This Week in Course Companions: He Walks With Us
The following is from the weekly message by Circle founder, Robert Perry, delivered each Thursday to Course Companions members. Course Companions is our global community of students and teachers walking through the Course, section-by-section and lesson-by-lesson, together as friends. For access to any classes, handouts, and additional commentaries referenced in these posts, we invite you to join Course Companions by visiting CourseCompanions.com. Please note that partial and full scholarships are available and no one is turned away from Circle of Atonement programming for an inability to pay.
__________________________________
June 25, 2020
Our Workbook class on Tuesday was about Review 5, which I love, and which I have discovered that many of you love as well. Its central image is of us walking along the road to God. Our footsteps on this road—our units of progress, you could say—are our practice periods. Jesus ends up saying a number of things about those footsteps/practice periods.
- Our footsteps have been too slow and hesitant because we aren’t sure we really want to walk this road. We need to pick up the pace.
- We should pray to God for His help in correcting the errors that pervade our practicing—our stumbling, forgetting, and wandering off. We should ask Him to help us pick up the pace.
- If we remember that the goal toward which we are journeying is the remembrance of our glorious true Self, we will indeed pick up the pace. We will walk with quickened footsteps and a resurrected heart.
- Jesus walks with us. He actually does our practice periods with us. And he is so identified with us in our process of walking home, that every time we do a practice period, he feels reborn.
What beautiful teaching!
Our Text class was about the section “Leaving Your Needs to Him” (T-13.VIII). This is the Course’s only extended discussion of possessions and of the Holy Spirit supplying them for us. In getting ready for the class, both Emily and I were amazed at the rich tapestry of themes in this section. It teaches us that in Heaven we have no needs, but here on earth, we do need things. However, we can’t trust ourselves to decide which things we need, for our ego is driven by the idea that simply owning things is salvation—a belief that saps the happiness from the things we acquire. Instead, we need to leave this area to the Holy Spirit. He will literally supply our material needs, but He will do so with an overriding consciousness of how possessions so easily reinforce our attachment to the world. He will supply things, therefore, without any emphasis on them. And He will only give us those things that don’t weigh down our journey, so that “Under His guidance, you will travel light and journey lightly” (T-13.VIII.4:4).
It’s a brilliant section, and so very different from some of the messages we hear out there—for instance, that the Holy Spirit would never supply us with things or that it is spiritual to use the power of our minds to manifest things.
Finally, please join us for our Sunday gathering this Sunday. Our topic will be “the desirability of Heaven,” something that many of us need to connect with and keep with us. And Neda Boin will once again be lending us her magnificent vocal talents. I hope to see you there!
With love,
Robert