Descriptions:
Video Description
Why do so many seekers start the Great Work full of fire, only to fall off the path? Lyam Christopher offers a kind, honest look at that struggle. Many people come to magic wanting to manifest money, love, or victory, and then feel discouraged when the real work asks for years of quiet discipline first. But he reframes it: the only thing truly worth manifesting is enlightenment, a freedom from the cycle the Buddhists call samsara. Until then, the work is not about getting everything you want, but about becoming someone who is no longer ruled by wanting.
Then he names the quiet enemy: the phone in your hand. Social media, he explains, hijacks our natural gossip instinct and our fear of missing out, pushing the brain into stress all day and draining dopamine until we feel too empty to practice. The fixes are wonderfully simple: sleep enough, wear blue-blocking glasses after sundown, step away from the news, and give the nervous system long stretches of nag-free time. It all adds up to a real kind of sovereignty, and even the structured study in Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation becomes easier when the mind is not being bossed around by every buzz and banner.
The heart of the talk is a beautiful image: nirvana means blown out, like a flame that stops burning. He paints a person standing under a shower, first bothered by the cold drops, then so calm that only water remains and there is no one left to complain. That state is what our word cool really means: unfazed, still full of preferences but free of the inner fire of discontent. To get there, he offers gentle tools, study in twenty-five minute bursts, read with your imagination like a dream, and even read on behalf of someone you love. The result is not effort for its own sake, but the quiet wonder of always being on to something new.
Full Video Transcript
Alright, it is time for another video. This week we are talking about motivation. I’m noticing that a lot of people will adopt to the great work. They’ll start to do a magical curriculum that brings them towards adeptship.
But somewhere along the line, they fall off the wagon and can’t seem to get back on it again, or they resume again later.
And this is largely because people get into doing magic because they want to be able to manifest this or that thing in their life.
They have a certain goal and they want to achieve it.
You want to do away with an enemy, or you want to get lots of money, or you want to experience abundance, these kinds of things.
Um, so when it becomes increasingly apparent that you’re going to be doing a rigorous discipline
for a number of years before you’re able to do any of that, uh, people can get turned
off relatively quickly.
And, uh, so maybe I can say a few words on how to stay motivated to get through the process.
okay um ultimately what the magical work is about is manifesting something yes but what you’re
manifesting is the state of enlightenment and there is nothing else worth having really than
that so one of the problems with magic uh is that as you work yourself towards adeptship
nothing is allowed until you get there in other words you can’t do any magic for attracting wealth
or or attracting a particular planetary virtue or something like that you can’t really do what
you want to do until you get to a certain point and i know how frustrating that can be because
when i learned to play guitar the way they taught it in school was insufferable uh they
they propped you up in front of a piece of sheet music and had you learn how to read sheet music
one note at a time plucking away on the guitar and part of me when i was trying to learn that
rebelled i’m like what does this have to do with music this is this is not the way our ancestors
learned how to play music we didn’t learn to sing by reading notes off of the page and we didn’t
build instruments so that we could read notes off of the page um and we didn’t need to learn a bunch
of different scales and a bunch of different keys until we could actually play a song we just
basically started playing a song as bad as it might have been okay and so the way that i eventually
ended up learning to play guitar was that i learned by playing a song right away it wasn’t a very good
song it only had one chord in it but god damn it i was playing a song and then eventually i learned
how to play two chords which was much better and then you know singing along and then eventually
three chords and suddenly that’s almost all blues songs right there and of course you get strumming
patterns and finger picking patterns and things like that and things just get better and better
rapidly and to this day I do not read sheet music very well nor do I have to it really doesn’t have
much to do with music at all. Now, when it comes to magic, it doesn’t really work that way. I’m so
sorry, because the problem with magic is that the things you want and the things that you try to
manifest are actually sabotaging the work that you’re doing. You might want to think of it like
a drug addict. So if somebody wants to experience what it’s like to be free and clear of drug
addiction. They can’t just say, well, I’ll just do the 12-step program when I feel like it. In fact,
what I’ll do is I’ll borrow a little bit from this 12-step program over here, and that’s 12-step
program over there. And at the same time, I’m still going to be taking some drugs and getting
high, but everything combined together, I should be able to make it work. No, we know it’s not going
to work and one of the problems with a mystical discipline like magic is that we are caught up in
something that the buddhists call samsara a cycle of endless suffering suffering that perpetuates
itself it’s a karmic cycle and when you’re caught in a karmic cycle the the only way out of it is
to abstain from it and to and the only thing worth manifesting is a state of freedom from that
cycle. So you don’t even know what truly is possible with magic until you have freed yourself
mostly from that cycle. So you’re freeing yourself from that cycle. So it doesn’t have a hold on you
