Today’s post comes from guest writer Zhenna, who at my request has compiled a list of some of her favorite techniques for shifting reality from a life of restriction to one of joy, expansion, authenticity, and abundance. I met Zhenna through a comment stream on Zen Gardner’s site and appreciated her words and energy so much that I invited her to write more here. As I’ve gotten to know her through email, I can tell she really does live what she shares in today’s post. Although some of this information might seem simple, it’s incredibly powerful. I’ve used some similar methods for decades, but I love Zhenna’s imaginative and fresh perspective! Her techniques regarding the “Alter-Altar” and “The In-Between” are particularly valuable, imho. I hope you enjoy this post — definitely one to print or bookmark as you continue your own joyful experiments. Thank you, Zhenna!
Tips and Techniques for Living a Magical Life
by Zhenna (aka “The Winged Witch”)
Journey to your essence, meeting your power, setting your mind free of control
I have taken many turns on my life’s journey, exploring many options, some of which I was conditioned to and others out of curiosity.
My most profound experience happened one day when I was washing dog bowls. I had no particular belief system and wasn’t looking for one when suddenly I felt like something had descended on me and around me. I knew everything was as it should be. Colors were more intense and they appeared to be alive. I felt a level of serenity and bliss I had never even imagined could exist. It was like I saw the world for the first time.
Over the years I lost the feeling but never forgot the day. It took many years of wrong turns and dead ends to bring me to the point I pleaded for that feeling to come back. . . and it did.. . .that fast. Who knew that all I had to do was ask. Once I at least started down a better path for me, I received what I call my life-guides. I got them one at a time over many years. The changes they made in me were nothing short of profound. As soon as I had some level of mastery of one, I received another one. I share them with you and hope they have some value for you. I have never shared them before.
The Three Truths:
(1) The power lies within, always keep it near, always be aware of it.
Of course we all know that on some level. It is maintaining the awareness that is the problem. We do not live in a world conducive to “the power lies within”. Rather we live in a world where we are conditioned to believe the power always lies without, be it religion, politics, family pressures, authority figures, the expectations of society, or cultural conditioning. Someone or something is always draining us of it. But without it, we will forever remain hostages.
For me a simple practice helped. I sit in a comfortable chair. I look down at my body and keep looking until I become really aware of myself and only myself. Often we are somewhat disconnected from our own bodies. I existed, not in a theoretical detached from my body way, but a personal loving way. Why love? Because if I don’t love myself, no one will and there will be no ability to grow. My body is OK just the way it is and deserves and appreciates my love. Then I will wait for my power to return to my body until I can actually feel/see it again within me.
I practiced this faithfully every day when I was alone. I reminded myself of it every time before I went out, until I could go out in any situation, including emergencies, and feel in control. I had conditioned myself to “the power lies within” and it was life changing.
I can say ‘no’ with ease and void of guilt. I expect to be treated with the graciousness I treat others with. If people don’t treat me that way, it is just a learning experience and I move on. I will not ever beg someone, surrender myself, or bribe someone to love me. I have found my selfness through this simple exercise. This is my life and it matters to me and it should.
(2) Live in the eternal now, this is all there is, within it is eternity and the gift of creation.
The day you walk past a beautiful crab tree in full bloom and don’t notice it because you are rushing to work or to run some errand, that is the day you know you don’t live in the ‘now’. And again, we live in a society that abhors the now. We are conditioned to always be on our way somewhere, out there, in front of us, wanting something we don’t have yet. We are always heading somewhere we are not. It is easy to be in the now on that trip to the mountains, but on a daily basis, it is not.
So here is my trick. I call it grace in the moment and the funny thing is, time will accommodate you by slowing down. I have found that I get more done in less time when I stay in grace in the moment.
Pick any physical activity relative to your life like washing dishes, folding clothes, dusting. It doesn’t matter although it is best if it is not a noisy activity. As you are washing the dish notice the color, feel it, enjoy it and don’t rush through the process. You know what, you bought that dish. What do you really think of it? How do you feel about it?
Chore by chore, get to know every single thing in your life again. Do you know why? Because part of our not being able to fully live in the now is due to the burdens we heap on ourselves. You are going to notice everything now, all the time. You will know what is and what is not connecting with you. What belongs in your life now and what does not. And, like magic, you are going to want to purge. You will stop buying stuff that doesn’t resonate deeply with you, but you will have more things around you that bring you joy every time you see them or use them.
