Descriptions:
Video Description
Everyone who begins a serious daily practice seems to meet the same wall: there is not enough time. In this video, Lyam Christopher sets out to soften that wall from the inside. Not by handing out tricks for squeezing more tasks into a day, but by looking for the deeper current beneath the hurry. The feeling of too little time, he says, is not really a clock problem; it is a motivation problem wearing a watch.
He walks the familiar planets as if they were moods. Venus wants the quick, delicious reward, while Saturn plans across whole seasons like the ant storing food for winter. Each planet carries a virtue and a vice, and each vice is usually a form of instant gratification. When we notice which planetary voice is pushing us at any moment, the rush becomes visible as something we carry, not something the day did to us.
Then the teaching lifts toward freedom. The chains of must, should, and not enough begin to dissolve when we stop believing in the little timelines the mind keeps stringing out in front of us. This is the actual practice traced in Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation, which uses ritual and journaling to expose exactly those hidden pressures. What is left is not more ticking minutes but a spaciousness in which the needful things arrange themselves, quietly, as if there had always been enough.
Full Video Transcript
Good evening. This time around, we are talking about the illusion of not enough time. So many
people, when they take up a magical discipline, will begin to complain that there’s not enough
time in the day to do all these things, that their life is already busy. They have a job,
they have kids, they have pets, they have this, they have that, they have two jobs,
they have three jobs. So it can be not very helpful to say to somebody who complains about
not enough time, that not enough time is an illusion. And there are all kinds of ways to
try to manage time so you can squeeze everything in there, right? I had a teacher who basically
said that there’s plenty of time for everything that you need to get done. So the illusion of
not enough time comes down to one particular psychological challenge. This is not necessarily
an easy challenge. It can be. Once I point this out, I think that many of you will be able to,
let’s say, evolve faster because as you continue to focus on this one thing, you’re going to notice
how it ties into everything so i guess what i’m going to propose here is that trying to reveal
the what the illusion is behind not enough time as you explore the issue of not having enough time
as you explore the illusion of not having enough time all of the other aspects of the great work
are tied into that so you can make you can make the issue of not having enough time the fundamental
thing that you’re working on in the great work. You can really start focusing on this whole
my day is too busy problem. I have too many things going on every single day. I can’t possibly get
to everything. That problem, you can make that your fundamental challenge and actually bring
the entire great work to bear upon that because dealing with that challenge will take care of a
lot of the tasks, let’s say, that are involved in the great work. Yeah, let’s see if I can clarify
this some more. This is not necessarily an easy thing to talk about. When you’re doing the great
work, when you’re going through the outer order grades, there are many things that people will
say to you that can suddenly become annoying. One of them is, how are you? Especially when,
know somebody asks how you’re doing how are you doing uh when they don’t really mean it how are
you and i think one of the issues with the great work is that we’re focusing on tifareth and that
tifareth is where you become more and more genuine and authentic and so um supposedly somebody who’s
genuine and authentic will not say things like how are you how are you if you don’t mean it so
so for a while when you’re doing the outer order work if somebody says how are you and they don’t
seem to mean it you might tend to want to snap at them and say you know or maybe just um or maybe
just really tell them how you’re doing and then they’re like oh i didn’t want to hear it like
just let them know okay so that’s one of the things that are annoying that people can say to
you another thing that people could say to you when you have begun the great work is what do
you do for fun you could say i conjure demons so um one of the things about the great work
is that it begins to reveal that the pursuit of fun isn’t really very fun and what you begin to
hear when people say what do you do for fun what you hear them saying is what do you do to try to
feel better you know what do you do to try to escape from not the monotony or the the numbness
or the unsatisfactoriness of life how do you how do you cope so when somebody says what do you do
for fun it’s more like what do you do to feel better or what do you do to cope with life you
know that sort of fun right um even if they don’t think they’re doing that that’s kind of what
they’re doing because for an unenlightened mind uh fun isn’t really joy yeah fun for the
unenlightened mind is more about um getting free from suffering like like in other words temporarily
um free from stress and that sense of relief or release is fun okay so what we discover in the
great work eventually hopefully is that uh that um uh their fun is not worthwhile really that
the natural state of mind is perfectly fine just the way it is there’s no need to have fun
anymore i mean fun still happens of course but there’s no need to chase after it because we
you eventually reach a state where everything is just fine the way it is yeah even joyous even when
things uh when the shit hits the fan um you can secretly enjoy having to deal with it on some
level okay would you rather be luxuriating on a couch than helping somebody clean up spilled blood
or something like that well yes of course but um the mere act of rising to the occasion and just
dealing with whatever’s coming up is very fulfilling very i guess the better word is
fulfilling and of course it’s kind of strange to walk up to somebody casually and say what do you
do for fulfillment so but that might be the more genuine question right and so the idea of seeking
fun all the time has to deal with the problem of motivation okay and this is what ruins your day
and fills it full of tasks and you can’t seem to get everything done because there’s something
