School for A Course In Miracles

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School for A Course In Miracles

“The universe of learning will open up before you in all its gracious simplicity.” T-14. II. 6:4
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A Course in Miracles Seminar on “Fearless Dying,” Sat 10/27

ACIM One Day Seminar on:

Fearless Dying.

“Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem… Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one.”   (Manual for Teachers #27)

Sat., Oct. 27, 2018

9:30am-4:30pm

@ Rocky Mountain Miracle Center

in Denver, Colorado

Click here for details…

REGISTRATION:

($75 )




Also: Tim and Lyn lead the Sunday Gathering @ RMMC on Oct. 28 @11am, and Chris Dixon  facilitates Lighthouse Newsletter on that same Sunday @1-3pm … also at RMMC.

 

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Christmas Retreat

Dec. 7-9, 2018

in Colorado Springs:

Click here to see Retreat Schedule and to Register…

 

Course Immersion One 2019,

Six Month Intensive from January thru June 2019,

(Available In-person and Online)

For more details about the Immersion and how to register,

(click here)

 

Happy Solstice & Merry Christmas ! The Birth of Our True Identity is Now… and Every Day !!

Merry Christmas to Jesus & Us!

References and excerpts from A Course in Miracles pertaining  to

Christmas and the rebirth everyday in us… of the ever-expanding awareness of

Our True Identity as Christ

 

Lesson 303

“The holy Christ is born in me today.”

Watch with me, angels, watch with me today. Let all God’s holy Thoughts surround me, and be still with me while Heaven’s Son is born. Let earthly sounds be quiet, and the sights to which I am accustomed disappear. Let Christ be welcomed where He is at home. And let Him hear the sounds He understands, and see but sights that show His Father’s Love. Let Him no longer be a stranger here, for He is born again in me today.

Your Son is welcome, Father. He has come to save me from the evil self I made. He is the Self that You have given me. He is but what I really am in truth. He is the Son You love above all things. He is my Self as You created me. It is not Christ that can be crucified. Safe in Your Arms let me receive Your Son.

 

Text, Chap. 19

(p.419, par. 9-10)

i. The Incorruptible Body

…. The infancy of salvation is carefully guarded by love, preserved from every thought that would attack it, and quietly made ready to fulfill the mighty task for which it was given you. Your newborn purpose is nursed by angels, cherished by the Holy Spirit and protected by God Himself. It needs not your protection; it is yours. For it is deathless, and within it lies the end of death.

What danger can assail the wholly innocent? What can attack the guiltless? What fear can enter and disturb the peace of sinlessness? What has been given you, even in its infancy, is in full communication with God and you. In its tiny hands it holds, in perfect safety, every miracle you will perform, held out to you. The miracle of life is ageless, born in time but nourished in eternity.

Behold this infant, to whom you gave a resting place by your forgiveness of your brother, and see in it the Will of God. Here is the babe of Bethlehem reborn. And everyone who gives him shelter will follow him, not to the cross, but to the resurrection and the life.

Lesson 182

“I will be still an instant and go home.”

This world you seem to live in is not home to you. And somewhere in your mind you know that this is true. A memory of home keeps haunting you, as if there were a place that called you to return, although you do not recognize the voice, nor what it is the voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel an alien here, from somewhere all unknown. Nothing so definite that you could say with certainty you are an exile here. Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not more than a tiny throb, at other times hardly remembered, actively dismissed, but surely to return to mind again.

No one but knows whereof we speak. Yet some try to put by their suffering in games they play to occupy their time, and keep their sadness from them. Others will deny that they are sad, and do not recognize their tears at all. Still others will maintain that what we speak of is illusion, not to be considered more than but a dream. Yet who, in simple honesty, without defensiveness and self-deception, would deny he understands the words we speak?

We speak today for everyone who walks this world, for he is not at home. He goes uncertainly about in endless search, seeking in darkness what he cannot find; not recognizing what it is he seeks. A thousand homes he makes, yet none contents his restless mind. He does not understand he builds in vain. The home he seeks can not be made by him. There is no substitute for Heaven. All he ever made was hell.

Perhaps you think it is your childhood home that you would find again. The childhood of your body, and its place of shelter, are a memory now so distorted that you merely hold a picture of a past that never happened. Yet there is a Child in you Who seeks His Father’s house, and knows that He is alien here. This childhood is eternal, with an innocence that will endure forever. Where this Child shall go is holy ground. It is His Holiness that lights up Heaven, and that brings to earth the pure reflection of the light above, wherein are earth and Heaven joined as one.

It is this Child in you your Father knows as His Own Son. It is this Child Who knows His Father. He desires to go home so deeply, so unceasingly, His voice cries unto you to let Him rest a while. He does not ask for more than just a few instants of respite; just an interval in which He can return to breathe again the holy air that fills His Father’s house. You are His home as well. He will return. But give Him just a little time to be Himself, within the peace that is His home, resting in silence and in peace and love.

This Child needs your protection. He is far from home. He is so little that He seems so easily shut out, His tiny voice so readily obscured, His call for help almost unheard amid the grating sounds and harsh and rasping noises of the world. Yet does He know that in you still abides His sure protection. You will fail Him not. He will go home, and you along with Him.