anymore. Okay. It’s still there. It’s not going to go away. You’re not going to cease to be human,
but it’s not going to dictate everything about your life anymore. It’s going to diminish to
such a to such a degree that it can’t take you over anymore this is what it means to be an adept
somebody who is not taken over anymore by a cycle of suffering and once you get to that point then
things begin to manifest relatively easy around you without even doing magic and you can do magic
to help things along okay so one of the hard things to understand about adeptship is that
um you can’t just have whatever you want an adept is someone who sees what’s happening in the
universe around him or her and uh will help those things come out into the open so they’ll notice
what is arising as a potential and if they want to see more of that they can help it come out into
reality so a magician is sort of like a midwife for different kinds of reality if a certain type
of reality is arising as a potential right now, then you can act as a midwife through your
techniques, rituals, whatever, and help it along and birth it into full manifestation. Okay. But
it has to be there to begin with. It has to be arising to begin with. You can’t just pluck
something out of thin air and have whatever you want. Sorry. We basically are now melded to the
universe and you’re in tune with what’s going on and then you can help things uh come out and to
to all intents and purposes around you to all intents and purposes around you people will
it’ll look like you’re doing magic like you’re getting whatever you want okay but what you’re
actually doing is helping certain things come out into the open uh from potential potentiality to
actuality okay and if that turns you off of magic so much the better don’t get involved unless
that’s something that you think you might be interested in okay and of course remember magic
is about manifesting the state of enlightenment there is nothing else in the universe worth having
other than enlightenment one of the things that is keeping people from pursuing a discipline like
magic is that they are distracted by so many other things. Particularly nowadays, it’s hard
to have a magical discipline because we are pulled in so many different directions by technology,
by social media, by texting, and smartphones, and computers, and things like that. What is
happening to us is that the stress response is constantly being triggered, and we’re not
really so much aware that human beings have a natural instinct for gossip. It used to serve us
relatively well when we lived in, let’s say, villages or towns. And the towns and villages
were relatively isolated from each other. We didn’t have a communication network through wires
or through wireless communication. We just pretty much had people traveling from town to town.
we didn’t know what was happening in a nearby settlement unless somebody visited
and when they visited we would take care of them we would put them up at the end we’d feed them
and then they would have to sing for their supper tell us what’s going on give us the news from the
nearby town what’s going on there how are they doing with their crops how is the warlord doing
in the local territory is he going to take us over what’s happening so we would really benefit
from getting that gossip from anybody who happened to be visiting. So we developed a natural instinct
for wanting to hear these things, for needing to hear these things. Unfortunately, this instinct
nowadays is being taken advantage of by social media apps. You could call it like a FOMO instinct,
a fear of missing out in other words we still are live under the assumption that we need to
hear everything that’s going on around us in the world because that’s something that used to help
us survive better in the past now we get so much information that’s not necessary anymore but the
instinct is still there that gossip instinct is still there and it’s being taken advantage of
So as you’re scrolling through your newsfeed, that FOMO instinct, the fear of missing out,
is still being triggered and you can’t stop yourself.
There are other things besides the FOMO instinct going on there, but that’s one of the big
ones right there.
If you are aware of this instinct and you notice it cropping up and you notice how it’s
being taken advantage of, you can look at your phone and look at these social media
apps and go, oh my God, what’s happened to me?
These people are taking advantage.
these designers of these software programs are taking advantage of my natural instincts
in order to make a few pennies off of me and it’s really being a drain on my time not only that but
it’s stressing me out okay so you might want to consider your nervous system your nervous system
has two parts at least it has the stress response and the relaxation response and you might want to
consider that there’s a sort of slider bar between the here’s the stress response here’s the
a relaxation response and so uh as any little thing that makes you feel like you’re inadequate
like you don’t have this and you need it it’s going to push it’s going to stress you out a
little bit i need to go get that oh this celebrity over here has that i don’t have that oh it’s
affordable i can go get that too and i can be like that now i’m not missing out anymore okay okay
let’s go get it or uh there’s or even better the news constantly is bombarding you with this or
that threat and of course these threats are happening in countries across the ocean uh and
the threats that are being shown to you uh rather dramatically through news footage are not even
having much of an impact on you okay uh and yet they are triggering your stress response as though
they are pretty much right next door or in the next neighborhood. You need to develop some
perspective on these things. Just realize that the gossip instinct and the FOMO instinct is being
capitalized on by these social media companies. Do they realize they’re doing it? Yes, I think
they do to some degree. And of course, many of the designers of these programs have stumbled upon
this mechanism. They’re not sure what’s happening, but they know, hey, it’s working, whatever it is.
And they keep you hooked on this technology that is stressing you out and making you feel like you
don’t have things or making you feel like you’re being threatened. Each time you come across one
of these little stories that seems very harmless, the slider bar between your stress response and
relaxation response is being pushed towards the stress response. This is why anxiety is so rampant
nowadays. Okay. There are other factors that come into play too, like the amount of sugar that we
eat, of course, the amount of carbs we eat and things like that. But, um, primarily it’s the
constant exposure to the newsfeed scrolling through one reminder of things you don’t have
after another. Okay. Or what scrolling through one threat after another, your instinct says,
yes, I’m staying on top of things. I’m informed. That means I can dodge things that are coming my
way or I can take advantage of things that are coming my way. I’m doing a good thing by looking
at all these apps. That’s what the instinct tends to say. But ultimately what’s happening is that
each little sense of inadequacy that you get or each little threat is stressing you out and
pushing that slider bar towards the stress response to the point where you are constantly
stressed out because you keep scrolling through that newsfeed, you keep checking texts, you keep
living life as though it’s one emergency after another. Even though it’s a minor emergency,
one minor emergency after another, it still keeps pushing that slider bar to the stress response.
the stress response shuts down higher brain function think of the the monster that’s chasing
you in a horror movie the stress response from being chased by the monster dumbs you down so
much that you can’t even figure out which car key opens your car door okay so um it doesn’t take
much to realize how much the stress response dumbs you down okay and people do seem to be
getting stupider as time goes by as we get more addicted to social media uh and and and as our
fomo instinct and our gossip instinct is being taken advantage of by these social media companies
unwittingly okay so um when it comes to stress there’s some good stress and bad stress there’s
eustress and distress okay you might want to think of these things as the eudaimon and the
keiko demon okay um eustress means good stress distress means bad stress so um there are good
types of stress to have and that’s the type of stress that motivates you to get through the
ordinary tasks of your day the distress is the unnecessary stress the excess stress the chronic
stress which keeps nagging you and yet you can’t seem to get enough of it because of your FOMO
instinct and your gossip instinct okay and you might want to think of the the instinct uh to
the instinct that has you using stress to motivate yourself just to get through ordinary tasks that
would be your good demon your you you diamond okay or and the uh and if your instinct is
misfiring if you have a gossip instinct that is being taken advantage of and not working correctly
that would be the evil demon, the Keiko demon, Keiko daimon.
A daimon is a spirit, not necessarily a demon.
Of course, a demon is a daimon.
Demon is a word that Christianity came up with to describe daimons.
A daimon is a spirit, neither good nor bad, or could be evil, could be good.
And the daimons pretty much inhabited a realm between the gods and mortals.
and they were there were goods there were good spirits and bad spirits they were called diamonds
and christianity came along and anything that wasn’t jesus or god was considered evil and so
all of the diamonds became evil demons okay and but if you want to you know
divide them into two categories any spirit or instinct that is misfiring and and not working
to serve you well is a keiko daimon bad demon right and uh any a spirit that is serving you
well or an instinct that is serving you well helping you get through your day and stay
motivated get things done whatever helping you relax that’s a you daimon or a good spirit
good demon all right these it’s not like you have a good demon here and bad demon here like sort of
the good angel on the right shoulder and the bad angel on the left shoulder.
It’s more like the evil demon arises in a contracted state.
Okay, so picture yourself standing underneath a shower head and you’re taking a shower.
Okay, the shower may be too cold and maybe too hot, maybe just right.
It might feel good, might feel bad.
Okay, whatever’s happening with that shower, that is the eudaimon.
That’s simply reality as it is.
this is the shower that’s happening okay now the keiko diamond the evil demon is the the sense of
you getting pelted by those droplets they’re too cold they’re too hot they’re coming at me too hard
it it hurts or i don’t want to be wet right now but i have to be clean you know like whatever
so that sense of you being hit by those droplets that is the uh evil demon that is sort of flaring
to life and saying what’s happening why is this happening what am i doing in the shower okay
the goal of enlightenment is for that keiko demon to disappear and all there is is just a shower
there’s just the droplets hitting everything underneath the showerhead there’s no you there
anymore to be hit that’s just stuff happening there’s no you okay what this means is um that
the actual experience of the shower is the higher self the ego is the one that is now being hit by
or bothered by or comforted by the shower, okay?
