This is important

A friend of a friend reacted to my post about spellcraft with “where is the sublime? It's missing.”

My initial response to this was basically “ha ha fair enough”. It’s very in line with the sort of reaction I expected really - my “magic” is a very pragmatic problem-solving oriented approach. It’s not about having profound spiritual experiences, it’s not about connecting with the natural world, it’s not about experiencing transcendent joy, it’s about getting shit done.

But the comment got to me.

More importantly, my response to it got to me.

Because on the one hand, it’s true.

But on the other hand, part of me protested this criticism intensely. That part doesn’t normally write here, but today I’m letting him drive. This is his letter to me. You can read it too.

You see, it’s true that what I do isn’t something I frame in terms of finding the sublime, or having profound spiritual experiences. It’s true that I’m focused on practical problem solving.

But those are the same thing.

I’m trying to show you something and I don’t think you’re seeing it. So I’m going to try a different way.

This is important. Please listen.

You are in a box

You are trapped in a box. You have been for a long time.

You’re not alone. People come by. Some of them are kind to you - they tell you they understand how hard it must be for you as a person in a box - or possibly a boxed person, they can’t decide - and that the world is not set up for people like you and this is a terrible tragedy.

They do not help you out of the box.

Some people are less kind to you. They tell you that it’s all your fault that you are trapped in a box, that if you really wanted to out of a box then you would be. Boxes are a sign of poor moral fibre.

They also do not help you out of the box.

Some people tell you that the box is all in your mind, that all you need to do is realise that there never was a box all along and you will be free.

You are still in a box.

Some people tell you that really, when you think about it, aren’t we all in boxes?

They are not in a box.

You do meet other people in boxes. They are easier to talk to at least. They get what it’s like, in a box. You can talk about your box-related problems. Some of them are in slightly larger boxes, some in slightly smaller ones. One of them is in a round box. Some of them are despondent about this, some of them are proud of their resilience in managing life in a box. Some of them rail against the people who don’t get what it’s like in a box. Some of them talk about how much better it is in a box. But, despite all your differences, there is a fundamental solidarity where you all understand each other, and this is far more comforting than talking to the box-free people who come by.

But you are still, all, in boxes.

Then one day you look at the lid of your box. There’s a catch there. It’s complicated, and fiddly, and it’s not obvious how to work it…

…but it’s not that complicated. You open the box.

The sublime arrives in the moment the lid opens and you step out of your box. It even stays as you stumble and fall, realising that all that time in a box has left you with no idea how to walk.

It will fade, but it will return every now and then as you remember these truths: You are no longer in a box. Boxes can be opened.

I am trying to show you that boxes can be opened.

You were born with wings

You were born with wings.

This doesn’t make you special. Everyone was born with wings. This is normal.

You see small children flying about sometimes. Their parents smile tolerantly. It’s perfectly normal, children do that.

They don’t show their children how to fly better though. Instead, they teach them how to walk.

Adults don’t fly you see. Oh, maybe some do. Artists and degenerates, maybe. But it’s childish. We’ve outgrown that.

You are no different to anyone else. You have wings, but you don’t fly.

It’s hard to fly you see. It was easy as a child, but children are small and light.

As an adult, you are weighed down by your larger adult body, and there isn’t really room. You live in the city, with high walls and lines above-head. You’d hurt yourself if you tried to fly. Where would you even start?

Your wings haven’t been used in so long, they’re weak and flabby. You doubt they could support your weight even if you let them.

But they itch. They know what they’re for, and they want to be used.

You talk about this with your friends and colleagues.

“Oh yes,” they say. “I remember when I was young and thought flying was the greatest thing ever. But I’ve outgrown that. These days I’ve got both feet on the ground, too many responsibilities to be flighty don’t you know. Ha ha.”

Everything but the laugh sounds sincere.

You talk about it some more, and are reliably informed that it’s impossible for an adult to fly, that it would be too much work, that it wouldn’t be worth it even if you could.

You don’t believe them.

So one day, you leave the city, and find a nice empty space to try to fly in. You stretch your wings, you jump… and you fall.

Your wings haven’t been used in so long, they’re weak and flabby. They can’t support your weight even if you want them to.

But that? That is just a problem. You can solve it.

It takes you less time than you think. You find ways to stretch your wings and strengthen them without flying. You watch videos, you read instructions, you get the basics down.

You go back out there every week, and you practice your running jumps, your glides.

And then, one day, you catch the wind just right, and you soar. The sublime arrives as you head skywards. It stays as you crash down to the earth.

Because this was just a first success. You barely flew, but you flew. And now you’ve done it once, you can do it again. Better.

I am trying to show you that you have wings. Rise.

You used to feel things

You used to feel things. You’re sure of it. But it’s been a while, and you don’t entirely remember how.

You’ve talked to people about this. They’ve told you it’s depression. Or alexithymia. Or maybe it’s just that grown men don’t feel things as intensely.

Perhaps they’re right. But you used to feel things. You think that you would like to again. Certainly this grey fog seems worse than what came before it.

People tell you to try antidepressants. They let you care less about the fog, but if anything the fog thickens.

People tell you to take drugs. You do. It works for a bit, but it doesn’t feel real.

People tell you that you should learn Focusing. You do. It lets you peer through the grey fog and slowly, carefully, puzzle out some of the things you’re probably feeling.

It’s very helpful. This improves your life significantly. But surely this isn’t it? Surely this slow game of detective work isn’t what people mean when they talk about emotions?

People tell you to go to therapy. Or do yoga. Or take up a meditation practice. If you touched grass you’d feel better. This is probably all capitalism’s fault. Or the patriarchy’s. Or the liberal media’s. Or the internet or kids these days or one of any one of a thousand other things. It’s burnout, caused by whatever their favourite explain-everything theory is.

