Анна Шиман
Draft translation. This text was translated automatically and has not been proofread yet — if something reads oddly, it does.
By “magical” I mean the kind of thinking we call fairy-tale magic: you only think of something and, hey presto, there it is (a whiff of transurfing, Sviiash and Zeland straight away). Some call it childish and smile condescendingly when they hear about Witches and Sorcerers. Of course, there is something childlike and rather naive about it. And I even know where it comes from — from childhood itself. But there is nothing more precious in the world than the little egocentric that each of us is as a child.
And you get the feeling that the world around was created to bring me everything at once on a silver platter (yes, that very one), “by magic, just because I wish it”.
When we want warmth and touch, we simply want someone or something to appear and sort it out, because we cannot yet take care of ourselves. And — “Oh! A miracle!” — it appears and sorts it out. It never even crosses our minds (it’s still empty in there) that this is a very caring and responsible mum/grandmother/sister/dad/nanny/(fill in your own), who understands and senses, or simply knows (has learnt it, read it in a book). Knows that we need feeding/hugging/changing/washing/and so on. And to us, little generalissimos, it seems that the whole world revolves around us alone. As children, we know very little about the material world — where things come from and why someone does one thing or another. We are so insignificantly small and so hugely egoistic that the only way we want to get what we desire is to keep this magic model: you only think it, and there you go!
What happens when the expected thing does not arrive on time, and how we wait for a miracle and scream, choking on our own cries, is a subject for another discussion.
So, let’s move on.
What happens when this model becomes fixed?
Now I’ll let you in on a secret: why people don’t want to grow up, and why they keep wanting to fall back into childhood and run away from real life (into codependent relationships, drugs, alcohol, shopaholism, gaming and so on).
Why, because those memories of the time when I am the centre of the world are so very sweet.
Picture it: you’re sitting at home with no money. Watching the news, cursing the government, unhappy with everything and everyone. Because everyone wants something from you.
You sit and dream how magical it would be to do nothing at all, just think of something, and it has already come true (yes, a caring, responsible, self-sacrificing mum will come and give it to you). You sit and remember your childhood experience of your mother’s hugs and love. And, by the way, it’s good if there was one — but what if there wasn’t?! Then you hide a feeling of enormous dissatisfaction, of resentment towards life, your family, people (for not loving you enough), and you tenderly nurse and cherish the idea that the world owes you! That you were short-changed! That you are being used, and so on, right up to utter self-pity and hatred of everyone around you.
So, back to “magical” thinking. Not a very constructive option, you’ll agree.
So what is to be done, and how should we live?
There are two options here:
1) stay there and live on the “substitutes” I described above;
2) make contact with the real world and learn to take care of your own wishes and needs yourself. In order to master the tools with which material things are made, to study the essence of things and phenomena, to gain experience and an understanding of HOW IT ALL WORKS.
Understanding that to get something “by magic”, you need to KNOW how to get it in the ordinary way: get up, do it, get it. For a person with the “I am owed” model, life in the real world is nothing but suffering. That is exactly why the game scenario “Persecutor (Tyrant)–Victim–Rescuer” is so widespread now (if you are interested, sign up for our training on working with it). And it is so widespread — suffering, comparing yourself and competing — that there is hardly room left for questions about spiritual development, the Soul and other such “nonsense”, which are called spiritual needs.
And that is how “magical” thinking gets devalued, though on the whole it has done nothing wrong and works perfectly well in a state of awareness.
It is the wonderful feeling of oneness with nature, the trembling of the Soul when you meet the dawn.
It is the knowledge that everything around is alive and has its own character and ways of showing it.
It is looking at things “differently”, an inner sense of mystery and magic, of the unusual, of great joy and curiosity about everything you come across in the world.
It is like creeping through the forest towards a large glade full of flickering fireflies.
It is a fairy-tale, unreal sense of Life and of the other side.
True, nobody has yet repealed the reality of life, the laws of the universe, of cause and effect, and sometimes we stumble while dealing with serious matters, such as earning money.
That is why it is important to build a good foundation for yourself and your loved ones (if you are responsible for them), and only then to think “magically”. And so we move on, playing the roles of victim and tyrant. Or we simply long to go back to a caring “mum”, demandingly cry out for love and hurt ourselves painfully on reality. This is the Path of Human Development! Welcome to the real world!
