The Grimoire Day 21

Sorry, busy day today, so not a lot of content.  Actually, half the time I say that I come up with a thousand words anyway, but let's just see what happens.

Day 21

I am afraid of sleep.  Unless I am exhausted, I find it an ordeal or, at best, a chore to get through before I can get on with what else I want to accomplish.  I don't need to be told why this is a foolish way to be and untenable over the long term.  What I can tell you is that it's kind of unpleasant, and I don't like it so I mean to change it.  This is what I've started doing, and I only have 4 nights so far in this, so I cannot tell you if it will stick or not.  But if there is anything I want anyone who is reading this to get out of what I'm writing it's that you shouldn't ever stop trying things, even if they are kind of silly.  Always be trying to do something to make your life a little better, always pick a goal and try to reach it.  Pick many so you don't get bored but not so many that you'll be overwhelmed, and don't be shackled to them.  If they don't work, drop them.  For now, anyway, you could pick something up in a month or a year and find it works very well for you then.

Anyway, this is a good place to start talking about trance and meditation and altering your own consciousness.  Quick disclaimer, anything to which I am not allergic I have been too chicken and remain too chicken to try, excepting alcohol, which I have not found does a lot for me in terms of magic.  I find that doing magic while drinking is like doing anything else.  It's pleasant to a point but the margin for error goes way up.  And really, you do not want to come back from an otherworld journey and find some jackass has drawn a dick on your face.

I sipped some tea with wormwood in it, once.  It tasted awful and I babbled for about three hours afterward.  Maybe four.  ETA six hours while dragging a worried party of two that I remember through semi-frozen swamp in the rain and/or snow.  So there's that.

Anyway, alcohol in quantities where it helps you sleep doesn't help and you don't sleep, exactly, so we'll leave that there.

This is what I do:  I go to mercury. 

Not the physical planet which is a physical ball of very hod iron orbiting very near the sun, but the mercury that sort of exists in my head.  Because I have been thinking about the planet recently in regards to the stuff I posted yesterday, and because it's supposed to be a good place to go for inspiration.  I put myself in space and go.  I think of a soft, cool, blue world which is really, really not the mercury of our solar system, but what the hell, and I fly toward it. 
 

It's not that much different than counting sheep, I suppose; what does make it different is that when I go, I put a couple of goals in mind before I set off.

1) I am going to dream when I get there.
2) I am going to be inspired; even if what I dream is not inspiring, my brain will be working while I sleep and the things that are unsettled will settle, and I will pick them up in the morning.

So far, it's been pretty helpful.  It's important to set the goals before you sleep and then ignore them, not think about them, just the cool, blue planet.  You set the course, now fly.  You'll get there.