I did some looking around and didn’t find a great deal about A Course In Miracles as it relates to money problems, and money lack in particular. This is interesting given that money lack or poverty, however we want to describe it, is the most significant problem people believe themselves to have — that’s according to my own unofficial observation.
Let me try then to see whether I can fill the gap on this subject matter: How A Course In Miracles responds to money problems… or doesn’t.
A Course In Miracles does touch on material desires and also needs, as we perceive ourselves to have needs. Here’s one interesting quote in the Course referring to money specifically: ‘You really think that you would starve unless you have stacks of green paper strips and piles of metal discs.’
I think it’s fair to say, on considering this quote, that the Course is saying you do not, in fact, have a need for money. Do you believe this? Do you honestly consider it true that you do not need money? Almost all of us would say this is totally unbelievable and that we do need money, and that without having at least some access to money we would be unable to survive.
Money for us then is life. That’s an extraordinary insight. So why does A Course In Miracles seemingly contradict it?
Because A Course In Miracles does not share your perception about who you are and the nature of your existence. You believe you are a physical being residing in a material world and A Course In Miracles says no — you are a spiritual presence that is abstract or formless, and you exist in a spiritual plane as one with God and within God. These are two very different beliefs, and are so contradictory that one of these beliefs must be wrong.
Which is it? Which belief is wrong? Are you, right this moment, a physical being in a material world or a formless presence in a spiritual home?
Of course the great majority of us will say that we are physical in a material world. And in saying this we are saying that A Course In Miracles is wrong; and that we are right.
And here’s where A Course In Miracles, in the name of Jesus and through the Holy Spirit, offers an insight and a correction. If you were in a spirit home at one with God would money be a need? Would there be any needs at all? What needs could there be being one with God?
None.
So the Course says your problem is false perception and this false perception manifests as an experience of lack, and also of emotional suffering. If you want to end these experiences of lack and suffering then open your eyes and see your reality — so says the Course.
There is but one problem, according to the Course, and here it is: you believe you are away from your spirit home within God, and this belief brings on a variety of lack and suffering experiences — including money lack. The solution is not to engage a projection that is not real, the solution is to change the cause of the false projection.
A Course In Miracles is concerned with cause and not cause’s false projections, and that is why the Course puts very little focus on false projections — like money lack — and puts so much focus on the actual cause: false perception, and correcting it.
Let me try to emphasize, as clearly as I’m able, what all of this means and what its practical applications are. You have no lack whatsoever, including money lack. You do not have lack — you have a problem of perception. You believe you are a limited physical being living in a finite material universe, and that you exist physically separate from God. In reality you are an infinite, immortal spiritual being living as one with God, in a spiritual plane.
You manifest experiences according to your beliefs about your reality. If your perception of your reality changes — if you should genuinely accept yourself as an infinite spiritual being completely at one with and in God — you will manifest different experiences. This is why A Course In Miracles refers to the world as an ‘outside picture of an inward condition’.
Projection makes perception. The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that. But though it is no more than that, it is not less. Therefore, to you it is important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world.
Change your mind. But don’t think you’ll be able to simply pay lip service, simply proclaim that you think differently about what you are and what the world is, and abundance will quickly roll in. If you’re searching for abundance then, nearly by definition, you consider yourself lacking and so don’t believe you’re an infinite presence at one with God.
See the difficulty of it? If you want it you’re actually keeping yourself from it.
A Course In Miracles is a manual for teaching us, progressively, what we really are. And good follows from this insight.
