Learner Archives • School for A Course In Miracles

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: A Little Willingness

September 17, 2013

“Salvation is easy just because it asks nothing you cannot give right now.” – A Course in Miracles, Text, page 382

It is of enormous relief to know—finally, and with certainty—what our only function is. We should be looking one another in the eye and winking the “we’ve got a secret” look of lovers in love.

The secret is that we have the key to our happiness in our very hands. It is nowhere else.

The key to happiness is forgiveness. It is the simplest thing you will ever learn because it requires nothing of us that we cannot give right now. How do you like them apples? Do I have your attention, or did you turn away again? From the bottom of my heart I hope not, because this is the “pearl worth any price.”

The key is in your hand: guaranteed!!!! Think mind when you read hand. Hopefully you will learn here and now how to turn it: also in your mind. Learning requires that you be right-minded as opposed to wrong-minded.

Wrong-mindedness fears change. It fixates on what it thinks it knows. It thinks happiness is getting what we want. It thinks a whole lot of things are real, all of which turn out to be illusions.

Right-mindedness is willing to question what it thinks it knows, including where happiness comes from. It is willing to learn another way of seeing. It is willing to turn away from all assumptions of what reality is and walk the razor’s edge where our true education can begin.

The choice is yours. You have the willingness; it has already been given you. Don’t let fear hold you back. Give it to the One Who gave you willingness instead. Daily, a thousand times a day, you make this choice.

In order to learn from the teacher of forgiveness who knows the way to happiness, you must resign as your own teacher. This is signified by the little willingness. This is the only way that you can ever be happy.

“If you listen to the wrong voice, you have lost sight of your soul.” – A Course in Miracles

There is a silent voice in you that will show you the way. Every second that you do not plan is an instant made available to the one who can give you your function. Your function is your happiness. To learn that your function and your happiness are the same is the simplest thing you will ever do. Any effort that you make will interfere. The following prayer from The Little Willingness, shows us how small our part is.

“I who am host to God am worthy of Him.

He Who established His dwelling place in me created it as

He would have it be.

It is not needful that I make it ready for Him, but only

that I do not interfere with His plan to restore to me

my own awareness of my readiness, which is eternal.

I need add nothing to His plan.

But to receive it, I must be willing not to substitute my

Own in place of it.”

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: About Lyn Corona

April 5, 2013

I don’t feel that I am overstating my capabilities when I say that I am a learner. Not in the traditional way of accumulating information to gain some advantage, but out of a deep curiosity about what lies beyond a self-centered perspective from which most of us view the world.

I was eleven years old the first time I had an “unusual experience” that gave me my first taste of an alternative point of view. I lived in the country, 14 miles from town, and being an only child I spent a lot of time on my own in nature. This particular time I was engaged in a favorite pastime at which I had developed great skill.

There was a river that ran through our property, and when the water was low enough, the larger rocks were exposed so that I could jump from rock to rock in a steady rhythm, running upstream like a salmon. Only one foot at a time could land on each rock and the game was to go as fast as possible without loosing my balance and dumping into the river. This particular time I suddenly found myself located outside my body in a timeless zone that was perfectly still and peaceful while my physical body kept jumping rocks. I never forgot the experience.

I was a freshman in high school the first time I heard the word enlightenment. I had no idea what it meant, but I caught the scent, like a hound on the trail of something big. The next time I was at the local library I checked out the only two books that seemed somewhat related to the topic. I remember one of the authors was Alan Watts. Nothing I read in those books satisfied my desire to know what enlightenment was. I continued my search off and on for years, knowing someday I would find something that could explain enlightenment and the timeless zone that I knew was more real than anything I had experienced since the river.

It was in the latter part of the 70’s when A Course in Miracles came into my life. I had just finished reading Jane Robert’s mind-blowing The Nature of Personal Reality which set the stage for the entrance of the Course. I immediately recognized it as the answer to my questions about why I was here, what gives meaning and purpose to life, why I was suffering and how it could end. And also how to get to the timeless zone and stay there forever.

As a beginning student of A Course in Miracles, I developed my own practice of learning. I was living in the mountains about 40 miles west of Denver so I didn’t know there were such things as study groups. As far as I knew the Course was a self study program. The only help available was through asking the inner Teacher to show me the meaning of a lesson or a complicated passage from the text. I would ask and somewhere in the course of my day there would be an incident or an encounter that would give me the understanding. The Teacher became very real for me, always answering in some form I could understand.

