Essays

Guilt you say? What guilt? That’s what I said to myself in 1976 as I read through A Course In Miracles for the first time. I didn’t understand very much of what I was reading, but I thought myself fortunate not to be experiencing the guilt this material stated was rampant in the world.

Then, in 1985, I heard a recording on special relationships and ACIM by Dr. Kenneth Wapnick, and I began to get realistically acquainted with the confusion in my mind. What I had, it turned out, were great denial mechanisms – ‘defenses’– the Course calls them. And worse, these very defense mechanisms I thought were keeping me safe and feeling good about myself turned out to be what was hurting me and keeping me in fear.

“… all defenses do what they would defend.” T-17.IV.7:1

“If I defend myself I am attacked.” W-pI.135

To quote from a 1950’s tv sitcom, The Life of Riley, “what a revoltin’ development this is”. The ‘this’ I refer to is the emerging understanding that the misperceptions in my own mind are my only problem and that internalizing the simple guidance offered in this Course is the whole way out.

To be in the joy of a mind unburdened by guilt is to free yourself from all suffering, sorrow, and loss. A Course in Miracles presents us with the means to grant ourselves this unfathomable gift. The Course calls this gift, which we first give to ourselves and then extend to others, forgiveness.

Forgiveness, as it is used in the Course, is a practical, logical process for correcting our personal misperceptions and replacing them with a guilt-free, judgment-free experience. This experience of our innocence is the gift. Our consistent acceptance of this gift turns our awareness towards the home we never left. This home is Heaven, and Heaven is a state of mind. When we have practiced forgiveness sufficiently to dispel our misperceptions, we spontaneously awaken in this state.

The terms ‘simple’ and ‘easy’ are so often found together to describe the same thing that it is not surprising that the two terms are often unconsciously conflated. This is of little or no consequence most of the time since what is simple is often also easy.

Not so, however, when the term ‘simple’ is applied to ACIM, as Jesus does throughout his course. Ironically, it is the Course’s simplicity that is hard for us to grasp. In describing his course, Jesus says … For here we have an answer, clear and plain beyond deceit in its simplicity. All the complexities the world has spun of fragile cobwebs disappear before the power and the majesty of this extremely simple statement of the truth (W-pI.122.6:6-7).

Understandably, when one begins reading and perhaps, studying ACIM, it can take some time to adjust one’s thinking to align with its thought system. While the writing style is unfamiliar to most readers in the beginning, it is what the Course says that is so challenging. The most basic metaphysical premise of ACIM … that there is no world (W-pI.132.6:2) … confronts our belief in the reality of our perceptions. Thus begins the process of realizing that our self/ego generated experience is not the truth. We must develop the humility to question the assumption that our perceptions are correct, and the honesty to recognize that we are wrong about all of our perceptions when they are generated from the ego.

This course is simple, clear, and direct. It is not difficult to understand nor is it open to interpretation. This is met with great resistance by our egos, whose hubris assures us that we are both capable of, and entitled to, make interpretations of everyone and everything in our world. As a result, each of us goes about our daily lives having “given everything we see… all the meaning that it has for us, (W-pI.2), never realizing that is why we see a meaningless world.” (W-pI.12)

“Knowing is not open to interpretation. You may try to ‘interpret’ meaning, but this is always open to error because it refers to the perception of meaning.” (T-3.V.5:1-2) Since “projection makes perception,” (T-21.In.1:1), this means that our interpretations of meaning are mistaken because they all come from the mistaken perceptions of ourselves as separate individuals in a world of separation. This is the illusion of the world that ACIM describes for its students throughout all three books.

So, the Course is simple, but because of our excessive pride and misplaced self-confidence, we, as egos, think we know how to judge what is in our best interest. Until we can develop the humility to step back and let Jesus lead the way, we will have trapped ourselves in our complicated world of judgment and attack. Until we are willing to commit to the simple practice of forgiveness, we will never experience the simplicity of salvation.

God is not a supreme sapien of some sort. God is spirit. So is His Creation, having been created in God’s likeness. Spirit is formless. Since we can not make an image in our mind of the formless, we must use a symbol we can recognize to speak or even think of God. To speak of ‘God the Father’ is to use a symbol in a form we all can recognize (a father) to stand for something else – God, who is formless. The grammatical term for doing this is a metaphor. 

Metaphor: ‘A thing regarded as representative or symbolic of something else, especially something abstract’

A metaphor is a figure of speech whose use in our case, is necessitated by the abstract nature of God and His Creation. In A Course In Miracles, God’s Creation is called His Son or Christ. It is very helpful to us as students of this course, to keep in mind that these terms ( God, God’s Son, Christ, God’s Creation) are all symbols that stand for That which is formless, changeless, limitless, perfect, infinite and eternal. All of those six terms are abstract and therefore essentially meaningless to us because we can’t ‘picture’ them.

I suspect that at least some of you must be wondering…if God’s Creation is formless, what about me!? No need to worry. God’s got you covered. The most oft-repeated phrase in the Course is:

“I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me.” W-pI.rVI.In.3:3-5

Without going into a lengthy explanation, the take away is that we are all perfectly safe in Heaven, but dreaming we are a body in a threatening world.

A Course In Miracles’ purpose is to teach us to use our dreaming to wake up – rather than stay asleep where we dream we are vulnerable. 

“You are at home in God, dreaming of exile but perfectly capable of awakening to reality.” T-10.I.2:1

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false.”
T-16.IV.6:1-2

If you are serious about studying, learning and practicing this course, then you must also be serious about the ultimate goal of this course, which is to awaken from the dream of separation and death.

“How can God’s son awaken from the dream? It is a dream of judgment. So must he judge not, and he will awaken.”  T-29.IX.2:3-5

To be effective, your daily practice then must be oriented around this goal. Your task becomes an ongoing vigilance for all disturbances to your peace of mind. This only involves the observation of yourself and your reactions (your interpretations) of everyone and everything which seems to be outside your mind.

When you find yourself getting upset, angry, sick, depressed, feeling victimized or even just mildly disturbed – you have found what you are looking for. Being alert for these and all similar reactions to the world is your task. Your task does not involve judging anyone else. 

This is the ‘mind-training’ that this course teaches. We are being trained to associate the cause of our upsets with our choice for the ego as our teacher, and the undoing of these upsets with our choice for the Teacher of Love.

The Three Steps Of Forgiveness

Our part of the process of forgiveness is complete in two steps. The third step is offered to us by the Holy Spirit to complete the process.

First, we must become aware of the thought that is the interference (barrier) to our mind being at peace.

Second, is remembering that we can choose the teacher of peace if we desire to do so.

“I could see peace instead of this.”  W-pI.34

As we choose the teacher of peace (Jesus or the Holy Spirit), it’s important to consider that we are not being told we “must” change teachers, but only that we “could” change teachers if we don’t like the experience we are giving ourselves now.

Third, having chosen the teacher of peace in the second step – our mind is now opened to a kindly re-interpretation of the thought that was the source of our upset. When we choose the teacher of peace, we move from the wrong mind to the right mind. The right mind is the home of the Holy Spirit and holds all of the peaceful answers to our concerns.

“Forgiveness is the key to happiness. I will awaken from the dream that I am mortal, fallible and full of sin, and know I am the perfect son of God.” W-121.13:6-7