Believing In Miracles
Saying you don’t believe in miracles is simply a refusal to appreciate them. It is shutting yourself off from experiencing awe. It is the unwillingness to acknowledge, as Caitlin Johnstone called it, “the wet-faced beauty of each instant.”
I suspect our unwillingness to embrace miracles is based in fear, a fear of being reborn with every moment in order to greet the eternally emerging stream of miracles. In other words, it is life itself that is the miracle, so how could life be other than a never-ending set of opportunities to encounter the miraculous?
We hesitate to leave our shell, shed the dead exoskeleton we’ve become comfortable with. We fear to leave the person we once were but no longer are in order to live as who we always are. That shell, that exterior, was never us to begin with. Though we may have fashioned it and identified with it, it was made according to the instructions of those who helped teach us how to be human. The ego we created was only in response to all the people we’ve met who told us who we should be, who saw in us something other than we truly were.
We have a fear of emerging from the shell fashioned to protect us in our formative years by those who loved us, or tried their best to. They too were unable to see us for what we are because they could never truly see themselves for who THEY were. When they looked at us they saw much of what was in their own eyes and minds as well as what was within us. And we, trusting those who fed us and protected us, felt it our duty to become not what we were but what they told us we were supposed to be. We developed a distrust of the voice within ourself, placed our intellect above what our own senses and what our own feelings found to be true.
The intellect can never hope to give us what direct and open experience can: a realization of the miraculous. The intellect can guide us but it is only a guide. As Erich Fromm said, “Thought can only lead us to the knowledge that it cannot give us the ultimate answer.” And the ultimate answer requires miracles. Those who do not open themselves to the miraculous nature of existence are merely guided through life without ever actually living it. Even if they were to travel the world, they would do so only as tourists.
What would people say if we told them we beheld the miraculous? Would they not look at us like we were crazy? When was the last time you shared this sort of sentiment to another person or another person shared it with you? What would your co-worker think if you told them you didn’t like the newest blockbuster movie because it didn’t sparkle with the sublime? It seems we are not permitted to experience life on this level. We’ve got to drop a hit of acid or have a very close call with death before we feel comfortable admitting such a thing.
We need to get more comfortable telling others how absolutely amazing being alive is, so that we can help other people experience it more fully. Because once we are able to talk openly about the miracles that exist in the wagging of a puppy’s tail, a sparrow’s song, the gurgle of a smiling baby or the gurgle of a flowing stream that reflects the sun’s light in a multitude of evanescent glimpses, the more willing we will all be to put aside all those postures and attitudes we once believed in. Once we embrace a life of miracles — which after all is just the miracle of life — we will cleanse from ourselves and from the world so much of what is toxic and poison to life. And this world is very much in need of being cleansed of the toxins and poisons we humans carry within our hearts. The world is drowning in them.