"The Glorious Experience!"

As we gleefully gaze across the flowering fields of the merry month of May we see only beauty, yet nevertheless notice that some flowers burst open in full brilliant glory while others more or less half blossom but never seem to reach a stage of spectacular bloom.

Those who use A Course in Miracles are much like a field of flowers, wouldn't you say? Sooner or later some skeptic is going to ask: "If this Course is so great, why have a few burst open into extreme brightness, almost as if they have become more heavenly than earthly ... while many, even after years with the Course, seem open only partially and seem never to feel the glorious experience?"

A few partially bloomed flowers might even reply: "What experience?"

Maybe the experience is too overwhelmingly enormous and glorious and breathtaking to be described in words but it is the experience Jesus talked about after the three books of the Course were all finished, "AMEN" had been said; and Helen Schucman, still not grasping that the Course was not about her old intellectual habits, asked for more clarification of terms. Here are a few sentences from what Jesus says to her:

"Yet there is no answer; only an experience."

"It is this experience toward which the course is directed."

"Seek only this (experience), and do not let theology delay you."

The operative word Jesus uses in the above sentence is only. Jesus knows in advance the delaying devices which future readers of his just completed Course are going to attempt to use. So before he surrenders to answering the question Helen is asking with her words, he answers first the question she is asking in her heart: "How do I really come to a clear understanding?"

Before giving Helen the intellectual satisfaction she thinks she wants, Jesus actually addresses the two most prominent delaying devices the ego manages to use with the Course: scholarship and self-examination.

Throughout the text and workbook Jesus has been telling us the Course is an undoing device which undoes us until we do nothing with our minds. He says the Course is a preparation device for an experience you could never prepare yourself for in a million years, precisely because "yourself" was invented to keep you out of the experience. The experience finally comes when we do nothing with the mind and the realization truly dawns on us: "I need do nothing." So Jesus, before clarifying terms for Helen, is in essence telling us (in what seems like the hundredth different way) that until we have the realization "I need to nothing," we will delay ourselves by scholarship and self-examination.

It's not so unnatural that born-again Christians think of the Course in Miracles movement as a cult. Certainly not everyone in the Miracles movement is exhibiting cultish or ego-driven behavior, but born-again Christians are onto the shenanigans of those who are deluded into believing that their salvation must come from scholarship, as well as those who have deceived themselves into thinking self-examination is the magic ritual that will take them to heaven. Born-again Christians know they have already been given a better answer than the cult of scholarship and the cult of self-examination.

Let's look at how Jesus addresses these two delaying devices of the ego in his answer to Helen:

SCHOLARSHIP

We know from the Course that if we are experiencing unified mind we see the totally illusory nature of percepts and concepts, while on the other hand if we feel there is important meaning in percepts and concepts our true motive is to cause the illusion of separation, the goal of which is controversy. We also know from the Course that the truth is already known inside of us, so questioning is an ego device used to deny what we already know, a way to set up another form of controversy.

So Jesus tells us our opening to the glorious experience comes not from scholarship in percepts and concepts, or from questioning, but from allowing percepts and concepts and questions to be undone altogether. He tells us the attempt to employ the usual study methods of the world as an approach to the Course is to actively resist being undone.

"This is not a course in philosophical speculation, nor is it concerned with precise terminology.... All terms are potentially controversial, and those who seek controversy will find it.... They (who seek clarification) must, however, be willing to overlook controversy, recognizing that it is a defense against the truth in the form of a delaying maneuver....

"(The Course) does not recognize as questions the mere form of a question to which an answer is impossible. The ego may ask, 'How did the impossible occur?', 'To what did the impossible happen?', and may ask this in many forms.... It is merely the ego that questions because it is only the ego that doubts.... Yet there is no answer; only an experience. Seek only this...."

It goes without saying that Jesus wants us to read the Course and use the Course, but not as the world reads and uses study material.

