The hermetic way. (Franz Bardon)

[osiris]

Although Bardon divides his praxis into ten steps, these are somewhat arbitrary. Here is a summary of his main points:

1. Self-Analysis & Basic Exercises
As mentioned above, the student must work diligently on understanding and harmonizing the four Elements within his own being before doing any further occult work. Bardon prescribes several weeks of minute, mercilessly honest self-observation and recording of one's faults and failings. The student classifies each under the four Elemental categories to see which Elements are out of balance in his Self. A similar exercise classifies his virtues and strengths. Since the magician is to have control over all the Elemental worlds, he must not be unbalanced or have any obsessions that would impede his effectiveness, or allow weak spots that could cause his undoing.
2. Intermediate Concentration & Breathing
In the next step, the student strengthens his ability to concentrate and performs breathing exercises and the techniques of autosuggestion. Bardon regards these as the secret key to the subconscious.
Bardon distinguishes carefully between two kinds of breathing: Pulmonary (normal) and through the skin. This second type of breathing takes practice. The body can respire automatically, but the student needs to learn to control it, combine it with voluntary pulmonary breathing and selectively inspire the various Elements and Akasha.
3. Advanced Visualization Exercises & Element Manipulation
This step entails intense concentration on and visualization of increasingly more complex objects, and "inhaling" the Elements into the body. The student also learns the "loading," or charging, of talismans, rooms, or objects for protection, healing, or other purposes.
4. Accumulation of Elements & Rituals
In this part of the training the student, works to perfect the balancing and concentrating of Elementary energies in the students own and other persons's bodies. In Bardon's system, "rituals" are mot what we normally think of as such, but rather mnemonics based on hand gestures, verbal formulas or visual keys. He claims that once you understand the energies properly, can recall an energy or situation with merely a surreptitious hand gesture, a silent formula or a combination thereof.
5. Transplanting Consciousness & Levitation
This step consists of a graduated series of exercises to prepare the student for physical and astral levitation and astral travel, as a prelude to communication with astral beings. Communication with the astral world can either be active or passive. Passive techniques are simpler and safer, thus Bardon presents them first.
6. Introduction to Astral Beings & Astral Travel
Besides astral beings and travel, this chapter deals with the creation of non-physical beings for the magician's use. Bardon also discusses the perils of accidentally creating them. This inadvertent creation of phantasms which can attach to and parasitize the operator is a great danger for the dabbler in occultism. At this point, Bardon again insists that the student not skip any step in his development, in order to avoid this serious problem.
7. Development of Clairvoyance, Clairaudience & Other Abilities:
Creation of Elementaries
Bardon gives formulas for accessories such as special eye-baths and ear-plugs to aid in development of supersensory perception. He also discusses magick animation of pictures and statues.
8. "Fluid Condensers"
These are special tools which the magician creates to concentrate, store, and manipulate the electric and magnetic fluids. He gives fairly detailed instructions for making, charging and using these "condensers."
First, Bardon teaches that even minute quantities gold can add enormously to the accumulative power of any condenser. Thus, he recommends preparing a gold tincture to "charge" any condensers the student makes. The easiest way is to dissolve a gram of soluble gold chloride in 20 grams of distilled water. (Gold chloride is fairly expensive - about $50 per gram.)
Here is an interesting example of Bardon's condensers: Put a handful of fresh or dry chamomile flowers into a pot. Pour enough cold water over them to cover them completely. Let the chamomile flowers boil for about 20 minutes. Cool them, but leave the lid on the pot and strain the decoction. Put this on the fire again and allow it to evaporate slowly until it weighs about 50 grams. A few drops more or less do not matter at all. Let the extract cool and, for better preservation, mix it with the same quantity (in this case 50 grams) of spirit or alcohol. (Remember to never use methyl or wood alcohol in any preparation meant to be used in or on the body.) To this mixture add about 10 drops of the gold tincture prepared above.

