Teachings of Christ Mind

Good evening. And welcome to everyone who’s joining us on the Internet.

What we need to talk about tonight are miracles. We’re reading from a book called, A Course In Miracles. And you know what? A lot of the students of the Course say, “A Course in Miracles is not about miracles, per se. They’re not about healing the sick… raising the dead… walking on water… moving from one place to another instantaneously. But that it’s a sudden shift of consciousness, you might say, a sudden change of mind that might not be accompanied by any physical changes, any, let’s say, change in your life. It’s just that the problem will not bother you as much anymore, because you’ve found your peace.”

But you know what?

We read last week that …

No. Let’s pay attention to what the words say. The words say when you are there …

Do you think you have never been at the center of the Heart of God? Do you think that you were never ever the holy Son or Daughter of God without any ignorance of your divinity, of your wholeness, of your completeness?

Do you think that God created you imperfect, with a capacity to become perfect?

Then the simple fact is, that you could never step lightly across the bridge upheld BY timelessness and find yourself directed straight to the Heart of God and at Its center and ONLY there, find yourself COMPLETE forever.

Forever means forever. It means before, now, after, without any of it being divided up into before, now, after. It’s FOREVER. It’s always. It’s immutably, unchangeably the fact of Being. And if you can at some point, step into the conscious experience of your completeness forever, then you’re stepping into what could only have been a pre-existing state, an ever-present state, even though you were thinking you were incomplete—partial, alone, separated. You see?

So if you’re going to find yourself complete in the Heart of God at any point in your existence, it’s not going to be a new state of Being for you. It’s going to be your natural state of Being that you’ve always been in, but which you have been unconscious of, and more than that, it’s something you have been consciously ignoring.

And how do you consciously ignore it? By consciously denying your completeness. By consciously denying the miraculous. By consciously denying the evidence of your completeness. And when you deny the evidence of your completeness, when you deny it as the eternal state of your being, you, as we’ve discussed before, created dissonance within yourselves which distracts you from the conscious experience of your eternal state of Being.

Now, no one who studies the Course will tell me or tell anyone else that the Course is about denying your completeness … it will not tell you that it is about denying the blessing of God’s Love. They will not tell you it’s about denying your relationship with God. They will not tell you that it’s about denying your holiness.

But you see, the strange thing is, that they will, and many of you do find ways to claim that you’re not the Son of God—the holy Son of God—and that there is not justification for you to have perfect vision or perfectly functioning kidneys or a capacity to run the four-minute mile or the three-minute mile, perhaps, or the capacity to give evidence to the miraculous.

Now, if it isn’t about denying those things, then why learn about completeness? Why learn about your holiness? Why learn about your holiness if you aren’t to take hold of it, if you aren’t to grasp it and embrace it and embody it, incorporate it so that it changes you?

Because I’ll tell you, one who is “complete forever in the Heart of God” is blemish-free – is imperfection-free. No zits of any kind, anywhere, and only the loveliness of love everywhere. But you argue against the miracle. You DO argue against the miracle.

At the bottom line, you are all afraid of miracles — maybe not the little ones, but the big ones you’re afraid of. In fact, the big ones you will often use as a means of applying guilt to yourselves and making yourself miserable. If you are in a plane crash and you are one of three people who survive, it would be called a miracle. And yet, very often, your survival constitutes a justification for grief: “Why me? Why did I not die and everyone else did?” If you go through a hurricane and your dwelling is least damaged, you feel uncomfortable around everyone else because you’re not as bad off as they are.

How much is too much good? Well, too much good is the amount of good that estranges you from your Brothers and Sisters. Not because they hold it against you, but because you feel unequal and you feel an unfairness.

How much is too much good? Well, too much good is the amount of good that estranges you from your Brothers and Sisters. Not because they hold it against you, but because you feel unequal and you feel an unfairness.

Now, you know what? Attitudes have to change about miracles. Miracles have got to start being embraced. Let’s bring it down to earth a little bit: Completeness has to be embraced as something to take hold of and love, and expect to find embodied by you in your daily life, in your actions, in your body, in your relationships. And you had better begin to expect to see the evidence of completeness there, because if you don’t, it’s only because you are expecting not to see it — you are disallowing the miraculous partly because you don’t want to feel guilty.

So, let me ask you: At the end of this day or any other day, ask yourself, “Have I given evidence to the miraculous today? Have I witnessed the miraculous?” In other words, “Did I not miss it through lack of attention?” Because I’ll tell you, the miraculous happens in front of you every day.

