An ACIM study group provides a supportive environment in which participants can share experiences of the Course. The group facilitator should encourage a spirit-guided approach in all aspects of the group, from reading to questions.

The Annotation System of A Course in Miracles allows students to quickly reference specific sections or passages within the text, regardless of which edition they use. It also helps students distinguish between different translations of the Course, as well as within their own language.
Introduction to the Text

The introduction to A Course in Miracles may well be the most famous and enduring spiritual text of all time. The book is a classic example of a self-study curriculum that has spawned several study groups and a handful of accredited churches inspired by its teachings.

The book is a rigorous and often challenging spiritual discipline that rewrites the rules of personal and social interaction. Its central message is that we all have the potential to develop an enlightened consciousness through the constant practice of forgiveness and the recognition that our world is a dream.

To make this a reality, the Course recommends a variety of practices and exercises, including a daily meditation (usually based on the Course's 365 lessons), frequent use of an A Course in Miracles Workbook, and a commitment to living each moment as if it were a miracle. These are only the beginning, however, as ACIM also encourages the cultivation of an unwavering gratitude for the many blessings we experience each day.

Unlike many similar works, the Book of Miracles is designed to be studied over the long haul, not just in a weekend workshop or a short term fad. The best way to understand the text is to read it slowly, paying attention to what it evokes in you.

The most impressive feature of the Book of Miracles is not its many lessons, nor its hefty tome; it's the way in which the text has been carefully organized into a coherent and comprehensive structure that makes studying the material easier than ever. The book also includes a dazzling array of charts and graphs that help students grasp the Course's ideas in an easy to digest format.
Introduction to the Workbook

ACIM has been referred to as "the Bible of the SBNR movement." This new, non-religious perspective of the world is growing at an increasing rate in both the US and Western Europe.

ACIM is a highly intellectual teaching that has sophisticated metaphysical, theological, and psychological concepts integrated into its text. However, it is possible for anyone at all to benefit from studying it and applying its ideas as a spiritual path. ucdm pdf

Those who do not wish to be intellectual may find it difficult to understand the content, especially since much of the material is written in blank verse. The text is designed to take you beyond mere intellectual understanding, to the point where your thoughts are dominated by the Course’s ideas. This is akin to training in the physical realm, in which manifold repetitions and disciplined effort are required to achieve results.

As such, a student of the Course should spend some time with the Text before beginning work on the Workbook. This is not necessarily required, but it is recommended as a way to make the exercises more meaningful. It is also important to remember that Jesus did not want to see his students simply studying the Text without doing the exercises, and he expected them to do both (W.in.1:2).

The workbook is designed to help you generalize the lessons so that you will understand that every one of them is applicable to everyone and everything in the world. This is important, because it prevents you from thinking that you have a special relationship with any particular person, situation, or event.

In addition, the exercises are intended to train you to transfer your new perception of things to other people. This is a very significant feature of the Course, since true perception, which includes the experience of love and peace, cannot be accomplished in isolation from other aspects of reality.

It is very important to note that some of the ideas the workbook presents will be hard to believe and seem to be quite startling. This does not matter, however, as long as you use them and apply them as directed.
Introduction to the Manual for Teachers

The Manual for Teachers is a book within A Course in Miracles that attempts to answer some of the more common questions posed by students of the Course. It is written in question and answer form, attempting to explain some of the concepts within the text in a way that may be easier for students to understand than the terse explanations found in the Text and Workbook.

The first major theme in the manual is that of separate versus shared interests. Essentially, this means that once a person has made the decision to take his learning away from the world's curriculum and instead study the Holy Spirit's curriculum, he will find that his pupil(s) are seeking him out.

This is because their minds are no longer occupied by the material world and the things that go with it, but rather by the spiritual world of miracles. They have been waiting their whole lives for this moment, the one that reveals itself as the day the learner makes a conscious choice to be a teacher of God.

As a result, they will come to him with the same question as anyone else who has made this decision: what does it mean to be a teacher of God?

Another theme in the manual is that of the teacher's role in bringing about the miracles. Specifically, the Manual outlines two distinct forms of teacher: one that demonstrates the Course's healing powers (and is denoted by the words "healer") and the other that guides his pupils through A Course in Miracles.

In the former, the teacher is viewed as offering his patients (or in some sections, their children) verbal teaching, an impressive feat that reflects Course principles. In the latter, the teacher is envisioned as using the Course to bring about a miraculous transformation of their mind and body.

In the end, it is this fusion of the two that gives us the manual's biggest surprise, the real secret to a successful student-teacher relationship. In fact, the most astonished me with this particular section of the manual was that the Course's main claim to fame was not the fact that it was the best teaching device known to man, but that it enlightened the teacher and pupil to a new level of enlightenment, bringing about the miracles of forgiveness through the power of love.
Study of the Text

A text can be defined as “the original words of something written, printed or spoken.” Texts include all kinds of language, from the most complex book to the back of a cereal box. They may be written, printed or spoken in a form such as a document, a speech, an email or an article. They may also be represented in other ways, such as a graphic symbol or an embedded tweet.

Several scholars have developed approaches to studying texts and their authors. One of these approaches is called hermeneutics, which is based on the philosophy of Friedrich Schleiermacher. Hermeneutics involves a careful examination of grammatical and psychological aspects of the text. It is also important to consider the relationship between the text and its surrounding context.

Intertextuality, which refers to the relationships between a text and other texts that have been written or spoken about it, is also a common theme in hermeneutics. For example, a popular news article may contain embedded tweets and links to other articles. Social media and blogs are a great source of examples of this type of intertextuality.

Text linguistics is the study of the words in a text, the meanings of those words, and how those words are interpreted by readers. It is a subfield of discourse analysis.

Another important aspect of text linguistics is the concept of “textual criticism.” This approach attempts to interpret a text by determining the meaning of the text as it was originally written and not as it has been altered through editorial emendations, which destroy the integrity of the individual manuscript. It is similar to the critical approach in historical linguistics, but it differs from this in that it emphasizes the importance of understanding the context of the text and not simply its contents.

The Text of ACIM uses common English language terms in a unique way that requires students to adopt new definitions for these words. This is not easy, especially if students have a prior understanding and understandings of these terms that are not ACIM specific.

Fortunately, there are many resources available to help students decipher the text and understand it more fully. These include: