School for A Course In Miracles

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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
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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

 

 

A Course in Miracles Seminar on “Fearless Dying,” Sat 10/27

ACIM One Day Seminar on:

Fearless Dying.

“Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem… Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one.”   (Manual for Teachers #27)

Sat., Oct. 27, 2018

9:30am-4:30pm

@ Rocky Mountain Miracle Center

in Denver, Colorado

Click here for details…

REGISTRATION:

($75 )




Also: Tim and Lyn lead the Sunday Gathering @ RMMC on Oct. 28 @11am, and Chris Dixon  facilitates Lighthouse Newsletter on that same Sunday @1-3pm … also at RMMC.

 

images

Christmas Retreat

Dec. 7-9, 2018

in Colorado Springs:

Click here to see Retreat Schedule and to Register…

 

Course Immersion One 2019,

Six Month Intensive from January thru June 2019,

(Available In-person and Online)

For more details about the Immersion and how to register,

(click here)

 

Ken Wapnick Videos on Death & Tim’s Recommended Movies about Death

 

Ken Wapnick 5 minute videos on “Death”:

(click refresh if videos don’t appear)

 

 

click here

 

For Ken’s Foundation’s Youtube channel with over 200 (ten minute or less) videos: 

click here

 

 

Some thought-provoking movies about death and dying and the afterlife:

1) Ghost… the classic with Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, and Whoopi Goldberg

*** 2) Coco…. beautiful animated CGI flick about Day of the Dead

*** 3) Departures… wonderful Japanese movie about forgiveness and respect

* 4) Hearts and Souls… funny and insightful with Robert Downey Jr, where 4 dead souls “haunt” him and work out their unresolved issues thru him.

5) What Dreams May Come… Robin Williams looking for his wife in the afterlife

* 6) Meet Joe Black… Anthony Hopkins as the dying man and Brad Pitt as “Death,” who has come to get him.

** 7) Flatliners… unusual movie about a group of med students who take turns taking their lives and bringing each other back, and in so doing learn some powerful forgiveness lessons, with very young Kevin Bacon, Kiefer Sutherland, and Julia Roberts. 

*** 8) Six Feet Under TV series… one of the best tv series ever! It’s about a family running a funeral home in LA and their many conversations with the dead folks they are working on…

* 9) All of Me… funny movie about souls inhabiting other bodies after death, with Lily Tomlin (the inhabiter) and Steve Martin (the inhabited)

10) One for The Angels… another classic: Ed Wynn meets Mr. Death in a 1959 Twilight Zone Show (Season 1, #2) on Netflix…   click here  

*** 11) Collateral Beauty… Ed Norton hires three actors to play Death (H. Mirren), Time, and Love to help his friend Will Smith get past his grieving. (A Tim & Lyn favorite!)

12) The Seventh Seal… Ingmar Bergman at his best, about a knight returning from Crusades and his interactions and conversations and chess game with Death.

13) Two X-Files Shows…  [1]”Tithonus” (6th Season, Eps. 10) about a photographer who can’t die:    https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B001DCEK96/ref=atv_dp_season_select_s6

* 14)  [2] “How The Ghost Stole Christmas” :(6th Season, Eps. 6)

Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin as two dead souls that haunt Mulder and Scully on Xmas Eve    : https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001DCEKAU

15) Heaven Can Wait… clever and funny, with Warren Beatty as dead soul mistakenly taken and James Mason as angel-in-charge.

** 16) Sixth Sense… part horror flick/part moving drama about afterlife, with Bruce Willis (nominated for 6 Academy Awards)

* 17) Brand New Testament… Very very quirky movie where God’s daughter releases (on everyone’s cell phone) the date they are going to die….

* 18) A Little Bit of Heaven… with Kate Hudson as woman who finds out she is terminally ill.

19) PS I Love You… Wife finds letters (with helpful suggestions for her) from her dying husband to her… after he dies, with Hillary Swank, Gerald Butler, and Kathy Bates.

** 20) Biutiful….Inarritu directs, Bardem stars as the dying man

*** 21) Amour… touching movie about love between elderly French couple.  It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was nominated in four other categories: Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Screenplay, and Best Director.

