You're Your Own Guide

A simple clairaudient practice to intuit True Will and burn off karma.

Image created on the Creekmason Initiates Discord Server, using Midjourney AI

Are you familiar with the Monkey Paw trope? The gist is this wish granting piece of taxidermy lowers a finger every time you use it for manifestation; the twist is your wishes always turn out unexpectedly bad. 

It’s essentially the same idea as the evil genie who maliciously takes your wording too literally. 

Is there a reason “be careful what you wish for” is a cultural cliché? 

Before we go on, you should know this essay belongs in the Woo-niverse. If that doesn’t suit you, you can pick your metaphor for the mechanism by which all this stuff functions. I’ll try to provide materialist explanations alongside Weird ones where I can. 

Actually, why not believe everything simultaneously and choose to lead with the explanation that gets you the best results? That kind of polygnosticism is a good companion to William James’ philosophical pragmatism.

With that content warning taken care of, let’s dive right in.

I try to stay away from transactional magick because even if I had the impossible guarantee that I’d get exactly what I wanted, I never really know whether the things my ego self wants are actually for my highest good. 

After all, “I” have been programmed since birth to believe the world is organized around scarcity, separation and lack. Isn’t anything I try to manifest just an expression of ineptly trying to slap a bandaid on those problems if I don’t do the alchemical work to purge them out of my subconscious?

Some ego-selves may want a new car, a fancy house, a raise. Others are after romance or even companionship. I really want the novel sitting on my hard-drive published. But ultimately, how do any of us know whether the results of acquiring those things would be a net benefit to our souls’ journeys?

We have to extract our True Will from the base wants that arise from karma.

Karma, translated directly, means both “action” and “the results of an action.” It’s cause and effect wrapped up into one. 

I like to use trauma responses as a good example of karma: initially they were adaptive behaviors or emotional reactions to horrible and repetitive circumstances. They became habits over time and now, new situations that aren’t exactly identical to our original trauma bring that same behavior out of us. Through no fault of our own, we were forced to develop conditioned responses that have become maladaptive. The actions we had no choice but to take in the past have effects that ripple into the future.

Some believe that this mechanism works over multiple life-times, and there’s good evidence for reincarnation out there from accounts given after Near Death Experiences. However, while it’s helpful, it's not necessary to expand to that timescale to apply the idea of karma to the problem of “getting what you wish for.”

Look back at your past traumas. Again: for me it's a lot of scarcity, separation and lack. Everything from not being able to afford food for days at a time after my bipolar diagnosis, to being raised in an anonymous suburb in a culture that praises self-reliance to the degree that I get the message I have no loving tribe, to feeling inadequate, undeserving and unworthy of love for that and other reasons.

Taking just the last example. I have developed all sorts of habitual behaviors as a result of my core belief that I am not enough. I have difficulty accepting both compliments and criticism. I frequently don’t allow myself to feel secure in relationships. Generally, unless I’m providing Earth-shattering, orgasmic, heroin levels of bliss to the people around me, I am anxious something terrible will happen.  

What kinds of things would my ego implore me to manifest when it’s weighed down by baggage like that?

Maybe I’d attempt to banish criticism of my writing or attract praise in the form of Likes and Upvotes and Shares. Maybe I’d try to manifest the perfect partner who would overlook all my flaws. I might try to suck up energy from Kether so I could emit Pure Joy to everyone around me and thereby never feel insecure. 

All of this misses the point though.

As long as I believe that I am unworthy, any attempts to use magick to ameliorate the symptoms of that narrative can never satisfy and will always backfire.

Let’s say I do some sort of elaborate Golden Dawn ritual to construct an amulet that allows me to effectively banish criticism. In the material model of reality, I’ve just affixed my intentions on doing whatever I can to prevent everyone from ever having anything negative to say about my work. In a more Woo world, perhaps I’m sending out vibrations that don’t harmonize with critical energy.

Either way, the pragmatic effects are most likely going to be that I, personally, set a course to prevent myself from encountering negative opinions of my work.

That has all sorts of problematic consequences. 

I might stop taking risks with my work. No one bothers to criticize clickbait so perhaps I find myself more drawn toward writing safe little listicles. What a drag.

I might stop soliciting any feedback at all, or stop sharing in places where I’d be exposed to people who don’t already agree with what I’m saying. Of course, then my ability to hone my ideas and sharpen my points would be seriously hindered. What a shame.

You have to realize that you’re here to heal from trauma, integrate your shadow, burn off karma. However you want to say it; manifest that, instead.

Whether you believe that karma is your inheritance upon incarnation or the result of childhood misfortunes and civilization’s propaganda, it points to specific lessons that you are here to learn.

How do you tell ego desires apart from karmic requirements? Ask your True Self.

What are some ways to talk to your True Self?

I wrote about one of my favorite methods of gaining insight into the true workings of the world via contemplation in my essay, Dog Walkin’ Shamanism.

A handful of the Creekmasons have been engaging in the intuitive exercise of drawing a tarot card a day using the bot on the Creekmason Initiates Discord and either asking one of our resident human readers or our OpenAI powered Liminal Trickster Mystic chatbot to fill in the gaps in their understanding of it.

Damien Echols and his wife, Lorri Davis describe a practice in their book Ritual that can get you in touch with your intuition involving asking questions and visualizing colors: “Green for go or red for no.”

For this essay, I want to describe a quick little practice of clairaudience—clairvoyance, but for listening instead of seeing. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of it.

Here’s the recipe!

1. Close your eyes

2. Say "I am word through my body, word I am word." (This is a Paul Selig attunement. Word as in what there was "in the beginning.")

3. Say "I am word through my vibration, word I am word."

4. Say "I am word through my knowing of myself as word."

5. Say "I am in my Knowing." 

6. Say a few things that you know without thinking. With easy, automatic certainty. "My name is..." or "My home address is..." or "My eye color is..."

7. Let your mind fill in the answer. It often blurts it out before you even mentally finish the sentence.

8. Say a question. "My true will in this situation is..." (Sometimes yes/no questions have seemed to work best for me.)

9. Listen. You will hear a literal voice. Don’t try to force it, just be open to the possibility.

Some might say that this exercise gets you in touch with the True Self that has chosen to incarnate as “you.” A soul that knows what its requirements for growth are; what it's karmic baggage is. 

Some believe the voice you hear is that of your ephemeral Guides, of Aliens or of your Holy Guardian Angel.

Just as easily, you could pin it on your own subconscious. The deep self that is always watching and, because it doesn’t tune out information that isn’t immediately useful toward survival, that knows more than is readily available to your conscious processes. 

Personally, I credit this exercise with helping me understand my reasons for incarnating. 

Let me know in the comments what it does for you!