Asa student and teacher of A Course in Miracles , I have
learned much about the r esistance that many people have
to Christian ter ms. As a Jew, I thought it was only other Jews
who would have a pr oblem with the wor d Jesus. But I was
wrong. It’s not just Jews who get nervous at the mention of
his name. Say the wor d Jesus to a gr oup of moderate
Christians, and ther e is lik ely to be as much r esistance to
the topic as ther e is in anyone else. I understand why . As it says in the Course, “some bitter
idols have been made of him who would be only br other to
the world.” So many Christian ter ms have been used to
create and perpetuate guilt, that many thinking people have
decided to r eject them entir ely. In many cases, in fact, the
problem is worse for Christians than it is for Jews. Jewish
childr en ar e usually taught nothing at all about Christian
terms. F or many Christian childr en, on the other hand, these
words wer e char ged with guilt, punishment, and fear of hell. Words ar e just wor ds, and new ones can always be found
to replace ones that oﬀend. In the case of Jesus, however,
the pr oblem isn’t as simple as just coming up with another
word. Jesus is his name. Ther e’s no point in pretending that
his name is Herbert. By automatically r ejecting Jesus, based
on what some traditional Christians have done with and in
his name, many people have thr own out the baby with the
bath water . In relation to A Course in Miracles  and other
esoteric pr esentations of Christic philosophy, they have
rejected the material oﬀhand based on its language. They
have fallen into a mental trap which in Alcoholics
Anonymous is called “contempt prior to investigation.”
Years ago, I was attending a dinner party in New Y ork
City. The topic of conversation at the table was a novel that
had r ecently been published. Someone ask ed me if I had
read it. I hadn’t, but I had r ead the book r eview in the NewYork T imes . I lied and said, “Y es.” I was so appalled at
myself . I hadn’t r ead the book, but I had enough infor mation
to pretend, for a moment, that I had. I was willing to let
someone else’s opinion stand in for my own. Not long af ter that, I thought of that incident when I was
deciding whether or not to r ead a book—namely, A Course
in Miracles —that dealt in any way with Jesus. I hadn’t
learned anything about him as a child. I had simply been
told “W e don’t r ead that, dear .” But Jews ar e also known for
encouraging intellectual achievement in their childr en. I had
been taught—although you would never have known it the
night of that party—to r ead, and to think for myself—and so
I did. T o me, A Course in Miracles  does not push Jesus. ‘Although the books come fr om him, it is made very clear
that you can be an advanced student of the Course and not
relate personally to him at all.’
The Course understands our r esistances but it doesn’t
cater to them. It is time for a huge r evolution in our
understanding of Christic philosophy, and most particularly
in our understanding of Jesus. The Christian r eligion has no
monopoly on the Christ, or on Jesus himself . In every
generation, we must r ediscover truth for ourselves. Who is Jesus? He is a personal symbol of the Holy Spirit. Having been totally healed by the Holy Spirit, He has
become one with Him. He’s not the only face the Holy Spirit
takes. He is a face. He is deﬁnitely a top of the mountain
experience, but that’s not to say he’s the only one up ther e.
Jesus lived within this world of fear, and per ceived only
love. Every action, every wor d, every thought was guided by
the Holy Spirit instead of the ego . He was a thor oughly
puriﬁed being. T o think about him is to think about, and so
to call forth, the perfect love inside ourselves.Jesus r eached total actualization of the Christ mind, and
was then given by God the power to help the r est of us
reach that place within ourselves. As he says in the Course,
“I am in char ge of the pr ocess of A tonement.” Sharing God’s
vision of things, he has become  that vision. He sees each
one of us as God sees us—innocent and perfect, loving and
lovable—and he teaches us to see ourselves that way . That
is how he leads us out of hell and into Heaven. T o see with
his eyes is to atone for our er rors in per ception. That is the
miracle he works in our lives, the mystical light that bursts
forth within our souls. Our minds wer e created as altars to
God’s Son. He r epresents God’s Son. T o worship Him is to
worship the potential for perfect love which lies within us all. Fairy tales ar e mystical allusions to the power of the
inner self, handed down fr om generation to generation. They ar e stories of transfor mation. T ales lik e Snow White
and Sleeping Beauty ar e metaphors for the r elationship
between the ego and the divine mind. The wick ed
stepmother, which is the ego, can put the Sleeping Beauty
or Christ within us to sleep, but she can never destr oy it. What is cr eated by God is indestructible. The most
destructive thing she can do is to cast a spell over us, to put
the beauty to sleep. And so she does. But the love inside us
doesn’t die; it just falls asleep for a very long time. In every
fairy tale, the P rince ar rives. His kiss r eminds us who we ar e,
and why we came her e. Prince Char ming is the Holy Spirit,
and He comes, in various guises and in various suits of
clothes, to awak en us with His love. Just when it seems all
hope is lost, when it seems as though evil has triumphed at
last, our Saviour appears and tak es us in his ar ms. He has
many faces, and one of them is Jesus. He is not an idol, or a
crutch. He is our elder br other . He is a gif t.
OceanofPDF .comCHAPTER 4
Surrender
“For in God’s hands we r est untr oubled …”
 
1. FAITH
“There is no pr oblem in any situation that faith
will not solve .”
What if we truly believed ther e is a God—a beneﬁcent or der
to things, a for ce that’s holding things together without our
conscious contr ol? What if we could see, in our daily lives,
the working of that for ce? What if we believed it loved us
somehow, and car ed for us, and pr otected us? What if we
believed we could aﬀor d to r elax? The physical body is at work every moment, an ar ray of
mechanisms with a brilliance of design and eﬃciency our
human eﬀorts have never begun to match. Our hearts beat,
our lungs br eathe, our ears hear, our hair gr ows. And we
don’t have to mak e them work—they just do . Planets
revolve ar ound the sun, seeds become ﬂowers, embryos
become babies, and with no help fr om us. Their movement
is built into a natural system. Y ou and I ar e integral parts ofthat system, too . We can let our lives be dir ected by the
same for ce that mak es ﬂowers gr ow—or we can do it
ourselves. To trust in the for ce that moves the universe is faith. Faith isn’t blind, it’s visionary . Faith is believing that the
universe is on our side, and that the universe knows what
it’s doing. F aith is a psychological awar eness of an unfolding
force for good, constantly at work in all dimensions. Our
attempts to dir ect this for ce only interfer es with it. Our
willingness to r elax into it allows it to work on our behalf . Without faith, we’r e frantically trying to contr ol what it is not
our business to contr ol, and ﬁx what it is not in our power to
ﬁx. What we’r e trying to contr ol is much better oﬀ without
us, and what we’r e trying to ﬁx can’t be ﬁx ed by us anyway . Without faith, we’r e wasting time. There are objective, discer nible laws of physical
phenomena. T ake gravity, for instance, or the law of
thermodynamics. Y ou don’t e xactly have faith in the law of
gravity, so much as you just know that it is. There are objective, discer nible laws of non-physical
phenomena, as well. These two sets of laws—those which
rule both the e xternal and inter nal worlds—ar e parallel. Exter nally, the universe supports our physical survival. Photosynthesis in plants and plankton in the ocean pr oduce
the o xygen that we need in or der to br eathe. It is important
to respect the laws that rule the physical universe because
violation of these laws thr eatens our survival. When we
pollute the oceans or destr oy plant life, we ar e destr oying
our support system and so ar e destr oying ourselves. Internally, the universe supports our survival as well—
emotionally and psychologically . The inter nal equivalent tooxygen, what we need in or der to survive, is love. Human
relationships e xist to pr oduce love. When we pollute our
relationships with unloving thoughts, or destr oy or abort
them with unloving attitudes, we ar e threatening our
emotional survival. So the laws of the universe mer ely describe the way
things ar e. These laws ar en’t invented; they’r e discover ed. They ar e not dependent on our faith. F aith in them mer ely
shows we understand what they ar e. Violation of these laws
doesn’t bespeak a lack of goodness; just a lack of
intelligence. W e respect the laws of natur e in or der to
survive. And what is the highest inter nal law? That we love
one another . Because if we don’t, we will all die. As sur ely as
a lack of o xygen will kill us, so will a lack of love. 2. RESIST ANCE
“Faithlessness is not lack of faith but faith in
nothing .”
A Course in Miracles  tells us that ‘ther e is no such thing as a
faithless person.’ F aith is an aspect of consciousness. W e
either have faith in fear or we have faith in love, faith in the
power of the world or faith in the power of God. We’ve basically been taught that it’s our job as
responsible adults to be active, to be masculine in natur e—
to go out and get the job, to tak e contr ol of our lives, to tak e
the bull by the hor ns. W e’ve been taught that that’s our
power . We think we’r e powerful because of what we’ve
achieved rather than because of what we ar e. So we’r e
caught in a Catch-22: we feel powerless to achieve until we
already have.If somebody comes along and suggests that we go with
the ﬂow, maybe lighten up a little, we r eally feel hysterical. After all, we’r e total underachievers as is, as far as we can
see. The last thing we can imagine doing is becoming any
more passive than we alr eady ar e.
Passive ener gy has its own kind of str ength. P ersonal
power r esults fr om a balance of masculine and feminine
forces. P assive ener gy without active ener gy becomes lazy,
but active ener gy without passive ener gy becomes
tyrannous. An over dose of male, aggr essive ener gy is
macho, contr olling, unbalanced, and unnatural. The pr oblem
is that aggr essive ener gy is what we’ve all been taught to
respect. W e’ve been taught that life was made for
quarterbacks so we e xalt our masculine consciousness,
which, when untemper ed by the feminine, is har d.
