Musings: All Would Be Love
“…you believe that without the ego all would be chaos. Yet I assure you that without the ego, all would be love.”
(T. 15. V. 1: 6-7)
If we would lay aside our need to be somebody—all ideas about our self and all ideas we hold about the person before us—we would find that we are peacefully joined beyond either of those identities.
What is real is shared and what is unreal can’t be. Only the mind can be shared and it is common to all without exception. It is the personal—the body, private thoughts, the psychological self with all its needs and wants—that is unreal and therefore can’t be shared.
Awakening is from the personal. The unwillingness to enter a shared experience is the only hindrance to the realization of our Self which resides in the mind. (This is why the ego does not want us to learn that we are a mind.)
The shift from identification with the body to the awareness of the self as mind is a choice. We all will eventually make it, but usually not until we experience the pain and suffering our personal needs, wants and special interests bring upon ourselves and others. At this point we may begin to ask ourselves if there might not be a better way of relating that does not involve our specialness.
I have made it my practice to learn from Jesus that my brother and I share the same mind. It is a choice I make every morning before I begin the busy doings of the day. Remembering my goal, my part in every encounter is simply to recognize when the ego asserts its special interests and be willing to offer them to Jesus in exchange for something of greater value. I am the learner and I have a teacher.
In this process I find there is no strain to get approval, acceptance, or recognition from my brother. The listening is open and gentle when I realize the relationship is not in my hands and I do not have to make anything happen. There is no fixing, correcting, dazzling, enthralling, outsmarting, captivating, or manipulating. In allowing the presence of love beyond either body to hold the relationship I experience ease and acceptance of myself and my brother.
Jesus has never failed to show me that my brother is a much better witness to our shared reality of holiness than he is to my ego’s demands that my specialness be indulged.
The mind is truly miraculous when it is not contaminated by the ego. Spiritual practice is learning how to use the mind effectively to choose against the ego. Once we learn that we have a mind and that our only option in this world is to choose between the ego’s tyrannical rule or Jesus’ kind and gentle teaching of forgiveness we can become the happy learners of the truth of the following statement:
“…you believe that without the ego all would be chaos. Yet I assure you that without the ego, all would be love.” T. 15. V. 1: 6-7
The Essential Metaphysics of A Course in Miracles: 4 classes
Without understanding the non-dual metaphysics of A Course in Miracles it is impossible to apply the workbook lessons that will change your mind and the way you see the world.
In this series of 4 classes you will learn
- what the course means by “mind training”,
- how to integrate the metaphysics into your life,
- the significance of accepting you are a mind,
- how to use the mind on behalf of awakening.
We will consider the benefits of making this momentous decision and address the fears that arise in the process.
The purpose of offering this class is to present A Course in Miracles as a path to inner peace so that you can decide if it is right one for you.
This is an ideal class for beginners and ongoing students who want to review the metaphysics.
Four Sunday Afternoon Classes
May 26, 2013
June 9, 23, and 30, 2013
2 to 4 p.m.
In the library of RMMC
Tuition: $80, for 4 classes
To register contact Lyn Corona or 303-880-7713
Rocky Mountain Miracle Center
1939 S. Monroe St.
Denver, CO 80210
Lyn Corona began her study of A Course in Miracles in 1976 and has been teaching its message of peace through forgiveness for more than 20 years. She is a founder and faculty member of the School for A Course in Miracles.
Here’s a downloadable, printable (pdf) flyer for this series of classes.
Musings: Who’s Your Teacher?
“Resign now as your own teacher, for you have been badly taught.”
To the one who takes pride in the quality of their dream I say, I will wait until you change your mind.
This is not said to be cruel. It is simply a waste of time to talk of waking when it is sleeping that is wanted. The quality of the dream matters not. A dream, is a dream, is a dream.
The purpose of dreams is to please yourself. They are personal and private.
The source of all dreams is fear. Yes, even the lovely ones. The fear comes from guilt; the guilt comes from wanting to be separate and special, because it is a lie.
The awakening dream, referred to as the happy dream in A Course in Miracles, has a different purpose. Its purpose is forgiveness of guilt so the dreamer can awaken and accept the Love of God. For this The Teacher, Who comes from outside of dreams, is needed.
The only real power we have in this world is to make one choice: to learn from The Teacher. All other uses of will take us deeper into the dream.
