This may not be explicitly pointed out anywhere in the course, but basically everything on "level 1" (reality) is permanently miraculous. God is miraculous. You are a miracle. Your creations are miraculous. The Holy Spirit is miraculous. Heaven is miraculous. Miraculousness is more than just the expression of miracles, it's a state of ego-law-breaking limitation-defying unlimitedness.
In this world, on level 2, we are able to bring miraculousness into the world to heal and correct. To shine a light in the darkness. This helps to resurrect the dead and restore life. Basically, as you remove blocks to the awareness of love's presence, you are removing blocks to your miraculousness - the state of miracle mindedness. The more blocks you remove, the MORE miraculous you become. Eventually there will be NO LIMIT to what you can do.
"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."
"Miracles are natural and should be happening all the time. When they aren't, something has gone wrong."
Jesus is more miraculous now than he even was on Earth.
It is totally natural to be totally miraculous all the time. Removing blocks unveils your naturally miraculous nature. Miracles become natural, effortless, automatic and constant. This is why they become like habits. This is also why miracles aren't about shifts in perception - the shifts merely uncover your miraculous nature and allow you to get in touch with love.
Love is an absolutely essential ingredient in being able to PERFORM a miracle. Miracles are expressions FROM love. Barriers against love have to be removed to allow the miraculous nature of love to express, to perform miracles. Which is why "miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first."
Jesus is saying that being miraculous is our natural inheritance and totally natural, WHEN we are being natural, and therefore we need to unlearn our unnatural attack thoughts, denials, blocks and fears, in order to get back in touch with the miraculous power we share with God.
Everything in the physical world is temporary. It comes, it lingers a while, and then it goes. This applies to absolutely everything. Bodies, worlds, animals, foods, cars, birds, insects, bicycles, trees, you name it. It seems to begin, it seems to remain as if promising to be there always, but then it leaves. Always, always, always it leaves.
However, the things of God are not temporary, they are permanent and eternal. They do not come and go, or last only a little while, or even a long while. They are forever. They have no beginning and no end. They are endless and immortal, incapable of fading away or decaying, of becoming sick or dissolving into death. Because what God has created cannot BE put asunder.
When you assign the properties of God's creations to the things of this world, you will have psychological sickness, because they will fail to be permanent. This includes valuing the things of this world as if they can be kept, being attached to the things of this world as if they are worth having, wanting the things of this world to never end, trying to keep bodies going for as long as possible, resisting change, not letting go of what inevitably must pass, and even attempting to stop death from happening.
Trying to make this world eternal is a mistake. Trying to give it reality and life, will and power, mind and value, is all a mistake. Every time you think of the things of this world as though they should last forever, believing they will not end, wishing they would always be there, or wanting them to never die, you are confusing immortality and mortality. Believing this world is your permanent home will tear you apart, because this world will tear apart.
Believing the things of the world must last forever, you will suffer psychologically. The things of this world WILL end, and the whole world will end, and everything you ever wanted to keep here will be destroyed. Even the things you spend a lifetime building. All the world's roads lead to death and destruction. It will leave, and it will take away, and all things physically will die. So when you're busy wanting them not to, you will be torn apart and experience loss and grief. The things you think you value will be destroyed, the bodies you think should live indefinitely will be mangled, and every treasure will be crushed.
You will suffer if you believe this world is anything BUT temporary, or anything but death. Trying to have it be permanent is to confuse it for heaven. It is not of God, it is not his kingdom, and it is not his will. Nor is it like him, having been made to be opposite to his kingdom in every way. All forms of attachment, resistance, ownership, specialness, valuing, believing real, trying to sustain, not wanting it to end, will make you suffer. Because it will end anyway and everything you thought you loved will be ripped away, leaving you empty and bereft, while you play with death.
The only way to alleviate this suffering is to cease the confusion of levels between heaven and earth. To stop trying to make this world last indefinitely. To stop trying to keep people in bodies. To stop valuing things that will die, and to stop resisting their going. You have to let the whole world go, because it is going to go whether you like it or not.
