School for A Course In Miracles

"The universe of learning will open up before you."

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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“Our Search for Meaning & Purpose,” August 16th Seminar @ RMMC

“Our Search for Meaning and Purpose”

Wed., August 16, 2017, 11am-5pm

Live Video Streaming Presentation from the Temecula Foundation for ACIM @

Rocky Mountain Miracle Center in Denver

(Not recommended for folks new to the Course, click here for programs suggested for beginners.)

 

Faculty: Dr. Rosemarie LoSasso and Dr. Jeffrey Seibert

Time: 11 a.m. – 1:15 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. – 5:15 p.m. (Mountain Time)

It seems to be the great preoccupation of the world to find what will give our lives meaning and purpose. And the search may lead down many different paths, among them: mundane achievements, such as money, power and fame; interpersonal relationships, including family and friends; caring roles aimed at helping others and making the world a better place; and spiritual pursuits, such as becoming a student (and teacher) of A Course in Miracles. And yet despite the seeming differences among all of them, from the perspective of the Course, they share one thing in common: they are all meaningless. For all seek to establish meaning and purpose in special relationships, our substitutes for God, through the activity of the body, which nicely serves the ego’s purpose of keeping the Son of God mindless.

This program will explore what the Course asserts are the only two purposes our lives can serve: reinforcing the dream through judgment and specialness, or awakening from it through the miracle and forgiveness, only one of which is meaningful, for it shifts our focus from the body to the mind. And we will examine the subtle ways in which the ego attempts to convince us that meaning and purpose can still be found in the world of dreams, telling us that seeking to find meaning in awakening from the dream is simply not enough to get us through our day.

 

Come watch with us together, at the Rocky Mountain Miracle Center, the live streaming of this insightful one day seminar on the search for truth from the Course’s perspective, with two great Course teachers from the FACIM in California.

 

Suggested donation $20

(or whatever you can to help the SFACIM in expanding the understanding of the ACIM)

Part of your donation goes to the RMMC and the FACIM.

You can donate at door with cash or check, or by credit card below… (if you don’t see yellow “Add to Cart” link click here)

 




“A One Day Immersion into Course Basics”

(Great for Beginners and All Course Students Seeking a Refresher in Course Fundamentals)

 Sat. Sept. 16th, 10am-4pm

Presented In-Person @ RMMC and Online

(click here)

Click Here for Updated SFACIM Daily Schedule

 

 

Arrogance vs Humility, Part One

(By Tim Wise)

How do we see ourselves?

What does arrogance look like?

What does humility look like?

How does God see us?

As I was planning to do a Thursday Chat about arrogance and humility, I did what I do on any topic and started with Webster. On arrogance, the dictionary definition is “being full of excessive and overbearing pride.”

With humility, Webster sounds like the Course: “having or expressing a sense of selflessness.” Really, that’s what it says. That’s the #1 definition that’s used the most in everyday English for being humble… letting go of our sense of ‘lower-case’ self.

A couple of my own ideas about arrogance, for me anyway… include a few things:

1) It has a puffed-up unwarranted overkill about it, like a balloon full of hot air.

2) Arrogance is not very likable, if not mostly distasteful. My sense is even the arrogant don’t like it in others.

3) Finally, arrogance needs an audience. It demands an internal belief that others are acknowledging the arrogant’s superiority, whether it’s true others are really noticing or not.

For humility, I would agree with Webster on an attitude of selflessness. I would also add the Course’s principle that the truly humble focus on shared interests in the mind, and let go of their investments in the seeming external differences.

The Course’s Take on Arrogance and Humility:

The Course actually uses the words arrogance/arrogant 55 times, and humility/humble over forty. Whenever arrogance is spoken about in the Course, it is always in relationship to its opposite, humility. The two themes are covered for the most part in Lessons #61, 152, and 186. “True humility” is especially described as the top of the ladder of prayer, in the Song of Prayer Pamphlet, p. 8:

Prayer (defined in the Pamphlet as not supplication to the Holy Spirit for specifics, but as a state of communion with the HS) is the way to true humility… and true humility will come at last to grace the mind that thought it was alone and stood against the world… Its selflessness is Self… Humility has come to teach you how to understand your glory as God’s Son, and recognize the arrogance of sin.

