31.01.06
0102 – What does it mean to me?
Posted in the Branch at 12:52 am by Graham Watts 
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from Issue 001, May 2000
Anyone who has studied A Course in Miracles will undoubtedly understand the importance of purpose – what is anything for? As the Course teaches, what seems to be needed or happening in the world always presents an opportunity to realise there are no needs and that nothing is really happening anyway. Furthermore, there is no individual ‘I’ to do anything, and that this ‘I’ is the root of the seeming problem. “The secret of salvation is but this; you are doing this but to yourselves”(T-27.VIII.10:1). But there evidently still seems to be a need to do things as far as I am concerned at this stage of the seeming process. As Helen Schucman once awoke with the following sentence on her mind -”Never underestimate the power of denial”. (Absence from Felicity, p166)
So why start a newsletter on the Course? Why not? Why do anything? To me it’s a case of do it or don’t do it but get on with it. One does or doesn’t do these things. No resistance, as the Course says, do it because it doesn’t matter. Nothing special. But at the same time it evidently does matter to me or I wouldn’t be doing it. The situation seemed to arise where it became appropriate to do so, so I did, and that’s all. Everything in this world of seeming separation is special in some form.
As the Course teaches, perception is only ever an interpretation and never a fact. That’s why it’s special. I realise, thanks to the Course, it is my own very personal (specially individualised) interpretations and reactions to things (particularly others) that always present me with my perfect lesson as a self-reflective process. This is through seeing what I’m resistant to look at within myself. Hopefully, I’m becoming more honest with myself. How else could I ever come to have at least half a chance of seeing the false within myself for the nothingness it is and choose to let it go? Therefore the lessons are invaluable and provide the way, the truth and the life – impersonally. How the Course is so practical!
As with a number of talks I have given on the Course, I’ve taken the understanding from the Course that teaching is learning and vice versa. I’ve realised that I’ve only ever been talking to myself really. Likewise with the newsletter, it is solely for my own learning and teaching purpose in the sense of getting to accept and know again the true life beyond my experience as the experiencer. What makes perception possible? No doubt the experience of being involved with a Course newsletter will provide many opportunities to find out! GW
Absence from Felicity – by Dr K Wapnick, Foundation for “A Course in Miracles”, 1991