** 22 & 23) Dead Man Walking & The Green Mile… two very great movies about death row.

*** 24) Kodachrome… on Netflix,  movie with Ed Harris as disgruntled dying parent on road trip with his estranged son.

25) Whose Life Is It Anyway?… Richard Dreyfus as man who fights for his right to die.

(The above starred *** shows are particularly recommended!)

 

School for A Course in Miracles 

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The Belief in The Murder/Death of God, and Our One True Self

More than 50 years ago in April 1966 (does it feel that long?), Time Magazine came out with its now legendary cover “Is God Dead?” It is a topic that the Course explores and discusses as the basis for our choosing to believe in separation from Our Father in Heaven. In order to pretend our disconnect from Source, we had to justify and believe in our ‘killing’ or destroying our connection and Oneness with God.

It is easy and quite normal from the ego’s point of view to skip over and quickly ‘forget’ those passages in the Course that talk about the death of God. The idea of ‘murdering’ God and our own true identity as His One Son is consciously so repulsive, not to mention in truth impossible.

Which is why, as the Course explains, we have to constantly project that guilt/blame for believing we did just that, onto the world and someone or something else, besides us… or we would let go of that secret belief that death is even possible, in a heartbeat (the Holy Instant). 

 

Here are some of the references in the Course…

where Jesus talks about the how and why of our belief in God’s death, and our own, and their impossibility:

 

“Our Ego Belief in the Murder and Death of God and Our True Self”

 

Text:

Ch.16, p.343, par. 12,

The special relationship (any relationship with a person or thing, seen through the eyes of the ego) must be recognized for what it is; a senseless ritual in which strength is extracted from the death of God, and invested in His killer as the sign that form (the entire physical universe of time and space) has triumphed over content (our Identity as Love), and love has lost its meaning. Would you want this to be possible, even apart from its evident impossibility? If it were possible, you would have made yourself helpless. God is not angry. He merely could not let this happen. You cannot change His Mind. No rituals that you have set up in which the dance of death delights you can bring death to the eternal (our true reality… and God’s).

Ch.19, p.403, par.7

7 There is no stone in all the ego’s embattled citadel that is more heavily defended than the idea that sin (the belief in our severed Oneness with God) is real: the natural (ego) expression of what the Son of God has made himself to be (separate from God), and what he is (now… a killer, a destroyer of Oneness). To the ego, this is no mistake. For this is its reality; this is the “truth” from which escape will always be impossible. This is his past (sin), his present (guilt) and his future (fear). For he has somehow managed to corrupt his Father, and change His Mind completely.

Mourn, then, the death of God, Whom sin has killed! And this would be the ego’s wish, which in its madness it believes it has accomplished.

 

Ch.23, p.486, par.2

2 Do you not realize a war against yourself (our true reality as God’s One Son) would be a war on God? Is victory conceivable? And if it were, is this a victory that you would want? The death of God, if it were possible, would be your death. Is this a victory? The ego always marches to defeat, because it thinks that triumph over you (your Real Self) is possible.

And God thinks otherwise. This is no war; only the mad belief the Will of God can be attacked and overthrown. You may identify with this belief, but never will it be more than madness. And fear will reign in madness, and will seem to have replaced love there. This is the conflict’s purpose. And to those who think that it (the attack and overthrow of God) is possible, the means seem real.

 

Ch.26, p.543, par.6-7

But judge him not (your brother), for you will hear no song of liberation for yourself, nor see what it is given him to witness to (his and your sinlessness), that you may see it and rejoice with him. Make not his holiness a sacrifice to your belief in sin. You sacrifice your innocence with his, and die each time you see in him a sin deserving death.

…You who would make a sacrifice of life, and make your eyes and ears bear witness to the death of God and of His holy Son, think not that you have power to make of Them (God and His Son) what God willed not They be.

 

 

Workbook:

 

Les.72, on  attacking God and God’s death, p.124, par.5-6

And every grievance that you hold insists that the body is real. It overlooks entirely what your brother is. It reinforces your belief that he is a body, and condemns him for it. And it asserts that his salvation must be death, projecting this attack onto God, and holding Him responsible for it.

6 To this carefully prepared arena, where angry animals seek for prey and mercy cannot enter, the ego comes to save you. God made you a body (so the ego sarcastically tells us…) Very well. Let us accept this and be glad. As a body, do not let yourself be deprived of what the body offers. Take the little you can get. God gave you nothing. The body is your only savior. It is the death of God and your salvation.

7 This is the universal belief of the world you see.

Les.163 on the death of God and His One Son, p.309, par.5-6

Here is the opposite of God (death) proclaimed as lord of all creation, stronger than God’s Will for life, the endlessness of love, and Heaven’s perfect, changeless constancy. Here is the Will of Father and of Son defeated finally, and laid to rest beneath the headstone death has placed upon the body of the holy Son of God.

5 Unholy (God’s Son in a body that will die) in defeat, he has become what death would have him be. His epitaph, which death itself has written, gives no name to him, for he has passed to dust. It says but this: “Here lies a witness God is dead.” And this it writes again and still again, while all the while its (death) worshippers agree, and kneeling down with foreheads to the ground, they whisper fearfully that it is so.


…God was once alive and somehow perished; killed, apparently, by those who did not want Him to survive. Their stronger will could triumph over His, and so eternal life gave way to death. And with the Father died the Son as well.

 

Manual:

#17, p.45, par.7

 Accept your separation, but do not remember how it came about. Believe that you have won it (from God), but do not retain the slightest memory of Who your great “opponent” really is. Projecting your “forgetting” onto Him (God), it seems to you He has forgotten, too.

7 But what will now be your reaction to all magic thoughts (belief that certain things or forms in the world can make us feel better, or make us feel worse)? They can but re-awaken sleeping guilt (for having separated from God and destroying the Oneness with our Creator in our minds), which you have hidden but have not let go. Each one (each magical thought that some thing, and not God, can make us feel better) says clearly to your frightened mind, “You have usurped the place of God. Think not He has forgotten.” Here we have the fear of God most starkly represented. For in that thought has guilt already raised madness to the throne of God Himself. And now there is no hope. Except to kill. Here is salvation now. An angry father pursues his guilty son.

Kill or be killed, for here alone is choice. (What the ego tells us…) Beyond this there is none, for what was done cannot be done without. The stain of blood can never be removed (reference to Macbeth’s wife), and anyone who bears this stain on him must meet with death.

 

#27, p.67, par.5

5 The “reality” of death is firmly rooted in the belief that God’s Son is a body. And if God created bodies, death would indeed be real (when we believe we are bodies, we are all ‘dead men walking’) . But God would not be loving. There is no point at which the contrast between the perception of the real world (the world seen thru the Holy Spirit’s eyes) and that of the world of illusions becomes more sharply evident (as our belief in death).

Death is indeed the death of God, if He is Love. And now His Own creation must stand in fear of Him. He is not Father, but destroyer. He is not Creator, but avenger. Terrible His Thoughts and fearful His image. To look on His creations is to die.

 


Text, Ch.23, p.495-498, Sec. III & IV excerpts (where the word ‘murder’ is used more than 20 times):

He (all of us) may deny he (believes he) is a murderer and justify his savagery with smiles as he attacks (judges). Yet he will suffer, and will look on his (mind’s) intent in nightmares where the smiles are gone, and where the purpose (murder) rises to meet his horrified awareness and pursue him still.

For no one thinks of murder (the death of God and our innocence as His Son, in our minds) and escapes the guilt the thought entails. If the intent is death (in the mind), what matter the form it takes (in the world)?

You are not asked to fight against your wish to murder. But you are asked to realize the form it takes conceals the same intent (all form in the world mirrors only one of two thoughts in the mind… love or death). And it is this you fear, and not the form. What is not love is murder. What is not loving must be an attack. Every illusion is an assault on truth (love).

Each form of murder and attack that still attracts you and that you do not recognize for what it is, limits the healing and the miracles you have the power to extend to all. Yet does the Holy Spirit understand how to increase your little gifts and make them mighty. Also He understands how your relationship is raised above the battleground, in it no more. This is your part; to realize that murder in any form is not your will. 

