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.
No comments:
Post a Comment