Creating your reality

One of the concepts in magical and spiritual thinking that could use some fettling is the notion that we create our own realities. To a significant extent, we shape and inform our own experiences. However, this is not about reality conforming to our desires. It’s not about ‘doing magic’ as a thing separate from how we live. It’s about being able to see and work with the threads of connection that guide what’s happening around us.

Let’s take a case in point. How we treat people informs who they will be for us. You can get the best a person has to give by acting as though you trust them and believe in them. Just believing in them won’t do it, you have to very deliberately put that belief where it can be seen, where it affects the other person’s sense of self and their ideas about what might be possible. And thus your will flows into the world and they become better able to manifest the things you were looking for.

I’ve noticed this recently in terms of how I respond to people, as well. If I’m taken seriously and treated as though I have a value, my morale is improved and my investment in that situation increases. The person who treats me like I have a value to them gets my best work. The people who see my skills and strengths and give me room to manifest those, get the best I am capable of. I’m finding myself in a number of spaces at the moment where this is happening, and I feel inspired by that sense of being valued. I become capable of doing more.

There have been times and places where I’ve faced the opposite. Places where I felt tolerated rather than welcomed, where what I do was/is belittled, diminished, dismissed or assumed to be of little consequence. Places where I have been taken for granted, or afforded no respect for my contributions. In those spaces, I am not at all inspired to do my best – I’m more likely to plan a quiet escape as soon as I am clear about what’s happening.

I go into these as the same person – same abilities, same willingness to give, same capacity to work and think, but what I’m able to do is informed to a significant degree by how I am treated and valued. I can’t do my best work for people who don’t think I’m up to much.

Every interaction we have with every other living thing creates ripples and changes. Every word spoken, every casual gesture. We shape so many of our relationships unconsciously, sending messages that were not intended, and reaping the awkward consequences. Self knowledge, self awareness and clarity of perception make it easier to get what we were intending. Putting into the world the things we want to find makes a lot of odds. Want to be taken seriously? Try taking other people seriously. Want to be loved? Be willing to put love into the world. It’s not a simple, causal effect, it is not the case that what you put out is what comes back to you. However, what you put out shapes what comes back to you. There is magic in being able to craft that so that what you do achieves the results you were looking for. In this I am a novice, but a happy, enthusiastic novice.

And as an entirely related aside, I’m really excited about what I’m getting to do at Moon Books, at nerdbong.com, with Down to Earth Stroud and Stroud Short Stories competition and I’m wondering whether a few other spaces might start to shape up some time soon.