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Put the Magical Realism Back in Your Life, Part Two
August 2, 2008
One person's reality may be someone else's magic. The key is learning to experience what is normal through new eyes. In the first part of this article we recognized that this can be done through conscious ritualing.
Ritual itself is such a continuous part of our everyday existence that it, too, has lost its magic for us. Understanding ritual and developing a sense for the qualiadelic will give us the new way of seeing what we desire.
As we know, ritual provides a framework for a certain controlled spontaneity, a space when we can play with symbols the way an actor plays with props. When rituals are successful our symbols stir up an intangible feeling in both ourselves and others, and so we repeat the ritual in order to understand that feeling more clearly.
This is the nature of the qualiadelic experience, because as we move toward symbols (and ideas, and feelings, and anything that attracts us) both we and the symbols evolve. I have used the image before, of a baby who sees his mother's eyes as only dark spots in a blurry face. Over time, not only do the baby's eyes see the face more clearly, but the mother develops a whole repertoire of expression toward her child. Both mother and child grow.
This in itself is pretty amazing -- pretty magical -- but there is more to the picture. As both we evolve and our symbols evolve through conscious ritualing, the symbol implies meaning and direction in our lives. Any parent understands this.
It is like discovering for the first time how wonderful reading can be. It dawns on us that books will forever after be a part of our lives. The same can be true for music. This is true as well for friendship, and careers, and hobbies, recreation and all kinds of play.
And don't forget, we live in larger communities as well. As we consciously ritual with them we discover the meanings that will guide us and our children, and their children, too.
As we discover qualiadelia in our lives we return to them again and again. It is doubtful that we can ever know them so well that they lose their magic. They are all like love, which we return to throughout our entire lives, always trying to understand and experience its ineffable qualities.
We grow the magic in our lives through conscious ritualing. When we discover the qualiadelic we have the sense that we are in the service of a greater narrative.
A book, a piece of music, a piece of clothing, each might suggest whole new worlds, new roles and new selves. A favorite spot, a garden, a building or a street corner might give us a feeling that we return to again and again, a feeling only known to ourselves and to the special people whom we bring or we find there.
The qualiadelic has the law of attraction going for it. Those who return again and again to cultivate themselves and the meanings they discover in their ritualing will find themselves in the best company.
Be Qualiadelic. Be Conscious. Change the routine.
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