Getting Shredded and the Training of The Will

Occult luminaries from Crowley, Gurdjieff, Carroll and Steiner have all stressed the importance of developing the Will as it relates to esoteric practice. For the most part this can be interpreted as developing the ability to assert conscious control over the mechanical aspects of our nature. Typically this begins with selecting arbitrary behaviours and habits and deciding to consciously change, add or delete them. Implicit in this notion is that as the Will gathers in strength so does our ability to assert greater influence over ourselves and our environment i.e we become more magically effective.

What does this have to do with getting shredded? Well in my opinion, any type of self-directed body transformation is far superior to many of the popular esoteric practices that aim to develop The Will. Think about it for a moment, a decision to radically alter your body is an assertion of your Will over the inertia of the material world. There are armies of magicians - particularly of the Left-Handed variety - who pay lip service to this idea but how many actually do anything with it? Here’s your chance to be one of the few.

Honestly, there are countless dietary and training approaches that can be used to achieve similar results and I have not intention of covering all of those here. What is important is that you decide on a course of action and see it through. Decide you are going to get shredded, declare it to the universe in whatever manner seems appropriate and get to work. Write down exactly what you will eat each day and at what times, when you will train, do your cardio, how much water you will drink etc. At the same time write down all those things that need to be removed from your life and eliminate them. Importantly, take the emotion out of it, forget out about how you feel and just do those things!

If you’re reading this and seriously contemplating it, you’ll be aware that there’s a part of you that is looking for excuses for why not to go through with it or postponing starting. Call that pernicious little voice what you like, it’s exactly that thing that needs to be overcome. You can’t think you way around it; you’ll just get lost in negotiations with the lesser part of you, action is the only remedy.

If you’re lost where to start with diet, consider what I like to refer to as “The Sex Panther Diet” - “60% of the time, it works all of the time”. Actually it works all of the time, just not those times when you don’t do it. Set you calories at 12 x body weight in lbs, protein is 1g per lb, fats at 25% cals and remainder in carbs. If you prefer a low carb approach, keep protein the same, set your carb quota and remainder in fats. Divide your calories across 2-4 meals - meal frequency is the least important thing when in comes to fat loss - and don’t snack! Recalculate your calories at the end of each week according to changes in bodyweight - wash, rinse, repeat until you’ve got abs you can grate cheese on. My suggestion is to keep protein stable and reduce the calories from either fat or carbs depending on how you initially set up your diet. If non of that makes any sense, shoot me an email via the contact form.

If you’ve never done anything like this before, there will come a point when you notice something of distinguishable magical significance. Somewhere between overcoming years of habitual behaviours and those new behaviours becoming habitual you’ll become aware of a renewal of energy and sense of internal freedom. Effectively this is The Will gaining a greater foot hold in your consciousness and the concomitant expansion of your own potential. If you persist further those new behaviours will eventually establish themselves as your baseline habits and you’ll have discovered something fascinating about the relationship between your conscious and subconscious mind.