ACIM Mentor

Last week I brought up the crucial point for any nonduality student that transcendent consciousness (the experience of limitlessness, oneness, love, joy, ecstasy, bliss, etc.) is not God. I read Suzanne Segal’s Collision With the Infinite , and shared her story to lay the groundwork for a discussion of this, which I now continue.  I did not always know myself that the experiences we consider transcendent consciousness were only an effect on the brain. Early in my study, I confused transcendent consciousness with Christ. So, when I realized those experiences were only effects, I grieved a little and went through a period of adjustment to this idea, but I also felt relieved of a significant illusion. However, it has taken me decades to really sort it all out.   For me, the goal was never to reach a transcendent consciousness, but rather to know Truth. I did, however, expect that a transcendent consciousness, or at least some aspects of it, could be a result of knowing Truth....

Recently, I read Suzanne Segal’s Collision With the Infinite , which was written in the 1990s and republished last year. It brought me full clarity about something I have seen and contemplated for quite a long time: The confusion many on a nondualistic path make between transcendent consciousness (experiences of limitlessness, oneness, love, joy, ecstasy, bliss, etc.) and God. A Course in Miracles makes a distinction between Knowledge (God) and perception (consciousness) for a very good reason: They are not the same thing. This is, in fact, crucial to understanding the forgiveness the Course teaches. As I have shared over the years, I have had direct Revelation of God, which revealed to me that, indeed, God is beyond consciousness, and moreover, only God is real. Therefore, all consciousness, no matter how transcendent, is a false experience. It is an illusion. There is much to say about this, so I am writing about it in three parts. To start, let me briefly tell you Dr. Segal’s ...

  “…The script is already written, yet isn’t the script an illusion? Our true Self is outside the illusion, so wouldn’t choosing with the Holy Spirit, the voice for God, also be outside the illusion, therefore outside the script?, Yes the script is already written, but we do have 3 minds, the ego mind, the Higher Holy Spirit Mind, and the decision maker mind, what we choose with the decision maker mind is what would keep us in the script/illusion or not, Our challenges are just lessons we have failed to learn presented yet once again, do we not have choice to decide to learn the lesson or not?, or is the choice to decide to release our defences against the truth also part of the script?   ‘What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you…’ (W-1...

  … my first reaction (ego) [to last week’s article] is that this concept (or truth rather) is very disempowering, and I’m finding it difficult to see the point of a suffering world.  Why would we choose to have an experience of separation from Love, unity, peace and joy? and choose a script that then keeps us locked out of The knowledge of Heaven?  It’s like we are emotional puppets who are tricked into thinking we have the power to pull our individual strings.  Yet there is nothing we can do to change the way the strings are being pulled…” – TR   God, being All, must contain the idea of Its Own opposite. But being All, God cannot have an opposite. So, the moment the idea of not-God arises it is undone. But not-God contains the idea of time (the opposite of Timelessness, or Eternity), so in time it seems the idea arose long ago and will be undone in some indefinite future (what A Course in Miracles calls the Atonement). But in God, the idea is over. In f...