The Economy of Consciousness

A friend and I were talking about magic and doubt the other day, and specifically that one doubt magicians suffer about our magical practices secretly all being make believe, fantasy fiction and wishful thinking. That "What if I'm just making all this shit up?" feeling. The fear of self delusion.
I would make the argument that this, in fact, is the most important question that a magician can ask themselves, all the time. Self-doubt and observation are key factors in any relative success of a magical practice like this. You wouldn't want to go off the deep end, would you? You gotta keep a sane perspective on things in your life. I think.

But it's secretly even more important than that whole silly "sanity clause" to ask this question. The question itself contains a Hermetic mystery.

"What if..." 

What are the implications of the question? If it were true, would that mean you are delusional? Is that the dangerous possibility that makes the question sort of horrifying to us? Maybe it's the waste of time? I mean, we could be spending years amassing piles of money, or changing the world with social activism and revolution instead of reading fairy tales.

But tighten it another notch and turn it around a bit. 

What if I'm just making all this shit up?

That's the actual premise of Hermetics, and we today understand that point very well. We really are just making this shit up. All of it, all the time. Our experiences are all interpretations of sense interfaces that are not real time. Our brains seem to process everything that happens each moment and turn all that data into a bubble of interactive awareness. We're all living a few nanoseconds in the past all the time, and we think it's now. And the universe and our ongoing experience of the universe, with memory and thought and time and running narrative supports the theory that it is actually real stuff we are experiencing through the senses.

And we can turn our attention to different input sensors. How cool is that? Think about your toes for a second. You weren't thinking about them before, but they were still there, and you can now vaguely recall that part of your awareness was secretly monitoring and reporting all kinds of data to you from your toes the whole time, but you weren't really paying attention to it.

Heh, "paying" attention. Attention and awareness are the currency we use to create and maintain the alleged material world we experience in our sensory bubbles in our brains. It's how the invisible part of us makes things happen to, through, and for the visible part of ourselves.

I mean, here's a mundane example... You can create a high paying job in the tech industry by paying your attention to the tools, techniques, and skills necessary to do the things that people get paid high amounts for in the tech industry. You create and influence your reality using an economy of consciousness wherein the function of exchange is the payment of attention. That's how it works.

And how hard is it to think thoughts? You're doing it right now. My thoughts are flowing into your mind where you're processing them as you interact with them. And I made you think about toes earlier. I created that experience for you by writing on the internet, which is even easier than thinking. 

So... What if we are just making all this shit up? 

Since we are?

Given that as a premise, the question changes to something else entirely: WHAT NOW? What are you going to do, what will you pay attention to, and how will you change your life, and everyone else's? 

What happens next?

And that transformation is the Hermetic mystery I was talking about. That flipping of the switch that takes a doubt and turns it into a virgin in the morning. It goes from a thing of fear and concern and turns it into an expression of that god-image-ness that is the mortal and immortal human being.

Now, I'm not saying it is, but pretend for a moment that this simple switch in thinking from "what if" to "what now" is the mental result of accomplishing the Great Work and is the thing that is different about the human among humans who has created the Philosopher's Stone. 

Now spend some time pretending that's you. What do you do? 

Pay off your creditors, then amass a fortune? That's one thing you could do, in the economy of consciousness.

* The ability to create is not the ability to control. If you don't believe me, have kids.