A MIRACLE COURSE

THAT IS
THE 12 STEP PROGRAM

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 A Course In Miracles International
PO Box 13, Lake Delton, WI 53940, USA
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www.acimi.com ♦ mcc@acimi.com
www.TheMasterTeacher.TV
This is a transcript of a recorded talk
given by Master Teacher.
Little editing has been done in hope of
maintaining and conveying the exciting,
spontaneous spiritual continuity.
 There is a solution
Almost none of us liked the self-searching, the
leveling of pride, the confession of shortcomings
which the process requires for its successful
consummation. But we saw that it really worked in
others, and we had come to believe in the
hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living
it. When, therefore, we were approached by those
in whom the problem had been solved, there was
nothing left to do but to pick up the simple kit of
spiritual tools laid at our feet. We have found much
heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth
dimension of existence of which we had not even
dreamed.
The great fact is just this, and nothing less: That
we have had deep and effective spiritual experiences
which have revolutionized our whole attitude
toward life, toward our fellows and toward God's
universe. The central fact of our lives today is the
absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into
our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed
miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those
things for us which we could never do by ourselves.
From The Big Book of Alcoholic Anonymous; page 25

Read it again!
 A Course In Miracles and The 12 Step Program
Wherein the necessary process of awakening from your
self-orchestrated dream of pain and death will be stimulated
and accelerated.
These are programs of recovery from an insanely rational,
self-perpetuating, objectively-temporal existence of terminal
confinement that is being misconstrued as some form of the
True Reality that is Eternal Life.
 The Importance of Anonymity
in Spiritual Awakening
Most Teachers of God in an accelerated spiritual
program of mind/body enlightenment will discover in
their own intense encounters with a newly-emerging
reality of ChristMind a highly directive responsibility for
personal anonymity. The more deeply-rooted this Portico
of spiritual rebirth is aligned with Creative Entirety the
more persistent this guardianship will be.
An issuant union with God is sacredly unspeakable
and must be protected against the judgmental intrusion
of your own corrupt self-constructed identity. Jesus speaks
of this repeatedly in New Testament Gospel. And, in His
Course in Miracles, as the necessity to guard your own
Christ Child and to nurture its growth through the creative
substance of continuing Holy instants.

The early founders of the AA Program recognized with

profound spiritual insight the importance of the term
“anonymous.” Certainly in the “confidence” of mutually-
confessed “worldly unmanageabilty.” But also in the
recognition that a personal revelatory experience of the
healing power of God may only be expressed through
carrying a visionary message of gratitude and freedom to
those still imprisoned in the inescapable cycle of drug
dependence.
In this sense, everyone who discovers the reality of the
“True Love of Creation” is anonymous in this world. -MT.

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 From Recovery To Enlightenment
To all recovering addicts and Course in Miracles teachers,
thanks for listening. You may well be, at this moment, further along
in your homeward journey than the “scenario of existence” you have
been conjuring as “your life” in this dark continuum of fearful
existence would indicate. Perhaps it’s time at last to decide “enough
is enough.” Let’s begin at the beginning and see if we can light up
a cavern or two together:
The 12 Step Program is a divinely-inspired manner and method
of recovery from the fatal disease of addiction to alcohol called
alcoholism.
A Course In Miracles is a divinely-inspired method and
manner of recovery from your addiction to a possessed conceptual
self-existence, selfishly maintained by denial and rejection of the
eternal love of God. It is an addiction to temporal existence and
death that we will call mortalism.
The 12 Step Program and A Course In Miracles are identical.
Not only are they identical in the process of the admission of a
whole God or unity mind but in the technique by which your
conscious contact with God can be enhanced and, at last, fully
realized.
Many of us remember the initial feeling of serenity that would
come over us as we experienced the peace of mind we discovered
we could share at 12 Step Meetings. A sharing of complete
helplessness and surrender which, for many, brought a dramatic

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spiritual intervention as we turned our will and life over to the care
of God. In the Course it is the experience of a Holy instant
which is a continuing mechanism of self-realization through
surrender of conceptual self-identity. For those of you who would
care to examine it, the re-enactment of the Holy instant, or the
time of surrender, is the sole purpose of 12 Step Groups and of
Miracle Teacher of God Gatherings. The whole basis of the 12
Step Program, including the steps themselves, is to maintain a
continuing conscious contact with God. This is of course true in
the miraculous maturity of your mind to a realization of eternal
wholeness that is the Course in Miracles.
Those of you who are coming to a 12 Step Program in the
degeneration of the fact that it is completely and only a spiritual
program and somehow are according it the necessity for a
continuing therapeutic reassociation of the ego, are very sadly
mistaken about what the 12 Step Program is. There is literally no
therapy in the 12 Step Program at all except the confession of any
continuing resentments you have maintained which, as you release,
become a part of the mechanism whereby you recover and discover
what? Forgiveness of yourself and those around you! This is
indeed How It Works.
I was rummaging through my dresser this morning and have
with me a copy of “How It Works” from the Big Book of
Alcoholics Anonymous and a dog-eared, life-saving prayer book
called “The 24 Hour Book” with daily prayers and instructions
for an entire year. Until the time of my personal surrender I certainly
had no conscious intent or even serious idea of pursuing any sort
of spiritual path. Now suddenly and miraculously I had been
given a whole new meaning and purpose for being alive.
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 How then did it work? Here’s how. No one fails who will
follow this path. All will succeed who will use the Big Book of
Alcoholics Anonymous or the Workbook of A Course In Miracles
to release or surrender to the certainty that there is a way out of
this impossible situation. That there is a transcendent solution that
brings peace and happiness. A power that is available to us right
here and now. All right! This is a good beginning! Let’s stay with
this.
Now, the demonstration of that must be the gathering of us
together in the admission that our powerlessness brought a change
in our perceptual association. This is the whole basis of the Course
in Miracles and if you will read in the Teacher’s Manual, “As For
The Rest,” you will discover that the teaching of surrender is the
whole basis for the necessity for the conscious contact with God.
That’s what we intend to experience right now, together, at this
moment.
I discovered as a recovered addict, following the miraculous
event that occurred in my mind, that there is a mechanism of action
to sustain and convey the serenity and peace of mind I had
experienced. And I’m going to use the term action here because
it’s very valuable to you. The whole basis of this teaching is “today
is the day” where and when through my release of direction or
misdirection of my conceptual associations I can continually
undergo an experience of what? A spiritual awakening!
Step #12 – Having had a spiritual awakening as the
result of these steps, we carried this message to other
associations of addictive self and practiced these principles
of forgiveness in all of our affairs.

