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A Course of Love (ACOL) claims to be a continuation of A Course in Miracles (ACIM). It was heard inwardly and written down, as was ACIM, and in each circumstances the “voice” claimed to be from Jesus. Nonetheless, the literary fashion of ACOL, although just like that of ACIM, shouldn’t be the identical and seems to be an try and mimic it. As well as, there are main variations between these two works that must be identified, as a result of a number of the teachings in ACOL contradict core teachings in ACIM which have helped and nonetheless are serving to many to purify their minds of earthly illusions and the limiting beliefs of the ego, to allow them to obtain the blessings of the Holy Spirit. If individuals believed the teachings in ACOL, the religious assist they’d in any other case obtain from lots of the teachings and practices in ACIM can be nullified. The aim of this text is to make clear a number of the elementary variations between the 2 works.
The next web page and part numbers check with ACOL: Mixed Quantity.
P. 280-282:
In 1.1, 7, 12, ACOL says that now – at this level in studying this course – the ego has been separated from the reader’s private self, and the reader’s “remembrance of the Christ-Self has abolished the ego-self… ” In different phrases, it claims the reader has now realized the Christ.
P. 340-341:
ACOL says should you attempt to assist others who’re struggling chances are you’ll lose your interior peace, that it is best to minister to these in phantasm provided that your unity (oneness) with Jesus Christ is completed and if, with out being in unity, you attempt to assist others go away illusions behind and return to unity, it is not going to work (20.14-15). This isn’t true. Should you search and observe the steering of the Holy Spirit inside you when making an attempt to assist others, you’ll not lose your interior peace, and it’s all the time useful to suggest the teachings of ACIM to those that are receptive and prepared.
If ACIM has benefited you, you’ll be able to point out this to all who can be open to listening to what it’s a must to say. By sharing with love and a want to assist others, our love will increase, for we obtain what we give. This can be a divine precept, and those that reside in love and in concord with God’s legal guidelines assist others. A Course in Miracles speaks of the legal guidelines of God, which haven’t modified. ACOL tells us that the time of Christ is now upon us, that new legal guidelines at the moment are in impact, and that we now not want the assistance and steering of the Holy Spirit. There is no such thing as a proof of this. The time of Christ could also be quick approaching, however the Holy Spirit continues to be with us. And once we hearken to and observe His light steering, He leads us to the Christ… the knowledge, love and light-weight inside… the reality of what we’re.
P. 559-560:
These sections include many false statements in an try and persuade the reader that, so as to notice the one Self, one has to unite with oneness by separating from oneness.
In 11.5, ACOL tells us, “It’s only in relationship that the oneness of the self separates from oneness and so is aware of oneness.” What may this probably imply? If oneness is oneness, it couldn’t separate from oneness.
ACOL additionally says, “God is the oneness and the separation.” How may God be the oneness and the separation? ACIM teaches that God is actual, separation is phantasm, and actuality can’t be half actual and half phantasm.
Moreover, in 11.5-6, ACOL says that, with out relationship between separate selves, private selves of kind, God wouldn’t know “He” existed, and God wouldn’t know God. This isn’t true. The phantasm of separate selves was not wanted for God to know Himself and His existence. God is omniscient. He is aware of He exists and what He’s by way of direct understanding of His actuality, not like human considering, which relies on phrases and pictures within the thoughts that just about all the time characterize bodily perceptions, that are the thoughts’s interpretation of sensations brought on by power currents coming from sensory nerves within the physique. Once we consider one thing, even one thing religious, we virtually all the time use phrases and pictures which might be usually used to characterize bodily perceptions, that are illusions, not actuality. God is actuality and thru direct understanding is aware of Himself and His existence.
