Living A Life of Magic

Magic, what a wonderful part of life! It is what fills our souls with joy, the hope that is found in each new sunrise. Magic is what warms our bones on a cold winter day as the sun glints off the frozen snow creating miniature prisms of beautiful dancing light that capture our imagination and catapult us into a very special place. It is what cools us down when it is 110º in the shade and we feel the caress of a gentle breeze on our cheek. Magic is the love that we experience when we see a newborn child or look into the wisdom that is reflected in the eyes of the oldest person we’ve ever met.

Like the power of Stonehenge, magic is part of the unknowable, that which we cannot describe but which exists and makes our lives extraordinary. It is part of the goodness of our spirit, the mysterious and intriguing aspect that makes our spiritual life so relevant no matter what.

Magic is part of the fantastic and the fantastical experience of life, and we do need both. This world of ours is filled with so much that is truly wonderful and miraculous. It is also filled with much that is chaotic, stressful and destructive. On any given day, you and I experience more chaos and confusion than the world has ever known simply because we chose to be born into this world at this important juncture in human history. My teachers often say that human beings were never meant to live under the kind of stress that we face in today’s world, yet here we are … and somehow, we know intuitively that things are going to work out in spite of all the negativity that surrounds us. Such is the power of magic, that it can transform even the darkest of times into the promise of a new and better future if only we will focus on the genius of human ingenuity and the brilliance of the natural world, instead of focusing on the distractions.

Magic also has its ‘other side,’ the side of magic that we refer to as ‘magic thinking’ where, like Cinderella, you find yourself waiting for some singular person or event to come along and change everything in your life and you live happily ever after. We all need these flights of fantasy once in a while, but you know you are in trouble when you find yourself waiting … and waiting … and waiting, until you wake up one day and life isn’t magical any more.

Magic thinking can become a very dangerous and destructive distraction. It is a distraction that takes you completely out of the magic in life, for magic is power; distractions are what dissipate and destroy power. To have power in life, you must take power; it is never just given to you. When you are engaged in magic thinking, you bleed off your heat and you bleed off your power, no matter how long you wait or how ardently you wish, because magic thinking is not real.

Magic, however, is as real as anything you will ever see, touch, feel, taste or hear in the world. Magic is understanding where God is in your life, understanding that there is a way to hold an impeccability in your life that is completely comprehensible and reasonable. It is accepting that there is more to life than what you see. Magic is what happens when something comes out of the unknown, an epiphany of understanding, and suddenly you can see the beginning, middle and end of a difficult and perplexing dilemma.

Do you remember the Michael Crighton film “Fear,” where there were monsters in the world and the people couldn’t figure out where the monsters were coming from? They thought they were being attacked by some kind of evil, supernatural force -- until all of a sudden they realized that the monsters were coming out of them because of the way they were thinking. It wasn’t that they wanted the monsters; they just wanted to bleed off the energy that was taking them towards enlightenment because enlightenment was something they had never experienced before and it frightened them.

Why does this happen? It happens because we are conditioned beings who are afraid of the very perfection that we are simply because we’ve never experienced it before. That is why we create Cinderella fantasies in our lives, to give us a sense of power and perfection that we are afraid we, ourselves, don’t really have. We are conditioned from a very young age to believe that life, or at least success in life, happens only in a particular, circumscribed way. We are taught that we must spend all of our time, our focus and our energy trying to conform to this outside notion of what life is all about. We are not taught to go within and find the exquisite vibrancy and brilliance of our own inner selves, the place within us where we are one with Great Spirit, one with all that exists in the universe, one with all of life, the place within where our own personal truth is found.

Then what happens is that we grow up cold, cold because we are separated from the passion and intensity of living our own truth in the world, separated from the brilliant vibrancy of our inner life. This inner life is where your spiritual life force comes from, the place where you are one with God. Inspiration comes from your spiritual life force. It is the fuel that is needed in all of your actions in life. When you are separated from that spiritual life force, separated from inspiration, your own acts of power are going to be very weak if they exist at all.

Your spiritual life force is what makes the difference between living a life of magic and living a life of magic thinking. And it is the one thing in this entire world over which you have the most control! Find your spiritual life force now, and live the glorious life of magic that is waiting for you.

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Lynn Andrews is an internationally acclaimed shaman healer and teacher, author of the New York Times best selling Medicine Woman series which chronicle her 35 years of work with indigenous shaman women on four different continents. Learn more at www.lynnandrews.com.