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Exploring the "Courses in Miracles"

by Kate Pool

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When I was young, I used to wish that there was an instruction manual that came along with life on earth. One to decode the strange language of this flesh and spirit dance.

Six years ago in a field harvesting organic veggies, I was introduced to what became for me, the guide that I had been, jokingly, seeking. A 57 year old woman, who had sold all her possessions and travelled alone to this small farm on PEI said, " You must be the reason I brought this book with me", and handed me the biggest thing to ever hit my life, " The Course in Miracles."

Some background....

I had been brought up in a fundamentalist protestant family. My father preaching every Sunday on the inevitability of hell for those of us who could not manage to believe. When I left home, I completely turned my life away from formal religion and began a long and often painful journey in search of my spirit, my truth. This journey took me to many strange places - mountain tops, bars, Zen Centres, jail, Buddhist retreats, native celebrations and so on....

During these years of searching, I had a few mystical experiences that convinced me that there was much more happening in our lives then what could be experienced with our bodily senses. One of these events happened in a women's emergency centre in Edmonton. I had been living a fairly wild life for sometime and finally found myself, alone and down and out, at the mercy of some kind souls who ran the shelter for edge dwellers like me. I woke up in the middle of a long night in a room with 25 cots filled with sleeping bodies. In the far corner of the room was a human shaped figure made entirely of light. I looked around the room to see who this angel was here to bless and found to my surprise it was there for me. This presence did not communicate with me verbally, there was no message, only a feeling of unconditional love which I had never even imagined the power of until this point. I must state that at that time in my life, I was from my point of view, very undeserving of such love, which really added to my amazement.

Back to "The Course in Miracles"...

The course was channeled by Helen Suchman, who was a professor of medical psychology at Columbia University's college of physicians and surgeons in New York City. She was not a spiritual person and was quite surprised by a voice that began to dictate a book that would take her seven years to finish. She says it seemed like a special assignment I had somehow, somewhere agreed to complete.

The course consists of the text which is largely theoretical and sets forth the thought system on which the course is based. The workbook includes 365 lessons - one for each day of the year. The course is a practical guide meant to teach to experience of applying its ideas in your daily life.

Here's a sample of a day's lesson

Lesson 70
My salvation comes from me
( From "Course in Miracles: Workbook for Students" )

1. All temptation is nothing more than some form of the basic temptation not to believe the idea for today . Salvation seems to come from anywhere except from you. So, too, does the source of guilt. You see neither guilt nor salvation as in your own mind and nowhere else. When you realize that all guilt is solely an invention of your mind, you also realize that guilt and salvation must be in the same place. In understanding this you are saved.

2. The seeming cost of accepting today's idea is this: It means that nothing outside yourself can save you; nothing outside yourself can give you peace. But it also means that nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb your peace or upset you in any way. Today's idea places you in charge of the universe, where you belong because of what you are. This is not a role that can partially accepted. 5And you must surely begin to see that accept it is salvation.

3. It may not, however, be clear to you why the recognition that guilt is in your own mind entails the realization that salvation is there as well. God would not have put the remedy for the sickness where it cannot help. That is the way your mind has worked, but hardly His. He wants you to be healed, so He has kept the source of healing where the need for healing lies.

4. You have tried to do just the opposite, making every attempt, however distorted and fantastic it might be, to separate healing the sickness for which it was intended, and thus keep the sickness. Your purpose was to ensure that healing did not occur. God's purpose was to ensure that it did...............................


Finally there is a manual for teachers that provides answers to some of the questions the student might ask such as, " How is peace possible in this world?"

Doing "The Course in Miracles" changed the way I looked at my life. I now understand that I am responsible for my reality. If I am angry now, I don't just look for someone to blame but turn inward to find the source of my reactions. I realize that I can choose joy and that I am as I was created, and have a direct and intimate relation to Spirit, to God. I live in daily gratitude for this path and what it has taught me for renewed hope and a feeling of wonder.

"Perception can make whatever picture the mind desires to see. Remember this, in this lies either heaven or hell, as you elect."

For more information on "The Course in Miracles," visit www.miraclecenter.org.

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