Who with the Love of God upholding him could find the choice of miracles or murder hard to make?

The bad news is that Jesus is telling us… we secretly believe we continue to kill our real connection with God and our brothers, and destroy our awareness of our true identity as God’s One Innocent Son… every time we attack and judge our brothers, by projecting our own guilt onto them.

The good news is that we didn’t, couldn’t, and never will be able to do that in reality! God still loves us, and Jesus didn’t go anywhere, and we can’t be ‘prodigal sons’ no matter how much we pretend.

For more discussion “On Death and Dying”

see Ken Wapnick’s Cd set (or MP3 or DVDs)

click here

Course References on Death and Dying:

“There is no death, the Son of God is free…”

27. WHAT IS DEATH?

Manual p.66

1 Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end? We have asked this question before, but now we need to consider it more carefully. It is the one fixed, unchangeable belief of the world that all things in it are born only to die. This is regarded as “the way of nature,” not to be raised to question, but to be accepted as the “natural” law of life. 

————————————

 Text, Chapter 23, p.493, par.19

19 There is no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven life is illusion. At best it seems like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions are but forms. Their content is never true. 

——————————-

WB Lesson 163, p.309

There is no death. The Son of God is free.

 1 Death is a thought that takes on many forms, often unrecognized. It may appear as sadness, fear, anxiety or doubt; as anger, faithlessness and lack of trust; concern for bodies, envy, and all forms in which the wish to be as you are not may come to tempt you. All such thoughts are but reflections of the worshipping of death as savior and as giver of release.

The idea of the death of God is so preposterous that even the insane have difficulty in believing it. For it implies that God was once alive and somehow perished; killed, apparently, by those who did not want Him to survive…

Our Father, bless our eyes today. We are Your messengers, and we would look upon the glorious reflection of Your Love which shines in everything. We live and move in You alone. We are not separate from Your eternal life. There is no death, for death is not Your Will. 

—————————————-

28. WHAT IS THE RESURRECTION?

Manual p.68

1 Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death. It is a re-awakening or a rebirth; a change of mind about the meaning of the world. 

2 The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. 

There is no death. The Son of God is free.

———————————————

Text, Chapter 19: The Attainment of Peace

C. The Third Obstacle to Peace: The Attraction of Death, p.416

1 To you and your brother, in whose special relationship the Holy Spirit entered, it is given to release and be released from the dedication to death. For it was offered you, and you accepted. Yet you must learn still more about this strange devotion, for it contains the third obstacle that peace must flow across… What seems to be the fear of death is really its attraction.

 7 Those who fear death see not how often and how loudly they call to it, and bid it come to save them from communication. For death is seen as safety, the great dark savior from the light of truth, the answer to the Answer, the silencer of the Voice That speaks for God. Yet the retreat to death is not the end of conflict. Only God’s Answer is its end. The obstacle of your seeming love for death that peace must flow across seems to be very great. For in it lie hidden all the ego’s secrets, all its strange devices for deception, all its sick ideas and weird imaginings. Here is the final end of union, the triumph of the ego’s making over creation, the victory of lifelessness on Life Itself.

 

D. The Fourth Obstacle: The Fear of God, p.420

1 What would you see without the fear of death? What would you feel and think if death held no attraction for you? Very simply, you would remember your Father…

4 See how the belief in death would seem to “save” you. For if this were gone, what could you fear but life? It is the attraction of death that makes life seem to be ugly, cruel and tyrannical. You are no more afraid of death than of the ego. These are your chosen friends. For in your secret alliance with them (death and the ego) you have agreed never to let the fear of God be lifted, so you could look upon the face of Christ and join Him in His Father…

… The exaltation of the body is given up in favor of the spirit, which you love as you could never love the body. And the appeal of death is lost forever as love’s attraction stirs and calls to you. From beyond each of the obstacles to love (and peace), Love Itself has called.

Also see:

*Workbook, Les. 167, p.318-319:

“You think that death is of the body. Yet it is but an idea (in the mind)… Death is the thought that you are separate from your Creator… What seems to be the opposite of life (in Heaven) is merely sleeping.”

