Wide appeal of A Course in Miracles

There is nothing I like more than a good question about the Course.  And by "good question", I mean a thought provoking one - a question that makes me reassess what I currently believe and perhaps come to see it in a new light. As a result, we have a very interactive study group of Course students here in Louisville where everyone is encouraged to share their insights and questions. It is also a very diverse group with people from widely varying religious backgrounds so we get a lot of very insightful questions and I've been making a note of them for the last 15 years.  Here is one of my favorite ones:

Question: The Course clearly appeals to people from very diverse religious backgrounds. Why do you think that is?

First and Foremost: A God you can love wholeheartedly

The diverse appeal of A Course Course in Miracles is due in very large measure to the way it completely reshapes our relationship with God. We do not have to earn our way back into our Heavenly Father’s love because we never lost it!

That’s what Jesus himself was saying when he gave us the parable of the Prodigal Son and the Lord's Prayer. Like the Prodigal Son, a child of God need only to change her direction back to home, and God the Father will run to meet her with open arms.

The appeal of the truth of ACIM is very great, undoubtedly, but even before we can get to an understanding of that truth, the appeal of a completely loving God is what kindles most student's motivation to learn and then maintains our momentum home.

Second: The desire for peace

“You who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness. You never really WANTED peace before, so there was no point in being told how to achieve it.”

The horror of nuclear destruction shocked a generation about the potential costs of war. Instant video news coverage and graphic Hollywood productions shoved the routine horror of war in the world's face. All romantic nonsense about the glory of military combat could be questioned, and rejected.

For the first time in history the instructions for peace could be heard by a significant slice of the population, for the simple reason that people of all nations were ready to listen. A Course Course in Miracles is a comprehensive “how-to” manual for genuine peace.

Third: Eliminate the (often corrupt) middlemen

Eastern traditions and ideas have been percolating around the Western world for several hundred years taking root. A new generation coming of age in the 1960's flocked to the promise of a direct personal connection to the transcendent world, and to God. The stale preaching of worn out doctrines by hypocritical clergy were not enough to satisfy a growing hunger for the divine.

A Course Course in Miracles presents itself as a truth to be tested and experienced, not as dogma to be blindly accepted. A revolt against the guardian priests was gaining strength.

Fourth: The inner world

Some sixty years after Freud popularized the idea of the unconscious mind, an educated public was ready to take it seriously and to go exploring. Saints and sages throughout the ages had know of this secret, and wrote about it, but it has been just recently that the terrible fear of the unknown depths relaxed its grip on the public consciousness.

A Course Course in Miracles provides a comprehensive set of spiritual exercises designed to deal with the dark nightmares that haunt our minds, and it lends us the courage to face them.

A perfect storm

These factors combined at the perfect time and in just the right place to make A Course Course in Miracles possible. The Course came as an answer to the heartfelt cries for help from the people of a war-weary world. The Course appeals to people from very diverse religious backgrounds because the Course promises what everyone wants deep down.

Carmen Cameron

Louisville, Kentucky

Investing in yourself

An incredibly successful and busy person once told me, “Find something you love to do and then just do it and you’ll never have to ‘work’ a day in your life.” He was obviously living in a state of joy and there was no doubt about his ability to be helpful to others in his chosen walk of life.

A couple of months ago, I gave a class on levels and degrees. We believe in levels and degrees because we believe that it is possible that we could SEPARATE ourselves from the Infinite - from God.

The course tells us that our only real need is to overcome that basic error. That we need to learn how to identify that falsehood as it comes up in our deciding process in all its multiple and pernicious disguises.

And one of the most painful guises of our collective belief in our separation from God is our resulting belief in our personal smallness. We are in truth cosmic beings - extensions of the One Universal Life - playing at being finite. Limited. Inadequate. Helpless in the face of a world that is far more powerful in its will for us than we are.

This world as we perceive it through our five physical senses (the ultimate premise for what the course calls our “body identification”) and our individual lives, as we have shaped them, are nothing more - or less - than our acting out of that ludicrous and erroneous belief.

You cannot be excluded from the All-That-Is. That would make All-That-Is less than Itself by subtracting what It extended AS YOU! (That’s downright silly.) So no one can deprive you of anything. That is, no one but yourself.

