A Course in Miracles® was first published in 1975. I well remember my excitement and joy when I first encountered it. I was surely ready for it as I had reached a stage in my life whenrealised that I had been on a path to nowhere, even though I had by then achieved everything in the material world I had worked for all my life. There was nothing wrong on the surface, it was more like a sad emptiness when I was suddenly confronted with the realisation that if I continued along the route I had been travelling, all Iexpect was more of the same. A life of empty dreams incapable of ever providing sustained happiness.

What a joy it was to find a way of breaking out of the cycle of fear and guilt. The Course was so compelling. It was authoritative without being judgmental. The words came alive for me and the mind behind the words seemed to know me better than I knew myself, and yet loved me regardless of my many faults. It was all unconditional love that could never change. It asked me why I was "preferring to be right rather than happy" and I could not think of a sensible response. It logically made me look at the root cause of my thought system and laughed at the foolishness of it all. -- I ended up laughing as well.

It told me that "Nothing the world believes is true." W-pI.139.7. shaking the foundations of my old thought system but at the same time providing me with a better way of looking at the insanity of the world.

Doing the workbook was the most significant year of my life as I practised the lesson each day. I was filled with excited anticipation and couldn't wait to go to work each day to see what perceptions I could change to find more loving solutions to perceived problems. My whole outlook on life had changed and I no longer felt separate from people around me. After much searching I found others on the same pathway and we came together in a discussion group to share the insights we had found. They were days of innocence when I think about it now 17 years down the track.

The Foundation of Inner Peace set the example for all of us when the board members gave of themselves in a selfless way to spread the word. Judy Skutch & Bill Whitson travelled to much of the western world introducing the Course.

Any writers wanting to quote from the Course merely had to ask permission and their request was lovingly approved. Some seemingly silly books supposedly based on the Course were published but they soon disappeared without a trace. This pathway was so incredibly different to anything we had encountered before and we all wanted to do what we could, to spread the news. In those early years Jerry Jampolsky set up his attitudinal Centre. People like Barbara and Robert Varley were providing amazing examples of trust as they travelled around the US in their camper van singing their songs and recounting stories of living their lives entirely with guidance from their inner voice.

Other teachers like Paul Steinberg and Bette Martin gave workshops all over the country and overseas often with very little reward. Burt Hotchkiss with his wife Nonnie visited many countries including New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and Australia without charge, encouraging people to form discussion groups to share their experiences since being affected by this teaching. Tara Singh had his yearlong retreat to study the Course with 30 or so dedicated students. The Miracle Distribution Centre founded by Beverly Hutcherson started distributing books in the US as we did in Australia. Songwriters, some good, some not so good, were inspired to put their feelings inspired by A Course in Miracles® to music.

Ken Wapnick after years of studious writing about the Course began to become more prominent as a teacher with his wife Gloria. Later People like Robert Perry and many others began teaching centres.

'Blissninnyness'

Hundreds of discussion groups formed all over the US, Canada and Australia. We felt we were part of a momentous movement that would absolutely transform the world. In retrospect, I see now we were naive, and there were overtones of `blissninnyness' (a term Ken Wapnick coined for students unrealistically blissed out, trying to jump quickly to an advanced state before they had even looked at their deep seated blocks to the awareness of love through forgiveness.) But there was a sweet simplicity to it all. We were in love with the idea of being part of the Sonship and felt we were family with Miracle students everywhere (even though sometimes it was at the expense of those we lived with.) Everybody seemed to honour other teachers on this pathway even though their approach was different to their own, and it was all a big joyous buzz.

If the Course didn't deliver what we wanted it wasn't the fault of the Course: it was because we wanted a little bit of Heaven while still retaining a little bit of hell. There was no doubt we retained at least some hope that by just studying A Course in Miracles® our lives would dramatically improve in some way. Why wouldn't it, after all weren't we on a `mission from God'? We thought we had an individual Holy Spirit looking after our personal interests, one who would `guarantee' us an easy run through life. Nothing would 'go wrong' and we would always be happy healthy and prosperous. Even our family and friends would be nicer to us. We 'had' to be looked after while doing his work.

The ego's had cleverly crept back into our minds through the specialness rear door! We hadn't yet learned that the Holy Spirit has no interest in the material world and what happens here. We are the ones who have orchestrated the material world. We should be grateful that the world has not worked out for us because if it did we would never search within and be lost. Even though we hadn't grasped the complete message of the Course I realise now just how patient Jesus was, always willing to wait for us to understand the ego's purpose for the illusion and the forgiveness processes the Course outlined. He was helping us retrace our steps out of darkness and back to awakening in God. There never was anything to learn but everything to unlearn.

