Holy Shift! (2 page)

Although the Course is written in Christian language, it is studied by my friends who are Buddhist,
Muslim, Hindu, and Jewish, because it offers a spiritual philosophy that reflects perennial wisdom. I found the Course in an old esoteric bookstore at a mind-body-spirit festival held in Central London. I bought it on a whim because I liked the title and also the idea of miracles. The Course describes a miracle as something you experience when you are willing to shift your perception from a psychology of fear to a psychology of love.

A Course in Miracles
encourages you to look at everything afresh. “Instruction in perception is your great need,” teaches the Course, in a section of the Text entitled “The Problem and the Answer
.
” The goal of the Course is to help you know yourself. “This is a course on love, because it is about you,” it states. It offers a system of mind-training that helps you undo the blocks to love—conditioning, judgment, and fear—so that you can enjoy and participate fully in the miracle of existence.

“There is no conflict that does not entail the single, simple question, ‘What am I?'” states the Course. The Course wants you to see that you are more than just a small, separate ego set apart from creation. “You are not an ego,” and “you are not a body,” says the Course. The body is simply the dress code for the human experience. The
holy shift
, as I call it, is the
recognition that you are a spiritual being having a human experience and not a human being who has occasional spiritual experiences. In other words, you don't have a soul; you
are
a soul.

Holy are you, eternal, free and whole, at peace forever in the Heart of God.

—Manual for Teachers. 15. 1:12.

The Course describes the perception of separateness as “a tiny, mad idea” that causes a “great amnesia” that leads you to live “a little life beset with fear.” Albert Einstein described separation as “an optical delusion.” The Course says, “In you there is no separation.” The goal of studying the Text and practicing the lessons in the Workbook is to make an “exchange of separation for salvation.” This exchange is described as an
inner shift
.

The Course is a love letter written from your soul to your ego. In this love letter you are asked to let go of your separate self-image, made of pain and fear, in order to experience your wholeness again. Your self-image is full of unworthiness because it is not worthy of you. “You who are beloved of God are wholly blessed,” says the Course. You are created whole, there is nothing missing in you, and
any unworthiness stems from conditioning and a mistaken identity.

In a section in the Text called “Seek Not Outside Yourself,” the Course encourages you to stop searching for the happiness, peace, and love you long for. It's because we believe that happiness is outside of us that we've made the world into a giant shopping mall. It's because we believe that peace is outside that wars are fought every day on this planet. It's because we are looking for love, instead of being the loving presence we truly are, that we live in a world where love is so hard to find.

“There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach.” That's quite a statement. What does it mean? “Your concept of the world depends upon this concept of the self,” explains the Course. How you see yourself is how you see the world. For example, if you perceive yourself as separate, then everything you want (like happiness, peace, and love) is also perceived as separate from you. You experience life as “a tiny you and an enormous world.” However, when you remember your wholeness, your oneness with everything, the world withholds nothing from you.

“There is no sin,” says the Course. Now this really is a holy shift!
A Course in Miracles
states that
nothing you do can ruin or alter your holy innocence. No matter how lost you are in the “detour into fear” and no matter how many wounds you experience in your “personal repertory of horrors,” your holy innocence remains intact, waiting to be witnessed again. The Course says, “Its central theme is always, ‘God's Son is guiltless, and in his innocence is his salvation.'”

“There is no need to suffer,” says the Course. Here is another holy shift in perception. The Course invites you to consider the possibility that because God is unconditional love, God does not punish you, cause you pain, or make you suffer (even for a good cause). “And so your innocence has not been lost. You need no healing to be healed,” says the Course. Any pain you experience is the pain of the ego and not of your soul. Therefore, all pain is a form of mistaken identity, a call for love, and a prompt to remember who you really are.

How do we experience a holy shift? How do we undo the illusion of separation? How do we experience a Self without guilt? How do we create a world with no war? The ego is a “poor choice as a teacher,” the Course says, because it never sees the big picture. “Resign now as your own teacher of salvation,” the ego is told. We are called to listen instead to the Holy
Spirit, which offers soul guidance directly from our holy self. It's with the Holy Spirit's help that we learn about forgiveness. Forgiveness is the great undoing that translates perception into knowledge, fear into love, and pain into miracles.

The Course teaches that forgiveness is more than just positive thinking, an emotional reframe, or the overlooking and forgetting of a specific event. Forgiveness is a spiritual path, according to the Course. It is the holy purpose of our life on earth. “Forgiveness is the home of miracles,” says the Course. Through forgiveness, we remember who we are. We learn that, in truth, there are no dark nights of the soul, only dark nights of the ego. Forgiveness helps us, therefore, to choose again, to find a better way, and to create a future unlike our past.

“This course is not beyond immediate learning, unless you believe that what God wills takes time,” the Course tells us. We can experience a holy shift in our life at any moment and in a single instant. How do we do this? Miracles require no suffering, no sacrifice, no penance, no money, and no special effort. The key is simply “a little willingness” to see what reality is like when you are not lost in fear, guilt, and thoughts of sins. Your little willingness is “powerfully supplemented by the strength of Heaven,” says the Course.

