Breaking The Illusion 🪬

The truth is, we actually have no idea what reality truly is. Everything appears so obvious to us: the houses outside, the clouds, the sun, other people. Yet, in the end, everything passes through a filter, a filter of the mind. We do not see reality itself. We see what the mind expects reality to be. Isn't this one of the most fundamental points? Philosophers have practically written entire epics about it.

The moment we are born is incredibly important. As you continue reading what I write on this site, you'll notice that I return to this point often. The moment of birth is the moment when consciousness transitions from infinite consciousness into a limited one. From that moment onward, we become connected to the mind and to this world's field of experience. We are exposed to forms, shapes, concepts—in short, to information about this world.

That information represents certain patterns, and the mind records those patterns, gradually reshaping consciousness itself. Little by little, we begin to forget our original state. Even time is one of these learned concepts. In fact, it is entirely possible that not even a single second has passed since the moment we were born. That infinite mind is still there, just behind us, not even a second away. It is the memories and the flow of info that makes it feel like a far away moment.

But everything we have learned about duration, flow, and the sequence of events becomes a tremendous obstacle to realizing this.

The mind and perception itself, possesses an astonishing ability to deceive itself. No matter how much I emphasize this, no matter how much I underline it, it will never be enough. Because we are inside that deception. As long as we remain within it, everything feels completely real.

Here's a small clue: we can observe this in dreams. Notice how time stretches, bends, and even breaks. Sometimes we experience what feels like a very long dream, only to wake up and realize it lasted only a few minutes. Or we think it felt long because entire scenes were skipped. But that's not really what is happening. What is actually happening is that you're shifting states of being. With every shift, a large portion of experiential memory is forgotten. That's why, when you wake up in this world again, it feels as though very little happened.

That is another moment where you deceive yourself.

The entire experience depends on the frame of consciousness from which you observe it.

Likewise, you can live through what feels like an hour's worth of events in a dream that lasts only a minute. But I won't dive too deeply into that here, that is a subject for another time.

What I really want to say in this text is something much simpler.

The practice of magic is, first and foremost, about breaking this chain of self-deception.

It is not about burning incense to drive away energies, summoning spirits, cursing people, or seeing the future. Even if those things may exist within the practice, this fundamental point must be deeply understood before approaching them. Otherwise, it becomes very easy to lose your way, and before long you'll find yourself using magic merely to discover where you'll meet your next lover, falling right back into the very same absurdities.

Although I cannot fully explain why, the subconscious becomes an incredibly powerful tool when it comes to breaking illusions.

Perhaps consciousness, despite limiting itself, can never completely sever its connection to infinite consciousness(well obviously:D). Everything left outside those limits becomes what we call the subconscious.

Viewed this way, the subconscious is like a bridge between infinite consciousness and limited consciousness. It is not entirely free, yet neither is it fully constrained. It remains remarkably flexible.

To step outside the illusion, we must change our frame of reference.

Right now, most of us operate from what I call the world's frame of reference. This has nothing to do with the planet itself. I simply use the term to describe our shared psychic field.

Think about it this way:

Unless you change what you are constantly exposed to, you cannot truly understand what you're exposed to. If you smell the same scent all the time, eventually you stop noticing it. If you keep looking at the same thing, you eventually stop seeing it. Everything is different the first time you encounter it, but over time it becomes ordinary, monotonous, and ultimately ignored.

This is one of the mind's natural tendencies. Anything familiar or explained becomes automated and normalized.

The subconscious, however, continually confronts you with what you do not know. It exposes you to it gently, following its own rhythm. The strange things you see, the absurdities, the bizarre experiences, all of them are products of this mechanism.

Another important aspect is that the subconscious makes many different kinds of experiences possible. Things your rational mind could never comprehend while awake become possible within dreams. This stretches the mind, and that is immensely valuable for the practice of magic.

The first step a magician can take toward breaking the illusion is to begin observing dreams and trying to understand them. As dream consciousness gradually presents its symbols and patterns in its own rhythm, the mind naturally begins to expand.

Still, neither dreams nor waking reality represent things as they truly are. Never forget that.

You will encounter strange things in dreams. Astonishing things. But when you do, remember that none of them are what they actually appear to be. You are still inside the mind's interpretation.

Real magic begins when the illusion itself starts to break.

And what lies beyond it resembles nothing you have ever seen.

Everything in this worldly plane works to keep us inside the illusion. Some of it was genuinely designed for exactly that purpose. The films we watch, the television series we consume, the food we eat, the things we learn, the work we are expected to do. Even the language we speak and the words we use, all of them participate in maintaining that illusion.

Dreams, however, are a more flexible and much faster field of experience. Because of this, they are particularly well suited for revealing the patterns that keep us trapped.

Thought is faster than lived reality.

We can imagine countless alternatives. We can simulate them. Yet physically, we only live through one of them. Evolutionarily, this has always been one of our greatest advantages.

Our ability to run these simulations also reflects which patterns have begun to imprison us, presenting them through alternative scenarios.

Of course, these same patterns can also be recognized through careful observation of physical life and a magician should learn to observe them there as well.

Magic is a practice that confronts us with the unknown and with our true nature.

And as our illusions begin to shatter, other aspects of existence gradually reveal themselves.