going on with motivation that makes you feel like you have to do everything now and like oh my god
i’m running out of time and i have to do this and i have to do that and i still haven’t called the
babysitter and you know whatever um so um that’s really very much of an illusion that there you
can kind of look at the day and say there is this really so hard this is not that hard so somehow
i’m making this so difficult okay and so the idea here is that there are many things that come
into your day that are motivating you to motivating you to do this and that and on and on
and on this all these things are worth having and worth chasing after or worth running away from
and you you engage in a lot of actions that are chasing after things and running away from things
whether those things are real like a lion who’s charging at you or whether it’s a deadline
approaching that’s the same that sort of anxiety you feel when you think you have
to do these things okay and what I’m proposing then is that you get to a
state where you never have to watch another motivational video to get
yourself to go to the gym or something like that right or you don’t have to
play the theme to Rocky 2 or 3 or 7 or whatever the eye of the tiger right you
have to play the eye of the tiger to go work out you just go okay will you feel motivated sometimes
fine whatever motivation comes and it goes okay but uh the ability the main focus could be in the
great work to free yourself from motivation okay i talked in a previous video um because the video
was called how to stay motivated in the great work uh oh and uh so i was thinking about doing a video
about freeing yourself from motivation. And then I was like, Oh, but I have this other video called
how to stay motivated. Okay. And of course I went back and watched that video and a little bit
anyway. And I noticed that I was, I immediately started talking about motivation as though it’s
not a big deal. Like in other words, it’s not really that important. So I’m like, Oh, okay,
good. So I’m not contradicting myself here. I can, I can basically go after motivation now and
basically say let’s remove it let’s get rid of motivation okay or or basically have a life that’s
largely free of motivation and you don’t so you don’t have to motivate yourself to do anything
ever again possible okay so um in that video on how to stay motivated in the great work i
focused heavily on uh social media and our smartphones and how they um the designer of
these software social media platforms um are deliberately making these things uh addictive
uh and they are taking advantage of you that you have that you have these certain instincts
the fomo instinct the fear of missing out okay because that that instinct used to serve us very
well we needed to be involved in our community so that we could be um we could be part of everything
and we could read the benefits of that and survive right we’re very social beings okay in the modern
lifestyle that’s that’s not as no as necessary anymore it’s still necessary but it’s not very
necessary anymore but we still have a very powerful fomo instinct fear of missing out so we
always want to be like in the know and so these social media apps with their news feeds and things
like that are constantly feeding into that um so rather than see that as a distraction you can see
it as oh i’m i’m naturally motivated to want to tune into what’s happening because there’s a dance
going on and maybe i can jump in and dance with them for a while if i look for the right moment
you know something like that you’re always on the lookout for what’s going on so you can
somehow benefit from it and you otherwise you might miss something and then you
you miss the benefit oh no oh i missed that sale at kmart oh no um then the the gossip instinct
as well that was something that that served us pretty well still serves us a little bit well
but we have the instinct that’s pretty powerful and so we like to hear the latest about what’s
going on in the news things like that um the the point here is that you want to pay attention
to any time when you feel motivated because if the goal is to be free of motivation you begin
to watch out for every little sense of motivation and these are really obvious that when you’re on
hear these devices okay or on a social media feed on a computer you can feel these instincts being
triggered okay you might catch yourself while you’re scrolling and you’re like well what am
i doing i’m trying to get to the next um insightful little uh news article that’s gonna really let me
know that i’m connected to everything or that it’s gonna assure me that i’m on top of everything i
know what’s happening right or it’s just the next titillating thing to come along you know that’s
another motivator to be so tuning into our need for novelty we might we might even have a novelty
instinct um so working with social media um that’s a great way to to keep on the lookout for any
motivation that pops up that draws you in and makes you do something and you’re like what am i
doing hold on somebody just took advantage of my book somebody somebody just motivated me oops
i should be in control of that why are they pushing my buttons like that so the fundamental
challenge then really for the unenlightened being let’s say is that they are motivation dependent
this runs very deep your fundamental challenge is that you are motivation dependent so in order to
to get out of bed you have to first be motivated do you ever feel that way you’re waiting for the
motivation to kick in so uh it’s like well i you know i’m gonna go to the gym but i’ll go when the
feeling comes when i when the inspiration comes right or i’m gonna work on this painting when my
muse speaks to me and finally inspires me just get up and work on it so um the need to sort of
wait for motivation to kick in, that’s also something to watch for.
It’s like you were sitting on the couch and you’re not moving and you’re
waiting for a motivation to strike.
Oops, you are now motivation dependent and this is not the way to be.
Okay.
Most of the time, most of the time it’s desirable to be not in a state of
motivation like this, or the need in a state of being motivational, motivationally
dependent, do not be dependent on motivation.
So as one goes through the grade process, the outer order grades of the golden dawn, okay, and some of the inner order grades as well here, we progress through levels of the psyche, levels of the Ruach, let’s say, right?
