ACIM Mentor

Students ask me what I think about “compassion” as a spiritual value and I always have to tell them that I don’t like the word. It’s wimpy and flaccid to me because it has so long been overused to stroke egos that its positive connotations have been all but wiped out for me. But it is a word that is used quite a lot in connection with spirituality so I have been contemplating what “compassion” means. In both my dictionary and in common usage the word means “sympathy” or “pity. “Sympathy” and “pity” are greatly valued in the world (this alone should make you suspicious). They are attitudes of separation because they are founded in the belief that personal stories are real. They are supposed to be about joining with another but they actually reinforce separation in your mind. When you look on a personal story that you have projected on another and you “feel for” them you are teaching yourself that the story that you have for them is real and that you are not the source of it. Moreover, s...

The end of the world is not its destruction but its translation into Heaven for you. This reinterpretation of the world leads to your corrected perception, which transfers easily to God. (MACIM-11.8.1) Did you know that “apocalypse” means to uncover or disclose? It refers to a prophecy, but the Apocalypse of the Bible is the last book of the New Testament and it’s about the destructive end of the world. So to the ego the connotation of the word “apocalypse” is fearfully negative because its guilt makes it assume that the end of the world would be a destructive event. Read history or any work of fiction from any era and you will find that everyone thinks that they are living in the worst times ever and that a punishing, destructive end of the world is imminent. Youngsters are shallow and lack respect; families are falling apart; society as a whole is a cesspit of selfishness and greed; wars, famines, natural disasters. The ego never changes! It always operates the same and no matter wh...

Students often ask if my relationship with my life-partner, Courtney, is a Holy relationship because she is not a student of A Course in Miracles . Yes it is but it is a different experience than I had in the Holy relationship that experienced when I was first a student of A Course in Miracles (see The Holy Relationship ). In that first relationship, which I call a mystical Holy relationship, I experienced another as the perfect reflection of my Holy Self. My Identity extended to include her, teaching me that the personal self that I thought I was, was not me. Eventually E moved on but I continued to experience Oneness just by thinking about her. Since I was still able to experience Oneness while she was physically thousands of miles away I learned that E was not the source of the Holy relationship; the Source of my experience must be with me all the time. The Holy relationship, I realized, is really with the Holy Spirit within me extended outward to encompass what my mind perceives. ...

The other day a student told me that she met a man who she thought did not like A Course in Miracles because he said he didn’t believe that anyone could be totally free of ego since he had never met anyone who was. I pointed out to her that that only meant he was not totally free of the ego because only ego sees ego. Thoughts do not leave the mind of the thinker; what you perceive is your own mind. If you are coming from ego you see ego; if you are coming from Christ you see Christ. If you are waiting for others to manifest Christ you will wait forever because you will be looking out from ego and therefore you will see ego. Only ego wants you to think that what you experience comes from others so that you can blame them for what you are choosing to not see. In your Christ Mind you know that you look only on yourself. The name of Jesus is the name of one who was a man but saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and remembered God. So he became identified with Christ, a ma...

Lately I’ve been speaking with students who feel they are doing something wrong because when they invite the Holy Spirit into a situation it often seems that the situation gets worse. Shouldn’t it be all happy-happy peaceful when you turn something over to the Holy Spirit? Yes and no. “Yes” it will eventually be peaceful but “no” initially there are usually some things within you and in your outer life that need to be brought in line with your goal of Peace. If your external circumstances need to change then often you will experience a period of external turmoil that can be very uncomfortable. And if it’s your mind that needs to change then you might find yourself confused, disoriented, afraid, unhappy, and disturbed. Sometimes, of course, both your inner experience and your outer world need to change and then it’s extremely uncomfortable. For example, you’ve accepted a path to God and you have invited the Holy Spirit into your life. Every one of us who is a student of A Course in Mira...