Showing posts with label Metaphysics of ACIM and UU. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Metaphysics of ACIM and UU. Show all posts

Saturday, March 4, 2023

What is A Course In Miracles?

 A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is a spiritual text that aims to help individuals achieve inner peace and happiness through a transformation of their perception of the world. The book was written by Helen Schucman, a psychologist, in the 1970s, and it consists of three main sections: the Text, the Workbook for Students, and the Manual for Teachers.

The Text provides a philosophical and theoretical foundation for the Course, explaining its central concepts and ideas. The Workbook for Students contains 365 lessons, one for each day of the year, that are designed to help the reader apply the Course's teachings to their daily life. The Manual for Teachers offers guidance for those who feel called to share the Course's message with others.

At its core, the Course teaches that the world we experience is an illusion created by our own minds, and that true reality lies beyond our physical senses. It suggests that the source of all our problems is our belief in separation from God, and that our ultimate goal is to return to a state of unity with our Creator.

The Course teaches that forgiveness is the key to healing our relationships with ourselves and others, and that love is the only real answer to all problems. It offers a path of spiritual transformation that involves releasing our ego-based thinking and embracing a higher perspective based on love, compassion, and forgiveness.

While the Course is rooted in Christian theology and terminology, it is non-denominational and can be applied to any spiritual or religious tradition. Its teachings have been embraced by millions of people around the world, and it is widely regarded as a powerful tool for spiritual growth and personal transformation.


At Unitarian Universalism A Way Of Life we try to integrate the metaphysical spiritual concepts of the Course with the seven principles and six sources of Unitarian Universalism. This integration takes a relatively high level of cognitive understanding, but the religious experience is available to anyone who is willing to adopt the suggested practices of forgiveness and unconditional love.

Sunday, October 6, 2019

The metaphysics of ACIM and UU - The origin of the world





Chapter one
The origin of the world

There are many origin of the world stories in many cultures. A Course In Miracles provides one that is conceptual and not in the form of an anthropological story. ACIM tells us that there are two worlds: the world of the ego and the world of the spirit. The world of the Spirit is Oneness. Oneness is a major concept in the perennial psychology. The mystical traditions in all major world religions recognize this Oneness and hold it up as “home” from which our human experience has emerged.

This emergence from the Oneness is what A Course In Miracles calls “the separation.” Further, ACIM calls the separation “a tiny mad idea.” This tiny mad idea that we can be separate from the Oneness is a joke at which we forgot to laugh. We forgot to laugh because we fail to remember what we have done. This is the apple that Adam and Eve ate in the garden. The apple was denial and forgetfulness. The perennial psychology tells us that we should “wake up” we should become aware of the Oneness from which we have separated ourselves and think we have left.

The creation story of A Course In Miracles is a story of running away from home and then forgetting that there is even a home which we have left, and even if we slightly remember the home we have run away from, we have forgotten the route back.

The world we have created when we ran away from home, ACIM tells us, is not real. It doesn’t really exist. We have just made it up. It is Truman’s world (referring to the movie starring Jim Carey), or the shadows dancing on the wall in Plato’s great story of the cave.

And so when we dimly remember that there is a reality from which we have emerged in the separation we have a choice to make about whether we want to continue to pursue the experience of the world of the ego, or return to the world of the spirit from which we have come.

Unitarian Universalism, based on its fourth principle, encourages us to engage in a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. However, it does not teach us where truth and meaning is to be found. It fact it often sends us on a wild goose chase when it suggests that truth and meaning are to be found in social justice projects. 

Truth and meaning are to be found in what A Course In Miracles calls the “atonement” which is the recognition that we have separated ourselves from the Oneness in pursuit of things of the ego. We have mistakenly made these things on the path of the ego idols. We believe that acquiring or obtaining these things on the path of the ego will make us happy. We are always, eventually, disappointed with the results of this erroneous quest. We wind up looking for love in all the wrong places. Love is to be found in the return to the Oneness, the thought of which terrifies most people because it requires a giving up of the ego.

The Universalists know and have taught that we are all in this quest together and that return to the Oneness, “universal salvation,” is inevitable. The only question is how long it will take humanity to remember its true source and to choose to abide there. When one person rejects the path of the ego and embraces the path of the Spirit and returns to the Oneness all of humanity takes a step forward on its path to salvation.

Sunday, September 29, 2019

The Metaphysics of ACIM and UU



Introduction

Unitarian Univeralism does not have a mystical tradition like other religions other than, possibly, the transcendentalists. It has become apparent that A Course In Miracles may be helpful to Unitarian Universalists who wish to pursue a spiritual path to achieve higher levels of peace, holiness, and salvation of the world.

If Unitarian Universalists are to practice the principles of A Course In Miracles, they must first understand the metaphysics of the Course which often seems to be counter intuitive. Within A Course In Miracles is a creation story which is the basis of all of its subsequent concepts, ideas, and practices. This book is an attempt to describe this creation story and the metaphysics of the Course so the practitioner can use the ideas presented in the Course in more effective, efficient, and satisfying way. The chapters of this book will be published regularly on UU A Way Of Life.

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