Have a little faith in me

May 14th, 2012
by sudugan.
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“Don’t make me go back out there again,” I said, resurrecting my “tiny voice.” The one I used to use as a kid in the confessional, reciting a rote list of venial sins, the tip of an iceberg I’d kept in the freezer for, well; ever. I couldn’t tell how long I’d been sitting outside my imaginary Jesus’ imaginary office, unable to rise to my feet and enter that ever-open door. I’d been emailing him all week and getting an out-of-office reply but obviously he was in there, grading papers maybe or playing with those finger puppets I gave him a while back.  (He has a bit of a thing for puppets. :) ) I’d been hoping to talk with him—to spill my guts, really—and yet. Some kind of force field kept me glued to the chair, unable to approach the light spilling out from that threshold.

After a while he came out and sat down beside me, laced his fingers backwards and inverted them, unfurled the pointers and thumbs and pressed them together. “Here’s the church, here’s the steeple,” he said, just like my grandfather used to all those years ago. “Open the doors and see all the people.” His thumbs swung open. He wiggled his fingers inside-out at me, threw back his head and laughed; just like my grandfather. But I refused to crack a smile. After all, I was here on serious business, and we were burning daylight.

“Don’t make me go back out there again,” I repeated, as emphatically as my tiny voice would allow.

He leaned toward me. “Why are we whispering?”

I managed a ragged sigh, looked over my shoulder. I really couldn’t say.

“Out there?” he said. He had lowered his voice, too, no doubt to meet me in the condition I think I’m in. That’s just the kind of guy he is.

“You know,” I said. “That ‘dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures come to die.’ ”

He smiled. “We’ve talked about this.”

“It’s just that I really am way over my head this semester. I mean, Jesus, the forgiveness pop quizzes are coming at warp speed and I can’t possibly keep up with all the lab work. You can’t blame me for falling behind. I am so not ready for this.”

“I thought you got an A plus on your last special relationships test.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m ready to make it all the same, mister; to look at everything with you, to come to every situation, every encounter with sentient and insentient beings without need. I mean, true I can see that body I held responsible for the drama and conflict playing out in my puny little head for such a long time was never the cause. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to give up the cause. I mean, seeing isn’t always believing, you know what I’m saying?”

“I believe I do.”

“I don’t go down easily, as you may have noticed. And I don’t know which scares me more right now. Going out there.” I pointed to the door down the hall, portal to the great illusion of my so-called life. “Or going in there.” I pointed to his office door.

“I see,” he said.

“I know you do. I’m just saying I’d like to slow this whole thing down, is that too much to ask?”

“You think I’m in charge of the speed?”

“I am so not ready to wake up, anyone can see that. I think I must have missed some prerequisites. Just like that recurring dream I used to have where I couldn’t graduate from college because I forgot to fill that math requirement I kept postponing. Whoa, that was a scary dream. Remember that one?”

“We’ve talked about this.”

“Well, obviously not enough.”

Anyway, speaking of dreams, I’d awakened that morning in the throes of a terrifying nightmare in which I found myself adrift in a strange, vast land, unable to speak the language. Bands of armed men who hadn’t bathed recently terrorized the countryside, randomly attacking civilians trying to eke out a living from the parched, rocky soil along bald hillsides. I was traveling with my little dog Kayleigh and a group of strangers equally lost, also trying to find a way out while staying under the radar.

In a cloud of dust a bus approached on the steep, dirt road and Kayleigh darted across the road ahead of it without me. Men waved automatic weapons out the windows and we dropped to our knees and covered our heads the way they used to make us in kindergarten during air raid drills. They passed us by without incident, but Kayleigh was nowhere to be found. I spent the rest of the dream dashing up and down the ravines frantically calling her name, abandoned by the rest of the group and overwhelmed by the possibility that I had lost her for good.

Jesus reached into his pocket and handed me a tissue from his seemingly endless invisible supply.

I dabbed at my eyes.  “It’s just that she’s so small,” I said. “So sweet and helpless, and loyal, too, you know? You don’t run into that very often out there.”

Jesus patted my arm.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I said.

“You always do.”

“Have a little faith in me is what you’re really saying. I don’t have to give up the things I love. I don’t have to go around doing everything that scares me just to prove I’m not a body. I just have to go back in there with you. To see things from your perspective, recognize how afraid of love I am; admit I’m not ready to wake up without trying to justify it by defending the reality of my dreams of loss and persecution. That’s how they get undone. That’s how eyes that cannot see begin to open. It’s like it says in the second half of the workbook, number 13. What Is a Miracle?

“The eyes of Christ deliver them to all they look upon in mercy and in love. Perception stands corrected in His sight, and what was meant to curse has come to bless. … The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it, and show it rested on a world more real than what you saw before; a world redeemed from what you thought was there.”

Jesus nodded. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

“Ha!” I felt better, sort of. I would just have to keep plugging along. Quit worrying about flunking the Course. Trust that “no one can fail who seeks to reach the truth,” even when I didn’t believe it, even when the thought of losing my dog brought me to my knees, even when I wanted to throttle someone “out there” just for the hell of it. It was all just part of the curriculum.

“What were my choices again?” I asked.

“We’ve talked about this.”

“Just that one choice, you’re saying?”

He nodded.

“Oh man, there has to be another way.”

Jesus laughed. I took his hand, rose, and followed him into his office.

“Seek for that door and find it. But before you try to open it, remind yourself no one can fail who seeks to reach the truth. And it is this request you make today. Nothing but this has any meaning now; no other goal is valued now nor sought, nothing before this door you really want, and only what lies past it do you seek.” (Workbook lesson 131, paragraph 12)

NOTE: A Course in Miracles uses the figure of Jesus as a symbol of the awakened mind, the memory of our one, eternal wholeness that lingers in the one mind of the one child of God merely dreaming an impossible dream of separation from all-inclusive, boundless, formless Love. By choosing this part of our mind as our teacher instead of the ego, we remember we are dreamers of the dream, rather than dream figures. Our guilt over the mistaken belief we have defected from real Love, can never return, and must continually exonerate ourselves by projecting our guilt on others to prove our greater innocence is undone as we look through the lens of kindness on what never was. Our split mind begins to heal as we learn to smile at our misperceptions and gently awaken to our one, true nature.

