Spirituality and Magick | Pros and Cons | Blended Models

Hey, what is up, you beautiful bastards? We're back with episode four. Renji is joining the chat with us, and we're going to get right into it. I don't want to waste any time.

Episode Four

• What is spirituality

• What is magick

• Assets and liabilities of each

• A blended model

What is Spirituality?

Spirituality is the act of coming into your right relation with yourself and the world at large.

What do I mean by right relation? Right relation is effectively being in alignment with the world at large. So it means being respectful, even if people are somewhat dickish to you; I mean, don't take their bullshit, but be the bigger person. It's a hard road to walk, but it's essential, in my opinion, to have that kind of character. So that's what I think spirituality is, just being a decent person and doing the next right thing for the right reason. it is a big picture intent.

Another aspect of spirituality involves ancestry. This process involves thinking about how you relate to the future generations and how you relate to the previous generations and understanding your responsibility and role in your current life. This process is about looking at your actions, the actions you take, and filtering them through integrity and alignment with your beliefs.

Are you carrying yourself in a way that you can respect? If not, is there a reason that you're carrying yourself in a way that you can't respect? Do you feel called to do something out of character for you?  

Spirituality also involves working on the attitudes that you carry towards yourself, the attitudes that you carry towards life in general.

Spirituality is a lot bigger concept than sharing shitty memes online or trying to manifest a yacht. It's about integrity. One of my favorite definitions of integrity is "doing what you said you were going to do long after the mood has left you." A massive part of spirituality is staying true to yourself, even when no one's looking.

Responsibility to hold yourself to a higher standard, responding to situations because you feel called to do so, and taking responsibility for how you carry yourself. This practice isn't about policing other people; this is about policing yourself because responsibility is one of the most effective forms of self-love, and it's about having responsibility for what comes after you're here, it's planting trees that you will never enjoy the shade of um, spirituality in like, one sentence is "be excellent" to each other wild stallion's bro, if you can't see the meme or if you can't see the video of this and you're watching it, you're listening to it or reading it.

I have a picture of bill and ted um, which is why I did air guitar, which you also didn't see, but whatever, you're missing out. 

What is magick?  

I use a hybrid definition Magick is the art of creating changes in consciousness and reality in conformity with will. So I think that's pretty straightforward.

I will use schedules to create changes in my attitude, and when I make changes in my mood, I can create changes in the external world. I like chaos magic because it focuses on shifting small things in big ways, like looking at probabilities and understanding that you only need to have a one or 2% increase in probability in certain areas to make significant gains.

Magic is like a spiritual technology, that is how I'm phrasing it here, and I love that concept. What I mean by that is magick is a process of harnessing spiritual energies and utilizing them for your betterment.

What magick consists of may differ from person to person. For me, strategies in my magickal arsenal include spells, divination, mediumship energy work, summoning, and things of that nature. I conceive all of those things to be magic-oriented; spirituality is the practice of communicating to clear your channels and psyche. Magic is the art of learning to channel universal energy. 

Pros of spirituality 

• teaches humility

• teaches balance

• teaches restraint

• teaches compassion

• teaches tolerance

All of these things are great when used moderately. 

Pros of magick 

• can even the odds

• can increase power

• can increase security

• can increase influence

• can create your results

• can increase influence

• can create results

Magic is for people who either have no power or have a lot of power and need protection. If you're kind of in the middle, you don't need magic.

So if you're listening to this, you're likely embarked on your magickal path under similar circumstances.  

Cons of Spirituality

• Can be an opiate

• Savior syndrome

• No Kool-Aid Please 

Can be an opiate

The opiate aspect of spirituality is that you can be one of those people who focus on manifesting all of the things you want rather than doing the things you need to do and helping the people you need to help.

The love and light, positive vibes only mentality keeps you stuck because there are many things that you have to look at to move forward. Not everything is love, light, sunshine, rainbows, and kitten whiskers.

So get the funk over it.  

Savior syndrome

Savior syndrome is thinking that you have to save everybody and that you have the only true way and that your way is THE WAY. This practice is evangelizing your experience.

No kool-aid please

Spirituality can turn very cult-like very quickly. But cults in themselves aren't bad. It's the ideology behind them and how the people involved utilize power and influence.  

Spirituality only can leave people vulnerable too.

Cons for Magick

• Thirst for power  

• Descent into madness

• Hungry ghost

Thirst for power is obvious. You get a taste of power and you want more of it.  

Descent into madness is kind of what occurs when the thirst for power gets strong enough; it's power at all costs, no matter what happens.  

