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
You are here: Home / Archives for A Course in Miracles

“No pain, no gain… Really?”

 

What is pain? What’s it for?

Did God really do this to us?

 

Watching the news last night really brought home to me how much relentless pain the planet seems to be in… both here, and abroad.

And then there is our own personal pain: physical, emotional, psychological… sometimes in spurts, at times chronic… sometimes mild, sometimes horrific.

Is it possible to somehow transcend all this stuff, and move beyond it into our true being and into a higher awareness, without being uncompassionate, uncaring, and disconnected?

A Course in Miracles discusses pain throughout the entire book, using words like suffering and pain more than 600 times. Two sections, that spend a lot of time looking at pain and its purpose, are “The (Our) Attraction to Pain” in Chapter 19, and Lessons 190, 193, 194, & 195 in the Workbook.

One of the most humiliating (to our egos anyway) and sometimes downright infuriating things that Jesus tells us about pain is this… It’s not that we don’t like pain or try to avoid it, but we are actually attracted to it. Really?

It gets worse… He continues with statements like:  “In your suffering of any kind, you see your own concealed desire to kill.” (Text, p.659, par.15)

Ok, wait… back up…if that’s even possibly true: what, how…  why ??

From Jesus point of view, pain is the great and grand witness to our supposed separation from Our Father. It screams our separated selves are real, and proves it by loudly proclaiming “I’m real, I exist, because look how much pain I’m in!”

(First off, don’t be a martyr. Even Mother Teresa said, if you’re in pain, take your medicine if you wish to. Jesus concurs. If you have a headache, or whatever, take an aspirin, take a walk, or do what makes you feel better. It would be silly not to.)

Unconscious pain permeates all three parts of our make-believe “Disconnect from Heaven” story of sin, guilt, and fear… each component of that saga can at least be described as incredibly painful.. the separation from Source (sin), the feeling of awfulness (guilt), and the sweat of terror of impending doom (fear).

[Click here for the Course story of how we believe we got here, into the world as bodies.]

But what if the pain was simply made up to reinforce the seeming reality of the story. We are God’s Son after all, and our cosmic make-believe might not only seem actually real, but so real that we even convinced ourselves to believe it… especially by adding the element of pain to the drama…

“If God is real, there is no pain. If pain is real , there is no God.”

(WB#190, par. 3)

 

 

Ok, ok… we sorta get the metaphysics, but what do we do now? How do we start to ‘undo’ this whole thing?

When I began working the lessons way back when, I realized one of my problems was… I didn’t consciously believe any of the Lesson titles. For example take one of the the first in-your-face lessons, WB #5 … “I am never upset for the reason I think.” Not maybe, not sometimes, but never.

Seriously? I’m always upset for the reason I think… that’s why I’m upset in the first place. I wouldn’t be upset if it were not for… ok, whatever. At least I can admit that’s what I believe. But, like Byron Katie always says in her sessions with others… “Is that true?”

So to start,  I put a what if  in front of the lesson (and actually all Lesson titles)… What if  I’m not upset for the reason I think? Am I even a little willing to go there? Some part of me says yes. That at least opens the door for me to look at maybe another possibility.

 

So, what then might be the real reason I’m upset? This is when we/I definitely need to ask Jesus for help to be able  to ‘see outside the box.’ My ego experience has always locked me in to blaming others for my pain… sometime myself or my own behavior, but mostly others.

What if I’m upset, in pain, feeling terrible physically or psychologically… simply because I’ve dropped Jesus hand, left my Father in Heaven, and am pretending I’m this separated thing that can feel pain and eventually die?  And I’m blaming something or somebody else for the pain I see and feel.

Would I even be willing to entertain the possibility that I made this up?

Another reason we really need Jesus or the Holy Spirit’s help when looking at this is… not only do we not believe it, but it’s really ego-easy to begin beating ourselves up if we did choose something this stupid…. Now I’m not only in pain, plus now I’m blaming myself for creating this mess in the first place… a double whammy ! I hear myself begin the ego litany… “Bad Course student, bad… !”

 

But then, if I’m willing to listen to another voice, and change ‘course,’ I feel Jesus gently saying to me…

Stop… stop. Look at me; talk to me. Sit with me for a while… let me help you experience something else, something wonderful. I love you. Softly, listen… you are not this separated-alone-self  in pain. You and I are connected… to each other, and to everyone else. We always are, we always will be. Be willing to feel this… God is loving us now!

Suddenly, as if someone threw a switch, I’m in a lot less pain, and I’m not as crazed as I was a moment before…

Jesus doesn’t tell me ‘no pain, no gain’…. he simply says ‘no pain… no pain.‘

 

 

For further discussion of pain and specifically the line from Lesson #190,

“Peace to Such Foolishness,” on Ken Wapnick’s CD set or MP3 download: click here.

 

Helen Schucman & Bill Thetford Speak… hear the recorded voices of the two scribes of “A Course in Miracles!”

 

 

Helen Schucman

 

Only known public recording of…

Helen Schucman speaking

(in a 15 min. radio interview)

 

 

Helen Schucman’s Autobiography on ACIM.org:

(click here)

Although the scribing itself was relatively effortless, it did engender tremendous anxiety in Helen, though less in Bill. As Helen wrote:

“It made me very uncomfortable, but it never seriously occurred to me to stop. It seemed to be a special assignment I had somehow, somewhere agreed to complete. It represented a truly collaborative venture between Bill and myself, and much of its significance, I am sure, lies in that. I could neither account for nor reconcile my obviously inconsistent attitudes. On the one hand I still regarded myself as officially an agnostic, resented the material I was taking down, and was strongly impelled to attack it and prove it wrong. On the other hand I spent considerable time in taking it down and later in dictating it to Bill, so it was apparent that I took it quite seriously. I actually came to refer to it as my life’s work. As Bill pointed out, I must believe in it if only because I argued with it so much. While this was true, it did not help me. I was in the impossible position of not believing my own life’s work. The situation was clearly ridiculous as well as painful.”

