Key Concepts and Terms Articles

I received the following response to our last issue of A Better Way, the special issue on miracles: I have to comment on your "Miracles" issue....I disagree quite strongly with what you seem to be saying in it.  I don't want to sound like a Course Nazi but any...

For the last week or so, I have been thinking about and practicing around anxiety. The reason is that it struck me, in a way it never has before, that anxiety isn’t really necessary.  As the Text says about anxiety, it “need not be” (T-4.VI.6:1). So I just now sat...

This article explores the concept of “acting out” in A Course in Miracles. This is mainly about the acting out of fantasies, but the Course appears to mix in with that the notion of just plain “acting out.” “Acting out” in normal usage When the Course speaks of acting...

"Atonement" is everywhere in the Course, and some form of "accept the Atonement" is in there 39 times. But in my experience, almost no one has any real feeling for the word as it functions in the Course. As a result, this key term, all the passages in which it occurs,...

A Course in Miracles states many times that "God has but one Son" (T-9.VI.3:5; T-10.III.10:1). This automatically raises a number of questions: Since we seem to be many, what are we? Is our individuality entirely illusory? Are we products of the separation rather than...

1.Our home is reality, Heaven, the Kingdom of God, a spiritual realm of pure oneness and boundless joy which can never be threatened. Since nothing real can be threatened, then the world is not real. Reality is formless, spaceless, timeless oneness, beyond all...

Every Course student knows that the Course uses a number of words in a special way. For instance, we all know that forgiveness means something very different in the Course than what it means in conventional parlance. I have slowly come to realize, however, that nearly...

The March-May 2006 issue of What Is Enlightenment magazine carried an article on Mother Antonia, sometimes called "the prison angel," who left behind a life in Beverly Hills to live in a Mexican prison and serve its thousands of inmates. The article, by Maura R....

I have had some requests for Mary Anne's exercise, so I will include it here, and then below that I will have the summary of the class. Mary Anne's exercise Start by seeing yourself as you usually do as you go about your daily life; that is, as a body in a physical...

Here are my notes from Thursday's class. I would really like to keep this discussion going. So please let me know your thoughts. Evidence for this view Bias is such a massive factor in perception. We know that bias plays havoc with our view of the world. Projection is...

The treasure house in the Course is best understood as a contrast to a conventional treasure house. On the literal level, this is “a building, room, or chamber used as a storage place for valuables.” But more broadly, it is any place in which we store what is...

In yesterday’s class my main point was that self-deception is the whole problem and self-honesty is the whole journey home. I began with this quote from the original dictation: “There is nothing as tragic as the attempt to deceive oneself, because it implies that you...