ACIM Mentor

Let’s say you have a bully in your life. Or maybe you just know of a bully. This person may be always on the attack. Or perhaps they only bully when they feel threatened. In any case, when you even so much as think of them you are feel fear. This fear does not come from them. This fear is because of beliefs in your own mind. This person is a symbol of the guilt and fear in your own mind. Unconsciously you recognize the motivation for their behavior is guilt and fear. And you can understand this because you are like them. You understand being defensive when you are afraid. So what you see in them is a projection of your own guilt and fear. They are a mirror of your mind and this is the actual source of your fear. So how do you move past projecting fear and increasing it in yourself? You bring your unconscious beliefs to conscious awareness. You do this by asking yourself, “Why do they behave this way?” You can answer this because you, too, are human and you understand human b...

When I was very young I realized that I didn’t feel love when others loved me but rather when I loved. This is why I was a nurturer. I had learned, though not in these words, that what I give I receive. When I was twenty I became a student of A Course in Miracles and read that lesson in those words. But I made the mistake of thinking that ACIM could not be talking about a lesson I had already learned. Helen Schucman was in her fifties when she scribed ACIM. Certainly she had to have already learned this lesson? Maybe this meant something else? So I took the lesson deeper and learned that it was saying, as it says elsewhere more plainly, that I can only give to myself. My mistake was thinking that I could not know something at twenty that someone at fifty had yet to learn. Of course we do not all learn the same lessons in life. And even when we do we do not learn them in the same order. A twenty year old can know something that someone at fifty has yet to learn. I was young a...

“He must learn to lay all judgment aside, and ask only what he really wants in every circumstance.” (M-4.I.A.7) The above quote is from the Development of Trust in the Manual for Teachers of A Course in Miracles where it lays out the stages through which a student will go. This refers to the fifth stage, the “period of unsettling”. But I’ve always found that sentence to be vague. In my translation of ACIM into plain, everyday language I translated it as: “Now, to attain Complete Peace, you must learn to lay aside the personal mind and forgive in every circumstance.” (M-4.I.A.5) This was to make clear that “what he really wants” means peace ; that laying judgment aside means laying the personal thought system aside because it is always evaluative (judgmental); and exactly how this is done (forgiveness). Peace is always here. So “asking for Peace” really means being willing to let go of that which is not Peace. When not-Peace is released (forgiven) Peace remains. ...

Usually I limit what I put out through my newsletter and blog to those things related to the concepts and practice of finding inner peace through an awareness of Truth. But in my work one-on-one with clients I often find myself reassuring and giving practical advice about very worldly things. Lately I have had to reassure and suggest courses of action to help my U.S. clients deal with their anxiety after our recent national elections. I find I’m repeating myself several times a day so I decided I would just put these ideas out there in one fell swoop.  (If you voted for Donald Trump or are not a U.S. citizen you can disregard this email or just read the spiritual practice advice in the last two paragraphs). The reassurances: If you voted for Hillary Clinton remember you are not alone. In fact, you are with the majority of voters. She won the popular vote by what may turn out to be a significant number of votes. (More on recourse for this below). On the surface this may...

This was not the article I intended to send today. But I know that many of my readers, all over the world, are upset about the results of Tuesday night’s election in the US. And those results did not happen in a vacuum. Sure, there are always political swings one way or another and wars and financial crises, etc. But right now those things are happening on a global scale and affecting far more people than usual. The world goes through this kind of global upheaval now and then and it is intensely uncomfortable when it reaches your part of the world. Some of my readers, I know, live in parts of the world that have been convulsing for a while. Maybe you have never known much but chaos. But most of my readers are in the West and are used to stability. Paradigm shifts are rare in the modern history of their countries. It is much nicer to be past it and reading about it in history! But here we are. And what are you to do to deal with the stress? Of course the size of the stress does not...

Back in the day my thing was not dwelling on the past. It was living in the future. Some of this was goals and plans. But most of it was just fantasy, even fantasizing about one day being at peace. But either way it was not being here, now, the only time in which it is possible to be at peace. The personal thought system is always about the past or future or just elsewhere. The “elsewhere” thinking can be dwelling on something that is not in front of you, like a completely made up time, place, or story; or something going on in the world or someone else’s life. This was common for me, too. So when I found I was in the future or elsewhere and I wanted to be present I’d bring myself back into the room. I’d remind myself that this is where I am now. All I have to do is deal with what is right in front of me right now. And any lessons I have to learn are right here. To do this I’d say to myself, “Come into the room” and then I’d make a point of looking at what was in the room with...