I started offering classes, workshops and retreats on the Course in 1986 and with a few brief sabbaticals have continued to do so until this day. Over the years I established several centers for the study of the Course, have been an itinerant teacher traveling the U.S, and most recently joined with some of my colleagues in establishing the School of Reason (now School for A Course in Miracles for students and aspiring teachers of A Course in Miracles. I also began this blog. The point of all our doings, mine or anyone else’s, is that they are a curriculum for our learning and vehicles for sharing another way.

The most repeated lesson in A Course in Miracles is “I am not a body. I am free”. Thank God, I can finally say it and know that it is true and not just some fluke that happened on the river one day. We don’t reside in a body and on some level we all know that this is true. That shift, from body to mind, is what A Course in Miracles is all about. It is a shift from a self-centered point of view to a transcendent presence that is mind. It’s a miracle.

It is not only possible to be in the world but not of it; it is essential. Our lives can reflect the ease and freedom of our real residence out of time where we are whole eternal minds in perfect communication with a non-physical universe of spirit comprised only of intangible Love.

The step out of time and into eternity (the timeless zone) calls for humility and the willingness to learn another way. We have to admit that we don’t know how to get there from here. Instead of it happening accidentally, like it did for me on the river, we have the inner Teacher that knows the way, and unlike my early experience that did not last, we can learn to reside there forever.

Here, in this world, is where our transformation takes place. We don’t die to get to Heaven. We just wake up. Enlightenment is not a place to travel to. It is right here. Right now.

School for A Course in Miracles is organized under the non-profit (501(c)3, Ark of Peace, which was founded in 1990 by school director, Lyn Corona, for the purpose of extending the message of peace through forgiveness as presented by A Course in Miracles. Since the inception of the Ark of Peace, for a few years it had a retreat center called Heaven on Earth in Pine, Colorado; a Miracles Center (1991) on South Pearl, which later moved to 924 Logan St.; The Pearl Street Abbey, a residential community for teaching and learning the Course; The Satsang Cafe, with an upper room for Course classes; and now the School for A Course in Miracles (formerly School of Reason)and the Ken Wapnick Memorial Library– all to fulfill its mission to extend the teachings of the Course.

Musings: Back Again

January 31, 2013

I think my last blog post was quite some time ago. Blame it on broken links, many changes in WordPress and a serious lack of technical skills on my part. I recently decided to renovate our SFACIM website with the help of Bruce Rawles, an amazingly skillful webmaster and all around very patient person. What you will find below is also on the About page, but since it is really an introduction and an invitation I wanted to make sure all subscribers to SFACIM received it.

Welcome to School for A Course in Miracles.

It was in the latter part of the 70’s when the A Course in Miracles came into my life. I had just finished reading Jane Robert’s mind-blowing The Nature of Personal Reality which set the stage for the entrance of the Course. I immediately recognized it as the answer to my questions about why I was here, what gives meaning and purpose to life, why I was suffering and how it could end. And also how to get to the timeless zone and stay there forever.

As a beginning student of A Course in Miracles, I developed my own practice of learning. I was living in the mountains about 40 miles west of Denver so I didn’t know there were such things as study groups. As far as I knew the Course was a self study program. The only help available was through asking the inner Teacher to show me the meaning of a lesson or a complicated passage from the text. I would ask and somewhere in the course of my day there would be an incident or an encounter that would give me the understanding. The Teacher became very real for me, always answering in some form I could understand.

I started offering classes, workshops and retreats on the Course in 1986 and with a few brief sabbaticals have continued to do so until this day. Over the years I established several centers for the study of the Course, have been an itinerant teacher traveling the U.S, and most recently joined with some of my colleagues in establishing the School of Reason for students and aspiring teachers of A Course in Miracles. I also began this blog. The point of all our doings, mine or anyone else’s, is that they are curriculums for our learning and vehicles for sharing another way.

