Smile When You Say That

"People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion".

~ Albert Einstein

Mage Music 79

It’s not just people who believe in physics who get what it's all about. People who live the tenets of Magick and apply them in life also understand that the only moment when change is possible is the now.

Now is when/where life happens.
Now is where the power is.

But how do you stay in the now when there are so many pressures of the past and future distracting you?

The fallacy of the string of beads

There's too much to overcome. 
I can’t make any changes until I fix this other thing first. 
I can’t create a new reality because my past makes things have to be the way they are.

These are the kinds of things people tell themselves to explain why they are where they are and why their lives aren't changing.  We all do it.  But unfortunately, these are the thoughts that block Magick and the possibility of change. 

These thoughts are fallacies based on the idea that time is like a string of beads, that one moment in existence follows the next in an order that cannot be changed.  But time is not a string of beads. Time is not one moment after the next in an inevitable sequence. Time is a dimension, a physical property of the Universe like length, width and height are. And like these other dimensions, time just is - all at once.

The illusion of past, present and future is a product of human perception, which is finite and cannot ordinarily embrace the fullness of all that is. The default human perception is to sample reality in finite and discrete units - a sequence of events, a string of beads - but the Mage understands that this limited perception is not the way it has to be.

Because all dimensions exist all the time within time, anything can move or be moved from one condition in reality to another by choice and through the rituals (actions) of one who has the desire and will to do so. It is a matter of not letting the weight of perceived past or future influence the moment that is now.

Breaking free of the weight and influence of past and future is key. You need a reliable method to interrupt who you have been being in order to transition to the new reality you choose to manifest. How do you do that?

The confounded bridge

In music the bridge is often used to contrast with and prepare for moving from one musical passage to another. It is not intrusive – it fits with the whole – but it is different enough that it is a clear message that what was is done and something different is coming. It can be a note, a pause, a key change or a combination of several musical elements, but its function is to enable connection with a different place.

A Mage must have a reliable bridge to the now, the only moment of power - a bridge that is strong enough to clear the perception of an inevitable past-future sequence and allow for a new direction. It might surprise you to know that the simplest tool to accomplish this is the lowly smile.

Smile when you think that thing

Human (and some other animal’s) facial expressions reflect the output of the part of the brain called the limbic system (a.k.a. the paleomammalian brain or the reptile brain).  The limbic system is the oldest part of the brain (in terms of evolution) and is the most primitive. This part of the brain works on automatic responses, not intellectual decisions. It’s where emotions and immediate reaction to danger is handled and where memory is processed. It’s where “social processing”, including the evaluation of faces, occurs.  It's why you smile or frown without even being aware you're doing it.

When you’re feeling sad or mad or happy the emotions are reflected on your face automatically by the limbic system. The emotions don’t even have to be current – the memory of past sadness, anger or happiness and the anticipation of them in the future can elicit the facial expressions just as well. But what’s more important for Magick is that this is a two-way street. 

" The moment you change your perception is the moment you rewrite the chemistry of your body. "
~ Dr Bruce H. Lipton.

Beliefs are the lenses through which perceptions of the world are filtered. As with any good lens, beliefs are transparent, that is, they seem invisible and you are mostly unaware of them. Emotions are shaped by the lenses of beliefs. Unchecked, emotions rule a person and take the place of conscious choice.

No Magick for you when you live unconsciously because then you can make no choices.

Here's the usual string of beads of unconscious living:  Memory (limbic system) leads to emotion leads to physical results - one of which is the expression on your face. It's simple chemistry. Positive emotions cause the body to produce certain chemicals (e.g. dopamine and serotonin) and these in turn provide energy and growth and give people a feeling of connection with the world. Negative emotions cause the body to produce totally different chemicals (e.g. cortisol and epinephrine). These chemicals shut down your body, protectively disconnect you from the world to prepare you for fight or flight. Enough of these chemicals and you no longer have conscious control, meaning you can no longer make choices.  No Magick for you.

The simple smile - a tool you  have with you at all times if you only choose to use it - is the bridge that interrupts the flow and influence of memory and connects with the now. It is the reverse string of beads. The smile tells the body that a positive emotion is in play and the limbic system - which is so primitive it can be fooled this way - says okay, things must be good. The limbic system backs off and suddenly you are in the now.

