The study of A Course in Miracles® with sincere willingness reaps immediate results, no matter how little or how much the student is willing to accept when he commences. It is quite common for new students to believe that the purpose of A Course in Miracles® is to help them fulfil what they consider are their earthly needs. We need not worry if they first want to pursue earthly goals. That is why we came here, according to our ego. The very pursuit of those goals is a learning path in itself as we inevitably discover that the achievement of those goals can not possibly satisfy us for long let alone provide us with lasting happiness.
If along the way of seeking their goals, they begin to see their brothers as themselves even if in only transitory instants, they are making valuable progress even though their desires may have been originally ego based. Jesus is gentle and understands exactly where we are at. Students will learn the Course in the individual way perfect for them.
"The curriculum is highly individualised, and all aspects are under the Holy Spirit's particular care and guidance." M-29.2.

New students ask many questions wanting to know how studying this Course will affect their lives. Questions like "Will my life work out for me?" "Will I have no ambition and be like a zombie with no direction unable and unwilling to do anything in the world." They ask these questions because doing is more important then being to the ego mind.
However, 'being in the world but not of it' does not mean for most people that we do nothing but sit in cave contemplating our navel. Some may very well choose isolation and contemplation where their thoughts of love would be shared by all of us but for most of us ordinary students we will lead pretty ordinary lives constantly changing our mind about what seems to be going on around us. Choosing love instead of fear when we can, and when we can't, forgiving ourselves until we can.

"There is a way of living in the world that is not here, although it seems to be. You do not change appearance, though you smile more frequently. Your forehead is serene; your eyes are quiet. And the ones who walk the world as you do recognise their own. Yet those who have not yet perceived the way will recognise you also, and believe that you are like them, as you were before." W-pI.155.1.

We can glean from this paragraph that while those living in spirit will recognise us, those who are still in an ego state will see us as we have always been. This also suggests that for most of us, we will look and act much the same as we always have, given the personality we have developed for ourselves this time around. Nothing will have changed very much and we would probably appear to be like everybody else at least on the surface. We may be still in the same job, in relationships with the same people, having a drink with our usual friends (Miracle students or not) and doing all of the normal things people do in this dream. Jack Luckett once described Miracle students as members of the 'Secret Service" performing Miracles merely by changing the perceptions in their mind while disguised as very normal human beings.
When new students ask what it is like to have studied the Course as long as we have, various ego emotions race through my mind. They ask questions like "Can you say you are happier all the time?", "Can you say your worldly goals are being met?" "Can you say life is going more to your liking?" Are you in a state of total bliss all the time? I can't honestly answer in the affirmative to any of those questions if that is the only criteria by which a Course student is to be judged. What I can say is that I am now more readily able to access an inner guide who will give me the answers I need when I think things are not going to my liking, and those answers always brings me peace.
It is in the usually long transition stage from being principally ego driven to being God driven, that major shifts need to take place. In my first few years of studying the Course I naively imagined the total change would be rapid and that all in the world would be joining me in a swift change of consciousness. Like many fairly new but very keen students it wasn't long before I was teaching the Course thinking maybe I was almost there and just about knew it all. The Course said it was simple and I thought that meant easy. I realise I know far less now than I thought I did then. But I need to remind myself "Isn't knowing less what it is all about?" The ego always shouts "There is more to learn!" but the Holy Spirit quietly reminds us "There is more to unlearn!" All our learning and conditioning in this world holds us back as the Holy Spirit finally needs an absolutely empty vessel to fill with God's Love.

"The world can teach no images of you unless you want to learn them. There will come a time when images have all gone by, and you will see you know not what you are. It is to this unsealed and open mind that truth returns, unhindered and unbound. Where concepts of the self have been laid by is truth revealed exactly as it is. When every concept has been raised to doubt and question, and been recognised as made on no assumptions that would stand the light, then is the truth left free to enter in its sanctuary, clean and free of guilt. There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this:
I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself." T-31.V.17.

People ask what changes take place in your thought system when you intensely study this Course for so many years? The main thing you learn is that nothing is as it seems to be. The ego is a master of disguise and at keeping our blocks hidden from our awareness. What appears to be loving may be hiding hatred obscuring a major block. One by one studying the Course shows us the areas that still need working on.

