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The Coursian Creed
In my previous post I briefly covered my faith journey from being raised to adopt the rules, roles, and rituals of a mainstream religion to realizing over time that it didn’t adequately fill the deep-seated need I had to fully comprehend the truth of my being, my relation to my creator, or how best to translate my eternal reality to a temporal existence in a human body.
I also mentioned that as part of that process I created my own bespoke religion which includes a creed or statement of core beliefs that underlie this Spirit-powered, mind-centric theology.
The Coursian Creed:
Now let’s break each step down a bit more:
I am a God created being of light, life and love that shapes my reality through the limitless power of thought and mind while dwelling in a boundless realm of pure Oneness and peace that is both changeless and eternal.
The majority of the world’s population, irrespective of their religious affiliation or lack thereof, consistently tell pollsters that they believe in some form of existence beyond the bounds of the physical body. Evidence for that belief can be found in the many thousands of documented near death experiences that describe the presence of brilliant light beings, an absence of time, thoughts as action, and an all-pervading sense of peace, love and unity. And home is the term that experiencers often use when asked to describe their surroundings.
So what if we’ve gotten it wrong all this time? What if we’re not born in a human body, live for a number of years, and then pass into some ethereal realm once the body expires, just to be judged whether worthy or not to stay or go. What if instead we were created as eternal beings of holy and radiant light, have never really left our home, and don’t just experience the sensation of love, but are in fact the very nature of it. You are Love. Pass it on.
“Everything you teach you are learning. Teach only love, and learn that love is yours and you are love.” ACIM T-6.3
Because my home is changeless and eternal, the material universe of space and time must be unreal.
If our home is eternal than a universe based on a belief in space and time must not be real, at least as experienced by an immortal being that is alien to that environment. It may be experienced as real—as occurs in a dream—but like a dream, it is understood to have not really existed once the dreamer is awakened.
"The purpose of time is to enable you to learn how to use time constructively. It is thus a teaching device and a means to an end. Time will cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating learning." ACIM T-1.1.15
Because the universe is unreal, a world based on dualistic concepts must be an illusion.
Earth is part of the larger universe and is ruled by the belief in competing opposites, so a being that exists in an eternal state of unity-based wholeness would not be able to effectively operate except at the level of illusion. The form of the illusion is determined by the mind, which itself is non-physical. As expressed by astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington, “The universe is of the nature of a thought or sensation in a universal Mind…To put the conclusion crudely - the stuff of the world is mind-stuff.”
"Your mind can be possessed by illusions, but spirit is eternally free. If a mind perceives without love, it perceives an empty shell and is unaware of the spirit within. But the Atonement restores spirit to its proper place. The mind that serves spirit is invulnerable." ACIM T-1.4
Because the world I perceive is an illusion, I must have never truly left my home, and instead have chosen to imagine a world in which I have an individuated form (body), experience pain and sorrow, and believe myself capable of evolving both physically and spiritually in continuous cycles of creation and destruction.
A body is key to believing the illusion is real because it serves as proof of a material existence. Consider the time spent attending to the body’s needs: we feed it, work it, exercise it, relieve it, rest it, groom it, decorate it, clothe it, wash it, medicate it, (what did I miss) and then repeat the process, day after day, until it ceases to function as hoped and we’re forced to continue the game in a non-physical reality that is meant to approximate our true home, but really only serves as the staging ground for our next body-based adventure.
And given that conflict-rich drama is the foundation on which all good adventures advance, we find ourselves constantly battling the dual impulses to give or take, help or hurt, judge or forgive, love or hate…you get the idea. It’s convenient to blame God or anyone other than ourselves for the pain, guilt and sorrow we feel, but the truth is that we created this world and are responsible individually and collectively for how we experience it. The body is nothing more than a mind-held device that we use to separate ourselves from others, but it doesn’t have to be like that. Keep reading.
“The world of perception is the world of time, of change, of beginnings and endings. It is based on interpretation, not on facts. It is the world of birth and death, founded on the belief in scarcity, loss, separation and death.” ACIM Preface, What It Says
Because I have never truly left reality—but choose to experience an illusion that is perceived as real—I retain a lingering sense of incompleteness that manifests as mental and physical distress, as well as a deep-seated longing for powers that are seemingly lost or unrealized.
