ACIM Getting Started

This is A Course In Miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. Nothing real can be threatened… Nothing unreal exists… Herein lies the peace of God.

All quoted material is from A Course in Miracles, copyright ©1992, 1999, 2007 by the Foundation for Inner Peace, publisher, and the copyright holder. This material is used with permission. (Foundation for Inner Peace, 448 Ignacio Blvd #306 Novato, CA 94949 US)

Transcript

The purpose of the Course in Miracles workbook is to train your mind in a systematic way to a different perception of everyone and everything in the world.

The exercises are planned to help you generalize the lessons,

So that you will understand that each of them is equally applicable to everyone and everything you see.

The exercises are very simple.

They do not require a great deal of time and it does not matter where you do them.

They need no preparation.

You do not undertake to do any more than one set of exercises a day.

Each exercise is planned around one central idea,

Which is stated first.

This is followed by a description of the specific procedures by which the idea for the day is to be applied.

The only general rules to be observed throughout are first,

That the exercises be practiced with great specificity,

As will be indicated.

This will help you to generalize the ideas involved to every situation in which you find yourself and to everyone and everything in it.

Second,

Be sure that you do not decide for yourself that there are some people,

Situations or things to which the ideas are not applicable.

This will interfere with the transfer of training.

The very nature of true perception is that it has no limits.

It is the opposite of the way you see now.

The overall intent of the exercises is to increase your ability to extend the ideas you will be practicing,

To include everything.

This will require no effort on your part.

The exercises themselves meet the conditions necessary for this kind of transfer.

Some of the ideas the workbook presents you will find hard to believe,

And others may seem to be quite startling.

This does not matter.

You are merely asked to apply the ideas as you are directed.

You are not asked to judge them at all.

You are asked only to use them.

It is their use that will give them meaning to you and will show you that they are true.

Remember only this.

You need not believe the ideas,

You need not accept them,

And you need not even welcome them.

Some of them you may actively resist.

None of this will matter or decrease their efficacy,

But do not allow yourself to make exceptions in applying the ideas the workbook contains.

And whatever your reactions to the ideas may be,

Use them.

Nothing more than that is required.

Nothing real can be threatened.

Nothing unreal exists.