This Child is your defenselessness; your strength. He trusts in you. He came because He knew you would not fail. He whispers of His home unceasingly to you. For He would bring you back with Him, that He Himself might stay, and not return again where He does not belong, and where He lives an outcast in a world of alien thoughts. His patience has no limits. He will wait until you hear His gentle Voice within you, calling you to let Him go in peace, along with you, to where He is at home and you with Him.

When you are still an instant, when the world recedes from you, when valueless ideas cease to have value in your restless mind, then will you hear His Voice. So poignantly He calls to you that you will not resist Him longer. In that instant He will take you to His home, and you will stay with Him in perfect stillness, silent and at peace, beyond all words, untouched by fear and doubt, sublimely certain that you are at home.

Rest with Him frequently today. For He was willing to become a little Child that you might learn of Him how strong is he who comes without defenses, offering only love’s messages to those who think he is their enemy. He holds the might of Heaven in His hand and calls them friend, and gives His strength to them, that they may see He would be Friend to them. He asks that they protect Him, for His home is far away, and He will not return to it alone.

Christ is reborn as but a little Child each time a wanderer would leave his home. For he must learn that what he would protect is but this Child, Who comes defenseless and Who is protected by defenselessness. Go home with Him from time to time today. You are as much an alien here as He.

Take time today to lay aside your shield which profits nothing, and lay down the spear and sword you raised against an enemy without existence. Christ has called you friend and brother. He has even come to ask your help in letting Him go home today, completed and completely. He has come as does a little child, who must beseech his father for protection and for love. He rules the universe, and yet He asks unceasingly that you return with Him, and take illusions as your gods no more.

You have not lost your innocence. It is for this you yearn. This is your heart’s desire. This is the voice you hear, and this the call which cannot be denied. The holy Child remains with you. His home is yours. Today He gives you His defenselessness, and you accept it in exchange for all the toys of battle you have made. And now the way is open, and the journey has an end in sight at last. Be still an instant and go home with Him, and be at peace a while.

 

Manual: p.36, par. 2

14. How will the world end?

Until forgiveness is complete, the world does have a purpose. It becomes the home in which forgiveness is born, and where it grows and becomes stronger and more all-embracing. Here it is nourished for here it is needed. A gentle Savior, born where sin was made and guilt seemed real. Here is His home, for here there is need of Him indeed. He brings the ending of the world with Him. It is His Call God’s teachers answer, turning to Him in silence to receive His word. The world will end when all things in it have been rightly judged by His judgment. The world will end with the benediction of holiness upon it. When not one thought of sin remains, the world is over. It will not be destroyed nor attacked nor even touched. It will merely cease to be.

Text, Chap. 22

(p. 470, par. 7 to 11)

I. The Message of The Holy Relationship

7 So in each holy relationship is the ability to communicate instead of separate reborn. Yet a holy relationship, so recently reborn itself from an unholy relationship, and yet more ancient than the old illusion it has replaced, is like a baby now in its rebirth. Still in this infant is your vision returned to you, and he will speak the language you can understand. He is not nurtured by the “something else” you thought was you. He was not given there, nor was received by anything except yourself. For no two brothers can unite except through Christ, Whose vision sees them one.

8 Think what is given you, my holy brother. This child will teach you what you do not understand, and make it plain. For his will be no alien tongue. He will need no interpreter to you, for it was you who taught him what he knows because you knew it. He could not come to anyone but you, never to “something else.” Where Christ has entered no one is alone, for never could He find a home in separate ones. Yet must He be reborn into His ancient home, so seeming new and yet as old as He, a tiny newcomer, dependent on the holiness of your relationship to let Him live.

9 Be certain God did not entrust His Son to the unworthy. Nothing but what is part of Him is worthy of being joined. Nor is it possible that anything not part of Him can join. Communication must have been restored to those who join, for this they could not do through bodies. What, then, has joined them? Reason will tell you that they must have seen each other through a vision not of the body, and communicated in a language the body does not speak. Nor could it be a fearful sight or sound that drew them gently into one. Rather, in each the other saw a perfect shelter where his Self could be reborn in safety and in peace. Such did his reason tell him; such he believed because it was the truth.

10 Here is the first direct perception that you can make. You make it through awareness older than perception, and yet reborn in just an instant. For what is time to what was always so? Think what that instant brought; the recognition that the “something else” you thought was you is an illusion. And truth came instantly, to show you where your Self must be. It is denial of illusions that calls on truth, for to deny illusions is to recognize that fear is meaningless. Into the holy home where fear is powerless love enters thankfully, grateful that it is one with you who joined to let it enter.

11 Christ comes to what is like Himself; the same, not different. For He is always drawn unto Himself. What is as like Him as a holy relationship? And what draws you and your brother together draws Him to you. Here are His sweetness and His gentle innocence protected from attack. And here can He return in confidence, for faith in another is always faith in Him. You are indeed correct in looking on your brother as His chosen home, for here you will with Him and with His Father. This is your Father’s Will for you, and yours with His. And who is drawn to Christ is drawn to God as surely as Both are drawn to every holy relationship, the home prepared for Them as earth is turned to Heaven.

Text, Chap. 15:

(p. 308, par. 7-8-9)

III. Littleness vs. Magnitude

7 In this season (Christmas) which celebrates the birth of holiness into this world, join with me who decided for holiness for you. It is our task together to restore the awareness of magnitude to the host whom God appointed for Himself. It is beyond all your littleness to give the gift of God, but not beyond you. For God would give Himself through you. He reaches from you to everyone and beyond everyone to His Son’s creations, but without leaving you. Far beyond your little world but still in you, He extends forever. Yet He brings all His extensions to you, as host to Him.

8 Is it a sacrifice to leave littleness behind, and wander not in vain? It is not sacrifice to wake to glory. But it is sacrifice to accept anything less than glory. Learn that you must be worthy of the Prince of Peace, born in you in honour of Him Whose host you are. You know not what love means because you have sought to purchase it with little gifts, thus valuing it too little to understand its magnitude. Love is not little and love dwells in you, for you are host to Him. Before the greatness that lives in you, your poor appreciation of yourself and all the little offerings you give slip into nothingness.

9 Holy child of God, when will you learn that only holiness can content you and give you peace? Remember that you learn not for yourself alone, no more than I did. It is because I learned for you that you can learn of me. I would but teach you what is yours, so that together we can replace the shabby littleness that binds the host of God to guilt and weakness with the glad awareness of the glory that is in him. My birth in you is your awakening to grandeur. Welcome me not into a manger, but into the altar to holiness, where holiness abides in perfect peace. My Kingdom is not of this world because it is in you. And you are of your Father. Let us join in honouring you, who must remain forever beyond littleness.

Text Chap. 15

(p.324, par. 1 to 4)

X. The Time of Rebirth

1 It is in your power, in time, to delay the perfect union of the Father and the Son. For in this world, the attraction of guilt does stand between them. Neither time nor season means anything in eternity. But here it is the Holy Spirit’s function to use them both, though not as the ego uses them. This is the season when you would celebrate my birth into the world. Yet you know not how to do it. Let the Holy Spirit teach you, and let me celebrate your birth through Him. The only gift I can accept of you is the gift I gave to you. Release me as I choose your own release. The time of Christ we celebrate together, for it has no meaning if we are apart.

2 The holy instant is truly the time of Christ. For in this liberating instant no guilt is laid upon the Son of God, and his unlimited power is thus restored to him. What other gift can you offer me, when only this I choose to offer you? And to see me is to see me in everyone, and offer everyone the gift you offer me. I am as incapable of receiving sacrifice as God is, and every sacrifice you ask of yourself you ask of me. Learn now that sacrifice of any kind is nothing but a limitation imposed on giving. And by this limitation you have limited acceptance of the gift I offer you.

3 We who are one cannot give separately. When you are willing to accept our relationship as real, guilt will hold no attraction for you. For in our union you will accept all of our brothers. The gift of union is the only gift that I was born to give. Give it to me, that you may have it. The time of Christ is the time appointed for the gift of freedom, offered to everyone. And by your acceptance of it, you offer it to everyone.

4 It is in your power to make this season holy, for it is in your power to make the time of Christ be now. It is possible to do this all at once because there is but one shift in perception that is necessary, for you made but one mistake. It seems like many, but it is all the same. For though the ego takes many forms, it is always the same idea. What is not love is always fear, and nothing else.

Text Chap. 15, Sec.XI

(excerpts, p. 327-329)

“Christmas as the End of Sacrifice”

(The End of Our Belief in The Sacrifice of Our True Self)

2 The sign of Christmas is a star, a light in darkness. See it not outside yourself, but shining in the Heaven within, and accept it as the sign the time of Christ has come. He comes demanding nothing. No sacrifice of any kind, of anyone, is asked by Him. In His Presence the whole idea of sacrifice loses all meaning. For He is Host to God. And you need but invite Him in Who is there already, by recognizing that His Host is One, and no thought alien to His Oneness can abide with Him there. Love must be total to give Him welcome, for the Presence of Holiness creates the holiness that surrounds it. No fear can touch the Host Who cradles God in the time of Christ, for the Host is as holy as the perfect Innocence which He protects, and Whose power protects Him.

3 This Christmas give the Holy Spirit everything that would hurt you. Let yourself be healed completely that you may join with Him in healing, and let us celebrate our release together by releasing everyone with us. Leave nothing behind, for release is total, and when you have accepted it with me you will give it with me. All pain and sacrifice and littleness will disappear in our relationship, which is as innocent as our relationship with our Father, and as powerful. Pain will be brought to us and disappear in our presence, and without pain there can be no sacrifice. And without sacrifice there love must be.

5As long as you perceive the body as your reality, so long will you perceive yourself as lonely and deprived. And so long will you also perceive yourself as a victim of sacrifice, justified in sacrificing others. For who could thrust Heaven and its Creator aside without a sense of sacrifice and loss? And who could suffer sacrifice and loss without attempting to restore himself? Yet how could you accomplish this yourself, when the basis of your attempts is the belief in the reality of the deprivation? Deprivation breeds attack, being the belief that attack is justified. And as long as you would retain the deprivation, attack becomes salvation and sacrifice becomes love.

