School for A Course In Miracles

"The universe of learning will open up before you."

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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GUILT, Part One: What is it, and Where is it ??

On Guilt, Part One:

“Do not be afraid to look within. The ego tells you all is black with guilt within you, and bids you not to look. Instead, it bids you look upon your brothers, and see the guilt in them. Yet this you cannot do without remaining blind. ” (Ch.13, Sec. IX)

 Guilt !

Why is the word guilt used and talked about in the Course almost 700 times?

Why does the Course insist we have to look at it, admit it, and let guilt go, if guilt isn’t real in the first place??

What is guilt anyway, and where and why is guilt hiding???

The good news: there’s only one internal kind of guilt in our minds that all external behavioral guilt is a reflection of… and it’s not real.

The bad news (from the ego’s point of view): there’s only one internal kind of guilt in our minds that all external behavioral guilt is a reflection of… and it’s not real.

What does that mean? All seeming guilt in the world, whether it’s your guilt for what you did, or it (maybe sometimes) is my guilt for what I did… has nothing to do with what and where the “real” guilt is lurking. The “real” guilt is always in the mind, and we feel it because we have chosen the internal teacher of separation (the ego) rather than the Voice for forgiveness (the Holy Spirit). Instead of admitting that, we then project that guilt (we call it blame, resentment, anger, whatever) onto other bodies, or our own. It is always simply a distraction from the actual source of guilt in our own mind for choosing to listen to the voice for separation, and then quickly forgetting we did that. So believing now we are bodies, we wind up thinking we don’t feel guilty, but the other guy certainly should, because look at what he did. I may not be aware of my own guilt, but I definitely see yours.

It is the Holy Spirit’s job (and His only) to help us look at this process and realize what we are doing. Then He helps us let that internal guilt go by seeing we made it up… it’s not even real. However, don’t try to do this by yourself…  cause we can’t.

We need to ask for the Holy Spirit’s help. We need Him to help us ‘step outside the box’ of believing we are bodies at the mercy of the world, and look at our identity as decision makers in our mind, choosing guilt or choosing forgiveness.

For the Course’s answers to the above questions (the what, where, and why of guilt), and practical insights into the process of letting guilt go, check out some of these Course references below…

[It is always helpful to remind ourselves that when the Course talks about ‘mind,’ it is not talking about the place in our bodies between our ears (the brain). It is however referring to a place, an experience deep within ourselves, where we are constantly choosing in any given moment between one of two inner guides or teachers, who help us interpret what we believe we see… the ego or the Holy Spirit.]

(1) What is guilt?

Ch.5, p.84 par.2-3… Belief in attack on God

If the ego is the symbol of the separation, it (the ego) is also the symbol of guilt. Guilt is more than merely not of God. It is the symbol of attack on God. This is a totally meaningless concept except to the ego, but do not underestimate the power of the ego’s belief in it. This is the belief from which all guilt really stems.

3 The ego is the part of the mind that believes in division (it is our own chosen, made-up, separated identity, at war with God). How could part of God detach itself without believing it is attacking Him? We spoke before of the authority problem as based on the concept of usurping God’s power. The ego believes that this is what you did because it believes that it is you (because we choose to believe the ego is us). If you identify with the ego (the thought of separation and sin), you must perceive yourself as guilty. Whenever you respond to your ego (as our guide) you will experience guilt, and you will fear punishment. The ego is quite literally a fearful thought. However ridiculous the idea of attacking God may be to the sane mind, never forget that the ego is not sane. It represents a delusional system, and speaks for it. Listening to the ego’s voice means that you believe it is possible to attack God (the sin we committed), and that a part of Him has been torn away by you (the guilt we feel). Fear of retaliation (the fear we will be punished) from without follows, because the severity of the guilt is so acute that it must be projected (onto the world).

