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Study of the Text 10-3-12

10-3-12
37 A miracle is a correction introduced into false thinking by me. It acts as a catalyst, breaking up erroneous perception and reorganizing it properly. This places you under the Atonement principle, where perception is healed. Until this has occurred, knowledge of the Divine Order is impossible.

I have a picture in my mind of this happening. I have become anxious about something happening at work and become absorbed in all the things that could go wrong because of this one thing that happened.  All sorts of angry, fearful thoughts whirl around in my mind, but amid all of those thoughts is a true thought. This true thought is a call for help. I give it my attention, if only briefly, but in that moment the call becomes focused and heartfelt, and I know I mean it.

A burst of light hurtles into all those thoughts breaking them up and they begin to reorganize. They start to make sense as I see them differently. I see the incident is just something that happened and not a harbinger of disaster. I start to see solutions instead of calamities. Slowly I remember that I am in no real danger. I am safe at Home with my Creator. This is not reality but a dream story, a game I am playing and I want to laugh in relief. Without the upsetting fear thoughts distracting me, I become interested in the game again.

I ask for guidance to play the game with compassion, love, and joy, and most of all gratitude. It may be only a dream, but it has become a dream that is helping me to wake up. I am grateful to the point of tears as I realize that I have help gaining a new perspective, and seeing it differently changes everything and changes it on every level. What a miracle this is!

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 10-2-12

10-2-12
36 Miracles are examples of right thinking, aligning your perceptions with truth as God created it.

When my thinking is always in alignment with the truth I will be peaceful at all times and in every circumstance. I know this is true because most of the time my thinking is in alignment with truth and I am peaceful. When something happens to alter this, when I become confused and start thinking with the ego, I lose my peace. The contrast has taught me that true perception, is miraculous. When I think with God, everything changes.

I had been out of alignment with the truth since Sunday night and I felt it acutely. My two daughters are in a rare disagreement and I have allowed myself to get in the middle of it. I thought I was going to mediate and bring everyone back into peace, but that is not what happened. There is not going to be a compromise in this situation and at the moment there is no peace or interest in peace.

Where my thinking went wrong is that I thought this shouldn’t be happening. I thought they should make peace their goal rather than being right. I thought they should listen to me because I am right. I thought I could be happy only if they were happy and at peace. I thought the burden of making everything ok was on me. I was totally confused.

It’s so funny because I didn’t see any of this while it was happening. I guess that’s why I refer to it as confusion. I just kept trying to fix things and digging myself in deeper and deeper. Finally, last night I said, “Holy Spirit, I need help.” And that was when I realized I had been trying to do this through the ego. I had not invited Holy Spirit in. I didn’t ask for guidance as to the best way to handle things. I didn’t ask for His words when I spoke to my daughters. Which meant I must have been listening to ego because there are only the two voices. No wonder I lost my peace.

Even as I sit here writing, I feel a stab of fear when I think of surrendering my “control” of the situation, and believe me, I recognize the irony when I use the word control. I have no control to lose. The ego mind thinks it knows what needs to happen and it thinks that to surrender is to lose. It argues the stakes are too high to take that chance. This thinking is so far from truth.

I want to be truly helpful, and I know the only way this will happen is to turn from the ego and allow my mind to be healed. From a healed perspective I will know what to say. I will know if I should say anything at all. Right now I am seeing all of us as separate and each with our own separate goals. That is not a true perspective. That is not in alignment with the truth as God created it. And so that is not helpful at all. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I am certain that I want a miracle now.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 10-1-12

10-1-12
35 Miracles are expressions of love, but they may not always have observable effects.

This principle is very clear. Not every miracle is going to show up in the story of your life as something you can see. It does not mean the miracle failed or that you failed. The way this principle has affected me is that I stopped looking for proof, and rested in my faith. I accept that every expression of love is a miracle and has results whether I can see them or not.

If I, or someone I know, were very sick, perhaps dying, and I remembered the truth this would be a miracle. I knew they could not be sick because sickness is not of God. I remembered they could not die because there is no death. This is an expression of love and thus a miracle. What if the body in question remained sick or died? Would this mean the miracle did not occur?

Jesus tells us that sometimes we may not be able to observe the miracle so it does not mean anything that the body remains sick or dies. I can imagine that the illness was put into place and must play itself out. I can imagine that the illness or death is a freely chosen classroom to help me learn a particular lesson or heal a particular belief in the mind.

I may not ever know why it happened as it did, but I know that when I forgive, when I express love, a miracle occurs whether I can perceive it or not. The body and all other forms of the world are illusions that may or may not change as a result of the miracle. The miracle is a healed mind and that always occurs.

Expressions of love are sometimes words or behavior and sometimes simply thoughts. Expressions of love are from the Holy Spirit; they pass through me to my brothers and sisters. Every circumstance is an opportunity for a miracle. There is no situation that stands outside this. If someone is angry with me and speaks harshly, I have the opportunity to respond in kind, or to recognize their words as a call for love and ask Holy Spirit how best to respond with love.

If someone murdered my child, I would have the same opportunity. I can see their action as despicable and unforgivable, or I can see it as a call for love and respond with love. In each case the miracle is the same. It only appears to be bigger or harder in the second case because I believe it is, because I place more value on some illusions than on others.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 9-28-12

9-28-12
34 Miracles restore the mind to its fullness. By atoning for lack they establish perfect protection. The spirit’s strength leaves no room for intrusions. 

As we perform miracles our mind is returned to its natural state. It knows no lack and knows no fear. It is strong and invulnerable and nothing from the ego thought system of separation can distract or confuse it. This is the purpose of miracles, to bring us to our right mind. This is inevitable for each and every one of us. Nothing can prevent this from happening.

I see that I made a mistake in the past when I discounted miracles that I experienced because they didn’t seem big and showy. I did not yet understand the nature of miracles. I didn’t even recognize the miracle when it happened through me, but it didn’t matter. The miracle still did its job and my mind continued to heal.

Once when I was working a man came in and started looking around. When I offered to help he began telling me the story of his troubled life. I had no idea what to say. I did not at that time have much of a spiritual practice, had not yet found A Course in Miracles, but I instinctively asked within for help. I opened my mouth and said just the right thing. I was amazed and never forgot that even though I did not understand the significance of what had happened.

In responding to the desire to be helpful I joined with my brother in a shared purpose, and a holy instant occurred. I willingly stepped back and allowed an intelligence greater than mine to move through me. I was truly helpful. I didn’t know how to do any of this or even that it was possible. I didn’t know what it meant to do this. And yet, it was done because I responded to a deeply buried, but strong impulse toward miracles. It was done simply because I allowed it.

That encounter was a miracle whether I acknowledged it as such or not.  The miracle requires so little of us. In fact, when I was so strongly identified with the personality self I am sure I would have been dismayed to discover how very little was required of me. ~smile~ Now I am very happy to know that my job is to desire miracles, and when guided to do so, to allow them to be done through me.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 9-27-12

9-27-12
33 Miracles honor you because you are loveable. They dispel illusions about yourself and perceive the light in you. They thus atone for your errors by freeing you from your nightmares. By releasing your mind from the imprisonment of your illusions, they restore your sanity.

I have imprisoned my will, the will I share with God. I have closed off all memory of that glorious Self so that I could have a realistic experience of being separate. I have done such a good job of this. My experience feels so real. I can hardly believe that I am not a being in a body with its own separate will. It seems so realistic, all this emotion, the anger and fear, the shame, jealousy, suffering, disappointment. And then the wild swing to pleasures of all kinds only to plummet into bitter disappointment as I realize the pleasure is never permanent. Wow! What a ride this turned out to be. I don’t remember my true nature yet, but what an extraordinary and powerful being I must be to have done this.

When I chose to plunge into this freewheeling experience of feeling separate from God, I knew it wasn’t real, but also knew that I would forget that it was not real, and so I left a key in my mind, a way to extricate myself from the dream world I had made. As my mind became ready to be released from this self-imposed prison, I would find the key. The key would begin unlocking prison doors; not all at once, but one at a time at first, so I could slowly back out of the stories. It would be too startling, to jarring, to just pop out of it.

For the Myron character this seemed to begin as an awareness that things are not as they seem. Then various books and teachers showed up in her life to point to different ways to see things. She slowly became aware of an alternative Voice in her mind, one that began to reveal her true nature. This same thing, with variations, began to happen for, first a few, then more and more of us. Because all of these characters are from the same mind, the more of them that awaken, the easier it is for the rest. I am in awe of the first few of us to hear that Voice and follow it. That could not have been easy. Now there are so many of us waking up that the mind responds more quickly and easily.

