The Teacher Archives • School for A Course In Miracles

Musings: Is It Healing or Fixing?

October 15, 2014

“You can’t fix what isn’t real. What’s real doesn’t need fixing.”

When you see a problem in someone else—sickness, mood, disposition—it is your mind that is in need of healing, not the one in whom the problem appears to reside.

There is only one problem…..ever. It is the idea of separation in the mind. If the indivisibility of a single whole mind is to be recognized, healing of the mind must occur.

A Course in Miracles is maddeningly relentless and impeccable in its teaching of non-duality. It leaves no un-swept corners in the mind where the ego’s belief in separation can remain hidden. One of those corners is our own good intentions to help others with their problems without first healing ourselves.

When we attempt to fix problems in someone else we are missing the point. It is an opportunity for our own healing, not someone else’s. Only a healed healer can heal. He heals by knowing we are all already healed. The certainty in his mind extends through his mind to other minds without him doing anything for which he could take either credit or blame.

This is not to say that one could not also do something in whatever form might be most helpful. However his certainty is that regardless of what he does in form, healing is already accomplished.

How different this is from fixing which can only occur where there is an idea of inequality and of “other”.

Yesterday someone tried to fix a problem that I thought I had. He first had to make the problem real by agreeing with it. He then took out his tools that he had learned in a training and began to try to fix my problem. The feeling that arose within me as this was going on was one of inequality. He, with his solution, was superior to me with my problem. Now we both had the same sickness, separation. There was no way out.

When we try to heal at the level of form we are attempting to keep the real problem which is in the mind. That way the ego, our false sense of self, is preserved.

This whole situation illustrated the important distinction between healing and fixing. If there is anything but perfect equality in any relationship the idea of competition has entered the mind. How can there be healing where there is one who is superior? Separation is reinforced rather than healed.

Unhealed healers believe the problem is where it is not, in the body and not the mind. The fact is that we are all already healed…..no exception. Minds are already joined and there is only one.

Nothing that is real that could possibly need fixing. Nothing unreal exists. We do not believe that however, or we wouldn’t be seeing the world of suffering that we see. It is the seer that needs to change the way in which he sees. He needs to learn to see with different eyes and hear with different ears. For that shift he needs a Teacher from beyond the world of form, one that doesn’t believe in differences of any kind.

A Course in Miracles teaches us how to make ourselves accessible to a Teacher who can show us how to look with a single eye from beyond the body and see a different world. This translocation of self from identification with the body to a singular consciousness is the awakened state we all pretend to seek and at the same time fear. It is the shift from the personal and the private, to the oneness of heaven and non-specificity. This is the land of “no-thing” and it is this that you and I fear. That’s what God is. And that’s what Love is. And thats what the Peace of God is. And that’s Heaven. And that’s what you are afraid of.

Would you like to live without fear? Would you like to experience Love? Would you like to be free of torment?

Musings: Only the Mind is Real

May 4, 2014

means meadow in the fall — **Means Meadow**

“Only the mind is real because only the mind can be shared.” (T-6. V.A. 3:2-3).

The body is neutral. Think of it as a mindless puppet and you are the one who pulls the strings. The puppet only responds to the decisions of the mind. The body has no thoughts, feelings or experiences of its own. It does what its master tells it to do. It is a symbol of what the mind dreams we are—a separated individual with a will of our own.

“The body is the symbol of what you think you are. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist.” (T-6.V.A.2:2-3).

If you want to try to prove that you are a body—that you are right and God is wrong, that separation is reality and perfect oneness is a lie—then you (the one pulling the strings) will want to make it seem that the body has power of its own and it can tell you who you are and how you feel. What better way to do that than for the mind to direct the body to feel pleasure and pain? This is all part of the ego’s plan to keep you mindless. Now it seems like life is in the body and not in the mind of the one pulling the strings.

“The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who are life.” (T.6.V.A.1:4).

