LOA vs. Magick – which is best in dealing with ‘toxic’ people (a story)

 

 

Recently a situation played out in my life which illustrates a difference between The Law of Assumption and Magick and their advantages and disadvantages. In my opinion, the difference  between magick and The Law of Assumption is that magick generally uses some method which is fairly ritualistic in nature, to effect a change in the world, and then forgetting it, and I'd say The Law of Assumption is less about rituals and forgetting, but more using less formal methods to state intention, and then staying in a feeling of abundance rather than forgetting (aka 'living in the end').

I need to give a bit of background to understand this story. I live in Phnom Penh, a life of magickal simplicity, and my accomodation is rented and basic. I practice The Law of Assumption in conjunction with minimalism in a way that is both counter-intuitive and beautiful, was developed over the course of a lifetime and will take more than a few articles to explain.

A few years ago I was out talking to a female friend in a bar and this guy suddenly came up from behind, grabbed her and pulled her away from me. I was with a few friends and we were all shocked but he was an ex or someone with an interest in her and she wanted to play it down.

I decided he's just one of the strange expatriates you tend to meet in this country. Every now and again I would pass him and if I was with her he would shout, 'She's my wife!' (she wasn't) to try and keep people away from her. It was no big deal, but after a while I realised he was staying where I was at the time, a hotel, but we were civil if we saw each other.

About three years later I was in my current accomodation. I'm pretty sure it's the cheapest room in the city. It has these open vents both to the room next to you and the street, so altough it could be a little noisy, I was really happy. I was undergoing a kind of spiritual revival at the time. My practice of magick and The Law of Assumption (or my method of it, which makes in a daily practice of mindfulness) was invigorated. All was going well.

One day I left my room and heard a booming French accent, 'Hey boss! How are you?' - this strange guy was there; he'd checked into the room next to me. Still, we had no issue with each other at that point as we shared a wall but not a ventilation grill. So everything was OK...

... Until the building work started. It was adjacent to me, so I had to change rooms and take the one next to him, which did directly share one of these ventilation gaps which means that, in terms of noise, we were basically in the same room as each other.

It wasn't too bad to start with but about twice a week, he would come home with a friend and be talking and laughing loudly in a way that woke me up. I'd mention it, he'd apologize, but it would happen again.

Still no biggie, until the arguments started. He'd be in the room at about three am and there would be screaming, 'SHUT UP! SHUT UP!' and he would start slamming the door as hard as possible. I have some health issues and am often in pain in bed and so not only sometimes find it hard to sleep, but get anxious about the pain keeping me awake. This can occasionally become a cycle that keeps me awake all night.

In the day, I could still do my usual practice of Magick and the Law of Assumption, but I was doing it alternately, like one day I'd do a ritual and the next it would be trance based. But now I'd never know when a door would slam or something and I couldn't go beyond alpha because of this stress, so it did begin to affect me

Also, he was playing music in the day. It wasn't normal music. It was more like an alarm that was set up to play randomly throughout the day when he was out. I asked him to stop but he denied it was even happening. I even asked one of the other neighbours, a Korean guy, to confirm that the noise was happening. Even with this confirmation, my neighbour didn't just deny all knowledge, but seemed completely nonplussed, almost like he didn't know he was doing it.

One day I was going out and he happened to leave a little before me so he saw me in the street and he waited for me to catch up because we were both walking in the same direction. He told me his name was Rudolph and he was French. He started talking and telling me about himself. He had been working in a factory in France but had left and gone through the Middle East on an overland trip on the way back. His conversational style was eccentric to say the best, slightly unnerving would be another way to put it. He rambled without stop, barely taking a breath. He didn't refer to me or wait for any input. It was so rambling it was hard for me to follow what he was saying. I got the gist of it.

He'd travelled through the Middle East, and all these young ladies had been disappearing, and the locals thought it was the Iranian government behind it, they were kidnapping and imprisoning women because they weren't wearing the hijab or had been breaking the precepts of Islam in other ways. However, he had uncovered a plot by the American government, who had actually sent the CIA out to murder them (I asked why they would do this, but his ramble was going full steam and he didn't even stop). They realised that he knew about the plot and put some agents on him, to follow him, and now they were camped in the hotel opposite where they had listening gear and were following his movements.

He was insane.

It was very unnerving because I couldn't get away from him but eventually I managed to say I was going the opposite way. It all started to make sense. He had schritzophrenia. He did admit that the music in the daytime was to annoy the CIA operatives that were recording him, because they sleep in the day and he wants to exhaust them. Now that music was already annoying, and now I knew that it was for absolutely reason whatsoever, and so I complained to the owner. She spoke to him and it stopped.

