CIM Lessons 82-88 and Miracles Principle # 13

Miracles Principle #13:”Miracles are both beginnings and endings, and so they alter the temporal order. They are always affirmations of rebirth, which seem to go back but really go forward. They undo the past in the present, and thus release the future.”

 CIM teaches that when the “separation” began, in that one instant, the entire world of evolution occurred (Text, Ch. 26, Section V). In that one instant that we believed we’d separated from God, it was as if a huge imaginary carpet spun out. This “carpet” constitutes the entire world of evolution—past, present, and future.

CIM also teaches that in that same instant, God created Holy Spirit (HS), an unbreakable and direct connection between Himself and His Son, you. In this manner, then, God provided the correction for separation the instant you imagined it. The challenge is that you believe this world of time and space, which is really a dream, is reality.

One way the ego has rooted you in this dream, has made you believe it’s a reality, is that it made up the notion of time as linear: past, present, and future. This is the key stumbling block in trying to understand how the miracle operates. Your mind is so structured in the belief that time is linear that it’s almost impossible for you to recognize that time is really holographic, which is a model that quantum physics has given us. Holography teaches that within each part of something is contained the whole. This means that within each of our minds is the entire history of the ego, the entire history of the physical universe—as well as the entire “history” of our divinity.

What happens is that at any given moment what we choose to experience is a particular part of this hologram. We dip into our minds and choose a part of the dream to experience. This is what the Course means when it says we walk through a script that’s already written (Workbook, Lesson 158, par. 3-4). HS doesn’t write this script. HS doesn’t cause things to happen to us in this world. What HS does do is to join with us in the script and teach us there is another way of looking at it.

Salvation/happiness is the ego’s script turned upside down. Where the ego’s script is to reinforce our feelings of separation, HS uses that script to teach us we are not separate. Spirit uses our world as a classroom. The ego uses it as a prison.

What keeps us on this carpet of time is guilt. That means the way to get off “the carpet,” waken from the dream, is to be free of our guilt. That’s what forgiveness does. The one claim Course makes is that it will save us “time.”

The only reference Course makes to reincarnation is in the Teachers Manual. It does imply in other places, however, that this is not the first time we’ve come to the physical plane. When it says we could save a thousand years, it’s saying we could save many lifetimes. If we choose to work out our unforgiveness issues now, then, in one lifetime, we could erase the seeming separation. That is what it means when it says of the miracle that it abolishes time or “alters temporal order.” It doesn’t abolish our sense of the whole span of time, but what it does is collapse the amount of time, in our minds, it would have taken us to work through the huge problem of guilt that we have.

Again, it’s not necessary to understand or even agree with this whole metaphysical view of time. What is necessary is to realize, when we find ourselves in difficult or painful situations, is that there’s a purpose you could identify within that situation. That purpose is that you could learn not to see yourself as a victim, and to the extent that you accomplish this, to that extent you will heal the guilt within yourself. That’s what saves you time.

Lessons 82-88 are all review lessons, so I will make no further comments on these lessons than previously provided to you. The short review statements in this section are all that you need.

Assignment: Miracles Principle # 14; Workbook Lessons 89-95; Text pp. 103-111, The Lessons of the Holy Spirit.

Practical Application: Find a small to medium box. If you like, decorate it to give it “sacred significance.” Cut a two-inch slit in the top of the box. This is your “God Box.” This will be an exercise in 1) faith and 2) in staying in the now—releasing guilts from the past and fears of the future. For the next 9 months, when you find your mind dwelling on or obsessing about a guilt from the past or a fear regarding the future, write it down on a small strip of paper and drop it into your God Box. As best you can, resolve to truly release this guilt or this fear to the One who can truly resolve it for all time. Make a note on your calendar to open your God Box on New Year’s Day and go through each item, noting the current status of the challenge or concern you released to God. Expect a happy surprise. If you are truly releasing these issues to God, you will have made a giant step toward developing the faith necessary to releasing the ego’s grip of fear. 

