How to Read A Course in Miracles

Bill has very intelligently suggested that you both should set yourself the goal of really studying for this course. There can be no doubt of the wisdom of this decision, for any student who wants to pass it. — from Jesus to Helen

The first leg of the program

Reading and studying the Course is where the ideas that will become the lens through which you see the world first enter your mind. Reading and study give you the foundation for the whole path, as the opening line of the Workbook says:

A theoretical foundation such as the text provides is necessary as a framework to make the exercises in this workbook meaningful. (W-pI.In.1:1)

Reading should be daily

You really should read the Course every day. The Workbook takes pains to give you reading material for each day. Even in Part II, where the lessons are less than half a page, you are given a page of additional reading material for each day. I would highly recommend adding reading of the Course to your plans for your morning quiet time.

From personal guidance to Helen and Bill

Bill has very intelligently suggested that you both should set yourself the goal of really studying for this course. There can be no doubt of the wisdom of this decision, for any student who wants to pass it (Absence from Felicity, p. 285).

You better re-read this now….Just re-read them, and their truth will come to you….Remember point 1, and re-read now….Notes on this course…should be reviewed….Review your note from yesterday… (Absence from Felicity, pp. 217-223).

Please read these three points as often as you can today, because there may be a quiz this evening. This is merely to introduce structure, if it is needed. It is not to frighten you (Absence from Felicity, p. 217).

Good students assign study periods for themselves. However, since this obvious step has not occurred to you, and since we are cooperating in this, I will make the obvious assignment now. Bill is better at understanding the need to study the notes than you are, but neither of you realizes that many of the problems you keep being faced with may already have been solved there….You vaguely know that the course is intended for some sort of preparation. I can only say that you are not prepared (Absence from Felicity, p. 258).

The Course’s primary dictum: “Read slowly, carefully, even repeatedly, and think about what you read.”

Some of the later parts of the course rest too heavily on these earlier sections not to require their careful study. (T-1.VII.4:3)

We have another journey to undertake, and if you will read these lessons carefully they will help prepare you to undertake it. (T-4.In.3:11)
Think about what you read

Devote two minutes or more to each practice period, thinking about the idea and the related comments after reading them over. (W-pI.rI.IN.2:3)

Read over the ideas and comments that are written down for each day’s exercise. And then begin to think about them. (W-pI.rIII.IN.5:2-3)

Read over slowly, even several times

Devote some three or four minutes to reading them over slowly, several times if you wish. (W-pI.rII.IN.2:2)

Read slowly and think about; review what you have read

These special thoughts should be reviewed each day [for ten days]. They should be slowly read and thought about a little while. (W-pII.IN.11:4)

Read: “to receive or take in the sense of (as letters or symbols) especially by sight or touch”

Study: “to read in detail, especially with the intention of learning”

Reading is more passive, study is more active.

Going back to the primary dictum (“Read slowly, carefully, even repeatedly, and think about what you read”), notice how conscious and intentional you are being. You are bringing all of your mind to bear on the act of reading. Rather than being a passive sponge, you are being a very active reader. You are studying.

If you are a more experienced student, you are not reading so much to gain information or to cover territory. You are reading to let the Course talk you into a change of mind.

I. Read slowly and carefully

I suggest the following: Take one sentence at a time and pay attention to all the words in it. Jesus told Helen, “As long as you take accurate notes, every word is meaningful.” So notice each word.

II. Read in light of the surrounding web

The Course is written more like a web than a string of beads. Themes weave in and out of each other in great profusion. This means that, to understand any given sentence, you need to look in the material right around it for the words and ideas that appear in that sentence. This stands in contrast to what students often do. When encountering a puzzling passage, they often lift their head and consult their own overall understanding of the Course, asking themselves what this passage must mean in light of that overall understanding. I call this “reading by projection,” because it means you just stamp the same old meaning onto every passage you encounter.

Example: “I need do nothing”
This well-known line has been taken to mean all kinds of things, such as:
“I don’t need to do anything outwardly, behaviorally.”
“I don’t need to do disciplined inner practice, like what the Workbook says you should do.”

What does the line really mean? To find out, read the following passage slowly, noticing each word. Look for words and ideas in the sentence “I need do nothing” in the following two paragraphs, which are the final paragraphs of the section “I Need Do Nothing.”

Who needs do nothing has no need for time. To do nothing is to rest, and make a place within you where the activity of the body ceases to demand attention. Into this place the Holy Spirit comes, and there abides. He will remain when you forget, and the body’s activities return to occupy your conscious mind.

