Darin Stevenson
∞ “I do not merely wonder what the minds of our ancestors ‘were like’ or what they saw and felt about the phenomenal and interior worlds. I am unsatisfied with argument and speculations, and always have been. Indeed, I am reminded of people who, having never seen or participated in sex, sit around arguing and speculating about it. In such situations, speculations are a symptom of absence from the direct experiences they refer to.
The mind of our ancestors is immediately available to all of us, for our own minds are founded in them; so, too, the minds of the unborn. But this is another matter. What I seek and manage to gain direct experience of is relatively simple: what did the other ages of our people see and experience in the world, and what was the nature of their relational and mentalistic experience?
What did they see or feel when they looked at the sun, the night sky, a forest, a lake, a river? What ‘were’ these phenomenon within their experience and thought? It is not so difficult as we imagine to retrieve their mind to our own direct experience. Much of what is required is that we simply ‘forget’ the models and explanations that science or religion as instructed us with.
This morning I stood in the living light of the rising sun and saw ‘mists’ rising from a nearby eave like tendrils of animated time. The phenomenon itself was fascinating, yet ‘entirely ordinary’ to modern thought. I was not experiencing modern thought. In my mind, this inexplicable miracle was a kind of living speech, the universe itself, time, my own mind, the entirety of everything on Earth was ‘doing something like this’ inside itself, invisibly. The ‘mist’ was no longer ‘a thing known, a process understood’; it became a sacred moving image of the nature of reality itself, of life, of birth, of death... of dreaming, and of waking mind.
And then I noticed something breathtaking: within the tangling fingerlets of mist there danced astonishing prismatic figures. Iridescent flows of changing hue in musical emergence and disappearance. I was seeing not mist in atmosphere, but souls and minds emerging and dissolving in timespace. Worlds and stars. Dreams and words. In the most ordinary of known phenomenon, I became involved in the most extraordinary experience of awareness and relation.
I do not merely wonder what the minds of our ancestors ‘were like’ because I can become their minds, and when I do what I understand of my own, our world, nature and reality... is radically and ecstatically transformed.”
— an anonymous informant

Richard A. Nichols III
This is good.
The other day I was trying to raise my perception of the world, and the world itself, to a higher level (this is hard to explain), and I noticed through the glass window/doors of the store I was in a whirlwind picking up and moving around leaves in dynamic circular patterns, with the whole ensemble meandering to and fro (actually I think there may have been two simultaneous whirlwinds in close proximity, I don't remember for sure), and it looked literally magical to me, it stood out from the environment like an oasis in the desert.
This has happened to me before a few times. In my normal state I'm deadened and encultured to see even whirlwinds as uninteresting, scientifically explained, entirely physical, mechanistic phenomena. But in this case it was like the air didn't seem to be a good enough of an excuse for the leaves to be magically raised and lowered, etc. like that, it looked like pure magic, and the "randomness" of the motion of the leaves, which was complex yet somewhat orchestrated, looked like it was actually a living thing.
It actually takes effort for me to see things this way, and to continue seeing them this way, and even then it's only to a mild degree. And even effort isn't enough unless I'm in the right state of mind that day. It helps if I haven't taken my anti-psychotic medication in a while, but I really need to take my medication.

Richard A. Nichols III
Regarding the statement that the air didn't seem to be a good enough excuse for the leaves to be lifted and moved around so much, I have a long-held suspicion that a good proportion of what happens in the world, including everyday things that we don't think twice about, aren't really soundly explainable with science and mechanism. We just assume they are, but I think a large part of what enables that assumption is that things magically fall into place to make the phenomena seem consistent with physical theory when we analyze them closely. And also, sometimes analyzing them closely can only mean analyzing them one small part at a time, and that doesn't validate or invalidate the more macroscopic-level behavior, which may still be magical.
The phenomenon of things magically falling into place with physical theory when we look closely is akin to paranormal anomalies rectifying themselves when we pay closer attention and frantically search for a rational explanation. This terror of needing an immediate physical explanation when something truly "illogical" happens is the same reason why things magically conform to scientific explanation and why the world continues to operate according to mundane, mechanistic principles. (I mean, I'm saying it doesn't really, but it continues to appear to do so, which itself implies a certain degree of humdrum/uniformity/conformity and a lack of mind over matter.)
So, I disagree when you say that people are misled to use the word "magic" in any external context. Magic in this sense is entirely possible, it's just oppressed by our collective mentality and expectations, though even now it occasionally happens.
This is why I'm trying to raise my perception of the world and the world itself.
Though this doesn't only involve introducing magic, it also involves a more "alive" and magical way of perceiving what's already there, and it also involves more magical and living interpersonal interaction, where thought forms and energies can become more "tangibly"/quasi-tangibly perceived/imagined, tracked/manipulated and communicated, and maybe it could help us interact and think more creatively, too, escaping the extremely hampering effects of our current "logical" (for lack of a better word) and linguistic entrapments. More creative and natural/easy interpersonal interaction/communication can, among other benefits, help to resolve emotional misunderstandings between people to clear up negative karma/patterns of spite, resentment, retribution, shaming, objectification that results in exploitation, subjugation and manipulation, etc.
These changes (which are really all different aspects and consequences of the same change) would make life on Earth more fun and liberated than is currently imaginable.