The Concept Of Magic Failure
The opposite of a threshold shift is what we call Magic Failure.
All things in Sanctuary are made from energy – they are all MORPHEABLE at WILL.
All things, and including the physical form we choose to represent our conscious selves in Sanctuary, are entirely responsive to conscious intervention.
You can fly, you can make things disappear, you can make things appear from nowhere – magic.
Interestingly enough, we have found that even outstanding Project Sanctuary Players can suffer from FORGETTING ALL OF THAT.
They may enter a state where they sit in front of an imaginary mountain in Sanctuary and simply start to wail, “Oh I’ll never get over this mountain!”
This state of magic failure is held to be a collapse of the energy system – power loss throughout mind, body and spirit.
It can be triggered by all manner of stresses and there is no-one who isn’t, on occasion, susceptible to magic failure.
Once magic failure has been identified, it is easy to step out of it – simply by remembering that …
- All things in Sanctuary are made from energy – they are all MORPHEABLE at WILL.
In EMO, the saying is used, “It’s only energy.”
As soon as that is remembered, magic failure disappears and the person can continue their exploration of the habitat to find the requisite threshold shift.
* People who have experienced magic failure in Sanctuary and successfully overcome it, find that magic failure also occurs in “real life” and find they are able to identify the problem and overcome it there, too.
Excerpt from Project Sanctuary In A Nutshell
If you note, at the bottom of the paragraph it says:
* People who have experienced magic failure in Sanctuary and successfully overcome it, find that magic failure also occurs in “real life” and find they are able to identify the problem and overcome it there, too.
And here comes the really interesting observation.
Magic failure in the hard is indistinguishable from all manner of so called psychological or emotional disorders - depression, low self esteem, internal conflict, self doubt, sadness, misery, anger, unhappiness, mood swings, panic attacks, and even the states that cause a person to go for substances or food or any other form of addiction to alleviate their suffering, can all be described as "magic failure".
They all have in common that a person who is afflicted by magic failure starts to think "crazy thoughts" and enters into a feedback system with their own emotions that gets consecutively more painful and tense, until the tension breaks through a panic attack, an anger tantrum, bursting out into tears, self mutilating, an abuse binge, or whatever an individual person uses to create a kind of "restart" for their systems which have become derailed and out of control.
Now you might ask, why do we want to talk about "just" magic failure, rather than being oh! so much more "scientific" and talk about depression, for example, and all its many symptoms.
The fact is that talking about depression doesn't seem to work very well at all. Talking about panic attacks and migraines doesn't, either. Chunking down into ever more lists of phobias and complicated "mental disorders" has gotten us practically nowhere at all.
When you say to a person who is "suffering from panic attacks" that this is an extreme form of magic failure, where you lose the knowledge and ability that you can affect this reality and DO SOMETHING to benefit yourself, help yourself, protect yourself, keep yourself safe, achieve something, escape, create, DO SOMETHING about your problems, solve them, overcome them, then we have a whole different approach to how to overcome this problem.
Overcoming magic failure per se is one single enquiry, producing one single rule book across the board that works for ALL INCIDENCES and ALL MANIFESTATIONS of magic failure, rather than having ten thousand different rule books for all these different "psychological disorders" or "emotional malfunctions" or "mental derangements".
Psychologically, emotionally and energetically there is an instant lightening effect when you drop all those many books, and instead, you are left with one rule book that works across the board - the book on how to avoid magic failure, how to spot the onset of magic failure, how to rescue yourself out of magic failure, and most importantly, what to do with yourself, how to act and think, and what conclusions to draw from the whole experience, once magic failure has occurred.
Now, we work with the presumption that human beings have an energy system, and that magic failure occurs in the energy system, technically being a breakdown of the normal functioning of the energy system.
This breakdown is like the generators shutting down and all of a sudden, there is no light, there are no elevators, nothing is working any longer.
The mind responds to this by panic - "Oh my God this is terrible! I'm - disturbed, broken, not working, I can't protect myself, I can't stop bad things from happening, I don't know what to do ..."
What exactly the thoughts are that COME AFTER THE BREAKDOWNÂ in the energy system is fairly individual and different in different people, which has confused the psychologists of old into thinking that there are as many different reasons for this happening as there are statements that people will make "when the lights go out". People say and think all sorts of things in magic failure based on their lifetime's experiences, and it doesn't matter if it is any variation on "Nobody loves me" or any variation on "I can't do this it's too hard" or any variation on "I can't stand this" or any variation on "I am absolutely terrified and all alone" - this is all just the after effects of magic failure.
