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.
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.
3. Be certain that it is impossible God and the ego, or yourself and it, will ever meet. ²You seem to meet, and make your strange alliances on grounds that have no meaning. ³For your beliefs converge upon the body, the ego’s chosen home, which you believe is yours. ⁴You meet at a mistake; an error in your self-appraisal. ⁵The ego joins with an illusion of yourself you share with it. ⁶And yet illusions cannot join. ⁷They are the same, and they are nothing. ⁸Their joining lies in nothingness; two are as meaningless as one or as a thousand. ⁹The ego joins with nothing, being nothing. ¹⁰The victory it seeks is meaningless as is itself.”
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.” Like the Cheshire Cat (in Alice in Wonderland), looking down on the chessboard of an insane battle, without condemning, because it is a silly, forgivable dream, a meaningless ego game, we can afford to gently dismiss the ego’s propaganda to take the tiny mad idea of duality seriously.
“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.)