Rediscovering Your Magic

Welcome to the premiere episode of Chasing Starlight. If you have been feeling disconnected from the wonder in your life, you aren't alone. The heaviness of modern adulthood has a way of dimming our inner spark, leaving us feeling drained and hungry for something deeper.

In our inaugural episode, host Isabel Carrington invites you to break through the everyday fog and reclaim your power right where you stand. Discover how a few shifts in perspective can help you tune into the magic hiding in plain sight, allowing you to step back into a life full of wonder.

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Chasing Starlight is brought to you by The Bell and Raven. If you’d like to explore more about who we are, including our workshops and educational offerings, our spiritual wellness retreats, and our one-on-one intuitive readings, be sure to follow us on social media: @thebellandraven or visit our website: thebellandraven.com.

Transcript

Isabel Carrington 0:01

I think we've all heard it, that there's magic in the everyday. Some of us probably hear it more frequently than others, and I know that it can be difficult for us to wrap our heads around, our logical brains, around the notion that that is anything other than just another cliche or trite expression. But it's true. The key is we just have to understand how to connect with it, or more appropriately, how to reconnect with it. And therein lies the secret. I'm Isabelle, and this is Chasing Starlight. Once upon a time, there was a mystical path that existed somewhere behind my parents' house where I grew up, and to this day, I do not remember exactly when or how I discovered it. It's almost as though it appeared one day out of thin air, which would absolutely make sense based on the level of significance that this path took on in my childhood. My friend Caroline and I, we loved spending time outside, as did most kids our age at the time. Of course, these were the days before screens of all kinds, aside from our TV. And I think in our household at the time, we still just had one television. And I think it was black and white, probably because that's what my parents determined was sufficient for our family at the time. And so outside it was for us, more often than not. And we loved using our imaginations. And more than anything, we loved testing the limits of what might be possible within the realms of reality. And so you would think that because we explored behind my parents' house so frequently, we would have discovered this magical path earlier, which of course only bolsters my belief that it just appeared one day out of thin air. There is no logical way we could have missed it otherwise. And this was no ordinary path. For one thing, it was flanked on both sides by lines of trees. And as the trees had grown up, their branches began to meet in the middle at the top, which formed a kind of canopy that blocked out a lot of sunlight and therefore submerged the path into a level of darkness, which of course made it all the more mysterious and exciting for us. But the most magical part of this path was that it didn't run in one straight line from beginning to end, like a tunnel. It started that way at the beginning, but after a short time, that one singular path would split into two, with one side veering off in one direction and the other side going off on its own merry way. And then after a bit, those two unique paths would reconvene as one for a few feet before diverging again. And even more wondrous was that when exploring one of the offshoot paths, that path would then split off into two as well. And these individual paths would invariably come back together to meet as one before going through the process of splitting off into multiple short little trails once again. Well, every chance we could get when the weather cooperated, Caroline and I would run back behind my parents' house until we reached the entrance of this incredible path. We'd start together always at the beginning, and then at the first fork in the path, I would go off in one direction and she would choose the other. And when I was on my own path, I would, of course, explore not only the magical path around me, but also I would find myself exploring the limitless worlds within my imagination that this path conjured up in my mind, completely wrapped up in my own little green bubble within this path. It felt magnificent. It felt absolutely full of potential and opportunity. And it was just magic. And then just as suddenly, my singular path would converge right back with the path that Caroline had been on. And I never knew exactly what Caroline experienced on her side of the path within her imagination, but something tells me that it was just as magical within her own mind as it was within mine. So then we would meet back up, walk together again for a little ways, and then the path would diverge again and again and again. We named this magical place the Chaney Patch for obvious reasons because the paths seemed to form chains and offshoots of chains before reconvening again together as one. And I could not get enough of this path. I began to dream about the Cheney Patch, and not just at night. I used to daydream about it. And I used to dream about where it might lead. Now, in reality, the Cheney Patch always came to an end by spilling us out into a field, usually full of sunlight, which was close to a river estuary that was beyond the edge of my parents' property line. But as a child, I was convinced that that couldn't be the end of the story. I was certain that one day everything would come into perfect alignment. And while I couldn't wrap my young brain around this, I just knew inherently in my soul that m maybe it would be under a particular moon phase or on a date of some deep celestial significance. I knew that this magical path would lead to something far beyond my wildest imagination. I mean, it had to. And I think about the Cheney Patch often now, as I have done frequently throughout all of my adolescence and and adulthood. Like most of us, I take a lot of great joy in reliving many childhood memories. Of course, I also have those cringeworthy, less than joyful memories where I think, wow, would that I could go back in time and alter that or change what I said or did. But no, I'm not quite yet at the point of bending the laws of physics. But the reason that I bring up the Cheney Patch today is because here I am, a woman, an adult, quite a few decades into her journey on this earth in this lifetime. And I find myself asking, where did that wonder go? I don't mean physically. I mean, I don't know if the Cheney Patch still exists behind what was my parents' house. I I hope it does. But I mean, where did the magic go? Where did that conviction that this path was magic and could lead to infinite opportunities of potential in my imagination? As a child, I knew with 100% certainty that there was something extraordinary waiting for me at the end of that path. The contrast, of course, is that, well, we become adults. And there's sort of a pall, a grayish veil that descends over us in modern adulthood. We have schedules, we have obligations, we have responsibilities, of course, and more than ever, we have endless screens to divert our attention or to sap our imagination. And as a collective, it's not just my thought, it is my ardent belief that we, and I'm sure you feel it too, that we are deeply missing that wonder. We are starving for that curious sense of discovery. When I think about children, certainly the first thing that I think about is their boundless imagination that exists within them. And when we think about their imagination, they don't just invent it, they rule those worlds within their minds. It is entirely tangible to them. They can taste whatever exists on the imaginary level in their minds. Sticks become swords and pillow forts become their kingdoms, dish towels or blankets or whatnot become wedding veils. Children have absolute agency over their imaginary realms. And the sense of what can be is limitless. Think about that. There is so much power in that. And so we have to ask ourselves, I ask myself this all the time, where did that power go? Now, many of you listening to me likely know me through my metaphysical shop and learning center, the Bell and Raven, which I opened back in 2021 in Connecticut. And if you've talked to me for any length of time, either at the Bell and Raven or just on a personal level, you've you've you've probably heard me share some of the incredible anecdotes surrounding, well, the shop and what happens on a daily basis in and around the Bell and Raven. Many of these anecdotes are comical, some of them are bittersweet, and some are absolutely profound on a deeply spiritual level. And I'm I'm I know that in future episodes I'll I'll likely share some of these stories with you. But one of the greatest revelations to me soon after I opened the Bell and Raven was a pattern that I began to notice almost immediately. I noticed that many adults, usually in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and almost always women, would come into the shop and they would walk around. They would look at our variety of crystals, they'd look at our different kinds of, you know, books and tools on intuition and magic and tools for setting intentions or manifestation or divination and all that. And then they would come up to the counter and they would look at me and almost in a conspiratorial hushed tone, they would say, You know, I used to be into all of this when I was younger. This used to be my thing. I used to love this. And I don't know what happened, I don't know where it went. And my instinctive response from the very first time I ever heard this, and I hear it regularly, I hear it regularly to this day, I hear it a lot, and and my response is still the same. I always say, this, this never went anywhere. It is still so alive within you, and it has been eagerly waiting patiently for you to reconnect with it. Somewhere along the way, we surrender our uniqueness to fit into this prescribed mold that matches outside expectations, and we trade it for chasing external validation. And this disconnection doesn't happen by accident. It is entirely systemic, and it comes from a controlled, hyper-industrialized society that thrives on predictability. And of course, predictability requires compliance. The system requires us to function like cogs in a well-oiled machine, and cogs cannot afford to possess a sense of wonder or magic or what if or imagination. But a numb, exhausted, disconnected population is incredibly malleable and incredibly profitable. So when you feel a chronic hollow ache in your soul, that nagging feeling that something beautiful, something so joyful, so wondrous, so full of awe is missing, what does society tell us to do? It tells us to fill it externally, it tells us to buy a newer car or scroll for another hour or just upgrade our lifestyle or or chase external validation by following whatever rigid societal script that we have come to subscribe to. But if you find yourself deeply enchanted by the simple magic of a tree canopy overhead or by a particular phase of the moon, you become much more difficult to control. The world systematically siphons away our magic because it needs us to be passive receptors. It needs us to look at our lives and believe that things just happen to us. So we might as well keep working, keep consuming and just keep on keeping our heads down. It is despair and numbness that keep the machinery running. But wonder disrupts it entirely. So, how do we actually start dismantling this conditioning that happens to us as adults, or more accurately, as adolescents? And sadly, I think even younger these days, honestly, to understand that we have to look at why we became detached from our own unique magic in the first place. And I have many thoughts. I have many thoughts about many things, but I have many thoughts about why on an animalistic level we retreat into a sort of cocoon as we go through puberty. In childhood, we possess a sort of fearlessness, a beautiful fearlessness, and this wonderful disregard for outside opinions. If you've ever spoken to a young child who hasn't yet had a filter impressed upon them by peers or elders or society, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And if you're on the receiving end of this, it can be sometimes brutal, but it's truth. It is their truth. And then as we transition into adolescence, that changes. We suddenly retreat inward. We we stop showcasing our unique quirks or traits because we become terrified of being perceived as quote unquote other. And so we go into this kind of chrysalis of conformity. Our