In 11.3-5, ACOL additionally tells us that God, the self of kind, and the One Self (the Christ) inside the self of kind, are able to being both the observer or the noticed solely by way of the technique of separate relationships becoming a member of in union and, in 11.6, that what’s separate and joined in relationship is All as a result of it’s all that’s knowable. To say that what’s separate and joined in relationship is every part implies that, with out separate selves of kind (separate selves in bodily our bodies) becoming a member of in relationships, nothing else (which incorporates God and the Self) may have existed. The message of ACOL is that the existence of God and the Self was made doable by man. It’s the reverse of what Jesus teaches in ACIM. In ACIM, Jesus tells us that God is our Creator (Creator). He encourages us to put aside the false idea that we will create what we’re, Chapter 3, VII (4), and to affirm that we’re as God created us.
The Self – the Increased Self, or Son – is one’s actuality. We will not be conscious of the Self, however it’s what we actually are. The Self is blissful, loving, omnipresent consciousness, one with the Supreme Consciousness, God, and is changeless, ever as God created It. It already is elevated, in different phrases, is of Spirit, not flesh, and has no kind. It’s everlasting, though particular person souls below the affect of the ego establish with the physique – the mortal, bodily kind they inhabit for a time – and thus don’t expertise their everlasting actuality.
God is the Supreme Blissful Actuality past kind, and it’s our relationship with the Holy Spirit, whom God created to information us dwelling, and with those that are united with this loving facet of God, that permits us to transcend kind and turn into conscious of our everlasting actuality because the Self.
ACOL is an try to steer us that we wanted to separate from oneness and relate to one another as people with bodily kind so as to know God and the Christ, and for God and the Christ to exist. That is the antithesis of truths that Jesus and others who’ve identified God and the Christ have taught down by way of the ages.
The paradise of Eden was an ideal world through which the primary people, symbolized by Adam and Eve, had been in an exalted state of consciousness and skilled oneness with one another and God. They already had been in relationship with one another and God and didn’t have to separate from oneness. God and Christ already existed, and so they may commune with God, and understand God within the life, magnificence and intelligence of nature as one. They skilled range, the person traits of one another and various things, however had been additionally conscious of the oneness of every part.
They might have remained on this paradise and after a short while turn into absolutely united with the Father whereas nonetheless retaining their individuality, however they misconceived and didn’t respect the reward of their creation as particular person souls, like particular person rays of sunshine issuing forth from One Mild, and the chance of experiencing the proper world of Eden. They didn’t perceive the aim of their new existence and didn’t need it, so that they mentally rejected it. Thus they separated themselves in thought, although not in actuality, from God’s creation and from God, and fell from the heaven of harmonious unity with their Creator. They tried to compensate for this loss by discovering pleasure within the imperfect world that resulted, however failed. Finally, illusions virtually completely changed their consciousness of God and of God’s creation. In the present day, our human consciousness and the world we understand are a legacy of the autumn of mankind in Eden.
The oneness and glory beheld by the Son in Eden earlier than He fell into delusion could have been what Jesus meant by “what’s true in earth” when he mentioned, “Suppose not you made the world. Illusions, sure! However what’s true in earth and Heaven is past your naming” (ACIM Workbook, Lesson 184: 8).
Many of the teachings in ACOL make little or no sense, particularly these introduced towards the top of the e-book, and so they contradict timeless truths, not solely these set forth by Jesus in A Course in Miracles, however those who had been written about by Christian mystics and nice masters who skilled, and due to this fact knew, the peace, omnipresent consciousness and love of the Christ Consciousness.
The Christ Consciousness – the Christ, or Son – is omnipresent all through the universe, and our consciousness of It develops by levels. The extra we carry our consciousness above the extent of sensory expertise, the first area of the ego, and give attention to that which is observable by the best schools of the soul, the extra we unite with the Christ Consciousness.
Christ Consciousness is an extension of God, not as ACOL says, “the attention of existence by way of relationship” (p. 560, 11.7). Christ Consciousness is within the Christ Mild that exists simply behind the world we understand with our bodily senses. It’s the pure reflection in creation of the loving intelligence of God. It has existed because the starting of time and is omniscient, changeless and with out kind. It’s the Christ Thoughts, the Son of God, who manifested in Jesus and in time will manifest in each human being.
That is the way in which Jesus describes Christ Consciousness in Conversations with Christ by Alexander Soltys Jones. It’s what enlightened beings have typically mentioned, however usually don’t say, as a result of phrases give an incomplete thought of upper truths, which must be skilled so as to be identified. Paramahansa Yogananda, an enlightened grasp, described Christ Consciousness utilizing virtually the identical phrases. Yogananda had realized the Self as this divine consciousness, or consciousness, omnipresent all through creation.
ACOL is crammed with false statements concerning the nature of God and the Christ. It was transmitted to the receiver from December, 1998 by way of October, 2001 and claimed that the time of the Holy Spirit (the Voice for God) had come to an finish. It will be a grievous error to simply accept its false teachings, which contradict the very essence of Jesus’s teachings in ACIM, and quit listening to and following the Voice for God simply because a spirit pretending to be Jesus mentioned we had been within the time of the Christ and now not wanted to hearken to the Voice for God. It’s now 2015, about fifteen years since ACOL was acquired, and whereas many souls are waking up, there isn’t a indication that many have entered the state of Christ Consciousness, the omnipresent, loving intelligence within the Mild of God simply behind the world we see with our bodily eyes. Furthermore, within the ACIM Workbook Epilogue, Jesus says that the Course is a starting, not an finish, that there isn’t a extra want of particular classes and that, after one completes the Course, the Voice of the Holy Spirit shall be their information and luxury as they proceed on their journey homeward to God.
After I purchased ACOL, I regarded ahead to studying extra concerning the nature of the Self however discovered that many statements concerning the Self, God, and Christ Consciousness had been imprecise, and I needed to battle to attempt to decide what they meant. Nonetheless, by studying sure sections time and again, the which means of those statements turned clear, and I noticed they weren’t true and I had been making an attempt to make sense out of false teachings that might not have come from Jesus. In reality, lots of them are the other of the teachings of Jesus and others who achieved God-realization – who had consciously united with (turn into one with) the Christ and the Father.
In ACIM, Jesus says that God the Father created us (the Self, or Son) in His likeness and our actuality is formless. He tells us the physique is an phantasm; that it might make issues, however doesn’t create as a result of to create is to create that which is actual, and solely Spirit can do that. ACOL reverses this and tries to persuade the reader that we’re beings of kind (bodily beings) and that by way of {our relationships} with different beings of kind we create the Self, which is our actuality. It even tells us that, except we first existed as beings of kind, God wouldn’t exist.
ACOL is stuffed with false claims and misleading arguments designed to negate Jesus’ teachings in ACIM. Listed below are some extra of its falsehoods, contrasted with truths in ACIM.
P. 559-561:
In 11.3 the bodily self is known as the “self of kind” however in 12.3 it’s referred to as the “Self.” Then, in 12.2-4, the Christ Consciousness is known as the “One Self” surrounding the house of the physique. These and lots of different ideas in ACOL will not be clearly expressed. This may occasionally have been intentional, to maintain the reader from realizing that they contradict primary truths in ACIM.
ACOL claims that so as to share in unity and relationship we needed to understand separation from oneness (11.2). It will have us consider this as a result of it needs us to simply accept the concept, by separating from oneness, we may unite the world of kind with the world of Spirit and, by combining kind (the physique) with the formless (Spirit), create who we’re. Nonetheless, we’re the formless (actuality), which is everlasting, we’re not kind (phantasm), which perishes, and in ACIM, Jesus says that actuality can’t be mixed with phantasm. Once we know actuality, phantasm disappears.
As talked about, the primary people already had been in unity and relationship. They had been particular person selves, had bodily our bodies and the ability to materialize our bodies, and so they skilled oneness. Eden was a wonderful state of consciousness, a contented dream.
These good selves may have loved and realized from their experiences as particular person souls in a world of magnificence, love and light-weight, and later, with out dropping their individuality, may have absolutely merged with one another and God as one. Nonetheless, they misconceived the reward of current as particular person selves. They interpreted it as separation, and lots of considered it as rejection. These and different judgments precipitated their consciousness to fall, and as an alternative of paradise, they perceived a bleak world of their very own imagining, which obscured the “blissful dream” God had given them. They tried to seek out happiness in earthly pleasures, however with out consciousness of the soul and Spirit, earthly illusions merely elevated the phantasm of separation. They felt guilt and concern, and in time, their consciousness of the peace, love, oneness, pleasure, knowledge, and energy of the soul and Spirit had been virtually completely changed with cravings for sense pleasures, greed, false beliefs, and different evils that arose of their illusory world. They turned virtually completely minimize off from communion with God and descended into darkness and distress. God didn’t banish His youngsters from their blissful dream; they banished themselves.
