For those interested in going over the lessons and Ken's commentaries again starting in the New Year, this is his opening "Preface" to his book set entitled "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," and will be followed in the next couple of days with his "Prelude" to the actual Introduction and then the lessons themselves, to be started on January 1.
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"Preface" by Kenneth Wapnick.
*My purpose in this book -- as it was in the classes that inspired it -- is to help students of A Course in Miracles better understand the meaning of the lessons and their place in the overall curriculum of the Course. Most of all, the purpose is to help students see the importance of applying the daily lessons to their everyday lives. Without such application, the words in A Course in Miracles is wasted, and they become simply a sterile system of intellectual teachings. Indeed, the stated purpose of the workbook is to help students apply the teachings of the text's theoretical framework:
"A theoretical foundation such as the text provides is necessary as a framework to make the exercises in this workbook meaningful. Yet it is doing the exercises that will make the goal of the course possible. An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of this workbook to train your mind to think along the lines the text sets forth." (W-in.1).
As any teacher knows, students learn by constant practice and repetition. While our memories may not extend that far back, that was how we all learned to read, write, and do arithmetic. Similarly, anyone who has learned to play a musical instrument remembers the daily practice and repetition of scales and exercises. So, too, with the text's principles of forgiveness. These must be practiced day in and day out, moment by moment if necessary. Jesus reminds us in the text that every encounter is holy one (T-8.III.4:1), because each experience, regardless of its magnitude, provides an opportunity for the reversal of projection that allows us to examine the contents of our unconscious minds. Without such awareness we can never truly choose again, the Course's ultimate goal. Moreover, when we learned our basic skills in elementary school, we did not learn each and every possible combination of words and numbers, but only the principles in specific examples, which we then generalized to all instances. Thus does our new Teacher -- Jesus or the Holy Spirit -- instruct us to forgive certain of our special relationships, helping us then to generalize the principle to all relationships:
"The purpose of the workbook is to train your mind in a systematic way to a different perception of everyone and everything in the world. The exercises are planned to help you generalize the lessons, so that you will understand that each of them is equally applicable to everyone and everything you see." (W-in.4).
In case we missed it the first time, Jesus repeats his point two paragraphs later:
"The only general rules to be observed throughout, then, are: First, that the exercises be practiced with great specificity, as will be indicated. This will help you to generalize the ideas involved to every situation in which you find yourself, and to everyone and everything in it ... The overall aim of the exercises is to increase your ability to extend the ideas you will be practicing to include everything." (W-in.6:1-2;7:1).
We shall return to this essential point when we begin our journey through the workbook.
These volumes can be read in at least three ways: 1) straight through, as one would do with the text of A Course in Miracles; 2) different lessons at different times; or 3) one lesson at a time, as a companion to each lesson. I would urge students, however, if they are doing the workbook for the first time, to read the lessons as they are, without my commentary. In other words, as will all my other work on A Course in Miracles, this eight-volume book is meant to supplement a student's experience of the workbook, not to substitute for the workbook as it was given to us.
A word now about the use of language in A Course in Miracles. As I discussed in great detail in Few Choose to Listen, Volume Two of The Messages of A Course in Miracles, the Course in written in dualistic (or metaphorical) language. That is the meaning of Jesus' statement in the Introduction to the clarification of terms:
"This course remains within the ego framework, where it is needed. It is not concerned with what is beyond all error because it is planned only to set the direction towards it. Therefore it uses words, which are symbolic, and cannot express what lies beyond symbols ... The course is simple. It has one function and one goal. Only in that does it remain wholly consistent because only that can be consistent." (C-in.3:1-3,8-10).
Underscoring the symbolic, and therefore inherently illusory nature of words, Jesus makes these comments in the manual for teachers:
"God does not understand words, for they were made by separated minds to keep them in the illusion of separation. Words can be helpful, particularly for the beginner, in helping concentration and facilitating the exclusion, or at least the control, of extraneous thoughts. Let us not forget, however, that words are but symbols of symbols. They are thus twice removed from reality." (M-21.1:7-10).
Therefore, because of our limited capacity to understand -- identifying with the brain instead of the mind -- Jesus' abstract or non-specific love needs to be expressed in a form we can understand and eventually accept. Thus he says in the text, concerning the Holy Spirit's teaching us how to experience the oneness of truth through forgiveness:
"All this takes note of time and place as if they were discrete, for while you think that part of you is separate, the concept of a oneness joined as one is meaningless. It is apparent that a mind so split could never be the teacher of a Oneness Which unites all things within Itself. And so What is within this mind, and does unite all things together, must be its Teacher. <Yet must It use the language that this mind can understand, in the condition in which it thinks it is.> And It must use all learning to transfer illusions to the truth, taking all false ideas of what you are, and leading you beyond them to the truth that is beyond them." (T-25.I.7:1-5; italics mine in sentence 4).
