In this School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) video conversation, Lesson 96: Salvation comes from my one Self (ACIM, W-96 page 169 in the English edition) of the Workbook of A Course In Miracles was our opening meditation. Here is the first paragraph of that lesson:
“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.” (ACIM, W-96.1:1-5)
Lesson 194: I place the future in the Hands of God (ACIM, W-194 page 370 in the English edition) of the Workbook of A Course In Miracles was the main focus of this class. Ken Wapnick’s commentary about this lesson begins on page 100 of Journey Through The Workbook (JTTW) volume 6; we read many passages from Ken’s writing, always prodigious, prolific, and profound!
Here are the first three paragraphs of that lesson:
“1. Today’s idea takes another step toward quick salvation, and a giant stride it is indeed! ²So great the distance is that it encompasses, it sets you down just short of Heaven, with the goal in sight and obstacles behind. ³Your foot has reached the lawns that welcome you to Heaven’s gate; the quiet place of peace, where you await with certainty the final step of God. ⁴How far are we progressing now from earth! ⁵How close are we approaching to our goal! ⁶How short the journey still to be pursued!
2. Accept today’s idea, and you have passed all anxiety, all pits of hell, all blackness of depression, thoughts of sin, and devastation brought about by guilt. ²Accept today’s idea, and you have released the world from all imprisonment by loosening the heavy chains that locked the door to freedom on it. ³You are saved, and your salvation thus becomes the gift you give the world, because you have received.
3. In no one instant is depression felt, or pain experienced or loss perceived. ²In no one instant sorrow can be set upon a throne, and worshipped faithfully. ³In no one instant can one even die. ⁴And so each instant given unto God in passing, with the next one given Him already, is a time of your release from sadness, pain and even death itself.”
We tend to gloss over the excruciating insanity of the ego thought system. As seasoned, self-indoctrinated egos, it’s challenging to look at that stark, raving lunacy in our mind, but only by looking at the ego without identifying with it (meaning with Holy Spirit’s correction applied to whatever craziness we see when we look) can we free our mind from the burden of unconscious, unfounded guilt. This needless suffering, born of the erroneous belief that we demolished Perfect Oneness (a.k.a. “threw God under the bus”), is corrected as we see everyone’s true, eternal innocence. No one committed this impossible crime, but we harbor festering self-hatred in our masochistic split mind until we admit we were wrong about our alleged criminality and accept the correction that true forgiveness provides.
Here is a “Kenism” that applies to the solvable predicament that we ALL find ourselves in:
“What if you could walk each day in this world and interact with people each day in this world and understand the fear and the pain and the innate sense of hopelessness that’s in everyone, feeling that they will never, ever get that love back? And even if love still existed, it certainly would be withheld from them because they’re so terrible and wretched. If you could hear that pain in everyone, you could never be impatient, you could never be angry, you could never be unkind, because you would hear the pain.” – (from Ken Wapnick‘s talk on “Patience”)
When we trust our Inner Kindness Teacher (Holy Spirit or the Jesus of the Course), we begin to realize that relinquishing ego’s use of time is always in our best interests, and of course, the best interests of everyone we meet or think about! The ego uses the past, present, and future for sin, guilt, and fear, respectively. (The Course often poetically uses the word God as a placeholder for Holy Spirit, reminding us that the Holy Spirit is the link in our mind back to our Source, our Creator, which we have never, and can never leave, except in silly forgivable dreams. We call those dreams “reality,” assuming that this material world of space and time is our reality without ever (or at least rarely) questioning the validity of that enormous assumption!) The Holy Spirit corrects the ego’s use of time, using the past, present, and future for Oneness, Innocence, and Love, respectively. Placing our future metaphorically in the hands of God (represented by the Holy Spirit’s gentle guiding correction that reveals the complete eternal innocence of all Creation) leads us up the ladder from the gloomy darkness of the ego’s unredeemable criminality to the lilies of innocence, a metaphor used in the Course to represent the “nothing happened” principle of the Atonement.
