ACIM Mentor

          Recently, I went to Suzanne Segal’s book, Collision With the Infinite , to look up something. I ran into what she said were Transcendental Meditation’s three stages of enlightenment: cosmic, God, and unity consciousness. I was struck before, but more so now, by how they measure enlightenment not by the absence or presence of ego, but rather by what had come to stay in awareness. In fact, even when Ms. Segal finally found someone, a Buddhist, to explain her decade long feeling of the absence of the self and the fear that filled that void, he told her she was in bliss because of her awareness of what she called the Vastness. He dismissed the fear she felt, which clearly indicated ego was still present. So, the TM and Buddhist measurement of enlightenment is not ego’s absence but, the Presence of the Light in conscious awareness. The Light is called many things. I call It Spirit and Ms. Segal called It Vastness. In the TM tradition, the first stage of ...

            God is All, and being All, God must consider Its Own opposite. But being All, God cannot have an opposite. So, God’s opposite, or not-God, can only ever be an idea . It is an idea that does not extend God, so it does not represent Reality. In fact, the idea of not-God is simultaneously undone as soon as it arises because it represents an impossible idea. There can be no absence of the All in the All. But the idea of God’s opposite, or not-God, is not an intellectual concept. It is not undone through intellectual reasoning. As God is Reality, the idea of not-God believes it, too, is a reality, one that is opposed to God. It seems to have come into existence , in a situation called consciousness , and is full of experiences in a material universe . So, existence , consciousness , experiences, and the material universe are all not-God. They are all illusions. But as God’s Allness simultaneously undoes the impossible idea of God’s opposite, the...

            “The word, special or specialness comes up in ACIM so many times, and it is key to understanding so much of what the course is about. However, specialness is so much a part of the culture we are living in now that claiming someone or something is not special is considered an insult. Although you surely have in the past I think this would be a good topic to address in an upcoming Mentor letter as a refresher and reminder for the New Year.” –ESA Persons are unique, and everyone has a unique part to play in the Atonement (what is unfolding in consciousness/the world), so in that sense you could say everyone is special. However, A Course in Miracles uses the term specialness to describe ego’s attachment to its unique person and its belief that special people or situations will bring it peace and happiness. This is ego’s reality, and it will never change for ego. So, naturally an ego is offended if you tell them their person is not special. Y...

            “How did you get to the break? How do you continue towards the freedom from ego? What did/do you ‘do’?... you said that things happen, no matter what…Yet, you have been a student of ACIM for many years. There is an intense attention towards this continuing process. How does ‘it’ happen? I am curious to read your answer.”. —K   The Break refers to the moment when Spirit took the center of consciousness here, bumping ego off center and leading to it falling away. I felt this approaching for a long time before it occurred. (See my memoir. ) But I did nothing to make it happen. All my years of study and practice of A Course in Miracles and growing my awareness of Spirit perhaps were preparation and indicated that the shift in consciousness would occur, but they did not make it occur. In other words, the cause of the shape of Liz’s former life may have been her eventual shift in consciousness, the shape of her life did not cause the shift ...