ACIMblog videos

In this School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) video conversation, we reviewed Workbook Lesson 152 of A Course In Miracles.Here are the first 3 paragraphs of Lesson 152:“1. No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. ²No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. ³No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. ⁴And no one dies without his own consent. ⁵Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. ⁶Here is your world, complete in all details. ⁷Here is its whole reality for you. ⁸And it is only here salvation is.2. You may believe that this position is extreme, and too inclusive to be true. ²Yet can truth have exceptions? ³If you have the gift of everything, can loss be real? ⁴Can pain be part of peace, or grief of joy? ⁵Can fear and sickness enter in a mind where love and perfect holiness abide? ⁶Truth must be all-inclusive, if it be the truth at all. ⁷Accept no opposites and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely.3. Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true, and nothing else is true. ²This you have heard before, but may not yet accept both parts of it. ³Without the first, the second has no meaning. ⁴But without the second, is the first no longer true. ⁵Truth cannot have an opposite. ⁶This can not be too often said and thought about. ⁷For if what is not true is true as well as what is true, then part of truth is false. ⁸And truth has lost its meaning. ⁹Nothing but the truth is true, and what is false is false.”(ACIM, W-152.1:1–3:9)Lesson 152, “The Power of Decision Is My Own,” was explored as a profound reminder that salvation is found at the level of the mind, not in changing the circumstances of the world. The lesson begins with uncompromising statements: no one suffers pain, grief, fear, sickness, or death without having chosen the underlying thought system that gives those experiences meaning. This can sound harsh or extreme if understood as a claim that an individual personality consciously chooses every event in form. The group emphasized that the Course is speaking instead about the mind’s fundamental choice between the ego and the Holy Spirit. The decision-making mind—not the body or the personal self—chooses how experience will be interpreted.The ego persuades us that the world is outside us and that its events determine our inner state. We believe illness, aging, loss, conflict, pain, and other people’s behavior cause fear or unhappiness. The Course reverses this apparent sequence. The world is the projection or reflection of a prior choice in the mind. When we choose the ego, we see a world of separation, vulnerability, victimhood, and conflict. When we choose the Holy Spirit for our interpretation of the world, the forms may still appear much the same, but their meaning changes. Rather than proof that we are abandoned, guilty, or threatened, they can become opportunities to remember that peace remains available by forgiving ourselves for wanting to be separate, and choosing a masochistic thought system that needs a constant supply of blame targets, even though the crime it accuses everyone of is impossible in truth.This distinction is especially important in confronting sickness, aging, and death. Several participants spoke candidly about physical pain, medical conditions, memory loss, fear of dying, and the practical use of medication. The discussion did not suggest denying symptoms or refusing helpful treatment. “Magic,” in Course terminology, may still be useful at the level of form when it is approached with kindness rather than panic or guilt. Taking medicine, seeking medical advice, or making a practical decision can be a loving response within the dream. The important question is not whether one does something in form, but which teacher (either ego or Holy Spirit) we ask to interpret the situation.One participant described asking Jesus for help during a painful episode—not necessarily ......Editor’s note: Above is an edited AI (ChatGPT) generated summary of an abridged text transcript of the YouTube recording. I’m still exploring the use of AI to summarize and organize lengthy text material. If you find this helpful, or have any suggestions or thoughts about the content above, please let me know. Your feedback is always appreciated! My intention is to provide useful insights and information related to ACIM. I found this summary quite good and didn’t change much; just a few minor adjustments and additions to enhance clarity and coherence with the Course’s teachings.(This conversation was facilitated by Bruce Rawles as part of the School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM.org) curriculum hosted by Lyn Corona and Tim Wise. This video recording was made on Monday, June 1, 2026.)Read the full article here:https://acimblog.com/the-power-of-decision-is-my-own-workbook-lesson-152-sfacim-class-conversation-with-bruce-rawles/

A Course in Miracles Lesson 152: The power of decision is my own; SFACIM class convo - Bruce Rawles

