Study Group Leader Training, Level 1 2021
Homework Assignment
Class 3: Helping Them Get It Right
Name: ____________________________________
Please answer the questions, put an X on the relevant lines,
and send your homework to James by Wednesday evening:
james@[Link]
1. Outside Influences
How closely do you follow the Course alone or do you include other paths and teachings?
Identify a couple of outside teachings that influence and color your understanding of the Course and
that you bring with you when talking about the Course.
2. Cameo 15, “Edgar Cayce” (CE, pp. 1778-1786)
I read the Cameo.
If Jesus took pains to distinguish his teachings in A Course in Miracles from the channeled
teachings of Edgar Cayce, what channeled teaching that you are fond of might also be different
from the Course?
3. Read the full “Course Lore” article sent with the class notes and do the exercise below.
_____ I have read the article, and I have done the exercise.
1
From “Study Group Leader Training, Level 1”
Presented by Robert Perry and Mary Anne Buchowski
September 11–November 6, 2021
Offered by the Circle of Atonement ([Link])
2
From “Study Group Leader Training, Level 1”
Presented by Robert Perry and Mary Anne Buchowski
September 11–November 6, 2021
Offered by the Circle of Atonement ([Link])
Course Lore:
50 Principles Exercise
Please type an X on the line next to those principles that you yourself have believed in the past, even to some
degree, or still believe now.
1. Don’t take this book too seriously; just play with it. Doesn’t the Course itself tell us to “forget this
course”?
2. We’re all students and teachers to each other. The Manual isn’t talking about actual teachers.
We’re all teachers of God.
3. The Course is a self-study course. Everyone knows that.
4. We shouldn’t try to stick too closely to exactly what the Course says. Trying to follow the letter of
the Course is fundamentalism.
5. Being a Course student doesn’t mean working with the book on a daily basis. It really just means
believing in its basic principles, and I can even get those from others who read the book.
6. The best way to do the Workbook is to screw it up and forgive yourself. Trying to do it just right
turns it into a ritual, out of a misguided desire to please some divine authority.
7. There is no one right interpretation of the Course. All interpretations should be honored. The
search for the “correct” one is just about egos trying to be right.
8. Any time we start talking about differences and disagreements, we are in ego. The egoless
response to differences in interpretation is to “tear out the page.”
9. The Course isn’t meant to be studied, but experienced. Studying it just turns it into an intellectual
exercise.
10. Following the Course alone is the same narrowness you see in traditional religion. We should
follow many teachings because truth is one.
11. The Course is so high and so unique that if you see a parallel between it and another teaching, you
are not understanding the Course.
12. God is impersonal. He is less like a Being than a “suchness.” He doesn’t even know we are here.
13. God doesn’t know about the separation. If He did, He would be as insane as we are.
14. God does not hear prayers. The prayers in the second part of the Workbook aren’t meant to be
prayed. They are metaphors.
15. The Holy Spirit is just a metaphor for our own memory of God. The Holy Spirit as an actual
created Being with His own awareness, will, thoughts, and feelings does not exist.
3
From “Study Group Leader Training, Level 1”
Presented by Robert Perry and Mary Anne Buchowski
September 11–November 6, 2021
Offered by the Circle of Atonement ([Link])
16. It doesn’t matter whether or not Jesus wrote the Course. It wouldn’t change anything if Mickey
Mouse wrote the Course. It still says what it says.
17. I do think that “Jesus” wrote the Course, but this Jesus has little or nothing to do with the Jesus
talked about in the Bible.
18. The Course is not about behavior. It’s only about a change of mind. After all, doesn’t the Course
say “I need do nothing”?
19. The Course cautions us against “making the error real.” Whenever we talk about the importance of
anything in this world, we are making the separation real.
20. Level confusion is thinking that sickness, healing, the miracle, the holy instant, the holy
relationship, forgiveness, or salvation have anything to do with the body or the world.
21. Whenever the Course seems to imply that duality or separation is real, we can be sure that it is
speaking metaphorically. It is just telling us a pleasant fairy tale to shield us from its true radical
teaching.
