Majik and coincidence

I have a book on magic, or magik or majik, however you want to spell it. Most of the book is over my head to be honest, but it makes for interesting reading, if only to see how some people think about the subject.

The first article in the book is written by Grant Morrison, who is a pretty famous writer if you're into comics. It's about how to be a 'pop' magician and talks about how to easily integrate majik into your everyday existence. It talks about things like sigils (majikal symbols,) and channelling spirits, but in a very different way to the 'usual' way of talking about these things - for example Grant mentions that if he wants to feel more confident in a situation, he prepares by channelling the spirit of James Bond. It's like majik lite and his main premise is 'use what works', which makes a lot of sense to me. He also talks about doing things like walking in a receptive state - being open to signs and messages from the universe.

To me, majik is similar to a lot of things in life. I don't really believe that when spiritualists channel spirits, they are actually talking to the dead or that people can perform spells as such. I'd love to be wrong, but I see no evidence to support it.

My belief is that majik, along with many other disciplines, like cold reading, fortune telling, apparently psychic abilities etc, work in a different way. I think what happens is that you make a direct connection with your subconscious. The subconscious is a wierd and wonderful place that we really don't understand. Your subconscious, so I am told, never develops past the age of 6. Kids of 6 are full of majik and wonder. I've read some bits about left and right brain theory too - the left controls language, mathematics and reason, the right controls creativity and abstract thought. The right brain works in patterns only and has no sense of time, so when you suddenly think of the answer to a problem three days later while sat in the bath, it's because your right brain has been working on pattern matching in the background while the rest of your brain has been busy with language and how much change you should get from a 20 after buying a round of drinks. (Left and right are terms and do not necessarily map to those sides of the brain in reality.) I think the left side of the brain corresponds to conscious thought and the right subconscious thought.

So, we have a part of our brain, (perhaps 'mind' is a better term,) that has no sense of time, (hence why when many artists are working on a project, they kind of zone out, or go into a trance like state and could not tell you how long they've been working until they look at the time,) and is permenantly 6.

Thing is, because the subconscious works on a pattern matching methodology, it's a very powerful problem solving tool - only the lack of a temporal sense counterbalances this. People under hypnosis have been able to remember events in astounding detail, say for example, the registration of a car that hit them thet they themselves didn't even think they'd seen.

It seems to me that our perception filters are mainly, or possibly exclusively for use with our conscious mind, enabling us to live without getting bogged down in trivial detail, but the subconscious, unfettered by these filters, picks up on many more details and then assembles them into patterns based on previous matches.

Hypnosis is a way of tapping into the subconscious via the conscious mind and I think things like affirmations, positive reinforcement, majik and the like offer a similar interface.

Because we view our world through the conscious mind, which is in turn partly fed by the subconscious, we see patterns everywhere: for example, the two punctuation marks :) become a smily face. It's a colon and a bracket, but we transform that into the pattern of a rudimentary human face. If this is true, there can be no such thing as coincidence, only the value we attach to patterns we ourselves create. This is not to say these patterns are without value, but that they have no objective or intrinsic value in and of themselves, but only subjective value placed on them by the observer.

So anyway, I was in my kitchen yesterday and I was thinking about my recent break up and the situation surrounding it and wondering what to do next. I was in a fairly receptive state obviously, due to being deep in thought. I found a sock of mine on the floor that had fallen there when I had taken my washing out of the machine. It was kind of balled up, so I shook it to even it out.

At the time I was wearing a bracelet of beads that I had bought whilst on holiday in Greece with the girlfriend I had before the last one and it had come to symbolise certain things about that relationship. As I shook the sock, my bracelet flew off my arm and I watched as, seemingly in slow motion, it hit the floor, the elastic snapped and the beads sailed into the air in random directions before bouncing to a halt.

This completely stopped my train of thought as I wasn't expecting it and I found myself just staring at all the beads for a second, thinking about how it had come to symbolise a previous break up and it broke while I was thinking about my current break up.
As I stood there I realised that I didn't know what to do. Should I carry on putting my sock up to dry or should I sort out my bracelet first?

Suddenly I heard the answer in my head, (in my own voice I might add,) as clear as crystal. In fact the thought was so isolated from anything else, it was like hearing a church bell in the dead of night when everything else was quiet. My brain is usually a fairly noisy place, so the significance was not lost on me when it said,

"I should pick up the pieces."

and there was my answer. My subconscious was telling me what I should do, both about the bracelet and the current situation. Coincidence? Wierd? Not really. I think we all have our answers most of the time, locked away in our subconscious until such time as it's ready to let your conscious mind know and being in a receptive state, whether through majik, or excercise, or prayer or positive thought can help facilitate getting these answers.

Just a thought.