Please note I will be away for a couple of weeks and will post ASAP when I return.

Click on the link on this site’s home page to order your personalized copy of my collection of personal essays, Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness, about practicing ACIM’s extraordinary forgiveness in ordinary life or order through Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Ordinary-Forgiveness-Susan-Dugan/dp/1846945585 or your local bookstore. If you read and like the book, please consider posting a review on Amazon and/or as a comment on this site.

If you enjoy these posts and like fiction, you might enjoy my recently published collection of linked short stories, Safe Haven, recently selected as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award in the literary fiction category: http://www.coloradohumanities.org/content/2012-colorado-book-award-finalists.

If you have an ACIM/forgiveness-related question, please feel free to submit it on my Q & A page.

I am now speaking regularly at ACIM Gather Wednesdays, 5-6 p.m., EST http://www.onemindfdn.org/acimgather.htm Here are links to two recent talks: http://db.tt/dJ4KWgRD    http://db.tt/dJ4KWgRD

Individual ACIM mentoring can help students learn to practice the Course’s extraordinary, mind-healing forgiveness in their daily lives. For information on individual ACIM mentoring; please click on the mentoring tab on this site.

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What do you ask for in your heart?

May 7th, 2012
by sudugan.
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I had just come through a welcome shift in my perception of a special relationship I had held responsible for the conflict and drama (A Course in Miracles teaches us is actually playing out internally) in my life for many years; experienced true gratitude to the object of my projection for helping me reclaim and release my own concealed desire to push real love away. Experienced true compassion for the secret fear we shared that we truly had defected from our one home and could never return.

And yet, predictably, my anxiety over what this Course was really saying about the self I still see in the mirror was at an all-time high. I vacillated between elongated holy (whole) instants of clarity and unwavering faith in our true reality and full-blown panic attacks about what that ultimately meant for the body I still think I inhabit, pacing the square footage of my Denver home like something caged. Hobbling on a toe I had broken the night before–while similarly pacing my habitat, my little dog in my arms—when I caught it on the hard edge of a wooden chest.

I had just returned from a limping walk around the park with my dog I had hoped would clear my head but instead left me reacting anew to the pollen spewing from the stately old trees bending in the wind. I pressed my fingers to my itchy, leaky eyes, dipped my toes back in the bowl of ice water beneath my desk, and decided to distract myself from my colossal resistance to accepting the comfort of my right mind by tackling various mindless tasks on my ever-lengthening To-Do list. But when I went to order tickets to the summer concerts that had gone on sale that very morning, I couldn’t find the membership number required to set up an account. Attempting to figure a way around it, I repeatedly timed out. When I finally located the membership number, the required links had mysteriously perished.

I gave up and attempted to convert some audio files to live links on my website with no success. I tried ordering a cake for my father-in-law’s approaching 90th birthday party. A bakery employee answered the phone, put me on hold, and did not return. I called again, was put on hold and disconnected. The next time I called, I got a fax tone. When I tried a little later the phone merely rang and rang. I then attempted to review a DVD for a class I was teaching but a power surge rendered our DVD player incapacitated.

Pacing my cell once more–anxiety seemingly freshly fed by these new frustrations–I had it out with my imaginary Jesus. Had I not committed and recommitted to making this Course the most important thing in my life? Had I not sincerely asked him to help me make learning forgiveness of a separation that never was the true purpose of all my interactions? Why was I still letting such trivial situations in my forgiveness classroom upset me like this? What the hell else did I need to go through to finally heal?

I stopped pacing then, and froze. I had never turned on him like this. Sure; I’d fantasized taking out the big, blue book many times; argued with my inner teacher, complained and whined, but never; you know, yelled at him before. I suppose I was waiting for some kind of Biblical retaliation, but there was only silence. There, I thought. I finally scared him away. But before the terror that thought evoked could fully seize me, the silence opened and deepened and beckoned; revealing a certain, complete stillness in which all previous worries and judgments; thoughts and emotions slipped away.

“What do you ask for in your heart?” I heard, a line from workbook lesson, 185, “I want the peace of God;” one of my favorites.

And a silent, inner answer arose from a Self beyond this body’s brain: “I want to see with you through the eyes of kindness to all; eyes that see everyone and everything as part of eternal kindness. I want to give up this hierarchy of illusions for good. To see the conflict and drama and pain I keep putting ‘out there’ as merely a reflection of the conflict, drama, and pain in my mind. Generated by a false belief that the ‘tiny, mad idea’ that I could exist as other than infinite, kind, oneness (or would want to) had any real effects.”

“What do you ask for in your heart?” The question came again.

“Eyes that can see,” I answered.  And returned to the silence again, closing my body’s eyes and joining with our inner teacher’s vision.

“Forget the words you use in making your requests. Consider but what you believe will comfort you and bring you happiness. But be you not dismayed by lingering illusions, for their form is not what matters now. Let not some dreams be more acceptable, reserving shame and secrecy for others. They are one.”

The lesson’s words echoed in my head. And I could see the unkindness–the result of having chosen the inner teacher of unkindness–I had been indulging by making the dream with its twists and turns real, forgetting I was the dreamer of the dream, not the heroine. All to preserve the story of a special self designed to promote a special tale of suffering and defeat that at least proves I exist as an individual but it’s not my fault.

“What do you ask for in your heart?” The question came again.

“I ask to see with you,” I repeated. “I ask to look through the eyes of kindness on everyone and everything, including the one I see in the mirror.”

I don’t know how long I sat there in stillness, flooded with gratitude for this Course, this practice, this teacher, the reality of our true, unalterable Self forever awake in boundless Love, merely dreaming of exile. Again certain that choosing the inner teacher of kindness would not cause me to disappear in a flash of obliterating light, only to smile. When I returned to the world, I went back to the tasks on my To-Do list and completed them, gently lifted a spider that had wandered inside with a tissue and returned it to the garden, and headed out to Motor Vehicles—where I met the most lovely, helpful people; I swear to God!–to get the license plates I needed for my new car.

