Miracles vs. Magic

“Let us talk a moment here of miracles. Simply stated, miracles are a natural consequence of joining. Magic is your attempt to do miracles on your own. In the early stages of your learning, you will be tempted to play a game of make believe. You will not believe that you are not your body, but you would make believe that you are not.” (ACOL, C:10.11)

Do we believe that we are our body? Pure and simple? Just the body, or are we beginning to see that the body is something that carries us, and that we ourselves are something else entirely?

Coming to this understanding is something the miracle will do for us. We will begin to believe in the intangible. We will see that we are spirit, occupying the space that is the body. And we will know beyond a shadow of a doubt that life goes on after the “death” of the body.

This belief in life after death is a major blessing of the miracle. Many of our fears have centered on the belief that we didn’t survive the death of the body, or we survived in a hell (of our own making), or we survived in we knew not what. We still don’t know the what of our survival beyond the death of the body, but we can intuit that what we will find will be good. And the miracle does that for us.

When we join with each other, we know miracles as a natural consequence of this joining. We are recognizing that we are not separate, as we have thought for eons. So what is there to fear? Many of our fears, just like uncertainty about the afterlife, have centered on the fact that we thought ourselves all alone, with nobody on whom we could depend except those in our special relationships. Joining, by implication, moves beyond special relationships to something better—holy relationships. We let go when we need to, but we will always have people in our lives who are there for us. We don’t have to fall in line with the drama of special relationships, for we know the true and the real of the holy. And with this another miracle has happened.

Let miracles happen today. Join freely with the others who surround us. What we give, we receive—as we have long known but didn’t know how to put into practice.

Now we know. We just reach out in love, for we have cast fear—at least for today—aside. And the miracle that envelops us will keep fear at bay.

Just love without expectations. And what we get in return will dwarf our expectations. Love is the thing. The only thing.

Changing Form Is Part of Life-Everlasting

“Changing form is part of the pattern of life-everlasting. (The Treatises of A Course of Love: ‘A Treatise on the New,’ 4.8)”

1 – Life after Death

This passage echoes a previous reflection on life after death. We are not meant, according to A Course of Love, to hope for new discoveries in science that will give us an eternal physical life on earth. Would we really want such a thing, if it were possible?

2 – The Same Form?

Some early writings on A Course in Miracles thought that a passage in those volumes promised that eternal physical life would be not only possible, but to be expected. This has not been upheld by more recent writings, and ACOL now comments on this hypothesis.

3 – Death

We may be threatened by death, in that it is the one thing that we cannot control. The control freaks among us may be especially threatened. We do not know exactly what form our body will take in the afterlife. Even careful readings of psychic commentary do not make this finally clear. But of one thing we can be certain: Life after death is not to be feared. We will change form, but we will know life everlasting. And we can hope that the death itself, as Ruth Montgomery’s Guides said, will be like “walking through an open door.”
4 – Reincarnation

Is reincarnation? Is this the changing form that is meant? It would not be wise for students/teachers of ACIM and ACOL to take any definite stand, outside the confines of close personal friends. All of us need to be as helpful as possible to all those we encounter, not to introduce tenets of controversy that would limit our usefulness. This attitude is a paraphrase of ideas in the Manual of A Course in Miracles.

5 – Afterlife

While changing form may suggest another form in the afterlife, and then a reintroduction of ourselves to form in this world, we do not know that for sure. Jesus’s words in ACIM can be read in two ways, and students/teachers of ACIM have differed on the point of reincarnation. But we do need to realize that in the grand scheme, we do change form, for our worn-out bodies need to be replaced. We cannot live indefinitely in these bodies. To change form is natural, nothing to be feared. It is, I believe, as Ruth Montgomery’s Guides told her (and us) “like walking through an open door.” That is what death really is.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

May I know in the depth of my being that death is not the end, that I only change form. I do not, therefore, have to fear death.

As time goes by, and pain comes to me through health changes, may I not suffer any more than would happen when I finally make the transition to life everlasting, life after death.

Amen.