Am I honest when I speak?

[Leary Herring]

Do

[personalreality]

This is precisely the reason that when becoming a part of a "magical order" (any kind of mystery school) the initiate must first proceed through the "lesser mysteries" before they can be admitted into the "greater mysteries".  In the "lesser mysteries", the initiate is taught to deal with their own psychological problems and to learn to keep their mundane life in balance before proceeding into the "greater mysteries" which would include such areas of study as AP.

Maturity is also very important.  One must have "experienced the world" as it were.  Quite often the impression in the new age is that the mundane reality is impure and unclean and therefore isn't worthy of the same attention that we give the otherworlds.  Traditional teachings express the opposite.  The mundane teaches us worldly wisdom, rational logic that can inform our path in the otherworlds.  The otherworlds in turn invigorate and enrich the mundane world.  One must have their "house in order" before undertaking otherworldly journeys.  You could take that literally to mean that one actually needs to be stable in a home, which teaches you how to handle the pressures of the mundane reality and the expectations of the human community of which we are all an integral part.  You could also take it to mean your personal psychological state.  Ideally, you want to be stable and balanced emotionally before undertaking otherworldly journeys.  This will ensure that you aren't being tricked by your own mind when you start projecting. 

I will clarify that I am not a member of any kind of magical group.  I do study the mysteries of my own accord, but I don't participate in group studies so I can't be considered an authority from experience in the mystery traditions.  I only know what I've read and what I've learned from friends who are or have been a part of such groups.

[AstralBlogger]

Very nice post Personalreality I agree with you completely. When you talk about magical groups do you mean like the "Golden Dawn"?

[personalreality]

Very nice post Personalreality I agree with you completely. When you talk about magical groups do you mean like the "Golden Dawn"?

well, in the "mainstream" world of the new age, yea, it means occult groups like that.  but in all honesty, i mean any magical path, which is really any spiritual path.  magic is just the science of understanding the nature of energy and manipulating it. 

[Psan]

  How do I keep my ego from clouding my quest?

This is a big problem, but a subtle one to catch. How many times , while we are out, we think of touching a girl or visiting an expired relative or flying and peeking somewhere, a lottery number etc? (I'm guilty of such but I did not make an issue of it).

This is a result of gaining the spiritual powers (=the ability to AP, its a siddhi actually), without first cultivating your mind. The result is, we waste many such opportunities of spiritual growth. May be that's why all spiritual traditions recommend taming the ego first, to cultivate a balanced mind, before doing advanced practices. In this way, the student gains full advantage of the powers.

Same applies to the recall and communication of the experience itself. Ego interferes and colors them. Some of the 'mainstream' projectors have fallen to such tendencies, may be to make their descriptions more spicy, to make themselves appear special, to sell a book, or simply to motivate others by making it somewhat larger than life.

The way I've found to remain honest and balanced in such matters is to imagine that I'm narrating the incidents to someone whom I respect greatly. Generally its your Guru or someone who is greater than you in this art. Mostly an experienced Guru will instantly detect the BS, if you tell him something, this keeps you in check. It also helps to include phrases such as 'in my opinion', 'its my guess', 'others say that'. So that you can speculate without making it appear as a fact.