If you have spent enough time exploring spirituality, you have probably heard about An application in Miracles. Maybe you have even done it. And endless choice of spiritual seekers-New Age, Christian, Buddhist-have see the Course or at least contain it sitting on their bookshelf. It has become a familiar the main landscape.
And yet that familiarity masks what a unique and unusual document An application in Miracles is. The Course falls into the family of channeled a course in miracles material, yet most such material generally seems to ride the ocean of popular currents of thought, telling us more or less what we expect you’ll hear: You are God. You create your own reality. You can have it all.
While the Course echoes countless themes from the world’s spiritual traditions and from modern mindsets, what is perhaps most striking about it is how original it is. Just when you think that you know what it is going to say, it heads off in some completely unfamiliar direction, one that has no parallel in a other teaching, ancient or modern.
For instance, all of us naturally want to distinguish ourselves through noted achievement, ability, and recognition. We all want to be special. Yet the Course points out that you can only be special when you are better than others, and that trying to make others worse than you is an attack. It says, “Specialness is succeed, and its glory is [another’s] defeat and shame. inch Trying to defeat and shame another, it says, just leaves you burdened with guiltiness.
Similarly, all of us try to fashion a confident image of ourselves, by implementing pleasing appearances and responsible behavior. Yet the Course says that this image we have so carefully crafted is really an idol, a false god that we worship rather than our true identity, which no image can capture: “You have no image to be perceived. inch The Course claims that we don’t require a finished image or special attributes, for underneath these shallow things lies a historical identity that is equivalent to everyone else’s yet has boundless worth.
Finally, we all assume that if there is a God, the world was made by Him. Yet the Course reminds us of what we all know, that the world is a place of suffering, disease, war, and death. Then it says, “You but accuse Him of insanity, to consentrate He made a new where may be appear to have reality. He is not crazy. Yet only madness makes a new like this. inch
Have you ever alleged that there is something deeply wrong with the world, that there is an insanity that has seeped into everything, including perhaps your own heart, then the Course might be for you. For it is dealing with this bad news that it delivers its good news.
It promises, “There is a lifestyle in the world that’s not here, although it seems to be. inch In this way, the distressing appearances of life no longer govern our state of mind, nor determine our respond to others. We can find “quiet even dealing with the turmoil” of the world. We can respond with open-handed generosity, even when others try to hurt us. We can ignore the past even when its remains lies all over. We can walk through our day with “no has feelings for you and no concerns… no anxiety about future and no past regrets” even if we have failed to manifest the life span in our dreams.
How do we reach this unshakable peace? We get down to business and went about re-training our minds. We practice seeing things differently. In this process, the Course provides abundant help. Its full of hundreds of exercises aimed at shifting us into a new perception-exercises in forgiveness, entering the present, seeing ourselves differently, and experiencing God.
Yes, the process takes effort (how did effort become so unpopular? ). And yes, it promises to turn our inner world upside down. Yet perhaps we have grown tired of our inner world, maybe a good bit done with it. Perhaps we have pointed out that as mercurial as it is, it is remarkably resistant to real change. Perhaps, then, we are ready to try something new, in order to take something off the ledge that we only thought was familiar. Perhaps An application in Miracles is the thing we have been looking for.