The real question you should ask yourself is what rules the mind? Who is it that is pulling the strings of the puppet? Is it the ego that wants separation, individuality, and specialness to be reality? If it is then the body/puppet must be made to appear to be alive because it seems to prove that separation is real. Under the ego’s direction the puppet will attack (judge) other puppets, and feel pleasure and pain. It will be different from others of its kind. This is the ego’s world, based in the tiny mad idea of separation, ruled by separate interests, all coming from the mind.

There is another way but you first must get back to the mind and recover your power as a decision making mind. You are the chooser of what rules your mind and therefore what directs the body. If you like being a person in a dream in a world of separate interests then you are probably not going to want to do this.

The shift from the body to the mind is what transformation is all about. It requires willingness to abandon the ego as your teacher in order to learn from a teacher who is outside the dream. In A Course in Miracles that teacher is Jesus, because he is a symbol of perfect, ego-less, love. You could use any other symbol that works for you.

It is impossible for you to make this transformation from fear to love, body to mind without help. All the talents, skills, abilities that you have developed over the years have been useful only for navigating the ego’s dream of separation. These same skills cannot be used to shift your identity from the body back to the mind. Again, the ego’s purpose is to keep you from ever knowing you are a decision making mind. After all, if you knew you would choose against it.

Be forewarned. When the ego gets wind of this it will become one of its two predominant moods: suspicious or vicious. It will threaten you with sacrifice and loss as it sees its days of specialness are numbered. Awakened mind, Suzanne Segal, author of Collision with the Infinite, A Life Beyond the Personal Self, expressed the fear this way:

Life in a state of freedom from the ego “bears no resemblance to the stark emptiness that fear might paint it to be. People who tell me they don’t want to give up the personal because they believe they would be giving up love or joy or deep feeling don’t understand that the personal never existed. Nothing is given up. Love that appears to be personal is based on an ego-constructed sense of being separate.”

At no one instant does the body exist at all. It is always past or future. In this very instant it can’t be found. Life is now and is in the mind. Hurry home.

A question to ponder: Why would it matter how long the body lives?

Musings: A Little Willingness

September 17, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He Who established His dwelling place in me created it as

He would have it be.

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

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

my own awareness of my readiness, which is eternal.

I need add nothing to His plan.

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

Own in place of it.”

Musings: All Would Be Love

September 16, 2013

“…you believe that without the ego all would be chaos. Yet I assure you that without the ego, all would be love.”

(T. 15. V. 1: 6-7)

If we would lay aside our need to be somebody—all ideas about our self and all ideas we hold about the person before us—we would find that we are peacefully joined beyond either of those identities.

What is real is shared and what is unreal can’t be. Only the mind can be shared and it is common to all without exception. It is the personal—the body, private thoughts, the psychological self with all its needs and wants—that is unreal and therefore can’t be shared.

Awakening is from the personal. The unwillingness to enter a shared experience is the only hindrance to the realization of our Self which resides in the mind. (This is why the ego does not want us to learn that we are a mind.)

The shift from identification with the body to the awareness of the self as mind is a choice. We all will eventually make it, but usually not until we experience the pain and suffering our personal needs, wants and special interests bring upon ourselves and others. At this point we may begin to ask ourselves if there might not be a better way of relating that does not involve our specialness.

I have made it my practice to learn from Jesus that my brother and I share the same mind. It is a choice I make every morning before I begin the busy doings of the day. Remembering my goal, my part in every encounter is simply to recognize when the ego asserts its special interests and be willing to offer them to Jesus in exchange for something of greater value. I am the learner and I have a teacher.

In this process I find there is no strain to get approval, acceptance, or recognition from my brother. The listening is open and gentle when I realize the relationship is not in my hands and I do not have to make anything happen. There is no fixing, correcting, dazzling, enthralling, outsmarting, captivating, or manipulating. In allowing the presence of love beyond either body to hold the relationship I experience ease and acceptance of myself and my brother.

Jesus has never failed to show me that my brother is a much better witness to our shared reality of holiness than he is to my ego’s demands that my specialness be indulged.

The mind is truly miraculous when it is not contaminated by the ego. Spiritual practice is learning how to use the mind effectively to choose against the ego. Once we learn that we have a mind and that our only option in this world is to choose between the ego’s tyrannical rule or Jesus’ kind and gentle teaching of forgiveness we can become the happy learners of the truth of the following statement:

***“…you believe that without the ego all would be chaos. Yet I assure you that without the ego, all would be love.”* *T. 15. V. 1: 6-7***

Musings: The Healing Purpose

June 20, 2013

The following was a letter to a friend who was in prison for a crime committed during one of his many bouts with addiction to cocaine. He wanted to wake up but was fixated on his particular dream.

I had known my friend for ten years and during this time he had been incarcerated four times. This time it was for ten years. Prior to this he had been incarcerated at least five times, all while on a cocaine rampage. He was released at the age of 50 having spent most of his life in prison.

Without purpose that can be applied regardless of the circumstances of his life, his situation would have been cause for desperation. My point in sharing this letter is that without purpose we are all hopelessly caught in our pitiful little dreams, be they pleasurable or painful.

Dear Friend:

This answer to your concerns about your incarceration comes from the heart. May it go to the heart, find its mark, and be helpful.

The brick and mortar prison that you find yourself in is a metaphor for the situation we all find ourselves in. The prison I am referring to is the mind that is ruled by the ego.

The ego is the thought of separation taking form. It is a prison house of our own making. Self-centered and selfish the ego sees everything in relationship to itself. The ego thinks the body is its home.

As if imprisonment were not bad enough the ego’s practice is to inflict pain or suffer pain instead of helping one another to escape. Of course I am speaking metaphorically. The escape from the prison house we have all made is accomplished only by learning that the person we think we are, that long lasting separate entity, is not what we are.

No one asleep and dreaming knows the way out of the dream he is dreaming. After all he believes it is real. He needs help.

The escape is through the mind and everyone, regardless of the circumstances of his life must come to that realization. Humans tend to make comfort, safety and security their goal and when they get them they think they have escaped the prison of separate interests. What they have attained is a pleasant form of fear.

Changing the circumstances of our life is not a change at all because it is the mind that needs to change. It is not hard to see that we take the thought system that we live by with us wherever we go. It’s all about us. To use a common analogy, changing circumstances is like shifting around the deck chairs on the Titanic. What difference will it make? The mind ruled by the ego is a sinking ship. It needs a new captain, not a change of location.

Once you have made the decision to become a happy learner from The Teacher for Truth the outcome is certain. You will escape the dream. How long the journey takes depends upon your trust in The Teacher and your willingness to bring the darkness in you to Him.

Choosing between the ego thought system of self-absorption and The Teacher’s thought system of healing is the only power the mind has. The rest of the time it’s idling, going nowhere.

Our relationships provide the opportunities for us to learn what’s in our mind. The ego’s thought system of separation goes like this:

1. The other guy is the guilty one.

2. If it weren’t for him (the other guy), my life would be peaceful and happy. (Conclusion: My anger is justified.)

3. I’m right. He’s wrong.

4. Somebody should pay, and it’s not going to be me. I’m innocent.

5. The other guy should be the one to suffer.

Behind every encounter some version of the above is always going on when the ego is ruling your mind. It only takes one person to stop playing this game. You. To do this you must have the desire to learn from a different teacher—the one that would free you and your brother together.

The Holy Spirit’s thought system, which you have chosen to learn because you are a student of A Course in Miracles, sees your brother differently. He sees

1. The other guy is innocent regardless of his behavior because he is not a body.

2. He is present in your life to help you escape from your dream of isolation.

3. There is no loss to anyone. Both parties gain.

4. Your attitude toward your brother is your attitude toward yourself.

5. You and your brother are joined in mind. Changing your mind changes all minds.

“Together or not at all” is the Holy Spirit’s mantra.

You get to choose between the ego and the Teacher of Truth. That makes you the ultimate Decision Maker. All power and glory is in your hands. It is the only freedom you have in this world.

To choose the Holy Spirit as your Teacher you must recognize when the ego is in charge, acknowledge that you no longer want it to rule your mind and ask the Holy Spirit for His Teaching instead. It’s really simple to tell which you have chosen. When you operate under the ego’s rule you don’t feel loving and happy. Simple.