And of course, the goal of enlightenment
is to have that ego vanish.
So it’s nothing but pure shower.
In other words, nothing but reality
just coming at you as it is
with no you there to be irritated by it
or comforted by it or made to feel inadequate by it.
There’s no ego there at all, okay?
That’s sort of the goal there, okay?
and of course this idea of reality just coming at you just as it is without the need to feel
offended by it bothered by it or comforted by it or rescued by it whatever without that special need
uh just becomes all higher self all reality just as it is how do we get to that point so you’re
just taking a shower that’s it and then there’s no you taking a shower it’s just just the experience
of the shower that’s all there’s no you to be bothered by it there’s no you to be comforted by
it there’s no you to be rescued by it just the shower what happens is when stuff happens in life
something in us flares to life it flares up okay it’s like this fire ignites in you that is
suffering okay the reason i’m bringing this up is because the word nirvana is that’s the word
that buddhists use for enlightenment that’s a sanskrit word for enlightenment nirvana
it literally means blown out okay so you might consider that most of us when we’re standing
underneath a shower that we’re uncomfortable with we pretty much this irritation in us is
flaring to life it might be an even an irritation that says i need to be comforted by the shower is
it warm enough is it warm enough yes okay i think i feel better now but it’s still burning it’s still
that fire is still burning that fire of desire or the fire of defensiveness the fire of discontent
is still burning okay and of course to be enlightened is have that flame completely
blown out so there’s nothing but the experience of the shower and there’s no fire left at all
to be cool and it’s pretty cool that we have in in the west we have this idea of being cool
he’s cool like what does it mean to be cool well probably what you gather from people who are cool
are people who are unfazed so when you say stuff that’s annoying they don’t get annoyed it’s like
that’s cool man whatever it’s like oh you feel that way that’s fine it doesn’t doesn’t bother
them because they’re cool in other words they don’t have that fire that flares up and says how
dare you okay they still have preferences and they’ll get away from you if it’s if you’re
irritating but they’re not going to have this attitude like uh what’s wrong with you or something
like that so to be cool is to have that fire blown out so basically you’re not irritated there’s no
me to be affronted okay you might want to consider that when somebody says nirvana and or somebody
talks about enlightenment it’s like basically to have that fire of ego blown out and of course
to be truly enlightened is be state is to be stabilized in that state of enlightenment so
that once the flame goes out it never reignites it’s gone and it will not reignite gone forever
no more suffering okay for many of us many of us on the spiritual path we learn to put the fire
out occasionally but it flares back to life again it comes back it’s like that those trick candles
on the birthday cake you blow them out you think they’re blown out and suddenly they fly back to
life again it’s like oh the ego came back oh my god okay so what does it mean to be cool means to
be unfazed so being enlightened and being cool are kind of the same thing okay now standing
underneath the shower head taking a shower you’re immersing yourself in the flow of life and that
that life can really flow when you get out of the way when there’s no you there anymore to be
bothered by it, okay? There has been some pretty cool research done into how to achieve the flow
state, okay? It’s not that hard. Essentially what you need to do is immerse yourself in a task
that’s relatively challenging, not too stressful, only slightly stressful enough to keep you
motivated, keep you going, so that you are so absorbed in the task that the flame blows out
and there’s nobody standing in the shower anymore. There’s just a shower happening. There’s no
worry. There’s no fuss about whether or not you’re going to succeed or not. There’s just the task
itself. You disappear. There’s nothing but the work. The work is going on now. And there’s no
you to be bothered by it. Okay. That’s essentially what it means to be in a flow state. To enter a
flow state, you need a pretty clear goal that you’re not very attached to, but it needs to be
clear. And there needs to be a moderate amount of challenge for that to happen. Okay. I recommend
doing some research into flow there’s some pretty cool science about it um can you stay in the flow
state forever probably not but of course to be enlightened like a buddha uh it you yeah it’s
forever you pretty much are now permanently in the flow state the flame has gone out and it will not
reignite what does it mean to be motivated well biologically uh you require dopamine at least