22. When the Course says the world is an illusion, it means the world as we see it. The world in itself,
apart from our judgments and projections, is real.
23. “There is no world” means: There was no Holocaust. There is no Darfur; it only exists on your
computer screen. There’s no point in providing veterinary care to your sick dog; she isn’t there. Why
dive into the pool to save a drowning child? He isn’t there.
24. The Holy Spirit doesn’t work in this world. How can He when there is no world?
25. The Course teaches us how to manifest abundance. Being poor is a manifestation of the “scarcity
principle.”
26. That person is my greatest teacher because he pushes all my buttons. He’s my savior because he
flushes my ego into the open where I can let it go.
27. My sole responsibility is to accept the Atonement for myself. Thinking I am responsible for others
just takes away their responsibility to change their own minds.
28. There is no one out there. There’s only one of us here. “Others” are just my own projections.
29. A holy relationship only takes one—it is holy when I see it in a holy way myself.
30. Joining is not about bodies joining or interacting in form. We should join with Jesus and the Holy
Spirit in our minds.
31. Trying to help others only makes the error real. It is an activity that is full of hidden ego agendas.
Why try to help out there if the world is not real anyway?
32. Trying to serve the poor or disadvantaged just reinforces the idea that they are lacking. The best
thing you can do for them is just see beyond their apparent lack.
4
From “Study Group Leader Training, Level 1”
Presented by Robert Perry and Mary Anne Buchowski
September 11–November 6, 2021
Offered by the Circle of Atonement ([Link])
33. Don’t fall into the grandiose trap of thinking you should “save the world.” The Course, after all,
says “Seek not to change the world.”
34. My special function is just to forgive, to let go of my own resentment. Thinking I have some
special role given me by the Holy Spirit is just the treacherous voice of specialness.
35. The miracle is just a shift in perception. It’s not anything that happens in the world. And it’s
certainly not anything I “perform” in the world.
36. Forgiveness has nothing to do with the other person. I don’t forgive for their sake; I do it for me.
37. The Course never tells us to be honest in this world. How can that matter when the whole world is
a lie?
38. Everything is perfect. Every thought is perfect. Every feeling is perfect. If I think that anyone has
made a mistake, I’m in judgment. It’s all good. Hitler was just fulfilling his perfect function.
39. Only the ego wants to be right, and only the ego calls something wrong. Instead of trying to be
right, we should just be happy.
40. I shouldn’t label my past choices “wrong.” That’s just the ego beating itself up. I was doing the
best I could. All of it was right for that moment.
41. Looking at the effects on others of my actions in the world is a wrong focus. The Course is very
clear that my mistakes and “sins” have no effect.
42. I shouldn’t expend energy looking for my ego. That is a negative focus that just reinforces the ego.
I need to wake up from it, not wallow in it.
43. The most important part of any action is the quality of my consciousness when performing that
action. The actual external effect of my action is beside the point.
44. There is nothing more important than being in the moment. As the Course says, “A healed mind
does not plan.”
45. Spiritual states are the sign of spiritual advancement. We know that someone is spiritual if that
person has had high spiritual experiences.
46. The reason I do the Course is to find peace, to exchange my judgmental, depressed inner states for
peaceful, blissful inner states.
47. You should never use any words in your study of the Course. Words, as the Course says, are but
symbols of symbols.
48. The intellect is an expression of ego. The mind is the problem, the heart is the solution, for the
heart is inherently pure and spiritual.
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From “Study Group Leader Training, Level 1”
Presented by Robert Perry and Mary Anne Buchowski
September 11–November 6, 2021
Offered by the Circle of Atonement ([Link])
49. It’s really all about direct experience, which is why feelings are where it’s at. Words, thoughts, and
beliefs are abstractions from direct experience, which is why they get in the way.
50. Children and animals live closer to the spirit than we do, because they live in the moment in direct
experience. Basically, anything with a less developed intellect is more spiritual.
In light of your answers, what have you learned about you and your relationship with “Course
Lore”?
6
From “Study Group Leader Training, Level 1”
Presented by Robert Perry and Mary Anne Buchowski
September 11–November 6, 2021
Offered by the Circle of Atonement ([Link])