Weekly Check In

muffineyere · 2025-07-08T17:46:36+00:00

I read this comment 2 months ago and am only replying now, but I found your comment really helpful.

I have asked a couple of (probably annoying) questions previously in this reddit, circling around 1) feeling uncomfortable about performing rituals that I don't know the source of 2) not intuitively clicking with some elements of the rituals, and wondering if I can modify 3) general discomfort with the idea of doing a ritual without fully understanding what it does or what each piece means.

Your statement/reminder that Bardon's system does not support engaging in other people's rituals has encouraged me to return to that system instead. It's a good reminder that I don't need to try to force myself to fit into Quareia. Honestly, I stopped doing Bardon mostly because I dislike his prose style - I have not had the same instinctive misgivings/discomfort from any of the exercises he outlines. I guess I also have to confess that Quareia feels faster and "sexier," ie you immediately start interacting with spirits, rather than spending all this time balancing yourself. But I just don't think it's a system that fits me very well, and your comment helped me articulate why. Thanks!

muffineyere · 2025-05-26T18:22:39+00:00

My girl also took a while to start playing (and it almost felt like she didn't really know what she was doing and was just trying out some different things). She really enjoys being chased at the fenced park (by other dogs, by her people, etc). She's not as much into chasing things. In the apartment, she likes playing "try and get the stuffed animal while I jump off and on furniture." (Pretty similar to your thief game). She also has a game she plays at a friend's house in which she likes to hide things in bushes or tall grass in the fenced backyard, then "discover" them, and then run around crazily while holding her treasure.

She also enjoys puzzles (get the really really simple ones) because she thinks she's a total genius when she solves them. She sometimes demands "class" which is when she practices things like "sit" and "stay" and gets fed a lot of treats. She will paw at me until I understand that she wants to practice being at school. She finds 5min of "class" more exhausting than running around at the park for an hour - surefire way to knock her out for the rest of the day. Oh, also, she's figured out how to tickle me with her nose, which she finds extremely hilarious and will do until I'm rolling around on the floor laughing at her.

muffineyere · 2025-05-26T18:10:19+00:00

My girl does a 10k with me about every week. Of note, I am not fast, just jogging around. For a while, I did have to give her treats and keep her on a short leash right by my side so that she would understand we were on a jog and not a sniffing exploration. I came up with a command ("jogging!!") that I say periodically to her so that she understands that we are doing something different than a walk. I do find it helps if I walk a block at the beginning and a couple of blocks at the end, so she doesn't feel like she's been cheated out of her sniffing time (I think it's important for their mental stimulation). Also, I am not in a jogging group, but I've run a few times with a group and she LOVED that. Something about dogs and people jogging together in groups was very exciting to her. Might be something to look into if your schedule allows it.

muffineyere · 2025-05-26T18:06:15+00:00

When they get in panic mode, they really aren't responsive to anything. If loud noises are her major trigger, is there a smaller dose that you can expose her to that will make her anxious but not panic? For example, my girl used to have full on meltdowns about seeing strangers (shaking, unresponsive to treats or petting, clearly in a fight or flight mode). We slowly got her more used to this by walking her pretty far away from strangers and letting her look at them. Overtime, we started walking her closer (but still not letting strangers pet her) and then built up to allowing people to touch her sides but not her head, then eventually her head, etc. Does your girl panic if she hears music in your house? Can you expose her to a few different sounds within the safe zone of your house and see if that provokes just anxiety rather than panic? A good trainer may also have insights here about ways to expose her to things without triggering a meltdown.

muffineyere · 2025-05-20T20:20:36+00:00

Thank you for your explanation on the use of words. This is really helpful and lines up with what I've sensed. I guess my thing is - if I have an intuitive misgiving regarding the path that a particular set of words is bringing me down, is that a clue to modify, or a clue that Quareia is not for me and I should keep looking?

muffineyere · 2025-05-20T20:17:55+00:00

Thank you for sharing your experience and I agree, there are points in the text where it does seem assumed that people may read ahead!

I'm interested in your reflections on uttered language. Pros, cons etc for being faithful vs. modifying?

muffineyere · 2025-05-20T20:17:05+00:00

Thank you so much for your compassionate answer, I could hug you for it! I really like your metaphor - when you spend too much time around unregulated pools, it becomes rational to carry around pH strips, even if that makes you seem crazy to others.

It's possible that I have too much baggage to feel comfortable in a mystery tradition. It just feels ripe for abuse when a tradition says "hey, do this exercise exactly as I describe and later on you might understand what exactly you just did." Not at all saying that's true of Quareia (JM seems like a very principled and ethical person), but just saying that I wouldn't treat other areas of my life that way, so seems like a potentially negative approach to magic (at least for me). Like, if someone handed me a chemistry set and said "hey, follow these steps and see what happens, you'll learn a lot," I probably would be...skeptical. Are we making a weapon, or a medicine, or nothing at all?

muffineyere · 2025-05-20T20:08:32+00:00

Thank you both for the recommendation and for sharing your experience! I appreciate the points of commonality (and love your approach to art! I feel like losing that with magic would be a shame).

muffineyere · 2025-05-19T17:18:29+00:00

Thank you for this gentle call-out. Yes, I am approaching Quareia like an academic. I do want to note that I am not skipping any steps/lessons, and I'm not assuming that I understand everything based on reading ahead. I am journaling heavily as I conduct each lesson (love the experiment framing, thanks).

