Earlier this week, I told one of my clients about an experience I had on my flight home from Knoxville. I described the most amazing 84-year-old lady who sat next to me and chatted my ear off—in the MOST delightful way—for the entire flight home.

Her name was Nancy, and she introduced herself to me the minute I sat down next to her. She was no more than about 4-foot-10-inches tall, but she was FULL of vitality, vibrancy, and an energy that I would describe as sassy. I immediately loved her and wanted to soak in all of her enthusiasm and excitement for life.

She described how she played volleyball 3 days a week at her senior center, and how she walked two miles every morning before her first cup of coffee. She lived alone, her husband having passed over a decade ago. She described to me how she has long conversations with her husband every night before she goes to sleep. As a side note, she pointed out the airplane window to the big puffy clouds and said, “He’s right there in those clouds, happier than ever.”

As she told me all about her incredible life, she sipped on a Diet Coke and causally ate M&M peanuts in between sentences. Before we landed, I asked her the secret to her incredible vitality and her overall sense of joy. She smiled and said, “I really just don’t think about stuff too much. I don’t analyze anything. I just live spontaneously. When things go right, I don’t give it much thought. And when things go wrong, I don’t give that much thought either. I just keep going. Keep Living.”

When I told my client all about Nancy on Tuesday morning, she paused for a moment. She said, “You know, at first I felt really jealous of Nancy and a bit depressed that my life doesn’t sound anything like that.”

My client paused again, took a breath, and smiled. She continued, “But now I see right through that story of she’s living well and I’m not. I see beyond the story to something so much deeper, truer, and more helpful. Without the struggles I have had and continue to have, I would have never had the impetus to question who I am and what is real and stable beyond this world of form. It is BECAUSE of my struggles that a whole new world of possibility has opened up. So I love that Nancy has the life she has. It is perfect for her. But, I am not about to fall for that old story that my life should be any different than it is. THIS is the life that is most in service of my waking up to a much greater and deeper sense of trust; a deeper sense of who and what I am beyond this story of me; beyond the apparent borders of this body.”

When my client so eloquently described her trust in what I can only describe as “the unseen realm,” my entire body relaxed as if it was drenched in warm honey. Her words resonated deeply, and that sense of trust that has settled in my own belly over the years felt wonderfully palpable.

I remember the first time I felt that inexplicable trust in something completely unseeable and unknowable. I was in the throes of what the world would probably describe as intense suffering on all levels: physical, mental, and emotional.

Since insights of this magnitude are inherently pre-verbal, I could not find the words to describe what I had sensed on a miraculous level in my belly. So, the only way I could describe it was with the phrase, “The whole world could blow up now, and everything would be OK.” I didn’t mean that in some weird, violent way at all. I meant that my internal world was so completely and utterly at peace, that nothing in the world of form could touch it.

That first taste of absolute trust in something beyond logical explanation only lasted a few seconds, but it was profound. It changed everything.

Naturally, I chased that feeling for a while. I wanted to live in it. I wanted it to be with me all the time. I tried to reverse-engineer it by remembering what I was doing and thinking before I felt it. But, I only exhausted and frustrated myself.

And then, again, out of nowhere, a few weeks later: OH, THIS, too, is part of the perfection. This striving and driving myself crazy is also part of the perfection that cannot be explained with logic.

And poof! That profound sense in my belly was back. The whole world could blow up and everything would be OK. Complete and total trust. Surrender. Nothing in the world of form had the capacity to take that away.

This falling into a space beyond logic—beyond the capacity to analyze or explain—was kind of wobbly and messy for a while. I think that’s the perfect design, though. If I had seen it clearly without the messes and wobbles, perhaps it would not have settled so deeply.

Even today, I find myself forgetting—and then remembering even more deeply. Just when I think I can’t see the impact of this unreasonable trust any more deeply—something comes along that looks like a problem or a unfortunate circumstance. And I wobble, resist and reject, and I do all of the things that my old programming and patterning dictate that I do. And then, poof! Just like that first time in 2019, the insight to trust what I cannot explain rises up more graciously and vibrantly than ever.

Just last night, I woke up around 2 o’clock in the morning, having just had a vivid nightmare. It was one I’ve had dozens of times over the years for some reason. My heart raced, my body vibrated as if electricity was running through it, and my mind instinctively scrambled for ways to THINK my way out of the discomfort. And, after about a minute or so, that sense of deep trust arose. There were no words—just a feeling in the belly, as always. But if I had to put words around it now, I would say it was something like, “This is not about your nightmare, Missy. This is not about ANYTHING your mind says it is. Stop trying to move away from this. Trust what is in the very center of this experience. This experience, with all the racing thoughts and vibrating energy, is worthy of your trust. Nothing in this experience is what your mind is telling you it is.”

And once again. Poof. Complete Trust in what made absolutely no sense to my mind. Pure Surrender.

My mind—like all minds—will probably always do what normal healthy minds do. It will judge people and circumstances. It will evaluate experiences and call them good or bad. It will predict really scary futures and insist that its interpretations of the past are accurate.

But, beyond the mind—beyond all those thoughts and stories and beliefs—there is something that is unnamable, indescribable, and unknowable—something that is worthy of absolute trust. Our attempt to name this thing is like attempting to point to a fire with an icicle. The closer we get, the more our attempts fail. So, for now, the best words I have to describe this space beyond thought are

Love.

Life.

Aliveness.

Presence.

Whatever we call it, it is beyond anything in the world of form. And yet everything in the world of form is made of it. We cannot fall out of it. And our innocent attempts to grasp it and hold it tight are not wrong. Even that is included.

When we find ourselves in brief moments of this recognition of what is trustworthy beyond our understanding, we are able to live fully in this world of form. We are able to immerse it in. We play and work and laugh and cry our heads off. Nothing really appears to be any different on the outside. But our internal world will never be the same.

Since I cannot think of a better way to describe this felt-sense of deep trust, I just call it miraculous.