Ego Archives • School for A Course In Miracles

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

March 22, 2019

(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.

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

Musings: “Where are dreams but in a mind asleep?”

September 7, 2014

A course to end all dreaming- that’s what A Course in Miracles is. All ego dreams, sleeping or waking, are based in fear. Whether the plot be pleasurable or painful, triumphant or ends in loss, ego dreams are spawned in mind asleep and dreaming of separation. In those dreams we are separated from God and our brothers, and feel split within our own mind. What good can possibly come from dreams that seek to prove that separation is reality?

A world in which we are born into a body that lives a little while and then grows old and dies is the dream that Jesus, teacher of resurrection, will awaken us from if only we will listen to him and do as he says. Resistance is strong because we believe our little lives, pitiful as they may be, are what we are. It is a mistake to be corrected, not a sin to be punished.

Jesus makes a distinction in his course that is still unknown to most of the world. The distinction is fundamental to learning and applying the Course’s lessons so that they change the way we see the world. To the individual it is a prison or a playground, determined by whether our specialness gets what it wants or not. When we get our way it is a playground. When we don’t, it is a prison. Our response when we don’t like the way things go is to change behavior or circumstances. To Jesus the world is a classroom for changing our minds. The problem is we don’t know we have a mind.

In the Course Jesus teaches us that the brain is not the mind. It is part of the body, the manifestation of the thought of separation. Its function is given it by the ego that treasures specialness and individuality and seeks only to prove our personhood is true. The effect is to keep us mindless and asleep. Unaware that we have a mind we can never change it. This is significant because it is the mind not the body that awakens or resurrects. Resurrection is the lesson Jesus learned that “most of all he would have us learn.” C5. 6:8 How can we learn it if we choose to remain asleep and dreaming, believing what our brains and bodies tell us? This is the ego’s fool proof defense of its false identity. But it is not “God proof”.

The world misunderstood Jesus’ earlier teaching of the resurrection over 2000 years ago because it did not have the education that Jesus is now giving us in A Course in Miracles. It could only assume that the body resurrected because it did not know about a mind, let alone how to change it. In learning that our home is in the mind and that minds are joined we can become happy learners of another way that ends dreaming through the gentle path of forgiveness. Forgiveness is something anyone can do simply because it requires nothing of us but a little willingness to learn from a teacher other than our ego. It is a level playing field on which everyone is equally qualified to join Jesus in what he calls “a game that happy children play.” W-p1.153.12:1

Forgiveness, the miracle, the holy instant, and the holy relationship are all terms used in the Course for the return to the mind. They signify stepping above the world’s battleground and joining Jesus in true humility and willingness to be taught. We cannot teach ourselves because we are the problem– the dreamer of fearful dreams in which everything dies. Who would doubt Jesus advice: “Resign now as your own teacher, for you have been badly taught.” T-12…V.8:3

If we knew for certain that the world is a dream we would not hesitate to leave it. It is forgiveness that shows us its unreality. Jesus overcame the world by not believing in it and we must do the same. It is not by struggling against it, but through the process of forgiveness that we learn the world cannot affect us, and ultimately that it does not exist at all. “There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach.” W-p1…132.6:2,3

Jesus is waiting for our resignation as our own teacher to give him the chance to show us that we can never be harmed, or hurt, or suffer, or die. Pain of any kind is a dream of punishment for a crime that never happened in the Mind of God where we reside. God does not sleep, nor dream, and we are like Him and not as we have made ourselves. Nor can we leave His Mind except in sleep.

“From the heart, may it go to the heart.”

Musings: Only the Mind is Real

May 4, 2014

means meadow in the fall — **Means Meadow**

“Only the mind is real because only the mind can be shared.” (T-6. V.A. 3:2-3).

The body is neutral. Think of it as a mindless puppet and you are the one who pulls the strings. The puppet only responds to the decisions of the mind. The body has no thoughts, feelings or experiences of its own. It does what its master tells it to do. It is a symbol of what the mind dreams we are—a separated individual with a will of our own.

“The body is the symbol of what you think you are. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist.” (T-6.V.A.2:2-3).

