Tag: lightness

How to Lighten the Fuck Up by Fooling Around with Magic

A Quick Look at the Playful Nature of Magic.

Magic.  

What is it, anyway?  We talk about magic a fair amount.  We say that something, “felt really magical,”  or we, “feel a lot of magic,” when we’re with another person,”  or a solution to a problem appeared, “just like magic.”  But what, exactly, is it?  Is it just a feeling, or is it a real thing that exists in the world independent of our feelings?

In The Magician card, we see a person channeling magical energy from, “above,” into the material plane.  He’s using his concentration, his will power, and his skills to pull that energy into what he wants to manifest.

Which, of course, is a major clue.  Magic is an energy, just like light, sound, radio waves, or solar flares.  What’s more, it is it’s own energy, meaning that it’s distinct from other energies.

We tend to get it mixed up with other energies, because it appears coincident with them.  When we’re madly in love with someone, it feels magical, and so we tend to mix magical energy up with being in love.  When we’re joyous, it feels magical, and so we tend to mix magic up with great happiness.  But magic is it’s own energy that appears with joy and love, but isn’t just joy and love.

We can see an analog of this with emotions and brain chemicals.  When we have a lot of serotonin in our bodies, we feel happier.  When we have a lot of cortisol and adrenaline in our bodies, we feel more stressed and anxious.  But . . . happiness causes serotonin to appear and serotonin causes happiness to appear, so it’s a definite, “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” situation.  They’re not equivalent – they just appear at the same time.

Reductionists would have us believe that serotonin = happiness, but it’s not true.  Antidepressants, which increase serotonin levels, can be a very effective band aid for depression, but they pretty much have to go along with good therapy to deal with the underlying problems.  If we don’t build in the therapy, the happiness goes away when we stop taking the antidepressants because – guess what? – the things that were making us unhappy are still there.

In very much the same way, magic appears in our lives coincident with love and and joy, but the love and joy don’t cause the magic.  Nor does the magic cause the love and joy.  They just appear at the same time.

There are some other clues we can find that point to what magic actually is.  Two major markers that appear in our lives when we’ve got magical energy flowing through us are synchronicity and serendipity.  Synchronicity and serendipity are really just short hand for, “life is easy.”  Solutions to our problems appear out of nowhere.  People, places and things that feel like gifts from the universe manifest with no effort at all.  

And, “life is easy,” is really just short hand for, “life is light.  Life is playful. Life is fun.”

Which are some more major clues about what magical energy really is.  In the same way that magic tends to appear when we’re joyous or in love, magic tends to appear when we’re happy and playful.  It’s almost as if the universe is saying, “You know, you really need to lighten the fuck up if you want me to play with you.  I get that you’re all sad and dour, but it’s a drag and I can find someone else to hang out with.”

So magic is an energy that tends to appear in our lives when we’re loving, joyous, happy and playful.  It doesn’t cause them and they don’t cause magic, but they definitely appear at the same time.

Which brings us to another card, The Fool.

The Fool is FULL of magic.  He’s dancing along at the edge of a cliff and he really doesn’t give a fuck about the danger because he’ll just float right off into the air and keep dancing.  His little dog is picking up on his joy and dancing right along with him, in just the way that dogs always will.

Now, the interesting thing about The Fool is that he’s the Zero card in the Tarot deck.  Every other card has a number, but The Fool is Zero.  Which means that he doesn’t belong anywhere and he belongs everywhere.  We can literally take any card in the Tarot deck, drop The Fool on top of it and things will start to get better.  Even extremely bad cards like Death and The Tower start to improve the second that we bring in magical energy.  

There are people in the world who will tell us that life is insane, tragic, and brutal and that there’s very little to be optimistic about.  And, when we look at the daily news, it can be hard to argue with that view.  Believing in love, joy, playfulness, happiness and lightness can seem downright . . . Foolish.   

But that’s the point.  No matter how bad the situation may be, if we start to drop The Fool on it, if we start to increase the magic in our lives, it will get better.  

Magic brings love, joy, happiness, playfulness, easiness, and lightness with it.

Yes, please.  I’ll have some of that.

My e-book, Just the Tarot, is still available on Amazon at a price that’s SO reasonable that it would be downright Foolish not to buy a copy.

The Rules of Synchronicity Number Two: Lighten the Fuck Up and Walk on Some Water

Playfulness as a key to synchronicity.

In my previous post, The Rules of Synchronicity, Having Sex with Pizzas, and Becoming More Flow-ish, I began to lay out some basic rules for increasing synchronicity in our lives.  We then use that synchronicity to get into The Flow State and life becomes a lot easier.

  Rule number one, of course, is to ask for synchronicity.  It’s like knocking on a door – if you don’t knock, no one will answer.

Rule number two is . . . play.

Just play.  As in, don’t take ourselves so seriously.  Lighten the fuck up.  Mellow out.  Have some fun.

