ACIM Mentor

A student of A Course in Miracles has asked me to address in a blog my being in a relationship with someone who is not a student. She points out that in my recent blog on the special relationship I refer to my life-partner as a “partner in every way” when she is not a student of the Course . She finds it “less than ideal” that she cannot share the Course with her husband and finds it hard to make decisions with him because they have different perspectives. My primary relationship is with God. Courtney accepts this and she has her own path to God (twelve-step). I never felt she needed to share mine. I really don’t think the Course would work for her even though she sees and accepts that it works for me. I’ve learned to share the Course with her not by directly talking about it, but by seeing Christ in her instead of what makes us different. I share the Course with her by knowing that she is Part of God while she is not remembering it for herself. I share the Course with her throug...

The Holy Spirit does not speak first, but He always answers . Everyone has called upon Him for help at one time or another and in one way or another, and has been answered. Since the Holy Spirit answers truly He answers for all time, which means that everyone has the answer now . (T-6.IV.3) Often students tell me they are not feeling God’s Presence in their life. Perhaps they think they are not because they have an expectation of the experience that is not being met by the actual experience. While a revelation of God is profound, experiencing God in your life in the world – what is called the Holy Spirit – is not. It is far more subtle and can be an ordinary, everyday experience. At first it is often only recognized in retrospect. But with conscious effort you soon begin to feel the Presence around you all the time. You are Part of God so of course you experience God. It is just that this experience is jumbled up with all your ego experiences and it takes a while to sort out what is...

I have said repeatedly that the Holy Spirit would not deprive you of your special relationships, but would transform them. And all that is meant by that is that He will restore to them the function given them by God. (T-17.IV.2) Until I experienced the holy relationship, my sole goal in life was to find Ms. Right and to live happily ever after with her. This special relationship was supposed to be my salvation, though I would not have put it that way. But I did expect it to fulfill me, make me happy and bring me peace – salvation by other names. I’ve written before about my experience with the holy relationship soon after becoming a student of A Course in Miracles when I was 21 years old ( http://acimmentor.blogspot.com/2006/02/holy-relationship.html ). The holy relationship was the experience that, like the revelations I wrote about last time, taught me that everything the Course was saying about Oneness was true. Through revelations I experienced Oneness with God; through the mira...

God does not need revelation returned to Him, which would clearly be impossible, but He does want it brought to others. This cannot be done with the actual revelation; its content cannot be expressed, because it is intensely personal to the mind that receives it. It can, however, be returned by that mind to other minds, through the attitudes the knowledge from the revelation brings. (T-4.VII.7) Students ask me how I can be sure about what I teach, how I can speak with such confidence. It is because I have experienced the Oneness of God through revelations. What A Course in Miracles teaches is not theory for me; it is fact. Grasping theology is not transformative but the experience of Truth is. A revelation of God cannot be adequately described. It is simply unlike anything in this world, but far more familiar. The deepest peace and greatest joy experienced in this world, even spiritually, do not compare. Not just because they are lesser than the experience of God; but because they ar...

Most people who become students of A Course in Miracles do not come to it already conceiving of God as the Only Being of Which they are a Part. God is almost always an authority figure of some kind, a parental figure or a supreme being, one which is over you, not one which encompasses you. Few who believe in a tyrannical god would accept the Course at all. So most who become students believe in a God who is probably a tough-love moral authority, a benevolent judge who wants you to measure up to Him/Her/It and is willing to help you do so. And of course, this god made the world and our bodies/egos, as well as our individual spirits/souls. So there is a huge leap to be made in your concept of God as you study and practice the Course. God did not make the world or bodies/egos, not even individual spirits. There is only One Spirit, of Which we are all a Part, and that One Spirit is God. It takes time to accept this intellectually, and even more time to accept this emotionally. After you...

I said before that what you project or extend is up to you, but you must do one or the other, for that is a law of mind, and you must look in before you look out. As you look in, you choose the guide for seeing. And then you look out and behold his witnesses. (T-12.VII.7) It is the law of mind that it always looks within first and then looks outward at a reflection of itself. This is what A Course in Miracles calls “extension” and it is the way that Spirit thinks naturally. Spirit looks within and sees Love and so it sees (extends) Love everywhere. The ego cannot escape this law so it uses denial as a way of dealing with it. It is essential for the ego’s survival that you believe that you are guilty for separating from God. If you looked within and found the guilt there you would seek for a way to undo it. So it “projects” the guilt away from you onto the world or others. This keeps guilt in your mind because projection does not actually get rid of guilt, it only hides it from your a...

Students ask me if they can be in the world without an ego. Of course the ego tells them that they will not exist without it, so you can see where the question is really coming from. And certainly we all make egos not just for ourselves but also for everyone else. If someone is coming from ego they will see ego whether it is there or not. Ego is your identity in separation from God, Who is your True Identity. But a distinct body and a distinct personality with all of its own opinions and preferences is only an obstacle to your awareness that you are Part of God when you think it is you and you feel you have to protect it. When you have to be right and have things your own way; when you are offended or threatened; when you make elaborate plans for your body and for fulfilling your ego; when you are concerned with the past and/or with the future – these are when a body/ego is an obstacle. A Course in Miracles teaches us to give to the Holy Spirit what we have made for separation so It c...

It is impossible to remember God in secret and alone. For remembering Him means you are not alone, and are willing to remember it. (T-14.X.10) If we are One with God how can we talk about “not being alone” as though there is God and us? We think of being alone – and loneliness as well – as being without another body nearby. Yet we’ve all experienced being lonely in a crowd. Aloneness and loneliness are really experiences of feeling unwhole. What we are experiencing in loneliness is the lack of the part of our self that we are denying. What the quote above means is that you cannot remember God in the isolation of your ego. To feel whole is to remember you are Part of God. God has not many Sons, but only One. (T-29.VIII.9) You feel lonely in a crowd when you are in ego looking out at other egos -- separation. You feel empty and incomplete. Loneliness is not healed by the presence of other bodies but by the recognition that there is only God and that God is in everyone and everything you...

In 2001 my brother-in-law died after a sudden, brief illness. He was only in his late forties. In 2003 my mother died suddenly. In the winter of 2005 my life-partner and I had to put down a beloved dog and my father and sister were diagnosed with cancer. My sister had surgery and recovered; in the spring my father passed away. That autumn my life-partner’s mother died. Last year my life-partner’s fibromyalgia became disabling and she has gone on disability. A few weeks ago my parents’ house finally sold after being on the market for a year and a half and the loss of this tangible reminder of them has hit me and some of my siblings like a ton of bricks. It is as though they just died. Yet finally this last loss seems to free me to finish my active grieving and move on. There was a time when a series of years like these would have left me devastated, anxious, depressed and self-pitying. I probably would have viewed the world as a dark, frightening place. I may have felt like a victim of...