ACIM Mentor

           “A clear distinction between what is created and what is made is essential. All forms of healing rest on this fundamental correction in level perception.” (T-2-V.A-12. [2])   Early in A Course in Miracles it makes a distinction between what is created and what is made . In the Course , Creation means God’s Extension of God, Which is called Christ , and anything else is brought into being or made . This distinction is important, and radical when it is new to the reader, because the Course tells us Creation is Reality and anything made is illusion. Only God is Real is the whole radical teaching of the Course . The liberation from guilt and fear that you seek is in the realization of this. And this liberation is what the Course calls forgiveness or salvation or healing . God, being All, must consider Its Own opposite. But being All, God cannot have an opposite. The idea of not-God is undone the moment it arises. But within the ide...

          When I first had Oneness experiences, I would be looking at, say, a pencil, and feel, “I’m one with the pencil.” But as time went on and these experiences were less shocking, I was able to be present to them longer and I realized I did not feel one with the pencil. I felt Oneness and the pencil happened to be there. It is the same with people. In my first holy relationship experience, I felt I saw my Self reflected in another. This was clearly not seeing with the body’s eyes but perceiving with my mind, as the Self I saw was not this person, and I had the experience even when the other was not present and I was only thinking about her. But in my current holy relationship, I simply see my Self instead of the other. There is no distance as I experience extension of my Self rather than a reflection of my Self. I never feel I love everyone, as others who have shifted consciousness have described. Instead, I simply feel Love everywhere, no matter who ...

            " Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God.” (W-189.7)   Normally, I encourage students to state the positive rather than the negative, as in “Only God is Real” rather than “this world is an illusion” because, on its own, a negative statement affirms lack. But when it comes to contemplating God, it is often best to empty out, as the above quote implies, simply because God is beyond our experience of consciousness. In fact, because God is unlike our experience in consciousness, we often speak of God in negative terms:   God is Form less God is Limit less God is Time less God is not a state God is not a condition God is not existence God is not thought God is not experience God is not awareness God is not being We may say: God is Love God is Joy God is Peace   But these are conditional experiences of God’s Glory, that condition being the limitati...

         “ Consciousness is the receptive mechanism, receiving messages from above or below; from the Holy Spirit or the ego. Consciousness has levels and awareness can shift quite dramatically, but it cannot transcend the perceptual realm. At its highest it becomes aware of the real world, and can be trained to do so increasingly. Yet the very fact that it has levels and can be trained demonstrates that it cannot reach knowledge.” (C-1.7)   Knowledge is A Course in Miracles’ term for God , where consciousness —or the term the Course prefers, perception —is the term for the part of God’s Mind that seems to be split between an illusory experience of separation from God (ego) and an Awareness (consciousness, perception) of Oneness with God (Christ/Spirit). Knowledge, or God, is both quantitatively and qualitatively different from consciousness. Nevertheless, while consciousness never becomes Knowledge, Knowledge extends into consciousness as a Consci...

           " …Perhaps you could share some bright sides of being spirit…I am acim student and looking forward for ‘joy and peace’ that abide in me. Reading some of your texts I hear a lot of struggling happening. I understand this is your true experience. Are you joy, love, peace?” – MS   Yes, now I do experience a happy lightheartedness after a long dark period where no Light was to be found, only sensed as a Context around me that I could not access. If you read my memoir ( A Memoir of Christ: A Student of A Course in Miracles Awakens , here.), the most important part to me was the very last entry in the Afterword, where I described an experience that I have come to call the Cosmic Chuckle . This was a crack of Light in the darkness. I had never experienced anything like it before. It came from a depth I had never accessed. I was thinking about the darkness I’d come through and the thought and feeling that came to me, with a deep chuckle and ...

            It is not a contradiction to say that what arises in consciousness is a meaningless appearance and to call it the Atonement, or correction of the perception of separation from God. Recognizing appearances as the Atonement simply acknowledges they are not random. They have a shape. What appears in consciousness expresses an idea. But that idea is meaningless because separation from God is not possible, so its correction is not necessary. The final expression of a plant is its flowering. The blooms arrive and fall away. And so it is in consciousness with thoughts, feelings, and actions rising to conscious awareness only to fall away. And just as a plant has a shape, so does consciousness. That is the Atonement. The idea of not-God blooms and is corrected by the Idea of God (Spirit) and falls away again and again. Nothing in a garden blooms in isolation. Each blossom that arises is the result of genetics and environment. Water, nutrients, wind,...

