How To Use The Laws of Your Mind - Hermetic Studies with Ariel Gatoga

 Today I want to talk about the hermetic principle called mentalism. The hermetic principle of Mentalism. Now, the hermetic principles were sort of codified as such in the early part of the 20th century by William Walker Atkinson in his book called The Kabalion, and it's a wonderful book, and I do like to use that book.

It actually is a wonderful sort of synopsis of a lot of the Hermetic writings. It's not a substitute for reading the Hermetica, which a lot of people believe it is. It's not, but it is a wonderful synopsis and I, and it gives us some great ways of distilling the disparate information that is available in the Hermetica.

But I do recommend that you also read the classical Hermetica as well.

So the principle of mentalism: the idea that is that all is mind. There's nothing but mind, and you can think about that practically. People say, no, there's more than just mind. Is there? How would you know? How would you know there's something other than mind?

Because the only way you know anything is because it's going through your mind. You think that you see what you see and you feel what you feel with your senses, and you taste what you taste, and you hear what you hear. You think you do, but that's just because your mind tells you so. How do you know that that's objectively true?

You don't. The only thing that you know is that you think. From ancient wisdom's perspective, there is nothing but that. There's nothing but the mind, and so when people think of the word God or the Creator or anything like that, they think that there's like this big body up in the sky that's doling out rewards and punishments or creating universes or whatever, and that doesn't make sense, because if the only thing that exists for us is mind, then the only thing that exists in the universe is mind and therefore God, if you will, or the Creator or the All or the One.

It's nothing more than an idea. Now we can think of God as the original idea. As the primary idea, as the first idea, as the first concept, and that it is the nature of the mind to expand and therefore, as the mind expands, the, the universe as we understand it is created and you, therefore, are an idea in the mind of this Creator. You're not a body, you're an idea.

Now you have a body from the point of view of how you interact with this world, but you only have that body because you understand your body by how you think through your mind. So you can think of all your sense organs as sending little bits of energy to your brain, but what interprets those little bits of energy in your brain?

What part of you knows and understands what that energy means? It's your mind. So there's nothing that exists outside of your mind. We say that there's two worlds, the mental and the physical or the mortal and the mental, because it's an easy way of, of objectifying things and understanding things. But ultimately there is only one,

and that's all mental. And a lot of times people think that the mind is less important and less significant than what they call the physical world, the mortal world. You hear it all the time. Oh, it's just in your mind. It's nothing to worry about. It's all in your mind. Everything's all in your mind.

Everything's all in your mind. So when in the Bible, when it said that God created man in his own image, male and female created he they. That means that God created an image of you. God created an idea of you. God imagined you. And so you are a product of God's imagination. Imagine that for yourself.

Imagine how you are a product of God's imagination created you by thinking of you, by, by conceptualizing you. Conceptualizing you as a soul and all of your uniqueness. All of every part of you is, is nothing more than an imagination. Extended outward. We say that you're an extension of light, and that's what light is.

Light represents the ideas of God, the ideas of the divine, the ideas of the all the one. Now we've come to understand that in this time space continuum in which we seem to be living together as a collective. It seems like we have separate bodies, we have separate personalities, we have separate egos. But from the point of view of the all, there is no possibility of separated anything because it's all in the mind of God.

It's all in the mind of the one. There's one mind. And since there's one mind. It's the mind that we all think with. Therefore, in this, like I said, in this time space continuum in which we appear to be living, it seems like we have different levels of mind. We have the mind that we are conscious of, the thoughts that we're thinking and the way that we're interacting with what appears to be a physical universe,

we have that mind. But then we have what a lot of people call the deep mind or the unconscious, or sometimes the subconscious mind, and that's the mind where it appears that things are created and how things are created. And it almost looks like there's two separate minds, but there are not. There's one mind.

There's one mind and one part of that mind you are consciously aware of, and the rest of it you're not consciously aware of. So when we say that the deep mind must be saturated with an idea in order for something to come about, or the deep mind must be contacted in order to do whatever you're trying to do magically, whether it be contacting a spirit or whether it be manifesting a goal or, or whatever you're trying to do.

