I had a really fruitful day of practice yesterday. As you probably know, I have been focusing a great deal on the idea of giving miracles—understood as taking the form of an almost constant stream of kindnesses and helpful messages. This can easily seem to impose on us the impossible pressure of thinking up these kindnesses and helpful messages. Yet that is a misunderstanding of how the process works. We don’t think them up. The impulses to do them are already in our minds. We just need to tune into these impulses, and then let them out, express them.
So that’s what I focused on doing yesterday. I picked a fairly lame sentence to practice: “I am vigilant for (or sensitive to) miracle impulses.” I did a lot of talking to myself around that sentence, reminding myself that miracle impulses were always trying to get into my mind, that I was needed as a channel of miracles to the people I encounter, and that I myself needed those miracles that I could give to them.
Then in each interaction I tried to ask myself “What is my miracle impulse in this situation?” That turned out to be very powerful. Almost invariably, something would leap to mind, an impulse that either I hadn’t been aware of at all, or one that had been there in the background, virtually unnoticed. Either way, I really had to ask what that impulse was, or it would have just sat there, unexpressed.
I remembered to ask, I think, about two thirds of the time. When I did, I was able to add little helpful things into each interaction. None of them were especially big, but they did make for different interactions. Yet even when I forgot, I was still different. I noticed that I was carrying myself differently, seeing myself differently. Later in the day, when I got bored with “I am vigilant for miracle impulses,” I switched to “I am the light of the world. That is my only function. That is why I am here.” To my surprise, those lines felt natural, like “Of course that’s why I am here.” In fact, tuning into these miracle impulses gave me a real sense of buoyancy all day. I felt much more bright, upflifted, confident, and happy. It really was an unusual day in that respect.
So I decided to continue with this focus today. I am practicing “Today I unblock my natural impulse to help,” drawn from something Jesus said to Bill: “Your ego is threatened, and blocks your natural impulse to help, placing you under the strain of divided will.” How interesting that blocking my natural impulse to help results in strain. This is reminding me today of another line: “Tension is the result of a building-up of unexpressed miracle-impulses.” That is one of those lines we simply cannot reflect on too much. Could it be that all of our tension comes from our own damming up of the natural flow of miracle impulses? Given how buoyant I felt yesterday, this idea is actually striking me as true right now.
