Descriptions:
Video Description
“Why does magic sometimes feel like it gently refuses to work? This lesson uncovers one of the oldest warnings in the tradition. Lyam Christopher points to Aleister Crowley and the teaching that the pure will must be delivered from the lust of result. The phrase sounds mysterious, but the idea is wonderfully simple: wanting one exact outcome too desperately is exactly what blocks the magic from breathing. You may still picture what you hope for, but the trick is to hold it lightly, like a gift offered rather than a demand made.”
“Then he leads us into a surprising bit of clear thinking about cause and effect. When we say smoking causes cancer, we are actually drawing an invisible arrow between two things that simply happened. Nothing in the world shows us that arrow itself. It is useful, but it is also a story we tell, not something we can literally see. That idea changes how magic feels. Instead of forcing a single result, the practitioner learns to invite the whole drama, its light and shadow together, because any real mystery arrives as a complete story rather than one snatched ending.”
“The warmest moment is a secret from the teacher Krishnamurti. When asked for the secret of enlightenment, he simply said, I really don’t mind what happens. It sounds almost too easy, but it holds the lesson in one breath. The magician becomes a gentle midwife, noticing what is already beginning to bloom and helping it along, rather than yanking at the universe for reassurance. To hold life this way, dark days and bright ones alike, is its own quiet kind of wonder, and perhaps the truest magic of all.”
Full Video Transcript
Good evening. It’s going to be evening when this posts today. It’s still afternoon right now in South Florida.
This week we’re going to be talking about lusting for results.
How lusting for results ruins your magic.
Aleister Crowley is famous for teaching his students to avoid lusting for results.
It’s unclear whether he was really able to benefit fully from that lesson, at least intellectually.
he understood the principle. And so we’re going to talk about what’s behind that principle and
why your desire for an end goal or why your goal focus is sabotaging your magic. This is from the
book of the law. This is just a quote from Crowley explaining the principle of the lusting for
results and how it can damage magic for pure will unassuaged of purpose delivered from the
lust of result is every way perfect unassuaged of purpose what does that mean it means free
of a specific goal essentially he would teach his students not to have a specific goal in mind
and this might fly in the face of a lot of creative visualization practices because
very often when you’re taught to do creative visualization for manifesting things or
you know making a treasure map and visualizing the end result of your efforts you’re very often
advised to think specifically you can do that but then of course there’s it it’s okay to think
specifically, but the problem is the attachment to the end result. If one were to visualize a
specific goal, one should do that in a manner that indicates you’re not attached to having
your magic end up in that specific way. Something like that might come out. Maybe I can make it
clearer later excuse me so in in order to understand what the problem with lusting for result
is we have to delve into the mysteries of cause and effect and we’re going to have to do some
critical thinking here this should be fun it’s going to be a quiz first of all let’s talk about
the way that cause and effect looks from the outside and then talk about the way that cause
an effect looks from the inside and what i mean by that cause and effect to most people looks a
certain way but when you become an initiate and you start peeking behind the scenes of reality
as beyond fortune would say you could see the actual machinery of the universe
then cause and effect doesn’t look the same anymore okay let’s talk about okay let’s do
some critical thinking right I run into this problem when I’m helping students
develop the ability to think critically okay and this is going to be an
eye-opener to many of you as well because many of you think you know what
a fact is okay there are actually two definitions of a fact one definition of
fact is something that’s true okay when it comes to critical thinking that’s not
really the definition of fact that we use okay when it comes to the the
context of fact and opinion fact has another definition okay so in in that
context a fact is something that can be verified something that can be proved
true or false okay facts can be false what okay well that is one definition of
a fact okay to make that clear if you were to sit in a courtroom during during
a trial some of the facts presented during the case turn out to be false there you have it okay
so a fact is it’s logically speaking in terms of pure logic a fact is something that um can be
verified as true or false conceivably okay that’s something to wrap your head around okay and as we
as we do this little exercise here you’re going to find yourself possibly drifting back into true
false mode okay remember a fact in this context is not something that’s true it’s something that
can be verified as true or false okay uh the first statement smoking is dangerous many people would
say oh that’s true we know it’s true well you cannot verify whether something is dangerous
now you can provide lots of facts to back up that statement okay so smoking is dangerous
is an opinion okay doesn’t matter how many facts you can present to support that opinion
the way that it’s stated there, it cannot be verified. I can’t measure danger. There’s no
danger meter. Like at what point does the needle go red and then become danger? I don’t have a
danger meter that can verify whether smoking is dangerous. Okay. It’s basically a subjective