Who can honestly say that they haven’t experienced moments, and for some many moments, of what feels like a missing part of your being…an absence of some essential power that is sensed but not fully recognized? Perhaps that is why we so love superheroes and other characters with fantastical powers that allow them to do things beyond the ability of the average human. What if you subconsciously knew that you really possessed God-like powers, but a part of your mind won’t allow you to remember that about yourself? Would that make you anxious, depressed, or simply angry? Perhaps instead it would make you a seeker of truths beyond the accepted norms that society typically condones. You made a world of choice, so choose wisely.
“Love is your power…it gives you everything.” ACIM T-7.6
Because I experience an underlying sense of incompleteness, I seek wholeness through the worship of idols in both material and conceptual forms.
Idols arise from our fundamental confusion about our identity. Having chosen to forget our true nature as spirit, we seek to establish a separate self–in the form of a body–and then look for external things to complete or protect this false identity. It’s because we think we’re bodies that we believe we need idols to defend against truth, because accepting our true nature would require giving up the separate self we’ve invested so much to make and maintain.
Idols can be anything that we believe gives us what only God can provide: peace, security, love and meaning. They come in myriad forms, including but not limited to work, money, politics, religion, and even our relationships.
Work is necessary to make money to feed, clothe and shelter the body. Politics provides a mechanism to influence social, economic and environmental policies that either harm or benefit our bodies, religions direct the rules, roles and rituals that bodies are required to adopt to ensure a proper and stable life and divine future.
“The body is the ego’s idol; the belief in sin made flesh and then projected outward. This produces what seems to be a wall of flesh around the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death.” ACIM T-20.6.11
Well, this post is getting a bit long and we still have five more to go, so I’ll cover the rest of the Creed in the next post. Please follow if you want to be alerted when the follow up post is ready to read.
Coursianity is my own bespoke religion and therefore isn’t something you can join in a traditional sense, but you can consciously embrace, practice and share it if you think it beneficial to your own search for deeper meaning and the betterment of the world.
Questions for Reflection
Next Post
The Coursian Creed (Part II)
Previous Post
Coursianity Is My Dis|Organized Religion
How to learn more about A Course in Miracles
Coursianity is not affiliated with any Course-related organizations and the thoughts, ideas, and opinions expressed are the author’s alone.
I also mentioned that as part of that process I created my own bespoke religion which includes a creed or statement of core beliefs that underlie this Spirit-powered, mind-centric theology.
The Coursian Creed:
- I am a God created being of light, life and love that shapes my reality through the limitless power of thought and mind while dwelling in a boundless realm of pure Oneness and peace that is both changeless and eternal.
- Because my home is changeless and eternal, the material universe of space and time must be unreal.
- Because the universe is unreal, a world based on dualistic concepts must be an illusion.
- Because the world I perceive is an illusion, I must have never truly left my home, and instead have chosen to imagine a world in which I have an individuated form (body), experience pain and sorrow, and believe myself capable of evolving both physically and spiritually in continuous cycles of creation and destruction.
- Because I have never truly left reality—but choose to experience an illusion that is perceived as real—I retain a lingering sense of incompleteness that manifests as mental and physical distress, as well as a deep-seated longing for powers that are seemingly lost or unrealized.
- Because I experience an underlying sense of incompleteness, I seek wholeness through the worship of idols in both material and conceptual forms.
- Because the idols I make are precious to me, I establish boundaries and build walls to protect them and am willing to attack and destroy anything or anyone that I fear could threaten my self-crafted identity.
- Because I feel guilty about having chosen to distance myself from God by creating a new identity—and fearing His imagined wrath in reprisal—I project my guilt onto others by believing that they are the cause of all that I lack, thereby justifying my nefarious actions against them.
- Because I see others as the enemy, I effectively block my awareness of the only means of escaping the illusion, which is to see others as a bridge to the Oneness we are in truth.
- Because I have effectively blocked awareness of the truth of my true being, I require a guide from without the illusion to show me the way home.
- Because I require a guide to show me a new way, I must first admit that I am lost and express a willingness to be led to a new vision of myself and the world.
Now let’s break each step down a bit more:
I am a God created being of light, life and love that shapes my reality through the limitless power of thought and mind while dwelling in a boundless realm of pure Oneness and peace that is both changeless and eternal.
The majority of the world’s population, irrespective of their religious affiliation or lack thereof, consistently tell pollsters that they believe in some form of existence beyond the bounds of the physical body. Evidence for that belief can be found in the many thousands of documented near death experiences that describe the presence of brilliant light beings, an absence of time, thoughts as action, and an all-pervading sense of peace, love and unity. And home is the term that experiencers often use when asked to describe their surroundings.
So what if we’ve gotten it wrong all this time? What if we’re not born in a human body, live for a number of years, and then pass into some ethereal realm once the body expires, just to be judged whether worthy or not to stay or go. What if instead we were created as eternal beings of holy and radiant light, have never really left our home, and don’t just experience the sensation of love, but are in fact the very nature of it. You are Love. Pass it on.
“Everything you teach you are learning. Teach only love, and learn that love is yours and you are love.” ACIM T-6.3
Because my home is changeless and eternal, the material universe of space and time must be unreal.
If our home is eternal than a universe based on a belief in space and time must not be real, at least as experienced by an immortal being that is alien to that environment. It may be experienced as real—as occurs in a dream—but like a dream, it is understood to have not really existed once the dreamer is awakened.
"The purpose of time is to enable you to learn how to use time constructively. It is thus a teaching device and a means to an end. Time will cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating learning." ACIM T-1.1.15
Because the universe is unreal, a world based on dualistic concepts must be an illusion.
Earth is part of the larger universe and is ruled by the belief in competing opposites, so a being that exists in an eternal state of unity-based wholeness would not be able to effectively operate except at the level of illusion. The form of the illusion is determined by the mind, which itself is non-physical. As expressed by astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington, “The universe is of the nature of a thought or sensation in a universal Mind…To put the conclusion crudely - the stuff of the world is mind-stuff.”
"Your mind can be possessed by illusions, but spirit is eternally free. If a mind perceives without love, it perceives an empty shell and is unaware of the spirit within. But the Atonement restores spirit to its proper place. The mind that serves spirit is invulnerable." ACIM T-1.4
Because the world I perceive is an illusion, I must have never truly left my home, and instead have chosen to imagine a world in which I have an individuated form (body), experience pain and sorrow, and believe myself capable of evolving both physically and spiritually in continuous cycles of creation and destruction.
A body is key to believing the illusion is real because it serves as proof of a material existence. Consider the time spent attending to the body’s needs: we feed it, work it, exercise it, relieve it, rest it, groom it, decorate it, clothe it, wash it, medicate it, (what did I miss) and then repeat the process, day after day, until it ceases to function as hoped and we’re forced to continue the game in a non-physical reality that is meant to approximate our true home, but really only serves as the staging ground for our next body-based adventure.
And given that conflict-rich drama is the foundation on which all good adventures advance, we find ourselves constantly battling the dual impulses to give or take, help or hurt, judge or forgive, love or hate…you get the idea. It’s convenient to blame God or anyone other than ourselves for the pain, guilt and sorrow we feel, but the truth is that we created this world and are responsible individually and collectively for how we experience it. The body is nothing more than a mind-held device that we use to separate ourselves from others, but it doesn’t have to be like that. Keep reading.
“The world of perception is the world of time, of change, of beginnings and endings. It is based on interpretation, not on facts. It is the world of birth and death, founded on the belief in scarcity, loss, separation and death.” ACIM Preface, What It Says
Because I have never truly left reality—but choose to experience an illusion that is perceived as real—I retain a lingering sense of incompleteness that manifests as mental and physical distress, as well as a deep-seated longing for powers that are seemingly lost or unrealized.
Who can honestly say that they haven’t experienced moments, and for some many moments, of what feels like a missing part of your being…an absence of some essential power that is sensed but not fully recognized? Perhaps that is why we so love superheroes and other characters with fantastical powers that allow them to do things beyond the ability of the average human. What if you subconsciously knew that you really possessed God-like powers, but a part of your mind won’t allow you to remember that about yourself? Would that make you anxious, depressed, or simply angry? Perhaps instead it would make you a seeker of truths beyond the accepted norms that society typically condones. You made a world of choice, so choose wisely.
“Love is your power…it gives you everything.” ACIM T-7.6
Because I experience an underlying sense of incompleteness, I seek wholeness through the worship of idols in both material and conceptual forms.
Idols arise from our fundamental confusion about our identity. Having chosen to forget our true nature as spirit, we seek to establish a separate self–in the form of a body–and then look for external things to complete or protect this false identity. It’s because we think we’re bodies that we believe we need idols to defend against truth, because accepting our true nature would require giving up the separate self we’ve invested so much to make and maintain.
Idols can be anything that we believe gives us what only God can provide: peace, security, love and meaning. They come in myriad forms, including but not limited to work, money, politics, religion, and even our relationships.
Work is necessary to make money to feed, clothe and shelter the body. Politics provides a mechanism to influence social, economic and environmental policies that either harm or benefit our bodies, religions direct the rules, roles and rituals that bodies are required to adopt to ensure a proper and stable life and divine future.
