New Consciousness Review Spring 2016 | Page 68

METAREALITY ARTICLE Ordinary Magic By Gary Sherman “A thing is not seen because it is physical. It is physical because it is seen.” - Plato Even though it appears as if magic has disappeared from our modern world, in fact it still exists, and is very much alive. Magic lives within us in a form we rarely recognize, and when we investigate the role that attention plays in the construction of what we experience and how we perceive, we discover properties of attention that are truly magical. A ttention is the most powerful tool we have to work with. There is no other aspect of self-experience in which we have such direct control -not in our thoughts, feelings, sensations 68 | NEW CONSCIOUSNESS REVIEW or behaviors. Attention is the creative instrument we use to construct our state of being, and is the active dynamic that determines what we perceive at any given moment; it is our most direct act of self-expression.