In this School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) video conversation, we reviewed Lesson 198 of the Workbook of A Course In Miracles with generous help from Volume 6 of Kenneth Wapnick’s JTTW (Journey Through The Workbook of a Course In Miracles 8-volume set).We opened the session with these italicized lines from Lesson 131:“Today I seek and find all that I want.My single purpose offers it to me.No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth.” (ACIM, W-131.15:5-7)As we identify with nothing that can be threatened, peace is a happy inevitability.In A Course In Miracles, there are 154 instances of the word “condemn” (or variations of that word).Here are the first 3 paragraphs of Lesson 198:“Injury is impossible. And yet illusion makes illusion. If you can condemn, you can be injured. For you have believed that you can injure, and the right you have established for yourself can be now used against you, till you lay it down as valueless, unwanted and unreal. Then does illusion cease to have effects, and those it seemed to have will be undone. Then are you free, for freedom is your gift, and you can now receive the gift you gave.Condemn and you are made a prisoner. Forgive and you are freed. Such is the law that rules perception. It is not a law that knowledge understands, for freedom is a part of knowledge. To condemn is thus impossible in truth. What seems to be its influence and its effects have not occurred at all. Yet must we deal with them a while as if they had. Illusion makes illusion. Except one. Forgiveness is illusion that is answer to the rest.Forgiveness sweeps all other dreams away, and though it is itself a dream, it breeds no others. All illusions save this one must multiply a thousandfold. But this is where illusions end. Forgiveness is the end of dreams, because it is a dream of waking. It is not itself the truth. Yet does it point to where the truth must be, and gives direction with the certainty of God Himself. It is a dream in which the Son of God awakens to his Self and to his Father, knowing They are one.”(ACIM, W-198.1:1–3:7)The inherent harmlessness, kindness, patience, grace, tolerance, and gentleness of our unlimited (sane) selves stand in sharp contrast to the ego’s harmfulness, cruelty, impatience, gracelessness, intolerance, and roughshod treatment of our precious siblings. That inappropriate treatment only seemed to occur. In truth, no crime is possible, which is to say that duality is impossible. Perfect Oneness has no opposite, and anything that seems to exist outside it (including everything seemingly separate that would imply a condemnable crime) is made up by the ego’s silly self-inflation. “… God thinks otherwise.” (ACIM, T-23.I.2:7) Our real identity (even if we’re not aware of it much) is still intact; the only bogus identity that disappears when we’re done with our forgiveness lessons is the dream figure that our egos have been projecting into the void of condemning thought. Everyone’s ego is a pathological liar we can afford to not take seriously!(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 video recording was made Tuesday, May 11, 2026.)...The lesson begins by overturning our ordinary understanding of injury. We normally assume that something outside us—a person’s behavior, an illness, an insult, a loss, a frightening event—causes us to suffer. The Course does not ask us to deny that such experiences seem real and can feel painful. Instead, it asks us to question the ego’s interpretation of them. If our true Identity is as God created It—whole, changeless, innocent, and beyond separation—then nothing in a world of changing forms can actually damage that Identity.This is not intended as spiritual bypassing or as an instruction to pretend that difficult experiences do not occur. It is an invitation to distinguish between the apparent experience in the dream and the mind’s interpretation of that experience. The body may seem vulnerable, the world may appear unjust, and relationships may bring distress. Yet the Course gently redirects us from trying to solve the problem solely at the level of form to asking a more useful question: What am I choosing to believe about myself, my brother, and God?The ego’s answer is always some variation on separation. It says that we are bodies, isolated from one another, competing for limited resources, and vulnerable to forces beyond our control. It urges us to look for causes outside ourselves and to make others responsible for our lack of peace. It treats differences as decisive and sameness as irrelevant. From that confused premise, condemnation becomes nearly automatic. If someone else seems guilty, we may feel justified in our anger, fear, resentment, or victimhood.Read the full post here:https://acimblog.com/only-my-condemnation-injures-me-acim-workbook-lesson-198-sfacim-class-conversation/

Only my condemnation injures me. W-198 School For A Course in Miracles (SFACIM) class; Bruce Rawles

