Category: A Year of Miracle Writing

Lesson 38: There is nothing my holiness cannot do.

In her book, A Return to Love, Marianne Williamson writes: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.”

Today’s lesson tries to help us wrap our mind around this concept that our greatest fear is that we are “powerful beyond measure.” We, honestly, don’t want to be that powerful, because with power comes great responsibility. We prefer to play small because that way, while we may lose the adulation of the world, we will definitely escape its scorn if things go sideways.

If we actually embraced the Reality of our holiness, we could transform the world. Our holiness, this lesson says, “is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance and limits of any kind.”

Who we really are isn’t limited by time, or space, or anything we see in this outside world. Instead, the lesson says, “Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available.  And there is nothing the power of God cannot do. Your holiness, then, can remove all pain, can end all sorrow, and can solve all problems. It can do so in connection with yourself and with anyone else. It is equal in its power to help anyone because it is equal in its power to save anyone.”

Continue reading “AYoMW: Feb. 7, 2020 — Nursing the Universe”

Lesson 37: My holiness blesses the world.

In Matthew 9:13, Jesus makes it clear what lesson we are here to learn in this bodily world: “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'”

The Greek word used for “mercy” in this passage means “kindness or good will.” The word used for “sacrifice” means “victim.” We have already learned in an earlier lesson that we are not the victim of the world we see. We only learn that when we begin to be willing to see the world differently and understand that what has been created out here was first created in our mind.

The world of fear, despair and greed we perceive together is a misuse of our creative powers. We have created a world where “sacrifice” is seen as a good and noble thing. We’ll sacrifice our lives for others, we’ll sacrifice our time, our belongings, our peace of mind. It sounds so generous. But we are not called to sacrifice, this lesson tells us, because sacrifice creates separation. It creates a sense of specialness.

You know plenty of people who take pride in the sacrifices they have made for others – for their kids, their family, their friends and their bosses. They can recount everything they’ve given up for the pleasure and comfort of others. It makes them feel special – and it makes them feel like a victim – a doormat taken advantage of by others.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Feb. 6, 2020 — Be Thou My Vision”

Lesson 36: My holiness envelopes everything I see.

Today, I should feel outraged, angry and justified in feeling that way. My “side” of the political aisle appears to face an insurmountable amount of what I perceive to be hatred, fear, greed and cruelty from those on the other side of that aisle.

Just last night, the partisan pot boiled over with a president giving a State of the Union address filled with outright lies about the state of our nation, snubbing the House leader who led his impeachment and then her retribution as she tore up her copy of his speech after it was all over.

After nearly three years as a student of A Course in Miracles, I feel my outrage muted by my desire to see peace rather than this, by my desire to go within my own mind and find the holiness that resides there and instead of filling my Facebook feed with outraged screeds, I want to use my mind, my words, my very life, to create a new world – a happy dream where the bridge to unity can be built.

For as much as my ego rejoiced as Nancy Pelosi ripped up that speech, my heart hurt. One more petty action provoked by another petty action. This is not how we display love in the world. What should she have done? Hugged his neck? Endured his arrogance and handshake snub?

Honestly, I don’t know. The fear and anger in this world appear to be insurmountable, but I know there had to be a better way to show the president a fierce kind of love in this moment of fear and hatred. Tearing up his speech wasn’t it. All that did was deepen the separation, strengthen the egos of all involved and made everyone feel justified in their hatred of each other.

Today’s lesson is a step toward finding a better way.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Feb. 5, 2020 — Pushing the envelope”

Lesson 35: My mind is part of God’s. I am very holy.

I went off on myself last night. One of the things I can’t stand about myself is that I’m a bit clumsy. Without mindfully moving through simple tasks, such as giving my cats a treat, I will make a mess and do what I did last night – spill most of the contents of the container on the floor.

The cats, of course, didn’t mind. It was manna from heaven.

Me? I blew up at myself and called myself everything but a child of God.

I had to laugh out loud when I read today’s lesson: “My mind is part of God’s. I am very holy.”

Yeah, right. Clumsy, self-abusing me is part of God and very holy. Tell me another one, Universe.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Feb. 4, 2020 — Panning for gold”

Lesson 34: I could see peace instead of this.

The first time I heard this phrase it was said by author Wayne Dyer in one of his TV programs that I watched. Dyer was my gateway drug into the metaphysical world so it was early in my learning when I heard him say this. I was immediately cynical.

“How in the world can we see peace instead of what’s obviously going on?” I thought.

Wars, rumors of wars, famine, greed, government corruption, the wealth gap, poverty, human trafficking, refugee crises, climate change. So much of the world is bereft of peace. Choosing to see peace instead of these very real dilemmas and tragedies is just so much spiritual bypass, woo-woo, head-in-the-sand spirituality.

That’s what I thought, all those years ago, and it’s what many people continue to think about metaphysical thought and practices. Deny reality and say your happy affirmations.