SELF-EXAMINATION

As soon as it has become painfully evident that using a worldly approach to the Course sets the mind into intellectual controversy, in fact keeping one trapped in the same old self-defeating habits of mind instead of leading to the glorious experience Jesus wants us to experience, the ego is forced to fall back on a second delaying and controversy-establishing technique: attention to one's thoughts and perceptions with the goal of catching the faulty and substituting replacements considered to be non-faulty.

Other than the obvious fact that we would be attempting to assume one of the Holy Spirit's functions with this second approach, it is still just another device for keeping one's mind engaged with percepts and concepts. The mind is infinitely creative. If you tell it you want to catch faulty perceptions, then it will oblige by providing faulty perceptions for you to catch ad infinitum, like a rat running in a cage getting nowhere. There is never any movement up and out altogether into an entirely conflict-free state of mind. Jesus tells Helen (and all of us) this is not the approach to be used:

"The structure of 'individual consciousness' is essentially irrelevant because it is a concept representing the 'original error' or the 'original sin.' To study the error itself does not lead to correction, if you are indeed to succeed in overlooking the error. And it is just this process of overlooking at which the course aims."

Yes, the Course is about the correction of perception. But Jesus emphasizes over and over again it is not about you doing anything to correct perception. You, as you perceive yourself if you still need the Course, are the problem not the solution. You do not know how to judge the faulty, never mind how to bring about true correction. Born-again Christians have heard inside at least one bit of guidance correctly: "Get yourself out of the way and let Jesus do it!"

Jesus tells us it's not about scholarship, it's not about watching your mind and working on your mind, it's not about watching your perceptions and working on your perceptions, it's not about watching yourself at all, in fact it's not about doing anything to bring about your own salvation. So what is it about?

"To say, 'Of myself I can do nothing' is to gain all power."

It's about surrender, isn't it?

We are often asked, "How would you suggest approaching the Course? Where should someone start?" The Course itself has this to say about a starting point:

"In some cases it may be helpful for the pupil to read the manual first. Others might do better to begin with the workbook. Still others may need to start at the more abstract level of the text.

"Which is for which? The curriculum is highly individualized, and all aspects are under the Holy Spirit's particular care and guidance. Ask and He will answer. The responsibility is His and He alone is fit to assume it."

It's all about surrender, isn't it? Can you read the text or the manual while your mind surrenders its usual habits? Can you allow the lessons of the workbook to work on you without you thinking you have to work on something?

The Holy Spirit will use the Course to undo you ... if you give up trying to do something yourself! Many have found that while reading the text and not focusing on understanding the lines, the spaces between the lines are busy working marvelous miracles. Others have noticed that repeating the lesson statements of the workbook bring about amazing changes in attitude and perception even when there is no feeling of "doing work on oneself" ... especially when there is no feeling of doing work on oneself. Some ACIM classes do nothing more than read to each other random sections of the manual ... and find themselves in heaven.

Who is working the miracles in these cases?

"Who assumes a power that he does not possess is deceiving himself. Yet to accept the power given him by God is but to acknowledge his Creator and accept His Gifts. And His Gifts have no limit. To ask the Holy Spirit to decide for you is simply to accept your true inheritance."

Born-again Christians thoroughly understand this. Those who are addicted to scholarship or self-examination would be better off spiritually in a Born-again Christian congregation where surrender is rampant and contagious than they would be in a Course class where their ego habits might even be reinforced.

In at least some parts of the Northern Hemisphere it is said that "April showers bring May flowers." This is an apt comparison to our spiritual blossoming. Flowers do not pull their roots out of the ground and dance in circles hoping to influence the rain. They simply surrender and let the rain come when it will and accomplish what it will.

"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin." (Matthew 6:28)

During this month of May let us be as flowers and rejoice that there is an experience we can experience that is so incredibly big and beautiful and wonderful and glorious that we couldn't make it happen if we wanted to ... so we happily surrender and let it happen by turning our faces toward God, seeing nothing else but God, and allowing God's Grace to rain upon us.