LITMIR.BIZ

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but it is more than a bit miraculous. Leila does not study the Course. This was also an obedient and courageous step on my part. I knew none of these people heretofore.

      I think that this group of six met bi-monthly, for about two years. I won't spend many words describing the group. I think the biggest lesson I gained from that group was how someone looking from the outside would say it disintegrated. One person dropped out because her husband did not read the Course and he was upset with her time commitment. A second woman told us: "The Course isn't giving me enough of a jolt." She moved on to crystals and other New Age "stuff". A third woman just could not get the rhythm of the Text. She would often read a sentence and exasperated, say: "What the fuck does that mean!" My friend Nadine or I would re-read the sentence with the correct iambs (is that the right use of the word?) and she would go "Oh….!" At some point, this woman found the Text too much of a hassle and just stopped coming. I can't remember why the other man in the group stopped participating.

      This experience solidified for me concepts related elsewhere in this book:

      •Everyone wants to "be spiritual", but few are willing to do the work it requires.

      •Many people take on a technology for misguided reasons. They are doomed to be frustrated.

      •Some people are made and/or prepared to resonate with some technologies, while others make no sense to them or leave them cold.

      •If you lack natural gifts, there is only so far any educational experience can take you; and

      •There are a lot of spiritual junkies out there!

      So from an outside perspective, the group disintegrated. Or did it? It was now just Nadine and me. No, that was not true: it was Nadine, me, and Jesus. Just as the Course's channel, her scribe, and Jesus created the Course, Nadine, I, and Jesus created a Trinity to learn it.

      For at least the next seven years, Nadine and I would meet weekly to read the Text, then the Workbook, then the Manual for Teachers, then a pamphlet and when that was complete, we would start all over again. My guess is we went through the Course's "canon" four times over. Here is the miracle for me in this experience: all Nadine and I did was read to each other. We would click into the sound of our voices and we entered a Trinity. As I said, the Course is not an easy read, yet it was rare that one of us would stop to ask the meaning of what one of us had read. If anything, an interruption was usually an expression of gratitude for the power and beauty of the words—or why one or both of us needed to Hear that message, that night! At some point, invariably not more than an hour (although we never planned this before nor timed ourselves), one of us would say: "I can't hear anymore. It just sounds like gibberish to me." I want to say that very often, both of us reached the same point at the same time. It's just that one of us "called the game".

      Did Jesus appear to us in our meetings? Of course not! Jesus was with us in the sense of: "For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst…" (Matthew 18) In Course terms, my "brother" and I asked to learn the Course. We were willing to leave our egos behind to join with the Christ mind, the mind we share with all and Everything. Jesus, not as the Christ but as the prime Western example of that mind, joined with us in that effort, to make our learning possible. (Sorry if I can't explain this any better—it's a miracle. If I could be perfect at explaining this, it would not be a miracle. It's a paradox, see?)

      I fear that if I go much further, I will write a book on the Course and bore you—and myself. I never find those books as powerful or true as the original! So here is my attempt to summarize what I have learned as a now 20+ year student:

      •It took a while for me to truly grasp, but I realized that the God for which I had been searching all those years was no God at all. The Course is nontheistic.

      •While this is still a mind bender, I accept this on some level: I and this entire world I see are a miscreation from a thought that happened in an instant: the thought that anything could be separate from Everything. That thought should have been laughed at the moment it was conceived, but it was taken seriously. And I am now part of this massive delusion, re-thinking that error moment-to-moment and acting as if it was real—creating and suffering the consequences.

      To the extent I can let go of my hold on a separate me and a separate world, I can let go and let God. . . enter into Grace.

      •The Course gives me a way—I believe the truthful way—to view the battle in my mind. One part of my mind hungers for Grace (my "right mind"); the other fears Grace and fights to maintain control. (Ego—ever heard that term before?) And then there is this third part in me that can and does tap into Grace. In my terms, The Voice; in Course terms, the Holy Spirit or Jesus as the once-earthly and best example.

      •The Course is clear and inflexible on this point; I cannot have a split mind. Either I am receiving, thinking, and acting from my right mind or from ego. I am responsible for what I see and how I interpret it. I am responsible for my interactions with others and even for drawing to me the things that happen in "my" world.

      •I am not left totally alone in this mind battle. If I let go to The Voice (in Course terms, "the Holy Instant"), then I can move into my right mind.

      The Course has given this ex-Jewish boy a way to accept "the Jesus story" and Christological terms, in practical ways I can use in my life. Forgiveness, for one big example! Throughout the Text, Jesus says: "They (the Gospel authors, Paul) got me wrong! Here is what I really said; here is what it truly means!" Or: "Here is why I really did that!" For me, the most important statement Jesus makes in the Text is: "I was willing to take a radical step in terms of the Earth (dying on the crucifix) to prove that nothing could happen to my true nature. I took the ultimate journey—to prove you do not need to repeat it!"

      The Course gives me tools I can use to stop my ego madness. When I do, and to the extent I do, miracles are possible. And I have done plenty! But the Course goes even farther; it keeps me from becoming a different kind of spiritual junkie; one addicted to miracles. The Course says miracles are temporary demonstrations of the truth. They only point to Grace; they are not Grace. To get too involved with miracles is just another way to lose my way.

      Perhaps most important, my study of The Course has given me a concept of Jesus that truly resonates with me. Far from being some lordly, unapproachable spirit on the right hand of God, Jesus is in me; a loving brother and a guide. To understand my relationship with Jesus today, I offer my realization from the trip I took in the Grand Canyon (Aug/Sept 2010):

      Over those seven days, we travelled 200 miles on the Colorado River, negotiating over 200 hundred rapids. Actually, I didn't negotiate one of them: Irv, our boat guide, did that for us. He knew whether to gun the raft into the rapids, cut the engine and let us float (once backwards!), or any other number of strategies. On hikes that were often up hundreds of feet, on rock cliffs, and usually in full sun, Irv was the guide who showed us how to traverse them safely.

      Irv soon picked me out as the least intrepid of the group. His oft-repeated phrase to me was: "Now Josh, there's just a few "skanky" spots on this one…" When we got to that skanky spot, Irv's encouragement allowed me to swallow my fear (OK—terror!) to do things like hugging and shimmying around a rock that left only a foot (or less!) path behind my back, or to get down on all fours and squirm under the rock wall. (A misstep would be a 200+ foot drop!) It was Irv who found the sand bar to stop for lunch and the place to put away for the night. He made all our meals and cleaned up afterwards. He even carted out our… well, you know; the stuff that comes out later after you eat.

      It didn't take long for me to realize that in that world, Irv was Jesus. I learned that if I trusted his experience and guidance, I could do things that normally I would be too frightened to attempt and I could do them safely, having an amazing experience as a result.

      As stated earlier, Judaism felt incomplete to me. I need a Guide to take me safely over those rapids; someone to encourage me to take those hikes to that Power greater than me. . . as well as an example to show me how to let me float away. Jesus is that example and that guide. I believe he is The Voice I hear in my mind.

      I had the good fortune, and I mean this in both senses of the word, to twice attend classes with

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