            I wrote last week about the real world arriving in my conscious awareness as the realization of the Atonement, or correction of the perception of separation from God. Readers and clients ask if I am in the real world all the time. No, but if not every day, most days I experience it at some point. It is never far away. It was not like this from the beginning of the shift in consciousness from ego-consciousness to Spirit-consciousness. (See A Memoir of Christ: A Student of A Course in Miracles Awakens here. ) Almost eight years ago, I began to feel I was in a different dimension, or different experience of existence. I described it at the time as feeling like a “ghost in the world.” I was Elsewhere while still perceiving the world. The world was not my home anymore. Then, almost four years ago, I experienced what I call The Break , which was when my identification with the person (ego) fell away. From then on, I felt in a new Context even th...

“The full awareness of the Atonement, then, is the recognition that the separation never occurred .” (T-6.II.10)   The real world pictures Heaven's innocence. (W-159.3)   Everything in consciousness expresses the Atonement, or correction of the perception of separation from God. Ego is the false idea corrected. Spirit is the Correction. Where the awareness of Spirit is the correction that manifests the Atonement in ego-consciousness, Spirit-consciousness is the realization of the Atonement in consciousness. Spirit sees nothing to correct as It sees the real world, or the reflection of God’s Reality in consciousness. The shift in consciousness from ego to Spirit brings about a reorientation in one’s relationship to the personal experience. The Two Pictures (T-17.IV) in A Course in Miracles illustrates this beautifully.  The specific context of this section is relationships, but it can be generalized to all of one’s experience of consciousness. Where in ego-co...

              Only God is Real. This has been, for me, the central teaching of A Course in Miracles . It was also my experience of direct Revelation of God. Yet, lately I have explained consciousness and time as the Atonement (correction of the perception of separation from God) in my writing and mentoring. The risk of writing and talking about an illusion is that it can seem to reinforce it as reality rather than as something that is not really here. But even in the illusion, we talk about things that are not there but seem to be all the time, don’t we? Once at a holiday gathering, my (now) ex-wife was passionately telling a friend what he needed to do with a character in a role-playing game they were in together. My father overheard this in passing and said, “Wow, she’s bossy! Listen to her tell him how to live his life.” I had to explain to him they were only discussing a game. An illusion is something that seems real but is not. If you were...

            God, being All, must include the idea of Its Own opposite. But being All, God cannot have an opposite. So, the idea of not-God is simultaneously undone as it arises. It is impossible. But, as the idea of not-God includes time, within the idea of not-God , but not in God, it seems as if the idea began long ago and will be undone in come indefinite future. The experience of time is what we call consciousness or existence . It is the experience of being a person in a body in a world. As an expression of that moment of the idea of not-God arising and being undone, consciousness is always split between the idea of not-God and its undoing, or ego and Spirit. This ongoing and inevitable undoing is what A Course in Miracles calls the Atonement . As an individual expression of consciousness, your mind in consciousness is split between ego and Spirit and expresses the Atonement at one stage or another, at any given moment, as well as throughout it...

            I’ve written a great deal lately about how every thought, feeling, and action that occurs is predetermined, as consciousness is simply the expression as time of the moment of the idea of God’s opposite arising and simultaneously being undone. It’s as though someone said, “The theme is undoing . Now write a story…” So, I understand now that consciousness is what A Course in Miracles calls the Atonement. It is already accomplished and simply passes through this mind, much like when I watch a film, the action depicted has already occurred. (I do not mean that what unfolds before me in consciousness has occurred before. The idea it represents—the idea of not-God arising and simultaneously being undone—is over. What is cancelled as it arises never occurs.) Some have found comfort in the awareness of predetermination, as they see now why guilt is impossible. They also feel release from pressure to attain awakening, or frankly anything else. They ca...

            “…In the first paragraph are you saying, you felt guilty in thinking that free will is a thing when it is not? …What do you mean you never made special relationships? Was it until you realized that all relationships are special/valuable that you now feel that you’ve made many special relationships over your lifetime? Or special=romantic but that is a thing you are allowed to miss because it exists as another opportunity to be the only thing that exists, love.”  – AD             Yes, I meant in the first paragraph of last week’s article that I found hidden guilt in the idea of free will. I was using the term free will as it is commonly used—freedom to choose to oppose or align with Truth (God)—not as it is, an extension of God’s Will. As A Course in Miracles points out, will can only truly be free as it is . So, I could only ever have an illusion of free will, in which state the Course addressed me. ...

            Last week, I wrote that after my shift in consciousness I came to see that, for me, A Course in Miracles’ emphasis on choice, while also saying everything is predetermined, lead me to discover not that free will is so, but that I believed it was so . This took me to the deepest levels of my belief in guilt. By the same token, I have come to see that all relationships are holy relationships and only ego says otherwise. In other words, I never actually made special relationships, but in ego-consciousness it was my belief that I had . So, the source of guilt in my relationships was not their forms, but my belief I had twisted Love into something It was not. In ego-consciousness, on the spiritual path of the Course , I came to understand that my identification with a person was not my natural state. But I mistakenly felt this meant I was not in my natural state of Spirit, when really I was always in my natural state of Spirit. Ego-consciousnes...