thoughts urgently become: if I am getting any attention on me from my peers, first of all, that might be very, very bad. And second of all, if I'm getting any attention as an adolescent, it better be the exact same kind of attention that that person's getting and that person's getting and that person's getting. So basically, I am now socialized to believe as an adolescent that the only good attention on me is actually a validation of conformity. And so we learn to put on this heavy armor of compliance just to survive. We tell ourselves that in order to be taken seriously as adults, we have to put away the quote unquote foolish things, that sense of wonder. We have no place for that. We have no place for magic. That's woo-woo, that's silly, that's childish. First of all, let's make one very important distinction. There is a huge difference between childish and childlike. And reconnecting with your inner magic and rediscovering wonder and enchantment is not childish. It actually requires an intentional act of remembering, an act of tapping back into it, into that soul core memory. And it requires an act of radical curiosity. In truth, I'm at its core, it is an act of rebellion. If you think back to the last time that you felt this way, and maybe it was all the way back in your childhood, but do you remember what it felt like to play for the sake of playing? Not for the sake of exercise, not for the sake of healthy competition, but just for the sake of playing, to tap back into your imagination. One of my favorite expressions as a child, and I often got strange looks from my friends when I would say it, I was really into the movie Mary Poppins. And so when my friends would come over and they'd say, What are we gonna do today? What are we gonna play? I would bring them outside if the weather was nice, and I would gesture broadly, wildly with my hands out to the trees in my parents' yard, and I would say, Just look, there are games in every tree. And some of them got it, some of them would go along with it. It's called improv, but um, some of them did not. And they would be very confused and they'd say, I don't see any board games up there. What would you hide them up there? What do you you think you're the Easter bunny? Sometimes those play dates were cut a little short. But anyway, all of this to say there is something extraordinary, something absolutely beautiful that exists within the limitless potential of our imaginations. And that 100% still exists as adults. And I get it. Yes, I get it. I know people will come at me and say, you know, our imagination, as adults especially, can be a very scary place. I understand that. I am human, and it's very real for me as well. And as adults, I understand it is very often less about games in every tree and more about the bill collector lurking behind every envelope or some other potential catastrophe. And not even potential. I know that there seem to be enough catastrophes in the conscious world to go around and around and around and around. But it is important to remember and acknowledge that imagination is not the denial of this, but it is a place for us to tap into our power, which is actually kind of odd. I mean, when you think about it, as children, we would go to a place in our minds, in our imagination, where we would be the ruler of this magical kingdom where we lived on a mystical island where unicorns ran free. I don't know, maybe that's just me, but the point is that as children, our imaginations were action verbs. Now I am this. Now I am doing this. So powerful, so much power. But somewhere along the way, we become adults and we enable our imaginations to become passive verbs. As in, what will happen to me if I don't make a good impression at this interview, for example, or what if I say the wrong thing? Or what if it rains on this special day? Or what will happen if I can't afford X, Y, or Z? Suddenly we have gone from action verbs and imagining ourselves fully in positions of power into passive receptors. Things now happen to us in our imaginations and not great things at that. We become captives of fear rather than these emboldened pioneers of the great unknown. And as captives of fear, fear of the catastrophic what-ifs, for example, we build a wall around us in an effort to protect ourselves. And here's the thing: this wall, it doesn't actually protect us. All it serves to do is to keep something out. Any guesses on what it's keeping out? If you guessed your own inner peace and more importantly, your connection to the magic of the everyday, you are absolutely correct. Now we can be realistic about this. If we have been existing for decades in a mindset of fear or catastrophizing, then trying to flip the script on our conscious mind, this so-called comfort zone of negative thinking is not going to happen overnight. It takes practice. It takes practice just like everything else in life. And I know, I know what's coming next. I a lot of times when I describe the practice of reclaiming our magic or shifting our mindset, the very first obstacle that people throw back at me is time. You know, I I hear it a lot. You know, Isabel, I would love to connect with my practice. I would love to sit and meditate. I would love to explore all of this, but I just don't have the time. And I hear you. I do. But we also need to be real about that for a moment as well. And well, let's just call that what that is. It it is a myth. It is a beautifully constructed excuse that is handed to us by. Culture that values constant exhausting productivity over self-care, over soul care. We have been conditioned to believe that if an activity doesn't produce a tangible result or if it doesn't cross something off of our never-ending to-do list, it is a waste of time, or it is a luxury that we can't afford. But if we are totally and completely honest, if we are truly honest with ourselves, we do have time. And we have time to scroll mindlessly through social media for an hour before bed. We have time to stress over things that we can't control or change. The not enough time excuse in general is often just fear in disguise. It's fear over disrupting our regular, comfortable routines and possibly protecting us from the vulnerability of change. And so we say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll get to it when I have the time or when the time is right. But