impression, a subjective impression that I get after I hear the facts. Okay. So this, the statement
number one is not a fact. Okay. That should be easy. I hope. Okay. Statement number two, smoking
may cause cancer okay many people might say that oh that’s factual not really no the pure logic of
it that that modal verb may you can also call that a weak verb may suggests uncertainty it’s also like
a prediction okay facts are a fact is something that you can use to support an argument and you
can’t support an argument with a vague statement like smoking may cause cancer what do you mean it
may cause cancer give me some facts what do you know what happened okay so statement number two
also an opinion don’t worry i’m going to get to the cause and effect thing okay smoking has been
linked to cancer that’s number three now that’s a factual statement because it can conceivably
be verified smoking has been linked to cancer so i can go look up some studies somewhere where
some scientist has drawn some kind of conclusion and he has linked smoking to cancer or she has
linked smoking to cancer. Okay. Yeah. So number three is a factual statement. Say fact. Okay.
Then we have number four. This is where the problem begins. Smoking causes cancer. Now the
question is, can cause and effect statements really be factual? Can you prove them to be true
or false, okay? You might notice that smoking may cause cancer and smoking causes cancer are
very much of the same ilk, okay? Now, in conventional thinking, and this is what I
have to tell, you know, my students, that cause and effect statements are normally considered
factual, all right? But as you can see here, smoking causes cancer is now becoming a bit
fishy because really smoking causes cancer that statement can be supported by a lot of facts but
the statement itself how can you prove the cause okay so in other words some guy yeah on the one
hand you got on the one hand you got some guy smoking on the other hand you’ve got him getting
cancer okay how can you prove the arrow of causation that that line that’s being drawn
between these two scenarios seems to be imaginary in other words all we know is that two things
happened how do we prove that causal vector between the two scenarios yeah so in truth
cause and effect statements are you know their beliefs or opinions okay and they can be supported
by facts all right but the problem is in the academic world uh cause and effect statements
statements tend to be regarded as factual. The reason for that is that they are implied facts.
Okay, so in other words, smoking causes cancer. What we’re really doing is we’re implying
that there have been lots of facts to prove this. Okay, that would be a factual statement, right?
So cause and effect statements cannot really be verified. What that brings us to then is that
cause and effect doesn’t seem to exist. This is going to lead to the problem of lusting for
results. In Buddhism, there are, I don’t know if you guys know this, but there are levels of
Buddhism. There are deepening layers of the exploration of Buddhism. And when many people
try to describe what Buddhism is, they go to the encyclopedia of Buddhism and then
pretty much uh what you find in the encyclopedia is the first teachings of the buddha okay and
you tend to find the what the what they call the theravada teachings of buddhism okay and
supposedly these are the teachings that the buddha first tried to teach to uh his disciples
okay and that’s the four noble truths the truth of suffering the truth of the cause of suffering
the truth of the end of suffering and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering
notice that all the cause and effect here that’s going on okay especially then at number two the
truth of the cause of suffering also called the law of cause and effect um and so what the buddha
was trying to say is that there are things you can that you can do to cause suffering for yourself
but that also means there must be things that you can do to end the suffering okay and the problem
with this first lesson or first, you know, lesson plan of the Buddha is that this really doesn’t
quite work. Okay. So you might do all the little tricks that Buddhism teaches you in the Theravada
school, and there’s no guarantee that the suffering is going to end. This is because,
mainly because of the lusting for the results. Okay. So maybe we can get to exactly what the
problem is here later there are further teachings of buddhism that evolved over time uh in tibetan
buddhism buddhism they call it the they they would call the four noble truths to be part of the first
turning of the wheel of dharma and there’s a second turning of the wheel of dharma which led
to the mahayana school of buddhism and then the third turning of the wheel of the dharma which
led to the tantrayana or vajrayana uh the tantric buddhism okay and in my opinion and in many
people’s opinion the the most effective forms of buddhism are the the third turning that the
tantra the vajrayana the tantrayana school okay and that’s the more magical buddhism that’s the
more ritualistic a lot of scientific techniques and things a very deep form of buddhism as well
because when you get to that level of teaching in buddhism you begin to see that cause and effect
does not exist and so this whole idea of the cause of suffering and then causing the end of
suffering is like an illusion and a lot of the effort exerted in the theravada school is sort
of wasted okay it doesn’t mean you can’t doesn’t mean you cannot achieve enlightenment in the
theravada school but what’s going to happen you’re going to exhaust the teachings and realize that
they just don’t work and then in that surrender that giving up something might click okay and
And then, of course, and this is how the deeper teachings of Buddhism evolved.
