In this School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) video conversation, we began by reading and discussing Lesson 277: Let me not bind Your Son with laws I made. (ACIM, W-277). This is a terse reminder that we can be limited and tyrannized only by our identification with the dualistic split (ego) mind and its projections (bodies and the entire material universe):
“Your Son is free, my Father. Let me not imagine I have bound him with the laws I made to rule the body. He is not subject to any laws I made by which I try to make the body more secure. He is not changed by what is changeable. He is not slave to any laws of time. He is as You created him, because he knows no law except the law of love.
Let us not worship idols, nor believe in any law idolatry would make to hide the freedom of the Son of God. He is not bound except by his beliefs. Yet what he is, is far beyond his faith in slavery or freedom. He is free because he is his Father’s Son. And he cannot be bound unless God’s truth can lie, and God can will that He deceive Himself.”
One of the primary mechanisms of this self-limiting and self-tyrannizing thought system is judgment. Ego insanity is kept alive in our dreams of duality by denying the intrinsic eternal sameness (and ultimately our Oneness) by making ephemeral, frivolous (from the perspective of our eternal nature) and condemning assessments of everyone and everything. This takes countless forms, and aligns with the ego’s pillars of sin, guilt, fear, reflected in innumerable special hate and special love relationships.
This doesn’t mean we stop making “common sense” judgments like stopping at traffic intersections when the light changes, or paying taxes, or brushing teeth, but rather noticing the debilitating ego practice of ceaselessly condemning others (and therefore ourselves) to a limited hopeless separate identity that is “uncertain, lonely, and in constant fear” (ACIM, T-31.VIII.7:1).
Eventually, as we notice more and more how exhausting this horrid and insidious ego default is, we will choose against it altogether. Meanwhile, our task is to simply look – without condemnation – at every (condemning) ego thought and forgive ourselves for resisting the peace that is possible if/when we drop the proverbial judge’s gavel.
The only way we can do this without feeling deprived is to realize (usually gradually over many years) how awful we feel when we make judgments that seem to keep us apart from the real Love that is our essence and that of everyone else. True forgiveness and the relinquishment of separating, isolating judgment are are really synonymous.
We read the classic “The Chinese Farmer Story” which illustrates who clueless we are when we assume we understand anything from our tiny finite individual perspective:
“Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, all of his neighbors came around to commiserate. They said, “We are so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate.” The farmer said, “Maybe.”
The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening everybody came back and said, “Oh, isn’t that lucky. What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!” The farmer again said, “Maybe.”
The following day his son tried to break one of the horses, and while riding it, he was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbors then said, “Oh dear, that’s too bad,” and the farmer responded, “Maybe.”
The next day the conscription officers came around to conscript people into the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. Again all the neighbors came around and said, “Isn’t that great!” Again, he said, “Maybe.”
The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad — because you never know what will be the consequence of the misfortune; or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune.”
— Alan Watts
Maybe … we’re all clueless when relying on ego’s infinitesimal perspective! I often think that when we have even a slightly revelatory experience, it’s probably like an amoeba at the bottom of a dark, murky pond crawling along the underside of a leaf who suddenly has an “illumination” experience when it crawls around to the top of the leaf and suddenly sees the dim, heavily filtered light coming from above the pond and thinks it now comprehends the cosmos!
“… there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” – Hamlet, William Shakespeare
We then read and mused about How Is Judgment Relinquished? (ACIM, M-10). Here are the first three paragraphs of that section of the Manual for Teachers in ACIM:
“Judgment, like other devices by which the world of illusions is maintained, is totally misunderstood by the world. ²It is actually confused with wisdom, and substitutes for truth. ³As the world uses the term, an individual is capable of “good” and “bad” judgment, and his education aims at strengthening the former and minimizing the latter. ⁴There is, however, considerable confusion about what these categories mean. What is ‘good’ judgment to one is ‘bad’ judgment to another. Further, even the same person classifies the same action as showing ‘good’ judgment at one time and ‘bad’ judgment at another time. Nor can any consistent criteria for determining what these categories are be really taught. At any time the student may disagree with what his would-be teacher says about them, and the teacher himself may well be inconsistent in what he believes. ‘Good’ judgment, in these terms, does not mean anything. No more does ‘bad.’
It is necessary for the teacher of God to realize, not that he should not judge, but that he cannot. In giving up judgment, he is merely giving up what he did not have. He gives up an illusion; or better, he has an illusion of giving up. He has actually merely become more honest. Recognizing that judgment was always impossible for him, he no longer attempts it. This is no sacrifice. ⁷On the contrary, he puts himself in a position where judgment through him rather than by him can occur. And this judgment is neither “good” nor “bad.” It is the only judgment there is, and it is only one: ‘God’s Son is guiltless, and sin does not exist.’
The aim of our curriculum, unlike the goal of the world’s learning, is the recognition that judgment in the usual sense is impossible. This is not an opinion but a fact. In order to judge anything rightly, one would have to be fully aware of an inconceivably wide range of things; past, present and to come. One would have to recognize in advance all the effects of his judgments on everyone and everything involved in them in any way. And one would have to be certain there is no distortion in his perception, so that his judgment would be wholly fair to everyone on whom it rests now and in the future. Who is in a position to do this? Who except in grandiose fantasies would claim this for himself?”
That last paragraph is a doozy! It is just one of countless ways the Course gently lampoons our investment, obsession and attachment to ego interpretations, ideals, and outcomes. Here’s another favorite lampooning:
“The strain of constant judgment is virtually intolerable. It is curious that an ability so debilitating would be so deeply cherished.” (ACIM, T-3.VI.5:6-7)
Holy Spirit’s certainty is our birthright, but first we have to let go of our dogged, damning determination to be “right” about everything.
Another Course “cliche” is the “right or happy” question which is closely tied to denying we’re clueless in a cosmic sense and we don’t even notice much of what we identify with in our “own minds.”
“Seek not outside yourself. For all your pain comes simply from a futile search for what you want, insisting where it must be found. What if it is not there? Do you prefer that you be right or happy? Be you glad that you are told where happiness abides, and seek no longer elsewhere. You will fail. But it is given you to know the truth, and not to seek for it outside yourself.” (ACIM, T-29.VII.1:6-12)
When I got a pilot’s license a few decades ago, I was authorized to fly under “Visual Flight Rules” (VFR), but didn’t continue this expensive hobby long enough to get an “Instrument Flight Rules” (IFR) rating. IFR pilots (using navigation instruments on the plane connected with a variety of systems) guide the plane safely so that an IFR pilot can take off, fly and land at another location without ever looking outside the cockpit, regardless of the weather and poor external visibility. Metaphorically, we’re all learning to trust Holy Spirit’s vision which sees through the fog and clouds of our limited (ego) projected perceptions, so that we can safely navigate home to where we never left.
In terms of our physical senses, we see about one octave of electromagnetic energy (visible light) and hear – at best – about 10 octaves of acoustic energy (sound). We occupy about a meter or two of space in what our science tells us is many billions of light years across, and if we take care of our fragile bodies – with a bit of luck? – we might have about 8 decades (give or take a few) of the dimension of time that supposedly spans about 13 billion years. and in this space time cosmos science estimates there are between 200 billion and 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. Check out this YouTube video of Images from the 3.2 Trillion Pixel Camera at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory on a large monitor or high resolution/large format TV if you need further evidence for the insignificance of our ego perspective!
We have the unmitigated gall to presume we understand our personal world, let alone anyone else’s experience, and especially the rest of this planet, let alone the greater cosmos! On our own, we feel unsafe: lonely, uncertain, and in constant fear. With our Inner Kindness Teacher’s unyielding help, we learn by experience to trust the safety of the All-inclusive Mind and we learn we are eternally together, unshakably certain, and in the constant peace of unchanging lovingkindness.
Our passion for judging is usually very challenging to release, since our very (silly, seemingly separate self) identity is inextricably tied to our “sacred” opinions about pretty much everything! To make this decision of “to judge or not to judge” more practical, we have to continually ask ourselves if we want to stay in the hell of condemning, accusing judgment (of others and indirectly of ourselves) … or do we want to learn to forgive more and more consistently with the correction of innocence for all which is the Holy Spirit’s only curriculum.
Our judgments are thoughts of impurity (duality) that make our inclusive identity seem limited, fragmented, and irreconcilably, hopelessly broken. When we notice these contaminating thoughts, our task is to more and more quickly look at them without blame, shame or incrimination.
“The necessary condition for the holy instant does not require that you have no thoughts that are not pure. But it does require that you have none that you would keep.” (ACIM, T-15.IV.9:1-2)
We also quickly read and discussed the next section in the Manual: How Is Peace Possible in This World? (ACIM, M-11) Here are the first three paragraphs of that section of the Manual for Teachers in ACIM:
“This is a question everyone must ask. Certainly peace seems to be impossible here. Yet the Word of God promises other things that seem impossible, as well as this. His Word has promised peace. It has also promised that there is no death, that resurrection must occur, and that rebirth is man’s inheritance. The world you see cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world. God’s Word has promised that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be impossible. But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this.
Again we come to the question of judgment. This time ask yourself whether your judgment or the Word of God is more likely to be true. For they say different things about the world, and things so opposite that it is pointless to try to reconcile them. God offers the world salvation; your judgment would condemn it. God says there is no death; your judgment sees but death as the inevitable end of life. God’s Word assures you that He loves the world; your judgment says it is unlovable. Who is right? For one of you is wrong. It must be so.
The text explains that the Holy Spirit is the Answer to all problems you have made. These problems are not real, but that is meaningless to those who believe in them. And everyone believes in what he made, for it was made by his believing it. Into this strange and paradoxical situation,—one without meaning and devoid of sense, yet out of which no way seems possible,—God has sent His Judgment to answer yours. Gently His Judgment substitutes for yours. And through this substitution is the un-understandable made understandable. How is peace possible in this world? In your judgment it is not possible, and can never be possible. But in the Judgment of God what is reflected here is only peace.”
In response to our after class conversation, I updated some links to classical music that Ken Wapnick found inspirational.
(This conversation was facilitated by Bruce Rawles as part of the School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) curriculum hosted by Lyn Corona and Tim Wise. This YouTube video recording was made on Sunday, October 4, 2025.)
A fellow Course student pointed out that this graphic could be interpreted in two ways: The gavel being relinquished by the mouse … or the gavel being given to the mouse. I would suggest that Holy Spirit (in the first interpretation) relieves us clueless critters of the burden of judgment, which we can’t really even do in truth:
“… judgment in the usual sense is impossible.” (ACIM, M-10.3:1)
When we try to judge on our own, we’re really attempting to conceal, bend and distort the data about the purpose of our mind so as to conceal the truth or mislead ourselves; we’re fudging the facts instead of forgiving falsehoods. It’s so much simpler and effective to allow the correction that our Inner Kindness Teacher holds out to us when we let go of the gavel of judgment believing our separate selves have the answers to consistent peace.
“Peace is inevitable to those who offer peace.” (ACIM, M-11.4:2)
We closed the session with this inspiring quote from Chapter 16:
“The new perspective you will gain from crossing over will be the understanding of where Heaven is. From this side, it seems to be outside and across the bridge. Yet as you cross to join it, it will join with you and become one with you. And you will think, in glad astonishment, that for all this you gave up nothing! The joy of Heaven, which has no limit, is increased with each light that returns to take its rightful place within it. Wait no longer, for the Love of God and you. And may the holy instant speed you on the way, as it will surely do if you but let it come to you.” (ACIM, T-16.VI.11:1-7)