“Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance, and limits of any kind.”
1. FORGIVENESS
“Before the glorious radiance of the kingdom, guilt melts away, and transformed into kindness will nevermore be what it was.”
“Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love.” They reflect a shift in how we think, releasing the power of the mind to the processes of healing and correction.
This healing takes many forms. Sometimes a miracle is a change in material conditions, such as physical healing. At other times, it is a psychological or emotional change. It is a shift not so much in an objective situation—although that often occurs—as it is a shift in how we perceive a situation. What changes, primarily, is how we hold an experience in our minds—how we experience the experience.
The world of the human storyline, of all our concentration on behavior and all the things that occur outside us, is a world of illusion. It’s a veil in front of a more real world, a collective dream. A miracle is not a rearrangement of the figures in our dream. A miracle is our awakening from it.
In asking for miracles, we are seeking a practical goal: a return to inner peace. We’re not asking for something outside us to change, but for something inside us to change. We’re looking for a softer orientation to life.
Old Newtonian physics claimed that things have an objective reality separate from our perception of them. Quantum physics, and particularly Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, reveal that, as our perception of an object changes, the object itself literally changes. The science of religion is actually the science of consciousness, because ultimately all creation is expressed through the mind. Thus, as A Course in Miracles says, our greatest tool for changing the world is our capacity to ‘change our mind about the world.’
Because thought is the creative level of things, changing our minds is the ultimate personal empowerment. Although it is a human decision to choose love instead of fear, the radical shift that this produces in every dimension of our lives is a gift from God. Miracles are an ‘intercession on behalf of our holiness,’ from a thought system beyond our own. In the presence of love, the laws that govern the normal state of affairs are transcended. Thought that is no longer limited, brings experience that is no longer limited.
We are heir to the laws that govern the world we believe in. If we think of ourselves as beings of this world, then the laws of scarcity and death, which rule this world, will rule us. If we think of ourselves as children of God, whose real home lies in a realm of awareness beyond this world, then we will find we are “under no laws but God’s.”
Our self-perception determines our behavior. If we think we’re small, limited, inadequate creatures, then we tend to behave that way, and the energy we radiate reflects those thoughts no matter what we do. If we think we’re magnificent creatures with an infinite abundance of love and power to give, then we tend to behave that way. Once again, the energy around us reflects our state of awareness.
‘Miracles themselves are not to be consciously directed.’ They occur as involuntary effects of a loving personality, an invisible force that emanates from someone whose conscious intention is to give and receive love. As we relinquish the fears that block the love within us, we become God’s instruments. We become His miracle workers.
God, as love, is constantly expanding, flourishing and creating new patterns for the expression and attainment of joy. When our minds, through focus on love, are allowed to be open vessels through which God expresses, our lives become the canvases for the expression of that joy. That’s the meaning of our lives. We are here as physical representations of a divine principle. To say that we’re on the earth to serve God, means that we’re on the earth to love.
We weren’t just randomly thrown onto a sea of rocks. We have a mission—to save the world through the power of love. The world needs healing desperately, like a bird with a broken wing. People know this, and millions have prayed.
God heard us. He sent help. He sent you.
To become a miracle worker means to take part in a spiritual underground that’s revitalizing the world, participating in a revolution of the world’s values at the deepest possible level. That doesn’t mean you announce this to anyone. A member of the French underground didn’t walk up to a German officer occupying Paris and say, “Hi, I’m Jacques. French Resistance.” Similarly, you don’t tell people who would have no idea what you’re talking about, “I’m changed. I’m working for God now. He sent me to heal things. The world’s about to shift big time.” Miracle workers learn to keep their own counsel. Something that’s important to know about spiritual wisdom is that, when spoken at the wrong time, in the wrong place, or to the wrong person, the one who speaks sounds more like a fool than a wise one.
The Course tells us of God’s plan for the salvation of the world, called ‘the plan of the teachers of God.’ The plan calls for God’s teachers to heal the world through the power of love. This teaching has very little to do with verbal communication, and everything to do with a quality of human energy. “To teach is to demonstrate.” A teacher of God is anyone who chooses to be one. “They come from all over the world. They come from all religions and from no religion. They are the ones who have answered.” The adage that “many are called but few are chosen” means that ‘everyone is called, but few care to listen.’ God’s call is universal, going out to every mind in every moment. Not everyone, however, chooses to heed the call of his own heart. As all of us are only too aware, the loud and frantic voices of the outer world easily drown out the small still loving voice within.
