Emerging magic?

Every now and then, I wonder….how much knowledge has been lost over the eons of r/evolving civilizations? How many times have we, quite literally, reinvented the wheel? What was in the texts, so precious to those who tended them, in the massive library in Alexandria, burned to the ground and lost to us all forever? What of the missing information from texts of which fragments – bits and pieces – have been found and left us searching for what else they might have offered?

How many civilizations around the world, over thousands of years, have experienced and learned and engaged, only to have it all disappear because of circumstances ensuring that it was so? How often have we come and gone, and then come again, working our way back to what we once knew in order to move forward?

How much of the magic of who we really are is no longer available to us because we have no knowledge of it… no way to look outside of ourselves and point to a book or scroll or even a ritual or practice and say ‘There! There it is! The formula for living a magical life! Just do that and follow those rules and you’ll be ok!” How much of our own potential remains unexpressed, to our last dying breath, because we never found the directions to or instructions for its expression? None of it missing or absent, just unused due to the fact that we don’t know where to look for it and, frankly, most of the time, never even think to look; compounded by the fact that we may not likely recognize it when we found it if it did not match what we think it should be.

It seems that lately, I am preoccupied with such things. I’ve spent so much of my life working with people and have marveled more times than not at how amazing they are when no one else is trying to tell them what to do or how to do it! I’m reminded of a moment during a 6-day intensive with a world-renowned ‘expert’ in their field, when I found myself in a room with 75 other people. The expert had left the room and just before their departure, a participant (woman) had begun to speak. When the expert returned, about 20 minutes later, the same woman was still speaking. The expert abruptly stepped into the conversation and berated the facilitator for allowing this woman to ‘babble’ on, and then asked those of us in the larger group how many of us would have just let this woman ‘ramble’ on (this was a facilitation training). I was the only one to put up my hand. When the expert asked me why I would do this, my response was “Because when she’s finished, she’ll stop.” That was my last training with this particular expert. .

It is a rare moment indeed, when we actually get to say what we want to say, and someone just listens. In all the years that I’ve been coaching, I’ve discovered that the client – if both welcomed and encouraged to just trust him/herself – always finds their own way home. Far too many of us grow up believing that what we have to say doesn’t matter, is of no interest to others, is silly/stupid/boring, takes up too much of other people’s precious time, is without merit, etc. We grow up believing that we have to make it quick, can’t ramble, must get to the point quickly and must never, ever, take time to pause….shed a tear or take a breath…or just take a moment to ponder what is most meaningful to us in this moment that we might share it with another.

When we’re in that big a hurry and that desperate for accurate details, small wonder that the magic of who we are has disappeared! Magic doesn’t happen that way.

When I browse the internet, scan for the latest interesting book, consider what audio product I might explore, I am very mindful of the culturally conditioned inclination to seek outside myself for someone else to have the answer. And it is culturally conditioned. What makes us think that we don’t have the answers we seek? Children seem to know what they want and what they don’t want, and we spend much of our time talking them out of it or punishing them when they won’t be stopped ‘with reason’.

Magic. Where does magic live? I’ve never found it outside of me, nor have I ever known anyone else to find their magic outside of them. That tells me something (but I am, of course, exceptionally well trained!) and that is that it must already live inside me. Am I willing to discover how to find it? And when I do, do I know how to recognize it as magic? And once I do, am I willing to allow it to flow and shape my life? And lastly, but most importantly, am I willing to allow my magic to be seen by others?

And just maybe, the most important of all, is that magic is never found but does the finding. If I am willing to slow down….let go…and allow myself to be led, magic may just have enough of a chance to sneak up on me when I least expect it, and make my day one that I will cherish for the rest of my life.

Magic happens, for me, when I am willing to just trust that it’s there! Magic unfolds in my life from one wave to the next, one step to the next, without any need for a master plan. Magic makes it possible for my life to unfold – moment to moment, day to day, one breath to the next. It is not so much that magic allows my future to emerge; it is that allowing my future to emerge is magical.

I wonder how often what I think I need, isn’t – and what I do need calls patiently to me until I can hear its sound. My chances of hearing are greater when the noise inside me has ceased, or at least been reduced to a dull roar. Unlike things outside of me, magic isn’t pushy or insistent or demanding. It will invite but will fade into the background when the rules kick in to ensure that I deny what is instinctual and I defer to what I’ve been trained to be.

Knowledge can come from someone or someplace else…from the ancients and all that has been lost to us that we can never have. But wisdom can only come from me and lives in my life unfolding, experienced from one awakened moment to the next. When magic decides to dance, it always chooses wisdom as its partner.

And I know there is much more.

Breathing is good....