If you want to try to prove that you are a body—that you are right and God is wrong, that separation is reality and perfect oneness is a lie—then you (the one pulling the strings) will want to make it seem that the body has power of its own and it can tell you who you are and how you feel. What better way to do that than for the mind to direct the body to feel pleasure and pain? This is all part of the ego’s plan to keep you mindless. Now it seems like life is in the body and not in the mind of the one pulling the strings.

“The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who are life.” (T.6.V.A.1:4).

The real question you should ask yourself is what rules the mind? Who is it that is pulling the strings of the puppet? Is it the ego that wants separation, individuality, and specialness to be reality? If it is then the body/puppet must be made to appear to be alive because it seems to prove that separation is real. Under the ego’s direction the puppet will attack (judge) other puppets, and feel pleasure and pain. It will be different from others of its kind. This is the ego’s world, based in the tiny mad idea of separation, ruled by separate interests, all coming from the mind.

There is another way but you first must get back to the mind and recover your power as a decision making mind. You are the chooser of what rules your mind and therefore what directs the body. If you like being a person in a dream in a world of separate interests then you are probably not going to want to do this.

The shift from the body to the mind is what transformation is all about. It requires willingness to abandon the ego as your teacher in order to learn from a teacher who is outside the dream. In A Course in Miracles that teacher is Jesus, because he is a symbol of perfect, ego-less, love. You could use any other symbol that works for you.

It is impossible for you to make this transformation from fear to love, body to mind without help. All the talents, skills, abilities that you have developed over the years have been useful only for navigating the ego’s dream of separation. These same skills cannot be used to shift your identity from the body back to the mind. Again, the ego’s purpose is to keep you from ever knowing you are a decision making mind. After all, if you knew you would choose against it.

Be forewarned. When the ego gets wind of this it will become one of its two predominant moods: suspicious or vicious. It will threaten you with sacrifice and loss as it sees its days of specialness are numbered. Awakened mind, Suzanne Segal, author of Collision with the Infinite, A Life Beyond the Personal Self, expressed the fear this way:

Life in a state of freedom from the ego “bears no resemblance to the stark emptiness that fear might paint it to be. People who tell me they don’t want to give up the personal because they believe they would be giving up love or joy or deep feeling don’t understand that the personal never existed. Nothing is given up. Love that appears to be personal is based on an ego-constructed sense of being separate.”

At no one instant does the body exist at all. It is always past or future. In this very instant it can’t be found. Life is now and is in the mind. Hurry home.

A question to ponder: Why would it matter how long the body lives?

Musings: “Your way will be different!”

April 17, 2014

“Your way will be different. … A holy relationship is a means of saving time. One instant spent together with your brother restores the universe to both of you.”

A holy relationship! This is the means A Course in Miracles has given us for returning to the home we never really left, that quiet center of rest where we need do nothing.

Have you paid close attention to Jesus’ instructions for saving time and saving the world while saving ourselves by waking up together? Here is the pearl worth any price, the keys to the kingdom, the goose that lays golden eggs, and the fountain of youth, and more.

If you have overlooked the possibilities I feel compelled to present them in a way that I hope will gain your interest, open your mind, and have you come away with a whole new appreciation for your brother and the opportunity he is giving you and you him, to awaken together. There is no sacrifice in this, although you may be thinking it.

I want to help you to understand, feel and appreciate what a relationship is honestly for so that you can recognize the holiness of all relationships, without exception. I guarantee you it has nothing to do with what the ego plans for your relationships.

Some of this may be very difficult to hear because the sense of being a separate individual is threatened. When you truly join with your brother there will be no awareness of the body. It is left behind. That is called a holy instant and that is where a holy relationship resides. It is not here, in a body, in a world, although you will still appear to be here.

The ego cannot imagine you without a body. It is specialness that has you hold on to the body as if it is you. Wanting to remain separate is what the ego wants. It is terrified of Oneness, which is of the mind, because it is the ego’s demise.

The ego, individuality, and specialness are limits that you have placed on love. You chose to do that and you will eventually choose to turn away from those limitations when you understand the cost.

Those costs will be pointed out to you here. What you don’t like or don’t want to hear will tell you who is reading, listening, and perceiving these words. The ego wants and promotes separate interests. It wants everything on its terms. It doesn’t want change. Notice when it arises. It is very useful information.

I am hopeful that I can illuminate the holy relationship so that you will find it desirable rather than something to run from. Perhaps it will be helpful to think whole when you read holy instead of conjuring up images of halos and doe-eyed faces.

