ACIM Puritanism

             After last week’s article about A Course in Miracles and fundamentalism, I heard from some readers and clients about teachers who assert that you should not enjoy anything in the world, that you must give up all attachments, that all personal relationships, especially romantic ones, are special and should be avoided, you shouldn’t take medicine or supplements or treatments for the body, etc. Like fundamentalism, this kind of puritanism is also inevitable when a spiritual text is in the hands of ego.

Did the first people to handle A Course in Miracles, Helen Shucman, Bill Theford, or Ken Wapnick, stop enjoying life, give up their relationships and all attachments, and stop using helpful treatments when they were ill or hurt? I mean, if anyone would, you’d think it would have been them because the Course came through Helen, it was for Bill, and Ken was right there as the second student and closely handled the material with Helen. But no, they did none of those things. They went on like ordinary people with ordinary lives and brought what they learned with them into those ordinary lives. (Well, Bill and Ken did.). Ken became a leading teacher of the Course and admonished students to relax and live normally and not take every word in the Course literally.

One of two things is going on with puritanical teachers of the Course. Ego in their minds tries to appease its guilt by repressing thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors it mistakenly thinks the Course says are sin. They naturally teach what they learn. If you think what they teach is hard for you, imagine how hard they are on themselves! Like fundamentalism, puritanism is performative over transformative. It is about how one appears, even to themselves, rather than how one authentically feels and acts.

The other possibility is that these teachers have shifted and are teaching what is true for them now as though that could bring about transformation for others. It seems they should know better, but this is common among spiritual teachers. Anyone who has a shift toward truth (a miracle) knows that they did not bring it about. It happened and the things that follow, like detachment, disinterest in personal relationships, and how to take care of the body, occur naturally. No practice brings truth to conscious awareness.

Enlightenment occurs when truth comes to conscious awareness to stay and ego falls away—not necessarily in that order. Obviously, neither of these are something that ego makes happen. When truth comes to conscious awareness first, a teacher is moved to certain practices, like meditation and certain mind training. They may find that they can detach, that they have fewer attachments anyway, that they are led away from certain behaviors. Those, however, are not causes but effects of the movement of truth toward conscious awareness. Their new behavior is not bringing about ego’s end, but signals this is occurring. However, ego is still there forming its spiritualities and religions out of this new information in a way that seems to validate ego. And one way of validating itself is to think it is bringing about enlightenment through various practices, so this is what some teachers teach.

For other teachers, ego falls away first but without an awareness of truth, and this can be pretty grim. They can seem rather nihilistic. Their teaching may be along the lines that everything is meaningless, and you are fooling yourself with your enjoyments and interests and relationships and goals. There is no longer a self for them, and maybe they feel some liberation in that, but they are left with a horrid emptiness instead of an abundant spaciousness. Not forever, but it can take years before truth comes to fill the void and if they are teaching from that void, it is stark nonduality without relief. What they teach isn’t wrong, just incomplete. They are in the middle, not at the end, of the process of enlightenment.

Inevitably, there is the question, then why does the Course suggest practices and even have a Workbook? The answer is in the context of its origins. For Helen and Bill, truth was moving forward in their minds, and this is how it was expressed. Helen was already aware of truth, though ego had not dropped. In any case, she was not moved to use the practices given though she turned to her inner teacher for the rest of her life when so moved. But Bill did the lessons as he took down her dictation. Truth was moving toward conscious awareness in him and the practices given were for him. Ken came along and was also moved to use them as truth moved forward in his conscious awareness. And that is what is occurring for all Course students for whom it resonates. This is why the Course’s emphasis is on your experience of your inner teacher, even leaving you with it in the last five lessons of the Workbook. You are told that after the Workbook you will have an “individualized curriculum” with your inner teacher. How far this will go, and whether ego drops or not, is different for everyone. The Course is not doctrine and dogma around which to force your life into a specific mold. It is a gentle teaching tool, not a battering ram, in the hands of your inner teacher.

It cannot be said enough: If guilt and/or fear remain the same or grow, you are listening to ego. When you follow your inner teacher, guilt and fear are reduced and sometimes fall away. If the way you or another reads the Course is not helpful or loving, you know it is being misread and ask your inner teacher to help you read it correctly. If you feel you cannot find your inner teacher, then find a gentle teacher in the world who helps relieve guilt and fear, not increase them. This is why we teachers and mentors are here, to make the way softer, gentler, and lighter for you.

 

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