7 In the holy instant the condition of love is met, for minds are joined without the body’s interference, and where there is communication there is peace. The Prince of Peace was born to re-establish the condition of love by teaching that communication remains unbroken even if the body is destroyed, provided that you see not the body as the necessary means of communication. And if you understand this lesson, you will realize that to sacrifice the body is to sacrifice nothing, and communication, which must be of the mind, cannot be sacrificed. Where, then, is sacrifice? The lesson I was born to teach, and still would teach to all my brothers, is that sacrifice is nowhere and love is everywhere. For communication embraces everything, and in the peace it re-establishes, love comes of itself.

8 Let no despair darken the joy of Christmas, for the time of Christ is meaningless apart from joy. Let us join in celebrating peace by demanding no sacrifice of anyone, for so you offer me the love I offer you. What can be more joyous than to perceive we are deprived of nothing? Such is the message of the time of Christ, which I give you that you may give it and return it to the Father, Who gave it to me. For in the time of Christ communication is restored, and He joins us in the celebration of His Son’s creation.

10 This is the time in which a new year will soon be born from the time of Christ. I have perfect faith in you to do all that you would accomplish. Nothing will be lacking, and you will make complete and not destroy. Say, then, to your brother:

I give you to the Holy Spirit as part of myself.
I know that you will be released, unless I want to use you to imprison myself.
In the name of my freedom I choose your release, because I recognize that we will be released together.

11 So will the year begin in joy and freedom. There is much to do, and we have been long delayed. Accept the holy instant as this year is born, and take your place, so long left unfulfilled, in The Great Awakening: make this year different by making it all the same. And let all your relationships be made holy for you. This is our will. Amen.

Ken Wapnick Seminars about Christmas

on CDs & MP3 Downloads:

(click here)

The Sign of Christmas Is a Star [CD]

Six Month Online Intensive for All Students of “A Course in Miracles” :

Course Immersion 2024

starts Sat. January 6th 2024… with 18 live online classes on ACIM fundamentals, and one-on-one personal mentoring, and more:

Our Online Immersion 2024 program is different from our regular weekly classes. It is for people new to A Course in Miracles… and anyone desiring to increase their understanding, appreciation, and practice of the Course from the ‘ground up,’ over the first six months of 2024. It can be described as an online ACIM intensive of basic training, not in blaming and fighting, but in the gentle arts of forgiveness and healing.

 

Six Month Intensive from January thru June, 2024,

1st, 2nd & 3rd Saturdays

@ 5:30pm- 7pm (Colorado Mountain Time)

Three Saturdays each month, one and half hr. classes.

click here for more info

 

From The Foundation for Inner Peace …

 

Happy New Year 2023 !!!

(by Lyn Corona)

“Make This Year Different by Making It All the Same.”

A new year’s resolution…

Jesus knows he is speaking to a ‘drowning man’ in A Course in Miracles. Every sentence is a lifeline. This one, “Make this year different by making all the same,” is given as a command. It will save us if we grab it, understand it, and do what he says.

The Course’s new year’s resolution comes at the end of Chapter 15, The Holy Instant, the holy instant being the time in which minds are joined in Christ’s love without body identity interference. It is also the chapter in which Jesus speaks about “the season” (Christmas) of his birth, and how we should celebrate it by joining him in holiness. Why not? What have we got to lose?

There always seems to be some justification for the lack of love we feel…some exception we would rather cling to than grab the lifeline of forgiveness. I could feel love if it weren’t for that situation, that person, that event, etc. That’s what we tell ourselves.

I recently attended a concert in which one of the songs was Meatloaf’s  “I Will Do Anything for Love.” It’s a powerful thought, but the chorus went like this:

“I will do anything for love, but I won’t do that THAT !”

Jesus’ New Year’s resolution requires that we look at all the “thats”. They are all the people that we won’t release to the Holy Spirit, but would prefer to use them to imprison ourselves as bodies, and them along with us. That will surely keep us from the love we say we would do anything for. That will surely keep us from our holiness.

Jesus introduces the resolution with this poignant recognition of our mutual imprisonment as bodies and our joint release in the holy instant in which there are no bodies. It goes like this:

“I give you (name of person) to the Holy Spirit as part of myself.

I know that you will be released, unless I want to use you to imprison myself.

In the name of my freedom I choose your release, because

I recognize that we will be released together.”

We either release or imprison. There is nothing in between. All our relationships could be made holy by giving them to the Holy Spirit who knows how to make of them something beautiful and fulfilling in contrast to the ego’s use to hurt and blame ourselves.

Image the the world in our minds if we were willing to not make any exceptions. What if everyone was seen the same… worthy of being released to love. It would indeed be a different world. This is what Jesus means when he says, “make this year different by making it all the same.” He asks us to give all our relationships, especially the ones we are using to victimize ourselves, to The One Who can show us our shared reality of holiness instead.

“Make this year different by making it all the same. And let all your relationships be made holy for you. This is our will. Amen.”

Happy New Year!

Lyn

Online Course Immersion One

Six Month Intensive from January thru June, 2023,

2nd & 4th Sundays  @ 9:30am-12pm Mt. Time

Designed for New “A Course in Miracles” Students…

and anyone desiring to immerse themselves in a profound understanding and practice of the Course.

