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Magick
lobster
Crusty Veteran
Walking along a Thames tributary, a jewelled dart of green/blue iridescence left the stream, flew above my head and returned to the river. A kingfisher.
I was wearing green and blue and a red cap, so this was an instinctual deviation, asserting territory. In essence I had become a kingfisher bird. 
It happened so fast. My favourite precious river jewel was gone before I could point it out ... Magick.
I believe in magick. It is around us all the time. What say you?
5
Comments
Bugger.....
On a more serious note
I agree.... Magical Insight Never Dull this is all the magic needed...
I find the natural world very magical when I take the time to look at it and really notice. Even chip-stealing sea-gulls!
Why make a label / feed the belief for something that functions well without it?
I'm a great believer in Occam's Razor - that given two competing equal explanations, the simplest that fits all the facts is likely to be true. Which generally leads one to the belief that magic as an explanation for the physical world is not necessary and just adds uncertainty to one's views.
But that said I find the seashore a magical place... the combination of clouds, water and wildlife, the way it looks differently every time, the way it takes over your mood and cleans your mind as you walk. I love taking photos to try to capture the moment when I'm out on the beach.
Thanks guys,
We could certainly use words like poetic, majestic, awesome. I quite like the term magickal. You assume that for something to be magickal a level of wonder, awe, superstition, spookiness need be present perhaps? Not so.
Art is often magickal, people, nature, the sky, music etc, all magickal ...
It's a label that denotes one thing from another - to this extent, it seems redundant.
Art is art, people are people, nature is nature, sky is sky, music is music...
The whole natural world is quite magical. That doesn't mean it's magic like Harry Potter though,
, of course. Some things, even when we know the logical science behind it, seem to defy possibility. Knowing all that goes into creating and growing another being, for example. or how everything in nature just works perfectly together to produce what other things in nature need. When trees lose their leaves, the leaves serve as fertilizer to grow things anew in the spring.
We know how all this works, but it doesn't make it any less magical to me because to have everything working perfectly in such an order is quite amazing. And despite our knowing how it work (why the leaves fall and how, how conception and birth work etc) we still haven't a clue how it came to be that way. But it doesn't matter. Just observing it is the magic.
This morning I got up in the dark and walked the dog under the stars and then when I walked with my son to the bus stop, I watched the last star disappear in the sunrise. Magic, all of it. Understanding doesn't have to remove the awe.
Great (and very ordinary) insight/story @karasti - awesome. As adults we sometimes lose the sense of wonder/magick/intensity ...
quoth @lobster:
As adults I think we tend to believe that we understand a lot more than we actually do. Give us a couple of formulas that illustrate some small detail of some superficial layer of cause and effect, and everything becomes ordinary to us. Some of us, anyway.
We don't really understand much at all. Everything is magic. No, I don't want to debate semantics!
Just something else to let go of...
An old friend once told me that he loved to rescue insects and animals in a predicament, so that they would believe that miracles exist.
I live in a constant state of awe.
It's good that we don't have all the answers, that we can't quite figure out the trick behind the magic, that a caring universe somehow makes sure that every day, for some absurd reason, we do believe, not that miracles exist, but that life is a miracle.
I always liked that quote “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.”
The more I learn about the universe (as in outer space) the more I am pretty sure my brain could implode from attempting to grasp it!
I love information, and I love to learn all the details of how and why everything happens. But I am perfectly content not always knowing, and I wouldn't want to arrive at a level of feeling like I "know" or "understand" everything in a mechanical way. I prefer the sense of awe and wonder. Of course, sometimes understanding leads to more awe
I wouldn't want to let go of a sense of wonder though.
The idea is to come to terms with dukkha, not to bask in dukkha.
I may let go of craving, aversion and delusion.
Not of my capacity for awe.
This got me thinking about how the more you know the more you realize you don't know.
It seems like there is a distinction between the kind of superstitious magic that arises from a gross cloud of ignorance and the kind of magical sense of awe that arises from knowledge of the world. Even though ignorance could be said to be a major player in either case there is a definite distinction between the two.
The magic of the mind is incredable
"If you change the way you look at things-The things you look at change!
And right before your very eyes, things begin to rearrange !"
Now that's real magic and a magic that anyone can access... anyplace, anytime........ no witches coven needed
Yes, magic is life and life is magic. It is a delight - sometimes challenging; but always a delight. (No matter how you spell it)
Peace to all
At the top of my Twitter today:
Wisdom begins in wonder-Socrates
It reminded me of something of Trungpa's I read regarding our reaction to beautiful things. That the key to our awakening/enlightenment is in recognizing that and being able to carry it forward into all things. Such as when we are moved by a piece of music, a painting, a sunset. To carry that emotional reaction to the wonder of life into all things. I'll have to see if I can find the exact quote in my notes.