Bardon continues:
If you wish to use the condenser for your own purposes, you may still strengthen it, by adding a drop of your blood or sperm, if possible both together, on a swab of cotton wool, throw this afterwards without any scruples into the condenser and shake the lot well. Then, pour all, in a funnel, through filter paper or linen into a small bottle and keep it well corked in a cool and dark place, ready to use.
The magician can use these condensers in many ways: mixing them with liquids to drink, for anointing, mixing them with incense compounds, or pouring them in small bowls to collect and concentrate certain energies.
Any fluid condenser which has been prepared in this manner does not lose its efficiency even after many years. The condenser must be well shaken each time you are going to use it, the bottle is to be corked again after withdrawing some out of it. In the same way you can prepare several universal condensers from Russian or genuine Chinese tea, from lily-blossoms-best are the white ones-popular leaves, alraune roots or mandragora roots, arnica montana, acacia flowers. Any simple fluid condenser, prepared from one plant is sufficient for normal use such as influencing through the elements, or developing the astral senses by means of the fluid condensers.
9. Magick Mirrors for Astral Travel & Healing
The magick mirror (of which the crystal ball is a species) is valuable for many experiments in clairvoyance, clairaudience and the like. After a brief description, Bardon lists many ways the magician can use it. He describes treatment of the sick using electro-magnetic fluids and the magickal loading of talismans, amulets and gems.
10. Elevation of the Spirit to Higher Levels
This chapter discusses the various ways the student should improve his spiritual qualities. Bardon wraps up with a discussion of several occult topics such as exteriorization, levitation, production of natural phenomena, suggestion, hypnosis, psychometry and long distance impregnation of rooms.

As you guys can see ive added some new enlightenment to my path. To me this has such importance i dont really know what i did without it. I will soon be digging into his books and just fiinished an online reading of Bardon's about how we think and its affects on us. Truly amazing studies.

[osiris]

The Four Elements
Bardon made use of the ancient four elements - Fire, Earth, Air and Water - plus Akasha, or Quintessence. His attributions of the elements are essentially the same as those in other systems and books.: Water for emotions, intuition; Fire for aggressiveness, passion, etc. In his view, the skillful magician was one who could manipulate the Elements to achieve desired effects. Of course, before the student could become master of the Elements, he had to harmonize and control the manifestations of all Elements in his own being.

Bardon taught that man was superior to all spirits, demons and angels in that only man was a "four-pole" being - that is, combining the energies of all the Elements . For instance, gnomes are strictly creatures of Earth, sylphs of Air and so forth. He cautioned the student to beware of tricks and deceptions on the parts of these creatures, who wished to capture a part of the human's soul.

In Bardon's words: "Any deliberate cause, may be such as a wish, a thought or any imagination created in this sphere together with the dynamic concentration of willpower, unshaken faith and fullest conviction is bound to be realized with the help of the elements... . "Consciousness knows neither time nor space, and is therefore an akasha principle. He also instructs the student to re-dissolve the akasha into the universe rather than keep it accumulated. In other words, the "magickal" frame of mind should not be the same as the everyday one.


Preparation of the Student
A pillar of Bardon's method is the point that the magician must be balanced in the Elements that make up his own being. A student with an excess or lack of any Element could not achieve great success, no matter how much work he does. An analogy would be an auto engine: no matter how much fuel you feed to it, it can only generate so much if it is not properly tuned and balanced. After a point, the engine will either wear out quickly or fail if you attempt to make it perform beyond its limits. The difference with humans is that our limits are self-imposed.

Bardon also insists on the point that the student begin at the beginning and not skip any section of his training. The student must completely master each step before proceeding on to the next. Again, the analogy to other endeavors is clear. If magick is a skill like flying, then the student cannot neglect the study of airplanes, weather, safety, avionics and so forth, without serious difficulties in the future.

Finally, as many teachers say, the student must keep a complete and accurate record. Without this, it is hard to repeat successes and avoid repeating mistakes.

[osiris]

Here and the next post are things i read last night. They really are simple but life changing.

INTRODUCTION
First of all: by no means you have to limit yourself to FBs methods only; I never did. But they are a real pleasure, very useful and the faculties gained by them are ... (use your imagination!) ... wundervoll.

Never forget, that we all are in fact already great magicians though most of us don't realize it. The so called ordinary life is our big shared magic, our "first ring of power" (Castaneda)!

