ACIM Mentor

Though it makes the ego in me squirm when I admit this to myself, the truth is that none of the considerable (though not complete) Peace I experience, nor any of my awareness of God, nor my knowledge of A Course in Miracles is due to anything that I have done. The Holy Spirit has really done it all. In my last article I mentioned the arrogance of me thinking that I know what I need to learn. Unfortunately, this has characterized much of my spiritual path. I would work and work on myself in a certain direction only to find the Holy Spirit causing a shift in me that had nothing to do with what I was working on! In other words, I am where I am not because of anything I have done, but in spite of what I have done. All the Holy Spirit has really needed all along is my little willingness, just as the Course says. Truly, I need do nothing. So I’ve learned to do nothing but to be open to God so that the Holy Spirit can do the rest. I do not need to judge what I am asked to do, or not asked ...

A couple of weeks ago I watched a movie that left me contemplating loss. The movie had a happily-ever-after ending but I got to thinking about how the characters’ relationships would change over the years, how nothing stays the same, people leave, people die, etc. I was getting depressed so, in my arrogant belief that I know what I need to be learning, I started thinking about loss in a way to get myself to stop valuing the world. I was trying to use the temporary nature of everything in the world to loosen even further any hold that I still give it over me. Then I thought that if I’m going to think about this I should do so with the Holy Spirit. So I turned to the Holy Spirit in my mind and the Holy Spirit brought me up short by saying, “I don’t want you to give up the world because it’s painful; I want you to give it up because it’s not true.” Wow. Once again I’m slapped upside the head with the awareness of how easy it is to fall into the ego-trap of making the world real to me. The...

"Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated." (T-26.X.4) Years ago, after taking a total break from A Course in Miracles for a couple of years, I returned to studying it and joined a local study group to get back into the groove. At that point I had almost totally forgotten the core teachings of the Course . One day at the study group a gentleman who was involved in a lawsuit (I cannot remember if he was suing or being sued) started talking about “justice”. He felt that the Course somehow supported his cause because he was certain he was “just”. This didn’t feel quite accurate to me, but I had gotten so far away from the Course that I wasn’t sure what was meant by “justice” in the Course. And since then I sometimes run into students who feel that something is their just due, or that they have been unfairly deprived by another, and they will say, “I know God wants me to have what is rightfully mine” or “Why would God deprive me of this?” In essence you...

Once upon a time when separation from God was more real to me than God I had to have a story for the separation. I had a narrative for the separation, and I have even offered it in my articles. But as I practice the Holy Instant more and more, and I spend my time living present to the Presence of the Holy Spirit, I find that all stories for the separation simply crumble as I try to grasp them. I literally become disoriented because there is no story for the separation because the separation isn’t real. Any story about it is totally made up, and I can see that now. Sometimes students ask me about how the separation works: Is reincarnation real, what happens when they die, is the story of Jesus real, how will the Great Awakening unfold, what is their part in it, etc. And over the years students have shared various stories with me that they brought with them to their study of A Course in Miracles , and that they feel the Course justifies. The Course itself offers a narrative for the sep...

A Course in Miracles makes it very clear that Truth and illusion cannot be reconciled. If there is any illusion in Truth, then Truth isn’t Truth. And if you bring illusion to Truth illusion disappears because unreality is dissolved by Reality. For many years I tried to bring the two together. Every now and then I’d sit myself down and try to come up with some sort of philosophy to live by that was based on my experiences of Oneness in direct revelations with God, and in the Holy relationship. I struggled to come up with a way to live, the appropriate attitudes to strike, and the politics to adopt in light of my experiences. But there was no relationship between my experience of the world and my experiences of Oneness, and I couldn’t make them come together at all. I’d always reach a point of relief when I saw the contrast between the two experiences clearly, but I didn’t really want to understand that, either. So I’d wander off, only to come back again and again to try to ...

Occasionally a student writes to tell me that the way that I interpret A Course in Miracles is wrong. Sometimes they say this outright, sometimes they couch this statement in more subtle terms. This is fine with me because what students think of me or what I write is about them, not about me. But I used to feel trapped because I didn’t want to get into dueling interpretations. If I just say “you’re right” when what they are saying contradicts what I just wrote, then they’ll think I’m lying. If I defend what I wrote – which I don’t even feel is required - I’m making them wrong, and I don’t believe this. There is no one “right” way to read the Course – there are only helpful and unhelpful ways to read it. And this evolves over time. What is a helpful interpretation for you now might not have been so before, and it might not be so in the future. Your Teacher is within you, and your Teacher knows what you need to hear now, and what you can understand now. So I asked the Holy Spirit how I ...

A student has asked me to write about the use of “you” in A Course in Miracles , some of which makes him uncomfortable in his ego-identification. In the world, you have three experiences of “you”: “You” in your identification with ego; “you” as the neutral decision-maker who can choose ego or Holy Spirit; “you” as Part of God (Christ Mind; Holy Spirit). The Real “you” is Part of God. The decision-maker “you” is, like the ego, your separated mind, but it has stepped back from the active separation-seeking of the ego, and so is neutralized enough to be able to choose either further separation (ego), or healing (Holy Spirit). A Course in Miracles addresses “you” in each of these experiences at different times. But the Course is a conversation between Helen Schucman and our Christ Mind (represented to her by Jesus), and the “you” in the Course is quite specific to Dr. Schucman and her experiences as she took down the Course (for example, for her “your brother” referred specifically to ...