And then the hungry ghost is effectively when that descent into madness has consumed all of you. It's consumed all of you, and you don't give a shit about anything, and you've kind of lost your soul at that point, and it is like being a hollow or an Espada in bleach. It can lead to addiction to power if people don't have some principles or some guiding compass of how to relate to other people. For example, atheists still have a lot of moral beliefs that aren't founded in spirituality. Their principles are founded in the understanding that being a good citizen benefits everyone. Magick without principles can lead to this being a selfish dick head is what I was trying to communicate poorly.

Um, here's the hit magick and spirituality are intentionally kept separate to keep you from your power. So you're often shown magic as a separate entity and granted, um, anybody who studies any of the books will understand that spirituality is inherent there. In my understanding, spirituality is the instruction manual for the safe use of magick. But the spirituality that you're given is I don't want to say it's incorrectly because people find meaning and purpose through it. There's a lot of stuff left out of it—the same thing with magick. 

Why is it like that?  

Psychopaths are in power. That's one of the most straightforward answers I can give you. Many people in power might not have your best interests at heart, and whether or not that's by design or it's just that shit floats to the top, I don't know. And if you look at how things are structured, that's true.

Safety is another reason it's kept separate and watered down. If everybody had access to understanding spirituality and magic things might not go so well. While there would be many good people, there would be the propensity for a lot of evil to be done. So it might be wise to keep them separate unless people are searching for it and willing to find it.

A bit of both is probably the actual truth, which means some psychopaths that understand this and intentionally suppress this knowledge. Also, This knowledge has some things that keep it hid from the wrong hands by nature.

Yeah, that's what I got anyhow. The blended model is my favorite, and I have a picture of Grant Morrison there. I don't know where this is from, but you program a reality now do it.  

Blended Model

• Right use of power

• Right restraint of power

• Community-focused

• Sustainable long-term rhizomatic growth*

*by rhizomatic, I mean that it works like a mushroom.

I don't know if that's the right word, but mushrooms form in this very, very interesting way. Maybe mycelial was the word that I wanted. I don't know if rhizomatic is correct the more I think about it, but they work together in an interesting way. 

Misuse of a blended model.

• Perverse use of power 

• Self-focused 

• Will impose control 

• Focused on short term 

• Finite 

• Individualistic

This practice is kind of the religion of self or the spirituality of self. This occurs when manifestation gets heavily involved in some of the darker aspects of magic. Now granted, I'm not saying anybody that's doing manifestation is evil. That would be stupid.

 Very few people end up in the blended models in general, like in a substantial or meaningful way anyhow, recapitulate, like I'm sick of hearing myself talk.

Spirituality is about tuning into the natural power of the universe.

Magic is learning to channel it. And if you look, the world channel is literally in the word channeler, which is one of the terms of a magician, and then source or source energy is literally in the term sorcerer; wow, look at that.

Magickal Initiation | Spiritual Emergency | Mental Health Crisis or Spiritual Awakening

Hey, what is up? It is Ross from the Spiritual Phoenix Podcast rekindled, and we will get right into today's episode. This is episode three; it will be more so about my recent experience. I had called it a mental health crisis in the last episode. I wanted to clear that up a little bit and explain what I was doing before, the experience, the experience itself, and kind of like the conclusion of everything. I'm doing this to illustrate the spiritual emergency and spiritual awakening aspect of a mental health crisis and show a parallel. Viewing them as separate can be detrimental, as both hold layers of benefit.

So this is somewhat shaky ground, and I would not suggest that anybody else looks at their personal experiences this way. I take no responsibility if anybody chooses to look at their personal experiences this way. Now, with that said, let's get into the episode. Renji is jumping on my lap because she's very irritated that I'm not feeding her, and it's too early for her to be fed.

So, my recent experience was the culmination of being out of alignment. There was some unresolved inner work that needed finishing. Another part of it was the fruit of external work I had been doing to address my issues. I've been too work-centric, and I think that's easy to do, primarily working on being an influencer and this niche and falling into some hustle culture.

It's easy to become solely focused on work in productivity. So focused that I lose sight of self-care. And ironically enough, I started this whole business and everything that I do to practice self-care. The other way that I was out of alignment was no social life. So for many people, covid um, destroyed their social life for me, I was so happy not to have the pressure of having a social life.

I understand that a key to maintaining mental health is a social life. And I have been able to overcome many of those barriers through my use of medical marijuana.

The next thing that's out of alignment is my relationship to herb. Before this, I hadn't smoked pot in like five years, and then I started smoking pot two months before. And then I had my spiritual awakening spiritual experience in mental health crisis type thing. So there's a connection there.