The only way to find salvation from a world that was dying before it was born, is to transcend the world and rise above it. To detach from it and recognize it as temporary and old and destined to die. The kingdom of God offers you everything that this world cannot give, and just as this world has disappointed you since time began, heaven has delighted you and will do so without end. Only the creations of God can satisfy you and bring lasting happiness.
Bodily relationships will come and go. You'll think they'll last forever and then they will end and you will be upset because you wanted it to last. All your collections and objects and toys will be destroyed. Everything you eat will turn to shit, if you manage to eat it before it rots. All places through all seasons will destroy everything they contain. Even entire solar systems and galaxies will be swallowed up and exploded apart.
Nothing in this world will last forever. The sooner this can be accepted and sink deeply within, such that you become willing to release it and let it all go, the sooner you will find happiness and peace.
"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it."
"The world you see is merciless indeed, unstable, cruel, unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate. It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while. No lasting love is found, for none is here. This is the world of time, where all things end."
"You who feel threatened by this changing world, its twists of fortune and its bitter jests, its brief relationships and all the "gifts" it merely lends to take away again, attend this lesson well. The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus."
"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."
Many ACIM folks appear to struggle between two sort of 'camps', in regards to whether to change the world or not.
There are many passages and quotable concepts in the Course which could be used to back up either viewpoint.
I think though the main reason people struggle with this is because the EGO has tremendous difficulty understanding anything outside of its backwards perspective.
For example, to the ego, control brings you freedom. It says that if you control things more, you'll be able to prevent all the things you don't want to happen, and enforce all the things you do want to happen. You'll 'get your way', and that means life will seem to be doing what you want it to do. And that is its interpretation of what freedom is.
The truth, which the ego cannot grasp or accept, is that control DIMINISHES your freedom, because it separates out some parts (of yourself ultimately) from others, sets them against each other, and elects to support only one of the two parts. Now your choices are diminished. In other words, if you choose A or B, once you've chosen, the other choice goes away, and now you are 'stuck' with the choice you made. This is freedom to the ego, but to your Real Self this is imprisonment.
So when you use the ego mind to try to understand a very basic principle like ACCEPTANCE, this I think is where the community's viewpoint hinges and stimulates controversy. It's because the ego does not understand HOW it could be possible that you can be accepting, or just working on changing how you perceive the world, and not be passive. So this is what it all pivots around.
Really these are the two conflicting attitudes of the EGO:
1) Accept everything as it is, don't try to change anything, be passive, work on your own mind, change your mind ABOUT the world, study in secret, don't tell anyone you're doing the Course, keep miracles to yourself, interpret miracles as shifts in your own perception only, and generally lay down any kind of 'interference' with the world as you go within. This is EGO because the ego has now separated you from the world, has isolated you to your body/mind with the justification of hundreds of Course quotes which SEEM to support its argument. This is EGO because the ego can't ALLOW there to be acceptance without interpreting it as SACRIFICE, i.e. the giving up of control which the ego thinks means like 'I need do nothing' i.e. I will literally stop expressing anything in the world. This is SPIRITUAL CONSTIPATION! You'll be stuck in your head and paralyzed from exerting the will and power of God. You will be disabled. The ego sees acceptance as disempowerment and disability, and this inspires all thoughts of how this kind of 'attitude' is the correct way to do the Course.
2) The second ego interpretation is that you aren't meant to just dwell on fixing your view of the world, but you're meant to change the world. Except that, to the ego, this means, using the ego to change the world. This turns into control. It turns into spiritualization of the world. It becomes the ego's party where all egos are invited to 'act spiritual' or to pursue special causes or use your ACIM learning to 'attack' what is. The EGO can't understand whatsoever how it could be possible to express something in the world and have it be ACCEPTING of the world at the same time. It does not get this. So if you were to express or exert or change the world, this is now considered 'unacceptable' to the Course theology, and therefore rejected by many students. And yet those who accept this idea then go on to shy away from some of the seemingly contradictory statements about acceptance or doing God's will or changing your mind and so on. This again is another ego play to flip your mind around a polarity of DUALITY, so that you stay within the ego thought system, and keep interpreting the course WITH the ego.
Neither of these camps have the truth.
