No overlap between sanity and insanity: notes for a SFACIM class conversation from Marisa Cuenin

Marisa Cuenin, a facilitator with the School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM), kindly shared her notes from an excellent class she led on Tuesday, September 22, 2026. Here is an edited transcript of her notes and quotes with a few supplementary comments:

There are numerous ways to convey the mutually exclusive nature of the two thought systems that form the core teaching of A Course In Miracles; these phrases suggest how these two completely opposite and mutually exclusive ways of thinking never meet:

• discrepancy
• lack of compatibility
• irreconcilable
• the two do not meet
• divergent
• inconsistency
• lack of similarity
• dissociation
• zero overlap

To recognize sanity, insanity must be seen as no longer desired and discarded. Light dispels darkness. Love erases fear. Kindness eliminates the appeal of harmfulness.

On Discrepancy:

Our Source of light does not experience shadows. Our real identity is loving kindness and doesn’t know about hate or cruelty.

“Something bad can happen ‘out there,’ and I can be alright ‘in here.’” – from When Fear Falls Away, by Jan Frazier, pg 42

“The main thing is to see that there is a discrepancy [lack of similarity, lack of compatibility]. There is not an inevitable one-to-one correspondence between what happens out there and what happens in here. Once you see that, once you see that you really do have choices in the matter of how you feel about something that’s happened—well, if you truly believe it, then you can hardly imagine making a deliberate intention to feel bad about anything . . . right?”

“I could see peace instead of this.” (ACIM, W-34)

Spirit and the ego can never meet:

From Right Teaching and Right Learning (ACIM, T-4.I):

“Nothing can reach spirit from the ego, and nothing can reach the ego from spirit. Spirit can neither strengthen the ego nor reduce the conflict within it. The ego is a contradiction. Your self and God’s Self are in opposition. They are opposed in source, in direction and in outcome. They are fundamentally irreconcilable, because spirit cannot perceive and the ego cannot know. They are therefore not in communication and can never be in communication.” (ACIM, T-4.I.2:6-12)

From God or the Ego Introduction (ACIM, T-11.in):

“Either God or the ego is insane. If you will examine the evidence on both sides fairly, you will realize this must be true. Neither God nor the ego proposes a partial thought system. Each is internally consistent, but they are diametrically opposed in all respects so that partial allegiance is impossible. Remember, too, that their results are as different as their foundations, and their fundamentally irreconcilable natures cannot be reconciled by vacillations between them.” (ACIM, T-11.in.1:1-5)

From The War Against Yourself: The Irreconcilable Beliefs (ACIM, T-23.I):

“Be certain that it is impossible God and the ego, or yourself and it, will ever meet. You seem to meet, and make your strange alliances on grounds that have no meaning. For your beliefs converge upon the body, the ego’s chosen home, which you believe is yours. You meet at a mistake; an error in your self-appraisal. The ego joins with an illusion of yourself you share with it. And yet illusions cannot join. They are the same, and they are nothing. Their joining lies in nothingness; two are as meaningless as one or as a thousand. The ego joins with nothing, being nothing. The victory it seeks is meaningless as is itself.” (ACIM, T-23.I.3:1-10)

“The war against yourself is but the battle of two illusions, struggling to make them different from each other, in the belief the one that conquers will be true. There is no conflict between them and the truth. Nor are they different from each other. Both are not true. And so it matters not what form they take. What made them is insane, and they remain part of what made them. Madness holds out no menace to reality, and has no influence upon it. Illusions cannot triumph over truth, nor can they threaten it in any way. And the reality that they deny is not a part of them.”(ACIM, T-23.I.6:1-9)

“What you remember is a part of you. For you must be as God created you. Truth does not fight against illusions, nor do illusions fight against the truth. Illusions battle only with themselves. Being fragmented, they fragment. But truth is indivisible, and far beyond their little reach. You will remember what you know when you have learned you cannot be in conflict. One illusion about yourself can battle with another, yet the war of two illusions is a state where nothing happens. There is no victor and there is no victory. And truth stands radiant, apart from conflict, untouched and quiet in the peace of God.” (ACIM, T-23.I.7:1-10)