To really understand that WHATEVER YOU ARE THINKING OR SAYING whilst you are in magic failure is irrelevant, meaningless, and just naturally and automatically happens as a SIDE EFFECT of the experience of magic failure is of the essence to have people take a completely different tack to themselves and their problems.
Simply put, whatever ANY person says in magic failure is NOT TRUE - it isn't some important insight on the nature of reality or on their own powers, purposes, attractiveness, lovability or the way the world works. It is ONLY an insight on what people think when they are in magic failure, and their energy system shuts down!
If you look at it like that, what you get is "destructive thoughts" (and words and deeds) being ONLY a proof that magic failure has taken place. Nothing more, and nothing less.
This is of critical importance for the state of the person AFTER the incident of magic failure (AFTER the anger outburst, the panic attack, the deep depression, the self mutilation incident, etc. etc.).
If a person comes out of their magic failure thinking that what they thought and felt during that state was THE TRUTH, then they move into a place where they consider themselves in a very negative fashion. They might think and feel that they are insane, crazy, unlovable, unable to protect themselves, unable to take control of themselves or of their own destiny.
But that's not "the truth" on any level; and rather than to try and argue each and every magic failure thought, deed, and statement one at a time, but simply to understand that in magic failure OF COURSE you are going to think/do/feel that, just as a person who is drunk will talk nonsense, slurr their words and stumble about OF COURSE as a direct effect of the state they're in.
That doesn't mean that the same person, when they're not drunk, can't think and talk clearly, or walk the line most expertly - OF COURSE.
The solution for the problem of thinking/talking/feeling nonsense, slurring your words and stumbling around is to not get drunk, obviously.
And likewise, the solution for the problem of thinking all manner of destructive and unrealistic thoughts and experiencing the related emotions is to AVOID MAGIC FAILURE.
This now gives us a whole new line of enquiry.
How do you avoid magic failure?
When is that moment each time where the energy system fails, and a PHYSICAL SENSATION denotes that switch from normal functioning into the abnormal state of magic failure?
Here are some simple examples.
"I was arguing with my wife and she threw a pan at me. Something hot flashed through my chest and into my head, and next thing I knew, I was on top of her, pounding her with my fists." Man, 42, "anger outburst"
"On my way down the stairs, I looked down and the stairs seemed endless and there was this horrible moment where my stomach just fell and then I had the panic attack." Woman, 52, "panic attacks"
"I was clearing out the attic when I came across a picture of my grandfather who abused me as a child. I felt like I'd been punched in the chest, all the breath went out of me, and I had to get out of there. I spent the next three weeks in bed, lost the will to live completely." Woman, 36, "depression"
I put the usual diagnoses into inverted commas because really, all of them are manifestations of the same thing - magic failure.
Something happened in the energy system of each person to set off the attack of magic failure. In all these examples and all the many that I could have mentioned as well, it would have made all the difference for the person to understand what was happening and how these incidences of magic failure come into being. For each one of the three examples, THIS HAD HAPPENED BEFORE, many times before at that; and each time, the aftermath and lack of comprehension on how this COULD have happened made each consecutive experience firstly more likely to take place again, and secondly had deep, lasting effects on the person's thoughts and feelings about themselves, which made FURTHER OCCURRENCES of more magic failure more likely to happen.
When we think in terms of magic failure rather than (uncontrollable anger, panic attacks, depression etc) we can deal with the whole problem group and history from a brand new perspective.
That we are dealing with an energy system injury that get tripped and then magic failure happens as a direct side effect is the first step towards understanding for the individual that what they are experiencing is SYSTEMIC. It is normal and to be expected, giving the ins and outs of their respective personal histories.
Any person who had been abused by their fathers in the way our first man was, and sustained significant injuries in the energy system relating to being attacked, is going to experience exactly that breakdown flash and will act predictably in the way the man did act.
The example I always give for this very SYSTEMIC functioning is that of a dog with an injured tail. If you step on it, the dog will snap at you. It's automatic, driven by the flash of pain the dog experiences, reflexive, and it doesn't mean that the dog is a bad dog, or that it doesn't like you, or anything else other than that if you step on an injured tail, the dog will turn around and snap at you.
