I asked AI to create a picture that I could use for this blog. I wanted to say that what comes out of our mouths and the thoughts our minds produce can be either one of two things, depending on the words or the thoughts: they can be deadly enemies, or they can be best friends who care for us like the angels themselves. In the words of Florence Scovel Shinn, Your Word is your Wand. I could not have produced a better picture of what I am trying to convey in this blog: Powerful words are streaming right out of OUR minds, and into a magic wand in OUR own hands, which WE can choose to wield in any way WE please.
Now imagine a little witch or wizard or fairy running around some fantasy world with a magic wand that it does not know how to handle, or properly wield. The ensuing chaos is the stuff of fairy tales, right? Wrong. It is the real life story of a person who is unaware that no word or thought returns void. Every word we utter goes out there and brings stuff back to us. And so we build our lives, in every respect. We can happily choose to believe that all the awful things in our lives came about because of some or other reason that has nothing to do with us, and decide to ignore our wands. Or, we could choose to be kind to ourselves and say, ‘Whatever the reason for what is going on in my life, I now forgive myself for not knowing better, just in case I had anything to do with it.’ And then we can decide, or not, to check out this magic wand of ours. Just to see if we can speak words that bring better stuff back to us. [Note: Yet who really knows what is in the soul plan of a divinely created human? We should not use the reality of the power our words have as an excuse to begin judging others by saying, ‘You must have done it to yourself’. Because spiritual laws also teach us not to judge others.]
In the fairy tales, we are taught that a magic wand makes things instantly right, and is easy to wield. The former is somewhat true, but depends on the skill of the wielder. The latter is downright wrong. Our real life magic wand, made up of our words and our thoughts, is so powerful that it indeed can make things instantly right for us, just like our Creator intended. This is why He gave it to us in the first place. But it only works for our good in that intended way if it is wielded properly. Is that easy to do? Perhaps it could eventually become easy with practise, but I personally have found it very difficult to begin wielding my wand with the diligent attention it clearly commanded. I don’t think I am alone in this. But now, every day, I set aside some time to learn to speak in a way that serves me, and those around me, instead of sabotaging whatever good I have decided to create.
Soon, a group of very special friends in my world are going with me on a trip to Peru. We began paying attention to our words, and our ‘vain imaginings’ as Florence Scovel Shinn called them. We found that our wands tended to be difficult to control, and gave us the same kind of trouble that a character out of the Harry Potter books would have had, if they had tried to tame a difficult broomstick, or learn to use a new wand.
The thing is, a character in a book can put away their unruly wand. You and I, mercifully, do not have to, and actually cannot put our wands away, but we do need to learn how to use them properly. Why? Because it is one of the powerful gifts that we were given at birth. Like when a fairy godmother blesses a baby in the fairy tales. So the Creator blessed us with the power and literal magic of the spoken word, and the thoughts behind it. Our options are: we can accept the glorious gift and learn how to wield this powerful tool to create a life we love; or, we can try to put away our wand, pretending that it is not futile to try to do so.
Because when we don’t want to do the work to learn how to wield it and try to convince ourselves that we are not subject to the power of that wand we were born with, the wand does not become powerless, it merely becomes destructive. We literally hand our lives over to the tyranny of our mind’s thinking, from where our uncontrolled thoughts, now our fiercest enemies, will create our life for us. And we won’t like that life. Can we blame our thoughts for being uncontrolled? And if not, whose responsibility is it to control the thinking in our heads? Who is responsible for the havoc wreaked in our bodies and in our lives by our unchecked thoughts and words?
Next time we take the time to explain our troubles to someone in detail, it would be wise to remember that we are etching those troubles on the canvass of our mind as we speak, sending those words out into the aether to bring back more of what we are (probably accurately) describing. Are we wrong about the reality or existence of what we are going through? No, of course not. Pain, sickness, poverty, lack, loneliness, scarcity, etc., are all very real things in many lives. Yet, we have a wand to wave them away. Instead of describing the situation, we can say, ‘I give the condition over to a higher intelligence for resolution, and I give thanks for the perfect outcome that, under grace, flows to me in a wonderful way’. Then watch the magic and power of our spoken words begin to work …
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