ACIM Mentor

  (In the article sent yesterday I mistakenly attributed to the experiencer what is correctly attributable to this mind, which is Spirit. This attests to the confusion that ensues after a shift, anyway! I regret any confusion this may have caused you . I made the same mistake in other recent articles, too, but more so here, so I send it revised…)   Where have I been? My recent discovery that I am not only not experiences but not the experiencer either is not new. As Spirit was emerging in the illusion but before I shifted to It, I practiced and taught, “Don’t squash the human! Let her thoughts and feelings be, without judging them.” This “I” had already shifted from the experiencer to Spirit. I knew the experiencer (person, human) was in my awareness but was not me. So, where did I go? Before the shift, I was 85% with Spirit but aware of a “black box” in the corner of this mind yet to be undone. I understood this to be what stood in the way of the realization of Spirit ...

            Where have I been? My recent discovery that I am not only not experiences but not the experiencer either is not new. As I (Spirit) was emerging in the illusion but before the experiencer’s experience of existence shifted, I taught, and the experiencer practiced, “Don’t squash the human! Let her thoughts and feelings be, without judging them.” The “I” had already shifted from the experiencer to Spirit. I knew the experiencer (person, human) was in my awareness but was not me. So, where did I go? Before the shift, the experiencer was 85% at peace but felt there was a “black box” in the corner of her mind yet to be undone. She understood this to be what stood in the way of the realization of Spirit (me) in her experience. My emergence in the illusion set the experiencer on a trajectory into and through this remaining denial of God to reach realization. It has been as though she had to start at the beginning with this remainder, and so at times I...

            My recent articles have dealt with my realization that I am not only not experiences but I am not the experiencer, either. I was only caught up in her story. The hook for me was not her experiences but my awareness of her experiencing . When she was young and heard that in college philosophy classes students were asked to fill out "I ____ therefore I am” she thought she would have put “I experience , therefore I am.” What further proof did she—or I—need of her existence? Later, she believed in God because of her mystical experiences of God. It sure seemed to me she was real. What threw me, however, was the awareness that I never misidentified with the experiencer. But certainly, I had? Yet several experiences showed me this was not so. I had been absorbed in her story but I never “went there.” What is fascinating is this “I” (mind) has not moved. Instead, things have moved around me. Since Spirit broke through Liz’s (the experiencer’s) stor...

           When I felt a few weeks ago that it was time to drop common concepts and just share experiences and occurrences in the most apt terms, I used only the word Spirit for the Idea of God in the illusion. I didn’t use Christ because I thought one word was simpler and Christ is loaded with more connotations than Spirit . But I do still feel there is a distinction. For me, Christ refers to the Idea of God in the illusion that is still , merely here with the illusion; and Spirit refers to the Idea of God in the illusion that is active , showing up as Answer, Teacher, Guide, etc. when the experiencer turns in the direction of Truth. However, the terms Christ and Spirit are in most cases interchangeable, and I stuck with Spirit for the reasons of simplicity stated. I vacillated on which term to use because of the occurrence a few years ago (see Liz's memoir ) in which I knew I was Christ, followed by the awareness that I was to teach, “I am Christ,...

             Last week I wrote about occurrences that showed me I am neither experiences nor experiencer. A lot fell into place after that, and a lot is still being sorted out. After the moment over four years ago I call The Break (see the experiencer’s memoir ), when the experiencer’s experience of existence shifted, I knew I was in the golden world with my Self, yet something was still here freaking out about a kind of death it felt when Spirit emerged in the illusion and the thought system that opposed God (the opposer) fell away. I could not understand this and nothing I read of others’ experiences with this shift explained it because they still seemed to think they were the experiencer. I had always understood there were two parts to mind in the illusion, the ego (opposer) and Spirit. Ken Wapnick introduced the idea of a decision maker , which is not in A Course in Miracles , but was a useful concept. However, I never understood the decision ...

