Priesthood

I somehow forgot to check the date in past few months... My priesthood month starts tomorrow, so no swearing, cursing, dirty thoughts, etc.
So, if anyone wanted a blessing or a prayer during November, feel free to contact me (this service is completely free, it's a part of the public service)

2nd Grade, Week 4: Power of suggestion

Suggestion is a process of forcing some idea to other people. This process can be conscious or unconscious, it can also be verbal or non-verbal. Forced idea can be an action that should be executed but it's not always the case. You can use suggestion to force an ideology, as well.

Simplest suggestion is a direct command: "Buy this product", but such suggestion is very obvious, that's way a salesman usually composes this command into a couple of consecutive sequences. Eg "Let me tell you why to BUY THIS PRODUCT. Don't BUY THIS PRODUCT if you are not going to use it ever again. Listen to the stories of happy customers that chose to BUY THIS PRODUCT"

Another way is a suggestion by position. Whatever the structure of your society or your book reading club is, people on top usually have more power over you than you'd think, if we imagine this sentence: "I will join you for diner tonight", said be a complete stranger, then a friend and then your boss, I can you know which will most probably force you to tidy your house and cook some better meal, that's the power an authority has over us.

Verbal suggestion can be also hidden, using words and phrases similar to what we want to suggest, eg instead of "give me a coffee" we can say "gimmick oh field" (My English suggestions suck...).

Non-verbal suggestion can be based on proximity (body distance), but also pictures, gestures, touches, sounds, smells, light and temperature, eg to cause a person being sleepy we can place it into a room of comfortable size with a nice soft sofa, dim lights, slow and relaxing background music and no distractions (no magazines, books, TV, etc).

We can also cause a person to choose a specific shape from a predefined set of shapes by "drawing" the shape in our communication via gestures BEFORE we inform the subject to randomly choose some shape (a person shouldn't know about the experiment beforehand else your suggestions will hardly take place).

2nd Grade, Week 3: Recognizing leading and lacking elements in self and others

Why should I know this
If you choose elements to be your main occult correspondence, you will perceive charecteristics and health as being consisted of elements. If that's the case, you want to keep the elements balanced in your body.

How to accumulate elements was something we have learned in the first grade and an improved version the first week of this grade. Now, as I said before, it is dangerous if elements are not accumulated in the same amount. Such imbalance can lead to a sickness or a major change in characteristics of your psyche.

Recognizing leading and lacking elements
Most of this you have already learned in the previous exercise of this week, through the character recognition. But not everytime we know the subject or we are willing to be truthful in our introspections (truth hurts), for that there is a simple exercise that will give you some general summary of how elementally balanced you are.

1. Invoke the feeling of heat to your whole body.
2. Invoke the feeling of cold to your whole body.
3. Continue with invoking a feeling of the heaviness to your whole body
4. Now invoke the feeling that your body is as light as a feather.

The important note is to truly feel the impressions you are trying to invoke. You might have already noticed, some steps went better than the other. Some were eg slower to achieve or you didn't achieve anything at all in certain steps. The reason can be that you are in a cold environment so a feeling of heat made you some troubles or (if your enviromental conditions were ok), that there is an elemental imbalance in your body.

Generally the feeling of a heat is associated with the Fire element, coldness with the Water element, lightness of a feather goes for the Air element and the heaviness comes down from the Earth element.

Perceiving the energy of others
This is a combination of what you have learned in this grade. Do the same procedure as when you are healing others with the Vital Force.
When your energy enters the body of your client, use your hands to perceive your client's energy. Focus on perceiving the heat, the cold, the heaviness, etc from the client's body, this will give you some general overview of what's going on with your patient/subject/client.

Time...

Once again I have too many projects on my hands :-D. I am writing the second grade of the curriculum, I also work on the occult novel, new books in my library appear about every other week and I am also working on the new introduction animation for my video channel.

After the second grade is finished, corrected and published I need to take some time off to recharge my batteries. To read some Terry Pratchett and chill out. Psychology study will also have to be put aside for a moment, my sleep deprivation makes the learning really hard :-D.

So here's the plan. Once I finish the second part of the curriculum and also the work on my staff (I will post images, when done), I will create the introduction animation and post some new videos (some maybe even occult related), then I will have some spare time for the Discworld and also sleep :-D.

