Let's dive into A Course in Miracles. A Course in Miracles (also known as ACIM or the Course) has a massive following of people and is often referred to as the newest testament. There are even ACIM study groups, similar to Bible study.
A Course in Miracles was channelled by a woman named Helen Schucman, a psychologist at Columbia University. She had an outstanding career and was well-respected by her colleagues. Over time, she started having an ongoing feud with a coworker named William Thetford. After some time, the two of them realised that this competition between them, the resentment they had for each other, and the tension between them wasn't a healthy thing… they were psychologists after all! They got together and they decided they were not going to do this anymore. “We're colleagues, we are going to respect each other, and we’re going to form this friendship,” they decided. If you asked either of them, they would say that mutual decision was the catalyst for A Course In Miracles coming to be.
One day Helen Schucman heard a voice in her head, and the voice said, “this is a course in miracles, please take notes.” Now Helen is a psychologist, she works with and teaches about people who hear voices in their head. This understandably freaked her out a little bit.
The voice kept coming though and each time it said, “This is a course in miracles, please take notes.” She didn't want to tell anyone about it because she was afraid they would judge her. But finally, she confided in her newfound friend William. He said “Hmm that’s interesting. She asked him what he thought she should do and William told her that she should probably take notes.
And so began the work that the two of them did together. It took like seven years to channel the entire Course. Helen started taking notes of everything that was said to her through this voice and William was a great typist so he typed everything up. Every night Helen would get a “download,” and every morning before work, she and William would get together and he would type out what she had handwritten the night before. They very quickly realised that this was a very profound teaching that was coming through.
The author of a Course In Miracles is Jesus Christ. Now that can seem very jarring for a lot of people to hear and people may think it's total BS right off right out of the gate. But if you read the course, if you pick up the text and actually read it, then you will very quickly realise that it is profound. It speaks in a way and the subject matter is such that it really couldn't be anyone else. It's one of the most life-changing pieces of writing that you'll ever read.
If the Course itself feels too overwhelming then I recommend reading A Course In Miracles Made Easy by Alan Cohen. It’s a phenomenal book on its own, even if you’re not ready it to learn about the Course. He does a great job of bringing it down to earth through teaching stories.
So what is ACIM about? A Course In Miracles can be summed up in three sentences:
Now if you can absorb and fully understand these three sentences, you don't even need to read the Course. The Course spends thousands of pages elaborating on those three sentences. Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God. Now if you've been following my work for a while, it might be starting to click that this is exactly what I teach.
I teach about how we are living in an illusion. How reality is an illusion. We are here living in a play, a school, a simulation, a game. And everything that you see around you is part of this illusion, part of this game, the stage setting of this play, this movie that we're living in. It's all set up so you can learn lessons. We're here to learn and then we move on.
A Course In Miracles talks a lot about ego. It talks about ego and how it is part of this illusion, like the software that comes with being human. Ego doesn't understand that you are this vast, beautiful, spiritual, energetic light being that's just pure unconditional love (because that IS your true nature - that's who you are). Ego thinks that you are just a body and you're just a mind, and it tries to keep you safe. It looks around at the world and it sees fear. It feels like fear. But fear is also part of the illusion. Ego feels judgement, the ego places blame, the ego sees things in black and white, and it panics and it feels shame, and it feels guilt, and it points the finger, it's the cynic, the critic, and the realist. That voice of doubt, that voice of worry in your head… and it’s all part of the programming that comes with being human.
But the ego's just trying to keep you safe because it thinks you're only a body. It keeps the body safe because when you believe that you're only a body, this world is a terrifying place. Natural disasters, tornadoes, and hurricanes can wipe you out in a flash. There are deranged gunmen everywhere, school shootings, people getting shot up in movie theatres and shopping malls, and diseases just like we went through with the pandemic. The ego lives in this constant state of fear.
And A Course in Miracles is about removing all of that fear, all of that illusion because it blocks unconditional love. And that's what you are, it's your birthright.
It also talks a lot about the atonement, and this is why you know that this is from Jesus. It talks about all of these things that are referenced in the Bible. But if you think about the New Testament we know it written by Jesus. The New Testament was written by people who experienced all of Jesus’ teachings and his story. And they wrote it long after, much farther back after it took place. Some of the stories in the Bible were written almost a century after Jesus died. They are secondhand accounts. But of course they are corroborated by each other. They’re corroborated by archeology too - we've found evidence that there was a man named Jesus who walked the earth. But none of the bible was told from Jesus's account.
And the thing is that all of his disciples, all the apostles, all these people that he touched were people, they were men, they were humans. Have you been watching The Chosen? It's a television show about the New Testament and it is phenomenal. It's one of the best things I’ve ever watched on tv and what I love about it is it does such a great job of portraying all of Jesus' followers as people. They felt jealousy, fear, and anger. They had relationship issues and insecurities. They had everything that we have today. They were people. They weren't these perfect enlightened beings. And they were the misfits of the time: the criminals, the addicts. They weren't the elite, they were the poor. They were human, that's the point and they were human just like we're all human today.
Humanity hasn't changed much in the last couple of thousand years. Now those stories in the New Testament were all secondhand accounts by humans who see things through their own lens, filter, emotions, belief system, through all the trauma they've been through, all the things they've risen above and been through… because everyone has a lens and a filter through which they view the world.
