The Age of Miracles (12 page)

And once you’ve gotten old enough, you’re not too proud to ask for help.

I’m amused when I hear someone say that faith is just a crutch. I figure if your leg is broken, then it would be nice to have that crutch. And you only use it until you’re ready to get back on your own two feet. Relying on God doesn’t mean that you’re relying on something outside yourself. It means that you’re relying on the Truth of All Things, a higher power whose throne is not out there somewhere but inside your heart. You’re relying on the power of compassion and nonjudgment. You’re relying on objective, discernible laws of the universe; faith that love produces miracles is no different from faith that gravity makes things fall.

If I have a choice between relying on a divine Creator or relying on the false powers of a confused and pain-filled world, then I choose the former anytime. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I can feel my soul reach up to God, my mind uttering phrases such as
All I want is the peace of God
before I even reach for the
A Course in Miracles
workbook that I keep next to my bed. I’m hardly some contemporary version of Saint Teresa, mind you—I’m just exhausted from a life of searching for anything but the be-all and end-all. My soul has been thrown against so many rocky cliffs, and I finally realized I was the wind. Who else but God could calm the tempest in my soul? And I have a feeling, having been calm for certain moments and certain hours and certain days, that what happens when I achieve that state is not just useful to me, but to Him as well. At least, that is what I pray for.

E
VERY PROBLEM IS A CHALLENGE TO BECOME
a better person. Imagine, then, what we’re being challenged to become in order to turn history around at this time. What quantum leap will transition us from the level of consciousness at which we created our problems to a level of consciousness at which we’re able to miraculously solve them? Who is it we are destined to be, that in our presence the dense thought-forms of hate will simply drop away?

That’s what is so exhilarating about this moment. Given that God has an answer to every problem the moment it occurs, then there exists in His mind an absolute plan—a blueprint for our salvation—already etched in full upon our hearts. According to that plan, we’ll be individually and collectively redeemed and set upon a new path of evolution. All the old notions will die away, and the human race will remember at last that we were conceived in love; we are here to love; and one way or another, we’ll remember to love.

One of the most important things that any of us can do to help the world are to pray and meditate consistently. Prayer, according to
A Course in Miracles,
is the conduit of miracles. It changes us, and through us, the entire world. No one who prays and meditates consistently doesn’t give a damn what happens.

The first reason we pray and meditate is to handle the darkness of the world, strengthening our resistance to rampant chaos and negativity. In this time of historical phase transition, many people are experiencing a low-grade panic they’re not even aware of. All of us should surround ourselves with a shield of light, and prayer and meditation provide it.

Interestingly, however, we don’t just pray and meditate so we can handle the darkness. We do it also so we can handle the light. Our nervous systems are being bombarded today by forces of light streaming down in response to humanity’s prayers for help, but a nervous system unprepared for such an onrush can become overloaded. It does us little good if we succeed at calling forth miracles, yet are psychologically and emotionally unprepared to receive them when they arrive. Prayer not only calls forth our good, but prepares us to handle it once it comes.

As Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “[We need] a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.” Many people say we’re being called by the dictates of sustainability to live materially smaller lives, and perhaps this is true. But spiritually, we’re being called to live
bigger
lives, to which our resistance is at least as strong.

I once heard author Stedman Graham suggest that even the most accomplished among us aren’t yet living at 100 percent. His point lingered with me. I wondered where the other 20 percent is if we feel that we’re only living at 80. Does it exist on a shelf somewhere as pure potentiality, waiting to be brought down when we’re ready to make it manifest? Was it put in a corner of God’s Mind for safekeeping? And if we open the flood gates to our full potential now, do we get to retrieve whatever possibilities we failed to manifest over the last 30 years?

When we don’t grow in certain areas, we can experience a kind of “flat line” while those around us gradually climb as in a diagonal line on a graph. Yet once we awaken to whatever awareness returns us to the natural arc of our soul growth, we make a direct vertical ascent to the place we were supposed to be—where we
would
have been, had we not tarried. This often happens when people get sober; all of a sudden, positive energy springs forth that they’d suppressed during the years they were using.

