The question of how in general to read or study the Course is addressed directly near the end of the Course itself, in the Manual for Teachers, where it is stated that each person’s program of study of the Course is highly individualized. “In some cases, it may be helpful for the student to read this Manual first. Others might do better to begin with the Workbook. Still others may do well to start at the deeper level of the Text. Which is the best beginning for whom? Who would profit more from prayers alone? Who needs just a smile, being as yet unready for more? No one should attempt to answer these questions alone. . . . The curriculum of awakening is highly individualized, and all aspects are under the Holy Spirit’s particular Care and Guidance. Ask and It will answer. The responsibility is Spirit’s, and It alone is fit to assume it. To do so is Its Function. To refer all questions and decisions to It is yours.”
The specific way to read, study, and practice the Workbook for Students is straightforward because the exact requirements of each day’s lesson are presented with the lesson theme, so there is complete clarity about the reading of this part of the Course. The two underlying structures for the Workbook are, first, to do the lessons in order, and second, not to practice more than one lesson in a given day, though as much time as needed can be taken to study and practice any given lesson or all the lessons.
A specific way to read the Manual for Teachers is not articulated in the same way as are the Workbook lessons. However, because the Manual is relatively short, and is presented as a series of questions and answers, its reading reflects the simplicity of its presentation.
How to read and study the Text is more complicated than either the Workbook or Manual because it is extraordinarily deep and quite extensive, and no study guide is provided by its author, though guides such as “A Summary of the Course” and “The Worldview of the Course” – available on this website and in the preface of A Renewed Course in Miracles – may help. As is stated in the Introduction to the Workbook for Students: “A thought foundation for understanding how the world came to be as it appears to be, and the way to overcome it, such as the Text presents, is necessary as a context to make exercises to integrate and direct the mind to allow miracles to be performed meaningful.” Given the essentiality of the Text as the thought foundation for the entire Course, including in making the lessons and exercises in the Workbook meaningful, it is worth considering how students of the Course might best facilitate their reading of the Text.
The Text doesn’t seek to outline a sequential left-brained course of study or cosmology. While the thought foundation for the entire Course is presented in the Text, this is done in a nonlinear, non-analytical manner. As the reader takes in the ideas presented in the Text, they are immersed in a kind of healing substance – a new thought system – and the tight construction of concepts that has been the reader’s old fixed thought system is gently loosened in this immersion. Such a regular immersion in thoughts of Truth and awakening “loosens” the egoic mindset’s hold on the mind, and in so doing loosens the world from all it was thought to be. In the context of the imagination of being immersed in a healing substance – rather than reading the Text with the thought of it being a roadmap to enlightenment, a thought that might lend itself to the illusion of spiritual development rather than to the undoing of illusion – reading the sections of the Text that make up each chapter may be thought of as regularly immersing oneself in a spiritual thermal mineral pool. This image also reflects the healing presence of Aesculapius, whose name was seen on the book spine of the Course in a dream by the Course’s scribe, Helen Schucman, prior to the beginning of the formal Course project.
Immersing ourselves in the way the thoughts and words are presented in a kind of cosmic logic of Truth in each Text section can be seen as gently relaxing and healing our minds, which are so used to the defensive, consumptive, and strategic manner in which the ego thinks and interacts with ideas and with the world. The deep hurts, “bruises” and trauma that our minds have experienced over time immeasurable, and the old ideas we have accumulated through misperceiving ourselves and the world, are gently dissolved, allowing for the establishing of the connections of a new thought system. To read the Text in this way can be seen as giving oneself the gift of spending time with Aesculapius and with Spirit in a spiritual thermal mineral pool that heals and restores the mind, much as immersing in a physical thermal mineral pool would offer healing on that level.
Jesus invites us in the Course: “Let us come daily to this Holy Place and spend a while together. Here we share our final dream. It is a dream in which there is no sorrow, for it holds a hint of all the Glory given us by the Divine. The grass is pushing through the soil, the trees are budding now, and birds have come to live within their branches. Earth is being born again in new perception. Night has gone, and we have come together in the Light.”
The pages of the Text experienced as a healing immersion in a new thought system can in this way easily be seen as a unique gift of rest, renewal and awakening for our minds in such great need of this, rather than as a cumulative sum total of pages to read to learn yet another set of ideas to add to one’s collection. In this way the Text sections, like the Workbook lessons and Manual sections, may be experienced as a miraculous gift to be cherished rather than as a given amount of words and concepts to make one’s way through.
Some readers may wish to complete the reading of the entire Course, including the Text and the Manual for Teachers, in the same year (at a minimum) that it takes to complete the 365 Workbook for Students lessons. There is a correspondence between the 365 Workbook lessons and the Text and Manual for Teachers sections that facilitates completing the reading of the entire Course in one year, and still allows the daily immersion in the sections of the Text described here. See “Study Materials” on this website for information about this one-year arrangement of the Course. This website’s Daily Lessons also presents this 365-day arrangement of the entire Renewed Course.
Two additional important points about reading the Course are given by its author, the first about applying focused study skills to mastering the material, given that it is an entirely new thought system, and the second about the applicability of its content to the problems we experience in our lives:
“All learning, even casual, involves attention and reflection at some level. More complex learning requires more involved attention and reflection, i.e., study. This Course is a training in integrating and directing your mind so you will be able to work miracles, that is, to allow miracles to be performed through you. As such, it is not casual learning. Students with sound study skills assign reflection or study periods for themselves. You may discover that the solutions to many of the problems you find yourself being faced with may be obtained through regular reflection on what is presented in this Course.
“You may believe that what is presented in this Course cannot really help you until you have completed the entire Course, even if you read over and reflect on some parts more than one time. I [Jesus] can assure you that this Course is not designed in that way. Every part may be fruitfully applied immediately to some aspect of your life.”