The simple smile - it puts you in the NOW.  Try one on and see.

Milestone

My first Mage Music post was May, 2012. While I wasn't looking yesterday Mage Music quietly received its 20,000th viewer and moved on past that mark.  Wahoo!


I truly appreciate all of my readers.  I hope you've found value here.
Thank you Mage Music fans!

Thank you Jimmy Page for the inspiration of your music!

A stab at movie making

And I have to say, what a lot of work for 14 seconds worth of video!  I think I'll stick with writing.

Click HERE to see the video!

CSI: Guitar

It "stayed with me for a long time until some thieving magpie took it to his nest."
~ Jimmy Page Interview, Guitar Magazine July, 1977


Mage Music 78 

Jimmy Page used a Gibson ‘Black Beauty’ Les Paul for most of his session work and solo singles prior to Led Zeppelin and briefly on tour with Led Zeppelin. This Gibson model is referred to in the world of musical instruments as the Fretless Wonder because of Gibson's advertising that the frets are low and smooth and give the guitar fast playing action.  The Black Beauty also has three humbuckers (electric guitar pickups that cancel out the interference - or hum - that otherwise would be heard during quiet sections of music).

Jimmy Page had his own Black Beauty modified over the years, including the addition of extra switches and a Bigsby tremolo, allowing Mr. Page to produce his own distinctive sound from it. Listen to the middle section of Bring it On Home, from Royal Albert Hall, for example.

The Black Beauty was stolen at an airport April 13-14, 1970. In spite of the reward offered for its return, it still is out there somewhere.

Or is it?

The story goes that during the 1975 tour in Vancouver Mr. Page was presented with a vintage Black Beauty that was supposedly the stolen one, and although when he checked it over and found that the serial number on the guitar was missing, Mr. Page decided it was his anyway and had it shipped to England.  So the story says.

If that's true, Jimmy Page has never played that particular guitar - one he's referred to as "precious" - again in public, nor has he referred to having possession of it in various interviews over the years.

In a Winter 1980 CREEM Magazine article, Jimmy Page said, "...it was very recognizable for all the custom work that Joe Jammer had done on it."  Joe Jammer could certainly  have identified the guitar in 1975 just by looking at the custom wiring.  Identification could also have been made in spite of the missing serial number on the guitar because the Bigsby tremolo arm has a serial number on it that is not only known but supplied in the reward ad Jimmy Page had placed in Rolling Stone.

In 2010 a person put out feelers on the internet about a guitar he wanted to put on eBay that supposedly was a gift to an uncle from Jimmy Page.  That story goes that the uncle died and left it to the guy who now wanted to sell it because he was "not a big Led Zeppelin fan".  Rather a stretch of imagination to think that Jimmy Page would give his Black Beauty to anyone and claim it was stolen.  We must presume that the 2010 guitar was not the real thing. Or... maybe the eBay guitar was the real thing - that is, the stolen guitar - and the queries about it put out in forums over the internet was a toe in the water to see how the world would react if it was offered for sale. Whatever the truth about that guitar, the subject was dropped like a hot potato and there was nothing from Mr. Page about it.

So where is Jimmy Page's Black Beauty today?

Cold Case, Hot Items

It's too late for a Crime Scene Investigation, obviously - but one has to wonder about what is now a very cold case.  What exactly would someone do if he/she had possession of that Black Beauty?  It couldn't be played in public.  It couldn't be publicly sold as Jimmy Page's guitar - not without a certificate of authenticity. And anyone who owned it would be at risk of exposure by revealing having possession of it to another person - so no bragging rights.

Highly valuable items have been stolen over the years for many reasons - and a few of these have never turned up in spite of extraordinary rewards (e.g., $5 million for information leading to the return of 13 paintings stolen from Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990).  What do people do with these things?

Is some aged rock star wannabe sitting in a locked room somewhere striking power chords from the stolen guitar?  Is it hanging in a vault, unplayed, merely stashed with stolen paintings and artifacts from museums?

