Abracadabra: Real magic

The phrase that I hear most often from new clients and the students in my classes is, “I want my life to matter.”

If I had a magic wand (and I do... so do you) I would wave it over the heads of every person on this planet and say these words: Your life already matters.

Abracadabra.

Because that statement - "I want my life to matter" - points to an intuitive understanding of a secret all wizards know - that there is a direct relationship between you and the world of forms, the world of matter.  And with just a little tweaking, that understanding becomes bonafide magic.

The kind of magic any of us can learn. 

A magic that lets us draw a line around a piece of the world and say,  I can see how this might be more beautiful, more generous, more in alignment with the world that I want to live in so... Presto, Chango. Abracadabra!

Though no one is absolutely certain of the origin of this magical incantation, my money’s with these definitions (from Wikipedia):

• a Hebrew phrase meaning “I create (A’bra) what (ca) I speak (dab’ra).”
• [A]bracadabra comprises the abbreviated forms of the Hebrew words Ab(Father), Ben (Son) and Ruach A Cadsch (Holy Spirit)

In other words, take this idea that I have and make it real – make it (into) matter.  You know, magic.

This is not the kind of magic that takes place in a protected, alternate universe like Hogwarts Castle, The Isle of Avalon or Rivendell. This is not a magic cloaked from ordinary life by mists, spells and enchantments. That kind of magic is fictional.

Yet, these stories of wizards and fairies and enchanted islands are bridges to the enchanted world that's woven right into this one. And every one of us wields a wand just as powerful as Harry Potter's - a wand that we use every single day, whenever we lift a pen or a paintbrush or raise our voice in song. The wand of our creativity.

Wizards all - we transform ideas into objects, scripts into films, strangers into partners, blueprints into buildings.

Every day.

This is the great reveal.

This is the Abracadabra.

This is what Harry Potter and Gandalf and real-life magicians like Steve Jobs can teach us:

Real magic is everywhere - and we are all meant to carve out a piece of the world and fill it with the light of our own ideas.

We are all creators, all magicians. And when we practice living as our favorite wizards do, playfully engaging with the shimmering invitation of the world around us, things change.

• We stop wearily acquiescing to the illusion that life is a random pile of meaningless events and empty encounters - a self-abandoning "Oh well" which gives us an excuse for our addictions and our pettiness and our self-absorption
• We stop treating divine guidance as a once-in-a-blue-moon miracle, as a big surprise that makes us gasp one moment and forget the whole thing the next.

When an amazing thing happens –when a feather floats from the sky right into our lap – we stop pretending that we are not moved - that we are not loved.

We place that coincidence, that miracle inside the broader context of a story that seems to be leading us somewhere pretty special – a place (or a world) that matters, and is shimmering with magic.

When we live this way, using the very real magic we were born with, we transform the world.

Abracadabra.