Therefore, so ar e we—all of us, men and women. W e’ve
created a ﬁght mentality . We’re always ﬁghting for
something: for the job, the money, the r elationship, to get
out of the r elationship, to lose weight, to get sober, to get
them to understand, to get them to stay, to get them to
leave, and on and on. W e never put away our swor ds. The feminine, sur render ed place in us is passive. It
doesn’t do anything. The spiritualization pr ocess—in men as
well as women—is a feminization pr ocess, a quieting of the
mind. It is the cultivation of personal magnetism. If you have a pile of ir on shavings and you want to
arrange them in beautiful patter ns, you can do one of two
things. Y ou can use your ﬁngers and try to ar range the tiny
pieces of ir on into beautiful, gossamer lines—or you can buy
a magnet. The magnet will attract the ir on shavings. It
symbolizes our feminine consciounessness, which e xerts its
power thr ough attraction rather than activity .This attractive, r eceptive, feminine aspect of our
consciousness is the space of mental sur render . In Taoist
philosophy, “ yin” is the feminine principle, r epresenting the
forces of the earth, while “ yang” is the masculine principle,
representing spirit. When God is r eferred to as “ He,” then all
mankind becomes “She.” This isn’t a man-woman issue. Reference to God as masculine principle in no way impinges
on feminist conviction. Our feminine self is just as important
as our masculine. The right r elationship between male and female principle
is one in which the feminine sur renders to the masculine. Surrender is not weakness or loss. It is a powerful
nonresistance. Thr ough openness and r eceptivity on the
part of human consciousness, spirit is allowed to infuse our
lives, to give them meaning and dir ection. In Christic
philosophical ter ms, Mary symbolizes the feminine within
us, which is impr egnated by God. The female allows this
process and is fulﬁlled by sur rendering into it. This is not
weakness on her part; it is str ength. The Christ on earth is
father ed by God, and mother ed by our humanness. Thr ough
a mystical connection between the human and divine, we
give birth to our higher Self . 3. GIVING UP RESUL TS
“You will never lose your way for God leads you .”
When we sur render to God, we sur render to something
bigger than ourselves—to a universe that knows what it’s
doing. When we stop trying to contr ol events, they fall into a
natural or der, an or der that works. W e’re at r est while a
power much gr eater than our own tak es over, and it does a
much better job than we could have done. W e lear n to trustthat the power that holds galaxies together can handle the
circumstances of our r elatively little lives. Surrender means, by deﬁnition, giving up attachment to
results. When we sur render to God, we let go of our
attachment to how things happen on the outside and we
become mor e concer ned with what happens on the inside. The e xperience of love is a choice we mak e, a mental
decision to see love as the only r eal purpose and value in
any situation. Until we mak e that choice, we k eep striving
for results that we think would mak e us happy . But we’ve all
gotten things that we thought would mak e us happy, only to
ﬁnd that they didn’t. This e xternal sear ching—looking to
anything other than love to complete us and to be the
source of our happiness—is the meaning of idolatry . Money,
sex, power, or any other worldly satisfaction oﬀers just
temporary r elief for minor e xistential pain. “God” means love, and “ will” means thought. God’s will,
then, is loving thought. If God is the sour ce of all good, then
the love within us is the sour ce of all good. When we love,
we ar e automatically placing ourselves within an attitudinal
and behavioral conte xt that leads to an unfoldment of
events at the highest level of good for everyone involved. We don’t always know what that unfoldment would look lik e,
but we don’t need to . God will do His part if we do ours. Our
only job in every situation is to mer ely let go of our
resistance to love. What happens then is up to Him. W e’ve
surrender ed contr ol. W e’re letting Him lead. W e have faith
He knows how . There’s a myth that some people ar e mor e faithful than
others. A truer statement is that in some ar eas, some of us
are mor e sur render ed than others. W e sur render to God
ﬁrst, of course, the things we don’t r eally car e that muchabout anyway . Some of us don’t mind giving up our
attachment to car eer goals, but ther e’s no way we’r e going
to sur render our r omantic r elationships, or vice versa. Everything we don’t car e that much about—ﬁne—God can
have it. But if it’s r eally, r eally important, we think we better
handle it ourselves. The truth is, of course, that the mor e
important it is to us, the mor e important it is to sur render . That which is sur render ed is tak en car e of best. T o place
something in the hands of God is to give it over, mentally, to
the pr otection and car e of the beneﬁcence of the universe. To keep it ourselves means to constantly grab and clutch
and manipulate. W e keep opening the oven to see if the
bread is baking, which only ensur es that it never gets a
chance to . Wher e we have an attachment to r esults, we tend to
have a har d time giving up contr ol. But how can we know
what r esult to try to achieve in a situation when we don’t
know what’s going to happen tomor row? What do we ask
for? Instead of, “ Dear God, please let us fall in love, or
please give me this job,” we say, “ Dear God, my desir e, my
priority is inner peace. I want the e xperience of love. I don’t
know what would bring that to me. I leave the r esults of this
situation in your hands. I trust your will. May your will be
done. Amen.”
I used to feel I couldn’t aﬀor d to r elax because God had
more important things to think about than my life. I ﬁnally
realized that God is not capricious, but is rather an
impersonal love for all life. My life is no mor e or less
precious to Him than is anyone else’s. T o sur render to God is
to accept the fact that He loves us and pr ovides for us,
because he loves and pr ovides for all life. Sur render doesn’t
obstruct our power; it enhances it. God is mer ely the love
within us, so r eturning to Him is a r eturn to ourselves.4. THE SURRENDERED LIFE
“Holy Child of God, when will you lear n that only
holiness can content you and give you peace ?”
To relax, to feel the love in your heart and k eep to that as
your focus in every situation—that’s the meaning of spiritual
surrender . It changes us. W e become deeper, mor e
attractive people. In Zen Buddhism, ther e’s a concept called “zen mind,” or
“beginner’s mind.” They say that the mind should be lik e an
empty rice bowl. If it’s alr eady full, then the universe can’t
ﬁll it. If it’s empty, it has r oom to r eceive. This means that
when we think we have things alr eady ﬁgur ed out, we’r e not
teachable. Genuine insight can’t dawn on a mind that’s not
open to r eceive it. Sur render is a pr ocess of emptying the
mind. In the Christic tradition, this is the meaning of “becoming
as a little child.” Little childr en don’t think they know what
things mean. In fact, they know they don’t know . They ask
someone older and wiser to e xplain things to them. W e’re
like childr en who don’t know, but think we do . The wise person doesn’t pr etend to know what it’s
impossible to know . “I don’t know” can be an empowering
statement. When we go into a situation not knowing, ther e
is something inside us which does. With our conscious mind,
‘we step back in or der that a higher power within us can
step forwar d and lead the way .’
We need less posturing and mor e genuine charisma. Charisma was originally a r eligious ter m, meaning “ of the
spirit,” or “inspir ed.” It’s about letting God’s light shine
through us. It’s about a sparkle in people that money can’tbuy. It’s an invisible ener gy with visible eﬀects. T o let go, to
just love, is not to fade into the wallpaper . Quite the
contrary, it’s when we truly become bright. W e’re letting our
own light shine. We are meant to be this way . We are meant to shine. Look at small childr en. They’r e all so unique befor e they
start trying  to be, because they demonstrate the power of
genuine humility . This is also the e xplanation of “beginner’s
luck.” When we go into a situation not knowing the rules, we
don’t pr etend to know how to ﬁgur e anything out, and we
don’t know yet what ther e is to be afraid of . This r eleases
the mind to cr eate fr om its own higher power . Situations
shift gear and lights go on simply because our minds have
opened up to r eceive love. W e have gotten out of our own
way. Love is a win-mode, a successful and attractive vibration. We think that success is diﬃcult, and so, for us, it is. Success in life doesn’t have to involve negative tension. W e
don’t have to be struggling all the time. If you think about it,
“taking the bull by the hor ns” would be a very danger ous
thing to do . In fact, ambitious tension actually limits our
ability to succeed because it k eeps us in a state of
contraction, emotionally and physically . It seems to give us
energy but doesn’t r eally, lik e the white sugar of mental
health; ther e’s a short high, followed by a crash. The
cultivation of mental r est, or sur render, is lik e eating healthy
food. It doesn’t give us an immediate rush, but over time it
provides a lot mor e ener gy. This doesn’t r equir e sitting in a lotus position all day . We
still get e xcited, but mor e gently . Many people associate a
spiritual life with a grade B movie, but God doesn’t get rid of
all the drama in our lives. He just gets rid of the cheap
drama. Ther e is no higher drama than true personal gr owth.Nothing could be mor e genuinely dramatic than boys
becoming r eal men and girls becoming r eal women. Something amazing happens when we sur render and just
love. W e melt into another world, a r ealm of power alr eady
within us. The world changes when we change. The world
softens when we sof ten. The world loves us when we choose
to love the world. Surrender means the decision to stop ﬁghting the world,
and to start loving it instead. It is a gentle liberation fr om
pain. But liberation isn’t about br eaking out of anything; ‘it’s
a gentle melting into who we r eally ar e.’ W e let down our
armor, and discover the str ength of our Christ self . A Course
in Miracles  tells us that although ‘we think that without the
ego, all would be chaos, the opposite is true. W ithout the
ego, all would be love.’
We are simply ask ed to shif t focus and to tak e on a mor e
gentle per ception. That’s all God needs. Just one sincer e
surrender ed moment, when love matters mor e than
anything, and we know that nothing else r eally matters at
all. What He gives us in r eturn for our openness to Him, is
an outpouring of His power fr om deep within us. W e are
given His power to shar e with the world, to heal all wounds,
to awak en all hearts. OceanofPDF .comCHAPTER 5
Miracles
“Your holiness r everses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every r estriction of time, space,
distance, and limits of any kind .”
 
1. FORGIVENES S
“Befor e the glorious radiance of the kingdom,
guilt melts away, and transfor med into kindness
will never more be what it was .”