CIM Lessons 75-81 and Miracles Principle #12

Miracles Principle #12: “Miracles are thoughts. Thoughts can represent the lower or bodily level of experience, or the higher or spiritual level of experience. One makes the physical, and the other creates the spiritual.” This is a very important principle. Miracles are thoughts, so a miracle is a change from the ego’s thought to the Holy Spirit’s thought. Miracles are thought because everything, ultimately, is thought. Nothing has existence outside our minds. The miracle is the thought that corrects the ego’s thought of separation. This is the first time CIM differentiates between the words “make” and “create.” Spirit creates the eternal. The ego makes ephemeral. (For a more detailed description of the difference in “make” and “creating” read Text, page 44—Beyond Perception—paragraphs 2-3.)

Lesson 75—“The light has come.” This lesson speaks of me as though I’ve accepted its message and forgiven the world; as though I’m ready, this very moment, to see the real world. Though I may not feel ready for such confidence, this lesson is the truth about me whether or not I have yet recognized it because any impression I may have that my will differs from God’s is only an illusion. Today is for the celebration of vision. I accept myself as God created me. The light has come!

Lesson 76—“I am under no laws but God’s laws.” This stunning, almost unbelievable statement confronts, head on, all our basic assumptions about life and ourselves. Our subjugation to the laws of the world is a choice we make from moment to moment. To realize this is true, we have to undo the mistake we’ve made in identifying who and what we are. That undoing is what CIM is all about. The following scenario forms the background to this lesson:

1.     We are perfect, formless mind, each of us parts of a seamless whole, but have wished to separate off a small piece of mind to call “me.” Our sense of identity has become restricted to this little fragment of mind, and we have felt enormous fear and guilt as a result of this false belief.

2.     We have made up a world filled with bodies for two reasons: first, to support our illusion of separateness; and, second, to escape the guilt in our minds by projecting that guilt onto others.

3.     Believing we are the body, and that our bodies are endangered by many things, we have devised an endless list of means for protecting and preserving our bodies. These are the “laws” we have agreed will govern the chaos we’ve generated.

Lesson 77—“I am entitled to miracles.” This lesson celebrates our true Identity as beings who are one with God. What we are entitles us to miracles. Nothing we do or say, no rituals we observe, entitles us to miracles. They are the gift of God. We do not try to generate miracles ourselves; we ask Holy Spirit to work miracles through us. We also remember that miracles may or may not always have observable effects. The essential ingredient in a miracle is not anything in the material world, but the freeing of our minds from illusions.

Lesson 78—“Let miracles replace all grievances.” If we did not have grievances, everything would be miraculous. God’s perfect world shimmers all around us, but it is blocked from our awareness by our grievances. The very purpose of a grievance is to hide the miracle behind it.  The Son of God is hidden in all of us. Only our grievances prevent us from seeing him everywhere. We have the power to release him in everyone around us simply by looking past our grievances to the Christ within them.  Perhaps we’re not ready to let go of our judgments entirely. This lesson is only asking that we try it on for size for fifteen minutes. “Let me behold my savior in this one.” This lesson offers reason to reconsider mindsets such as, “I have to love her from another room.” As we said in our last session, this is a good starting point, but as CIM students, we must be willing to take this a step further, whenever we feel ready. The one we are seeing as “toxic” is our savior, our greatest teacher—if only we are willing to be willing to ask Spirit, sincerely, to help us see that “toxic” person in a different way.

Lesson 79—“Let me recognize the problem so it can be solved.” This lesson brings us back to the CIM principle—“One problem, one solution.” These lessons merit repeating until the concepts they teach become imbedded in our thought processes. We seem to be faced with myriad problems, overwhelming in their complexity.  To break free of this illusory burden, our first step must be to recognize the problem in every problem. As long as I think the problem is anything other than my imaginary separateness from God, which has always been a non-issue with God, I will continue to think I have a sea of problems for which there is no solution. The seeming complexity of the world is nothing more than our minds’ attempts to not recognize the single problem, thus preventing its resolution. If we can see the separation at the root of every problem, we realize we already have the answer.  We are already free. All we’re being asked to do at this point is to “suspend all judgment about what the problem is.” So today we’re being called to doubt—to doubt our own version of what our problems are. And then to ask Spirit, “What is the real” problem here?”

Lesson 80—“Let me recognize my problems have been solved.”” An unresolved problem is an excuse for unforgiveness. An unresolved problem generates a grievance that blocks the light or truth from our awareness. Whenever we choose, we can accept the fact that the “problem” is already gone because in God’s mind, which is ALL THERE IS, there never was a problem. We are still as God created us.

Lesson 81—Begins review: ”I am the light of the world.”

Assignment: Miracles Principle # 13; Lessons 82-88. Text Chapter 14, Section III “The Decision for Guiltlessness,” pp. 274-278.

Practical Application: This week, practice applying The Rules for Decision (Text pp.625—629) whenever something or someone disturbs your peace. You may find it helpful to write the steps down on a sticky note or note card that you can keep handy. 

CIM Lessons 68-74 and Miracles Principle #11

Miracles Principles #11—Prayer is the medium of miracles. It is a means of communication of the created with the Creator. Through prayer love is received, and through miracles love is expressed.“ This principle introduces the idea of prayer, a word not often used in CIM. The Text, Ch. 3, section V, says “the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness” because forgiveness heals our minds. When we pray to God for something to happen on the level of the body—ours or someone else’s—we are making the body and the world real, which means we’re falling into the ego’s trap. When we say, “This is my problem, God, and I want you to take care of it,” this is the arrogance of the ego speaking. God has already given us All That Is; it is only our thinking that makes that seem not so. A miracle is the “little willingness” to join with the Holy Spirit that thereby joins us with our brother and heals the mind of both—from the ego’s way of seeing to Spirit’s.

Lesson 68—“Love holds no grievances.” This lesson doesn’t try to “lay down the law” or make us feel guilty. It simply tries to motivate us to want to let grievances go by showing us, first, how much pain they bring to our minds and, second, by helping us experience how wonderful it feels to let them go.  Because our Self is Love, holding grievances is an act of betrayal.  Our Source is Love, and we are created like that Source. When we hold a grievance, we seem to be different from our Source and, therefore, feel cut off from Him. However, the mind can’t quite conceive of a source and its effect being totally different; therefore, to logically cope with the dilemma, we make God over in our own image: angry and vindictive. We dissociate, forget who we are, to ease the pain of constant Self-betrayal. That‘s why CIM teaches that forgiveness is not something we do for others but something we do for ourselves.

Lesson 69—“My grievances hide the light of the world in me.” I am the light of the world, but my light can’t shine out because grievances hide it. When I let my grievances go, it simultaneously releases the light in my brother and in myself. Today’s practice is another attempt to become aware of our Self as God created it. The form of the practice is repeated often in the Workbook. The pattern is one of attempting to move through or past the thoughts that normally occupy our minds and to settle into deep stillness to the Self we’re not normally aware of. This is a CIM method of meditation and one of the tools given to us that can be used even after Workbook practice per se has ended.

Lesson 70—“My salvation comes from me.” It is tempting to lay the blame for my problems somewhere outside myself, and the idea that all of them are in my mind and nowhere else seems preposterous. However, if the source of my problems is outside of me, I am the helpless victim of these outside forces. I can only rant and rave about them. If, however, my problems lie solely in my own mind, then I am capable of doing something about them. In fact, only I can do anything about them and nothing outside of me can prevent me from doing it. I (capital S!) am in complete control and therefore I am already free.  The cost of this truth is the realization that the “cavalry” isn’t coming to rescue me. Nor can my position, my money, my spouse, my analyst or my guru. Not even Jesus will do it for me. Jesus is simply a part of my wakened mind. He is me, remembering and reminding me.

