ACIM Mentor

As you perceive more and more common elements in all situations, the transfer of training under the Holy Spirit's guidance increases and becomes generalized. Gradually you learn to apply it to everyone and everything, for its applicability is universal. When this has been accomplished, perception and knowledge have become so similar that they share the unification of the laws of God. (T-12.VI.6) A Course in Miracles tells us that we need to generalize the lessons of the Holy Spirit. This means that we need to take what we learn in a specific situation and learn that that lesson can be applied to every other situation as well. For example, while the first time you see your holiness reflected it is in a specific person, that experience of holiness must be applied to every relationship and situation for you to understand what holiness is. This is generalizing the lesson that holiness is everywhere. If it wasn’t, holiness would be specialness. If you exclude one person or situation f...

The Holy Spirit will answer every specific problem as long as you believe that problems are specific. His answer is both many and one, as long as you believe that the one is many. (T-11.VIII.5) Students will say, “I read the Holy Spirit told him…” or “My friend said the Holy Spirit told her…” If there is a limit to what guidance from the Holy Spirit you should follow it is the specific guidance the Holy Spirit gives others. The Holy Spirit will always give specific answers to specific questions and these answers are meant for the specific person asking the question at the specific time at which they are asking. Though the answers come from Truth, they are not Truth. The world is never your reality. But as long as you believe in it, the Holy Spirit will use it to remind you that you are Part of God by teaching you to trust the Holy Spirit – the Voice for your True Self. When I was a teenager and having a rough time I would write down questions and then the answers that came to me. The ...

If you would keep a little space between you and your brother still, you then would want a little time in which forgiveness is withheld a little while. And this but makes the interval between the time in which forgiveness is withheld from you and given seem dangerous, with terror justified. (T-26.VIII.3) Sometimes students tell me they think the world is going to hell in a hand-basket. They point to various convolutions going on in the world as proof of this. These students often preface their comments about the world with, “I know it’s an illusion, but…” Obviously they don’t know it’s an illusion or they would not be in the least concerned. Their real issue isn’t the world, but their lack of faith in God. The instant the idea of separation entered the mind of God's Son, in that same instant was God's Answer given. In time this happened very long ago. In reality it never happened at all. (M-2.2) The “separation” from God never happened. The instant separation was thought of ...

In my blog of June 9, Learning Not to Judge the Holy Spirit’s Guidance ( http://acimmentor.blogspot.com/2007/06/learning-not-to-judge-holy-spirits.html ), I mentioned that both my life-partner and roommate are disabled. Students want to know how I see them and live with them. Some want to know why I haven’t healed them. The mind always sees itself. If I look outward and see a need for healing, what really needs to be healed? My own mind, of course. A healthy body is no more real than an unhealthy body. What would need to be healed is my perception that anything I see “out there” represents something real. What would need to be healed is my belief that appearances need to change for me to be whole and happy. Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regar...

All questions asked within this world are but a way of looking, not a question asked. A question asked in hate cannot be answered, because it is an answer in itself. A double question asks and answers, both attesting the same thing in different form. The world asks but one question. It is this: "Of these illusions, which of them is true? Which ones establish peace and offer joy? And which can bring escape from all the pain of which this world is made?" Whatever form the question takes, its purpose is the same. It asks but to establish sin is real, and answers in the form of preference. "Which sin do you prefer? That is the one that you should choose. The others are not true. What can the body get that you would want the most of all? It is your servant and also your friend. But tell it what you want, and it will serve you lovingly and well." And this is not a question, for it tells you what you want and where to go for it. It leaves no room to question its beliefs, e...

When you turn over your life to the Holy Spirit you have to let go of judging how you are guided and judging how your life unfolds. Judging only gets in the way and makes you miserable. You have to trust that everything happens for a reason. Often, you won’t see why something has happened until later. Sometimes you won’t see it at all. But your life is no longer your own. You are part of a much larger plan and the One in charge of it can see the whole plan. You can only see a small part at a time. Sometimes students write to tell me they don’t like that I am mentoring students of A Course in Miracles or they are uncomfortable with the way I have set up my mentoring practice. I used to doubt and wonder and question, too. But what was that but ego blather making me unhappy? When I decided to not judge what I was asked to do and let go and let things unfold I became so much more at peace. But it isn’t just with mentoring that I have to get out of the way. It’s my whole life. The Holy Spi...

Some students are confused by seeing others who seem to have true spiritual experiences but who then go into exclusive and restrictive religions that emphasize sin and guilt. They want to know why the Holy Spirit would lead them into these religions. Ego and Spirit cannot know each other because they are mutually exclusive. Ego is the denial of Spirit and its existence is wholly dependent on you. When you listen to Spirit all the ego knows is that your attention went someplace else and it is threatened. It has two means of getting your attention back: Exalting itself; or direct attack on you. When you are still very much identified with ego it will usually try the former, reassuring you that you are “special”. As you begin to detach from ego, exalting your specialness doesn’t work because you recognize it is ego exalting itself and not you, so ego resorts to a more direct attack. Your will is not the ego's, and that is why the ego is against you. (T-9.I.2) When someone who is ver...

