Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Pursuing a spiritual path involves purification, a giving up, a surrender to God's will instead of insisting on our own.

The seventh miracle principle in A Course In Miracles is: "Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first."

The purification mentioned in this principle refers to our mind not our body. The Course teaches that the body is an illusion, it merely is a conduit of our spirit. In itself it is nothing and to focus on it is to miss the point or distract us from where the effective focus should be our mind.

Our egos are so full of drama, resentments, grievances, attacks that to be miracle workers it needs purification. If we are to be more aware of Love's presence in our lives we must remove the obstacles and barriers to Love's presence. It is this removal of these barriers and obstacles to the awareness of Love's presence that the Course is referring to when it says that "purification is necessary first."

Miracles are not something only certain very holy people can do. They are everyone's birth right. In fact, for humanity to achieve its ultimate purpose all people must become miracle workers because a miracle, in the terms of the course, is simply right thinking and right awareness. We come to the place where we understand what is really important which is to love. Kenneth Wapnick in discussing this principle quotes St. Augustine who said "Love and do what you will." The ego distracts us from loving and so whatever blocks our loving awareness needs to be removed so that our awareness can be purified. In Unitarian Universalism our principles help us with this purification when we covenant "to affirm and promote the acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth" and when we support the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. A free and responsible search should involve a purification of illusions and drama so that we get closer to our authentic and genuine selves which involves the awareness of the inherent worth and dignity of ourselves and every person.

Here is a moral tale of purification of a prosecutor who made terrible mistakes because of ego:



It is interesting that so much of our justice system is motivated by "winning" rather than the truth.

Today, do not get caught up in "winning" and having to be right. Perhaps practicing "not doing" as was suggested yesterday by the Tao Te Ching can help.

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