Now, to many people, that’s going to sound counter-intuitive.  After all, we’re asking the Universe for guidance in our lives!  And that’s serious stuff, by golly, and we should act very solemn about it.  Maybe dress all in black and look pained and tragic.  Or maybe even fall down on our knees and sob about it.

Not.

There is a, “Whatever-It-Is,” out there in the Universe that answers our questions and gives us guidance when we ask.  Call it god, call it the faery folk, call it angels, call it whatever you like.  It’s there and it engages with us when we engage with it.

Now, the Whatever-It-Is has some basic characteristics, just like a person.  In fact, it might be easier to think of Whatever-It-Is as a person or even a friend.  One of it’s characteristics is that it’s playful.  It likes to engage with people who have a sense of humor and a light heart.  It’s not that Whatever-It-Is WON’T engage with us if we’re all serious and dejected and depressed.  It would just rather engage with someone who’s a little more fun.

Using the analogy of a friend again, we all have friends who are in a dark, depressed place.  Everyone goes in and out of the light and some people stay in the darkness a little longer than others.  If we have a friend like that, we don’t turn our backs on him.  If she needs to have a cup of coffee and just unload about how miserable her life is, we’ll do that.  We’re willing to pat his shoulder and say, “There, there . . . it will all work out.”

On the other hand, if we see that particular friend coming toward us a block away, we might cross the street and peer into a shop window until he passes by.  We’re compassionate, but we’re not masochistic.  We’re there to help, but we don’t seek out the darkness they’re living in.

Put another way, we’re all attracted to people who are positive, humorous, and light hearted.  Their positive energy gives us a good energetic charge and, hopefully, we give them one as well.

In very much the same way, Whatever-It-Is is much more likely to engage with us when we’re living in a fun, humorous, positive space.  It has a light, playful energy and so it’s much more compatible with OUR energy when we’re light and playful.

This is, of course, completely contrary to what we’ve been raised to believe.  Traditionally, people have sought out a connection with Whatever-It-Is in churches.  And what do we know about going to church?  It’s very, very, very serious.  And solemn.  And pretty damned uncomfortable.  No giggling allowed, thank you very much.  

Catholics even have a tradition of smacking themselves in their chests with their fists and saying, “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea MAXIMA culpa.”  That translates as, “I am guilty, I am guilty, I am SO FUCKING guilty.”

Would you like to have a conversation like that with a friend?  Of course not.  So why do we assume that Whatever-It-Is wants to have that conversation with us?  The ironic thing is that we’ve been taught that, in order to talk with Whatever-It-Is, we have to get into a really dark, serious emotional space and this is totally non-productive.  It just makes it that much harder for the positive energy and guidance to flow to us, because our vibration is incompatible.

Another problem that many of us – especially those of us who were raised as christians – encounter is that we’ve been taught from the get-go that GOD IS NOT OUR FRIEND!  The word, “god,” is just the term that most Westerners use to describe Whatever-It-Is.  It’s the something out there that we talk to when we need guidance and help, which we call, “praying,”  and when it answers us we call that, “miracles.”  

Unfortunately, we’ve also been taught that this god person pretty much doesn’t like anything that makes us happy.  That includes masturbation, sex, lying around being lazy, eating too much, and getting high.  He’s making a list and he’s checking it twice and he’s going to find out if we’re naughty or nice.  And if we’re naughty, we’re going straight to hell. Forever.  Period.

In other words, god doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.  In fact, you can flip through the entire bible and hardly find one single instance where god appeared to be having any fun or told a joke or did a dance.  The one exception I can think of was when Jesus decided to walk on the water just to freak out the local fishermen, but that’s a different story.

So, once again, this is a mind-set that we need to TOTALLY get out of.  Whatever-It-Is (call it god if you want to) LIKES for us to have fun.  Whatever-It-Is LIKES people who have sex and lie around in a hammock on a sunny day and tell jokes and dance.  Who wouldn’t?

Just to recap where we’re at in this discussion at this point:

  1. – We’re much happier, more fulfilled, and content when we’re living in the state of consciousness that we call, “The Flow.”
  2. – That state of consciousness always occurs coincident with synchronicity, so if we can increase our synchronicity, we increase the time we spend in The Flow.
  3. – Synchronicity means having contact with, asking questions of, and getting guidance from the spiritual source that some people call god/goddess or the faery folk or angels or spirit guides or even Whatever-It-Is.
  4. – The first step in achieving synchronicity is to actually, consciously ask for guidance and then watch for answers.
  5. – The answers will come a lot easier if we stay in a happy, light, positive vibration and remember that Whatever-It-Is is a benevolent friend who likes to have fun.

I’ll be posting some more about synchronicity in the near future, but for now just remember that the way to enlightenment is to lighten the fuck up.  We can do that!

Remember that my e-book, Just the Tarot, is available on Amazon for much less than what you’d pay for a box of chocolates and you’ll know EXACTLY what you’re getting.