“Miracles occur naturally as e xpressions of love.” They
reﬂect a shif t in how we think, r eleasing the power of the
mind to the pr ocesses of healing and cor rection. This healing tak es many for ms. Sometimes a miracle is a
change in material conditions, such as physical healing. A t
other times, it is a psychological or emotional change. It is a
shift not so much in an objective situation—although that
often occurs—as it is a shif t in how we perceive  a situation. What changes, primarily, is how we hold an e xperience in
our minds—how we e xperience the e xperience.The world of the human storyline, of all our concentration
on behavior and all the things that occur outside us, is a
world of illusion. It’s a veil in fr ont of a mor e real world, a
collective dr eam. A miracle is not a rearrangement of the
ﬁgures in our dr eam. A miracle is our awak ening fr om it. In asking for miracles, we ar e seeking a practical goal: a
return to inner peace. W e’re not asking for something
outside us to change, but for something inside us to change. We’re looking for a sof ter orientation to life. Old Newtonian physics claimed that things have an
objective r eality separate fr om our per ception of them. Quantum physics, and particularly Heisenber g’s Uncertainty
Principle, r eveal that, as our per ception of an object
changes, the object itself literally changes. The science of
religion is actually the science of consciousness, because
ultimately all cr eation is e xpressed thr ough the mind. Thus,
as A Course in Miracles  says, our gr eatest tool for changing
the world is our capacity to ‘change our mind about the
world.’
Because thought is the cr eative level of things, changing
our minds is the ultimate personal empower ment. Although
it is a human decision to choose love instead of fear, the
radical shif t that this pr oduces in every dimension of our
lives is a gif t from God. Miracles ar e an ‘inter cession on
behalf of our holiness,’ fr om a thought system beyond our
own. In the pr esence of love, the laws that gover n the
normal state of aﬀairs ar e transcended. Thought that is no
longer limited, brings e xperience that is no longer limited. We are heir to the laws that gover n the world we believe
in. If we think of ourselves as beings of this world, then the
laws of scar city and death, which rule this world, will rule us. If we think of ourselves as childr en of God, whose r eal homelies in a r ealm of awar eness beyond this world, then we will
ﬁnd we ar e “under no laws but God’s.”
Our self -perception deter mines our behavior . If we think
we’re small, limited, inadequate cr eatur es, then we tend to
behave that way, and the ener gy we radiate r eﬂects those
thoughts no matter what we do . If we think we’r e
magniﬁcent cr eatur es with an inﬁnite abundance of love
and power to give, then we tend to behave that way . Once
again, the ener gy ar ound us r eﬂects our state of awar eness. ‘Miracles themselves ar e not to be consciously dir ected.’
They occur as involuntary eﬀects of a loving personality, an
invisible for ce that emanates fr om someone whose
conscious intention is to give and r eceive love. As we
relinquish the fears that block the love within us, we
become God’s instruments. W e become His miracle work ers. God, as love, is constantly e xpanding, ﬂourishing and
creating new patter ns for the e xpression and attainment of
joy. When our minds, thr ough focus on love, ar e allowed to
be open vessels thr ough which God e xpresses, our lives
become the canvases for the e xpression of that joy . That’s
the meaning of our lives. W e are her e as physical
representations of a divine principle. T o say that we’r e on
the earth to serve God, means that we’r e on the earth to
love. We wer en’t just randomly thr own onto a sea of r ocks. W e
have a mission—to save the world thr ough the power of
love. The world needs healing desperately, lik e a bir d with a
broken wing. P eople know this, and millions have prayed. God hear d us. He sent help. He sent you. To become a miracle work er means to tak e part in a
spiritual under ground that’s r evitalizing the world,participating in a r evolution of the world’s values at the
deepest possible level. That doesn’t mean you announce
this to anyone. A member of the F rench under ground didn’t
walk up to a Ger man oﬃcer occupying P aris and say, “ Hi,
I’m Jacques. F rench R esistance.” Similarly, you don’t tell
people who would have no idea what you’r e talking about,
“I’m changed. I’m working for God now . He sent me to heal
things. The world’s about to shif t big time.” Miracle work ers
learn to k eep their own counsel. Something that’s important
to know about spiritual wisdom is that, when spok en at the
wrong time, in the wr ong place, or to the wr ong person, the
one who speaks sounds mor e like a fool than a wise one. The Course tells us of God’s plan for the salvation of the
world, called ‘the plan of the teachers of God.’ The plan calls
for God’s teachers to heal the world thr ough the power of
love. This teaching has very little to do with verbal
communication, and everything to do with a quality of
human ener gy. “To teach is to demonstrate.” A teacher of
God is anyone who chooses to be one. “They come fr om all
over the world. They come from all r eligions and fr om no
religion. They ar e the ones who have answer ed.” The adage
that “many ar e called but few ar e chosen ” means that
‘everyone is called, but few car e to listen.’ God’s call is
universal, going out to every mind in every moment. Not
everyone, however, chooses to heed the call of his own
heart. As all of us ar e only too awar e, the loud and frantic
voices of the outer world easily dr own out the small still
loving voice within. Our job as a teacher of God, should we choose to accept
it, is to constantly seek a gr eater capacity for love and
forgiveness within ourselves. W e do this thr ough a
“selective r emembering,” a conscious decision to r emember
only loving thoughts and let go of any fearful ones. This is
the meaning of for giveness. F orgiveness is a majorcornerstone of A Course in Miracles  philosophy . Like many of
the traditional ter ms used in the Course, it is used in a very
nontraditional way . Traditionally, we think of for giveness as something we
are to do when we see guilt in someone. In the Course,
however, we’r e taught that it’s our function to r emember
that ther e is no guilt in anyone, because only love is r eal. It
is our function to see thr ough the illusion of guilt, to the
innocence that lies beyond. “T o forgive is mer ely to
remember only the loving thoughts you gave in the past,
and those that wer e given you. All the r est must be
forgotten.” W e are ask ed to e xtend our per ception beyond
the er rors that our physical per ceptions r eveal to us—what
someone did, what someone said—to the holiness within
them that only our heart r eveals. A ctually, then, ther e is
nothing to for give. The traditional notion of for giveness—
what The Song of P rayer  calls “ forgiveness-to -destr oy”—is
then an act of judgment. It is the ar rogance of someone who
sees themselves as better than someone else, or per haps
equally as sinful, which is still a misper ception and the
arrogance of the ego . Since all minds ar e connected, then the cor rection of
anyone’s per ception is on some level a healing of the entir e
racial mind. The practice of for giveness is our most
important contribution to the healing of the world. Angry
people cannot cr eate a peaceful planet. It amuses me to
think how angry I used to get when people wouldn’t sign my
peace petitions. Forgiveness is a full time job, and sometimes very
diﬃcult. F ew of us always succeed, yet making the eﬀort is
our most noble calling. It is the world’s only r eal chance to
begin again. A radical for giveness is a complete letting go ofthe past, in any personal r elationship, as well as in any
collective drama. 2. LIVING IN THE PRESENT
“All your past e xcept its beauty is gone, and
nothing is lef t but a blessing .”
God e xists in eter nity. The only point wher e eter nity meets
time is in the pr esent. “The pr esent is the only time ther e
is.” A miracle is a shif t in thinking fr om what we might have
done in the past or should be doing in the futur e, to what we
feel fr ee to do right her e, right now . A miracle is a r elease
from inter nal bondage. Our capacity for brilliance is equal to
our capacity to for get the past and for get the futur e. That’s
why little childr en ar e brilliant. They don’t r emember the
past, and they don’t r elate to the futur e. Be us as little
childr en, that the world might ﬁnally gr ow up. One of the e xercises in the Course W orkbook r eads, “The
past is over . It can touch me not.” F orgiving the past is an
important step in allowing ourselves the e xperience of
miracles. The only meaning of anything in our past is that it
got us her e, and should be honor ed as such. All that is r eal
in our past is the love we gave and the love we r eceived. Everything else is an illusion. The past is mer ely a thought
we have. It is literally all in our minds. The Course teaches,
“Give the past to Him Who can change your mind about it
for you.” T o sur render the past to the Holy Spirit is to ask
that only loving, helpful thoughts about it r emain in our
minds, and all the r est be let go . What we ar e left with then is the pr esent, the only time
wher e miracles happen. ‘W e place the past and the futur e
as well into the hands of God.’ The biblical statement that“time shall be no mor e” means that we will one day live
fully in the pr esent, without obsessing about past or futur e.
The universe pr ovides us with a clean slate in every
moment; God’s cr eation holds nothing against us. Our
problem is that we don’t believe this. L et us ask for giveness,
not of ‘God who has never condemned us,’ but of ourselves,
for all we think we did and did not do . Let us give ourselves
permission to begin again. We all encounter situations in our lives wher e we wish we
hadn’t done something we did, or wish we had done
something we didn’t. They’r e those moments in our lives, be
they yester day or several years ago, that mak e us cringe to
think about. One of the most fr eeing techniques pr ovided us
in A Course in Miracles  is a prayer on of the T ext, in which
we instruct the universe to undo our er rors:
“…the ﬁrst step in the undoing is to r ecognize
that you actively decided wr ongly, but can as
actively decide otherwise. Be very ﬁr m with
yourself in this, and k eep yourself fully awar e
that the undoing pr ocess, which does not come
from you, is nevertheless within you because
God placed it ther e. Your part is mer ely to r eturn
your thinking to the point at which the er ror was
made, and give it over to the A tonement in
peace. Say this to yourself as sincer ely as you
can, r emembering that the Holy Spirit will
respond fully to your slightest invitation :
 
I must have decided wr ongly, because I am not at
peace .I made the decision myself, but I can also decide
otherwise . I want to decide otherwise, because I want to be at
peace . I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will
undo all consequences of my wr ong decision if I will
let Him . I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for
God for me . And that’s it! It’s a course in miracles , not a course in
moving the fur niture. ‘Miracles r everse physical laws. T ime
and space ar e under His command.’
