I even pointed you to someone who takes a very practical, very methodological approach to magic and you responded that you skimmed his website and apparently all the work he had done was a waste of time. (Even though you clearly had no idea.)
And to the information you sent me I stated that:
If this stuff is as literal as the rest of the excerpts make it out to be then...
As well as:
But like I said, I still have to do my due dilligence and listen to the podcast before deciding what I think of their "Direct Magick" ideas
So no I did not skim his website and deem everything he said a waste of time as you accuse. I don't have the data to determine that yet.
I'm not in any way suggesting that anyone should take someone else's word on anything at all. We should of course be skeptical of any knowledge and judge for ourselves whether some bit of knowledge appears true or not. But you appear at first glance to be someone who considers themselves much "smarter" than anyone at all that has gone before. You appear to me to reject without discrimination and that attitude seems to me to be utterly foolish.
The reason I constantly reject all this stuff is because every single time I have gone looking for knowledge it always winds up being some religious nonsense. Usually involving making contracts with spirits or some other form of outsourcing your own responsibility. After awhile of dead end after dead end and religious cult after religious cult I stopped bothering and just did it myself. It's also the reason I am so passionate in teh way I tal here. I want german engineering standards of excellence, not feelings. Feelings are not valid arguments. Feelings don't matter in and of themselves. I expect my reasoning to be torn down at least as hard as I tear down the reasoning of others. I want to make sure that when I say something I'm actually right. Not that I just feel like I'm right. But that I can back up what I'm saying from a quadrillion angles in reality. And if someone else can't handle that same level of scrutiny in return for their own arguments, that's their own fault. If their only arguments to me are "You're so mean." then they're more worthy of being mocked than debated.
Skeptiko itself has proven to be the best decent source of information that I've managed to find so far. I've found a wealth of decent corroborative information from people like Dr. Jack Hunter. Some of the stuff on Forest Ackerman. The guy who talked about sick building syndrome. The studies on how goal oriented men seem to do better at the predicting pictures test and so on. Sure I can't name every nitty gritty detail of them right now but the fact that people with much more resources and accreditation than me were able to find the same results has definitely been valuable information to find.
The only other repeatedly reliable source of information and methodologies I've had are, ironically, a certain small group of people I talk to via projection. Their advice on methods to try has repeatedly proved itself true and accurate. Hell they've even helped me by setting up training sessions via shared dreams. Training sessions which then had real world effects on my ability. I've even managed to pull
them down here, making them tangible poltergeists themselves, a few times and do joint work with them trying to help my girlfriend and I achieve what we're trying to do. This is a group effort as I've stated before. It is
incredibly far from me thinking I'm smarter than everyone who came before me considering those are the people trying to directly help me as best as they can. Without the sheer amount of help I have gotten I doubt I'd be anywhere near the level of skill and ability I currently am let alone would like to be. Can I truly prove any of it right now? No, and that's just how it is.
I've started to go looking at Gordon Whites stuff on Runesoup as well but I'm really new to his stuff but I'm willing to give it a chance. But I will never,
ever accept any form of outsourcing. No drugs, no "angels," no contracts, none of it. It is simply not what I'm trying to do. And given the sheer amount of success I
have had I can't really blame myself for thinking the way I do. Because clearly my way just plain
works even if it's not exactly 100% of what I want at the moment.
I also spend almost all of my time training, or at least as much as I can. So I don't exactly have a lot of time to go reading and listening up on the results of other peoples work all the time. I barely spend any time time writing my own stuff down because the time I'd be spending on that could’ve been spent training to get the knowledge that I would’ve wanted to write down in the first place. But I am at least making that attempt now bit by bit. But the results tehmselves will always take top priority. Words on a page will never be as good of proof as being able to hold a crackling ball of energy in your hand right in front of someone.