The Shopping Cart

It was early spring in 2014 and I was pulling into a parking space at a grocery store in Rockford, Illinois. The last traces of slush and snow were disappearing into the drainage basins. I had escaped from my mom’s house to do her grocery shopping. I say escape because I needed a break from taking care of her. My mind was in a loop: why can’t she just let me……fill in the blank. Now I would say, be me. At the time it was frustration about being told what to do, when to do it, and how to do everything.

I couldn’t pull all the way into the parking space because a grocery cart was in the way. I couldn’t back out because a car was pulling out behind me and the truck next to me, probably the person who left the grocery cart in my way, couldn’t finish pulling out either. I was stuck. It was a sloppy mess outside the car, and I didn’t want to get out before I had parked the car. I didn’t react to the person who left the cart. I was frustrated by the cart. So, I waited. Then I got fierce and waved my invisible magic wand at the cart and yelled at it to move. “Move. Damn it!” It didn’t move. Great, I thought. My magic wand isn’t working. Some person could move it for me. And right then a man walked by, grabbed the offending cart and moved it out of the way. I was dumb founded. I quickly thanked the universe for answering my request. I gave a little chuckle. We think the universe should respond in a certain way. It always responds. But it responds in its own way. The universe does have my back. My magic wand is working. It simply doesn’t work how I think it should. Silly me. I’m hung up on how.

Quit calling daydreams fantasy.

When children play, we call that “make believe.” Isn’t that interesting? What if when children play, they are just making their beliefs come true? What if that is the true nature of magic? That we make our beliefs come true? We believe them so much that they become a knowing. A knowing is already true.

I enjoy my dragon visions. Is shapeshifting real? Is it true? When we make believe, we make it real. It is true and it is magical.

I did the same exercise with magic that I had previously done with gratitude. Every day for a month I wrote down a list of all of the magical occurrences that I saw in my life.

At first, it was a series of what some people would call cosmic coincidences. There were a lot of those in our life and they certainly seemed magical. Then I began to appreciate seemingly ordinary things as also magical. I wrote about the workings of the body and the songs of the birds and the rustle of the leaves of the trees. The crickets and birds singing with John when he played his guitar. The ducks on the pond laughing when we told a joke.

Many simple things can be seen as magic, as well as the truly extraordinary occurrences in our lives that some people call miracles.

Technique: List of Magical Occurrences

List ten things that happened today that you consider magical or cosmic coincidences. Do this for twenty-one days.