Click here for info

What is my real purpose for this new year? 

click here

 

Every Friday, 1:30 pm: Temporarily Suspended

 :

… Suspended for the time being…

class: Climbing the Ladder Home - School for A Course in Miracles - logo

Every Friday, 1:30-3:00 pm

Ongoing Class meets every Friday of each month, 1:30-3 PM.

Location: Rocky Mountain Miracle Center, Denver, CO

The group has a threefold purpose: Becoming comfortable with the metaphysics of the Course and its two thought systems; learning to decipher which of the two we are choosing; searching and applying the instructions and terms presented in the Course. To achieve this, the group reads and discusses the Course, listens to and discusses Ken Wapnick material, and shares personal experiences with the forgiveness principles of the Course.

Drop-ins welcome. Donation basis.
Facilitated by Chris Dixon (kevlene@q.com)

Guidelines For Becoming an SFACIM Teacher…

School for A Course in Miracles - logo

Guidelines for SFACIM Teacher Qualifications:

—- Completed Immersion One and Two

—- Have facilitated a weekly or biweekly ACIM group for at least six months under the guidance and direction of the SFACIM during and after Immersion Two

—- approval as Teacher based on review and determination of School Directors after completion of above (usually an evaluation given about every 6 months.)

—- Their 100% commitment to the School and its classes (especially the encouraging & directing of all Course students with which they connect, to the student’s eventual taking of Immersion, which is the School’s primary function and goal.)

For more info call Lyn (303 880 7713) or Tim (720 391 9294).

Ken Wapnick Videos on Death & Tim’s Recommended Movies about Death

 

Ken Wapnick 5 minute videos on “Death”:

(click refresh if videos don’t appear)

 

 

click here

 

For Ken’s Foundation’s Youtube channel with over 200 (ten minute or less) videos: 

click here

 

 

Some thought-provoking movies about death and dying and the afterlife:

1) Ghost… the classic with Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, and Whoopi Goldberg

*** 2) Coco…. beautiful animated CGI flick about Day of the Dead

*** 3) Departures… wonderful Japanese movie about forgiveness and respect

* 4) Hearts and Souls… funny and insightful with Robert Downey Jr, where 4 dead souls “haunt” him and work out their unresolved issues thru him.

5) What Dreams May Come… Robin Williams looking for his wife in the afterlife

* 6) Meet Joe Black… Anthony Hopkins as the dying man and Brad Pitt as “Death,” who has come to get him.

** 7) Flatliners… unusual movie about a group of med students who take turns taking their lives and bringing each other back, and in so doing learn some powerful forgiveness lessons, with very young Kevin Bacon, Kiefer Sutherland, and Julia Roberts. 

*** 8) Six Feet Under TV series… one of the best tv series ever! It’s about a family running a funeral home in LA and their many conversations with the dead folks they are working on…

* 9) All of Me… funny movie about souls inhabiting other bodies after death, with Lily Tomlin (the inhabiter) and Steve Martin (the inhabited)

10) One for The Angels… another classic: Ed Wynn meets Mr. Death in a 1959 Twilight Zone Show (Season 1, #2) on Netflix…   click here  

*** 11) Collateral Beauty… Ed Norton hires three actors to play Death (H. Mirren), Time, and Love to help his friend Will Smith get past his grieving. (A Tim & Lyn favorite!)

12) The Seventh Seal… Ingmar Bergman at his best, about a knight returning from Crusades and his interactions and conversations and chess game with Death.

13) Two X-Files Shows…  [1]”Tithonus” (6th Season, Eps. 10) about a photographer who can’t die:    https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B001DCEK96/ref=atv_dp_season_select_s6

* 14)  [2] “How The Ghost Stole Christmas” :(6th Season, Eps. 6)

Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin as two dead souls that haunt Mulder and Scully on Xmas Eve    : https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001DCEKAU

15) Heaven Can Wait… clever and funny, with Warren Beatty as dead soul mistakenly taken and James Mason as angel-in-charge.

** 16) Sixth Sense… part horror flick/part moving drama about afterlife, with Bruce Willis (nominated for 6 Academy Awards)

* 17) Brand New Testament… Very very quirky movie where God’s daughter releases (on everyone’s cell phone) the date they are going to die….

* 18) A Little Bit of Heaven… with Kate Hudson as woman who finds out she is terminally ill.

19) PS I Love You… Wife finds letters (with helpful suggestions for her) from her dying husband to her… after he dies, with Hillary Swank, Gerald Butler, and Kathy Bates.

** 20) Biutiful….Inarritu directs, Bardem stars as the dying man

*** 21) Amour… touching movie about love between elderly French couple.  It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was nominated in four other categories: Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Screenplay, and Best Director.

** 22 & 23) Dead Man Walking & The Green Mile… two very great movies about death row.

*** 24) Kodachrome… on Netflix,  movie with Ed Harris as disgruntled dying parent on road trip with his estranged son.

25) Whose Life Is It Anyway?… Richard Dreyfus as man who fights for his right to die.

(The above starred *** shows are particularly recommended!)

 

School for A Course in Miracles 

You Tube Channel: 

(Please Subscribe!… thanks.)

