Over what sometimes feels like a huge
number of years (certainly more than I want to admit to) I had the honor of
either running or visiting Miracle groups around the U.S. Canada and Australia.
The juggernaut for me began way back in 1977 and ’78 after the Course first
became available in print and we began groups all over the New York City area, and
then connected with and visited groups in North Carolina, California and
everywhere in between. And what a conglomeration of uninformed, but deeply
sincere seekers were we all. None of us had any deep understanding of the
Course. Oh no! We just were winging it. We brought to group meetings our
ridiculously varied backgrounds and tried to understand and explain what we
were reading through the jaunticed eye of our past studies. New Age gobbledygook
shared space with Catholic catechism, Jewish traditions and modern
psychobabble. Yet, miraculously the Course slowly came into focus.
I remember being in the New York City
apartments where the Foundation for Peace, publishers of the Course resided.
They had asked Helen the scribe to ask Jesus if he could explain and define
many of the words that were causing so much confusion for so many of us. Helen
asked and came back with added pages Jesus dictated to her. After reading what
Helen had transcribed from her shorthand everyone collectively threw up their
hands in frustration. It read just the way the whole course read. And so the
Foundation did the best they could and attached it to the end of the Manual for
Teachers, entitling it “Clarification of Terms.” (Yeh, right!)
But, we all soldiered on and soon more
and more students studied, shared, taught and the exquisitely sublime, though
at times deeply disturbing material unfolded for us all. Now, you can find extraordinarily
experienced teachers to help students stymied and stuck in a paragraph,
chapter, phrase or word or more important of all, application.
If you are at the point where you
would like to really delve deeply into the Course either on your own or with a
newish group, here is the first lesson from the Instant Curriculum for you to try. I
designed this curriculum so that you and only you can drill deeply into the
well of precious information and actually let the Course itself teach you. The
Nutshell Dictionary at the end of the Instant Curriculum can be a handy tool, and
there are always superb teachers available to guide you if necessary.
So here is the first lesson. Just read
the section in the Course and then answer each question the best you can. Writing (or typing) answers
is really helpful for clarifying your thinking. Here you go. Give it a try and
see what happens.
Lesson A
Readings from the Text:
“The
Introduction – This is a course in miracles. . .”
1. How “should”
you study this material since it is a “course”?
2. Review the
“Principles of Miracles” at the
beginning of the Text and define a miracle in your own words.
3. How do you
feel about the Course being voluntary?
4. Review “free will” in the Nutshell Dictionary and
explore how this affects the curriculum.
5. Explore the phrase “the meaning of love” and how
it relates to learning the Course.
6. Since the Course aims at removing the blocks to
the awareness of love, what then are these blocks?
7. Why do you
think the opposite of love is fear?
8. Explore what is real and what is unreal – Check
the Nutshell Dictionary if necessary.
9. Spend a few moments simply resting in the peace
of God. Explore what you may discover there.
(You can find the Instant Curriculum with its Nutshell Dictionary in the left column)
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