Miracle Jnana Yoga
The “happy dream”
prepares you for awakening.
THE HAPPY DREAM
Miracle Jnana Yoga teaches you how to use
your mind in a new way that leads to awakening. This world is typically
perceived as a fearful place. The Course teaches that the world is actually
only a dream of fear, and you are the dreamer of the illusion of fear. By
recognizing that you are the dreamer, you can choose to change your mind about
the world. A “miracle” is a change in perception that allows fear to be
replaced by an expression of love. Through forgiveness, you can replace
grievances with miracles, and you can replace fearful dreams with what are
called “happy dreams.” Your ultimate goal is to awaken from all dreams in order
to find oneness in Heaven.
However, it is extremely difficult to make
the giant leap from the fearful nightmares of this world to the joyful
recognition of Heaven. Because the gap between fearful illusions of the world
and the blissful Reality of Heaven is so great, you need a way to bridge this
gap. The Course maintains that you need to find a middle ground of transition
that releases you from the grip of fearful illusions and that prepares you for
Heaven. Therefore, the Course instructs you to transform fearful nightmares
into “happy dreams,” which are still dreams, but serve as reflections of
Heaven. In the picture above, the sun represents Heaven. The dove symbolizes
the Holy Spirit, Who is your personal guide to Heaven. The beautiful flower
stands for the happy dream. Because you are the dreamer, you can decide whether
you want to see fearful dreams or happy dreams. By listening to the guidance of
the Holy Spirit and by choosing to see happy dreams, you will be preparing
yourself to awaken in Heaven and will be helping your brothers and sisters to awaken
as well.
In the image below, the rainy day could be
perceived fearfully as a dark and dreary dream. Nevertheless, the man in this
image has chosen to ignore the rain and to see through the “eyes of love.” Thus
with a smile, he perceives a happy dream. You do not have to change the world
to see happy dreams. You only need to change your perception of the world. In the worst of worldly situations,
you can still perceive happy dreams. Even in the face of death, you can remind
yourself of the happy dream by saying and believing, “I am not a body. I am
free. For I am still as God created me.”1 The foundation of the happy dream is
that you have never lost the everlasting light and love that God has placed
within you in your creation. Regardless of outer circumstances, through the
acceptance of the happiness of the happy dream, you prepare yourself for
awakening to the light and love you have never lost. The happy dream prepares
you to accept the happiness of Heaven. When you accept the happy dream, you are
accepting God’s Will of eternal happiness for you.
Happy dreams come true, not because they
are dreams, but only because they are happy. And so they must be loving. Their
message is, "Thy Will be done," and not, "I want it
otherwise."2
1. W-201,
p. 388
2.
T-18.V.4:1-3, p. 383
A man chooses to percieve the "happy dream."
PERCEPTION
VERSUS KNOWLEDGE
In the
practice of Miracle Jnana Yoga the intellect
is emphasized, and it is all about studying and applying the Course
principles to heal the mind. The mind is currently split between the
small part
that is ruled by the ego and the much larger part that is the Christ Mind.
The ego
part of your mind relies entirely on perception, which is partial
awareness
that relies on the belief in separation. In your use of perception, you
are the
perceiver and something separate from you is the object of your
perception.
The vast majority of your mind is the Christ Mind, which relies on
total
awareness, called knowledge. Perception and
knowledge are mutually
exclusive, so you can be aware of only one or the other. The ego
condition
keeps you locked into perception, and so you are unaware of the
knowledge in
your mind that would reveal your true nature in Christ.
The mind can
be right or wrong, depending on the voice to
which it listens. Right-mindedness listens to the
Holy Spirit, forgives
the world, and through Christ's vision sees the real world in its
place. This
is the final vision, the last perception, the condition in which God
takes the
final step Himself. Here time and illusions end together.
Wrong-mindedness listens to the ego and makes illusions; perceiving sin and justifying anger, and seeing guilt, disease and death as real. Both this world and the real world are illusions because right-mindedness merely overlooks, or forgives, what never happened. Therefore it is not the One-mindedness of the Christ Mind, Whose Will is One with God's.1
Perceptions
can be true and loving or false and unloving.
