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Ask: Could you please write about "shadow work"?

          “Could you please write about the importance (or lack there of) of shadow work sometime? How is it to be done? Anything you know about this will be helpful and appreciated. I am unclear and confused.” –BB   Shadow work refers to addressing the repressed and unconscious parts of your mind that are revealed when you are emotionally triggered, or upset. Shadow refers to both these aspects of your psyche being largely hidden and that much of what is repressed or unconscious is considered “darker” thoughts and feelings, like guilt and shame. The benefits of this work are greater self-awareness and the opportunity to learn to emotionally self-regulate when triggered and perhaps to eventually release (forgive) the source of the triggers. These benefits result in an increased sense of well-being and healthier relationships. You don’t know what is in your “shadow” until you are emotionally triggered. Triggers have beliefs and feelings and stories ...
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Ask: Can you shed some light on ego making choices?

            “Can you shed some light on the magic trick of the ego that feels/thinks that IT is doing everything and anything…surrendering, taking its will back, praying the Course’s prayers, doing the lessons and so on.  Is it not the case that “I” am literally doing nothing?  That God is simply God being and this little side trip into consciousness is merely unfolding…no agency whatsoever?  That the belief in the reality of this dream, by definition, contains this ever present belief that we are making choices?” –MG   So, here’s what my experience since The Break has shown me, contrary to what I expected as a student of A Course in Miracles : No part of truth, whatever you want to call it, God or pure consciousness (my preference now), entered a “dream” or “side trip”. Ego, it turns out, was an idea playing itself out. The idea is a false reality where an “I” lives as a person in a body in a world. Some see this “I” as also having ...
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ACIM, Spirituality, and Nonduality

            Nonduality is not a spiritual path. It is an awareness and experience of one truth. This rises to conscious awareness of itself, so it cannot be attained. The insights garnered from the experience can be shared, but the experience cannot be taught. However, the awareness of one truth may result in ego going on a spiritual journey. Spirituality is what ego does with a dim awareness of truth. It takes the information that truth is beyond it and shapes it to its reality, resulting in duality: Ego and truth are true. This results in other perceived dualities, like good and bad and right and wrong. The end of its spiritual journey is not ego transforming but falling away. There has been among A Course in Miracles students from the start a debate about whether the Course is a nonduality teaching or not. The Course does point to nonduality. It states outright that there is only one truth and ego and its world are not real but are mirages. But most...
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Truth Reclaiming

            Imagine a significant plot of land. It has grass and trees and shrubs. There are animals and insects, bacteria and fungi living there. The wind blows, rain and snow falls, the sun beats down. Life thrives. And then, one day, someone comes and builds a house on the land. It’s really no big deal because nature, life, continues around it and it will, left to its own devices, take it over. But the builder comes to live in the house. They build a fence to keep animals out, they spray pesticides regularly to hold the insects at bay, they landscape the property inside the fence to keep nature away from taking over the house, and they maintain the building to withstand the wind, rain, snow, and sun. Still, sometimes animals and insects, rain and snow make their way into the house, the sun eats away at the fence and roof and siding of the house, and the grass and plants require persistent tending to hold them off. It is hard work to deny nature. Then...
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Ego and Oneness

             A Course in Miracles tells us that ego fears oneness. But ego is simply the experience of fear. The stories it has as to “why” it is afraid are, first, to project the source of fear away so that ego can deny it is fear, and second, to seem to be real. Elaborate stories make up ego’s world, filling what it feels is the “void” of consciousness. Ego is the idea in consciousness that is opposed to truth, or pure consciousness. Its denial of truth results in it denying what it is, too. But as truth rises toward conscious awareness, the contrast with ego illuminates all that ego is. Ego’s fear seems to increase but it is really just being exposed. So, it can seem that ego is “afraid of” truth (or anything else it points to), but that’s just a way for ego to project and explain away the exposed fear to itself. Last week’s articl e was about the various ways that oneness can show up in one’s perception, and it mentioned how ego cannot know tr...
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Various Ways Oneness is Perceived

              It turns out, the perception of oneness shows up in many ways. As truth rises to conscious awareness (your immediate awareness, your living experience), ego takes the information that comes with this and turns it into what it can understand. This is how we get our spiritualities and religions. Truth rising to conscious awareness is not happening for the world, it is not happening for ego, but ego tries to make it so and pieces the information it has into a narrative that makes sense for it. There is no doubt that the rising of truth affects the mind’s perceptions, no matter what ego does with it. Sometimes the veil of ego slips entirely and the purest oneness, the onlyness of truth , or pure consciousness, the space in which ego and its world appear, is seen in conscious awareness. This is considered a mystical experience because it is out of the norm. When this occurs, it is clear that conscious awareness is part of the onlyness o...
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Present to the Past and Future

             In keeping with recent articles on how A Course in Miracles students torture themselves, here’s another common mistake I encounter: “I know I’m not supposed to think about the past, but the other day I remembered this funny thing that happened…” or “I know I’m not supposed to think about the future, but I’m concerned I won’t have enough money to put my son through college…” The Course does not say you should never think about the past or future, but rather living there is not helpful. It asks you to see that the past and future are only ideas in your mind now . And it points out one of ego’s chief illusions that causes you so much pain is seeing the past in the present. For example, you have a strong response, positive or negative, to someone you just met, and this likely indicates they remind you of someone from the past. You are not seeing them, but your own projection from your own past. You feel you know something about them, but...
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