The Fall of the Berlin Wall and Robert Frost's Poem, The Mending Wall

Yesterday, I was reading newspaper articles about the Twentieth Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, November 9, 1989. While reading, I was surprised and pleased at what came floating into my mind, Robert Frost’s poem, Mending Wall, written long before the Wall went up.

What the poem does is bring out the symbolic significance of the Wall, like a barrier in our minds, a wall of fear and darkness separating us from love and light. Here are the first two lines of the poem:

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it.

The frozen ground-ground swell is like the light penetrating darkness.

Later in the poem, the speaker contrasts this recognition with his neighbor’s idea that 'Good fences make good neighbors', noting that he moves in darkness.

Here is the poem.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

While the theme of the poem is set in the first two lines, the speaker matter-of-factly details the repairing of the wall for the next 23 lines, and then he thinks:

There where it is we do not need the wall.

When he tells this to his neighbor, he can only repeat his father’s saying,
'Good fences make good neighbors.'

Although the speaker does not name what does not love a wall, calling it something, he is aware at some level that it refers to the light and love that he is; at some point along the way, he had caught a glimpse of the truth of his wholeness.

Yet, his neighbor is moving in darkness, aware only of his separateness from God, having learned from his father who was a liar from the beginning in the sense of the human conditioning being passed on, deceiving from generation to generation.

Holiness can never be really hidden in darkness, but you can deceive yourself about it. The deception makes you fearful because you realize in your heart it is a deception and you exert enormous effort to establish its reality. T-1.lV.2:1,2

In this darkness, he moves like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

This is the darkness of separation in illusion. There is, however, an end to his journey in darkness, and the fall of the Wall gives us a physical demonstration.

There is a hush in Heaven, a happy expectancy, a little pause of gladness in acknowledgement of the journey's end. For Heaven knows you well, as you know Heaven. No illusions stand between you and your brother now. Look not upon the little wall of shadows. The sun has risen over it. How can a shadow keep you from the sun? No more can you be kept by shadows from the light in which illusions end. Every miracle is but the end of an illusion. Such was the journey; such its ending. And in the goal of truth which you accepted must all illusions end.
T-19.lV.6

And the Wall and the illusions came tumbling down.

And all the king’s men and all the king’s horses
couldn’t put Humpty together again.

Simply Letting a Single Thought Melt into Stillness Dismantles an Entire Hallucination

Several weeks ago, three Texas fishermen were rescued from atop their capsized boat in the Gulf of Mexico, after having been stranded for eight days. The men, Tressel Hawkins, 43, James Phillips, 30, and Curtis Hall, 28, were found sitting on their twenty-three foot catamaran, 180 miles from land, having endured hunger, blistering heat, scares from sharks, and hallucinations.

The men rationed their salvaged bubble gum, crackers, beer and chips and used a hose to suck fresh water out of the internal “washdown” tank. Fishermen often keep such a tank to wash fish slime off their boat when they are out in the salt water. “We’d eat crackers one day, and then a handful of chips,” Phillips said. “Everything tasted like gasoline and saltwater.” (Texas Boaters Fought Heat and Hunger, USA Today, 8/31/2009, Section 1, p. 1)

What first caught my attention in this account is that they started hallucinating about the fourth or fifth day.

“We started hallucinating about people dropping off food and water,” Phillips said. “And we were talking to them, but they weren’t there.” (Texas Boaters, p. 1)

What is fascinating to me is how Hawkins, in particular, dealt with his hallucinations.

Hawkins said he initially wondered whether his rescuers were another figment of his imagination. “My first reaction was, ‘Is this really real?’ You must have to kind of sit back and say is this real or hallucination. You have to wake yourself up three or four times to make sure it is real.” (Texas Boaters, p. 1)

Now, what you and I know, and Hawkins may not, is that he is continuing to hallucinate now while safe at home, and we do, too, when we are not experiencing the peace of God and seeing with the eyes of Christ. We hallucinate each moment we take for real the dream that we are making up by believing that what we see with our eyes has reality, believing in our miscreations. We hallucinate when we listen to the voice of the ego, rather than the Voice for God. This is one way Jesus expresses it in A Course in Miracles.

The distractions of the ego may seem to interfere with your learning, but the ego has no power to distract you unless you give it the power to do so. The ego’s voice is an hallucination. T-8.l.2:1-2

The root meaning of the word distract is helpful here. It comes from the Latin, distractus, meaning “to draw away from.” We can choose not to give into the temptation of being drawn away from experiencing the peace of God. We can stand still for a moment and question the reality of our dream. Hawkins teaches us to kind of sit back and say is this real or hallucination. He did not, automatically, give it power.

You cannot expect it to say “I am not real.” Yet you are not asked to dispel your hallucinations alone. You are merely asked to evaluate them in terms of their results to you. If you do not want them on the basis of loss of peace, they will be removed from your mind for you. T-8.l.2:3-6

The word hallucinate comes from the Latin hallucinatus, meaning “to wander in the mind, in the sense of to have an illusion.” When we wander from the state of mind of the peace of God, we end up distracted by images in time and space, walking through an illusory world of our own making, believing it to be real.

Jesus tells us very early in His Text:

You are much too tolerant of mind wandering, and are passively condoning your mind’s miscreations. T-2.VI.4: 6

What if you recognized this world is an hallucination? What if you really understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal? Could you have faith in what you see, if you accepted this? And would you see it? T-20.Vlll.7.3:3-7

Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are.

That is why I love so much the lesson that Hawkins teaches.

“My first reaction was, ‘Is this really real?’ You must have to kind of sit back and say is this real or hallucination.

My God! That’s all I have to do. I just have to step back for a moment and ask if this is real?

This is Lesson 155, I will step back and let Him lead the way.

The world is an illusion. Those who choose
to come to it are seeking for a place
where they can be illusions, and avoid
their own reality. Yet when they find
their own reality is even here,
then they step back and let it lead the way.
What other choice is really theirs to make?
To let illusions walk ahead of truth
is madness. But to let illusion sink
behind the truth and let the truth stand forth
as what it is, is merely sanity.
W-p1.155.2

This is Lesson 182, I will be still an instant and go home.

When you are still an instant, when the world
recedes from you, when valueless ideas
cease to have value in your restless mind,
then will you hear His Voice. So poignantly
He calls to you that you will not resist
Him longer. In that instant He will take
you to His home, and you will stay with Him
in perfect stillness, silent and at peace,
beyond all words, untouched by fear and doubt,
sublimely certain that you are at home.
W-p182.8



For the past couple of weeks, I have been actively practicing stepping back and being still. It came to me one night just before going to bed, while I was sitting quietly, simply being aware of breathing in and breathing out, that I could practice doing this during the day from moment to moment, when I remembered, particularly, when I found myself hallucinating.

This also coincides with the fact that I have been memorizing this passage from Lesson 189, I feel the love of God within me now.

Simply do this: Be still, and lay aside
all thoughts of what you are and what God is;
all concepts you have learned about the world;
all images you hold about yourself.
Empty your mind of everything it thinks
is either true or false, or good or bad,
of every thought it judges worthy, and
all the ideas of which it is ashamed.
Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you
one thought the past has taught, nor one belief
you ever learned before from anything.
Forget this world, forget this course, and come
with wholly empty hands unto your God.
W-p1.189.7

I realized that I was beginning to live into the meaning of this passage by simply taking these steps.

1. Be aware of breathing in and out.

2. Ask for help to let go of thoughts.

3. Be present and receptive.

So, I am walking down the street, and I come face to face with a brother against whom I have a grievance; recognizing my hallucination, I breathe in and out and ask for help to let it go, and I become present and receptive, smile, nod my head in greeting, and walk on by.

I am becoming increasingly intolerant of mind wandering.

And now it comes to me to express it this way:

A single thought melts away in stillness,
dismantling an entire hallucination,
making way for the state of mind of the peace of God.

"The brain can think, and the eyes can see." "Nonsense!"

I came across an article in The New York Times a couple of days ago that summarizes research that demonstrates, empirically, exactly how our brains lure us into causal loops, making us believe that we are seeing something real going on outside of ourselves. The article is entitled, “Brain is a Co-Conspirator in a Vicious Stress Loop,” and here is the first paragraph.

If after a few months’ exposure to our David Lynch economy, in which housing markets spontaneously combust, coworkers mysteriously disappear and the stifled moans of dying 401K plans can be heard through the floorboards, you have the awful sensation that your body’s stress response has taken on a self-replicating and ultimately self-defeating life of its own, congratulations. You are very perceptive. It has. Researchers have discovered that the sensation of being highly stressed can rewire the brain in ways that promote its sinister persistence. (Natalie Angier, "Brain is a Co-Conspirator in a Vicious Stress Loop, " Science, p. 18-19, August 18, 2009)

The researchers discovered that highly-stressed rats actually underwent physical changes in their brains’ neural circuitry.

On the one hand, regions of the brain associated with executive decision-making and goal-directed behaviors had shriveled, while, conversely, brain sectors linked to habit formation had bloomed. “Behaviors become habitual faster in stressed animals than in the controls, and worse, the stressed animals can’t shift back to goal-directed behaviors when that would be the better approach,” Dr. Sousa said. “I call this a vicious circle.” (Brain, p. 18)

Just now, much to my surprise, a voice came into my mind, shouting, “Nonsense! The brain cannot think, and the eyes cannot see!” That’s a familiar voice, it is the plucky Alice of Alice in Wonderland. Just after entering the rabbit-hole, she found herself only a little startled seeing the Cheshire Cat, astride a branch. She even stood up to the nasty Queen who looked at her and said, “Off with her head.” “Nonsense!” said Alice, very loudly and decidedly, and the Queen was silent. Her “decidedly” echoes my certainty that the images our brains present to us are no more real than Alice’s bizarre adventures down the rabbit-hole.

It is for this reason that Jesus begins His Workbook of A Course in Miracles with this Lesson, Nothing I see means anything. In the Text He refers to the brain’s illusory interpretations.

The brain interprets to the body, of which it is a part. But what it says you cannot understand. Yet you have listened to it. And long and hard you tried to understand its messages.T-22.l.2:9-11

You cannot understand the brain’s interpretations because they are not real.

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein, lies the peace of God.

That which is real cannot be seen because it is invisible, intangible—Truth, Love, Joy, Peace.

That which is unreal is visible, tangible—the brain, the body, the eyes and the images they make. This is our human conditioning. Our father was a liar from the beginning.

Children are born into the world through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds seem to be trapped in their brain, and its powers to decline if their bodies are hurt. T-13.In.2:4-6

Children, like Alice, fall into a rabbit-hole, an illusion, a dream.

For the content of individual illusions differs greatly. Yet they have one thing in common, they are all insane. They are made of sights that are not seen, and sounds that are not heard. They make up a private world that cannot be shared. For they are meaningful only to their maker, and so they have no meaning at all. In this world their maker moves alone, for only he perceives them. T-13.V.1:4-9

The problem is that we forget the fall, and we become entranced by the images our eyes see and the sounds the ears hear, not realizing that there is another way of seeing, seeing through the eyes of Christ.

We are on a mission here to learn to see truly, to see with vision, and we cannot do this alone because we are constantly deceived by seeing through blind eyes. And we are not alone. The Holy Spirit will guide us to see through the brain’s sleeping eyes, so that we can recognize the vision of Christ. It is a matter of remembering and forgetting; forgetting, i.e., relinquishing the sights and sounds projected by our brains, and remembering to see with the eyes of Christ. This is an awakening to the real and letting go the unreal. T-12.Vl.4

The researchers studying the brains of the stressed rats were joyously surprised to learn that the changes in behavior and brains could be reversed. That is, although, the induced stress caused particular sections of the brain to shrivel, they found that pampering the rats particular parts of the brain “resprouted.”

But with only four weeks’ vacation in a supportive setting free of bullies and Tasers, the formerly stressed rats looked just like the controls, able to innovate, discriminate and lay off the bar. Atrophied synaptic connections in the decisive regions of the prefrontal cortex resprouted, while the overgrown dendritic vines of the habit-prone sensorimotor striatum retreated. (Brain, p. 19)

The "resprouting" of the atrophied synaptic connections is, of course, looked on as favorable, and this is a real temptation while looking through eyes that cannot see. We tend to see dualities, e.g., a stressful, or non-stressful situation, sad or happy, good or bad, and we try to find a solution more favorable rather than less favorable, forgetting that we are looking at completely illusory situations, dream-figures of our own making, characters at the bottom of a rabbit-hole.

So, it always comes down to the basics. When I see an image and respond to it stressfully, or non-stressfully, for that matter, I ask for help to remember that it is not so, it is not real, it is a dream, and ask to see through the images with vision, with the eyes of Christ, thereby, experiencing truth and love and peace.

At the end of Alice in Wonderland, we discover what we may have suspected all along—Alice Liddel, the young girl Charles Dodgson based his story on, was dreaming all the time. She finds herself in her sister’s lap, dreaming that cards are fluttering down all around her, and she wakes up discovering her sister brushing leaves off of her face.

Here is the way I expressed it in the last section of a poem in blank verse I once wrote about Alice, entitled The Wonder of Alice.

At this the whole pack of cards rose up in
the air, and came flying down on Alice
Liddel, lying on her sister’s soft lap;
she was gently brushing away some dead
leaves that had come fluttering down from the
trees upon her face. So Alice got up
and ran off, thinking while she ran, as well
she might, what a curious, wonderful dream.

If you wish to read the poem in its entirety, please click here.

Scissoring Our Dream Out of Unity

Leafing through A Course in Miracles the other day, I came across a copy of a poem paper-clipped to Lesson 184, The Name of God is my inheritance, entitled The Way by Albert Goldbarth. It is faded and yellowed, and I probably cut it out of The New Yorker some time ago.

THE WAY

The sky is random. Even calling it “sky”
is an attempt to make a meaning, say,
a shape, from the humanly visible part
of shapelessness in endlessness. It’s what
we do, in some ways it’s entirely what
we do—and so the devastating rose

of a galaxy’s being born, the fatal lame
of another’s being torn and dying, we frame
in the lenses of our super-duper telescopes the way
we would those other completely incomprehensible
fecund and dying subjects at a family picnic.
Making them “subjects.” “Rose.” “Lame.” The way

our language scissors the enormity to scales
we can tolerate. The way we gild and rubricate
in memory, or edit out selectively.
An infant’s gentle snoring, even, apportions
the eternal. When they moved to the boonies,
Dorothy Wordsworth measured their walk

to Crewkerne—then the nearest town—
by pushing a device invented especially
for such a project, a “perambulator”: seven miles.
Her brother William pottered at his daffodils poem.
Ten thousand saw I at a glance: by which he meant
too many to count, but could only say it in counting.

I find this poem to be a remarkable description of how we make up an illusory world.

The sky is random.

I am sitting on our deck on a warm, sunny day in August, and I casually glance about me, seeing the bird feeder, the chimes, the trees, and the sky. I am simply looking, randomly, defined as “occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern.” Yet, I automatically name things, cutting each thing out of the whole, selecting one thing at a time by symbolizing it with a name.

You live by symbols. You have made up names
for everything you see. Each one becomes
a separate entity, identified
by its own name. By this you carve it out
of unity.
W-p1.184.1:1-4

Even calling it “sky”
is an attempt to make a meaning, say,
a shape, from the humanly visible part
of shapelessness in endlessness.

And once again, this is wired into our brains. In an article in the newspaper today, Michael Shermer, an author who studies how the brain functions says this:

We are pattern-seeking primates. We connect the dots, and often they really are connected. We just assume all patterns are real. You can show people a random collection of anything and they will find a pattern.(The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, August 2, 2009, p. A9.)

What is humanly visible we consider real, and what is shapeless and endless we consider unreal. The poet, Albert Goldbarth, intuits that this is what we do, and unfortunately for us, it is almost all that we do.

It’s what
we do, in some ways it’s entirely what
we do—

This is the way reality is made
by partial vision, purposefully set
against the given truth. Its enemy
is wholeness. It conceives of little things
and looks upon them.
W-p1.184.4:1-3

and so the devastating rose
of a galaxy’s being born, the fatal lame
of another’s being torn and dying, we frame
in the lenses of our super-duper telescopes the way
we would those other completely incomprehensible
fecund and dying subjects at a family picnic.

Even the birth of a galaxy, however huge it seems, is small because it is unreal. Even the beautiful metaphors of devastating rose and fatal lame do not make it real. In the phrase, super-duper telescopes, I saw the word “dupe.” We are always being duped by what we see and name, our own projections, reminding me of this sentence from out of the past: Whether we are looking into a telescope, or into a microscope, we are always looking only at the back of our heads.”

“Dupe” becomes even stronger when its origins become clear. It comes from (tête) d'uppe, or “head of a bird thought to be especially stupid.” You gotta to love it. We are stupid birds believing our illusions.

Even our family members seem to be getting old and sick and dying because we see them as illusions, as subjects, not as the truth of what they are, children of God.

They are made of sights that are not seen, and sounds that are not heard. They make up a private world that cannot be shared. For they are meaningful only to their maker, and so they have no meaning at all. In this world their maker moves alone, for only he perceives them. W-13.V.1:6-9

Making them “subjects.” “Rose.” “Lame.” The way

our language scissors the enormity to scales
we can tolerate. The way we gild and rubricate
in memory, or edit out selectively.
an infant’s gentle snoring, even, apportions
the eternal.

Once again, Goldbarth intuits that space and time are carved out of unity, and we cut by scissoring with language. This is seeing with the body’s eyes, partial vision, purposefully set against the given truth.

And yet, there is only one vision, seeing with the eyes of Christ, the other vision.

Yet does this other vision still remain
a natural direction for the mind
to channel its perception. It is hard
to teach the mind a thousand alien names,
and thousands more. Yet you believe this is
what learning means; its one essential goal
by which communication is achieved,
and concepts can be meaningfully shared.
W-p.1.184.5

When they moved to the boonies,
Dorothy Wordsworth measured their walk

to Crewkerne—then the nearest town—
by pushing a device invented especially
for such a project, a “perambulator”: seven miles.
Her brother William pottered at his daffodils poem.
Ten thousand saw I at a glance: by which he meant
too many to count, but could only say it in counting.

It is with a sure hand that Goldbarth ends his poem by evoking William Wordsworth (1770-1850). Wordsworth knew, first hand, that we are of God, not of man. Here is a famous stanza from his poem, Intimations of Immortality.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
hath had elsewhere its setting,
and cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
but trailing clouds of glory do we come
from God, who is our home.
59-66

Wordsworth experienced resting in God, our true nature, even though he referred to the daffodils by “counting;” for him it was simply a convenient metaphor. Here is the last part of Wordsworth’s poem, I wandered lonely as a cloud.

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
in such a jocund company:
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
what wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
in vacant or in pensive mood,
they flash upon that inward eye
which is the bliss of solitude;
and then my heart with pleasure fills,
and dances with the daffodils.

He captures perfectly what it means to step back from seeing with the body’s eyes, and in the bliss of solitude experiences seeing with the inward eye, seeing with Christ vision.

It is not completely clear to me why Goldbarth entitled his poem, The Way. I will assume that he is resting in the unity and wholeness of his true identity, knowing that there is no world, other than the illusory one we make by seeing through only the body’s eyes. I trust I am on the right track because Goldbarth does use the phrase in this manner three times in his poem:

the way we would. . .

the way our language scissors

the way we gild and rubricate

If so, he recognizes that only by demonstrating exactly how we scissor our dream out of unity and wholeness is the way we come to experience another way of seeing.

Jesus said unto them,
Verily, verily, I say unto you,
Before Abraham was, I am.
John 8:58

And Jesus expresses it this way in today’s lesson, 224, God is my Father, and He loves His Son.

My true Identity is so secure,
so lofty, sinless, glorious and great,
wholly beneficent and free from guilt,
that Heaven looks to It to give it light.
It lights the world as well. It is the gift
my Father gave to me; the one as well
I give the world. There is no gift but This
that can be either given or received.
This is reality, and only This.
This is illusion's end. It is the truth.

My Name, O Father, still is known to You.
I have forgotten It, and do not know
where I am going, who I am, or what
it is I do. Remind me, Father, now,
for I am weary of the world I see.
Reveal what You would have me see instead.
W-p11.224

The way means to ask for help to be reminded of the truth of what I am, so that I can learn to see through my illusory world of time and space, and experience in its place the peace of God, seeing with the inward eye.

Jesus saith unto him:
I am the way, the truth and the life.
John 14:6

Hamlet's, "There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so," and Jesus' Course in Miracles.

Early in the second act of Hamlet, King Claudius secretly summons Hamlet’s school chums, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, from Germany to spy on Hamlet who suspects that Claudius, his father’s brother, recently usurped the throne after having poisoned his father. When they first meet, Hamlet is surprised and asks them what they have done to deserve being sent to prison. They ask him what he is talking about, and he says that Denmark is a prison. They disagree, and Hamlet speaks this famous line, “There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.” (Hamlet.11.2:251)

This sentence can be broken down into three parts:

1) There is nothing

For a split-second, I am always only looking at a blank slate.
No thing I look at and give a name to exist at all.

2) but thinking makes it so

I keep missing the fact that nothing exists until my thinking, automatically, brings it into existence.

Things but represent the thoughts that made them.
(W-p1.187.2:3)

Our brains in conjunction with our senses write on the blank slate.

3) good or bad

I quickly preoccupy my thinking by automatically slipping into judgment.

In the context of A Course in Miracles, that is a powerful sentence coming to us from across the centuries, echoing the title of Jesus’ Lesson 1, Nothing I see means anything. The lesson begins with this sentence: The reason this is so is that I see nothing, and nothing has no meaning. This is followed by Lesson 2, I have given everything I see all the meaning it has for me, and the first sentence reads: I have judged everything I look upon, and it is this and only this I see.

Obviously, Jesus begins his 365 Lessons by making clear and precise the problem we face. We take for granted, for granite, that what we see is trustworthy, and we walk around with the strongly ingrained belief that “seeing is believing.” His Lessons enable us to practice learning that what we see is illusory, of our own making, and that we can learn to see differently; we can learn to see with vision.

What I think I see now is taking the place of vision. I must let it go by realizing it has no meaning, so that vision may take its place.
(W-p1.51.1:4,5)

I am willing to recognize the lack of validity in my judgments, because I want to see. My judgments have hurt me, and I do not want to see according to them.
(51.2:5,6)

Overcoming my conditioning that “seeing is believing” is, obviously, a giant obstacle. In addition to the Lessons, it does help to see a clear demonstration that it is the judging brain that uses the eyes to “see,” but this is not vision. (In a recent blog post, “Stick out your tongue and look at me: Images we see in the world are first formed deep in our brains," I use the BrainPort to demonstrate this.)

Recently, I came across a fascinating article demonstrating that we are more than a brain, more than a body and brain, more than our sensory perceptions, more than our petty judgments. When we manage to strip away our nothingness, we can come to experience our wholeness. The article demonstrates what we are without our brains; we are souls.

In 1991, Pam Reynolds was found to have an aneurysm on her brain stem. Faced with a ticking time bomb, she opted for an experimental operation called a "cardiac standstill." The surgeons put her under anesthesia, taped her eyes shut and put molded speakers in her ears that emitted loud clicks, about as loud as a jet plane taking off. When her brain no longer responded to those clicks, the surgeons lowered her body temperature to 60 degrees and drained the blood out of her head, like draining oil from the engine of a car. The aneurysm sac collapsed for lack of blood. The surgeons drilled into her skull, snipped the aneurysm and sewed it up, and then reintroduced the blood into her body.

Finally, they raised her body temperature and brought her back to consciousness.

When Reynolds awakened, she had a story to tell. She said she floated upward and watched part of the operation. She could describe what the operating theater looked like and how many surgeons there were. She could describe the unusual-looking bone saw that cut open her head, as well as the drill bits and blade container. She heard conversations, including one in which a female surgeon observed that Reynolds' left femoral vein was too small for a tube, to which the chief neurosurgeon responded, "Try the right side."

Records from the surgery confirmed all these details. Reynolds' neurosurgeon says he is flummoxed by the episode: "From a scientific perspective," he told me, "I have absolutely no explanation about how it could have happened."

Her story raises the question: Was Reynolds' consciousness operating separately from her brain?

Reynolds' experience — and that of many others — is prompting researchers at institutions such as the University of Montreal and the University of Virginia to investigate the astonishing proposition that a person might have a consciousness — or (gasp) a soul — that can operate when the brain is off-line. (Barbara Bradley Hagerty, The God Choice, USA TODAY, June 22, 2009, p. 9A)

It is always fun to see an empirical demonstration of the truth of what we are.

I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.
(W-p1.RVI.Intro.3:3-5)

No matter what my brain tells me, I am still, i.e., I remain as God created me; and I am the stillness of God’s creation. That which I am has been expressed with a variety of words—soul, mind, the Christ, God’s Son, Atman, spirit, light, Self.

You are one Self, united and secure in
light and joy and peace. You are God's Son,
one Self, with one Creator and one goal;
to bring awareness of this oneness to
all minds, that true creation may extend
the allness and the unity of God.
You are one Self, complete and healed and whole,
with power to lift the veil of darkness from
the world, and let the light in you come through
to teach the world the truth about yourself.
(W-p1.95.12)

All we are asked to do, and it is everything, is to forget, relinquish, forgive our small self, and the world it projects. We are asked to recognize that nothing is good, or bad, but my "stinking" thinking makes it so. And this nothingness is all going on in a small, dark place in the back of my brain, and it is that that I write on the blank slate.

