Our Magical Attention

by Rev. Amari Magdalena

With the many untoward events going on in the world right now, our Attention becomes much more important.  In shamanism we talk a lot about Intention and Attention (thus my emphasis with Capital letters).  Attention is defined as where we place our consciousness and monitor our thoughts and words.  Intention is what we really want to achieve by our actions.  If there was ever a time to contemplate those two concepts it is now.  The addition of ‘magical’ to Attention suggests that our consciousness, thoughts and words can be re-focused out of our ordinary material reality to that extraordinary place of higher mind and heart. 

We might equate Magical Attention with the energies of the Nagual–the East to West axis on the medicine wheel.  When we invoke the spirits and guardians of these cardinal directions we are opening ourselves to connecting beyond the veils of our illusion to upliftment and illumination. The Tonal–North and South, are the axis on the medicine wheel that most of us travel in our material, ordinary world connecting us with more earth-ward wisdom and innocence. In my book, Awaken Your Inner Shields: Transform Your Life, I provide information about this.

At this pivotal time in human history, we’ve been presented with an opportunity to take an evolutionary leap forward.  What you say?  How can that possibly be when SO much destruction is reported in graphic detail daily?  My eyes and ears are pained by all of the needless suffering and violence. And, yes, I do understand how upsetting it can be.

I would answer, if you are absorbing the bad news every day, you are missing what is wonderfully transpiring at deeper levels.  If you awaken in the morning and either check out the news on television, the newspaper, NPR, or your favorite search engine’s news, your Attention is receiving mostly bad news.  Should you need updates at mid-day, even more fear and anxiety is fostered.  Home at 6, more news?  To bed with the bad news?  An appetite of that would surely lead to not only gustatory indigestion but indigestion of your very spirit.

Every single day, on Facebook alone, there is a heartwarming story of human heroism and service to humanity.  Occasionally, these stories make it to our national news.  Ted Talks on the radio often have speakers who are talking about some essential aspect of human evolution from their particular perspective.  Inspirational books have been available long before the New Age, churned them out like butter.  Many, many offerings through citywide Meet-Ups provide opportunity for spiritual succor and tools for learning how to move into your Magical Attention.

I believe another aspect of this change, which I’ve written regularly about on Facebook of late, is comprehending that for new growth, the old growth has to be pruned as Chauncey Gardner told the President in Being There.  We have to empty our mind-cups of less than pleasant thoughts, and begin to fill them with hope and belief in the process. 

As we witness the changing of our four seasons, so is the process we are observing now.  Spring brings the new beginnings; summer the growth, fall the harvest, and winter the fallow time.  We too, as a planet, are going through these vary same stages though perhaps not as timely or consistent. I believe we are in the fallow time; old unworkable forms are dissolving and dying right before our very eyes.  Yet their compost can be the manure to feed what will emerge.

Only faith, can bring us to realize that the spring and new world WILL emerge if we place our Magical Attention on that belief and direct our Intention to contributing to creating it.  Cry no more.  This is as it should be. 

Rise up and start getting involved in the processes and forms that will come forth when our chrysalis sheds it cocoon and the New Bright World emerges.  Perhaps not all of us will witness this.  Yet, we alone can plant the seeds that will bring the Dawn of the Peace as a magnificent monarch.  In my head I am singing an old song, You’ll Never Walk Alone, that was SO impactful in my troubled youth, “When you walk through a storm hold your head up high and don’t be afraid of the dark.  At the end of the storm is a golden sky and the sweet silver song of a lark……” 

Readers, I have actually seen that golden sky once in New Mexico–so awe inspiring that I pulled off the road and wept.  It was, and it is, magnificent beyond our limited imagining.  Believe me. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV5_LQArLa0

[53 Past Blogs are in my book "Shaman Talk" available in softcover and ebook on Amazon.com]

Having a Foot in Both Worlds

By Rev. Amari Magdalena

In the early 90’s when I was introduced to alternative spirituality and involved with consciousness groups in New Mexico and Atlanta GA, there was a fantastic quality to life.  Much discussion in the groups was geared to finding ways to escape the mundane, material world.  It got pretty crazy to the point of talk about going to the 39 Parallel to wait for “the ships” to pick us up and carry us away to the galactic command.

About this time the wonderfully satirical book ET101: The Cosmic Instruction Manual came out.  That is, I took the book to be satire and laughed my way through it.  After the adjective awesome got so overused in groups as to be meaningless, I began to have my doubts about the escape plan. Having been concurrently introduced to Earth-Based Spirituality, my grounding exceeded my gullibility in the exit strategies.

Today much of the farther out woo-woo of the New Age has been tempered down a bit. Many of us actually discovered ways to make this material experience more fun and rewarding.  We finally grokked the fact that Earth time can be quite wonderful.  Lots of us got on the pulpit of save the Earth by raising consciousness about climate change and human impact on the environment.  We started to appreciate and enjoy the earth experience. Some of us taught respect of all things in the manifest world.

Somewhere in that shift we also recognized the importance of not surrendering one set of explorations to the exclusion of another.  In better words, we figured out that having a foot in both worlds was the new definition of sanity.  We began to stop being seekers of a spiritual path and consolidated our beliefs to embrace the power of being finders.  That magically lead to a wonderful integration of both worlds and a lot more satisfaction and contentment with our particular lot in life.

One thing that I’ve observed, as an elder, is that reason prevails when we move from extremes on any given continuum to an integrated central.  This posture allows us to meet wide diversity in recognizing similarities and resolving our differences.  I suppose we might say that our mastery leads us to finding that bridge across extremes to a place where all worlds could meet in a deep peace.

With the disparate energies now present of growing violence and turmoil juxtaposed to an expanding spiritual awareness and consciousness, more than ever sanity prevails when we choose to have a foot in both worlds–material and ethereal.  We can recognize that path of humanity that is not working without too much judgment and choose to right our own thought and actions ship towards upliftment, expansion and harmony.

If ever there was a time for individual mastery of thought, word and deed, it is now.  As we are able to embrace the biblical “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,” we can serve as way-showers for others on the path of spiritual and material integration.  We can serve as example of a dance of life that has two feet, one in each world, moving gracefully with beautiful symmetry and rhythm. 

As we are approaching a time of celebrating Freedom, it may also be a wonderful period to free ourselves from enslavement to outdated thinking and collective fear/negativity that prevails in our commercial media.  When the proverbial rockets red blare in sky-filled demonstrations, let us see the sparks as new ideas for creating a reality in which personal freedom and collective responsibility reign supreme as we place one foot firmly in each of our magnificent worlds.

Peace be.

[53 Past Blogs are in my book "Shaman Talk" available in softcover and ebook on Amazon.com]