Journey Without Distance; The story behind A Course in Miracles by Robert Skutch

Author:Robert Skutch [Skutch, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

From September 1968, when Helen had “completed” scribing the Course, until the following spring, she and Bill found themselves deeply involved in several new projects at the hospital. Then, one day early in May, during lunch she said, “You know, Bill, I thought I was so relieved when the Text was finished, but strange as it seems I really miss my function.” During the next several days she became increasingly restless. “I don’t know what it is Bill,” she said with some distraction, “but I think there’s going to be something like a work book.”

Two weeks later the Voice returned, and they learned that the Text Helen had received over the past three years was not the entire Course, as they had each thought, and that the forthcoming Workbook for Students was to be an integral part of A Course in Miracles. Helen was not happy; for all she knew the Workbook could turn out to be twice as long as the Text, and the dictation could go on for five years or more.

When the Voice began dictating though, those fears were quickly dispelled, for the first two paragraphs that Helen took down told her precisely what they had to look forward to;

A theoretical foundation such as the text provides is necessary as a framework to make the exercises in this workbook meaningful. Yet it is doing the exercises that will make the goal of the course possible.

An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of this workbook to train your mind to think along the lines the text sets forth.

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. The training period is one year. The exercises are numbered 1 to 365. Do not undertake to do more than one set of exercises a day.

Helen was a lot less resistant to scribing the Workbook than she had been to the Text. This could have been due to the fact that she was now accustomed to the Voice, but it was also probably due to the content of the introductory instructions to the Workbook. Just prior to receiving Lesson 1, Helen took down the following:

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.

The fact that the Voice gave specific permission not to believe the lessons if one so desired, was quite a relief to Helen. She thus did not have to face the many ideological conflicts that the content of the Text presented to her. In addition, Helen’s resistance was lessened because she did recognize that by putting the principles

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