2nd Grade, Week 3: Categorizing people by elements

Elements contained within body and their portions are not some abstract thing. Astral and physical are heavily interconnected, we could even say merged together, therefore our internal elemental balance affects our external appearance and behaviour, as well.

Basic correspondences and implications
Fire: willpower
Air: mental plane, anything related to intellect, thoughts, memories, etc
Water: Emotions
Earth: Material stuff, whether we are talking about wealth or bold body structure, this all is contained within the Earth element. Before we also said that the Earth element is heavy, Air element is light, which means we can reverse the rule here, people with more Air in their bodies and lacking Earth element (imbalance) will have light and weak bodies.

What is this good for?
Elemental balance affects both physical and mental states, knowledge of the balance state can help us understanding our subject or even influencing him.
But for our characterization to be accurate, we have to be able to notice details. Let's say you meet a lazy person. Laziness will have some deal of lacking willpower (lacking Fire element), but together with this we can also have a lacking Water element (decreased emotional activity, no motivation). Laziness can also comes with a greater deal of the Air element in the body. In such cases our subject is a great thinker, but spend most of his time "innovating", day dreaming, and hardly does find some time to actual make his ideas come true (through work, which would require the Fire element, willpower).
Person with increased amounts of Fire and Earth elements will be physically strong, doing physical work with ease and as a sort of relaxations, unfortunately decreased Air element will cause this person won't think much during the process, the work will be just a routine, now innovation process will happen. Lacking water element in such cases will cause a lack of empathy, this person will have a love for his job, but will hardly have a real love for another person.

Best subjects for suggestions are greatly lacking the Fire element, usually with increased amount of the water element (extravercy, showmanship, going with the crows), with Air and Earth elements being about average.

2nd Grade, 3rd Week: Basics of character recognition

We like to know our environment, the mysteries scare us. It's the old fear, same fear that caused we avoided a dark. Fear that we cannot control what we don't know.
On the other side, there was a rumour in the ancient Egypt that if you knew the real name of some deity, you could control it, you can even command it to make you immortal. This is an abstract way of saying: "Knowledge is power".

Most basic schema
Introverted person is someone "locked" in his own world, usually shy, having problems with making a contact with unknown people, day-dreaming most of the time.
Extraverted person is someone always willing to chat, sometimes maybe a bit of an exhibitionist.

Did it say anything to you? Well..
Introverted person is more locked, which means it is more resistent to the suggestion, extraverted person is more open and suggestible types are more available amongs the extraverted types. This is also the founding stone of hypnotic show, you need an extraverted person who is also a bit exhibitionist that would go on stage (more of this later). Introverted person would never go on the stage and wouldn't usually even try the hypnotic test (more of this later).

It is easier to get to the extraverted person and get to know it. On the other side introverts are more stable and when you finally get to know them, you know them for good, they will hardly ever change in such a drastic way as an extravert can.

You should also know that extraverts tend to be more emotionally stable, introverts are more inclined to various depressions and usually have a weaker metabolism, as well.

Schema to study
- choleric
- sanguinic
- flegmatic
- melancholic
(Yes, a homework...)

What are schemas good for
Schemas help us to categorize people into closer groups. Basically such a categorization is stupid because we all are individuals. Knowing that someone is a choleric extravert or flegmatic introvert won't make as know the person as a whole, but it will help us in understanding the person a bit more, having even a small idea of what you can expect from someone is always better than nothing.

But remember that people are not too easy to categorize, eg extraverted/introverted is not an on/off switch, it's a scale starting with extreme introvert and ends with extreme extravert, but people are usually somewhere in between, either closer to one or the other end.

Creating a custom schema
Take a piece of paper and in a 10 minutes write as many character traits as you know, then use these words as a dictionary of your own schema. You will see that when you have a defined set, categorizing will become easier to you, especially if you study this grade carefully.

