Spacing Out For Fun and Profit

Maybe the most basic magical technique I use on a semi-regular basis is called scrying.  It's easy, it's helpful, you can do it even if you think magic is bs, and it can be a ton of fun.

Sit in front of something nondescript.  I've read you should use a bowl of water or a mirror, but I've done it staring at a wall or into the darkness in bed.  Then, relax your eyes and let your brain go wherever it wants, and trust that everything you are seeing is real.

In my two favorite scrying episodes, I've seen myself as a Gandalf-type figure in white robes and a kick-ass white beard living in a tower of ice, staring down at the pristine, icy landscape with regal disdain.  I've met my spirit animal, the wolf, and I'm not sure he's a particularly friendly fellow.  He tends to chase other creatures away and jealously hoard his kills.  I've also stared into complete and utter nothingness, the darkness behind the dark, and found that it's not that bad.  If that's the afterlife, at least it will be relaxing.

It's what the the shamanic among us might call "having visions."  "Talking to spirits."

Are you freaked out?  Feel the need for a confession and Hail Mary?

Relax.  If nothing else, my "visions" give me an excuse to post up the picture of Three Wolf Moon.

And as you might guess from the quotation marks, I don't think there's anything paranormal or spooky about these "visions."  I am sure that a reader can identify a psychological technique that calls for a subject to let his mind do whatever it wants and analyze the results--free association, maybe?  That's all that's happening here.  

I learned a great deal about myself from these episodes.  I'm a loner.  I like solitude.  I can isolate myself and push people away.  If you had asked me a year ago, I guess I would have said I knew this stuff about myself, but I certainly wouldn't have felt it in my gut and accepted it as true the way I do now.

And I'm a guy who wants healthy relationships, so it's pretty useful to know that I have this streak in me.  It allows me to control how it manifests itself better, I hope.  Maybe I'm a little less quick to blow people off.

The larger point: when I talk about magic, I could really care less about whether the tricks and spells work, although I have no doubt that they do, for skilled magicians under the right circumstances.  The reason I enjoy thinking about, reading about, and, yes, practicing magic is because it frees me to experience things I hadn't even considered before.

I consider myself to be a pretty practical and skeptical guy, and here I am writing about wolves and relationships.  This stuff is FUN, and I've learned a tremendous amount about myself and my world.  My dabblings have broadened my perspective on the world and myself.  Letting the weird into my life has made me more open minded and less afraid.  THAT'S the real value here.