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 What does this have to do with the continuing therapy or the
necessity to establish a reason for our unmanageability? Nothing
whatsoever. This is true to the Course in Miracles and to the 12
Step Program. There is no reason, ultimately, for your
unmanageability. And the centering on that certainty, whether it
be given to ethyl alcohol or any addictive practice, is that I have
one problem and one solution. This is the core of the teaching
because any problem that can be seen in the magnitude of the
impossibility of the solution must be afforded a totality of solution.
It’s a miracle! “There’s another way in which I can look at
this,” is exactly what A Course In Miracles teaches. And it
teaches it as enlightenment of mind directly through prayer
and meditation as is dictated by the 12 Step Program. The
degeneration into a continuing necessity for the therapy of the
possessive self-identity is exactly the causation for the continued
resedativism of the ego as it falls back into its inherent
resentfulness, as it’s called in the 12 Step Program, or grievance
is the word generally used in A Course In Miracles.
You are always meeting at a grievance of your perceptual
mind. And those of you who have felt the frustration of an alcoholic
mind, which all of you possess incidentally, are all part of that
determination to seek justice or justification for your individual
associations which, as Jesus says in the Course, are inherently
resentful. It has nothing to do with the degree of the resentment
by which you are demanding justice in your associations with
yourself. “All that I do, I do unto myself.”
What we’re expressing, then, is a progression in and from the
12 Step Program to A Course In Miracles as an inclusion of
your absolute ability, through the unconditional surrender of your
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addiction-to-ego, to take your place as the Savior of the World.
This is very fundamental and is the natural occurrence in a
determined direction, and I’m speaking here from high personal
experience, that the continuing activity brings about the miracle of
the release of the necessity, literally, to “participate in my dream of
death.” To demand recognition of myself in the correlation of my
determination to assert myself and satisfy the demands that are
apparent in me. I failed at that. I failed! The whole teaching of A
Course In Miracles is to fail in your self-purpose. Are we clear
on this? The whole basis of the teaching is that you cannot succeed.
How abhorrent to many of you in your ego manifestations is the
word “surrender.” This is precisely and exactly what the 12 Step
Program is. You can’t get it by self-control or manage-ability.
You must be forced into a situation of surrender or fear where you
will be willing to see that there is no manner by which you can
overcome your problem. And then the manifestation of the miracle
will occur. It is the admission that I cannot solve the problem
under any circumstance at all.
What we attempt to do in A Course In Miracles is to place
you in a situation where you will make the admission that you are
in deep fear and that the problem cannot be solved. Obviously,
an alcoholic mind is aware, at a very early stage of his career of
sedativism, that he is in a great deal of fear and he cannot for the
life of him, or the death of him, understand why associations or
how associations are able to deal with the incredible slaughterhouse
or purposelessness of the world in which he finds himself. In that
sense, he is different. He seems to have been born in the wrong
time. The Course in Miracles uses the term “later in time” to
identify him. Do you understand? The more fearful, the later in
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time. The more fearful the association is, the more he has
determined that the problem cannot be solved under the
circumstances in which he apparently finds himself. That’s a
statement of fact.
So How It Works, then, is a continuing practice of the initial
encounter where you asked for help and received it. You asked
for the help of a power greater than yourself as a transcendent
necessity, having discovered, at last, through your own futile
rummaging of your mindless misappropriations of the love of God,
that the problem could not be solved. This is literally the teachings
of A Course In Miracles: the continuing practice of the experience
of that instant. It’s an exciting reality for the 12 Step Program
people, and for those of you who are working the program of A
Course In Miracles, to discover that, on a continuing disciplinary
basis, if you work this Program, you will awaken one morning
and discover that the Program is working you.
This has happened to a lot of us. And this is a practice of the
discipline of getting up in the morning, and sitting quietly with the
AA 24 Hour Book or the Course Workbook, and intentionally
attempting to contact God and feeling the peace that emanates
from this, and in many senses being able to deal with problems of
the world which you were not heretofore able to handle, and
certainly that is progress. The idea that conscious contact can
continue and bring about a result that is literally miraculous each
moment and will change your life and the world you apparently
inhabit, is the whole purpose of A Course In Miracles. Certainly
it begins with some form of fundamental admission of your own
unmanageability. “Let me remember I did not make myself.”

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 Who can determine, or is it determinable when you walk into
meetings, your readiness to really hear what the 12 Step Program
teaches? Or your willingness to share, then, with these associations
your mutual helplessness? All good 12 Step Program teachers
understand that you come together in a meeting to share your
inability to deal with the world and the recovery from addiction
that you have experienced through this conscious contact with
God. This is what all Course in Miracles groups should be. This
is, indeed, what the Workbook of the Course is designed to bring
about.
Those of you who in the past years have wondered why your
12 Step Program is resulting in your continuing, we used to call it
“white knuckling,” in your refusal to “Let Go and Let God,”
usually will admit it has directly to do with your incapacity to admit
what the 12 Step Program is. The 12 Step Program is literally a
surrender to God; God as you understand Him – or as we used to
say, “don’t understand Him.” In that sense, then, the 12 Step
Program is nothing but a surrender, this is the Workbook of the
Course. And the realization that there is another way not contained
within the solutions of my own conflictual mind or what is defined
as my own perceptual reality. Do you see this? We discover that
in our weakness is our strength. “Keep It Simple, Stupid.”
The simplicity of the 12 Step Program and of A Course In
Miracles must escape the perceptual mind because it is a
mechanism of self-complication. Very fundamental in the 12 Step
Program is the idea of “an attitude of gratitude.” It is the certainty
that your sobriety or your release from the addictive captivity of
drug dependence had nothing to do with your self-will but came
solely from a miraculous intervention of a Higher Power. A miracle,
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then, is nothing but a complete momentary undoing of bondage to
self-conception.
The magnitude of gratitude inherent in this miraculous
occurrence of freedom is far, far beyond any conceptual explanation
of it. The happy realization of self-certainty intrinsic in God
dependency is grievously rejected and denied by the judgmental
defiance of your meaningless self-will.
Rarely have we seen a person fail... How It Works. Is
there anyone who goes to the meetings who really actually would
sit down and read How It Works? How does it work? Rarely
have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed
our path. It doesn’t say partially or semi-thoroughly followed
our path, and it doesn’t say never. There was a big discussion at
one of the conferences, this seems like 2000 years ago too, about
why the term is “rarely” have we seen...rather than “never” have
we seen a person fail... The answer to that is the same as regarding
self-discovery and recovery in direct contact with the higher power
of Universal Mind. Nobody can determine the method of the
perseverance or dedication of the individual association. So what
rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed
our path means is, who can determine what thorough is? Thorough
– is it thorough surrender, or thoroughly following the path?
I can remember walking into a meeting and listening to that
and entering into it without the necessity to even hear what it was
saying. It’s a discovery that you have found in your own mind of
your indelible capacity to communicate with the universe by coming
together as you are doing now. No explanation is necessary. It’s
a realization that true communication comes through self-discovery.

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That joyous self-certainty and serenity of mind are inherent in God-
dependency.
Those who do not succeed are those who cannot give
themselves totally to this program. There are such
unfortunates. They seem to have been born that way. They
are incapable of evolving a rigorous necessity for honesty,
with the continual admission that I cannot solve this problem. That’s
being honest. “I cannot solve this problem. I don’t know who I
am or what in hell I’m doing here. I need help!” Now, some real
spiritual progress may begin.
There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional
disorders, and we treat them as gently as we can because we
understand that their emotional disorders are being brought about
directly by their inability to deal with the associations of the world.
We are aware of their feelings of fear and paranoia and
schizophrenia which are the direct result of their incapacity to hold
themselves in the dream of fear that they are experiencing. They,
too, can recover if they can evolve the capacity to be honest
in realizing that it’s normal for them to have experiences of fear.
Attempting to overcome the fear is the antithesis of the teachings
of A Course In Miracles, and, in fact, the 12 Step Program. It’s
the admission that you cannot overcome it. This is the only therapy
that is really applicable to this teaching of a conscious contact
with God. Is this so?
Our stories disclose in a general way, here we come to
the 12 Step Program and here we come to A Course In Miracles,
what we used to be like, and this is our continually looking at our
human pursuits, isn’t it? I don’t want that. What we used to be

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like, what happened to us, in the discovery of the miraculous
intent – what we used to be like, what happened, and what
we are like now. This is a group that then comes together and
says very simply, “I have had a miraculous occurrence in my own
mind and I want to share the joy and happiness of the peace I
have found by this experience.” Isn’t this so? Not studying my
relationship with my mother-in-law or my ex-husband in order to
hold onto the resentment of the problem I had in the first place.
So we’re comparing the fundamental principles of recovery
in the 12 Step Program with those of A Course In Miracles. We
see that they begin with some admission of an absolute inability to
solve the problems of your own personal existent self-identity and
continue to the total necessity for a transformative spiritual
experience. I saw an article in some magazine about a young
recovering alcoholic who had been told by his sponsor that the 12
Step Program had nothing at all to do with A Course In Miracles!
That the Course in Miracles was very complicated and mysterious
and was too difficult to be understood. What nonsense! We’re
very determined here that you understand the fundamental basis
of both of these teachings. Don’t get caught in the wash of therapy.
These are programs of continuing conscious contact with God or
Universal Mind that free you from the insanity of an intolerable
worldly self-conception that required an ever-increasing sedativism.
“I am free from self-will run riot.”
Can you come and teach with me our certainty of having had
the experience of the miracle of sobriety and the continuing miracle
of self-realization that is this direct method of communication with
Eternal Reality?

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 How inevitable the consciousness of Bill Wilson, one of the
founders of AA, who was a typically helpless example of total
addiction to “any relief” from the impossible situation of this world,
who finally underwent the horrendous experience of a dark night
of the soul – a “Father, why hast thou forsaken me?” to a “Father
into thy hands I command my spirit” advent of a phenomenal,
physically-illuminatory experience of transformation. Bill’s bed at
the hospital, as witnessed by several nurses in his room, was literally
enveloped in light. Where will you personally deal with an
inexplicable transfiguration of this nature? It is impossible to say.
The only possible measurement is totally present in your own
personal dilemma expressed as the frustration and futility that occurs
in your own need to find a true meaning and purpose for your
existence in this world. Be assured of this: the entire reclamation
project of the 12 Step Program and A Course In Miracles is
totally based on a divine revealing of, and intervention by, our
very own individual and universal source of reality, which is the
eternally-creating mind of God.
It is important to remember that the programs are not a
perceptual admission of the necessity for some sort of bottoming
out. They are the natural, inevitable result of the surrender itself.
They are both the cause and the effect. Can you hear this? In any
prayer, the cause and the effect are actually simultaneous. The
teaching of the Course is you literally cannot get more than you
are asking for, but you will indeed get what you are asking for.
Do you see this? So that the broader your range of surrender, the
more mentally and emotionally edifying will be the simultaneously-
corrective response of the Holy Spirit. There is nothing to deny
your own intentions because nothing is outside of you. If you ask
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for the peace of God, and truly desire it, you will have the peace
of God because the peace of God is what you are.
So the first time that you hear this message, and the second
time, and the tenth, and the twentieth time, and the hundredth
time, and How It Works at meetings, or How It Works in A Course
In Miracles groups, will dictate the terms under which you are
absolutely, unqualifyingly willing to accept that you have a very
serious authority problem in regard to the making of yourself and
the necessity and determination to die. And the relief that you feel
when you come into a group of this nature is not expressible, but
those of you who have been to what we would term “good”
meetings where there is no therapy, just a mutual recognition, can
sense the feeling of a high camaraderie through the admission of
the powerlessness of that identity or association and it is very,
very noticeable. Your concern is not therapy at all.
I’ll speak as a Program member for a moment here: If you’ve
got a beginner who is going to give you what we call a “drunk-a-
log,” he is determined to tell the story of the circumstances that
indicated how completely powerless he was. Certainly these are
necessary and important admissions. Much as if you came into a
Course group and said, “I just can’t deal with this world.
Everything I do is futile.” This is simply an admission of qualification
for membership. Any counseling advice should not occur. The
member has one problem and has been given the solution. In no
regard would any recovering addict take the inventory of the other
person. Do you understand? I’m not going to take the inventory
of that association. I have enough problems in my dedication to
my own recovery. The therapy that I would offer him would only
be based on my determination not to have an experience myself,
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but rather to verify his resentments in association with himself rather
than admitting that we really only had one problem and that
problem is the drug itself.
All Program meetings and all Course in Miracles groups say
that you have one problem. You may call it alcohol, you may call
it ego, you can call it self-perception, you can call it determination
to affront God – I’m not concerned with what you call it. All of it
is a limited self-identity or an addiction to the necessity of the
assertion of your limited consciousness-mind. Does that make
any sense? So here we come together in a sensible purpose of
undergoing the miracle or the experience in our dedication to the
certainty that the problem is not solvable. “Don’t Analyze,
Utilize.”
Here’s How It Works. There are those, too, who suffer
from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of
them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest. Here
it is. Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to
be like, what happened, and what we are like now. If you
have decided, individually, in your own mind, that you want what
we have, never mind that you are able to discern it by your own
mechanisms. The decision is that you are willing to become
Teachers of God and declare an association of yourself that is
giving you joy and happiness. You’re looking at other associations
who are ready to give up their inventory of total death and sickness,
and are asking, as when you came to the Program, “How did you
get this?” “How did you come to know this?” This is the
mechanism you’re teaching as the 12 Step Program and A Course
In Miracles.

