Showing posts with label Miracles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Miracles. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

The miracle, unconditional love, is a matter of faith.

 


According to the teaching of A Course In Miracles, a miracle is a shift in perception and apprehension from the world of the ego, conditional love, to the world of Spirit, unconditional love. When we perceive and apprehend things from the world of Spirit, unconditional love, we may not always see any observable effects, but the perception and apprehension from the world of the Spirit effects the perceiver and apprehender even when there appears to be no changes in the external world of the ego. 

Faith is the belief in the unseen and the unprovable. We intuitively know even when there is no external confirmation. For example, Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. The inherent worth and dignity is based on faith not always on external perceptions of behavior, attitudes, beliefs, and values that a person appears to manifest.

This faith is a matter of choice about what to put our minds on. Would we come from a place of unconditional love or conditional love? It is up to each one of us to decide when we become aware that we have a choice.

Saturday, May 12, 2018

Revelation and miracles




Unitarian Universalists aren't big on mysticism. They tend to be too rational and intellectual and caught up in their heads to encourage too much turning inward to their hearts. "The movement" as they like to refer to their religion is more about focusing on the path of the ego than the path of the spirit. This, though, has not always been the case, especially when one comes to understand the earlier Universalist roots.

The early Universalists understood and taught that we are all one and that "God" loves God's creation unconditionally. Since this early insight, the faith has lost its moorings and has become more focused on egoistic concerns much to its detriment. 

Currently, UUs eschew discussions or thoughts about revelation and miracles which robs it of its spiritual potential.

Revelation is about our experience of the Oneness, the nondual cosmic consciousness, the ground of our being, which some call God, others call Life, others call Love. Revelation cannot be described fully. It can’t be named and put into words. All the great religions teach the idea that God is unnamable.

The little boy, in Sunday school, was doodling while the teacher was explaining the lesson. The teacher irritated moved through the classroom to the boy’s desk, looked down at him and asked, “What are you doing?” The young boy looked at her sweetly and said, “I’m drawing a picture of God.” The teacher said, “Jordan, nobody knows what God looks like.” He said, “Well, you will when I’m done.”

People who tell you they know what God is, or what God is like, of what God wants are deluded or manipulative and running a scam. God is an experience not a person and some people can tune in and others don’t know it’s possible, have never tried, or have chosen not to. Most people can’t be bothered. They have other things on their minds that they are pursuing and it’s not until things are not going well for them that they wonder if there is a better way. It is written in A Course Of Miracles, in the text, Chapter 2, Section III, part 3, verses 5-10, Tolerance for pain may be high, but it is not without limit. 6 Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that there must be a better way. 7 As this recognition becomes more firmly established, it becomes a turning point. 8 This ultimately reawakens spiritual vision, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. 9 The alternating investment in the two levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict, which can become very acute. 10 But the outcome is as certain as God.”

When the pain becomes high enough it dawns on the person that there must be a better way and this precipitates the turning to a search for what that better way might be. This search takes the person inevitably to miracle thinking and behavior. Remember, “revelation” is an experience, and “miracles” are thinking and behavior. Revelation is the experience of Love and this experience contributes to thinking on a different wave length and behaving on a different path. The person has left the path of the ego and is now traveling on the path of the spirit. Instead of asking, “What is best for me?” the person asks, “What would love have me do?”






Wednesday, February 28, 2018

What is a miracle?

Miracles are often equated with magic. There are stories of miracles in the New Testament supposedly performed by Jesus to heal the sick, feed the hungry, raise the dead.

There stories of miracles have sent Unitarian Universalists running from the denominations of mainline Christian churches and certainly out of the doors of fundamentalist Christian churches.

The stories of miracles are mesmerizing for children and the butt of jokes for adults. At a deeper level of theological consideration the word "miracle" has a whole other meaning. It is not magic, but a shift in perception from the path of the ego to the path of the spirit.

It is written in A Course In Miracles, "Miracles reawaken the awareness that the spirit, not the body, is the altar of truth. This is the recognition that leads to the healing power of the miracle."

We are preoccupied with the body, its shape, its movements, its thoughts, its feelings, its desires, its intentions, its motivations, and we miss the fact that we are none of things nor are our brothers or sisters.

These things of the body change, and they are misperceived, misintepreted, misgeneralized, and it is a shit show that creates great distress because we think these changes are real when they are illusions of our own making.

Lesson 5, in the workbook of A Course In Miracles, makes me laugh every time I am reminded of it. The lesson states, "I am never upset for the reason I think." Upon reflection this turns out to be true. There is always another way of looking at things. There is always another side to the story, often many sides. Which side do we take, and why, and doesn't it get tiring after awhile with all the drama?

The miracle is the recognition that the ways of the body are illusions when one is viewing things from the path of the spirit. We come to awareness that Love is all there is. And we laugh at our stupidity, at our ignorance, at our naivete in missing what's really important.

The miracle is awareness that when its all said and done, when we get all the way down to the bottom of things, Love is all there is. Was there all the time. We just didn't see it.

Today, look past the bull shit, the nonsense, the false importance of bodily ways and notice the Love that is there, that always was there. It is this shifting from the path of the ego and the body to the path of the spirit and the witness that is the miracle.

Saturday, January 20, 2018

Do UUs believe in miracles?

Unitarian Universalists convenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. So, do UUs believe in miracles?

Some do. The more mystical among them do.

It is written in A Course In Miracles that a miracle brings about no change at all. What the miracle is, is a change in perception, a change in awareness, a change in consciousness, an epiphany, the light bulb going on in your mind which sheds light in what was formally darkness, a making of the unconscious conscious. It is written, "A miracle can make no change at all. But it can make what always has been true be recognized by those who know it not; and by this little gift of truth but let it be itself, the Son of God allowed to be himself, and all creation freed to call upon the Name Of God as one." T-26.VII.20:4-5

What this passage is referring to is the illusion of the separation from the Oneness into separate egos and the concomitant drama of attack, guilt, judgement, and punishment. To be very blunt, what ACIM is teaching is that this drama of the separation is all bull shit. This separation never really happened except in our own minds which lead to this creation of hell that brings us so much anguish and suffering.

The miracle is the awareness that this drama of separation is not real and what makes this awareness possible is forgiveness. Forgiveness is correcting our perception that we are victims persecuted by external circumstances over which we have little control. We finally realize that these external circumstances are figments of the imagination, simply illusions as the Course calls them, and that while we can't control the illusions, we can control our response to them and our management of them. The Course recommends that we take the path of the spirit and not the path of the ego. In choosing the path of the spirit we decide to surrender to what we discern as God's will for us, and rise above the bull shit, and join with our brothers in love.

It is in making the choice for forgiveness and joining our will with God's will that than epiphanies occur which we call miracles.
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