um and the idea is that um you you proceed from the moon which is the lowest level the earth is
the lowest level and then the moon um uh pretty much if you’re in the sphere of the moon you’re
on the earth because you’re in the sublunar realm okay and then you proceed from the sphere of the
moon you rise up to mercury you rise up to the sphere of venus to the sphere of the sun i know
this doesn’t match astronomy, but it matches astrology. Okay, so the whole system of the
golden dawn progresses through the spheroth of the tree of life, and the lowest sphera on the
tree of life is Malkuth, which is for earth, and then the next highest is Yasod, which is for the
moon, and on and on. So if we are going to go through the process of initiation through a
golden dawn system or through hermetic magic right uh we go from the moon to mercury to the
sphere of venus to the sphere of the sun to mars to jupiter to saturn and beyond okay and uh golden
dawn mostly uses the septenary which is the the system of planets that we had in place before we
were able to see the planets beyond saturn okay and so that model of the universe pretty much has
at Saturn being the outermost sphere of the of the cosmos and beyond that was a
sphere of the zodiac but beyond that was simply the unmanifest okay which were
like or God himself let’s say right so God himself was on the outside and then
he’s creating he’s creating the earth but in doing so all of his power is
filtering down through the various planets down to the center where the
earth is okay and so um god’s power as it’s creating the earth has to filter down through
saturn then through jupiter then through mars then through the sun then through venus then
through mercury and then to the moon through the moon into the sublunar realm which is the earth
okay and so when we initiate ourselves and we become more godlike let’s say right um we we are
rising up through the spheres and in each sphere we’re letting go of a planetary vice each one of
these planets has a virtue and a vice okay if you want to know what those virtues and vices are you
can look in dion fortune’s mystical kabbalah which is required reading in the kabbalah magic book
and you can see what the um various virtues and vices are supposedly and uh when it comes to the
moon what we what we tend to let go of uh well in each one of these planets the vice that’s
associated with it is a type of motivation okay so uh the motivations that are associated with
the sphere of the moon have to do with safety of the home and family protection of the family okay
maintenance of the the household okay you know fertility and making sure you can have offspring
and all those sorts of things, all those things involving, you know, creating a family, protecting
your family, maintaining your family and your household and all these things. And this could
also involve your pets and your plants and your furniture and your house and paying the rent on
time and, you know, all this kind of stuff. And there are lots of anxieties and lots of motivations
to do that. Many of them instinctive. Okay. Many very powerful ones too. When I’m out shopping
and i see a husband and wife shopping they’re very much in the sublunar mode they tend to be
anyway like they’re looking out for their family and that you better get out of their way because
they are looking for things for the household and nothing’s going to get in their way because they
are a sublunar team working to um protect and maintain their nest get out of their way okay um
so uh now we we also have aspects of the ruak that are higher than those concerns of safety of the
home and all that kind of stuff then it comes mercury okay this is the scheming
intellect mercury is very important to magic of course and you find that
mercury is important throughout all the spheres at least in in terms of hermetic
magic and of course mercury and Hermes are the same deity essentially right and
hermetic comes from Hermes in other words their hermetic traditions are
lorded over by Hermes by mercury okay so when you do hermetic magic it’s very
thought oriented it’s very scholarly it’s a lot of reading just lots of
outlining and studying there’s lots of concepts and bubble diagrams and lots of
thought involved right and of course so the scheming and planning and goal
setting okay making goals and doing measurements and things like that right
being it’s being scientific about things so um you know the couple who wants to
maintain their household might do so very intelligently and learn about how
to you know fix things around the house by studying them or consulting
artificial intelligence and then of course beyond that then we have the
sphere of venus which is the sphere of affection passion and luxury among other things of the
sphere of love but really more this the sphere of the expression of love more so more like affection
tenderness you know touching each other things like that right um and the sphere of luxury and
comfort okay so you notice that the when you take care of the house that’s mostly a moon thing
but if you make your house luxurious okay with a divan and feeding yourself grapes or having
somebody beautiful feed you grapes that’s more venus right so um when you when people start to
uh take bubble baths and um and get king-size beds that are nice and soft and fluffy and all
this stuff those are venus elements now being added to the home whereas the home doesn’t need
need to be if that luxurious okay and of course um having a good sex life having a good uh life
of tenderness and affection with others it’s also Venus um the needs for that okay now let’s go back
to Mercury the Mercury is very much a goal setting type thing and setting a goal for yourself is
automatically there’s the motivation thing happening right there okay so when you set a
goal for yourself if that has a strong motivation for you this is kind of the kind of thing we want
to transcend in other words if you set a goal for yourself and you go after it just go after it
doesn’t need to be the motivation doesn’t have to necessarily be that strong okay and so for venus
we will let go of the need to be comfortable all the time we let go of the need to be touchy-feely
all the time. Okay. That, um, it’s not essential to our survival. If we have, um, a good sex life
or, or, or love life and all these things, these are the things that we can also let go of. Okay.
Mainly in terms of suffering. Okay. It’s like, Oh, if I don’t have a partner that I have sex
with regularly, I’m suffering so horribly that that’s what you would let go of. Okay. It doesn’t
mean you don’t have a partner that you have sex with. It’s more like that unconscious driving need
disappears. It’s no longer a requirement. It just happens magically. So as you pass through the
sphere of the sun, that’s a different kind of motivation. That is a motivation to build up
yourself or to look awesome or to be awesome. Okay. You might even say that Venus is sort of
the outward aspect of beauty where looking awesome can be a sort of venus thing looking beautiful
looking handsome um but then really the beauty itself um is in the sphere of the sun that’s
radiant it comes from the inside okay and so um this is kind of a higher level of motivation
but it’s still very problematic especially for magicians especially for people who are doing
the great work. Because the primary vice of the sun or Saul is pride, hubris. And the primary
challenge of an aspiring magician is not necessarily the illusion of not enough time.
