I'm not talking about abracadabra or expecto patronum. I'm talking about magic words of a much more mundane and common variety. They are really so mundane and ordinary that they weave their way into our lives daily, if not hourly. This is by no means to minimize its power. In fact, I feel that these magic words are so powerful that they can literally create the worlds we live in. Brilliantly camouflaged, these powerful magic words stealthily construct the parameters through which we interpret our individual existential landscapes. They can have so much power over our emotions and our behavior, our beliefs and our values, that there are some that are spoken very rarely, in low tones and whispers.

Think of the most powerful words you can imagine and you will find them hidden in plain sight. Love, hate, acceptance, connection and greed are some common examples, some others can be innocence, guilt, shame and happiness. The magic in these words is tried and tested, used and abused, and often given away freely – for better or for worse.

Not all magic words are ancient or have rich pedigrees like the examples above. New magic words are made daily. Sometimes they gain power over time, and sometimes their power is immediate and disruptive.
If we think about how we emotionally react to these examples, and if we think about how our emotions dictate our behavior, we begin to see how powerful these magic words can be when it comes to influencing how we live our lives, or even how we think about ourselves. The difference between I love you and I hate you, for example, is only partially about the tone used when uttering the phrase.

That's the thing about magic words. People are quick to condemn their own words, as if they have some sort of agency or life of their own. But magic words are dead unless they are spoken by a mage, by some individual who uses them with a specific intention in mind and who unleashes the power they deliberately hold.

Just as there are good wizards and bad wizards in the stories we hear, there are also good and bad wizards in our everyday lives. Think of a time when a carelessly used magic word or incantation had a devastating effect on you, or how the right words wielded by an inexperienced mage lodged a psychic spear in your side. You might even have been guilty of doing it yourself. I know it does, and I'm sure we can all remember instances when what we meant to say and what our words ended up doing were two very different things.

The beauty of magic, in my experience, is that a person simply has to become aware of it to gain a measure of control over its power. For the vast majority of us, the curses whose weight we unknowingly carry, and whose influence on our lives we can only partially see, were not hurled at us by pointy-hatted witches or black sorcerers in front of altars.
Far from it. These curses are the result of magic words carelessly used by mages who would otherwise not have known they were so: by those around us who are very ignorant of the power these magic words have to wound or heal, wound or transform, separate or connect. , depending on how they are used.

Waking up to the normalcy of magic words can help us understand more about the mages behind them: their intent, their motivation, and oftentimes, their real power or lack thereof. We can see your spells and incantations for what they really are. Sometimes those closest to us want nothing more than to radiate divine love and light upon us, binding ancient and powerful magic words into incantations so sweet they could have come from the lips of angels.

Sometimes, however, insecure and hurtful people desperately grasp power with these words because it makes up for their own helplessness. If we realize how powerless the mages are behind these dark words, then breaking a curse becomes as easy as casting a counter-spell of our own. In my experience, the most powerful magic word available is love.

Its effects, when used correctly and with good intentions, are invincible, and its many forms are so common to us that we don't have to go far to find the right mantra for the job at hand. I love myself and I love you are two beautiful examples of how this magic word can be used to kill the magic words of others, to free ourselves and those we love from deliberate or unintentional curses.

If we choose to go a step further, to see all our words as magic, we will find an easy path to empowerment and to a space where we can more consciously create the worlds we want to live in. the Buddha, who once said:

"We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with a pure mind
And happiness will follow you
Like your shadow, unbreakable.”