It’s all good news

[Please note: ACIM passages quoted in this article reference the Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP) Edition.]

I’ve just realized that I can read the Course in a new way and I’d like to share it with you. I’ve been dwelling a great deal lately on the notion of God’s Love, which, in my mind, really is the bedrock of the Course. Yes, the Course’s bedrock is also the distinction between reality and illusion, but I think that distinction is a result of God’s Love. The separation, the world, and the body are all illusions because God in His Love would not let them be real. At one point, the Course speaks of our loneliness and friendlessness and asks “Would God let this be real?” (T-11.III.2:4). No, a loving God wouldn’t do that.

The word that has been coming to my mind lately has been “paradise.” If God’s Love is really true—if He loves us in the overwhelming way the Course says He does, and if His Love is not only stronger than the threatening forces that surround us, but is really the only power there is—then that is such unbelievably good news that we are really living in paradise. We can feel as if we are in paradise right now, for in fact we are. In this state of paradise, all the things in our lives that seem so big and insurmountable shrink into insignificance. They become tiny footnotes on a page filled with love. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to feel like you are in paradise all the time?

Now back to my reading of the Course. As I read the Text this morning, I realized that even though I have always seen a great deal of good news in the Course, I have also felt a kind of constant background sense of friction at how different it is from how I currently think, how high it is asking me to reach, and how hard it seems to do that. Jesus seems to know we will feel this. He says in Lesson 181, “You have been quite preoccupied with how extremely different the goals this course is advocating are from those you held before. And you have also been dismayed by the depressing and restricting thought that, even if you should succeed, you will inevitably lose your way again.” And then in Manual Section 13, he says, “You may believe this course requires sacrifice of all you really hold dear.” I think this sense of friction may not be present when you start the Course, but I think it grows on you the more time you spend with it.

Then, in addition to this sense of friction, I find that my mind often blanks out when Jesus is speaking about things that are actually very wonderful, but are so abstract as to seem distant from my daily life. Allen Watson has often remarked to me how Ken Wapnick would brush over those parts when he commented on a section, saying, “That’s just Jesus giving us a little pep talk.”

So, in my reading of the Course, there has been lots of good news, but also lots of bad news, and lots of distant, not-so-relevant news. As I read, I can feel my mind switching from one kind of news to another all the time: up, down, blank, up, down, blank.

What I realized this morning is that it’s all good news. What I saw was that God’s Love was either in every line or behind every line. I could see that His Love was the real, underlying message everywhere, in every sentence. This seems so obvious in hindsight, but it hasn’t seemed obvious all these years. Let me show you what I mean. Here is a paragraph from Section III of Chapter 11 in the Text:

God hides nothing from His Son, even though His Son would hide himself. Yet the Son of God cannot hide his glory, for God wills him to be glorious, and gave him the light that shines in him. You will never lose your way, for God leads you. When you wander, you but undertake a journey that is not real. The dark companions, the dark way, are all illusions. Turn toward the light, for the little spark in you is part of a Light so great that it can sweep you out of all darkness forever. For your Father is your Creator, and you are like Him.

Read each line and see if you can see God’s Love in it. Some of the lines are obvious: “God hides nothing from His Son,” “God wills him to be glorious,” “God leads you.” But even lines that speak of darkness still carry that message of God’s Love. For instance, “When you wander, you but undertake a journey that is not real.” We can read that as, “You do a lot of wandering down paths that are not actually real (you fool),” or as, “Yes, you wander down dark paths, but God in His Love has made sure that you’re not really going anywhere.”

It’s a very simple idea, but it makes a lot of difference. As we read the Course, we can take it all, even the most challenging bits, as good news. All of it can be glad tidings of God’s Love for us. As The Song of Prayer says, all of it can be echoes of His Love. And therefore all of it can give us the feeling that we are in paradise.