by D. Patrick Miller

Without getting too specific, what would you say usually gets in the way of people’s happiness and success? Most of us would place the blame on the difficult external circumstances of our lives — all those unpleasant events and conditions, from terrorism to traffic jams, that seem utterly beyond our control.

But author and spiritual teacher Robert Perry suggests that “difficult circumstances” is a polite way of stating the problem, compared to how it really feels to us. “Circumstances are more than just difficult,” he writes; in fact they “appear to be attacking us. A hundred times a day, they peck at us; occasionally, they try to crush us.... In the midst of the world’s insane obstacle course, we are quite simply doing our best. Our intentions are good. We may occasionally lash out or inadvertently hurt someone, but whenever we do, there are pressures on us that, if recognized, make our actions perfectly understandable. We do get blamed, but only by those who do not see the whole picture. In truth, we are just trying to make the best of a difficult situation.”

Sounds like a fair estimation of the human condition, right? The only problem is, says Perry, is that it’s “utterly false” — at least according to the modern psychospiritual teaching known as A Course in Miracles (ACIM), which Perry has been teaching and writing about since the mid-1980s. As ACIM suggests, the person who constantly feels besieged by circumstances is putting on a “face of innocence” masking a deep, existential rage — a rage which can only be healed through unstinting self-confrontation and the consistent practice of a transcendent forgiveness.

Co-founder (with Allen Watson) of an ACIM teaching center in Sedona, Arizona, called the Circle of Atonement, Perry writes and teaches with an exceptional clarity that has made him one of the most popular teachers of ACIM. His brief Introduction to A Course in Miracles, published by Miracle Distribution Center, has sold well over 100,000 copies and he has authored eighteen other books and pamphlets in wide circulation. While he has had doctrinal differences and legal wranglings with Kenneth Wapnick, the most historically prominent of Course teachers, he takes a similar tack in reminding students that ACIM is not a therapeutic quick fix for anyone’s problems, requiring a lifelong dedication to fully understand and realize the potential of the teaching. While the forthcoming Path of Light: Stepping into Peace with A Course in Miracles is not Perry’s “big book” on ACIM that was held up in a copyright dispute with Wapnick and the Foundation for A Course in Miracles, it is his first substantial title in five years. I was happy to play a role in its development as a publishing consultant, and I’m grateful to Robert Perry for granting Fearless the first interview in advance of its publication in May 2004. For more information, see the website of Circle Publishing.

 

Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion of the Christ” is now in the public eye, presenting a pretty grisly portrayal of the sacrificial ethos at the heart of conventional Christianity. I think it’s safe to say that A Course in Miracles has a radically different view on the crucifixion and its meaning. How would you explain the difference in these perspectives?
PERRY:The Course has a wonderfully refreshing view of the crucifixion. Traditionally, of course, we’ve been taught that it was all about Jesus undergoing very real suffering and death, that this paid for our sins and allowed God to forgive us. The Course’s view couldn’t be more different. Its view is that the crucifixion was not about the physical events that Jesus passed through, but how he saw those events. It says that he saw himself as literally unable to be hurt or killed — even if his body could be — and that this invulnerability is what enabled him to respond defenselessly and without anger. By responding this way, says the Course, he was trying to send us a message about how we can respond to our little daily crucifixions. He wanted us to come away saying, “If he could know he was invulnerable under those circumstances, then perhaps I can remember that I’m invulnerable when my co-worker gives me a dirty look.” In other words, the crucifixion was a teaching demonstration for us, rather than some kind of transaction with God. To feel indebted to him because of what he suffered for our sake, or to feel angry at those who did this to him, is to miss the whole point.

