Severing Obstacles

For the Magus the meaning and content of his life is awareness achieved through actions. Therefore on this Way it is, of course, important, on the one hand, to identify impulses ready to be realized, and on the other hand to bring them to fruition.

Nevertheless, difficulties and distortions often arise with both of these components.

It is clear that in order to successfully discern impulses striving for actualization — that is, strictly speaking, desires — one must gaze honestly and without distortion into the depths of one’s mind, distinguish one’s own inclinations and destructive currents, identify one’s essential qualities and potential. This skill, which is key to the purification and growth of awareness, is traditionally described as “listening to one’s heart,” and more recently as “knowing and conversing with the sacred guardian angel.” Naturally, for any being striving to develop the ability to find in the turbulent currents of its mind the essential keys is a cornerstone not only of development but of individual existence as such. And Magic has developed many approaches to help attain this “knowledge.”

However, no less important, though somewhat less discussed, is the ability to “bring a matter to completion,” that is — to achieve a completed realization that does not create a shadow. It is clear that it is not enough merely to “identify a desire”; it is not enough simply to hear what the heart or the logos of the mind says — one must also do, realize, accomplish. Frequently a “dead end” appears precisely at this stage, and many who are skilled at “understanding” themselves very poorly put that understanding into practice.

Evidently, problems with bringing desires to fruition can be reduced to three basic causes: 1) rejecting the result; 2) clinging to what must be relinquished; and 3) indifference, apathy and passivity.

The first problem consists in a mismatch between the current state of mind and the state it must move into as a result of a given realization. It is clear that because these states are heterogeneous, tension often arises between them, and because the current state is supported by available resources, it can well prevail in that resistance. In turn, this repudiation can be active, in the form of anger, or passive, in the form of fear. In fact, a deep-rooted unwillingness to win, rooted in the fear of a new state of being and thus in the necessity of new actions, new confrontations and new dangers, is a very common problem for the realization of impulses. Very often we do not do what we want because we fear the results of those actions and the obligations those results will impose on us. Less common is active rejection of the result of actions, since it may seem that it would make us “weaker,” more vulnerable, and so forth. This problem is the product of the narrowness of the current perspective on one’s state, an inability from a less developed condition to assess the prospects and possibilities of a more developed one.

The second problem consists in the desire to hold on to what one has become accustomed to, what seems necessary, and which must be relinquished as a result of the realization in question. Obviously the root of this obstacle is the sense of separateness, and as its natural continuation — the drive to possess.

The third problem comes down to an unwillingness to leave a stable position, inertia and passivity. The mind tends to suppress the impulses that “disturb” it simply by virtue of its striving for equilibrium, its “weight” and “resistance.”

To overcome these problems and nonetheless bring a desire to fruition, two approaches are possible.

The first, more common, method consists in identifying the mind with the current of desire, in becoming involved in that current. Most often desires are realized in the human world in exactly this way: the mind convinces itself that the given realization is its nature, it is, in a sense, a “matter of life and death,” and so on. In doing so the whole structure of the mind is temporarily aligned according to the direction of the desire, and all forces are directed toward its fulfillment. Yet such immersion of the mind in the current of desire has a number of serious drawbacks. First, having realized the impulse, the mind confronts emptiness and a lack of understanding about what comes next. Because it was involved in that current, its completion implies the end of that state of mind, which threatens decline and loss of force. Indeed, one often observes how a person who greatly wanted to achieve something, after attaining the cherished goal, falls into depression and collapse, unable to find a new purpose. Second, by involving itself in one current, the mind risks ignoring other impulses equally important for its development, thus missing substantial chances and opportunities.