“You want the peace of God. And so do all who seem to seek for dreams. For them as well as for yourself you ask but this when you make this request with deep sincerity. For thus you reach to what they really want, and join your own intent with what they seek above all things, perhaps unknown to them, but sure to you. You have been weak at times, uncertain in your purpose, and unsure of what you wanted, where to look for it, and where to turn for help in the attempt. Help has been given you. And would you not avail yourself of it by sharing it?

No-one who truly seeks the peace of God can fail to find it. For he merely asks that he deceive himself no longer by denying to himself what is God’s Will. Who can remain unsatisfied who asks for what he has already? Who could be unanswered who requests an answer which is his to give? The peace of God is yours.”

Click on the link on this site’s home page to order your personalized copy of my collection of personal essays, Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness, about practicing ACIM’s extraordinary forgiveness in ordinary life or order through Amazon (currently bargain-priced for Amazon prime members)  http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Ordinary-Forgiveness-Susan-Dugan/dp/1846945585 or your local bookstore. If you read and like the book, please consider posting a review on Amazon and/or as a comment on this site.

If you enjoy these posts and like fiction, you might enjoy my recently published collection of linked short stories, Safe Haven. http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Haven-Susan-Dugan/dp/0983742006. Safe Haven was just selected as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award in the literary fiction category: http://www.coloradohumanities.org/content/2012-colorado-book-award-finalists and a finalist for the Colorado Authors League awards http://coloradoauthors.org/Site/2012CALAWARDSNOMINEES.php in the mainstream fiction category, and makes a great Mothers’ Day gift.

If you have an ACIM/forgiveness-related question, please feel free to submit it on my Q & A page.

I am now speaking regularly at ACIM Gather Wednesdays, 5-6 p.m., EST http://www.onemindfdn.org/acimgather.htm Here are links to two recent talks: http://db.tt/dJ4KWgRD    http://db.tt/dJ4KWgRD

Individual ACIM mentoring can help students learn to practice the Course’s extraordinary, mind-healing forgiveness in their daily lives. For information on individual ACIM mentoring; please click on the mentoring tab on this site.

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It is done

Apr 30th, 2012
by sudugan.
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I sat at my desk, cross-legged in my chair; eyes squeezed shut, silently repeating the word “one” in response to a tsunami of other words and images flooding the shore of my scant gray matter, ego-driven directives warning me to act post-haste in response to recent dream developments or, you know, risk certain annihilation. “One,” I repeated, “one, one, one,” hoping this simple incantation might trigger the right-mindedness—that awareness of my real identity seamlessly fused with our creator along with every other seemingly forsaken soul—I had apparently misplaced.

“Seven billion,” the ego countered, “and counting,” referring to the number of people currently vying for survival on the planet, each capable of destroying said planet and each other in ever more ingenious ways. I know. It had been that kind of morning. I’d awakened abruptly less than an hour earlier in the throes of a vivid dream in which I found myself a prisoner escaping from a sprawling, vintage penitentiary; a vision that had hovered just on the periphery of my waking dream as well. I had somehow made it to the yard safely in the middle of the night in my little, striped jumpsuit, had summoned my courage and dashed across it toward the chain link fence only to be suddenly illuminated by an overhead roving light. Like a roach on a kitchen floor exposed by the flip of a switch, I froze, fully aware the jig was up.

In my waking dream, too, the jig seemed just about up. I had never been more aware of my allegiance to my special stories of suffering at the hands of imaginary problematic costars and unfair scripts, the anxiety-spiked paralysis that descended whenever I so much as contemplated what my life would look like without the imprisonment of these projections. Abandoning my doomed mantra I squeezed my eyes shut again and watched the ego’s risk management power point with as much detachment as I could muster while silently begging for truth to weigh in. And then I actually heard the phrase: “Just be kind,”–which surprised me, because I am generally not one to receive these sorts of specific, divine downloads—followed by “It is done.”

I inhaled gratefully, the ego’s presentation receding like a photograph developing backwards into the ether from which it sprang, and found myself back in the classroom of the inner teacher of love instead of fear, seated across the desk from my imaginary Jesus (that symbol of our mind made sane by truth instead of mad by guilt), the big, blue book open on the desk between us. “I know what you’re thinking,” I said.

“You always do.”

“Liar, liar pants on fire.”

“Say, what?”

“No, I mean, really. See, you’re trying to tell me everything my body’s eyes report is a lie because it’s all based on a lie. The lie that the one child of God I remain could separate from eternal wholeness or would want to that gave birth to the lie of separate interests and unfair treatment. The lies of my thoughts of specialness, my emotional reactions to passing dream scenes, figures, and plots, my belief in the lie that my waking dreams are more real than my sleeping dreams when both of them are lies. Just one damn lie after another is what you’re really saying, isn’t it?”

His brows shot up, the way they do.

“The lie the ego keeps pushing that I will never find my way home through this Course, never experience more than a passing holy instant, never transform my special relationships into holy ones, never break out of this jailhouse alive. When the truth is, you’re trying to remind me that I asked you some time ago to help me change the purpose of this relationship from proving I exist separately but it’s not my fault to proving our sameness. We share the same ego, the same decision maker, and the same right mind. And we both want to find our way home to the all-inclusive love and innocence we think we destroyed more than we want to hold on to our differences.”

“Go on,” he said.

“And so what you’re really saying is just be kind, and patient, too, because there isn’t anything else to do but allow the undoing that comes from looking at my dream with you to dissolve my fear and nourish my trust that love will prevail.  I have asked, and you have answered, regardless of the time lag I seem to be experiencing and the tantrums it seems to trigger in the self I still think I am. As you’ve pointed out many times, there is no time in truth. I need only allow you to use the illusion of time kindly for me, trusting patiently that healing is happening even though I don’t yet see or feel the results, or even understand what that means. I may be hard-wired to resist this healing, to accept its comfort, but my resistance has no effects on its power or progress, just like my belief in the ‘tiny, mad idea’ I could run away from home and experience myself as other than perfectly, infinitely whole and loved had no effects.”

“I see,” he said, nodding.