So often I hear from students who are deliberately staying in a painful situation because they think that they “should”, they think that they are still in the situation because they haven’t forgiven “enough”, they are waiting for the “miracle” that will transform the situation. They will say they have tried and tried to forgive the person/people/situation but he/she/they/it has not changed. But forgiving means letting go, and that often shows up as you moving on. To deliberately stay in a bad situation is not forgiveness, or waiting for forgiveness; it’s self-flagellation. A situation that they recognized they needed to forgive is now being used by the ego in their mind to point out how they have “failed” to forgive. I hear about this form of self-flagellation often in regard to relationships. You change when you become a student of A Course in Miracles , and your relationships with others around you may no longer reflect your new values. Sometimes others fall away from you; sometimes ...

There comes a time when you find that you are losing interest in the world around you. You find it harder and harder to find common ground with others. You have little interest in social gatherings, and when you are with friends and family you find it hard to be interested in what interests them. You find yourself listening more, and sharing less. This is a natural part of the process of detaching from the world. A true spiritual path is a quiet sinking inward. As your mind grows quieter you lose interest in the clamoring world. You want your life in the world to be simple so that you don’t have to think too much about it. People fall away, or your relationships transform into simpler arrangements. You happily spend a lot more time alone, or with simpler creatures – children, animals, nature; those who know how to just “be”. When you do have to be with others you still take an interest in them, but not in what they find interesting. Some people will be drawn to your peace; others will...

Sometimes students will say to me: “I want to be a (gentle, strong, wise, happy, etc.) person.” Sometimes they say: “I want to be a person who (is looked up to, makes others laugh, is there for others, etc.).” These are all ego self-images, and they are all equally meaningless. For a long time I struggled with how to see myself, and with how I was “supposed” to be as a spiritual person. Was I supposed to have strong boundaries with others, or was I supposed to be there for everyone? Was I supposed to be peaceful or fun-loving or serious? Was I supposed to be wise and distant, or goofy and friendly? My values, I realized, were all over the place. Sometimes I valued strength, other times vulnerability. Sometimes I valued detachment, other times closeness with others. Finally I would get so confused as to how I should be I’d ask the Holy Spirit and the answer was always: “It doesn’t matter. You’re not a person.” Of course I’d immediately feel relief that I didn’t have to make myself, and ...

A student has asked me to write about the body as a communication device that the Holy Spirit can use. From the Holy Spirit’s perspective the world that you perceive has only one purpose – forgiveness of your perception of separation from God. This is the one purpose for every thing, every relationship, and every situation. The body’s purpose, then, is to be used for forgiveness. A Course in Miracles calls the body a “communication device”, but as is often the case with familiar words in the Course “communication” is used differently. There is only one mind, so you can only communicate with yourself. In the Course “communion” and “communication” refer to Oneness – to the Oneness of your Mind, and to your Oneness with God. So the body is a means for you to teach yourself that your mind is One – that there is no separation between “you” and what your mind perceives. When you have learned this your mind is healed, and it is ready to wholly remember God. The body s...

A question students of A Course in Miracles often ask is if the Holy Spirit makes things happen in the world for them. How could this be so if the world is in your mind, and the Holy Spirit and the world are opposed and cannot meet? The world that you perceive is an effect of your mind. The Holy Spirit is also in your mind, but the Holy Spirit does not go into the world to make things happen for you. When you are centered in God what you need in the world that you perceive manifests as a reflection of the Wholeness of your mind. When you first learn this the ego may tempt you to use this awareness to get what it wants. Sometimes student’s get lost trying to manifest or - to use today’s popular term - “attract” a better illusion of separation from God. However, this does not make any sense. If you really understand that the world is only an effect of your mind, why would you care what was showing up in it? If what happens in the world is important to you then yo...

Ultimately, a Holy Instant is a direct revelation of God. Ultimately, a miracle is an experience of Oneness. Ultimately, a Holy relationship, which is a miracle, is also an experience of Oneness with what seems like another outside of you. But many students haven’t yet experienced Oneness, and there is a difference between the experience of actual Oneness, and the everyday practice of the Holy Instant, the miracle, and the Holy relationship. The practice is to prepare and open you for the actual experience of Oneness with God (revelation), or with the part of your mind that seems “out there” as a world (miracle). As A Course in Miracles says, God is in charge of revelations, and your Christ Mind is in charge of miracles. Only God and your Christ Mind can recognize when you are open to experiencing Oneness, either through a revelation or through a miracle. You cannot force the experience of Oneness. But by practicing the Holy Instant, by extending God’s Love in your aw...

