There are numerous Course quotes that relate to the helpful ideas in this article. The idea of “arriving as we are” is reflected in this quote:

The holy instant does not come from your little willingness alone. ²It is always the result of your small willingness combined with the unlimited power of God’s Will. ³You have been wrong in thinking that it is needful to prepare yourself for Him. ⁴It is impossible to make arrogant preparations for holiness, and not believe that it is up to you to establish the conditions for peace. ⁵God has established them. ⁶They do not wait upon your willingness for what they are. ⁷Your willingness is needed only to make it possible to teach you what they are. ⁸If you maintain you are unworthy of learning this, you are interfering with the lesson by believing that you must make the learner different. ⁹You did not make the learner, nor can you make him different. ¹⁰Would you first make a miracle yourself, and then expect one to be made for you?” (ACIM, T-18.IV.4:1-10)

Another frequent and related theme in this essay is the essence of forgiveness:

“Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. It merely looks, and waits, and judges not.  He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is.” (ACIM, W-pII.1.4:1-5)

Arriving at God

Introduction

This article draws on three major influences: Swami Dayananda Saraswati’s teaching of Vedanta, Shin Buddhism, and A Course in Miracles, a contemporary revelation that, in my view, can be understood as a Christian form of Vedanta.

A central theme is particularly influenced by the Shin Buddhist distinction between self-power and Other Power.
We cannot rely upon the very self that is caught in ignorance to bring about its own spiritual transformation. Our part is to arrive exactly as we are and cease trying to transform ourselves, but rather entrust ourselves entirely to the action of Wisdom/ Compassion.  The transformation comes from God’s side, not ours: the Presence of God appreciated is the transformative factor, illuminating the mind with Wisdom and transforming the heart through Compassion.

Awakening to the Presence of Being

The central question in spiritual life is not simply whether we believe in God. Nor is it whether we can develop a convincing philosophy about God. The real question is whether we can awaken to the actual Presence of God and discover what happens to our mind and heart when that Presence becomes appreciated.

This makes spirituality something we can experiment with rather than merely believe. We can become open to what the spiritual teaching is pointing towards and then see what happens in our actual experience. Does a confused mind become clearer? Does a disturbed heart find rest and release? Does resentment loosen? Does compassion arise where previously there was judgment and hostility? We do not have to decide in advance what should happen. We experiment and see.

There is one principle that must remain clear throughout this experimental approach. We do not produce the transformation ourselves. Our responsibility is to arrive exactly as we are. Through wisdom we come to recognise that a darkened mind and a misdirected will cannot be relied upon to bring about their own spiritual transformation. When this is really understood, our striving comes to an end. We do nothing.   We simply look, wait, and judge not.

What happens to our mind and heart from there is God’s activity, not ours. The transformative factor is the action of that Presence on our minds and hearts.

God Is Being Itself

Swami Dayananda unfolded an understanding of God as the presence of Being itself. This is very different from thinking of God as a separate being somewhere in the universe. If God is Being itself, the Presence of God is not something that has to arrive. Being is already present.

This is why the distinction between an idea about God and the awakening to the Presence of God is so important. “God is Being” is a statement. We can believe the statement, reject it, or discuss its philosophical implications. But none of these things is the same as awakening to the Reality towards which the statement points.

Dayananda used the example of water and waves to help us appreciate this. Imagine the surface of the ocean. There may be enormous waves and tiny waves, violent waves and gentle waves, beautiful waves and frightening waves. Each wave has a particular form, and every form is changing. One wave arises, remains briefly, and disappears. Another takes its place.

Yet what is actually fully present throughout all these changing forms? Water.

There is not water plus a wave. The wave is water appearing in a particular form. When the wave becomes enormous, the water has not become enormous in its nature. When the wave becomes rough, the water itself has not been damaged by roughness. When the wave collapses, the water has not been destroyed. The forms arise, change and disappear, while the presence of water remains abidingly Present, untouched by the forms.

The important point, therefore, is not that water is hidden underneath the waves. The wave itself is nothing but water appearing to us in a particular form.  Whatever the appearance of the wave, there is only water there.

Dayananda’s spiritual teaching takes us from this simple example towards something much more profound. No matter what forms and appearances arise, there is only God here. The forms are many and continually changing, but Being itself is untouched by their appearance, change and disappearance.

A person appears. A tree appears. A body appears. A thought appears. Fear appears. Pleasure appears. Sickness appears. Health appears. Birth and death appear. The forms are radically different from one another, just as the waves of the sea can take radically different forms. Yet Being is present throughout.

The wisdom is not asking us to deny the forms. A rough wave is still a rough wave and a gentle wave is still a gentle wave. In ordinary life we continue to recognise differences and respond appropriately to them. What wisdom reveals is that the changing appearance does not affect the hidden fact. Despite appearances, there is ONLY God here.

Just as water remains water whatever happens in terms of the different kinds of waves coming and going. Likewise, Being remains untouched whatever forms appear within our experience. The spiritual discovery is therefore not that God occasionally enters our experience. It is that, despite the endless variety of appearances, there is only God here.

From Appearance to Presence

Once this understanding begins to open for us, the world can be seen differently. Normally we are almost completely preoccupied with appearances. We divide what appears into what we like and dislike, what we want and fear, what we approve of and condemn. Our attention becomes absorbed in the forms.

This is rather like standing before the ocean and seeing nothing except separate waves. One wave frightens us, another attracts us, another disappoints us, and another gives us pleasure. We become so preoccupied with the characteristics of each wave that the ever-present fact of water is overlooked.

Wisdom invites us to recognise what is present regardless of the form. The forms do not have to disappear for Being to become evident. Indeed, the forms themselves can become transparencies through which the Presence of Being is appreciated.

This is what it means to say that everything can become transparency of the Presence of God. We are not imagining God behind everything. We are not superimposing a religious belief upon the world. Rather, as our own projections and judgments become less dominant, the Presence that is already here becomes available for recognition.

The wave does not have to become something different from what it is before we can recognise water. Likewise, our present experience does not have to become something other than what it is before we can awaken to the Presence of Being.

Why We Overlook What Is Already Here

If the Presence of Being is abidingly present, we naturally have to ask why it is not obvious to us. The reason is that we are usually unconsciously enclosed within our own psychological activity.  We are constantly judging, interpreting, remembering, anticipating, wanting, and resisting. We do not simply directly encounter what appears; we encounter our interpretation of what appears.

We can carry exactly the same activity into spiritual life. We want enlightenment. We want peace. We want an experience of God. We want to become wise and compassionate. We create an image of the spiritual person we hope eventually to become and then begin struggling to become that person.

The object of our striving has changed, but ourselves as a striving self remains firmly in charge. We are still relying upon ourselves to bring about what we think is our salvation.

Yet if God is Being itself, our striving cannot make Being more present than it already is. The problem is not that God is absent and must somehow be brought into our lives. The problem is that we have not awakened to this Presence that is already here.

To the degree that our continual judging, projecting, and striving become passive, that Presence can become evident to us. We do not create God’s Presence through our passivity. We simply cease some of the activity through which we remain enclosed within ourselves.

We Arrive Exactly as We Are

This brings us to our part in the process, and it is essential that we understand it correctly. Our job is not to transform ourselves. Our job is to arrive exactly as we are.

If our mind is confused, we arrive with a confused mind. If our heart is resentful, we arrive with a resentful heart. If we are frightened, jealous, lonely, despairing or full of craving, that is how we come. We do not first try to become peaceful, loving, forgiving or spiritual.

This is not a minor detail of correct spiritual practice. It is fundamental. If we try to improve ourselves before coming into the Presence of God, we have once again made ourselves responsible for the transformation. We are effectively saying that the confused mind must first make itself clearer and the disturbed heart must first make itself more peaceful before either can be brought to God.

The direction is exactly the opposite. We bring the confused mind to Wisdom because it is confused. We bring the disturbed heart to Compassion because it is disturbed. We bring the misdirected will into the Presence of the Good precisely because it is misdirected.

We arrive without disguising our actual condition. There is no spiritual entrance examination that we have to pass before becoming available to God’s Love. Whatever we find ourselves being now is what we bring.

Why We Arrive at Doing Nothing

Doing nothing is not an arbitrary spiritual instruction. We arrive at doing nothing through wisdom.

When we look honestly at our condition, we discover that the very mind upon which we have been relying does not see clearly. Our will is directed towards things we imagine will complete us, protect us, or make us happy. Yet the continued activity of this darkened mind and misdirected will has not brought about spiritual freedom.

Wisdom reveals the impossibility of relying upon ourselves as we are to effect our needed transformation. A darkened mind cannot be the source of its own light. A misdirected will cannot rely upon its own misdirection to become rightly directed. The self that requires spiritual transformation cannot also be the source of that transformation.

When this is seen as a fact, striving naturally begins to cease. We are not ordered to become passive. We become passive because Wisdom has shown us the futility of continuing to rely upon ourselves.

Doing nothing, therefore, means that we cease trying to perform the transformation.  We do not clear the mind. We do not transform the heart. We do not redirect the will. We do not manufacture peace, Wisdom, Compassion, or an experience of God.

We simply look, wait, and judge not. This statement comes to us from the A Course in Miracles teaching.

The Transformative Activity Comes from God

This is where the division between our part and God’s part must remain absolutely clear. We arrive exactly as we are. Having understood that we cannot rely upon ourselves to produce spiritual transformation, we cease trying to do so. That is our side of the process.

The transformation comes from the other side. Wisdom illuminates the mind. Compassion transforms the heart. As the Good becomes evident and appreciable, the will itself is drawn in a different direction. This is because we can’t help but will towards what we see as good. This means to discover what is really good as opposed to what appears to be Good is to bring about a shift in the direction of our will. This point St. Thomas Aquinas made very clear.

We do not make these things happen.

We can use the image of the sun. An object placed in sunlight does not illuminate itself. The light comes from the sun’s side. Nor does the object generate the warmth that warms it. The warmth comes from the sun.

In the same way, we can think of God as the spiritual Sun.  We bring the darkened mind into the Presence of Light, and Wisdom illuminates it. We bring the disturbed heart into the Presence of Love, and this Compassion transforms it. We bring the misdirected will into the Presence of the Good, and a different direction becomes possible.

This is why spiritual transformation is fundamentally different from self-improvement. We are not gradually constructing a wiser and more compassionate version of ourselves. God itself is what becomes present in our lived experience as a new mind and a new heart.

The transformative factor is therefore not our effort.  The transformative factor is the Presence of God appreciated.

Awakening Must Come Before Abiding

If the Presence of God is always here, we may wonder why we speak about awakening at all. The reason is that there is a difference between the Presence of God and the Presence of God appreciated.

Water is present in every wave whether we recognise it or not. In the same way, Being is present whether we appreciate it or not. Awakening is the recognition of what is already present.

Once God’s Presence becomes appreciable, we can begin to understand what it means to abide in that appreciation. We cannot consciously abide in a Presence that has never become evident to us. Awakening therefore comes first, and depth of abiding develops as we become increasingly familiar with resting in this Presence of Being.

Spiritual teaching has an important role because it can direct our attention towards what we have overlooked. But the teaching itself must not be confused with the Presence of Reality. “There is only God here” can become another belief. What matters is whether we can awaken to the Presence towards which those words point.

This is why experimentation is so important. We do not have to persuade ourselves that any of this is true. We can suspend judgment pending discovery and see what happens.

A Meditation Experiment: Awakening to the Presence of Being

Sit quietly.

There is nowhere to go.

Nothing has to be achieved.

Bring gently to mind:

Right here, right now, as we are, the Presence of Being is already here.

Do not force ourselves to believe it.

Simply ask:

Could this possibly be true?

Think of the sea.

Large waves.

Small waves.

Rough waves.

Gentle waves.

Water is not away from any wave

The forms change.

The presence of water remains.

Now consider:

Whatever is appearing, Being is abidingly present.

Thoughts may arise.

Feelings may arise.

Sounds may arise.

The body is present.

The world appears.

We do not have to change any of it.

We arrive exactly as we are.

If the mind is confused, let the confused mind remain as it is.

If the heart is disturbed, let the disturbed heart be here.

Do not repair anything.

Do not become spiritual.