Truth is of the Holy Spirit and his mind functions in a completely different way with rules that apply to all and which has no duality in it. The Holy Spirit has a completely different understanding of ACCEPTANCE. He has a completely different grasp of whether you are 'for or against' doing stuff in the world, knowing that this is a dualistic question. Holy Spirit would not see your 'accepting things as they are' attitude as being SEPARATE from 'being empowered to do God's will and heal the world'. And therefore, Holy Spirit supports BOTH camps combined, which completely defies the ego's logic.
It is possible to be accepting without that having to mean, you cut yourself off from the world or disappear into your intellectual correction of perception. It is possible to be accepting of what 'is' or what appears to be happening, while at the same time having the power and will to CHANGE IT. Because... after all, IT is just an effect of what's going on in the mind. IT is a dream that YOU are dreaming. So this has to mean, you can accept what you have made, but you can also make something different. So this division of separation in the community is really only there because the EGO has gotten ahold of the Course and DOES NOT understand the Holy Spirit's viewpoint or thought system.
As always with ANY polarizing, dualistic, separating set of questions, in which it seems that neither side seems to 'get it', this ALWAYS means that "there has to be a better way" and there always IS a third option. It's that third option that comes from Holy Spirit. Another way not just of looking at the situation, but another way of looking at HOW you look at looking at the situation.
You can accept without being controlling, and yet exercise tremendous freedom to intercede. "I [Jesus] inspire all miracles, which are really intercessions. They intercede for your holiness." - principle 32. "35 - Miracles are expressions of love, but they may not always have observable effects." - principle 35, which also means miracles USUALLY have observable effects, meaning they change the world.
There is not a contradiction here. The contradiction is in the ego mind that cannot understand this. It can't get it because the ego can only see WITH separation. It is blind to Oneness or true meaning. Any separation in the community has to be founded in the ego.
Whatever you believe is the cause of you, you believe is your creator. God is the cause of you, being your creator. When you displace causality and project it outside of yourself, onto the dream world that you are causing, you believe that the world is the cause of you. This now means that you think the world is your creator.
Idol worship now becomes worship of your false externalized creator. The dream now seems to create you (physical birth), determine what you are, defines you, changes you, affects you, and chooses for you when you will live or die.
Believing you are being caused by any aspect of the world in any way, is a belief that your creator is separate from and outside of you. The dream world was made in an effort imagine that you are outside of or separate from God, producing a world which seems to be outside and separate from you. The dream world is now believed to be your Father.
Believing in external causes is a complete reversal of cause and effect. The dream is believed to be dreaming you. Every time you believe it has power over you, is attacking you, upsetting you, making stuff happen against your will, you are believing that the dream you are dreaming is dreaming you.
Anything it seems to do to you, you see as your inheritance. Anything that happens to you, you interpret as receiving. The world, as an externalized God, is seen to be willing against your will, choosing against your will and forcing you. It's seen as an enemy, because this externalized God is like your opponent.
When the dream is the cause of you, the dream is seen as against you. And this makes you an effect of the dream. Effects show up as physical symptoms of sickness, emotional symptoms of guilt and fear, and dictates your state of awareness.
If the dream is dreaming you, and you are not dreaming the dream, you are not aware that the dream is coming from you. This means to believe the dream is dreaming you, you have to be unconscious. That the dream can make you unconscious is nothing less than the belief that the dream can cause your death.
In orded to believe the dream is the cause of you, and you are its effect, cause and effect must be reversed. This reversal is literally false perception. False perception is backwards perception, in which that which is outside is taken in as if happening to you. Signals and messages come into you, at you, from the outside in. The body's eyes and senses pick up on what the dream world is telling you is there, and the body itself is part of the dream.
In true perception, mind sees and extends outward from the inside out, looking first within to love and peace, and then shining it outward in ignorance of what is in the dream. The dream is ignored, recognized as nothing but an effect of you and not a cause. No power or causality or will is seen in it. Its "alien will" no longer exists.
Nothing stands between you and the face of Christ, beyond the dream, and the dream is no longer an obstacle to peace. It is seen through as a thin veil of illusions which you have power over. You are now aware of dreaming, aware of being causal, and are aware that nothing in the world causes you. This is a correction of level confusion because the world you made did not make you. Recognizing you made the world gives you power - ie causality, over it.
