Descriptions:
Video Description
Can you step away from daily magic once you have begun? Lyam Christopher answers this common question with care and a little awe. Yes, he says, you can stop, but the work has a way of changing how you see the world, and that change does not simply pause when you do. Once you have glimpsed what the practice offers, many of the old pleasures stop sparkling the way they used to.
He describes the risk as a kind of winter of the soul. When magic wakes you up, you begin to notice that the things people chase for happiness, the rush, the relief, the next win, are really just moments of suffering temporarily quieted. In that space, joy can seem missing, and it takes courage to look for it in a new way. The answer he offers is gentle and strange: joy is not hidden inside any one thing but found in the act of imagining itself, in meeting the pictures that rise in the inner world and helping them become meaningful.
If life forces a pause, he suggests small ways to keep the flame alive. Write a signed pledge that the break is only temporary and keep it inside your journal. Keep a daily magical diary even if the grand rituals must wait. Read slowly, in the old way called Lectio Divina, by hearing the voice in your head, picturing what the words describe, and watching the larger patterns form like the branches of the Tree of Life. The full path is laid out in Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation, and the promise is oddly heartening: the work, once stirred, can become its own unending joy.
Full Video Transcript
Alright, it’s time. It’s Sunday night. It’s time for the next video.
So, I get a lot of questions about taking a break from magic.
Because one of the warnings about taking up the great work in the Kabbalah Magic Book is that
once you start the process, it’s not really a good idea to stop.
And the general premise is that the first grade of magical work, neophyte grade, is probationary.
And if the magical work is not to your liking, presumably you can stop while you’re in the neophyte grade and no harm done.
That’s a theory anyway.
One of the problems with starting the self-initiation process is it tends to be a runaway process.
It begins and once begun, it needs to run its course.
and maybe i can explain a little bit of how that tends to work so can you take a break from magic
uh yes yes you can of course uh but there are risks so um i think uh the main question is okay
so what happens when you stop there’s just sort of this dire warning as you must complete it once
you begin well um the main thing comes about because you develop a perception of life which
reveals that the things that once you thought gave you pleasure they no longer do that you begin to
notice that you haven’t really experienced pleasure very much yet okay and so supposedly when you
become enlightened then you can really experience joy i’m making a distinction between joy and
pleasure all right so when people when people experience a relief from suffering they very
often will consider that to be pleasure or joy or when people experience a huge rush of motivation
like when you have coffee in the morning okay or when you level up in a video game okay that spike
of dopamine is often mistaken for joy it does seem to provide some pleasure that sort of oh that’s
okay let’s find out what’s going on let’s go let’s go do this right um or if you have a release
or a relief from suffering let’s say you make lots of money all of a sudden and oh i finally
have enough to get my car fixed i’m so happy well all that’s really happened is that you are
have simply you’re simply relieved the suffering diminishes or comes to an end uh so the premise
behind the the mysteries is that well that isn’t really happiness that isn’t really joy
that’s simply a lessening of suffering so once you begin to see that then you begin to wonder
what is joy where is it i don’t seem to have it it’s nowhere around and so in the process of
seeing through the things that used to bring you joy or what you thought was joy uh you begin to
notice that there’s nothing there’s nothing that you can go after that’s going to provide
what you thought it would provide and this leads to a period of darkness okay and that is the
the dark night of the soul okay so that’s kind of the danger of beginning this process as you
begin to wake up you begin to see that uh the things that bring most people pleasure or the
things that they think will bring them pleasure don’t really do that and then the world looks
empty like there’s nothing there’s nothing i can possibly do that’s going to bring me lasting joy
okay and so now what and there’s a period of dryness and darkness that you progress through
you’re just trying to find out where where is my missing joy where is the joy of life
right uh and one of the problems with that is if you start this process and you don’t go through
with it you can kind of well you can get stuck for a very long time in a joyless state okay
of course you already were most likely in a joyless state most of the time but you didn’t
know it. And so you were kind of okay, but now you know it. Now you know that, oh, I’ve never
really experienced joy before. What do I do? How do I find it? And then everything around you
fails to deliver. And this can be a period of great suffering. It’s hard to describe what that
is. It’s a period of dryness or emptiness, lack of purpose. And you feel like you’re at the whim
of randomnessness random randomness and meaninglessness so in order to find your joy
the process you engage with is quite simple you engage with imagination because the imagination
is presenting all kinds of wonders to you saying oh this might provide you pleasure take a look at
this hmm okay that didn’t seem to work well this might provide you some pleasure how about this
so you have this fun house of images that you’re now in it’s like where i’m lost in this fun house