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 First of all you have to want it, don’t you? You have to be
able to see the difference between the pain that you are in and the
apparent joy that this association is experiencing. And the first
thing he will tell you in his genuine association is what? He didn’t
have anything to do with it! Do you see? All good programs will
teach, “I had nothing to do with it. I gave up, and I had the
miraculous experience of the non-need to continue to sedate
myself. It was a miracle.” I want the mechanism, which is the 12
Step Program, of continuing to have that experience. I want to
have it all the time.
Now, if you decide that you want what we have and are
willing to go to some lengths to get it... Oh, it doesn’t say some
lengths. No, no! It doesn’t say compromise! It says, “are willing
to go to any lengths to get it.c Now, obviously the guy who is
going to continue, if you really taught this, who is going to continue
to demand attention to his addiction will say, “I’m not willing to go
to any lengths. I can still solve my problem.” This is the basis of
the teaching. But if you’re willing to go to any lengths, you’re
ready to take certain steps. You’re ready to make particular
applications of the necessity for the miracle in the Workbook.
These are steps aren’t they? In the Workbook? Now, some
of them we are going to refuse to do. Some of them will be
easier for you to do than others because you have a tenacity to
continue to verify the necessity to exist in time and die and
that’s very inherent in you. All of your human memories verify
your addiction to self-possessive termination.
And, at some of these steps you’re going to balk. Why?
You still think you can find an easier and softer way to the
solution. It’s a lot easier for me not to have to listen to you,
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Jesus of Nazareth. It’s a lot easier for me not to have to listen to
the inevitability of my surrender in order to have the experience. I
would rather assert a compromise to Your direction that “Thy will
be done on earth as it is in Heaven” so I can continue to direct my
own program. Any good, and I’m using the term “recovered,”
alcoholic knows perfectly well that the more he directs his
associations, the more resentment he will retain in the necessity
for the expression of himself. That’s a fact. “Let Go and Let
God.” “Get Out of the Driver's Seat.” “Go the Extra Mile.”
“But for the Grace of God...” What’s ever happened to all
these expressions? They’re too spiritual. They are ultimately
nothing but a confession of God-need.
We thought we could find an easier, softer way, but what?
We couldn’t. Notice that this is past tense. The 12 Step Program
is the admission that you have evolved and are in Heaven. Even
the Twelfth Step says having had a spiritual awakening, we continue
to do it, but our problem has been solved by our continual contact.
There’s no necessity to indicate another solution. Our certainty
that the problem cannot be solved is the continuing admission of
this contact with God. Today I will judge nothing that occurs.
But we couldn’t. Now, with all the earnestness at our
command, all of it, with everything that we can tell you as a mind
who came to know this, that we can possibly give you, we beg of
you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Look at
all of this conceptual world as not being able to be understood.
Say immediately, everything here is only totally chaotic. Be fearless
and thorough from the very start. Why is this necessary? Some
of us have tried to hold onto our old ideas and the result
was nil until we let go absolutely. That is a direct statement
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from A Course In Miracles. You think you’re getting a result
from your own retention of resentment but the result is actually nil.
You are getting no result at all except the continuing fear within
your own mind. The result was nil until, you’re not going to like
this sentence, until we let go absolutely. Is that all right?
Remember that you’re dealing with an ego/alcoholic/
self-identity. You’re dealing with the necessity to sedate yourself,
to give yourself credit for your associations, to justify the
resentment and fear that you feel in your own mind. Jesus would
say of the ego: it’s cunning, it’s baffling, and it’s powerful, and
without help, it’s way too much for you to ever do. You need
the Holy Spirit to bring you to the attention that you cannot solve
the problem. But there is One who has all power – that One
is God. May you find Him now! That’s a high prayer. May
you find Him. It’s a request that you find Him through your
determination not to solve this. May you find Him now!
Remember, He isn’t lost, you are!
Half measures availed us nothing. Half measures avail you
nothing. A compromise of your determination to correlate the
sickness, pain, death and loneliness of earth with eternal love and joy
and happiness of Heaven will not work. Half measures availed
us nothing. A full measure is what God is. A half measure is what
separation is. It will avail you nothing. You cannot avail of your own
death wish and expect to solve the problem.
Where did you stand? At the turning point. When Jesus
teaches this in the Course, again and again and again, He will say,
you’re at a turning point now. Are you able to see that this is a
turning point? Will you allow your mind to come into this point

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that you have always come to before, and then, determine to see
a result in half measure, rather than what? As this sentence says,
we asked His protection and care with complete abandon.
This is the core of the teachings of A Course In Miracles.
My joy and happiness, guys, those of you who want to hear
this, you can make this academic if you want to, you can study all
the reasons and the reassociations you want to; the fact of the
matter is that my peace and joy are my complete dependence on
God or a higher power, a certainty that of and by myself I am
nothing. It has nothing to do with what I am dependent on. What
is that? That’s complete abandon. Notice that the joy is in the
abandon. You can direct it to God but only if you understand Him
anyway. Abandonment in that sense is giving, isn’t it? I’m going
to abandon my need. I’m going to only give. I will not be
possessed by the necessity to hold on and to retain. I will abandon
that and I will say, “Father into thy hands I command my spirit.”
Here are the steps we took. Past tense – it worked didn’t it
– a day at a time. As a program of recovery we admitted what?
Step #1 – We were absolutely powerless over everything and
our life was unmanageable. We are powerless. I don’t care
what it’s over. I can’t solve this problem. You know in your
hearts you can’t solve this problem and you’ve covered it up. I
don’t care how much joy you’re getting out of the certainty that
you can. Fundamentally, you know that you can’t solve the problem
or you wouldn’t be seeking happiness. You are seeking happiness
with the admission that you can solve the problem, but you can’t.
The problem is not solvable in that sense.

