In harmony with the Synchromind content and learning theme for 2023 which is "miracles," today we will study a lesson from A Course in Miracles that has to do with miracles being a birthright, or something we are entitled to.
ACIM Lesson 77 declares simply, "I am entitled to miracles." The first paragraph of this lesson's teaching says, "You are entitled to miracles because of what you are, you will receive miracles because of what God is, and you will offer miracles because you are one with God. Again, how simple is salvation? Is it merely a statement of your true identity. It is this we will celebrate today." Then the second paragraph goes on to say, "Your claim to miracles does not lie in your illusions about yourself. It does not depend on any magical powers you have ascribed to yourself, nor on any rituals you have devised. It is inherent in the truth of what you are. It is implicit in what God is. It was ensured in your creation and guaranteed by the laws of God." There are some powerful mindset implications buried within these words.
Right away, I would like to acknowledge the use of the word entitlement. To some, it can feel like a strange word. Entitlement is often used in the context of bratty children or trust fund babies. I know that some people will feel a bit unsettled to say to themselves that they are actually entitled to miracles. And again, I do understand that. We all don't like entitled people wherever we go, people who have a real sense of unjustified entitlement in the day-to-day world. It can be obnoxious for others involved. But unlike that bratty image of entitlement consider this: this is actually a message from spirit to us to remind us that we were created to live miraculously. It is part of our identities. It's part of who we are. It's something we can choose to ignore or forget about and live apart from and experience nightmares as a result of trying to live apart from it from this identity, but nightmares truly weren't in the plan for who we were supposed to become. And therefore, the sense of entitlement is more like a legal entitlement. You know, it's almost like the way a beneficiary of a will can show up somewhere and say, this will says that I inherited x, y, and z and it legally belongs to me.
So it's more of a technical DNA trait than a mood or behavioral attitude. As I have mentioned many times before, I love to bring in the story of the Prodigal Child. This story illustrates again and again an idea of legal entitlement to the father's favor. The wayward child of a king squanders his inheritance after having demanded it early, and then comes back a very shabby version of himself. Then when this wayward child returns, to nearly everyone's surprise, instead of being reprimanded or ostracized from the family and more obedient son, the parent reinstates the child into all the full rights of being a part of the kingdom - no questions asked! Now this seems very odd to the sibling of the wayward child who stayed behind and took care of business. That sibling even feels somehow slighted in the process. The parent points out that it isn't a matter of performance or merit, but a matter of identity. In short, that story highlights that miracles are based on our accepting that we are entitled to experience them. The rest of the passage encourages us to use this and to rely on the availability of miracles to help us in any situation that we find ourselves in.
Next you can pay attention to the fact that the course calls out people who potentially may try to take credit for manifesting their own miracles by saying, "Your claim to miracles does not lie in your illusions about yourself. It does not depend on any magical powers you have ascribed to yourself, nor on any rituals you have devised." In a lot of my work as a coach, I help my clients to cultivate tools, habits, and even rituals some might say. For example, in last month's article I dove into the mind training toolkit from my book Nightmares to Miracles, and there are these twelve tools for training the mind. But don't be confused: all of these tools and everything I teach as a coach is inherently of value in and of itself. They simply help us to drill a pathway into connecting with source. I'll sometimes gently and respectfully bring attention to those who tend to be more secular who seem to talk about the tools without any clear connection of the tools being about connecting with inner divine source. There's a massive cultural secularization around meditation and mind training and things like that. And the reason that I'm gentle about this sort of maybe implied criticism or critique is that I have a lot of clients, very high powered, influential, successful people who may not want a spiritual or religious tone in the work that we do. In those circumstances, to convey a more secular perspective, consider that you are tapping into your inner GPS or your intuition or the quantum field. These are all sort of parallels.
On that note it forces me to remain humble myself as a coach in this field. I frequently say to clients when it seems appropriate and useful that, "I, Dave, am as dumb as a doorknob!" The reason I say that is because I don't want to apply any level of confusion that I ascribe any power to myself without source. The identity is almost like a legal identity that was or is attributed to all of us because of where we're sourced from in the Divine. And without that connection, then I believe I am as dumb as a doorknob.
This lesson is an excellently concise lesson to use as a daily mantra. You can say to yourself, "I am entitled to miracles," for anything and everything. Your wellness and health and all of the things that go along with that, your business, and every aspect of one's business, your cash flow, your clients, your products and services, your circle of love and romantic relationships, family relationships, friendship circles, plants, animals, the earth, the cosmos, and then finally, enlightenment, in terms of your sense of deeper divine purpose in your life. Combined these make up the four pillars that are part of my coaching program, book, and online course: health, wealth, love, and enlightenment.
Again, tapping into this entitlement doesn't sound like, "Hey source! Why is it taking you so long!?" But rather, "I'm having some challenges here. I need a way through. Please help me navigate. Show me what I should do." Once you have experienced this level of guidance, even just a few times, I believe you will have no doubts about a connection to an inner higher power beyond just yourself.
Now pivoting into a section of my book Nightmares to Miracles, I want to re-introduce the topic of cleaning. At the very end of the book, you'll find a link along with a very short password that will give you access to high resolution resource sheets. In chapter five, which is entitled Cleaning. At the beginning of my book, I've added a little blurb from A Course of Miracles that is relevant to the section which says, "There is an advantage to bringing nightmares into awareness, but only to teach you that they are not real and that anything they contain is meaningless." That's very powerful. That's how nightmares work. Once you wake up, you realize you are back to the real world and I think it's an apt way of beginning to look at cleaning.
For anyone who isn't yet familiar with this Hawaiian technique of cleaning, Ho'Oponopono, it can be summarized by the fact that it is comprised of four affirmations:
I love you.
I'm sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
So you do this as a practice for connecting with that inner source that we talked about, the divine. These affirmations are being directed to that divine source. I love you. I'm sorry for doing things my own way and not relying on you more, and therefore making a mess of things. Please forgive me from the chains of mental habits, programming, even karma that are keeping me entrapped. And then, thank you for that.
This practice is very powerful about establishing intimacy with this source and a lot of clients and people in my circle who tap into this experience how liberating it is to do this regularly. In addition to the original affirmations, I've also come up with some alternatives just to explain what each affirmation could also be interpreted as.
I love you is self explanatory.
I'm sorry means I'm stuck or I'm suffering and I need to get out of it.
Please forgive me translates to please delete my negative programming, which is keeping me stuck. You can say "please delete my negative programming on..."
Finally, thank you for getting me unstuck.
The final thing that I'd like to highlight here is Dr. Len's amazing story. Dr. Len is the Hawaiian PhD psychologist who pioneered the reintroduction of this ancient Hawaiian healing technique into the contemporary scene starting maybe about 25 or 30 years ago. Joe Vitali got very interested in this story and helped both of them to write a book about it called Zero Limits, which I think is a book worth looking at. One of the most compelling stories in their book, which I think just has an enormous relationship to leadership, is that Dr. Len was hired in Hawaii to be the chief psychologist at a facility that was housing those who are referred to as the criminally insane. These are people who have done the worst types of crimes: murder, rape, pedophilia, arson, just to name a few. They also have clear diagnoses such as schizophrenia, borderline conditions, bipolar conditions, depression, anxiety, and the list goes on. When Dr. Len got to this facility, these inmates were heavily medicated. They were heavily shackled at all times. There was high turnover from the staff. It was just a toxic place and the staff certainly did not enjoy working there. People got burned out very quickly. They even made a note in their explanation of all this that even plants wouldn't grow in the building. So Dr. Len was considered to be a very strange sort of psychologist because he didn't actually do one-on-one counseling with the inmates. Instead he stayed in his office, reviewed each inmates files, and cleaned all the files. Once he was there, inmates didn't need to be as heavily medicated or shackled anymore, staff turnover rates reduced, and plants started growing in the building. So I usually like to tee this up for my clients as just not some "woo woo" thing that we're doing, but if you can really embrace this as a leader of a team and the team can get it too, it's an enormous way to transform the organization from the inside out.
I also do this for my clients often. I will even do this in the complimentary call before a person has officially signed up with me. I use it to see if we would be a good fit by asking, what's one of your toughest pain points about any aspect of the problem that you just told me about that you want to work on? Then they just say it with the ad lib after me and we'll do that a couple of times. The point being that when there's conflict on a team of any kind, it's really because of the submerged pain points that are bumping into one another and people are actually attracted to one another because of their complementary pain points. That's actually how people fall in love. People don't like when I say that sometimes and I'm not taking the fun and the romance out of falling in love. But the reason that some people gravitate towards one another with such obsession and passion is because they're recognizing subconsciously in one another the pain that they can resolve. And if it's not resolved, then it's hell on earth. Or it can be. The bottom line is I get cleaning with my clients as soon as possible because it's very parallel to A Course in Miracles and all the mind training about releasing the blockages to connect with source. It's the same basic methodology, but it's much simpler to teach and get people tuned into as a precursor to maybe A Course of Miracles if they want it.
Today, I encourage you to take a browse at this cleaning technique by going on YouTube and searching for guided Ho'Oponopono videos. Apply a pain point in your life to be cleaned and observe as the transformation takes place over time.