that’s what seems to happen a dopamine secretion in the brain tends to correspond to a state of
motivation dopamine is sort of a feel-good hormone uh sometimes called a happiness hormone it’s a bit
of a misnomer it’s more of a uh when this hormone is secreted it corresponds to a state of feeling
like you want to get something done feeling motivated like yes i got this i can do this
let’s do it let’s go okay um one of the problems with social media that’s happening now is that
it depletes dopamine because it’s constantly trying to stimulate you to do something it’s
prodding you with your sense of inadequacy you don’t have the right body type you need to look
like this go get go buy this product go get this gym membership go do this go eat this or uh there’s
these threats on the horizon you need you need to take precautions you need to buy this insurance
you need to vote for this person to protect yourself you need to be safe okay the all these
things are pushing your dopamine are getting you to secrete dopamine so to get you to do things
okay but all these apps and things are getting you to do things that other people want and of course
they are not only are they lying to you but they’re also you know feeding you a false version
of reality um they’re they’re talking about stuff that’s happening that doesn’t have much to do with
where you are and yet still it’s pushing you to do more to scroll further to to not miss out
to keep the gossip flowing because you think it’s helping you to just stay on top of gossip okay um
and as this keeps going on throughout your day it’s depleting the amount of dopamine you have
in your brain you might want to consider there’s this gland in your head that secretes dopamine
and it runs out. And suddenly, I don’t feel like doing anything. I feel so apathetic. I don’t know
why. And of course, let me just reach for my phone and scroll some more. And then more dopamine gets
depleted because these apps are constantly getting you to want to do things or pressuring you to do
things. So the dopamine gets depleted. Naturally, the answer is to delete most of your social media
accounts and the ones that you do use you seldom use them sorry okay but i’d like to ask do these
things really give you any happiness if they’re depleting the very hormone that makes you feel
motivated they’re actually going to lead to depression anxiety disempowerment and this is
exactly what is happening to us and of course you won’t feel like doing the magical work if you’re
constantly hooked on these things and your dopamine is being depleted. Well, how can you
increase dopamine? Naturally, you abstain from activities that deplete it, okay? Now, there’s
some easy fixes. Getting enough sleep, for one thing, is a great way to restore dopamine, okay?
Getting eight or more hours of sleep per night, okay? Don’t want to overdo it, but of course,
taking control of the light exposure that you have so that you are your brain is producing the
right the right amount of melatonin at night that’s an easy easy way to make sure you’re
getting enough sleep if you suffer from insomnia insomnia chances are it’s simply because you’re
exposing yourself to electric light at night okay and now electric light that has some of the blue
spectrum in it and i’ve talked about this before there is a type of electric light that you can
bring into your home that doesn’t have much blue in it that can then encourage your brain to produce
enough melatonin so you can get enough sleep, okay? Another easy hack is to wear blue blocking
glasses. Once the sun goes down, you’ll get sleepy very fast, okay? That’ll give you enough sleep,
and during that lengthy sleep cycle, your dopamine will be restored, okay? But then in the morning,
don’t reach for the phone. That’s probably what you’re going to do, right? Let’s scroll a little
bit. Let’s check my texts. Let’s check the news. Now, these things are going to once again keep
pushing you to do things, motivating you to do things so you don’t feel inadequate or motivating
you to do things so that you don’t feel stressed out or under threat. I recommend not watching the
news ever again, ever. And if you think you need to keep in touch with it, I would suggest that
you watch the news only to see what other people are are chronically stressed out about because
there’s always some kind of psychic epidemic going on that’s being perpetuated by the news cycle and
by social media uh so you can at least tune in to see what everybody’s stressed out about maybe
once a week for about 10 minutes and then put the damn thing away put the phone away turn off the
news if there’s something you really need to know about you can find out very quickly because the
news is everywhere because people are addicted because of FOMO and because of the gossip
instinct. Okay. So no, there’s no need to worry about being cut off from the news. It’s everywhere.
