In studying A Course in Miracles and hosting mastermind groups for the past 13 years, I have yet to choose the subject of "miracles" as the topic for our annual theme.
My clients study miracle mindsets from all kinds of different directions, so I try to extract elements that I think could be most helpful in the work that we do in executive coaching. Moving forward on this blog, I would like to structure each article with a two-fold approach. First I will look at the topic of miracles in A Course in Miracles, as previous articles have done, and then I want to pivot to my book, Nightmares to Miracles, and we'll do a section of chapter after the introductory material chapter each month as we go through the year. And the rationale for that is that I want to keep sharing the book with the world and with whoever it's appropriate for is a part of my audience. Even though I teach the principles often, I don't want to forget what's in my own book. I find that if I don't stay in the book - thinking about it, talking about it, sharing on it - then I can sometimes forget the level of density and value I created it with. Not to "toot my own horn," but over time, even one's own teaching material can lose its gravity. So this is a way for me to remember and stay connected to the sections into the chapters of the book and then to continue to put this in front of our most likely audience.
So going back to the theme of this coming year, I have an anchor lesson to keep us grounded on the topic of miracles through the year. It doesn't have the word "miracle" in it, per se, but it's all about miracles from my perspective. Lesson 47 from A Course of Miracles says, "God is the strength in which I trust." So the way that functions for me is that if I'm faced with anything at all that's challenging me - big or small - I just start reciting that with regard to the problem or the issue and how I'm going to get through it. And within minutes or hours or a day or two, the problem has virtually dissolved and I'm walking into a solution. So I just love how powerful that lesson is as a portal into the miraculous. Remember that my definition of a miracle is: a solution to a problem that seems impossible to solve.
Let's look at the first ten principles from ACIM. So the very first principle of miracles says, "There is no order of difficulty in miracles. One is much harder or bigger than another. They are all the same. All expressions of love are maximum." Now, when I started the Course of Miracles in 1995, I was really studying it and this sentence was bewildering to me. I thought, I don't really understand because if I have a fever and I think that I recovered miraculously from the fever or I needed money and money suddenly appeared miraculously or synchronistically, that's very different to my mind at the time that if somebody dies and they're raised from the dead but you think of that as a literal thing, or you think of it as just simply symbolic, there is no way at that time that those things were on the same order to me, of difficulty. So I had the hardest time understanding this. Now I get what it's, what it's about. I think it's like when they say someone can't be "a little pregnant." The person is either pregnant or they're not pregnant. It's binary, it's on or it's off. So if you're in the miracle zone, you're in the world of miracles. And that zone is completely transformative in every way, shape or form. If you're not in the miracle zone, then everything is of the illusion of pain and suffering or scarcity. Now, that might beg the question of whether within the miracle world there are sort of places in which you're further in or not. But at least in terms of my basic understanding at this point in my journey, I think that's what it's getting at. It's like with regards to any particular moment in life, we're either in the miracle zone or not in the Miracle Zone.
This leads into one of my favorite themes, The Prodigal Child story. From the position of the parent, is their love for their two children truly equal? It may appear to them and feel to them as though it's different, but it's maximum if at the highest level of cosmo. The worth of every human being is totally equal and somehow the miracle process touches on that and captures that everybody is ushered into all the benefits of the divine by being on that channel, not just a few. There's no partiality.
So there are now a few more principles that really focus on the source of the miracle. In principle two, it says, "The miracle itself doesn't matter all that much. What really matters is their source alluding to God higher power." Principle three, "Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them." Then in principle four, "All miracles mean life and God is the giver of life. God's voice will direct you very specifically. You will be told all you need to know." So again, the miracle process is not just that higher power is a source of miracles, but there's a GPS system about that. As we tune in more and more, we get guided into the miracles that we're supposed to be the facilitators of. Principle number five was a real head scratcher for me for a long time. I didn't quite understand this, "Miracles are habits and should be involuntary. They should not be under conscious control. Consciously selected miracles can be misguided." So I was really challenged by this for a long time, until I read Ken Wapnik's work on the 50 Miracle Principles. He's a famous and well regarded teacher and scholar, and his book on the 50 Miracle Principles really helped clear this up for me.
Essentially what he was saying is that spirit can be guiding the miracles, or the ego can be controlling or trying to control miracles. And so when it means that they shouldn't be consciously controlled, it's really talking about the ego and that when they're unconsciously sort of motivated and guided, it's talking about the spirit. And that clarified a lot of it was, okay, that makes sense. Otherwise it's a tug of war between what I want the miracle to be and what higher power has planned, that's the miracle is the source of the miracle. So it's the end of the control of source.
Number six says, "Miracles are natural when they do not occur, something had gone wrong." Well, that's a bold statement that almost demystifies them, which we don't want to do. What it's getting at is a very high order proposition or thinking that miracles are natural as part of our birthright, so that with everything that we're doing, if we were in our best state, we'd all be like Jesus or Buddha or any of the other masters. You're hungry? Let's manifest food for everybody. You need to get across the lake. Let's walk on water. Somebody died from a sickness, let's bring them back to life. That begs the question of whether if we were all miraculous, they wouldn't die in the first place. It's pointing to an extreme position in which the miraculous way of being is the natural state of all of us. And we've fallen away from that. We are imperfect human beings, and therefore we've got an inventory of things that are blocking our miracles from happening every day, all day. And the goal becomes trying to unblock them through these techniques of cultivating a miracle mindset. It's a process of going back home, to our natural state. In some of the literature, when you reach that state, you become what's called an ascendant master. You've removed all the impediments to your ultimate enlightenment, and you have complete mastery over the physical world as a miracle worker.
