When going with the flow becomes a way of life. Miracle Principle #5

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

The shift in perception from the world of the ego to the world of the spirit requires thought training, but with practice, functioning in the world of spirit seems to come naturally and becomes a way of life. One’s consciousness is raised to the point of enlightenment. One no longer operates in the world of the ego, and one’s awareness of living in the spirit occurs involuntarily. It simply has become a way of living.

To live in the realm of unconditional love for oneself, other human beings, and the world requires awareness and forgiveness. Forgiveness begins with the awareness that drama, ego nonsense is an illusion. Life at this level of the ego is not real. We need not live on the ego plane because we can change our minds. How often have we said to ourselves, “There must be a better way?” As it says in the introduction to the Course: “Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.”

We often do not apprehend this spiritual dimension until we are in crisis and suffering mightily. At the time of our greatest distress and desperation, we intuitively realize that there must be more if only we can get past the terrible circumstances that we feel so victimized by. At such times, people sometimes cry out, “How can God be doing this to me, to them?” The answer, of course, is that God is not doing this at all. In our anger and suffering we project blame for the situation onto whoever we can find even remotely relevant to the situation and when no scapegoat is available, we readily blame and attack whatever our understanding is of God. Eventually this attack on our understanding of God fills us with guilt and fear or retaliation and we enter into despair. None of this high drama is real. It is conjured up in our tortured minds to rationalize the suffering we are afflicted with.

This game of attack and defend, blame and protect, fear and accusation, is the work of the ego. Watching others play this game is titillating and exciting. We find it emotionally arousing and it distracts us from our own inner turmoil. In the media business they say “If it bleeds, it leads.” It perversely makes us feel better to learn that other people have things worse than we do because we can congratulate ourselves that while we may be bad, we are not as bad as that. This is the world of the ego where drama and gossip and judgmentalism reign. A lot of people spend a lot of their lives in this realm often with great pain and suffering as well as sadistic enjoyment of other’s misfortune.

Just as the fifth principle tells us that “Miracles are habits and should be involuntary” so too drama and gossip and judgmentalism are habits. The shift to the miracle thinking of unconditional love takes effort and practice and as one becomes more skilled, miracle thinking becomes involuntary and becomes a way of life. Once this occurs, to specifically apply our unconditional love under our conscious control can be misguided, because at this point in our development it is Spirit working through us, and not our ego that is in control of the process. One has set one’s ego aside and is living in a flow state one with the spirit. At this point it is not “respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part” as stated in the seventh principle of Unitarian Universalism, but rather “enjoyment of the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” As it says in the introduction to the Course, “Herein lies the peace of God.” I would say, “Herein lies the joy of God.”

When miracles are habits and are involuntary” we are living in great joy and peace. This peace and joy is what A Course In Miracles promises us as does our Unitarian Universalist faith when we come to the point of practicing our faith daily, hourly, minute to minute. It simply becomes a way of life.

 Questions:

When have you felt at great peace, at one with the universe?

How do you set the nonsense aside in your life and become aware of Love’s presence?

What helps you become nonjudgmental and just accepting that “it is what it is?”

As my friend, Al, says, “When life gives you white water, get out your surf board and take up surfing.” When have you “surfed” over troubled waters, and become aware of God’s Love and Peace?

Lesson one - The mystical life as a love story

"The Tao that can be told of is not the Absolute Tao."

Tao Te Ching

"Revelation is intensely personal and cannot be meaningfully translated. That is why any attempt to describe it in words is impossible. Revelation induces only experience."

A Course In Miracles, T-1.II.2:1-3

The Bagwah Shree Rajnesh latter called Osho said in his talks on the Tao Te Ching on June 11, 1975,

" If you don't know how to be silent, it becomes heavy. ....You can talk, and you can create a screen of words around you so that your real situation cannot be known by others. You clothe yourself through words."

All the scriptures from various faith traditions, from the religions of the world can do is point you to the experience of God, the experience of God which A Course In Miracles calls revelation. As Bhagwan says, these scriptures awaken a curiosity, a thirst, a search for a spiritual experience which is clouded over by our daily lives in the ego dream of separation from God from whence we have come.

"Revelation is literally unspeakable because it is an experience of unspeakable love."
T-1.II.3:7

Unitarian Universalism is a very young religion and has no mystical tradition of its own other than what it draws from its six sources to which I now add a seventh, A Course In Miracles. ACIM is a manual for returning to  a relationship with God here on earth. Properly understood and practiced it brings joy and peace to its practitioners and to those in relationship with them.

From now on many of the articles on UU A Way Of Life will reference A Course In Miracles and readers are invited to study ACIM and contribute to the discussions here that will occur in the comment sections of the articles. Articles may be appearing a little more often than just on Mondays, but the Monday articles will be the main articles that set the focus for the study for the week.

