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These are some of the most amazing stories about what a great job our Universal Life Church ministers are doing. These are stories of why they became ordained, the courses they've taken, and the great things they are doing with their ministries.

Monday, December 20, 2010

A Course In Miracles

I have been touched by many of the topics but the one that has most relevance for me at the moment is the ultimate lesson: Miracles and Addictions.

I have suffered with a number of addictions in my life, most recently food.  I struggle every day and sometimes every waking minute of every day.  When I read the words from the Course “To be addicted to something is to imply that it has power over us” suddenly it all made sense.  It is not meant to be a struggle because it doesn’t really exist.  It is a figment of the scarcity principle. A figment of my imagination.

The truth of the words “…. ..all beliefs are real to the believer” really hit home for me because my belief that certain substances, such as food, can fill or rectify a  perceived lack, is just that, a belief.  A belief created by me but not reality.  A belief that gives the addiction power over me.  The only reality is that the belief in lack has been created by me alone.

I have spent the majority of my adult life searching outside myself for something to ease the pain of childhood traumas.  I have also spent a great deal of time searching inside myself for the answers.  Ultimately, I have resorted to the external search because of my misguided belief that those external sources were more tangible and concrete.  I believed that if I could hold it in my hand, touch it, taste, see it or smell it then it was of more use to me than the often perceived nebulous regions of my “mind”.  Having said that, there was always a large part of me that new my reliance on the external was fallacious.

The first miracle in all of this is my awareness of what is happening to me while I am in the grip of my addiction.  It has to be miraculous that I can be utterly at the mercy of this addiction and at the same time have insight into my circumstances.   The second is the fact that I was drawn to this Course.  That is a miracle because out of all the courses I could have stumbled on to on the Internet, this was the one.

I now realise and accept that nothing in my life can exert power or influence over me unless I allow it to so do.  It all comes back to the illusion of separateness.  If I subscribe to the view that I am separate from God, or indeed from other people, that is the origin of all suffering for me and indeed for others. 

I now also realise and accept that I must surrender everything to God.  Surrender, of course, is anything other than an act of weakness.  It is, in fact, the ultimate act of strength to be able to say with true conviction “God, I have tried my way and it hasn’t worked.  From now on, Your will, not mine.”   

I feel very privileged to have been a part of the journey that is this Course and believe I have reached some genuine epiphanies.



Rev. James Davis

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