A Course in Miracles

the beginnings for me . . . and for the Course

At this point I found myself struggling! This book was strange, to say the least, and I found myself going unconscious at the bottom of every page. It was like I’d read the page and go, yeah I understand that, and then seconds later I’d totally forget what I had just read. This was total resistance. This is a defense mechanism we use (the ACIM would say the ego uses) to avoid changing. Resistance is a strange thing, we usually resist most that which a part of us loves and yearns to be with. The thing we’re fighting to achieve is the thing we resist the most.

Background to the ACIM

The book comes in three parts. There is the text itself, plus a handbook for teachers, and the work book for students. The workbook is, if you like, the way into it. It contains 365 lessons, which are like a condensed or bite-sized version of the text, to be read sequentially, leading the reader from the fundamentals of metaphysics to self realization. The workbook spans exactly one calendar year, with no more than one lesson to be covered every day. So I abandoned the text and started there. However, a little bit into the workbook I again hit resistance, and just started making excuses not to do it. However, I’d say about a year later, I took up the challenge again, starting again at lesson 1, and this time I completed it. I finished it on my 50th birthday.

I suppose you could say I was ‘ready’ to do it then and not before. I’ll accept this explanation although I find the term a bit new agey and a cover up for denying our resistance. Somebody wrote once, I think it was Tony Robbins, although I’m not sure, that when we make a decision with the ‘made-up mind’ we will carry it through. In other words only when we’re totally committed to a task will we do it. Often we tell ourselves that we’ll do something with no intention of carrying it through. Well, the second time I embraced the material I did it with the made-up mind, and then all my resistance suddenly fell away. Very soon I started enjoying it and it became like the thing I’d been looking for all my life. I kept thinking what the hell kept me so long from reading this? I remember jumping out of bed each morning so enthusiastic was I to discover that day’s lesson. Perhaps I should mention I was doing a lot of circular breathing (rebirthing) see my second great awakening at the time, and the more breath we have the more life we have, and consequently we are better able to overcome resistance. Then what seemed difficult before can be easy to grasp.

Ok, time for a reality check here. I am not suggesting for one moment that you must drop what you’re doing now and rush out and buy A Course in Miracles. Part of the ethos of the unscripted self, which I set myself from the very onset, is not to be prescriptive. Rather I want to reveal vistas that show you where you can go, then gently lead you there if you so wish. Only go where you feel drawn, only travel the path with a heart. There’s a difference between being drawn to something, and feeling you ‘must’ do it. The first is your path calling you, the second is often an outside pressure that seems to suggest, ‘if I don’t do this I’ll be missing something’, and this is lack mentality. Not a good place to start anything from. Of course if you feel drawn to the Course then by all means go for it. But it’s not for everyone. Also I hasten to add you don’t have to be doing rebirthing or anything else in order to understand this work.

How the Course came into the world

The story starts in the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Columbia University in New York city with two individuals, Bill Thetford, professor of Medical Psychology there, and Helen Schucman, who worked as a psychologist in the department. The time was the mid 1960. Things were pretty rough at the time in the university, and in the lives of both individuals. Then, to cut a long story very short, one day Helen heard a voice speaking to her out of nowhere. Yes, she thought she was going crazy as anyone would when they hear voices in their head. However, the Voice continued, calm, assured, unthreatening. It asked her to write down what she heard, none of which made any sense to Helen at the time. The voice relayed to her

“This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love. For that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.”

And it is summarized as

“Nothing real can be threatened,

Nothing unreal exists.

Herein lies the peace of God.”

And so the Voice continued for the next eight years. It would speak to her for one hour each day and Helen would faithfully record the words. Then it would stop as suddenly as it begun. Also if the phone rang or someone entered the room the Voice would stop and resume again as soon as the interruption was over. The only two people Helen communicated that she was having this unusual experience was her husband and Bill Thetford. Despite his logical and analytical mind Bill was the one who encouraged her the most, feeling a great empathy with the message she was receiving, and was instrumental in having the material printed and eventually published. The Course was published in its three constituent parts in the 1970s.

Impact

There is no doubt to anyone who’s read the Course that it comes from a source beyond this world, from a higher-logical level than even the most intelligent or inspired works we are familiar with. The Voice clearly identifies itself as Jesus, but in no way does the personality intrude. It is not specifically a Christian document nor does it call on anyone to adopt that or any other form of belief. In fact the Course is way beyond all those things. The first thing that struck me when I eventually read it was how it didn’t have to make anyone else wrong in order to get its message across. Most great works will ‘argue against’ something. Indeed this is how academia teaches to establish an argument or position. The Course is beautiful and free of all that. It is truly script-free. It doesn’t tell you what to do or lay down any ‘thou shalts’, or ‘thou shalt nots’. True freedom, true enlightenment is always in your hands. Some may be put off by the language of the Course, as I was in the beginning. It is Christian (almost Biblical) in tone, but in its message it is more Buddhist, although of course it doesn’t mention, let alone prescribe either of these. As I say it seems to come from an authority, from an intelligence, way beyond what we know. Whether you accept the authorship as Jesus or nor, strangely isn’t really that important. The Course speaks to everyone, of whatever creed, belief or persuasion.

If one can summarize the Course, its message is that there is only God, and that you are part of God and are still with God. And everything else is an illusion, merely a dream. That you are as God created you, and cannot be otherwise. Therefore what we see as sin and evil is merely our own false perception and not true seeing. It states,

“You are as God created you, and so is every living thing you look upon, regardless of the images you see. What you behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss, is but temptation to perceive yourself defenseless and in hell. Yield not to this, and you will see all pain, in every form, wherever it occurs, but disappear as mists before the sun.”

The way out of this illusion is through forgiveness. But the Course does not teach forgiveness in the traditional way. If we really think about it, to forgive someone is to hold power over them. This was what I always found so repugnant about Christianity. Instead the Course teaches,

“Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in that view are all your sins forgiven. What is sin except a false idea about God’s Son? Forgiveness merely sees its falsity, and therefore lets it go. What then is free to take its place is now the Will of God.”

It also speaks about the ‘special relationship’, which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have friends and lovers, but that if we make these ‘special’ we risk limiting our love. It uses the word special in its original and proper meaning. By ‘special’ we tend to mean something dear to us. But the word actually denotes ‘that which is different’. The Special Olympics uses this in the correct way. Participants in these Olympics are not any lesser athletes than those in the ordinary Olympics, they are simply different, and wish to be seen and respected for that. The Course puts relationships into two categories, the unholy relationship and the holy one.

I paraphrase: An unholy relationship is based on differences where each one thinks the other has what they have not. They stay until they think that there is nothing left to steal, and then move on……..A holy relationship starts from a different premise. Each one has looked within and seen no lack. Accepting their completion, they would extend it by joining with another, whole as themselves (like two full cups running over on each other).

I freely admit A Course in Miracles to be the primary informing factor in my life and in my writings. However, it’s not the only one. Please don’t think that everything written in the unscripted self is from, or in some way related to the Course. It’s not, and it would be doing a disservice to the Course to leave that unsaid, and thereby have it insinuated.

I wouldn’t want to see it becoming the new Bible, to see it forced on people or become a ‘must do’, Indeed this would go against the very principles of the Course which states that only you can bring about your salvation.

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