Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few years, events around the world have built into world changing fate processes, and the energetic storms that accompany such a change in world history can directly influence, smack or completely floor a magician who is sensitive to energetic tides. Magicians who work with visionary magic are far more susceptible to such energetic shifts, even apprentice magicians depending on their innate energetic sensitivity. Can get badly affected. 

One of the down sides of such magical sensitivity is that when fate is moving world chess pieces around, your energy gets caught up or co-opted into ‘service’ – the energetic side of you joins with others around the world to create a working army of human energy that shifts the delicate fibres of fate patterns to where they need to be. It is not a conscious thing, it is not something you can choose to do as it is the deepest side of you that is working, not your conscious personality in life. And we have no say or even inkling into what that energy is doing – we become the Fed-Ex of the inner worlds – Here, hold this, deliver this energy to there, thanks, now go away.  Such can be difficult for modern humans as we are used to control, to be able to choose a side, or to work within an agenda. But fate is far far more complex and longer lived than our puny and fleeting lives, and doesn’t operate in agendas, only patterns.

A physical side effect of being a part of that mass of energetic workers is that it leaves less energy for your body and mind to run the day-to-day tasks of being a modern human. You can feel your energy go out from you like a vast tide that vanishes over the horizon, and you are left feeling like a lump of tired, painful, and sometimes downhearted living flesh that refuses to do anything. And one of the consequences of that is the individual self discipline vanishes down the back of the sofa, never to be found again. 

Or so it feels like that. Unless of course you are one of those annoying people who are blessed with inbuilt self discipline that works no matter what. The rest of we mere mortals must work at it, often in phases of two minutes of self discipline followed by weeks of laying on the sofa wishing the world would just fuck off.

Of course in magic, self discipline is one of the main pillars necessary for long term successful and safe magic, so when that goes, everything else also vanishes down the back of the sofa regardless of whether you have a sofa or not. For magicians in training, it is the most frustrating thing of all, because without that discipline your training grinds to halt and becomes this far distant mountain that you have to climb. And of course, you have to climb it still in your dressing gown and fluffy slippers.

Trying to pull on your big girl/boy knickers and giving yourself a talking to, fails either straight away or within a couple of days. Writing out a schedule for yourself, sticking affirmations on your fridge, or tempting yourself with rewards also fails, and you end up back on the sofa, eating the rewards and writing foul mouthed graffiti over the affirmation posters.

So how do you do it? There are methods. 

First, it has to be the right time – If your energy is far out there, it is not going to come back in just because you want it to. So while you are in the depths of the sofa, groaning from pain and lack of the will to live, place a ‘hook ‘on the wall of your mind and rope to it the thought that you cannot stay with this forever, and that climbing back out has to happen at some point. That is enough for that time.

Second – know yourself. Has the tide past but you are enjoying wallowing? Or maybe you hadn’t noticed that the flop over has become the norm for you? Don’t look at yourself and get into self loathing or blame as that is pointless and does nothing.  Rather look at the current situation – are you still too blasted? Or have things eased a little bit but not enough to shift you? If they have eased in the smallest of ways, that is the indication to attempt a climb back in the smallest of ways. 

The smallest of ways

Never try to dive back into magic (or extreme sports, or extreme dating or extreme anything).

First sort the ground zero in small steps of everyday life. Look at the small things – do you leave something out to put it away later when you would in the past have dealt with it straight away often without even thinking about it? Pick that coat up and hang it up. There, your self discipline just got it’s first building block towards the shimmering tower of self mastery.

Surrounded by coffee cups and socks? Put the cups by the sink and put the socks in the wash basket or washer. Now you are exhausted and need to lie down….. two more bricks towards your building. Worry about washing up later, just putting things where they need to go is what you are focusing on.

Day by day, inch in these small steps. Not quite that bad for you? The pick a few bigger ‘small steps’ for yourself and don’t worry about anything else. Keep that going for a week or two, and when you feel like you have a bit of you left over, add in more small steps without losing the ones you have established.

It is the ability to take that one more step when you feel you can’t walk any more that starts to build the tower.

And for those of you magicians reading this who are on top of everything and think this is silly… well, that can be a hard fall from a dizzying height that can maybe come one day.