what is perfect timing when it comes to carving out a few moments to reclaim your inner wonder? And I do mean a few moments, at least to start. Once you get going, you're going to want more and more and more moments. I mean, because who wouldn't want to have as many moments of magic and wonder as possible? So here's where we have to remind ourselves that we have the power to connect with enchantment and wonder and magic right in the middle of our everyday life. If we allow ourselves to fall into the trap of the mindset of not enough time, all we're doing is adding yet another layer to that wall that we have constructed around ourselves, the wall of compliance, which keeps us cemented as being a passive verb. And here's a little secret: the society we live in wants you to feel backed in to the corner of not enough time. Why? Because then you become inert. And make no mistake, inert humans are controllable humans. So to shed that dull gray wall of compliance, which we sometimes like to call adulthood, we have to engage in what I like to call little micro rebellions. We can bring the action verb back into focus by infusing the ordinary and routine moments of our day with a sense of deliberate, childlike wonder. We bring the magic back through a change in perspective, literally. And more than anything, know this a huge part of real magic is about reconnecting with nature and all of its ancient wisdom. Over hundreds of years, our modern society has conditioned us to live as though we are separate from the ways of the earth, or even worse, much worse actually, that we are above these ways. We have come to the point where we treat the natural world like this well-worn, faded, and jaded backdrop to our busy lives instead of the very thing that sustains us, that teaches us, that nurtures us. So if you want to practice this everyday rebellion this week, I want to challenge you to do something incredibly simple. All you need to do is to step outside, take a walk, or just stand in a quiet area outdoors, just you, without your phone, and without a specific destination in mind. And when you're out there, I want you to change how you pay attention. What happens to you when you close your eyes and just listen to the bird song? And not as a background noise. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love to identify what birds are hanging out with me at any given time based on their songs. But if you hear birds calling while you're outside, or if it's in the evening, maybe you hear peepers up, depending on the time of year or where you are, or maybe it's just the wind in the trees. When you hear any of these things, what if you allowed yourself to imagine what their secret ancient language is actually saying? Are they passing a message down the line? Are the trees alerting the stones to a change in the weather? Are the birds telling each other about your arrival here now? And what what do you feel that they would tell you right now in this moment if they could? What message would they have just for you as your allies, as your nature allies? And one more question: once you envision this message, once you hear it, once you receive it, will you take it to heart and let it guide you? In future episodes, we'll get more into the topic of not just observing and listening for messages that nature and universe have for us. And and they truly are everywhere, everywhere, all around us via so many different channels. But we'll also get into how to decipher what they mean as well. All in good time. It's definitely one of my favorite topics, although, truth be told, if a subject has become an episode here, then it's likely one of my favorite topics. And I do have a lot of them. I do have a lot of favorite topics, but we have to remember that when we engage with the world this way, by stepping off that never-ending treadmill of screens and routines, and we bring ourselves back into the realm of the natural world, the mundane begins to fracture. And the extraordinary finally has a chance to break through. And you, you get to tell the heavy modern societal script. You get to say, You do not own my mind, and you do not own my spirit. You step right back into the role of active creator. So when those grown-ups come into my shop and they say, I used to feel connected to all of this, I don't know where it all went. I say to them, and I say again to you now, it never went anywhere. It is still right there. It might be a little bit dormant, might be a little bit rusty, but it is still waiting underneath the slog of daily routines and schedules. It is just eagerly waiting to be remembered and tapped back into. I think back to the Cheney Patch. And I like to imagine in my mind that it still exists. I picture it as maybe just a little bit more overgrown over the years, but in my mind, it's absolutely still there. We're all walking our own versions of the path. And sometimes we have to remind ourselves to diverge off, away from the mainstream, into our own quiet, shadowy spaces in order to reconnect with the magic of who we truly are. And when we do, we reclaim our power by bringing that wonder and magic back out into the bright sunlight. I leave you today with one final question to carry on with you into the rest of your week. It's the same question that lives on a sign that's front and center at the Bell and Raven every single day. And that is, how will you honor your magic today? Give yourself 10 minutes this week, just 10 minutes, to step off of the proverbial main road and reconnect with that wonder that's all around you and within you too, and ask yourself, do I want that wonder in my life again? In the words of one of my dearest friends, you won't change if you don't change. So take those sacred moments, just a few at a time, to reclaim your wonder and to reconnect with the magic all around you. And I promise you, you will be so glad you did. Thanks for joining me today. And I hope that I will see you back here on the path once again. In the meantime, this is Chasing Starlight. Chasing Starlight is a podcast brought to you by The Bell and Raven. If you'd like to explore more about who we are, including our workshops and educational offerings, our spiritual wellness retreats, and our one on one intuitive readings, be sure to follow us on social media at TheBell and Raven. Or visit our website, thebell and raven.com.