Tips for building mind spaces
Mindspaces, also referred to as inner temples, are a great step between meditation and astral travel experiences. However, they are an amazing multi-purpose standalone tool as well. Especially for undercover witches who need to keep their practice secret!
I divide them into two types: basic mind spaces and shadow spaces. This post is about the basic mind spaces.
This is essentially a bubble in the space between this plane and the astral planes. It belongs to you and you can change it around as you see fit. Those are like your accounts in dropbox. Just like dropbox or other cloud services, those are password protected etc etc; you get to keep stuff there, its not 100% break-in proof, but safe enough. And you can generate a link to the bubble and send it to a friendly spirit/deity/any entity really, that you want to hang out with.
This place is great as a safety retreat - you can rest here should things get tough. I feel that energy work and practice can be done easier in the mind space, and you can study the energy more directly and it flows much easier than in physical. There’s also spirit work to a done here. Invite your spirit friends over, meet with your deities for a cup of coffee, so much potential for fun~ There is a lot of room for experiments, spell casting and learning. And finally you can set up a passage that’ll take you straight to astral planes.
Your mind space is very flexible and it can look like anything. It can be a room, a garden, a house, a mountain top, a metro station, an underwater location, a formless blob of darkness. Anything YOU want. Coming back to energy work - it is easier to work with and shape energy, hence its easier to build structures in your space that allow for anything you can think of. Kind of like Rose’s room in Steven Universe. Although it takes more than a wish to make that structure stable.
Here’s a great post to check out by @stsathyre
How to build a mind space.
An important point to keep in mind is that mind spaces can be re-shaped easily, so just go ahead and try things out! You can always adjust things and make them different/better as you go :)
Think of what purpose it is going to serve. Are you going to mainly use it for spellwork? Is it going to be a safety retreat? It has to be practical for whatever your goals are. Should it have lines of shelves for books and magical tools? A large table for mixing up herbs/energies? A number of seats for guests you are going to invite? An extra door that would take you out into the astral planes?
Sketch a layout. Yes, take a pencil and a sheet of paper and just plan out your space. Do you want that river to pass through the middle of the room? Behind the building? Do you want that huge boulder to be in the middle of the clearing where you can set up your mind-space altar? Think of how it would be most comfortable and appealing. Include some leisure areas, a pile of pillows, a pile of soft autumn leaves, a soft floating cloud you can rest on - it’s always nice to have that :) I would discourage from going into greater detail on your furnishings at this point - you want to go gradually. Plan for a door through which you will enter.
Think of the door and safety reinforcements. I would suggest that your door have some sort of authentication mechanism to check that it is, in fact, YOU who is trying to come in. The best way is probably to include something that would read in your energy signature - while it is possible to fake that, it is hard. And in the majority of cases, there isn’t going to be many beings out there who’d go through much trouble to break in.
Pick your technique for actually GOING there. I should probably make this a bigger point, but.. There are many ways to travel and there are many degrees of depths to it. In other words, depending on what you like, you can go into a deep meditative state and go full-in. This way, your experiences will be intense, you will strongly feel all the sensations. Sometimes there are situations where you might not have enough time or good enough circumstances to go that deep. For such situations, a form of a spiritual bi-location might come in handy, which will make your sensations duller but will enable you to actually do things in physical while you also work in your mind space. (this is my favorite way of handling these things because life circumstances can be a bitch). I am sure duskenpath posted about doing this but I can’t seem to find the post now.
Use the technique and start working on that door! Seriously, if you still haven’t - go check out this post. Use your technique and take yourself to that door. The basic frame should already be there. Examine it and work with it. It helps to touch and feel the material, contemplate the color. Geez just go read that post x)
Work on one thing at a time. I would advise to start gradually. When you go in, focus on one thing at a time. Shape your item. Make the structure strong, then move on to the next item. Work out all the details of the item, feel it, hell - smell it! Those structures are like wine. Older is stronger. After you create a couple of things - let it rest. Exit the space slowly and go on to do your daily business. Let it sit for a day or two, think of what you’ve completed in your space once in a while, keep it hanging in the back of your mind but do not actively go there. Let it gain strength. When you feel like it’s pretty set, go back in. See how it looks, see how it holds up. You might need to revisit your first structures and add some energy in there, reinforce them. To give you an example: I decided I needed a forest. I started working on it, the general sketch, the basic layout of the forest. I let it sit. When I came back, what was more like a sketch became more of a real thing. I did not have to consciously keep them there or make them work - they were rolling on their own.
A warning of foggy vision. When you are setting up the space, you focus on the details and pay much attention to each item. However, I’ve found that for me, being in the mind space - especially during bi-location feels kind of foggy. It is mostly a problem of focus, since I am working in two places at once. It feels like I should be wearing glasses but I don’t have them on. The details of the objects are gone unless I specifically work with the particular object. Even then sometimes it is cloudy. And you know what? That does not stop me from getting things done in the space. It might slow me down. But it is perfectly fine. For me that is a fair trade-off. I either go there without the really deep submersion, and everything is foggy, OR I don’t go at all. So that’s just something to keep in mind too
Sigils as a structure reinforcement and a gateway. If you feel like giving your space and structure an extra boost, you can make a sigil to represent the space and the changes you made to it. I know, usually the tutorials say to work with words. Apply the same approach to the little layout plan you sketched before. Take the basic shapes you used for your tables, chairs and other itmes and combine them into a sigil. Make changes until you feel that the sigil is a good representation. That same sigil can be used as a point of focus if you have trouble reaching your mental space. However, I would suggest keeping that sigil very and very private. You wouldn’t want to let anyone know your bank account password, neither would you want to let anyone have your apartment keys :)
A bit more on what you can do
You can do witchy business right there. You can cast spells from your mind space. You can set up your altars and shrines there if you have to keep your work/worship hidden. You can also do shadow work by accessing your subconscious more directly (if anyone is interested I will write a post about shadow spaces). You can brew tea and enjoy quiet evenings near a fireplace. You can use your space as a station to create servitors and experiment with energy structures. There are so so many possibilities!
If you have anything to add or questions to ask, my ask box is open and I’d be happy to discuss/help out! :)
