The Outing

Hopefully, none of you will be disappointed to find that this post isn’t about a picnic or a trip to the mall. Instead, it’s about my decision to once more tell my story.

As I mentioned on my About Abby page, A Course in Miracles has been an important part of my spiritual life for more than 11 years now. In fact, without the things I have learned through the Course, I would never have had the courage to accept the truth of who I am and become the woman I am today. Thus, I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the Course.

I first came to the Course through a woman I began dating in August 1996. Linda had been a student of the Course for several years and we discussed it briefly several times while we were together. At one point, we read the Preface, which describes how the Course came to be and the major lessons it teaches. What I read spoke to a deep place within me but the study group that Linda had been part of had disbanded and I didn’t know how else to begin, so I didn’t pursue it further. In January 1997, however, Linda ended our relationship. By then, I had lived in Prescott for almost two years. During that time, I had noticed an announcement of a weekly Course in Miracles study group in the “community calendar” feature in the local newspaper. Having lost the relationship that I had been clinging to for support and companionship, I was angry and hurt and felt myself sinking further into the depression that has been a part of my life since I was very, very young. Fortunately, by that time, I had learned that I didn’t have to live in misery. I also knew, however, that I had to find something besides the twelve-step meetings, therapy and breathwork sessions that I was already doing, to keep me afloat. In that moment of pain and desperation, I turned to the Course.

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Thoughts on Change and Choices – and Much, Much More

Yesterday, my friend Callie wrote about the need for change in her life and came to the conclusion that only the “atomic option,” i.e. exploding the status quo that those around her seek to impose, is likely to work for her. I had a pretty powerful reaction to that idea, and wrote her a long comment, which is pasted below, in response. I know that much of what I wrote is about me, not her, and, in fact, directly relates to our discussions about the delusion of the necessity for sacrifice to get what we need during my Course in Miracles study group yesterday morning. (If you want to see what prompted those discussions, read the section called “The Time of Rebirth” in Chapter 15 of the Text of A Course in Miracles, which appears on p. 324 of the second edition, or, in ACIM speak, you can find it at T:15:X (or Text, Ch. 15, Sec. X).) But I also had a lot of other things going on yesterday, all of which led to one of the most emotional days I’ve had in a long time.

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