ACIM Mentor

Last week I wrote about how this mind has come to an awareness of the self’s life in the world as an effect and not a cause. It is an effect whose cause passed the instant it was caused, so therefore it is over. This means, in essence, that what you see unfolding in the universe of form has really passed. This does not mean, strictly speaking, that what you see passing in time is predestined. What you see is done, therefore, it is not to be done. You are really looking back at an idea that is over (and therefore cannot be changed), not living in a predetermined idea unfolding. However, since you think that you are in time, and that the idea began long ago and will be undone in some indefinite future, you experience it as though it is unfolding now. The reason this mind used to get stuck on this idea that time is over and what it is seeing is past was that, as a self-starter, it felt so self-directed. The piece that this mind was missing (other than the fact that it is a mind and n...

This mind used to hear others says that “it is all unfolding perfectly” and couldn’t understand their point of view. It understood “the script is written” as “the outcome is inevitable” and yet it still didn’t have the full picture. But it does now. Truth (or God, if you prefer) is Formless Being extending without limit. Being All, Truth must have within It the idea of Its Own opposite. But, being All, Truth cannot have an opposite. The opposite-of-Truth can only ever be an idea, and it is an idea that is undone by Truth’s All-encompassing nature the instant that it is thought. It is as though Truth said, “What is my opposite? Oh, yeah, I cannot have an opposite.” Poof! It was undone. (In A Course in Miracles the part of the Mind of God where this idea is supposed to have occurred is called the “Son of God”). Since Truth is formless, infinite, eternal, and one, or the same, throughout, the idea of the opposite-of-Truth, or not-Truth, is time-bound, limited, diverse forms....

“Last night I watched a riveting documentary on the life and crimes of the notorious millionaire psychopath, Robert Durst. I vaguely remembered hearing about him but actually knew very little. As his Texas murder trial played out in the film, it became clear that he was going to be acquitted. Watching his slick, venal, lawyers manipulate the unsophisticated jury - and then calmly talk about their unscrupulous tactics in later interviews - I felt my stomach tighten with fear and my temples throb with rage. The duplicity of Durst's wealthy family in the cover-up, the unresolved grief of the families of his victims, and of course listening to the vile Durst himself trying to play the world for fools, added to my upset. I tried to detach from the story and contemplate why I felt so threatened for one thing, and how to return to peace (my ultimate goal in all upsets.)  The only thing I could come up with is that this case so rocked my sense of how things SHOULD have played out, I felt ...

A couple of week ago I answered a question about whether or not animals have consciousness ( http://acimmentor.blogspot.com/2016/01/ask-does-each-animal-experience.html ).My answer provoked several emails of questions and comments. They seemed to be about different aspects of my response but I’ve come to see that they were all related. So I am going to respond to the ideas in them here in one fell swoop. First, let me define what I mean by “consciousness” (in other contexts “awareness” or “perception”): A mind that is capable of an awareness of Truth. While one split mind ( what A Course in Miracles calls the “Son of God”) projects the entire universe of form, it projects its split mind onto only one form, the human animal. So while many animals have some degree of intelligence and many experience degrees of emotions, only the human animal suffers the conscious and unconscious psychological conflict of a mind that is split between Truth and not-Truth. Some indicated that I sa...