As I have stated often lately, I have come to see that consciousness is the Atonement, or the moment of the idea of God’s opposite (not-God) arising and simultaneously being undone by God’s All-encompassing nature, unfolding as time. Consciousness/time does not bring about the Atonement, but rather expresses it. Everything in consciousness/time leads to the inevitable outcome of the undoing of the impossible idea of not-God. Therefore, everything in consciousness/time is predetermined. We are only watching the Atonement unfold, not just in the world, but through the thoughts, feelings, and actions of the personal experience passing through our minds. This led me to wonder why A Course in Miracles teaches that we have free will and are responsible for our own experiences, at minimum choosing to which teacher in our minds (ego or Spirit) we choose to listen at any given moment. Of course, it says itself in several ways, most notably “the script is written”, that consciousness is over...

            When I first wrote about my shift in consciousness and the discomfort and difficulty I faced (see The ACIM Mentor Articles , Volumes 3 and 4 as well as A Memoir of Christ: A Student of A Course in Miracles Awakens , here ), some readers thanked me in a way that implied I was somehow “taking it for the team.” I took this to mean they felt I would save others the same difficulties, and I could only imagine that would be through sharing my experience as I was. Or perhaps they felt I was serving all by playing my part in the Atonement (as is everyone). I felt, however, that their gratitude was unnecessary, as I did not feel I was going through those experiences and sharing them for anyone, not even for myself. The idea of service of any kind was stripped away in the very process in which I found myself. Since the shift, I have come to understand that consciousness (time, existence, appearances) is what A Course in Miracles calls the Atonement...

           "I  have been practicing Presence for some time now. I read my lesson for the day and then sit with my eyes open, often just staring at the rug. I 'feel' the Holy Spirit while I am doing this. Basically, it just feels good. Sometimes this can go on for hours with some short breaks in between. The time doesn't matter...Are practicing Presence, Mindfulness and the Holy Instant the same thing? Is practicing Presence a way of practicing the mechanics of the Holy Instant?” – WW   Your way of practicing Presence certainly sounds like one way to practice the holy instant. As for mindfulness , that depends. Years ago, I had a client who told me he practiced mindfulness by being present with whatever he was doing. If he was doing the dishes, he was with the action of dish washing. If he was speaking with someone, he was present with them, etc. He became very disciplined about not letting his mind wander. But where, he asked, was the peace ...

          “ I have been talking to fellow ACIM students, and we all discuss the following question: H ow can we have relationships in the world (seeming) with people who are not ACIM students, without assuming the persona of the illusory, separate small-s self?  If we do engage at the small-s self level, are we teaching our brothers/sisters that the separation is real, and therefore reinforcing our own learning of this illusion?” – MG   In Spirit-consciousness, you experience a person, but you do not identify with it. So, relationships are experienced as all the same, no matter if their outward forms are different or whether the other is a student of A Course in Miracles . You go through the motions of relationships with detachment, knowing only God is real, and everything in consciousness passes, as does consciousness itself. It is an illusion. This is automatic in Spirit-consciousness and does not require effort or practice. Until you are in...

  Is it necessary to be in the Holy Instant to extend the Atonement to the Son of God…” – WW             Yes. The Atonement , or correction of the perception of separation from God, plays out over time as consciousness or existence. The holy instant is a manifestation in time of the Atonement, as it is anything from a dim awareness of God all the way up to direct Revelation of God. Follow up question: “ So being in the Holy Instant would also be necessary to extend Forgiveness?”   Yes. The holy instant, forgiveness, and the Atonement are all the same >>>>>   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.

“Are we as little children completely and utterly beholden to God and stuck in the Atonement following  Spirit out, perfectly?” – LK   As Christ, you are God’s Creation, or Extension. There is no you without God, but there is also no God without you. So, you do not owe God anything any more than God owes something to you. Does sunlight owe anything to the sun? Does the sun owe anything to the light it extends? Extension means there is no separation, so ideas like being beholden do not apply. The Atonement (consciousness, existence, time) is the moment of the idea of not-God arising and being undone by God’s All-encompassing nature seeming to unfold over time. It is a passing experience so, no, you are not and cannot be stuck in it. >>>>>   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.

  “…so in time and form…would the atonement reflect a healed mind by the healing of the world? How is the atonement reflected?” – KD Everything in time is the Atonement, or an expression of the instant of the idea of not-God arising in God’s Mind and being simultaneously undone by God’s All-encompassing nature. Within the Atonement (time, consciousness, existence, appearances) however, there are what I call manifest undoers , or those whose unfolding story manifestly reflects the correction of the perception of separation from God. This shows up as everything from a vague awareness of God all the way up to Christ Consciousness. >>>>>   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.