In June 2002, I conducted a workshop in which I discussed Lesson 188, “The peace of God is shining in me now.” Part of the discus­sion included the topic of this article. The following is an edited transcript of that part of the workshop, the rest of which was not recorded. Every attempt has been made to keep the informal quality of the talk, at the same time enhancing its readability in this writ­ten format. An audio tape of the discussion in its entirety is available from the Foundation.

I begin with the middle of the second paragraph of the lesson:

Who can deny the presence of what he beholds in him? It is not difficult to look within, for there all vision starts. There is no sight, be it of dreams or from a truer Source, that is not but the shadow of the seen through inward vision. There perception starts, and there it ends. It has no source but this (2:4-8).

That is why you cannot understand A Course in Miracles when you try to pick at it from your own brain, from your own thinking. It is not outside you. Rather, you do with this Course what you do with any great work of art-a great poem, a great Shakespearean play, any great work of literature: You let the words resonate inside you. You don't pick them apart and analyze them. You just let them work within you, and they will inevitably lead you to that place inside that is beyond all words, all thoughts, all concepts. When you are in the presence of any great work of art-be it a poem, painting, piece of music, or sculpture-the minute you try to analyze it with your brain you block any chance of having the experience of truth that the artist had-the content -- from which emerged the work of art -- the form. That does not mean that there is anything wrong in analyzing a work of art, but doing so will deprive you of the experience that the artist was expressing through his or her work.

The same is true of A Course in Miracles. If you try to ana­lyze it and focus on the literal meaning of the words, you are going to miss its heart. What you want to do is read these words and let them work within you. That will be your entrée from where you think you are, outside, to where you truly are, inside. That is why Jesus says that “it is not difficult to look within, for there all vision starts.” That is where you are. Remember, per­ception begins and ends in the mind.

Learning this Course is a lifetime's work, because there is such resistance to it. We continually put up barriers, especially intellectual ones, whenever we try to understand and pull A Course in Miracles apart in terms of meaning, which almost guarantees that we will never “get it.” I recall hearing of a pro­fessor at Brooklyn College who spent a considerable portion of a semester analyzing the wondrous finale of the second act of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, an absolutely brilliant piece of music. But all you really have to do is listen to it. Understand­ing the genius inherent in the ensemble's composition is not going to lead you to the experience. Similarly, you do not have to analyze the mind of the poet to read Hamlet or King Lear and feel its power and beauty. Or sitting before a great painting, you do not have to know how the colors were used or the figures bal­anced to experience its inspirational loveliness. You just give yourself to the work of art, and then you become one with it.

This is similar to how A Course in Miracles should be approached, which means that you have to transcend the sub­ject-object duality. Remember, as long as you think there is a you who is studying this, the Course will ultimately never work for you. Such dualistic experience is the entrée level, to be sure, because we all begin that way. But the very experience of your­self as a student learning from your inner teacher here and read­ing this, will end up being the greatest block if you do not eventually grow beyond that stage.

The only way you can really understand A Course in Miracles is if it is inside you. I am not saying that you should not read and study it. You certainly must, and Jesus insisted that Helen and Bill do just that. But to ensure more than just an intel­lectual mastery of the material, it has to become you, so that, in a sense, it is no longer you reading the words, it is the words infusing you. That is why Jesus says this is simple. Again, it is not difficult to look within. You are already within! So you have to break through the dualistic barrier that sees you as a student learning from a teacher, or a reader looking at a book. You begin with dualism, but you cannot end with that, because if you do, you will never really learn the Course.

This also is why no one could write a meaningful review of A Course in Miracles who is not a part of the process of being a student. Without engaging in the Course's process of forgive­ness, the person would be writing a review, as many people have tried to do, from the outside, and therefore entirely miss the core of its message. In the end, you want to transcend the I that has defined you as a student of this Course. You begin with that relationship with the Course, but you will not get very far up the ladder if you continue to see it that way.

