While the many miracles of Jesus are described in The Bible, my experience with the King James Version was in a literature class from which I remember little. Even when I joined A Course in Miracles, the word “miracle” didn’t have meaning that I could feel. I was seeking a better way to live—not miracles. When in India, I was seated close enough to revered guru Satya Sai Baba to see him produce vibhuti, holy ash, on his palm by closing then opening his hand, I thought of it only as unusual. A miracle was not a lived experience for me.
For many years I lived in my head, unaware I was missing my heart’s input to my thinking. Only in my late forties did I begin to bring my thoughts and my feelings together for making decisions. When I let go of seeing myself as an intellectual, I had felt a great relief, for this had been a subconsciously false view for most of my life.
What I remember that tells who I am is being a girl standing in the doorway of the shed of my grandparents’ farm, listening to the hay rustling, and all I can see is hay as I feel other than myself, and I didn’t talk about that. Now I know that feeling as the feeling of who I am—of God, a part of the all that is God, and in those moments in the shed I was one with the hay and its sound.
In recent years I have thought that many miracles have occurred in my life, and I’ve attributed them to God. These experiences were my definition of miracle, not necessarily another’s. Then I found these quotes. “God’s nature as the Ocean of Love cannot be grasped by the mind. God has to be known through love and not through an intellectual search for miracles. …It is true that, while loving me, people often do have spiritual experiences that were hitherto unknown to them; and these experiences help them in the further opening of the heart. … (but), they should not be regarded as the goal.” And, “Only love for God works the miracle, because love is beyond mind and reason.” So I began thinking of miracles as coming from within me—a big step and one that I’m still nurturing and contemplating for its truth.
I had an experience last week, humorous to me, yet the timing was hard to miss. Each night I must make Indian flat bread called bhakri. The only ingredients are sorghum flour and water. Making them properly depends on an ability to alter the temperature under a curved cast iron pan from high to low according to what the single bhakri looks like. I have persisted at practicing, helped recently by information in English about how to do this, and these past two months, my bhakri have been, if not perfect, sometimes enjoyable, and always minimally edible.
Pushing the dough has become a meditation, but late one night, perhaps ten o’clock as I had continued working on writing, I was pushing it with my eyes closed I was so tired. When I carefully placed the first thin, round bhakri on the pan, suddenly, unexpectedly, I said in a loud voice, “I need a miracle!” The single bhakri rose but not fully. Then I put the second one on, by now willing for it to be edible. And instead, this dough rose to a perfect dome, as it should, and I make a dash for my camera.
My realization is, “Whatever is the source of miracles, whether they originate from without or from within, openness to their appearance is an enlightening communing with life.”
*All quotes ©Meher Baba