Time Travel Magic.
The secret with getting magic to work is to not believe in it — what you need to do instead is just to accept that it’s there and then ignore it. Forget it, leave it alone. Just because you can breathe you don’t have to believe in oxygen — just accept it and it will work by itself. It’s possible to use rituals and spells, which can be there to make the mind more focused, but if you just can accept magic as a natural state you might not need it. In the end it’s a matter of taste, so do what makes you feel good.
I usually use two forms of magic; time travel magic and, often together with the first, object magic. The first one is the most interesting, but also needs years of insights and personal acceptance to work. I call it time travel magic because parapsychology researcher and scientist Dean Radin, or if was one of the hosts at a podcast he appeared in, called the way of focusing on an upcoming event for a form of mental time travel. It’s a way of thinking where you visualize the future you want and therefore make it come true. What I’ve discovered is that the moment you want to happen often is too charged — with anxiety, nervousness, fear of failure and so on, even if it’s a happy event — that just by focusing directly on it makes it more difficult to happen.
So, I sat down and started to think of my life and how it has unfolded over the years, and I’ve discovered that by not focusing on the moment I want to happen, will make that moment happen. Sometimes it takes a long time, but most of the more traditional stuff (work and money for example) have been constant — as soon as I stopped worrying about it, and for me worrying meant dreaming and thinking of that moment of success that I really, really wanted, including having doubts on if it ever will happen.
I stopped doing that. The moment I stopped looking for true, good love — a man perfect for me and me being perfect for a man — I found love. That’s something I believe we all have heard before; stop looking and it will come for you. It’s the same with my career. Once upon a time I was constantly worried if I was going to find a job and make money, but somewhere along the way I just stopped focusing on it and since then I’ve been constantly successful in making a decent living.
The thing is that my mind has always been focusing on the moments after the desired moment. That’s the trick! I never visualize the moment someone called me and asked if I wanted to work for them, or the actual signing of the contract. What I saw in front of me was a later moment, leading up from that more important moment. Me smiling with colleagues at a party, the last day of work or something else, something very easy-going not really related to the job itself.
I’ve done a few random experiments through the years; it’s just examples of how one can focus to make it happen without putting too much pressure on the actual event. Let’s divide each magical project into three parts:
1. Target
2. Issue
3. Goal
- The first one was a certain, the target. The issue was that illness. My goal was that the illness would disappear. So instead of focusing on the medical part of this I visualized an image of the person standing in the sunshine, smiling and looking happy and healthy. This was meant to be days or even weeks after a complicated medical procedure.
- The second one was an important gathering, and I wanted it to be a lovely evening. The image in my mind was of two people, both close to me, standing at the edge of a forest watching the beautiful sunset. This was supposed to be hours after the initial meeting.
- Third one was the meeting with a complicated friend and I wanted it to be a great meeting, a rare thing in our friendship at that point in our lives. The image in my mind was us having a great time moments after we first met that day.
- Fourth, I watched a certain blu-ray. The issue is always that my player has problems playing region A and I wanted to see this movie now. I was visualizing how I saw a certain scene in the film on the TV.
- The fifth and last one was a colleague who was about to do her last driver’s license test and she had failed once before. I saw in front of me how she smiled and was happy.
As you can see, this is not about performing miracles. It’s taking realism and bending it by will to an angle where it actually can happen. One always needs to bring in probability in magic. The more realistic it is, the bigger chance is it to happen the way you want it. The illness basically had two paths, negative or positive — and it was a 50% chance of both. The weather, nothing complicated there. The same with the relationship to my friend or nonsense like making a blu-ray disc work properly. But in the end, all these deliberate experiments worked to my favor, or more importantly, to the favor of those involved.
It needs to be a realistic goal, which I can’t state enough. To be honest, during the same time I also did one that didn’t work (or haven’t worked so far at the time of me writing this) but the chance was also way smaller for it to happen. Why? Probably because I know less about the other person involved in my plans and he knows little about me, and a strong awareness of each other is always a good thing, but not necessary.
To be clear; the key is to focus on the moment leading up from THE moment, not THE moment itself. Don’t dwell on it, just let it pass through your thoughts and let it be a file somewhere in your mind, easy to access, but too vague to focus on.
In my right pocket I also have an object that means a lot to me. It has a special story, a quite remarkable story actually, behind it and just by thinking of it gives me some kind of strength. I use it sometimes while doing time travel magic, almost like the start button or key to some kind of magical device. I squeeze it, letting my mind find that moment leading up from the moment and then I let it all go.
What’s happening here? I’m not sure, it’s magic and I know it works, but just like my dear friend Markus Widegren’s ideas about aiming to be the person you want to be: it’s about reflecting yourself and what you want to be to others so their perception of you will make you change yourself without even understanding it. It’s about small, subtle changes in your own personality to the degree that you shape a persona other people expect from you which will make you change yourself even more to fit their view. Which in the end is your view of yourself. Let’s make it very simple and primitive; you want to find money on the street. You focus on the moment you’re enjoying something you can buy for that money (and remember to keep it realistic) and let that image slip away into the archives of your mind and forget it. Subconsciously you’re looking down more, and taking longer walks — which means the chance to find money on the street will be bigger. You’re just changing your reality in a very basic way, and it sounds like nothing, I know — but face the fact; it’s some kind of magic, because sooner or later it WILL work.
Fred Andersson is a Swedish story producer, researcher and writer with over twenty years of experience in commercial television and the author of three books. He lives in Märsta, outside Stockholm, with his photographer husband Grzegorz and two overly active cats. Join him on Twitter and Instagram.
