In the Miracle

Yes miracle happens we have only to pay attention. My brother in law was struggling between life and death for weeks after he tried to commit suicide. My family and I were at his bed side even if we did not understand why he did that. almost everyday for a month I went to see him and we talked ... we talked not about what he has done but about small things,beautiful moments of our life. And as days passed by and his condition was worse and worse, we talked, we even laughed and I was amazed to see a new person. He was no more the stressed, sad man I knew. Even if he was under a lot of pain he was calm, he was serene. Two weeks ago he left this plane. This very difficult experience that is the suicide of a dear one turned out to be a beautiful moment... a moment of truth.   Denise

Seven summers ago, in 2002, I was 34 years-old, and had just gotten married to the love of my life. And we were expecting our first child (A girl) several weeks hence. I was feeling wonderfully happy and quite centered, yet excited and nervous about impending fatherhood. I felt like I was standing at the doorway to Real Adulthood. We'd married on an island off the cost of Maine, and were staying in my bride's family cottage. One afternoon, I was alone at the cottage, took a shower, did a little yoga on the deck overlooking the water, and took a small hit of pot from a pipe I had with me. (Note: I've never taken any hallucinogens or other drugs, besides alcohol, and am only an occasional pot-smoker). I decided to lie on my back and take in the sky overhead. It was breezy and overcast, and the clouds were swirling. With the little bit of cannabis in my system, I felt awe-struck, lying there, watching the clouds, seeing occasional crows and seagulls flying overhead, hearing the beating of their wings, listening to the wind...I was struck with a feeling of the immensity of the natural world, with the earth beneath me, and the vast sky above. I was watching the different shapes the clouds were forming, a bunny, a horse's head, etc...then I saw what looked like the shape of an eye form in the clouds, and eye which seemed to be gazing down at me very intensely. But I didn't take it too seriously, and soon it faded away. But then something happened that took my breath away. Still gazing skyward, I watched the clouds and shadow slowly take the shape of what appeared to be a word, written in cursive--I though to myself, "That looks like the word--" and as I thought it, the word YES appeared quite suddenly and unmistakeably in the clouds above me! I gasped, I blinked my eyes several times, not quite believing what i was seeing, but there it was: YES...And then, as with all the other shapes I'd seen, it drifted away. I sat up, my heart galloping in my chest, and thought about what I'd just seen: the most miraculous affirmation I might ever recieve.

My father had been out of work and in ill health for a while. The night before he was to go into surgery for his condition I found a nice picture of him and and wrote down my intention for him that he should be healthy wealthy and happy. I wrote this phrase down repeatedly on a piece of paper which I wrapped around his picture and then put under my pillow and went to sleep. The next day I got the news that not only was he recovering nicely form the surgery but someone had phoned to offer him a job. I felt at first astounded and then extremely grateful.

Back in 1997 I was finishing up a super-liberating year abroad as an exchange student in The Netherlands, the year between graduating from high school and going to college...the whole year was really mind-blowing, living in a different culture, family, environment...taking a break from the over-ambitious flow I was in in high school and experiencing just BEing and Experiencing life was definately a miracle in itself...

near the end of my year i ended up by "chance" at House-party in amsterdam, my first one ever, and was given the gift of a little pill of exstacy. The experience was a miracle, I felt in all the cells of my body for the first time a real feeling of inner-love (something my inner-critic never allowed me to dare feel before that)~~~~~I was broken open, and the fire of love lifted me up.

At the end of the night I was given a flyer for another party in amsterdam the next weekend...I took it and never thought I would go to it...I lived in the east of Holland, and my host-family probably wouldn't be too keen on me going to Amsterdam twice within 2 weeks. The next week my love-epiphany kept working through my system (and still is to this day) and to make a long story short, I ended up going to that underground houseparty, in the old harbors of amsterdam...at the beginning of the night, I sat down on a couch and thought to myself: "I feel completely content with myself..." usually I was always looking for a mate, feeling insecure, comparing myself to others, feeling closed. But tonight I felt seriously and completely content.

At that moment a man walked into the room and I was immediately attracted to him...later on in the night we spoke and I could literally FEEL our 2 souls merging into one another...up until then I had thought reincarnation was bullshit, but at that moment i could FEEL that our union was older than this lifetime...i had met my twin soul.

