High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘Magic’

.

.

Giggle, wiggle, wink, jig.  Holler, whistle, toot.

It’s not the how that matters, it’s the getting in the game.

It’s finding a little minute for a tickle now and then, for tapping and clapping and slip-sliding away.

The power of perspective is hidden (whoot-whoot!) in play.

Bam! You’re a kid again with a wide open mind, where all the magic is free to roll in (giggling) and grab you (tickling) and where every circumstance is your rabbit-in-a-hat ally just waiting for a wave of your wand.

The sky and waters and all that lie above and below them leave their marks, etch their colors on your mind.   Everything you perceive is but an interpretation of the dance; the reality is too large for seeing.

It’s the paddling itself that enriches and grows you, the experience of moving through the dream, the way your interpretation shapes its flow.  It becomes whatever you name it.

Call it rough and the waters of the dream will roil and churn; call it calm and it will be so.  That’s its magic.  It reflects you to yourself and shows you the consequences of your naming it.

It paints your mind in layers, comprehending your meaning.  It knows whether you are intending adventure or fear when you order rough waters.  It knows whether the calm will evoke boredom from you or peace.

Paddle on; the journey is for your bliss and understanding.

Long, long ago, when I was a little girl, Aunt Mae told me the story of the snow elves.   Normally they were invisible, she said.  But they could roll in fresh snow and it would stick to them for a little while.

If you walked in a woods strewn with oak leaves, Aunt Mae said, on the day of the first sticking snow, sometimes it was possible to catch the elves at play.

She supposed that other kinds of leaves might do, but every time that she had seen them herself, it had been on oak leaves.  She figured, she said, that it was because the ground was still warm, and that the thickness of the oak leaves probably helped to keep the elves’ snow-skin from melting.

“You’re making this all up, aren’t you?” I asked.  I’ll never forget how her face crumbled at my accusation.

“Oh no, dear!” she said.  “Listen to me.  The world is a magical place, full of wonders and delights.  You need to hold on to that, no matter what people might tell you or what life might bring.  Promise me that you will.”

There was a kind of urgency in her voice that stuck something deep in me.  I knew somehow that what she was saying was important and true.  “I promise, Aunt Mae,” I whispered, and she smiled and squeezed my hand.

I looked for the snow elves on the day of the first sticking snow year after year for the rest of my childhood.  But then other interests caught my mind and Aunt Mae’s story faded away into the realm of forgotten memories.

Yesterday the first snow fell here.  As much as the adult in me sometimes dreads winter, the child in me was filled with delight.  When I got home from work, I couldn’t keep myself from walking in the woods.  The beauty of it erased all my cares, and I fell into a trance of sheer happiness.

I had just turned toward home and was walking past the giant oak when a tiny bell-like sound caught my ear.  I looked toward it instinctively and there at my feet I saw them!  Snow elves!  A pair!   I could hardly believe my eyes, but I knew at once what they were.  “Hello!”  I said, astonished.

They giggled, and then, in an instant, they faded away, leaving behind oak leaves, holding the year’s first snow.

I stood there in silence for a few minutes, fighting against my grown up reason to accept what I had seen.  “See?” a soft voice whispered in my heart.  “I told you.”

And as I walked home, I felt a gentle spirit walking beside me, and I felt restored and filled quiet joy.

They come like milkweed seeds, floating with divine nonchalance into your clear, easy mind, as if they were nothing at all.

But something in their light catches your attention – a notion, a wink.

As they land, they whisper with just a hint of seduction, “Go here,” or “Try this.”  Or maybe they unzip a whole instant movie of your next possible future and say, “Want it?”

Some say they’re pieces of luck.  (For sure!)  Some say they’re a nudge from angels.  (Could be.)   Some give long-winded talks about the collective consciousness and the power of your  superconscious mind.  (Sigh.)

I say, “Who cares!”  Just grab ‘em!

I mean, you can tell right away that they came just for you.  They’re seeds of possibilities with your very own name written all over them.

Take the road they point to.  Play out the movie in your real life.  Make the dive.

Oh, and be sure to say thanks.

That’s the way you keep the magic flowing.

The whole purpose of dandelions, you know, is to help your best wishes come true.  You pluck one, hold it up to your face, make a wish and blow – really hard! And off fly the seeds on gossamer wings, to plant your dreams where they can flower and grow.  Who can resist it!