Thus God and the Holy Spirit (and Jesus) are spoken of as if they were persons, members of the species homo sapiens. They have a gender, and speak, act, think, make plans, have reactions and feelings, and even body parts -- voices, arms, hands, and tear ducts. Yet how can a non-dualistic God be or do any of these things? Lesson 169 states that "God is," and nothing more can be said that is truly meaningful. It is essential, however, for a student of A Course in Miracles to understand that all such references for God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus are not meant literally. On the level of symbol and metaphor, they simply meet us <in the condition in which we think we are>. Much of the workbook is written on this level, and I shall usually point out the <seeming> inconsistency between form and content, word and meaning, sometimes referring back to the passages I have just cited. When the use of symbol is properly understood, the problem of consistency will disappear. That is why Jesus cautions us in the text not to confuse symbol with source (T-19.IV-C.11:2).
In addition, there are notable inconsistencies in the use of words. For example, as mentioned above, the word <God> is used when it is obvious <the Holy Spirit> is the proper subject. One example comes in Lesson 193, "All things are lessons God would have me learn." The lesson itself makes clear that "God does not know of learning," while throughout all three books the Holy Spirit is referred to as our Teacher. In Lesson 29 we are told that "God is in everything I see," yet the lesson and the one following make it clear that it is the <purpose> of God that is meant, and we know from our study of A Course in Miracles that it is the Holy Spirit's function to hold that purpose of forgiveness in our minds. Other examples abound, and I shall for the most part point them out as they occur.
It is also important to point out the references to traditional Christian terms, such as <Atonement> the <Second Coming>, and <Last Judgment>, not to mention lessons such as "I am the light of the world." This follows the same lines of reasoning I just discussed -- Jesus' use of our Western and dualistic language as the <form>, within which he teaches us a different <content>. Therefore, it is extremely important to understand in the Course that most of the time Jesus uses language of symbols with which we all have grown up. Both in Judaism and Christianity, God is seen as having plans and doing things for us, such as sending various kinds of help: natural phenomena, angels, His Son, even having the last named killed on our behalf. A significant part of His plan includes includes special people with special parts in the special plan. Such obvious anthromopomorphisms, when the symbols are taken literally, are red flags pointing to the voice of specialness and not the Voice of truth. Jesus does not speak directly of specialness in the workbook, but he does describe its dynamics. In an important line from the text, he says that we cannot even think of God without a body, or in some form we think we recognize (T-18.VIII.1:7). That is his way of explaining that because we believe we are bodies that are separate, he must talk to us about a God who also seems to be separate -- not that He is in truth, but that He <seems> to be. Again, this does not literally mean that God has put the remedy or the Holy Spirit in our minds, or that He even has a plan. When we fell asleep and began this insane dream, we took with us into the dream a memory -- the Holy Spirit -- from where we came. <We> did that -- not God. The Holy Spirit is the memory and Presence of Love, and the reminder of who we are as Its children. We shall return to this below.
As one begins this journey through the workbook, some additional comments may be helpful. A student would have to be either heavily into denial or so highly advanced as not to recognize the concept, if resistance to the lessons is not experienced somewhere along the way. The workbook's stated purpose, reflecting that of A Course in Miracles itself, is to undo the ego's thought system of guilt -- the foundation for our very existence as separated and individualized selves. One does not let such a foundation go easily or lightly. To do so would mean the end of existence as we know it. And so our selves -- ruled by the ego -- resist any incursion into the ego's bastion of defenses. Thus we speak of the process of learning and living the Course as a journey we take with the Holy Spirit as our Teacher. It is a journey through the far country of resistance -- fear, guilt and projection -- with the light of forgiveness our guide, and the light of Heaven our goal, That is why we speak of the structure of A Course in Miracles as symphonic, wherein certain core themes are repeated, varied, set aside, and restated, until the stirring coda of redemption heralds the journey's end.
One of the many forms of resistance takes, in addition to the more obvious ones such as forgetting the lesson title or the lesson itself, is using the titles or statements as affirmations. That is not their purpose, and their misuse reflects the ego's process of bringing the light to the darkness; this not only covers the darkness, <but the light as well>. Rather, the statements in question are meant as symbols of the light, to which we bring the darkness of our ego's guilt and judgment that are gently shined away.*
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The eight volume book set, "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," can be purchased at the following site:??~ M. Street
