The Element of Everyday Miracles and Its Hope for Reveling In the Mysteries of Life

The Rocks from Galilee - they were a gift to Mary's Mom from her Grandpa; Mary's Mom in turn gifted it to her.

The other day, I was sitting in a conference room with Mary and a Varicent developer.

Mary is on the commission team at the company where I am currently on assignment.

Tasked with documenting the commission processes at this company, I was entering notes in Microsoft One Notes about the different sales incentives paid out by the company, and the data sources for each of them.

“What can you tell me about the SPIFFs, Mary?” I said, “How often do you pay SPIFFs and who gives you that information?”

Mary replied: “Strange you ask. Piper just sent me an email asking me about this month's SPIFFS as well.”

Piper is Mary’s boss and I have to work closely with both him and Mary.

 “It's telepathy”, I said. 

Both Mary and the developer stopped what they were doing and looked at me.

When someone says something like that, there usually is more to come.

“I have had several amazing coincidences in which telepathy had to be involved” I said.  “Do you want to hear my story about the 3 benches?”

“Yes,” said Mary, lighting up, “I have had some amazing coincidences happen to me as well.  You tell us your story about the 3 benches first and then I will tell you both about my pebbles story.”

So I told them about the time I woke up in the middle of the night with an idea for a story about 3 benches and what I discovered later on.

“That’s amazing,” said Mary, “now I will tell you my story”

Mary’s Story

Mary was a member of a Bible Study Group. 

Then she decided to take a break.   

After about a year, she felt she should start going to Bible Study again.

But she wanted to find a new Bible Study Group and was unsure about how to go about finding this new Bible Study Group.

Around that time, she visited her mom. Mary’s mom surprised Mary by giving her a velvet box which contained some pebbles and a note.

“This is from the Holy Land and it is over 50 years old” said Mary’s mom.  “Your grandpa gave it to me. He brought it back from his visit to the Holy Land. The stones are from Galilee where Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount as it says on the note.  I would like for you to have it.”

Mary knew she would treasure the box for life.  It contained, besides the stones, a hand-written note from Mary’s grandpa, which read: “These rocks are from the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus spoke to the multitude. The Sermon on the Mount from the mouth of Jesus.”

The next Sunday Mary was attending Sunday service when she happened to glance through the church bulletin.  Suddenly, the following words caught her eye in the events section of the bulletin:

 “Women Only Bible Study Group meets every Tuesday at 6 p.m. in the church hall. Topic this week:  Sermon on the Mount.”

Mary felt the hair rising on her hand.  She thought about her mom’s gift to her and her grandpa’s words and knew her search for a new Bible Study Group had ended. The answer was staring at her in these words in the bulletin. She would go to this new Bible Study Group and study the Sermon on the Mount with them.

On Tuesday Mary went to the church hall at the appointed time. 

“What can we do for you?” asked the group of elderly women she saw before her.

“I have come to join your Bible Study group and to study the Sermon on the Mount with you” Mary answered. 

“This is amazing,” said one of them, “We have been praying non-stop for someone new and young to join our group, and here you are. But do tell us, how did you find out about our group and what made you to decide to join us?”

So Mary told them the story of the stones from Galilee from her grandpa and his note about the Sermon on the Mount, and about reading in the church bulletin about the Sermon on the Mount being the topic for this week for the Bible Study group.

The ladies were perplexed, “But the Sermon on the Mount is not the topic of the week. You must have read wrong.”

Mary had brought her church bulletin. “I am confused,” she said, “this is what my bulletin said.” She showed them her bulletin.

As it turned out, the Sermon on the Mount was a misprint. The bulletin had been reprinted with the correct information. Everyone in the group had the corrected copy. Everyone save Mary. Her copy still had the topic listed as the Sermon on the Mount.

Call it a miraculous misprint - Mary would be the only one to get a copy of the bulletin with this misprint - a misprint with so much personal meaning for her; and this misprint would bring her to this Bible Study Group where they had been praying for someone like her to come along.

A miracle on all sides.

Mary's miracle got me thinking about how in each of our lives, there are miracles that are uniquely ours, miracles that are precious, important and personal, miracles no one else can claim.

