By Dr Joshua David Stone

"Forgiveness is the key to happiness." A Course In Miracles

Around 20 years ago a woman by the name of Helen Schuman channeled a set of books called, "A Course in Miracles". These books were written by Jesus Christ and then telepathically channeled to Helen much like the Alice A. Bailey books were channeled to Alice Bailey from the Master Djwhal Khul.

I can honestly say that in the last twenty two years these two sets of books have had a more profound effect on me than anything else I have ever studied. "A Course in Miracles" is basically a course in attitudinal healing. The basic premise of these books is that there are two ways of thinking or philosophies of life and only two.

Every person in the world falls into one or the other. There is the voice of the spirit or of the Christ, and then there is the voice of the ego. This could also be stated as the voice of your Higher Self or the voice of your lower self; the voice of the Self or the voice of the self; the voice of the big "I", or the voice of the little "i"; the voice of the Holy Spirit or the voice of glamour, maya, and illusion; the voice of the "Self" or the voice of the "not-self"; the voice of the Holy Spirit of the voice of the negative ego.

We are conditioned as children and by society to think and interpret life from the negative ego’s perspective This is why so many people are filled with so many negative feelings, emotions, and lack of inner peace.

"A Course in Miracles" teaches in a very systematic way, how to change and undo the negative ego’s thinking, and how to hence think with your Christ mind. Did not it say in the Bible, "Let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus." Jesus, as we know, was a man and human being just like you and I, who became the embodiment of the Christ by becoming one with the Christ consciousness.

The Christ consciousness is not just for Christians. The Christ consciousness, the Buddha consciousness, the Krishna consciousness, God consciousness, and the consciousness of all religions are all the same thing. Many people have a lot of negative programming behind their religious upbringing. It is important here not to get caught up in the words, or semantics. It is also important to understand that whatever religion, or spiritual path you are on, I suggest you keep it.

The new religion of the future is the one that honors and recognizes all religions and all spiritual paths, for they all lead to the same place. The introduction to "The Course in Miracles" states: "This is a Course in Miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary."

Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. 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.

A Course in Miracles, for most people, is a very difficult book to understand and read. One of my biggest purposes in writing this particular chapter is to take the essence of the Course’s teaching and make it very easy to understand. Even if you never read "A Course in Miracles" you will get the essence of it in this chapter.

I know in my personal spiritual path and evolution, a chapter explaining and summarizing the course in simple to understand language, would have been very beneficial to me. I think you will find this chapter extremely illuminating. I have also expounded on the Course’s teachings to make them more universalistic to all religions and all spiritual paths which a person may be exploring. I have also added many of my own ideas to give the reader a very complete understanding of what the "Christ consciousness" really means.

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

"Nothing real can be threatened Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the Peace of God."

A Course in Miracles is a required course, the introduction says. What this means is not that everyone has to study "A Course in Miracles", but rather everyone has to learn to think with their Christ, Buddha, Krishna, Elohim, Allah, or God mind. The Lord Sai Baba has said that the definition of God is that "God equals man minus ego."

You cannot pass your spiritual initiations and realize God without transcending the selfish, separative, fear based mind of your ego. The curriculum is set, and "A Course in Miracles" is just one form, or tool, for learning these lessons.

The Course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. This brings us to the core of "A Course in Miracles" teachings which is that God created us, and our true identity is the Christ.

In other words we are each sons and daughters of God, made in God’s image. God is love so we are love. We don’t have to become love, love is what we are. It is only the negative ego programming and conditioning that covers this in us.

We are each like diamonds with mud on us. Our path on earth is to clear away the mud so our true diamond nature can shine. Even Jesus said, in the New Testament, "Everything that I can do, you can do and more." I don’t think He was lying.

The fundamental Christian church has misinterpreted His message. Sure Jesus was the son of God, but so are we. In the Buddhist religion you would say that we each are the Buddha. In the Hindu religion we each are the Atma, or Eternal Self. In the old testament the Jewish prophets said, "Ye are Gods and know it not." They also said "Ye are Gods and children of the Most High." David, in the Psalms, said, "Be still and know, I am God."

This is why "A Course in Miracles" introduction says, nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the Peace of God. Your true identity as the Christ or the Buddha, or Atma, or Eternal Self cannot be changed. That is how God created you. You can think you are something other than this but this does not change reality. You are the Christ, the Buddha, the Atma, the Eternal Self, whether you like it or not. The reason you have no choice is that you didn’t create yourself, God created you. The spiritual path is really not trying to get any place, it is just the reawakening to who you are. The second step being the practice of being your "Self" in daily life.

Where Did the Negative Ego Come From?

The negative ego did not come from God, it came from man’s misuse of free choice. Man is the only creature that has the ability to think out of harmony with God. The fall that the Bible refers to occurred when we, as Monads, or individualized sparks of God, chose to come into matter. It wasn’t the coming into matter that caused the fall, it was the over-identification with matter. It was that moment when we thought we were a physical body rather than a God being inhabiting or using this physical body.

