There is an art to releasing our hold on our illusions, a systematic method through which we open ourselves up to perceiving a broader portion of reality and simultaneously stretch our horizons. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, to do this we need to learn a certain set of skills and then, once we've mastered those skills and turned technique into ability, we need to set those skills aside. The concept is similar to the story one of my teachers told me that I shared in the first chapter. In a certain magickal Tradition, the shaman-in-training would use specific herbs to reach a certain level of reality. Once they were capable of reaching that level with the herb, the dose of the herb would be reduced and the shaman-to-be would be expected to close the resulting gap by developing their own skills. We need to embrace the same concept in our own spiritual work – relying on a technique until our own developing abilities allow us to reach the same level without the aid of that technique.
The concept behind this approach is one that we will employ again and again on this journey. Because we chose to accept certain illusions that limit who we truly are, we aren't aware of the vast amount of information, wisdom and energy that are readily available to us. The first step in this process is to discover the appropriate doorway that holds a greater portion of reality than we currently have access to, either by searching on our own or with the assistance of a teacher, and then initiate the intent to step through that door. We then need to employ the appropriate tools and techniques to reach that doorway and step through it. The key to this process is the understanding that once we have stepped through that doorway, the only thing limiting us from immediately accessing the energy that doorway holds without employing rituals, symbolism or tools to reach that point, are the limitations that we choose to place upon ourselves.
The tools, techniques and philosophy are intended to fall away as we grow. We aren't building strength that will fade unless we continually train, but are letting go of illusionary limitations that, once released, no longer have any hold over us. This process may be easier for you to understand if you think of it as being similar to our ability to physically maneuver through the mundane world. As an infant, there is a significant challenge involved in simply developing the strength, coordination and balance to make our body respond to our will. With practice and determination, we learn to roll over. From there, we learn to first crawl, then walk. In a very short time, we are running, skipping, jumping, climbing trees – a wide range of tasks that, as a tiny infant, were not only beyond our ability, but actions whose existence we had yet to even consider when we began our journey. At no point in time did we have to go back and revisit skills in order to move to the next level. Once we learned to run, we no longer had to practice crawling – the ability became a part of who we are, rather than a building block that we needed to constantly employ in order to move on to more advanced forms of movement.
On the path that I teach, our approach to magick and spirituality follows exactly the same principle. We will learn skills that are vital for us to access a certain level of reality or reveal a specific spiritual truth, but we will find that we do not need to continually relearn and reapply those skills. Once we believe that we reach a specific milepost in our journey, that point of our path becomes a part of who we are. Our focus can be on moving as far ahead as our self-imposed limitations will allow us to travel, not on devoting more and more time and energy to portions of the journey that we've already covered.
Before we can begin learning skills and consciously interacting with spiritual energy, we need to find the first doorway to reach for and eventually step through. To be more specific, we need to become aware of how spiritual energy manifests within our perception of reality. Not only will this clearly show us the door to reach for, but unless we can see and understand the energy and the implications of its flow, we can't even begin to consider learning how to consciously alter it.
One of the concepts that I introduced in the first chapter is that all of reality is composed of spiritual energy. When you rewind time back to just before the beginning of everything, to the instant before reality was born, there is no physical world. The only thing that exists is spiritual energy. Another way to think about this concept is by playing the "ancestor game." You start with yourself and say, "I came from my parents." Then you say, "My parents came from their grandparents" and name them. It quickly becomes a much easier task if you take one branch of the rapidly expanding tree and follow it back as far as you can go. Eventually, you'll run out of names, which speeds up the game considerably. You can then focus on the species level, rather than the individual. Eventually, even the species falls away and you reach the building blocks of life. At some point the game draws to a close as the logical mind can't navigate any farther back. Usually this is around the time you reach "cosmic dust cloud" or some variation on the theme if you believe in evolution (if you don't, you reach this point much more rapidly). The step beyond that initial building block can only be described as Spirit as you've reached the moment where there is nothing else to give birth to the physical. When you reverse the game, you realize that all life, that all of existence came from this spiritual energy.
By it's very definition, all of existence is Spirit.
What is asked of you on this path is to not only make that leap and understand reality from this perspective, but you are asked to begin to see the weave that the fabric of life is formed with and learn how to insert your own threads into that cosmic tapestry. You do it all the time. All of reality does. The key is that, by walking this path, you are choosing to insert those threads consciously with an understanding of the implications behind your actions. You're making a statement that you're willing to open your eyes, that you're ready to wake up and step into your role as an incarnated human being and a spiritual entity.
So how do we begin?
Back in the early 1990's, I found myself in much the same place you're standing right now. I was working with a wonderful teacher of Native American descent who had agreed to take me on as a student a short time earlier, a relationship that would last for the better part of two years. She lived on one side of the United States, I was on the other, and we corresponded through letters and packages and she recorded her teachings on audio cassette before entrusting them to the postal service. My teacher would give me concepts and theory and send me out to find my own techniques and applications. I was instructed that the lesson wouldn't be completed until I'd successfully navigated through the material and found my own methods for interacting with nature and the spirit world.
Nowadays, that's commonplace in my world, but back then it was a concept that required me to stretch far beyond my comfort zone. I was a little bit in awe of studying with a woman who had been trained by her People's shaman and who was offering to train me as well. I didn't want to screw up. I had no idea what the correct answer should be, what I would find when I slipped out into nature, or if I would somehow meet her expectations of me as her student or fall dreadfully short.
Her first lesson seemed simple enough. I was to go outdoors and sit, quietly, for at least fifteen minutes and simply observe. The exercise would be implemented over the course of thirty consecutive days. If I missed even a single day, the days were reset and the exercise was restarted from the very beginning.
