magic via affirmations/visualization/faith

[hamletincarnate]

how many of you do not use ritual but try to bring about desired change via affirmations (either spoken or thought or mantra-style), visualization (and or meditation), and belief that what you want/need will manifest itself?

many thinkers say that we are made of the same particles of the whole universe and so our thoughts our things. we can manifest our own reality by thinking/believing it into being.

thoughts?

[semi]

I do both ritual and nonritual. Works the same either way. I just like riual when I want to do something more...um...ritualistic. I believe we create our own realities for the most part.

[Jolantru]

Perhaps, it's just intent that really matters, isn't it?

[Necrosapien]

I have to agree with the above post. I'm not sure it matters exactly what we do but that it has a meaning or symbology to us and therefore makes us put faith that it will happen. It's the belief that something will happen, not necessarily doing specific things.

That's my opinion and I'm sure that there might be some who disagree, but those are my thoughts.

[AlAskendir]

how many of you do not use ritual but try to bring about desired change via affirmations (either spoken or thought or mantra-style), visualization (and or meditation), and belief that what you want/need will manifest itself?

many thinkers say that we are made of the same particles of the whole universe and so our thoughts our things. we can manifest our own reality by thinking/believing it into being.

thoughts?


I do use ritual, but sparingly....

I use affirmations all the time, to excellent effect!

I am a non-christian devotee of Ernest Holmes' Science of Mind, a body of work that brings anyone who might read it to such clarity about how manifestation can possibly work, skimming out the intensive christian focus.

The problem for me comes in three spots.....
> the first is where I am phrasing my affirmation or desired state of affairs in the present tense but can tell that I am pretending to believe that it is now true,
> the second is how I sometimes seem to need to repeat and repeat until I get almost disgusted with the whole idea before I let go by giving up on it, and then it comes into being AND THEN I take it for granted so much that even after it fades away I don't seem to want to do any 'maintenance manifestation' to keep it happening...
> the third is how I long for the whole process to be easier, and maybe flashier? Like hollywood special effects maybe?

Childish, I know. I also know that these difficulties are problems in my mind-self, not anything outside of me, but at least I have gotten to that part of the improvement process that I can recognize and thus maybe properly target the problems.

[misty]

When I do any sort of spell work, I tend to use visualization and the belief that the affects of my work will manifest itself. This reminds me of the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy...basically how a belief or expectation affects the outcome of a situation. The mind is a very powerful tool...I am constantly surprised at the things I can accomplish simply with intent and belief.

[Bethra]

Once upon a time I used to do ritual work all the time then I realised that much of what I was doing was little more than fetters for me to focus my mind upon. The whole idea of ritual is to get the mind into focus on the subject fully. To center your entier awareness upon the work you wish to do. A ritual is basicaly a tool for your mind to use to focus your intent upon. Just like the altar trappings and spell components, it all trains the mind to focus on the task in hand. Ritual work is hard and grulling for this exact reason it teaches you to use the power of your mind totaly focusing on one thing and one thing only, blinkered from anything that is external to the work you are involved in. Once the mind is trained to a developed level it can be focused without the need for all the trappings and ritual. The end result will be the same IF your focus is strong enough without the need of ritual as a fetter. Guaining this level of focus is often very difficult without something to center the mind upon but it is by no means impossible. I myself refure to it as Alpha Magic. The benifits of training the mind to this level are that you can do Alpha Magic anywhere you like so long as you can drop into the required state of mind. No more need of altars and trappings. No more need of spell components. Its all done in the mind working with energies and vibrations and particals just as in ritual but without the need to take up so much space.