Miracles take away the barriers to joining, replacing an ancient enmity with open-mindedness, appreciation and love.
The work of the individual in A Course in Miracles is the transformation of their perceptions as laid out in the Workbook lessons and the Text. The process is to become increasingly aware of the fearful propensity to respond or react without love to anyone. This includes all responses you make to “others” and yourself, and in all temptation to perceive yourself as persecuted, attacked, or treated unfairly. To attack and defend, then to attack in defense are the ego’s circular means to perpetuate the madness of the separation illusion and an existent state apart from the unity of life in God.
The ego minimises fear, yet the presence of fear bears enormous cost. The fearful perception anticipates attack and must maintain defense against it. Attack takes many forms both overt and subtle, always justified but is never seen as complete insanity. More than the opposite of love, it is the means by which love is totally banished from awareness.
Therefore to awaken to the reality of love we must become increasingly honest with ourselves in recognising all the forms in which temptation to judge and attack are justified and valued. And then we turn to the Help of the Teacher of miracles for the help we want and need, to make a better choice and choose the miracle of kindness, helpfulness and love instead. And while this may sound simplistic, in this lesson lies the complete escape from illusions, the undoing of the false ego, body-mind identity, and the awakening of the living Christ in awareness as the true Self.
Lay aside your shield which profits nothing, and lay down the spear and sword you raised against an enemy without existence. Christ has called you friend and brother. He has even come to ask your help in letting Him go home, completed and completely. W.182
“The holy instant is the miracle’s abiding place. From there, each one is born into this world as witness to a state of mind that has transcended conflict, and has reached to peace. It carries comfort from the place of peace into the battleground, and demonstrates that war has no effects. For all the hurt that war has sought to bring, the broken bodies and the shattered limbs, the screaming dying and the silent dead, are gently lifted up and comforted.
There is no sadness where a miracle has come to heal. And nothing more than just one instant of your love without attack is necessary that all this occur. In that one instant you are healed, and in that single instant is all healing done. What stands apart from you, when you accept the blessing that the holy instant brings? Be not afraid of blessing, for the One Who blesses you loves all the world, and leaves nothing within the world that could be feared. But if you shrink from blessing, will the world indeed seem fearful, for you have withheld its peace and comfort, leaving it to die.“
T-27.V.3.1-4
“This is your part; to realize that murder in any form is not your will. The overlooking of the battleground is now your purpose.
Be lifted up, and from a higher place look down upon it. From there will your perspective be quite different. Here in the midst of it, it does seem real. Here you have chosen to be part of it. Here murder is your choice. Yet from above, the choice is miracles instead of murder. And the perspective coming from this choice shows you the battle is not real, and easily escaped. Bodies may battle, but the clash of forms is meaningless. And it is over when you realize it never was begun. How can a battle be perceived as nothingness when you engage in it? How can the truth of miracles be recognized if murder is your choice?“
T.23.1V.4
“Mistake not truce for peace, nor compromise for the escape from conflict. To be released from conflict means that it is over. The door is open; you have left the battleground. You have not lingered there in cowering hope that it will not return because the guns are stilled an instant, and the fear that haunts the place of death is not apparent. There is no safety in a battleground. You can look down on it in safety from above and not be touched. But from within it you can find no safety. Not one tree left still standing will shelter you. Not one illusion of protection stands against the faith in murder. Here stands the body, torn between the natural desire to communicate and the unnatural intent to murder and to die. Think you the form that murder takes can offer safety? Can guilt be absent from a battlefield?”
T.23.III.6
“Do not remain in conflict, for there is no war without attack. The fear of God is fear of life, and not of death. Yet He remains the only place of safety. In Him is no attack, and no illusion in any form stalks Heaven.”
T.23.IV.1
“Think what is given those who share their Father’s purpose, and who know that it is theirs. They want for nothing. Sorrow of any kind is inconceivable. Only the light they love is in awareness, and only love shines upon them forever. It is their past, their present and their future; always the same, eternally complete and wholly shared. They know it is impossible their happiness could ever suffer change of any kind. Perhaps you think the battleground can offer something you can win. Can it be anything that offers you a perfect calmness, and a sense of love so deep and quiet that no touch of doubt can ever mar your certainty? And that will last forever?”
T.23.IV.8
“Those with the strength of God in their awareness could never think of battle. What could they gain but loss of their perfection? For everything fought for on the battleground is of the body; something it seems to offer or to own. No one who knows that he has everything could seek for limitation, nor could he value the body’s offerings. The senselessness of conquest is quite apparent from the quiet sphere above the battleground. What can conflict with everything? And what is there that offers less, yet could be wanted more? Who with the Love of God upholding him could find the choice of miracles or murder hard to make? “
T.23.IV.9
“The way to God is through forgiveness here. There is no other way…
God is our goal; forgiveness is the means by which our minds return to Him at last.”
The Illuminate Mind Foundation aims to be a vital resource for the enlightenment of mind through the extraordinary gift to all mankind that is A Course in Miracles. It is a continuing forum for the joyful re-discovery that you are now and have always been a complete, continuous and whole part of all the Love, Light and Joy of Eternal Life.
The divine mind-science of A Course in Miracles presents a curriculum for the complete transformation of identity, through ‘true forgiveness’, to the discovery of perfection and holiness as the original nature of mind in God. This enlightened self-realization we recognize as the singular eternal solution to the existential problem of false separation from God and the condition of suffering inherent in the world.
“You are as God created you. There is nothing else to learn, nothing else to know, and nothing else that has any value. For in this one idea is everyone set free along with you.”
Now is the time!- This is an invitation to join in the adventure of awakening, to step into the great transition to Truth, to take the “journey without distance” from the limited, fearful condition of the human ego-identity, to the freedom of recognizing the eternal Self as perfect, healed and whole in the transcendental light of Christ; the illuminate mind “that knows its Source, its Self, its Holiness.“
- “Forgiveness sweeps away distortions, and opens the hidden altar to the truth. Its lilies shine into the mind, and call it to return and look within, to find what it has vainly sought without. For here, and only here, is peace of mind restored, for this the dwelling place of God Himself.”
The posts published below are expressions of Charity as a way of living in this world. Charity is an act of faith amongst equals that demonstrates the continuing miracle of the forgiving mind; our love for one another, our need to learn to “give all to all” and to be “truly helpful” in all ways at all times and to all.