(Excerpts from Song of Prayer p. 8)

A Course in Miracles - combined volume - hardbound - English

Some Course thoughts from Les.#61…

“I am the light of the world.”

Who is the light of the world except God’s Son? This, then, is merely a statement of the truth about yourself. It is the opposite of a statement of pride, of arrogance, or of self-deception. It does not describe the self-concept you have made. It does not refer to any of the characteristics with which you have endowed your idols. It refers to you as you were created by God. It simply states the truth. 

To the ego, today’s idea is the epitome of self-glorification. But the ego does not understand humility, mistaking it for self-debasement. Humility consists of accepting your role in salvation and in taking no other. It is not humility to insist you cannot be the light of the world if that is the function God assigned to you. It is only arrogance that would assert this function cannot be for you, and arrogance is always of the ego.

True humility requires that you accept today’s idea because it is God’s Voice which tells you it is true. This is a beginning step in accepting your real function on earth. It is a giant stride toward taking your rightful place in salvation. It is a positive assertion of your right to be saved, and an acknowledgment of the power that is given you to save others.

( WB, Les 61, p. 102, par.1-3)

Arrogance and humility are simply about how we see ourselves… we either are “the light of the world” we perceive, or we’re not. Our identification as separated egos insist on the latter. We believe we have done the impossible (a great definition of arrogance), and separated from our Father in Heaven. Now we believe we are these inflated balloons full of hot air (bodies), that will eventually deflate (die). How silly is that!

 

Of course, our ego would like to run in its own direction, relentlessly maintaining belief in separation. It would use all the above Course statements its own way, especially “the power that is given you (us) to save others.” The ego would make it all about separate bodies saving other separate bodies, especially my body/personality saving yours. However that power to save (i.e. wake up from the dream of  separation) is never, ever, played out in the world behaviorally, or by the separated us at all.

Whatever happens in the world is always a mirror reflection of two (and only two) chosen thoughts or chosen teachers in the mind, the ego or Holy Spirit…  If we are choosing the inner ego voice of  belief in separation in our minds, whether we act like Crusader Rabbits (a cartoon from the 1950’s) saving anyone or everyone in the world, it will always be a refection of that teacher in our minds.

Whenever our behavior is reflecting an inner ego choice, any worldly act of kindness/salvation cannot help but be an act of arrogance! Full of hot air and blown-up pride. It typically manifests as… “I am Holier than tho, and I will save you, the lesser.”

These ego-based “kind” actions certainly have the ring of the three ideas above about arrogance:

  • It’s puffed-up and overblown.
  • It’s usually not wanted or liked or even appreciated, and if so… only temporarily, and then later resented.
  • And it’s believed by the ‘do-gooder’ that he’s admired for it, or at least should be.

It doesn’t mean we should not help out in any situation. The Course is only saying what really matters is which internal teacher am I doing ‘the helping’ with…

—————————

For Part Two on “Arrogance vs Humility” on this website:

{including how do I know which teacher in my mind I am choosing}

click here

Also, for a more in-depth discussion of arrogance & humility,

see Ken Wapnick’s

“Making the Holy Spirit Special:

The Arrogance of the Ego”

(on 9 CD set or MP3 download)

click here

 

Celebrating The First Ten Years of…

School for A Course in Miracles: click here

Would you like to help the School for A Course in Miracles…

Grow and Expand?

Click here

 

Arrogance vs Humility, Part Two

So how do we know, in any given moment, which teacher we are internally choosing?

How do we know if our seeming act of kindness is genuine or not?

 Does pain seem real to us in the situation? 

How do we feel?

How can you know whether you chose the stairs to Heaven (HS) or the way to hell (the ego)? Quite easily. How do you feel? Is peace in your awareness?

