ACIM Mentor

            There is a difference between self-realization and enlightenment, but these goals are often confused and thought to be the same thing. They are not. Self-realization can be taught and enlightenment cannot. Self-realization can be a deliberate “path” and in fact the journey itself is often the goal. (“The journey is the destination.”) But there is no “path” to enlightenment. It cannot be attained or achieved. It happens if it is to happen. Both are caused by the movement of pure consciousness (truth) toward conscious awareness. But self-realization occurs to ego. It is the effect on it of truth rising, transforming it but not wholly undoing it. So, one’s mind continues split between truth and illusion. Enlightenment, however, occurs when ego falls away because pure consciousness has risen fully to conscious awareness. The split is gone, there is only one reality, one truth, pure consciousness. Anything else remaining is recognized as unreal, m...

            Something that happens after a shift in consciousness is you see how things are in consciousness as opposed to what ego has said is happening. Obviously, it’s a radically different point of view! From ego’s point of view, a spiritual journey can seem integral and deeply meaningful. It is the source of ego’s deepest validation of itself as real, so it is its deepest delusion. But from the point of view of truth, pure consciousness, ego’s spiritual journey is incidental. It is what ego does when it senses truth rising to conscious awareness. Some have glimpses of truth, moments of “awakening” where pure consciousness rises briefly to conscious awareness, like near-death experiences or mystical experiences. As only ego can be said to be in any kind of dream (the illusion that it is real), then “spiritual awakening” can be said to be something that happens to ego. It is ego coming to realize that there is a truth beyond itself and its world. (It...

           One of the first words I understood A Course in Miracles to redefine, as it did with so many, was ego . It clearly referred to something more than just pride or self-centeredness or one part of the human psyche that, along with the id and superego , Sigmund Freud had defined. I understood ego in the Course to mean the whole personal experience. I discovered in time that most students understood this right away, too. If you’ve had more than insights but mystical experiences , then you are aware that pure consciousness is more than just perceiving differently or perceiving something different, it is a different experience of existence. While I referred to ego as a thought system as its mind structures were what I dealt with daily, I was aware that if it fell away, there would be a shift in the experience of existence. However, I didn’t realize these two aspects would not wholly fall away together. The ego thought system , which I have refe...

            Last week I wrote how the idea of a “Son of God” only seems to make sense from ego’s perspective so it falls away when ego does. From the perspective of truth (pure consciousness, what ego senses as “God”) no part of it has ever been lost and so the idea of a “journey” of return is totally illusory. For readers and clients who have not come to see this there is always the question, “What can I take away from this information?” First, that there is a truth here in consciousness, even if it is not an individuated “your” truth. It is what is and it is lovely. Second, forgiveness as A Course in Miracles teaches it, that nothing appearing in consciousness is real, is a fact . Last week I shared how this is realized here. You may not yet see this for yourself, but I give testimony that it is true, perhaps reinforcing it in you. Third, if you experience the split mind, where you are aware of truth beside ego, then you too have forgiveness righ...

              In last week’s article I mentioned that after the shift in consciousness here I could no longer find anything in this mind to call the “Son of God” and struggled to fit my experiences into the ontology and theology of A Course in Miracles . Here I will explain. This is what I thought and expected and taught over three decades as a student, teacher, and mentor of the Course :   I (along with you) am a (the) Son of God. In my pure state I am what is called Christ . I had come to understand “God” or “Father” as Whole and “Christ” or “Son” as Part of that Whole due to the Course making it clear that God and Christ were truly One. The reason for the distinction was that part of the whole had “forgotten to laugh” at the ridiculous idea of being separated from itself and had “fallen asleep”. Thus, the Son, or Part, was looking to get back to its Father, or its Wholeness. Since this was only a dream, this Part had not really left th...

        In her book, The Real Christ , Bernadette Roberts details how Christ , or the awareness of truth, was lost in a cult of Jesus that arose in the early Christian Church. One of the ways this occurred was through a rigid insistence that only certain approved language could be used by writers and teachers, which meant much authentic experience was lost. If someone wrote about their genuine experience in language that was not approved by the Church, they were labeled a heretic and executed. She lamented this when she had begun having experiences that were not described in the contemplative or mystical teachings of her Church ( The Experience of No-Self ), leaving her without validation and support. Eventually, the Church’s power diminished and within and outside the Church there were many contemplatives and mystics who did write about their experience in their own authentic language, but she still could find only one or two teachers who wrote about what she was ex...