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Dear Friends,
Most of the problems we encounter are due to the attachment we have to our beliefs, our judgment of others and ourselves. And yet we find it difficult, almost impossible, to release ourselves from these beliefs, even for an instant. The beliefs are those we have been taught, from our earliest years with parents, through the teaching in our schools, from books we have read or from others’ voices we have heard.
We adhere to our beliefs, and most of us at some point feel threatened when another holds a belief that appears to contradict us. Wars are fought, fellow human beings are killed in the name of belief.
A Course in Miracles says that what we have learned projects a world that is not there. A world where we appear to be separate from our brothers, with a thought-system that ensures a fragmented view of our True Self.
This is the world of belief, where what we believe is raised to the level of Truth in our thinking. I believe what I believe to be true; you believe what you believe to be so. But belief is never the Truth.
For Truth to be True, it must remain independent of my point of view. It is not fashioned by my experience, my history, my exposure to one “ism” or another. It pays no heed to what culture, religion, politics or education befalls me. Somewhere deep inside, our need to promote our beliefs as True is seen as false. Inherent in our deception is the anxiety that comes with forming alliances as if agreeing to be false with others can somehow make the false true.
A Course in Miracles does not seek to impose another belief system upon us, but rather attempts to free us from our dependence on the beliefs we have borrowed from others. It says “There is another way of looking at the world,” that “the meaning of Love… is beyond what can be taught,” and “learned” or “believed.”
The Course gently challenges us to “remove the blocks to the awareness of Love’s Presence, which is your natural inheritance.” But to discover the truth of this, to discover what is evident when the eyes are willing to see, demands we suspend our judgment, if only for an instant.
In this retreat, we gather to support one another in the suspension of what we have learned before in order to discover the New.
We welcome you to join us in this Journey From Belief to Truth.
- Charles Johnson
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