Ego’s mindless misuse of the present moment is to deny the (unfounded, unconscious) guilt by projecting it willy-nilly onto everyone and everything in the world, making all the specifics we encounter the scapegoats for our impossible crime, with bodies (those of “others” or our own, it doesn’t matter which) being the “poster children” of ego’s needless abuse. Our bodies are seemingly ever-present; yet, when our minds are trained on other thoughts, notice how they seem to disappear. Common sense (and certainly the Course) suggests that anything that comes and goes – the instability of form – is not a reliable or worthy witness to unchanging reality (not the “reality” of space and time we tend to bank on). Here are a couple of quotes from the Course that remind us of this silly investment in both bodies and ego’s use of time:
“At no single instant does the body exist at all. ²It is always remembered or anticipated, but never experienced just now. ³Only its past and future make it seem real. ⁴Time controls it entirely, for sin is never wholly in the present. ⁵In any single instant the attraction of guilt would be experienced as pain and nothing else, and would be avoided. ⁶It has no attraction now. ⁷Its whole attraction is imaginary, and therefore must be thought of in the past or in the future.” (ACIM, T-18.VII.3:1-7)
“In no one instant is depression felt, or pain experienced or loss perceived. ²In no one instant sorrow can be set upon a throne, and worshipped faithfully. ³In no one instant can one even die. ⁴And so each instant given unto God in passing, with the next one given Him already, is a time of your release from sadness, pain and even death itself.” (ACIM, W-194.3:1-4)
Listening to, and trusting our Inner Kindness Teacher, we relinquish and undo ego’s misguided, abysmal use of time (assigning sin to the past, guilt to the present, and fear to the future), freeing the past, present, and future by questioning and releasing ourselves (and everyone else, since minds are joined) from the prison of condemning judgments.
“The ego has a strange notion of time, and it is with this notion that your questioning might well begin. ²The ego invests heavily in the past, and in the end believes that the past is the only aspect of time that is meaningful. ³Remember that its emphasis on guilt enables it to ensure its continuity by making the future like the past, and thus avoiding the present. ⁴By the notion of paying for the past in the future, the past becomes the determiner of the future, making them continuous without an intervening present. ⁵For the ego regards the present only as a brief transition to the future, in which it brings the past to the future by interpreting the present in past terms.” (ACIM, T-13.IV.4:1-5)
“To learn this course requires willingness to question every value that you hold. Not one can be kept hidden and obscure but it will jeopardize your learning. No belief is neutral. Every one has the power to dictate each decision you make.” (ACIM, T-24.in.2:1-4)
We briefly touched on the “Two Wolves” metaphor, which, summarized below, reflects the simplicity of the answer to our mental dilemmas, regardless of the specific seeming cause. The answer is always which of the two thought systems (the ego or the Holy Spirit) we identify with, empower, believe, and make our guiding principle:
Question: “There are two wolves, and they are always fighting. One is darkness and despair, the other is light and hope. Which wolf wins? … Answer: “Whichever one you feed.”
The Course would suggest that (unlike the two wolves story) our true light and hope, which has nothing to do with this world of space, time, individuality, and duality, doesn’t fight against darkness, since the darkness is merely a forgivable dream:
“Truth does not fight against illusions, nor do illusions fight against the truth. ⁴Illusions battle only with themselves. ⁵Being fragmented, they fragment. ⁶But truth is indivisible, and far beyond their little reach. ⁷You will remember what you know when you have learned you cannot be in conflict. ⁸One illusion about yourself can battle with another, yet the war of two illusions is a state where nothing happens. ⁹There is no victor and there is no victory. ¹⁰And truth stands radiant, apart from conflict, untouched and quiet in the peace of God.” (ACIM, T-23.I.7:3-10)
We talked about how we only need to trust our Inner Kindness Teacher THIS moment, not (like Atlas bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders) take on the entirety of the ego’s thought system at once. If I give the Holy Spirit access each instant to my “secret dream” (of unforgiveness, uncertainty, loneliness, and fear), then I am unburdened each instant. That’s all I need to do!
Our closing meditation was the last two paragraphs from Lesson 194: I place the future in the Hands of God (ACIM, W-194:
“Place, then, your future in the Hands of God. For thus you call the memory of Him to come again, replacing all your thoughts of sin and evil with the truth of love. Think you the world could fail to gain thereby, and every living creature not respond with healed perception? Who entrusts himself to God has also placed the world within the Hands to which he has himself appealed for comfort and security. He lays aside the sick illusions of the world along with his, and offers peace to both.
Now are we saved indeed. For in God’s Hands we rest untroubled, sure that only good can come to us. If we forget, we will be gently reassured. If we accept an unforgiving thought, it will be soon replaced by love’s reflection. ⁵And if we are tempted to attack, we will appeal to Him Who guards our rest to make the choice for us that leaves temptation far behind. ⁶No longer is the world our enemy, for we have chosen that we be its friend.”
(This conversation was facilitated by Bruce Rawles as part of the School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) curriculum hosted by Lyn Corona and Tim Wise. This YouTube video recording was made on Monday, April 6, 2026.)