The following treatise could also be headed by the title: "How to acquire faculties". It is devised especially for the practice of FBs teachings, but you can adopt it also to get every kind of other "psychic" (or not) faculties.

And please, don't use magic for "ordinary" matters, there is no need to do it. If you have problems with everyday life (money, relationships, health, ... ), then use everyday methods to overcome this situation, it is really ease to do it. If you don't know how, then try this link (sorry, coming up after the completion of this treatise).



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1 - THE EASY WAY

The first and most important thing to know and to remember is the following: it is VERY EASY to acquire the desired faculty!

(And that's the truth, you'll know it!)

Be extremely cautious, if you hear or read formulations like "working hard", "difficult", "master", "practice", "exercise", "fight for it" and so on.

These formulations will create a mental block, your body will immediately prepare to master some difficult task, your muscles will tense, your blood pressure and the adrenaline/cortisone-level will raise. This is a typical "alarm-situation" also called stress. Your body is optimally prepared to run away (from this situation and all related matters) and it would be almost impossible to learn or do something new in such a condition.

Be really careful when you use language: it's our means to structure or even create (in a certain sense) reality. Check always, which feelings or concepts are attached to a certain word or sentence. Every word or sentence which you say to yourself (inner dialog) or to others is a suggestion to yourself or to others, if they can hear it.

I'll give you a couple of examples:

work: an activity which extends over a certain period of time and which is somehow unpleasant. If the same activity is pleasant in nature then the term "work" is omitted and the activity is specified by the proper name. Looking-TV very seldom is called "work".
exercise: a properly devised method which is supposed to assist in acquiring a faculty that is somehow difficult to gain.
Of course, everybody has its own interpretation-set for a certain phrase or word. But there is a certain degree of similarity of interpretation; if there wouldn't be correspondence, then language would be of no use to communicate our ideas.
Suggestions tend to "accumulate" if presented often. As an example take the weather report: "Tomorrow the weather will be quite BAD, it will rain all day." This is the suggestion, that if you see rain, then you should feel bad. And after hearing this induction several hundreds of times from most people around you, you will react to it and feel bad. This is a good example of "black magic" in our everyday life.

Therefore it is extremely important, that you say to yourself, that it is really very ease do this thing, that it would be a pleasure, that it is of no importance if you have immediate success or not, and so on.

Then your whole being prepares to do something pleasant and will immediately go for it. Basically the wirings of our brain are really simple: avoid pain - go for pleasure.

You may object: I can say these things to myself, but I can't really believe them wholeheartedly; I have tried this and that and it never worked ...

Here comes in a special trick: no matter if you believe it or not, say it to yourself and it works, though you can't "feel" it (at first). It even may work better if you don't believe it! Sounds weird, doesn't it? But it works!

Strangely enough Franz Bardon discourages the reader stating on several occasions, that it would be very difficult, to master the exercises. I don't know his motivation for doing so, but I guess that he wanted discourage people in search of magical power to harm or influence others or in search of easy methods for gaining riches and that like. A second point may be his wish to protect the beginner from disappointment, if results doesn't come immediately. He did know, that the dedicated student never gives up, and that this kind of student sooner or later would be successful. But why trying to do it the hard way, if there exists the easy way? As Bardon smilingly did put it in words according to his student Dr. M.K.: It's all sooo simple! (Souvenirs De Franz Bardon)

Perhaps FB dedicated his Initiation into Hermetics only to highly talented people. Mister M.K. for example succeeded with the first steps in only one month.

But I'll tell you the good news: everyone can succeed with FBs exercises, no matter how talented you are. The only prerequisite is a normal brain. Are you able to speak your native language fluently or are you able to read? These degree of intelligence is by far enough to be able to gain all the benefits out of his teachings.

So always keep in mind: it is VERY EASY to acquire the desired new faculty!



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2 - THE INNER DIALOG

What is a faculty?

It's a set of highly structured activities, which are triggered if you "want to do it" or by shifting your attention to it.

How do you raise your hand? Nobody really knows, we only can DO it. We learned HOW to do it in our childhood and human physiology tells us, that with this simple movement are involved hundreds of different activities first in our brain, followed by different muscle-activities, coordination, feedback loops ... and so on.

