ACIM Mentor

            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...

             Liz here was only twenty when she became a student of A Course in Miracles so she felt that she could not have already learned ideas presented in the Course . If she came across something she already knew she felt it must mean something “higher” or “deeper” than what she had already learned. But she was mistaken. She had not yet learned that we don’t all learn things in the same order. A person at twenty could already have learned something that someone else doesn’t learn until they are fifty. The most significant example of this is the idea that what you give you receive. Liz had already realized the reason she was a nurturer was that she felt love when she was loving, not when others loved her. Really, what she felt when she engaged in actions considered nurturing was satisfaction, but this is one of those “good” feelings that we call “love”. However, when she read the idea that one will experience whatever idea or attitude they proje...

            Last week I wrote, “Ego holds itself off from what appears as though what happens is supposed to be at its direction and feels confused at best and furious at worst when things don’t go its way.” What I meant by ego holding itself off is it sees itself as autonomous rather than part of a whole—the whole being appearances in consciousness. It projects this autonomy onto the neutral person, something that, like ego, is also just appearing in consciousness. This never changes for ego. It never comes to feel it “belongs” except maybe temporarily with other egos and bodies. This is easily shattered, though, when ego realizes its expression is unique and it is different or it feels others don’t see it correctly. If you have a sense of being part of something larger, a greater whole, that is not ego but is due to truth rising toward your conscious awareness. It’s a dim sense of the wholeness of truth (pure consciousness) and/or an awareness that desp...

             A rose is an expression of a rose bush. Or, if you need a broader example, we say the weather and plants and animals on earth are expressions of that abstract idea, nature. We have no aspirations for these expressions, we don’t expect them to lead somewhere, because we understand them as expressions. They will arise and they will pass and we accept this. So, when I say that what appears in consciousness, including your life, is only an expression this is what I mean: Everything appearing in consciousness is not to bring something about but is part of a depiction of what A Course in Miracles calls the Atonement , or the correction of the perception of separation from God. To put this in the terms I use now, everything is part of a depiction of the moment the idea of not-truth arose and was simultaneously undone by truth’s all-encompassing nature. It is pre-determined, “the script is written”, because it depicts over time a moment whose o...

             After the shift in consciousness here I had the sense of making a 180-degree turn in outlook. It felt like the turn radius of something huge, like a ship that makes a long arc to turn around instead of the neat U-turn of a small car. It felt like I had been looking at things backwards and now I would see things from the correct point of view. It took a while to come to fruition. It turns out that what appears in consciousness is a predetermined expression and aspiration—trying to reach a goal—was just part of the expression, it was nothing real, because there was no one here that needed to get somewhere. The appearance that there is, is just that—an appearance. It is ego’s story, and it is just a depiction of an idea. The thing is, I can share what is seen in enlightenment, but I cannot teach it in such a way that it becomes your living experience. If you cannot see that what is appearing in consciousness is only an expression, you canno...

             In the past several articles, I’ve been drawing a picture, one that is clear to me now but was not always. As truth rises to conscious awareness it affects ego and the two become blended and it is difficult to sort them out. Especially as ego is not motivated to do so. It will use whatever comes to conscious awareness to validate itself, its reality. Of course it does, it knows nothing else. The spiritualities it finds acceptable always include some version of itself, subtle though that might be. Its idea of heaven, of the “real world” in A Course in Miracles’ terms, is some version of what it wants to be true. To help uncross the wires—sort out ego from truth—I’ve been using the distinction between enlightenment and self-realization because these goals are not the same but are often confused. And what occurs when these goals are confused is spiritual bypassing that does not address dysfunction and/or inevitable disappointment after yea...

             The absolute, being all that is, must contain the idea of its own opposite. But being all, the absolute cannot have an opposite. So, the idea of the opposite of the absolute can only ever be an idea , and one that is simultaneously undone by the onlyness of the absolute. This idea and its simultaneous undoing are represented as consciousness . Consciousness is a symbolic depiction of an idea of a truth (represented by pure consciousness ) being opposed by ideas (represented by ego and its world) that appear in it and that it undoes over time. Pure consciousness (the truth of consciousness) is whole and does not have parts. But ego, as the idea of denial of truth, makes it seem that it does have parts: Conscious awareness (what is in immediate awareness), subconscious (what is just out of conscious awareness), and unconscious (what is out of conscious awareness). Ego’s occupation of conscious awareness pushes truth into the unconscious...

            In ego-consciousness, Liz here was in the first generation of A Course in Miracles students, having come to it in 1984 at the age of 20. Right away she had mystical experiences that revealed to her the nondualistic teaching of the Course —that the one and only truth is beyond appearances. The study group she was in at the time did not discuss the kinds of things she experienced. The members were mostly focused on relationships and giving things to the Holy Spirit. Because of her experiences, Liz felt pulled in another direction and left the group to form a relationship with the Holy Spirit and study the Course on her own. (Back then, I did not use the term nonduality . I said the Course was “Eastern religious philosophy in Christian language.”) From what she heard and read about Course teachers in the years that followed, no one was talking about the kinds of experiences she had. When she returned to a Course study group in 2000 after t...