“A Course In Miracles” Teaches Spiritual Concepts It Says Are Required To Awaken.
"Course Teachings" foundation and correlational teachings are based on and taken from the teachings in "A Course In Miracles". In the course, Jesus teaches, "course required". Between 1965 and 1972, the course was channeled and scribed from inner communication from the spirit of Jesus to Helen Schucman and William Thetford. They were professors of Medical Psychology at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. Below are teachings by Jesus giving the purpose and reasons for the required course.
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"This course is a MIND-TRAINING course.
This is not a course in philosophical speculation, nor is it concerned with precise terminology. It is concerned only with Atonement, or the correction of perception. The means of the Atonement is forgiveness. The structure of "individual consciousness" is essentially irrelevant.
Of all the messages you have received and failed to understand, this course alone is OPEN to your understanding, and CAN be understood. All terms are potentially controversial, and those who seek controversy will find it. Yet those who seek clarification will find it as well. They must, however, be willing to overlook controversy, recognizing that it is a defense against truth in the form of a delaying maneuver.
The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is KNOW THYSELF.
There is nothing else to learn. If the purpose of this course is to learn what you are, and if you have ALREADY DECIDED that what you are is FEARFUL, then it MUST follow that you will NOT LEARN THIS COURSE. But you might remember that the reason FOR the course is that you do NOT know who you are. If you do not know your reality, how would you know whether it is fearful or not?
The association of truth and fear, which would be highly artificial at best, is particularly inappropriate in the minds of those who do not know what truth IS. All that this kind of association means is that you are arbitrarily endowing something quite beyond your awareness with something YOU DO NOT WANT.
The course does state, and REPEATEDLY, that its purpose is the ESCAPE FROM FEAR.
This course is a guide to behavior. Being a very direct and very simple learning situation, it provides the guide who tells you what to do. If you do it, you will SEE that it works. Its RESULTS are more convincing than its words. THEY will convince you that the words are true.
This course is perfectly clear. You do not see it clearly, because you are interpreting AGAINST it, and therefore do DO NOT BELIEVE IT. And if belief determines perception, you do not perceive what it means, and therefore do not ACCEPT it. This is not a course in the play of ideas, but in their PRACTICAL APPLICATION. Nothing could be more specific than to be told very clearly, that if you ask you WILL receive.
This course has explicitly stated that its goal FOR YOU is happiness and peace.
This course will teach you what you are, restoring to you your identity. We have already learned that this identity is shared. This course is not beyond IMMEDIATE learning, unless you prefer to believe that WHAT GOD WILLS TAKES TIME. And this means ONLY that you would rather DELAY the recognition that His Will IS so.
The reason why this course is simple, is that TRUTH is simple. Complexity is of the ego...
This is a course in HOW to KNOW yourself.
You have TAUGHT what you are, but have NOT let what you are, teach YOU. You have been VERY careful to avoid the obvious, and NOT to see the REAL cause and effect relationship that is PERFECTLY apparent. Yet, within you, is EVERYTHING you taught.
What can it be, that has NOT learned it? It must be this that is REALLY outside yourself, NOT by your own projection, BUT IN TRUTH. The decision whether or not to listen to this course and follow it is but the choice between truth and illusion. This course will LEAD to knowledge, but knowledge itself is still beyond the scope of our curriculum. Nor is there any need for us to try to speak of what must forever lie beyond words.
It is not for us to dwell on what cannot BE attained. Being so simple and direct, this course has NOTHING in it that is not consistent. This course requires almost NOTHING of you. This is a course in CAUSE, and NOT effect.
This course is easy just BECAUSE it makes no compromise.
Yet it SEEMS difficult to those who still believe that compromise is possible. The motivation for this course is the attainment and the KEEPING of the state of peace. Given this state, the mind is quiet, and the condition in which God is remembered is attained.
To learn this course requires willingness to question EVERY value that you hold.
Not one can be kept hidden and obscure, but it will jeopardize your learning. NO belief is neutral; every one has the power to dictate each decision you make. For a decision is a CONCLUSION, based on EVERYTHING that you believe. It is the OUTCOME of belief, and follows it as surely as does suffering follow guilt, and freedom sinlessness. There IS no substitute for peace. You would oppose this course because it teaches you, YOU ARE ALIKE. You have NO purpose that is not the same.
This course makes no attempt to teach what cannot easily be learned.
Its scope does not exceed your own. Except to say that what is yours will come to you when you are ready. This course will teach you ONLY what is now. This is a course in miracles. And, as such, the laws of healing must be understood before the purpose of the course can be accomplished.
This course attempts to teach no more than, that the power of decision cannot lie in choosing different forms of what is still the SAME illusion, and the SAME mistake.
All choices in the world depend on this; You choose BETWEEN your brother and yourself, and you will gain as much as he will lose, and what you lose is what is given him. How utterly OPPOSED to truth is this, when what the lesson’s purpose is to teach that what your brother loses YOU have lost, and what he gains is what is given YOU."
