Illmatic, I wouldn't say I missed your point... I knew when you told me to meet other people you weren't referring specifically to other magicians, I just said that to show I'm slowly trying to establish some outside connections besides just living inside my own head as it were. I actually think that maybe hanging out with other magicians in real life could be helpful: It would be living proof that I'm not the only nut who has these weird notions.
As for the physical thing, this one is dicey. These days meditation is virtually impossible due to the amount of tension in my head/facial area that drains me of my ability to concentrate (or not concentrate, as it were). Ditto for breathing exercises: I usually can't take deep breaths because when I do I get sharp squeezing pains usually around my stomach area and under my ribs. This is very frustrating as I'd like to try these exercises but my body won't let me. Running makes me very wary too as when I move too fast my heart starts beating very fast and I worry that I'll bring on a heart attack or something by overworking it.
Right now my main health woe is my eyes: Ever since I got my full-time job a few months ago my eyes have been killing me. Constantly watering, itchy and achey to touch, blurred vision, light-headedness... Most people would write these off as anxiety or allergies. I went to see an eye doctor a few weeks ago and he did a battery of tests on my eyes and his conclusion was that it was either allergy-related or from straining my eyes looking at computers (turns out I'm a bit far-sighted). He gave me drops but I still haven't gotten around to using them yet. Despite this visit I still worrying I'm going blind (which to me is one of the worst things I can imagine) and this is one of the causes of my depression. I feel, "why should I bother doing anything if I'm going blind?" Most people would say that if the doctor wasn't too concerned I shouldn't worry, but for all I know I could have qliphoptic vampires feeding off the energy of my nervous system and there's no way he could have detected that. If I could somehow convince myself that these eye problems don not mean I'm going blind maybe I could focus my attention on other areas, but the notion has a way of gripping the mind (and of course I'd probably end up focusing on something else... Like the tingling in my fingertips I've been getting recently, or whatever, and then I'd have a whole new condition to grapple with). It never ends.
Bottom line, I probably, in retrospect, wasn't ready to work with the qabalh yet. When I self-initiated myself into magic over 2 years ago one of my friends warned me to avoid the Tree of Life as it can lead to obsessions, particularily the dark side of it. In retrospect she was probably right as, ever since I've read "The Filth", I've had an obsession with the dark side of the Tree. I should probably add here that my magical workings dealing with this have mostly been regulated to reading a lot about it, thinking a lot about it, and channeling some of that darkness into my stories/art. So, when I say working with the qliphoth I do not mean that I've been doing rituals with their sigils, astrally projecting myself through the tunnels of Set (as I noted above, I've never astrally projected period), doing any type of dreamwork or scrying with them. Mostly just reading. I'm not sure one can evoke demons or magical things just by reading about them (RAW doesn't seem to think so) but they have such a dark mysterious allure I couldn't help but be captivated. So, on one hand the odds that I'm being turned slowly into a qliphopic puppet probably are small, but it's still a looming concern in the back of my mind. But I feel hesitant to just interrupt this whole process as I've been involved in it for over a year now and do I really want to think of a year of my life as having been wasted for nothing (especially my 23rd year?)
When I got into magic I was very cautious (as I've said before my first occult book i ever read was Fortune's "Psychic Self-Defense") but at the same time I was a bit cocky as I thought "Oh, only idiots make mistakes like that. I have nothing to worry about" (there was a time where chaos magic seemed like the least dangerous type of magic one could work with, but now I'm not so sure). The funny thing about this was recently (like last night) I was flipping through Phil Hine's "Condensed Chaos" (which I read towards the beginning of my self-initiation) and I was reading about his chapter on "Is Magic Dangerous?" and I was like "Oh fuck!" Isolation ("Isolation precedes madness"), "Magus-itis" (check), "Obsession" (oh god, and how... "Then there's the "sinister" behavior that sometimes manifests, cultivating a glamour of being an "outsider"... This is often a cover for a lack of social skills, and a gnawing sense of inferiority"), "Cosmic Tragedy" ("So too, one's fears, worries and problems take on a cosmic dimension to the level where you're not merely going through a bad patch but are having a cosmic initiation that no one can possible understand, and is vital to the future of the human race"), Paranoia (check again), "Gnostic Burn-Out" (yup). As I noted above when I read that section some time ago I scoffed and thought "That'll never happen to me." It appears I now have to eat my words.
Bottom line (and I know this takes the apparence of disjointed rambling, I'm sorry), one of the main reasons why I fear change is mostly because I'm afraid that if I do change my life for the better and achieve happiness something terrible will end up happening to me (accident, getting a fatal disease, etc.), or I'll end up being punished in some manner or other. I'm not sure where this fear comes about... My religious upbringing, the attitude of my family (which is pretty much to know your place and not stand out), or what... Then again I'm miserable now so how much worse can it be? I suppose aspects of it can also be traced back to my middle-school years... As a child I was very happy, extroverted and chatty with a large group of friends and I got out a lot, but in middle-school such behaviour drew attention to me and I was bullied a lot. Ever since then when I'm in public I try not to be noticed and try not to stand out, which helps explain my lack of social skills (though in college I did go through a goth phase in which I dressed kinda silly in public, but back then I was slowly getting confidence back).
To wrap this self-absorbed ranting up, I've decided that maybe Gypsy does make a point somewhere back there. While death and disease are my number one fear the other big one is social situations that have the potential to be awkward. If I'd really want to explore my own personal "Nightside of Eden" then those would be the paths on the backside of the Tree of Life. That is, perhaps the qliphoth in my case do not lurk in "dark" areas (which I've been dabbling in all my life and, in a way, have become comfortable with) but are actually "hiding" in the outside world of bright colors, clubs, and other public places most normal people don't fear. In that respect these would probably be my demons lurking on the 22 reverse tunnels (in no particular order):
1. Sex (odd how I can both crave for it yet be terrorfied of it... I blame lack of experience).
2. Going to clubs
3. Dancing in public (during private rituals, no problem, but in real life... forget it, jack.)
4. Flirting with total strangers (or flirting period).
5. Kissing someone (my lips are very dry and usually chapped).
6. Holding hands/hugging/snuggling (fear of intimacy).
7. Going on a date (or to a party, or whatever).
8. Driving on highways
9. Driving in a big city (to say nothing of finding a parking spot).
10. Going to a place I have no idea how to get to.
11. Cross-dressing (or dressing strange) in public.
12. Telling someone that I have a crush on I like them.
13. asking someone out.
14. making a scene in public (being rude, etc.)
15. Not getting enough sleep on nights where I have to work the next day (this has been very bad as of recent).
16. Public speaking (though I have no problems playing music in public as then I'm not really myself, just a character).
17. eating new foods at places I don't usually eat (fear of food poisoning/indigestion/heartburn attack).
18. Being involved in a conversation with more then 2 people at once (I'm always afraid I'll start to say something but then someone else will start to talk and I'll have to stop talking and end up looking foolish).
19. Being the center of attention anywhere (I once skipped a drag show my campus gay alliance group was holding because I was worried my lesbian friends would tell one of the performers to pretend to flirt with me and i just wouldn't know how to react in such a situation).
20. Working out (or doing anything atletic in general).
21. Being far away from my home or comfortable places I know for any prolonged period of time (unless I'm with my family on vacation).
22. Giving people my opinion or telling them what I really think about an idea.
Jeezus Christ, this is a sorry list of fears if I've ever seen one. Now, looking at the list above, these are things that most normal people do every day and have no problem with. Yet I have great difficulty with them as I don't react to change well at all. Obviously the best strategy would be to try each one out over time until I got used to them, but I don't even know where I should start. |
