Musings… The Power Of Your Mind & Your Decision Maker

June 1, 2020

“My Decision Maker”

What is it? Where is it? What are my options?

On Ken Wapnick’s Chart of Course Metaphysics, his diagram depicts ‘the how and why’ of believing we are in the world, and more importantly, how we ‘get back’ to our true Identity in Heaven. The primary and most important concept central to the whole chart is the decision maker (DM). Ken describes it as that internal part of us in our mind that chooses whether to take the tiny mad idea of separation seriously (the ego)… or not, and see it as silly (the Holy Spirit).

The reason why the “decision maker” is so pivotal is that is where all our seeming trouble started when we started believing we separated from God (i.e. ego)… so when we get back to the mind and specifically to our decision maker and choose again, our belief in our woes will end and we will experience peace.

So first off…. what is it? How would we describe this decision maker (DM)? Regretfully, after running to Ken Wapnick’s Glossary for ACIM for a quick pat answer… it was not there. He did describe the Course’s view of “decision” however:

Decision: the last remaining freedom as prisoners of this world is our power to decide; while unknown in Heaven, decision is necessary here as it was our decision to be separate from our Source that must be corrected; this is accomplished by choosing the Holy Spirit instead of the ego, right-mindedness instead of wrong-mindedness. (Ken Wapnick’s Glossary)

A couple things implied in the above definition… there seems to be a part of us that can and does decide, and it’s a decision between one of two choices, the ego or Holy Spirit. The inference in the last part above in Ken’s definition is that the choice takes place in our “mind,” where we pick an experience of right-mindedness, the Holy Spirit… or wrong-mindedness, the ego.

The Course itself only uses the phrase decision maker one time (Manual p.17, par.2, L.7)… although it is a reference to the ego making the body with its brain the decision maker instead of the mind, in order to protect the ego’s own anonymity from our awareness:

… it is obvious that decisions are of the mind, not of the body. If sickness is but a faulty problem-solving approach, it is a decision. And if it is a decision, it is the mind and not the body that makes it. The resistance to recognizing this is enormous, because the existence of the world as you perceive it depends on the body being “the decision-maker.” (Man. p.17)

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The DM is talked about (without being mentioned per se), in a number of places in the Course, as that part of our mind which chooses between one of two thought systems.

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Jesus does use a phrase twice that is synonymous with the decision maker: he refers to the mind as “the mechanism of decision.” Once in Chap. 8:

Your mind is the means by which you determine your own condition, because mind is “the mechanism of decision.” It is the power by which you separate or join, and experience pain or joy accordingly. My decision cannot overcome yours, because yours is as powerful as mine. If it were not so the Sons of God would be unequal. All things are possible through our joint decision, but mine alone cannot help you. Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it. (Text p. 145, par.5)

And once in Chap. 12:

This world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless “laws,” and without meaning of any kind. For it is made out of what you do not want, projected from your mind because you are afraid of it. Yet this world is only in the mind of its maker, along with his real salvation. Do not believe it is outside of yourself, for only by recognizing where it is will you gain control over it. For you do have control over your mind, since the mind is “the mechanism of decision.”

¹⁰ If you will recognize that all the attack you perceive is in your own mind and nowhere else, you will at last have placed its source, and where it begins it must end. For in this same place also lies salvation. The altar of God where Christ is, is there.

From this place, where God and His Son dwell in peace and where you are welcome, you will look out in peace and behold the world truly. Yet to find the place, you must relinquish your investment in the world as you project it, allowing the Holy Spirit to extend the real world to you from the altar of God. (Text p.222, par.9-10)

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In the following two paragraphs from section V of Chap.31, p.658…. Jesus talks about the part of us (the decision maker aligned with the ego) that chooses between the two internal wrong minded images of ourselves that we project onto others and our seeming self as bodies in the world: a guilty victimizer or a seemingly innocent self (the victim: the ‘face’ of innocence)…

¹² There is an alternate about the thing that you must be (a victimizer or the victimized). You might, for instance, be the thing you (as an ego) chose to have your brother be. This shifts the concept of the self from what is wholly passive (victim), and at least makes way for active choice, and some acknowledgement that interaction must have entered in. There is some understanding that you chose for both of you, and what he represents has meaning that was given it by you. It also shows some glimmering of sight into perception’s law that what you see reflects the state of the perceiver’s (wrong) mind. Yet who was it that did the choosing first? If you are what you chose your brother be, alternatives were there to choose among, and someone (my internal decision maker) must have first decided on the one to choose, and let the other go.

¹³ Although this step has gains, it does not yet approach a basic question. Something (our decision maker) must have gone before these concepts of the not-self. And something (my DM) must have done the learning which gave rise to them. Nor can this be explained by either view. The main advantage of the shifting to the second (victimizer) from the first (victim) is that you somehow entered in the choice by your decision. But this gain is paid in almost equal loss, for now you stand accused of guilt for what your brother is. And you must share his guilt, because you chose it for him in the image of your own. While only he was treacherous before, now must you be condemned along with him. (Text p.658)

Lesson 152: “The power of decision is my own.”

Jesus could have alternatively said … The power of the decision maker is my own.

1. No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. And no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here, salvation is (in the mind at the level of the decision maker’s choice between ego and Holy Spirit). (Les. 152)

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Although the Course only uses the phrase decision maker one time, it does use the term “maker” 35 times. And it is in reference to our DM aligned with the ego and the story of separation we “make up.” Check out the first time ‘maker ‘ is used in the Course in Chap. 4:

They (the ego and the Holy Spirit) are therefore not in communication and can never be in communication. Nevertheless, the ego can learn, even though its maker (the decision maker in the mind) can be misguided (by itself)…

You dream of (you make-up) a separated ego and believe in a world that rests upon it. This is very real to you. You cannot undo it by not changing your mind about it (we as the decision maker need to choose Jesus or the HS instead). If you are willing to renounce the role of guardian of your thought system and open it to me, I (Jesus) will correct it very gently and lead you back to God. (Text p.53-54, par. 2 & 4)

In other places Jesus call us a ‘dream maker,’ a ‘concept maker,’ and an ‘image maker’ … all synonymous with the decision maker.

