Aldous Huxley once noted: “Contemplation is the condition of alert passivity, in which the soul lays itself open to the divine Ground within and without, the immanent and transcendent Godhead.” It’s as if by thinking about what you desire, you release a zillion little invisible yet alert worker bees who guide you in the act of creation. When you use your mind to align with the all-knowing “transcendent Godhead,” miracles begin to show up.

Here’s what recently happened to my daughter Serena: After graduating from the University of Miami, she and her friend Lauren were excited about creating a television show focusing on healthy eating, cooking, and general living geared toward their age group. We could all easily imagine Serena and Lauren hosting the show, and they went so far as to write a proposal and practice presenting the idea in a TV format. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to be able to find the right person or agency to represent them.

I asked Serena to contemplate herself surrounded by what she and Lauren wanted to attract, and to discard excuses such as, It will be difficult…It’s never happened before…It’s too big…or I’m too young. I reminded her to just keep contemplating, because that’s the highest form of activity. Neither of us anticipated the way this would work out. But to understand, you first need a bit of history.

About 15 years ago, my daughter’s best friend, Jesse Gold, and her family spent an evening with us in our summer apartment on Maui. That night, seven-year-old Serena had the entire gathering in tears one moment and laughing hysterically the next as she entertained us with her natural acting ability. Jesse’s father, Harry, even wrote an agreement saying in effect that when Serena came to Los Angeles to become an actress, he’d like to represent her. He signed this spirit-of-the-moment contract and gave it to my wife, who kept it—unbeknownst to Serena—all these years.

Back to the present. A decade and a half had passed, and I was running late for a meeting in Burbank to discuss a television show with some producers. The traffic was heavy, I had difficulty finding a parking spot, and it felt as if nothing was going right with respect to the timing of this appointment. As I finally entered the lobby of the building where the meeting was to take place, the elevator door began to close as I approached. Thankfully, however, someone held it open.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I headed to my meeting on the 14th floor. And that’s when I noticed that Harry Gold, who happens to be one of the top talent agents on the West Coast, was the person who was holding the elevator door open for me! Although we hadn’t seen each other in years, Harry insisted that I stop to say hello to Jesse, who was working part-time in a restaurant in that same building while she pursued her career. We all hugged, laughed, and marveled at the set of circumstances that brought Harry and me together at that moment, in that elevator. And when I called Serena’s mom later, she pulled out that little contract written in jest some 15 years ago.

By contemplating herself surrounded by the conditions she wished to attract, I believe that my daughter created an alignment that caused me to arrive late for that appointment at precisely the right moment that Harry could hold the elevator for me. Coincidence? Maybe. But what a beautiful coincidence. So many things had to appear to go wrong in order for all of this to manifest. Serena has now been able to welcome an opportunity for producing her television show, with representation for her idea by someone who agreed to do so in writing when she was a seven-year-old…someone who was as close to her as her own family was when she was a little girl.

I’m not the least bit concerned about the outcome of Serena’s adventure. The point is that when you engage in the act of active contemplation, you set in motion a powerful force—you allow yourself to be lived by the great universal mind or Tao. I have no doubt that as my daughter continues her contemplative inner work, eschewing any excuse patterns and keeping all of her mental activity on what she intends to manifest, she’ll see this kind of occurrence showing up regularly. What she does with it and where it will go are all wrapped up in what she continues to contemplate.