I totally understand, I live in a science/tech-heavy area where if it’s not in a textbook, or an algorithm, or peer-reviewed, it’s dismissed as nonsense. In the end, I keep my spirituality to myself. It’s not my job to convince someone…energy is better spent on the open minded.
I was reading a thread called “Advice from King Paimon” and he said the following which seems quite appropriate:
“Why do you care so much about what the clueless don’t know, and the blind don’t see? Mind your own business!”
Indeed: chemical reactions etc… Another thought I had was that some people joked about their hormones (in referral to sex) and as a mental response I used to be like “So they’re proud to be almost machines?”
Try not to fight them or surpesss them. Rather look at ways around them. I use afformations sometimes as a member here recommended and it helps change your mindset.
Limiting mindsets are an issue and with time your will can overpower these. Yesterday I was speaking about baneful Magick and a family member told me that it comes back 20X worse and will take your loved ones. For a while it did overpower me but today I was like fuck those beliefs I’m my own God. We all fall into this sometimes but your will needs to be stronger than the opinions of others.
Basically take a shower. You can visualize whatever you want (I used pink light) and then just try and look at ways around those thoughts as I mentioned stronger. Remember we who practice magick have experiences others will never understand.
To know, to will, to dare, to keep silent.
As for the work put in to see and hear spirits, sometimes they make themselves obvious, sometimes not.
A teacher once remarked on the meaning of the Great Work, is exactly that … a lot of work. For a while you might wonder if you are some Harry Potter obcessed fan, until one day you get the feeling of a presence near you. Another thing is that people rarely move forward to encounter their Holy Guardian Demon and Holy Guardian Angel (the Great Work), and seek shortcuts. Luckily, many demons work with us because they realize despite their agendas we are like helpless kids seeking exactly that … help.
Or they could cause the issue and present the,selves as the solution, or maybe not. Who really knows?
Yet still, as a witch put it into me, we have to put our blood, sweat and tears into our work, sometimes obcessively, sometimes barely, sometimes until we break down and then we get the work manifested.
Dont doubt yourself, just learn and learn and put your work in. And if you feel like youre about to break, know you arent the only one, nor have been the only one, or will be the last. Its a part of the journey, as hard as it is, it is still the opportu nity to learn.
My two cents.
Its easy to say magick isnt real until you experience something unreal, if you have a consistent practice and desires/goals that are possible but just out of reach you will manifest them. Keep a journal so then a year later you can realize how much of your magick has came to fruition.
Science and rationality is not the holy grail of intellectual thinking and isnt the only way to view the world. Fiction, myths, art, and magick do not cater to rationalist, these fields are for the dreamers and imaginative. Whats rational about a painting or sculpture, but sometimes art can be more real than life itself. Have you ever read a book and been there, like truly in the scene? Thats not very rational and yet is an extraordinary experience that holds value.
Rationalist have zero artistic taste they are concerned with numbers, statistics, logical filters etc.
Dont pay them any mind, focus on your magick and stay consistent after a year of genuine effort and record youll witness first hand a phenomenon that breaks all logic reason, this will solidify your faith in magick.
Relax, you’re overreacting a tiny little bit. You don’t even know these people.
You will never have the same views as everyone else on this planet. And that’s a good thing.
You should be happy about the fact that all they do is write comments and you live in a time and place where everyone can believe whatever they want and practice magick without having to face difficulties because of it.
Well @Red_Comet you got lots of advice more tactful than I would probably give to be honest, so my only other suggestion is while you’re working on figuring things out, don’t be this guy:
In other words if you know you need protection from criticism, act as that protector, diligently and with commitment, and don’t expect anyone else to change their views and actions to accomodate your own lack of certainty.
Except, I skipped over the Harry Potter part and went straight to “poof” - chaos!
While I am still not able to make my opinions known on this subject. For me, science and spirituality go together like peas in a pod. I take what I need/want and leave the rest.
I have personally learned it’s okay to agree to disagree with others. I’ve learned to stand up when I’ve needed to stand up in my words.
Friend, unless a human is signing your paycheck or has some other form of material leverage over you, it may be worth considering whether its opinion is even worth considering at all. And even if it does have leverage, there’s a huge difference between feigning consideration and genuine consideration. Personally, I’m quite happy to hide in plain sight. These systems of thinking and of being, these relationships with the great old ones, are not for most people. Let them continue down their path, perhaps it works for them, but it has no bearing on you. I think it’s best not tell others of your activities, there is no reason to do this it will only draw scorn and possibly introduce more variables into the work.
The funniest part of this is that even such people have a lot of spiritual experiences. Premonitions. also things just as simple as trance or feeling a presence. Ever heard from them that time is running too quickly when they do what they like? Even when they share some of their weird dreams you can see right through it.
Yes, although it’s a vague and I don’t have a better term for it. Those are certqinly things you can notice and would be dismissed when confronted by them. (own experience)
What I have found is that many of these rationalists are actually quite the opposite of scientific and simply seek to maintain their world view for two reasons. The number one reason being the sense of superiority it allows them to delude themselves with and second it absolves them from accountability.
Now for the sake of this explanation remaining objective I’ll leave my own thoughts feelings experiences and anecdotes out of this for now. Now many of you know that I believe in the Shining one the great architect and that I am what’s often referred to as a deist. But I’m not going to go into this at the moment.
When delving unto these topics I keep an open mind. I know that we as a planet know very little about our universe despite what the arrogant would have you believe. I also know that there is a fine line between the sceptic and the denier.
