Last night I dreamt I was back in 1980. I had discovered my pathway home and I was convinced by the way that it had affected me that I had in my hands the most important writings that the world had ever seen. I was sure that I had some role in providing Australians a means of accessing this material.
I had never experienced anything before which had such a profound impact on our lives. While knowing somehow that I was not to advertise or promote it in any way, I knew that I was to be somehow a conduit for those who would be seeking it in this country. It is hard now to describe the atmosphere then. Just finding out where to get the books was difficult in the early days and strange stories abounded of how people eventually found the books at exactly the right time in their lives.
It seemed as though we were fired up with the Holy Spirit and it wasn't long before with my wife Pam's support I gave up my successful business so we could concentrate full time with the Course, organizing workshops, groups, sponsoring overseas speakers and commencing our newsletter for Australia. They were heady and exciting days. We had no idea where it would all end. We discovered later that others in different areas of the world were inspired in similar ways. They were days of innocence when I think of it now 18 years down the track.
The Foundation had earlier set the example for all of us when they gave of themselves in a selfless way to spread the word. Judy Skutch first on her own and then with Bill Whitson covered much of the western world introducing the Course to interested parties.
Any writers wanting to quote from the Course merely had to ask permission and their request was lovingly approved. This love from the top filtered down to everybody involved with the Course inspiring them to follow suit. It 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 working with children and adults with life threatening illnesses. 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 instigated 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 Pam and I did in Australia. Songwriters, some good, some not so good, were inspired to put their feelings to music.
Ken Wapnick emerged from comparative obscurity to adopt a more visible involvement leading to the formation of his Foundation for A Course in Miracles® with his wife Gloria. Their centre at Crompond NY provided workshops for Miracle students until attendances grew so large, it became necessary for them to move on to their present location in Roscoe. Ken continued writing his books based on the Course.
Other teaching centres were set up and 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. Sure, we were naive, unaware of the ego's tenacious hold on our minds, 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 nevertheless 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. We were not aware that in many cases we had just exchanged our old special relationships for a new Miracle variety. Everybody seemed to honor other teachers on this pathway and it was all a big joyous buzz.
There was no doubt we retained a hope that by studying the Course our individual lives would dramatically improve in some way. Why wouldn't it, we thought, after all we were on a mission from God? We had an individual Holy Spirit looking after our interests who would guarantee an easy run through life. We would stay well, never want for anything and 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 learned yet that the Holy Spirit has no interest in bodies or the material world and what happens here. We are the ones who scripted our life and organize the chaos in the world. We should be grateful Holy Spirit doesn't interfere in our lives. If the world worked out for us we would never search within and be lost forever.

AND WHAT OF NOW?

When I woke up, it was 1998 and nothing seems the same any more. A Course in Miracles, though as yet not widely known, has a foothold in the world. Translations in all major languages are either under way or completed. While the early phenomena around the Course's thought system has dwindled, the basic principles are by now more readily accepted by a greater number of people than before and have at least in part infiltrated into the minds of all the Sonship.
"You are being blessed by every beneficent thought of any of your brothers anywhere." T-5.in.3.
However the unholy trinity of sin, guilt and fear still rule this world and victimhood remains an important ingredient in the ego's thought system. Many of the students who merely dabbled with the Course in those early days soon found the going too tough to handle when they realized the Course was saying that everything that seems to happen to us is a result of a decision we ourselves make.
In my present dream all the old feelings seem to have been replaced by my required standards of behavior. A formless non-ego thought system appears to have taken on form. Structures around the Course have been established and their teachers have been made special, some even given guru status, resulting in considerable cynicism from those who see the Course as a self-study course free from the constraints of anyone telling us how we should study or apply the Course. Newsletters and internet discussion groups are now openly and strongly attacking these structures and even the Foundation of Inner Peace itself and prominent Course figures. The copyright controversy and the pending legal action by Penguin (Viking) against the Endeavor Academy seem to have threatened the peace of many Course students.
I really can only talk from my own perspective, but the differences I see have to be all in my mind. The Course in Miracles hasn't changed, I had. The world I see is of my own doing.
It is worth remembering that the prominent Course figures criticized are the same people we once admired. Have they changed? Or has my own perception of them changed? If I 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 him. We have unrealistic expectations of behavior for our idols that are totally impossible for them to live up to.
It is a fantasy we have made, not the truth. Having set the stage ourselves, if the figures in that play refuse to act out the role we have given them in our dream and 'let us down', we feel dejected and angry, wanting to pull them down.
One day I realized to my horror that I had become so judgmental about the way some people taught the Course that I could more easily forgive a serial killer than someone who saw the Course differently to the way I did.
The first obstacle to peace was 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 obviously don't want it. 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 with a change of mind and the Holy Spirit's help. The ego has no trouble finding witnesses to our feelings of suspicion about everything and the desire to attack those whom we once admired.
We have lost the plot when we concern ourselves about what others do or say. Ego's never consistently agree and our feelings of hostility to them only reflects the fact that we are choosing fear instead of love. Co-scribe of the Course Dr. Bill Thetford when asked to adjudicate on two students' disagreement on an interpretation of a Course passage replied "If it was me, I would have just torn out the page."
It seems to me the Course has always had a life of its own and its passage in the world is protected in some way. Everything has a way of sorting itself out, so those intentions were even in part motivated by their need to enhance their own ego, eventually learn the lessons they needed to learn.
Worrying about the forms established around the Course is a pointless exercise, as all forms are by their very nature, transitory. The diminishing number of Miracle discussion groups throughout the world is a good example of this. They must have served some need in those early days perhaps as a means of sharing newly discovered insights, although in hindsight, they were at best, social meetings with 'like minded' people, or at worst, special relationships in a new, more 'spiritually acceptable' form.
The final workshop is the total forgiveness of those close to us in our daily lives past and present. I am convinced that whilst earthly teachers and books on the Course can be helpful initially we must go beyond that help and even finally the Course itself relying entirely on the lessons of life learned with the guidance of the Holy Spirit as it recommends in the epilogue of the workbook.
"This course is a beginning, not an end. Your Friend goes with you. You are not alone. No one who calls on Him can call in vain. Whatever troubles you, be certain that He has the answer, and will gladly give it to you, if you simply turn to Him and ask it of Him. He will not withhold all answers that you need for anything that seems to trouble you. He knows the way to solve all problems, and resolve all doubts. His certainty is yours. You need but ask it of Him, and it will be given you." W.ep.1.
You could learn this Course all alone on a desert island if you had the willingness. The help from Jesus and the Holy Spirit is beyond limitation.
We have no need to worry about the future of the Course. The custodians of the Course have their hearts in the right place and are exactly the right people for the job. We should remember and be conscious of the debt we owe them for their efforts in bringing the Course to the world and be grateful for their continued dedication and commitment.
The Course is out in the world in its original form free of all ego and specialness. Even attempts to distort it, add to it or edit parts out of it will not work as there are well over a million copies available for those who choose this pathway as their own. Anything being taught that is not in line with the essence of the teaching will simply fade away in time without a trace.
What other Course tells you to "Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God." W-pI.189.7.
The most important lesson I have leaned about the Course is that it is just a tool, albeit an incredibly efficient tool, to help us wake up from this dream of separation, or as author Hugh Prather puts it: -

Bill McDonald