The same holds true, of course, for the first star you see in the nighttime sky, for shooting stars, and for birthday candles on a cake.

Wishes are big magic.  Even when you’ve long since abandoned childhood foolishness, given the chance to make a wish, you still close your eyes and conjure up the best one you can, fill it with hope and let it fly (just in case).  Don’t you?  C’mon.  I know you do.  If a genie came by with lamp . . . well, enough said.

Wishes have power.  They’re tokens of our unfulfilled desires, our dreams of what could be.  They’re openings to our secret self, pathways to our possibilities.  “If you can conceive it and believe it, you can achieve it,” said Napoleon Hill.  And it all starts with the conception, the wish, the dream.  Our wishes are pointers, whispers from ourselves about potential life directions.

What wishes are waiting inside you for recognition?  Do you pay attention when the words “I wish” sail out of your mouth?  Try noticing.  Collect your wishes; jot them down on the back page of your journal.  See what they tell you.  You just might be surprised.

So there I was, sitting at the lake watching the swan when a flash of color caught my eye.  Looking down, I thought I had wakened inside a dream.  A tiny little guy who looked something like a cross between one of Snow White’s dwarfs and a leprechaun was walking along the shore dragging this Aladdin-like lamp behind him.  It was half his size and looked really heavy.  But he was grinning ear to ear.

I rubbed my eyes.  He was quite a mish-mash of metaphors, come to life.  He looked at me and laughed and it startled me.  “Hello!” he said.

“Hello,” I answered.  “Who are you?  And what are you doing here?”

“I’m John,” he said, “and I just got my lamp.”

“Um, that would be Johnny the Genie?” I said, trying not to roll my eyes.

“Right!  Cool lamp, hey?  Want to make three wishes?”

“And if I do, will you make them come true?” I asked, thinking I must have gone over the edge.

“Well, I’m just an apprentice, of course,” he said.  “And to tell you the truth, we don’t really make the wishes come true.”

“What’s with the lamp then?  And what do you do?” I asked.  This was getting more incredulous all the time.

“Well, see,” Johnny said, setting down his lamp and plunking down cross-legged beside me, “the lamp is just a prop.  It’s like a placebo.  You believe it has power and so it does.”

“What do you do, then?” I asked.

“I whisper,” the unlikely genie said.  “As soon as you make your wishes, I turn invisible.  But I follow you everywhere and keep whispering your wishes to you.  That keeps you looking for them.  And you know—what you believe in and look for has a way of showing up.”  He giggled.

“Of course, you’re the one who really makes them happen,” he said in a low voice as if he were sharing a confidential secret.  “You listen to your hunches and prompts and whims.  Then, expecting magic, you follow them to see where they lead.  You spot the opportunities for action.  You decide to grab them.  Everybody makes their own magic, you know.  I just help them believe.

“Neat job, hey?  Like my suit?” he said.

I told him I thought the job was a fantastic gig.  “But that suit . . . Well, to be honest, you don’t look powerful to me.  I always thought genies were supposed to be big and powerful.”

“Hey!  I’m just an apprentice, I told you.  This is my first lamp.  I start with the little wishes.  You know, things like ‘I wish I could get myself to exercise today,’ or ‘I wish the kitchen were cleaned up,’ or ‘I wish I could be more cheerful.’  Stuff like that.  I help people practice doing the little magic, and both of us learn—the person who makes the wishes and me.  And we both get better at it as we go along.  We graduate to bigger things.”

“I think I’m beginning to get it,” I told him, after thinking for a few minutes about what he had said.  “I could get up tomorrow morning, make three smallish wishes for my day, and then watch myself choose to make them come true.  Right?”

“Well, sure!  That’s how it works.  I just make it more fun.  People forget their magic is supposed to be fun.  Remember that, and you don’t even need me at all.  Give it a try.  See how it works for you for a couple weeks or so.  Make three wishes in the morning and believe you can get them to come true.  See what happens.  I’ll find you later down the road, see how you’re doing.”

“Okay,”  I said, “Why not?”

“Great!  Good luck to you!” he said, giggling.  “I gotta go now.  Lots of wishes are waiting to come true out there.  And I can’t wait to help it happen.”

“Good luck to you, too, Johnny.  I think you’re going to be a fabulous genie.”

And hardly had I finished my sentence than—Poof!—he was gone.

From across the lake, I thought I heard the swan laughing.