The most repeated lesson in A Course in Miracles is “I am not a body. I am free”. Thank God, I can finally say it and know that it is true and not just some fluke that happened on the river one day. We don’t reside in a body and on some level we all know that this is true. That shift, from body to mind, is what A Course in Miracles is all about. It is a shift from a self-centered point of view to a transcendent presence that is mind. It’s a miracle.

Here, in this world, is where our transformation takes place. We don’t die to get to Heaven. We just wake up. Enlightenment is not a place to travel to. It is right here. Right now.

Musings: Who Is Looking?

June 12, 2010

What would you be willing to give to absolutely know, without a shadow of a doubt, that a happy outcome to all things is sure? That there is nothing to fear? That there is no need to feel loss, pain, or suffering? That there is no death? This knowledge is your inheritance. It has already been given you.

All that stands in the way of knowledge are illusions, believed to be true. The problem, as the quote from the great sage Nisargadatta points out, is solely mental—in the mind. There are no real problems.

“It is all the mind can do—

Discover the unreal as unreal.

The problem is only mental.

Abandon false ideas, that is all.

There is no need of true ideas.

There aren’t any.” –Nisargadatta Maharaj

The miracle shows you that illusions are illusions; that the false is false; that the unreal is unreal. This all you need learn to let all fear fall away.

Seeing the false as false may not sound very glamorous if your idea of awakening is that it happens to “some one”. I mean, seeing illusions as illusions! Come on! What’s fun about that?

Seeing illusions as illusions cannot be done by a body at all. That’s what’s amazing about that!

The shift from seeing through the body’s eyes to seeing through the impersonal eye of one Self is a miracle. It is a leap from physical identity to mind (not to be confused with intellect) within Mind. It requires vision and vision is a gift. A body cannot give it because the body does not possess it. Vision is given. Would you first attempt to give yourself a miracle and then ask for one?

“God is my strength. Vision is His gift.” Lesson 42

The miracle is a shift out of the body identity and into the one Mind. It is a shift in looking through a different set of eyes: not physical eyes but spiritual eyes. It is a different way of seeing. The who in who is looking is no longer personal. It is not a someone.

While the body’s eyes can only see illusions, spirit can only see what is. The body’s sensory apparatus was made exclusively to validate the existence of the illusory person.

(Note to you, the reader: I am writing about something here that can only be recognized and known. That must be understood. Perhaps, you can be set up for vision to dawn. I am not sure. So this instrument seems to be doing this, in service to that. The process goes something like this. Thoughts come. There is silence. An image comes. There is emptiness. There is a mind in service to That Mind and then there is Mind Only and Silence presides over everything. There is no lyn. She materializes when there is a story.)

Most of us think we are earnest spiritual seekers until we realize it means letting go of our stories about ourselves right up to this very one we are in right now. The story and the lyn character are the illusion, the dream of separation. That’s what we need to look at in a different way, through different eyes. We need to learn how to look at the dream from an impersonal point of perception.

You can’t have both the dream and waking up. Most want both. Your problem is that you like some parts of the dream and not other parts. A dream is a dream. Choices within the dream are meaningless because they lead no where. Dreaming or waking? That’s the only choice. Which will it be? You cannot be forced. It is the one choice you have in this world. All other choices are choices for the unreal.

“Where are dreams but in a mind asleep?” ACIM

The “undoing of what never was” (personhood, individuality, separation, specialness) is personally insulting to an ego. After all it tells us who we are, what’s important, where to go and what to do. And now it is being called into question. What’s goin on?

If you will look earnestly you will find you are frequently working and reworking the story of yourself: that self-made (synthetic) individual that you have accepted to be what you are. Over and over you piece together a story of a life in a body in order to convince yourself and others that your personhood is real….that you exist!

“Nothing that can be visualized or imagined is real.”

Prior to the undoing, relationships can’t be anything but self-serving. We use others to maintain the story about ourselves, whatever that may be. After undoing there is no “other” to love or to hate. Love is inclusive; it is not “two who have become one”. It is “not-two”, period. There never were two.

As you become happier about learning what you really are you lose interest in the dream figure and all the related stories that feed it and keep it alive. Personhood starts to dissolve, to recede, and the freedom that becomes apparent following its dissolution bring companions of joy, peace and impersonal and indiscriminate Love. The belief that it is a sacrifice to let personhood fall away is based upon the assumption that the separated self actually existed in the first place.

