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First post here; here goes.

About six months ago, I bought Donald Michael Kraig's Modern Magick: Twelve Lessons in the High Magickal Arts. I thought it was a great book when I first started reading it, and I still do. It's obviously not perfect; I very much dislike the way that he presents alchemy and alchemical symbolism as only being related to sex magic, and ignores the physical aspect completely. His attempts at humor also fall flat. But overall, this is a very good book for someone who's just starting out with ceremonial/ritual magic (like me).

I have been slowly working through the lessons, adding certain details (additional visualization in the LBRP) and omitting other parts that, after a good time of practice, don't seem to be doing anything for me (the dream diary, the Solar Adorations). My progress has been very slow for two reasons. First, acquiring tools has been a slow and imperfect process (still using a bath robe...) that is nowhere near complete. Second, I have not been able to adhere to daily practice for extended periods of time.

The most I can manage is a few weeks before I get 'burnt out' and stop working for days or weeks at a time. I had made a New Year's resolution to adhere to my daily work for a month, and I nearly made it; while I'm glad that I have the potential to do so, I'm still not there yet. I believe I have found the reason for my lack of success in daily practice: lack of consistency.

Due to my erratic schedule, I can't really have a set time each day for ritual work. If I'm the only one at home, I can do all the rituals normally, but this can range from nine AM to four PM. If others are home, I have to wait until around 11 PM, and use what Kraig calls the "Great Voice". I personally do not believe in astrology as a reliable form of divination, but I certainly acknowledge that the positions of the 'planets', especially the Sun, probably has an effect on the outcome of magic.

It's the wildly varying time of day and type of vibration that I think has been contributing to my lapses. Anyone have any thoughts on finding a regular time and place of privacy, seven days a week?

Having struggled myself with discipline and motivation for daily practice, I've found that it's less about putting together a rigid routine and sticking to it no matter what, and more about forcing yourself to fit your practice into whatever your routine happens to be on that particular day. Instead of saying 'I'll practice at X time every day,' then trying to work your whole schedule around it, and stressing out if you can't fit it in, just try to say 'I'll practice at some stage today,' then whenever you have a spare 20 minutes, fit in a ritual or a meditation or whatever. If you genuinely can't fit it in that day, don't beat yourself up over it, just resume practice the next day.

What it really comes down to is forcing yourself to get up and get into it, even if you don't feel like it. You'll reach that moment where you have spare time to practice, but you'll be tired, or you'll want to do something else, or you won't be in the mood, but you need to just shrug it off and go do your work anyway. You have to accept that you'll never reach this miraculous stage in your life where the same hour in your schedule is free every single day and all of your motivation just happens to align with that hour. It'll never happen. Discipline isn't about shaping your life so your practice fits into it perfectly, but about going through with your practice even when the circumstances are imperfect.

Rin wrote:What it really comes down to is forcing yourself to get up and get into it, even if you don't feel like it. You'll reach that moment where you have spare time to practice, but you'll be tired, or you'll want to do something else, or you won't be in the mood, but you need to just shrug it off and go do your work anyway.

This has indeed happened to me several times. Since my schedule always seems to "magically" open up around noon, I've been thinking of trying to do the Relaxation Ritual at that time. The last time I did it was at school, and it felt like it took me at least ten minutes; according to my watch, though, it was exactly five. I think part of the problem is related to this, since my work always feels like it takes a long time (what Kraig calls "time displacement"); this is a good sign as far as results are concerned, but it'll take some getting used to.

On the other hand, rigidity and schedule are exactly why I stopped doing the Solar Adorations; they may have been short, but they were a huge hassle, and I didn't get anything out of them, physically or magically.