We must first put our faith in the limited before believing we are small – OR THAT BEING SMALL WAS EVEN POSSIBLE!

That erroneous belief in separateness - in being limited by the body in what we are capable of doing - is the entire foundation of our world. That’s why it is an illusion. But it’s an illusion we have each accepted or we couldn’t be limited by the “powers” of the world in the first place.

This belief in the collective conscience of humanity is exemplified in the extreme by a TV program called “The Apprentice” in which seemingly very intelligent people are willing to do ANYTHING AT ALL in order to secure the mentorship of one of the world’s most prominent “successes”. Many people would be willing to figuratively (sometimes, literally) kill to win that kind of prized “opportunity”. How sad and yet how logical. It’s just a matter of degrees of excess of what we each do in order to just survive in the world as we see it.

If we only limit ourselves to our physical senses in our perception of our strengths and resources, then we will readily give up our fondest wishes, our ideals - even our God-given hopes and aspirations – slowly and agonizingly losing touch with our very essence. And growing ever-more despondent in the process.

We have traded our potential for a very limited sense of security, indeed, when in reality, we have the means for direct access to the Source of the universe if we are just open to that as a possibility.

The source of life created you in order to extend Its own creation, not as a “lab rat” to be tested in order to prove your value. It already KNOWS your value! It created you beyond measure. It is YOU that made the “ruler” by which you set a value on yourself. “Infinity minus x” is how you identify yourself. And that is an insult to the Infinity that created you.

Just consider what if:

• WHAT IF God is ONLY love? And love without ANY limits?


• WHAT IF He created you just as loving and as limitless as He is?


• WHAT IF nothing is beyond your ability to do IN PARTNERSHIP with Him?


• WHAT IF God had the thought to do something wonderful for His creation and YOU (in your present form and abilities) came into existence as a result?


• WHAT IF THAT DREAM YOU GAVE UP ON and locked away in the deepest recesses of your heart is precisely YOUR REASON FOR BEING?

WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO BE OPEN TO REVIVING YOUR DREAMS AND ASPIRATIONS THEN? Would you be willing to TEST what ACIM tells us and just be open to the possibility that God can open the doors YOU closed - and open new doors for you as well? Would you be willing to watch your thoughts for any reflection of the belief in limitation? Could you be vigilant for the kingdom of God? Not just for your sake alone but for the joy and blessing of all you touch!

THEN the universe of infinite possibilities can open up for you. But it needs your invitation and unceasing welcome (even when it gets a little scary) for the Mind that heard your request and answered has not left you alone to deal with the changes that He’s wrought. You are only asked to TRUST, when you’re tempted to doubt the love of the Infinite and then limitations will just fall away, like the “scales” from the eyes of the blind.

Your faith given to One’s vision instead of to your perception of appearances is the “little part” that is asked of you. So small a part, in fact, that you are likely to be insulted by it.

Be open to being You and one idea, one connection, one person, one “closed door” opening will change your life for the better in one instant. But the FIRST door you need to open is in your mind: the door you closed on the Infinite.


These are ACIM’s promises to you. Be willing to accept them - for your sake and mine.


Blessings,

Carmen Cameron
Louisville, Kentucky

My first experience with a psychic

Dear friend,

The first time I visited a psychic was by accident. I was in high school in New Orleans, many years ago. My friend Lana wanted a psychic reading, but she was afraid to go alone. So I went with her. Before we went, a different friend named Cheryl from my after school job requested that I ask the psychic a question for her. She said, "Ask if Mickey is with Daddy." Her father had just died a few months before, but I had no idea who Micky was.

In all the excitement of meeting with the psychic, I forgot all about Cheryl's question. It wasn't my appointment and I wasn't paying for the psychic anyway. Lana was. I was just there to keep Lana company. We had to wait in the front room of the psychic's shotgun style house for about 20 minutes before Lana's appointment. It was a little creepy. Every square inch of each wall was covered by pictures of Jesus, crucifixes, and rosaries, with dozens of statues of the Virgin Mary on little shelves sticking out from the wall. Three small tables in the room were each covered with more than a dozen pure white candles. The air was thick with incense.

