Camp Miracle: Lifesaving ACIM Tools and Skills from Lesson 78

Hop on the Love Bus, Everybody! We’re off to Miracle Camp!

We’re gonna have crazy fun, gettin’ our joy on, joining with our Mighty Companions, and learning new skills to help us find our way home when camp is over.

The first and most important activity is meeting our Counselor and Director. Some of us may have a bit more experience at navigating this camp and are here only to be truly helpful, but we all have the same Counselor and Director. He goes by any number of names – Spirit, Jesus, I AM, Higher Power, God, Allah, the Goddess, Mother Mary, Universe, Creator… He answers to whatever you call Him and whenever you call on Him. 

This Guide will hear you, answer all your questions and dissolve all your problems. 

He knows where you are going, and how to get there, and walks ahead of you as a way-shower, illuminating your path with His light so you will not lose your way. 

He walks beside you, offering constant companionship, encouragement and support – if you stumble or fall He will pick you up and help you gain your footing. 

He walks behind you, and always has your back – protecting you and keeping you safe. 

You are equipped with a built-in GPS that will always point you in the right direction and lead you back to Him. He does wait for you to call on Him though, because we all do have free will here at Miracle Camp. So I invite you to make a connection with Him if you want to have as much fun as you possibly can, rather than wandering around alone in the dark, getting lost and being scared the whole time.

Your fellow campers consist of everyone in the whole world, so there is no one who is not at Miracle Camp with you. The campers who share your cabin are all of the people who are and have ever been in your life. But nobody is excluded from Miracle Camp for any reason. Ever.

We’re going to cram a lot of adventure into our camp experience, and you will have the opportunity to learn a lot of things that you can keep practicing to speed up your journey back home. 

We begin with the Obstacle Course.

 To be successful at doing the Obstacle Course you’re gonna need 3 tools which you’ll definitely want for the remainder of camp. They’ll make your life so much easier if you use them every day on the trip back home. 

The goal of the Obstacle Course is to use these 3 tools to reach the Awareness of Love’s Presence. 

Willingness – your decision to be all-in, to want to be in the Awareness of Love’s Presence, and to agree to put on your Shift-in-Perception goggles.

Shift-in-Perception goggles – these go on once your willingness is in place. They will correct your vision, and help you to see everything that has previously been distorted by your judgment through the lens of Love instead. 

Forgiveness Boomerang – this tool works with the Shift-in-Perception goggles. Whenever you find that your peace of mind is disturbed by an obstacle – a relationship issue, difficult situation, bodily condition, financial concern, or some other perceived problem –you say, “I forgive you because there’s nothing to forgive. I forgive myself for believing in the ego’s dream, and I ask my Guide to help me see it differently” and release it. 

 It doesn’t matter if the “You” is another person, or a job, or your body, or your bank account, or a politician, or the IRS. It is part of the process, and the way it works is that as you say those powerful words and launch them with the Forgiveness Boomerang, that healing acknowledgment that all is Spirit and all is perfect and forgiven goes toward the person or problem and then ricochets back to you, and BOOM! 

Your perception is shifted and you see the situation differently. You might receive inspiration or guidance to take an action, or reach a place of compassion or understanding, or the issue may just dissolve into the light that you are when you use those tools. Regardless, it no longer looks like an obstacle, and you begin to feel the Awareness of Love’s Presence. 

This shift in perception is what is referred to as the miracle. As you practice this more and more you will be amazed at the clarity, ease, beauty, abundance, and sense of interconnectedness and synchronicity that colors the way you see the world.

Now that we’re geared up with our tools and have completed the Obstacle Course, we are prepared for Trust Falls.

So in order to find our way home we have to develop trust in our fellow campers, because we can’t get home without them. The only reason we don’t trust our bros is because we think we are guilty and we project that guilt onto them and see them as guilty and not to be trusted. This results in us also not trusting ourselves or God, because we are all one inseparable Being.

