Welcome to Gaia! ::

I was chatting with someone yesterday and I stopped to think about a discussion we had a few months ago. A thought gelled and a question occurred to me:

Shielding is one of the basic techniques for anyone who deals with, well, mental disciplines - you keep out other people, spirits, stray 'stuff' from your mental space. Yeah, those little voices, too. But think about what an actual, physical, shield does. Sure, it keeps those arrows from punching holes in you, but it also means you have to reach around it to poke at someone else.

So, how do you reach out mentally while shielding? Is a mental shield a one-way construct?
This is very important to the Seer, at least the sort that I am, because you don't just sit and wait for messages to come, no, I go out and listen along the strands of the web of existence. If I'm behind a shield how do I listen?

That's what I need! Oh, where was this 'filter' idea when I was tarot reading professionally? Thanks for the insight, Akabi!

Hmm... I'd say my weak areas are in focusing energy and grounding. Typically with grounding I just pull out some choice crystals and try to tune in to what's going on, but on more than one occasion I find myself 'floating away' in the middle of class; I subconsciously tune out alot of what's being said and usually end up finding myself writing for my book or drawing. I'd be up for trying suggested non-crystal-relying techniques for grounding if anyone has them :3

For energy focusing - dealing with it at all, really - I really don't know what to do. I tend to rely on crystals and bright colors (I like orange for it best. Orange candles, orange crystals, orange cloth, etc) for that as well, or I sort of just will a little bit in. I'd like to learn how to raise and focus it before I start working spells and reaching out to the spirit community (still working on my shielding, I see that's a current topic in here), otherwise run into some pretty problematic situations...

Meditation - My input on that would be I highly recommend guided ones like the kind Wynyfryd does (You can find her free podcast episodes at the iTunes store, under 'Wynyfryd's Meditation Room'). These really help to visualize scenes and focus in on the senses, as well as having a Human voice around to give the sense someone's with you in a non-creepy way. I've personally found that the guided ones also allow me to let go of random thoughts because my attention is on the visual I'm painting from the words, and so far they've been the most relaxing meditations I've had.

Ritual....yeah, that thing so many of us do, whether together or separately. Maybe you started with a 'recipe' out of a book or you attended one put on by a group or.....you learned a way of doing them from a circle you were an initiate of. Maybe you even know WHY things are done the way they are done.

If you came to some sort of pagan faith from someplace else, often a major religious movement, you may know more about 'ritual' than you think! After all, 'mass', 'services', 'worship,' are all rituals even though they are called other names. You chant, define the space, bring people together, call on deity, give offerings, ask for good things to come to you or bad things on the evil folks. Whatever, they are all rituals. I may start a discussion about rituals but, for now, let's just be personal and stick to the basic practices.

Paraphrasing from Deborah Lipp's "Elements of Ritual", a Wicca-focused book: rituals follow patterns and those patterns exist for a purpose. Rituals flow from one step to another in a cohesive series and both the steps, themselves, and their order make sense. Everything is there for a purpose. "A religion should be consistent, functioning as a whole. Its rituals should flow from its theology, its theology should flow from its myth, and vice versa, all around in a circle of wholeness."

If I might step back, ritual construction can be, well, interesting, if we do not follow a set path. Truthfully, we are making our own as we develop, find belief, collect a body of our own mythology, grow as pagans. I would advise starting simple, with small themes and set purposes. Focus on today, on small goals....

-a relationship
-attracting a better job, teacher or situation
-healing someone close to you
-finding a spirit guide

I'm sure others could suggest good reasons to conduct personal rituals.

A book I've read that really helped in psychic protection wasn't about shielding at all. I can't remember it's title at the moment but it was about resisting salespeople and advertising. It makes me wonder if successful salespeople actually have a glamour or some sort of ability to talk other people into things, influence them unduly and generally con them. A psychic component to scams, if you will.
Breaking glamours seems like a good skill to me.

The book I have, "Psychic Self-Defense and Well-being" by Denning and Phillips has one basic technique: you strengthen your aura through visualization. It is very similar to constructing a glowing ellipsis around the self and developing a mechanism of passive maintenance so that it continues to protect you even when you aren't actively thinking about it. The authors call it the "Tower of Light". Basically, you set up a meditation ritual to practice the aura strengthening: prepare a space, develop a trance mantra and settle into a psychic space where you can visualize and work. I doubt that the exact steps are important as that you build your aura in your own way, clean it, brighten it, color it.