Even if you’re not an addict, just by living in this society you’ve been privy to an addictive system. President Bush was right when he pronounced America to be “addicted to oil” (and probably a few other things as well), and the dysfunctional patterns spawned by that addiction extend like tentacles into all our lives. If a parent is an alcoholic, his or her children carry the psychological weight of the addict’s unprocessed issues. If someone steals a presidential election, the citizens of the country carry the psychological weight of that guilty secret. If a nation invades another country for control of its oil, then its citizens bear the collective karma and resulting guilt of being involuntary accomplices to what’s now euphemistically called “regime change” but in ancient times would have been more aptly referred to as “pillage and plunder.” These forces and many others have played on our psyches, suppressing the emergence of our better selves. No wonder so many of us have gotten depressed or emotionally checked out. These are very, very critical times.

It’s time to get emotionally and psychologically sober now … to awaken from the stupor of the last few decades. To claim the percentage of our potential that we haven’t yet manifested and go for that 100 percent. The race is on. This is it. Let’s pray. Let’s go.

O
UR PROBLEM ISN’T THAT WE DON’T THINK LOVE
is an important thing; our problem is that we don’t think it’s the
most
important thing. There are lots and lots of distractions out there.

But something happens when you’ve lived through enough. Children suffering needlessly … kids going off to war … people dying of hunger in a world of plenty—lesser issues begin to pale in comparison. A day comes when you look at the news and say,
What the hell are we doing?!

It’s horrible to contemplate, but terrorists know what
they’re
doing. I can’t imagine a kind-of, sort-of, when-it’s-convenient, casually committed terrorist. Terrorists have an agenda, that’s for sure, and they’ll do whatever it takes to further it. Yet our biggest problem isn’t just that a relatively few people hate with conviction; it’s that not enough of us
love
with conviction.

With every thought of love, we participate in the creation of a unified field of exponentially greater possibility for everyone. When a butterfly flaps its wings near the tip of South America, it affects the wind patterns near the North Pole. And the same is true in the realm of consciousness: Every miracle you work in your life is a blessing on life itself.

A couple of years ago the Amish of Pennsylvania, who eschew all worldly power, showed us all what love really is. If the world survives, I credit them. When some of their little girls were bound and shot dead by a crazed gunman, they forgave him. Let me repeat that: They
forgave
him. On that day our entire country knew, without a doubt, that we were in the presence of the real thing. Hard-boiled newscasters and commentators, who don’t get humble and authentic and sincere for anybody, got humble and sincere and authentic as they reported this story.

According to
A Course in Miracles,
all minds are joined. No mind could be apprised of the Amish reaction to their enormous tragedy and not be transformed. By their own demonstration of grace, the Amish graced us all. Our souls were touched not only by their grief but by their spirituality as well. By holding to the light, they transcended darkness … and not just for themselves. A truer crucifixion of the Christ could not occur, nor a truer resurrection either. And in the case of Jesus, as well as his true disciples the Amish, millions more were lifted up.

Love is to fear what light is to darkness; in the presence of one, the other disappears. When enough of us stand in the light of true love—not a simplistic love, but the strong and extraordinary love of God—then all war will cease. But not until then. Until enough of us learn to love as God loves, creating a force field of holiness to purify the earth and dissolve its evil, then we’re going to continue our march toward planetary disaster. Love
is
the answer. Yet look at how terrifying that thought is to the ego. We find that notion—that love is our salvation—more frightening than war, do we not? We resist it more than we resist nuclear disaster. And why? Because the love of which I speak is one that would transcend the ego, and the world we live in is the ego’s delight. The ego knows that by embracing love, we’re destroying
it.
But those are our only choices, really: the ego will survive, or we will.

N
OT EVERYONE HAS MONEY OR WORLDLY POWER
, but all of us have equal capacity to think, intend, and pray with conviction. Love is an ever-renewable spiritual resource. We wouldn’t have to worry so much about the state of the world if we felt more universal agreement among us that we’ll all do whatever we can to heal it.

No matter who we are, we have things we’re supposed to do to fulfill the calling of our souls. But the soul’s calling isn’t a broad revelation that will be written in large letters across the sky. Rather, it’s a challenge to be the person we’re capable of being in any given moment. We never know what conversation or encounter could lead to what, as long as we’re showing up for it as best we can. God’s universe is itself one big loving intention, and when you align your own intentions with His, you set in motion a kind of wind at your back.

