Musings: The Five Laws of Chaos of The Ego

March 26, 2020

“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.

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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.

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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?

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: The Four Obstacles to My Peace of Mind

March 6, 2020

The Obstacles to Peace

(Chapter 19, Section IV, p. 406-424)

The Course tells us that there are basically four obstacles to finding our true peace of mind…

(with four correlating subheadings, delineated by an “i”):

A. The Desire to Get Rid of It (Peace)

i. The Attraction of Guilt

B. The Belief the Body Is Valuable for What It Offers (A place for our projected guilt, seen as the body’s pain or pleasure)

i. The Attraction of Pain

C. The Attraction of Death (not just death of the body, but belief in the idea of death)

i. The Incorruptible Body

D. The Fear of God (The fear of Love, the fear of sinlessness)

i. The Lifting of the Veil

The Titles Themselves

The first striking thing hits us as we begin to look at these titles above!

Jesus is telling us that the very qualities or feelings that we are attracted to… are not peace, not joy, and not love.

In our make-believe separated state, he literally says we are attracted to their opposites: we are really attracted to guilt, to pain, and to death. These unrecognized attractions to terrible stuff are three of our main obstacles to peace.

For many of us, is that even in our awareness? Do we really believe that?

But, what if it’s possibly true though?… How often have we tried at peace, love, or joy, and seemed to miss the mark? Or even if we felt them temporarily, the other shoe eventually dropped. What if just below our seeming conscious desires for peace and love… something else is going on in our minds. What if we are really trying to push real peace and love away? What if we are not upset, or attracted, or whatever, for the reasons that we consciously think? (WB Lesson #5)

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Then there’s the title of the fourth obstacle, “The Fear of God!” So it gets worse… even more insulting to our egos. Not only does Jesus tell us we are attracted to some real nasty things like pain and death, but then he says that what we are really fearful of isn’t the bad stuff, to which we are attracted, but God Himself. He says that we are not really seeking for God’s Love, but we have actually convinced ourselves we are afraid of It.

So once again is that possible? Is the Course correct, as the country western song laments… we are “lookin for love in all the wrong places”… because we are truly afraid to find it?

The Four Grand Self-Deceptions (Obstacles)

One way of looking at the four obstacles and their order is to review our Wapnick Chart and the Course’s story of how we got here in the world (or at least believing that we’re here)… and then we retrace the steps of our descent into the hell of the world (and the self-imposed obstacles to our return to Heaven), starting with where we think we are now:

We believe are bodies in a world, very vulnerable to the both physical and emotional attacks of others… obviously a not very peaceful state of existence to say the least. But it doesn’t look or feel like something we inwardly chose to be in. But what if it’s true, that my ego internal choice is constantly choosing to perceive a a state of conflict, so I can blame my lack of peace on someone else, and not realizeI chose it. And thus my desire to get rid of peace for that very purpose. And so what if it’s true, that I’m never feeling un-peaceful or upset for the conscious reason I think, that it’s somebody else’s fault? (See Les. # 5)
The convincing, convicting, and conniving guilt we made-up in our minds is projected (misplaced) onto the body, especially others bodies guilty of what they did to mine. The ‘proof’ lies in all the seeming pains and pleasures of our bodies: the belief that the body is valuable for what it offers (guilt galore!). We made up a universe of time and space with many individual bodies for this purpose. Yes I feel pain or pleasure, but it’s seems to be coming from something external to my personality and my body.We believe our pain comes from what other bodies are doing to us (or even what our own body is doing), but we never admit the pain might be coming from the source of guilt in our mind… thus “the attraction of pain.” The body’s seeming pain in the body keeps us distracted from pain’s real source, the guilt within which was made up to prove our separation from Peace. The body’s seeming pleasure (special love) is simply a set up to place the internal guilt on someone else when the special love eventually fails and seems to now be our source of pain.
And then the most insulting attraction of all… what Jesus calls our “dedication to death.” The internal belief in a spiritual death (the end of ourselves as spirit at one with our Heavenly Father) is now projected onto the death of our bodies with which we identify. It is the ultimate ‘proof’ that we left Heaven’s peace. There is and can be no death in heaven, only eternal Life at one with Itself. However once again, from a body’s point of view, our belief in death does not seem to be our choice nor our fault. We tell ourselves that we were born into bodies that simply die…we didn’t choose to do that… it just happens, or worse we blame it all on God. We believe death is real, but of course we don’t want to believe we are actually attracted to it, much less responsible for making the idea of it up in the first place. Death once again proves we pulled off the impossible, and left Heaven.
Finally, back to the ego’s beginning, the tiny mad idea of separation… We, identifying as a separated self (the ego), convince ourselves that we are now afraid of God. On one level we tell ourselves that He is going to punish us (ultimately with death, then hell) for what we did, i.e. leave Heaven. However on a deeper level, the Course tells us that we are not actually afraid of God’s wrath, but that we’re really afraid He’s not upset at all… because nothing really happened. That means no individual us, no bodies, no nothing… everything we think we are, believe in, and seem to react to, all nothing. Jesus constantly reminds us that we couldn’t and didn’t leave our true Identity in Heaven, even if some part of us seemed to want to. Chapter 13 (p.242, par.1-2) clearly tells us:

“You are not really afraid of crucifixion (we think crucifixion is the payment God demanded of His Son). Your real terror is of redemption.” The Atonement principle says separation didn’t and couldn’t happen. God’s experience of love and oneness in Heaven with His Son, which is our only true Identity, does not include or know any experience of a separated state.

It does all sound like Star Wars: In a time long long ago and in a galaxy far far away, we seemed to step outside of our true reality in Heaven and play around with the ‘tiny mad idea’ of being separate from Heaven’s Peace…in other words we toyed with “our desire to get rid of peace.” This started the ego’s make-believe ballgame of separation rolling… To insure believing we actually did separate and did leave our true state of peace, we then made up the feelings of sin, guilt, and fear…thus feelings which ‘prove’ to ourselves we did a really bad thing and did separate from our Father in Heaven. And then all that awareness was repressed, ‘forgotten,’ and the responsibility for our own lack of peace projected onto something or someone in the world.

It seems like we did this in some distant past, but we would be having a true experience of peace right now, if we were not still putting up theses unacknowledged blocks to our awareness right this moment. We need to work on this because it is happening right now.

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Moving through and undoing (with the HS help) the four obstacles to peace are basically the letting go of believing ego’s story of the unholy trinity in our wrong mind: sin, guilt, and fear, that we told ourselves and accepted as reality:

1. sin (we threw Our True Identity as God’s One Son away),

2. guilt (the made-up pain we feel for doing just that, then projected onto the body and its ultimate death), and

3. fear (consciously of God’s punishment, but really of God’s Love)

So, through the process of forgiveness, we look at and uncover each of these stages (obstacles) and become willing to let each one go, not by ourselves, but with of ‘course’ the help of Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, by our side.

The Way Back:

The ACIM Forgiveness Process

The question that Jesus recommends that we learn to ask of the Holy Spirit, about anything is…”what is it for?”

From the ego’s point of view the purpose of our obstacles to peace are just that… self-chosen obstacles that are kept out of our conscious awareness, so it looks like we are running after and chasing peace, when we really are not… the Course says our self-accepted ego mantra becomes “Seek but do not find.”

The Holy Spirit’s reverse purpose, for the obstacles we made up, is to…

1. look at and acknowledge them

2. see their insanity, and the pain (the cost) for believing in them to maintain a separated identity in something that we’re not, and

3. be willing to ask for His help in seeing beyond those obstacles to the “real world” (an experience that our innocence and our brothers’ innocence is still intact, despite what we think we see and hear…)

The Starting Place

Two of the major themes that Jesus develops throughout this entire section (and especially in the section’s intro and the ‘Lifting of the Veil’ at the end) are that the way we move through and beyond each and every obstacle is…

With the Holy Spirit’s help, to have a Holy Relationship with the Holy Spirit in our minds. This then is reflected in our relationships with all our brothers.

He tells us that the first step in connecting with the Holy Spirit’s help is always to ask ourselves… are we willing to look past our judgements of each other, with His Help, to see the true innocence within? This begins the “Lifting of the Veil” of our belief in sin, guilt, and fear, and is specifically spelled out in the Text on p.421, par.8, line 7:

“But first, lift up your eyes and look on your brother in innocence born of complete forgiveness of his illusions, and through the eyes of faith (the HS) that sees them not.”