Our job as a teacher of God, should we choose to accept it, is to constantly seek a greater capacity for love and forgiveness within ourselves. We do this through a “selective remembering,” a conscious decision to remember only loving thoughts and let go of any fearful ones. This is the meaning of forgiveness. Forgiveness is a major cornerstone of A Course in Miracles philosophy. Like many of the traditional terms used in the Course, it is used in a very nontraditional way.
Traditionally, we think of forgiveness as something we are to do when we see guilt in someone. In the Course, however, we’re taught that it’s our function to remember that there is no guilt in anyone, because only love is real. It is our function to see through the illusion of guilt, to the innocence that lies beyond. “To forgive is merely to remember only the loving thoughts you gave in the past, and those that were given you. All the rest must be forgotten.” We are asked to extend our perception beyond the errors that our physical perceptions reveal to us—what someone did, what someone said—to the holiness within them that only our heart reveals. Actually, then, there is nothing to forgive. The traditional notion of forgiveness—what The Song of Prayer calls “forgiveness-to-destroy”—is then an act of judgment. It is the arrogance of someone who sees themselves as better than someone else, or perhaps equally as sinful, which is still a misperception and the arrogance of the ego.
Since all minds are connected, then the correction of anyone’s perception is on some level a healing of the entire racial mind. The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world. Angry people cannot create a peaceful planet. It amuses me to think how angry I used to get when people wouldn’t sign my peace petitions.
Forgiveness is a full time job, and sometimes very difficult. Few of us always succeed, yet making the effort is our most noble calling. It is the world’s only real chance to begin again. A radical forgiveness is a complete letting go of the past, in any personal relationship, as well as in any collective drama.
2. LIVING IN THE PRESENT
“All your past except its beauty is gone, and nothing is left but a blessing.”
God exists in eternity. The only point where eternity meets time is in the present. “The present is the only time there is.” A miracle is a shift in thinking from what we might have done in the past or should be doing in the future, to what we feel free to do right here, right now. A miracle is a release from internal bondage. Our capacity for brilliance is equal to our capacity to forget the past and forget the future. That’s why little children are brilliant. They don’t remember the past, and they don’t relate to the future. Be us as little children, that the world might finally grow up.
One of the exercises in the Course Workbook reads, “The past is over. It can touch me not.” Forgiving the past is an important step in allowing ourselves the experience of miracles. The only meaning of anything in our past is that it got us here, and should be honored as such. All that is real in our past is the love we gave and the love we received. Everything else is an illusion. The past is merely a thought we have. It is literally all in our minds. The Course teaches, “Give the past to Him Who can change your mind about it for you.” To surrender the past to the Holy Spirit is to ask that only loving, helpful thoughts about it remain in our minds, and all the rest be let go.
What we are left with then is the present, the only time where miracles happen. ‘We place the past and the future as well into the hands of God.’ The biblical statement that “time shall be no more” means that we will one day live fully in the present, without obsessing about past or future.
The universe provides us with a clean slate in every moment; God’s creation holds nothing against us. Our problem is that we don’t believe this. Let us ask forgiveness, not of ‘God who has never condemned us,’ but of ourselves, for all we think we did and did not do. Let us give ourselves permission to begin again.
We all encounter situations in our lives where we wish we hadn’t done something we did, or wish we had done something we didn’t. They’re those moments in our lives, be they yesterday or several years ago, that make us cringe to think about. One of the most freeing techniques provided us in A Course in Miracles is a prayer on of the Text, in which we instruct the universe to undo our errors:
“…the first step in the undoing is to recognize that you actively decided wrongly, but can as actively decide otherwise. Be very firm with yourself in this, and keep yourself fully aware that the undoing process, which does not come from you, is nevertheless within you because God placed it there. Your part is merely to return your thinking to the point at which the error was made, and give it over to the Atonement in peace. Say this to yourself as sincerely as you can, remembering that the Holy Spirit will respond fully to your slightest invitation:
I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace.
I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.
I want to decide otherwise, because I want to be at peace.
I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him.
I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me.
And that’s it! It’s a course in miracles, not a course in moving the furniture. ‘Miracles reverse physical laws. Time and space are under His command.’
