V. Wholeness and Spirit
- The miracle is much like the body in that both are learning aids for facilitating a state in which they become unnecessary. When spirit’s original state of direct communication is reached, neither the body nor the miracle serves any purpose. While you believe you are in a body, however, you can choose between loveless and miraculous channels of expression. You can make an empty shell, but you cannot express nothing at all. You can wait, delay, paralyze yourself, or reduce your creativity almost to nothing. But you cannot abolish it. You can destroy your medium of communication, but not your potential. You did not create yourself.
- The basic decision of the miracle-minded is not to wait on time any longer than is necessary. Time can waste as well as be wasted. The miracle worker, therefore, accepts the time-control factor gladly. He recognizes that every collapse of time brings everyone closer to the ultimate release from time, in which the Son and the Father are one. Equality does not imply equality now. When everyone recognizes that he has everything, individual contributions to the Sonship will no longer be necessary.
- When the Atonement has been completed, all talents will be shared by all the Sons of God. God is not partial. All His children have His total Love, and all His gifts are freely given to everyone alike. “Except ye become as little children” means that unless you fully recognize your complete dependence on God, you cannot know the real power of the Son in his true relationship with the Father. The specialness of God’s Sons does not stem from exclusion but from inclusion. All my brothers are special. If they believe they are deprived of anything, their perception becomes distorted. When this occurs the whole family of God, or the Sonship, is impaired in its relationships.
- Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return. The miracle calls him to return because it blesses and honors him, even though he may be absent in the spirit. “God is not mocked” is not a warning, but a reassurance. God would be mocked if any of His creations lacked holiness. The creation is whole, and the mark of wholeness is holiness. Miracles are affirmations of Sonship, which is a state of completion and abundance.
- Whatever is true is eternal and cannot change or be changed. Spirit is therefore unalterable because it is already perfect, but the mind can elect what it chooses to serve. The only limit put on its choice is that it cannot serve two masters. If it elects to do so, the mind can become the medium by which spirit creates along the line of its own creation. If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains its creative potential but places itself under tyrannous rather than Authoritative control. As a result, it imprisons, because such are the dictates of tyrants. To change your mind means to place it at the disposal of true Authority.
- The miracle is a sign that the mind has chosen to be led by me in Christ’s service. The abundance of Christ is the natural result of choosing to follow Him. All shallow roots must be uprooted because they are not deep enough to sustain you. The illusion that shallow roots can be deepened, and thus made to hold, is one of the distortions on which the reverse of the Golden Rule rests. As these false underpinnings are given up, the equilibrium is temporarily experienced as unstable. However, nothing is less stable than an upside-down orientation. Nor can anything that holds it upside down be conducive to increased stability.[1]
Today we move beyond escape from darkness to learn about Wholeness and Spirit.
In our first paragraph of today’s reading, Jesus likens miracles to our bodies – when we have no more need for bodies we will have no more need for miracles. Those who are whole, do not need what miracles provide. When we no longer believe our bodies define us, we let them go and the need for the miracle goes away.
But here we are now, you and me – still in the body, still with lots to learn – and Jesus tells us while we still retain our humanity to choose miracles because miracles reflect God’s love – they offer forgiveness, they are merciful, and they heal first our perception and then everything we behold and experience in our perception.
Conversely, when we make the loveless choice, we make an empty shell. Lovelessness is sin we learned in yesterday’s text. Sin is the opposite of a miracle. Lovelessness prolongs our suffering in time, it delays our return to God, it stupefies and petrifies, reducing the creative force within us to almost nothing but it cannot destroy our holiness. Sin cannot destroy the God in us, it cannot abolish our Holy Self. It can wreak havoc and even death to our bodies but not our Promise, not our Potential, for we did not create our Selves.
When our mind is transformed by the miracle, we have no desire to waste time because we know that time itself is a waster. As long as we stay bound to time, we suffer, and we cause others to suffer. Dragging out my awakening to holiness did not just hurt me and cause me unnecessary pain – it hurt everybody who loved me, who depended upon me, and who looked upon me. While my biggest worry about identifying with Spirit was that it would turn me into some kind of a religious nut who would miss out on all the goodies this world had to offer, wasting my time in lovelessness is where I lost my marbles! Sunk in a sense of shame and despair, how I regret the suffering I seemed to cause by my lack of wisdom, kindness, and Golden Rule driven behavior.
As a miracle worker we know better than to waste time. Every time someone wakes up to the truth about themselves, time collapses a little more and we all grow closer to the ultimate release from time, from bodies, from separateness. In the meantime, we perform our miracles, and we do not waste our time in lovelessness!
When we remember fully who and what we are in Christ, we know that union with God is everlasting light and life, while separation from God is the black hole of darkness and death. Nothing is excluded from God’s Love. In God’s eyes we are each special but never more special than one another. An idea like me being even a little more special than you, deprives you of a little bit of specialness and gives me more. This does not fly in the Kingdom of God, for such ideas would blight the concept of oneness, unity, and equality which is the law of love and peace and joy.
