CIM Lessons 159-165 and Miracles Principle #24

Miracles Principle #24: “Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead because you made sickness and death yourself, and can therefore abolish both. You are a miracle, capable of creating in the likeness of your Creator. Everything else is your own nightmare, and does not exist. Only the creations of light are real.” We made the body and the body’s laws—aging, genetics, nutritional requirements, etc.—and we can unmake them by withdrawing our investment or belief in them. Spirit does not heal because Spirit did not make the body sick. We get sick by projecting the guilt in our minds onto our bodies, and forgiveness brings us back to health. What Spirit does is heal the guilt in our minds that made the body sick. This is an important distinction so we don’t fall into the trap of asking Spirit’s help for things in the material world. All that does is make the world of illusion “real.” The only meaningful prayer, therefore, is a prayer of thanksgiving for who and what we are. We are capable of creating in the likeness of God, which is on the level of spirit. Nothing else exists. Everything else is nothing but a dream.

The goal of CIM is not to awaken from the dream. The goal is to change the nightmare into a happy dream. In the Happy Dream, we still live within this world of illusions, but no longer project any guilt onto it. That is living in this world with what is called “true perception.” This is what the Course calls living in the “real world.” When we attain the Happy Dream, CIM says God takes the last step Himself, and that is what finally awakens us from the dream.

Lesson 159—“I give the miracles I have received.” We enter frequently into a holy instant. There, we experience a little taste of Heaven. While we can’t carry this experience back into the physical world, we can carry back what that experience is like, translated into perception. This is called “the vision of Christ,” which is manifested in forgiveness. We accept God’s mercy, experienced in the holy instant, and in turn extend that mercy to our brothers. We cannot become fully aware of what we have received in a holy instant until we give it away. The extension of Christ’s vision is an integral part of salvation (aka happiness). It’s what brings us to certainty. It’s similar to the principle taught by AA, that you stay sober by helping someone else stay sober.

Lesson 160—“I am at home. Fear is the stranger here.” “Fear” is virtually synonymous with “ego.” The picture in this lesson is that we’ve invited fear, personified as a stranger, into our house, and the stranger has taken over and declared that he is us. The insane part is that we’ve gone along with the stranger, accepted that the stranger is really us. Having habituated ourselves to fear, we believe our thoughts and feelings of anger or loneliness or helplessness are us. Yet these manifestations of fear are an interloper, not a genuine part of us at all. When we make this distinction, we can begin to relate to our fear rather than from it. When I relate from fear, I’m in its grips; the fear is me. When I relate to my fear, I can look on it with dispassionate mercy. I can say, “I’m having thoughts of fear” or “I am experiencing fear.” I am the thinker who’s thinking the thoughts, but I’m not the thoughts. When we can separate ourselves from the fear we feel, we can identify with our true Self. This new vision of ourselves, however, of necessity, includes everyone. It’s as if God has given us a pair of glasses and said, “Here, put these on, and you will see your true Self.” But when we discover that, in putting them on, we see not only ourselves in a new light but everyone, we rebel. We want to see ourselves as innocent, but we are unwilling to see everyone that way. If we refuse to see those around us as innocent, we’ll put down the glasses, refuse the vision of Christ, and will not be able to recognize our Self. “You will not remember Him until you look on all as He does.”

Lesson 161—“Give me your blessing, holy Son of God.” When my brother or a circumstance causes me anger, instead of listening to the ego and agreeing that the brother or circumstance is the cause of my anger, let me see that the brother is giving me a blessing by revealing to me that I‘ve forgotten who I am. If I’m seeing something that makes me angry or upset, it’s because I wish to see it. My mind has separated from the Love of God, or thinks it has. Thereby, it splinters reality, sees specific forms that seem to justify my upset. It sees fragments rather than the whole picture, as God does. If I ask, however, Spirit will take the specific circumstances I’ve made and use them to teach me a different point of view. What I see when I see a brother as a body attacking me is my own fear external to myself, poised to attack. If I allow Spirit to show me my brother as he is, instead of how my fear made him, what I see will be so awesome I’ll want to kneel at his feet in adoration.