The miracle continues...9 years ago I immigrated to the Netherlands, and we continue to live in love, i continue to experience and investigate the inner love within...my endless gratitude for this union with myself, with my life-partner, and in this world...I am so deeply grateful*

long story, thanks for listening*

"There are only two ways to live your life: one as though nothing is a miracle, the other as if everything is a miracle. I believe the latter." --albert einstein

Before I begin to even write, I can feel a fever in my stomach. The experience I'd like to share has totally reworked my understanding of the universe and the reality we co-create out of its vast space. I suppose it begins with a feeling I'm sure many others have experienced, the knowing of another person you've just met. I dated a man of this kind when I was seventeen, and I suppose that was my first real heartbreak. When our eyes first met, I was literally shocked sitting in the passenger side of his car, the electricity buzzing me frozen and the pale blue of his eyes burning my consciousness. There was a hurricane of emotions though in the eye, lied fear. The relationship was characterized by this fear: fear to speak my Truth, fear to acknowledge things as they really were, fear to honor my karma. When we at last parted in spring of 2006, he didn't want to hear from me at all. Which was why I was so surprised to hear from him again in October of 2007. It had been a weird year for me already, I'd moved off campus during my second year of undergrad, and had a room with rainbow walls--deep purple, sensuous red, school-bus yellow, forest green, and lime green. That house was haunted too, made quite a lot of noise, somebody was always in the kitchen moving tupperware, but otherwise the presence was benign. During the previous year, I can remember a desperate time, when I'd encountered a wanderer, when people spoke in hushed tones about mental dis-ease, I called out to my former love, just with a thread's hope of reaching him, declaring my own doubts of my sanity. I'd left him a message. So perhaps I really wasn't so surprised by hearing from him again but more so by the feelings that came with the knowing. I knew things about him then I couldn't explain. He was in a bad relationship and I supposed it couldn't sustain itself much longer. He was still with the girl he'd gotten with shortly after our demise. Out of her irrational fear, she commanded him not to speak to me, and he obeyed. It's a shame what goes on under the name of Love. But I knew deep down it wouldn't be the last I'd know of him, even though in my conscious mind I tossed around how to cope with such a possibility. I shaved my head sometime that October, near Halloween, people suggested I'd make a perfect Evey heh. Not quite what I had in mind, not a role, not a ploy...I wanted to get down to some realness, defy the common social laws, step out of my normal zone. I remembered the powerful influence such an act had on a male friend of mine and I felt it was my time. I'd stopped eating meat and now I wanted to become a clear channel for consciousness, and thus began the Great's experiment. Yearning to find a place for my creativity, my music my art that had nearly been tossed to the wind as I entered this monstrous college scene, I auditioned for the musical "Hair" that a local theatre company was putting on. There I met a couple people I knew -- one with the same first name as me, a sweet lady I'd sung in high school choir with; the other, a boy with a birthday I was expecting to know. Ironically, even with no viable hair, the directors seemed impressed enough with my somewhat melancholic rendering of "Nowhere Man" [I'm a huge Lennon fan :]. At the callbacks, the real inner journey started. The song to be sung was "Air". As a huge lover of the environment, this song touches me deep. I remember drudging through the snow to get there, I was nervous and fighting with myself to stay positive...I'd so many things on the mind. In the room, I was highly sensitized to all the nerves that were going on. I sort of kept to myself and perhaps that's where I could have made better choices. My competitive spirit seemed to undermine me, and when it was my turn to perform "Air" I pushed myself to do it without looking at the words, but as the lines were unfamiliar, I tripped myself up and sadly broke with frustrated emotion, laughing myself out of it. It heralded an event that was to come...not too many months later I'd be led to a church, my idea to "shake things up a little", but what I found was something more profound and really remembered the dream where I'd been singing in this church but the voice wasn't mine. When I'd dreamt up these three months a year ago, I wasn't yet too detached from my confidence, I knew my voice as the strongest one in choir, but this me in the dream in the church had such a feeble, thin sound. So it was to pass. The more I piece out details, the more difficult this story gets to tell, because I realize it truly is endless. There were horrifying moments, breath-taking moments, sublime moments, embarrassing moments, and paralyzing moments! When I realized what I was in, which perhaps I'm still realizing, but as it occurred to me that this time was known to me already, I sought a teacher. I met a pagan group and finally a magical group, whereby at this time, I was also looking for a soul mate. Ha, be careful what you ask for; although by some standards we weren't such a bad match, in truth I was in a position vulnerable to believing it was divine when it was really torpid. The dream segments spanned from that October through the following Spring. As time wore on, and notably after I met my "soul-mate" who was incidentally also my magic teacher [www.omnimancy.com], the events faded into a feeling of deja vu and my manifestations slowly felt to come under my direction [although granted, I'm no God...yet!] So believe what you will of this, but I can't deny it, especially as I recorded poetic accounts of these dreams. What I know is that there is a place we can all access where there is one Truth and that when entered, anything is possible. It is not the manipulation that goes on in this arena that is difficult for people, that is intuitive; rather, it is in finding the entrance that many encounter blocks. I hope my tale of future-dreaming may help tear down those illusory walls that keep you from embodying your Divine Nature. Oh, and keep the record of your dreaming close to your heart!

