Many of us continue day after day doing the same old routines, having no excitement or adventure in our lives. Know anyone like that?

There is someone who has fascinated me for years. He didn’t live life the same way every day. He took chances and ventured out of the box, going out on a limb to turn possibilities into realities. This person is David Blaine.

I did some research on David and here is what I found. David is known as “the magic man” and “the street magician.”

“You don’t get into magic... magic gets into you,” claims David.

Not only does he live and breathe magic, he has even dreamt about it. From the time he was three years old, he kept having a recurring dream. In this dream, he was alone in a mysterious place where magic resided. It was like an enchanted forest except it was a room that was filled with magic. There were huge display cases made of glass and mahogany that contained magical effects. Every type of magic that David could conceive of was in this sacred place. He said, “It was as if you could somehow obtain magical power just by being there in this magical place.” For years he had this dream.

When David was young, his mother gave him an old, yellowed deck of tarot cards that had been his grandmother’s. David’s hands wanted to manipulate the cards and do magic with them. As he grew older and began to get more serious about magic, the magic room in his dreams got smaller and smaller. When he became a professional magician, he refused to use trick card decks or trick objects. When he began using a regular deck to do card effects, the dream stopped.

The belief in the magic
is the magic itself...
 

When David was five years old, he told his mother that he was going to be a showman. She smiled and told him that sounded great. David recalls, “It was that kind of unconditional love and respect that gave me confidence that no matter what obstacles came forth, I would be able to succeed in whatever I wanted to do. What I wanted to do was magic.”

David’s mom and her friends were into macrobiotics, metaphysical and spiritual things so they were always open to the unexpected.

I’ve followed David’s career throughout the years as he mesmerized me and the world with his smooth, unfaltering magic effects.

David was five when he began his quest for magic. He discovered the book, “The Secrets of Houdini” and Houdini became his role model. He would spend hours reading everything about magic that he could get his hands on. He came to realize that magic stripped away logic, “It confronts fears and brings us to a place of constant wonder and enchantment.”

When he was growing up all David had was his mother. She meant everything to him. David said, “The only absolute true love that’s possible is the love between a mother and a child.”

David went to Europe to study magic in his late 20s. While he was there he found out that his mom had ventured off the macrobiotic regimen and that her cancer had advanced. It was like being hit in the face with a baseball bat. He returned home to find his mom bedridden. She was on large doses of morphine for the pain. David spent the final weeks of her life close to her. It was hard for him to fathom that she was dying. She had given him everything that he needed to prepare him for going out in the world to achieve his goals. David had always envisioned succeeding at magic so he could shower his mom with all the material things she had sacrificed in order to give him every advantage as a child. David said, “She lived a truly spiritual life, never judging, always trusting, always loving.” Though she could barely speak, her last words to David were, “God is Love.”

David has a trusting innocence about him. He is approachable, doing his magic in the streets all over the world. David has been buried alive and was encased in ice for many days. He just finished staying under water for eight days. He was handcuffed and weighted down by chains. When he emerged from the water in New York City he talked to the crowd of thousands. Shivering and moved to tears, he said, “I am so humbled so much, by the support of everybody from New York City and from all over the world. This was a very difficult week but you all made it fly by with your strong spirit and your energy. I thank you all and I love you all.”

David is making history and we are all witness to this unique, sensitive young man. He shows us that we can do whatever we want to if we have a dream and set our minds to it. We have the power to do things we never thought possible. When I had to go through a challenging situation last week I used David as a positive power tool to inspire me to go on. We don’t know what we are capable of until we try.

David was once asked, “Is the David Blaine people see really you, or a character?” He replied, “Well, I’m not really a magician, I’m just me. The guy who does magic isn’t really what I am. This is what I am.”

David doesn’t just do magic...
he is magic.
 

For those who believe,
no explanation is necessary.
For those who do not,
none will suffice.
                                                             Dunninger

Gerri Magee is director of advertising and public relations and assistant to the editor of phenomeNEWS. She continues to share her thoughts “On The Path” in this column. You can write her at gerri@phenomenews.com.