Fresh Eyes Upon the World

Posted on in Healthy Living by Neal Grace

The Miracle of Life

When we pause fully during our hectic lives to take stock of what is happening all around us, while dropping our filters of preconceptions, we will see that everything is inherently a miracle—including us! Both the microscopic and the immense life forms are all creations of a spectacular dance of the intricate processes of the universe. A tulip is endowed with the magical ingredients of nature and is no less magnificent than the great blue whale navigating the vast oceans. The earth’s atmosphere, with its wild changes, is imbued with miraculous ingredients to sustain life. A blade of grass is the working of sensational forces to give it a body and its life cycle.

Every living creature is the culmination of eons that formed it inexorably through time. An emerald-throated hummingbird, with its astonishing gracefulness and staggering aerial feats, is another of nature’s miracles. The horse languishing in the meadow, a single snowflake, a cumulous cloud drifting in the light of a late summer afternoon, the trumpeter swan gliding on a shimmering lake in spring, silvery cascades spilling over sculptured rocks in the mountains, and a great redwood tree—all are miraculous expressions on this mote in space called Earth!

Now let’s explore you and me. We humans often get caught up in the chaotic demands for our survival. The truth is we are here for a short time, probably less than a century. Our existence is a flash in cosmic time. Astounding biological and chemical phenomena created us out of the elements of the universe. This unto itself is enough to send us into a state of wonder. We are part of the miracle called life. We can breathe, eat, see, talk, hear, and feel the endless waves of the world racing through our body. When we meditate, relax, walk in nature, and focus our thoughts on uplifting images, we are aligning ourselves to our natural rhythm of life.

Life is a gift for us to experience and explore, with all its vicissitudes and challenges, with all its mysteries and inexplicable happenings. We are here to discover who we are. This takes courage, focus, and determination. We are easily distracted by the more superficial trappings of everyday living. Despite how we direct our destiny, we are always learning about who we are and how we operate in the complexity of the world. We are a work in progress, a ceaselessly evolving wonder that is unduplicated anywhere. It is imperative that we act as the champion of who we are. We need to remain vigilant stewards on a daily basis.

children thinking about the future of our earth. Earth in is eye.
children thinking about the future of our earth. Earth in is eye.

Every morning we are reborn to set forth on a new adventure. Life created us, endowing us with certain features that allow us to interact with the forces of nature. When we love this dreamlike existence, we get closer to our spirit, the part of us that is mystical and deathless. When we love the world with all of its underpinnings and wild changes, we find ourselves in a timeless place of wonder…like a child enthralled with the moment.

We humans often become bogged down by the mundanity of survival and day-to-day living. Our perspectives narrow and keep us hanging out on the surface of things, floating like driftwood on the tides. We take things for granted, especially our own lives. We lose contact with our deeper self. We forget what exists beneath the surface, the roots entangled endlessly with the great mystery of which we are an eternal part. We forget we are components of the stars, a living entity shaped over eons into what we are today.

Finding the deep inner connection to the Divine presence and loving this experience called us is the only route to take. Everything else is a form of impeding the flow of the natural expression of life. We humans can fill our minds with dark thoughts that uproot our love of life. Yes, there are events and situations in the world that are terrible, causing an avalanche of despair to roll over us. There is duality in the world. But we must use and develop our higher consciousness to help us navigate toward an inner sanctuary of serenity that lives in our souls. There is an undimmed light in everyone’s soul. Shine this light upon the world!

We must use our positive focus and creative action to support us in our journey through this world. We must use our consciousness to remember the greater truth about our momentary life. Whenever we lament about who we should have been or what we could have done or why we were born into the conditions of our existence, we are diluting our purity and freedom to love life and behold the abundance of miracles surrounding us everywhere!

We can love life daily simply through the attitude we cultivate and perpetuate. Let’s take a deep breath of air, letting it fill our lungs, and then let it go by releasing the need to control everything. Then allow our body to feel the energy of gratitude and appreciation. In doing this we feel our oneness with all living things, realizing in our consciousness that we have landed here in this dream called life as a result of inconceivable powers who loved us enough to create us.


Neal Grace is a Marin-based author-poet, whose latest book Fresh Eyes on the World: Making Life a Spectacular Journey is published by Grizzly Peak Press. Neal Grace.com

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