CIM Lessons 243-249 and Miracles Principle #36

Miracles Principle #36—“Miracles are examples of right thinking, aligning your perceptions with truth as God created it.” Right thinking, also called right-mindedness in CIM, is thinking along with Spirit rather than with the ego. The miracle, a shift in perception, does not directly express the truth of God but reflects it. The truth of God is that we are all one. In this world, we experience the oneness by transcending barriers of separation: thoughts of anger, hurt, victimization, etc. While perception is not the truth, it is nonetheless not in conflict with it. This is the same as the idea discussed earlier about the “reflection of holiness.” These reflections are the goal of the Course. They are the inevitable effect when we bring down our barriers to truth.

Lesson 243: “Today I will judge nothing that occurs.” If nothing else, this lesson can show me just how constantly my mind is judging. The eventual goal of CIM is to relinquish all judgment and to allow Spirit to judge everything for us. Obviously, letting go of judgment won’t happen over night. Our minds are trained to automatically categorize everything we see: “What a nice day!” “What a ridiculous hairdo.”  “Jerk!” Judgment is quite literally the breeding ground for the ego’s hellish nightmares. Every thought bears fruit of its kind. If I believe I am guilty and that my brother is even guiltier, the universe will bear witness to that central thought. Everywhere I look I will see punishment for that guilt in myriad forms: lack and limitation, illness, starvation, war, estranged relationships, etc. At first, we just want to consider being honest with ourselves and becoming aware of our constant judgments and of the fact that they have no meaning because I do not have sufficient information to judge. The ego has convinced us that judgment and intelligence are synonymous. Nothing could be further from the truth! To judge accurately, I’d have to know a vast number of things that “must remain beyond my present grasp.” Think what a relief and timesaver it will be to release the meaningless activity of judgment!

Lesson 244: “I am in danger nowhere in the world.” Who I have believed myself to be is in danger everywhere in the world. I’m constantly bombarded with signals of danger. Our water is unsafe. Smoking can kill me. Even secondhand smoke. Preservatives in food cause cancer—and on and on and on. In order to even begin to accept today’s idea, I have to realize that I am not who I have believed myself to be. What would I feel like if I truly accepted God’s word for Who I am? I am the beloved creation of God, forever safe in the His love and omnipotent protection. Like the very young child who, when Mommy or Daddy says, “Everything’s all right now,” relaxes and falls asleep, I can trust my heavenly Father to care for me. But how can I believe that when I am without a job or riddled with pain? I can begin by realizing I am not a body. I am eternal spirit. It is my dogged denial of this fact, my judgment that I am guilty of sin and deserve punishment, which manifests my nightmares. A very young child cannot be convinced he did not see a boogieman in the closet until Mommy turns on the light and shows him the boogieman was an overcoat on a hanger. Likewise, I have to allow Spirit to turn on the Light in my “closet” and shine away my illusions.

Lesson 245: “Your peace is with me, Father. I am safe.” God’s peace doesn’t come and go. God’s peace is with me now and always. Unrest is something I am always superimposing on the underlying peace, which never leaves me. Unrest is a false perception: peace is reality. If I’m willing to stop and say, “Peace! Be still!” to the storm in my mind, God’s peace is always there, waiting to be remembered. Well, what if the doctor has just told me I have an inoperable brain tumor? Peace is in remembering that I am not a body. I am an eternal spirit. No one’s body, nor the cares that accompany it, will last forever. “Nothing real (eternal) can be threatened. Nothing unreal (physical/ephemeral) exists.”

Lesson 246: “To love my Father is to love His Son.” We can’t love God without loving what He created. The Apostle John, in his epistles, said very much the same thing when he said, “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his broth, he is a liar.” The “Son of God” in CIM refers not simply to Jesus. It refers to all our brothers and sisters and to ourselves. The measure of the quality of relationship we have with God is the quality of relationship we have with those around us and with ourselves. Let me be open to uncovering the little bits of hatred that still lie in my heart—especially those directed at myself. The Text teaches me that uncovering the hatred within myself is “crucial” (T-13.III.1:1) to salvation—to my happiness and my freedom.

