Every 2 out of 3 people I meet who's into magick or ye ol occult is stuck on some kind of unnecessary hang up or another. Most often, it all boils down to the fact that they've stalled during their initiation due to something they're missed, or else they've never encountered some basic, but vital bit of knowledge.
I've written this short guide in hopes that a few of those stuck will find what that need to unstick themselves.
The first problem most initiates get stuck on is the issue of whether or not magick and the occult are "real". Anyone not stuck in the doorway knows from their first-hand experience that they are real as anything can be real. If you had the same experience-based perspective as an adept, you'd easily see where the confusion lies: the pre-initiate isn't asking whether magick and the occult are "real" as they actually exist, instead he's asking if what he imagines about them is real.
So, the answer to the question "Is the occult and magick real?" is an easy yes, but if your idea of them comes from anything other than direct first-hand experience, then what you're asking is most likely a fairy tale concocted from fiction or something you read and misinterpreted which has nothing to do with magick and the occult. Though, I have to note that even this imaginary image has a sort of reality -- as the direct, first hand experience that one has of one's own imagination.
The second hang-up follows from the first without the answer given above. Still wanting to get in the door, the pre-intiate makes all things related to the occult and magick an issue of belief and faith, as something that he says he "believes to be true". With shaky faith in the face of skepticism as his foundation, he will spend most of his time consuming and regurgitating, with an arrogant, know-it-all demeanor, sketchy secondary and ancedotal evidence (usually having nothing to do with the subject and somehow nearly always involving the word "quantum"). In other words, outright bullshit of all kinds) which he thinks validates his faith.
To get free from this hang up, you have to:
1, Discard all beliefs about magick and the occult , whether you think they're true or not
2. Consider everything you once considered a belief as merely an idea
3. Experimentally test those ideas pragmatically from the.perspective of a rational and skeptical investigator.
If the ideas hold up, then keep them. If they are easily debunked, pitch them. That's the easy part. You'll find that, more often than you like, that an idea is untestable. Either it can't be tested at the moment or ithe idea itself simply can't be tested.
An idea of the first kind is like testing the idea of what cotton candy tastes like without any cotton candy readily available. It's reasonable to assume you will be able obtain some in the future, therefore for the time being the idea remains untested and thus it's validity undetermined. In these cases just make a note of it and go onto other things.
An idea of the second kind is so vague and incomplete that it's impossible to design an experiment to test it. This is the case with the hard problem of consciousness. The actual problem is that we don't understand what consciousness well enough to begin to define it in a way where an appropriate experiment can be devised to test it. If the idea is of this second type the only solution is to work on the idea itself until it has a proper definition and a proper one is one that lends itself well to experimentation.
Another idea of the second type is untestable because designing an experiment is impractical. For example, let's assume you that the idea there was an alien living alone on the surface of Pluto. This is untestable because there's no telescope on Earth powerful enough to image Pluto as anything more detailed than a very small, undetailed splotch of color. It might be possible to invent and build a better telescope than the previously existing ones. Or, it might be possible to build a spaceship and go to Pluto and search for the alien up-close. However, both of those possiblities are highly unlikely and therefore impractical. This sort of thing is the kind of thing you have to learn to let go,
One final thing about testing ideas. As you get better at experimentally validating / falsifying ideas, you'll be able to more quickly determine whether an idea is testable or not. At this point, you can begin to evaluate whether or not an idea is worth testing. If can't be tested, it's not worth thinking.
Another common hang-up is getting hung up on the 'feeling of mystery'. It's as if feeling that something is mysterious is enough to include it in the category of "all things supernatural". You will most likely see the problem caused by the implications of the "supernatural" -- it sets up a person's mind to think that somehow supernatural things exist in a sort of parallel space and time beyond the ability to verify through experimentation. Stop using this word.
The feeling of mystery doesn't mean that whatever evokes the feeling in you is supernatural in any way, shape or form. Instead it's a feeling we naturally get when we experience something both salient because it's unfamiliar and easy to believe that's relatively harmless. It's a signal our brain gives us which means "Pay attention, you're about to learn something." It's a feeling which is followed by wonder / curiosity.
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