Everyone you meet is your savior from isolation. By seeing our relationships in this way, every day becomes an exciting chance to remember our true undivided nature. Purpose is everything!

Everyone engaged in dreaming is trying to get rid guilt by dumping it on someone else. Refuse to blame the other guy for your misery. (The real source of your misery is your choice to be a self-centered, special, individual entity.) Ask The Teacher for help. You are not going to be able to rehabilitate yourself.

“Humility … does require that you be not content with less than greatness that comes not of you.” – A Course in Miracles, T.381.

Blessings,

Lyn

Musings: About Lyn Corona

April 5, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Musings: Who’s Your Teacher?

April 1, 2013

“Resign now as your own teacher, for you have been badly taught.”

To the one who takes pride in the quality of their dream I say, I will wait until you change your mind.

This is not said to be cruel. It is simply a waste of time to talk of waking when it is sleeping that is wanted. The quality of the dream matters not. A dream, is a dream, is a dream.

The purpose of dreams is to please yourself. They are personal and private.

The source of all dreams is fear. Yes, even the lovely ones. The fear comes from guilt; the guilt comes from wanting to be separate and special, because it is a lie.

The awakening dream, referred to as the happy dream in A Course in Miracles, has a different purpose. Its purpose is forgiveness of guilt so the dreamer can awaken and accept the Love of God. For this The Teacher, Who comes from outside of dreams, is needed.

The only real power we have in this world is to make one choice: to learn from The Teacher. All other uses of will take us deeper into the dream.

“Resign now as your own teacher.” T-12. V.8:3

It is The Teacher’s job to show us reality. This we cannot do for ourselves because we already beleive in unreality. We must invite The Teacher in order to learn who we are. That invitation is the little willingness. It will change the direction of your thinking and your life.

Reality is impersonal. Only one who has seen beyond the world can teach what we are. Without these teachers there would be no hope of salvation for special persons who think they are living in a world.

We need help. The first step beyond the limited and personal view is to look with the impartiality of The Teacher at our character and the other characters in our dream. Both are shadows of projected guilt. The Teacher shows us how to undo our belief in them through forgiveness.

“Forgiveness….is still, and quietly does nothing……It merely looks, and waits, and judges not.”

From: What is forgiveness? Workbook, p. 401

You already are spirit: complete and healed and whole. You cannot become what you already are. No amount of effort will take you there. Instead, cease imagining yourself to be what you are not. You are not a person that was born into a world that will eventually die and leave. Anything that comes and goes cannot be real.

You brought the world with you when you came. You are not in the world. The world is like a tiny spec of dust in the mind that is you.

Try this:

Think of yourself as existing only in this moment, without a future or a past. Allow things to be exactly as they are. Don’t seek to change anything. Wait here and become a happy learner of The Teacher who can show you a different way of seeing that reveals the real world.

Do this regularly and your personhood will begin to dissolve.

Don’t fight yourself if you find yourself resisting. You might still like being you.

No problem.

We will wait until you change your mind.

Musings: Back Again

January 31, 2013

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

Welcome to School for A Course in Miracles.

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

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

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

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

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

Musings: Who Is Looking?

June 12, 2010

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

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

“It is all the mind can do—

Discover the unreal as unreal.

The problem is only mental.

Abandon false ideas, that is all.

There is no need of true ideas.

There aren’t any.” –Nisargadatta Maharaj

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Musings: Three Things

March 14, 2010

I am not a scholar of A Course in Miracles. For a while I thought I might be but that’s not “the way of Lyn”. I’m glad to get that out of the way.

The scholar for the Course, in my opinion, is Dr. Kenneth Wapnick. His brilliance and dedication to the principles of the Course are unparalleled. He is the Founder of the Foundation for A Course in Miracles, along with his wife Gloria. Extensive scholarly material is offered at their website at FACIM.org.

Even though I am not a scholar I do not underestimate the importance of understanding the theoretical foundations presented in the text of the Course. Once you understand the two thought systems the Course presents—the ego’s and the Holy Spirit’s (The Teacher)—and their respective implications, you will be able to open to any page in the often complex material and know exactly what is being said. I owe that understanding to Dr. Wapnick.

