What is a miracle?

Our special theme says, “A miracle is a correction. … It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false.”

I had a dream a few nights ago. In the dream, my daughter, my boyfriend and I were traveling to Yellowstone National Park in a station wagon very much like the one my parents had when I was a child. Jasmine, Ron and I rode in the front seat. In the backseat, there was an unattractive woman and her mindless daughter. The woman was Ron’s new girlfriend, which he added to our family. I was being nice and accepting of our situation; I welcomed her and her daughter into our family.

We stopped at a Route 66-like truck stop. Ron and Jasmine got our dog out of the very back of the station wagon and took the dog for a walk. I opened the backdoor to let Ron’s new girlfriend and her daughter out of the backseat, intending fully to be polite—even believing that I liked them—when all of the sudden, my anger burst out unexpectedly.

I couldn’t believe how rude I was to this woman. My intention was to be nice! So, I tried to apologize, but again anger and hatred poured out of me.

I ran away from the car, horrified by my own behavior, and ran into the truck stop restaurant to hide. There, inside the restaurant, I met Dolly Parton. She showed up as a fairy godmother type of character. She was there to help me look at my feelings and to discover what was true for me. Since I had been lying to myself about how I felt, this was important and helpful.

That’s the end of the dream. However, when I woke up, I saw where all of the components of the dream came from.

1. Recently a friend told me how her partner of many years has invited another female partner to be part of the family. My friend appears very happy with this arrangement, but I thought she wasn’t being honest with herself about her feelings.
2. Another friend was recently divorced. Her ex-husband has a new girlfriend. This friend is very angry about the new girlfriend. She has openly shared her anger about this with me, including telling me repeatedly how ugly this new girlfriend is.
3. The friend who was recently divorced has told me many times how mindless her teenage daughter is. She gets very angry at what she perceives as her daughter’s refusal to think.
4. On our last family vacation, Ron, Jasmine and I traveled on Route 66 in Arizona. Our next planned vacation is Yellowstone National Park.
5. Every day in my household, we take a break from whatever we are doing to walk our dog. It’s a necessary part of our life right now.
6. Whitney Houston played the fairy godmother in one version of Cinderella. Whitney Houston also sang, “I Will Always Love You,” which was written by Dolly Parton.
7. My parents had the station wagon that was in the dream when I was 11 years old. That is also the year my parents divorced.

If you look at these seven details, all of which are stored in my subconscious mind, you can see that the subconscious pulled these details together in a new way to create the dream. The dream was simply old memories and impressions woven together to create a new temporary tapestry.

I am sharing this with you, because this is how our world is made too. All of the old ideas—old thoughts, perceptions, impressions and beliefs from the collective subconscious—are woven together to create what appears to be a new present, but it is actually just a regurgitation of old thoughts, perceptions, impressions and beliefs. And the miracle sees it as meaningless regurgitation.

Some people may give my dream meaning by analyzing it and saying, “This means that, and that means this,” but that misses the point entirely. The point is that the dream (and the world) is meaningless. When we give it no new meaning, we accept the correction. If we give the dream meaning, the subconscious is rebuilt, and the regurgitation continues.

It’s true that I can look at my dream and see what is in my subconscious. The seven elements above show that. But seeing that enables me to look at the dream and realize, “Oh, the dream was just made up from a random reordering of the subconscious.” In other words, what I see in the dream is merely false.

And that is true of the world we see also.

I let forgiveness rest upon all things, For thus forgiveness will be given me.

Today’s lesson says, “I thank You, Father, for Your plan to save me from the hell I made. It is not real. And you have given me the means to prove its unreality to me. The key is in my hand,…”

The “means to prove its unreality to me”—the key—is forgiveness, which is abiding as the unaffected Self. Abiding unaffected is giving no new meaning to the regurgitation that is the world.

The Loving All Method is a gentle way of abiding as the unaffected Self. Therefore, living the Loving All Method is forgiveness. It is the key.