⁷ Concepts (of a made-up separated self) are learned. They are not natural. Apart from learning they do not exist. They are not given, so they must be made (up). Not one of them is true, and many come from feverish imaginations, hot with hatred and distortions born of fear. What is a concept but a thought to which its (decision) maker gives a meaning of his own? Concepts maintain the world. But they can not be used to demonstrate the world is real. For all of them are made within the world, born in its shadow, growing in its ways and finally “maturing” in its thought. They (self-concepts) are ideas of idols (of sin, guilt, fear), painted with the brushes of the world, which cannot make a single picture representing truth. (Text p.657 par.7)

4. You see the world that you have made, but you do not see yourself as the image maker. You cannot be saved from the world, but you can escape from its cause. This is what salvation means, for where is the world you see when its cause is gone? Vision already holds a replacement for everything you think you see now. Loveliness can light your images, and so transform them that you will love them, even though they were made of hate. For you will not be making them alone (our DM then is choosing the HS). (Les. 23, p.34, par.4)

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The main point and the most important part of Ken Wapnick’s Chart for us as a Son of God returning home is… our return in our awareness to that inner place in our mind where we make a new choice in teachers.

It is there we can be willing to hear Jesus, instead of the ego, tell us that he loves us. And that nothing happened, the atonement principle. In that experience we know it’s true… and then we can look out upon our seeming individual self and others in the world without judgement and condemnation.

Check out this SFACIM video on

“The Decision Maker”

Musings: The Five Laws of Chaos of The Ego

March 26, 2020

“The Five Laws of Chaos”

Discussed in Chap. 23 Sec. II of A Course in Miracles, these five chaotic “laws” are basically the laws or rules of the ego’s dismal war-game of separation, The War Against Yourself (your True Self).

They, the “laws,” are put in quotes because as Jesus says they are not real laws but are simply made up descending rungs in an illusionary ladder, where we attempt to become a ‘something else,’ other than God’s One Son.

The problem is, Jesus continues, that we really do believe in them… and don’t realize we do.

He also says that once the first law is set in motion the other four automatically follow, and that you can’t have or believe in any one of them without the rest. It’s like a super slippery sliding board, where once you start you can’t stop till you crash at the bottom, ie. into the world we think we’re in.

Another way to look at these laws (or stages in our process of establishing an alternate ego identity)… is to review the Chart and see how these are the ego’s five steps that we seem to take away from our awareness and experience of our true Identity in Heaven. That separation and descent into hell is actually impossible to do (even tho part of us wants to believe we did), and the Course calls that fact that nothing really happened… the Atonement Principle.

of The Ego

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Here they are in a nutshell:

The Laws of Chaos

The first three laws take place internally in us in what the Course calls the wrong mind:

1) “The truth is different for everyone.”

It is our belief in sin: Differences are real, and those differences are important! There is a hierarchy of illusions. (in defiance of the first miracle principle: there is no hierarchy of miracles.)

2) “Each one must sin, and therefore deserves attack and death.”

It is our belief in guilt: we did really sin, it was really terrible, and we will be punished.

3) “For if God cannot be mistaken, He must accept His Son’s belief in what he is, and hate him for it.”

It is our belief in fear: we make up a God that is as crazy as we are, and that we should be afraid of Him! For we believe that also He believes we have sinned (separated from Him), and He will punish us for it.

But: we simply made up a God in our separated “image and likeness,” and then we told Him how He should think and feel, especially about us.

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The 4th and 5th laws take place in the world (reflecting the first three laws of sin, guilt and fear in the mind… into all our worldly relationships):

4) “This seeming law is the belief you have what you have taken.”

Special hate relationships: In a savage world the kind cannot be kind. They must take or else be taken from, by others who are worse than themselves. The Course calls these our special hate relationships.

5) “The final principle…holds there is a substitute for love (as crazy as it sounds, the Course calls this substitute: Fear!).”

Special love relationships: That substitute is hidden in my brother’s body and personhood, and he must be destroyed, in sometimes seemingly subtle ways… to get it back. We do this in disguise with the “face of innocence,” a pretend niceness and disingenuous kindness, and without a real appreciation and awareness of the true innate Innocence of our brothers or ourselves.

I then ‘need’ you to show me your fear… that you ‘need’ me and are afraid that you will one day lose me, either thru abandonment, sickness, or death, and vice versa. (described in Ch. 31, Self-Concept vs. Self, p.656)

Ken Wapnick calls this substitute for love, not our true innocence as one Son of God, but the special innocence, special love or attention, that we as egos desperately need to sustain our individual made-up selves. To get this recognition of special innocence from others, we must cannibalize others to demand and ‘devour’ their time, energy, and regard. This process takes the form of the phony face of innocence … through manipulation, control, threat, and compromise.

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Even in the world of time and space, so called “life” must eat other “life” in order to survive and maintain itself. This is simply a projection of the first law of chaos. My truth, or identity, is different from God’s truth.

And in order to be different and separate from our Father in Heaven, we believe we had to sever (kill) our connection with Him and steal (eat) a piece of His Life and run away with it. Thus the ego’s laws come full circle in the fourth, and especially fifth law of chaos… the special love relationship, the ego’s most boasted weapon. (Text p.341, par. 3).

I take, bargain, compromise with you… whatever it takes to get from you what I think i need… attention, esteem , ‘love,’ etc. in order to maintain and feel better about my chosen belief in this ego self.

Jesus tells us in Chapter 23:

¹⁸ “You would maintain, and think it true, that you do not believe these senseless laws, nor act upon them. And when you look at what they say, they cannot be believed.

Brother, you do believe them.

For how else could you perceive the form they take, with content such as this? Can any form of this be tenable? Yet you believe them for the form they take, and do not recognize the content. It never changes. Can you paint rosy lips upon a skeleton, dress it in loveliness, pet it and pamper it, and make it live? And can you be content with an illusion that you are living?

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.”

(par. 18-19 p. 493)

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Think about these laws and notice your reaction to them. Do they even seem credible?

Does any one of them particularly stand out?

How would you describe each of them in your own words?

For further discussion of the “Laws of Chaos”… what they mean, how they play out in our special relationships, and most importantly how they can be acknowledged and released… listen to Ken Wapnick’s CD set or MP3 download @ facim.org,

**or read Ken’s comments in his insightful discourse “Journey through the Text,” Volume Three, p. 213-220…**

or see the SFACIM video on the Laws of Chaos: click here

The Ego Pandemic in Our Mind … and The ‘Vaccine’ : Forgiveness

March 11, 2020

A Forgiveness Refresher:

The Functional Solution to

The Belief in Virus, Disaster & Death in Our Mind

(click arrow below for replay of podcast)

Forgiveness: The Antidote for All Belief in Sickness

March 5, 2020

Tim uses Lessons #61-66 to describe how we use forgiveness to save the world from our own judgment & condemnation.