Holiness (wholeness) is not something that can be possessed so the ego has a problem with it. The ego exists by possession of others to fulfill its needs and wants. Without others it can not exist. The ego is not going to like this.

You on the other hand will love it! Now I am talking to your right mind that wants something different than what the ego wants. You may not know what it is, but you know what it is not. It is not possession, bargaining, manipulation, control. It is not doubt, fear, and guilt.

You want another way and you are willing to become a learner of that way. You are the chooser, not a body with a brain. The chooser resides between the right mind and the wrong mind; the part of the mind that chooses holiness and the part of the mind that chooses the body. It’s up to you.

The Lie

We are all living a lie here. Our very existence as separate bodies with a life and will of our own is a lie, and we re-enact this lie with “others” on a daily basis. It is here in our special relationships that we will heal the cosmic lie of being separate from our Creator, Oneness, Love and Eternal Life.

Why do we stay with the lie of our separateness and the few special relationships that seem to give us some comfort? It is to protect the ego’s thought system of separation. The ego asserts separation is real, I am real, and don’t you forget it!

The purpose of our special (and not holy) relationships is to keep us mindless, fixated in the lie. There is a “me” and there is a “you” and let us take our comfort here in separation and never look for another way. It’s a strange sort of comfort, but it keeps our belief in individuality safe.

For more on what is the holy relationship: click here

Musings: “Miracles Are Natural”

June 20, 2013

“Miracles are natural. When they do not occur something has gone wrong.”

First, let’s be clear what a miracle is not.

A miracle is not an extraordinary external phenomenon like a vision of Jesus in a cloud. It’s not having a check show up in the mail that just covers the rent when the bank account is empty. It’s not even the spontaneous remission of a terminal disease.

Miracles are corrections in the mind for our errors in perception. (Think interpretation when you read perception.) Interpretations are perceptions. When your perceptions are unloving, you are misperceiving; something has gone wrong.

That something is what’s in the way of what is natural: the miracle. The miracle is always present. We are not aware of it because we have put something in the way that keeps it from our awareness. That something goes by many names: ego, false self, dream figure, phantom, to name just a few. Perception is distorted by the personal needs, wants and desires of the false self.

The body is not our home. A Course in Miracles teaches us that the body’s eyes don’t see and its ears don’t hear.

The senses merely report to the brain. The brain then interprets the data based upon what the mind wants to see. Having decided that we are a separate self everything the brain reports is interpreted to validate the separate self. It is a closed system.

The miracle is a way of changing your mind about yourself. You cannot do this without the help of a presence other than the ego in your mind. Call it what you will: Holy Spirit, Loving Presence, this presence is kind and knows what is in your best interests. It is your Self. Don’t be afraid of it; it is there to help you remember what you are.

You must have noticed that scarcity dominates the self centered point of view. Experiencing the lack that we have inflicted upon ourselves we seek outside for approval, acceptance, recognition, and respect. Because of our imagined needs, we don’t see anyone as they are but only as a means to fulfill our needs. It is this distorted way of perceiving that the miracle corrects.

By choosing the miracle we are turning toward the love we have been seeking outside ourselves. Instead of sacrificing others to our needs our relationships provide the opportunity for miracles.

The miracle is not something we do. Miracles are natural expressions of love. Without the interference of the ego’s getting mechanisms, impersonal love flows freely. It blesses everyone indiscriminately; in other words it makes no special selections as to who is worthy and who is not. The miracle teaches us what we are, not who we are.

The miracle-minded process looks something like this:

1. You fess up! You admit that something has gone wrong. You can’t recognize a solution to a problem that you don’t know you have. You are not experiencing the miracle; you need the miracle.

2. You take responsibility. The something wrong is with you. The problem is not “out there” in someone else. The problem is in the mind along with the answer.

3. You decide to become a learner. As a learner you can be taught. You make a right-minded decision to turn your unloving perceptions over to that Loving Presence for its point of view.

4. You do nothing. The miracle is just that; a miracle. It happens. It will show you that no one did anything to you; you were not harmed or hurt in any way.

