Breaking Down the Barriers of Doubt

Breaking down the barriers of doubt is a very important process for anyone hoping to achieve paranormal or occult feats. Do not get me wrong; doubt is a very important thing to have. However, as anyone that has ever applied for a job or tried out for a team can tell you, doubt can work against you. This is especially true in the field of the paranormal. Doubt can keep us from even attempting anything at all, let alone actually achieving substantial results.

Complete confidence and belief are a prerequisite for many occult and paranormal pursuits, belief in both the sought phenomenon and in one's own abilities. This really isn't that different than more mundane pursuits like shooting a basketball or jumping a hurdle though. However, like with shooting hoops and jumping hurdles, one has to start at the beginning when it comes to the occult. Many traditions and paths have basic exercises designed for new initiates and future techniques build upon these basic exercises. One has to walk before they can run and this applies to occult pursuits just as much as it applies to everyday pursuits.

I bring this up because not only do these beginner exercises build necessary skills (in both occult and mundane examples) but they also build confidence. These exercises or techniques become easy and the practitioner comes to have little doubt in the possibility or in their own ability to perform a given task. To use an occult example, a neophyte will most likely have doubts about the possibility of and their own ability to perform a physical evocation of a Goetic spirit. If they can push their doubts aside long enough to actually attempt the evocation they will likely fail.

More than one seeker has been stopped in their tracks when a spell they attempted failed or they couldn't perform a certain exercise successfully. This causes people to give up on the occult and move on to some other interest. Those that stick with it come to learn why their initial attempts failed and in my opinion it is because the beginner is likely to try to perform a task that is outside of their capability, both in ability and in belief. They have not done much occult work prior and therefore have not loosened the fetters of doubt through experience of occult phenomena. This doubt causes them to fail because they do not really believe it can be done or do not believe that they are capable of doing it.

I am not just referring to conscious doubt either. Conscious doubt is usually pretty easy to dispel. Subconscious doubt is the tricky thing that one has to deal with. Subconscious doubt plays a very prominent role in the occult as the occult is a primarily mental field. Even with all the wands and robes, the human mind is still the center of all magic and mysticism. If your own mind is working against you then you will surely fail at a mental pursuit. How do we get past subconscious doubt then? As the saying goes, "Seeing is believing."

We do the beginner exercises, we build our skills brick by brick. Greater skills lead to more profound experiences and profound experiences lead to the erosion of the subconscious barriers of doubt. The more "impossible" phenomena we experience, the more we weaken that barrier of doubt that has been built up in our minds and thus the more we open ourselves to more impressive experiences. This is why it is important to start at the beginning and build your skills from the ground up.

Speaking from experience, I know that this is not always easy when you first pick up a book on magic or occultism and decide that the basic exercises are boring or stupid. I had this attitude for a long time and that amounted to my becoming little more than an armchair occultist in many respects because nothing seemed to feel right or work right. When I went back and started at the beginning I began to have a lot more success. As I have more successes my doubt erodes, both my doubts in the possibility that these things exist and my doubts in my own abilities to do these things.

These ingrained doubts are no one's fault. Our subconscious mind manages our reality. It keeps track of our everyday concerns, sorts our thoughts and feelings, and makes it so we can function in our mundane lives. Most people are caught up in their everyday societal pursuits and their subconscious minds become attuned to this. Anything paranormal is out of the ordinary and there is a deep reflex to reject these things as they seem to have no place in our everyday reality as we understand it. If you want to become adept at paranormal or occult pursuits then you need to get rid of your doubt, both on the surface and deeper down.

You do not do this by having blind faith or deluding yourself; you do it by having genuine paranormal experiences. This is empiricism in its purest form, an experiential approach to the paranormal (and reality for that matter). Start from the beginning of the book and learn the basics. Do the beginner exercises until you are confident in your abilities. Only then will you be able to progress to truly amazing experiences.

Good luck to all of you out there that are brave enough to try these things for yourselves and get your own proof.