 

 

Bill Thetford

 

 

 

 

 Bill Thetford Talks About…

His Life & A Course in Miracles:

Part One:

Part Three

Bill Thetford’s Autobiography on ACIM.org:

(click here)

As to the impact of A Course in Miracles on Bill, he said:

“It changed my life totally. I recall typing the first fifty principles on miracles that came through Helen in the Fall of 1965, and realized that if this material was true then absolutely everything I believed would have to be challenged—that I would have to reconstruct my whole belief system. At the time, however, I thought that would be impossible; I didn’t know how I could do it. Yet I felt that was a requirement, since the material that came through Helen in the beginning phase seemed so authentic and genuine. I went into shock for a brief period, wondering how it would be possible to make such an abrupt change in my perception of life and the world. Later I realized that God is merciful, and does not ask us to make changes so abruptly, that there would be adequate time to gradually begin to shift my perception. I think what was important was my willingness to change, not mastery of the material.”

 

 

 

 

Ken Wapnick talks about Helen’s own Course process on Youtube

(click here)

(10 min.)

 

PBS “Visionaries” Documentary:

  (with Sam Waterston) 

Helen and the Course:

(click here)

 

Ken & Gloria Early Days

@ Roscoe, N.Y.

(click here)

 

One Hour Video Introduction to…

“A Course in Miracles”

by the School for A Course in Miracles

with a little history and a brief explanation of the Course’s metaphysics and its unique version of forgiveness …

(click here)

 

Six Month Online Course Immersion Program,

January- June 2022

(click here)

(Please, never let lack of funds be a deterrent in taking any of the SFACIM classes or events listed… give Tim a call @ 720-391-9294, leave a voicemail, and he will get back to you ASAP. We always try to work something out. We want you to be there!)

Autobiographical Book Release From Ken Wapnick’s Writings: “Symphony of Love”

The Temecula Foundation has released an autobiographical book from Dr. Kenneth Wapnick’s writings called a “Symphony of Love.”

Excerpt from Intro by Gloria Wapnick: The book begins with two very powerful unpublished autobiographies, My Life with God and My Life with Jesus. The first, My Life with God, Kenneth wrote at the request of Helen Schucman, who urged him to do that project in 1973. The second, My Life with Jesus, was done mostly after we moved to Temecula in 2001, since people kept asking for one…

Click here for more info and how to order

Healing: What It Is… What It Isn’t

Welcome to The School for A Course in Miracles…

 

 

 

Weekly Online Classes… 

(click here)

Online:

Six Month In-depth Immersion Program

on The Healing & Forgiveness Processes 

in the book “A Course in Miracles”…

 

Online January thru June Every Year

(open to all, especially those recently drawn to A Course in Miracles)

For info: click here

School for A Course in Miracles:

Video Replays on The Topic of Healing …

(click here)

 

 

A Course in Miracles - combined volume - hardbound - English

In Chapter 21, Sec. II of the book “A Course in Miracles,”

Jesus tells us that:

I am responsible for what I see.
I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the goal I would achieve.
And everything that seems to happen to me I ask for, and receive as I have asked.

 

Could that possibly be true?

What if ACIM Workbook Lesson 198 states what is actually going on?

‘Only my condemnation (of others and myself) injures  me.’

 

What healing is…

What healing isn’t?

What does the Course mean by the healing of my mind?

 

(by Tim Wise)

The book A Course in Miracles uses the words heal/healer/healing more than 725 times… only about 100 times less than forgive/forgiveness/forgiven (835). How are forgiveness and healing related in the Course? How are they the same? How are they different?

Early on in my beginning exposure to the Course, the list of Course words associated with a transcendent experience of holiness (ie, guiltlessness) began to grow and grow… a miracle, forgiveness, healing, reason, a holy instant, true perception, Atonement, the face of Christ, etc.

It took me a while to realize that in content they all basically meant the same thing. That freed me to not get so bogged down in sometimes subtle differences, depending on how Jesus was using the words. One of the places in the Course where Jesus explicitly points out their sameness is in the Manual p.55 on “How are healing and Atonement related?”

 Healing and Atonement are not related; they are identical. There is no order of difficulty in miracles because there are no degrees of Atonement. It is the one complete concept possible in this world, because it is the source of a wholly unified (true) perception…

 … To forgive is to heal. The teacher of God has taken accepting the Atonement for himself as his only function. What is there, then, he cannot heal? What miracle can be withheld from him?

… That forgiveness is healing needs to be understood, if the teacher of God is to make progress.

Manual p.85, par. 3:

For true perception is a remedy with many names. Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one. They are the one beginning, with the end to lead to Oneness far beyond themselves.

 

 

 

 

So…  healing= forgiveness= Atonement= a miracle= true perception !

Ok then, what is their shared meaning? That answer lies in a closer look at what and where the “only” problem is, and what and where the one and only solution is. Workbook Lessons 79 & 80 are emphatic and uncompromising that our only problem (in spite of all our seeming issues in the world) is our belief in our mind  in separation from Our Father in Heaven, which never really happened. The healing of that belief is our forgiving (i.e. admitting and letting go) of that belief. Our awakening in true perception that separation is impossible and our real identity as God’s One Son is still intact… that’s the definition of  Atonement in the Course.

Another similar helpful realization is that all the words, associated with an ego-based wrong-minded experience in our mind, are also the same in content, and could be used interchangeably… sin, guilt, fear, anger, wrong perception, sickness, death, separation, grievances and judgement… all mean the same thing, all stem our belief that sin/ guilt/ fear and separation from Our Father are even possible.

The mistake or common problem we all have is we take this condition of sin and guilt in our mind and project that onto the world of bodies. Now we think sin and guilt are alive and “well,” but it’s not in us (not in our minds)… it’s in the other guy. He’s the one that’s to blame now; he’s the guilty party. And in time and space he may well be guilty of doing not very nice things… but that ‘s not our real issue.

Our brother’s seeming guilt is just a projection and distraction from the sickness and guilt in our own mind for having pushed God out of our own awareness. And that’s where, in the internal place the Course calls the mind, the only remedy or healing can take place for us.

(1) We start with our perception of our brother’s guilt, (2) honestly admit to ourselves that is what we think (that he is to blame for our lack of peace), and then (3) be willing to have Jesus show me my brother’s sin in the world is simply an outward picture of my own inner condition, i.e. belief in my own guilt.  Jesus will help me then experience that my brothers’ seeming sins and my own have had no effect on our one true innocent identity. Jesus still loves us… he didn’t go anywhere. We are still God’s One Innocent Son.

 

 

Lesson 325

All things I think I see reflect ideas.

This is salvation’s keynote: What I see reflects a process in my mind, which starts with my idea of what I want (the tiny mad idea of sin and separation). From there, the mind makes up an image of the thing the mind desires (to see I am guilty of separation), judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find. These images are then projected outward (the guilt is now in others, not me), looked upon, esteemed as real and guarded as one’s own. From insane wishes comes an insane world (the world we see was made as an attack on God and on our Identity as His Son). From judgment (of ourselves as guilty) comes a world condemned (others are now guilty). And from forgiving thoughts a gentle world (the real world) comes forth, with mercy for the holy Son of God (and not condemnation), to offer him a kindly home where he can rest a while before he journeys on, and help his brothers walk ahead with him, and find the way to Heaven and to God.

What healing in the Course isn’t…

In light of what we said above that the only sickness is in the mind is due to our belief in separation from God, then the solution for that ‘sick’ belief is the Holy Spirit helping us to acknowledge and let go our chosen belief in that separation .

So how do we then deal with sickness, disease, broken limbs, or anything in the body. Do we take our vitamins, or exercise, or should we do any of the stuff we do to keep our bodies healthy?

One way of looking at our bodies is to see them as reflections of the choice between the two inner teachers (ego or Holy Spirit) in our mind. In that sense our bodies are simply puppets of which puppeteer (teacher/guide) in our mind we have chosen. When we choose the voice of separation (ego), we identify and see our made up separated selves as bodies (in which the ego puppeteer actually believes he is the puppet). Just believing we are a separate body moving in a world of separation is the “sick” or psychotic belief…  whether the body seems to be healthy or not. Sickness in the Course has nothing to do with the condition of the body. The sickness is that we believe we are a body… period! 

Can you imagine going to a puppet show and you realize the puppeteer believes he actually is his puppet! That would probably make us all pretty nervous.

At the mind level, remember the real healing is simply letting go of believing we separated from God and are now vulnerable bodies at the mercy of others. That was the ego’s purpose for believing it’s a body in the first place. We maintain the seeming separation, but the pain we feel (the horror of separating from Our Father) is now blamed on something or someone else. The real source of pain, of belief in separation in the mind, is forgotten and projected out onto others.

So… that projection could be on a person who harmed me, or a germ that made me sick. Whatever it was, the ego says I didn’t do it…I didn’t choose this pain, but it was done to me.

 

Just below the surface of any physical or psychological pain we are feeling, there is always a ‘face’… some one or some thing we are pointing a finger at… and we are saying to them it’s all your fault. However, it is simply our constant ego need to blame others for the pain from our own internal choice to be separate from God and each other. We still feel the pain of that belief in separation (the pain is a way to prove to ourselves we really separated). But now we blame the pain on something outside our minds… on the world with all its other bodies, and then judge them as the culprit. They are responsible for my pain, not me. That’s the lie we tell ourselves…

 

So back to exercise or vitamins or bodies staying healthy…

Jesus tells us that the question we need to ask of anything is what’s it really for? What’s my body’s purpose?

 

If our bodies are puppets or reflections of our mind’s chosen inner guide (ego or HS), then the question should not be… do I want an intact healthy puppet or a broken sick puppet to communicate with other puppets. The truly helpful question would be…  what do I want to communicate: what is my body’s purpose? Is it to convey the message of the ego and tell others the pain of my separation is their fault? Or is it the Holy Spirit message (from Les. #201-220): we are not bodies (puppets), we are free, and we are still as God created us.

Either a seemingly healthy puppet, or a seemingly sick puppet, can and will work to communicate either message. The choice is which purpose, which message do I want to share (peace or blame) with my brothers… and not what shape my puppet’s in.

Our bodies are simply communication devices. Do we want them operating properly? Jesus doesn’t care about bodies; it’s our mind he’s concerned about. If we think a healthy puppet helps us carry the HS message in our awareness to others and ourselves, then why not take the vitamins. If our puppets function better with exercise, then exercise if we want to. Respect our bodies/our puppets as classrooms to help others and ourselves wake up. Just try not to take the puppet’s make-believe ‘health,’ or lack of, too seriously.

Remember… our peace of mind does not depend, and will never depend, on our body’s apparent condition…

but, in any given moment, only on our internal choice of teachers.

Excerpts from Lesson 132:

I loose the world (and my body) from all I thought it was.

The world (and the body) is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes (our choice to believe in separation and guilt), acted out so you can look on them (our wishes) and think them real. Perhaps you think you did not make the world (or your body), 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.

Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world (including the way we see our body) must change accordingly. Ideas leave not their source (in the mind). 

There is no world! (There is no body!)

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.

—————————————–

In summary then, what is healing in the Course? Forgiveness..

What isn’t healing in the Course? Healing is never about healing of the body… but only our mind.

Healing References in The Course:

A Course in Miracles - combined volume - hardbound - English

Healing is mentioned in seven of the first 50 miracle principles at the beginning of the Text, p.3-5   (# 8, 17, 20, 23, 24,29, 37).

Two Chapter titles include “healing” … Chap. 5 (Healing and Wholeness) and Chap. 27 (Healing of The Dream).