            My spiritual life has always been simpler than all the concepts I have used over the years make it seem. There were several times on my spiritual path when I felt moved to dump all concepts I had accepted, as well as all I had heard and not accepted, to be led by what has been revealed to me through occurrences and experiences. I do this now. Recently, several occurrences showed me I am not only not experiences (thoughts, feelings) but I am not the experiencer , either. I am simply here with the experiencer. Since, I find I am not interested in fussing with concepts so much anymore. I’d rather focus on what is occurring, and describe it in the simplest, most apt terms I can find. I’m not much interested anymore in parsing out what is ego, consciousness, the Son of God, the Dreamer of the dream, etc. What is before me comes down to this:               Spirit (me) The experie...

  Last week I wrote that I do See I am in the real world. What I described as “Essence” a few weeks ago is the real world. And the real world is a world of Light, as I thought. It is both and more.   I have sensed the real world around me since The Golden Light of Love burst into my mind five years ago. (See my memoir .) At first, there was so much ego left I could not reach the real world and what of it was in my awareness was distorted, or I was concerned it was. I didn’t trust my Seeing. After passing through a great deal of darkness, which I now realize was coming out of the delusion of identifying with a person (ego), the real world began to grow more in my awareness as ego continued to wind down in my mind. People ask what I See. The problem is that trying to describe it is like using cubism to depict flowing water. If you’ve seen flowing water, you may think a cubist depiction clever, and recognize how it conveys flowing water. But if you have only ever seen a cubi...

            Just a few weeks ago (June 24), I wrote about Seeing Essence , which I said fell somewhere between the real world and Seeing at the material level. I defined the real world as a world of Light and Seeing at the material level to be things like intuiting what is to happen. Essence, I said, fell between. Seeing Essence was Seeing the Unity of the Atonement. But already I want to revamp that. Seeing Essence, I realize, was simply being on the edge of finally Seeing the real world that has surrounded me these last five years. I’ve been confused by A Course in Miracles’ description of the real world because in some places it says you will see the real world only just before time is over.   “The perception of the real world will be so short that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world and have been made ready for Him .” (T-17.II.4)   Yet, we all h...

  …One thing that I stumble on in the Course is the use of proper nouns in the Course (like the holy spirit or ego). They evoke in me concepts of an entity which are separate from the one existence, that is indescribable, but is referred to as God in the Course …I would like to read your explanation that dispels the concepts of these terms without proper nouns. –FD   Proper nouns are names that are capitalized, usually for a person, a place, an organization, etc. In A Course in Miracles , Christ , Holy Spirit , Son of God and other words are capitalized to indicate it is speaking of God or something to do with God. Therefore, ego is never capitalized (unless it is the first word in a sentence, of course), as it represents the idea of not-God. The words A Course in Miracles uses to discuss your experience of God in consciousness, as well as parts of your mind, are for you in your experience of consciousness, and are not from God’s perspective. In God there is only ...

            Some have expressed (ha, ha) confusion over my use of the word “expression” when describing time and consciousness as the Atonement, so let me explain. An artist has an idea and expresses it through a medium of their choice—words, pencil, paint, wood, metal, etc. The idea comes first and then it is expressed, the expression being the final outcome of the idea. The artist’s idea is the cause , the expression (the work of art) is the effect . Cause and effect flow in only one direction, from cause to effect. It never reverses. An artist paints a picture to represent an idea. The painting does not affect the artist or idea that caused it. So, no matter how distorted an expression of the idea the painting may appear to be, the artist and idea are unaffected. When an artist brings their idea into being, we call the product their “creation.” But in A Course in Miracles , the word creation does not refer to something brought into being, but to ...

           In my memoir , I spoke of a long phase of having no comfort when nothing in my mind was familiar. The personal identity was gone. Something of ego remained, but it seemed generic and was awful, like nothing I experienced before, which I now know to have been insanity as I came out of the delusion of personal identity (ego). And I no longer had Spirit to “call on” as Comforter, Teacher, or Guide because I was Spirit! Yet, I had no idea how to be Spirit. Seeing had come, but I didn’t trust it when it involved the material world. Only much later, when I was writing my memoir, did I realize Seeing would have been my comfort if I could have consistently trusted it. Seeing , as I use the word with an uppercase “S”, is Spirit’s perception. And what Spirit Sees is Its Self. At its highest, Spirit Sees the Real World. The Real World does not involve the material world at all, like Seeing the Golden Light of Love. This is the purest Seeing of my S...

