The Daily Transmissions Podcast

Reaching for Magic, Even in the Darkness

• Yelena Mogilev • Season 1 • Episode 3

Share episode

Have you ever wondered how to find light amidst the shadows of loss and grief? Join me on a heartfelt exploration as I share my personal journey through the darkness, discovering the magic and wonder that life still offers. Inspired by art and the wisdom of great thinkers like Joshua Abraham Heschel and Albert Einstein, we explore how shifting our perspective can transform despair into an opportunity for growth and enchantment. Together, we'll uncover how embracing a mindset of radical amazement can reveal beauty and spirituality in the everyday, even during life’s most challenging moments.

The essence of true abundance lies not in material wealth but in the richness of human connections and community support. Reflecting on the challenges faced in California, this episode emphasizes the transformative power of love, joy, and solidarity. By choosing beliefs and perspectives that bring joy and wonder, we can create personal constructs that nourish and empower us. Let's embark on this journey of finding miracles in the mundane and embracing life's magical moments with a renewed sense of hope and anticipation for future connections.

Products & Organizations mentioned in the episode: https://www.inpursuitofmagic.org/ 
I personally own their necklace, which serves as a supportive physical anchor, reminding me to always stay in pursuit of magic. I also love gifting their stickers to others and find it endlessly delightful to stumble upon their message in unexpected places around NYC and other cities. Interacting with their art and message brings me immense joy and always leaves me smiling. 

Organization: 
https://www.moishehouse.org
Moishe House is a global community that empowers young adults to create vibrant Jewish experiences for themselves and their peers. This organization changed my life in profound ways. Living in a Moishe House allowed me to build the Jewish community of my dreams, create some of my most meaningful memories, and meet lifelong friends—including the love of my life. Moishe House fosters connection, creativity, and a sense of belonging, and I’m deeply grateful to have been a part of it.

Speaker 1:

hello, hello, dear ones, such a joy to be with you and to just sit next to you or walk beside you in whatever way that this transmission meets you, wherever you are, and again I thank you from the bottom of my heart for choosing to be here, spend time with me. Okay, so to dive in, today's conversation is one that is a really personal one for me, as I am someone who has lived through a lot of things some very intense, deep, profound losses, too many personal losses of dear ones that have transitioned, and you know grief and I and death and I, we dance. We've been dancing together for quite some time. And so, while there's so much happening in the nation, in California, in the world, while there's still so many people recovering from everything that happened in Asheville and again abroad all of these things happening concurrently, simultaneously, and while we're processing all of these things, I really wanted to invite us into a conversation around light, and so the title of this episode is Reaching for Magic Even in the Darkness, is Reaching for Magic Even in the Darkness, and it's the offering that I want to leave you with. My desire is that it embraces you like a hug, meets you and leaves you with a glimmer, and or with glasses full of glimmer, such that the world around you, you interact with it, differently and newly, as my dear mentor, layla Martin, says, innocently right, imagining you're seeing it all for the very first time. So that's the game I would like to invite you in for this conversation, if you can take a moment and put on, you know, bring your hands up to your eyes, metaphorical glasses of innocence and wonder and awe. Children are so wonderful at this, because everything is new and therefore it is a discovery, it is majestic and it is magnanimous and it is phenomenal and it is fascinating, and so I would like to invite us to step into that energy, that possibility, that lens for this moment and or, ideally, in some way, shape or form, however you choose, to bring it into your life, to your life moving forward. And again, no worries. Simply, as we know, in meditation, whenever you or we or any of us, we get distracted, that's okay. We have busy, beautiful minds, as Pema Chodron says, and I agree with her and all there is is just to come back with gentleness and ease and start again. So, as I was thinking of what I wanted to share, there's a few anchors that I want to bring into the conversation and also a bit of insider access to me. I love quotes. I really, really, really do. It's truly such a fun way to bookmark musings and wisdom and to have an anchor for a concept or a way of being. I truly, truly live my life through the lens of certain wisdoms shared by those before me, and I will do different episodes about each one. But today I want to focus us and this conversation on magic and wonder and awe and calibrating our lives to that. No budget necessary. It is free, 99, so no worries, and it can meet you wherever you are.

Speaker 1:

One of my favorite artists, two women. I'll find their names and put it in the footnotes, but they had this template where they would, with spray paint it's like block letters and it would say in pursuit of magic. I'll repeat that again the invitation that they had to us with their art was in pursuit of magic. I highly invite you to check them out. They are phenomenal. They actually make phenomenal jewelry that has that statement. I have a number of their pieces because it always reminds me in physical form that I can come back to being in pursuit of magic wherever I am, no matter what's happening. So I'd like to invite you to do that.

Speaker 1:

First and foremost and that brings me to the first of a few quotes that I'll incurs into and engage with in this conversation I love this one from Roald Dahl those who don't believe in magic will never find it, and so one of the things I've known to be very true in my life is whether you think you can, you are right. You are absolutely right, and so also the premise of how I live my life you'll hear me say this probably a number of times is it's all made up. So create a construct that serves you, because everybody's going to have a, you know, a flippant opinion. Anyway. You're never going to do it perfectly enough, or this or whatever. This could be better, whatever, okay, they can keep their opinions Because it's your life Right and it's all technically made up. So choose a context that serves and welcomes you into an experience of nourishment and wonder.

