Going Through The Workbook for Students of A Course In Miracles

[Relax]

Hi RitaJC -  it's really thoughtful and kindhearted to makes threads of ideas that interest you and that you feel will help others, but we can't control the replies to our threads, and I find it concerning that you want to shut down discussion of the 'material' you present.

You also did that with your Byron Katie thread when you wrote:

"Everybody can take it or leave it, if it doesn't seem working for them. No need to start a discussion."

and now here with this thread:

4. In general, I believe there is no need to start a discussion. Could you just accept and use what resonates with your inner knowing with appreciations and let the rest be as not for you (not now or ever)?

The whole point of a forum and Bring 4th is "to start a discussion"

What (I think) you mean when you write that is:

'there is no need to start a discussion if it's going to disagree with what I think is excellent.'

I let it go - on the Byron Katie thread - I provided a link to the info that she engages in (proven) mind control and left the thread - but to see you doing it here - stifling "discussion" on another thread... wanting people to do the lessons with you - without honest feedback

- I feel 'called to' point out this censorship by you.

I've done reading up on the ACIM and the workbook (which ISN'T separate from it - It's DERIVED from ACIM) and found this interesting and very complex, thorough analysis:

https://www.enlightened-spirituality.org...tique.html

Dr. Helen Schucman, a non-observant, extremely agnostic Jew intermittently involved in Catholic devotion who late in life cursed the ACIM as the worst thing that ever happened to her.

ACIM as a thought-system can be categorized alongside the teachings of the "New Thought" cluster of quasi-Christian church groups founded in the late 19th century descending down to today (including Unity School of Christianity, Church of Religious Science, Church of Divine Science, et al.). ACIM itself is not organized centrally into a religion or a church but functions more like a movement. Like these older church groups, ACIM has surely helped countless thousands of people come into greater peace, love and happiness, though it is also the case that many persons, especially of the more "extreme adherent" "true believer" temperament, evidently have not been well-served by ACIM material, for reasons that will become clear in this essay.

[Insert the essay that follows]

It is worth hearing the views of the Franciscan Catholic priest Benedict Groeschel, CFR, steeped in studies of the paranormal, and a former student of Schucman at Columbia University (20 years her junior) and subsequently a close friend of Schucman in her last dozen years of life (he introduced her to Ken Wapnick and gave a eulogy at her funeral). Groeschel heard Helen tell him many times, "I hate that damn book," meaning the ACIM, and she repeatedly disavowed its teachings and the cult that formed around it. He finally surmised that ACIM might have been sourced in a diabolical entity, for, as he wrote, "This woman who had written so eloquently [in ACIM] that suffering really did not exist, spent the last two years of her life in the blackest psychotic depression I have ever witnessed," full of rage (See Groeschel, A Still, Small Voice: A Practical Guide on Reported Revelations, Ignatius Press, 1993, p. 79.)

[insert more analysis]

Somewhere in here more needs to be said about William Thetford, Schucman's department head and close colleague, and the one who so eagerly encouraged her to keep scribing "the Voice" in the earliest days. According to his vita (as some have sleuthed it and posted to an earlier version of the Wikipedia page on Thetford), "from 1951 to 1953 Thetford worked on Project BLUEBIRD, an early CIA mind control program that led to [the infamous] Project MKULTRA. ... From 1955 to 1957 he was an assistant professor of psychology at Cornell University's CIA-funded Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology. ... From 1971 to 1978 Thetford, along with David Saunders, headed the CIA mind control Project MKULTRA Subproject 130: Personality Theory." Given the ACIM's overt aim, especially in the Workbook, to have its students "unlearn" everything they think they know and be subject to the ACIM's "re-education," Thetford's major role in the editing of ACIM and his prior and later involvement with CIA mind-control work is NOT reassuring.

ACIM pretentiously views itself as the "Third Book" of the Bible, after the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament. This grandiose view of itself and its authoritarian "closed thought system" easily lures many vulnerable persons to read it and adhere to it and be brainwashed by it, persons who are attracted to external sources of authority that tell you what to believe and what rules to follow. One reader, posting at the Rick Ross anti-cult forum, tells of his own experience wading into the ACIM text: "In some ways, it offers very nice and flowery verses ... on spiritual upliftment.... But then things get dark. One moment, the reader is treated as a 'child of God,' for whom it is an honor for the author to serve with love and gentle guidance. In the next moment, the reader is berated as the cause of all the suffering of the world because of 'bad thoughts.' And so it goes back and forth like this, like you're being subjected to 'good cop, bad cop.' I started feeling disoriented, confused, and eagerly awaiting each new page in a feeling of dependence. I had to exercise a little personal control in discontinuing my reading. To ease my agitated mind, I did some simple 'watching the breath' Zen-style breathing meditation. And that helped stabilize my mental state." This reader went on to note the involvement of Thetford (and perhaps Schucman?) with the CIA MK-ULTRA mind-control program and he wonders, like others have aired on the internet, whether there might not have been an interest by the CIA in experimenting with the fostering of mass religious movements and ACIM might perhaps have been one of these "tests."

Continuing in our criticism, there's a noxious exclusivist stance the ACIM "Voice" takes in saying that students of the ACIM should really not be studying other paths but only ACIM. That’s hubris and narrow-mindedness. To its credit, at the end of the Workbook, it is stated: "This Course is a beginning, not an end...No more specific lessons are assigned, for there is no more need of them. Henceforth, hear but the Voice for God...He will direct your efforts, telling you exactly what to do, how to direct your mind, and when to come to Him in silence, asking for His sure direction and His certain Word." But persons deeply involved in the ACIM might spend several years or, as has often happened, two or three decades of their life exclusively tied to the ACIM and closed off to more mature, balanced and truly wise spiritual teachings.

[then follows more discussion/information]

members can read the additional discussion in the link if they wish... just as they can read the Byron Katie link...

for what it's worth I sense your intent is positive... but trying to control the responses you get tells me you either can't bear to examine what helps you because your need for it's help is very urgent/important... and you can't bear any risk of being disillusioned...

apologies if that sounds patronising or incorrect
nb: the article (link) does have positive things to say about aspects of ACIM... so it's a balanced/impartial examination (imo) similarly - there are some aspects of 'the work' that can have levels of a certain 'usefulness'... I think the problem comes down to the fallability of humans, both the messengers, the listeners, the students, the commercialisation aspects, the ego overtaking the initial 'purity' of ideas...

This is why after 40 years of reading just about everything I could get my hands on and spending years in libraries, bookshops, online... the Ra Material because it had the cross hatched group of THREE and such vigilant metaphysical 'hygiene' and never dwelt on 'transient' information is the only information that I've ever felt secure enough to consider seriously as approaching 'truth'... or uncontaminated information... and even then - as Ra themSelf would advise - have discernment and take only what sits /fits well with yourself.

I'm not a devotee - or wholesale consumer (unquestioning) of the 'material'.
So everything else comes under major scrutiny too.
I wish well - but red flags show up when you only want supporting feedback... no (critical) "discussion".

One other thing... remember the power we each have as a creator... especially when we create from love.
From your page photo - I see a very loving and lovely person