In the last episode, I told the story of what happened when I was standing on the platform of a train station with a large group of commuters and we suddenly realized that the well-dressed, mid-forty-year-old woman who was about to get off the train was blind. The woman was a professional, going about her business on a normal weekday morning, just like the rest of us who were standing there.  Except she was blind. As I watched her come down the train steps and start walking away with her cane, once I got over the unexpected shock of the encounter, I found myself in a world that was suddenly filled with humility and gratitude. I guess it was for obvious reasons. I've always taken the gift of sight for granted. For me, it just comes along with the territory of being alive. I rarely, if ever, give it any thought. But this chance encounter had reinforced in me how precious it is to be able to see and it hit me with unexpected power. I became in touch with how small of a creature I actually am, completely dependent on forces unseen and unknown by me – like having the power of sight, for example. I felt extremely humble and a profound sense of gratitude washed over me. Generally, when we experience something like this, we find ourselves in a rarified state of being, enjoying the sense of clarity about what's really important in our lives. And then, in today's hyper-fast paced world, before you know it, we revert back to our normal, everyday habit of trying to get the next thing we want. This is what happened to me but still, it was quite a powerful feeling and it lasted for most of that morning. Now real feelings of humility and gratitude are a little more than they may appear to be. We're all familiar with them and something about them feels just right. But modern neuroscience has taken it to a deeper level by yielding a vast amount of data which highlights the powerful effect they have on our overall consciousness. Along with the release of a myriad of positive neuropeptides that can do wonders for us, humility and gratitude can bring about actual physiological changes in the brain itself, making it function on an entirely new level. And these changes can be quite powerful when it comes to our overall happiness and sense of well-being, transforming our minds into higher states of awareness.  And as I had also mentioned in the last episode, both Einstein and Jung emphasized how important it is for us to evolve and grow our consciousness. Now from thousands of years of contemplative traditions all the way through to modern neuroscience we are told that the ideal way to begin to enhance this growth process is to start appreciating some of the incredible things we have been given in this life, rather than to just keep on taking them for granted.             So, let's take a little deeper dive into this. Whether we're aware of it or not, there is a truly vast intelligence that is within each and every one of us. We don't know the extent of it and the truth is, we will never know, because it's just too vast. But whether or not we're aware of it, the truth is, it's still there. Let's consider one small, but truly miraculous part of this intelligence – our ability to heal. A few months ago, I got a nasty paper cut one on my right index finger. Now if you're right-handed, you probably don't pay much attention to how you use your right index finger. But once you have a cut on it, you find out pretty quickly.             Most of us have probably had a paper cut. They can be surprisingly painful, but we all know them to be just a minor nuisance. They're not going to kill you. They're just an inconvenience. You take care of it, maybe you put a band aid on it and it heals up in a couple of days. I've had them many times where the intensity of the pain gradually decreases, then goes away completely. A few weeks later, it had healed so well that I could barely remember that I ever had it or exactly where it had been.           Just a small, everyday occurrence that happens to us all, but what is it that happened? Somehow, my body just healed it. Now here is where we have to stop and pick up our mental microscope. We've all had tons of physical problems that have just healed themselves. We caught a bad cold. It was a real drag. It lasted a couple of weeks until it finally healed. You get out of your car on a funny angle and you twist your ankle. You limp along for a while until it finally heals. Examples like these are endless and we've all had them probably thousands of times, from getting over indigestion, maybe a hangover, to recovering from a broken bone, the flu or even a major illness, we have an innate trust in the healing processes of the body and we take it all for granted.           But what is it? How does it happen that we heal ourselves from all these things? Of course, there are hundreds of medical books that will explain the process, but the basic, bottom line is that the ability to heal is part of the miraculous intelligence that we each have within us all the time. Again, we take it completely for granted, but to put it into perspective, let's say you go out and buy a wonderful new suit. It's perfect in every way. Maybe it even was ridiculously expensive, but you still bought it, because that's how much you liked it. One night, you wear it out to a party and you don't even know why, but when you get home and take it off, you notice that it has a significant tear in it. You must have caught it on a nail or piece of glass, whatever. It doesn't matter how it happened. Your beautiful new suit is torn.           Now it doesn't matter how wonderful it is, what kind of fabric it's made from or how much it cost you. The rip in that suit is not going to heal. Of course, we all know that. You're not going to hang it up in your closet and a few days later, when you come back, it will have naturally repaired itself.           No. And that's the enormous difference between the tear on your suit and the cut on your finger. The suit in an inanimate object. It does not have the power and intelligence of life in it. But our bodies do. Again, this points to the deeper fact that our existence is, by nature, miraculous.           And this isn't just limited to the parts of ourselves that we know. No, this intelligence goes far beyond that. Like if you're having a chat with a friend, trading questions like, "How your family? How's your job? How's that new TV you bought?" All normal enough questions, but nobody asks, "So, how's your spleen doing?"           Your spleen? Not only don't you know how it's doing, most of us no idea what it is or where it is. But something inside of us does. This vast, almost unfathomable intelligence within knows everything about it in real time.           By the way, how's the Ph balance in your mouth at the moment? Does it have the right amount of acid in it given what you ate last night?  Again, this is the kind of thing most of us never think about and we have no conscious control over it anyway. But the intelligence in our body does. It knows everything about it, monitoring and adjusting it constantly.                So much goes on inside of us that we have no idea about and here's one last example that always gets me. Let's say you go into a public bathroom and you leave with some very nasty germs on your hands. Within another hour, by eating or rubbing your eyes or nose, you ingest several million of these toxic germs and now you have a real invasion on your hands.             But you have an immune system with precision firepower that makes Battlestar Galactica look antiquated and tame. Powerful cells called macrophages arrive to detect, engulf and destroy the invaders. If necessary, your hypothalamus directs the production of exact hormones to step up the attack and after a short while, all the invading cells have been killed. They're then carefully escorted through your blood stream into your bladder.  An hour or two later, you go to the bathroom and pee them all out. End of episode.           Your health was protected, your life was preserved and you had absolutely no idea that it happened. In all probability, your mind was busy spinning its web of delusion, conjuring up the way it wishes things would be. According to current estimates, this kind of thing happens within us about 1,200 times each day.           So where is all of this going? It's just going back to where we started – humility and gratitude. We are living a life whose miraculous nature is far beyond our ability to comprehend. And to close, nothing is more miraculous or important to us than our breath. You can go without food for about thirty days. You can go without water for about seven. But you can't go without your breath for more than just a few minutes at most.           Whether you're aware of it or not, it's been happening since the moment you were born and it will continue until the moment you die. And all the great teachers of all time have instructed us to humbly recognize and be grateful for the absolute miracle of it. They say this is the key to opening the doorway to the higher realms. It all begins with the simple recognition of the power that is giving us life.           Now, there's a modern-day teacher named Prem Rawat who has been a big influence on me for many years, and one of the things I've always liked about him is that he has a great sense of humor. He can express a deep truth in a way that makes you laugh while it delivers its profound meanings, which isn't easy. He was once talking about how obsessed the religions of the world are with stories about miracles, which makes us dream big dreams. But we fail to see our own life as a miracle which, by definition, it is. He said once, and I'm paraphrasing, "You can spend your whole life hoping for a miracle, but would you know one if you saw it?  The truth is, you wouldn't recognize a miracle if it was happening right under your nose."           At first, I laughed, but when I took it in a little deeper, it suddenly wasn't' so funny anymore, it became more of a challenge.  That was many years ago and I'm still trying to realize what's going on right under my nose.           Well, that's the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened, and let's get together in the next one.

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