The bigger challenge is actually ego and hubris. And you’ll notice that people who do hermetic
magic um they experience ego inflation and many of them become uh and that’s
that’s an indication that the magic is actually working but it also indicates that they’re
probably not doing it correctly they’re probably not um working with it in terms of
as the ego inflation happens they have to find a way to deal with it we’ve talked about this in
previous videos okay so the that type of motivation to basically become inwardly beautiful and
to become more fully and totally yourself okay um that’s a nice motivation to have yeah whatever
um but it tends to be contaminated with i must like why can’t i just be myself and people will
tell you why don’t you just be yourself and you’re like i don’t know how to do that and that’s so
that that sort of um need to be yourself all the time but that you’ll have to let go of that too
okay it would be very nice to be free of that wouldn’t it and mars mars is kind of bluntly
obvious so um but there are aspects of mars that are subtle um some there are a few anyway um mars
is a sphere of aggression really going after something okay um with a spear right um so um
or or if there are aspects of the psyche that are not serving you anymore you just simply cut them
off slice them off i don’t need that anymore gone like um that is an aspect of the work but um
the the reaction to that can be very extreme so when uh when mars is not being virtuous
when we’re operating in a vice of mars we are reacting harshly automatically to things
and that we can also let go okay so there’s motivations to go get things or become things
or grab things whatever but there’s also motivations to push them away to kill them
to destroy them to annihilate them right those that kind of motivation will also go away you
don’t need it doesn’t mean you you’re incapable of destroying things remember we want to reach
is a level of operation where we are free of motivation we can act without needing to be
motivated all right jupiter is the sphere of expansiveness there’s a lot tied up in jupiter
as we as we go down this list or as we head as we go up the tree of life let’s say as we go out to
the outer edges where saturn is things get bigger right and so there’s a lot jupiter contains all
the other virtues inside of himself right basically um and of course saturn contains
all the virtues inside including jupiter inside of it okay so uh jupiter involves a lot of things
but it is it’s a it’s a pretty nice planet because it tends to be very generous and very giving also
very gluttonous maybe a little greedy um or tends to tends to be tends to accumulate a lot of stuff
so that can grow okay kind of like a king would do if he’s in and it can even lead to tyranny
in some in some instances and um maybe some braggadocio too like in other words
puffing yourself up too much to look much bigger than you are some a lot of that is tied into the
vice of the sun but also jupiter plays into that too so um the jupiter it’s mainly the gluttony
and jupiter does govern digestion so as you’re eating a lot of stuff and getting fatter and
fatter that’s a big jupiter thing okay and so letting go of the need to um accumulate things
and become massive and big and in control of all the stuff you have okay um all the stuff you have
is eventually going to control you it’s not going to work okay so the need to do that needs to be
let go of okay so we can operate in the sphere of jupiter without needing to be big like that
okay jupiter’s already big and if it’s if you’re in the vice aspect of jupiter you’re trying to
become big there’s no need to do that finally we get to saturn what i’d like to propose here
is that saturn the outermost planet let’s say of the cosmos um saturn supposedly has motivations
going on in it but they’re all very long term the short-term goals like in other words uh like one
of the motivations of venus is to go have sex with somebody right and make it really good right make
it very pleasurable right and um but that’s like instant gratification sort of thing so a lot of
the vices of the planets are instant gratification okay um so if saturn has any motivations going on
with it they’re all very long term which tends to make them look virtuous okay so it’s like the
grasshopper versus the ant the ant spends all summer storing up food so during the winter it
has plenty of food to eat the grasshopper just frittered away his time and doesn’t do any of
that and then it starves and dies in the winter right that’s an old fable um so uh the ant is is
somebody who’s being very dutiful with long-term plans that’s a saturnian thing okay so with
saturn we begin to move past the need for motivation we just do things because we know
that they work not because we feel like doing them right now okay and so saturn does pose a problem
because um the things that we do we just do them because they need to be done and that tends to
cause a problem because a lot of times we do things because my ancestor did that therefore
i do it too and i just keep doing it it seems to be an instinct for that too um it’s it’s called
conservatism okay but um of course it does have value but the the need um for to stick to a
pattern just for sticking to the pattern that also needs to be transcended okay so that need to stick
to a long-term pattern um you can also transcend that uh motivation and that motivation goes away
okay but already with saturn we’re getting to a point where motivation is starting to disappear
because with saturn you just do it because you’re supposed to so saturn is kind of the model to
follow here actually okay until you get to saturn and you can get out of it like and it kind of
works too because when you’re in the outer order you just do what you’re told you do with the
rituals you do the way you do what your teacher tells you you do what the book says right um
because you are not yet ready to operate under your own guidance so you rely you rely on that
saturnian principle i’m just going to be traditional for now and follow the program
but eventually i’m going to get to a point where i don’t need to do that anymore
okay but saturn is a good teacher in that regard because in sat in the mode of saturn you’re
already just letting go of any motivation at all okay this is very high on the tree of life by the
way so the idea of no longer needing to be motivated um is a supposedly a very high level
skill high level grade and in the grade of the golden dawn that would really be the magister
template which is a very high level it’s way above the level of the adept of the or the
adeptus minor and of course beyond saturn um then we are operating in a realm where there is no
personal motivation anymore okay or we’re free of personal motivation personal motivation still
arises but it doesn’t control us at all anymore it’s gone okay and if it arises it’s just kind
of what the body does that and you but as it arises you’re instantly aware of it and you
disregard it so to be free of motivation okay so if we are we might consider it this way that
many of the motivations that we experience are horizontal i am over here and that thing is over
there i want that thing over there i’m being motivated now to go get it okay this is a
horizontal sort of axis okay or that thing over there looks really scary i need to get away from
it let’s get to a safe place i’m now motivated to get away from this thing over here and to
go to a safe place right so that’s also a sort of horizontal motivation okay and so
for all intents and purposes here those are the only kind of motivations that really fit what
motivation is and so when somebody asks a student of the golden dawn why are you doing this it’s
very hard to answer that question because once you’re really in the grade work process are you
what are you trying to do what are you trying to get because that horizontal level of motivation
is falling away and so you don’t even know what it is okay and kind of what you’re after is is
