Day 60: Welcome to the countdown!

60 days ago, on June 4th, 2010, I turned 29 years old.  I decided that before I turned the big 3-0, I wanted to complete a spiritual journey.

Earlier this year I began attending Marianne Williamson's Tuesday night lecture series in Los Angeles.  If you don't recognize her name, here's an excerpt from her book A Return to Love, which you've probably read or heard before:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Marianne teaches from a spiritual study called A Course in Miracles.  The book's pages are Bible-thin, and appropriately so.  There are 669 pages of theoretical text, followed by a workbook containing 365 meditation lessons, followed by a manual for teachers.

Starting on June 4th, 2010, the day of my 29th birthday, I began the meditations - one for each day of the year until the day I turn 30.  I also started reading the text shortly afterward - 2 pages a day.  So I'm all on track to complete the full text and workbook in A Course in Miracles before I turn 30 years old on June 4th, 2011.

Just last week I saw the film Julie & Julia, and it inspired me to begin this blog.  Rather than working my way through a cook book and recipes, however, I'm making my way through a spiritual handbook and meditations.  It's almost the same thing, right?

So for all the spiritual seekers out there, join me on my journey as I embark on one of the greatest spiritual studies available today, while I also count down to the milestone of turning 30.  I'll share my thoughts and feelings about the course each day, and how the study is affecting my life and my way of thinking.

As I write this first blog, it is the end of my 60th day.  This also happens to be the last day of the first review session in the workbook (10 days of review, which covers the first 50 lessons).  To bring you up to speed, here's a list of the first 50 meditations:

1. Nothing I see means anything.
2. I have given everything I see all the meaning that it has for me.
3. I do not understand anything I see.
4. These thoughts do not mean anything.
5. I am never upset for the reason I think.
6. I am upset because I see something that is not there.
7. I see only the past.
8. My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.
9. I see nothing as it is now.
10. My thoughts do not mean anything.
11. My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world.
12. I am upset because I see a meaningless world.
13. A meaningless world engenders fear.
14. God did not create a meaningless world.
15. My thoughts are images that I have made.
16. I have no neutral thoughts.
17. I see no neutral things.
18. I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing.
19. I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts.
20. I am determined to see.
21. I am determined to see things differently.
22. What I see is a form of vengeance.
23. I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts.
24. I do not perceive my own best interests.
25. I do not know what anything is for.
26. My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability.
27. Above all else I want to see.
28. Above all else I want to see things differently.
29. God is in everything I see.
30. God is in everything I see because God is in my mind.
31. I am not the victim of the world I see.
32. I have invented the world I see.
33. There is another way of looking at the world.
34. I could see peace instead of this.
35. My mind is a part of God's.  I am very holy.
36. My holiness envelops everything I see.
37. My holiness blesses the world.
38. There is nothing my holiness cannot do.
39. My holiness is my salvation.
40. I am blessed as a Son of God.
41. God goes with me wherever I go.
42. God is my strength.  Vision is His gift.
43. God is my Source.  I cannot see apart from Him.
44. God is the light in which I see.
45. God is the Mind with which I think.
46. God is the Love in which I forgive.
47. God is the strength in which I trust.
48. There is nothing to fear.
49. God's Voice speaks to me all through the day.
50. I am sustained by the Love of God.

Whew!  As you might be able to tell from these first 50 lessons, A Course in Miracles aims to deconstruct our current, faulty way of thinking, and replace it with a way of thinking aligned with our true purpose as miracle-workers on earth.  It is designed to provide a foundation for inner peace, to dissolve the illusions we build around ourselves and bring to light the abundance of Love we all share - for we are all One.

I hope you will join me on this journey.

Until tomorrow,
Journeyman