I’m kinda straight, and thanks for the compliment… but come on, my eyes and eye shape? I’m not eating all natural, supplementing, hydrating like a MF, and working out every day to hear that I’ve got good eye shape! I’m gonna have to kick it up Enoch Petrucelli style to get the body props, I guess.
Real answer to your question, though, and maybe I’ll talk about this on wednesday: I don’t care for balance. Balance spreads me too thin, makes me feel like I never have enough time, and isn’t sustainable for obsessed folks like me.
I’m all about Integration! Instead of balancing everything out like a fancy hors d’oeuvre platter, I grab everything I want to do and roll it in some butterleaf lettuce (avoiding grains, most of the time) and enjoy everything mixed together, a few bites at a time of everything I love spread out through my day. Weird analogy, yeah, I know. I’m also doing an intermittent fasting thing, with 3 hours before breaking the fast today, and man would I love to sneak myself an hors d’oeuvre wrap before my mind wakes up and catches me cheating.
A more literal interpretation: First, I am magick, so it is impossible for anything I do to not be magickal. I wake up and talk to my gf, and she is magick, our love is magick, our life is magick, and most of our conversations are overtly magickal. Our morning chit-chat would sound like a boardroom reciting of daily tasks, but I use my charming/sexy voice and I’m excited about what I create each day, so I’m actually setting up my schedule and connecting with my love at the same time, often while I’m getting dressed or brewing coffee.
I’ll hit my morning ritual at sunrise while working out in my backyard, or on the drive to the gym. If I’m gyming it instead of yardwork-workout, I listen to my psytrance mix that gets my heart rate jacked on the treadmill, and I’ve selected music with magickal, spiritual, or motivational overtones, so I’m programming my mind with magickal messages with my body at peak states. I’ll also use some sort of inverse-yogic stretch postures Kali taught me when I hit my slow intervals and pull power from infinity into my body and graft it into my cells and bones. Basically, my workout isn’t just working my body, but is using my body to expand my Self.
If I’m standing in line somewhere, or driving a highway, or having a conversation, I’ll often simultaneously sink deep into mala mantra meditation. It takes some real practice to really listen and engage while at the same time going deep, but I’ve pretty much mastered it.
Eating is a ritual. Cutting veggies is an ancient tradition connecting me to my ancestors further back than memory goes, and I’ll either listen to something magickal or inspirational, or prep for my day while cooking. After hanging out with enough free-spirits, I’ve reclaimed the practice of blessing my food, holding my hands over the plate, really feeling the gratitude of the living things I am sacrificing so I can have the energy and strength to live my purpose for one more day.
I am naturally most productive the first half of the day, so I’ll set up the Temple, tap into the spirit of the message, and do the best that I can to speak from spirit instead of from mind. Thankfully, Orlee is always excited to edit film, so I do some pre-prep of the raw footage and send it down the chute. While files are rendering or uploading, I’ll hit emails, refine projects in development, write, or work on other background tasks, and toggle between those while my tech does tech stuff for me. I’ll give my daughter a wake-up knock on her door as I’m relocating rooms, tell her I love her, ask how she slept, and remind her to eat some protein with breakfast… and no, peanut butter isn’t the best breakfast protein, kiddo! Then on to the next vid/podcast/book. Work itself is magick, literally for me now, but it always has been. Mixing stains to beautify cabinetry was alchemy and art. Carpet cleaning was service to those in need, and I’d always try to leave the home having learned something new about the customer, or having done something extra. We expand through our impact on others, regardless of what line of work we do. There is always a deeper level of connection, and connection is magickal!
The home office/temple combo makes parenting much easier to integrate, especially right now. I’ll check in on the kid, make sure she’s on her schoolwork, or ask about the art she’s always making, help her find paints or solvents so she can melt doll faces to the right deformity, or just ask how she’s doing, and let her open up and just listen and enjoy her. I’ll usually give her a briefing on what the rest of my day looks like and find out what she has planned, and usually schedule a couple things to do with her when I’m not working each day. She’s 15 and is starting to read and work through my works, so we’ll talk a lot of magick theory and applications, and I’ll read tarot for her sometimes when she asks me to, usually to improve relationships, resolve friendship concerns, or just direct the more difficult choices she has to make… but only when she asks for a reading directly. Without her I’d be a serial killer instead of a Creator, so she is magick and connecting with her is a magickal gift!
I try to get in at least 1 quiver of archery practice every day (45# Recurve, with great accuracy at 40 yards). I’ve got a large foam dice target on a stump in the backyard, so I’ll switch into my daisy dukes and get some sun while flinging arrows. Archery is a meditation for sure, complete with pranayam, trataka, and attainment of effortless certainty, when it’s perfect.
I hike a semi rugged 3 mile loop trail a few days a week, just a sneak under my back fence, and that’s either a walking meditation or a processing/solution/creation activity as well as an extra bit of exercise to keep my body and mind in flow. Sometimes I’ll take business calls on the hike, especially boring businessy business calls… they’re a lot easier to enjoy in nature!
Dinner with the kiddo is always at the table, no phones, and good conversation. This is probably the only thing I do that could be considered “traditional” parenting, but it is essential, not just to maintaining the connection every day, but also a very primal form of love, to share food that you’ve taken time to prepare with your loved ones, and to try to include foods she enjoys. It can really make the difference between feeling cared for or feeling unimportant to a child, or a lover.
After dinner I usually will hit a few more work tasks before “clocking out.” I can definitely go overboard and just work forever, so I try to set an approximate time for a board game or a movie or a short walk with the kid, or sometimes we’ll just sit and talk for a couple hours before I head to bed.
Then, even when I’m bedding down, I usually listen to sleep hypnosis audio to target specific improvements or refinements I’d like to make in myself (Michael Sealy on youtube has a ton of great sessions).
I also have my phone on me to vlog creative thoughts wherever I’m at, and notebooks and pens all over the place, because if the muses have a message, they don’t wait around long for me before it’s forgotten, so I’ve got to externalize the internal immediately with some quick notes so I can unpackage it later on.
I’ll take my fatboy out and it’s not just a bike ride, it’s a communion with the spirits of the air. I’ll target-shoot and channel martian fires or mercurial aim.
I love every minute of my life: Art is my work, and my life is the art of magick, and there is nothing that I observe that is not a manifestation of magick or a communion with the miraculous.
Anyways, you probably weren’t asking for my daily routine, but the point is that there isn’t much separation and balancing of magick and life and relationships and work and personal time and intimacy and entertainment… everything is magick, and magick flows through everything, expresses itself through my every act, and turns the mundane into miracles that I am able to enjoy throughout the day, no matter what I’m doing. If it needs my attention, then it needs my magickal attention. If it needs my presence, it needs me to be magickally present. If there is a problem, there is a magickal solution, or a divinatory guidance.
To most, it might seem an extreme way of viewing and living life, but for me it is Supreme Living. I can’t shut off what I am, and I am magick. I’ve tried to shut it off, tried to compartmentalize and not be what I am, and the result is absolute suffering. So, I just take me with me wherever I go, and I always have everything I need right there!