"The hidden presence, when we think we are alone." *

Gloria Swanson, because this image is articulate beyond words.

*Title quote from Charles de Lint

“Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.”
― Tom Robbins

There are moments, more would be welcome, when we see or think we see behind, beyond the veil.  Generally no more than glimmers that feel like visual intuition, I experienced such a moment this week, the fleeting sight of how things are, how they may be in the future.  Not solid enough to allow description, the aperture opens and closes leaving behind a knowing, a confirmation, an almost-missed nod of assent that what one seeks is possible, perhaps even at hand.  Surely I am not the only one who is aware of this.

It may be the result of a current meditation course.  Some of the old caulking was loosened and things began slipping through the cracks.  It was an enlightenment I wanted to grab quickly and firmly with both hands.  It could not be held.

I've met the non-ordinary before, we are not strangers.  Listening to a program excerpt by shamanic teacher Robert Moss on active dreaming, he said, "The world around us will speak to us in signs and symbols...everything is alive...find extraordinary messages in ordinary things."

I think we all possess magic.  I believe we are dulled, bludgeoned, by simply trying to keep up with the everydayness of our lives, let alone the monstrous events that slide between us and the sun.  How not to be pulled even further from center, how not to react but to remain grounded, even hopeful no matter what, there's the task.  Perhaps it is to keep us going that we are allowed the rare peek beneath the circus tent.  The acrobats!  The aerialists!  Derring-do without a net!  We ARE made of the same stuff as they, aren't we?  Or did we lose the talismans tucked into our palms and pockets before we were propelled earthward?  Existence can be a weighty business.  We need to believe that nooks of impossible lightness, of goodness, remain, exist, that we have not spent all our tokens, worn the good off all our charms.

These chance sightings of sudden radiance are not corner-of-the-eye manifestations, the sort too-easily dismissed as imagined.  They are real and looking us in the eye, just not for long.  If the soul keeps a journal, I register them there, do my best to digest what nourishment they bring.  I think upon them, then think some more.  Mostly I trust, I believe.  I do not plan to stop.