12. Miracles are thoughts. Thoughts can represent lower-order or higher-order reality. This is the basic distinction between intellectualizing and thinking. One makes the physical and the other creates the spiritual, and we believe in what we make or create. This is necessary of some clarification because it seems to give some realness to the physical, as if there were two things: Spirit and its somehow-opposite called matter. Here is a key point, and it is born out in Lesson 97 and the lessons preceding it. There is only Spirit.
What I have called ‘intellectualizing’ simply misperceives, as if You were seeing a vine draped over a garden wall at a distance and You mistook it for a snake. The vine stands for Reality here, the distance is your supposed separation from God, and the snake is the world, which is how Reality appears from the insistent stance for supposed separation.
Again, I say ‘supposed’ because You have never become separated. At this instant You are embraced as the Father-Mother Love and can choose this Love at any moment.
The ‘physical’ is but a dream sense. Spirit always remains the Reality no matter how often You choose to be ‘born’, ‘age’, ‘sicken’, and ‘die’.
It’s just a silly painful game, and – like the Light, the Love – You – right now, even as You seem to yourself to be a ‘mortal’ subject to danger, suffering, and death – right now – are no such thing. Right now are You Spirit – the Presence of Love. This is your healing and the healing of the world.
13. Miracles are both beginnings and endings. They thus alter the temporal order. They are always affirmations of rebirth, which seem to go back, but really go forward. They undo the past in the present, and thus release the future. This is such a delightful experience. As you gently shift your mind in the present, your old past is gone, and with it, freedom from self-justification. This may sound awful. If my mother, my father, my ex-spouse, my boss, my teacher didn’t do it to me, are you saying that it’s my fault, all this mess?
There is no fault when there is no guilt. There is no guilt where there is no sin, and a dream of sin does not make it real. Accept this for yourself and You win freedom for the world.
This is the hardest thing for the mind to accept because We’ve worn the coat of victimization for so long. My mother, my father, my husband, my wife, my children, my government, the economy, my race, my religion, my caste … and ultimately all blame is settled on God who is said to have created this mess.
This is a heavy garment; like a suit of armor, it seems to protect while weighing Us down. And yet, I say ‘Us’ because while You are so garbed I wear it with You to lighten the crushing load. This is the ‘yoke’ I spoke of: “Take My yoke upon You … for My burden is easy, and My yoke is Light.”
Come – will You? Come and help lighten the load for yourself and our brothers and sisters. Our beautiful brothers and sisters who lie sleeping next to You as You stir.
This is no sacrifice – in the ordinary sense of the word. This is no sacrifice I ask of You, but a sacred act (which is the literal, original meaning of sacrifice), which can only bring You Happiness.
Is this too much to ask? That You might – right here in life – that You might come to play with Me as We gently waken our drowsy family. Heaven Here – not up in the sky – awaits Us All.
I ask You only that You be not so quick to condemn the unlovable, but rather extend a gentle patience, perhaps tinged with loving amusement at them – and at yourself – that anyone could ever think them thus.
Think of the burden it is for the Presence of Love to pretend that she – or he – is unlovable, even hateful. No wonder You all spend so much time in front of the tv and sleeping. To think the unthinkable is agony.
Let Us free All of Us from this pain – exchanging it for Joy.
14. Miracles bear witness to truth. They are convincing because they arise from conviction. Without conviction they deteriorate into magic, which is mindless, and therefore destructive; or rather, the uncreative use of mind.
May 16, 2006
Don’t worry about having skipped the other day. What you needed to hear and share began at . We’ll speak of now, which meets today’s need.
Truth is Reality. Truth is All Good. So miracles stand witness to the All Good (phone interruption) of ever-present Reality.
This attests to the need to be ever Conscious only of Now, because what You need is Now – not found in dwelling in the past or the future – neither of which has place as Reality.
Let Me repeat that: All that You could ever need is present Now. It is only visible – for lack of better words – Now. It is not only visible, but feel-able, audible, fragrant and sweet to the taste. (Your senses are never separate. The experience is multi-sensory. Any time one sense appears solo is it always supported by a chorus of the others. A simple bird song of Heaven is more complex and exquisite than a symphony orchestra.)
All that I am describing is the expression of the fullness and richness of Heaven. The word ‘need’, itself, is an impossibility. You come complete, full and running over as We all give to each Other as part of our natural, normal Divine interaction.
I will give You a glimpse of what this feels like – and it is an expansion of the question I gave You so many years ago: What would it feel like if every meeting You have – with anything – a brother, a sister – a rose – a grain of sand – a flea – what if they all were maximal expressions of Love? Yes, I know I have taken it further, including every thing. This is the ‘running over’ (referring to the twenty-third Psalm) when one is so full of Love – so filled with Love – that It cannot help but pour forth and bathe everyone and everything.
So, like children having a water fight on a hot day, dousing each other, laughing joyously, so Our Now is: full with Love, with Joy, ever shared. ‘Alone’ – in the human sense of it – simply does not exist.
Life is Miraculous … Forever.
Course In Miracles Society
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