When a few people were able to give up and surrender, and then suddenly enlightenment would strike anyway.
And they’d be like, aha, all right, there’s another way to go about this.
So there are deeper teachings of Buddhism that go beyond cause and effect.
And this ability to see beyond cause and effect will help us explain why lusting for results ruins your magic.
and so what we’re getting at now is something called a causal causality it’s a paradox of
course um there’s a i seem to recall that there’s a great scene in the movie american gigolo
the one with richard gear and um i don’t know if i’m imagining this but i seem to recall there
was a scene where he was called in to have sex with uh some rich guy’s wife and the rich guy
was going to watch and it’s an uncomfortable scene for the for the wife because she didn’t
really want that uh she was just trying to please her husband and he so he was going to watch
richard gear have sex with his wife okay um and so she’s uncomfortable with it and he and and the
richard gear character notices that all right uh and then while he begins to help her relax and
then they begin making out and then she starts really getting into it for heaven’s sake it’s
Richard Gere anyway, right? Okay. So, um, and they really start getting into it and it starts
becoming a passionate, spontaneous make-out session and they’re starting to get undressed
and stuff like that. And suddenly the husband, uh, speaks up and interrupts them and says, no,
you’re supposed to, uh, remove the blouse first. And then you’re supposed to, uh, bring the,
are the bra straps down around her arms then you’re supposed to uh undress her one breast at
a time and then you’re and they’re just looking at him like are you kidding me okay so you could
see what’s happening there something was starting to happen spontaneously as though no end result
were we’re not looking for an end result here anymore okay we’re just we’re just letting it
happen but the uh the rich guy steps in and basically he has an idea of the way things
need to go they need to go like this okay and that’s that’s what’s called being goal focused
and this is why lusting for a particular result tends to ruin what’s natural okay this is why
lusting for a result that’s one explanation of why lusting for results uh ruins your magic okay
that’s a pretty good example actually i i remember seeing that scene i was already into magic at the
time and i was like aha that’s what crowley meant okay now was crowley ever able to let go of his
lust for results no i don’t think so but he knew the principle a lot of his enlightenment was
intellectual it wasn’t really heartfelt in fact he had some trouble with the heart center i think
the tifara center that’s something we can talk about in another video the importance of heart
versus head in enlightenment all right and so uh many of you are probably attracted to magic
because you don’t like banality maybe not everybody some people get into magic because
they they’re just looking for a new addiction okay um but many people are attracted to magic
because it’s sublime it has demons in it and it has uh shadow work to do and these are the kinds
of people who like they say oh i like it when it rains sunny days are okay whatever but it’s better
when it rains i like the dark i like staying in the shadows you know um yeah yeah uh the idea of
liking dark things and being in the shadows and you know wearing all black um that’s really kind
of a reaction against people who are superficial and saccharine in terms of happiness and sunshine
goody goody fun stuff right um so going like delving into the darkness of things ultimately
that is an attempt to be more full-bodied to be not only all very sweetness and light but also
darkness so you want the whole spectrum of things you respect the entire enchilada okay so delving
into the dark of things um is really more of the psyche’s attempt to value its entire uh realm
rather than just the sunshine happy realm also the dark moody realm okay and what you’ll find
is that um this is why i i tend to tell people i really do not like show tunes because show tunes
tend to be so desperately cheerful they tend to be like this little dancing guy here okay
not all show tunes are like that okay so i tend to like musicals that have darker themes to them
like phantom of the opera of course and uh but even the sound of music has some really challenging
um inspiring things going on which are much more than just um sweetness and light okay
but yeah for overall like um show tunes suffer from that desperate cheerfulness that one-sidedness
that lusting for a good result let’s be happy we’ve got to be happy let’s be happy now this
is another reason why i don’t seek out comedy movies and people tend not to understand when i