When it was finally our turn, we walked down a short hallway to a small side room that was decorated with colorful drapes and printed fabrics hanging on the walls. The only light came from 7 white candles. There was one candle on each of the 4 walls of the room, and 3 on the table that the little white-haired psychic sat behind. She looked like she was ancient.

As soon as Lana and I entered the room, but before we even had a chance to sit down in the two wooden chairs opposite the psychic, she announced, "I see an old, very short and very big-chested woman dressed in an old fashioned black full-length dress buttoned up to the neck. There is something wrong with her face. It is twisted somehow, and she looks like a horse. I also see a tall thin man standing next to her. He is totally bald and he is holding a single rose against his chest. I smell roses too. Stronger than from a single rose. It's more like rose perfume."

I recognized the old woman the psychic was talking about instantly. It was a perfect description of my grandmother, who had died the year before. She had been caught in a fire when she was a young girl and her face was badly burned. The scars gave her a slightly twisted horse face. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't pretty either. Rose perfume was the only perfume she ever wore, and she wore it every day.

Tears came to my eyes. I missed my grandmother very much, and I was overcome with emotion to know that her spirit was still alive. I really had no idea who the tall bald man was, but I didn't ask. I sat in silence through Lana's reading. Every once in a while, the psychic would brush her hands down by her feet, as if she was swatting unseen insects. Once she blurted out, "Shoo! Go away!" and immediately apologized. The psychic said that a small long-haired dog was running around her feet and between her legs, and it was distracting her.

Of course, there was no dog in the room.

The next day when I saw Cheryl, she asked me about the psychic. I had to confess and apologize that I had forgotten to ask her question about Mickey and her father. Cheryl seemed a little disappointed, but not upset. She wanted to know about Lana's and my big psychic adventure, so I told her about it, just as I have told it here.

Cheryl stayed silent and wide-eyed during my story, until I got to the part where the psychic was swatting at the invisible dog at her feet. When Cheryl heard me tell that, she burst into tears. She exclaimed, "Oh, I'm so happy. Mickey IS with Daddy."

"You've forgotten about this, Carmen," Cheryl started to explain, "but when my father died two months ago the family asked that nobody send flowers and instead give the money to charity. You came to his funeral with a single red rose for my mother. It was the only flower there. I never told you this, but my mother put that red rose you brought on my father's chest before we closed the coffin. He was buried with that rose. My father was tall and thin, and very bald. That man with the rose the psychic saw when you and Lana walked into the room was him."

A chill went up my back. "But who is Mickey?" I asked.

Cheryl pause and looked into the distance. "Mickey was Daddy's dog," she continued. "He was Daddy's best friend and companion. Daddy had raised him from a pup. Mickey was a small frisky long-haired dog that was always running around Daddy's feet. Mickey loved to run figure eights between Daddy's legs. Near the end, when Daddy was using a walker, we were so worried that Mickey would trip Daddy that we almost took him away from him, but Daddy would have had a fit. When we came home from Daddy's funeral, we found Micky curled up on Daddy's bed. Mickey died that same day that we buried Daddy."

That was my first experience with a psychic, and it made a big impression on me. The most valuable lesson I needed to learn at that young age was that life goes on even after the body is set aside, and that our loved ones are still with us, always.

Since then I have moved away from New Orleans. I have lived in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other parts of the country, and I have encountered many different psychics over the years. Some have been good, and some have not. Some have had natural talent and it came easy for them, and some have relied on cards or charts and had to work at it.

But after that first experience of mine, I have never doubted that the ability is genuine and useful. It has shaped my whole idea about death, and what it means. I have many psychic friends. A few of them are professional psychics, but most are not. I have even developed my own psychic and intuitive abilities over the years, but I'm not a professional.

The one thing I have learned about psychics is that they are not all the same, and the ones with the biggest signs or the most impressive advertising may not be the right one for you, right now. You might be drawn to a particular psychic like a magnet, or you may trip over one by accident. But if you are looking for a psychic, you may need to look at several, or even dozens, before something inside of you clicks, and says "This is the one."

The only suggestion I have for you, if you liked my experience with the New Orleans psychic, is to be a little bit open to the possibility that Shakespeare was right when he wrote, "There is more in Heaven and earth than is dreamed of in your philosophy."

If you are looking for a psychic, click this link and follow your own intuition.



Sincerely,

Carmen
Louisville, Kentucky

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