Reality as Change (Praxis, I.)
(Praxis, I.)
Most people believe that “reality” is a fixed stage, built of stone and steel, unmoved by the shifting of human thought. But this is not so.
Reality, as each of us experiences it, is built upon three fragile pillars: behavior, perception, and emotion. These are the lenses through which we interpret the world, and they are far from fixed. Change them, and you change the world itself.
The Mirage of Permanence
Consider this: the same storm may be ruin to the farmer and blessing to the desert wanderer. The same silence may be torment to one who fears solitude, and balm to one who craves peace. The storm does not change, nor the silence—but perception does.
So it is with all of life. What we call “reality” is not the external event, but the internal interpretation. And interpretation may be guided, shifted, sculpted.
Behavior as Reality
If perception is the lens, behavior is the hand that shapes the clay. What we do in response to the world creates ripples that alter what the world becomes.
A single choice—a word spoken in anger or withheld in patience—can bend relationships, futures, and even the stories people tell about us long after we are gone. To act differently is not merely to change ourselves; it is to alter the field in which we live.
Emotion as Foundation
And beneath perception and behavior lies emotion—the undercurrent. It colors what we see, it propels what we do. Few realize how deeply emotion reshapes their sense of reality. Joy makes the world glow; grief renders it gray; anger stains it crimson.
To learn to guide emotion is to learn to guide the very fabric of experience.
The First Principle of Praxis
Thus we arrive at the first principle: reality is change. Not the cosmos itself, but our experience of it. And since experience is reality to us, the power to alter it is profound.
This is the essence of Human Magick, though here we strip away the word’s occult trappings. It is simply the disciplined practice of altering perception, behavior, and emotion—within ourselves first, and then, inevitably, within others.
The Practice of Change
How does one begin?
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By observing without judgment how one’s perception colors events.
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By choosing small acts of behavior that ripple outward.
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By practicing techniques to regulate emotion—breath, reflection, ritual, word.
None of these alone “change reality” in the grand sense. But together, consistently, they shift the lived world, day by day, choice by choice.
Toward Transformation
This path is not supernatural. It is practical. Yet when practiced with discipline, its results appear extraordinary. One awakens to the truth: the world has always been pliable, and the key has always been in our hands.
Reality is not a prison, but a mirror.
And every mirror can be tilted, turned, polished, or broken.
Reality is change. To master change is to master life itself.