“Yes, you do. It’s like you said in Chapter 17, V. The Healed Relationship:

‘This is a time for faith. You let this goal be set for you. That was an act of faith. Do not abandon faith, now that the rewards of faith are being introduced. If you believed the Holy Spirit was there to accept the relationship, why would you now not still believe that he is there to purify what He has taken under His guidance?…’

So what you’re really trying to say is even though I still feel confused, start listening to the ego again, and reaching for solutions in form, even as the panic rises in my throat at the thought of relinquishing my fantasized special self, you’ve already corrected the conditions that led to these feelings of sin, guilt, and fear; and I’ve corrected them, too, because we are one. I just need to remember that if I have joined with you outside time in the eternal present for even a nanosecond and experienced the freedom, all-inclusive innocence, and completeness of our one, true nature–which I have–salvation is certain in this situation, too.”

“I see,” he repeated.

“You most certainly do. Well, I just have to say, I’m so glad we had this little talk. You were really on quite the roll today, weren’t you?”

“It was nothing,” he said.

Ha! He really is a lot funnier than anybody gives him credit for.

I lifted my palm in the air.

He high-fived me right back, and I found myself once more at my desk, in my office, happily wrong about, well; that would be everything.

“You and your brother stand together in the holy presence of truth itself. Here is the goal, together with you. Think you not the goal itself will gladly arrange the means for its accomplishment? It is just this same discrepancy between the purpose that has been accepted and the means as they stand now which seems to make you suffer, but which makes Heaven glad. If Heaven were outside you, you could not share in it is gladness. Yet because it is within, the gladness, too, is yours. You are joined in purpose, but remain still separate and divided on the means. Yet the goal is fixed, firm and unalterable and the means will surely fall in place because the goal is sure. …”

 

Click on the link on this site’s home page to order your personalized copy of my collection of personal essays, Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness, about practicing ACIM’s extraordinary forgiveness in ordinary life or order through Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Ordinary-Forgiveness-Susan-Dugan/dp/1846945585 or your local bookstore. If you read and like the book, please consider posting a review on Amazon and/or as a comment on this site.

If you enjoy these posts and like fiction, you might enjoy my recently published collection of linked short stories, Safe Haven. http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Haven-Susan-Dugan/dp/0983742006. Safe Haven was just selected as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award in the literary fiction category: http://www.coloradohumanities.org/content/2012-colorado-book-award-finalists and a finalist for the Colorado Authors League awards http://coloradoauthors.org/Site/2012CALAWARDSNOMINEES.php in the mainstream fiction category.

If you have an ACIM/forgiveness-related question, please feel free to submit it on my Q & A page.

I am now speaking regularly at ACIM Gather Wednesdays, 5-6 p.m. EST http://www.onemindfdn.org/acimgather.htm Here are links to two recent talks: http://db.tt/dJ4KWgRD    http://db.tt/dJ4KWgRD

Individual ACIM mentoring can help students learn to practice the Course’s extraordinary, mind-healing forgiveness in their daily lives. For information on individual ACIM mentoring; please click on the mentoring tab on this site.

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Forgiveness slide show

Apr 23rd, 2012
by sudugan.
2 comments

I sat at my desk, cross-legged in my chair, eyes closed; calling to mind the face of someone I’ve been struggling to forgive for a long time. Offering a silent apology with as much sincerity as I could find in my slowly unfurling heart for the many ways in which I had used him to embellish my story of seeking and never finding. The tale of ill-fated suffering I was learning I had woven in an effort to keep the fiction of a separate me alive all these years, while denying responsibility for it. The many repetitive accusations I had leveled at this person in my thoughts that seemed impossible to release slowly appeared one by one on the screen in my head beneath his face, like captions anchoring a photograph. And I suddenly understood exactly what the Course means when it asks us to consider as it does in workbook lesson 134, paragraph 9:

“…When you feel that you are tempted to accuse someone of sin in any form, do not allow your mind to dwell on what you think he did, for that is self-deception. Ask instead: ‘Would I accuse myself of doing this?’”

It struck me like a blow to the solar plexus that I had, in fact, accused myself of doing this. And this, and this, and this, and this. My blindness lifted for a moment in my longing to share the truth my right mind knows, and I could see clearly in the bright light of forgiveness how every accusation I had made about this person described my own deeply denied faults. The ones I’d carried all my life, never once daring to utter aloud in the confessional of my childhood. How I’d  found the perfect canvas seemingly “out there” on which to paint them, that I might convince myself over and over again they were real but belonged to someone else.

“I’m so sorry,” I silently told the image in my mind. Sorry for projecting my inability to forgive myself for these perceived “sins”—but symbols of my belief in separation–on you. Sorry for rigidly portraying you as my antagonist rather than seeing you as but another fragment of the one child of God we remain. Doing your best to survive here as a fugitive from real, eternally whole Love, just like I am; likewise secretly convinced you will blow your cover if you don’t spend every conscious moment picturing the problem “out there” rather than looking within.

I gazed into the eyes of my projection, genuine remorse welling up inside, blinking back welcome tears of recognition that we really were the same. We shared the same repressed belief in what A Course in Miracles calls “the tiny, mad idea” that the one child of God in truth seamlessly fused with our creator could defect from our eternally unified source. The belief in which gave rise to a guilt so crushing our one mind appeared to split into an ego (the part of our mind that forgot to smile at the preposterous notion), the Holy (Whole) Spirit (the part of our mind that remembered to smile), and the decision maker, the part of our mind that selfishly sided with the ego’s version of the myth. Choosing to follow it into an entire universe of projected forms, assuming individual bodies to prove we exist but it’s not our fault, and then falling asleep to insure we never returned to the mind to choose again for our unalterably, all-inclusive, infinitely loving truth.

The dream seems so real, its figures so convincing, its performances so winning. However bizarre its plot, we believe it, and react from our belief. We feel elation and pain, excitement and grief, anger and regret; the cramped and stifling nature of trying to experience love between and within bodies deliberately invented to limit it. Our fortunes deliciously, deliriously wax and wane. We bond together and bargain to get our needs met and when our contracts are broken, we condemn others for breaking them. While secretly rejoicing in their greater guilt that at least temporarily gets us off the hook for that nagging original guilt we sense within that never goes away for long, however gifted at projection we become.

