ACIM Mentor

“…Whenever you have faced the rock bottom, did your feelings at the time block out hearing Truth? …” – SS             Yes, sometimes they did. In those times I would remind myself that Truth was still here, whether or not I was aware of It. This gave me perspective and brought me some relief. It reminded me that Truth did not need me to be aware of It, which diminished for me the significance of anything I was going through in a passing moment. If I could continue with my practices of turning to Truth ( 4 Habits for Inner Peace ), I did so. But, often, until I actually hit bottom, I would be in too much resistance to engage in any practice. Then I would wait until I did hit bottom (became more miserable than I was resistant) and became willing to open myself to Truth by engaging in them again. >>>>   If you want to benefit from my experience and lighten your process, email me at Liz@acimmentor.c...

In August of 2017 the Golden Light of Love flowed into my mind and, much to my surprise, with It came a romance novel that I felt compelled to write ( A Good Woman ). I cannot say that I “channeled” it, but it certainly seemed “given” to me. I was immersed in it everywhere I went and I was inspired to put ordinary situations or events that I encountered into it. It was baffling, but enjoyable, and I just went with it.             That book was followed by another novel ( Towing the Moon , currently out to readers for feedback). When I wrote that one, the Golden Light had receded, and I was more settled into the writing process, but still often inspired.             After this, the life of the self (body, personality) with which this mind once identified radically shifted. A Holy Relationship had come and suddenly the life the self had lived became a former life. And this ...

            Last week it came over me that I have chosen everything that has happened to me. I saw that I shaped every part of it. I felt this clearly and felt how empowering seeing this, as with so many of my recent insights, is. And then it hit me: What needs to be empowered? The little will . And in a moment I saw that where others have famously let go of the little will all at once and become egoless, I am still exerting it in this slow-motion release. I am responsible for how long this is taking . And I always have been. I am the one that made what could take an instant into a process. I said, in essence, “Yes, I will go to Truth— but on my terms .” “This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time.” (T-Introduction) Thirty-five years ago I became a student of A ...

Last week I wrote about how fear is simply the experience of what I call the “little will”. I wrote how I used to think I was afraid “of” something, but I’ve discovered that fear is really just another experience. It is the experience that is the opposite of Love.             Love is the condition of Being. It is an experience of abundant wholeness and peace and happiness. Being is effortlessly willed. The little will, however, is a bit of Will exerted in opposition of Being/Will. You can recognize it by the sense of effort it requires.             When I am fearful or feeling any of its many manifestations (anxiety, anger, depression, etc.) I simply remind myself that the feeling is not the point. What’s really going on is I’m exerting the little will. How empowering this is! It helps me to see that there’s really no difference between the experience of Love and the exper...

(This was supposed to go out last week, on April 3, when I was out of town, but for some reason it didn't post...) Last week I wrote about the little will, which is what I call my exertion of a will apart from my True Will. It is a left over habit from ego-identification; probably the chief one. One of the most important insights I’ve had about the little will is that when I am fearful, I am exerting the little will.             The ego (personal thought system) is a thought system of guilt and fear. That is the experience you have when you are ego-identified. There is no guilt/fear without the ego and no ego without guilt/fear. Yet, I always thought of fear as an emotion that had its source in something I considered fearful, for example, some anticipated loss. So I thought I was afraid “of” something. But now I see that fear is simply the condition of a thought system and fear and all of its manifestations have as their sourc...

            When I say the ego (personal thought system) fell away from this mind, what I mean is the structure of that thought system is gone. The structure of it was made up of values and beliefs and the thoughts and concepts that uphold them. And I simply no longer believe in them. The habits of thinking and reacting with the ego—what I call the “echo” of the ego—is ever diminishing.             One of those habits is the exertion of what I call the “little will”. A few weeks ago I mentioned how I used to try to look upon this will as an alien thing I had to release. But I found that unhelpful, because the little will is part of my True Will, so it cannot be released. Trying to do so felt to me like I was trying to undo myself, which, besides being undesirable, is impossible!             I’ve been through many episodes in the past ninetee...

            I wrote long ago about how when I was young I had the very frightening experience of fantasizing about women I was attracted to and then finding my fantasy didn’t line up with pseudoreality (my term for what is called “reality” in the world). For example, I’d have a crush on a woman at work and fantasize about her in off hours or over the weekend and then when I saw her again at work I’d realize my fantasy had nothing to do with who she really was. Then I was terrified—what the hell was I doing in my mind?             Then along came A Course in Miracles and it described this phenomenon in a few different ways. (Writing scripts for others; we make an ego not just for ourselves, but for others; you change your relationship to others even when you are not with them, etc.) Phew! At least I knew I wasn’t the only crazy person around!          ...

