If you have seen the movie “The Miracle Worker”, you will no doubt remember the pivotal scene where Helen Keller finally understands that Anne Sullivan is communicating with her. They are together at the water pump, and as the water runs over Helen’s hand, Anne is signing “water” into her other hand. The dawn of understanding is unmistakable, and in that miracle moment a whole new world opens up for Helen. Things begin to make sense. She now has a way of interacting with a world that previously was completely closed to her. Everything is the same, and nothing is the same.
Similar revelations are played out in the lives of those who embark on a journey to understand themselves and to find a way to feel better. We come to understand that Life has been trying to talk to us, but we didn’t understand the language. We did not know that there is a way to understand and to impact what happens to us. There is a way to engage with Life that feels like a dance, with Life in the lead, whereas previously, we may have felt our lives were haphazard and we were dancing alone in the dark.
As we engage this journey of understanding, each time we receive an insight that illuminates a whole section of our life, we are astonished. “You mean I have been doing this to myself all this time, and thinking someone else was doing it to me?”; “I can’t believe I didn’t see this before!”; “I didn’t realize how people were perceiving my actions.”; “I have never understood before why I continually behaved that way when it clearly wasn’t working.” These are common statements made by those who catch glimpses of the underpinnings of their habitual behaviours.
But the miracle moment comes when we actually feel that new understanding land in our physical body. There is a clear sense of it, like a key turning a lock. We can feel the key solidly locking into place. This is where true change takes place. And as each key drops into place, we build a new self and a new life, based on deep truths which change how we see the world, how we interact with it and, most importantly, how we feel.
There is a sense of joy in each discovery, an excitement, as though we have found a buried treasure, which indeed we have.
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