Over the past few months, the blog has focused on filling in some gaps in my story. While it was mundane and lacking any magick or spiritual wisdom, it was necessary for me. With that out of the way, we can get into some of the good stuff. Before we get into magickal and spiritual practices, though, I'd like to start with an often overlooked aspect in these topics.

How you schedule your day impacts your magick.

One of my biggest strengths is the variety to which I've approached life. I've embodied the directionless habits of a drifter in my twenties, and I've lived a disciplined routine that bordered on monastic living in my thirties. What I've found is that both of these hold access to different angles of approaching magical powers.

One thing I learned from my psychedelic 20's was the Timothy Leary axiom "set and setting." While my party days are long behind me, this statement touches on how physical and emotional settings can affect your day. Another way of thinking of this is that the structure of the external world impacts your consciousness.  

I've found, though, that not only does the structure of your external world help construct your consciousness, how you schedule your time also influences how your mind works. Understanding that magic relies on your mental framework or consciousness, it also stands to reason that if schedule impacts consciousness and consciousness impacts magick, your daily schedule impacts your magick.

In my experience, I've found three distinctive states of scheduling time. Each state has its attributes, flavor, and personality. Two of these scheduling methods are extreme, and the third is a hybrid of beneficial aspects of the previous two. You have to embody the two extremes to the tipping point to access the third in my experience. However, you might be able to do so and as with anything I say, take it with a grain of salt.

Here's a quick overview of the types of magick

Structureless Magick

Composed of: Unitnetional oddities, weird experiences, associative sync

Lifestyle: Carefree lifestyle that doesn't have any cohesive organization. The schedule can change daily and is out of control of the individual.

Limitations:  Has a life of its own and can lead one to madness.

Structured Magick

Composed of: Intentional odd experiences, Manifestation of desires, 

Lifestyle: Disciplined lifestyle that has a clear pattern. This schedule is routine and is the foundation of success and happiness in life.

Limitations: Restrictive and can eventually orient one towards greed.

Flow Magick

Composed of: a blend of intentional and unintentional weird experiences

Lifestyle: Has daily objectives but does them as appropriate to the needs of that specific day. There is enough structure for the benefits of structured magick to bled through and enough fluidity for structureless magic to flow freely, creating an optimal life experience.

Limitations: Can be challenging to maintain initially, requires discipline and ability to set your schedule. 

Let's take a more detailed look.

Structureless Magick

In my twenties, the guiding compass was driven chiefly by random hedonistic impulses. The openness of this approach to my schedule allowed for the unexpected to be a common occurrence. It led me to exciting places, unique people and was the generative force of some of my best stories.

It seems the more space we make for the unexpected, the more we allow the universe to move us into new directions. To steal a phrase from Gordon White, we are "moved around the board." The openness of this lifestyle leaves space for other forces to influence some of your decisions and actions. While this can be invigorating, it can also be frightening and lead to some disastrous places, as my story shows.

Structureless magick has its own life and inertia. As such, the absence of restraint or coherent structure; will eventually lead to disaster. However, when channeled properly, it can create excellent results. I would posit the freedom of this model is essential to harnessing true power. However, to conduct structureless magick beneficially, we need its opposite, structured magick.

Structured Magick

Most of my thirties were about rebuilding my life as a result of uncontrolled structureless magick. Building implies structure, and considering all I had was rubble, I had to start with the foundation. The foundation for me was structure and routine.

Structure and routine offer something tangible to your life that better prepares you for the inevitable hardships that will arrive. Regularly engaging in the same set of constructive habits is akin to building a root system. It will support growth and sustain life. 

In my case, this was the restoration of my psychical, emotional, mental and spiritual health. The wellness in these areas also positively impacted developing a business, better social skills, healthier connections, getting out of debt, and self-reliance. Effectively structured magick was a catalyst for correcting all of the imbalances of structureless magick. 

The problem is at some point, structure and form become prisons. They are devoid of movement and inevitably become rigid. Over time, anything that does not bend will break, and life will eventually present situations that disrupt your routine and habits. Which, for me, resulted in panic attacks, anger, defeat, and a whole slew of other emotions.

Thankfully, life has a grey area, and here we enter into Flow Magick.

Flow Magick

Flow magick is the effortless act of being that has aspects of both structured and structureless magick working in harmony. It consists of having things to do but not being too committed to accomplishing them in any particular order or fashion and instead allowing the day to unfold organically.  

When you create enough randomness for unique experiences to occur and sprinkle in enough structure to maintain a level of coherence, life takes on a new form. It's more potent and visceral. You can blend the best aspects of two opposite ways of living into one harmonious expression of life, but it takes skill.  

The basic premise is the understanding that things happen on a different timeline than your own. You switch off the clocks and time systems that the rest of the world live by and tune into the universe's pulse. This process is incredibly destabilizing because we are shedding one operating system and switching to another. 

Flow magic is primal.

Society has influenced the mind and the way the human being interacts with its environment. Before living in cities, life allowed more space for the mysteries to play. Now we've unfortunately seemed to build layer upon layer of disconnection, with our days saturated in distraction. However, we can tune in to a more primal state by creating a different structure to our lives.

No alarm clock

It's shocking how much this can impact your day. Let your body sleep until it feels rested, and then get up and go straight into meditation. You want to tap into the power of the theta state your mind is naturally in upon waking. You can maximize this benefit by also using theta binaural beats through a set of headphones. 

Daily Meditation

Meditation orients your mind differently. We are looking to approach the world from a calmer and more centered perspective. It's necessary for navigating the world outside of the traditional approach to scheduling. Most modern techniques to schedule focus on productivity, while meditation focuses on awareness.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the practice of being fully present in the moment. Think of it like taking some of the practice of meditation to active parts of your day. You are observing the very act of being alive and the experience for what it is. In a non-stop society built on frantic impulses, the ability to fully experience a situation with your senses is a blessing.

Listen to your body

Your body is trying to tell you things all the time, but most of us aren't listening. When we crash during the workday and need a nap or unplug for a few minutes, many of us can't. When you ignore what your body is telling you, it distorts your intuition and makes it harder to function in a natural state. 

Don't judge

Part of flow magic is also letting your emotions be. That doesn't mean we don't investigate our feelings and what's causing them; it means we don't label them as good or bad. All emotions are carrying messages; we've just become shit at decoding them. When you stop viewing your feelings as good or bad and embrace the feeling as information about an experience, you open yourself up to an opportunity for learning.

Switching over to a flow magick lifestyle

In the future, I will be working on outlining what I perceive as one path to accessing the state of being that is flow magick. There are many different roads to the same destination, and you are encouraged to take what works for you and discard the rest. Until then, stay diligent on your path, and we will chat again soon.