I would not blame pot; specifically, it's pot in combination with the other medication I was on. But I do need to address that. That was one of the things that were out of alignment.

Next, there's a specific diet I'm supposed to eat because of autism and stuff like that.

Lastly, my spiritual practice was out of alignment. There are things that I've learned that worked well for me, and I'd stopped doing them.

I had a habit of doing a rigorous daily meditation and prayer routine that was helpful for me. But I lost touch because of a move and the other moving pieces of my life. None of that is to make an excuse but rather me calling myself on my BS.

It's to illustrate its reality and show that I have to be more mindful of it moving forward, right. Unresolved stuff that had played into the episode, childhood stuff, a lot of us have childhood stuff that still needs organizing and processing, and well, I had done a lot of work on one specific side of my family. There was a whole other side of the family that I had left unexamined.

Life itself has left scars on me, and there are still things that need to process insecurities; everybody has them. I have my unique ones. Um, some of those had surfaced and made it somewhat unbearable and then doubts. There's a lot of doubt going on because I've invested heavily in my business, and the return on it so far has been negligible.

But there's; also, I don't know if it's just stubbornness or this like gut feeling that everything will eventually work out. It's just a matter of contributing full belief in what I'm doing and sticking with it. So that's in there as well and then fruits of the labor.

This part is interesting. When the doctor had asked me what I thought I was experiencing, I told him Samadi because there was this unification or this unity consciousness. There were just these other layers that I had to sort through that were uncomfortable.

Um, but magical practice in terms of fruits of my labor. So before this experience, I participated in the Rune Soup premium membership. In terms of affordable ways to upskill your magical ability, it's one of the biggest bangs for your buck. But I had taken several courses.

I had been doing ancestor work; I had been doing there, his, what is it, angels, fairies, fairies, and side course where it looks like all of those things as one specific, um not specific one unified theory of weirdness and then the ancestor's course as well. Right?

So like all of these different things. The other thing study was a big part of what played into this weirdly, like studying all the various religions and cultures that I did. A powerful spiritual theme and thread pulled me through it and let me keep myself safe. Discipline is the other one.

So before all of this going on, I had had an almost daily tai chi yoga and meditation practice that I had participated in, and that's like one of the things that mentally fortified me through everything. But I'm just now getting back to that practice; commitment was the other.

Part of this experience was a commitment to my magical path because I kept considering the Terence McKenna quote, "magick is jumping into the abyss and realizing it's a featherbed." I committed to seeing whatever I was experiencing through to the end—believing in what I was experiencing enough to ride it out, even though it was terrifying and probably scary for other people in my life.

It was something that I had to go through, I sincerely believe, and the reward of that it hasn't fully manifested yet, but there's going to be a lot of power that comes from it; this was just a magical precursor.

Earlier I mentioned a series of house spells that I had done. I did a ritual where it was like looking at the house as an entity and then looking at how each room relates to my life purpose um setting up each room intentionally to those specific purposes.

I had been working with Fae and not like the pretty little fairies that some people think, but like Fae, as in the entities, you don't want to funk with type of Fae. However, if you go to them the right way, they may be willing to help you out.

I did a pretty intense ritual with them over the end of summer, and that played into some of this ancestry work. One of the things that I had done was this ancestry meditation. I had been cleaning up an old family heirloom that came over from Europe, that was like my grandpa's grandparents or something similar, so there's like all of this heritage and layering soaked in.

Part of the ancestry work I did was a meditation where you focused on different ancestors like your familial ancestors, so you're your grandparents. Then their parents and then to the grandparents of your grandparents and so on. It creates a massive fractal of blood ancestry. Then you look at ancestors of place.

So the people that lived in your locality, then you look at ancestors of craft, so for me, that would be like culinary arts would be one of the crafts magician, tarot card readers. And you're pulling on all of these threads of ancestors that go back to the first people. There's so much pain and trauma if you go through that; it's so fucking hard.

Astral projection was another big one like I had upskilled my astral projection skills. I would say that I was out there for a lot of the times when I did sleep in these experiences, and I've been through some stuff meme magic.

Meme magic is where you kind of load sigils into memes, and then you put the memes out there, and it's charging the sigil when people are interacting with the meme. I had done a lot of that. Um, and I have had some real success with some of it too. I've also experienced synchronicities relative to the memes, as weird as that is, and, lastly, the hyper sigil.

