Hi! It's been a long time since I've posted much (got distracted by graduating from high school ^_^) but I'm back to working on my magic and was wondering if anyone has any suggestions for exercises for controlling magic/energy and keeping consciousness altered. I have done a few impromtu spells recently and have encountered problems with this. I ground and find it very easy to slip into an altered consciousness. One moment I'm thinking normally and then there's a definite shift. But because it's so easy, I have trouble staying there. I constantly feel that I'm about to slip out and so end up rushing my spell work.
The other problem is that I can summon the energy/magic and push it into my hands, but sometimes it gets "stuck" there and I can't push it out of my hands into what ever object I'm working with. I feel this problem using a wand or even just using my hand. I haven't tried with an athame yet. Could this be because I just need more practice, or would a change of tool help with this?
I am not a very visual person, so visualization exercises aren't always effective for me. I tend to focus on the magic as sensation and heat traveling through me instead of light. When I first started I always tried to visualize it as light, but I always lost the light to sensation. So if you have any exercises that involve sensation, I would especially like to hear those, but any exercise would be helpful.
Thanks!
I find it fascinating when I read of people like you who feel energies in a sensation way, because I'm quite the opposite, I'm extremely visual.
As far as your first problem of slipping out of the state of altered consciousness, I'd like to suggest something that's perhaps in between sensation and visualization, which has to do with your experience of being in a sacred or magical environment when you do magic. I find that my ability to stay in altered consciousness is supported by environmental elements. Maybe you could spend some time thinking about what for you makes a magical or sacred environment (sound, smells, sights, sensations) and try to add things to your area of magical working to create an environment that will support you staying in your altered state of consciousness.
Since you're sensation-based, pErhaps there is some object, for instance, that when you touch it, feels "magical" to you, or seems to support magical energy in your body. I would try to find such an object, and consecrate it and dedicate it to this purpose only, so that your learned physical experience gets "linked" with the object and its sensations or textures, as something that supports your magical work. YOu might spend a day or a week going about the house and yard or other places, trying to direct your hands and body to "feel" and find such an object.
OF course, you do take in the world through your eyes, and even if you aren't good at inner visualization, you may find that there are some objects that when you look at them with your mundane eyes, do also support a magical feeling. PErhaps a picture of someone or something, or some natural object.
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