ACIM Mentor

            My experiences in the past year and a half, which revealed that the ego (personal thought system) had fallen away a while ago and involved what I call The Break, where my consciousness shifted upward, have been humbling. They revealed to me that I was both naïve and arrogant about the spiritual path I am on. I was naïve about this mind. All the difficulty I’ve encountered is nothing inherent to the path, but rather to the limits of this mind. And I was arrogant in thinking I knew the way ahead. Oh, I knew there was a shift up ahead. It came a couple of years earlier than I sensed, but it didn’t come as a surprise. The nature of the shift came as a surprise, though. I had no idea that the mind’s shift to Spirit would be like this.             What is the nature of the shift? An entire life, both an internal consciousness and the external expression of it, fell away. So far my mind has ...

            Along the way, as much as I loved to get into spiritual theory, in the end I always let experience lead the way. Theory is interesting intellectually, but it never caused an actual shift in my experience. I have been willing to let go of theory if experience taught me something different. However, more often than not my experience would not contradict, but would rather illuminate theory for me. Theory became fact when I experienced it. In the past several years I became aware of the pseudo-reality we live in as a story. This is how “the world isn’t real” began to show up in my experience. This story is the moment the idea of not-Truth arose in the Mind of Truth (God) and was undone by Truth’s all-encompassing nature unfolding as time. In time, the idea seemed to arise long ago and its undoing seems to be in some indefinite future. We live in a story of correction, or undoing, or, as A Course in Miracles calls it, Atonement. I became awa...

If I can be said to have a desire, it is for what will happen. It does not make sense to want anything else! To do so would mean opposing myself, because I now know I am That from Which it all unfolds. I no longer feel I am a thread independent of the tapestry. I am the tapestry expressing as this thread. This makes it very difficult to speak to people who are not on the same path about my experience. Did I want to leave Australia? No; it wasn’t about want. Did I want to stay? Not at the moment, because I could feel leaving was the next step. Do I want to go back? Yes, but that’s because I feel I will. If that changes, I will feel complete with Australia. Acting is no longer about desire, or want, or motivation for me; it’s about feeling the movement of the unfolding through me. I willingly move as I am moved and my feelings seem to keep pace with the movement. What do you want? What would make you happy? What are your plans for the future? These are not relevant questions to m...

I am back in the United States after a year in Australia where I followed a Holy Relationship, which continues into a new phase. Everyone wants to know how I find it here now, back in the city (Las Vegas, Nevada) I left a year ago after dismantling the life I had been living. So I thought I would just tell you all in one fell swoop!             Las Vegas is familiar, but not natural to me. It feels like a foreign land I once visited. I live with a sister across the city from where I lived before, but I have been to my old neighborhood and I even drove past my former home. It is hard for me to believe only a year has passed since I went through that huge dismantling. In fact, it is hard to believe I ever lived that life. Not only can I not find the self that lived that life, I cannot find the self that left it. And as my time in Australia wound down I could feel who I had been there falling away, too.     ...

“Is the Course saying that the script is written and our only choice is to see everything with the ego or the Holy Spirit? Or is it saying that in every situation where we make a decision the script switches to a different script?” – BM A Course in Miracles is saying everything that happens is already set and your choice is in how you see it. Although you feel that your desires, motivations, choices, and actions are your own, really you are a part of a whole, and that whole lives through you, showing up as your desires, motivations, choices and actions. While your will feels free, it is really part of a greater will living through you. To understand this, you must understand the nature of what you perceive as reality, or the world you live in. It is actually an instant of undoing unfolding as time. That instant is the idea of not-God (not-Truth) arising and being undone in the Mind of God (Truth). God, being All, must contain the idea of Its Own opposite. But being All, Go...

            A common spiritual practice is to be mindful, which is another way of saying to be present. A common misunderstanding is that mindfulness should be limited to the body’s activities; to its breathing, feelings, and activities.             Sometimes clients say things like, “I struggle to stay present, but I’m worried about my son” or “I want to be present, but I can’t stop thinking about what my sister said to me last week”, etc. They feel that they shouldn’t be thinking about anything but what the body is doing. But the mind is going to continue to think until it does not. So mindfulness must include being present to the mind’s present thoughts, even when those thoughts are about the past or the future.             When you are doing tasks that do not require much thought, like cooking, washing dishes, pulling weeds, engaging in ...

            On my path there were various ways in which I was “purified” of guilt, often quite consciously. But I had two noteworthy episodes that I did not recognize as purification when I went through them. The first I have written about a few times before. I began A Course in Miracles , which was the start of my spiritual path as well, in 1984. It was my life from the moment I picked it up. I was in a study group for a very brief period at the very beginning, but after that it was just me and the Holy Spirit (Awareness of Truth in my mind). Despite early experiences of direct Revelation, a Holy Relationship, and higher miracles I remained largely intellectual in my approach to my spirituality.             In the late 90s I found my study and practice tapering off until one day I realized ACIM had been sitting on my end table gathering dust for quite a while. I simply had no motivation to read...

            In the past couple of years, this mind has faced itself like it never had before. This is an aspect of becoming conscious to Truth. It lights up every corner of the mind, revealing what had been hidden, and what had been hiding It. This has meant seeing a lot of dark and ugly beliefs, most of which I’d seen over the years. Some I thought were gone, but seemed to review. A few surprised me. I did not have to do anything with most of them but feel them and see them and realize they were no longer really there. These were the shadows of the ego (personal thought system) that had gone. I learned, through this long, uncomfortable retrospective, exactly what the ego was and what it taught me about me (lies). While the actual beliefs went with the ego, some habits and postures instilled by it are still unraveling.             One of these beliefs was revealed in a deep discomfort with myself ...

My visitor’s visa is due to expire and I will be returning to Nevada in the United States in early October after a year in Western Australia. As most of you know, I came here to Hannah, with whom I have a Holy Relationship. It has been quite an, erm…. interesting year for both of us. Difficult may be a more apt word, LOL, though of course there is also a lot of Love.             It is not my place to tell Hannah’s story, but we have both faced ourselves in ways we did not expect. I came here having just dismantled a life that had come to completion and with a mind adapting to a new consciousness. The former was difficult and I hoped the latter meant things would get easier for me. Ha, ha! In some ways they got harder. But now, yes, it is much easier. The first months for me were very difficult because the echo of the ego (personal thought system) was very much upon me. I was smack in guilt and fear and grief and I was easily...

In painting, pentimento refers to the emergence of previous paintings or drawings on the canvas beneath the present painting. It can reveal the artist’s original ideas or that the artist changed their mind. In fact, the word is Italian for “repentance”. Ha!             I feel this kind of “bleed through” now as the Light of Truth shows up for me in this new kind of Vision and Awareness. Sometimes I have an epiphany and I am There , seeing with pure spiritual Vision. But most of the time I simply experience, well, pentimento, as the Light of Truth simply illuminates my present experience. When I first experienced It, I called It the Golden Light of Love, or, simply, the Golden. Later, as It seeped into my ongoing experience, I called It the Enchantment, because It was a magical feeling of being, well, enchanted with everything. Now I simply call It Love.             I expe...

Although I have not watched much of Modern Family , besides enjoying the writing and the humor, I always liked the sitcom because of its realistic portrayal of family relationships. There is a lot of tension; a lot of painful history. There is a lot of disappointment, eye rolling, and sighing. But there is also always love.             Painful family relationships are a common theme with my clients. There are two mistaken expectations that often emerge. One is that there is not supposed to be tension in loving relationships. My clients think something is wrong when there is conflict. The other is that as one becomes spiritually aware personal relationships become pain free.             Let’s take the first mistaken expectation. There is no perfection in the world. The personal experience is a relative one so there are no absolutes. We are all unique and therefore different...

I have shared many times that direct Revelation of Truth is indescribable. Truth is so wholly unlike the relative experience of perception that I can no more describe It than I could describe a color to a blind person. There is nothing to which to compare It because it is All-That-is. What I do say is that Truth is Wholeness beyond any experience of wholeness at the relative level because at the relative level wholeness is always experienced in relation to lack. It corrects lack. But Truth does not occur in relation to anything else. Also, Truth is beyond experience . The highest level of awareness (consciousness; perception) that one can attain at the relative level of perception is the Awareness of Truth (Holy Spirit). The effect of this is an experience of Oneness. And, truly, this, too, cannot be adequately described, though many of us have tried! At the level of perception, where all is relative, Oneness “bleeds through” into duality as an experience of “One with” what ...

            Sometimes I feel that what A Course in Miracles teaches is just for this stage. Only now do I get immediate results putting into practice what I have practiced for 35 years. But, of course, I actually always got results. It was just the time between practice and accepting its results has shortened considerably. It took years! Then months, then weeks, then days. Now its hours at the longest; usually minutes, if not instantaneous forgiveness.             When I first became a student of ACIM, which was the start of my spiritual path as well, I had direct Revelation and higher miracles that showed me that what ACIM teaches is true. From that time on, all I was really doing was coming to accept what I had seen, that Truth (God) is true. I made the mistake for the longest time of thinking I had to relearn this and that I had to choose Truth over and over. But Truth had come to my awarenes...

In A Course in Miracles , the path is laid out in what is called in the Manual for Teachers the “Development of Trust” (M-4.I.A) After I undid the guilt in my mind (see my book, Releasing Guilt for Inner Peace ), I was aware of a dark corner in my mind to which forgiveness could not extend. It was not dark as in sinister, but simply unknown. I could see it and feel it, but I couldn’t access it. I knew I would face it someday.             Two years ago the Love rose to my conscious awareness and I became even more aware of that inaccessible corner in my mind to which It could not extend. Nine months later I experienced what I call The Break. This is when I became aware that I had risen in consciousness. But, still, I was aware of something that blocked the extension of spiritual Vision in my conscious awareness. I knew my consciousness had risen; I simply could not always see this.        ...