ACIM, on the other hand, is an account directly from Jesus and he talks about all the things in the Bible and how certain aspects of it got misinterpreted. He says, “Here's the truth. Here's how you should take that. Religion has twisted this. Let me untangle it for you.” And that is probably going to be triggering for some people to hear. If you're a Christian or a Catholic that might be upsetting depending on how open-minded you are. Some people read the Course and they're like, “this is too Christian for me” and other people say, “this isn't Christian enough for me.” because they’re all too stuck in their ways. They’d rather believe what they learned was right instead of accepting the gift of actually hearing it from the mouth of their Saviour. Now the Course isn’t just for Christians; it’s for everyone. And I encourage everyone to read it, to come at it with an open mind, because there is so much gold to be learned in it. It is such a beautifully moving book.
Here are a few examples of things he talks about that the Bible didn't explain the way that he meant it:
Atonement:
The atonement is the final taking away of all of your sins at the end of your life and just giving you pure forgiveness because God (or source, life force energy, the creator, whatever you’d like to call it) is pure-unconditional love. You are its child. You are a piece of source and so many people who have had near-death experiences explain that when they crossed the veil, they weren't judged for a single thing they did in their lifetime. There was only forgiveness and understanding, and not only could they feel that forgiveness, understanding, and complete non-judgement and complete unconditional love, but they could also look at the events of their lives and have compassion and understanding for themselves.
Anita Moorjani is a great example. She wrote an amazing book called Dying to Be Me, where she talks about how she had stage four cancer and went into a coma because her organs shut down. Doctors told her family she was dying and she realized what caused her cancer while she was on the other side. When she came back, she was able to change her mindset, her habits, and her beliefs, and her cancer disappeared. (Side note: She also endorsed my book and called it a ‘“Must Read,” and it's going to be on the front cover, which is so freaking cool because she is such a wonderful, powerful, amazing person.)
Many people who have had a religious upbringing live in fear of judgment and fear of punishment. But that's not what it's about. It is about pure unconditional love. We are here to learn lessons. We are here to experience being a human. There's no judgment when you pass and no punishment coming.
The Crucifixion:
Alan Cohen jokes in his book A Course in Miracles Made Easy that if Jesus were to die today everyone would be walking around with little electric chairs on chains around their neck instead of crosses. It's a little morbid when you think about it, that people remember someone who was just in pure love who had all of these amazing teachings and who helped humanity and helped everyone the way he did by the gruesome way he died. It's almost doing him a disservice. Jesus says in A Course in Miracles that it was never about the crucifixion. It was about the resurrection and everyone focused on death rather than the resurrection. He refers to the crucifixion as the last useless walk to the cross.
He didn't die for our sins. He showed us that he was taking the last useless walk to the cross for us. It's all about redemption, coming back, and rising. You might think about in your own life are there crosses that you die on? Jesus was saying to us “You don't need to do this in your own life.” But so many of us crucify ourselves through guilt all the time; we punish ourselves.
A Course in Miracles says guilt is absurd and it just doesn't even make sense in the universe. However, so many of us punish ourselves all the time. We punish ourselves through guilt because we think there's some greater punishment coming - perhaps from our parents, our bosses, our teachers, God, or whoever else. But there's no punishment coming. You're doing it to yourself. And everyone missed the point. He was saying no, it's about rising, overcoming, love, and all of these other things. It's not about the actual death and it's not about dying for anyone's sins.
The Holy Spirit:
It's really interesting because the Holy Spirit in A Course of Miracles is halfway between you and God. And in all of the spirituality that I've studied, we talk about a higher self and that resonates with me a lot. And the higher self is the middle ground between you and Source. I see them as interchangeable. They even both have the initials HS!
In spirituality, we say that you are not your whole complete self incarnated here right now because you as a soul are so much energy, power, vastness, and light that you couldn't possibly shrink down into a human body - that would destroy the body. Only about 10 to 20% of you is incarnated in human form right now and the rest of you sits on the other side of the veil as your higher self… the piece of you has that connection to Source. It sees your whole life plan, the lessons you're supposed to learn, and your past lives and this is what Dolores Cannon tapped into. She called it the subconscious because she didn't know what it was, but it is this all-knowing force. It is pure love, pure light and that's exactly how Jesus describes the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a beacon of love and it's what humans are supposed to be but then ego came in.
Ego came in because there was a fall in consciousness and because of that, they created the atonement which wipes away all of your sins at the end of your life. It completely forgives you at the end so that any forgiveness you haven't been able to give yourself or others, Jesus and the Holy Spirit take you the rest of the way there at the end.
There is so much more in the book . I recommend you read it. Read it with an open mind. And again, start with the A Course in Miracles Made Easy by Alan Cohen if that works for you. Marianne Williamson also wrote a lot about A Course in Miracles.
It's a life-changing read and even if you have to block out the fact that it came from Jesus because your mind can't go there or you don't believe in channeling, I recommend you read it.
Side note: if you feel that way keep following my work to release those triggers because you want to be able to get to a place where you can open your mind to anything and not be triggered. I have so many videos about triggers and how they're mirrors and all of that. If this is triggering, check out some of those videos.
But even if you can't say, “Okay, this was written by Jesus, and it was channeled,” read it as a standalone incredible spiritual work because it will change your life. It's a journey from fear to love. I think especially in today's day and age, we could all use that. So check out A Course in Miracles and you'll start to see how a lot of what I teach comes from these principles.