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 Step #2 – We came to believe, through the futility of our
own expressions, that a Power greater than ourselves could
restore us to sanity. What a lovely use of the word sanity and
insanity. The Course teaches you directly that you are insane and
that all of your efforts in regard to this don’t require a definition of
what insanity is. I’ve known a lot of alkies in my day who admit
they acted very insanely when they drove a car or did all the crazy
things that they do in their continuing unmanageability. The
admission that the whole association is insane and that the manner
in which they could be restored to sanity transcended their capacity
is the second step of the Program, which goes to the third, which
is literally the Workbook of the Course:
Step #3 – Made a decision to turn our will and our lives
over to the care of God as we understand Him. I’m going to
turn it over. I’m not able to solve the problem. Is that okay?
“That’s very weak. Isn’t that an admission of your powerlessness?”
Yes! Yes, those of you who are determined to assert yourself.
You can do that, but you will then continue to what? Assume the
guilt for the necessity of your self-identity and you’re going to
take on that burden of guilt. It’s going to give you a sense of
resentment because you’re going to demand justice within this
association, aren’t you.
What do you do after you’ve done all that? Step #3 – You’ve
done this and it’s working. You’ve turned your will and your life
over to the care of God and you’re having, this is the Workbook
now, you’re having all of these lovely experiences and your whole
life is changing. But now, there’s some necessary things to do.
This is the Workbook along with the rest of the Steps of the
Program.
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 Step #4 – We made a searching and fearless moral
inventory of ourselves. Now, if you want to get caught up in
what moral means, go ahead. Remember that the emphasis is on
fearless. You cannot be forgiven until you make a fundamental
admission of your guilt. You can go out and teach all you want,
“I’m not guilty” and, “I’m forgiven.” The direction is that you are
in a condition of the guilt of self-inflicted pain, and that it’s perfectly
proper for you to take an inventory of the associations in which
you find yourself. Notice that it doesn’t say that the inventory
must always be degrading. They will allow you to have all the
pride you want in your necessity to compare yourself with what
you consider to be the injustices around you. But remember, the
relinquishment of your resentments against yourself and your
surroundings (in the Course Jesus calls them grievances) is
absolutely necessary in order to experience the peace of God.
Look to this day, for it is life, the very life of life.
Now, if you’re going to do Step #5, the requirement is that
you admit or undergo an atonement in your incapacity to deal
with the sin in which you find yourself. This is actually an on-going
process in the miracle. Who do you have to admit to? You
admit to God, to yourself, and to another human being the
exact nature of your wrong doing. Is it necessary for you to?
Admitting to God is pretty easy, admitting to yourself is pretty
easy; admitting to another human being requires the necessity for
you to forgive yourself in your relationship with him and it can be
very valuable to you. So this is an admission of our capacity to
share a union or a new identity based on the surrender of our self-
will. We are becoming ready to accept forgiveness of ourselves

