School for A Course In Miracles
"The universe of learning will open up before you."
(This takes the place of our normal 9am Tuesday meeting)
Most western religious and spiritual paths assume something is really wrong to begin with, and then go about trying to fix it or evolve beyond it. To them, sin and separation are devastatingly real. The Course specifically sets up its version of the Atonement (that nothing happened), right in its Introduction to the Text on page 1.
This Intro immediately spells out that this is not a course about love, loving, or evolving somehow towards love, or even making the world a better place in which to live… but on letting go of our own judgements of others and ourselves which block our awareness that we are still beings of Love:
“The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim however at removing the blocks to the (our) awareness of love’s presence, which is our natural inheritance.” (Text, p.1)
So then, this is simply a course about undoing those blocks, in our minds, to realizing that love is already a done deal, and our true Identity is still part of that Love… period. We are God’s children, always have been, always will be. The Course shows us how to stop pretending that we’re not eternally part of God’s Love… insisting in our criticizing, fixing, and sometimes even ‘helping,’ that we are not ‘still’ as God created us.
“But when I willingly and gladly go the way my Father’s plan appointed me to go, then will I recognize salvation is already here, already given all my brothers and already mine as well.” (Les.#317)
So what’s my Father’s plan? In the Course’s 1300 plus pages, Jesus is always encouraging us to look at each other differently by asking the Holy Spirit for help ‘to see beyond the veil,’ see beyond the differences we think we see and even cherish. Early on in the Course he also states that this course is not about behavior (Text p.29, par.2-3). It is not about what we do or don’t do, but about how we “see” each other.
And more to the point: with whom are we seeing or perceiving… our ego or the Holy Spirit? Jesus tells us we have this internal place called the mind, where we are constantly choosing between one of these two teachers or inner guides. (NB: This internal place is not what the world calls our brain, but a deep place within us the Course describes as the ‘mind.’) When we choose the ego as our teacher, we see separation and blame. When we choose the Holy Spirit, we experience the Atonement, that nothing happened and our true Identity is still intact.
Problem is, when we are choosing the ego, we’re not really conscious of that choice… but we do feel its effects. We are irritable, judgmental, and certainly not peaceful. We are quick to point out that our discontent is not our responsibility, but we easily finger-point the culprit as something or somebody else. It’s amazing when we go thru the course of our day, and begin to realize… how many times each and every day we are blaming, and how much we are on high alert to find a new drama where we can find and accuse others of robbing us of our peace.
However, choosing to ask the Holy Spirit to perceive and experience people and things differently is a very conscious and vigilant effort. We first honestly look at how hateful our thinking and seeing is, and even tho we believe we are right, we admit how painful it is to hold onto that righteousness. (Would I rather be right or happy?) This becomes the motivation to hope that ‘there must be a better way,’ and I begin to be a little more willing to find and try that ‘better way’. The better way for Course students is the Course’s process of forgiveness, ie. learning to ‘see’ differently. We forgive, or let go, of our way of viewing the world full of victims and victimizers. Then we allow, or let, the Holy Spirit’s vision, of what we truly are, take its place.
(Lesson Titles #31-35)
Forgiveness in the Course is a return to the awareness of the “Done Deal.” Whatever our eyes might be telling us, we ask for the Holy Spirit’s gift of vision to see/experience that our brother’s innocence (and ultimately our own) is still intact… already there and present, no matter what they are doing or not. This doesn’t mean, in terms of behavior, that we don’t do the next appropriate and helpful thing. But it does mean that while we are doing whatever our chosen behavior is, in our heart of hearts, we come to know we are each already ok, already saved, and already God’s one Son.
This is not some pie-in-the-sky made up fantasy. For those of us who have practiced the Course’s forgiveness, we experience that this is the reality behind all the seeming facades that ’cause’ us to blame and condemn. We actually begin to feel and know, about ourselves and others, what Jesus consistently tells us in Lessons #201 thru 220:
“I am not a body. I am free. I am still (already) as God created me.”
Thank you Jesus!
and Happy Thanksgiving!
A false belief that there can be something or someone other than God or more than God.
A belief in separation projected onto special relationships with things, people, or ideas.
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The first idol we made-up in our minds (and in a sense worshipped) was our belief that we could be a separated Son of God, autonomous and distinct from our Father in Heaven. The Course calls that “new” identity/idol ego. This silly belief gets projected onto time and space, with all our worldly idols a reflection of that original mistaken error.
