You know the feeling. 

On and on about our day, our minds are absolutely POLLUTED with NOISE. 

True actual noise! Like static on a radio!  

The song from the commercial playing in the back of your brain, the reminder to buy more toothpaste at the front of your brain, the lingering feeling of Monday doom in the middle of the brain, the embarrassing thing you said 10 years ago haunting some weird corner (hitting you with a ping of dismay repeatedly) - all while your conscious mind is still here and now reading this on a screen. 

Big time yikes.

So often in spirituality,  we learn again and again (and again... and again) that our most powerful and clarified moments of clear *magic* often come from the times when we ACTUALLY TAKE THE TIME to TURN DOWN THE DAMN NOISE. 

Think about it, only in the silence can we truly hear and receive a message, right? 

How is your intuition gonna call you, if the line is busy? Maybe at some point your intuition feels ignored and stops calling. Clearly the commercial song and the toothpaste  is more important. 

Perhaps a mediocre example, but you get it - right? 

How can we make a habit of turning down all that static? Being one with the silence? Tuning into the magnetic hum of the Universe?  

And occasionally using that silence, to open ourselves up to messages with easier pathways and outcomes? 

I am of the belief, that we end up hitting the same nail on the head sometimes - sweaty and frustrated... when there may have been another answer, another solution. One that is not only more aligned with the self , but also just physically and mentally easier. 

But here's the catch (there's always a catch, huh?): you have to take 5 minutes to tune the world out to get that clarity. 

Okay, here we are! The Meat On The Bones of this post! I've been doing a visualization that helps me with this for years. Recently, it took on a much more potent form after I created an Astral Altar (watch the full  workshop for that here if you're level 2.5) that I return to over and over to perform this. 

An Astral Altar is essentially a place you create in your mind for the purpose of meditative or spell-related work. All done in the comfort of your mind. The idea is you choose places and objects that are somewhat familiar to you, so that you have no issues visualizing them.

Cue my great-grandfather's 1940's radio. I still own it. It still works. It has that crackly static from station to station. It's signal fades in and out. I'm hyper familiar with the feel of the wooden box, the ripped fabric speaker, the cold and sturdy touch of the knobs. 

So I use this real-life radio as a mental tool. When I need to turn all the thoughts down to zero volume  - I take some deep breaths, close my eyes (although now I can do this with my eyes open, while also multi-tasking if I have to), and I picture myself sitting in a chair at the top of a tower, overlooking the salty sea. In front of me is a table with my old radio sitting on top. 

I imagine my loose and stray thoughts as staticky, changing channels on the radio.  Some times they're announced like ad-reads by old Hollywood voices with trans-Atlantic accents. It's funny to hear a radio announcer declare that I need to buy toothpaste. 

I turn the knob continuously, sifting through all the thoughts as channels, cycling through them recognizing them. And when I feel like I've given a drop of my attention to each one... I slowly move my hand to the volume knob and start steadily turning it down ...

down...

down...

until there's nothing but silence. 

Nothing but silence in the whole Universe. 

Not a thought, not a voice, not a moment even - just silence. 

In my visualization, I get up from my chair and walk away from the table and radio. 

I slowly waltz over to railing of the tower overlooking the sea... I lean my arms on the bars and I just take in the view. 

Sometimes I can hear the waves crashing on the shore, sometimes I can't even hear that. 

It feels like a magical void-space. In between everything. No one can bother me here. Time expands for as long as I like. And the silence lasts as long as I want. This experience not only feels like a massage on my brain, but also allows me to open up the space for intuition to come through. 

Once I feel I've cultivated enough silence, I may pose a question and wait for an answer. Sometimes I get I receive an answer inside the visualization, sometimes I hear a word  - sometimes I have to leave the visualization and continue to live out my day before I see a sign or come to an epiphany. 

But this exercise helps me open the space for the magic to come through. 

And can magic happen, if we don't open the space for it? 

Can we take the call, if the line is busy? 

Can we hear the message, if we're too focused on the static? 

Find your personal version of this. 

Craft it with care - and use it often. 

Come back and tell me how it goes.