While A Course in Miracles is written on a high intellectual level and demands a great deal of attention as you read it, inter­estingly enough, the intellect itself is used to get you beyond the intellect. Thus you read it and automatically know what it means, but not through your brain. You know what it means because you know it is true. You sit in the presence of a great work of art, however you define its greatness, and you know it is not of this world, but a reflection of truth. It is not the form; forms are never true. But you know there is truth there, and that truth transcends the artist and the observer, who thus become one because there is no outer and inner. Helen's lovely poem, “Awake in Stillness,” begins: “Peace cover you within, without the same” (The Gifts of God, p. 73). The outer peace, the inner peace are one and the same. Indeed, ultimately there is no “outer.” Likewise, to state it again, there is no Course that is out­side us.

When you study A Course in Miracles you are reflecting a process in your mind whereby you have gone through the dark­ness to that thought of light, so that you can look at that dark­ness from the perspective of the light. But since we think we are bodies governed by a brain, we have the Course in this form. The learning, though, does not occur as you look at this book or study it. The learning occurs, again, in the mind, which has nothing to do with the body.

Just as guilt comes from the belief in being separate and is a barrier to learning, so then the alleviation of guilt removes the barrier entirely. And when you begin to realize that you and this other person have no separate interests, you are beginning the process of merging; it is not bodies that merge, it is the minds that merge. As you continue that process, the right mind-the home of the Holy Spirit in our post-separation mind-merges with all, because there is only one Mind. A Course in Miracles is part of that Mind, just as any great work of art or any authentic spiritual teaching is. You simply become one with its Oneness.

A telling passage from the text perfectly describes this pro­cess of merging with what is perceived to be outside you:

Everyone has experienced what he would call a sense of being transported beyond himself.…a sudden unawareness of the body, and a joining of yourself and something else in which your mind enlarges to encompass it. It becomes part of you, as you unite with it. And both become whole, as neither is perceived as separate. What really happens is that you have given up the illusion of a limited awareness, and lost your fear of union.…you join it without reservation because you love it, and would be with it. And so you rush to meet it, let­ting your limits melt away, suspending all the “laws” your body obeys and gently setting them aside (T-18.VI.11:1,4-7; 12:4-5).

Let us continue with the lesson:

The peace of God is shining in you now, and from your heart extends around the world. It pauses to caress each living thing, and leaves a blessing with it that remains for­ever and forever. What it gives must be eternal. It removes all thoughts of the ephemeral and valueless. It brings renewal to all tired hearts, and lights all vision as it passes by. All of its gifts are given everyone, and everyone unites in giving thanks to you who give, and you who have received (3:1-6).

Remember -- the idea is to transcend the I, to transcend the personal. You cannot make this happen. It will happen of itself when the barriers are gone. What will speed you along is simply asking Jesus or the Holy Spirit, day in and day out, all the time, for help in seeing everyone as part of the same Sonship. As he says at the end of Chapter 15 in a special New Year's prayer: “Make this year different by making it all the same” (T-15.XI.10:11). Make this year different from all others by making everything that you perceive the same. You can do this because everything is the same. There is truth, and then there is everything else. And “everything else” is equally nothing. Every illusion is the same: a slight twinge of annoyance and intense fury are the same (W-pI.21.2:5; M-17.4:3-8). Nothing is always nothing, regardless of its form.

The beauty of this lesson is that it offers us a glimpse, among many other glimpses in A Course in Miracles, of what the truth really is: a light that embraces all people as one because the separation is an illusion. What we “see” are just the fragmented projections of God's one (now separated) Son. What enables us to learn that the separation never happened is to real­ize first and foremost that there are no separate interests. I can­not say that too often. It is the key to the Course (e.g., M-1.1). The essential idea in our relationships, indeed, in everything in our lives is to learn to be selfless; not in a sacrificial way, not in the sense that you are giving anything up, but selfless in the realization that you want to have the individual, unique, special self that we all have so coveted and cherished be replaced. You come to learn without sacrifice, because if sacrifice is involved, you are on the wrong spiritual path and will not learn.

