ACIM Chapter 2. V. A. Special Principles of Miracle Workers P 11 (1). The miracle abolishes the need for lower-order concerns.
ACIM Chapter 2. V. A. Special Principles of Miracle Workers P 11
(1) A. Special Principles of Miracle Workers
11 (1) The miracle abolishes the need for lower-order concerns. Since it is an out-of-pattern time interval, the ordinary considerations of time and space do not apply. When you perform a miracle, I will arrange both time and space to adjust to it.
I love that Jesus said time and space are lower-order concerns. ~smile~ I have never thought of it just that way, but of course, it must be true. Time and space are just part of the illusion and have no reality. I will remind myself of this by meeting any concerns I have about time and space with the thought that they are just lower-order concerns and not rigid and inflexible.
I have proven this to myself in the past, but I see now that I act like those moments were “special.” It is as if there is a limit on the number of miracles I can expect, so I should use them sparingly and not waste them on little things. I see the error in that kind of attitude. The more I expect time and space to bend to my needs, the less I will believe in it. I have frequently seen time expand to accommodate my writing in the morning.
I will need to finish at a certain time, and even though it doesn’t seem possible, I will do so with no stress or concern about passing time. In fact, when I write with Spirit, I often experience it as if it is a meditation, and time and space disappear for me. The first time this happened, it was quite startling, and I excitedly told everyone about it. Now I do it without surprise but with the same gratitude.
Time and Space Yield to the Miracle
Another way I experience time and space yielding to the miracle is when I forgive a person or situation after it has happened. For example, I can be in the middle of an argument, and if I become aware of what I am doing, I can stop, forgive it, and return to peace. Though I don’t do this anymore, I used to sometimes find myself too deep into my ego, and I continued.
Later, when I return to sanity, I would probably feel miserable about the whole thing, regretful and anxious. I simply stopped, forgave it, and returned to peace. I expected that, having given it to the Holy Spirit and asked that my mind be healed, that He would undo all the consequences of my wrong decision.
It does not matter how long ago this happened. I have forgiven retroactively things that happened when I was a child. How perfectly forgiveness works and how little time and space matter is remarkable.
I have had this experience with grievances that I have held for years, grievances against others or myself. Some were so painful or shameful that I could hardly think of them. And yet, after the forgiveness process, I am free of the pain and can speak and write of them easily. They lose their sting and become just good examples of how forgiveness works. What a miracle that is!
A Retroactive Forgiveness
I will add something I wrote in the past as an example of this kind of retroactive forgiveness. In this example, I was able to forgive my mom, and in forgiving her, I forgave myself. Years of regret and recriminations fell away as if they had never happened. This happened after my mom had Alzheimer’s and was unavailable to me normally.
At one time, I would have lived in regret that I did not do this while she and I could still communicate, but by this time, I understood that speaking with words, face-to-face is the lesser kind of communication. I also understood that the miracle was not curtailed by time and space. It was awesome to experience the healing.
Forgiving Mom
At some point, I decided I needed to forgive the grievance I was holding against Mom. It took a few tries because in forgiving the situation, I would have to give up using Mom as the scapegoat for my sins, which meant I would have to take full responsibility for my life. This was very scary because my seeming failure to be a “good” mother caused me the most guilt and pain in my life. What would I do if I had no one else to share the blame? I felt like I would drown in it.
What made the difference for me was that I wanted to be free more than I wanted to be the innocent victim. So eventually, I was able to ask with complete sincerity for help to see differently. I asked the Holy Spirit to look at this situation with me. This meant that I had to look with total honesty. I had to look at the rage I felt at my mother for the part I saw her playing in this. It is not a pretty thing to see my darker side and I resisted this for quite a while. Who wants to face their murderous desires? It is particularly hard when it is a parent because our parents are our stand-in for God. So, it feels just like the original error is being replayed again.
The Willingness to Forgive
I had to look at my part in the situation and see that I wanted to set this up to make someone else guilty and to make myself appear innocent. That was not any easier. I really had to get naked here, take off my spiritual cloak and see my underlying desire to set up a situation to prove my innocence at my mom’s expense and then to cover it all in denial so that I could pretend I had nothing to do with it.
Convincing myself to be honest, was the hardest part. Once I decided to be willing to see differently, it was not as painful as I had anticipated. I did experience strong feelings of self-hatred and guilt, but I knew I was not alone and that the Holy Spirit was looking with me. I became willing to turn my mind from the idea that my mom’s demands caused this disturbing situation; I remembered that I am the source of my experience. This is always, wholly, and completely the truth; under no circumstances is it not true. I am the source of all I experience.
Through my willingness to forgive, I could feel compassion for the young and frightened mother I was rather than feeling guilt and contempt for myself. I saw then that with this healing, there was no guilt within me to project onto my mom, and I felt compassion for her, too. She was only doing the best she could, just as I was doing the best I could. Rather than berating myself for my mistakes and blaming my mom for how I turned out, I could see that she and I had much the same issues, and we spent this lifetime working on them together.
Feeling Grateful
I finally began to feel deep gratitude and love for my mom, and now I can’t wait to have a good laugh with her over all the years I held onto that silly grievance. And I didn’t talk myself into this attitude or reason myself into it. I made room for the truth with my willingness to be wrong and accept the Holy Spirit’s help.
We have looked at the idea that we are completely responsible for everything we experience. We see that we chose our parents and that we deliberately choose to set up our own victim stories. The reason for this is to keep our ego intact and thus keep our separated, unique, individual self-identity. We see that separation promotes guilt, fear, hatred, and depression. I wonder why we hold onto it as we do. It hardly seems worth it.
We also see that the way to correct the situation is through forgiveness. It is necessary that we forgive ourselves for choosing the ego and that we forgive others for the projection of this separation choice that we place on them. The easiest way I know to do this is to simply notice the effects of separation when they show up in my life, then look at it with the Holy Spirit.
I am willing to forgive myself for the error so the Holy Spirit gives me a new perspective. I can then look at the one who mirrored this for me and forgive my projection onto them. And then I will be able to see this person differently. I will see this person as innocent. Seeing the innocence of whoever I am working with now will remind me that I am also innocent. What a lovely circle of forgiveness and healing this is.
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