X,
Actually, I recommend that you just abandon magic totally for a bit. I've done this a few times over the years, just avoided all occult books and that kind of thinking and looked into other areas (there was a big spell once where I spent alot of time reading books about science and philosophy). Generally, if you're really serious about magic, eventually you will return to it, hopefully with more insight on the subject then you had before. Sometimes not focusing on magic can be the most magical act you can do at that moment. What was that Phil Hine wrote about "Gnostic burn-out"? You may be trying to do too much at one time. There was a time myself where I was like "Oh man, I gotta read the Book of the Dead, I have all these Crowley books to read, have to read more Dion Fortune", whatever. I was trying to absorb all this occult information in a very short time span, trying to make myself this super-intelligent human being, but I was trying to read too much at once and just ended up getting tired and burned out and depressed. Which is why I only read one or two occult books at a time now and try to balance it out reading something else, be it fiction, non-fiction, whatever. Try reading something you'd normally never read, like a chick novel or something. If you really do believe in the kind of things that Robert Anton Wilson writes about, deconditioning yo self and taking on new reality tunnels, this is perhaps one of the most radical things you can do.
I can sympathize with you to some extent, being somewhat socially inept myself a good majority of my friends exist online and I too have gotten wrapped up in internet obsessions, and the end result is usually you alienate your online friends. For example, I almost ruined a friendship once with an Australian friend of mine because whenever we got together for a daily chat I would almost inevitably lapse into a diatribe about how depressed I was, and so on. I thought he could relate as in many ways we're similiar and we've both been emotional crutches to each other in the past, but by this point he had moved on, gotten a social life, he wasn't in that kind of headspace anymore. Which is why I haven't spoken to him all that much in awhile, only every now and then, though when I get out of my dark period I'll certainly try to connect to him again. In your case, you tend to repeat the same problems quite a bit, and that annoys people after awhile. I don't mean this as an insult, as I'm the same way. You have to put yourself in other people's shoes though and see how frustrating itcan be to say the same things over and over again. I have a transexual friend in real life I knew in college who I mostly just talk to over the 'net now, though we're supposed to meet again and hang out one day this year, catch up on old times. We read each other's live journals and this person is constantly complaining about how depressed he is, how much he wants to move, how he wants to kill himself, and so on. And everytime he lapses into self-pity I usually cheer him up with inspirational messages and so on, which he seems to get something out of. But then the cycle repeats itself and I just end up getting frustrated because I care about him but he just keeps thinking the same negative thoughts over and over again. The only plus about all this is it gave me some insight on my own behavior. In David Icke's book "I am me, I am free" Icke says one of the worst things you can do to "why me" people is try to constantly console them. I think there's some truth to this.
See? I learned something from a David Icke book. |
