Exploring A Course in Miracles

The life of Jesus has moved people the world over like no other. But we have often put Jesus’ life in a frame where the main purpose was to demonstrate his divinity. What if we put it in a different frame? What if we see Jesus’ life as a concrete demonstration of the principles of A Course in Miracles? Seen that way, what would his life—with all its drama, its miraculous events, and its revolutionary elements—tell us about what it means to live the Course? We hope you will join Robert and Emily for a discussion on what inspiration and guidance we can we gain from Jesus’ example in our own lives. ** FREE Gift - Guidance Journal ebook for students of A Course in Miracles ** ACIM places a great deal of importance on guidance. Our new digital Journal has been designed to assist you as you practice asking, hearing, and discerning the Voice within. You are welcome download it for free, at www.circleofa.org/guidance.

A Course in Miracles calls us to go places we seemingly can’t go. How, then, do we get there? One answer is that we lean on Jesus’ help. The Course teaches that Jesus is genuinely present, and that we can lean on his strength, his guidance, his healing, and his companionship. This naturally brings up many questions: Does he really exist? Is he available to us personally? How do we call upon his help? What things do we turn to him for? What things should we not turn to him for? Please join Robert and Emily as they discuss these vital questions for our journey with the Course. ** FREE Gift - Guidance Journal ebook for students of A Course in Miracles ** ACIM places a great deal of importance on guidance. Our new digital Journal has been designed to assist you as you practice asking, hearing, and discerning the Voice within. You are welcome download it for free, at www.circleofa.org/guidance.

A mature holy relationship is a wondrous experience. It contains the highest happiness that is possible in this world. That said, it takes an unusual ability to get outside our egos in order to truly join. On Sunday, February 28, 2021, Circle founder Robert Perry and executive director Emily Bennington will be hosting a workshop based on the Course’s extensive discussions of holy relationships. Robert and Emily will help you understand this important Course teaching and what your next steps are along the road to fully embodying it. This bonus episode of the podcast is a preview of the workshop content. To register, please visit www.circleofa.org/events.

In the Complete and Annotated Edition of A Course in Miracles, there are some challenging teachings on sexuality. Students have been grappling with these teachings ever since they first came to light approximately twenty years ago. It’s easy to see these teachings as merely negative (Don’t have sex unless….) when, in fact, they are actually pointing us to another way of being in the world, one where we engage in “miracle-inspired relating.” Listen to Robert Perry and Emily Bennington's fascinating discussion of the Course's teachings on sex, which was originally broadcast live via Facebook. (Find out details of their next live broadcast by following the Circle of Atonement's Facebook page - www.facebook.com/circleofatonement). If you'd like to read the materials referenced in this discussion, they can be found in the Complete and Annotated Edition of ACIM, under Miracle Principles 18, 43, 46, 48, and Cameo 11.  The book is available via Amazon (affiliate): https://amzn.to/3fQyRvW.

The idea of projection is familiar to us all: You see in others that which you don’t want to see in yourself. But is it possible that projection is responsible for our whole perception of the world? This is the startling prospect that A Course in Miracles lays before us - but this is also good news, because understanding projection gives us the power to undo its distortions and thus liberate our perception. Robert and Emily are hosting a workshop on this topic called Maybe It's You: Understanding Our Relationship with Projection and this bonus episode is a preview of what to expect. To register for Maybe It's You, please visit circleofa.org/events.

We can all relate to feeling unfairly treated. And when we're hurt, we naturally want to let other people know - especially those who we feel are responsible. A Course in Miracles offers a unique understanding of the unconscious psychology behind feeling unfairly treated. It promises that if we can understand what's really going on inside of us, we can be free of hurt itself. In this episode, Robert and Emily explore this idea and discuss how we can stop showing people a damaged picture of ourselves and show them our healing instead.

Times like these call us to be better people. They call us to be anchored within so that we can respond with love and helpfulness to the world outside. This may seem like a distant goal, but this is precisely where A Course in Miracles can help. The Course is known for its unique wisdom and its practical exercises, all of which are aimed at helping us meet a stormy world in a new and different way. Regardless of where you are in your Course journey, we know you will benefit from the Course’s teaching on how we can truly advance on our spiritual path, and be the people we are called to be in the new year and beyond.  

It’s clear that, all around the globe, we have a hate problem. As spiritual seekers, we tend to shy away from using the word hate, but that’s what it is. And until we face our hate directly, it will remain a destructive force in us and in the world. A Course in Miracles doesn’t shy away from the word “hate” and its cognates, which appear over 200 times in the book. Accordingly, the Course is well equipped to help us heal the hate within us. In this episode of Exploring A Course in Miracles, Robert and Emily offer practical tools for facing and rooting out the hate in our hearts so that we can heal it in our world.

As we look around at the world today, insanity appears to be everywhere. In such a place as this, how can we choose love? According to A Course in Miracles, we face this choice between insanity and love at all times. The question is only which direction we will go. Will we decide that the world is sane or that love is sane? Will we adjust to a world that makes no sense, feeling that we must fit in? Or will we buck the system and choose to love like God loves? In this episode of Exploring A Course in Miracles, Robert and Emily discuss how we can all stand for love in an insane world.

How should we see other people? Perhaps the Course’s main answer to this question is that we should see them as holy. Holiness is a hugely important concept in A Course in Miracles, which contains over a thousand references to “holy” and “holiness.” Yet we don’t talk much about holiness, do we? Perhaps we find it slightly threatening, because of its religious connotations. But the fact that we find it threatening also means that it’s powerful. Given what a powerful concept it is, imagine what it would mean to see another person as holy. What would it mean to see everyone as holy, no matter what that person is like or may have done? In this episode, Robert and Emily explore the power and significance of seeing our brothers as the Course would have us see them.