Do not manufacture peace.

Do not look for an experience.

If prayer comes naturally, we can ask:

Please help us awaken to the Presence that is already here.

Then do nothing.

Look.

Wait.

Judge not.

Remain available.

Then, without trying to produce an answer, notice what happens to the mind and heart.

We Have to Experiment

This last point is extremely important because otherwise everything we have said can remain philosophy.  We can understand the water and wave example. We can agree that God is Being. We can believe that Wisdom and Compassion transform us. But we still have only ideas.

We have to experiment with the teaching in our actual experience.

Suppose we come to the meditation with a confused mind and a disturbed heart. We do not decide in advance what should happen. We do not sit there monitoring ourselves every few seconds to see whether God is working. That would simply be ourselves being a striving mind taking charge again.

We arrive exactly as we are, cease attempting to transform ourselves, and look, wait, and judge not.  Afterwards we can notice whether anything has changed. Is there more clarity in the mind? Is the heart more at rest? Has something we were tightly holding begun to loosen? Has a different understanding opened up in us without our manufacturing it?

Perhaps nothing obvious happens. We do not need to manufacture a result in order to validate our belief. The whole point is to experiment honestly. We suspend judgment pending discovery and continue becoming available.

If transformation does occur, however, we should notice its character. We did not reason our way into it. We did not force ourselves to feel differently. Something became available that was not available while we were enclosed within our own striving. People who are seriously involved in a 12-step program know what we are talking about here. They are not afraid of acknowledging helplessness.

This is where the teaching becomes something we can begin to verify.

Experimenting With an Actual Disturbance

The experiment becomes even more significant when we apply it to an actual problem. Suppose someone has hurt us and our mind is preoccupied with what happened. We are certain that the other person is responsible for our present unhappiness. Our heart is full of resentment.

We do not have to deny what happened. Nor do we have to persuade ourselves that the other person behaved well. But we can recognise our present condition: our mind is enclosed within grievance-making, and our heart is disturbed.

This is precisely how we arrive.   We do not first forgive. We do not manufacture compassionate thoughts. We do not tell ourselves that a spiritual person should not feel this way. The resentful person is the person who comes before God. This is because it is understood that God is present, enfolding us precisely where the resentment is.

Then we recognise that the mind presently caught within grievance cannot rely upon itself to produce the Wisdom through which the grievance will be seen differently. We stop trying to solve the spiritual problem ourselves.

A Meditation Experiment with Disturbance

Stop.

Notice what is actually happening.

Our mind is preoccupied.

Our heart is disturbed.

Do not condemn this.

Do not change it.

Notice what we believe is causing our unhappiness.

Do not argue with the belief.

Simply arrive exactly as we are.

Remember:

The Presence of Being has not disappeared.

Bring the darkened mind to the living Presence of Wisdom.

Bring the disturbed heart to the living Presence of Compassion.

Bring the misdirected will into the Presence of what is really Good.

If prayer is natural, ask:

Please help us see what we cannot presently see.

Then stop.

Do nothing.

Look.

Wait.

Judge not.

Afterwards, notice what has happened to the mind and heart.

Transformation Is the Verification

The transformation of our mind and heart is important because this is where spiritual teaching becomes existentially verifiable. We are not attempting to prove God as though God were an object. We are discovering what happens when we awaken to and abide in the appreciation of the Presence which IS God

A mind that was completely enclosed within grievance may begin to see differently. A heart that was tight with resentment may begin to soften. Someone whom we had reduced to an enemy may become visible as another human being caught in ignorance, fear, craving and confusion, just as we can be.

If this happens, we should be careful about how we understand it. We did not successfully make ourselves compassionate. Compassion became alive in us. We did not manufacture a wiser thought. Wisdom illuminated what we had previously been unable to see.

This is God becoming present in our life as a new mind and a new heart. The Presence is not merely something we think about. Its transformative activity becomes evident in what happens to us.

The experiment therefore remains wonderfully practical.  We bring our actual mind and heart, not an imaginary spiritual version of ourselves. We do nothing to them. We look, wait, and judge not, and then we see whether Wisdom illuminates and Compassion transforms.

Abiding in the Appreciation of Presence

As the Presence of Being becomes increasingly appreciable, spiritual life begins to involve abiding. We become familiar with the difference between being enclosed within ourselves and resting in Presence that is God.

We will still become lost in the waves. Something happens, and we become angry. The body’s condition might frighten us. Someone criticises us. An old grievance returns. We begin worrying about tomorrow.   Once again, our attention becomes absorbed in the forms and our interpretations of them.

We do not have to regard this as spiritual failure.   We simply recognise that we are no longer abiding in the appreciation of God’s Presence.   The recognition itself gives us the possibility of turning and becoming available again to the transforming action of this ever-present Wisdom/Compassion.

We return, although in an important sense God has never gone anywhere. It is our appreciation that has been lost. We arrive again exactly as we are, including whatever disturbance is now present. Wisdom once again shows us that we cannot rely upon ourselves to perform the transformation, so we cease trying. We look, wait and judge not.

Over time, the question becomes increasingly simple: are we abiding in the appreciation of the Presence of God, or have we become enclosed within ourselves again?

There Is Only God Here

The water and wave example can now take on its full spiritual significance. We look at the ocean and see innumerable forms, but the fact remains there is only water here. The wave may be huge or tiny, peaceful or violent. It may arise or disappear. None of this touches the fact of the presence of water. Water is present throughout and remains what it is regardless of the forms that appear. Dayananda used this metaphor to help us awaken to God’s Presence. His interest was not metaphysics but rather to bring us to a point where we could knowingly rest in God’s lap

Dayananda’s wisdom invites us to abide in the appreciation of Being. The appearances in life are innumerable.   Some delight us, and some terrify us. Some appear beautiful and some ugly. Some remain for decades, and some disappear almost immediately. Yet the changing appearances do not alter the Presence of Being.

A Vision opens up in us: No matter the appearances, there is only God here.

As this moves from being an idea towards becoming an appreciation, everything becomes a transparency that reveals the presence of God. We no longer have to find God somewhere away from the experience we are facing. The very forms that previously absorbed our attention can become the place in which the Presence of Being is recognised and appreciated.

This does not happen because we project the idea of God onto everything. It becomes possible as our make-believe projections subside. As we, as ego, become passive, we are less enclosed within what we think, want, fear, and judge. What has always been present can now become evident.

Then the whole spiritual process becomes remarkably clear. We awaken to the Presence of Being. We arrive exactly as we are. Wisdom shows us that the darkened mind and misdirected will cannot be relied upon to accomplish their own transformation, and therefore we cease trying. We do nothing; we simply look, wait, and judge not.

What follows is not our work. The Presence of God appreciated is the transformative factor. Wisdom illuminates the mind, Compassion transforms the heart, and the will begins to find its right direction in response to the real Good that we have come alive to.

We do not have to accept this merely because a spiritual teaching tells us it is true. We can experiment with it in the concrete circumstances of our own lives. We can bring an actual confused mind, an actual grievance, an actual fear and an actual disturbed heart to the Presence of God. We can arrive there Right Now, Right Here, As We Are without improving ourselves, do nothing, look, wait and judge not, and observe what happens.

In this way the Presence of Being can cease to be a metaphysical idea. It can become something recognised, appreciated and increasingly abided in.

This provides a comfort that the world can’t give.

And the evidence of that Presence is not that we have acquired a new belief about God, but that the Wisdom that is God becomes active in us as a new mind and the Love that is God becomes active in us as a new heart.

THIS IS THE ONLY WAY OUT OF ALL THE CRAVING, HATRED AND FEAR IN WHICH WE CAN SO EASILY BECOME ENCLOSED.

The post Arriving At God – Bede Draper first appeared on ACIM blog.

In this School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) video conversation, we consider the topics of labor, work, effort, … We examine how we have labored under the assumption that “the separation” – the metaphysical “Big Bang” in the split mind – happened. We believe that we’re incomplete, apart, alien to each other and to our Creator (if we even consider that we were created). This burden of guilt, insanity, and uncertainty is simply a correctable mistake. From our ego perspective, it’s not an easy correction, but seen properly, it is profoundly simple.

We began with Lesson 244: I am in danger nowhere in the world. (ACIM, W-244)

And there we are in truth. No storms can come into the hallowed haven of our home. In God we are secure. For what can come to threaten God Himself, or make afraid what will forever be a part of Him?

(ACIM, W-244.1:1–2:4)

We looked at related “labor” words that appear in A Course In Miracles (ACIM): There is only one instance of “labor” in ACIM. However, many related words appear in the Course (with the number of instances in parentheses):

• goal (440)
• work (104)
• effort (84)
• force (38)
• strain (28)
• exert (8)
• coercion (4)
• strive (19)
• responsibility (99)
• wages (6)
• career (1)
• labor (1)
• baggage (0)
• burden (24)

Nerd joke: A photon checks into a hotel. The desk clerk asks: “Do you have any baggage?” The photon replies, “No, I’m traveling light.”

Interesting physics fact: Photons do not experience time. So a photon that was “birthed” shortly after the “Big Bang” billions of years ago, which we perceive as traveling across the universe, doesn’t experience time; it disappears (from its perspective) the moment it seemed to appear!

We spent the bulk of the remainder of the session reviewing instances of the word “burden” since it is a good example of the feeling of being weighed down and crushed by the oppressive gravity of the ego’s made-up burdens of sin, guilt, and fear in all their obvious and insidious forms.

We reviewed various excerpts from the text of A Course In Miracles (ACIM) that contain the word “burden”:

“When you are tempted by the wrong voice, call on me to remind you how to heal by sharing my decision and making it stronger. As we share this goal, we increase its power to attract the whole Sonship, and to bring it back into the oneness in which it was created. Remember that ‘yoke’ means ‘join together,’ and ‘burden‘ means ‘message.’ Let us restate ‘My yoke is easy and my burden light’ in this way: ‘Let us join together, for my message is light.'” (ACIM, T-5.II.11:1-4)

Our assignment is to drop the gravity of the ego’s insanity, which restores the levity of the Holy Spirit’s sanity. Our only job (our sole responsibility) is to ask for the correction, the undoing of the ego’s guilt. Actually, the entire thought system is undone whenever we question and release our identification and investment with any part of its insanity!

“What the ego makes it keeps to itself, and so it is without strength. Its existence is unshared. It does not die; it was merely never born. Physical birth is not a beginning; it is a continuing. Everything that continues has already been born. It will increase as you are willing to return the unhealed part of your mind to the higher part, returning it undivided to creation. I have come to give you the foundation, so your own thoughts can make you really free. You have carried the burden of unshared ideas that are too weak to increase, but having made them you did not realize how to undo them. You cannot cancel out your past errors alone. They will not disappear from your mind without the Atonement, a remedy not of your making. The Atonement must be understood as a pure act of sharing. That is what I meant when I said it is possible even in this world to listen to one Voice. If you are part of God and the Sonship is one, you cannot be limited to the self the ego sees.” (ACIM, T-5.IV.2:1-13)

It’s not possible to be separated in Truth. Only the voluntary belief in separation weighs heavily on our minds. We choose to impose that weight by wanting to be separate, autonomous, individual selves. Our burden of personhood (rather than recognizing we are “part” of the whole of Perfect Oneness (that has no “parts”) is self-inflicted. We hoist that heavy load, like the metaphorical Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders, to assume a self at enormous cost to our peace of mind.

“The Holy Spirit atones in all of us by undoing, and thus lifts the burden you have placed in your mind. By following Him, you are led back to God where you belong, and how can you find the way except by taking your brother with you? My part in the Atonement is not complete until you join it and give it away. As you teach so shall you learn. I will never leave you or forsake you, because to forsake you would be to forsake myself and God Who created me. You forsake yourself and God if you forsake any of your brothers. You must learn to see them as they are, and understand they belong to God as you do. How could you treat your brother better than by rendering unto God the things that are God’s?” (ACIM, T-5.IV.6:1-8)

When we lift the burden of any condemning or limiting judgment of others in our mind, we become truly helpful, since that is the only help that is truly needed: the correction of the erroneous thought of separation in my mind:

“You can do much on behalf of your own healing and that of others if, in a situation calling for help, you think of it this way:

²I am here only to be truly helpful.
³I am here to represent Him Who sent me.
⁴I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do, because He Who sent me will direct me.
⁵I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing He goes there with me.
⁶I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal.”(ACIM, T-2.V-A.18:1-6)

Hiding from truth is a great burden; our “hides” (the superficial façades of form that the skin of our bodies typify) don’t destroy eternal truth; they just postpone the restoration of our awareness of everyone’s unchanging perpetual innocence.

