Optimism II

Now for the rest of the story.

I want you to stick with me here because this is a little dicier. Trickier because it's easy to sound like a nut talking about Magic. No, not the Criss Angel or David Copperfield prestidigitation and illusion puffery...I'm talking about the real deal: Making things happen according to your Will.

It's the subject of the offbeat video my sister recommended called The Secret. The secret is The Law of Attraction. And it's as simple as this: Whatever you concentrate your attention and emotion on is what you get. Literally. And that's exactly how Magic works; it is a formal method of focusing and concentrating the mind and emotions toward a goal.

Now, in the video, they don't ever use the word Magic. But it's the same principle. And before you get crazy on me...it's also the same principle as, say, Prayer.

In fact, it's almost so obvious that it's a little embarrassing to have to be told it at all. It's working all around us and to us every day. We just aren't paying attention!

Life tends to confirm your worldview. Happy, optimistic, hopeful people get good stuff; miserable, angry, resentful people get crap. Duh.

What you focus on, you get.

What about prayer, you say? Some prayers get answered, but some don't, you say? There are two principles working here:

1) Degree of emotion involved. People pray in different ways, in different amounts, with different attitudes. An emotionless, perfunctory, occasional prayer is pointless and useless. The important thing is concentration of focus and emotion. You gotta MEAN it! And you gotta do it regularly!

2)What you're really asking for. When we pray, "Keep me healthy and happy", we're focusing on health and happiness, feeling emotions of joy and hope. On the other hand, if we pray, "Oh Lord, please don't let me get a horrible fatal disease", we're concentrating on a horrible fatal disease, feeling emotions of fear and horror. The first pray-er gets health and happiness. The second pray-er gets a horrible fatal disease.

The first prayer was answered, the second denied, right? But no! The Law of Attraction is a force of nature that responds to focus and emotion, always delivering what's requested. It doesn't speak English, so it doesn't register that "don't send" part. It responds to the emotional magnet, sending like to like. Hate to hate; fear to fear; joy to joy, disease to disease, health to health; and wealth to wealth!

The second pray-er was concentrating all his emotions and focus on that horrible fatal disease. The Law of Attraction felt the call...and delivered! Prayer answered in spades!

It's simple. But not easy. Refusing to obsess on trouble, pain, anger, and fear is challenging. But it does get easier as you do it. Remember, it's a choice. Unlike what the current brain-dead, pop-psychology babble says, you can control your feelings. You can decide to be happy and hopeful instead of angry and afraid. And doing it will change your life.

And lo! This does have an application in the greater world of politics...

Have you noticed how all Islamic States are sewers? Full of failure, anger, hate, envy, misery, poverty, disease, murder, torture and tyranny? Yet Israel, surrounded by enemies, founded on the same desert (without the oil!) by a people with a catastrophic history is a bustling, prosperous, inventive, robust, optimistic, free democracy?

And what of the West? The most successful, happy, fun, free, inventive people in history, despite wars and depressions and famines and invasions and plagues.

The West hasn't had it any easier than the Middle East. Fie on anyone who suggests we were "blessed" with what we have. We worked our asses off to get it. We survived every kind of nightmare and disaster the world and nature could heap on our heads.

We decided to be prosperous, hopeful, happy, optimistic and free. We focused on it. Obsessed about it. Worked for it. Died for it. Lived for it. And what do you know? We got it. We rose to the occasions of defeat, destruction, setback, horror and beat them back with hope and optimism, the determination to make things better. We dreamed dreams and made Magic and it all came true.

The West was built by a strong desire for wealth, health and happiness; by joy, love, hope and optimism. And it'll stay great if we stay focused on them. And in the same way, an individual's life can be a work of art, a creation made by choice. Concentrate on what you love and desire and it will come to you. Concentrate on what you hate and fear and it will come to you, too.

And that, my friends, is Magic.

The Gunslinger