Dealing with Questions about A Course In Miracles

I have been writing a series in HubPages about my experience doing A Course in Miracles. Taking five lessons at a time I have written the series by reporting on the realisations and insights I have had in performing the exercises in the course.

The exercises are designed to make us experience the ideas outlined rather than using them as an intellectual exercise. I have found the experience to be a most rewarding one and the journey has been an enlightening one.

I would highly recommend that anyone interested in the course first read the book “The Disappearance of The Universe” by Gary Renard. The book does a great job in giving the reader an overview of what to expect and in so doing gives a focus that the reader might otherwise take some time to find or even fail to recognise.

I recently received some very interesting questions from a hubber called Mr Happy about some of the exercises and the results I reported. The questions were so good that I felt they deserved a hub devoted to answering them as the comment box would simply not do them the service they deserve.

Spirit Whisperer says:

"It does not claim to be the one and only right way back to God but simply states that it is one way to get us back on track to HIM."

Mr Happy asks:

Are you sure HE is not a HER? Could you elaborate? - I'm half serious. I am half serious here because you made the "HIM" claim and half unserious (I think I just invented a word) because as I previously said somewhere else I believe that in a sense, everything is equally important and equally meaningless thus, nothing really matters. You can answer my question and all is good or you can not answer my question and all is still good. This is just my opinion.

Spirit Whisperer answers Question #1:

The words HE and HER are both as meaningless as each other in this context. It is as meaningless to call God a He or a Her as it is to do so with the flame of a candle. It is not going to detract from the essential message as long as you keep the mind fixed on the goal. The distractions are the meanings we attach to the world and this includes the idea we each have of God. All equally meaningless. If we suspend our associations with the words we use and read the message it simply states that we are lost and will inevitably find our way home.

We each take different paths but there is only one destination – God. And before we get embroiled in thinking about God it is important that we accept that any idea that we can think about God is just that … an idea and nothing to do with God and that includes the random gender meaning that the words He or She might try to attach to the idea of God.

God is not an idea. If you keep your mind focussed on thinking about your idea of God you are in essence creating God in your mind and only adding to the confusion and the separation from truth. Whatever words people use to refer to God it is important to remember that words are ideas and nothing to do with the things they describe but important for us to function within the collective illusion we call life.

Spirit Whisperer says:

"True love is unconditional and asks for nothing."

I love this sentence! There is no other way to put it.

With the following, I have a problem: "The Holy Spirit teaches us to learn how to automatically forgive".

Mr Happy asks:

I can forgive, once, twice, three times, four times, five times ... maybe ten times but there is a point where I will let the nasty wolf come out. When confronted with pure negativity, I can eat-it-up and dissolve it within myself. Doesn't a negative plus a negative become a positive? I can intake some "poisons" and overcome them.

Spirit Whisperer answers Question #2:

You make a very good point here and you very clearly illustrate the misunderstanding many people have about forgiveness.

To judge is the opposite of forgiveness. So when a person says they forgive then their thinking is implying that there has been a wrong doing and that is a judgement.

Forgiveness is a state of being but most people use it as a covert way to judge and so increase the internal confusion and the separation from God.

There is nothing to forgive as there is nothing to judge. It is all meaningless because we have created it all in our minds. If you create something in your mind then you must know that it cannot in reality exist outside of the mind that created it. So when you say you forgive, you are saying you forgive the wrong doing that you yourself created in your mind and which therefore does not in reality exist.

When you truly realise this you reach the state of forgiveness and when you reach this state you are in a position to live in both worlds. What I mean by this is that you can function within the illusion without being of it and that is a loftier purpose of our existence than giving so much importance to the meaningless illusions we continuously create with our minds.

The negative exists because we believe in the positive. Both are equally meaningless and are creations of the mind.

Spirit Whisperer says:

"Forgiveness is necessary in this dream world in order to correct the mistakes we have made in a thinking that keeps us separate from ourselves and from God."

Mr Happy asks:

I can agree with this statement too, although I just think forgiveness is necessary in order to grow as self. I leave it at that.

I dislike prophets ... I am not fond of Jesus or Mohammed or anyone else who claims to be the voice of the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit is in us all. I can listen to that silence within me which is older than time or thought ... I do not need the voice of others who claim to hear the voice within myself better than I do.

All opinions. Thank you.

Spirit Whisperer answers Question #3:

The idea that you have of Jesus and Mohammed are creations of your own mind. They do not exist outside of your mind and as such have nothing to do with them. How can we truly know what they claimed exactly? They never wrote anything down so all we have to go on are “Chinese Whispers” !

The problem we have with the message is with our idea of the messenger. Would we refuse to receive a cheque of $1,000,000 because we did not like the postman who was delivering it to us?This is how meaningless it would be to deny the message because of an idea we have created about the messenger.

The only meaningful question here would be to ask ourselves if the message can help us correct perception. It is our perception that distorts everything and we don't help the situation by further adding to the distortion by the mind altering substances that we deliberately and even accidentally or inadvertently take.

The mind is very clever so we should not be fooled by what we call the silence. Even this has associated with it meaning that we have written on it. It is when all judgement is suspended and all ideas be given the same meaningless importance that we transcend thought and the illusion it creates.

I refer to the Holy Spirit as in intermediary while we learn how to do this and correct perception. Ironically we must use thought against itself in order to transcend it. By calling on the creator we are in effect saying that we no longer trust the world that we have created and we are now ready to see the world that God has created. We are asking God to guide us free of any ideas we previously held. We call on our inner teacher or guide and that is the only worthwhile idea in our quest for truth.

There are many ways to say the things I have said in this hub and the message has been expressed in many different ways by many different people from the beginning of time so what I say is nothing new. The message is distorted by the mind that perceives it so the way to hear the message is to correct perception. What better way to do this than to ask our creator to guide us?

Mr Happy said:

“I do not need the voice of others who claim to hear the voice within myself better than I do.”

Spirit Whisperer comments:

I agree with this statement completely as long as we have learned to discern between the voice of ego and the illusion of truth it creates and the voice of our timeless inner teacher, the one I call the Holy Spirit.

I would like to thank Mr Happy for his questions which have given me an opportunity to clarify some of the things I have written about in my series about A Course In Miracles.

There is however no substitute for experience. We each of us regularly fall prey to thinking about something and believing that by thinking about something that we have experienced it. This is a mistake and only serves to add more layers to the illusion.

The menu might look nice but no menu would taste anything like the actual meal !

Following are two links to the books I have recommended in this and my other articles on this subject. Reading the book by Gary Renard would serve as an invaluable introduction so when you actually start the course it makes it all a lot easier to follow.

• The Disappearance of The Universe by Gary R. Renard
• A Course in Miracles by Dr Helen Schucman