These ‘idols’ includes all our special love and hate relationships, with things and people we like, and things and people we don’t like. All those “idols” are simply mirrors of that believed separation within us in our mind. That is their purpose in the world… to keep us involved in all the worldly drama, and not realize their source.
The way out, of taking this seemingly gigantic hallucination seriously, is to see past those worldly idols and be willing to have an experience beyond them (with Jesus and the Holy Spirit’s help), to the true innocence of others and ourselves as God’s One Son, still intact. The Course calls that willingness forgiveness.
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“A sick god must be an idol...that is exactly what the ego does perceive in a Son of God….a sick god, self-created, self-sufficient, very vicious and vulnerable.”
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“The body is the ego’s idol...a wall of flesh around the mind.”
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“Idols must fail/fall because they have no life…you came to die…and you see death and disappointment everywhere.”
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“What is an idol? Nothing… Where is an idol? Nowhere.”
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“Whenever you feel fear in any form… be sure you have made an idol, and believe it will betray you.”
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“This is the purpose of an idol: that you will not look beyond (your needing) it, to the source of the belief that you are incomplete.”
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“The wearying, dissatisfying gods you made are blown-up children’s toys…The rules he (the child) made for boxes and for bears have failed him…and he is afraid.”
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k7L6Q5d0OY&t=51s
Click here if video doesn’t appear above…
An ultimate in Course education and practice!
Come, study, and experience A Course in Miracles with our School for ACIM facilitators (who have collectively learned, practiced, and taught the Course for over a 100 years ). This is a six month program, from January 1st, 2019 through the end of June. We cover and explore in-depth all of the fundamental ideas on forgiveness and healing in the Course, and the how-to’s for application in our everyday lives.
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Ken was my teacher, living example of the Course and dear friend. My first experience of Ken was hearing a cassette of “this guy from New York who edited that course” explaining why I’d immediately forget the paragraph in the text that I just read. My last experience of Ken was at the Foundation workshop I attended last year where he once again illuminated the Course’s holy trinity: Forgiveness, Love and Joining.
I was overjoyed when the Foundation relocated to Temecula, and I could get my heart and soul refreshed and reawakened in The Oasis of Peace that Ken made the Foundation. I delighted in watching him welcome new and veteran Course students with smiles, hugs, the occasional prank and always loving attentiveness to each of us.
Ken truly brought the Course to life. I sought his help when I was in a desperate heart of darkness period. This was just one of the many conversations we had during that dark time. Through tears I said, “Ken, I feel as if I’ve painted myself into a corner and can’t get out.” Ken reflected a moment, and looking at me lovingly with his familiar impish smile said, “You don’t have to wait for the paint to dry.” I see his smile and feel his love now and always.
Are you curious about what “The Course in Miracles” is REALLY about? Are you a new student or are you someone that picked up the “Course” book years ago but, never read it, however, never threw it out? This four hour workshop teaches the basic “bones” of the “Course.” For new students it is an opportunity to gain a better understanding of this miraculous message, a beginning to a new way of seeing. For seasoned students it provides enhanced learning, as spirit always offers new messages, a deepening in understanding, and the opportunity of learning a lesson of love.
Saturday, February 9th
12:30 to 4:30 pm
Cost: $30
Location:
Light of Grace Healing & Ed Center
5900 W. National Ave., West Allis (Milwaukee), Wisconsin
For full details and to RSVP click here: Fundamentals
(by Tim Wise)
In the 1980’s the Talking Heads rock group had a song that kept repeating the line… “Well, how did I get here?”
Probably the most often question ever asked by both new and ongoing Course students is this: How did we/why would we ever leave the oneness and the peace of Heaven, and then separate into something else… if oneness is our true reality.
What is the Course’s short and quick answer to “How did the impossible happen?”… It didn’t!
There are actually three ways the Course approaches and doesn’t answer this ego-based inquiry:
1) It’s not really an innocent question, the Course explains, but rather a statement masquerading as a question. We have already wrongly defined ourselves as separated beings. Now we are similar to two year olds throwing a fit and stamping our feet, insisting on something not real or helpful. We are demanding an explanation from God as to how that exodus from Heaven took place. As with any loving and caring father dealing with a tantrum, there’s not a lot He can say… but simply quietly wait for the tantrum to stop. (Text: p. 376, par.4 & The Quiet Answer p. 574-6)
“Who asks you to define the ego and explain how it arose can be but he who thinks it real, and seeks by definition to ensure that its illusive nature is concealed behind the words that seem to make it so” (Man. p. 81 par. 2).