But we will see them as such, only when we are transformed, when we have moved to a different level of being and have become open to the idea of miracles.

Getting my first job in advertising was a miracle.

So was getting my first break as a commissions analyst.

And my first break as an SPM consultant. 

Do you sometimes wonder why someone else lands a role or a job you feel you can perform better than they do?

I often do.

The answer is the miracle that got them that role or job was meant for them and is uniquely theirs.

Albert Einstein said,“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” 

When you join the camp of those who think everything is a miracle, you revel in every small stroke of luck, every little chance happening that saves the day.

Here's a small miracle that happened to me recently...

The Vacation Fish Feeder 

Recently Tanita and I had to go out of town.

In the days leading up to our trip, I worried about the 3 members of our family who would be left behind.....

Our 3 goldfish...

Who would feed them?

The last time we went out of town, my friend Becky was living in our apartments. I gave her a spare key and she popped in once a day and fed the fish in our absence.

But now Becky lived 4 miles away. Driving over to feed our 3 goldfish would take a lot of her time. I was hoping I could come up with some alternate solution so I didn’t have to ask her.

A week before my trip, I had lunch with Rich, a commissions analyst. At lunch we were talking about this and that.

When he told me he had several different pets -  dogs, cats, birds, fish, thinking of my upcoming predicament with my goldfish, I asked “Dogs, cats, birds, fish...who takes care of them when you go out of town?”

“Oh, I have to make arrangements with someone to look after them,” he said.

“I am in a predicament,” I said, “I am going out of town next week and I have 3 goldfish to be fed.  It’s tough to ask someone to come over every day in your absence just to feed 3 goldfish.”

“Oh, you can always buy a vacation fish feeder,” he said.

“What,” I asked, “a vacation fish feeder? I didn’t know there was anything like that.  It must be very rare and expensive and available only online. Would it be worth it for only 3 goldfish and would I be able to get it in time for my trip?”

“They’re cheap,” he said, “here let me look it up on Google”. He looked it up and announced, “it will cost you between 2 and 3 dollars and any pet store will have it”

I thought to myself, “Who would have thought there would be something like that!”

I went to Petsmart. Right enough, there on the shelves, with all the brands of fish feed, I found the vacation fish feeder he was talking about. Fish shaped blocks which came 4 to a pack, and which when placed in water, would dissolve slowly to provide a time-released source of food.

I was set.

A small personal miracle had saved the day.

I was able to go on my trip without worrying about my fish, and without bothering my friend Becky.

Small miracles happen on a frequent basis

Some of them appear as 'aha' moments.

It was an “aha” moment which led to my becoming an SPM Consultant...

I had quit my full-time job as a Commissions Analyst, and was still trying to figure out what to do.  Meanwhile my sister Rosie attended a job search talk. At this talk, the speaker told the attendees they should not hesitate to include on their resumes, any skill development courses they planned to pursue - even those skill development courses which were in their future. Rosie shared this with me on a phone call. After the phone call with Rosie, I found myself thinking about this.  “I know what I can do, ”I thought, "I can do the Xactly or Callidus Administrators Course. Once I am able to put that on my resume, job opportunities will open up.”   

And so I called Xactly and signed up to do their Administrators course. This got me into an Implementations company. From that I branched out into becoming an SPM consultant doing implementations, testing, documentation and administration for companies using Excel, Centive, Xactly or Varicent.

It all started with a miraculous phone conversation with my sis Rosie which was the first link in a chain of events.

I am sure you have stories to tell about your own miraculous first links in a chain. And your own "aha" moments.

Your own Newton moment. Your own Archimedes moment. Your own St. Augustine moment.  Your own Goldwire moment.

Goldwire moment? What’s that?

Let me explain.

The Goldwire Moment

Back when I ran my own creative shop Purple Patch, a client of mine decided to start his own agency and didn’t know what to call it.

He and his wife went on a vacation shortly before he launched the agency.

In the nightstand drawer beside their hotel bed, they found a King James Bible.

Devout Christians, they decided to open the Bible and seek inspiration within its pages to find a name for their agency.

