There is a lot of resistance to miracles in the Course community

When I first started with A Course in Miracles, my main impression came from the setup given by The Disappearance of the Universe. The focus was on a corrective form of forgiveness. There wasn't a whole lot of talk about actual miracles.

As I started to read ACIM itself, it was so intense and inspiring and profound that I quickly became absorbed in it and overwhelmed by it, such that it was more a case of just trying to process what was being said. Again I didn't really think much about actual miracles because so much of the focus was on the activities of the ego and atonement and forgiveness and so on. And then the workbook lessons, didn't seem to allude to miracles as such but more to unusual training exercises and lofty ideas that were difficult to accept.

It's taken a number of years, I've been doing this for maybe 13 or more years now, to come around to realizing that there is actually an underlying current of miracle-working in the Course which is perhaps not entirely clear and obvious. But looking back, you'd think it would be obvious. I mean, its called a course in miracles, meaning, a course in how miracles work and how to perform them. You'd think you'd end up as a miracle worker if you truly learn it.

And then there are the 50-ish miracle principles, which outline various properties of miracles and yet which, I feel, are grossly misunderstood by many and largely glossed over. Sort of, oh yeah, by the way, early on there were some principles that we read and didn't really get so we just kept reading. And let's not also forget the way FIP edited out some valuable key insights and information about miracle-working on a daily basis.

Somewhere among this huge minefield of metaphysics and extreme spirituality and radical ideas and forgiveness and undoing and all this... somewhere in all this there are miracles. You know, like the ability to do anything? The ability to heal the sick and raise the dead, just as Jesus actually says in the Course itself? The ability to be literally sustained by the love of God all day every day ie that God's power can be used to provide everything you need - protection, food, water, housing, money, whatever. Complete independence from the ego's laws of chaos or dependency on anything outside of you to exist. The total transcendence of the body. This is all quite obscure to most Course students or is simply believed to be too far-fetched and waaaay out there to be actually possible.

You'd think this wasn't a Course in Miracles but a course in mental somersaults, or a course in forgiving, or a course in aspiring to awaken, or a course in metaphysics, or a course in undoing the ego etc... well it's a course in MIRACLES. At almost every ACIM retreat, at least judging by the videos I've seen and the few I've been to, there is very little mention of forgiveness, yet alone mention of or demonstration of miracles. Even at the main ACIM conference it seems, from what I can tell, there is very little if anything in the way of anything to do with miracles. What's going on here? Is it a course in not knowing what the heck the Course is about or what it's leading to or what it's enabling us to do? The 4th word in the book title... is "miracles".

And then those who do think about the miracles, brush it off as just, you know, some shift in perception or some inner personal correction or some mental somersault or some undoing of your own ego or whatever.... with barely any interest in or concern about how we treat other people, how loving we are, how joined we are with God and Christ... and yup, pretty much no miracles. And if there's one other thing that is barely ever mentioned at any of these conferences or retreats or courses, it's God. And rarely Holy Spirit, for that matter. It's like we're all studying inside a little intellectual box and we barely even grasp the magnitude and potential of what Jesus is trying to teach us.

There's a lot of focus on inner peace, but not outer peace. There's a lot of focus on 'becoming spiritual' but not BEING spiritual. There's a lot of focus on removing the ego from our own mind but not from our brothers. There's a lot of focus on what 'I' - spiritualized ego self I - is going to get out of this course and very little on how our heart is meant to open to and help and support and teach and guide and heal others. There isn't very much sharing. There isn't very much love being shared. Just a whole lot of useless 'study' and keeping to ourselves. Where is the heart? Where is the love? Where are the miracles that love expresses?

Even within the ACIM community, I find that as I express these more radical aspects of the course, large numbers of people reject it. They quote back to me what they think the course is saying which always pretty much dumbs down and resists and rejects anything too radical. It keeps it all in a nice little tidy private ego-world package which doesn't rock the boat and doesn't step out into the world as a leader or as a radical teacher who knows the truth. A Course in Miracles is EXTREMELY RADICAL. We need to become very very open minded about what it's trying to teach us and what Jesus would have us do. We're meant to be miracle workers, not circus performers.