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Showing posts from August, 2016

The Two Spiritual Goals

No matter a person’s spiritual path there are only two possible goals: To spiritualize the self’s life in the world or to transcend the self. The vast majority of people choose to spiritualize the self’s life in the world. Even if they’ve had higher miracles in which they perceive that the Truth is true and that the world is not they do not feel called to transcend the self. Being aware of Truth improves their life in the world and this is enough for them. But a few feel called to transcend the self usually because they’ve experienced the reality of Truth in either a direct Revelation (only Truth) or a higher miracle. They feel called to Truth because It is the Truth and nothing else will satisfy them. They are willing to be wholly free from guilt. Even those who feel called to transcend the self will go through a stage of spiritualizing the self’s life in the world. It is an inevitable stage when embarking on a spiritual path because when you start out all you know is the se

The Choice for Peace is Made Once

For a long time after I became a student of A Course in Miracles when things were hard or dark I felt I’d “fallen off the path”. I kept thinking I had to choose peace again and again. Why couldn’t I just make the choice and mean it? Why did I keep losing my way? What I didn’t know was that I had meant the choice for peace the first time that I allowed myself to experience Truth. I didn’t have to make the choice again. Once I let Truth into my awareness my path to peace was set. I wasn’t lost; I was in an unfolding process. The times that I saw as hard or dark or lost were part of that process to attaining peace. But I only saw this in hindsight many, many years later.             What unfolded after the moment that I let Truth into my awareness was that moment manifesting in the story of time. So any choice for peace that I made after that moment was not to choose the whole path all over again. It was a choice for peace now . In any given moment if I was not at peace and I wanted

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. Fo

You Don't Have to Give Up the Loves of Your Life

If you’ve been reading my stuff for a while please bear with me because I am returning again to an idea that I’ve visited many times before in many ways. But it is something that comes up often with clients and with people who write to me, even those whom I know have read all my stuff. So here I revisit it: You do not have to give up the people, things, activities, etc. that you love to have inner peace. You simply want to give them to the Holy Spirit so It can use them as classrooms in which to teach you peace. So often I hear from students of A Course in Miracles who judge against themselves for being too attached to their families, their friends, their animals. They try to force themselves to give up their interests and activities. If they love someone or enjoy or get pleasure from something they are certain that it is “wrong”. Somehow they think ACIM asks them to give up these things. But in fact it is the ego with its belief in guilt and punishment that leads them to fee

Ask: Any comments on you being an iconoclast?

“The more I read the July 27 blog ( http://acimmentor.blogspot.com/2016/07/learning-beyond-whats-in-acim.html ) along with the comments and your responses, the muddier the waters seemed to get (for me) until I read your statement:  ‘ACIM led me to the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit led me past my obstacles to being aware of Truth, many of which were not specifically mentioned in ACIM.’ You have always made the point that studying the Course was simply a means to an end; that it was even possible to reach an understanding of the Course and still not have inner peace. After getting almost nothing from the Course per se, the various teachers, authors, books, speakers, and students - I came across 4HIP , Releasing Guilt , the Mentor Articles and your personal mentoring. Now that I have established a relationship with my inner Teacher of Truth - which I find to be fairly accessible, simple, quiet and tailor-made, I feel like a phony to consider myself a student of ACIM. Why bot