Miracle Jnana Yoga based on the Course focuses on changing false
perceptions
into true perceptions, changing unloving perceptions into loving
perceptions.
This includes performing miracles that are exhanges of light and love
between
two people in which false perceptions are replaced by true perceptions.
When
you mind becomes filled with only true perceptions, only loving
perceptions, it
becomes ready to make the leap from the world of perceptions to the
world of
knowledge, which is Heaven.
Every child
of God is one in Christ, for his being is in
Christ as Christ's is in God. Christ’s Love for you is His Love for His
Father,
which He knows because He knows His Father's Love for Him. When the
Holy Spirit
has at last led you to Christ at the altar to His Father, perception
fuses into
knowledge because perception has become so holy that its transfer to
holiness
is merely its natural extension. Love transfers to love without any
interference, for the two are one. As you perceive more and more common
elements in all situations, the transfer of training under the Holy
Spirit's
guidance increases and becomes generalized. Gradually you learn to
apply it to everyone
and everything, for its applicability is universal. When this has been
accomplished, perception and knowledge have become so similar that they
share
the unification of the laws of God.
What is one
cannot be perceived as
separate, and the denial of the separation is the reinstatement of
knowledge.
At the altar of God, the holy perception of God’s Son becomes so
enlightened
that light streams into it, and the spirit of God’s Son shines in the
Mind of
the Father and becomes one with it. Very gently does God shine upon
Himself,
loving the extension of Himself that is His Son. The world has no
purpose as it
blends into the purpose of God. For the real world has slipped quietly
into
Heaven, where everything eternal in it has always been. There the
Redeemer and
the redeemed join in perfect love of God and of each other. Heaven is
your
home, and being in God it must also be in you.2
Knowledge
refers specifically to experiential awareness of
your true Self. If you prefer, you may think of this knowledge as
the total
awareness of your “spirit” or of your true nature in Christ as a Son of God.
Concepts are important in Miracle Jnana Yoga, not for the sake of
establishing
a dogma that must be accepted, but rather in order to establish a
mental
framework necessary to expand your awareness of your true nature.
1. C-1.5:1-4,
6:1-3, p. 79
2. T-12.VI.6:1-7,
7:1-7, p. 229
PRINCIPLES OF MIRACLE JNANA YOGA
Miracle Jnana
Yoga, because it involves how you use your
mind, requires that you believe in the Course, study it, and allow its
spiritual principles to be the foundation of your own personal thought
system. Of
course, you can have other secondary spiritual philosophies that
complement the
Course. For example, the spiritual principles of the Edgar Cayce
readings are
very helpful, especially in reference to practical matters of diet and
health.
Also, the Course does not address many form-related issues of exercise,
health,
and meditation that can be obtained from Eastern yoga philosophies.
The practice
of Miracle Jnana Yoga, like traditional Hindu
jnana yoga, requires the ability to discern between the real and the
unreal. In
order to discern between the real and the unreal, you would obviously
need to
have a clear understanding in your own mind of what in fact is real and
what is
unreal. Below you will see a recommended list of eight proposed
“Miracle Jnana
Yoga Principles.” This list represents my understanding of how to apply
the
Course to distinguish the real from the unreal. Out of necessity,
this is
a set of one-size-fits-all premises that cannot possibly encompass
every
seeker’s spiritual understanding, nor is it intended to do so.
These
principles are not a dogma that must be accepted in
order to practice Miracle Yoga. You may not accept all of these
premises or may
not be attracted to the terminology that is used here. If you do not
agree with
these premises or with the terminology, you may want to make up your
own
personalized list of principles that best reflect your own spiritual
understanding. After you make your choice of spiritual principles, you
may
choose to proceed with your own personalized practice of a Christian
form of
jnana yoga with trust in God to show you the way. Then as God guides
you over a
period of time and you make progress spiritually, you may decide to
make
changes in your basic premises, which would reflect your closer walk
with the
divine.
Even if you accept the premises proposed below, you still may want to use your own words to set forth a specific list of premises that best reflect your individual perspective on how to follow Christ. You are encouraged to establish in your own mind a specific set of premises that you feel you can firmly believe so these ideas can be a starting point for practicing discernment between the real and the unreal.
