Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #59265 in Books
• Published on: 1992-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 133 pages

About the Author
Kenneth Wapnick has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and has been working with "A Course in Miracles" since 1973, when he joined Helen Schucman, scribe of the Course, and William Thetford at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. In addition, he worked closely with Helen preparing the final manuscript of the Course. Since that time he has lectured widely on "A Course in Miracles", as well as conducted a practice in psychotherapy. He has written many books on the Course and he has also produced numerous tape sets explaining and discussing the principles of the Course. He is President and co-founder with his wife Gloria of the Foundation for "A Course in Miracles" in Roscoe, New York, which is the copyright holder of the Course, as well as being its teaching center. Together they have travelled nationally and internationally giving workshops on the Course.

Excerpted from The Fifty Miracle Principles of a Course in Miracles by Kenneth Wapnick. Copyright © 1992. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
From pages 6-8:

The best definition of what a miracle is, then, is that it is a correction for a misthinking or a misperception, and therefore A Course in Miracles will never advocate that you do anything about changing your behavior....This does not mean, by the way, that the Course would not advocate many times doing something to shift your behavior. All that it would say is that you not believe that by changing your behavior you have changed the problem. It could be a useful step towards changing a problem, but the basic problem is never out in the world or the body -- it is in the mind. This idea, of course, is absolutely essential to everything that the Course teaches and everything that we will be talking about. Certainly it is essential for understanding what the miracle is. The simplest definition of a miracle is that it is a correction for how we perceive or for how we think.

One of my favorite lines in the Course, which really is a perfect definition of a miracle even though it does not use the word, says that "the holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love" (T-26. IX.6:1). Someone whom we hate, hatred being the ego's way of looking, becomes someone whom we love, and that vision of love is given to us by the Holy Spirit. What we are talking about are two different ways of looking at the world and, more specifically, looking at the relationships in our lives. One is the ego's way of looking, which is a way of seeing more and more separation, anger and guilt, justifying our anger, and making sickness real here in the body. All these perceptions really reinforce the basic ego premise that we are separate from each other and from God. The correction for that is to go from the ego's way of looking to the Holy Spirit's way of looking, and it is that shift from the ego to the Holy Spirit that is the miracle. The identical word for that process of shifting from the ego's perceptions of someone else to the Holy Spirit's, is "forgiveness."

When we do forgive, what we are really doing is healing the problem, because the basic source of the problem is our interpretation of it, and this is based on our guilt. So all of our problems -- whether they be physical, financial, or social -- are not found out here in the world of the body but are found, rather, in our minds, and they all can be traced back to a problem of guilt. Another term for guilt would be "lack of forgiveness." It is when we forgive that our problems are healed, so we can then say that the words "miracle," "forgiveness," and "healing" represent basically the same process.

We can see, therefore, that a miracle is the answer to the problem, which is guilt, and we can define this even further and say that all of guilt comes from the belief that we are separate. So, these two words, "separation" and "guilt," are also virtually synonymous, because one comes from the other. From pages 73-74: Miracles reawaken the awareness that the spirit, not the body, is the altar of truth. This is the recognition that leads to the healing power of the miracle.

That is, again, the same idea, that truth and holiness are not found in the body; they are found in our minds. When our minds are totally healed we will recall that truth is in our Identity as spirit. Later on, the Course talks about the temple of the Holy Spirit as a relationship (T-20.VI.5:1). It is not in the body; it is in the relationship. The Holy Spirit cannot be in the body because there is no body. God would not place the Holy Spirit in a place that does not exist and where there is no problem. Bodies do not get sick, nor do they get well. It is only the mind that can be sick, and only the mind that can be healed.

I said earlier that when the separation seemed to occur, God created the Holy Spirit. He placed the Holy Spirit, Who is also defined in the Course as being God's Answer and His Voice, in the place where He is needed (T-5.I.5; T-5.II.2). Where the Holy Spirit is needed is not out here in the world, because the world is not the problem. He is needed in our mind. That is where the altar of truth is. The body is not the temple of the Holy Spirit; it is the use of the body that is, which is always found in terms of a relationship: joining in a common purpose. For the Course, the temple of the Holy Spirit, where He is made manifest and where He is found, is in a relationship. There is a passage where Jesus says that he stands within the holy relationship (T-19.IV-B. 5:3; 8:3). This does not mean that he is not present in an unholy relationship. What it means is that when we are in an unholy relationship, which is what A Course in Miracles calls a "special relationship," a relationship where guilt is the goal and separation is the principle, then the one who manifests forgiveness and joining will become invisible to us. If we are choosing to hear the ego's voice of guilt and separation, we are not going to hear the voice or experience the presence of the one who represents joining, forgiveness, and healing. It is not that Jesus is not present in a special relationship, but his presence is obscured.