Are you certain which way you go? And are you sure the goal of Heaven can be reached? If not, you walk alone. Ask then your Friend (HS) to join with you, and give you certainty of where you go.

(Text Ch. 23, p.494, par.22)

 

How can you tell when you are seeing wrong, or someone else is failing to perceive the lesson he should learn? Does pain seem real in the (my) perception? If it does, be sure the (my) lesson is not learned.

And there remains an unforgiveness hiding in the (my) mind that sees the pain through eyes the mind directs. 

(WB Les. 193, par.7)

Over and over the Course tells us that the way we save the world is by realizing that we and the world are already saved. The Course’s Introduction to the Text resounds throughout the entire Course: 

The Course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim at removing the blocks to the (our) awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance.

(Text p. 1)

 

In other words we are already saved, and pretending we’re not. Our innocence as God’s one Son is still intact. But we distract ourselves from that true identity with our finger pointing: “look at what you did to me!”

As the above Lesson# 193 says, “there remains an unforgiveness hiding in our minds”… hiding from us. The bottom line unforgiveness is always hanging onto the guilt for our supposed disconnection from God in our minds… which never really happened. We don’t really want to admit that, much less let it go. And we use all our projected wordly resentments and blames to cover that awareness over in ourselves and stay preoccupied elsewhere.

It’s the ongoing ego game of self deception. You may know the recurring line in the R.E.M. song “Bang and Blame.” Its lyrics keep repeating the phrase “bang, bang… blame, blame… so let it go.” We constantly target and shoot (bang) at each other with our judgements (blame), to stay distracted from our own made-up internal incrimination.

 

Every addict/alcoholic in recovery knows one of the first things they have to do is look… look at and initially admit that they are addicts (in the Course, the bottom-line ‘addiction’ is to separation). Without the addiction they believe they will die, even though the addiction is killing them. Same with us: without separation we secretly made ourselves believe we’ll die.

And by themselves without help, addicts can’t stop. With the Course, it’s the Holy Spirit who helps, and without Him we can’t stop our judging.

Underneath that understanding, recovering addicts begin to realize they’re tenaciously clinging to, and nursing, their resentments or unforgivenesses, to maintain and justify their addiction.

Similarly, what is preventing us then, in this very second, from feeling saved, or causing us to experience anything less than real peace? There is always a judgement, an unforgiveness, we are holding onto. And we have to convince ourselves and others, that judgement is justified. It is those judgements that block our awareness of who we truly are, “the awareness of love’s presence.” We and our brothers are love, and come from love, and will always be love.

So no matter how right we think we are about our conscious judgements… The only way to see past them is to acknowledge them, how awful and deep they do run. All of our conscious judgements are simply a projection of our own inner guilt for pushing Jesus away in our minds. So, to stop pushing him out of our awareness, ask  Jesus or the Holy Spirit for help to let those judgements go, especially the underlying idea that we even could push God away in the first place. We then begin to have an experience beyond those judgements of others and ourselves to our true reality.

“I am never upset for the reason I think.”: 

This idea can be used with any person, situation or event you think is causing you pain. Apply it specifically to whatever you believe is the cause of your upset, using the description of the feeling in whatever term seems accurate to you. The upset may seem to be fear, worry, depression, anxiety, anger, hatred, jealousy or any number of forms, all of which will be perceived as different. This is not true. 

(WB Les#5, par.1)

A restatement of Lesson #5 could easily have said… “What if I’m never judging for the reason I think?”  

Like car maintenance plans, what if my judgements are simply a separation maintenance program… and that in my arrogance, I’m in total denial about what is really going on. I’m just making up reasons to blame and point fingers, even tho in the world those judgements may seem totally justified. However justified or not in worldly terms, what if all that is just a smokescreen for what’s really happening?

 

If all that drama is based on not who and what we truly are, what do judgements about someone else’s behavior or my own have to do with the real me or the real you! They simply keep me stuck in believing you and I are these separate vulnerable things, at the mercy of whichever way the wind blows, disconnected from our true reality.

