Take me as your model for learning

Saturday November 17^th

Next workshop coming up!

Another major source of discomfort for students of A Course in Miracles can be its uncompromisingly Christian language. ‘This course comes to you in a language you know and love,’ it tells us, but these days in our secular European society few people love this talk of God and all those references to Holy Spirit, Atonement and so on. If the sheer size of the book and the depth of its psychology do not put you off, the embarrassment of studying a mind-training course with Jesus as your personal tutor is too much for most of us would-be sophisticates to know how to deal with.

But ‘words are but symbols of symbols’, and it is their meaning, not the names that matter. The course is for people of all religions or no religion. Although it uses the word more often than any other, you need not believe in God to learn the peace of mind and the altered viewpoint that the course offers.

In this workshop we will explore what this kind of language means to us, and look at how the course frees us from the emotional inheritance of two thousand years of Christianity. It teaches us to use whatever symbols we need until we can see beyond all symbols. It only asks us to question every value that we hold, to set judgement aside, and learn to trust our own inner teacher.

Where? 31 Harrow Way Andover SP10 3RQ

When? Saturday 17th November, 10 am to 2.30 pm

How much? £15

Enquiries and booking: 01264 395579 or email anna@unlearningschool.com

Symbol and Reality

A talk for the Woking Astrology Group

Friday 2nd November 2012, 8-10 pm

The Maybury Centre, Board School Road, Woking GU21 5HD

Enquiries and bookings: b.mcauliffe@ntlworld.com 

or telephone 07954384023

Symbol and Reality: an introduction to A Course in Miracles

We like to know what is unique about us, not what we have in common with the universe. But just as every combination lock is based on only ten digits from 0 to 9, all birth charts consist of the same symbols in different arrangements. All meaning, we think, lies in the differences. But symbols point away from what is separate and particular, to what is universal.

As Maya Angelou said, "Human beings are more alike than unalike, and what is true anywhere is true everywhere." When I am most true to myself and you are most true to yourself, we are the same.

Symbols help us see connections instead of differences, and to communicate what words cannot express. Symbols are only gestures, intimations, approximations, but they serve to remind us of a reality beyond all symbols.

Use all the little names and symbols which delineate the world of darkness. Yet accept them not as your reality (W184 11)

Are We Nearly There Yet?

A one-day workshop for students of A Course in Miracles

Saturday 10^th November 2012

Ruskin Hall, Dunstan Road, Oxford OX3 9BZ

10 am – 5 pm

If you feel different, if you feel lost, or even if you don't, you are an alien here, the Course tells us: This world you seem to live in is not home to you. And a very juvenile alien, too, afraid, homesick, and with its head under the blanket – until we learn otherwise.

The cure for alienation is not a journey home through space but an awakening in time. To wake up is to grow up, pack up the game of fear, put away the toys of guilt; to see not through a glass darkly, but face to face. But it can seem a long process, for children believe in magic and in make-believe, and are afraid that growing up will be the end of fun and games. We do not want to come home yet when we are called. So the Course gives us all the time we want, and introduces a game that happy children play in which everyone who plays must win; in which even while we keep turning backwards and downwards, the escalator is still carrying us forward and up. 

In this workshop we will explore what the themes of childhood, growing up and alienation mean to us personally, and what difference the Course’s unique perspective can make to our lives and relationships. By means of group discussion and individual meditative exercises the aim is to further our understanding of the Course, so as to travel the journey without distance more swiftly and light of heart.

 

A Miracle Network Event

£60

Booking: 0844 567 0209 or admin@miracles.org.uk

Enquiries: 0207 262 0209 or info@miracles.org.uk

No Thorns, No Strangers

 The new Oxford Miracle Café opens with its first meeting on Wednesday. The evening begins with a vegetarian meal and live music, and then Anna will talk about the vision of the Course as an invitation to further discussion and questions.

No Thorns, No Strangers, No Obstacles to Peace:

the radical vision of A Course in Miracles

A talk by Anna Powell

Wednesday 12th September 2012

What does the Course mean by ‘seeing differently’? How do you see the invisible, and how do you not see the thorns and strangers and obstacles that are only too obvious? There is always a better way, the Course reminds us, a better way of relating, of dealing with problems. And it begins with seeing everything with a clearer eye.

Price: £8 on door, plus £5 for food

Time: 7 to 9pm (doors open 6.45pm)

Place: The Magic Cafe, 110 Magdalen Road, Oxford OX4 1RQ Location map 

(Buses: 5 from station, 1, 3, 5 from city centre. Get off at Magdalen Road stop. Street parking is likely to be difficult.)

Let us know if you plan to come so we can make sure there is sufficient food, or for more information, call Steve Clarke on 07970 789259 or email spc@steve-clarke.co.uk

The Happy Learner...and other upcoming events

A new series of Saturday workshops on A Course in Miracles begins Saturday 15th September.

The Happy Learner workshops offer an introduction to and exploration of some of the ‘quite startling’ ideas of A Course in Miracles. What do they mean, what do they not mean, and how do they apply to the specific situations and relationships that concern us? What does the course mean by the ‘real’ or ‘forgiven’ world - and how can we get there from here?

Saturday 15th September

Forgiveness offers everything I want (W122)

Forgiveness sounds magnanimous and we would expect it to figure in a course in spiritual philosophy; but who would go so far as to say that to forgive and to be forgiven offers everything I want? Would you rather forgive the person who has caused you some grievance, than have anything else you might really, really want? We need to completely rethink the meaning of the word before we can discover for ourselves that forgiveness really is the key to (our own) happiness.

For details of the complete series see Workshops: www.unlearningschool.com/p/workshops.html

Saturday 29th September

Illusions: How to live in a world that is not there

Day workshop hosted by Miracles Southwest
Breathing space Centre, Exmouth, Devon

10.30am - 4.30pm

£35

Enquiries and Bookings: Susan Gibson suegibson33@gmail.com

Friday 2nd November

Talk hosted by Woking Astrology Group
The Maybury Centre, Board school Road, Woking GU21 5HD

8 - 10pm

Symbol and Reality: an introduction to A Course in Miracles

'Use all the little names and symbols which delineate the world of darkness. Yet accept them not as your reality' (A Course in Miracles, Workbook 184 11)

We want to know what is particular about us, not what we have in common with the universe. But all birth charts consist of the same symbols in different arrangements, just as every combination lock is based on only ten digits from 0 to 9. All meaning, we think, lies in the differences. But as Maya Angelou said, "Human beings are more alike than unalike, and what is true anywhere is true everywhere."

In 1976 a unique manuscript was brought out of hiding, and quietly became a worldwide bestseller. Whatever your spiritual beliefs or disbeliefs may be, A Course in Miracles speaks to you personally of what is true always and everywhere, and offers you a leap forward in your journey towards revelation and inner peace.

Enquiries and bookings: Beryl McAuliffe b.mcauliffe@ntlworld.com

Saturday 10th November

Day workshop hosted by the Miracle Network 

http://www.miracles.org.uk/events/event_page.php?event=343

Are We Nearly There Yet?

If you feel different, if you feel lost, or even if you don't, you are an alien here, the Course tells us: "This world you seem to live in is not home to you." ( W 339) And a very juvenile alien, too, afraid, homesick, and with its head under the blanket; and so are we all.

The cure for alienation is not a journey home through space but an awakening in time. To wake up is to grow up, pack up the game of fear, put away the toys of guilt; to see not through a glass darkly, but face to face. But it can seem a long process, for "children believe in magic" (T 104) and in make-believe, and think growing up will be the end of fun and games, and we do not want to come home yet when we are called. So the Course gives us all the time we want, and introduces "a game that happy children play" (W 286) in which "everyone who plays must win" (W 286); in which even while we keep turning backwards and downwards, the escalator is still carrying us forward and up.

In this workshop we will explore what the themes of childhood, growing up and alienation mean to us personally, and what difference the Course’s unique perspective can make to our lives and relationships. With group discussion and meditative exercises we will work individually and co-operatively to further our understanding of the Course, so as to travel the journey without distance more swiftly and light of heart.

No Sense of Direction

The poem (below) by Vernon Scannell does not tell you where it is going until you get there – for uncertainty is what it is about. It loses you on the battleground and again in peace time, only to suddenly arrive somewhere entirely unexpected. It turns out to have, after all, an unerring sense of direction. And so do we all, the course tells us, if only we will step back and let it lead the way.

