Today, this day that is called the Sabbath in the faith I was brought up in, I thought I’d express my profound gratitude for those things which are beyond the ordinary.<\/p>\n
Have you ever known something before it happened?\u00a0 Have you ever had an encounter with someone you loved after they passed?\u00a0 Have you ever had a dream which felt so real that you were surprised to find yourself in bed when you awoke?\u00a0 Have you ever seen an angel?\u00a0 Have you ever heard bells, chimes, or rattles when none were near?\u00a0 Have you ever smelled the beautiful scent of flowers when none were anywhere around?\u00a0 Have you ever felt a hand on your shoulder when there was no one near you?<\/p>\n
I have had several of these experiences myself.\u00a0 For instance, there was a plant that I loved.\u00a0 I found it to be very beautiful and every time I walked by it I would admire the new growth, the unfurling bright green leaves, the health and hardiness of this plant.\u00a0 And then one magical moment when I watered the plant, I saw a wisp of smoke\/vapor dance for just a moment amidst the leaves.\u00a0 I was astonished.\u00a0 It was a moment of magic in an otherwise completely ordinary day.\u00a0 It was one of the most magical, fascinating things I’d experienced to that date.\u00a0 Grace.\u00a0 I feel, to this day, that the plant responded to my love and wanted to show me a visible manifestation of its spirit.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, a girlfriend reported a similar experience that year, but it wasn’t with a plant.\u00a0 It was a little mobile I’d created – a wire sculpture of a dancing woman with a crystal imbedded in her belly.\u00a0 My friend had hung this figure from the ceiling and one day she reported seeing a spirit much like what I’d experienced.\u00a0 Whether this was from the love I’d imbued it with during its creation, or the love and appreciation my friend had for it, I don’t know.\u00a0 All I know is that she and I both experienced magic around something that we loved.<\/p>\n
Some of us may never have moments like these.\u00a0 Others of us may have them and then try to explain them away because they don’t fit in with our understanding of reality\/science\/natural laws.\u00a0 And many of us may have had sacred experiences that move us to the depths of our soul and then felt unable to ever share them with anyone.<\/p>\n
I have a few friends who claim to have seen fairies.\u00a0 I have at least two friends who’ve had encounters with UFO’s.\u00a0 Some of you may be thinking I have a lot of crazy friends.\u00a0 But consider this:\u00a0\u00a0 In one survey, over half of all Icelandic people said they believed in elves. *\u00a0 And belief in fairies is still widespread in the British Isles.\u00a0 (Yeats often spoke of his interaction with them.)\u00a0 In Africa and elsewhere, traditional people certainly interact with forces not part of the everyday American’s reality.\u00a0 And many spiritual traditions in Latin America and Native America work with deities and spirits beyond the realm of ordinary physical reality.<\/p>\n
Other people have been blessed to have really transcendent experiences – long moments when they felt connected to everyone and everything, when they floated in a state of omniscience and exquisite bliss.\u00a0 Others have had near death experiences when they’ve encountered a Being of great Love and Light.\u00a0 They have felt so immersed in unconditional and ineffable Love they never wanted to return to this sad earthly plane.<\/p>\n
Believe it or not, there is much evidence that this is indeed a mystical, magical world.\u00a0\u00a0 If you have not been blessed to have had any of these experiences, read biographies about shamans, Christian mystics, spiritual adepts from the Himalayas, spiritual masters from India, and channelers.\u00a0 Even the most hardened cynic knows the stories of Jesus’ miracles.\u00a0 Many of us have been taught that those miracles were specific to him and\u00a0 that time.\u00a0\u00a0 But what if those same miracles could be performed by other spiritual masters?\u00a0 This is not blasphemous.\u00a0 Many sources say that during those years unrecorded in the gospels, Jesus was wandering the globe being taught by other powerful and knowledgeable teachers – in the Himalayas and elsewhere.\u00a0 There is literature, for instance, that speaks of Jesus (Yeshua) meeting Gautama (the Buddha.)<\/p>\n
If one opens one’s mind to the possibility that magic exists, there is ample evidence that it is so.\u00a0 And why not?\u00a0 If God is all powerful, all loving, omnipresent, and if the Earth is His creation, then why\u00a0 should this Earth be so ordinary?\u00a0 Could it not be a mystical, magical place if we simply give it permission to be so?<\/p>\n
I celebrate Magic.\u00a0 I celebrate Miracles.\u00a0 I celebrate the Great Mystery.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
* http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/international\/archive\/2013\/10\/why-so-many-icelanders-still-believe-in-invisible-elves\/280783\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today, this day that is called the Sabbath in the faith I was brought up in, I thought I’d express my profound gratitude for those things which are beyond the ordinary. Have you ever known something before it happened?\u00a0 Have you ever had an encounter with someone you loved after they passed?\u00a0 Have you ever…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":553,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[168,169,3,468,11,469,467,24,463,466,22,423,140,146,462,465,249,470,464,248,471],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-angel","category-angelic-forces","category-blessings","category-buddha","category-connectedness","category-fairies","category-gautama","category-grace","category-great-mystery","category-jesus","category-love","category-magic","category-metaphysical","category-miracles","category-mystery","category-mystics","category-native-people","category-near-death","category-non-physical-reality","category-sacred","category-ufos"],"yoast_head":"\n