Seminary Program

This is where we post the essays from many of our Universal Life Church Seminary students. When students finish a ULC course, they write a comprehensive essay about their experiences with the course, what they learned, didn't learn, were inspired by, etc. Here are their essays.

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Friday, October 31, 2008

A Course in Miracles

Dr. in Metaphysics Final Essay
By Rev. Patricia Buben

A Course in Miracles is all about love and forgiveness. All situations can improve and miracles can happen when we open ourselves up to love and forgiveness in all areas of our lives.

The Miracle Worker course starts with explaining the function of the three parts of our mind: conscious, subconscious and higher mind. The conscious mind, which is the lower mind, is where we are consciously most of the time. It contains our personality and ego. Anytime we move to a different level of thinking, we move from servitude into freedom. As the Course states: “Freedom of choice is the only freedom that exists in this world”.

It goes on to discuss the nature of reality and how our being separate from God is only an illusion. Love is the only thing that really exists. When we choose to heal the separateness, we go back to the true reality of our oneness with God. The Holy Spirit is here to remind us that this world is only an illusion. When we let him in, he takes away all guilt and fear. He teaches us how to forgive.
Meditation is one way of going from the chaos of the world to true inner peace. It helps you to remove yourself from the attachment of the ego/false self and reconnect with who you really are inside. Meditation also has a profound effect on the body. It helps to reduce stress, induces the relaxation response and helps to balance out your body. This is the opposite effect that stress has on the body.

In order to create what we want, we need to focus on positive thoughts otherwise we will attract negative situations into our lives. Every thought we think creates our reality. Thoughts filled with fear and guilt will produce negative results. Thoughts filled with love and forgiveness will produce positive results. In order to have the life we want, we must have a desire to change and an intention to take action. These two things will produce the needed change and attract positive results into our lives. One thing that I found very interesting and thought-provoking was the definition of an addiction: “the giving away of our power to an outside source in order to hide from our guilt.” What a powerful (and true) statement!

Lesson 19 especially resonated with me. It discusses the purpose of life, which is to give of ourselves. This is true in every situation that we are in. For example, the purpose of work is not to obtain wealth, status and compliments from our boss. The purpose of work is to give of ourselves—to our coworkers, staff and boss. Work is a temple where we combine our talents with others’ talents and use them to meet the needs of others. We are at work to do God’s will and if we surrender ourselves to him, the Holy Spirit will be able to work through us. That is what creates miracles. God only wants us to be happy doing our work and doing what we love to do.
A quotation taken from the Course: “Our talents are diamonds reflecting the infinite talent of God” is one of the most beautiful statements I have ever read. It expresses beautifully how important our talents are and the genius that God must be.

Overall, the entire course was very powerful and I had many “aha’s” while taking it. I would recommend it for all students. It has made a big difference in how I look at life and how my thoughts have had such a powerful affect. I never realized just how responsible we are for everything that occurs in our lives.

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