In your chapter on “The Problem” you write that we are all tempted to see ourselves as “enraged victims” of the world we see around us. Could you go into why this happens and what we can do about it?
PERRY: To continue with the theme from the previous question, the world is full of attack, full of crucifixion. We frequently feel misperceived, unfairly treated, and taken advantage of, even by those who are supposed to love and protect us. This is the universal human experience. So what do we do? The Course begins by saying that the situation is not what it seems. It says that we don’t have to feel attacked, because in truth we are invulnerable. And it says that we only choose to feel attacked in order to give ourselves a justification for doing our own attacking. It’s as if we slash ourselves with a knife and then place the knife in someone else’s hand and shout, “Look what you did to me!” Just realizing this can bring release. If you think of a recent episode where you felt attacked, and then think, “I only chose to feel wounded by what he did so that I could manufacture grounds for attacking him,” then the anger and woundedness tend to dry up.

This change in perception is an example of how the Course sees forgiveness, which it defines as the realization that my anger was never justified in the first place. This, in the long run, is the real solution to feeling like “enraged victims.” Not to get even, not to protect our boundaries — though that may be an interim necessity — but to learn a profound kindness in the face of even the most mean-spirited assaults, a kindness made possible by the recognition of our inherent invulnerability. This, in the Course’s view, is what will lead to our own resurrection, our own awakening to unlimited life.

Many Course students have been driven up the wall by its seemingly harsh appraisal of the so-called “special relationship.” How would you explain the problem, and its solution, to someone who was unfamiliar with ACIM?
PERRY: Even though I too find the Course’s teaching on special relationships challenging, I don’t think it’s any harsher than what we ourselves realize at the bitter end of a romantic relationship. At that point, we understand that the other person was not really giving to us, that this person was just using us to get his or her own needs met, needs which have to do with him or her feeling special. It finally dawns on us that it wasn’t really love at all. If we could only turn this around and apply it to ourselves, then we would be exactly where the Course wants us to be. Instead, though, we assume that the problem lay in that particular person and the solution lies in finding the right person, rather than realizing that the problem lay in the “game of love” itself and the solution lies in uprooting the lovelessness in our own hearts.

What’s new about Path of Light in terms of the Course teaching books that have come before it? What would you like to put out there that may not have been said before?
PERRY: I actually think there are quite a number of things that are new about Path of Light. First, I see it as a truly comprehensive introduction, one which covers the whole spectrum, from how the Course was written and what the Course is, to what it teaches and how to “take” this course, how to live it. A reader could start out having never heard of A Course in Miracles and end up having a fair grasp of the Course “in the round.”

Second, I try to present a more complete vision of what the Course teaches, one that emphasizes both the dark and the light, both the metaphysical and the practical. My experience is that most treatments of the Course tend to “hang out” in one particular area of the Course’s thought system while overlooking the rest — which is very easy to do, given how truly vast that thought system is.

Third, I present the Course primarily as a path, rather than as merely a teaching. I personally believe this is the most neglected aspect of A Course in Miracles. Whereas a teaching merely tells you about the goal, a path is a road by which you can actually reach the goal. I think that Course students have been so fixated on the Course’s lofty ideas that they have tended to neglect the very concrete and practical things the Course asks us to do in order to reach the goal. In my view, these things boil down to three activities: study, practice, and extension, all of which Path of Light discusses at length. Doing these three things is how we go beyond merely talking about the Course’s teachings to actually living them.

Fourth, the book tries to combine both fidelity to the Course and practicality for the reader. It seems to me that Course-based books have by and large opted for one of these at the expense of the other. Either they try to be really faithful to the Course, and sound rather dry, lofty, and impractical, or they try to be really practical and user-friendly, yet tend to leave out the more radical elements of the Course. I don’t believe we ever need to choose between these two values, because the Course itself is extremely practical. Thus, fidelity to it means being practical, and that is the approach I have taken with this book.