Susan Dugan and Bruce Rawles explore the topic of The Definition of Healing (ACIM, P-2.VI) in their series of ongoing conversations about A Course in Miracles in this YouTube video. The Course's focus is always and only on our own mind, and our choice between the two thought systems in our own mind: ego (insanity) or our sane correction that ACIM refers to as Holy Spirit or the non-dual version of Jesus, distinct from the dualistic version presented in dualistic religions. Any ego-free presence in our mind will work just fine for that correction, as our teacher Ken Wapnick reminds us.As in their earlier ACIMblog.com conversation on how healing is accomplished, the emphasis is not on improving the body, rearranging circumstances, or fixing another person. Healing is a change in the mind: a willingness to question the ego’s interpretation of pain, conflict, sickness, and victimhood.The psychotherapy language is deliberately broadened. The “therapist” can be anyone practicing the Course, and the “patient” is anyone with whom we are in relationship—spouse, child, parent, colleague, neighbor, political opponent, or the person who has just irritated us. These relationships become classrooms in which the mind can notice its investment in separate interests. The real patient, Susan and Bruce remind us, is always the mind that has chosen the ego’s thought system of separation, guilt, judgment, and fear.This follows the approach of Kenneth Wapnick and the Foundation for A Course in Miracles (FACIM.org): always and only about the mind, our decision-making faculty that chooses constantly between insanity and sanity. Sickness, from this perspective, is not a bodily diagnosis, nor a punishment, nor evidence of spiritual failure. It is the mind’s identification with a vulnerable, guilty, separate self. The body and world then seem to provide convincing evidence that this self is at the mercy of forces outside itself. Yet the Course gently redirects attention to the decision-making mind—the place where we choose between the ego’s interpretation and the Holy Spirit’s correction.Paraphrasing some wisdom from Ken recently heard on an audio of one of his classes:We realize how masochistic the ego is when we uncover our secret complicity in wanting atrocities and betrayals to befall us. Worse yet, we insanely relish and relive each abuse and unfairness because that confirms our identity as a righteous suffering self, a majestic martyr, a victorious victim. Separate selfhood is the greatest and most viciously defended crown jewel kept hidden in plain sight in the ego’s highest citadel. A baby cries to get any attention for its separate self; it doesn’t matter if the attention is for “positive“ or ”negative” behavior as long as its individual identity is acknowledged.We may protest that we want only peace, while unconsciously using grievances to prove that someone else is guilty and that we are innocent by comparison. The ego would always preserve its separate identity at the cost of happiness. Susan brings this lofty metaphysics into daily practice: the lesson is revealed in whatever is “pissing me off at the moment”—a difficult relationship, a political conflict, an anxiety, a bodily symptom, or even a flashing and unwanted computer-screen distraction.The pivotal opening paragraph of the section says that psychotherapy can be defined simply as forgiveness. The unforgiving mind believes it is unforgiven, shelters guilt, and guards it with alert defense. Healing begins when we hear the mournful inner “dirge” of grievance and begin to question it: perhaps I am not upset for the reason I think. This does not mean denying that cruel behavior or distressing events appear to occur in the world. It means asking why my peace has become dependent on them, and recognizing the projection of guilt that makes another person, body, or circumstance seem to be the cause of my inner condition.This is closely related to the earlier ACIMblog discussions, including “How is judgment relinquished?” and “Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.” In each, forgiveness is not conventional pardon, moral superiority, or a spiritualized attempt to overlook real sins. It is a re-evaluation of the belief that sin, guilt, and separation are real. As Wapnick repeatedly taught, the purpose is not to make a better ego or obtain a miraculous rearrangement of form, but to look without judgment—with Jesus or the Holy Spirit beside us—at the guilt we have hidden and projected.The discussion of sickness and unforgiveness makes this practical. Although forms of upset seem vastly different to us, the Course points to one underlying problem and one correction. A small irritation and a major grievance both allow the mind to see its habitual projection. We need not pretend that there are no differences in the world of form; rather, ...Read the full post here:https://acimblog.com/the-definition-of-healing-acim-p-2-vi-with-susan-dugan-bruce-rawles/

A Course in Miracles: The Definition Of Healing (P-2.VI) with Susan Dugan & Bruce Rawles 19Jul2026

