ACIM Mentor

             Last week I wrote about how a spiritual ego is the inevitable result of Spirit rising to conscious awareness. I want to make a distinction between a spiritual, spiritualized, or spirit-centered ego, and a “holy ego.” Spirit is in every consciousness. And in many, as a manifestation of the Atonement, or undoing of the idea of not-God, Spirit rises toward conscious awareness, or the level of consciousness of which one is immediately aware. For most among the many, the shifts are subtle and unfold over a lifetime, perhaps coming about through reading a spiritual teaching or hearing someone speak. For a few among the many, Spirit does not just rise toward but rises temporarily to conscious awareness in a dramatic experience, like a mystical experience or near-death experience. This dawning of Truth on one’s consciousness leads to a “honeymoon” period of months to years where Spirit is in or very near conscious awareness but eventually rece...

             Sometimes I hear from clients or readers that they do not want a “spiritual ego.” Well, I’m sorry, but that is inevitable as Spirit rises toward conscious awareness while ego is still the center of your consciousness. It is, in fact, what teachings like A Course in Miracles are for. Any sense of meaning, purpose, significance, value, learning, journey, or mission about the person’s life and world is ego. And as the Course says, Spirit will not take these away from you, but transform them. What happens after an experience when Truth dawns on your mind spontaneously, through a near death experience, or through a teaching is a shift in what you see the personal experience—consciousness—is for. It now has a spiritual purpose, which will vary from person to person. It may be about morality, loving each other, forgiving, learning about the Truth within you, or some combination of these. It may evolve over time.   Ego does not fall away ...

            As the shift in consciousness approached here, two related experiences kept occurring. One was the awareness that it did not matter at all what this person was experiencing. A while before, I had become aware that for much of Liz’s spiritual life I’d been merely managing moods. When Liz was in a good mood, I judged I was spiritually centered. When Liz was in a bad mood, I thought I was spiritually off and had something to look at. But even after I’d sorted that out, I was still concerned with Liz’s experience until I came to realize that what Liz was experiencing had nothing to do with reality! So how could it matter? Related to this was that whenever something occurred that led to a “What am I?” kind of experience it would come to me that the more appropriate question was, “What is real?” Ego was still here and interpreted this to mean that only what is real could be called the true “I”. But now I understand that Spirit was exposing the ident...

            Questions about a direct occurrence of God (Reality beyond consciousness) that I’ve described have been coming up with clients and readers lately, so I will write about it again here. The first direct occurrence of God here was when I was first a student of A Course in Miracles forty years ago. (It’s possible I had one as a child—something happened that was profound and shocking and to which ego had a powerful opposing reaction.)   It was shattering and it took about a week for this mind to go back together. And it was months before I could even acknowledge it happened. My last was in 2007. Each time one occurred, however, I was better able to tolerate it. In the past, I have mistakenly called a direct occurrence of God a revelation thinking this was the word the Course used to describe it, but it turns out it defines a revelation as a direct communication with God, which means something that happens in consciousness. I don’t know ...

             Since I’ve shared through my memoir  and recent interviews  the great difficulty I passed through when consciousness shifted here, a few people have shared that they went through a rough patch of anxiety or depression at some point in their life and they wonder if that means that they are now enlightened. Others tell of leaving behind a life in middle age, as I did, and wonder if that was because they are enlightened. Some have wondered if they should welcome suffering to cause enlightenment! By far, depression is depression, and anxiety and fear are anxiety and fear and have to do with psychology, ego, and/or chemical imbalance, and nothing at all to do with enlightenment. And by far, a mid-life upheaval of one’s life is simply an ordinary mid-life crisis. I saw this meme on social media once: Beyond great suffering is great liberation . This does not refer to all suffering. It refers to the specific suffering experience o...

         “One of the fundamental premises in ACIM is.… All is either an expression or extension of love or a call for love. Those calls for love are the business side of life. I thought you might expound on how you respond to those calls in your life…” —EFS   Obviously, I do not see things as I used to. If an upset appears in this mind, ego is no longer here for more than a moment to give it meaning, significance, or value—to make it real. Upsets in others do not upset me and upsets in this mind quickly disappear. So, there is no longer a need for a practice to bring Love to mind. But I can answer how I responded before the shift in consciousness. A Course in Miracles teaches that there are two orders of thought, Love (Spirit) and the call for Love (ego). It discusses this in the context of relationships with others. The Course advises that to not reinforce ego in you and another, respond to a call for Love—display of ego (upset)—with Love (Spirit)....

           I’ve heard from some that while they would like to share or read some of the things shared in the A Course in Miracles groups on Facebook, they can’t bear the misunderstanding and attacks in the comments. So, I started a new group, ACIM Resource Safe Space , on Facebook, a comment-free zone where you can post and read without fear of being misunderstood or attacked. Here is how I describe the group on Facebook:   A safe space to share and read a wide variety of thoughts and experiences and post resources relevant to students of A Course in Miracles .   Please post or repost anything you think will be useful, helpful, or food for thought for students of ACIM , but please do not use this group as your personal platform. You may advertise ACIM events or services, but please limit these to once a week.   This is not a community, but a resource center. So, comment only to express appreciation and gratitude. And please no s...

             Since I’ve come to experience consciousness not like a house with two floors—higher level (Spirit) and lower level (ego)—but more like a plot of land with two distinct houses (Spirit and ego), it has become clear to me how much A Course in Miracles spiritualizes ego. In fact, it is no different from religions. Yes, its foundational ontology is nondualistic and its practice can lead to that awareness, but the way it addresses the reader belies this. What would the Son of God be, if not only Christ? No part of God is lost to God, nor dreams it is lost to God, so no part of God returns to God or awakens to God. Ego embarks on a journey to God that can never be realized because it is an illusion that must fall away. Only ego dreams (oh, how it wishes !) that it is part of God lost to God. When clients read or hear this from me, they ask me why the Course doesn’t teach what I am now experiencing. That is because the Course is not meant to...