I'm writing my second book, and my second book is primarily a framework of my metaphysics and how I see the world. It's like a culmination of my lived experience from what it started to what I picked up along the way, and to say that that wasn't an influence on the things that I'm doing now would be a lie. And before everything popped off again, I had anticipated beginning to um rework my book entirely, but now I see that it is kind of okay; there are only a few minor tweaks that need to be done; I have other work that I need to do first. It was an illuminating experience.

There was also the tie-in to 1111, and a lunar eclipse occurred around then. There was like so many layers of magical shit that went into this that to discredit it as something else is foolish. The other thing that I want to correct is I had said that this was like a spiritual thing. This was more a magical initiation in a big way.

If you listen to episode two, where I record the intro, before me having the experience. I talked about it being an initiation into the invisible mystery school or the invisible college and the tattoo that I had on my hand being like the soap burn-in fight club, where it's like the initiation mark; I think that that was true in a big way.

There's going to be a lot more exciting stuff that comes as a result of that because there were some names and people that I interacted with in spirit that I'm curious to see if they come up in real life.

The experience itself, ancestral healing, was a considerable part like I cleared up a lot of karmic debt for people in my lineage, and then I cleared up a lot of stuff in the future for people that are coming in. I earned my right as an ancestor; later on, as long as I hold the line and like maintain my credibility.

Interdimensional travel is another part of the experience, and that is saying like I'm not too fond of the 5D. The way people talk about it is stupid, but it was like a 5D experience. Gordan white talks about this book flatland. I've not read the book, but the concept is effectively like a higher level of thinking and going from 2D to 3D.

Words can't begin to explain it the oddity of my experience. I don't know what the funk I experienced there in a big way, but there's a lot more going on, and life functions way differently than we think. The other part of the experience was I was given a gift.

So I had mentioned the nature spirits that I had worked with, um part of the nature spirit thing was asking them for assistance and like working with them. I had a very profound experience initially when I did that in September. Still, when it came to the results of this experience, there are gifts that I was given that I have not uncovered yet another massive part of the experience, and this is like the most crucial part.

It's funny how this is a minor thing. It just shows you how goddamn self-centered I can be at times. Um, there is an ongoing restructuring of power, and the restructuring of power isn't on a small scale. There's a big shift coming, which will be positive for the people.

Um, but the following line, I think, is what's essential about the restructure of power; it's healing yet not um going through what I went through makes me realize that there's a lot of unresolved shit in the collective psyche that people have to process. Certain people like me are kind of here to help process that.

But other people still have to do their work, like you can't do nobody can do your push-ups for you. So things are going to be somewhat wonky in the collective psyche for a while, especially with all the added pressures of everything that's happened recently.

People like me need to step up and work on our shit. We don't have to hold space for others in the bullshit lightworker way, but we have to be a beacon, and how we carry ourselves, that's the important thing. And then lastly, the conclusion is the doctor accepted me. Like when I said that my experience was samadhi, he didn't question me or anything. I told him about using medical pot. He prescribed me medication that would work in conjunction with it that wouldn't exacerbate the impact of marijuana.

Lastly, they took me off of one of the mental health medications they said had contributed to that experience. Overall the experience was healing; as weird as that sounds like I picked up a couple of negative habits due to it. I'm not too pleased with myself; I've been smoking cigarettes again.

But there seems even to be something positive coming from that, even if it's not the healthiest choice.

I don't want to experience that again, whatever that was, and I don't think it was caused by pot alone, regardless of pot being part of the equation. I don't think pot was the part that caused the problem, and then, it was scary as fucking ship.

So to break down. Kind of, some of the things that I was thinking, um, I live in a house that my mom owns, but I felt that there was like other people in the house with me. I thought that I was injected with a hotshot, which I learned the term from looking up the lyrics to a song.

Effectively a hotshot is a syringe full of drugs intended to kill people. I've never done hypodermic drugs or anything like that. I wasn't around anybody with hypodermic needles. I have no idea where I thought that I got the hotshot. I thought somebody gave me a Jeffrey from a Russell brand movie, and I've never even seen the movie; I only know about the Jeffrey, which is like a laced joint.

Fuck. Dude, there was like carryovers from previous psychosis, shadow people, like you name it, they're like the C. I. A. was involved, there was all sorts of wild shit that I thought. I drank out of a fucking puddle. Like, I just can't explain the horror of some of these things.

I'm going to leave it at that. So this was just kind of a bonus episode. I'm still probably going to do episodes; the original episode three will be episode four now. Because I want to get back on track with everything, and I want to like get past this experience, but I did want to document it because it happened, and um yeah, we needed this here anyhow.

