(Paper
#0299-11)Many students study "the Course," but do not really understand what a miracle is. The miracle is the Love of God that stands at the door of our mind, patiently and eternally waiting to be let in. It is there as Reality's Totality, has always been there and forever will be. That LOVE is what God Is and What We are as well. It is the entirety of ALL. Outside of IT is nothing. Inside IT is Everything That Is. But It can not come in to us until we open our door. What keeps us from opening our door is that we have piled up mountains of darknesses, beliefs, opinions, judgements, and hatred which block that door.
Therefore, for us to want to open our door, we first must want to remove those blocks to the awareness of love's presence. This becomes our intention and our purpose. Once we have done that, with the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit within our mind, we have to have the willingness to open our door and let God's Love in. And that's all we have to do. To do more would once again be to use our judgement as to what should enter. Our darkness is our unwillingness to open the door. Once open, the Holy Spirit will bring us the understanding of God's Love. We do not do it.
As the Love of God is everything that IS in Reality, it will give us everything we think we have lost and restore our mind to the Oneness of God's Kingdom.
The flow of God's Love, which is the miracle, comes to us for us, and for us to pass on to our brothers. That is why miracles are natural and happen without our conscious effort. In actuality the miracle is but ONE, as God's Love is ONE, but here in the experience of our world, miracles seem like many to suit the many problems we think we have.
The miracle begins for us with our acceptance of the Atonement, the realization of what and where we truly are. This change of mind opens our door and allows the miracle of God's Love to flow in to us. This then puts us in a position to pass it on to our brothers when they are ready to receive it, and finally back to God, thus re-establishing the flow of His Love back to Him, which has been His Will all along and allows Him to experience His Completeness. Our acceptance of our Atonement allows our door to open, thus putting us in a state of "miracle readiness." Remember, our mind is like a refrigerator; the light doesn't come on until the door is opened.
Miracles seem to us to come into our minds spasmodically, sometimes with periods of nothingness in between. This is because of our unwillingness to keep our door open continuously as we retreat again into some corner of our special darkness. However, once we have experienced the process and have seen it work, it is easier to do the next time.
The miracle is not accepted just once for all time, but appears to come to us a bit at a time as we allow its coming. We do not have to wait until we have accumulated the totality of God's Love before we can pass it on; we can pass each portion, each miracle, as we experience it. Actually, we are not the one passing it on, as we offer what we have received to our Holy Spirit for Him to pass on. We may decide to offer the miracle we received to some particular brother whom we judge as asking and worthy of receiving it. However, only Holy Spirit can say if the time is right. He may save the love we offer until the time and condition is right for its transmittal. That is not our concern -- it is His. But once having sent our miracle of love to another, we feel its benefit and thereby are assured that we received it and have it forever. In the giving, is the realization of our having received it. Thus ACIM© says that giving and receiving are the same.
As we begin to study ACIM©, we soon realize that it has two aspects. First is the intellectual description of its theology, principles and theory. We are told early and often about cause and effect; how we have gotten to where we seem to be, what has apparently happened and how we can return to reality. We learn about projection and extension, special and holy relationships, and of acceptance and the guidance of Holy Spirit in our lives. This is as embodied in the TEXT.
Once we understand where we are intellectually, even if we can't yet accept it as truth, we begin exercises to experience ACIM© in our lives. It takes us where we are and begins to gently show us the error in our thinking. Such is the purpose and direction of the WORKBOOK. Its road back takes us through a process of re-evaluation of everything we ever thought we knew or believed, to a concept of LIFE outside our world, body and ego thought system. The WORKBOOK guides us through living experience what we learned in the TEXT as concept.
We hear its concepts, incredible at first, then gradually accepted
a bit as we go on. ACIM© describes the stages of changing our
mind as we advance in its study as:-
1. "at first to be but said and then repeated many times;"
2. "and next to be accepted as but partly true, with many reservations."
3. "Then to be considered seriously more and more,"
4. "and finally accepted as the truth."
(from Lesson 284, Workbook)
Through our fog of disbelief and misunderstanding the truth about
the Totality of God, and our Self as part of His Mind, begins to seep through
to us. We eventually get to a place in our mind where we can intellectually
accept the fact of our Atonement, and our door opens. This allows
Holy Spirit to guide in the miracle, which is God's Love. Our process
of forgiveness and awakening had started. We often do not realize,
on a conscious level, it has started, but as awarenesses of synchronicity
and love's effects are noticed, we may first become startled or mystified.
After awhile, it all starts to add together and we are aware of God's miracles
working in our lives. This is our proof, and we realize that we have
received a miracle and passed it on. As we open more and more to
God's truth and Love, His miracles come in faster and faster underlining
the certainty of our Atonement and our true Identity as His Son.