“Resign now as your own teacher.” T-12. V.8:3
It is The Teacher’s job to show us reality. This we cannot do for ourselves because we already beleive in unreality. We must invite The Teacher in order to learn who we are. That invitation is the little willingness. It will change the direction of your thinking and your life.
Reality is impersonal. Only one who has seen beyond the world can teach what we are. Without these teachers there would be no hope of salvation for special persons who think they are living in a world.
We need help. The first step beyond the limited and personal view is to look with the impartiality of The Teacher at our character and the other characters in our dream. Both are shadows of projected guilt. The Teacher shows us how to undo our belief in them through forgiveness.
“Forgiveness….is still, and quietly does nothing……It merely looks, and waits, and judges not.”
From: What is forgiveness? Workbook, p. 401
You already are spirit: complete and healed and whole. You cannot become what you already are. No amount of effort will take you there. Instead, cease imagining yourself to be what you are not. You are not a person that was born into a world that will eventually die and leave. Anything that comes and goes cannot be real.
You brought the world with you when you came. You are not in the world. The world is like a tiny spec of dust in the mind that is you.
Try this:
Think of yourself as existing only in this moment, without a future or a past. Allow things to be exactly as they are. Don’t seek to change anything. Wait here and become a happy learner of The Teacher who can show you a different way of seeing that reveals the real world.
Do this regularly and your personhood will begin to dissolve.
Don’t fight yourself if you find yourself resisting. You might still like being you.
No problem.
We will wait until you change your mind.
Musings: Back Again
I think my last blog post was quite some time ago. Blame it on broken links, many changes in WordPress and a serious lack of technical skills on my part. I recently decided to renovate our SFACIM website with the help of Bruce Rawles, an amazingly skillful webmaster and all around very patient person. What you will find below is also on the About page, but since it is really an introduction and an invitation I wanted to make sure all subscribers to SFACIM received it.
Welcome to School for A Course in Miracles.
I don’t feel that I am overstating my capabilities when I say that I am a learner. Not in the traditional way of accumulating information to gain some advantage, but out of a deep curiosity about what lies beyond a self-centered perspective from which most of us view the world.
I was eleven years old the first time I had an “unusual experience” that gave me my first taste of an alternative point of view. I lived in the country, 14 miles from town, and being an only child I spent a lot of time on my own in nature. This particular time I was engaged in a favorite pastime at which I had developed great skill.
There was a river that ran through our property, and when the water was low enough, the larger rocks were exposed so that I could jump from rock to rock in a steady rhythm, running upstream like a salmon. Only one foot at a time could land on each rock and the game was to go as fast as possible without loosing my balance and dumping into the river. This particular time I suddenly found myself located outside my body in a timeless zone that was perfectly still and peaceful while my physical body kept jumping rocks. I never forgot the experience.
I was a freshman in high school the first time I heard the word enlightenment. I had no idea what it meant, but I caught the scent, like a hound on the trail of something big. The next time I was at the local library I checked out the only two books that seemed somewhat related to the topic. I remember one of the authors was Alan Watts. Nothing I read in those books satisfied my desire to know what enlightenment was. I continued my search off and on for years, knowing someday I would find something that could explain enlightenment and the timeless zone that I knew was more real than anything I had experienced since the river.
It was in the latter part of the 70’s when the A Course in Miracles came into my life. I had just finished reading Jane Robert’s mind-blowing The Nature of Personal Reality which set the stage for the entrance of the Course. I immediately recognized it as the answer to my questions about why I was here, what gives meaning and purpose to life, why I was suffering and how it could end. And also how to get to the timeless zone and stay there forever.
As a beginning student of A Course in Miracles, I developed my own practice of learning. I was living in the mountains about 40 miles west of Denver so I didn’t know there were such things as study groups. As far as I knew the Course was a self study program. The only help available was through asking the inner Teacher to show me the meaning of a lesson or a complicated passage from the text. I would ask and somewhere in the course of my day there would be an incident or an encounter that would give me the understanding. The Teacher became very real for me, always answering in some form I could understand.
I started offering classes, workshops and retreats on the Course in 1986 and with a few brief sabbaticals have continued to do so until this day. Over the years I established several centers for the study of the Course, have been an itinerant teacher traveling the U.S, and most recently joined with some of my colleagues in establishing the School of Reason for students and aspiring teachers of A Course in Miracles. I also began this blog. The point of all our doings, mine or anyone else’s, is that they are curriculums for our learning and vehicles for sharing another way.