As for the futur e, the Course points out that ther e is no
way for us to know what’s going to happen tomor row, or the
next day, or ﬁve years fr om now . Only the ego speculates
about tomor row. In Heaven, ‘we place our futur e in the
hands of God.’ The Holy Spirit r eturns our minds to total
faith and trust, that should we live with fully open hearts
today, tomor row will tak e car e of itself . As Jesus said in the
Sermon on the Mount, “ Be ye not anxious for tomor row, for
tomor row shall be anxious for itself .”
‘The ego bases its per ception of r eality on what has
happened in the past, car ries those per ceptions into the
present and thus cr eates a futur e like the past.’ If we felt
that we wer e lacking in our past, our thoughts about the
futur e are based on those per ceptions. W e then enter the
present in an eﬀort to compensate for the past. Since that
perception is our cor e belief, we r ecreate its conditions in
the futur e. “Past, pr esent and futur e are not continuous,
unless you for ce continuity upon them.” In the pr esent, wehave the opportunity to br eak the continuity of the past and
futur e by asking the Holy Spirit to intervene. This is the
miracle. W e want a new life, a new beginning. W e desir e a
life untainted by any darkness of the past, and being
‘entitled to miracles,’ we ar e entitled to that full r elease. This is what it means to say that Jesus washes us clean of
our sins. He completely r emoves all loveless thoughts. W e
relinquish any thoughts of judgment, of anyone or anything,
that hold us to the past. W e relinquish any thoughts of
attachment that k eep us grasping at the futur e.
The world of the ego is a world of constant changes, ups
and downs, darkness and light. Heaven is a r ealm of
constant peace because it is an awar eness of a r eality that
lies beyond change. “ And Heaven will not change, for birth
into the holy pr esent is salvation fr om change.”
The world that the Holy Spirit r eveals to us is a world that
lies beyond this world, a world r evealed to us thr ough a
diﬀer ent per ception. W e die to one world in or der to be bor n
into another . “To be bor n again is to let the past go, and look
without condemnation upon the pr esent.” The world of time
is not the r eal world, and the world of eter nity is our r eal
home. W e are on our way ther e. We are pregnant with
possibilities. 3. RESURRECTION
“Your resurrection is your awak ening .”
The purpose of our lives is to give birth to the best which is
within us. The Christ comes as a little child because the symbol of
the newbor n infant is the symbol of someone whoseinnocence is unmar red by past history or guilt. The Christ
child within us has no history . It is the symbol of a person
who is given the chance to begin again. The only way to
heal the wounds of the past, ultimately, is to for give them
and let them go . The miracle work er sees that his purpose in
life is to be used in the service of the for giveness of
mankind—to awak en us fr om our collective sleep. The Course tells us: “The Bible says that a deep sleep fell
upon A dam, and nowher e is ther e reference to his waking
up.” So far, ther e has been no “compr ehensive r eawak ening
or rebirth.” W e can all contribute to a global r ebirth to the
extent that we allow ourselves to be awak ened fr om our
own personal dr eam of separation and guilt, to r elease our
own past and accept a new life in the pr esent. It is only
through our own personal awak ening that the world can be
awak ened. W e cannot give what we don’t have. We’re all assigned a piece of the gar den, a cor ner of the
universe that is ours to transfor m. Our cor ner of the
universe is our own life—our r elationships, our homes, our
work, our cur rent cir cumstances—e xactly as they are. Every
situation we ﬁnd ourselves in is an opportunity, perfectly
planned by the Holy Spirit, to teach love instead of fear . Whatever ener gy system we ﬁnd ourselves a part of, it’s our
job to heal it—to purif y the thought for ms by purif ying our
own. It’s never r eally a cir cumstance that needs to change—
it’s we who need to change. The prayer isn’t for God to
change our lives, but rather for Him to change us. That’s the gr eatest miracle, and ultimately the only one:
that you awak en from the dr eam of separation and become
a diﬀer ent kind of person. P eople ar e constantly concer ning
themselves with what they do: have I achieved enough,
written the gr eatest scr eenplay, for med the most powerful
company? But the world will not be saved by another gr eatnovel, gr eat movie, or gr eat business ventur e. It will only be
saved by the appearance of gr eat people. A glass vase is meant to hold water . If mor e water is
poured into the vase than its volume can contain, then the
vase will shatter . So it is with our personalities. The power of
God, particularly at this time, is pouring into us at rapid
pace and high velocity . If our vessel, our vehicle—our
human channel—is not pr epared pr operly thr ough devotion
and deep r everence for life, then the very power that is
meant to save us begins to destr oy us. Our cr eativity, rather
than making us personally powerful, then mak es us
hysterical. That is why cr eative power—God within us—is
experienced as a double-edged swor d: if r eceived with
grace, it blesses us; if r eceived without grace, it drives us
insane. This is one of the r easons why so many cr eative
people have tur ned to a destructive use of drugs: to actually
dull the e xperience of the r eception of God’s power rather
than enhance it. God’s power coming into us, in a cultur e
that had no name for that power or acknowledgment of
genuine spiritual e xperience, so frightened us that we ran to
drugs or alcohol to avoid feeling what was r eally happening. It was only when we wer e stoned that we had the courage
to claim our own e xperience. “Miracles ar e everyone’s right,” says A Course in
Miracles , “but puriﬁcation is necessary ﬁrst.” Impurities—
mental or chemical—pollute the system and desecrate the
altar within. Our vehicle then can’t handle the e xperience of
God. The waters of spirit rush into us, but the vase begins to
crack. It’s not the ﬂow of power we have to work on—God’s
love is alr eady pouring in as fast as we can handle it—but
the pr eparedness with which we r eceive it. A Course in Miracles  likens us to people in a very bright
room who have their ﬁngers in fr ont of their eyes,complaining that it’s dark in her e. The light has come but
we don’t see it. W e don’t r ealize that the pr esent is always a
chance to begin again, a light-ﬁlled moment. W e respond to
light as if it wer e darkness, and so the light tur ns to dark. Sometimes it is only in r etrospect that we can see that we
were given another chance at life, a new r elationship or
whatever, but because we were too busy r eacting to the
past, we missed the opportunity at something radically new . When we’r e truly honest with ourselves, our pr oblem is
not that opportunities for success haven’t appear ed. God is
always e xpanding our possibilities. W e are given plenty of
opportunities, but we tend to under mine them. Our
conﬂicted ener gies sabotage everything. T o ask for another
relationship, or another job, is not particularly helpful if
we’re going to show up in the new situation e xactly as we
showed up in the last one. Until we’r e healed of our inter nal
demons, our fearful mental habits, we will tur n every
situation into the same painful drama as the one befor e.
Everything we do is infused with the ener gy with which we
do it. If we’r e frantic, life will be frantic. If we’r e peaceful, life
will be peaceful. And so our goal in any situation becomes
inner peace. Our inter nal state deter mines our e xperience of
our lives; our e xperiences do not deter mine our inter nal
state. The ter m cruciﬁxion means the ener gy patter n of fear . It
represents the limited, negative thinking of the ego, and
how it always seeks to limit, contradict or invalidate love. The ter m resurrection means the ener gy patter n of love,
which transcends fear by r eplacing it. A miracle work er’s
function is for giveness. In perfor ming our function, we
become channels for r esurrection. God and man ar e the ultimate cr eative team. God is lik e
electricity . A house can be wir ed for it, but if ther e aren’t anylight ﬁxtur es, what good does that do? If God is seen as
electricity, then we ar e His lamps. It doesn’t matter the size
of the lamp, or its shape, or design. All that matters is that it
gets plugged in. It doesn’t matter who we ar e, or what our
gifts are. All that matters is that we ar e willing to be used in
His service. Our willingness, our conviction, give us a
miraculous power . The servants of God bear the imprint of
their Master . Lamps without electricity cast no light, and electricity
without lamps casts no light either . Together, however, they
cast out all darkness. 4. COSMIC ADUL THOOD
“Child of God, you wer e created to cr eate the
good, the beautiful and the holy .”
As we become pur er channels for God’s light, we develop an
appetite for the sweetness that is possible in this world. A
miracle work er is not gear ed towar d ﬁghting the world that
is, but towar d creating the world that could be. Just tr eating the symptom of a pr oblem isn’t r eally
treating it. T ake nuclear bombs, for e xample. If we all work
hard, sign enough petitions and elect new oﬃcials, then we
can ban the bomb. But if we don’t get rid of the hatr ed in
our hearts, what good will that do, ultimately? Our childr en
or our childr en’s childr en will manufactur e a destructive
force mor e powerful than the bomb, if they ar e still car rying
within them enough fear and conﬂict. Everything in the physical universe becomes part of the
journey into fear, or the jour ney back to love, depending on
how it’s used by the mind. What we devote to love, is usedfor love’s purposes. So we work within the worldly illusion,
politically, socially, envir onmentally, etc., but we r ecognize
that the r eal transfor mation of the world comes not fr om
what we’r e doing, but fr om the consciousness with which
we’re doing it. W e’re actually just buying time while the r eal
transfor mation of global ener gies has a chance to kick in. The miracle work er’s purpose is spiritually grand, not
personally grandiose. The high cosmic drama is not your
career, your money, or any of your worldly e xperiences. Your car eer is certainly important, as is your money, your
talent, your ener gy, and your personal r elationships. But
they’r e important only to the e xtent that they ar e devoted
to God to use for His purposes. When we outgr ow our
immatur e preoccupation with the small self, we transcend
our selﬁshness and become cosmically matur e.