Lesson 247: “Without forgiveness I will still be blind.” All forgiveness is ultimately forgiveness of myself. I may be willing to admit that my unloving or unjoyful feelings in the present are due to my faulty choices in the past. But what I’m overlooking is that I’m feeling unloving or unjoyful because I’m continuing to choose these feelings now, in the present. I’m still listening to the voice of the ego. If I avoid awareness of that in the present, then I am blinding myself. One indication that my ego is still running the show is that I’ll still be making excuses for myself, talking about my vulnerability. Or I’ll be caught up in wanting others to accept their own responsibility for the situation in the relationship. If someone tries to get me to see my own responsibility for things, I feel attacked, even if it’s done in true love. I’ll be saying things like, “I don’t know why I keep getting blindsided by all these needy/mean-spirited people.”  I have formed a habit of refusing to see my own desire to be separate/special in the present, of projecting that motive onto others. (“He thinks he’s so perfect!” “She is so judgmental!”) The desire to separate myself must be seen in the now to be healed. Brought into the now, error encounters the Light and is gently shone away. If I’m seeing anything but innocence in my brothers, I’m hiding guilt in myself. There is no guilt but my own. And when I see that, there is no guilt at all.

Lesson 248: “Whatever suffers is not part of me.” The Son of God cannot suffer. This one is really hard to swallow, especially when I find myself in the proverbial frying pan. When I have the flu, I’m miserable. It isn’t somebody else being miserable; it isn’t anything I can even conceive of separating myself from. But this lesson is asking me to begin to learn to disengage myself from my ego and my body. It’s asking me to begin to distinguish my Self from that which experiences various things CIM views as illusions: suffering, grief, pain and death. This disowning of falsity about the holy Son of God prepares us to welcome back our true Self. Below my level of consciousness, every scrap of suffering I experience in this world is laid at God’s feet. He is ignoring me, punishing me. When we begin to disengage ourselves from our egos and our bodies, when we begin to realize that our Self is not suffering, we can remember God’s love, and love Him in return. Rather than following the evidence of our senses, we can turn to “Follow His Light, and see the world as He beholds it.” And He always sees everything as either an expression of love or a call for love.

Lesson 249: “Forgiveness ends all suffering and loss.” Unforgiveness is painful. It hurts to shut someone out of my heart. Forgiveness ends that suffering, that feeling of aloneness. To believe that forgiveness ends all suffering is a stretch. It still seems some of my pain is not related to unforgiveness. Yet it is. All of it! If I forgive in the sense CIM speaks of so that I see there was not sin, that I wasn’t hurt, and that I lost nothing, then “anger makes no sense.” If there’s no anger, there’s no attack. This is how I will see the world when I look through the eyes of the Christ. This doesn’t mean I’ll suddenly see everyone transformed into angelic beings. Jesus saw the “real world,” and he was crucified. But he did not suffer, and he did not lose. He was no longer identified with his body. He knew the body couldn’t die because it had never lived. Likewise for me, my life may not instantly become a flower-strewn pathway to glory. There may still be those who seem to want to harm me. My body may still become sick. Loved ones will still die, cars will be stolen, houses will still burn down, jobs will still be lost. Yet the healed mind will see no loss, nor experience suffering, knowing that “nothing real can be threatened.” The more my mind embraces forgiveness, the more the physical reflection of my mind will transform as well, leading me into what the Course calls the Happy Dream—the foyer to Heaven.

Assignment: Miracles Principle #37. Lessons 250-256. Review or continue reading in Manual for Teachers “What Are the Characteristics of God’s Teachers?” pp. 9-16.

Practical Application: Make eye contact with your brothers and sisters this week. As Spirit to help you see the Christ in each one.