#skrying

Ancient Mesoamericans believed mirrors were spirit doorways to alternate worlds, “much like Alice in Through the Looking Glass,” anthropologist Karl Taube of the University of California Riverside writes in an email. “Once you deeply gaze in, you have opened up that connection.” Taube has studied Aztec mirrors but was not involved in the new research.

I am going to describe my experience with a practice called Kasina. I am not going to break down every aspect of this practice, you can google that. This practice is amazing for skrying, visionary work and developing psychic power. If you decide to practice this work I definitely recommend reading Mastering the Core Teachings of The Buddha by Daniel Ingram. Not to become a Buddhist, but to learn the amazing collection of techs available in Buddhism. They spent a couple thousand years learning how to hack the brain so you may find something useful. Yes the language is different and can be confusing and that is why I recommend Ingram’s book. It is done by a western mind and written in that perspective. If at any point during this little guide you don’t understand what I am talking about it can be found in Ingram’s book. It’s free. Read it. 

I will describe two ways to do this. The terrible way and the real way.

First the terrible.

Set up a candle in a dark room like this:

This was done in my living room with my dog crawling around and whining because he wanted attention. I was distracted and often did this practice while talking or petting him. I figured because of this I should focus more on insight practice. I would observe the movement of the flame for varying amounts of time and once I noticed that the image was burnt into my eye I would shut my eyes and observe the visual details of the afterimage in as much fine detail as possible. I tried different ways of focusing on the flame and the afterimage. The worst possible way to do it is a laser like focus on the flame and afterimage. So you would begin to get a strained tunnel vision like focus on the flame, you begin squinting. Then the afterimage may start out brilliantly but dance around and get lost quickly. I found the longest I could hold the afterimage this way was between 4-6 minutes. The afterimage was still bright and vivid and maybe could begin morphing into various shapes that would look like a blue space like the sky with a brilliant point, ruby red third eyes surrounded by a blue-green aura, a red-white sphere, a comet, a brilliant glowing orb with white runic letters written on it, a planet with a ring, a reddish ball that shifts into a blue ball, then into purple black ball and then it would blink in and out. I found for best results in this terrible practice one should view the flame for about a minute. Now, you may be saying “J! You saw some cool visuals, how is this a terrible?” Because what is possible with this tech! If you do the above or get the results described above you are barely scratching the thinnest surface.

I actually still recommend doing it this way to see how much detail and resolution you can gain get on the afterimage. You may surprise yourself at how pixelated your vision will be with the colors. It will be like watching an 8 bit psychedelic video game figure morphing into different things, but on the back of your eye lids.

The (OH SHIT WAS THAT GOD) real way

I set up my altar in the way I have it for meditation practice 

You don’t have to set it up this way, just get some things that are meaningful to you. You are not doing a ritual or anything you are just getting your right brain in the mood. If doing a ritual gets you in the mood, then do one. Not required.

If you want the practice to be the most successful keep the following things in mind:

Keep a relaxed wide view. You are not focused like a laser visually on the flame, Your mental focus is the flame, not the visual focus. If you find yourself zooming in and the surroundings fade out, zoom back out to wide view. This may sound weird but imagine ALL sensations even body sensations are playing on a screen in front of your awareness. You are behind it all observing the total. That may help, it may not but try to get into that mode of thinking. The important part is the wide view. Wide view activates the right brain. Once you have this relaxed wide view then begin.

Keeping the relaxed wide view, on the in breath *mentally” not visually zoom in on the flame. On the out breath relax that mental zoom to wide view. You are “holding” the flame mentally, not visually. Try out a few different ways and you will get it. keep flowing between an expansion and contraction. O/o. This may be the hardest part. Relaxed visual focus, flowing mental focus between flame and wider experience. Like waves of attention but always keeping the flame in the center. It is a gentle balance. Too much laser like focus will not bring the best results (you will still get pretty cool results) You will want to keep your eyes open for at least a minute. Don’t worry about blinking, just be natural. This isn’t a staring contest, in fact if you notice *any* strain, relax it.

Now for the afterimage! This is where a key concept of insight meditation will bring you results. The basic concept of insight meditation is that you can only know something/anything through the experience of the sensations of that thing. Once you get that into your mental programming and add the the idea that to have a successful magickal result one must imagine the desired result “As If” it were occurring right now you will be well on your way. That is why we are so focused on activating the right brain, we want to go with the flow, experience everything in that dream like “as if” and save the rational, analyzing left brain for after the experience and our journals. If you have experience with the hypnagogic state it’s the same thing but on steroids.

You will keep that same relaxed flowing expansive and contractive experience with the eyes closed. So on the relaxed slow inhale you will gently zoom in on where ever that afterimage is and all the sensations you can experience in relation to that experience and on the slow relaxed out-breath you will gently expand out to your full experience of all sensations related to NOW and being. Focus is on bright afterimage while keeping relaxed awareness on all possible sensations. 

Get ready for some amazing experiences once you get this right. If you accept that whatever sensations you experience are reality then you are about to blast off into realms of bliss. In fact, this is probably the easiest way to achieve Jhana. 

Now for the tricky part which is just going to take time and experimentation. You are going to get some insane visuals and blissful feelings, and I want you to just ride it out at first. Just experience and try not to exert control over it. You are not skrying aethyrs or going speak with ancestors or having a jam session with Apollo, you can do those things with this, but I want you to just try to experience the waves of bliss and the visuals for what they are. ALLOW. Let the waves and colors and sensations do as they please without your effort or interpretations. If you see gods and angels appear and bless you don’t interact, if the universe burns away and you are left sitting in a paradise don’t jump up and taste the fruit just yet. Let the experiences just roll through you, taste the bliss but do not grasp, command, demand, influence or direct in anyway. In time you definitely can if you want! I just want you to see what CAN be if you allow it to happen. If that takes weeks, months or years that’s up to you and your goals. I highly recommend researching the different jhanas though as this will be quite insightful.

To bring this into the practical realm, you would first do a magickal ritual to direct your intent and then use this method to skry or as a means of gnosis to produce a magickal change. So, for an evocation you would set up everything, banish, purify, make your calls inside a circle and keep the flame in the triangle and then perform the kasina. You would then allow the afterimage to morph and grow into the angel. For sigil magick one could have the basic intent of power, success, bliss for any operation, perform the kasina, let the afterimage do its thing and once you enter this glowing relaxed equanimity state where it feels like everything is as it is, all is fine THEN create the sigil in that space and release it. Trust me on that one!