Mari’s Blog
The “birth” of A Course of Love
C:3.10 Everything has birth in an idea….
I began my “Foggy reflections” last week, with a quote on symbolism and mention of the beginning of my reception of A Course of Love at the start of the season of Advent … the time of the coming of Christ. I then went on to other things. I thought this week, if I could get it down to a page (?!) I’d tell of this “coming.” But then I remembered that I have a video that speaks of it, which I am now editing to post, and that, in turn, gave me a chance to reflect, in a different way, on the birth of A Course of Love, on this date, sixteen years ago.
I actually want to return to the idea of symbolism and the way that it exists naturally in our lives…the symbolism that gives us our clues and hints at deeper meaning, and how it isn’t, at times, until afterwards, that we see and feel all that these signs have come to give us.
Anyone who has gotten married might be able to relate. If asked to describe your wedding years later, few would speak of the ceremony itself. You might start with falling in love, then getting engaged, then the friends and family with whom you celebrated. Or you might speak of the mishaps and the nerves. All of these things matter to us and have a place. And yet a wedding swims in symbolism and meaning that we don’t necessarily think of, but that exists, and that affects us and carries us through, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. And we need that, because besides the love that has brought us to the point of “legal” joining, there is often also ambivalence, fear of the unknown, doubt, concern for what is left behind. Layer upon multi-layer of thought and feelings.
And that is how it was with me as this Course began, and all of those usual “telling of an event like a wedding” scenes have been included when I share my story. It is also why, I believe, the symbolism of the Course coming at the time of Advent has become more powerful to me over the years. The “coming” of A Course of Love was announced in several ways, but this one had the feel of ceremony. Even so, my sudden awareness of Ordinary Time ending, and Advent beginning, is one left out of the video I’m preparing and many other tellings of the coming of A Course of Love. The funny thing is that I didn’t have any real understanding of the symbolism of either Ordinary Time or Advent until the day, in 1998, that coincided with the birth of “the idea” that my “work for God” (which I felt had been predicted by a dream) was “a new course in miracles.”
I’ve thought of it since as quite ridiculous that I was Catholic school educated for ten years and had attended Mass almost since birth, and I’d never been taught, and never caught on, to the basic structure of the Church’s year. I could remember years of wondering why we couldn’t have the lovely music of Christmas in church until Christmas day. I did not grasp the idea of Advent as a time of awaiting, (there were no Advent wreaths or Advent calendars around in my youth) or the reason hymns like “Oh Come Oh Come Emmanuel” were the staple in the weeks before Christmas. But in 1998, after attending an early morning Mass, I suddenly did. I remember how I rushed home, after this dawned on me, to look up “Ordinary Time” and “Advent.” I was on fire with wanting to understand. I spoke of it with Mary Love, my companion of “The Grace Trilogy” days and since those days. And on that particular day (which just happened to be her birthday), it was Mary who took me the rest of the way to understanding what it was I was awaiting, by revealing a dream in which she had seen “a new Course in Miracles.”
As she spoke of her dream, the feeling flooded me that this was what had been trying to get through to me. She and I sat at my dining room table, having coffee and a birthday treat as we visited. After she left, the feeling that her dream had been shared as an “announcement” was overwhelming. I could suddenly see all sorts of messages in a new light, all pointing at this outcome. I “asked” about it, in my way, and the truth of the feeling was confirmed.
A “new course in miracles” felt like way too big of an undertaking for me. My mind could barely grasp the idea, and for a week was overwhelmed with the enormity of it. I wondered how long it would take and why anyone would want a new course. I prayed and wrote and hoped and didn’t hope for it until, on December 1, I heard the first words of A Course of Love.
AND THEN, in the seventh paragraph I received, there was mention of the second coming of Christ!
