The Bones of a Magical System

Defining the Situation

Imagine we are a tiny, conscious species dangling by the thread of self-awareness over a vast, dark pool of quiet potential, to which we all return. We desperately explain concepts and break down the things of the world to maintain an illusion. We want to believe we are in control, this unknown potential isn’t real, and we continue eternally. This includes our philosophical attempts through the ages to hang word-filled definitions on that which is beyond words. We are determined to believe in our continued existence. This is not to say we don’t continue to exist. Anything is possible…and that’s the point. We don’t know what can be, because we decide what to energize with our focused belief.

We seek to retain our distinctive self in a defined way, so we may believe our perception of self continues. Explaining to ourselves and each other how things work, we reinforce how we hope things work. We then feel safe in our minds, like we understand and are in control. This need for comfort continuously limits our perception of the undefined, the wordless potential. We are determined to shove the unknowable void into the tiny boxes of belief and opinion our conscious mind defines for it.

Imagine Being a Creator

The conscious mind is like an algebra teacher, caught up in the how. If it just floats up, you have the answer, but you didn’t show your work. The logic of steps makes us comfortable and capable of consciously defending our position, of proving our beliefs and opinions are correct. But being right, proving ourselves to others or the world is not our purpose.

Wait… what? Our reality does not require our attention to be focused on the minutia of its operation for it to work. Our conscious mind doesn’t have to understand, for things to work out. Leonardo DaVinci, Albert Einstein, and Marie Curie are examples of folks that leapt into the void with their imaginations. Their questions reached far beyond their own time’s limited understanding of…things. Their leaps allowed concepts that took a sharp left from accepted reality and led to more leaps.

The act of observing, focusing our attention on, a tiny electron locks it into a position within our reality, according to quantum physics. The probability of its position between detections is represented as a wave of possible positions. There are those that scoff and say the behavior of the smallest particles has nothing to do with the things around us or the macro world, although there are eight billion conscious minds focusing their belief and attention on every aspect of what we agree is reality.

From a Certain Point of View

Every-thing we focus on is made up of these particles. They constantly wink in and out of our reality, displaying multiple possibilities at once. They take a position in reality based on whether or not our attention is focused on them, and what we expect from them. This is the basis of our reality, but we deny the effect of our interwoven actions and beliefs. We focus on defining the rules, on focusing our explanation of reality to feel safe.

Dodging nihilism and striving for a more concrete view in this world of illusion and potential, the majority of us draw back from this abyss. Society’s explanations and proofs try to build representative structures that leave our beliefs and opinions about physics and reality intact. We create structure incrementally to reach points where geniuses have imagined a leap into the undefined pool of potential. They used their intuitive questions, while society works to preserve the Dr. Suess-like framework of order balanced above the void. We work very hard to keep our safety net and orderly expectations intact.

Our structure stretches toward unknowable, as quantum physics postulates a point where a probability wave (undetected potential) meets the comparative entangled aspect of things (observation). The unknown actually occupies a concrete position when it is observed. In one theory, this reality exists because we are aware of it, give it our attention, and expect it to act in certain ways.

As in uncountable times past, we walk a tightrope of creation, and can consciously choose what to believe, and thereby, what will exist. This is a massive obligation for such a tiny self, and is one of the reasons we tell ourselves and each other stories that abdicate this responsibility.

The Available Pool of Potential

Geniuses don’t arrive at their conclusions through scientific method. They prove their leaps of intuition and imagination with that method, but the imagination of asking the right question opens them to the chaos of an undefined knowing, an unproven answer. The conscious mind proceeds to create proofs to explain and test what has been realized. Science is driven by the conscious mind’s fear, strengthening safety nets over the bottomless intuitive pool that is the unnamed and undefined.

Instead of allowing the individual to determine the right question for themselves and accepting the intuitive leap as an answer, our society discourages that knowing. The collective experts make us feel safe by applying layers of a word-filled hypothesis to a barely stretched idea. This allows for society’s ordered progress without confronting the chaos. This approach prevents our collective structures and filters from collapsing. The leap of faith, far into the intuitive potential, that can be taken by the individual, is a risk most cultures cannot afford.

For instance, most of us feel and acknowledge a spark or energy of some kind we can’t define. We have a myriad of names for it, calling it consciousness, awareness, or spirit. We have many philosophies and religions attempting to define and control our self-awareness, our purpose, or the meaning of life. They address this situation with stories designed to convince those listening that a select few have answers to the mystery. Like shining a light into a lightless corner to explain the dark, they describe the unnamed with words, utterly inadequate words.

Many of our rational thinkers tell us more and more often there is no interaction that could be considered a soul or God, no energy that can’t be explained by the belief structures we’ve built. However, if the universe and gravity function the way our current models say they function, then there must be some sort of dark matter and dark energy. They call it this because it is unseen, it doesn’t emit, absorb, or reflect light, and so, is hidden from our world of perception. We know something must be there because we observe the effects on the defined universe, but we move forward without understanding it or how it interacts with us.

A Rose by Any Other Name

The part of reality we can explain and understand is estimated to be between five and twenty percent of our universe. The other eighty to ninety-five percent we have given yet more labels, dark matter and dark energy, in a long line of labels. It has mass and affects objects, but can’t be perceived in a measurable way.

What if our self-awareness (meaning, spark, purpose) is the driver behind all of it? What if our potential is being defined and restricted by our limited belief? Are we trying to give unlimited potential a name, place it in a box to feel comfortable? Are we trying to protect the current layers of constructed order our group consciousness has constructed?

Or, is dark matter the comparative opposite for our known universe and actually just another thing? Do we limit our reality by labeling things to feel safe? Should we order our reality to the point of defining every nuance? To enable potential to become what’s needed in the moment without restriction, should we allow things to remain undefined? If we stop trying to explain how our observation, the act of focusing our attention, creates a reality for each of us, would our creativity soar?

Controlling the Narrative

By believing and accepting those focused on the minutia of things, we box the vast unknown into explainable sections. We get lost in the details and our true universe is trapped by equations and explanations, remaining restrained by our boxes of complex rules passed down from one generation to the next.

Our science doesn’t want to let go of its constructs, its solid ground. They have theories that attempt to build bridges from their safe places to the unknown. With one hundred years of building those bridges, they still aren’t sure how our tiniest particles occupy many possibilities in space at the same time until we focus our attention. Or, why mass to counterbalance our reality is waiting in unnamed and intangible places.

Are philosophy and science converging? Will this mixture of separate word salads bring us any closer to knowing any truth? Or will it just give us more chances to define and restrict our reality? This circles us back to wordless potential, where none of our definitions of how the world works, can explain how the world truly works.

The revelation coming from this is we, within ourselves, through the right questions, have access to this potential. Magic disappears, not because it never existed, but because of the way we define everything around us without question. A lack of doubt leads to surety and confidence. A skeptic (sure of limited possiblity) can witness magic only if a believer (sure of unlimited possibility) is present. A lack of doubt also leads to a stack of neat boxes, to the safety of well-defined and predictable things. Over many generations, we have focused on refining the definition of things, and as creators, we get what we expect.