So things carried on about the same for about a week. One day he came home and was particularly loud, I heard him go in the room and the argument he had with someone was particularly frantic. I got up and knocked on his door. I heard him tell someone to wait because he had to answer the door. He opened it. He was standing there completely alone in the room (talking to himself) and covered in blood. He started babbling on about the agents, who had tried to kill him. So I tried to calm him the best I could went to bed.

Magick time!

Next day I complained again to the owner, who just said there are a lot of people like this in Phnom Penh, and that he had told her he was robbed in the street. She wouldn't do anything. And so it was time for me to do something. As I've said, I've practiced magick and The Law of Assumption all my life, and so when I need to change something in the world, I have the means to do so.

I made a magickal ritual based on my personal techniques of sigils and ritual energy direction (developed and perfected over 35 years), with the purpose to make him leave the room and stay somewhere else. I was careful to limit the operation so that no one would be harmed. The end operation of the main ritual was to leave a piece of the sigil taped to his door inconspicously and wait for the magick to work.

About ten days later, I came home. His door was wide open and the smell of marijuanah permiated the whole hallway. He called me over and explained, 'You will soon have a much better neighbour. I messed up bigtime. I have to go back to France.' (He didn't specify how exactly how he'd messed up). I told him I was sorry to hear that, went to my room, punched the air a few times in joy and went to sleep.

Magick can make things worse!

All was well for over a month. Then a new guy moved in. He might have been over a hundred years old, but he was Japanese, and you know what some of these guys are like, 100 years old, but he could move like a 25 year old. He was silent and normal except for one thing: he woke at 5.30am everyday and slammed the door. It's a big iron door and it's hard to close it quietly.

Well, he would be coming and going, making soup, sitting outside for ten minutes, coming back, this door was slamming all morning until midday. But I managed to roll with it. I would come home at 7pm and sleep early, although it was far from perfect. I would often be jolted awake in the middle of a dream, which is very jarring to me.

I decided that I can't really broach this because he's doing nothing wrong, he might be deaf or find it hard to turn the large metal door handle, so I just lived with it but I was often tired all day, and eventually decided to take a break out of town.

It took a few days to arrange everything. One morning I packed up, walked out the door and noticed his key was in the lock, he had checked out. Well I was already psyched about leaving, I had planned ten days in a nearby little riverside town where I know the owners of a quiet hotel, I could have a nice room and get some voice-overs finally done for the YouTube channel I was trying to start.

The Magick was working... kinda

So I went there and checked in this little guesthouse, it was like a homecoming. I'd not been there for over six months but they remembered me, gave me a discount, all the staff out from the back came out to say hello. They have rooms with no window, which usually I'd avoid but I wanted to do these voiceovers and so I was happy, it was perfect.

I had a lovely evening eating and strolling along the riverside. They put me in a ground floor room and said I'd be able to move upstairs the next day as the painting had just finished and there was still the smell on the upper floors.

Next day, at six am I was jolted from a dream by all this drilling and banging. I lay there waking up for about a minute, then went upstairs. All the rooms were being renovated, with drills, brushes, saws etc. everywhere, but there were no workers. I went up another floor, and another to the rooftop, and there were the guys, working on the roof itself, which was completely dug up.

So I sat out by the river later, a bit upset and feeling a little cheated. I'd paid for a week but I know the owner well so I went back and asked for a refund, and he gave me it. I was really happy, because if I went back to the city now then there was no one next to me and I could start recording.

I left the next day, got back early evening and slept, woken a few times by voices but otherwise, all good. Next morning I woke up, went out and I heard, 'Hello boss, how are you!' in a French accent – this guy had returned from France. I was right back where I started.

Well there was absolutely nothing I could do at that point. The little piece of magick I taped to his door months ago was still there, but obviously expired as he had returned. I did think of just doing this same ritual again, and getting rid of him, but something made me think twice.

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An now, an aside (subplot)

Firstly, there was something else going on. Elsewhere in life, I was up against a long-term adversary. A couple of years ago I spent my evenings in an open bar and food court area where I'd become a regular, got to know everyone, a part of the scene and so on. I got involved in the local politics of the place as I was friends with many of the people and there was this local gangster (and bully) that was extorting money from some of my friends. Well eventually, the whole place closed down and was sold to developers, so the situation had simply ceased to be.

But now, over a year later, I'd got a little close to a woman recently, and it turns out he's an ex (but doesn't seem to fully realise this). Also, he was running some kind of a protection racket that was affecting my friend. This all sounds terrible, but really I don't know people like this usually, I'm a quiet person and simply don't make enemies as I don't confront, but these two foes had come into my life (at the same time) in a way that was without me initiating contact or provoking them in any way.

