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Study of the Text is the first phase of the Course’s program.
The second volume, the Workbook, contains 365 lessons, one for each day of the year.
The Workbook, then, is really a training program in the Course’s system of spiritual practice.
Through practice, the same ideas that we learned in the Text become more deeply internalized. They increasingly become the lens through which we see and the source of what we feel.
The first form is that of the teacher of pupils, in which a more experienced student of the Course plays the role of mentor, skillfully guiding a pupil along the path of the Course.
The other form is that of a healer who goes to those with health issues and shines the healing power of forgiveness into their minds.
its essence is simply the giving of love, usually in v...
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As the Course says, “Everything you teach you are learning. Teach only love, and learn that love is yours and you are love.”
The new world of meaning that we first encountered in the Text has now become the only meaning that we see in ourselves and in all things.
The teaching A Course in Miracles offers a unique perspective on reality, the human condition, and the path to happiness. What follows is an attempt to condense its grand symphony of ideas into a brief summary.
The foundation for everything in the Course is its concept of an uncon...
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the Course describes God as being like the perfect father—purely loving, without the slightest trace of a...
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Before time began, this loving Father created us as His beloved Sons. He poured all of His attributes, all of His being, into us, so that we were exactly like Him—egoless, limitless, an...
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He created us without bodies, without any boundaries to wall us off from Him. We thus existed in boundless oneness with God and with each other, basking in a love from Him that exceeds our current comprehension....
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earth with which it can be compared, and nothing you have ever felt apart from Him that res...
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Such a Heaven may sound alien to us now, yet this, says the Course, is our natural environment. This is home.
We collectively
dreamt an entire universe in which everyone was separate, selfishly contending with each other and locked inside vulnerable bodies that aged and died.
The Course teaches that the world of time and space was n...
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It also teaches that however solid this world may seem to be, it is not truly real.
This might initially sound disheartening, yet it is actually wonderful news,
for it means that Heaven remains the only reality and that this world of pain...
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We, however, believe this world is real, and so all of our efforts go towards rearranging its circumstances. We chase after possessions and money and power. We search for that special person who will make us happy. We lavish attention on our body—its appearance, its pleasure, its comfort, and its safety. Yet none of it really works. It all just perpetuates the real problem, which remains unaddressed.
The ego is nothing more than a false belief about our identity. It is the belief that we are separate,
alone, and on our own.
“Guilt is…the sole cause of pain in any form.”9
In a desperate attempt to get rid of this guilt, we project it outward. Now the guilt that we see inside appears to be outside of us, lurking in everyone we meet.
What we don’t realize is that the real source of our fear is our own guilt. We are afraid that our sins will eventually catch up with us.
We forgive,
by realizing “that there is nothing to forgive.”
If to err is human and to forgive divine, then our forgiveness shows us that we are divine.
Through forgiveness we begin to relate to others in a new way. Rather than taking from them to meet our needs, we extend help and healing to them for the sake of their needs. We take the love that arises in us through forgiveness and express it in a helpful way.
is the main meaning of the word “miracle” in the Course: an expression of love that heals the perception of another—which is what love always does. As our love deepens, giving miracles becomes our whole function, our life purpose. “I am the light of the world,” the Workbook has us say. “That is my only function. That is why I am here.”12 In this function we rely on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, trusting Him to tell us who needs our help and how they can best receive it. Rather than this being a noble sacrifice, it fills us ...
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the Jesus of A Course in Miracles is a very different figure than the Jesus of traditional Christianity.
He does not see himself, for instance, as the only begotten Son of God. Likewise, he does not see salvation as hinging on faith in him. And he emphatically rejects the idea that he died for our sins.
A portrait of the historical Jesus and his teachings
Prayer is the medium of miracles. 2Prayer is the natural communication between the created and the Creator. 3Through prayer love is received, and through miracles love is expressed.
3God does not guide, because He can share only perfect knowledge.19
4Guidance is evaluative, because it implies that there is a right way and also a wrong way, one to be chosen and the other avoided.
In this world, it is impossible to create, but it is possible to make happy. 2We have said repeatedly that the Holy Spirit would not deprive you of your special relationships, but would transform them.16 3And by that, all that is meant is that He will restore to them the function that was given them by God. 4The function you have given them is clearly not to make happy. 5But the holy relationship shares God’s purpose, rather than aiming to make a substitute for it. 6Every special relationship that you have made is a substitute for God’s will, and glorifies yours instead of His because of the
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2Every special relationship which you have ever undertaken has, as its fundamental purpose, the aim of occupying your mind so completely that you will not hear the call of truth.
2The workbook is divided into two sections, the first dealing with the undoing of the way you see now, and the second with the restoration of sight.
4The very nature of true perception is that it has no limits.
5It is the opposite of the way you see now.
Atonement, or the correction of perception.
3The means of the Atonement is forgiveness.
4The structure of “individual consciousness” is essentially irrelevant, because it is a concept representing the “orig...
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