Affirmations are a very basic practice suitable for beginners. They can do remarkable things in some cases, but they're mostly a gateway to other things.
What you're dismissing as "self-help," properly understood, is the secret of the ages. You -- like everyone else, of course -- are constantly co-creating the world you experience. If you don't find that world satisfactory, why, that shows you that you're doing it clumsily and unconsciously, rather than learning to direct will and imagination consciously into the process and get what you want. This is what Eliphas Lévi and Dion Fortune were talking about. You've probably heard me say that everyone does magic all the time, but most of us do it badly? That's what I'm talking about, too.
You can literally have the life of your dreams. I've done that and so have other people I know. It's done, using Lévi's phrasing, by using will and imagination to direct the astral light. Every power that ever was or ever will be is in you, right now -- that's the secret of macrocosm and microcosm -- and so you don't have to turn outside yourself for what is already in you. If you do, you're like the guy in the old Sufi story who spent years roaming the world in search of a golden treasure, and all along it was buried in his own back yard.
One other thing. I'm glad my early books on Golden Dawn magic are still helping people, but I'm also a little embarrassed by them. I'd understood the mechanisms of magic at that point but I hadn't yet gotten a clue about the deeper dimensions of the magical art. Treat them as the works of an enthusiastic beginner, and be aware that I've learned a few things since then.
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What you're dismissing as "self-help," properly understood, is the secret of the ages. You -- like everyone else, of course -- are constantly co-creating the world you experience. If you don't find that world satisfactory, why, that shows you that you're doing it clumsily and unconsciously, rather than learning to direct will and imagination consciously into the process and get what you want. This is what Eliphas Lévi and Dion Fortune were talking about. You've probably heard me say that everyone does magic all the time, but most of us do it badly? That's what I'm talking about, too.
You can literally have the life of your dreams. I've done that and so have other people I know. It's done, using Lévi's phrasing, by using will and imagination to direct the astral light. Every power that ever was or ever will be is in you, right now -- that's the secret of macrocosm and microcosm -- and so you don't have to turn outside yourself for what is already in you. If you do, you're like the guy in the old Sufi story who spent years roaming the world in search of a golden treasure, and all along it was buried in his own back yard.
One other thing. I'm glad my early books on Golden Dawn magic are still helping people, but I'm also a little embarrassed by them. I'd understood the mechanisms of magic at that point but I hadn't yet gotten a clue about the deeper dimensions of the magical art. Treat them as the works of an enthusiastic beginner, and be aware that I've learned a few things since then.