As for the future, the Course points out that there is no way for us to know what’s going to happen tomorrow, or the next day, or five years from now. Only the ego speculates about tomorrow. In Heaven, ‘we place our future in the hands of God.’ The Holy Spirit returns our minds to total faith and trust, that should we live with fully open hearts today, tomorrow will take care of itself. As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Be ye not anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow shall be anxious for itself.”
‘The ego bases its perception of reality on what has happened in the past, carries those perceptions into the present and thus creates a future like the past.’ If we felt that we were lacking in our past, our thoughts about the future are based on those perceptions. We then enter the present in an effort to compensate for the past. Since that perception is our core belief, we recreate its conditions in the future. “Past, present and future are not continuous, unless you force continuity upon them.” In the present, we have the opportunity to break the continuity of the past and future by asking the Holy Spirit to intervene. This is the miracle. We want a new life, a new beginning. We desire a life untainted by any darkness of the past, and being ‘entitled to miracles,’ we are entitled to that full release. This is what it means to say that Jesus washes us clean of our sins. He completely removes all loveless thoughts. We relinquish any thoughts of judgment, of anyone or anything, that hold us to the past. We relinquish any thoughts of attachment that keep us grasping at the future.
The world of the ego is a world of constant changes, ups and downs, darkness and light. Heaven is a realm of constant peace because it is an awareness of a reality that lies beyond change. “And Heaven will not change, for birth into the holy present is salvation from change.”
The world that the Holy Spirit reveals to us is a world that lies beyond this world, a world revealed to us through a different perception. We die to one world in order to be born into another. “To be born again is to let the past go, and look without condemnation upon the present.” The world of time is not the real world, and the world of eternity is our real home. We are on our way there. We are pregnant with possibilities.
3. RESURRECTION
“Your resurrection is your awakening.”
The purpose of our lives is to give birth to the best which is within us.
The Christ comes as a little child because the symbol of the newborn infant is the symbol of someone whose innocence is unmarred by past history or guilt. The Christ child within us has no history. It is the symbol of a person who is given the chance to begin again. The only way to heal the wounds of the past, ultimately, is to forgive them and let them go. The miracle worker sees that his purpose in life is to be used in the service of the forgiveness of mankind—to awaken us from our collective sleep.
The Course tells us: “The Bible says that a deep sleep fell upon Adam, and nowhere is there reference to his waking up.” So far, there has been no “comprehensive reawakening or rebirth.” We can all contribute to a global rebirth to the extent that we allow ourselves to be awakened from our own personal dream of separation and guilt, to release our own past and accept a new life in the present. It is only through our own personal awakening that the world can be awakened. We cannot give what we don’t have.
We’re all assigned a piece of the garden, a corner of the universe that is ours to transform. Our corner of the universe is our own life—our relationships, our homes, our work, our current circumstances—exactly as they are. Every situation we find ourselves in is an opportunity, perfectly planned by the Holy Spirit, to teach love instead of fear. Whatever energy system we find ourselves a part of, it’s our job to heal it—to purify the thought forms by purifying our own. It’s never really a circumstance that needs to change—it’s we who need to change. The prayer isn’t for God to change our lives, but rather for Him to change us.
That’s the greatest miracle, and ultimately the only one: that you awaken from the dream of separation and become a different kind of person. People are constantly concerning themselves with what they do: have I achieved enough, written the greatest screenplay, formed the most powerful company? But the world will not be saved by another great novel, great movie, or great business venture. It will only be saved by the appearance of great people.
A glass vase is meant to hold water. If more water is poured into the vase than its volume can contain, then the vase will shatter. So it is with our personalities. The power of God, particularly at this time, is pouring into us at rapid pace and high velocity. If our vessel, our vehicle—our human channel—is not prepared properly through devotion and deep reverence for life, then the very power that is meant to save us begins to destroy us. Our creativity, rather than making us personally powerful, then makes us hysterical. That is why creative power—God within us—is experienced as a double-edged sword: if received with grace, it blesses us; if received without grace, it drives us insane. This is one of the reasons why so many creative people have turned to a destructive use of drugs: to actually dull the experience of the reception of God’s power rather than enhance it. God’s power coming into us, in a culture that had no name for that power or acknowledgment of genuine spiritual experience, so frightened us that we ran to drugs or alcohol to avoid feeling what was really happening. It was only when we were stoned that we had the courage to claim our own experience.
“Miracles are everyone’s right,” says A Course in Miracles, “but purification is necessary first.” Impurities—mental or chemical—pollute the system and desecrate the altar within. Our vehicle then can’t handle the experience of God. The waters of spirit rush into us, but the vase begins to crack. It’s not the flow of power we have to work on—God’s love is already pouring in as fast as we can handle it—but the preparedness with which we receive it.