 

Twelve Section titles in the Text contain ‘healing”:

Ch. 2. IV. Healing as Release from Fear

Ch. 5. IV. Teaching and Healing

Ch. 7. IV. Healing as Recognition of Truth

Ch. 7. V. Healing and Changelessness

Ch. 8. IX. Healing as Corrected Perception

Ch. 9. V. The Unhealed Healer

Ch. 11. II. Invitation to Healing

Ch. 17 V. The Healed Relationship

Ch. 19 I. Healing and Faith

Ch. 26 VII. The Laws of Healing

Ch. 27 II. The Fear of Healing

Ch. 27. V. The Healing Example

 

 

Workbook

Lesson 136. Sickness is a defense against the truth

Lesson 137. When I am healed I am not healed alone

Lesson 140. Only salvation can be said to cure

 

Manual 

5. How is healing accomplished?

6. Is healing certain?

7. Should healing be repeated?

22. How are healing and Atonement related?

23. Does Jesus have a special place in healing?

 

 

Psychotherapy

  1. The Process of Psychotherapy – III. 3-4; V. 4-8; VII. 4, 7; VIII. 1-3

 

 

Song of Prayer

S3.in

S3.III.4-6

 

Here’s a link to Ken Wapnick CD sets and books on “Healing.”   

click here

SFACIM Video on “Hurting Ourselves”  Part One:

Click here

SFACIM Video on “Hurting Ourselves” Part Two:

Click Here

 

The Gifts of God Prose Poem

The Gifts of God Prose Poem was the last of dictated messages to Helen Schucman from Jesus. It is contained at the end of a collection of poetry by Helen, also called by the same title,

The Gifts of God.

(click here to purchase)

The year was 1978. The Course had already been taken down by Helen Schucman and was published. The two Course pamphlets (Psychotherapy & Song of Prayer) were also already scribed, between 1975 and 1977.

It was a cold, snowy February weekend  in New York City… and Ken Wapnick was scheduled to head out of the Big Apple on a train for a couple days, to a Catholic center (about 30 miles north) to do some counseling work. Helen was terrified that Ken would be hurt, or worse, in an impending snowstorm. She had already talked him out of going the previous weekend for the same reason, and Ken dutifully said that this time he had to go, and he did. Helen had herself so worked-up about it, that her conscious fear became over-the-top and out of control. Later, by 3am in the middle of the night, she decided to finally talk to Jesus about it.

What then developed, over a three month period thru April of ’78, were Jesus messages to help her walk thru…  not the distracting conscious fear about Ken’s safety, but the real underlying fear (hers and ours) of simply letting go of separation and being with Jesus. These messages were collectively put together in what today is known as the Gifts of God Prose Poem.

The best description of this process, and a great discussion by Ken Wapnick on the contents of this piece, is Ken’s ten CD set/MP3 download:

“The Gift of the Ego (Fear) vs The Gift of God (Love)”  

Click here for info.

The Gifts of God Prose Poem contains five sections (on 14 pages):

  1. The Dream of Fear
  2. The Two Gifts
  3. The Ending of The Dream
  4. Our Gift to God
  5. The Father’s Love

 

The Prose Poem is a beautifully written synopsis of the entire Course,  with all its verses in Shakespearean iambic pentameter. For best understanding, it is recommended and helpful to have some clear previous study of the Course’s basic metaphysics, prior to reading and applying the poem’s teachings to our lives.

However The Gifts of God Prose Poem is an insightful capstone to the Course itself, and resonates with all Course students as an incredible addendum that wonderfully crowns A Course in Miracles.

 

 

Also, for a complete discussion of the entire Prose Poem by the School for ACIM, visit the SFACIM’s replay series on this amazing literary work of art…

and the expression of Jesus’ love for us in it:

click here

 

Time, Time, Time… What is My Real Purpose for This New Year ?

 

 

(by Tim Wise)

Songs & Movies about Time:

Many great songs have been sung about ‘time’…

  • “Time, time, time…see what’s become of me….” Simon & Garfunkel Hazy Shade of Winter
  • “Does anybody really know what time it is, does anybody really care?”… Chicago
  • “If you’re lost you can look, and you will find me… Time after Time“… Cyndi Lauper
  • “There is a season (turn, turn, turn), and a time to every purpose, under heaven”… Byrds

 

Oprah a while back put out the movie A Wrinkle in Time. It joins a list of more than a hundred movies with “Time” in the title, many in which the characters seem to step outside of time, somehow control it, and/or jump around in it.

Some of the more memorable ones are: Somewhere in Time, Out of Time, A Time to Kill, The Time Machine, and my favorite… Time Bandits.  And there are dozens more about time without time in the title, including: Deja Vu, Groundhog Day, and even the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life.

 

 

Time holds an incredible fascination and investment for all of us, and we hear it resound every time we wish each other a “Happy New Year.” It’s a greeting that conveys our hopefulness for a new time, a year that’s soon coming that will preferably be better than previous years.

Ken Wapnick said that of all the many topics that Course students ask him to discuss, the subject of time was inquired about more than all the others.

 

 

The Course says the only question we should ever ask about anything is… “What is it for?” What is its purpose? And there’s only two possible answers. At the level of the mind, is it to help support the ego thought system of separation, to confirm the ego’s identity story of sin-guilt-fear? Or does it become a classroom for the Holy Spirit to teach us forgiveness, i.e. letting go of our own belief in separation and blaming others and God for it?

So we will turn to the issue of ‘time’ with these same questions… what is time for? What is time’s purpose from an ego point of view… or from the Holy Spirit’s true perception of it?

But first let’s look at some of the ways time is talked about in the Course. Time is mentioned right away, early on, in five of the 50 Miracle Principles at the beginning of the ACIM Text (p.4-6):

  • #15 (time’s purpose), 

     Each day should be devoted to miracles (in the Course a miracles is simply an act of true forgiveness and its result). The purpose of time is to enable you to learn how to use time constructively. It is thus a teaching device and a means to an end. Time will cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating learning (forgiveness).

  • #19  (miracles and time),

     Miracles make minds one in God. They depend on cooperation, because the Sonship is the sum of all that God created. Miracles therefore reflect the laws of eternity, not of time.

  • #25 (miracles as holographic in time), 

 Miracles are part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which, when completed, is the Atonement. Atonement works all the time and in all the dimensions of time.

  • #47 (miracles as timeless),

 The miracle is a learning device that lessens the need for time. It establishes an out-of-pattern time interval not under the usual laws of time. In this sense it is timeless.

  • #48 (miracles controlling time).

The miracle is the only device at your immediate disposal for controlling time. Only revelation transcends it, having nothing to do with time at all.

 

 

Time does not really exist.

