A course in miracles?

[TheFlyingMan]

I didn't want to hijack the other thread on this, I've been attempting some of the exercises on ACIM. Some of them make me feel uncomfortable physically although intellectually they are similar to the non-dual stuff I've been reading anyway. (I'm referring to lessons 11-13, if anyone is curious)

what about the allegations about the ACIM ?
A Course in Miracles - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There are a few criticisms at the bottom.

Why would these lessons make someone feel uncomfortable? I understand that switching the way you look at the world make someone intellectually comfortable but this one is a bit physical. Has anyone ever completed the course? What were the results?

[JHL]

I've read most of the book, and I think I managed a few of the lessons but didnt go very far with it.

I thought there were some really good insights along the way, and in particular I enjoyed the insights around projection, i.e. - before we see what is in the world outside of us, we first look inside of ourselves and then project what we see onto the world outside.

Apart from that and a few other things useful insights, I guess I just didnt have the discipline to carry on with the lessons.

Sorry, that probably wasnt very helpful.

[AAMM77]

Well if someone really completed the course, I suppose that person wouldn’t be here anymore. However, I’m someone who completed the workbook exercises. And I can relate to the physical uncomfortable feeling you speak of. Following the thinking of the course, bodily state is but a symptom (effect) of mental state (cause). So I’d say it is ego resistance. You are getting too close to the ego’s secrets. The exercises you mention basically point out that what was made with the ego thought system is meaningless; it is neither good nor bad; it is nothing. That kind of thinking is threatening to the dualistic ego. It brings a bunch of unconscious guilt to the surface. The more a person chips away at the ego though, the less future resistance.

The results so far for me completing the course text are notable. Since the course provided a framework on which to understand why people think and behave the way they do, I have developed an immensely greater tolerance for other people’s belief systems. And I’m a lot less worried about how I should behave physically, like what I should eat or do to act in the world, because I no longer treat those things as something outside of my mind. Still though, the course dug up a lot of unconscious guilt that I still have to work through; it is an ongoing processes. There is still plenty to forgive.

And as far as criticisms of the course go, there are always critics of everything, so there are of course critics of the course. A lot of the criticisms are of and by people who have hijacked the course to use for their own ego purposes; those are strawman criticisms though. Such things are but a result of what the course calls the first law of chaos: that the truth is different for everybody.

[TheFlyingMan]

Hmm great replies thanks!