the leveling up process but for real okay now the golden dawn is notorious for for having these
grade systems and then people get caught up in the idea of assuming very high level grades uh
like adeptus major or something like that and say i am an adeptus major and you are
simply an adeptus minor and then having these you know the leveling up uh
experience is merely the acquisition of a certificate and a title okay and obviously
and same thing happens in college too right there’s somebody hands you a piece of paper
and now you can pass that off as i’ve been through this learning process and i am now capable of
working in your company or something like that right um so of course leveling up in college
if you do it for real means that you have acquired the skills necessary to operate on a different
level of reality okay and of course many people who go through college haven’t really done that
they’ve they’ve acquired the paper they finished the program but they didn’t really acquire many
of the skills some of them okay and the same thing goes for when people go through like a mystery
school like the golden dawn okay um so but of course um there is a sort of aspiration
which is not motivation anymore so if somebody asks you why why are you doing magic first of
all it’s not a good idea to talk about it but um if your teacher asks you why are you doing this
it can be very hard to answer because you like you might say something like because i have to
that there’s not logical right but the the teacher will nod and say okay like because you’re really
after the leveling up experience because you can reach breakthroughs where you’re now operating on
a different level a different playing field you’re free of certain various compulsions that many
people suffer from and you can have breakthroughs like that okay and if you study literature
that’s a big theme in literature actually you could even call it the leveling up experience
and um if you read like if you read james joyce it’s almost always about that and um
and what you’ll find is that people have the opportunity to level up but they miss
they miss it you can see it’s the opportunity to function on a new level is there and they don’t
grasp it and the reader knows is this this is called dramatic irony where the reader knows
what has happened maybe if the reader is smart enough the reader can see what’s happened um
but the opportunity missed they could have switched to a different level of life and they
failed the test and they are stuck at a lower level okay there’s another story there’s a short
story you can read it’s very subtle it’s it’s called it’s not joyce it’s um hemingway i think
uh hills like white elephants the story is hills like white elephants and notice how one of the
characters has leveled up and another of the characters has not that’s the primary point of
the story okay and so this need to level up for real we can call we can say that that’s not
really a motivation anymore. That’s an aspiration. And so the goal then might be to live a life
that’s almost completely free of motivation. You don’t need to wait for motivation to strike to
get out of bed. You just do it. Okay. Because you have something else driving you. Maybe it’s
aspiration. You’re just after that leveling up experience. Okay. Which means, you know,
you’re basically climbing up those planetary spheres and in each sphere, you’re letting go
of one of those compulsive things that ruins your life and it’s gone now okay it doesn’t happen
necessarily in that compartmentalized away as you go through the grade process okay but it’s set up
that way and you’ll notice that the various vices will fall away as you go through the grade system
and you can experience these leveling up experiences okay you can also call them deepening
experiences if you want to. It’s not like you’re really necessarily going up somewhere. I’m above
you now, all you lowly people, right? No, you can say I’m just deeper, wider, bigger. My horizons
have expanded further. Aspiration instead of motivation. So what does this mean for you in
the work? So a lot of times when people try to free themselves from motivation, they’ll do things
like, well, okay, I’m going to sit here and study for three hours, right? And every time a
distraction comes up, I’m going to write down what that distraction was, okay? This can be very
helpful. And eventually you will remove those distractions from your workspace. That can be
really cool. You can do that, right? But what I would propose is that you just get rid of the
word distractions and you journal about all the things during the day that motivated you. Because
secretly you have a secret mission now to be free of the need to be motivated i should be able to
act only in terms of aspiration and not in terms of motivation anymore okay to free yourself from
the need to be motivated okay it doesn’t mean you don’t feel motivation that’s that’s part of being
in a physical body that’s the way the body works but as the motivations pop up you’re like oh
there’s a motivator i don’t have to i don’t have to um compulsively go after that okay so
you might even take carry your journal around with you everywhere you go for like two weeks and when
a distract when you catch yourself um being distracted into something or being motivated
to do so doing something that’s like a time waster right then you can uh jot it down in the journal
it’s like oh caught myself scrolling looked like i was trying like i was trying just to feel um
happy for a second that’s so that that need to feel happy is actually sort of a miserable impulse
like i don’t i’m not comfortable where i am right now i’d like to be some i’d rather be somewhere
else the most interesting thing is actually to then sit there and observe the environment
because it’s perfectly fine being there most likely and this need to be elsewhere is very
interesting how did that evolve actually you know this sort of need i’m never comfortable in my own
skin where i am right now you notice that people who suffer from uh addiction or they have an
addictive personality where they can easily get hooked on this drug or this video game or they’re
always addicted to something right um or they’re alcoholic or or worse right um if if you know them
you can see there they always seem to be scanning around looking for some some other place to be
or something else to do it’s almost as though where they are right now this is this is
uncomfortable always uncomfortable where they are and always looking for the next thing to get
involved with i once went to an aa meeting with a friend who had gotten her chip or something like
that right and she was going to give a speech and um i found it very interesting that many of the
the people in the room seem to be looking for somebody that would, maybe they could talk to
that would, I guess, make them feel better. Like they weren’t, there was a little fire lit under
them. Like they weren’t really happy where they were sitting. And it can be very interesting to
become somebody who is just not like that at all. Who’s very comfortable just sitting where they
are perfectly comfortable, right where they are. Don’t need to be anywhere else. Don’t need to be
running away from anything wouldn’t that be nice that is essentially the enlightened state so
journaling about motivators and with the intent of like oh i got motivated again these things are
perfectly fine you don’t want to get rid of the motivators let’s say but of course you can do that
if you want but being motivated is not a problem the problem is when you are constantly relying
on motivation to get you to do things so noticing the motivation is fine it doesn’t mean you get rid
of the motivation okay you can’t you’re always going to be motivated in some way right um
something’s always pushing a button here here and there right but what you’re getting rid of is the
need for motivation in order to get you moving okay and if you want to think of it this way that
you can say well i’m going to rely on aspiration now i don’t know it might just be worthwhile just
