It Is Easier to Get What You Want, Than to Know What You Want

It takes me days to compose and implement a magic spell. That time doesn’t include the additional journaling, meditation and dreaming that I do when I decide to go after something I really want. On one hand my meticulous ways ensure for the most part, that my spells work with few unexpected results. One the other hand, this practice makes it exceptionally difficult for me to do “magic on the fly.”

Once, I had to compose a magic spell on the spot during a rather intensive class I was taking on ceremonial magic. I made a hasty decision to cast a spell for debt reduction. I thought that would be a rather safe decision; who doesn’t want to get their finances under control? But not only did the spell not work with my usual rate of accuracy, it backfired horrifically, leaving me in the worst state of financial panic that I hadn’t seen since my divorce.

What the heck had gone wrong?! I thought it had been a good spell, with specific wordage for my intention. And yet the money in my bank account continued to dwindle and my panic continued to rise. So I began journaling and meditating and dreaming to figure out what had gone so horribly wrong. Then one day it was as if the curtain was drawn aside and I saw the Great and Powerful Oz for who he (or she, in this case) really was. I didn’t want debt reduction. I didn’t want it at all. No, even eight years after my divorce, I still wanted to punish myself because in my mind, I was a failed wife and a terrible (single) mother. I was divorced and unwanted. I wanted to be unwanted. I wanted to be a victim. Because then everyone could look at my sad eyes and crumpled form and nod their heads and say, “Oh yes, poor Amy Alice, she’s just been through so much.”

“Well, that’s kind of dumb,” I said.

So then I opened up my spell template (yes I have a spell template – its four pages long) and I started writing about what I was willing to do to get my finances on track. I made a simple decision – I prioritized each bill. If low priority bills only got five dollars sent, that’s what they got. If they didn’t get paid on time, they didn’t get paid on time. I made the decision to work with the resources I had. I wasn’t going to punish myself for not having the same resources as other people or more specifically other women (who were successfully married and not single mothers). I made a decision that I was not a victim.

I made a decision. I made a plan.

What happened next was nothing short of magical. Not only was the debt dwindling, my bills were getting paid on time! And even more shocking – I had money left over at the end of the month. What was so unexplained is that no variables changed: I had the same job with the same income and I had the exact same bills. It just so happens that my union’s contract was finally approved and I did in fact get a raise. That happened after I saw a $1000 dollar cushion in my savings account instead of a negative balance in my checking account. It happened after. It wasn’t the source of the magic, it was a part of it.

Just this year I took my son on holiday to the Cayman Islands and I paid for it in cash.

I still have some debt that I work on each month according to my financial priorities. In my new financial plan, I gave myself to 2018 to eradicate the current debt. I am absolutely sure that I will be able to do that. I am also absolutely sure that I will acquire new debt as I plan to take a loan for my son’s college education. I am absolutely sure I will be able to cross that bridge successfully when the time comes.

I learned something important from that tragically failed debt-reduction spell. I learned that it is so much easier to get what I want than to know what I want. I was so sure that I wanted debt reduction, but in reality I was wearing my debt as a badge of honor, and I wanted that badge – that debt - more than anything else. The moment I let go of that want, it paved the way for new opportunities I had never even allowed myself to imagine were possible.

Imagination is the very foundation of magic. 

I learned that I have got to be open to incredible possibilities, but if I’m clinging so dearly to my limitations, I will never be able to articulate what it is that I want. At least not with any rational perspective. Limitations can be seductive excuses.

Now, I do not mean to say that everyone wishes every calamity that befalls them on themselves. I had cancer. There were enough environmental and genetic explanations for that disaster. I do not believe I wished that on myself with magic. However, my perspective of that situation made a huge difference in my outcome. I could have given up utterly, and succumbed to this limitation in my life. My cancer was not life-threatening, but as it was in my throat, there stood a possibility that my singing voice would be destroyed. But I was open to the possibilities, whatever they might be. It just so happens, my singing voice is even better than it was, probably due to the removal of the huge tumor that was in the way.

