How To Get Everything You Ever Wanted

The biggest story in the news last week, was the $1.6 Billion Powerball jackpot. It was the biggest jackpot in the history of any lotto, by nearly a billion dollars. Everyone I know, including myself, bought tickets. After all, who wouldn’t want to spend the rest of their life trying to figure out ways to spend all that money?

Today I got an email from an Internet Marketing Guru on this topic. While that email was about success in business, as I read it I realized that everything he talked about in that email, also pertained to Witchcraft.

A lot of people look at Witchcraft as a shortcut. They think, “If only I had the perfect spell, I could…” whatever they desire. They think of it as some sort of magickal lotto. It’s not. In fact, Witchcraft may be the opposite of a shortcut.

Real Witchcraft requires serious discipline. Discipline produces success, no matter what your definition of success is.

Gaining all you desire

If your idea of success is to be a great pianist or painter or gardener, then to get there you must postpone immediate trivial pleasure such as watching TV or going out to the bars. Instead you must practice the piano, study painting, or weed the garden ready for the spring.

I would submit that even if your definition of success was to be at peace with the world and to be in a blissful connected state with the universe you must first practice the long hours of discipline required for meditation, and practice the minute-by-minute discipline of pushing out the constant chatter of thoughts from your mind.

A Zen monk, for example, could be said to be almost perfectly (if excessively) disciplined.

[quote icon=dark size=24 width=63% color=#000000 align=none]Our ancestors had to prepare the ground, plow, plant, tend, and weed their crop over months, before harvesting it to eat. We go to the grocery store.[/quote]

Most people in the world today, exhibit these two characteristics:

1. They rarely think of the future, or plan for it. They live only for today.

Living for the moment is only half of the story. You can only enjoy today because of the plans you made or work you did ‘yesterday.’ Similarly, you can only enjoy tomorrow because of the plans you make or work you do today. This includes simple pleasures like a day walking, listening to the birds sing. You can only do that because 'yesterday' (last year, etc.) you worked hard enough and saved some money so that you could take time off. It is obvious that you can only eat today because of the work you did yesterday, unless you have set up your life to scavenge from others.

2. They spend every moment seeking instant gratification. They never give a thought to what happens after the gratification ends.

This is important because we are all driven by gratification. We all want life to be easy, fun, and enjoyable. That’s human nature. The problem is, because life has become so easy, because basic survival is no longer a concern, we have forgotten what it was like to have to plan ahead. Our ancestors had to prepare the ground, plow, plant, tend, and weed their crop over months, before harvesting it to eat.

We go to the grocery store.

We have gotten so used to the abundance of food, that if something happened and the supply stopped tomorrow, 99% of the population of America would starve to death in weeks, because they are simply unable to grasp the concept of work today, for benefit tomorrow.

The Magickal Secret

Disciplined people use their time and talents to create present and future success for themselves. This means doing something. This is hard. This takes effort and it takes will-power.

Undisciplined people watch soap operas seven days a week, go out all the time, buy all the latest toys or generally waste their time and talents for thirty of forty years. And then.... huge surprise...they're broke when they retire!

Look, this hardly needs saying. There's nothing wrong with watching television sometimes, going out now and then, and having the odd meal out. These are pleasures. This is candy now. Then, you should turn the TV off and get to work on projects that will make you successful. You stay in several nights and work through until midnight on the same thing. This is investing time in your future, and is an identical concept to investing (saving) money for your future.

A disciplined person does not spend all his/her time now, in trivial pleasures, they save some for the future. Time is funny stuff. You can't put it in a box and save it for a future day, say the end of your life, and then haul it out and get extra days of life.

The rule with time is that you have to invest it straight away. It multiplies and produces success in the future. You use this success to buy time from other people. For example, the success can release you from the need to work, and that gives you a whole lot of time, much more than your original investment of time.

So the analogy is exact. Undisciplined people squander all their free time now on pleasures (eat all the candy) and get, say, 100 units of pleasure. Disciplined people use a little of their time for pleasures (eat a little candy now), then invest their time for the future. This multiplies many fold, and frees up vast amounts of time in the future. The net result is that they get (say) 1,000 units of pleasure in total over the years. This is their reward for being disciplined.

Witchcraft is Discipline

Everyone has a sense of discipline. Heck, without it, you'd never get out of bed in the morning. Discipline is exactly that voice which says to you after the alarm has gone off: "Right, come on, up you get!" Without that, you'd just lie in bed all day.