“Would you allow the body to say ‘no’ to Heaven’s calling, were you not afraid to find a loss of self in finding God? Yet can your self be lost by being found?” (ACIM, T-29.I.9:5-6)

Lies and deception are another way of looking at this intolerable burden of belief in separation:

“To those unhappy learners who would teach themselves nothing, and delude themselves into believing that it is not nothing, the Holy Spirit says, with steadfast quietness:

The truth is true. Nothing else matters, nothing else is real, and everything beside it is not there. Let Me make the one distinction for you that you cannot make, but need to learn. Your faith in nothing is deceiving you. Offer your faith to Me, and I will place it gently in the holy place where it belongs. You will find no deception there, but only the simple truth. And you will love it because you will understand it.”(ACIM, T-14.II.3:2-9)

Needlessly carrying the burden of guilt because we deny ourselves the correctable misunderstanding is the cause of our suffering:

“How can you who are so holy suffer? All your past except its beauty is gone, and nothing is left but a blessing. I have saved all your kindnesses and every loving thought you ever had.I have purified them of the errors that hid their light, and kept them for you in their own perfect radiance. They are beyond destruction and beyond guilt. They came from the Holy Spirit within you, and we know what God creates is eternal.You can indeed depart in peace because I have loved you as I loved myself. You go with my blessing and for my blessing.Hold it and share it, that it may always be ours.I place the peace of God in your heart and in your hands, to hold and share. The heart is pure to hold it, and the hands are strong to give it.We cannot lose. My judgment is as strong as the wisdom of God, in Whose Heart and Hands we have our being. His quiet children are His blessed Sons. The Thoughts of God are with you.” (ACIM, T-5.IV.8:1-15)

All of us siblings in truth are thoughts of Creation.

It takes enormous energy (and effort; a huge burden) to maintain the belief in separation, my colleague Leonard Laskow would say. Here is another instance of the Course gently reminding us that we can drop our burdens by forgiving ourselves for our imagined crimes against oneness, our hallucinated hell of sin, guilt, fear, and mental mortality.

“The Holy Spirit, therefore, must begin His teaching by showing you what you can never learn. His message is not indirect, but He must introduce the simple truth into a thought system which has become so twisted and so complex you cannot see that it means nothing. He merely looks at its foundation and dismisses it. But you who cannot undo what you have made, nor escape the heavy burden of its dullness that lies upon your mind, cannot see through it. It deceives you, because you chose to deceive yourself. Those who choose to be deceived will merely attack direct approaches, because they seem to encroach upon deception and strike at it.“ (ACIM, T-14.I.5:1-6)

“Here is the holy place of resurrection, to which we come again; to which we will return until redemption is accomplished and received.Think who your brother is, before you would condemn him.And offer thanks to God that he is holy, and has been given the gift of holiness for you.Join him in gladness, and remove all trace of guilt from his disturbed and tortured mind.Help him to lift the heavy burden of sin you laid upon him, and he accepted as his own, and toss it lightly and with happy laughter away from him.⁶Press it not like thorns against his brow, nor nail him to it, unredeemed and hopeless.” (ACIM, T-19.IV-D.16:1-6)

It’s unreasonable to assume that shifting a burden from one place in my mind (my self-concept) to another place in my mind (my concept of you) accomplishes anything but fomenting further attack.

“Neither your brother nor yourself can be attacked alone. But neither can accept a miracle instead without the other being blessed by it, and healed of pain. Reason, like love, would reassure you, and seeks not to frighten you. The power to heal the Son of God is given you because he must be one with you. You are responsible for how he sees himself. And reason tells you it is given you to change his whole mind, which is one with you, in just an instant. And any instant serves to bring complete correction of his errors and make him whole. The instant that you choose to let yourself be healed, in that same instant is his whole salvation seen as complete with yours. Reason is given you to understand that this is so. For reason, kind as is the purpose for which it is the means, leads steadily away from madness toward the goal of truth. And here you will lay down the burden of denying truth. This is the burden that is terrible, and not the truth.” (ACIM, T-21.VI.7:1-12)

A favorite mnemonic for cutting my burden in half is that being “responsible 2 (to) everyone” is half the effort of being “responsible 4 (for) everyone.” It’s an even greater relief when I realize I can be responsible to everyone in my mind by just saying no to ego’s entire thought system of guilt and refuse to apply it to anyone’s identity, including my own.

“That you and your brother are joined is your salvation; the gift of Heaven, not the gift of fear. Does Heaven seem to be a burden to you? In madness, yes. And yet what madness sees must be dispelled by reason. Reason assures you Heaven is what you want, and all you want. Listen to Him Who speaks with reason, and brings your reason into line with His. ⁷Be willing to let reason be the means by which He would direct you how to leave insanity behind. Hide not behind insanity in order to escape from reason. ⁹What madness would conceal, the Holy Spirit still holds out for everyone to look upon with gladness.” (ACIM, T-21.VI.8:1-9)

True reason (from the Course’s perspective is just sanity, right-mindedness, the truly reasonable desire for peace for everyone, in contrast to the ego’s cruelty, viciousness, addictions, and projected victimhood.

Letting go of burdens is not needlessly adding more to our mental load than we are actually responsible for; not thinking the world is on our shoulders, and that we need to “save” it. We’re just asked to consider NOT thinking we need to contribute (sacrifice) our own best interests:

“… it is very hard for you to realize it is not personally insulting that your contribution and the Holy Spirit’s are so extremely disproportionate. You are still convinced that your understanding is a powerful contribution to the truth, and makes it what it is.” (ACIM, T-18.IV.7:4-5)

The only sacrifice we’re asked to make is the idea of sacrifice.

“This is the function of your holy relationship. For what one thinks, the other will experience with him. What can this mean except your mind and your brother’s are one? Look not with fear upon this happy fact, and think not that it lays a heavy burden on you. For when you have accepted it with gladness, you will realize that your relationship is a reflection of the union of the Creator and His Son. From loving minds there is no separation. And every thought in one brings gladness to the other because they are the same. Joy is unlimited, because each shining thought of love extends its being and creates more of itself. There is no difference anywhere in it, for every thought is like itself.” (ACIM, T-22.VI.14:1-9)

The holy relationship the Course talks about isn’t between people in the dream of duality; it’s between the decision-making mind and the Holy Spirit’s correcting “undo” principle; this truly holy relationship is then reflected in the relationship my dream figure has with every dream figure.

“Now you are merely asked that you pursue another goal with far less vigilance; with little effort and with little time, and with the power of God maintaining it, and promising success. Yet of the two, it is this one you find more difficult. The “sacrifice” of self you understand, nor do you deem this cost too heavy. But a tiny willingness, a nod to God, a greeting to the Christ in you, you find a burden wearisome and tedious, too heavy to be borne. Yet to the dedication to the truth as God established it no sacrifice is asked, no strain called forth, and all the power of Heaven and the might of truth itself is given to provide the means, and guarantee the goal’s accomplishment.” (ACIM, T-24.VI.12:1-5)

We have (when identified with the ego’s insanity) everything upside-down, backwards, and inside-out. We think that relieving ourselves of the burden of the sadistic, masochistic thought system of sin, guilt, fear, death, and mindlessness is an imposition. It’s actually dropping the ego’s crucifix of self-punishment. We just need to look calmly and patiently at both inner-directed and outer-directed hate and see that both make us miserable. Eventually, we’ll want to drop the whole thought system voluntarily.

“Son of God, you have not sinned, but you have been much mistaken.” (ACIM, T-10.V.6:1)

We concluded with the same workbook lesson: I am in danger nowhere in the world. (ACIM, W-244), noting that we are burdened nowhere in the world, unless we voluntarily, insanely load ourselves with the heavy burden of unconscious, unfounded guilt and its foolishly fomented fear. Our body (or bodies of others) can’t burden us by robbing us of our peace. We just need to stop taking the ego’s interpretation of everyone and everything seriously! In other words, as Carol Howe (who recently left the space-time dream) reminds us

Never forget to laugh!

(This conversation was facilitated by Bruce Rawles as part of the School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) curriculum hosted by Lyn Corona and Tim Wise. This YouTube video recording was made on Sunday, September 1, 2026.)

The post Laboring Under An Assumption: Unburdening – SFACIM class conversation first appeared on ACIM blog.

There are some fascinating parallels between quantum physics and the pure non-dualism of A Course In Miracles. However, from the perspective of Dr. Kenneth Wapnick, we must be careful not to confuse a scientific description of the physical universe with the Course’s metaphysical teaching that the universe itself is an illusion.

The central distinction is this: Quantum physics challenges our ordinary understanding of physical reality; A Course in Miracles challenges the very premise that physical reality exists independently of the dreaming mind.

They can illuminate one another philosophically, but quantum physics does not scientifically prove the Course. Let us examine where they appear to meet and, more importantly, where they part company.

Five important similarities

1. The world is not what it appears to be.
Quantum physics demonstrates that matter does not behave as the solid, independently existing collection of objects suggested by ordinary experience. The Course goes considerably further. It teaches that the entire world of matter, space, and time is a projection of the mind’s belief in separation.

Similarity: Both challenge our ordinary perception of reality.

Difference: Physics revises our understanding of the physical world. The Course questions its ultimate reality.

2. Separation is not as straightforward as it appears.
Quantum entanglement demonstrates that two physical systems can exhibit correlations that cannot be explained by treating them as entirely independent systems with predetermined local properties. The Course teaches that separation itself is an illusion. There is only one Son of God, and the appearance of billions of separate identities does not alter that oneness.

Similarity: Both challenge a simplistic picture of independently existing parts.

Difference: Quantum entanglement describes relationships between physical systems. The Course’s oneness is absolute, beyond all physical relationships.

3. The observer and what is observed.
In quantum physics, measurement is fundamental to how experimental outcomes are described. However, this does not mean human consciousness creates matter. Mainstream quantum theory does not require a conscious observer to produce a measurement. In the Course, perception is the result of projection. The mind first chooses the ego’s thought system and then perceives a world that witnesses to that choice.

Similarity: Both invite questions about the relationship between observation and what appears to be observed.

Difference: The Course’s perceiver is the dreaming mind, not the physical observer conducting a scientific experiment.

4. Time and space are not necessarily what common sense assumes.
Quantum theory challenges some classical assumptions about the separability and behavior of physical systems. The Course teaches something much more radical: time and space belong to the dream of separation. They are not attributes of Heaven.

Similarity: Both invite us to question the apparent self-evidence of our everyday experience.

Difference: Quantum physics continues to investigate events within the physical universe. The Course teaches that time itself is part of the illusion.

5. Appearances do not reveal the whole truth.
Classical intuition is insufficient to understand quantum phenomena. Mathematical descriptions and experimental findings disclose behavior that everyday perception cannot adequately represent. The Course teaches that the body’s senses cannot reveal truth because they were made to witness to the belief in separation.

Similarity: What seems obvious to perception need not provide a complete account of reality.

Difference: Science corrects perception through experimentation and theory. The Course corrects perception through forgiveness.

The fundamental difference: Kenneth Wapnick’s Level One and Level Two

This is where Kenneth’s teaching becomes particularly important. In his article The Levels of Teaching, he explains that confusing the Course’s absolute metaphysics with its teaching about our experience within the dream produces serious misunderstandings. We can apply that distinction to quantum physics.

Level One — Absolute metaphysics
Only God and Christ are real.
There is no separation, no world, no time, no space, no matter, and no individual consciousness.
There is only the perfect, undifferentiated Oneness of God and His creation.
At this level, even quantum physics is part of the illusion because it studies the universe, which the Course teaches has no ultimate reality.

