A Course in Miracles is an exceptionally strong spiritual device. It is one pathway among many and it defines itself that way. It says it's one type of the universal educational plan and that there are many others. It's a pathway of quantum pardoning. The Good book says, "Pardon multiple times seven." (Matthew 18:22) That's just multiple times — it gives a feeling of many. Maybe 2000 years ago, 490 was many times. Today, I think we know it will take a profound cleansing of our cognizance to come to a state of peace of mind, alluded to by Jesus in the Book of scriptures as the Kingdom of Heaven. In the east it may very well be unity, unadulterated love, Nirvana or just seen as joy.
A Course in Miracles is an educational program that comes from Jesus Christ. It's extremely practical. In the event that you really read the stories of good news and the teachings of Jesus from 2000 years ago, you could see that it was a ton about pardoning and love — loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself. He really emphasized the initial two of the ten commandments. And presently, 2000 years have passed, we have a few new words — new terminology, new fields of study. One of them is brain research. 2000 years ago, we didn't have Sigmund Freud. We didn't have all these teachings about the oblivious culpability, safeguard mechanisms, the self image, and so on. A Course in Miracles utilizes the teachings of brain research, the teachings and terminology of education, and it also utilizes Christian terminology. The brain science ideas which it utilizes are projection, suppression and denial — the dynamics of the inner self that keep us trapped. We remain secured in guard and attack at whatever point we are using these mechanisms.
The Course talks about the self image in a way that is past what Freud did. Freud saw the inner self as having a value of some sort, as a mediator between our morals and mores from one perspective, and our oblivious desires and driving forces on the other. Jesus says in A Course in Miracles, the self image is a mask that has been laid across the face of Christ. It's an attempt to have a false character — to be camouflaged from who you really are, which is Soul.
A Course in Miracles starts off with a text that lays out the hypothesis or philosophy. There is then an Exercise manual with 365 daily illustrations — one example for each day of the year. It's extremely practical. Kind of like when we were in secondary school, maybe we had science class and would go into the lab to actually play out the analyses with the components to actually perceive how it functions practically in our life. That's what the Exercise manual is about, clearing away the self image garbage from the mind and learning how to confide in the Soul and let go of judgment, analysis, and condemnation.
Then, at that point, it has a Manual for Teachers in the back, for those that really go into the educational program as, you could say, a miracle laborer or a teacher of God. Basically it is saying that this is our actual calling, that underneath all of our earthly callings, everybody wants delight, happiness and peace. And everyone needs significantly more training in being courses or instruments for miracles as in St. Francis' prayer: "Master, make me an instrument of your peace."
As you go on the spiritual excursion, you begin to find all kinds of nuances of pride that come in. The self image actually wants to show up on the spiritual excursion. It wants to have some sort of force, transform it into something prideful, some sort of idea that's based upon even the ideas of healing. There appear to be a few spiritual teachers and healers that have greater ability. There are those that have less, or those that are deprived of those that have the healing abilities.
ACIM is teaching us about our ideal equality; that everybody and everything is entirely equal. We are impressions of this Divine Unity. We should be liberated from all these self image convictions of inferiority and prevalence, of having a false feeling of satisfaction as well as shame, and profound unworthiness. All of these ideas are part of a mask that's well used to act as a cover over our actual Christ Character.
The Manual for Teachers is also saying that Christ is an idea in the Mind of God, so Christ is neither female nor male, feminine or masculine. It is a creation of wonderful love and it's saying that we are all God's youngsters and that we came from God and we have failed to remember what our identity is. We've fallen asleep and we are caught in a dream in which we feel we're alone and separate from everything and everybody. And we aren't going to awaken from that dream until we learn how to pardon — until we learn to exchange our unhappy dream for a happy one, then we will wake back up into reality.
Most present day nations are extremely familiar with the Judaeo-Christian language because it's so considered normal. We are extremely familiar with Judaeo-Christian philosophies and teachings. It states in the Holy book, assuming you return to Beginning, that Adam nodded off. Never in the Book of scriptures does it say that Adam at any point awakened. In that sense, A Course in Miracles is using the Judaeo-Christian language yet in a way that is inspired and completely intended to raise up cognizance, raise up awareness, so you can transcend the self image limiting convictions and come into an extremely high state of mind which is the gateway back to the Kingdom of Heaven.
However, the Kingdom of Heaven is an inward heading, a state of attitude, a state of mind, the beatitudes in the Book of scriptures, and it's not necessary to focus on the structure. Dislike you go to another place or as on the off chance that there's an afterlife in which you begin another life. It's more similar to you opening your heart and you opening your mind to a state that Jesus calls the Kingdom of Heaven. And he says it's within you. It's not beyond you. You don't have to search for it out on the planet or out in the universe.
The teachings of the Course are non-dualistic teachings. In the event that you return into ancient China or back into India, you would have heard of Advaita Vedanta. Advaita actually means "not two," and that is a way of talking about the fact that there is a unity which interfaces us all. Indeed, even in quantum material science, they're presently talking about the quantum field, the bound together field, in motion pictures like What the Bleep Do We Be aware?! and so on. They're describing the same thing that Jesus, Buddha, and many of the spiritualists and saints have talked about.
It's a bound together field of awareness where everything is totally associated. Each star, galaxy, atom, and particle are all associated, despite the fact that the self image convictions are of space, time, and distance which makes it appear as, personally, we're disengaged and separate. We're exceptionally tiny according to the human viewpoint. A Course in Miracles is saying, no, actually you're strong and vast unimaginable. This is your actual character. You truly do have to go through a procedure for training your mind to allow the self image to go in order to be reliably aware of that high state of mind. Many of us get impressions and we're so grateful for them. Thank God, Hallelujah! Thank you for showing me who I really am and the way that it feels. The battle comes in when we float back into the human realm of cognizance and awareness; it's back into separation.
Thus, this is a practical educational program in training the mind to higher states of cognizance that pulls from three areas of study: brain science, Christianity, and education.
The Course is really pointing to the experience of peace of mind. Being simply one more religious philosophy or another philosophy is not meant. It's actually pointing to an encounter, a reliable encounter, of peace of mind. All the melodies about peace and love, they go into talking about something that has been a goal of humanity for a long time, and ACIM is saying here are the practical advances you can go through to reach that goal, and to know yourSelf as you genuinely are, as God created You. The Latin word for personality, "persona," means "mask." The personality self resembles a mask that has to be seen and released so we can encounter our authentic Self.