Why do I say that? Because God is appearing in front of you every day. God is the only Thing manifesting in front of you at any given moment. Did you give evidence to the miraculous by witnessing it? . . or were you too preoccupied with your problems and your grievances and your jealousies and your fears, et cetera?

So, did you witness the miraculous? . . or did you facilitate the miraculous during your day? . . or did you allow the miraculous to happen to you during the day?

You should be able to say “Yes” to all three of them. And you should be able to say “Yes” to all three of them multiple times every day.

You know, there are those who devote their lives to the practice of healing, healing as the result of doing the two-step, healing as the result of joining with the Father, wanting to know the Father’s perspective about one who needs to be healed so that this healer may join with the Father in acknowledgement of the truth, in acknowledgement of the experience of the truth of this one needing healing—and there is an expectation that healing will occur. And the one asking for healing is in expectation of healing occurring.

And when the expectation is in alignment, and when it is not interfered with by doubt or arguments against the healing, there’s not just a shift of perception, there’s a shift of experience—and the blind can see and the kidneys work … and the body functions.

Now, one could say, let’s say the one needing healing could say, “Why should I deserve healing when there are thousands of people in and out of hospitals around the world dying from this very same illness, or suffering from this very same illness? Why should I experience healing? Why should I get special attention?

Well, fortunately for those practicing healing, that question doesn’t make sense and is corrected immediately in the recognition that every time a belief in lack is overcome—is negated—and is replaced by wholeness, it lessons the density of the belief of lack in the world.

And so one deserves to experience healing because first of all, it honors the Father by giving evidence of the Father’s perfection right where you are, right where “a human being is.” And if you have the evidence of the Presence of God right where you are—right where a human being is—that evidence of the miraculous in the human experience lifts the human experience, you might say, lowers the density of the confidence everyone has in the impossibility of the miraculous. And this is needed. And it needs to be taken hold of and embraced consciously with no reservation, no doubts, no guilt.

You experiencing the miraculous demonstrate the Reality of the miraculous, give evidence to wholeness, which at the least is inspiring to all who are not experiencing their wholeness.

And if they misunderstand what’s happening and they do become jealous of you. “Well, who are you to deserve to not have cancer anymore without going through chemo therapy and all the rugged shit? Who the hell are you to have this experience and not me?”

“Well, I’m just like you. And because I’m just like you, what’s happened to me is your Birthright as well. And I’ll be glad to stand with you in honor of your Birthright. I’m willing to stand with you as evidence of the truth about you so that you might not feel at a disadvantage because of my supposed advantage over you. Let us stand together in the name of the miracle. So that then you and I healed, have lessened further the density of the belief in the uncorrectability of this illness or disease.” You see?

Somebody has to be willing to step out of the crab barrel. Why? So that you can have an advantage over everyone else in the crab barrel? No. But so that once out of the crab barrel, you can say, “Look, come on! I will stand here until you’ve made it out. And I will encourage you to come. You can see I’m out—and you know I was in there before.”

Somebody has to bear witness to the miraculous. Someone has to give evidence to the miraculous because everyone deserves to see that the miraculous is actually absolutely normal and is everyone’s Birthright and that no one any longer needs to stand in ignorance of his Birthright—accept it and suffer it, or suffer its absence.

How much is too much good? How much is too much good to wish for your Brother? “Well, God, please heal him enough so that he won’t draw attention, or his healing won’t draw attention to him. Heal him enough for him to feel really good even if he’s not perfect yet. Heal him enough so that his being whole can’t be used by him as justification for guilt or for further suffering. You see?

No! Stand with your Brother and you be an agent for change by finding no miracle too grand or too excessive. But don’t try to imagine what that will be.

Take what I’m saying within. Do the two-step. Ask the Father, “What is the truth here? Share with me the experience of the truth here so that I’m out of my head and into my heart where I feel the truth. Help me be in the holy instant, in that place where I’m introducing nothing extraneous to or different from the Movement of God. And help me experience what that is, so that in my experience of it I find myself Knowing—not as a bit of information but as an experience—the truth about my Brother. The truth about my Brother that may go far beyond the most miraculous thing I could think of, where the Meaning of completeness forever registers with me and causes me to have a shift of perception in which I see my Brother embraced in the Meaning and the experience of completeness forever.” You see? You don’t know what that will be.

The holy instant is perhaps the most powerful idea expressed in the Course. It’s also the simplest because every single one of you has the capacity to step into the holy instant. Each one of you has the capacity to shut yourselves up, to silence your mind so that you can listen. And in that silence, desire of the Father—of the Source of your Being—to Know the truth. Why? So that you can facilitate the miraculous. And so that you can let the miraculous in to you. And so that you can recognize the miraculous in your day.