When God is no longer thought to be the dream, no longer seen to be separate or externalized, He is now found within you, and being within you you will see him outside of you. Initially God is in everything you see, and then everything you see gives way to only God. God is all that you see and then perception ends, ending the dream and awakening you to ultimate reality.
"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."
"And to realize that pain is purposeless, without a cause, and with no power to accomplish anything."
"Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness."
"Fear cannot be real without a cause, and GOD is the only Cause."
"There is no remedy the world provides that can effect a change in anything. "
"It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect."
"For, if you think the world you made has power to make you what it wills, you ARE confusing Son and Father; effect and Source. "
"And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect it cannot make effects. As an illusion it is what you will. "
"Place cause and effect in their true sequence in one respect, and the learning will generalize and transform the world. "
"YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless?"
"The separation is merely a faulty formulation of reality, WITH NO EFFECT AT ALL."
"It is emphasized here that these differences have no effect at all on the miracle, which can heal any of them with equal ease."
"It is your wish that MAKES it what it is in its effect on you. "
"It denies the ability of anything which is not of God to effect you in any way. This is the PROPER use of denial."
"The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?"
"They will not fade when dreaming ends. They end the dream instead; and last forever for they come from God to His dear Son, whose other name is you."
"He must be Savior FROM the dream he made, that he be free of it."
"His light is ALWAYS the call to awake, WHATEVER you may have been dreaming."
"You will first DREAM of peace, and THEN awaken to it."
The mind and intention behind your words has power.
What you speak is powerful, IF you are speaking words of truth.
Sometimes people will say something like, "I'm worried that..." or "try not to...." or "be careful because you might...." etc. These are all coming from the victim mind and are statements of what the person believes.
They are actually affirmations, which affirm that they believe there is some potential for bad things to happen to you. They are an attempt to diminish power. They are CURSES.
It may seem as though someone is being considerate when they say they are worried about you, or that they are seeking for your preservation when they say they're afraid that something could happen and to be careful etc... but secretly this is laced with attack.
If you are really looking out for someone, SPEAK TRUTH INTO THE SITUATION, don't speak and make more real the ways that bad things are going to happen.
Instead of "be careful you don't hurt your back", what about "your back is strong and safe and cannot be hurt"?
Instead of "don't go to that store because that person might be there", how about, "I see you as empowered and confident and nothing can affect you."?
There's a big difference between fake concern and real support.
Just as guilt is not love, fear is not support. Fear is an attack. It is a further attempt to condemn and curse the situation and keep your brother in a prison.
You can set people free when you use words of powerful truth that are aligned with and extend God's power. They are not just words but carrier signals for His power to flow across. They can move mountains. When your word is the same as God's word, you can perform miracles.
A bible quote along such lines: "Have faith in God," Jesus said to them. "Truly I tell you that if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and has no doubt in his heart but believes that it will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.…"
When someone is attacking, it will come across as them being attacked by you. And thereby they believe they are justified in attacking as though they themselves are not doing it at all.
Victim consciousness automatically means someone is trying to blame someone else for doing what they themselves are doing, or for believing what they themselves are believing.
Those who are afraid, sick, feeling unworthy, guilty, judged, affected, upset by others, etc... are all attackers. They are believing in attack, have attacked themselves, and are now trying to attack others.
Those who accuse are themselves subject to their accusations. You but accuse your brother of your own sins. Whatever you believe is true of yourself you will come to believe is true of others. If it is true that you're sinful and unworthy, you'll see others as being sinful toward you and making you unworthy.
Attack seems to justify itself by projecting itself out (projection) and then perceiving what has been projected (perception). Thus projection makes perception. The ego is then perceiving its own reflection of attack and calling it someone else's.
If someone else truly is the origin of attack, then you would be justified in revenge. You would be justified in claiming you are innocent, and that you have been unfairly treated. But what appears to be an attack from others is really your own self attack which you've displaced onto them, or hired them to take responsibility for.
