CIM Lessons 138-144 and Miracles Principle #21

Miracles Principle #21: “Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles you accept God’s forgiveness by extending it to others.” God does not forgive because God never judged. When CIM talks about the forgiveness of God, it’s talking about the unconditional Love of God. Forgiveness, as CIM describes it, is forgiving your brother for what he has not done. (Text, Ch. 17, Section III, par. 1)You realize nothing has been done to you; it’s all something you’ve done to yourself. In miracles, we shift from the ego’s hate and blame to Spirit’s Love, which then becomes the extension of God’s love to us and through us. Jesus says we demonstrate he did not die in vain by demonstrating that he lives in us, which means living according to the same principles of love and forgiveness he did. The more we practice his example, the closer we come to the Christ within and, thereby, to remembering God.

Lesson 138—“Heaven is the decision I must make.” The physical realm is a world of duality, of opposites. In this world, choice is not only possible, it’s life. God’s creation is one of non-duality, of perfect oneness. If reality is oneness, choice is impossible, inconceivable. A place where nothing changes and there are no opposites sounds boring! We are addicted to drama, devoted to the delicious agony of indecision. To be without decisions seems to us like death. Yet this is what the Course offers.  When this truly dawns upon our minds, we recoil in mortal terror. It’s unconscious; we don’t realize what’s going on, but we literally run away from truth and from total love, not knowing what we’re doing. It seems as if we’re being asked to die. And, in a sense, we are: to die to life as we have known it. The only way out is through—through fear to love. Through fear to faith that our Creator would not “stick it to us,” but rather wills to give us all there is in place of nothing. Our guilt is the only thing holding this all from us. When we look at this choice “with Heaven’s help,” we see that purpose of this world is to make one final choice—the choice for heaven, the choice between illusion and reality. Time exists only for this—to “give us time” to make this choice.

Lesson 139—“I will accept Atonement for myself.” To accept the Atonement for myself means to accept the truth of what I am—and what everyone else is as well. And what am I? God created me as an extension of His Love. That is my purpose. To accept the Atonement is to begin to function as God’s Love in the world. This lesson is magnificent in its dissection of the insanity of the way we question our identity. It questions our questioning. It raises our doubts to doubt. It belittles our thoughts of littleness. How can we be anything except what we are. And how can we not know what we are? God’s grandness, this magnificent inclusiveness, this divine generosity is our very being! Every time we refuse to see the magnificence in another, we deny our own. When we look on others with less than love, it’s because we refuse to accept how much we merit unconditional love. We are here to restore the grandeur of what we all are to every mind. Through us our Father’s Love can contain all minds. Our heart is big enough for all the world. Think of this the next time you’re inclined to think your life has no purpose!

Lesson 140—“Only salvation can be said to cure.” The “cure” CIM is talking about here is a healing of the mind, not the body. This lesson applies to bodily sickness, but it also applies equally to any apparent “problem” in this world—financial lack, loneliness, etc. To seek a cure by any means in the physical realm is what CIM calls “magic.” Finding a magic formula within the dream is never the solution because we are curing the symptom rather than the cause. The root of the problem is in the mind. Early in the Text, Jesus makes it clear, however, that the use of magic isn’t evil. It just doesn’t really work. Yet sometimes it’s the best we can do. If we have a splitting headache, we take an aspirin. There is no shame in this. Only let us not deceive ourselves that we have really done anything to cure the dis-ease. The magic of this world can mask symptoms but cannot cure. Bringing our illusions to truth, allowing our guilt to be removed from our minds—this cures and nothing else. Sin, and therefore sickness, cannot be real because God is everywhere present. He has not left us and, therefore, what we think is sin cannot be so. In our awareness of His presence, guilt disappears, and with it, the cause of sickness.

Lessons 141-144 are review lessons with the theme of “My mind holds only the thoughts I think with God.” What does this mean? Does it mean all the thoughts I have somehow mysteriously come from God no matter how meaningless or ugly they seem? No. It means that the mind of which I’m aware is not my real mind. My conscious mind, filled with erratic private thoughts, is an illusion of a mind—a mirage floating over my real mind. My real mind is a limitless domain, at one with the Mind of God. In that mind, my thoughts are not petty or fleeting, but stable, eternal realities. The thoughts in my real mind are not self-initiated but rather stream from God through me. The “self-deceptions” mentioned in this review material are all the thoughts of which you’re currently aware. They are self-deceptions because they deceive you into thinking your mind is not that infinite mind which thinks in unison with God. These self-deceptive thoughts affect Reality “No more than can a child who throws a stick into the ocean change the coming and the going of the tides.”

Assignment: Miracles Principle #22; Lessons 145-151; Text Chapter Two, pp. 23-28—“Healing as Release from Fear” (First words: “Our emphasis is now on healing.”); The Function of the Miracle Worker (First words: “Before miracle workers are ready to undertake, etc.”; and “Special Principles of Miracle Workers” (First words: “The miracle abolishes the need, etc.”)

Practical Application: This week, as you make the many choices you will undoubtedly make, ask yourself as you make each choice, “What is it for?” What is the motive behind your choice? Is the motive or intent one of love or one of fear? Is it one of eternality or one of passing importance or value? As you choose what you will wear for the day, is it to impress or is it to bring comfort and joy? As you choose what to eat, is it a choice of fear (Oh! The calories!) or is it a choice of mindful engagement and gratitude. As you choose what activities to do or not to do, be consciously aware of how the activity blesses you and others or not. Remember, as you engage in this “exercise,” that salvation is happiness.