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Consciousness and Magic

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“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering its a feather bed.”
― Terence McKenna
 
“Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life."
– Jiddu Krishnamurti
 
“We are going to the moon that is not very far. Man has so much farther to go within himself.” ― Anaïs Nin
 
"Don't forget - no one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell." - Charles de Lint
 
“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.” ― Robert Fulghum
 
“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.”
― Dylan Thomas "Happy Centennial Birthday"
 
“We tend to disempower ourselves. We tend to believe that we don’t matter. And in the act of taking that idea to ourselves we give everything away to somebody else, to something else.” ― Terence McKenna
 
“Matter is spirit moving slowly enough to be seen.” ― Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

With that I say Goodnight. I have gathered my koans for many posts yet to be. :)
 
“We live on a blue planet that circles around a ball of fire next to a moon that moves the sea, and you don’t believe in miracles?”
 
“No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

We are the center of the universe, of all that is. We. Us. Me. You. It begins and ends here, in this spot. From this spot we spin out the world into existence. It's a profound mystery but it is so. This is not poetic license. This is reality. When you start to understand, nothing will ever be the same. Nothing will ever be 'just', or banal, or 'everyday'. That is the beginning - when that realization comes, and you know with an intimacy too powerful to name - that you rule this You, this spot, this place, this Eternal Now.

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.

It's taken me a while to understand all the cliches.


"The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs." - George Eliot, Middlemarch

Ludovico Einaudi - Nuvole Bianche

"To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour."
- William Blake
 
Because this is relevant to what I am going to say -

“THE REAL VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY CONSISTS NOT IN SEEKING NEW LANDSCAPES, BUT IN HAVING NEW EYES.”
- Marcel Proust, French novelist
 
This, too, has relevance, though at first glance it seems out-of-place on this thread. What is relevant is the portion that speaks about the 'believing nations', starting at around 02:25.

Important points are made that will have relevance to this discussion regarding 'Magic'.

Why Some Countries Are Poor and Others Rich

 
"There are Witches still, who walk unshod upon the earth and listen to the murmurings of the trees and garland themselves with sacred herbs while the Moon watches far above."

– Scott Cunningham, Magical Herbalism: The Secret Craft of the Wise
 
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