Personal Gain

Greetings everyone,

Hope you are adjusting to the time change alright.  I can tell you that this week has been quite challenging.  I'm hungry and sleepy at all the wrong times.  What a difference a misplaced hour can be. It even disrupted one of my weekly phone conferences with friends.

Every week we meet over the phone to set intentions for our world and each other.  This week was the second time we'd met on a new night.  After almost five years of a particular time we'd moved it to accommodate new schedules.  Factor that in with the time change and we were all discombobulated.  So I ended up talking with one of my friends later in the evening and discussing working on the self.

Both of us play with energy and possibilities.  I mentioned that although I work quite a bit in the field of possibilities and shifts for others with great results, my success with myself has been sporadic.  At least in the way of instantaneous shifts.  I asked why is it so hard to work on myself when I can do so much for my clients.

My friend quoted a rule back to me that many people in the magical paths have either encountered or been taught formally.  "You can't use magic for personal gain."  On the surface that seems like a good rule right?  Makes it so practitioners can't cheat someone or get an unfair advantage.  (Unfortunately sorcerers tend to disregard this rule entirely).  The only problem is that personal gain is a very nebulous term.  Spiritual growth is a personal gain, so is personal healing.  Would we consider these bad?

Some of this comes out of old religious programming and its proscription against magic in general.  There are reasons why those proscriptions existed.  Yes there are risks, yes there are unsavory people, and there are always unforeseen consequences (or side benefits if you did a good job).  This rule against personal gain helps us feel like we're being good little wizards.  That if we're not benefitting then maybe it isn't so bad to go against those old subconscious programs.

Still this rule also holds us back from achieving our dreams either with traditional magic, or self help techniques.  Together my friend and I came up with a new rule to replace the old one and it is as follows, "Magic cannot be used for soley egoic gain."  This still is somewhat limiting but perhaps it is the training wheels to not having a rule at all.  The ego while lovely to chat with is only a part of us.  This rule ensures that whatever we're trying to achieve is not just a whim of the ego to make it feel more special.  If it is something that will bring us into better balance and greater overall joy and ease in our spirit then let the spells fly.  If not then perhaps we should take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

So how about you?  Do you have some outdated rule about how you can or can't help yourself out?  What's that about?  Are you afraid if you manifest what you want that you'll be bad?  Are you letting your ego's need to be viewed as a good deserving person get in the way of your heart's deepest dreams?  What if you crafted a new rule? What if you threw out the rulebook?  There is a line from an episode of Doctor Who that has stuck with me.  A villain says to the Doctor, "The anger of a good man isn't a problem.  Good men have too many rules."  To which the Doctor responds, "Good men don't have rules, good men don't need rules."  Maybe you could take a page out of the Doctor's rulebook and decide that there are no rules.  Let me know how that works.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle