The Practice of ACIM and Nonduality

            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 and be left only with Spirit.

The Course’s central practice of forgiveness is not like ego’s forgiveness, which reinforces the reality of consciousness, or duality. The Course’s forgiveness is “this is not real, because only God is real.”

The practice of the holy instant is to bring you back to centering in God, again and again throughout the day, to bring to your experience the Reality of God, which will show you that only God is Real.

And the holy relationship, which is the practice of inviting Spiritual Vision into your experience in the world, is for the same purpose.

So, there’s no contradiction between the Course’s nonduality theory and its practice, although it can seem that way on paper, meaning, to the intellect. But once you put it into practice, the theory is illuminated by experience. 

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Comments

Unknown said…
Thank you for posting this clear explanation of a seeming contradiction. The course meets us in the condition in which we think we are and gently leads us step by step up the ladder that separation led us down.
5:03 AM
nicci said…
beautiful post.
8:42 AM
Anonymous said…
Yesterday's lesson and the Practice of ACIM in Nonduality present a way to be at peace with experiential feelings and doubts about it not seeming okay to talk about the truth and feeling not okay with not talking about the truth.

Releasing Guilt for Inner Peace has helped in looking at guilt in conscious and unconscious narratives of the self and selves collectively.

The lesson's teaching on truth (non dual) and not-truth (dual) clarifies accordingly:
"Truth must be all-inclusive, if it be the truth at all. Accept no opposites and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely.
Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true, and nothing else is true. ²This one has heard before, but may not yet accept both parts of it. ³Without the first, the second has no meaning. ⁴But without the second, is the first no longer true. ⁵Truth cannot have an opposite. ⁶This can not be too often said and thought about. ⁷For if what is not true is true as well as what is true, then part of truth is false. ⁸And truth has lost its meaning. ⁹Nothing but the truth is true, and what is false is false".

This seems to ask how the truth can be true and only true and not truth, duality - nothing else, be part of truth in the non dual truth teaching.

Truth must be all-inclusive to be truth. Where duality appears in ACIM opposites, exceptions and exclusion contradict the truth entirely.

"And thus the truth appears to have some aspects that belie consistency, but do not seem to be but contradictions introduced by the self", and selves collectively.

Duality shows up in the course where it is inconsistent with its truth teachings.
We are asked NOT to accept opposites to the truth of any kind or make any exclusions or exceptions to the truth in recognition that only the truth is true and nothing else.
We ARE asked to accept appearances of contradiction in ACIM where duality appears in all its "imperfect limitations of not-truth" as false appearances having no truth and nothing else. Non Duality in the Course attests to "what is true is true" and duality in the Course attests to "what is false is false" and that's the part we're asked NOT to accept.
Consideration might be given to what belies the teaching showing up as opposite to and inconsistence with truth using the indicators provided.
"This can not be too often said and thought about".
1:11 AM
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