Jesus introduces some amazing ideas about time in the above lines, that will be developed later in the Course. He quickly re-emphasizes however some of these same miracle principles on time… one page later in Chap. 1, Sec II, “Revelation, Time and Miracles.”

4 “No man cometh unto the Father but by me” does not mean that I am in any way separate or different from you, except in time, and time does not really exist…

6 The miracle minimizes the (ego’s) need for time. In the longitudinal or horizontal plane (of time and space), the recognition of the equality of the members of the Sonship appears to involve almost endless time. However, the miracle entails a sudden shift (The Holy Instant), from horizontal (in the world) to vertical perception (in the mind). This introduces an interval from which the giver and receiver both emerge farther along in time than they would otherwise have been. (Jesus later in The Text does call this the Holy Instant.) The miracle thus has the unique property of abolishing time to the extent that it renders the interval of time it spans unnecessary. There is no relationship between the time a miracle takes and the time it covers. The miracle substitutes for learning that might have taken thousands of years. It does so by the underlying recognition of perfect equality of giver and receiver on which the miracle rests (the willingness, to let go of the past and experience this equality as one Son of God… is described later in the Course as forgiveness). The miracle shortens time by collapsing it, thus eliminating certain intervals within it. ( T p.7-8, par. 4 & 6)

 

 

The most hard hitting of the above lines,to our egos anyway, is … “time does not really exist.” He echoes this again and again throughout the Course, saying things like… “Time is a trick, a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures seem to come and go as if by magic.” (Les. 158, p.298, par.4)

 

The Ego’s Use of Time: Preserving Our Belief in Sin & Separation

In Heaven, time does not exist at all. Therefore it doesn’t exist, period. Everything outside of heaven is simply illusion, including time (… Course Metaphysics 101). We don’t believe that, but Jesus is very matter of fact that’s just the way it is…

When we seemed to step outside of heaven and play with the idea of separation in our mind, we made up the sin-guilt-fear story to prove to ourselves we actually pulled off a cosmic disconnect from our Father and our true identity in Heaven. We separated (our sin in the past) and it was/is terrible (the guilt we feel now) and we will be punished (fear of the future). We then projected that story onto an entire made-up universe of time and space. Space proves our separation (I’m here and you’re over there)… and time (past, present, future) provides a screen for the projection of our mind’s sin-guilt-fear story, except now it gets projected onto others.  Sin-guilt-fear is alive and well but it’s in you, not me…it’s  your sin in the past (not mine so much), the present guilt that you certainly have, and the fear of threatening punishment and doom about the future that you should feel, as payment for what you did.

 As you look upon yourself and judge what you do honestly, you may be tempted to wonder how you (or your brother) can be guiltless. Yet consider this: You (and your brother) are not guiltless in time, but in eternity. You have “sinned” in the past, but there is no past. Always has no direction. Time seems to go in one direction, but when you reach its end it will roll up like a long carpet spread along the past behind you, and will disappear. As long as you believe the Son of God is guilty you will walk along this carpet, believing that it leads to death. And the journey will seem long and cruel and senseless, for so it is. (Text p.237, par.3)

 

The Carpet of Time

The Course tells us consistently the Son of God is still and forever guiltless (the Atonement principle). In  the moment of seeming separation, time seemed to roll out like a long carpet, and immediately rolled back up with our acceptance of the Atonement. It’s already a done deal. What appears to be happening is that we are just reviewing that carpet of time in a linear way from our individual viewpoint in time and space, and have not quite reached the Atonement part of the story yet. ( “For we but see the journey from the point at which it ended, looking back on it, imagining we make it once again; reviewing mentally what has gone by.”…Les. #158). So in a sense we are all in replay mode, watching something that’s already happened.

But in truth (Heaven), it didn’t happen at all…   

So…  did you get all that? Ken Wapnick and Jesus both caution us to not try to wrap our brains around these ideas about time (as part of the world’s illusion, brains were made not to to ‘get’ them).  However we are promised an internal experience in our minds through forgiveness, where we eventually understand and feel this truth as an experience.

And we can do that now, with Jesus’ help. In fact the only time we can do it is… now. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, but now.

 

 

 

Alright then, that’s a general look at the metaphysics of time… but what does that have to do with me, believing I am moving thru linear time? Where do I begin?

Take another look at the first nine Workbook Lessons. The first six entail how there’s something seriously amiss with the way we are seeing, thinking about, or understanding anything. Lessons 7 & 8 explain why: I see only the past because I’m preoccupied with it. What it doesn’t say here in these lessons (but in many other places in the Course) is that what we are preoccupied with (and actually obsessed with) …  is guilt! Lesson 9 more than implies the answer lies in our willingness to admit our preoccupation with the past (based on separation, sin and guilt), and let the past go.

Guilt is promoted, encouraged, and locked in place with our concept of time… We are sure that guilt is very real, whether it’s your guilt or mine. Terrible things happened to us or were done by us in the past. This ‘proves’ that the present is not only on very shaky ground, but that the future is bound to repeat the past… especially when we are not continually on-guard.

I see only the past… Old ideas about time are very difficult to change, because everything you believe is rooted in time, and depends on your not learning these new ideas about it. Yet that is precisely why you need new ideas about time. This first time idea (I see only the past) is not really so strange as it may sound at first. (Les.#7)

My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts. This idea is, of course, the reason why you see only the past. No one really sees anything. He sees only his thoughts (of separation) projected outward. The mind’s preoccupation with the past is the cause of the misconception about time from which your seeing suffers. Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is. It therefore cannot understand time, and cannot, in fact, understand anything.

The one wholly true thought one can hold about the past is that it is not here. To think about it at all is therefore to think about illusions. Very few have realized what is actually entailed in picturing the past or in anticipating the future. The mind is actually blank when it does this, because it is not really thinking about anything. (Les.#8)

 

 

One thing to consider, in looking at these ideas about guilt and time: I might not be aware of my own guilt or even of feeling guilty at all, but most of us can quickly admit to and see the other guy’s guilt. His guilt or my guilt… doesn’t matter… guilt is guilt. The Course constantly reminds us that what I see in my brother is what I really see in myself: one finger pointing at him, three fingers pointing back at me… maybe not the same in behavior or form, but certainly the same in motivation and content.

