Do results matter more than belief in occult practice?

[Tryp]

I've found over time the whole psychological paradigm to be inefficient and awkward for me. Beliefs may still be there, same as the impulse to explain how something happened, but I much prefer to not give either a leading role in my practice. They unnecessarily complicate things, and if I look back in order to honestly judge whether my beliefs were useful, what I see is no different from the proverbial fixated clock that will regardless give the right time twice a day.

Carroll's extreme relativism was surely a great exercise to start with, but not one I've been able to sustain. I work first with what I know, regardless of the sense it makes and how convenient it is. I haven't quite found a "magical system" I can stick with, other than some sort of basic, pragmatic sorcery and an essentially relational view of the cosmos. So I guess that means results for me.

 

[Yvonne]

IMO the mechanism of magic takes place below the level of your conscious mind. Belief is a way to program that level, in the same way as you program yourself to ride a bike.

You will hear magicians say "It works even if you don't believe in it" and this too is a belief system. So even if you deny it consciously, it is still possible that at the level that really counts, you really want it to happen. You will know whether this is true because you will get results

I believe no explanation of magic can be complete if it depends on a single magical system - each system is a map, not a territory.

"It works even if you don't believe in it" is a belief that it works. The person that says that believes it will work. Si they do believe in it

 

[Robert Ramsay]

I've found over time the whole psychological paradigm to be inefficient and awkward for me. Beliefs may still be there, same as the impulse to explain how something happened, but I much prefer to not give either a leading role in my practice. They unnecessarily complicate things, and if I look back in order to honestly judge whether my beliefs were useful, what I see is no different from the proverbial fixated clock that will regardless give the right time twice a day.

I think I can see where the difficulty is here - it is the mechanism of belief, not the belief itself, that does the work. I think Carroll was trying to condition people into being able implement that mechanism at will. I like to think of it more like riding a bike - when you first start learning, you wobble all over the place and you have to think about what you're doing. When you've learned, you can ride about without hardly being 'present' at all. That's the level I'm talking about. The belief mechanism is just how you get your intent to the place where 'the rubber meets the road'.

Obviously, I'm not telling you how to do your practice I just thought your situation is an interesting one!

 

[Firetree]

A skeptical mind successfully eliminates the chance to experience any intuitive phenomena by rationalizing every subtle impression. In this state, magical training collapses because the skeptic practitioner’s own cognition rejects the very signals they are trying to cultivate.

It appears you do not know about this type of 'magical training ' then .

 

[Tryp]

I think I can see where the difficulty is here - it is the mechanism of belief, not the belief itself, that does the work. I think Carroll was trying to condition people into being able implement that mechanism at will. I like to think of it more like riding a bike - when you first start learning, you wobble all over the place and you have to think about what you're doing. When you've learned, you can ride about without hardly being 'present' at all. That's the level I'm talking about. The belief mechanism is just how you get your intent to the place where 'the rubber meets the road'.

Obviously, I'm not telling you how to do your practice I just thought your situation is an interesting one!

Thanks for the comment. I understand the logic behind Carroll's proposals (I did spend some time initially experimenting with CM) but it was precisely this implementation of X or Y belief at will that eventually became difficult and counterproductive for me -not because I couldn't pull it off, but because my need for consistency in practice was bigger and I wasn't comfortable under an arbitrary framework that simply wouldn't go smooth with whatever experience I gathered.

I think someone (HoldAll, IIRC) mentioned above how he wasn't able to make himself step into the shoes of, say, a Christian fundamentalist, even for the sake of the experiment. For me, the exercise of adopting rigid, potentially alien beliefs or ethical views was not necessarily a problem; I worked in storytelling for a long time, where the exercise of temporarily aligning myself with, say, a serial killer, was commonplace. But carrying that exercise to my practice was a different story. I'm aware that this can be seen as a limitation, but honesty and consistency are crucial to me in practice, and I find a big difference between the (inevitable) wish for things to manifest in a certain way, and the adoption of a belief that is not based on my experience.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Thanks for the comment. I understand the logic behind Carroll's proposals (I did spend some time initially experimenting with CM) but it was precisely this implementation of X or Y belief at will that eventually became difficult and counterproductive for me -not because I couldn't pull it off, but because my need for consistency in practice was bigger and I wasn't comfortable under an arbitrary framework that simply wouldn't go smooth with whatever experience I gathered.

I think someone (HoldAll, IIRC) mentioned above how he wasn't able to make himself step into the shoes of, say, a Christian fundamentalist, even for the sake of the experiment. For me, the exercise of adopting rigid, potentially alien beliefs or ethical views was not necessarily a problem; I worked in storytelling for a long time, where the exercise of temporarily aligning myself with, say, a serial killer, was commonplace. But carrying that exercise to my practice was a different story. I'm aware that this can be seen as a limitation, but honesty and consistency are crucial to me in practice, and I find a big difference between the (inevitable) wish for things to manifest in a certain way, and the adoption of a belief that is not based on my experience.

That's the thing about magic - because the implementation depends on the person you are, no practice is right for everyone - we may all be trying to get to the same thing, but there are as many routes to it as there are practitioners

I'll admit I too found Carroll's methods interesting, but ultimately not applicable to me.

I wonder how much we have been programmed in advance, by religious exposure or other teachings, to the "there is only one right way of doing things" idea?

 

[Tryp]

I wonder how much we have been programmed in advance, by religious exposure or other teachings, to the "there is only one right way of doing things" idea?

Probably much more than we all realize and care to admit.

Clearly, in my own conclusions about what makes sense, or even what works or not, my early conditioning will still work. Even if I abjured something, its structure still exerts some gravity pull that makes some things more likely to be adopted than others.

But I've learned how language shapes thought, and for instance I try to be very careful when pronouncing something "right", other than in the sense of appropriate or fitting to my current place and direction, which may or may not be the same in the future. I appreciate Carroll for his contribution to thought plasticity, maybe not as a goal in itself, but as a important tool for free will and decision.

 

[Pneuma_Purifier]

It appears you do not know about this type of 'magical training ' then .

If someone demands rigorous empirical proof before accepting an internal impression, their rational mind will always provide an alternative explanation. For a skeptic, keeping Tarot or intuition in the box of "harmless psychological entertainment" feels safe. It preserves a predictable, material universe where the mind remains entirely in control.