The most repeated lesson in A Course in Miracles is “I am not a body. I am free”. Thank God, I can finally say it and know that it is true and not just some fluke that happened on the river one day. We don’t reside in a body and on some level we all know that this is true. That shift, from body to mind, is what A Course in Miracles is all about. It is a shift from a self-centered point of view to a transcendent presence that is mind. It’s a miracle.
It is not only possible to be in the world but not of it; it is essential. Our lives can reflect the ease and freedom of our real residence out of time where we are whole eternal minds in perfect communication with a non-physical universe of spirit comprised only of intangible Love.
The step out of time and into eternity (the timeless zone) calls for humility and the willingness to learn another way. We have to admit that we don’t know how to get there from here. Instead of it happening accidentally, like it did for me on the river, we have the inner Teacher that knows the way, and unlike my early experience that did not last, we can learn to reside there forever.
Here, in this world, is where our transformation takes place. We don’t die to get to Heaven. We just wake up. Enlightenment is not a place to travel to. It is right here. Right now.
Musings: The Difference between Translation and Interpretation
“A good translator, although he must alter the form of what he translates, never changes the meaning. In fact, his whole purpose is to change the form so that the original meaning is retained.” T-7. II.4:3-4
Once a week I used to have the delightful opportunity to read for a blind man. Robert, a seeker of truth since his early 20’s, was then 86. His most prized possession was a library containing the works of the world’s greatest mystics, theologians, philosophers, and teachers.
At my first meeting with Robert he asked me to find and read from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. It was a well used book with sections underlined and margins marked with comments and questions. (In the months that followed, I found that to be true of most of the books in this library.)
Never having read Marcus Aurelius, I was surprised to learn the great Roman Emperor spoke the language of choice and mind training that had become so familiar to me in A Course in Miracles. I understood him perfectly and soon the three of us—Marcus, Robert, and I—were sharing the same transcendent country in the mind.
Months later, after many reading sessions with Marcus and Robert, I decided I had to have a copy of Meditations to add to my library. Amazon had several translations, and not finding any comments that set one apart from another, I chose one for no particular reason.
When my copy arrived I took the first opportunity I had to settle into my reading chair and began. After a few paragraphs I started to feel something was missing. The words seemed similar but they did not take me to same place of communion with the great mind of the Emperor.
The next time I read for Robert, I took my book and compared the same section in Robert’s translation. Some of the words were the same, many were different, but the meaning was alive in Robert’s translation and not in mine. Having learned the value of a good translation I sent my copy back to Amazon.
When A Course in Miracles came into my life back in 1976 there were no study groups, no interpreters, and no translators (that I knew of), and there were many times when I did not understand what I was reading. On those occasions I would ask Jesus or the Holy Spirit to help me and somewhere during the events of the day the meaning would be made perfectly clear.
As a result of this learning process, I developed an intimate relationship with the course Teachers (Jesus and the Holy Spirit) and understanding that did not involve interpretation. The experience was that of being in their mind or “going to their country”. It is the same experience I shared with Robert while reading Marcus Aurelius.
When a message—it could be music, poetry, art, literature—is coming from out of time, it has the capacity to take us to where that work is coming from. It is a transcendent experience—a gift from Heaven that touches us for a moment takes us home. A Course in Miracles is that for me.
A translation that conveys the original meaning of a precious work of art can only be done by someone who has joined the author in his country and has understood the meaning of the message without interpretation. The form may be changed—different words, different language—but the content remains the same. This is crucial. If that is not the case the translation will miss the mark intended by the original.
I find Ken Wapnick to be a superb translator of A Course in Miracles. He adds his words to help students understand some of the complex material of the Course. But he does not change the meaning. Presently he is the only translator of the Course that I recommend to students.
Accepting A Course in Miracles as a path of awakening means joining Jesus and the Holy Spirit in their country (the mind), not trying to bring them here. What I find in much of the supporting material on the subject of A Course in Miracles is that it often (and very subtly) brings Jesus and the Holy Spirit into this world. When this occurs the ego has gotten involved in interpretation and is twisting the original message of the course to suit its purposes of self preservation. The effect of this effort is to keep us from joining Jesus and the Holy Spirit where they are.
If you want to experience a foreign country the only way to really do that is to go there. Reality—a shared experience of the mind—is a foreign country for those of us who believe we are bodies living in a world. The purpose of A Course in Miracles is to shift our identity from the body to the mind. That is a miracle.