In thinking we were a physical body, then came the illusion of separation from God, and separation from our brothers and sisters. Then came selfishness, fear, and death as real. From these faulty premises a whole thought system developed that was based on illusion, maya, and glamour.

We have spent hundreds of incarnations caught up in this illusion. The amazing thing is that what "A Course in Miracles" teaches is that the fall never really happened. We just think it did. The basic law of your mind is that it is your thoughts that create your reality. Your feelings, emotions, behavior, and what you attract and magnetize into your life all come from your thoughts.

Is the glass of water half empty or half full? Are you optimistic or pessimistic? Do you look at what happens in life as teachings, lessons, challenges and opportunities to grow, or do you look at things as bummers, problems, aggravations, irritations, and upsets? It is how you think, and interpret, and perceive that will determine how you feel in any given situation.

We have always been the Christ, the Buddha, the Atma, the Eternal Self, and have always been one with God. All of our negative egotistical thinking has not changed this one single bit.

A good metaphor for this could be relating it to dreaming. When you have a nightmare or bad dream at night and wake up from it you are relieved that it was just a dream. When you were dreaming it, however, it seemed so real. Well, I say to you now in this "holy instant", WAKE UP!!!

Wake up from the negative hypnosis you have been living in, thinking you are unworthy, unlovable, inferior, separate from God, powerless… In this holy instant wake and realize that you are the Christ, Buddha, the Atma, the Eternal Self. You have always been and always will be.

The great saint from India, Ramana Maharshi, said that the spiritual path is like a person who comes to Him asking His help in finding a necklace she has lost for the last forty years. Ramana Maharshi says, well, what’s that you are wearing around your neck? The woman, all of a sudden, realized that she had been wearing the necklace all along. Well, that is how the spiritual path is. You don’t have to find God, you already are God and have been all the time. It is the insane voice of the ego, or separative mind that keeps us lost in glamour, maya, and illusion.

Sai Baba says, "Your mind creates bondage, or your mind creates liberation." A lot of people down play the mind as though it were not important. As Sai Baba says, it is your mind and how you manage it that will determine if you achieve liberation or remain in bondage.

Heaven and hell are places but they are first states of mind. When the ego is your guide and teacher you are in hell. When the spirit and soul consciousness is your teacher, you are in heaven. Buddha, in His four noble truths said that all suffering comes from wrong points of view.

How do you interpret life? Do you interpret it from the negative ego’s set of glasses or from the Buddha’s or Christ’s set of glasses. It is important to understand that you don’t just see with your eyes, you see with your mind, through your belief systems.

The major work of the spiritual path is clearing out all the negative egotistical beliefs from the conscious and subconscious mind, and replacing them with the Christ and Buddhist and spiritual pattern. The rest of this chapter will get into more specific detail as how to do this.

The Authority Problem

The authority problem has to do with the core issue of who is the ultimate authority in life. The Course teaches that the ultimate authority is God, and it is God that created us. The ego tells you, however, that God doesn’t exist because you can’t see Him with your physical eyes, and hence He or It is the ultimate authority. Hence the ego tells you that you are just a physical body, not the Christ living in a physical body.

The ludicrousness of the ego is quite obvious, because God created us, and we created the ego, however we have been letting the ego be the ultimate authority. It is time for us to recognize and own our personal power and authority over our selves. It is time for us to gain mastery over our mind, our emotions, our physical body, and our ego.

It is not God’s job to get rid of our ego, it is our job. We created it, so we can get rid of it. God could do it but this would be like giving birth to a child and doing everything for the child and adolescent. If we did this then the child and future adolescent would grow up to be completely incapable.

If God did it for us then we would be incapable, and there would be no reason to incarnate into this school called earth life. God doesn’t need to learn these lessons, we do. One of the lessons of "A Course in Miracles" is that "my salvation is up to me".

God has already given us everything. It is we who have separated ourselves from God, by listening to the voice of the ego. In reality we have never been separated, however in our consciousness, or perception of reality we are. This can be easily changed by just changing our thoughts. The Bible says, "Be ye transformed by the renewal of your mind." "As a man thinketh so is he." Lincoln said, "A man is as happy as he makes up his mind to be." I think it was Emerson who said, " A man is what he thinks about all day long."

It is time for us to wake up and snap out of this self created hell of our own negative thinking. It is time to get in control of our subconscious mind and stop letting it push us around. It is meant to be our servant, not our master.

How is This Accomplished?

The process of accomplishing this attitudinal healing is, in actuality, very simple. What I would recommend is that you imagine that you are surrounded by a golden bubble which protects you from the outside world and other people, and also protects you from your own subconscious mind.

In other words, I would like you to imagine that all of your thoughts, feelings, impulses, desires, images, are all out side of your golden bubble. All of what is termed the content of consciousness is outside of the bubble.

The idea then, is that every time a thought, feeling, or impulse arises from your subconscious mind, that you make it stop at the gate of the bubble, almost as if there is a guard there checking its passport. If the thought or feeling or impulse is positive, loving, spiritual, balanced, Christ-like, of God, then let it through the bubble and into your mind.