With each obstacle to peace, we used our brother’s body, personality, and actions as a scapegoat for our own inner choice to get rid of peace, and then blame our guilt and pain on him. To recognize that, by asking for the Holy Spirit’s help, is the only way back in in letting go of each of these obstacles to peace, these “blocks to the awareness of Love’s presence,” that we ourselves put there and then denied. (see the Course’s Introduction on p.1 in the Text)

Another way Jesus describes as the way to start this process is in the Text, p.441, par.9. He tells us don’t even ask how to see my my brother or myself without a body… but am I willing to see past my judgements and have an experience of his and my guiltlessness, the process of true forgiveness. (Click here for explanation of forgiveness in ACIM.)

Your question should not be, “How can I see my brother without the body?” Ask only, “Do I really wish to see him sinless?”… forget not that his sinlessness is (also) your escape from fear.

The second step in the process is… am I willing to see beyond my own seeming guilt for having thrown Heaven away? The same way I was willing to forgive my brother for what he did not do (cause me pain), am I willing to ask Jesus for help… to let go of believing I left him and my Father in Heaven for something else (a separate identity)? He did not go anywhere. And I simply pretended I did.

What if all that seeming separation is just not true?

Not recognizing that that has been my problem all along… not that I actually did separate from what I/ we truly are, but I only convinced myself I did. And then to ask for help to let that silly belief go “back into the nothingness from which it came.”

And then I begin to realize: that each of the obstacles to my peace of mind that seemed like real obstacles were never there, and were all made up.

For further discussion of the “Obstacles to Peace,” see Ken Wapnick’s CD set or MP3 Download on “Lifting of the Veil”

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**or Ken’s “Journey through the Text,” Volume Three, p.78-92.**

Musings: Six Stages of Developing Trust in The Holy Spirit

February 4, 2020

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)

“No pain, no gain… Really?”

January 7, 2020

What is pain? What’s it for?

Did God really do this to us?

Watching the news last night really brought home to me how much relentless pain the planet seems to be in… both here, and abroad.

And then there is our own personal pain: physical, emotional, psychological… sometimes in spurts, at times chronic… sometimes mild, sometimes horrific.

Is it possible to somehow transcend all this stuff, and move beyond it into our true being and into a higher awareness, without being uncompassionate, uncaring, and disconnected?

A Course in Miracles discusses pain throughout the entire book, using words like suffering and pain more than 600 times. Two sections, that spend a lot of time looking at pain and its purpose, are “The (Our) Attraction to Pain” in Chapter 19, and Lessons 190, 193, 194, & 195 in the Workbook.

One of the most humiliating (to our egos anyway) and sometimes downright infuriating things that Jesus tells us about pain is this… It’s not that we don’t like pain or try to avoid it, but we are actually attracted to it. Really?

It gets worse… He continues with statements like: “In your suffering of any kind, you see your own concealed desire to kill.” (Text, p.659, par.15)

Ok, wait… back up…if that’s even possibly true: what, how… why ??

From Jesus point of view, pain is the great and grand witness to our supposed separation from Our Father. It screams our separated selves are real, and proves it by loudly proclaiming “I’m real, I exist, because look how much pain I’m in!”

(First off, don’t be a martyr. Even Mother Teresa said, if you’re in pain, take your medicine if you wish to. Jesus concurs. If you have a headache, or whatever, take an aspirin, take a walk, or do what makes you feel better. It would be silly not to.)

Unconscious pain permeates all three parts of our make-believe “Disconnect from Heaven” story of sin, guilt, and fear… each component of that saga can at least be described as incredibly painful.. the separation from Source (sin), the feeling of awfulness (guilt), and the sweat of terror of impending doom (fear).

**[Click here for the Course story of how we believe we got here, into the world as bodies.]**

But what if the pain was simply made up to reinforce the seeming reality of the story. We are God’s Son after all, and our cosmic make-believe might not only seem actually real, but so real that we even convinced ourselves to believe it… especially by adding the element of pain to the drama…

“If God is real, there is no pain. If pain is real , there is no God.”

(WB#190, par. 3)

Ok, ok… we sorta get the metaphysics, but what do we do now? How do we start to ‘undo’ this whole thing?

When I began working the lessons way back when, I realized one of my problems was… I didn’t consciously believe any of the Lesson titles. For example take one of the the first in-your-face lessons, WB #5 … “I am never upset for the reason I think.” Not maybe, not sometimes, but never.

Seriously? I’m always upset for the reason I think… that’s why I’m upset in the first place. I wouldn’t be upset if it were not for… ok, whatever. At least I can admit that’s what I believe. But, like Byron Katie always says in her sessions with others… “Is that true?”

