Helen Schucman

I've been reading a lot about Helen Schucman and Bill Thetford, the two people who brought A Course in Miracles into the world.  To channel that kind and that quantity of information is incredible, and I was curious as to how it all came about, particularly since, it's made known up front that Helen had a very difficult time accepting what she was actually doing--being the channel for A Course in Miracles.

What I've found is so much of what I face in my own spiritual growth and what I deal all the time in sessions, and that is how to synthesize experience/knowing of the divine and everyday life.

With Helen, since she lived (she was born in 1909), at a time and place (New York, working at Columbia University), when spiritual information was simply not available and what was was not highly regarded, having profound psychic experiences was not only unsettling, but with no place to find explanations and support.

Also, psychology/psychiatry was rather young and narrow, so offered little help (geees, both she and Bill were psychologists!)

From everything I've read so far, and viewing it from my experience and context in giving readings, she had two distinct personas:  the part of her that channeled A Course in Miracles, that was psychic, that remembered past lives, etc., and the human personality.

And from all my readings the fear, anxiety, inability to unfold . . . in adulthood, always has the cause of abandonment.  The parents were simply not there.  There was no one to provide a definition of reality.  There was no one to lead the child into new experiences and foster confidence . . . .  And this is just what happened with Helen, and boy, does her life reflect that--the huge anxiety, fear . . . in complete contrast to profound wisdom of her soul.

I feel sad.  The misery of the disparity is hugely painful.  These days, in readings, and for myself, solutions to this have been offered, but in Helen's time, she was simply pronounced "neurotic" by those who knew her.  What a sad, limiting definition, and so final.  In another time, she would have been able to transform that.

Nevertheless, the challenge to integrate personality and divinity--to continually evolve the personality to match the truth of higher knowledge.  From my experience, as long as we are alive, we are engaged in this effort; it's one of the ways that not only consciousness evolves in general, but our soul evolution happens.