The Course, however, is far from advocating complacency or simple happy talk. It’s asking us, in all of these workbook lessons and throughout the text, to examine our thoughts about the world and discover what role we have played in bringing about the suffering that we see around us. It’s not an exercise in feeling guilty for the actions – or inactions – we have participated in that we believe caused the pain in the world. It’s a chance to change our mind and make it right – a chance to save the world and end the sense of separation from each other and God that all we feel in this world.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Feb. 3, 2020 — Peace, y’all”

Lesson 33: There is another way to look at the world.

There are two sides to every story, conventional wisdom tells us, but in reality, there are a million or more different ways to see whatever is going on around us. That’s because everyone perceives the world differently. Perception is reality, with a little “r,” for all of us.

No place is that truer than in traffic. On the way to Jubilee! Circle Sunday I nearly hit a guy turning left in front of me at an intersection. I braked and yelled, “Dude! Watch out!” while I honked. It was a huge improvement from my usual reaction to such near misses. In years past, when road rage had a firm grip upon me, I would have yelled expletives, given him the one-finger salute or even pursued him in an effort to let him know just how IN THE WRONG he had been.

My partner admonished me for my strong reaction and came up with reasons why the man may have been distracted – a family emergency perhaps or a rush to get to an important gathering. She was quick to point out other ways to see the situation besides than some dude driving dangerously for sport or to try to intentionally piss me off.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Feb. 2, 2020 — Pucker up”

Lesson 32: I have invented the world I see.

While we live in this dream world, it’s natural to see ourselves as a victim – even if we practice telling ourselves we’re not. Today’s lesson is another approach to that idea. Whenever we feel like the world is victimizing us, disregarding us, or trampling on what we see as our rights, we have to remind ourselves that this is the world we made.

“I have invented the world I see.”

We have done this by collectively misusing our creative powers. We do this all the time with both great and small effects on the world and lives around us.

All Adolph Hitler really wanted to do with his life was paint. He was a struggling artist when he began to misuse his creative power in service to his ego’s hunger for domination when it became clear he would never be honored for his art. The pictures he painted in the world became terrible, bloody and deadly to those under his sway.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Feb. 1, 2020 — Kissing the world”

Lesson 31: I am not the victim of the world I see.

Pick up any newspaper, visit any news site, heck, spend five minutes on Facebook, and you’ll find a lot of victims in this world. Everyone feels victimized by something whether it’s the government, their family, their friends, their enemies, their leaders. Some even feel victimized by technology and impersonal algorithms.

The ego loves for us to think we’re victims of somebody or something. If we feel that way, we’ll project our pain and blame out into the world, which creates more feelings of victimization and often makes us feel downright smug, seeing others who are far more victimized than we believe we are. Or the opposite – we feel that our suffering is worse than others.

It’s easy to find evidence out in the world that we’re all victims of something, which is why today’s lesson begins with the outside world, advising us to look around us and repeat, “I am not the victim of the world I see.”

We are then invited to “apply the same idea to your inner world. You will escape from both together, for the inner is the cause of the outer.”

Continue reading “AYoMW: Jan. 31, 2020 — Drop the knife”

Lesson 30: God is in everything I see because God is in my mind.

After my first round through the workbook of A Course in Miracles, I decided to try an experiment. If it’s true that God is in everything I see because God is in my mind – and there’s really only one of us here anyway – I decided to go to my local Walmart.

I don’t know about you, but I hate going shopping, especially in Walmart where folks seem to be bound and determined to block the aisles, saunter slowly with their carts and leave you no way around them and generally be obstacles and a nuisance as you attempt to get to the dairy department or the dog food.

This time, however, I was determined to see God in everything at the Walmart – because God is in my mind and if God is my mind, I can project God out here and experience the love of the Holy even in Walmart.

It was a surreal and amazing experience. As I passed each person, I noted to myself, “There’s God in the Walmart.” (I suppose, for all the weird things I’ve seen in Walmart, I could have said this aloud and attracted very little attention!) It felt a little odd at first, but as I continued to do that – silently greeting each person that passed me as God in flesh – my vision truly began to change. I stopped seeing other people as obstacles and began to sense a Holy presence right there in that blocked aisle.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Jan. 30, 2020 — Squinting at the Divine Light in Walmart”

Lesson 29: God is in everything I see.

Some critics of A Course in Miracles call it “spiritual bypass” or “New Age woo-woo,” but fail to understand that many of its concepts and ideas are quite old and are actually nothing new under the sun.

Today’s idea: “God is in everything I see,” harkens back to the concept of “panentheism” which was coined by German philosopher Karl Krause in 1828. He was seeking to distinguish the differences in philosophy at the time between Spinoza, Hegel and Schelling over pantheism.

Pantheists believe that God is composed of all things in the universe, is not personal, and reality and divinity are the same.

Panentheists believe that while God is the soul of the universe and its spirit is infused into everything within it, God still transcends this physical time and space and remains, in many senses, separate.  

The Course leans more toward the panentheistic idea, positing that while God infuses everything in this physical realm – including tables, politicians and tax collectors – God remains outside of our ideas of time and space. God is here and not here – within us and without us.

Continue reading “AYoMW: Jan. 29, 2020 — To everything, Namaste”