So to start, I put a what if in front of the lesson (and actually all Lesson titles)… What if I’m not upset for the reason I think? Am I even a little willing to go there? Some part of me says yes. That at least opens the door for me to look at maybe another possibility.

So, what then might be the real reason I’m upset? This is when we/I definitely need to ask Jesus for help to be able to ‘see outside the box.’ My ego experience has always locked me in to blaming others for my pain… sometime myself or my own behavior, but mostly others.

What if I’m upset, in pain, feeling terrible physically or psychologically… simply because I’ve dropped Jesus hand, left my Father in Heaven, and am pretending I’m this separated thing that can feel pain and eventually die? And I’m blaming something or somebody else for the pain I see and feel.

Would I even be willing to entertain the possibility that I made this up?

Another reason we really need Jesus or the Holy Spirit’s help when looking at this is… not only do we not believe it, but it’s really ego-easy to begin beating ourselves up if we did choose something this stupid…. Now I’m not only in pain, plus now I’m blaming myself for creating this mess in the first place… a double whammy ! I hear myself begin the ego litany… “Bad Course student, bad… !”

But then, if I’m willing to listen to another voice, and change ‘course,’ I feel Jesus gently saying to me…

Stop… stop. Look at me; talk to me. Sit with me for a while… let me help you experience something else, something wonderful. I love you. Softly, listen… you are not this separated-alone-self in pain. You and I are connected… to each other, and to everyone else. We always are, we always will be. Be willing to feel this… God is loving us now!

Suddenly, as if someone threw a switch, I’m in a lot less pain, and I’m not as crazed as I was a moment before…

**Jesus doesn’t tell me ‘no pain, no gain’…. he simply says ‘no pain… no pain.‘**

For further discussion of pain and specifically the line from Lesson #190,

“Peace to Such Foolishness,” on Ken Wapnick’s CD set or MP3 download: click here.

Autobiographical Book Release From Ken Wapnick’s Writings: “Symphony of Love”

May 6, 2019

The Temecula Foundation has released an autobiographical book from Dr. Kenneth Wapnick’s writings called a “Symphony of Love.”

Excerpt from Intro by Gloria Wapnick: The book begins with two very powerful unpublished autobiographies, My Life with God and My Life with Jesus. The first, My Life with God, Kenneth wrote at the request of Helen Schucman, who urged him to do that project in 1973. The second, My Life with Jesus, was done mostly after we moved to Temecula in 2001, since people kept asking for one…

Click here for more info and how to order

The Gifts of God Prose Poem

March 23, 2019

The Gifts of God Prose Poem was the last of dictated messages to Helen Schucman from Jesus. It is contained at the end of a collection of poetry by Helen, also called by the same title,

The Gifts of God.

(click here to purchase)

The year was 1978. The Course had already been taken down by Helen Schucman and was published. The two Course pamphlets (Psychotherapy & Song of Prayer) were also already scribed, between 1975 and 1977.

It was a cold, snowy February weekend in New York City… and Ken Wapnick was scheduled to head out of the Big Apple on a train for a couple days, to a Catholic center (about 30 miles north) to do some counseling work. Helen was terrified that Ken would be hurt, or worse, in an impending snowstorm. She had already talked him out of going the previous weekend for the same reason, and Ken dutifully said that this time he had to go, and he did. Helen had herself so worked-up about it, that her conscious fear became over-the-top and out of control. Later, by 3am in the middle of the night, she decided to finally talk to Jesus about it.

What then developed, over a three month period thru April of ’78, were Jesus messages to help her walk thru… not the distracting conscious fear about Ken’s safety, but the real underlying fear (hers and ours) of simply letting go of separation and being with Jesus. These messages were collectively put together in what today is known as the Gifts of God Prose Poem.

The best description of this process, and a great discussion by Ken Wapnick on the contents of this piece, is Ken’s ten CD set/MP3 download:

“The Gift of the Ego (Fear) vs The Gift of God (Love)”

Click here for info.

The Gifts of God Prose Poem contains five sections (on 14 pages):

The Dream of Fear
The Two Gifts
The Ending of The Dream
Our Gift to God
The Father’s Love

The Prose Poem is a beautifully written synopsis of the entire Course, with all its verses in Shakespearean iambic pentameter. For best understanding, it is recommended and helpful to have some clear previous study of the Course’s basic metaphysics, prior to reading and applying the poem’s teachings to our lives.