What happens to the dream figure, when we cease making it? It is recognized to be the empty vessel that it is. Neutral. There is nothing in it. There is no body home! We never were located in the body in the first place. The separation never occurred.

What remains is genuine stillness. Nothing is left of “me”; stillness is. Now we understand the meaning to Jesus’s directive to “Be Still and Know.” Be still from the constant assertions of making a self. When that ceases there is “no thing” separating What Is from What Is.

Note: I know this sounds like the ravings on a Dr. Bronner’s label. This is the dilemma of trying to put into words what can’t be spoken of.

“To be your self is to be no self at all.”

What of the character that continues to appear in the dream? Has it any use at all?

All gifts are given through the mind that is immersed in Mind, known as the “Christ Mind”. It has vision, the alternative to judgement and separation. Christ’s vision is a gift given to all, without exception. It reflects the indiscriminate love of our Creator. Healing, forgiveness, and blessing (they all mean the same thing) extend without any awareness of someone doing something. This is a constant outpouring of love. Meanwhile the body carries on with the details of living in the world without angst or effort.

“Nothing of lasting value can happen to someone who knows exactly what they want.” Nisargadatta

The most perfect Stradivarius violin needs a player for it to make beautiful sound. Likewise, the body instrument in the hands of The Maestro functions flawlessly. Used by the ego it will gather information for its stories. Bla, bla, bla, bla, bla.. The instrument itself is empty and filled with Silence. Its potential is fulfilled only when it is played by One Who knows what it is for and how to play it. When The Maestro plays there is a different world to see. Fear cannot be found. It is no where present.

A problem arises only when there appears to be a doer: some (separate) one who can take credit or blame. It is this that we attempt to do when we believe we have a life and a will of our own. A Course in Miracles refers to this as the authority problem.

Musings: The Seeker

March 19, 2010

There is something about a true spiritual seeker that sets them apart from everyone else, namely they are interested in going beyond what they presently know about themselves.

They are willing to pull up the anchor of history—their name, place, career, roles, and accomplishments up to now, and set sail across unknown waters for the Eternal.

Even the good days lived through the body’s senses are not enough to satisfy the seeker who more than likely has utilized them to the max, finally realizing that they change with the wind. Just a slight shift in the direction and a lovely mood is gone. He has learned the hard lesson that no lasting happiness is available through the senses.

Another quality of a seeker is a loss of interest in his personhood, that character that the world refers to by some name. There is some tarnish showing around the edges of his self concept, and some patches on his self esteem. No matter how lovely, successful, or happy his image appears to be there is a hollowness in it that he longs to have filled.

A true blue seeker is disillusioned with his plans for happiness for himself. Tired of convincing himself and others that his plans are working there is a weariness that tells the story of the many failed attempts. Perhaps there is another way to lasting happiness?

I set out on that journey almost as soon as I got here. I was very uncomfortable in my “skin suit” and didn’t much like the conditions. Of course, just like everyone else I didn’t know why until much later.

Becoming a learner is nothing more than admitting the following:

“I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself.” ACIM

“There is no statement the world is more afraid to hear than this.”

Many hands have been extended to help the seeker navigate the journey from here to here. A Course in Miracles, an invitation from the heart to the heart, is one of those hands. It takes us on a journey without distance, to a place we never left.

By the way, you already may know if you fit the profile of a seeker. You have a slight gentle smile on your face.

School of Reason

March 12, 2010

“Above all else I want to see.”

Like any course A Course in Miracles offers an opportunity to learn something that is considered to be of value. The similarities probably begin and end there.

Unlike most educational opportunities it is not aimed at improving who you are or the world you seem to be living in. It may have those residual benefits but that is not the goal.

Changing the way in which you see is the aim of the Course. Most of humanity does not currently believe there is another world to see. Only by transforming the one looking is that shift accomplished. A student first has to decide if he or she wants to become a learner in this particular way—a way that has no particular gains to the personal self. Peace of mind and vision are attained by transcendence of the personal.

If you feel called to make this kind of change you won’t be able to stop your Self from following it. The “you” who thinks it is living in a world and likes it (sometimes), may resist. On the other hand no teacher can give you this desire. You have it or you don’t.