A new era for the Course has begun

It is a very different picture in 1997. To many the Course is not exciting and new any more and to the ego only the new is exciting. The early enthusiasm of new students in those early days began to wane once they started to see the true abstract nature of the material and they realised that the Course was not providing solutions on a level of form. Once some students found out what it was really saying they recoiled away.

Many students who seemed so enthusiastic initially became frightened and found the going too tough, when confronted with the formlessness of this Course, they realised that when the Course says, "There is no world"(lesson 132) it meant it literally. Most moved on to seek easier and more 'interesting' pathways. Let us remember our egos do NOT like this Course.

Who really wants to know that there is no hope of finding answers in this world and that everything they are seeing is a manifestation of what is in their minds? The only `enemy, has always been ourselves.

Very few people we knew who were with the Course 17 years ago are still working with the material. Discussion groups previously scattered all over North America, Australia and New have continued to diminish in number. The groups remaining mostly have small numbers of students in attendance.

Many students including myself convinced that the Course was our pathway fell into the seductive web of form as we started discussion groups, academies, churches, foundations and newsletters, arranged workshops, lectures and festivals. We wanted still to be special and we made teachers special, some we even `elevated' to guru status.

All form is by nature transitory and the fact that everything seems to be falling apart is inevitable, reflective of everything else in this insane world. Many newsletters long struggling financially have stopped production and most of those remaining, are now canvassing desperately for funds. Judging from what I have read in newsletters and on the internet, the tightening up of copyright restrictions to quote from the Course and the pending legal action by Penguin (Viking) against the Endeavour Academy for breaches in the use of the copyright, appears to have threatened the peace of many Course students.

Course students attacking each other seems in total contradiction to the teaching of the Course we study. Some of the prominent Course figures now under attack are the same people we once admired. Have they changed, or is it our perception of them that has changed? If I attempt to `elevate' any brother to be special in my mind, and I have done that, I have denied the truth that he is exactly like me: a Son of God far beyond my perception of them. It is a fantasy I have made of him, not the truth. If our idols refuse to act out their role exactly as we have set up for them in our dream we feel dejected. This dejection turns to anger then often outright attack. That is what we eventually do to all idols we make.

I have to realise that the first obstacle to peace is my desire to be rid of it. If I wanted only love, that is all I would see. If I am not seeing it I don't want it.

"Beyond All Idols"

In those early days all involved with the Course seem to want love above all else because I wanted it. It can easily be the same today if I want only love. The ego has no trouble finding witnesses to our feelings of suspicion about everything, reinforcing the desire to attack those who we once admired. Worrying about idols or people who want to form organisations and structures around the Course is an ego distraction and an attempt to make the error real. If we think external teachers help, they help. Any feelings of hostility to former idols are only a manifestation of our choosing fear instead of love. The Course remains the same as it always was.

The Course says of itself: -

"The reason this course is simple is that truth is simple. Complexity is of the ego, and is nothing more than the ego's attempt to obscure the obvious." T-15.IV.6.

The Final Journey is Within

Earthly Course teachers can only take us so far and we must go beyond reliance on them. There is nothing in the Course that suggests we would need external teachers at all or that any organisation should be formed around the material. It was an inevitable course of events as that is what egos do. The establishment and maintenance of organisations invariably takes up so much of our time it ends up becoming more important than the good intentions which inspired their formation in the first place. Even the Course is only a temporary tool to enable us to awake from the dream.

While it can be of benefit to learn from others who have walked this path before us, at best they can only teach from their perception of what the Course is saying to them. Ultimately no one can forgive for us, and there must come a time when we cease relying on external teachers and even the Course itself and rely only on our internal teacher as it recommends in the Manual for Teachers.

"The curriculum is highly individualised, 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. To do so is His function. To refer the questions to Him is yours." M-29.2.

The specific teachers and students referred to in the manual are you and all your brothers and you and they are always teaching or learning. That learning never ends while we remain in form in an unforgiven world. Our forgiveness lessons never cease to provide us with the means for our ONLY function in this world. Happily, this is where we will find a reflection of God's peace and joy within the dream. The path of forgiveness is what Jesus refers to as the "universal course" which exists in thousands of other spiritual paths. ACIM is just one form of a universal experience.

Bill McDonald