*Song of Prayer Pamphlet, Part 3. Healing:

Sec.I p.16, par. 1-2

Sec. II p.17-18, par.1-5 (including…)

“This is what death should be; a quiet choice, made joyfully and with a sense of peace, because the body has been kindly used to help the Son of God along the way he goes to God. We thank the body, then, for all the service it has given us.

But we are thankful, too, the need is done to walk the world of limits, and to reach the Christ in hidden forms and clearly seen at  most in lovely flashes. Now we can behold Him without the blinders, in the light that we have learned to look upon again. — We call it death, but it is liberty. It does not come in forms that seem to be thrust down in pain upon unwilling flesh, but as a gentle welcome to release.

 

If there has been true healing, this can be the form in which death comes when it is time to rest a while from labor gladly done and gladly ended. Now we go in peace to freer air and gentler climate, where it is not hard to see the gifts we gave were saved for us. For Christ is clearer now; His vision more sustained in us; His Voice, the Word of God, more certainly our own. — Death is reward and not a punishment. But such a viewpoint must be fostered by the healing that the world cannot conceive.”(S-3.II.2:1-4/3:1-5/5:5-6)

For Further Discussion

on Death & Dying

by Ken Wapnick:

(Click on pictures below for info)

 

 

SFACIM YouTube Channel: Video on “Collusion”

 

Video on “Collusion with The Ego”

(click here)

 

 

School for A Course in Miracles

 

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SFACIM YouTube Channel: 

(click here)

… Be sure to click on the “VIDEOS” link at the top of SFACIM YouTube page to see the list of  replays of videos and chats available from the School on many Course topics !

If you can, please donate a few bucks after watching replays… to help keep alive and growing the School for ACIM, our website , and more video replays coming… Thanks!

 

You can donate here:


If you don’t see yellow “Donate” link above, click here for link

 

Also be sure to check out the brief but insightful

Kenneth Wapnick videos on YouTube !

 

Four Online Classes Now Scheduled, from “School for A Course in Miracles” (SFACIM)

We are moving into making more meetings and classes about the Course available ONLINE, with online video streaming (using free download and free use of Zoom App).

These are for anyone anywhere, local or far away, especially for folks around the world in places where in-person meetings and classes are not present, or easily accessible…  So here are the four we have so far… 

 

1) Every Saturday Morning, Online Only,

9:00-10:15am Mt. Time:

Use this link:  https://zoom.us/j/5749176177

 

For 75 minutes every Saturday morning, we will go over a couple of Course pages (lately it’s been in the Text), giving time for questions and comments. This class is online only… 

 Click here for more info.

 

2) Every Tuesday Morning, 9:30-10:45am, Lyn Corona’s Online Class on ACIM

click here

 

 

 

4) Wednesdays in The Workbook : evenings @ 6:30pm

3) Six Month In-depth Course Immersion Program,

Jan.-June 2020 ,

click here

 

All times listed above are Mountain Time.

It is suggested that the online classes be accessed (using the free downloadable app ZOOM simply by clicking the link provided) about five to ten minutes before class begins. This allows you to get settled in and introduce yourselves…

Connecting from your PC or Mac or Smart Phone…

To connect from your device is easy:

Just click on the Zoom link,  and follow the 2 or 3 prompts that will direct you to the meeting (and it also will automatically download the free Zoom App, if you already haven’t)….

 

 

Questions? … call Tim @ 720-391-9294, and/or click here for more info on free Zoom live streaming.

Arrogance vs Humility, Part One

(By Tim Wise)

How do we see ourselves?

What does arrogance look like?

What does humility look like?

How does God see us?

As I was planning to do a Thursday Chat about arrogance and humility, I did what I do on any topic and started with Webster. On arrogance, the dictionary definition is “being full of excessive and overbearing pride.”

With humility, Webster sounds like the Course: “having or expressing a sense of selflessness.” Really, that’s what it says. That’s the #1 definition that’s used the most in everyday English for being humble… letting go of our sense of ‘lower-case’ self.