I experience what you call miracles regularly, about 2-3 times a year, I estimate.  This has been the case for most of my life:  An evolution of paradigm change following paradigm change;  What the Damanhurians call, "events," in their esoteric physics.

Each closes a door and opens a new one.

When I first saw a computer -- that was an extraordinary change for me.  What psilocybin is to many people, computers were for me.

And then there's actual psilocybin:  That affected a transformation.

The Evolutionary Salons, put on by Michael Dowd and Peggy Holman and Tom Atlee and so on -- these were yet another major transformation in outlook and vision.

To be followed by the Storyfield Conference, which completely altered my plans and visions for life on this planet.

Going to Harvey Mudd College completely altered my outlook.

Eckankar, my first out of body experience, glimpses of inner worlds turned into full voyages, and esoteric training.

And when I first discovered the body of scientific knowledge;  Imagining with toy model plastic amoeba in my small hands.

17 years layer, I would come to understand the transhumanist insights, from personal conversations with CEOs, heads of companies, technical leads, database administrators, technologists of all stripes.

Visiting Damanhur, turning my vision completely, and my baptism in the Temples of Humankind.

The visions I have seen in the study of visual language, the futures I have seen that will become real.

When I discovered the Imagireal, the Mystical Real, and discovered a world transformed by the conscious application of the imagination.

And I can't think of miracles without thinking of the miracle that I have faith is to come: that great day, the first of incomprehensible - even greater days, the hope of humankind, centered in the heart of Love:  the Resurrection.

In short, I perceive the entirety of the universe to be an unending succession of miracles to even greater miracles.

I woke to my husband having a stroke. In the emergency room, we felt like we had stepped into an alternate universe. He was hooked up to all the gadgets which we were more or less grateful for in the event there really was any immediate tool in their arsenal that could freeze us in time granting us a few moments to breathe in the face of this life threatening situation so as to gather our thoughts. It turned out that the immediate course of action was not in any way clear to our emergency helpers. At first he was just subjected to routine lab tests. As the answers did not come to our HMO assigned crisis handlers they leaned toward more invasive types of testing; they boldly claimed to already know what medications he would need to take beginning immediately and to continue for the rest of his life when they weren't even sure yet what “the exact nature of the cardiovascular accident he’d experienced” (their words) was. In fact, a particular medication was proposed and insisted upon before there was any degree of certainty of what he needed to be treated for. We resisted against strong authoritative opposition, feeling that the information gathered and shared thus far did not support this course of action. In less than 24 hours, the same folks who’d been certain he should take this particular medication reversed their position 180 degrees saying it would have been exactly the wrong medication which if it had been administered could have had dire results (whew! We dodged that bullet). Please note: this care was received in a facility considered up there with the best of conventional medicine. So we navigated the world of modern medicine with our usual trepidation amped up and this went on for about a nerve-exhausting week. Our bodies (I think) screamed—there IS danger—the body knows what to do—these folks do not—run—with what you know seek a situation that respects and supports the wisdom of the body. That brought everything into focus. I phoned a physician in another state we’d known 35 years earlier—we believed he understood health and how sick bodies can get better. I called fearing he might have died because he’d been in his late 40’s back then, but hoping that he had not and could at least provide a trusted referral. To my surprise, he was not only alive at 83, but still practicing natural “medicine” with vim and vigor. We packed a bag and drove to his institution without hesitation leaving behind the bag full of various medications we’d been told my husband needed to take the rest of his life. With our trusted physician’s guidance, my husband fasted on water only for 42 days, every week having extensive blood analyses that confirmed healing was taking place; we could have guessed without the blood work that he was getting well again, but it was nice to have some scientific validation. Immediately following his fast, I undertook my own 32-day fast on water only. And less than one year later, we put our 21 year old daughter under this physician’s care for her own 33-day fast. The transformation in all three of our physical states following the fasts was nothing short of miraculous. All three of us achieved healing that had been evading us for years and which had actually been greatly hindered where conventional medical solutions had been considered and tried. Our daughter had been ill for most of her life up until then and just before undergoing the fast had grown gravely ill. No words can describe the return of vitality that had occurred in all of us, but particularly in her youthful body. Before these experiences I did believe that the body had its own wisdom to teach us and most of what passes as “health” care will not return one to health. However, after these experiences, I KNEW this without a shred of doubt. All we had to do was get out of our own way, remove all obstacles to regeneration and a miraculous process always available to us revealed itself.

