Chapter 1:  The Meaning of Miracles

A Course in Miracles: Getting Started

by ExplosiveSpirit | Aug 7, 2016 | A Course in Miracles, Weekly Blog

About A Course in Miracles

Carol Tallon, www.CarolTallon.com

  The original text was delivered by Professor Helen Schucman and Professor William (Bill) Thetford, both professors of Medical Psychology at Columbia University back in the 1970’s.  I am using the term ‘delivered’ as neither took credit for being the authors, but rather, Helen was the channel for the work, assisted by Bill.

If it is of interest, I recommend that you watch this YouTube video that gives a bit of personal and professional background on both professors.  By their own admission, neither was a believer; they were not living particularly spiritual lives.  In fact, their relationship was described as being far from harmonious.  But perhaps therein lay the potential…

Together, they set out to find an alternative way for their academic department to co-exist without the “aggressive and angry” attitudes that were, at that point in time, being reflected.  As it transpired, A Course in Miracles was and is that way.

In the Preface

A Course in Miracles is a way to find your own inner teacher.

While it is blatantly Christian in statement, it deals with universal spiritual themes.  It aims to reverse thoughts, to bring us through a journey of unlearning so that we might get to our state at the time of our creation.

The book is comprised of three parts: Text; Workbook for Students; Manual for Teachers.  The text is broken down into 27 chapters, which I will summarise over the next month.  Please note that the summaries and any interpretations are personal to me and another reader will surely have another interpretation.  I am interested to hear other interpretations and I would hope that by approaching A Course in Miracles in this way – regularly and through the ExplosiveSpirit.com website – it will lead to a discussion among readers of the text.

Upon reading of the text in its entirety, the workbook has 365 lessons, one for every day of the year.  A year of miracles, how amazing does that sound?  The text asks that you suspend judgment as you apply the lessons.  The course is a beginning only, not an end in itself.

Nothing real can be threatened.

Nothing unreal exists.

Herein lies the peace of God.

Truth versus Perception:

Truth is unalterable, eternal and unambiguous.  It can be unrecognised but it cannot be changed.

Perception is learned rather than given, selective in its perceptual emphases, unstable in its functioning and inaccurate in its interpretation.

Knowledge is truth.  Truth and perception are two distinct thought systems, opposite is every respect.  Perception leads to perpetual conflict within ourselves and with our higher power, whether you believe that to be God or  the Universe or some other entity.

We are living in a world of illusion; much of what we ourselves have created is simply not real.

“When you have been caught in the world of perception you are caught in a dream.  You cannot escape without help, because everything your senses show merely witness to the reality of the dream”

We need to recognise our illusions without believing in them.  To escape this dream world, we must reverse our thinking and unlearn our mistakes.  This happens through forgiveness.

“Projection makes perception”.  This refers to the truth as we see it, i.e. it is made true only by our interpretations.

We use perception to justify our own mistakes, our anger, our impulses to attack, our lack of love.  We must learn to forgive, not because we are good or charitable beings, but because what we are seeing or perceiving is not true.  We have distorted the world by our twisted defenses and are seeing what is not there.  We need to recognise and look past or forgive our errors in perception.  By forgiving others, we forgive ourselves.

As a lapsed Catholic, I have always had a difficulty with the word sin, as defined by those Catholic teachings.  A Course in Miracles defines sin as “lack of love”.  Sin is a mistake to be corrected, not a wrong-doing to be punished.

Our sense of inadequacy, weakness and incompletion comes from our perception of scarcity.  This scarcity principle, or concept of lack, governs the whole word of illusion.

We seek in others what we feel is wanting in ourselves.  We ‘love’ – but not in the true sense of the word – another in order to get something for ourselves.  This is a mistake, for love is incapable of asking for anything.

“The ‘little I’ seeks to enhance itself by external approval, external possessions and external ‘love’.  The Self that God created needs nothing.  It is forever complete, safe, loved and loving.”

Therefore, real love has no needs and wants to join with others out of their mutual awareness of abundance.

Special Relationships

Special relationships are too often destructive, selfish and childishly egocentric.  Yet, they can, in truth, become the holiest things on earth; miracles and miraculous.

Each one can be the opportunity to let perceptions be healed and errors corrected.  Each one is a chance to forgive oneself by forgiving the other.

Perception is a function of the body, that is, we see what our physical eyes and hear with our physical ears; truth abides inside each of us.  It is a function of spirit.  Often times, we struggle to hear and see the truth over our egos.

Forgiveness

Under the law of Heaven, giving and receiving are the same.  The only way to receive forgiveness is to offer it.  Forgiveness is a necessary correction for all the mistakes we have made.  Acknowledging good in others helps us to see it in ourselves.  Forgetting all of our misinterpretations and with nothing from the past to hold us back, we can remember our higher power.

When we are ready God and the Universe will take the final step in our return to him and to love.