DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC?: Awakening to your divine potential

This article was published in The Mindful Word journal of engaged living (http://www.themindfulword.org)

There’s a sense in which all of life is magic: the magic of a flower, the magic of a tree, the magic of birds in flight, the magic of spring, the magic of autumn, the magic of a baby just born, the magic felt by two human beings sharing unconditional love. Yes, it could be said that magic is everywhere, that the very fact of creation is an act of magic. Indeed it is, and human beings who acknowledge this and embody in form the magic of life at their core have the singular opportunity to experience the beauty, the wonder, the glory and the miraculous nature of creation. This is the magic I believe in.

Yet there’s another kind of magic that has been concocted by the human mind in its state of limited understanding. It’s a counterfeit magic, a product of wishful thinking and actually not magic at all. I refer to this phenomenon as “the myth of magic.” Of the myths that have been accepted by people down through the centuries, few are as ancient and deeply rooted in human consciousness as this belief in magic—the idea that mysterious, supernatural powers exist and can, under certain conditions, produce miraculous effects in human beings and their environment.

“Wanted—a magic formula or potion to change the hearts and minds of men” ran a recent ad in the Chicago Tribune. Many answers were forthcoming, but religion headed the list. The acceptance of the “myth of magic” is indeed the basis of all human religion. In fact, the various religions of the world—ancient and modern, Oriental and Occidental—are merely the different mechanics which man have devised to tap the “magic” in which they have wrapped their hopes and dreams.

Belief in this kind of magic is the essential ingredient of human religion for the simple reason that a state of limitation is universally accepted as normal. It’s believed, for example, in the Christian pattern based on the idea of “original sin,” that man is a “worm of the dust,” a decidedly inferior creature, who can only be delivered from the “curse” of human nature and the “prison of the flesh” by the intervention of a merciful God via his wonder-working son, Jesus Christ. Even many of the most sophisticated and seemingly self-assured individuals alive today, the finest products of the computer age, are labouring, consciously or unconsciously, under an enormous inferiority complex, a monumental conviction of their own inherent weakness and insignificance, and are looking with increasing desperation for that magical something—be it computer technology, the “second coming” or world government—to bail them and their human fellows out of the morass of misery that presently engulfs the planet. It has been customary to dread the possibility of invasion by beings from another planet, but now I understand there are growing numbers who feel that such an intervention may be the last hope for our survival!

When you get right down to it, a pretty incredible feat of self-deception is required to swallow the “myth of magic.” Yet generation after generation of human beings somehow manage to persuade themselves that this kind of magic does in fact exist, that the “Fountain of Youth,” the “Great Society” or the “New Jerusalem” is about to appear. But even more amazing is the ingenuity human beings have exercised in devising ways and means by which this supposed magic may be harnessed to human ends. In the religious doctrine of transubstantiation, for instance, the bread and wine are alleged to be the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ and thus loaded with magical potential. Believers who ingest these magical elements are supposedly raised to the status of divinity, at least for the duration of the Eucharist.

Yet, compared to the claims advanced by certain cosmetic and soft drink manufacturers, this is mild indeed. The “myth of magic” is marketed on every street corner and doorstep of civilized society. People, it seems, will quite willingly put their bodies and minds through the most outlandish acrobatics if, by doing so, they believe that supernatural powers can be bent in their direction. Rigorous ascetic disciplines, mechanical gadgetry of all kinds, religious rites and rituals, special diets and elixirs, and ingenious doctrinal formulations have all been employed to this end.

To quote some opening verses from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities, sayeth the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?” Perhaps it is time to state the truth of the matter: there’s no magic, certainly not in the sense in which human beings conceive of it. There are no “mysterious, supernatural powers” at work in the affairs of man. Nothing has ever operated, or ever will, outside of simple natural law. No magician or combination of magicians—scientists, industrialists, politicians and religious saviours included—is going to materialize some sunny day to halt the downward plunge of civilization. The fate of the Earth is entirely in our hands. Divine intervention is a pipe dream. This kind of so-called magic is a myth.

But this myth is actually the product of an even more pernicious myth—the idea that men and women are merely human and consequently confined to a miserable state of weakness and limitation on Earth. Of all the frauds ever sold to humanity, this is certainly the most absurd and the most destructive. The plain fact is that human beings are divine, and it is only because they have swallowed the lie of limitation, thereby betraying their own nature, that belief in pseudo magic has seemed necessary to assuage their troubled hearts and minds.

Obviously a man like Jesus would appear to be superhuman to those thoroughly persuaded of their own inferiority. But when the true meaning and significance of his life is dug out of the pile of legends and myths in which deluded human beings have buried it, it’s evident that he was one of the only completely authentic human beings of whom there exists any record. He absolutely refused to swallow the lie of limitation. He dared to be himself, an angelic being in human form. “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.” This was his challenge to subsequent generations, but who has believed him?

Isn’t it about time that we discarded once and for all the “myth of magic” and the “myth of limitation?” Isn’t it about time that we ceased our foolish strivings and imaginings and simply began to be what we were created to be on Earth, began to assume responsibility for the expression of divine character here and now? This is the only way that a transformed state of Oneness will appear on Earth, certainly not by divine intervention or some kind of “rapture,” as if God acts quite apart from the creatures who were made in His image and likeness. To an individual going up in an elevator everything outside of the elevator seems to be going down. The New Jerusalem comes down from God out of heaven when human beings rise up in consciousness, allowing the cobwebs of myth to be cleared away by the infilling spirit of God.

This is the magic of life, something of which human beings in their self-imposed prison of limitation know nothing. Yes, there are vibrational gradations, such that those operating at a higher vibrational frequency may appear as magicians to those existing at a subhuman level. But why stay at a subhuman level? How utterly unnatural! Rise up and taste the magic of life! When we awaken to our divine potential, when we begin to release the magic that we have tended to impute to a separate God, then it becomes quite apparent that everything required for the total transformation of human existence is already present on Earth.

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