told them that like um life is hilarious why would i want to go to a comedy i don’t need to
establish i don’t need to go after that as a goal things are already funny but um but you can still
drag me to go see a comedy movie and and i’ll have a great time yeah of course uh but it’s not
something i seek out because i don’t really lust for results there’s something um inherently
neurotic about that. And it can be, so I tend to avoid, you know, seeking happiness, at least on
the surface. Okay. And so we can talk about, well, what is happiness really then? Because somebody
who is endlessly cheerful like this is going to end up in a miserable place. It’s kind of like
that Simpsons episode where they go to the restaurant that counts down to the New Year’s
Eve every hour. And it was that Marge says, oh, it must be so wonderful working at a restaurant
where you get to count down to New Year’s Eve every hour. And the waiter’s like, somebody,
please kill me now. That’s a different kind of dancing. Okay. So notice what’s happening here
is that we’re not just trying to express happiness there’s also we’re just trying to express
something something invisible we don’t even know what it is like it’s being expressed somehow
through the motion through the grace there’s an element of beauty to it but beauty is not
necessarily pretty beauty has an element of the sublime to it has light and darkness light and
shade do you want to listen to led zeppelin which is light and shade darkness and light or do you
want to listen to katrina and the waves which is all sweetness and light and saccharine katrina
and the waves is nice but anyway um but of course uh many artists bring a lot of shadow with them
as well and hardness and softness and darkness and light a full-bodied approach that’s because
they’re expressing something that’s behind the scenes okay and if i only want to express the
sunshine aspect of something that’s behind the scenes i’m repressing the dark aspect of it
and that leads to trouble okay that leads to a problem because that becomes a goal focus it
becomes lusting for a particular result if you want to have wonderful things in your life you
must evoke all of them the dark aspect of them and the light aspect of them not just the happy
sunshine aspect of them all right so let’s look at the let’s look at the problem with cause and
effect okay so when whenever you see something happening like the guy smoking and then the guy
gets cancer 10 years later all right all we really can see is when the guy was smoking
taking a puff we see this happening right and eventually we see the you know x-rays or whatever
and the blood the blood tests and the tumors uh and we then we conclude oh one of them must have
caused the other and we see enough evidence over time with many many different people
so that we can conclude that there must be some kind of causal relationship but in reality that
red arrow there does not exist okay it is inferred okay so cause and effect isn’t really there it’s
just a convenient fictionalization of what we’ve seen it’s a very useful fiction as well because
we can we can anticipate more cancer from smoking and we’d probably be correct not always though
okay um and uh but it doesn’t mean that cause and effect actually exists yeah and so if you
really want to practice magic you’ve got to let go of cause and effect and of course there goes
the whole definition of magic right there right what is what’s the definition of magic um to cause
change in conformity with your will to cause change and then suddenly we say cause and effect
doesn’t exist oh so we might come back to this one um so cause and effect is not just a single line
it’s also multiple multiple vectors of uh for one cause having numerous effects or one effect having
numerous causes okay the interesting thing is that you might notice oh my gosh this looks like a
a magic circle with the north south east and west so things i can do to cause effects to happen
in the direction of air in the direction of water in the direction of fire and in the direction of
earth north south east and west uh or there are things that i can work with in terms of air water
fire earth that cause an effect in me okay hmm okay but cause and effect doesn’t truly exist
it will seem to exist though okay let’s see if i can we can get to the heart of this so the way
to look at cause and effect now is that remember that red arrow doesn’t really exist it’s only
inferred okay so all we see is what appears to be a cause and what appears to be an effect
okay now that cause and effect scenario is a drama there are many different types of drama
in the universe or beyond the universe okay and these types of drama can be invoked or evoked