Lesson 71—“Only God’s plan for salvation will work.” After being told yesterday that salvation comes from me and only me, it’s a little annoying to be told that only God’s plan will work. But this isn’t really saying anything different. The ego’s plan involves looking outside myself; God’s plan is wholly centered on my change of mind. In God’s plan, salvation comes from me; in the ego’s plan, it comes from any place except me. In the ego’s view, I’m the innocent victim. In the ego’s plan, the mind’s only function is to determine what, outside of me, has to change for me to be saved. The ego looks in every place except where the answer is: in my own mind. God’s plan is that I look for it where it is: in myself.

Lesson 72—“Holding grievances is an attack on God’s plan.” This is a long, tough lesson. The scope of ideas presented here is daunting, even to an experienced CIM student. One primary truth the lesson tries to get across is that we are not bodies. The general thrust of the message is that grievances imply a certain view of life, in which the body is the real source of happiness and God is to be feared because He appears to command us to sacrifice our happiness. In this view, grievances are always about how another body has mistreated us; our happiness depends on how others treat us. This view also implies that God is a body and is intensely focused on getting treated right by other bodies. He demands that we serve Him, obey His commandments, and forego the pleasures of the body as sinful. In the end, He requires us to pay our debts by dying. Given this view, the natural impulse is to run from Him. That’s how grievances attack God’s plan—by inducing us to run from Him.

Lesson 73—“I will there be light.” The desire to attack cannot be our will; it can only be the idle wish of the ego. Our will and God’s will are identical. The wishes of the ego, which oppose the will of God hold limited power. This is why affirmations, based on the ego’s desire to “get” something, at best bring sketchy results. The will of our Self, however, is all-powerful. These lessons attempt to get us in touch with that Self through forgiveness. Forgiveness erases the dark places in our minds that are being projected as dark places in the world, just as a dust mote in a movie projector throws a dark blotch on the screen. The ego sees through a glass darkly. Forgiveness clears that glass so that we can again see God’s perfect creation. That is the will of our eternal Self. That is the will of God.

Lesson 74—“There is no will but God’s.” There is nothing apart from God and His creation. There is no devil, no “evil force” that opposes God. Nothing exists that is independent of Him and therefore capable of having a different will. How can we explain then our common experience of wanting things we think are opposed to God? Or even more down to earth, the experiencing of being torn between conflicting desires? If there is no will but God’s, how is this possible? It isn’t! Unless illusions are involved. When there seems to be a will opposed to God, we are seeing illusions. When we realize our minds cannot be in conflict incredible peace results. (Note the difference [par. 5] between true peace and false peace.)

Included in these lessons:

How to Listen for Guidance

1.  

           Listen in patience. Don’t give up too soon. Once you have asked Holy Spirit a question, wait patiently. And while you wait, periodically repeat your request. Not to remind a forgetful Holy Spirit, but to renew your own focus and your confidence that you will hear.

2.     

      Listen with confidence. God wills with you that you hear. Claim what belongs to you!

3.    

      Listen in deep silence; wait for Him in quiet expectancy. Success in hearing Spirit boils down to this: How still can you get your mind? This stillness, however, should not be passive or lax. Rather, it should be an alert, attentive expectant stillness. Combining a quiet restfulness with a poised alertness is central to the art of listening. Of course, holding your mind in this state is something most of us can’t do for more than a half a minute in the beginning. This is why the Workbook instructs us to draw ourselves back again and again to our focus—as often as we need to—while we develop the art.

Assignment: Text: Read Miracles Principle #12 and read/review Chapter 30, The New Beginning, pp. 625-630 (Introduction, Rules for Decision, and Freedom of Will).

Practical Application: Whenever something or someone disturbs your peace this week, silently say, “Thank you for this opportunity to learn to let go/forgive.”