A couple of my own ideas about arrogance, for me anyway… include a few things:

1) It has a puffed-up unwarranted overkill about it, like a balloon full of hot air.

2) Arrogance is not very likable, if not mostly distasteful. My sense is even the arrogant don’t like it in others.

3) Finally, arrogance needs an audience. It demands an internal belief that others are acknowledging the arrogant’s superiority, whether it’s true others are really noticing or not.

For humility, I would agree with Webster on an attitude of selflessness. I would also add the Course’s principle that the truly humble focus on shared interests in the mind, and let go of their investments in the seeming external differences.

The Course’s Take on Arrogance and Humility:

The Course actually uses the words arrogance/arrogant 55 times, and humility/humble over forty. Whenever arrogance is spoken about in the Course, it is always in relationship to its opposite, humility. The two themes are covered for the most part in Lessons #61, 152, and 186. “True humility” is especially described as the top of the ladder of prayer, in the Song of Prayer Pamphlet, p. 8:

Prayer (defined in the Pamphlet as not supplication to the Holy Spirit for specifics, but as a state of communion with the HS) is the way to true humility… and true humility will come at last to grace the mind that thought it was alone and stood against the world… Its selflessness is Self… Humility has come to teach you how to understand your glory as God’s Son, and recognize the arrogance of sin.

(Excerpts from Song of Prayer p. 8)

A Course in Miracles - combined volume - hardbound - English

Some Course thoughts from Les.#61…

“I am the light of the world.”

Who is the light of the world except God’s Son? This, then, is merely a statement of the truth about yourself. It is the opposite of a statement of pride, of arrogance, or of self-deception. It does not describe the self-concept you have made. It does not refer to any of the characteristics with which you have endowed your idols. It refers to you as you were created by God. It simply states the truth. 

To the ego, today’s idea is the epitome of self-glorification. But the ego does not understand humility, mistaking it for self-debasement. Humility consists of accepting your role in salvation and in taking no other. It is not humility to insist you cannot be the light of the world if that is the function God assigned to you. It is only arrogance that would assert this function cannot be for you, and arrogance is always of the ego.

True humility requires that you accept today’s idea because it is God’s Voice which tells you it is true. This is a beginning step in accepting your real function on earth. It is a giant stride toward taking your rightful place in salvation. It is a positive assertion of your right to be saved, and an acknowledgment of the power that is given you to save others.

( WB, Les 61, p. 102, par.1-3)

Arrogance and humility are simply about how we see ourselves… we either are “the light of the world” we perceive, or we’re not. Our identification as separated egos insist on the latter. We believe we have done the impossible (a great definition of arrogance), and separated from our Father in Heaven. Now we believe we are these inflated balloons full of hot air (bodies), that will eventually deflate (die). How silly is that!

 

Of course, our ego would like to run in its own direction, relentlessly maintaining belief in separation. It would use all the above Course statements its own way, especially “the power that is given you (us) to save others.” The ego would make it all about separate bodies saving other separate bodies, especially my body/personality saving yours. However that power to save (i.e. wake up from the dream of  separation) is never, ever, played out in the world behaviorally, or by the separated us at all.

Whatever happens in the world is always a mirror reflection of two (and only two) chosen thoughts or chosen teachers in the mind, the ego or Holy Spirit…  If we are choosing the inner ego voice of  belief in separation in our minds, whether we act like Crusader Rabbits (a cartoon from the 1950’s) saving anyone or everyone in the world, it will always be a refection of that teacher in our minds.

Whenever our behavior is reflecting an inner ego choice, any worldly act of kindness/salvation cannot help but be an act of arrogance! Full of hot air and blown-up pride. It typically manifests as… “I am Holier than tho, and I will save you, the lesser.”

These ego-based “kind” actions certainly have the ring of the three ideas above about arrogance:

  • It’s puffed-up and overblown.
  • It’s usually not wanted or liked or even appreciated, and if so… only temporarily, and then later resented.
  • And it’s believed by the ‘do-gooder’ that he’s admired for it, or at least should be.

