Is There Anything Harder than Becoming a Magician?

I got a question earlier today asking about a passage in The Spirit of Magic. The passage consisted of me mentioning that several people have claimed that becoming a magician is the hardest endeavor a human can attempt, followed by a statement that I don't agree with this. The question was what human endeavors I considered to be more difficult than that of becoming a magician. 

I want to begin my response by discussing the following passage from Bill's commentary on IIH.

"Do not become discouraged. Realize, however, that this line of practice is possibly the most difficult thing on earth to master. After all, in book one you are preparing to internalize in yourself the essence of all spiritual wisdom and power that exist on this planet."

Let me make a few things clear. First, Bill is not exaggerating. In the process of working through IIH, you do prepare to internalize in yourself the essence of all spiritual wisdom and power that exists on this planet. The thing is, this isn't difficult. It just takes a long time. Of course, if you go about this process incorrectly, then yeah you're going to create a lot of problems for yourself and that's going to make the process a lot more difficult than it needs to be. However, if you go about it correctly, this shouldn't be the case. 

Which isn't to say that magical training is easy. One purpose of magical training is to make you stronger. You only get stronger by overcoming challenges and working through difficulties. Therefore, it's inevitable that you're going to encounter challenges and difficulties during your training. These challenges and difficulties might scar you and rough you up, but they're not going to completely shatter you. There are people, however, who do undergo experiences that shatter them and then have to spend the rest of their lives trying to piece themselves back together. That's a far more difficult process than becoming a magician is.

If you want specific examples of endeavors more difficult than becoming a magician is, think about the people who were imprisoned in concentration camps during the Holocaust. For them, staying alive was harder than becoming a magician is for most students today. During the Vietnam war, I think the average amount of time soldiers lived once deployed was two weeks. For those soldiers, staying alive was also harder than becoming a magician is for most students today.

We don't have to go in the direction of war and violence to find examples of endeavors more difficult than that of becoming a magician. In order to pay for college, one of my exes had to work two part-time jobs while overloading so she could graduate a year early. Even with the two part-time jobs, she couldn't afford to pay for four years. Trying to cram four years worth of work into three years while working two part-time jobs made her so busy that she could only sleep a few hours every other night. For her, getting a college degree was harder than becoming a magician is for most students today.

So again, while becoming a magician is a difficult process, there's no reason to believe it is literally the most difficult endeavor a human can attempt. Bill doesn't say that. He says it is "possibly" the most difficult endeavor. That's true. If you go about magical training extremely incorrectly, then it will be impossibly difficult. However, if you go about it correctly, you should be fine. As for what I mean by going about your training correctly, I'll leave you with another quote from Bill.

"I think of magic as a way to discover and to make one’s best choices in life.  It puts you in touch with what is original and with what produces the greatest transformations.  I also think of genuine magic as not a short cut or way to speed things up so that you get what you want more quickly.  Rather, it slows things down so you get your actions right the first time around."

I've told a few people already that I think how easy an aspiring magician finds his training is directly proportion to how well he understands the passage quoted above and to what extent he has internalized the lesson contained within the passage.