In this School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) video conversation, we read and examined portions of the Workbook of A Course In Miracles with generous help from Volume 4 of Kenneth Wapnick’s JTTW (Journey Through The Workbook of a Course In Miracles 8-volume set).In A Course In Miracles there are:1865 instances of mind! Wow! Hardly a minor topic! … However, there are only9 instances of mind-wandering specifically … although the whole Course could easily be seen as a curriculum for undoing our prodigal wandering minds!The first instance of the latter term is here:“The correction of fear is your responsibility. When you ask for release from fear, you are implying that it is not. You should ask, instead, for help in the conditions that have brought the fear about. These conditions always entail a willingness to be separate. At that level you can help it. You are much too tolerant of mind-wandering, and are passively condoning your mind’s miscreations. The particular result does not matter, but the fundamental error does. The correction is always the same. Before you choose to do anything, ask me if your choice is in accord with mine. If you are sure that it is, there will be no fear.” (ACIM, T-2.VI.4:1-10)We seem to have massively wandered from Perfect Oneness, yet our beloved Course’s first principle is that “There is no order of difficulty in miracles. (ACIM, T-1.I.1:1). This is true, no matter how bleak and hopeless our “lost” state might seem to be. Since we never left our Source, returning is only an imaginary journey, yet one we find more comfortable to make at our own very slow pace, rather than at a “snap of a finger” which might be interpreted incorrectly as a fearful experience. When insanity is the default state of mind…“They are already in a fear-weakened state. If they are prematurely exposed to a miracle, they may be precipitated into panic. This is likely to occur when upside-down perception has induced the belief that miracles are frightening.” (ACIM, T-2.IV.4:8-10)We then reviewed these two lessons that comprise review lesson 146:“My mind holds only what I think with God.1(131) No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth.(132) I loose the world from all I thought it was.”(ACIM, W-146.1:1-2)The Course uses metaphors of the vertical (“undo” correction) and horizontal (ego idiocy of fussing over trivial differences in dream options).We referenced Ken Wapnick’s (FACIM) workshop on “The Mind’s the Thing,” which relates nicely to our conversation. The liner notes for this audio program reinforce the Course’s persistent, gentle, patient prescription for consistent mindfulness:“The focus of this program is on the primacy of the mind in both the ego’s and Holy Spirit’s plans of salvation. To the ego, salvation rests on denying the mind and its power, making the Son of God mindless; to the Holy Spirit, salvation comes through the practice of forgiveness, wherein we recognize the ego’s strategy and reverse it so that we can return to the mind and choose again.”It’s always essential to work on the level of cause rather than effect, avoiding level confusion:“It is pointless to believe that controlling the outcome of misthought can result in healing. ²When you are fearful, you have chosen wrongly. ³That is why you feel responsible for it. ⁴You must change your mind, not your behavior, and this is a matter of willingness. ⁵You do not need guidance except at the mind level. ⁶Correction belongs only at the level where change is possible. ⁷Change does not mean anything at the symptom level, where it cannot work.” (ACIM, T-2.VI.3:1-7)Here are more related posts on this website that address level confusion; reversing cause and effect or mixing levels is a widespread, ubiquitous ego strategy to keep us mindless....Truth is formless and changeless, so returning to it is (happily) inevitable when we realize that the changeable form-bound identities we made up are “radar blip wannabes” that have never registered in eternity, and everything we made up involving space, time, form, and materiality has not (and cannot) compromise our eternal, all-inclusive, indivisible, inseparable, innocent being shared by all.Every specific thing we made up is the “mathematically perfect classroom” when given to our Inner Kindness Teacher (Holy Spirit) for correction that helps us undo our belief in duality, multiplicity, confusion, and every permutation of the silly idea of guilt.Every specific thing we use for the Holy Spirit’s purpose is essential and successful; every specific thing we use for the ego’s purpose is non-essential and a failure to accept the sane correction of mind-wandering. This isn’t a suggestion to indulge in guilt, but just the opposite; when we notice we’ve meandered away from peace, the most loving, kind thing we can do is to make a mental bee-line back to serene sanity ASAP!...Read the full post here: https://acimblog.com/mind-wandering-sfacim-class-conversation/

A Course in Miracles: Mind Wandering & Workbook Lessons 131 and 132; SFACIM class with Bruce Rawles