We do not originate the miracles, but we do pass them on as directed as
a miracle worker and a teacher of God.
Therefore, we must use descriptions suited to our understanding and say, "In the beginning God IS." We need a beginning point; He knows no beginning, everything being ONE and eternal. God is Truth. It is the abstract Idea of Perfect ONENESS. There is nothing else.
However, for us to understand, ACIM© defines God as Truth. Truth in motion becomes Love. Love must extend itself to meet its own description. So God extended Himself and created us as the Christ, His One Son, which is every living thing. It is not just living things as we know them in our little world, but the total of all God's Thoughts. If God thought It, It is. If He didn't, it isn't.
So there we are, in Heaven as His Created Son. His Will,
His directive, His intention is to have us as co-creators of Love and Truth
in Heaven, creating with Him. But He wants us to be co-creators by
our choice. Therefore, He gave us the freedom to examine our Self.
But since We and God and Heaven are all ONE, there is no where to examine
Us from, and no one indeed to examine.
Therefore, it became necessary for us to step outside of our Self to
enable our examination. This is the DIVINE DICHOTOMY. We have
stepped away, yet are still ONE and have never moved. This is what
has been referred to as our perceived separation, our dream, the illusion,
and is what we are experiencing in our separated mind, in our body and
in our world. We have become so enamoured of the dream we are having,
we don't want to leave it and step back Home. The hardest thing we
will ever have to do is to say NO to the dream!
It now seems all so real, we can't remember Heaven and have even forgotten how to get there. God knew this might happen so has sent His Holy Spirit in each of our minds to remember for us and lead us Home, when we are ready. Jesus, being the personification of Holy Spirit in our world, has given us his book "A Course In Miracles©" as our road map home.
To put all this in scientific terms, we can say that God is Pure and Total ENERGY. Energy is expressed as E. When we put that Energy in motion, It becomes E-motion. And that E-motion is Love. That Energy has a perfect and total vibration or frequency. As we seemed to descend further and further away from the vibration of Truth, also called ONENESS, BEING, and even "Nirvana," the vibration slowed down and became thought. We began to think about other things and enjoy our journey. Slowing the vibration further, we became light, and experienced ourselves as beings of light. Slowing still further we came into the much denser vibration of matter and form. Then something began to happen. We really missed our Self as the Christ, God our Father, and Heaven. We seemed trapped and had forgotten we still had Holy Spirit to ask to remind us of our way home. Our elder brother, Jesus, saw our predicament. He was the first to "remember" who he was and to ask Holy Spirit for guidance. Once Jesus became "fully realized," as we all will eventually, he saw his way, took it, and left his example for us to follow.
Much talk these days uses the term "Christ" when they really mean "Jesus." They say Palestine is where "Christ" lived, meaning where Jesus walked upon the earth and spoke his teachings. Christ never came into our world, except in the spirit mind of each one of us, including Jesus. It would be much easier to learn truth if we were to correct our nomenclature. Jesus is not God or Christ any more than all of us are. It is just that he has already "fully realized" what he is, which is still only potential in us.
Miracles are witness to God's Love sent to us in our perceived
separated state. They are not necessary in Heaven, for then we have
returned to ONENESS and the Love that they are.
So, we will accept the Atonement for ourself, our only responsibility
while here, and allow the miracles to pass through us to our brothers and
back to God.
In order to accept Atonement, it is necessary for us to change
our perception from horizontal thinking to vertical thinking. In
this way, we withdraw our guilt feeling from the past and our fear feelings
about the future back into our "NOW" mind where they all started.
Then, with the help of Holy Spirit, we turn our thinking upwards above
our world, bodies and ego thoughts and look down on our "battlefield" with
the vision of Christ. Now we see clearly which allows us to forgive
all that we thought was so, and extend the miracle of God's Love to all
our brothers. Our door is open at last, and miracles begin to flow
in.
When our Wheel of Life rolls out, we experience ourself as going through a series of stages on our road of spiritual awakening back to our eternal state of Perfect Being in the Oneness where we are eternally, as created by God. These stages are:-
1. BEING - (Knowing) - Our eternal state in the Oneness of NOW.
2. THINK - (the 1st Movement)
3. CREATE - (Doing)
4. BECOME - (Acceptance)
5. EXPRESS - (Proclamation)
6. EXPERIENCE - (Demonstration)
- BE A COG IN THE WHEEL OF LIFE -
and back again to BEING when the Wheel is complete and we realize
the Perfection of our SELF as a Child of God in the Oneness of the Real
World.