The Restoration of Magic
Noticing magic and miracles can open your heart
If you haven’t found something strange during the day, it hasn’t been much of a day.
Physicist John Wheeler
In Colorado, the Rocky Mountains do not begin gradually with rolling knolls, larger hills, and finally the real mountains, as with many ranges. They arise suddenly from the plains like a wall, which means that there is a specific point…well, actually a very long north-south line, where one can go…the place where the North American continent erupts from horizontal to near vertical.
Yesterday morning I drove to the closest point on that line to pray and watch the sunrise. On the way, I passed 3 deer walking unafraid down the side of the street, one doe on only 3 legs. I wondered first if I could do anything for her, and failing that, if it meant something…as if she were in my dream.
When I reached “the line”, I turned east to face a thousand miles of plains, the sun just breaking the horizon, my city, and one scampering rabbit. The mountains began their 9,000-foot climb a few feet behind me.
I practiced “ho’oponopono”, the Hawaiian art of forgiveness, saying to anything and anyone who has disturbed my peace, or whose peace I have disturbed, “I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you.” The Meadowlarks, Doves, Geese and Robins provided the musical background.
The trees are just now at that moment of their own abrupt transition. Three days ago they were all apparently dead branches. Two days ago there was a hint of green. Yesterday, they shocked me, like the rise of the Rockies, with their sudden verdant unfolding.
If the backbone of a continent can so abruptly shift….if the season and plants can overnight transform…then surely any miracle is possible today.
What magic or miracle is in your life today? Are you willing to open to it…to notice it?
You know….the world is not a merely rational, logical, complicated machine. Quantum mechanics, often referred to affectionately by physicists as “quantum strangeness” has totally dis-proven that worldview, although in this rational, logic-worshiping culture, many of us still cling to the old Newtonian worldview like a life-raft in a storm. If that works for you, you have my blessing. I speak to the rest of us, who yearn for possibilities which may seem impossible, for truly, the Universe is far, far more miraculous, full of extravagant and unimaginable possibilities.
There are excellent books and movies that take this deeper, such as The Holographic Universe, What the Bleep do We Know, and The Spontaneous Healing of Belief: Shattering the Paradigm of False Limits. All I have room to say here is…we should turn our doubting mind back on itself. We should doubt the doubter, for it is the doubt itself, or the fear underneath the doubt, which cuts us off from the magic and miracles.
There is a scared one inside most of us, about 4-years old, who prefers to never again get his/her hopes up, lest he/she be cruelly disappointed. When we look at the breakthroughs or healing possibilities we desire, but tell ourselves, “that could never happen for me,” we slam shut the door which the Universe was opening.
Our instincts to protect that little one are exactly right! He/she does need our protection, our nurturing, our reassurance. But to let it run the show? To let our wounded inner child slam the door shut on the magic of life? Not for me! I will not spend my life refusing to ever again believe in Santa Claus!
Can you hold the hand, reassuringly, of the one inside who’s armored against the fear that his/her longed for magic will never come…and walk through that door anyway? You might be stepping into an adventure of great possibility and fulfillment. If not, I’ll bet that you are far more capable today of bearing disappointment than you were at age 4. Pick yourself up and see what other doors are opening. I’ll bet there’s something very exciting behind door number three!
Oh…and, by the way, I’ve been feeling both fabulous and productive since my magical sunrise trip to the edge of the Rocky Mountains.