Let’s review the Loving All Method today. Although you have read this more than once before, it is always possible a sentence or word that did not stand out to you before will now shine with new, previously unseen clarity. Therefore, although the mind may want to skip reading this, because the mind thinks it knows it already, let’s bypass the mind’s opinion and read Chapter 12 of The Most Direct Means to Eternal Bliss again today.

Note: I would like to point out an error in my mind, and how error manifests into suffering. If you look back at the seven elements from my subconscious, which created the dream, you will notice that element #1 included a judgment I made about another. That judgment, left uncorrected, is what led to the suffering of the Regina-character in the dream. Without that judgment, the dream could have been completely benign, like the real world. Loving everything exactly as it is (the Loving All Method) corrects all errors.

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What is a miracle?

Our new special theme says, “A miracle is a correction. It does not create, nor really change at all.”

Recently, we played a game based on the teaching in Rupert Spira’s book, The Transparency of Things. We used a book or some other piece of paper with words on it as a prop. First we read the words on the page, and we noticed what they said, and then we shifted our focus to notice the paper on which the words were written. We became aware of the paper that was already present, even though we weren’t consciously aware of it when our attention was focused on the words.

A miracle is similar to that shift in focus.

When we shifted our attention from the words to the paper, we did not create the paper. We merely became aware of it. In fact, nothing changed at all. The words already appeared on paper. There was no material change. The only change, if we call it a change, was that we became more aware of the paper.

A miracle is like that. It shifts our awareness from the specific focus of the ego to another focus that is not of the ego.

I can attack but my own sinlessness, And it is only that which keeps me safe.

We can use this sentence from our workbook lesson to notice how a miracle works.

If I read the sentence with emphasis on “attack”, I may see the sentence in this way:

I can attack but my own sinlessness,
and it is only that (attack) which keeps me safe.

The sentence may look a little crazy written that way, but the ego’s perception is crazy. And in fact, the ego perceives exactly as that sentence is written above.

When thinking with the ego thought system, don’t you think attack keeps you safe?

Pause and look at this for a moment. Remember some subtle ways that you have attacked, because you thought that was the way to be safe.

Now, if we shift the focus in the sentence, we will see the sentence differently. Let’s put the emphasis on “sinlessness”:

I can attack but my own sinlessness,
and it is only that (sinlessness) which keeps me safe.

Now the meaning of the sentence has changed completely, although the actual sentence itself remains the same. The only “change” is a shift in focus, but the shift in focus changes everything.

With this shift in focus, we move outside the ego’s way of thinking entirely. Now attack is the opposite of safety, because if I attack anything, I attack my awareness of my sinlessness, and only my sinlessness keeps me safe.

A person who reads the sentence with the emphasis on attack, and believes that emphasis, is going to understand, think and act much differently than one who reads the sentence with the emphasis on sinlessness and believes (or puts faith in) that meaning.

This shift in perception from seeing attack as my safety to seeing non-attack as my safety is a miracle.

In order to help initiate this miracle in you, please contemplate the following today:

1. Remember a time that you used attack for perceived protection or safety. How did you feel in that moment? Write those feelings down as honestly as you can.
2. Are those feelings synonymous with “safety”? To help you answer this objectively, open a thesaurus and look at the synonyms for safety. Can you find the feelings that you have already written down in that list of synonyms?
3. Next, contemplate what your sinlessness is. In order to get a real sense of your sinlessness, which is present right now, don’t contemplate sinlessness as an idea or concept. The mind defines some ideas as sinless and some ideas as sin. If you contemplate this by thinking, you will only define a part of you as sinless, or you will only define yourself as sinless sometimes. We are looking for sinlessness that is whole, perfect and always present. So without thinking, look at yourself now. Can you find whole, perfect and always present sinlessness? Don’t give up until you do.
4. Once you have realized whole, perfect and always present sinlessness, read this sentence again with emphasis on what you have found:I can attack but my own sinlessness, and it is only that which keeps me safe.
5. What is that? What does the sentence mean with emphasis on that? Write what it means as you see it now, with the shift in perspective that occurred through following these steps. As you write, additional insight may come. Continue to write with insight until it comes to a quiet end. This will help initiate the miracle in you.

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