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WB p.161 par.1; p.166 par. 2… Descriptions of ‘intense horror’ of ego’s guilt

You think you are the home of evil, darkness and sin. You think if anyone could see the truth about you he would be repelled, recoiling from you as if from a poisonous snake. You think if what is true about you were revealed to you, you would be struck with horror so intense that you would rush to death by your own hand, living on after seeing this being impossible. (Les. 93)

You see yourself as a ridiculous parody on God’s creation; weak, vicious, ugly and sinful, miserable and beset with pain. Such is your version of yourself; a self divided into many warring parts, separate from God, and tenuously held together by its erratic and capricious maker, to which you pray. It does not hear your prayers, for it is deaf. It does not see the oneness in you, for it is blind. It does not understand you are the Son of God, for it is senseless and understands nothing. (Les. 95)

(2) Where is guilt hiding?

Ch.5, p.86 par. 8… Decision of the mind

8 The continuing decision (in the mind) to remain separated is the only possible reason for continuing guilt feelings. We have said this before, but did not emphasize the destructive results of the decision. Any decision of the mind will affect both behavior and experience. What you want you expect. This is not delusional. Your mind does make your future, and it will turn it back to full creation at any minute if it accepts the Atonement (our guiltlessness) first.

Ch.13, p.236 par.1-2… Acceptance of guilt into the mind

1 If you did not feel guilty you could not attack, for condemnation is the root of attack. It is the judgment of one mind by another as unworthy of love and deserving of punishment. But herein lies the split. For the mind that judges perceives itself as separate from the mind being judged, believing that by punishing another, it will escape punishment. All this is but the delusional attempt of the mind to deny itself (its oneness with other minds), and escape the penalty of denial. It is not an attempt to relinquish denial, but to hold on to it. For it is guilt that has obscured the Father to you, and it is guilt that has driven you insane.

Projected onto the World…

2 The acceptance of guilt into the mind of God’s Son was the beginning of the separation, as the acceptance of the Atonement is its end. The world you see (which is projected from our mind’s choice for guilt) is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws that seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds seem to be trapped in their brain, and its powers to decline if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and are no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel (and guilty too).

Ch.13, p. 261 par.6… Always in your mind

6 See no one, then, as guilty, and you will affirm the truth of guiltlessness unto yourself. In every condemnation that you offer the Son of God lies the conviction of your own guilt. If you would have the Holy Spirit make you free of it, accept His offer of Atonement for all your brothers. For so you learn that it is true for you. Remember always that it is impossible to condemn the Son of God in part. Those whom you see as guilty become the witnesses to guilt in you, and you will see it there, for it is there until it is undone. Guilt is always in your mind, which has condemned itself. Project it not, for while you do, it cannot be undone. 

For more Course references on

(3) ‘Why’ we need to look at guilt?

(4)  ‘How’ do we look at it?

see…

“Guilt, Part Two”

(click here)

 

 

For Ken Wapnick CD sets (or MP3 downloads) on realizing and releasing guilt…

(click here)

 

(click here)

Replay of  SFACIM Class on…

Chap. 13: Introduction and Section 1

click here

 

Musings: The Five Laws of Chaos of The Ego

“The Five Laws of Chaos”

 

Discussed in Chap. 23 Sec. II of A Course in Miracles, these five chaotic “laws” are basically the laws or rules of the ego’s unhappy game of separation, The War Against Yourself (your true Self).

They, the “laws,” are put in quotes because as Jesus says they are not real laws but are simply made up descending rungs in an illusionary ladder, where we attempt to become a ‘something else,’ other than God’s One Son.

The problem is, Jesus continues, that we really do believe in them… and don’t realize we do.

He also says that once the first law is set in motion the other four automatically follow, and that you can’t have or believe in any one of them without the rest. It’s like a super slippery sliding board, where once you start you can’t stop till you crash at the bottom, ie. into the world we think we’re in.

