What's the key components for magic? - Deception and misdirection. I've noticed that in my mind a character has developed through the years which I noticed the other day as friend asked me for help, and I was coincidently watching the film Prestige, which is a very cool film about magicians in the past. Now in magic its all about the anticipation, creating doubts in your audience, holding peoples suspense until you reveal your ending which must seemingly through deception shock and destroy the audiences initial doubts in order to be defined as "good magic". Its kind of like an effective sales pitch process.
Someone I know was in a tight spot financially, this person I have known for years, and they have never asked for money from me before. I could feel this persons embarrassment about talking to me about their dilemma, and as soon as I realised the situation this person was in, I immediately knew that I had the capacity to help them out of this situation.
But rather then just immediately saying I could help, I instead went into this magician character, whereby I am attempting to hold the persons suspense, create doubt in the person that I can produce, and then pull the rabbit out of the hat to shock and destroy this persons doubts at the last moment.
So I helped them eventually, but why go through this shift into this pointless character in my mind? Why pretend that I can or can't do something, if in reality the opposite is true? It doesn't make sense, just delayed the solving of the situation. I mean if I can help in any situation, then I should say so immediately here, so that a solution can be created as quickly and effectively as possible.
This magician character is all based on ego, playing mind games, a desire to be mysterious, playing god, delaying, holding suspense, building and destroying doubts through deception. Some of these points are maybe valid in the worlds of theatre/acting/films/sales/intelligence agencies for example - but in the context of day to day living with everyday people, and what I allow inside of myself, it is clearly not cool to become this magician character.
Fascinating how the mind works really, Iv'e then been looking at is this character coming up in other areas of my life, because this character does not assist me in living what's best for all. Iv'e seen there are actually many places in the past where I will try to hold someone's suspense, feed into their doubts, and then shock them at the end. I mean even the first email address I ever had included the word mystery and most things defined as mysterious in the world I have always found to be cool - playing "games of mystery" with people, which is kind of like making deception a game, which in reality it is not at all, it is self-dishonesty.
We are all illusionists, playing games of thrones, but life is real here, there is no games. So have you been a magician too? If so then stop trying to create "moments of magic" and join me in my next blog as I continue to investigate this character and walk the necessary corrections.
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