The trick is to start cultivating that sense of discipline; that small voice which nags away at you. You need to make it habitual. Don't suppress it. Listen to it and follow it. This is the difference between success and failure. The 'secret magick formula' of finding success can be encapsulated in the quality of self-discipline. It's little more than that.

As an example, if you were disciplined enough to spend 10 minutes a night in meditation, within a month, you would have the mental acuity to effortlessly slip into a meditative state whenever you desired. I tell you this not to encourage you to start a meditation practice, but to prove that you don't need to be a Zen Master immediately. A simple piece of self-discipline in a basic practice can build your skills in a short amount of time. Imagine what would happen if you really applied your talents! The only thing which stops people doing this, is a lack of self-discipline. Laziness by any other name.

Your future life is governed by the series of choices which you make today. Little choices. Hourly, daily, weekly choices. Most people always choose the 'candy now' option. This route leads to failure. I promise you that. Every little choice they make is an 'instant gratification' choice; to watch another hour of TV, to sleep late again, to go out, to have some entertainment, to ‘sleep’ in on the weekend, to buy some more goodies, and so on.

Life you know, is incredibly short. If you’re over forty will know this already; if you’re between 30 and 40 you will be glimpsing the truth of this, and if you’re under 30 you probably still think you are immortal. I certainly did!

[quote icon=dark size=24 width=63% color=#000000 align=none]Your future life is governed by the series of choices which you make today. Little choices. Hourly, daily, weekly choices. Most people always choose the 'candy now' option.[/quote]

The rewards of life come to the doers, not the talkers. Talk is cheap, as they say, and it is absolute truth. You receive rewards from life in direct proportion to the amount of effort you put into it. Also true. There is no magickal shortcut to success and happiness. Success brings happiness, and success is about getting off your ass and actually fighting for what you desire.

That’s the real secret.

Life is a fight, now just as it was a hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago. The goals have changed somewhat, but the rules remain the same.

Life doesn’t respond to needs, wishes, or desires. Life laughs in your face. Only your disciplined effort, right now, will plant the seeds of a future crop that will meet those needs, wishes, and desires.

Gaining All You Desire

To complain about how your needs are not being fulfilled right now, is nothing more than whining that someone else isn’t working hard enough to meet those needs for you.

If you went outside and told the ground, “I need some corn.” Would you expect even the most fertile soil to instantly erupt with corn? Of course not! Would you expect others to just show up, and till the soil, plant the corn, water it, weed it, and pick the ears just so you could have some corn? Perhaps you’d like them to cook the corn for you as well?

No one cares what your needs, wishes and desires are. It sounds harsh, but it’s true. The only person who cares about what you want, is you. That means you are the only one who will do the work to make your desires manifest.

[quote icon=dark size=24 width=63% color=#000000 align=none]Life is a fight, now just as it was a hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago. The goals have changed somewhat, but the rules remain the same.[/quote]

Sounds like hard work, doesn’t it? Welcome to the real world of Witchcraft.

I’ve already shown you that it doesn’t take much to start. A few minutes of disciplined work each day will do, and if you’re still with me at this point in the blog, you have the discipline. Those who don’t have what it takes, gave up reading back at the top, or saw the length and never started.

If you plant nothing, you get nothing.

Spend all your time on instant gratification, and later in life, you have nothing.

Waste your time away in trivial pursuits instead of learning…when you really need a skill, or knowledge, for an important job, you reach into your bag of tricks and pull out…nothing.

The crop you need now because you’re hungry, is the crop you should have planted yesterday. The crop you’ll need tomorrow, is the crop you plant today.

There is no magickal solution to fix today’s problems. There is only the hard work and sweat of making a habit out of disciplined work. Start small, and build. The biggest castle started with a single brick.

[quote icon=dark size=24 width=63% color=#000000 align=none]...if you’re still with me at this point in the blog, you have the discipline. Those who don’t have what it takes, gave up reading back at the top, or saw the length and never started.[/quote]

This website could have been full of classes by now, if I had spent more time working on it. Even those of us who understand the value of discipline, sometimes find ourselves slaves to gratification. You are going to stumble along your Path. That is how you learn. As long as you don’t give up, you will be successful. It may take longer than you’d like, but even that is within your control.

Successful people are disciplined. They choose some pleasure now, but will then choose hard work and effort over further immediate pleasure. This sows the seeds so that they can reap a richer future harvest. They become successful and happy people.

A true Witch is a successful person.