Links from the Show at a Glance:

 

Artist: Rebekah Nemethy

Title of Art: String Light Bokeh at twilight

Instagram: @rebekahnemethy

 

The article on the Least Stormy Cities in the US (https://www.currentresults.com/Weather-Extremes/US/calmest-cities.php)

 

Art Ink Submission Guidelines: rebekahnemethy.com/artinksubs

 

 

 

Art Ink Podcast Transcript:

 

[Intro:]

 

While talking to a friend about the documentary I mentioned in a previous episode called The Secret she pointed something out to me. The Secret features rich and famous interviewees like Jim Carey showing off their big-time-dreams-come-true, and these are people that it may be hard to relate to because their stories don’t reflect the majority experience. They certainly didn’t reflect my experience of the world.

 

And I want to say from the get-go that I’m not trying to judge The Secret in any way, because I’m incredibly grateful for it. I think it’s amazing! But I feel strongly compelled to empower more people to embrace this mindset of conscious creation and what my friend helped me to realize is the power of the little bits of magick, that we might be able to actually relate to, to give us that initial proof we sometimes need to fully believe in our own power.

 

So today I’m going to share tiny, but undisputable, tales of real life magick. I’m excited to have a few of my own tales to tell, but I’m beyond thrilled to be able to share the experiences a couple of my closest friends have shared with me too.

 

But, before we get started, let’s talk about our cover art for this episode.

 

 

[Art Description:]

 

Today I grabbed a photo from my own art library, because one of my favorite subjects to photograph are out of focus lights also known as bokeh to us photo nerds. This photo in particular was made in mid-winter, right at twilight. Photographers often talk about the esteemed golden hour when the sunlight casts beautiful light across the Earth just as it’s going down, but on a thickly overcast day, golden hour is transformed into blue hour and that twilight hue in a winter sky is what fills the background of this image.

Christmas lights are strung up across a railing in a wavelike pattern across the frame. Though, they are more like big yellow orbs, swollen from my intentional lack of focus.

 

There’s nothing that looks so magickal to me as soft orbs of light. Little lights, big magick… which is a perfect way to introduce you to today’s story:

 

Little Bits of Magick… enjoy.

 

[Story:]

 

It was Lauren’s birthday, and she was headed to work when she realized she had just enough time to hit her favorite drive through coffee shop on the way. The café’s app had alerted her that she had a birthday freebie coming her way, and she was happy to take them up on the offer. The universe seemed in perfect alignment, too, as there were only two cars in line, and Lauren pulled in and placed her order.

 

The first car quickly got their order and left, but the next one, the one that was just ahead of her… well… it was taking a bit longer for their order to come out. And as. the. minutes. ticked. by… Lauren started to get anxious. She was going to be late to work. Then, as the clock confirmed that she would indeed be late for sure now, she started to get frustrated.

 

“WTF did you order?” She muttered angrily to the car in front of her.

 

Finally, the car pulled away, and Lauren hastily pulled up to the window to get her coffee. But all her anger melted away when the girl at the window told her that she was all set, because the guy in front of her had already paid for her coffee.

 

When Lauren was telling me this story, late one night, on my birthday actually, she was expressing it with a lot of laughter but also with a splash of shame.

 

“I mean, I felt like such an ass… was he just being nice? Or did he see how angry I was getting and felt bad for holding me up with his massive order?” I mean, I’m paraphrasing, but she said something like that. And she felt some regret about not being able to say thank you, because he was already long gone.

 

But because we were talking about manifestation and how we create our reality earlier in our conversation, I tuned in right away to what happened. Did you catch it?

 

Lauren drove into that line already in the frequency of free coffee. It wasn’t just a hopeful expectation, she knew, full stop, that she was getting a free coffee. So the universe matched that frequency with another free coffee.

 

And what Lauren told me next totally confirmed it, because later on, at work that very same day, she got another free coffee from a coworker. And was able to use that birthday freebie on her app later on that month.