A Course in Miracles points out over and over how all sickness and disease and death in the world is simply a reflection of our own internal belief in separation from God. (It takes about two minutes into the recording to get past the background noise.)

Like Download

“The Real Virus:”

In this post we have replaced the word “problem” in Lesson 79 with the specific problem/issue of “sickness,” to present how the Course approaches all sickness in the world (including the coronavirus) as a reflection of the one and only perceived sickness in our mind: our belief in separation from Our Father in Heaven.

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“A Course in Miracles” Workbook Lesson 79 (p.141):

“Let me recognize the sickness (of belief in separation in my mind) so it can be healed.”

A sickness cannot be healed if you do not know what it is. Even if it is really healed already you will still have the (original and only) sickness, because you will not recognize that it has been healed. This is the situation of the world. The sickness of (belief in) separation, which is really the only sickness, has already been healed. Yet the healing is not recognized because the sickness is not recognized.

Everyone in this world seems to have his own special form of illness(es). Yet they are all the same, and must be recognized as one if the one solution that heals them all is to be accepted. Who can see that a sickness has been healed if he thinks the sickness is something else? Even if he is given the answer, he cannot see its relevance.

That is the position in which you find yourself now. You have the answer, but you are still uncertain about what the (real) sickness is. A long series of different sicknesses seem to confront you, and as one is settled the next one and the next arise. There seems to be no end to them. There is no time in which you feel completely free of some kind of illness and at peace.

The temptation to regard sicknesses as many is the temptation to keep the sickness of separation unsolved. The world seems to present you with a vast number of illnesses, each requiring a different answer. This perception places you in a position in which your healing of sickness must be inadequate, and failure is inevitable. (Just believing we are a body, healthy or not, is sick, projected from the unhealthy but made-up belief in our mind that we are separated from Our Father in Heaven.)

No one could solve all the sickness the world appears to hold. They seem to be on so many levels, in such varying forms and with such varied content, that they confront you with an impossible situation. Dismay and depression are inevitable as you regard them. Some spring up unexpectedly, just as you think you have resolved the previous ones. Others remain unsolved under a cloud of denial, and rise to haunt you from time to time, only to be hidden again but still unsolved.

All this complexity is but a desperate attempt not to recognize the (real and only) sickness (believing we are separate minds, projected onto separate bodies, healthy or not), and therefore not to let it be resolved. If you could recognize that your only sickness is separation (in the mind), no matter what form it takes (as healthy bodies or sick bodies), you could accept the answer because you would see its relevance. Perceiving the underlying constancy in all the sicknesses that seem to confront you, you would understand that you have the means to solve them all. And you would use the means, because you recognize the problem.

In our longer practice periods today we will ask what the (real) sickness is, and what is the answer to it. We will not assume that we already know. We will try to free our minds of all the many different kinds of ’sick’ we think we have. We will try to realize that we have only one sickness, which we have failed to recognize. We will ask what it is, and wait for the answer. We will be told. Then we will ask for the solution to it. And we will be told.

The exercises for today will be successful to the extent to which you do not insist on defining the sickness. Perhaps you will not succeed in letting all your preconceived notions go, but that is not necessary. All that is necessary is to entertain some doubt about the reality of your version of what your sicknesses are. You are trying to recognize that you have been given the answer by recognizing the problem (in the mind), so that the problem and the answer (the Holy Spirit tells us the our belief in separation is silly) can be brought together and you can be at peace.

The shorter practice periods for today will not be set by time, but by need. You will see many forms of sickness today, each one calling for an answer. Our efforts will be directed toward recognizing that there is only one sickness (belief in the ego) and one healing (The Holy Spirit). In this recognition are all sicknesses resolved. In this recognition there is peace.

Be not deceived by the form of sickness today. Whenever any forms of sickness seem to rise, tell yourself quickly:

Let me recognize the only sickness is in my mind so it can be healed.

Then try to suspend all judgment about what sickness is. If possible, close your eyes for a moment and ask what it is. You will be heard and you will be answered.

Video replay on dealing with CORONAVIRUS & OTHER DISASTERS…

For a two disc CD seminar or MP3 download

on sickness & healing,

see Ken Wapnick’s

“The Kindness of Healing”…

click here

SFACIM Online Course Meetings

… almost every day!

To help get us thru the “crazies,” in these current times…

click here

Musings: The Four Obstacles to My Peace of Mind

March 6, 2020

The Obstacles to Peace

(Chapter 19, Section IV, p. 406-424)

The Course tells us that there are basically four obstacles to finding our true peace of mind…

(with four correlating subheadings, delineated by an “i”):

A. The Desire to Get Rid of It (Peace)

i. The Attraction of Guilt

B. The Belief the Body Is Valuable for What It Offers (A place for our projected guilt, seen as the body’s pain or pleasure)

i. The Attraction of Pain

C. The Attraction of Death (not just death of the body, but belief in the idea of death)

i. The Incorruptible Body

D. The Fear of God (The fear of Love, the fear of sinlessness)

i. The Lifting of the Veil

The Titles Themselves

The first striking thing hits us as we begin to look at these titles above!

Jesus is telling us that the very qualities or feelings that we are attracted to… are not peace, not joy, and not love.

In our make-believe separated state, he literally says we are attracted to their opposites: we are really attracted to guilt, to pain, and to death. These unrecognized attractions to terrible stuff are three of our main obstacles to peace.

For many of us, is that even in our awareness? Do we really believe that?

But, what if it’s possibly true though?… How often have we tried at peace, love, or joy, and seemed to miss the mark? Or even if we felt them temporarily, the other shoe eventually dropped. What if just below our seeming conscious desires for peace and love… something else is going on in our minds. What if we are really trying to push real peace and love away? What if we are not upset, or attracted, or whatever, for the reasons that we consciously think? (WB Lesson #5)

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Then there’s the title of the fourth obstacle, “The Fear of God!” So it gets worse… even more insulting to our egos. Not only does Jesus tell us we are attracted to some real nasty things like pain and death, but then he says that what we are really fearful of isn’t the bad stuff, to which we are attracted, but God Himself. He says that we are not really seeking for God’s Love, but we have actually convinced ourselves we are afraid of It.

