Cognitive Magic

Introduction

There are two critical skills to develop on the journey to becoming a mage: 1) the ability to develop ideas in your mind, and 2) the ability to communicate those ideas to the Universe. Developing ideas involves concentrated attention towards an idea, such as visualizing and simulating the scenario or concept in detail. The thought should be accompanied by a knowing that it is possible to attain the desired outcome.

Cognitive magic works by programming the brain in a process called intentional perceptual attunement. From a cognitive magic perspective, each thought is an attractor in the sense that it attracts other thoughts and ideas that are relevant to it. Whenever one holds an idea in mind for a sustained period of time, the mind generates relevant ideas, thoughts, and potential actions related to the idea. Concentrated attention upon a thought builds its ability to attract other thoughts to it. The degree of concentration and level of detail in the visualization or simulation in combination with the level of belief it will occur, determines how strong of an attractor the thought will be.

Once enough thoughts are attracted to the original creation thought, a perceptual logic is developed that will filter affordances in the environment to present only relevant action potentials to perception. In this way, potential to take action and bring the thought to reality reveal themselves to the individual. This is the process of intentional perceptual attunement that programs the mind to perceive possibilities for action aligned with the original idea.

Cognitive Magic

A Druid Mage should spend time, energy, and resources understanding their own mind. The majority of the population is not aware that their thoughts are creating their reality. It would be perfect if there was some piece of technology that made individuals aware of the impact their thoughts and thinking patterns have on their reality. One method of achieving this is to teach people how to do magic, i.e. intentionally programming the brain. Magic teaches individuals that concentrated intention about a particular idea can increase the probability of it occurring, which is true.

Druid magic acknowledges the basic truth that thoughts create our reality. For example, a happy and joyous thought changes one’s perception of the environment to find the positive aspects of it, which changes our subjective experience of reality. Thoughts create perceptual filters that influence how you perceive and interact with the environment. The longer you think those thoughts, and more attention you devote to them, the stronger the filter is. When one has negative, doubting, or fear-based thoughts, perception will focus on elements of the environment that reinforce that negative thought pattern.

If these thought patterns persist for a long enough time, they can create a lasting perceptual filter that can become stuck, trapping one in a negative thought cycle. To break the cycle, you have to meditate and release all those perceptual filters by directing awareness inward. Visualize energy coming down from above and up from below, flowing into you and filling you with loving energy. Try to maintain that feeling of love. When you exist in this state of oneness with the Universe, you are able to heal and program your body and mind much easier. Develop the idea of what you would like to change while you are in this state, i.e. achieving your hopes and dreams, reducing stress, or reducing negative thought patterns. Think through that thought in detail to consider related ideas.

It is critical that you truly believe you can and will accomplish your idea. Starting with small and attainable goals will help build your confidence that you can envision something in your mind and have that thing manifest in reality through action. This is the heart of the creative process which contains cycles of contemplation and observation followed by inspired action.

When an individual becomes a creator, they know they have the power to make their ideas a reality. Similarly, they know that doubts and fear only impede their creative ability. Becoming a creator is an empowering process of becoming aware of your thought processes and manually controlling them, rather than being controlled by them. You can become a victim of a mind that has developed entrenched thought patterns that continually interpret the world in a negative manner. To break free of this victim mentality, remember that you are an unlimited creative and have the potential to shape your reality.

So much can change at the snap of a finger when one changes the conceptual structure that is being used to guide thinking. Humans don't realize they have this mechanism that filters their perceptions and ideas. It is there, running in the background, influencing ideation and eye saccades. Here, it was called perceptual logic and it is the very thing that enables one to see how to interact with objects in the environment, a sort of perceptual intelligence. Knowledge is not just what you know, but how to interact with the environment. Once you realize you have these perceptual filters, you can begin to become more aware of their functioning and even change them to your benefit. Meditation, mindfulness, and magic are three ways of changing your perceptual logic filters.

Intentional Perceptual Attunement

In cognitive magic, magic is a method of communicating your ideas, thoughts, and desires to your own unconscious mind in order to program the brain in a process of intentional perceptual attunement. Intentional pereptual attunement is the process of tuning perceptual processes through intention. Perception is tuned by the consciousness of the agent focusing on an idea that spurs neural activation patterns related to it. These activation patterns contain sensorimotor profiles, which are percept-action pairings. With these pairings, it is possible to produce what are known as object affordances, or the interactive potential of objects. The mental image and idea the consciousness maintains primes the network of the brain and biases it to perceive certain object affordances in the environment known as perceptually salient object affordances. Mental imagery and visualization therefore tune the perceptual processes dynamically by applying intention as a sort of filter to produce perceivable object affordances in the environment. When an object acffordances beomes perceptible, it can raise the probability of accomplishing a goal related to that object. Thus, when an individual navigates throughout their environment, they may see several small opportunities to interact with the environment to attain their goals they may not otherwise have seen and therefore raise the overall likelihood of attaining their goal, which is here called magic.

