reality Archives • School for A Course In Miracles

Musings: Who’s Your Teacher?

April 1, 2013

“Resign now as your own teacher, for you have been badly taught.”

To the one who takes pride in the quality of their dream I say, I will wait until you change your mind.

This is not said to be cruel. It is simply a waste of time to talk of waking when it is sleeping that is wanted. The quality of the dream matters not. A dream, is a dream, is a dream.

The purpose of dreams is to please yourself. They are personal and private.

The source of all dreams is fear. Yes, even the lovely ones. The fear comes from guilt; the guilt comes from wanting to be separate and special, because it is a lie.

The awakening dream, referred to as the happy dream in A Course in Miracles, has a different purpose. Its purpose is forgiveness of guilt so the dreamer can awaken and accept the Love of God. For this The Teacher, Who comes from outside of dreams, is needed.

The only real power we have in this world is to make one choice: to learn from The Teacher. All other uses of will take us deeper into the dream.

“Resign now as your own teacher.” T-12. V.8:3

It is The Teacher’s job to show us reality. This we cannot do for ourselves because we already beleive in unreality. We must invite The Teacher in order to learn who we are. That invitation is the little willingness. It will change the direction of your thinking and your life.

Reality is impersonal. Only one who has seen beyond the world can teach what we are. Without these teachers there would be no hope of salvation for special persons who think they are living in a world.

We need help. The first step beyond the limited and personal view is to look with the impartiality of The Teacher at our character and the other characters in our dream. Both are shadows of projected guilt. The Teacher shows us how to undo our belief in them through forgiveness.

“Forgiveness….is still, and quietly does nothing……It merely looks, and waits, and judges not.”

From: What is forgiveness? Workbook, p. 401

You already are spirit: complete and healed and whole. You cannot become what you already are. No amount of effort will take you there. Instead, cease imagining yourself to be what you are not. You are not a person that was born into a world that will eventually die and leave. Anything that comes and goes cannot be real.

You brought the world with you when you came. You are not in the world. The world is like a tiny spec of dust in the mind that is you.

Try this:

Think of yourself as existing only in this moment, without a future or a past. Allow things to be exactly as they are. Don’t seek to change anything. Wait here and become a happy learner of The Teacher who can show you a different way of seeing that reveals the real world.

Do this regularly and your personhood will begin to dissolve.

Don’t fight yourself if you find yourself resisting. You might still like being you.

No problem.

We will wait until you change your mind.

Musings: The Difference between Translation and Interpretation

February 8, 2012

“A good translator, although he must alter the form of what he translates, never changes the meaning. In fact, his whole purpose is to change the form so that the original meaning is retained.” T-7. II.4:3-4

Once a week I used to have the delightful opportunity to read for a blind man. Robert, a seeker of truth since his early 20’s, was then 86. His most prized possession was a library containing the works of the world’s greatest mystics, theologians, philosophers, and teachers.

At my first meeting with Robert he asked me to find and read from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. It was a well used book with sections underlined and margins marked with comments and questions. (In the months that followed, I found that to be true of most of the books in this library.)

Never having read Marcus Aurelius, I was surprised to learn the great Roman Emperor spoke the language of choice and mind training that had become so familiar to me in A Course in Miracles. I understood him perfectly and soon the three of us—Marcus, Robert, and I—were sharing the same transcendent country in the mind.

Months later, after many reading sessions with Marcus and Robert, I decided I had to have a copy of Meditations to add to my library. Amazon had several translations, and not finding any comments that set one apart from another, I chose one for no particular reason.

When my copy arrived I took the first opportunity I had to settle into my reading chair and began. After a few paragraphs I started to feel something was missing. The words seemed similar but they did not take me to same place of communion with the great mind of the Emperor.

The next time I read for Robert, I took my book and compared the same section in Robert’s translation. Some of the words were the same, many were different, but the meaning was alive in Robert’s translation and not in mine. Having learned the value of a good translation I sent my copy back to Amazon.

When A Course in Miracles came into my life back in 1976 there were no study groups, no interpreters, and no translators (that I knew of), and there were many times when I did not understand what I was reading. On those occasions I would ask Jesus or the Holy Spirit to help me and somewhere during the events of the day the meaning would be made perfectly clear.

As a result of this learning process, I developed an intimate relationship with the course Teachers (Jesus and the Holy Spirit) and understanding that did not involve interpretation. The experience was that of being in their mind or “going to their country”. It is the same experience I shared with Robert while reading Marcus Aurelius.

When a message—it could be music, poetry, art, literature—is coming from out of time, it has the capacity to take us to where that work is coming from. It is a transcendent experience—a gift from Heaven that touches us for a moment takes us home. A Course in Miracles is that for me.

A translation that conveys the original meaning of a precious work of art can only be done by someone who has joined the author in his country and has understood the meaning of the message without interpretation. The form may be changed—different words, different language—but the content remains the same. This is crucial. If that is not the case the translation will miss the mark intended by the original.

I find Ken Wapnick to be a superb translator of A Course in Miracles. He adds his words to help students understand some of the complex material of the Course. But he does not change the meaning. Presently he is the only translator of the Course that I recommend to students.

Accepting A Course in Miracles as a path of awakening means joining Jesus and the Holy Spirit in their country (the mind), not trying to bring them here. What I find in much of the supporting material on the subject of A Course in Miracles is that it often (and very subtly) brings Jesus and the Holy Spirit into this world. When this occurs the ego has gotten involved in interpretation and is twisting the original message of the course to suit its purposes of self preservation. The effect of this effort is to keep us from joining Jesus and the Holy Spirit where they are.

If you want to experience a foreign country the only way to really do that is to go there. Reality—a shared experience of the mind—is a foreign country for those of us who believe we are bodies living in a world. The purpose of A Course in Miracles is to shift our identity from the body to the mind. That is a miracle.