I don't know about you, but I'm a bit of a procrastinator and not always that open to change. To make things worse, I lived in an apartment in the middle of town. I had to work five days a week. There were chores to accomplish; television shows to watch; a thousand distractions beckoned that would keep me from my appointed task.
I was sitting in my living room, watching television late one evening when the assigned exercise slipped into my mind and refused to leave. It was all I could think about, the urge to complete the task so insistent that I was having a difficult time watching the evening's prime time programming. Back in those days, I was even more stubborn and clueless than I am now and it seemed as if the spirit world often needed to strike my head soundly with an ethereal rubber mallet in order to get my attention. Annoyed that the thought wouldn't leave me alone, I leapt up from my chair, grabbed my coat, and slipped outside.
The problem was, I had no idea where I was going. There I was, standing in front of my apartment door, wondering where I could find nature. I could see some trees in the distance, but it was dark and cold and I wasn't about to walk that far. The idea that I could climb in the car and drive to the mountains, forests or beaches of my native Oregon hadn't even entered my consciousness at this point in my path.
So I did what any complete and utterly clueless novice would do.
I looked around the apartment complex, scanning the darkness for neighbors and checking once more for the headlights of passing cars.
Then I sprinted across the parking lot and slipped into the bushes, crouching within them in the cold and dark, hoping that no one could see me.
When you live in the midst of a media culture, fifteen minutes seems like an eternity. That first night I learned that it's very cold in Oregon in late September. I discovered that passing cars are actually quite loud, especially when you're certain that it's a neighbor returning from the grocery store and that they'll soon be staring at you as you're captured by their headlights. I learned that fifteen minutes seems like three hours, especially when you check your watch every two minutes or so. Finally, with an audible sigh of relief, I realized that the fifteen minutes had passed. Carefully checking once more for cars or neighbors, I climbed out of the bushes and dashed back across the parking lot, slipping into the warmth of my apartment and the gentle glow of the beckoning television.
And then I realized that I had twenty-nine more evenings to go.
I was sure that this was one of those things that teachers subjected new students to, an opportunity to test how serious they were about their path and whether they were worthy of the instruction. At that point in my path, I simply couldn't see another reason for sitting outside for two minutes, let alone fifteen minutes for thirty consecutive days. But I wasn't about to give up. If nothing else, I had a stubborn streak a mile wide. When the next evening came, I once more checked the parking lot and then dashed to my sanctuary in the bushes.
Things did not improve. On that second night I realized that, while it's cold in Oregon during late September, its infinitely more so when it's raining. With an unpleasant mixture of annoyance and disgust, I discovered that even a light sprinkle will drip from leaves and branches for what seemed like hours. That hard-packed dirt will magically turn to mud with only a tiny amount of moisture. That what had seemed like an impossible amount of time to quietly wait the night before simply became an eternity the second time out with the addition of a cold drizzle.
The next evening I found myself firmly planted in front of the television, watching as the digital clock on the VCR informed me of the increasing lateness of the hour. I kept telling myself, "One more show, just one more," until not only had the majority of the evening passed, but it was well-past my normal bedtime.
Reluctantly prying myself from the couch and retrieving my coat, I once more made the dash across the parking lot and slipped into the bushes. I found the same trunk that I had leaned against the previous night and the same hole in the foliage overhead that alternately displayed the stars or let in the rain.
And that was when it finally began to make sense to me. It wasn't just a bush on the side of the parking lot. It was my bush. There was a familiarity to its presence. I knew the trunk that supported my back, the gap in the branches and leaves that showed me the night sky, the patterns of shadows and light formed by its branches and leaves. Somehow, in the middle of the city, huddled under a bush at the edge of my apartment's parking lot, a new world began to open for me. There was a pattern to how the soil softened under the touch of the rain and then slowly grew firm again as the water was drawn to where it would be most useful. I could see the wind as it blew through distant trees and learned to anticipate the moment that it would then dance with the leaves of my own bush. I discovered the beauty of the way the light was captured by the sap suspended on the branch before my eyes. My suburban world suddenly became populated by wildlife that I had somehow remained unaware of until that night and I found myself marveling at the rustling sound of sleeping birds perched in the bushes around me.
As the days continued to pass, I found myself looking forward to my time spent in nature. And as I slowly learned to observe, an entirely new world opened up for me. I realized that I could feel the plant life around me, not by physical touch, but with something else, something that had always existed inside of me. It was as if my own being extended beyond my body and I could feel where other energies touched it or where they existed beyond the boundaries that I used to define myself. As I sat there quietly, the minutes slowly ticking by, I realized that I could sense the world around me, that everything - the earth beneath me, the sky above, the plant life that surrounded me - had a very distinct sensation to it, like being close enough to a wood stove to sense its heat without being close enough for it to truly warm you.
Over the years, I realized that this was the first part of the lesson. The exercise had been specifically designed to teach me to open my eyes and see the world around me as alive and vibrant, not just as the backdrop for my busy life. Each night the world opened a little more to me. Some days it seemed as if the trees whispered wordlessly to each other, just beyond the reach of my hearing. When the weekend came, I sat in the sun, watching the sparrows trace patterns in the sky. It wasn't so much that each thing I saw had a lesson to teach me - I wasn't far enough along on my path to realize that yet. It was that my perception began to slowly change, that I began to see the world around me as being alive. And, because it was truly alive to me, each thing I saw had an intrinsic value. As a part of that weave of life, as an integral part of the world around me, I realized that my life had value too, and over the years I would learn to see the special gift that each of us holds that makes us magickal and unique.