 

So really, it doesn’t matter if the guy bought her an apology coffee or a pay it forward kinda coffee, what counted, in this example at least, is that she knew she already had it.

 

This is why the rich seem to get richer and the poor seem to get poorer. Sometimes it’s a challenge to change our frequency, because it’s easier to stay stuck in old patterns. But if you start to pay attention, you may begin to see more and more what things, what energies, what frequencies are magnetized to you.

 

I was chatting with my friend Ania recently too and she told me another story that was pure magick.

 

She lives in dry, hot California, and has for the past decade or so, but originally she’s from Poland, where there’s a lot more rainfall and more frequent fluctuations in the weather. So naturally, when she was reminiscing with some friends one day, it came up in conversation how much Ania missed thunderstorms, which, by comparison, are a super rare occurrence where she lives now. In fact, according to this article on the Least Stormy Cities in the US, the top four cities with the fewest thunderstorms per year were San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento, and Los Angeles all of which experience less than 5 days of storms per year.

 

Ania said something along the lines of, “I wish we’d get a thunderstorm soon.” But even though she said that, she wasn’t holding her breath, because it was right smack in the middle of the dry season… maybe a few months from now she’d get her wish. Fat chance of it happening now though!

 

So Ania shrugged it off, and the conversation flowed onward.

 

Only a few hours later, out of nowhere… well can you guess what rolled on in? That’s right, an earth shaking, grumbling, wind-thrashing thunderstorm that brought heavy rains and beautiful veins of lightning across the sky.

 

And Ania watched, front and center, as her wish from earlier literally came true before her eyes. The thunderstorm danced above her and she was exactly in the middle of it. A few lightning bolts hit so close that her house shook with thunder almost instantly. This was what made this experience so powerful to her; how close the storm got.

 

It was a most magickal moment, at least that’s how it felt to me when she told me this story. I was grinning from ear to ear.

 

Ania was reminding me that nature is where we can witness those first, and sometimes most striking, manifestations come to life.

 

As a kid and in my teens I used to just sit outside in the woods; talk to nature. I’d literally ask questions aloud about my most pressing life issues… and the wind would answer me. It’d make noise up in the trees by rustling leaves, move my hair, brush my face. This still happens now, when I take the time to actually go out into nature.

 

But the other thing that stood out to me about Ania’s story was her total and complete letting go of her wish. It wasn’t like she was on her knees praying for rain and fearing her garden would suffer if she didn’t get her prayers answered immediately. There was no desperation or expectations – she simply set her intention (even if unintentionally in this case haha) and she let it go.

 

But I want to get a little bit deeper about the letting go. The very nature of wanting something, to have a desire at all, emphasizes to the universe that we are in a state of lack, that we are lacking that thing we want. And so the universe gives us more of that lacking we’re always feeling. This is why our manifestations pleasantly surprise us more often than not, because the magick that is most potent, the kind that creates quickly and powerfully, comes from a place of passionate curiosity.

 

And curiosity doesn’t have attachments. Curiosity is more like, asking the universe: “What if?”

 

What if we could have a thunderstorm soon? Wouldn’t that be amazing? Ah well, we’ll see.

 

Rather than:

 

OMG, if it doesn’t rain soon my yard will suffer or fires will do more damage than ever or (insert any other fear-driven thought/energy/emotion here).

 

Most of the time when we’re trying to consciously manifest a desired result, we are holding on too tightly. And like a needy ex that keeps popping up on your phone, holding on like herpes just creates more resistance to actually receiving that thing.

 

So how do we create more consciously? How do we flip the switch so that we are magnetizing the energy we want more of instead of repelling it from us?

 

Be curious and playful and have fun.

 

Here’s another example of some magick that happened in my own life recently that shows this playful curiosity at work.

 

I had been practicing pirouettes almost daily in my kitchen for a long time, probably a year or two, until I hurt myself, in an unrelated accident, and was forced to take a break from them. And then, by the time I was healed enough to try again, I kind of forgot about them for awhile. So when I finally realized hey, I should get back to those pirouettes, over a year had passed.