(click here)

 

The Belief in The Murder/Death of God, and Our One True Self

More than 50 years ago in April 1966 (does it feel that long?), Time Magazine came out with its now legendary cover “Is God Dead?” It is a topic that the Course explores and discusses as the basis for our choosing to believe in separation from Our Father in Heaven. In order to pretend our disconnect from Source, we had to justify and believe in our ‘killing’ or destroying our connection and Oneness with God.

It is easy and quite normal from the ego’s point of view to skip over and quickly ‘forget’ those passages in the Course that talk about the death of God. The idea of ‘murdering’ God and our own true identity as His One Son is consciously so repulsive, not to mention in truth impossible.

Which is why, as the Course explains, we have to constantly project that guilt/blame for believing we did just that, onto the world and someone or something else, besides us… or we would let go of that secret belief that death is even possible, in a heartbeat (the Holy Instant). 

 

Here are some of the references in the Course…

where Jesus talks about the how and why of our belief in God’s death, and our own, and their impossibility:

 

“Our Ego Belief in the Murder and Death of God and Our True Self”

 

Text:

Ch.16, p.343, par. 12,

The special relationship (any relationship with a person or thing, seen through the eyes of the ego) must be recognized for what it is; a senseless ritual in which strength is extracted from the death of God, and invested in His killer as the sign that form (the entire physical universe of time and space) has triumphed over content (our Identity as Love), and love has lost its meaning. Would you want this to be possible, even apart from its evident impossibility? If it were possible, you would have made yourself helpless. God is not angry. He merely could not let this happen. You cannot change His Mind. No rituals that you have set up in which the dance of death delights you can bring death to the eternal (our true reality… and God’s).

Ch.19, p.403, par.7

7 There is no stone in all the ego’s embattled citadel that is more heavily defended than the idea that sin (the belief in our severed Oneness with God) is real: the natural (ego) expression of what the Son of God has made himself to be (separate from God), and what he is (now… a killer, a destroyer of Oneness). To the ego, this is no mistake. For this is its reality; this is the “truth” from which escape will always be impossible. This is his past (sin), his present (guilt) and his future (fear). For he has somehow managed to corrupt his Father, and change His Mind completely.

Mourn, then, the death of God, Whom sin has killed! And this would be the ego’s wish, which in its madness it believes it has accomplished.

 

Ch.23, p.486, par.2

2 Do you not realize a war against yourself (our true reality as God’s One Son) would be a war on God? Is victory conceivable? And if it were, is this a victory that you would want? The death of God, if it were possible, would be your death. Is this a victory? The ego always marches to defeat, because it thinks that triumph over you (your Real Self) is possible.

And God thinks otherwise. This is no war; only the mad belief the Will of God can be attacked and overthrown. You may identify with this belief, but never will it be more than madness. And fear will reign in madness, and will seem to have replaced love there. This is the conflict’s purpose. And to those who think that it (the attack and overthrow of God) is possible, the means seem real.

 

Ch.26, p.543, par.6-7

But judge him not (your brother), for you will hear no song of liberation for yourself, nor see what it is given him to witness to (his and your sinlessness), that you may see it and rejoice with him. Make not his holiness a sacrifice to your belief in sin. You sacrifice your innocence with his, and die each time you see in him a sin deserving death.

…You who would make a sacrifice of life, and make your eyes and ears bear witness to the death of God and of His holy Son, think not that you have power to make of Them (God and His Son) what God willed not They be.

 

 

Workbook:

 

Les.72, on  attacking God and God’s death, p.124, par.5-6

And every grievance that you hold insists that the body is real. It overlooks entirely what your brother is. It reinforces your belief that he is a body, and condemns him for it. And it asserts that his salvation must be death, projecting this attack onto God, and holding Him responsible for it.

6 To this carefully prepared arena, where angry animals seek for prey and mercy cannot enter, the ego comes to save you. God made you a body (so the ego sarcastically tells us…) Very well. Let us accept this and be glad. As a body, do not let yourself be deprived of what the body offers. Take the little you can get. God gave you nothing. The body is your only savior. It is the death of God and your salvation.

7 This is the universal belief of the world you see.

Les.163 on the death of God and His One Son, p.309, par.5-6

Here is the opposite of God (death) proclaimed as lord of all creation, stronger than God’s Will for life, the endlessness of love, and Heaven’s perfect, changeless constancy. Here is the Will of Father and of Son defeated finally, and laid to rest beneath the headstone death has placed upon the body of the holy Son of God.

5 Unholy (God’s Son in a body that will die) in defeat, he has become what death would have him be. His epitaph, which death itself has written, gives no name to him, for he has passed to dust. It says but this: “Here lies a witness God is dead.” And this it writes again and still again, while all the while its (death) worshippers agree, and kneeling down with foreheads to the ground, they whisper fearfully that it is so.


…God was once alive and somehow perished; killed, apparently, by those who did not want Him to survive. Their stronger will could triumph over His, and so eternal life gave way to death. And with the Father died the Son as well.

 

Manual:

#17, p.45, par.7

 Accept your separation, but do not remember how it came about. Believe that you have won it (from God), but do not retain the slightest memory of Who your great “opponent” really is. Projecting your “forgetting” onto Him (God), it seems to you He has forgotten, too.