So the Holy Spirit and Jesus ask us to try this:

Where concepts of the self have been laid by is truth revealed exactly as it is. When every concept has been raised to doubt and question, and been recognized as made on no assumptions that would stand the light, then is the truth left free to enter in its sanctuary, clean and free of guilt. There is no statement that the world (and all of us) is more afraid to hear than this:

I do not know the thing I am,

and therefore do not know what I am doing,

where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself.

Yet in this learning is salvation born. And What you are will tell you of Itself.

(Text Chap.31, p. 660, par. 17)

Jesus says… my brothers, the willingness to ask for my help to see and experience yourselves the way I see you is true humility. Anything less is simply silly arrogance.

For an in-depth discussion on discerning which teacher I am listening to,

see Ken Wapnick’s

“A Hawk from A Handsaw”

(on 5 CD set or MP3 download)

click here

 

The Nonprofit “Ark of Peace” (under which School for A Course in Miracles is affiliated)

Bridge - Autumn Color

Founding:

The Ark of Peace was founded as a 501 © (3) nonprofit organization in 1990 to support and extend the teachings of forgiveness set forth in A Course in Miracles. In the Course, the ark of peace symbolizes the truth that remains as we release others from our mistakes and honor them as they are. “You made him not; no more yourself. And as you free the one, the other is accepted as he is.”
 
A Course in Miracles elevates our relationships to spiritual significance by teaching us to use them to free ourselves from the illusion of separation. Its message is practical and its accomplishments palpable while living in the world.
“The ark of peace is entered two by two, yet the beginning of another world goes with them.”

Board of Trustees:

Lyn Corona, president

TimWise, vice president

 

Outreach:

Since its founding in 1990 the Ark of Peace has served hundreds of individuals through teaching, healing, and community service. Throughout these diverse forms the single purpose has remained awakening from the dream of separation through the Course’s unique form of forgiveness.

Donate:

The Ark of Peace is the legal entity for the School for A Course in Miracles. The Ark was founded in 1990 as a 501© (3) nonprofit organization to share the teachings of A Course in Miracles. All donations are tax-deductible.
Checks made out to Ark of Peace/School for A Course in Miracles will be used exclusively to help the school carry out its teaching function by providing classes, events, publications, media, and an online resource through this website.
Please consider contributing to our message of peace through forgiveness with your donation. Your generosity will help us serve others seeking to discover the peace of mind that lies beyond the illusory belief of separate interests.
We gratefully accept each donation, regardless of amount, to further our mission of sharing A Course in Miracles’ message and helping others understand and apply its teachings. Please click on the Donate button (at the top right of every page) to make a donation.

* If there is a specific place/cause you would like your donation to be applied to, please mention it in the notes box upon payment.*

If you would prefer to make a donation via check, you can send your check to:
School for ACIM
c/o Lyn Corona
1663 Steele Street #1007
Denver, Colorado 80206
Questions about your donation? Please contact Lyn Corona here.
Thank you for your donation!
————————————

A Letter from The School President:

Dear friend of School for A Course in Miracles,

I want to take a moment to let you know how much we appreciate your monthly contributions to School for A Course in Miracles.

Most importantly, by your generosity you join us in our common purpose of learning forgiveness and freeing yourself and your brothers from misunderstanding and the hate that ensues. A peaceful mind is not a little gift. Through our joint sharing we hope to accelerate this process. Together we are part of a greater purpose than the one we once came to this world for.

Secondly, regular monthly donations are an important part of our overall financial stability because they enable us to budget with certainty. Regardless of the amount you are able to contribute your regular contribution is very helpful to us and we thank you for it.

If you are not yet a regular contributor and would like to be one, here is how you go about it:

  • Go to our School for A Course in Miracles website atwww.sfacim.org
  • Find the donate button on any page and click on it
  • From the dropdown menu choose your option. Monthly donation is among them.
  • Choose an amount, from $5 to $200 or set your own amount
  • Choose method of payment (Bank Debit Card or Credit Card)
  • If you prefer check, send to:School for A Course in Miracles1663 Steele St. #1007Denver, CO 80206

About our regular online classes.