From the point of view of our own secret doubts and fears, it does appear, as the poem suggests, that some people unswervingly go through life succeeding at this or dealing effectively with that, finding their way into jobs and relationships and enriching experiences that we have somehow missed or mismanaged.

Yet in truth there is almost no one here who is really sure which direction to take. Some may fancy they ‘need no guide’, but everyone is guided by some idea, has some purpose in mind. The question is, what is the purpose underlying what you think is your purpose? Are you being misdirected by your own fantasies and isolated sense of self; or allowing yourself to be led by an impulse from beyond your own limited viewpoint, to reach across the obstacles between us and inside us, so as to reconnect? In the language of the course, are you guided by the ego, or by the Holy Spirit?

There are two teachers only, who point in different ways. And you will go along the way your chosen teacher leads. There are but two directions you can take, while time remains and choice is meaningful. For never will another road be made except the way to Heaven. You but choose whether to go toward Heaven, or away to nowhere. There is nothing else to choose (T26 V 1).

The road that you think will take you to where you want to be is an illusion, for you are mistaken about who you are and what will bring you joy. If you start from the standpoint of a separate individual whose chief purpose is to take care of your body’s comforts and interests, you may forge confidently ahead and seem to know where you are going and what you are doing, and sometimes achieve comparative success and short-lived gratifications. Or you may be humiliated by failure, the failure to grasp what was only ever a chimera. Either way, the course tells us, this is how you make yourself blind and deaf to the only part of your mind which can lead you to real peace and lasting happiness, because when you identify with your body and not with your mind you are losing touch with your own reality.

You do not ask too much of life, but far too little. When you let your mind be drawn to bodily concerns, to things you buy, to eminence as valued by the world, you ask for sorrow, not for happiness (W133).            

To be guided by your individual needs, as you perceive them, is not independence, but slavery to illusions. To base your purposes on the world’s values is to have ‘eyes chained by the night’: you may not seem lost, but you will only find your way back to the too familiar territory of disappointment and the same old mistakes. Uncertainty is hardly a reliable guide in itself, but at least it can make room for humility and patience; for the willingness to give up striving to arrange life to suit yourself, and to give way to the power of love that is in you but not of you.

Your function here is only to decide against deciding what you want, in recognition that you do not know. How, then, can you decide what you should do? Leave all decisions to the One Who speaks for God (T14 IV 5).

What does this mean in practice? How do you know it is not still your self-deceiving self posing as the whisper of God? Practising a shrewd self-awareness will help to distinguish between your lucid mind and further fantasy, but the best reassurance that you have turned away from illusions and invited love to be your guide is simply that you feel relief and peace again:

When you have learned how to decide with God, all decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort, and you will be led as gently as if you were being carried down a quiet path in summer (T14 IV 6).

These are poetical images, because there are no words that can speak of oneness or adequately express the experience of becoming whole. The course describes itself as a journey, a way home for the lost and the lonely; but also reminds us that this is just a way of speaking. In truth, you are not lost, you are never alone; there is nowhere to go, nothing to prove; there is no journey, but only an awakening (T13 I 7). 
The battles we seem to fight, the seeming choice of paths before us, the seeming differences between us are not real but a delusion that we share. You do not leave insanity by going somewhere else. You leave it simply by accepting reason where madness was (T21 VI 3). There are not many directions to choose between, but only one. There is only one ‘lucky path’, and we must all stumble upon it - realise we are already on it - once we give up our own obstinate sense of direction.

Everyone has experienced what he would call a sense of being transported beyond himself… And while this lasts you are not uncertain of your Identity, and would not limit It. You have escaped from fear to peace, asking no questions of reality, but merely accepting it…Come to this place of refuge, where you can be yourself in peace. Not through destruction, not through a breaking out, but merely by a quiet melting in. For peace will join you there, simply because you have been willing to let go the limits you have placed upon love, and joined it where it is and where it led you, in answer to its gentle call to be at peace (T18 VI 1-14)

No Sense of Direction

I have always admired
Those who are sure
Which turning to take,
Who need no guide
Even in war
When thunders shake
The torn terrain,
When battalions of shrill
Stars all desert
And the derelict moon
Goes over the hill:
Eyes chained by the night
They find their way back
As if it were daylight.
Then, on peaceful walks
Over strange wooded ground,
They will find the right track,
Know which of the forks
Will lead to the inn
I would never have found;
For I lack their gift,
Possess almost no
Sense of direction.
And yet I owe
a debt to this lack,
A debt so vast
No reparation
Can ever be made,
For it led me away
From the road I sought
Which would carry me to –
I mistakenly thought –
My true destination:
It made me stray
To this lucky path
That ran like a fuse
And brought me to you

And love's bright, soundless
Detonation.

