By James Gregory
I was born and raised Catholic in the 1950s. My upbringing was what you would expect for the time: I went to church with my family every weekend, attended Catholic grade school and Catholic high school, served as an altar boy, and even considered priesthood.
Everything changed for me when I started attending university. I realized that I was no longer a child and I started making decisions about my own life. I moved out of my family home and stopped going to church. As far as I was concerned, organized religion, with all its rules and emphasis on sin and guilt, was no longer relevant to me. However, thanks to a Grade 10 Religion class, I had developed a life-long love of the Bible. Jesus of the Bible was my model and I considered myself happily Christian.
When I graduated from university four years later, I realized that something was still missing from my life: meaning. Two questions burned in my soul that seventeen years of church and book learning hadn’t answered: Who am I? Why am I here? I spent the next 25 years searching the world for the path that would show me the meaning of life:
- The teachings of Edgar Cayce and the Association of Research and Enlightenment (ARE)
- Transcendental Meditation (TM)
- Integral Yoga
- Charismatic Catholicism
- Priesthood (for the second time)
- Spiritualism, reincarnation
And while each of these paths helped me become a better person, none of them answered my fundamental questions to any degree of satisfaction. I kept on searching.
And then a force of nature named Mary Anne blew into my life. She was a teacher of A Course in Miracles (ACIM, the Course), something I knew little about. We married despite the difference in our beliefs. She lived and breathed the Course, but it held no interest for me based on what I knew of its teachings:
- There are no sins, just errors.
- Jesus was not God, just a man.
- God did not create the world; it is just an illusion we made.
I remained happily Christian.
Two years after we were married, Mary Anne was hired as Administrator and teacher-in-training at The Circle of Atonement (the Circle, COA), a teaching and healing center based on A Course in Miracles. When the position of Office Manager came open, she urged me to apply. Despite some misgivings, I did. When I was offered the job, I decided to try it out for a year.
Given that I would now be working for an organization based on A Course in Miracles, it seemed to make sense that I should have at least a working knowledge of it. I tried reading the Text (the theory) but found it dense and incomprehensible. Then I discovered a year-long Workbook class (the practice) was about to start and decided to join. Each day we studied and practised the lesson for that day. Over the year, I learned a lot about the Course and about myself. For example, that the author of the Course was Jesus (the same Jesus whom I had come to know and love through my Bible reading). As I read the Course, every word of his rang true. I found the answers to my two burning questions: Who am I? I am a holy Son of God, perfect and sinless just as He created me. And why am I here? To love and be loved, to remove all obstacles to love, to help others do the same and thus find salvation together. By the end of the year, I was surprised to discover that I was a Course student. I kept on studying the Course and working for the Circle… and reading the Bible.
I had been looking for answers to two basic questions and instead found a complete spiritual path with nothing lacking, nothing contradictory. Every time I read the Course, I hear Jesus talking to me and I get new insights, for his wisdom is bottomless. And thanks to the Course, I have come to understand the Bible better because the Course has hundreds of biblical references that are highlighted and explained in the Complete and Annotated Edition of the Course (CE) published by the Circle. Who better to explain the Bible than Jesus himself?
And what about those teachings of the Course that I had originally found problematic?
- Despite my Christian investment in sin, what a blessing it is to finally be relieved of the burden of guilt that comes with the belief in sin.
- Turns out that I don’t have an issue with the fact than Jesus is not God. The Course portrays him as an “an elder brother,” an image I find comforting.
- I admit that I still struggle with the fact that the world is just an illusion that I have made, because my senses insist it is “real.” The good news is that if the world is not real, I don’t have to take it so seriously.
- And the Text that I had once found “dense and incomprehensible” is now so poetic in its simplicity and elegance, that reading it sometimes brings a tear to my eye.
What a relief it is to have discovered what I have been looking for all my life. With the Course, I have gained a profound peace because I am no longer searching for the truth, I am learning how to live it.
_______________
James is curator of the “From Church to Course” category of the Story Project.
_______________
If you enjoyed this story you might enjoy this one!
Or you may be interested in delving deeper into A Course in Miracles.