            As most of you know, I have come to Australia to be in a Holy Relationship with Hannah. I have been here for five months now. One of the things I discovered about Hannah is she has many facets. She has the usual sides to her personality that everyone has, but she also has qualities that, for me anyway, are not fully “sides” so I think of them as “facets”.             For a long while, I felt I could not see her clearly. It felt like I was looking at her through a fog, but I couldn’t see what the fog was made of. However, as I slowly became familiar with her sides and her facets, the fog seemed to disperse, and she came into clearer focus. Then one day, without even thinking about it, I saw what the fog was made of: My projections. And I saw how I formed them.             A Course in Miracles tells us that, unconsciously, we see ...

            I have felt for quite some time in a borderland. (Not to be confused with the “Borderland” in A Course in Miracles , which is the Real World). I have left darkness and I’m headed into the Light (Holy Spirit—the Awareness of Truth in my mind). I do not see as far and as clearly as I do when I am in the Light, but It does illuminate the borderland so I see much more than I did before. As I have shared, I have seen much deeper into the ego (personal though system) and into this mind’s relationship to it. But the Light Itself has also been illuminated for me.             I wrote a few weeks ago about how I’d come to see what I call “Higher Awareness” (egolessness) is not only a result of an awareness of Truth but that it can be attained simply through the willingness for it. ( Forgiveness, HigherAwareness, and Christ Consciousness ). This didn’t cause a shift in me so much as an adjustment t...

Last week I wrote about the void left when the ego (personal thought system) fell away. What I mean by “void” is that the structure around which my mind organized itself is gone. I grab for familiar handholds and find them missing. This leaves me with the sensation of free-falling through space. Sometimes, however, I experience this as liberation. Obviously, since I can observe this and write about it, it indicates my whole mind is not a void. The ego only merely occupied a place in it after all. It really was only a thought system—an arrangement of ideas for looking at myself and my world as a person. What disguised the void for a while, rather unsuccessfully, is the echo of the ego remaining in my mind. It is unsuccessful as a disguise because it, rather than the Awareness of Truth (Holy Spirit), is now the “other” in my mind. It feels as though it is floating in my mind, rather than that it is my mind. It yells into the void, trying to fill it with what used to be there. But i...

            It’s not a comfortable thing, the ego (personal thought system) falling away. I have been uncomfortable for over four years. That’s when it happened, but I didn’t recognize it. All I knew was that something had happened, I was no longer relating to the world as I had been, I was increasingly uncomfortable, and I expected one day I’d understand. And then one day last year I did. But all that’s happened since is that the discomfort has come into sharper focus as I discovered the explanation for it. And, oh, yeah, and all sorts of new discomforts occurred as I dismantled an entire life and moved to a new life in Australia. Which has had its own discomforts.             But the outer changes and its attendant discomforts, which pass pretty quickly as I adjust, are insignificant compared to what’s going on within. I live within; that’s my “world”. And that is often, not in struggle, because...

            Something that shifted in the past few years after the ego (personal thought system) fell away, leaving its diminishing echo behind, is I started to honor, not the ego itself, but the mind behind it. My mind.             Honoring my mind showed up as allowing the ego to have its responses without judging myself for them. I didn’t realize at the time that honoring was what I was doing. I had undone guilt (see my book, Releasing Guilt for Inner Peace ), so I no longer felt a need to judge myself for the ego’s judgments. I no longer feared the ego, because I no longer felt guilty about it. I simply found that if I pushed away egoic responses they lingered and if I allowed them, they dissipated. I had no idea that this was how to respect my own mind! But of course it was. The ego was a part of my mind, even if false. Letting it have its say was how I respected, not the ego, but the will be...

What I find myself pondering since I learned that what I call Higher Awareness can be attained as a goal and not just as an effect of an awareness of Truth is where what A Course in Miracles defines as “forgiveness” comes into play. Is there a difference between Higher Awareness attained as an end in itself and Higher Awareness attained as the effect of forgiveness?             The easiest way for me to discuss this is to compare the two teachings that informed my spiritual path: ACIM and The Infinite Way . I was certainly aware of an incongruity between them as Joel Goldsmith (who wrote TIW and several articles and books related to it) never discussed Truth and illusion, so he never discussed forgiveness as ACIM defines it. But I also never gave this much thought as I used the teachings in different ways and ACIM always took precedence. What occurred recently for me is the exact nature of the incongruity became clear.  ...

In the past weeks I wrote a couple of articles making a distinction between Truth and Its effects and highlighting the importance of seeking Truth rather than Its effects.   This came up for me upon reading Jan Frazier’s When Fear Falls Away , which emphasized an awareness of inner Divinity as a goal for humanity without any discussion of the Source of that Divinity. I felt the lack of that discussion was curious and somehow incongruent with my experience. I was reminded of Joel Goldsmith’s Infinite Way, which was a help to me early on my path, but also never discussed Truth and illusion. Frazier seems to say her ego-less perception is humanity’s potential; Goldsmith seemed to say the egoic view was erroneous and the ego-less view is “God’s creation”.             It’s taken me a while to sort out what I read and felt was incongruent with my experience. It comes down to this: My experiences of direct Revelation (Truth Itself...

