Judy became the very public face of A Course in Miracles in the late ‘70s. She personally introduced it to thousands of people in events around the country. She told a compelling story of how ACIM had been scribed by Helen with connection and support from Bill, how miraculously it came to Helen word for word just as it was printed, and how the whole copying, distributing, and then publishing of it was one miracle after another. She told how she at first had to “xerox” copy after copy to give to people who were interested and how there was no way she could keep up with the demand for early copies. She talked about how the money to professionally publish was miraculously received. The story seemed almost too good to be true.
I've been getting the guidance lately that we are coming much closer to that sufficient number. When a sufficient number become miracle-minded, or when a sufficient number, let's say, start tuning into the Holy Spirit, start tuning into their own wisdom instead of relying on external authorities, the time shortening, the miracles, the healing, get accelerated very, very profoundly. Actually, this particular quote teaches it becomes immeasurable how fast things will speed up. It's saying that when there's a critical number, when a critical number of the Holy Children of God who believed they were separate start learning that they have a connection with each other, that they have a connection to the Voice for God, that they can receive their own wisdom, that they don't have to rely on external authorities any more, something amazing will happen.
When a critical number of people get that, then something exponential takes off. It's not just a linear progression, it's an exponential progression. So at certain point, we're going along, we're going along, things are slowly increasing, things are slowly increasing, but then all of a sudden this critical number get it (Rev. Tony is using his hand to track the path of a rising exponential curve) and then it just takes off. I have gotten the feeling and the message that we're approaching that. We're approaching that critical mass. There's another way of looking at this, like the 100th monkey thing. When the 100th monkey learns how to wash his pear, all the monkeys suddenly know how to wash their pears. There's a cascade of increased healing that I believe could be right around the corner.
The Community Miracles Center is a local and worldwide fellowship. We share our experience of A Course In Miracles and other related spiritual teachings in order to heal our perception of ourselves, our relationships, and the world."
"There is no choice in this because only you can be the foundation of God's church. A church is where an altar is, and the presence of the altar is what makes it a church. Any church which does not inspire love has a hidden altar which is not serving the purpose for which God intended it. I must found His church on you because you who accept me as a model are literally my disciples." (OrEd.Tx.6.12)
1. Articles of Incorporation Secretary of State of State of California Feb. 9, 1987 (Shows Church intended purpose)
2. Recognition Letter Franchise Tax Board State of California Jun. 17, 1987 (Shows legal Church status)
3. Recognition Letter Internal Revenue Service U.S.A. Jan. 8, 1988 (Shows 501[c][3] Public Charity status)
4. Amendment to Articles Secretary of State of State of California Jan. 14, 1998 (Shows name change)
5. Reissue Recognition Letter Internal Revenue Service U.S.A. Oct. 10, 2018 (Shows 501[c][3] Public Charity status with new office address)
Okay, so let's get back to the COVID-19 pandemic. We were told …. What were we told during the COVID-19 pandemic? We were told to isolate, to separate, to shelter-in-place, to wear masks, to stand six feet apart, to avoid crowded stores. Don't go to church or other public gathering. For sure, don't go to church. They sing in church! Oh no! They sing out loud and they spew droplets of saliva everywhere when they sing. Oh … how yuck! You can't be around that. Family gatherings, no more than nine people, only representing two households at the most. Everybody should have a COVID test before they go. Before we had the test, we had to take everybody's temperature — make sure nobody with any kind of elevated body temperature would come in.
Think about all of this massive push to separate ourselves. People are trying to forget about this. I think the government would like us to forget about it. I'm not quite willing to let go of the awareness of what our institutions pushed on us. I don't think it was healthy. Look at the image on the Sunday Program cover (page 1 of this issue of *Miracles Monthly*). This is what we were shown during the pandemic. Yes, this is how we were to tell if we were the appropriate safe distance from one another. Maybe this was a mother and a daughter who could only talk six feet apart and with the masks on. Stay separate. Separation was what was going to save us. Yeah. Well, did separation save us? "No." Just about everybody eventually got COVID-19 one way or another.
This made me think and reflect. I want to honor something that happened this week. As a lot of you are aware of, some know me very well, I'm a huge sports fanatic. I play sports, and I also watch sports. This past week, the NFL (National Football League) and the people who are sports fans experienced something that was very tragic on a Monday night game when one of the players from the Buffalo Bills tackled someone else. Then, I was there watching the game, the player who made the tackle collapsed right there on the field. It was just an experience I've never experienced while watching on TV. Then just seeing the expressions of all the players around him, because they had to do CPR on him right there on the field to save this young man's life. This made me think more and more about faith, of trusting and believing that something higher than us will ensure that this individual, who collapsed in front of thousands of fans in the stadium, millions of people watching that game, and all the other players, that things would work themselves out.
Seeing the outpouring of prayers from all over the place, towards this individual, sending out that healing, loving energy to this individual, to the teams, to the family members — that's seeing something that we don't see often. That is faith. Being able to put that energy forward and out there is faith. The individual, towards the end of the week, was finally able to get off of the breathing tube so he can breathe on his own, that's the power of faith. That's the power of trusting and leaping — taking it to a level that is absolutely remarkable. What's something that we always knew from the Course. This was not about a separate person. It was everyone coming together as one, as a collective. What a huge strength and powerfulness that exists because of that.
The current type of medicine that we practice here in the United States, and in most Western countries, is called allopathic medicine. What these two doctors were saying was that allopathic medicine has just failed. It has certainly, in the West, failed with its approach to the COVID pandemic, and it's actually been failing for a long time. "Allopathy," means "the treatment of disease by conventional means, currently with drugs, having opposite effects to the symptoms, often contrasted with homeopathy" — anyway, it is the traditional treatment, if you can call drug intervention traditional. We've been doing it extensively for over 100 years. So allopathy is the traditional treatment of disease using medications and drugs that are designed to combat the disease, or maybe alleviate the symptoms of the disease. That's allopathic medicine the way we practice it in the West, and certainly in the USA.
It's all involved with the study of sickness, and the analysis of illness, but a new paradigm really should be launched, according to these doctors, that studies wellness. We need to study why well people are well, instead of so much of why ill people are ill. Now is a wonderful opportunity to do just that. I love that quotation that was in the reading for today, that was read earlier. "Rehabilitation does not come from anyone else. ..." (OrEd.Tx.8.29) In the new era of wellness, there's going to be much more of a reliance on one's self, and one's guidance, and one's connection to one's own wisdom. We may seek some outside help or some outside information, but ultimately, wellness is going to come down to our own connection to our own guidance, to the Holy Spirit, as A Course in Miracles would say, and to our own infinite, eternal nature.