This just doesn’t work for the things we have in our lives, but also our lifestyle. Once you unburden yourself physically, you will start the emotional process of setting yourself free. Just think how much time you are spending supporting what isn’t working in your life, but has become habit. If your mind is consumed with racing through life, never slowing down, and always pushing yourself, your creativity can’t flow and your soul can’t bloom.
When we come to the end of our lives, it is the now moments we will cherish. The times we were fully aware and fully alive and even time was our friend.
(3) Mind Magic is the key to creating your life. Freedom is living it.
You have found your power and you have unburdened yourself, now it is time for the fun. Look around you. Your life is exactly what you have created on some level through your thoughts and actions. Your life and surrounding are a reflection of what you thought (and thus did) yesterday.
What you are thinking right now holds the gift of creation. I am not saying that we don’t get some unpleasant, even ugly, things thrown at us because we are at best co-creators along with everything else in the universe so I don’t want to turn this into some simple minded erroneous blame statement. We have the power within ourselves, we just need to fine tune it.
This is where meditation can be helpful. It helps you control your mind.
Another trick is to spend an hour a day for a week (or more) and note what thoughts run through your head during that hour. At some point you have to come to grips with the endless repetitive noise that runs through your head along with your emotions and what triggers them. I am pretty sure there is an abundance of negative self thought in there somewhere. Keep putting that low opinion of yourself out there and you can’t help but draw that reality to you. You will be surprised by what you find out about yourself by noting everything you think and feel.
Until you have some mastery over your thoughts, you can’t effectively direct them. This is what spell crafting is. It is learning to use focus and props to assist your desires and needs. But. . . let me add that I have also found a level of emotion free of negativity but rich in intense desire, pristine and/or pleasant surroundings, an area you have conditioned to be the temple to and reflection of your essence, fantasy, and times of high energy (like electrical storms) to be extremely helpful, extremely.
This is something you will have to play with to find your own best combinations, but first you MUST gain control over your thoughts and get to know who you really are, not who you might think you are. You are going to have so much fun with this one and practice makes perfect. Never forget to push the limits because you really can’t know if there are actually any limits. Everything you have been told isn’t necessarily true.
The Wisdom:
Observation is creation. The design is wisdom.
There is a difference between being a watcher and an observer. Observation takes thought as interaction, watching can be totally passive and even mindless. This is why figuring out who you really are, is so important. Only when you know who you really are and where you really want to go, can you start down the path to get there.
You are the writer, director, and actor in your life. Here you must see yourself a bit out and above yourself (to either side) until you can watch you interacting with yourself like you would play a doll. This is what you do every day or someone else does for you every day. You are just taking conscious control of who you want to be.
Now write the script for that day. It probably won’t go exactly as written (but what script does?), but you will have a good start. Most importantly, you will play a really big part in producing your own adventure from now on.
The Alter-Altar:
Build an Altar to yourself. Worship is the act of altering your reality.
This is probably going to catch in your chest with a gasp. After all, since we were very small, we have always been conditioned to “worship” something outside ourselves, something greater than ourselves. It is sacrilegious to worship ourselves or even ridiculous to think about it. But actually it is not because “worship” can also mean, according to Webster, “extravagant respect or admiration for an object of esteem.” You, being the object of esteem here.
Your body, mind, and soul have given you a gift of experiencing life, maybe not a perfect life in a perfect body, but life. And because you are alive, you have experiences, through experiences you can choose to learn, through learning, you transcend. It doesn’t get any better than that.
The second result of your alter-altar is that you see yourself in the whole out in front of you, sitting right there on the altar. It helps to place positive images of yourself on the altar. Those that represent something you most like about yourself or a time when you were in control and feeling your best. Feel free to add any props/tools that bring you mentally back to a “I was at the top of my game” feeling.
When you are really looking at yourself (who you know and see clearly now) and you have written a really great script (sitting right up there on the altar next to you), you can visualize yourself morphing into who you always wanted to be. Pulling the best from your past and adding your desired future to your image.
You just made a plan you can proceed with in the physical. Your Alter-Altar should always remain a central part your home and life. Enjoy it.
The Throne:
I am sovereign in my own kingdom. Live like it. Behave like it. Know it.
If you have worked all the exercises proficiently up until now, you have realize who you really are, you know you have power, you know you have worth, and you know you have magic. Congratulations, you have just escorted yourself to your own throne. Sovereign in your own kingdom. No one will ever take it away from you again.