When they opened the Bible, it opened to Exodus 28 and the chapter Clothes for the Priests. The chapter made several references to gold wire.

“That’s it,” they decided, “let’s call our agency Goldwire.”

Be Ready and Willing 

“Miracles come in moments.  Be ready and willing”, says Wayne Dyer.

And Richard Bach says “You're never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true.” 

There is a mystery at the heart of who we are, and our personal struggles and longings, and there are forces beyond logic and reasoning to help us solve our problems, overcome our challenges, and to dare to dream.

Enjoy each small everyday miracle in your life, and understand there are more to come, they are a natural result of your spiritual development.

I will end with this quote from Deepak Chopra: “According to Vedanta, there are only two symptoms of enlightenment, just two indications that a transformation is taking place within you toward a higher consciousness. The first symptom is that you stop worrying. Things don't bother you anymore. You become light-hearted and full of joy. The second symptom is that you encounter more and more meaningful coincidences in your life, more and more synchronicities. And this accelerates to the point where you actually experience the miraculous.”

As always thanks for reading and have a great day and week….M….A Pearl-Seeker like you.  Thanks to Ajay and Rosie for their comments on Facebook and everyone else for their votes. Happy Easter to all of you celebrating Easter today.

The Element of Searching for Answers, and Its Hope for Developing Knowledge, Self-Knowledge, and Knowledge For Those We Love.

There are three types of knowledge.

Knowledge.

Self-knowledge.

And knowledge concerning other people, including knowledge on behalf of those we love, or care for.

To illustrate with an example…..

If someone said to me, “Minoo, did you know that bats eat twice their weight in food every day?….

This is an example of knowledge.

Whereas if they said, “Minoo, I am afraid of bats.”....

This is an example of self-knowledge, which they are sharing with me.

Whereas if they said, “Minoo, in researching a neurological illness which recently struck someone in my family, I found out the highest incidence of this illness was experienced by the  Chamorro people of Guam 70 years ago. Between the years 1945 to 1956, the Chamorros experienced a 50-100 fold greater occurrence of this illness, which was found to be connected with consuming flying fox bats as part of their diet; these flying fox bats foraged on Cycad, a plant, the seeds of which contain a dangerous nerve toxin”……

This is an example of knowledge concerning other people, including knowledge on behalf of those we love.

Knowledge.

Self-knowledge.

Knowledge concerning those we love or care for.

We need all 3 to lead a fulfilling life.

The first type of knowledge is important.

We go to school to pick it up.

At school, we learn a lot of different things.

We learn to read and write and add and subtract and divide.

We learn about the universe and how it works.

We learn about the planet and its different peoples.

We learn about the history of different countries.

We learn games and sports and all kinds of arts – theatrical arts, musical arts, photography, painting, sculpting.

We learn about our bodies and minds and what makes them work.

If we have a good head for facts and figures, we can go on tv shows like Jeopardy with this knowledge and score big.
We can also pick up knowledge on the job.
Most of what I know of Excel, Centive, Xactly and Varicent was learned on the job.

And then there’s self-knowledge.

No less valuable.

We learn what we like to do and what we don’t like to do.

Whether we are meant to go our own way, or follow someone else’s grand plan.

What is important to us, and what is not.

Whether we like to take risks, or we like to play it safe.

What activities are in our sweet spot, and what are a stretch.

When it’s time for a change, our self-knowledge will alert us to that too.

Self-knowledge helps us make better choices.

Therapists and life coaches and psychology books and good friends can help us sharpen our self-knowledge –even just being observant about ourselves will do the trick.

When I say, “I am really happy and in the flow when I am reading, writing or walking,” I can say it confidently, because it comes from self-knowledge.

In the financial arena, when I say “I feel more secure renting an apartment than owning a home” it comes from self knowledge too.

I have learned through self knowledge, I prefer stocks to any other form of investment, and I need to live below my means, and accumulate little or no debt, in order to feel secure.

If you know you prefer real estate to any other investment; if you know you are comfortable assuming mortgage debt; and if you know you can’t stomach the ups and downs of the stock market, kudos to you for knowing yourself too.

When it comes to life choices, self-knowledge helps us understand our values and principles; self-knowledge also tells us when any area of our life is due for a change.