Note: If you still find yourself trying to “do” the miracle yourself, you have not fully turned the problem over to the Loving Presence. If that’s the case, go back to step 3 and investigate as to what perceptions you still want to keep. Maybe you are not willing to let it go at this time. Then “unwillingness” is what you would bring to that Loving Presence.

Perhaps your trust in the Loving Presence is very weak at this point. Then lack of trust is the perception that you would offer for correction. Always begin where you are.

Consistent willingness to be a learner places your mind in its natural state of grace. It enables you to give without any sense of loss. As long as you perceive lovelessly you remain a learner.

Musings: The Healing Purpose

June 20, 2013

The following was a letter to a friend who was in prison for a crime committed during one of his many bouts with addiction to cocaine. He wanted to wake up but was fixated on his particular dream.

I had known my friend for ten years and during this time he had been incarcerated four times. This time it was for ten years. Prior to this he had been incarcerated at least five times, all while on a cocaine rampage. He was released at the age of 50 having spent most of his life in prison.

Without purpose that can be applied regardless of the circumstances of his life, his situation would have been cause for desperation. My point in sharing this letter is that without purpose we are all hopelessly caught in our pitiful little dreams, be they pleasurable or painful.

Dear Friend:

This answer to your concerns about your incarceration comes from the heart. May it go to the heart, find its mark, and be helpful.

The brick and mortar prison that you find yourself in is a metaphor for the situation we all find ourselves in. The prison I am referring to is the mind that is ruled by the ego.

The ego is the thought of separation taking form. It is a prison house of our own making. Self-centered and selfish the ego sees everything in relationship to itself. The ego thinks the body is its home.

As if imprisonment were not bad enough the ego’s practice is to inflict pain or suffer pain instead of helping one another to escape. Of course I am speaking metaphorically. The escape from the prison house we have all made is accomplished only by learning that the person we think we are, that long lasting separate entity, is not what we are.

No one asleep and dreaming knows the way out of the dream he is dreaming. After all he believes it is real. He needs help.

The escape is through the mind and everyone, regardless of the circumstances of his life must come to that realization. Humans tend to make comfort, safety and security their goal and when they get them they think they have escaped the prison of separate interests. What they have attained is a pleasant form of fear.

Changing the circumstances of our life is not a change at all because it is the mind that needs to change. It is not hard to see that we take the thought system that we live by with us wherever we go. It’s all about us. To use a common analogy, changing circumstances is like shifting around the deck chairs on the Titanic. What difference will it make? The mind ruled by the ego is a sinking ship. It needs a new captain, not a change of location.

Once you have made the decision to become a happy learner from The Teacher for Truth the outcome is certain. You will escape the dream. How long the journey takes depends upon your trust in The Teacher and your willingness to bring the darkness in you to Him.

Choosing between the ego thought system of self-absorption and The Teacher’s thought system of healing is the only power the mind has. The rest of the time it’s idling, going nowhere.

Our relationships provide the opportunities for us to learn what’s in our mind. The ego’s thought system of separation goes like this:

1. The other guy is the guilty one.

2. If it weren’t for him (the other guy), my life would be peaceful and happy. (Conclusion: My anger is justified.)

3. I’m right. He’s wrong.

4. Somebody should pay, and it’s not going to be me. I’m innocent.

5. The other guy should be the one to suffer.

Behind every encounter some version of the above is always going on when the ego is ruling your mind. It only takes one person to stop playing this game. You. To do this you must have the desire to learn from a different teacher—the one that would free you and your brother together.

The Holy Spirit’s thought system, which you have chosen to learn because you are a student of A Course in Miracles, sees your brother differently. He sees

1. The other guy is innocent regardless of his behavior because he is not a body.

2. He is present in your life to help you escape from your dream of isolation.

3. There is no loss to anyone. Both parties gain.

4. Your attitude toward your brother is your attitude toward yourself.

5. You and your brother are joined in mind. Changing your mind changes all minds.

“Together or not at all” is the Holy Spirit’s mantra.

You get to choose between the ego and the Teacher of Truth. That makes you the ultimate Decision Maker. All power and glory is in your hands. It is the only freedom you have in this world.

To choose the Holy Spirit as your Teacher you must recognize when the ego is in charge, acknowledge that you no longer want it to rule your mind and ask the Holy Spirit for His Teaching instead. It’s really simple to tell which you have chosen. When you operate under the ego’s rule you don’t feel loving and happy. Simple.