Ordinary mind is where the real magic is. Seriously, this is not a metaphor. When we begin to wake up, golllly, as Gomer used to say, things sure look different! But, they look the same too.
Getting "us" out of the way opens the door to the universe, and it doesn't happen in real time, it happens NOW! It truly is instant karma, and the connections are incredible. But even though they are incredible, they are just ordinary. We have to be in ordinary mind to see this, not up in our thoughts and conditioning.
Einstein once said that time has to exist because w/o it everything would happen at the same time. He couldn't prove that it existed, it was just his theory, and he had all sorts of elaborate thought programs to "prove" that it existed. He should have pushed it further, because in reality everything DOES happen at the same time, and it happens in different realms of existence simultaneously. Enlightenment is this....very....moment. There really is no past, future or present, only now.
We know that the past is gone and just an illusion, but we still think that there is a present and a future. There might be, but maybe not. Nothing is assured when it comes to this. If we die today, there is no future for us. Even if we are looking for something to happen in the future, when it happens it will be the present, and the moment we notice that it happens it is no longer in the present, it is in the past.
Trungpa, and I belong to a Shambhala sangha, got some things right, and some things were filtered through all those drugs and sake. To say that some things are beautiful and some things are not is duality. The key to our awakening is awareness meditation. This is what awakened Siddhartha and countless other sentient beings.
Really? So why do they describe the fabric of the cosmos as "space-time"? What about the arrow of time, what about entropy, what about atomic clocks, etc?
Well, he more rightly claimed time is an illusion without which everything would happen all at once.
I think the present moment is fluid with no chunks or borders between what we take as a moment and another. However, this is because that was.
I like the wonder and am constantly amazed I but wouldn't ascribe it to magic.
Aww...what's the harm in a little fairy dust?
@smarino all things are duality, including you saying Trungpa got some things right and thereby implying he got other things wrong. That, too, is duality. It's pretty hard to converse without it. Trungpa wasn't limiting things to beautiful or not. He was saying when you note that connection you can use it as a jumping off point to expand that connection to all things, to all people, to all moments. Everyone has to start somewhere.
It limits our options, our understanding and is fodder for delusional thinking.
Otherwise I'm sure it's harmless.
This is non-sense ... it also happens to be true.
Not sure who Gomer is and golly is not a word I use - oops I just did
I deliberately used ye olde spelling of magick to suggest that as well as the mundane there is more to love than hormones, more to a smile than lip movement, more to a sunset than hot gas disappearing.
If we discover the wonderfully ordinary, we find the transcendent ...
Iz plan.
As Nisargadatta put it:
When I look inside and see that I am nothing, that’s wisdom. When I look outside and see that I am everything, that’s love. Between these two my life turns.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-loy/transcendence-or-immanence-balancing-heaven-and-earth_b_3166015.html
Indeed there is a definition difference in "magic" and "magick." Don't get caught up in simple definitions and read between the lines a little. I can think being pregnant was magical without thinking it was by magic that it happened. And so on. It's not delusional thinking. It's appreciating all that is. To me, wisdom includes both wonder/awe and knowledge. Knowledge is just facts and is lacking a necessary connecting component.
Obviously it's up to personal interpretation but my answer is no, I do not believe in magic nor does spelling it differently change the definition for me.
For myself there is no line between the mundane and the wonderful and I like it just fine like that.
I think the point @David was exactly what you said, just said in a different way. the difference in spelling is only to differentiate between pulling rabbits out of hats and making the Statue of Liberty disappear and the wonder of the moment. Whether you prefer to call it awe, wonder or magic, it is all referring to the same thing.
Just light through water? Pah!
The spelling magick is used to differentiate between magic/conjuring/illusion and magick/wonder/awe/reality as @karasti says ...
Today we saw a double rainbow. Just a rainbow? Yes. Magickal? Yes.
When we believe there is no longer magic(k) in this world, it is a sign that it has left our hearts as they have hardened."
I think to lose the sense of wonder, awe, delight in the little things and to consider them limiting and delusional is a crying shame, myself. If that is the road to Enlightenment, then I would rather be (and am happy to be) on the wrong road.
'Delight in the little things' - exactly so. Attend to the details.
Most of have our heads in the clouds, mobile phone, worries about the passing away trump, our mind tantrums etc.
http://brightwayzen.org/paying-attention-no-matter-what/