There was by no means any want for us to understand separation from God, and in actuality, this by no means occurred. In illusions, the blissful dream of Eden was forgotten, however the Self nonetheless exists, and thru unconditional love, we will make {our relationships} holy, expertise the “actual world,” and return to the Father.
If we ponder the teachings in ACIM and sincerely search and observe the Voice of the Holy Spirit, who patiently waits for us to actually wish to be guided by Him, we will regain paradise and return to our Creator. We’ll know once we are within the time of the Christ, for we’ll really feel our consciousness increasing within the infinite love and omnipresent consciousness of our immortal Self, the Christ.
In 11.6, ACOL says, “Solely what exists in relationship is aware of that it exists.” In context, it’s telling us that separate selves of kind (11.2-3), or our bodies, can know they exist solely by current in relationship.
This contradicts a elementary instructing in ACIM, that our bodies and separation are each illusions (not actual) and the Self (which is actual and does exist) is with out kind. Due to this fact, relationship between separate selves of kind is an phantasm and doesn’t characterize the existence of what we’re: the immortal, formless Self. Furthermore, you recognize that you just exist by experiencing what you might be, not by experiencing relationship between your physique and different our bodies separate from one another. A “holy relationship” will enable you to expertise the love that you’re and thus know that you just exist, however this information comes by way of direct expertise of the Self when your relationship with one other being is on the extent of Spirit and transcends relationship on the extent of bodily kind.
We’re thoughts (consciousness), and once we awaken within the mild and love of the Christ Thoughts (Christ Consciousness), we transcend the phantasm of separation. Realizing our unity with one another within the oneness of the Christ Consciousness, we turn into conscious that the physique and separation are phantasm (not actual) and we’re one.
In 12.3-4, ACOL claims that Christ Consciousness – the One Self (the Son) – is all that’s, after which, on web page 644 (37.22-24), says that “God the Father” exists solely as an thought created by Jesus. This reverses the reality that God has all the time existed and, as Jesus tells us, is his Father (Supply).
ACOL additionally says that the One Self loves Its Self, there may be nothing else to like, and the One Self is the All. Nonetheless, Jesus, who’s one with the Christ Consciousness, loves the Father and, in ACIM, tells us that union with the Father is the aim of our journey.
The falsehoods in ACOL which were talked about are an try and persuade the reader that our bodies, separation, relationship between our bodies becoming a member of in union, and materiality are actual, and that God (the Father, who created the Son) exists solely as an expression of the Son (Christ Consciousness), and that the Son couldn’t have existed with out separate bodily our bodies joined in relationship (11.2, 5-7). That is the other of the ACIM instructing that solely God and God’s creations are actual and that the physique and the world we see with the physique’s eyes are goals that may disappear once we get up and know God (who’s past time and house and has all the time existed) and the Son (who’s formless Spirit and was created by God).
P. 576-578:
In 16.10, ACOL says concern is a response to a sense, not a sense. In 16.14, it goes on to say that consciousness doesn’t embody both love or concern. That is nonsense. Worry is a sense, which we expertise as an emotional response to a perceived risk. And, though concern is phantasm, it’s a part of consciousness (ego-consciousness, not Christ Consciousness), and Christ Consciousness is the loving consciousness that results in the Father. Remember that the time period “consciousness” is normally outlined as consciousness (of something, whether or not phantasm or actuality) however in ACIM Jesus makes use of “consciousness” and “notion” to check with consciousness of that which is phantasm (unreal) and “data” to check with consciousness of that which is actual. Loving ideas are an exception. They might be perceived on the earth however are everlasting and are its solely actuality, Chapter 11, VII (2).