Over time, all of God’s family returns to Him. The miracle calls us all home no matter how long we try to deny our Spirit and live for the flesh. The miracle calls to us in dreams, in quiet thoughts, through our love for our children and grandchildren, and the beauty and wonder of Creation. When our hearts and minds are touched by God even in our lowest, darkest hour, we know it is the miracle which is calling to us to change our mind and choose the right Kingdom. The Creator has put Himself into all of His Creation. We may have tried to claim it as our own, but God cannot be mocked in this regard. We can never steal or hide our holiness from Him Who is Holy and has marked us forever as His own. There is no small part of Creation which can ever be lost because it is whole, and it is one.
We must all meditate upon this in our devotional practice and ask God to make it real to our minds. When we begin to fathom the wholeness and oneness of God, the miracle has removed all fear from our mind of God’s Holiness, our holiness, and our place in His Kingdom. We are part of a grand scheme, my brothers, in which we dwell forever in a state of wholeness and abundance beyond words. When we share miracles, Jesus says, we are affirming our place in that Kingdom, in the Sonship, in that state of utter joy, delight, and certainty forever.
When we change our minds about God and begin to openly acknowledge, love, and serve Him and His Call, we are on the side of truth. Truth remains unchanging forever. God will not change His mind about our perfection just because we did. God is truth and truth does not change its tune! God Who loves Creation today will love Creation forever. When we align our minds with God, His Spirit creates through us. We find that the creations of love, of peace, and joy are boundless and go on forever in every direction. Creations of spirit are not limited by time and space or direction. Creations of spirit bless and complete, they draw us together, not apart.
When we do not align our minds with God, we are under the control of tyranny. Oppression is the poor substitute for the freedom and joy and limitlessness of the spirit. Our creativity in a state of lovelessness will last for a fleeting moment and then degenerate into repetitive cycles -regurgitating that which has already been created, perhaps in a slightly different form, perhaps in a different hue, but never anything truly alive and everlasting. In the loveless state, our attempts to create will grow old and stagnant, ever more selfish and depraved. To be free of this unpleasant, diabolic cycle we must change our minds by placing them under the control of God, who is the only true Authority. When we have learned all we need to know about darkness and sin, when we only want light and love, God frees our mind of these hellish rounds and restores to our awareness our true Identity in Him.
In the last paragraph of today’s reading, Jesus assures us that miracles will follow all of us who choose to be led by Him in His service. We live abundantly and we give abundantly when we follow Christ. We walk in the Spirit and we share all the Gifts that God has bestowed upon us. We withhold His love and mercy from nobody.
Before we can accept our wholeness and our holiness, all shallow belief systems and religious practices must be uprooted, must be surrendered, must be looked upon as distortions of the message of Christ. Christ teaches that the Golden Rule is the only acceptable way in which to follow Him. We are proactive, not reactive. We do not feed our minds the newsreels of the day and make the mistake of taking it for truth! We respect the message of God’s love and forgiveness and refuse to take sides in battles in which both parties have denied the peace, love, and unity of God and have taken arms against each other and therefore against Christ. We forgive and bless because we are forgiven and blessed. We hold nobody accountable for our happiness, for our peace, and for our joy for we trust only in God and what He has for us. We do not chase after that which can never satisfy, for we have devoted ourselves only to God, Who is Wholeness and Spirit.
Jesus understands that when our superficial beliefs and practices are uprooted, we will temporarily feel insecure. This world has seemed very real to us for all this time. Few of us have had direct contact with our spiritual Self and have not yet learned to trust God’s call to us. We may have had terrible experiences because of followers of Christ who have not offered us miracles, but rather harshness, harassment, and hurtfulness. We may have read religious texts that perverted God’s love and described God as wrathful, vengeful, and prone to dangerous temper tantrums when His tiny creations did not obey His every whim. Giving up traditions that glorify the death of Christ instead of His resurrection, will seem at first to throw us off balance. Yes, when our shallow roots are uprooted, we may feel a little wobbly – but do not be afraid. Truth stands and never needs defense, only lies are vulnerable. Shallow, ego-based stories of God do not give us certainty – they fill us with doubt and fear and shame.
Today’s prayer then is:
Our Father Who is perfect, awesome, and true, we want Your Kingdom and not ours. Uproot our shallow belief systems, our false doctrines, and our silly traditions that do not give us certainty, but rather make us feel ashamed of ourselves and our belief in You. Awaken us to Your truth. Let us devote ourselves to Christ Who leads the way. Deepen our understanding and help us not to be afraid. In the name of Jesus, with Whom we are one. Amen.
[1][1] A Course in Miracles. Chapter 1:V Wholeness and spirit. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992). pp. 12-13.
Audio credit: www.eckiefriar.com
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