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Return to - The Simple Law of Assumption

(Always use an oracle before either The Law of Assumption or any act of deliberately manifestation)

At this point, I asked the tarot what to do. I enquired seperately about these two different people, in different ways, as at the time I wasn't linking them together. I took a few notes about the tarot readings and when I was thinking back on this I realised that the judgement card had come up a few times. This card, and imagery, for me means reaping the result of something you have sown before. It's not judgement, like being judged by an outside power, it's simply the law of cause and effect, experiencing something you have created yourself with your habitual thinking over time. Now really, in this situation, in both situations in fact, I am a passive victim... ostensibly.

 

 

 

Of course, I'm into the whole spiritual thing. In fact, I'd say, in a way, I've given my life to the spiritual path based around The Law of Assumption, Manifestation, Magick with a K, but also growth and personal development, so I hope I am a somewhat fairly mindful and self-aware person.

I've actually been taking notes of my moment-to-moment consciousness for some time. One thing I've noticed doing this is that an oft repeating form of daydreaming and spontaneous fantasy in my mind is various made-up scenarios which have a common thread, of me being a passive victim.

Unconscious Creation

I'm going to write more about this method elsewhere, but basically, when you learn to watch and make notes on your moment-to-moment conscoiusness over time, and find common themes in your previously unobserved (and usually a little bit crazy) daydreams, you tend to uncover a need to feel certain things. It's almost as though your mind is creating these fantasies again and again to keep on creating a certain feeling in you, which in my case was indignance. I have an innate need to feel justified (and victimised).

Why would my mind keep doing this? It's crazy. Why doesn't it create daydreams that make me feel happy and fulfilled. Well to me it's obvious. Without going into too much detail and making this a story about being a victim, My childhood was pretty awful. I was abused and victimised in a number of ways, and of course, I was a child at the time. I was innocent and I did nothing to provoke anyone, it wasn't my fault.

But no one ever intervened, or helped me, I couldn't even talk about it until recently. So I've come to realise that now, forty years later, my mind keeps creating ostensibly unrelated daydreams (sometimes based on present day scenarios) with different  themes where I can feel now what was denied me then, an aknowledgment by the world that I am a victim.

But I'm working on this.

I don't want to be a victim now. I don't want the contents of my mind to keep recreating this emotion via these mindless daydreams. I want to be free and positive, but I can see and aknowledge how I have created these two difficult people I was now facing as an adult and I was able to take full responsibilty and CHANGE. In this case, magick with a specific outcome, was a mistake. It was just a band aid. What I needed to do was to stop creating, within and without, circumstances and dreams that let me feel what I felt I needed to feel and to consciously create thoughts and feelings that I choose to feel.

A new Law of Assumption operation

I thought long and hard about what what was the ESSENSE of what I want to feel now, in my home. I wanted to feel safe, at peace, rested and productive. So I scripted this, I wrote down my goals in the form of what I wanted to feel, and no other details. I then felt it. Then I kept feeling it. When life seemed to do things that would make me feel the contrary, I ignored it and felt what I wanted, and I left the details of what would unfold to The Universe.

I carried on with life and it was OK for around three or four days. I thought maybe he's seen some doctor and picked up a prescription or something as I didn't hear a peep. But then one night I came home and heard him singing at the top of his voice in French. This was to start with. After a couple of hours, he started shouting, 'Oh, you are so clever, yes, look at you! I wish I was like you!' (incessently) – obviously directed towards whatever internal voice was taunting him. After an hour of this he was just straight up cursing, at the top of his voice.

The Law of Assumption wins out

It was unbearable and not going to work. Next day I went downstairs and told the owner that I needed to change rooms. Now I was back where I started, but actually, it worked out.

Firstly, I no longer share the ventilation slits with his room. Secondly, He seems a lot better, he's actually silent nowadays. Also, my health improved vastly and I no longer wake up in pain. I am woken, usually once or twice, by barking dogs, but it doesn't make me anxious and I simply go back to sleep. Not only that, but I generally manage to visualize a little before falling asleep again. The sound of building work is distant in my current room and I'm able to enter a trance every other day, as was the case previously, despite of the noise - so actually my abilities of changing brain state are stronger because of it. More than this, there is now a time-window late at night where it's quiet enough for me to actually start creating voice-overs and make a start on my youtube channel, something I had pretty much given up on.

So in conclusion, when I was faced with this situation and used magick to create a specific outcome, it was only a temporary solution, the situation returned. When I relied on The Law of Assumption, creating the emotional and energetic state I wanted, I needed to uncover and heal what was in the way and let solutions unfold that were broader and more wholistic, creating a situation better than I could have conceived had I created a specific solution. None of this is to say The Law of Assumption is better than magick, in some ways they are two different things, and in other ways they are the same thing - and ultimately there in only one goal of life .

The real lesson of the whole story isn't which is best out of these two, it's that the essense of both (and life) is orientating our feelings from within and doing this in a way that is so firm and consistent and empowering that we can be less specific in our goals and more trusting in our surrender.