And I do highly recommend you do not watch it ever again. Okay. Unless it’s prescriptive,
unless you want to go after something, you need some specific information, check out the news,
and then quickly turn it off again, because you’ll begin to notice it’s like, oh, it’s happening
again oh my god these various instincts that i wasn’t aware of before are being triggered again
there they are oh my god this is this stuff is very real i didn’t know i had a fomo instinct
or a gossip instinct another way to increase dopamine is to meditate meditate but by meditate
i basically just mean sitting doing nothing don’t keep trying to achieve some kind of state because
that’s going to deplete dopamine. So it’d be better to describe it as a state of non-meditation,
sitting there doing nothing. Don’t try to meditate. Oh, for heaven’s sake, that’s going to
deplete dopamine really fast, especially if you have some kind of sparkly idea about what should
be happening and you try to go after that thing. Sitting still doing nothing. And to help that
even further you can do any kind of breathing pattern that has a long exhale okay um there’s
a breathing pattern i recommend in one of my videos um i think it’s called several breathing
breathing techniques that will change your life something like that um it’s called the dead
breath that’s really good it’s got the long exhale and you can help you increase your dopamine stores
again um it requires a little bit of attention to do it um another an easier one is the witchy
breath, which involves breathing in to the count of three, holding the breath for the count of seven,
breathing out for the count of nine, holding the breath out for the count of 13, and then starting
the cycle over again, okay? And if you just sit down, chances are you’re not going to be able to
hold your breath for 13 seconds, so you could leave off that 13-second pause for the first few breaths,
but then eventually incorporate it in when it becomes easy for you, okay? The most important
part about this witchy breath is probably the number nine uh because that’s the out breath which
is um sustained though i do find that a 13 second breath hold is also really calming evening out
hard to describe okay you might want to try it i call it the witchy breath because these are all
witchy numbers from witchcraft the number three is for the triple goddess the number seven is the
number of planets the number nine is the number of the moon and the number 13 is the number of
lunar months in the year. Not that that matters. It just happens to be a really cool pattern for
breathing. And it’s one that you don’t have to pay much attention to. You just get in the pattern
and it becomes automatic. And lo and behold, your dopamine levels go up and you feel like doing
things again. I recommend doing this for maybe 30 minutes, something like that. You can also adopt
this breathing pattern when you’re doing the middle pillar, when you’re circulating the light.
pomodoro technique so to be motivated in order to study if you’re going to be a student of her
medicism you are a scholar you are somebody who likes to read books and scrolls and computer
screens okay somebody who likes to do research even okay hopefully not hopefully not in a social
media feed or in the news that might happen sometimes uh you’re somebody who likes to do
research into biology into mythology into psychology into mysticism into
obscure systems of alchemy okay and there’s in the Kabbalah magic curriculum
there’s quite a lot of reading to do okay and some study work too and things
like that so in order to stay motivated for that I would I might suggest you
adopt the Pomodoro technique some of you probably know what this is the most
obvious example is that you set a timer for 25 minutes and during the 25 minutes you are not
allowed to have any distractions. You simply do the work of your studying. You do your reading or
you work on your compendium of gods or you draw some mystical diagrams or you color your tree of
life diagrams and you don’t allow anything to distract you from that for the 25 minutes. And
then when the 25 minutes is up uh you might want to finish a little task and you’ll say um and you
you want to just speak to your psyche and say just hold on for a second i want to finish this one
little thing and then we’ll then we’re going to take a break okay uh you want to communicate with
your psyche let let it know that you care about it okay uh and then um when the 25 minutes is up
you take a five minute break and do whatever okay uh i wouldn’t recommend reaching for the phone
okay um but just relax uh putter around the house go do the dishes some kind of mindless task
and then when the five minutes is up five or so minutes then you go through your next cycle of
25 minutes where you do some of your study work or your reading and you do not allow any
distractions to interfere with your study or your reading until the 25 minutes is up okay and when
the 25 minutes is up, then you can say, oh, let me just finish this paragraph and then I’ll stop
and we’ll take a break and then we’ll start the next cycle again. I think you’ll find that this
is quite effective. It actually can be quite useful. Is 25 minutes optimal for you? No,
you can start that way, but then you can tweak it. You might do 40 minutes and a 10 minute break,
or you might do 10 minutes and a three minute break. Okay. Set up a pattern that works for you.
But the cool thing is that during that study time or the reading time, you don’t allow any distractions to creep into your activity.
It can be pretty, once you get into it, I think you’ll find that the motivation factor is pretty strong once you establish a good habit with the Pomodoro technique.
Yes, 25 minutes and five minutes is the standard amount you’ll find.
You could even find some YouTube ambiance channels where they just play some white noise like rain falling or river flowing or wind blowing for 25 minutes.
And then a little buzzer goes off, and then there’s a five-minute break.
And then after the five-minute break, there’s another 25-minute session of white noise.
That’s pretty cool.
You might want to try that.
During your day, I would suggest setting up a substantial amount of nag-free time.
technology is constantly nagging you okay what this involves is going into your smartphone
and removing all of the alerts okay so your phone no longer buzzes at you and sends banners at you
and alerts you for this and that the only alert I might consider leaving on is the little badge
that appears on your app that will magically appear without buzzing or alerting you with
a banner. Okay. So that when you do look at your phone, you can see which apps have notifications
on them, but your phone isn’t constantly buzzing at you. I wonder if this is causing some of you
to panic right now. Cause I noticed, especially among the younger people, they must have their
phone with them at all times. And when it buzzes next to them, they immediately look at it.