The longest chapter in the Text, and the longest Course expose’ on guilt is Chapter 13, “The Guiltless World.” Also, one of the longest discussions on time is in the very same chapter, in sections IV “The Function of Time” and VI “Finding The Present,” because our belief in time is the great preserver of guilt.

As long as we are not totally in this moment (a Holy Instant in our minds), and we are invested in making serious decisions about a seeming past and a ‘not-yet’ future, we are back in guilt mode…maintaining separation but blaming it on someone else.

This is not to beat up ourselves, or call ourselves bad Course students for buying into time and preserving guilt. It’s simply to remind us there’s more work to be done, and to remember to ask Jesus for help to look at it the way he does.

The ego has a strange notion of time, and it is with this notion that your questioning might well begin. The ego invests heavily in the past, and in the end believes that the past is the only aspect of time that is meaningful. Remember that its emphasis on guilt enables it to ensure its continuity by making the future like the past, and thus avoiding the present. By the notion of paying for the past in the future, the past becomes the determiner of the future, making them continuous without an intervening present. For the ego regards the present only as a brief transition to the future, in which it brings the past to the future by interpreting the present in past terms. 

 … It dictates your reactions to those you meet in the present from a past reference point, obscuring their present reality. In effect, if you follow the ego’s dictates you will react to your brother as though he were someone else, and this will surely prevent you from recognizing him as he is…  And you will receive messages from him out of your own past because, by making it real in the present, you are forbidding yourself to let it go. You thus deny yourself the message of release that every brother offers you now. The shadowy figures from the past are precisely what you must escape. They are not real, and have no hold over you unless you bring them with you. 

 It is evident that the Holy Spirit’s perception of time is the exact opposite of the ego’s. The reason is equally clear, for they perceive the goal of time as diametrically opposed. The Holy Spirit interprets time’s purpose as rendering the need for time unnecessary… The ego, on the other hand, regards the function of time as one of extending itself in place of eternity, for like the Holy Spirit, the ego interprets the goal of time as its own. The continuity of past and future, under its direction, is the only purpose the ego perceives in time, and it closes over the present so that no gap in its own continuity can occur. (Text p.245, par.4-8)

 

 

 

In summary, Jesus tells us (in Chap. 13):

“You consider it natural  to use your past experience as the reference point from which to judge the present. Yet this is unnatural because it is delusional. When you have learned to look on everyone with no reference at all to the past, either his or yours as you perceive it, you will be able to learn from what you see now. For the past can cast no shadow to darken the present, unless you are afraid of light. And only if you are would you choose to bring darkness (guilt) with you, and by holding it in your mind, see it as a dark cloud that shrouds your brothers and conceals their reality from your sight…

To be born again is to let the past go, and look without condemnation upon the present. The cloud that obscures God’s Son to you is the past, and if you would have it past and gone, you must not see it now. If you see it now in your illusions, it has not gone from you, although it is not there…

You would destroy time’s continuity by breaking it into past, present and future for your own purposes. You would anticipate the future on the basis of your past experience, and plan for it accordingly. Yet by doing so you are aligning past and future, and not allowing the miracle, which could intervene between them, to free you to be born again…

 The miracle (by asking the Holy Spirit’s help to do this…) enables you to see your brother without his past (our own guilt projected onto him), and so perceive him as born again. His errors are all past, and by perceiving him without them you are releasing him (the Course’s definition of forgiveness). And since his past is yours, you share in this release. Let no dark cloud out of your past obscure him from you, for truth lies only in the present, and you will find it if you seek it there. You have looked for it where it is not, and therefore have not found it. Learn, then, to seek it where it is, and it will dawn on eyes that see. Your past was made in anger, and if you use it to attack the present, you will not see the freedom that the present holds.”  (Text p.250, par.2-5)

Make This Year Different by Making It All the Same… guilt-free and holy.

Happy New Year!!

 

 What is a Miracle?

(WB p. 473)

1 A miracle is a correction. It does not create, nor really change (anything) at all. It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false. It undoes error, but does not attempt to go beyond perception, nor exceed the function of forgiveness. Thus it stays within time’s limits. Yet it paves the way for the return of timelessness and love’s awakening, for fear must slip away under the gentle remedy it brings.

 

water drip

Other References in the Course on Time:

1) Ch.26, p.550, par. 3-5, 9-10   “The Little Hindrance”

2) Les. #158, p.298,  par.2-4, 9-11   “Today I learn to give as I receive.”

3) Les. 169, p. 323, par. 4-11    “By grace I live. By grace I am released.”

4) Manual #2, p.5, par. 2-4    “Who are their (God’s teachers) pupils?”

Ken Wapnick CD sets (and MP3 downloads ) on Time:

1) The Clear and Shining Instant of Time (9 CDs)

2) The Time Machine (4 CDs) 

3) The Metaphysics of Time (4 CDs) : A Lyn and Tim Favorite, also available as DVD

4) The Meaning of the Holy Instant (2 CDs)

5) How Will The World End? (2 CDs)

6) Forgiveness and The End of Time (4 CDs)

7) From Time to Timelessness (2 CDs)

(click here for descriptions and links to FACIM bookstore)

Ken Wapnick’s Book on

Time, A Vast Illusion

 

Happy Thanksgiving: Be grateful! Our sinlessness is an… “Already-Done-Deal !”

 

Yet our own redemption is done already, and unless you give all that you have received you will not know that you have awakened with him, your brother… already.        

(Text p.209, par. 9)

One of the striking differences between ACIM and traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and most New Age spiritualities is that…  A Course in Miracles takes an ‘already-done-deal’ approach.

Most western religious and spiritual paths assume something is really wrong to begin with, and then go about trying to fix it or evolve beyond it. To them, sin and separation are devastatingly real. The Course specifically sets up its version of the Atonement (that nothing happened), right in its Introduction to the Text on page 1.