Peace comes dropping slow

I will arise and go now,
And go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there,
Of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there,
A hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there,
For peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning
To where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer,
And noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now,
For always night and day
I hear lake water lapping
With low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway
Or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Lake Isle of Inisfree, by William Butler Yeats

Trouble is, it won't work. The glee of eating your home-produced beans all by yourself is a lonely triumph. There will be midges biting and the toilet paper will run out. The bees are dying out these days, too, and anyway you can’t live on honey for ever. Time and weather will undermine the solitary cabin – in short, the poet will soon miss the madness and convenience of city life. Indeed he never left it, except in his nostalgic imagination.

In this holiday season, it is useful to remember that there is no earthly paradise. There is no escape within the world from the world we have made. There is nowhere we can go that does not have a dark side - we carry it with us. The best that seclusion can offer is a temporary respite; a defence from the challenge of other people’s differences and demands, an attempt to protect our self-image, do things our own way, and find a relative but disconnected peace on our own terms. It takes more than a change of scenery to quiet the buzzing of doubt and self-loathing that is the underside of the separate self; it takes a change of mind.

Conflict must be resolved. It cannot be evaded, set aside, denied, disguised, seen somewhere else, called by another name, or hidden by deceit of any kind, if it would be escaped. It must be seen exactly as it is, where it is thought to be, in the reality which has been given it, and with the purpose that the mind accorded it. For only then are its defenses lifted, and the truth can shine upon it as it disappears (W333).

Peace is not there, wherever we think there may be. It is already here. It is always with us, as present on the pavements grey as where the cricket sings. Our images of favourite places at best reflect back to us the love and peace that we truly are. At worst, we cherish the forms of things for their own special sake, instead of what those forms remind us of; losing ourselves in dreams.

But read the poem without confusing image with reality, and then it says, like the Course in Workbook Lesson 182, I will be still an instant and go home. At any moment, especially at any moment of weariness or hurt or upset, we can think, like the poet, ‘I will arise and go now’: I will be still an instant. I will change my mind, forget my grievances, drop my accusations, stop wallowing in my shame, and go back to the stillness within. Now, on the roadway or wherever I outwardly seem to be, whatever I seem to be outwardly doing, I can stop being driven by the noise in my mind and listen only to the peace that always, night and day whispers in the deep heart’s core.

The Remains of the Day: forgive the passing of time

This Saturday June 9^th we have Workshop 10: The Remains of the Day – forgive the passing of time. This will be the last workshop of the present series, so we will not only look at the meaning of time and how to use it, but also review the whole theme of the past ten months, and how and why to Forgive your Life for not being what you meant.

Forgive the passing of time and your wasting of it, or its wasting of you. A Course in Miracles frees us from the burden of the past, from present problems and from fears for the future by clarifying two very different ways to understand and make use of time. What does boredom – having ‘too much’ time, or not knowing what to do with it – have in common with never having enough time; and what is the real alternative to both? You can use any moment either to destroy, or heal: and it is never too late to be still an instant and be free of the constraints of time altogether.  

Save time, my brother; learn what time is for T29 VII 9

See you on Saturday for a good time!

The Alien in the Mirror

This Saturday 12^th May the next workshop is The Alien in the Mirror: forgive your self. 

Look again at the person you seem to be. Who is the ‘you’ in the mirror, in the photo album, in other people’s image of you? Why are we so prickly about offences to our pride, so anxious about appearances, so mortified by our mistakes?  Forgive your failures and your limitations, your insidious self-centredness and the person you wish you were or were not. 

It is not you who are so vulnerable and open to attack that just a word, a little whisper that you do not like, a circumstance that suits you not, or an event that you did not anticipate upsets your world, and hurls it into chaos (T24 III). So who are you, who is the ‘you’ the Course is talking to?

This workshop will be more hands-on than usual, so bring your notebook and be prepared to leave your past behind…as, by the way, two of you did with your umbrellas last month. You must have been missing them!

See you soon.

