You Do Not Have to Understand ACIM

          Years ago, I had a client who had been attending a weekly A Course in Miracles study group for years. In our first session I asked, as I do if it has not already come up, about his relationship with his inner teacher (Holy Spirit). He was surprised. He told me that many of the participants in his study group could quote the Course chapter and verse, but no one discussed their inner teacher. Whatever topic someone brought up, someone else would merely quote what the Course teaches on the topic. Now he understood why he felt stuck.

Once I received an email from someone who described herself and her friends as highly educated, but they were struggling to understand certain aspects of the Course. Those were aspects that would only be understood through experience. So, I asked her about her spiritual experiences. “Oh,” she wrote back. “There’s supposed to be an experience?” Indeed, there is.

 

“A universal theology is impossible, but a universal experience is not only possible but necessary. It is this experience toward which the course is directed.” (C-in.2)

 

A Course in Miracles is not an end in itself unless your goal is simply to know well what it says. But if you want inner peace, recognize it as merely an instrument that your inner teacher is using to lead you to a different experience. You don’t need to worry about understanding the Course, completing each book, or agreeing with everything it says. If you are moved to continue having it as part of your life in some way, then you can trust that it is serving the purpose of peace for you, even if you don’t seem like a “good Course student”. The “universal experience” it means to lead you to is your inner teacher, not anything about the books themselves. Take any studying you feel moved to do lightly and enjoy it. When you are too serious about understanding the Course, you turn it into an idol.

 

>>>> 

If you have a question the answer to which you feel may be helpful to others, send it to Liz@acimmentor.com and indicate that you want it answered in this newsletter/blog.

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