ACIM Principles of Miracles 47 The miracle is a learning device that lessens the need for time. Principle 48 The miracle is the only device at your immediate disposal for controlling time.
ACIM Principles of Miracles 47, 48
Miracles Principles 47, 48
47 The miracle is a learning device that lessens the need for time. It establishes an out-of-pattern time interval not under the usual laws of time. In this sense it is timeless.
When I feel like someone has attacked me, it is possible I will feel the need to defend myself, and that defense will be an attack. This creates a cycle into which no healing can come. It is like a war that has no end. The soldier on one side shoots a soldier on the other side, and then that side shoots a soldier on the other side, and it goes on and on. The war cannot end because the rule is to defend when you are attacked, and sometimes, attack first as a defense against possible attacks.
Suppose the soldiers notice that if this continues, then soon there will be only one left standing. Maybe that means his side wins, but at what cost? Who will care except maybe that last soldier? But what can be done to stop the killing? Usually, someone outside the battleground begins negotiations for peace.
My War
For many years of my life, I was at war with everyone. No one died from my attacks, and they did not kill me, but there was much suffering. Even when there was a truce, no one could relax because we all had to be on the lookout for the next volley of attacks, and you never knew where they would come from. It could easily be someone you thought was a friend, even a loved one.
But just as in a war between armies, there was a limit to the pain and destruction I could take. I decided there must be a better way, and I found that way through A Course in Miracles. Now when I notice that I have again entered the battlefield, I ask for a miracle. I ask that I might learn another way, something that is not painful, something that doesn’t just delay the attack but that corrects the belief that created the need for an attack. I don’t just want another truce; I want war to end. The miracle comes from outside the closed cycle, so it can bring a different solution.
When I ask for the mind to be healed and accept that healing, I save thousands of years of suffering. Many, many battles will not be fought, and many attacks will not be answered. The light that shines away the darkness in my mind spreads throughout the Sonship. When anyone accepts the miracle, we all owe him a debt of gratitude because he accepts it for all of us.
Miracles Principle 48
48 The miracle is the only device at your immediate disposal for controlling time. Only revelation transcends it, having nothing to do with time at all.
How does the miracle control time? The Course tells us that the script is written, but it also tells us that we do have choice. Our choice is how we will see the script and how we will use it. We can use it to go deeper into the illusion or to wake up from the illusion. We are told that the first split in the mind occurring after separation was consciousness, the receptive mechanism which receives messages from both Spirit and ego. When we receive a message from the ego, we can believe it or not believe it. And we can also learn to recognize the messages that are from Spirit.
Let’s use a particular circumstance to examine this idea. One time when I was still working, I hurt my neck and was having a lot of pain because of it. The script had me going through this problem and experiencing a number of consequences. The direction the script took me depended on the decisions I made. It was possible that I could lose my job because I had to take so much time off. This would lead to other consequences, some far-reaching. Or I could use this script to make choices that help me understand the connection between suffering and guilt. There are lots of lessons that could be learned from this script.
Here’s an Example
Or, let’s say at about the same time as I hurt my neck, I also had the opportunity to deepen my understanding of the Course. I gained more understanding about the way these things occur and why. I became more willing to be receptive to the Holy Spirit and more willing to set aside my thoughts. In this way, I could be more open to the truth. Consciousness is not creative, but rather it is a perceiver, and as such, it can never have knowledge. But it can be trained to true perception, and that is what’s happening. I am learning to perceive more truly than before.
When I was first studying the Course, I was confused about healing, and so I had a lot of false starts. At first, I felt guilty for being in pain, like I had done something wrong and so was being punished for not being a better Course student. Then I thought that I could fix it by figuring out what I did wrong. I could learn the right words to say and remember to say them often.
That wasn’t working, but I was at least sure it was my thoughts that were the problem. So, I tried changing my thoughts. I figured I could heal my neck if I stayed faithful to the belief that I am not a body. I thought that meant I should not go to the doctor or take medicine because then that would mean I believe in the body. But my neck hurts. This was hard. And painful. Maybe you can relate to this confusion and the frustration it caused.
Upset but Determined
I was angry, frustrated, and scared, but still determined to gain the understanding I needed. Finally, I stopped resisting the pain and stopped trying to use my own thinking to work this out. I remembered my purpose is to wake up by healing the mind. This script is exactly all and only what I need to wake up. I trust my Spirit. (I trust the script.) So, I ask Spirit what it is I am to learn from this, what I am to do, to understand, to know. I ask how it is I am to see this. I ask for the blessing of a miracle.
With a new understanding, I turn my attention away from the body (effect), and I ask that my mind be healed. Because I became receptive to a more helpful way of experiencing this pain in the neck, I now had a truer perception of this situation. The result is that certain effects were no longer going to be experienced. The neck would heal eventually, but for as long as the pain stayed, I experienced it without fear or guilt. I learned to breathe through the pain. I was guided to a doctor who helped on the physical level.
Becoming More Receptive to Guidance
Because of this kind of change, I didn’t miss as much work, and so there was no worry of losing my job. Because I was not making the pain worse through the stress caused by frustration and fear, I wasn’t so hard to get along with. Who knows what damage I might have done to my relationships otherwise? The more receptive I was to guidance, the faster I learned the lesson the pain came to bring me. And the shorter the path to awakening.
It becomes shorter because the script took a sharp turn, and I avoided a lot of the effects that I would have had to experience if I had stayed with the ego thinking. Think of the script not as a straight road but as a road with many twists and turns and lots of ways to get to the same place. Some of those roads take you on the scenic route and are more time-consuming. But if you listen closely to your Navigation System, you can avoid them when you are tired of the scenery and just want to go Home.
This is how we lessen time through the miracle. The change in my thinking (the miracle) elevated my perception to something closer to truth. I no longer needed certain lessons, and those are now in some other form of the script, but not in the one I am on. True perception helped me avoid certain ego pitfalls, so I lost that time as well.
Click Here to read a short article I wrote on the body. It will take you to my blog on Pathways of Light website.