A Course In Miracles — Intro And Tips On Practicing
I’m going to begin discussing the lessons from The Workbook section of A Course In Miracles (ACIM) again beginning with Lesson 1. But before I do, I want to share a bit about how Jesus, who is the author, says we should practice these lessons and how they can change and rearrange our thinking and then our lives.
It is said that the first 3 lessons should be practiced no more than twice a day, preferably morning and evening and for no more than a minute.
The statement of the day should be applied to whatever your eye lights upon but not everything. But most importantly, nothing is to be specifically excluded. The exercise should be “practiced with great specificity” and you shouldn’t “decide for yourself that there are some people, situations or things to which the ideas are inapplicable.”
The purpose of the workbook lessons is “to train your mind in a systematic way to a different perception of everyone and everything in the world.”
Pam Grout, in one of her blog posts on The Course says that “everything we see is just a cardboard cutout — a picture of the past frozen in time.” She says that “we decided long ago that life is this certain way and that’s all we can see.” That’s the reason we practice the Workbook lessons, in order to break free from our past perceptions and gain a new way of perceiving ourselves and the world around us.
There are two sections in the workbook, the first “deals with the undoing of the way you see things now” and the second part deals with the “acquisition of true perception.” This is the way The Course will change your thinking and ultimately your life.
There is a very interesting statement in the Introduction to The Workbook: “Remember only this; you need not believe the ideas, you need not accept them, and you need not welcome them. Some of them you may actively resist. None of this will matter, or decrease their efficacy. But do not allow yourself to make exceptions in applying the ideas the workbook contains, and whatever your reactions to the ideas may be, use them. Nothing more than that is required.”
Please feel free to leave any thoughts or questions you might have about A Course In Miracles in the comment section and together we’ll discuss these matters.
I hope you try practicing each lesson before deciding that it doesn’t work. You might find a whole new world opening up for you.