46. An Inexplicable Gift

The miraculous is singular and divine. It only happens once, and never again. It is beyond our human abilities. It is an inexplicable gift given by the world itself.

Like the miraculous, the magical also cannot be explained. If it could be explained, we would call it science. The magical, however, is neither singular nor divine. It is repeatable and it is something we can do. The magical is closer to the human while the miraculous is the work of the gods.

Your desires, aversions, and beliefs can produce suffering. They combine to produce an ideal world that you want for yourself. If you become attached to your ideal, you will continuously compare your reality to the ideal. Since reality typically falls short, you will suffer from the misery that your life is not what you want it to be right now and the anxiety that it might not be what you want it to be in the future. By seeing this relationship between attachment and suffering in your own experience, you can also discover how to free yourself from attachment. When you are completely empty of attachment, your self-produced suffering also ends.

That your suffering ceases when you are empty appears to be straightforward cause and effect. If it is regularly and repeatably observed it might even be a scientific truth. But not only does your suffering end, it is also replaced by an unexpected joy. You exist in the same way as you did when you were suffering but now this same existence is a joyful one. This transformation does not seem to have any explanation. It seems to be, in some way, magical.

And perhaps it is also miraculous. For even if each particular instance of joy is something you create through your own actions, the very possibility of joy itself is not your doing. How is it possible that there can be an experience so peaceful, so uplifting, and so perfect? That joy exists at all seems to be a singular and inexplicable gift.