WHERE MIRACLES LIVE A miracle is an ordinary event that lies outside your current structure of knowing: Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote: “Whoever you are, some night step outside the house you know so well … enormous space is near.” Let’s proceed into this enormous breathing room! “Miracle” is a word that seems loaded with portent and magic. But when I talk about miracles, I’m not necessarily referring to a religious or even a spiritual experience. Willa Cather put it best when she said, “Miracles rest not so much upon healing power coming suddenly near us from afar, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for the moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what has been there around us always.” The potential for miracles is always around us. They are hidden from view only by the way we think about the world. — Energy of Money
Much of what you now consider to be commonplace once seemed like a miracle to you, including your first breath. Do you remember the first time you were able to ride a bicycle? I do. I had been tooling around on my tricycle, watching the older kids zoom here and there on their two-wheelers. I could not understand how they stayed up. Did they have invisible wires? Were they all gifted with unimaginable athletic prowess? How did they do it? Then came the day when I got my first two-wheeler. I was nervous. How could I possibly accomplish that miraculous feat? I remember clearly the moment my father pushed me off and, amazingly, I stayed up! I felt in my body the miracle of balance. Of course, after a few weeks I didn’t even think about staying up, let alone consider it a miracle. By then riding a two-wheeler was well within my structure of knowing.
When you discern a miracle and interact with it, the scope of your structure of knowing expands to incorporate the event. A miracle eventually loses its aura of wonder and mystery and takes on a quality of ordinariness. It can even become a habit. But if you can keep stretching your structures of knowing, there will always be another miracle within reach.
The point here is that you have already had plenty of miracles in your life. You undoubtedly will have more. We’re just giving you a more systematic way of reaching them. Can you remember how impossible some of your accomplishments once seemed? Having a peaceful and satisfying relationship with money is just as possible as any of those others. Consider that it will affect your relationship with all forms of energy. It’s simply a matter of being able to move beyond your current structures of knowing.
MIRACLES AND THE HERO’S JOURNEY Living your life knowing it is a hero’s journey molds you to prepare to succeed in attaining the miraculous, and that preparation is crucial. In the story of the Holy Grail, for example, Percival didn’t just meander up to the Holy Grail and nab it. He first made sure his own house, his mind, and his affairs were in order. He sorted out his intentions and opened himself to recognizing the signs that guided his quest. His training and focus allowed him to withstand temptations that might have distracted him from his path. He thus succeeded where other Knights of the Round Table had failed: he found the Grail and brought it to King Arthur. Your journey to discover miracles in your relationship with money is much like Percival’s search for the Grail. You are preparing your mind to distinguish your true Life’s Intentions from your Monkey Mind’s distracting chatter as you trade the comfortable and familiar for the miraculous.
How do you stay your course as you approach miracles? You’ll run into some hair-raising moments. Many of the world’s greatest film directors will tell you there are often shooting days when nothing goes right. The weather turns wicked. The cast gets sick. The equipment breaks down. Permission to shoot at a specific location is suddenly denied. At these points Monkey Mind jumps into action, yelling, “If you had any sense, you’d cut your losses and quit right now. Let’s get out of here!” This is the decisive moment, and everything hinges on whether the director listens to the chatter.
The best directors move outside their structures of knowing, ignoring what Monkey Mind says things should look like. They reach for their vision despite the setbacks—and they put themselves in the position to produce a miraculous result. Claiming your miracles, despite the insistence of Monkey Mind, requires being willing to operate outside customary reason and wander into the confusion. It also requires being willing to take things one step at a time, with the support of your friends.
Dancing with your Life’s Intentions and Standards of Integrity, instead of Monkey Mind, provides opportunities for miracles. Look at the difference between a miracle and an opportunity. An opportunity is an auspicious opening. It combines circumstance, timing, and place to produce conditions that are favorable for a particular event or action. Opportunity can include events that are predictable, not requiring a stretch, as in: “Have you had the opportunity to read this morning’s paper?” Some of these events can be boring or even commonplace. Miracles, though, are events that show up in the opening that opportunity creates. They are not an extension of the past. And they fill you with wonder and awe. You begin to see miracles everywhere as you dismantle your structures of knowing about money. Even reading this far has undoubtedly started that process for you.
Advanced simulations increase the probability of miracles. Basic simualtion is useful. It’s the tip of the iceberg, and the first step outside the structures of knowing. But advanced simualtion, is the the whole ocean is possibility outside our frame of view. The deeper we go, the more authentic and miraculous our experiences and calls to action become .
Remember, conscious observation is the key to going beyond your paradigm. To continue your journey, you must know where you stand right now. As you do this exercise, you are beginning to dismantle your structures of knowing. Remember, this is an ontological, not a psychological, process. It has not so much to do with analysis as with observation. As you write your answers, you will notice a shift in the way you see money.
BECOMING EN-LIGHTENED A paradox occurs when you consciously observe what you are experiencing. Whatever you look, see, and tell the truth about begins to lose its emotional charge. This is what clearing away your thoughts, beliefs, and ideas means. “Most people think of enlightenment as a kind of magical attainment,” writer David Cooper tells us, “a state of being close to perfection … but for most of us, enlightenment is much more in line with what Suzuki Roshi describes. It means having a quality of being, a fresh, simple unsophisticated view of things.” The key to finding miracles in your life is to develop your ability to recognize and benefit from them. The Buddhists call it “beginner’s mind.” You can enjoy its gifts at any age. To approach our lives with beginner’s mind is a major breakthrough in how we experience the world around us, and this certainly includes our relationship with money. In this respect, we are working toward a certain level of enlightenment. We are clearing away the thoughts, beliefs, and ideas that cloud our ability to see things as they really are.