Best Book for Understanding the Course
Book Review
Posted by aplecompte on July 20th, 2009
TITLE: Awakening Through A Course in Miracles
AUTHOR: David Hoffmeister
I studied the Course for 18 years and thought I understood it. But reading Awakening Through a Course in Miracles took me to a much deeper level. What is so different about this book is that the author, David Hoffmeister, has been there and done that. Since his awakening almost two decades ago, David has clarified the message of the Course for individuals and groups across the United States and in over 20 foreign countries. He consistently speaks with the wisdom and unconditional love of the Christ Mind.
The book is a selection of David’s best teachings, letters and small group dialogues on key Course topics, sequenced from basic to advanced. His desire is that you clarify your understanding and accept God’s plan for salvation, healing and happiness. Jesus assures us that God’s plan for salvation works and David is living proof that it does.
In the beginning dialogues David’s tone is conversational. For example, here he debunks the ego’s plan for salvation: “The ego is basically saying that if you, as a body, just get the right pieces of the puzzle, if you get the script to come out just the way you want it to, you’ll be happy and peaceful. What a scam! How long will you play that game before seeing that there’s no cheese at the end of that tunnel. Seeking the right mate, the right job, the right place to live, the right climate is truly a wild goose chase. That kind of seeking attempts to bring about peace of mind and happiness by changing the form instead of accepting the Holy Spirit’s purpose. You can never find lasting happiness and peace in the world. Accept this, but do not stop with this. The Holy Spirit will lead you to happy dreams, and on to waking from the dream entirely.” p. 152.
He makes the metaphysical context readily understandable: “The sleeping mind believes that it has separated from God and has made up a self and a world. It thinks it is the author of its own identity, the author of reality. Until the Correction for this basic error is accepted, this problem is believed by the sleeping mind to be a battle with God. But a battle of this magnitude is too terrifying to keep in awareness and is therefore denied from awareness. The problem seems to be projected onto the screen of the world and thus appears to be where it is not, between persons or between persons and institutions. These are, therefore, make-believe conflicts.” p. 146. The book contains an annotated chart the Course’s projector analogy, in which light passes through the ego film and false cause-and-effect relationships of self/other and subject/object are projected onto the screen of the world.
And David nails the judgment problem: “The ego is the underlying belief that one can actually separate from God. After thinking it separated, the mind felt so chaotic that it tried to order the illusion, to bring some sense of stability to the chaos. That’s where judgment first came in. To order the illusion, to make a hierarchy of illusions, is to judge. But by thinking that it can order its own thoughts, or think apart from God, the ego mind blocks awareness of the Christ, which thinks only with God. God orders one’s real thoughts.” p. 139. David covers key concepts like judgment from many angles.
I found it comforting to see that David teaches in the same way Jesus does. In the first chapter of the Course Jesus says, “I was a man who remembered spirit and its knowledge. As a man I did not attempt to counteract error with knowledge, but to correct error from the bottom up. I demonstrated both the powerlessness of the body and the power of the mind… I cannot unite your will with God's for you, but I can erase all misperceptions from your mind if you will bring it under my guidance. Only your misperceptions stand in your way. Without them your choice is certain. Sane perception induces sane choosing. I cannot choose for you, but I can help you make your own right choice.” T-3.IV.7.
David takes the same practical approach, “We come together open to having errors of thought and misperceptions healed or corrected from the bottom up. In other words, we do not start with the abstract (Love of God, Knowledge, Heaven) as a solution to perceived problems.” p. 110.
This is why David’s dialogues with students make good learning devices. David says, “The process could be described as a very open dialogue in which no questions, concerns, or topics are off limits; a kind of spiritual psychotherapy in which everyday perceived problems are traced back to the false beliefs and resulting misperceptions in the mind… Cultivating a sincere intention to discern the nature of ego thought, raising it to awareness, leads you to a greater willingness to choose peace instead of fear. Why would anyone choose fear unless, unrecognized, it seemed to offer something of value?” p. 111.
David clarifies the use of “stepping stone beliefs,” false concepts the ego mind believes in, to establish an initial common understanding. These concepts are then passed over as you move from believing you are a person stuck in the world to understanding your spiritual reality.
David: “Meditation, for example, starts out with practice. You do have to work at training your mind to jump off the thought trains, as they say in Buddhism. But there comes a point when your life becomes a living meditation. In other words, you need to trust the Holy Spirit for everything. The Holy Spirit is not going to give you a pathway that seems like deprivation and sacrifice; you would quit listening to the Holy Spirit if you start feeling that. You have to be given a carefully developed curriculum, step by step, to build your confidence in miracle working.” p. 186
David is uniquely qualified to tell us about the joyful aspects of awakening. Here are a few words about how stabilized perception brings peace of mind: “The purpose I was called to extend has stabilized my perception of the world. It is very much like a lucid dream that is very happy and calm. The serenity comes from being aware of the dreaming and not taking any of the signs and symbols personally, as if they were actual things existing in and of themselves.” p. 207
For, me, the big eye-openers came in the Advanced Teachings section of this 370-page book. Unfortunately, because they really are advanced, I can’t explain them here. The chapter titles are: Opening to the Experience of Real Relationship, Purpose is the Only Choice, Reversing Effect and Cause: Getting to the Bottom of the Belief in Linear Time, and The Five Levels of Mind.
A Course in Miracles is a self-study program in forgiveness. Forgiveness is the means by which the thinking of the world is reversed and God is remembered. After reading it, “the reader is left in the hands of his or her own Internal Teacher,” the Holy Spirit. My problem was that, after reading the Course, I still could not clearly and consistently hear the Hoy Spirit. At times my enthusiasm for the Course wavered and I was not always certain of my direction.
Then last year I went to a retreat with David Hoffmeister and experienced his happiness, love and clarity. I was reinvigorated. I read his book and had a similar uplifting experience. I learned the importance of these sentences in the Manual for Teachers about the developing teacher: “Yet when he is ready to go on, he goes with mighty companions beside him… He will not go on from here alone.” David is now my mighty companion and I am sure of my direction.
David wrote Awakening Through A Course in Miracles so that all of us might come to awakening more quickly. I recommend that you join him in spiritual companionship. Perhaps you think you stumbled on this review “by accident.” But, if it resonates, you may order the book through this link: http://messengers-of-christ.org/materials.htm
This review appears in the July/August issue of Miracles magazine.
Tags: Awakening, Ego, Forgiveness, News