So once again is that possible? Is the Course correct, as the country western song laments… we are “lookin for love in all the wrong places”… because we are truly afraid to find it?

The Four Grand Self-Deceptions (Obstacles)

One way of looking at the four obstacles and their order is to review our Wapnick Chart and the Course’s story of how we got here in the world (or at least believing that we’re here)… and then we retrace the steps of our descent into the hell of the world (and the self-imposed obstacles to our return to Heaven), starting with where we think we are now:

We believe are bodies in a world, very vulnerable to the both physical and emotional attacks of others… obviously a not very peaceful state of existence to say the least. But it doesn’t look or feel like something we inwardly chose to be in. But what if it’s true, that my ego internal choice is constantly choosing to perceive a a state of conflict, so I can blame my lack of peace on someone else, and not realizeI chose it. And thus my desire to get rid of peace for that very purpose. And so what if it’s true, that I’m never feeling un-peaceful or upset for the conscious reason I think, that it’s somebody else’s fault? (See Les. # 5)
The convincing, convicting, and conniving guilt we made-up in our minds is projected (misplaced) onto the body, especially others bodies guilty of what they did to mine. The ‘proof’ lies in all the seeming pains and pleasures of our bodies: the belief that the body is valuable for what it offers (guilt galore!). We made up a universe of time and space with many individual bodies for this purpose. Yes I feel pain or pleasure, but it’s seems to be coming from something external to my personality and my body.We believe our pain comes from what other bodies are doing to us (or even what our own body is doing), but we never admit the pain might be coming from the source of guilt in our mind… thus “the attraction of pain.” The body’s seeming pain in the body keeps us distracted from pain’s real source, the guilt within which was made up to prove our separation from Peace. The body’s seeming pleasure (special love) is simply a set up to place the internal guilt on someone else when the special love eventually fails and seems to now be our source of pain.
And then the most insulting attraction of all… what Jesus calls our “dedication to death.” The internal belief in a spiritual death (the end of ourselves as spirit at one with our Heavenly Father) is now projected onto the death of our bodies with which we identify. It is the ultimate ‘proof’ that we left Heaven’s peace. There is and can be no death in heaven, only eternal Life at one with Itself. However once again, from a body’s point of view, our belief in death does not seem to be our choice nor our fault. We tell ourselves that we were born into bodies that simply die…we didn’t choose to do that… it just happens, or worse we blame it all on God. We believe death is real, but of course we don’t want to believe we are actually attracted to it, much less responsible for making the idea of it up in the first place. Death once again proves we pulled off the impossible, and left Heaven.
Finally, back to the ego’s beginning, the tiny mad idea of separation… We, identifying as a separated self (the ego), convince ourselves that we are now afraid of God. On one level we tell ourselves that He is going to punish us (ultimately with death, then hell) for what we did, i.e. leave Heaven. However on a deeper level, the Course tells us that we are not actually afraid of God’s wrath, but that we’re really afraid He’s not upset at all… because nothing really happened. That means no individual us, no bodies, no nothing… everything we think we are, believe in, and seem to react to, all nothing. Jesus constantly reminds us that we couldn’t and didn’t leave our true Identity in Heaven, even if some part of us seemed to want to. Chapter 13 (p.242, par.1-2) clearly tells us:

“You are not really afraid of crucifixion (we think crucifixion is the payment God demanded of His Son). Your real terror is of redemption.” The Atonement principle says separation didn’t and couldn’t happen. God’s experience of love and oneness in Heaven with His Son, which is our only true Identity, does not include or know any experience of a separated state.

It does all sound like Star Wars: In a time long long ago and in a galaxy far far away, we seemed to step outside of our true reality in Heaven and play around with the ‘tiny mad idea’ of being separate from Heaven’s Peace…in other words we toyed with “our desire to get rid of peace.” This started the ego’s make-believe ballgame of separation rolling… To insure believing we actually did separate and did leave our true state of peace, we then made up the feelings of sin, guilt, and fear…thus feelings which ‘prove’ to ourselves we did a really bad thing and did separate from our Father in Heaven. And then all that awareness was repressed, ‘forgotten,’ and the responsibility for our own lack of peace projected onto something or someone in the world.

It seems like we did this in some distant past, but we would be having a true experience of peace right now, if we were not still putting up theses unacknowledged blocks to our awareness right this moment. We need to work on this because it is happening right now.

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Moving through and undoing (with the HS help) the four obstacles to peace are basically the letting go of believing ego’s story of the unholy trinity in our wrong mind: sin, guilt, and fear, that we told ourselves and accepted as reality:

1. sin (we threw Our True Identity as God’s One Son away),

2. guilt (the made-up pain we feel for doing just that, then projected onto the body and its ultimate death), and

3. fear (consciously of God’s punishment, but really of God’s Love)

So, through the process of forgiveness, we look at and uncover each of these stages (obstacles) and become willing to let each one go, not by ourselves, but with of ‘course’ the help of Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, by our side.

The Way Back:

The ACIM Forgiveness Process

The question that Jesus recommends that we learn to ask of the Holy Spirit, about anything is…”what is it for?”

From the ego’s point of view the purpose of our obstacles to peace are just that… self-chosen obstacles that are kept out of our conscious awareness, so it looks like we are running after and chasing peace, when we really are not… the Course says our self-accepted ego mantra becomes “Seek but do not find.”

The Holy Spirit’s reverse purpose, for the obstacles we made up, is to…

1. look at and acknowledge them

2. see their insanity, and the pain (the cost) for believing in them to maintain a separated identity in something that we’re not, and

3. be willing to ask for His help in seeing beyond those obstacles to the “real world” (an experience that our innocence and our brothers’ innocence is still intact, despite what we think we see and hear…)

The Starting Place

Two of the major themes that Jesus develops throughout this entire section (and especially in the section’s intro and the ‘Lifting of the Veil’ at the end) are that the way we move through and beyond each and every obstacle is…

With the Holy Spirit’s help, to have a Holy Relationship with the Holy Spirit in our minds. This then is reflected in our relationships with all our brothers.

He tells us that the first step in connecting with the Holy Spirit’s help is always to ask ourselves… are we willing to look past our judgements of each other, with His Help, to see the true innocence within? This begins the “Lifting of the Veil” of our belief in sin, guilt, and fear, and is specifically spelled out in the Text on p.421, par.8, line 7:

“But first, lift up your eyes and look on your brother in innocence born of complete forgiveness of his illusions, and through the eyes of faith (the HS) that sees them not.”

