“The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding”

By Lian Brook-Tyler

“The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding” Dipen Parmar ✨

As much as this is a powerful (and deservedly much shared) quote, if we read ‘magic’ as wealth, success, status, or the dream relationship, and if we read ‘work’ and we think “Perhaps this means I need to hustle harder, or take the leap and hire that coach promising prosperity, or start sharing myself on social media in a way that terrifies me.”… It could be useful to go deeper.

Remember Hillman said “The wound and the eye are one and the same.”

Simply put, this means we’re likely seeing magic and work through the eyes of conditioning and wounding.

For those of us in the work of individuation and union, we need to devote to seeing how we’re seeing. That is no easier than seeing our own eyes, which is why reflections… from mirrors and trusted guides… are essential.

Joseph Campbell said something similar to Parmar…

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”

This mythical phrase invites us deeper into our own Hero's Journey, the story of the man or woman who, through great suffering, reaches an experience of the Divine and returns with powerful gifts for their village.

I suggest it also invites us to see a reality beyond the fantasy of wounding… The cave is indeed work, but the work of turning our awareness inwards, this could be time at our altar, in wild nature, meditation, contemplation, dream work, shamanic journeys, or shadow alchemy.

As Campbell also said “Mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of reason and coercion.... The first function of mythology is to reconcile waking consciousness to the mysterium tremendum et fascinans of this universe as it is."

The sacred, the numinous, the transcendent, the divine… as it is.

Which means the treasure we’ll find isn’t the stuff of our modern culture’s obsession with status and money but is the lost parts of our own bright souls, and the doorway to union with Spirit.

Journey well, dear ones.

All my love and blessings as you unfold your own myth.

♥️

Art: kiwi thompson 🙏

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