to eliminate the need for motivation okay uh eliminate the habits that take you away from
just being with things as they are and what you’ll find is when these things go away when when the
motivation comes up and you don’t follow it it gets weaker as time goes by and then you have
more time to do things because the things that really require your attention there aren’t very
many of them okay and if you’ve gotten yourself into a lifestyle where you have a lot of motivators
it’ll take a while for them to disappear of course they’ll start to fall away and you’ll
still declutter you know you’ll get rid of objects in your house that require maintenance and things
like that and of course it’ll take time but you’re eventually working to yourself into a you know a
i don’t know a lifestyle where it’s like oh i have enough time for everything because there
really isn’t that much that really needs to be done once all the motivators are not taken so
seriously anymore if you want a good example if you want a good reason not a good motivator if
you want a good reason to watch the lord of the rings again you can study the character strider
or aragorn because he to my mind is a really good example of somebody who is struggling just a
little bit with um with personal motivation and eventually he kicks it like in other words he no
longer needs to be motivated at all he simply acts which makes him um good material to be a proper
king in the last movie the return of the king did i just spoil that for you the return of the king
aragorn becomes the king in the last film okay so um he uh he if you watch his demeanor
he’s very interesting to watch and this is not in the books by the way this is
the way that Viggo Morgenstern plays him and he has a sort of tired thing going
on like he’s constantly moving but she there’s a lot of things he’s doing and
he gets tired but he just keeps going he keeps keeps going there isn’t really
much of a motivation there there’s just aspiration okay and when there is
motivation that causes him to suffer you get to see where that happens and when
when he starts worrying about himself whether he’s strong enough or whether
he’s good enough. What does that matter? You just do what you got to do, right? So very interesting
character to study, in my opinion. Let me know what you think in the comments. Maybe he’s not
a good example of someone who frees himself from motivation. For those of you who have already
practiced a geomancy, which is a part of the Zolotar grade in the Kabbalah magic book,
one of the dreaded figures that comes up in a geomantic divination is Karsar,
which tends to indicate stagnation or imprisonment or being stuck where you are if you want to change
something if you get car certs i guess not going to change you’re stuck where you are sorry you
know so um not always a bad thing because if you are engaged in an operation or you know um
if you’re doing something that’s trying to maintain a particular lifestyle or a program
or something like that you want it to stay as it is carcer would be a good figure because it means
nothing’s going to change everything’s going to stay the same all right um carcer is ruled by
saturn okay and um so the idea of being stuck in this prison this little capsule here right of um
being stuck in inside there it’s not necessarily a bad thing because saturn teaches us you don’t
need to be motivated just just do things according to the universal pattern that’s right here you’re
already in it play along with the pattern the way it’s been done for thousands and thousands of
years just do it right just play along with the pattern this is a very important lesson okay and
this is one of the keys about how not to be motivated anymore you just play along with your
nature or play along with the universal nature but in a very big sense not in an immediate sense
where I want this, I want this now, like, okay, it’s nagging me, I want it, right? So it’s more
like long term big, like, in other words, what is life trying to achieve here? What is the what is
the culture that I live in trying to achieve? Like, well, let’s help that along. And then let’s
participate in that big pattern. Okay? When you when you immerse yourself in these patterns,
these large Saturnian patterns, they tell you what to do, sort of. And there’s really isn’t any
personal motivation anymore. You kind of, you disappear and you’re just part of the game. Now
you’re part of it. You’re part of the dance. You’re part of the system, whatever it is, right?
Naturally, this is also quite dangerous because, um, if you just do a ritual or, or a particular
culture practice, because it’s been done that way for thousands of years, that’s, um, that can be a
bad thing because you’re, you’re not evolving. You’re not, things are staying the same, right?
but the lesson of Karcher on the virtue of Karcher is that you can use it as a
vehicle oh we have this formula for how something works it’s been done for a
thousand years and it always seems to work I’m going to use that right now so
Karcher here is not just a jail or a prison it’s a vehicle and you get inside
it you’re not trapped inside there don’t get trapped like in other words once the
vehicle no longer serves the purpose do you get out of it and you discard it
okay so that’s your lesson of mercury would help with that mercury would help you use this
structure whatever you know traditional structure you’re taking advantage of you want to use that
but then discard it when it’s longer no longer necessary it’s a very subversive idea what i’m
presenting here too because it’s the magician is not someone who follows rules necessarily
the magician is someone who uses rules okay doesn’t obey the rules necessarily he’s more
someone who uses rules to get things done okay but he’s also very capable of
just following those rules for a while could be very stern about it too very
scientific about it like this let’s do this absolutely the way it needs to be
done as though this is very important just for now but we don’t cling to it
and keep doing it that way we only use it that way to get a certain result and
then we let it go okay so it’s so eventually if if you achieve if you’re
working towards freeing yourself from motivation saturn is a great teacher for that and carcer is
a great teacher for that because you’re just sticking to a certain pattern what’s the next
step of the pattern okay let’s do that now and that can be very fulfilling too because you know
you’re participating in a very big um project right and that there’s a sense of being of not
being yourself anymore you transcended yourself there’s no personal motivation there’s just the
aspiration now where you’re you are now aspiring to be to to be part of something bigger than
yourself that’s the difference between aspiration and motivation okay but it’s very careful it’s
you got to be very careful not to get caught in one particular religion or or you know practice
or cultural tradition um just for the sake of continuing in that tradition okay that’s called
conservatism, dogmatism, calcification is a term used for that. If a tradition has become
calcified, people are just doing it because it’s been done that way and there’s just no longer any
benefit being derived from it. If you want to experience right now what it’s like to be free
of motivation, you can catch a glimpse of that. You can use the Pomodoro technique. Let’s say you
have to study something let’s say you are creating an outline for your grade
work okay or let’s say you you have to read that dreaded book on Egyptian gods
right it’s it’s kind of a chore to have to read that for some people anyway
right and so in order to motive motivate yourself you’re going to use the
Pomodoro technique right but the cool thing about the Pomodoro technique and
And I’ll tell you what it is in a second, is that it’s not really motivation-based, aspiration-based maybe, but it’s just more Saturnian in that it just says you’re just going to fulfill the pattern.