Everyone you meet is your savior from isolation. By seeing our relationships in this way, every day becomes an exciting chance to remember our true undivided nature. Purpose is everything!

Everyone engaged in dreaming is trying to get rid guilt by dumping it on someone else. Refuse to blame the other guy for your misery. (The real source of your misery is your choice to be a self-centered, special, individual entity.) Ask The Teacher for help. You are not going to be able to rehabilitate yourself.

“Humility … does require that you be not content with less than greatness that comes not of you.” – A Course in Miracles, T.381.

Blessings,

Lyn

Musings: A Simple Daily Practice

April 15, 2013

The door to peace is always open. We just need to turn toward it. — **The Open Door**

Lesson 5 and Lesson 34 are two excellent lessons in A Course in Miracles that would be really helpful to remember and practice daily. Apply these any time that you do not feel loving toward all your relationships and yourself.

Ask yourself frequently how you feel throughout the day.

Being self aware means watching yourself from outside the dream instead of being completely absorbed in it. When you are watching you are awake in the dream meaning you are bringing awareness to it. When you are completely involved in the dream you are sleepwalking.

When you feel anything other than peace, say:

“I am never upset for the reason I think.” Lesson 5

There is no need to analyze. There is no need to talk with someone else about how you feel. It is your business, your work, and the point at which a shift in identity from the body to the mind occurs. You are a mind, not a body.

The ego would have you think you are upset because of something that happened outside* you. Saying “I am never upset for the reason I think” means you are willing to question and let go of your investment in the ego’s perception of why you are upset. It is always wrong.

Remember unless you notice when you are upset and then look at how you are using the world, the body and your relationships to justify the upset, you can’t take this step of admitting you are wrong. The fact is that you decided to abandon the peace of God first and now you are looking for a way to keep this decision hidden. If you were experiencing the peace of God nothing could upset you. What better way to avoid responsibility than to blame someone or something outside you. This is how the ego keeps the guilt in your mind over separating from God. It projects it and sees it in the bodies around you (including your own).

**“I could see peace instead of this”. Lesson 34**

When you are not invested in your idea about why you are upset you can sincerely say “I could see peace instead of this.”

Returning to peace is not some super extraordinary mystical thing. Peace is always just beyond the ego’s interpretation of things. A decision against the ego is a decision for the Holy Spirit. It is one or the other. This is the only decision we ever need make.

What is considered to be outside* you? The body and the world. Both are projections of the thought of separation in the mind. Included in the body are thoughts, feelings, the brain, and the all sensory apparatus which report to the brain for interpretation. The mind, according to the Course, is not our brain. It is the place inside us where we choose to believe in separation, or forgiveness.

Musings: Making Our Weak Commitment Strong

April 14, 2012

“AN UNTRAINED MIND CAN ACCOMPLISH NOTHING.”

The ideas shared in lessons 181 to 200 of A Course in Miracles are designed to help us in “firming up our willingness to make our weak commitment strong.” In other words, we know we want to change our minds, but we are dealing with the entrenched thought system of the ego which is set as the default mechanism for our thinking and decision making.The ego rules when we are not certain of our goal and the means to accomplish it.

Each of these lessons will lead us home, but first they will expose our mistaken choice for the ego so it can be seen and gone beyond. What remains unseen is still there, functioning beneath the surface of our awareness, where it remains only to be projected outside the mind.

Lesson 181- I trust my brothers who are one with me.

This lesson is not about trusting other bodies to do what is honorable, fair and good. Your brother is not his body or its behavior, although the ego, whose triumph over God is the body, would love you to think so. This lesson is referring to the sinlessness of the Christ mind which we all are and which is always worthy of trust. The ego, whose mantra is “one or the other”/”kill or be killed”, can never be trusted.

Students of A Course in Miracles, trying to do the spiritual thing, will often take a lesson like this—I trust my brothers who are one with me—and try to trust the body and its behavior even though it is ruled by the tyranny of the ego.

It is entirely possible, in fact it must be practiced vigilantly, to trust the One Self that we are while not denying the harmfulness of the ego’s decisions which are always based upon self interest. The distinction lies in understanding that the lessons in the Course, are about the content of your mind, and the content you believe to be in your brother’s mind, and not the forms that we seem to take, along with the form’s behavior. The basis for practicing forgiveness is understanding the difference.

