I have an important magical point today - one I almost forgot myself.
It is paradoxical, counter-intuitive and illogical.
That’s why I think you’ll love it.
Here it is -
Sometimes, when a magical person is really doing the work and dutifully attending to the problems of living, it becomes very important that they take little hiatuses from their problem-solving.
The hiatus, even a quick one, opens us up to help, healing and magic that we couldn’t even see when we had our dedicated problem-solving hat on.
The hiatus, the break, the breather, invites new magic in.
This is not to say we should ignore our problems, or pretend they aren’t there. It’s also not meant as a permanent escape from or abandonment of the big work we do in the world.
It is to recommend that we take little breaks from our problems which has several interesting effects:
sometimes when we take a break from our BIG problem, a solution finally comes through
sometimes when we bring our awareness out to the other side (i.e. our problem is cured) we access big, new information about other areas of our lives that haven’t been getting the most attention because they have not been the most problematic lately
sometimes we realize there are aspects of our BIG problem, that we aren’t ready to let go of - that there is some hidden pay-off for us within the BIG problem
sometimes when we take a conscious (little) hiatus we realize that maybe this BIG problem is something that maybe we don’t care about in the big picture as much as we thought we did (or thought we should), and that releases a little resistance that ironically makes the BIG problem a little easier to solve
sometimes when we take a breather, some other, important insights can arise; sweeping in from the wings where they were waiting for us to not be totally obsessed with the one BIG problem
Here’s a quote from theoretical physicist David Bohm that I’ve always loved that helps illustrate this point:
"Between where you are now and where you'd like to be there's a sort of barrier, or a chasm, and sometimes it's a good idea to imagine that you're already at the other side of that chasm, so that you can start on the unknown side."
- David Bohm
Humans with imagination are really good at reverse engineering. When the material world is stubborn and stingy about giving us access to solutions, our imaginations are not.
Especially lucky for us, we are magical people, who know how and when to dip into the imaginal realms in order to create the change we want in the regular world.
We can also find support for this “quick hiatus” idea from the shamanic idea that if you’ve been trying a physical method to heal something and it’s not working, you ought to try a spiritual technique; and vice versa.
This is not spiritual bypassing. This is a tiny hiatus from which we will return. This looks like consciously ceasing connection with the aspects of your existence that are directly concerned with that BIG problem. And then seeing what insights arise in that space. And then, coming back to the problem at hand - ideally with a new perspective.
For the paid tier people, below you’ll find an 8 minute experience I recorded in my backyard yesterday that will guide you through a “tiny hiatus”. I know you’ll be able to hear in my voice and the sounds of the birds how energetically expansive just 8 minutes can be.
And, before I let the rest of you go, I also want to remind us that we have solved many problems in the past. We’ve all had problems and we’ve all found solutions. And, then, often, we forget we even had that problem in the first place.
When we can drop into (or rise up into) different awarenesses as we work on whatever we are working with, we give ourselves access to a lot of power and wisdom that we may not have found if we just stayed unimaginatively grinding.
It is a funny thing with humans - the devil we know is most always preferred to the one we don’t. Even if we don’t love how things are, we are used to it and in some ways it can start feeling like “home”. When we look at the “devil we know” preference in relation to problem-solving, we can see how we can get in a weird relationship with the problems that have been with us for a long time. Little breaks, coming up for air, help defend us from the risk of developing an obsessive attachment to the actual problem rather than a journey towards its solution.
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