Do You Believe in Miracles?
A bit of a silly question, don’t you agree?
One that is a lot more interesting when we break it down, however.
The first action in doing so is to define what we individually/internally mean by miracles!
I’ll give you my sense of what it means and please compare it to what you feel as truth within you.
“¡Mira! ¡Mira!” Look at that! Look at that!
That’s what a miracle is, in essence, and even etymologically — a “look at!”
Our word miracle comes directly from the Latin noun, miraculum, -i, n. — an object of wonder; a wonderful, strange or marvellous thing.” Something that draws our attention so as to merge us with a state of wonder and marvel.
Miror, mirari in Latin is a deponent verb which means to wonder at, or look at with wonder. Deponent verbs carry a passive form but an active meaning, which is significant in the meaning of the word.
I wonder at, mirror, is to say that I am the one who is wondering, but in the act of it, “I” am in fact being shaped and forever transformed by the object of my wonder.
Of all the miracles you’ve experienced, whether it is a lover in your life, a passion/gift that you nurture and develop, a work of art you witness, a set of emotions you feel on a regular and spontaneous basis, the ability and opportunity to serve others, do you prefer the circumstances of your life that came together out of “thin air” or the ones that were preceded by your steady imagination about it, or some combination of the two?
Why do we call those miracles? We do, don’t we? Or is only something we don’t understand or comprehend a miracle to us?
Some of us “like” to see only the circumstances that we can foresee or that we plan for. In other words, we have identified ourselves with only the successful part of every equation. In an unsuccessful event, our identity is chafed, in an attempt to expose our true identity, but can often cause us to double down on the falsehood in a misinterpretation of the pain of such a moment.
Life, and being grateful for Life, is the greatest miracle. The creativity of this planet and all that we know to be true is something worth noticing and appreciating. Including our own physical organisms, which are the foundation for our awareness and appreciation of truths in the first place.
When we are dis-identified from our own attachments, we become deeply in tune with the oneness we share. It is in our blueprint to become sensitive to Life when we soften the resistance to what is shown to us. It is also in us, Alan Watts calls it the “irreducible element of rascality,” to form attachments to this world that colors our view of it, and in so doing we explore aspects of our consciousness that are understood more deeply when we venture into an obsessive state beyond sane and reasonable involvement.
For me right now, that is my involvement with golf, which is beyond attachment or obsession at times. It is pure identification and building of a lifestyle and imagined existence around the activities it involves. When you can alternate or have both simultaneously, existence is the most fun thing you could ever/never imagine up.
In this way, Life stays exciting and different and new and surprising and perfectly imperfect.
It is a miracle when we see it ourselves.
When we see ourselves in it, as it.
As both the subject and object of observation.
As the teacher and student; problem and solution; receiver and transmitter; masculine and feminine; animal and Divine.
