Response #23 (djg) Wednesday, January 12, 2000

 Just read whole topic in quest to suggest answer to #18 "What is a miracle"
 and also to understand where the question was coming from.
 
 Nice to see aldous huxley mentioned (#16?) because - I can't remember which
 of his books this was in - but I remember my high school friends and I 
 identifying in one of his novels THE core value of the spiritual path:  
 
        "Pay attention, boys, pay attention"
 
 this is the core of the spritual and if one does truly PAY ATTENTION
 then the other values mentioned become the only way to live.
 When one truly pays attention to ones immediate position in however
 many of the 4, or 10 or 26 dimensions one perceives, what some call "ethics"
 -compassion and justice- are just instinct and one can do nothing else.
 
 I think it works backwards a bit, too.  If one imitates an "ethical" life
 one may learn to pay attention.
 
 and when one is paying attention - everything is a miracle - and, perhaps
 one is capable of performing what preoccupied others may also perceive
 as "miracles" - so What is a miracle?
 something that makes folks PAY ATTENTION.

Response #24 (gobeyond) Wednesday, January 12, 2000

 well put!

Response #25 (emerald-sonja) Wednesday, January 12, 2000

  
 "and when one is paying attention - everything is a miracle"
 
 that's too easy.  too pat.  what does that really mean?  It seems to
 imply a life where no struggle or searching is needed. Where everything
 is just fine as it is.  Well, yes, awareness is essential.  Just
 appreciating being is as well.  But I can't buy that everything is just
 fine....no, not just fine, but in fact a miracle...just as it is. 
 Unless you just intend to meditate and bliss out of this world with all
 its struggles and troubles.  

 >seems to imply a life where no struggle or searching is needed
 
 Exactly. That's exactly the truth, but you can only really SEE that it's
 true when you really wake up and pay attention. It doesn't mean you have to
 "bliss out" and stop living at the worldly level. You see the truth that
 everything is fine, but that's on a different level. To stop struggling
 against what is in a way that you rise above rather than regress behind it,
 if that makes sense. But struggling against it won't get you anywhere, in
 case you haven't learned that by now. If you're all tied up with fighting
 this and struggling against that, you'll never see the truth that each and
 every breath is a miracle. Sit with a dying person, watch a baby being born,
 spend a night in an intensive care unit, if you need to be reminded.

Response #27 (gobeyond) Wednesday, January 12, 2000

  On the other hand...
 
  I have to object mildly to reducing the meaning of 'miracle'.  While
  it is fine to elevate things like birth and breath, giving them the
  awe that they certainly deserve rather than taking them for granted,
  there is that _other_ thing, the thing that seems to be _outside_
  of natural law, not just a superb example of the wondrous complexity
  (and simplicity) of it.
 
  A shaman I used to know made it rain in a small circle around me
  in an open field on a cloudless day in full sun (or, at least, it
  happened-- I suppose I can't entirely claim he made it happen, as
  he only winked a bit, and never actually said he'd done it). That's
  the sort of thing I'd reserve the word 'miracle' for.
 
  Except, of course, that what it really means, I think, is that the
  natural laws _don't_ in fact operate the way I think they do, but
  in some other even more marvelous ways.  Which, in the end, just
  encourages me to pay more attention!

Response #28 (djg) Thursday, January 12, 2000

 RE:
 >> "and when one is paying attention - everything is a miracle"
 >
 >that's too easy.  too pat.  what does that really mean?  It seems to
 >imply a life where no struggle or searching is needed. Where everything
 >is just fine as it is...
 
 Paying attention is easy?  No, it's the ultimate struggle.
 And when one attains such a state of complete focus - absolute
 being in and of the moment is "everying fine"?
 Is searching needed?
 I agree to try to answer those questions would indeed to "pat" - 
 Paying attention is hardly the easy answer, it's the most difficult,
 that's why it is so exceedingly rare.
 
 At this time and place for Earthlings we understand 4 dimensions
 of space time pretty well - but it's also beginning to become clear
 that there are quite a few more dimensions within which the
 "forces of nature" work - and science may need massive particle
 accelerators to map phenomena to mathematics, but that is hardly
 necessary to perceive and manipulate.
 Particle accelerators are the easy part...

Response #29 (leroy) Thursday, January 12, 2000

 I think of the circle of rain as magic rather than a miracle.
 
 I know that calling each breath and each heartbeat a miracle sounds a little
 like a Hallmark card, and that kind of talk has been reduced to the trite.
 But when you wake up and pay attention, even for a minute, you see the
 profound truth of it, on a different level. It's not easy to see on that
 level day to day, and sometimes it takes a startling event like birth or
 death to make it visible.
 
 But as for "struggling": it reminds me of when I was about 8 years old and I
 went on my first overnight campout. Sometime during the night I woke up and
 found I'd gotten all tangled and lost deep inside my sleeping back. I
 couldn't find the opening, to stick my head out. I panicked and started
 struggling and squirming, thrashing around frantically. But the more I
 struggled, the more hopeless it got. Then I heard the camp counselor's voice
 saying, "Hold still, everything's ok, I'm coming to help you." And of course
 as soon as I stopped struggling and relaxed, the sleeping bag fell open and
 my head was out in the fresh air where I could breathe again. Struggling is
 so often counterproductive.
 
 Miracles are happening all the time, it just takes a shift in perception to
 realize that.

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