Just for a moment, let me step back and ask for help to forgive what I have made, now.

Forgiveness gently looks upon all things
unknown in Heaven, sees them disappear,
and leaves the world a clean and unmarked slate
on which the Word of God can now replace
the senseless symbols written there before.
Forgiveness is the means by which the fear
of death is overcome, because it holds
no fierce attraction now and guilt is gone.
Forgiveness lets the body be perceived
as what it is; a simple teaching aid,
to be laid by when learning is complete,
but hardly changing him who learns at all.
(W-p1.192.4)

And I must be constant, I must be exceedingly vigilant, I must be determined, because the brain and body unite to convince me to turn away from the truth of what I am. The brain and body present a strong case. The temptation is great to accept what the brain offers.

For example, just do this:

1. While sitting at your desk in front of your computer, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles.

2. Now, while doing this, draw the number ‘6’ in the air with your right hand.

3. Notice that your foot now changes directions, moving counter-clockwise.

Our brains have a mind of their own, if you will, and we cannot seem to will it otherwise. But the good thing is there is only God's Will, and our brains/bodies are not real. Jesus makes this absolutely clear in His Introduction to the Course.

Nothing real can be threatened.

What is real is truth, light, peace, joy, serenity, God, infinity.

Nothing unreal exists.

What is unreal is made by the brain and body senses, and it is finite.

Herein, lies the peace of God.

Recognizing the truth and relinquishing, forgiving, what is not so gives us peace.

At the end of the pay, Horatio holds the dying Hamlet in his arms, and he says his last words, The rest is silence.

Horatio: Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Returning to God on earth as in Heaven is resting in silence, stillness, and peace.

The Holy Spirit: The Great Corrector

Right now I am using Microsoft Word to type this essay. I notice that when I misspell a word, an unseen program automatically corrects it. For example, this is how I just typed c-o-r-e-c-t, and as I hit the space bar to go to the next word, the program instantly corRected it. In effect, the mistake was instantly forgiven.

There is an invisible program running in the background that is guiding my every keystroke. Although I cannot see it, I experience its effects. Its correction is automatic. It uses what I type to make it right. I just make mistakes. There is no guilt in that; there is no shame. I can trust this program. I can trust what is invisible. It is just a matter of typing away, and when it is right it is right, and when I make a mistake, it is simply an offering to be corrected.

Of course, the program running in the background is analogous to the Holy Spirit's invisible presence within us. The typing mistakes are simply illusions and dreams. The Holy Spirit bridges the gap, carrying us to truth and reality, as bodily mistakes are forgiven.

In this manner, misspellings are dispelled.

The Holy Spirit mediates between
illusions and the truth. Since He must bridge
the gap between reality and dreams,
perception leads to knowledge through the grace
that God has given Him, to be His gift to
everyone who turns to Him for truth.
Across the bridge that He provides are dreams
all carried to the truth, to be dispelled
before the light of knowledge. There are sights
and sounds forever laid aside. And where
they were perceived before, forgiveness has
made possible perception's tranquil end.
W-p11. 7. What is the Holy Spirit? 1

Just as the Microsoft program replaces mistakes with accuracy, the Holy Spirit replaces worldly errors with Eternal Truth.
The goal the Holy Spirit's teaching sets
is just this end of dreams. For sights and sounds
must be translated from the witnesses
of fear to those of love. And when this is
entirely accomplished, learning has
achieved the only goal it has in truth.
For learning, as the Holy Spirit guides
it to the outcome He perceives for it,
becomes the means to go beyond itself,
to be replaced by the Eternal Truth.
7:2

It is just a matter of offering to the Holy Spirit our mistaken key strokes, our fearful images and dreams. They can be utilized for another purpose.

If you but knew how much your Father yearns
to have you recognize your sinlessness,
you would not let His Voice appeal in vain,
nor turn away from His replacement for
the fearful images and dreams you made.
The Holy Spirit understands the means
you made, by which you would attain what is
forever unattainable. And if
you offer them to Him, He will employ
the means you made for exile to restore
your mind to where it truly is at home.
7:3

I also notice that when I do not space the wordscorrectly, a red line appears beneath the words, reminding me to go back and leave a space. When I see that red line, I need but stop a moment, return to the underlined words, place the cursor between them, hit the space bar, and in that moment, in that stillness, the words separate (words correctly) and the red line disappears.

From knowledge, where He has been placed by God,
the Holy Spirit calls to you, to let
forgiveness rest upon your dreams, and be
restored to sanity and peace of mind.
Without forgiveness will your dreams remain
to terrify you. And the memory
of all your Father's Love will not return
to signify the end of dreams has come.
7:4

The program is a gift, replacing my wayward key strokes with correct ones. Thy will be done. Not mine. Learning to stand still for a moment and asking for help to be corrected is my only function.

Accept your Father's gift. It is a Call
from Love to Love, that It be but Itself.
The Holy Spirit is His gift, by which
the quietness of Heaven is restored
to God's beloved Son. Would you refuse
to take the function of completing God,
when all He wills is that you be complete?
7:5

I walk down the street now, fully trusting the Holy Spirit's correction, and I find that when this judgment or that judgment appears on the screen of my mind, these ideas come to my awareness for a moment, and then they are washed away, leaving a clean slate, making way for heavenly thoughts.

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Matthew.6:10

“Stick Out Your Tongue and Look At Me:” Images We See in the World Are First Formed Deep in Our Brains

We grow up automatically believing that what we see with our eyes makes up a real world. When an infant begins to connect a word with an image he sees, e.g., "Mommy," "doll," "doggy," we reward him lavishly. Thus begins his quest to learn the names of everything in sight.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with this. You can hardly expect a child to do otherwise. The only problem is that it establishes a world that seems real but, in fact, is not real. Obviously, overcoming this predilection to believe what we see with our eyes is a terribly difficult task.

Last week I came across an article in the newspaper that made the task less difficult by providing me with unequivocal evidence that seeing with the body’s eyes does not establish a real world. The article is entitled, Using the Tongue to Help Blind See, demonstrating how a device called BrainPort enables the blind to see images.

Roger Behm lost his sight at 16, the victim of an inherited disease that destroyed his retinas. Both of his eyes were surgically removed. Now 55, Behm has made himself at home in a sightless world. Three years ago, he slipped a device over his head, turned it on, and was once again able to discern light and dark, shapes and shadows, letters and numbers, and even a rolling golf ball. "I could look down and and see the ball, white on black, and I could see myself swinging my putter," Behm said. "And, of course, I missed. But I could reach down and pick up my ball, like any other sighted person."

The BrainPort relies upon the ability of the human brain to adapt when a source of sensory information such as the eyes are lost and traditional sight is impossible. In this case, the device uses a video camera to translate images into electrical impulses that are sent via the tongue to the brain where portions of the organ devoted to touch and sight work together to turn the information into an image that the blind person can actually see. It takes advantage of groundbreaking work by a UW-Madison scientist that showed the brain will reprogram itself to accept and use different sensory signals — in this case touch instead of sight — to replace signals that can no longer be received due to injury or disease. (Ron Seely, Using the Tongue to Help Blind See, Wisconsin State Journal, Sunday, May 17, 2009, p. A11)

Reading this article was so helpful to me in breaking the bondage of believing that seeing with these eyes establishes a real world. The BrainPort provides an excellent reference point for the Workbook Lessons of A Course in Miracles, particularly in the beginning. This is why Jesus begins his Workbook where he does, Nothing I see means anything.

The reason this is so is that I see nothing, and nothing has no meaning. It is necessary that I recognize this, that I may learn to see. What I think I see now is taking the place of vision. I must let it go by realizing it has no meaning, so that vision may take its place. W-p1.51.1

This is a tough beginning because we take for granted, for granite, that seeing is normal, natural, universal, ordinary—in other words, seeing is believing.

You do not seem to doubt the world you see.
You do not really question what is shown
you through the body's eyes. Nor do you ask
why you believe it, even though you learned
a long while since your senses do deceive.
That you believe them to the last detail
which they report is even stranger, when
you pause to recollect how frequently
they have been faulty witnesses indeed!
Why would you trust them so implicitly?
Why but because of underlying doubt,
which you would hide with show of certainty?
W-p1.151.2

To begin to shake this firm foundation, Jesus links thoughts with images.

My thoughts are images I have made. Whatever I see reflects my thoughts. It is my thoughts that tell me where I am and what I am. The fact that I see a world in which there is suffering and loss and death shows me that I am seeing only the representation of my insane thoughts, and am not allowing my real thoughts to cast their beneficent light on what I see. Yet God's way is sure. The images I have made cannot prevail against Him because it is not my will that they do so. My will is His, and I will place no other gods before Him.
W-p1.53:15

It is so hard to accept that what I see in the world is simply, and profoundly, a projection of my thought-images first formed in my brain, especially since the very beginning I was conditioned to believe that the world is real--"Mommy," "doll," "doggy."

It is so hard to look out through the window right now and see the trees and the grass and the sky and the clouds and the birds and the squirrels and say to myself, “This is not so; this is not real.” It is difficult to realize that this panorama all begins in the dark recesses of my brain where, in fact, no light can really enter.

Over the centuries, catching glimpses of the unreality of the world, we have come up with a number of metaphors:

A sleeping dream
An illusion
The shadows on the walls of Plato's cave
A mirage
A stage play
A movie
Life's but a walking shadow. . . a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. (from Macbeth)
A hologram
A holodeck

These metaphors all tell me that I am seeing only my thought-images being projected out, and what I see is simply their reflection.

In contrast to believing in what the body’s eyes see, Jesus uses emphatic phrases like these, stopping our minds for a moment:

There is no world.

Thoughts are images I have made.

I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein, lies the peace of God.

This is the way William Wordsworth (1770-1850) expresses it, demonstrating that while the infant is learning to connect words and images, he is all the time trailing clouds of glory, coming from God.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
(Ode, Intimations of Reality, lines 60-70)

Seen through the tongue, or the eyes, what we see covers up our connection with God. What Jesus is offering us is the opportunity to shift our faith from our senses to faith in the truth of what we are, the holy sons of God. What is real is seen with vision; what is unreal is formed in our brains, either through the body’s eyes or through the tongue. My goodness! It is the brain that is seeing, usually through the eyes, sometimes through the tongue. Who knows what it will use next. But the brain is not real, only Christ's vision is real.

Reason would tell you that the world you see through eyes that are not yours must make no sense to you. To whom would seeing such as this send back its messages? Surely not you, whose sight is wholly independent of the eyes that look upon the world. If this is not your vision, what can it show to you? The brain cannot interpret what your vision sees. This you would understand. The brain interprets to the body, of which it is a part. But what it says you cannot understand. Yet you have listened to it. And long and hard you tried to understand its messages. When I manage to let go and stop listening to the brain’s interpretation, I am free to hear and see with the Savior’s vision.
T-22.l.2:3-12

Though one can read the science over and over again, it still requires somewhat of a leap of faith to grasp the idea of "seeing" through the tongue. Simply, the patterns of light picked up by the camera are converted by a tiny computer into electrical pulses across 100 stainless steel electrodes. Users say it feels similar to touching a weak battery to your tongue, a bubbly or tingling sensation. The pulses are spatially encoded, meaning the person receiving those signals on the tongue can perceive depth, perspective, size and shape. That information is translated by the brain into images — fuzzy images, because of the low resolution, but images nonetheless. Those who have used the device explain that they perceive the objects in front of them, separate from their own bodies. (Seely, p. A11)

The BrainPort helps me to see (Whoops, notice that we are so ingrained with the idea that seeing is believing that we use “see” as a metaphor for understanding) that I don’t even see only with my eyes. I can see with my tongue as well. This reminds me that when I was talking about this with my wife, Christine, I read to her my working title, “What I Seem to See in the World is Simply a Visible Picture of Neural Activity Taking Place, Invisibly, in the Dark Recesses of my Brain,” and she said immediately, “No, just call it, Stick out your tongue and look at me.”

In the beginning of this essay, I used the phrase “unequivocal evidence,” and I have to chuckle now because it demonstrates again how ingrained it is that we think that seeing could possibly offer proof that there is a real world out there. Ironically, the word “evidence” comes from the Latin vident, “to see” meaning “plain or clear to the sight, or understanding.” Jesus, of course, sees this connection.

The mad illusion will remain awhile
in evidence, for those to look upon
who chose to come, and have not yet rejoiced
to find they were mistaken in their choice.
W-p1.155.3:2

“Equivocal” comes from the Latin equi, “equal” and voc, “voice,” meaning “having two or more interpretations.” However, “unequivocal” means “unambiguous, clear, having only one possible interpretation.” And what is significant for us is that its root meaning is “voice,” reminding us that there is only one Voice, the Voice for God, the Holy Spirit.

Yet you must learn to doubt their evidence
will clear the way to recognize yourself,
and let the Voice for God alone be Judge
of what is worthy of your own belief.
He will not tell you that your brother should
be judged by what your eyes behold in him,
nor what his body's mouth says to your ears,
nor what your fingers' touch reports of him.
He passes by such idle witnesses,
which merely bear false witness to God's Son.
He recognizes only what God loves,
and in the holy light of what He sees
do all the ego's dreams of what you are
vanish before the splendor He beholds.
W-p1.151.7

In summary, this is Joel Goldsmith expressing the continual translation of the visible picture into the reality in his masterpiece, The Infinite Way.

Spiritual illumination may be attained by living constantly in the consciousness of the presence of perfection, by the continual translation of the visible picture into the reality. We are being faced with discordant appearances all through our days and nights, and these must immediately be translated through our understanding of the “new tongue,” the language of Spirit.

Every incident of our daily experience offers fresh opportunities to use our spiritual understanding, and each use of the spiritual faculties results in greater spiritual perception, (the Savior’s vision) which in turn reveals more and more of the light of Truth. “Pray without ceasing. . . . And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Translate the pictures (thought-images) and incidents of daily existence into the new tongue, the language of Spirit, and consciousness will expand until translation occurs without even taking thought. It becomes a habitual state of consciousness, a constant awareness of Truth.

Only in this wise can we find our lives unfolding, harmoniously from the center of our being without taking conscious thought. Instead of our existence being a continual round of “demonstrations,” it becomes the natural, harmonious, joyous unfoldment of good. Instead of repeated efforts to make good come to us, our every good unfolds to view from the depths of our own being without conscious effort, either physical or mental. We are no longer dependent on a person or circumstance, nor even on our personal effort. Spiritual illumination enables us to relax our personal effort and rely more and more on Divinity unfolding and revealing Itself as us. (Joel Goldsmith, The Infinite Way, Marina del Rey, CA., DeVorss & Co., p.43)

And now I find it very helpful to read Lesson 92, Miracles are seen in light, and light and strength are one.

Lesson 92 is primarily in blank verse. I say “primarily” because the first two paragraphs are in prose, and the remaining paragraphs morph into the poetic stanzas of blank verse. From Lesson 91 to 97 Jesus is in the transition of moving from prose to blank verse, and Lesson 98 is entirely in poetic form. Here is Lesson 92.

The idea for today is an extension of the previous one. You do not think of light in terms of strength, and darkness in terms of weakness. That is because your idea of what seeing means is tied up with the body and its eyes and brain. Thus you believe that you can change what you see by putting little bits of glass before your eyes. This is among the many magical beliefs that come from the conviction you are a body, and the body's eyes can see.

You also believe the body's brain can think. If you but understood the nature of thought, you could but laugh at this insane idea. It is as if you thought you held the match that lights the sun and gives it all its warmth; or that you held the world within your hand, securely bound until you let it go. Yet this is no more foolish than to believe the body's eyes can see; the brain can think.

It is God's strength in you that is the light in which you see, as it is His Mind with which you think. His strength denies your weakness. It is your weakness that sees through the body's eyes, peering about in darkness to behold the likeness of itself; the small, the weak, the sickly and the dying, those in need, the helpless and afraid, the sad, the poor, the starving and the joyless. These are seen through eyes that cannot see and cannot bless.

Strength overlooks these things by seeing past
appearances. It keeps its steady gaze
upon the light that lies beyond them.
It unites with light, of which it is a part.
It sees itself. It brings the light in which
your Self appears. In darkness you perceive
a self that is not there.
Strength is the truth about you; weakness is
an idol falsely worshipped and adored
that strength may be dispelled, and darkness rule
where God appointed that there should be light.

Strength comes from truth,
and shines with light its Source has given it;
weakness reflects the darkness of its maker. It is sick
and looks on sickness, which is like itself.
Truth is a savior and can only will
for happiness and peace for everyone.
It gives its strength to everyone who asks,
in limitless supply. It sees that lack in anyone would be
a lack in all. And so it gives its light
that all may see and benefit as one.
Its strength is shared, that it may bring to all
the miracle in which they will unite
in purpose and forgiveness and in love.

Weakness, which looks in darkness, cannot see
a purpose in forgiveness and in love.
It sees all others different from itself,
and nothing in the world that it would share.
It judges and condemns, but does not love.
In darkness it remains to hide itself,
and dreams that it is strong and conquering,
a victor over limitations that
but grow in darkness to enormous size.

It fears and it attacks and hates itself,
and darkness covers everything it sees,
leaving its dreams as fearful as itself.
No miracles are here, but only hate.
It separates itself from what it sees,
while light and strength perceive themselves as one.
The light of strength is not the light you see.
It does not change and flicker and go out.
It does not shift from night to day, and back
to darkness till the morning comes again.

The light of strength is constant, sure as love,
forever glad to give itself away,
because it cannot give but to itself.
No one can ask in vain to share its sight,
and none who enters its abode can leave
without a miracle before his eyes,
and strength and light abiding in his heart.

The strength in you will offer you the light,
and guide your seeing so you do not dwell
on idle shadows that the body's eyes
provide for self-deception. Strength and light
unite in you, and where they meet, your Self
stands ready to embrace you as Its Own.
Such is the meeting place we try today
to find and rest in, for the peace of God
is where your Self, His Son, is waiting now
to meet Itself again, and be as one.

Let us give twenty minutes twice today
to join this meeting. Let yourself be brought
unto your Self. Its strength will be the light
in which the gift of sight is given you.
Leave, then, the dark a little while today,
and we will practice seeing in the light,
closing the body's eyes and asking truth
to show us how to find the meeting place
of self and Self, where light and strength are one.

Morning and evening we will practice thus.
After the morning meeting, we will use
the day in preparation for the time
at night when we will meet again in trust.
Let us repeat as often as we can
the idea for today, and recognize
that we are being introduced to sight,
and led away from darkness to the light
where only miracles can be perceived.

Breathe in, Breathe out: Your Connection with Eternity

This morning, a bright, breezy day in late April, I was sitting on the couch, looking out the window, watching the birds come and go from the feeder laden with black sunflower seeds, and I became aware of my soft breathing. I became increasingly conscious of breathing in and breathing out.

Then I flashed on the brilliance of Michael Brown’s book, The Presence Process: A Healing Journey into Present Moment Awareness. His book engages his reader in a process that enables you to become increasingly aware of each moment. The central part of the process is sitting quietly and connecting your breathing for 15 minutes, twice each day, once just after arising, and once just before going to bed.

We connect our breathing naturally. In other words, we breathe in and out without pausing between our breaths. We breathe gently applying slight effort only to our in-breath. The out-breath is automatic and relaxed. It is useful to visualize a fountain: energy is only required to push the water into the air because gravity will automatically bring it down. Our in-breath is the water being pushed up and our out-breath is the water effortlessly returning to earth. Even though we apply slight effort to our in-breath and relax during our out-breath, it is important to make sure both our in-breath and out-breath are evenly lengthened in duration and that there are absolutely no pauses between them. We must intend to breathe with our inhale and our exhale being one continuous breath--one continual flow. We must not in any way breathe abnormally or attempt to exaggerate our breathing pattern. (Michael Brown, The Presence Process, Namaste Publishing, Vancouver, CA., 2005)

Now I was curious to give this breathing pattern a number, to quantify it. I grabbed a stopwatch and counted the number of times I connected my breathing during one minute: 11 times. At a bare minimum, then, during the course of, say, an 18 hour day, it's 18X60X11=11,880.

This is such a gift because by simply becoming aware of connecting my breathing from time to time as I walk through the day, I am reminded of my Inner Presence; I am reminded that I am the Christ; I am reminded that I am in the world but not of the world. I am of God, His perfect Son, and everything is reminding me of my holiness, my wholeness, my divinity. Here is Jesus expressing this in Lesson 267, My heart is beating in the peace of God.

Surrounding me is all the life that God
created in His Love. It calls to me
in every heartbeat and in every breath;
in every action and in every thought.
Peace fills my heart, and floods my body with
the purpose of forgiveness. Now my mind
is healed, and all I need to save the world
is given me. Each heartbeat brings me peace;
each breath infuses me with strength. I am
a messenger of God, directed by
His Voice, sustained by Him in love, and held
forever quiet and at peace within
His loving Arms. Each heartbeat calls His Name,
and every one is answered by His Voice,
assuring me I am at home in Him.
W-p.2.267.1

His Voice is the Holy Spirit. The root meaning of spirit comes from the Latin, spirare, meaning “to breathe.” The Holy Spirit is the breath of God. When you think about it, our voice is simply breath, exhaling from our lungs, passing through our “voice box,” and shaped into words by our throat, mouth, and lips. The words formed are simply hot air. In His Text, Jesus refers to this as a puff of madness. (T-20.lll.8:4) Are we going to listen to this puff, our feeble voice, or attend to the holy breath of God?

Amazing, this is from today's lesson.

Let my own feeble voice be still, and let
me hear the mighty Voice for Truth Itself
assure me that I am God's perfect Son.
W-p.1.118.2:2

The moment I become aware of my breathing, I slip into present moment awareness, receptive to the Holy Spirit, the Voice for God. In this state of awareness, all thoughts that have no source in reality fall away, and I experience forgiveness.