So the Trust Fall consists of recognizing our brother’s innocence, so we can see our own. The way we do that is to remember that everyone at this camp is actually here to save us, and we are here to save them. We do not need to be suspicious of each other – we are all rays of the same light. As we follow our Guide and place our fellow campers in His care, we let go of holding them and ourselves in guilt. Instead we trust, seeing the Truth of them, and we relax into their arms, knowing that they will catch and hold us.

If you struggled with Trust Falls because you’re holding a grievance against another camper, no worries. The next activity will help you overcome that – it’s our Lifesaving Badge qualification!  

If you are ready to take the camp experience up a notch and move yourself forward to a place of greater peace, love, and joy, then jump into the deep end, this next endeavor is for you!

 Our lifesaving exercise is based on workbook lesson 78 from A Course in Miracles –

“Let miracles replace all grievances”.

W-pI.78

The activity is done with your Camp Buddy, because as the Course teaches us,

“When I am healed I am not healed alone.”

W-pI.137

Now, your Camp Buddy is not necessarily your BFF – at least not one toward whom you are having shiny, happy feelings for at the moment. Nope. Too easy. Where is the strength and skill development in that? Rather, he or she is a person toward whom you are holding a grievance! As lesson 78 says,

“Someone perhaps you fear and even hate, someone you think you love who angered you, someone you call a friend but whom you see as difficult at times or hard to please, demanding, irritating, or untrue to the idea he should accept as his, according to the role you set for him. You know the one to choose, his name has crossed your mind already.”

W-pI.78.4:5,5:1

(Does anybody else besides me feel totally busted right now?) 

So we have our Camp Buddy assigned to us. Now, the first part of the lifesaving practice is that we hold the person in our mind as we are now thinking of him or her. As the lesson continues,

“You will review his faults, the difficulties you have had with him, the pain he caused you, his neglect, and all the little and larger hurts he gave. You will regard his body with its flaws and better points as well, and you will think of his mistakes and even of his ‘sins’.”

W-pI.78.6:1-4

Then, you ask your Camp Counselor and Director, who is the One Who knows this fellow camper in his reality and truth, to let you see him differently, and see him through the eyes of true forgiveness. You say,

“Let me behold my savior in this one You have appointed as the one for me to ask to lead me to the holy light in which he stands, that I may join with him.”

W-pI.78.7:3

You see him filled with light, see it emanating from him, shining forth and encompassing you both. In your willingness to join with one you held a grievance toward, the miracle – the shift in perception – occurs.

You have allowed vision to be restored, so that you can see that this person is your savior. You have opened the way for the Holy Spirit to dissolve any feeling of separation that was between you. Y

ou have thrown your brother a life preserver of love and saved his life by allowing him to save yours.

By perceiving the light in him, which is the ONLY way you can see the light that is always shining within yourself – you have let Spirit lift you to safety rather than resisting and keeping you both in darkness. 

You have now earned your lifesaving badge today! You rock!

Camp Miracle: Lifesaving ACIM Tools and Skills from Lesson 78

Thank you SO MUCH for coming with me to Miracle Camp! I had such a great time with you, and hope that you are now, literally, a happy camper. 

If you have had fun, felt empowered or experienced a shift please share this post and subscribe to my Youtube channel.

If you want to work more intimately on developing the tools that A Course in Miracles offers to transform your relationships with everyone and everything in your life, book a free Coaching Discovery call with me here.

 As we embark on the bus to leave camp – but not each other – I offer this prayer:

“Father-Mother Spirit, as we return to the places we live in the world, let us remember that You, our Counselor and Director, go with us, inspiring us to carry our light and shine it forth. We are grateful to You for providing us with the tools we now take with us, and for our intention to practice using them. Be with us as we work to cultivate the skills and strengths we have learned, and help us to build on them, with whatever buddies You lead us to encounter along the way home. Let us continue to be moved to untie the strands of fear with which we have bound ourselves and each other, weaving them instead into symbols of friendship that connect us. Amen.”

BEST. FELLOW. MIRACLE. CAMPERS. EVER!

Kumbaya.

Kelly

Kelly Russell, The Rock Your Joy Coach

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