Magic vs. Conventional Wisdom

Deer Magic

Deer Magic

Now we have been dealing with the magical approach, and let me gently remind… you that I said that you must be willing to change all the way from the old system of orientation to the new, if you want the new approach to work fully for you…
Jane Roberts (The Magical Approach: A Seth Book)

2010 was a tough year. But this difficult year brought some very special gifts, including a new flexibility and a willingness to release my old judgments, stories, and expectations. I was dying, and I was coming to life. All the old rules stopped making sense, and the new rules were not rules at all, but a willingness to suspend my disbelief and to enter into the Presence of God in a deeper way, then to do the next impossible thing while God made a way where there was no way.

Conventional wisdom offers a linear perspective of how things should be and what is happening. It is based on past experience. Read any newspaper with its dire predictions and you have a good idea of what conventional wisdom is. Listen to the wet blankets in your life as they warn of some pending disaster if you are crazy enough to follow your bliss and you’ll get another dose of conventional wisdom. But when you start living by spiritual principles, it’s always new territory and the wisdom is anything but conventional. As Ernest Holmes used to say, “Principle has no precedent.” Or as my wise friend, Donna Michael says, “You’ve never been here before.” 

Conventional spirituality is based on theologies and dogma that attempt to define and describe God. Magic, as I define it, is a mystical relationship with God, understanding that whatever name you use is only a partial understanding of a reality beyond our comprehension. “We see through a glass darkly…" Mysticism, magic, spiritual alchemy, metamorphosis—it’s all a process of releasing old limiting ideas and embracing a new paradigm. 

One of the ways I am accessing mystical wisdom is through my morning pages. I have written morning pages (three pages longhand without stopping or editing, per Julia Cameron’s instructions in The Artist’s Way) since 1994. This year, inspired by Lily, a friend in a literary group, I’m often allowing the third page be a response from God to all the mundane crap I write in the first two pages. I offer the entry for the new year, below, as an Inner Wisdom entry. I hope it inspires you as much as it inspires me. I wouldn’t call it “channeled” or “inspired” but I do sense a wisdom greater than my own conventional thinking coming through. (I’ll tell you if I still feel the same way at the end of 2011, as some of it goes farther than I would ever say if it was just conventional me speaking.)

Words of Encouragement 

Awaken to the now moment. Centered attention is the way to spiritual rebirth and renewal—initiation into a higher plane of living, a deep sense of presence. 
Eckhart Tolle

“Stirb und werde.” Die and come to life.
Goethe

I soon learned that I could have right thought only as I lived my interior life in the very atmosphere of the Abiding Presence.
Albert C. Grier

The new meaning of soul is creativity and mysticism. These will become the foundation of the new psychological type and with him or her will come the new civilization. 
Otto Rank

What imagination does with reality is the reality we live by.
David Ignatow

Logic will take you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
Albert Einstein

Imagination is the capacity to make connections between the visible and the invisible, between heaven and earth, between the present and the past, between present and future.
Eugene Peterson

The great art of turning within is to see the connections between things which do not seem to be connected… We can train ourselves by consistently questioning if things are the way we think they are; and by making an effort to depart from our personal vantage point in order to see a connection hidden from our personal vantage point. That is what Buddha called questioning your opinion.
Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Imagination can fashion the world into a homeland as well as into a prison or a place of battle. It is the invisibles that determine how you will view the world, whether as a homeland or as a prison or as a place of battle. Nobody lives in the “objective” world, only in a world filtered through the imagination.
Czeslaw Milosz

For most people, there is something disturbing and threatening about the word 'magic', and they want nothing to do with this practice. And yet everyone practices magic; yes, on an unconscious level they do nothing but that. According to the laws of divine justice, each negative thought and feeling is in itself black magic, for it sullies something, it tears it to pieces. And conversely, everything that is harmonious and constructive, everything that embellishes and illuminates, belongs to the category of white magic. So, instead of appearing horrified whenever magic is mentioned, humans would do better to try and understand the significance of the ways they express themselves. Yes, for, when seen in this way, many people who have never opened a book of black magic, who don't even believe black magic exists, are actually, through their behavior, their thoughts, feelings and words, veritable black magicians.
Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

Affirmation

I invite “magic” into my life in 2011 by inviting the living Presence of God to work in, through, and for me. 

Inner Wisdom: 

It’s magic—you don’t want to know exactly how it is done, it would ruin the show. Just enjoy it. Clutching, clinging, judging, speculating, defining—all are counterproductive. A small amount of skepticism is part of the fun, for the magic is even more dazzling when you say, “I believe, help my unbelief.” 

“Success” was in many ways a dry and limiting word for 2010. I had to twist and bend your mind with it, so that you could access that alchemical secret of non-attachment and letting go of all conventional definitions of success. Success is a by-product of magic. Now with “magic” as your word for 2011 we can get to the good stuff. 2010 taught you the limitations of conventional wisdom. That’s the old paradigm you have been so frustrated with that is dying. Magic, alchemy, mysticism, enchantment—that’s the new paradigm.

Magic is a word that is key in transformation, evolution, and metamorphosis. Not only that, magic is more fun. It’s playful, and it intimates that there is a measure of effortlessness, an abracadabra open-sesame Aladdin’s lamp approach to solving problems; an approach that does not solve the problem at the level you created the problem, but dissolves and outgrows the problem, turning it into a non-issue because you have moved to a higher level of consciousness.

You will see this happen concerning a safe place to live, a large and steady income, and especially coming together with the love of your life. It is the land of heart’s desires fulfilled, and the fearsome dragons turn into the friendly dinosaurs of Dinotopia, and all the failures and losses alchemized into a butterfly metamorphosis that gives you wings. Poetry instead of prose. Song instead of lectures. Lovemaking and bliss. 2011 is magic. 

• Who could have imagined the miracles that appeared in November and December of 2010? So, what kind of miracles might be possible in the new year?
• What miracles would you most wish to see come together?
• What kind of miracles would you love that might not even be imaginable right now?
• What feelings do you want to feel?
• How do you want to feel and be in whatever situation you might find yourself?
• Are you willing to believe in spite of your unbelief?

 

And here is a bit of my favorite musical magic. 

PLEASE SHARE this video! http://www.HarmonyRecords.org Tim Bays is a speaker, humorist and musical presenter who uses songs and stories to entertain, elevate and inspire. He has worked with companies from IBM to At Home Total Care and shared concert bills with artists ranging from Sarah Vaughn to Arlo Guthrie.