Validation Speeds Up the Process to Peace

In my early years as a student of A Course in Miracles (I began in 1984) I didn’t really have anyone I trusted to speak to about my experiences. Very early on I experienced a direct Revelation and the higher miracle of the mystical Holy Relationship. No one in the initial study group I attended was discussing ACIM on the level on which I seemed to experience it. And I just didn’t know anyone else who was a student. (There was no internet yet!)

So I went off on my own with the Holy Spirit. This was great in that it meant I had to work right away at building my trust in the Holy Spirit. And as ACIM points out, the whole process is the “Development of Trust” (Manual for Teachers) in Truth. But the process would have been smoother and I suspect gone a little faster for me if I had someone in the world to validate some of my experiences. Because I had no one to speak to I had to live with a lot of doubts. And doubts kept me spinning in place and not moving onto the next lesson.

For example, after a couple of years I began to notice a pattern of vacillation between experiences of peace and longer periods of being back in the conflicts of the ego. I noticed that any experience of Truth, no matter how “minor”, resulted in a huge backlash from the ego (personal thought system). Even though I saw the pattern it took me a long time to trust what I was seeing and to trust that this was the normal process. Was I really seeing a pattern? Or was my going back to the ego again and again a sign I was failing? The Holy Spirit seemed to reassure me that it was a normal pattern and explained that I was swinging between to the two thought systems in my mind to sort them out.  But my trust in my ability to discern the Holy Spirit was not strong yet. And my trust in the Holy Spirit was not strong, either. That was another place in which validation would’ve helped. And because I was not validated in my observations and my discernment I took a very long time to learn to trust them and the Holy Spirit.


Doubts are an inevitable part of the path to peace. But you do not have to stew in them. You can seek validation from others who have more experience on the path, in study groups, online, or one-on-one with a mentor. A lot of what I do as a mentor is validate my clients’ experiences. I can hear the relief in their voices when I tell them that what they experience is normal or that yes, they are hearing the Holy Spirit. And I watch them move forward after they are validated.

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Comments

Anonymous said…
Thank You
12:40 PM
Christine said…
I noticed in the first paragraph your wrote, "IN the Holy Spirit"...rather than "with"...that brings It closer, or expresses the Oneness. Very clear - thank you.
5:15 AM
Christine said…
Oops - I read it again - ha! You did write "with" in the second paragraph...at first glance "in" did stick out to me...it's like being "in" a pool, rather than sitting beside the pool...
5:18 AM
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