Until we ﬁnd that cosmic maturity, we’r e childish. W e’re
worrying about our car payments, our car eer
advancements, our plastic sur gery, our petty hurts, while
political situations car een towar ds disaster and the hole in
the ozone looks worse every day . Childishness is when we’r e
so pr eoccupied with things that ultimately don’t matter, that
we lose our essential connection with things that do . There’s a diﬀer ence between childish and childlik e.
Childlik e implies spirituality, as in tender ness, and a
profound not-knowing that mak es us open to new
impressions. Childlik e is when see ourselves as childr en in
the ar ms of God. W e lear n to step back and let Him lead the
way. God isn’t separate fr om us, because He’s the love inside
our minds. Every pr oblem, inside and out, is due to
separation fr om love on someone’s part. Thirty -ﬁve
thousand people a day die of hunger on earth, and ther e’sno dearth of food. The question is not, “What kind of God
would let childr en starve?” but rather, “What kind of people
let childr en starve?” A miracle work er returns the world to
God by making a conscious change to a mor e loving way of
life. W aiting with cynical r esignation for the world’s collapse
makes us part of the pr oblem, not the answer . We must
consciously r ecognize that, for God, “ther e is no or der of
diﬃculty in miracles.” L ove heals all wounds. No pr oblem is
too small for God’s attention, or too big for Him to handle. Every system in the world—socially, politically,
economically, biologically—is beginning to crumble under
the weight of our own cruelty . Without miracles, it could be
argued that the gig is up, that it’s alr eady too late to save
the world. Many people ar e convinced that the world is
headed for an inevitable major collapse. Any thinking
person knows that the world is in many ways moving in a
downwar d spiral, and an object con tinues to move in
whatever dir ection it’s cur rently headed. Only the
application of a str onger counterfor ce can change its
direction. Miracles ar e that counterfor ce. When love r eaches
a critical mass, when enough people become miracle-
minded, the world will e xperience a radical shif t.
This is the eleventh hour . The Course tells us that it’s not
up to us what we lear n, but only whether we lear n through
joy or thr ough pain. W e will learn to love one another, but
whether we lear n it painfully or peacefully is entir ely up to
us. If we continue in our dark ways and we manifest nuclear
war, then even if ther e are only ﬁve people lef t on the
planet at the end of the conﬂagration, those ﬁve people will
have gotten the point. They would sur ely look at one
another and say, “ Let’s try to get along.” But we can bypass
the scenario of a nuclear Ar mageddon if we so desir e. Most
of us have alr eady suﬀer ed our own personal Ar mageddons. There’s no need to go thr ough the whole thing againcollectively . We can get the point later, or we can get the
point now . Knowing that we have a choice is a genuinely
adult understanding of the world. After Dor othy had gone thr ough her whole dramatic
journey to Oz, the good witch told her that all she had had
to do was click her heels together thr ee times and say, “I
want to go home,” “I want to go home,” “I want to go
home.” Ther e had been no need for the long traipse down
the yellow brick r oad. Dor othy, who I’m sur e was outraged,
said, “Why didn’t you tell me that?” The witch r eplied: “Y ou
wouldn’t have believed me!”
In ancient Gr eek tragedies, ther e’s a common device
called “ Deus e x machina.” The plot builds up to a disastr ous
climax, and just when it looks as though all hope is lost, a
god appears and saves the day . That’s an important piece of
archetypal infor mation. A t the last moment, when things
look the worst, God does tend to appear . Not because he
has a sadistic sense of humor, waiting until we’r e totally
desperate befor e showing us his muscle. He tak es so long
because it’s not until then that we bother to think about
Him. All this time, we thought we wer e waiting for Him. Little did we know, He was waiting for us. 5. REBIR TH
“This is what is meant by ‘The meek shall inherit
the earth’: They will literally tak e it over because
of their str ength .”
It is time to fulﬁll our purpose, to live on the earth and think
only the thoughts of Heaven. ‘Thus shall Heaven and Earth
become as one. They will no longer e xist as two separate
states.’There are times when miraculous thinking is not easy,
because our mental habit patter ns ar e per meated with fear . When that’s the case—when our anger, jealousy or hurt
seem stuck to our hearts and we can’t let them go—how do
we work miracles then? By asking the Holy Spirit to help us. The Course tells us that we can do many things, but one
thing we can never do is call on the Holy Spirit in vain. W e
are told that ‘we don’t ask God for too much; in fact, we ask
for too little.’ Whenever we feel lost, or insane, or afraid, all
we have to do is ask for His help. The help might not come
in the for m we e xpected, or even thought we desir ed, but it
will come, and we will r ecognize it by how we feel. In spite
of everything, we will feel at peace. We think ther e are diﬀer ent categories of life, such as
money, health, r elationships, and then, for some of us,
another category called “spiritual life.” But only the ego
categorizes. Ther e is r eally only one drama going on in life:
our walk away fr om God, and our walk back. W e simply
reenact the one drama in diﬀer ent ways. The Course says ‘we think we have many diﬀer ent
problems, but we only have one.’ Denying love is the only
problem, and embracing it is the only answer . Love heals all
of our r elationships—to money, the body, work, se x, death,
ourselves, and one another . Through the miraculous power
of pur e love, we let go our past history in any ar ea and
begin again. If we tr eat miraculous principles lik e toys, they will be lik e
toys in our lives. But if we tr eat them lik e the power of the
universe, then such will they be for us. The past is over . It
doesn’t matter who we ar e, wher e we came fr om, what
Mommy said, what Daddy did, what mistak es we made,
what diseases we have, or how depr essed we feel. Thefutur e can be r eprogrammed in this moment. W e don’t need
another seminar, another degr ee, another lifetime, or
anyone’s appr oval in or der for this to happen. All we have to
do is ask for a miracle and allow it to happen, not r esist it. There can be a new beginning, a life unlik e the past. Our
relationships shall be made new . Our car eers shall be made
new. Our bodies shall be made new . Our planet shall be
made new . So shall the will of God be done, on earth as it is
in Heaven. Not later, but now . Not elsewher e, but her e. Not
through pain, but thr ough peace. So be it. Amen. OceanofPDF .comPART II
Practice
OceanofPDF .comCHAPTER 6
Relationships
“The Holy Spirit’s temple is not a body, but a
relationship .”
 
1. THE HOL Y ENCOUNTER
“When you meet anyone, r emember it is a holy
encounter . As you see him, you will see yourself . As you tr eat him, you will tr eat yourself . As you
think of him, you will think of yourself . Never
forget this, for in him you will ﬁnd yourself or
lose yourself .”
Befor e I read A Course in Miracles , I studied many other
spiritual and philosophical writings. It felt as though they led
me up a huge ﬂight of stairs to a giant cathedral inside my
mind, but once I r eached the top of the stairs, the door to
the chur ch was lock ed. The Course gave me the k ey that
opened the door . The k ey, very simply, is other people. Heaven, accor ding to the Course, is neither a condition
nor a place, but rather the “awar eness of perfect oneness.”
Since the F ather and the Son ar e one, then to love one is tolove the other . The love of God is not outside us. Ther e is a
line in a song fr om the play Les Miserables  that says, “T o
love another person is to see the face of God.” The “ face of
Christ” is the innocence and love behind the masks we all
wear, and seeing that face, touching it and loving it in
ourselves and others, is the e xperience of God. It is our
divine humanness. It is the high we all seek. In every r elationship, in every moment, we teach either
love or fear . “To teach is to demonstrate.” As we
demonstrate love towar ds others, we lear n that we ar e
lovable and we lear n how to love mor e deeply . As we
demonstrate fear or negativity, we lear n self -condemnation
and we lear n to feel mor e frightened of life. W e will always
learn what we have chosen to teach. “Ideas leave not their
source,” which is why we ar e always a part of God, and why
our ideas ar e always a part of us. If I choose to bless
another person, I will always end up feeling mor e blessed. If
I project guilt onto another person, I will always end up
feeling mor e guilty . Relationships e xist to hasten our walk to God. When
surrender ed to the Holy Spirit, when He is in char ge of our
perceptions, our encounters become holy encounters with
the perfect Son of God. A Course in Miracles  says that
everyone we meet will either be our cruciﬁer or our savior,
depending on what we choose to be to them. F ocusing on
their guilt drives the nails of self -loathing mor e deeply into
our own skin. F ocusing on their innocence sets us fr ee. Since
‘no thoughts ar e neutral,’ every r elationship tak es us deeper
into Heaven or deeper into Hell. 2. FORGIVENES S IN RELA TIONSHIPS“Forgiveness tak es away what stands between
your br other and yourself .”
A Course in Miracles  prides itself on being a practical Course
with a practical goal: the attainment of inner peace. Forgiveness is the k ey to inner peace because it is the
mental technique by which our thoughts ar e transfor med
from fear to love. Our per ceptions of other people of ten
become a battlegr ound between the ego’s desir e to judge
and the Holy Spirit’s desir e to accept people as they ar e.
The ego is the gr eat fault-ﬁnder . It seeks out the faults in
ourselves and others. The Holy Spirit seeks out our
innocence. He sees all of us as we r eally ar e, and since we
are the perfect cr eations of God, He loves what He sees. The
places in our personality wher e we tend to deviate fr om love
are not our faults, but our wounds. God doesn’t want to
punish us, but to heal us. And that is how He wishes us to
view the wounds in other people. Forgiveness is “selective r emembering”—a conscious
decision to focus on love and let the r est go . But the ego is
relentless—it is “capable of suspiciousness at best and
viciousness at worst.” It pr esents the most subtle and
insidious ar guments for casting other people out of our
hearts. The cor nerstone of the ego’s teaching is: “The Son
of God is guilty .” The cor nerstone of the Holy Spirit’s
teaching is: “The Son of God is innocent.”
