In this School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM) video conversation, we began by reading Lesson 285: My holiness shines bright and clear today:
“Today I wake with joy, expecting but the happy things of God to come to me. I ask but them to come, and realize my invitation will be answered by the thoughts to which it has been sent by me. And I will ask for only joyous things the instant I accept my holiness. For what would be the use of pain to me, what purpose would my suffering fulfill, and how would grief and loss avail me if insanity departs from me today, and I accept my holiness instead?
Father, my holiness is Yours. Let me rejoice in it, and through forgiveness be restored to sanity. Your Son is still as You created him. My holiness is part of me, and also part of You. And what can alter Holiness Itself?”
We’re always choosing between the total ego wackiness of insane masochism (where any degree of guilt condemns all) or the sane, pristine peace of abundant eternal innocence shared equally and fully by all.
Here are the first three paragraphs of The Inner Shift (ACIM, T-21.VIII):
“Are thoughts, then, dangerous?To bodies, yes!The thoughts that seem to kill are those that teach the thinker that he can be killed.And so he “dies” because of what he learned.He goes from life to death, the final proof he valued the inconstant more than constancy.Surely he thought he wanted happiness.Yet he did not desire it because it was the truth, and therefore must be constant.
The constancy of joy is a condition quite alien to your understanding.Yet if you could even imagine what it must be, you would desire it although you understand it not.The constancy of happiness has no exceptions; no change of any kind.It is unshakable as is the Love of God for His creation.Sure in its vision as its Creator is in what He knows, happiness looks on everything and sees it is the same.It sees not the ephemeral, for it desires everything be like itself, and sees it so.Nothing has power to confound its constancy, because its own desire cannot be shaken.It comes as surely unto those who see the final question is necessary to the rest, as peace must come to those who choose to heal and not to judge.
Reason will tell you that you cannot ask for happiness inconstantly.For if what you desire you receive, and happiness is constant, then you need ask for it but once to have it always.And if you do not have it always, being what it is, you did not ask for it.For no one fails to ask for his desire of something he believes holds out some promise of the power of giving it.He may be wrong in what he asks, where, and of what.Yet he will ask because desire is a request, an asking for, and made by one whom God Himself will never fail to answer.God has already given all that he really wants.Yet what he is uncertain of, God cannot give.For he does not desire it while he remains uncertain, and God’s giving must be incomplete unless it is received.”
We went through much of Ken Wapnick’s always brilliant, highly recommended, commentary on this section, starting on page 162 of volume 3 of JTTT (Journey Through The Text of A Course In Miracles 4-volume set),
Any condemning judgments or separating comparisons reinforce the belief in separation and, therefore, are dangerous to our peace of mind; these dualistic thoughts declare war on our real, undifferentiated Identity, which we all enjoy beyond time and space, even if we seem oblivious to it most of the time. Each desire for being right and getting what we think we need is a request for battle, for conflict, for disappointment, and misery.
“In the holy instant we finally say and mean: ‘I do not want the world’s offering, but want instead to learn the lesson that not only is the world not hurting me, I have not hurt it.’ “ – Ken Wapnick, Journey Through The Text of A Course In Miracles, volume 3, page 163, last paragraph in column 2.
This is the full forgiveness that truly is every heart’s real need.
“It is this one intent we seek today, uniting our desires with the need of every heart, the call of every mind, the hope that lies beyond despair, the love attack would hide, the brotherhood that hate has sought to sever, but which still remains as God created it.” (ACIM, W-185.14:1)
It’s OK to be afraid of forgiveness; it isn’t a crime, but it is (as Ken frequently reminds us) quite silly.
We also read and shared thoughts about the next section in ACIM’s text: Salvation and the Holy Relationship (ACIM, T-22.in). Here are the first three paragraphs of that section:
“Take pity on yourself, so long enslaved. Rejoice whom God hath joined have come together and need no longer look on sin apart. No two can look on sin together, for they could never see it in the same place and time. Sin is a strictly individual perception, seen in the other yet believed by each to be within himself. And each one seems to make a different error, and one the other cannot understand. Brother, it is the same, made by the same, and forgiven for its maker in the same way. The holiness of your relationship forgives you and your brother, undoing the effects of what you both believed and saw. And with their going is the need for sin gone with them.