Yet there will always be this place of rest to which you can return. And you will be more aware of this quiet center of the storm than all its raging activity. This quiet center, in which you do nothing, will remain with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent. For from this center will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly. It is this center, from which the body is absent, that will keep it so in your awareness of it. (T-18.VII.7:6-8:5)

Based on what you have underlined and circled, please answer the following questions:

  1. If you were to follow the instruction of these paragraphs, how would you actually sit down and “do nothing”? Are there any sentences that sound almost like instructions for what it means to “do nothing”?
  2. Is this material telling you to never do anything outwardly, behaviorally? Can you back up your answer?
  3. These paragraphs speak both of doing nothing and of busy doing. How do the two relate to each other (in these paragraphs)?
  1. You would sit down, be still physically and mentally, and make a place within you where you do nothing, and where you aren’t thinking about the body’s doings. The sentence that sounds like instructions is 7:6: “To do nothing is to rest, and make a place within you where the activity of the body ceases to demand attention.”
  2. No it’s not telling me to never do anything behaviorally. There are many references to “the body’s activities,” some of them clearly positive, such as “every busy doing on which you are sent,” and “how to use the body sinlessly.”
  3. You could answer this in the form of a step-by-step process:
  1. You make a place within you where you do nothing, where the body’s doing doesn’t have your attention, a place of stillness, a place of inward rather than outward focus.
  2. Holy Spirit come into this place.
  3. He remains in that place, even once you come out of it.
  4. Because this place remains, you can return to it.
  5. You can be more aware of it than you are of the storm of doing. You can have most of your attention in the eye of the hurricane (the quiet center) even while participating in the raging storm of the hurricane.
  6. And this quiet center can give you rest in the midst of that storm—in the midst of doings on which you are sent.
  7. You will be sent on those busy doings from this quiet center. It will direct you in how to use the body—how to behave—sinlessly, for sake of others, rather than self.
  8. The fact that this center has no body in it is what will allow it to direct the body sinlessly and you to see the body sinlessly.

III. Take it personally.

It is easy to take the Course’s teaching as a series of abstract statements about people and reality in general. It is crucial, however, to take it as a series of statements about you personally and about your relationships.

Insert your name
This is how Jesus urged Helen Schucman to take it:

Now take this personally, and listen to Divine logic:
If, when you have been forgiven, you have everything else, and
If you have been forgiven
Then you >have everything else. (Urtext)

If you read it in the usual way, this syllogism says the following:

If, when one has been forgiven, one has everything else, and
If one has been forgiven
Then one has everything else

But if you take it personally, as he said, it means something very different. Try reading it again and inserting your name at the asterisks:

If, when you have been forgiven *, you have everything else, and
If you * have been forgiven
Then * you have everything else.

Can you feel the difference?

As another example, In the following passage, mentally insert your name at every asterisk.

You have the vision now * to look past all illusions. It has been given you * to see no thorns, no strangers and no obstacles to peace. The fear of God is nothing to you now *. Who is afraid to look upon illusions, knowing his savior stands beside him? With him, your vision * has become the greatest power for the undoing of illusion that God Himself could give. For what God gave the Holy Spirit, you * have received. The Son of God looks unto you * for his release. For * you have asked for and been given the strength to look upon this final obstacle, and see no thorns nor nails to crucify the Son of God, and crown him king of death. (T-20.II.7:1-8)

Hear these words as being from Jesus to you

In the following passage, again insert your name at the asterisks, and imagine that this really is Jesus speaking to you.

Like you, * my faith and my belief are centered on what I treasure. The difference is that I love only what God loves with me, and because of this I treasure you beyond the value that you set on yourself, * even unto the worth that God has placed upon you. I love all that He created, and all my faith and my belief I offer unto it. My faith in you * is as strong as all the love I give my Father. My trust in you * is without limit, and without the fear that you will hear me not. I thank the Father for your loveliness, * and for the many gifts that you will let me offer to the Kingdom in honor of its wholeness that is of God. (T-13.X.13:1-6)

Apply any mention of a brother to a specific person in your life
For the following passage, choose a person in your life and insert his or her name where it says “your brother” or “him.”

The memory of God shines not alone. What is within your brother still contains all of creation, everything created and creating, born and unborn as yet, still in the future or apparently gone by. What is in him is changeless, and your changelessness is recognized in its acknowledgment. The holiness in you belongs to him. And by your seeing it in him, returns to you. All of the tribute you have given specialness belongs to him, and thus returns to you. All of the love and care, the strong protection, the thought by day and night, the deep concern, the powerful conviction this is you, belong to him. Nothing you gave to specialness but is his due. And nothing due him is not due to you. (T-24.VII.2:1-9)

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