So I think the last thing that I do want to say before I shut the funk up for real is you can have a mental health crisis or a spiritual experience or a magical initiation, you can go into the facility, you can play by their rules, if it feels in alignment with you and you can get on with your life. It doesn't have to be this big thing.

The last time that this happened to me, I was hung up for years. Now because of the foundational work I did, I know how to come out of this experience quickly, which I wanted to convey with this podcast.

So it's very serendipitous that I actually had those experiences occur again because now I'm able to show people the difference and show people, hey, this is what it is, this is how we can move forward, let's fucking do it and make it happen anyhow, chat with you soon and enjoy the next episode, bonus week.

Shaman Tarot Deck Review | Tarot Deck Review

Hey, what is up? It's ross, and I wanted to start doing a monthly tarot deck review. I'm going to start with one of my favorite decks; we will use a four-point system and then look at my top five cards.

The first deck we're going to use is the first tarot deck that I ever got. It is not the exact copy of the deck. I've had to re-buy it a couple of times.

Is this deck easy to use?

No, the Shaman tarot is not suitable for beginners in my experience, even though they come with a little book that explains all of the cards.

Now that I've learned the Rider Smith Waite system and I am more familiar with tarot, this is a unique system in many ways. 

It takes a lot of liberties with the cards, so it's challenging for beginning readers if you're trying to learn tarot as a whole.

Suppose you're going to get one deck in one deck only, ever. In that case, it's probably a good deck.

If you're willing to learn how to read some of the cards more traditionally and then want to build upon that knowledge, this is like an excellent intermediate deck.

Quality of the cards

I would say the quality of the cards is good. I've had this copy of this deck in particular now for five-plus years; the cards are holding up well. 

The cards are quality card stock. Some companies use flimsy and cheap materials. All my serious readers know what I'm saying.

These are by Lo Scarabeo; from what I've seen, that company produces high-quality cards.  

Artwork and Coloring

The artwork is stunning. It blends many aspects of the spiritual journey with society, and it combines a lot of tribal concepts with modern living. 

It's a fantastic way to think about these concepts and bring them into your life. So the artwork is stunning, very, very colorful, high detail.

It's kind of like having a spiritual experience in modern society. It reminds me of my spiritual awakenings and emergencies.

So the top five cards were tough to pick for this deck because like less than a quarter of the way through it, I already had five cards; I changed a couple of them out because I have O.C. D. I could spend hours and hours trying to pick my top favorite cards.

I went with the ones that caught my eye the most this time because I love the whole deck, so you can deal with it, and we'll look at the cards now. 

Top 5 in no particular order

The Lovers Card

So the lover's card in this deck is well done. The reason is it has the man and the woman there, and then there's like the wedding knot represented by a serpent. That's a nod to a kundalini awakening. That could be a call to some of the ayahuasca visions.  

There's also this sense of the alchemical wedding, unifying the masculine and feminine principles within ourselves, which then causes the kundalini awakening. And then here you have what would be the angel in Rider Smith Waite presented as the shaman and here like activates this higher sense of being because of the alchemical wedding. I think that's a really potent example of symbolism alone.  

The World Card

Well, look at the next card, the world card. I love the world card. I think having the ouroboros there is incredibly important. The feminine goddess energy overlooks the world because we generally associate mother earth. 

I believe that the feminine or generative principle is essential.

Healing

The artist takes liberties with the Temperance card by calling it Healing and vastly changing its meaning. But I love this card because it shows balance in a really interesting way.

There's passive energy and active energy; feminine energy is typically associated with passive energy. So here, the feminine energy is being active, and it's causing the man to be passive and stop and take a look. It's stopping the guy in his tracks. 

Additionally, it shows how actively stopping and centering yourself creates change or transformation represented by the butterflies.

There is another fun twist to this symbolism, but it's easier expressed in the video above.

The Hunter of Demons

The general meaning of this card has a stink of Spiritual manipulation. If you had told me I would include the hierophant in my top cards, I'd have thought you're full of shit. But this is one of the areas where they make a cool play on the meaning.

The hunter of demons here goes into these old beliefs and traditions and exercises them of all of their bullshit. The hunter of demons is ensuring that things have agency and meaning in modern society and our current with what we need; it's not holding onto useless boondoggles of a dead culture.

I think that that's at least how I interpret it, which is super heavy. That's why I like this meaning of it because it also incorporates the reverse, which I view as following a path with heart. A way with heart is baked into the hunter of demons, and that's why I like it.

Seven of Wands

This card is not a traditional representation of, by any stretch, seven of wands is about victory and accomplishment. This deck shows the battle, not the accomplishment.. 