  What are you doing with your spiritual practice but seeking to have another, better experience? You want your consciousness transformed. Specifically, you want peace in your conscious awareness —that of which you are immediately aware. You want a different world, really. And that means recognizing that your world is not the material world the body’s eyes report to you—and of which they are a part. Your consciousness—your mind—is your “world.” When spiritual teachers point out that Truth is within you, they do not mean in your person’s body, but in your consciousness—which isn’t even really “your” consciousness but is simply an individuated expression of consciousness. There are three parts to your consciousness:   Conscious awareness : That of which you are immediately aware. For example, what the body’s eyes see now and the thoughts and feelings in your mind now. Your conscious awareness is limited, so it cannot contain all of what is in your individuated consciousn...

           The Course was dictated to two who had a sense of Spirit working in their lives. After all, they were taking down the Course itself! The Universal Christ Mind sought to develop and grow their awareness of Spirit through the lessons in the Workbook as well as simply in discussion with them, privately and through the Course . And for those who find the Course and already have an awareness of Spirit, even if only dimly, the Course functions in the same way. Through the practice suggested, they develop their trust in Spirit. But for many who come to the Course , the discernment of Spirit within has not yet occurred. For them, practice is the means of opening to the awareness and experience of Spirit. Those who do not understand this often feel frustrated and even angry with the Course for suggesting that they should be having experiences that they do not yet have. They feel that they fall short when they read the instructions and descriptions ...

             Your spiritual path is an expression, but you probably experience it as for something—you want a different experience. You want peace. And a new experience comes not from ideas, but from practice that invites and extends the new experience. There are a lot of ideas in A Course in Miracles that are startling, maybe frightening, and often seem impossible when you first learn them. How can the world you see not be real? How could you ever come to understand that you are not a body? How can you see the real world when ego’s world is right before your eyes? The alchemy of practice is that it transforms ideas into experience. For example, I did not come to understand that I am mind by going around saying, “I am not a body” or even “I am mind.” The awareness that I am mind seeped in over time as I watched my mind, as I watched how my thoughts and judgments made the world I saw. I realized one day that I had shifted and now understood I am a ...

     “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12 KJV   What I did not know to expect when enlightenment occurs is the years-long overlap of Spirit and ego in consciousness while ego slowly falls away. This means there is a long stage in which the mind having the experience does not fully understand what is occurring. This early stage of enlightenment is much like the much earlier stage of spiritual awareness that I call dawning , when one first becomes aware of the real world in consciousness or Reality (God) beyond consciousness through a mystical experience or experiences. You see amazing things, but not clearly. The difference is, after the dawning experience, your experience of existence goes on as usual, as ego is still the center of your consciousness, although you feel changed. And enlightenment means a very different experience of existence, as it is...

             As I’ve shared before, in my earlier Oneness experiences, I would feel I was one with whatever I was looking at or thinking about—person, place or thing. But as time went on and these experiences were less shocking, they lasted longer, and I experienced them more clearly. I discovered that I am not One with whatever I see or is on my mind, but Oneness is here… and there is something appearing before the body’s eyes or in the mind’s memory. This experience of Oneness is Spirit’s Wholeness , reflecting the Onlyness of God (Reality) beyond consciousness. It reveals that consciousness and the myriad forms appearing in consciousness are illusions that have no effect on Reality (God) at all.   “…There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach…Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist b...

            Consciousness arose to play out the idea of the opposite of God (Reality), or not-God. But as God is All and cannot have an opposite, consciousness also contains the Idea of God, or God’s Spirit , canceling out not-God. So, as it unfolds over time, consciousness is the correction of the perception of a reality opposed to God, or what A Course in Miracles calls the Atonement . Consciousness has three parts: Conscious awareness, the subconscious, and the unconscious. Until Spirit rises to conscious awareness, It is in the unconscious or subconscious. The Atonement, then, is the process of the Idea of God (Spirit) rising to conscious awareness, in individuals, and in consciousness as a whole. (Bear in mind, this play of the idea of not-God and the Idea of God that is consciousness/time/the Atonement, is merely symbolic and has no effect on God whatsoever.) As Spirit rises toward conscious awareness to manifest the Atonement, this shows up as...

             A Course in Miracles tells us that when we learn that we are projecting guilt outward, ego’s response is to see the guilt within, not undo it. This shows up as what I call the righteous guilt phase where students become hyper-responsible for everything occurring in their person’s life, sometimes to the extent of taking responsibility for other people’s behavior or denying that others are also contributing to problems in their relationships with them. This feels good to ego because, first, you still see guilt as real; second, it feels righteous to take responsibility for it; third, problems don’t get resolved, so ego gets to continue spinning on them. Many spend years in this phase, taking responsibility for everything occurring, and not addressing problems in their relationships, feeling this is the “spiritually correct” thing to do. Upsets are not caused by what is occurring in the material world but by your projection of meaning ont...

             It is not uncommon for me to hear from clients and readers that they are disappointed in A Course in Miracles after a while. They are not getting from it something that they expected. Yet, they still feel compelled to read it and try to practice it. Sometimes, they’ve left it, only to come back, frustrated that they can’t let it go but they can’t get it to work for them, either. If this is happening to you, you have set up a goal for studying and practicing the Course that is not in line with how the Atonement is being expressed through you (your “path”). Your attraction to the Course , despite your discomfort with it, indicates that it is a part of your expression of the Atonement. So, what you need to look at is how your expectations do not line up with your unique expression of the Atonement. Most students begin the Course pretty much the same way, sticking to its theory and suggested practice, often for many years. Some do the W...