A Course in Miracles is written to the mind that has the power to choose. There is a choice to be made and only you can make it. Only the time you choose to make it is up to you. Eventually everyone will make it because it is the only real choice. The alternatives are not up to you either. (See the Introduction to A Course in Miracles below).

The power to choose is meaningless unless you know what you are choosing between. The alternatives can be expressed in different ways: dreaming or waking; fear or love; illusion or truth; death or life. The choice is always the same: to place your mind under the true Authority or the tyranny of the ego.

The purpose of every lesson is to make the alternatives clear to you so you can make the better choice.

Introduction to A Course in Miracles

“This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. 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 awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.

This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:

“Nothing real can be threatened.

Nothing unreal exists.

Herein lies the peace of God.”

Musings: Self Sabotaging Behavior

October 4, 2011

Once we heed the call to wake up from the ego thought system we begin to see the world differently.

It becomes a classroom in which everything can be used to learn to make a different choice that will lead us out of the dream of separation instead of deeper into it.

Until we understand what we are choosing between, choice is meaningless. We but choose among illusions, which can hardly be called a choice.

“There is a choice that you have the power to make when you have seen the real alternative. Until that point is reached you have no choice, and you can but decide the better to deceive yourself again.”

Self sabotaging behavior is behavior that we know is not in our best interest, yet we do it anyway.

We eat foods that hurt us. We drive people away with behaviors that cause them difficulty. We spend our time doing things that we don’t even respect. We don’t exercise when we know that we should. We drink too much, spend more than we have, smoke, gamble, and generally overindulge.

Self sabotage is a classroom that most of us share. Fortunately, it provides an excellent opportunity for changing our minds because we are aware of our need for change every time we indulge. And we are convinced it is the behavior that needs to change.

The School for A Course in Miracles offers another alternative to trying to change behavior. All our do’s and dont’s can be see as a reflection of a choice in our minds. Which teacher are we running with, the ego or the Holy Spirit?

Self sabotaging behavior is always one of the SFACIM subjects, viewed from the perspective of A Course in Miracles.

There Is No Peace Except the Peace of God

October 22, 2010

“There is no peace except the peace of God, unless you seek for misery and pain.”

Lesson 200

The lessons of A Course in Miracles are a song that comes from the heart of Love to the heart of one that sleeps.

They are meant just for you its reader and no one else, as intimate as you will allow them to be. They undo suffering at its cause: your mistake-in-identity.

You are a dreamer and this is your dream of separation. You have dreamed everything in your dream and you can continue to dream and stay asleep. Or you can choose to wake up by inviting the lessons of the Course into your dream to help you look at it and learn to see it from the perspective of wholeness.

Undoing the belief in a separate self with a private will is the inevitable outcome of setting foot on this path of liberation. Along the way false beliefs will be undone, trials and tribulations gone beyond, and glorious things learned as we pass from conflict, through peace to oneness.

Oneness is love.

I love what the Course has taught me and I think I can help others learn from it as well. This is a passage that we make together by sharing what we are learning so that conviction will be strengthened in everyone. It is a way of opening our eyes, ears, and mind to the possibility of living without fear.

Waking is not religious or even spiritual.

Waking to Oneness is truth.

It’s simply what is.

There are many lessons in A Course in Miracles that have altered my point of view so radically that the world never appeared the same after that. It was if something left me that was never there in the first place. I couldn’t tell you what it was because it is gone. Call it illusion, falsity, pretense, effort: whatever it was, its going left space in which something new and surprising could occur, not as a one-time event but as an on-going mystery unfolding.

I thought it might be helpful to others to share parts of those lessons and my perspective on them. This is one of those lessons.

Lesson 200—There is no peace accept the peace of God.

“There is nothing else for you to find except the peace of God, unless you seek for misery and pain.”

That is a pretty unequivocal statement. There is nothing else for you to find except the peace of God. That is, unless you seek for misery and pain. The peace of God or misery and pain, take your pick. Those are the only options.

