Exploring A Course in Miracles

Roger Walsh, professor of psychiatry and religious studies at University of California at Irvine, has been with the Course from nearly the beginning and has practiced the Course on a daily basis for decades. He brings a breadth of learning into how the Course relates to the world's great spiritual traditions as well as the unique contributions it offers. His interests focus on topics such as excep...

This is a time in which good leaders are desperately needed, and our collective ideas about leadership are changing dramatically. In this heartfelt discussion, Emily Bennington and Robert Perry discuss what ACIM has to say about leadership, and asks how we can be the kind of leaders it is asking us to be - in our lives and in the world. They also invite us to question the influence we have over ot...

If you're a Course student, you've likely approached the Holy Spirit many more times than you have approached a conversation with God. "Ask the Holy Spirit." "Turn it over to the Holy Spirit." These are such common phrases in practice, but we still see a lot of confusion around who and what He (Holy Spirit) is. In this episode of Exploring A Course In Miracles, Robert Perry and Emily Bennington di...

A Course in Miracles is a very practical path, but its practicality rests on some extremely unconventional views about the nature of reality. Is there evidence for those views? That is what we discuss with philosopher and writer Sharon Hewitt Rawlette. Sharon is a recent prize winner in the Bigelow Institute contest for essays on the evidence for life after death. In this conversation, Circle foun...

Perhaps we remember our parents saying, "Wait till you get out into the real world!" We know that world, where life is a struggle because no one gives you a break. But according to A Course in Miracles, that's the illusion, and we can look past that illusion "into beauty that will enchant you, and will never cease to cause you wonderment at its perfection." That, says the Course, is the real world...

"Shadow figures" is the term A Course in Miracles uses for the images we carry of people from our past who didn't give us the love we craved. These "ghosts" haunt our present. We project them onto individuals in the present, so that we relate to those present individuals as if they were the ghosts from the past. No wonder our relationships don't work! Join Circle Teachers Robert Perry and Emily Be...

We have witnessed an unprecedented focus on the self for the past few decades. This focus has permeated society, mainstream spirituality, and the ACIM community. Circle founder Robert Perry and executive director Emily Bennington call this "the cult of self" and in this podcast episode, they explored what it is, its effects, how we can spot it, and what we can do to resist its lure.

In the old days, it was "a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Now, we just worry that it's unsatisfying. A Course in Miracles teaches that it is neither. The Course says that at the foundation of our being we feel an irresistible attraction to God, which it calls "the pull of God." Join Robert Perry and Emily Bennington for a lively discussion of this important but little-kno...

"God" is a word that appears throughout the pages of A Course in Miracles . But how important is it for us to believe in God? Do we have any real evidence that God exists? Is belief in God necessary for making progress on the spiritual journey? In this episode of Exploring A Course in Miracles , Circle founder Robert Perry and executive director Emily Bennington discuss these questions as well as...

The Circle Story Project is a collection of real-life stories that exemplify Course principles, ranging from profound experiences and unusual phenomena to more everyday inner shifts. In this bonus episode of Exploring A Course in Miracles, Circle founder Robert Perry and executive director Emily Bennington talk with Story Project leader Sue Pearson and editor James Gregory about how the Story Proj...

What is anger? What causes it? How can we be relieved of it? Is it a force of its own that we can either bottle up or let flow through us? Or is it the result of something we ourselves are freely doing? For answers to these questions and more, you are invited to join Robert Perry and Emily Bennington for an in-depth look at anger as it is discussed in A Course in Miracles.

Katherine Woodward Thomas is the  New York Times -bestselling author of  Conscious Uncoupling  and  Calling in the One . Katherine is also a licensed marriage and family therapist and a teacher to students all around the world who want to learn about ending or beginning a significant relationship with love at the center. In this interview, Circle of Atonement Executive Director Emily Bennington in...

The time between Palm Sunday and Easter is widely known as 'Holy Week'. For many raised in Christian traditions, this has been a sacred week which is rich in ritual, meaning, and emotion, all of it building up to the joy of Easter. Course students from other traditions may not have any associations with Holy Week at all. Regardless of your background, wouldn't it be wonderful to celebrate Holy Wee...