As I sat gazing into the eyes of my seeming nemesis, yearning to see clearly, I suddenly experienced the remorse Ken Wapnick had been talking about in a CD set I’d been listening to that had seemed so puzzling, versus the guilt the ego would have us reinforce in our efforts to foist our self-condemnation on others.  A gentle remorse that recognizes our sameness, versus a guilt that insists on empowering our differences. “I’m sorry,” I silently repeated, sorry for refusing to forgive the badass self I keep insisting on seeing in you. A self that remains innocent of a crime that never occurred, despite my guilty, tortured fantasies. “I’m sorry,” I repeated, and really meant it. I was just afraid of losing my mistaken self, just like you.

But there was nothing in truth to fear, I could see that now; guilty dreams have no effects upon the truth. Only gratitude to you for revealing the mirage of my specialness to me, and the welcome, loving light it concealed. A funny thing happened then. The face in my mind now smiling back at me faded, replaced by another face, and another, and another. An entire forgiveness slide show of past figures in the long dream of Susan revealed themselves, complete with captions of my judgments, pausing for reevaluation and release. In each case, I saw our sameness, first in its fearful dream state, and then in its certain, abstract, awakened innocence. And I gave thanks for this practice, this forgiveness slide show that enabled me to review my mistaken perceptions with the inner teacher of love instead of fear. Allowing me to open my eyes and begin this day again, realigned with peace.

“Do not be afraid to look within. The ego tells you all is black with guilt within you, and bids you not to look. Instead, it bids you look upon your brothers, and see the guilt in them. Yet this you cannot do without remaining blind. For those who see their brothers in the dark, and guilty in the dark in which they shroud them, are too afraid to look upon the light within. Within you is not what you believe is there, and what you put your faith in.

Within you is the holy sign of perfect faith your Father has in you. He does not value you as you do. He knows Himself, and knows the truth in you. He knows there is no difference, for He knows not of differences. Can you see guilt where God knows there is perfect innocence? You can deny His knowledge, but you cannot change it. Look, then, upon the light He placed within you, and learn that what you feared was there has been replaced with love.”

-A Course in Miracles, Chapter 13, IX. The Cloud of Guilt, paragraphs 6 and 7.

Click on the link on this site’s home page to order your personalized copy of my collection of personal essays, Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness, about practicing ACIM’s extraordinary forgiveness in ordinary life or order through Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Ordinary-Forgiveness-Susan-Dugan/dp/1846945585 or your local bookstore. If you read and like the book, please consider posting a review on Amazon and/or as a comment on this site.

You can listen to a recent interview about Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness at   https://www.maryannelive.com/radio-shows/power-of-we/718-susan-dugan-extraordinary-ordinary-forgiveness.html

If you enjoy these posts and like fiction, you might enjoy my recently published collection of linked short stories, Safe Haven. http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Haven-Susan-Dugan/dp/0983742006. Safe Haven was just selected as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award in the literary fiction category: http://www.coloradohumanities.org/content/2012-colorado-book-award-finalists and a finalist for the Colorado Authors League awards http://coloradoauthors.org/Site/2012CALAWARDSNOMINEES.php in the mainstream fiction category.

If you have an ACIM/forgiveness-related question, please feel free to submit it on my Q & A page.

I am now speaking regularly at ACIM Gather Wednesdays, 5-6 p.m. EST http://www.onemindfdn.org/acimgather.htm

Individual ACIM mentoring can help students learn to practice the Course’s extraordinary, mind-healing forgiveness in their daily lives. For information on individual ACIM mentoring; please click on the mentoring tab on this site.

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Seek you no further

Apr 16th, 2012
by sudugan.
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All week long I’d been robotically watching the same old series of internal films starring yours truly, pausing to reflect on moments of glory interwoven among juicy tales of love lost, success stymied, and hopes dashed. Rewinding and zooming in on antagonists large and small, past and present, polluting the landscape of my so-called life, hell-bent on preventing me from capturing my fair share of hard-fought-for happiness and well-being here on planet crazy.

Then, too, under the ego’s ever-willing-and-able tutelage, I’d been counting the many ways in which a special relationship continued to thwart me without any discernible provocation on my puny part, the many ways in which plot twists and turns in the saga of Susan seemed to throw me once more into chaos. As well as courting the possibility that new, unexpected developments might prove the answer to all my worldly prayers. Once more seduced into believing I had any clue whatsoever about what I really wanted.

I’m not going to lie to you. Despite having made healing my mind through practicing forgiveness A Course in Miracles-style my primary goal, I could not seem to stop myself from reaching for that remote like the handle on a slot machine just one more time; convinced I had somehow missed a major loophole in my predicted odds. Deliciously intoxicated anew by the far-fetched possibility I might yet tweak the script, adjudicate the conflict, replace a couple problematic costars; rewrite a few contracts in my favor; thereby triggering the happy ending I so deserved. Driven once more under the influence of the ego’s tantalizing story of individuality realized and desired to change everything I could possibly think of except, well; my mind. Yet, even as the score rose once more in sad, then hopeful, crescendo; a part of me gently smiled and shook its proverbial head. Damn.

In my peripheral vision, I could see my imaginary Jesus (that memory of uninterrupted wholeness in our one mind) draped beside me on the couch, sandals shed, feet stretched out on the coffee table, silently waiting. Enthralled with the images on my imaginary screen, I tried to ignore him but it’s not all that easy to do anymore. He has a pretty strong presence and is always kind of hanging around, if you know what I mean. At last I slapped the remote down, and turned to face him.

“Long time no see,” I said.

“Ha!”

“I know what you’re thinking.”

“You always do.”

“Step away from the remote,” I said. “Well, I mean, as if.”

Jesus threw back his head and laughed.

“But what you really meant to say was ‘Seek you no further,’ right?” I asked, quoting from the beginning of A Course in Miracles workbook lesson 200: “There is no peace except the peace of God.” The lesson that had more than once inspired me to envision in graphic detail running back and forth, back and forth, over this big, blue book with my car.

“You will not find peace except the peace of God,” I recalled. “Accept this fact, and save yourself the agony of yet more bitter disappointments, bleak despair, and sense of icy hopelessness and doubt. Seek you no further. There is nothing else for you to find except the peace of God, unless you seek for misery and pain.”

