ACIM Mentor

            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...

            There is a difference between self-realization and enlightenment, but these goals are often confused and thought to be the same thing. They are not. Self-realization can be taught and enlightenment cannot. Self-realization can be a deliberate “path” and in fact the journey itself is often the goal. (“The journey is the destination.”) But there is no “path” to enlightenment. It cannot be attained or achieved. It happens if it is to happen. Both are caused by the movement of pure consciousness (truth) toward conscious awareness. But self-realization occurs to ego. It is the effect on it of truth rising, transforming it but not wholly undoing it. So, one’s mind continues split between truth and illusion. Enlightenment, however, occurs when ego falls away because pure consciousness has risen fully to conscious awareness. The split is gone, there is only one reality, one truth, pure consciousness. Anything else remaining is recognized as unreal, m...

            Something that happens after a shift in consciousness is you see how things are in consciousness as opposed to what ego has said is happening. Obviously, it’s a radically different point of view! From ego’s point of view, a spiritual journey can seem integral and deeply meaningful. It is the source of ego’s deepest validation of itself as real, so it is its deepest delusion. But from the point of view of truth, pure consciousness, ego’s spiritual journey is incidental. It is what ego does when it senses truth rising to conscious awareness. Some have glimpses of truth, moments of “awakening” where pure consciousness rises briefly to conscious awareness, like near-death experiences or mystical experiences. As only ego can be said to be in any kind of dream (the illusion that it is real), then “spiritual awakening” can be said to be something that happens to ego. It is ego coming to realize that there is a truth beyond itself and its world. (It...