- 25 -
and those around us. Today, well lived, makes every yesterday
a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope.
The Sixth Step is a particular step that is taught in A Course
In Miracles as a continuing examination of your association. We're
entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of
character. In our associations with Bill Wilson, we talked about
whether you can ever be entirely ready to do anything. But
remember, there is a determination here that you have turned your
will and your life over to the care of God. So that while you
cannot determine your readiness, you can stay vigilant in your
dedication that the miracle is working in your own mind. This is
greatly emphasized in the Workbook of the Course. Stay single-
minded and you cannot fail.
Step #7 – Humbly ask Him to remove our shortcomings.
Father, help me to see myself as you see me. I have fallen short of
the goal of perfect love and happiness you set for me. Don't let
my resentment of my own shortfall blind me to the light of this new
life.
Now you’re going to what? Step #8 – Make a list of all
the persons you harmed, and became willing to make
amends to them all. First it says you don’t make the amend
immediately, you evolve a willingness to do so. That’s a very
interesting idea. That the willingness comes before the action itself.
Not that it can be measured, but somewhere there’s a discipline
involved in your willingness to admit to the people you have harmed,
through your old dedication to remain in your own selfish,
possessive association with yourself, that you have discovered
through a spiritual experience a new you! That a miracle has
happened and is happening!
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 Then what? Step #9 – Then you make direct amends,
literally, to such persons wherever possible, except when to
do so would injure them or others. I want to say this to you,
and I want you to hear this and this goes for 12 Step Programmers
as well as Miraclists: The result of the amend that you are willing
to make has nothing at all to do with the amend itself. The purgation
that occurs at your capacity to confess or ask for forgiveness is
the necessity. In truth, whether your amend is accepted or rejected
matters not. Many of you are very fearful of the result you’re
going to get by asking for total forgiveness. In the Course Jesus
teaches this: that the ego is going to be affronted by you. No
matter how much you demand that it forgive you, it is not going to
forgive you in that association, and you are looking for a limited
result of the purgation of your own mind, that is, a necessity for
you to justify the forgiveness in the first place. And to the direct
extent you look for a quid pro quo or an exchange of the mutualness
of your guilt, you will not do a satisfactory step. The cleansing is
always individual through the forgiveness or the recognition that
you are as God created you. And there is, literally, no reciprocity
involved in it. I know to some of you that may seem selfish because
you’re going to continue to demand a necessity to justify the evil
that you think you did in order that you can continue to share it.
That is not what this says and it’s not finally what you must do.
Remember you must be and are always only perfect as God created
you.
Now to Step #10 – Continued to take personal inventory
and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. This is a
crucial part of the 12 Step Program and also of the Course in
Miracles program. Your ability to stay in a continual condition of
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confession where you don’t lay up the stores of resentment that
have held you in your situation or bondage to the grievance are
important keys to the teachings both of the 12 Step and Miracles
Program. “Easy Does It Now...” “I'm doing this to myself.”
Perhaps now you think that the application of Step #10 is not
so important. Perhaps you’ve fallen into all sorts of philosophies
and perceptions about what the Course in Miracles is. Listen: A
Course In Miracles is nothing but a psychology of total forgiveness
and the value of taking an inventory at night before you go to bed,
about seeking not to have harmed anybody, and making that
amend immediately, and that will keep you on the track to salvation.
And I’m speaking from deep experience in this, because working
the Program, or the discipline of running an inventory in your mind
at the end of the day so that you don’t carry over the possession
of the grievance, is crucial. Why? If you carry it, you will justify
it in the resentment of the association of your old, meaningless
conceptual mind. Don’t let the sun set on a grievance, because if
you can only do it now, the necessity to hold onto the resentment
justifies the past action and holds you in the bondage of your old
association. Cause no one pain. Wow! Talk about a day at a
time! Or as the Course teaches – an hour or a minute or a Holy
instant!
You look at the condition of the resentment of the world in its
determination to continue to punish and justify an old association
and you can see exactly what you need to look at in your own
mind. And to live a life in order to justify that somebody be
continually punished, or held in prison or killed is just a waste of
your life. What a terrible waste it is to watch these television
programs where there’s a confrontation that “you did this to me
- 28 -
twenty years ago and I’m going to hold onto that until the day I
die.” That’s a wasted life, guys. What a useless, meaningless
condition of existence. You listen to me. I’m going to offer you a
little therapy. I’m not at all concerned about how you hear this.
I’m telling you that any grievance is simply bondage to pain,
loneliness and death. Any association, in its demand for vengeance,
is inflicting pain on itself and that “self.” What is the difference
between a prisoner and a guard? Nothing. Both are condemned
to that association of the grievance. See that? What a terrible
thing to go through life as what the perceptual mind is, a constant
need to get even; to punish these other associations, which are
really nothing but your determination to hold onto your grievance,
and to suffer pain and death.
So you continue to take a personal inventory and when
you’re wrong, promptly admit it. This is exactly the same
teaching as don’t lay up stores. But it’s very difficult for you to
see. Every possession that you hold onto binds you to the
retrospect of the necessity to justify the death that you’re
proceeding to. Do you see how this is?
Each day this whole teaching, and the manner in which many
of you initially obtained sobriety or the direction of turning your
will over to the care of God, came about by the admission of
“today is today.” I will not be concerned about yesterday or last
week; those things are gone and there’s nothing I can do about
that but ask for release from them. They cannot be changed
because they’re already gone. How deep is the resentment of an
alcoholic mind, or a perceptual mind, who is determined to base
his reality on a resentment or a miscalculation or a mistake or
what he calls a sin that happened to him twenty years ago; ten,
- 29 -
twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years ago? And the inevitability of the
frustration he feels by his inability to change it, and he is condemned,
then, to suffer the result of that. Why? He has sequenced time in
his own mind and he is determined to base his reality on that
previous experience. All previous experiences are only grievances.
And this is the first thing my sponsor told me on the Program.
Don’t ask for justice, ask for mercy. When I first came to meetings,
I began to say things like, “Well I know, but I had...” He said,
“Stop it! Ask for mercy, dummy.”
The teaching is “you’re on borrowed time” anyway. The whole
teaching is that you’ve borrowed just a moment from eternity.
Can you hear this? Now that you’ve got this chance, call it a
Holy instant and use it to recognize your return to Heaven, you
see that there is a way that you can live rather than die. You
borrowed eternity and put a moment of it into time. That’s a
lovely idea, isn’t it? This is the same idea as the conversion and
enlightenment of your mind. It’s the same idea as having a death
experience where you understand that you’re alive by a grace
that transcends your self-identity, and this will make you very happy.
You’re in grace. What? You’ve commended your spirit to God.
That’s the whole idea. That’s personal inventory, isn’t it? That’s
your own deep dark secrets about yourself – the one you blame
your neighbor for. The heck with that! Let go and let God! Each
one of you retains one particular special grievance. Do you know
that? Would you care to look at that one? I have one. It’s the
whole world. And I assumed responsibility for my determination
to help lead you out of this hell.
Miracles teachers see immediately that Step #11 is a
description of the entire program of transformation that is the
- 30 -
Workbook of the Course in Miracles. Listen! Sought through
prayer and meditation to continually improve our conscious
contact with God as we didn’t understand Him, whoops, as we
understand Him, praying only for knowledge of His will
for us and the power to carry it through the spirit.
And then the very beautiful last step, #12: Having had a
spiritual awakening as a result of these steps – notice this is
past tense. It’s happening to you! First you work it, then it works
you. First you apply the discipline of the Workbook, then you
discover that the Workbook is real. It really works! Once you
discover that the miracle of God contact is real, the discipline
becomes simple. And finally, there’s no discipline at all because
the natural occurrence of the joy is the turning of your will and
your life over to God. Having had a spiritual awakening as
the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to
alcoholics. We tried to carry it to other human sufferers – to
other “mortalholics.”
This is you as a teacher of God, isn’t it? This is you as the
Savior of the World. And to practice these principles in all
of our affairs. That is all you’re asked to do. The discipline is to
stay in this constant necessity for the reassociation of your mind
with the admission that the miracle is always working all about
you if you’ll let it. Can you see this? It’s always happening to
you. Step back – feel the indescribable happiness of your true
reality! The resistance is always in your own perceptual mind.
We can’t tell you what love and God is, but we can tell you what
the obstacle to love is. This is the determination of yourself to hold
yourself in this bondage of ego, in this bondage of the addiction to
the necessity for your self-identity.
- 31 -
 “Wow,” some of us said. “I’m not going to go through with
that. What an order!” What an order! I can’t go through
with it. And many of the associations that will come in contact
with the teachings of A Course In Miracles will say, “What an
order! I can’t go through with it.” Do not be discouraged. No
one among us has been able to maintain anything like
perfect adherence to these principles. Why? There is no
definition of perfection. I’m not teaching you to an establishment
of the manner by which I accomplished this. I’m telling you it’s a
continual reassociation of your own mind. You’re the one that is
seeking for the result. I’m not offering you result. There’s no
manner by which you can do this. The admission of our
powerlessness, our helplessness, is what salvation is. And this is
actually what this says: We are not saints. The point is we are
willing to grow along spiritual lines. In that sense, we are
claiming only momentary spiritual progress to this determination
because the result is not here. But we open our hearts and our
minds. We have the experience of the miracle of the loss of the
conflict of our perceptual identity and we enter into a union with
God which is the basis of all of the teachings. “God is the Mind
with which I think.” “Thy will not my will be done.”
Here’s our description of the human, and there’s a
chapter to the agnostic (those of you who believe that the
Course in Miracles is written in the vernacular of Christianity,
and tend therefore to reject it, for example), and your personal
adventures, which are a part of your own mind before and
after, make three things very clear: That we were
unmanageable, that we were alcoholic; that we were in our
own perceptual self and that we could not manage our own
- 32 -
lives no matter what we did; and that no human power could
have relieved our alcoholism or our fearful human condition
because we were locked in the disease of mortalism. But that
God could and would if He were sought. It doesn’t say
“found.” Does it? It says, “sought.” It doesn’t say God could
and would if He were found. God isn’t lost. The act of seeking
God is what the peace of God is. The act of the release is what
the peace is. “Thank You.” That’s a prayer, isn’t it? “My Father
gives all power unto me.”
So is this a prayer meeting that we’re having? Is this a
communion with God? Have you made an agreement among
yourselves not to discuss your own personal grievances because
they’re meaningless? Somewhere. Somewhere you have
undergone a transition where you have no intention of bringing
your individual grievances or self-identity into this attempt at union
with God. This is the admission of a conversion, a freedom from
the bondage of this world of death. A meeting of Mortalholics
Anonymous! This is the whole basis and only purpose of A Course
In Miracles. I’m not going to bring my grievance into the meeting
and justify the grievance. I’m going to come to an AA meeting,
I’m going to come to a Course group, and simply acknowledge
that I am perfect as God created me. And through the release of
the necessity to hold the grievance, I will have the experience of
the joy and happiness of God. “I am the Light of the world.”
How exciting that, at last, this world has a purpose: to teach
and learn together the unlimited power of the whole universe that
is ours through the creative love of God – the revelation that you
are experiencing in the release of your own conceptual self-identity.
The core of the curriculum is that you are no longer feeling
- 33 -
responsible for the sickness and pain and death that is inherent in
the human mind; and that you are, in fact, undergoing this
enlightenment or experience or miracle of the turning of your self-
will over to the will of God. All right. And it’s the act of doing it,
that is what the miracle is. And it is continuous and it is going on
all the time. What an incredible discovery! The Workbook of A
Course In Miracles is nothing but a practice in prayer. It is a
catechism on how to pray, only because you need the discipline of
how to pray. This is a prayer session and we’ll do a couple of
prayers for you.
Feel the magnificently divine truth of these prayers as directed
to you by the resurrected mind of Jesus Christ:
How foolish, Father, to believe Your Son could cause
himself to suffer! Could he make a plan for his damnation,
and be left without a certain way to his release? You love
me, Father. You could never leave me desolate, to die within
a world of pain and cruelty. How could I ever think that
Love has left Itself? There is no will except the Will of
Love. Fear is a dream, and has no will that can conflict
with Yours. Conflict is sleep, and peace awakening. Death
is illusion; life, eternal truth. There is no opposition to
Your Will. There is no conflict, for my will is Yours.
Forgiveness shows us that God’s Will is one, and that we
share it. Let us look upon the holy sights forgiveness shows
today, that we may find the peace of God. Amen. (Lesson 331)
I will not wait another day to find the treasures that my
Father offers me. Illusions are all vain, and dreams are gone
even while they are woven out of thoughts that rest on false