The miracle work er consciously invites the Holy Spirit to
enter into every r elationship and deliver us fr om the
temptation to judge and ﬁnd fault. W e ask Him to save us
from our tendency to condemn. W e ask Him to r eveal to us
the innocence within others, that we might see it within
ourselves.“Dear God, I sur render this r elationship to you,” means,
“Dear God, let me see this person thr ough your eyes.” In
accepting the A tonement, we ar e asking to see as God sees,
think as God thinks, love as God loves. W e are asking for
help in seeing someone’s innocence. I was once vacationing in Eur ope with my family . Although my mother and I wer e both making noble eﬀorts at
getting along well with each other, we wer en’t succeeding. Old patter ns of attack and defense wer e continuously
cropping up between us. She wanted a mor e conservative
daughter, and I wanted a mor e enlightened mother . I kept
opening the Course for help and inspiration but much to my
chagrin, I seemed to open the book to the same section
each time I pick ed it up. I would r ead, “Think honestly what
you have thought that God would not have thought, and
what you have not thought that God would have you think.”
In other wor ds, wher e wer e my thoughts not aligned with
God’s? It was driving me crazy . I wanted support for my
defensive feelings. The last thing I wanted to be told was
that the only er ror was an er ror in my own thinking. Finally, glancing acr oss St. Mark’s Squar e in V enice, I
looked closely at my mother and said to myself, “It’s true—
God’s not looking at her and thinking, ‘Sophie Ann is such a
bitch.’” As long as I chose to see her that way, as long as I
was not willing to give up my focus on her er rors, I could not
be at peace because I was not sharing God’s per ception. As
soon as I saw this, I r eleased my tense ﬁxation on what I
perceived to be her guilt. F rom that point forwar d, the
situation began to shif t. Miraculously, she was nicer to me,
and I was nicer to her . It’s easy to for give people who have never done anything
to mak e us angry . People who do mak e us angry, however,
are our most important teachers. They indicate the limits toour capacity for for giveness. “ Holding grievances is an
attack on God’s plan for salvation.” The decision to let go
our grievances against other people is the decision to see
ourselves as we truly ar e, because any darkness we let blind
us to another’s perfection also blinds us to our own. It can be very har d to let go of your per ception of
someone’s guilt when you know that by every standar d of
ethics, morality, or integrity, you’r e right to ﬁnd fault with
them. But the Course asks, “ Do you pr efer that you be right
or happy?” If you’r e judging a br other, you’r e wrong even if
you’r e right. Ther e have been times when I have had a very
hard time giving up my judgment of someone, mentally
protesting, “ But I’m right.” I felt as though giving up my
judgment amounted to condoning their behavior . I felt,
“Well, somebody’s  got to uphold principle in this world. If we
just for give things all the time, then all standar ds of
excellence will disintegrate!”
But God doesn’t need us to police the universe. Shaking
our ﬁnger at someone doesn’t help them change. If
anything, our per ception of someone’s guilt only k eeps
them stuck in it. When we ar e shaking a ﬁnger at someone,
ﬁguratively or literally, we ar e not mor e apt to cor rect their
wrongful behavior . Treating someone with compassion and
forgiveness is much mor e likely to elicit a healed r esponse. People ar e less lik ely to be defensive, and mor e likely to be
open to cor rection. Most of us ar e awar e on some level
when we’r e oﬀ. W e’d be doing things diﬀer ently if we knew
how. We don’t need attack at this point; we need help. Forgiveness for ges a new conte xt, one in which someone
can mor e easily change. Forgiveness is the choice to see people as they ar e now. When we ar e angry at people, we ar e angry because of
something they said or did befor e this moment. But whatpeople said or did is not who they ar e. Relationships ar e
reborn as we let go per ceptions of our br other’s past. ‘By
bringing the past into the pr esent, we cr eate a futur e just
like the past.’ By letting the past go, we mak e room for
miracles. An attack on a br other is a r eminder of his guilty past. In
choosing to aﬃr m a br other’s guilt, we ar e choosing to
experience mor e of it. The futur e is pr ogrammed in the
present. T o let the past go is to remember that in the
present, my br other is innocent. It is an act of gracious
gener osity to accept a person based on what we know to be
the truth about them, r egardless of whether or not they ar e
in touch with that truth themselves. Only love is r eal. Nothing else actually e xists. If a person
behaves unlovingly, then, that means that, r egardless of
their negativity—anger or whatever—their behavior was
derived fr om fear and doesn’t actually e xist. They’r e
hallucinating. Y ou for give them, then, because ther e’s
nothing to for give. F orgiveness is a discer nment between
what is r eal and what is not r eal. When people behave unlovingly, they have for gotten
who they ar e. They have fallen asleep to the Christ within
them. The job of the miracle work er is to r emain awak e. We
choose not to fall asleep and dr eam of our br other’s guilt. In
this way we ar e given the power to awak en him. A prime e xample of a miracle work er is P ollyanna. The
ego knows this, which is why she is constantly invalidated in
this cultur e. She walk ed into a situation wher e everyone had
been in a nasty mood for years. She chose not to see the
nastiness. She had faith in what lay beyond it. She e xtended
her per ception beyond what her physical senses r evealed to
her, to what her heart knew to be true about every humanbeing. It didn’t matter how anyone behaved. P ollyanna had
faith in the love she knew e xisted behind anyone’s fear, and
thus she invok ed their love into e xpression. She e xercised
the power of for giveness. W ithin a short time, everyone was
nice and everyone was happy! Whenever someone says to
me, “Marianne, you’r e being a P ollyanna,” I think to myself,
“If only I wer e that powerful.”
3. GIVING UP JUDGMENT
“Judgment is not an attribute of God .”
A Course in Miracles  tells us that whenever we ar e
contemplating attacking someone, it is as though we ar e
holding a swor d above their head. The swor d, however,
doesn’t fall on them but on us. Since all thought is thought
about ourselves, then to condemn another is to condemn
ourselves. How do we escape judgment? Lar gely thr ough a
reinterpr etation of what we’r e judging. A Course in Miracles
describes the diﬀer ence between a sin and an er ror. ‘A sin
would mean we did something so bad that God is angry at
us.’ But since we can’t do anything that changes our
essential natur e, God has nothing to be angry at. Only love
is real. Nothing else e xists. ‘The Son of God cannot sin. W e
can mak e mistak es,’ to be sur e, and we obviously do . But
God’s attitude towar d error is a desir e to heal us. Because
we ourselves ar e angry and punishing, we have concocted
the idea of an angry, punishing God. W e are created in
God’s image, however, and not the other way ar ound. As
extensions of God, we ar e ourselves the spirit of
compassion, and in our right minds, we don’t seek to judge
but to heal. W e do this thr ough for giveness. When someone
has behaved unlovingly—when they yell at us, or lie aboutus, or steal fr om us—they have lost touch with their
essence. They have for gotten who they ar e. But everything
that someone does, says the Course, is either ‘love or a call
for love.’ If someone tr eats us with love, then of course love
is the appr opriate r esponse. If they tr eat us with fear, we
are to see their behavior as a call for love. The American prison system illustrates the philosophical
and practical diﬀer ence between the choice to per ceive sin
or to per ceive er ror. We see criminals as guilty and seek to
punish them. But whatever we do to others, we ar e doing to
ourselves. Statistics painfully pr ove that our prisons ar e
schools for crime; a vast number of crimes ar e committed
by people who have alr eady spent time in prison. In
punishing others, we end up punishing ourselves. Does that
mean we’r e to for give a rapist, tell him we know he just had
a bad day and send him home? Of course not. W e’re to ask
for a miracle. A miracle her e would be a shif t from
perceiving prisons as houses of punishment to per ceiving
them as houses of r ehabilitation. When we consciously
change their purpose fr om fear to love, we r elease inﬁnite
possibilities of healing. Forgiveness is lik e the martial arts of consciousness. In
Aikido and other martial arts, we sidestep our attack er’s
force rather than r esisting it. The ener gy of the attack then
boomerangs back in the dir ection of the attack er. Our power
lies in r emaining nonr eactive. F orgiveness works in the
same way . When we attack back, and defense is a for m of
attack, we initiate a war that no one can win. Since
lovelessness is not r eal, we’r e not at the eﬀect of it in
ourselves or others. The pr oblem, of course, is that we think
we ar e. In seeking a miracle, we don’t tak e part in life’s
battles, but rather we ar e asking to be lif ted above them. The Holy Spirit r eminds us that the battle is not r eal.“Vengeance is mine, sayeth the L ord,” means,
“Relinquish the idea of vengeance.” God balances all wr ong,
but not thr ough attack, judgment or punishment. Contrary
to how it feels when we’r e lost in the emotions that tempt
us to judge, ther e’s no such thing as righteous anger . When
I was a little girl, I would ﬁght with my br other or sister, and
when my mother came home she would be annoyed at us
for ar guing. One of us would always say, “They did it ﬁrst.”
It actually doesn’t matter who “did it ﬁrst.” Whether you’r e
attacking ﬁrst or attacking back, you’r e an instrument of
attack and not of love. Several years ago I was at a cocktail party wher e I got
into a very heated debate about American for eign policy . Later that night, I had a kind of waking dr eam.
