ACIM Mentor

It’s hard to grasp that the world is an illusion. The word “illusion” means something that’s not there but that you see anyway. In the midst of the illusion it’s impossible to accept that it’s an illusion. And there’s this expectation that if you ever did get that it’s an illusion it would be like vapor before your eyes. Now, this may happen. I’ve had experiences where the physical world for a moment seemed transparent, but this experience is not sustained. If it were, I would have learned all that I need and the world would be gone from my mind! The everyday experience of the world as an illusion, though, is that the world's significance pales in comparison to the Peace of God that you experience within. I wrote before about how what you value is what is real to you (see Reality and Value ). The world fades into the background as it becomes less valuable to you. Sometimes students ask me if there will ever come a time when they will cease to see the horrors of the world or somebod...

It cannot be said too often that everything is thought, everything is in your mind, because to understand the miracle and how it works you have to understand this. To the ego, material, concrete form is real and thought is meaningless. Of course, this is upside down. Mind is what is real and it is formless and abstract. So one of the first things you have to do is grasp that you see this backwards, that mind and thought are what are real and material, concrete form is what is not real. There are two levels of perception. The first level is the thoughts that make the world for you and this layer is neutral. Look around the room you are in now. Everything is a thought – round, blue, rough, chair, refrigerator, rug, etc. even though you aren’t conscious of yourself “thinking” it. What you are seeing with the body’s eyes – remember the body itself is unreal – is the screen made by the split mind so the separation could be projected onto it. This level of perception is neutral because it ha...

As with everything else, A Course in Miracles uses the idea of “faith” in a way that is different from the way that the world usually uses it. It still means trust, and trusting Something that the body’s eyes cannot see, but faith as the Course uses means acknowledging that only God is Real. One day I was having a conversation with my life-partner, Courtney, about prayer. She comes from a traditional Christian background and sometimes I have questions because I don’t understand Christianity. I told her about overhearing two women talking and one told her friend that her daughter had had a medical procedure and she had come through it okay. Her friend said, “God is good. Our prayers were answered. ” I asked Courtney if this woman would’ve thought God was bad if the first woman’s daughter had not come through okay. Of course not. The woman would’ve accepted that as God’s Will. Okay, so what’s the point of these petitioning prayers if God is going to do Its will in any case? Courtney ex...

Back in the summer of 2005 I went to see my therapist to help me sort out what was my grief over my father’s recent death and what was just regular mid-life stuff. She’s not a student of A Course in Miracles but she is a great therapist and I don’t go to her for spiritual stuff but for practical stuff – like what I was going through then. I saw her for a few weeks and at one point I found my mind flooded with story ideas. Once upon a time I wrote (terrible) fiction and I have always been filled with story ideas. But this was so overwhelming I had to make notes on some of the stories just to get my mind to shut up. I shared this with my therapist and she got this far-away look in her eye that I recognize as someone listening to the Holy Spirit and then she asked me, “What are you not doing that you need to be doing?” At first I thought she was saying I was supposed to write novels, which I had no desire to do anymore. But then a few days later I realized she asked that question without...

You are not an ego, a personal self; you are One with God. When in A Course in Miracles it says that you chose to be separate from God and you feel guilty for this and you fear God will punish you it does not mean that you personally made this choice. When the Course says that you are responsible for making the world it does not mean that you personally made the world. It means you the mind-that-has-decided-to-split from God made this choice and that all of the egos that seem to have been made by these choices are born into guilt and fear. If you identify with a personal self you will feel guilty and fear God. You can only escape guilt and fear by putting aside the ego in all its forms. All that is left then is God. In sorting out Truth from illusion you have to realize that the personal self is the illusion. The questions students ask: “What happens when I die?” “Is reincarnation real?” “Did I plan this life?” All of these are questions about the personal self and are not really q...