Metaphysics and Miracles

Metaphysics and Miracles Essay

Rev. Baudouin Heuinckx

Although some of the positions taken in this course are not entirely in line with my personal beliefs, I found that it was enlightening in many ways.

First of all, the course is based on serious studies of the mind and spirit by a serious practitioner. This in my opinion is one of its very important characteristics and sets solid foundations for its conclusions.

Although I agree that most of the problems are created by the conscious mind’s tendency to fragment and analyze, I would like to point out two things. First, I do not think that it is inherently negative to differentiate oneself from the whole, as long as that differentiation is made while acknowledging that one is also part of the whole. This can be a quite difficult task, but I believe this to be more accurate than one or the other possibility considered separately. Second, I believe some problems also exist are created by the unconscious mind. To use the image of the dark room and the flashlight, there could be obstacles in the room beyond the range of the light beam that would make us stumble and fall. Phobias would be a typical example.

I would think that problems should be broken down into ‘simple’ problems, which the conscious mind can resolve with some more thought and inventiveness, and ‘deeper’ problems that the conscious mind would not be able to solve, and for which one must rely on the higher mind. The first ones do not require miracles: they require conscious action and responsibility. Many problems can be solved that way, and I think they should. It is to the second ones that miracles should be applied. One should not attempt to rely on miracles to solve every simple problem of one’s life.

The conscious mind is the realm of the ego, which defines the personality. I think it would be a mistake to consider the ego as ‘wrong’, or as being – simply because of its existence – the source of all our problems. In my view, the problem is not the existence of the ego. I believe that we should not shy away from our differentiation, but rather accept that it is part of the whole. I would not say that ‘we are not our ego’, but rather that ‘we are much more than our ego’. In that view, the problem is not the ego itself, it is the imbalance of the ego created by fear, quite aptly highlighted in the course under the headings ‘over-inflated’ and ‘under-inflated’ egos. I believe our first task should be to use the perspective of our higher self and its Love to balance and center the ego. In that sense, when the course talks about something negative ‘coming from the ego’, I would prefer to say that it comes from the ‘imbalanced ego’. Being hostage to the ego would be wrong, but we should be able to balance and accept our ego while at the same time being host to God.

The course presents an interesting view of the concept of sin. My personal belief is that sin does not actually exist. Of course many people, including myself, perform bad or evil things, but these are simply that. They are not sin in the sense of disobedience from the orders of God. I do not believe that there are actual instructions from God that could be disobeyed. Moreover, and I think the course describes this very well, the ‘original sin’ of believing to be separated from God does not exist either. This original sin cannot be real, as we were never actually separated from God. It is an illusion. Once we realize that God is and has always been with us and within us – probably in our higher mind – we can let go of the illusion of being unworthy and entirely separate from God and each other. But neither are we ‘better’ than others: we – and the whole creation – are all equally worthy and united by God.

There is one point, which I already mentioned, on which I have to come back. If we never actually separated from God, but if the ego and the physical world were created as symbols of the separation, then the ego and physical world would be creations of God, or at least created with the assent of God. This last sentence even sounds funny, because how could anything be created without the assent of God? I do not believe the physical world to be an illusion, a ‘dream world’ or ‘world of forms’ to use course terminology. In fact that ego and the physical world are creations of God and we should not ignore them. If everything else than Love would be an illusion, what would be the point?

Having a personality and living in a physical world is not contradictory with acknowledging our everlasting union with the Love of God through the higher mind. We can be both unique and part of the One, as long as we understand that we are not better or worse than the rest of Creation. Following the teachings of the course, we should let Love – I would tend to qualify it as Divine Love or Perfect Love – help us balance our ego by casting out the fear and open the channels to the higher mind in order to restore the connection with God that we always had but forgot we had. Through Perfect Love, we would restore Perfect Trust, not only in God whom we never left and never abandoned us, but also in ourselves and the other.

Our challenge, for which the methods explained in the course prepares us quite well, should therefore be to become more and more aware of the presence of the Divine within us and to use the Love of God to balance our ego. By understanding that we are at the same time unique and part of the Divine, we will grow in love and respect for the others, not because separateness is an illusion of the ego, but because we would have understood that we are all individual facets of the same diamond.

by Rev. Baudouin Heuninckx

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