The Course does not mince words. If I was honest with myself, I had to admit that every road taken in this movie of a life so far–despite fleeting pleasures guiltily grabbed along the way–every road taken within the seductively murky memories of all lives past had never led me where I really wanted to go. Even though I know better I had been looking for the love and peace I craved again on the screen, mistaking dancing, lunging, enticing, terrifying shadows for the content of my life. Once more completely forgetting I have no life except the life I share as one with all that is. “A oneness joined as one” I can only remember when I return to the decision-making mind and watch the ego’s propaganda films with Jesus as my teacher. And, yet.

“I still haven’t exhausted every possibility,” I whined. “I mean, there are still places to go, people to meet, books to read and write, mountains to climb.” Bold, new horizons to conquer, I thought; final frontiers. Right.

His brows shot up, the way they do.

Damn. I knew what he was thinking. The Course is not asking us to exhaust every possibility; to sample every morsel of the world’s secular and spiritual smorgasbord. To seek for ourselves in every possible special relationship seemingly “out there.” That would be the ego’s plan for salvation. To look for the love we believe we squandered when we first took the “tiny, mad idea” of individuality seriously only outside the mind where it can never be found. To seek and never find that we might prove over and over again we indeed exist as separate entities but it’s not our fault. Instead of returning to the mind and looking with Jesus as our teacher on what never was. Going home to the place in the mind in which the insane notion we could divide the eternally indivisible, all-loving Self we share with our creator was simply seen for the silly nothingness it remains.

“Go home,” I recalled, from lesson 200. “You have not found your happiness in foreign places and in alien forms that have no meaning to you, though you sought to make them meaningful. This world is not where you belong. You are a stranger here. But it is given you to find the means whereby the world no longer seems to be a prison house or jail for anyone.”

Even though I had vowed to make my new life’s purpose springing myself from the ego thought system’s prison of separation through practicing forgiveness, a part of my mind was not yet completely convinced I still had a home to return to. Not completely sold on J’s promise that relinquishing my death grip on this physical and psychological body I still spied in the mirror each morning staring guiltily back at me would deliver the freedom I was really seeking. But, I had at least learned that trying to fix up the movie left me frightened and stressed out. While watching with Jesus offered a deep comfort, completion, and the happy ending for all I truly wanted. And, yet.

A part of me is still too afraid to go home, still not quite ready to give up forever on this retrospective in which I seem to have invested so much toil and time; blood, sweat, and tears. I sighed, and picked up the remote, savoring its icy smoothness with my fingers; all those freaking buttons.  I just couldn’t seem to help myself.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “You’ll wait with me in hell a while longer. That’s just the kind of guy you are. Let’s have just one more look, then, shall we? Together this time?”

Jesus just continued to smile.

 

Click on the link on this site’s home page to order your personalized copy of my collection of personal essays, Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness, about practicing ACIM’s extraordinary forgiveness in ordinary life or order through Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Ordinary-Forgiveness-Susan-Dugan/dp/1846945585 or your local bookstore. If you read and like the book, please consider posting a review on Amazon and/or as a comment on this site.

You can listen to a recent interview about Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness at !  https://www.maryannelive.com/radio-shows/power-of-we/718-susan-dugan-extraordinary-ordinary-forgiveness.html

If you enjoy these posts and like fiction, you might enjoy my recently published collection of linked short stories, Safe Haven. http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Haven-Susan-Dugan/dp/0983742006. Safe Haven was just selected as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award in the literary fiction category: http://www.coloradohumanities.org/content/2012-colorado-book-award-finalists and a finalist for the Colorado Authors League awards http://coloradoauthors.org/Site/2012CALAWARDSNOMINEES.php

If you have an ACIM/forgiveness-related question, please feel free to submit it on my Q & A page.

I am now speaking regularly at ACIM Gather Wednesdays, 5-6 p.m. EST http://www.onemindfdn.org/acimgather.htm

Individual ACIM mentoring can help students learn to practice the Course’s extraordinary, mind-healing forgiveness in their daily lives. For information on individual ACIM mentoring; please click on the mentoring tab on this site for more information.

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The quiet answer

Apr 9th, 2012
by sudugan.
2 comments

“Let me get this straight,” I said, as my inner imaginary Jesus and I rode up the chairlift at Loveland Ski Area together last weekend. “You want me to make friends with my projections? You still haven’t met them, have you?”

He just laughed, swinging his skis like he’d been doing this all his life. Minus ski boots, of course, sans helmet, same old nubby robe, those signature hot pink shades rimmed with sparkles he’d gotten so fond of last summer. He should have made quite the spectacle even among people whizzing by below in full spring skiing Colorado-style regalia: a man dressed as a banana on a ski board and another as a hot dog; women in bikini tops; Lady Gaga impersonators. But he must have borrowed Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak again because obviously no one else but yours truly could see him.

I’d summoned him moments earlier as I boarded the lift solo having spun off from my husband and a friend who prefer to ski extreme terrain. A conversation with said friend on the ride up appeared to have re-ignited my sense of victimization in a scene in my dream from the day before, a forgiveness opportunity I’d been grappling with off and on for more than 24 hours.

“Have I mentioned how much I just love forgiveness opportunities?” I muttered, as I related the story to Jesus.

Having risen that morning once more in a state of discontent about the way in which a dream figure seemed to be thwarting me, I headed for a fitness center I belong to at a nearby university–big, blue book in hand–in search of both endorphins and right-mindedness. I hit a stationary bike and opened A Course in Miracles to Chapter 27, IV. The Quiet Answer, in which we learn again that no problem is ever solved from within a thought system deliberately designed to keep the real problem (our belief in separation from our real source and Self) at the root of all problems perennially concealed and thereby unresolved.

“… In conflict there can be no answer and no resolution, for its purpose is to make no resolution possible, and to ensure no answer will be plain. A problem set in conflict has no answer, for it is seen in different ways. And what would be an answer from one point of view is not an answer in another light. You are in conflict. Thus it must be clear you cannot answer anything at all, for conflict has no limited effects. Yet if God gave an answer there must be a way in which your problems are resolved, for what He wills already has been done.”