Beyond the metaphysics, the more important awareness is on the content of the mind. Is it love? Or is it fear?

If it is love, the intent is to be truly helpful, to join with the other person on common ground, and to look beyond separate interests.

If it is fear, the intent is to attack or to defend (which is an attack), to separate, or to makes oneself special or different in some way.

It is easy to tell what our motivation is by how we feel. If we are basking in peace it was love in action. If we feel anxious and uneasy, then it was fear in action.

Although I have studied, taught and practiced the Course for 35 years all I can say with certainty is that I am a more willing learner now than when I began. That may be my sole qualification for offering our School for A course in Miracles.

Lyn is sort of a combination inviter/pointer with a little bit of cheerleader mixed in. I am not The Teacher. The 365 Lessons make way for The Teacher and I am inviting you to consider doing the lessons.

1. It takes humility to be a learner. Humility is for the ego, not spirit. A meaningful message from the Course in that regard is:

“Humility will never ask that you remain content with littleness. But it does require that you be not content with less than greatness that comes not of you.” – T. 381

These are a few things that seem to have disappeared from my résumé in recent years:

I can’t find personal ambition any more. The possibility of being helpful to those who want to find inner peace is enough reason for doing this.

I don’t waste time and energy making sacrifices. I do what I am inspired to do.

Pessimism. Can’t find it any more. I always think things are going to work out, even when I know they are not. “A happy outcome to all things is sure,” just not according to my plan.

I am not “against” anyone or anything. I find being wholeheartedly “for” something to be much more invigorating.

2. Is the Course for you?

My intention is only to be truly helpful but I can’t guarantee that you won’t be offended by what you read and hear in these pages.

Spiritual paths are often treated like hobbies, pulled out of a drawer when you have some spare time. This just means that the learner hasn’t really decided what he wants to learn yet.

A Course in Miracles offers a real alternative and I hope to make that choice clear so that a would-be-learner can decide if he wants the outcome the Course is leading him toward. It is not for everyone. There are many paths that lead to truth.

No one can give you the desire to turn your back on the conventional wisdom of the world with all of its pains and pleasures. You have to see for yourself that it is the only answer that will save you and the world simultaneously.

How many teachers (learners) does it take to save the world? One. That would be the impersonal you, the one the Course is taking you to.

3. Bad Habits and Cures

Humans have bad habits that are inconsistent with what they say they want. If we knew what our bad habits were, they wouldn’t have us anymore. They are hidden and buried in someone else just so we might keep them. That’s how the fictitious ego preserves itself.

To recognize the illusions in which we believe, we need husbands, wives, parents, children, friends, lovers, authority figures, and enemies to show them to us. Salvation is a collaborative venture. We awaken “together or not at all.” For this reason we should be fully appreciative of everyone, our enemies as well as our friends.

I believe it is in our nature to lean ever so slowly toward love. We are terribly threatened by it for many reasons, one of them being that love is indiscrimate. It is given equally, to all, without exception. The ego only approves of special love.

I feel some urgency to share anything that can help us let go of our self-centered ideas of love and move on to the real thing. I also want to invite others to do the same. It does appear that time has about run out on our learning opportunity as a species.

We have the potential to transcend our self-centered viewpoint but it remains to be seen whether we will just continue squabbling as individuals and as nations.

The perpetuation of our species, another specialness idea, is not the goal here. It is the idea of separate interests in our mind that must be undone in order to save a world that exists only within our minds. I would prefer not to annihilate another thing.

Another bad habit of humans is that they always think it’s about the other guy. If these other folks would just change, the world would be a better place. No. It’s just you. When you leave separate interests behind and awaken to reality you may find that nothing needs to be fixed.

You can’t fix what isn’t real. What’s real doesn’t need fixing.

The behavior that follows a mind that has transcended separate interests is loving and kind to everyone. It doesn’t walk away from the chaos. It shines its loving light for all to see. That certainly can’t hurt the world. Then we will be able to say and mean “a happy outcome to all things is sure.”