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(a selection from my book, The Tao of Hogwarts: Transformative Themes from the World of Harry Potter)

It is well known that about half of all marriages in this country end in divorce, so to recount one's own divorce story is to assure oneself of a substantial audience with whom the pain and bitterness of this experience can resonate. I became involved in the same destructive emotionsthe charges and counter-charges flung in a cesspool of malignancy, leading inevitably to the legal profession and its absurdly mechanistic language and procedures (to say nothing of the expense). However, one thing was different in my experiencedifferent, at least, from the stereotypical divorce encounter. I learned, fairly early on in the process, and even amid the swamp of my own negativity, that a call for help from invisible resources would, at the very least, prevent me from making more mistakes than I had already made. I made that call, first as a propitiatory kind of begging (to Saint Jude, to Jesus, to the Buddha, to any known cultural spiritual figure who I imagined could help) that my marriage be repaired, that reconciliation be accomplished, and that love somehow be restored. This, of course, only led to further estrangement and bitterness, until at last my call for help became the kind that Harry makes in facing the basilisk: all the religious deities and symbols were removed from my inner space, and in that seeming emptiness, a direct connection formed spontaneously between myself and the Source of my being.

Only the I Ching-a plain-speaking, nonsectarian, impersonal source of guidance-remained for me. I consulted it every night, often spending hours with its calm voice and inscrutable ability to capture a broader perspective of events and emotions that seemed to have closed around me like a trap. From this point where I ceased with the desperate demand of prayer and focused instead on the work of simple understandingfree of expectation, claim, or the hunger for influence-help arrived. I found myself able to turn off the noise of resentment and bitterness, able to endure the terrors of isolation, and capable of putting down the inner sword with the poisoned tip, whose use had only brought me defeat, despair, and soul-suffocating guilt.

Once I had become clear within (mainly through simply asking), the outer plane responded spontaneously, and channels of communication opened between myself, my former wife (how we use the language matters, and the prefix "ex" before anything tends to demean it), and the child that unites us in principle and purpose. This gift came to, or I should say through, me, because at a time where all conventionally spiritual means had been exhausted in failure, I asked for help without sticking any terms or conditions onto the request. Almost instantly, the basilisk of ego was silenced enough to allow the helping presences of the universe to flow with Nature's deep abundance. This is an example of what I mean when I speak of "the way of natural magic."

Learn more about this author, Brian Donohue.
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