A couple of days ago I had the beginnings of a migraine. It was an intensely painful headache and nausea. I immediately took a pill because my experience is that I have to catch it quickly or it can last up to three days. I seemed fine until I woke up the next day and it was back. I didn’t want to take another pill because I had to go to work. Suddenly I had the thought that this headache is not real. I allowed the thoughts to come to me.

Where did this headache come from? There is no power in the body to make a head ache. There is no power in the environment or in the food I eat to trigger a headache. There is no power in pills to ease the headache. The only power that exists is within me. The headache and the nausea simply vanished. Poof. It was gone. It could not stand against the truth. Really, what happened is that I wanted to know the truth, I wanted my true Self to be released from the prison of false thoughts I had designed to hide my Self from my self. And so this is what happened. “Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose.” WB L152

The miracle that I experienced occurred because of the decision to know the truth. I decided I wanted to know the truth about this headache. I set aside all I thought I knew about migraines and the way the world works. I stepped out of the bounds of time and space and the laws of the world, and fully accepted that I am under no laws but God’s. I ignored all I taught myself, all the proof I had provided for myself that the world is real and its law’s immutable. That was a miracle. The effect of the miracle was the instant release from pain.

Now here is the tricky part, the part where confusion is most likely to obscure the truth. I am happy I decided not to have a migraine. In the story which I am still experiencing, Myron is mostly concerned with freedom from pain. I am still identified with that persona, so I am happy, too. However, I am not as identified with her as before and I am also identified, perhaps more identified, with spirit. I know that the miracle happened in the mind. Both body and pain are an illusion and so can’t be healed. The miracle was in the change of mind that precipitated the change in the illusion. My experience has been that when the change in mind occurs there is usually a change in the illusion, which only makes sense because the illusion is an effect of the mind.

I stood there in the middle of the floor feeling intense gratitude as I felt no pain and as I realized that I would never again be able to blindly accept that I am under laws that were made to bind me to the illusion. I still feel pain just as I still have ego thoughts, and I asked for enlightenment about this. The feeling and thought that came to me was that the miracles would continue to flow through me and that I can wait in certainty for complete healing. No worries. I suppose I am still unlocking doors, one at a time.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 9-26-12

9-26-12
32 I inspire all miracles, which are really intercessions. They intercede for your holiness and make your perceptions holy. By placing you beyond the physical laws they raise you into the sphere of celestial order. In this order you are perfect.

“Thank you, Jesus.” I feel a lot of gratitude this morning as I read these words. Jesus inspires the miracles that are becoming more common place in my life. When I am identified with the Myron character I don’t feel holy or perfect. But through this persona I am inspired by Jesus to express my desire to let go of the ego wish for a separate will. When I do this, and to the degree to which I do this, I am placed beyond the physical laws of the world, and so miracles abound because as my Self I am perfect.

I understand now that miracles are the result of knowing I am under no laws but God’s. My friends and I were talking about unusual phenomenon that seems to occur around some highly awakened individuals. Some of this unusual phenomenon seems more extraordinary than others, and yet, is it really?

If someone seems to hover above the floor, or manifest physical objects out of nothing, or heal the sick or raise the dead, what have they done? In each case they have simply manipulated matter. They have ignored the laws of the world because they know these laws are made up and not real. 

A friend of mine once watched her hand disappear while doing the first four lessons. One might argue that while this was a unique and convincing experience for her, it is hardly the same thing as healing a leper. But there is no difference. In both cases the only thing that happened is that belief in the world as reality is at least, temporarily, suspended.

There is no order of difficulty in miracles. A miracle occurs when the mind, to some degree and for that moment at least, is healed. That healed mind then manifests a different world, a world that reflects its true nature, which is ephemeral. It is not real and its laws are not binding.

When with the body’s eyes I look at the world I see solid objects, and with an unhealed mind I believe this is the only reality. I see it, therefore it must be real. As the mind becomes healed, and begins to awaken from its dream state, the solidity of form begins to waver. It is not form that changes, of course, but rather an awakened mind remembers that form is nothing.