Level Two — Within the dream
The mind believes separation has occurred.
Here we experience bodies, relationships, time, space, and physical laws.
Quantum physics investigates how this apparently physical universe behaves.
The Course addresses the mind’s interpretation of its experience, teaching us to exchange the ego’s purpose of separation for the Holy Spirit’s purpose of forgiveness.

Consequently, quantum physics belongs entirely within what Kenneth calls the dream. Even the most extraordinary discovery about the universe remains a discovery about the universe, not about God.

An important distinction: quantum interconnectedness is not the Oneness of God

This is perhaps the most important philosophical point. Some contemporary spiritual teachings suggest that quantum entanglement demonstrates that everything is interconnected and that this interconnectedness is evidence of divine Oneness.

Kenneth’s non-dualistic framework requires a more careful distinction. There is a profound difference between these two propositions:

• Everything in the universe is connected.
• There is no universe, and therefore nothing separate that needs to be connected.

The first remains a statement about multiplicity. The second reflects the Course’s absolute non-dualism. Even if science eventually demonstrated that the entire physical universe constitutes one interconnected system, it would still be describing a system of form. It would not be describing the formless Oneness of God.

This distinction is consistent with Kenneth’s emphasis in Duality as Metaphor in A Course in Miracles, where he explains the importance of distinguishing the Course’s symbolic language from its absolute metaphysical content. FACIM

4. Why quantum physics cannot establish the Course’s metaphysics. Consider the following comparison:

The distinction between the two disciplines is especially important when discussing consciousness. Quantum theories of consciousness exist, but there is no established scientific finding that human thought creates physical reality through quantum measurement.

What would Kenneth Wapnick emphasize?

Based on his consistent teaching, I would draw three important conclusions. These are applications of his framework, rather than quotations from him specifically about quantum physics.

First: We do not need quantum physics to validate A Course in Miracles. The Course is not a scientific theory awaiting experimental confirmation. Its teaching concerns the mind’s belief in separation and the undoing of that belief.

Second: The intellectual fascination with the universe can become another defense against looking within. The ego would much rather understand the mysteries of quantum mechanics than look quietly at its own judgments, special relationships, grievances, and guilt.

That does not mean scientific curiosity is wrong. It means that, as Kenneth continually emphasized, the important question is the purpose for which we use something.

Third: Understanding the unreality of the world is not the same as awakening from it. We could understand quantum physics brilliantly, intellectually accept the Course’s metaphysics, and still become furious when someone criticizes us.

Forgiveness, not metaphysical knowledge alone, is the Course’s means of undoing the belief in separation.

This is consistent with Kenneth’s discussion in The Significance of A Course in Miracles: A Freudian Vedanta, which integrates non-dualistic metaphysics with the psychological process of recognizing and withdrawing projection.

A useful teaching analogy: the dream

Imagine someone dreaming that they are a physicist. Within the dream, they discover the most astonishing laws of quantum mechanics. They discover that particles behave in unexpected ways and that the universe is profoundly different from what they previously believed. Yet everything they have discovered remains within the dream.

Their discoveries may be perfectly consistent with the laws operating within that dream, but they have not awakened from it.

Awakening does not require discovering the final law governing the dream. It requires recognizing that one has been dreaming.

This analogy is especially useful for understanding the Course’s distinction between the investigation of the universe and the undoing of the mind’s belief in it.

The central conclusion

I would summarize the relationship in one sentence:

Quantum physics questions the apparent nature of the universe; A Course in Miracles questions the reality of the universe itself.

And, from Kenneth Wapnick’s perspective, I would add:

The purpose of studying A Course in Miracles is not to discover the scientific mechanism by which the world is an illusion. It is to recognize why we wanted the illusion in the first place, and then gently choose against that purpose through forgiveness.

Quantum physics may offer fascinating intellectual parallels, but the Course’s pathway remains the quiet, practical undoing of guilt, judgment, and the belief in separation. That is the difference between understanding the dream and awakening from it.

The post Comparison of Quantum Physics and ACIM first appeared on ACIM blog.

We began with Workbook Lesson 235: “God in His mercy wills that I be saved.” (ACIM, W-235)

(ACIM, W-235.1:1–2:3)

Unlike the separate identities we’ve fabricated with our split minds, our real (shared, all-inclusive) identity is safe and saved, beyond threat, danger, and harm. This is expressed in this inspiring selection from the text:

“How can you who are so holy suffer? All your past except its beauty is gone, and nothing is left but a blessing. I have saved all your kindnesses and every loving thought you ever had. I have purified them of the errors that hid their light, and kept them for you in their own perfect radiance. They are beyond destruction and beyond guilt. They came from the Holy Spirit within you, and we know what God creates is eternal. You can indeed depart in peace because I have loved you as I loved myself.” (ACIM, T-5.IV.8:1-7)

The first half of “The Fear of Healing” (ACIM, T-27.II) was the topic of the previous week’s class, so we started with paragraph 11. Here are paragraphs 11-13 of this section:

We also read Beyond All Symbols (ACIM, T-27.III)

Here are the first 3 paragraphs of Beyond All Symbols:

“Power cannot oppose. For opposition would weaken it, and weakened power is a contradiction in ideas. Weak strength is meaningless, and power used to weaken is employed to limit. And therefore it must be limited and weak, because that is its purpose. Power is unopposed, to be itself. No weakness can intrude on it without changing it into something it is not. To weaken is to limit, and impose an opposite that contradicts the concept that it attacks. And by this does it join to the idea a something it is not, and make it unintelligible. Who can understand a double concept, such as “weakened power” or “hateful love”?

You have decided that your brother is a symbol for a “hateful love,” a “weakened power,” and above all, a “living death.” And so he has no meaning to you, for he stands for what is meaningless. He represents a double thought, where half is cancelled out by the remaining half. Yet even this is quickly contradicted by the half it cancelled out, and so they both are gone. And now he stands for nothing. Symbols which but represent ideas that cannot be must stand for empty space and nothingness. Yet nothingness and empty space can not be interference. What can interfere with the awareness of reality is the belief that there is something there.

The picture of your brother that you see means nothing. There is nothing to attack or to deny; to love or hate, or to endow with power or to see as weak. The picture has been wholly cancelled out, because it symbolized a contradiction that cancelled out the thought it represents. And thus the picture has no cause at all. Who can perceive effect without a cause? What can the causeless be but nothingness? The picture of your brother that you see is wholly absent and has never been. Let, then, the empty space it occupies be recognized as vacant, and the time devoted to its seeing be perceived as idly spent, a time unoccupied.”

(ACIM, T-27.III.1:1–3:8)

…

“For we but see the journey from the point at which it ended, looking back on it, imagining we make it once again; reviewing mentally what has gone by.” (ACIM, W-158.4:5)

Our choice to identify with the ego splits our mind, assigning different roles to different people, making their functions appear opposed. The mind seems to contain competing purposes, with one half aligned with the ego and the other represented by the Holy Spirit. This is not a battle between two equal forces. The Holy Spirit does not fight the ego; the conflict comes from the mind’s investment in the ego’s interpretation. Right-mindedness is the choice to look with the Holy Spirit, while the ego’s guilt-based perception is not a genuine rival to reality. Reality need not fight illusions, but shadowy illusions are forever fearful of the light of reality that would dispel the darkness of the ego’s nothingness. The apparent division is part of the dream, not a division in God or in our true identity. Here is Ken Wapnick’s (FACIM) metaphysical chart with detailed explanations on the Course’s theory of mind and forgiveness.

Thoughts of guilt in the split mind express outward via projection. The thought of love extends throughout a unified mind that has never been divided. The word “extend” does not mean that ideas are sent away from us, since “ideas leave not their source” (ACIM, W-132.5:3). The ego propagates its sense of guilt through projection and blame, attempting to deflect attention from the source; the right mind reflects love through forgiveness. Useful questions are not whether we have become perfectly forgiving, but which interpretation we are choosing and whether we are willing to ask for help.

Paragraph 13 describes the ego’s strategy more directly. If I think of myself as divided, I will see my function as divided too. Another person becomes the target of correction, so that their apparent errors can be treated as different from mine. Everyday comparisons between countries and cultures become examples where we notice what seems wrong elsewhere and imagine we would do better. The ego always uses differences to separate, while the Holy Spirit uses our encounters to reveal shared interests and a shared need for peace.

We read from Ken Wapnick’s JTTT (Journey Through The Text of A Course In Miracles 4-volume set), where Ken describes the “hierarchy of sins”: we may acknowledge ordinary mistakes in ourselves while reserving the label of serious sin for others. That comparison can feel like moral discernment, but it can also preserve the ego’s claim to innocence. (The irony is that the ego – being made from the idea of guilt – tries to reclaim its innocence by making others more guilty, yet the ego has no clue that our real identity is innocence for all, and there is no need to steal innocence or make itself seem less guilty by making others more guilty!) The person we condemn becomes the guilty one; we become the one who is entitled to correct or forgive them. Even apparent forgiveness can preserve judgment if it depends on seeing the other as guilty to any degree and ourselves as morally superior. The point is not that every action has the same worldly consequences, but that guilt does not define anyone’s deepest eternally innocent identity.

The later paragraphs describe the pictures we make of our brothers and sisters. The “picture” is not the person’s eternal reality; it is the image shaped by our perceptions, judgments, and expectations. When we see someone as a body who can attack, injure, or deprive us of peace, we are seeing through the ego’s frame. Movies are a helpful analogy: the apparent world is a convincing display of images, but its convincing appearance does not make it true. Truth does not change. The metaphysical assertion that the world is an illusion is presented as a gradual teaching, not an instruction to dismiss everyday experience or other people’s suffering.

This qualification matters. Seeing the world as an illusion is perhaps better first approached by questioning the ego’s assumption that the world is a separate reality created outside the mind; it is not a license to behave carelessly or to deny what someone is experiencing. The practical application is to question the ego’s claim that external events cause our guilt and loss of peace. The “picture” can be used differently: the Holy Spirit turns any and every encounter into a classroom for forgiveness. Changing the purpose of perception, relationships help us uncover and release our judgments rather than reinforce them. FACIM on recurring situations as forgiveness lessons

We explore the “empty space” left when we release the ego’s distorted picture of reality. Here is an interesting related summary of ideas presented by physicist Donald Hoffman (from a longer interview) who uses the metaphor of virtual reality headsets to describe how we don’t perceive the projected universe of spacetime directly; we perceive an infinitesimal, distorted, interpreted version. The “film noir” movie we watch from birth is scary when we give the neutral (projected) data to the ego, which can only misinterpret everything, being intrinsically clueless. Tragedies and horror films are the only genres of ego-made movies. “If this were the real world, God would be cruel.” (ACIM, T-13.in.3:1)

However, when we use the exact same feedback from our projected world to our Inner Kindness Teacher (Jesus or Holy Spirit in Course parlance), we realize that we’re watching a horror flick of our own imagination. As the Beatles say, it’s nothing to get hung about!

The identity space vacated by rejecting ego’s pathetic, partial, polarizing self is not something we need to fill by forcing a spiritual experience or constructing a “better” (separate) self-image. We make room by becoming willing to question our judgments and let another interpretation be given. The Course’s instruction is to be still and let the mind be receptive. Spiritual preparation can itself become a project of the ego: the belief that we must perform perfectly before love can reach us. What we leave vacant, reality will fill with corrected vision, with the awareness of sameness and shared interests and identity.

We read “True undoing must be kind,” and discussed the contrast between a condemning picture and a forgiving one. Forgiveness offers a gentler, truer way of seeing: the “other” is no longer treated as a stranger and a sinner whose guilt proves our innocence. By questioning our projections and reeling them back into our minds (where they’ve never actually left), we release external accusations, and this correction opens the inner door to releasing our erroneous self-condemnations as well.

Kindness corrects the formal religious baggage of putting Jesus on the cross, making this symbol special, different, and unreachable. “There is nothing about me that you cannot attain.I have nothing that does not come from God.” (ACIM, T-1.II.3:10-11) The sanity of forgiveness reverses the ego’s crucifixion of our Appointed Friend in our mind and restores the intrinsic equality of all creation, including every one of us. The point is not to glorify suffering or to suggest that people should accept abuse. Ego attacks that would make us different cannot alter our real identity as the Son of God, shared by all. The Course’s Jesus models a mind that does not interpret attack as proof that love has been destroyed. The practical value of this teaching is a growing ability to notice when we are making another person responsible for our inner distress and to choose again.

