Day 1

Introduction

"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:

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.

Herein lies the peace of God."

I found A Course in Miracles on my mother's bookshelf among The Lost Books of Eden and The Tibetan Book of the Dead, not to mention the Bible, obvious remnants of my grandfather's legacy. Though WASPish, he nevertheless dabbled in everything else, including lots of drugs. Anyway, as I explored this book, I was captivated because although it begins from a Christian worldview, as the introduction puts it "the Course deals with universal spiritual themes." I would like to think it is something the Gnostics would have taught. I will not dwell, I hope, on how different this teaching is from mainstream Christianity because just as much as I don't appreciate being evangelized, I certainly don't want to reverse-evangelize. There are of course similarities as well.
I would like to think of myself as extremely open minded, being accepting of any benevolent religious or spiritual credence. In short, at this point in my life I believe there is one universal entity we are all an inextricable part of - it may be called God, Source, or The Great Unity of Being. I believe through meditation and prayer we can become more in tune with this, well, I'll just use the word God because The Course does. I do mean God in the widest, largest, most expansive possible sense.
I undertake this course with humility as its depth and breadth is rather huge. I will write one entry everyday on 1-3 pages of the 622 of Text, and on one of the 365 lessons in the Student Workbook. Through this rigorous study, I hope to further enlighten myself and anybody else who cares to read along. I would actually prefer to have companions on the journey, so let's delve into this together, shall we?

Some helpful Glossaries: http://www.facim.org/acim/glossary.htm, http://www.circleofa.org/glossary/AcimGlossaryIndex.php
A Crash Course in Miracles podcasts: www.cloudsun.com
An all encompassing site: http://acim-search.miraclevision.com/

Text:

Chapter 1

The Meaning of Miracles

Principles of Miracles

The first two pages consist of 25 of 50 principles of what Miracles are. Miracles are natural. Miracles are involuntary habits. They bring love to both the giver and the receiver. To be honest, there are many detailed principles, yet I still have very little idea of what a miracle is. Here are some important points:

-Miracles are expressions of love.

-Miracles are thoughts, that can represent bodily or spiritual levels of experience; lower or higher respectively. One makes the physical, the other creates the spiritual.

-Miracles are every one's right, but purification is necessary first (Hmm, that sounds ominous).

-Miracles bear witness to truth. They arise from conviction and are therefore convincing. Otherwise they would be magic, the uncreative use of mind.

-"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service you can render to another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. You recognize your own and your neighbor's worth simultaneously."

-Miracles indicate forgiveness. Through them you accept God's forgiveness by extending it to others.

-"Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead because you made sickness and death yourself, and can therefore abolish both. You are a miracle, capable of creating in the likeness of your Creator. Everything else is your own nightmare, and does not exist. Only the creations of light are real."

-"Miracles are part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which, when completed, is the Atonement (important vocab word)."

I have had to copy some of these verbatim because the concepts are just so new and vast to me. I suppose we would be remiss if we did not have a first idea of what a miracle is since we're taking a course on them, but I think as we go along everything will become clearer. So to sum up, so far it seems to be that miracles are forms of love which help us to rise higher up on the spiritual scale and bring forgiveness and freedom to us and others.

Workbook:

Part 1

Lesson 1

"Nothing I see in this room [on this street, from this window, in this place] means anything."

This lesson is easy enough to perform. Saying it to yourself. Believing it is another matter. Everything we see holds some meaning for us. Our egos make up stories and we react emotionally to everything. There is usually a feeling associated with the thing. So when I do this exercise, I acknowledge the feeling and see the object devoid of its meaning for me. No easy task.