People who are drawn to the occult path usually show a curious and enthusiastic nature. Beneath the surface through there is a feeling of uneasiness and uncertainty. Any eagerness to get started is counterbalanced by apprehension. The existence of both these states is more than understandable and people ought not to shy away from the latter (and anyone who laughs at them because of the latter, and there are those out there, ought to eat a bag of dicks).
More than once have I seen people who come into occult themed online groups, stating they are new and know not how to begin. They then ask for a book or someone to guide them along. This too is understandable, being more or less common sense. But whether they are pointed towards a book that tells them how to LBRP, or someone will offer them more or less solid guidance until their training wheels fall off (or not), isn't the first (proper) step in my opinion.
One can begin to prepare even before they start actual occult practice (and starting to gather tools). Depending on the curriculum they come across and end up working, they will find exercises and techniques fit for beginners, which will help them move further towards building a solid foundation. Such elements, alongside meditation and so on, complement the usual LBRP-ing and MP-ing one can find with a quick search. But any structure does not start with the foundation.
Whether building a dog house or a pyramid, one must first and foremost select a proper space. That space must stand apart from all others, otherwise people would wake up one day seeing construction workers pouring concrete over the roof of their second bedroom as part of a skyscraper mega column. Depending on which way you're looking at the situation, it won't end well for neither the owners of the house or for those of the soon to be skyscraper and I'm thinking from a structural perspective alone, but you can surely imagine more resulting unpleasantries.
Besides standing apart, the space must be suited for the structure one wants to erect. It's a no brainer you cannot build something that exceeds a certain weight on sandy or clay soil and expect it not to sink or fall apart after a while. Likewise, building on a hard mineral base requires additional effort and more sophisticated tools and equipment. While in the former case one cannot expect to built more than a shack, which would be the occult equivalent of fapping to sigils expecting to become a rich billionaire, in the latter it would be a pity not to build something worth the effort and long-lasting. I'm not saying you'd have to work all the way up to Ipsissimus and anything lower is to be considered failure, but that you won't get to brag about being R.R. et A.C. and then say dumb shit like God likes shepherds more than planters. (Don't they teach people any esoteric symbolism in occult orders, ffs?)
Back to the subject of this article, anyone willing to start can begin to set their space apart from others' without even uttering a single godname. By this I mean setting one's mind apart from the "normals'" as a space for the future magical foundation, while still being a muggle. Why should this be important since occult training in itself provides various technical means for that purpose? Because people are probably going to find those means unpleasant for some time and overcoming that feeling will prove easier or harder, depending on one's own everyday consciousness.
More than one source out there distinguishes between mundane and magical consciousness. Mundane consciousness is what people usually experience in daily living. Magical consciousness is set apart from the mundane, being something one keeps expanding while actively involved in (magical or mystical) occcult matters. It's often said that mundane consciousness has a habit of dragging the person out of their magical one (because reasons that are too easy to find elsewhere for me to add them here). This is usually overcome through diligence in daily practice in order to eventually not be affected by the inertia one's lower self is used to ever since it can remember. That pesky lower self usually causes issues for some time until it will eventually find itself in a position where it cannot but fall in line and become a good soldier, so to speak, or the person abandons the whole thing altogether (eventually becoming an armchair or academic type who later on vents their frustrations over their failure by berating noobs).
The following set of... guidelines are meant to help one become more aware of themselves (and their surroundings) wihin mundane consciousness alone, even without any magical practice experience. They do so by making the lower self work with things it's already familiar with and thus prevent it from freaking out later on when it finds itself in an environment it will likely consider completely alien, the occult. Bluntly speaking, one's lower self should find the following much easier than, say, visualize even the most basic shape for a certain amount of time (in which case it may very well start bitching because it wants nothing to do with that and instead wants to keep scrolling tiktok). This way, one would prevent inertia from brutally intervening during occult training sessions and therefore these guidelines can be followed even before one actually begins any occult work.
I'm pretty sure I'm not reinventing the wheel here and I bet these things, alongside others, can be found elsewhere in more elaborate forms. I'm simply sharing what I've come across, even if it's in a more fit for me, stupid friendly form, using simpler words and notions.
1. Now
We must realize that during this physical existence we always live in the now, even when we're unaware of this. Newborns and kids up to several years are unaware of their own self and are thus are unaware of this now, but the same applies to different states of consciousness. During sleep we're unaware of it and also when we dream, since in dream consciousness "time" does not pass as in waking. The same goes for someone comatose, someone experiencing a mystical state, etc.
I'm strictly referring to waking consciousness in this case, but objectively speaking the world at large is in a continuous now. The most minute passimg instance is already in the past and the most immediate instance ahead is still the future. People in general are oblivious to this and usually refer to the now in more abstract terms such as the present second, or even minute.
The cause of them being oblivious is that their awareness allows itself to be pulled towards many different sources that demand attention. These sources can be objective (external), or subjective (internal), but in many cases it's both. So whether we're experiencing a delightful night on the town, feeling happy while listening to music and being engaged in interesting conversations, or feeling miserable in a dark room while recalling various stuff over and over, the fact it is all happening in the now escapes us.
Therefore, we must adjust our awareness to perceive that now, then the fact it is ongoing. To do this we simply have to stop and by stopping I mean to cease everything we are doing. The more sudden this cessation, the better, as the abrupt change in perspective will allow for a greater awareness of the instance.
Imagine, for example, you're having a delicious meal at a fancy restaurant, listening to pleasant music and enjoying good company. Then, out of the blue, a glass drops from the table behind you and everything seems to freeze the moment it shatters on the floor. It's like time itself stopped for an instant that feels infinite. That's the now.
