A Course in Miracles
The course of miracle aims to try and elaborate the distinction between God and ego. Other words that try to enlighten people on their life meaning and life occurrences are knowledge, perception, truth, and illusion. The knowledge of these terms helps us to understand what happens in our day-to-day life. According to the course of miracles, the ego denotes wrong-mindedness and the Holy Spirit represents right-mindedness. The Holy Spirit is one of the three trinities.
That is God, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ as our helper sent the Holy Spirit. According to the frame of the course of miracles, the work of the Holy Spirit is to teach us forgiveness, which acts as a corrective measure of the ego. Thus we can talk of three thoughts of systems. These are One-mindedness that belongs to the knowledge, the wrong and right-mindedness represent the world of perception.
According to the course of miracles, the world and the body are only illusions that are created by the ego and therefore symbolize separation. The 2nd level relates to this world where we believe we are. From the second level, the body and world are taken as neutral and can serve one or two purposes. The wrong-mindedness ego takes them as devices to strengthen separation while according to right-mindedness they are the Holy Spirit that teaches as the divine forgiveness of God. Here illusion refers to misperception of ego. That is it, tries to view an attack as the solution to the prevailing circumstances instead of a call for love.
This clearly shows how the course focuses on our intents, not their external manifestations which are only projections of our intents. That is a course of cause but not effect. The ego has the capacity to affect our physical world, as this physical world is inherently illusory due to our thoughts. The course of miracles emplacing on correcting these miscreative thoughts that are the real cause of our problems like in the case of Dan.
According to the course of miracles, the one-mindedness of Christ comprises love, spirit truth, infinity, and reality. According to the oneness of God’s creation, the sum of all these thoughts is unbreakable. On the other hand, wrong-mindedness due to the ego comprises three major concepts. These are Sin-Which is a belief that we have separated our self from God which is not true in the real world of One-mindedness. The second one is guilty that takes us when we believe that we have sinned and hence separated our self from God. The guilt troubles us because it symbolizes our attack on God. This is manifested as fear, which is our third concept.
Peaceful Warrior
The peaceful warrior movie revolves around Dan Millman (Scott Mechlowicz), one of UC Berkley’s more promising gymnasts. Dan is one of those guys that most people don’t enjoy being around because he seems to have everything — good grades, athletic prowess, and an endless stream of hot sorority babes in his bed – all a result of very little effort. Oh, and he’s also a total prick. But he also has a powerful case of insomnia, exacerbated by visually stunning, though often disturbing nightmares. (Dan2006)
Late one night, Dan is out driving to nowhere in particular and stops at a filling station. He encounters a white-haired mechanic (Nick Nolte), who speaks in well-worn Zen Buddhist clichés before making a leap to the top of the filling station roof. This magic trick is enough to reel in the athlete’s curiosity, and thereafter, Dan makes a habit of visiting the gruff ‘fella’, who he nicknames “Socrates”.(Dan2006)
At first, Dan doesn’t buy into Socrates’ “wisdom,”.Like in a spiritual journey, something catastrophic occurs to kick things into gear; Dan suffers a motorcycle accident and sustains injuries almost identical to those that occurred within one of his nightmares. When doctors discover that the athlete’s femur is broken in 17 places, they tell him to kiss his gymnastics career goodbye. Dan briefly considers jumping off a clock tower to end all the painful misery, but sadly for the audience, he decides to visit his old buddy Socrates instead. (Dan2006)
In his humbled state, Dan decides to embrace Socrates’ wisdom, and in doing so, he reevaluates his life and its consequences. Socrates is convinced that a return to competitive gymnastics can be found through enlightenment, so he decides to educate Dan on the art of the peaceful warrior, which basically means letting go of ambition, developing an appreciation for the mundane, and living in the moment, i.e., Chicken Soup for the Dipshit. Indeed, Socrates’ method of training is that of unconventional conventionalism, and one can observe shades of wax on/wax off in his techniques, though Mr. Miyagi, at least, managed to teach Danielson karate, while Socrates only teaches Dan how to scrub a toilet and repair a few engines, lessons he could’ve picked up just as well at the Adult Center for Minimum Wage Employment. (Dan2006)
Applications
The lesson that Dan learns from Socrates is very important in his life. This is because it helps him to live a new life after the despair he finds himself in, after the motorcycle accident. In fact, the knowledge of Socrates helped Dan to live since he wanted to commit suicide when he learned from the doctor that his femur had broken 17 times and therefore he could not do his gymnastics again. The motorcycle accident that happened to him is in agreement with the concepts of life in the course of miracles, where our actions are taken as projections of our thoughts This is because the accident was a projection of his dream (thoughts) he had in the past.
Therefore the knowledge of Socrates to Dan was very vital because it helped him to move from the illusion world he was in after the accident to embrace reality and come back again as a strong gymnastic. The knowledge of Socrates helps Dan to learn that nothing is impossible with handwork and determination. Socrates helps Dan to live at the moment and forget what had happened to him before which was his major problem.
This required him to start a new life and a new history in his life and a new way of doing things. According to Socrates Dan was to stop his former luxurious that comprised of an endless stream of hot sorority babes in his bed and live a life that was compliant with Socrates’ way of living. This was very important as it helped him to regain his strength eventually and end up being a great gymnasium.
On the other hand, Dan learned Socrates’ spiritual way of life. He learned that dreams do not happen accidentally in life but according to Socrates dreams should be taken to alert people to something that will in their life in the future. This is because according to Socrates and the course of miracles dreams are taken as thoughts that have a spiritual significance of events to happen in the future. i.e. they are a projection of events to occur.
The lesson that we learn from the peaceful Warrior is very practical to our day-to-day lives. This is because in the journey of our life we also find ourselves in the same states of despair as Dan was. This happens when encountering difficult or challenging situations in our life. This becomes very hard for most of the people who do not have the wisdom of Socrates to conquer them. Therefore it is very important for people to learn Socrates’ wisdom to enable them to overcome difficult situations in our life.
References
Dan M. (2006) Way of Peaceful Warrior: New York University New York. Web.