Well, it’s time for another simple idea, and that is simply that everything is magic.
If we really think about it, it really is something that is always there, something that we can always be aware of if we choose to, that we so easily look at things as being mundane and everyday.
And I think just from familiarity, repetition, the fact that things tend to repeat in partly predictable patterns, that we sort of expect things to be a certain way, and that becomes ordinary, that becomes normal, that becomes everyday.
And we start to think of magic as being something that is separate, something that is supernatural, something that is there- that exists in the extraordinary, in the unusual, in things that don’t follow the ordinary pattern of the everyday.
But when I really think about it, the everyday, simple existence is itself absolutely magical.
I mean, how do we exist? How do we have this world of phenomena around us, all these things that we can sense, the colours, the sounds, the feelings, the tastes, the feelings inside, the subtleties of all our thoughts and ideas, the complexity and combinations of things in the world? Simply being able to apply our will and be able to do things, like you can move.
You can move the parts of your body, and you can control that.
These simple things are absolutely magical.
So it seems like it’s just the habit.
It’s the habit that makes us see things as ordinary and mundane, and then we separate them from this sense of magic.
And also, we’re trained to see things in a so-called scientific way, where, you know, the real world is something that is explained by material laws, material factors, physics.
This is all something that is natural, whereas the idea of magic is seen as some kind of an ancient superstition, in most cases not even taken seriously.
But really, science only explains the phenomena.
It is one- it is a partial explanation of the phenomena of the universe that we see.
It can explain patterns in the universe, patterns of movement and relations of parts of the universe to each other.
But science does not answer why anything exists at all.
Why do we have this- this thing? Science is only a description of different aspects of this universe that we experience.
But what is this all about? Why is any of this happening at all? And that’s where I don’t believe in this division between science and magic, as if they’re somehow opposed.
This sense of magic is something that is beyond what science can explain.
It doesn’t oppose science, but it’s simply there at the foundation of everything.
Beyond all the details of scientific description is, ultimately, this is incredible.
It is incredible that we get to experience this universe.
That magic is there at the foundation of everything.
And now I’m wondering, why is it so easy to lose that sense of magic and not think of it this way? It’s so easy to get lost in the mundane, stuck in the ordinary, and expect everything to follow this kind of ordinary, dull repetition, where what we imagine as the limits of possibility close down, and we just see this ordinary life.
But that magic is always there.
And now the question I have for myself, and for you, is: how can we open that perception again? How can we see the magic? How can we become aware once again? It’s something that I know it’s there.
I know there’s this foundation of magic.
And yet, every day, a sense of ordinariness always returns.
So what can I do to remember the magic?