I chose this because it's actually what victory and accomplishment feel like at times, at least for me. At times, I feel like this tiny thing is taking on this massive behemoth, and that's why I chose it because symbolically, it's dope as funk is the easiest way that I can put it.

I highly highly recommend this deck. If you're new to reading, I suggest waiting till you have learned the basics from a more standard deck

I'm not an authority; I'm not gatekeeping. Please take my advice on anything with a grain of salt. I hope this was helpful. If it was, leave a comment, tell me what you liked about it, tell me what you didn't like, and subscribe if you have not already. Peace.

Selected by Spirits | Spiritual Awakenings | Spiritual Emergencies | Dark Night of the Soul

Hey, what is up? It's Ross. And we're back with episode two; this is about being selected by spirits, spiritual awakening, spiritual emergency, dark night of the soul initiation by spirits and Bankai.

Selected by Spirits

I've gathered that being selected by spirits is a continuous process. It usually happens earlier on in a person's life where they're picked at birth or shortly after in the earlier ages. Some essence or unique personality stands out, making them attractive to spirits. The other aspect of this is that it's an optional experience.

Spirits' ideas of kindness and compassion are vastly different from the human concept from what I've seen. The reason being is, it's not easy. There's some need for permission for spirits to engage or work with people. So there has to be some trust. And that trust is earned gradually. If it were forced or coerced, people would not be so willing to; I believe that good things could come from it, but because it is optional and you can let it go whenever you want, there's a sense of benefic kindness behind it, even though it might not look that way on the surface to people.

Being selected by spirits is becoming more common because as the world gets sicker, more people have what would be called soul sickness.

I see these people like me having this quote-unquote soul sickness, almost like mushrooms coming in and detoxifying these spaces by digesting the bullshit. Look at the pollution and terror we wage on each other and the planet. This type of behavior is not a sign of the health of a species, but if people meditate on why we're acting this way, there might be a solution. Sharing our experiences to help raise consciousness is the course correction. 

Spirit is looking for people for course correction because some unity between the material world and the spirit world needs to be maintained, and they have more resources to guide things, but they don't have the physical hands to do it.

We have physical hands, but we don't have access to some knowledge. So when we work together with them and with other entities, we get better opportunities, which is why spirit would be looking for people who would be more gifted.  

Spiritual Awakening

A spiritual awakening is a profound experience that helps one understand the relationship to the cosmos. These are very beautiful, but they can have some terrifying elements.

The issue is they can leave people having a false sense of reality because they're looking at the world through rose-colored glasses and begin to miss out on the finer nuances of what it means to be human. 

Spiritual awakenings also offer a sense of power, purpose, sense of mystery, and sense of connectivity. All of the previous concepts culminate into one, transcendence. And by transcendence, I mean superseding your needs and thinking of the good of the collective. Because oftentimes, we want the world to change to our liking. 

Spiritual Emergency

A Spiritual emergency can come from initiation by spirits or part of a natural process. I've had several spiritual emergencies. The most recent one was an unexpected or breached spiritual awakening or download, and I like to use the metaphor of watching Netflix on dial-up as it would probably blow the phone out of the socket.

Some people don't even know what dial-up internet is that may be reading this; these experiences are things that end people up in psych wards, right? There are things that the information that you get is a little bit too much to handle. You don't have the resources to handle it, and you lose your shit, which is not pleasant because then you also have to sort through everything and put Humpty Dumpty back together again, blah blah blah.

These things are rough, which is why I do what I do to help people. But they also include loss of power, paranoia, confusion, irritability, and psychosis.

I'm not violent in those states. There is a lot of aggression and anger in there, which can lead people down bad roads. Also, the confusion can make you make poor choices. It's just not a good place to be, and spiritual emergencies are different from a dark night of the soul, but you can also have them happen simultaneously.

Dark Night of the Soul

It surprised me how quickly I was able to bounce back from it. Still, like Dark Nights of the soul are a heckn' bad time friends, you do not want to go through that and from what I've seen, um you can go through more than one as well, and the best thing to do is buckle up because you can't run from it when it's coming for you.  

You just got to sit there and take it and navigate it wisely, or you can be afraid, but the more fear you have, the more these experiences will mess you up. You want to be somewhat neutral about it anyhow.  

A dark night of the soul is about demoralization, degradation, isolation, emptiness, pain, and fear; this is the thing where like you're on the verge of death. Still, you did not die, and that is almost worse. That is like an insult to injury,

Initiation by spirits

Initiation by spirits, only a fool would want them, and they require grit.