If the thought, feeling impulse, or desire is negative, egotistical separative, selfish, fear based, imbalanced, and not of God, then push it out of your mind. "A Course in Miracles" states, "Deny any thought that is not of God to enter your mind."

You must understand that the mind works like the physical body. If you want to be physically healthy you must eat good food. If you eat bad food or spoiled food you will get physically sick. The same thing applies to your mind. If you want to be mentally and emotionally, and spiritually healthy, you must let only positive God-like thoughts into your mind. If you let negative egotistically thoughts into your mind you will become mentally emotionally and spiritually sick.

It is not God or the Ascended Master’s job to control your mind, that is your job. One of the most important principles of "A Course in Miracles" is to be "vigilant for God and His kingdom." Most people are not vigilant enough over their mental and emotional diet. They live on what I call automatic pilot. They are not conscious, aware, alert, over the thoughts, or feelings, they allow into their mind from the subconscious mind and from the outside world. Most people do not have enough detachment, spiritual discernment, or spiritual discrimination.

When you push a thought out of your mind, it can be likened to a plant that is not being watered. It withers and dies from lack of attention. After pushing the negative thought out of your mind the idea is to then switch your mind like a TV station to the opposite positive spiritual or Christ-like thought, feeling, and image. This is like a new seed that sinks into the soil of the subconscious mind and sprouts.

The law of the mind is that it takes 21 days to cement any new habit into the subconscious mind. After 21 days it will be automatic to think with your Christ mind. It will not even be difficult. It will be a "habit". A lot of people think that habits are always bad. They are not necessarily. The idea is to fill your subconscious mind with positive Christ-like habits and get rid of the egotistical ones.

Jesus, in the New Testament, applied these principles when He was walking with His disciples and one of His disciples started to complain. Jesus whirled around and exclaimed, "Get thee behind me, Satan!!!" He was saying no to the ego, which the fundamentalist church refers to as the Satan or the devil.

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of being vigilant. When people in the outside world are negative the idea is to keep your golden bubble up and let their energy slide off you like water off a duck’s back, or let it bounce off like a rubber pillow.

Are You a Master or a Victim?

The spirit guides you to be a master - the ego guides you to be a victim. When you are in your master consciousness you fully recognize that you cause and create your own reality. You create everything. You create your thoughts, feelings, emotions, behavior, physical health, what you attract and magnetize into your life. This is based on the Hermetic law, "As within, so without, As above, so below."

That which you think and image within your conscious and subconscious mind will manifest its mirror likeness in your external circumstances. The outer world is a mirror of your inner world. Remember that we are co-creators with God, made in His image. God is not a victim and neither are we.

The microcosm is like the macrocosm. As you learn to get into control of your mind, you then learn to get in control of your feelings and emotions. Feelings and emotions do not just happen to us, they are created by how you think.

There are certain beliefs that cause certain feelings and emotions. When you learn to think with your Christ mind all of your negative feelings and emotions begin to disappear. There is a way of thinking that will bring you inner peace, unconditional love, joy, and happiness all the time.

Nothing outside of yourself causes you to think or feel anything. It is your interpretation, your belief, your perception of the situation that causes you to feel the way you do. For example, in the 1929 stock market crash, one person jumps out the window of a building and commits suicide. Another person loses a million dollars and says, "easy come, easy go".

Two people come to work and the elevator is broken and they have to walk up ten flights of stairs. One person curses and swears and the other says, "Oh great, an opportunity to get some physical exercise."

When you walk down the street do you see other people as just meaningless other physical bodies, or as brothers and sisters in a much larger spiritual family. As I said previously, you see with your mind, not just your physical eyes.

Your behavior is also caused by your thoughts and feelings. You never do anything that does not have an antecedent as some thought or feeling in either your conscious and subconscious mind. The idea is to completely clean out the subconscious mind of all negative programming. Later in this book I will dedicate an entire chapter to tools and methods for achieving this.

As you achieve this mastery over what Djwhal Khul has called your three lower vehicles (mental, emotional, and physical bodies) and control over your negative ego, you become in tune with the soul and eventually merged with the soul and the third initiation.

This brings you a Midas touch where everything you do turns to gold, because you are in harmony with God’s laws. As you continue to evolve your attunement moves from the soul to be guided by the spirit of monad. You become fully merged with the monad at the fifth initiation and ascend at the sixth initiation. As this mastery is achieved you can program the subconscious mind to attract to you anything you need. The subconscious mind works on the law of attraction, magnetism and repulsion. The idea is to consciously program the subconscious with only positive, Christ-like thoughts which attract to you only positive things from the outside world.

Most people don’t utilize the incredible power of the subconscious mind. I will delve much deeper into this in the chapter on integrating and balancing your three minds. This reprogramming is achieved through the process of "denial and affirmation".

The idea is to deny the negative thoughts and to be constantly affirming the positive spiritual thoughts. In the chapter on how to reprogram the subconscious mind I will give you all kinds of positive affirmations and visualizations to work with to achieve whatever it is you want to create and achieve in your life.