Allan Ramsay
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Why Write Fiction about ACIM?

11/20/2014

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There's no shortage of guidance for those who study A Course in Miracles. We have outstanding teachers who I'll not try to enumerate; naming names would undoubtedly cause me to overlook people I don't yet know. In addition to teachers who do so much to spread the word, one can find exceptional blogs addressing virtually every aspect of the Course. Not be be forgotten, YouTube is alive with compelling content. And for the most traditional of all learning formats, ACIM teachers have written many excellent books to help us along.

So where does the idea of writing fiction about ACIM come in? I think there are countless people who have yet to know the Course, or even to know it exists. A novel or short story can introduce those not yet acquainted. Fiction can extend ACIM's reach.

A story like Julia's Risky Decision might appeal to young women, or to anyone engaged in traditional New Age matters 
 (if one can use the word “traditional” when speaking of New Age ideas). Or, a story about a guy named Paul who struggled with his young life and now works as a customer service rep might attract another group. Perhaps even the YA (young adult) audience.

The novel Computing Love reaches out to those who enjoy a bit of mysticism mixed with spirituality, a dabbling of romance and some deep dives that illustrate the main principles of the Course using everyday situations.



Even beyond "reaching out" to potential new ACIM students, writing fiction allows a writer to address current world situations from the viewpoint of ACIM. For example, Computing Love tells a story about what will soon become a serious threat to our way of life. Quantum computing. Consider that scientists at Google, NASA, our much-discussed NSA – as well as many other organizations around the world – are spending millions of dollars to bring a quantum computer to life. Once that happens, life will very likely change in fundamental ways. A few examples:
  • Take a look at how worldwide banking could be threatened. 
  • Read how the NSA's $79.7 million program plans to use a quantum computer to “penetrate hard targets and to 'own the net.'” 
  • Learn why the people at Big Think said, “While a computer with those capabilities would in most cases be a triumph, it could also spell disaster if placed in the wrong hands.
I see this issue of writing fiction about ACIM as just one more small contribution to helping spread the word. Let's hope it does, for the more people learning what ACIM teaches, the “faster” we might reach the “place” where Atonement reaches the entire Sonship.

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Blogging Updates

11/6/2014

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This week I've been collecting my A Course in Miracles blog posts from other sites I've used for the last few years. It just seems right to organize things in one place rather than having them scattered across the web.

So I've laboriously copied and pasted a number of blog posts from their original URL's to this one. In the process I found a few typos (there may well still be a few more to discover), and took time to review what I've been saying for the last few years.

But I discovered something I didn't anticipate.

The novel I'm releasing shortly, Computing Love, represents (rather well) some of the process I've gone through as I've studied ACIM. Old blog articles that mention the work done by Rick Hanson; the books I've reviewed for my freelance writing clients; articles about Immanuel Kant and Kurt Vonngegut; articles on how our bodies are glucose/oxygen powered machines  – many of these and others are reflected in Computing Love.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. After all, creating a novel, or even a short story, has to reflect to some degree what the author has experienced or, at least, imagined. 



Now, although all comments were lost as I moved content from one URL to this one, I'm pleased to have everything in one place. I hope you find some value in these posts.

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Kurt Vonnegut and I Think We're Like Marine Iguanas

11/4/2014

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PictureKurt Vonnegut
Back in 1985, which doesn't sound that long ago until I realize that it's been nearly 20 years, Kurt Vonnegut published "Galapagos." I picked the book up at the library because we'd visited Ecuador a few years back. Ecuador laid claim to the Galapagos Islands in 1832.  Vonnegut was a writer known for dark humor who said things like this:
  • I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.
  • Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
  • A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
Here's what he said in Galapagos about marine iguanas. I think his description of the marine iguanas is not much different than how an observer could describe our human lives:

The marine iguana "could be more than a meter long, and look as fearsome as a Chinese dragon. Actually, though, it was no more dangerous to life forms of any sort, with the exception of seaweed, that a liverwurst. Here is what its life is like in the present day, which is exactly what its life was like a million years ago:

"It has no enemies, so it sits in one place, staring into the middle distance at nothing, wanting nothing, worrying about nothing, until it is hungry. It then waddles down to the ocean and swims slowly and not all that ably until it is a few meters from shore. The it dives like a submarine, and stuffs itself with seaweed, which is at that time indigestible. The seaweed is going to have to be cooked before it is digestible.

"So the marine iguana pops to the surface, swims ashore, and sits on the lava in the sunshine again. It is using itself for a covered stewpot, getting hotter and hotter while the sunshine cooks the seaweed. It continues to stare in to the middle distance at nothing, as before, but with this difference: It now spits up increasingly hot saltwater from time to time."


Becky and I were talking about this particular passage as we drove from Sarasota to Orlando. She said something like this:  "Staring off into the middle distance at nothing, eating a few times each day and then going to sleep at night -- that's not much different than what we do, is it?"  

I said, "No, it's not. The time we spend awake each day, whether we're staring off into the middle distance at nothing or are supremely busy with our so-called lives -- loving, worrying, complaining, blaming, fearing, wondering, thinking and all the other things we do while we're awake -- those are the thing we call OUR LIVES. You're so right: We're really not that much different from the marine iguanas. We think our lives are important but we're 
really just staring off into the middle distance at nothing at all.  This is all a dream, an illusion and matters not a bit."
  
Yes, it's really wonderful that the longer one studies A Course in Miracles the better one becomes at finding new ways to see things -- new ways for forgiving everything, paying less and less attention to the ego mind and more and more to the Holy Spirit Mind God provided to each of us who think and fear that we abandoned Him. 

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