Life Goal: To live as magical a life as is humanly possible.
Oh, I talk about other goals, smaller, more manageable things like growing SoundWorks into a community of healers and artists working together in a multitude of vibrational modalities . . . which is not small, but it’s not as big as live as magical a life as humanly possible. Not by a long shot.
I do write a lot about magic, because I believe that the realm of what we call magic – or occult, esoteric, unexplained, para-normal, psychic, eldritch, woo-woo, witchy, strange – is one of the greatest mysteries of all time, and the most exciting frontier that still exists. Science has explained damn near everything else, but not magic. They’ve tried. One cranky old fart made a career of debunking any and all phenomena he came into contact with, but . . . he did it by setting up parameters that were designed to confine an experiment to measurements and outcomes only currently understood and accepted in a scientific realm, and thus, his debunking was sadly limiting and ineffectual. What he refused to accept or take into account is that true magic cannot be measured or contained by any mundane method currently known to science.
Science is catching up, ever so slowly, but they are not applying their new technologies to the detection of magic, because the fear of ridicule, loss of funding, loss of status/tenure/respect, are all too terrifying to contemplate. And to be honest, I don’t give a rats patootie whether magic can be validated scientifically. It’s a mystery, and maybe it needs to stay that way.
But that’s not why you called.
Living a magical life is tricky. We have become dependent on gadgetry and scientific principles in our day-to-day lives, and largely ignore other possibilities. We have caller ID so we are less likely to know intuitively who is calling before we pick up the phone. We have GPS so we can’t just find the place we’re looking for because it felt right to go this way or that. Forget getting lost and the thrill of finding something new.
My mother always knew when one of her children was sick or injured before she ever heard about it. She just . . . knew. (She still does – anytime I get sick or hurt I have to practically banish her because she hovers and is very, very cold, like ghosts often are, and I end up shivering like I have a fever even when I don’t.) A couple days ago I forgot to set my alarm; I wanted to get up early so I could do my breathwork and meditation before the day got too busy. Michael’s alarm went off stupid early for a meeting at work, so he got up, and I went back to sleep. In my dream I remembered that I forgot to set my alarm, and was a little annoyed, but then I thought, ah, screw it, I’m tired, I didn’t sleep very well last night, I’ll just sleep in and meditate later – knowing there was no way that was going to happen. A few minutes later, I started hearing a little singy-songy voice, like a tape recording sped up very fast, and felt hands prodding at me, around my face and neck where the covers were off. At first I thought it was some kind of malevolent spirit who wanted to kill me, but didn’t feel fear or that sick, dark feeling that so frequently accompanies evil. I couldn’t banish it, either, so . . . hmm. Being puzzled about it woke me up – in plenty of time to do my breathwork and meditation. Ah, goshthanks, Mom.
My cat used to serve as my alarm clock often. It was probably her stomach clock going off, but if I wasn’t up by a certain time, she’d put her paws and her little face up over the edge of the bed and say, “Mom? Mom? Mom?” until she got my attention. Not “meow” or “rowr” or anything else. Clearly, emphatically, “Mom.” She never did it on a Saturday or Sunday, because she probably knew she would be an ex-cat very fast. How do they know it’s the weekend? Well, that’s magic for you. Cats are nothing if not magical. I remain in total acceptance of that phenomenon as completely real.
Over many, many years, I have trained my intuition and my clairsentience in order to regain some of our lost abilities.
It’s just like a muscle, y’all. Use it or lose it. Work on it and it comes back. I am an effing Time Ninja. If I decide I need my schedule to shift to make room for something to happen, whatever I have on my schedule will shift, fortunately usually in a good way. A student will text and say they have an opportunity to do something they’ve been wanting to for a long time, and I’ll say, “Oh, that’s fantastic, by all means enjoy it!” and that is that. Or a client will need to reschedule because an old friend is in town for the day. It has never been, I fell and busted my arm and won’t be having lessons for at least six weeks, nothing like that. There was a death in a family one time, but it was one of those long expected blessings that meant the end of someone’s suffering. It’s not something I do, it’s just . . . being in the flow. Being aware and believing with all my heart that my desire for harmony in my life, and harmony for others, will create even bigger, better harmonies than I can imagine. My harmony ripples out from me and makes other people vibrate more harmoniously just because they’re in some proximity to me. It feels humbling and amazing, and I am in awe every time it happens.
I’ve also trained myself to know when my phone rings what’s actually important. I have a strict personal rule: If I don’t recognize the number, I don’t answer the call. I don’t want to extend my car’s warranty, thanks. When I want to give money to political campaigns or causes, I will do it, but don’t call me 37 times a day to terrorize me into giving more than I am comfortable with. But somehow, sometimes an unidentified number will come up and I’ll know, that‘s important. Need to answer this one. And it always is. It’s an unlisted extension from my doctor’s office with test results, or a potential client wanting to ask some questions before booking an appointment. So far I have managed to evade the warranty people. I’m sure this disturbs them hugely. I like to fantasize that they have a pool going, where every time somebody calls me and I don’t answer they put a quarter into a pot, and whoever gets me to answer will win what now must be about three grand.
But the most important expression of my intuition is in healing sessions.