On vacation last year, my wife and I were travelling through my home state of West Virginia. I wanted to show her one of my favorite spots Seneca Rocks. As we sat at the restaurant eating lunch near the path to hike to the top of the mountain, my wife questioned if she would be able to hike to the top as she was recovering from a knee injury. I assured her it would be worth trying, telling her about a previous visit of mine to the top where the snow was blown into the sheer face and appeared to be falling up. We started slow amongst the many fellow tourists that day. I kept telling her about the snow incident and how it was just a mutual friend and I at the top that frigid day. We had to take many rest on the way up. Clouds started to roll in on this previously sunny day. We were within one hundred yards of the pinnacle when the rain and lighting really unleashed. We sat under a tree trying to wait it out. All the other hikers left within ten minutes. We continued to sit for another twenty minutes alone near the top. My wife decided to try dusting off her weather magick she hadn't used for years (and which I had never witnessed) and I decided ask the mountain "spirits" to allow my wife to see the mountain as I once had and meditate. After twenty minutes of the aforementioned experiments, we decided to make a push toward the top because the rain wasn't letting up. At the observation deck we had some alright views but were still getting soaked. I asked her if she wanted to risk seeing the very top ridge which was about a twenty foot scamble over wet, slick rock. She agreed. As we scambled up we began to notice that the rock was dry. At the top, the rock under our feet was totally dry and we could see it raining ten feet below us on both sides of the ridge's sheer walls.

Thank you Charles for opening up this subject. My personal experience is that all of life is a miracle when we take a moment to really tap into what is happening, for example the unfathomable interactions taking place in the human body every second that we could never be fully explained. I have had or witnessed countless experiences that could be considered miracles. While I have come to expect these occurences, I never cease to be in awe with each event, as if I were experiencing such a thing for the first time. I am a person who has worked as a change maker for many years and the points at which I grew weary and fearful were the moments when I forgot what is possible in the presence of great faith and enormous love. I know we will be co-creators of a new world, but it some ways it may not look all that different. I expect it will, however, be totally different in the way we inhabit it. We will live, as you describe, fully conscious of a flow that we can presently only speak of as a miracle. Dawn Griffin dawn@onwingsofadream.com

I went on a long walk by myself out on the campus of my college by the lake. I have always been fascinated with dragonflies, and when I saw a beautiful red one I crouched down in front of it to get a closer look. I was able to lie on my belly right in front of it, my face was about a foot away from it's face. It didn't fly away and was very still. We stayed there staring at one another for a long time. Finally the dragonfly tilted it's head to the right. It only seemed natural for me to tilt my head to mirror the dragonfly. Then it tilted it's head to the other side. I did the same. There was a pause. It tilted it's head to the right. So did I. Then I tilted MY head first. The dragonfly mimicked me. I tilted my head twice, so did the dragonfly. There was a long long pause, we both processed the implication that we were communicating with a rational being. The dragonfly initiated a tilt, I copied. This went on for a long time, we intuitively switched leader and follower. Ultimately it became commonplace to be playing a mirroring game with a dragonfly. It was clear that we both knew what we were doing and were doing it on purpose. I'm the one that ended the game. Another time I was in the islands snorkeling and spearfishing. I noticed that a baby yellowtail snapper was swimming under my belly. Every time I looked for it, it was there. Then I pretended to grab it, it masterfully eluded my grasp, but kept coming back for more (just like my dog!). I would get bored, forget about it, go back to snorkeling and spearfishing, but every time I looked for the little fish it was still swimming under my belly. Then I would play with it a little bit, it would dart out of my reach and always return to my side. I spent a few hours in the water with my new friend. Finally, my hands were pruning and I wanted to get out of the water. I played with my friend a little and then I started swimming to shore. It followed me into very shallow water. I had to then stand and while walking to the shore, the little fish was swimming along side my feet the whole way. My eyes teared up when I stepped out of the water and said goodbye to my little fish friend, I could not stay in the water forever. I hope he lived a long and prosperous life... Hollis