Yeah, you have to have a little bit of something else to make it, though, because I don't know what the funk I just experienced going through all of that. Still, I don't want to go through it again um. Still, I do know that whatever the funk I went through, it was going to help me be a stronger person requires heart; you have to have a heart too, because if you do not have something that you can rely on that is meaningful, like a way to get you through there, you're fucking cashed, you're done!
This process requires principles, so you have to have principles in and initiation by spirit because it's like the upside-down; everything is wonky. Even the rules have somewhat reversed, and if you don't have a general compass of how to be a good person and know right from wrong, you can very quickly put yourself in circumstances that can lead to real consequences. 

And hurt or harm a lot of people and then lastly don't fail, you don't want to fail the initiation by spirits because if you do, you're gonna wish that you just never did. Um, and I'm just going to leave it at that, right? I don't think I need to unpack that anymore.

Bankai

 Bankai is achieving a level of inner mastery that visibly manifests into the material world. This concept comes from bleach um, which is an anime that I enjoy, and we'll be talking about bleach as we go more through the podcast. Still, I think there is this potential for manifesting dreams into the real world and achieving inner mastery in this pursuit. When we're able to craft our imagination and these experiences in meaningful and powerful ways, we can begin to create physical changes in our lives, and I'm evidence of that.

If you look at my life where it was five years ago to where it is now, my life is vastly different and um. At the same time, I'm still somebody who has mental health issues and doesn't have their life together fully, my life is vastly different, and it's like a refined form of spiritual pressure.  

So this is, you know, the pits coming anyhow, you jump in, you're going for the ability to manifest your dreams, or you're willing to die like trying to manifest your dreams, it is refining power. So many people in the modern witchcraft movement or whatever the hell you want to call it to focus solely on power, but they don't understand that power doesn't mean shit if you're not using it effectively.

This process is refining power to a precision point. So you can use it for specific things. You don't need to use a lot of magic to make things effective. You could use a bit of magic in the right places at the right times, and subtlety is your friend.

In regards to magic, in my personal opinion, and I say this after being like the most extra bitch ever. So, keep that in mind. It's ok to have a moon shot but keep a lot of your manifestations tangible to build up your confidence. And then also You're better off staying small and unnoticed with your magickal workings. 

Are you going to look around and find out? Um, the universe loves brave people. The universe does not like cowards much. And let's see. Quick note others' journeys await, and other trips await. You'll have your unique take on what these words mean in your experience; all of this stuff is just reference, not gospel, and they say that, like keep in mind all of these things I'm sharing are just ideas in my own experience.

I'm not trying to dictate your experiences; I just hope that you find something useful from this and that you can use it to grow and move forward with this process. One of my theories is the universe is educating us, the universe might be having fun with us, or the universe is learning, so why do I think it's like this? 

Because the universe is trying to learn or teach, or it's just having fun and working with us because it's infinite.

And what else would it do to recapitulate? Certain people are selected by spirits and undergo a series of experiences, but choice matters, and it's a test of your soul and character. So again, spirits can select people, um, take them through this awakening process; there are some challenges there, and it's meant to bring out the best in you, and if you don't meet the grade, they're fine letting you be fodder.

In the next episode, which will be two weeks from now, we will be talking about spirituality, tuning into the natural power of the universe. Magic is learning to channel it. So we're going to start separating spirituality and magic, and then in episode four will probably go full magic or something like that.

I'm not too sure, still getting recalibrated after being out of the psych ward and with all of that said, we will chat again soon, have a great day.

Establishing the egregore and updating old ideas

Hey, what is up? Episode one, wow, doing this again. So some of you don't know me; most of you probably don't know me. My name is Ross Cessna. I used to host a podcast called the spiritual phoenix podcast. That's how I got started in all of this. I started it five years ago on the day um doing this one to correct some of the mistakes that I made and how I presented the first one and do some things differently and build a community around it.

So maybe I should start with saying what I want to do with this podcast first off, then explain who I am and do somewhat of a backstory, and then describe some of the paths forward with everything.

It's not going to be super dull; I'm going to make it fun, don't worry.

The show intends to be upon the following premises, magic psy-phenomenon and forces beyond our comprehension are real and interact with people regularly and just to like break this down with some like regular vernacular too.

Think about it this way. We are humans. We know for a fact that we can't tune into 99% of reality because of the limits of our perception. It's statistically impossible that there are no forces beyond our comprehension. So that means that there's a lot of shit going on that we don't know.

Learning to integrate these experiences into mainstream culture is imperative to the well-being of the individual and the species, long-term survival.