through magic okay but in order for a drama to really be dramatic it has to have dark elements
and light elements it can’t just consist of effects there must also be causes that are
discernible in it okay so it’s the whole package of that drama that’s important not just the effect
okay so when you are doing magic you are calling upon some particular archetype some particular
deity some particular spirit like a deity has a new a number of angels and spirits that are
beneath it in other words the deity is like the overall theme of the drama and then we have the
greater characters and the lesser characters which are underneath that theme and the whole
cast of characters um is that that’s the thing that you’re you are invoking not just a little
piece of it that you want oh i want the end result of that story but that’s all i want
if you try to conjure up the end result of a particular drama guess what you’re also going
to get all the other stuff that led to that it’s also all part of it okay this is one of the most
disturbing things about magic because when you when you get do a ritual to get something you
also get all of the other stuff that comes along with the drama of that thing that surrounds that
thing okay so when you work in magic you’re calling upon the archetype it’s like the cause
and effect they are perceived to exist within your own dimensional compartment you’re pretty much
let’s say you live on a in flat land okay you’re you let’s pretend you’re two-dimensional
and and uh and so uh you’re calling a three-dimensional being to come down into
your two-dimensional world and manifest its drama in your life. You can try to get only one aspect
of the drama, the tiny little aspect of the drama that you want, but guess what? The whole
package comes with it. Once you realize this, then you can work magic. So when you call upon
a particular archetype, everything that’s part of that archetype is also going to be
manifesting around that thing. And so when you do your ritual, you are sort of coaxing,
inviting the archetype to happen. And it can be very helpful when you call upon an archetype to
deliberately call upon both the cause and effect elements that happen within one of its myths,
let’s say and the light and darkness the good and evil also that occur within that archetypes
mythology okay um if you only go for one particular aspect um you can’t really do that
doesn’t really work it comes with the whole package okay so this drama um let’s say you’re
calling you’re you’re a two-dimensional being right so one way of looking at your magical
ritual space is is that it is a two-dimensional platform where the drama of the universe unfolds
and a three-dimensional entity will can be called down into that to sort of pass through that
platform and as it passes through it plays out its drama all these different kinds of things happen
and reveal the full-bodied nature of that archetype okay as it passes through um another
way to look at your ritual space is uh this is more of the enochian view where um the the drama
of your life is pretty much in the circle right there and all around it those are the ethers
and uh they consist of all these different angels that are sitting there in those various tiers
watching your performance and of course um each of those angels has its own particular kind of drama
associated with it okay and you can call upon those angels to you know um send its blessing
to you upon the stage sort of sort of then to help you manifest its particular drama okay uh
because say maybe it might descend into that space and as it does so all the things that are around
you in that space now begin to uh act out that particular angel’s drama okay it’s kind of like
the angel is a giant magnet and it passes near the circle there, and all the iron filings on
that circle now arrange themselves according to the drama that’s associated with that angel,
okay, the drama or its magnetic field, okay? So if you think about, you know, put the iron filings
on the paper and then you hold a magnet underneath the paper and all the iron filings line up around
it in a particular pattern, okay? This is what we’re talking about. And what you’ll notice is
that you call upon a particular angel you’re going to get the entire pattern not just a little piece
of it okay and so uh once you realize this then magic becomes something much much different um
and if you were to call upon one of these angels that’s sitting in one of the ethers
one of these angels that’s sitting in one of those stands right um it might not come okay
So another aspect of magic is knowing which angels are coming down and which ones are leaving.
So what’s happening is that a magician tunes into the universe and he’ll notice which angels are coming into manifestation and which ones are leaving manifestation.
