For one of our August meetings Guy suggested we do something different: we would leave behind our usual meeting room, and instead hold our discussion in a nearby park. As we gathered in this natural setting next to the Rogue River, we sensed we would hear something special this morning; something that would pull us further out of our old selves. And indeed, in his talk Guy showed us quite clearly the difference between the enclosed world of thought in which we usually dwell, and the open universe that lies beyond ourselves. He began his talk with a play on the words of a popularly-known phrase, "there's more to reality than meets the eye," by telling us "There's more to reality than meets the 'I.'" In other words, he was saying that those experiences that we habitually see as our "normal" lives exist within an already larger universe that is largely unseen. And that staying awake within ourselves is the same as having the opportunity to glimpse a new and expanded reality whose new view naturally lifts us up and out of our presently limited ideas about who we are. Guy then proceeded to tell us of a special insight he had received one morning while eating watermelon!

At first several of us thought that he was just having some light-hearted fun - as we often do at points in our discussions about the Higher Life. But the next moment it was clear that we were about to embark on an important study-lesson, because he asked if any of us had ever really considered all the secret spiritual lessons - the miracle - existing in any piece of fruit! Just think about this question for yourself. As you're about to see, there's more to it than meets either the eye or the "I"!

Watermelon juice is sweet. Lemon juice is sour. And yet they're both water. Why is one sweet and one sour? What makes each of them water with a different quality? Something in the seed of each fruit instructs the plant to take something different from the ground and to process it in a different way. What was the intelligence that decided that? In what way does that intelligence act in our own lives? And if you'll ask yourself these simple questions, as we were ourselves asked to do that bright August morning, you too will start to see a whole new world right where you are; a world that is open and orderly; an invisible world of Wisdom at work all around you, revealed in all things physical, and yet hardly noticed by anyone. And if we can see the beauty in this unseen world which patiently awaits our conscious entrance, then we must also ask ourselves the next question... As hard as it may be to do: When it's given to us to be ever-renewed explorers of Higher and Higher worlds right within our own, why then do we spend so much time thinking about so many proven worthless, self-tormenting, self-enclosing things?

The truth here is troubling to those self-pleasing pictures we all have of ourselves, but results reveal the rule: We are not awake in our own life experience. The miracles are missed because we, ourselves, are missing.