Hatred and fear don’t have this cosmic support; while they have power, they don’t have
spiritual
power. And they’re spiritually powerless when confronted by a genuine love. There are terrible things in the news today, but as much darkness as there is out there, there is more love
in here.
Perhaps that’s what the bigger problems of the world are here for, in some way: They challenge us to dig deeper into ourselves for who we really are and how we might choose to live differently. Martin Luther King, Jr., said that it’s time to inject a new kind of love into the veins of human civilization. That love
is
rising up today. It’s a new kind of thinking, a great turning of the heart.

In every area—from medicine to education to business to media to politics to the arts—there are people expressing new, more enlightened modes of being and behavior. And each of us, no matter who we are, can align ourselves with a better idea. Whether it’s something as simple as using a different kind of lightbulb in response to global warming or working to rebuild a neighborhood school, joining in a group meditation or forgiving those who have trespassed against us, we can participate in a new wave of creation. When we consciously dedicate ourselves to creating a more loving planet, then that which is not love will fall of its own dead weight.

And when all of this comes together, the world will change in the twinkling of an eye.

Dear God,

I place the world in Your hands.

Please use me

to make things right.

Amen

W
E
A
RE THE
W
ORLD

P
articularly as we get older, our spirits as well as our bodies need more quiet time, more reflection, more immersion in the magic of just
being.
That doesn’t mean we’re retreating from the world, so much as we’re moving into a deeper experience of it. For the world is in fact a whole lot bigger than what we see with our physical eyes. Part of the value of the aging process—and I did say that, yes: the
value
of the aging process—is that it delivers us naturally to realms in which we’re not quite so tethered to the realities of the material world. It’s not so much that we’re “losing it” as that we’re
finding
it. I find it utterly liberating to have forgotten certain things; thank
God
I forgot them! And that’s not to minimize scary monsters such as the fear of Alzheimer’s. It’s just to keep some of our changes in perspective.

I don’t think as quickly as I used to, I’m sure of it. Nor do I speak as quickly or move as quickly. But it seems to me that I
think
more deeply. It’s like I understand things in the round.

I
WOKE UP ONCE TO A LATE-NIGHT EPIPHANY THAT SHONE
like a neon pronouncement: that the key to human salvation lies in our living for each other. I know, I know. Hardly new. But at the moment it came to me, it seemed big and profound.

Obviously we’ve all heard the concept before, but aren’t we stymied by what it actually means? Does it mean that we’re supposed to give all of our possessions to the poor? How does that work in terms of our worldly responsibilities? Are we not supposed to have a home for our children? Aren’t we supposed to provide for them? And is it bad to enjoy nice things?

In
A Course in Miracles,
it says: “To have, give all to all.” But sometimes you look at the material world and think,
Well, surely it can’t mean that… .

The line I heard in my head that night was not “Give away everything you own.” It was “Live for others.” And I’ve wondered what the world would look like if we did.

We’ve been so thoroughly programmed to look out for number one, as though “me” is so much more important than “we.” But the shift from living for ourselves to living for others is clearly the spiritual imperative calling humanity back to the garden.

What, then, about healthy boundaries? Does living for others mean I’m to give everyone everything—as in my time, my energy, my money, my heart? I’ve tried to do that … be the paragon of self-sacrifice … never having time for myself, making myself wrong for wanting to take care of me, always running around trying to please or do for others. And it got me nowhere. If anything, it left me angry, resentful, vulnerable to thieves, and feeling much more stuck in a rut on my spiritual path as opposed to being sped up on it. Wrecked half the time, I rarely showed up as my best for anyone.

Healthy boundaries
are
loving; they show respect both to the person who sets them and to the person who’s asked to honor them. I think it’s best to seek a balanced life, at peace with ourselves and our own loved ones; then when we do turn our attention to the world, we can bring so much more to it. We bring a higher version of ourselves.

According to
A Course in Miracles,
sacrifice has no place in God’s universe. Taking care of ourselves in a righteous way
is
meaningful service to a greater task because we cannot give what we cannot be. From that space of peace, and the moderate behavior it produces, comes more than enough money and time and energy to give to the world. Service is very serious work, but codependency it is not.