It’s the strangest thing. You know, I’m, I’m somewhat older. So I remember a time when there
were no smartphones, obviously. And when my phone buzzes in my pocket, I don’t grab it and look at
it. I pay attention to the person I’m sitting with and who I’m talking to. If that person is a
younger person, they normally will turn away from me and look at their phone. And not only is that
rude, but it’s also, it’s kind of like if somebody snaps their finger at you and says, hey, go do
exactly what I say right now. Go do this. And you run and go do it. That’s what’s happening. This
phone is basically telling you to go do something and you, oh yeah, I’ll go do that. Who made that
phone boss of you. Take your power back. My phone doesn’t boss me around, doesn’t tell me what to
do. I look at it when I want to look at it. In other words, I’m cool. My fire has gone out.
I’m not constantly alerted and on fire to go do something or on fire, afraid of something,
worried. I’m not constantly worried I’m missing out on something. I’m cool. Nirvana means blown
out fire’s gone so set up some nag free time a lot of nag free time during the day and what i
recommend um i just spoke to a friend of mine um today his uh his only time just to check with
social media and um any stressful situations on the news or anything anything like that is pretty
much a right around dinner time and when dinner’s over like before dinner during dinner when dinner’s
over then all that stuff gets turned off he puts on the blue blocking glasses he does the dishes
and during the doing cleaning the kitchen doing the dishes getting the house ready for night time
that’s a nice settling down activity where none of these um neurotic news feeds and things keep
prodding him and telling him what’s good for him or what and or what’s not good for him
and he’s starting to wind down for sleep and he most certainly does not tune into any of this
social media toxicity before right before going to bed it would be ideal to not keep the smartphone
in the bedroom at all and to actually reinstate using an alarm clock okay but if you can use your
smartphone as an alarm clock and not have it buzzing at you and alerting you i suppose but
i highly recommend that you adopt the ancient practice of an alarm clock if you need one and
keeping the smartphone out of the bedroom you might even set up a policy where it’s not even
allowed in there okay and in fact maybe while you’re at home it stays locked in a box interesting
thing is that there’s been studies done that when a phone is not within arm’s reach stress levels go
way down concentration levels go way up kind of strained actually and of course if stress levels
go down, intelligence also goes up a lot. When stress levels go up, intelligence goes down
a lot. All right, in order to be motivated and to make progress in a hermetic magical curriculum
like the Kabbalah Magic Book or any system of mystical training or study, we need to relearn
how to read, okay? Because the social media has also conditioned us to hunt for information with
our eyes where is it it’s on the page somewhere i need to scroll and find it where there it is
okay i got it okay now let’s go off and run run let’s go run and buy this product good okay next
okay now i need to find something else i found it okay well we need to prevent this from happening
i need to vote for this person okay let me go vote okay um so this we’ve learned to read uh
by hunting for information with our eyes this is not how to read we have lost our ability to read
properly so let me educate you on how to read properly let’s restore our reading to the way
it used to be i’m going to come back to this one in order to read so that you enter a flow state
okay and that you can now be more fully engaged with your reading you need to use your imagination
yeah so we let’s reinvent reading okay so reading is like being a shaman it’s like the light version
of being a shaman uh it’s not about decoding words off of the page or finding a key fact that i need
so i can get something done not necessarily it can be um primarily it’s just a way of entering
imagination reading is more like dreaming okay it’s almost like astral projection a light version
of astral projection, okay? Because when you read, you enter an imaginary world and then you go
exploring and you start to experience what the words are conjuring up. By names and images are
all powers awakened and reawakened. All right, so levels of imagination in reading. So the bad
habit now with reading is that we’re hunting for information with our eyes. Stop doing that. When
you are reading, like reading a book, you know, like paper and ink, what you need to do is imagine
the author talking to you. What does the voice sound like? What do the inflections sound like?
Does it sound like a fireside chat? Is this a man? Is this a woman? Is it a child who’s speaking?
Do they sound urgent? Do they sound casual? Okay, this is engaging with your imagination at the
auditory level. Level one is auditory imagination. Imagining the author speaking. Okay. Many of us
forget to do this. And then we start reading way too fast. Processing information. Reading is not
about processing information. It is about entering imagination. And the first level of imagination is
to imagine what the author sounds like. Okay. And the characters who are talking. Okay. Level two
is to literally visualize what the author is describing. So you can see here we’ve got this
person at the podium talking to the audience. And the audience, first of all, can hear the person
speaking. Then they begin to visualize what the person at the podium is literally describing.