Thank you, CE, for another fun essay. Thank you for encouraging us to ponder, explore and share our perspectives which, by exchanging our unique experiences, provides an opportunity to further expand our remembrance of the All That Is—and of the miracle of who and what we are: One with The All That Is.

 

In A Course In Miracles (the Original Edition published by Course in Miracles Society), chapter one of The Text section, Introduction to Miracles, begins with the Principles Of Miracles.

While there are many principles, I will only list the very first six, in order, here:

 

1 There is no order of difficulty among miracles. One is not “harder” or “bigger” than another. They are all the same. All expressions of love are maximal.

2 Miracles as such do not matter. The only thing that matters is their Source, which is far beyond human evaluation.

3 Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense, everything that comes from love is a miracle.

4 All miracles mean life, and God is the Giver of Life. His Voice will direct you very specifically. You will be told all you need to know.

5 Miracles are habits and should be involuntary. They should not be under conscious control. Consciously selected miracles can be misguided.

6 Miracles are natural. When they do not occur, something has gone wrong.

 

Of these first six principles, the first and sixth are two of my favorites: “There is no order of difficulty among miracles” and “Miracles are natural”.

 

Miracles do indeed abound, as so many replies to your essay indicate. For me, one of the grandest ever-unfolding miracles is how God (The Universe, The Creative Force, The All That It Is) is able to experience the creation process—life--through and as us.

While we may appear to be separate beings (appearing to be separate from each other and separate from the animals, plants, rocks, sky, stars, planets and so forth), we are not separate at all. We are inexorably bound and whole at every level. It is, therefore, miraculous that we can seem to experience ourselves as separate—and especially including those lapses (errors in thought), when it seems we are somehow separate from the All That Is, which is exactly what we are.

 

Thus, for me, the miracle today and everyday is re-membering. It is as you suggest, when you write about entering an age of miracle consciousness. More and more people are gently awakening to the truth that they and every breath they take, is an act of breathing life into the universe itself.

 

p.s.—here’s a link to a free and really cool film (from mindmovies) featuring a discussion about miracles by Gregg Braden: http://mindmoviedownload.com/Miracles/

 

Peace, TheDrewid

The following is a blog I wrote last November after the first miracle I accepted to be something more than coincidence:

 

1 am, working on homework. I hear a knock on the door, and wonder which of my roommates has people coming over at this hour. It's the neighbor, she says excitedly "your back yard is on fire! Do you need me to call someone?" I look, I see my backyard is most definitely on fire, and respond "yes please call 911!" as I ran out to turn on the hose and try to get it under control.

My grill, apparently, had been left on. I thought it was off, I had even checked it after dinner.  The knobs were lined up in what looked like the 'off' position, but it turned out that they were actually in the 'very low' position. 8 hours later, the grill got tired of all that heat, and stuff started melting. The grill fell over, caught some plastic chairs on fire, and then it was off to the races.

The view from behind my sliding glass door was a sight to behold. Flames covered the concrete pad that the builders thought would suffice for a patio, far too close to the glass for comfort. Flames, right outside my back door. Big, threatening flames; these weren't your garden variety controlled grill flames, not even the 'too much lighter fluid' flames. These were real, angry flames, eating my stuff; they were free, they were excited, and they were looking for something new to consume. These were angry flames, and much hungrier than those who usually visit my back yard.

"Hose," I thought. "These flames are still small enough that I can put them out, I've got to get the hose on." I got the hose turned on and start spraying the flames, but all the grease from the bottom of the grill reacted by making the flames bigger. Not good. “I've got to get this fire out” I thought, “before it burns the house down.... Shit, the propane tank is in the middle of the fire! Dumb idea! dumb idea! Fuck the house, I didn’t make it through 2 tours in Iraq to get blown up in my own back yard!”