“The invitation” goes on all the time. You choose when you are ready to hear it. “Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what to take at a given time.”

The curriculum is the miracle. “It is a required course”.
The miracle is the “awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance.”

The Course undoes the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence. “It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to…….”

The Lessons, all three-hundred and sixty-five, do the work in a realm that you are not even aware of. Your contribution to the process is to learn how not to interfere.

Pursuing this calling can feel like turning traitor to the conventional wisdom of the world. It is of a different order in which we acknowledge we are all learners together, leaning toward love while discovering our equality.

The peace any one of us experiences is shared by all since minds are already joined. While it appear that one is turning his back on the world it is from a selfless and transcendent view that we can bring the inner peace and love to the world that it needs so badly.

In 2009 a small enthusiastic group of student/learners in the way of the Course joined together to start a school for serious students. Collectively, we logged well over 100 years of devotion to the Course’s teachings and the practice of forgiveness. We called it the School of Reason (now School for A Course in Miracles) . I am currently its Director.

A word about the faculty of the SFACIM: Each of the teachers has pursued their calling vigilantly. They have direct experience of the miracle that the required course promises. Each of them engaged in a two-year process of unlearning so that they could learn to see differently. They know what takes to sincerely practice forgiveness and to receive the benefits of peace. They can help you make the best use of time.

If you are undecided about your spiritual goal and whether our School might help you attain it, you may find it valuable to attend an event sponsored by the SFACIM, or drop in to one of our teacher’s classes. You will find these events and classes posted here on our website.

You may also find a purposeful conversation with any one of faculty helpful in clarifing your interest in attending.

We go together or not at all.

Musings: Becoming a Learner

February 21, 2009

The pleasure of helping others learn started in first grade. I attended a one-room schoolhouse/church/town library combined in rural New Hampshire. A huge black wood-burning stove was the unifying amenity in an otherwise stark room that housed 21 students, grades 1 through 4, and our little desks along with 1 teacher and her very large library desk.

Mrs. Amos, my teacher, was a tall, thin, very erect woman with flame red hair that she wore in a sausage roll at the nape of her neck. Gold wire rim glasses magnified her large, soft brown eyes making them appear to be out of proportion to her thin face. The low heeled lace-up brown shoes on her feet were practical and sturdy like Mrs. Amos herself.

Mrs. Amos gave me my first experience of loving to learn. She innately knew what each child needed to contribute to be an active participant and she gave them that chance. Pudgy Goodwin brought in the fire wood and stoked the stove satisfying his need to move a lot and also to offset his lack of interest in academics. Georgiana Greenwood had a garden in the south facing windows where she was experimenting with sprouting seeds under different conditions. Janet Pierce, trouble maker that she was, got the perfect job for her—taking care of the stinky pens that housed the mice, hamsters and gerbils.

You would think our humble little school would have lacked opportunity, but Mrs. Amos had a huge bag of tricks at her disposal, and she used them all. We listened to classical music on Friday afternoons (music appreciation) , followed by all 21 of us playing our Tonettes (band practice). Our art room consisted of a closet with an easel and shelves filled with paints that Mrs Amos bought with her own money. The art closet was a special place because we could only get 2 or 3 “artists” in there, and only if we shut the door. Once that was accomplished it was more like a hideout and it was here that I heard some things I had never heard about before.

Mrs. Amos gave me the task of tutoring classmates in reading. I loved words and they co-operated by almost never stumping me as to their pronunciation and meaning. It was here on the back stairway that led to the library on the second floor that I first felt the pleasure of helping others learn.

I am still a learner. What I want to learn has changed however. Thirty or so years ago A Course in Miracles showed up in my life. It told me that I didn’t know what I was. It seemed to me that was a pretty important thing to know and a serious question to ask. “What am I?”

Most of us ask a question having already decided the answer so we are not really learners at all. To ask this question sincerely we have to come to it with empty hands—no prior understanding, no intended outcome, no idea of how or when the answer will arrive and what it will mean for us.True humility calls for the reliquishment of all our assumptions. It is the admission that I do not know.

The most important question is “What am I?” Living in the mystery, not knowing the answer is an exercise in trust. This holy ground is where God has His Way with me and I experience the ultimate pleasure of His Will of perfect happiness for me.

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