Peace fills my heart, and floods my body with
the purpose of forgiveness.

~~~Dear Reader, look up from this writing and breathe in, breathe out.

This opportunity awaits me each time I remember to connect my breathing, and this opportunity is available to me all during the day. How often do I avail myself of this chance to step out of time into eternity each minute, each hour of the day? Do I become aware once, twice, 15 times? 100? Yet, look at how simple it is to give myself this gift.

The little breath of eternity that runs through time like golden light is all the same; nothing before it, nothing afterwards.
T-20.lV.5:8

This Child in you does not ask for more than just a few
instants of respite; just an interval
in which He can return to breathe again
the holy air that fills His Father's house.
You are His home as well. He will return.
But give Him just a little time to be
Himself, within the peace that is His home,
resting in silence and in peace and love.
W-p.1.182.5:4-7

Lesson 97 declares I am spirit.

You are the spirit in whose mind abides
the miracle in which all time stands still;
the miracle in which a minute spent
in using these ideas becomes a time
that has no limit and that has no end.
Give, then, these minutes willingly, and count
on Him Who promised to lay timelessness
beside them. He will offer all His strength
to every little effort that you make.
Give him the minutes which He needs today,
to help you understand with Him you are
the spirit that abides in Him, and that
calls through His Voice to every living thing;
offers His sight to everyone who asks;
replaces error with the simple truth.
W-p1.97.4

Give Him the minutes. . .a minute spent. . .

This is a holy instant, but a holy instant is not simply an interval between the past and the future, for that would make it of time. The word interval derives from the Latin, inter, meaning "between," and vallum, meaning "wall." This is a temporal and spatial reference, whereas a holy instant takes you out of time and space, being the state of mind of the peace of God.

In the holy instant nothing happens that has not always been. Only the veil that has been drawn across reality is lifted. Nothing has changed. Yet the awareness of changelessness comes swiftly as the veil of time is pushed aside.
T-15.Vl.6:1-4

God is with me. He is my Source of life,
the life within, the air I breathe, the food
by which I am sustained, the water which
renews and cleanses me.
W-pll.222.1:1-4

When you have learned how to decide with God, all decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort, and you will be led as gently as if you were being carried down a quiet path in summer. Only your own volition seems to make deciding hard. The Holy Spirit will not delay in answering your every question what to do. He knows. And He will tell you, and then do it for you. You who are tired will find this is more restful than sleep.
T-14.IV.6:1-7

Breathe in and breathe out, Dear Reader, and connect with eternity.

Learning to make a choice between seeing through the body's eyes, or seeing through the eyes of Christ: The 20 Minute Book

Last night I dreamed that a close friend asked me to do something one morning, and I said, “Yes,” thinking it would just take a moment, but it turned out that the task went on and on and on. I became very frustrated because I had another task that I was focused on, in fact, the task was to take the entire morning to write this essay. When the frustration became too intense, I began to argue about it, and the argument went on and on, and I felt our friendship slipping away.

And then I woke up! Yes, it was a classic moment. I was so relieved that it was a dream, that it was not so.

What is so is that the dream serves as a perfect introduction to this essay, reminding us that this self we made in the waking dream is absolutely no different than the self projecting the sleeping dream. When I awaken to the truth of my True Self, the false self and its dream simply vanish.

Let’s start at the beginning, reminding ourselves that we are as God created us, not as we made ourselves. We are a Thought of God.

"God created man in his own image and likeness" is correct in meaning, but the words are open to considerable misinterpretation. This is avoided, however, if "image" is understood to mean "thought," and "likeness" is taken as "of a like quality." God DID create the Son in His own Thought, and of a quality like to His own. There IS nothing else.

The original name for "thought" and "word" was the same. The quotation should read "In the beginning was the thought, and the thought was with God, and the thought WAS God." How beautiful indeed are the thoughts of God, who live in His light. Your worth is beyond perception because it is beyond doubt. A Course in Miracles by Jesus Christ (Urtext), pp.72,73

While walking this earth in this body, my salvation depends on my recognition that my false self is making a dream, while all the time, I am in the world, but not of the world, being a Thought of God. This is the Thought that I AM before coming into this world, while I am in the world, and after I leave.

Salvation requires the acceptance of but one thought;--you are as God created you, not what you made of yourself. Whatever evil you may think you did, you are as God created you. Whatever mistakes you made, the truth about you is unchanged. Creation is eternal and unalterable. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. You are and will forever be exactly as you were created. Light and joy and peace abide in you because God put them there. W-p.1.93.7

Obviously, there is one problem and one solution. The problem is that I think I made my self.

The self you made is not the Son of God. Therefore, this self does not exist at all. And anything it seems to do and think means nothing. It is neither bad nor good. It is unreal, and nothing more than that. It does not battle with the Son of God. It does not hurt him, nor attack his peace. It has not changed creation, nor reduced eternal sinlessness to sin, and love to hate. What power can this self you made possess, when it would contradict the Will of God? W-p.1.93.5

My self in this waking dream is as unreal as my self in my sleeping dream. When I wake up to this fact, moment to moment, my self does not exist at all.

Since we are as God created us-- mind, Thought, word, our minds choose moment to moment what we experience, what our condition is. This is our awareness in each moment, our consciousness.

Consciousness is the state that induces action. You are free to believe what you choose, and what you do attets to what you believe. T-1.11.1:8,9

Your mind is the means by which you determine your own condition, because mind is the mechanism of decision. It is the power by which you separate or join, and experience pain or joy accordingly. T-8.1v.5:7,8


The word “decision” comes from the Latin, decidere, meaning “to cut off.” When you decide to ally with the false self, you cut off your awareness of your True Self; when you decide join with your True Self, you cut off your awareness of your false self.

Obviously, the first step is to learn that we even have a decision to make. All along we were conditioned to believe that we were victims of the events happening around us, and our only choice was how to react. When we looked to those teaching us how to be in this world, no one demonstrated to us that we could be responsive, not reactive, that seeing is not believing. That is why Jesus begins His Lessons where He does.

Nothing I see means anything.

Right in the beginning, Jesus takes away from us our habit of thinking that seeing is believing. In fact, just in case we do not get it the first time through, he reviews the first 50 lessons, beginning with Lesson 51.

Nothing I See Means Anything.

The reason this is so is that I see nothing, and nothing has no meaning. It is necessary that I recognize this, that I may learn to see. What I think I see now is taking the place of vision. I must let it go by realizing it has no meaning, so that vision may take its place.

I find it extremely helpful to read the review of the first fifty lessons, The 20 Minute Book, by taking a very hard look at the reference for each of the pronouns, I or You, serving as subjects. Here is an example:

The reason this is so is that I see nothing, and nothing has no meaning.

Seeing through the eyes of my false self is a condition my mind chose for a moment. That part of the mind is represented by an italicized I, a shaky construct.

It is necessary that I recognize this, that I may learn to see.

This is another part of the mind that can choose, represented by a regular I, a regulatory mechanism, the mechanism of decision. In the first two sentences of His first Lesson, Jesus demonstrates that we have choice. This I is not the false self, or the True Self, it is consciousness in the act of recognition.

What I think I see now is taking the place of vision.

The regular I ( I think) recognizes it made a choice (I see now) to see through the body’s eyes.

I must let it go by realizing it has no meaning, so that vision may take its place.

This part of the mind, (I must) the mechanism of decision, cuts away meaninglessness, so that it can be replaced by vision.

This teaches me sentence after sentence, lesson after lesson, that I seem to have choice. Of course, we only seem to have choice, in fact, we are as God created us, and Thank God, we have no real choice in the matter. But overcoming the seeming, the dreaming, is a big step in the recognition of our True Selves, and overcoming the seeming is the purpose of the Workbook.

It is almost as if the mechanism of decision can be personified as looking through either the body’s eyes, or the eyes of Christ.

When he looks through the body’s eyes, he is allied with his false self, unaware of another way of seeing. When he looks through the eyes of Christ, he is joined, aligned, with his True Self, unaware of another way of seeing.

In Lesson 94, I am as God created me, it’s as if Jesus is giving you, the mechanism of decision, a pep talk to decide for Self.

Now try to reach the Son of God in you. This is the Self that never sinned, nor made an image to replace reality. This is the Self that never left Its home in God to walk the world uncertainly. This is the Self that knows no fear, nor could conceive of loss or suffering or death.

Nothing is required of you to reach this goal except to lay all idols and self-images aside; go past the list of attributes, both good and bad, you have ascribed to yourself; and wait in silent expectancy for the truth. God has Himself promised that it will be revealed to all who ask for it. You are asking now. You cannot fail because He cannot fail. W-p1. 94.5,6

Here is a description of the you looking through the ego’s eyes, allying with the ego.

You see yourself as a ridiculous parody on God's creation; weak, vicious, ugly and sinful, miserable and beset with pain. Such is your version of yourself; a self divided into many warring parts, separate from God, and tenuously held together by its erratic and capricious maker, to which you pray. It does not hear your prayers, for it is deaf. It does not see the oneness in you, for it is blind. It does not understand you are the Son of God, for it is senseless and understands nothing. W-p1.95.2

The following is a description of you looking through the eyes of Christ, joining with your True Self, represented by a bold you.

You are one Self, in perfect harmony with all there is, and all that there will be. You are one Self, the holy Son of God, united with your brothers in that Self; united with your Father in His Will. Feel this one Self in you, and let It shine away all your illusions and your doubts. This is your Self, the Son of God Himself, sinless as Its Creator, with His strength within you and His Love forever yours. You are one Self, and it is given you to feel this Self within you, and to cast all your illusions out of the one Mind that is this Self, the holy truth in you. W-p1.95.13

Here is a graphic representation of the three I’s:

I, The mechanism of decision


I,The False Self I, The True Self

The regular I represents the mechanism of decision, the recognition that we have choice.

The italicized I represents the alliance with the false self.

The bold I represents the alignment, the joining, with the True Self.

In his book, The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle also refers to these different parts of the mind, describing his awakening experience.

One night not long after my twenty-ninth birthday, I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absolute dread. I had woken up with such a feeling many times before, but this time it was more intense than it had ever been. The silence of the night, the vague outlines of the furniture in the dark room, the distant noise of a passing train-- everything felt so alien, so hostile, and so utterly meaningless that it created in me a deep loathing of the world. "I cannot live with myself any longer." This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. " Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the 'I' and the 'self' that 'I cannot live with." "Maybe," I thought, "only one of them is real." (Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, Namaste Press, Vancourver, CA., 1999) pp. 3,4

In the context of this post, Tolle is positing the three parts of the mind I have been referring to.

" Am I (the mechanism of decision) one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the 'I' (the ego) and the 'self' (the True Self) that 'I' cannot live with." "Maybe," I thought, "only one of them is real." And the I joins with the True Self, becoming I.

And now we can read through the review of the first 50 lessons, becoming increasingly aware that we have choice by carefully verifying the reference points for each pronoun serving as subject.

I Have Given What I See All The Meaning It Has For Me.

I have judged everything I look upon, and it is this and only this I see. This is not vision. It is merely an illusion of reality, because my judgments have been made quite apart from reality. I am willing to recognize the lack of validity in my judgments, because I want to see. My judgments have hurt me, and I do not want to see according to them.
LESSON 2

This identification of the references for the pronouns empowers me to realize that I have choice: I have judged, I am willing, I want to see, and so forth.

I Do Not Understand Anything I See.

How could I understand what I see when I have judged it amiss? What I see is the projection of my own errors of thought. I do not understand what I see because it is not understandable. There is no sense in trying to understand it. But there is every reason to let it go, and make room for what can be seen and understood and loved. I can exchange what I see now for this merely by being willing to do so. Is not this a better choice than the one I made before?
LESSON 3

These Thoughts Do Not Mean Anything.

The thoughts of which I am aware do not mean anything because I am trying to think without God. What I call “my” thoughts are not my real thoughts. My real thoughts are the thoughts I think with God.

This (I think with God) is the joining of the mechanism of decision with the True Self, represented by the bold I.

I am not aware of them because I have made my thoughts to take their place. I am willing to recognize that my thoughts do not mean anything, and to let them go. I choose to have them be replaced by what they were intended to replace. My thoughts are meaningless, but all creation lies in the thoughts I think with God.
LESSON 4

I Am Never Upset For The Reason I Think.

I am never upset for the reason I think because I am constantly trying to justify my thoughts. I am constantly trying to make them true. I make all things my enemies, so that my anger is justified and my attacks are warranted. I have not realized how much I have misused everything I see by assigning this role to it. I have done this to defend a thought system that has hurt me, and that I no longer want. I am willing to let it go.
LESSON 5

I Am Upset Because I See What Is Not There.

Reality is never frightening. It is impossible that it could upset me. Reality brings only perfect peace. When I am upset, it is always because I have replaced reality with illusions I made up. The illusions are upsetting because I have given them reality, and thus regard reality as an illusion. Nothing in God’s creation is affected in any way by this confusion of mine. I am always upset by nothing.
LESSON 6

I See Only The Past.

As I look about, I condemn the world I look upon. I call this seeing. I hold the past against everyone and everything, making them my enemies. When I have forgiven myself and remembered Who I am, I will bless everyone and everything I see. There will be no past, and therefore no enemies. And I will look with love on all that I failed to see before.
LESSON 7

Here we are, only in Lesson 7, and already Jesus has us sinking into the peace of joining with our True Self. Only Oneness is in our experience, as we boldly unite with all things, seeing through the eyes of Christ.

My Mind Is Preoccupied With Past Thoughts.

I see only my own thoughts, and my mind is preoccupied with the past. What, then, can I see as it is? Let me remember that I look on the past to prevent the present from dawning on my mind. Let me understand that I am trying to use time against God. Let me learn to give the past away, realizing that in so doing I am giving up nothing.
LESSON 8

I See Nothing As It Is Now. If I see nothing as it is now, it can truly be said that I see nothing. I can see only what is now.

This is a statement of fact. Seeing through the eyes of Christ, I can see only what is now. Now is not an interval between the past and the future; now is the state of mind of the peace of God.

The choice is not whether to see the past or the present; the choice is merely whether to see or not. What I have chosen to see has cost me vision. Now I would choose again, that I may see.
LESSON 9

My Thoughts Do Not Mean Anything.

I have no private thoughts. Yet it is only private thoughts of which I am aware. What can these thoughts mean? They do not exist, and so they mean nothing. Yet my mind is part of creation and part of its Creator. Would I not rather join the thinking of the universe than to obscure all that is really mine with my pitiful and meaningless “private” thoughts?
LESSON 10

My Meaningless Thoughts Are Showing Me A Meaningless World.

Since the thoughts of which I am aware do not mean anything, the world that pictures them can have no meaning. What is producing this world is insane, and so is what it produces. Reality is not insane, and I have real thoughts as well as insane ones. I can therefore see a real world, if I look to my real thoughts as my guide for seeing.
LESSON 11

I Am Upset Because I See A Meaningless World.

Insane thoughts are upsetting. They produce a world in which there is no order anywhere. Only chaos rules a world that represents chaotic thinking, and chaos has no laws. I cannot live in peace in such a world. I am grateful that this world is not real, and that I need not see it at all unless I choose to value it. And I do not choose to value what is totally insane and has no meaning.
LESSON 12

This is Lesson 12, and already the I, mind, consciousness, awareness, is making a strong declaration of standing up for itself.

A Meaningless World Engenders Fear.

The totally insane engenders fear because it is completely undependable, and offers no grounds for trust. Nothing in madness is dependable. It holds out no safety and no hope. But such a world is not real. I have given it the illusion of reality, and have suffered from my belief in it. Now I choose to withdraw this belief, and place my trust in reality. In choosing this, I will escape all the effects of the world of fear, because I am acknowledging that it does not exist.
LESSON 13

God Did Not Create A Meaningless World.

How can a meaningless world exist if God did not create it? He is the Source of all meaning, and everything that is real is in His Mind. It is in my mind too, because He created it with me. Why should I continue to suffer from the effects of my own insane thoughts, when the perfection of creation is my home? Let me remember the power of my decision, and recognize where I really abide.
LESSON 14

As the mechanism of decision, I am determined or recognize my Home, yes I will.

My Thoughts Are Images That I Have Made.

Whatever I see reflects my thoughts. It is my thoughts that tell me where I am and what I am. The fact that I see a world in which there is suffering and loss and death shows me that I am seeing only the representation of my insane thoughts, and am not allowing my real thoughts to cast their beneficent light on what I see. Yet God’s way is sure. The images I have made cannot prevail against Him because it is not my will that they do so. My will is His, and I will place no other gods before Him.
LESSON 15

I Have No Neutral Thoughts.

Neutral thoughts are impossible because all thoughts have power. They will either make a false world or lead me to the real one. But thoughts cannot be without effects. As the world I see arises from my thinking errors, so will the real world rise before my eyes as I let my errors be corrected. My thoughts cannot be neither true nor false. They must be one or the other. What I see shows me which they are.
LESSON 16

I See No Neutral Things.

What I see witnesses to what I think. If I did not think I would not exist, because life is thought. Let me look on the world I see as the representation of my own state of mind. I know that my state of mind can change. And so I also know the world I see can change as well.
LESSON 17

This is the awareness of the mechanism of decision poised in the middle of choosing to see through the eyes of either the false self, or the True Self, knowing that he will see outside what is first inside.

I Am Not Alone In Experiencing The Effects Of My Seeing.

If I have no private thoughts, I cannot see a private world. Even the mad idea of separation had to be shared before it could form the basis of the world I see. Yet that sharing was a sharing of nothing. I can also call upon my real thoughts, which share everything with everyone. As my thoughts of separation call to the separation thoughts of others, so my real thoughts awaken the real thoughts in them. And the world my real thoughts show me will dawn on their sight as well as mine.
LESSON 18

I Am Not Alone In Experiencing The Effects Of My Thoughts.

I am alone in nothing. Everything I think or say or do teaches all the universe. A Son of God cannot think or speak or act in vain. He cannot be alone in anything. It is therefore in my power to change every mind along with mine, for mine is the power of God.
LESSON 19

I Am Determined To See.

Recognizing the shared nature of my thoughts, I am determined to see. I would look upon the witnesses that show me the thinking of the world has been changed. I would behold the proof that what has been done through me has enabled love to replace fear, laughter to replace tears, and abundance to replace loss. I would look upon the real world, and let it teach me that my will and the Will of God are one.
LESSON 20

I would demonstrates the intention of my mind to join with my True Self.

I Am Determined To See Things Differently.

What I see now are but signs of disease, disaster and death. This cannot be what God created for His beloved Son. The very fact that I see such things is proof that I do not understand God. Therefore I also do not understand His Son. What I see tells me that I do not know who I am. I am determined to see the witnesses to the truth in me, rather than those which show me an illusion of myself.
LESSON 21

What I See Is A Form Of Vengeance.

The world I see is hardly the representation of loving thoughts. It is a picture of attack on everything by everything. It is anything but a reflection of the Love of God and the love of His Son. It is my own attack thoughts that give rise to this picture. My loving thoughts will save me from this perception of the world, and give me the peace God intended me to have.
LESSON 22

I Can Escape From This World By Giving Up Attack Thoughts.

Herein lies salvation, and nowhere else. Without attack thoughts I could not see a world of attack. As forgiveness allows love to return to my awareness, I will see a world of peace and safety and joy. And it is this I choose to see, in place of what I look on now.
LESSON 23

I Do Not Perceive My Own Best Interests.

How could I recognize my own best interests when I do not know who I am? What I think are my best interests would merely bind me closer to the world of illusions. I am willing to follow the Guide God has given me to find out what my own best interests are, recognizing that I cannot perceive them by myself.
LESSON 24

I Do Not Know What Anything Is For.

To me, the purpose of everything is to prove that my illusions about myself are real. It is for this purpose that I attempt to use everyone and everything. It is for this that I believe the world is for. Therefore I do not recognize its real purpose. The purpose I have given the world has led to a frightening picture of it. Let me open my mind to the world’s real purpose by withdrawing the one I have given it, and learning the truth about it.
LESSON 25

My Attack Thoughts Are Attacking My Invulnerability.

How can I know who I am when I see myself as under constant attack? Pain, illness, loss, age and death seem to threaten me. All my hopes and wishes and plans appear to be at the mercy of a world I cannot control. Yet perfect security and complete fulfillment are my inheritance. I have tried to give my inheritance away in exchange for the world I see. But God has kept my inheritance safe for me. My own real thoughts will teach me what it is.
LESSON 26

Above All Else I Want To See.

Recognizing that what I see reflects what I think I am, I realize that vision is my greatest need. The world I see attests to the fearful nature of the self image I have made. If I would remember who I am, it is essential that I let this image of myself go. As it is replaced by truth, vision will surely be given me. And with this vision, I will look upon the world and on myself with charity and love.
LESSON 27

The bold I, the Self, will look upon the world.


Above All Else I Want To See Differently.

The world I see holds my fearful self-image in place, and guarantees its continuance. While I see the world as I see it now, truth cannot enter my awareness. I would let the door behind this world be opened for me, that I may look past it to the world that reflects the Love of God.
LESSON 28

God Is In Everything I See.

Behind every image I have made, the truth remains unchanged. Behind every veil I have drawn across the face of love, its light remains undimmed. Beyond all my insane wishes is my will, united with the Will of my Father. God is still everywhere and in every-thing forever. And we who are part of Him will yet look past all appearances, and recognize the truth beyond them all.
LESSON 29

God Is In Everything I See Because God Is In My Mind.

In my own mind, behind all my insane thoughts of separation and attack, is the knowledge that all is one forever. I have not lost the knowledge of Who I am because I have forgotten it. It has been kept for me in the Mind of God, Who has not left His Thoughts. And I, who am among them, am one with them and one with Him.
LESSON 30

I Am Not The Victim Of The World I See.

How can I be the victim of a world that can be completely undone if I so choose? My chains are loosened. I can drop them off merely by desiring to do so. The prison door is open. I can leave simply by walking out. Nothing holds me in this world. Only my wish to stay keeps me a prisoner. I would give up my insane wishes and walk into the sunlight at last.
LESSON 31

I Have Invented The World I See.

I made up the prison in which I see myself. All I need do is recognize this and I am free. I have deluded myself into believing it is possible to imprison the Son of God. I was bitterly mistaken in this belief, which I no longer want. The Son of God must be forever free. He is as God created him, and not what I would make of him. He is where God would have him be, and not where I thought to hold him prisoner.
LESSON 32

There Is Another Way Of Looking At The World.

Since the purpose of the world is not the one I ascribed to it, there must be another way of looking at it. I see everything upside down, and my thoughts are the opposite of truth. I see the world as a prison for God’s Son. It must be, then, that the world is really a place where he can be set free. I would look upon the world as it is, and see it as a place where the Son of God finds his freedom.
LESSON 33

I Could See Peace Instead Of This.

When I see the world as a place of freedom, I realize that it reflects the laws of God instead of the rules I made up for it to obey. I will understand that peace, not war, abides in it. And I will perceive that peace also abides in the hearts of all who share this place with me.
LESSON 34

I will perceive and I will understand. . .the future tense indicates a condition when the regular I can choose for peace.

My Mind Is Part Of God’s. I Am Very Holy.

The bold I is now, in this moment of recognition, very Holy. As I share the peace of the world with my brothers, I begin to understand that this peace comes from deep within myself. The world I look upon has taken on the light of my forgiveness, and shines forgiveness back at me. In this light I begin to see what my illusions about myself kept hidden. I begin to understand the holiness of all living things, including myself, and their oneness with me.
LESSON 35

The regular I is beginning to join with the True Self.

My Holiness Envelops Everything I See. From my holiness does the perception of the real world come. Having forgiven, I no longer see myself as guilty. I can accept the innocence that is the truth about me. Seen through understanding eyes, the holiness of the world is all I see, for I can picture only the thoughts I hold about myself.
LESSON 36

I boldly see now; the regular I can picture, meaning I have choice.

My Holiness Blesses The World.

The perception of my holiness does not bless me alone. Everyone and everything I see in its light shares in the joy it brings to me. There is nothing that is apart from this joy, because there is nothing that does not share my holiness. As I recognize my holiness, so does the holiness of the world shine forth for everyone to see.
LESSON 37

There Is Nothing My Holiness Cannot Do.

My holiness is unlimited in its power to heal, because it is unlimited in its power to save. What is there to be saved from except illusions? And what are all illusions except false ideas about myself? My holiness undoes them all by asserting the truth about me. In the presence of my holiness, which I share with God Himself, all idols vanish.
LESSON 38

My Holiness Is My Salvation.

Since my holiness saves me from all guilt, recognizing my holiness is recognizing my salvation. It is also recognizing the salvation of the world. Once I have accepted my holiness, nothing can make me afraid. And because I am unafraid, everyone must share in my understanding, which is the gift of God to me and to the world.
LESSON 39

I Am Blessed As A Son Of God.

Herein lies my claim to all good and only good. I am blessed as a Son of God. All good things are mine, because God intended them for me. I cannot suffer any loss or deprivation or pain because of Who I am. My Father supports me, protects me, and directs me in all things. His care for me is infinite, and is with me forever. I am eternally blessed as His
Son.
LESSON 40

God Goes With Me Wherever I Go.

How can I be alone when God always goes with me? How can I be doubtful and unsure of myself when perfect certainty abides in Him? How can I be disturbed by anything when He rests in me in absolute peace? How can I suffer when love and joy surround me through Him? Let me not cherish illusions about myself. I am perfect because God goes with me wherever I go.
LESSON 41

The first four questions starting with "How" indicate that the regular I is asking himself a question. The bold I indicates joining in pefection.

God Is My Strength. Vision Is His Gift.

Let me not look to my own eyes to see today. Let me be willing to exchange my pitiful illusion of seeing for the vision that is given by God. Christ’s vision is His gift, and He has given it to me. Let me call upon this gift today, so that this day may help me to understand eternity.
LESSON 42

