A Course in Miracles

Dr. of Metaphysics, Course of Miracles

Student: Rev. Linda Francis

Final Essay: When the Student is Ready¦

I am not sure if I went in search of the Course of Miracles or it came in search of me. I attended several lectures and noted each speaker quoted from a book that I was not failure with. Each speaker called it a "life changing book'. Neither our local book store nor the library had it, so I moved on to read other recommended books.

However, quotes from the book continued to show up in magazines and other books I read and then one day just after my husband's death I pulled out his suitcase from under the bed and there was the book, Course of Miracles, along with notes that he had used to teach the class in Philadelphia before his marriage to me.

Why had he never mentioned this book to me during our 12 years of marriage? I was teaching a class in forgiveness and he had mentioned he once taught a class about it as well but gave it up when he could not forgive the professor who abused him in college. He told me I would find a success and joy he was never able to find for I truly had the ability to forgive others.

When I started reading The Course of Miracles I realized this must have been the book he was talking about. I began to read it but realized it was deep and I needed to find someone who understood it better than I could alone. I asked many in my little fundamental community and each had never head of the book nor wanted to study it with me. I begin to pray to find a person with an interest in the book, also.

Finally, I went on line and found your course and another one and enrolled in both. A few weeks ago I noted in the newspaper a speaker was discussing the book and so I attended the lecture only to run into an old friend I knew 25 years ago and she was studying this book as well, with a small group that met about 30 minutes from where I lived each Tuesday morning.

The book truly has changed my life, and this class has helped me greatly in understanding the book much more than I could have on my own. The book is much about forgiveness which I had taught in workshops and lectures for a long time, and I had worked my own personal path through this process long ago. However, it still gave me a deeper look into forgiveness as well, in seeing forgiveness must not be about pity, or judging.

However, what the class truly added to my life came in the one line, "Every act is love or a call for love." Now, as the person is acting in a hurtful matter to me I am saying to myself, "this is not love so thus it is his or her call for love," and even as he is talking I am sending him a mental energy of love.

Often that along is enough to cool his actions off and even when it is not I walk away without feeling like a victim or having a need to judge. There was a time I use to need to go into solitude and reason my way through forgiveness but now by seeing even as the person sticks out at others that he is calling for love I am not even hurt to the point I even have a need for forgiveness.

Lately, giving a lecture at a church, I was verbally attacked publicly by a lawyer known for doing this to many speakers. Suddenly, I remembered the line, "every act is love or a call for love." To this day I do not know how I pulled it off, nor does the group I was speaking to for many came up to tell me they did not understand what happened at that moment for almost like magic for the first time ever this man backed off and said he was sorry. (Perhaps soon I can teach another class from what I have learned in this class and explain how others can do just what I did.)

Not only did he calm down, he has never attacked another speaker when I have been in his presence. To this day each time I see him, I put a bright circle of light around him and I still send him an energy of love. He even came up months later to tell me what a great lecture I made that night on the topic of fear and the thinks about it often.

However, the biggest help that came from this class was the lesson I needed to learn to get past the grief for my late husband. We had a nearly perfect marriage and after his death I found myself wondering if I could go own living without him. He came to me in a dream telling me it was not my time to go that I needed to teach others the things we learned and shared together. (Note: It was just after this dream that I went to look for my show that the dog had taken under the bed and found this suitcase with the book in it.)

After his death, I had found myself in such poor health I had to give up my job, my spiritual retreat in the mountains which I no longer could afford and it felt as if there was nothing to live for at this point, for all I loved was now missing from my life. AND THEN I read: healing comes in the present not the past or the future. And I knew I had been living since his death in the past and dreading the future without him. I was missing the moment of now all together. So since I began this class my spiritual journey has taken a new path: living in the moment and finding simple joy in simple things.

Daily, I focus on my breath deep and slow and feel the moment and then send healing energy to my body. I melt into my surroundings, the birds, trees, stranger's smiles, etc., and I am one with awesome beauty and joy for that moment. While I still miss my husband my happiness scale has returned to a 8 and often a 10 plus at moments.

Dozens of books and lectures have jumped into my path since I started taking this class and guess what … all on the same subject, and so I return to the question and I ask. Did I chose Course of Miracles or did it choose me? There is an old saying that when the students is ready the teacher will come. I was in need and ready and the teacher came.

This class has been the most useful of all the ones I am taking. I would love to see others classes offered from Course of Miracles in the future.

Rev. Francis

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