MIRACLE JNANA YOGA PRINCIPLES
1. The
physical world of matter in all animate and
inanimate forms and the psychological world of rational thinking are
expressions of relative realities. These are manifestations of the
Ground of
Being, within which these partial realities draw their existence.
Although
these relative realities do exist, they may be considered ultimately
“unreal”
(illusory) when compared with the absolute Reality of the Ground of
Being that
may be called God.
3. Your true nature, your Christ Self, is right now and
for eternity united to God and to the Holy Spirit. Your Christ Self is
within
you waiting to be uncovered. Your Christ Self is already pure and holy
and
untouched by death or decay. Your Christ Self is your unchanging
reality and
may be considered your individual ground of being within the ultimate
Ground of
Being that is God.
4. You are currently identified with your body and a
psychological, rational thinking mind. You think of yourself as being
separate
from others and from God and this idea of separation, which is an
illusion, is
your “ego.” Because of your identification with your ego, you have
“spiritual
amnesia,” which is ignorance of your true nature as the Christ Self.
But the
purity of your Christ Self cannot be defiled by errors, called “sins,”
that
occur at the form level. Sins have no power to change the reality of
your
holiness and are merely mistakes that can be corrected with the
assistance of
the Holy Spirit.
5. Your primary means of overcoming ignorance of your true
nature are manifestations of divine grace that come from God the
Father, the
Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ. One means of cooperating with divine
grace is
the path of Miracle Yoga through a combination of Miracle Karma Yoga,
Miracle
Bhakti Yoga, Miracle Jnana Yoga, and Miracle Raja Yoga.
6. Miracle
Jnana Yoga, like the other aspects of Miracle
Yoga, involves overcoming ignorance by “looking and overlooking.” This
path
requires the use of discernment, the ability to use the intellect to
distinguish between the divine Reality and the unreality produced by
the ego.
This discernment includes “looking,” which is attachment to the
infinite and
“overlooking,” which is detachment from the finite. Miracle Jnana Yoga
involves
an inward meditative focus aiming to transcend discursive thinking.
However,
unlike jnana yoga in the Hindu tradition, Miracle Jnana Yoga is
primarily
focused on forgiveness.
7. The
ultimate goal is divine union, but an immediate
objective of Miracle Yoga is an integration of the physical, emotional,
mental,
intuitive, and spiritual aspects of human nature. The
purpose is to surrender yourself to
the divine influence of God’s Will and allow yourself to follow the
example of
Jesus and be guided by the Holy Spirit. This is achieved primarily
through the
application of forgiveness. If divine union is experienced in this
life, the
goal will not be to escape from this world, but rather to produce a
total
interpenetration of all the lower faculties to place them fully under
the
direction of the divine influence.
8. Even if the ultimate goal of awakening the Christ Self
in this life is not realized as an experience, you have fulfilled God’s
Plan
for your life by dedicating yourself to doing God’s Will to the best of
your
understanding and ability. God’s Will is your own true will. By living
a life
of doing God’s Will, when this life is completed, you will be prepared
to
receive God’s embrace in the next life and to be awakened to your true
nature
as the Christ Self.
Yoga in
general may be considered “systematic
internalization” because the seeker sees everything in the macrocosm as
also
being within the microcosm of his own body. The seeker brings his
awareness
within to find the divine within. Yoga uses the awareness of
internalizing all
experiences within the body, not to reinforce the ego that is attached
to the
body, but to ultimately transcend the body and join with God.
Traditional jnana
yoga has the specific internal direction of meditation directed toward
affirming one’s true nature as Brahman—God. In addition to the
“systematic
internalization” of jnana yoga, there is also a “systematic
externalization” in
jnana yoga in which the seekers looks past appearances in order to see
the
divine externally. In Hindu jnana yoga, the internal seeing of the
divine is
more important than the external seeing of the divine.
Unlike Hindu
jnana yoga that places a higher priority on
its internal component and a lower priority on it external component,
Miracle
Jnana Yoga places a greater emphasis on “systematic externalization.”