That’s all you’re going to do.
So you’re just going to do the pattern.
There’s no need to try to get something here.
Just do the pattern.
Okay, so when you enter the Pomodoro technique, it’s basically a very simple technique for studying or working, especially for intellectual work, like on a computer, writing, things like that.
you simply work for, let’s say, 25 minutes, and then you take a break for five minutes.
And then the five minutes is up, you work for 25 more minutes, and then you take another break for
five minutes, okay? And the main rule is that you do not allow distractions during the 25 minutes.
What you’ll find is that when I say you don’t allow for distractions, you can hear that as
you don’t allow for motivations to step in and pull you away from your task. Okay. So motivations
are not allowed. You don’t even need a motivation to do the task. You just do it because you’re now
the only motivation, let’s say, is to fulfill the pattern, which is more not really motivation
anymore. You’re just doing the Saturnian sort of, all right, let’s do the formula, right?
25 minutes of working on this with no goal other than to just do it. And then five minute break.
what you’ll notice is that wow the goal is gone the goal is not making me suffer anymore i don’t
need to like try to get somewhere in my work which is always making me suffer and making this such a
task or a chore i have this goal that’s sitting on top of me going you must do must go must be
there right it’s gone you’re just doing the work for 25 minutes and then you take a break for five
minutes and then you can experience what it’s like to just work and how evil goals can be actually
they’re such task masters right like sitting on top of you that you must be somewhere other than
where you are with the pomodoro technique you’re just right there just doing the process whatever
is necessary to get the studying done you just do it with no with no other motivations you know
impinging upon that time and the nice thing about the pomodoro technique is it basically
acknowledges a reality about your body and your nervous system. It’s not really possible to be
free of motivation all the time. So we allow these five minute breaks for motivations to have a,
you can have a little playground where you allow motivations to make you go do things.
Okay. You might even say, Oh, I’ll pick, I’ll, I’ll play candy crush for five minutes. As long
as you have that timer going. Um, and then you’re back out of motivation mode and you, you go back
into uh them into the work mode but what happens is it’s not really work anymore it’s more like
flow okay a state of flow is where you just do the work there’s not they’re sure there’s a goal
involved but it’s just kind of uh the goal is more of an accessory and if you think about the way
saturn operates saturn can be goal focused too but really the the wisdom of saturn is that you’re
just doing the work that’s in front of you and it’s a very large structure that you’re enmeshed
in and you’re part of something bigger than yourself right and the goal you’re striving for
it is kind of expendable it can change it can it can shift to something else okay so um because
the main thing is the structure that you’re immersed in and that you are participating in
and the goal of that structure is really kind of beyond the structure anyway and that can change
at any time it can keep shifting around okay so that’s why i say saturn you could see saturn when
it’s more mature it’s just not goal focused anymore it’s not even motivation based anymore
it simply does what it does almost out of duty it’s almost how to have a good sense of duty and
honor really is to have a very powerful mature saturnian aspect to yourself all right how do
you free yourself from motivation other than writing about your motivations as they come up
okay other than doing the um you can do the pomodoro technique so that you can experience
what it’s like to be at least momentarily free of motivation okay but then of course you can do
something called trekcho which this is from this is from the highest level of tantra in buddhist
practice trekcho is from not mahamudra it’s from zoggen which is supposedly a very high level um
initiation i don’t know in buddhism um and many of the many of the principles of mahamudra and
zogchen like trekcho are difficult to understand unless you are already pretty far along as an
initiate within any system so if you are go very far in kabbalah if you go very far in daoism if
you go very far in buddhism you will be able to understand trekcho okay i’m gonna i’ll explain it
now it’s very very simple okay but and for those of you who have been doing the sort of magical
work with uh the lbrp and middle pillar and magical journal you will you will probably
understand what i’m talking about okay to some degree um trekcho simply means that you are sort
of aggressively because let’s say you’re just sitting still right you’re sitting there and
you’re just watching for thoughts to come up okay but now watching your thoughts that’s that’s such
a frustrating thing to deal with because most people don’t know what a thought is so rather
than watching for thoughts let’s say because a thought is basically a subject object scenario
so what you’re watching for really is a motivation scenario subject object right you are the subject
and there’s an object out there that is desirable you want it now you’re being motivated okay when
something like that comes up that’s a thought a thought is a subject object scenario remember
in from basic grammar a sentence is a series of words that comprises the complete thought
a thought contained or a sentence contains a subject a verb and an object okay or subject
verb and compliment okay and so when when in trekta they say you’re watching for your thoughts
you’re really watching for any kind of subject object scenario that comes up i need food must
go get i must outsmart this thing that this predator that’s breathing down my neck right
that subject object scenario um every thought you have involves some kind of motivational pressure
okay which means that there are some mental mental processes that go on but there are many mental
processes that go on that are not thoughts okay so when somebody says you you need to be free of
thoughts okay which is kind of silly but um but of course what we’re really getting at is you want to
be free of thoughts you want to be free it’s the same thing as being free of motivation motivation
no longer controls you and remember a motivational scenario is a subject object scenario where
