The Miraculous Part 1
January 18, 2026
The Miraculous Part 1
Welcome to this week’s Daily Reflections on The Miraculous.
From childhood, George Gurdjieff sought truth not only in the world around him but in the unseen realms of the spirit. After making a pilgrimage to foreign lands, he discovered the Enneagram in a monastery in the Middle East. Studying there for years, he then carried his new-found wisdom to the West and spent the rest of his life teaching this ancient pathway to self-knowledge.
As a young man, Gurdjieff traveled endlessly, determined to uncover the spiritual roots beneath all things. His search led him to monks who preserved the hidden wisdom of the Enneagram. Through them, he learned that human beings wear masks that veil our true nature. Each mask, he taught, could be traced to a person’s chief feature, the governing trait that shapes one’s life. These chief features later became the seeds of the nine Enneagram types articulated decades afterward by Oscar Ichazo.
Gurdjieff himself never wrote about the Enneagram. He taught it as it had been entrusted to him, through the oral tradition. It was said that his teachers insisted the most profound truths should never be written down, because they might be misunderstood or misused. Only those who embodied the work would preserve it.
Yet Gurdjieff had a devoted student, Peter Ouspensky, who revered the teachings he received. Wanting to honor and preserve them, he wrote In Search of the Miraculous, a book that illuminates the profound spiritual truths reflected in the Enneagram. To come so close to these truths in itself, is miraculous.
The word “miraculous” comes from the Latin “miraculum,” meaning “object of wonder,” rooted in “mirari,” which means “to wonder at.” We wonder at what we do not fully understand, and what exceeds our knowing. When Christ turned water into wine, His first public miracle, it evoked wonder because it transcended explanation. But the miraculous is not confined to Jesus and His miracles. It is happening on many levels right now. Some miracles are gradual and may take generations to manifest. Some are found in the unexplainable outworking of circumstances and in sacred coincidences that happen everyday. Some are found within. We find that we have strengths and other capacities that come from completely beyond our own will or power.
This week, we will revisit the miraculous and reflect on how it touches and transforms us.
Spiritual practice: Have you ever seen something you would call miraculous? Write about it—what happened, and what made it so.
Self-inquiry: What criteria must something meet for you to recognize it as miraculous?
Prayer:
Dear God, It took a miracle to hang the stars in space. And it took one to make each of us. I stand in wonder every day. Amen.