It is easy to imagine how the Christ in you differs from your ego but not as easy to recognize how the Christ in you differs from spirit. The Christ in you is that which is capable of learning in human form what it means to be a child of God. The Christ in you is that which is capable of bridging the two worlds. This is what is meant by the second coming of Christ. C:p.7
Awe, love, hope, disbelief, confusion…they all were mixed into the soup of my feelings at this beginning. Yet the standouts that pointed me to the truth of what was happening, were the signs and symbols that, when waited upon, revealed what they had been pointing to.
Having a spiritual view opens us to all that is beyond the concrete or substantial in our ordinary lives, but that are, at the same time contained within them. Signs and symbols do the work they are given to do: they are revealing of the truly real. They evoke and guide and all we can do is yield to them. Yield . . . and await further revelations.
Foggy reflections
All the symbols of your physical life reflect a deeper meaning that, while hidden to you, you still know exists. C1.17
These days, I do not spend as much time in the cabin as I once did. I go to the cabin each morning but often I don’t get back here. Sundays are different. This Sunday, I am back for a second time. The first was in the damp dark. Now it is light, foggy, and raining softly. I adore fog. Rain after snow is most always welcome. Smells of spring fill the air. You hope it all washes into the ground before the next freeze so you don’t end up with a skating rink, but even that threat can fade from your mind as mist fills the air and raindrops ting against your roof. Especially if you adore fog. If you love the ways of obscurity—seeing through to what is there, as with fog—or seeing what comes as darkness lifts and light arises. Such acts of nature feel to me…private, under wraps, in between, deeply…soulful! Although I often complain (it seems a requirement of those who live with winter weather), I love seasonal change and its symbolism.
A Course of Love began at the start of Advent, the time of the coming of Christ; at the end of ordinary time. It was symbolic to me, that this should happen. Significant. A message. Last night at church, in hearing the reading for the last Sunday in ordinary time, (MT 25:31-46) I was reminded, as I am each year, of those days of awaiting and then beginning to receive ACOL. As I thought of it, this year, I felt it would give me a helpful way to bring one of those neither here nor there, right or wrong, foggy areas, into expression. Because the thing is, I would not have understood symbolism from other cultures or religions. I needed those specific to my life experiences. The reading reminded me that Jesus too had a culture, and lived and spoke from and to that culture (in this passage from Matthew he is a shepherd, separating the sheep from the goats!).
I bring this up for a number of reasons.
In A Course of Love we are called children of God. God is referred to as a He. That is one of my reasons. Do I believe that God is a he? No. Did a male God fit my understanding of God at the time I received this Course? Yes. Did a parental God fit my image of God at the time? Yes. But even then, I feel, it was as “image,” a way to understand and to relate. By the time we have reached the end of A Course of Love, this language is explained. There is a reason for it. We can keep or shed such language. But the mood is different. The context has changed. Our view has broadened. We can accept so much more about who God is and who we are.
There are reasons for the idea of a god who has offspring; of an idea that fosters the sense of a benevolent god who is as unconditionally loving as a parent for a child. It is a way to conceive of such things before we understand God as a state of being and Love as the nature of that state of being. Before we see ourselves as an extension of this Love. And it is clear that the way we see God, in whatever way that is, is just fine. No one has to abandon their relationship to God—not as Father, as Mother, as Spirit, or as Creator.
But here’s the real foggy part that is on my mind this morning:
Early in the Course, the words, “man and woman joined in marriage” followed the ones at the top of this page: All the symbols of your physical life reflect a deeper meaning that, while hidden to you, you still know exists. The union of two bodies joined in love create a child, the union of man and woman joined in marriage create oneness. In 1998, those words didn’t phase me. By 2006, when I did an updated printing, I wanted to change them, just take out “man and woman” and put in “two people.” It felt like the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do, both at the same time. Did I have a right to mess with the words as they were given? Even knowing that Jesus spoke to me of marriage as I understood it at the time? Or that the way he speaks to us changes as we go? In the Treatises, Jesus specifically extends welcome and acceptance to all people of every creed and sexual persuasion. But I don’t know if that takes the sting from “man and woman joined in marriage.” So, I want to say that as the first receiver, for whatever it is worth, I did not hear these words as ones meant in support of only male and female unions. I heard them merely as a reflection on one symbol of joining common to the time in which I heard it. To support any exclusion to joining would make no sense, as we see as we continue, and I want to be on record in this regard.