Now, needs are always specific. They are not usually specifically what you think the needs are. But needs themselves, regardless of how you interpret them, are specific. And this means that the answer to a need, the truth that negates the lack is also very specific. And because it’s specific, you have no choice about what the answer will be.

Now the ego doesn’t like that.

But the fact is, that your need is the evidence of your being out of alignment with God in one way or another, or in denial of God in one way or another. And therefore, the answer is that which specifically, point-for-point, you might say, negates the belief that is creating the need—negates the denial that’s creating the experience of need.

You say, “I’m having problems, and it’s because of this and that and the other thing. Father, help me get this, that and the other thing so that the problem can be solved.”

Now, it isn’t this, that or the other thing that’s needed, of course. What’s needed is really very simple … always. It’s your peace. It’s you. [Big sigh] Letting out a sigh that releases all the tension you’ve been carrying and magnifying and even valuing at times because of the benefits it gets you.

And so the answer isn’t complicated. The answer is you being utterly simple, letting the simplicity of your need, of your lack, register with you. 
And what that almost always means is, you saying, “I give up. [chuckling] I give up my resistance against the Father …I give up my resistance against fitting in … I give up my resistance to cooperating, and in the absence of denying everything around me, [sigh] being that full open consciousness in which what’s true can be seen, staring you in the face where it had been all along.”
 It’s again like the child fretting, who held in the Father’s arms, looks up at his Father’s face and sees his Father’s eyes and remembers, “Oh-h, yes, I’m safe. I don’t need to be fretting. I can relax. I can be the Son I am instead of the independent one that I’m not, suffering from my so-called state of independence. This is when the miraculous happens.

The miraculous is not the result of control exercised by you, skillfully.

The miraculous is the result of humility—that which happens when you do the two-step. And the miracle is what you experience there in the intimacy you experience with God, in that place where God’s laws prevail, nothing else does. And you, in the peace and the pleasure and the soul-satisfaction of being at one with your Father and nothing else, and therefore, being at one with all of Creation, are able to participate fully and wholly in the acknowledgement of the awesomeness of Creation in which you are acknowledging … what? The miraculous in everything you see. And in which you let the miraculous in. And in which, by virtue of your participating in acknowledging the miraculous, you facilitate the miraculous.

Mind you, I’ve laid it out pretty clearly here. None of this is some sort of private spiritual journey. It’s you in your daily life recognizing the miraculous, facilitating the miraculous and letting the miraculous in by virtue of involvement with your Brothers and Sisters, involvement which does not let the justifications of the absence of miracles to go unobjected to. Where you do not allow the inspiration that promotes miracles to remain covered over because you are speaking up, moved by your clarity that has been the result of your doing the two-step, on the spot, in your day.

It’s about involvement, where you don’t let the status quo remain the status quo. It’s about you stepping out of the crab barrel and turning around and facilitating others leaving the crab barrel, so that you don’t need to feel guilty for your miracles. And no one else has to feel jealous of your miracles because your miracles are their miracles and you won’t be quiet about it until they know it!

Witness for your Brothers and Sisters all day long because that is your function as a holy Son of God or a holy Daughter of God.

Do it, so that at the end of the day you can say, “Yes, I was witness to miracles! Yes, I let miracles in. And yes, I was the facilitator of miracles.”

Every time Paul sits down and lets me speak, he gives evidence to the miraculous. Why do I say that? Because he lets that which illuminates the miraculous, that which illuminates the truth come forth and be manifest “in the world.” He lets it become manifest in his relationships with all of you and lets me be manifest in the relationships with all of you. You see? He let’s the miraculous in and he facilitates the miraculous by letting the miraculous that he let in, flow in perfect appropriateness.

And the world “needs this.” And everyone you know who is not experiencing completeness needs active witnesses on their behalf—witnesses to what is true about them.

Nothing is too good for you. Nothing is too good for your Brother. And there’s nothing too good that you could wish for your Brother and take time to join with the Father to experience the truth of as an experience, so that you might be with your Brother in a brand new way, at a brand new level that inspires him to have the experience of completeness that identifies completeness, wholeness, healing.

Take this to heart. God takes you to heart. And in His heart completeness forever is yours. Take this to heart. Share it with your Brother so that he might find completeness forever in the completeness forever that you’re finding, because you let yourself into the Heart of God.

It’s beautiful. It’s simple. But it requires you not to minimize and justify the minimalization of the miraculous.

I look forward to being with you next week.