A Course in Miracles and Nihilism

Recently, I've read opinions regarding A Course in Miracles, and Ken Wapnick's teachings, being nihilistic. In my personal experience, Ken is the least nihilistic teacher and person I've ever known or could imagine, and A Course in Miracles is as far from nihilism as one can get.

I think what happens is the content of the Course is so threatening to our self-identity, and the meaning we have given the world, that many people have a tendency to resist and therefore misunderstand the Course, and therefore resist and misunderstand Ken's teachings of it.

The Course can only be understood by the heart, and resistance to the Course, namely, resistance to the presence of love in our mind, allows many to use the ingeniousness of the ego, whether within the construct of the Course itself or other traditions, to deconstruct the Course into pieces that add up to 2+2=4. The "good" news is that it proves their point, and the bad news is... that it "proves" their point. Anything that would explain away God, meaning, value, hope, or purpose, is not something we would want to be right about.

This is a 2+2=5 course. We can't understand it with 2+2=4 intellectualism. We can only understand it from a 2+2=5 perspective. The perspective of the heart.

This perspective cannot be found within a worldly thought system, it must come from beyond the logical insanity of a worldly thought system.

The Course is not a scientific treatise, and cannot be read as such. It is an epic love poem that, like subjective art, speaks to the heart of some, while others remain unmoved before it, and move on to what personally touches them.

When people try to break forgiveness down to formulas (which can be helpful in the beginning stages), or break the Course down into disassembled concepts, they aren't doing justice to the magnificence of Course. A Course in Miracles is a transcendent, rapturous, symphony that is layered beyond the first, second, or one-hundredth reading. It spirals ever upward, revealing itself in glorious ways we could have never imagined in our youthful arrogance of studentship.

And even then, it acknowledges its limits as a symbol, and invites us, finally, to "forget this world, forget this Course, and come with wholly empty hands"... not unto nothingness, but "...unto your God." (W-pI.189.7:5)

It is the ego that disappears into the nothingness from whence it seemed to come. It is the ego in its inability to even conceive of love, that thinks what is outside itself must also be nothingness. And it is the ego, in its confusion and perpetual self-protection, that mistakenly interprets such a journey as meaningless, when in truth, it is the only meaningful journey within illusions. In A Course in Miracles, the world has great meaning, one that offers happiness and hope, for now the world has been given a new and holy purpose: to return us to the mind where illusions give way to truth.

Before we can come with wholly empty hands unto our God, we must first - if we are Course students, or those who would seek to offer estimable opinion on it - come with wholly empty hands unto this Course. Those with agendas of any kind do not come with wholly empty hands, and unknowingly erect a barrier between themselves and the loving content which flows from the Course into an open mind.

Many critics of the Course have given it a cursory reading and haven't come close to hearing its happy song of healing. Others have probed deeper, bringing their own worldly understanding, philosophic understanding, atheistic understanding, religious understanding, non-dualistic understanding, New Age or spiritual understanding, any understanding... and have attempted to give their view of the Course, without recognizing the meaninglessness of that view. For such a view must be shaped and limited by the "raucous shrieks" of their own understanding, rather than inspired by the letting go of all understanding, and allowing the Course to speak with pure abstraction into the silence of a humble heart.

It is here the many subtle layers of the Course and its symphony are finally heard and understood beyond all rationales and rationality itself. A gentle melody which gives way to the eternal song of Heaven itself.