The process of intentional perceptual attunement can be broken down into four phases that include: 1) calming the mind, 2) formalizing intention, 3) sending energy into the idea, and 4) listening for the response.

1. Calm the mind: To calm the mind, find a quiet place and take a few deep breaths. Enter into a meditative state.

2. Formalize intention: Think through the idea you would like to accomplish. Consider what would help you accomplish it. Think about what it would feel like to attain your desire. Maintain a calm knowing that this can be accomplished by you. Develop a visualization of you attaining the goal. Try to imagine as many details of the visualization as possible. Concentrate your attention on the visualization and increase its clarity.

3. Send energy: Imagine sending energy into that idea. In your mind's eye, imagine sending energy into the image you formalized in step 2. Cultivate love, joy, and gratitude and send that energy into the idea. Think back on a particularly loving memory, and use that feeling to send the energy. The visualization is a method to communicate to your higher self in the unconscious mind. The energy creates a thought attractor of your idea, which will attract other related thoughts and actions.

4. Listen for response: Relax and listen to a response from your higher self. Sit quietly and wait for any thoughts, images, impressions, ideas, or words from the higher self. Know that the higher self has heard your idea and that it is working to make your idea a reality. After you are done listening for a response take immediate action on the idea to begin its manifestation in reality. For example, write down any ideas and impressions you had while you were listening to the higher self or throughout the session. Recording insights reinforces the idea that these thoughts are important and impactful for the magic. This is the perceptual placebo effect once more.

This procedure is a process of communicating with your unconscious mind. First, you enter into a meditative state, which disengages the perceptual logic that guides daily activity. In this state, new perceptual logic can be created to guide interaction in the environment. The intention that you develop and the thought attractor that forms creates a new perceptual logic that will present opportunities for achieving your goal. The energy that you send into the idea is a form of concentrated intention that makes the thought attractor stronger. Thus, the longer you maintain your concentrated intention and the degree of concentration impacts how effective the magic will be. Listening to a response from the higher self is a way of convincing yourself that the higher self did in fact hear what you told it, which strengthens the perceptual placebo effect. Listen for any insights, thoughts, and intuition, and record these. This will inform your cognitive system that these kinds of insights are important and that it should generate them more often.

Magical Conceptual Technologies

It is possible to use ideas, techniques, and artifacts to increase your ability to perform effective magic. A magical conceptual technology is an idea or concept that can be used to carry out magical workings. Examples include calling upon God, the angels, or gods and goddesses to come into your magical work and use their energy to increase the overall energy of the creative idea.

To begin the practice of cognitive magic, you can use a crystal to represent the Universe. The crystal is a magic conceptual technology that is designed to create the perceptual placebo effect. This means that the degree of belief that you have that this crystal is in fact the Universe determines how effective the outcome will be. In the beginning you are essentially tricking yourself into believing that the crystal is an expression of the Universe. As you progress and contemplate further about the nature of consciousness and the Universe, especially the concept that we are all one, your belief in the crystal will increase. In cognitive magic, this crystal is known as a luck machine, as it is used to increase the probability of a certain outcome in reality.

There are six main stages of a magical working using a luck machine:

1. Become one with the crystal. Feel the crystal’s weight in your hand, look at it’s intricacies and details, feel its wholeness and completeness, and try to feel its energy or vibrational frequency and match your own to it. Calm the mind while you are doing this to focus only on the crystal. Enter into a meditative state while inspecting the crystal.

2. Formalize your intention. Visualize what you would like to have happen, picture it in as much detail as possible. Consider variables such as the necessary steps to achieve the idea, outcomes associated with the idea, and what it would feel like to achieve the idea. Maintain a confident knowing that your ideas are possible and can be accomplished by you.

3. Anchor your intention into the crystal. Imagine the image you have in mind being transferred to the crystal. As you see and feel your thoughts being transmitted to the crystal, imagine the universe is receiving your ideas via the crystal.

4. Send love, joy, and gratitude energy to the crystal as you see your manifestation coming to reality in your mind. Imagine and feel yourself radiating love energy, try saying the word love mentally for an extended period of time. Think back through your memories to find one that you have a particularly loving feeling about. Cultivate that loving feeling and then radiate it outward.

5. Expand your awareness outward while you are radiating love, joy, and gratitude. Expand until you can see the whole universe, or what your mind comprehends it to be. Imagine and feel yourself sending loving energy directly to the universe.

6. Listen to the universe for a response. Sit quietly and wait for any thoughts, images, impressions, ideas, or words from the universe. Know that the universe has heard your idea and that it is working to make your idea a reality. After you are done listening for a response take immediate action on the idea to begin its manifestation in reality. For example, write down any ideas and impressions you had while you were listening to the universe or throughout the session.