Speaker 1:

And so I'd like to invite you to play a game of mantic, to believe that it is everywhere, because the truth is right. Confirmation, confirmation bias is a thing, and so if you say to yourself and have the belief anchored deep in your system that, oh, I'm so unlucky, nothing good ever happens to me, or I'll say a tender one. I'm unlovable. Truth is so many of us have some version of that. I see it, raised my hand, been there, and yet you can choose one that serves meaning that I'm always taken care of. People truly want to contribute to me, to support me, to see me thriving, and so things are always not. Instead of happening to you, they're happening for you. So this minor inconvenience, oh no, that's not happening to me, it's happening for me. It's clearing the path so that more magic can fill in the space.

Speaker 1:

And again, I'm aware that this, you know, is fantastical thinking. Yes, that is very true, and I share it with you from a space of true knowing that that meant fantastical thinking has truly changed my life in some of the absolute and I'm going to speak in me because I told you I would in some of the absolute most devastating moments of my life, devastating moments of my life, this fantastical thinking has had people show up in ways and support me and have things just align and occur beyond my wildest dreams in the most beautiful ways. Sunsets have been richer because through my fantastical, magical thinking, because I decided that magic was everywhere, it then was the sunset each time was the most beautiful one I'd ever seen. I'd ever seen Because, in truth, I was present for it and savoring it like it was the last, because in some ways, right, you know, we're not guaranteed the next breath, we're not guaranteed much of anything really, and so I don't say that to be pessimistic. I say that to be an invitation to live fully and slow down and, as you're walking, maybe pause for a moment, smell a flower or touch it with your hands. I'm a very sensory person, so I definitely experience the world through my senses, and I say that here because I would like to invite you to that.

Speaker 1:

If what's happening in California, you know, it's a teacher for us of truly what matters. People matter, those we love matter, our beloveds, our fur babies, they matter. And, on a poignant although we would love to not have this kind of strife happen none of us can truly know what's awaiting us and our wealth, our abundance, although very often we're taught that money, physical money, is abundance right, it's a sign of abundance we can't really. I'm going to try to keep this as light as I can. I'll get into deeper topics at some point, but truth is, when we transition, when we turn into a different form. It can't take it with us, right? But yet the amount of love and joy and laughter and beautiful memories with people we care about that, that, that relational wealth, that is truly, absolutely, deliciously abundant.

Speaker 1:

And now, as I'm seeing so many people show up to support California, canada, mexico, here in New York, they're doing a lot to gather supplies all over different parts of California. I have friends that are doing it in both coasts right, a part of these grassroots efforts to just support, you know, altadena and the Palisades and Palisades I'm saying it crazy but really to support, you know, all those affected and they're choosing to reach for the light even when it's super dark. So I'd like to invite you to do that in whatever way aligns and nourishes you, and it doesn't have to be the permission slip is. It doesn't have to be big, start small, but be in the inquiry right, decide, choose. That magic is everywhere, love is everywhere. That things don't happen to you, they happen for you. That things don't happen to you, they happen for you.

Speaker 1:

And so, with that, I'll read to you a quote that I read for the first time on a forest floor on a Judaism and Mindfulness retreat led by Moishe House, which is a phenomenal organization that I was a part of, and from that very moment when I read those words, I felt them to my bones. Words, I felt them to my bones and it changed my life and I have lived my life through that lens. This is now maybe over 15 years, maybe potentially more, but, yeah, I want to share them with you. Hope that they nourish you in whatever way that they can. This is the wisdom of Joshua Abraham Heschel.

Speaker 1:

Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. Radical amazement, to get up in the morning and look around at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything be spiritual is to be amazed. Radical amazement Everything is phenomenal, everything is incredible. Everything is phenomenal, everything is incredible. Never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, these words changed my life, and I definitely have moments where I'm in some dark nights of the soul and need to reach for that. I'll be vulnerable. Yep, sometimes it's a reach, sometimes it's a reach. And yet, additionally, also because I believe that the universe is a generally kind, loving universe which I can already hear the thoughts that some of you are having ruminating around in your head of yeah but, and this, what but? You know Again, that's the contract that I calibrate my life too, and whenever I can try to zoom out far above the chest bird that I'm walking and that is my life, and look at things at a larger scale, at all the pieces and things that are aligning that I can't see, that are aligning for me, even sometimes when it strips everything that I have known to be solid as a foundation beneath me.

Speaker 1:

Beneath me, I choose to trust that I am loved, that everything is happening for me, not to me, I am not a victim Although I have definitely spent many years in that mentality and that everything will be okay. Boom, everything will be okay if it's not the end. No, it's, I think the quote, I'll say it, the quote that I used to write on my notebook, was like my self-hypnosis mantra for years when I was younger is everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end. And so I leave you with that, with the invitation to create a construct that serves you, whatever one really nourishes you, whatever lens truly nourishes you, to take on the game that magic is everywhere, in whatever way that it unfolds or resonates for you. And this one last one. I'm just looking over my notes.

Speaker 1:

Albert einstein, who I think we all trust to have been pretty wise one, said there are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle, and so I invite you into taking on the latter and wish that it serves you and nourishes you, and that you can always, now, in a new perspective, in a new way, reach for magic, even in the darkness. All right, dear ones, stay delicious, because you already are, and I'm looking forward to sharing some musings and connecting again super soon. I love you, thank you.