2) At one point Jesus said to Bill Thetford, when Bill asked him about how the separation happened… “why are you asking about something that seemingly happened in the past (The Big Separation from God), when you believe you are doing it right now?” In any given moment there is only one of two thoughts being projected into our awareness in time and space… either separation (and it’s not our fault), or forgiveness (the Course’s Atonement principle which says separation never did happen, and isn’t happening even now). That all solely depends on which internal teacher we are choosing in this very second, the ego or the Holy Spirit. (Text p.85, par. 6 & p.179, par. 11-12)
“It is reasonable to ask how the mind could ever have made the ego. In fact, it is the best question you could ask. (Because, the ‘best’ answer is…. it din’t.) There is, however, no point in giving an answer in terms of the past because the past does not matter, and history would not exist if the same errors were not being repeated in the present” (Ch. 4, p. 56, Sec. II, par. 1).
3) And finally the most comforting description of this process of addressing this belief… Jesus says that when we practice forgiveness in our minds with others and ourselves, this question/belief will simply fade away, into the unreality from which it came. In other words, an experience of our true connection and identity as one Son of God is the direct result of forgiveness. We will know the disconnect never happened, despite the separated images we still seem to see. Then the question “well, how did I get here” becomes irrelevant, and we totally lose our investment in needing an impossible answer to a silly question. The simple answer to the question “how did the the separation ever happen?” is… it didn’t. (Manual p. 77, par. 3-4)
“The ego will demand many answers that this course does not give. It does not recognize as questions the mere form of a question to which an answer is impossible. The ego may ask, ‘How did the impossible occur?’, ‘To what did the impossible happen?’, and may ask this in many forms. Yet there is no answer; only an experience. Seek only this, and do not let theology delay you.” (Man. p. 77 par.4)
https://youtu.be/_lQYJCYIIsA
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First, I want to make sure that we know what the ego is and the way that it sees the world.
The ego is the belief in separated, locatable self. The mind mistakenly identifies with the body believing it to be its home. Specialness is the main attribute of the ego, meaning that it sees the world and everything in it from a self-centered point of view. It’s all about ” me”.
From the ego’s point of view the world is one of two things: a prison house or a playground. As long as any perception supports the idea of a separate self, winner or loser, the ego is happy.
This lesson contrasts the ego’s notion of gratitude, which is based on differences and comparison, with the true and only reason to be grateful: love that is not of this world.
The lesson invites us to change our thinking so that our gratitude reflects truth. We can only be grateful for what is real. Love is truth and truth is Oneness. “Love makes no comparisons. And gratitude can only be sincere if it be joined to love.”
Our addiction to specialness (the disease of the ego) is exposed throughout the lessons of A Course in Miracles. This is not to shame us into changing behavior, but to help us see what needs seeing. What remains hidden from our awareness cannot be gone beyond. It remains as a “block to the awareness of love’s presence.”
Specialness is sickness. It is insanity and it is necessary to admit that we are insane before we can become happy learners. Separation is simply a wild idea in the mind that is taken seriously.
“Love Is the Way I Walk in Gratitude” also shows us the way we would see if we accepted Atonement which is the Course’s correction for insanity. What Atonement means is that we never separated from Oneness, never made a body, were never born and can never die. It means that the thought of separation in our mind had no effect.
Hear this: the thought of separation had no effect because it was not God’s Thought. God’s is the original thought and we cannot think apart from Him. The thought of separation is a secret, private thought that we believe to be true, therefore, we are the only ones that can change it.
Our only spiritual responsibility is to accept that the thought of separation had no effect, and that we have no power over God.
God is Love and Love has been defined by Him. The ego’s version of love is specialness. It is the belief that we can and did triumph over God.
Gratitude is to God because we could not/did not succeed in changing ourselves or reality. When this is accepted, as this lesson points out, we will be truly grateful. The ego’s version of gratitude– to be grateful because you are better off than someone else– is “pitiful and deprecating”.
Note: A Course in Miracles uses metaphor—images and symbols—to help us understand our situation. For example, in this lesson it mentions “escape from prison.” These images and symbols refer to a condition in our mind.
Similarly the story of the Holy Spirit descending from God and blanketing us in love and whispering in our ear until we accept that we are loving and lovable is a story. The purpose is to open our minds and hearts to the possibility that love is all there is and has no opposite.