With each obstacle to peace, we used our brother’s body, personality, and actions as a scapegoat for our own inner choice to get rid of peace, and then blame our guilt and pain on him. To recognize that, by asking for the Holy Spirit’s help, is the only way back in in letting go of each of these obstacles to peace, these “blocks to the awareness of Love’s presence,” that we ourselves put there and then denied. (see the Course’s Introduction on p.1 in the Text)

Another way Jesus describes as the way to start this process is in the Text, p.441, par.9. He tells us don’t even ask how to see my my brother or myself without a body… but am I willing to see past my judgements and have an experience of his and my guiltlessness, the process of true forgiveness. (Click here for explanation of forgiveness in ACIM.)

Your question should not be, “How can I see my brother without the body?” Ask only, “Do I really wish to see him sinless?”… forget not that his sinlessness is (also) your escape from fear.

The second step in the process is… am I willing to see beyond my own seeming guilt for having thrown Heaven away? The same way I was willing to forgive my brother for what he did not do (cause me pain), am I willing to ask Jesus for help… to let go of believing I left him and my Father in Heaven for something else (a separate identity)? He did not go anywhere. And I simply pretended I did.

What if all that seeming separation is just not true?

Not recognizing that that has been my problem all along… not that I actually did separate from what I/ we truly are, but I only convinced myself I did. And then to ask for help to let that silly belief go “back into the nothingness from which it came.”

And then I begin to realize: that each of the obstacles to my peace of mind that seemed like real obstacles were never there, and were all made up.

For further discussion of the “Obstacles to Peace,” see Ken Wapnick’s CD set or MP3 Download on “Lifting of the Veil”

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**or Ken’s “Journey through the Text,” Volume Three, p.78-92.**

The Pandemic Crises: Recommended Videos on Sickness & Healing thru “A Course in Miracles”

February 14, 2020

Here are a few class replays on dealing with fear and sickness…

**by learning and practicing A Course in Miracles approach to healing and forgiveness, especially in this current milieu of all kinds of sickness and hospitalizations in the US and around the world…**

——————————–

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goJGFZGKj8U&t=381s

Feeling bummed out?

February 14, 2020

—

Feeling a bit out of it, possibly even depressed…?

Check out this video replay of SFACIM’s discussion of depression from a Course point of view:

Where it really comes from… How to move beyond it.

(click here)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BseTHhb9Ga8&t=4043s

Musings: Six Stages of Developing Trust in The Holy Spirit

February 4, 2020

Six Stages (or Steps) on

The Ladder of the Development of Trust

… from The Manual p.9-11

(Start at bottom of this post with #1 “The Undoing”… and then move up the ladder to the top at #6 “Achievement”)

6) Period of Achievement: The Real World…we ‘go Holy Instant’, and stay there. This is what the Manual calls “advanced teachers of God”. This is when the nine other characteristics of God’s Teachers automatically become part of us. We then share our awareness of the sameness of God’s Son with all persons and all things in all situations.

5) Period of Unsettling: Dark night of the soul… Ken says it’s when all hell breaks loose. We begin to realize that our own belief in an ‘individual self’ is still holding back our awakening to our true Self . It is similar to lesson 93, when we realize that we still are holding on to a not-self of “evil, darkness and sin.” We are learning to lay all judgements aside…in every circumstance, even about who we think we are (at this stage, a decision maker who could choose the something else of an ego).

4) Period of Settling Down: Time of “reasonable peace”… we have learned that asking Jesus for help not only hasn’t killed us or even taken anything away, but we are actually feeling pretty good and hopeful, being able to ask for his vision whenever things push our buttons again. It’s the calm before the storm, or the eye of the hurricane.

3) Period of Relinquishment: Giving up what doesn’t work… we are starting to see that things that used to seem valuable to us, like getting the stuff we thought we wanted (special love), and blaming and judging others (special hate) and keeping away what we don’t want, may not really be working for us. But we are not quite ready to give some of that up. So there can be a sense of sacrifice during this time. What we really learn to relinquish is not stuff or certain behaviors, but we simply let go of keeping Jesus and his perception of us and the world out of our awareness.

2) Period of Sorting Out: Learning what’s valuable, what isn’t…by asking Jesus to help us see that we are not upset or temporarily happy for the reason we think. We used to think certain things/people caused us pain or pleasure, and then the inevitable pain when the other shoe dropped. Now we are beginning to see that what only brings us true peace is inviting Jesus into our awareness, to help us look at our misplaced investments (distractions).

1) Period of Undoing: Changing teachers… from the ego’s ladder that goes nowhere (“lookin for luv in all the wrong places”), we get on the ladder of the Holy Spirit that takes us back to the right mind. We ask Jesus for help to be our new teacher.

Recent Replay of Course & Coffee Chat on the six stages of trust:

(click here)

May 2022 SFACIM Retreat : Photos

January 31, 2020

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SFACIM Online Classes

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The Retreat:

Welcome to

“Our Resurrection Together!”

Retreat Schedule:

Friday:

1:00- 4:00 pm… Registration (Pick up your room key and sign in @ Registration Table in “Francis Place” Building in main hallway… across from Aspen Room )

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**2:00pm… Orientation & Opening Meditation in Woodmen Room .**

2:30pm… Discussion of ‘Our Resurrection Together’ on Ken Wapnick’s Chart… & Lifting The Veil in Ch. 19 (Tim)

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3:30pm… Break

3:45-4:45pm… Second Session (Pt. I): Chap. 20 Sec. I “Holy Week” (Dave Dempsey)

4:45pm break

5-545pm … #2nd Session (Pt. II) Ch. 20 Sec II “Gift of Lilies” (Steven)

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6-7:00pm… Dinner in Franciscan Center Cafeteria

7:30-8:30pm… Third Session: Intros (2-3 minutes each person… who you are, where you’re from, and anything you might like to share about your relationship with Jesus and his Course.)

