Hands-On Chaos Magic: Reality Manipulation through the Ovayki Current - Andrieh Vitimus 2009

Enhancing Your Sensory Perception

We can use our imagination to simulate any of the five senses. In the movie What the BLEEP Do We Know? Dr. Joseph Dispenza states that the mind doesn't know the difference between what is real and what is imagined (Arntz 2004). The same neural pathways fire if we are working with a memory, an imagined situation, or a real situation.

Some people think that they can't visualize things. Let's try a simple exercise. Think about your bedroom for a minute. What does it look like? How does it feel? How does it smell? What sounds come from your memory of your room?

People will encode information and memories with a particular sense. Many books on magic talk about visualizing, but visualization is only one sense. Imagination can work with all of them. The majority of people will use visual, auditory, or tactile senses to primarily encode information (Bandler and Grinder 1975). The imagination for any one sensory system can be built up to greater levels of proficiency and ability. It was probably very easy for you to remember your room and remember different details within your room. At first, certain types of details might have popped into your mind. Perhaps you described the room in terms of what you could feel, such as "a soft room," or in terms of what you could see. If you concentrated, those first details might lead into a different sense. The thoughts might have been a spatial representation of your bedroom, or you might have had a tactile understanding of the room, but you still had some sort of mental construct of your room. In a way, even if you had a preferred way of experiencing the room, you could probably switch to a different sense and fill in the blanks.

Going a little further, sensory imagination can be thought of as a form of mental control and focus. Control and focus are needed to do any ritual. After relaxation, mental focus is probably the single most important part of any magical system. Let's try some focusing games.

Sight Exercise

Now that we have practiced breathing in our own way, let's combine the breathing experiments with our senses. Pick an object and stare at it. Think about and stare at one object that is inconsequential to you. The mind may begin to wander; acknowledge any thoughts that pop into your mind and let them go. Start out slowly with this exercise. Begin with five or six minutes and work up to about thirty minutes. Try this with different breathing patterns. Then try this with a symbol and then a picture. Just relax, have fun, and write down how long you were able to practice.

Sound Exercise

Relax, sit comfortably, and let any thoughts go. After about ten minutes of breathing, have a partner walk behind you and ring a bell (or use a timer). Try to not think of anything but the sound. Long, continuous sounds are better for this exercise than sharp, short sounds. Focus on only the bell's sound. Singing bowls/bells work well for this meditation, as they are not as jarring, but any repetitive sound could work. A tone generator is also an excellent tool for this exercise. Feel free to experiment with different sounds. What effects do they have on you when you are relaxing? After the novelty of the sound wears off, you may see your mind start to wander. Like the sight exercise, just keep trying to improve the length you can focus only on the sound. Remember to breathe, let the thoughts go out of your mind as you are breathing, and move as little as possible. The point is merely to experience the sound and focus on the sound.

Smell Exercise

Relax and let go of any thoughts you have while keeping your eyes closed. After about ten minutes of breathing and relaxing, have a partner walk behind you and place a scent under your nose. Try to just experience the scent without trying to figure out what it is. After you practice experiencing just one sent, try to mix scents. The goal is to remain relaxed while experiencing the scent. Initially, the novelty of the smell will hold your mind's attention, but that may wear off after a minute. Try to work up to thirty minutes of focusing on merely the smell, releasing any other thoughts that come into your mind. Relax and have fun.

Touch Exercise

Relax, breathe, and clear your mind with your eyes closed. After you are relaxed, have your partner touch some area of your skin in a nonsexual way. Try to concentrate only on the sensation of being touched. What happens? This is a very pleasant exercise that you can apply in other intimate situations as well. Be creative. For the truly sensuous, try kissing various plants, body parts, stones, books, and any other objects you can think of. The lips are very sensitive in both sexes, and kissing is a connective experience that allows the mind to focus on tactile pleasures. (Warning: playing around with this exercise has been known to cause more intimate, playful, and intense experiences with your desired partner.) Work up to thirty minutes, concentrating only on a physical touch. Think about the sensual possibilities of being able to focus on the sensation. After you have experienced skin-to-skin touch, try different objects like a feather, a rock, or anything else with a unique texture. Remember to experiment and write down your experiences in your journal.

Taste Exercise

Relax with your eyes closed for ten minutes, and then have a partner place some flavor or spice on your tongue. Try not to figure out what the flavor is. Merely experience the sensation. Remember, you are trying to build your focus. Move as little as possible. If memories pop up, let them go and continue with the exercise. Keep trying this with different sensations. After you have experimented with simple flavors, attempt to focus on tasting more complex foods while relaxing and breathing.

Imagining the Sensations

Isolating the senses and trying to focus on any one sensation is in itself a useful technique to start building up the imagination in that sense. Let's go back to the previous exercises. In each game, try to experience the sensation and then, in your mind, re-create the sensation. Try to keep repeating just the sensation in your mind over and over for twenty to thirty minutes. Try using different but similarly simple sensations, recreating them in your mind after you experience them and then trying to re-create the sensations for an extended period of time.

