Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart

Into the Magic Shop is both a guide to meditative practices and an illustration of the ways those practices can transform a person’s life. The promise of change is in fact what initially intrigues Doty about Ruth’s offer; as a child surrounded by poverty, alcoholism, and mental illness, Doty sees Ruth’s promise to help him “make anything [he] want[s] actually appear” as perhaps his only hope of avoiding the kind of life his parents lead (23).

Of course, Doty initially struggles to see the connection between meditation and manifesting his desires. As Ruth says, techniques like total body relaxation aim first and foremost to change a person’s inner reality, not to alter the world around them: “There are a lot of things in life we can’t control. [...] But you can control your body and you can control your mind” (48). What Doty realizes is that meditation changes the practitioner in ways that enhance their ability to impact external reality. Doty’s self-affirming mantras offer an example of this dynamic in action. By practicing self-affirmation, Doty bolsters his sense of himself as a unique and worthy individual, which in turn helps him disentangle his own future from his family’s: “I [.