In this School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) video conversation, we explored how non-duality transcends our imagined need to be constantly at war with ourselves; there is no need to be a victor over anyone or anything else if, in Truth, we are everyone and everything. To achieve this awareness, we use what seem to be external triggers as reminders that there is nothing outside us. Therefore, attacks, grievances, and any calls to battle, regardless of the form or magnitude, must be silly responses to ego provocation and propaganda. Seeing the sameness of what appears to be external, the idea of doing harm to anyone (or anything) outside becomes absurd because we realize (however dimly at first) that harming "others" would be harming "self". All the "big deal" categories of life issues, when given to our Inner Kindness Teacher for correction, become perfect classrooms for remembering that fighting our way to peace has never worked and never will.We began the class by reading Workbook Lesson 125: In quiet I receive God’s Word today; here are the first three paragraphs:1. Let this day be a day of stillness and of quiet listening. ²Your Father wills you hear His Word today. ³He calls to you from deep within your mind where He abides. ⁴Hear Him today. ⁵No peace is possible until His Word is heard around the world; until your mind, in quiet listening, accepts the message that the world must hear to usher in the quiet time of peace.2. This world will change through you. ²No other means can save it, for God’s plan is simply this: The Son of God is free to save himself, given the Word of God to be his Guide, forever in his mind and at his side to lead him surely to his Father’s house by his own will, forever free as God’s. ³He is not led by force, but only love. ⁴He is not judged, but only sanctified.3. In stillness we will hear God’s Voice today without intrusion of our petty thoughts, without our personal desires, and without all judgment of His holy Word. ²We will not judge ourselves today, for what we are can not be judged. ³We stand apart from all the judgments which the world has laid upon the Son of God. ⁴It knows him not. ⁵Today we will not listen to the world, but wait in silence for the Word of God.(ACIM, W-125.1:1–3:5)The quiet center is a related metaphor in the Course, reminding us that peace is always possible. We return the interpretation faculty in our mind to the center (the Holy Spirit), denying all of our peripheral projections the status of cause in our mind, but are restored to their rightful place as mere effects of our choice of teachers. When we choose the Holy Spirit (our Inner Peace Teacher) as our source of guidance and perspective, our peace is not subject to our prior dualistic dreams because we have changed the cause from (dualistic) war to (non-dual) tranquility.We read and shared thoughts about the section in ACIM's text entitled The Irreconcilable Beliefs (ACIM, T-23.I)Here are the first three paragraphs of this section:"The memory of God comes to the quiet mind. ²It cannot come where there is conflict, for a mind at war against itself remembers not eternal gentleness. ³The means of war are not the means of peace, and what the warlike would remember is not love. ⁴War is impossible unless belief in victory is cherished. ⁵Conflict within you must imply that you believe the ego has the power to be victorious. ⁶Why else would you identify with it? ⁷Surely you realize the ego is at war with God. ⁸Certain it is it has no enemy. ⁹Yet just as certain is its fixed belief it has an enemy that it must overcome and will succeed.2. Do you not realize a war against yourself would be a war on God? ²Is victory conceivable? ³And if it were, is this a victory that you would want? ⁴The death of God, if it were possible, would be your death. ⁵Is this a victory? ⁶The ego always marches to defeat, because it thinks that triumph over you is possible. ⁷And God thinks otherwise. ⁸This is no war; only the mad belief the Will of God can be attacked and overthrown. ⁹You may identify with this belief, but never will it be more than madness. ¹⁰And fear will reign in madness, and will seem to have replaced love there. ¹¹This is the conflict’s purpose. ¹²And to those who think that it is possible, the means seem real. ..."(ACIM, T-23.I.1:1–3:10)Our egos make such "big deals" about our specific issues, grievances, worries, and tragedies. Yet from the eternal perspective of the Holy Spirit, these incitements to outrage are all "much ado about nothing.""Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God." (ACIM, T-in.2:2-4)(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 Tuesday, May 5, 2026.)

SFACIM class: Transcending the need to fight - A Course in Miracles, Bruce Rawles facilitating group