there’s an object that is threatening you or an object that is enticing you okay even if that
object is abstract your mind is still making an object out of it i want to be high class
right that’s that’s an object you’re you’re putting out there now you have to go it’s
pretty much it’s the carrot that you’re dangling in front of yourself now right
whenever a subject object scenario arises you’re instantly aware of it and then of course the idea
diatrecto is you really look at how that thing is operating there and just watch it as it plays
itself out what is it what is it trying to do what is it what is it oh that and so what it feels like
you’re kind of you’re a cat who’s watching to see when the mouse comes out of a hole okay um if if
you guys know how to get rid of hiccups you can get rid of hiccups by constantly anticipating the
next hiccup and if you can if you can concentrate or focus in a relaxed way just continuously
tuning in for the next hiccup to arrive that’s kind of what trek show can feel like right because
you’re just watching for your thoughts you’re watching for that next subject object scenario
to emerge so there’s again and sometimes you you lose track and you realize one of the
some and a subject object scenario has emerged and you didn’t notice it there’s a where was i
and you’re back to sort of paying attention again right so this is essentially the work that we’re
doing in the kabbalah magic book it’s essentially trek joe i know that sounds weird so um because
what happens is when you draw a magic circle around yourself i’m going to go to this one right
here when you draw the magic circle um that’s establishing you as a subject within your
circular sense of self, right? And everything out beyond the perimeter there is the universe out
there, the world, big bad world out there, right? And everything out there is an object that could
possibly be motivating you to do something. Okay. So when objects arise in your field of awareness,
if they’re motivating you, then that’s a thought and a thought needs to be then recognized for what
it is it’s like oh something’s trying to motivate me i don’t need to respond to that all right and
so in the process of drawing the magic circle every day like this and doing some other kinds
of work we are creating a psychic structure around ourselves that allows trek joe to happen
and we are now continuously aware of myself the subject and the things out there beyond my magic
circle, which are trying to motivate me, or that’s what it seems. It seems that way anyway,
right? And then you’re constantly aware of this subject-object dichotomy and that none of these
subject-object dichotomies are real, not inherently real anyway. They are real only as constructs in
the mind. You see something out there beyond the confines of your magic circle and you really want
it and your mind creates a beeline between yourself and it it’s what it means to be strung
out right to be strung out on a drug or strung out on an ex-girlfriend let’s say right um because
you want that object can’t have it and of course it keeps pulling that string right that string
isn’t even there but the mind creates it to the point of even you know creating a cliche of being
strung out by something you know all right um and of course when we are free of all of these
different motivational scenarios that keep popping up um what happens is that we don’t have to
respond to them and as we become uh as we know recognize them for what they are it’s like wow
and we even begin to see that if i’d really do chase after these things or run away from them
the result is not necessarily good i’m not going to get what i want if you have to see that clearly
for yourself and then you these things begin to fall away and what happens is your day becomes
clear because there’s not much left to do anymore there are many of the things that we do throughout
the day uh are actually um create karma for us negative karma mostly um and the idea is to be
free of that so there are many things that you um many motivations that pop up during the day
that uh are unnecessary and you begin to recognize them as you so you can be free of motivation
entirely and all that’s left at that point is just you just respond to whatever you need to respond
to and in a much larger sphere of operation where you transcend yourself and you’re really operating
in the sphere of saturn or beyond where there is no really you know personal motivation there’s no
self-centered motivation anymore okay which for all intents and purposes here there is no motivation
then it’s simply aspiration or not even that it’s just gone right and then you just deal with
everything appropriately as it arises and it’s a pleasure to do that it’s above all a pleasure to
be free of motivation and with this comes the transcendence of time because time i guess we
don’t have time to get into that all right so um but uh when people say time doesn’t exist
yeah time doesn’t exist but it would be more accurate to say that time doesn’t exist the way
that people think it does it doesn’t exist as a timeline there’s no such thing as a timeline
okay and so uh but just for now just keep in mind that the the line between you and where you want
to be isn’t really there it’s created by the mind to get you strung out compulsively get you to do
things right this is the way the mechanism of the body works right because we’re still struggling
with all these instincts that have been moving us along right and the idea is to reach a level
of mind that is 80 to 90 percent free of motivation like that these these timelines
and these lines are being strung out they do not exist and when you can see through them like that
when they pop up it’s like oh they don’t even have a hold on you anymore because they’re not even
there and it’s amazing though to feel them because they still pull you right and just like wow that’s
such an amazing mechanism that has probably been evolving for the last million years and most of
the people i meet are completely dominated by it and i am really only tickled by it now like to
this point where it it’s barely even there for me at all like you can you could get to that point
okay this picture comes from the movie the sorcerer’s apprentice disney movie
i don’t recommend it unless you’re into this the set design is pretty cool but it’s not a
very good movie but really cool magic circle all right so i look forward to
to the comments on this one this should be interesting and until next time
Source: Lyam Christopher