In Hindu
jnana yoga, everything is geared toward the end result of God
realization, but
in Miracle Jnana Yoga, steps along the way are the important focus, and
the
result of divine union can be left in the hands of divine grace to
manifest in
this life or in the hereafter. Miracle Jnana Yoga in its external
aspect is
really a form of external focusing that produces inner healing of your
psychological makeup. Your ego nature already has a negative system of
externalization, called projection, in which guilt
and faults are
projected onto others for you to avoid looking at these within
yourself. The
loving systematic externalization of Miracle Jnana Yoga is designed
specifically to counteract projection by the process of seeing the
divine in
your brother in order to recognize the divine in yourself.
This process
of seeing the divine is best described in the
Course as forgiveness. You may think of forgiveness
as not holding a
grievance toward another person. However, a broader view of forgiveness
is that
you have illusions about people and letting go of your own illusions
about them
is forgiving them. Specifically you have the illusion that other people
are
egos, bodies and minds separate from you and separate from God. The ego
itself
is the illusory idea of being separate from God. When you give up your
illusion
about another person being an ego, you are giving up the idea that this
person
is separate from God. You are able to see that person as divine, as not
separate from God and not separate from yourself. Consequently,
forgiveness is
defined as the giving up of the concept of separation. Thus forgiveness
is
likewise seeing the divine in others. When forgiveness allows you to
see the
divine in your brother, it will remind you of the truth that you are
not an ego
separate from God and that you are divine, and this produces inner
healing.
This
systematic externalization of Miracle Jnana Yoga more
correctly could be called, “systematic forgiveness.” This forgiveness
is
another example of the principle of “looking and overlooking,” which is
a part
of all the forms of Miracle Yoga. Thus forgiveness is looking for
the
divine and overlooking all else. If you make the mistake of looking at
what is
not divine, meaning illusions of the ego, you make them real to you by
looking
at them. To correct this error, you are advised to overlook the
illusory
manifestations of the ego and in so doing these will remain unreal.
Simultaneously you are advised to look beyond illusory appearances and
look at
and perhaps even see the divine wherever you look. This looking and
overlooking
allows you to truly forgive by seeing through illusions to the truth,
thus
realizing the holiness in everyone and the meaninglessness of guilt.
FOURTEEN UNIQUE COURSE IDEAS
Below
is an excerpt from An Overview of “A
Course in Miracles”: Introduction to the Course—What Beginners Need to
Know.
The Course expresses many ideas that are not found in other spiritual
philosophies of either the East or the West. The following are fourteen
examples of these
distinctive spiritual principles,
which form the basis of Miracle Jnana Yoga:
1.
In
order to remain the Lord of Love, God could not and did not create maya
(the dream or illusions of this world). The dream of this world is not lila
(divine play) because it was not
created by God. Rather, you and all of
your brothers and sisters made this dream, which could be called the “collusion
illusion.” This dream seems
to be real because it is a collective
dream rather
than an individual dream that you have
when you go to sleep at night.
2.
You
can only be where God has placed you. Thus you and all your brothers and sisters have
never left Heaven. That
is where you still are,
while you
remain sleeping in your dreams of separation from the Oneness of Reality.
3. Reality consists of “qualified nondualism.”
(Total
nondualism is the
belief
that you lose your individual identity when you become aware
of your Oneness with
the All.) The Course’s
qualified nondualism consists of the
paradox that each individual seeker is part of
Christ and the
whole of
Christ at the same time.
4. There is cause and effect, but there is no
karma as it
is commonly
understood
in the East. Karma only seems to exist because of your illusory belief in the
reality of guilt, which is a
false and self-imposed belief in the
necessity of self-punishment. Salvation is merely the
complete release
from the belief in guilt and the acceptance of holiness leading to the acceptance of
reality.
5.
All
problems are solved in the miracle
of the “holy instant” in which you become aware of your oneness with
all of
your brothers and sisters in
the One Christ.
The holy instant is only an instant in time, yet it is a window to the timeless
eternity of Heaven.
6. The Course uses the term “revelation” to
describe
enlightenment,
saying
it is God communicating Himself directly to you and is not
reciprocal (not you
communicating yourself to God).
Miracles are more useful now than revelation because of
their
interpersonal nature, connecting
you with
your brothers and sisters in Christ.
7. Jesus is your awakened elder brother and your
equal in
Christ, so
Jesus
is not more loved by God than you are loved by God. If you
are open to
the guidance of Jesus, he can assist you to become what he is now by helping you to
wake up.
