Why do we find it so hard to believe in miracles? They are actually all around us and yet we often fail to see them. Well, some of us at least. The thing about miracles is they are not always the awe-inspiring, gargantuan affairs of epic, biblical proportions that people expect them to be.

If you are expecting a fridge full of bottled water to suddenly turn into wine on the appearance of unexpected guests at the door, you are probably setting yourself up for disappointment. Oh no, miracles are often small, unassuming little affairs, but miracles nonetheless!

For instance, you are running late for an appointment and immediately find a parking space conveniently close to where you need to be, when usually you have to drive round for ages looking for one. Or, you lose your wedding ring and search high and low for it, eventually giving up all hope of ever finding it. It suddenly appears in a place you have looked in a dozen or so times. You are totally lost while out driving, take a turn and then find yourself right outside where you want to be. These things are all too often taken for granted because they are not huge miracles, just happenings that help you along.

Of course bigger miracles can and do take place. Someone coming out of a coma, just before the life support machine is about to be switched off. Someone else walks practically unscathed from the wreck of a car. These are the miracles many people would describe as real miracles and yet they are unaware of just how important the little miracles can be. And once you learn to accept these “happenings” for the miracles they are then bigger miracles often can and do follow. We just have to be open to receiving and acknowledging them.

One reason why people are not able to see small, everyday occurrences for the miracles that they truly are is that, in general, society’s expectations for bigger and better things has been growing rapidly over the past 25 years. Whereas in bygone eras people were taught to be happy with “their lot,” the dawn of Thatcherite Capitalist values has led to an explosion of consumer greed and the striving to attain a plethora of things we could never previously afford.

I am not for one moment suggesting here that we should endure aspects of our lives that are making us miserable. However, in buying into this consumer culture, we are merely being encouraged to use money we haven’t got to buy a multitude of goods that we don’t really need in the mistaken belief that it will bring us happiness.

This has led to an overall dissatisfaction with life as we are driven to keep up with others and in the process have lost sight of what we truly desire. We allow ourselves to be driven by our ego’s and are constantly in pursuit of a false happiness. We expect miracles, but yet are unable to see them for what they are.

Sometimes we are so fixed on the outcome to a certain situation that we fail to look at the bigger picture. If a solution to a problem doesn’t fit our expectations, we are immediately tempted to dismiss it.

A colleague of mine, who is a fellow healer, recently told me of a couple of experiences she has had during the course of her work. One involved sending distant healing to a very sick, quite elderly man in the hope of giving a miracle cure. A few weeks later he died, leaving her wondering why she hadn’t been able to successfully heal him. She began to question her life purpose, wondering why on earth she was sent people to heal if she ultimately couldn’t heal them.

On speaking to the man’s daughter-in-law some time later, my friend apologized profusely for not being able to help, expecting her to be very upset. However the woman hugged her and thanked her. Apparently for his whole life the patient had been a very difficult man, given to cruel verbal outbursts and extremely mean with his money.

In the weeks leading up to his death, while receiving the healing, he had suddenly undergone an amazing transformation of character. Not only had he made amends to various family and friends he had upset over the years, but he had also changed his will and left generous amounts of money to each of them. “It was a complete miracle” the woman told her.

Another client of hers had terminal cancer and she was giving him intensive distance healing to hopefully shrink the tumors and reverse the disease. This was a young man who at the time of receiving healing was unable to walk, or for the most part even sit up. Again, he died several weeks later.

As with her other client, my friend was devastated that she had been unable to help him. However, soon after his passing she received a letter from the man’s fiancée telling her that during the last few weeks he had actually been able to leave his bed on several occasions and enjoy days of near wellness that enabled them to spend precious, quality time together.

The fiancée was certain that without the healing he would have died much sooner and not be able to do any of these things. Another miracle. You see, it is our attachment to a result, our inability to be open to other possibilities that closes our minds to accepting miracles for what they are.

However, a miracle can come in disguise and not be revealed for what it is until some time after it has occurred. We may be in a job we actually hate and that bores us to death, but would never leave because it pays the bills and we have responsibilities. We are then made redundant, and, after worrying how we will make ends meet, a chance meeting leads us to a complete change of career that brings us real fulfillment and better money.

The miracle here is that without the redundancy we would probably have plodded along forever. Even if our hearts had told us to leave the job, our heads would have probably intervened and told us not to because logic and reasoning teamed with fear would have crept in and prevented us from following our true desire.

Social conditioning and fear have exacerbated over generations and the majority of us have become misguided by logic, reason, norms and values. We have quite simply lost our ability to ‘feel.’ In short, we have forgotten that we are in fact spiritual beings in physical bodies. And yet, if we could once more get in touch with our ‘feeling’ nature and think more with our hearts than our heads, we would soon be able to recognize every single miracle for what it is, however small, and enrich our lives in ways we never dreamed possible.

If only we could allow ourselves to trust our gut instincts more, we would have infinite sources of wisdom and fulfillment at our disposal and kick-start our most valuable and powerful tool of all; our higher self, our inner Angel, the supra-consciousness that binds us all to the eternal life force that flows from the universe and can bring us unlimited gifts and miracles. It just takes a little faith.

Of course, it is not always easy to have faith in something that is not tangible. Look at it this way though. Every time we go to sleep we are placing our faith in waking up the next morning. Whenever we go out of the house we have faith that we will return home safely again. If we can apply that same level of faith to accepting the spiritual element of our nature we would have the infinite power of the universe at our disposal.

I am tempted to add here that this isn’t exactly rocket science, but funnily enough, this isn’t quite true. Many scientists are now realizing that to acknowledge the scientific effect, one must also acknowledge the spiritual cause. In other words both quantum physics and meta-physics work in synergy to produce a cornucopia of endless possibilities.

There is no beginning and there is no end, so we can quite simply attract anything we want into our lives. All it takes is a shift in consciousness. The more people that open themselves up to a belief in miracles, the greater the number of miracles that will be experienced, and the bigger and better they will become. This in turn will raise the spiritual vibrations and help to bring about abundance both individually and collectively through the spiritual law of attraction, so the whole world will benefit. It truly is a case of believe and receive. And that is no small miracle.