I was watching a bit of the Olympics because figure skating is just… stunningly gorgeous. And also because I genuinely think that if aliens came down to Earth, and they looked at the figure skaters, and then they looked at me sitting on my couch watching the figure skaters, and they were tasked with classifying species on this planet… they would absolutely assume we were different ones.
I mean, these people can do things on blades, on ice, at insane velocity, that I cannot do even barefoot, standing still, holding onto a freaking wall in my own house. It’s superhuman. It’s wild.
So I saw this routine that was really spectacular. This particular athlete was unspeakably good. Like, next-level good. It was incredibly impressive. But then at the end of the routine, the way he looked at the audience, the way he sort of walked off the ice… I just didn’t like it. He came off so cocky. Just a shitty attitude, imho.
Then, a couple of days later, I saw that he had finished last, when he was expected to win gold. So of course I went and watched that routine. And it was honestly kind of tragic. He fell. Twice. After what had been, up until that point, a ridiculously perfect performance.
I was sitting with my partner, Jeff, and we were talking about it, and I said, “Yeah, that’s because he was too confident. I think that’s what fucked him up. He just thought he was beyond failing.”
And Jeff was like, “No. To be an Olympic athlete you have to be super confident.”
And I’m like, “Yeah, absolutely. You can’t be second-guessing yourself. But what you actually need is to be insanely confident and humble at the same time. Because if you go too far in either direction, you’re not going to win.”
So after the performance we watched a brief interview. They asked him what happened. He gave some technical answer—this, that, whatever—but then he said, ‘I went in too confident.’
And suddenly I went from disliking him for what I perceived as a shitty attitude to being like, wow… this guy has some real self-awareness.
Mind you, this poor man does not give a single fuck what I think of him. He will never know I exist. But the reason I’m using him as an example is because the magical axioms I teach in Liberation Magic aren’t just spiritual principles that make your inner life better, your emotional life better, your mindset better…
They have real-world consequences.
One of the magical axioms is this:
Paradox is life’s organizing principle.
Not being able to hold the paradox, in this case, that you must be 300% certain of your ability to win while simultaneously holding the possibility of absolute failure, is what led him to fail that day. That inability to hold both truths at once is what tripped up his performance.
And that paradox, like learning how to hold power and humility together, is just one of the three magical axioms I teach inside Liberation Magic.
Because the reason I teach magic is not only that your spiritual health is valuable in and of itself…
It’s that having access to these tools improves your material life too. Your outcomes. Your performance. Your reality, here on planet Earth.
Liberation Magic opens soon. Our first session begins March 25, and doors are about to open.
So if you’re interested in joining us, reply with “Yes to magic” and we’ll make sure you’re the first to know when registration goes live.
So whatever your own equivalent of Olympic gold is, can be yours.
Courage, truth, and infinite love,
PODCAST INTERVIEW
I was recently a guest on The Woo Curious Podcast hosted by Eileen March, the founder of My Luminous Life. Eileen and I had a wonderful discussion all about reclaiming spiritual power, healing the witch wound, dismantling spiritual individualism, and why embodied, community-rooted witchcraft matters now more than ever. Here are the links to listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or watch on Youtube:
If you like what you hear, I would be so grateful if you share it with your friends! Don’t forget to tag us @iameileenmarch and @maritza.a.schafer if you share on Instagram!
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I don’t believe in magic, but I know that it works!
Magic is not a belief system, it’s a practice that works. Don’t believe me? Come try it out. If it doesn’t work, you lose nothing. But if it does… your dream life is about to begin!
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“El poder está en la acción.”
— Maritza Schafer