8. The Holy Spirit was created by God specifically
for
the purpose of
helping all seekers to wake up
from their self-imposed dream. He offers healing
to their minds that have been split between one part that is
committed to the
truth and reality and the other
part that is committed to falsehoods
and illusions. Before healing the split mind with the One-mindedness
of the Holy Spirit, you need to first let go of the ego’s wrong-mindedness
of false perceptions and accept the right-mindedness
of true perceptions.
9. Every seeker has all the qualities of God with
the
following one
exception:
The seeker can never be the First Cause, which belongs only to God the Father. You
cannot wake up from
your dream by
denying
that God is your Creator, your Father. The
dream of this
world is an illusory and
futile attempt to “create yourself” and make God
Fatherless. The Course
refutes this by asserting, “I am not a body. I am free. I am still as God
created me.”
10. What are called “sins” are merely mistakes
that can
easily be
corrected.
God created you by extending Himself into you so you are forever part of Him and
cannot be defiled. Thus no
mistake (often wrongly
identified as a
sin) can ever take away your perfect holiness that God gave you when He
created you. The Holy Spirit’s plan of salvation is called the Atonement.
It is a
plan of perfect love that has corrected
all of your mistakes and their effects. But your responsibility
as a miracle worker
is to accept the Atonement in
the holy instant and
heal your own
mind as you extend healing to others.
11.
You
have a burning love for God, just as God loves you completely. God’s love for you and your
passionate love for Him
are hidden. You have lost your awareness of this love, but
your lack of
awareness has in no way limited the purity or reality of this
all-consuming
love still in your mind. The Holy Spirit separates all your fearful,
false
perceptions from all
your loving, true
perceptions. The Holy Spirit saves all your loving
thoughts, called the
“blessed residue,” and He will bring this content of love with you when you
finally wake up in your true Home in Heaven.
12.
You
can use Christ’s vision—use the “eyes of Christ” or the “eyes of
forgiveness”—to see the world light up figuratively and perhaps at
times literally. You
cannot wake up from the nightmares
of your dream world and go directly to Heaven. Yet you can make the
transition
possible by first seeing the dream world as a “happy
dream” (“real
world”) and later seeing the “face of Christ.” You, your brother, and
the world
are always forgiven for what never happened. The happy dream is still
an
illusion, but it is
an illusion of
forgiveness that leads to awakening. Yet God must take the final step to
bring about your awakening in Heaven.
13. Other philosophies apply generalization in
only a
limited way so
learning is extended to some
new situations as an option. The Course asks you to generalize your
learning to
all
new situations as a
necessity. For
instance, you learn to
forgive one person and one object in the world, in order to eventually
learn to forgive everyone and all objects
in the world,
forgiving the world itself. If
you leave anyone outside of your
forgiveness, you will not be able to forgive yourself. Similarly, if
you
do not learn to love everyone, you will not be able to accept love as
your own
true nature, and you will not understand the true universal nature of love itself.
14. Other philosophies define terms by their
distinct
differences, just as
the world makes
comparisons and distinctions based on separating ideas. The aim of the Course
is to reverse the
thinking of the world and undo all you have taught
yourself. The Course
defines its terms by demonstrating how spiritual principles overlap,
are interrelated,
and have the same purpose and meaning of oneness. One holy instant
contains all holy
instants. One instant in time contains
all the billions of years of time itself. One miracle contains all
miracles.
One true perception perfectly unified
will unify all perceptions and lead to full awakening. How
all true
perceptions are unified in oneness is best expressed in this quotation: “Forgiveness,
salvation, Atonement, true
perception, all are one. They are the one beginning, with the end to
lead to oneness
far beyond
themselves.”1
1. C-4:6-7,
p. 85
An Overview of "A Course in Miracles"
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Memory Walk in the Light:
My Christian Yoga Life as
"A Course in Miracles"
Author:
Donald James
Giacobbe
“The central message of the Course
is forgiveness, and the key to yoga is opening to the divine presence.
As a
teacher of Miracle Yoga based on Course principles, my goal is to live
my life
as an expression of forgiveness and openness to the experience of
Spirit.”
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