The final paragraphs move beyond even the forgiving picture. Forgiveness and symbols are described as temporary teaching aids: they help undo the belief in separation until they are no longer needed. Since the world consists of distinctions and opposites, it cannot depict the nondual reality of Heaven. A symbol can point toward oneness, but it cannot contain or reproduce it. Once there is no separation in our mind, the experience of the truth of our being eliminates the need for signs that point the way to that experience.

This also helps explain the Course’s distinction between atonement and at-onement. “At-one-ment” is the ultimate awareness of nothing but oneness, while atonement is the process of undoing the belief that separation and sin are possible. Keeping the goal in view is inspiring and necessary, but trying to leap straight to the conclusion bypasses the everyday forgiveness work through which the mind becomes willing to release guilt. We restore sanity by gently, patiently, kindly looking at each specific grievance, judgment, or comparison, questioning the ego’s insane interpretations and ultimately discarding those masochistic interpretations altogether.

The session closes by returning to Lesson 235: “Father, your holiness is mine.” Salvation is the recognition that our true identity was never damaged; projection and judgment hide that recognition. Forgiveness asks the Holy Spirit to help us see our siblings without condemnation. This forgiving vision of seemingly externals is really internal forgiveness of ourselves for wanting to identify with a separate self. Each instant of true forgiveness is a step toward the truth that cannot be represented by pictures, images, or anything specific at all. Our “reality is only spirit” (ACIM, T-1.III.5:5). Spirit is abstract, all-inclusive, and undoes all condemning beliefs in sin, guilt, fear, death, and duality.

The work is not to make the dream perfect, nor to force ourselves to feel loving. It is to look honestly at the ego’s misjudgments, notice the guilt and separation they protect, and become willing to choose the other (non-ego) teacher. That willingness does not make us responsible for the world’s behavior or require us to deny its effects. It changes the mind’s interpretation and loosens the belief that anyone’s guilt—that of “another” or our own—is the truth about who we are.

“Son of God, you have not sinned, but you have been much mistaken.” (ACIM, T-10.V.6:1)

Editor’s note: What appears above (after the 3 quoted sections) is an AI (ChatGPT) generated summary of an abridged text transcript of the YouTube recording, which I have carefully edited and revised liberally as needed. I’m using AI to summarize and organize lengthy material. If you find this helpful, or have any suggestions or thoughts about the content above, please let me know. Your feedback is always appreciated! My intention is to provide useful insights and information related to ACIM. I found this summary quite good and didn’t change much; just a few minor adjustments and additions to enhance clarity and coherence with the Course’s teachings.

(This conversation was facilitated by Bruce Rawles as part of the School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) curriculum hosted by Lyn Corona and Tim Wise. This YouTube video recording was made on Sunday, August 24, 2026.)

The post The Fear of Healing (part 2) & Beyond All Symbols SFACIM class conversation with Bruce Rawles first appeared on ACIM blog.

There are numerous ways to convey the mutually exclusive nature of the two thought systems that form the core teaching of A Course In Miracles; these phrases suggest how these two completely opposite and mutually exclusive ways of thinking never meet:

• discrepancy
• lack of compatibility
• irreconcilable
• the two do not meet
• divergent
• inconsistency
• lack of similarity
• dissociation
• zero overlap

To recognize sanity, insanity must be seen as no longer desired and discarded. Light dispels darkness. Love erases fear. Kindness eliminates the appeal of harmfulness.

On Discrepancy:

Our Source of light does not experience shadows. Our real identity is loving kindness and doesn’t know about hate or cruelty.

“Something bad can happen ‘out there,’ and I can be alright ‘in here.’” – from When Fear Falls Away, by Jan Frazier, pg 42

“The main thing is to see that there is a discrepancy [lack of similarity, lack of compatibility]. There is not an inevitable one-to-one correspondence between what happens out there and what happens in here. Once you see that, once you see that you really do have choices in the matter of how you feel about something that’s happened—well, if you truly believe it, then you can hardly imagine making a deliberate intention to feel bad about anything . . . right?”

“I could see peace instead of this.” (ACIM, W-34)

Spirit and the ego can never meet:

From Right Teaching and Right Learning (ACIM, T-4.I):

“Nothing can reach spirit from the ego, and nothing can reach the ego from spirit. Spirit can neither strengthen the ego nor reduce the conflict within it. The ego is a contradiction. Your self and God’s Self are in opposition. They are opposed in source, in direction and in outcome. They are fundamentally irreconcilable, because spirit cannot perceive and the ego cannot know. They are therefore not in communication and can never be in communication.” (ACIM, T-4.I.2:6-12)

From God or the Ego Introduction (ACIM, T-11.in):

“Either God or the ego is insane. If you will examine the evidence on both sides fairly, you will realize this must be true. Neither God nor the ego proposes a partial thought system. Each is internally consistent, but they are diametrically opposed in all respects so that partial allegiance is impossible. Remember, too, that their results are as different as their foundations, and their fundamentally irreconcilable natures cannot be reconciled by vacillations between them.” (ACIM, T-11.in.1:1-5)

From The War Against Yourself: The Irreconcilable Beliefs (ACIM, T-23.I):

“Be certain that it is impossible God and the ego, or yourself and it, will ever meet. You seem to meet, and make your strange alliances on grounds that have no meaning. For your beliefs converge upon the body, the ego’s chosen home, which you believe is yours. You meet at a mistake; an error in your self-appraisal. The ego joins with an illusion of yourself you share with it. And yet illusions cannot join. They are the same, and they are nothing. Their joining lies in nothingness; two are as meaningless as one or as a thousand. The ego joins with nothing, being nothing. The victory it seeks is meaningless as is itself.” (ACIM, T-23.I.3:1-10)

“The war against yourself is but the battle of two illusions, struggling to make them different from each other, in the belief the one that conquers will be true. There is no conflict between them and the truth. Nor are they different from each other. Both are not true. And so it matters not what form they take. What made them is insane, and they remain part of what made them. Madness holds out no menace to reality, and has no influence upon it. Illusions cannot triumph over truth, nor can they threaten it in any way. And the reality that they deny is not a part of them.”(ACIM, T-23.I.6:1-9)

“What you remember is a part of you. For you must be as God created you. Truth does not fight against illusions, nor do illusions fight against the truth. Illusions battle only with themselves. Being fragmented, they fragment. But truth is indivisible, and far beyond their little reach. You will remember what you know when you have learned you cannot be in conflict. One illusion about yourself can battle with another, yet the war of two illusions is a state where nothing happens. There is no victor and there is no victory. And truth stands radiant, apart from conflict, untouched and quiet in the peace of God.” (ACIM, T-23.I.7:1-10)

“Illusion meets illusion; truth, itself. The meeting of illusions leads to war. Peace, looking on itself, extends itself. War is the condition in which fear is born, and grows and seeks to dominate. Peace is the state where love abides, and seeks to share itself. Conflict and peace are opposites. Where one abides the other cannot be; where either goes the other disappears. So is the memory of God obscured in minds that have become illusions’ battleground. Yet far beyond this senseless war it shines, ready to be remembered when you side with peace.“ (ACIM, T-23.I.12:1-9)

From The Decision for Guiltlessness (ACIM, T-14.III):

“Each day, each hour and minute, even each second, you are deciding between the crucifixion and the resurrection; between the ego and the Holy Spirit. The ego is the choice for guilt; the Holy Spirit the choice for guiltlessness. The power of decision is all that is yours. What you can decide between is fixed, because there are no alternatives except truth and illusion. And there is no overlap between them, because they are opposites which cannot be reconciled and cannot both be true. You are guilty or guiltless, bound or free, unhappy or happy.” (ACIM, T-14.III.4:1-6)

From Sharing Perception with the Holy Spirit (ACIM, T-14.VII):

“Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking whereby two systems of belief which cannot coexist are both maintained. If they are brought together, their joint acceptance becomes impossible.” (ACIM, T-14.VII.4:3-4)

“If you are in a darkened room and switch on the light, the darkness disappears, which reflects the same principle of the aforementioned biblical line, “… Perfect love casteth out fear.” (1 John 4:18). In the presence of love, light, and God, fear, darkness, and the ego cannot exist. That is why the ego so desperately fears our choosing the Holy Spirit and, through dissociation, steadfastly tries to keep us from bringing darkness and light together.” – Kenneth Wapnick

“You cannot have them both, for each denies the other. Apart, this fact is lost from sight, for each in a separate place can be endowed with firm belief. Bring them together, and the fact of their complete incompatibility is instantly apparent. One will go, because the other is seen in the same place.” (ACIM, T-14.VII.4:7-10)

“When we keep the ego separate from the Holy Spirit, we are believing in the reality of the separation and the world that arose from it, while the inner world of forgiveness and atonement, not to mention heaven itself, are seen as illusions. Belief does not establish reality, but it does determine what we believe that reality is.

The ‘same place’ is the mind, which is not capable of simultaneously holding light and darkness in awareness. It can hold them both within itself only if they are split off or dissociated; in other words, if we are not aware that both exist. Everything the ego does in the physical universe has as its sole purpose to keep the darkness from the light, which would simply shine it away.

Since this can occur only in the decision-making mind, as long as we remain mindless, living as bodies governed by a brain, the ego is safe from all undoing.”

– Kenneth Wapnick

On Dissociation:

We believe we are either guilty or guiltless and then see the projection or extension on another:

“Our emphasis has been on bringing what is undesirable to the desirable; what you do not want to what you do. You will realize that salvation must come to you this way, if you consider what dissociation is. Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking whereby two systems of belief which cannot coexist are both maintained. If they are brought together, their joint acceptance becomes impossible. But if one is kept in darkness from the other, their separation seems to keep them both alive and equal in their reality. Their joining thus becomes the source of fear, for if they meet, acceptance must be withdrawn from one of them. You cannot have them both, for each denies the other. Apart, this fact is lost from sight, for each in a separate place can be endowed with firm belief. Bring them together, and the fact of their complete incompatibility is instantly apparent. One will go, because the other is seen in the same place.” (ACIM, T-14.VII.4:1-10)

“The guiltless and the guilty are totally incapable of understanding one another. Each perceives the other as like himself, making both unable to communicate, because each sees the other unlike the way he sees himself.”  (ACIM, T-14.IV.10:1-2)

“Communication with God is life. Nothing without it is at all.” (ACIM, T-14.IV.10:6-7)

“If we are guilty, we project our guilt onto others, seeing them the same way. Similarly, when we remember our true guiltlessness, we cannot but see others as guiltless too. Projection (and extension) makes perception. Communication between them, then, is impossible, for guiltlessness and guilt are mutually exclusive thoughts and cannot meet, let alone coexist in awareness. They are kept apart by dissociation, fulfilling the ego’s goal of protecting itself from Atonement.” – Kenneth Wapnick, JTTW, volume two, page 160-161

From The Holy Meeting Place (ACIM, T-14.VIII):

“The link with which the Father joins Himself to those He gives the power to create can never be dissolved. Heaven itself is union with all of creation, and with its one Creator. And Heaven remains the Will of God for you. Lay no gifts other than this upon your altars, for nothing can coexist with it. Here your little offerings are brought together with the gift of God, and only what is worthy of the Father will be accepted by the Son, for whom it is intended. To whom God gives Himself, He is given. Your little gifts will vanish on the altar, where He has placed His Own.” (ACIM, T-14.VIII.5:1-7)

From Reason and the Forms of Error (ACIM, T-22.III):

“The introduction of reason into the ego’s thought system is the beginning of its undoing, for reason and the ego are contradictory. Nor is it possible for them to coexist in your awareness. For reason’s goal is to make plain, and therefore obvious. You can see reason. This is not a play on words, for here is the beginning of a vision that has meaning. Vision is sense, quite literally. If it is not the body’s sight, it must be understood. For it is plain, and what is obvious is not ambiguous. It can be understood. And here do reason and the ego separate, to go their separate ways.” (ACIM, T-22.III.1:1-10)

“The ego’s whole continuance depends on its belief you cannot learn this course. Share this belief, and reason will be unable to see your errors and make way for their correction. For reason sees through errors, telling you what you thought was real is not. Reason can see the difference between sin and mistakes, because it wants correction. Therefore, it tells you what you thought was uncorrectable can be corrected, and thus it must have been an error. The ego’s opposition to correction leads to its fixed belief in sin and disregard of errors. It looks on nothing that can be corrected. Thus does the ego damn, and reason save.” (ACIM, T-22.III.2:1-8)

From Miracles as True Perception (ACIM, T-3.II):

“I have stated that the basic concepts referred to in this course are not matters of degree. Certain fundamental concepts cannot be understood in terms of opposites. It is impossible to conceive of light and darkness or everything and nothing as joint possibilities. They are all true or all false. It is essential that you realize your thinking will be erratic until a firm commitment to one or the other is made. A firm commitment to darkness or nothingness, however, is impossible. No one has ever lived who has not experienced some light and some thing. No one, therefore, is able to deny truth totally, even if he thinks he can.” (ACIM, T-3.II.1:1-8)

“Innocence is not a partial attribute. It is not real until it is total. The partly innocent are apt to be quite foolish at times. It is not until their innocence becomes a viewpoint with universal application that it becomes wisdom. Innocent or true perception means that you never misperceive and always see truly. More simply, it means that you never see what does not exist, and always see what does.” (ACIM, T-3.II.2:1-6)

It’s the peace that’s outside the dream. Even though the dream is made out of it, it’s the peace that’s outside the dream. It’s totally inviolable by the dream.