Another way to look at these laws (or stages in our process of establishing an alternate ego identity)…  is to review the Chart and see how these are the ego’s five steps that we seem to take away from our awareness and experience of our true Identity in Heaven. That separation and descent into hell is actually impossible to do (even tho part of us wants to believe we did), and the Course calls that fact the Atonement Principle.

 

 

 

of The Ego

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Here they are in a nutshell:

The Laws of Chaos

The first three laws take place internally in us in what the Course calls the wrong mind:

1) “The truth is different for everyone.”

Our belief in sin: Differences are real, and those differences are important! There is a hierarchy of illusions. (in defiance of the first miracle principle: there is no hierarchy of miracles.)

2) “Each one must sin, and therefore deserves attack and death.”

Our belief in guilt: we did really sin, it was really terrible, and we will be punished.

3) “For if God cannot be mistaken, He must accept His Son’s belief in what he is, and hate him for it.”

Our belief in fear: we make up a God that is as crazy as we are, and we should be afraid! For He also believes we have sinned and we will be punished. But: we simply made up a God in our separated “image and likeness,” and then we told Him how He should think and feel, especially about us.

————

The 4th and 5th laws take place in the world (reflecting the first three laws of sin, guilt and fear in all our worldly relationships):

4) “This seeming law is the belief you have what you have taken.”

Special hates: In a savage world the kind cannot be kind. They must take or else be taken from, by others who are worse than themselves. The Course calls these our special hate relationships. 

5) “The final principle…holds there is a substitute for love (as crazy as it sounds, the Course calls this substitute: Fear!).”

Special loves: That substitute is hidden in my brother’s body and personhood, and he must be destroyed, in sometimes seemingly subtle ways… to get it back. We do this in disguise with the “face of innocence,”  a pretend niceness and disingenuous kindness, and without a real appreciation for our brothers or ourselves. I ‘need’ you to show me fear… that you ‘need’ me and are afraid that you will one day lose me, thru abandonment or death. (described in Ch. 31, Self-Concept vs. Self, p.656)

Ken Wapnick calls this substitute for love, not our true innocence as one Son of God, but the special innocence, special love or attention, that we as egos desperately need to sustain our individual made-up selves. To get this recognition of special innocence from others, we must cannibalize others to demand and ‘devour’ their time, energy, and regard. This process takes the forms of manipulation, control, threat, and compromise.

—————

Even in the world of time and space, so called “life” must eat other “life” in order to survive and maintain itself. This is simply a projection of the first law of chaos. My truth, or identity, is different from God’s truth.

And in order to be different and separate from our Father in Heaven, we believe we had to sever (kill) our connection with Him and steal (eat) a piece of His Life and run away with it. Thus the ego’s laws come full circle in the fourth, and especially fifth law of chaos… the special love relationship, the ego’s most boasted weapon. (Text p.341, par. 3).

I take, bargain, compromise with you… whatever it takes to get from you what I think i need… attention, esteem , ‘love,’ etc. in order to maintain and feel better about my chosen belief in this ego self.

Jesus tells us in Chapter 23:

18 “You would maintain, and think it true, that you do not believe these senseless laws, nor act upon them. And when you look at what they say, they cannot be believed.

Brother, you do believe them.

For how else could you perceive the form they take, with content such as this? Can any form of this be tenable? Yet you believe them for the form they take, and do not recognize the content. It never changes. Can you paint rosy lips upon a skeleton, dress it in loveliness, pet it and pamper it, and make it live? And can you be content with an illusion that you are living?

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.”

(par. 18-19 p. 493)

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Think about these laws and notice your reaction to them. Do they even seem credible?

Does any one of them particularly stand out?

How would you describe each of them in your own words?

The Laws of Chaos [CD]

For further discussion of the “Laws of Chaos”…  what they mean, how they play out in our special relationships, and most importantly how they can be acknowledged and released… listen to Ken Wapnick’s  CD set or MP3 download @ facim.org,

or read Ken’s comments in his insightful discourse “Journey through the Text,”  Volume Three, p. 213-220…

or see the SFACIM video on the Laws of Chaos: click here

 

 

Musings: Six Stages of Developing Trust in The Holy Spirit

IMG_1611

Six Stages (or Steps) on

The Ladder of the Development of Trust

… from The Manual p.9-11

(Start at bottom of this post with #1 “The Undoing”… and then move up the ladder to the top at #6 “Achievement”)

6) Period of Achievement: The Real World…we ‘go Holy Instant’, and stay there. This is what the Manual calls “advanced teachers of God”. This is when the nine other characteristics of God’s Teachers automatically become part of us. We then share our awareness of the sameness of God’s Son with all persons and all things in all situations.

5) Period of Unsettling: Dark night of the soul… Ken says it’s when all hell breaks loose. We begin to realize that our own belief in an ‘individual self’ is still holding back our awakening to our true Self . It is similar to lesson 93, when we realize that we still are holding on to a not-self of “evil, darkness and sin.” We are learning to lay all judgements aside…in every circumstance, even about who we think we are (at this stage, a decision maker who could choose the something else of an ego).

4) Period of Settling Down: Time of “reasonable peace”… we have learned that asking Jesus for help not only hasn’t killed us or even taken anything away, but we are actually feeling pretty good and hopeful, being able to ask for his vision whenever things push our buttons again. It’s the calm before the storm, or the eye of the hurricane.

3) Period of Relinquishment: Giving up what doesn’t work… we are starting to see that things that used to seem valuable to us, like getting the stuff we thought we wanted (special love), and blaming and judging others (special hate) and keeping away what we don’t want, may not really be working for us. But we are not quite ready to give some of that up. So there can be a sense of sacrifice during this time. What we really learn to relinquish is not stuff or certain behaviors, but we simply let go of keeping Jesus and his perception of us and the world out of our awareness.

2) Period of Sorting Out: Learning what’s valuable, what isn’t…by asking Jesus to help us see that we are not upset or temporarily happy for the reason we think. We used to think certain things/people caused us pain or pleasure, and then the inevitable pain when the other shoe dropped. Now we are beginning to see that what only brings us true peace is inviting  Jesus into our awareness, to help us look at our misplaced investments (distractions). 

1) Period of Undoing: Changing teachers… from the ego’s ladder that goes nowhere (“lookin for luv in all the wrong places”), we get on the ladder of the Holy Spirit that takes us back to the right mind. We ask Jesus for help to be our new teacher.

Recent Replay of Course & Coffee Chat on the six stages of trust: 

 

(click here)

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

 

 

(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.

 

water drip

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

 

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

The Essential Metaphysics of A Course in Miracles: 4 classes

Without understanding the non-dual metaphysics of A Course in Miracles it is impossible to apply the workbook lessons that will change your mind and the way you see the world.

In this series of 4 classes you will learn

  • what the course means by “mind training”,
  • how to integrate the metaphysics into your life,
  • the significance of accepting you are a mind,
  • how to use the mind on behalf of awakening.

We will consider the benefits of making this momentous decision and address the fears that arise in the process.

The purpose of offering this class is to present A Course in Miracles as a path to inner peace so that you can decide if it is right one for you.

This is an ideal class for beginners and ongoing students who want to review the metaphysics.

Four Sunday Afternoon Classes

May 26, 2013

June 9, 23, and 30, 2013

2 to 4 p.m.

In the library of RMMC

Tuition: $80, for 4 classes

To register contact Lyn Corona or 303-880-7713

Rocky Mountain Miracle Center

1939 S. Monroe St.

Denver, CO 80210

Lyn Corona began her study of A Course in Miracles in 1976 and has been teaching its message of peace through forgiveness for more than 20 years. She is a founder and faculty member of the School for A Course in Miracles. 

Here’s a downloadable, printable (pdf) flyer for this series of classes.

class: Essential Metaphysics of A Course In Miracles - School for A Course in Miracles - logo

Musings: A Simple Daily Practice

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.