2nd Grade, Week 3: Basics of psychotherapy

What to expect in this course
This is going to be a super-short version of psycho-therapy course so I will skip the usual boring stuff about different methodologies, whether we are talking about CBT, psychoanalysis, psychodynamic, etc, such stuff is truly boring.
All you have to know is that we are going to study the integrative methodology, which became quite favorite recently. The reason is that these different methodologies are better for some stuff and worse for other stuff. Integrative methodology combines the best of the aforementioned based on different situations. Eg you want to apply cognitive behavioural therapy methods on neurotic problems, experiential psychotherapy on depressions and self-searching, etc.
The reason why you should be interested in therapy at all is hidden within the arcanum of Magick. Magick is not a hobby, Magick is the lifestyle. If you mean it seriously with Magick, it's not okay being Magicians on Friday night during conducting some static ritual or while trying to impress your friends. You must live and breathe Magick, you must eat it for the breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well. Your every sleeping and waking hour must be filled with Magick. Psychology (and psychotherapy) teaches us important lessons about mankind and about ourselves. With these lessons we can easily help people resolve their problems or scare the living sh*t out of them without silly wand waving and all that pompous stuff, sometimes a word is more powerful than a sword.

What we learned before
During the first grade we have already learned and tried some techniques from experiential psychotherapy. These techiques were supposed to help us gain some stable mental health, fight our vices, support our virtues and help us fighting a stress, depressions and panic attacks. These techniques were:
-simple relaxation exercise
-cleansing exercixe
-two chair exercise
-calming breathing

If you are not sure which is which I recommend to recapitulate these because these won't be mentioned again. Sorry, guys, I am not Bardon, I am not going to repeat myself.

Basic rules in therapy
1. You are not a problem solver, you are supposed to listen to people and in certain cases lead them in certain directions
2. Nodding your head lightly helps to build an impression of a listener, which helps for your client to open to you
3. Listen what your client says and remember it well, if long-term memory is failing you, take notes, but rather after the session, staring at the paper and writing something during session looks like you are not listening to the client.
4. Repeat client's words if you are unsure if you listened carefully or when you think that a client needs understanding. In the latter case formulate the sentence to be supportive.
Eg when client says: "I think no one understands me", formulate the answer as something like: "I get it, you feel as if you were not being understood by other people".
Such reaction usually has a bonding effect, except for few cases that we will talk about a bit later.
5. Feel free to talk about your personal experience or life if being asked by the client, just don't overdo it, remember that sessions are namely about the client. Also don't avoid answering because that could severe the bond.
6. Psychotherapy without bonds do not work, your client must trust you for the therapy to work (sounds familiar?)
7. If you make a mistake during remembering or interpretation and the client informs you either verbally or non-verbally, don't be affraid to admit your mistake, the bond is even stronger when client recognizes you as a human being. From such an apology the client can also learn that it is ok to be wrong and such situations can be resolved in a kind and elegant manner.
8. Some people talk fast, some quickly jump from one topic to another, some speak super slow, leave minute long pauses between sentences and some have just an annoyingly high-pitched voice. Adapt to people's speeds and personal settings and don't lose your cool. Certainly don't go "For God's sake, speak faster!!!" Or "This is so fucking boring!!!", that's generally considered a very bad form.

What to do if your client is defensive
In the beginning it's normal that some people are not willing to open, slow down and be patient. If the defensiveness appears later in session it means we omitted something. Either we forgot some information from previous sessions, we misinterpreted what the client told us or we touched some too sensitive topic. It can also be we didn't ask a correct question but in such cases the client usually asks similar question he wanted to be asked. Eg he defensively asks about your life and the reason is that he thinks you are not interested in his life because you didn't ask that question. You will usually notice this in non-verbal communication.
Non-verbal communication is a very complex topics and there are countless books on the topic. To make this section short we won't talk about it in depth, let's just say that non-verbal communication consists of:
-tone and melody of the voice
-facial expressions
-eye movement and positions
-hand gestures
-body postures
-body distance

Always consider these aspects and in long-term process you will know your client well enough to notice when something is happening and what is happening.
As we said before, therapists are not omniscient beings, they are humans. Don't be scared to admit your mistake and fix it.

Pygmalion effect
Pygmalion effect shows how expectations in someone's abilities can influence someone's future actions and also results. There was an experiment where a group of random students were selected. Teachers of people in this group were notified that these people are highly talented, with a status of geniality. These students then had a remarkable improvement in their grade. Their teachers considered them special and treated them this way as well, which in return gave them better motivation in their study.
On the other side, if you were considered idiot, you would either had to work harder to get rid of this label or you could give up and your grades would degrade.