Almost every time I read something fiction, I think I’m taking a break, and I usually learn something useful. The series by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory that begins with The Outstretched Shadow is pure fantasy — elves, unicorns, dragons, goblins, a couple different kinds of mages (a.k.a. wizards to us muggles), a classic good-versus-evil story — is rich and deep with mythology and morality that I can use.

What caught my imagination in this moment was this idea of a ‘mage price’, the cost to a wizard of enacting a magical spell. In this story, there are the High Mages and Dark Mages, who typically create their magical spells using other people’s vital energy without asking permission; an Elf Mage, who bonds with a dragon, the dragon who bonds with him offers his vital energy and immortality to the elf mage; and Wild Mages, who pay personal mage prices for every magical spell they cast, and who often ask others to share in the energetic cost of the magical spell. Sometimes the mage pays for a spell with his or her life, acting out the old adage, ‘The good of the many is more important than the good of the one.’ (By the way, I’m not sure I completely agree with that adage. Likely, more on this in a future post, because it bugs me.)

As an aside, I want to make it plain that I don’t personally believe in the mythology of good-versus-evil as a Reality. I do believe we each can (and do) have experiences and might want to perceive them as evil. There’s a huge difference. I would never say that to someone in the middle of a deep, dark, miserable, ugly, unpleasant or unwelcome experience. That feels unkind and completely inappropriate to me. If we are truly immortal beings, which I firmly believe we are, then any human experience — no matter how painful, lengthy or ghastly — is temporary, and provides fodder for learning a bit more about who we are, if we choose to see it that way. In my mind, this is a Truth whether evil is a person or an organization who is acting in a way we perceive as dastardly or destructively, an illness, an event, or anything that we perceive is against us. What if every single experience of our lives actually serves to increase our understanding, or our ability to be compassionate or aware? What if every single experience or event is truly for us? That means we can never be victimized in our lives, or actually be a victim of any person, place, experience or thing. Sometimes, this is hard to wrap my mind around and I’m certain it is true.

Now, back to mage prices… We teach that it is completely appropriate for us to live lives that we choose. We teach that choice is invisible (intention, willingness, determination) and consequence is visible (the desired object, outcome or experience). We teach that Law is impartial, delivering to each one of us precisely according to our actual beliefs. Whatever I truly believe is possible for me to have, achieve or accomplish, I can have, achieve or accomplish. I just have to be willing to give up any and all limiting ideas I have about accepting the thing or experience I choose. There’s the catch, the mage price.

One of the delicious experiences in the “Foundations of the Science of Mind” course is that each student is asked to state a goal they desire to achieve by the end of the 13-week class. The same is true, to a lesser extent, in the Power of Eight groups. Some people struggle with getting definite and concrete about what they wish to claim. It feels so much safer to claim something intangible or unmeasurable. (We want to say we are just being magnanimous.) It feels risky to state a personal goal. It feels vulnerable. What if I get it? How will I have to change for this new reality to show up for me? What if I get it, and don’t like it? What if I don’t get it? So many questions!

We have to be willing to give up the comfortableness of who and what we have been to step into lives we choose. This is true for each of us individually, and it is true for us as a community. About ten weeks ago on a Sunday morning, I asked each of us to consider what we wanted to become, and whether we were willing to grow into a center big enough, and powerful enough, to accomplish our desires. I know myself as willing to pay the mage price, and give up my limiting beliefs, for this accomplishment. Are you?

A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it. — Marcus Aurelius

       -Rev. Janis