Motionlessness

Well, I’m doing quite well with the motionlessness, with the exception of one thing. My body occasionally spasms. My foot will jerk or my thumb or something. I’m wondering if this is acceptable motion because it is completely involuntary. I have had sessions without spasms, so I know it can be done, but yesterday for example, my foot jerked pretty close to when I had laid down. I also wonder at the source of these involuntary movements. What causes muscles to contract like that at random? I might try a few quick relaxation techniques before starting the clock to see if I can eliminate these involuntary movements.

Motionlessness, sitting up

Yesterday I tried my motionlessness sitting up. Usually I do it laying down, and I found it a bit more difficult to assume a relaxed position sitting up. I acheived six minutes, but I was interrupted, so I would have gone longer if I hadn’t been.

Sometimes when I do this exercise I feel like a prisoner in my own body. It’s quite maddening. The body really wants to move. And when I’m focused on not moving, I notice the movements the body makes on its own much more acutely. The face twitches, muscles in the fingers and legs twitch. Breath motion is much more significant than I’d thought. This exercise requires an extreme amount of discipline. It’s outragous to me how strong the impulse to scratch an itch can be, or how difficult it is to keep my tongue still. Still, I will perservere. The more I do it, the more I start to understand the purpose of it.

Here’s what I’m noticing

Success at motionlessness depends on when I do it at this point. If it’s after work and I’m a little tired I can lay motionless for 15min pretty easily. I become quickly relaxed. I don’t fall asleep, but if I laid there much longer I probably would. If I’m tense at all, it’s complete agony and so far, in that state, I haven’t topped eight minutes. Will keep plugging along.

yay! 15 minutes

Today I did my motionlessness exercise after work and I was able to stay still for 15 full minutes. I will see if I can duplicate these results tomorrow.

Inching forward

Today’s motionlessness session was a bit longer–between 6 and 7 minutes. This time I was in the bedroom on top of the bed spread in my work clothes. The lights were off. I could hear noise from the street and T working on the computer. This time around it was the mouth that did it again–I twitched my tongue and mouth. My fingers proved problematic as they were intensely cold the whole time while the rest of me was warm. I may try again tonight before bed. If I can get in more that one session a few times a week, I might see more progress.

Frantic, angry fingers

The first mind control exercise in Liber Null is to practice motionlessness. The goal is to find a comfortable position and hold it for at least fifteen minutes without moving the body at all. This does not include breath movements, obviously.

My first attempt took place on the sofa. I want to practice in a range of locations/positions, as I think true success would include being able to remain motionless in a range of positions/conditions. I laid on the sofa with the TV and music off. T had already gone to bed, so there were no other people around. The only sounds were the hum of the computer and cars driving by outside. The light was on–I was afraid of falling asleep with it off. I kept my eyes closed so that my eyes wouldn’t dry out, forcing me to blink.

I looked at the clock before laying down so that I could get a good idea of how long I went without moving. I settled in and the exercise was easy at first. After just a few moments, however, I began to notice small tensions and discomforts that became very unpleasant. Two of my fingers, for example, felt too close together. I actually felt angry when I suppressed my natural desire to move them. Suddenly all of my fingers felt tense, as if they needed to be flexed. Other parts of my body itched. I tried to think of a neutral body part to concentrate on to take my mind off my fingers. At first I selected my tongue, but when I focused in on it, it immediately felt filled with tension. I switched to my big toe, which made me want to bend it. I went on like this and finally twitched my tongue and then my fingers. I lasted between 4 and 5 minutes. I guess that’s a decent start. I think it will probably take several days of practice to extend my time significantly.

The Syllabus, the meat, MIND CONTROL!

Now that we’ve warmed up a bit by creating a habit of recording dreams and pulling Tarot cards, it’s time to get down to business–to the meat of magick as it were. Because, after all, recording dreams isn’t magick. We’ve agreed to use Peter Carroll’s book Liber Null to begin as it outlines a concise process for developing mind control. We’ll be focusing on the first section titled Liber MMM. Part of the process is to make a record of all of our daily attempts, which will be recorded here.

In addition, now that we’ve had some practice with our dreams, we will be taking steps toward mastering the dreamworld by attempting to manifest a specific object in our dreams. Successes and failures will be recorded here as well. The ultimate goal of gaining mastery over the dreamworld is to practice lucid dreaming, contact entities, and achieve exteriorization, or out of body experiences. But we’ll start with manifesting an object.