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:
Herein lies the peace of God.
That was the first paragraph I read from A Course in Miracles--a self-administered, self-taught course of spiritual psychotherapy. I believe I read it aloud alongside my cousin Kathy, with whom I was then living. She had just purchased the three-volume set of books at a cost of $40.00 from Taylor's Bookstore in Arlington, Texas. We excitedly tore into them as we had been anticipating this day which came so unexpectedly--even though we knew it would someday happen. I know that we did a cursory examination together...and then separately took a volume each to examine more closely. I grabbed the Manual for Teachers (it was the shortest) while I seem to recall her grabbing the Text (the largest of the three-volume set) while we left the middle volume (Workbook) to peruse later together. The order of the books is laid out just like any other set of educational materials typically taught in a classroom of students. But for this set of books, the students are my brothers (referred to in the masculine throughout the material) and the classroom is this world. Only it's not real. The world, that is.
Immediately--wasting no time at all--the material gives me what would seem an outrageous premise. Nothing I see with this body's eyes is real. Perception is a result, not a cause. Projection makes perception. "The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that." Immediately--as well--did I find these words more comforting than anything I'd ever heard. I was twenty years old. Kathy (my cousin) was thirty-eight, a divorced mother with a teenage son. She had taken me in as a kind of wayward child. It was my second attempt at living in Texas because my first attempt ended in financial disaster. Returning to Pennsylvania (the scene of my youth) with my tail between my legs and with mom and dad's ever-ready help, I moved back with every intention of one day returning to Texas. Reasonably speaking, it would have been an impossibility on whatever salary an unskilled, college dropout kid would make. Even though I didn't realize this at the time, Kathy did. And she took me in! I will never forget that. And I actually think it gave her pleasure because her own father and mother had kicked me out of their house the previous year. That's another story but a good one.
A few weeks after I moved in with my cousin in the early summer of 1984, I finally asked her what was different about her. I mean, she glowed! She was a huge beam of positive energy. The deeply depressed little boy who lived inside my head at the time was curious. Had she changed? Yes, indeed it was affirmed. She had changed as in, like, 360 degrees! The story was a bit long but the gist of it was this: She had a mental breakdown, she traveled to see a friend who had studied psychology and worked for a licensed psychologist. He counseled her and gave her a book titled Love is Letting Go of Fear by Dr. Jerry Jampolsky. She claimed this book changed her life. She was so inspired by it and so excited about it that she bought numerous copies for siblings, parents and cousins. She gave one to me. She told me very simply, "It's the truth, Tom." She expressed that she was kind of bummed that no one else seemed to have the type of ecstatic reaction she had...but just "read it and tell me what you think!"
I devoured the book in what seemed like less than a day. It's a small formatted paperback. But I couldn't just finish the book in that time because it had a series of lessons in the 2nd part that needed to be carried out one each day for two weeks, I believe. I so liked what I'd already read that it was no problem for me to carry out the instructions and I did them--as instructed. Daily. The transformation I felt at the time was immediate. I seemed to have the same reaction to the material as she had! My excitement just seemed to re-ignite hers and so we bonded over what both of us came to call "the TRUTH."
Dr. Jampolsky credits A Course in Miracles throughout the book and cites numerous quotes. The various lessons in the second part are lifted almost directly from ACIM's workbook. Still basking in the feelings I had from Jampolsky's book, I naturally began to question access to the source material. Where could we find this "course" in "miracles?" I asked Kathy to ask the psychologist friend about it but he kind of dismissed it as a difficult to understand work authored by someone who was supposed to have channeled the information. He told her that the content would be confusing so he didn't recommend it. It didn't stop us, however, from looking for it. Then, a few months later, while shopping at Taylor's Bookstore (long since closed) we found ourselves in the often perused "metaphysical" section and there they were. Just the one set! "Oh my god, Tom! I have to get them!" She had no argument from me and I couldn't afford the--at the time--exorbitant price of $40.00. What unfolded in the weeks, months and years to come was a lifelong love for what I've always believed was the TRUTH. ACIM would sit back on my shelf for long periods of time throughout those years but it was always there. And I turned back to it frequently. It rests in my spirit once again as I traverse this twilight of my life.
(continued)
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