Lately, a lot of students have brought up how difficult it is for them to accept that God is within them. Sometimes the issue is that they so believe the ego’s misperception of them that they feel too imperfect or unworthy of God. Sometimes they are so used to God as a parental or authority figure that they have a hard time changing their conception of God. I wrote before about how your concept of God will change over time ( http://acimmentor.blogspot.com/2007/03/evolving-concepts-of-god.html ). But if you want to close the gap between yourself and God faster here is an idea you can contemplate in quiet moments to help you do so: I am Part of God . When I want to really get a concept in A Course in Miracles I set aside time to contemplate it. This means I think about it deeper. I’ve done this often with ideas in the Course and this leads to “a-ha” moments where I know I really get the idea. I’ve learned that I need to have this experience several times before it sinks in. This is how...

Here again you see the opposite of the ego's way of looking, for the ego believes the situation brings the experience. The Holy Spirit knows that the situation is as the goal determines it, and is experienced according to the goal. (T-17.6.5) The ego teaches that the external event or thing makes you feel or learn something. The person, the book, the teacher, the situation – all of these somehow conjure up an internal experience in you. You are a passive learner being taught from “out there”. The Holy Spirit teaches that you can learn from everything not because everything has something to teach, but because your teacher is within you. What you learn is not determined by anything “out there” but by your own goal. If you want to learn you are separate from God you will listen to the voice for separation within you – ego. If you want to remember you are One with God, you will listen to the Voice for God within you – the Holy Spirit. Sometimes students are afraid they will be misled ...

In my experience, the Holy Spirit does not think in terms of right/wrong or good/bad. When it comes to things in the world, the Holy Spirit asks one question: “What part of this is helpful for awakening?” And It lets go of everything else. For example, I often have students who comment to me about books they have read that reference A Course in Miracles , but that they have found are not strictly in line with the Course . Last November I decided to address this issue in a blog, The Better Dream Teachers ( http://acimmentor.blogspot.com/2006/11/better-dream-teachers.html ). There were a lot of ways I could have looked at the writers of these books. My ego doesn’t like it when someone reads the Course differently from me or when they do something with the Course with which I don’t agree. But the Holy Spirit pointed out that many students who complained about these teachers were often led to the Course through their books. I also know that many people have used these books to help the...

For a long time one of my obstacles to accepting what A Course in Miracles was teaching was that I thought it was trying to make us all into goody-two-shoes. I thought what it is saying is that we are supposed to look at “bad” situations and simply choose to see them in a “nice” way. I couldn’t see that in every situation I was interpreting what was occurring. I thought the way I saw the world was fact and that changing how I see the world was repression, when in fact the world itself and the events in it are neutral. I learned that the world is neutral through my absorption in politics and by watching the talking heads on television (see How I Overcame My Addiction to Politics, http://acimmentor.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-i-overcame-my-addiction-to-politics.html ). At first I noticed how an event was interpreted differently by different people depending on their political point of view, each claiming that the way they saw things was the truth. Then I saw the “spin doctors” after poli...

The first time I heard the Voice for God and consciously knew what It was, was at the moment I came out to myself as a lesbian. I was seventeen years old, three months out of high school and infatuated – once again – with a woman. I said to myself, “You know this means you are a lesbian” and a still, quiet Voice in my mind said, “I know.” I felt a rush of relief and I felt joy for the first time in my life. It was as though a curtain was pulled back and I allowed myself to see who I really was for the first time. The world is an illusion. Those who choose to come to it are seeking for a place where they can be illusions, and avoid their own reality. (W-155.2) The self I saw then was not my True Self, but my human self, my ego, the illusion of myself. In time, as I learned the Truth that I am Part of God, I wondered about that moment. Why would the Holy Spirit bother to be with me when what I was revealing to myself was not Truth? There is a conflict we all have in the world with our h...

There’s a woman who is a customer of mine in my house cleaning business who I have known for over a decade. I see her almost every week. We remain only acquaintances because she is devoutly LDS (Mormon) and I am a lesbian. She is friendly to me, but only asks general questions about my personal life, and never asks about my life-partner. I know she is uncomfortable with my homosexuality, and while I am always honest and never hold back, I do not bring up my life-partner unless she or someone with us has touched on a topic that makes it natural for me to mention Courtney. While our spiritual beliefs vary greatly and are in some areas diametrically opposed, I respect her consistency. She lives what she believes. She is not a hypocrite. This woman is respected, even revered, in the LDS Church here. She is a teacher in her Church and is often called upon to speak at LDS gatherings. Her specialty seems to be morality and she has a deep belief in right and wrong. Her Church teaches that one’...