where can i find joy okay so in the process of engaging with imagination you can find out
what the real joy of life is the enlightenment experience okay and what you’ll notice is that
the the magical work with its uh circle of power that you draw around yourself and the
pentagrams that supposedly banish negative influences and the invocations and the middle
pillar these are all ways of actively engaging with imagination and this is something that
most people just don’t do they’re just kind of at the whim of imagination and whatever comes up
in the imagination kind of lords over their life it kind of um governs their outlook and and so
one of the tasks is to gain control over what the imagination does in in some some way like that
okay so um if you if you come across something that causes you pain the imagination is what
then flares up and labels it as bad and suffering the suffering like oh poor me so this imaginary
scenario comes up of poor me comes up and then the suffering begins okay that’s an and um the
the enlightenment process delves into how that works you begin to look at how that suffering
scenario arises within the imagination you gain control over that suffering that the scenario
of suffering it’s like wow it doesn’t really need to be this way does it okay how can it be okay so
you begin to explore imagination and what you’re looking at is the automatic faculties of
imagination that are just kind of up and running and auto-interpreting your life for you okay and
so if you engage in a in a path of meditation that’s essentially what you’re doing you are
still engaging with the imagination you are observing what it produces moment to moment
and you are also observing that wow that’s not it that’s not going to deliver my happiness
hmm that’s not going to do it either so where how does this work like and you begin to notice that
oh actually as i engage with the imagination the joy is simply in the engagement of it
in the recognition of it okay so it’s just nothing in the imagination that’s going to provide you
your missing joy it is the engagement with imagination itself that does so okay this is
not really so obvious at first and this is why magic is difficult okay it’s difficult to wield
the imagination and uh sort of um get better at doing that making friends with it uh being
interested in what it has to show you all right um yeah and when i say get some control of it
that’s a bit of a misnomer it’s when you to get control of imagination is more to make friends
with it and then establish sort of a partnership with it okay that relationship with between you
and imagination is not really real either because what’s really happening is the imagination is
arising in you and turning around to look at itself out there in terms of all the images that
arise within it okay and um if you can do that this in a in a path of meditation fine in a path
of meditation you just kind of sit there and wait for the images to arise so you can deal with them
and this is that kind of practice is very important in a practice of magic you deliberately
prod the imagination to produce things to to show you things you stimulate the imagination to
begin its process of unfoldment okay and um the life of the average person person basically hides
from this process and like shrinks away from imagination does not want to engage with it
because there’s too much suffering involved in that when you begin to engage with imagination
all the traumatic scenarios from your evolutionary past begin to surface because they come up and
they say oh this is something that countless ancestors have experienced in the past and you
need to make meaning out of this this is something that is waiting for you to come to terms with
okay there’s lots of that happening it’s going to start bubbling up and eventually as you get
used to doing that every moment becomes a an engagement with imagination and it’s not like
the imagination is ever going to stop showing you things from out of its depths that are disturbing
or interesting or they that need to be made meaningful uh but the process itself eventually
of doing that eventually becomes joyful it’s kind of what we’re here to do and there’s a great
pleasure in doing that and an image that i might give to you in regards to engaging with imagination
is that the when you do your banishing ritual all the supposed negative forces get pushed out to the
edges okay and then the middle pillar is right down the center of your magic circle right and
so this is the middle pillar is the engagement in that field of imagination and it’s almost as
though you know there’s a light coming down shining onto the view screen of imagination
and then bursting into radiance okay i’m probably overdoing the imagery a bit but that that light
comes down and bursts into like a sort of wing flower pattern or wing pattern of wings and there
are many powers and fears and hidden traumas that are embedded in imagination which can now be
liberated looked at and set free and that’s why so there’s this very process of engaging with
imagination is the holy guardian angel itself okay and so you could even say that that as it
as the imagination unfolds this is like these are like the wings of the liberty of of what that
feels like to finally accept the task that is at hand in front of you and experience the imagination
as it unfolds moment to moment and to never hide from it again to never hide from the task that is
being presented to you and that task is simply to make meaning out of whatever arises in imagination
okay and to be clear all you can see all you can ever see is the imagination okay if you think oh
i’m just looking at the world i’m not looking at the imagination well when you look at the world
you are looking at sensory inputs packaged and presented to you by the imagination okay and
And as those experiences are packaged and presented to you,
they automatically get sort of categorized and boxed up
according to your past conditioning, okay?
