Magic

I believe in magic. It is what comes out of the floor when I lie face-down on the carpet and feel the vast solid foundation of the world beneath me. There is magic when I step through the stone gateway into the wildflower garden and feel the welcoming embrace of the expectant plants.

Because of magic, the touch of a green face towel reveals its thrilling texture as I put it back into its metal ring. I sit and talk with a beloved friend without urgency, and the electric magic radiates all around us.

The magic is always there. I just have to pay attention. For me, paying attention means that I let go of all interfering beliefs and surrender to the transparent belief in magic. Each morning, I settle quickly on to the edge of my bed, and because I have let go of all else, all notions, the magic grabs me and opens my awareness to more than I could otherwise see or feel. Magic whisks me away.

I have spent years living in a world of belief created by religion, and I now see that those efforts were attempting to create their own form of magic. So much of my religious belief required surrendering to a reality I could only imagine to be present. The imagined belief helped capture something of the magic, but it got so complicated by doctrine and obscured by illusion. It was a magic largely based on nothing real, nothing actually present.

I am now choosing more to pay attention to a magic that rises not out of my imagination but out of what is actually present. It is a magic radiating out of what manifests immediately before me or inside may body. This is a magic that comes directly out of the vast universe. It invites me to experience it through all the forms I encounter. I may be touching the floor of my bedroom, but the magic of the reality beyond the fuzzy carpet works on me.

Looking back, I now realize how often I have walked on the margins of this magical world and never realized what I needed to do to enter in. There were those who invited me, but I wasn’t aware how to respond. Perhaps there were times that I did actually cross over and partially recognized where I was.

Today, I choose to allow the magic of the universe to work on me more routinely, again and again. More and more, I am finding myself in a magical world. I think I can be at home here. I invite my companions to join me and enter this magical world.