7 But what will now be your reaction to all magic thoughts (belief that certain things or forms in the world can make us feel better, or make us feel worse)? They can but re-awaken sleeping guilt (for having separated from God and destroying the Oneness with our Creator in our minds), which you have hidden but have not let go. Each one (each magical thought that some thing, and not God, can make us feel better) says clearly to your frightened mind, “You have usurped the place of God. Think not He has forgotten.” Here we have the fear of God most starkly represented. For in that thought has guilt already raised madness to the throne of God Himself. And now there is no hope. Except to kill. Here is salvation now. An angry father pursues his guilty son.

Kill or be killed, for here alone is choice. (What the ego tells us…) Beyond this there is none, for what was done cannot be done without. The stain of blood can never be removed (reference to Macbeth’s wife), and anyone who bears this stain on him must meet with death.

 

#27, p.67, par.5

5 The “reality” of death is firmly rooted in the belief that God’s Son is a body. And if God created bodies, death would indeed be real (when we believe we are bodies, we are all ‘dead men walking’) . But God would not be loving. There is no point at which the contrast between the perception of the real world (the world seen thru the Holy Spirit’s eyes) and that of the world of illusions becomes more sharply evident (as our belief in death).

Death is indeed the death of God, if He is Love. And now His Own creation must stand in fear of Him. He is not Father, but destroyer. He is not Creator, but avenger. Terrible His Thoughts and fearful His image. To look on His creations is to die.

 


Text, Ch.23, p.495-498, Sec. III & IV excerpts (where the word ‘murder’ is used more than 20 times):

He (all of us) may deny he (believes he) is a murderer and justify his savagery with smiles as he attacks (judges). Yet he will suffer, and will look on his (mind’s) intent in nightmares where the smiles are gone, and where the purpose (murder) rises to meet his horrified awareness and pursue him still.

For no one thinks of murder (the death of God and our innocence as His Son, in our minds) and escapes the guilt the thought entails. If the intent is death (in the mind), what matter the form it takes (in the world)?

You are not asked to fight against your wish to murder. But you are asked to realize the form it takes conceals the same intent (all form in the world mirrors only one of two thoughts in the mind… love or death). And it is this you fear, and not the form. What is not love is murder. What is not loving must be an attack. Every illusion is an assault on truth (love).

Each form of murder and attack that still attracts you and that you do not recognize for what it is, limits the healing and the miracles you have the power to extend to all. Yet does the Holy Spirit understand how to increase your little gifts and make them mighty. Also He understands how your relationship is raised above the battleground, in it no more. This is your part; to realize that murder in any form is not your will. 

Who with the Love of God upholding him could find the choice of miracles or murder hard to make?

The bad news is that Jesus is telling us… we secretly believe we continue to kill our real connection with God and our brothers, and destroy our awareness of our true identity as God’s One Innocent Son… every time we attack and judge our brothers, by projecting our own guilt onto them.

The good news is that we didn’t, couldn’t, and never will be able to do that in reality! God still loves us, and Jesus didn’t go anywhere, and we can’t be ‘prodigal sons’ no matter how much we pretend.

For more discussion “On Death and Dying”

see Ken Wapnick’s Cd set (or MP3 or DVDs)

click here

Course References on Death and Dying:

“There is no death, the Son of God is free…”

27. WHAT IS DEATH?

Manual p.66

1 Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end? We have asked this question before, but now we need to consider it more carefully. It is the one fixed, unchangeable belief of the world that all things in it are born only to die. This is regarded as “the way of nature,” not to be raised to question, but to be accepted as the “natural” law of life. 

————————————

 Text, Chapter 23, p.493, par.19

19 There is no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven life is illusion. At best it seems like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions are but forms. Their content is never true. 

——————————-

WB Lesson 163, p.309

There is no death. The Son of God is free.

 1 Death is a thought that takes on many forms, often unrecognized. It may appear as sadness, fear, anxiety or doubt; as anger, faithlessness and lack of trust; concern for bodies, envy, and all forms in which the wish to be as you are not may come to tempt you. All such thoughts are but reflections of the worshipping of death as savior and as giver of release.

The idea of the death of God is so preposterous that even the insane have difficulty in believing it. For it implies that God was once alive and somehow perished; killed, apparently, by those who did not want Him to survive…

Our Father, bless our eyes today. We are Your messengers, and we would look upon the glorious reflection of Your Love which shines in everything. We live and move in You alone. We are not separate from Your eternal life. There is no death, for death is not Your Will. 

—————————————-

28. WHAT IS THE RESURRECTION?

Manual p.68

1 Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death. It is a re-awakening or a rebirth; a change of mind about the meaning of the world. 

2 The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. 

There is no death. The Son of God is free.

———————————————

Text, Chapter 19: The Attainment of Peace

C. The Third Obstacle to Peace: The Attraction of Death, p.416

1 To you and your brother, in whose special relationship the Holy Spirit entered, it is given to release and be released from the dedication to death. For it was offered you, and you accepted. Yet you must learn still more about this strange devotion, for it contains the third obstacle that peace must flow across… What seems to be the fear of death is really its attraction.