But you know what not one person tells you? Not one fucking person, until you puzzle it out from a random aside in some weird book that you picked up on a whim.

You’re breathing wrong. You’re controlling your chest too much, breathing through your nose. Those are emotional regulation strategies. That’s why all your emotions are muted, that’s why the only feeling you get when things go badly is a tight knot in your chest as you hold your chest too tightly to feel the feelings that want to come out.

Anyway, here’s a spell for you:

Ragged Breathing

This is a spell for when you’re clearly having a strong emotion but it’s not coming out.

Breath in, slowly, through an open mouth. Breathe out. Control the out breath as little as possible. Just let it come out as it wants. Probably it will be ragged and juddering. Keep doing this. Cry if you need to.

It might not work for you, the actual you who is reading this newsletter, but for the you that is me it was most of what you needed to hear.

All you needed to blow away the fog was breath.

The sublime arrives as the grief pours through you, at choices made and not made, at years lost in the fog.

Nobody ever said the sublime was nice. It scours you out, and leaves you feeling empty, but renewed.

Those years were lost. They didn’t have to be. But nobody showed you the way out. You had to put it together from hints and fragments. You had to puzzle it out. And you did.

And, once you had, you realised that your worst possible fears were true. The path that took you so long to puzzle out, that took so much hard work to find your way. It’s easy. It doesn’t require endless study or grappling with the profound nature of the soul. There was just a quick fix.

It’s not, actually, as simple as that of course. You haven’t fixed everything, you’ve just learned one trick. You don’t miraculously suddenly feel all your feelings. You don’t become a new person overnight. You need to remember over and over again that this is possible, and that goes directly against why you learned not to feel your feelings. They’re scary.

I am trying to show you that you can be brave. I am trying to show you how to grieve those lost years. I am trying to show you that there don’t have to be any more.

It is not so hard as we have supposed

There is a passage from Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell that gets me every time:

“My pupils,” he said. “My pupils are magicians. All the men and women who ever wanted to be Norrell's pupils are magicians. Childermass is another. Segundus another. Honeyfoot. The subscribers to the magical journals. The members of the old societies. England is full of magicians. Hundreds! Thousands perhaps! Norrell refused them. Norrell denied them. Norrell silenced them. But they are magicians nonetheless. Tell them this.”

He passed his hand across his forehead and breathed hard for a moment. “Tree speaks to stone; stone speaks to water. It is not so hard as we have supposed.”

The last line makes me cry every time. I don’t think this is the typical response to it, but it strikes a chord in me.

Prior to this point in the novel, Strange and Norrell have been the only two magicians in England. They have been heralded as unique talents, as doing things that nobody else can.

Many have wanted to be able to do what they do, and believed it is impossible.

This is the point at which Strange turns to all of those who yearned for magic and been denied, and tells them that it is not impossible. All that is needed is that you try. It is not so hard as we have supposed.

I know, intellectually, that it is not that there is some grand conspiracy of silence. Nobody is refusing to give you the easy answers that lie everywhere around us that they know and are for some reason refusing to share. That, in reality there are problems that are genuinely hard, and that not all of them have solutions, and that people cannot always tell the difference between these and the easy ones.

I know that the reason why people don’t tell you these things is that they don’t know. They don’t see them. Maybe they have picked up one or two of the key insights out of the thousands that we need and have got over-focused on them. Maybe they just think that because they’ve never seen the problem solved, it must be impossible. Certainly they don’t understand the millions of tiny solutions they’ve implicitly adopted, invisible to everyone in their subtlety.

But, in my heart of hearts, I don’t believe this.

Because what I actually believe in my heart is this: The reason people don’t tell you how to solve all your problems is that they’re not trying. They’re not serious. They have long given up on the idea that there are outcomes that actually matter, and that they can be responsible for them going well. All they care about is not being blamed for them going badly, and not being blamed doesn’t motivate you to actually figure things out and teach them to others, it just motivates you to do what everyone else is doing. And nobody else is helping either.

I know all the reasons this isn’t a fair accusation. I just don’t care. Most of them, I’ve given up on expecting better.

But you can do better. Don’t be like them. Please.

Things can be better. It’s not hard, I promise.

I’ve spilled so many words on this and it’s because what I want to say is so simple that I can’t say it without sounding insane or trite.

Have you tried identifying problems and solving them? Have you tried looking at the things that are bad and doing them better? Have you tried doing the simple, obvious, things that you know work? Have you tried paying attention to the world and seeing what it needs?

The sublime arrives when you see the world clearly for a moment, and it all makes sense and you know how to change it.

I am trying to show you it is not so hard as we have supposed.

You could be vast

You could be vast, and you are small.

I know how it feels, believe me.

You want to stretch, and grow into the world. You haven’t. Not much.

You cram yourself into a tiny corner of who you can be, because every time you reach out, there is the possibility of pain.

The uncertainty is the worst part, really. Pain is just pain. You can handle pain.

But the possibility of pain? Each time you reach out, you brace yourself in anticipation for a cost that may or may not come.

Eventually, you learn not to reach out. You surround your tiny corner in walls of anxiety.

You become a small, fearful, version of who you could be. You stay where you know it is safe.

But you know this is not enough. Sometimes you have no choice but to grow, so you approach a wall, and push it back.

The sublime arrives, just a little, as you appreciate the new space to be you. You have become larger, against just a little, and you revel in the new freedom of your slightly larger cage.

But this is not enough. You cannot be who you want to be, who you need to be, in a slightly larger cage.

Out of fear, you have surrounded yourself with walls.

I am trying to show you that you can walk through walls.