The wise words worked their magic on me as they almost always do. The ongoing conflict I was experiencing in this relationship–the sense that no alternative seemed likely or promising, no solution forthcoming—could only be healed when I chose against the inner teacher of separate interests and for the inner teacher of all-inclusive, innocent wholeness. The solution always and only lay in the mind of the dreamer, not in the dream. By returning to the mind in the holy instant in which I admitted I did not know the real question let alone the answer and looking at the drama on the screen with Jesus–recognizing myself as merely another character in a dream created to prove I exist at God’s expense but it’s not my fault—I could experience peace instead of this.

As I continued reading the beautiful section my worries and needs and fears dissolved, the imaginary credits to the most recent installment in the story of Susan on the imaginary screen rolled, and I smiled, certain as I headed for my brand new car in the parking lot that all was well. No one was guilty here. We were all truly awake within indivisible love, merely dreamy a trippy dream of exile.

I looked over my shoulder right, and left, scanning the rear view mirror as I slowly backed out of the parking spot and had almost made it when another, larger vehicle slammed into me. A woman got out and apologized, then moved her car back into the space and returned. I stood gazing at the side of my scratched and dislodged bumper, shaken. Just then, across the lot, a woman in an SUV who happened to be a friend of the woman who hit me got out of her car, came up, and declared it was no one’s fault. We were both pulling out at the same time. The woman who hit me whose car was not damaged refused to give me her insurance information and claimed she hadn’t hit me hard enough anyway to have caused that much damage to my brand new car.

My hand shook as I wrote down her license plate number. “Why are you so angry?” she asked. What planet are you from? I thought, but thankfully did not say. Anyway, I wasn’t angry, I hadn’t berated her or raised my voice, had I? Who the hell was she to call me angry?

But of course, I was. I spent the next couple hours trying to figure out how I had shifted so abruptly from a state of seeming tranquility to this unexpected conflict in which I perceived myself once more unfairly treated and dare I say, treating? Her car hitting me had seemed so freaking random. I found it nearly impossible to see it as my own projection but begged for help to do so anyway, at least certain I wanted to feel better.

As I rode out the gap between asking for help from my right mind to see the situation differently—through the eyes of all-inclusive love instead of all-exclusive fear—and allowing/accepting the answer, I also recognized how my wrong-mindedness in this situation had broadened to include, well, everything. The “problem” upsetting me earlier seemed back in my face again, my allergy symptoms completely off the charts; the world at large on a sad, downward spiral.

And yet, as I called in Jesus this morning on a spring day under blueberry skies in the idyllic Rocky Mountains, upset anew about these and other projections, as I admitted I didn’t know how to respond to or interpret anything, I kept hearing the same phrase in my mind: “Make friends with your projections.”

“You seriously want me to make friends with my projections?” I repeated, as Jesus and I sailed off the lift at the top. “Be careful,” I warned, as he skated from ski to ski, hair flying, beside me. “It’s always icy in the morning this time of year. Ice can kill you. It will melt in a couple of hours and then turn into this slushy cement. Slush can kill you, too.”

His brows shot up and down, up and down above the shades. He’d been watching those vintage Groucho Marx reruns again, I could tell.

I nodded. “I’m not making this up. Well; never mind. Anyway, you have about a twenty minute window around twelve-thirty/one where you’re not dead meat. Of course, even then you might get taken out by a drunken banana man,” I added, as said boarder, as if on cue, crunched barely by us.

Jesus followed me down a winding catwalk leading to a fairly gentle run I’d chosen given the less than ideal conditions. We paused near a stand of evergreens. “OK; I know what you’re thinking,” I said.

“You always do.”

“Making friends with my projections is just another way of ‘making it about them’ as Ken Wapnick likes to say. Which really means seeing their fear, their neediness, instead of just seeing mine? Like with that woman who hit me yesterday. How the hell do I know what was going through her mind? She might have had no insurance, or been terrified of losing it. Worried about money, about her husband’s reaction; who knows?”

Jesus shrugged and nodded.

“But the ego always speaks first. Of course I reacted out of ego; that’s how projection works. I put it out there to prove I really do exist but it’s someone else’s fault. Until all the guilt in my mind is gone I will continue to want to see it in something external. When that happens, all I need to do is return to the holy instant and look with you. When I do that I see that no one’s guilty here. Everything seemingly “out there” reflects the same inner fear. All problems large and small–no matter the details–have the same answer because they’re all designed to preserve the only ‘problem’: the belief that the ‘tiny, mad idea’ of separation from indivisible, eternally loving wholeness had any real effects.”

Jesus smiled.

“Only, it didn’t,” I said.

I took off and he followed but quickly passed me, gracefully dodging in and out of the wacky cast of spring-fevered characters descending around us. Frankly, it always worked out better when I followed him anyway.

At the bottom of the lift—I swear to God–they were blasting the Depeche Mode tune Personal Jesus from gigantic speakers.

Jesus and I looked at each other and cracked up.

Then he lifted his thumb in the air, and was gone.

“Therefore, attempt to solve no problems in a world from which the answer has been barred. But bring the problem to the only place that holds the answer lovingly for you. Here are the answers that will solve your problems because they stand apart from them, and see what can be answered; what the question is. Within the world the answers merely raise another question, though they leave the first unanswered. In the holy instant, you can bring the question to the answer, and receive the answer that was made for you.”

 

Click on the link on this site’s home page to order your personalized copy of my collection of personal essays, Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness, about practicing ACIM’s extraordinary forgiveness in ordinary life or order through Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Ordinary-Forgiveness-Susan-Dugan/dp/1846945585 or your local bookstore. If you read and like the book, please consider posting a review on Amazon and/or as a comment on this site.

If you enjoy these posts and like fiction, you might enjoy my recently published collection of linked short stories, Safe Haven. http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Haven-Susan-Dugan/dp/0983742006. Safe Haven was just selected as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award in the literary fiction category: http://www.coloradohumanities.org/content/2012-colorado-book-award-finalists

If you have an ACIM/forgiveness-related question, please feel free to submit it on my Q & A page.