In this School For A Course In Miracles video conversation, we explored how gratitude and generalization go together; both are vital parts of our curriculum for escaping insane dreams of differences and restoring our minds to the saneness of sameness.We began the class by reading the first four paragraphs of Workbook Lesson 123. I thank my Father for His gifts to me. (ACIM, W-123):"Today let us be thankful. ..." - (ACIM, W-123.1:1–4:3)The remainder of this session was devoted to seeing the similarity in every problem – I chose (and continue to choose for the most part, to the degree that I'm not at peace) the wrong teacher – ego, instead of our Inner Kindness Teacher, a.k.a. the Holy Spirit or ACIM's author, Jesus. This aligns nicely with this idea appearing in Workbook Lesson 79:"Everyone in this world seems to have his own special problems. Yet they are all the same, and must be recognized as one if the one solution that solves them all is to be accepted. Who can see that a problem has been solved if he thinks the problem is something else? Even if he is given the answer, he cannot see its relevance." (ACIM, W-79.2:1-4)We read and discussed Many Forms; One Correction (ACIM, T-26.II), page 544 in the Text of the English edition) Here are the first four paragraphs of that lesson:"It is not difficult to understand the reasons why you do not ask the Holy Spirit to solve all problems for you. ...." (ACIM, T-26.II.1:1–3:5)We read extensively from Ken Wapnick's coverage of this section on pages 58-60 of volume 4 of JTTT (Journey Through The Text of A Course In Miracles 4-volume set).If you don't already have the "Journey Through..." series and want to deepen your appreciation, understanding, and application of ACIM's pure non-dual metaphysics, I highly recommend all 3 sets covering the 3 main volumes of the Course:JTTT (Journey Through The Text of A Course In Miracles 4-volume set)JTTW (Journey Through The Workbook of a Course In Miracles 8-volume set)JTTM (Journey Through The Manual of a Course In Miracles single volume)Unlike JTTW and JTTM, the first set (JTTT) is not a line-by-line explanation of the Course's text. However, it does cover the majority of the text using a thematic approach, which Ken Wapnick explains is similar to how the Course itself introduces and develops themes, then sets them aside for a while, and then picks them up again in a symphonic, poetic fashion, rather than a linear, scientific approach.The Importance of Generalization - Seeing the sameness in content, despite differences in formThe Course asks us to generalize the solution (forgiveness) to every problem, since the ego thrives on complexity, confusion, obfuscation, diversion, and countless forms of fragmentation. We are encouraged to keep forgiving an ever-widening variety of problems until we begin to recognize that the solution always involves asking the Holy Spirit for help, gratefully seeing everyone in essence as the same (the reflection of the Oneness of our pure non-dual, eternal, innocent reality), and forgiving whatever appears to concern or confront us in every moment.We're learning to generalize, or, looking at it from an "undo" perspective, we are unlearning the ego's habit of compartmentalizing, dissecting, dividing, polarizing, and mentally separating everything and everyone to the detriment of our recognition of our shared heritage and destiny.The generalized answer (correction) that our Inner Kindness Teacher offers is that every specific challenge ego throws at us is amenable to the correction that our real forgiveness offers, since forgiveness sees both the sameness of every problem, and the sameness of every seemingly separate self struggling with specific situations. Sameness of content in the mind, but not necessarily (hardly ever) in terms of form, is what guides us to generalize the solution. We can also think of our Inner Kindness Teacher as our Inner Generalization Teacher. When we see the intrinsic (not extrinsic) equality of all, generalization reveals the master key to consistent peace. This reinforces the Simplicity of Salvation in our mind, undoing the chaos of special cases, specialness, and every ego's use of differences and separation to keep us mindlessly enslaved, uncertain, lonely, and in constant fear."The holy instant is the Holy Spirit’s most useful learning device for teaching you love’s meaning. For its purpose is to suspend judgment entirely. Judgment always rests on the past, for past experience is the basis on which you judge. Judgment becomes impossible without the past, for without it you do not understand anything. You would make no attempt to judge, because it would be quite apparent to you that you do not understand what anything means. You are afraid of this because you believe that without the ego, all would be chaos...." (ACIM, T-15.V.1:1-7)Read the full post here:https://acimblog.com/many-forms-one-correction-sfacim-class-conversation/

Many Forms; One Correction (ACIM, T-26.II): A Course in Miracles SFACIM class with Bruce Rawles