After my mother’s death in 2005, I identified an area of my life that was due for a change, and I made this change.

Meditation sharpens self-knowledge.

I started meditating in the fall of 2010, and since then, my self-knowledge has become more highly developed and nuanced.

For instance, I now know when I am falling prey to unhealthy curiosity versus healthy curiosity.

If I want to know someone’s age, what they are earning, what their title is, or how much they paid for something, this is unhealthy curiosity.  So I try to stop these thoughts in their tracks when I can - that is, before they become a question I pose to somebody.

Healthy curiosity, on the other hand, is when a friend asks, “Minoo, do you know if it is possible to claim people who are not family members as a dependent on your tax return, or to claim someone who is not living with you?” and I say, “hmmm….good question. Let me research and get back to you.”  So I Google it and I find the answer, which is yes, we can claim anyone as a dependent, even if they are not living with us or related to us, as long as someone else doesn’t claim them, and we can prove we were responsible for more than 50% of their annual living expenses.”

Healthy curiosity versus unhealthy curiosity.

Self-knowledge is important to finding out what we want and what we don’t want, because we can’t have everything. In almost any situation, there will be trade-offs. We will need to make a choice between having one thing or another. 

For instance, when I became an SPM consultant, I had to make a trade-off. Between being able to set my own hours, work on different assignments and pick and choose assignments – and being able to earn a steady income. I chose freedom over security and predictability – it was a choice I had to make.

Moving on to knowledge of other people, and knowledge on behalf of other people…..

No one has to hit us on the head for us to realize how important this is.

If we are self-centered and preoccupied with our own business, not only will we miss out on a lot in life, but we will fail to develop empathy, which is crucial to dealing with other people.

We have to care – and not just superficially – about other people, and their thoughts, their feelings, their situation, and their back story.

Because we all don’t come from the same mold, every person will be a learning experience.

We may discover that one person gets offended if you ask too many questions, or you tell them what to do.

Another person may get upset if you reveal something to someone else about them, that they'd rather keep private.

Only when we become a student of people, will we understand each person has to be dealt with as an individual.

Is there a simple answer to dealing with other people?

Actually there are 2 answers.

The first is simply the Golden Rule – we should do unto others what we would have others do unto us.

The other is kindness.

As Leo Buscaglia says, “Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”

We are kind when we give someone our full attention ….. when we are empathetic about their situation, when we help in any small way we can, when we affirm we love them, when we respect their boundaries, when we acknowledge their efforts and achievement,  and when we make sure to include them, so they do not feel marginalized, or left out.

The 14^th Dalai Lama, says, “If you shift your focus from yourself to others, extend your concern to others, and cultivate the thought of caring for the well being of others, then this will have the immediate effect of opening up your life and helping you to reach out.”

Indeed, as soon as we shift our focus from “I, me and my”, we will find a way to reach out.

An appropriate way.

A way that can make a difference.

To bring down the incidence of illness in developing countries, the Bill Gates Foundation has distributed thousands of mosquito nets to households in mosquito-infested areas.

This simple low-tech solution has had a far-reaching impact.

Answers like this come when we shift our focus from “what we want for the other person” to “what the other person wants and needs”

I learned this the hard way, when I started supplementing my maid’s income back when I was in India.

Yes, when it comes to reaching out to make the world a better place, we can do grand things, expecting grand results …. or… we can adopt the wisdom contained in these lines from This is Water by David Foster Wallace: “The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”

Sacrificing for someone in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.

If we can do that, we will know the joy of being someone else’s joy, someone else’s pillar, someone else’s port in a storm.

Yes, this is how we can use our knowledge, our self-knowledge, and our knowledge of what other people want and need to make the world a better place.

I will end this post with the following 2 quotes:

“You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

And this final one from Amy Leigh Mercree - “Share, care, hug like a bear”

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As always, thanks for reading and have a great day and week…..M….a Pearl Seeker like you.  Thanks to Ajay, Lakshmi and Subhakar for their comments on Facebook on my last post, and thanks to the rest of you for your votes.  Happy birthday to all those with birthdays in the month of April.