Do you want to take the Course in Miracles?

Do you want to take the Course in Miracles?

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.

Introduction, A Course In Miracles

Today, on UU A Way Of Life, we are beginning our study of the text of A Course In Miracles. The third principle of Unitarian Universalism is to affirm and promote the acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth. How is this encouragement to be implemented? One of the ways we do this at UU A Way Of Life ministries is to encourage the study of A Course In Miracles.

There are other ways to encourage spiritual growth and UU A Way Of Life supports these other ways as well. Unitarian Universalism’s third principle is the affirmation and promotion of a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. There are many roads to Rome as they say and A Course In Miracles is only one road. It is the road UU A Way Of Life ministries is choosing to take at this time. You are welcome to join us.

In the introduction to ACIM it is taught that life is a process of learning and we can learn what we want when we want to learn it. However, there is a basic curriculum which establishes what we have to learn sooner or later as we wish and choose. The point is that we can choose when to learn the curriculum but we don’t get to choose the curriculum itself.

What is the curriculum we have to learn sooner or later? It is two things. First, at our birth into a body, we have separated ourselves from the non dualistic Oneness from which we emerged. Second, we spend a lifetime first constructing the separate self we believe is real and then undoing it as we merge back to the non dualistic oneness from which we came. 

The construction of the illusionary self was an unconscious process and becoming aware of what we have done, we decide to undo it which is a conscious decision. It is this conscious decision to undo our ego that entails the curriculum which we must take sooner or later, come hell or high water.

This decision to undo the ego usually comes about when it dawns on us that there must be a better way to lead our lives than what we have been doing up to that point. In Alcoholic Anonymous, this is called “first step work.” The first step reads in part, “We admitted we were powerless...and our lives had become unmanageable.”

Have you ever felt that your life has become unmanageable? Have you then begun a search for a better way to live your life? In what directions and where has this search taken you?

Most people say that they just want to be happy. But what will bring them happiness? Is it the wiles and snares of the ego, or the alignment with their Transcendent Source? And if you decide it is the latter, how does one make this alignment? What have you found helpful so far?