I ran back to the front of the house and was looking for the neighbor who was calling 911 when I heard the propane tank go. Apparently, fortunately, propane tanks have relief valves. When the pressure and heat get too intense, the valve pops and lets the gas out to relieve pressure to keep it from exploding. I didn’t know that at the time, but I’ve since learned that it's pretty impressive and holds a LOT of pressure and heat. But, here's where I got luckiest. While I didn’t learn this until later, the relief valve on the tank was pointing directly up in the air.  As it sat, when it let go it essentially turned into a gigantic blow-torch, with a jet 25 feet high and 3 feet wide, oh so very unbelievably shooting straight up into the sky. Had it been angled toward the house, the roof would have been ignited and I'd have had a structure fire and no more worldly possessions. Had it been angled another way, the neighbors could have been in danger. The giant blow torch went off while I was in front of the house so I couldn't see it, and thus didn’t know what damage was being done.

But as soon as I heard it I ran in the front door to see what was happening, and that's when I remembered about my roommates. Ben I didn't need to remember about, his room was right next to the festivities. He heard the boom and jet engine 'whoosh' from the tank going, saw the intense red light filling his room through the window, and was on his way out in a hurry as I was going in. Randy, on the other hand, was further away. It didn't take much to wake him though, despite his being in a deep sleep at that hour; I guess the sense of urgency in my voice was such that there was no need for questioning. “Get out! Get out! We gotta get out!” I didn't really know at that point which way the flame was heading, for all I knew the house or the roof was being ignited as I spoke.

We got out to the front of the house, we got the dogs out, and we were standing around waiting on the fire truck when the propane tank stopped making the jet engine noise. I thought to myself, ok, time to go see the damage and perhaps start with the hose again. "The propane tank isn't a threat any longer, I've got to stop the fire," I thought. I walked around the house to the backyard, and saw that amazingly no damage had been done and began spraying with the hose again. The fire was still kind of greasy, smelled like burning plastic, but I wanted to get it cooled down and out before it spread. The water wasn't making the grease react too violently, so I thought the best idea was to get water on it so eventually it will quit burning. I started spraying down the fire again, calmer then since I thought that the propane tank was empty and knowing that no real damage was happening, but still cautious. I squatted 15 feet away and put water on it from there. BOOM!! WHOOSH!! Apparently, the relief valve on the propane tank is strong enough that once it let out enough pressure, it shut off the flow even with propane still in the tank. When I sprayed water on the fire and the grease flared up again it heated the tank to where the pressure busted the valve again.

When I say a 25 foot tall jet, I'm not exaggerating. At that point I was convinced to leave well enough alone, the fire department would be there soon enough.

 

One of the firemen later said, with an air of stating the obvious, that I was extremely lucky. It easily could have been a structure fire, and they always recommend that people keep grills 10 feet from the house for that reason. Something like 40% of houses that burn to the ground are the result of grill fires. They put the fire out with a high pressure water fire extinguisher, then doused it for 10 minutes with my hose to make sure it was cold and out for good. They started to move the propane tank, but it had fused itself to the concrete somehow, it took a lot of effort to get it up.

Lucky day, all around. There were some good lessons learned, too. Sometimes it takes a traumatic incident like that to get you to appreciate what you have. I might decry all worldly, materialistic possessions sometimes, saying I wish I could just get rid of it all and wander the earth, but realistically, even I have a lot of stuff that I think I would be largely lost without at this point. I walked into my room a few hours later and looked around at all the stuff I own, and was overwhelmed with the thought that I had nearly lost it all, and wondered what I would have done if it was all gone. I really don't know, and I'm glad it didn't go that way. It's funny, academic philosophers these days are starting to talk about the mind being extended and embodied in our environments, and I felt a bit of a shock at the prospect of losing all my stuff, and I think that the shock comes from the fact that I would have literally lost a part of myself. All my clothes, books, my computer with all my writings, pictures, and music; my bed, my iphone, my cooking equipment, my paintings… We are not isolated individual selves floating around in a selfish world, we are one with our world, and our world is one withf us. When we lose that stuff that has become part of us, it's almost like losing a body part.