Course students have long struggled with the fact that the feminine seems entirely absent from the pages of A Course in Miracles. God is "Father." The Holy Spirit is referred to as "Him." We are all called "Sons." Other people are called "brothers." In this podcast episode, Circle founder Robert Perry and executive director Emily Bennington speak about what this means while also highlighting examp...

As the Course community has become aware that far more editing was done in the Course than was previously known, the idea has grown up that all of this editing—done primarily by Helen Schucman—was guided. In other words, just as the dictation was from Jesus, the editing was too. That's a comforting idea, but we don't have to speculate about this. We can see literally thousands of editing decisions...

We all know healthy boundaries are important. Long before boundaries were celebrated as an essential part of self-care, Robert Frost wrote, "Good fences make good neighbors." And yet, as Course students, the topic of boundaries brings up many significant questions: How do we reconcile boundaries with the spiritual teaching that we ultimately have no boundaries, that the lines between us are a fict...

We often think of Christmas as the celebration of Jesus' birth in the world. The Course has its own take, however, one that celebrates a holy birth within all of us. In this episode of Exploring A Course in Miracles, Circle of Atonement founder Robert Perry and executive director Emily Bennington share an encapsulation of the Course's Christmas teachings and how we can all apply them to our lives....

A Course in Miracles contains 325 references to gratitude and thanks. Circle founder Robert Perry has compiled these references, pulled out the main themes and what we are left with is a truly unique and loving approach to practicing gratitude. In this episode of Exploring a Course in Miracles , Robert and Executive Director Emily Bennington take a closer look at these teachings that offer us prac...

When it comes to spirituality, so much of the focus is on how we ourselves can benefit. Does this practice bring us peace, are we feeling healthier and more motivated, etc. As students of A Course in Miracles, we all have personal goals we hope to achieve through this path, but have we ever stopped to consider what the Course's goals may be? Have we ever wondered whether the Course itself has a pu...

A Course in Miracles famously says "Seek not to change the world" and even declares "There is no world!" What, then, do we do as Course students about trying to save and heal the world? This question came vividly to the fore when bestselling author and Course teacher Marianne Williamson ran for President of the United States in 2019 and continues to strike a chord to this day. Within the Course co...

A Course in Miracles is a sacred text. Any edits or changes of any kind are not done so lightly. And so, the addition of the lost section, The Journey into Fear, is a significant thing and it's one we are excited to share with you. In this episode of Exploring A Course in Miracles , join Circle founder Robert Perry and executive director Emily Bennington for a lively discussion on not only this ne...

In the early weeks of the Course's dictation, Helen Schucman received three pieces of guidance about whether her co-scribe Bill Thetford should get a flu shot. At the time, there was even the possibility of the flu becoming an epidemic. Today, with the coronavirus pandemic continuing into its second year, the beauty of this guidance is that we have Jesus directly addressing how to respond to a sit...

A Course in Miracles Co-scribe Bill Thetford kept what appears to be a journal of Course application for two months—August and September—in 1966, just shy of a year from when A Course in Miracles began coming through (in October of 1965). The value of this journal is that it affords us a glimpse of what it looked like to Bill—and clearly to Helen Schucman to a degree as well—to apply the Course in...

As a close friend of A Course in Miracles co-scribe, the late Bill Thetford, Carol Howe authored an intimate account of Bill's life entitled, Never Forget To Laugh: Personal Recollections of Bill Thetford, Co-Scribe of A Course In Miracles ( https://amzn.to/3qD1pi5 - affiliate link). An elder within the ACIM community, Carol is still actively teaching ACIM, and in this fascinating conversation wit...

In this episode, Robert Perry and Emily Bennington share lessons they learned from recording the entire Text (over 900 pages) in just 19 days in order to make the audiobook of the Complete and Annotated Edition of A Course in Miracles. The audiobook will be available early in 2022, and you are welcome to sign up for 'Circle News' if you'd like to stay updated with the progress of this and the othe...