Delving
Mysticism is not a high or a form of entertainment and should never be treated as such. Nor is it meant to be a method for selfish attainment or a tool of oppression. Your attitude is crucial. If you desire spectacular experiences that will make for good bragging stories, you are far better off in worldly pursuits. If you hope for grandeur and worldly power by means of the occult, you will surely get what you deserve.
Mystical territory has its perils and difficulties. If you are determined to search and to experience in the realm of mystery, be sure of certain things. Be sure your morals are in order. Check your intentions and motives. Acquire proper knowledge. Assure that you are physically and psychologically capable of what you intend to do and how you intend to do it. Secure and maintain proper privacy and dignity concerning both your ventures and their results. Protect your safety. Rely on aid from mature, informed, and willing others, who are capable and worthy of your trust, whenever that reliance is appropriate. Admit in a timely fashion to the need for emergency assistance if it arises. Be fully prepared with your tools, space, and other needs before you commence. Do not sully the earth or any living thing. Do not cause any disgrace.
Your journey is a lifelong work, not an event. Your results may often be subtle and take time in their development. Your perspective will likely evolve. Evaluate and reevaluate yourself up front and as you go: Examine your reasons for this undertaking and what you hope to achieve. Know your values and have the courage to live by them. Maintain properly related discipline. Make good decisions. Make appropriate sacrifices where called for. Do not wreck yourself through carelessness; with bad kinds and degrees of debt; by abusing, robbing, or neglecting others; by using your activities to overburden or abuse yourself; by burying yourself in fiction to escape reality; by thrill or drama seeking; or by being greedy. Be patient. Maintain focus. Do not take up the challenge solely because you are afraid that if you do not do it at the first opportunity, you will lose your nerve or move on in life and do something else. Honor your doubts. Tell yourself the truth and forego the entire effort or any particular further advancement if you are not ready for any reason. There is no shame in such a decision.
Purification is more than just a precursor to ritual. To open the spiritual process, cleansing merits its own occasion. Search yourself honestly and boldly. Know what you have done and discard your excuses. Secondly and separately, understand your real reasons. Face the effect you have had and the feelings others may have had in response. Take responsibility for whatever influence you may have had on the young, the impressionable, the vulnerable, the fabric of the whole. Do not entertain yourself by devolving into wallowing, inflicting additional pain on yourself beyond what comes naturally from truth and sympathy or empathy, or inflating your ego with grand imaginings of self-importance by overestimating your actions and their results. Look fully and devote all the time this exercise is due. Stop short of dwelling, however. Accept that you are human and make mistakes and that cleansing yourself will not relieve you of this fact. Learn to live with what you have revealed to yourself and what has come of it. Find compassion toward yourself. Ceremonially demonstrate or prayerfully declare, in a clear manner, your genuine remorse and willingness to atone and accept consequences, but do this without injuring yourself and increasing the harm you have taken part in. Remember that there is a difference between making amends and dealing with natural consequences, on the one hand, and being dealt contrived and vengeful punishment, on the other. Therefore, ask for the lovingkindness, mercy, and forgiveness of Ultimate Divine Spirit. In receiving it, forgive yourself. Request that you be made clean, whole, and new. But do not fall into the delusion that this simply erases your history. Instead, let it be the preparation for your first steps forward. Bathe your body. Make amends where it is proper and you are able, and leave alone what is best left undisturbed. Repeat these things as necessary throughout your life, but make a specific and formal point of doing all this as fully as you can, in one way or another, at the beginning of your journey and before any further serious efforts are made. Performance of the cycle may be done all at once or in stages of varying lengths, over time.
When you then study, be diligent, whether your education involves texts, exercises, nature, art, the living of life, or any other thing. Pay attention. Think. Be open but not unwise. Take care not to be misled. Do not confuse symbols and scenarios with what they represent. Maintain your sense of reason. Make sure information is authentic and accurate. Take time. Stay grounded. Unlearn assumptions. Allow that more is possible than you may have thought. Do not be flighty in your pursuit of resources. Be steadfast but do not force. Accept that you cannot and should not always be allowed to possess something simply because you think you want it. But fulfill your desires when it is good and healthy to do so. Respect your teachers - all of them. Recognize that your path or direction may be different from that of others but that the ultimate common goal, for those who are true, is service to the same Spirit and greater good. Stay humble. Do not be afraid to appear perplexing or even foolish, but do not build yourself up by making a point of seeming mysterious. Remember to love. Keep your sense of humor. Harbor joy. Balance your studies with the rest of your life.
When all of this has been and continues to be seen to, further pursuit can be made. Discovery and revelation may also come of their own accord. If you are meant to act, inwardly or outwardly, the details of what you must do, when, where, and how will all be made known to you and the means made available. If you fail in the necessarily associated requirements or violate principle and good judgment, the consequences will find you out more surely than anything you intentionally sought.
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