I am at as loss in terms of knowing what to write about this because I am finding it all so confusing in my mind. But since starting this blog, I have found it good just to start writing about what I am experiencing as I get to know some of my thoughts about it. Having to express it in a way that makes sense is good mental discipline and almost makes me feel like I am gettin back in touch with my creativity.
I have been pretty much faithfully doing the course for twenty-three days now, reading the daily chapter and doing the exercises that go with it. I don't hugely enjoy reading the chapter. I find it difficult to penetrate the meaning of what is said, even more so to apply it to my everyday life. Not understanding makes me feel a bit stupid at times and that is somewhat uncomfortable for me! Sometimes what I read one day clarifies what I have struggled with before, but overall what irks me is that I really don't know what I think of it all! Is that the product of a mind that has become somewhat lazy - in the sense of avidly reading so many ideas and just taking them in with out seemingly processing or wrestling with them - or am I just going through that inner confusion which heralds true learning? Or is it all just a loada bollocks???
See, having read "A Return to Love" and most of "The Gift of Change" by Marianne Williamson, I really cannot agree with the last statement. But Marianne Williamson's books make so much more sense than "ACIM". At times I ask myself, is this book just contradicting itself? But I don't have a good enough grasp of the material to answer that. I feel so far behind it. I wish I could bring up some of the cases in which I thought this happened, but I am sorry to admit that alot of it just goes over my head and does not commit to my memory. The basic gist of the Course comes across and I am familiar with it from Williamson's writings - it fits in with the mentality of the lovely Florence Scovel Shinn books which got me through some very difficult times - and I like it. I think it is a positive way in which to use my mind.
It's just got me panicking a little because I begin to think "Oh God what have I done wrong to cause this?" when something negative happens or I have a bad day in spite of all my hard work. These things pass of course, but instead of feeling mentally empowered, at times sometimes I feel at the mercy of the power of my mind, if that makes any sense! I think it good to take responsibility for my thoughts and how they manifest in my life, but at times it is a huge pressure and terrifies me. My faults and shortcomings become clearer to me and they just seem endless! How can I ever sort them all out? If I have an uncharitable thought or react badly to something that upsets me, I always pray afterwards and say to God "Please help me to see this differently" I try to bless those people and situations I am having most difficulty with, I ask God to remove the thoughts which are unworthy of my better self. But at the moment it is tiring and disheartening to say the least. I wanna go back to my ignorance and have a good old moan or bitch, but that feels uncomfortable too!
Ach, this is probably a part of the process and transformation will occur subtly and for the best. I find the exercises easier to access than the readings. I do them with as open a mind as possible. Sometimes the premise is a little obscure like, "What I see is a form of vengeance", but then on the obscure days weird little insights come to me, seemingly unrelated to the central lesson and on the days where the exercises seem to make sense, I don't really seem to get anything out of them. And sometimes I disagree, "Is this the world I really want to see?" is supposed to be answered in the negative, but at times I am happy with looking around and seeing things just as they are.
And what confuses me too...should I have no dreams or plans whatsoever in case they have nothing to do with God's Will for me? Sometimes I feel guilty when glimmers of fantasy of ambition arise and other times I get worried that this course will cause me to lapse into some form of apathetic fatalism. All of this seems to be contributing to some form of spiritual lethargy.
I think I have had my surfeit of spiritual books for the present. I have a few to finish of course and I am really enjoying them, but my brain is becoming so overloaded with all that stuff, it's having no chance to process. I need a bit of fiction in my life! I read Jane Austen's "Persuasion" on a complete whim the other week and it was a breath of fresh air!!! And the other night, for the first time in almost a year, I picked up a book that had to do with theatre "The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit" and I am enjoying the little bit I have read so far...
Of course I will stick with ACIM but I need to relax...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I don’t like the Course of Miracles either.
e.g. Lesson 7: I see only the past.
Er, no. I don’t. How would you know, anyway? This is like advertising that creates a problem and then says 355 lessons later, look we’ve solved it all for you. I didn’t really have a problem with this in the first place, but if I waded through all this drivel I certainly would have.
Another early lesson-
“My thoughts do not mean anything”
Uh? Aaaaagghhh! It’s impossible to argue against this statement. The statement means nothing if you don't believe it, and nothing if you do.