_OceanofPDF.com_A_Return_to_Love_-_Marianne_Williamson.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        Asa student and teacher of A Course in Miracles, I have
learned much about the r esistance that many people have
to Christian ter ms. As a Jew, I thought it was only other Jews
who would have a pr oblem with the wor d Jesus. But I was
wrong. It’s not just Jews who get nervous at the mention of
his name. Say the wor d Jesus to a gr oup of moderate
Christians, and ther e is lik ely to be as much r esistance to
the topic as ther e is in anyone else. I understand why. As it says in the Course, “some bitter
idols have been made of him who would be only br other to
the world. ” So many Christian ter ms have been used to
create and perpetuate guilt, that many thinking people have
decided to r eject them entir ely. In many cases, in fact, the
problem is worse for Christians than it is for Jews. Jewish
childr en ar e usually taught nothing at all about Christian
terms. F or many Christian childr en, on the other hand, these
words wer e char ged with guilt, punishment, and fear of hell. Words ar e just wor ds, and new ones can always be found
to replace ones that oﬀend. In the case of Jesus, however,
the pr oblem isn’t as simple as just coming up with another
word. Jesus is his name. Ther e’s no point in pretending that
his name is Herbert. By automatically r ejecting Jesus, based
on what some traditional Christians have done with and in
his name, many people have thr own out the baby with the
bath water. In relation to A Course in Miracles  and other
esoteric pr esentations of Christic philosophy, they have
rejected the material oﬀhand based on its language. They
have fallen into a mental trap which in Alcoholics
Anonymous is called “contempt prior to investigation. ”
Years ago, I was attending a dinner party in New Y ork
City. The topic of conversation at the table was a novel that
had r ecently been published. Someone ask ed me if I had
read it. I hadn’t, but I had r ead the book r eview in the NewYork T imes. I lied and said, “Y es. ” I was so appalled at
myself. I hadn’t r ead the book, but I had enough infor mation
to pretend, for a moment, that I had. I was willing to let
someone else’s opinion stand in for my own. Not long af ter that, I thought of that incident when I was
deciding whether or not to r ead a book—namely, A Course
in Miracles —that dealt in any way with Jesus. I hadn’t
learned anything about him as a child. I had simply been
told “W e don’t r ead that, dear. ” But Jews ar e also known for
encouraging intellectual achievement in their childr en. I had
been taught—although you would never have known it the
night of that party—to r ead, and to think for myself—and so
I did. T o me, A Course in Miracles  does not push Jesus. ‘Although the books come fr om him, it is made very clear
that you can be an advanced student of the Course and not
relate personally to him at all. ’
The Course understands our r esistances but it doesn’t
cater to them. It is time for a huge r evolution in our
understanding of Christic philosophy, and most particularly
in our understanding of Jesus. The Christian r eligion has no
monopoly on the Christ, or on Jesus himself. In every
generation, we must r ediscover truth for ourselves. Who is Jesus. He is a personal symbol of the Holy Spirit. Having been totally healed by the Holy Spirit, He has
become one with Him. He’s not the only face the Holy Spirit
takes. He is a face. He is deﬁnitely a top of the mountain
experience, but that’s not to say he’s the only one up ther e. Jesus lived within this world of fear, and per ceived only
love. Every action, every wor d, every thought was guided by
the Holy Spirit instead of the ego. He was a thor oughly
puriﬁed being. T o think about him is to think about, and so
to call forth, the perfect love inside ourselves. Jesus r eached total actualization of the Christ mind, and
was then given by God the power to help the r est of us
reach that place within ourselves. As he says in the Course,
“I am in char ge of the pr ocess of A tonement. ” Sharing God’s
vision of things, he has become  that vision. He sees each
one of us as God sees us—innocent and perfect, loving and
lovable—and he teaches us to see ourselves that way. That
is how he leads us out of hell and into Heaven. T o see with
his eyes is to atone for our er rors in per ception. That is the
miracle he works in our lives, the mystical light that bursts
forth within our souls. Our minds wer e created as altars to
God’s Son. He r epresents God’s Son. T o worship Him is to
worship the potential for perfect love which lies within us all. Fairy tales ar e mystical allusions to the power of the
inner self, handed down fr om generation to generation. They ar e stories of transfor mation. T ales lik e Snow White
and Sleeping Beauty ar e metaphors for the r elationship
between the ego and the divine mind. The wick ed
stepmother, which is the ego, can put the Sleeping Beauty
or Christ within us to sleep, but she can never destr oy it. What is cr eated by God is indestructible. The most
destructive thing she can do is to cast a spell over us, to put
the beauty to sleep. And so she does. But the love inside us
doesn’t die; it just falls asleep for a very long time. In every
fairy tale, the P rince ar rives. His kiss r eminds us who we ar e,
and why we came her e. Prince Char ming is the Holy Spirit,
and He comes, in various guises and in various suits of
clothes, to awak en us with His love. Just when it seems all
hope is lost, when it seems as though evil has triumphed at
last, our Saviour appears and tak es us in his ar ms. He has
many faces, and one of them is Jesus. He is not an idol, or a
crutch. He is our elder br other. He is a gif t. OceanofPDF. comCHAPTER 4
Surrender
“For in God’s hands we r est untr oubled …”
 
1. FAITH
“There is no pr oblem in any situation that faith
will not solve. ”
What if we truly believed ther e is a God—a beneﬁcent or der
to things, a for ce that’s holding things together without our
conscious contr ol. What if we could see, in our daily lives,
the working of that for ce. What if we believed it loved us
somehow, and car ed for us, and pr otected us. What if we
believed we could aﬀor d to r elax. The physical body is at work every moment, an ar ray of
mechanisms with a brilliance of design and eﬃciency our
human eﬀorts have never begun to match. Our hearts beat,
our lungs br eathe, our ears hear, our hair gr ows. And we
don’t have to mak e them work—they just do. Planets
revolve ar ound the sun, seeds become ﬂowers, embryos
become babies, and with no help fr om us. Their movement
is built into a natural system. Y ou and I ar e integral parts ofthat system, too. We can let our lives be dir ected by the
same for ce that mak es ﬂowers gr ow—or we can do it
ourselves. To trust in the for ce that moves the universe is faith. Faith isn’t blind, it’s visionary. Faith is believing that the
universe is on our side, and that the universe knows what
it’s doing. F aith is a psychological awar eness of an unfolding
force for good, constantly at work in all dimensions. Our
attempts to dir ect this for ce only interfer es with it. Our
willingness to r elax into it allows it to work on our behalf. Without faith, we’r e frantically trying to contr ol what it is not
our business to contr ol, and ﬁx what it is not in our power to
ﬁx. What we’r e trying to contr ol is much better oﬀ without
us, and what we’r e trying to ﬁx can’t be ﬁx ed by us anyway. Without faith, we’r e wasting time. There are objective, discer nible laws of physical
phenomena. T ake gravity, for instance, or the law of
thermodynamics. Y ou don’t e xactly have faith in the law of
gravity, so much as you just know that it is. There are objective, discer nible laws of non-physical
phenomena, as well. These two sets of laws—those which
rule both the e xternal and inter nal worlds—ar e parallel. Exter nally, the universe supports our physical survival. Photosynthesis in plants and plankton in the ocean pr oduce
the o xygen that we need in or der to br eathe. It is important
to respect the laws that rule the physical universe because
violation of these laws thr eatens our survival. When we
pollute the oceans or destr oy plant life, we ar e destr oying
our support system and so ar e destr oying ourselves. Internally, the universe supports our survival as well—
emotionally and psychologically. The inter nal equivalent tooxygen, what we need in or der to survive, is love. Human
relationships e xist to pr oduce love. When we pollute our
relationships with unloving thoughts, or destr oy or abort
them with unloving attitudes, we ar e threatening our
emotional survival. So the laws of the universe mer ely describe the way
things ar e. These laws ar en’t invented; they’r e discover ed. They ar e not dependent on our faith. F aith in them mer ely
shows we understand what they ar e. Violation of these laws
doesn’t bespeak a lack of goodness; just a lack of
intelligence. W e respect the laws of natur e in or der to
survive. And what is the highest inter nal law. That we love
one another. Because if we don’t, we will all die. As sur ely as
a lack of o xygen will kill us, so will a lack of love. 2. RESIST ANCE
“Faithlessness is not lack of faith but faith in
nothing. ”
A Course in Miracles  tells us that ‘ther e is no such thing as a
faithless person. ’ F aith is an aspect of consciousness. W e
either have faith in fear or we have faith in love, faith in the
power of the world or faith in the power of God. We’ve basically been taught that it’s our job as
responsible adults to be active, to be masculine in natur e—
to go out and get the job, to tak e contr ol of our lives, to tak e
the bull by the hor ns. W e’ve been taught that that’s our
power. We think we’r e powerful because of what we’ve
achieved rather than because of what we ar e. So we’r e
caught in a Catch-22: we feel powerless to achieve until we
already have. If somebody comes along and suggests that we go with
the ﬂow, maybe lighten up a little, we r eally feel hysterical. After all, we’r e total underachievers as is, as far as we can
see. The last thing we can imagine doing is becoming any
more passive than we alr eady ar e. Passive ener gy has its own kind of str ength. P ersonal
power r esults fr om a balance of masculine and feminine
forces. P assive ener gy without active ener gy becomes lazy,
but active ener gy without passive ener gy becomes
tyrannous. An over dose of male, aggr essive ener gy is
macho, contr olling, unbalanced, and unnatural. The pr oblem
is that aggr essive ener gy is what we’ve all been taught to
respect. W e’ve been taught that life was made for
quarterbacks so we e xalt our masculine consciousness,
which, when untemper ed by the feminine, is har d. Therefore, so ar e we—all of us, men and women. W e’ve
created a ﬁght mentality. We’re always ﬁghting for
something: for the job, the money, the r elationship, to get
out of the r elationship, to lose weight, to get sober, to get
them to understand, to get them to stay, to get them to
leave, and on and on. W e never put away our swor ds. The feminine, sur render ed place in us is passive. It
doesn’t do anything. The spiritualization pr ocess—in men as
well as women—is a feminization pr ocess, a quieting of the
mind. It is the cultivation of personal magnetism. If you have a pile of ir on shavings and you want to
arrange them in beautiful patter ns, you can do one of two
things. Y ou can use your ﬁngers and try to ar range the tiny