In this case, Perseus cutting off Medusa’s head. And not only that, but there’s a level three of
imagination that involves abstract visualization in other words conceptual mapping outlining
seeing how seeing cause and effect relationships okay bubble diagrams things like that okay
when you engage all three levels of imagination that’s a moderately uh challenging thing to do
so you you set the conditions for a state of flow okay so that reading becomes an engaging
task uh engaging enough when you’re when you’re working at all three levels like this so that
your ego will disappear the flame will blow out for a little bit or to use the shower analogy
it’s just a shower now it’s just the shower the droplets are falling there’s no me being hit by
the droplets there is simply the experience of what’s going on in the imagination okay this is
how to reclaim the power of reading all right let’s let’s return to that previous one another
way to stay motivated when it comes to studying and reading and particularly particularly in
regard to reading because there is a lot of reading required for the grade work okay uh set
goals for heaven’s sake why not um if you guys want to join me i’m actually on goodreads.com
you can find me by name i just set up my account yesterday just to see whether this works pretty
well or a day before or something like that and i’ve i’ve engaged the feature where uh i i tell
everybody what book i’m reading and i even tell them what page i’m on and when i make progress
i record the progress immediately okay um i’m finding it actually is pretty cool i’m actually
doing more reading than i did before i’m not sure why exactly i’m sharing it with people i don’t
know um but yeah just to uh you’re showing yourself how much progress you’re making i find
it interesting that one of the most popular authors in the world is Stephen King. He’s not
that great a writer. He’s written some cool stuff. Green Mile is pretty cool. But ultimately, he’s
not that great a writer, but he is a page turner. And I think one of the biggest motivations when
you read Stephen King is that, wow, I just blew through 30 pages in a single sitting. That’s
pretty cool. Somehow it feels kind of good to get through a lot of reading in one sitting. I’m not
sure why um but so setting setting these reading goals and tracking your progress is a great way
to stay motivated and get lots of reading and studying done all right if you happen to be
studying or reading something that is not of interest to you right now like if you’re going
to college and they make you read stuff that you don’t want to read um it’s bound to happen
uh it’s still your job to be motivated to read it sorry you got to do it got to push through right
Well, if you’re not interested in what you’re reading right now, chances are someone you know
of or somebody that you’re going to know is going to be interested. So why not try reading or
studying on behalf of others? Okay, once again, get that ego out of the way. It’s not all about you.
In fact, if you want to enter a state of flow, there is no you. You’re gone. It’s just the shower.
Okay, so read for other people’s sake. For instance, if I’m reading an article about snoring,
i don’t snore that i know of um but my grandmother snores so i don’t want to read this article about
snoring but my teacher is requiring that i read it damn it well in order to fix that i will read
this on behalf of my grandmother because chances are snoring is the topic of snoring is going to
come up someday when i’m talking to her and guess what i’ll be informed and maybe i can give her
some pointers so i’m reading things on behalf of others i read things for to help other people
okay um so you might want to consider that if you get bored when you’re studying something
that boredom is very possibly selfish it’s like this doesn’t have any benefit to me well could
be a benefit to somebody why don’t you read it on their behalf try it it’ll make you feel like a
good person tell me what that feels like by the way essentially being in a state of flow and being
motivated is like eventually you’ll get to a point hopefully if the work is successful where you’re
always on to something new. You never know what’s going to happen next. And you’re kind of excited
all the time about, I can’t wait to see what the universe is going to show me today. It’s kind of
the state of enlightenment. Okay. Can’t wait to see what’s going to unfold next. And there’s no
me there to be apprehensive about what’s going to happen or to feel inadequate in the face of
what’s happening. That’s gone. It’s just more about exploring and adventure and curiosity.
okay not much more to enlightenment than that so once that flame of discontent is blown out
there’s nothing but always on to something new the flower is constantly blooming there’s no end
to it it just keeps coming and it’s the eternal springtime now everything is constantly new
constantly gushing sometimes unpleasant but still always interesting and if there’s nobody there to
be offended by it is it really so bad all right so i’m hoping this is of help for staying motivated
i don’t know this video might have kind of gone all over the place i don’t think social media is
evil but your instincts are being taken advantage of for somebody else to make a buck basically
don’t let them do that and don’t let your phone snap its fingers at you and compel you to do this
or that. Become your own boss. Put the damn thing away. You use it when you feel like it. And when
it comes to reading and studying, remember you are entering imagination. You are exploring
imagination. You’re not trying to process information. A robot does that and you are not
a robot. All right, until next time.
Source: Lyam Christopher