And he will take advantage of the ones that are entering manifestation.
okay um this is why i sometimes refer to the magician as a midwife because he tunes into
uh reality as though it were a great goddess who was pregnant with something reality is always
pregnant with something something is about to come out okay um and but but sometimes uh something
has already come out and it’s already played out as existence and it’s on the way out okay so a
tradition is mostly tuning into what reality is pregnant with in other words what’s coming next
aha let’s tune into that and then when you invoke that you remember you’re going to
get the whole thing okay so and the ability to appreciate the whole thing
that you’re invoking moment to moment this is really the experiment the experience of
enlightenment um one of the the secret of enlightenment is something that krishnamurti
gave to his followers and they were very disappointed with him when he told them what it
was he says i’ll tell you my secret and everybody leans in and was listening it’s like well he’s
going to tell us how to become enlightened and he said well my secret is that i really don’t mind
what happens yeah and so um what that means is that when something is when a new reality is
coming into being he doesn’t mind the dark aspects of it there’s as dark aspects it has
light aspects he takes the whole thing warts and all the ability to appreciate both the beautiful
and the sublime to appreciate the whole thing so you’re not just katrina and the waves anymore
walking on sunshine you are more like led zeppelin cashmere you know that um i hope you
understand these references. So your music is both dark and light, not just happy sunshine,
goody, goody. So hopefully you understand now what it means to when you’re lusting for results.
Okay. This is the problem with addiction. What does it really mean to be happy or blissed out?
Okay. Being happy or blissed out is not just being happy and blissed out. That’s if you try to go
after that way yeah you can get it but it becomes cheap shallow saccharine and ultimately
unfulfilling you can have the appearance of happiness it’s kind of like taking zoloft
and then you it’s like am i happy i seem to be acting like i’m happy but this isn’t really happy
is it this is really weird this is a superficial happy act i’m acting like i’m happy because the
brain chemistry seems to be happy, like something like that. So what it really means to be happy is
to explore things that are manifesting in their full-bodied nature, in their beautiful aspect and
their sublime aspect, in their dark aspect and their light aspect, the whole thing, the causes
and the effects, the apparent causes and the apparent effects, the whole thing. So I’ve seen
this you go to a funeral and they’re they’re especially women especially some women who can
read like mothers who can really mourn oh they can cry they can cry so hard um and it’s like wow i
wish i could cry like that she’s really enjoying it now that sounds really cruel you know because
there’s obviously suffering going on there but there there is a sort of unbridled full-bodied
appreciation of the drama of what’s happening there yeah so i’m many people might hear this
and say i don’t want that if that’s enlightenment i don’t want that i don’t want to embrace
the suffering or embrace the grief but that’s what enlightenment is you know like if if it’s
time to grieve you’re going to do it and there’s going to be an aspect of pleasure to it and when
it comes time for celebrations and happiness and humor joy there’s going to be a dark aspect to
that you’re going to appreciate you’re going to appreciate the dark aspect the ironic aspect of
the joy and the and the celebration too it’s the full-bodied experience of of whatever is coming
into reality not just the the part that the um part that the ego has latched on to i want this
aspect of it no no no no the whole thing everything comes at you and then the appreciation of the dark
and the light aspects are now fully upon you and so when you call upon something to manifest
um you’re doing it because it’s already on the way anyway otherwise it won’t come
uh and then it’s really going to come it’s really going to come out and then you can position
your life so that you can enjoy it and be ready for it and survive it and this is the real aspect
of magic. Okay. Uh, Hmm. All right. So I look forward to the comments. Um, this was a pretty
deep one. So I’m wondering, uh, what you guys might think about it. If you are the type of
person who says, Oh, I like rainy days. I don’t just like sunny days. I like rainy days. You’re
already onto this thing. You already know what I’m talking about. Okay. Or maybe you didn’t know
why you liked darkness and moodiness and things like that but now you now you know now you know
why because you want the whole thing you want everything you don’t you don’t want just this
feel-good part the shadow the shallow aspect of it you want the deep end of the pool as well
okay all right well until next time
Source: Lyam Christopher