Friday, April 23, 2010

Course in Miracles

From time-to-time, I’ll be blogging about A Course in Miracles, which I have been taking for the last 22 years, and every once in awhile understand – no, that’s not fair, I understand a lot of it at an intellectual level and feel a deep resonance with almost all of it on the emotional and physical levels. I guess my ‘difficulty,’ my hesitation in saying I understand it, revolves around operationalizing it - living it on a daily, hourly, moment to moment basis. I’m not operationalizing it, experiencing it, as much as I’d like to, so it feels like I don’t understand it.

But I do understand it and am writing this to better operationalize the Course for myself, and to introduce new people to it by taking things from the Course that will resonate - make sense, seem intrinsically true and worthwhile, even without fully understanding the Course’s metaphysics. For example: “…we no longer tolerate the dishonesty of believing that our problems come from somewhere else [outside us]. Honesty does not apply only to what you say. The term actually means consistency. There is nothing you say that contradicts what you think or do; no thought opposes any other thought; no act belies your word; and no word lacks agreement with an other. Such are the truly honest.”

Now to me, not only do those ideas about honesty and self-responsibility resonate, they are inspirational, and among my highest life-long aspirations. I want to share such ideas, hoping they will resonate with you, too. I think they are ideas whose time has come, that we need to operationalize now. To give these ideas more heft, my posts will include explanations of the Course’s metaphysics. Please keep in mind as you read my posts, that I am not an expert on the Course; I’m only sharing a lay person’s interpretations.

The Course says that it’s either God or the ego. God (that amorphous all-encompassing all-inclusive resonance of life, not Zeus nor the Zeus-like ‘Father’ of much Judeo-Christian dogma) or the ego. God is reality, the ego, illusion. Our experience is that either we’re with God or the ego. Our reality and the truth about us is we’re at peace, one with God, a part of God, dreaming that we’re separate from God (an impossibility), here in the world, and that if we think we’re here in the world – which I do and you do, then we’re with the ego in the illusion.

The ‘miracle’ in the Course’s title is our experience of awakening, with spiritual help, from the illusion of the world and experiencing our reality as part of God. When that happens, which it does often, it feels like a miracle. The experience of awakening and the ability to awaken – to perform ‘miracles,’ resides in the mind of every human being; it’s available to everyone; no special rituals, initiations or training required. The miracle occurs each time we’re able to experience, to know at a very deep level, our reality, our oneness with God; to experience and understand that God did not create the world, is not watching us or keeping score and the duality that we experience here – the good and evil, the love and hate, pain and bliss, are not of God, but of the ego.

The world arose when the ego offered the tiny mad idea that we could separate ourselves from God, that our reality, our true bliss as undifferentiated parts of infinite oneness was too boring and not enough for us, that something more was needed, and we accepted that idea. The world arose from a decision we, not God, made to accept that tiny mad idea. But in truth, nothing could change our reality and oneness, so we are asleep with God, dreaming we are here. Just as when you had a bad dream as a child and your parents were in the next room, knowing you were safe in your bed, so God knows we are safe and with It. It was our choice for the ego, a decision made in our minds to dream, that we, with spiritual help, must undo. That is what the Course teaches, how to get the spiritual help, undo the decision we made and awaken to our reality. Honesty and self-responsibility are part of the undoing process.

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