Do you pray for miracles?
A teacher of mine was talking about the miracle of life itself. He was saying that it’s something like 2.5 trillion sperm that go in the wrong direction, only to die, and just one ends up connecting and resulting in you.
That’s amazing. One in 2.5 trillion. WOW!
He went on to talk about miracles, radical healing, spiritual and metaphysical unexplained experiences. As I sat and reflected on miracles, I was reminded that miracles are really just about the moment — about your daily practice.
Being a Transcendent Mantra Meditation teacher, I’m often explaining to people that the things we desire are a simply a byproduct of our daily practice: whether we seek to release stress, deepen our spiritual beliefs, overcome emotional patterns, improve our physical health, expand our creativity, or tap into joy and peace.
In the daily practice of transcendent meditation (PSM®), you actually cannot avoid the things you seek (if you’re keeping up with your daily transcendent practice). More often than not, we are avoiding miracles daily by being busy, distracted and caught up in life’s stories.
This reminds me of a story about the Buddha on his path to awakening which goes something like this:
Buddha spoke about the experience of attaining conscious awareness (Jhana) and how he had gained light and vision yet soon he noticed them disappear. Having considered the reason for this disappearance he noticed his concentration (meditation/mindfulness) had fallen away. When meditation was there, light and vision were there. When meditation fell away he lost both light and vision. Then he restarted his practice with mindfulness until he once again gained concentration, vision and light.
We do not meditate for the experiences in transcendent meditation; there’s nothing that we are trying to achieve. We simply use a tool (a silent mantra) that transcends our thoughts and taps us into the non-local, pure potential experience — the place from which miracles are born.
We meditate to experience the miracles and the shifts in the other 23 hours of our day — not in our practice itself. Therefore, the true miracle is found in our daily practice.
My two essential daily practices are inquiry through writing and transcendent meditation. Through my commitment to my practices, I’ve experienced this very thing. I know that just by getting up and writing two pages of either inspiration or junk, it will have an equally profound effect, and open me up to more insight, creativity and inspiration; I call it my conversations with God. It simply comes down to the daily practice and discipline of loving the junk as equally as the inspiration. By the simple act of implementing these practices, the miracles can be seen and experienced throughout my life.
This shows up and is made true in every area of our life. Within society, there are so many people searching for quick fixes and shortcuts. Yet, if we took let’s say – physical health — daily exercise and daily eating habits, which are practices for physical wellness — crash diets do not work.
When you’re feeling stressed and disconnected and your well-being is suffering, one day at the spa might feel great, but it’s the daily routine that matters; the morning workout, daily meditations and/or regular walks in nature that help you reduce stress and invoke wellness.
In business, it comes down to the things you do daily that contribute to your success and to your achieving peak performance on a consistent basis. If you’re an elite athlete, you know that your daily focus and routine is what brings you closer to your achievements.
Spiritually evolved masters, successful musicians and experienced martial artists talk about the 10,000 hour principle — everything comes down to your daily evolution. It is both the quantity and quality of your practice that matters.
Your daily discipline is what ultimately matters: there are no real overnight successes. There are no quick fixes. There are no shortcuts to experiencing awakening, success, connected relationships and optimal heath and wellness.
What about praying for miracles?
Praying for miracles is fine, but be mindful if you’re putting faith in physical situations or people outside yourself. When we do, there is a sense of clinginess, expectation and attachment to these outside influences being our answer — whether they be deities or the like.
As an example of this, you might invest your energy into thinking, “If only I could get the right marketing strategy, then my business would be a success” or “If only this breathwork meditation session would make me enlightened, then that would be the miracle I’m looking for.”
What about tapping into the source of miracles, infinite possibilities and creation that is already within you? Another way of looking at this would be to find the great wells of strength, joy and resourcefulness already present within you, and utilizing those qualities so that you might “make use of what God gave you.”
This would mean praying for miracles with detachment, surrender and the understanding that you must become partners in the creation of miracles. Meeting creation halfway by moving daily towards miracles with a detached commitment — that is when they move towards you. That’s when you become the person capable of experiencing the miraculous.
Do you pass up miracles?
I’m not sure if you have ever heard the story of the guy stranded on a roof during a flood, who is desperately praying for God to save him.
Pretty soon, a row boat comes along and yells up “Climb down, I’ll row you to safety”.
The guy on the roof says, “No, no, God is going to save me,” and he carries on praying.
About an hour later a motor boat sees him and says, “Hey, climb on board I’ll take you to safety.”
The guy again says, “God is going to save me,” and he carries on praying.
Pretty soon a rescue plane flies over head and lets down its ladder, the man refuses and keeps on praying.
When the man ends up in heaven, he says to God, “Why did you forsake me?” God says, “What do you mean? I sent a row boat, a motor boat and a plane….”
Experiencing miracles in life comes down to our ability to see them and meet them. Miracles actually happen all around us every day, whether you know it or not. The source of creation, or God as you know it, doesn’t turn on and off. They are actually quite a normal occurrence.
Experiencing miracles might be subtle or profound — we may access instant physical healing, awaken to different states of consciousness, or tap into unexplainable spiritual experiences. But after years of practice, the one thing I know for sure is that whenever I’m keeping up with my daily meditation and writing, the answers come from within and miracles seem to be all around me.
Life is just one big miracle. Even in the difficult moments, I can see the perfection, beauty and doorways to new opportunities. When I’m not keeping up with my practices, the cause of my strife and the answers to it seem outside of me, and life’s obstacles result in struggle and discomfort — miracles seem harder to see, like distant wishes.
Are you attached to your concepts or stories of miracles?
Every situation, occurrence and relationship in our lives only holds the meaning we give it. It’s important not to make a story of our miracles — information is only as good as our detachment from it. If we are attached to these experiences we may very well be missing the unfoldment of more grace (we can’t see the forest through the trees). I have experienced unity consciousness, healed my body of disease, experienced painless, blissful childbirth I can say from the bottom of my heart, I believe the miracle is truly found in the practice; in the moment. None of these experiences are anything but a beautiful experience in a sea of possibilities that are available to us when we implement a daily practice that opens us up to experiencing the miraculous.
My teacher is right: you are a living miracle, and my wish for you is to dive deep into your daily practice — the one that transcends your current reality, so you can experience the gifts, miracles and joy that are there for you!
I feel truly blessed to teach these essential practices that you can incorporate into your daily life anywhere and everywhere effortlessly, to become you own guru, to become your own teacher, to become your own healer, to become your own hero and to experience the miracles of life.
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