A Course in Miracles likens us to people in a very bright room who have their fingers in front of their eyes, complaining that it’s dark in here. The light has come but we don’t see it. We don’t realize that the present is always a chance to begin again, a light-filled moment. We respond to light as if it were darkness, and so the light turns to dark. Sometimes it is only in retrospect that we can see that we were given another chance at life, a new relationship or whatever, but because we were too busy reacting to the past, we missed the opportunity at something radically new.
When we’re truly honest with ourselves, our problem is not that opportunities for success haven’t appeared. God is always expanding our possibilities. We are given plenty of opportunities, but we tend to undermine them. Our conflicted energies sabotage everything. To ask for another relationship, or another job, is not particularly helpful if we’re going to show up in the new situation exactly as we showed up in the last one. Until we’re healed of our internal demons, our fearful mental habits, we will turn every situation into the same painful drama as the one before. Everything we do is infused with the energy with which we do it. If we’re frantic, life will be frantic. If we’re peaceful, life will be peaceful. And so our goal in any situation becomes inner peace. Our internal state determines our experience of our lives; our experiences do not determine our internal state.
The term crucifixion means the energy pattern of fear. It represents the limited, negative thinking of the ego, and how it always seeks to limit, contradict or invalidate love. The term resurrection means the energy pattern of love, which transcends fear by replacing it. A miracle worker’s function is forgiveness. In performing our function, we become channels for resurrection.
God and man are the ultimate creative team. God is like electricity. A house can be wired for it, but if there aren’t any light fixtures, what good does that do? If God is seen as electricity, then we are His lamps. It doesn’t matter the size of the lamp, or its shape, or design. All that matters is that it gets plugged in. It doesn’t matter who we are, or what our gifts are. All that matters is that we are willing to be used in His service. Our willingness, our conviction, give us a miraculous power. The servants of God bear the imprint of their Master.
Lamps without electricity cast no light, and electricity without lamps casts no light either. Together, however, they cast out all darkness.
4. COSMIC ADULTHOOD
“Child of God, you were created to create the good, the beautiful and the holy.”
As we become purer channels for God’s light, we develop an appetite for the sweetness that is possible in this world. A miracle worker is not geared toward fighting the world that is, but toward creating the world that could be.
Just treating the symptom of a problem isn’t really treating it. Take nuclear bombs, for example. If we all work hard, sign enough petitions and elect new officials, then we can ban the bomb. But if we don’t get rid of the hatred in our hearts, what good will that do, ultimately? Our children or our children’s children will manufacture a destructive force more powerful than the bomb, if they are still carrying within them enough fear and conflict.
Everything in the physical universe becomes part of the journey into fear, or the journey back to love, depending on how it’s used by the mind. What we devote to love, is used for love’s purposes. So we work within the worldly illusion, politically, socially, environmentally, etc., but we recognize that the real transformation of the world comes not from what we’re doing, but from the consciousness with which we’re doing it. We’re actually just buying time while the real transformation of global energies has a chance to kick in.
The miracle worker’s purpose is spiritually grand, not personally grandiose. The high cosmic drama is not your career, your money, or any of your worldly experiences. Your career is certainly important, as is your money, your talent, your energy, and your personal relationships. But they’re important only to the extent that they are devoted to God to use for His purposes. When we outgrow our immature preoccupation with the small self, we transcend our selfishness and become cosmically mature.
Until we find that cosmic maturity, we’re childish. We’re worrying about our car payments, our career advancements, our plastic surgery, our petty hurts, while political situations careen towards disaster and the hole in the ozone looks worse every day. Childishness is when we’re so preoccupied with things that ultimately don’t matter, that we lose our essential connection with things that do.
There’s a difference between childish and childlike. Childlike implies spirituality, as in tenderness, and a profound not-knowing that makes us open to new impressions. Childlike is when see ourselves as children in the arms of God. We learn to step back and let Him lead the way.
God isn’t separate from us, because He’s the love inside our minds. Every problem, inside and out, is due to separation from love on someone’s part. Thirty-five thousand people a day die of hunger on earth, and there’s no dearth of food. The question is not, “What kind of God would let children starve?” but rather, “What kind of people let children starve?” A miracle worker returns the world to God by making a conscious change to a more loving way of life. Waiting with cynical resignation for the world’s collapse makes us part of the problem, not the answer. We must consciously recognize that, for God, “there is no order of difficulty in miracles.” Love heals all wounds. No problem is too small for God’s attention, or too big for Him to handle.
