School for A Course In Miracles
"The universe of learning will open up before you."
We are thankful for one thing alone:
God has given the gift of love to each of us.
The ego is grateful because He has favored us in some special way while others suffer.
Salvation is an equal playing field on which everyone has been given everything. (There is nothing the ego scorns more than indiscriminate love.)
It is our responsibility to see it that way because that is the way it is. The way out of hell is the same for everyone. We must learn to see the world forgiveness sees.
Let forgiveness extend to everyone without exception. Do not exclude anyone. There is only One Son of God: Christ.
(The words God, Christ and Son of God are symbols of symbols. They stand for Love. Love is Oneness.)
Saying “we are one” is not the same as Oneness. While we identify ourselves as separated selves– separate from our Creator and separate from others– our profession (according to the Course) is to exclude no one from love. This is the means given us to reach the gates of Oneness: accept God’s Love by being loving.
As the lesson points out, we “earn” (symbolically) the right to love by being loving. God isn’t withholding love from us. We are keeping it from ourselves. Earning the right is a way of saying we can give love until we accept that we are love. It’s a wonderful plan.
We have been given everything.
First of all, we never changed reality so it remains Love and we are still loveable. Secondly, our first loving action is to bless the world with forgiveness. FOR THIS we should be grateful. How beautiful. How clean and simple and perfect is that? Who is unwilling to take part?
“You will be bound till all the world is seen by you as blessed, and everyone set 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.” Lesson 200
We can offer our friends, family, colleagues, partners, friends and enemies alike, their freedom by looking at the thoughts we hold against them and deciding we prefer not to keep that point of view. In wanting to see differently we will.
When our forgiveness is complete we will have total gratitude.
The Denver based School for A Course in Miracles (formerly School of Reason) was founded in 2007 by three long-time A Course in Miracles students in response to a perceived need for Course classes that present a unified, accurate and consistent understanding of the Course’s rather complex thought systems. We, ourselves, had found this consistency in the study materials generated by eminent Course scholar, Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D.
Even after 20 or 30 years of independent study of the Course, the benefits in working with Dr. Wapnick’s material was so profound for us that we wanted all students to experience the accelerated learning that takes place when using his insightful and illuminating material. Through the use of his books, CD’s and DVD’s his influence is found in all the offerings of School for A Course in Miracles (SFACIM). Be sure to check out some of Ken’s brief 10 minute youtube video presentations on different Course topics, and visit his Foundation’s website @ facim.org. Ken made his transition in Dec. 2013.
For the serious student the Course presents a lifetime practice of healing and forgiveness. School for A Course in Miracles offers classes and study groups for every stage of the journey. A student can see a path of Course education before him and be assured of consistency in the message and high quality of teaching and mentoring.
More on Ken and his Foundation:
Kenneth Wapnick taught and wrote about A Course in Miracles for more than 35 years, publishing more than 30 books and over 200 audio and video recordings of his classes and lectures, some works authored with his wife, Gloria. He is widely regarded as the world’s foremost teacher of the Course, which he has said is the most important spiritual document for our age. Kenneth, with a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, was an associate of Dr. Helen Schucman, scribe of the Course, and Dr. William Thetford, Helen’s close friend, colleague, and collaborator in the scribing. Kenneth worked with Helen for over a year preparing the Course for publication.
In 1983, Kenneth and Gloria began the Foundation for A Course in Miracles in Ardsley NY, which moved to Crompond NY, then Roscoe NY, Temecula (Ca.) and is now located in Henderson, Nevada. The Foundation’s principal purpose over the years has been to assist students in understanding the Course through classes, discussion groups, and written, audio, video, and digital publications. The depth of Ken’s understanding of the Course’s thought system, his clarity and humor, and his constant demonstration of the Course’s gentle message of peace thru forgiveness continue to attract large numbers of people to his writings and recordings. It is the Foundation’s mission since Ken’s passing in December of 2013 to assure that his truly remarkable legacy of teachings continues to be available, now and for future generations. His website: www.facim.org
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Mondays & Thursday Evenings @ 6:30pm Mt. : Barnes Knowles barnesknowles@onmail.com (720) 434-0982
Fridays (1st & 3rd 0f each month) @ 10 am Mt. : David Delaplane dadelaplane01@gmail.com (303) 915-1754
Sat. mornings @ 10am Mt. : Lori P. 720-981-7318 or at EMailLoril@gmail.com
Tuesdays @ 7pm Mt. : Susan Dugan click here
Tues. (12:30pm Mt) & Wed. (7pm Mt) Maria Young click here
Wednesdays @ 11am Mt. : facim.org click here
“As long as there is a ‘you’ doing or not doing, thinking or not-thinking, meditating or not meditating, you are no closer to home than the day you were born.” 
“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.
“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.”
– ACIM Workbook Lesson 248