God Is My Source. I Cannot See Apart From Him.

I can see what God wants me to see. I cannot see anything else. Beyond His Will lie only illusions. It is these I choose when I think I can see apart from Him. It is these I choose when I try to see through the body’s eyes. Yet the vision of Christ has been given me to replace them. It is through this vision that I choose to see.
LESSON 43

God Is The Light In Which I See.

I cannot see in darkness. God is the only light. Therefore, if I am to see, it must be through Him. I have tried to define what seeing is, and I have been wrong. Now it is given me to understand that God is the light in which I see. Let me welcome vision and the happy world it will show me.
LESSON 44

God Is The Mind With Which I Think.

I have no thoughts I do not share with God. I have no thoughts apart from Him, because I have no mind apart from His. As part of His Mind, my thoughts are His and His Thoughts are mine.
LESSON 45

God Is The Love In Which I Forgive.

God does not forgive because He has never condemned. The blameless cannot blame, and those who have accepted their innocence see nothing to forgive. Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God’s Love on earth. It will bring me near enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me up to Him.
LESSON 46

God Is The Strength In Which I Trust.

It is not my own strength through which I forgive. It is through the strength of God in me, which I am remembering as I forgive. As I begin to see, I recognize His reflection on earth. I forgive all things because I feel the stirring of His strength in me. And I begin to remember the Love I chose to forget, but Which has not forgotten me.
LESSON 47

Forgiving is joining.

There Is Nothing To Fear.

How safe the world will look to me when I can see it! It will not look anything like what I imagine I see now. Everyone and everything I see will lean toward me to bless me. I will recognize in everyone my dearest Friend. What could there be to fear in a world that I have forgiven, and that has forgiven me?
LESSON 48

God’s Voice Speaks To Me All Through The Day.

There is not a moment in which God’s Voice ceases to call on my forgiveness to save me. There is not a moment in which His Voice fails to direct my thoughts, guide my actions and lead my feet. I am walking steadily on toward truth. There is nowhere else I can go, because God’s Voice is the only voice and the only guide that has been given to His Son.
LESSON 49

I Am Sustained By The Love Of God.

As I listen to God’s Voice, I am sustained by His Love. As I open my eyes, His Love lights up the world for me to see. As I forgive, His Love reminds me that His Son is sinless. And as I look upon the world with the vision He has given me, I remember that I am His Son.
LESSON 50

Finally, here is Eckhart Tolle again.

I understood that the intense pressure of suffering that night must have forced my consciousness to withdraw from its identification with the unhappy and deeply fearful self, which is ultimately a fiction of the mind. This withdrawal must have been so complete that this false, suffering self immediately collapsed, just as if a plug had been pulled out of an inflatable toy. What was left then was my true nature as the ever-present I am: consciousness in its pure state prior to identification with form. (Tolle, p. 5)

Master Teacher in his video, The Power of Now In The Resurrection and Teleportation of Your Body, refers often to Tolle. To see a ten-minute preview of this video, please click here.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 and The Holy Instant

For anyone who has learned to perceive truly through A Course in Miracles, it is no surprise that the Course provides a framework for all of our life experiences. In His Introduction to the Workbook, Jesus says:

If true perception has been achieved in connection with any person, situation or event, total transfer to everyone and everything is certain. W-p1.Intro.5:2

This makes it possible to demonstrate that Shakespeare’s true intent in his sonnet is absolutely consistent with the Course.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

The best way for me to approach the meaning of this sonnet is to recognize who is speaking to whom. The speaker is addressing his lover who is saying, basically, you did me wrong by not meeting my demands of romantic love, the requirements of a special relationship. You impeded its fullest development.

Right in the beginning of the sonnet, the speaker shifts the argument for a special relationship to a higher level, the marriage of true minds, a holy relationship.


Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments.

Shakespeare calls his lover's vague accusations impediments. The word impediment means “to check our progress, to strike against our feet,” coming from the Latin pedis, meaning “foot.” The speaker is saying, I will not allow the admittance of this judgment into my mind to prevent me from the awareness that love is one, the marriage of true minds.

That love is one is echoed in this passage from the Course:

Perhaps you think that different kinds of
love are possible. Perhaps you think there is
a kind of love for this, a kind for that;
a way of loving one, another way
of loving still another. Love is one.
It has no separate parts and no degrees;
no kinds nor levels, no divergencies
and no distinctions. It is like itself,
unchanged throughout.
W-p.1.127.1:1-5

Experiencing this oneness is the holy instant.

The holy instant is a time in which you receive and give perfect communication. This means, however, that it is a time in which your mind is open, both to receive and give. It is the recognition that all minds are in communication. It therefore seeks to change nothing, but merely to accept everything. T-15.lV.6:5-8

The holy instant is the Holy Spirit's most useful learning device for teaching you love's meaning. For its purpose is to suspend judgment entirely. Judgment always rests on the past, for past experience is the basis on which you judge. Judgment becomes impossible without the past, for without it you do not understand anything. T-15.V.1:1-4

Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:

It never alters with
a person or a circumstance. It is
the Heart of God, and also of His Son.

Love's meaning is obscure to anyone
who thinks that love can change. He does not see
that changing love must be impossible.
And thus he thinks that he can love at times,
and hate at other times. He also thinks
that love can be bestowed on one, and yet
remain itself although it is
withheld from others. To believe these things
of love is not to understand it. If it could
make such distinctions, it would have to judge
between the righteous and the sinner, and
perceive the Son of God in separate parts.
W-p1.127.2

The speaker remains steadfast in his awareness of total love, the marriage of true minds, recognizing that this love does not alter, and he will not bend with his lover to remove that which is not real. His beloved is looking for certainty in specialness. The following passage is particularly powerful if you imagine Jesus addressing the lover expressing grievances.

You cannot love parts of reality and understand what love means. If you would love unlike to God, Who knows no special love, how can you understand it? To believe that special relationships, with special love, can offer you salvation is the belief that separation is salvation. For it is the complete equality of the Atonement in which salvation lies. How can you decide that special aspects of the Sonship can give you more than others? The past has taught you this. Yet the holy instant teaches you it is not so. T-15.V.3

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

This expresses the speaker’s constancy to the marriage of true minds in contrast to altering or bending or removing. To illustrate this constancy Shakespeare uses the metaphor of the Northern Star that over the centuries has provided an ever-fixed mark for mariners, enabling them to orient themselves on the dark ocean, sailing their barks, their boats. Although the distance between the Northern Star and your boat can be measured, his height be taken, its value to mariners is immeasurable, having saved an untold number of lives throughout the generations.

This ever-fixed mark is like a touch of Heaven.

Everyone on earth has formed special relationships, and although this is not so in Heaven, the Holy Spirit knows how to bring a touch of Heaven to them here. In the holy instant no one is special, for your personal needs intrude on no one to make your brothers seem different. Without the values from the past, you would see them all the same and like yourself. Nor would you see any separation between yourself and them. In the holy instant, you see in each relationship what it will be when you perceive only the present. T-15.V.8

The speaker is capable of bringing a touch of Heaven to their special relationship, but his lover is incapable.

Shakespeare also uses this metaphor to express Caesar’s constancy in his play, Julius Caesar. In the Senate on the Ides of March, as the senators and conspirators press in on Caesar, presenting their petitions, he becomes angry and declares that he will not be moved by their pleading, these couchings and these lowly courtesies, as an ordinary man might be. He declares that he is constant.

I could be well moved, if I were as you:
If I could pray to move, prayers would move me:
But I am constant as the northern star,
Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
The skies are painted with unnumber'd sparks,
They are all fire and every one doth shine,
But there's but one in all doth hold his place:
So in the world.
Julius Caesar.3.1:58-66

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Because of guilt, all special relationships have elements of fear in them. This is why they shift and change so frequently. They are not based on changeless love alone. And love, where fear has entered, cannot be depended on because it is not perfect. In His function as Interpreter of what you made, the Holy Spirit uses special relationships, which you have chosen to support the ego, as learning experiences that point to truth. Under His teaching, every relationship becomes a lesson in love. T-15.V.4

Special relationships are based on things as they appear to be in time and space, and a love based on these appearances, being Time’s fool, vanishes like men before the Grim Reaper.

The ego's use of relationships is so fragmented that it frequently goes even farther; one part of one aspect suits its purposes, while it prefers different parts of another aspect. Thus does it assemble reality to its own capricious liking, offering for your seeking a picture whose likeness does not exist. For there is nothing in Heaven or earth that it resembles, and so, however much you seek for its reality, you cannot find it because it is not real. T-15.V.7

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

There is no love but God's, and all of love
is His. There is no other principle
that rules where love is not. Love is a law
without an opposite. Its wholeness is
the power holding everything as one,
the link between the Father and the Son
which holds Them Both forever as the same.
W-p1.127.3:5-8

If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

In the couplet, the speaker asserts that he is so sure of what he has just expressed about the nature of the marriage of true minds, that if anyone can prove him wrong, then he never wrote and no one ever loved. This assertion places his lover in an untenable position, knowing that the speaker has written and that others have loved.

To this point, my emphasis has been on the content of the sonnet, but I would be remiss if I did not point out how the meaning of the sonnet is an exquisite blend of content and form, sense and sound, structure and meaning. Shakespeare gave himself the task of both expressing his meaning completely, and following the demands of this particular structure:

1) The sonnet will consist of three sets of four lines, or quatrains, and end with a rhyming couplet.

2) The quatrains will rhyme in a particular pattern. The convention is to assign each rhyme a letter of the alphabet, starting with “a.”

Quatrain 1: a, minds, b, love, a, finds, b, remove
Quatrain 2: c, mark, d, shaken, c, bark, d, taken
Quatrain 3: e, cheeks, f, come, e, weeks, f, doom
Rhyming couplet: g, proved, g, loved

3) The rhythm will be iambic pentameter, meaning five sets of iambs, an iamb is: slack STRESS.

let ME/ not TO/ the MAR/ riage OF/ true MINDS

Shakespeare was a consummate artist in blending content and form, posturing our voices to experience the full meaning of his intent. For example, in the first line of the sonnet he emphasizes ME, from the very beginning contrasting his constancy to the Holy Instant with the young man’s inconstancy, and emphasizing MINDS, not bodies. He is declaring that he will not allow his awareness to dwell on thoughts that prevent him from experiencing the joining of their minds.

As we saw in the passage from Julius Caesar, this also the rhythm of his thirty-seven plays:

but I am CON stant AS the NOR thern STAR

In His Course, Jesus exquisitely postures our voices as we say His words in our minds. In the Text, Chapters 26-31, and in the Workbook, Lessons 99-365 are written in blank verse. Even as we read these passages in prose form, the sheer poetry of His unworldly masterpiece flows on our breaths carrying the words, commingling with the beating of our hearts:

the HUSH of HEAV en HOLDS my HEART to DAY



Please take a look my ten-minute video where I briefly demonstrate how Jesus postures our voices by using blank verse. Go to my web site and click on the title, "The Sheer Poetry of A Course in Miracles." Click here.

Hand in Glove: The Presence Process and A Course in Miracles

I first came across A Course in Miracles in the late fall of 1986. Christine persuaded me to go with her to a Meditation Class that met Sunday evenings at the local community college, Kalamazoo Valley, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. During one of the classes, a woman gave a thirty-minute introduction to the Course. Recently, I had seen the Course in a bookstore, and I looked through it and put it back on the shelf, having no idea what it was about. On Monday, the very next day after her introduction, I went out and bought it and began devouring the Text. In all of my reading prior to that time, I had never come across anything like it. Incidentally, Christine and I were married three years later, and the Course proved to be a firm foundation for our marriage.

I first came across the book, The Presence Process, late last fall. My son, Stephen, thirty-nine, has joined us at Endeavor Academy, and he had begun doing the Presence Process and kept telling me what incredible experiences he was having. I began reading the book in December and Christine and I started the Presence Process Sessions soon after. The first thing that struck me about the book was the writing. Michael Brown’s prose sparkles on the page. The words, sentences and paragraphs lead the reader to powerful experiences.

So what is present moment awareness? It is a state of Being in which we effortlessly integrate the authentic and Divine Presence that we are with each God-given moment that we are in so that we are able to respond consciously to every experience we are having. By accomplishing this, our response is always the same: gratitude—a flow of gratitude that washes us of all our illusions. Entering such a state may sound hard and complicated when we are living in time. It is, however, effortless and completely natural because present moment awareness is our birthright. It is the kingdom of awareness through whose gates the prodigal children return. The hard part has been attempting to find what we did not know we had lost. The best part is realizing that we have been looking for something that has already found us. (Michael Brown, The Presence Process, Namaste Publishing: Vancouver, Canada, 2007), pp. 13, 14

The Presence Process is so powerful because it engages you in a process that integrates perfectly with the Course. The book offers an Introduction and then guides you through 10 seven-day Sessions. Each session has an explanatory chapter, an Activating Statement, e.g., for Session One it is I choose to experience this moment, and two-15 minute Breathing Exercises, one just after awakening in the morning, and the second just before crawling into bed at night.

The Presence Process is a guided journey that contains all the practical technique, perceptual tools, and knowledge required to consciously extract our attention from the illusions and trappings of time in order that we may reenter the present moment of life. (Brown, p. 1)

Now I want to demonstrate the powerful integration of A Course in Miracles and The Presence Process. Rather than demonstrate the connections in abstract terms, I offer a concrete example.

On Tuesday morning, February 10, after doing the 15-minute Breathing Exercise, I first read Lesson 41, God goes with me wherever I go, and then I read the first couple of pages of the explanatory material for Session 10 in The Presence Process. I was astounded at the opportunity for integration, and I realized that I could juxtapose passages from the Lesson with passages from The Presence Process.

God goes with me wherever I go.

Today's idea will eventually overcome completely the sense of loneliness and abandonment all the separated ones experience. Depression is an inevitable consequence of separation. So are anxiety, worry, a deep sense of helplessness, misery, suffering and intense fear of loss.

For me, it always comes down to awareness. Is my awareness on my experience of being one with God, or is my awareness on my thoughts that have no source in reality, inevitably causing depression?

The separated ones have invented many "cures" for what they believe to be "the ills of the world." But the one thing they do not do is to question the reality of the problem. Yet its effects cannot be cured because the problem is not real.

When my awareness is on separation, I think that the ills of the world are the cause of my upset.

The universal Law of cause and effect states that “when we seek, we shall find” and “what we ask for, we shall receive.” Therefore, the automatic and unfaltering consequence of this Law is that we will always see only what we are looking for, and all the experiences that we have in our life will always be exactly what we have been asking for. In other words, our life and the way we experience it is the ongoing answer to questions that we have been asking and continue to ask. The reason why this may not immediately be apparent to us is that most of our looking and asking is taking place unconsciously based on a whole range of belief systems (misinterpretations) that we adopted as children. (Brown, p. 253)

This is where the Presence Process is particularly helpful because it reminds us that our belief in separation as cause is a deeply-ingrained belief instilled, or imprinted, in us as children. Like the Course, The Presence Process offers a step-by-step process to help us cleanse our belief systems. This process enables us to bring to the surface our unconscious, imprinted beliefs, recognize them, and ask for help to let them go. In this manner we learn that we are the cause of our reactions to what appears to be the ills out there and these ills are merely effects of our beliefs. We formed these beliefs by the age of seven, and now they can be cleansed.

Here is an example of how the cleansing process works. The other day I passed an acquaintance in the hallway, and her face remained completely expressionless as we nodded in greeting. I walked on with a nervous feeling in my stomach. Her expressionless face had triggered this reaction in me, but she was not the cause.

The cause was in my early childhood. I remember my father as being stoic, his face usually expressionless, regardless of what was going on. I often felt that I should be en garde around him, not knowing what was going on with him as far as my behavior. Obviously, I am still affected to this day by this unconscious belief. Now it is simply a matter of bringing this to the surface and cleansing it.

In The Presence Process, this requires four steps.

1. Dismiss the messenger. Rather than dwell on the woman who walked by, dismiss her from my thoughts, immediately. She is effect, not cause.

Internally, we can thank her for her great service and let her be on her way. (Brown, p. 200)

2. Get the message. Find one word that captures the emotional reaction: nervousness.

3. Experience the message. Feel it to heal it.

Our choice to now be present with whatever upsets us enables us to realize that we can physically feel within our body what we initially thought was happening” out there.”
(Brown, p. 201)

4. Ask for help to let it go, recognizing its unreality, becoming aware of the peace of God, knowing that God goes with me wherever I go.

Once we can feel this emotional blockage as a physical sensation within our own body, we are ready to transmute it with “divine alchemy” by moving it out of our body by applying the power of our compassionate Presence. (Brown, p. 201)

The idea for today has the power to end all this foolishness forever. And foolishness it is, despite the serious and tragic forms it may take.

Therefore, if we do not like what we see or the quality of what we are experiencing, it is our responsibility to go within to access and then change our unconscious causal beliefs. No one can do this for us. Having the ability to do this for ourselves is exactly what free will is. This is exactly what freedom is. This is what true responsibility is. This is what The Presence Process has given us the opportunity to accomplish. (Brown, p. 253)

Deep within you is everything that is perfect, ready to radiate through you and out into the world. It will cure all sorrow and pain and fear and loss because it will heal the mind that thought these things were real, and suffered out of its allegiance to them.

You can never be deprived of your perfect holiness because its Source goes with you wherever you go. You can never suffer because the Source of all joy goes with you wherever you go. You can never be alone because the Source of all life goes with you wherever you go. Nothing can destroy your peace of mind because God goes with you wherever you go.

We understand that you do not believe all this. How could you, when the truth is hidden deep within, under a heavy cloud of insane thoughts, dense and obscuring, yet representing all you see?

And these insane thoughts are unconscious, until I bring them to the surface.

There is a gap between every other human being and us. This gap is the space between us. This gap appears real because of our physical body. In the gap between everyone else and us is where the world manifests. What we call “our world” is this gap.

It is obvious that the woman in the hallway is the Christ. But by focusing my awareness on her expression, I am making the gap real, preventing us from joining.

Because our physical body leads us to believe that this gap is real, we automatically believe that we can be separated from others. We believe that our body is separate from the bodies of others and that we therefore have our own physical sensations. We believe that we have our own mind and therefore our own thoughts. We believe that we have our own heart and therefore our own emotions. We believe that we have our own spirit and therefore our own spiritual experiences. This perception leads us to believe that when we are not in the company of another human being, we are therefore on our own. Having a physical body allows us to believe that we can be alone. (Brown, p. 253)

Today we will make our first real attempt to get past this dark and heavy cloud, and to go through it to the light beyond.

We have thought of someone and then bumped into him or her or received a phone call from them within minutes. We have felt something behind us and turned around to see someone watching us. We have found that as we are about to utter a thought, someone standing next to us has expressed it for us. We have been about to confide in someone as to how we feel emotionally when they have pre-empted us by telling us that they are having the same emotional experience. We have also had spiritual or philosophical insights, experiences or realizations that we thought were unique to our experience, only to hear others verbalizing that they had just recently had the same experience, insight, or realization.

We can call these “Oneness Experiences” being psychic, transference, intuition, empathy, telepathy, or the outcome of being sensitive. It does not matter what name we give them; what matters is that we adjust our beliefs about the nature of our paradigm according to the ongoing proof that is being laid before us by these “Oneness Experiences.” The proof inherent in the Oneness experiences reveals to us:

That our physical bodies, though appearing separate, are not; they are connected energetically somehow to every other body.

That our mind is not the physical brain in our head; its capacities extend beyond the confines of our physical body to any distance that we care to think about.


That our emotional experiences are not confined to us alone; they are shared by the world around us. That our ongoing and unfolding spiritual awareness is not personal or exclusive; it is universal and inclusive. (Brown, p. 254)

The Presence in me is One with the Presence in the woman in the hallway. Since we are One, I can realize that the Presence activated her behavior, giving me an opportunity to bring to the surface and cleanse an unconscious belief, freeing me up to experience our Oneness, making it clear that I am the cause, I am responsible, thereby holding her harmless.

Brown makes a helpful play on words, when he turns around the word "upset," making it "set up," enabling me to realize that the Presence uses my upset to set me up, so that I can take the opportunity to cleanse it.

There will be only one long practice period today. In the morning, as soon as you get up if possible, sit quietly for some three to five minutes, with your eyes closed. At the beginning of the practice period, repeat today's idea very slowly.

God goes with me wherever I go.

Then make no effort to think of anything. Try, instead, to get a sense of turning inward, past all the idle thoughts of the world. Try to enter very deeply into your own mind, keeping it clear of any thoughts that might divert your attention.

From time to time, you may repeat the idea if you find it helpful. But most of all, try to sink down and inward, away from the world and all the foolish thoughts of the world. You are trying to reach past all these things. You are trying to leave appearances and approach reality.

Appearances are caused by my unconscious beliefs, but the awareness of reality is always present.

It is quite possible to reach God. In fact it is very easy, because it is the most natural thing in the world. You might even say it is the only natural thing in the world. The way will open, if you believe that it is possible. This exercise can bring very startling results even the first time it is attempted, and sooner or later it is always successful. We will go into more detail about this kind of practice as we go along. But it will never fail completely, and instant success is possible.

As we approach the experience of Oneness, which is the intimate connectedness of our Inner Presence with each other and all life, we must keep in mind that we are all still unconsciously enslaved by ancient limited belief systems that have been diligently passed down through the generations. From the moment we entered our present life experience, we automatically inherited these ancient beliefs from our parents. Let us begin, therefore, by acknowledging that by their very nature, these ancient beliefs about “how the world is” are completely out of date. Even though they are familiar and therefore comfortable to the mind, they are ineffectual. We can acknowledge that they may at one point in our evolution have served us, but now they no longer do. Now they limit us and maintain the mistaken illusion that we are separate from one another, that we can be alone, and that we must “go out and get ours” or else we will go without.

These outdated belief systems are the foundations of all our present experiences of lack. They are also the foundations of all fear, anger, and grief. With the proof that our present day Oneness experiences have placed and continue placing before us, maintaining the belief that we are separate from each other on any levels madness. It is delusional. It is denial. It is the same as believing that the earth is flat when we can clearly see the curve of the open horizon before us. (Brown, p. 255)

Throughout the day use today's idea often, repeating it very slowly, preferably with eyes closed.

God goes with me wherever I go.

Think of what you are saying; what the words mean. Concentrate on the holiness that they imply about you; on the unfailing companionship that is yours; on the complete protection that surrounds you.

The best way to approach this massive updating of our perception is that we can accommodate the experience of Oneness is to consciously invite the experience of the Oneness paradigm to come flooding into our awareness. We can begin this process effortlessly by choosing from this moment onward to believe that we are One with all life around us. In the same breath, we can invite our daily occurrences to confirm this for us through personal experience.

Ask and you will receive.

In other words, we can activate The Law of Cause and Effect; we can consciously look for evidence that we are one body, one mind, one heart, and one spirit. By looking for it, we will see it because The Law of Cause and Effect states that we will always see what we are looking for.

Seek and you will find. (Brown, p. 256)

You can indeed afford to laugh at fear thoughts, remembering that God goes with you wherever you go.

Every time we have a Oneness experience and contain it, we will digest it. The nutritional benefit of holding these experiences within will be that our faith in the Oneness paradigm will grow into a “knowing” that will permeate our consciousness and daily experience in spite of what the world may believe is so.

“Faith” does not require outside support: only “belief” does.

After agreeing to contain and digest what we experience, we can then accelerate the process of inviting this Oneness paradigm to flood our awareness. We can accomplish this by taking an active step towards having this paradigm confirmed for us; we can choose to live this way on purpose. Accomplishing this is simple. Accomplishing this is what The Presence Process has been leading us towards. This is the invitation inherent in experiencing our own Inner Presence. Oneness is the terrain of present moment awareness. (Brown, p. 257)

God goes with me wherever I go.

Barack Obama: A New Consciousness

In my preceding blog post, I used the image of a star to convey our Oneness with our Father in our Creation. And this morning I began reading an article by Jeshua (Jesus) channeled through Judith at Oakbridge University in Tacoma, WA. Here are the first two paragraphs:

Beloved one, do you know you have brought forth a new consciousness? It is a consciousness which, truly, has been in process for some time, both for you individually and for the collective. You have been, again, the one who has been on the cutting edge, on the crest of the wave. The master that you are, you have come one more time to participate in an evolutionary step in the realization of Oneness. We have spoken in previous times of how this reality is based upon an experiment, if you will, of starseeds, each and every one of you having come from different star constellations and having been the descendants of ones from other star constellations, bringing with you remembrance of life and cultures in other places and other realities.

I am amazed at the timing, because tomorrow is the inauguration of Barack Obama, and here is paragraph # 7 from the article.

Some months ago in your timing, there came along a gathering of energy in the embodiment of one person, who said, "It is possible to be inclusive rather than exclusive. It is possible that there can be equality and respect and honor for each and every voice." And he began gathering to himself others who wanted to have hope, who wanted to believe in the best of what could be possible. He even chose a certain saying that you have heard the brothers and sisters chanting: "Yes, we can. Yes, we can." It is very powerful. Yes, you can do what you envision.