At one point in “The Program” section of your book you advise the serious Course student to “keep your head down.” What do you mean by that?
PERRY: At that point I am talking about how to read the Course. My experience is that most Course students engage in what I call “reading by projection.” In this mode, when you come upon a puzzling passage, you lift your head up, mentally consult your overall understanding of the Course, and ask yourself, “What must this passage mean in light of my overall understanding?” This results in just projecting your old understanding onto this new passage; there’s little room for anything new to enter in. Instead, I urge students to keep their heads down and look around in the sentences immediately before and after the puzzling passage. That surrounding material holds the clues to what the author was really trying to say with that puzzling sentence. And what he was trying to say is usually far more mind-bending, challenging, practical, and transformative than what reading by projection would ever say.

You also advise that students should take the Course “personally.” What is your method for doing that, and why is it important?
PERRY: Students sometimes complain that the Course’s ideas are a “head trip,” but I find that they are only that if you don’t apply them to yourself. You can take the same idea that others have used as an intellectual escape and use it to transform your experience of the world — if you take it personally. My main method for doing so is very simple, but it’s also very effective. I simply insert my name in about every other sentence, virtually wherever I see the word “you.” It’s the oddest thing — it makes seemingly dry sentences come to life, it causes new understandings to emerge, it makes reading the Course a highly personal experience, rather than a jumble of abstract, spiritual-sounding words.

Could you briefly summarize what you describe in the book as “a day in the life of the mature Course student”?
PERRY: Most of our days are really about taking care of our bodies and our egos, keeping them safe and looking after their various needs and drives. The Course is slowly training us to have a very different kind of day. It is a day in which we still take care of our bodies and our earthly responsibilities, but in our mind the day is really about the goal of God. That is what we are focused on. So we begin the day with Course study — just a couple of pages is enough — and with Course-based meditation. Then all through the day we do the kind of practice taught to us in the Workbook, which lifts our minds to a place of serenity and joy, and clears out our frequent upsets. We also see ourselves as being on a kind of quiet mission to give miracles to others, not through spewing “Course-speak” at them, but through demonstrating real love and forgiveness in concrete and unassuming ways. And then we end our day as we started, with God.

This all sounds rather extreme, and it really takes years to move into this different sort of day, but it is more than worth it. I believe that having one day like this after another is what will bring real progress. It will move us closer and closer to genuine egolessness, and the fruits of that will show in our lives and in the life of everyone we meet.

You’ve been intimately involved, whether you wanted to be or not, in the ACIM copyright controversy. Although the issue is not yet settled definitively, the most recent court decision has reversed the previous trend toward preservation of the copyright. Apart from the politics of the moment, what do you see as the larger process that’s been going on in this long conflict? What lessons can Course students draw from this process for their own development?
PERRY: My lens through which to see the copyright controversy has come from looking back into the Course’s own story. If we look at the story of how the Course was written, we see that its original custodians were fallible human beings, with all the usual foibles, who didn’t really understand the nature of the divine story they were part of. They planned to keep the Course mostly to themselves, locked up in their closet, so to speak. Yet whatever unseen presence was really in charge of the show had other ideas. This presence worked through serendipitous, unforeseen events to liberate the Course from their closet, for from the beginning this book was meant as a gift to the world.

Without giving a lengthy explanation, I’ll just say that it is not hard to see this very same pattern in what has played out with the copyright controversy. I think history has repeated itself.

What lessons can we take away from this for our own development? I’ll just share the things that have been most helpful for me in the midst of my long journey with the copyright controversy. First, don’t be surprised at how things can go wrong. As the author of the Course once said to Helen and Bill about some botched events in their lives: “There is nothing of special interest about the events... except their typical nature.” This kind of messiness is simply the way things go down here. Why did we think the Course would be exempt from that? Did we really believe that Course students are different from everyone else? Second, forgive. If the Course is our guide, then forgiveness is our response to the insanity of how things go down here. And forgiveness must be worked at; it must be practiced. Third, trust. Trust that, no matter how crazy we humans are, there is an unseen Presence working behind the scenes to bring all situations to an eventual happy ending.

 

For more information about Path of Light
and Robert Perry, see the website of Circle Publishing.

Copyright 2004 by D. Patrick Miller. All rights reserved.
For reprint information please contact reprints@fearlessbooks.com.