Three Tips for Preparing for Your Early Morning Practice Sessions
Many Bardonists practice the exercises of IIH early in the morning. This is often a good time to practice. Your mind is usually freshest early in the morning. The streets are quiet, so if you live in the city, you don't have to put up with the sound of traffic. Also, the astra-mental atmosphere tends to be clearest during the early morning, because during night, everyone is sleeping and therefore not producing as many negative thoughtforms by thinking hateful, envious, or judgemental thoughts.
What some Bardonists don't realize, however, is that if you want to have a good practice session early in the morning, you should begin preparing the night before. In fact, if your evening goes badly, this can have a negative impact on your practice session the next morning. This isn't always the case, but it often is. For this reason, I want to give you three tips regarding how to prepare for your early morning practice session the night before.
Tip 1: Make Wise Choices Regarding How You Shower before Going to Bed
Showers can be relaxing, and being relaxed when you go to bed can help you fall asleep and improve the quality of your sleep. To make your shower more relaxing, shower while fully present. Don't think about your job, or relationship problems, or anything of that nature. Immerse yourself in the relaxing feeling of the warm water falling upon you and running down you. Feel your muscles relax as the heat from the water flows into them and loosens them. Choosing to be present while showering instead of distracted is one example of what I consider a wise choice.
Another wise choice is to use the magic of water to wash away negative traits when showering. Bardon describes how to do this in the physical section of Step 1 of IIH. This will help transform you in a positive manner, and will put you in a state of mind when you go to sleep that translates to "I'm making progess in my training. I'm on a roll!" When you wake up in the morning, you'll want to continue your efforts to transform yourself in a positive manner, and will do so by practicing well.
Tip 2: Go to Bed Early
Many Bardonists think that if they go to bed early instead of staying up late, they are missing out on life. In reality, all they are missing out on is the opportunity to undergo high quality training instead of their typical sleep-deprived training. If you keep falling asleep while practicing VOM, you're probably not getting enough sleep and should go to bed earlier. Seriously, practicing magical exercises is so much easier when you're not struggling to stay awake the whole time.
Tip 3: Practice John O'Donohue's Fountain of Love Exercise
In his book Anam Cara (one of my faves), the spiritual writer John O'Donohue states that within every person is a fountain of love. As an exercise, he says that while falling asleep, you should find this fountain of love within you and let the love flowing from this fountain permeate you and saturate you. In this way, you will fall asleep saturated with love and wake up refreshed and nourished by it.
This exercise might not resonate well with everyone. Within the field of Western magic, there are actually many exercises that are designed to be done while falling asleep. As a result, if you don't like the fountain of love exercise, there are other exercises to choose from. One of them is, of course, Bardon's exercise of repeating an autosuggestion affirmation over and over again until you fall asleep. If enough people are interested, I can write another blog post listing some more exercises designed to be done while falling asleep. In any case, I hope this post helps you with your practices.
Be kind.
What some Bardonists don't realize, however, is that if you want to have a good practice session early in the morning, you should begin preparing the night before. In fact, if your evening goes badly, this can have a negative impact on your practice session the next morning. This isn't always the case, but it often is. For this reason, I want to give you three tips regarding how to prepare for your early morning practice session the night before.
Tip 1: Make Wise Choices Regarding How You Shower before Going to Bed
Showers can be relaxing, and being relaxed when you go to bed can help you fall asleep and improve the quality of your sleep. To make your shower more relaxing, shower while fully present. Don't think about your job, or relationship problems, or anything of that nature. Immerse yourself in the relaxing feeling of the warm water falling upon you and running down you. Feel your muscles relax as the heat from the water flows into them and loosens them. Choosing to be present while showering instead of distracted is one example of what I consider a wise choice.
Another wise choice is to use the magic of water to wash away negative traits when showering. Bardon describes how to do this in the physical section of Step 1 of IIH. This will help transform you in a positive manner, and will put you in a state of mind when you go to sleep that translates to "I'm making progess in my training. I'm on a roll!" When you wake up in the morning, you'll want to continue your efforts to transform yourself in a positive manner, and will do so by practicing well.
Tip 2: Go to Bed Early
Many Bardonists think that if they go to bed early instead of staying up late, they are missing out on life. In reality, all they are missing out on is the opportunity to undergo high quality training instead of their typical sleep-deprived training. If you keep falling asleep while practicing VOM, you're probably not getting enough sleep and should go to bed earlier. Seriously, practicing magical exercises is so much easier when you're not struggling to stay awake the whole time.
