There is no order of difficulty in miracles

This is the first and fundamental principle of the course: no difficulty is harder to resolve than any other. No wrong is beyond forgiveness, it is never too late to change your mind, and no one is more or less lovable than anyone else. All these are aspects of the same idea.

How can we possibly apply this in practice? You only have to look around you to see that there is an order of difficulty in everything. Isn't it harder to build a house than to wash the dishes? And what one person can do easily, another may struggle to do at all. Even your own routine activities can seem more difficult some times than at others. We rate what happens to us on a scale between 'good' and 'bad', with infinitesimal shades of in-between. There are welcome events and there are disasters. There are minor illnesses and some you may not survive at all. And you can get on at once and delightfully with some people, while others seem so alien that they might have come a different planet. In the world we live in, some outcomes can be quite effortlessly achieved, while some are downright impossible.

But the whole emphasis of the course is on shifting our focus away from 'the world we live in'. It coaches the reader towards an entirely different experience of reality. The miracle is not bound by any laws of time or space or logic. Only you cannot expect miracles until you understand where they come from and the purpose they serve.

In this workshop we will look at problems and their degrees of difficulty. How effective is your approach to problem solving? Do you tend to adopt a 'fight', 'flight' or 'freeze' position, according to the kind of person you think you are, and the circumstances as you see them? The course gives us an alternative way of resolving conflict, no matter what form it appears. It is a course 'in miracles' - its whole purpose is to enable us to see any problem, all problems, in another light, such that they disappear altogether. The question is, does it work, how does it work, and how do you go about it?

Make this year different by making it all the same (T15 XI 10.8)

Saturday 11^th May 2013, 10.30 am to 2.30 pm at Harrow Way, Andover SP10 3RQ

Contact anna@unlearningschool.com if you would like to join us. You will be welcome.

Love is what I am

"I always wanted to be somebody," said Lily Tomlin, "But I see that I should have been more specific."

Yet specific is just what we are. The unique identity we each piece together and defend is made of specifics: this height, that colouring, this personality and that upbringing.

The building of a concept of the self is what the learning of the world is for. This is its purpose; that you come without a self, and make one as you go along...A concept of the self is made by you. It bears no likeness to yourself at all (T31 V 2).

Until you change your mind about who you are, you will run into one problem after another, trying to prop up a self concept that is fundamentally unreal. Changing your mind is what the course is for: it offers new ideas to replace your limited and limiting thoughts, and open your mind to a deeper reality.

But there is a part of us that still wants to be a specific somebody and has no intention of changing its mind, and this month's workshop theme is one that can really stick in the craw: I am very holy (W35). The idea has nothing to do with being pious or long suffering, or doing good deeds. It is about becoming free of your sense of self. Here is the same idea in other words:

Love, Which created me, is what I am (W229).

So what does it mean, and how does it change who you think you are and what your life is for?

We meet on Saturday 13th April at Harrow Way, Andover, from 10.30 am to 2.30 pm. You are welcome to join us.