Moving on, "Miracles are everyone's right. But purification is necessary first." And I'm glad that my friends helped me to keep focus on the fact that the purification that's being talked about here is not behavioral purification. It's what you, I think we're alluding to long ago, which is the blocks mania, if we say more specifically, fear, guilt and anger, collectively known as attack thoughts. So these things get in the way of our experience in miracles, and the whole course is about letting go of these things and doing these blocks to the inner love which empowers us in miracle mindset.
So the final one on this list is number ten, "The use of miracles as spectacles to induce belief is a misunderstanding of their purpose." So we all have testimonials, which are since our miracle resume. It's not necessarily saying that if we can experience and perform miracles, that isn't a good thing. But I think that it's getting at the fact that using them to try to induce people to believe, again, as I said, it's not their true purpose. So that again begs the question, what is the purpose of miracles? My best understanding is that the main purpose of miracles is to reduce our suffering, that's the main purpose is to help us reconnect with the love that's the source of the miracles. And when we do that, miracles are an expression of that love, in that a lot of our conflicts and struggles and all the things that we're dealing with, they just sort of melt away around that particular miracle.
Now I'd like to pivot and introduce my book, Nightmares to Miracles. On the front cover, there are some secrets embedded in here - nothing bizarre, all positive - but I always like to see if people can figure out what's going on when it comes to the cover allusions.
So Nightmares of Miracles is the main theme, as you can see, quite boldly. And then the subheading is Miracle Mindsets for CEOs, executives and Entrepreneurs to transform adversity into success in Health, Wealth, Love and Enlightenment. So there's a lot going on in that subheading, but it's really just sort of the target client, the CEO's, executives and entrepreneurs, and then it's about the kind of mindset that helps us transform adversity into success and then specifically in health, well, and enlightenment. So that's the deal there. And then you have some dream catcher sort of background in this. The person who designed the book added that, which I thought was really amazing because originally it was a plain white background and then they added the dreamcatcher elements to it. There's also the sun, which is a bit of symbolism about God's presence. Then the firefly symbolism.
Inside the book, we have four sets of questions, and these questions are the same questions I ask every new client, potentially new client, every prospective client.
So the questions are: what are your main goals and the work we're going to be doing together? What's the mix of personal and professional goals? It's usually two, three, four goals, maybe at most. The next question is usually around what do you think you contribute to? The problem that you're having now is not to blame the client or protect the client. It's not to attack them or make them feel bad or defensive. It's just to get a sense of whether the client has the ability to look inward and see what they're contributing to the problem. And then the next question is what have you tried before and what's worked for you and what hasn't worked for you? Have you done therapy? Have you had coaching? Do you have courses and programs that you've studied? Then I go a little bit deeper. This is my background as a former psychotherapist. I ask if anyone has an official sort of diagnosis, a formal diagnosis, if you want medication of any kind. (I also also allow them to pass because they may not want to answer those questions given that they're just sort of fishing prospecting.) I just want to know what the possible bottom is for them. So the fourth area is just sort of checking about their goals or from a different direction.It goes something like this after six months to twelve months of working together: How would your life look if our work was successful? So those are the questions and I like to guide us through those on the initial calls that we're making.
The next section in the preliminaries is who is this for? And what are the benefits? There's a long list of these in the book, so usually who is this for? The title says it's for CEOs, executives and entrepreneurs. But I do have a fair number of professionals too, so-called professionals, doctors, lawyers, things like that. Everyone is welcome. I end up working sometimes with the children, sometimes very young children, seven, eight, nine teenagers, young adults in college. So they're obviously not CEO's, executives and entrepreneurs yet, but I can lead to them through their parents who are. Some of the problems that come to me for my clients are stress. People are stressed out either because of work relationships or teams or personal relationships. Trying to settle into a relationship, trying to get out of trouble relationship difficult, challenging relationship. How to balance all different moving parts of one's life and then finding meaning can also be a big issue for people who have reached a level of success in terms of professional expertise and financial security. The benefits to clients more peace, more balance, less stress, a greater sense of purpose - and one of my favorites is - doing less while accomplishing more. How to get into state of flow in which one through delegating and organizing work differently and being the spirit one is actually doing less, accomplishing more.
So in the introduction, everything we just did was all preliminary just to support people to see if they're in the right place as they read in the book. Then in the introduction, there are two quick sections. The first one is all the different things I've gone through that have been sort of part of the GPS navigation process leading me on this journey. One of the early ones was me passing German, then when I stumbled on Hypnosis audio Hypnosis program to learn German, then the other miracle breakthrough was with a client where Oprah Winfrey got involved with the client, actually called the client at their business, $2 million business in Manhattan and Oprah herself called the client to let them know that they were going to be featured in O Magazine. So that was my first experience with the influence of a billionaire, and Oprah no less, which got me focused on the billionaire track as a part of my business. Then the last sort of miracle breakthrough part of all this was when I had congestive heart failure in 2014. It was a really scary nightmare, then somehow that all changed. Those are the milestones along the way. I've been a line cook, a dishwasher, a busboy, I've worked in factories, I became a teacher. I've been trained for the priesthood, then get ordained physical priesthood, did pastoral psychotherapy, and then finally ended up in executive coaching. So that's a quick trajectory.
The final part is just the structure of the rest of the book. I'm so glad to be able to share this and remain familiar with the book myself. I believe that in giving my book substantive attention and keeping the dialogue going, it will become and remain more and more alive and useful to my audience and beyond.
