Breathe the sweet air of freedom. D:4.21

I love this new book. Having the entirety of this work held together as one has created a difference, a newness that I find quite wonderful. This “love of my life” has a fresh feel and a novel energy. I am moved by simply holding it in my hands, stirred by the feel of its body. It is as if the two of us have come home.

This feeling is due in large part to the wonderful folks at Take Heart Publications who, in bringing the books of A Course of Love together into one, recognized that the time for the wisdom of the heart has come, and come to give new life. That’s what A Course of Love: Combined Volume represents to me: new life. New life for this Course, for me, and for readers.

I’m Mari Perron. Over the course of three years, beginning in December of 1998, I “received” the books of A Course of Love. Received has always been my favorite word for describing the process by which this Course came, and in this Combined Volume “First Receiver” is even used on the cover. The nice thing about the word receive is that it can also describe the way A Course of Love may have (or will) come to you.

I feel so privileged to be part of this Course’s life. And I am grateful to be able to have something to do with bringing this invitation to love to you. Yet it has been the freedom to be who I am that has surprised me the most. Yes, this Course is about love, it is about union, it is about being wholehearted. But what has changed me, pleased me, lifted my spirits and filled my heart the very most, is the newfound and surprising nature of the freedom it offers.

There is the relieving freedom of not trying any longer to be someone I’m not. There is the releasing freedom of letting go of illusion, of shedding old and limiting beliefs. And there is the challenge of the freedom to take risks, to have new ideas, to think new thoughts, to embrace new ways of knowing, to express new feelings, to care deeply, and to create the new.

I am not always up to the challenge of freedom or to accepting all that freedom offers. This part of the equation could be called accepting being human. This is what I love most about this Course. I don’t really know how we can be free without accepting our humanity and our divinity as one. Freedom won’t save us from being human, but it can get us to quit trying to.