BELIEVING IN MAGIC
Possibility, imagination & creation
Most of us love the idea of magic, but few of us actually believe in it. It seems that magic is reserved only for small children. Once we reach the age of “logical” brain development, magic becomes silly fantastical play that only little kids do and since we are becoming a “big” kid, magic goes out the window for us. Why do we stop playing and believing in magic? Why do we get so serious and realistic? It’s really all about what we value as a society and what gets reinforced. We get acknowledgment and praise for getting good grades, excelling at math and science, and for doing our school work well. We don’t get acknowledgment for how well we play, the worlds we create with our imagination or how much we believed in magic today. Since there is an innate human need to belong and be part of the group, we follow what the collective agrees to value even if it isn’t in alignment for us. Despite our best efforts to stay connected to our steam of magic and all of its infinite possibilities, we often lose connection to it our mid-late childhood development.
What is magic? Magic is the space of possibility, imagination and creation. What we often fail to realize is that we are imagining our entire reality. We each are already master magicians (ie. creators). The world we create/are creating is flat, mundane and logical because that is what has been reinforced to us as what’s real and important. Therefore that is what we see and continue to create through our seeing. In this way reality appears to be devoid of magic, but rather it’s that we’ve used our magical powers to create this seemingly ordinary experience. Inside of this experience we pretend to know what is going to happen next, we create plans, schedules and routines that give us a sense of familiarity, and the world of infinite possibilities gets scaled down into just a few known potential outcomes for how things can be and operate.
You can see that regardless of whether or not you believe in magic, you are utilizing it everyday. It’s simply a matter of tuning in, paying attention and inquiring into what it is you are creating. We create with our imagination and our seeing. Whatever you can imagine is possible you can create. Again you are already doing it all of the time, it’s only that your range of what is possible is likely quite narrow and your active imaginative qualities are somewhat off line. You keep creating the same reality because you aren’t conjuring up anything novel from the well of your creator powers. The question then becomes how do you get yourself back on line, activating your imagination and making magic that makes your reality feel alive, invigorating, exciting, mysterious and blissful.
GETTING TO THE HEART
The well-spring of magic
The portal into our active imaginative qualities and creating a more magical reality experience for ourselves is finding our way into our heart. We are born open and in the state of love. This is why a young child’s heart is naturally open and why they have access to the world of their magic. Even if you don’t perceive what they perceive or join them in their creations, they are in their own magically reality all of the time. That is until they learn the seemingly “fixed and solid” natural of reality that we condition them with and they start to believe that they are a product of creation rather than the magician/creator of it. This is when the world of infinite possibilities becomes only a small handful of options and we forget, lose touch or disconnect from the fact that we are the ones doing all of the creating.
As time goes on, and we have more and more experiences of being human, we move further and further away from the source of ourselves. This means we forget ourselves more and more with time. In addition, many of the experiences that we have being human don’t feel good and we learn to protect ourselves from physical, emotional and mental pain. Protection means that we shut down, close off and become less open and available to participate with creation. Since we’ve forgotten that we are the magician/creator we feel powerless to the circumstances of life, and helpless to how we feel, sense and relate to life and others. In essence it’s kind of big, confusing mess.
Finding our way back into our heart often means feeling the things that shut it down in the first place. When we feel the pain it breaks our hearts back open. We move through the feelings rather than stay closed down and shut off. We open into the pain rather than protect ourselves from it. This is healing in a nutshell. It’s not complicated, but it’s also not necessarily easy. It takes quite a bit of courage and ginormous heap of trust in ourselves to reopen. Well it might seem easier to stay closed and continue life as the mundane status quo, you will feel unsatisfied and non-magical. Your experience of life will be functional, but it won’t necessarily be fun.
Your heart is the well-spring of magic. It makes everything come alive. It allows all possibilities to emerge. It activates your imagination and helps you remember that you are the magician of this creation. The reward of feeling the pain becomes clearly evident as you embark on the journey. Your commitment and devotion to the path is key. Some days it will feel hard to find your heart, but your desire to do so will be your guiding light. If your level of commitment or devotion is high then before you know it there will be nothing that doesn’t fit inside of your heart. You will have engulfed all of creation in love. This means you will undoubtedly experience magic as your lived reality moment to moment. As always the choice lies in your hands, your heart and your desire.
Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado