This video recording is from a classroom conversation in the School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) program with Bruce Rawles about “What is the Holy Spirit?” – the 7th “What is…” essay in part II of the WorkBook of A Course in Miracles. In this session – led by Lyn Corona and Tim Wise – Bruce Rawles reviews the differences between the two thought systems (ego or Holy Spirit)
We opened this session with Workbook Lesson 302: Where darkness was I look upon the light.
“Father, our eyes are opening at last. ²Your holy world awaits us, as our sight is finally restored and we can see. ³We thought we suffered. ⁴But we had forgot the Son whom You created. ⁵Now we see that darkness is our own imagining, and light is there for us to look upon. ⁶Christ’s vision changes darkness into light, for fear must disappear when love has come. ⁷Let me forgive Your holy world today, that I may look upon its holiness and understand it but reflects my own.
2. Our Love awaits us as we go to Him, and walks beside us showing us the way. ²He fails in nothing. ³He the End we seek, and He the Means by which we go to Him.” (ACIM, W-302.1:1–2:3; boldface of the last line added by me)
There are 899 instances of “Holy Sprit” in ACIM! Here are some more of them:
We resume by reading The Invitation to the Holy Spirit (ACIM, T-5.I) – Here is the first paragraph:
“Healing is a thought by which two minds perceive their oneness and become glad. ²This gladness calls to every part of the Sonship to rejoice with them, and lets God go out into them and through them. ³Only the healed mind can experience revelation with lasting effect, because revelation is an experience of pure joy. ⁴If you do not choose to be wholly joyous, your mind cannot have what it does not choose to be. ⁵Remember that spirit knows no difference between having and being. ⁶The higher mind thinks according to the laws spirit obeys, and therefore honors only the laws of God. ⁷To spirit getting is meaningless and giving is all. ⁸Having everything, spirit holds everything by giving it, and thus creates as the Father created. ⁹While this kind of thinking is totally alien to having things, even to the lower mind it is quite comprehensible in connection with ideas. ¹⁰If you share a physical possession, you do divide its ownership. ¹¹If you share an idea, however, you do not lessen it. ¹²All of it is still yours although all of it has been given away. ¹³Further, if the one to whom you give it accepts it as his, he reinforces it in your mind and thus increases it. ¹⁴If you can accept the concept that the world is one of ideas, the whole belief in the false association the ego makes between giving and losing is gone.” (ACIM, T-5.I.1:1-14)
So much of the Course revolves around noticing the profound difference between how we feel when we’re choosing between the two thought systems:
Holy Spirit gives grace instead of ego’s grief.
Ego insists that (lowercase) i exist, but it’s not my fault; my identity is dependent on the thought system of sin, guilt, fear, and death. I attempt to hide from this by identifying with the dream of form, which never happened in Truth, but as ego, I have no clue about Truth.
HS: (uppercase) I undo everything that interferes with the memory that I live eternally innocent and at peace within the mind of God.
Here are the first three paragraphs of “What is the Holy Spirit?”
“1. The Holy Spirit mediates between illusions and the truth. ²Since 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. ³Across the bridge that He provides are dreams all carried to the truth, to be dispelled before the light of knowledge. ⁴There are sights and sounds forever laid aside. ⁵And where they were perceived before, forgiveness has made possible perception’s tranquil end.
2. The goal the Holy Spirit’s teaching sets is just this end of dreams. ²For sights and sounds must be translated from the witnesses of fear to those of love. ³And when this is entirely accomplished, learning has achieved the only goal it has in truth. ⁴For 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.
3. 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. ²The Holy Spirit understands the means you made, by which you would attain what is forever unattainable. ³And 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.” (ACIM, W-pII.7.1:1–3:3)
We also reviewed a comparison chart (covered in more detail in a prior ACIMblog.com post here: Beyond this Thought System is One I Want: Holy Spirit’s Marketing Brochure This post goes into more detail on the comparison chart with a related video.
This chart compares Holy Spirit and ego, revealing to us the obvious pros of Holy Spirit and cons of the ego – a “bug-and-feature” review of the two thought systems: ego’s 100% insanity (which bugs us all the time) and Holy Spirit’s 100% sanity (soothes all the time):
This class was given on June 18, 2021.