This Intro immediately spells out that this is not a course about love, loving, or evolving somehow towards love, or even making the world a better place in which to live… but on letting go of our own judgements of others and ourselves which block our awareness that we are still beings of Love:

 

“The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim however at removing the blocks to the (our) awareness of love’s presence, which is our natural inheritance.” (Text, p.1)

So then, this is simply a course about undoing those blocks, in our minds, to realizing that love is already a done deal, and our true Identity is still part of that Love… period. We are God’s children, always have been, always will be. The Course shows us how to stop pretending that we’re not eternally part of God’s Love… insisting in our criticizing, fixing, and sometimes even ‘helping,’ that we are not ‘still’ as God created us.

“But when I willingly and gladly go the way my Father’s plan appointed me to go, then will I recognize salvation is already here, already given all my brothers and already mine as well.” (Les.#317)

So what’s my Father’s plan? In the Course’s 1300 plus pages, Jesus is always encouraging us to look at each other differently by asking the Holy Spirit for help ‘to see beyond the veil,’ see beyond the differences we think we see and even cherish. Early on in the Course he also states that this course is not about behavior (Text p.29, par.2-3). It is not about what we do or don’t do, but about how we “see” each other.

And more to the point: with whom are we seeing or perceiving… our ego or the Holy Spirit? Jesus tells us we have this internal place called the mind, where we are constantly choosing between one of these two teachers or inner guides. (NB: This internal place is not what the world calls our brain, but a deep place within us the Course describes as the ‘mind.’) When we choose the ego as our teacher, we see separation and blame. When we choose the Holy Spirit, we experience the Atonement, that nothing happened and our true Identity is still intact.

Problem is, when we are choosing the ego, we’re not really conscious of that choice… but we do feel its effects. We are irritable, judgmental, and certainly not peaceful. We are quick to point out that our discontent is not our responsibility, but we easily finger-point the culprit as something or somebody else. It’s amazing when we go thru the course of our day, and begin to realize… how many times each and every day we are blaming, and how much we are on high alert to find a new drama where we can find and accuse others of robbing us of our peace.

However, choosing to ask the Holy Spirit to perceive and experience people and things differently is a very conscious and vigilant effort. We first honestly look at how hateful our thinking and seeing is, and even tho we believe we are right, we admit how painful it is to hold onto that righteousness. (Would I rather be right or happy?) This becomes the motivation to hope that ‘there must be a better way,’ and I begin to be a little more willing to find and try that ‘better way’. The better way for Course students is the Course’s process of forgiveness, ie. learning to ‘see’ differently. We forgive, or let go, of our way of viewing the world full of victims and victimizers. Then we allow, or let, the Holy Spirit’s vision, of what we truly are, take its place.

(Lesson Titles #31-35)

Forgiveness in the Course is a return to the awareness of the “Done Deal.” Whatever our eyes might be telling us, we ask for the Holy Spirit’s gift of vision to see/experience that our brother’s innocence (and ultimately our own) is still intact… already there and present, no matter what they are doing or not. This doesn’t mean, in terms of behavior, that we don’t do the next appropriate and helpful thing. But it does mean that while we are doing whatever our chosen behavior is, in our heart of hearts, we come to know we are each already ok, already saved, and already God’s one Son.

This is not some pie-in-the-sky made up fantasy. For those of us who have practiced the Course’s forgiveness, we experience that this is the reality behind all the seeming facades that ’cause’ us to blame and condemn. We actually begin to feel and know, about ourselves and others, what Jesus consistently tells us in Lessons #201 thru 220:

“I am not a body. I am free. I am still (already) as God created me.”

Thank you Jesus!

and Happy Thanksgiving!

This Thurs.  11/23   @ 10am Mountain Time   

Special Online Thanksgiving Celebration 

with Tim & Lyn 

click here

Replay of video from SFACIM on a discussion of “gratitude”:

click here

Also a five minute youtube clip on Ken Wapnick speaking about our gratitude to Jesus for giving us his Course in Miracles:

Click here

 

 

Coming soon…

Six Month Online

The Immersion 2024

click here for info

 

Musings: On ‘Idols’ in “A Course in Miracles”

Idols & Idolatry

(The word ‘idol’ is used 172 times in the Course)

Definitions of “Idol” from Ken Wapnick’s Glossary of Course Terms:

  1. A false belief that there can be something or someone other than God or more than God.

  2. Symbol of the substitution of the ego for our one true Self or God.

  3. A belief in separation projected onto special relationships with things, people, or ideas.

  4. The Anti-Christ

 

———————————-

The first idol we made-up in our minds (and in a sense worshipped) was our belief that we could be a separated Son of God, autonomous and distinct from our Father in Heaven. The Course calls that “new” identity/idol ego. This silly belief gets projected onto time and space, with all our worldly idols a reflection of that original mistaken error.

These ‘idols’ includes all our special love and hate relationships, with things and people we like, and things and people we don’t like. All those “idols” are simply mirrors of that believed separation within us in our mind. That is their purpose in the world… to keep us involved in all the worldly drama, and not realize their source.

The way out, of taking this seemingly gigantic hallucination seriously, is to see past those worldly idols and be willing to have an experience beyond them (with Jesus and the Holy Spirit’s help), to the true innocence of others and ourselves as God’s One Son, still intact. The Course calls that willingness forgiveness.

 

———————————————–

 

Use of Word “Idols” in the Course:

 

 

 

 

  • Ch. 10, Sec. III, p.185, par. 1 & 5 “The God of Sickness”… on idol of sickness:

“A sick god must be an idol...that is exactly what the ego does perceive in a Son of God….a sick god, self-created, self-sufficient, very vicious and vulnerable.”

 

 

————————————–

 

 

  • Ch. 20, Sec. VI, p.436  “The Temple of the Holy Spirit” … on bodies as idols:

“The body is the ego’s idol...a wall of flesh around the mind.”

 

————————

  • Ch. 29, Sec. VII, p.617. par. 6 “Seek not Outside Yourself” … on idol of death:

“Idols must fail/fall because they have no life…you came to die…and you see death and disappointment everywhere.”

 

———————

 

  • Ch. 29, Sec. VIII, p.619 “The Anti-Christ” … on the idol of Anti-Christ:

“What is an idol? Nothing… Where is an idol? Nowhere.”

