This is my space for my musings and meditations on A Course in Miracles and all I have learned from and through it since I first became a student of the Course in 1997. You can read much of how I came to the Course on my other blog in a post called The Outing. For now, I’ll just say it’s been an amazing journey, one that I don’t know that I would have survived if not for the Course.
I thank each of you for visiting. Please feel free to leave your comments. We are all students and teachers of Goddess’ Truth, whether we know it or not, and have much to teach and learn from each other. I am very interested in developing a dialog with you about A Course in Miracles and how it has affected your life.
A note on nomemclature: You will notice that, for the most part, I prefer “Goddess,” instead of “God” and female, instead of male, pronouns and other gendered references. Encountering and learning from various goddesses, especially the Hindu goddess Kali, has been an important part of my journey for several years now. Prior to my transition, i.e., when I was still living as a man, and someone (in my experience, always a woman) in one of my study groups would comment on the constant use of male pronouns and “God” and “Father,” instead of “Goddess” and “Mother” in the Course, and how challenging that was for her to accept the messages that the Course has to teach us, I would explain my understanding of the reasons for that choice like this: The primary message of the Course is our Oneness; using both male and female references would emphasize our divisions, not our oneness; so, the Course had to use one or the other and chose male references; women or others who had problems with that choice simply needed to view it as an opportunity to transform thoughts of how we are different to how we are all One.
All that, of course, was before I began to accept and honor my own feminity and to feel the very different nature of various goddesses. Now, I feel held and comforted by female energy, both my own and the energy that I receive from other women and Kali. So, I usually convert “God” to “Goddess” and male pronouns to female whenever I read to myself. (In my current study group, I still read the Course as written out of respect for tradition primarily and the wish to avoid an issue that has yet to arise on its own.) I am now finishing the Text and the Manual for Teachers for the sixth or seventh time (I haven’t kept track over the years). Although I have only been changing to female references for a few months, it has brought a much greater sense of comfort, safety and love to my study of the Course than I have ever experienced. I intend to continue that practice and will probably do so when I quote from the Course here. For those of you who object, feel free to change them back, or use any other terminology that works for you. As the Course teaches, words are only symbols of symbols and have no meaning other than what we give to them. (M:21:1:9.) The Oneness that we feel and the opportunity to experience revelation as we study the Course is what’s important, not the words we use to reach that goal.
Blessings to all,
Abby
Note: The quotation in the tagline above is from The Gift: Poems by Hafiz, The Great Sufi Master, Translations by Daniel Landinsky, p. 228.
