(excerpted from the revised and expanded edition of
Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia)

You can drink a glass of water. You can spread butter on a slice of toast. You can wash your hair and prune your plants and draw infinity signs on a piece of paper. Your hands work wonderfully well! Their intricate force and sustained grace are amply supported by your heart, which circulates your blood all the way out to replenish the energy of the muscles and nerves in your fingers and palms and wrists.

After your blood has delivered its blessings, it finds its way back to your heart to be refreshed. This masterful mystery repeats itself over and over again without you ever having to think about it.

Contemplate the unfathomable prowess of your digestive system. Countless chemical reactions have to unfold with alacrity in order for it to work as well as it does. The gastric juice has to be composed of just the right mix of pepsin, rennin, mucus, and hydrochloric acid. The bile and pancreatic juice must arrive at the right spot and at the right time. The enterocytes in your small intestine always have to remember anew how to carry out their uptake of ions, lipids, and peptides. How can they possibly be so good at knowing exactly what to do and when to do it?

The circulation of blood and the conversion of food into fuel are just two of many alchemical feats that the secret intelligence within you takes care of. Thousands of other exchanges and transformations and syntheses are ceaselessly working their wizardry inside your body without your conscious participation.

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You may sometimes take for granted the luxuriant variety of unique and subtle aromas that come to you, but the truth is that you love your sense of smell. You're also thrilled about your power to hear sounds, and taste flavors, and touch textures. A few of these impressions repel or offend you -- although even those are often interesting -- but the vast majority ground you and gratify you.

Maybe you rarely celebrate the fact that you can think, but according to my inside sources, the flash of mercurial codes through your brain is among the universe's most dazzling accomplishments. Try to imagine the colossal divine plan or the implausible series of fabulous accidents that had to coalesce in order for you to be able to generate thoughts -- soaring, luminescent, liberating thoughts or shriveled, rusty, burrowing thoughts ... thoughts that can invent or destroy, corrupt or redeem, bless or curse.

Your capacity to experience emotions and passions and longings is one of your most precious endowments. You may not exult in the waves of anger or jealousy that sometimes ripple through you, but you're glad you have the power to feel them. Your yearning for an impossible dream may feel shattering, but you relish being able to accommodate that much intensity.

And as for the sensations that are more unambiguously positive, like a surge of courage in the face of an intriguing challenge or a surprising breakthrough with an intimate ally: They're treasures beyond measure. Can I hear you shout hallelujah?

Language is another spectacular marvel. Millions of souls have cooperated for untold centuries to cultivate a system of communication that you understand very well. Your ability to speak and read and write makes you feel strong and dynamic. It intricately connects you to the world, and allows you to engage in one of your greatest pleasures: hearing and telling stories.

Your imagination may be the best gift of all. It's the source of your creative power. If there's a particular experience or object you want to bring into your life, the first thing you've got to do is visualize it. The practical actions you take to manifest your dreams always refer back to the pictures in your mind's eye.

And so every goal you fulfill, every quest you carry out, begins as an inner vision. Your imagination is the engine of your destiny. It's the catalyst with which you design your future. Do you know where it comes from? Do you have any idea how powerful it is?

Here's yet another amazement. You're in possession of the extraordinary power of self-awareness. Maybe you don't fully realize how far-fetched that stupendous ability is. Get this: You not only know that you are you; you also know that you know that you know you are you. With an ease that belies the complexity that had to be built into the structure of creation to make it possible, you are conscious that you're alive and awake and unique. You have a million different feelings and fantasies about what it means to be you. How is that even possible?

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Read Part 1 of the series "Let's Expose the Obvious Miracles."