True forgiveness, as A Course in Miracles teaches, is the recognition that nothing real is occurring in your perception that you are living in a world apart from Truth (God). Lately I’ve written about how two years ago I came to experience the self’s life as a play. The unfolding story before me is an extension of me. I am Author and character; Creator and creation. Well, I’m a little slow, but the other day it dawned on me: This is what “nothing real is occurring” feels like. I am living forgiveness . The belief in guilt is the belief that Truth has been killed or attacked by not-Truth. It is the belief that there are two realities: Truth and Its opposite, not-Truth. To overcome guilt, I remembered my experiences of Truth in direct Revelation and in higher miracles. Both showed me that Truth is untouched by anything that seems to happen at the level of perception, therefore guilt has no basis. (I go into what guilt is, how to recognize it, and how to undo it in my book, Releasi...

Every now and then I get questions about what A Course in Miracles calls the “happy dream” or the “real world”. Most want to know if this means they will have everything they want, which usually is along the lines of a lot of money, and all that money can buy; the perfect life partner, with whom they will have no conflict of any kind; engaging and interesting employment, etc. The happy dream is a shift in perception, not circumstances. It is happy because you are aware of the Source of True Happiness within you and this extends in your awareness; into the “dream”. You know your happiness is not dependent on any circumstance.             Sometimes the question comes as: “Don’t I deserve to be happy?” Yes! But who is the “I” in this question? You will never be happy in a false state because, well, it’s false! You can only be happy in Truth because, well, It’s the Truth! No matter how much you seek for lasting peace and happines...

A few times a year I’ll hear from readers who want to know how they can look at some horror in the world and see Love, so the answer bears repeating. The answer is that the content of what you see never comes from the images appearing before you. By “content” I mean the meaning that you see, which is the same as what you experience. And that is either some form of fear or Love, which always comes from you.             Love is Reality. It is your Being. It is the True Content—meaning, the Real World, as A Course in Miracles calls It. In my translation of ACIM into plain language ( The Message of A Course in Miracles and Practicing A Course in Miracles/The Way of A Course in Miracles ) instead of “Real World” I use “True Perception”. For me, “True Content” and “True Perception” more accurately describe the experience of Spiritual Vision. What you perceive is always your own mind. When you perceive through the personal thoug...

Several years ago—I’m not sure when it began—a new understanding of the nature of everything began to creep into my mind. The insights came slowly over time and eventually formed a whole picture for me. These showed up in my articles over a span of time. It began with me understanding, in A Course in Miracles’ language, that there is only one dream, one dreamer of the dream, and that all of us are dream figures in that dream. There is one will living out through what seems to be individual wills. On a personal level I experience desire and choice and they feel like mine alone, but they are this universal will (“the universe”) living through me. Eventually I understood what was unfolding in time was the moment in the Mind of Truth of the idea of Its opposite arising and being instantly undone by Truth’s all-encompassing nature. This is what ACIM calls the Atonement and I call the Undoing.             What I didn’t realize was th...

I have been experiencing Oneness in a way I did not expect, so for a long while I didn’t label it “Oneness”. I have had experiences of someone, something, and even everything else as me. In the moment of the realization of Oneness, the mind, not the body’s eyes, is the source of my awareness. So appearances do not determine my awareness, but are wrapped up in it. For example, if I’m looking at a tree and I know we are one, its appearance is also mine and vice versa.             This experience of Oneness is how I understood the experience of “creation” or “extension” in A Course in Miracles . God (Truth) “creates” through extension, meaning Its Being extends everywhere, always. So “Creation” in ACIM is not something brought into being by God, like the universe of form. In ACIM “Creation” is God’s Infinite Being. That’s the level that ACIM calls “Knowledge”, which is apart from the level of perception (consciousness, awareness)...

“The body is a limit imposed on the universal communication that is an eternal property of mind. But the communication is internal. Mind reaches to itself. It is not made up of different parts, which reach each other.” (T-18.6.8) “The body is a limit imposed on the Oneness that is an Eternal Property of Mind. Oneness is internal and It reaches to Itself. It is not made up of different parts which reach to each other. ” (MACIM-18.6.8)*             I have learned that detachment evolves into the extension of Oneness (Wholeness).             First, let me explain how I was before detachment. I was pretty much attached to everyone. Another way to say this is I projected my source of wholeness onto everyone, expecting that they had what I needed to be whole. Oh, I didn’t go around saying this, not even to myself. It was just how I related to the world in my identificatio...