Ballad of the Breadman

Mary stood in the kitchen
Baking a loaf of bread.
An angel flew in the window
‘We’ve a job for you,’ he said.

‘God in his big gold heaven
Sitting in his big blue chair,
Wanted a mother for his little son.
Suddenly saw you there.’

Mary shook and trembled,
‘It isn’t true what you say.’
‘Don’t say that,’ said the angel.
‘The baby’s on its way.’

Joseph was in the workshop
Planing a piece of wood.
‘The old man’s past it,’ the neighbours said.
‘That girl’s been up to no good.’

‘And who was that elegant fellow,’
They said, ‘in the shiny gear?’
The things they said about Gabriel
Were hardly fit to hear.

Mary never answered,
Mary never replied.
She kept the information,
Like the baby, safe inside.

It was the election winter.
They went to vote in the town.
When Mary found her time had come
The hotels let her down.

The baby was born in an annexe
Next to the local pub.
At midnight, a delegation
Turned up from the Farmers’ Club.

They talked about an explosion
That made a hole in the sky,
Said they’d been sent to the Lamb and Flag
To see God come down from on high.

A few days later a bishop
And a five-star general were seen
With the head of an African country
In a bullet-proof limousine.

‘We’ve come,’ they said ‘with tokens
For the little boy tochoose.’
Told the tale about war and peace
In the television news.

After them came the soldiers

With rifle and bombs and gun,
Looking for enemies of the state.
The family had packed up and gone.

When they got back to the village
The neighbours said, to a man,
‘That boy will never be one of us,
Though he does what he blessed well can.’

He went round to all the people
A paper crown on his head.
Here is some bread from my father.
Take, eat, he said.

Nobody seemed very hungry.
Nobody seemed to care.
Nobody saw the god in himself
Quietly standing there.

He finished up in the papers.
He came to a very bad end.
He was charged with bringing the living to life.
No man was that prisoner’s friend.

There’s only one kind of punishment
To fit that kind of crime.
They rigged a trial and shot him dead.
They were only just in time.

They lifted the young man by the leg,
Thy lifted him by the arm,
They locked him in a cathedral
In case he came to harm.

They stored him safe as water
Under seven rocks.
One Sunday morning he burst out
Like a jack-in-the-box.

Through the town he went walking.
He showed them the holes in his head.
Now do you want any loaves? He cried.
‘Not today,’ they said.

 Charles Causley

Every call the Church makes for some literal demonstration of ‘faith’ – like wearing crosses, like studying texts in school, like proclaiming belief in a physical resurrection – drives another nail into its own cross, further stamps out the flame of truth that once gave it life. Like a reversal of the Emperor’s New Clothes, it is trying to hang clothes on an emperor who does not exist.

Those who thank God for their ‘daily bread’ and mean the food on their table - even if they are imaginative enough to include the chocolate in their Easter egg, or even have enough grasp of metaphor to mean the earnings that make them a ‘breadwinner’ – have dismally defined themselves as needy, separate creatures in a competitive world of limited resources, and God as something other, somewhere else, of whom we know nothing but that He distributes unevenly and may at any moment take away again even that little we have.

Yet those who dismiss such superstitions as nonsense may suffer from a still greater sense of alienation, having thrown out not only the symbols that speak to our deeper levels of mind, but also what they speak of. Here is some bread from my Father. Take, eat  is a message that cannot be translated in any literal way. Only the god in yourself, quietly standing there can either hear it or say it. If you have shouted that into silence with the persuasions of false gods or with arguments against gods of any breed, you will not hear your own call to your real self, or the certainty of your own reply.

The bread of life has nothing to do with the bodies we suppose we are, and everything to do with the spirit we are, the mind that thinks us. It is never helpful to call for separate groups to cling to what will further separate them, or to try and cast in concrete an ineffable reality. Religious leaders might inspire us, rather, by pointing beyond petty and outworn symbols to their deeper and universal meaning, by shaking new life from them as Charles Causley has done here, or by seeking new metaphors, more relevant to our own times, to reconnect mind with spirit and to reveal the numinous in everyday life.

But even if they did, would we pay attention? We like our religions to be irrelevant, divisive, ranting. We are not ready for ideas that might dissolve the world of specifics and reconnect each with each other, inner with outer, thought with being. Not yet. Not today, thank you.

Easter Day 2012