It happens in the mind and in the part of the mind, if you will, that is beyond your conscious understanding. So what that tells us is that our conscious mind here doesn't really have a huge capacity for creativity. It doesn't have a huge capacity for understanding. It doesn't have a huge capacity for anything other than being aware of what seems to be happening within the body.

Because that's what we've done. That's what we've done. We've carved out little egos for ourselves. We've carved out little places in our, what appears to be a physical world, but really is within this mental world, we've carved out our own personalities, our own identities, our own way of interacting with what appears to be other people, other bodies, other identities.

And that part of our mind that we have subjugated to, to that purpose of separation is very small compared to the, the rest of us. It's very insignificant almost, but we've exalted it. We think that's who we are. We think that the way we think in our so-called conscious mind is who we are Now. As we start to get more and more advanced in, in our Craft and in spiritual work we're doing, we start to understand that these levels of mind are what are discussed in, in many of the ancient philosophies as father and mother.

So that father, part of our mind is the conscious mind. If, if we're not allowing our ourselves to use our conscious mind, to think petty thoughts, and we are, are, are working to exalt the thoughts that we are choosing to think with our conscious mind. We understand that that's more of the god mind, the masculine mind, if you will.

And that feminine goddess mind is that part of the mind that we'll never be conscious of. We can't be conscious of because it's beyond understanding. And that's where creation exists. That's how, that's the womb of all creation, but that's all happening inside of our minds. Two different functionings of the same mind.

You could look at it on the tree of life. At, at the, at the, the top of it. You could see that second sphere as being your conscious mind. And that third sphere is being your unconscious mind and that top sphere as being the one. As being the all. And it's through that activity of the mind. That all creation happens for us.

So we create in the exact same way that we, that we are created. So if you think about, uh, God as being the one that expresses itself as a father and mother, but it's just oneness. There's, there's no, there's no place where God stops and Goddess starts, father stops, and mother starts, just like a battery or a magnet.

For instance, if you took a magnet and you split it down the middle, you could, you wouldn't get a a positive pole and a negative pole. You get two new magnets and each one of them would have a positive pole and a negative pole, and that's just how it is. There's this polarity, but they come together in this principle of mentalism because all is one, and there are two functions of the mind, the conscious mind, and the deep mind, and.

It's the constant interplay of these two sides of the same thing, which is responsible for all creation. And that is the crux of all of it. When you're dealing with magic, and it doesn't matter if your magic is so-called very mundane, very practical, getting your bill paid or getting whatever, getting a new boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever you're, you're doing with your magic.

New car, or if your goal is something very lofty, becoming more peaceful or transcending aspects of your, your ego mind and things like that. It doesn't matter whether your goals are lofty, so-called lofty, or whether your goals are very practical. It's all based on the interplay of the God and goddess within you or that positive and negative.

Uh. Part of the battery within you, or the male and female conscious and unconscious mind. Now, it's important to understand that this unconscious part of the mind is the womb, and it receives the seed just like the earth receives a seed or any, uh, mammal receives a seed into the womb. It receives it, it doesn't choose it.

It doesn't say, I'd like this seed, please. I'd like that seed, please. That's based on the conscious mind. The conscious mind is the, the, the chooser, and that's why it's very hard for people to break out of certain conditions within their lives because they are unwilling to discipline their conscious mind to change the seed planting process.

And so you can tell them until the rest of time that it's all in the mind and that they have power over their mind and they can choose their own thoughts, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But until they are capable or even willing to entertain the idea that they need to discipline their conscious mind, they can't get any kind of results.

It's impossible. You're just telling a thirsty person that there's water. Until that person is willing to turn on the tap and put the glass under the running water and drink it they'll just be thirsty. Telling them over and over again, there's water, there's water, isn't gonna do them any good. They have to make a choice.

To change the way that they're using their conscious mind, because that is, in this world, the only part of the mind that is under our control. If we are clear that that part of the mind is what is under our control, and that, that is what is planting the seeds into the deeper part of our mind, which we do not have control over.

Once we understand that, then we, we start to really get clear on the kind of power that we have here and the results speak for themselves. So there's all kinds of tools and techniques for planting seeds within the mind. In magic, we use all kinds of techniques and tools. Some of them purely mental, some of them using, uh, uh, physical symbols, you know, in, if you're not in in magic, there's still ways to do it.