That's a big statement there. But I think that's incredibly true also, right? Because more and more people are having these experiences.

These experiences seem to be ways to facilitate growth and change and expand the individual. And because our current system views people having these experiences as a mental health crisis is because they don't fit into the modern framework of materialism, it's an issue, and that's the next point.

Some individuals, often problematic and troubled, are selected by spirits and put into a life of hardship that often leads to a life-altering crisis. Some of us are chosen to go through these processes to help shepherd other people Through this process. With so many people wakening up, we don't need teachers or gurus.

Some people go that route, but it's not supposed to be; it's more like a fellow traveler. And then this crisis often brings about psychic changes and a series of events that, while unique to the individual, fit into archetypal themes. What that means is there's this overlying or underlying theme that can unify all these different experiences despite the experience occurring in a way that makes sense to the individual.

It's hard to describe, but maybe the right people get what I'm saying, right. Some of the ways that the universe or whatever this, these other forces are expressing themselves in ways that seem batshit crazy to most people. Still, they're legitimately something there in some instances, and mental illness is also real.So deciphering the two can be challenging.

Sharing these experiences with others in a safe and supportive environment can be critical to maintaining a state of mental well-being. As somebody who has had these experiences and then was put in the mental health system, and I was told not to trust many useful things, that was just as disorienting as believing what wasn't real.

Learning how to process that and integrate these experiences in a way where you're grounded and still able to function is super important.

Having a podcast in a community that offers a platform for voices of experiencers is necessary and something that I am uniquely suited to do.

Here's why okay, so for me, a lot of my earlier podcast was me documenting my journey of getting my life back together after this substantial spiritual awakening spiritual emergency that completely devastated my entire being right.

The whole podcast is really structured on that, and it begins with me entering 12 step recovery and working on myself and like going through the entire emotional process of becoming a better person, fixing myself, healing, growing, expanding, and then learning how to integrate magic in how working on spiritual stuff increased my magic ability.

And while there was a lot of good information and that earlier stuff that I put out, many of the perspectives need to be corrected, not because they were necessarily wrong, they didn't have the whole picture, and there's a broader context that I had missed. One of the main things for me that has shifted is over the years, I've left 12 step recovery, I began using CBD hemp, and then I've recently integrated medical marijuana back into my life. It has been fundamentally life-changing and how much it has helped me. And it made me realize what I had initially used it.

And that's one of the reasons why doing this podcast again is crucial to me because I want to address that aspect of that part of the journey and say that I was wrong in many ways. I presented some of that information incorrectly. There is an appropriate way to use marijuana. And I did mention that at times, but there were times when I was a dick about things to um, and I needed to correct myself on that and have some humility about it.

Additionally, other ideas need to be unpacked and expanded more, and those things need to be fixed just for my well-being and to clear up some of my thoughts on stuff.

And then lastly, I have actually done support groups and have learned so much about healing and the intersection of personal healing, magic spirituality, and all of these things that it would be unfair of me not to offer these back to the community.

And while initially, this is going to be the show is going to be more about correcting some of the old issues and catching people who listen to the old show up on what I'm doing now and explaining more about my personal practice, and building up a system of metaphysics. So we have a common understanding of what I'm talking about.

Once we do that, I want to start getting authors and guests and things on um and talking about their experiences. Still, I do want to also maintain some of the ways that I did the original show. A key component was just riffing off the top of my head about certain topics and ideas that come up and like having a good time doing it and not being super pressured or committed to it, but making it fun. This time, though, I plan to get the community involved in making it about you.

This whole show isn't for me anymore; while the work is never done, I've done my shit and have little things to attend. The show is to share that experience help other people find their way, not to tell them what to do. Because I am not a guru, I have authority over my experience, and even that's questionable at times. I can't tell you where to go.

That's the thing about this experience that I think most people miss, and this is one of the things that religion does a great disservice to people because it tells people that there's this one way, but there are as many ways as there are people and you have to unlock your own path, but because of these archetypal themes, we can share this in language and find commonality and find ways to navigate it.

Um, it's going to be an enjoyable experience. I've learned so much about presenting information and interviewing guests. I think we're going to have a really good time.

I want to have community members on the show and learn about your experiences. There is already a system of events and a membership system, so we can get involved and have online meetups. We can do some super fun stuff, and I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be a blast, and I look forward to going on this adventure with you.

With all of that said, I'm not going to take up any more of your time, I will be back in two weeks, and I think we're going to unpack what's going on with the magical system and maybe some stuff like that anyhow chat soon.