From our various beginnings, we travel on many roads to broader horizons where understandings and differences begin to fade and I can only say that the love spoken of here both transcends and includes all images.
[T]his call to return to your Self is being sounded far and wide and … goes out to humble and ordinary people like yourself. There is no exclusivity to this call. It excludes no race nor religion nor ones of either sex or sexual preference. It but calls all to love and to live in the abundance of the truth. T3:21.21
Expression
Expand your reach!
In last Sunday’s post from the cabin, I said that I’d talk more this week on expression. I’m not sure what I had in mind. Was it just the desire to post some of the Course’s wonderful quotes on how essential self-expression is? Was it on the link between who we are and sharing, or expressing, who we are? Was it on what can seem new to spiritual seekers—the idea of allowing what we feel and expressing a range of feelings, talents, desires?
As I went to some of my favorite passages, I realized, once again, that Jesus does us such a 
service by talking of how things feel. I’ve concluded that one of the reasons that he does this, is to help us let go of the pattern of learning. In The Dialogues chapter on The Territory of Conscious Awareness, Jesus talks of how it feels to discover a talent, which I relate to as that, “Oh my gosh, I’m good at this!” feeling. Or that, “Wow, this feels as natural as breathing,” feeling. I have felt it about writing. One of my daughters felt it about singing. My grandson may well be feeling it as he swims. Like it or not, we seem to be naturally good at some things and to struggle with others. We enjoy some activities and not others (something I’m reminded of as the snow falls and outdoor sports commence—as they were never my cup of tea). And I’d say that when we desire to perfect a talent, let’s say of playing the piano, it might be difficult, but not nearly as much of a struggle as it would be to play the piano if you had no desire to do so; if, as a kid, your mother made you. As parents we often expose our children to all kinds of things—and we do it with this idea that, through exposure, a child might “discover” a love (or a talent) … if not for piano, maybe for the guitar. If not for skiing, maybe for running.
Jesus uses this idea to help us understand that we have each already experienced something that existed prior to the time of learning. Something that was “there” in us prior to our lessons or even our exposure. With such ideas, he brings the idea of “awareness” down from a lofty or esoteric practice and into the ground of our being as who we are.
I’m glad I was led to this because, as I prepare the audio files of A Course of Love, I am more aware than ever before of the differences between the first half of this Course and the last half of this Course. In 8.8 of The Dialogues, Jesus gives one clue to the source of this difference:
Between the Course and the Treatises, all of what you needed to learn was put forth. What we are now doing is discussing what was taught from the realm of wholeheartedness. What was learned was only able to be learned because you chose to become the wholehearted. You chose to join mind and heart and it was done. But you do not yet know how to rid yourself of former patterns. Your mind, while it no longer wants to cling to known patterns, is confronted with them constantly. Thus your heart still seems to battle with the supremacy of mind.
D:8.9 So what we are attempting to do is to open the mind to the wisdom of the heart with these dialogues. As the mind opens and accepts the new, the art of thought will become your new means of thinking. What has been learned will become an ability to think wholeheartedly, or with mind and heart in union, and then that ability will transcend ability and wholehearted will become what you are, and wholeheartedness your sole means of expression.
D:8.10 The self and the expression of self that comes from any place other than wholeheartedness is not the true Self or the true expression of the Self but the self-expression that arises from separation. Self-expression that arises from separation is still valuable, as it is a sign of yearning toward the true Self and the true expression of the Self. Thus where you have desired to express yourself in the past is very likely linked to the natural ability or talent you did not have to learn, to that which was given and available just a step beyond where the separated self could reach.
D:8.11 Expand your reach!