“Illusion meets illusion; truth, itself. The meeting of illusions leads to war. Peace, looking on itself, extends itself. War is the condition in which fear is born, and grows and seeks to dominate. Peace is the state where love abides, and seeks to share itself. Conflict and peace are opposites. Where one abides the other cannot be; where either goes the other disappears. So is the memory of God obscured in minds that have become illusions’ battleground. Yet far beyond this senseless war it shines, ready to be remembered when you side with peace.“ (ACIM, T-23.I.12:1-9)

From The Decision for Guiltlessness (ACIM, T-14.III):

“Each day, each hour and minute, even each second, you are deciding between the crucifixion and the resurrection; between the ego and the Holy Spirit. The ego is the choice for guilt; the Holy Spirit the choice for guiltlessness. The power of decision is all that is yours. What you can decide between is fixed, because there are no alternatives except truth and illusion. And there is no overlap between them, because they are opposites which cannot be reconciled and cannot both be true. You are guilty or guiltless, bound or free, unhappy or happy.” (ACIM, T-14.III.4:1-6)

From Sharing Perception with the Holy Spirit (ACIM, T-14.VII):

“Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking whereby two systems of belief which cannot coexist are both maintained. If they are brought together, their joint acceptance becomes impossible.” (ACIM, T-14.VII.4:3-4)

“If you are in a darkened room and switch on the light, the darkness disappears, which reflects the same principle of the aforementioned biblical line, “… Perfect love casteth out fear.” (1 John 4:18). In the presence of love, light, and God, fear, darkness, and the ego cannot exist. That is why the ego so desperately fears our choosing the Holy Spirit and, through dissociation, steadfastly tries to keep us from bringing darkness and light together.” – Kenneth Wapnick

“You cannot have them both, for each denies the other. Apart, this fact is lost from sight, for each in a separate place can be endowed with firm belief. Bring them together, and the fact of their complete incompatibility is instantly apparent. One will go, because the other is seen in the same place.” (ACIM, T-14.VII.4:7-10)

“When we keep the ego separate from the Holy Spirit, we are believing in the reality of the separation and the world that arose from it, while the inner world of forgiveness and atonement, not to mention heaven itself, are seen as illusions. Belief does not establish reality, but it does determine what we believe that reality is.

The ‘same place’ is the mind, which is not capable of simultaneously holding light and darkness in awareness. It can hold them both within itself only if they are split off or dissociated; in other words, if we are not aware that both exist. Everything the ego does in the physical universe has as its sole purpose to keep the darkness from the light, which would simply shine it away.

Since this can occur only in the decision-making mind, as long as we remain mindless, living as bodies governed by a brain, the ego is safe from all undoing.”

– Kenneth Wapnick

On Dissociation:

We believe we are either guilty or guiltless and then see the projection or extension on another:

“Our emphasis has been on bringing what is undesirable to the desirable; what you do not want to what you do. You will realize that salvation must come to you this way, if you consider what dissociation is. Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking whereby two systems of belief which cannot coexist are both maintained. If they are brought together, their joint acceptance becomes impossible. But if one is kept in darkness from the other, their separation seems to keep them both alive and equal in their reality. Their joining thus becomes the source of fear, for if they meet, acceptance must be withdrawn from one of them. You cannot have them both, for each denies the other. Apart, this fact is lost from sight, for each in a separate place can be endowed with firm belief. Bring them together, and the fact of their complete incompatibility is instantly apparent. One will go, because the other is seen in the same place.” (ACIM, T-14.VII.4:1-10)

“The guiltless and the guilty are totally incapable of understanding one another. Each perceives the other as like himself, making both unable to communicate, because each sees the other unlike the way he sees himself.”  (ACIM, T-14.IV.10:1-2)

“Communication with God is life. Nothing without it is at all.” (ACIM, T-14.IV.10:6-7)

