This article gives you a short introduction to the Course in Miracles. The Course is a spiritual text with daily workbook lessons. They consist of daily affirmations, reflections and meditations. It is a mind training to help you change from a perception of a fearful world to living your true purpose in life: to be happy and joyful. This is also the goal of yoga, which helps you to be fully present in the Now and to act out of love in every moment of your life.
Even though the spiritual text on which our group is based uses Christian terminology, its contents is universal. It resembles more Eastern yogic philosophies, yogic practices and Christian mysticism than the Christian conventional traditions from childhood.
The Course emphasis on the choice you have to have a loving perspective in any given moment. This choice is an internal attitude, which is in fact your ultimate freedom. Heaven is a state of mind.
One example for changing your perspective is: Everyone makes mistakes. You can blame yourself for them, which results in feelings of guilt, or blame others for them, which results in anger (Sri Sri Ravi Shankar). Both feelings result from a negative ego’s perspective. If you change your perspective to that of a loving thought system, you see mistakes as learning devices to make better choices in future.
Here you find a passage from the book “Good-Bye to Guilt” by Gerald Jampolsky. He is one of the earliest authors writing about the Course and its applications in daily life. The Course and the meditations are meant to train the mind in thinking and experiencing the Thought System of Love, which is described below. Enjoy!
Choosing between the Two Thought Systems
from “Release from Guilt” by Gerald Jempolsky
Every decision we make in our lives is chosen either from the ego’s thought system or love’s thought system. The ego would have us base all of our decisions on the condemning judgments we have made in the past. Love’s thought system would have us release the past and make all of our decisions by listening to the voice of our inner teacher, the voice of love. The following chart can be used to help us clarify which of these thought systems we are choosing to live by:
Ego’s Thought System
- This moment is for guilt and fear; the fearful past predicts the fearful, guilty present and future. Spend most of your time worrying about the past and future, and don’t experience much joy now.
- Our reality is limited to our body, and it is impossible to live in this world without fear, depression, conflict, and worry.
- When we try to get as much as we can and hold on to it, we are experiencing ourselves as fearful and separate from others.
- Age and experience determine who our teachers are.
- Love is always conditional; I will love you if you perform and behave as I want you to.
- There are different kinds and degrees of love: a love for this, a love for that. And there are people who should be excluded from love because of their unworthy behavior.
- The body, life, and love all die. Life and the body are the same. Life and love are separate.
- Love is limited to what we see and hear. It has boundaries and expectations.
- Everything we see is separate and different from what we are.
- What is true is that we are born to live in the world where sooner or later we will experience frustration, pain, unhappiness, despair, fear, hopelessness, and death. There are a lot of things besides love in this world.
Love’s Thought System
- This moment is the only moment there is, and it is for love. In this moment there is no guilt or fear.
- Our natural state of being is love. It is to be happy, joyful, and peaceful.
- When we constantly give our love and peace away and join in oneness with others, we are experiencing ourselves as love.
- Everyone, regardless of age, is our teacher of love.
- Love is always unconditional and has nothing to do with performance or behavior.
- There is only love. It is always changeless, maximal, and nonexclusive.
- Life is separate from the body; life and love are one and the same; and life is always—because love never dies.
- Love has no limits, boundaries, or expectations. It simply unfolds upon itself.
- Everything we see is but a mirror of what we are.
- Love is the only thing that can be true, and what is love is all there is.