The ego uses physical illness and pain to make the body real to you. That is its primary goal for illness and pain. This shows up as using them for many reasons: To get attention, to punish you, to avoid situations, to make others guilty, etc. But of course no matter how physical symptoms show up their origin is in your mind. Ultimately all healing is the result of you accepting healing in your mind, either directly in your mind, or through “agents” like medicines, doctors, and treatments that seem outside of you and that remove the symptoms in a way that your mind can accept. Using external agents is what A Course in Miracles calls “magical thinking”, but it is necessary until you can accept healing directly. “The miracle is useless if you learn but that the body can be healed, for this is not the lesson it was sent to teach. The lesson is the mind was sick that thought the body could be sick; projecting out its guilt caused nothing, and had no effects.” (T-28.II.11) Oft...

There is a lot of discussion in A Course in Miracles around the Holy relationship in which it says that you can “trust your brother”. What it really means is that you can trust the Holy Spirit within you to guide you in the relationship. It must be understood that much of the Course specifically addresses Helen Schucman’s experience, and this is most apparent in its discussion of the Holy relationship. Helen was in a unique position with Bill Thetford in that they had a specific task to do together. They learned about the practice of the Holy relationship as they scribed the Course together. But most students do not have the privilege of having a Holy relationship with another who is also a student of the Course , and who is willing to go through the experience with them. The experience of the Holy relationship is not like anything in this world. It is an experience of Oneness with another that completely wipes out of your mind any separation between you and another. ...

In A Course in Miracles you are told that you are always teaching, and that you are always teaching only yourself. What you are teaching yourself is what you believe that you are. Come from ego and you teach yourself that you are ego. Come from Spirit and you teach yourself that you are Spirit - you are being what the Course calls a “teacher of God”. This is occurring within you every moment. You never really learn from others; you learn from the teacher within you that you choose at any given moment. Read a book, or listen to someone speak, and you will read and hear what you have chosen to learn about yourself. The world thinks of teaching as something you do for others. You may accept that what you teach you learn, but if you are a teacher you are supposed to see yourself helping others in some way. But the Course shows us that there are no “others” to help. Everything is your mind. You do not live in a world, but in your thoughts about a world. You are always only rela...

We are so used to the ego’s religions with their “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” that almost every student goes through a phase where they read prohibitions and admonishments into A Course in Miracles . But the Course does not tell you a thing about how you should live in the world. What it does is compare the ego’s thought system with the Holy Spirit’s thought system to help you to sort out when you are coming from ego and when you are coming from the Holy Spirit. It is helping you to sort out illusion from Truth because they have become confused in your mind. The mistake that many new students make is thinking that they are supposed to make the ego more like the Holy Spirit. This is where they think they read how they “should” or “shouldn’t” be. Students will say, “I know I shouldn’t judge.” But what the Course says is that judgment is the way that the ego thinks, and that it really doesn’t have the capacity to truly judge because it doesn’t know what the Truth is. Only...

This view of payment may well seem impractical and in the eyes of the world it would be so. Yet not one worldly thought is really practical. How much is gained by striving for illusion? How much is lost by throwing God away? (P-3.7) The quote above from the supplement to A Course in Miracles on psychotherapy refers to money, but really you can use the ideas in it for any aspect of life in the world once you decide to follow only the Holy Spirit. People tell me all the time how I should do things, especially with my mentoring practice or my writing. If they are students of the Course then I remind them that I follow the Holy Spirit. If they are not then I tell them I’m not interested, or I smile and thank them for their suggestions. This used to bother me and I wondered why until I figured out that others were simply reflecting what the ego was telling me. I have the intelligence and discipline to do anything with my life that I want to do and the ego wants me to do anything...

I’ve noticed that there are three types of motivations for being on a path of spiritual awakening, and that the motivation determines how easy the path is for the student. You may have more than one motivation, and over time your motivation may change. In fact, the third motivation below is the one you have to have to let go of ego and the world, and to fully remember that only God is Real. The first motivation is the avoidance of pain. This is a negative motivation because you are not pulled toward something that attracts you, but you are pushed by something you wish to avoid. This is the least successful of the motivations because the ego interprets a path of spiritual awakening as one of sacrifice. So if you are already in pain it seems at first as though you are simply choosing another form of pain. You can get through this if you understand that you are not being asked to sacrifice but to give up all pain . But it’s much easier when you have a positive goal as well. ...

There comes a time when students start to get what A Course in Miracles is saying and they start to mourn the loss of the things in the world that they love: Blue skies, sunsets, ice cream, children’s laughter, puppies, sex, shopping, attaining goals, good books, long walks, etc. But these are distractions from what you really fear that you will lose. The things that you love in the world are really nothing to you. Not just in the spiritual sense, either. To the ego their only value is in how your attachment to them can mask what you really do not want to lose: Separation from God. Separation from God is the ego’s only goal, and everything it uses is the means to this end. So your attachments in the world only represent your real attachment to an individual self that is separate from God. Some students embark on a path of trying to loose themselves from specific attachments. But until you let go of ego you will always be attached to something in the world. This is the form that separa...