The holy shift is our Atonement. “The offer of Atonement is universal,” says the Course. “It is equally applicable to all individuals in all circumstances.” Miracles are available to everyone who shows a little willingness. “A miracle is
now
. It stands already here, in present grace,” says the Course. Therefore, in any holy instant, our weary egos can experience the grace and healing that is on offer from our soul, which is in Heaven and in a state of perfect oneness and wholeness.

My hope is that
Holy Shift!
helps you experience a year of miracles. I've chosen an excerpt from
A Course in Miracles
for each day of the year. I encourage you to set aside time every day—between 1 minute and 15 minutes—to reflect on each message. Each entry is an invitation to a deeper inquiry. Be sure also to take the message with you into your day.
Holy Shift!
is offered as an aid; it is not meant to replace the main work. That said, the main work of
A Course in Miracles
is not to arrive at just an intellectual understanding of the words; it is to identify with the love that brings these words to you. In truth, you
are
this love.

Robert Holden
London, October 2013

A Note to the Reader:
Each entry in
Holy Shift!
is taken from either the Text, the Workbook, the Manual for Teachers, or one of the two supplements: Psychotherapy and The Song of Prayer. The references for each entry belong to the 3rd Edition, Combined Volume, of
A Course in Miracles,
published by the Foundation for Inner Peace in 2007. Here is an example of how to read the reference:

Text-18. VIII. 13:1-8.

Chapter 18, Verse 8, paragraph 13, lines 1 to 8.

Workbook-p II. Lesson 360. 1:1-7.

Part II, Lesson 360, paragraph 1, lines 1 to 7.

Manual for Teachers. 14. 5:1-7.

Chapter 14, paragraph 5, lines 1 to 7.

Psychotherapy-3. III. 8:9-13.

Chapter 3, Verse III, paragraph 8, lines 9 to 13.

Song of Prayer-1. I. 1:1-7.

Chapter 1, Verse 1, paragraph 1, lines 1 to 7.

 

The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught.

It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance.

The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.

This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:

Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.

Herein lies the peace of God.

Text-Intro. 1:6-8 & 2:1-4.

 

Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love.

The real miracle is the love that inspires them.

In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.

Text-1. I.1:1-3.

 

In you is all of Heaven.

Every leaf that falls is given life in you.

Each bird that ever sang will sing again in you.

And every flower that ever bloomed has saved its perfume and its loveliness for you.

Text-25. IV. 5:1-4.

 

You are the work of God, and His work is wholly lovable and wholly loving.

This is how a man must think of himself in his heart, because this is what he is.

Text-1. III. 2:3-4.

 

Whenever you are not wholly joyous, it is because you have reacted with a lack of love to one of God's creations.

Text-5. VII. 5:1.

 

My holy brother, think of this awhile: The world you see does nothing.

It has no effects at all.

It merely represents your thoughts.

And it will change entirely as you elect to change your mind, and choose the joy of God as what you really want.

Your Self is radiant in this holy joy, unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable, forever and forever.

Workbook-p I. Lesson 190. 6:1-5.

 

Dwell not upon the past today.

Keep a completely open mind, washed of all past ideas and clean of every concept you have made.

You have forgiven the world today. You can look upon it now as if you never saw it before.

You do not know yet what it looks like.

You merely wait to have it shown to you.

While you wait, repeat several times, slowly and in complete patience:

The light has come. I have forgiven the world.

Workbook-p I. Lesson 75. 6:1-9.

 

Salvation requires the acceptance of but one thought;—you are as God created you, not what you made of yourself.

Whatever evil you may think you did, you are as God created you.

Whatever mistakes you made, the truth about you is unchanged.

Creation is eternal and unalterable. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. You are and will forever be exactly as you were created.

Light and joy and peace abide in you because God put them there.

Workbook-p I. Lesson 93. 7:1-7.

 

It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain.

Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way.

There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression.

No one but yourself affects you.

There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail.

But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are.

Workbook-p I. Lesson 190. 5:1-6.

 

I have said you have but two emotions, love and fear.

One is changeless but continually exchanged, being offered by the eternal to the eternal. In this exchange it is extended, for it increases as it is given.

The other has many forms, for the content of individual illusions differs greatly. Yet they have one thing in common; they are all insane.

Text-13. V. 1:1-9.

 

Perception can make whatever picture the mind desires to see.

Remember this.

In this lies either Heaven or hell, as you elect.

Manual for Teachers. 19. 5:2-4.

 

Tolerance for pain may be high, but it is not without limit.

Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that there
must
be a better way.

Text-2. III. 3:5-8.

 

The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true.

This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions.

No one is afraid of them when he perceives he made them up.

The fear was held in place because he did not see that he was author of the dream, and not a figure in the dream.

Text-28. II. 7:1-4.

 

Forgive us our illusions, Father, and help us to accept our true relationship with You, in which there are no illusions, and where none can ever enter.

Our holiness is Yours. What can there be in us that needs forgiveness when Yours is perfect?

The sleep of forgetfulness is only the unwillingness to remember Your forgiveness and Your Love.

Let us not wander into temptation, for the temptation of the Son of God is not Your Will.

And let us receive only what You have given, and accept but this into the minds which You created and which You love. Amen.