When enough is enough 1

A New Awareness

 In a previous post, I wrote about when is enough enough?

The main idea of this post was to bring to light a personal struggle that I’d been having, but also a struggle that I’ve been seeing with a lot of magicians, that they might not even be aware of. Even though people are not aware of it, there must be a feeling somewhere deep inside that what they’re doing now isn’t it. It isn’t fulfilling that quench that they so deeply want to be fulfilled, it’s not reaching a higher goal or purpose, it’s just running in circles, like a serpent eating its own tail.

Now of course the ouroboros (pictured above) is not the perfect example of this, although In some way it also is. It is a symbol of life going in circles, and so is our desire to become a better magician and our desperate attempts to become a better magician. We’re essentially chasing something much deeper, much more profound, but I will get back to this later.

 In the previous essay, I wrote about how many magicians want to become better magicians, they are chasing after new tricks and products to satisfy their dopamine needs, the need to gain approval from other people, and the need to have something new.

 This is in some regards, even though exploited, a wonderful thing. It all boils down to the fact that each and every one of us loves magic so dearly that we are willing to spend money on our education. That cannot be said for many other people with their hobbies.

I remember seeing those posts that say “The average person spends 300 euros on a yearly basis on their hobbies”, meanwhile I’m looking behind me at a bookshelf with over 400 magic books and I think “300 euros, that would be nice……”.

 The point is that all of us want to spend money on magic, money on becoming a better magician. It could be said that buying tricks is a complete waste of time, but is it really?

We bought the trick because we saw it and there was something there that we liked, maybe something that fooled us or an interesting concept that amused us. There was something there that sparked an interest. This interest was so big and so powerful to us that we proceeded to buy the trick, book, [insert magic thingy]. The point is that something was there, and the question that we have to ask ourselves in that regard is if we got that “thing” out of it, or not?

 Did we buy the trick and truly study it? Did we truly get the thing out of it that we unconsciously wanted to get out of it? Or, did we buy and quickly satisfy our quench for dopamine, showed it to some people, and then made that trick together with our money disappear in the bottom of a drawer somewhere?

Look, I’m not saying that it’s wrong to buy a trick only to perform it a few times, if that is the goal that you want to get out of the trick then that is completely fine. But, there are also quite some of us that want more out of it, that want more out of the magic and we don’t know how.

 It is my goal throughout this month of December to share some of my solutions to this with all of you. I’m not saying that I have all of the solutions, but, I am saying that I have a few that have worked for me.

My first awareness

You see very early on in my magic career I went to Blackpool; this must’ve been at least seven years ago by now. When I went to Blackpool, I just remember leaving that place depressed.

Other than Blackpool being the most depressive place in the universe, the dealer’s hall just left a bitter aftertaste to me. When I saw the number of things that were being sold in the dealers' hall that seemed to be completely useless to me, I also saw some of my friends spending literally thousands of pounds on new tricks. They were buying all this new material and when I asked them “Why would you spend so much money on all this different type of magic?” I finally got an answer that connected all the dots in my mind.

 My friends’ answers were basically always something along the lines of “I’m figuring out the type of magician I want to be and these props are teaching more great lessons within magic”.

 And BINGO!

Basically, the magic market holds an image in front of us that tells us

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“Buy this and you will be the next greatest magician”,

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“You know those insecurities that you have? This trick will solve it”,

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“This trick will make you a better magician instantly”.

 The magic market plays with our insecurities and then tells us that it has a cure for those insecurities and so we keep going in circles, like the Ouroboros trying it eat its own tail.

 But there is also good news here. The Ouroboros is eating its own tail and like this keeps going in circles. But it’s also eating something that is part of itself. The solutions that we’re all seeking to our insecurities and other magical problems are things that already lay inside of us. We all have the capabilities to be a great performer, a better magician, or even a better lover, but we just have to put the work into it.

Mastery

In his book Mastery, George Leonard described a chapter “America's War against Mastery”.

In this chapter, he went over a new trend that he was seeing. A trend where people want to reach things without working for them. Everyone is in love with the idea of being able to play the piano like a maestro. But no one is willing to put in the hours and the work to be able to perform like that. No one wants to go through the pain and hardship to actually master something. That is the war against mastery. Which we could here also call the war against magic.

We are in a war against magic. All of us want quicker, easier, and more self-working tricks. Tricks that require no skill and can be shown in an instant. But is that really satisfying? Is that really the thing that will help us improve as magicians and will that leave us with long-term fulfillment?

I don’t think it is, and I think there are other ways to make life, magic, and more things more fulfilling and more fun in general. This is too much to go over in this newsletter and so in two weeks, I’ll be back with you in order to discuss concepts that will help us understand our quench for dopamine better in the hope that we will be set straight on our path to mastery.

Yes, I do realize that I haven’t given many tips on how to improve, however, the purpose of this first article is to bring an awareness. From this awareness, we can start to inspect our lives and search for answers.

-Rico Weeland