MAGICAL LIVING - review

Magical Living, Bob Makransky, Dear Brutus Press, www.dearbrutus.com, 2014, 173pp, $14.95.

Magical Living is the second volume of the Introduction to Magic series. This is the second edition that has been updated since the original print in 2001.

        This book is a series of essays exploring ways to enhance and improve our lives by learning the elements of control necessary to reach a place of inner peace. The author advises that control over the body, the mind and the emotions are all necessary in order to reach the Spirit. Magical Living contains a body of knowledge acquired by Makransky through his own personal pursuits and experiences.

        Magic can be used to control one’s emotions and induce a calming effect on the practitioner. Makransky defines that calmness is being neither angry about the past nor fearful of the future. Fully living in the ‘now’ with ease will also allow the body and mind to relax. The dichotomy of his approach comes into play as he explains that when we seek to become a magician, we willingly leave behind the known. So magic brings about calmness through deliberately seeking things that may be uncomfortable and disorienting. Interesting idea.

        It makes sense that living fearfully or angrily is also uncomfortable, but in a much more detrimental way. There is no growth through anger or fear of things we can’t change or control. Why not channel those same feelings into learning ways to conquer their control over our actions (and reactions)? Once WE assume control over them, we have the ability to determine our own destiny.

        The essays cover topics ranging from channeling spirit guides to talking to plants to communing with water spirits and most everything in between. There are exercises designed to raise awareness through each of the elements as well as to tear down or at least re-examine our own conceptions of who and what we are. Finding oneness with everything is the beginning of being able to step outside ourselves.

        Perhaps one of the best pieces to understand the need to take that step outside is “On Not Letting the S.O.B.’s Get You Down.” No one honestly sets out to have a bad time, but we often allow someone else’s actions interfere with our experience. As soon as one encounters an “S.O.B.”, it’s almost as if there’s a green light for bad behavior all the way around. Resisting that urge and maintaining pleasantness may not change someone else’s bad attitude, but it will reinforce your own good one.

        There are too many essays to describe in detail, but suffice to say, there is a little bit of everything for everyone here. It’s a beautiful little book to carry around for when you just want something to read at odd moments, but I suspect that, for some, it will be a book that’s picked up over and over again. At times, I find myself ruminating over something I read or glance at the contents page to have something jump out at me that’s relevant to the moment.

        Makransky has put together a book of wonderful content but is careful to remind the reader that this is all based on his own experience. He refers to other authors and resources that have other viewpoints, so what one may not ‘get’ from this book, they may find in another.

        I highly recommend this book to anyone with an open mind and a real willingness to look at themselves and their surroundings. Talk to the plants, splash in the water, listen to the air. Magic is all around just waiting for you.

- J Byrne