A Course In Miracles: Progress Report I
A Course In Miracles: Progress Report I
How this scientist experiments with miracles
Photo by Davide Cantelli on Unsplash
I recommend reading and doing the lessons in “A Course In Miracles.”
Or you can do the lessons in the Workbook part.
YMMV. I’ll explain why it was valuable for me and might be for you.
A bit of history.
In December 2019, I came across the book “A Course In Miracles.” I wrote about it in this post, conveniently titled: “A course in miracles.”
I started to read the book, started doing some of the exercises, and then—I stopped. Why? I don’t know.
But I kept reading the book. It’s around 1,000 pages. Reading and reading. It took a long time.
About 11 months after I found the book, I started to do the Course again—this time not alone. My sister, Zorina, my nephew, David, and two of my daughters, Dana and Mira, joined me. The daughters dropped out pretty quickly. David has been off and on, mostly off. Zorina continues to keep me company as we progress together.
The Course includes a Workbook with 365 Lessons. It recommends you do no more than one lesson a day. If you need or want, you can stay at the same lesson for a few days. We’ve done that.
Many lessons take about five minutes, repeated two or three times a day. Some lessons are longer. Some recommend more repetitions. Few take as much as a half-hour a day. Not very much time, really.
Zorina and I are at Lesson 54 and we are still moving forward.
The results have been astonishing.
Recommendation
I recommend doing the course—at least through Lesson 54. As I said at the top, I’ll explain why. It will take some words.
But let me be clear: I recommend it.
It’s been invaluable. Totally worth the time I’ve spent. And a lot more. Same for Zorina.
Doing it with someone is much better than doing it alone.
If anyone who reads this wants to do the course with me, leave a comment, or email me, and if I’m not dead yet, we’ll find a way.
How lessons work
Our minds contain ideas. The ideas in our minds influence our feelings and our behavior. They affect the other ideas that we will allow into our minds.
Ideas are important.
The Course introduces ideas that you have probably not encountered before. Some of them challenge existing ideas. Some fill empty spaces.
You don’t have to believe the ideas. Repeat: belief is not required, only a willingness to apply an idea that you may not believe and see what happens.
Each lesson presents an idea and explains how to apply the idea. Then you practice applying the idea. Maybe you do that again later. Maybe you apply it several times a day.
That’s it. Just consider a new idea and apply it.
You don’t need to judge the idea, or evaluate it or compare it with other ideas—through you can, of course. Your job is just to apply it.
Want an example? Here’s an idea from the course (Lesson 20)
I am determined to see
How do you apply that idea? The Course gives instructions:
Repeat today’s idea slowly and positively at least twice an hour today, attempting to do so every half hour. Do not be distressed if you forget to do so, but make a real effort to remember. The extra repetitions should be applied to any situation, person or event that upsets you.
That’s it. That’s how you apply that particular idea. Just remind yourself “I am determined to see.”
There are other ideas that are a little less familiar. There are ways of applying other ideas that are more complex. But that’s the basic drill. Consider an idea and apply it.
What if you don’t believe one of the ideas? I’ll tell you in advance they are not all as easy to believe as believing that “I am determined to see.”
That’s OK.
The instructions say (my emphasis)
Remember only this; you need not believe the ideas, you need not accept them, and you need not even welcome them. Some of them you may actively resist.
So you don’t need to believe them. Nope. Indeed, it’s expected that you’ll find some hard to believe. Quoting:
Some of the ideas the workbook presents you will find hard to believe, and others may seem to be quite startling. This does not matter.
Belief is not required. Even a completely open mind is not required. Only a willingness to experiment:
You are merely asked to apply the ideas as you are directed to do. You are not asked to judge them at all. You are asked only to use them. It is their use that will give them meaning to you, and will show you that they are true.
God and the scientific method
I see the Course as an application of the scientific method in the domain of mind, or spirit.
You perform an experiment and observe the results. Science.
You can believe that electrons are particles or believe that electrons are waves or that there are no such things as electrons. Science does not care what you believe.
You do the “double-slit experiment’ and collect the data. You do another experiment and another. You try to understand what’s going on. But you don’t have to believe anything to do the experiment or to do science.
Some of the course’s ideas include the idea of God. What if you don’t believe in God?
Who cares?
Remember only this; you need not believe the ideas, you need not accept them, and you need not even welcome them. Some of them you may actively resist.
So if an idea mentions God and you don’t believe in God and even if you actively resist any idea that involves any kind of God-like-idea, that’s 100% OK.
You do the experiment and apply the idea anyway.
Science.
Unwillingness to experiment
If you’re unwilling to experiment because you’ve decided that you don’t like a particular word or because you believe there’s nothing you can learn by performing an experiment that others have found useful, I’m not going to call you narrow-minded or prejudiced or even a science denier.
Because I don’t have to.
I have found the God ideas offputting, and I still do. And so did my sister.
Nonetheless, I did the experiments. I applied ideas that I did not believe.
I found that it was helpful to frame the God ideas—at least through lesson 54—in ways that made the ideas less irritating. It might help you—if you don’t like the Course’s use of “God.” But I’ll save that for another post.
Why do ACIM?
YMMV BOYV
Your mileage may vary based on your values.
If you place a very high value—as I do—on being a kinder, more loving, more accepting, forgiving, compassionate person, the course will help. In the end, the course is about the power of forgiveness.
If you place a very high value—as I do—on equanimity, this will help. A lot.
That’s what I’ve found, and that’s what my sister has found.
If you place a very high value—as I once did—on learning as much as you can about as many things as you can, this may help—but maybe there are better things to do. There is something to learn here that you won’t learn otherwise. But there are so many other things to learn and so little time. So I don’t know.
If you place a very high value on understanding current events and political trends—nothing wrong with that, by the way—this may help a little, but it’s probably not worth even the short time that it takes away from reading the news, listening to podcasts, and discussing ideas.
YMMV BOYV
What’s next?
I came across a series of blog posts by a guy named Sean Reagan. He’s written a series of posts annotating each of the ACIM lessons. He’s also got another blog called “ACIM Notebook” that I’ve started to sample.
I found reading his stuff valuable. I’ve found writing this post valuable.
I think I’m going to write my own series of posts as I go through the course.
If I do, I’ll link the first one —> here.
Related posts
Here are the other posts I’ve written on this topic: