Miracles News
January-March, 2015
You Are Not Bad, You Are Wounded
“Recently, I listened to a lecture by Marianne Williamson. During the lecture, Marianne said: “To forgive someone means to see that they are not bad, they are wounded.” When she spoke these words, they flew out and stuck to me in the same way that arrows with suction cups stick to the wall when they are shot from a bow. OK, this is probably not a new thought to ACIM students, but maybe it was the “100th” monkey principle that made me get it in a way I just hadn’t before or maybe I am so willing to give up blame and guilt that I was able to really hear this simple, but profound statement and apply it not only to others but to myself.
I thought about how my small self reacted in a conditioned response when another person opened my wounds by what felt like an attack; an attack that, according to the Course, came from their wounds. When I react from my wounded, small self, I am not conscious that the other person is wounded, I just see them as withholding love and my reaction is to withhold love from them. This is not a healing situation for either of us, is it!
Spirit gave me a wonderful chance to really experience this lesson. My husband and I were finishing a rehab project on a condo. It seemed like we had been to Lowe’s a hundred times, and we were both ready to be done. We had one more purchase to make, and as we parked in-front of Lowe’s, my husband started warning me that this better not take too long. I could feel his impatience and my conditioned response was to get very quiet and to let myself feel “victim” to his impatience rather than to see that he was having a hard time coping with the stress of the rehab.
That evening, I “happened” to see a short documentary film about a blind man, Dan Berlin, who walked the rim of the Grand Canyon from end to end and back to the beginning – 46 miles. Dan said he went through a very dark time when he lost his sight, but he decided he could overcome this challenge (wound) and live a normal life. In other words, Dan chose to change his perception of his blindness and not be its victim. This change in perception is what the Course would call “a miracle.”
Dan had four friends who went with him on the walk and were his guides. Clearly, he had to trust these guides and be in the present moment. He had to be mindful of every step and be aware when a guide would touch him on the shoulder and tell him to “move to the right a little.” If he hadn’t listened, he would have walked off the edge! About halfway through the walk, Dan thought he could not go on, but his guides encouraged him and with their positive reinforcement (energy) he continued and finished the walk. (You can see the short documentary of Dan Berlin walking the Grand Canyon on YouTube).
After seeing the documentary, I thought about how I had let my conditioned response to my husband’s impatience lead me into my wounds of feeling like a victim and, from that conditioned victim response, I withheld love. I realized that if I had stayed in the present moment, asked my guide (Holy Spirit) for help and handed what was happening over to Her, the tone of the whole afternoon could have been changed. But that conditioned response is a path well-traveled. I know every nook and granny and can anticipate every curve. I don’t bring awareness to this path, I bring familiarity; I don’t bring Holy Spirit, I bring ego.
But just like Dan Berlin re-learning how to live his life not as a victim of his blindness, but as a full person, I know that I, too, can release the old, familiar way of doing things and choose a new path. And like Dan listening to his guides as he walked the Grand Canyon rim, the path of the Holy Spirit means a path where I need to be aware of every step, where if I am not in the “now” I could easily lose my footing. This path takes courage and awareness. It takes willingness to be still and listen to my guides and to correct my course when they tell me to so that I don’t fall of the edge and drop into my ego self.
What is your “Grand Canyon”? Where do you allow your thoughts to lead you off the side of the cliff into the deep darkness of your ego thoughts? This is a very important question to contemplate as this is the place to ask for miracles.
Rev. Barbara Goodman Siegel is a Pathways of Light minister living in St. Louis, MO. E-mail: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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