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This article originally appeared on my personal blog, Clinsights, here.
Editor’s Note: In two days, this post will be locked and is available only to paid members because we don’t want this duplicate content on the open web in a way that might draw traffic away from the original post. You can always read the entire post here.
We are sharing this essay in The BoldBrush Letter because, though it applies primarily to writers, the underlying idea applies to all artists. Please enjoy.
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Over the course of my lifetime, the world has increasingly embraced the logical, the scientific, and the rational. We have, collectively, turned away from the unknown, the mystical, the spiritual, and the unexplainable.
I, personally, have, for most of my life, embraced this trend. I was a thinker and not a feeler. I relied more on logic than intuition. I've scoffed at miracles, and laughed at the mystical, favoring what is "real" and what is explainable.
But that was a mistake.
And I am changing.
What is "real" isn't only what we can explain with words and theories. In the last several years, meditation and other reflective practices have opened my metaphorical eyes.
Humans are not logical, we are much deeper than that. We have a dual nature.
We are masters of logical thinking and also feeling and intuition.
And, increasingly, I'm noticing that we have turned away from the magical and the spiritual at the time we need such things the most.
Look at the world: war, inflation, bank runs, increasing crime, dehumanizing attitudes, arguing on social media.
These are all ways for us to destroy ourselves.
They are ways that we lose our humanity; for our humanity is spiritual in nature. By the way, I don't mean “religious” when I use the word spiritual.
Perhaps someday science will be able to explain what I am calling "spiritual" or "magic" but, whatever we call it, humans need it. We crave it.
Economists pretend that humans are rational creations. But such purely rational creatures only exist in the minds of economists.
For example, people often buy products for non-rational reasons. And marketing should be non-rational. Marketing is more about making magic than managing metrics and a spreadsheet leaves no room for magic.
When we do things, such as making a non-essential purchase, we only pretend we are rational.
We then take our real, “magical”, reasons for doing things and we rational-IZE them.
In other words, we rationalize magic and in doing so, we diminish it.
Perhaps it’s time to embrace the sacred, the spiritual, and the unexplainable again.
"Those who don't believe in magic will never find it". - Roald Dahl, author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Everything written in this post (and all my posts) is written 100% by me, Clintavo, a flesh and blood human seeking to grow my soul and come home my truest self; for that is the essence of creativity. I do not use AI to assist me with writing — that would deny me the very growth of my world through writing that I seek. I do use AI to create relevant images to go with my writing as the images are orthogonal to the writing itself and I am not an illustrator.