D:8.7 While discovery of the new will naturally include much that goes beyond what you now think of as your natural talents or abilities, the place or Source of your natural talents or abilities is a place from which to start building your awareness of what is available or given—of what is but awaiting your discovery and conscious awareness.
As I read this, I remembered a segment from Chapter 2 of A Course of Love that perhaps prepared us for this time. We’re hearing about the ways of the mind, and that with the mind we have been in a learning process that stands apart from who we are. We think we can know without that knowing being who we are; that we can love without love being who we are.
But Jesus concludes, in C:2.16 that, “Nothing stands apart from your being. Nothing stands alone.”
Gifted with threads
Express your Self! D:D9.9.3
Friday morning. I come in from the cabin feeling aimless. It is the morning after I was on a radio show in which I didn’t feel that my words served me particularly well. Such things cause aimlessness, I think. You wander around with the question of them, which is vague and mildly irritating, like a dripping faucet. In this wandering, I pick up a notecard from the Borealis Press that depicts “Too tired to go back” from Robert Shetterly’s Annunciation Paintings. It’s been sitting there a long time. I’ve been meaning to find out more about it.
The source of these note cards is a mystery to me. I found them in a box two years ago while cleaning out my canning room. They’re unused. Blank inside. I’m sure it was me that bought them, and yet they niggle at me. The copyright on the back is 1994. Six months ago I framed one. All this time I’ve been meaning to look up Robert Shetterly, to see what I could find out about the Annunciation Paintings. Being aimless, I fall to the task.
I can’t find what I’m looking for but I find that Shetterly has been painting the series of portraits, Americans Who Tell the Truth, for more than ten years. I realize I knew of this work, but had not associated it with the artist on my little notecards. On his website, it is said that in this older series, he reflects on the metaphor of The Annunciation. I want to know: What reflections? What metaphor? Unfortunately, the popularity of Americans Who Tell the Truth makes finding these reflections beyond me.
Yet I have already followed threads and I keep going, finding an imposing and inspiriting amount of talk on civic discourse: places where art and poetry, spirituality, politics, and nature all swirl in the same current. I feel better and reminded of so many things. Shetterly says, “We paint not to express ourselves but to find out what it is we want to express.” I wonder . . . Did I find out what I wanted to express as I fumbled with the interviewer’s questions Thursday night? I wonder . . . Did I find, in this quote, why ACOL is often hard to talk about? Am I continually caught in the act of finding what wants to express itself? It is a feeling I love—this wondering. When I feel this way, I feel as if I stand on the edge, on the verge of discovering a new continent.
Standing in this new place, I do not search so much as turn. I turn, and there, a little to the right, it comes to me to go to the reflections on “art” in A Course of Love. These are from the third Treatise on the Personal Self:
Expressions you call art are desires to share the Self in a new way. These expressions you call art are expressions of a Self who observes and interacts in relationship. They are not expressions that remain contained to who you are or who you think yourself to be. They are not expressions of the self alone. They are not expressions of the self alone in terms you might consider autobiographical, and they are not expressions of the self alone that you would consider the self in separation. They are rather expressions of the Self in union—expressions of what the Self sees, feels, envisions, imagines in relationship. T3:2.1
What purpose has art? While art is but a representation of what the artist chooses to share, few of us would call these representations useless or without value. Art is a representation but it also becomes something in truth, something that has been named art. Art becomes something in truth by expanding awareness, or in other words, by making something known. This is what true relationship does and is its purpose as well as what it is. T3:2.2
Not to leave out the beauty of music, we hear about the Song of God in the fourth treatise, A Treatise on the New:
You are God’s harmony, God’s expression, God’s melody. You, and all that exist with you, form the orchestra and chorus of creation. You might think of your time here as that of being apprentice musicians. You must learn or relearn what you have forgotten so that you can once again join the chorus. So that you can once again be in harmony with creation. So that you can express yourself within the relationship of unity that is the whole of the choir and the orchestra. So that you can realize your accomplishment in union and relationship. T4:5.2
You are the substance of the universe. The same energy exists in the stars of the heavens and the waters of the ocean that exists in you. This energy is the form and content of the embrace. T4:5.5
Tomorrow or the next day, next week or next month, I feel certain I’ll begin to inch along the edge of the metaphor of The Annunciation. It feels so relevant, familiar, and feminine to me that I will want to follow its threads. I have been gifted with threads. I am filled, once again, with the joy and wonder it is to have them come—aimlessly—and dance about, like kites in the wind.