By establishing a small series of disciplined acts, the self discipline needed for magic starts to grow slowly but steadily – your discipline in magic comes from your discipline in life. 

The key is to not get over enthusiastic and go mad, only to find yourself back on the sofa drooling. My mantra is; small steps – fuck you.

I can have very strong self discipline for long periods of time, for which I thank ballet training in my teens. But I also have a low energy side and when the energy goes very low, the discipline vanishes. When you add in magical energetic tides and inner energetic work to that mix, I end up as a crumpled heap on the floor. 

As menopause barrelled in at high speed, passed by, and then exited the door while shouting obscenities at me, it just added insult to injury. I got the hook of discipline nailed to the wall and hauled myself back up, as a battered wrinkled big nosed old lady… and yes, your nose grows when you are old, so I end up looking (sideways on) like one of those people in Van Gough’s “Potato Eaters” painting. Sigh. Anyway… digression….

There are no masters

Just in case you think I am writing this from a high point of offering scraps of advice to the peasants, here is a slice of my latest round of ‘nail the hook to the wall, loop a rope on it and hang on’ times. 

Over the last few years, the energy in my country as been pretty rough as the clouds of destruction gathered. One only has to look at the mind-boggling acts of self harm the nation has done to itself over the last few years to get an indication of the invisible battle for the soul of the nation that has been raging. And such battles are still going on in nations around the world. Needless to say ,the inner energy as been pretty horrible for a long time.

During the last twelve months it really built to a peak of nasty and I have spent a lot of time between my jobs just laying down and moaning pathetically. Some of it is age, some of it is the genetic syndrome I have which makes you tired and everything hurts, and a lot of it is the inner energy of what is going on (though thankfully, after far too long, it has shifted recently).

The discipline vanished and was replaced by ‘fuck it’, ‘it will be fine’ and ‘just this once’…. this became my most recent norm which recently culminated in an unplanned visit to Glastonbury. My partner and I went to visit a friend on her farm which is not far from Glastonbury, but I avoid that place like the plague (think the worst of the New Age and throw in a few Messiahs and Merlins for good luck) so we drove around and out of the way of it to get to the farm.

Unfortunately due to bad traffic and road works, my partner and I had to return home via Glastonbury as it was the only route available. We were hungry and decided to brace ourselves and stop for something to eat. Omg. It was 3pm so all eateries were not serving food – the English have never discovered that if you serve food all day in a high traffic tourist spot, you earn money. So we went to the health food store (the only food store in the town centre) and bought snacks, high grade chocolate and all the things you shouldn’t eat at our age.

I was munching on the forbidden foods as I walked down the high street and I looked at all the broken and unravelled people who populated the sidewalks… too many drugs, not enough of the right drugs, and too much fantasy that had unravelled delicate minds.

We drove off and finally got home where I ‘dropped my coat on the floor’. I munched on the remains of the forbidden foods, crashed out on the bed and slept, fully clothed for thirteen hours.

I finally woke, feeling like absolute shit and crashed straight into a day of heaving heavy boxes around. I felt ill, I felt dirty (from Glastonbury) and for the first time in a long time, I realised all of my self discipline was gone. I had noticed it before and thought, fuck it, too much is going on right now.

But now, I had no more excuses left.

For the first time in a while I took one small and very focused magical step of discipline, and one small step of physical discipline.

The following morning, I woke feeling tired, but something magical had shifted – that one small act of magical discipline had brought me back online in a small way, and my body was shouting at me to pull my shit together.

I took my blood sugar before I ate anything that morning, just out of curiosity. I had always prided myself on no diabetes, no heart issues, no blood pressure issues.

That morning the voice of the blood sugar machine, in its strange Chinese to English accent said,

“ Are you really trying to fuck yourself up completely?”….

actually it was far more polite but that is what it meant.

No breakfast necessary for me that morning. Sometimes it is the small stuff that scream the wake-up call to you, and that morning the machine screamed, and I finally heard.

So if your self discipline and your magical practice is lost somewhere down the back of the sofa, join me in small steps, as we create single bricks that together we can build a tower of mastery with – but remember, there are no masters, only workers.

PS – this is the process known in Egyptian magic as the raising of the Djed. No, it is not about men’s dicks, it is about gaining back your inner strength and discipline.

There is no try, either do or don’t do – Yoda.