Or maybe it wasn't stolen, just misplaced.  Maybe the guitar is sitting in some high school musical instrument room, dented and scratched by generations of kids with dreams of fame and fortune without a clue of what they practiced on.  Maybe it ended up in a pawn shop, purchased by someone for a kid's birthday present and is now sitting in an attic somewhere, forgotten. Maybe it went to the airport's lost item room and was somehow never found by Jimmy Page's roadies - who must have looked for it, though there's no record of that.

Maybe it ended up in a landfill.  I pray that is not true!

Various works of fiction have postulated that eccentric thieves just want to have the artwork for themselves to enjoy, but they always get busted because they can't help but brag.  It's more likely the Black Beauty is being used like other objects of great value that can't be sold publicly - for black market barter.  Weapons or drugs or human slaves for that guitar?

That's just so wrong in so many ways.  Maybe it's not true.  I fear it is.

The power of numbers

Cold cases can be solved with persistence and if enough resources are thrown at them.  I think the case of the missing Black Beauty could be solved.

Here's what I'm thinking:  Jimmy Page has millions of fans.  That's millions of people who could be looking for that Black Beauty.  I don't care that it has been nearly half a century since Jimmy Page touched that guitar - I think that if millions of people became cold case investigators, we could find the Black Beauty and get it back to where it belongs.

I think that if all of us who cared would simply choose to change our own realities to one where Jimmy Page and his Black Beauty were reunited, that we could pull off a world-wide feat of Magick.

I think there is no black market or black vault or black heart that could keep the Black Beauty from being brought back to the light if we wanted her there.

What do you think?

Beginnings Mean Endings

"The world shifts, when you suddenly realize you have power. Your responsibilities shift. You might not like it, but you have to assess your life with a wholly different set of measurements."
  ~ Sharon Shinn, Royal Airs

Mage Music 77

The hardest thing for many would-be Mages is the problem of letting go of the past. It's like trying to fill a glass with wine when it's already full of water. You need to get rid of the old thing in order for there to be a place in reality for the new thing to manifest.

Letting go turns out to be a hard thing to do. The past is what we know. It is what we compare everything to and it is what we use to assess our expectations and hopes for the future.

The past is also the worst measurement possible for Magick.

Power shift

Imagine what it would be like if a master musician - say someone like Jimmy Page - only repeated the music of the past and never pushed the musical envelope of innovation. Imagine if we only judged his music by the measurements of the past. We'd still be listening to Lawrence Welk. Only kidding of course - because we'd still be listening to the sounds that were the precursors to music made by our most ancient ancestors.  There would be no place for Jimmy Page or any musician who dared seize the power that shifts the world of music.

When you've got the power to create a change in reality, you've got to let go of where you were and move on to the new state of being. You must boldly go where you have never gone before. You must shed the past and move on to the future - the future you choose for yourself.

You have to become a different person, with a different way of looking at life and a different set of measurements for assessing your life.  The power shifts from who you were to who you are - that is, if you don't sabotage your own Magick by holding on desperately to the past.

Different measurements

It can be made no clearer than this:  You cannot change if you refuse to change.  This means letting go of the things that do not work in your life, that do not support who you want to be.  This means learning what the measurements of the desired reality are and assessing your life against the new paradigms rather than those of the past.

Transformation is your responsibility if you would do Magick, because Magick won't do it for you.

♫   Begin your new year by truly ending the old.  Best wishes to you for 2014  ♫ 

It's over!

OK, the Mage Music contest is over and the winner will be notified and mailing address verified, and then will be announced.

Thank you all for participating - this has been fun!


PS - The normal Mage Music posts will start up again soon, but I think not on a weekly basis as I've done for nearly two years.

Contest deadline coming up!

Find out more about the contest submission at the last post here, in which I not only announced a second chance to win, but simplified questions (that should generate the same answers as the first round).

So don't delay - go ahead and enter - you've got nothing to lose and a chance for a great TBL prize to win! The new deadline is no later than 11:59:59 PM MST (Denver time) Saturday December 21 (Winter Solstice).  You can do it!

PS - when you submit your answers via email, you should receive a confirmation email in reply.  If you don't get one within half a day, resubmit!