The Center
For A Course Of Love
Elevating our Humanity / Taking Back Our Selves
...the time of illusion is
now called to an end.
(17.8, A Treatise on the Personal
Self)
From Mari Perron:
The Center for A
Course of Love has two missions, both
of which are in support of our return to our true selves: Sharing
the books of this course, and sharing who we are.
This Center also supports a
change – a broadening in our
idea of who we are.
The future depends on us embracing this change.
The Center for A Course
of Love is symbolic of diversity within unity.
This diversity is particular to each of us, and also particular
to this course. From “A Treatise on the Personal Self."
| 21.21 |
….This
call to return to your Self is being sounded far and wide
and … it goes out to humble and ordinary people like
yourself. There is no exclusivity to this call. It excludes
no race nor religion nor ones of either sex or sexual preference.
It but calls all to love and to live in the abundance of
the truth.
|
Diversity
is about uniqueness, distinction, and also newness. We who have
been embraced by Jesus within this
course are called to be forerunners of the new. What this means,
starting out, is that we’re going to be seen as different.
We’re going to be aware of a change – aware ahead of
many of those around us. It is always difficult to be different,
and so we need to join in solidarity and support, so that we don’t
become discouraged.
It has been seven years since this
course was first published, and it is appropriate at this seven-year-mark,
that there is a beginning
of recognition of this movement to the new. It is always so tough
to change our thinking and our beliefs. It takes time. It is easy
not to change when the change itself remains obscure, buried in our
former ideas about ourselves and in the lovely but at times baffling
language of Jesus.
What is this change? This newness?
The end of the illusion and our ability to live truly.
This is an enormous change.
It seems too much to hope for that the dream of the ego could come
to an end, and that we ordinary people can embody love, and live
truly. It feels as if it is a reversal of so many of the former
beliefs we have adopted.
Yet it is so remarkably lovely
that we are each capable of being a true representation of love.
How do we support each other in being that which we are? In this
gigantic change in thinking and being?
The first means of this support
seems to need to come from me. I feel as if I need to say right
out, directly and clearly, that this course, through union and
relationship, takes us beyond the reality of the ego. It takes
us beyond the false to what is true. It feels necessary to make
this strong statement because this course follows A Course
in Miracles.
A Course in Miracles readers have
been extremely devoted to Jesus and to their learning, and these “new” ideas may, at
first, feel like a challenge to what is already known. Yet as one
of my colleagues, a man trained in ACIM and also intimate with
ACOL, reminded me: A Course in Miracles did
not dwell on outcome. It’s aim was to remove the blocks to love’s presence.
It makes perfect sense that with that Course’s mission complete,
a new course would reveal what awaits – what lies beyond
the removal of the ego, and beyond all that is false.
This movement from the false
to the true begins at the very beginning of this course when Jesus
says that it will not be our egos that do this learning. The Christ
in us will learn this course and, learning this course, our identity
crisis will end. We will be able to be true, and to live love,
even as the imperfect humans we are. In fact, our uniqueness, even
our imperfections, were given us as part of our original creation.
I mention this because many find this movement to new life hard
to accept because they do not feel as if they fit an ideal of perfection.
Being able to move beyond our ideals of perfection is necessary
and very freeing! Jesus speaks of our new purpose as “the
miracle that will allow you to exist as who you are in human form,” and
also as elevating the self of form.
I’m expressing these
thoughts as mine and with no effort toward convincing anyone of
a way not right for them. Jesus says in A Treatise on
the New, “The elevation of
the personal self in this time of Christ can be the new choice.” It
can be. It does not have to be. Jesus goes on to say:
| 10.13 |
“Some
will not be willing to move out of the time of learning.
Those who have learned what this course would teach but do
not move beyond the state of learning will change the world.
They will make the world a better place....
|
| 10.14 |
“Those
of you willing to leave learning behind will create the new.
This
will not happen through learning but through sharing. |
| 10.11 |
Learning has had to do with what is perceived.
No longer learning has to do with what is revealed. Learning
has had to do with what is unknown. No longer learning has to
do with what is and can only be known through revelation. Learning
has had to do with supplying a lack. No longer learning has to
do with the realization that there is no lack. Learning was what
was necessary in order to allow you to fulfill the desired experience
of expressing the Self of love in form. No longer learning is
the revelation that the time of accomplishment is upon you and
the expression of the Self of love in form is what you are now
ready to do. Learning was what was necessary in order to know
who you are and how to express who you are. No longer learning,
or being accomplished, is synonymous with knowing who you are
and the ability to express who you are in truth. |
| 10.12 |
“Expression
of the self of love in form is what you are now ready to
do. Learning was what was necessary in order to know who
you are
and how to express who you are. No
longer learning, or being accomplished,
is synonymous with knowing who you are and the ability to
express who you are in truth. … Expression of the Self
of love is the natural state of being of those who have moved
beyond
learning to creating through unity and relationship." |
In language more attuned to
ACIM, you might say “the end of learning” is where
you’re at when the barriers to love’s presence have
been removed. You could even say that this miracle of A
Course in Miracles has led to this “new miracle,” that “will
join physical form to truth.” The most difficult thought
reversal of this miracle, at least if my conversations with folks
is any indication, is the idea of the end of the illusion.
