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Watching the Vacillations of Consciousness

             This is how I thought it was: There is an “I” here that has two thought systems it can choose between, ego and Spirit. It vacillates between these two thought systems. This is what I have discovered is how it is: Consciousness here is like a neutral space that holds two “I”s, ego and Spirit. Consciousness does not have an “I” of its own. It does not have agency; it cannot make choices. It registers either ego experiencing ego or Spirit experiencing Spirit. In words, this may sound like a nuanced difference. After all, there is one thing here registering two different experiences. But experientially, it is a huge difference.   Relative to how they feel now, ego and Spirit felt muted before. Now, it is as though two entities or beings—I can’t think of better words to express the presence of these ideas that have taken form—occupy the space here called consciousness. And as each experiences only itself, it is as though there are two diametrically opposed worlds here that
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Do What Makes Sense to You

             Since I’ve come to see that what unfolds in consciousness is an expression rather than for an outcome, I see everyone’s story as though it is a bloom in the garden of the Atonement. Whatever it is, is what it is supposed to be. There are no shoulds or shouldn’ts . Sometimes, clients will tell me what they really value over what they think they should value. What they value are “worldly” things like career, relationships, sex, family, money, and various experiential experiences. What they feel they should value is God above these. But the Atonement (consciousness) has two parts, the expression of the idea of not-God (ego) and the expression of the idea of God (Spirit). Ego is not wrong or bad, it is a false experience. Ultimately, so is Spirit because everything in consciousness is not real. Spirit is different from ego in that it reflects Truth, but it is no more real than ego. What is appearing in consciousness is not supposed to be anything other than what it is.
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Approaching Your Person's Life With Curiosity

             God, being All, must contain the idea of Its Own opposite. But being All, God cannot have an opposite. So, the idea of not-God is undone even as it arises. But within the idea of not-God is time, the opposite of Timelessness. And in time, it seems that the idea of not-God arose long ago and will be undone in some indefinite future. Consciousness is the space in God’s Mind where these ideas take form and are depicted. As it depicts an idea simultaneously undone, what unfolds in time/consciousness is predetermined. The story of your person expresses the Atonement, or the undoing of the idea of not-God. It is part of the whole of the Atonement and cannot be separated out. There is no individual soul or spirit on a journey, just one consciousness depicting the Atonement through various ideas that take form, nonmaterial and material. So, your person is a singular expression of consciousness, part of the whole of consciousness, and is not a vehicle for individual achieveme
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When Desire and Realization Are the Same

          The first time I had an inkling that everything that happens in consciousness (the experience of being a person in a world) was predetermined was over twenty years ago, after a study group I led. The Secret was big then and there was a lot of talk about how one could manifest what they wanted simply by wanting it enough. I had feelings of incongruity about this idea, but I had not yet sorted it out for myself. An attendee came up to me and said that anything she wanted manifested within a few days. As I walked away from this conversation, I had the thought, “What if she wasn’t manifesting but her desire for something indicated it was about to show up?” In other words, her wanting wasn’t making something happen, she was simply in tune with what was to happen. I noted two things in my life when it came to desire and something showing up. One was that if it was not going to show up, trying to make it do so was a struggle. It felt like swimming upstream. The other was that whe
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The Difference Between the Movements of the Atonement and Spirit

              A Course in Miracles teaches that consciousness—this experience of being a person in a world—is the Atonement , or the depiction of the correction of the idea of separation from God. This means that there are two parts to consciousness/the Atonement—the false idea, represented by ego, and its correction, represented by Spirit. Therefore, everything that unfolds in consciousness is the Atonement, whether ego or Spirit. But this does not mean that everything that unfolds in consciousness is Spirit . As consciousness depicts a moment that has already occurred—the idea of not-God arising and simultaneously being undone by God’s All-encompassing nature—how it unfolds is already predetermined, or, as the Course puts it, “the script is written.” In that sense, whatever occurs, even ego, is a perfect movement of the Atonement . But only the movement of Spirit is the movement of Spirit . As one develops their awareness of Spirit and advances spiritually, their movement is d
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The Difference Between the Spirit-centered and the Spiritualized Ego

            When I was a new student of A Course in Miracles in 1984, I soon had my first direct revelation of God (Reality). I cannot describe what this was like because It was not in consciousness (this experience as people in a world), and It was wholly unlike consciousness, not just quantitatively, but qualitatively. Nothing in consciousness is anything like God at all. I can share that God is a Wholeness so complete, even the idea of lack is not There. The idea of a world is not There. God’s Glory is indescribable—again, not just in magnitude, but in Its characteristics. It is laughable to think that anything in consciousness, with its characteristic forms of perceptions and ideas and experiences and a material universe, could have anything to do with God or have any effect on God. So, I saw the forgiveness the Course offers, the awareness that nothing in consciousness is real, nothing in consciousness has any effect on God at all. As consciousness is so unlike God, what app
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Ego Speaks For (and to) Itself

         All meaning and significance granted to the person’s life, even spiritual meaning and significance, is ego, period. Spirit merely coexists with a person acting in a world and makes no judgment on this, nor does it grant it meaning and significance because It knows this is not real. It is totally possible for the person to operate in the world without ego because ego is not the source of the person and does not live the person. The person is a neutral expression of consciousness. What ego does is tell a story about the person and their actions, and that story is to validate itself, to make ego seem to be an alternate reality to Reality (God). It doesn’t seem like the story is about ego, but rather about what is appearing, because ego projects the story to hide itself behind what is appearing. An analogy: You are sitting in a garden and there are birds and insects flying and buzzing around and the wind is blowing about the trees and bushes. You are simply coexisting with these
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