8:30-8:50pm… Silent Meditation

9:00pm till whenever… Social time in Bonzel Room (comfy large living room setting in bottom/ground floor of Marian Hall)

9:00pm- 7:00am… Quiet time on Marian Hall & Francis Place sleeping floors (no talking please in first floor and second floor hallways, and open & close room doors quietly)

Saturday:

7:30-7:50am… Meditation in Woodmen Room

8:00-9:00am… Breakfast

9:15-10:30am… Session One: finish Intros, Ch. 6, Sec. I par 1-9 “Message of Crucifixion” (Becca)

10:30am… Break

10:45am… Session Two: Ch. 6 Sec. I par. 10-18 (Bruce R)

11:45am… Break

12:00-1:00pm… Lunch

1:00-3:15pm… Afternoon breaktime : Take a walk, take a nap, or watch Ken video, or even all three…

2:15-3:15pm… presentation: Ken video in Woodmen on “The Changeless Dwelling Place” (Ch. 29 Sec. VI)

3:20pm… Afternoon meditation in Woodmen

3:30pm… Breakout groups of 6 or 7 people each (see group listings above)

Groups 1 & 2: Woodmen Room… Group 3 : 2nd floor Francis … Group 4: Bonzel Room… Group 5: Ground Floor Kitchen in Marian Hall … Led by 1) Bruce, 2) Bevie, 3) Dave VD, 4) Abe, and 5) Jane

4:30pm… Break

4:45-5:45pm… Session Three: Chap. 22 Sec. I “Message of Holy Relationship” (Chris J.)

6-7pm… Dinner

7:15pm-8:15pm… Group gathering on Ch.11 Sec. VI “Waking to Redemption” (Tim)

8:15pm Meditation

8:45pm till whenever… Social time in Bonzel Room (comfy large living room setting in bottom/ground floor of Marian Hall)

9pm-7am… Quiet time on sleeping floors (no talking in hallways, please try to open and close doors quietly)

Sunday:

7:30-7:50am… Meditation in Woodmen Room

8-9am… Breakfast

9-10am… strip beds, pack up, load your cars, and return keys to office (unless you are staying an extra night or more)

10:00am… last session: Lyn on Helen’s poem “Stranger on The Road” (we will hand out copies of the poem)

11:15am… Closing

12:00pm… Lunch (if you already signed up for this lunch as an extra meal)

*Before coming to the retreat:

Please be sure we understand, or refresh our understanding, of the Metaphysics of Ken Wapnick’s Chart… by watching a couple of our YouTube video presentations on the Chart.

**(Click Here… for videos on Ken’s Chart)**

Francis Place: Building # 40 (on right below)

with Registration/Room-key Table, FRC office & Woodmen Meeting Room

Directions from North or South on I-25

Exit #149 >Woodmen Road
Head WEST on Woodmen (toward the mountains).
Go about 1/3 mile, stay in far right lane.
Look for small white sign that says Mt. St. Francis.
At the intersection of Windchime and Woodmen, you will make a right-hand turn. (E. Woodmen Rd. makes a sharp right turn at light, and becomes W. Woodmen)
Follow Woodmen approx. 3.2 miles and you will see the entrance to Mt. St. Francis on your left.
Enter the grounds and follow the signs to Franciscan Retreat Center or Francis Place.
You will stay straight and make no turns once on the property. Road takes you directly into Franciscan Center parking lot. Franciscan Center Office is in Francis Place building #40 (picture above), the building on the right…

Retreat Attendees & Room #’s

* Room keys should be on little table in lobby, just inside Front door of Francis Place Building #40.

** Fill out any requested forms on table, including your license plate number.

*** If you are staying in Marian Hall there is a door code on your room key to access either of two entrance doors (west and east sides of building) to Marian Hall. West entrance (mountains side) is on first floor, east entrance is on ground floor (basement floor).

If you are arriving earlier than 5/20, and you do not see a key table, check with office in Francis Place.

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Please unload your luggage and then park in parking lot north-west of Marian Hall, and not in parking lot in front of Francis Place. Follow the road around to the right of Marian Hall (heading toward the mountains), parking lot is just beyond the Marian building.

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Be sure to bring your room key with you when you leave your room, especially those sharing a bathroom with another room next to theirs…. your bedroom door automatically locks when you close it behind you, unless you purposefully unlock it yourself before you go out. Otherwise you will have to call the office or the maintenance man on the hallway phone to get back in.

Rooms sharing a bathroom with the next door room are… 13 and 14, 21 and 23, 25 and 26, 33 and 35.

There is a $20 charge for a lost room key.

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Please keep your bathroom door closed when taking a shower… or you may set off the fire alarm and get an unexpected visit by a group of firemen (ask Duke). If it’s warm enough outside, you may want to open your bathroom window a little to vent any steam build-up in bathroom.*

(Marian Hall above, adjacent to the right of Francis Place)

All class sessions & meditations are in the large Woodmen Mtg Room, just inside to the right in Francis Place Bldg #40.

The Bonzel Large Living Room on Ground floor of Marian Hall is open for socializing around the clock.

If you are staying in Francis Place, ask someone staying in Marian Hall for access code to Marian Hall door to gain access to Bonzel Room & small kitchen in Marian. (code used to be something simple, like 1234)

** More than a third of the retreat attendees have been here before, so ask around for help and explore the grounds when you arrive.

Retreat meals are served buffet style.

All five retreat meals are served buffet style in the FRC Cafeteria. (north side of St. Clare Convent in expanded picture of Franciscan Property below.) Retreat meals include Friday dinner, Sat. all 3 meals, and Sunday breakfast.

*Please do not eat the food labeled gluten-free or vegetarian on the buffet … unless you already have signed up for either of those two before April 3oth.

All those who did sign up for gluten free or vegetarian… are welcome to eat anything else they can on the buffet line.

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Cold Storage for Food You Bring…

There is also a small kitchen (for our use, with sink and refrigerator, and coffee & tea machine) available next to Bonzel Room on the ground floor of Marian Hall.

And there is also a large refrigerator available in our Woodmen meeting room. It is recommended that you label any refrigerator items with your name, date and room #.

Free bottled water, sodas, juice, even Yoohoo…will be available in Woodmen fridge during retreat.

Click on picture of Franciscan Property above to expand…

(click twice to really blow it up even more)

Look for Franciscan Center (retreat center) on upper left side.

FRC Cafeteria (black area) is just above St. Clare Convent bldg.

The Text of ACIM Class Replay Series: 195 video class replays on Chap. 1 thru 31

January 29, 2020

The ***School for* *ACIM***

195 Class Replays on

The Entire Text,

section-by-section.

(each class is approx. 75-90 minutes) :

Classes on The ACIM Text:

Hello Course Students around The World!