It is understandable if you want to argue with that statement given the investment you might have in your dream. Arrogance is the first and perhaps only real obstacle to becoming a learner of another way, entirely unknown to you. We want to be right about what we think reality is in spite of the fact that it is causing us misery and pain and always ends in death. Wouldn’t you be better off if you were wrong, aside from the fact that you are wrong? (I didn’t say those famous last words. Jesus did.)

Lesson 200 makes perfectly clear what the choice is. A real choice doesn’t have an alternative. It ends choosing altogether, returning the mind to what you really want: peace.

Here is where the ego, that false sense of personal identity, loudly begins to resist. You know its sound and the feelings that arise when defense feels necessary to protect the little that you have and think you know. It says things like,”Peace sounds boring, don’t you think?” “I want a lot of other things AND peace. Let’s make a deal.”

The personal point of view tells us that it would be a sacrifice to let go of “conflicting goals, senseless journeys, frantic vain pursuits, and meaningless endeavors” and to want the only thing that can be found.

There is another voice. It is silent and yet it knows the way back to peace with perfect certainty. The truth is already within us but we are in perpetual conflict because we hear two opposing voices and we have to choose only one.

You are the chooser of which voice to listen to, which calling to obey. You are the one who is humble and willing to trust in a better way than the direction you are currently going. Lesson 200 is written to you. In fact, all the lessons are.

No ego would ever choose the peace of God because it does not contain the “gift” of specialness that the ego seeks. Peace cannot be possessed by anyone so it has little appeal to the individual. No one else will even know if your mind is changed and you have found the peace of God.

(Note: One of the things that most students of the Course overlook is that the lessons do not give the personal “you” anything. To the ego the lessons are either a waste of time or they require romanticizing so that the ego can delude itself in thinking it is getting somewhere or something with the lessons.

It is actually the seeker (ego) itself that gets undone in the lessons of the Course. The seeker wants peace as a possession for itself so it approaches the lessons as a way to acquire what it thinks it is missing. Undoing the seeker reveals the peace that has always been.

So let’s be clear that the lessons undo. They may sound poetic to a personal self that can turn anything into a tune to its glory but if you actually open to the lesson you will see it is presenting you with the opportunity to look at the arrogance of the ego so that it can be seen for what it is and forgiven.)

“Forgive yourself for vain imaginings, and seek no longer what you cannot find. For what could be more foolish than to seek, and seek and seek again for hell, when you have but to look with open eyes (not from the self centered point of view*) to find that Heaven lies before you, through a door that opens easily to welcome you?”

All you need do is look upon the you that seeks in all the wrong places and for all the wrong things and see that it has never brought you peace. These are all vain imaginings of a separate self, arrogant in its attempts to make itself better than other men and always failing in the end because no matter how good the dream, it always ends in death.

Peace belongs to you, the chooser of peace, the non-locatable presence that has been released from misidentification with a body. What chooses the peace of God already has and is the peace of God. (This is so simple and yet it is so difficult to speak about because the words aren’t it. They point; that’s all).

Now here comes the practical application of learning that there is nothing to find here except peace. Give it! Since you can’t get anything, because there is no seeker who lacks anything, you can only give. In giving without exception you teach yourself what you truly are.

“It is given you to find the means whereby the world no longer seems to be a prison house for anyone.”

“Freedom is given you where you beheld but chains and iron doors. But you must change your mind about the purpose of the world, if you would find escape.”

Here it is: plain and simple. (Nobody wants to hear this).

“You must change your mind about the purpose of the world.”

For most, the world is a prison house and we are its victim. It gives to take away. We lose the things we love. We are born, struggle a while, get old and sick and die.

For others, the world is their playground, filled with the idols to their specialness. Their hope is that these “special deities” will give them more than others so they feel successful.

Neither purpose, prison house or playground, will show you that you are free.

Here’s what will.

“You will be bound till all the world is seen by you as blessed, and everyone made free of your mistakes and honored as he is. You made him not; no more yourself. And as you free the one, the other is accepted as he is.”

Here is the way to peace, the bridge to eternity. This is your purpose and your function while you abide where you are not at home. The key here is “all” and “everyone”. Make no exceptions. It is not the people we love that are the problem. It is the ones we don’t love, the ones we blame for our unhappiness, that hold the key to our freedom. They are innocent in eternity as are you, outside of which we are nowhere.

“Who could hope for more, while there still appears to be a choice to make between success and failure; love and fear?”