We have online classes on Saturday and Tuesday mornings at 9:30 am, and Thursday evenings at 6:30 pm. They are accessed through our Zoom classroom link which can be found on every weekly news post or by going to the website and finding any online class. The link is always the same.

Every earnest student is welcome to attend. We do not make specific charges for these classes. Instead, if you find value here, we hope you will consider making a monthly donation to support School for A Course in Miracles.

About donations.

School for A Course in Miracles is the teaching order of Ark of Peace, a 501 © (3) nonprofit organization founded in 1990 to support and extend the teachings of forgiveness set forth in A Course in Miracles. In the Course, the ark of peace symbolizes the truth that remains as we release others from our mistakes and honor them as they are. “You made him not; no more yourself. And as you free the one, the other is accepted as he is.” L. 200

We thank you for choosing School for A Course in Miracles for your Course education.

With appreciation,

Lyn Corona

Celebrating The First 10 Years of School for A Course in Miracles

EXTENDING THE MESSAGE OF

“PEACE THROUGH FORGIVENESS”

 

Hello, Friends of A Course in Miracles:

Our School for A Course in Miracles was founded in 2007 as School of Reason. The name was later changed to School for A Course in Miracles as it more accurately expresses what we are about. The school is the teaching order of the Ark of Peace, a 501(c)3 non-profit, established in 1990 for the purpose of sharing the Course’s teachings of “peace through forgiveness”.

 

Here are some of the accomplishments in our first 10 years.

  • An outstanding website www.sfacim.org. As you visit it you will see a beautiful, well-organized site, filled with extensive written, audio and video materials on the Course. Updated daily, you can always find current events and classes.
  • 100’s of classes, numerous workshops and retreats, and five 6-month long Course Immersions in the study and application of Course principles.
  • A prolific Ken Wapnick Library, which has provided local Denver Course students with thousands of hours of listening to renown scholar Dr. Kenneth Wapnick as he illuminates the teachings of ACIM.
  • Weekly on-line classes offered through our new technology – Zoom Online Classrooms.
  • Mentoring sessions – a choice of 30 or 60 minutes – for those times when you feel stuck and can’t see a way out.
  • New technology that is expanding our access to students anywhere in the world. Course Immersion 2017 was attended by students in-person and online in Colorado, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. The good news is that the technology has not impaired but broadened our School’s teaching/learning process.
  • The transformation of students into teachers of God, defined by the Course as those who understand and demonstrate the practice of forgiveness and share Jesus’ aim of healing the mind.
  • Four faculty members with over 120 years of combined education and application of Course teachings illuminated by thousands of hours studying with Course scholar, Kenneth Wapnick, Phd. Our teaching is consistent, focused and simple, imbued with certainty and conviction that it works. The benefits to students is accelerated learning and experience.

 

 

 

 

It appears to be a good time for us to think about extending the message of A Course in Miracles. The message is very simple: “God’s Son is guiltless.” To learn and experience the truth of this statement we must teach (demonstrate) it. And to teach it we must learn to forgive. Forgiveness is the way to peace.

From Jesus and his Course, and from Ken Wapnick (scholar, teacher and true helper) and his teachings on the Course, the facilitators of SFACIM have received an outstanding education. Now we are being nudged to expand our reach and make this same education more available to earnest students wherever they may be. Coincidentally, there is nothing we as Course facilitators would rather do than carry this message.

Moving forward, we want to build a firmer financial foundation on which to operate Jesus’ and Ken’s, yours and ours, and ultimately everyone’s school. We hope to move forward with the assurance that we can do so with minimum financial concern. Furthermore, we want there to be champions of the idea of “peace through forgiveness” in this world for as long as it is needed.

As a student, or someone who has been affected by A Course in Miracles, perhaps we speak for you as well. If so please join, help, or support the School for ACIM in any way you feel moved.

Click here to find out how you can help…

Sincerely,

Lyn Corona,

Director of School for A Course in Miracles