pieces of ir on into beautiful, gossamer lines—or you can buy
a magnet. The magnet will attract the ir on shavings. It
symbolizes our feminine consciounessness, which e xerts its
power thr ough attraction rather than activity. This attractive, r eceptive, feminine aspect of our
consciousness is the space of mental sur render. In Taoist
philosophy, “ yin” is the feminine principle, r epresenting the
forces of the earth, while “ yang” is the masculine principle,
representing spirit. When God is r eferred to as “ He,” then all
mankind becomes “She. ” This isn’t a man-woman issue. Reference to God as masculine principle in no way impinges
on feminist conviction. Our feminine self is just as important
as our masculine. The right r elationship between male and female principle
is one in which the feminine sur renders to the masculine. Surrender is not weakness or loss. It is a powerful
nonresistance. Thr ough openness and r eceptivity on the
part of human consciousness, spirit is allowed to infuse our
lives, to give them meaning and dir ection. In Christic
philosophical ter ms, Mary symbolizes the feminine within
us, which is impr egnated by God. The female allows this
process and is fulﬁlled by sur rendering into it. This is not
weakness on her part; it is str ength. The Christ on earth is
father ed by God, and mother ed by our humanness. Thr ough
a mystical connection between the human and divine, we
give birth to our higher Self. 3. GIVING UP RESUL TS
“You will never lose your way for God leads you. ”
When we sur render to God, we sur render to something
bigger than ourselves—to a universe that knows what it’s
doing. When we stop trying to contr ol events, they fall into a
natural or der, an or der that works. W e’re at r est while a
power much gr eater than our own tak es over, and it does a
much better job than we could have done. W e lear n to trustthat the power that holds galaxies together can handle the
circumstances of our r elatively little lives. Surrender means, by deﬁnition, giving up attachment to
results. When we sur render to God, we let go of our
attachment to how things happen on the outside and we
become mor e concer ned with what happens on the inside. The e xperience of love is a choice we mak e, a mental
decision to see love as the only r eal purpose and value in
any situation. Until we mak e that choice, we k eep striving
for results that we think would mak e us happy. But we’ve all
gotten things that we thought would mak e us happy, only to
ﬁnd that they didn’t. This e xternal sear ching—looking to
anything other than love to complete us and to be the
source of our happiness—is the meaning of idolatry. Money,
sex, power, or any other worldly satisfaction oﬀers just
temporary r elief for minor e xistential pain. “God” means love, and “ will” means thought. God’s will,
then, is loving thought. If God is the sour ce of all good, then
the love within us is the sour ce of all good. When we love,
we ar e automatically placing ourselves within an attitudinal
and behavioral conte xt that leads to an unfoldment of
events at the highest level of good for everyone involved. We don’t always know what that unfoldment would look lik e,
but we don’t need to. God will do His part if we do ours. Our
only job in every situation is to mer ely let go of our
resistance to love. What happens then is up to Him. W e’ve
surrender ed contr ol. W e’re letting Him lead. W e have faith
He knows how. There’s a myth that some people ar e mor e faithful than
others. A truer statement is that in some ar eas, some of us
are mor e sur render ed than others. W e sur render to God
ﬁrst, of course, the things we don’t r eally car e that muchabout anyway. Some of us don’t mind giving up our
attachment to car eer goals, but ther e’s no way we’r e going
to sur render our r omantic r elationships, or vice versa. Everything we don’t car e that much about—ﬁne—God can
have it. But if it’s r eally, r eally important, we think we better
handle it ourselves. The truth is, of course, that the mor e
important it is to us, the mor e important it is to sur render. That which is sur render ed is tak en car e of best. T o place
something in the hands of God is to give it over, mentally, to
the pr otection and car e of the beneﬁcence of the universe. To keep it ourselves means to constantly grab and clutch
and manipulate. W e keep opening the oven to see if the
bread is baking, which only ensur es that it never gets a
chance to. Wher e we have an attachment to r esults, we tend to
have a har d time giving up contr ol. But how can we know
what r esult to try to achieve in a situation when we don’t
know what’s going to happen tomor row. What do we ask
for. Instead of, “ Dear God, please let us fall in love, or
please give me this job,” we say, “ Dear God, my desir e, my
priority is inner peace. I want the e xperience of love. I don’t
know what would bring that to me. I leave the r esults of this
situation in your hands. I trust your will. May your will be
done. Amen. ”
I used to feel I couldn’t aﬀor d to r elax because God had
more important things to think about than my life. I ﬁnally
realized that God is not capricious, but is rather an
impersonal love for all life. My life is no mor e or less
precious to Him than is anyone else’s. T o sur render to God is
to accept the fact that He loves us and pr ovides for us,
because he loves and pr ovides for all life. Sur render doesn’t
obstruct our power; it enhances it. God is mer ely the love
within us, so r eturning to Him is a r eturn to ourselves. 4. THE SURRENDERED LIFE
“Holy Child of God, when will you lear n that only
holiness can content you and give you peace. ”
To relax, to feel the love in your heart and k eep to that as
your focus in every situation—that’s the meaning of spiritual
surrender. It changes us. W e become deeper, mor e
attractive people. In Zen Buddhism, ther e’s a concept called “zen mind,” or
“beginner’s mind. ” They say that the mind should be lik e an
empty rice bowl. If it’s alr eady full, then the universe can’t
ﬁll it. If it’s empty, it has r oom to r eceive. This means that
when we think we have things alr eady ﬁgur ed out, we’r e not
teachable. Genuine insight can’t dawn on a mind that’s not
open to r eceive it. Sur render is a pr ocess of emptying the
mind. In the Christic tradition, this is the meaning of “becoming
as a little child. ” Little childr en don’t think they know what
things mean. In fact, they know they don’t know. They ask
someone older and wiser to e xplain things to them. W e’re
like childr en who don’t know, but think we do. The wise person doesn’t pr etend to know what it’s
impossible to know. “I don’t know” can be an empowering
statement. When we go into a situation not knowing, ther e
is something inside us which does. With our conscious mind,
‘we step back in or der that a higher power within us can
step forwar d and lead the way. ’
We need less posturing and mor e genuine charisma. Charisma was originally a r eligious ter m, meaning “ of the
spirit,” or “inspir ed. ” It’s about letting God’s light shine
through us. It’s about a sparkle in people that money can’tbuy. It’s an invisible ener gy with visible eﬀects. T o let go, to
just love, is not to fade into the wallpaper. Quite the
contrary, it’s when we truly become bright. W e’re letting our
own light shine. We are meant to be this way. We are meant to shine. Look at small childr en. They’r e all so unique befor e they
start trying  to be, because they demonstrate the power of
genuine humility. This is also the e xplanation of “beginner’s
luck. ” When we go into a situation not knowing the rules, we
don’t pr etend to know how to ﬁgur e anything out, and we
don’t know yet what ther e is to be afraid of. This r eleases
the mind to cr eate fr om its own higher power. Situations
shift gear and lights go on simply because our minds have
opened up to r eceive love. W e have gotten out of our own
way. Love is a win-mode, a successful and attractive vibration. We think that success is diﬃcult, and so, for us, it is. Success in life doesn’t have to involve negative tension. W e
don’t have to be struggling all the time. If you think about it,
“taking the bull by the hor ns” would be a very danger ous
thing to do. In fact, ambitious tension actually limits our
ability to succeed because it k eeps us in a state of
contraction, emotionally and physically. It seems to give us
energy but doesn’t r eally, lik e the white sugar of mental
health; ther e’s a short high, followed by a crash. The
cultivation of mental r est, or sur render, is lik e eating healthy
food. It doesn’t give us an immediate rush, but over time it
provides a lot mor e ener gy. This doesn’t r equir e sitting in a lotus position all day. We
still get e xcited, but mor e gently. Many people associate a
spiritual life with a grade B movie, but God doesn’t get rid of
all the drama in our lives. He just gets rid of the cheap
drama. Ther e is no higher drama than true personal gr owth. Nothing could be mor e genuinely dramatic than boys
becoming r eal men and girls becoming r eal women. Something amazing happens when we sur render and just
love. W e melt into another world, a r ealm of power alr eady
within us. The world changes when we change. The world
softens when we sof ten. The world loves us when we choose
to love the world. Surrender means the decision to stop ﬁghting the world,
and to start loving it instead. It is a gentle liberation fr om
pain. But liberation isn’t about br eaking out of anything; ‘it’s
a gentle melting into who we r eally ar e. ’ W e let down our
armor, and discover the str ength of our Christ self. A Course
in Miracles  tells us that although ‘we think that without the
ego, all would be chaos, the opposite is true. W ithout the
ego, all would be love. ’
We are simply ask ed to shif t focus and to tak e on a mor e
gentle per ception. That’s all God needs. Just one sincer e
surrender ed moment, when love matters mor e than
anything, and we know that nothing else r eally matters at
all. What He gives us in r eturn for our openness to Him, is
an outpouring of His power fr om deep within us. W e are
given His power to shar e with the world, to heal all wounds,
to awak en all hearts.
The author believes that using the name "Jesus" is not the issue, and that it's not about replacing it with another word, but rather about understanding the true meaning and intention behind the name.
What is the author's perspective on the name "Jesus"?
Miracles are not about changing external circumstances, but rather about shifting our perception and changing our own thinking and behavior. It's about choosing to love and heal ourselves and others.
What is the concept of "miracles" in the context of A Course in Miracles?
The author believes that forgiveness is not about condoning or ignoring someone's wrongdoings, but rather about recognizing that there is no need to judge or condemn, and instead, choosing to love and accept people as they are.
What is the author's stance on the concept of "forgiveness"?
The author believes that faith is not about blindly believing, but rather about trusting in the universe and letting go of our attachment to specific outcomes. It's about choosing to trust in the power of love and the universe to handle things.
What is the author's view on the concept of "faith"?
The author believes that surrender is not about giving up control, but rather about letting go of our ego's need to control and manipulate, and instead, choosing to love and trust in the universe.
What is the author's perspective on the concept of "surrender"?