One of my favorite quotes from Buddhism is, “Expectations lead to all suffering.” It’s so simple and yet so profound.
Having worked with my own chronic pain from a young age, and with many others for decades, I’ve come to understand that expectations are what we have, and miracles are what we want.
In fact, we are told in our world that miracles are possible. Everything is presented as black and white: You get a diagnosis, and you find the cure.
More and more, we are learning that it is much more complicated than that. And yet, dangling that carrot of easy, fast, and over-and-out is always more appealing than chronic and long-term suffering.
Or is it?
That expectation—that there are answers that will come in the way we want them to—is often the problem.
You may get answers and miss them because you are looking for the cure and expecting that to be the answer.
The Miracle Behind the Miracle Ball Method
The miracle behind the Miracle Ball Method is real, but it doesn’t always fit the narrative of what people want.
We want to know: How did it happen?
For many of us, knowing how something happened feels like insurance that it won’t happen again. If we understand the cause, we believe we can control the outcome.
But as with drugs, modern medicine, and therapies, nothing can predict the future. And that is still very scary.
With all that modern medicine has discovered—which is considerable—human beings seem to stay ahead of the curve. They continue to experience pain, physically and emotionally. And sometimes medicine can seem like the Wizard of Oz: the man behind the curtain, rapidly providing answers that may never actually touch the problem.
If you have chronic pain, consider this:
It may end today—and then come back tomorrow.
It may seem like a miracle because you don’t even know why it ended.
You might immediately look for answers because you want to control your expectations. You want to know what happened so you can make sure it never happens again.
But maybe there is another miracle to explore:
The miracle that we don’t know everything.
The miracle that we can’t predict the future.
Living in that place of not knowing might actually make everything a little easier.
Chronic Pain Doesn’t Fit in a Fast World
We live in a very fast world, and chronic pain doesn’t fit in.
Chronic means something lingers. It continues. Sometimes it changes in ways that confuse us.
A fast world wants results. It wants cures. It wants facts.
I remember watching an interview with an older doctor who was teaching residents. His first statement, he said, always disappointed the young doctors who were about to begin their journey of healing.
He said:
“Medicine is more art than science.”
He remembered the collective sigh that always followed.
We want answers. We want to be able to give people answers. And we don’t want the answer to have any continued narrative.
We want the narrative to end.
The problem is solved.
My back pain is gone. I no longer have that injury. I’ll never get it again.
But is that how the body works?
More Art Than Science
So what does it mean when we say medicine is more art than science?
It makes me think about the name The Miracle Ball Method.
Many people have told me that the name doesn’t fully describe the method. They have said that the method is much deeper. I understand that. Sometimes, I think the name Miracle Ball Method sounds a bit superficial.
But is it?
The longer I’ve lived with that name, from the first book published in 2004, the more I realize it might have been the best name after all.
It kind of walks the line between the world we live in—a world that wants very fast answers—and the unknown.
The unknown connotes, for many people, a sense of weakness.
If I don’t know what this is, if I don’t have the exact answer, then I won’t be cured.
But that’s not what art is.
And that’s not what a miracle is.
A miracle is something beyond what we understand, so we immediately dismiss it as a cure.
Which is—and is not—accurate.
It may not be a cure because chronic pain is not necessarily a disease that needs to be cured.
But the Miracle Ball Method gets you in touch with the unknown. It gives you a sense that your body is not random. Your body knows what it is doing.
Instead of running away from what we don’t understand, maybe we should move toward it.
Maybe we should learn that the unknown is not a place to fear. It can be a place we trust.
When doing the Miracle Ball Method, the simple directions give you a little space to listen—to hear that small, unfamiliar voice of feedback from your body.
The longer you do it, the more directions you receive. And the more you listen, the more you begin to experience a dialogue. Your body responds. You feel something change. You receive feedback you could not have predicted.
There is a voice from the other side.
Not from outside of you, but from within.
And this is where the Miracle Ball Method challenges the narrative that the answer—or the cure—must always come from somewhere outside of you.
The Method doesn’t ask you to believe in a miracle.
It gives you a way to experience one.
And maybe, in that place, we can heal in ways that feel amazing—even if we don’t know exactly how it works.
Maybe that is the miracle behind the Miracle Ball Method.