Archive of Articles
God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit
The Circle of Atonement is making these thought-provoking and inspiring articles about A Course in Miracles topics available to you online. Most of these articles have appeared in past issues of our newsletter, A Better Way.
For a selection of Circle of Atonement articles translated into Spanish, go to Artículos del Círculo de Expiación en Español.
For a selection of Circle of Atonement articles translated into Dutch, go to artikelen in het Nederlands.
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- "I Gladly Make the 'Sacrifice' of Fear" by Robert Perry. Robert draws out the meaning of the prayer for Lesson 323, a beautiful prayer that gives us permission to let go of our painful emotions and let God's Love come streaming in. In the process, it gives us a new vision of the way to God, a way in which we gain everything without any cost.
- The Practice of Being Present to God by Robert Perry. Many of the meditations in the Course are centered on the idea of becoming absent to the usual things that fill our minds and becoming totally present to God.
- What Is God Like? We can see God as angry, indifferent, or loving. Course students tend to see God as remote, uninvolved—indifferent. But is that how the Course frames Him?
- Three Aspects of Our Relationship with God by Robert Perry. Robert explores Helen Schucman's subway vision, which he says contains three aspects of our relationship with God, aspects which we all long for, but which often seem incompatible with each other.
- Why Won't God Just Zap Me into Enlightenment? by Allen Watson. Allen explains how God's refusal to just zap us into enlightenment is actually an expression of His Love, rather than proof that He is cruel.
- Does God Have a Plan? by Robert Perry. Does God have a specific plan for our lives? Robert answers this universal question by telling the story of when he first received the Course and how he became aware of his calling to teach the Course. He concludes that there is a specific plan, but it may not match our plan for our lives.
- "All My Sorrows End in Your Embrace" Lesson 317: by Robert Perry. Robert attempts to draw out the beauty in the moving prayer that is found in Lesson 317.
- "Be in My Mind, My Father: An Appreciation of the Prayer for Lesson 232" by Robert Perry. Robert draws out the meaning in this beautiful prayer, in which we speak intimately to God of spending an entire day with Him, from the moment of waking through the evening and even into our sleep.
- Does God Know We Are Here? by Robert Perry. It has become an article of faith in Course circles that God does not know we are here in this world, and does not even know that we think we are here. But what does the Course actually say about this topic? The answer, discussed at length in this article, may surprise you.
- Big Daddy or Divine Desert? by Robert Perry. What is the nature of God? Is God the big daddy in the sky we were taught in church? Is God the formless void of the mystics? Is there a way to weave the best in both these concepts into a single concept?
The Separation and the Nature of the World
- The Joy of Realizing That This Place Is Hell by Greg Mackie. We have a hard time admitting just what a nightmare life on earth really is, because we think such an admission would inevitably sink us into the depths of despair. Greg shows how realizing that this place is hell, while sobering, can actually be a gateway to great joy.
- Does God Know We Are Here? by Robert Perry. It has become an article of faith in Course circles that God does not know we are here in this world, and does not even know that we think we are here. But what does the Course actually say about this topic? The answer, discussed at length in this article, may surprise you.
- Life Is but a Dream T-29.IX, The Forgiving Dream: by Robert Perry. We may believe that this life is a dream. Yet how can it be, when things so often act against our wishes, seemingly proving that they have an independent will and are not mere figures in our dream? This article offers a lengthy and mind-expanding answer, based on the section in the Text entitled "The Forgiving Dream."
- The Course and Mother Nature by Robert Perry. What impact should the Course's view have on our attitudes toward nature? If the world was made as an attack on God, what should be our new attitude toward nature?
- The Weird Disease by Robert Perry. Robert uses the metaphor of a really weird disease to talk about the separation and the dreaming of this world.
Jesus, Christianity and the Bible
- The Man Who Trusted God: Jesus' Final Parable by Robert Perry. What if Easter was another one of Jesus' parables, only this time one that was actually lived out? If it was, how would we tell that parable?
