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Expressions with Ben Andriessen: Being the Bridge

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Ben Andriessen

I am so pleased to welcome Ben Andriessen to the Expressions page. Ben first contacted me nearly four years ago. He told me the story he shares with you (below) of “finding” A Course of Love, and also shared this response to his first reading: “I have not been able to stop reading/studying it ever since. Some of it is rather challenging, almost goading my ego, while other sections are as clear as light and profoundlyMari Publicity5V helpful, revelatory almost. Thank you Jesus!” We have been communicating ever since and have witnessed the depth of our understanding growing as we’ve shared. This witnessing of our changed state is one of the many ways in which we support each other in discovering all of who we are. Ben’s poetic visage of ACOL is an enriching example of a new way of seeing, and one of the many reasons for this page dedicated to the sharing of our unique expressions of A Course of Love.  Welcome~

Mari Perron     


 

One of my favourite holiday activities is browsing in second-hand bookshops in search of surprises. It was in June 2012 when I found myself visiting the largest second-hand bookstore in Wigtown, Galloway, also known as Scotland’s book town. Prosaically called “The Bookshop,” it boasts having over one mile of shelving, supporting over 65,000 books. I made my way to the “spirituality” section which, disappointingly, was comprised of less than fifty volumes, one of which immediately caught my attention.

“A Course of Love” it said on its spine. What … !?

Having been a teacher/student of A Course in Miracles for 30 years, my instant reaction was: “How dare they!… a new Course?”  As I read the Table of Contents and leafed through the book, I got an immediate flavour of the power and authority of the words, very similar to my first encounter with A Course in Miracles, way back in 1983. Puzzled and curious, I bought it, having stayed only 5 minutes in that bookshop.

I wondered how a book, channeled from Jesus, became part of a second-hand bookshop’s inventory. Who would possibly discard it or sell it and why? Ah, the ways of Providence are mysterious indeed: A Course of Love (ACOL) became available in the UK in 2002 and took ten years to find me during a chance visit to a small town in Scotland. What a blessing it turned out to be!

One of the statements that grabbed me was that, with the ego gone, the time for learning was over, meaning I had graduated from ACIM and was now ready for a Post-Graduate Course, ACOL, that required no study or following lessons. Says C32.4: “Think not. This Course requires no thought and no effort.” This becomes possible when mind and heart join in relationship and are experienced as part of the Identity of Divine Self.

One of the remarkable discoveries I made is that many of the sections (or “verses”) can be printed and read as poetry, in “open verse,” to allow the deeper meaning of the words to become apparent. I give you two examples, and encourage anyone to find their own “poems.”

As with the poetry of Rumi and Hafiz, one allows oneself to “enter” the poem to explore, from within, the Spacious Self that we are:

Being
Your being here is not
futile or without purpose.
Your being here is itself
all purpose, all honor, all glory.
There is no being apart from being.
There is no being alive and being dead,
being human or being divine.

There is only being.

Being is.
Yet being,
like love,
is in relationship

Thus your purpose here,
rather than being one of finding meaning,
is coming to know through relationship.
It is in coming to know through relationship
that you come to know
your Self.
C:27.23

There is, of course, no space here to explore the many concepts presented in this self-contained “poem.” My favorite is one from the third volume of ACOL, Day 39 of The Dialogues, verse 46, called The Bridge. A fellow member of the ACOL Facebook Group, Anne Solveig Elmberg from Sweden, designed the marvelous background to this. Thank you so much, Anne.

Bridge revised

 

A few months ago I was listening to the Commons debate on Syria (2nd Dec ’15), and I was acutely aware of this line: “You will also be the bridge between war and peace.” Will the depth of that statement ever be grasped? I feel that it is not the yes/no of doing that matters, rather the awareness of . . . the bridge between.

May your journey with A Course of Love be blessed.

Ben Andriessen
Co. Durham
United Kingdom

 

Expressions Introduction with Elliott Robertson

Hi, I’m Mari Perron, and I’d like to personally welcome you to this page—the Expressions page, and theMari Publicity4 next, the Dialogue page—pages that have a lot to do with how I see A Course of Love  (ACOL) moving out into the world. As each reader experiencing this Course comes to the “end of learning” predicted within its pages, they begin to express themselves in new ways. This is so important. This Course will live on in us and as us. It is not meant to follow the same model as previous teachings. This is one of the many ways that you and I are called to be pioneers of the new. Willingly giving up our roles as teachers and learners, companionship and sharing become the new way, a way that fully recognizes the vital energy of our own unique gifts. Each offering from union and relationship, provides another piece of this puzzle that makes up creation of the new. You and I share, in part, so that we come to know what our new feelings and experiences are saying to us, and to see the part we play within the grand design. As each of us dare to share, we discover our Selves newly, and bring all that we are into our encounters. The catalyst that Jesus says this Course is, propels us into acceptance of our sisterhood and brotherhood, with equal acceptance of the forces that take us to that edge that creation is. To embrace these forces that can challenge us and make life confusing as well as joyous, is an act of creation in itself. This embrace is an act of love. And these pages will offer all kinds of various expressions of that love.

Today, I invite you to meet (and love!) Elliott Robertson.

 

The Center for A Course of Love welcomes guest poet Elliott Robertson.

elliott

 

 

“I’ll always remember my first encounter with A Course of Love.

I was at a Course in Miracles group; a lady in the group shared with me one or two pages from the text while we were waiting to begin.

I don’t recall the content nor anything my friend may have told me about A Course of Love. I only remember how delicious the words were to my soul. Never before had scripture resonated so profoundly for me.”

 

 

 

 

 


To the Center
By Elliott Robertson
O Spacious One,
you love to make
your home within my heart.
I am compelled to welcome you
with adoration.
You penetrate all hearts
with knowledge and with grace.
The heart must open
just as plants must greet the sun.

O Spacious One,
you have the power
to hold within you ponds and seas
and flowers. Everything that moves
is filled with spirit.
Bring me to my master’s house
so I might know the realm of plenty.
Bring me to the center
of your peace and love.


 

This page will continue to provide an offering of poetry, prose, art or video that reveals how Mari and other receiver/readers of A Course of Love, once deeply moved, express their heart-connection, their soul’s longing, or their journey to new life. “Expression” of our changed state is highly encouraged in ACOL, often described with the help of references to art:

book

Expressions you call art are desires to share the Self in a new way. These expressions you call art are expressions of a Self who observes and interacts in relationship. They are not expressions that remain contained to who you are or who you think yourself to be. They are not expressions of the self alone. They are not expressions of the self alone in terms you might consider autobiographical, and they are not expressions of the self alone that you would consider the self in separation. They are rather expressions of the Self in union—expressions of what the Self sees, feels, envisions, imagines in relationship.

A Treatise on the Personal Self T3:2.1

You can submit your expression to expressions@centerforacourseoflove.org.