Attempting to re-create one or two of your senses may be easier to do at first. We shall cover the reasons for this in the next chapter. After you have done the simpler sensations, try experiencing and recreating more complex sensations. For sound, you may work from a musical chord up to part of a melody and then to an entire song. For your visual senses, it might be a good idea to work up from a line to symbols to full pictures and three-dimensional objects, and then maybe finally up to full scenes, like those in a movie, play, or TV show.

Mantra Focusing

Instead of listening to a bell or crystal singing bowl, write down a phrase and repeat it. Again, relax and let any thoughts you might have flow out of your mind. Breathe and try not to move. Make sure the phrase makes no sense to you. If you prefer, try various New Age/metaphysical chants such as Aum, Zazas Zazas, or Nasatanada Zazas. Every religion has some phrase or catch phrase (not in English or another language you know) that you can repeat. Although this seems easy, pay attention to the phrase you are repeating. You may notice that after a time it may start to morph and change. Just take a breath and start over. Record how long you can go before the phrase morphs or before you become mentally distracted. Keep working on this until you can get to about thirty minutes. Remember to relax; there is no race with these exercises. Just keep working at them. You will get better as you do this. After picking some known phrases, try to do this with some random combinations of syllables. Choose the combination of syllables and then repeat that combination. Note in your journal if a combination has a certain effect for you.

As with the other exercises, try to experiment with your breathing while working with the combinations of syllables. Do different thoughts pop into your mind, or do you have different sensations? Does changing your posture change the effect of some of your new syllable combinations?

Building Visual Imagination for Symbols

Sit down in a comfortable position and relax. Breathe deeply. Visualize a line in front of you. The line can be any thickness, length, or color you prefer. Try to hold this line in your mind for as long as possible. This exercise seems very simple on the surface, but as you are trying to visualize the line you may notice that you get distracted or that the line changes. Again, we are trying to build control and focus. See how long you can go without out the line changing. This takes practice. I had trouble with this when I started, and I often go back to this exercise when I am losing focus.

After you can focus on the line for thirty minutes or so, try two lines, and then three lines, and then more complex symbols like the infinity sign, a pentagram, runes, or whatever symbol you would like to focus on. Try to stare at the symbol for up to thirty minutes as well. Keep journaling. This exercise does take a bit of practice. Relax, and don't worry about the day-to-day progress; you will see progress in the journal over time.

Kinetic Touch/Gesture Exercise

Motion is also a form of tactile stimulation. The patterns of dance or the martial arts involve a fair amount of focus with remembering each step or move. For instance, in Qi Gong, each form has a different series of events to remember. Although this is not a book on yoga or Qi Gong, the importance of movement in some forms of magic and the concentration needed to do certain combinations of gestures do help the mind focus (and they also help the mind focus in concert with the body).

Pick a simple gesture, such as waving hello. Try it once. Much of the gesture will depend on what position your body is in. As you repeat the gesture, how does it feel? Does the motion change slightly as you are doing it repetitively?

Pick a couple of simple gestures and combine them. Try to start with two simple gestures and then move to more. After doing two simple gestures, do the gestures change? What is your limit of combining gestures together before it gets too difficult to remember or concentrate? Remember to stay relaxed with this.

Try to repeat the same gesture for thirty minutes. After the initial novelty of the situation wears off, you may see your mind potentially changing the gesture slightly. Start very simply, practice for thirty minutes (remembering how the gesture feels as well), and then add complexity to the gesture. Students of the martial arts will recognize that their forms are a series of exact gestures. Try to work up to more complicated and difficult series of gestures. Experiment. Again, this is a process, and this exercise in particular focuses on will over body. Remember to write down each attempt and the aftereffects in your journal. Try to practice some gestures or movements you find via a Google search.

Feel free to move your body in all sorts of ways-random, meaningless gestures. How do these seemingly random movements affect you? Do some gestures have an impact on you? Does a certain gesture change your mood, or does it change your thinking? If you find a gesture like that, make sure to write it down (S. Wilson 2004). Once you do a few experiments with one gesture, experiment and combine sequences of random gestures.

Of course, after this, try to see whether changes in breathing or posture, or even holding a mudra, change the effect of the dance sequence or the random sequences of gestures (if it's possible to hold a mudra or change postures-some gestures can only be completed in a certain posture). Free yourself to experiment. You will have some interesting results; write down the combinations that you find useful.

Combining Senses

Once you have practiced and can effectively re-create complicated sensations in one of the senses, you can then start to recombine the senses. First, start with one sense, and then add a second, different sense (like an image, tactile sense, or taste). Be creative. Try different combinations of senses within your mind. Start with simple combinations, and then move to increasingly more complex combinations.

After you have practiced with two senses, move toward three senses together, and then try four and possibly five.