2/26/19

Miracles Course : How real is real?

 When it comes to the phenomenal world, the phrase "This too shall pass" fairly sums it up from the perspective of A Course in Miracles. All is alive, in motion, and changing. Form comes into being, adapts, grows, changes, and passes away. It is a world of the ephemeral in flux. This is the world we know. This is the world where the consequences are gauged in probabilities and not in certainty. It is the world we have created to satisfy a desire for impermanence.
What we experience and perceive with senses is not the world that God created, which is eternal. "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning." James 1:17 This, on the other hand, is an adequate description of reality. No variation without any shadows cast by turning. The world of reality moves in one direction only, toward creation and extension of that which is already real, and with no blockages of the light that might cast a shadow. The world of illusions and deceptive appearances that obscure the reality beyond is the world of maya, the ephemeral.

In Hinduism and Sikhism, maya is the principal concept which manifests, perpetuates and governs the illusion and dream of duality in the phenomenal universe. It is not real, as that word is used within A Course in Miracles. What is real is eternal, meaning that it exists outside of space-time, and it is unchanging, which is even more difficult to understand. But, to dismiss the phenomenal world as "just illusion" is to wholly miss the point, in Course terms. Perhaps in other traditions the world is viewed as a trap to be escaped, in the Course the world is to be forgiven, healed, and transformed into Heaven.

A close analogy is provided by the Hebrew word 'Tikkun,' which means to heal, repair, and transform the world. This is the duty and responsibility of humankind because the creative powers we share is what sustains the world of illusion. We cannot simply turn our back upon it, for it is impossible to escape our own creations. The mind is the cutting edge of creation and until we learn to heal our mis-creations and stop casting shadows across the land, illusions and the deception of separation will persist. The first law of God can be expressed as "You broke it, you bought it." What the mind has created wrongly shall continue laboriously and painfully through time, until that mind is returned to the service of light. The world we know is not real in the ultimate sense, but it is real enough in time because it is sustained by the hidden power of the universe, the creative power of God, wrongly applied. In this, the teachings of A Course in Miracles are fairly unique. I am not aware of any other like it.
"Fantasies and projection ... both attempt to control external reality according to false internal needs... Twist reality in any way, and you are perceiving destructively. Reality was lost through usurpation, which in turn produced tyranny. I told you you were now restored to your former role in the Plan of Atonement. But you must still choose freely to devote your heritage to the greater Restoration. As long as a single slave remains to walk the earth, your release is not complete. Complete restoration of the Sonship is the only true goal of the miracle-minded." A Course In Miracles
-  oOo   -
Tom Fox
Louisville, Kentucky






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