I’ve never believed that God created me just to entirely remake me again from scratch. He always starts from where we are. Oddly enough, the phrase I remember from Marianne Williamson’s Gift of Change book, and which I’m pretty sure doesn’t have any origin in ACIM philosophy is “God turns our wounds into beauty marks”. That one little phrase made more sense to me than anything in the Course so far. (I’m half way through the text, and 31 lessons in) I find the writing style so long-winded and monumentally turgid, not to say bloody bamboozling. Helen Shucman said that the reason the Course was so long even though the message was actually very simple, was that she wanted to create a work of art. Sorry?! It’s a very poor work of art, Helen! The core ideas are so much more lucidly expressed when you read Marianne Williamson, and she is not pretending to write great literature. It’s a bit like Stanislavsky- the original books all terribly long-winded and disorganised. Then Jean Benedetti and Bella Merlin’s books summarise it and make it all so much clearer, and better organised! Helen Shucman was ‘given’ these words but even she couldn’t bring herself to agree with them, still less even abide by them.
People are entrapped by fear; and their own resulting false interpretations of God’s love cause all their problems for themselves primarily and then others around them. Well, OK I get that. But ACIM seems to be using disorientating mind-games to make one give up having any trust in ones own thinking- a mild but highly effective form of mind-control torture technique! Another form of entrapment.
Anything but love is a lie- nothing exists except love. Well, yeah, thanks “Jesus”. Duh! It takes hundreds and hundreds of pages to tell me this in a hopelessly contradictory way. The Hindus explained this concept in just one word- maya. I have no doubt ACIM works very well for raging fundamentalists, and perhaps for super- rationalist, desperate atheists, and/or credulous agnostics, who may all need to start from a tabula rasa; but these ideas, as they are expressed in this book at least, can be totally confusing for the majority of us who live somewhere in the hinterland of an honest relationship with our doubts and God. No wonder you’re confused, Sarah. Me too!
The Course’s insistence on daily ritual reading makes me feel like a lazy schoolboy forced to do RE homework. I feel I'm being admonished like a naughty and ignorant child, ‘This is good for you, take it… You’ll understand when you’re older.’ When I read it I can almost visualise a finger being wagged in my face. Well, sorry, I smell shite. I am not going to surrender my right to question.
I have decided ACIM is a misleading cult. Even Helen Schucman who channelled the book, denounced it on her deathbed. The book’s not actually dangerous (No, “Jesus”, I am not in fear about this, honestly!), it’s just boring! Repetitious and horribly long-winded. I just haven’t the patience: it’s going straight back to the library. I don’t believe like the Christian fundamentalists the book is satanic (The devil has got to be more interesting than this!). And to be fair, I don’t believe it is all mumbo-jumbo either- The book contains a some penetrating and important truths- mainly that love is all there is, and that fear causes all the problems in the world. It may even be worth saying these things again. But again and again and again... and again... and AGAIN??????
The world’s still not listening. But no wonder if the lessons this dull!
The one thing I simply cannot bring myself to accept is the notion that nothing in this life is real. Tell that to the starving AIDS-stricken Eritrean, tell it to the rape-victim, to the child who has watched his parents blown up in a car-bomb attack Iraq and then see how holy and righteous it makes you or them feel.
I’ve decided to get my spiritual nourishment from more readable sources- ACIM is just too poorly written. Give me Thomas Merton, Oswald Chambers, Jung, the Bible, Sanaya Roman and… yes, Marianne Williamson any old day!!!
I fell asleep reading it yesterday. SITTING UP!!! And yes, it is horribly patronising. I just felt like I wasn't getting it. Your comparison with Stanislavsky and Bella Merlin is right on the mark, especially since I am reading the latter at the moment.
I guess some good comes of it if it has inspired Marianne Williamson's work. I think what I dislike most of all is that it seems to encourage another form of the homogenous thinking that I railed against in an earlier post. Yes there are good central lessons to it, but 1000's of pages are not needed! The exercises are a good idea, but again...doesn't it remind you of the horrible arrogance of those drama schools who "break you down to build you back up again?"
And I don't like the way it's making me feel really uncertain about my thoughts, it's worse than Catholic Guilt!!!
I don't know how the central message of the Course can be "Relax"
Heh Heh It feels naughtily delicious to have a good ole bitch about the bloody thing! All the same, I'm gonna give it a bit more time, just outta doggedness and curiosity and I will now engage my mind in being more critical. Even though my thoughts don't exist!!!
The Course is not for everyone...but if it is your path, then you will undoubtedly know it. For me, it is the way. I have had incredible insights into my self-sabotaging behaviors that have held me back from happiness and real relationships with friends, family, and my partner. Understanding the course is a process that requires patience. Marianne Williamson also helped me to grasp the meaning of the text from day 1. I just love her translations into plain English. After listening to so many of he lectures that I bought on iTunes under "spoken word", I can know read the book with great ease. Once you can grasp the language, the messages within are multi-leveled and take on very personal and specific meaning. I was ready to get to the bottom of my crap and I think that is why I had no resistance or feeling of insult by the books language. It is a leap of faith to jump of of the cliff of "reason" into something outside of one's known comfort zone. But that is where real self-discovery is found. Thanks for your blog post! Warm regards, Jeff
Post a Comment