MAKING REAL MAGIC

There is one common breathing, one common flow; all things are in sympathy.

— Hippocrates

We are embarking on a path of real magic. Real magic is the art of bringing gifts from another world into this world. We do this when we go dreaming and when we remember to bring something back. In dreaming, we go to other realities that may include places of guidance, initiation, challenge, adventure, healing. When we bring something back from these excursions, and take action in ordinary life to embody the guidance and energy we receive, that is a practice of real magic.

We go dreaming in the night. We do it quite spontaneously. We can do it by setting an intention for our nocturnal adventures. We can do it as lucid dreamers, awakened to the fact that we are dreaming and able to navigate the dreamlands consciously. We can do it in the way of the shaman, traveling intentionally, conscious and hyperawake, riding the drum to locales beyond the ordinary, and bringing back gifts.

We can also walk the roads of everyday life as conscious dreamers, learning to recognize how the world is speaking to us in signs and symbols, and how a deeper order of events may reveal itself through the play of synchronicity. In night dreams and conscious excursions, we get out there; we go near or far into other orders of reality where the rules of linear time and Newtonian physics do not apply. Through synchronicity, powers of the deeper reality come poking and probing through the walls of our consensual hallucinations to bring us awake. Sometimes they work to confirm or encourage us in a certain line of action; sometimes they intercede to knock us back and discourage us from persisting in the worst of our errors.

Synchronicity is when the universe gets personal. Navigating by synchronicity is the dreamer's way of operating 24/7. Though the word synchronicity is a modern invention — Jung made it up because he noticed that people have a hard time talking about coincidence — the phenomenon has been recognized, and highly valued, from the most ancient times. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus maintained that the deepest order in our experienced universe is the effect of "a child playing with game pieces" in another reality. As the game pieces fall, we notice the reverberations, in the play of coincidence.

When we pay attention, we find that we are given signs by the world around us every day. Like a street sign, a synchronistic event may seem to say Stop or Go, Dead End or Fast Lane. Beyond these signs, we find ourselves moving in a field of symbolic resonance that not only reflects back our inner themes and preoccupations, but provides confirmation or course correction. A symbol is more than a sign: it brings together what we know with what we do not yet know.

Through the weaving of synchronicity, we are brought awake and alive to a hidden order of events, to the understory of our world and our lives. As in the scene in the movie The Matrix when the black cat crosses the room in the same way twice, riffs of coincidence (for which I have coined the term reincidence) can teach us that consensual reality may be far less solid than we supposed.

This book provides roadside assistance for the conscious traveler in the dream of waking life. We will learn how the world is speaking to us in many voices through signs and symbols and synchronicity, and how we can bring from these many voices guidance, joy, and a deeper sense of what it is all about. This is a book of practice rather than theory, and I will follow the Gryphon's advice:

"Explain all that," said the Mock Turtle.

"No, no! The adventures first," said the Gryphon in an impatient tone: "explanations take such a dreadful time."

[Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland]

Adventures are more fun than explanations, and a story is our easiest way to get to the truth of a matter and to carry that truth. I will start with three personal stories because I agree with Mark Twain when he says, "I do not wish to hear about the moon from someone who has not been there." These stories are not about traveling to the moon (I have written about that in other books), but about encounters with a deeper reality in quite ordinary places: a pub, a gritty urban street, and a backyard.

You do not need to travel far to encounter powers of the deeper world or to hear oracles speak. You are at the center of the multidimensional universe right now. The doors to the Otherworld open from wherever you are, and the traffic moves both ways.

A SEAT IN THE FOX'S PUB

The fox had put his name on the pub, which should have clued me in to the possibility that stopping here for a beer and a bite might be more than a routine affair. The Firkin and Fox. Thoroughly English sounding, but used on the American side of the big pond for a chain of airport restaurants that do not have English ales on tap, and where you probably will not find meat pies or bangers on the menu. It was the only sit-down place with alcohol available that seemed to be open on that long concourse at Washington's Dulles airport, so I was ready to take the best I could get.

There was already a tilt to my day, that shift away from the sense that the world is solid or fixed that comes when your plans have been screwed up and you are traveling on a completely different itinerary from the one you had had signed, sealed, and emailed. I had discovered in the early hours that the first flight in a long journey had been canceled. I had to wait only twenty minutes in a phone queue before a helpful agent rebooked me. I was now traveling via Dulles instead of Newark. So be it. Such changes in plans bring a Trickster energy into play. If you can avoid type A personality disorder and are not allergic to surprises, you may find things and people coming together in unusual ways, giving you, at the least, the gift of a fresh story.

However, it did not seem that the Firkin and Fox was going to be part of my story. The place was jam-packed.

I was moving on when a woman started disentangling herself from her seat at the bar. The young man next to her reached down to help her with her bags. As she came toward me, I moved to take her seat.

"Your timing is exquisite," I thanked her.

"You are going to enjoy that young man," was her unlikely response.

The young man at the bar was behaving oddly, hopping back and forth between the now vacant seat and the one he had been sitting on. He finally decided I could have his previous seat. Clearly, there was going to be some kind of engagement here. His baby-blue eyes floated up out of a pale and desperate face.

He declared, "I know you are an elder. I have been asking for an elder to help me."

He asked me to guess his age. I did, and got it right. Twenty-two. Now he was almost beseeching. "What can you tell me about life?"

"Never leave home without your sense of humor."

"I know. But I get so intense, so aggressive. Like, if someone bumps the...