I threw away the ACIM book twice
It all started with this book called A Course in Miracles, given to me as a gift.
My first reaction was "cool … I always wanted to learn how to perform miracles". Then I began peeling away the shrink-wrap and was in for quite a surprise.
Definitely not a book on magic tricks or any sort of supernatural conjuring. My excitement quickly faded as I started flipping through the pages. There was a lot of Christian terminology, and the pages themselves even felt like Bible paper – very thin and wispy.
The more I read, the more convinced I was that no rational, intelligent person could believe what this course was teaching.
So I threw the book away.
But in a very strange way, the book kept calling out to me. I had never had any mystical experiences – and didn't believe in anything of the sort. It wasn't as if I had no choice, but I felt an extremely strong urge to retrieve the book from the trash. I needed to give it a second chance.
The second reading was longer and more careful, and it brought me to the same verdict. Pseudo-religious. Maybe borderline cultish. I threw it away again.
And again I felt the pull.
None of this made sense to me. I am a logical, analytical person. How could a book take over my thoughts like this? I was a little ashamed of it, and I could not stop.
So I decided to end it. I would fly cross-country to Temecula, California meet the Ken Wapnick who had helped bring the course into the world, see through the whole thing in person, and be done with it.
I walked into a small room where receptionists were handing out name tags. One of them was an unassuming, balding man with a thick Brooklyn accent and a pronounced speech impediment. This was Ken Wapnick. He came around the table to shake my hand.
I had never stood in front of someone so free of ego. I had come to argue, and found nothing to argue against.
Few words passed between us, and yet one question arrived whole: what if all of my thinking about the course, and about a great many other things, had been coming from judgment? And behind it, a stranger thought. What would it be like to meet the world, and other people, without it?
And I've been living with that question since.