One who walks in hate does not look long at an object, as though he were tired. When he is affected by the humours, he quarrels with others often. Even with very good things he is not pleased. Thus he rejects all things. Towards other objects of sense also he behaves in the same way. Thus it may be known that one is a walker in hate.
- The Arahant Upatissa, Vimuttimagga ('The Path of Freedom'), trans. Rev. N.R.M. Ehara, Soma Thera, Kheminda Thera (Kandy, Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society, 1995), pp. 58-9.

I'm back... it seems... from ten days of vipassana meditation. I hit the meditation cushion for ten hours per day, between 4am to 9.30pm; nine days in total silence, with no food in the evening after 5pm, except for a couple of far-too-tiny pieces of fruit. (Ouch.)

I went into the retreat with a magical intent: to deal with issues impeding my progress in gaining knowledge and communication of the Holy Guardian Angel (HGA). But what happened proved unexpected. Tonight, I'll record the second half of a solo podcast, dealing with the HGA aspect. For now, I wanted to record some other issues.

The original problems with my meditation practice were cleared up in the first two days. They seem embarrassingly obvious now. Firstly, I'd been craving for mystical states, which is a sure-fire guarantee they won't occur. Secondly, I'd been focusing attention on gross rather than subtle objects: another no-brainer.

But nine days of verbal silence brought home something more obvious: I'm a hateful bastard. I was shocked how much of my internal monologue is occupied with slagging off others. This constant torrent of bile became painfully loud in my head. "Fine," I thought, "I'll stop it," but was horrified to find I couldn't. It's a deep habit against which I'm helpless. I'll have to put in serious work to change.

The vipassana technique itself I found amazing. It equips you with a perception of extremely subtle sensations throughout the body, and trains you to maintain equanimity towards them – no matter how painful or seductive they are – with an awareness that, like all perceptions and their objects, sensations are impermanent. I seemed to be making good progress, and was beginning to feel that Buddhist dharma made all this occultist malarkey look childish. I'd reached the point of deciding I was a Buddhist rather than a magician, until – somewhere between the eighth and ninth day – I mentally crashed out of the course.

I had sat and felt my body dissolve into a depersonalised mass of quantum fluctuations. This was reality, and I experienced it as true. But then, somehow, the technique became no more than a self-deluding exercise in withstanding discomfort. The truth: I was sitting on a cushion getting a sore arse, pretending I wasn't bothered about getting a sore arse, and convincing myself that by not being bothered about getting a sore arse I was becoming a better person. This, too, became reality, after I made an experiment of sitting for an hour visualising Baphomet rather than doing the technique, and assessing the difference in my tolerance of the discomfort and the degree to which I felt good afterwards. There was none.

Meditation is magic, I realised.

There are techniques, but there is also intention. One sits with intention, focusing energy and will in a particular direction, but in a special way that doesn't create attachment or craving.

Sounds familiar?

"Dharma is so scientific," the DVD image of S.N. Goenka informed me repeatedly throughout the week. I was helpless under my vow of silence to retort that it wasn't; that it might've been, if Buddha had said: "Try this; but I'm not going to tell you what happens." He didn't; he couldn't give us a method without specifying beforehand its intended effect, because without intention dharma leads nowhere.

There's no such thing as dharma, unless I decide there is, or I make a dharma of my own.

I'm no Buddhist. I'm a magician who uses Buddhist techniques.

The next part of the story – how my HGA smuggled in a message, and how I sneaked off into the woods to perform an invocation – I'll save for the podcast.