Reclaiming Magic
Artwork by Mendek Rubin
My father was fascinated by magic. He mused about it in his writings and often pondered how it worked and its role in the world. For my father, magic wasn’t focused on sorcery or sleight of hand. It was about pushing past the boundaries of our mind’s limiting conditioning with an inner certainty that there is more to the universe—and ourselves—than we can ever fully see or comprehend. Magic lives in mystery, and my father recognized that while scientific facts and formulas satisfy our intellect’s need for certainty and control, they can simultaneously blind us to life’s inexplicable wonders.
For me, the process of writing Quest for Eternal Sunshine embodied magic. Since there was no logical explanation for all the times new writings by my dad would suddenly appear on a shelf that I was absolutely certain I’d thoroughly searched before, I assumed he was somehow participating in the creation process from the “other side.”
In the original manuscript that Quest for Eternal Sunshine was based on, my father wrote there was no way he could prove that magic exists, but there was one thing he knew for sure: Believing in it was no crazier than not believing in it. “To believe in magic is no more illogical than believing in misery, a mechanical non-caring universe, or original sin.”
My dad was sure that magic was involved in his ability to invent machinery, and perhaps was the force behind all creativity. He also saw it was an essential part of his awakening journey: “Every time I plant a positive thought in my mind, the stage is set for magic. Every time I question an erroneous assumption, the veracity of my antiquated belief system, I open the door, if ever so slightly, to magic. The fact that I have the capabilities to turn my life around is due to the fact that magic is part of my makeup. It is the awakening of something grand and divine that overrules the old and the useless, reaching out into the sublime and the profound.”
As part of his healing journey, my father frequently utilized his imagination to go back in time to reimagine his past. He said it was a miracle of life—a practical manifestation of magic—that our yesterdays can be imbued with new emotions that make them an entirely new experience. “Thus yesterday becomes a part of the now, and the old yesterdays fade away.”
My favorite of my dad’s visualizations—Basket of Flowers—has a strong component of magic :
Basket of Flowers
I am a carrier of love offerings. I carry a basket of flowers, and I offer
one to everyone I meet, be they friend or foe. No matter how many
flowers I give away, more flowers appear in the basket.
It is magic. I am a part of this magic.
For most of the four years I was writing Quest for Eternal Sunshine, the working manuscript had a chapter called “Reclaiming Magic” which included a story that some of my editors and early readers worried might undermine my father’s credibility, so I decided to remove the chapter, and instead “sprinkle magic” throughout the entire book. Ultimately, the word “magic” was used twenty-one times in the book, and the final line of the last chapter ends with: “Beyond the confines of our limiting belief systems, a magical world is waiting for us all.”
Pondering magic as I write this essay is reminding me about how aware of it I felt while working on the book. Writing from my father’s perspective for so many years—first person in his voice—helped me see the world as I imagined it looked through his eyes: full of miracles.
So today, I want to join my dad in “reclaiming magic” by sharing a draft of the deleted chapter. I hope it inspires you to see more sparkle in the world!
(Deleted chapter from an early manuscript of Quest for Eternal Sunshine)
RECLAIMING MAGIC
One of my favorite parts of my journey has been reclaiming magic. Magic was something I believed in as a child, but I gave it up as a matter of course as I grew up; I just didn’t think it made sense anymore. But as I got older, I made a one-hundred-eighty degree turn and decided to I wanted to re-embrace magic as my own. But having lost it once, there was no easy way to find it again. It wasn’t just handed back to me.
As a middle-aged man, I began to play with the word “magic” like a child plays with a toy. As the word grew inside of me, “magic” became one of my favorite concepts. I guessed that magic was a big part of life, but I still wasn’t sure how magic manifested itself in my daily living.
Now I believe that a fascination with magic exists throughout the world because magic is somehow part of our evolution as human beings. It parallels our deep desire to tap into the mystery of our as-yet-unrealized potentials.
Magic isn’t logical. I couldn’t experience magic directly until I stopped believing in the limited world I saw through the eyes of my conditioning. I needed to learn how to trust my heart more than I trusted my mind. As long as I believed that only scientifically proven things were legitimate, I was always going to be blind to it. But every time I questioned the validity of my antiquated belief system, I opened the door, ever so slightly, to magic.
Innocence enables magical moments. We sense magic through our intuition and our imagination. When you’re little, there are no boundaries to your imagination; the world is magical. In order to experience magic as an adult, I had to reconnect with my long-forgotten childlike faith.
SAVED BY MAGIC
Years ago, in my jewelry factory, I had an experience that made me suspect that there was something more to this world than what I was experiencing in my everyday life. I needed to fix something high up on a wall that was close to the top of our factory’s very tall ceiling. I decided to stand on a press, a machine with sharp moving parts, even though I knew it wasn’t a smart idea. If I fell, I would probably crack my head open. Still, I got on the press, reached up high and sure enough, almost immediately, I was falling.
Instantaneously, something magical occurred. An object, similar to a stool, manifested under my feet. It definitely hadn’t been there before, and it was only there for the split-second it took me to step safely to the ground. Even though it sounds crazy, this actually happened to me. I stepped on something in mid-air that saved me.
Afterwards, I thought about this experience frequently. I wondered if unseen forces had decided to help me avoid serious injury or death. Had magic saved me? It also made me think that perhaps human beings have the power to materialize matter, and I might have done just that.
THERE ARE MIRACLES EVERYWHERE
Now I know that miracles happen all the time. The sun rising every morning is a miracle, as are the cycles of the moon and the billions of stars glimmering in the night sky. It’s a miracle that music exists, that there is song and dance, laughter and love. The kinship between all of nature—the sympathetic cord uniting us in a world of beauty, acceptance and understanding—is a miracle.
When I deny magic, it is the same as denying the benevolent aspects of Creation and our part in it. Denying magic is what made my existence so dreary for so many years. Like a candle in the darkness, magic helped me find my way back to the sunshine.
USHERING IN A NEW AGE
When I shift my frequency to magic, I access a new way of seeing the world. Old energy is washed away, replaced by a new energy, which is always love. Magic brings a state of grace in which barriers of thought melt away and peace becomes endless. It is a joyful opening to life’s countless mysteries. When I fully trust like a young child, magic calls me to a world of wonder—a place outside of time and space, where the angels reside.
