HOW TO TRANSFORM WITHOUT BEING A TRANSFORMER … or at least looking like one.

This may be what people have been waiting for.   To my understanding, the process of transformation can be considered mind magick as you really do not need any tools or props, just an image in your mind and your own mental effort.  However, some people claim all magick is like that so it is neither here or there.
Transformation takes the energies behind a situation and shifts it.  Laurie Cabot was my first introduction to this, followed by the Kybalion; however chi gong, the martial arts, holistic healing and hypnotherapy (where it is called reframing) include the concept.  It’s a big thing with many dragons. We humans, do it without thinking, a lot.  It is experiential, despite using your “mind”.  You first need to have experienced or know what you want to change; you may need to get access to it if you haven’t experienced it before.   You then need to have experienced/know what you want the end feeling &/or result to be.   The middle step is where you change it.
Bruce Lee was said to have seen the problem, in his minds eye, on a piece of paper, which he crumpled up and threw away.  I find that a little odd, as from a chi gong viewpoint, he left a vacuum, which needed to be filled.  But maybe the author never knew how he followed up(*1).  Another martial arts author had you, instead of shifting what you had, imaging drinking 5-10 bottles of the energy you needed daily until it became a part of you(*2).
I want to stress shifting over dumping:  when you dump something, someone else could run into it which may cause them problems.  Mother Earth is polluted enough that we do not need to dump our negative energies into Her unless we specify that the energies become compost, which is a form of shifting.  There is a Tibetan Buddhist meditation that you can use … image all your negativity as black bugs, spiders and scorpions that flow through the earth and end up in the underworld realm of Lord Yama, Lord of Death.  This can be used as a offering to make him and his retinue happy;  it is said to help extend your life too.
If you shift the energies, you leave around neutral or positive energies that benefit others; you may discover that someone walking by, absorbs your shifted energy.  It takes the edge of their unhappiness off and they start to see things in a more positive light.  I personally believe that we’re drowning in an environment of negative energies.
In doing what i call “magickal aikido”, we are not grounding energy into the earth, throwing it away or giving it to the Light, like many magicks do.  We are actively tapping into it, so as to recycle it with the intention that we minimize damage and benefit others instead.  I hate to be crass, but look at all the energy out there that we could be tapping into, to bring about change.  This is where you can be very creative.  The basic process has you select a symbol representing what you wish to change, you add mental energy and the process is done when a new symbol representing your outcome appears.  You may have to do this process a few times until you are unable to bring forth the original image.
As i recall, Laurie Cabot had you image an upright rod with a ball above and below the rod, i believe one ball was light and one was dark.  She had you mentally place energy into moving the rod 180 degrees; once the rod was flipped over, the energy had been changed.  During my human Reiki master teacher training, I found myself using a white lotus that was dismal, dirty and damaged, to represent energies that needed change.  As the energies were shifted the lotus became beautiful, bug-free and bright.   (A brief aside, if you see an image in your mind and you can change it, it is your magickal imagination; if you see something that you can not change, it is a true contact.)  So the essence of this process is to see an image representing the unwanted energies, add energy to change it (surround it with golden or white light, violet flame, reiki it, chant or tone a change … however you add energy), then let a new image appear representing the desired energies.
Other imagery along these lines work just as well, you have to decide what works best for you.  You can see a traffic light with the red light on; as it shifts, it turns yellow and when it is shifted, you see the green light for “go”.  I like using an old fashion frankenstein large electric “throw the switch” switch.  This i push from the left, off  position to the right, on position; somehow i thought that’d be a lot of fun as a kid, throw the switch, the creature comes to life … (i gave up being a mad scientist when i realized i was  dyslexic and found the magickal path.)   You can use different kinds of meter faces: the bar graph rising or falling, the little needle moving, all of these work well.   You can use the imagery of 2 beam scales or of a childrens see-saw.  If you are as old as i am and like TV (which i don’t), you can use the old NBC color peacock that was used to show that the program was in color.  You can even image the fizzing when you put baking soda in a glass of vinegar water.
This is a useful way to shift painful emotional memories and energies.  You may need a friend or a professional hypnotherapist to help you, depending on the severity of the emotional damage.  To reframe a situation, you see it on a movie screen in your minds eye, then you send energy to it with the intention to rewrite the scene the way you want it.   After enough energy has been sent, you will see the scene you want to see.   Again, you may have to do this several times as you are not only changing the memory but the energy behind it, but once you are done, you have freed up a major block.
One new age holistic healer had you engulf the image in roses; the roses absorbed the image and its energy,  as they grew, leaving only beautiful, sweet smelling, roses in the end.   If you are ceremonial magickally oriented, you can use the way of transformation as taught by Donald Michael Kraig in his MODERN MAGICK.  He has you use the four elements and their tools to do your transformation work.  If you have something too fiery, he recommends you use water to put it out; if something is too airy, you can use earth the stabilize it and so on.
Here are a few items that may aid in the process of transformation:
Colors:  purple, white, gold;
Celtic Tree “runes” (Ogham Fews):  hawthorn, pine and birch in sequence.
Herbs:  basil, hawthorn, blackthorn, dragons blood resin, pine or fir and
Stones: amethyst, ametrine, citrine, garnet, labradorite, quartz, malachite.

The next post will look at specifics in context of magickal aikido.

Tashi Dalek and Danse in the Dragon Winds

http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/kyb/index.htm

http://www.kybalion.org/kybalion.php

Cabot, Laurie and Tom Cowan.  POWER OF THE WITCH.  NY: Delta.       1990.  0-385-30189-8

Chia, Mantak. Taoist Ways to Transform Stress into Vitality.  ??:  Healing Tao center.  1991  978-0935621006

Christensen, Loren W.  THE WAY ALONE.  ??: Paladin Press.   1987     9789-0873644211  *2

Huffins, Launa BRIDGE OF LIGHT: Tools of Light for Spiritual Transformation.  ??: H.J. Kramer. 1993   ISBN: 978-0915811502

Hyams, Joe.  Zen in the Martial Arts.   NY: Bantam    1982.   978-0553275599  *1

Kraig, Donald Michael MODERN MAGICK: Eleven Lessons in the High Magickal Arts.  St. Paul MN: Llewellyn  1988.   978-0875423241