“This is the truth of the Son of God: He is untouched by dreams. So your job is to do this, which the course calls resting in God.”

– Keith Kavanagh; YouTube video on “What is Guidance in A Course In Miracles“, March 2, 2025

To restore peace and heal our split minds:

• We look sanely at insanity without condemnation.
• We see both thought systems clearly.
• We see that they are completely irreconcilable and have no overlap.
• We see that we no longer want insanity.
• This last step automatically aligns us with sanity and peace.

(Lyn Corona and Tim Wise host the School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) curriculum, which currently offers 9 weekly classes in a variety of formats, all emphasizing the work of Kenneth Wapnick of the Foundation for A Course In Miracles (FACIM).

The post No overlap between sanity and insanity: notes for a SFACIM class conversation from Marisa Cuenin first appeared on ACIM blog.

Here are the first 3 paragraphs of “For They Have Come” a favorite section of Helen Schucman – the scribe of ACIM – and one of the two she shared with Ken Wapnick to introduce him to the Course:

We also read “The Little Garden” – an earlier portion of the text – which shares a similarly inspiring message as “For They Have Come.”

Here are the first 3 paragraphs of “The Little Garden“:

“It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. ²For the body is a limit on love. ³The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was made to limit the unlimited. ⁴Think not that this is merely allegorical, for it was made to limit you. ⁵Can you who see yourself within a body know yourself as an idea? ⁶Everything you recognize you identify with externals, something outside itself. ⁷You cannot even think of God without a body, or in some form you think you recognize.

The body cannot know. ²And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you. ³God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there. ⁴Limits on love will always seem to shut Him out, and keep you apart from Him. ⁵The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and complete idea. ⁶It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that within it is your kingdom, where God can enter not.

Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. ²And to defend this little speck of dust it bids you fight against the universe. ³This fragment of your mind is such a tiny part of it that, could you but appreciate the whole, you would see instantly that it is like the smallest sunbeam to the sun, or like the faintest ripple on the surface of the ocean. ⁴In its amazing arrogance, this tiny sunbeam has decided it is the sun; this almost imperceptible ripple hails itself as the ocean. ⁵Think how alone and frightened is this little thought, this infinitesimal illusion, holding itself apart against the universe. ⁶The sun becomes the sunbeam’s “enemy” that would devour it, and the ocean terrifies the little ripple and wants to swallow it.”

(ACIM, T-18.VIII.1:1–3:6)

We also read portions of Lesson 165: “Let not my mind deny the Thought of God”. (ACIM, W-165)

Here are the first 3 paragraphs of this lesson:

“What makes this world seem real except your own denial of the truth that lies beyond? ²What but your thoughts of misery and death obscure the perfect happiness and the eternal life your Father wills for you? ³And what could hide what cannot be concealed except illusion? ⁴What could keep from you what you already have except your choice to see it not, denying it is there?

The Thought of God created you. ²It left you not, nor have you ever been apart from it an instant. ³It belongs to you. ⁴By it you live. ⁵It is your Source of life, holding you one with it, and everything is one with you because it left you not. ⁶The Thought of God protects you, cares for you, makes soft your resting place and smooth your way, lighting your mind with happiness and love. ⁷Eternity and everlasting life shine in your mind, because the Thought of God has left you not, and still abides with you.

Who would deny his safety and his peace, his joy, his healing and his peace of mind, his quiet rest, his calm awakening, if he but recognized where they abide? ²Would he not instantly prepare to go where they are found, abandoning all else as worthless in comparison with them? ³And having found them, would he not make sure they stay with him, and he remain with them?

(ACIM, W-165.1:1–3:3)

…

The discussion centered on Lesson 165, “Let Not My Mind Deny the Thought of God,” and the beautiful text section “For They Have Come” from Chapter 26 of A Course in Miracles. Together, these passages present the Course’s essential movement from guilt and separation to forgiveness, holiness, and the remembrance of God. The group also drew on Ken Wapnick’s commentary, which points out the poetic and musical quality of the Course’s prose. The deeper meaning may be felt in the stillness between the words—the silence that points beyond language toward the experience of God’s Love. Ken often suggested that we let the Course wash through us like an epic poem, letting the profound message carry us throughout our lifetimes of unlearning insanity. He also emphasized keeping the non-dual metaphysics close in one’s mind.

Lesson 165 begins with a series of searching questions. What makes the world seem real except our denial of the truth beyond it? What obscures the happiness and eternal life God wills for us except the belief in separation which indulges thoughts of misery, mindlessness, and death? What could hide what cannot truly be concealed except our wanting to identify with illusion? The lesson’s central idea is that the thought of God is not absent from us. It is already present, and only our decision not to see it seems to conceal it. Perfect Oneness hasn’t betrayed or abandoned us; we are merely dreaming that we abandoned and betrayed our perfect innocence.

This does not mean that God has withdrawn or that we must earn our way back to Him. Rather, the Course teaches that the mind has chosen the (ego) thought system of separation and then projected its consequences onto a world that appears external and real. We believe that our unhappiness is caused by specific bodies, relationships, politics, money, illness, aging, loss, and circumstances. Yet the Course gently redirects us to the level of mind, where we are always making the important choice. The question is not whether the world seems difficult; it is whether we are willing to look beneath our interpretation of it and consider the alternative of forgiving ourselves and restoring peace.

The group noted that the lesson is, in effect, asking a single question in many forms: Do we really want to remain miserable, or are we ready to consider a different way of seeing? The Course never coerces an answer. It simply invites honesty. Our resistance is not proof that the teaching is wrong; it actually is a huge clue that we’re foolishly, but forgivably, denying ourselves the option of being kind to ourselves by being kind to all. It is useful information about how strongly the ego wants to preserve its separate identity and its familiar grievances that keep the illusions and misinterpretations of separation actively sabotaging our peace.

The text section “For They Have Come” describes the end of the journey in evocative language. Ken Wapnick observed that it carries an “aura” that transcends the written word. Words such as love, holy, hate, light, and ancient give the passage a distinctive tone. The word “ancient” is especially significant because it points to the timeless instant (now) when the mind seemed to choose hate instead of love. The equally timeless possibility – and happy inevitability! – of choosing again … against the insanity of condemnation in any form.

The passage is also written in blank verse, giving it a musical quality. Ken compared it to a symphony and cited the violinist Isaac Stern’s phrase about “the silence between the notes.” In the same way, the deepest communication in this section may be found not merely in its concepts but in the quiet it evokes. The words lead toward an experience that cannot be fully contained in words: recognizing Christ in our siblings (everyone we meet or think about) and remembering God.

The Course’s practical formula is simple but demanding: see the face of Christ (innocence, guiltlessness) in another person to see it in ourselves and remember God. This is not sentimental idealism. It requires us to notice our resistance to innocence. The ego only deals in guilt. However, this guilt can and does appear in endless varieties and is disguised in countless forms. It sees others as wrong, threatening, selfish, inferior, and responsible for our unhappiness. Since “ideas leave not their source,” the ego also sees ourselves as similarly guilty, ashamed, flawed, and deprived. The same thought of condemnation is applied everywhere. The Course has us work with what seems “outer” until we become adept at undoing projection, as we realize the cause is “inner”. If we condemn our brother, we condemn ourselves and God; if we condemn ourselves, we condemn our brother and God. The apparent triangle of God, self, and brother is not truly divided. How we see one is how we see all. One brother is all brothers and all sisters in non-duality.

This insight can initially feel sobering. It means that every grievance is more extensive than it seems. When we are angry at another person, anxious about the future, resentful of an event, or worried about money, we are not merely responding to an isolated problem. We are holding a shadow between ourselves and our brother, and that shadow obscures both the face of Christ and the memory of God. This ego-imposed shadow doesn’t damage reality, which is not threatened by our dream of separation and guilt. But it does make us miserable until we question the sanity of the ego’s guilt-spewing mental machinery and pull the plug on its lunacy. The price of maintaining separation is severe, although we often do not recognize it until we have glimpses of the peace that forgiveness offers.

Yet the Course never asks us to condemn ourselves for having grievances. It asks us to look at them from gentle eyes. The opening lines of “For They Have Come” are therefore both poetic and instructional: think of how holy you must be, from whom the Voice for God calls lovingly to your brother; think of how holy your brother must be, in whom your salvation rests. Regard him gently. Look with loving eyes upon him who carries Christ within him; this applies to everyone you meet or think about.

These are not commands to manufacture spiritual feelings or “shout down” the ego. They are directions (corrections) for the mind. They tell us what to remember when we notice that we have chosen judgment. The correction does not depend on changing someone else or trying to make a relationship outwardly ideal. It consists in our willingness to question the ego’s interpretation and ask to see with the Holy Spirit instead. It is remembering that what appears to be an external relationship is really taking place in the mind.

Forgiveness is a shared process. We do not awaken alone. The holy relationship (letting everyone “off the hook” for an impossible cosmic crime) replaces the ego’s special loves and special hates because it recognizes a common interest rather than competing interests. If our brother remains condemned in our mind, we cannot know the innocence that is also in us. But if we recognize Christ in another, we remember the holiness we share. The sane call of holiness to holiness is stronger than the insane attraction of sin (separation, substitution, specialness) because it is the call of love to itself.

This is why the Course speaks of the return to Heaven not as an achievement that must be earned, but as a return to the Home we never truly left. The dream of separation is fading, however slowly, because it has no foundation in truth. We may fear giving up the separate self—the small, defended identity that seems to make us unique—but the eternal love behind the temporal fear outlives the ego’s resistance.

The passage repeatedly contrasts an “ancient hate” with the ancient love that replaces it. The ancient hate is the original wish to be separate from God, expressed in countless forms of attack, guilt, competition, fear, and blame. It is not merely a personal anger toward a particular individual, although the ego’s insanity includes all of these specifics. Insanity is the entire thought system of separation. The Course’s imagery can be stark: murder, death, desolation, a barren ground scorched by hate, a bloodied earth, and garments of insanity. Such imagery is meant to clearly expose the brutality of the ego’s thought system without making it real.

The ego’s world includes obvious forms of violence, but its underlying violence is mental. Every time we insist that another person is separate from us, guilty, or deserving of exclusion, we symbolically dismember the oneness that is our true Identity. This dissection and dismemberment has no impact on what is forever true, but within our dream, these terrors seem very real. Every judgment becomes a small act of separation. The Course uses strong images because it wants us to recognize the enormous cost of taking the ego seriously. We have made a frightening movie, then forgotten that we wrote the script, produced it, directed it, starred in it, and chose to watch it – over, and over, and over, in countless nauseating, horrifying permutations.