Robert Shetterly quote found here: http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/the-artist
ACOL quotes cited from the Combined Volume.
Still to come, quotes on expression from The Dialogues.
Blundering and Discovery
Discovery has been a grand facilitator of the human spirit’s quest for the truth and is part of what brought you, finally, to the quest to know your Self. D:6.13
I wonder how many people find that their Sunday mornings still include sitting around reading the newspaper. When I was young, the newspaper and church defined Sunday mornings. Back in the 1960’s in my predominately Catholic neighborhood (and city for that matter), there were many times to choose from for getting to Mass. We had pretty much settled on the 12:45 Mass but there were times when we sat around in our robes for so long that we’d have to hustle to get to the latest Mass available, 1:00 Mass at the Cathedral of St. Paul. Even the Sunday mornings of my own children took place in the same manner, although by then, many of the churches, including ours, only offered two Masses. During those years, we went to church at ten o’clock and came home after to read the paper. Whether it was the TV Guide, the ads, the comics, the weather page, or the hard news, there was something for everyone.
It took a while to find it, but the answer to when Saturday evening masses began to be held was January of 1970. The definition of evening was after 4 p.m. I also learned that before 1953, Mass could not be celebrated after 12 noon.
Now…why did I get started on this exploration? It was from reading the paper, of course, and in particular came from reading a column called “The Blundering Gardener.” The woman who writes the column, Bonnie Blodgett was speaking of a new book called “Make It Stick,” by St. Paul author Peter Brown. It’s his attempt to translate the findings of “eminent memory researchers into plain English.” He interviewed her for the book and she writes, “Brown is convinced that blundering is the real key to my success at accumulating knowledge and “making it stick.”
I walked out to the cabin with this on my mind, and in the process of getting myself sat down 
and my computer plugged in, immediately knocked over a paperweight that had been holding open the Journals of Joyce Carol Oates, which I’ve written of before. The book’s pages number 495 before the index, but it’s a bigger book than A Course of Love. The paperweight broke in two parts. What fell out of the bottom was a picture of St. Catherine’s Court. Without it being taped onto the felt base, my paperweight suddenly became a clear magnifying glass. Much better! My blundering worked to my benefit.
This has happened many times in much more profound ways. It’s part of what I mean when I speak of things “coming to me.” I’d say it’s also part of the way of discovery that replaces the old style of learning by the time we reach the end of A Course of Love. When you’re intent on learning something specific, you can miss a lot of discoveries along the way. If you’re afraid to make blunders, you might not discover what you would by being open to what the gardener refers to as “trial and error.”
Peter Brown suggested that Bonnie’s habit of jumping into projects before properly researching the how-to part, helped her to retain what she learned (or discovered) in this way, and kept her from dropping new projects in fits of futility. In other words, the “how to” books can make whatever you’re hoping to learn so complicated and copious that you give up.
It’s just another example of the practicality as well as wisdom offered in this Course. The end of learning is a major theme of A Course of Love for a reason. What have we learned? What has been gained through all our learning and effort? What have we accepted as true because those “in the know” have said it is true?
All fascinating stuff. And what’s more, is that the mode of discovery works so well with relationship. ACOL emphasizes union and relationship. Union and relationship takes in all those wonderful times of connecting through collaboration, of finding truth in dialogue, and of knowing ourselves better through sharing.
Newspaper quotes from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, 11-2-2014, 11E