An awakened mind begins to remember that it is not subject to form, but is the maker of form. In this state of mind, manipulation of form is simple. I suppose from a fully awakened state, the mind does not see the manipulation of form as miraculous, just normal and maybe interesting. While still in thrall to the idea of separation and form as reality, it absolutely appears miraculous.

The value of experiencing miracles at this time is that they provide conviction that I am beyond physical laws. Somewhere I am being gently shaken awake with these miracles that have been inserted into my dream through my own true desire. Some part of my Self is shaking me and saying, “Wake up, sleepy head. Let go of your silly dream and join the rest of Us here in the Celestial Realm, you holy and perfect Son of God.”

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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Study of the Text 9-25-12

9-25-12
31 Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe. You should thank God for what you really are. The children of God are holy and the miracle honors their holiness, which can be hidden but never lost.

If I see a miracle, or experience a miracle and feel awe, it is because I don’t really believe I am holy. Miracles are not a special gift to us; they are our right because of who we are. When I don’t experience miracles I should be surprised, not the other way around.

I was thinking about times when I experienced miracles. Once I was caught up in a grievance. I was so angry with someone that I could not imagine ever forgiving them. I hated that feeling and wanted so much to be free of it, but then I would think about how wrong that person was and how much they hurt me. I prayed and prayed and tried affirmations and cried, and nothing happened for the longest time.

Then one day I didn’t want that grievance. I didn’t care who was right. I didn’t care if I seemed to be hurt. I just didn’t want it. The miracle occurred. Years, literally years, of anger, frustration, hatred, guilt and fear just melted away as if they had never been. It was immediate and complete and it happened because that is what I wanted. Am I powerful, or what?

The miracle could not be forced on me or torn from me. But the moment I wanted it without reservation, it was mine. I was reminded of this while reading a novel yesterday. It is called A Discovery of Witches. In it a young witch has been spell-bound. For the longest time she could not use her magic.

She remembered being able to use magic long ago when she was just a child, but that ended when she was seven and lost her parents. Then when she opened an ancient manuscript she began to experience her magic, but only what seemed to be in a random way. Eventually she discovers she is spell-bound and the spell keeps her magic from being forced from her by anyone, even herself.

The reason the magic sometimes works is because it only works when she needs it. It seemed random because sometimes the need was minor and so she didn’t put the two things together. She would try to make a spell work, but no matter how hard she tried to force the magic nothing happened. But she would need a book from the shelf and it would appear next to her. So she learned to relax and not worry about the magic, knowing it would be there when she needed it.

This was how the miracle of the disappearing grievance happened for me. I have power beyond imagining and can and do make things appear and disappear. In fact nothing occurs without my consent. But my power is “spell-bound.” For reasons of my own I wanted to experience life as if I were not an unlimited being and so enchanted myself. My power cannot be forced from me, not even by myself. The Holy Spirit can only point the way; He cannot force me to be my Self.

Like the witch in my story I too am on a quest to find the answer to this spell. She is following clues and being supported by those who love her. Part of the answer lies in joining with another person to find the solution and this joining in a single purpose is an essential part in unbinding her magic. Sound familiar?

The witch in the story finds many clues in an ancient manuscript and I find my clues in A Course in Miracles. It is peppered with reminders of who I am, but like the witch I am reading about, I at first did not understand them. This is because I have really believed my experience of being powerless meant that I was powerless, just as she really believed she could not do magic because she was not doing it.

In order to regain her magic the witch had to stop trying to force it, and in order to regain my power I had to learn that I could not make it happen but I could allow it to happen. My power responds to my undivided will, or another way to say it is that my desire must be whole.

It turns out she could have magic when she needed it. I have miracles when I truly want them. Her magic could not be forced and my power cannot be forced. Like my witch, discovering my power has created conviction in that power.

The reason I had to wait for so long for the miracle of a healed grievance is because I didn’t really want it, not if it meant giving up my resentment and letting the other person off the hook. What I was really praying for was that the other person should remain guilty.

The problem with that was I had to remain in the prison of guilt to which I had condemned the other person. After all, I couldn’t take my eyes off the hate in case he escaped from it. It was insane behavior for a person who claimed to want freedom from pain and suffering. I could not force the situation to resolve, but the moment my desire for freedom was complete, the prison disappeared and we were both freed. Just like that! It was a miracle.

© 2012, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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