Magic
When I first started reading books that took place in India, I thought the tales must be exaggerated legends and myths, full of metaphorical wisdom but not things that happen in the “real” world.
How could a person REALLY be in two places at once? How could people vanish and materialize on command? Surely it’s impossible for a person to read another’s mind? I was utterly unprepared for the magic and synchronicities I would experience in real time when I traveled to Rishikesh, nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas on the banks of the Ganges river.
I arrived in India in March of 2016 for the first module of my 300-hr yoga teacher training. I’d always thrived in learning environments, and I was prepared to successfully do all the techniques, study all the materials, retain the information, and generally be a “good” student. Things started going “wrong” for that plan the second I landed in Delhi. The plane arrived 2.5 hours delayed, and I realized that I’d missed the last flight of the day to the smaller town where I was prepared to spend 4 weeks. From the missing of the flight, it seemed like nothing happened the way I expected, and I showed up to my training with a bad head cold. As a recovering perfectionist, this did NOT fit with my plans for being able to “perform” all the yoga and meditating I had shown up to do at the best of my capabilities. But life has a funny way of giving you exactly what you need, even if it seems to be the opposite of what you want at the time.
The training days were long and rich and different from anything I’d ever experienced. Our morning meditations were often interrupted by monkeys hopping (banging) loudly all over the tin roof above us, to which my teacher would laugh and speak about the monkey mind always causing disruption. We practiced breath techniques that made my energy buzz, had lectures that challenged what I thought I understood about my mind, and did yoga asana (poses) for several hours each day.
On the fourth or fifth day of the yoga training, I woke up at 5:45 to get to class at 6, where we sat and practiced our internal breath technique for roughly an hour. I was still sick and felt miserable. I had been trying so hard all week long, but this day I was exhausted and instead I laid down and stopped trying. I stopped trying for maybe the first time in my life. I stopped trying to prove myself, stopped trying to better myself, stopped worrying about how others would perceive me, and I surrendered into exactly who and what I was in that present moment. I never would have thought that not trying would be one of the most challenging and beautiful experiences I’d yet had. Not trying led me out of my head and into my heart, where I settled into a comfort with myself that was a reflection of love. It helped me evolve from discipline into devotion, and that has been one of the guiding principles of my life since then.
The experiences I was being pushed into, the deep yoga I was practicing, and being in a place where I knew nobody all culminated to invite me into a mindset I’d never tried before. The space of newness filled me with awe and wonder, and magic worked its way into my life. I’m sure magic had been a part of my life leading up to this trip as well, but I’d never been open and present enough to fully look at the truth I was experiencing and wrench my heart open to it in quite the same way.
One of the lessons I learned when I laid down and surrendered is that when I stop using my mind to analyze e v e r y t h i n g, I enter the magic that exists in presence. Magic can show up as opportunities, repeating numbers, animals, a whisper from your intuition, nature speaking to you in her subtle way, someone calling you right when you think of them, and in so many more ways. Many of us in western cultures come from the perspective that we must understand things in order for them to be real. I’ve also witnessed in myself and my peers a tendency to hurry around and do and think a lot, and to see resting, simplicity, and just being as unimportant or indulgent. So I want to ask you: does resistance come up in your mind when I present the potentiality of there being synchronicities and wondrous events that are not random, and that we can’t yet scientifically prove?
“Same thoughts always lead to the same choices, same choices lead to the same behavior and the same behaviors lead to same experiences and the same experiences produce the same emotions and these emotions drive the very same thoughts.
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Something I love about Dr. Joe’s work is that he highlights the power each of us has individually to affect our environments and change our lives simply through getting out of our habitual thought patterns. I believe I discovered magic in India because my mind was forced out of the way it had always been. Different thoughts led to different results, and I was filled with childlike wonder about this world and myself. The yoga techniques I learned started to shift my electromagnetic field, which influenced the way the world interacted with me as well.
I’m not going to go into the specifics and details of all the synchronicities I experienced on my journey to India because that would feel like an attempt to logically explain them, and the thing about magic is it’s inexplicable. The one thing I’ll share is that by the end of my trip, I could simply think about a person and they would appear, either in the cafe I was leaving, or on a motorbike outside a shop I was walking out of, or along a route to the river not often traveled.
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Flash forward to the end of my first month in India. I am in a textile shop in Rishikesh near the Ganges River and the owner is pulling out tapestry after tapestry, tempting me to purchase one.
“They’re beautiful!” I laugh to him, “But I don’t have room in my luggage and I’m not going to get one!”
One of my favorite things about the random encounters there is that there’s a hint of philosophizing woven into what could easily be normal conversations.
He continued unfolding the large, beautiful textiles and replied:
“What you need to understand is that the entire universe is inside of you, so you need to not think, just buy. Trust that you will be taken care of and that you have enough.”
I counter him, still laughing:
“Well if the entire universe is inside of me, doesn’t that mean I don’t need to buy any more possessions?”
And he, straight-faced like a stone, replies:
“You are very confused”.
Maybe I was delightfully confused. Maybe that confusion was exactly what I needed to see the world around me with fresh eyes. Nothing made much sense in India. Nothing to my mind, which had mostly experienced the linear, Newtonian world up until then. But perhaps it was stepping out of the ‘sensical’, ‘logical’ world that allowed me to enter a world of magic and mysticism. A world with synchronicities so bold that I had no choice but to stare them in the face and soak the magic into my being. A world that made perfect sense to my heart.
India taught me to see the magic that is all around. It doesn’t only exist there. It’s woven into what could be a mundane task in your ordinary (to you) hometown. We don’t have to travel across the world to think different thoughts, make different choices, and break out of the cycle life has largely woven for us.
A few ways to discover magic in your normal life:
Write down intuitive nudges you have in the Notes app on your phone. You don’t have to act on their advice if you don’t feel ready to, but look back every couple of weeks or so and see if your intuition was accurate. You can start following your intuition with the littler ones and build your trust muscle with yourself to follow the bigger ones too.
Get into nature. Even if you live in a city, go hang out by trees, feel the sun on your face, be present with how the cycles of nature affect your body and mind. Take at least 5 minutes to sit quietly in nature and observe your surroundings. No podcasts, music, scrolling, just you and our beautiful planet. If you take a friend, be intentional about having a few minutes of quiet.
Meditate. I know, I know, that’s every yogi’s advice. But carving out some time to just be with yourself everyday will highlight which thought patterns you have that are repetitive, and that’s where clarity comes so you can choose supportive thoughts in your day-to-day life. It can literally be as short as 5 minutes! If you don’t know where to start with meditation, I have a meditation on the elements on my YouTube channel, or you can come to one of my donation Zoom classes (schedule and password posted weekly on my Instagram). Both linked below.
Get out of your routine, even in just small ways. Take a different route to work, try a workout you’ve never done before, cook something new. New experiences open your mind to see differently.
Practice curiosity. Look at how kids and animals go through the world, and see if you can see the world through their eyes. Remember that your mind can only take you so far.
Trust yourself. Your process will most likely be different than mine, and that is beautiful. Answers are almost always found within, not in other people. We are not homogenous, and your unique expression may be where you find synchronicities and magic!
I want to hear your experiences with synchronicities and magic! Share in the comments, or reach out to me on social media, or come create some magic with me on an upcoming retreat. I’m sending you all lots of love!