I have learned to trust what pops unbidden into my head, what I hear, what I see, and what I sense with my non-physical awareness. When I am working on someone and my singing bowl suddenly feels like I’m pushing through extreme hold hair gel, I know there’s some trauma associated with the chakra or the part of the body I’m working around. I once came across a really loud and sticky spot about three feet out from someone’s knee, and I made a note of it on my chart. After the session I said, “Here’s where you injured your knee, probably forty or more years ago,” and watched as the client had to pick his jaw up off the floor. “How did you know that? It would have been . . . forty-three years ago! And sometimes it still bothers me, but I am just so used to it that I ignore it.” What can I say, the sound tells me to look and I believe what I see.
My dad was one of those guys who just don’t ever get lost. Sometimes he would not know exactly where he was, but he always ended up driving right up to wherever we needed to be at exactly the right moment. It was uncanny and legendary. Glade was never lost. He could also become invisible at will, until he wanted to be seen. I have worked hard to cultivate his sense of direction. I often repeat this little incantation I made up to help me orient myself in the directions.
I call upon thirteen sacred directions
to protect and guide me:
North, South, East, West
Before me, behind me, to my right, to my left
Around, between
Above, beneath
And within
Have you ever stood in a forest and found a true direction just by the feel of it? Ah, yeah, that’s North right there. There is a certain kind of pull that happens. Certain migrating birds have a very strong internal compass, which has been refined and developed over multiple epochs of time. Birds were dinosaurs once, so they’ve been around a long damn time. That internal GPS is wicked. I wonder if it makes up for being the biggest, baddest brothertruckers around? Hard to say. I used to rule the world, but now I know exactly where I am all the time. Well, sure. Why not. It’s not the worst trade they could have made.
But I digress. I say forest for a reason. In town we are bombarded with WiFi, cellular, radio and other fields, signals and waves, and it is much more difficult to feel directions, intuitions, messages from Spirit (or Mom), and other natural sensings that have for some reason become paranormal and supernatural. But being a good Druid, I frequently advise seekers to go out to the woods for answers. Oh, your actual questions might not be answered, but you will absolutely find something better, and after an hour in the woods you probably won’t care about the original problem nearly as much anymore. Works every time. But back to the point, go out to the woods and find a true direction, like North. North is pretty easy. So . . . we have iron in our blood, right? Iron is a compass and it aligns with North. Sit down, breathe slowly and easily, and feel North for a while. Feel the iron in your blood lining up pointing North like the needle in a compass. Then every day for a week, wherever you happen to be, at home, at work, at the mall, out for dinner, just take a few moments and see if you can find North without a compass, and then just sit for a few minutes and feel it. Then the next week try South. The iron would be lined up in the same way, but . . . the pull will be different. If you felt any sort of attractive force when you were facing North, it would have been pulling you toward it. Facing South, that attractive force will be pulling you back. It’ll be weak, especially at first. But eventually, you’ll feel it. Not really a tug, not even a pressure, just . . . mmm, there. A . . . something. But it’s there. That’s North. Okay. After you are feeling South, try East, try West, once you get really good see if you can segment into NW and SE and NNW and so on. Maybe you’ll feel it, maybe you won’t.
Maybe working with your intuition is more interesting or important to you. Set your phone ringer to a neutral tone so nobody has a special ringtone to alert you that it’s them, and turn your phone upside down so you can’t see caller ID. See if you can guess who is calling you just by the non-physical feel. Try it for a week. See what happens.
Maybe your interest is more toward the healing arts. Ask a buddy to join you, and use your non-physical senses to see what you can find. See if you can notice a chakra that’s out of alignment, or not spinning right, or spinning out of control. See if you can feel it with the energy centers in the palms of your hands. See if you can hear distortions in a singing bowl or a tuning fork when you tap it and move it over each chakra. See if you can intuit why they’re out of alignment, and trust the information you receive. There is no point to any of this if you don’t trust what you get.
It all takes practice.
Soooooooooo much practice. But doesn’t everything worth doing? It has taken me at least a decade of really working on it to get to where I’m at, and I would consider my skills to be pretty rudimentary, honestly. But what are lifetimes for if not to practice and get better at things and enjoy the journey? I totally believe that one of the reasons we’re so out of tune with our surroundings is that we’re programmed to be in such a goddamn hurry all the time. Stop rushing and just be. Sit and find frickin’ North and feel it for what it is – it’s North. And that may not change your life, but it will build your mental strength and your intuitive skills. Life is an incremental process. Very few things happen to you all at once. for example, we didn’t gain the 25 pounds we’ve (nearly) all put on since Before Covid (BC) in March of 2020. No, it took until at least December to get all the way there. And taking that weight off is going to take until . . . who knows? But if we do it incrementally it will be much more effective than if we try to do it all at once. Trust me on this.
If you don’t practice you won’t strengthen your non-physical senses at all. And there is absolutely no harm in trying to get a little more in tune with the natural world, even if we are surrounded by technology that makes a lot of these senses seem obsolete (they won’t seem so obsolete when you can’t get a cell signal and you don’t know where you are). Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Let me know how it goes.
Need inspiration to live a more magical life? SoundWorks can help! Stick around and let’s see what kind of magic we can create together.