Tip 3: Practice John O'Donohue's Fountain of Love Exercise
In his book Anam Cara (one of my faves), the spiritual writer John O'Donohue states that within every person is a fountain of love. As an exercise, he says that while falling asleep, you should find this fountain of love within you and let the love flowing from this fountain permeate you and saturate you. In this way, you will fall asleep saturated with love and wake up refreshed and nourished by it.
This exercise might not resonate well with everyone. Within the field of Western magic, there are actually many exercises that are designed to be done while falling asleep. As a result, if you don't like the fountain of love exercise, there are other exercises to choose from. One of them is, of course, Bardon's exercise of repeating an autosuggestion affirmation over and over again until you fall asleep. If enough people are interested, I can write another blog post listing some more exercises designed to be done while falling asleep. In any case, I hope this post helps you with your practices.
Be kind.
Hello Virgil. Thank You for your advices.
ReplyDeleteIf possible... I'm always interested in your posts about practical tips like this, morning and evening routines.
Sure, I'm happy to write a post on that subject. Will do so soon.
DeleteHello dear Virgil, those are solid advice thank you. I always enjoy reading your blogposts be it practical, pieces of wisdom or just sharing some of your thoughts. Your way of writing is so enjoyable to read while conveying very interesting content.
ReplyDeleteYes a post on night time exercices will be very much welcomed
Loved all your books, Virgil!
ReplyDeleteIt felt like it is perfectly tailored towards me — the dark could/aura during childhood that attracted enemity, the Natalie Portman thing and many more :-)
I have created my black soul mirror with over 250+ shades of traits thanks to the examples you gave. I'm assuming it shall be a while before I work through it lol. I have a couple of questions:
1.) How do we know when we are ready to move on to step 3? If we are to keep working with and adding to the black soul mirror throughout the IIH process (when we find them), surely they too are imbalances that needed to have been cleared before moving to step 3?
2.) I'm rather stuck creating the white soul mirror. I can't for the life of it, think of more than 5 or 6. How do we find at least 100, what if I do not posses a 100 good qualities?
3.) During the process of magical eating and breath inhaling positive traits, do you have any tips on how to feel the positive quality go inside you? I find it rather hard to feel or visualize a quality I never possessed in the first place!
Hi. I'm glad you liked my books and my writing style.
DeleteRegarding your first question,
Think of a playground roundabout. If the roundabout starts spinning really quickly, the people on the edge are going to fly off. The people in the center will be fine and won't fly off. You don't have to be perfectly at the center to be safe. You just have to be close enough to the center. When it comes to safely working with the elemental energies in Step 3, it's a bit like that. An elemental equilibrium can be understood symbolically as standing at the center of the Cross of Equilibrated Forces. You don't have to be perfectly at the center, just close enough. As for giving guidelines for knowing when you're close enough, I'd have to think about that a bit more. It's a common question people ask, and the standard answer is that you should get rid of your 3s and 2s, but not worry about your 1s. Rather than follow a rigid rule like that, I'd say exercise your judgement and when you feel that you have eliminated your big negative traits and medium negative traits and developed the positive traits necessary in order to be more balanced than you were before, you can move on. I realize this is vague advice, but it's really a matter of judgement and intuition rather than looking through a checklist and saying "Ok, I'm good to move on to Step 3."
Regarding your second question,
I get this question a lot, and it makes me regret not also including an example white soul mirror in The Elemental Equilibrium. Here are 3 traits from my white soul mirror that you probably also have but didn't list in your white soul mirror.
1. I know that conscious breathing is an effective self-transformation technique and appreciate its usefulness and value.
2. I know that conscious eating is an effective self-transformation technique and appreciate its usefulness and value.
3. I know that magical washing is an effective self-transformation technique and appreciate its usefulness and value.
In other words, think broader. Many people can't think of positive traits to put on their soul mirror because their definition of a positive trait is unnecessarily narrow. Knowing or appreciating something worth knowing/appreciating can be considered a positive trait. It doesn't have to be just behaviors patterns or habits or aspects of one's personality.
Regarding your third question,
There are many ways of approaching conscious eating/breathing. The Cosmic Letter K approach I describe in The Elemental Equilibrium is my preferred approach. In other words, for me, it's not so much about "feeling" the trait entering me. Rather, it's about "knowing/believing" that the trait is entering me. Getting yourself to believe something temporarily (e.g. that the food you are eating is really patience/charisma/whatever) is a skill that can be practiced. If you prefer to go the "feeling" route you describe, then imagining you are someone you know who possesses the trait may give you a sense of what it feels like to possess the trait.
Hope this helps.
I'm in the process of re-reading your books right now and will be bookmarking your answer into it.
DeleteWill really be looking forward to your upcoming works, can't wait!
Thank you for taking the time to answer and for being there for us newbie Bardonists :-)