It's all done by our unconscious, we only can give instructions and judge the outcomes:

"yes GOOD so, hm ... not so good, a little bit more right, now left, yes, and now faster please, come on, oh no! ... slow it down, don't hurry ... (and so on)."
Our unconscious knows what the meanings of "good", "slow", "hurry" and "yes" are and it will react correspondingly to this inner dialog, adjusting to the desired outcome.
And as most of our activities are repetitious in nature we learn to do most things automatically, with almost no conscious effort. We even can reach a point when a faculty is so deeply rooted in our unconscious, that we can't stop it anymore by conscious effort. Try to look at an "A" not hearing the sound of it; it's extremely difficult; you see an external picture and at the same time you are forced to hear an inner sound. Through thousands of identical situations our brain has learned to make the inner sound of "a" everytime it sees this special picture.

If you practice "thought-control", an exercise (better called activity) of step one of Initiations into Hermertics, then you shift your conscious attention to the inner dialog. All of us are engaged in this inner dialog, but most people do it so automatically, that they have almost no conscious perception of the process.

Now almost all students of "THE ART", call them mystics, yogis, magicians and so on, regard this inner dialog to be their worst enemy. Why?

Imagine you're doing for the first time the exercise called "one-pointedness of mind" of step 1 in Initiations into Hermetics. As FB points out, in this exercise you have to keep in mind only one thought of your choice, not letting shift your attention to any other thought.

Yet as you will notice, your mind will not obey your conscious wish and will almost immediately begin to wander. So you put your attention back to your object of concentration only to notice, that after a few moments you're back on some irrelevant topic like "I have to feed the cat after this meditation". Again you put your attention back and at this point begins a struggle between the conscious mind and the automatic attitudes of the inner dialog.

This is for most beginners a point of endless frustration and anger. A lot of people just give up at this early step of development.

In "Autobiography of a yogi" by Yogananda you can find an example of it. At the beginning of the 14. chapter you can read the passage, where the guru of Yogananda Sri Yukteswar wants his student to come and calls: "Mukunda" (as was the first name of Yogananda), and the young Yogananda answered: "Master, I'm meditating" (and therefore I cannot come). And the master replied: "I know how you are "meditating", your thoughts are wandering like leaves with the wind."

I could add hundreds of similar examples because the experience of the disturbing inner dialog is a generally encountered pattern and well documented in occult literature. Every student of occult arts will encounter this "problem".

For this reason FB puts thought-control and one-pointedness of mind at the beginning of his course.

Most people and teachers claim that at this point you have to learn the art of concentration. I think that they are wrong. Just now you are PERFECT in concentration! Everyone has a domain, where he can concentrate perfectly. Think of something which you really like, which you can do for long times, maybe watching TV, reading, chat, drinking beer ...

Every psychologist will tell you, that you need tremendous amounts of attention and concentration to do these things. Often we don't realize how smart we got in our everyday life!

Other people can't think of something, which they really like; then perhaps they can perfectly concentrate on worrying. This kind of people can worry all day and all night too, they are wonderful worrying-yogis, and so they put in reality almost all of their worries! That's no joke, that's magic in action!

All you have to do is to shift your attention from your present object of concentration to the new faculty which you wish to acquire. It may take a little bit of time, but by repetition concentration on the new faculty comes without effort and zag -> an undine appears before you (it's a joke, undines are for a later step of development).

The inner dialog is no enemy at all but a precious ability to master everyday life and your ally in acquiring every kind of magic.

Now I will tell you how you can do your "concentration" exercises in a comfortable way. Take the case that you are learning "one-pointedness of mind". Shift your conscious attention to the thought of your choice. As I pointed out before, there will soon intrude other disturbing thoughts. And here comes the important point: Don't panic. Don't be afraid. Remain calm and composed. Don't call them "disturbing thoughts". *** Welcome these "other" thoughts !*** It's a silly thing to fight your unconscious automatic patterns! You will only feel bad and if you feel bad, then your unconscious will connect this situation with unpleasantness and will try to avoid the situation. Then you will say to yourself or to your friends: "the exercises are quite difficult and I was not able to master them".