Our series on the Text of ACIM has been a daunting task, for us and the Course students who participated during the pandemic … not so much because of the amount of material contained in the Text’s 600 plus pages. It is indeed a handful, but working thru the Text of ACIM also brings up and challenges our reluctance and resistance to actually hearing what Jesus is telling us.

As ‘healthy’ egos believing we are bodies (vulnerable to other bodies like people and viruses), we don’t want to be told nothing we see means anything (WB. Les. 1)… and the world, and all the blame we are laying on it is not what we are really upset about. (“There is no world!” from WB Les. 132).

But from Jesus point of view that is good news for all of us, because that means that all the blame and judgments with which we are so indulged and preoccupied… is indeed all made up and unnecessary as the One Innocent Son of God that we still truly are.

So Jesus walks us gently but thoroughly through the process of letting go of the pain and blame that supports our belief in a separated identity, separate from him and our Father in Heaven. He helps us let those insistent silly beliefs go.

Jesus respects our fear of him and his message, yet he lays down a spiritual roadmap and offers us a way out, a journey out of our chosen misery and seeming isolation… if and when we are ready to take that gentle journey back with him (see Chapter 8: “The Journey Back”).

=============================

**The link for the list of 195 Video Class Replays on The Text (about 75 minutes each) will be sent to those who are… currently donating monthly any amount of $30 or more.**

Also the SFACIM will include the links for hundreds of other class replays including:

Classes on Many ACIM Topics like Peace of Mind, Forgiveness, Atonement, and Healing
Classes on all The Workbook Lessons
The Series on “Dealing with Anger, Resentments & Grievances”
“The Back-to-Basics” Series for Beginners
and more added every week…

Please click here to donate.

Example of Text Discussions, Chap. 1 Sec. I

“The 50 Miracle Principles” :

Overview of Text Chapters:

Preface: written after completion of Course, with the “What It Says” third section specifically written by Jesus (the first two preface sections are by Helen Schucman herself).

———————-

Chapters 1-4: Basically a conversation between Helen and Jesus (with material edited out personal to Helen & Bill):

Chap. 1: The Meaning of Miracles…Introduction to the main Course themes that will be developed throughout the Text

Chap. 2: Separation & Atonement… Basic metaphysics of Chart (also addresses Helen’s and our own fear and resistance to Jesus & his Course)

Chap. 3: Innocent Perception… Basic definitions of terms used in Course

Chap. 4: Illusions of the Ego… Exploring what ego is and Jesus role in that exploration.

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First major shift in writing with Ch. 5, Sec. V (on guilt), from basically a dialogue with Helen in the first four and a half chapters, to Jesus dictating the rest of Text from this point on:

Chap. 5: Healing & Wholeness… Exploring who/what is the Holy Spirit & how He helps us with our recognizing and letting go of guilt.

Chap. 6: Lessons of Love… First discussion of anger, Four HS lessons (steps) to return to Heaven.

Chap. 7: Gifts of Kingdom… Heaven & Healing

Chap. 8: Journey Back… “Singing” Jesus

Chap. 9: Acceptance of Atonement… First discussion of forgiveness

Chap.10: Idols of Sickness… on Biblical 1^st & 2^nd commandments (shortest chap.)

Chap.11: God or Ego… our ‘authority problem’

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Next major shift in writing… with more intense emphasis on process of looking at ego’s made-up insanity:

Ch.12: HS Curriculum… realizing the ego’s central teaching: that love is dangerous

Ch.13: Guiltless World.. full blown exposé on our internal unrecognized guilt (longest chap.)

Ch.14: Teaching for Truth… the proverbial ‘calm before the storm’ chapter, before the following three chapters (15-16-17) on special relationships… Chap. 14 includes sections on two major Course themes: the “What is a Happy Learner” and “Our Call for Help/ Our Call for Love “

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Ch. 15, 16, 17… on Special Relationships

Ch. 18… on Our Dream “Life”

Ch.19… Our Own Four Obstacles to Peace

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Ch.20, 21, 22… Second “calm before the storm” (with three chapters on Vision, Reason, and Salvation in The Holy Relationship)… before The Laws of Chaos & Specialness (starting in Chap. 23):

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Ch.23… (Laws of Chaos) Ken Wapnick calls this the “toughest” chapter in the Text, with very little reprieve in it… how way we methodically deceive ourselves into believing in separation.

Ch. 24… The Goal of Specialness, extended description of the “Substitute for Love” in the fifth Law of Chaos.

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Ch. 25-26… Third and final ‘calm’ (a breather), on equal justice for all of God’s one Son, how to move from injustice to real justice (is life really not fair?)… before the last part of the Text.

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Ch. 27-28… more on Dreams: the dreaming of the world and its underlying horrific “secret dream” of the wrong mind.

Ch. 29-30… In-depth discussion of the ego’s idols… and and the steps or ‘rules’ on how to move past those idols (the seven rules for decision-making in Ch. 30).

———————–

Ch. 31… The capstone of the Text : all the themes of the Course are brought together, coalescing in this last great movement of the Course’s grand symphony.

Musings… “The Real World” vs “The Fake World”

January 7, 2020

The Real World…

A Course in Miracles uses the phrase “real world” about a hundred times. It also refers to the experience of the real world with other descriptive terms like… the world of holiness, the redeemed or saved world, and the happy world. How is the real world different than the regular world we perceive and seem to live in?

The Course also says in many places that it is our mission to save the world (it talks about the world more than two thousand times). Even though at the same time it says that the world we see doesn’t really exist…. so why save it?

There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. (Les. 132, par.6)

There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His Wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? (Les. 132, par.13)

So what’s going on? How do we get from this world to the real world?

The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real. Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. (Les. 132, par.4)

Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God’s Love on earth… As I begin to see, I recognize His reflection on earth. I forgive all things because I feel the stirring of His strength in me… How safe the world will look to me when I can see it! It will not look anything like what I imagine I see now. (Les.60)

We examine these questions and ideas… and we will use Workbook Review Lessons #51 to 60 to shed light on this process of waking up to a new world… the real world:

The Real World vs The ‘Fake’ World 2/27/20

February 27, 2020

Tim discusses the nature of the real world, its purpose , and how to see it.

Like ShareDownload

SFACIM Online 2/29 Class:

“Sickness, Disease, & Disasters”

from an ACIM Point of View

Facing Viruses, Death, and Even The Elections…

with Jesus and The Holy Spirit

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For Video Replay: click here

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“My Decision Maker”

What is it? Where is it? What are my options?

