God exists in eternity. The only point where eternity meets time is in the present. "The present is the only time there is." A miracle is a shift in thinking from what we might have done in the past or should be doing in the future, to what we feel free to do right here, right now.
A miracle is a release from internal bondage. Our capacity for brilliance is equal to our capacity to forget the past and forget the future. That's why little children are brilliant. they don't remember the past, and they don't relate to the future.
One of the exercises in the Course Workbook reads, "The past is over. It can touch me not." Forgiving the past is an important step in allowing ourselves the experience of miracles. The only meaning of anything in our past is that it got us here, and should be honored as such. All that is real in our past is the love we gave and the love we received. Everything else is an illusion.
The past is merely a thought we have. It is literally all in our minds. The Courses teaches, "Give the past to Him Who can change your mind about it for you." To surrender the past to the Holy Spirit is to ask that only loving, helpful thoughts about it remain in our minds, and all the rest be let go.
What we are left with then is the present, the only time where miracles happen. We place the past and the future as well into the hands of God. The biblical statement that "time shall be no more' means that we will one day live fully in the present, without obsessing about past or future.
The universe provides us with a clean slate in every moment; God's creation holds nothing against us. Our problem is that we don't believe this. Let us ask forgiveness, not of God who has never condemned us, but of ourselves, for all we think we did and did not do. Let us give ourselves permission to begin again.
~ A Return to Love - Reflections on the Principles of A COURSE IN MIRACLES by Marianne Williamson. pg 70, 71, 72
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In a certain Sufi Order this particular Remembrance as a Technology of the Heart is taught. It involves three sacred invocation. First is Astaghfirullah - this is the statement to free ourselves from the bondage of past, from every regret, every mistake, every act of oppression of the past. Astaghfirullah literally means 'I seek forgiveness from Allah'.
Second is MashaAllah - this is the statement to free ourselves from the speculation of future, from every unreal desire, every illusion about future or anticipation of future. MashaAllah literally means 'as Allah Wills', so with this sacred statement we surrender and submit everything in future as the grand Will of the Divine.
Once we are free from the bondage of past and the project of future, we are stabilized to the present moment and when we are stabilized in the present, all we as human beings embodied with the capacity to witness truth and beauty - all we can do is to be in awe, to be a witness. And then finally we say, SubhanaAllah ~ 'Glory be to Allah', Glory be to God, Glory be to the One.
So here they are again, Astaghfirullah, MashaAllah, SubhanaAllah. Thats all. May the utterance of these sacred matra with the correct attunement of mind and heart may we be free with the true freedom and may we be present in the true sense of it. May our life be touched by the Abundant Miracles that is always present.
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