Who has need for sin? Only the lonely and alone, who see their brothers different from themselves. It is this difference, seen but not real, that makes the need for sin, not real but seen, seem justified. And all this would be real if sin were so. For an unholy relationship is based on differences, where each one thinks the other has what he has not. They come together, each to complete himself and rob the other. They stay until they think that there is nothing left to steal, and then move on. And so they wander through a world of strangers, unlike themselves, living with their bodies perhaps under a common roof that shelters neither; in the same room and yet a world apart.
A holy relationship starts from a different premise. Each one has looked within and seen no lack. Accepting his completion, he would extend it by joining with another, whole as himself. He sees no difference between these selves, for differences are only of the body. Therefore, he looks on nothing he would take. He denies not his own reality because it is the truth. Just under Heaven does he stand, but close enough not to return to earth. For this relationship has Heaven’s Holiness. ⁹How far from home can a relationship so like to Heaven be?”
We choose against freedom with each insistence on demanding attention for our separate interests, our separate, special selves, each with its separate, special seeming needs at the expense of everyone else’s separate, special seeming needs. If we notice that everyone is in the “same boat” playing the same miserable, pathetic, and unsatisfying dream game, we shift our perception from individual to shared, which provides the basis for true compassion and awakening from the nightmare of competition, warfare, polarization, and divisiveness. All of these are cornerstones of the ego’s gloomy, guilty identity made of nothing and defended to the death against the salvation of forgiving kindness.
Our Inner Kindness Teacher (Holy Spirit) undoes the “asunder blunder” – the silly belief in separation. It shows us that we’re the dreamer, not the dream figure, and that our dreams have had no impact on our eternal reality.
“We do want to see, for we no longer desire the guilt-driven gifts of specialness that led us into lives grasping for crumbs that could never satisfy our longing for the love we had foresworn.” – Ken Wapnick, Journey Through The Text of A Course In Miracles, volume 3, page 192, last paragraph in column 2.
An easy-to-identify “red flag” when we’ve sabotaged our salvation (compromised our peace) is when we notice the upset of holding grievances of any magnitude. We realize that “Holding grievances is an attack on God’s plan for salvation.” (ACIM, W-72)
Salvation is equivalent to forgiveness. From the non-dual perspective of the Course, these are essentially equivalent, in that they all lead to the undoing of the belief in separation, with capitalized words indicating the Holy Spirit’s use of mind:
- Answer
- Atonement
- awakening
- correction
- face of Christ
- forgiveness
- function
- happy dream
- healing
- holy instant
- holy relationship
- justice
- Last (Final) Judgment
- miracle
- real world
- reason
- redemption
- resurrection
- salvation
- Second Coming
- true perception
- undoing
- vision
- Word of God
(Reference: page 11, first paragraph under “Right-mindedness”, Glossary Index for A Course In Miracles by Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D. You might also find related terms in the ACIM online glossary helpful.
Learning to see the sameness of equivalent ideas aligns with the importance of learning to see everyone is the same; we all have the same mind:
- ego (split mind)
- Holy Spirit (correction for the split mind)
- decision maker (which is either identified with ego or Holy Spirit at any instant)
- One Mind (the non-dual Christ Mind which transcends all differences; the awareness of Perfect Oneness)
It’s helpful to remember that words (as Plato suggested) are “symbols of symbols” (ACIM, M-21.1:9). Their significance is the meaning behind the words, so it’s a good reminded to not become preoccupied with symbols, but always let our Inner Kindness Teacher lead our mind to the Source of meaning.
We concluded with a selection from “The Forgotten Song”:
“Beyond the body, beyond the sun and stars, past everything you see and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light that stretches as you look into a great and shining circle. And all the circle fills with light before your eyes. The edges of the circle disappear, and what is in it is no longer contained at all. The light expands and covers everything, extending to infinity, forever shining and with no break or limit anywhere. Within it, everything is joined in perfect continuity. Nor is it possible to imagine that anything could be outside, for there is nowhere that this light is not.” (ACIM, T-21.I.8:1-6)
(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 12, 2025.)