CHAPTER ONE
Overview
I would like to share with you a brief overview of the philosophy of A Course in Miracles on which this book is based. A Course in Miracles is a self-study program for personal and spiritual transformation that emphasizes the necessity of relying on our own internal teacher for guidance rather than looking for teachers outside ourselves. It consists of a text, which sets forth the concepts on which its thought system is based; a workbook for students containing 365 lessons (one for each day of the year), designed for practical application of the course’s principles to daily life; and a manual for teachers written in question and answer form to clarify terms and issues related to the course.
The course is a spiritual teaching, not a religion. It uses Christian terminology, but it is ecumenical in nature. The course states that “a universal theology is impossible, but a universal experience is not only possible but necessary.” Its emphasis is on application, and, after studying the course, students are encouraged to demonstrate and live the spiritual principles of forgiveness and giving through love in their daily lives.
The goal of the course is to lead us from the world of the ego—our body/personality-self—to the world of love. Once we are caught in the world of the ego, which is the world of perception, it is as though we are imprisoned in a dream. We need help to awaken from this dream since what our senses reveal to us merely reinforces our belief in the reality of the dream. The course stresses that as long as we identify with our ego or body/personality-self and believe we are limited by the boundaries of what we perceive in the physical world, we cannot experience our true reality—our spiritual self.
Until we challenge the reality of our ego, we will continue to go through life more concerned with getting than giving, feeling guilty, separate, and afraid. We will make condemning judgments, blaming ourselves and others. With the ego as our guide, guilt and fear will rule our lives; conflict will never totally disappear, and we can anticipate that our “reality” will be destroyed by sickness and death.
If we are willing to detach from our ego, it is then possible to correct our perceptions. The world of corrected perception is the world of love. It is a world that is seen through the filter of spiritual vision, the vision of love, rather than through the distortions of our ego.
Like a cloud obscuring the sun, the guilt and fear that we carry within us block our ability to experience the presence of love, which has never left us. We are all miracles of love, but we are blind to that truth. A miracle can be thought of as a shift in perception that removes the fear and guilt that block our awareness of love’s presence, which is our reality.
I would like to share with you some quotations from the course that are the underlying themes—or heartbeats—of the philosophy expressed in this book.
“When you feel guilty your ego is in command, because only the ego can experience guilt.”
“Only your mind can produce fear.”
“I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts.”
“Love holds no grievances.”
“I will not be afraid of love today.”
“Love and guilt cannot coexist, and to accept one is to deny the other.”
“To love yourself is to heal yourself.”
“All healing is release from the past.”
“Forgiveness is my function as the light of the world.”
“Only my own condemnation injures me. Only my own forgiveness sets me free.”
“Forgiveness ends the dream of conflict here.”
Attitudinal Healing
Because of the profound effect the course had on my life, I decided to apply its principles in working with catastrophically ill children. In 1975, my inner guidance led me to help establish The Center for Attitudinal Healing in Tiburon, California, to fulfill that function.
At the time I helped found the center, I equated the death of my body with the end of life, and I had terrible hang-ups about the inevitability of my own death. Working with children and adults who were facing the possibility of their own deaths, and seeing them and the members of their extended families as my teachers, gave me a wonderful opportunity to heal my own attitudes about death.
In addition to groups for catastrophically ill children and adults, we have recently begun a program for children whose parents have life-threatening illnesses. I would like to emphasize, however, that the center’s programs are not limited to those with life-threatening illnesses. We also have a person-to-person program where people come together for only two reasons: to learn how to let go of judgments, and to practice forgiveness. The concepts used at the center have wide, practical applications, and we have been invited to introduce these principles of attitudinal healing to retirement centers, educational and medical institutions, businesses, and governmental agencies.
Our center offers no treatment: it is an educational center that serves as a supplement to the medical model. Our definition of health is inner peace, and we define healing as letting go of fear. We believe that it is not people or conditions in our external world that cause us to be upset, but rather the thoughts and attitudes we have about people and conditions that cause us to be in conflict and distress.
Letting go of our past thoughts of guilt, fear, and condemning judgments is what we call “attitudinal healing.” Attitudinal healing is concerned only with changing the thoughts in our own mind. It is not focused on changing situations or other people in our lives.
We do our best at the center to establish an atmosphere of unconditional love where we learn to recognize the love in others rather than concentrate on their faults. It is our belief that giving and receiving are the same, and, therefore, by helping others we help ourselves. This principle implies that there is no separation—that our minds are joined. We emphasize that the present moment is the only time there is, and its only purpose is for giving love and letting go of the negative thoughts from our past. At our center, everyone is regarded as both a teacher and a learner.
There are now approximately thirty-five centers in the United States and in other parts of the world. Perhaps the greatest gift we have been given, which is the basis for attitudinal healing, is the power that comes from knowing that we are free to choose the thoughts we put in our minds, and that by changing these thoughts, we can change our experience.
We do not have to have a life-threatening illness to apply these principles in our daily lives. All of us have unhealed relationships that can be healed, and we can free ourselves from our bondage to the past by becoming aware of the boundless love within us. It is this bondage and attachment to our guilt and fears of the past that cause not only our internal conflict, but the external conflicts we see in the world. It is so easy for all of us to become stuck in the mundane issues and self-pleasures of our lives—and to forget that PEACE … PEACE … PEACE in the world is truly the number one issue of our lives.
The premise of this book is that to heal our relationships we must first be willing to find peace within ourselves and then extend that peace to everyone. As each of us makes the healing of our relationships through love and forgiveness the most important thing we can do in our lives, peace in the world will become inevitable.
Copyright © 2009 by Gerald Jampolsky. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