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perceptions. Let me not accept such meager gifts again today.
God’s voice is offering the peace of God to all who hear and
choose to follow Him. This is my choice today. This is my
choice. And so I go to find the treasures God has given me.
I’m not going to participate, I’m going to lay down this burden of
self and I’m going to find the treasure of my own awakening. I
seek but the eternal. For Your Son can be content with nothing
less than this. What, then, can be his solace but what You are
offering to his bewildered mind and frightened heart, to give
him certainty and bring him peace? Today I would behold
my brother sinless. This Your Will for me, for so will I behold
my own sinlessness. (Lesson 334)
Listen! Here’s everything you ever need to know about your
recovery from the meaningless journey into fear that is your
perceptual self-identity:
I’ve come to know that I am affected only by my own
thoughts and I am determined that I am a thought only of you as
you have created me. It needs but this to let salvation come to
all the world because I have created all the world in my fearful
thoughts, but I am being affected only by my own thoughts. For
in this single thought is everyone released at last from fear. I
intend to release my brother from the judgment I have laid on him
in order to keep my own identity. I’m not going to hold a resentment
in my mind in order to justify our relationships. Now has he
learned that no one frightens him, and nothing can endanger
him. I have no enemies, and I am safe from all external things.
My thoughts can frighten me, but since these thoughts belong to
me alone, I have the power to change them and exchange each
fear thought for a happy thought of love. I am crucifying myself.
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I’m not going to do it anymore. God has a plan that His beloved
Son will be redeemed and was redeemed. Your plan is sure, my
Father – only Yours. All other plans will fail. And I will have
thoughts that will frighten me, until I learn that You have
given me the only Thought that leads me to salvation. Mine
alone will fail, and lead me nowhere. Just my own, just my
own idea. But the Thought You gave me promises to lead me
home, because it holds Your promise to Your Son. (Lesson 338)
These are the prayer lessons of the Workbook of A Course
In Miracles. Our meeting together today was an attempt to get
you to enter into the experience of the release of the necessity to
continue with your addiction to pain and death and time. And this
under the auspices of the direction of your own mind through the
12 Step Program which came from a miraculous intervention. And
your life-saving Course in Miracles Program that is resurrected
mind awakening you from your own nightmare. You, individually,
in your own dream of death and pain can undergo the experience
of the miracle. The steps to awakening from your dream of death
begin with the admission and recognition of your incapacity to
deal with this and the discovery that there is another way to live
that is not constituted in your perception as you identify yourself.
Literally, an expansion of your own mind. To what? A communion
and a union with the power of the Universe which is what you are.
Heavenly Father, we Thank You that this has come about
in us and we are certain now of the glory of the revelation
of these steps and of this Program. And we are happy that
we have found ourselves in this late sojourn of mind among
those willing to make the confession of pain and death and
the need not to be found guilty in their own self-identity
- 36 -
with the admission that God only forgives because God is
what your Universal Mind is. In this, we remain thankful.
And in this, we abide. And in this, our truth is, forever and
ever. Amen.
I want you to understand that when I am speaking of this, I
am speaking directly from my own personal experience of
surrender that founded my program of sobriety and serenity and
of a continuing need to carry this message that fostered my passage
to enlightenment. It is very possible for you in an awakening mind
to rummage through what brought you to this. And if that’s an
expression of continual gratitude, the total power of God’s love
will be yours as you give it away. If it’s an expression of the
necessity to reassociate, to demand the attention to what you think
are the needs of your self-containment, of your own determination
to sustain yourself, you’re going to remain in the temporal order
of the futile existence of mortalism. Isn’t this so? That’s a statement
of fact. How very simple it finally is!
I can only give to myself.
If I defend myself I'll be attacked.
You are causing your own grievance and you are not going to
do it anymore. It’s amazing how far the 12 Step Program or what
you call A Course In Miracles programs can get off the track in
regard to what it offers and guarantees. And the reason is that it is
both difficult and simple at the same time. They both declare
literally that peace and joy come from a renunciation of your own
self-conceived associations. There’s no other way that this can
occur. It requires the experience of sharing the joy of the certainty
of the confession of your helplessness and the experience of a
whole new reality not of temporal existence, but a part of Eternal
Life.
- 37 -
 Having shared an incredible need for justification of life on
this earth, I understand the calamity of the word surrender. While
I was perfectly willing to finally admit that I had suffered from a
powerlessness and that a continuing recovery from my addiction
was occurring, the idea of the total surrender, which was the
continuing mechanism of my enlightenment, was difficult for me.
What many will discover as I did, was that my necessity to carry
the message in the twelfth step practice allowed me to observe
the miracle of sudden recovery in action.
What happened was, and what happens with many of you,
your revelatory reassociation causes you to recognize the 12 Step
Program as a healing mechanism in which you immediately enter.
The same thing will happen with many consciousnesses who have
had revelatory reassociations in broad ranges of self when they
pick up A Course In Miracles. They will immediately be able to
see it or discern it at that level of the recognition of their own
mind. This, then, is just a practice of a continuing new visionary
experience of reidentification of yourself within your own mind.
But the value is never in the mechanism or method. The value is
only in the continuing grace of this newly-discovered reality.
You’re where you belong at last. When you discover a group
that is in full admission of the sharing of an experience of recovery,
you will feel virtually immediately the release of your own necessity
to protect and justify the fearful possession of your own
resentments. You have come together to share the miracle of a
complete healing from a fatal disease of mind and body. The serene
certainty of your recovery is privately acknowledged and
protected through honoring your individual anonymity. You are in
this world, but not of it.
- 38 -
 And that’s literally a communicative experience. You don’t
limit yourself to the old impossible you. You have made the
fundamental admission that you have gathered for the purpose of
sobriety rather than to determine by judgment the value that you
have in your own identity of yourself. Quite literally, “I can’t solve
this problem.” “I can’t either.” “It’s not solvable.” “I know it.”
“How are you getting along?” “Fine, as long as I don’t.” Not:
“How well are you dealing with it?” Rather: “How well are you
not dealing with it?” “I can’t, He will if I let Him.”
The admission in both teachings is that the resentment can be
released immediately because you are the resentment. And the
Holy instant is inevitably the moment that you release it because
your addiction to your own self-willed existence is what the
grievance was. Now are you whole and alive in the fullest measure
as the miracle of God-dependence frees you from the bondage of
self-inflicted pain, loneliness and death of this world. And now a
joyous reunion of our minds occurs.
The sharing of the experience of the miracle is an imperative
part of our awakening to the reality of Eternal Life. We offer to
each other and the world our vision of a completely new meaning
and purpose for this apparent aggregation in time and space.
That I was present at your miracle happening had to do with
the certainty that I could share with you my miraculous experience
of healing not as identified in the situation of the world. In the
sharing of the healing grace of the love and light of God, our minds
communicate the simple and incredibly exciting realization that we
are whole and perfect and eternally alive as God created us.