 

Yet, miraculously on my first attempt, I not only nailed it but I did a double! And then when I switched to my other foot, I did it again! It literally felt like someone else had taken control of my body and twirled me around perfectly like a ballerina in a music box. But then when I tried again after those two perfect double pirouettes, dozens of times between each foot, I was all over the place; teetering and stumbling. I couldn’t even come close to those first two, flawless, attempts.

 

So the moment I got serious, and started focusing on the end result in the future instead of the curious playfulness of the present moment, well then all flow left my body and my desire, need, want for more perfect pirouettes started repelling my ability to do so. At the time those first two twirls felt like pure magick… but as I’m writing this I’m realizing that perhaps it’s just pure presence that allows us to tap into that magick-like flow. Presence with a splash of curiosity and a sprinkling of playfulness. That is one powerful recipe for magick.

 

Ok because I promised you a more negative manifestation story, as in, how I unconsciously and inadvertently created my reality, I’ve got one more to share with you today. I think you’ll get a kick out of it.

 

Nick bought an Amish Fireplace, it’s an oxymoron of a thing, but we love it. It’s basically an electric heater, that simulates a fire on front, and it’s housed inside a beautifully carved, Amish-crafted mahogany wood case that we roll around our house as the seasons change. In the warmer months it’s my night stand in the bedroom, and in winter we move it into the living room which is the coldest room in the house, with its big bay window and drafty front door.

 

Well when we decided to roll it on out into the living room a couple of winters ago, we knew that we had to use an extension cord to avoid tripping the breaker when both watching TV and using the fireplace at the same time. The year previous we kept tripping over the cable and eventually taped it down. So I reminded Nick to grab the Gaffer’s tape as he was setting it all up.

 

Now you should know that I’m the perfectionist in our relationship, although I have been doing a lot of work to be more laid back, like Nick, and learn to let things go. But when I walked out into that living room I couldn’t stop myself.

 

“Really?” I said. I remember it being an incredulous mixture of laughter and anger.

 

Instead of running the wires underneath the TV stand and along the wall, like I would have, taping it down across the entryway into the kitchen, he sloppily taped it in a long ugly line straight from the heater to the outlet. But even though I was prepared to let go of the messiness of it, I couldn’t let go of the worst offense. We have one of those extension cords that has a thick end with room for three plugs, and Nick had taped that huge, outlet section of wire right in the middle of the path we walk the most.

 

“Come on Nick… are you serious? If I knew you were gonna do it like that I would have just done it myself.”

 

“What?” He asked as he came into the room.

 

“I’m gonna break my fucking toe on that thing! Why would you do it that way?!” But like I said, I really was working on my perfectionism and trying to lessen my nagginess factor, so after venting about it and laughing, I was like whatever, maybe I just need to let this go.

 

I don’t remember if it was that day or the day after, but it wasn’t long before I went strolling through the living room and kicked that thing so hard it was like I was in the world cup trying to score the winning goal. Instead of “Goal!” however I screamed out in pain and limped into the kitchen, tears involuntarily starting to form in the corners of my eyes.

 

Nick came running, and when he saw the look on my face he felt so bad he immediately started pulling up the tape to reroute the bulky mass to another location.

 

But I’d realized what had happened, and I couldn’t be mad at him about it. “I totally manifested that,” I said with a bitter laugh.

 

 

 

[Conclusion:]

 

Hey there magick makers, I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I enjoyed creating it, because the truth is I have a whole lot more where these came from. So many, in fact, I’m already planning a Little Bits of Magick Part 2 episode. What about you, though? Do you have any of your own bits of magick you’d like to share with us?

 

If so… you’re about to get the deets on how you can submit your story.

 

Virtual hugs to Lauren and Ania for letting me share your stories, and of course a great big hug to you too dear listeners. Ta ta for now!

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