Some people use hypnotherapy, some people use prayer. There's all kinds of ways to plant those seeds, and, and train the conscious mind. Meditation. But until you do, until you are capable of taking responsibility for the thoughts that you're thinking throughout the day and really a allowing yourself to control

your mind to control and discipline your wandering mind, you are going to continue to get the results that you get because you are planting seeds by rote. There's nothing anybody can do about it other than taking control of their conscious mind. You can't wish for it to be other. That doesn't work. It doesn't matter If you wished that it, it wouldn't be so hard if you wished you didn't have to discipline your mind and you wished that some external power could just come and fix it for you.

There's, there's no, there's, there's no wishing that can make that happen because even in regards to things like working like I do with the solar light, where you are calling on a higher power to come in and do for you what you cannot do for yourself. It's still up to you to keep your mind focused on that higher power and not return back to your old ways, not turn back to, uh, focusing on the problem, to focusing on the, on the, on the lusts, or focusing on the worries or focusing on the grievances or whatever it is that's causing you problems.

Yes, many times we do have to call on a power that is higher than ourselves, but we are only ultimately calling on a higher part of our minds, even though it seems like it's separate from us because it's so different. We're calling on a higher part of our minds, but it is still up to us to keep our conscious mind focused and anchored on that.

So, knowing and understanding that all is in the mind is one thing, but acting like it is something very different. So I encourage you to find a discipline wherein every morning you can find some way to focus. Your mind and discipline your mind, and I like that magic minute technique just because it's so simple and so easy and so effective and you don't really need to, to practice it for more than one to maybe 20 minutes at the most.

I mean, if you can expand it to 20 minutes, that's amazing. But even if you get five minutes of focusing your mind in the morning. What that tends to do is it establishes a new habit pattern, and that's what our minds are based on our habit patterns. It starts to establish a new habit pattern wherein even when your mind isn't focused during the day, since you started your day with a focused mind, that when you are up against a problem, you are more apt to look for the solution where the solution lies rather than spinning your wheels,

like you would be doing maybe previously, because you've disciplined and trained yourself to go for that, uh, focused mind. In the morning, so you're sort of under the guidance of that focus throughout your day. And if you can get into the habit of doing a little bit of that meditation in the morning and maybe even a little bit more at night, what you're going to notice is that you have more power over your mind.

And if you have more power over your mind, that means you have more power, period. Actually you're not having more power. You are exhibiting more power. You are, uh, wielding more of your power. It's as if we have all power available to us at any moment of time and point of space, but we choose to ignore it and we choose not to use it because it's too easy for us to just create by rote.

We don't wanna take charge of our minds. We don't want to. It's too hard, we think, but that's just the way we've programmed it, that's just our ego mind saying, nah, don't bother. Don't do that. It's too hard. It's not hard. It's really not that hard. It's actually quite easy. It's just a matter of doing it and and being willing to commit to doing it because you decided that you want something new.

You don't want the same old, same old. You want something new. And if you want something new, that means that you're going to learn how to create where creation occurs. And creation, like we said, always occurs within the mind because that's all there is. And so the more you can discipline that, that conscious mind, the more power you have, not only over your mind, but because you have power over your mind.

You have power over your life. So I invite you to just ponder this concept of mentalism as being all that is even in the, in the face of, uh, of seeming physical issues or problems. Understanding that, that it's occurring within your mind and that you do have power to control your mind, to control your conscious mind, and one of the first ways to control your conscious mind is by controlling your words.

By controlling your words. It's hard to control every single thought, but it's not that hard to control your words, and if you listen to yourself say something that you didn't mean, you can take it back. You can take it out of the law of cause and effect by saying, I take that out of the law of cause and effect, or I take that back, and just the doing of that starts to create more of those habit tracks inside your mind so that you are staying conscious, you are staying aware, and you are being.

Clear about the kinds of thought seeds that you are planting into the depths of your mind, that part of your mind that you don't have control over, and then you can start seeing that things start working out for you differently because you have taken charge of that part of your mind, which was before very undisciplined.

Thanks for spending some time with me today. We'll go over some more of these hermetic principles in the future. Until next time, blessed be.