ACIM and UU - Miracles are natural; they are the awareness of Love's presence

The sixth miracle principle is:

T-1.I.6     Miracles are natural.  When they do not occur something has gone wrong.

Kenneth Wapnick writes in his commentary on the 50 miracle principles about the sixth principle, "The course teaches us that the most natural thing in this world is to be at peace and one with God, because peace comes from the Holy Spirit within us." p. 32 It is our egos which obstruct and block our awareness of Love's presence. In other words one person is not holier than an other. As the Universalists have taught us we all are unconditionally loved by God, the Spirit of Life. Some people have erected more impediments to the awareness of Love's presence or they have not purified their lives of these impediments so their awareness is dim. Jesus was a master as have the other enlightened people who have walked and walk this earth. Enlightenment means to become aware of Love's presence and to have removed or overcome all the impediments to this awareness.

In the Unitarian Universalist tradition we have covenanted together to affirm and promote the acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations and I like to add, and the world. How do we do that - encourage spiritual growth? According to this principle of ACIM, the awareness of Love's presence is natural and when we lose this awareness something has gone wrong. And what is it that has gone wrong? It is the ascension of our egos, our sense of specialness, our separation from God and the Body of Christ, the communion of saints, the peace and oneness with God. Universalism teaches that we are all are one and yet in our daily lives we forget. God, I imagine, laughs at us because we behave and think so stupidly. God laughingly says to us, "Don't believe everything you think because it is your ego that is playing tricks on you and makes you believe in things which in the last analysis are no real threat to you at all. Once you have become aware of this you will experience my peace."

UU & ACIM - Who am I to know what is best for the universe?

The fifth principle of miracles is:

“Miracles are habits, and should be involuntary. They should not be under conscious control. Consciously selected miracles can be misguided.”

This is another hard principle to understand if you do not understand the philosophical framework of  ACIM. Miracles are a way of thinking and a matter of intention not forms or specific behavior. Are you loving are not? When you are loving, miracles happen without your knowing it. To live and act in a loving way becomes natural after a while. It takes great training and discipline but after practice it happens without thinking. It is like learning to play the piano or ice skate. At first it takes great effort and seems very awkward and maybe even impossible, but with ongoing effort and practice we become more proficient and it just comes naturally. Miracle thinking where we seek to do the will of God and not gratify our own ego inclinations and desires takes determination, persistence, and practice and then gradually becomes natural and we do it without be consciously aware.

Miracles, as ACIM uses the term, is not magic. They are not manipulation, they are born of loving intention to allow God’s will to extend itself to the situation and people we interact with. We have choice to react or to respond. Reacting is when we get our buttons pushed and our bodies are triggered. Responding is a conscious, thoughtful, deliberate and purposeful action governed by turning it over to our Higher Power or in the terms ACIM, the Holy Spirit. In AA the second step is turning our lives over to our Higher Power and this is what this fifth principle is describing. We have turned our lives over to the Holy Spirit to use as a conduit of God’s loving grace. This most often happens when we are forgiving. It is a humbling experience for us to forgive ourselves are escapades into egoistic drama, and to forgive other people for the imagined injustices and hurts we perceive them to have perpetrated on our bodies and our pride.

Unitarian Universalism asks us to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. When we intentionally do this with love for ourselves and others we are working miracles, and ACIM is telling us that this intention and action should be habitual and not under our conscious control because we trust in our Higher Power, the Spirit of Life to guide us because our HP and SL knows best. When we try to guide and pick and chose miracles we are in danger of becoming judgmental and projecting our own desires, resentments, drama onto other people. ACIM teaches that we can’t work miracles by ourselves because of our egos it is too easy to make mistakes. It is better to turn ourselves over to our HP and SL for guidance. This is easier to do when we remind ourselves of the seventh UU principle which is that we are just a part of the interdependent web of all existence and who am I to think that I know what is best for the universe?

UU & ACIM - God cannot take responsibility for what you've done

The fourth miracle principle in A Course In Miracles is:

All miracles mean life, and God is the Giver of life. 2 His Voice will direct you very specifically. 3 You will be told all you need to know.

This principle is confusing because it does not seem to describe our experience. We do not hear God's voice specifically and being anxious and lost most of the time we don't feel and believe we are told what we need to know. The reason for this bafflement is that we are thinking about the principle on the ego plane and not on the spiritual plane.

The ego believes it has certain problems which the Course teaches us aren't real, we have created them in our heads. Indeed, we do create our own hell because of our attachments, our grasping, our sense of lack and scarcity. Our ego then screams, gimme! gimme! gimme!. Our fears and our anger over what we perceive as deprivation blocks our awareness of Love's presence. A small shift to the spiritual plan changes all that. We realize that we are part of God, part of the All, and in this cosmic consciousness we realize that fundamentally we have every thing we need, because as the Universalists have taught us, God loves us unconditionally even if our ego is distressed that it doesn't have everything it wants. Whose fault is this? It is certainly not God's fault. God didn't make the ego, you did. God cannot take responsibility for what you've done. God gives us free will after all and you can do as you please.

However, if we set aside our ego desires, hates, resentments, God is there for us and will direct us specifically to love as God loves and that is, really, all we need to know. In shifting to the spiritual plane from the ego plane we become aware that we, like everyone in the world, have inherent worth and dignity and in this inherency there is no lack but eternal life. The first principle of Unitarian Universalism brings us home once again to the Source of our lives.

UU and ACIM - The time is now

Today begins a series of articles on A Course of Miracles and Unitarian Universalism. Unitarian Universalism draws from many sources and usually identifies six. This series will outline and suggest a seventh, A Course in Miracles.

A Course In Miracles is a metaphysical text composed of three parts which was channeled by Dr. Helen Schucman in the 70s and transcribed by Dr. William Thetford. Dr. Schucman was channeling the voice of Jesus. It is a wonderful and sacred document which provides the student with a whole new way of viewing life and “reality”.

ACIM begins with a short introduction. We will begin here.

“This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It only means that you can elect what you want to take at a given time.”

Life is the course in miracles. It became required of you when you were delivered into the world from your mother’s uterus. It is a good life if you know how to live it. Socrates said that an unexamined life is not worth living and most people do not live an examined life until they hit bottom, there is a crisis of some sort that leads them to the realization that there must be a better way. When they realize that there must be a better way they begin to engage in what the UU fourth principle calls “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.”

Sometimes the engagement in this search does not require a crisis, a hitting of bottom, but is an early quest or a growing restlessness that leads to an awareness that we cannot establish the curriculum of our lives, but only observe it and thoughtfully figure out how to best manage the experiences and challenges which come our way. The “curriculum” provides us with opportunities to learn and become more aware.

Gurdjieff said that winners and losers suffer alike, but that winners learn from their suffering and losers don’t learn a thing.

As the Jewish mothers say, or the Italian mothers, or the Irish mothers, “there’s always something!” Indeed there is and it is called Life. We create our own heaven and hell not by the external circumstances we are confronted by, but by the way we respond to those circumstances. One aid in this learning is the acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth as it says in our third UU principle.

As for the curriculum, while it is a required course and we cannot establish the curriculum, we can decide when we want to take it. I think now is as good a time as any if you are ready. Please join me.