Luke
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Hi, and thank you for taking the time to read a little about me.
I had always known of A Course in Miracles. There were these three blue books (the Text, Workbook, and Manual for Teachers were each separate volumes back then) that were always on a shelf near at hand, but I didn’t really know what they were. My dad had been an early adopter, reading about the Course in a magazine around 1980 or ’81. He was still cattle ranching full-time when he went through the Workbook, and this was what led him to let go of his ranching career to become a high school science teacher, where he ended up positively influencing the lives of a few thousand kids in the following decades.
He suggested I see what I thought of it in my late teens in the wake of losing my older sister in a car accident. I have a clear memory of recognizing something in me shift when I read the words, Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God. I think I made it to Lesson 10 before I gave it up the first time. In the ensuing years, I would try again and get a little further each time before giving up, vacillating between reading Edgar Cayce, Ken Wilbur and more mainstream Christian theology. In my mid-twenties, I made it all the way to Lesson 81 before getting an email from Gary Renard advertising some sort of anti-aging compound and deciding that if he, the “authority” on A Course in Miracles, was using his status to hock anti-aging creams, that meant the Course was full of crap! (That didn’t last very long.)
Slowly, as “time” wore on, I started to recognize that I couldn’t do it on my own, anymore. My dad was one of the handful of people I knew that had even heard of A Course in Miracles, and we would have fantastic conversations about the metaphysics and how it aligned with and contextualized the more mainstream Christian teachings we knew, but beyond that, it was largely an individual endeavor for both of us. I had never tried any kind of study group outside of the mainstream church I grew up in.
Fast forward to 2019, my wife Laura and I were looking for some kind of couples’ retreat. She was unfamiliar with the Course beyond the little I had told her about it, but I saw that the Take Me to Truth community was going to be having a retreat in Abiquiu, New Mexico. Being a New Mexico native, I thought Laura, being a New Mexico native, would be willing to consider it because, even if it was too weird for us, at least it would give us a chance to spend a week in what we both feel is our favorite part of the world. In that week we both fell in love with the community, and she took to the concepts like a duck to water. A few months later, we joined Coreen Walson in her next TTC offering, and I have been looking at ways to get more involved with Take Me to Truth ever since.
For my part, I realized what I had been missing all along was the community. You can’t do the Course on your own (well, you can, but it is very difficult and takes a level of discipline I lack). I learned that my intellectual understanding was pretty much spot on, but that I had no idea how to incorporate the teaching into my daily life because I really didn’t understand how to recognize ego and how subtle it is at taking everything, including my spiritual journey, and ultimately reverting it back to itself.
There are many good teachers of A Course in Miracles, but I felt at home as soon as I became willing to be a part of Take Me to Truth. I’m excited that Sandy has asked me to join her as a co-facilitator. I look forward to joining with the new group that forms with us in Light and Love and seeing what miracles we can give together.
With Peace and Love and Good Happiness Stuff,
Luke