And so this automatic categorization and boxing up and packaging,
you know, all this stuff that happens is being done in a way that is deceptive.
It just does not portray the world or the mind the way it actually is, okay?
because of the momentum of horrible events from the past
or scenarios from the past that have deprived you of something you need
or that have assaulted you or hurt you or threatened you.
These are all things waiting to be recognized
and they’re going to come out of the woodwork,
they’re going to come out of imagination and present themselves
so that you can reimagine them and make different meaning out of them.
what this means is that the imagination is primary okay your foundation is not in the
physical world your foundation is in the imagination okay and this is born forth by
kabbalah basically uh the foundation is not in the lowest sphere of the tree of life it is actually
in the second lowest sphere yesod is called the foundation okay and then when you reach the level
which is above the material plane supposedly uh that is the level that’s the first entry into
the plane of imagination okay so your foundation is actually in the imagination itself if you try
to extract a sense of purpose from the physical world itself we already know that that that
doesn’t work very well okay eventually that’s going to fail you it’s not going to provide
lasting happiness, the way to that lasting happiness is then to engage at a higher level
with the imagination itself as it shows its mistaken perceptions and images and memories to
you. It presents those things to you so that you can reimagine them and reformulate them so that
you can actually see what’s truly happening around you, okay, in terms of the physical world, in terms
of the mind even in terms of the imagination okay and imagination is another word for the soul or
soul we can we can deliver the word soul as a non-count noun okay you don’t have a soul you
have soul okay you have a soulful way of living a soulful way of living is to live on the level
of the soul which is the true foundation of who you are which supposedly persists after you die
and so it will keep going might even be true so the imagination is primary the material world is
not your foundation the imagination is your foundation this means that the subject-object
relationship becomes very important all right so when we engage when we when we monitor the
subject-object relationship okay that’s me versus this thing out there me versus anything out there
could be me versus the entire world that i see out there okay that subject-object relationship
is now being examined okay the interesting thing about that is that the joy is not out there in
the world and the joy is not within either okay the the joy is in that relationship okay in order
to experience joy you can’t just be sort of unmanifest as pure potentiality that’s really
nice okay but really to experience joy or ecstasy it’s in the interrelationship of that
unmanifested state to manifestation and the joy is something that flows continuously like an
endless springtime okay so uh the subject object relationship is very important even though the
subject object relationship is ultimately dualistic and duality is not real because all is one right
it is as you examine that dualistic relationship then you begin to catch your nervous system in
the act of formulating it okay because a dualistic relationship is very simple it simply means oh
poor me inside here who’s deprived and needs things out there there it is that’s the dualistic
relationship right there or it’s also poor me inside here who’s being victimized by nasty
villains out there and this just poor me inside here who needs things or is being hurt by things
okay that is the essence of the of the duality that is the illusion of our existence okay it
doesn’t mean that objects out in the world aren’t real it simply means that your separation from
them isn’t real okay but you can enjoy that apparent separation by examining very closely
the subject object object relationships around you okay so the the freedom of enlightenment is not
within and it’s not out there okay it’s really in the i don’t want to say it’s in between either
okay it’s in that relationship okay so if you’re at the highest level of the tree of life that’s
not necessarily freedom anymore that’s simply i’m i’ve disappeared into unmanifestation and
everything is pure potentiality um ultimate perfection complete liberation from suffering
etc etc if you come lower on the tree of life to the sphere of tifareth which is in the center of
the tree of life now you have an interaction between the highest sphere and the lowest
sphere and this is the realm of the flow and this is why the middle suffer the middle sphere is
called beauty beauty the experience of beauty within that subject object relationship and what
does it feel like it feels like a flower or it feels like wings angel wings right so you might
take a break from magic uh and what tends to happen when you do that um you can very rapidly
forget uh the benefits of magic okay there aren’t really any benefits per se just but you can forget
the sense of fulfillment that you got from doing it okay so and then of course
one day you come back to it you say oh well let me do my ritual practice again
it’s been two months I haven’t done anything now I’m going to engage in my
ritual practice again do the magic and then suddenly you’re like wow that was
