WOULD YOU REALLY LIKE TO READ SOME HEAVY-DUTY MATERIAL (LIKE ACIM) BUT NEED A LITTLE READING ENCOURAGEMENT?
I don’t like to start off a post on a negative note about myself, but I’m thinking it could be helpful to others who secretly regard themselves as not very good readers.
I had an extremely difficult childhood with diseases, neglect and sabotage. My parents were contacted re. my sub-standard reading and I was put into a special remedial class. That went nowhere because quite frankly nobody cared.
I managed to somehow graduate from high school and come to the big city where I realized my deficit was interfering with my normal daily activities, especially socially: I just didn’t like to read – but oh how I wished I did. So I decided to take just one college course, just to see if I could handle it. It was an English course and I struggled very much. But I aced it!!! You can’t imagine how exhilarated I felt with that accomplishment!!! I had done it on my own with only God’s help.
I began to take more and more courses all the while struggling with my reading and wishing it were more of a joy in and of itself, but that never happened. I finally became content with the knowledge that the reward for reading – for me – was when I finished and had all that knowledge swimming in my consciousness! That was good enough for me. I kept taking more and more college courses until I earned a bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D., but that’s not the point of this message.
I suspect that there are a lot of people out there who really don’t like to read, especially technical or inspirational material. They love to see short colorful memes or perhaps a few conjoined paragraphs, but don’t like to have their attention span challenged! My message here is this “YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE MISSING!” The sheer ecstasy of overcoming the bugaboo of an aversion to reading is phenomenal!!! The rewards are astronomical!!! A whole new world opens up to you. It’s true that the new world opens up a bit by listening to pre-recorded material; but, in the case of something you really want or need to internalize, it doesn’t come close.
● Some years later I embarked on a thorough study of A COURSE IN MIRACLES and you can bet that those study skills that I had gleaned earlier came in very handy – especially in ‘doing’ its LESSONS!
Over the years I’ve probably listened to A Course in Miracles on tape as a refresher for thousands of hours: it made me feel sooo good! But I’ll never forget a guy I knew about 24 years ago who had been listening to it on cassettes. I happened to mention to him that Jesus was the author and Helen Schucman acted as “scribe,” taking dictation from Him. He didn’t have a clue what I was talking about although it was included in the tapes! He never “got it” just from listening even though Jesus as author was mentioned extensively. He also never even “got it” that A Course in Miracles is a COURSE and the 365 lessons at the end of the book were a Course requirement! I’ve enjoyed listening to ACIM over the past 24 years; but owing to its profound importance, my listening has only been as a review.