The solution is obviously not to hospitalise the dog, but to cure the injury in the tail so that doesn't have to happen any more; and what we are looking at with magic failure, is the DIRECT, SYSTEMIC PATH to curing the injuries in the person's energy system that are tripping magic failure in the first place.
In the meantime, these are high end examples.
"Normal" people have low level incidences of magic failure all the time, but the structure is the same, and the resulting negative effects on a person's incarnation are the same as well.
For example, a perfectly "normal" person (one who wasn't abused sexually or physically by their caretakers and who hadn't been in a near fatal plain crash) might lose their job, and they try and keep up their spirits (the state of active magic and the opposite of magic failure) but find that the interview that seemed to go so well ended up in a rejection.
The person experiences the requisite body sensation, in this case "a sinking feeling in the stomach" and they go home, "deflated".
Now, they're starting to doubt whether they "have what it takes" to get a good job, wonder "what is wrong with me" and so on, and on; but with most people, this doesn't last too long and eventually, the person "will pick themselves up" and decided today's a new day and yes, I have what it takes to get a good job, let's GO!
But this "mild form of magic failure" is still EXACTLY THE SAME PROCESS as they extreme examples that have far more grand symptoms, or go on for month and years instead of just one evening.
By beginning to notice incidences of mild magic failure in every day life, even people who suffer with the high end forms of magic failure eventually begin to understand how they work as a system, and how all those negative thoughts and beliefs, decisions about the nature of the world and themselves over the years were really not "the truth" after all, but just magic failure garbage that EVERY SINGLE PERSON WILL PRODUCE like a printing press chucks out the paper without a care in the world if any of what is printed on it is true or false, by nature and by default.
At this time, the best way to make practical use of the idea of magic failure (as opposed to the idea of psychological damage or insanity!) is to use negative thoughts when they occur as THE INDICATOR THAT MAGIC FAILURE HAS OCCURRED.
Rather than taking it for granted to think "God I'm so ugly!" when looking into the mirror, to understand that you would never think that if you were feeling on top of the world, happy, fully energized, fully engaged on all levels with yourself and your life, is the first step.
Now, we can take steps towards improving our control over how much magic failure we allow into our lives.
We can consider what might alleviate the magic failure and bring our systems back on an even keel.
The energy system is a part of our overall mind/body/spirit totality and as such, linked to the body.
A bad diet, lack of sleep, lack of exercise all contribute to weakening the energy system; and likewise, delicious and nutritious food, a good night's sleep and a walk in nature can go a very long way to bringing back energy not just into the body, but into the energy system too.
The energy system being made of energy can be charged in many other ways as well. Beautiful things, sparkly things, enjoyable people, fresh, natural things can all be used for a quick boost that will help the immune system of the energy body build up strength. The stronger the energy system is overall, the less likely magic failure is to occur; and if it does occur, you bounce back much quicker from it.
And this is the final message I'd like you take away from this brief introduction to magic failure as a concept to replace mountains of unhelpful ideas and outdated theories with one single rule book that is simple and practical across the board.
Magic failure cannot be avoided in life.
Stuff happens to all of us, and all of us, including every oh so enlightened guru or role model, no matter how shiny, HAVE MOMENTS OF MAGIC FAILURE.
We shouldn't be too concerned about avoiding having these moments when the energy system goes on strike; but we should concentrate about noticing when that happens and to make sure we bounce back from it QUICKLY.
The longer we stay in magic failure, the worse the effects for the mind/body/spirit totality.
So it is extremely important to understand that there is nothing good, nothing educational and nothing "karmic" or "meant to be" about either magic failure, or the experiences you have whilst you are in magic failure.
You honestly learn NOTHING about the truth of anything at all during those states; reality turns to spinach and fractionates.
If you are interested in the truth, or being productive, or actually finding out who you really are (and that would be, who you really are when you are NOT in magic failure!) then paying close attention to what causes magic failure in your life and taking every step to get out of it as soon as possible is OF THE ESSENCE.
Negative thinking about yourself, any other person or the world at large is ALWAYS an indicator of magic failure.
And what is the opposite of magic failure?
Of course - it is the state of being in love.
With yourself, with the world, with your fellow humans, with God.
More of that, and less of the magic failure, and there is no doubt that you can transform your life in a whole new way.
Silvia Hartmann
March 2010
* Read this again in a week or two ...
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