ACIM Mentor

            Invariably, after articles like the past two where the illusion of identity was discussed, a client or a reader will say something to me along the lines of, “I know there really is no identity but…” Or, “I know I’m not supposed to have an identity…” What is shared in articles like those are how things change, what is seen after nonduality experiences, not a judgment against or prescription for repressing your current experience. It seems many feel foolish for continuing to have an experience that they hear or read is no longer there for others and they opt to deny it or repress it in their experience. But keep in mind, only ego struggles against ego. Ego is not a wrong thing or a bad thing, nor is it foolish for it to be appearing in conscious awareness. That is just what is happening, a false idea running its course. To pure consciousness that is all it is, a mirage—nothing. Any meaning, purpose, or value, good or bad, seen in ego and/or its...

           When this mind was first a student of A Course in Miracles , ego was confused to find in the Clarification of Terms in the Manual for Teachers that ego was juxtaposed with the miracle (C-2). It had expected the opposite of ego to be an identity , which it would call the Holy Spirit or Christ, because it saw those as identities. It expected that something here would go from identifying as an ego to identifying as the Holy Spirit or Christ. So, it was baffled, in fact disconcerted, by the Course saying the opposite of ego was the miracle. Of course, yes, technically the Holy Spirit is a miracle, at least as the Course defines miracle, a shift in consciousness toward truth. But what this section of the Course makes clear is that the necessary shift comes not in identification but to perception , or really, which consciousness, ego or the Holy Spirit/Christ, occupies one’s conscious awareness (your immediate experience) and therefore how it se...

            As the shift in consciousness approached here, a thought that kept coming up was that the better question is not, “What am I?” but rather “What is real?” And since, what I’ve discovered is when we talk about the “I” or self what we mean is “what is experienced as real”. “I” is a designation that moves from identity to fact, depending on whether ego or truth (pure consciousness) occupies conscious awareness. I’m not talking about the “I” in our casual discourse—the “I” starting this sentence being an example of that. In English, anyway, it would be ridiculously awkward to have a conversation avoiding “I” and “me” and “my”. But when we express our spiritual or nonduality experiences, “I” becomes the designation of what is felt in conscious awareness to be real. For example, as the shift approached here, there were frequent experiences of “I am nonlocal.” This mind (conscious awareness) was everywhere rather than in a specific place. Clearly, the...