Sin as an adjustment (SFACIM class conversation)

In this School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) video conversation, we read and explore the section “Sin as an Adjustment (ACIM, T-20.III).

There are 35 instances of “adjust” (or variations of that word) in ACIM.

Our conversation began with a short vintage video clip (not in the recording)  of the intro to the 1963 TV show The Outer Limits. The announcer says (among other things in an ominous Orwellian tone), “Do not attempt to adjust the picture.” It would seem that the moments of our ego-dominated lives are spent endlessly trying to adjust the world, visually, acoustically, and in every other sense and dimension we can imagine, yet never really succeeding.

For an opening meditation, we read the first 3 paragraphs of ACIM Workbook Lesson 182:

“I will be still an instant and go home.

This world you seem to live in is not home to you. And somewhere in your mind you know that this is true. A memory of home keeps haunting you, as if there were a place that called you to return, although you do not recognize the voice, nor what it is the voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel an alien here, from somewhere all unknown. Nothing so definite that you could say with certainty you are an exile here. Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not more than a tiny throb, at other times hardly remembered, actively dismissed, but surely to return to mind again.

No one but knows whereof we speak. Yet some try to put by their suffering in games they play to occupy their time, and keep their sadness from them. Others will deny that they are sad, and do not recognize their tears at all. Still others will maintain that what we speak of is illusion, not to be considered more than but a dream. Yet who, in simple honesty, without defensiveness and self-deception, would deny he understands the words we speak?

We speak today for everyone who walks this world, for he is not at home. He goes uncertainly about in endless search, seeking in darkness what he cannot find; not recognizing what it is he seeks. A thousand homes he makes, yet none contents his restless mind. He does not understand he builds in vain. The home he seeks can not be made by him. There is no substitute for Heaven. All he ever made was hell.”

(ACIM, W-182.1:1–3:7)

“We’ve all made a huge adjustment to our reality to convince ourselves that we’re in a horrible predicament that we call space and time, and yet, we made it up! We’re all trying to figure out, how did I get here? How do I get outta here?” 

The Course reminds us that in truth, in eternity, we’re not actually stuck in a specific “here” but we’re dreaming of exile from our real Identity. Ego’s adjustments are the futile attempts to try to change what is on the “screen” of our outer experience (effect) without changing the cause (our choice of teachers). The locus of change – our decision-maker – is carefully hidden by the outer and inner shields of oblivion. If these shields could talk under a revelatory “truth serum” and recite ego’s mantras that attempt to protect their defenses, they might sound something like this:

“What can the body’s eyes perceive, with power to correct? Its eyes adjust to sin, unable to overlook it in any form and seeing it everywhere, in everything. Look through its eyes, and everything will stand condemned before you. All that could save you, you will never see. Your holy relationship, the source of your salvation, will be deprived of meaning, and its most holy purpose bereft of means for its accomplishment.” (ACIM, T-20.VIII.6:5-9)

“When you perform a miracle, I will arrange both time and space to adjust to it.” (ACIM, T-2.V-A.11:3)

• Adapt (As Ken Wapnick reminds us, the world is “a maladaptive solution to a non-existent problem.”*)
• Inure (to habituate to something undesirable or intolerable, especially by prolonged subjection; accustom.)
• Ignore (attempts to deny, remove, or obliterate from awareness)
• Endure (the long-suffering victimhood and martyrdom that relies on projection to make culprits seem external)
• Cope (similar to endure, coping would be another form of “stoicism-to-destroy” … ACIM reveals the the vicious nature of ego: “Death seems an easy price, if they can say, ‘Behold me, brother, at your hand I die.’” (ACIM, T-27.I.4:6)
• Compromise (At best, even when glossing over the mortal gloom of ego’s suicidal purpose, ego’s mind deals only in consolation “prizes”)
• Resignation, defeat, surrender, submission, etc. … to ego; when we’re resigned to ego, we tolerate both self-abuse and abuse seemingly by others. The Holy Spirit never suggests that we serve as a doormat.
• Sugarcoat (bliss-ninny denial of our feelings and experience; the very classrooms our Inner Kindness Teacher needs for forgiveness.)

• Ignoring the rock in my shoe, I’d rather have the rock wear a hole in my foot!
• Ignoring a funny sound under the hood of my car
• Hand-washing to attempt to resolve guilt (like Lady Macbeth or Bob Newhart’s STOP IT! Therapy)
• The shower is broken, so I’ll take sponge baths instead

• ATTACHMENT (adjustment) <— Pull what we want closer: libertine, hedonist, bon vivant; ego’s rape, loot and pillage mindset revealed in socially acceptable … and not so acceptable ways;
• AVERSION (adjustment) —> Push what we abhor away: Ascetic, renunciation “I’ll go live in a cave or an abandoned mine … or just sell my TV and live like a monk
• “Radical middle” (extreme moderation) is mentioned briefly in Kenneth Wapnick’s scholarly comparative philosophy book, Love Does Not Condemn: The World, the Flesh, and the Devil According to Platonism, Christianity, Gnosticism, and ‘A Course in Miracles
• I won’t “rock the boat.”
• I will stay below every radar to avoid looking at my mind
• Projection = a displacement attempt to push sin, guilt, and fear (our new identity) from our mind, and yet retain a face of innocence, which leads to an endless succession of other ineffective strategies.

• death of a family member or friend  (how about our imagined murder of God!)
• relationship issues or divorce (separation from Perfect Oneness and each other)
• major life changes (birth into a body, it went downhill from there!)
• illness or a health issue (in you or someone you’re close with – sick minds projected onto bodies)
• moving to a new house or place (“moved” in my dream to space time)
• sudden disasters (we disconnected from the star … light in our mind)
• money troubles or fears (we fell for the ego’s fraudulent scam of investing in the scarcity principle)

Typical causes in children and teenagers include:

• family fights or problems (if we’re all “kinfolk,” that all-inclusive family covers a lot of territory)
• problems in school (this whole world is one immense school)
• anxiety over sexuality (the mechanism of our imagined cause of biological separation is a perennial guilt target)

“Take pity on yourself, so long enslaved.” (ACIM, T-22.in.1:1)

“The blind become accustomed to their world by their adjustments to it.” (ACIM, T-21.I.4:1)

“Thus they define their life and where they live, adjusting to it as they think they must, afraid to lose the little that they have. And so it is with all who see the body as all they have and all their brothers have. They try to reach each other, and they fail, and fail again. And they adjust to loneliness, believing that to keep the body is to save the little that they have. Listen, and try to think if you remember what we will speak of now.” (ACIM, T-21.I.5:1-5)

“When you are still an instant, when the world recedes from you, when valueless ideas cease to have value in your restless mind, then will you hear His Voice.So poignantly He calls to you that you will not resist Him longer.In that instant He will take you to His home, and you will stay with Him in perfect stillness, silent and at peace, beyond all words, untouched by fear and doubt, sublimely certain that you are at home.” (ACIM, W-182.8:1-3)

(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, June 8, 2025.)