ACIM Mentor

           Clients and readers often express fear about what they will face on their path to peace based on what they have read of others’ experiences, usually on other paths. It can be helpful to read about others’ experiences when you have those experiences yourself. They can be reassuring and validating. But until you have those experiences, keep in mind reading or hearing about them may lead to not just fear, but distorted expectations all around. As a student of A Course in Miracles , you don’t know what to expect, because you are to follow Spirit, not a well-worn path, such as the contemplatives many read about. Contemplatives remove themselves to varying degrees from life in the world. They meditate for many hours a day and live simplified lives outside of formal meditation to help maintain a meditative attitude. Whether in the East or West, each tradition has discovered the internal process a contemplative can expect. Part of this may be what is c...

            My three recent articles about how transcendent consciousness is not God has led to questions about the difference between consciousness and Spirit, as the descriptions of pure consciousness and Spirit often sound the same. Before I get to those experiences, let me explain the difference between consciousness and Spirit. A Course in Miracles says consciousness was the first split in Mind. So, consciousness is the illusion or dream of separation from God. It is also called the Son of God in the Course , as God cannot be wholly absent from any part of Mind. So, consciousness is split between Spirit, God’s Extension, through Christ, in consciousness, and the idea of not-God, or ego. Here is an analogy to illustrate this: If the sun were God, then sunlight would be Christ (God’s Extension or Creation), Earth would be consciousness (one side in sunlight, the other in darkness), and where sunlight touches Earth would be Spirit. So, very simp...

            P hysicists know that when their formulas to explain something in the material universe are long, detailed, and difficult, they have not yet landed on the answer. When they’ve hit upon the way the material universe works, the formula is elegant and simple. And so it is with Truth. If you want to know Truth, you simply have to invite Spirit into your awareness and let It lead the way. There is no more to it than that, because in the end, Spirit is all that is real in your experience, and everything else but Spirit falls away. You do not have to attain a perfect state of consciousness. You do not even have to attain a perfectly quiet mind when meditating. You do not have to use only right thinking all the time. You do not have to be ego free. None of those things get in Spirit’s way once you are following It. For a long while you will have two thought systems, ego and Spirit, and Spirit will help you learn how to live with ego. If your spiritu...

            Two weeks ago, I began a discussion about why it is important that students of A Course in Miracles , or any other form of nonduality, do not confuse transcendent (pure) consciousness with God. I shared Suzanne Segal’s ( Collision With the Infinite ) story the first week, and last week explained consciousness and the difference between oneness experiences of pure consciousness and the Oneness of God. Now I will explain why it is crucial to not confuse them. The Course calls the fundamental issue blocking one’s awareness of God the authority problem , or the belief that you are what you have made of yourself. This “you” refers to the Son of God in its split-mind, the maker of consciousness, and shows up in your individual mind as your identification with a person in a body in a world. (This identification is ego .) Oh, certainly you do not consciously think you made yourself. You may profess belief in a creator (author), but if you are not in...

Last week I brought up the crucial point for any nonduality student that transcendent consciousness (the experience of limitlessness, oneness, love, joy, ecstasy, bliss, etc.) is not God. I read Suzanne Segal’s Collision With the Infinite , and shared her story to lay the groundwork for a discussion of this, which I now continue.  I did not always know myself that the experiences we consider transcendent consciousness were only an effect on the brain. Early in my study, I confused transcendent consciousness with Christ. So, when I realized those experiences were only effects, I grieved a little and went through a period of adjustment to this idea, but I also felt relieved of a significant illusion. However, it has taken me decades to really sort it all out.   For me, the goal was never to reach a transcendent consciousness, but rather to know Truth. I did, however, expect that a transcendent consciousness, or at least some aspects of it, could be a result of knowing Truth....

Recently, I read Suzanne Segal’s Collision With the Infinite , which was written in the 1990s and republished last year. It brought me full clarity about something I have seen and contemplated for quite a long time: The confusion many on a nondualistic path make between transcendent consciousness (experiences of limitlessness, oneness, love, joy, ecstasy, bliss, etc.) and God. A Course in Miracles makes a distinction between Knowledge (God) and perception (consciousness) for a very good reason: They are not the same thing. This is, in fact, crucial to understanding the forgiveness the Course teaches. As I have shared over the years, I have had direct Revelation of God, which revealed to me that, indeed, God is beyond consciousness, and moreover, only God is real. Therefore, all consciousness, no matter how transcendent, is a false experience. It is an illusion. There is much to say about this, so I am writing about it in three parts. To start, let me briefly tell you Dr. Segal’s ...

  “…The script is already written, yet isn’t the script an illusion? Our true Self is outside the illusion, so wouldn’t choosing with the Holy Spirit, the voice for God, also be outside the illusion, therefore outside the script?, Yes the script is already written, but we do have 3 minds, the ego mind, the Higher Holy Spirit Mind, and the decision maker mind, what we choose with the decision maker mind is what would keep us in the script/illusion or not, Our challenges are just lessons we have failed to learn presented yet once again, do we not have choice to decide to learn the lesson or not?, or is the choice to decide to release our defences against the truth also part of the script?   ‘What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you…’ (W-1...