However The Gifts of God Prose Poem is an insightful capstone to the Course itself, and resonates with all Course students as an incredible addendum that wonderfully crowns A Course in Miracles.

**Also, for a complete discussion of the entire Prose Poem by the School for ACIM, visit the SFACIM’s replay series on this amazing literary work of art…**

and the expression of Jesus’ love for us in it:

click here

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

March 22, 2019

(by Tim Wise)

Songs & Movies about Time:

Many great songs have been sung about ‘time’…

“Time, time, time…see what’s become of me….” Simon & Garfunkel Hazy Shade of Winter
“Does anybody really know what time it is, does anybody really care?”… Chicago
“If you’re lost you can look, and you will find me… Time after Time“… Cyndi Lauper
“There is a season (turn, turn, turn), and a time to every purpose, under heaven”… Byrds

Oprah a while back put out the movie A Wrinkle in Time. It joins a list of more than a hundred movies with “Time” in the title, many in which the characters seem to step outside of time, somehow control it, and/or jump around in it.

Some of the more memorable ones are: Somewhere in Time, Out of Time, A Time to Kill, The Time Machine, and my favorite… Time Bandits. And there are dozens more about time without time in the title, including: Deja Vu, Groundhog Day, and even the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life.

Time holds an incredible fascination and investment for all of us, and we hear it resound every time we wish each other a “Happy New Year.” It’s a greeting that conveys our hopefulness for a new time, a year that’s soon coming that will preferably be better than previous years.

Ken Wapnick said that of all the many topics that Course students ask him to discuss, the subject of time was inquired about more than all the others.

The Course says the only question we should ever ask about anything is… “What is it for?” What is its purpose? And there’s only two possible answers. At the level of the mind, is it to help support the ego thought system of separation, to confirm the ego’s identity story of sin-guilt-fear? Or does it become a classroom for the Holy Spirit to teach us forgiveness, i.e. letting go of our own belief in separation and blaming others and God for it?

So we will turn to the issue of ‘time’ with these same questions… what is time for? What is time’s purpose from an ego point of view… or from the Holy Spirit’s true perception of it?

But first let’s look at some of the ways time is talked about in the Course. Time is mentioned right away, early on, in five of the 50 Miracle Principles at the beginning of the ACIM Text (p.4-6):

#15 (time’s purpose),
Each day should be devoted to miracles (in the Course a miracles is simply an act of true forgiveness and its result). The purpose of time is to enable you to learn how to use time constructively. It is thus a teaching device and a means to an end. Time will cease when it is no longer useful in facilitating learning (forgiveness).
#19 (miracles and time),
Miracles make minds one in God. They depend on cooperation, because the Sonship is the sum of all that God created. Miracles therefore reflect the laws of eternity, not of time.
#25 (miracles as holographic in time),

Miracles are part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which, when completed, is the Atonement. Atonement works all the time and in all the dimensions of time.

#47 (miracles as timeless),

The miracle is a learning device that lessens the need for time. It establishes an out-of-pattern time interval not under the usual laws of time. In this sense it is timeless.

#48 (miracles controlling time).

The miracle is the only device at your immediate disposal for controlling time. Only revelation transcends it, having nothing to do with time at all.

Time does not really exist.

Jesus introduces some amazing ideas about time in the above lines, that will be developed later in the Course. He quickly re-emphasizes however some of these same miracle principles on time… one page later in Chap. 1, Sec II, “Revelation, Time and Miracles.”

⁴ “No man cometh unto the Father but by me” does not mean that I am in any way separate or different from you, except in time, and time does not really exist…

⁶ The miracle minimizes the (ego’s) need for time. In the longitudinal or horizontal plane (of time and space), the recognition of the equality of the members of the Sonship appears to involve almost endless time. However, the miracle entails a sudden shift (The Holy Instant), from horizontal (in the world) to vertical perception (in the mind). This introduces an interval from which the giver and receiver both emerge farther along in time than they would otherwise have been. (Jesus later in The Text does call this the Holy Instant.) The miracle thus has the unique property of abolishing time to the extent that it renders the interval of time it spans unnecessary. There is no relationship between the time a miracle takes and the time it covers. The miracle substitutes for learning that might have taken thousands of years. It does so by the underlying recognition of perfect equality of giver and receiver on which the miracle rests (the willingness, to let go of the past and experience this equality as one Son of God… is described later in the Course as forgiveness). The miracle shortens time by collapsing it, thus eliminating certain intervals within it. ( T p.7-8, par. 4 & 6)