            Last week I mentioned having thoroughly reviewed the ego (personal thought system) in this mind and my relationship to it over the past several months. There is nothing new to learn, but the review continues. It is as though the echo of the ego is falling away in slow motion and as it falls the Light shines through it and I see, in minute detail, what it was and how I related to it. While it is a thought system of fear, I no longer fear it. Getting to know my mind like this is the most intimate experience I have ever had. It is also empowering. No illusions about what’s going on here. It’s right in my face, moment by moment. There’s no other power here. This is between me and me, and nothing else, which is why it feels so intimate. I have felt that the ego is gone in all but my conscious awareness. My conscious awareness is where I live moment by moment. Sometimes I’m in the Awareness of Truth and I feel the echo hovering in the distanc...

The moment the idea of the opposite-of-Truth (God) arose it was undone by Truth’s all-encompassing nature. But within that idea is time, and in time it seems like the idea arose long ago and will be undone in some indefinite future. So what we experience unfolding as the story of spacetime is the Undoing of the idea of not-Truth (the “Atonement” in A Course in Miracles ). That means everything that occurs is part of the Undoing. Some things are obviously a part of it, as in each time Truth breaks into a mind, however briefly. I refer to this as the “manifest Undoing” and those who are conscious of Truth the “manifest undoers”. But everyone else is also playing their part perfectly. They are the “support players” as it were. They are just as necessary to the undoing as the manifest undoers.             As I have come to understand this, I have become aware that everything happens in the perfect time. Resistance and obstacles in s...

“ Liz in your book the ‘4 Habits for Inner Peace’ you state at the beginning of each chapter on the four habits an affirmation that contains the word ‘I’. Who is the ‘I’ that is making these affirmations?...” – E St. A             Well, since you’re reading the book, hopefully you! You, the mind asking the question. You, the mind that is seeking an experience other than the one you have had. You, the mind that wants to remember What it is in Truth.             I suspect that behind your question is your wondering where your mind fits into the whole Truth and illusion thing. Or maybe the different levels of mind, blah, blah, blah. You don’t have to question this. You don’t have to doubt yourself or your experience of yourself. Just have the experience you’re having without judging it or trying to understand how it fits in to a bunch of theories. You are you, a mind seeki...

Have no illusions—when you are uncomfortable thinking about the detachment that comes with the awareness of Truth, it’s not because you will come across as cold and unfeeling. It’s not because you will abandon your loved ones or lose them in some way. This is what the ego (personal thought system) tells you to distract you from what’s really going on. Your discomfort is because when you detach what you really detach from is not some world outside you, but from the ego (personal thought system) and its “world” (perceptions).             Detachment from the ego is the natural result of being aware of Truth. You experience it at first as not feeling as you are used to about a certain person or situation. “This used to really upset me. It doesn’t anymore.” It seems as though it is the situation you are detached from, but it is actually that you are no longer responding to it from the ego. You’ve chosen to look at it from a different...

A few weeks ago I wrote about Truth and Its effects and not confusing them. What inspired that article was my reading of Jan Frazier's book, When Fear Falls Away .   While the book was directly useful to me by validating my experience and helping me to delineate the distinction between psychological wholeness and spiritual Wholeness, I felt something was missing from her story. And that was Truth Itself. This is what reminded me to turn inward to Truth. And, as it always does, this caused important shifts for me.             I first wrote about this in March, 2017, after I’d realized, with great relief, that love and peace, and joy were only effects. Like everyone I chased these, but chasing them misses the point. Truth is the point, not Its effects. They are important because they indicate Truth is here, but to seek them for themselves is to lose sight of Truth.          ...

My experience of “I” has changed. I no longer experience my motivations and actions as coming from a limited, personal, autonomous place. I used to feel “I” was an independent thread in a tapestry of other independent threads. Now I experience “I” as the Tapestry expressing Itself through this thread. A Course in Miracles says you cannot know What you are in yourself alone. This means you cannot understand yourself as only one thread in the Tapestry. You are the Tapestry as a whole expressing as a single thread. ACIM speaks in terms of your relationships with others, but, for me, even the way I read that for a long time was limiting. Not yet able to allow the Tapestry to express through me, I tried to understand the Tapestry one thread (relationship) at a time, and it didn’t work. I was relating at the level of the thread rather than at the level of the Tapestry. The mystical Holy Relationship with another has been my way into understanding this. A mystical Holy Relationship i...