ACIM Mentor

             Sometimes clients are surprised when I warn them against “ A Course in Miracles fundamentalism”. They say they never thought they would hear that word associated with the Course . But fundamentalism refers to an approach, not a specific religion or spirituality. We are used to the term being applied to the distorters of Islam that have taken over whole swathes of the world or to Christians who took over one of the major political parties in the US in the 1980s and are at this time trying to force their   distorted view of Christianity on the whole country. Anyone paying attention sees little daylight between Islamic and Christian fundamentalism not because they use the same symbols but because they use the same approach to same effect. Google defines fundamentalism as “a strict, literal adherence to sacred texts or traditional ideologies and a rejection of modern secular interpretations”. Fundamentalists interpret their sacred tex...

             Clients and readers who have not had mystical or nonduality experiences want to know if they can still practice forgiveness as A Course in Miracles teaches it since in the Course ultimately forgiveness is coming to recognize that nothing real is occurring. Yes, you can. You can come to see and release (forgive) ego’s illusions, which are projections of meaning and expectations. The Course teaches the source of your pain is your own thoughts, so you don’t need to forgive others or situations but rather your unmet expectations and false projections of meaning. So, if in situations where you are in pain you look for how you contribute to your pain by looking at your expectations and projections of meaning you are practicing forgiveness. Simply acknowledging that you are the source of your upset is stepping into forgiveness.   Zia had an abusive mother. Sometimes the abuse was physical, but the verbal and psychological abuse was ...

             A traveler who has never been in a desert is crossing one. In the distance, they see an oasis of water. They move persistently toward it but never reach it. It is always ahead of them. This is because they do not see water but rather heat shimmering off the sand. They were sure they saw water, but it was a mirage—an illusion. An illusion is something that is taken to be real that is not. For illusions to be illusions, they must be convincing. This is their seeming power and why they can seem hard to overcome. To pure consciousness (truth), ego, the material world, thoughts, and feelings are merely appearances. They are not real. They have no meaning. They have no effect on pure consciousness. But for ego, ego, the material world, thoughts, and feelings are reality. Since they are not true but ego believes they are, for ego they are illusions. Ego is delusional. After The Break, this mind (this conscious awareness) went through a long...