In this School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) video conversation, we talked about the wearying, burdensome choice of ego thinking; the belief in separation wears away like a heavy, tyrannical tariff on our tranquility, or termites on our foundation of peace.(Note: There is no suggestion here to not pay our taxes on the bodily level of form, but rather to notice how the ego "taxes" our peace incessantly and choose against ego interpretations, and notice how the ego's "government" is intolerably incriminating of all, by making differences and separation real.)We hear phrases like "Sudden death" and "the moment of death," which makes time seem real and as irreversible as the ego's idea of sin, guilt, and fear. The Course tells us: "At no single instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but never experienced just now. Only its past and future make it seem real." (ACIM, T-18.VII.3:1-3) Buying into ego's propaganda, we are falsely self-taught to invest in fear about a specific moment when bodies (and their peripheral personalities) no longer meet our slavish imagined needs.While ACIM undoes our belief in bodies, death, and duality, focusing on a single "life-altering" event, it also exposes and systematically undoes the "time-release" self-sabotage that slowly taxes our well-being. Ego punishes with both fear of the "moment" of oblivion, and the vastly more cruel penalty of taxing our peace with interest in a dubious, incongruous, divided house of cards. In our insane mind, we render gleefully unto the ego emperor that which is his due, our persistent attention on the non-essential, distracting, distorting, and agonizing disease and dismemberment of being taxed into oblivion, thought by guilty thought, projection by blaming projection of that unfounded, mostly unconscious guilt."You have carried the burden of unshared ideas that are too weak to increase, but having made them you did not realize how to undo them. ⁹You cannot cancel out your past errors alone. ¹⁰They will not disappear from your mind without the Atonement, a remedy not of your making." (ACIM, T-5.IV.2:8-10)"Therefore lay judgment down, not with regret but with a sigh of gratitude. ²Now are you free of a burden so great that you could merely stagger and fall down beneath it. ³And it was all illusion. ⁴Nothing more." (ACIM, M-10.5:1-4)Try replacing the word "death" with "grievances that tax our peace" in this quote:"Behold the Guide your Father gave you, that you might learn you have eternal life. ²For death is not your Father’s Will nor yours, and whatever is true is the Will of the Father. ...." (ACIM, T-12.IV.6:1-8)Looking for ideas that "tax" our peace, in ACIM, there are (including variations of these words):115 instances of the word "careful"100 instances of the word "demand"99 instances of the word "responsibility"73 instances of the word "punish"53 instances of the word "heavy"40 instances of the word "compromise"32 instances of the word "impose"28 instances of the word "strain"24 instances of the word "burden"18 instances of the word "contribution"15 instances of the word "worry"8 instances of the word "stress"6 instances of the word "tribute"1 instance of the word "pressure"1 instance of the word "drain""... lay judgment down, not with regret but with a sigh of gratitude. ²Now are you free of a burden so great that you could merely stagger and fall down beneath it. ³And it was all illusion. ⁴Nothing more. ⁵Now can the teacher of God rise up unburdened, and walk lightly on. ..." (ACIM, M-10.5:1-8)We read and discussed Lesson 104: I seek but what belongs to me in truth. (ACIM, W-104; page 186 in the Workbook of the English edition) Here are the first three paragraphs of that lesson:"Today’s idea continues with the thought that joy and peace are not but idle dreams. ..." (ACIM, W-104.1:1–3:4)We then reviewed "Beyond the Body (ACIM, T-18.VI) page 384 in the Text of the English edition. Here are the first three paragraphs of that section:"There is nothing outside you. ..."(ACIM, T-18.VI.1:1–3:7)We're all in a "debtor's prison" of guilt when we buy into the ego's fraudulent promises – regarding its substitutes of sin, guilt, fear, and oblivion instead of our true inheritance (of completeness, innocence, joy, and gentle, lucid mindfulness) – that tax our sanity, certainty, and serenity.Our task is to behold (just look at) the ego's eroding, taxing, diminishing, dividing effect on our peace (with our Inner Kindness Teacher) and see how our choice for that dualistic duel is unnecessary and forgivable. ...(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 Tuesday, April 14, 2025.)Read the full post here: https://acimblog.com/undoing-the-ego-tax-on-peace-sfacim-class-conversation/

A Course in Miracles; SFACIM class: undoing the ego tax on peace - Bruce Rawles

https://acimblog.com/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. ... 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! ..."(ACIM, W-194.1:1–3:4)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. ..." (ACIM, T-18.VII.3:1-7)"In no one instant is depression felt, or pain experienced or loss perceived. ..." (ACIM, W-194.3:1-4)Read the full article here:https://acimblog.com/i-place-the-future-in-the-hands-of-god-sfacim-class-conversation

I place the future in the Hands of God: A Course in Miracles SFACIM class Lesson 194 April 6, 2026

