ACIM Mentor

Last week’s article ( http://acimmentor.blogspot.com/2017/02/emotional-satisfaction-or-freedom.html ) about the two possible approaches to spirituality and how one way to characterize them is the pursuit of emotional satisfaction for the self or transcending the self led to a lot of comments and questions that I will try to clear up here. (The article was a follow-up to two other articles I had written on the same topic. Some of the questions readers had could be answered in those earlier articles and links were provided in last week’s article. If you still have questions I suggest reading those as well as last week’s article for a fuller look at the topic). The emotional satisfaction I wrote about in the last article was not referring to what one seeks in relation to others. It was referring to the desire for an emotional connection with Truth (God) that one would characterize as “warm”. I was highlighting how which goal we pursue in spirituality can often be revealed by the

A few months ago I wrote a couple of articles about the two possible spiritual approaches ( http://acimmentor.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-two-spiritual-goals.html , http://acimmentor.blogspot.com/2016/09/more-on-two-spiritual-goals.html ). The most common approach, the one of religions and most everyone else on a spiritual path, is to spiritualize the self and its life in the world. The other approach is to transcend the self. A while later I was having a discussion with my wife, Courtney. Her path is to spiritualize where mine is to transcend. I have never put it in those words to her because from past experience I know that she doesn’t understand my desire for liberation from the limitations of the self. In this discussion she said, again, that she finds my spirituality to be cold and cerebral. She wants warmth; she wants emotional satisfaction. I understood, but did not explain to her, that she finds my path lacking because for her it is only an idea. She has not experienced wh

“… I don't recall precisely where in ACIM, but I remember reading the sentence "God Created Love." This sentence struck me as, in my thought process, it implied at one point Love did not exist in God's Awareness or at least was not as Complete in His Awareeness as it is now. (Trying not to include "time" in this concept.) I also believe the statement was made "God IS Love" (emphasis I believe is mine). After some attention on this (and I realize the disadvantage of trying to understand God from my particular viewpoint), I came to the conclusion that Awareness by Nature is expansive and seeks to increase. As such, it would explain a God that increases in Awareness - that is "Expansive" in Nature. If this is True, it is logical to consider that God started at a point of Awareness and increased His Awareness from that point. It is also logical to conclude that any sane and logical expansion of Awareness would ultimately reach the Awarenes

Sometimes when I share with my clients that I used to take certain ideas and phrases in A Course in Miracles and meditate on them to take them deeper they want an example. So here is an example of what I mean by meditating on a concept: “I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.” (W-Review VI-intro.3) Notice how this phrase begins with a negative but quickly fills in the blank: “I am not a body. I am free.” It is never a good practice to stay in a negative or “not” phrase. It would leave me in emptiness. The obvious question that arises in my mind with the negative “I am not a body” is “Then what am I?” So the answer is immediately given: “I am free .” What is fascinating is that what I am is not described as something abstract like “I am Spirit” or “I am Mind”. Instead ACIM gets to the experience of what I am: Limitless. It also reveals with the word “free” that my identification with a body is the reason that I feel limited. So instead of trying