Hello world!
Printing “Hello World!” is the standard first program that programmers write when learning a new programming language. It seems a good place to start with a new journal, and a good place to start the lessons from A Course in Miracles once again.
I first encountered the Course over 20 years ago at a party. The host had the old fashioned three volume set on her bookshelf. A Course in Miracles, what an intriguing title. I pulled volume 1, the Workbook for Students off the shelf and started to read the introduction.
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.
This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:
Nothing real can be threatened.Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.
I was struck dumb. I literally couldn’t move or speak for some time. I hadn’t even finished my first beer, so was sober. Phyllis, the hostess, came over to me, removed the book from my hands and said, “Come by and talk to me tomorrow.”
Tomorrow came and she loaned me her copy to sample. It was strange, written in an old fashioned style that can be hard to pick up. Later I learned that much of the Course is in iambic pentameter like Shakespeare and “A Night Before Christmas”. But that’s beside the point. A long journey had begun for me, which was sometimes wonderful and sometimes difficult. But ACIM is part of my life now in a way I couldn’t have imagined then.
The next year when my girlfriend died, the lessons were my lifeline, offering solace that I couldn’t find elsewhere. Now, 22 years later, I return yet again to the lessons. It’s another time of transition, though thankfully not one so devastating.
Join me, if you will, for the course of a year. If you do the lessons, you will be changed. You don’t need to believe. You don’t need to do anything other than be diligent in following the simple lesson-a-day format.
I’ve participated in Course groups, led some, organized others, sat mostly silent in one for a year as I practiced the lessons. Talking about ACIM is good. But it is in the practice of the material through the lessons in the Workbook for Students that real change occurs. Changing ideas is a good first step. Changing one’s self through daily practice is where the real reward is gained.
Posted on December 29, 2006 ::
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