“The body is the ego’s idol; the belief in sin made flesh and then projected outward. This produces what seems to be a wall of flesh around the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death.” ACIM T-20.6.11
Well, this post is getting a bit long and we still have five more to go, so I’ll cover the rest of the Creed in the next post. Please follow if you want to be alerted when the follow up post is ready to read.
Coursianity is my own bespoke religion and therefore isn’t something you can join in a traditional sense, but you can consciously embrace, practice and share it if you think it beneficial to your own search for deeper meaning and the betterment of the world.
Questions for Reflection
- Do you have a list of key beliefs that you hold sacrosanct like a creed?
- How do you feel about the idea of your human existence being an illusion versus your core reality as spirit?
- Do you have a nagging and unidentified sense of lack in your life?
Next Post
The Coursian Creed (Part II)
Previous Post
Coursianity Is My Dis|Organized Religion
How to learn more about A Course in Miracles
- Circle of Atonement - An online community for learning and practicing ACIM
- Coursianity.com - A website companion to this Substack account
Coursianity is not affiliated with any Course-related organizations and the thoughts, ideas, and opinions expressed are the author’s alone.
Coursianity Is My Dis|Organized Religion
What is religion: a force for good, a tool for social or political manipulation, the “opiate of the masses”…or a bit of all three? I created my own bespoke religion to fill a spirit-sized hole in my psyche and to explore the curious human compulsion to create faith-based belief systems in order to cope with the stress and uncertainties of life both here and beyond.
At the most virtuous level, religions are able to address our most profound existential anxieties, offer a framework for understanding an often chaotic world, promote social cohesion, and act as a bridge to facilitate cooperation across ethnic, cultural and economic divides.
At the other end of the spectrum, organized religions have repeatedly shown an unsettling capacity for perpetuating harm through holy wars, ethnic cleansings, the oppression of marginalized groups, the support of caste systems, and the use of divine scripture to justify slavery, racial discrimination and a host of other egregious acts.
Those are two sides of the same coin, so to speak. How does one make sense of it?
The Road to Faith
I was raised in a Christian household—Sunday school and church attendance, home-based Bible lessons, and bedtime prayers—yet the fundamental narrative preached from the pulpit and presented in the illustrated Bible my mother shared with me and my siblings never fully resonated in my curious adolescent mind. At least not in a way that allowed the established framework to fully take hold in my consciousness.
I was taught that the Holy Trinity is a core doctrine of Christian faith, but due to its complex nature, it was best thought of as a mystery of faith, revealed in Scripture, but not fully comprehensible to human reason. That explanation only served to raise my doubts and pique my curiosity.
I was also taught that reason allows us to make logical sense of the world and serves to evolve our thinking to address changing information and circumstances. At least that’s how it’s supposed to work, but I was being asked to suspend reason with regard to religion, while applying it in all other aspects in my life.
Over time the questions continued to mount, but the answers seemed less than logical.
For instance, why did Jesus preach to turn the other cheek, love our neighbors and even love our enemies while telling his disciples that he didn’t come to bring peace but a sword. And why does the Bible tells us that God loves all of his children yet chose to protect only the favored or “chosen” while visiting plagues, murder and worldwide destruction on others?
Many who reach this point choose to become atheists, agnostics or the religiously unaffiliated, but I was still a “believer,” albeit of a slightly different shade or shape. The established Christian mold was broken in my mind and I didn’t know how to put it back together in a way that would serve to preserve and enrich my most cherished beliefs.
Over time, it become increasingly difficult to accept the notion that my most fundamental beliefs about life, love and ultimate reality—including a passionate belief of the existence and significance of God, Christ and the Holy Spirit—should be denied a religious identity simply because those beliefs differ markedly from any of the organized religions of the day.
The Traditional Path
On the surface, I appear to be Christian given my nationality, geography, ethnicity, and professed belief in God. But I’ve never felt like that label was a good fit.
I’ve heard it said that there are thousands of Christian denominations, so determining the criteria for calling oneself a Christian appears to be largely open to interpretation…without getting into the particulars of what constitutes a “real Christian.”
While wholesale agreement regarding articles of faith are varied, some core beliefs are typically held by most Christians:
- God exists in three co-equal persons: Father, Son (Jesus Christ), and Holy Spirit.
- Jesus is the only Son of God, fully God and fully human.
- The Bible is God’s inspired word and the ultimate authority for faith and practice.
- Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
- All humans have sinned, resulting in separation from God.
