User:Dialogues/A Course of Love

A COURSE OF LOVE
A Course of Love was first published in 2001 by New World Library and since has been maintained by the Center for A Course of Love and printed and distributed through Itasca/Bookmobile. It is a three-book series that includes A Course of Love as Volume I, The Treatises of A Course of Love as Volume II, and The Dialogues of A Course of Love as Volume III. 

Not until Mari Perron scribed this course has another person been given a mission similar to that which Helen Schucman undertook in scribing A Course in Miracles (ACIM). Perron uses the word “received” to describe the process that Schucman referred to as “inner dictation.” She spent three years, beginning in December, 1998, writing the three books.

A Course of Love is a new course stated to be for the heart what the original is for the mind. The opening lines of the Prelude read: "This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. The time for you to take it is now. You are ready and miracles are needed." The concluding paragraph of the Prelude states, "This time we take a direct approach, an approach that seems at first to leave behind abstract learning and the complex mechanisms of the mind that so betray you. We take a step away from intellect, the pride of the ego, and approach this final learning through the realm of the heart. This is why, to end confusion, we will call this course A Course of Love."

A Course of Love has been published in Great Britain, Germany, South America and Denmark and a Norwegian translation is underway. Not yet popularized or conversely seen as controversial, its authenticity as a sequel to ACIM is only, in 2009, beginning to appear in print (see Miracles Magazine, May/June ’09).

With an assurance that the ego has been weakened, A Course of Love declares that the ego will no longer be the learner. When this course is taken in via a receptive heart rather than a thinking mind, the first joining, described as the healing of the division between mind and heart is accomplished. This is called "wholeheartedness." With the mind and heart in union, the ego is abolished, the illusion comes to an end, and an “elevated self of form” …a true or given self, is able to live in, and bring truth to, a waiting world.

Mari Perron is the scribe of the books of A Course of Love, author of two books of The Grace Trilogy, and of The Given Self (due 12/09 from O-Books). Unlike Schucman, and perhaps relevant to her reception of this course of love, Perron does not have an educational or professional background. Her journey to the heart began when a good friend was grieving the loss of her baby daughter and they, along with another friend and co-worker, undertook a shared spiritual quest to answer life’s toughest questions – those of who we are and why we are here. A Course of Love followed some years later and as a whole responds to those questions, beginning with a statement that its aim is to end our identity crisis and return us to who we truly are: "Where the original Course in Miracles was a course in thought reversal and mind training, a course to point out the insanity of the identity crisis and dislodge the ego's hold, this is a course to establish your identity and to end the reign of the ego." Article text.

Perron has lived a quiet life since the reception of the books, says her orientation is to solitude, and yet that she is becoming a radical champion of the human, or given self, and of the call to new life.

Article text. Perron, Mari. A Course of Love. Center for A Course of Love, St. Paul, MN, 2001, xxi, xxiii, xxxv.