ACIM Mentor

             Some readers and clients express confusion over whether A Course in Miracles is truly a nondual teaching. It is, but their confusion is because the Course’s foundational theory (its ontology and theology) is nonduality (only God is real) but its practice does not seem to be. That is because the practice meets you where you are, in ego-consciousness, or duality (the experience that both consciousness and God are real). Yet, the practice means to lead you to experience God (Holy Spirit, Christ) which will show you that only God is real. The introduction to the Course points out that you don’t need to seek for God (Love) but for your obstacles to God. Those are ideas that make separation from God—duality—seem real to you. Undoing them is what the Course is for. The Course leads you to an awareness of the Holy Spirit, or God in consciousness. Growing your trust in the Holy Spirit is how you grow your awareness of God’s Reality. And if it is to be, you will drop ego a

  (This questioner [CS] had many questions, which are answered in last week’s and this week’s articles. I present each question and then its answer.)   “How are we to understand the 10 year restructuring  process given the recognition that time is a  ‘structure of ego’ that ‘seems to grant reality to consciousness’? Can the seeming reality consciousness of ego be understood in relation to what Jung refers to as the symbolic archetypes of collective unconsciousness where there is a shared unconscious belief system expressed within linear constructs of time and space across which the trajectory of life, birth and death appear to unfold sequentially…" I have been told that there is a ten-year process that follows a shift in consciousness from ego- to Spirit-consciousness like I experienced. I suspect it is more a de -structuring rather than re structuring process. However, as I described, I do not experience it as time passing, but rather that I am still as this process seems to

            (This questioner [CS] had many questions, which are answered in this week’s and next week’s articles. I present each question and then its answer.)   “…Jung stated: ‘There are forms or images of a collective nature which occur practically all over the earth as constituents of myths and at the same time, as individual products of unconscious...These [archetypes] are imprinted and hardwired into our psyches.’ Considering the nature of ego and its structures as it correlates with Jung's collective unconscious archetypes in ‘Facing the Structures Left Behind’ (last week’s article), an encompassing understanding is sought with respect to how the terms ‘consciousness’, ‘awareness’, ‘conscious awareness’, and ‘unconsciousness’, are expressed or could be applied respectively to:   ‘Ego is the idea that consciousness is reality, and its structures are ideas and beliefs that uphold this idea [and] symbolize ego, the personal identity and its story, and the material universe

            A client who has read many awakening stories reminds me that after the shift in consciousness from ego to Spirit, one embarks on a ten-year process. Well, this month is five years, so I’m halfway there! It’s hard to believe it’s been five years. Oh, sure, if I look at all that’s unfolded in this mind since then, I can see where it took that much time to do so. But in the normal course of things, many different things happen in five years, and for me, only one thing has been occurring for five years, this process. It’s like I’ve been standing still while all this has gone on around me. After some things I’ve seen this week, I understand this process better. When I was confused about ego’s persistence after it seemed to fall away, a couple of people told me of others who described it as the ego “winding down”, like when you stop peddling a bicycle but continue to roll forward until the momentum is used up. I felt it like the “echo” of ego was still here or its habits of