really great why did I ever stop okay and so kind of what you’re experiencing
is that that the reconnection to what the task is in other words that you’re
true task in life is to make meaning out of what’s being presented and when you stop doing that and
just kind of get lost in your troubles in the world and you know go back to your work a day
existence you are turning your back on that and you’re just now proceeding in terms of the momentum
of your life and your life then consists of what just one damn thing after another right and so
you’re you’re back into that one damn thing after another mode and you’re back you get stuck in that
mode of oh i just need to get these things done and then i’ll be able to relax and get stuck there
again right and all it takes is a a performance of ritual again to remind you oh this is the really
fulfilling thing that i need to do oops how did i forget we forget the same way that we forget
about a dream we had at night try to remember your dreams in the morning it can be really hard
because you you wait just 30 minutes and to write them down and suddenly you sit down to write them
down and you’ve forgotten all of them they slip away so easily very interesting too because um
if imagination is primary then then you’re going to basically uh lose and you’re going to lose it
really fast okay it’s mainly because it gets covered up uh by your day-to-day experience by
the seeking for the end of suffering okay so you you get caught up seeking after things in the
world like in other words when you when you start to go out into the world and try to get happiness
out there or try to lessen your suffering by going out there oh it’s out there once i get it
i’ll be okay okay or once i get away from that over there i’ll be okay you get stuck in that
drama again and the fulfillment of engaging with that in other words um really trying to see through
that your work of trying to see through that relationship or prodding that relationship
um gets neglected and it very quickly slips away because the the mundane world is much louder than
the spiritual world maybe and so what um magical ritual largely amounts to stirring the pot
and i’m bringing this picture here of um an ibis this is the way that ibises are in florida where
i live okay i know in egypt they look a little different uh the ibis is the animal of the god
toth the egyptian god toth the god of magic and the god toth is pretty cool because he has that
bird’s head and his beak is sort of like a prodding sort of appendage that maybe writes
maybe the beak could be said to write on scrolls or um so when you watch an ibis in the water or
in the grass it tends to stir things up with its beak okay and this is what you do when you do
magical work when you draw your magic circle you know use your magic dagger or your magic wand
whatever um this is the beak of thought which is prodding into the imagination stirring things up
fleshing things out okay like prodding those those demons to appear so that you can make
meaning out of them so that you can reimagine them they aren’t really demons okay all right um but
your task is to summon them forth so you can see for yourself that they are not really demons
and when you stop doing that when you stop stirring the pot every day uh you very quickly
forget the importance of doing that and you drift into a life of just chasing after stuff out in the
world unfortunately or running away from stuff that you think’s out to get you so if you need
to stop if you want to if you want to take a break because something’s happening in your life and you
like you have to live like in a refugee camp for two months or something i don’t know like these
things can happen right um because the magical work requires some seclusion so that you can do
ritual work without anybody like you know observing you and saying what the heck are you doing like
um so if you’re going to end up in a situation where you cannot do the magical work but you’ve
already begun it okay and you’re worried about the dark night of the soul okay um that is a bit
of a pickle yes okay um my first bit of advice is to see if you can make it work anyway because
the obstacles we think we face we might not really face okay let’s say you’re living with somebody
and you’re just embarrassed to um do magical ritual where you know they might be able to hear
you i’ve already talked about this in a previous video um that um fear performance anxiety uh is
really kind of an illusion and i find that people nowadays are are actually very tolerant of strange
mystical practices okay but still um who knows you might have to go and live with your parents
for a while and they are completely intolerant of anything remotely magical because of some
archaic you know um christian beliefs that they they still cling to um yeah there are things you
can do um for one thing you could make a contract okay um not necessarily a contract where you sell
your soul to the devil that’s not really possible because remember soul is not a count noun it is a
non-count noun you don’t have a soul you have soul okay you experience soul soul is something you
experience it is not uh it’s not like you have one and i have one and it’s not an object that
you can give away okay however the contract that you make though is a pledge that well i’m going to
continue to confront i’m going to continue to do my shadow work so it is sort of like a contract