- Jesus died on the cross as a sacrifice for the sins of humanity.
- Jesus rose from the dead on the third day, conquering sin and death.
- Forgiveness of sins is gained exclusively through faith in Jesus Christ.
- Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead.
- We are called to live lives of love and good works.
One out of ten; that’s as close as I get to being a card carrying Christian. The importance of love and good works is the only core belief that I wholly embrace without the need for substantial reinterpretation.
My Dis|Organized Detour
Coursianity promotes a Spirit First approach to life that places a high value on divine guidance and the immense power of interpersonal expressions of love, kindness, empathy, and forgiveness. It is a religion of One; looking within rather than without, and seeing all of God’s children as sharing a common creation experience that makes them equally worthy of His eternal, unalterable and unconditional love.
I named my religion Coursianity because it looks to a book titled A Course in Miracles (ACIM or Course) as its designated sacred text and because it shares some of the better elements of Christianity without all the added rites, rituals and dogma. Love is the watchword of my religion and it’s the only thing that keeps me sane in this crazy, upside down world.
I call it disorganized because it balances somewhere between a fully structured religion and purely individualized spiritual beliefs. Coursianity offers a modicum of structure in the form of a widely available sacred text—with more than a million copies sold worldwide—a well established means of learning and practicing the core lessons set forth in the text, and a list of core principles in the form of a creed, which I’ll explore in a future post.
Coursianity holds the following beliefs:
- The Trinity includes God as Creator/Source; the children of God who are expressed as unique beings or souls that are also unified in a single universal Self or Christ; and the Holy Spirit, who serves as the Voice for God in this world.
- The historic Jesus exemplifies the extraordinary depth of empathy, kindness, and loving/healing actions that an incarnated soul can achieve in a human lifetime.
- Post resurrection, Jesus serves as a teacher and guide for those who seek to live by his example.
- A Course in Miracles contains new teachings of Jesus that seek to set the record straight on key lessons that have either been forgotten, suppressed or intentionally altered to suit the needs of those in power.
- Jesus was conceived and born in the same manner as the rest of us.
- We choose to believe that we’re separate from God, but that error (not sin) is temporal, addressable and correctable without the need for fear or punishment…eternal or otherwise.
- Jesus died on the cross due to the greed, envy, and fear of those who choose power over peace and love.
- Jesus rose from the dead to prove that death is an illusion and life everlasting.
- What you give or project onto others comes back to you in equal measure. Give love, get love. Give fear, get fear. It’s really that simple. We find our true identity through how we perceive and treat others.
- The world will meet a quick, quiet and joyful end when all illusions are undone.
- We are called to live lives of love and good works.
It’s not a conversion religion. There’s no declaration of faith, tithing or genuflecting. It’s a theology of the Mind, so there are no steepled cathedrals or holy sacraments. Nothing is added that would distract from looking deeply within for the path that leads to our waking from the dream and returning to the Kingdom that we are and have never truly left.
The Journey Onward
It wouldn’t feel right to end without acknowledging that Christianity—on the whole, as a religion—has inspired countless individuals around the world to feed, clothe, house, and generally care for millions of those in need over the course of its existence. That’s a fact, not opinion, so it’s certainly worthy of recognition and admiration.
It just doesn’t work for me.
I’m drawn to a different truth, one that is more inclusive and anchored in love in a way that doesn’t allow for exclusion or contradiction in any way, shape or form. And there’s no allowance for the use of fear, judgement or guilt as tools of coercion, persuasion or persecution.
God is love and so are we…period.
I also want it to be clear that Coursianity is tailored to satisfy a specific need that I have to make sense of the world, universe/multiverse, AI, quantum effects, aliens (both local and galactic), and more—as informed by ACIM—but not explicitly covered in its teachings. It’s my self-crafted, cognitive framework for understanding Life.
It’s not something I’m asking you to join, other than following and/or sharing this account if you find my journey of interest and potentially beneficial to your own search for deeper meaning.
Questions for Reflection
- Do you think that religion is a dirty word or the best hope for humanity?
- Does the idea of a self-crafted, disorganized religion make sense to you?
- If you created your own religion, what would it look like?
Up Next
- The Coursian Creed: 11 Core Principles for Daily Decisionmaking
How to learn more about A Course in Miracles
- Circle of Atonement - An online community for learning and practicing ACIM
- Coursianity.com - A website companion to this Substack account
Coursianity is not affiliated with any Course-related organizations and the thoughts, ideas, and opinions expressed are the author’s alone.