ACIM Mentor

            Dichotomies have fallen away from me. I no longer have an inner and outer life. If I turn inward I hit a wall. And without an inward there is no outward. Instead, there is just here/now.           I no longer have a higher and lower mind. There is just this mind.             And as for time, I have no past. The self has a past life, but I feel I have just been brought into awareness. I do have a present and a future, but the boundaries between them are gone, making time just one thing for me: Here/now. As a writer of fiction it is often the case that I know where my characters are going; I just don’t always know how I will get them there until I am writing it. This is what I have found for my life in the world now. I can sense what’s to happen, but I don’t know the details until they unfold before me. So I feel I am in the present and future simultaneously. I don’t experience them as separate; both are aspects of now. When this began for me I felt greatly conflic

Historically, it was rare for me to put out in these articles what was going on for me in real time. (Three volumes of my articles are out in books titled The ACIM Mentor Articles ). An article would come to me after I completed processing an experience. But for the past couple of years I’ve gone through so much immediate shifting that I find myself sharing pretty raw stuff. Sometimes an article is my processing so that I end up cutting and pasting it into my journal. And I shift so fast that often I have moved way past an article by the time I post it. This is one of those. But as it reflects the process, I will share it as I wrote it last week.             It isn’t always easy to share my grief since the ego (personal thought system) dribbled away, because I’d rather tell you that when it falls away it is all happy-happy-joy-joy. And for some it is. Maybe it will be that way for you. But if it isn’t, you will be prepared to face whatever is in your mind, as I was. Maybe this m

I don’t quite remember when this happened, but sometime before I dismantled the old life I was out walking one morning and I had a distressing thought or question cross my mind. My split-mind turned toward the Holy Spirit (Awareness of Truth in my mind) and received an answer. But I was startled because this time I heard the question and I answered—I was not the questioner turning to the Holy Spirit. I was the Holy Spirit answering.             Suddenly I was no longer the split-mind, but the “other side” of the split, the Teacher. As significant as it was to me at the time, it of course now stands out as a telling moment. This was the first time I was conscious of the shift in my mind, although I didn’t recognize its full implications. I was confused: I figured once I shifted to identifying with the Holy Spirit the split-mind would be gone. Was I now, as the Holy Spirit, to mentor the split-mind? Anyway, I couldn’t force myself into that position and I didn’t feel a moment like th

            Since I have become aware that what I thought of as “me” is a character in a story of Undoing (the “Atonement” in A Course in Miracles ), and that in fact I am the Undoing (Holy Spirit/Awareness of Truth) expressed as that character, I have become aware that what I thought was me did nothing. I never had a will apart from the Undoing. Everything I felt, thought, and did was the story of Undoing. This has made it clear to me what the ego (personal thought system) was.             First, to recap the ontology (theory of existence) that I culled from ACIM and that the Awareness of Truth (Holy Spirit) and my experiences helped me hone: Truth (God), being All, must contain the idea of Its Own opposite. But, being All, It cannot have an opposite. The moment the idea arises it is undone by Truth’s All-encompassing nature. However, as Truth is timeless, limitless, and formless, not-Truth is time-bound limited form (the universe). Time is the illusion (not-Truth) on which all

            My first experience with grief over a life shift was when I graduated high school. I wasn’t a kid anymore. I wasn’t a student anymore. My whole community had been in school and it would be gone overnight. That was all I had known so far in my life! There was no going back. I would never be a kid again; I would never recreate a community like that again. If I was a student again it would be in a very different context. I didn’t feel the grief until graduation drew near. I didn’t know to expect it. No one talked to me about it, so I did not speak of it. I was embarrassed by emotions at that age anyway and I sensed it was a sign of weakness. (Poor kid!)             None of this meant I found adulthood undesirable. But I knew it would be very different and so I felt a loss. Following closely on this I came out to myself and entered into an even longer and darker grieving period. Again, it was not that I wanted to stay in the closet, but I was also not going to have the lif

“Please clarify what you said at the end of your (November 8) newsletter. I think I understand ‘Higher consciousness occurs as an effect of the awareness of Truth on the mind.’ But I don't understand ‘...it is no more significant to be aware of Truth than to not be aware of Truth.’ I thought being vigilant only for God and His Kingdom meant being aware of Truth.” – BT “Be vigilant only for God and His Kingdom” (T-6.V-C) is a lesson of the Holy Spirit in A Course in Miracles meant to teach you that you have a choice of thought system in your mind. In the mind training ACIM provides this would be a first step toward growing your awareness of Truth. But that is quite apart from the context of that article, Consiousness, Truth, and Forgiveness . In that article I discussed how Truth (God) is beyond all consciousness (awareness), even the highest consciousness of Truth. So while consciousness can be affected by Truth, consciousness never affects Truth. Truth is wholly unaffec

I realize some of my recent articles (like last week’s Consciousness, Truth, and Forgiveness ) are above a lot of readers’ heads and seem like a lot of theoretical hoo-haw, but please bear with me. These come out of my new experiences and insights so they lay the groundwork for what will come up ahead.             I want to explain more clearly what I wrote last week and discuss its significance.             One thing that was a source of confusion for me on this path was the two ways oneness can be experienced. One is something falling away where there are two or more leaving one. This, in fact, is how I’ve understood non-duality: An illusion of reality falls away and the only Reality (Truth) is left. The other way I’ve experienced oneness is where there seems to be two or more and I find they are one. This can come as a vision and experience where I see the unity of all things or where I feel one with one or more seeming “other”—person or thing.             The latter is my c

            What for me sets A Course in Miracles apart from other teachings is that it conveys that the Truth (God) is beyond our experiences of Truth. Our perception, awareness, consciousness—whatever you want to call our experience—of Truth is not Truth. It is only perception, awareness, consciousness, or an experience of Truth. The Holy Spirit, or Christ Consciousness, or what I call the Awareness of Truth, is as far as consciousness can rise, but It is never Truth.               I discovered this for myself through direct Revelation of Truth. Truth is beyond all experience (perceptions, awareness, consciousness) of Truth because It is beyond all experience. It is indescribable (and shattering) because nothing on “this side” of Truth resembles Truth, not even the Awareness of Truth (Spirit). The Awareness of Truth is only an effect of Truth on consciousness.             As a contemplative, Bernadette Roberts ( The Path to No-Self ) had no idea of this and discovered it f

            My experiences in the past year and a half, which revealed that the ego (personal thought system) had fallen away a while ago and involved what I call The Break, where my consciousness shifted upward, have been humbling. They revealed to me that I was both naïve and arrogant about the spiritual path I am on. I was naïve about this mind. All the difficulty I’ve encountered is nothing inherent to the path, but rather to the limits of this mind. And I was arrogant in thinking I knew the way ahead. Oh, I knew there was a shift up ahead. It came a couple of years earlier than I sensed, but it didn’t come as a surprise. The nature of the shift came as a surprise, though. I had no idea that the mind’s shift to Spirit would be like this.             What is the nature of the shift? An entire life, both an internal consciousness and the external expression of it, fell away. So far my mind has been dealing more with the shock of what happened—internally far more than externall

            Along the way, as much as I loved to get into spiritual theory, in the end I always let experience lead the way. Theory is interesting intellectually, but it never caused an actual shift in my experience. I have been willing to let go of theory if experience taught me something different. However, more often than not my experience would not contradict, but would rather illuminate theory for me. Theory became fact when I experienced it. In the past several years I became aware of the pseudo-reality we live in as a story. This is how “the world isn’t real” began to show up in my experience. This story is the moment the idea of not-Truth arose in the Mind of Truth (God) and was undone by Truth’s all-encompassing nature unfolding as time. In time, the idea seemed to arise long ago and its undoing seems to be in some indefinite future. We live in a story of correction, or undoing, or, as A Course in Miracles calls it, Atonement. I became aware that what I felt were my

If I can be said to have a desire, it is for what will happen. It does not make sense to want anything else! To do so would mean opposing myself, because I now know I am That from Which it all unfolds. I no longer feel I am a thread independent of the tapestry. I am the tapestry expressing as this thread. This makes it very difficult to speak to people who are not on the same path about my experience. Did I want to leave Australia? No; it wasn’t about want. Did I want to stay? Not at the moment, because I could feel leaving was the next step. Do I want to go back? Yes, but that’s because I feel I will. If that changes, I will feel complete with Australia. Acting is no longer about desire, or want, or motivation for me; it’s about feeling the movement of the unfolding through me. I willingly move as I am moved and my feelings seem to keep pace with the movement. What do you want? What would make you happy? What are your plans for the future? These are not relevant questions to m

I am back in the United States after a year in Australia where I followed a Holy Relationship, which continues into a new phase. Everyone wants to know how I find it here now, back in the city (Las Vegas, Nevada) I left a year ago after dismantling the life I had been living. So I thought I would just tell you all in one fell swoop!             Las Vegas is familiar, but not natural to me. It feels like a foreign land I once visited. I live with a sister across the city from where I lived before, but I have been to my old neighborhood and I even drove past my former home. It is hard for me to believe only a year has passed since I went through that huge dismantling. In fact, it is hard to believe I ever lived that life. Not only can I not find the self that lived that life, I cannot find the self that left it. And as my time in Australia wound down I could feel who I had been there falling away, too.             When I experienced what I call The Break, which was when I rose in c

“Is the Course saying that the script is written and our only choice is to see everything with the ego or the Holy Spirit? Or is it saying that in every situation where we make a decision the script switches to a different script?” – BM A Course in Miracles is saying everything that happens is already set and your choice is in how you see it. Although you feel that your desires, motivations, choices, and actions are your own, really you are a part of a whole, and that whole lives through you, showing up as your desires, motivations, choices and actions. While your will feels free, it is really part of a greater will living through you. To understand this, you must understand the nature of what you perceive as reality, or the world you live in. It is actually an instant of undoing unfolding as time. That instant is the idea of not-God (not-Truth) arising and being undone in the Mind of God (Truth). God, being All, must contain the idea of Its Own opposite. But being All, Go

            A common spiritual practice is to be mindful, which is another way of saying to be present. A common misunderstanding is that mindfulness should be limited to the body’s activities; to its breathing, feelings, and activities.             Sometimes clients say things like, “I struggle to stay present, but I’m worried about my son” or “I want to be present, but I can’t stop thinking about what my sister said to me last week”, etc. They feel that they shouldn’t be thinking about anything but what the body is doing. But the mind is going to continue to think until it does not. So mindfulness must include being present to the mind’s present thoughts, even when those thoughts are about the past or the future.             When you are doing tasks that do not require much thought, like cooking, washing dishes, pulling weeds, engaging in a quiet hobby, etc., you find your mind processing the day just passed, a book read or movie seen, an issue in your life, an insight, somet

            On my path there were various ways in which I was “purified” of guilt, often quite consciously. But I had two noteworthy episodes that I did not recognize as purification when I went through them. The first I have written about a few times before. I began A Course in Miracles , which was the start of my spiritual path as well, in 1984. It was my life from the moment I picked it up. I was in a study group for a very brief period at the very beginning, but after that it was just me and the Holy Spirit (Awareness of Truth in my mind). Despite early experiences of direct Revelation, a Holy Relationship, and higher miracles I remained largely intellectual in my approach to my spirituality.             In the late 90s I found my study and practice tapering off until one day I realized ACIM had been sitting on my end table gathering dust for quite a while. I simply had no motivation to read it. I felt no rancor toward it. I was not frustrated or angry. I was simply not int

            In the past couple of years, this mind has faced itself like it never had before. This is an aspect of becoming conscious to Truth. It lights up every corner of the mind, revealing what had been hidden, and what had been hiding It. This has meant seeing a lot of dark and ugly beliefs, most of which I’d seen over the years. Some I thought were gone, but seemed to review. A few surprised me. I did not have to do anything with most of them but feel them and see them and realize they were no longer really there. These were the shadows of the ego (personal thought system) that had gone. I learned, through this long, uncomfortable retrospective, exactly what the ego was and what it taught me about me (lies). While the actual beliefs went with the ego, some habits and postures instilled by it are still unraveling.             One of these beliefs was revealed in a deep discomfort with myself that had been with me for the past several years, perhaps since the ego fell away in

My visitor’s visa is due to expire and I will be returning to Nevada in the United States in early October after a year in Western Australia. As most of you know, I came here to Hannah, with whom I have a Holy Relationship. It has been quite an, erm…. interesting year for both of us. Difficult may be a more apt word, LOL, though of course there is also a lot of Love.             It is not my place to tell Hannah’s story, but we have both faced ourselves in ways we did not expect. I came here having just dismantled a life that had come to completion and with a mind adapting to a new consciousness. The former was difficult and I hoped the latter meant things would get easier for me. Ha, ha! In some ways they got harder. But now, yes, it is much easier. The first months for me were very difficult because the echo of the ego (personal thought system) was very much upon me. I was smack in guilt and fear and grief and I was easily triggered, although I also recovered relatively quick

In painting, pentimento refers to the emergence of previous paintings or drawings on the canvas beneath the present painting. It can reveal the artist’s original ideas or that the artist changed their mind. In fact, the word is Italian for “repentance”. Ha!             I feel this kind of “bleed through” now as the Light of Truth shows up for me in this new kind of Vision and Awareness. Sometimes I have an epiphany and I am There , seeing with pure spiritual Vision. But most of the time I simply experience, well, pentimento, as the Light of Truth simply illuminates my present experience. When I first experienced It, I called It the Golden Light of Love, or, simply, the Golden. Later, as It seeped into my ongoing experience, I called It the Enchantment, because It was a magical feeling of being, well, enchanted with everything. Now I simply call It Love.             I experience It here/now. It is everywhere/always. It is the Real World or True Perception. It is a perception of w