The little things are important, but we forget that just like we forget to floss or clip our fingernails. Checking the grill was a dumb-fuck thing to screw up, particularly since I knew for a fact that it was on and had gone outside to turn it off, and was somehow fooled into believing it was off already. But it's a metaphor for my life lately.  I've been thinking too much about big and overwhelming things, and while the big picture is definitely important, so is the little, local picture. There are a lot of lessons that can be taken from this, and that's a bit strange. The timing is uncanny, as is the fact that I was able to be tricked by the grill knobs. I KNEW that I left it on in case the pork chops weren't done, I KNEW that no one else had touched it, and I knew that I needed to turn it off. I went outside with the dogs specifically with the intent of turning it off, but I saw the knobs in a direction that looked off and was somehow convinced, and I didn't give it a second thought until the angry flames were eating my lawn chairs at 1:30 in the morning. How did that happen? How did that happen and nothing come from it but lessons? In retrospect I honestly feel like the grill intentionally tricked me, that it gave itself that I may see a deeper truth than I currently believe. No one was hurt, no real damage done, I only lost the grill and the patio table that was next to it. Even my potted plants seem to be ok, though they were on the table and the plastic pots that they were in melted away. I've been focusing too big lately, and have been losing all hope. Jack Johnson's song All At Once has been my theme song: "All at once, the world can overwhelm me, and there's nothing that you can tell me, that will ease my mind."

Is it possibly mere coincidence that this happened today, after a discussion that gave me reason to hope for the future?  Is it possibly coincidence that it happened in just such a way that forced me to see that not paying attention to the small things around me and in my local environment can burn my world down, yet with nothing bad coming from it? Or should I take this as a sign from providence, or God, or Wakan Tanka, that all things are connected, that I have a purpose here, and that I need to quit losing focus and losing hope? I'm having a very hard time wrapping my head around the seriously long chain of events that all happened in just the right way that led to this fire as being mere coincidence, though I won't deny that I'm having a harder time wrapping my head around whatever "not coincidence" implies. It's been a benevolent sign, and I've just got to learn from it--be it mere coincidence or some larger force at work. Teachers don't always have to be academic types, sometimes even inanimate objects can teach us hugely important lessons. Providence is capable of teaching us always, we just need to learn to listen. I'm all ears now.

 

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It's a lesson that even today hasn't fully sunk in, even though there have been innumerable "miracles" in my life since. This was the first "uncanny coincidence" of my life that I accepted to be the work of something larger than mere coincidence. There have been many since, and in retrospect there have been a great many before that have led me to be where I am today. This one though--occurring as I was taking a college course on Native American Philosophy taught by a Native American philosopher (one of maybe 10 in the world, and if you're going to learn Native thought you really must do so through Native authors), which was introducing me to alternatives to the modern scientistic view of the nature of reality I had been mostly subscribed to; ideas like "the universe is alive," and there is spirit everywhere. This class was not only completely dismantling so much of what I held to be true about the world, it also showed me a different view of human nature, and that all of our problems come from our separation and illusions of control. This benevolent fire, striking when it did, led me to believe that the universe likes me, is on my side, is pulling for me, and is helping me as I am helping it. Of course fully accepting this view of the universe and integrating it into my daily life has been much easier said than done, particularly as I look around Orlando and see so much destruction, loneliness, violence, sadness, and ugliness spread by the incredible growth of the area that has paid no attention to ecology or global problems.

 

There have been many other things that I’m not sure what else to call but miracles since then, though I still have trouble fully accepting them because I have no understanding of how they work, what they imply, or what is behind them. They still seem slightly frightening or spooky to me when they occur, as my rational mind still likes to think it’s in control and knows what’s going on.  Such as:

The light in my bedroom has, on a few occasions, somehow turned itself on at points in conversations that seem too eerie to be coincidence, as though some spirit is using it to say "yes, it's important that you do that thing you were just talking about." (It should be noted that it’s some sort of wireless, battery operated, push button electric switch, not a typical light switch, and this could just be a glitch. It does also turn itself on at times that seem inconsequential, but has on numerous occasions seemed to be communicating with us.)