Give yourself the opportunity to learn a NEW pattern: namely "one-pointedness of mind" (in this case). You have never done it before, so how should you know how to do it? Give your brain the possibility to experiment a little bit. If you are very strong motivated to learn the new ability then sometimes it's useful to go even in the wrong direction. Deliberately think of other items and enjoy the feeling to do it faulty "by yourself".

So imagine you are sitting there forgetting almost completely that you are doing a concentration exercise. Then suddenly, bang!, you are back on your topic. You didn't fight for it. You are simply back. You were sitting there thinking on some irrelevant thing and from one moment to the other your attention jumps back to the object of concentration. Nobody knows why. It's done by the unconscious. But you are back.

Enjoy this experience! Say to yourself "Oh yes, I'm back, this is the correct state of mind." (Or just "feel" it without words at a later stage of development).

Then after a few moments, again your attention shifts. And after a while, again you will be back.

In this learning process your focus of attention will constantly change. I like to compare it to a pendulum. It is always in motion. For short periods it will pass the center, which in this comparison is the thought of your choice. But most times it will be outside. As you proceed, the pendulum will calm down and therefore pass the center more often. In the end it will rest perfectly in the center for as long as you want. Let the pendulum (mind) go his own way, don't try to interfere. At last it goes automatically there where you want it to go!

[osiris]

3 - REPETITION: THE GOLDEN KEY TO THE PALACE

Do you remember this old joke:

Yesterday I met a funny man at a party. We talked about music and he said, that he likes piano. I asked him if he plays the piano and he replied: "No. I wanted to learn it. But I couldn't. I tried twice, but it didn't work."

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It's of crucial importance to repeat your chosen exercise ***EVERY DAY*** SEVERAL TIMES for a short span of time (10 minutes or so) until you are successful. Please notice that I use the term "repetition" instead of "practice". Simply shift your attention to the task without trying hard.

Don't believe that practicing gives only these results which you can observe! EVERY REPETITION of a given exercise causes a lot more extensive effects on an unconscious level than you will ever realize in your conscious mind. After finishing the exercise your unconscious CONTINUES to work for the desired outcome and many different levels of your personality work together diligently to realize your wish. Don't identify completely with your conscious mind. Our consciousness, however well developed, is still but a reed on the sea of the unconscious. Begin to trust your other levels of consciousness, they do an optimal job!

It's often compared to planting. You can only plant the seed (your wish for a certain faculty) into the ground (your unconscious) and then you have to trust mother nature that the seed will unfold his inborn tendencies. If you anxiously or impatiently dig the seed out every day to control the germination, then you disturb the natural process and success will eventually be lost. Water your "seed" everyday with the repetition of the exercise so that the "soil" remains "moist" having optimal conditions for the ongoing development of the little plant.

Practice daily as you resolved to do and after completion of the exercise shift your attention to everyday activities without worrying about more or less success with your exercise.

Trust in time: be convinced that success is about to come. As you know: a train is bound to reach the next station because he has to follow the rails. It's only a matter of time. In this case you are fully confident: you don't worry if the rails were put in the right direction, if the conductor knows how to drive and so on. Likewise trust your inner processes. Yet it's very important that your train's engine has enough power to reach the station. And this power you add by every repetition of your exercise.

After some time, when you did repeat the chosen exercise for a certain number of times, things will change. You will notice interesting features about the mental processes related with your exercise. When you make it to this point, doing the exercise will become a most pleasurable journey. You will experience every day new and interesting facets and features of it. These occurrences will lift your spirits and will be an ongoing motivation for your progress. That's one reason why I said that advice is necessary only at the beginning. If you master the first steps then you will go on and on. You will know, that with every new exercise you may experience at first some difficulties, but knowing them of a transitory nature they won't bother you anymore.

A seeming little success or failure with a given repetition of an exercise doesn't matter at all! A single session is never of importance. There will always be some little ups and downs when you practice until you reach the goal. Our mind is no silicon chip which functions always in the same way. We are living beings and therefore we are subjected to oscillations in our performance. And finally there will come the happy day when you take off. It will always be a breakthrough: although success comes step by step, the first experience of a new faculty is always a single elated event. The practitioner knows that this is true. It happens over and over again that you seem to have almost no success at all: and from one moment to the other everything is changed. Real success comes most always as a surprise: and you will know for sure, that you got it.

Now, how often should one practice a certain exercise? The most efficient amount of practicing time varies greatly from one person to another, but also from one exercise to another. It depends on the talent for a certain faculty, on your capacity to stop the internal dialog, on your self-esteem about your possibilities to learn something new, and so on. Therefore you have to find out by experience for yourself, how often you should repeat an exercise. It varies from 1-2 times a week up to 6 times (or even more) a day.

I will give you an example: there are people who are very good at visualization. They use it almost all day as a normal component of their thinking process. And they do so from their very childhood on. Therefore they are quite used to visualize something.

That's "talent": if you do something for a long period of time, then you can do it most certainly very well.

Others don't use visualization with their normal thinking process: they think mostly in words (internal SOUNDS) and therefore they are not used to visualize. Such people have to invest more time to develop this ability.

If you are a natural at doing an exercise, then you may go by with 2 - 3 repetitions a week; if you have an aptitude for a new ability but are not able to master it to its full extend, then you should practice it 1-2 times a day. And at last, if it seems very difficult for you to attain the new ability or if you like to proceed very fast, then it may be necessary to repeat it up to 6 times a day. (But be careful: never overdo! If you feel unhappy or if you notice other unpleasant feelings, then reduce the amount of practicing.)

There is certainly a minimum amount of practicing time needed to acquire a new ability. If you read a sentence, then you have to do it in a certain time pattern. You can't read every hour one word in which case you won't be able to understand the text. Likewise you will get nothing at all, if your repetitions of a given exercise are to distant in time.

Therefore decide carefully if you really want to begin practicing a certain exercise.

One or two exercises will suffice at first. If you are coming along very well with one or two, THEN you may increase the number of exercises which you practice REGULARLY.

Most beginners want to master too many abilities at once. I can understand this perfectly, it's quite natural.

If someone begins with Bardon's system, he is highly motivated to get all the magical faculties which sound so supernatural. A newbie really wants to be a great magician who has the powers to do almost everything.

Yet Hermetics is different. It's no tool to influence others, either in the good or in the bad way. It's no tool to get superhuman powers. You will be no super(wo)man who saves the world!

Hermetics is a method to improve ourselves: a method for REAL progress. It's a method to make ourselves MORE human. If your main motivation for magic is only the fulfillment of your wishes, then you will be hindered in your progress by these very wishes. At first we have to learn patience, perseverance and tenacity. If we master these qualities, then success is bound to come also in most other domains, and everything will change for the better. You will realize, that from this point on, you will be able to get most worldly things without the least use of magic. THIS IS REAL PROGRESS ! Therefore you eventually decide, not to use magic for everyday concerns. And if you decide so, the gates to magical powers will open widely.

Karl Brandler-Pracht (1864-1945?), a German magician recommends in his "Text-book for the development of occult powers" (Lehrbuch zur Entwicklung der okkulten Kraefte) the following exercise to develop the aforementioned qualities: "Get a large vessel and fill it with beans, peas and lentils. Mix thoroughly. Now separate the 3 kinds of seeds in 3 vessels. Do it repeatedly, always when you have 15 minutes of spare time. Watch your feelings: don't get nervous or impatient. Do it with an inner feeling of quiet dedication and love. If you succeed with this, then get a pack of bird-seeds and separate the many different kinds of seeds. If you get nervous at this slog almost throwing the hole thing out of the window, then have a short break, sing a funny song and try to relax. Then start again."

Please consider also that our society puts at our disposal most ways and means to obtain a commonly desired outcome like the faculty to read, to drive and so on. For example we have to go to school, in order to practice regularly our faculties to read, to write, to count etc.

But our society knows nothing about magical goals. In this respect you are completely on your own. Therefore YOU ARE IN NEED OF A METHOD, which secures absolute regular practice of such exercises, which develop magical abilities.