When he says he stands within the holy relationship, he means that when we truly forgive and shift the purpose of the relationship from the ego's guilt to his forgiveness, then we will know he is there. The veils of guilt that kept him hidden are removed. He says in the Course at one point, "Teach not that I died in vain. Teach rather that I did not die by demonstrating that I live in you" (T-11.VI.7:3-4). The way that we demonstrate that Jesus is alive and well, and that he did do what he said he did, is to live according to the same principle that he did: the principle of forgiveness or transcendence of the body; totally shifting from a perception of seeing oneself as a victim to seeing oneself as joined with all people, living that out in the relationships of our personal lives. That is how we demonstrate that he is living in us. In words based on John's gospel: "They will know you are my disciples by your love for one another" (Jn 13:35). The Course's version of that would be: "They will know you are my disciples by your forgiveness of each other."

Customer Reviews

Too confusing
What scares people away from the Course is authors who write books about it. When I began the Course, I listened to tapes and attended seminars conducted by "teachers". I gained nothing because people were just quoting Course passages. I felt they had not experieced a transformation and were blind leading the blind. What the Course teaches is simple, but it belabors the point, and causes confusion. What the Course teaches is this: you are IN REALITY not a body. You are SPIRIT. Therefore the EGO is a fake, it's not real. (You need to understand what the Course means by REALITY: that which never changes.)

Everything you do in life is a product of your ego. The mind is part of the ego too. The Course tells us how destructive the ego is, that it doesn't want to die, and will do anything it can to preserve itself.

When you understand you are SPIRIT, then everyone is united. After all, there is only one Spirit. The ego sees itself as separate. (Thus, the "Separation".) When Man saw himself as a body he became separate from his Creator. That's when sin came into the world.

So essentially, meditate, quiet your mind, thoughts will cease. You will just BE. That is the Miracle.

Concerned
Concerned that people will see sickness as a spiritual problem and blame the sick person - which takes away compassion and care when most needed.
Yes, God answers prayers, but sometimes the answer is Wait, and sometimes it is No, not always yes.

Jesus told the apostles that the blind man's blindness was Not due to the man's nor his parents sin, but for the Glory of God.

It is sad that we can not accept sickness as a way to lead us closer to God. That we want to take the Cross out of our lives, even though Jesus says for us to pick up our crosses and follow Him. Where did Jesus take His Cross, to Calvary - ('Father take this cross from Me, but not mine will by yours be done' - 'my soul is sorrowful even unto death' - 'My God, My God, why have you abandoned Me')

being Near Jesus when we are in great suffering, whether physical, emotional or spiritual - is being close to Jesus in the Garden and at Calvary, as Mary and John were. Not easy, but still a very good place to be if we remember Whom we are near, Jesus.

I recommend Through the Cross to Victory and The Passion of the Cross.

The Power of the Cross: Applying the Passion of Christ to your life

A Personal Interpretation of "A Course in Miracles"
This book is an attempt to bring the essence of the classic "A Course in Miracles" to a level of understanding that is more accessible to the average reader, or to those who don't feel the time or inclination to wade through the 1300+ pages in the original work.

The book contains a discussion of 50 principles that have been extracted from "A Course in Miracles" followed by a question and answer segment after each principle description.

While the goal of making this large volume more readily available to larger numbers of people is noble, I fear that like anything else that is interpreted for another, much can be lost in translation. For example, why are there exactly 50 miracle principles, no more and no less? The original book has 31 chapters, followed by 365 lessons in the workbook, one for each day of the year.

My personal feeling is that anytime someone interprets the work of another, the essence of its meaning is more limited for those who read only the interpretation. Yet "A Course in Miracles" is a complex work and many would welcome a distilled version of it. However, the course itself is designed to be a lifelong project, one that does not lend itself to quick or easy answers.

Although I enjoyed reading the author's distilled interpretation of "A Course in Miracles", my preference is to read and interpret the original text for myself, however rambling or challenging it might be.

A book that explores the divine unity of all in a way that induces experiential clarity in the reader is High Way from Hell: Using Emotion to Fan the Fire of Enlightment.