Surrender · “Let Go to Receive”
The Magical Approach
Stop trying to force outcomes by the anxious intellect alone; set a clear goal, then trust the deeper spontaneous intelligence to organize the means, combining relaxed ‘let it come’ faith with sensible rational action.
The magical approach: Form a clear goal and let it act like a magnet. Aim with the intellect — see the target — then stop forcing the means and trust the deeper, spontaneous intelligence to organize them. Prize effortlessness; catch yourself rehearsing failure and return to the target. Follow real impulses and keep taking sensible action — magical and rational together, never one alone.
What it is
Seth’s teaching on how to pursue a goal, given across a 1980 series later published as The Magical Approach. His claim: the anxious, controlling intellect that insists on personally reasoning out and forcing every step is working against itself.
Beneath it lies a “spontaneous rationality” — a deeper organizing intelligence (the same one that runs the body) that, given a clear goal and trust, draws the means together far more effectively. The “magical approach” is to define what you want, then relax into a confident, trusting, impulse-following mode rather than gripping and straining.
Crucially, Seth does not mean passivity or wishful waiting: the magical and the rational are meant to be combined.
The Method
From The Magical Approach (faithfully described; short quotes only):
- Set the goal, then let it act like a magnet. “Those goals are usually conceptualized desires, and once formed they act in a fashion like magnets, drawing from those vast fields of interrelatedness the kinds of conditions best suited to their fulfillment.”
- Use the intellect to aim, not to force the means. “When the intellect is used properly, it thinks of a goal and automatically sets the body in motion toward it.” Seth’s image is an archer: see the target, concentrate on the bull’s-eye, take your stance — “and the body’s magical properties would do the rest.”
- Stop rehearsing failure. The intellect misused “concentrates upon all of the different ways that his arrow could go wrong.” Catch that, and return attention to the target.
- Prize effortlessness. “Desire is action. the desire will bring about the proper results. The feeling of effortlessness is what is important.” Trust the inner work rather than straining.
- Combine, don’t substitute. Seth is emphatic: people who “concentrate upon money. and rely upon the magical approach alone” — having “quit their jobs, ignored impulses to find other work” — find “this does not work either, of course.” Keep taking sensible, rational action and follow your genuine impulses.
- Trust the support you can’t see. Cultivate the infant-like “trust” Seth describes — the sense that you are “supported by a greater body of knowledge than you consciously realize.” Relax the demand that everything “be reasoned out.” (Sourcing note: attributed quotation and paraphrase from the 1980 sessions; not a reproduction.)
Source & Lineage
The Magical Approach gathers Seth sessions Jane Roberts (1929-1984) delivered in 1980, published posthumously in 1995. It is Seth’s mature statement on creative living: the partnership of the intuitive/spontaneous (“magical”) and the deliberate (“rational”) mind.
It extends the point-of-power and belief work into a whole working style, and resonates with flow research, with surrender/letting-go teachings, and with the New Thought motif of relaxed expectancy.
The Traditions' versions
The pattern — hold the aim clearly, then release anxious control and let a deeper intelligence and timing do the organizing — recurs widely; Seth’s signature is the explicit pairing of the magical with the rational, and the warning against either alone: - Action through non-action / wu wei (Daoism) — effective effortlessness. → Daoist entries.
- Letting go / casting the burden (Hawkins, Shinn) — releasing the grip on outcomes.,
- Visualize then footwork (Dooley) — imagine the end, then take real steps.
- Flow / not over-monitoring (Csikszentmihalyi) — performance degrades when the anxious intellect tries to control automatic processes.
Common refinements
Mistaking it for passivity. “Effortless” is a quality of action, not its absence; quitting and waiting is the failure mode Seth names explicitly.
- Dropping the rational entirely. Combine the magical with sensible planning and real steps.
- Rehearsing all the ways it could fail. That is the misused intellect; keep returning to the target.
- Forcing “trust.” Trust grows by practising on small things first, then letting it extend.