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Showing posts from March, 2008

A Visual Description of Oneness

In God there is only God. This is the meaning of Oneness. Oneness is the Law of Mind, which means it is Mind’s true state of being. The experience of Oneness with God is limitless love, peace and joy which cannot be conveyed in words. But what I am going to attempt here is an intellectual description of Oneness . This will maybe clarify some of the confusion students seem to have around the idea of Oneness, “extending God”, “what you give you receive” and the equality of having and being in God. Whiteness is the visual representative of God here. Imagine whiteness being everywhere – extending up, down, all around. There is only whiteness – so whiteness is one . There are no parts in whiteness because it is all one extending infinitely in every direction, but if you did separate it into parts each part would be exactly the same as every other part and could be said to be extending whiteness. Because there is only whiteness in whiteness all it can give is whiteness and all it can re

Miracles Are Simple But Resistance is Strong

“The name of Jesus is the name of one who was a man but saw the face of Christ in all his brother and remember God. So he became identified with Christ, a man no longer, but at one with God.” (C-5.2) This quote from A Course in Miracles used to piss me off. I wanted to attain Christ Consciousness, too, but I just wanted to be Christ, I didn’t want to have to see Christ everywhere. This was so contrary to the way that I understood things worked! If I was Christ, why would I see Christ everywhere? It didn’t make sense. Wasn’t I supposed to find God within? Why did I have to change what I was seeing in the world? I couldn’t make the connection between myself and what I was seeing in the world. And yet this was the central teaching of the Course ! Everything is Mind; we only see our own minds, we are always teaching ourselves what we are by what we choose to perceive. I was so resistant I made the simplest thing – a miracle – so difficult. Let me give you an example of how easy a mirac

Only Mind is Real

Almost every new student of A Course in Miracles has moments of disorientation trying to believe that the physical world isn’t real because in separation from God the physical is what is real and mind is nothing. This is what the Course calls “upside-down thinking” because it is the exact opposite of what is true. The physical world seems solid and unshakable, but to what? A mind that identifies with a physical body and that underrates its own power. It’s hard to believe that the physical world is not real when the body is real to you and what you can see, touch, taste, hear and smell is how you measure reality in your identification with a body. Do you see how circular the reasoning is here? The physical tells you that what you can measure physically is real. Is this any surprise? But of course, it’s not the body that tells you what is real. It’s the mind that chooses to use the body to tell it that the physical world is reality. The mind is what is real. The physical is nothing. It

Others' Reaction to You

There’s a tricky passage in A Course in Miracles that confuses some students: If you inspire joy and others react to you with joy, even though you are not experiencing joy yourself there must be something in you that is capable of producing it. If it is in you and can produce joy, and if you see that it does produce joy in others, you must be dissociating it in yourself. (T-9.VI.1) What confuses some students is the parts about others reacting to you validating that joy is in you. How can this be? Doesn’t one’s reaction come from their self? Isn’t it up to them whether they see the Holy Spirit in you or not? Yes, how someone sees you is their choice, not yours. For an extreme example, think of Jesus’ life. All He did was extend God’s Love but that’s not what everyone saw. Some saw Him through their own guilt and fear, so much so that they crucified him! The Course teaches consistently that your experience comes from your own mind. It is true that when your attitude becomes more lov