One of my favorite aunts, my Aunt Sal, did however, have a life-threatening cancer and she did in fact die from that cancer. I miss her, but I’m not sad for her, because she was also open to possibilities. She turned a six-month life expectancy into five well lived years. She made a decision. She had a plan. Despite her limitations she was going to live her life fully. And she did. She used the resources she had, limitations and all. She knew precisely what she wanted: she would live her life to the fullest for as long as she could; and she didn’t allow her cancer to get in the way of that. Her desire did change after five years though. What she wanted then was to die with dignity surrounded by the people she loved; and she did.

That’s something else about magic, it’s flexible. 

If I really want to do some serious level magic, I have to be prepared that what I want today, may not be what I want tomorrow. Hence, once again it is so much easier to get what you want than to know what you want.

Recently at a conference, I shared this perspective of magic and an attendee approached me in frustration. She had lost her job and was in danger of losing her house - a house that she had struggled to obtain. I asked many questions to help her get to the root of the problem. She couldn’t get a job because she was too old. She couldn’t get a job because she didn’t have the right training or education. She could not under any circumstances let the house go because it had been won in a great legal battle with her family. She could not ask her family for assistance. She couldn’t take a border or a roommate because that was just too dangerous. Over and over again, with each question I asked her, she was determined to give me her limitations. “No magic worked,” she said.

I truly believe that is because like me, she wanted her limitations more than she wanted…a job? Or was it the ability to keep the house? I honestly don’t think she knew. She didn’t know because what she wanted were the limitations. Because of that she was absolutely closed down to any possibility. A plan cannot be made if there is no room for possibility. She was so focused on her limitations that there was nothing she was willing to do.

If she wanted a job and she evaluated her resources, and she determined new training was in order, she could find a training course she was willing to attend.

If she wanted a job and she evaluated her resources, and she determined that she was too old, she could be willing to change her hairstyle, clothes and makeup to make her appear younger.

If she wanted a job, McDonald’s, Walmart and Starbucks are almost always hiring if she was willing to do the work those jobs required.

If she wanted to keep the house she could have looked to her family as a resource, if she was willing to approach them with a plan to share the house that had been such a contention.

If she wanted to keep the house she could employ the resource of a background check service to help her select a safe boarder or roommate.

Or she could evaluate her resources and be willing to sell the house.

She was not willing to do anything except find more and more limitations to her predicament. She wants to be limited, that is what is most important to her. And if she doesn’t change that, no matter how powerful a witch or magician she might be, she will never get a job and she will lose her house.

Magic is not just waving around a pretty stick, magic is driven by will. 

As in: What am I willing to do to get what I really want? If I’m obsessed with my limitations, and my need to be a victim, then I most assuredly will get precisely what I want: I will be a victim. If the only thing I’m willing to do is find every possible excuse for why nothing is possible, then I will get exactly what I want: Nothing will ever be possible.

So then the real question then is: How the heck am I supposed to know what I want? 

Particularly if this magic stuff is so flexible and things change and I change?

I suppose that I have to be as flexible as the magic. My personal solution is journaling, meditation and dreaming with heavy emphasis on the journaling. I would also have to say that magical disasters are great for separating what I think I want from what I actually want. Actually, my debt reduction spell worked like a charm! I was told to declare bankruptcy. That certainly would have eradicated my debt. I came to know that I didn’t want debt reduction. No, I wanted financial freedom. I wanted a little money in the bank and my bills paid on time. More importantly though, I wanted the freedom to make financial decisions without anxiety, even if that decision meant acquiring a little more debt. It’s hard to say if I would have figured that out without the spell steering me towards bankruptcy. It is, without a doubt, much easier to get what I want, than to truly know what I want. Knowledge is often hard won; but nothing worth pursuing is rarely easy to come by.

2018 Update

I thought you'd like to know that as of June 2018 my spell came to fruition and I am now debt-free.