ACIM Weekly Reader vol 2 no 1

January 5, 2010

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Happy New Year everyone. Be of good cheer.

New Year’s Day: A holiday celebrating faith in the mere passage of time as a means of producing change for the better. —: New Devil's Dictionary

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The unity of opposites
Anti-idolatry is no cure for idolatry. They are two sides of the same coin, and the reverse side affirms the belief in specialness just as much as does the obverse. When the Course says to reverse thinking 180 degrees, this isn't what it means.

This is the hidden unity in duality: You can't have anything without also having its opposite. As G. I. Gurdjieff said it, every stick has two ends. In the seeming opposites of apparent duality, opposites are in a mutually dependent relationship.

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The Easter Lily and cultural relativism in ACIM
The symbolic association of white trumpet lilies (Lilium longiflorum) with Easter, and the phrase "Easter Lilies," is a fairly recent development. The cultural significance of the symbolism is limited primarily to the English speaking parts of the world, and particularly the United States and Canada. These lilies are native to Japan and were not introduced to England and the United States until the 19th Century. . . . (read more)

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Reading the Gospels
October 1991 through October 1992 was my one-year stint in an intense super-secret Fourth Way teaching school that had relocated in Louisville from Colorado just as I joined, and which moved on to Lexington, Kentucky, shortly after I got myself kicked out. There were two teachers who were husband and wife, and about twenty students. At first, most of the students were the ones who had re-located with the teachers from Colorado. The focus of study was through a direct line of teaching from G. I. Gurdjieff, through P. D. Ouspensky, through Rodney Collins.

It was here that my reconciliation with Christianity began. It was here that I first encountered a plausible alternative interpretation of the Gospels that made sense to me at the time. The value to me at that time was immense. It opened a crack in the seemingly monolithic and impenetrable fog of contemporary mainstream Christian discourse that I didn't believe or respect. It involved questioning the purpose and intent of the gospels. . . (read more)

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Reading A Course in Miracles

"Jesus has led the way. This course has come from him because his words have reached you in a language you can love and understand." - ACIM

Over a period of forty-three years, the great Sufi master Jalaluddin Rumi (1207 - 1273) dictated his Spiritual Couplets (Mathnawi-i-Manawi) to a scribe.

In his 1964 book The Sufis, the great contemporary Sufi teacher Idreis Shah wrote of the Mathnawi that its poetry and imagery is, "of such power in the original that its recitation produces a strangely complex exaltation of the hearer's consciousness." . . . ( read more )

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Christ in You - Lesson three - Christ the life

The voice of spirit is far-reaching. It is the expression of omnipresence, and is both near and far. It knows nothing of space, but for the present we must deal with beginnings. Perhaps it would be as well to help you at your present stage of unfoldment. It is absolutely necessary that you should have times of quiet, that you should come out from the business of life for a part of each day. If you were to wait in silence, holding the attitude of growth and steady development, thinking above all else of the kingdom of God — your condition should not be one of strain or of blank nothingness, avoid both these extremes — the result would be of the highest value to yourself and to all around you. . . . ( read more )

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ACIM is NOT nihilism
The term "nihilism" comes from the Latin word "nihil", which translates to the English word "nothing". Most commonly, the philosophical doctrine of nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism. Existential nihilism argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value. . . . ( read more )

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Peace,

Tom Fox
Louisville, Kentucky

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ACIM Weekly Reader vol 1 no. 11

December 22, 2009

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A Course in Miracles and Christianity

Like Jacob wrestled an angel, I have wrestled Christianity for decades. And, like Jacob, I will not let it go,   except Christianity bless me.

My most memorable introduction to the underpinnings of Christianity was during my fourteenth year.  My mother had died a few years before, my two older brothers had left home for college, and it was my father and me in the house . . . and he had a heart attack. I felt very alone and scared, so I turned to the Bible.

Through pure bad luck I opened to one of the Old Testament texts about how God was about to pour a bad-ass heaping of punishment out on the Hebrews for having fallen away from the law.  It scared the dickens out of me, but it all made sense and I believed it.  I was being punished by God, and my father's heart attack was just the next installment.  I hadn't even had sex yet, but I knew I was already doomed.  After a few close encounters with various fundamentalist born-again Christians, I got tired of worrying about eternal damnation all the time, so I threw the Christianity bathwater out the window, baby Jesus and all.

But I returned, slowly.  In fits and starts, I have become reconciled with the religion of my birth.  A Course in Miracles helped a lot.

Articles:
Christianity and a Course in Miracles
Are you a Christian?
A Christian dialog - part one
Saint Peter, the blockhead
Selling Jesus to the Romans

I have notice that when anyone wishes to compare the teachings of A Course in Miracles to the teachings of Christianity, that person invariably starts talking about the Roman Catholic Church as the basis for comparison.  There are many other forms of Chirsitanity that are more useful to examine, such as The Society of Friends.  Sometimes that deep seated cynicism about Christianity from decades ago comes out in me. The pool at Bethesda.

But, as I recently observed elsewhere, if you can't see the Christ in Jesus, who can you see it in?

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The psychic grid

Recently I have been inspired to take another look at the structural underpinnings of apparently reality in the world.  It's not as easy as it sounds, and it doesn't necessarily involve standard psychic powers, real or imagined.  Chopra described it as the field of infinite possibilities, and it is related to the discussion of The Holographic Universe from last week. See also: Mind power or miracle.

Now it is extended to a thirty year old book by Beatrice Bruteau titled The Psychic Grid.


An excerpt:

"Happily for us, experience never leaves us long untouched by doubt, unexposed to some alternative to our present perception of the world.  We may think ourselves secure on our island which we have organized in terms of our own images of reality and our own emotional attitudes. And then there will come a great storm, and suddenly a totally new type of world is confronting and confusing us.

" Our first reaction is almost always rejection.  We meet the alien thought with hostility and struggle with it in fear.  Even when intelligence suggest that the alien has certain points of merit, our emotional being registers distress .  .  .  We live in different worlds.  It is the difference that causes the upset.  It undermines the kind of homeostasis which we feel is necessary to preserve our tranquility and our sense of reality.  .  .  . The strong feeling, the sense of being 'shocked' and 'stunned,' comes out because every worldview conflict threatens our sense of selfhood."

Carmen has described her 1996 close encounter with the grid on Peaceful Path.

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I have added several new links to A Course in Miracles resources, which may be of interest to anyone looking for good quality on-line Course discussion and sharing.

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Tom Fox
Louisville, Kentucky

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ACIM Weekly Reader vol 1 no. 10

December 15, 2009

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In The Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot explores the idea that the entire universe is a hologram. Using this  new description of reality the universe is actually a kind of 3-D projection and is ultimately no more real than a 3-D image in space,despite its apparent solid materiality.

Talbot examines the works of physicist David Bohm and neurophysiologist Karl H. Pribram, both of whom independently arrived at holographic theories or models of the universe. Talbot suggests that a holographic model might provide a scientific foundation for understanding various paranormal and anomalous phenomena, such as extrasensory perception, and provide a scientific basis for understanding mystical experience. He also ties in elements of Carl Jung's "collective unconscious" theory, and the synchronicity phenomenon, to suggest the existence of an underlying unified field that ties all things in the universe together . . . . (read more)

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Christ in You - Lesson 26

The Control of Self and Environment

The world around, or rather the visible world, is, as you know, full of wonderful possibilities, though yet imperfect, because un-mastered. The world you know is illusory and shadowy only because man has not reached the crown of being. As man evolves, the whole material plane is lifted into a higher condition . . . . (read more)

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As you may know, the term "spiritual eye" appears in the Original Edition of A Course in Miracles, but it was edited out prior to the first F.I.P. publication in 1975.  The idea of spiritual perception as a mode very different from ordinary physical five-sense perception is common in all mystical traditions, although Helen Schucman and Bill Thetford were unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the idea.

I've researched the use of the term "spiritual eye" in English back to the 14th century English mystic Walter Helton.  His best know work, The Ladder of Perfection, uses "spiritual eye" 30 times at least.

I have excerpted most of Hilton's use of "spiritual eye" and collected them on my blog . . . . read here.

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50 Spiritual Classics - In 2005 Tom Butler-Bowdon published a book listing and reviewing what he considered to be the 50 best spiritual books available in English.  What caught my attention about the book was that Butler-Bowdon included A Course in Miracles on his list.  Beyond that, I was curious which other books made it onto his list and how many of them I had read.  To make it easy for others to review the list, I've extracted it . . . . (See the list here) No need to buy the book.

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If you haven't watched Gregg Braden's 7-part YouTube video presentation on the Science of Miracles, I've collected the series on Miracles Course Journal. Find all seven video segments here.

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The 1975 version of the Course is available to read online at WikiSource. The links are here


Peace,

Tom Fox
Louisville, Kentucky.