Special relationships disguise the ego's real intentions

One of the ego's favourite hiding places are in our special relationships where hidden hatred is often disguised as special love. The Course asks us to look honestly within the deepest crevices of our mind at what is really going on and convert those dependent and imprisoning relationships into freeing holy relationships which expand to include all our brothers. The rate of change each individual experiences would vary widely depending on their resistance in accepting fully the truths presented but all must reach some point where they are at the crossroads of the two thought systems: the old and the new. At some stage we have to begin to loosen our fixed belief in the world, as we knew it and begin to consider the alternative. We don't have to let it go completely in one go, just loosen it, or in other words, entertain the possibility that the world may not be as solid and fixed and real as we thought it was.
When even part of the world becomes loosened in our mind, nothing in it seems certain any more and its eventual complete undoing is certain. I thought once I knew what was going on, but I don't seem to have the least idea of anything any more. I used to pride myself on my 'proven' ability to solve problems in the world not only for me but also for everybody else. Sure I can easily slip back into trying those old and 'proved' methods of solving problems but nowadays those methods merely seem to dig me into a bigger hole and exacerbate the problem still further. For me now, no problem is ever truly solved without asking for a better way of looking at it and its eventual dissolving through forgiveness. I really have no choice, for if I don't forgive, the problem forever stays in my mind. I can pretend it has gone from my mind for a while, but it remains lurking there at the ready to pounce on me when I least expect it. Then when I try to project it on to someone else I would send myself me deeper into depression. Nowadays the judgments I make about others seem to backfire on me very quickly and I am able to more readily see the lesson before it consumes me in despair.
Teaching seems to have accelerated over time, as 'good' and 'bad' experiences oscillate with alarming speed. What seems to be 'good', turns out not to be so, and what seems to be 'bad' has a different result. Individual problems seem to dissolve overnight readying you for the next one. The more and more that this happens the less credence you are able to give to the corporeal world. It all seems scary at first as the foundations of your old thought system seems to be crumbling away faster than you seem to want them to and there is nothing you can be sure of any more. The old world has become more unstable and undependable and the real and unalterable still only vaguely remembered becomes the only thing we can count on. However, there is no doubt much trust is needed during this period of change as the ego's way of seeing the world remains very seductive.
The ego's way of looking at life is very familiar to us. It suggests that life is short and we should take advantage of the limited time we have. Sickness, old age and inevitable death will come soon enough, so grab what you can while you can.

"The strongest witness to futility, that bolsters all the rest and helps them paint the picture in which sin is justified, is sickness in whatever form it takes. The sick have reason for each one of their unnatural desires and strange needs. For who could live a life so soon cut short and not esteem the worth of passing joys? What pleasures could there be that will endure? Are not the frail entitled to believe that every stolen scrap of pleasure is their righteous payment for their little lives? Their death will pay the price for all of them, if they enjoy their benefits or not. The end of life must come, whatever way that life be spent. And so take pleasure in the quickly passing and ephemeral". T-27.I.7.

It is a race against time, which we can never win. In this entire apparent world of uncertainty the most repeated statement in the Course becomes the main thought that anchors me and keeps me sane.

Life itself must eventually teach us that this world can never work but the Course's method of forgiveness speeds up the experience. For a while we continue to make the wrong choices trying to keep a foot in both camps of illusion and reality, but trying to maintain allegiance to two opposing thought systems is wearying and eventually must become intolerable. In the end, we must choose one or the other and if we decide to choose the untrue we can be sure that the opportunity to choose again will surely return until we finally make the only sane choice.
Yes studying the Course in unsettling. It is meant to be. Seeing rapidly changing circumstances all around you in a world that seems totally meaningless makes it fruitless to make plans or set goals for our future happiness and security. We begin to realise that our desires can bring us pain to the exact extent of our investment in them as a way of making us happy. This vulnerable situation can change overnight with a twist of fate and easily throw our world into Chaos
Our only salvation is to accept the atonement for ourselves and be at peace in the sure knowledge of who we are. We are not these vulnerable temporal bodies. We can only dream of sickness and death but we know that all dreams disappear in the morning.

"You are at home in God, dreaming of exile but perfectly capable of awakening to reality. Is it your decision to do so? You recognise from your own experience that what you see in dreams you think is real while you are asleep. Yet the instant you waken you realise that everything that seemed to happen in the dream did not happen at all. You do not think this strange, even though all the laws of what you awaken to were violated while you slept. Is it not possible that you merely shifted from one dream to another, without really waking?" T-10.I.2.

We can set all the goals we want. This is our dream after all. However dreams constantly change. That is their nature. The last goal we will ever seek is "The peace of God" When we make that choice, has lovingly been left up to us.

Bill McDonald 1997