Chapter 1 From book;

Everyday Magic and Personal Change

agic! Harry Potter, Hogwart’s School? Sorcerers, Merlin? Incantations in Latin that produce blue flashes of light? That’s fiction. I’m not talking about that kind of magic.

Having the right stuff–pointed hats, purple robes, magic wands cut from the seventh limb of the north side of a willow tree in the dark of a new moon, necklaces of Celtic symbols, altars, chalices, ceremonial swords and shields–that’s a whole other course of study.

I am talking about everyday magic: parking spaces when you want them, running into people you need to see, things routinely turning out better than expected, having the right people in your life, desired opportunities presenting themselves. This is magic that you don’t think about. It is your life pattern.

Everyday magic can have other forms: never finding parking spots, having to spend an enormous amount of energy to see people, having things work out marginally only after enormous effort, being disappointed by the actions of people in your life, never getting any “breaks.” This is magic most people don’t think they create. It is an invisible life pattern.

You can change the Magic in your life. You can change what happens every day and over the course of your life. You can become the author and editor of your life story. It is as though your life is a movie, and you are the writer, director and casting director. This book will show you how to alter the story of your life and effect personal change.

This book is not a therapy in the conventional sense. Therapies have trained or credentialed practitioners who act to help solve emotional problems or teach you methods to solve emotional problems. They hope to help you understand your feelings. They hope to move you from apathy, anger or fear to a state of happiness. Therapies are inward journeys. You search inside for the sources of your feelings. You try to find the incidents in your childhood or other times of your life that created feelings that are the source of the way you feel in similar scenarios. You resolve internal emotional conflicts. I have seen people go through various forms of therapy and become happy and then intermittently serene. However, the general form of their lives didn't change much. They still lived in the same house, drove the same car, worked at the same place, had the same job, had the same old friends and had many of the same general problems in life.

Some of them were happy, but their lives were filled with an endless struggle. They had long commutes to jobs in which they received little personal satisfaction. Minor and major things often went wrong in their lives. Successes were hollow, not commensurate with the struggle to achieve them. Their lives were better in many ways. They didn't spend much time being angry or sad.

They weren't always running other people down. They were more fun to be with. Their emotional lives had changed, but they were essentially the same people. They were still traveling the same rut on their lives' path. By the consensus definition, success doesn't have much to do with emotional well-being. I have known of very rich and successful people who were very angry. I knew angry Hollywood attorneys who won million-dollar cases and spent the money on cocaine to kill the pain. I saw successful movies produced by angry directors. I knew serene people who filed for bankruptcy. I knew conservatively happy people who labored hard with little success. Therapy has to do with emotional well-being. It doesn't have much to do with the success dimension of life. A person's degree of success could be thought of as another matter entirely.

In the movie metaphor, the emotional well-being of a character is not the story. The screenplay is the story. In the above example, the "angry lawyer" is the character. Getting rich from fees from multimillion-dollar personal injury cases is the story. If the personal injury lawyer's therapy had worked, he might have been happier, but he would be a personal injury lawyer. If he quit being an (angry) lawyer, which would be rewriting his story, he might become an angry real-estate investor. The character would be the same. Some Hollywood actors such as Cary Grant were pretty much the same character in a wide variety of movie stories. In real life, all characters have stories that are magical. That magic produces a consistent life. The same lessons appear over and over until we get the understanding that changes the magic that was producing them.

I don't know any people able to wave their magician's wand and create exactly what they want. Things simply happen as if by chance for most people. However, there seems to be a consistency about what most people unconsciously make appear.

The life stories of people I know are quite consistent in the package of magic they create. In the business world, we call it their "track record." A person with a good track record at sales, for instance, could be depended upon to produce the same sales results over and over. Other people might talk a good game, but, when it came to producing results always ran into insurmountable barriers.

Some people had amazing track records at producing disasters. They seemed to be under a spell that made everything turn out that way.

1 The Book of Spells

In many stories about magic, including Harry Potter books, people have Books of Magic full of useful spells. Nobody knows or remembers who wrote the spells. Practitioners of magic learn these spells or consult the Book of Magic when the need arises. The spells are in Latin or some other ancient language and are intended to produce specific effects. When practitioners recite the spell, the effect is produced. Zowie!

You may not know it, but you have a Book of Magic that contains spells. You carry the book in your subconscious memory. These spells guide your daily activities and guide the course of your life. Like most characters in magical stories, you do not know you are under a spell and behave as though all your actions are "the way things are supposed to be." Unlike the Books of Magic in fiction, we know who wrote the spells: your parents, mentors teachers, religious leaders, culture and you, yourself, have made the entries.

2. Memes

Because the word "spells" has many meanings, I use the word "meme" (pronounced like "theme") to describe these spells. I define "meme" as a learned attitude, belief, decision, or behavior. If your mother taught you the aphorism "a stitch in time saves nine" (and you bought the idea), that is a meme. If she demonstrated that behavior by always making a point of taking care of things before they got out of hand, she taught you that meme. If, by contrast, your mother always let things go and get out of control, you could make the decision that you would always "take a stitch in time to save nine." Either way, you acquired the meme. It is the spell that makes you take a stitch in time to save nine when needed. Memes might be learned ways of dealing with situations. If your father had a specific set of swear words he used in certain situations, you might have learned to say those same words when you deal with the same situations. Your father cast a spell that makes you swear like him. You might learn to use the same racial epithets as a parent. These sayings might be memes that portray a learned attitude toward a race. The spell causes you to have the same attitude.

These learned behaviors can be very subtle. You may learn to laugh the way your father does. You may learn to make the same face your mother does when you disapprove of something. Your posture may be the same as a parent's. You may be under a spell that causes you to mimic your parents.

Not all spells or memes are negative. Loving parents will be role models who pass on memes of the value of having a loving family. Parents can communicate the value of living a life of honesty and integrity. Religious teachers can give you memes that are guidelines for living a virtuous life. Education can give you practical memes of great value.

Fortunately, we do not need to consult a sorcerer to remove these spells. If you can identify and be aware of the memes you hold, you can make a conscious decision to examine them and then erase or change the spell from your personal Book of Magic. You can change the magic in your life by becoming more aware of the spells you are living under, what is written in the book.

The following chapters will show you methods of finding those spells that produce life patterns. That knowledge will enable you to discard those you do not want to keep.

In contrast to therapies that are inward journeys, searching for memes is an outward journey. You hunt for sources outside yourself that are the sources of behaviors: What is the spell, and who cast it?

There are many kinds of spells or memes to examine. First, we look at personal memes.