“If we are guilty, we project our guilt onto others, seeing them the same way. Similarly, when we remember our true guiltlessness, we cannot but see others as guiltless too. Projection (and extension) makes perception. Communication between them, then, is impossible, for guiltlessness and guilt are mutually exclusive thoughts and cannot meet, let alone coexist in awareness. They are kept apart by dissociation, fulfilling the ego’s goal of protecting itself from Atonement.” – Kenneth Wapnick, JTTW, volume two, page 160-161

From The Holy Meeting Place (ACIM, T-14.VIII):

“The link with which the Father joins Himself to those He gives the power to create can never be dissolved. Heaven itself is union with all of creation, and with its one Creator. And Heaven remains the Will of God for you. Lay no gifts other than this upon your altars, for nothing can coexist with it. Here your little offerings are brought together with the gift of God, and only what is worthy of the Father will be accepted by the Son, for whom it is intended. To whom God gives Himself, He is given. Your little gifts will vanish on the altar, where He has placed His Own.” (ACIM, T-14.VIII.5:1-7)

From Reason and the Forms of Error (ACIM, T-22.III):

“The introduction of reason into the ego’s thought system is the beginning of its undoing, for reason and the ego are contradictory. Nor is it possible for them to coexist in your awareness. For reason’s goal is to make plain, and therefore obvious. You can see reason. This is not a play on words, for here is the beginning of a vision that has meaning. Vision is sense, quite literally. If it is not the body’s sight, it must be understood. For it is plain, and what is obvious is not ambiguous. It can be understood. And here do reason and the ego separate, to go their separate ways.” (ACIM, T-22.III.1:1-10)

“The ego’s whole continuance depends on its belief you cannot learn this course. Share this belief, and reason will be unable to see your errors and make way for their correction. For reason sees through errors, telling you what you thought was real is not. Reason can see the difference between sin and mistakes, because it wants correction. Therefore, it tells you what you thought was uncorrectable can be corrected, and thus it must have been an error. The ego’s opposition to correction leads to its fixed belief in sin and disregard of errors. It looks on nothing that can be corrected. Thus does the ego damn, and reason save.” (ACIM, T-22.III.2:1-8)

From Miracles as True Perception (ACIM, T-3.II):

“I have stated that the basic concepts referred to in this course are not matters of degree. Certain fundamental concepts cannot be understood in terms of opposites. It is impossible to conceive of light and darkness or everything and nothing as joint possibilities. They are all true or all false. It is essential that you realize your thinking will be erratic until a firm commitment to one or the other is made. A firm commitment to darkness or nothingness, however, is impossible. No one has ever lived who has not experienced some light and some thing. No one, therefore, is able to deny truth totally, even if he thinks he can.” (ACIM, T-3.II.1:1-8)

“Innocence is not a partial attribute. It is not real until it is total. The partly innocent are apt to be quite foolish at times. It is not until their innocence becomes a viewpoint with universal application that it becomes wisdom. Innocent or true perception means that you never misperceive and always see truly. More simply, it means that you never see what does not exist, and always see what does.” (ACIM, T-3.II.2:1-6)

It’s the peace that’s outside the dream. Even though the dream is made out of it, it’s the peace that’s outside the dream. It’s totally inviolable by the dream.

“This is the truth of the Son of God: He is untouched by dreams. So your job is to do this, which the course calls resting in God.”

– Keith Kavanagh; YouTube video on “What is Guidance in A Course In Miracles“, March 2, 2025

To restore peace and heal our split minds:

• We look sanely at insanity without condemnation.
• We see both thought systems clearly.
• We see that they are completely irreconcilable and have no overlap.
• We see that we no longer want insanity.
• This last step automatically aligns us with sanity and peace.

(Lyn Corona and Tim Wise host the School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) curriculum, which currently offers 9 weekly classes in a variety of formats, all emphasizing the work of Kenneth Wapnick of the Foundation for A Course In Miracles (FACIM).