When you begin to practice, then you have most certainly the sincere longing, to do your exercises most regularly. Yet every wish has only a certain amount of motivational-power. The stronger this energy is, the longer you will be urged to do your exercises regularly. But even very strong wishes contain only a limited amount of motivational-power. As time passes, other wishes and motivations will blend in and capture your attention so that your resolution to do the exercises will become weaker and weaker, then it may become quite unimportant to practice and at last you will almost forget your resolution. There will remain only a faint whisper of your bad conscience. Only 10% (or less) of people have in my experience the inborn faculty to steadfastly carry out any resolution.

All others need from time to time a reinforcement of their determination. Therefore the importance of spiritual communities, of scholar/master relationships, of spiritual oaths and as the newest emerging development in this line: internet discussion boards. Very effective in this respect are also books on occult matters. All this different means aid to focus our attention on the task.

Please consider also, what another author tells us about regular practice:

"A schedule of practice is vitally important, so the first thing you want to do is develop one. If you don't have a schedule, what you are saying is that you will practice when you have time. That never works. Decide on a time when you will, on a regularly recurring basis, practice. The time you pick, and the frequency of practice you plan on, should be realistic. Remember, you want these to be times and places you can stick with once you have made the commitment to do it. Now, you are in all likelihood an exceptional person, one who can do many things a lot of other people cannot do.
How do I know this? Because over the years I have found that it is mainly only exceptional people who seek out and learn to use self hypnosis. Here is another little tidbit I can pass on to you from years of experience: The more exceptional you are, the more you need a schedule. I don't know why that is, it just is. There are exceptions, of course, but for the most part everyone who is well organized and easily scheduled is also boring, plodding and unimaginative. Incapable of anything except the most mundane activities. The flip side of this is that the more productive and capable you are, the more you must have a schedule to get everything in. You probably already know this. But if you don't, pay attention: Develop a schedule! "

It would be a very good idea, to invent your own personal method which fits your personal needs best. For example my preferred method uses diagrams. I like diagrams a lot. I'm used to work for "good" diagrams which show or prove something. I really detest "bad" diagrams which prove only failure or chaotic behavior.
Say, I want to do a certain exercise 6 times a day and not less. To monitor my performance I draw a diagram like the following.



I feel strongly motivated, to get a nice diagram by repeating the exercise every day the required 6 times. I really detest not to reach the minimum score of 6, which in consequence would ruin (like this one shown as example) the neat diagram. At first I did these diagrams by hand; nowadays I use a computer.

Yet this method meets only my needs at best, you should find something which is best fitted for yourself. (I know a lot of people who really hate diagrams.) The only important point is, that you do your exercises regularly.

Therefore don't be disappointed, if you realize suddenly that you "forgot" to practice. As I stated above this kind of behavior is quite natural and widespread among people. Be prepared in advance that such a thing may happen; you can even watch your motivational intensity: you may detect the fading out in advance and take appropriate measures in time.

One last word in this respect: In a certain sense time doesn't exist. There exists only the present moment. Therefore you have to begin in this very instant. We can't say: "I will begin tomorrow", because there exists no tomorrow. One does always these things which he has always done. If you want to be sure that you will do something tomorrow, then you have to DO IT TODAY first.

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The following two sentences are very important: "If you do it now, then you will do it most certainly also tomorrow, if you don't do it now, then you will do it never." and "One repeats always these things which he has always done."

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These two sentences are true for almost all actions in our life, from the most important to the least quite meaningless ones. Therefore be very careful about EVERY action in your life, because it's most likely that it will build up a new habit for the good or for the bad or to reinforce an old good or bad one, depending on the nature of this action.

[osiris]

www.geocities.com/franzbardon/

Where i found this. But i do plan to read through his books very soon.

[crazycat]

www.abardoncompanion.com/index.html

I was doing some reading from this same person from the above website just a few weeks ago. I was interested in these MP3 files that day.

www.abardoncompanion.com/MP3-Links.html

I was planning on getting more into that after the holidays. I've really been getting into a lot of these older writings and people lately.

[osiris]

Awesome ill check the mp3 links from home tonight.

Its good to be back.