My iphone has a tendency to not work at times I should really be paying attention to my surroundings. The camera app disappeared one time when I wasn't supposed to take a picture of something that I wanted to (and never before or since), it has refused to open emails on occasion when I was in situations when I shouldn't have opened them, and while my wife and I were on a trip in the foothills of the Appalachians and should have been paying attention to the incredible beauty surrounding me, it simply disconnected the sim card to get me to put it back in my pocket. I've not had a problem with the sim card since, but it happened at least 4 times in the week we were in the hills--I had to turn the phone off and back on to get it to work again, and it would work for a while, but then some time later when I took it out to connect to the net rather than connecting to the beauty around me the phone would tell me again, "no sim card detected." Smart phone, in my phone's case, seems to be more accurate than intended.

 

In the past there are some big ones too, that though I didn’t consider miraculous at the time, I'm now sure they were.

On March 24, 2002 I rode my month old motorcycle into a guardrail at a high enough speed to be thrown 100 feet or so, amazingly landing just 5 feet beyond a drainage ditch that was lined with large, jagged boulders, and somehow ended up with only a few torn knee ligaments, a broken arm, and a broken pelvis, most of which seem to have actually happened when I hit the railing. I don't remember hitting the rail, I don't remember flying, I don't remember landing, I don't remember any pain.  I remember seeing the sharpness of the corner rushing at me, panicking and freezing when I knew I couldn't make it, then lying on my back in the grass. I didn’t lose consciousness, I just don’t have any recollection of it. At the time I thought I was just lucky that everything lined up just so that I’d not be too seriously hurt.

March 24, 2003, I was in Iraq and was only a few hundred meters from where a soldier in another company was shot by a sniper while riding in his tank toward our HQ position. It was only a week or so into the invasion and we were stopped to wait on the supply trains to catch up while we were making our mad dash to Baghdad.  I was in a HQ element (as I was still recovering from knee surgery from the bike accident) so I heard the whole story come in over the radio.  Gregory P. Sanders, 19 years old, had been shot in the head by a sniper hiding in an onion field not 400 meters from where we were, and from our HQ tent we could see the enormous amount of blood covering the front of the tank he was in. The entire front deck of the tank was red, and his friends were huddled together beside it mourning him. He was young but married with a young baby, and though I didn’t know him, he was a friend of a friend of mine. When we learned these things about him and then stepped outside and saw the blood, the war was real in a way that it hadn't been before.

In talking about the strange coincidence that it was March 24 of the previous year that I had been in my accident, one of my soldiers told me that it was his birthday that day. When relaying the three strange coincidences to our platoon sergeant we found out it was the day he enlisted 18 years prior. Very strange coincidence we thought then, though now it's apparent to me that all of them were necessary for me to realize that the motorcycle accident had been more than just luck.

Had the accident not occurred there's no way I’d be where I am today. Had I not had the accident I would have been transferred to Korea later in 2002, wouldn’t have gone to Iraq in 03 or again in 05 and met any of the guys I now consider family, wouldn’t have gotten the amazing dogs that I have, wouldn’t have read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maint while laid up from the accident and thus wouldn’t have been introduced to the path of philosophy, wouldn’t have met my wife, wouldn’t have, wouldn’t have... Who knows where I would have been now, but it would be nowhere near where I am, and where I am now tells me that my life has enormous cosmic significance—even if my rational mind still lags behind my intuition most days. Reliving these miracles has actually helped me see the importance of them, and so this article has worked.

Which brings me to another miracle: coming across your work Charles, which has led me to a position where I can finally (hopefully) fully accept the many lessons of my "burned out" grill. It is a miracle because, as you said, "Anyone who truly understands the magnitude of the global ecological crisis knows there is no hope," and I had very little before coming across Money and the Crisis of Civilization, which led me to Ascent, which led me to your talks and meditations on the Ascent website, which led me to a path that makes sense for me, which will hopefully lead me out of the desperate and confused state I’ve been falling in and out of so regularly of late. It has been hard to fully accept the idea that there is actually good reason for immense optimism today, and I am hoping that this new path that has unfolded before me, a path towards helping to heal people and our world holistically, is what I need in order to maintain that hope and optimism. Nothing else makes sense at this point. Healing is the only thing that makes sense for me to be doing now, and I've only come to that by following the lead you have pioneered, which, by your own definition of miracles, makes your work and your life miraculous as well.

the liscene plate of the car parked in front of us was _____XDC. Under the influence of a drug by the same name i thought it nothing short of a confirmation from god i was doing the right thing. Is that a miricle???? This was only two days ago at a Phish concert.   That said, under the influence i began to realize how selfish alot of this just getting blitzed at concerts is and i think that might be a miricle