- 39 -
 This indeed is the entire healing process of the illumination of
your mind through the process of A Course In Miracles:
The roads this world can offer seem to be quite large in
number, but the time must come when everyone begins to see
how like they are to one another. Men have died on seeing
this, because they saw no way except the pathways offered
by the world. And learning they led nowhere, lost their hope.
And yet this was the time when they could have learned their
greatest lesson. All must reach this point, and go beyond it.
!"

It seems to you the world will utterly abandon you if you

but raise your eyes. Yet all that will occur is you will leave the
world forever. This is the re-establishment of your will. Look
upon it, open-eyed, and you will nevermore believe that you
are at the mercy of things beyond you, forces you cannot
control, and thoughts that come to you against your will. It is
your will to look on this. No mad desire, no trivial impulse to
forget again, no stab of fear nor the cold sweat of seeming
death can stand against your will. For what attracts you
from beyond the veil is also deep within you, unseparated
from it and completely one.
!"

Each day, and every minute in each day, and every

instant that each minute holds, you but relive the single
instant when the time of terror took the place of love. And
so you die each day to live again, until you cross the gap
between the past and present, which is not a gap at all.

- 40 -
Such is each life; a seeming interval from birth to death
and on to life again, a repetition of an instant gone by long
ago that cannot be relived. And all of time is but the mad
belief that what is over is still here and now. Forgive the
past and let it go, for it is gone. You stand no longer on the
ground that lies between the worlds. You have gone on,
and reached the world that lies at Heaven’s gate. There is
no hindrance to the Will of God, nor any need that you
repeat again a journey that was over long ago.
!"

Not one light in Heaven but goes with you. Not one
Ray that shines forever in the Mind of God but shines on
you. Heaven is joined with you in your advance to Heaven.
When such great lights have joined with you to give the
little spark of your desire the power of God Himself, can
you remain in darkness?
Seek for that door and find it. But before you try to
open it, remind yourself no one can fail who seeks to reach
the truth. And it is this request you make today.
Put out your hand, and see how easily the door swings
open with your one intent to go beyond it. Angels light the
way, so that all darkness vanishes, and you are standing in
the light so bright and clear that you can understand all
things you see. A tiny moment of surprise, perhaps, will
make you pause before you realize the world you see before
you in the light reflects the truth you knew, and did not
quite forget in wandering away in dreams.

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 You cannot fail today. There walks with you the Spirit
Heaven sent you, that you might approach this door some
day, and through His aid slip effortlessly past it, to the light.
Today that day has come. Today God keeps His ancient
promise to His holy Son, as does His Son remember his to
Him. This is a day of gladness, for we come to the appointed
time and place where you will find the goal of all your
searching here, and all the seeking of the world, which end
together as you pass beyond the door.
Thank you for answering your call. The decisive imperative of
your need to share your awakening from the nothingness of this
world is much appreciated. I love you. -MT.

I Am Responsible
I am responsible... I am responsible...
I must give it away to keep it. When I am healed I am not healed alone.
When anyone, anywhere, I would share my healing with the world,
reaches out for help, I want the that sickness and death be banished
hand of AA always to be there. from the mind of God’s one Son,
And for that: I am responsible. Who is my only Self.

I walk with God in perfect holiness. I light the world,

I light my mind and all the minds which God created one with me.

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 From the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous:
How It Works
Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed
our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or
will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually
men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest
with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at
fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally
incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which
demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average.
There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental
disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity
to be honest.
Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like,
what happened, and what we are like now. If you have decided
you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get
it – then you are ready to take certain steps.
At some of these we balked. We thought we could find an
easier, softer way. But we could not. With all the earnestness at
our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from
the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas
and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.
Remember that we deal with alcohol – cunning, baffling,
powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is One
who has all power – that One is God. May you find Him now!
Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning
point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon.

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 Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a
program of recovery:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol -- that
our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves
could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over
to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of
ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another
human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these
defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and
became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible,
except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we
were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve
our conscious contact with God as we understood
Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us
and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of
these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics,
and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
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 Many of us exclaimed, “What an order! I can’t go through
with it.” Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able
to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles.
We are not saints. The point is, that we are willing to grow along
spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to
progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual
perfection.
Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic,
and our personal adventures before and after make clear three
pertinent ideas:
(a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage
our own lives.
(b) That probably no human power could have relieved
our alcoholism.
(c) That God could and would if He were sought.

Your Peace Is With Me, Father. I Am Safe.

Your peace surrounds me, Father. Where I go, Your peace
goes with me. It sheds its light on everyone I meet. I bring it
to the desolate and lonely and afraid. I give Your peace to
those who suffer pain, or grieve for loss, or think they are
bereft of hope and happiness. Send them to me, my Father.
Let me bring Your peace with me. For I would save Your
Son, as is Your Will, that I may come to recognize my Self.
And so we go in peace. To all the world we give the
message that we have received. And thus we come to hear
the Voice for God, Who speaks to us as we relate His Word;
Whose Love we recognize because we share the Word that
He has given unto us. (Lesson 245)
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 I Am In Need Of Nothing But The Truth.
I sought for many things, and found despair.
Now do I seek but one, for in that one is all I need,
and only what I need. All that I sought before I
needed not, and did not even want. My only need
I did not recognize. But now I see that I need only
truth. In that all needs are satisfied, all cravings
end, all hopes are finally fulfilled and dreams are
gone. Now have I everything that I could need.
Now have I everything that I could want. And
now at last I find myself at peace. (Lesson 251)

This Is My Holy Instant Of Release.

Father, it is today that I am free, because my
will is Yours. I thought to make another will. Yet
nothing that I thought apart from You exists. And
I am free because I was mistaken, and did not affect
my own reality at all by my illusions. Now I give
them up, and lay them down before the feet of
truth, to be removed forever from my mind. This
is my holy instant of release. Father, I know my
will is one with Yours. (Lesson 227)

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 Look to this day,
For it is life,
The very life of life,
In its brief course lie all
The realities and verities of existence,
The bliss of growth,
The splendor of action,
The glory of power -

For yesterday is but a dream,

And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today, well lived,
Makes every yesterday a dream
of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore, to this day.

Sanskrit Proverb

From The Hazelden Twenty Four Hours A Day Book

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