Knowing the difference between magical thinking and miracle thinking determines whether you can transcend limitations or perpetually prolong them. Frequently in my hypnotherapy practice I witness individuals who unconsciously prolong suffering because they are caught in the malaise of magical thinking in the hopes of something magically transforming their lives. Achieving success in redefining your life in alignment with your authentic power to fulfill is a matter of understanding where the “locus” (center) of power resides for that intent.

We are conditioned to search for outer remedy, believing some agency apart from our own inner constitution has the “magical” power to restore or confer. This is witnessed in the advertising empires that exploit our conditioned hypnosis to look outside ourselves for remedy. Even religion/spirituality is often filtered through our conditioned programming that perceives that outer agency has the wherewithal that we do not inherently possess. It is this programmed conditioning that has us forward our own inner viability to outer resources which confer the expectancy of “magical” resolution. To be very clear, it is not that support systems, mechanisms, technologies, therapies, medicine, religion, spirituality and other methodologies are not of incredibly valuable import – it’s just that these means should promote the release of our own power to fulfill; not replace it.

Handing Over Your Crown

This unconscious abdication of our own innate power to fulfill is what causes our inner power to atrophy leading to magical desires and expectations. And as any magician would attest, magic is not real but merely slight-of-hand that promotes the illusion of realism! When someone can show me a magician’s assistant actually being sawed in half, guts spilling out and everything – and then being put back together with no apparent means of reattachment – then I will concede the “reality” of magic. But unfortunately, we impose magical thinking on all manner of expression. Marriage will “magically” solve loneliness, a pill will magically resolve the psychological cause of erectile dysfunction, this face cream will magically make you ten years younger, this surgery will magically correct years of abuse to the body, and it goes on and on. Even in my own profession as a hypnotherapists, there is the assumption or expectancy that hypnosis will magically cause things to change, when in reality, therapeutic hypnosis is actually a most direct and profound technology for YOU to align your mind with the change desired! The grateful and frequent acknowledgements I receive for the impact of my use of this life-transforming technology called therapeutic hypnosis, is always received with an inner wink – as I know the hypnosis work has simply returned you back to your own power to fulfill.

Miracles Are Real – Magic Is Not

Well, what then of miracles? Are they real? Or is it a guise for the erroneous assumption of “magic?” First order of business is to understand what a “miracle” is. Emblazoned on one wall of my hypnotherapy office in sprawling text spanning six feet across is this statement from 4th Century philosopher St. Augustine,“Miracles do not happen in contradiction to Nature, but only in contradiction to that which is known in Nature.” That statement is the crux of, and the validation of, the “realness” of the miraculous. A miracle only appears as such because of our limited idea of what “Nature” is capable of doing! I have often said that the revolutionary catalyst of the advent/invent of the internet revealing what we now “know” is possible with communication – could have been invented in the Stone Age! The principles employed that enable internet communication have existed since before time. However, it is our evolving knowledge – or more accurately, the release of erroneous assumptions about communication – that has enabled humanity to take advantage of it! To even your great-grandfather, the internet would seem “miraculous.” And now, your grand-child cannot even relate to what all the internet-fuss is about. “Miracles do not happen in contraction to Nature, only in contradiction to that which is known (assumed about) Nature.”

So the miraculous is not magic; quite the contrary – the miraculous is a consequence of releasing the programmed assumptions about what is naturally possible. Desire to witness a “miracle” in your health? Begin by letting go of the medical assumptions of what is possible! Desire to see a miracle in your finances? Let go of the assumptions that your history determines your now. Desire to witness a miracle in the quality of your relationships? Release the pessimistic assumptions of your past relationship content or your parent’s experience of relationship.

Miracles are infused in the very fabric of your identity and become accessible when you no longer forward your power to the wishful escapism of magic.