No matter what your situation is as you read these lines, always remember that with hope and a few more ingredients, miracles happen. That is, when you least expect it and as if by magic, your life is suddenly completely transformed. Where there was only darkness, all of a sudden, there is light and where there was only a glimmer of hope, your wildest dreams come true.

Contrary to popular beliefs, miracles don't simply spring out of the blue. They are the result of accumulated pressure applied to the confines of the existing paradigm to the critical point of failure of those confines.

In other words, we live within the scope of a certain reality that seems to be absolute; that nothing foreseeable can change. However if we apply enough pressure on that reality, as if by miracle, it will change and open the door to an entire different world.

Examples of the phenomenon abound but we just don't see them as such because they are every day occurrences. They are the miracles of life. An acorn is planted in the soil, the forces of nature are applied to that seed and it grows into a mighty oak tree.

That's only one example out of millions of miracles that happen around us every day. Had we never seen or heard about the acorn and the oak tree, would we believe it to be possible? Not by any stretch of the imagination.

Miracles are only phenomena that defy the existing logic in our present paradigms. To put it into others words, miracles a course in miracles what happen outside the framework of our present way of thinking. They appear as if by magic but it does not have to be so; we can provoke those miracles.

How that's done is dramatically illustrated by people who overcame incredible odds to accomplish what nobody thought was possible. They did what seemed to be impossible because they never gave up hoping, they never gave up believing and they never gave up trying.

They were sustained and motivated by faith. Not faith in a higher power but faith in what the mind and will of man can do when it is fully unleashed through undauntable courage and total commitment. We have resources that we don't even know we posses until they are set free by transcending the habitual patterns of thinking.

An example of that was seen in the death camps of the Holocaust during WWII. Women who had to rely on exchanging sexual favors with the guards to stay alive were seen to have their bodies literally blossom and become much more attractive in spite of all the deprivations and starvation regime that they had to endure.

Those were extreme examples of what the will and determination of the mind can do but they are perfect indicators of what is possible. We can literally perform miracle; so long as we have hope, that we believe and that we don't ever quit.

The scope of what we can and cannot do is determined by our beliefs. Henry Ford summed all up when he said, "Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you're right." Such is the influence and power of faith when applied to the will and courage of man.