P. 616:
After saying, in 29.5-7, that wholeness and separation are merged within the reader’s new actuality – which is unattainable as a result of, based on ACIM, separation is an phantasm and disappears when dropped at actuality – ACOL goes on to inform the reader that they’re all the time the creator of their actuality (29.8). This goes towards Jesus’ warning in ACIM, Chapter 3, VII (4), to not consider you’ll be able to create your self. He says you’ll be able to understand that you are able to do this however you can not make it true as a result of God is your Creator. In VII (5), he says the idea that we will self-create denies the Fatherhood of God and is the “satan” as a result of it reinforces the phantasm of separation from God.
From statements on pages 553 (10.12), 559 (11.2-3, 5-6) and 561 (12.2-4) in ACOL one can see that the spirit that conceived ACOL needs the reader to consider the physique is an important a part of Christ Consciousness – the One Self, the Christ (web page 580, 17.4) – and is actuality. That is the other of what ACIM needs us to understand, that the physique shouldn’t be actual however is an phantasm, and that illusions can’t be mixed with reality – the oneness, love and light-weight of God that exist past phantasm. The physique is what precipitated human beings to neglect God and actuality at first.
College students of ACIM would lose the advantages of its teachings in the event that they learn and believed what ACOL says. In the event that they believed, because it claimed (about fifteen years in the past, when it was acquired), that the time of the Holy Spirit had ended, and the reader was consciously united with the Christ and now not wanted to be guided by the Holy Spirit, they’d stop to pay attention for and observe the “Voice” of the Holy Spirit, which as Jesus repeatedly tells us in ACIM, allows us to beat the affect of the ego and unite with the Christ. The Christ, the Son, is the mirrored mild, love, and oneness of God; omnipresent and omniscient – our immortal being, our true identification – and we want the assistance of the Holy Spirit so we will consciously unite with the Christ.
As talked about, ACOL needs the reader to consider that the physique is a part of the truth of the Christ. That is an try and negate Jesus’ instructing, clearly acknowledged in ACIM, that the phantasm of the physique blocks our consciousness of God (Chapter 18, VIII 1-2 and IX 3). Most individuals are strongly hooked up to the physique, with their minds centered on meals, leisure, bodily pleasure and worldly issues, spending little or no time considering, worshipping or fascinated about God. Only a few persons are conscious that God is inside them as divine love and light-weight. As an alternative, they consider themselves because the physique and due to this fact really feel separated from God. They hold making an attempt to fill the void by searching for happiness within the pleasures of the physique, which by no means works as a result of with out experiencing the love of God, one can’t be really blissful and happy. So long as one stays centered on the physique, considering it’s their actuality, the phantasm of separation continues.
If individuals believed what ACOL teaches, they’d assume they’d already achieved union with the Christ. As an alternative of considering and residing the truths in ACIM and following the “Voice” of the Holy Spirit, they’d assume all they needed to do was let the Christ maintain them. Many wouldn’t even give materials assist or religious counsel to these in want of it, as a result of ACOL mentioned this was not their accountability and will trigger them to lose their interior peace. Unsubstantiated and sometimes engaging statements that contradict these of Jesus in ACIM would hold them from understanding Spirit, and they might proceed to expertise separation from the Self and God.
The ego, afraid of its demise, is intent on changing God with phantasm, Actuality with unreality, and Fact with falsehood. It needs us to cling to the concept the physique is an important a part of actuality and is what we’re. It needs us to consider we create our actuality by way of relationships with one another in bodily our bodies, when in fact our actuality already exists, is Spirit, and solely must be found. It was the ego within the thoughts of a smooth-talking, artful spirit that conceived ACOL, in an try and hold souls from attaining liberation by way of the teachings in ACIM and the steering of the Holy Spirit.
Be aware: Along with a few of Jesus’ teachings in A Course in Miracles and Conversations With Christ, this text additionally contains religious ideas from God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhavagad Gita by Paramahansa Yogananda, Love With out Finish by Glenda Inexperienced, Messages from Jesus by Mary Ann Johnston, and The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ by Levi.
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