That throne is the throne of your true essence which you finally realize was your birthright all along. Of course this is not the silly, arrogant, egotistical, snobbish, fools ‘throne’ of the royalty of the mundane elites. No, this one is elegant, serene, powerful, gracious, and wise.
A great line from an old song, Sunshine Superman by Donovan “you can just sit there while thinking on your velvet throne about all the rainbows you can have for your own.”. . . and that is how you make magic from a place of authority.
The In-Between:
Released from the past. Not entangled by the future. The pure point where anything is possible.
As shocking as the Alter-Altar was to our conditioning, this matches it in difficulty to maintain. The best way I can explain it is to imagine you left a life behind fraught with stressful and difficult conditions and relationships. You finally broke free of the chains and you have no way to communicate with anything in your past. Relief. You are on your way to start a new life but haven’t arrived there yet so you have no real idea what the future might hold.
That in-between time is the most free you will ever feel and probably be remembered as the time you most want to live again. Nothing from your past is pulling at you and nothing from your future has entangled you. Just pure possibility. Just you on your terms.
If you have ever experienced it, you know it is as close as you can come to freedom and bliss. If you haven’t, it might be hard to realize how glorious it can be. The trick is to stay there as often as you can and there is no easy way to do that.
Virtually everything in our modern world from cell phones, to mortgages/loans, to careers, to relationships, to religion is designed to entangle us. You almost can’t function in modern society without stepping in a trap.
Here are a few hints for some escape time. Do you really need to be connected all the time to the outside world? Make your residence including your yard a holy temple and sanctuary. Get out of debt and stay out of debt. Live below your means. Make savings a priority. Become self-sufficient. Spend some alone time in nature as often as possible, make time. Keep the demands in relationships reasonable for you. Have a cottage industry so if you lose your source of income, it will not destroy you mentally or financially. All this will give you various levels of freedom from entanglement. You can walk away much easier if you need to and that is a great feeling.
When you feel yourself getting entangled again just visualize yourself flying above the earth and notice all the pointless frantic racing around humans do. It is almost comical.
You have to free yourself to find the In-Between.
Surrender:
Captivity reversed to never happened. Innocence restored. Magic released.
I believe much of our need to “control” situations or people comes from our desire to be free ourselves. The more we have lost control in our lives, the more we want to control the world. I can’t give you a trick here, but you are far from needing one now anyway. Only your essence or subconscious can guide you on this one. Once you have found yourself and your power, most likely you will still need to take a trip back in time to release some bondage that only your subconscious is aware of.
For no particular reason, you will mentally be taken back in your life to relive an experience. It is probably a mundane moment which may not seem terribly memorable or important, but it is. It is where you made one of the wrong turns into captivity by relinquishing your power.
The surprising thing is how the smallest most insignificant mundane incident can have the most colossal negative effect on your life and cause the strongest entrapment. You may have forgotten the moment or experience or if you remember it all, it seemed average. That is why the hook was set to deeply within you. You never even noticed it happening and never realized what was happening.
You will relive the experience mentally and consciously, only this time you see yourself in the scene, in control of the situation and what happens is on your terms. There won’t be anything forced or emotional about this. It will be a detached experience. More like watching a movie.
Something strange happens here, the wrong turn has been righted in your subconscious, the chains broken, and its power over you neutralized. I have wondered if in some mystical way that past no longer exists, at least not as you lived it. You are that free of it.
You can’t get to the In-Between until you can surrender your attachment to your past and you can’t surrender your attachment to your past until you find those wrong turns and write a new script more to your advantage. Your subconscious and essence will help.
This has been my journey so far. I am sure there is more to come. Every time I think it can’t get any better, it does. Blessed Be to all of you on your journey to find your essence, power, magic, and freedom.
Zhenna, The Winged Witch
Bio: “I have had many adventures in my life and lived many of my dreams. Right now I am involved in creating a sanctuary for mystical people and animals in a green oriented community. Over the years I have watched ridiculous rules imposed on people as cities have become more and more overcrowded. Rules made by government that make no sense and are restrictive and soul crushing. So here in my remote corner of the U.S., animals and people are welcome to come for a vacation or to live full time and enjoy clean air, open spaces, world class birding, astronomy, trail riding, hiking, parties, lectures, events, and we can even help you arrange world eco tours. The vision is a new concept for what a community should be that inspires people and lives in harmony with nature.” www.caballosresort.com