Beyond the Ego: A Course in Miracles and Depth Psychology

A Course in Miracles tells us that our ceaseless searching for 'a place to call home' is futile if focussed on the outer world. This podcast addresses this idea with a reading of the essay 'Helpless,' which uses three paintings by Australian artist Frederick McCubbin to discuss the roots of feeling lost and alone.It concludes with a discussion of Workbook Lesson 189, highlighting how releasing judgement paves the way for an experience of homecoming.CHANNEL OVERVIEWReflections on teachings from A Course in Miracles, with reference to psychology, philosophy, and artists of all persuasions. WEBSITE: https://www.stephaniepanayi.comBOOKS: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Stephanie-Panayi/author/B07PV5GNX2?ref=ap_rdr&store_

A Course in Miracles isn't an easy text to understand, but requires study and reflection. Yet in the introduction to the Course's Workbook, we are told that the efficacy of the lessons doesn't depend on our understanding. Instead, a simply willingness to suspend disbelief and practice the lessons is all that is needed. This dual requirement within the Course's curriculum means that we are called to exercise different elements of our psyche — a practice which, in itself, helps us move toward an experience of wholeness — a central concern of the Course. Wholeness was also an important concept within Carl Jung’s psychology, which describes four different psychological functions within all of us. This podcast explores how these functions relate to the four traditional forms of Yoga, and how the very structure of A Course in Miracles encourages their expression. Not only, then, does the Course’s message lead to an experience of wholeness, but so too does the Course's form. The video includes readings from ‘From the Head to the Heart and Back Again: A Course in Miracles as an Integrative Yoga,’ taken from Jung and A Course in Miracles by Stephanie Panayi.CHANNEL OVERVIEWReflections on teachings from "A Course in Miracles", with reference to psychology, philosophy, and artists of all persuasions. WEBSITE: https://www.stephaniepanayi.comBOOKS: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Stephanie-Panayi/author/B07PV5GNX2?ref=ap_rdr&store_

A Course in Miracles says, “Future loss is not your fear. But present joining is your dread” (T-26.VIII.4:3-4). To maintain our separate, ego identification, we need to believe that our peace is subject to what goes on in the world. This means that the thought of future loss (of our health, a loved one, a job, money) isn’t the source of fear, though it appears to be. Instead, our real fear, our dread, is of joining with the Holy Spirit’s peace in our mind, undoing our identification with the ego and the ‘I’ we hold dear, the one riddled with shame and guilt, the one that feels condemned, always anticipating disaster. This is why the Course also says that we are not really afraid of crucifixion, but of redemption: “You think you have made a world God would destroy; and by loving Him, which you do, you would throw this world away, which you would. Therefore, you have used the world to cover your love, and the deeper you go into the blackness of the ego's foundation, the closer you come to the Love that is hidden there. And it is this that frightens you” (T-13.III.4:3-5).To be redeemed, according to A Course in Miracles, is to leave the depressing, self-defeating thought system of the ego behind and claim our inheritance as a part of God’s one Self. In other words, it is to realise our essential union with others, expressed in acknowledging our shared need. Yet we are afraid of redemption because we think it means the end of ‘us’. Following in the Course’s tradition of using metaphors to convey major themes, this podcast includes a reading of ‘Through the Looking Glass: Forgiveness, Time, and the Event Horizon,’ which uses a scientific metaphor for transformation and discusses how to approach the prospect of redemption without fear. The essay is taken from Alchemists of Suburbia: A Course in Miracles, Psychology and the Art of Integration, by Stephanie Panayi.CHANNEL OVERVIEWReflections on teachings from "A Course in Miracles", with reference to psychology, philosophy, and artists of all persuasions. WEBSITE: https://www.stephaniepanayi.comBOOKS: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Stephan...

"There is no conflict that does not entail the single, simple question, 'What am I?'" (W-139.1:6) - A Course in Miracles.In the fourth century, an intense debate arose within Christianity over the relationship between Jesus and God: was the Son one with the Father, co-eternal and of the same substance, begotten; or was he made by the Father at a particular moment, out of nothing?This dispute, known as the Arian Controversy, offers a doorway into the Course’s distinction between the ego-made self-concept and our spiritual Self.In this episode of ‘Beyond the Ego’, we explore the controversy alongside passages from the Course’s ‘Self-Concept Versus Self’ section, and examine how the distinction between made and begotten can be applied to our practice of A Course in Miracles.CHANNEL OVERVIEWReflections on teachings from "A Course in Miracles", with reference to psychology, philosophy, and artists of all persuasions. WEBSITE: https://www.stephaniepanayi.comBOOKS: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Stephanie-Panayi/author/B07PV5GNX2?

A central premise of A Course in Miracles is that the ego interprets the world as a threatening place in which our needs compete with those around us. Into this nightmarish ‘Hunger Games’ scenario, the quiet and gentle voice of the Holy Spirit can be heard if we are willing to question our judgements. His presence speaks of the Atonement principle, which says we haven’t left our Source; the nightmare isn’t real. The comforting nature of the Atonement principle can be thought of as Mother; a refuge when the world is too much with us. This motherly aspect of God is the focus of this podcast. It centres on a reading of ‘Let It Be,’ from The Bridge of Return: A Course in Miracles as a Western Yoga, by Stephanie Panayi, and includes a discussion of Carl Jung’s thoughts on the Mother Archetype and his own mother’s ‘two voices.’The importance of the two aspects of ‘mother’ is discussed considering Parsifal’s heroic task in the Fisher King Grail myth, and with respect to our propensity to listen to the ego’s catastrophic interpretations of life’s events. CHANNEL OVERVIEWReflections on teachings from "A Course in Miracles", with reference to psychology, philosophy, and artists of all persuasions. WEBSITE: https://www.stephaniepanayi.comBOOKS: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Stephan...