I invite you to read the article in its entirety by clicking here.

The A, B, C's of Reality: Creation, Sin, and Salvation

Finding a way to express the truth of what I am is not that difficult; coming into the awareness of that truth is another thing. The fact is that I am as God created me, but I wandered into the temptation of thinking I could do it my way, separating from God, wandering in the wilderness, longing for home, and, finally, fell to my knees and asked for help to become aware of my true Self, praying for my salvation, and coming home at last.

So, that is a one-sentence expression, and what follows leads me into the awareness that I am as God created me.

A. Creation

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Genesis 1:26

This passage from the Urtext helps me understand what it means to say that I am in the image and likeness of God.

"God created man in his own image and likeness" is correct in meaning, but the words are open to considerable misinterpretation. This is avoided, however, if "image" is understood to mean "thought," and "likeness" is taken as "of a like quality." God DID create the Son in His own Thought, and of a quality like to His own. There IS nothing else. (URTEXT, The Original Unexpurgated Manuscript As It Emanated From The Mind And Heart Of Jesus Christ of Nazareth), p. 72

The original name for "thought" and "word" was the same. The quotation should read "In the beginning was the thought, and the thought was with God, and the thought WAS God." How beautiful indeed are the thoughts of God, who live in His light. Your worth is beyond perception because it is beyond doubt. (p. 73)

As early as Lesson 16, I have no neutral thoughts, Jesus introduces the terms create and likeness.

Thoughts are not big or little; powerful or weak. They are merely true or false. Those that are true create their own likeness. Those that are false make theirs.
W-p1.16.1:4-7

We are always either making up false thoughts, or creating true thoughts.

In my mind, buried under layers of ego-thoughts, is the Thought of God. It is a state of mind, eternal, instantly available to my awareness, the moment my awareness shifts away from its preoccupation with ego-thoughts.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him: male and female created he them. Genesis 1:27

And Jesus expresses it this way in His Course in Miracles.

Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts,
in number infinite, and everywhere
without all limit. Only Love creates,
and only like Itself. There was no time
when all that It created was not there.
Nor will there be a time when anything
that It created suffers any loss.
Forever and forever are God's Thoughts
exactly as they were and as they are,
unchanged through time and after time is done.

God's Thoughts are given all the power that
their own Creator has. For He would add
to Love by its extension. Thus His Son
shares in creation, and must therefore share
in power to create. What God has willed
to be forever one will still be one
when time is over; and will not be changed
throughout the course of time, remaining as
it was before the thought of time began.
W-pII. II. What is Creation? 1, 2

In my mind are God's Thoughts, extensions of His Love, Heaven.

I am God's Son, complete and healed and whole,
shining in the reflection of His Love.
In me is His creation sanctified
and guaranteed eternal life. In me
is love perfected, fear impossible,
and joy established without opposite.
I am the holy home of God Himself.
I am the Heaven where His Love resides.
I am His holy Sinlessness Itself,
for in my purity abides His Own.
W-pII. 14 What am I? 1

This is an attempt to represent, graphically, the fact that we are God's Creation, simply His extension. And the color yellow seems to represent, naturally, the fact that we are light, that we are the light of the world that we are an extension of God. To represent this graphically, the star should be exactly the same color as that from which it extends, but to see the outline of the star it was necessary to introduce the white shading.

The sign of Christmas is a star, a light in darkness. See it not outside yourself, but shining in the Heaven within, and accept it as the sign the time of Christ has come.
T-15.XI.2:1,2

As the ideas for this essay took shape, I began to think of shooting stars streaking across the sky. I imagined all shooting stars as emanating from the same planet, all of the same substance, and it was easy to see Creation as an analogy, the stars and the planet, and man and God. We are all One.
In addition, I found myself asterisking the passage about the star of Christmas and most of the passages that follow to remind myself to use them in writing this essay. The root mean of asterisk * comes from the Greek, asterikos, meaning "little star."

Also, in respect to the "star" in today's lesson (Lesson 14, God did not create a meaningless world) Jesus uses this example in the exercise:

God did not create that disaster (specify), and so it is not real.

In each case, name the disaster" quite specifically.

"Disaster" means "ill-starred," coming for the Italian dis, "away" plus astro, "star." The sense is astrological, of a calamity blamed on an unfavorable position of a planet. (But we know that a disaster is, in fact, the result of an unfavorable position of our ego-mind.)


B. What is Sin?

Unfortunately, I made my own life a disaster by striking off on my own, pursuing my own thoughts, making up a world of sights and sounds and touch and smell and taste. I found myself looking in my mind and watching an oddly assorted procession going by (Lesson 10) and thinking that this procession of thought-images was true, all the time eating from the tree of knowledge.

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Genesis 2:16,17

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die. Genesis 3:4

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her and he did eat. Genesis 3:6

When my awareness shifts from the Thoughts of God, the tree of life, to the thought-images in my mind, the tree of knowledge, I separate from God, replacing truth with illusions. This separation is sin.

Sin is insanity. It is the means
by which the mind is driven mad, and seeks
to let illusions take the place of truth.
And being mad, it sees illusions where
the truth should be, and where it really is.
Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there
the sinless would behold? What need have they
of sights or sounds or touch? What would they hear
or reach to grasp? What would they sense at all?
To sense is not to know. And truth can be
but filled with knowledge, and with nothing else.
W-p11. 12 What is Sin? 1

Through the centuries, "sin" has become a loaded word. From the Aramaic, it is, in fact, an archer's term, simply meaning "off the mark." My arrow, my awareness, simply misses the target, and I am off the mark. Jesus expresses this shift in awareness as a tiny, mad idea.

Into eternity, where all is one,
there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which
the Son of God remembered not to laugh.
In his forgetting did the thought become
a serious idea, and possible
of both accomplishment and real effects.
Together, we can laugh them both away,
and understand that time cannot intrude
upon eternity. It is a joke
to think that time can come to circumvent
eternity, which means there is no time.
T-27.VIII.6:2-5

As early as Lesson 4 in His mind-training manual, Jesus teaches us that These thoughts do not meaning anything.

The thoughts of which I am aware do not mean anything because I am trying to think without God. What I call "my" thoughts are not my real thoughts. My real thoughts are the thoughts I think with God. I am not aware of them because I have made my thoughts to take their place. I am willing to recognize that my thoughts do not mean anything, and to let them go. I choose to have them be replaced by what they were intended to replace. My thoughts are meaningless, but all creation lies in the thoughts I think with God.
W-p1.51.4

In each life, I see the separation occurring as a child begins to acquire language. When the child begins naming objects, s/he separates by shifting his/her awareness from God to man, from unity to separation.

You live by symbols. You have made up names
for everything you see. Each one becomes
a separate entity, identified
by its own name. By this you carve it out of unity.
W-p11.184.1:1-3

I am reminded of the story of the little girl who went into the bedroom to see her new-born sister in the crib and stared into her eyes. Her mother asked her what she was doing, and she said, "I am looking into her eyes because I know they last looked on God."

This is an attempt to represent, graphically, the separation.

The dark lines forming the borders represent how our awareness of our insane thought-images seem to separate us from God. The borders form an imaginary prison. There are only the Thoughts of God, and our meaningless thoughts separate us from Them.

Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

So he drove out the man: and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.Genesis 3:23,24

The fact is that man exiled himself from the Garden of Eden; man, himself, ate of the tree of knowledge, turning his back on the tree of life. God did not exile him. This is a good thing. Since man, himself, chose to shift his awareness from life to death, he can choose again for life. Since he is solely responsible for death, he is solely responsible for life.


I just love the metaphor Joel Goldsmith uses to express man's life, journeying off the mark.

One mystic described this life as “a parenthesis in eternity.” This life! Observing life objectively and using the circle as symbolic of all life, it is obvious that we have come from the past into a parenthesis in the circle, and when this parenthesis is removed—the one marking birth and the other marking death—we will be on our way into another parenthesis, or what is called the future. This should help us to understand that our present life on earth is only an interval in eternity. (Joel Goldsmith, A Parenthesis in Eternity, HarperOne, New York, 1963, Chapter IX, An Interval in Etrnity, p. 100)

In spite of ourselves, since we are as God created us, we cannot help but know at some level that we are wandering on a journey far from home, and we cannot help but experience from time to time that we are more than what our ego-thoughts are showing us, that there must be more to life than what is in our awareness. We are haunted by the idea that we are more than we seem to be.

This world you seem to live in is not home
to you. And somewhere in your mind you know
that this is true. A memory of home
keeps haunting you, as if there were a place
that called you to return, although you do
not recognize the voice, nor what it is
the voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel
an alien here, from somewhere all unknown.
Nothing so definite that you could say
with certainty you are an exile here.
Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not
more than a tiny throb, at other times
hardly remembered, actively dismissed,
but surely to return to mind again.
W-pII.1821

Here's a depiction of catching a glimpse of home.

This is an attempt to express that our separating thoughts are a very thin veil obscuring the Thoughts of God. We have all had glimpses of Heaven, no matter how the dark boundaries of ego-thoughts tried to prevent our becoming aware of the shining Thoughts of God. We have all, inevitably, experienced this melting into this shining light.

C. Salvation

In the beginning was the Word that I am as God created me. God keeps His promises.

Salvation is a promise, made by God,
that you would find your way to Him at last.
It cannot but be kept. It guarantees
that time will have an end, and all the thoughts
that have been born in time will end as well.
God's Word is given every mind which thinks
that it has separate thoughts, and will replace
these thoughts of conflict with the Thought of peace.
W-pII. 2 What is Salvation? 1

. . . let go the thoughts you have written on the world, and see the Word of God in their place. . .this can truly be called salvation. (Lesson 14)

This letting go is called forgiveness.

This is salvation’s keynote:

And from forgiving thoughts a gentle world comes forth,
with mercy for the holy Son of God,
to offer him a kindly home where he
can rest a while before he journeys on,
and help his brothers walk ahead with him,
and find the way to Heaven and to God.
W-pII.325.6

My sourceless thought-images that separate me from the awareness of God exist for only one purpose, for giving away.

Forgiveness recognizes what you thought
your brother did to you has not occurred.
It does not pardon sins and make them real.
It sees there was no sin. And in that view
are all your sins forgiven. What is sin,
except a false idea about God's Son?
Forgiveness merely sees its falsity,
and therefore lets it go. What then is free
to take its place is now the Will of God.
W-pII. 1 What is Forgiveness? 1

This is the way to Heaven and to the peace of Easter, in which we join in glad awareness that the Son of God is risen from the past, and has awakened to the present. Now is he free, unlimited in his communion with all that is within him. Now are the lilies of his innocence untouched by guilt, and perfectly protected from the cold chill of fear and withering blight of sin alike.
T-20.II.10

In our forgiveness is our salvation, as we become aware of our creation as God's most holy Son, joining the household of God in Joel Goldsmith's felicitous phrase.

The household of God is composed not only of people who are here on earth, or of those who have passed: the household of God encompasses the universe. The household of God is embodied in our consciousness, and we are embodied in the consciousness of the household of God.

Those who love God are brought into one household, one family, one companionship, into a sharing with one another; (The Course uses the term, mighty companions) and just as we are sharing with those coming into the Light, so somebody with an even higher consciousness is sharing with us. (Goldsmith, p. 111)

In the beginning was the Word. . .

And now we experience ourselves, again, as we were at the beginning, an extension of God.

The fact is that we are always only one thought away. When we are aware of peace, we are one thought away from conflict. Awareness of conflict is one thought from peace. Experiencing peace is a holy instant.

The sudden expansion of awareness that takes place with your desire for it is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds. It calls to you to be yourself, within its safe embrace. There are the laws of limit lifted for you, to welcome you to openness of mind and freedom. Come to this place of refuge, where you can be yourself in peace. Not through destruction, not through a breaking out, but merely by a quiet melting in. For peace will join you there, simply because you have been willing to let go the limits you have placed upon love, and joined it where it is and where it led you, in answer to its gentle call to be at peace.
T-18.VI.14

. . . a quiet melting in as the imaginary boundaries collapse.

And now we end where we began with Creation, the Father and the Son linked eternally by prayer.

Prayer is the greatest gift with which God blessed His Son at his creation. It was then what it is to become; the single voice Creator and creation share; the song the Son sings to the Father, Who returns the thanks it offers Him unto the Son. Endless the harmony, and endless, too, the joyous concord of the Love They give forever to Each Other. And in this, creation is extended. God gives thanks to His extension in His Son. His Son gives thanks for his creation, in the song of his creating in his Father’s Name. The Love They share is what all prayer will be throughout eternity, when time is done. For such it was before time seemed to be.
Song of Prayer, Introduction. 1

'Tis the Season to Remember that You Never Walk Alone

For a good part of my life, I felt completely alone. I mean I had family and friends and acquaintances and coaches and teammates and students, but I felt alone in that if I couldn’t get it done, it wouldn’t get done. If I were not up to the task, I had no sense that I had anything else in myself to rely upon. It was always a case of my personal toughness, and I suppose, I took a certain amount of pride in being able to get it done, although I did become very weary.

This misplaced pride in standing alone is expressed in this poem that has, unfortunately, served as a rallying cry for getting it done, personally, individually.

Invictus

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbow'd.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)

. . .master of my fate. Sure. Finally, when I was about fifty-six years old, I experienced for the first time that I am not alone. A few years earlie, I had come across A Course in Miracles, but it did not really penetrate until one day I was in devastation, and I went to my room, and just stood there in the middle of the room, refusing to do anything to sedate, to relieve me from the pain. After a while, a thought came into my mind, “Pick up the Course and open it at random.”

I stepped across to my desk, picked up the Course, and “happened” to open it to Chapter 18, Section VII, I need do nothing. I sat down and read it, sobbing. These passages, in particular, showed me that I was not alone.

To do nothing is to rest, and make a place within you where the activity of the body ceases to demand attention. Into this place the Holy Spirit comes, and there abides. He will remain when you forget, and the body's activities return to occupy your conscious mind.

Yet there will always be this place of rest to which you can return. And you will be more aware of this quiet center of the storm than all its raging activity. This quiet center, in which you do nothing, will remain with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent. For from this center will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly. It is this center, from which the body is absent, that will keep it so in your awareness of it. T-18.VII.7:7-9, 8

Those were tears of recognition and of gratitude. I felt the Presence within that always has been and always will be there.

And now, at Christmas time, I simply want to look again at inspiring passages that I have recently, miraculously, come across, expressing this Presence that is in all of us, uniting us all in Oneness.

From the Course.

The sign of Christmas is a star, a light in darkness. See it not outside yourself, but shining in the Heaven within, and accept it as the sign the time of Christ has come. He comes demanding nothing. No sacrifice of any kind, of anyone, is asked by Him. In His Presence the whole idea of sacrifice loses all meaning. For He is Host to God. And you need but invite Him in Who is there already, by recognizing that His Host is One, and no thought alien to His Oneness can abide with Him there. Love must be total to give Him welcome, for the Presence of Holiness creates the holiness that surrounds it. No fear can touch the Host Who cradles God in the time of Christ, for the Host is as holy as the perfect Innocence which He protects, and Whose power protects Him.T-15.XI.2

And here is Jesus speaking in John.

I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.
John 14:18-20

Jesus reassures us in Lesson 70.

Try to pass the clouds by whatever means appeals to you. If it helps you, think of me holding your hand and leading you. And I assure you this will be no idle fantasy. W-p1.70.9:2-4

Awareness of His Presence enables us to be in the world, but not of the world. This is how Michael Brown expresses it in The Presence Process.

Awareness of the Presence is a state of Being in which we effortlessly integrate the authentic and Divine Presence that we are with each God-given moment that we are in so that we are able to respond consciously to every experience we are having. By accomplishing this, our response is always the same: gratitude—a flow of gratitude that washes us of all our illusions. Entering such a state may sound hard and complicated when we are living in time. It is, however, effortless and completely natural because this awareness is our birthright. It is the kingdom of awareness through whose gates the prodigal children return. The hard part has been attempting to find what we did not know we had lost. The best part is realizing that we have been looking for something that has already found us. (Michael Brown, The Presence Process (Namaste Publishing, Vancouver, Canada, 2005), p. 13.

In His Urtext, Jesus demonstrates to Helen how He activates those around her to communicate to her what she needs to learn for herself. In the following example, she would have been late to work because of her focus on Jesus’s dictation of the Course.

The reason you have been late recently for work is because you were taking dictation merely because you didn't remember to ask me when to stop. I prompted that call from Jack (the taxi man who couldn’t pick Helen up) to show you that this is not necessary. Also, the other man needed the money more today. Scribes must learn Christ-control to replace their former habits, which did produce scarcity rather than abundance. Urtext, The Original Unexpurgated Manuscript as it Emanated from the Mind and Heart of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, p. 14

In another situation, Jesus says to Helen:

I inspired Bob, the elevator man, to make that remark to you. Urtext, p. 35.

When I first read, I inspired Bob, the elevator man, it exploded off the page and stayed with me for a long time. It is so clear how Jesus activates those around us to assist in our awakening to the recognition that we are truly One.

And from the Epilogue.

You do not walk alone.
God’s angels hover near and all about.
His Love surrounds you, and of this be sure;
that I will never leave you comfortless.
W-pII.Epilogue

When I look back at this essay, I can see how Jesus inspired me. While I was sitting on the couch, next to the wood-burning stove, looking out the window on a cold, snowy day, with my notebook in hand, thinking about the ideas that had been running through my mind for the past couple of days, into my mind came most of the passages that I quoted, above. In particular, my chest warmed with gratitude when it came into my mind to look at the Epilogue. You do not walk alone is the theme of this essay, and the last line echoes comfortless in John.

Finally, this song comes to me from over the years, You’ll Never Walk Alone.

When you walk through the storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark
At the end of the storm
There's a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of the lark.

Walk on, through the wind
Walk on, through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone
You'll never walk alone.

Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone
You'll never walk alone.

And now, Dear Reader, here is the last line of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One.

And God Bless you, Master Teacher.

To listen to a recording of You'll Never Walk alone, click here.

We Truly Are Surrounded by Angels

We had about three inches of snow fall overnight here in Wisconsin Dells. Walking to Session at Endeavor Academy this morning, I fell, slipping on the ice beneath the snow, and landed perfectly on my back. Walking home, I fell again, but this time I landed on my right side, my arm jammed against my ribs. I laid there for a moment, unable to move, and I was surprised by a young woman’s voice because I hadn’t seen anyone around. She looked deeply into my eyes, being completely present, and asked if I were OK. I got up slowly and said that I might have broken my ribs. She asked if I wanted a ride, but I said I’d better walk it off.

Then she said do you want to pray and I said yes, and she held out her hands and I clasped them, and she prayed this long, spontaneous prayer, beginning “Dear God”, asking that I be healed and that my family be well and so forth. I actually felt much better, felt healed, and I thanked this angel profusely, knowing that we truly are surrounded by angels.

God's Name can not be heard without response,
nor said without an echo in the mind
that calls you to remember. Say His Name,
and you invite the angels to surround
the ground on which you stand, and sing to you
as they spread out their wings to keep you safe,
and shelter you from every worldly thought
that would intrude upon your holiness.
W-p1.183:2

I turned and walked away with a grateful heart, never looking back. I don’t know where she came from, or where she went, or where her car was.

It is Always, Simply and Profoundly, a Matter of Awareness

Yesterday morning I woke up around 8 o’clock and faced the rather pleasant prospect of allowing the morning to unfold as it would because I had no particular agenda. I sat down with a cup of coffee and read the day’s Lesson. Everything was moving slowly, as I just sat quietly, looking out the window watching the pine branches swaying in the wind, listening to the wind chimes, seeing the first feathery flakes of snow falling, tentatively.

Then a Thought came to mind, “”Read something, randomly, from the Manual for Teachers.” I opened to, What is the Peace of God? I read it very slowly, lingering over each paragraph, sitting quietly between each one.

Then I came across this astonishing passage.

Forgive the world, and you will understand that everything that God created cannot have an end, and nothing He did not create is real. In this one sentence is our course explained. In this one sentence is our practicing given its one direction. And in this one sentence is the Holy Spirit’s whole curriculum specified exactly as it is. (M-20.5:7-10)

When I looked back at the words forgive, world, create, and the Holy Spirit, I was inspired to read the first paragraph of each of these four instructions on a theme of special relevance, as stated in the Introduction to Part II of the Workbook:

1. What is Forgiveness? 3. What is the World? 11. What is Creation? 7. What is the Holy Spirit?

1. What is Forgiveness?

Forgiveness recognizes what you thought
your brother did to you has not occurred.
It does not pardon sins and make them real.
It sees there was no sin. And in that view
are all your sins forgiven. What is sin,
except a false idea about God's Son?
Forgiveness merely sees its falsity,
and therefore lets it go. What then is free
to take its place is now the Will of God.


3. What is the World?

The world is false perception. It is born
of error, and it has not left its source.
It will remain no longer than the thought
that gave it birth is cherished. When the thought
of separation has been changed to one
of true forgiveness, will the world be seen
in quite another light; and one which leads
to truth, where all the world must disappear
and all its errors vanish. Now its source
has gone, and its effects are gone as well.

11. What is Creation?

Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts,
in number infinite, and everywhere
without all limit. Only love creates,
and only like itself. There was no time
when all that it created was not there.
Nor will there be a time when anything
that it created suffers any loss.
Forever and forever are God's Thoughts
exactly as they were and as they are,
unchanged through time and after time is done.

7. What is the Holy Spirit?

The Holy Spirit mediates between
illusions and the truth. Since He must bridge
the gap between reality and dreams,
perception leads to knowledge through the grace
that God has given Him, to be His gift to
everyone who turns to Him for truth.
Across the bridge that He provides are dreams
all carried to the truth, to be dispelled
before the light of knowledge. There are sights
and sounds forever laid aside. And where
they were perceived before, forgiveness has
made possible perception's tranquil end.

In the beginning of this essay, I said that a Thought came to me, and I capitalized Thought because the Thought was from God. It all comes down to awareness. In each moment, where is my awareness? Am I aware only of God’s Voice, the Holy Spirit speaking to me all through the day, or am I aware only of the incessant chatter of my separated mind?

It is always, either/or, on or off, wholeness or separation, Heaven or the world, Everything or nothing, Thoughts or thoughts, Love or fear, Real or unreal.

It always comes down to my awareness. When I am aware only of the peace of God, so be it, I am grateful for the grace of God, experiencing what is Real. When I am aware of fear, I ask the Holy Spirit for help to forgive my fear thoughts, so that I can be aware, again, of the peace of God, letting go of the unreal.

Forgive the world, and you will understand that everything that God created cannot have an end, and nothing He did not create is real.

Catching a Glimpse of the Truth Increases My Awareness of the Presence of God.

Just after I turned forty, I was taken by complete surprise when I was told by my Dean that I was terminated from my job. I was coaching and teaching at a small college, and he had invited me to lunch at a rather nice restaurant. Just after our food was served, he informed me of my termination with very little explanation. I felt ambushed, and having lost my appetite, I stood up and left. To that point in my life, I had never felt such devastation and shame and fear. I rationalized that we had just brought in a new college president, and I had been caught in faculty politics.

On a practical level, I still had mortgage payments and bills and a family to take care of. On an emotional level, I was facing shame and unworthiness and a complete lack of identity. I remember walking home from the restaurant with tears in my eyes saying to myself, “If I’m not a coach and a teacher, who am I?” Further, I had nothing to fall back on as far as faith, or spirituality, never having gone to church or taken a spiritual path. My life was becoming increasingly difficult, and I was in the early stages of undergoing psychotherapy.

To fill my days, I would walk the three miles from my home to downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan, go to the library, look for jobs, and read all morning, go to lunch at a nearby restaurant, and then return to the library for the afternoon, and walk home in the evening—all the time wounded and depressed and lonely.

One day I was walking into town, and the words “sea change” came into my mind. Through therapy, I had begun to pay attention to such “free associations,” and as soon as I arrived at the library, I looked it up. It comes from a song by Ariel in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a play I had studied in college as an English major.

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
(Shakespeare, The Tempest, 1, ii,399-404)

This was my first break since the termination. I felt buoyed up, I felt there was hope, I felt that, perhaps, even I, a shameful bottom-feeder, could be transformed into something rich and strange, just as eyes turned to pearls and bones turned to coral. I love that “sea change” means “a profound transformation.”

At about the same time, I read an article where the columnist explained the meaning of the Chinese ideograms that make up the meaning of the word, “Crisis.” (An ideogram is a symbol used in some writing systems, e.g., those of Japan and China, that directly but abstractly represents a thing or concept itself rather than the word for it.) It seems that in Chinese two ideograms are used to express it, one means danger and the other opportunity. I saw that the danger in my crisis would be to continue looking at the world as I always had, that it was a given, and I was a victim, and that the only thing I could do was to adjust to it, always trying to find more peace and less conflict, that I would always be facing such dualities, there being no alternative.

Or I could see this as an opportunity to look at things differently. I could begin to trust ideas that came to mind, ideas that were glimpses of Truth beyond the world I saw. I could begin to trust that I was not alone. I could trust that there is an alternative to this way of looking at the world, that, perhaps, this is all a dream, as Prospero says in The Tempest.

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
(The Tempest, IV, I,156-158)