As I said a moment ago, the ego self gets in the way of one's study and practice of A Course in Miracles. You can never understand this Course through your self. You can only under­stand it when your self-at least for an instant-has faded away. Then you realize when you read A Course in Miracles that you are talking to yourself, the right-minded self within. But you are not talking in words; the words on the page are simply, to repeat this central point, a reflection in form of the ultimate lesson that you are learning in your mind: There is no individual self in Heaven. So the words here, which in our split minds are a per­fect reflection of that Thought, say that you have no self-inter­est. All interests are shared; all purpose is shared because we are one. Wrong-minded interests are all the same: maintaining sepa­ration. Right-minded interests are all the same: undoing separa­tion. Finally, we know that the peace of God is shining in us when we are able to look out and not take sides, when we no longer see winners and losers, victims and victimizers, good guys and bad guys.

The peace of God can never be contained. Who recog­nizes it within himself must give it (5:1-2).

For what your inward vision looks upon is your percep­tion of the universe (5:7).

Sit quietly and close your eyes. The light within you is sufficient. It alone has power to give the gift of sight to you. Exclude the outer world, and let your thoughts fly to the peace within. They know the way. For honest thoughts, untainted by the dream of worldly things out­side yourself, become the holy messengers of God Himself (6:1-6).

The process that Jesus is talking about here is simply the idea of being quiet. And one of the ways that we reach that quiet is by paying attention to all the noise and chatter going on within us, the “thunder of the meaningless” (W-pI.106.2:1). The idea is not to struggle or fight against the noise, or to shout it down. Just step back, calmly observe the chatter, and say: “There I go making a big hullabaloo again. There I go finding fault, making up stories, plotting revenge and doing all sorts of judgmental things. Obviously, I am afraid of the quiet. I am afraid of the light.” In that quiet light our individual existence cannot be sustained. And, therefore, we cover over that Oneness and universal light by going back into fragmentation, separa­tion, judgment, and attack.

These thoughts you think with Him. They recognize their home. And they point surely to their Source, Where God the Father and the Son are one (7:1-3).

This vision will happen any time one single person chooses to be that one Son and that one universe, because in that holy instant the world disappears in awareness, and all that remains is a reflection of Oneness. In that state of mind, known in the Course as the real world, you look out on the world and see what everyone else's eyes see, but you realize that what these eyes behold reflects the flimsy veil of separation that does not have the power to conceal the truth of that inward vision: that we all are indeed one, but pretending we are something else.

That is how you would walk the world: without turmoil, disquiet, fear, or guilt. Within that experience of Oneness you know there is nothing here that can hurt you, because you look beyond the fragile veil of hate, specialness, separation, and nationalism to the universality of the light of Oneness. That is your reality, and nothing can touch it.

We practice coming nearer to the light in us today. We take our wandering thoughts, and gently bring them back to where they fall in line with all the thoughts we share with God. We will not let them stray (9:1-3).

We let the light within our minds direct them to come home. We have betrayed them [these thoughts], ordering that they depart from us. But now we call them back, and wash them clean of strange desires and disordered wishes. We restore to them the holiness of their inheritance (9:4-7).

I spoke earlier about replacing the sense of ego self when you study A Course in Miracles, otherwise you will not under­stand it. But when you are really quiet and can feel a deep sense of peace and love, your I is suspended as the memory of your Identity as spirit begins to dawn. Then all of a sudden comes the fear of the I disappearing, and you quickly go to anything of the body as a distraction. So it is not only that “sickness is a defense against the truth [i.e., spirit]” (W-pI.136), anything you do that reaffirms your individual existence as a body is a defense against the truth. Just watch what you do and understand its pur­pose, and you will begin to realize that you have done that all your life. Whether it is something seemingly important as a major life decision, for instance, or something as trivial as eat­ing a candy bar instead of being quiet. The form does not matter. You simply want to recognize how much you want to keep your I in place. And, again, watch how you do that with this Course as well.

A Course in Miracles, in summary, cannot be understood through your brain. It cannot be understood through your per­sonal ego self. It will not reveal its “secrets” to you as long as you approach it as an I. You receive the full depths of its pro­found teachings only when that boundary between you and it dissolves. And so, finally, all things will come to shine in the inner light and peace of the dissolving I. This is the peace that truly passeth all understanding since it exists only in the unified thought of love that cannot be understood, but merely known. As Jesus reminds us one more time:

And we lay our saving blessing on it [the world], as we say:
    The peace of God is shining in me now.
    Let all things shine upon me in that peace,
    And let me bless them with the light in me (10:5-7).