The most hard hitting of the above lines,to our egos anyway, is … “time does not really exist.” He echoes this again and again throughout the Course, saying things like… “Time is a trick, a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures seem to come and go as if by magic.” (Les. 158, p.298, par.4)

The Ego’s Use of Time: Preserving Our Belief in Sin & Separation

In Heaven, time does not exist at all. Therefore it doesn’t exist, period. Everything outside of heaven is simply illusion, including time (… Course Metaphysics 101). We don’t believe that, but Jesus is very matter of fact that’s just the way it is…

When we seemed to step outside of heaven and play with the idea of separation in our mind, we made up the sin-guilt-fear story to prove to ourselves we actually pulled off a cosmic disconnect from our Father and our true identity in Heaven. We separated (our sin in the past) and it was/is terrible (the guilt we feel now) and we will be punished (fear of the future). We then projected that story onto an entire made-up universe of time and space. Space proves our separation (I’m here and you’re over there)… and time (past, present, future) provides a screen for the projection of our mind’s sin-guilt-fear story, except now it gets projected onto others. Sin-guilt-fear is alive and well but it’s in you, not me…it’s your sin in the past (not mine so much), the present guilt that you certainly have, and the fear of threatening punishment and doom about the future that you should feel, as payment for what you did.

As you look upon yourself and judge what you do honestly, you may be tempted to wonder how you (or your brother) can be guiltless. Yet consider this: You (and your brother) are not guiltless in time, but in eternity. You have “sinned” in the past, but there is no past. Always has no direction. Time seems to go in one direction, but when you reach its end it will roll up like a long carpet spread along the past behind you, and will disappear. As long as you believe the Son of God is guilty you will walk along this carpet, believing that it leads to death. And the journey will seem long and cruel and senseless, for so it is. (Text p.237, par.3)

The Carpet of Time

The Course tells us consistently the Son of God is still and forever guiltless (the Atonement principle). In the moment of seeming separation, time seemed to roll out like a long carpet, and immediately rolled back up with our acceptance of the Atonement. It’s already a done deal. What appears to be happening is that we are just reviewing that carpet of time in a linear way from our individual viewpoint in time and space, and have not quite reached the Atonement part of the story yet. ( “For we but see the journey from the point at which it ended, looking back on it, imagining we make it once again; reviewing mentally what has gone by.”…Les. #158). So in a sense we are all in replay mode, watching something that’s already happened.

But in truth (Heaven), it didn’t happen at all…

So… did you get all that? Ken Wapnick and Jesus both caution us to not try to wrap our brains around these ideas about time (as part of the world’s illusion, brains were made not to to ‘get’ them). However we are promised an internal experience in our minds through forgiveness, where we eventually understand and feel this truth as an experience.

And we can do that now, with Jesus’ help. In fact the only time we can do it is… now. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, but now.

Alright then, that’s a general look at the metaphysics of time… but what does that have to do with me, believing I am moving thru linear time? Where do I begin?

Take another look at the first nine Workbook Lessons. The first six entail how there’s something seriously amiss with the way we are seeing, thinking about, or understanding anything. Lessons 7 & 8 explain why: I see only the past because I’m preoccupied with it. What it doesn’t say here in these lessons (but in many other places in the Course) is that what we are preoccupied with (and actually obsessed with) … is guilt! Lesson 9 more than implies the answer lies in our willingness to admit our preoccupation with the past (based on separation, sin and guilt), and let the past go.

Guilt is promoted, encouraged, and locked in place with our concept of time… We are sure that guilt is very real, whether it’s your guilt or mine. Terrible things happened to us or were done by us in the past. This ‘proves’ that the present is not only on very shaky ground, but that the future is bound to repeat the past… especially when we are not continually on-guard.

I see only the past… Old ideas about time are very difficult to change, because everything you believe is rooted in time, and depends on your not learning these new ideas about it. Yet that is precisely why you need new ideas about time. This first time idea (I see only the past) is not really so strange as it may sound at first. (Les.#7)

My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts. This idea is, of course, the reason why you see only the past. No one really sees anything. He sees only his thoughts (of separation) projected outward. The mind’s preoccupation with the past is the cause of the misconception about time from which your seeing suffers. Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is. It therefore cannot understand time, and cannot, in fact, understand anything.

The one wholly true thought one can hold about the past is that it is not here. To think about it at all is therefore to think about illusions. Very few have realized what is actually entailed in picturing the past or in anticipating the future. The mind is actually blank when it does this, because it is not really thinking about anything. (Les.#8)

One thing to consider, in looking at these ideas about guilt and time: I might not be aware of my own guilt or even of feeling guilty at all, but most of us can quickly admit to and see the other guy’s guilt. His guilt or my guilt… doesn’t matter… guilt is guilt. The Course constantly reminds us that what I see in my brother is what I really see in myself: one finger pointing at him, three fingers pointing back at me… maybe not the same in behavior or form, but certainly the same in motivation and content.

The longest chapter in the Text, and the longest Course expose’ on guilt is Chapter 13, “The Guiltless World.” Also, one of the longest discussions on time is in the very same chapter, in sections IV “The Function of Time” and VI “Finding The Present,” because our belief in time is the great preserver of guilt.

As long as we are not totally in this moment (a Holy Instant in our minds), and we are invested in making serious decisions about a seeming past and a ‘not-yet’ future, we are back in guilt mode…maintaining separation but blaming it on someone else.

This is not to beat up ourselves, or call ourselves bad Course students for buying into time and preserving guilt. It’s simply to remind us there’s more work to be done, and to remember to ask Jesus for help to look at it the way he does.

The ego has a strange notion of time, and it is with this notion that your questioning might well begin. The ego invests heavily in the past, and in the end believes that the past is the only aspect of time that is meaningful. Remember that its emphasis on guilt enables it to ensure its continuity by making the future like the past, and thus avoiding the present. By the notion of paying for the past in the future, the past becomes the determiner of the future, making them continuous without an intervening present. For the ego regards the present only as a brief transition to the future, in which it brings the past to the future by interpreting the present in past terms.

… It dictates your reactions to those you meet in the present from a past reference point, obscuring their present reality. In effect, if you follow the ego’s dictates you will react to your brother as though he were someone else, and this will surely prevent you from recognizing him as he is… And you will receive messages from him out of your own past because, by making it real in the present, you are forbidding yourself to let it go. You thus deny yourself the message of release that every brother offers you now. The shadowy figures from the past are precisely what you must escape. They are not real, and have no hold over you unless you bring them with you.

It is evident that the Holy Spirit’s perception of time is the exact opposite of the ego’s. The reason is equally clear, for they perceive the goal of time as diametrically opposed. The Holy Spirit interprets time’s purpose as rendering the need for time unnecessary… The ego, on the other hand, regards the function of time as one of extending itself in place of eternity, for like the Holy Spirit, the ego interprets the goal of time as its own. The continuity of past and future, under its direction, is the only purpose the ego perceives in time, and it closes over the present so that no gap in its own continuity can occur. (Text p.245, par.4-8)

In summary, Jesus tells us (in Chap. 13):

“You consider it natural to use your past experience as the reference point from which to judge the present. Yet this is unnatural because it is delusional. When you have learned to look on everyone with no reference at all to the past, either his or yours as you perceive it, you will be able to learn from what you see now. For the past can cast no shadow to darken the present, unless you are afraid of light. And only if you are would you choose to bring darkness (guilt) with you, and by holding it in your mind, see it as a dark cloud that shrouds your brothers and conceals their reality from your sight…

To be born again is to let the past go, and look without condemnation upon the present. The cloud that obscures God’s Son to you is the past, and if you would have it past and gone, you must not see it now. If you see it now in your illusions, it has not gone from you, although it is not there…

You would destroy time’s continuity by breaking it into past, present and future for your own purposes. You would anticipate the future on the basis of your past experience, and plan for it accordingly. Yet by doing so you are aligning past and future, and not allowing the miracle, which could intervene between them, to free you to be born again…

The miracle (by asking the Holy Spirit’s help to do this…) enables you to see your brother without his past (our own guilt projected onto him), and so perceive him as born again. His errors are all past, and by perceiving him without them you are releasing him (the Course’s definition of forgiveness). And since his past is yours, you share in this release. Let no dark cloud out of your past obscure him from you, for truth lies only in the present, and you will find it if you seek it there. You have looked for it where it is not, and therefore have not found it. Learn, then, to seek it where it is, and it will dawn on eyes that see. Your past was made in anger, and if you use it to attack the present, you will not see the freedom that the present holds.” (Text p.250, par.2-5)

Make This Year Different by Making It All the Same… guilt-free and holy.

Happy New Year!!

What is a Miracle?

