Marianne's Journey

I grew up in a middle-class Jewish family. When I went to high school, I took my first philosophy class and decided God was a crutch I didn’t need. What kind of God would let children starve, I argued, or people get cancer, or the Holocaust happen?

During college, a lot of what I learned from professors was definitely extra-curricular. I left school to grow vegetables, but I don’t remember ever growing any. There are a lot of things from those years I can’t remember. Like a lot of people at that time—late 60s, early 70s—I was pretty wild. Whatever sounded outrageous, I wanted to do. And usually, I did.

I didn’t know what to do with my life, though I remember my parents kept begging me to do something. There was some huge rock of self-loathing sitting in the middle of my stomach during those years, and it got worse with every phase I went through. As my pain deepened, so did my interest in philosophy.

I always sensed there was some mysterious cosmic order to things, but I could never figure out how it applied to my own life. I believed other people were dying inside too, just like me, but they couldn’t or wouldn’t talk about it.

I kept thinking there was something very important that no one was discussing. I didn’t have the words myself, but I was sure that something was fundamentally off in the world. How could everybody think that this stupid game of making it in the world could be all there is to our being here?

One day in 1977, I saw a set of blue books with gold lettering sitting on someone's coffee table. I opened to the introduction. It read:

"This is a Course in Miracles. It is a required course.

Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum."

I remember thinking that sounded rather intriguing, if not arrogant. Reading further, however, I noticed Christian terminology throughout the books. This made me nervous. I put the books back on the table.

It took another year before I picked them up again—another year, and another year’s misery. Then I was ready. This time I was so depressed I didn’t even notice the language. This time I knew immediately that the Course had something very important to teach me. It used traditional Christian terms, but in decidedly nontraditional, nonreligious ways.

I was struck, as most people are, by the profound authority of its voice. It answered questions I had begun to think were unanswerable. It talked about God in brilliant psychological terms, challenging my intelligence and never insulting it.

The Course seemed to have a basic message: relax. I was confused to hear that because I had always associated relaxing with resigning. I had been waiting for someone to explain to me how to fight the good fight and now this book suggested that I surrender the fight completely. I was surprised but so relieved. I had long suspected I wasn’t made for worldly combat.

For me this was not just another book. This was my personal teacher, my path out of hell. As I began reading the Course and following its Workbook exercises, I could feel almost immediately that the changes it produced inside of me were positive.

I felt happy. I felt like I was beginning to calm down. I began to understand myself, to get some hook on why my relationships had been so painful, why I could never stay with anything, why I hated my body.

Most importantly, I began to have some sense that I could change. Studying the Course unleashed huge amounts of hopeful energy inside me, energy that had been turning darker and more self-destructive every day.

The Course, a self-study program of spiritual psychotherapy contained in three books, claims no monopoly on God. It is a statement of a universal spiritual curriculum. There’s only one truth, spoken different ways, and the Course is just one path to it out of many.

If it's your path, however, you know it. For me, the Course was a break-through experience intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically. It freed me from terrible emotional pain. A Return to Love is based on what I have learned from A Course in Miracles. My prayer is that this book might help someone. I have written it with an open heart. I hope you’ll read it with an open mind.

The Darkness

"The journey into darkness has been long and cruel, and you have gone deep into it."

When I was most desperate, I looked for a lot of ways out of my personal hell. I read books about how our minds create our experience, how the brain is like a bio-computer that manufactures whatever we feed into it with our thoughts. "Think success and you’ll get it. Expect to fail and you will," I read. But no matter how much I worked at changing my thoughts, I kept going back to the painful ones.

I would work on having a more positive attitude, get myself together and meet a new man or get a new job. But I would eventually turn into a bitch with the man, or screw up at the job. Sure, I could change my thoughts, but not permanently. And there’s only one despair worse than "I blew it," and that’s, " I blew it again."

My painful thoughts were my demons. Through various therapeutic techniques, I’d become very smart about my own neuroses, but that didn’t necessarily exorcise them. The garbage didn’t go away; it just became more sophisticated.

For me, no matter what hot water I had gotten into, I had always thought that I could get myself out of it. But finally I got myself into so much trouble, that I knew I needed more help than I could muster up myself.

My fear finally became so great, that I wasn’t too hip to say "God, please help me."

The Light

"The light is in you."

So I went through this grandiose, dramatic moment where I invited God into my life. After that, nothing really felt the way I expected it to. I had thought that things would improve. It’s as though my life was a house, and I thought God would give it a wonderful paint job—new shutters perhaps, a new roof. Instead, it felt as though as soon as I gave the house to God, He hit it with a wrecking ball.

"Sorry, honey," He seemed to say, "there were cracks in the foundation, not to mention all the rats in the bedroom."

I had read about people surrendering to God and then feeling this profound sense of peace. I did get that feeling, but only for about a minute. After that, I just felt like I’d been busted. This didn’t turn me off to God so much as it made me respect His intelligence. It meant He understood the situation. If I was God, I’d have busted me too. I felt more grateful than resentful. I was desperate for help.

A certain amount of desperation is usually necessary before we’re ready for God. When it came to spiritual surrender, I didn't get serious, not really, until I was down on my knees completely. Nervous breakdowns can be highly underrated methods of spiritual transformation. They certainly get your attention. As painful as this experience was, I now see it as an important, perhaps necessary step in my breakthrough to a happier life.

For one thing, I was profoundly humbled. I saw very clearly that, of myself, I am nothing. Until this happens, you keep trying all your old tricks—the ones that never did work but you keep thinking might work this time. Once you’ve had enough, you consider the possibility that there might be a better way. That’s when your head cracks open and you let God in.

People are crashing into walls today socially, psychologically, emotionally and biologically, and more people have felt their heads crack open in some way, then have admitted it to their friends. But this isn’t bad news. It's good. Until your knees finally hit the floor, you’re just playing at life.

The moment of surrender is not when life is over. It’s when it begins. Not that the moment of eureka, that calling out to God is it, and it’s all Paradise from then on. You’ve simply started the climb. But you know you’re not running around in circles at the bottom of the mountain anymore.

How ironic! You spend your whole life resisting the notion that there’s someone out there smarter than you are, and then all of a sudden you’re so relieved to know it’s true.

All of a sudden, you’re not too proud to ask for help.