If you are perceiving that someone is "treating you" in a poor way, or "being" a certain way toward you, or has "done something to you" etc.. you know that this is really you being in a state of self-attack. Your attempt to find someone guilty is just your attempt to find yourself guilty. Proving that someone else is to blame just proves all over again that you are to blame.
The only way to undo attack is to stop abusing yourself. See yourself as innocent and worthy of God. Stop finding yourself wrong and guilty. Stop attacking yourself with beliefs in sin and guilt. You didn't do anything really wrong and nothing that cannot be forgiven. Do you deserve redemption?
For a long time I thought that if I would just SAY what the truth is, or 'get it intellectually', or be able to describe it, or have the right insight to put some pieces of the puzzle together, then I would .... achieve some kind of goal.
But, really... this never achieved anything other than worshipping metaphysical logic and becoming 'right' about it.
How many times do we really need to explain how and why this illusion all happened, or how the ego operates?
Being able to understand The Course doesn't mean I am now experiencing God. In fact it's quite the opposite.
Understanding the course maybe paved the way to realizing that... understanding the course doesn't bring peace, or God, or love. Knowing what it SAYS isn't the same as experiencing what it points to.
I've had some pretty lofty states of 'consciousness' or at least, high states of very abstract thinking, which I always thought were the way to access the truth. But it's not. Because this is just the ego mind trying to reach up to Holy Spirit's mind to get a taste of it... and because ideas return to their source there is an inevitable 'snapping back' out of it and back into mundane thinking.
What has to happen is this intellectual ego mind has to give way and be seen for the limited device that it is. It cannot and will not ever accomplish an experience of truth. It can only comment about it. It is removed from truth, because it is based in .... at the very least, symbols, if not a further layer of symbolism layered on top of that as words.
Thoughts and words don't make you be with God.
Transcending this ego-intellectual mind and going to be in a different mind, the mind of God/Holy Spirit, is what gets you to experience God.
You have to get out of the ego mind, out of the intellect/intelligence of the ego, out of the ego's thinking ... even if it seems to be very lofty course-focussed thinking. Ego thinking about the Course is NOT an experience of the truth!
We need to let go of this ego mind and all its activities and open up instead to a different mind, level 2 mind - the Holy Spirit's mind, shared with God.
I feel this is quite an important point. The body and its eyes were made NOT to see reality. They fixate on physical appearances only and CANNOT see anything else. They reports only the physical nature of objects. This is totally blind.
However, there is another part to the perceptual mechanism. Your mind uses perception to INTERPRET what the body’s eyes report. You can interpret the messages as true and real, or as false and illusion.
When you are being unforgiving, you look at the physical messages and believe you are seeing reality. Your mind emphasizes differences, believes appearances, and regards the physical as reality. This is FALSE PERCEPTION. Believing the body’s eyes is an error.
When you are being forgiving, you look at the physical messages and recognize them as ALL UNREAL. Forgiveness looks PAST the physical images and doesn’t believe what they report. Your mind will still SEE the physical images, but OVERLOOK them and barely register them. A forgiving mind looks PAST bodies to the Holy Spirit and Christ in your brother, beyond the body.
In true perception, seeing the "forgiven world", your mind is going to be very loving and happy and holy, and it’s going to perceive in a "whole" way. Whatever signals the body’s eyes send to the mind, it will shine PAST them. Love extends, it does not stop at surfaces. It moves beyond the limited, to the unlimited. So you’ll be loving, BUT simultaneously recognizing this world IS NOT REAL and reality is BEYOND it.
To see the "forgiven world" or to perceive the "real world", must therefore require looking PAST the physical forms that the body STILL is looking at. Here the mind is looking "towards" Heaven with perception, and perceives the light beyond the physical. But perception is stil interpretation. Jesus says those who perceive STILL need healing! To perceive towards reality is STILL a state of separation. There is only one reality, not two. Perception itself must end.
When perception ends, it ends along with the body, which was made to have something to perceive WITH. The mind overlooks the physical ENTIRELY, has absolutely no perception of form, and experiences ONLY formless reality. In this reality there are no forms, bodies, or planets, all of which were designed to BLOCK AWARENESS. In Heaven, there is only light, love, mind and spirit.