So first off…. what is it? How would we describe this decision maker (DM)? Regretfully, after running to Ken Wapnick’s Glossary for ACIM for a quick pat answer… it was not there. He did describe the Course’s view of “decision” however:

The Course itself only uses the phrase decision maker one time (Manual p.17, par.2, L.7)… although it is a reference to the ego making the body with its brain the decision maker instead of the mind, in order to protect the ego’s own anonymity from our awareness:

The DM is talked about (without being mentioned per se), in a number of places in the Course, as that part of our mind which chooses between one of two thought systems.

Jesus does use a phrase twice that is synonymous with the decision maker: he refers to the mind as “the mechanism of decision.” Once in Chap. 8:

And once in Chap. 12:

10 If you will recognize that all the attack you perceive is in your own mind and nowhere else, you will at last have placed its source, and where it begins it must end. For in this same place also lies salvation. The altar of God where Christ is, is there.

Lesson 152: “The power of decision is my own.”

Jesus could have alternatively said … The power of the decision maker is my own.

Although the Course only uses the phrase decision maker one time, it does use the term “maker” 35 times. And it is in reference to our DM aligned with the ego and the story of separation we “make up.” Check out the first time ‘maker ‘ is used in the Course in Chap. 4:

They (the ego and the Holy Spirit) are therefore not in communication and can never be in communication. Nevertheless, the ego can learn, even though its maker (the decision maker in the mind) can be misguided (by itself)…

In other places Jesus call us a ‘dream maker,’ a ‘concept maker,’ and an ‘image maker’ … all synonymous with the decision maker.

The main point and the most important part of Ken Wapnick’s Chart for us as a Son of God returning home is… our return in our awareness to that inner place in our mind where we make a new choice in teachers.

Check out this SFACIM video on

“The Decision Maker”

For Ken Wapnick’s further discussion of “The Decision Maker,” see this 2 CD set or MP3 download….

“The Five Laws of Chaos”

Discussed in Chap. 23 Sec. II of A Course in Miracles, these five chaotic “laws” are basically the laws or rules of the ego’s dismal war-game of separation, The War Against Yourself (your True Self).

They, the “laws,” are put in quotes because as Jesus says they are not real laws but are simply made up descending rungs in an illusionary ladder, where we attempt to become a ‘something else,’ other than God’s One Son.

The problem is, Jesus continues, that we really do believe in them… and don’t realize we do.

of The Ego

Here they are in a nutshell:

Jesus tells us in Chapter 23:

18 “You would maintain, and think it true, that you do not believe these senseless laws, nor act upon them. And when you look at what they say, they cannot be believed.

Brother, you do believe them.

Think about these laws and notice your reaction to them. Do they even seem credible?

Does any one of them particularly stand out?

How would you describe each of them in your own words?

For further discussion of the “Laws of Chaos”… what they mean, how they play out in our special relationships, and most importantly how they can be acknowledged and released… listen to Ken Wapnick’s CD set or MP3 download @ facim.org,

or read Ken’s comments in his insightful discourse “Journey through the Text,” Volume Three, p. 213-220…

or see the SFACIM video on the Laws of Chaos: click here

A Forgiveness Refresher:

The Functional Solution to

The Belief in Virus, Disaster & Death in Our Mind

(click arrow below for replay of podcast)

“The Real Virus:”

“A Course in Miracles” Workbook Lesson 79 (p.141):

“Let me recognize the sickness (of belief in separation in my mind) so it can be healed.”

Video replay on dealing with CORONAVIRUS & OTHER DISASTERS…

For a two disc CD seminar or MP3 download

on sickness & healing,

see Ken Wapnick’s

“The Kindness of Healing”…

SFACIM Online Course Meetings

… almost every day!

To help get us thru the “crazies,” in these current times…

The Obstacles to Peace

(Chapter 19, Section IV, p. 406-424)

The Course tells us that there are basically four obstacles to finding our true peace of mind…

(with four correlating subheadings, delineated by an “i”):

A. The Desire to Get Rid of It (Peace)

i. The Attraction of Guilt

B. The Belief the Body Is Valuable for What It Offers (A place for our projected guilt, seen as the body’s pain or pleasure)

i. The Attraction of Pain

C. The Attraction of Death (not just death of the body, but belief in the idea of death)

i. The Incorruptible Body

D. The Fear of God (The fear of Love, the fear of sinlessness)

i. The Lifting of the Veil

The Titles Themselves

The Four Grand Self-Deceptions (Obstacles)

The Way Back:

The ACIM Forgiveness Process

The Starting Place

“But first, lift up your eyes and look on your brother in innocence born of complete forgiveness of his illusions, and through the eyes of faith (the HS) that sees them not.”

Your question should not be, “How can I see my brother without the body?” Ask only, “Do I really wish to see him sinless?”… forget not that his sinlessness is (also) your escape from fear.

And then I begin to realize: that each of the obstacles to my peace of mind that seemed like real obstacles were never there, and were all made up.

For further discussion of the “Obstacles to Peace,” see Ken Wapnick’s CD set or MP3 Download on “Lifting of the Veil”

————-

or Ken’s “Journey through the Text,” Volume Three, p.78-92.

Here are a few class replays on dealing with fear and sickness…

by learning and practicing A Course in Miracles approach to healing and forgiveness, especially in this current milieu of all kinds of sickness and hospitalizations in the US and around the world…

—

Feeling a bit out of it, possibly even depressed…?

Check out this video replay of SFACIM’s discussion of depression from a Course point of view:

Where it really comes from… How to move beyond it.

Six Stages (or Steps) on

The Ladder of the Development of Trust

… from The Manual p.9-11

Recent Replay of Course & Coffee Chat on the six stages of trust:

¹⁰ If you will recognize that all the attack you perceive is in your own mind and nowhere else, you will at last have placed its source, and where it begins it must end. For in this same place also lies salvation. The altar of God where Christ is, is there.

¹⁸ “You would maintain, and think it true, that you do not believe these senseless laws, nor act upon them. And when you look at what they say, they cannot be believed.

**or read Ken’s comments in his insightful discourse “Journey through the Text,” Volume Three, p. 213-220…**

**or Ken’s “Journey through the Text,” Volume Three, p.78-92.**

**by learning and practicing A Course in Miracles approach to healing and forgiveness, especially in this current milieu of all kinds of sickness and hospitalizations in the US and around the world…**