Lesson 162—“I am as God created me.” For the third time we encounter as the main thought of a lesson what may be the single most repeated thought in the Course. Why is this idea so important? “This single thought, held firmly in mind, would save the world.” We are not what we made of ourselves. Our mistakes have not changed the truth about us. Our entire spiritual journey is characterized in terms of this idea: “You but emerge from an illusion of what you are to the acceptance of yourself as God created you.” (T-24.II.14:5). To acknowledge “I am as God created me” is to recognize the Son of God. It is to be free of guilt. It is to know the innocence of every living thing.

Lesson 163—“The is no death. The Son of God is free.” When Course says there is no death, it’s not talking about death of the body. How could what never lived live forever? CIM says that to accept the idea of death is to proclaim God’s impotence. Each apparent instance of death is a witness that God is dead. It says He Who wills life could not stop this death, so He must be dead. We may respond by saying we don’t want to believe God is dead. We don’t want to die. But CIM says anger is a death thought—a wish that something or someone “go away” or “not be.” So we try to compromise. We want to hold certain death thoughts but not others. The lesson says if death exists at all, it totally contradicts life and cannot be true unless life is proven false. If we say death is real in any form, we’re saying the God, Who wills only life, is dead. Here we find an echo of the words from the Introduction: ‘Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.” Life cannot be threatened. Death does not exist. If we truly saw that worry about physical death, sadness, anger, etc. are all just forms of the idea that God is dead, we would laugh at them.

At the same time, CIM does not advocate pretending death is not real in the illusion. Denying grief is simply not healthy. Rather, as Course so often suggests, I can simply look at what I’m feeling and recognize that, however real my loss feels, it’s based on a denial of truth. I can remind myself that I’m believing God is dead and that’s just a foolish notion. This pain, which I’m indeed feeling, is therefore not real. I’m okay, and God is still alive. You might call this lucid dreaming. Although the experience you’re going through feels terribly real, there’s part of you that is aware you’re dreaming.  All CIM asks is that we recognize our mistaken thoughts, that they are proclaiming an untruth—that God is dead. If we do that, Spirit will do the rest.

Lesson 164—“Now we are one with Him Who is our Source.” Recent lessons are reaching for some new kind of level. There’s consistent emphasis on the holy instant. We’re being asked to listen to “the song of Heaven,” the call of our hearts to God and His to ours—a call that is continually beckoning beyond all the sounds of this world. We practice setting aside the sights and sounds of the world that constantly witness to us the ego’s message of fear. We quiet ourselves and try to get in touch with the “silence into which the world cannot intrude.” Such practicing puts our minds in a state of peace and joy, a place of assurance that despite all seeming evidence to the contrary, all is well. It may be difficult at this juncture to fully understand how such practicing can “save the world.” Yet it is so because all minds are joined.  The effect on the world proceeds whether or not we are aware of it.

Lesson 165—“Let not my mind deny the Thought of God.” Current lessons are a strong encouragement to move forward—past the point of hesitation and into a firm commitment. We need to become disillusioned with the ego to the point that we begin to see through its games. We don’t see the real world because we don’t want to. Because we still believe the ego has something of value to offer us. Jesus appeals to us to deny not Heaven. He says it is ours but for the asking. Now the ego is carping in our ears something like, “You don’t know what you’re getting into here. How do you know you’ll like it? You’d better be sure before you make a move, buster.” Course says we don’t have to be sure before asking because “conviction lies within it.” In other words, we don’t find the conviction, the certainty, until we experience Heaven, and we can’t experience Heaven till we ask. Certainty is not something we can generate for ourselves. “We count on God, and not upon ourselves, to give us certainty.” But for that to happen, we have to be willing to “die” to the experience of life we know now and to ask for something more. We need to be willing to ask that “the Thought of God” enter our minds and displace the distortions.

Assignment: Read Miracles Principle #25. Practice Lessons 166-172. In the Text, read pages 380-388 (“The Little Willingness,” which begins with “The holy instant is the result of your determination, etc.; ”The Happy Dream;” and “Beyond the Body.”)

Also, please remember to bring to class passages from CIM that have been especially meaningful or especially puzzling or challenging for you.