| Strength of Mind |
| Strength of mind is a concept that has great legs in the occult community, especially among Chaos mages and others who tend to believe that all magic and psychic phenomena originate purely within the mind of the practitioner. In other communities it has less influence. There are a number of reasons I believe it to be important, especially with regard to my own practice. In many spiritual traditions, much attention is given to maintaining the strength of one's connection to the divine, or to the strength of one's commitment or strength of spirit, but often very little attention is paid to the idea of strengthening the individual mind of the practitioner. One reason for this is that little importance is placed on the individual; many traditions (especially Chrisitanity, but even many mystical traditions) teach that the individual is subject to a greater power and that everything a person does is the result of the grace or power or help of a Supreme Being or other 'outside' influence rather than through one's own effort/power. I will address my own beliefs on the strength of one's connection to spirit helpers of all kinds later. Right now, I intend to talk a bit about the strength of one's own mind and how that may influence the effectiveness and practicality of one's personal practice. Everything we do originates within the mind--not only our spiritual and/or magical work, but also such mundane actions as going to work, paying our bills, taking care of our families, etc. Very few actions come about purely on their own. Our intentions drive our actions and, beyond that, even create our reality. Through strength of mind we are able to define and maintain the vision which we seek to manifest into 'reality.' Some Native American elders have spoken of sitting and intentionally 'dreaming' the world they want their children and grandchildren to inherit. This is using the power of our intentional mind to create and hold a vision for the future. Another important consideration when dealing with any magical, supernatural, or spiritual phenomena is the question of delusion. Many people would consider even the simple belief in spirits to be self-delusion. I, obviously, take a different stance. That said, I do understand and recognize the possibility of simply believing in something that does not exist, or of believing in influences, orders, or other communications from spirits that originate solely within the mind of the individual. This is a very thorny problem. How does one differentiate between delusion and spiritual reality when the very experience of spiritual activity and/or presence is generally so subjective? I have yet to come up with a definite and perfectly satisfactory method. I have developed a way of coping with this uncertainty, however, that has worked pretty well for me in my own practice. When I came up with this, I thought it was a purely original tactic and that I was a genius. I have since discovered that I am not the first or only person to use it. Nearly every person who makes any decision based on spiritual or psychic influence, with the likely exception of fanatics and the truly mentally ill must eventually face this question: Am I just fooling myself or is this real? There are a number of ways to address this possibility, but the one I use constantly is the acceptance of a certain amount of uncertainty. Even a peripheral study of philosophy will open our minds up to the lack of absolute certainty about the nature of reality. My response is to remain only partially certain about anything, including my own existance. While I am something like 99% sure that I exist, I allow for at least the possibility that I am the figment of someone else's imagination or some other strange explanation for what I experience as my reality. When I do a healing work for someone, I am pretty sure that my actions are at least mostly responsible for any results we may see, but I allow for a certain amount of doubt as to whether the apparent healing is the result of psychology, or the placebo effect, or even simple coincidence. If I see a ghost or journey to another place in my dreams, I understand that while I take the experience at face value, it could all be my imagination. In shamanic practice, the imagination and dream worlds are considered as real as the physical realm with very real effects on our daily lives, so even if I am only traveling in my imagination I can still expect some level of change in my day-to-day life. I figure--If it works, why question whether it's real or not. I know that is kind of a cop-out, but the real question in shamanic practice is whether you see results, not whether you have faith. Belief is NOT a requirement for most of what I do, so I can mostly leave those questions for others. This all relates to strength of mind in that one must have a generally stable and strong sense of themselves and a fluid sense of reality to work in the spirit realms. A weak, unstable mind, or one prone to delusions, will not only hamper this kind of work, but can wreck real havoc in one's life. One must also know themselves very well to participate in spiritual work of any kind, especially many of the more subtle actions such as divination, necromancy, psychopomp work, etc. The better one knows their own deepest thoughts and motivations, and the more one can be brutally honest with themselves, the more clarity they will have when deciding whether a message has come from a spirit or from their own subconscious mind. Strengthening the mind is an area of very little writing or research. Feeding the brain is one way to help gain strength of mind. By this I mean constant curiosity and learning, and not simply studying spiritual and esoteric subjects, but learning as much about the entire cosmos as we are able to absorb. The more I learn about biology or astronomy, for instance, the more I realize the incredible interconnectedness of all things and how certain patterns of design, behavior, and correlation repeat themselves in nature. The more I learn about animals, the more I am able to read and understand the actions of Power Animals. The more I learn about human nature in sociology, psychology, anthropology, and history, the more I am able to see the patterns in human behavior, including my own. And the more one exercises their brain, their conscious seat of intellect, the more they are able to stretch beyond accepted boundaries of thought. Entheogens are another element in the discussion of the mind. There are entire books written on this subject and I cannot adequately address it here. I will just say that psycho-active substances can not only expand the mind and give one experience in the fluidity of reality, but they can also break a mind. There are some experiences that our minds may not be ready to accept or assimilate. If pressed past these limits, our minds may reject them entirely or interpret them in such as way as to make them un-usable, frightening, or even break our connection to sanity and the |