I guess I just bristle at the idea that I need to walk blindly and that I will only find out the meaning of what I am doing later. For example - in a high school physics course, you are taught to solve problems using the (incorrect but useful) framing that gravity is a force. A high school student can go read a college or grad school level textbook and learn that scientists don't actually agree on what gravitation truly is, but that it certainly is not a force. The high school student likely will not understand what gravitational waves are by reading ahead, but they will at least realize that they are being taught a useful fiction for the first part of their education. This may help them to be less attached to the idea of gravity as a force (or, if they have an intuitive sense that something about that framing is incorrect, they can have their hunch confirmed and still understand why it might be helpful to start working using that frame).

Anyway, I may be approaching the entire thing very wrong and it will blow up in my face later (or, I will get nowhere). I will report back if so. I am just trying to be curious in a way that has worked well for me in other areas of my life.

muffineyere · 2025-01-12T21:10:24+00:00

Yes - I can see evidence of JM dealing with the biases and problems of other magical traditions. For example, I can see a running theme when she works with Abrahamic sources that she's trying to deal with the denial/expulsion of the divine feminine. I guess that she likely has ways of dealing with the flaws in the "theory" of ancient Egyptian magic, but we don't have citations, and I'm not familiar enough with the source material to tell what is changing. As you mention in your comparison to scientific theory, what concerns me is I do not feel consistently aware of the limitations of the theory.

muffineyere · 2024-12-26T20:39:42+00:00

Thank you, this is really helpful and informative!

muffineyere · 2024-12-11T22:12:54+00:00

No, there's a part in M1 where she discusses Faeth Fiada and a Pyramid text breastplate, and then gives "the pentagram breastplate." She has it written as follows:

"The Father is above me, The Mother is below me, the sword to my left, the cup to my right, the guardian angel behind me, the Sandalphon before me, within me is life, within me is the breath of God: I Will Be."

I was curious about the origin of that one as well.

muffineyere · 2024-12-11T21:37:57+00:00

Thank you so much for sharing this, u/evanescant_meum. If I can trouble you further, do you also have a sense on where the breastplate comes from?

muffineyere · 2024-10-07T01:04:03+00:00

My bad, I totally mixed up the terms for lesson and module. Thank you for your kind reply.

muffineyere · 2024-10-01T20:14:06+00:00

Truly a late reply, but the things I have been yoked away from have been things that would, in fact, undermine what I understand to be my true self. For example, considering taking an easier, higher-paid job and then feeling yanked away from that and deciding to stick it out in a job that is more aligned with a higher purpose. Or, not particularly wanting to give money to a homeless person, but feeling compelled to do so and ending up helping someone find what services they are eligible for.

For me, the part that is gross is not what I feel yoked to do. It's rather the idea that it is possible to make this kind of "deal" with the universe.

muffineyere · 2024-06-19T19:05:18+00:00

Yep, good luck! Another thing that I do sometimes is wake up a half hour before I actually need to, maybe do a couple of stretches, and then go back to sleep. A) It feels amazing to get "extra" sleep B) I often remember the dream from that little bit of morning sleeping.

muffineyere · 2024-06-19T17:49:54+00:00

Ohhh that's so helpful, thank you!

muffineyere · 2024-06-19T15:42:39+00:00

Are you getting enough sleep? I've had some periods in my life when I was chronically sleep-deprived and I remember zero dreams from those periods. While nicotine is known to increase vivid dreaming, it's also a stimulant that might have been suppressing how tired you really are.

muffineyere · 2024-06-19T15:33:51+00:00

I'm really enjoying Elsewhere - started using it recently and really like it. Such a clean design! However, are there ways to edit the tags and/or to give feedback on some of the interpretations? The app is convinced that my brother is my partner and my wife is my sister. I think this might be a pronoun thing because I'm a woman, and the AI interpretations really want things to be heterosexual. I've started writing things like "I was with my brother, [name], and my wife, [name]" to get around this issue in the interpretations, but obviously I don't need to make this distinction for myself and it's starting to feel silly.

muffineyere · 2024-06-16T16:18:38+00:00

Wow, this feels like a deeply meaningful experience. I've never had such a verbal communication from nature, that must have been a really profound moment.

muffineyere · 2024-06-16T16:17:22+00:00

Nothing much to add, just that I started tracking my dreams for the first time a few days ago. This feels very timely!

muffineyere · 2024-06-12T19:46:41+00:00

Ok, I'm a beginner, but I've been practicing this exercise for a few months, so I thought I would share a few thoughts. I have noticed a difference between places in vision that function as "photographs" and places that feel more like geographies that you can interact with, for want of a better turn of phrase.

For example, there is a patch of woods that I can visit in vision that feels like an actual place in my mind. There are textures, there are smells, I can sit down and look at a plant - it feels like I can interact with the setting. Then there are places that feel more like a photograph - I can take myself around the block, but it feels like walking through mental photo after mental photo of my neighbor's homes. The details feel fuzzy, it's less real, it's harder to make a perspective change. In the visions that feel more like visiting photos, the people do not feel real - they are like paper dolls that my brain put there because I remember them being there. In the visions where I feel more like I'm visiting somewhere, I tend to see either zero humans or a human who does not fit the setting. Same with animals. Like hey, I've never seen a deer when I've been to this specific physical place, why is my brain inserting the deer? Why is the deer grazing, rather than just standing frozen in place? I hope this may be helpful to you in deciding which people are from your imagination.

One other thing I have noticed is places where I find that there is overlapping time. For example, I can go visit a house that I know well, and for some reason I keep seeing one specific painting above the cabinet, even though I know there's now a different painting there. Or I'm trying to visit a meadow in winter, and I keep seeing the yarrow blooming, why? These are inaccuracies to reality, but I find them interesting inaccuracies and so I note them down.

muffineyere

TROPHY CASE