Don't Question the Magic

“Turn left,” the disembodied voice beside my ear said as I drove home from running errands in the Southern California town of Encinitas seventeen years ago on the same day Jon was out for a long bike ride. The way to our house required a righthand turn, but I got in the left turn lane as instructed. I’ve learned over the years to trust this voice even when it seems not to make sense.

I headed west on Encinitas Blvd just in time to see Jon on his bicycle veer into the driveway of the car dealership on the north side of the street, tip over, and fall off into the grass. I turned left into the driveway as he stood up, completely unsurprised to see me there, and began to load his road bike into the backseat of the car.

“It’s like you expected to see me here,” I said.

“Why wouldn’t you be there when I needed you,” he replied.

This was the sense of it.

Magical moments like this can not be quantified using logic, simple math, or even calculus and most often do not bear immediate fruit as this one did. This kind of reality operates outside of the third-dimensional bounds of time and space, and sitting in 3D trying to track the who, what, where, when, and why of the magic can diminish it, limit it, or even outright undo it.

Now I am not saying to discard your discernment or avoid practical and pragmatic thinking. It’s been my experience that I am at my most powerful when using both operating systems at once, the one connected to this body and this reality and the one connected to a version of reality that transcends the limitations of the first and opens the door to miracles and wonder playing out into physical reality right in front of me.

Even though the magic took me right where I was needed that day, I still had to use my physical eyes to see Jon on the left and my physical body to get him and his bicycle into the car and then drive him home. I’ll also never know what would have happened had I turned right. Perhaps the string of physical events would have played out similarly, it just all would have taken much longer with a lot of explaining and back and forth along the way.

The magic saves time, energy, and space leaving us open to be of greater service to one another and exist more effortlessly in a state of joy. The magic invites us to say “yes” to what we do not yet fully understand while at the same time keeping ourselves from falling into magical thinking or delusions.

This is an art form, to sit on the magical fence without falling into either the density of disconnection created by isolation on the one side, or the disconnection created by living up and out of the body in fantasy or mental illness on the other. It requires patience, awareness, honesty, and faith, each working in concert with the other, each an equally important cog in moving ourselves further along our evolutionary path.

This is integration and re-ascension, in my opinion. It is nothing more or nothing less than the enormity of humanity and all of our systems evolving from the inside out. I used to think “ascension” would happen in one moment, a complete and total shift of ourselves and our reality into something more loving. This was me falling into magical thinking bordering on a delusion without connection to our grounded reality.

It suddenly occurred to me one day that this idea about ascension was a repackaging of The Rapture, same dogma, different words (or sometimes the same exact words).

This “Ah-ha” moment shifted me on my evolutionary path. My Aquarian Sun, so decidedly opposed to following along with any dogma or system at every turn, began to pick this all apart and look more deeply within at my piece, my experiences, and my contribution to our world at hand.

This was also a moment of magic, the questioning voice from within pushing against a delusional idea, “But, how does this even make sense?” This is when the question becomes the magic.

My idea of integration and re-ascension has shifted to an understanding that it is an ongoing process in which all of us are involved in every moment we exist. I no longer see an endpoint to it or a final destination but rather a continuing evolution of ourselves and our systems at hand as each of us heals and becomes whole giving ourselves access to the truth that we are love incarnate, we are one, and what benefits the collective benefits the self.

I question myself and the world around me all of the time. I am in a constant back-and-forth that moves me along, deeper and deeper into my body while raising my awareness, increasing my compassion and empathy, and making me more available.

But when the magic appears in front of me in miraculous form, this is something I do not question. This is something I open up to and receive with a grateful heart as I appreciate the beauty of this Universe.

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