As we look for ways to expand our awareness of how things work these days; positive thinking, the law of attraction, and similar “mind over matter” concepts are being sold as the new Messiah. Motivational gurus make some good points about human potential. However, it seems to me there are some wrinkles in this new religion.
My parents visited from out of town the other day, and they tried to teach me how to play cribbage while they were here. My mom was explaining the strategy and told me once that we wanted to draw a 5. So, I cut the deck and got a 5. It did help us, but it helped my son and father even more, so we lost that hand. Next, Mom told me we were hoping for a 6, so I cut and we got a 6. Same thing – we got a couple points but our opponents got even more, so we lost again. This little game reminded me why I stopped following conventional guidance many years ago.
Lately, the current wisdom that most of us hear says “Take control of your life. Manifest what you want to happen!”
Sometimes, people ask “Does it work?”
Yes! Of course it works!
The question we should be asking is “Is it in our best interest to work that magic?”
Like those hands of cribbage I lost when I made things happen that I thought I wanted, it’s incredibly easy to force the wrong situations into our lives. During these times of change (i.e. destruction, and the threat of destruction, of just about everything in our lives) pulling a rabbit out of a hat could be really handy! Still, it’s really important to learn to rely on the only thing that is really reliable, and destroy all of our other illusions before they try to destroy us.
Learning to harmonize rather than using all the forces at our disposal to force our own way is the difference between mysticism and magic. Magic make things happen that we want to happen. Mysticism puts our desires and energy in action but leaves us detached from the results, placing our faith instead on the intelligence of the universe.
Those who are religious might want to remember Commandment #1. Reliance on the wisdom of our own ego instead of on our supreme source is a violation of that commandment. The rest of us pragmatic types probably just need to realize that whenever we try to take complete control of a situation, we’re on thin ice. We need to take responsibility for our lives, but that’s entirely different from taking control away from the intelligent, mystical force around us.
Hunt Henion
www.shiftawareness.com
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