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.)
“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)
“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. ³You pay no price for life for that was given you, but you do pay a price for death, and a very heavy one. ⁴If death is your treasure, you will sell everything else to purchase it. ⁵And you will believe that you have purchased it, because you have sold everything else. ⁶Yet you cannot sell the Kingdom of Heaven. ⁷Your inheritance can neither be bought nor sold. ⁸There can be no disinherited parts of the Sonship, for God is whole and all His extensions are like Him.” (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. ⁶Yet it is not only this that is his benefit. ⁷His sense of care is gone, for he has none. ⁸He has given it away, along with judgment.” (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. ²They are your right, because of what you are. ³They come to you from God, Who cannot fail to give you what He wills. ⁴Yet must there be a place made ready to receive His gifts. ⁵They are not welcomed gladly by a mind that has instead received the gifts it made where His belong, as substitutes for them.
2. Today we would remove all meaningless and self-made gifts which we have placed upon the holy altar where God’s gifts belong. ²His are the gifts that are our own in truth. ³His are the gifts that we inherited before time was, and that will still be ours when time has passed into eternity. ⁴His are the gifts that are within us now, for they are timeless. ⁵And we need not wait to have them. ⁶They belong to us today.
3. Therefore, we choose to have them now, and know, in choosing them in place of what we made, we but unite our will with what God wills, and recognize the same as being one. ²Our longer practice periods today, the hourly five minutes given truth for your salvation, should begin with this:
³I seek but what belongs to me in truth, and joy and peace are my inheritance.
⁴Then lay aside the conflicts of the world that offer other gifts and other goals made of illusions, witnessed to by them, and sought for only in a world of dreams.”
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:
“1. There is nothing outside you. ²That is what you must ultimately learn, for it is the realization that the Kingdom of Heaven is restored to you. ³For God created only this, and He did not depart from it nor leave it separate from Himself. ⁴The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God, who left not his Father and dwells not apart from Him. ⁵Heaven is not a place nor a condition. ⁶It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else; nothing outside this Oneness, and nothing else within.
2. What could God give but knowledge of Himself?²What else is there to give?³The belief that you could give and get something else, something outside yourself, has cost you the awareness of Heaven and of your Identity.⁴And you have done a stranger thing than you yet realize.⁵You have displaced your guilt to your body from your mind.⁶Yet a body cannot be guilty, for it can do nothing of itself.⁷You who think you hate your body deceive yourself.⁸You hate your mind, for guilt has entered into it, and it would remain separate from your brother’s, which it cannot do.
3. Minds are joined; bodies are not.²Only by assigning to the mind the properties of the body does separation seem to be possible.³And it is mind that seems to be fragmented and private and alone.⁴Its guilt, which keeps it separate, is projected to the body, which suffers and dies because it is attacked to hold the separation in the mind, and let it not know its Identity.⁵Mind cannot attack, but it can make fantasies and direct the body to act them out.⁶Yet it is never what the body does that seems to satisfy.⁷Unless the mind believes the body is actually acting out its fantasies, it will attack the body by increasing the projection of its guilt upon it.”
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. Every “communication” based on the ego’s assumptions that separation happened “garnishes our wages” of peace. Every real (guiltless, blameless, harmless) communication effortlessly reinstates our original, eternal, and unassailable innocence and the serenity, safety, and comfort that all-inclusive shared innocence provides. Every liability the ego has fabricated becomes an asset when given to the Holy Spirit.
(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, 2026.)