Looking back, I realize that the termination truly turned into an opportunity. I began seriously searching for truth beyond my sensory experiences. I focused on my therapy, I read books, voraciously, like Lao Tzu's The Way, The Bhagavad Gita, and Krishnamurti, and Jung, and books on Zen. I joined “New Age” groups, I meditated, and finally, five years after the crisis, I came across A Course in Miracles, in fact, my wife, Christine, gave me the Course on Christmas Day, 1986, and seventeen years after the termination, I crossed the threshold of Endeavor Academy in the Wisconsin Dells.

In retrospect, I am grateful for that “fateful” lunch and realize that my Dean was, indeed, my savior. I was saved from my investment in the dream, the illusion, the mirage, the mass hypnotism projected from my limited, egoic self, and I began to catch more and more glimpses of the true alternative that I am the holy Son of God, Himself.

This all came back to me yesterday while reading a chapter in a book by Joel Goldsmith (1892-1964) entitled, The Art of Spiritual Healing. He reminds me that I do not really hear the truth until I feel hopeless, until I am on my knees.

Spiritual healing often has far greater success with incurable diseases than with the curable ones because when a doctor says, “I’ve done all I can do,” the patient gives up hope of a cure from material medica and, in his hopelessness, he is receptive and responsive to the spiritual impulse. (Joel Goldsmith, The Art of of Spiritual Healing, Chapter V, "What Did Hinder You!", p. 57)


And “sea change” was, indeed, a spiritual impulse. That was the beginning of my awakening, a process continuing to this day, the initial realization that I am dreaming.

Just for a moment imagine that you are experiencing an unpleasant night dream: You are in the ocean, swimming; you have gone out too far; you look back toward the shore and see that there is very little hope of rescue. Even though you shout your lungs, no one can hear you. And so you are seized with fear. You struggle and strive to reach the shore, and, of course, the harder you fight the harder the ocean fights you. There is only one thing left for you to do—drown. Yes, drown—but wait! In your fight, you shouted and someone heard you, came over and shook you, woke you up, and behold the miracle! The drowning self disappeared; the ocean disappeared; the struggle disappeared. You awakened and found that you had never left your comfortable home. All that was necessary in order to be released from the struggle was to awaken. This is the nature of spiritual healing. Whether you are struggling with some form of sin, false appetite, disease, poverty, unemployment, or unhappiness, stop struggling and wake up. Wake up to your true identity. You are not a swimmer in a deep ocean; you are not a sufferer in sin and disease; you are not a coach, teacher; you are the Christ-consciousness, a child of God, and the very error you are fighting, you are perpetuating by that fighting. (Goldsmith, p. 58)

. . . unemployment.

Whatever the form it takes, I need constant reminders that “This is not so, I am dreaming, Help!”

I have come to learn through A Course in Miracles that reminders of the Truth of what I am, God’s holy Son, are always available, and that these spiritual impulses will come into my awareness when I stand still for a moment and ask for help. I have learned to trust that they will come into my mind just as “sea change” came to mind, gifts, infused with the power of God. These reminders come to me in a variety of forms: Reason, Forgiveness, Trust,
Gratitude, Peace, Receptivity, and God’s Will.

REASON

Reason helps me sort out the true from the false in respect to the premises, or foundations, of my thinking process. The clearest way to look at this process is to consider a syllogism, for example:

All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

A syllogism demonstrates that if the first two premises are valid, then the conclusion is valid. Of course, the irony here is that philosophers through the generations have used this syllogism as a good example of establishing validity, when, in fact, it is completely invalid because all men are immortal. It is also ironic that they would use Socrates because he said these words about his immortality at his trial:

If death is a removal from here to some other place, and if what we are told is true, that all the dead are there, what greater blessing could there be than this, gentlemen? . . .How much would one of you give to meet Orpheus and Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer? I am willing to die ten times over if this account is true. . .They are now immortal for the rest of time, if what we are told is true. (The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Pantheon Books, New York, 1961, “The Apology,” p. 25)

Jesus begins the Lessons of His Course by establishing a valid premise in the title to Lesson 1:

Nothing I see means anything.

We learn through His systematic mind-training how to complete the syllogism:

I see a tree.
Therefore, the tree means nothing.

Jesus teaches us from the beginning that what is visible is unreal, meaning nothing, and He leads us to experience that what is invisible is real, meaning everything.

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein, lies the peace of God.

Jesus begins where He does because He knows that for our entire lives we have taken for granted that seeing means something, basing our lives on this syllogism:

Everything I see means something.
I see a tree.
That tree means something.

And, of course, what the tree means depends on my past—memories and judgments and associations, and what it means to you depends on your particular memories and judgments and associations. And we think we can communicate with each other on this level?

Thank God for A Course in Miracles. It is a systematic mind-training that reverses our habitual, conditioned way of seeing falsely, so that we can learn to see truly. That complete reversal is what a “sea change” means, a sudden reversal of the tide.

Fidelity to premises is a law of the mind and everything God created is faithful to His laws. But fidelity to other laws is also possible not because they are true, but because you made them. (The Urtext, p. 128)

FORGIVENESS

Forgiveness is a shift in awareness from the dream, the unreal, the past, to the awareness of the truth, the real, the present, the peace of God.

Unless the past is over in my mind,
the real world must escape my sight. For I
am really looking nowhere; seeing but
what is not there. How can I then perceive
the world forgiveness offers? This the past
was made to hide, for this the world that can
be looked on only now. It has no past.
For what can be forgiven but the past,
and if it is forgiven it is gone.
(W-pII.289.1)

Can you imagine how beautiful those you forgive will look to you? In no fantasy have you ever seen anything so lovely. Nothing you see here, sleeping or waking, comes near to such loveliness. And nothing will you value like unto this, nor hold so dear. Nothing that you remember that made your heart sing with joy has ever brought you even a little part of the happiness this sight will bring you. For you will see the Son of God. You will behold the beauty the Holy Spirit loves to look upon, and which he thanks the Father for. He was created to see this for you, until you learned to see it for yourself. And all his teaching leads to seeing it and giving thanks with him.

This loveliness is not a fantasy. It is the real world, bright and clean and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun. Nothing is hidden here, for everything has been forgiven and there are no fantasies to hide the truth. The bridge between that world and this is so little and so easy to cross, that you could not believe it is the meeting place of worlds so different. Yet this little bridge is the strongest thing that touches on this world at all. This little step, so small it has escaped your notice, is a stride through time into eternity, beyond all ugliness into beauty that will enchant you, and will never cease to cause you wonderment at its perfection.
(T-17.II.1,2)

GRATITUDE

I know I am experiencing gratitude when my chest becomes infused with warmth, and I tear up, and my mind is still, my heart filling with love.

Walk, then, in gratitude the way of love.
For hatred is forgotten when we lay
comparisons aside. What more remains
as obstacles to peace? The fear of God
is now undone at last, and we forgive
without comparing. Thus we cannot choose
to overlook some things, and yet retain
some other things still locked away as "sins."
When your forgiveness is complete you will
have total gratitude, for you will see
that everything has earned the right to love
by being loving, even as your Self.

Our gratitude will pave the way to Him,
and shorten our learning time by more
than you could ever dream of. Gratitude
goes hand in hand with love, and where one is
the other must be found. For gratitude
is but an aspect of the Love which is
the Source of all creation. God gives thanks
to you, His Son, for being what you are;
His Own completion and the Source of love,
along with Him. Your gratitude to Him
is one with His to you. For love can walk
no road except the way of gratitude,
and thus we go who walk the way to God.
(W-pII.195.8,10)

TRUST

And now I trust that no matter how I feel while my awareness is on seeing through the body’s eyes, using false premises, experiencing pain and despair, I know that I can shift to another awareness, knowing that “This is not so.” There is only the peace of God, that nothing I see means anything, even though there may be a gap between the recognition and the peace.

For an expression of trust, I am turning to a little book, God Calling. In 1932, a woman came across a book entitled For Sinners by A. J. Russell. Reading the book, she was led to believe that if she were to sit down with a good friend, a “spiritual” woman with “pencil and paper in hand, “ they would receive messages from Jesus. And, indeed, they did. In this little book are messages for each day of the year. Here is the message of October 6, entitled "A Child’s Hand."

Yes, cling. Your trust shall be rewarded. Do you not know what it means to feel a little trusting hand in yours, to know a child's confidence? Does that not draw out our Love and desire to protect, to care? Think what My Heart feels, when in your helplessness you turn to Me, clinging, desiring My Love and Protection. Would you fail that child, faulty and weak as you are? Could I fail you? Just know it is not possible. Know all is well. You must not doubt. You must be sure. There is no eleventh-hour rescue I cannot accomplish. (A. J. Russell (Ed.), God Calling (Barbour, Ohio, 1989, October 6)

And this is Jesus speaking:

If it helps you, think of me holding your hand and leading you. And I assure you this will be no idle fantasy. (W-p1.70.9:3,4)

PEACE

One morning I was sitting on the couch looking out the window, absent-mindedly running through the events of the coming day, and all of a sudden I was overcome by utter peacefulness; I was lifted out. Then, this came into my mind, “This is my only function, this is my only purpose.” I realized that while I walk in the world, but not of it, my only function is to come into this state of mind, the awareness of the peace of God. This is my only purpose, and this is simple. I came into full understanding of Brother Laurence’s phrase, “It’s not what you do, it’s the state of mind in which you do it.”

The peace of God is shining in you now,
and from your heart extends around the world.
It pauses to caress each living thing,
and leaves a blessing with it that remains
forever and forever. What it gives
must be eternal. It removes all thoughts
of the ephemeral and valueless.
It brings renewal to all tired hearts,
and lights all vision as it passes by.
All of its gifts are given everyone,
and everyone unites in giving thanks
to you who give, and you who have received.
(W-pII.188.3)

While you stand to one side as a witness or a beholder, eventually a state of peace will come. Then you will catch a glimpse of God as Is—not a power over anything, just God is. You begin to understand that no power does anything to anyone, and you become a beholder as reality begins to appear. All problems fade out in proportion as you develop this ability to be quiet, to behold, and to witness divine harmony unfold. (Goldsmith, p. 68)

Please read the following passage aloud and hear Jesus saying to you, The hush of heaven holds my heart today, (Lesson 286), as you would soothe a crying baby, “Hush, shhhhh.” Listen to Jesus’s soothing “s” sounds.

In Him you have no cares and no concerns,
no burdens, no anxiety, no pain,
no fear of future and no past regrets.
In timelessness you rest, while time goes by
without its touch upon you, for your rest
can never change in any way at all.
You rest today. And as you close your eyes,
sink into stillness. Let these periods
of rest and respite reassure your mind
that all its frantic fantasies were but
the dreams of fever that has passed away.
Let it be still and thankfully accept
its healing. No more fearful dreams will come,
now that you rest in God. Take time today
to slip away from dreams and into peace.
(W-pII.109.5)

RECEPTIVITY

When I am experiencing the peace of God, I am receptive to God’s Voice, the Holy Spirit. Often, during the day, I experience an idea coming to me, unbidden. It’s the having of wonderful ideas.

. . . “sea change.”

Let every voice but God's be still in me.

Father, today I would but hear Your Voice.
In deepest silence I would come to You,
to hear Your Voice and to receive Your Word.
I have no prayer but this: I come to You
to ask You for the truth. And truth is but
Your Will, which I would share with You today.

Today we let no ego thoughts direct
our words or actions. When such thoughts occur,
we quietly step back and look at them,
and then we let them go. We do not want
what they would bring with them. And so we do
not choose to keep them. They are silent now.
And in the stillness, hallowed by His Love,
God speaks to us and tells us of our will,
as we have chosen to remember Him.
(W-pII.254)

And so, in conversation with a friend, perhaps one who has come to me for help, I simply listen, step back, and often find myself saying, “This just came to mind,” and I trust that whatever it is, it will be helpful for both of us.

Your healing Voice protects all things today,
and so I leave all things to You. I need
be anxious over nothing. For Your Voice
will tell me what to do and where to go;
to whom to speak and what to say to him,
what thoughts to think,
what words to give the world.
The safety that I bring is given me.
Father, Your Voice protects all things through me.
(W-pII.275.2)

GOD’S WILL

Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.

When I get out of the way, God’s will and mine are one; not mine but Thine.

Your will be done, you holy child of God.
It does not matter if you think you are
in earth or Heaven. What your Father wills
of you can never change. The truth in you
remains as radiant as a star, as pure
as light, as innocent as love itself.
And you are worthy that your will be done!
(T-31.VI.7)

God does not know of learning. Yet His Will
extends to what He does not understand,
in that He wills the happiness His Son
inherited of Him be undisturbed;
eternal and forever gaining scope,
eternally expanding in the joy
of full creation, and eternally
open and wholly limitless in Him.
That is His Will. And thus His Will provides
the means to guarantee that it is done.
(W-pII.193.1)

Wherever I am, the Father within me is; therefore, wherever I am, the Father within me is about His business. (Goldsmith, p. 41)

These reminders, literally, "bring to mind again" the remembrance that I am God's most holy Son in whom He is well pleased.

"The mind is an instrument of awareness." Joel Goldsmith

One day back in the early 70’s when my son, Stephen, was a very young boy, we were driving around the town where we lived in central Illinois, and he was standing in the middle, just in back of the front seats in his customary position, taking everything in. Then he asked, looking at a factory, a dark building with few windows, dark and gray, stretching for a block, “Daddy, is that a school?” Having been a junior high English teacher, I laughed at the aptness of his comparison. After all, factories are organized to turn out finished products completely alike in appearances, and schools seem intent trying to stamp out finished students who look alike in spite of the fact that each student is as remarkable individual.

Not to worry, though, because we have both come to learn through
A Course in Miracles that, in fact, there are no factories, there are no schools; there is no world. Through the Course we have learned, systematically, to train our minds to distinguish the difference between what is real and what is unreal, as Jesus sums up in His Introduction.

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God.

It is quite possible, in fact, it is necessary to let go of the belief that what you see, hear, taste, touch, and smell is real, and that what you do not see, hear, taste, touch, and smell is real. This is the great undoing, enabling homo sapiens to evolve in to homo illumina, the wise ones into those filled with light, experiencing oneness with God. Coming into this experience of oneness is completely natural because it is our inheritance; we are as God created us.

Thomas Merton once expressed it this way.

My dear brothers and sisters, we are already one. But we imagine we are not. So what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.

To demonstrate that this is our birthright, individuals across the centuries have come into this experience of being what we are in truth in a variety of ways. One great example is Joel Goldsmith (1894-1964). What I love about Goldsmith is his ability to express the Truth I have learned through the Course with a different set of metaphors. The other day, Stephen brought to my attention a wonderful chapter in Goldsmith’s book, The Art of Spiritual Healing, entitled The Language of Spiritual Healing. I was so inspired by this chapter because of the way he found his own language to express his experience.

The Infinite Way is a spiritual teaching consisting of principles which anyone may follow and practice, irrespective of his religious affiliation. The Infinite Way reveals the nature of God to be one infinite power, intelligence, and love; the nature of individual being to be one with His qualities and character, expressed in in¬finite forms and variety; and the nature of the discords of this world to be a misconception of God's expression of Himself in His universe. These are universal principles based on the message of the Master, Christ Jesus, who taught that man can realize his oneness with God through conscious com¬munion with God, thereby bringing about peace on earth, harmony, and wholeness. Joel Goldsmith, The Art of Spiritual Healing (San Francisco, Harper, 1959), p. 40.

He goes on to express how to reverse our deeply-ingrained belief that our senses are showing us what is real by teaching us to look through what we apparently see to what is real.

You train yourself to see people, not as they look, but to see through their eyes, back of their eyes, realizing that there sits the Christ of God. As you do that, you learn to ignore appearances, and instead of trying to heal or reform someone, or improve him, you are really bearing witness to his Christ-identity. (Goldsmith, p. 42)

It matters not what the outer senses may testify. Something within has to sing a song, and the song it must sing is, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. . . I in the midst of you am mighty.” (Goldsmith, p. 43)

He goes on to make his meaning absolutely clear.

In the work of The Infinite Way, the words "real" or reality" pertain only to that which is spiritual, eternal, im¬mortal, and infinite. Only that which is of God is understood to be real or is recognized as reality. With this definition of reality in mind, it should be easy to grasp the statement that we cannot see, hear, taste, touch, or smell reality. (Goldsmith, p.50)

It all comes down to our awareness, to our conscious awareness. Goldsmith expresses it perfectly in one sentence:

The mind is an instrument of awareness. (Goldsmith, p. 43)

Our mind, our consciousness, can, in truth, be aware of only one state, the peace of God, our real Self. However, our consciousness can appear to be aware of another state, an unreal state, the state of fear and conflict brought to us by our senses. Goldsmith demonstrates with every sentence how to use this instrument truly, being aware of what is real, spiritual, eternal, immortal, and infinite, in the middle of a world made up by our senses.

It requires the faculty of the Soul to behold reality. Reality pertains only to that which is discerned through an inner awareness. Jesus referred to this as, “Having eyes, see ye not? And having ears, hear ye not?” In other words, there is that which must be seen and heard with the Soul faculties. (Goldsmith, p. 50)

As a healing practitioner, he makes a very useful distinction between existence and non-existence.

When we speak of sin and disease as unreal, we do not mean that they are nonexistent. We are not just fooling ourselves and using our imagination in saying that they are unreal or untrue, but if a person has ingrained in him from infancy that the material is the real and the material body the whole, then to him the disease is existent. When sin, disease, and death are called unreal, it is not a denial of the so-called existence of these things: It is a denial of their existence as a part of God or reality. (Goldsmith, p. 51)

The beginning of wisdom is the realization that these conditions need not exist. Freedom from them comes not from seeking relief from God, but through seeking God and rising to that dimension of life in which only God is. There is not freedom from discord; there is not freedom from sin, false appetites, or desires; there is not freedom from poverty: There is only freedom—freedom in God, freedom in Spirit. (Goldsmith, p. 51)

Towards the end of this essay, he makes it all crystal clear by using the metaphor of a mirage.

Let me illustrate this. If you were traveling on the desert and saw, as is often the case, that the road ahead of you was covered with water, and if that were your first experience in the desert, you would automatically stop your car because obviously you could not drive through a sea of water. Your first thought would probably be, "What shall I do? How will I get through that water? How can the water be removed from the road?"

You look around and do not see any help. Then you look back again at the road, and if you look long enough, intently enough, you awaken to the fact that there is no water there. What you have been seeing is a mirage, an illusion. You smile, start your car, and go forward. As long as you were seeing water on the road, you would sit there helplessly waiting for that water to be removed, but the moment that you understood it to be a mirage, an illusion, the water disappeared, and you were free to go forward. (Goldsmith, p. 53)

The mirage of the water does exist because, for a moment, it is your awareness. But that awareness of its existence does not make it real. My awareness of the reports of my senses does not make the reports real. My awareness of the existence of sin and disease does not make them real. Only by shifting my awareness to the peace of God do I experience what is real.

When I make this shift to the awareness of my Real Self as God created me, then sin and disease cease to exist. It is always on or off, 0 or 1, all or nothing, love or fear. That which exists or does not exist is dependent on my awareness. And I can always ask for help to shift my awareness from seeing water to experiencing the peace of God. This is healing. This is forgiveness.

Healing takes place, not through the intervention of some God, but through arriving at a state of consciousness in which sin, disease, and death have no reality, a consciousness which no longer battles these forms of discord and no longer tries to get rid of them. Our attitude toward them is the same as our attitude toward the water on the desert after we have discovered that it is not water, but an illusion, or mirage. (Goldsmith, p. 54)

. . . you awaken to the fact that there is no water there. You smile, start your car, and go forward.

When my awareness shifts to the peace of God, my heart fills with gratitude, I smile and go forward.

Seeing a Game Within a Game is an Act of Charity

Last Sunday evening, my wife, Christine, and I went to see the movie, The Women. It was aptly named because not one male character ever appeared with any of the women. The movie depicts the ebb and flow of friendship among four women—Sylvie, a magazine editor, Alex, a lesbian, Edie, pregnant for the fifth time, and Mary, a devoted wife, doing volunteer work, organizing charitable events, working for her father, and being a mother. Within the context of this circle of friends, the film focuses on Mary dealing with the dissolution of her marriage and her triumphant struggle to become her own person.

Mary (Meg Ryan) learns of her husband’s infidelity, becomes estranged from her daughter, initiates divorce proceedings, hits bottom, begins her recovery, and starts her personal business designing clothes. All this time she is developing her potential, finding the self that she let go of in her attempt to step back and be the perfect wife.

Finally, she mounts an incredibly successful fashion show, reconciles with her daughter, and at the end, her husband pleads for a second chance.

During the movie, I found myself saying, “I’m watching a game within a game.” I picked up that phrase from my son, Stephen. Just that afternoon we had watched a football game between the Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions. He is a loyal, but long-suffering, fan of the Lions, having grown up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and I am a fan of the Packers, having switched loyalties after living in Wisconsin for years.

I was cheering for the Packers, and I was surprised to hear him cheering for the two wide receivers for the Packers, Greg Jennings and Donald Driver, particularly when they made spectacular plays that doomed his hapless Lions. When I asked him about it, he said, “I’m watching a game within a game.” He went on to explain that he and eleven of his buddies were playing “Fantasy Football” on their computers. At the beginning of the season, each of them selected a team of twelve players from all the teams in the National Football League and charted their performances in games throughout the season. That afternoon, he was pitted against his buddies, each one surveying the NFL landscape to see how their fantasy teams were faring.

Now I understood the concept of a game within a game. Each time Jennings or Driver caught a pass or scored a touchdown, Stephen earned a certain number of points based on the yardage and the scoring. For example, in this game, his two wide receivers earned a total of 27.9 points, helping his fantasy team win this weekend’s competition. Although the Lions lost the game that afternoon, he won the head-to-head matchup. This goes on for the entire season, and at the end the winner collects $1000.00.

Whew. That’s why I found myself watching the movie and seeing a game within a game. That is, my mind is sufficiently trained to see that there is always only one Game going on. Regardless of what seems to be going on in the fantasy, the dream, I am always driving towards the goal of recognizing that I am the holy Son of God. I am my true Self as created by God; I am not the self I made with false perception. My salvation is the recognition that this is already accomplished; this is the real Game. I am not saved by improving my false self—the game within the Game.

So, while I cheered for Mary’s effort to come into her own as a woman, building her self-esteem, and giving her points for her pluck and determination, I was well aware of the real Game going on, the real Game that is always going on. While she appeared to be racking up points in the aptly named “Fantasy,” she is always, already safe at Home, and the only real outcome is to come into this recognition. Her pluck and determination simply need to be redirected.

Perhaps, there will be a sequel entitled, This Woman’s Game. In this movie, Mary realizes that her hard-won sense of a strong, independent self begins to fall apart again, as it inevitably will because nothing in the dream, nothing in the fantasy, sustains you. This time when she hits bottom, instead of trying to shore up her false self, she will, miraculously, hear the still, small Voice in her mind whisper to her that she is not a victim of this world; that, in fact, she invented the world she sees; there is another way of looking at the world; she could see peace instead of this. Now that she is playing the real Game, she can come into the recognition of her true Self, God’s holy child, realizing that there is nothing to fear. She is now and forever sustained by the love of God.

Finally, whether I am observing a game within a Game while watching a football game, or sitting in movie theatre, or interacting with those around me, I am, actually, performing an act of charity, seeing the Christ in others because charity is a way of perceiving the perfection of another. (T-2.V.9:4) This is seeing with vision. And with this vision, I look upon the world and on myself with charity and love. (W-p1.56.2:6)

“Game On!”

The Glistening of the Light

The sunlight of my Presence is on your paths! (God Calling, 8/26)

I am walking home after my cooking shift at the Cheese Factory Restaurant on a Sunday afternoon in early fall. Just across the bridge over the Dell Creek, I cut through the blacktop parking lot of a real estate office.

The surface of the asphalt is still wet from the morning rain, and the sun is at just such an angle that the surface is glistening. As I step into the glistening, it disappears and the next step sparkles as I step into it, and I proceed to walk into sparkly light, my thoughts disappearing and my mind becoming light.

Around you angels hover lovingly,
to keep away all darkened thoughts of sin,
and keep the light where it has entered in.
Your footprints lighten up the world, for where
you walk forgiveness gladly goes with you.
T-26.IX.7:1,2

Our shining footprints point the way to truth,
for God is our Companion as we walk
the world a little while. And those who come
to follow us will recognize the way
because the light we carry stays behind,
yet still remains with us as we walk on.
W-pI.124.2:4,5

When I am in light, there is no thought.

When I am in thought, there is still light because there is only light; it is just that a thought blocks my awareness of light’s presence.

With each step I became increasingly aware of the light that we are.

His step is light, and as he lifts his foot
to stride ahead a star is left behind,
to point the way to those who follow him.
W-p1.134.12:5

My Declaration of Release

I am the holy Son of God Himself; (191)

this situation does not define me.

The word situation derives from the Latin, situare, meaning “place.” A situation is a set of circumstances appearing to exist in space and time. Define comes from the Latin, definire, meaning “limit and determine.” The definition of my Self as God's holy Son will not be limited by my projected images in space and time. This is my declaration of release from worldly situations.

By refusing to be limited, I
come into the experience of being
limitless, a state of mind beyond space
and time, resting as God created me,
standing behind the drama of ego mind.

Father, my thanks to You for what I am;
for keeping my Identity untouched
and sinless, in the midst of all the thoughts
of sin my foolish mind made up. And thanks
to You for saving me from them. Amen.
W-pII.229.2:1-3

We Are Always Dealing Only With Thought

The other day, early in the morning, I was sitting on the couch, tying my shoe laces, about to walk out the door, and I looked up and saw movement though the window. I thought, “That’s my damn neighbor walking his dog whose barking often wakes me up during the night.” I finished tying my laces and looked up again, and there was no one there, only my reflection in the window. No neighbor, no dog. Only me catching my movements in the window. It happened real fast. So did the thought.

So, there we are. It’s all in that story. The thought, for example, "My damn neighbor," always comes first. There is only thought. I am always only looking into a mirror, reflecting back to me my thoughts.