  … my first reaction (ego) [to last week’s article] is that this concept (or truth rather) is very disempowering, and I’m finding it difficult to see the point of a suffering world.  Why would we choose to have an experience of separation from Love, unity, peace and joy? and choose a script that then keeps us locked out of The knowledge of Heaven?  It’s like we are emotional puppets who are tricked into thinking we have the power to pull our individual strings.  Yet there is nothing we can do to change the way the strings are being pulled…” – TR   God, being All, must contain the idea of Its Own opposite. But being All, God cannot have an opposite. So, the moment the idea of not-God arises it is undone. But not-God contains the idea of time (the opposite of Timelessness, or Eternity), so in time it seems the idea arose long ago and will be undone in some indefinite future (what A Course in Miracles calls the Atonement). But in God, the idea is over. In f...

 " If the script is already written, and the world is a projection of the false beliefs we hold in the mind, wouldn’t the script change as we are willing to allow our perception to change? Or is our perception already determined as well?, Is the decision to wake up from the dream already predetermined? If the only real choice we have is to choose the ego thought system or the Holy Spirit in each moment, wouldn’t that lead to very different scripts?” – TR   The material experience is an expression of the moment of the idea of not-God/the undoing of the idea of not-God—what A Course in Miracles calls the Atonement. (You can also call it time , ego-consciousness , existence, or illusion .). So, everything in your material experience— thoughts, feelings, choices, actions, etc.—is predetermined. Wherever your mind is in the process, whatever you think, feel, and do, expresses the Atonement perfectly. You cannot deviate from “the script.”   In the Atonement, it seems...

  “I’m having problems with understanding the concept of Self. The script is written. This is an illusion. Two definite facts. If the writer of the script is our Higher Self, who is the “I” who’s asleep and needs to be awakened? I’m confused.” - BS “The script is written” is a figurative way of saying everything that happens in the material universe is predetermined. No one really “writes” it; there is no intention behind it. It is a meaningless expression of a meaningless idea—the idea of not-God/the undoing of the idea of not-God. This unfolding story of time is what A Course in Miracles calls the Atonement . Your Self is God’s Extension, or Christ (Spirit, Son of God). You have never left God, but you seem to be unconscious (asleep) to your Self in God, so a part of your mind seems to be having a dream of time (consciousness, existence) and you seem to be living out a role in the Atonement. In the dream, as your mind seems split between Awake (Christ) and asleep (ego), ...

  “My study of ACIM seems to take me to the logical conclusion that most of what I do in my days is without significance. I mean the only true purpose is to wake up to reality, the world as I experience it is an illusion that is to be forgiven, but certainly not embraced. Yet in other places of the text I acquire the impression that there is a plan, a purpose for me. By ‘me’ I don’t refer to ego, rather to me as a spirit, an expression of God. Would you say the most correct understanding is to, as much as I am able, to focus on understanding what keeps me from waking up? All the rest to be minimized? That there is no other purpose or plan I would give attention to?” - RP   You are correct that what occurs in the material experience is without significance. The material unfolding is merely an effect, or expression, of what occurs in your mind. So, your material life is the least significant aspect of consciousness as it is pure effect and has no consequence.   ...

  Regarding your present perspective, how do you feel about the transliteration [sic] you did of ACIM — The Message of a Course in Miracles ? Has your view of any of it changed?” – RP My goal with the plain language translation was to bring A Course in Miracles’ message out from behind its loaded symbols and dense language. As my experiences since I shifted consciousness have only validated and further illuminated its message for me, I still feel I accomplished that. In fact, I sometimes marvel at what came through in the translation and my articles and books. This mind truly was an instrument of Spirit. >>>>>   If you have a question the answer to which you feel may be helpful to others, send it to Liz@acimmentor.com and I will answer it in this newsletter/blog.

  Hello, everyone, it has been a while! Over a year, actually. Fourteen months ago, I began this newsletter, The Christ in You , and said I felt it would probably be irregular…well, so it has been, but a bit more than I thought it would be!   If you wish to review the six newsletters/blogs I wrote last year, you can do so at www.acimmentor.blogspot.com. What they say is still valid and they will catch you up with where I am a bit.   As many of you know, I have been busy for a year and a half writing a memoir of my spiritual path from its start when I became a student of A Course in Miracles in 1984 up through my shift in consciousness in 2018 and beyond. It is near completion, and I will self-publish it in a few weeks, so stay tuned!   Here is the back-of-the-book blurb for A Memoir of Christ: A Student of A Course in Miracles Awakens :     A student and teacher of A Course in Miracles , a nondualistic path to inner peace, Liz Cronkhite ...