with the devil in other words i promise i’m going to continue to um do magic work so that i can see
that these demonic forces are not really demonic forces so and the interesting thing is that
the soul or the psyche or the imagination likes that because it keeps showing you things out of
its depth saying you need to make meaning out of this you need to reimagine this okay if you don’t
believe that’s true try having ptsd for a while okay because that’s exactly what happens in ptsd
the soul or the imagination pathologically shows you things that you need to make meaning out of
desperately okay this happens to all of us but if you if you have ptsd it’s it’s really bad
it’s it gets uh acutely um harsh to the point where you can actually experience
very real hallucinations very real seeming hallucinations and um that simply amounts
to the imagination saying hey this is urgent you need you need to reimagine this okay and that’s
why that’s why we keep a magical journal so as the psyche shows us things from out of its depths
we make meaning out of them we reimagine them okay and so in in a sense that is sort of like
promising all the hidden demons inside you that you are still going to work with them okay so if
you need to take a break from magic you can always make a contract and say this is only temporary i
plan for three months to do to live this way i’m no longer going to going to do my daily practice
in which i you know prod forth the psyche to reveal things to me okay um but i play do plan to
to renew it at this particular day and then sign it in red okay not in blood but in red so you um
and then put it inside your magical diary all right and um and continue you can use that as
a bookmark in your magic magical diary continue to keep your magical diary you want to keep using
the keep doing a daily entry okay because you should be able to still do that even if you’re
living in very harsh conditions hopefully you should still be able to keep a diary so that
you can keep processing the things that occur to you okay so keep the process going as much as you
can at least on paper or in your keyboard journal on your digital journal uh yeah you can make a
digital contract too of course all right so making a contract might be very helpful okay
it doesn’t mean you’re going to keep the contract okay but it shows it shows that you are dedicated
it’s like i’m this is temporary i do plan to get back to the practice again of doing this and that
is the practice of the magical diary now that so while you are taking a break from magic you
continue to make entries in your magical journal another thing you can do since you’re not doing
magic anymore or ritual okay is you can uh adopt a very undramatic spiritual practice and zen is
probably the best example of that and um if you read books by charlotte yoko beck um one of the
books is everyday zen another one is called nothing special those two are great introductions
to zen um because then simply involves sitting there watching the thoughts that come up that’s
it that’s really all there is to it uh or and also observing bodily sensations and things like that
those are very much the same thing okay everything’s arising in imagination everything is okay so
you’re constantly paying attention to what’s coming up so you can still do that and nobody
will know okay you can still have a practice like that in fact you can perform zen even while you’re
doing things while you’re working while you are doing sort of mundane tasks around the house
you can do zen and of course zen work is something i believe i prescribed that even in the
kabbalah magic book in the zolotter grade yeah to get familiar with paying attention paying
attention to what arises in the imagination another thing you can do when when you take a
break from magic is you can continue your spiritual practice by by the practice of lectio divina keep
in mind that reading is itself a sort of shamanistic act in by reading you engage with
imagination okay so reading itself can be transformed by you into a magical practice
okay not as powerful as dramatic ritual acting things out things like that right but um but still
fairly potent fairly powerful so notice that reading and writing both engage with imagination
okay reading is very potent that way unlike watching a movie where everything is imagined
for you pretty much all right and you might notice that the most provocative movies tend
not to imagine everything for you they leave a lot to the imagination how interesting and so
you can do even better than that by taking up a sacred reading practice okay
I’ve seen people describe Lectio Divina like people from the church things like
that I’m never quite satisfied with their way of doing it it’s it’s too
shallow you might look up the practice of close reading to get a better handle
on what happens during Lectio Divina but still that’s not enough I can give you a
a clue right now okay when you do Lectio Divina you regard the act of visualizing what’s being
presented on the page before you you regard that as a sacred act because this is this is the task
that we have come here to do to make meaning out of what arises in imagination okay so this is a
sacred thing you’re doing okay and when you do that you pay attention to imagination on three
different levels. Level one is auditory. So you imagine the voice of the person who’s speaking.