Every system in the world—socially, politically, economically, biologically—is beginning to crumble under the weight of our own cruelty. Without miracles, it could be argued that the gig is up, that it’s already too late to save the world. Many people are convinced that the world is headed for an inevitable major collapse. Any thinking person knows that the world is in many ways moving in a downward spiral, and an object continues to move in whatever direction it’s currently headed. Only the application of a stronger counterforce can change its direction. Miracles are that counterforce. When love reaches a critical mass, when enough people become miracle-minded, the world will experience a radical shift.
This is the eleventh hour. The Course tells us that it’s not up to us what we learn, but only whether we learn through joy or through pain. We will learn to love one another, but whether we learn it painfully or peacefully is entirely up to us. If we continue in our dark ways and we manifest nuclear war, then even if there are only five people left on the planet at the end of the conflagration, those five people will have gotten the point. They would surely look at one another and say, “Let’s try to get along.” But we can bypass the scenario of a nuclear Armageddon if we so desire. Most of us have already suffered our own personal Armageddons. There’s no need to go through the whole thing again collectively. We can get the point later, or we can get the point now. Knowing that we have a choice is a genuinely adult understanding of the world.
After Dorothy had gone through her whole dramatic journey to Oz, the good witch told her that all she had had to do was click her heels together three times and say, “I want to go home,” “I want to go home,” “I want to go home.” There had been no need for the long traipse down the yellow brick road. Dorothy, who I’m sure was outraged, said, “Why didn’t you tell me that?” The witch replied: “You wouldn’t have believed me!”
In ancient Greek tragedies, there’s a common device called “Deus ex machina.” The plot builds up to a disastrous climax, and just when it looks as though all hope is lost, a god appears and saves the day. That’s an important piece of archetypal information. At the last moment, when things look the worst, God does tend to appear. Not because he has a sadistic sense of humor, waiting until we’re totally desperate before showing us his muscle. He takes so long because it’s not until then that we bother to think about Him. All this time, we thought we were waiting for Him. Little did we know, He was waiting for us.
5. REBIRTH
“This is what is meant by ‘The meek shall inherit the earth’: They will literally take it over because of their strength.”
It is time to fulfill our purpose, to live on the earth and think only the thoughts of Heaven. ‘Thus shall Heaven and Earth become as one. They will no longer exist as two separate states.’
There are times when miraculous thinking is not easy, because our mental habit patterns are permeated with fear. When that’s the case—when our anger, jealousy or hurt seem stuck to our hearts and we can’t let them go—how do we work miracles then? By asking the Holy Spirit to help us.
The Course tells us that we can do many things, but one thing we can never do is call on the Holy Spirit in vain. We are told that ‘we don’t ask God for too much; in fact, we ask for too little.’ Whenever we feel lost, or insane, or afraid, all we have to do is ask for His help. The help might not come in the form we expected, or even thought we desired, but it will come, and we will recognize it by how we feel. In spite of everything, we will feel at peace.
We think there are different categories of life, such as money, health, relationships, and then, for some of us, another category called “spiritual life.” But only the ego categorizes. There is really only one drama going on in life: our walk away from God, and our walk back. We simply reenact the one drama in different ways.
The Course says ‘we think we have many different problems, but we only have one.’ Denying love is the only problem, and embracing it is the only answer. Love heals all of our relationships—to money, the body, work, sex, death, ourselves, and one another. Through the miraculous power of pure love, we let go our past history in any area and begin again.
If we treat miraculous principles like toys, they will be like toys in our lives. But if we treat them like the power of the universe, then such will they be for us. The past is over. It doesn’t matter who we are, where we came from, what Mommy said, what Daddy did, what mistakes we made, what diseases we have, or how depressed we feel. The future can be reprogrammed in this moment. We don’t need another seminar, another degree, another lifetime, or anyone’s approval in order for this to happen. All we have to do is ask for a miracle and allow it to happen, not resist it. There can be a new beginning, a life unlike the past. Our relationships shall be made new. Our careers shall be made new. Our bodies shall be made new. Our planet shall be made new. So shall the will of God be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Not later, but now. Not elsewhere, but here. Not through pain, but through peace. So be it. Amen.