Every student experiences what you experienced regarding quiet surroundings while doing the concentration exercises. The disturbances are inevitable, and they can be your greatest enemies or your greatest teachers. The simple answer to this occurrence is that these are forces which are trying to prevent you from succeeding with the exercises, and it is up to you to decide whether to consider them a challenge to overcome or an obstacle that you cannot overcome. In other words you can make them work for you or against you. Welcome them and you will overcome them; if they annoy you or stop your concentration exercises then they have become the victor and you the loser.
The solution to overcoming these problems is given in Step I of Magical Schooling of the Soul in Initiation into Hermetics. Through serious and lengthy introspection you will find the cause for these annoyances in your own negative characteristics, and once you have turned these predominant negative characteristics into virtues, these kinds of interruptions will no longer affect you. It is worth your effort, not just for these exercises, but also for all future exercises. The soul is key to your success, but also the cause for your failures.
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My next question concerns a phenomenon that, because of it's nature and motive, I suppose is not uncommon among people who deals with occult. In order to make my question clear I will give a longer introduction.
It is a phenomenon of "fear of one's thoughts", in other words it concerns uneasiness, fear, anxiety or feeling of guilt which is connected with idea that there might be possibility that our thoughts directly affects reality.
Among ordinary, modern people, whose deep personal views and philosophy is materialistically, atheisticaly or agnosticaly inclined, there is developed in great amount natural resistance toward this problem because position of majority of modern society is that we affect people and things around us with our actions in a manner that is not very hard to learn during our life, so that we know for instance that if we don't want to hurt someone it is enough not to swing with hammer or axle in a crowded places (rough example but even more subtle ones are not much harder to grasp for average person). People also learn that you might hurt someone with your words if that person cares about your opinion but as far as thoughts are concerned, you may relax. Even among this kind of people, there is a possibility that this "fear of thoughts" phenomenon occurs but it is usually masked and expresses itself in some impulsive actions (frequent washing of hands, avoiding some kind of movement and similar) that are in psychology known as obsessive-compulsive disorders (and which are actually kind of rituals that person try to perform in order to regain sense of control over situations, thoughts, mood).
However, when someone starts reading about occult systems and philosophies, one of major changes that tend to occur in his thinking pattern is due to a fact that his belief in usual cause-effect chains in which he thought universe worked, becomes blurry and he suddenly starts asking himself whether he knows in what ways his actions, including thoughts affects people around him, his future, and entire universe. In that way he becomes much more vulnerable for possibility of developing this fear. He gets in situation where he blames his mood for certain minor unpleasant situations that he comes across. That triggers in him more negative thoughts and then he blames these thoughts for further, maybe more severe occurrences. He becomes more tense and anxious and that affects his nerves so he then really starts to make some mistakes in his actions, which in return deepens his fear. This is a kind of chain reaction which I guess is sometimes very hard to brake from, and usually only solution is to change thinking pattern so much that person throws away all his interest in occult and start thinking and believing that there is only usual "apparent" link between cause and effect.
In first book of Bardon's system, I thought that there is a safety-mechanism which makes possible for student to advance without developing this or similar problem. It is because all manners and ways for affecting hidden planes and more generally for causing effects in "non conventional" ways are clearly explained and all requires from a student very intentional and willingfull attitude during this procedures. In that way, I considered that one can be calm and doesn't need to be afraid that he will undeliberately by for instance ironically cursing someone cause harm to that person, and wouldn't come in situation that he tries to control every thought and movement in order not to unintentionally "magically affect" someone or something.
However, in step VIII of training of the soul, at the beginning Bardon warns that anyone who has come to that stage of development should be very attentive about what he's thinking, especially with plastic *three-dimensional)thinking because developed power of concentration imprints into akasha powerful pictures and animate them so that they tend to realize. There goes away my safety mechanism :) This warning means that it is possible for a magician, by not paying enough intention, to impregnate akasha without conscious wish and decision to do so. This caused a bit of fear in me. Of course, I could calm myself with the fact that Bardon made this warning in chapter VIII so that it probably means that students who are on lower steps can't make this sort of unintentional effect by mistake, and part of my question for you is weather this is true? that there is a "safety measure" in akasha that prevents less developed people to negatively affect their life and life of others in that way? Ofcourse one of possible answers is that my fear is the problem and that I should eliminate it (and that is certainly true), but there is a difference when someone is afraid of the black cat passing the street in front of him and when someone is afraid of burning his hand if he puts it in the fire. In first case, apart from working on his fear, he should simply learn that there is no way that cat can cause him bad events for that day and his fear will then more easily go away, and in the other case he should work on his fear from fire if it bothers him, but he shouldn't change his belief that fire does burn things. More generally, my question is if you have any advice on position which one should take on this matter concerning possibility of causing unintentional magical affects to reality.
Thank you.
I forgot to sign :)
That was me again.
Igor
While reading once again part of step VIII mentioned in previous question, I noticed that it may be possible that I misunderstood it because of my not-so-perfect English. I will quote a part of the sentence from the beginning of step VIII of soul training:
"Whosoever has reached this point in his development must very carefully consider what he thinks in a very conscientious and attentive manner,especially his plastic or three-dimensional thinking."
Should the first part of the sentence be understood as 1."whosoever has reached this point must very carefully, attentively and conscientiously consider what he thinks,"
or as
2."whosoever has reached this point must very carefully consider what he attentively and conscientiously thinks"?
Although difference is seemingly small, actually it is huge. First meaning would present a warning that could endanger "safety mechanism" that I mentioned in my previous question, and second would, on the contrary, support it, because it would mean that we should watch out only about thoughts that we deliberately, attentively think, and than there would be clearly no possible motive in Bardon's system for "fear of thoughts" that I mentioned.
Usual meaning of the word "conscientious" suggests that my first understanding was right, but I thought it was better to check it hear.
Igor
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