ACIM Mentor

        “How can one differentiate between an egoic experience of what seems to be Truth or Love or Peace and an authentic awareness of Truth? All I can sense is that authentic Love feels so ‘other’, and cannot be described…but if something is ‘experienced’ at all, is this, by definition an egoic interpretation?” – MG   You may have heard that all experiences are illusions. This is ultimately true. The absolute—the absolute truth —is not an experience . There are no words for what it is. All experiences occur in and are registered by consciousness, which is ultimately an illusion, too. But consciousness is all we are dealing with here. And in terms of consciousness, there is pure consciousness, or the truth of consciousness, and there is ego, or illusion appearing in consciousness. So not all experiences are ego. Some are pure consciousness, or the truth of consciousness. What it seems you are trying to sort out here is ego’s versions of love and peace ...

            Last week’s article was about finding that heaven is not an extra-ordinary state but is the everyday ordinary consciousness you are used to. I get asked if now that I see this, do I experience heaven all the time? No, I do not, because ego is still falling away. But I sense heaven here, and have moments and episodes of it. In fact, lately I’ve been dealing with bouts of over-the-top fear when certain things “go wrong” or appear that they may. What changed after The Break, or shift in consciousness, was the covers were pulled from ego, from fear. What I once would’ve felt as a niggle of irritation or discomfort because of something practical I had to deal with I now know was the fear I feel fully now. Fear used to be (mostly) denied or masked or distracted from. I suspect some of Liz’s physical issues are due to years of the fullness of fear being repressed. Fear had to go somewhere, it had to be expressed in some way, and that ended up in the ...

               “Heaven is here. There is nowhere else. Heaven is now. There is no other time.” (M-24.6:4-7)   Lately, there have been articles written here that speak of the ordinariness of truth—pure consciousness—and how it is always here. You may hear or read this in other places, too. Certainly, the everpresence of truth was something that Liz here had often heard and came to experience. But applying the word ordinary to truth was something she came across only relatively recently. So, what was expected was that when ego fell away and truth was fully revealed, it would be remarkable. She expected that the veil of ego covered something different from her usual experience so when it was gone, something different would be exposed. This expectation was largely due to overblown mystical experiences, which Liz thought revealed what A Course in Miracles calls the real world and were indeed out of the ordinary and remarkable. But those tu...

Last week I wrote about truth, or pure consciousness , rising to conscious awareness. I mentioned how the Christian labels (God, Christ, Holy Spirit) used in A Course in Miracles , though never used here (this conscious awareness) in the traditional Christian way ( Christ never meant Jesus , for example) have fallen away as special words are found unnecessary for something so delightfully ordinary and simply present. There has been a long journey here with the word “consciousness”, accepted, rejected, and accepted again, this time because it has been found to be distinctly apt. The word consciousness in the context of spiritual experience and aspiration seemed to have developed in Eastern religious philosophy rather than in the West. While Liz here recognized the truth of nonduality teachings, she was never moved to pursue them. There was an attempt here sometimes to translate what was said about consciousness in those teachings into the Christian symbols of God, Christ, and Holy ...

             When the shift in consciousness (The Break) happened here in 2018, anything that could be called “I” or “me” (ego) fell away. The Holy Spirit as constant companion was gone as well, because there was no longer anything here to connect with the Holy Spirit. However, it was not totally lost. What once was called the Holy Spirit no longer felt beside but surrounding . It had become the context—the space, the field, the “world”—in which everything was occurring. This was one of many experiences at the time that was baffling, largely because it did not fit expectations. But experiences that I could not understand for a few years are now coming together. (The experience of that time can be found in a memoir ). The presence of ego in consciousness seems to block part of consciousness from itself, what we experience as conscious awareness —what is immediately in our awareness. This blocking seems to make an unconscious. So, truth , which is pur...

             Last week, I wrote that acceptance is a universally taught aspect of inner peace across psychology, religions, and spiritualities. You will often hear it as, “Accept what is .” But which “what is”? What is appearing before you and unfolding in your life? Or the what is that is truth , which is the space in which what appears appears and what unfolds unfolds? It depends, of course, on the context of what is being discussed and it can be useful to clarify with the speaker. Because while accepting truth leads to acceptance of what appears and unfolds, it does not work the other way around. No matter how much you accept what appears and unfolds, it will not lead you to an awareness of truth. It is still helpful, however. When you are aware of truth and you see that what is appearing is nothing more than an appearance—an illusion —it naturally follows that you accept it. There is no motivation to work to change an illusion. To say, “Well, ...

            When students read in A Course in Miracles that the entire experience of the person and its world is an illusion, it leads to two common questions: “How can I possibly see my reality as an illusion?” and “Am I to deal with the whole experience as an illusion or only deal with the illusions within the experience?” That the personal experience is an illusion is an awareness that may come to you through mystical experiences or a slow dawning, but it is not something that you can make occur, so there is no point in trying. Practically speaking, you can deal only with the illusions that occur within the experience.   And this is what a teaching like the Course is for. It is a “better way” to be in the personal experience. The person and its experiences have no meaning. Without ego, the person is just a human animal living out its life. The person would have thoughts and feelings and take actions and they would all just pass by if ego was n...

              When I write or talk about truth and how it is peace and “the good” as I did the past two weeks, readers and clients ask why they aren’t experiencing it, why they are having this experience of inevitable pain, lack, and loss? I have explained this often through the ontology that came to me long ago and I will use it here again and elaborate. The absolute (truth), being all, must contain the idea of its own opposite. But as the absolute is all, it cannot have an opposite. So, the opposite-of-the-absolute can only be an idea that is undone by the allness of the absolute as soon as it arises. However, within that idea there is time (the opposite of timelessness) and in time it seems as though the idea of the opposite-of-a-truth arose long ago and will be undone in some indefinite future. This is what is unfolding in consciousness. Pure consciousness before anything arises in it is the truth and ego (“I”, self, identity) and its world...

            Last week, I wrote that you should trust the still, the quiet, and the gentle over dramatic mystical experiences of love and joy. Dramatic mystical experiences do represent truth rising to conscious awareness, but they do not mean anything in themselves. I shared how for ego, though, the drama was what it looked for. In fact, Liz here missed how significant it was when The Enlightened Mind showed up to stay because it didn’t come with any drama at all. It was just quietly and matter-of-factly here. Oh, she knew it was important, but not how important. It was only when reading back in her journal while writing her memoir that she saw that it had been life changing. When you hear or read teachers who have had nonduality experiences (the onlyness of truth) say of truth “it’s so simple” and “it’s right here and always has been”—yes! We miss it because we’re looking for something dramatically different. But the different is actually ego. It is ...

             When Liz here stumbled onto truth, it was while seeking peace. She was an anxious person, and it was not love or happiness she felt she was missing, but inner peace. Before I continue, let me define peace . Peace is an absence of conflict. Without conflict, what is present is wholeness and never-ending stillness . Notice peace is not defined as something new arising, but by the absence of something. Conflict therefore blocks the awareness of the presence of peace. Another way to say this is ego, which is the experience of conflict, blocks the peace inherently here. What Liz thought were her first mystical experiences, mind-blowing love and oneness and joy, occurred when she was twenty years old and had just started A Course in Miracles . Eventually, these and their aftermath, a kind of honeymoon, passed. Ego was upset about this, it threw a temper tantrum, it wanted those experiences back. But as Liz moved past this over the years, i...

          When Liz here was first a student of A Course in Miracles she was an anxious person and looking for a way out of fear. In fact, her introduction to it was Jerry Jampolsky’s Love is Letting Go of Fear , the title a quote from the Course and very appealing to her. She dove right into the Course , all three books at once. I don’t remember how long it took her to read the Text, but as she neared the end she kept waiting for it to “wrap things up” into a nice package that would summarize all she read into the formula that would reveal the way into enlightenment and therefore out of fear. But instead it ended on Choose Once Again . How disappointing! What had she missed? She was being told the way out, but it wasn’t enough for her. The Buddhists say, referring to ego, “Life is suffering.” But they also say, “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.” The Course deals with the suffering aspect of ego, which is a choice. Painful things will happen. Suff...

            A couple of weeks ago I posted an article in which I referred to someone on the national stage as a narcissistic sociopath. The article was about projection, but some have taken issue with me labeling someone. (More on labels at the end of this article.)   They ask, aren’t we supposed to see Christ in everyone? Let me share the experience here with that idea. When Liz here was first a student of A Course in Miracles she had the spontaneous mystical experience of seeing the reflection of a self that was not Liz “in another” for a brief time. It was an experience of oneness. She understood this self to be universal, not limited to her, or to the other. She didn’t call this Christ at the time but knew this experience of oneness was what was meant by Christ . (It could also be called holiness or divinity or true self ). The experience faded but was never forgotten. Although she referred to it as seeing the universal self “in another”...

           Last week I wrote about projection. Whenever discussing projection, we discuss the darker aspects of ego, even though it also projects the lighter stuff. This is because the darker stuff is what triggers us emotionally. We see outside ourselves the dark stuff within that we don’t want to see. Sometimes, we are triggered purely by what we project and what we see is coming only from our mind. Sometimes, what is outside ourselves mirrors the dark stuff in our mind and we are triggered because we’ve been trying to avoid seeing it. Last week’s article was about the latter. Some readers are uncomfortable talking when I discuss the dark stuff. If you are familiar with Ken Wapnick’s teaching, then you have probably heard a term he coined for students of A Course in Miracles who do not want to face the hard and dark stuff in their minds: Blissninnies . Blissninnies insist all is always good and there is no dark stuff or they think they are to ignore t...

            For the past ten years there has been a narcissistic sociopath on the national stage in the US. He and the others like him with whom he surrounds himself are a trigger for many. I’m often asked by clients and readers how to deal with this. When you are emotionally triggered, you are projecting. Projection means you see in others something you don’t want to see in yourself. If you are not triggered, you are merely observing. So, first sort that out. To see someone’s behavior and merely not like it or to feel it does not express your values, is not to be triggered, so it is not projection. But when you have a strong emotional response, you see in someone something you don’t want to see in yourself. And when you get in touch with that, you will no longer project and no longer be triggered. (This is a form of what is known as “shadow work” or dealing with the unacknowledged dark side of your own mind.) Most psychological disorders are universal...

              Ah, the but . There is the indicator of conflict. And conflict always means ego. When I hear that but , I know the speaker or writer feels something naturally or has a desire but they feel their feelings or desires conflict with” being a good Course student.” And quite often, what they feel or desire does not conflict with A Course in Miracles , they’ve just misread it.   “I’m not feeling good, but the Course says I shouldn’t take medicine, it’s magic.” The Course says that unless you have attained a state of consciousness in which you can manipulate form—like heal the body—take medicine. Magical thinking is thinking that a healed body is an end in itself and true peace.   “I met someone I’m interested in, but I know I’m not supposed to want a special relationship.” The Course says you do not have to give up your special relationships. Rather, give them over to the Holy Spirit to be transformed to holy relationsh...

          We’ve all heard the stories: Someone struggles to accept a situation and when they do, the situation resolves or falls away, Here are some examples:   Jane has always wanted a life partner, but it has not happened. She’s 37 now and has come to accept being single. She’s at peace with this. This is when she meets the man she will marry and spend the rest of her life with.   Gretchen was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder. She’s angry. She falls into depression and for a long while she can’t seem to get past it. A therapist points out that she is grieving and suggests she allow the grieving process. Then one day Gretchen suddenly accepts that she will be managing this illness all her life. A month later, during a check-up at her specialist’s office, she sees a new doctor who notices something in her chart and orders more tests. It turns out Gretchen was misdiagnosed and does not have an autoimmune disease. She is given the appropriat...