In Pursuit of the Miraculous

An honest appraisal of what the world needs now

I’m a student of a set of books called A Course in Miracles. I assume many of my readers are as well, since it has become very popular in the fields of transpersonal psychology as well as spirituality. The Course is not a religion - there is no doctrine or dogma; rather, it’s a self-study program of spiritual psychotherapy based on universal spiritual themes.

The topic of miracles is particularly relevant given how much we could use one in the world right now.

Pobytov

First there is the word “miracle” itself. As the Course defines the term, a miracle is a “shift in perception from fear to love.” That might not seem like such a big deal, until you consider that thought is the level of cause; everything happening in the world is an effect that was caused by thought.

A miracle isn’t supernatural; it’s simply a working of the mind. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We have within us a power more powerful than bullets.” Exactly. Our greatest power to change the world lies in our ability to think differently about it. There is no transformational effort of any fundamental consequence that does not include a change in how we think about the world.

What is ISIS? Or Nazism? It is a certain kind of thinking that became operationalized. And what was Abolition? Or the Civil Rights movement? Another kind of thinking that became operationalized. Thoughts based on hatred turn into actions based on hatred, and thoughts based on love turn into actions based on love. Looking at social movements only in terms of how they express themselves outwardly is to fail to understand where they come from, how to stop them if they should be stopped, and how to foster them if they should be fostered.

Now let’s get a little more meta-physical, which simply means “greater than the physical.” Hatred is not physical, love is not physical, forgiveness is not physical, psychology is not physical, emotions are not physical. So to say that something isn’t physical is not to say that it doesn’t exist.

Metaphysical reality is just as “real” as physical reality, and the rules that govern it are no less random. Understanding metaphysics is not some airy fairy woo woo pursuit, but rather a deeper investigation of the mind and how consciousness operates. The peculiarly old-fashioned Western notion that all serious conversation has to be kept to the purely logical and material is what is keeping us stuck, and in very dangerous ways. As it says in A Course in Miracles, “Love restores reason and not the other way around.” Destroying our eco-system is decidedly not rational. Yet many supposedly “logical” conclusions lead to our continuing to do it. Pure insanity often tries to use logic as its cover. “It’s only logical that Exxon would do whatever it could to lower the price of drilling in the Amazon,” is an example.

But the only real logic is love. It is logical that mothers in every mammalian species seek to protect their offspring. It is logical that we have an instinctive desire to protect one another in times of tragedy. It is logical that human beings are social creatures who want and need each other’s company. The universe is logical; it’s humanity that is not.

As a whole, humanity is not logical because we are not loving. And that is because we are dominated by a non-loving thought system, a view of who we are and who we are to each other that is at odds with the natural world. Thoughts of love are natural, and they manifest a loving world. But a non-loving thought system trains all of us to think in unloving, unnatural and ultimately illogical ways from a very young age.

Think about a cancer cell in the body. It’s a cell that has forgotten its function. It’s been cut off from a natural intelligence that otherwise guides it to work collaboratively with other cells, supporting the healthy functioning of the organ it’s part of. It’s gone off to do its own thing.

And that is what has happened to the human race. Our consciousness has been infected with a malignant thought: that we are separate from one another, with no higher purpose than to do our own thing, disconnected from the collaborative matrix by which human beings can live in harmony and societal health with other people, other species, and the earth.

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That is why there is war. That is why there is injustice. That is why there is an unfair economy. That is why there is racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and the like. That is why there is environmental degradation. That is why there are toxins in our food. That is why we are plagued by violence. Humanity is insane. We have lost our conscious connection to the reality of who we are, and why we’re on the earth. That is a spiritual problem with deeply political consequences, and until we address the cause then the effects will remain the same. The symptoms simply morph, showing up in different places and times; our most urgent task is to address the disease.

The world as we know it is simply a screen onto which are projected our thoughts. Whether in one individual’s life or in a nation’s, you can’t change the plot by trying to fiddle with the screen. The human mind is the creator of the story and human action is the projector. That’s what we’ve got to attend to, in order to transform the world.

So it is that we need a miracle, a collective shift in perception from fear to love that will save the world while there’s still time. The soulless, non-loving political and economic alliances that now dominate America are a scourge on our democracy and in many ways on the world around us. While most Americans are good, decent people, and millions of us live dedicated as best we can to ethics and morality, the actions done in our name and with our tax dollars too often belie the better angels of our nature.

And that’s why we can’t avoid politics. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “Is not politics a part of dharma too?” There is no spiritual or religious tradition that gives anyone a pass on addressing the suffering of other sentient beings. We must address the spiritual health of the collective now, not in alignment with any specific religion or spiritual path or ethical program, but standing for the value of universal compassion as a political as well as personal goal. Such a stand is essential to any pursuit for a just and sustainable world.

None of us can wall ourselves off forever from the horrors of the world. Our collective karma is coming for all of us, regardless how much we work on ourselves personally in an effort to live a more loving life. One of the kindest, gentlest, most loving people I have ever known just happened to be on one of the planes on 9/11. We have a collective calling now: to take the lessons we have learned about living better lives, and apply them to the task of building a better world.

Prayer for the World:

Dear God,

There is so much danger in the world today,

So much insanity, so much darkness and fear.

Our mortal powers are not enough

to counter the evil in our minds and on our streets.

Dear God,

Please send a miracle.

Into every country and every home, into every mind and every heart,

may Love now trigger the light,

may it activate our holiness,

may it remind us of the truth within.

May Your love encompass us

and a deep inner peace give us solace.

Lord, we live in fearful times

and we long for a better world.

We surrender what is, into the bonfire of Your transformative power.

Refine this metal.

Refashion our creations.

Remind of the eternal truths,

Return us to our native grace.

Take back what we have kept for ourselves,

and do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

May the world be reborn.

Help us forgive and leave the past behind,

the future to be guided by You.

Hallelujah, Yours is the power.

Praise and thanksgiving, as You use Your power to save us,

to heal us,

and to lift us from the past.

Show us new ways of being

and teach us how to live them.

Thank you, God.

Amen