- What Was the Meaning of the Empty Tomb? by Robert Perry. Was there really an empty tomb? And if so, what did it mean? Did Jesus really appear to his followers? And if so, how do we reconcile that with the Course's teaching on the unreality of the body. This article explores a piece of guidance that Helen Schucman received on October 2, 1976, in which she asked the "Boss" to answer the perennial question, "Was there a physical resurrection?"
- Beauty From My Christian Past by Allen Watson. Allen Watson reflects on how much truth and light reached him while he was a practicing fundamentalist Christian.
- Does A Course in Miracles Commit the "Sins of Scripture"? by Robert Perry. Based on the presence of these "texts of terror," he maintains that we should not see the Bible as the Word of God. What does all of this imply about the Course?
- God's Word or Human Words? The Quest for Truth in Elaine Pagels's Beyond Belief and in the Course Community by Greg Mackie. How can we tell the difference between the word of God and mere human words? Do we listen to what the authorities tell us or rely on personal experience alone? Or is there another way? Based on Elaine Pagels's bestselling book Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, this essay explores Pagels's account of the conflict in early Christianity between heterodox "spiritual Christians" and the orthodox Christianity that eventually triumphed. It then applies what Pagels says about Christianity to the Course community and offers an answer to the question of how we Course students can discern truth within our own developing tradition.
- How Jesus Applied the Course to the Lives of Helen and Bill C-5.6: by Robert Perry. Some of the personal guidance that Jesus gave to Helen and Bill.
- How Jesus Helps by Allen Watson. How Jesus, in A Course in Miracles,offers to help us yet a little more if we accept his presence in our lives.
- How Does A Course in Miracles Regard the Lord's Prayer? by Robert Perry. Especially for those of us who grew up in church, this question is relevant. Should we continue to use the Lord's Prayer, discard it, or reinterpret it?
- How the Course Views the Bible by Allen Watson. How the Course Views the Bible by Allen Watson. An excerpt from his book, Seeing the Bible Differently, this article presents a broad overview of the way the Course interprets the Bible.
- A Joint Portrait of Jesus by Robert Perry. Parallels between the Jesus of history and the author of A Course in Miracles. Condensed from the article below entitled "Who Was the Jesus of History, and Did He Write A Course in Miracles?"
- Who Was the Jesus of History and Did He Write A Course in Miracles? by Robert Perry. In this article, Robert explores the title question by comparing the Jesus of the Course with the historical Jesus as seen through the eyes of Marcus Borg, a leading historical Jesus scholar.
- What Does the Shroud of Turin Mean? by Robert Perry. This link takes you to an article on www.shroud.com, the most respected website on the Shroud of Turin. The article explores the possible significance of the Shroud as "Jesus' own gospel, his way of communicating to posterity the same message he taught during his life." Inspired by the work of the Jesus Seminar and by the Course's interpretation of the crucifixion and resurrection.
- His Recognition of Us M-23.5: by Robert Perry. Our world has seen in Jesus, perhaps more than in any other, a sublime beauty, a perfection, a ray of light, a source of hope. This article by Robert Perry, published in an earlier edition of A Better Way, is based on a passage in the Course in which Jesus says that he sees in us all those things we have seen in him.
- How to Listen for Guidance by Robert Perry. Wouldn't it be great if A Course in Miracles gave us detailed instructions in precisely how to listen for the Holy Spirit's messages?
- Hearing God's Voice Means Joining by Allen Watson. Allen comments on the unique way that the Course links our ability to hear God's Voice with joining with one another: "You cannot hear the Voice for God in yourself alone" (T-9.II.6:4).
- What I Have Learned About Guidance by Robert Perry. Robert shares thirty key points about guidance that he has learned from his personal experience.
- Does God Have a Plan? by Robert Perry. Does God have a specific plan for our lives? Robert answers this universal question by telling the story of when he first received the Course and how he became aware of his calling to teach the Course. He concludes that there is a specific plan, but it may not match our plan for our lives.