              Buddhist parables:   “A monk set off on a long pilgrimage to find the Buddha. He devoted many years to his search until he finally reached the land where the Buddha was said to live. While crossing the river to this country, the monk looked around as the boatman rowed. He noticed something floating towards them. As it got closer, he realized that it was the corpse of a person. When it drifted so close that he could almost touch it, he suddenly recognized the dead body – it was his own! He lost all control and wailed at the sight of himself, still and lifeless, drifting along the river’s currents. That moment was the beginning of his liberation.”   “One day the Master announced that a young monk had reached an advanced state of enlightenment. The news caused some stir. Some of the monks went to see the young monk. ‘We heard you are enlightened. Is that true?’ they asked. ‘It is,’ he replied. ‘And how do you feel?’ ‘...

          Over a decade ago, I realized the Enlightened Mind was already here, whole and complete, within me. But the person continued to play a part in the world and seemed to still be in a process. I still had a sense of a part of me striving for Enlightenment. I did not know it at the time, but my identity had unconsciously shifted from a figure in a dream to the dreamer of a dream. And while the part of my mind in a process still dominated, I had become aware of the split in my mind in an ongoing way. What I did not know then that I know now is the idea of me that still seemed in a process was simply the expression of a predetermined role in the Atonement, the correction of the perception of separation from God, the story of time and consciousness,. And the sense of striving was ego. It merely tagged along with its own agenda, reaching for something it could never attain. More importantly, neither was me. Only the Enlightened Mind was me. Last week I...

          When I wrote my memoir ( A Memoir of Christ: A Student of A Course in Miracles Awakens ), I struggled to convey the terribleness of the intensely uncomfortable experiences I had as I shifted from ego to Spirit-consciousness. I used words like darkness and disorientation and surreal and even horror but there was a quality to the overall experience that I could not accurately characterize for myself much less convey to others. It was dismayingly unexpected and unfamiliar. I thought maybe one day I would look back and understand. Well, that day came. I now know that I was experiencing insanity . I also said I knew I was experiencing ego as it really was, without denial or covers, yet insanity never occurred to me. When it finally did a few weeks ago, I felt relief. I finally had the appropriate description for my experiences. I now understand everything I went through.   “You cannot evaluate an insane belief system from within it. Its ran...

            “…If I feel like taking a long break or even not going back to spiritual practice then that is the atonement working through me. …I feel almost angry that I was somehow hoodwinked, yes childish but true.”   “Why do you feel hoodwinked?”   “ I think because after doing the lessons in acim I felt like it was a guide to enlightenment.  I felt I could realize it.  The lessons do seem to espouse that way of thinking or so I believed.” – email exchange with Anonymous   THE Enlightened Mind is here within you now. So what is this other story that you need to reach It but an illusion of you? A Course in Miracles does teach this and offers the holy instant as the way to practice awareness of it. So, your choice is to spin in a story of not being enlightened or to turn this instant to the Enlightened Mind within you. Not all students read A Course in Miracles the same way. Some of my first articles pointed ou...

            Sometimes I see spiritual prescriptions written or spoken so casually, that make it seem so easy to be in Spirit-consciousness, as though it is just another way of thinking, and I wonder, did the teacher shift consciousness and not realize it or have they not, but glimpsed it, and think that is all there is to it? Because, let me tell you, Spirit-consciousness is not just another way of thinking in ego-consciousness. It is a whole other experience of existence. It is a whole different way of seeing. It comes from a different place in your mind than ego-consciousness, and the contrast is dramatic. I don’t say this to discourage but because it is the truth. Also, to let you know that if you cannot get past identifying with your thoughts, or you cannot love everyone the same, or you don’t feel Oneness everywhere, or you don’t see the world is not real, you are not failing. You are in ego-consciousness and those things are not natural in ego-con...