Mitch Horowitz - The Miracle Habits: The Secret of Turning Your Moments into Miracles

THE MIRACLE HABITS

ALSO BY MITCH HOROWITZ

Occult America

One Simple Idea

The Miracle Club

Secrets of Self-Mastery

The Miracle of a Definite Chief Aim

The Power of the Master Mind

Magician of the Beautiful

Mind As Builder

THE MIRACLE HABITS

The Secret of Turning Your Moments Into Miracles

Mitch Horowitz

author of The Miracle Club

Published 2020 by Gildan Media LLC

aka G&D Media

www.GandDmedia.com

Copyright 2020 Mitch Horowitz

No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any manner whatsoever, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. No liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained within. Although every precaution has been taken, the author and publisher assume no liability for errors or omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

First Edition: 2020

Front cover design by David Rheinhardt of Pyrographx

Cover photo by Larry Busacca

Interior design by Meghan Day Healey of Story Horse, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request

eISBN: 978-1-7225-2324-4

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Jacqueline, a miracle.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

A PHILOSOPHY OF CASH-VALUE

I have seen talented people squander promising careers, audiences, and prospects because they practiced bad habits in work and life. I have also watched people who appeared unexceptional attain notable success due to good habits.

But this book is about neither.

The Miracle Habits is about more than cultivating sanctioned notions of success or acceptance. It is not about being 10% happier, good enough, or reorganizing your sock drawer. Rather, as the title implies, this book is about fostering miracles. Not as a once-in-a-lifetime experience but as a recurring and natural part of life. My definition of a miracle is simple: a fortuitous event or circumstance that exceeds all conventional expectation.

I believe in storming heaventhat is, in reaching unapologetically for the peak of what you want. Much of todays therapeutic and self-help talk of purpose, gratitude, and meaning is, in my view, misleading. Such terms are placeholders for the avoidance of naming what we really want in life. True purpose and meaning are found in personal powerin cultivated providence, epic performance, and ideal self-expression. Whatever your aims, needs, or wishes, The Miracle Habits demonstrates how to invite extraordinary (and ethical) possibilities into your life.

Be sure that youre in the right place: we are embarking on a path of attainment. As Ive written in my previous book The Miracle Club, I believe that the contemporary seeker suffers from personal division and, ultimately, disappointment if he or she avoids the principle of accomplishment. I refuse to call aspirational wishes by terms like identifications or attachments. These labels emerge from ancient and culturally conditioned religious traditions (all religions are culturally conditioned), which I consider poorly suited to much of modern life. Impulses of self-development and creativity dwell innately in your personhood. Honoring and ethically framing those impulses should be the aim of spirituality. By ethics I mean doing nothing to deny the self-development of another person that you seek for yourself. The friction you experience when deterred from creative impulses should be noticedand heeded.

In early 2020, I heard from Colton Holmes of the Front Range area of Colorado. Colton and his wife had recently left a spiritual community. Their former community offered them a familiar paradigm, which they came to question. He wrote me:

We recently moved out of an ashram after eight years. I have struggled to let go of the ashram mentality that external things like money, retirement, and all of worldly existence essentially are only distractions and obstacles on a spiritual path. I personally feel, as I believe you do, that many of the old spiritual traditions need to take a good look at themselves. These traditional institutions teach in a way that supports the institutions themselves more than develops the students at a certain point.

I am in sympathy with that statement. And I take it further. I believe that you as a creative beingone said in spiritual traditions from Hermeticism to Judaism to be made in the image of the creatorshould expect miracles in your life. Although we face myriad complexities, and we experience multiple laws and forces, I believe that the song of self-expression, in its fullest and most varied sense, exists and yearns to spring forth from every persons psyche. Practices that curb that song produce inner conflict and frustration. I have witnessed too many colleagues on the spiritual path experience a terrible inner division between conditioned notions of non-attachment versus pursuit of their artistic, domestic, or financial wishes. Moreover, my experience, both personally and communally, is that the individual cannot be truly happy without singing the song of the selfwithout pursuing his or her deepest wishes, however defined. In matters of self-development, I see no division between depth and height, or spiritual and worldly to use general terms. The manner of your pursuit matters more than the nature of your pursuit. But it is vital that the individual find a path that most fully expresses the self, as he or she defines it.

Some spiritual traditions teach that we lack self-perspective and are too divided within to speak of possessing or understanding authentic wishes. Experience has taught me to dissent from that judgment. I believe that at certain sensitive moments, we, as individuals, possess higher perspectivenot ultimate but higher. We are not the victims of a cosmic joke that deters us from knowing ourselves and what we truly wish for. Released from peer pressure and conditioning, we are more mature than we know.

The pushback against aspiration in both spiritual and literary culture can produce ironic and almost humorous results. In 2019, The New York Times op-ed page published an essay by a Princeton University writing instructor arguing against the desire for greatness and extoling the value of being good enough. This is an increasingly popular theme among social critics, including bestselling columnist David Brooks. How did the good enough essay land on that coveted page? The author won first-place in an essay-writing contest sponsored by the Brooklyn Public Library. This was noted without irony.

Can we really become what we wish? Only you can answer that question for yourself. But that we have been given a song I have no doubt. You cannot express it, and you cannot apply the creative faculties of your mind, however, until you come to terms with what you truly want. Do you know what you want in life? I believe the first chapter, Unwavering Focus, will help you respond meaningfully to that question. It is central to our journey in this book.

I contend that you can take this journey and develop miracles based on how you live moment-by-moment, hour-by-hour, day-by-day. Put another way, based on your habits. The subtitle of this book is,