It doesn’t mean we should not help out in any situation. The Course is only saying what really matters is which internal teacher am I doing ‘the helping’ with…

—————————

For Part Two on “Arrogance vs Humility” on this website:

{including how do I know which teacher in my mind I am choosing}

click here

Also, for a more in-depth discussion of arrogance & humility,

see Ken Wapnick’s

“Making the Holy Spirit Special:

The Arrogance of the Ego”

(on 9 CD set or MP3 download)

click here

 

Celebrating The First Ten Years of…

School for A Course in Miracles: click here

Would you like to help the School for A Course in Miracles…

Grow and Expand?

Click here

 

Celebrating The First 10 Years of School for A Course in Miracles

EXTENDING THE MESSAGE OF

“PEACE THROUGH FORGIVENESS”

 

Hello, Friends of A Course in Miracles:

Our School for A Course in Miracles was founded in 2007 as School of Reason. The name was later changed to School for A Course in Miracles as it more accurately expresses what we are about. The school is the teaching order of the Ark of Peace, a 501(c)3 non-profit, established in 1990 for the purpose of sharing the Course’s teachings of “peace through forgiveness”.

 

Here are some of the accomplishments in our first 10 years.

  • An outstanding website www.sfacim.org. As you visit it you will see a beautiful, well-organized site, filled with extensive written, audio and video materials on the Course. Updated daily, you can always find current events and classes.
  • 100’s of classes, numerous workshops and retreats, and five 6-month long Course Immersions in the study and application of Course principles.
  • A prolific Ken Wapnick Library, which has provided local Denver Course students with thousands of hours of listening to renown scholar Dr. Kenneth Wapnick as he illuminates the teachings of ACIM.
  • Weekly on-line classes offered through our new technology – Zoom Online Classrooms.
  • Mentoring sessions – a choice of 30 or 60 minutes – for those times when you feel stuck and can’t see a way out.
  • New technology that is expanding our access to students anywhere in the world. Course Immersion 2017 was attended by students in-person and online in Colorado, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. The good news is that the technology has not impaired but broadened our School’s teaching/learning process.
  • The transformation of students into teachers of God, defined by the Course as those who understand and demonstrate the practice of forgiveness and share Jesus’ aim of healing the mind.
  • Four faculty members with over 120 years of combined education and application of Course teachings illuminated by thousands of hours studying with Course scholar, Kenneth Wapnick, Phd. Our teaching is consistent, focused and simple, imbued with certainty and conviction that it works. The benefits to students is accelerated learning and experience.

 

 

 

 

It appears to be a good time for us to think about extending the message of A Course in Miracles. The message is very simple: “God’s Son is guiltless.” To learn and experience the truth of this statement we must teach (demonstrate) it. And to teach it we must learn to forgive. Forgiveness is the way to peace.

From Jesus and his Course, and from Ken Wapnick (scholar, teacher and true helper) and his teachings on the Course, the facilitators of SFACIM have received an outstanding education. Now we are being nudged to expand our reach and make this same education more available to earnest students wherever they may be. Coincidentally, there is nothing we as Course facilitators would rather do than carry this message.

Moving forward, we want to build a firmer financial foundation on which to operate Jesus’ and Ken’s, yours and ours, and ultimately everyone’s school. We hope to move forward with the assurance that we can do so with minimum financial concern. Furthermore, we want there to be champions of the idea of “peace through forgiveness” in this world for as long as it is needed.

As a student, or someone who has been affected by A Course in Miracles, perhaps we speak for you as well. If so please join, help, or support the School for ACIM in any way you feel moved.

Click here to find out how you can help…

Sincerely,

Lyn Corona,

Director of School for A Course in Miracles

Have Retreat, Will Travel

School for A Course in Miracles - for students and aspiring teachers of A Course in Miracles (logo masthead)

Have Retreat, Will Travel:

The School for A Course in Miracles would be happy to send two or thee of its facilitators to conduct a retreat for a few days, anywhere in the world, if you can put together a group of at least 15 folks who would attend a Course Retreat. Our three Course facilitators have over 100 years collectively of studying, practicing, and teaching the Course. Call Tim (720 391 9294) or Lyn  (303 880 7713) for details…