I assumed that the awakening process was the same for everyone and that any seeming differences could be put down to those who shared their experiences using the symbols of the path they had taken. I thought the steps were the same, but the description varied according to the tradition followed. But I have discovered that the path is not the way you take; the path is the way that takes you. So your path does not just determine how you are likely to describe your experiences. It indicates the experiences that you will have. Although the content is ultimately the same, it does not unfold the same for each of us. I don’t just mean that we don’t all go through the same stages in the same order. I mean we go through very different, if eventually similar, experiences, which are determined by the path unfolding through us. For example, Bernadette Roberts ( What is Self? ) was a Christian contemplative and made it very clear that she initially went through a process that was in line with...

A few weeks ago I wrote about my “ Grand Tour of Fear ” (May 8). I shared how since my shift in consciousness I have seemed to experience fear in all its forms and degrees. It has been an intense and often rough two years, but it has not been all about fear. I wrote that I would eventually share some of the good stuff that has happened as well, so here it is. So far, the hallmark of my experience has been my feeling of immortality. Immortality was not something I gave much thought to before and I had no idea I would one day experience it. Like so much of this new experience, it has seeped slowly into my awareness so that the way to characterize it has come long after I began to have the experience. First I felt a “ghost in the world”. This was before the moment I refer to as “The Break”, which I call the shift I experienced. After The Break I would say “a new life had come”, which seemed inadequate to describe my experience. Not long after that I became aware that I am Spirit and...

Avery Wan lived in a dark room, only she didn’t know it was a dark room. It was all she knew, so she thought it was what existence was. One day Avery noticed that there was something in the room that had always been there, but that she only now saw was not the same as the as-yet-unlabeled darkness. How could she not have noticed there were two where she thought there was one? No matter. Now she knew. She labeled what she was used to “darkness” and this newly-in-her-conscious-awareness presence “light”. Because it was new to her awareness, she was drawn to look at the light. She was happy to feel she knew something more about existence. The more she looked at the light, the more distinct it became from the darkness, and the more she was baffled that she hadn’t seen this before. It’s so obvious! What’s more, she found the light to be more appealing than the darkness. She suspected that the light had helped her tolerate the darkness all along. So she lived for a while happily awar...

Sometimes I hope there is some reason for the journey through fear I have taken these past two years since I rose in consciousness. I have seen fear up close and intimately; raw, unmasked, and unmodified. But then I see that it is just as insignificant as the experience of existence (ego) that is gone for me and when it is over I will not give it any thought. This is just the way this split mind comes to an end. Everything A Course in Miracles says about the ego I have visited, experientially , not as just a concept. I have been through the fear of death and I’ve been through death. (Not of the body, obviously, which is irrelevant.) A much worse experience was fear of nonexistence. Because, as the Course points out, at least death “proves” there had been a life. Nothing terrifies the ego more than the idea that it doesn’t exist. Because it doesn’t. And I’ve seen that, too. When I reached the furthest edge of fear of nonexistence I had only one place to go if I didn’t pull ba...

When I was first a student of A Course in Miracle s I noticed a pattern: Whenever I had a positive spiritual experience, anything from a significant insight all the way up to a higher miracle, I would then have a “backlash” from the ego. This showed up as fears, attacks on me, attacks on others, obsessing angrily on a social or political issue, etc. The initial backlash seemed to be in direct proportion to the strength of the spiritual experience. But, for a long while, even one simple insight could lead to weeks of backlash. Eventually I noticed the pattern and came to accept that the backlash would happen. Simply recognizing the pattern helped mitigate it. In time I learned to not resist at all, because that seemed to lengthen and strengthen it. This shortened the duration and intensity of the backlash considerably. When I started teaching and coaching Course students I discovered I was not alone. In fact, this pendulum swing is a universal experience—and one of the more unco...

Sorry to have inundated you with emails lately, but I find I am going in a new direction and I wanted to share a new service—joining in Christ (the part of each of us that is Part of God)—and offer a discount for mentoring/life-coaching during this unusual time when we hunker down during the COVID-19 pandemic. (I’ve also lowered my fee in general. Check out my new streamlined website, www.acimmentor.com.) And here I send you the first of a new newsletter/blog, The Christ in You . When I ended the ACIM Mentor Articles a few weeks ago I felt it difficult to continue teaching in a way that was meant to be “corrective”. By this I mean, looking out at a world I thought needed adjusting. I still found it natural to teach one-on-one in a mentoring/life-coaching session with the handful of clients who still remain, but I found writing articles to be a strain except where I shared my process. My point of view shifted with my shift in consciousness, about which most of you know if you read m...

  “Christ is the link that keeps you one with God, and guarantees that separation is no more than an illusion of despair, for hope forever will abide in Him. Your mind is part of His, and His of yours.” —A Course in Miracles (W-pII.6.2) “(Christ) is the Self we share, uniting us with one another, and with God as well.” —A Course in Miracles (W-pII.6.1) I live now in the awareness that I am Christ—and so are you. I wish to use the power of my awareness to strengthen your awareness of Christ in you.   So I offer joining sessions at $1 US per minute from 10 to 30 minutes. How this works: ·          Email me to set up a time for joining. Liz@acimmentor.com or 702-742-5305. ·          You call me on the phone or Skype or Facetime or another platform over the internet. ·          If you have something on your mind you wish t...