In this School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) video conversation, our opening meditation was the first 3 review lessons in Lesson 60 of the Workbook of A Course In Miracles:"1. (46) God is the Love in which I forgive. ... (ACIM, W-60.1:1–3:6)We don’t need to guess what real (eternal, unchanging, undivided, undifferentiated) Love is; we just need to keep practicing true forgiveness, which reflects that real Love and undoes the silly, maladaptive, fearful thought system we’ve been investing in for so long!When we truly forgive, we’re using the strength of the Holy Spirit (a.k.a. Jesus of the Course or our Inner Kindness Teacher or any ego-free presence) to guide our mind to the altar of true compassion, true justice, where the separation never happened. Otherwise, we’ll be using “forgiveness-to-destroy”. When I’m sane, I “make no decisions by myself” (ACIM, T-30.I.2:2), in other words, deciding as a blind and blinding ego. We’re given some superb guidelines in the “Rules For Decision.” ACIM is profoundly authoritative (gentle, patient, yet unflinchingly dedicated only to Truth), yet never authoritarian; there is zero coercion in the Course. This is epitomized in the simple 4-word italicized advice: “Do not fight yourself.” (ACIM, T-30.I.1:7)We then read Perception and Choice (ACIM, T-25.III) from the Text of A Course In Miracles and had a lively discussion, as usual! Here are the first three paragraphs of that section, which Ken Wapnick covers from pages 10-14 in Volume 4 of the Journey Through The Text of A Course In Miracles 4-volume set.“To the extent to which you value guilt, to that extent will you perceive a world in which attack is justified. ... (ACIM, T-25.III.1:1–3:6)Ego’s motto: “My terrorizing will continue until morale improves.” The ego always defends projection, attack, and defense by refusing to forgive what is completely illusory and therefore always forgivable. We either refuse to acknowledge Truth if we’re in “ego mode” or we refuse to acknowledge illusion when guided by our Inner Kindness Teacher. In our sane moments, we merely watch the ego drama without condemnation: the silly, forgivable belief in separation, the alleged crime of sin, the imprisonment of guilt, the tyranny of fear, the repression of our experience resulting from our schizophrenic choice, the attempted projection of our internal dislike, and the perception of adversaries “outside” us. In ego mode, we’re like toddlers fighting each other in a playground sandbox, brandishing tiny plastic swords against each other with our petty grievances in an absurd dream of duality.The Holy Spirit doesn’t acknowledge illusion, since the Holy Spirit’s correction is a reflection of Truth; it is the memory of what we really are as the One Christ Mind, that includes all Creation. Our Inner Kindness Teacher doesn’t fight against illusions; it merely suggests that we can drop our pathetic defenses, and stand up from the metaphoric sandbox in our mind, leaving ego’s dismal battlefield “playground” or put another way, leave the film noir horror flick we call dualistic, polarized, adversarial thinking.“I will love you and honor you and maintain complete respect for what you have made, but I will not uphold it unless it is true. ⁸I will never forsake you any more than God will, but I must wait as long as you choose to forsake yourself. ⁹Because I wait in love and not in impatience, you will surely ask me truly. ¹⁰I will come in response to a single unequivocal call.” (ACIM, T-4.III.7:7-10)During the conversation, I recalled a vivid nocturnal dream, which I wrote about in my second book, The Geometry CodeUniversal Symbolic Mirrors of Natural Laws Within Us; Friendly Reminders of Inclusion to Forgive the Dreamer of Separation. I now share that excerpt here, starting on page 64, from the chapter “Mentalism: 1st of the 7 Hermetic Laws”:“The Projection Room (a nocturnal dream)A decade or two ago, I had a nocturnal dream (to distinguish from the ordinary, diurnal waking dream I call my life) that had a profound effect on me. ... "We took our sanity (the correction of the Holy Spirit a.k.a. Jesus of the Course a.k.a. our Inner Kindness Teacher a.k.a. any ego-free presence in our mind) into the dream to restore the harmlessness and neutrality of everything we made to fight us and“The secret of salvation is but this: that you are doing this unto yourself. ....” (ACIM, T-27.VIII.10:1-6)The simplicity of our perpetual opportunity for peace is that we constantly can … and do … choose between the insanity of special, separate “consolation prize” disappointing interests, of the one truly shared interest of returning home together. We realize that the ego’s propaganda isn’t just mediocre; it never works; it never brings us peace of mind; it always brings only war. ...Read the full post here: https://acimblog.com/perception-and-choice-sfacim-class-conversation/

A Course in Miracles: Perception and Choice (T-25.III) SFACIM class conversation with Bruce Rawles

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