“There ain't no competition
When you trust intuition,
Just close your eyes and listen
Get out the stupid system."
- Cleo Sol
I hated the book The Magicians, and I say hate as a nice word. It was pretentious, complicated, and slow as hell. So when I saw the show on Netflix, I wasn't exactly jumping for joy. Until we found ourselves in a pandemic. Then I got hooked on the show, and boy was I in for a wild ride. Now I'm not trying to say it's the best show in the world. It's random and has a lot of hate-able entitled characters. But it's something about the randomness- the adventures- that lure me into the show. In a way, the show is a lot like life. The Magicians is about a guy finding out that magic is real.
Unlike Harry Potter, he finds out at eighteen years old, so it’s basically about a grown-up Hogwarts. Instead of it being this beautiful bonding experience, it's dark as fuck. In the first two episodes, a moth-man showed up and killed a professor. (That would never happen on Dumbledore’s watch!). But I digress. In the show, there was this common theme of the characters trying to "avoid" the inevitable. Each time they try to keep things the "same," the worse things got. It was only until they accepted the reality of their situation , did things get better. The same can be said about life. We spend so much of our life regretting the past, being fearful of the future, that we don’t embrace the present.
Jeremiah 29: 11 says: “ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” This passage reveals that God knows there will be moments of doubt in our life. But in those moments, he wants us to push through because everything is happening for our good. If you knew that if you tried something, you would succeed, wouldn't you do it? Yet, God makes these guarantees, and we still don’t believe him. It's not because we don't want to trust him. It's because we have been taught that the God of power is outside of us. We're waiting for God to move physically when he operates spiritually.
The other day I was doing a video for my YouTube channel when I received a download that the "idea/ inspiration or nudge" is the answer to our prayers. But instead of acting on them, we push them to the side and wait for the "blessing" to come. So many of us are waiting for God to "move" in our lives, not realizing that it's us that God moves through. You can be the best person in the world with the purest intentions. But until you put some actions behind those intentions, you will remain stuck in the same place. We pray to God for “change” in our lives, but when it happens, we do everything to keep things the same. Why not just accept the new adventure life is trying to take you on?
When God asked me to start my YouTube channel, I assumed it was for tarot readings. I thought this would be the path out of Corporate America and into financial freedom. (Like always!) I got several customers right away, met some amazing people, and then started getting another signal. Shut down the personal readings. It didn't make sense to me. Why would I do this if I'm not trying to make money off of it or build a business? Again, God was asking me to trust him. He gave me an end goal, and I forced my ego to stay out of it. I didn't get caught up in keywords, researching, and beating the algorithms. No matter how humbling the process has been and will be, I have committed to this path.
I have been putting my head down and doing the work. Sometimes, oftentimes, that’s what’s God requires on this journey called life. Then just when I was sure my path was set, God sent me another prompt. The ultimate breadcrumb to a childhood dream realized, another call of adventure. This one made my heart skip a beat. I literally jumped out of the chair with joy. But just as quickly as the excitement flooded my system, so did the doubt. Thoughts like "no, this is too soon" or "can I truly afford it" sprang into my mind. Just when I was about to let it go, my eye caught the clock. It was “4:44”.The angel number means: Whatever you're working on will contribute to happiness, stay the course and enjoy the process.
If there was ever a clear sign from the universe, this was it. Just like that, I committed again. To take another plunge into the unknown. To go on another adventure. Our egos want us to believe that the road to our dreams is straight and arrow. But God doesn't operate in the logical or the ego. He's a spiritual being, much like us. To be like him means simply to become more of yourself. It's poetic, really. We're all like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz: The power was inside us all along. For years, I have been waiting for God to make a "change" in my life. Not realizing that all it took was for me to surrender to God and to actually follow through on these nudges. Overnight, I went from feeling like I was trapped, and nothing was happening in my life. To feeling like the sky was the limit. Just like that, I was in a new chapter of my life!
All it took was for me to make a choice. Now, I'm not saying that I never have moments of doubt. Trust I have plenty of breakdowns. But the difference now is I go to God. I tell him what’s bothering me and how he can help me, and guess what? He always delivers. When I first started my journey, I wanted to believe all this spiritual stuff. But I wasn’t seeing anyone who looked like me doing it(aka black people). So I prayed to God about it. I told him I "kind" of believed in him and this spiritual stuff. But until I saw black people doing it, I couldn't be sure. Weeks later, I got a random Facebook message from a friend saying, "I know you're into this type of stuff." It was a spiritual retreat.
The following weekend, I was on the eastside of Detroit with ten other black men and women, learning about spirituality. At one point, I glanced around the room and realized that I didn’t know a single person in the room. Some of you would chalk that up to a coincidence. But I see it as only one thing - God. At the end of the weekend, I legit cried tears of joy in my car. How could I ever doubt him? God's function in our life is not to create or uncreate the circumstances in your life. That's why he created you. God is simply the observer. A lot of us don’t go after our dreams due to the fear of the unknown. But shouldn’t it be the fear of staying the same?
Think about it: if Kanye was never Kanye, would there be a Drake? We need to see that it's ok to be different, to create a new wave. We are all required to step into our God-given power so that others know it's ok to do the same. In my Law of Attraction deck, a card says, I Can Earn A Living Doing What I Love to Do. To summarize, it says:
“There is no better way to earn money than to do the things you love to do. Money can flow into your experience through endless avenues. It is not the choice of the craft that limits the money that flows- but only your attitude towards money.”
What if instead of calling things "goals", we called them "adventures"? Doesn’t the word adventure make the unknown exciting, not scary? When I was a little kid, all I thought about was seeing myself on the big screen. Now I have a list of movies that I not only want to write but direct and star in as well. If I think about all the steps, it will take to make that a reality, it would feel impossible and overwhelming. But when I look at it as one big adventure, it gets me excited to even be on the journey.