- How Can We Distinguish Between the Ego and the Holy Spirit? by Allen Watson. An in-depth answer, including practical advice for application, to one of the most perplexing questions for Course students.
- Does the Holy Spirit Actually Do Things in the World? by Greg Mackie. This article is an excerpt from the book One Course, Two Visions, which compares the views of the Circle of Atonement and Ken Wapnick. Does God not even know about the separation (as Wapnick teaches), in which case the Holy Spirit is just an illusory split-off part of our own minds, a metaphorical symbol for the memory of God that does not have a plan or actively help us in any way? Or did God actively respond to the separation by creating the Holy Spirit (as the Circle teaches), a loving Being Who literally has a plan for the world's salvation and helps us bring that plan to fruition by actively guiding our thoughts, words, and actions if we will let Him?
- Please Take What? by Robert Perry. Course students often believe that if the Divine did anything in this world, it would make the world real. In this humorous hypothetical dialogue, Jesus asks Helen Schucman to take down the Course, only to find that she is already a metaphysically-savvy Course student.
- The Holy Spirit Will Provide by Nicola Perry. Inspiring story of the Holy Spirit providing a down-to-earth need.
- Be Born in Us Today by Allen Watson. Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ in a manger. In A Course in Miracles, Jesus speaks of his birth in another way as well. He speaks of being reborn in us. Perhaps, this Christmas, we can remember not only to celebrate his birth 2000 years ago, but to seek for, and celebrate, his birth in us today.
- What Is the Christmas Story For? by Greg Mackie. A comparison of the original Gospel writers' purpose for writing what became our Christmas story with the reinterpretation of that story's imagery in A Course in Miracles. While the Gospel writers wrote it to exalt Jesus, the Jesus of the Course uses it to exalt everyone.
- Let Christ Be Welcomed Home by Greg Mackie. A commentary on the first paragraph of Lesson 303. Using poetic imagery that evokes the traditional story of the first Christmas, it invites us to experience a kind of day that is a far cry from the usual frenetic activity of our conventional Christmas celebrations: a day of hushed expectancy, in which we peacefully await the birth of Christ at the center of our being.
- The Advent of the Course by Robert Perry. The birth of the Course as a modern example of the birth of the Christ child into this world.
- Christmas: The Birth of Holiness into this World by Robert Perry. The first Christmas was a holy instant in which holiness was born into this world. From there, it will "grow in life and strength and hope until the world is still an instant, and forgets all that the dream of sin had made of it."
- The Holiness of Christmas by Robert Perry. Based on Helen Schucman's poem by the same name. This poem portrays us as wise men who come before the infant Jesus and give him all of our "hidden venom." A new, and very practical, twist on an old story.
- We Celebrate Christmas by Repeating It by Robert Perry. The Course depicts us celebrating Christmas not by lauding events of long ago, but by repeating the birth of Christ in us today.
- Welcome Me Not into a Manger by Robert Perry. In the Course, Jesus asks us not to welcome him into a manger. If he had told this to Mary and Joseph, it would have made sense. But what does it mean when he tells this to us?
- The Celebration of Christ's First Coming by Allen Watson. According to the Course, Christ's first coming was not 2,000 years ago in Palestine, but before time, with the creation of God's Son. How can we use Christmas to remind ourselves of the all-important fact that God created us as His Son?
- Watch With Me, Angels by Robert Perry. An article from our November 2000 newsletter about angels and Christmas.
- How Would Jesus Want Us to Celebrate Christmas? by Robert Perry. We know how tradition wants us to celebrate Christmas, but wouldn't it be wonderful to know how Jesus himself wants us to celebrate his birth?
- Jesus Reborn in Us by Allen Watson. Letting the Christmas season remind us, not of a birth in ancient times, but of Jesus' birth in us in this time, now.
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