So how, then, do we live for others? The best I can come up with is that service is a way of being. It means I can make the person who just carried my bags into the hotel room feel how much I truly appreciate what he did for me. Tip him generously as well, of course, but match the tip with an attitude of honor for what he does. Both are important. It means that in any moment, as part of my spiritual practice, I can do what I can to show love and respect for the person in front of me, or on the phone with me, or whatever.

Most of us have more contact with other human beings each day than we might realize, and with every encounter, there’s a chance for a miracle. There’s the person behind the counter when you bought your coffee. The person on the phone when you made that call about getting your dryer serviced. The person who washes the windows in your office building. It might not seem like much, this tiny little droplet of compassion added to the universe when you show up more kindly, but the important point is not what it did for the universe. The point is what it did for
you
—it changed
you
—and that is how it shifts your world.

Holiness is determined by a shift in purpose. Anything we do that honors only ourselves is simply a spiritual dead end. There’s no cosmic blessing supporting it. But anything done with others in mind—even if it involves caring for ourselves so we can be more prepared and available for service to others—carries the blessing of a loving universe.

Consider a vacation, for instance. It betters you to give your body and mind a rest every once in a while. A holiday increases the healthy bonds among partners, mates, friends, and family. The principle of service doesn’t require you to avoid joyous opportunities; if anything, joyous people are more productive. The more you care for the world around you, the more the universe is likely to provide the rest that feeds your soul and keeps you going.

There’s time for fun, and there’s time for work. The relationship between the two seems to be a pattern within all natural systems; you can feel it in your gut whether you’re on or off track. When your life is all fun and no work, you feel unclean somehow. When it’s all work and no fun, you’re out of balance and hardly of use to anyone. In fact, it’s because the problems of the world
are
so serious that we need to do whatever it takes to lighten up sometimes. One of the ways you know you’re in the flow is if you’re seriously of service and seriously enjoying yourself at the same time. It feels right because it
is
right. At the deepest level, our needs are all one.

I
N THE LAST FEW YEARS WE’VE SEEN AN INTERESTING TREND
: The “second career” has become a new buzz. People who have spent 20, 30, or 40 years achieving one thing then take up something else. What used to be seen as retirement age is now seen, if the person wishes, as simply career Phase Two. Rather than thinking of the second career as an anticlimax or “just a little something I do to stay busy,” people end up seeing the first, perhaps more flashy work as a prelude to something more important that they’re meant to be doing with their lives. They view achievements that were the height of their material success to have been preparation for an even greater success—the means by which they learned the skills they’d ultimately need to make their biggest contribution to the world.

The new midlife becomes a time when the
Sturm und Drang
of our more youthful years is alchemized into the highest manifestation of our talents: something useful not only to ourselves but to others. It might take ten years to discover how to build a business and then another ten to learn how to be the most compassionate human being—add ten more to find out how to be the best mate or parent, and somewhere around our 50s or 60s we’re ready to live our most shining lives.

From people who have hated their jobs for decades and now burst free at last to live their true calling to those who have loved their careers but still reach for something more meaningful in midlife or beyond, something is happening, making it clear to everyone that closing shop is not the pulse of this moment.

An interesting example of the second-career phenomenon is Bob Daly—who, after serving as the chairman and CEO of Warner Bros. for 19 years, decided to resign and eventually became chairman of the board of Save the Children. Having achieved a job that by modern American standards would be considered the height of success, he now defines “success” in a more expanded way.

Daly lived the American dream and then added to it. He started his career right after high school, working in the accounting department at CBS for its lowest-paying job of $41 a week. Progressing from there, he lived out the career fantasies of a generation. Loving television, he ended up running a television network. Loving movies, he ended up running a movie studio. Loving baseball, he eventually bought a piece of the Los Angeles Dodgers and ran it for years. Yet clearly, he says, the best is what he’s doing now.

Daly says that he’s never looked back, never wondered if he made the wrong decision by leaving the pinnacle of the corporate world. Save the Children has opened him up to a world he knew nothing about. Most people, he says, know neither the scope of suffering among the children of the world or the scope of the humanitarian efforts to save them: “You see a few clips on TV, but you don’t really know. Once you’re in the room with people who have been doing this their whole lives, who have decided from college that money would not motivate them, you just think,
These people are so special.