Students have asked me what I think about people who are called “master teachers”. Some who are referred to as “master teachers” use A Course in Miracles and some use other teachings. Students seem to want to know two things: Do I believe a person can be a “master teacher”? And how can they know who to trust? The Master Teacher is the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is within you. When looking for external teachers there is always the risk that you will not learn this and will mistake another “person” as having something that you do not have. An advanced teacher of God will always point you inward to God and will teach you that the Truth in you is the same as the Truth in themselves. We are in the world to teach only as long as we need to learn. Therefore, there is no difference between teachers of God, except time, and what is that but an illusion? Really, you are your own teacher because you learn from others what you project or extend – separation from God or Oneness with God. As ...

Few students of A Course in Miracles are happy to find that they have embarked on a process – they want Heaven now ! Sometimes they are in immediate pain somewhere in their life and they want a quick fix. Usually they’ve had at least one tantalizing glimpse of peace and they want it back – all the time ! But their impatience is really a lack of faith that peace is theirs, otherwise they would simply relax into the process of awakening to it. They may think they lack faith in themselves (“How do I know I won’t step off the path?”; “How do I know if I’m following the Holy Spirit?”), but when you are still identified with ego, trying to put your faith in yourself means withdrawing your faith in the Holy Spirit. Either you have turned your life over to the Holy Spirit but don’t trust the Holy Spirit; or you haven’t faith enough in the Holy Spirit to turn your life over yet. It is but the first few steps along the right way that seem hard, for you have chosen, although you still may think ...

When I led a study group a young man new to A Course in Miracles came a few times. He asked, “What is the Holy Spirit? Is it my conscience?” We told him, No . “Is it my good intentions?” Again, we said, No . I don’t remember how we explained it to him at the time. The Course tells us the Holy Spirit is the Voice for God, our Teacher and Guide, etc., but what he wanted to know was, what is the experience of the Holy Spirit? How would he know when he was experiencing the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is the Love of God within you. It is the Love within you that is One with the Love in everyone else and with God. Everyone experiences the Holy Spirit, whether or not they identify It as such. It is just one of many voices in your mind that you are trying to single out. Sometimes the Holy Spirit guides us through our intuition – but not all intuition is the Holy Spirit’s guidance. This is the difficulty in trying to sort out what is the Holy Spirit and what is ego. One of the characteristic...

It seems to me there is some confusion out there as to what happens when you turn a relationship over to the Holy Spirit or choose to see another’s holiness rather than their ego (these are the same thing). Pretty much life goes on as before, only your attitude changes. Your experience of relationships changes and others may change toward you because of this. You really only need to experience your holiness once through another for this to happen. Choose to see your holiness in one relationship and you’ve changed them all because they are all the same – your relationship with your self. I hear a couple of different expectations from students about the practical results of choosing to see holiness in another. The rare one is that if you see holiness in someone they will change to become what you want them to be. Far more often, however, students think that once they turn a relationship over to the Holy Spirit their own personal needs should be ignored. They should only focus on holiness...

I’ve been asked to define an unhealthy relationship. There are many reasons one can become uncomfortable in a relationship, often because of their own projections. So how do you know when it is time to insist on change or to leave? An unhealthy relationship is one where the overriding reason you maintain its form is fear. Relationships are complex and you may stay in a situation for many reasons, but the fear is “overriding” when if you took away the fear you would insist on change or leave. I said maintain its “form” because sometimes we don’t want the relationship to completely end, but to change. For example, you don’t want to stop being a parent to your adult child, but you do want him to get a job and move into his own place. It’s unhealthy if he is using emotional blackmail to make you support him and you give in to this. Fear in the form of guilt is the overriding reason you maintain the form of this relationship. The other reason I said “form” is because all relationships are r...

I used to be a political junkie. I love to analyze and there is nothing so given to analysis like politics. Election years were the most absorbing to me and I spent my time flipping between 24 hour news programs and the C-Span channels to get my fix. When I got back into A Course in Miracles after a few years away from it I lost much interest in politics. But when the U.S. went to war against Afghanistan – and then Iraq – I felt I “should” pay attention. It was simply that my ego had found a hook to draw me back. I spent a couple of years completely absorbed with politics again. It filled my mind and I was often in a tizzy over something in the news. I drove my life-partner crazy. I was not happy; I was addicted. Finally I asked myself why I was watching this stuff. What was it for? Why was I making it real to me? It only fed my ego. I’ve heard that some say you have to watch this stuff to forgive it, but that doesn’t make any sense. When you forgive illusion you let it go. So I stopp...

You will never know that you are co-creator with God until you learn that your brother is co-creator with you . (T-9-VI.7) In A Course in Miracles “creation” means Oneness with God. The quote above means that you will not know you are One with God until you learn you are One with others in this world. Sometimes students ask me why the Course puts such an emphasis on relationships with others when it teaches you that God is within you. Why do you have to see God in others? If your brothers are part of you, will you accept them? Only they can teach you what you are, for your learning is the result of what you taught them. What you call upon in them you call upon in yourself. (T-9.VI.3) And meaning always looks within to find itself, and then looks out. All meaning that you give the world outside must thus reflect the sight you saw within; or better, if you saw at all or merely judged against. (T-20.VIII.10) We’re back to the law of mind: The mind always sees itself. There is really ...