This recognition is not meant to produce shame. On the contrary, it is the gentle call to release ourselves from the tyranny of wanting to be an ego. When we see that the ego’s world is a projection, we no longer have to defend it or pretend that it is the truth. We can admit that the apparent horror is a dream and ask for help in seeing past it. On our own, we may be horrified by the ego’s darkness. With Jesus or the Holy Spirit (or any ego-free symbol in our mind), we can look at it without panic and learn that it has no power to change what God created.

The text describes the transformation in striking metaphorical imagery: the blood of hatred fades, grass grows green again, white flowers sparkle in the sun, and what had seemed a place of death becomes a living temple in a world of light. Hate has rendered the mind barren; forgiveness restores it. Miracles spring up like grass and flowers on scorched ground. What hate seemed to make, forgiveness – “an earthly form of love” (ACIM, W-186.14:2) has undone.

This does not necessarily mean a dramatic alteration in the external world. The real transformation occurs in the mind. The “holy ground” where forgiveness happens is not a particular geographic location. Frogiveness, being of the mind, occurs outside space and time, although specifics within space and time seem to trigger and become the catalyst for forgiveness. It is the abstract, shared mind in which the decision for separation was made and can now be undone. Forgiveness makes any apparent place holy because it reveals the holiness that was already there… and everywhere and every when.

At the level of perception, however, the world can become a gentle reflection of this shift. Ordinary objects, relationships, and daily activities can seem to “sing” of oneness. This is not because the forms themselves become divine or special, but because they are no longer used as evidence of guilt and separation. When the mind is peaceful, everything can be received as a symbol of shared innocence rather than as an occasion for attack.

The discussion of “angels” followed this same understanding. In the Course, angels are not literal celestial beings having form. They symbolize God’s light, protection, and loving thoughts. They represent the truth that we have never actually left God. Seen through forgiveness, our brothers themselves become angelic presences: reminders of the right mind, innocence, and the possibility of peace.

“To keep away all darkened thoughts of sin and keep the light where it has entered in” can be understood as the protection that forgiving thoughts offer to the thinker of thoughts that undo insanity. Unforgiveness protects projection; forgiveness protects extension, inclusion, and love. As we question the ego’s ongoing war, we are lifted above the battleground and can see the conflict as a forgivable projection rather than as an inescapable prison.

The “golden footprints of forgiveness” describe this gentle path home. They do not require us to leap immediately from fear into a full awareness of perfect oneness. Forgiveness is an immediate experience in which the world becomes kinder and more transparent. It occurs first “in lovely flashes” (ACIM, S-3.II.2:3) but grows over time with practice. We still seem to be individuals in a world, but we see its forms differently. When we forgive, the specific situations, objects, and people around us reflect the message that we are safe, joined, and loved. The world is not made holy by being different from other places; it is made holy by the purpose we give it.

The section culminates in the image of the temple of the living God being rebuilt. Where the cross once stood, the risen Christ now stands. Forgiving vision heals ancient mental scars. The cross represents the ego’s belief in sacrifice, punishment, guilt, and death. The risen Christ represents the correction: innocence cannot be destroyed, love cannot be crucified, and what God created remains whole. Forgiveness replaces ancient enmity with an ancient miracle—the remembrance that separation never truly occurred.

The phrase “For they have come” refers to God and Christ returning to awareness, but Ken Wapnick clarifies that “they have come” because we are coming to them. We bring the darkness to the light, and it disappears. If we try to bring the light into the darkness (try to make sanity fit within the context of insanity) we will remain confused and upset. We are not waiting passively for God to arrive from somewhere else. We are withdrawing the barriers we placed against the awareness of Love. As these barriers fall away, God and Christ seem to return to the mind that had denied them. In truth, they were never absent.

The group ended by returning to Lesson 165’s message of hope. Doubt is not the truth about us. God’s certainty remains beyond our doubts, His Love beyond our fears, and the thought of Him beyond all dreams. The Course removes the doubts we have placed between ourselves and our certainty of God. It does not create a new truth; it helps uncover the truth that has always been present.

The practical invitation is therefore gentle and immediate. We can practice in hope because hope is justified. We can pause when we judge, worry, hate, or feel ashamed, and remember that the thought of God has not disappeared. We can ask for help to look with loving eyes. We can let an ancient hatred become a present love. Each moment of forgiveness is a return to the holy ground of the mind, where the separation we thought we made quietly fades, and the memory of our eternal Home shines again.

Editor’s note: What appears above (after the 3 quoted sections) is an AI (ChatGPT) generated summary of an abridged text transcript of the YouTube recording, which I have carefully edited and revised as needed. I’m using AI to summarize and organize lengthy material. If you find this helpful, or have any suggestions or thoughts about the content above, please let me know. Your feedback is always appreciated! My intention is to provide useful insights and information related to ACIM. I found this summary quite good and didn’t change much; just a few minor adjustments and additions to enhance clarity and coherence with the Course’s teachings.

(This conversation was facilitated by Bruce Rawles as part of the School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) curriculum hosted by Lyn Corona and Tim Wise. This YouTube video recording was made on Sunday, June 14, 2026.)

The post For They Have Come: SFACIM class conversation with Bruce Rawles first appeared on ACIM blog.

Here are the first 3 paragraphs of Lesson 152:

Lesson 152, “The Power of Decision Is My Own,” was explored as a profound reminder that salvation is found at the level of the mind, not in changing the circumstances of the world. The lesson begins with uncompromising statements: no one suffers pain, grief, fear, sickness, or death without having chosen the underlying thought system that gives those experiences meaning. This can sound harsh or extreme if understood as a claim that an individual personality consciously chooses every event in form. The group emphasized that the Course is speaking instead about the mind’s fundamental choice between the ego and the Holy Spirit. The decision-making mind—not the body or the personal self—chooses how experience will be interpreted.

The ego persuades us that the world is outside us and that its events determine our inner state. We believe illness, aging, loss, conflict, pain, and other people’s behavior cause fear or unhappiness. The Course reverses this apparent sequence. The world is the projection or reflection of a prior choice in the mind. When we choose the ego, we see a world of separation, vulnerability, victimhood, and conflict. When we choose the Holy Spirit for our interpretation of the world, the forms may still appear much the same, but their meaning changes. Rather than proof that we are abandoned, guilty, or threatened, they can become opportunities to remember that peace remains available by forgiving ourselves for wanting to be separate, and choosing a masochistic thought system that needs a constant supply of blame targets, even though the crime it accuses everyone of is impossible in truth.

This distinction is especially important in confronting sickness, aging, and death. Several participants spoke candidly about physical pain, medical conditions, memory loss, fear of dying, and the practical use of medication. The discussion did not suggest denying symptoms or refusing helpful treatment. “Magic,” in Course terminology, may still be useful at the level of form when it is approached with kindness rather than panic or guilt. Taking medicine, seeking medical advice, or making a practical decision can be a loving response within the dream. The important question is not whether one does something in form, but which teacher (either ego or Holy Spirit) we ask to interpret the situation.

One participant described asking Jesus for help during a painful episode—not necessarily for a miraculous change in the body, but for guidance about how to proceed. This led to a practical insight about what might help with the pain without causing unwanted side effects. The experience illustrated a central point: the Holy Spirit does not manipulate form to help us. Help comes through a shift in purpose and perception. We can make sensible choices while recognizing that our peace does not ultimately depend on the outcome.

The group also reflected on the Course’s use of the word “oblivion.” From the ego’s perspective, bodily decline, forgetfulness, or death can seem terrifyingly close to annihilation. Yet in the Course’s metaphysics, the whole world of separation is already a kind of oblivion: an attempt to extinguish awareness of God, love, our true Identity. We cannot actually destroy that awareness, but we can believe we have hidden it. Therefore, the most meaningful alternative to oblivion is not preserving the body forever; it is becoming less lost in the body and more aware of ourselves as mind. Looking at fear with Jesus, without judgment, makes it possible to be aware of fear without being entirely defined by it.

This was described as being “unafraidly afraid”: allowing fear to be present without adding condemnation, denial, or further fear. The ego’s currency is fear, while the Holy Spirit’s response is forgiveness. Looking at fear with forgiveness does not pretend it is absent. It acknowledges the experience honestly while declining to make it proof of reality, guilt, or separation. This nonjudgmental awareness can be deeply consoling. A frightened person may still seem to be present, but one is no longer completely imprisoned within that identity.

Lesson 152 (and the entire Course) insists that truth cannot have exceptions. If truth is true, then its opposite cannot also be true. Love and perfect holiness cannot coexist with fear, sickness, loss, and death as ultimate realities. The ego finds this difficult, even offensive, because it wants some parts of its world to remain real. It may give lip service to the idea that truth is true in an abstract way, but always vehemently resists the further implication that nothing else is true. The ego wants contrast: some pleasure better than some pain, some situations safer than others, some forms more valuable than others. It treats these comparisons as proof that the world matters.

The Course, however, makes a “vertical” distinction rather than a worldly (“horizontal“) one: truth versus illusion, reality versus unreality. The Holy Spirit does not ask us to compare one illusion with another to find salvation. An improved circumstance may be welcome, but it is not the same as peace. Both favorable and unfavorable situations can be used by the ego to reinforce separation. The real contrast is between the restless, judgmental ego state and the quiet peace that reflects our true home in God.

We can experience peace in our ordinary lives by allowing every specific situation to be part of our forgiveness curriculum. “Resting in God” is not dramatic or mystical. It may appear simply as a clear mind, a settled heart, a lack of preoccupation, and a quiet capacity to do everyday things. One may wash dishes, take a walk, or speak with another person while feeling inwardly at rest. When agitation, resentment, urgency, or anxiety returns, the contrast can serve as useful information. Rather than evidence of failure, an upset is like a rumble strip on the road: a signal that the mind has drifted and can be gently redirected.

The group extended this metaphor playfully. Ideally, one notices the rumble strip before reaching the curb, scraping the wheel, or crashing into the guardrail. But even the guardrail is helpful if it leads to a new choice. The Holy Spirit provides no final dead end. There are always additional “safety nets,” no matter how far we seem to have wandered into guilt or distress. The recurring Course reminder—“I am never upset for the reason I think”—is always available. It invites us to pause, question our interpretation, and become willing to see peace instead.

The lesson’s teaching that all transitory states are false raised an important concern. If grief, pain, and misery are not ultimately true, does that minimize or dismiss lived experience? Definitely not. The Course does not ask us to use metaphysics as a spiritual bypass. It meets us in the condition in which we believe ourselves to be. We must look honestly at what seems to be happening, including suffering and fear, but look with the Holy Spirit rather than with judgment. Metaphysics functions as a diagnostic tool: it helps us recognize that our real problem is not an event in the world but the mind’s belief that it is separate from God, or more accurately, our wanting to be a separate self.

This perspective does not deny that violence, loss, illness, and fear seem to occur. It changes their meaning. Instead of asking how to prove that the world is unreal, we can ask what our upset reveals about the thought system we have chosen. The only two thought systems are: (1) the insanity of the ego, or (2) the sane correction of the Holy Spirit. The body may still feel discomfort, just as a mosquito bite may still itch, but suffering about the discomfort can be transformed. We need not deny the experience; we need only become willing to question the story we attach to it.

The lesson also redefines humility and arrogance. The ego’s usual version of humility is to see oneself as small, weak, sinful, guilty, ashamed, and at the mercy of forces beyond one’s control. Yet the Course calls this arrogance because it treats our own judgment about what we are as truer than God’s. To accept ourselves as little, damaged, or guilty is to claim that we have successfully changed what God created. True humility is the opposite: accepting our rightful place as God’s changeless, innocent, loving Son. This is not self-inflation or spiritual grandiosity. It is the quiet acknowledgment that truth is true and that we did not create ourselves.

The ego is arrogant not only when it boasts but also when it suffers self-righteously. It can wear what one participant called a “crown of suffering,” treating depression, anxiety, victimhood, and unfair treatment as evidence of specialness. It may make a large identity from pain, shame, or spiritual accomplishment. Even becoming proud of being a Course student (or comparing ourselves with other Course students or anyone else) can be another ego strategy. The corrective is not to attack the ego, body, or self-concept. They are not evil, sinful, or wicked; they are simply mistaken and, in that sense, silly. Ken Wapnick frequently reminds us that choosing the ego is just silly and not deserving of condemnation, but rather, patience and gentleness. Condemning others (which is always projection of our own hidden self-condemnation) only makes the ego seem more real and formidable.

