This Course requires no thought and no effort. There is no prolonged study and the few specific exercises are not required. This Course has succeeded in ways you do not yet understand and have no need to understand. These words have entered your heart and sealed the rift between your mind and heart. (C:32.4)

Now that the Pope’s movie/documentary: “Pope Francis – A Man of

his Word,” is out, I remembered an article in “Science of Mind,” or maybe I was organizing and just found it—who knows. I don’t know about you, but I can rarely trace the “actuality” of the trail that leads me to start either a piece of writing or a treasure hunt for greater understanding of a fleeting insight.

This article didn’t contain any direct “heart and mind” quotes, and when I looked on-line, I couldn’t find any there, and yet I feel confident that I’ve heard the Pope speak them and that the writer of this article, “A Compassionate Heart, a Courageous Soul,” one of Pope Francis’ U.S. editors, describes this language accurately. He did so in ways that sounded just like A Course of Love.

Gary Jansen shares that, “The lesson here is that mindfulness is good, and coupled with heartfulness, it can lead to a powerful union of head and heart, ultimately leading to union with God.”

UNION OF HEAD AND HEART

“Francis would caution that our intellect is only part of who we are. In fact, our thoughts can often get in the way of our hearts….”

UNION WITH GOD

And so, I let A Course of Love speak for itself, and share some of what Jesus says about this union.

I.1 This course was written for the mind—but only to move the mind to appeal to the heart.

The heart is needed to guide the mind in a way that it does not desire to be guided, a way that is one of joining, a way that does not allow the mind’s separate stance, its rules, or its right answers. The heart is needed because it is who and where you are and responds in love to what is one with it. We are one heart. We are one mind. The route to oneness and union, to life in form that accepts oneness and union, to a humanity restored to wholeness, is through the heart of the mind. I:6.7

You were your Self before you began your learning, and the ego cannot take your Self from you but only can obscure it. Thus the teachings you need now are to help you separate the ego from your Self, to help you learn to hear only one voice. This time we take a direct approach, an approach that seems at first to leave behind abstract learning and the complex mechanisms of the mind that so betray you. We take a step away from intellect, the pride of the ego, and approach this final learning through the realm of the heart. This is why . . . we call this course A Course of Love. P:43-44

C:21.7 No matter which path you follow, the path of the mind or the path of the heart, you will not get where you are wanting to go until they are joined. You might imagine three paths—one path representing mind, one path representing heart, and one path representing wholeheartedness. The path of neither mind nor heart alone will take you where the path of unity will take you, and the journey will not be the same.

C:29.5 Wholeheartedness is unity regained. Your return to unity is your return to your full power and your ability to be of quite literal service to God and your brothers and sisters.

C:29.20 Choose anew and let the power of heaven come together to seal the rift between your mind and heart, and make you whole once again.

Through mindfulness you will remember who you are.
Through wholeheartedness you will be who are. T1:5.14

T1:6.4 Union is the mind and heart being joined in wholeheartedness. It is your union with your Self. Union with your Self is union with God.

D:7.8 [A]ll that lives is from the same Source, and there is nothing more alive than mind and heart combined in the spirit of wholeheartedness.

D:12 We are, in Christ consciousness, one Christ. We are, in wholeheartedness, one heart and one mind.

Pope Francis is spoken of in terms of “his humanness and his divinity” in one breath, and in another, of his “simplicity, authenticity and honesty.” With our embrace of wholeheartedness, this is our promise too.

I also invite you to celebrate, along with Sebastián Blaksley, and the entire ACOL family, the publication of the Spanish edition of Un Curso de Amor. This very weekend Sebastián will be representing our Course at a book fair in Buenos Aires. He was, in younger years, before Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis, a student, and his father a teacher, in the school that Bergoglio headed, and the family continues to visit the Pope in Rome. The coming of Un Curso de Amor to Argentina, home to the Italian born Pope for many years, is also home to Sebastian and the home base from which it will be extended to the Spanish speaking world. You can view his website here:

http://www.fundacionuncursodeamor.org/#!/-bienvenido/

Quotes from “A Compassionate Heart, A Courageous Soul,” written by Gary Jansen, Science of Mind, December 2017