Thoroughly understanding this
difficulty, this Center for A Course of Love has
the larger purpose of letting you self-identify. If you resonate
with this new truth,
if you feel the draw to this movement and to being a forerunner
of the new, then you need to know that there are others making
this choice as well…this choice to see the ego as the illusion
or dream, and to see that when they are dissolved together, there
is a true, or given self, that remains.
The Center for A Course
of Love is less about the content of A Course
of Love than about living with the assurance Jesus gives us, that
we can be who we truly
are, and live in a true world, here and now. This site is for anyone
looking for this acknowledgment, either from these course books,
or from a fellow traveler along the way:
Being who you
are is essential, and is the only truth you can be.
The human person,
and the physical world, the land of the living – with all
its charm and beauty, its heartbreak and gladness, with its ability
to inspire, to exasperate, to change, and to grow – are
part of creation, as are we.
All that was unreal was
the untrue – the ego and its self-created universe.
There is no “one way” to
respond to God or to the love within our own hearts. Yet we each
are called to respond — called to express ourselves in our
way. Joining together with those who feel similarly is important
to each of us.
You can feel pretty alone
out there when you get the crazy idea that you — you as one
autonomous person — matter. Society tells us we are important
for what we contribute and produce, for the way we look, or the
way we use our minds. Too often, spiritual “society” tells
us we are important for our spirit or our pursuit of higher consciousness.
Societies, like overarching atmospheres, encourage us to fit in.
They encourage us to ideals. We are not seen as, nor encouraged
to accept, the totality of who we are.
This Center is a place that
will encourage those of you who are ready, to take back who you
are, and to work for a recovery of the identity that you will find,
ultimately, must be returned to.
From within union, we can see
in wholeness what we saw only partially before. In learning the
ways of the ego, and associating ourselves with that falsehood,
we continued to see with the eyes of the mind and continued to
make inaccurate assumptions. Now, seeing wholeheartedly, our humanity
is no longer regarded as a dream, as an illusion, as a mistake,
or as a disgrace. This Center is a place where you can find simple
acknowledgment: we, as human beings, have personality, have hopes,
dreams, and desires, and are naturally imbued with consciousness
and the capacity to be awake and aware. Not be egoic, but be who
we are.
From The Dialogues:
Realize that I love your smile,
your teeth, the hair upon your head, the warm, smooth shape of
your skull. Realize that I love your hands and that as you take
another’s hand, you hold my own, and that I am with you as
well as within you. Realize that I love all that you are, and that
as you snarl in anger, cry in despair, hang your head in weariness,
howl with laughter, I am with you and within you.
You will realize as you enter
union by means of the bridge of our direct relationship that you
will not leave your humanity behind. You will realize that as you
enter union by means of the bridge of our direct relationship that
you will no longer see me as an inhuman God. You will know I am
as human as are you and that you are as godly as am I.
Do not expect perfection, only
union. Do not expect sainthood, only Godhood. Do not expect the
world, expect heaven. Do not expect answers, only knowing. Do not
expect learning, only revelation. Do not expect all, without also
expecting nothing. Expect to know that you hold both within yourself
and that you hold me as I hold you.
If you have accepted your return
to love, you are ready for movement.
The R & R Movement
The Revolution
A Course Of Love is revolutionary.
The stated aim of A Course
of Love is to end our identity crisis. Each
of us who join the movement to take back our identity are the revolution,
and who we are together
is the revolution. The revolution is a rejection of the false and
an acceptance of the true. What is true is real. What is false
is illusion. The revolution is an acceptance that we are imminently
capable of bringing truth to life.
We are searching for the meaning
and purpose of life that was lost with our acceptance of a false
belief: that we are separate. With this belief came our lives of
fear. These two beliefs, of fear and separation created the illusion.
In the illusion, we lost ourselves. Jesus has called the illusion
to an end.
The revolution is taking back
our selves, our freedom to end our concentration on what is old
and false, and to join with each other in exploring and discovering
what is new and true: in ourselves, in each other, and in the world.
We who do so are common people: painters, housekeepers, secretaries,
doctors, salespeople, counselors — but we are also pioneers
of the new, creating the new. The means is sharing who we are.
As Jesus says in A Course
of Love, “You have to share
who you are to be who we are."
The Renaissance
All that we’ve learned
has not been able to still our yearning to know who we are. We
long to know and be known, and for the intimacy of the heart.
A Course of Love is
an invitation to each of us to explore and fulfill this longing.
It is an invitation to express ourselves in our way. When I was
receiving the text, I heard that A Course of Love would
create a new renaissance. This new renaissance is inspired by the
freedom
to be who we are. When we’re free to be who we are, we follow
our hearts’ desires and end the rift between our “spiritual
lives” and “our lives.” We’re no longer
seeking or learning on the spiritual path. We’re living our
true lives.
Who were the
leaders of the Renaissance? The office holders? The politicians?
No! The leaders were those who brought the world a new consciousness
through their writing, art, music, and through challenging the
entrenched ideologies of the office holders. These were the leaders.
We can be these kinds of leaders
by being who we are and through work that flows from who we are.
When we are who we are, doing what we do through an embrace of
our own nature, whatever we do becomes the way we lead.
A renaissance is exciting to
contemplate but also feels urgently needed. Conformity is dangerous,
and each of us being who we are
is the antidote to this danger.
Click
Here To Join The Movement.
(No cost, no obligations, no benefits except standing up and being
counted as a forerunner
of the new.)
mari@thedialogues.com |