“I made plenty of money in my life, and I was very happy and had tremendous satisfaction,” he continues. “But this might be the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.” He’s getting what he calls more “psyche income” now, with the satisfaction of knowing that he’s using his prodigious managerial strengths to help alleviate the suffering of children around the world.

Daly’s departure from Warner Bros. caused a debate among his friends: “They understood my wanting to go run the Dodgers. But this… ? Some people understood, but some people thought I was insane.”

Bob Daly is part of a new trend—among his peers, his fellow Americans, and his contemporaries. From those who give time as volunteers to those who give vast amounts of money, there is a growing realization that each of us needs to do what we can to address humanity’s most urgent problems. Daly senses something good in the air: “Charity,” he says, “has become chic.”

And that is a very good thing. A new tide of humanitarian passion is on the rise, as a sleeping giant of a generation has begun to awaken, registering with alarm that while it slept, huge problems were brewing.

A 50-year-old today might have 20, 30, or even 40 good work years left. We still have time. But this is a moment on the planet, if ever there was one, when all hands are needed on deck. And it’s not just young hands, with their physical power, that are needed. Also needed are the hands of those who are guided by the wisdom only years can bring. If we’re anywhere near midlife today, we carry within us a memory of a time when the world we live in seemed more full of hope. That hope is missing now, and our job is to restore it.

At the beginning of 2007, I had the thrill of attending a New Year’s celebration in honor of the opening of Oprah Winfrey’s Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa. Oprah often quotes Emily Dickenson’s line of “I dwell in Possibility.” Clearly she does, opening greater spaces of possibility for millions of others as well. I am one of them. And on that visit to Africa, new doors of understanding were opened in my heart.

While traveling in the bush, we stopped in various places to rest. I will always remember how we washed our hands: Imagine being greeted by a beautiful African woman in her native clothes, holding a wooden-and-brass pitcher and bowl. You slightly reach out your hands so that she can pour soap on them for you; afterwards, she pours warm water over them, the bowl catching the water as it falls. Washing your hands has become something more than that; it has become some sensual ritual full of meaning and grace. You’re receiving more than soap and water; you’re washing away more than your physical dirt. If the woman had been washing my feet or I’d been washing hers, I could not have felt more absolved or blessed. All these years I’d been washing my hands, and it was though I’d never really known what I was doing.

One day after a safari ride, having heard a priestess call us home to humanity’s cradle (“Your umbilical cord is buried here”), we were treated to a spectacular feast under a tent lit by candlelight. Someone at my dinner table mentioned how the kings and queens of old African tribes had been the first to be taken into slavery. I looked around at the other guests, including some of the leading artistic and cultural figures of contemporary African-American society, and I mused that they were at least figuratively those kings and queens reincarnated, come back now to reclaim their connection to Africa. The descendants of slaves had risen to such prominence and glory that they could return to their ancestral land with privilege unimaginable
200 years ago.

As dinner ended, dancers came out to perform. Gradually they magnetized the dinner guests from their seats; black Hollywood stars began dancing with native Africans to their native beats. Lifetimes loosened before my eyes, and I felt privy to a genuinely prophetic moment. Watching modern and ancient worlds share molecules, I felt God stretching out His hand in what felt like a final offer to humanity. We’re being assigned a task that, if performed well, carries such fundamental redemption potential that it will cancel out otherwise inevitable and terrible consequences of our behavior as a species.

I got it. I saw it. I heard it. I felt it. A-F-R-I-C-A. There’s something about saving the mother continent that will help save her children everywhere.

Dear God,

In these momentous times,

please pave a path

by which the world

can repair itself

before it is too late.

Use me,

in any way You wish,

to turn the dark into light..

Amen

T
HE POVERTY IN THE WORLD TODAY IS STAGGERING
: 350 million children in this world go to sleep hungry every night. The amount of sheer human despair on this planet makes the status quo unsustainable.

We are now in the midst of a great revolution, a quantum leap from one era of human history to another. Things are going to be radically different over the next few years, as we will enter either a new age of darkness or a new age of light.