Behind many forms of upset lies a painful thought: “I hate being what I am.” A perceived attack from another person may trigger anger and the urge to retaliate, but beneath this is often self-hatred, guilt, or shame. We feel bad about ourselves and then project the cause onto someone else. These self-condemning thoughts and feelings actually are at a deep, ontological level, but seem to involve specifics in our world because our egos will do anything to keep us from seeing the real source of our misery – our wanting to identify with it! Forgiveness means using the experience as a mirror. We do not have to explain it away or force ourselves into positivity. We bring the feeling to Jesus or the Holy Spirit and allow its deeper meaning to be revealed. When the shift occurs, we may find that the suffering self temporarily disappears into a more peaceful awareness. This does not necessarily change external circumstances, but it demonstrates that the insane ego identity built on guilt was never true.

The power of decision is therefore our way home. In Heaven, no decision between thought systems is needed, because only truth exists. But once the tiny mad idea of separation seemed to arise, the decision maker became the means of returning. Our responsibility is not to fix the world or force ourselves to feel spiritual. It is to recognize that we have been choosing the ego’s interpretation and to ask for help in choosing again. The Holy Spirit, Jesus, or God can be understood in the way most helpful to us; what matters is learning not to rely on the ego to interpret our experience.

The lesson’s practice is simple: begin the day (or any moment) by reminding ourselves, “The power of decision is my own. ⁴This day I will accept myself as what my Father’s Will created me to be.” (ACIM, W-152.11:3-4). Then wait quietly, letting self-deceptions be laid aside. Throughout the day, or when the initially inevitable mind-wandering occurs, patiently repeat the invitation. God’s Voice will replace frantic thoughts with peace, self-deceptions with truth, and the illusion of a separate self with the remembrance of our all-inclusive shared identity; the undifferentiated being that is eternally innocent and inseparable.

The movement from “my own” to “our own” matters. The decision is never private in its effects. To recognize the Son of God – our all-inclusive shared identity – in oneself implies recognizing Him in everyone. Because we tend to exclude certain people or groups from this mental blessing, it initially seems impossible. But the Course asks us to consider that perhaps the ego’s condemning verdict of guilt onto everyone is actually what is impossible. Forgiveness welcomes back those whom we have excluded through judgment. As we turn toward the light, we do not create the warmth and luminance ourselves; we simply receive and share the radiant inner light that we are always given. The lesson closes not with pressure to achieve perfection, but with an invitation to rest: to choose, again and again, the peace of God in place of the frantic ego thought system.

Editor’s note: Above is an edited AI (ChatGPT) generated summary of an abridged text transcript of the YouTube recording. I’m still exploring the use of AI to summarize and organize lengthy text material. If you find this helpful, or have any suggestions or thoughts about the content above, please let me know. Your feedback is always appreciated! My intention is to provide useful insights and information related to ACIM. I found this summary quite good and didn’t change much; just a few minor adjustments and additions to enhance clarity and coherence with the Course’s teachings.

(This conversation was facilitated by Bruce Rawles as part of the School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) curriculum hosted by Lyn Corona and Tim Wise. This YouTube video recording was made on Monday, June 1, 2026.)

The post The power of decision is my own (Workbook Lesson 152) SFACIM class conversation with Bruce Rawles first appeared on ACIM blog.

Recovering Bliss-ninny Calendar – newly updated for 2027!

Calling all recovering bliss-ninnies! Here is a newly updated calendar for students of A Course In Miracles (ACIM) who want reminders of the thought system we’re here to undo, featuring a few of the more challenging quotes from ACIM with photographs (mostly around Castle Rock, Colorado, and other Rocky Mountain locations, including Alberta, Canada) by Bruce Rawles, editor of ACIMblog.com. Kenneth Wapnick said, “A bliss-ninny doesn’t want to look at guilt or what the world is really like. A person will say, ‘Oh, the Course is changing my life; it’s going to change the world,’ without really looking at the guilt the Course is trying to undo. A bliss-ninny does not have a proper understanding or respect for the ego in terms of how ugly it can be and how attracted to it we are. If you don’t look at guilt, everything you do with this Course is going to be guided by that decision, and you will totally misunderstand what the Course is saying.” The quote was from Susan Dugan’s excellent interview with Ken, which you can read here. While most students of ACIM probably aren’t in the ‘clinically pathological bliss-ninny’ category (grin), we all have our favorite idols of specialness in the world that we think will make us happy. So, even if you only have a few residual ‘special projects’ to repair this surreal holodeck with the intent of turning the dream into your bliss factory, you might find the quotes on the calendar helpful. If you stand back far enough, you can always just look at the photos when the resistance is high to directly let the meaning of the quotes sink in, letting them work subliminally. :-)

Here are the quotes from the Recovering Bliss-ninny calendar:

Cover:

“The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so.” (ACIM, T-13.in.2:2-3)

January:

“I am responsible for what I see. I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the goal I would achieve.” (ACIM, T-21.II.2:3-4)

February:

“You are still convinced that your understanding is a powerful contribution to the truth, and makes it what it is.” (ACIM, T-18.IV.7:5)

March:

“You will become increasingly aware that a slight twinge of annoyance is nothing but a veil drawn over intense fury.” (ACIM, W-21.2:5)

April:

“Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated. In this view, you seek to find an innocence that is not Theirs but yours alone, and at the cost of someone else’s guilt. Can innocence be purchased by the giving of your guilt to someone else?” (ACIM, T-26.X.4:1-3)

May:

“Learn now, without despair, there is no hope of answer in the world. But do not judge the lesson that is but begun with this. Seek not another signpost in the world that seems to point to still another road. No longer look for hope where there is none.” (ACIM, T-31.IV.4:3-6)

June:

“The ego is also in your mind, because you have accepted it there. Its evaluation of you, however, is the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit’s, because the ego does not love you. It is unaware of what you are, and wholly mistrustful of everything it perceives because its perceptions are so shifting. The ego is therefore capable of suspiciousness at best and viciousness at worst.” (ACIM, T-9.VII.3:4-7)

July:

“Learn this, and learn it well, for it is here delay of happiness is shortened by a span of time you cannot realize. You never hate your brother for his sins, but only for your own. Whatever form his sins appear to take, it but obscures the fact that you believe them to be yours, and therefore meriting a ‘just’ attack.” (ACIM, T-31.III.1:4-6)

August:

“But it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself, impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance to think it is. There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach.” (ACIM, W-132.6:1-3)

September:

“What is not love is murder. What is not loving must be an attack. Every illusion is an assault on truth, and every one does violence to the idea of love because it seems to be of equal truth.” (ACIM, T-23.IV.1:10-12)

October:

“If you perceived the special relationship as a triumph over God, would you want it? Let us not think of its fearful nature, nor of the guilt it must entail, nor of the sadness and the loneliness. For these are only attributes of the whole religion of separation, and of the total context in which it is thought to occur.” (ACIM, T-16.V.10:1-3)

November:

“The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, ‘Behold me, brother, at your hand I die.’ For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors must be sins.” (ACIM, T-27.I.4:5-7)

December:

“If you can be hurt by anything, you see a picture of your secret wishes. ⁹Nothing more than this. ¹⁰And in your suffering of any kind you see your own concealed desire to kill.” (ACIM, T-31.V.15:8-10)

Here is an explanation of ACIM’s annotation system; annotations with links (to the Web Edition of the Course) to read the full quotes in context appear at the end of each quote above.

Purchase the Recovering Bliss-ninny Calendar here.

Here are links and details about two newer calendars with ACIM quotes, much less challenging, too:

• A Course In Miracles: Inspiring Quotes calendar & details
• Humorous quotes lampooning the ego calendar & details

The post 2027 Update: Recovering Bliss-Ninny Wall Calendar first appeared on ACIM blog.

After realizing that the “Recovering Bliss-Ninny Calendar” – available for several years – had some rather challenging quotes from A Course In Miracles, I made a calendar with quotes on the other end of the difficulty spectrum, with lots of soothing, gentle, reassuring, inspiring, encouraging, and uplifting Course quotes: the A Course In Miracles: Inspiring Quotes calendar.

More recently, I added another ACIM quote calendar that perhaps meets us more in the middle, with some humor to make the integration a bit easier: still requiring gentle vigilance of mind, yet the kindly wit of the author that lampoons our egos simultaneously motivates us to choose the real alternative that will provide consistent happiness and peace.

Here are the quotes from the new A Course In Miracles humor: ego lampooned calendar:

January:

Note: Annotations with links (to the Web Edition of the Course so that you can read the full quotes in context) appear at the end of each quote above. Here is an explanation of ACIM’s annotation system;

Purchase the “A Course In Miracles humor: ego lampooned” calendar here.

Here is a version of the calendar without the ACIM quotes if you just want to enjoy some abstract patterns (not colorized) from close-up photography of an abandoned dump truck near the entrance to the mining village ghost town at Ruby, Arizona.

Here are links and details about two prior calendars with ACIM quotes:

• A Course In Miracles: Inspiring Quotes calendar & details
• Recovering Bliss-Ninny calendar & details

The post 2027 Updated ACIM Wall Calendar: Humorous quotes lampooning the ego first appeared on ACIM blog.

Since truth and sooth are synonyms, let’s let the Truth soothe us! We still need to look at our egos – without condemnation! – and slowly (but surely) acknowledge the stark absurdity, atrocity, and inanity of the 100% insane ego. Yet by looking at the gentle, real alternative that waits with infinite patience for our return, we have the perfect contrast to motivate us to drop insanity and restore the peace by forgiving ourselves for the crime of separation that is forever impossible in truth, yet unavoidable in the ego’s interpretation of its own projection.

Here are the quotes from the A Course In Miracles: Inspiring Quotes calendar:

January:

February:

“Can you imagine what it means to have no cares, no worries, no anxieties, but merely to be perfectly calm and quiet all the time?”
T-15.I.1:1

March:

“The word ‘inevitable’ is fearful to the ego, but joyous to the spirit. God is inevitable, and you cannot avoid Him any more than He can avoid you.”
T-4.I.9:10-11

April:

“You have not lost your innocence. It is for this you yearn. This is your heart’s desire. This is the voice you hear, and this the call which cannot be denied.”
W-182.12:1-4

May:

“You are altogether irreplaceable in the Mind of God. No one else can fill your part in it, and while you leave your part of it empty your eternal place merely waits for your return.”
T-9.VIII.10:1-2

June:

“You and your brother are coming home together, after a long and meaningless journey that you undertook apart, and that led nowhere.”
T-18.III.8:5

July:

“Spirit is in a state of grace forever.
Your reality is only spirit.
Therefore you are in a state of grace forever.”
T-1.III.5:4-6

August:

“How can you who are so holy suffer? All your past except its beauty is gone, and nothing is left but a blessing. I have saved all your kindnesses and every loving thought you ever had. I have purified them of the errors that hid their light, and kept them for you in their own perfect radiance. They are beyond destruction and beyond guilt.”
T-5.IV.8:1-5

September:

“You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting yourself and your brothers totally without judgment.”
T-3.VI.3:1

October:

“The still infinity of endless peace surrounds you gently in its soft embrace, so strong and quiet, tranquil in the might of its Creator, nothing can intrude upon the sacred Son of God within.”
T-29.V.2:4

November:

“If peace is eternal, you are at home only in eternity.”
T-5.III.10:8

December:

“What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good?”
W-135.18:1

Note: Annotations with links (to the Web Edition of the Course so that you can read the full quotes in context) appear at the end of each quote above. Here is an explanation of ACIM’s annotation system;

Purchase the A Course In Miracles: Inspiring Quotes calendar here.

Here is a version of the calendar without the ACIM quotes if you just want to enjoy some abstract patterns of sand; these are photographs of sand patterns on the beach at Yachats River estuary (and vicinity near Yachats, Oregon) taken May-June 2022.

Here are links and details about two other calendars with ACIM quotes:

• Recovering Bliss-ninny calendar & details
• Humorous quotes lampooning the ego calendar & details

The post 2027 Updated Wall Calendar: A Course In Miracles: Inspiring Quotes first appeared on ACIM blog.