When I hear the word, “magic,” I think about someone shuffling a deck of 52 cards and randomly pulling out the one I chose. I think about a woman in a fancy costume, mesh tights and high heels, lying calmly inside a box, smiling, while someone is apparently sawing her in half. A bright white scarf turning into a dove and flying away. An elephant disappearing into thin air.
These are common associations but they are limited. There is so much more to magic than the bravado of sleight of hand and creating illusions. There is a different level altogether where we start
with nothing and watch it become something. Where we see the ordinary transform into the extraordinary right before our eyes. No tricks or deceptions.
The dictionary definition of magic refers to a supernatural power that seems to make impossible things happen. But I see it differently. I see it as a natural power that makes astonishing things possible. I believe that when we are awake and paying attention, our regular
day to day world becomes a much larger and more colorful version of itself. A place where real life experience is lifted into a realm of infinite possibilities that we can’t explain or understand. But we know they are there. I had the privilege of working on a memoir for the late Olivia Newton John who sang the wonderful lyric, “We have to believe we are magic.” And she was.
I was a child of seven when my father woke me up before dawn. We got into the car and he told me we were going to see a solar eclipse. “When the sun starts to rise,” he said, “the moon’s going to pass in front of it. The sky will get dark for a few minutes and then it will light up again.”
“Why?” I asked.
“The moon is jealous,” he said. “It has to disappear every morning when the sun comes out. Today, it wants special attention.”
If my father said so, that was good enough for me. We climbed a long hill beside the airport and stopped in a vacant lot. My father and I held hands with our faces pointed upwards as the sun was starting to rise. A faint glow appeared along the horizon, lighting up the edges of the world and in a moment, the darkness descended. I looked at my father’s upturned face as it became a dark silhouette against the heavens. I was witnessing magic and my father and I were a part of it.
Today, I see the magic in the pastels of a sunset streaking the sky. Turning strands of wool into colorful sweaters. Picking up a guitar and making beautiful music. Watching a wound heal. Writing
words that turn into stories. Painting strokes on a canvas that become breathtaking works of art. They all unfold in a seamless breath of fresh air and we marvel at how we might have missed them if we hadn’t been paying attention. When we are awake and alert, it’s reasonable to expect to see the world in a much broader and more beautiful perspective.
Celebrated poet, W. B. Yeats, wrote, “The world is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
During the sixties, when my friends and I were experimenting with psychedelics, one of the most powerful teachings for me was the connectedness I felt with the people around me. I remember sitting opposite a friend and looking at his face and suddenly I was looking at myself. His face had become my face. It was clear that I was a part of him and he was a part of me and that realization has stayed with me. That was pure magic and when I have a hard time connecting with someone, I call on that day to remind me about what is possible.
In the nineteen eighties, I took ten trips to the Philippines to study with the world famous faith healers. My research became the inspiration for the first book I wrote called, “Awakening the Healer Within,” (available on Amazon), when I learned unequivocally that
magic heals. I don’t have enough room in this blog to go into detail, it took a whole book to do it, but all I can say is that I witnessed some miraculous healers while I was there. I also witnessed fakes, people who were doing some kind of hocus pocus that left the patient not only still ill, but suffering terrible disappointment. It was hard to see with my eyes what was real, so in order to tell the difference, I looked for the feeling of magic in the air. If it filled me with joy and made me feel good about myself, that was all the reality I needed. If it didn’t, it was time to move on. Celebrated German scientist and
author, Johann Goethe, said,” Magic is believing in yourself. If you can do that, you can make anything happen.”
When someone asks me if I believe in God, I start with what I don’t believe. I don’t believe in a patriarch on high who watches us and gives us what we want. Or not. I don’t believe in a heavenly mediator who tells us what’s okay to do or not do. I don’t believe in a separate entity that washes our lives clean if we believe in him. Or her. My
belief is different than that. I believe that God exists in the magical synchronicities of life:
Seeing someone’s face in my mind and the phone rings. Running into a friend in a foreign country. Finding out that someone I know, bought the very house where I’d lived thirty years prior. Spending time with a boyfriend who had his own island in Tahiti where a friend
of mine had visited years before she and I had met. All of these things happened to me and I expect you have examples of your own.
When we are touched with wonder, awe and amazement, you and I may see thing differently, we may use our own words to describe it, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t moved and uplifted by the same kind of magic. Shakespearian actor, Jon Finch, said, “Magic is the brush that paints the unseen; the instrument that plays the chords of amazement.”
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