A Course in Miracles Lesson 172

God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

Yesterday I talked about how this sequence of lessons deploys a call-and-resonse model that is designed to gently nudge us byond the domain of reason and intellect and into the domain of faith.

Faith is not superior to reason but it does allows for certain kinds of insights that reason in its infancy can’t fully reach (because it is still so yoked to the need to report back, to justify itself).

Today, again, we are presented with nontrivial statements about our self – that, paradoxically, we are safest when we are utterly defenseless and that God counts us among his ministers.

“Minister” here should not be confused with a church leader, but with the older – more natural – understanding of one who tends and cares for others. In other words, a healer.

I have written a lot about nonviolence and A Course in Miracles. I’ve written less but still plenty about how we can heal in God’s name, as students of the course.

Yet again, these big important ideas are subsumed by a greater one: that God is Love and we are not separate from God. When individual lessons are reduced to a single powerful lesson, they are not being minimized. Rather, we are being asked to see how they flow from a greater truth, which is the truth of our identity which is in God as Love.

When that is clear, then nonviolence ceases to be merely conceptual, and our capacity for healing is neither dormant nor theroretical but active and effective. It is a real thing right now.

It’s easy enough to say (or write) this. It is harder to accept – to know – the truth of it, in a way that ends any alternative perspective.

Hence, for today and a little while longer, we are not trying to “get” anything. Nor are we trying to let go of anything. We are simply expressing a willingness to have our mind pried open by any means possible, and to find out what happens next.

Therefore, I wish you something new in your practice today.

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2 Comments

  1. Thanks Sean, this post has really helped me. I have been experiencing a lot of inner conflict/turmoil over the whole concept of needing to ‘figure it out’ as a course student . Like what my function is etc and feeling honestly ill equipped to fulfill it. Not sure what ‘it’ is lol. Maybe taking everything myself too serious I don’t know. Anyway, this post was helpful. Blessings to you

    1. You’re welcome, Nancy. Thank you for sharing. I hear this and very much identify with it. And it’s really hard to sit with the nagging discomfort, especially when we’re ready to be done with it. I am not a Ken Wapnick student but we traded letters a ways back and he said to me (as he said to most course students) stop taking yourself so damn seriously. And I was both kind of offended at that but also willing to look into it. After all, the course doesn’t promise a serious dream but a happy dream. What would have to change or happen for me to realize that? To live that way? And then slowly a shift began and I started to find my function and make it real. It sucks that it takes time and energy! And it’s not consolation that time and energy are illusions! But it does unfold in time and like another tradition says, don’t quit right before the miracle happens. Thanks for being here and for sharing, Nancy. I’m grateful we share this path.

      ~ Sean

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