This is actually a good thing because it demonstrates that I am totally responsible for what I see in the mirror. My thoughts are the cause; the images are the effect. I am not a victim of these images. I can change them by changing my mind.

It gets even simpler. There are only two kinds of thoughts. Thoughts are either true or false, real or unreal, loving or fearful. Jesus expresses it this way in His Course in Miracles.

Thoughts can represent the lower or bodily level of experience, or the higher or spiritual level of experience. One makes the physical, and the other creates the spiritual. (T-I.1.12:2,3)

And He expresses it this way in Lesson 199, I am not a body. I am free.

Freedom must be impossible as long
as you perceive a body as yourself.
The body is a limit. Who would seek
for freedom in a body looks for it
where it can not be found.
(W-p1.199.1:1-3)

The mind that serves the Holy Spirit is
unlimited forever, in all ways,
beyond the laws of time and space, unbound
by any preconceptions, and with strength
and power to do whatever it is asked.
(W-p1.199.2:1)

Seeing my "damn neighbor" is clearly a thought from a level of experience that has no source in reality, bound by my preconceptions. For a split-second, I actually had a choice between the lower or higher levels, but the thought came so rapidly, unconsciously, naturally, automatically, habitually that I did not catch it, and it carried its own emotional baggage. It is always moment to moment. In the state of mind of the peace of God, I would have looked through the image and caught the reflection of my true Self, experiencing the spiritual level of my mind. This is because I am as God created me.

I am the holy Son of God Himself. (Title, Lesson 189)

And the key thing here is to observe that this is a thought; we are always dealing only with thought, and this realization that I am God's Son is a thought from the higher level of experience.

One holy thought like this and you are free;
You are the holy son of God Himself.
(W-p1.191.6:1)

Your Self and God’s Self are the same—Himself, your true Identity.

However, if you were to think this thought, “I will deny this Identity,” a bodily level of experience, then you will look into a mirror and see images and form associations and make judgments based on preconceptions.

Deny your own Identity, and you will not escape the madness which induced this weird, unnatural and ghostly thought that mocks creation and laughs at God. (W-p1.3:1)

Yet, you are simply playing a game with thought.

Yet what is it except a game you play
in which identity can be denied?
You are as God crated you. All else
but this one thing is folly to believe.
In this one thought is everyone set free.
In this one truth are all illusions gone.
(W-p1.191.4:1-5)

It is folly to damn my neighbor. This is all going on only in one place, my mind. There is only my mind. There is only your mind. There is not a world “out there,” and my mind “in here.” There is only my mind, either projecting thoughts from a lower level, or reflecting thoughts from a higher level.

And I always have choice, because my mind is the mechanism of decision.

Your mind is the means by which you determine your own condition, because mind is the mechanism of decision. It is the power by which you separate or join, and experience pain or joy accordingly. (T-8.IV.5:7,8)

As God’s most holy Son, all power is given you in Heaven and on earth. (W-p1.20.3:7) The obvious question is with this power why does the mind habitually choose for hell over Heaven?

What just came to mind is Hamlet because he, too, poses a question to begin his famous soliloquy.

To be, or not to be—that is the question.

He assumes that the human condition is hell, and his only choice is to endure it, or commit suicide. He is caught in the bodily level of experience, not realizing that he does, indeed, have choice. He sees himself as a victim of the world, not realizing he is the cause. The reason is that his thoughts come to him so rapidly, unconsciously, naturally, automatically, habitually that they obscure his real thoughts from a higher level of experience, those from his True Self.

Seeing the world in this manner, he finds himself a victim.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?

In these lines he catalogues the human condition of looking into a mirror, darkly.

To die, to sleep--
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to.
'Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished.

Since these are thoughts that have no source in reality, it is wrong to conclude that death is the way out; the fact is that we are the holy Sons of God who cannot die, and the real way out while we are on earth is to become aware of our real thoughts by asking the Holy Spirit for help to relinquish thoughts of the bodily level that seem so real.

What is helpful in reading Hamlet’s soliloquy is that it eloquently describes the world from the human, egoic perspective. These are his thoughts. After all, that is the meaning of a soliloquy, to be an actor alone on stage speaking his thoughts directly to the audience. (If you wish to read the soliloquy in its entirety, please scroll to the end of this post.)

It is also helpful because we can adapt Hamlet’s phrase to be or not to be to make clear the truth of our being. Now I can say to be means to experience becoming aware of, my real thoughts, experiencing that I am God’s holy Son, I am a Thought of God, I am being his presence on earth.

Into His Presence would I enter now. (Title, Lesson, 157)

Nothing is needed but today’s idea
to light your mind, and let it rest in still
anticipation and in quiet joy,
wherein you quickly leave the world behind.
(W-p1.157.4:3)

This is the experience of to be, being in the world, but not of the world.

Not to be, however, means to deny my Identity as the holy Son of God and see in the world the projections of my unreal thoughts. We can begin to see through our images when we become aware of what we automatically do in our lower level minds, as we decide for insanity instead of truth.

Jesus, of course, having been a man himself, knows of our habitual addiction to bodily thoughts and designed His early lessons to help us see, first of all, exactly what we do with our thoughts from moment to moment, and secondly, how to forgive them.

Here is as Review of Lesson 11 in Lesson 53, My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world.

Since the thoughts of which I am aware do not mean anything, the world that pictures them can have no meaning. What is producing this world is insane, and so is what it produces.

Alone on stage, Hamlet reveals his thoughts, the ones of which he is aware, but this awareness does not make them real. In fact, they are obscuring his real thoughts. By remaining unaware, he is choosing not to be.

Reality is not insane, and I have real thoughts as well as insane ones. I can therefore see a real world, if I look to my real thoughts as my guide for seeing.

Lesson 12. I am upset because I see a meaningless world. Insane thoughts are upsetting. They produce a world in which there is no order anywhere. Only chaos rules a world that represents chaotic thinking, and chaos has no laws. I cannot live in peace in such a world.

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

…a sea of troubles.

We can go beyond Hamlet and see that we have a real choice, not one between living and dying, but between what Thoughts are valuable and what thoughts are valueless.

I am grateful that this world is not real, and that I need not see it at all unless I choose to value it. And I do not choose to value what is totally insane and has no meaning.

Lesson 13. A meaningless world engenders fear. The totally insane engenders fear because it is completely undependable, and offers no grounds for trust. Nothing in madness is dependable. It holds out no safety and no hope.

The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to.

But such a world is not real. I have given it the illusion of reality, and have suffered from my belief in it. Now I choose to withdraw this belief, and place my trust in reality. In choosing this, I will escape all the effects of the world of fear, because I am acknowledging that it does not exist.

Lesson 14. God did not create a meaningless world. How can a meaningless world exist if God did not create it? He is the Source of all meaning, and everything that is real is in His Mind. It is in my mind too, because He created it with me.

Why should I continue to suffer (the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune) from the effects of my own insane thoughts, when the perfection of creation is my home? Let me remember the power of my decision, and recognize where I really abide.

Lesson 15. My thoughts are images that I have made.

Whatever I see reflects my thoughts. It is my thoughts that tell me where I am and what I am. The fact that I see a world in which there is suffering and loss and death shows me that I am seeing only the representation of my insane thoughts, and am not allowing my real thoughts to cast their beneficent light on what I see.

Although Hamlet dies fearing the sleep of death and what dreams may come, Horatio, his friend glimpses the truth. Holding Hamlet in his arms as he utters his last words, The rest is silence, Horatio says,

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Yet God's way is sure. The images I have made cannot prevail against Him because it is not my will that they do so. My will is His, and I will place no other gods before Him.
It is really quite simple, to be or not to be. A friend said to me a long time ago, “All I know is that when I am feeling peaceful (to be), I say ‘Thank you,’ and when I am in conflict (not to be), I ask for ‘Help.’ ”

Moment to moment, it is always “Thank you” or “Help,” and it is always your decision to lose yourself in thought or find your Self in Thought.

And by the way, when you do find yourself lost, you can always say “Stop it,” reminding me of this 6-minute routine by Bob Newhart that is very practical and very funny.

Please click here to see this routine.

HAMLET: To be, or not to be--that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprise of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. -- Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! -- Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.
(III.1:58-92)

"Screen of smoke" or "smoke screen?" The Absolute Precision of Jesus' Language in His Course in Miracles.

It is simply miraculous that Jesus brought from out of time His Course in Miracles through the scribe, Helen Schucman. Though reluctant, she persevered over a seven-year period to write down in shorthand the words of A Course in Miracles. On a daily basis her colleague, Bill Thetford, took her transcription and typed it up into words and sentences and paragraphs. The prose and poetry of this masterpiece is impeccable, demonstrating that it could have come only from out of time.

Nevertheless, students occasionally joke about certain words and phrases because of their connotations in English. For example, Lesson 140, Only salvation can be said to cure, is usually called the “ham lesson” because cured ham is considered a delicacy. In the Reviews of Lessons 171-180, this phrase begins and ends the repetition of the daily Lessons, God is but Love, and therefore so am I, sometimes brings laughter because of the wordplay of “but” and “butt.”

Over the years, students have rolled their eyes when they came across the phrase, a screen of smoke, in Lesson 133, I will not value what is valueless.

All things are valuable or valueless,
worthy or not of being sought at all,
entirely desirable or
not worth the slightest effort to obtain.
Choosing is easy just because of this.
Complexity is nothing but a screen
of smoke, which hides the very simple fact
that no decision can be difficult.
What is the gain to you in learning this?
It is far more than merely letting you
make choices easily and without pain.
(W-p1.133.12)

Students, of course, think it should be “smoke screen” and smirk and say things like, “Well, after all, Jesus’ first language wasn’t English, but Aramaic.”

Finally, after all these years, I came across the phrase “screen of smoke” in another context, and I flashed on this phrase from the Course and saw the absolute precision of Jesus’ language. This epiphany occurred while reading an article in The New Yorker about ancient cave paintings in France and in Spain. Here are three paragraphs that provide a context for the insight.

During the Old Stone Age, between thirty-seven thousand and eleven thousand years ago, some of the most remarkable art ever conceived was etched or painted on the walls of caves in southern France and northern Spain. What those first artists invented was a language of signs for which there will never be a Rosetta stone; perspective, a technique that was not rediscovered until the Athenian Golden Age; and a bestiary of such vitality and finesse that, by the flicker of torchlight, the animals seem to surge from the walls. In the course of some twenty-five thousand years, the same animals—primarily bison, stags, aurochs, ibex, horses, and mammoths—recur in similar poses, illustrating an immortal story.

In the century since the modern study of caves began, specialists have tried to understand the culture that produced them. Of course, over the years, a number of theories have been developed. One group of specialists developed the theory that cave painting largely represents the experiences of shamans or initiates on a vision quest to the underworld. The caves themselves served as a gateway. Where the artists or their entourage left handprints, they were palping a living rock or summoning a life force beyond it.

Jean-Michel Geneste, a leonine man of fifty-nine with a silver mane, told me about an experiment that he had conducted at Lascaux in 1994. He decided to invite four elders of an Aboriginal tribe, the Nganinyins—hunter-gatherers from northwestern Australia—to visit the cave, and put them up in his house in the Dordogne. (Judith Thurman, First Impressions: What does the world’s oldest art say about us?, The New Yorker, June 23, 2008, p. 59)

And now here is the paragraph that brought into perspective the unerring accuracy of Jesus’ language.

Before visiting the caves, they first had to purify themselves, so they built a fire, and pulled some of their underarm hair out and burned it. Their own rituals involve traversing a screen of smoke—passing into another zone. When they entered the cave, they took a while to get their bearings. Yes, they said, it was an initiation site. The geometric signs, in red and black, reminded them of their own clan insignia, the animals and engravings of figures from their creative myths. (Thurman, p. 60)

There it is. Their rituals required traversing a screen of smoke—passing into another zone. In His Lesson, Jesus is teaching us how to pass from one world into another, passing from the false world to the true world.

There are no satisfactions in the world.
(W-p1.133.2:5)

He is expressing how easy it is to make the transition from valuing the valueless to valuing what is of value, passing in effect, from one zone to another, shifting from the false, egoic state to our true state of mind where only the truth is valued. To do that, we simply part the veil, move to another state; it is as simple as passing through a screen of smoke.

“Smoke screen” has a different connotation. It suggests “an action taken to mislead somebody or obscure something.”

Jesus shows us, however, that the ego’s complexity can be walked through as simply as we can walk through a thin screen of smoke, leaving behind the ego’s valueless state and entering into our true state of mind, the only state of any value, the only state there is.

A Favorable Wind Gently Carries You Home

A couple of days ago, I had a rather long conversation with an individual, and during the course of this conversation I became increasingly angry at some of things he said. I was surprised at the extent of my anger and contempt.

The next day, I played it over in my mind. I actually listed the things that he said that pissed me off. I imagined scenarios where I really trashed him. I imagined another where I got into a teaching, even though he is barely familiar with A Course in Miracles. Then I turned on myself and asked how I could get so angry for so long when I have been at this mind-training for some time now.

Finally, I asked for help and sat down to read something that would remind me of the truth of what I am and what he is, the holy sons of God. I picked up, or rather I realize in retrospect , I was guided to pick up a folder of readings by Raj/Jesus who speaks through Paul Tuttle at the Northwestern Foundation of A Course in Miracles. I just love this material because Raj/Jesus reads a section of the Course and comments on it through Paul during a Study Group meeting. It is simply Jesus commenting on what he transcribed to Helen Schucman, only using a different set of metaphors, making it incredibly personal while expressing the truth of His unworldly masterpiece. I “happened” to select the transcript of March 13, 2005, as Raj/Jesus reads the section, “Two Evaluations,” Chapter 9, Section VII.

Early on, Raj/Jesus cites this sentence from the Course:

Every minute and every second gives you a chance to save YOURSELF.
(T-9.VII.1:6)

He goes on to comment:

You’re presented with the opportunity to see and be in your Sanity again. Every single thing that confronts you is nothing less than the Kingdom of Heaven seen clearly, or through a glass darkly. (Raj/Jesus Transcript, March 13, 2005, p. 2)


After reading those two sentences, I simply melted into the peace of God with no trace of anger or contempt. The dark night of the soul was over. It is always a matter of remembering and forgetting.

When I was reminded that the conversation presented me with an opportunity to choose to see clearly, or see through a glass darkly, I was free to choose, and melting into peace was the choice.

At this point, I became curious about the origins of the word, “opportunity.” The key is to see “port” hidden in the word. In Latin, opportunus, means “favorable,” deriving from ob portum veniens, meaning “coming toward port with a favorable wind.” What I had labeled as extremely negative, seeing through a glass darkly, was, in fact, an opportunity to see clearly, returning Home with a favorable wind.

And now, sitting here experiencing the peace of God, I am grateful for this individual and our conversation, and I trust when it happens again I will remember to look at it as an opportunity, a chance.

Do not lose these chances, not because they will not return, but because delay of joy is needless. God wills you perfect happiness now.
(T-9;VII.1:7,8)

Now, I am not making this up; as I am sitting here typing this, he just knocked on the door. He is my landlord, and he came, unexpectedly, to take care of some problems created by the recent flooding here in Lake Delton, Wisconsin. I took a deep breath, invited him in, and he, typically, said some things that would ordinarily have provoked me, but this time, I managed to look at him clearly, and we had a rather enjoyable conversation.

You can never forgive a person. You can only ask for help to let go of your unreal thoughts about him, projected from your insane, egoic mind.

Do nothing, then, and let forgiveness show
you what to do, through Him Who is your Guide,
your Savior and Protector, strong in hope,
and certain of your ultimate success.
He has forgiven you already, for
such is His function, given Him by God.
Now must you share His function, and forgive
whom He has saved, whose sinlessness He sees,
and whom He honors as the Son of God.
(W-p11. 1 What is forgiveness? 5)

Now, Dear Reader, I invite you to practice forgiveness, just in case your ego-mind sometimes makes up a storm, driving you out to sea.

Please bring to mind an individual who seems to be out there, causing you to see through a glass darkly.

Imagine looking at him through the ego’s eyes, the body’s eyes, projecting on him all of the scorn and anger from this state of mind, separate from God. Just allow the negative stuff to surface without resistance. Resist not evil.

Thank you.

Now, look at him with the vision of Christ, looking through his body to the Christ that he is, seeing a reflection of your true Self, joining with the Christ that you are. Namaste.

Thank you.

Obviously, I have no idea how this worked for you. Just stopping for a moment, stepping back, is sometimes enough to experience a shift in your mind.

It turns out then that everything can be used to undo perception, enabling you to learn to see with vision. Sometimes, when I find myself persistently looking through the body’s eyes, I practice by literally closing my right eye and looking at his image through my left, representing the egoic state of mind. Then I imagine looking through his image with my right eye, representing Christ’s vision. This literal shift from left to right, from misperception to vision is sacred.

Brother, this day is sacred to the world. Your vision, given you from far beyond all things within the world, looks back on them in a new light. And what you see becomes the healing and salvation of the world. The valuable and valueless are both perceived and recognized for what they are. And what is worthy of your love receives your love, while nothing to be feared remains.
(W-p11.164.6)

Regarding this exercise, I find it helpful to look at the connotations of left and right in our culture. “Left” comes from Old English, lyft, meaning “weak.” And worse, “sinister” comes from the Latin, sinister, “on the left side, unlucky, inauspicious.” While “right” comes from the Old English, riht, “go straight.”

The act of forgiveness, this shift from one state of mind to another, to the only true state, can be expressed in a variety of ways.

Conversion.
Transformation.
Correction.
Redemption.
Atonement.
Salvation.
Resurrection.
Release.
Relinquishment.

Letting go of the unreal.
Being carried Home.
Loosing the world.
Undoing.
Remembering and forgetting.
Healing.

Raj/Jesus expresses it in reference to wishing to see the Evidence of Love.

Now, “I wish to see the Evidence of Love” doesn’t mean looking at somebody who’s behaving badly and say, “Man, I wish to see the Evidence of Love there. I wish they would change. I would like to see them behaving nicely.” That isn’t what it means. What it means is, I wish to see them without looking through a preexisting definition I am holding about them. I wish to see there what I know is the Truth about them. I wish not to see my misperception of them. I wish to see what revelation, insight, has uncovered to me about them which I am seeing there, in spite of the way I used to interpret their behavior, and in spite of the way they see themselves.

You see what I’m saying? When you say, “I wish to see the Evidence of Love,” it’s you engaged in an act of projecting the True Consciousness of them there, instead of getting hung up on your perceptions of what’s going on based on your own tiny, fearful frame of mind, coupled with their behavior that is based on their tiny, troubled frame of mind. To say, “I wish to see the Evidence of Love there,” doesn’t mean, “I wish they would change.” It means I wish to see them in a new way. I wish to extend to them whatever Consciousness of Truth God will reveal to me. You see? It’s far different from saying, “Gee, it would really be nice if they were a little more pleasant to be around.” That’s not wishing to see the Evidence of Love. There’s no gift in it.

“I wish to see the Evidence of Love” means you are going to take the proactive step, we’ll say, of insisting upon asking for the Vision that will let you see or grasp the meaning of the fact that if there’s anything there at all where your Brother or Sister is, it has to be God. The moment you do that, the lens through which you’re looking shifts and you are looking for something different. You are looking to see the Evidence of Love there. You’re looking to see the more of What’s Really There than what you had seen, or even what your Brother thinks is there and calls himself or herself. Are you getting what I’m saying?

To wish to see the Evidence of Love is not a wish to stand in receipt of something. It’s a wish to make a gift of a new way of seeing that is gathered not from your memory, but a willingness and an expressed desire to have the Holy Spirit reveal to you What Is Truly There, just as the Holy Spirit, your Right Mind, looks at you and sees What’s Truly There and extends it to you, and does not believe what you think you are and all the feelings you have associated with what you think you are. And that’s why your communion with the Holy Spirit is always healing. And that’s why the Holy Spirit can turn everything, every situation to your advantage. You have the OPPORTUNITY with your Brothers and Sisters to be that which turns whatever is happening in their life to their advantage.
(Raj/Jesus Transcript, March 13, 2005, pp. 5,6)

And now I understand what it means to say I am responsible for what I see. It is significant that the following quotation comes from a section in the Course entitled, “The Responsibility for Sight.”

I am responsible for what I see.
I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the goal I would achieve. And everything that seems to happen to me I ask for, and receive as I have asked. (T-21.II.2:3-5)

All along it has been difficult to understand how I could possibly be responsible for the things happening to me, particularly the bad things. Why would I ever ask for that? And now I realize I am responsible when I choose to see through the body’s eyes. I can just as well choose to see with vision. My choosing is my responsibility. My choice is the cause; I get the results, fully responsible for the choice.

Sometimes I go about pitying myself
and
all the time I am being carried on great winds across the sky.
(A Native American Saying)

And so I say to myself:

Each moment is an opportunity
to be carried gently home by the wind.

The Raj/Jesus transcript is available at the Northwest Foundation for ACIM.
Scroll down to the March 13, 2005, transcript.
Click here for the website.

The Eye of the Storm

Earlier today a tornado set down nearby, and right now it's early evening and another warning siren just went off, and soft thunder is rumbling in the dark sky, and the wind is coming up.

I am reminded of a poem I wrote some time ago, and I am posting it now.

THE EYE OF THE STORM
AND THE PEACE OF GOD

Flying research missions into the eye
of the hurricane, intrepid pilots
report of bravely hurtling through the eye
wall, the outer layer, a maelstrom, a
grinding stream, battered by torrential rains
and terrifying, one-hundred mile winds.

Suddenly, they break through, dazzled by blue
sky and sunlight, the calm at the center
of the storm, a clear space, sometimes forty
miles in diameter, where the winds are
light, the sky is sunny, stillness at last.

In wonder, they gaze up at the sides, the
blue-white clouds of the eye wall, towering
thousands of feet, gradually sloping
away, the walls of a great stadium.

This place at the center can be likened
unto the place in our center, God's peace.

There is a place in you where this whole world
has been forgotten; where no memory
of sin and of illusion lingers still.
There is a place in you which time has left,
and echoes of eternity are heard.
There is a resting place so still no sound
except a hymn to Heaven rises up
to gladden God the Father and the Son.
Where Both abide are They remembered, Both.
And where They are is Heaven and is peace.

Think not that you can change Their dwelling place.
For your Identity abides in Them,
and where They are, forever must you be.
The changelessness of Heaven is in you,
so deep within that nothing in this world
but passes by, unnoticed and unseen.
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:1,2

This poem was born from the seed of this
one revelatory Thought: Each moment in
time presents an opportunity for
conversion to eternity. The world
of time and illusion, like the eye wall,
just false perception, can be broken through.

The world is false perception. It is born
of error, and it has not left its source.
It will remain no longer than the thought
that gave it birth is cherished. When the thought
of separation has been changed to one
of true forgiveness, will the world be seen
in quite another light; and one which leads
to truth, where all the world must disappear
and all its errors vanish. Now its source
has gone, and its effects are gone as well.

The world was made as an attack on God.
It symbolizes fear. And what is fear
except love's absence? Thus the world was meant
to be a place where God could enter not,
and where His Son could be apart from Him.
Here was perception born, for knowledge could
not cause such insane thoughts. But eyes deceive,
and ears hear falsely. Now mistakes become
quite possible, for certainty has gone.

The mechanisms of illusion have
been born instead. And now they go to find
what has been given them to seek. Their aim
is to fulfill the purpose which the world
was made to witness and make real. They see
in its illusions but a solid base
where truth exists, upheld apart from lies.
Yet everything that they report is but
illusion which is kept apart from truth.
W-p11.3 “What is the World?” 1-3

The wind and rain and terrifying sounds
of the eye wall can be likened unto
the false world, made from sourceless thoughts, unreal,
simply mechanisms of illusion.

As sight was made to lead away from truth,
it can be redirected. Sounds become
the call of God, and all perception can
be given a new purpose by the One
Whom God appointed Savior to the world.
Follow His Light, and see the world as He
beholds it. Hear His Voice alone in all
that speaks to you. And let Him give you peace
and certainty, which you have thrown away,
but Heaven has preserved for you in Him.

Let us not rest content until the world
has joined our changed perception. Let us not
be satisfied until forgiveness has
been made complete. And let us not attempt
to change our function. We must save the world.
For we who made it must behold it through
the eyes of Christ, that what was made to die
can be restored to everlasting life.
W-p11.3 "What is the World?" 4,5

Just as pilots know now that the eye wall
will give way to the eye, we now know that
false perception will give way to God’s peace
when we ask the Holy Spirit for help,
certain that we are headed towards peace
no matter the terror of our storm thoughts,
trusting that “This is not so,” knowing we
will break through to the eye of the storm, now,
seeing with the eyes of Christ, proclaiming,
I AM THAT, I am the eye of the storm,
the stillness and the peace of God at last.

I Am Saved, or Damned, Simply by a Thought

Yesterday, I found myself in conflict with a good friend. Since I went to bed with it unresolved, I started thinking about it as soon as I woke up this morning, feeling sad and fearful. Just after getting out of bed, I prepared coffee in our French press and started reading Lesson 96, Salvation comes from my one Self. Even while doing the lesson, I kept hearing this nagging, frantic voice in my mind saying things like, “You’re not a good friend;” “You really fucked up this time.” This was obviously the voice of the ego.

Ordinarily, I try not to use the term “ego” because this usage tends to objectify it, making it easy to disown, as if it were outside of me. When, in fact, I am the ego when I think I am that, while in truth, I am That, the holy Son of God. It is remarkable that the word “ego” comes from Latin, the personal pronoun meaning “I.”

When I realized what I was doing to myself by paying attention to this painful voice, I put down the Workbook, grabbed my notebook and began transcribing what was going on in my mind, trying to slow things down so that I could be aware of just one thought at a time.

The ego is always eager to pounce, particularly when I am feeling down.

The pounce is in the form of a thought.

This thought is the ego’s attempt to keep me down, literally, as I hang my head in shame and fear.

This is the ego’s attempt to defend itself against God.

While my head is down, I am not likely to look up to see the face of Christ, not likely to look up to ask the Holy Spirit for help.

While feeling the pain of this attack thought, I encourage other attack thoughts by indulging in past memories and associations, and the ego keeps pouncing.

This defensive strategy works me over pretty well, until I recognize the ego’s intent.

In this recognition, I do look up and ask for help.

The Holy Spirit is the bridge between the ego’s defensive intent and my awareness of my true Self.