(WB p. 473)

¹ A miracle is a correction. It does not create, nor really change (anything) at all. It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false. It undoes error, but does not attempt to go beyond perception, nor exceed the function of forgiveness. Thus it stays within time’s limits. Yet it paves the way for the return of timelessness and love’s awakening, for fear must slip away under the gentle remedy it brings.

Other References in the Course on Time:

1) Ch.26, p.550, par. 3-5, 9-10 “The Little Hindrance”

2) Les. #158, p.298, par.2-4, 9-11 “Today I learn to give as I receive.”

3) Les. 169, p. 323, par. 4-11 “By grace I live. By grace I am released.”

4) Manual #2, p.5, par. 2-4 “Who are their (God’s teachers) pupils?”

Ken Wapnick CD sets (and MP3 downloads ) on Time:

1) The Clear and Shining Instant of Time (9 CDs)

2) The Time Machine (4 CDs)

3) The Metaphysics of Time (4 CDs) : A Lyn and Tim Favorite, also available as DVD

4) The Meaning of the Holy Instant (2 CDs)

5) How Will The World End? (2 CDs)

6) Forgiveness and The End of Time (4 CDs)

7) From Time to Timelessness (2 CDs)

**(click here for descriptions and links to FACIM bookstore)**

Ken Wapnick’s Book on

Time, A Vast Illusion

Musings: On ‘Idols’ in “A Course in Miracles”

October 24, 2018

Idols & Idolatry

(The word ‘idol’ is used 172 times in the Course)

Definitions of “Idol” from Ken Wapnick’s Glossary of Course Terms:

A false belief that there can be something or someone other than God or more than God.
Symbol of the substitution of the ego for our one true Self or God.
A belief in separation projected onto special relationships with things, people, or ideas.
The Anti-Christ

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The first idol we made-up in our minds (and in a sense worshipped) was our belief that we could be a separated Son of God, autonomous and distinct from our Father in Heaven. The Course calls that “new” identity/idol ego. This silly belief gets projected onto time and space, with all our worldly idols a reflection of that original mistaken error.

These ‘idols’ includes all our special love and hate relationships, with things and people we like, and things and people we don’t like. All those “idols” are simply mirrors of that believed separation within us in our mind. That is their purpose in the world… to keep us involved in all the worldly drama, and not realize their source.

The way out, of taking this seemingly gigantic hallucination seriously, is to see past those worldly idols and be willing to have an experience beyond them (with Jesus and the Holy Spirit’s help), to the true innocence of others and ourselves as God’s One Son, still intact. The Course calls that willingness forgiveness.

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Use of Word “Idols” in the Course:

Ch. 10, Sec. III, p.185, par. 1 & 5 “The God of Sickness”… on idol of sickness:

“A sick god must be an idol...that is exactly what the ego does perceive in a Son of God….a sick god, self-created, self-sufficient, very vicious and vulnerable.”

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Ch. 20, Sec. VI, p.436 “The Temple of the Holy Spirit” … on bodies as idols:

“The body is the ego’s idol...a wall of flesh around the mind.”

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Ch. 29, Sec. VII, p.617. par. 6 “Seek not Outside Yourself” … on idol of death:

“Idols must fail/fall because they have no life…you came to die…and you see death and disappointment everywhere.”

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Ch. 29, Sec. VIII, p.619 “The Anti-Christ” … on the idol of Anti-Christ:

“What is an idol? Nothing… Where is an idol? Nowhere.”

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Ch.29, Sec. IX, p.622 “The Forgiving Dream” … on idols as nightmarish toys:

“Whenever you feel fear in any form… be sure you have made an idol, and believe it will betray you.”

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Ch. 30, Sec. III, p.630 “Beyond All Idols”… on seeking idols to complete us:

“This is the purpose of an idol: that you will not look beyond (your needing) it, to the source of the belief that you are incomplete.”

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Ch. 30, Sec. IV, p.633 “The Truth behind Illusions”… more on idols as toys:

“The wearying, dissatisfying gods you made are blown-up children’s toys…The rules he (the child) made for boxes and for bears have failed him…and he is afraid.”

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Ch. 30, Sec. V, p.635 “The Only Purpose”… on idols as blocks to the real world:

Our experience of the Real World takes place… “when we learn how easily our idols go when not wanted any more.”

Musings… How Could the Separation Ever Have Happened??

September 25, 2018

(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),

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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

August 30, 2018

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.