Rationalizing Magic
Reflection #67: It's time to believe in magic again
Over the course of my lifetime, the world has increasingly embraced the logical, the scientific, and the rational. We have, collectively, turned away from the unknown, the mystical, the spiritual, and the unexplainable.
I, personally, have, for most of my life, embraced this trend. I was a thinker and not a feeler. I relied more on logic than intuition. I've scoffed at miracles, and laughed at the mystical, favoring what is "real" and what is explainable.
But that was a mistake.
And I am changing.
What is "real" isn't only what we can explain with words and theories. In the last several years, meditation and other reflective practices have opened my metaphorical eyes.
Humans are not logical, we are much deeper than that. We have a dual nature.
We are masters of logical thinking and also feeling and intuition.
And, increasingly, I'm noticing that we have turned away from the magical and the spiritual at the time we need such things the most.
Look at the world: war, inflation, bank runs, increasing crime, dehumanizing attitudes, arguing on social media.
These are all ways for us to destroy ourselves.
They are ways that we lose our humanity; for our humanity is spiritual in nature. By the way, I don't mean “religious” when I use the word spiritual.
Perhaps someday science will be able to explain what I am calling "spiritual" or "magic" but, whatever we call it, humans need it. We crave it.
Economists pretend that humans are rational creations. But such purely rational creatures only exist in the minds of economists.
For example, people often buy products for non-rational reasons. And marketing should be non-rational. Marketing is more about making magic than managing metrics and a spreadsheet leaves no room for magic.
When we do things, such as making a non-essential purchase, we only pretend we are rational.
We then take our real, “magical”, reasons for doing things and we rational-IZE them.
In other words, we rationalize magic and in doing so, we diminish it.
Perhaps it’s time to embrace the sacred, the spiritual, and the unexplainable again.
Perhaps it’s time to believe in magic again.
"Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.”
Roald Dahl
(author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)
Everything written in this post (and all my posts) is written 100% by me, Clintavo, a flesh and blood human seeking to grow my soul and come home my truest self; for that is the essence of creativity. I do not use AI to assist me with writing — that would deny me the very growth of my world through writing that I seek. I do use AI to create relevant images to go with my writing as the images are orthogonal to the writing itself and I am not an illustrator.
I've always believed in magic intuitively but thought maybe it was just something I was making up. As I've gotten deeper into my spiritual practice over the past twelve years, I've realized how "real" it actually is.
It's crazy that you posted this today because I wrote about it in my post yesterday:
"We think we are so smart. See, touch, taste, smell, hear. Apparently, the scientists 'discovered' a sixth sense! Wow! Thanks to them, we’re now granted access! But is that it?
What a bunch of monkeys we all are. Just because we’ve, on a number of occasions, surpassed our atmosphere, we think we deserve a throne. In reality, we’re hardly a gene or two away from butt-scratching chimps. If we think we’re so smart, why do we give ourselves to such wasteful, empty endeavors?
What are these other senses? Well, I don’t know. If, however, you cannot, or will not use them until someone who spent a decade of their life in the confines of some concrete building to 'study' puts a name to the unnamable, then I reckon you’ve got no need for them anyway.
If you listen closely enough, they’re still there. But you’ve gotta listen, you’ve gotta be quiet.
Magic is real, and science killed it."
Sorry for the long quote, but I need to share it because the synchronicity here is awesome. I notice, for some reason, people often write about similar things at similar times . . . As if the Muse dictates, at large, our collective inspiration. Very cool stuff, would love to exchange some ideas one day.