What does it sound like? Are they standing at a podium? Are they standing on a pulpit? Are they
having a fireside chat with me? Are they giving a fiery political speech? What do they sound like?
You got to hear them in your head, okay? Level two, you want to imagine what’s literally being
described by them, the actual images that pop up based on what they’re describing, okay? So if I’m
talking about somebody eating a fruit from a tree, I literally picture the apple or the pear or
whatever it is, and somebody reaching for it and plucking it, I literally watch those things, okay?
And then level three of the imagination is abstract visualization for all the schematics
that might arise okay and this is where abstract maps come into play like the tree of life okay
or a sequence of events happens sort of in a timeline boom boom boom boom like that that’s
so what you do is you pay attention to all three levels of imagination while you’re reading okay
and you constantly pay attention to what’s arising both literally in the terms of the
concrete images okay and uh abstractly in terms of idea maps okay or timelines or hierarchies
things like that okay all three levels and you pay attention to how those happen because what
you’ll notice is in your in your practice of ceremonial magic and and kabbalah uh it’s not
only the um concrete images like tarot cards the images on tarot cards that are important but it’s
also the images of interacting concepts such as the sphere oath on the tree of life okay so level
two visualization is the images on tarot cards level three visualization would be the relation
of the tarot cards to each other in the form of the tree of life diagram okay so you can do a lot
of spiritual work if you really know how to visualize while you’re reading on all three
levels of imagination, possibly even beyond that. That is the practice of Lectio Divina,
divine reading. And the things you would read then, of course, while you’re taking a break
from magic would be spiritual texts, okay? It could be the Bible, could be stuff from the East,
could be stuff from the heretical saints like St. Teresa of Avila or St. John of the Cross,
uh could be buddhist texts things like that um what i would suggest is you stick to non-dual
type texts um of the non-dual traditions just look up non-dual find some books maybe
might be interesting for you all right so yes you can take a break from magic uh there is a risk
that you will end up sort of stranded in a dark night of the soul there’s also risk that you will
lose the memory of the value that a magical practice provided to you and that risk also
is then is that you won’t get back into it because you don’t know what you’re missing
okay because the memory of the benefits of magic quickly fade and you recover them only when you
start up again it’s like oh right this is what i was supposed to be doing all along i’m supposed
to be prodding the imagination to reveal things to me so that i can make meaning out of them
without end on and on all right is there anything beyond that well not really and i would like to
even say that um in the golden dawn curriculum in the outer order the the goal is to reach that
middle sphere on the tree of life that’s to farith do you really need to go any higher
yeah that’s inevitable okay but the way i see it really if you go beyond that or if you go to the
level the supernal is the top three sphere oath once you get to that level it’s really all you’re
doing there is preparing for death you’re preparing to leave this life okay some people might disagree
with that like it just depends how thorough your work is because if you are really um inflaming
yourself with prayer during ritual you’re doing your daily work with a lot of intensity you’re
keeping your magical journal work you will begin to touch down on enlightenment experiences
possibly in the even in the outer order grades in the lower sphere of the tree of life
and once you’ve touched down like that and you’ve had a glimpse of i don’t know immortality or
oneness um the what whatever grade you’re in on the tree of life or whatever sphere
you are in in the tree of life is no longer that important okay so if you’re really doing the work
all that’s really important is that you get to that to far earth level that the center sphere
on the tree of life the rest will take care of itself okay and when it comes to you know divine
joy or ecstasy that’s really something we experience while we’re alive okay so when you
get on those higher sphere oath it’s no longer that’s no longer the realm of living it’s wonderful
but it’s not it’s not that joy of being alive anymore it’s it’s a it’s beyond this i don’t
beyond this world um it is simply not participating in this outer um material world anymore okay
supposedly yeah i i’m not dead so i really don’t have the authority to talk too much about what
happens beyond death um so that’s kind of the theory of it and since i can see into the
imagination it does seem to be true as there’s some does seem to be some truth to it and that
process of the imagination engaged engaging with your with itself the imagination stirring its own
pot as it were continues on and on and on and it becomes a pleasure to do that it becomes a joy
an unending joy to do that all right until next time
Source: Lyam Christopher