Week 2: A Course in Miracles

Welcome to the second in a series of posts on A Course in Miracles! If you missed last week's entry, ACIM is a self-study program that  teaches your mind to view the world in a more forgiving and peaceful light. It consists of 365 lessons that we meditate on every day for a year. Two years ago I tried going through it on my own but I got lost. 

Now I've joined a study group with a great teacher, so fingers crossed I'll be able to see it through  - all 365 days of ACIM! 

With that note behind me, I should confess that I didn't follow any of the lectures during the week and instead of studying them one day at a time, I am going through them now. I know, it's  awful, ACIM works best in bite sized chunks. But anyhow, let's get started with Week 2. 

The quotes are on the A Course in Miracles website but the interpretations are my own. If you missed my first post READ IT HERE. Here are highlights from the week. 

Day 8: My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts. 

Last week we ended with the concept that wherever we look, we see the past whether it's pink nail polish taking you back to your first school dance, tardiness taking you back to a mom who was always running late, and even happy memories like icing on the cake reminding us of birthdays. Our experiences start to condition our thoughts and our expectations, so that in time we look at a person's appearance and make assumptions about them. Our thoughts lend a voice to those assumptions and for this reason, our mind is preoccupied with thoughts about the past. We can remove this filter by taking a step back and realizing that our thoughts about X, Y or Z are really about the past.

Day 9: I see nothing as it is now. 

One of the things I love about energy healing, is how each session is unique. I tend to tune into my client's energy field clairvoyantly to get a sense of what needs to be healed or cleared. The impressions come as pictures, feelings or even cartoons, illustrating the world that they live in. Every healing is a surprise, it's own movie starring John or Sally. Pretty soon it also becomes apparent that we all have different filters, based on our experiences. Some people see love through rose colored glasses, other have a cynical filter. We can each be presented with the same opportunity and nevertheless have completely different reactions to it: hope, excitement, cynicism or apathy. We don't see the world objectively; instead we see what our experiences led us to expect.

 

Day 10: My thoughts do not mean anything. 

I could interpret this one one of two ways - my study group is tomorrow so we'll see what the teacher has to say about it. The more obvious meaning (pardon the pun) is that our thoughts don't have the significance we think they have, because we're viewing the present through the lens of our own assumptions.

Let's give an example: 

Your friend Mary cancels dinner plans yet again and you think "oh, she always has something better to do" But maybe this time, her babysitter  did cancel last minute. Or she's been so stressed at work that her social life has been put on the back burner, it's not personal. 

We don't know the reason for things, so our thoughts about those things are at best irrelevant and at worst, damaging. This brings me to the second way of interpreting today's phrase: are our thoughts significant? On any given day, the average human has 50-70 thoughts. How many of them are significant? How many of them are true? How many of them are products of the subconscious?

Day 13: rephrased but, a random or uncertain world creates fear.

 

A few years ago I applied for a job as a Global Brand Manager. The interviewer told me that in order to do well, the candidate had to feel comfortable with high levels of uncertainty. In their environment plans changed all the time, projects were abandoned at the last minute, goals would change. You'd never know if the thing you were working on today would be useful or meaningful tomorrow. The only solution was to accept that uncertainty and live with it. Today's phrase reminds me of that interview (I didn't get the job). If living in a chaotic world is stressful, your best bet is to learn to live with it and find a way to trust. Otherwise we end up anxious, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. A Course in Miracles tells us to trust that there is a reason, one we don't see. 

So that's a wrap! 

Come back next week for the third installment on A Course in Miracles. You can read the whole course for free on the ACIM Website Here. It's worth doing for a whole year so that you get the full benefit. I’m going to blog about it just this month.

Study groups help a lot, though there are also plenty of online videos and interviews explaining ACIM. Reiki hugs, Regina

  

Image: canva.com (added 2023)