By Jan Worley
What seemed like an ordinary Sunday church service, instead delivered a surprising and life changing experience. The schedule at my wife’s church that day included two speakers who were leaders in the Young Women’s program talking about the recent girls’ camp. Other speakers were young women who had attended the girls’ camp.
The organizer/leader of the camp spoke of her love for the girls who attended and talked about how the girls shared love with each other, such as the older girls taking the younger girls under their wing, so that everyone felt fully part of all the activities. I was struck by the love she professed for the girls, and how the girls responded to each other in the same way. There was a real connection with me and the speaker about the message of love. To me it seemed the chapel was filled with love.
After a few minutes of her speaking, I noticed a bright light on her head. I thought that was quite a trick of the sun to light up her head like that. And then I noticed it was a band of light that was not only surrounding her head, but came down her neck, shoulders, and her arms, which was as much as I could see because she was standing behind the pulpit. It was an amazing sight. The band of light was probably two inches or a little more in height; it was hard to tell since I was sitting in a pew maybe thirty feet away. I continued to watch this light for several minutes as it stayed around the woman until she was finished speaking. As soon as she was finished and began walking away from the pulpit the light was no longer around her, at least to my eyes.
I pondered this event and what it meant. It finally dawned on me that the sun had nothing to do with the bright light around the woman, because there were no windows in that chapel.
I’ve been a student of A Course in Miracles (ACIM) for more than thirty years, with rigorous reading and study undertaken in the early part of those years. However, my study of ACIM has been sporadic for the last several of those years.
I joined the Circle of Atonement program called Course Companions more than a year ago. One of the perks of that program is that you can get a commentary daily on the different sections of ACIM (Text, Workbook, Manual for Teachers). When I joined that program, I started getting commentaries on chapters well into the Text. When they ended, I started getting the Workbook commentaries in early July this year.
I reflected on my experience with the light around the woman for several days. Then four days after that “light” experience, the commentary emailed to me was on Workbook Lesson 15. The message in that lesson I had forgotten. In paragraphs two and three this lesson of the CE edition states the following: “This introductory idea to the process of image making, which you call seeing, will not have much meaning for you. You will begin to understand it when you have seen little edges of light around the same familiar objects that you see about you now. That is the beginning of real vision. You can be certain that real vision will come very quickly when this has occurred. As we go along, you may have many ‘light episodes.’ They can take many different forms, some of them quite unexpected. Do not be afraid of them. They are a sign that you are opening your eyes at last. They will not last, because they merely symbolize true perception and are not related to knowledge.”
What a startling message for me. It changed how I viewed the Course.
When I received my first copy of ACIM, I opened it up randomly and read three pages. The words on those pages (I don’t remember which ones they were) resonated with me like no others, even though I have shed tears reading Christian scriptures in the past. As I learned more of the Course, I grew more in love with it. The message of love and forgiveness was so beautiful. I even loved that the bar to salvation was so high because it seems how Heaven should be – love and forgive everyone completely, and love everyone the same. However, some assertions of our capabilities in the Course such as “heal the sick and raise the dead”, “move mountains”, and see the “real world”, seemed fantastical, and hardly within the realm of humans in our current state. I came to think that we could make a lot of progress on love and forgiveness, but reaching the bar of salvation seemed like a hundred or a thousand lives away in future illusions from the one I’m living now. Since the “light” experience, I now believe completely everything that the Course says is possible and attainable in this or future lives. I strongly believe it is scripture coming from Jesus of Nazareth himself.
What are the requirements for seeing/vision? When I had my “light” experience, I was in a place of feeling much love at the time. So probably some feeling of love is a requirement for seeing.
But certainly, forgiveness is a requirement. Forgiveness has been on my mind for many years. I was inspired to develop a class on forgiveness, which I did, and taught the two-hour class at the local community college every semester for about three years (I taught other classes there including World Religions) as well as two other venues. During that time, I finally concluded my forgiveness journey concerning my father which had taken fifty years. Maybe I had done the required forgiveness work to see “the light” (you learn what you teach). The Course talks about the relationship of forgiveness to seeing/vision: “Realize that your forgiveness entitles you to vision. Understand that the Holy Spirit never fails to give the gift of sight to the forgiving. Believe He will not fail you now.” [CE W-75.6:4-6]
I’m 83 years old and I don’t expect to reach salvation in this life. It would be really nice if I were wrong because I’m certainly not looking forward to another adolescence.
My experience of seeing this wondrous light three months ago has not occurred again up to now. However, after this holy event in my life I am excited that maybe the high bar of salvation can be reached in considerably less than a hundred more lives.
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Now it is given me to understand that God is the light in which I see. Let me welcome vision and the happy world it will show me. [CE W-59.4:6-7]
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