 7 Those who fear death see not how often and how loudly they call to it, and bid it come to save them from communication. For death is seen as safety, the great dark savior from the light of truth, the answer to the Answer, the silencer of the Voice That speaks for God. Yet the retreat to death is not the end of conflict. Only God’s Answer is its end. The obstacle of your seeming love for death that peace must flow across seems to be very great. For in it lie hidden all the ego’s secrets, all its strange devices for deception, all its sick ideas and weird imaginings. Here is the final end of union, the triumph of the ego’s making over creation, the victory of lifelessness on Life Itself.

 

D. The Fourth Obstacle: The Fear of God, p.420

1 What would you see without the fear of death? What would you feel and think if death held no attraction for you? Very simply, you would remember your Father…

4 See how the belief in death would seem to “save” you. For if this were gone, what could you fear but life? It is the attraction of death that makes life seem to be ugly, cruel and tyrannical. You are no more afraid of death than of the ego. These are your chosen friends. For in your secret alliance with them (death and the ego) you have agreed never to let the fear of God be lifted, so you could look upon the face of Christ and join Him in His Father…

… The exaltation of the body is given up in favor of the spirit, which you love as you could never love the body. And the appeal of death is lost forever as love’s attraction stirs and calls to you. From beyond each of the obstacles to love (and peace), Love Itself has called.

Also see:

*Workbook, Les. 167, p.318-319:

“You think that death is of the body. Yet it is but an idea (in the mind)… Death is the thought that you are separate from your Creator… What seems to be the opposite of life (in Heaven) is merely sleeping.”

*Song of Prayer Pamphlet, Part 3. Healing:

Sec.I p.16, par. 1-2

Sec. II p.17-18, par.1-5 (including…)

“This is what death should be; a quiet choice, made joyfully and with a sense of peace, because the body has been kindly used to help the Son of God along the way he goes to God. We thank the body, then, for all the service it has given us.

But we are thankful, too, the need is done to walk the world of limits, and to reach the Christ in hidden forms and clearly seen at  most in lovely flashes. Now we can behold Him without the blinders, in the light that we have learned to look upon again. — We call it death, but it is liberty. It does not come in forms that seem to be thrust down in pain upon unwilling flesh, but as a gentle welcome to release.

 

If there has been true healing, this can be the form in which death comes when it is time to rest a while from labor gladly done and gladly ended. Now we go in peace to freer air and gentler climate, where it is not hard to see the gifts we gave were saved for us. For Christ is clearer now; His vision more sustained in us; His Voice, the Word of God, more certainly our own. — Death is reward and not a punishment. But such a viewpoint must be fostered by the healing that the world cannot conceive.”(S-3.II.2:1-4/3:1-5/5:5-6)

For Further Discussion

on Death & Dying

by Ken Wapnick:

(Click on pictures below for info)

 

 

Happy Resurrection!

Please visit this  Course & Coffee Chat replay on the Course’s meaning of the Resurrection (click here)…

and check out these selected Course readings given at Easter Time about the Resurrection:

Chap. 20, sections I & II p. 425-428 “The Gift of Lilies”

WB Les. 135  p. 256 par. 24-25-26 “This is my (our) Eastertime.”

Manual #28 “What is The Resurrection?” p.68-69

Click here

for our latest SFACIM post on

“Healing: What It Is, What It Isn’t”

Quarterly on a Sunday : Lighthouse Newsletter Study Group (Next One TBA)

Every Three Months, on a Sunday, 1- 3pm @ RMMC.

Next one: TBA

The group meets four times a year at RMMC on a Sunday afternoon from 1- 3pm. Upcoming dates and selected newsletter will be announced, or you can contact Chris Dixon. (kevlene@q.com).

There will be study and discussion of one of Ken Wapnick’s past Lighthouse newsletters published by Foundation for A Course In Miracles (FACIM). 

 

Recommended for Ongoing Course Students

(Newcomers …click here)

$7 suggested donation for class.   

 

The Lighthouse Newsletter to be covered will be announced a few weeks before class. 

 

IMG_0003

We suggest reading the Lighthouse article ahead of time, making notes to share about it, and numbering the paragraphs in each section of the newsletter for easy reference. 

 

 

 Facilitated by Chris Dixon

All of Dr. Kenneth Wapnick’s insightful Lighthouse Newsletters are contained in this Lighthouse Anthology from FACIM.org…

Hardcover Book
First edition. 520 pages.
  
 

Excerpted from the Introduction:

In 1990, the Foundation for A Course in Miracles began its official newsletter, The Lighthouse. It evolved into a quarterly periodical announcing classes and publications, and featured articles written by us (Kenneth and Gloria). We have thought for some time now, echoed in the numerous requests of others, to have these articles available as a collection, and thus are pleased to announce this compendium of writings entitled From The Lighthouse. The articles cover a wide range of topics, as we considered both the world of A Course in Miracles as well as the world at large through the lens of the Course’s teachings on forgiveness. When taken together, as they are in this compendium, these writings provide a window into how we at the Foundation have seen A Course in Miracles as a spiritual path, as well as our own development as a center dedicated to preserving and teaching its principles.

Below are some excerpts From The Lighthouse (click on title to read):