The focus this week is on the mystical life as a love story.

Questions for the week:

1. Have you experienced revelation in your life and if so, what has that been like for you, how has it affected how you have functioned, and what, if anything, have you done with that experience?

2. What factors or circumstances if any have contributed to this experience of revelation? Have you been able to re-create the experience again?

3. Bhagwan says that silence, which allows one to go within, is an important factor in facilitating the experience of revelation, but there are other spiritual practices such as the whirling dervishes in the Sufi tradition which are used to achieve a flow state of revelation. Others say that drugs such as LSD is a short cut while others dismiss this as just a pharmaceutical alteration of brain chemistry and not a genuine mystical experience. What do you think?

4. Unitarian Universalism seems to be more focused on social justice values than facilitating revelatory experiences with one's Higher Power. Is this why UU has remained a small, marginalized religion without much influence in the increasing consciousness of humanity? Would the development of a mystical tradition give Unitarian Universalism a more solid core and foundation for its work in transforming the world?

Please leave your comments.

Principles of miracles #4 - Deeply listening to Life, we are blessed by a miracle

The fourth principle of the 50 principles of miracles reads “All miracles mean life, and God is the Giver of life. His Voice will direct you very specifically. You will be told all you need to know.”

As Neale Donald Walsch points out to us in his Conversations With God books God not only talks to us but He talks to us all the time. Unfortunately, most of the time we don’t listen.

I remember a church sidewalk bulletin board at Christmas time which read, “You too can hear the angel’s song if you tune into the right frequency.”

Miracles are that shift of perception onto the spiritual dimension of life instead of the world of the ego. This shift of perception to the spiritual dimension not only gives us life, but as Jesus said, it gives us life abundantly. If we substitute our English word “life” for God, then indeed, we being to understand how life speaks to us constantly, and speaks to us very specifically, and if we listen carefully, it tells us all we need to know.

The problem arises when we no longer listen to Life but instead get caught up in the drama of the world of the ego. For many people, this is all they think life is and it takes much suffering and sometimes tragedy before they realize that there must be more and there is a better way to live what Life we are given. Our Unitarian Universalist principles point us in some good directions in living life, and taken seriously and deeply, might be considered God’s voice or Life’s voice speaking to us.

The first UU principle states that UUs convenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. It we do this consistently and shift our perception to this level there would be no more racism, no more discrimination, no more war, no more violent crime, no more rape, exploitation of any kind and we would live in a world where there is dignity, respect, and love for everyone. If we lived in a world of love and respect where the inherent worth and dignity of every person was affirmed and promoted, is there anything else that you would need to know? And if we were to suddenly begin to live this way, it would indeed be a miracle.

What does it take to live this miracle where God’s voice directs us very specifically and we are told all we need to know? It takes the awareness that comes from a shift in perception to the spiritual dimension and it takes forgiveness. We forgive not so much for the sake of the perceived offender but for our own sakes who mistakenly believe that a person could really harm us at a spiritual level. We only harm ourselves in our mistaken belief that our spirit can be attacked without our collusion. Jesus demonstrated this idea when He was being tortured and executed and He said, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” We all feel tortured and that people are trying to “execute” us psychologically, and emotionally, if not physically, many times in our lives. We become defensive, reciprocate the attack, and engage in recrimination leading to developing and holding onto resentments and grievances which can last sometimes for years. Follow Jesus’ example, and say “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Rise above the attacks and move on to peace and joy.

If Walsch is right that God, Life, speaks to us all the time, we would be happier and at more peace if we learned to listen. When we hear the angel’s song, we feel as if we are blessed by a miracle.

This is article # 35 in a series on A Course In Miracles. An article based on the study of A Course In Miracles is posted every Wednesday on UUAWOL.

Principles of miracles #3 - A miracle is evidence of God’s unconditional love

The third principle of miracles is “Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.”

The world of the ego is a world of protection and attack. Ego functions to protect itself and advance its gratification and what it sees as its enhancement. Ego will “love” conditionally if it finds this “love” as gratifying and facilitative of its defense and expansion. The conditional love of the ego is not real love. Real love is unconditional and as the Course states “everything which comes from love is a miracle.”

Unconditional Love is a shift in perception and functioning onto the spiritual dimension out of the world of the ego. True Love is selfless and is the expression of “one for all, and all for one” which the Course calls the Atonement or At-One-Ment. The Atonement, according to Marianne Williamson is when everybody loves everybody all the time. The development of humanity to this point will be possible when everyone participates in the Miracle which is being aware of and present with the Unconditional Love of the Universe which some people refer to as God. The reference to this is somewhat alluded to in the seventh principle of Unitarian Universalism, “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.”  However, most people would interpret this principle as a systemic, ecological perspective of the world of the ego and not necessarily a shift in perception and appreciation to the spiritual dimension which A Course In Miracles calls a miracle.

How does one enter the spiritual dimension? What is the door that one must pass through? The Course is clear that there are two doors: awareness and forgiveness. First, one must change one’s way of thinking and second, one must forgive oneself and others for participating in the drama in the world of the ego. This type of forgiveness one does not for the benefit of the perceived perpetrator and offender, but one forgives for oneself, a rising above it, so one does not continue to be caught up in the illusion of nonsense which most of us experience as our lives.

If God can be thought of as Love and we were created in God’s image, then we too are extensions of God’s love. Our birthright is to participate naturally in the expression of Love, and miracles are not so much the expressions of Love, but the awareness of the Source from which they flow.

Unitarian Universalism proclaims the “inherent worth and dignity of every person” not because of their ego but because of the divine spark which resides in every person and which inspires the expression of  Unconditional Love which when perceived amazes us as evidence of a Miracle.

Principles of miracles #2 - Don't mistake the means for the end

The second principle is “Miracles as such do not matter. The only thing that matters is their Source, which is far beyond evaluation.”

The shift in perception from the world of ego illusions to the spiritual dimension is the tool of recognition, acknowledgement, and acceptance of the source but this miracle does not matter in itself, it is merely the door that we walk through. The shift is a way of removing the blocks to the awareness of Love’s presence. What really matters is the unconditional, all encompassing Love that extends Itself to all of us and to the universe.

Our Unitarian Universalist principles point to this Source in our seventh principle which is “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” Back in the 60s we called this “cosmic consciousness”. The experience of “cosmic consciousness” is rare but a perennial aspect of human history especially in the reports of the mystics.

Mystics, though meditation, prayer, and other spiritual practices are able to obtain an awareness of the cosmic consciousness and this “miracle”, shift in perception, doesn’t matter. It is the experience of the cosmic consciousness, the peaceful loving presence of the universe that matters.

Children, in their innocence, may have more mystical experiences than adults, but with further socialization, and conditioning by the culture, the illusions of the ego, the drama of life soon repress the awareness of the spiritual level of consciousness deep into the unconscious.

Having lived a life in on the ego plane, as we mature, we slowly become aware that there is something more to life than what we have been living. Sometimes our lives become so painful, so distressful, even traumatic, that we  hit bottom and become convinced that there must be a better way. It is often in our greatest suffering that we become desperate enough to shirk off our participation in the illusions of the ego world and start looking, searching for another dimension of life that can bring us peace and make us more whole again. While the search seems miraculous to ourselves and to other witnesses, the Course reminds us that it is not the search that is miraculous although it is important, but what really matters is the Source of the other dimension of Unconditional Love that we intuitively sense and therefore seek.

Implementing the values of our Unitarian Universalist faith, the seven principles, at a deep level on a daily basis can help us remove the blocks to our awareness of What Really Matters that is “far beyond evaluation.”

Principles of Miracles #1 - Unconditional love

What is a “miracle” as the term is used in A Course In Miracles? A Miracle is a shift in perception from the world of the ego to the world of the spirit. When one tunes into the world of miracles, a person is living in a different dimension. It is a dimension of love and peace.

The text of A Course In Miracles begins with a list of 50 principles of miracles. Each principle is a densely packed idea that is worthy of unpacking if one is to further develop a rich interior spiritual life. The ideas contained in these principles are intuited by most people because they have experienced these ideas at times in their lives often in fleeting experiences. Because of the liminal quality of these experiences people are rarely able to articulate what, at an intuitive level, they know.

An exploration of the meaning of each of these 50 principles is worth the effort as it deepens a person’s understanding of the spiritual dimension of life. Other traditions may describe these principles in different ways and with different vocabulary, but no matter how the principle is described , all descriptions point to a universal experience.
The first principle of Miracles reads “There is no order of difficulty in miracles. One is not ‘harder’ or ‘bigger’ than another. They are the same. All expressions of love are maximal.
Unconditional love is unconditional love. There are no conditions put on it. You love someone or something unconditionally just because you want to. The object of one’s love does not have to deserve your love. You cannot love someone or something unconditionally out of sense of responsibility or obligation or appreciation or gratitude. Those attitudes are not love they are “obligation” or “responsibility” or “obligation”  or “gratitude”. True love is unconditional.

And so to love unconditionally does not involve any order of difficulty, nor is such love bigger or smaller than any other. Unconditional love simply is just that unconditional love and as such unconditional love is always whole hearted and without reservation.
For most people loving unconditionally is a rare experience, and so is being loved unconditionally. For Unitarian Universalists unconditional love is a foundational belief of their faith. The idea first preached by Universalists that God loves us unconditional sent shock waves through the Calvinistic, puritanical world and still is unbelievable to many religious people of today. It takes a deep and abiding understanding and experience of God to shift one’s perception to the spiritual dimension where a life of miracles abide.

Living in the dimension of miracles requires a shift in perception, setting aside one’s ego, and forgiving oneself and others for the imagined attacks and hurts that one thinks one has suffered. Jesus lived in this dimension and He clearly stated that the way to the Kingdom is “to love as I have loved”. As He is being tortured and executed, He has the presence of mind to say, “Father forgive  them for they know not what they do.” How could a person say such a thing unless their spirit has been resurrected to quite a different place than our usual ego plane? Jesus was in a different dimension when He said this. His interior spiritual life was perfected to the point at which they could kill His body, but they could not kill His spirit. His spirit has lived on for 2,000 years and His example still inspires us today. Jesus taught us that God, Abba, His Daddy, loves us unconditionally and we should/could experience this if only we could set our drama, our egotistical cares, aside and tune in to the deeper, spiritual level. As the bumper sticker says, “You too can hear the angels sing, if you tune into the right frequency.

Fuel for an interior spiritual life- A Course In Miracles

There are many sources for fuel for an interior spiritual life. One such source is A Course In Miracles. The introduction to A Course In Miracles reads as follows:

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 means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time.  The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught.  It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.
This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
 
 Herein lies the peace of God.

When the introduction says that the Course is a required course it does not mean that A Course In Miracles is the only way to the Kingdom. In fact, the course explicitly states that there are many paths. What is meant by the "required course" is that sooner or later everyone should learn that the ego illusions that we entertain and cling to are not real. We return to the Kingdom by forgiving ourselves and others for clinging to our illusions that the ego world is real. The only thing real is the Kingdom of God which is love. True love, unconditional love cannot be threatened. It is what we are and we are extensions of God's divine love for the world.

As Unitarian Universalists we agree to covenant and affirm the free and responsible search for truth and meaning and we realize that this search can be different for different people at different times in a person's life. We are free to elect when we want to learn what. We must come to the awareness of Love at our pace and in our own time.

The Course is clear that it cannot teach the meaning of Love, but it can help us to overcome the blocks to our awareness of Love. Affirming and promoting UUs 7 principles can help us overcome those blocks to our awareness of Love's presence and in living the principles we can find peace.

As one studies the Course one comes to realize that the path to Love is forgiveness. We forgive ourselves and then we forgive others. The 3rd principle states that we covenant to affirm and promote the "acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations ( and I add "in the world")".

If we truly believe that the Love of God cannot be threatened, we have nothing to fear and can be at peace. Jesus tells us later in the Course that this is the true lesson of the crucifixion. His body could be tortured and killed, but His Love did not die but lived on in the stories that continue to be told about His great Love and faith in the Kingdom of God. It is Jesus' demonstration of this great Love when He said, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do" that manifests the principle that Love cannot be threatened or killed. It lives forever; always was, is now, and forever shall be. This is the great faith based on the awareness of Love beyond the temporal, egotistical nonsense that we call our lives. UUs, who live the faith, see beyond and forgive the nonsense and affirm and promote the worth and dignity of every person which is one way of acknowledging the spark of the divine in each one of us and in all of humanity. This is our Universalist Faith which we proclaim sincerely to the world.

We invite others to take the curriculum now. Now is the time. You can wait, but the sooner the better for humanity.

A Course In Miracles commentary #22 - The forgiven release their brothers and sisters from their suffering

In our ego minds we are separated from God.

The principle of A Course In Miracles is that we all should be At-one-ment. The Atonement takes forgiveness. Once we have forgiven ourselves, our job is to help others.

It is written in T-1.III.3 "The forgiven are the means of the Atonement. 2 Being filled with spirit, they forgive in return. 3 Those who are released must join in releasing their brothers, for this is the plan of the Atonement. 4 Miracles are the way in which minds that serve the Holy Spirit unite with me for the salvation or release of all of God's creations."
UUs, like all human beings, are forgiven for their separation from God because, in reality, they could never separate themselves from Him since they are manifesting the Life Force. Not all UUs, though, are aware of this, and many, for now, may not even want forgiveness because they choose to maintain their separation.

When they do return to God, and our Universalist faith acknowledges that we all do sooner or later, they will be in the position to forgive in return and with the help of the Holy Spirit extend Miracles to their brothers and sisters. We acknowledge this and pledge our intention in the third principle when we covenant to affirm and promote the acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations and to share what we have come to know with others who think the world they have made is real.

The take away today is to continue to work on forgiveness by asking the inner Holy Spirit for help. Every time to forgive yourself and another a miracle occurs and time is shortened in our pursuit of the Atonement.