The Holy Spirit’s help also comes in the form of a thought, reminding me that I am invulnerable, the holy Son of God.

I am created perfectly; I am not as I made my egoic self, a cruel parody of my birthright, my true Self.

Salvation, too, is simply a thought, just as the ego’s pounce is a thought.

We are always dealing only with thoughts.

Right now, the Holy Spirit’s Voice is an easy choice, reminding me of the truth of what I am, and I am saved from the attacking voice, experiencing the peace of God, as the conflict with my brother dissolves.

I do not know whether or not he is still having conflicting thoughts.

He is totally responsible for his thoughts; I am totally responsible for mine.

While experiencing peace, I cannot project pain; while experiencing peace, I have an opportunity to join with him.

I can now join because conflicting thoughts are not in my awareness.

Actually, it is more accurate to say that conflicting thoughts do enter my awareness, but now I just don’t pay them any attention. I saw a good analogy in the newspaper today. A woman said, “It’s like a ticking clock keeps you up at night. You eventually fall asleep, not because the ticking stops, but because you figure out how to stop hearing it.”

When I figure out how to stop hearing attack thoughts, I, of course, wake up, rather than fall asleep, but it does not mean that they are not still ticking away.

In this waking state, I can now extend an invitation to my friend to join because I am clear in my mind, and my clarity is my responsibility, his state is his.

The chances are good now that the light will do the work, and we will join.

And then I put down my notebook and picked up the Workbook again to finish Lesson 96, Salvation comes from my one Self.

I invite you now, Dear Reader, to read today’s lesson in blank verse, meaning ten syllables per line, with the accent on every other syllable, for examples:

we WILL at TEMPT to DAY to FIND this THOUGHT W-p1.96.8:1

Lesson 96 follows, below, in blank verse. You will observe that the first paragraph is in prose. Jesus has been making the transition from prose to blank verse in the recent lessons. Starting with Lesson 91, Miracles are seen in light, Jesus has been increasing the stanzas of blank verse, while decreasing the paragraphs of prose. Finally, the first lesson entirely in blank verse is Lesson 98, I will accept my part in God’s plan for salvation. Each lesson from 98 to 365 is entirely in blank verse, the rhythm echoing the beating of your heart.

To take a look at all of the passages in the Course in blank verse, please go to my website to peruse Steve Russell’s book, The Rhythm and Reason of Reality.

Although you are one Self, you experience yourself as two; as both good and evil, loving and hating, mind and body. This sense of being split into opposites induces feelings of acute and constant conflict, and leads to frantic attempts to reconcile the contradictory aspects of this self-perception. You have sought many such solutions, and none of them has worked. The opposites you see in you will never be compatible. But one exists.

The fact that truth and illusion cannot
be reconciled, no matter how you try,
what means you use and where you see the problem,
must be accepted if you would be saved.
Until you have accepted this, you will attempt
an endless list of goals you cannot reach;
a senseless series of expenditures
of time and effort, hopefulness and doubt,
each one as futile as the one before,
and failing as the next one surely will.

Problems that have no meaning cannot be
resolved within the framework they are set.
Two selves in conflict could not be resolved,
and good and evil have no meeting place.
The self you made can never be your Self,
nor can your Self be split in two, and still
be what It is and must forever be.
A mind and body cannot both exist.
Make no attempt to reconcile the two,
or one denies the other can be real.
If you are physical, your mind is gone
from your self-concept, for it has no place
in which it could be really part of you.
If you are spirit, then the body must
be meaningless to your reality.

Spirit makes use of mind as means to find
its Self expression. And the mind which serves
the spirit is at peace and filled with joy.
Its power comes from spirit, and it is
fulfilling happily its function here.
Yet mind can also see itself divorced
from spirit, and perceive itself within
a body it confuses with itself.
Without its function then it has no peace,
and happiness is alien to its thoughts.

Yet mind apart from spirit cannot think.
It has denied its Source of strength, and sees
itself as helpless, limited and weak.
Dissociated from its function now,
it thinks it is alone and separate,
attacked by armies massed against itself
and hiding in the body's frail support.
Now must it reconcile unlike with like,
for this is what it thinks that it is for.

Waste no more time on this. Who can resolve
the senseless conflicts which a dream presents?
What could the resolution mean in truth?
What purpose could it serve? What is it for?
alvation cannot make illusions real,
nor solve a problem that does not exist.
Perhaps you hope it can. Yet would you have
God's plan for the release of His dear Son
bring pain to him, and fail to set him free?

Your Self retains Its Thoughts, and they remain
within your mind and in the Mind of God.
The Holy Spirit holds salvation in
your mind, and offers it the way to peace.
Salvation is a thought you share with God,
because His Voice accepted it for you
and answered in your name that it was done.
Thus is salvation kept among the Thoughts
your Self holds dear and cherishes for you.

We will attempt today to find this thought,
whose presence in your mind is guaranteed
by Him Who speaks to you from your one Self.
Our hourly five-minute practicing
will be a search for Him within your mind.
Salvation comes from this one Self through Him
Who is the Bridge between your mind and It.
Wait patiently, and let Him speak to you
about your Self, and what your mind can do,
restored to It and free to serve Its Will.

Begin with saying this:

Salvation comes from my one Self.
Its Thoughts are mine to use.

Then seek Its Thoughts, and claim them as your own.
These are your own real thoughts you have denied,
and let your mind go wandering in a world
of dreams, to find illusions in their place.
Here are your thoughts, the only ones you have.
Salvation is among them; find it there.

If you succeed, the thoughts that come to you
will tell you you are saved, and that your mind
has found the function that it sought to lose.
Your Self will welcome it and give it peace.
Restored in strength, it will again flow out
from spirit to the spirit in all things
created by the Spirit as Itself.
Your mind will bless all things. Confusion done,
you are restored, for you have found your Self.

Your Self knows that you cannot fail today.
Perhaps your mind remains uncertain yet
a little while. Be not dismayed by this.
The joy your Self experiences It
will save for you, and it will yet be yours
in full awareness. Every time you spend
five minutes of the hour seeking Him
Who joins your mind and Self, you offer Him
another treasure to be kept for you.

Each time today you tell your frantic mind
salvation comes from your one Self, you lay
another treasure in your growing store.
And all of it is given everyone
who asks for it, and will accept the gift.
Think, then, how much is given unto you
to give this day, that it be given you!

Things I Say to Myself to Wake up from the Dream and Sink into the Peace of God

Walking around in the dream, I too often forget the truth of what I am. Remembering that I am God’s holy Son requires great vigilance and determination and dedication. The temptation to forget that I am already safe at Home is very powerful. It is always a matter of forgetting and remembering, moment to moment.

It’s like walking into a movie theatre, finding your seat, settling in while the lights dim and the credits roll, then watching the images projected onto the blank screen, getting caught up in the story, losing all sense of your surroundings, until the ending credits begin to scroll down the screen and the lights brighten. You slowly come to our senses, putting on your familiar persona like your coat, and walk out of the theatre, forgetting that there’s absolutely no difference between the images on the movie screen and the images that are now flooding your screen. They are equally unreal.

I find myself walking through the day usually absorbed in these images. When I become aware of this absorption, I ask for help to remember that they are simply thoughts I have made, thrown out onto the blank screen by my personal projector.

God has given you the means for undoing what you have made. Listen, and you will learn how to remember what you are. T-10.V.11:6-7

It helps me to remember what I am by saying these things to myself.

. . .state of mind

I frequently repeat this sentence from Brother Laurence, “It’s not what you do, it’s the state of mind in which you do it.” This reminder quickly takes me to the realization that there is only one state of mind, the peace of God, but there appears to be another, the state ruled by a little speck in my brain called the ego, having no source in reality. From this state are projected thought-images that are over the moment they occur.

. . .not of the world

In that sense, I am in the world, but not of the world. I am walking around in a projected world, but I am not of this world because I can choose to ask for help to be in the state of mind of the peace of God. In this state I am lifted out of the world of my projections.

. . .the eyes of Christ

When I am in this state, the only state there is, I see through the eyes of Christ. I am always looking into a mirror. Through Christ’s eyes I experience the reflection of peace, joy, love, light, truth, perfection, oneness, reality.

. . .the body’s eyes

When I see through the body’s eyes, I experience fear, guilt, conflict, pain, anxiety, depression. It is always either/or, Christ’s eyes, or the body’s eyes. It’s on or off; it is always my choice, Heaven or hell.

. . .joining with my brother

I experience hell when I see my brother’s body and his behavior and find myself making judgments, using the pronoun you, attacking and blaming him, putting everything outside of myself. I experience Heaven when I look through his body and behavior and see the face of Christ reflecting back to me, using the pronoun I, taking full responsibility for what I am experiencing. In this state of mind we join, and I can experience His bright reflection.

. . ."I” need help

I always need help, and it always helps me to take a look at who this “I” is. First of all, there is only one I, the one created by God. But this separate “I” can appear to be seduced by the ego, taking on the ego’s persona and allying with it. I need help to break away from this unholy alliance and join with my Christ Self, and then I am at safe at Home, still as God created me.

. . .familiar versus the Real

This seduction is a result of my conditioning as a body. I find that trusting the body’s senses of sight and sound and smell and taste and touch make a world that is completely familiar, natural, habitual, normal, ordinary, and universal. I forget that this is an unholy alliance made by my projected thought-images. I come to learn that what cannot be sensed is Real, and what is Real is perfectly natural.

. . .the Holy Spirit

Thank God, help is already here in my mind. The Holy Spirit’s is the bridge between my states of mind, my state of dreaming and my state of reality and peace. It is simply, and profoundly, a matter of remembering and forgetting. When I truly ask for help to remember, all of the power of the universe rushes in to help me because that is what I am as God’s Son. When I forget, I am making up a world where nothing is happening. An image appears and quickly vanishes; it’s over. As a waiter said to me the other day as he served me my lunch, after he had recited to me a long list of personal woes, “I said to myself, it ain’t happening.”

. . .gratitude

When I come into the awareness of the only thing that is really happening, now, I am filled with gratitude. When I am grateful and my mind is still, I find that I am most receptive. In this state, I can more easily hear the Voice for God speaking to me all through the day. This Voice prompts me, and I simply do the next thing.

The Inevitability of Hearing the Voice for God

A couple of days ago I came across an article in The New York Times by a journalist, Sara Rimer, “Gatsby’s Green Light Beckons a New Set of Strivers.” Apparently, the novel, written over 80 years ago, is speaking to high school students now, particularly immigrants.

BOSTON — Jinzhao Wang, 14, who immigrated two years ago from China, has never seen anything like the huge mansions that loomed over Long Island Sound in glamorous 1920s New York. But F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby, with its themes of possibility and aspiration, speaks to her.

She is inspired by the green light at the end of the dock, which for Jay Gatsby, the self-made millionaire from North Dakota, symbolizes the upper-class woman he longs for. “Green color always represents hope,” Jinzhao said.

“My green light?” said Jinzhao, who has been studying “Gatsby” in her sophomore English class at the Boston Latin School. “My green light is Harvard.”

Gatsby, of course, is the doomed dreamer in the novel who is obsessed with his love for Daisy, a woman he courted eight years previously, and now believes that he can repeat the past and win her love, again. When we first encounter him in the novel, he is staring at the green light at the end of her dock across the bay, symbolizing his romantic dream.

This article brought back memories for me because in March of 1965 I wrote a critical essay and lesson plan on The Great Gatsby, “A paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Teaching from The University of Chicago.” Over the years, through all the moves from city to city, I managed to keep a copy of that essay. I found it yesterday and read it for the first time since I wrote it so long ago. Just holding it in my hands takes me back. It is a copy of the original that was submitted, a carbon copy, thin, yellowing paper with gray carriage marks of the typewriter, dark, shadowy columns running down each page. Sometimes letters are hard to read because I had used Whiteout to type corrections on the original. I had typed it on my portable Remington, a thoughtful and practical gift from by parents for my high school graduation.

This seventeen-page essay actually holds up quite well after all these years. I can see that my young, scholarly self took his task seriously. In preparation for writing it, I had read Fitzgerald’s other novels, his short stories, and a dozen books of literary criticism. My young self argued his thesis rather tenaciously.

Now, there is only one reason for this nostalgic look at this past event, and the word “nostalgic” is just right, because the word means “a longing for home,” from the Greek nostos, meaning "homecoming," and algos, "pain." The home I am referring to here is being Home in God.

This world you seem to live in is not home
to you. And somewhere in your mind you know
that this is true. A memory of home
keeps haunting you, as if there were a place
that called you to return, although you do
not recognize the voice, nor what it is
the Voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel
an alien here, from somewhere all unknown.
Nothing so definite that you could say
with certainty you are an exile here.
Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not
more than a tiny throb, at other times
hardly remembered, actively dismissed,
but surely to return to mind again.
W-p1.182.1

One of my favorite themes is that we are always being spoken to by this Voice, whether or not we hear it. It is inevitable as God’s Son that we hear His Voice, even though we are doing everything in our power to defend ourselves against hearing His Voice. In fact, hearing it is completely natural, and not hearing, or defending ourselves against it, is completely unnatural.

It is quite possible to listen to God's Voice all through the day without interrupting your regular activities in any way. The part of your mind in which truth abides is in constant communication with God, whether you are aware of it or not. W-p1.49.1:1-3

The part that is listening to the Voice for God is calm, always at rest and wholly certain. It is really the only part there is. 2:1,2

Sink deep into the peace that waits for you beyond the frantic, riotous thoughts and sights and sounds of this insane world. You do not live here. We are trying to reach your real home. We are trying to reach the place where you are truly welcome. We are trying to reach God. 4:4-8

Now back to writing my essay on the novel.

The thesis that I tenaciously articulated is a result of hearing the Voice in the form of an idea that struck me. Across the years this has remains a vivid memory for me.

I remember facing a deadline and sitting down at my typewriter on a Saturday night in my room where I lived in a house on Harper Avenue, a few blocks from the University of Chicago campus. I had worked on the paper for five hours. But when I finished, I was in despair because I knew it had not come together. It lacked a clear focus, I had begun rambling and, basically, summarized the chapters as I went through the novel. I stood up, grabbed the sheets of paper and tore them up.

It was midnight, and out of fear and depression and despair, I decided to take a walk along the nearby beach of Lake Michigan, just across Lake Shore Drive. Of course, my critical voice was attacking me, telling me that I wouldn’t be able to graduate; I wouldn’t be able to move on with a career; I would just be stuck.

At that time, of course, I had no idea that I could ask for help. I thought that I was totally alone in the universe. I didn’t have the slightest idea that I was God’s Son, no idea that I was anything except this wild illusion, frantic and distraught, but without reality of any kind, constantly distracted, disorganized and highly uncertain. W-p1.49.2:3

Nevertheless, walking along the beach, my hands in my pockets, my head down, I was suddenly struck with an idea in the form of a soft voice, telling me to focus the entire paper on the question of the reliability of the first-person narrator, Nick Carraway. This just seemed to click. "Eureka!" My despair lifted, I looked up at the stars and felt renewed.

The next day I woke up running the idea, the gift, through my mind, and it felt just right. Since the reader is seeing all of the events through Nick Carraway’s eyes, I could focus on him, his value structure, and how he evaluated the behavior of each of the characters. With this key firmly in mind, I sat down the next day, after a peaceful sleep, and rather easily typed the essay.

Here are some excerpts from the essay, demonstrating the implementation of the idea that came to me on the beach, a gift from the Voice for God.

Nick Carraway, our guide in the form of a first-person narrator, is deeply involved with the other characters. Participating in the action and evaluating events with knowledge of what preceded and what followed them, Nick proves to be a completely reliable narrator. When he describes Tom and adds that “There were men at New Haven who had hated his guts,” we accept this as a significant appraisal of Tom. When he steps back and openly reacts to a character after describing him or her, he helps the reader see the character more clearly. For example, after describing Jordan Baker, he says, “Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.” His response to Daisy, evident in his description of her, fixes her in the reader’s mind for the rest of the novel, “Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget.”

By gradually revealing more and more about Gatsby through Nick, whose judgments remain consistent with the reader’s, Fitzgerald manages to keep Gatsby unreal and mysterious. Had Fitzgerald revealed more about Gatsby in the beginning, this effect would have been lost. He had to maintain this effect to prepare the reader to accept Gatsby as the tragic dreamer who eventually “breaks up like glass against Tom’s hard malice.”

So there we are. In spite my limited self, I had heard the Holy Spirit speak to me. No mind training. No Bible training. No Transcendental Meditation. It is inevitable, meaning “something that is certain to happen,” from the Latin, inevitabilis, meaning “unavoidable.” It is completely natural. We are as God created us.

What am I?
I am God's Son, complete and healed and whole,
shining in the reflection of His Love.
In me is His creation sanctified
and guaranteed eternal life. In me
is love perfected, fear impossible,
and joy established without opposite.
I am the holy home of God Himself.
I am the Heaven where His Love resides.
I am His holy Sinlessness Itself,
for in my purity abides His Own.
W-p11.14.1

What is the Holy Spirit?
The Holy Spirit mediates between
illusions and the truth. Since He must bridge
the gap between reality and dreams,
perception leads to knowledge through the grace
that God has given Him, to be His gift to
everyone who turns to Him for truth.
Across the bridge that He provides are dreams
all carried to the truth, to be dispelled
before the light of knowledge. There are sights
and sounds forever laid aside. And where
they were perceived before, forgiveness has
made possible perception's tranquil end.
W-p11.7.1

So, I did graduate from the program, and my first job was teaching English in a junior high school in Westport, Connecticut. Pursuing my dream within a dream, my green light was to blend my passion for teaching with earning a living. Four years after I graduated from the Master’s Program, my Supervisor, Janet Emig, called me in Westport, telling me of a new opportunity at the University of Chicago. They were starting a new program called The Teaching of Teachers, and it led to a Ph.D. from the Education Department. She thought I would be a good candidate. And much to my surprise, she said that she found herself often using my critical essay as an example when she was assigning the paper to her students.

So, after four years of teaching in Westport, I continued pursuing my particular green light. I felt the nostalgia of returning to Chicago, and somehow the Voice on the beach and the writing of the essay and Janet’s remembering it and her call were all taking me home, in retropspect, taking me Home. In September of 1969, just after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, my wife, Kim, and our two children, Lori (4) and Stephen (6 months) jumped into our ’65 Volkswagen Beetle, and I followed them in a U-Haul Truck, heading for Chicago.

It’s all good. In spite of ourselves, it is inevitable that we are going Home, a journey without distance to a goal that has never changed. T-8.VI.9:7

Resting in the Expanded Consciousness of Holiness

Yesterday, it took four hours for my son, Stephen, and I to drive the 125 miles from the Wisconsin Dells to the Milwaukee Airport because of the record-setting snowstorm. We were totally stopped several times because of overturned semi-trucks. I learned the next day that over 800 motorists were stranded, and the National Guard was called out to help the motorists and clear the highway.

I dropped him off and decided to return right away because his Toyota Tundra had handled very nicely in the snow and ice. As he pointed out to me, because of the four-wheel drive and the tires, he could actually accelerate in the snowy passing lane, maintaining steady traction.

When I arrived on the outskirts of Madison, I was moving along rather well. Suddenly, I slammed on the brakes, and the Tundra became a huge sled, out of control on an icy, three-lane highway. I slammed on the breaks because I suddenly realized that I was about to back end a semi-truck. What happened is that ground suddenly became figure. What I saw as a car’s tail lights at a safe distance ahead suddenly became a semi’s tail lights a few feet in front of me. It was a perceptual distortion that often happens to me at night driving along the highway, staring at tail lights. Ordinarily, the sudden shift from ground to figure is trippy, but this time. . .well, I was completely present during the spin, my head staying completely calm and clear and alert. I said to myself, you just turned the steering wheel hard to the right, now you’re going to have to turn it hard to the left. I noted that there weren’t any cars coming up on me, and all I had to do is ride out the smooth slide, gliding down a three-lane highway. Finally, I came to a stop, facing three-quarters to the rear; I just turned around and proceeded on my way. My heart rate did not accelerate, and my head remained peaceful and clear, during and after the event. I just said, “Thank you, Jesus.”

This morning I was astonished to read the first paragraph of Lesson 38, There is nothing my holiness cannot do, from Jesus' Course in Miracles.

Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance and limits of any kind. Your holiness is totally unlimited in its power because it establishes you as a Son of God, at one with the Mind of his Creator.

Two days before this event, I was completely inspired by reading a classic book given me by a friend, The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment by Thaddeus Golas (1924-1997), first published in 1972. I read it from cover to cover in a three-hour sitting, taking copious notes. I was so excited reading it because it is the Course with different metaphors. Golos uses the metaphor of contracted and expanded awareness, and holiness is expanded awareness.

Golas expresses it this way.

Contraction is felt as fear, pain, unconsciousness, ignorance, hatred, evil, and a whole host of strange feelings. At an extreme he has the feeling of being completely insane, of resisting everyone and everything, of being unable to choose the content of his consciousness. Of course, these are just the feelings appropriate to mass vibration levels, and he can get out of them at any time by expanding, by letting go of all resistance to what he thinks, sees, or feels. When we are completely expanded, we have a feeling of total awareness, of being one with all life. At that level we have no resistance to any vibrations or interactions of other beings. It is timeless bliss, with unlimited choice of consciousness, perception, and feeling.

Expanded awareness is speeded up vibration. When we are at this vibration level, everything around us in time and space moves slowly, and now we are truly in the world, but not of the world. That was my experience in the spinning sled.

Golas expresses the contrast of slow vibrations.

Note carefully that when your vibrations are slow, or contracted, events seem to happen fast, and you will feel that events are happening too fast for you to control them. And you may therefore feel impelled to try that much harder to exercise control. The slower your vibrations, the more unpleasant your life: you will contend with more conflict, mass, and pain. Events will happen too fast for control, yet time will seem interminable because you can see no way out. But the faster you are vibrating and the more messages you get back from your environment, the slower events will appear to be happening, and the more you will feel you are in control. The more you love, the faster you vibrate, then the less need you feel to control anything, and you are not fearful of change and variety. You experience everything deeper and slower and more lovingly.

The higher the ratio of expansion to contraction in yourself, the more expanded and loving you are, the faster you vibrate. And when you raise your vibration level, you can neatly sidestep collisions, both psychic and physical, and quite literally change the world for the better. Love is the strongest magic of all.

There is nothing my holiness cannot do because the power of God lies in it.

It is timeless bliss, with unlimited choice of consciousness, perception, and feeling.

The purpose of today's exercises is to begin to instill in you a sense that you have dominion over all things because of what you are.

Thank you, Father.

Happy New Year! Rest in God

I started the new year with an extraordinary experience. My wife, Christine, and I were staying with our friends, Carol and Dan, in Lansing, Michigan, at their C D Inn. As I was slowly waking up on New Year’s Day, I just lay there with my eyes closed for awhile. We would be driving back home soon, and I was pleasantly surprised that I could not visualize the house in Wisconsin Dells where we have been living for the past ten years; I simply could not bring it to mind.

I rather enjoyed this not knowing and wanted to prolong it as long as possible. This lovely state of formlessness was very peaceful. When I told a friend, Tanja, about this experience, she smiled and said, “It sounds like enlightened amnesia,” capturing exactly my response to this state of mind at that moment. This still state of mind served as a reference point for sentences from A Course in Miracles, for example:

I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me. W-p1.rVI.In.3:3

This state of mind where the reference point is not form but formlessness is the stillness of my creation as God’s Son. Being unable to formulate for a moment, this enlightened amnesia, is a refreshing, peaceful experience that runs counter to the normal, habitual, regular formulation of thought-images that we manifest in space and time. This experience serves as an example of stepping out of time and space. This is our true state of consciousness before coming into the world of form, while being in form, and after leaving.

This state is what is Real.

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God. W-p1.In.2:2-4

This reality in my mind is the reference point for a variety of metaphors simply expressed in Lesson titles:

I am the light of the world. (Lesson 61)
The light has come. (Lesson 75)
Light and joy and peace abide in me. (Lesson 93)
I am as God created me. (Lesson 94)
I am one Self, united with my Creator. (Lesson 95)
I am spirit. (Lesson 97)
I rest in God. (Lesson 109)
Let me remember I am one with God. (Lesson 124)
The world I see holds nothing I want. (Lesson 129)


These metaphors provide a great way to enter a new year because on January 1st. I begin, again, the Lessons of A Course in Miracles. Ensconced in the state of mind of the peace and light of God, I am eager to read Lesson 1, Nothing I see means anything. From this reference point of the awareness of the peace of God, the falsity of what I see is readily apparent. It is a reminder that what I am as created by God has nothing to do with the physical form. I am God's Son regardless of the world I made up with separating thoughts.

It is from this perspective, meaning “to look through,” that I can look at the titles of Lessons 2-7 as reminders.

I have given everything I see in this room all the meaning that it has for me. (Lesson 2)
I do not understand anything I see in this room. (Lesson 3)
These thoughts do not mean anything. They are like the things I see in this room. (Lesson 4)
I am never upset for the reason I think. (Lesson 5)
I am upset because I see something that is not there. (Lesson 6)
I see only the past. (Lesson 7)

Jesus is simply telling us what we already know but forgot that we know. Because of our preoccupation with seeing in form, we stay unaware of our Real state of mind. That is why Jesus uses “see” in these titles, demonstrating the falsity of what we take for granted, the falsity of the premise that seeing is believing.

It is a done deal. What we are in Reality has nothing to do with what we see around us.

And now I am going to practice the awareness of our Reality by reading and commenting on the first five paragraphs of Lesson 109, I rest in God.


We ask for rest today, and quietness
unshaken by the world's appearances.
We ask for peace and stillness, in the midst
of all the turmoil born of clashing dreams.
We ask for safety and for happiness,
although we seem to look on danger and
on sorrow. And we have the thought that will
answer our asking with what we request.

Bringing my house into existence by remembering it is just an example of entering into the world's appearances with my thought-images. Recognizing the falsity of these thoughts enables me to shift into the awareness of the peace of God.

"I rest in God." This thought will bring to you
the rest and quiet, peace and stillness, and
the safety and the happiness you seek.
"I rest in God." This thought has po