Kenneth Wapnick, widely regarded as the foremost teacher of A Course in Miracles, gave a talk, which later became a book, entitled A Talk on a Course in Miracles. I recommend that anyone interested in understanding the Course read this book. I want to summarize here some of the things he said.
Wapnick reminds us that the Course is written in two levels. The first level shows the difference between what the One-Mind and the split-mind are.
• The One-Mind level is where we remain united to God even though we have forgotten it. At this level, the body and the world are illusions, products of our separate minds or ego. They represent separation.
• The second level or split-mind relates to the world in which we think we live. It shows the differences between wrong-minded and right-minded. At this level, we consider our bodies and the world to be real. We see attack, separation, sin, and guilt.
Wapnick also mentioned that the Course speaks of three different thought systems: One-Mind, wrong-mind, and Right-Mind.
The following are brief explanations of the three thought systems:
• The One-Mindset is our true reality; it is the world of heaven. It’s the level we’ve never gone from, but we think we have. It has nothing to do with this world. It is our recognition of our unity with the Creator and with all of Creation. In heaven, there is no time or space. This level is rarely mentioned on the Course.
• The split-mind is the ego’s thought system. This system believes in sin, guilt, and fear. When the Course speaks of sin, it refers to our belief that we are separated from God, leading to fear and guilt. Wapnick says that the guilt the Course refers to is “the sum total of all the negative feelings, beliefs and experiences we have had about ourselves,” which are primarily unconscious.
• The Course tells us that as soon as the ego was created, God gave us the Holy Spirit, who, for the Course, is the part of our mind that knows that it is always connected to God. It is as if our mind is divided in two. One part, the Holy Spirit, knows that we have never separated from God. The other one, the ego, thinks that we have.
- Right-mindedness is the thought system of the Holy Spirit, which leads us to forgive our guilt. In this system, we decide to live exclusively in the state of love, towards ourselves and others. We do this through forgiveness. Forgiveness does not lead to attacks or judgments because we begin to see what we previously identified as attack or judgment simply as the wrong way for the other person to say, “I feel lonely, and I need love.” This leads us to feel compassion, instead of anger.
In the following blogs, I will delve into some of the mechanisms of the Course to achieve forgiveness and live the experience of love.