Take a look around this world with your filters off. A good look. Have you reached the time in your life when you clearly see that nothing in the entire world works? Ever?

Do you long for a better way? Are you ready for something radical? The perfect peace that comes from knowing we are all one, literally? Are you longing to reach a state of perfect peace that isn’t achieved, but realised, once the barriers to love have been removed?

Many people are waking up to the reality that despite the outward appearance of progress, we are always subject to wars, environmental catastrophes, viruses, divisive politics, famines, endless greed, family feuds, relationship problems, selective loves and hatreds. It never goes away, just goes on and on throughout the ages. It just keeps getting recycled in an endless masquerade. The causes of all these issues have the same source, but the issues never get solved because no one ever looks at the root cause.

We don’t need to go to Eastern teachings such as Vedanta to realise a state on oneness with all that is. There is a non-dualistic masterpiece in the Western Judeo Christian tradition called ‘A Course in Miracles’ – which can be practically applied to your everyday life to completely alter your idea of reality as you thought you knew it. It’s called A ‘Course’ in Miracles because it’s just that. It consists of a text, a workbook with a lesson for each day of the year, and a teacher’s manual. A ‘miracle’ as described by the course is not some supernatural intervention as such but a ‘correction’ by the Holy Spirit leading to a change of mind about the nature of reality -a movement of the mind from ego to Spirit.

I don’t write about the course to proselytise, but I mention it I simply to point to its existence, since I have spent many a long year wondering why, if oneness is all there is, that I don’t have a greater sense of that in Christianity. If reality, as the Buddhists say, – is ‘not two’ or ‘non dual’ why is there so much judgment in the Bible? Why do so many so called Christians think it’s ok to have enemies? Or to have justified wars? The course has answered my questions and conflicting perceptions of the nature of reality. To repeat, a ‘miracle’ as the course describes it, is a correction or change of mind about the nature of reality, and not some supernatural event.

The course is not difficult. However our resistance to it is very great. And for good reason. It turns everything you think you know on its head and I do mean everything. The course follows the principle that real learning in this world can only happen through unlearning everything we know. Since the ego is what we know -it talks a lot about how invested we are in it, to the exclusion of anything else. The choice, according to the course is a binary, one -the ego or the Holy Spirit. The wrong mind or the right mind. We literally spend all our time either 100 percent in the egos thought system or 100 percent in the thought system of the Holy Spirit. They are mutually exclusive. How much time we spend in either system is up to us. We have the freedom to choose. Though as the course says it’s a process which doesn’t happen overnight.

Dr Kenneth Wapnick is the foremost teacher of ACIM and spent decades giving seminars on its many themes. His videos are freely available on the internet. Anyone who is interested to find out more about the origins of A Course in Miracles can do do here.

How do you know you are in Spirit and not in ego? The answer to that is that you are in a state of perfect peace. Peace is total. If there is the slightest annoyance, irritation, worry, concern, then you can be sure you’re listening to ego.

Foundation for A Course in Miracles®