 

—————————–

 

 

  • Ch.29, Sec. IX, p.622 “The Forgiving Dream” … on idols as nightmarish toys:

“Whenever you feel fear in any form… be sure you have made an idol, and believe it will betray you.”

 

 

————————–

 

 

  • Ch. 30, Sec. III, p.630 “Beyond All Idols”… on seeking idols to complete us:

“This is the purpose of an idol: that you will not look beyond (your needing) it, to the source of the belief that you are incomplete.”

 

——————————

  • Ch. 30, Sec. IV, p.633 “The Truth behind Illusions”… more on idols as toys:

“The wearying, dissatisfying gods you made are blown-up children’s toys…The rules he (the child) made for boxes and for bears have failed him…and he is afraid.”

 

 —————————-

  • Ch. 30, Sec. V, p.635 “The Only Purpose”… on idols as blocks to the real world:

Our experience of the Real World takes place… “when we learn how easily our idols go when not wanted any more.”

Ken Wapnick You Tube Videos… on “Christmas and The New Year”

Ken Wapnick dark bkgnd

Five minute youtube clips on Ken Wapnick speaking about Christmas:

 

 

 

——————–

and the New Year:

Also…

A New Kind of New Year’s Resolution :

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feQXDh-H-6M

———————————-

“On Ken’s Relationship with Helen”,” 10 minutes,  (click here);

—————————————–

One Hour Interview with Ken Wapnick By Ken Bok... click here

 

See latest book release from FACIM based on Ken’s writings: click here

And… A Tribute to Ken upon His Passing:

Ken was my teacher, living example of the Course and dear friend. My first experience of Ken was hearing a cassette of “this guy from New York who edited that course” explaining why I’d immediately forget the paragraph in the text that I just read. My last experience of Ken was at the Foundation workshop I attended last year where he once again illuminated the Course’s holy trinity: Forgiveness, Love and Joining.

I was overjoyed when the Foundation relocated to Temecula, and I could get my heart and soul refreshed and reawakened in The Oasis of Peace that Ken made the Foundation. I delighted in watching him welcome new and veteran Course students with smiles, hugs, the occasional prank and always loving attentiveness to each of us.

Ken truly brought the Course to life. I sought his help when I was in a desperate heart of darkness period. This was just one of the many conversations we had during that dark time. Through tears I said, “Ken, I feel as if I’ve painted myself into a corner and can’t get out.” Ken reflected a moment, and looking at me lovingly with his familiar impish smile said, “You don’t have to wait for the paint to dry.” I see his smile and feel his love now and always.

Jack B.

 

Musings… How Could the Separation Ever Have Happened??

 


(by Tim Wise)

In the 1980’s the Talking Heads rock group had a song that kept repeating the line… “Well, how did I get here?”

Probably the most often question ever asked by both new and ongoing Course students is this: How did we/why would we ever leave the oneness and the peace of Heaven, and then separate into something else… if oneness is our true reality. 

What is the Course’s short and quick answer to “How did the impossible happen?”… It didn’t!

 

 

There are actually three ways the Course approaches and doesn’t answer this ego-based inquiry:

(1) It’s An Assertion, Not a Question

1) It’s not really an innocent question, the Course explains, but rather a statement masquerading as a question. We have already wrongly defined ourselves as separated beings. Now we are similar to two year olds throwing a fit and stamping our feet, insisting on something not real or helpful. We are demanding an explanation from God as to how that exodus from Heaven took place. As with any loving and caring father dealing with a tantrum, there’s not a lot He can say… but simply quietly wait for the tantrum to stop.   (Text: p. 376, par.4  &  The Quiet Answer p. 574-6)

“Who asks you to define the ego and explain how it arose can be but he who thinks it real, and seeks by definition to ensure that its illusive nature is concealed behind the words that seem to make it so” (Man. p. 81 par. 2).

 

 (2) It’s Not Only in the Past- It’s Happening Now Too!

2) At one point Jesus said to Bill Thetford, when Bill asked him about how the separation happened… “why are you asking about something that seemingly happened in the past (The Big Separation from God), when you believe you are doing it right now?” In any given moment there is only one of two thoughts being projected into our awareness in time and space… either separation (and it’s not our fault), or forgiveness (the Course’s Atonement principle which says separation never did happen, and isn’t happening even now). That all solely depends on which internal teacher we are choosing in this very second, the ego or the Holy Spirit. (Text p.85, par. 6 & p.179, par. 11-12)

“It is reasonable to ask how the mind could ever have made the ego. In fact, it is the best question you could ask. (Because, the ‘best’ answer is…. it din’t.) There is, however, no point in giving an answer in terms of the past because the past does not matter, and history would not exist if the same errors were not being repeated in the present” (Ch. 4, p. 56, Sec. II, par. 1).

 

 

(3) Ask for An Experience, Not An Explanation

3) And finally the most comforting description of this process of addressing this belief… Jesus says that when we practice forgiveness in our minds with others and ourselves, this question/belief will simply fade away, into the unreality from which it came. In other words, an experience of our true connection and identity as one Son of God is the direct result of forgiveness. We will know the disconnect never happened, despite the separated images we still seem to see. Then the question “well, how did I get here” becomes irrelevant, and we totally lose our investment in needing an impossible answer to a silly question. The simple answer to the question “how did the the separation ever happen?” is… it didn’t.     (Manual p. 77, par. 3-4)

“The ego will demand many answers that this course does not give. It does not recognize as questions the mere form of a question to which an answer is impossible. The ego may ask, ‘How did the impossible occur?’, ‘To what did the impossible happen?’, and may ask this in many forms. Yet there is no answer; only an experience. Seek only this, and do not let theology delay you.” (Man. p. 77 par.4)

 

https://youtu.be/_lQYJCYIIsA

For further discussion of our ‘leaving Heaven’

see Ken Wapnick’s CD set or MP3 download on

“The Four Splits” (click here),

——————————–

For an SFACIM post on the ‘way back’ to Heaven thru

“The 3 Steps of Forgiveness”:  click here