There is open minded scepticism and then there is blind scepticism. Which is basically just a euphemism for willfull denial. Then of course we have the gullable and naive.
The gullable and naive tend to jump to conclusions in support of what they want to believe. They ignore evidence and put forth anything that supports their narrative.
They twist evidence to fit their preexisting notions.
The open minded sceptic relies on scientific method and Occam’s razor. Keeping in mind that the simplest and most obvious explanation is usually true and that when other possibilities have been ruled out what is left even if highly unlikely must be true. The scientific method consists of formulating a hypothesis and then attempting to prove that hypothesis wrong. If it can’t be proven wrong then that means there is more evidence to support it. It holds up to scrutiny.
Now let’s keep in mind that much of what is unseen and unquantifiable is also unfalsifiable as a result. In other words it’s very difficult if not impossible to prove wrong.
The blind sceptic goes on the assumption that if something is not what they like they can use it’s inability to be proven wrong not as evidence for support but as a cause for dismissal.
The blind sceptic or willful denier commits a perversion of scientific process by ignoring the hypothesis and focusing on alternative possibilities only no matter how unlikely or outlandish. It does not seek to prove the null hypothesis wrong but instead seeks to gain support for the alternatives. It operates under the assumption that the null hypothesis can not be true and therefore deserves no recognition. It then seeks explanations that it believes may be more likely and then attempts to gain support for said alternative explanation. When it feels as though an alternative explanation has gained enough support it then seeks to replace the null hypothesis with its alternative explanation. It does not seek to disprove it’s alternative. This method is used to circumvent the null completely for the purposes of dismissal of the null. This is the exact opposite of scientific.
Ultimately everything pertaining to a situation boils down to the will to pursue without sufficient evidence.
So let’s look at an example of a situation where we have a lack of evidence and a choice to pursue or not.
A middle aged woman wakes up in the middle of the night and rolls over to wake up her husband with a story claiming to have had a telepathic communication with an alien consciousness in which she says the alien consciousness informed her of an impending disaster which if acted upon could be averted.
How then do we approach this?
We take it at face value then proceed to form a hypothesis and then disprove it.
So we have two variables to explore. Telepathy and alien consciousness, we must first determine if alien consciousness is valid. Then we determine if telepathy is valid. We have no solid proof of either.
We have no solid proof because anything in the realm of the non physical can’t be quantified or measured.
We have no solid proof that telepathy exists.
We have no solid proof that alien consciousness exists.
How the various thinking types approach this.
The Naive automatically makes the choice to pursue and accepts the situation at face value. They seek evidence to support rather than disprove.
The blind sceptic uses anti method to dismiss the null and instead offers alternatives and seeks evidence to support the alternatives. Then replace the null with said alternative or even leaves it open ended and can conjure many possible alternatives. And so long as there are viable alternatives the null can be discarded. In the same way the naive seeks evidence to support the null. The null is not considered possible because the blind skeptic has already determined in a similar way that the criteria of telepathy and alien consciousness are already dismissed.
Then we have the open minded skeptic. Who tackles the issue head on by attempting to disprove the null.
Can alien consciousness be disproved? No it is unfalsifiable at this time. Can telepathy be disproved? No it is also unfalsifiable at this time.
Can the claim be disproven? Technically no.
Now we come to the matter of choice. Knowing that the claim can neither be proven or disproven we have two options. Do we go ahead and act as if it is true and move forward with out proof or do we choose to discard entirely?
To move forward based on a belief would be considered unscientific but also to discard based on a belief would also be unscientific. In one scenario discarding based on belief would lead to no future discoveries or results. However moving forward based on belief could potentially lead to discoveries and results.
Many scientific discoveries, and technologies have occured as a result of moving forward based on belief. The atomic bomb, particle physics, the discovery of air as molecules, and various an entire world full of discoveries and new technologies which have later yielded results regardless of proof have been achieved due to experimentation moving forward on a belief.
So we have determined that moving forward can be of benefit but what about our scenario?
In our scenario the woman described a means to avert a potential threat. If we take the Naive rout we avoid a disaster and if nothing happens then there is no harm done.
Should we take the open minded sceptical view and decide to move forward we also avoid a disaster and no harm is done.
If we take the blind sceptic route and discard and nothing happens there is no harm done. But if we take the blind sceptic route and discard but something does happen then a disaster befalls us and we had knowingly allowed ourselves to be put in danger based on nothing more than a belief.
In the end this is all amygdala based decision making. The blind sceptic seeks superiority. His identity of being “no nonsense” is the only reason he would forgo potential discovery and accept the possibility of disaster is based solely on his feelings of superiority in the present moment.
This is basically what I’m saying about moving forward based on belief. Developing a model and if the results are fruitful the model is retained. The so called rationalists, have a dismissive process. Rather than attempt to disprove the hypothesis they dismiss it and instead offer up replacements for which they seek support and never actually attempt to even disprove their alternatives.
I remember starting my magical practice to prove that it doesn’t work, but then I started getting results and had to change my beliefs
Like Mulberry said, everyone has a model that they follow and it’s up to you to choose yours. I wouldn’t be able to follow their model since my pesky rituals keep working.
Hate to double post, but I had a thought-it’s possible that there are scientists who are good at their job who are very open-minded about magick personally but would never disclose that they feel that way because they’d be embarrassed to bring that up, especially if their colleagues found out. I’m studying to be in the scientific field, and I’m going to be “in the closet” about being into this site’s subject.
