I’ve been rereading Mitch Horowitz’s The Miracle Club (in preparation for revisiting Miracle Habits, because as you might be aware, Habits are a long-standing area of interest for me). In a section titled A New Vision of Mind Power, Horowitz comments on how New Thought is “conflicted between urges to ‘change the world’ or ‘be on top of the world.'”
Of course he’s right, but not just New Thought. Magic too gets stuck in a vise between wanting to make your life better using the tools to hand, but also being in right relationship in a world that’s fundamentally inequitable, unfair, and harmful. With his usual blunt and not at all fluffy-new-age style, Mitch offers the following advice:
If you want social justice… begin with the ethic of keeping your word and excelling at the basics of organization and planning. Start there–and if you perform well at those things, expand your vision. You cannot “fix” things that affect others unless you can first care for the things that are your own.
The Miracle Club, Horowitz, Mitch, Chapter Nine
Obviously, you get why I’m a fan, right? This is my entire Grundwerden right there.
Now, to be fair, his take is more thoughtful and nuanced than that soundbite and the entire section (and of course the book as a whole) is worth your attention. His primary thinking is around breaking down the dichotomies between self / other, individual / society, inner / outer. But I think the most important point he makes is that we should at least think about these topics. Because if we don’t, if we pretend they don’t exist, then we are saying that the world is fair and everyone has the same rules and we shouldn’t worry about any of that on our journey to reach our goals.
I think everyone who strives to improve their life needs to come to terms with this. If you are using purely mundane means, this is an ethical imperative; but if you are using the tools of enchantment (which include the techniques of New Thought) it’s also a practical one. Magic just works better if you aren’t in moral conflict with the goal you are trying to reach.
I personally have three perspectives on this issue:
First, the Baseline Acknowledgement that the Rules are Different for Different people.
Second, the acceptance of Robinhooding as a mechanism for improving both self and community (which is to say, if you can’t use the master’s tools to destroy the master’s house, maybe you can steal his fucking tools and build your own house).
Finally, my newest thinking is that value-driven goal setting is the key to bridging the inner/outer divide (a la Horowitz) and resolving the moral conflict that blocks magic. So my basic premise is that goals are best when they flow from the well-spring of what you value. Many a young person has graduated from four years of intellectual gymnastics, with a ton of debt, only to realize that the goal they have set themselves up to achieve isn’t what they actually care about (what they value). Note, I’m not talking moral-majority, values-voter, virtue-signaling values here (like Miss Universe wanting the ever popular “world peace”). I’m talking about what you personally really care about. Goals that flow from this wellspring are better for you, but also easier to enchant for.
The key though is that your goal, while driven by a personal value / desire, should also manifest more of that thing into the world at large — for you, but for everyone else as well.
So let’s say you value beauty. If you do, then goals that increase the beauty in your life are good goals for you. But if you value beauty in general, you won’t just want to create a beautiful life for yourself, you’ll want to work on creating a more beautiful world. And that makes the world better for everyone (even people who don’t necessarily value beauty).
If you value prosperity (which is a completely legitimate thing to value) you will set goals and do magic for prosperity, but also to manifest a world with more prosperity in it.
If you value competence, then you will want to work to be a competent person but then also share the tools you’ve found so that other people can benefit from having their shit together as well (hi, yes, I have a strange core value).
But the trick is that even if this is your personal value and you are enchanting for a goal related to that personal value, you have to be careful not to denigrate or work against that value in the world at large. Because it’s hypocritical yeah, but also because IT DOESN’T WORK AS WELL.
If you value freedom, then you should be working on goals that increase your freedom… but don’t you also desire a world where everyone has more freedom? Bluntly, if you want a world where you can live the life you choose (not directly harming other people obv, because that impedes their freedom) then you need to be ready to let other people be free – even to do things or live their lives in ways you don’t like or approve of. And that’s not political, because it runs in both directions. Everyone wants to be free when it’s their team’s freedom. But baseline, if you value freedom, then you should be working for a world with more of it, regardless of political affiliation or demographic. And if you can’t do that, then maybe you don’t value freedom. (And that’s actually fine if you acknowledge it, maybe you value tradition or progressivism or whatever – but don’t BS yourself and try to do magic for a thing if you don’t really value it).
If you value peace, you will want to create a peaceful life, but also work toward a more peaceful world. You don’t get to value peace and call for war. You can keep the peace where you are in a defensive way if you must, or acknowledge that other people might do that, but baseline you cannot value peace and support war (not even “good wars” or “just this once”). If you are calling for war then you don’t value peace, you are virtue-signaling peace like Miss Universe.
My husband’s grandmother valued life. This amazing woman once told me that she never voted “because the Democrats are pro-abortion and the Republicans are pro-death penalty so there’s no one to vote for.” I don’t have to agree with this perspective (on abortion or voting) to admire her internal consistency! While I’m far from life-hating, I don’t value life in the way that she does (which was informed by her strong, life-long Catholic faith). But she did and I appreciated that she was ‘all in’ on the idea even if it lacked political savvy. Though to be honest, at this point ‘there’s no one to vote for’ sounds less like old lady pearl-clutching and more like deep wisdom.
This circles us back to the whole New Thought debate. Because we don’t make change by pretending the world is the way we want. We make change by:
- Engaging with the world AS IT IS
- Manifesting the change we want to see in the world (for ourselves, but also for everyone)
Not that this is always possible or clean or easy. For me this principle works in concert with the other two (different rules and Robinhooding). But together I think they suggest a framework for building that bridge between what we want for ourselves and what the world needs from us. And that, my friends, is pretty miraculous!
As Venus heads into her retrograde shadow, you’ll want to revisit what you value and how those values manifest into what you truly desire (and from there what you manifest into the world).
