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Showing posts from December, 2008

How to Stop Taking Responsibility for Others

Students often want to know if I am also detached from those who are closest to me, and the answer is yes. I live in the recognition that all I am experiencing are my own thoughts, so I do not get caught up in ego-thoughts as though they are reality. I don’t mean that I am perfect at this, but correction comes much quicker than it used to. Even in my mind when I say “they” I am aware that the “they” are my own thoughts, not “others” who are outside of me. I’m aware I’m really always speaking to myself, even now as I write this. My path is wholly inward. In the beginning I was of course very much in ego and “others” as something real outside my mind were very real to me. I was also very co-dependent, and I felt it was my responsibility to “fix” others when I saw they were hurting or unhappy. When I learned to change my co-dependent behavior I still felt guilty for not fixing others because changing my behavior did not change my mind. Change came when I decided to accept what A Course in

Instant Karma

Many years ago a student of A Course in Miracles shared with me that her friend was worried about something negative she did to another because she was afraid of “karma” – meaning she feared that there was going to be a negative consequence in the world for her for the negative action she’d done. She was afraid that if her actions didn’t come back to haunt her in this life they would in another. I explained to her that karma is actually instant: What you give you receive – immediately. If you are coming from Love you experience Love right now, and if you are coming from fear you experience fear right now. There’s no great mystery here, nor is there any delay in consequences. But you can see here how the ego is always concerned with the past and the future and overlooks the present. You are experiencing something right now, and that is the consequence of the thoughts that you are having right now. You can only undo your sense of separation from God right now. The ego would prefer that y

Understanding One Mind

A Course in Miracles teaches us that there is only One Mind, but when it seems like your only experience is being a unique individual mind among many unique individual minds it is very hard to understand that there is only One Mind! I was given a means of explaining One Mind, but it is too long for an article, so I have put this metaphor on a page at my website, and the link to it is below. Keep in mind that the more ego-identified you are the more what is written in this story will just be theory to you. But as you peel away the many layers of your ego-identification, and individual identity begins to fall away from you, the way this story explains One Mind will make more and more sense to you. Eventually, it will be the concept of many minds that will not make sense to you! As a bonus, in the process of going over this story I found that it provides the answers to many of the questions that students ask: If God is all there is and God is Perfect, how could the separation have happen

Choose the Experience, Not the Appearance

“I am responsible for what I see. I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the goal I would achieve. And everything that seems to happen to me I ask for, and receive as I have asked.” (T-21.II.2) The ego is always concerned with what is appearing in the world because it wants you to believe that the world is your cause and that you are its effect. It tells you that what you experience is determined by what is happening in the world. The Holy Spirit, however, knows that you first choose the experience that you wish to have, and then you interpret what is happening in the world according to the choice that you have made. The world was made to be separation from God, and the ego uses it as such. But the Holy Spirit uses it to teach you forgiveness. If you choose to experience conflict – ego – then you will judge the world to make it real to you. If you choose to experience Peace then you will overlook – forgive – the world. Some students interpret the third sentence in the q

Why Do Anything?

Why Do Anything? Last week I received an anonymous email, which begins with a quote from my article last week: >> Some students read the term "Son of God" in A Course in Miracles to mean everyone in the world collectively, but actually "everyone" in the world is only an erroneous idea in the one mind of the Son of God (Part of God).<< So why should we listen to you, Liz, if you are only an erroneous idea? This logic is hilarious. If what you say is true, none of your mentoring is worth anything. Isn't that clear? :-) Let’s begin with the idea that I am an erroneous idea. In my article I didn’t say that I am an erroneous idea, only that “Liz” is an erroneous idea. I am One with God, so I exist Eternally, but not as ego. However, to ego my True Being is the same as ego’s non-existence! What I read behind this person’s statement about the logic of the message of A Course in Miracles , and the worth of my mentoring, is a lament that I hear i