Jodorowsky, Alejandro - Psychomagic - The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy

Now try to go beyond your head to expel the force. Try to exceed the interior of your head: imagine that your eyes are thirty centimeters higher than the cranium and, feeling that you are a cobra, think about what we have below the belly button, two or three fingers lower, a point of concentration and that there is a force that exits from there toward the exterior, a force that can enter into others. In the belly. This is the Emperor tarot card. It is seated like that, and the force is there.

DRAW

Now we will do an applied creativity exercise. Now that you have all the mental tools necessary—concentration, strength, all that we have studied in this course—you are going to imagine that you have a canvas of any size that you like. You have a paintbrush that changes colors according to your desire. And you are going to make a painting, an imaginary painting. You can draw, you can make large marks, you can change the colors—whatever you like. Then, seated in groups and making gestures, describe the painting you have painted. Okay? Begin! While you paint, you can put on imaginary music to guide you. If you want to be creative, create! And if someone has creative potential, may he continue, go along until something appears. To your unconscious, it is as if you have made a painting, you know? To the unconscious, what one has done in the imagination is the same as what is carried out in reality. In the nervous system, when one imagines something, the same connections are activated. What happens is that normal people do not propose to do such things, because they do not believe it. Really, if you want to be creative, you need to just do it. If I paint ten or twenty paintings like this, imaginary ones, then I will be able to do a real painting; I will be mentally prepared to paint. You see?

SCULPT

And now, to finish with this series of exercises, make a sculpture. In space, the sculpture becomes. You can use whatever material: marble, gold, bronze, whatever you want. And create a figure, or if you want to go further, you can turn it into an abstract. Think about what sculpture you want to make. Be sculptors. We are going to be able to manipulate space creatively. It is important, because if you do not do this, you will have an undeveloped dimension. It is necessary to move around the object. Sculpture makes us abandon the fixed glance; it lets us develop our spirit as it spins around the created object. Once finished, we will describe it, because the commentaries are also important. Before starting to sculpt, really think about the material you are going to choose, it should be a material that you like. You can also color it . . .

FASHION DESIGN

In this exercise, we will create clothes. You can make a suit individually or else in a group. If you do it in a group, each one should make three pieces for the others. Take a good look at the other person and observe what clothing could call attention to him. It is not a criticism. Be daring and infuse the shape with strength, like in a carnival. Create imaginary suits. And you will see that, just as you can paint and sculpt or play music, you can create fashion. Daring to do it is all it takes. If after this exercise, they put you in charge of a fashion show, you can do it! It has to do with seeing how the other is. You can change the clothes, change the appearance; you can fill, take away; you are the owner of the other’s look. You are his owner. We begin.

THE RAINBOW

We are going to become more creative with a fundamental exercise. What I am going to do is count from nine to zero to concentrate your attention. You must pay attention, really listen. The best way to concentrate, the most simple, is to imagine the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. As I am counting, I first submerge myself in the red; then I see the red converting itself into orange, the orange converts itself into yellow, the yellow turns into green, the green turns into blue, then dark blue, then violet. The purpose of this is to occupy the mind and to not think with words. Feel the arrival of each color. Nine . . . eight . . . each time more concentrated. Seven . . . more concentrated. Six . . . deeper, deeper. Five . . . deeper, deeper. Four . . . deeper . . . Three . . . deeper, the listening, the concentration, the receptivity. Two . . . deeper . . . Now we are going to use the unconscious . . . one . . . we are going to use the unconscious . . .

YOUR SPACE

In your interior you have space, the territory that you love. There is a territory that is yours. It can be at the foot of the mountain, in the country, by the ocean; it can be fertile ground, sand; whatever you want. Let your terrain arrive; imagine the ideal place for you. Do you see it? What is there? Is there shade? What does it smell like? Are there little insects? Other animals? Whatever there is, let it arrive. And in your territory, be happy, happy: because finally you have a territory the size you want. Small, large, each one has his own. It is crucial that the unconscious give you your plot. The land that belongs to you. The slice of the planet that is yours. The landscape in which you live. Do not choose the landscape of others. Do not choose that of your parents. Choose yours alone. Take the joy of your plot and observe how the house emerges, the interior that is yours. It is your ideal house, where you want to live and develop yourself, accompanied or not, all your life. What is the house you want? What size? Made from what? What is it like? Think about what your ideal space is. Without limits. When you’re able to conceive this ideal house, walk around it, take a good look at it, go inside it and create everything: bathrooms, beds, the kitchen, the cups, the spoons—you are going to create all the objects in your ideal house and in all its rooms. Go for a walk and create your house once and for all! So you truly know what you want, without limits! There are no limits on money, there is not one prohibition, you do not have to be small or mediocre. Choose in your creativity what you really want, so that later you can carry it out in real life. Take your time . . . Think about what activities you wish to do in your house . . . the materials . . . you are the Great Architect. Your own architect. Your own creator . . . Take all the time you need, because it is fundamental for you to know your territory. Your house is your ego, it is your true I. Think also about how you are going to be dressed in your house. What clothing corresponds to you? How do you want to present yourself? In the kitchen, dream up everything you wish to eat. What is your ideal nourishment? And concentrate on the ideal company. With whom do you desire to be? If you want to be with anyone at all. There can be a reading room, a movie theater, music, books, animals—all that you desire. Without limits. Imagine your bed in this ideal house.

And this part of the exercise is also fundamental, essential, so do it well. You are in the bed, lying down, but your life has ended. You are dead. And from your corpse your new being comes out and is reborn. How do you want to be reborn? You are lying down, a being, a body that has stopped, and you get up with a new body. With what physique? What gender? What age? What would be your ideal I? Imagine yourself as an ideal I. The I that we have is not our ideal I. We have an ideal, although it is still far away. Give yourself permission to imagine it. All these exercises are designed to eliminate the lack of confidence, to enrich yourself. If you have a plot, if you have a house, if you have an ideal being, you have enriched yourself.

Now criticize yourself the way a person in your family would. Your mother, your father, your brother. Talk with their voice. Put yourself in the position of someone who opposes you. Because if until now you had not imagined any of this, it is because inside you there are forces working against what you imagine. What are these forces? Embody them. For example, talk as your mother would talk. Or your father. And criticize. All of the new medicine talks of territory, saying that a loss of territory creates illnesses. Because the brain, they say, acts like an animal that needs its territory. Even though I do not believe that this is absolute. Therefore, when we know what territory corresponds to us, we take a big step toward creativity. And the house is the development of our individual I. And if I invent the house that I want for me, I allow myself to exist as myself. Outside of parents. For this reason, to talk with your parents or create a new body is a move of creative freedom that you make. Creativity comes from an interior freedom, from an internal appreciation. I know that I have all of this in my interior, so I can put myself into action. The imagination works on very simple principles.