Now, I'm not saying you should have your friends and family pull scare pranks on you often. You can stop by yourself at any moment of your choice. Once you achieve that, consider that you're carrying that instance with you regardless of what's happening within and without you. Becoming aware of that for even the briefest moment suffices, before your focused awareness starts to dilute again into bits and pieces of anything else. But the more you prolong that moment, the better.
Here I should point out that a strange sensation may arise once you "freeze" everything. In some cases it can prove overwhelming. For example, for a considerable time, on every occasion I froze my microcosm (or at least what I was more or less conscious of it) so that any thoughts, feelings and emotions abruptly ceased, I was hit by a powerful sensation of being short of breath. It was as if the cessation of everything I usually perceived inside of me left behind a void and my body was fooled into believing it would not be able to refill itself with the air that's so mandatory for living. This sensation gradually receded over time, but you can see how people can be attuned to the physical world in such a way it can only experienced more comfortably with a diluted awareness.
2. What
We must also realize that for a considerable part of our lives we do things, both physically and mentally. Whether we walk or think or feel, each of these is an activity that demands energy from us. But most of the time people are not entirely aware of what they're doing, especially when it comes to things that have become second nature to them. We can watch TV or play computer games while running several parallel trains of thought and replying to the person who just distracted us by texting.
I will leave the inner activities out for now and focus on the outer, but you can do the same with the former at your leisure. Regardless of what physical activity you're doing at any given time, stop for an instance, then become more conscious of the activity itself. You can do this for a short while or throughout the entire activity.
Say you're drinking water. Whether it's from a glass or a bottle, it's irrelevant and so is the container's substance. Become aware of your hand reaching out to the container, grabbing it and moving it to your mouth. Then maintain the same awareness during the time you put the container to your lips, allow the water to enter your mouth, then go down your gullet after swallowing it. I'm pretty sure you'll even sense it entering your stomach.
3. How
Besides the above, another factor of importance we must realize is that everything we experience leaves certain impressions on us. Again, both inner and outer experiences are considered and it is the impressions they leave that enrich our soul. In this case people are usually aware of those impressions, but very often to more or less degree, depending on the nature, power, as well as the number of stimuli that trigger them. As before, I will leave out internal stimuli although the same considerations apply.
Following the previous example, become aware of your impressions during the activity of drinking water. Does the container feel heavy or light? Is it smooth? How does its shape and color make you feel? The water may be wet to the touch, but how does it feel when it enters your mouth at that time? Comfortable or otherwise? Does it leave you a sensation of coolness, or does it feel stagnant? If it's sparking water, how does the gas feel? Does it tickle? Do you feel the water sliding smoothly down towards your stomach or otherwise? And so on. The more impressions you become aware, the better.
While these simple tasks may appear as coming from a life coach manual, they're not. I said these things during in my first few weeks of actual occult practice, but the people in the online alleged occult environment I found myself at the time were too busy posting motivational quotes, love&light reiki doctrines, or alleged axioms of fake gurus to take notice, let alone do them alongside me and share feedback. How did I come across them? Dunno. Seriously, I'm not not like I read about them somewhere and parroted them later on, especially since I hate to read (and practically tortured myself into going through various blogs articles scouring for information I desperately needed).
They just came to me and I followed them. Probably the fact I had undertaken a couple of shamanic journeys* a few days beforehand and met some "hooded figures" who "told me something" in sign language might have had something to do with it. I had not yet begun any GD stuff at the time and was just starting to look up online sources for how to get started (and in what direction, i.e. tradition). I also only met Señor Humberto (whom I call Shaman even if he's not one) later so I only relied on what the blog I tagged above said. By the way, somewhere in his articles you'll find something similarto what I wrote here, but I'munable to find it and he's being especially cheeky atm when it comes to sharing the article itself, so I'll leave it be. I'm sure regular readers of the Mr and Mrs Farrell occult bugle (that just reached 1000 subs today, so congrats to that!) are aware of that particular article.
(*The tagged article was written a couple of years ago and I can't find the initial one, but I'm pretty sure it's by the same author as I precisely recall the initial instructions and the way they were formulated)
I didn't even know if what I was doing was even a thing or if I was allowing my wild imagination to run on autopilot. It was only later that I came to understand how stuff like pathworking is done, astral vision and stuff like that. The important thing is that, looking back at those experiences after more than a decade, I realized they were of much greater help than I could have ever realized, regardless of how clumsily they were attempted. Not only am I now confident those figures were actually some kind of entities I actually met through astral vision, but I'm pretty sure they taught me something of value even though I was unaware of it for a long time (while at the same time doing stuff they had imparted).
The veering off course at the end of this article was deliberate. It shows how in the dark people can be about pretty much everything at the beginning. It was especially so for me because I'm sort of special in a Cartman in Spacial Olympics kind of way when it comes to comprehending new stuff, not to mention when that stuff is so vast I don't know where to start. Even now I'm undisciplined when it comes to getting involved in new things. I don't do it step by step like any sane person would because I eventually realized that goes against the grain in regards to getting closer to the best version of myself. Instead, I plunge head first or hop around like an idiot, metaphorically speaking.
At any rate, since in my case the bar is at its lowest, I'm sure others will find it easier. Even so, the complexity of this field can raise hurdles in the path of bright people as well, causing confusion and even the feeling of being stuck. And since I finally figured out how to insert videos properly instead of tagging the link, I leave you with this video of a lecture some may find useful tips in.
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