I am now speaking regularly at ACIM Gather Wednesdays, 5-6 p.m. EST http://www.onemindfdn.org/acimgather.htm

Individual ACIM mentoring can help students learn to practice the Course’s extraordinary, mind-healing forgiveness in their daily lives. For information on individual ACIM mentoring; please click on the mentoring tab on this site for more information.

 

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Bridge over troubled water

Apr 1st, 2012
by sudugan.
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Shhhh … Lean in a little closer. I have a confession to make. I killed a spider the other day in cold blood. I spotted it immediately on entering my bathroom to prepare for bed. A large, brown, hairy, I suspect non-poisonous creature; it appeared to have rappelled into the center of my bathtub. It froze as I flipped on the light. To me, it seemed a no-brainer.  I turned on the forceful faucet to wash it away, watching, detached and lost in thought about a problem I couldn’t seem to solve as it fought for its life. It wasn’t until the suction of the eddying water actually forced it down the drain that a wave of horror followed by deep regret washed over me.

The charms of Charlotte’s Web notwithstanding, I have always feared spiders and long ago made a bargain in an effort to achieve a certain détente with their kind. I would not bother them, I vowed; if they would not bother me. I would not approach them, interfere with them, trash them in conversation, or harm them in any way provided they stayed in their own territory: the great outdoors. I have remained faithful to my end of the agreement (coerced by my family, I once even hiked–really fast!–for hours in New Mexico among tarantulas without a single murderous thought). They, alas, have repeatedly broken their side of our pact with often tragic results. But as the water continued to run spider-free, it struck me like a blow to the solar plexus the degree to which I had completely disassociated the killing of the spider from practicing forgiveness A Course in Miracles-style.

Allow me to explain. I had been listening again (it takes a lot of listening for me to begin to hear this) to Ken Wapnick’s lengthy, meaty, every-so-challenging and helpful CD series Cast No One Out. In which he explains that we need to learn to extend forgiveness not only to the humans in our seeming lives but also to the animals, vegetables, minerals, insects, objects, amebas, protozoa, bacteria, and even politicians.  We need to generalize the Course’s message to everything we imagined in opposition to our singular truth. To join with our right mind and allow the comfort of its all-knowing vision to help us dissolve the hierarchy of illusions we have woven to obscure our reunion with the reality of our undifferentiated, eternally whole, loved and loving nature.

My robotic reaction to the crawling “intruder” in my bathtub helped me see once again how falsely, madly, deeply defended I am to the idea of seeing everyone and thing as sharing the same mind split over the terrifying belief that our wish to experience separation from our source was more than a momentary fantasy and had real effects. But only by learning to see that everyone and thing apparently “out there” shares the same split mind–the same fear they/it will never be accepted back into the loving fold–and therefore deserves the same gentle, kind response will ultimately heal my mind and allow me to awaken to the one and only loving, capital S Self I really want.

It struck me as I gazed down at the blank, white, tub–cleansed of my projection of a spider out to get me but slimed by the rising guilt over my perceived “crime”–that my resistance to what this Course was really saying–that there is no individual named Susan in conflict or collusion with other beings seemingly “out there”—went so much deeper than I could ever wrap my puny, little ego head around. In truth, the trouble I was having again holding my brother harmless in a special relationship in which I continued to perceive myself misunderstood and unfairly treated, the trouble I was having being kind and gentle with my own body, the trouble I was having refraining from cursing out my computer, the irritation I felt toward the wind-born dust and pollen assaulting my nostrils, lungs, and eyes, was no different from my perception of and reaction to a spider that had accidentally wandered as spiders will into enemy territory.

And it struck me as I stood there once again dropping the ego’s hand and reaching instead for the hand of the inner teacher of kind forgiveness that resisting doing what the Course was asking us to do hurt so much more these days. Resisting the only peace I really wanted–a peace far beyond this imaginary world of imaginary forces large and small vying for imaginary survival in an imaginary world–in an effort to protect a false self I still believed on some level offered me something I honestly could no longer name hurt like, well, hell. Because I now knew I always had a choice of which inner teacher—the ego or Jesus/Holy Spirit/right mind—I wanted to follow. And I could choose peace instead of this, if only I wasn’t so terrified of going home.

As Chapter 16, VI. The Bridge to the Real World, paragraph 8 tells us:

“ … Delay will hurt you now more than before, only because you realize it is delay, and that escape from pain is really possible. Find hope and comfort, rather than despair, in this: You could not long find even the illusion of love in any special relationship here. For you are no longer wholly insane, and would soon recognize the guilt of self-betrayal for what it is.”

As I stood watching myself watching the empty tub with Jesus/Holy Spirit/right mind—that symbol of the part of our mind that never took the “tiny, mad, idea” of separation seriously and holds for us the memory of our uninterrupted completeness—I realized my fear of losing the self I see in the mirror, the self I still believe offers me a chance to have my Course and my special identity with its special problems and challenges and triumphs, too—was at an all time high. My mind was still split. And although I knew I felt so much better when I chose the inner teacher of love over the inner teacher of fear I still on some level believed I was losing something real. And still was not completely convinced I was gaining something real.

But with Jesus beside me, I could take hope and comfort rather than despair in knowing I am no longer wholly insane–and am learning more and more as I am willing from moment-to-moment to admit I am wrong about everything–that seeking for love outside myself has and will never work. But extending kindness and gentleness even to spiders, even to difficult special relationships, even to computers and politicians, even to the self I still think I am will always bring me peace. And continue to heal our one fractured mind in ways I can’t possibly and thankfully don’t need to understand.

“The Holy Spirit asks only this little help of you: Whenever your thoughts wander to a special relationship which still attracts you, enter with Him into a holy instant, and there let Him release you. He needs only your willingness to share His perspective to give it to you completely. And your willingness need not be complete because His is perfect. It is His task to atone for your unwillingness by His perfect faith, and it is His faith you share with Him there. Out of your recognition of your unwillingness for your release, His perfect willingness is given you. Call upon Him, for Heaven is at his Call. And let Him call on Heaven for you.”

If you enjoy these posts and like fiction,  you might enjoy my recently published collection of linked short stories, Safe Haven. The kindle version is available FREE for the next few days: http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Haven-ebook/dp/B0061QJYPO/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2

Click on the link on this site’s home page to order your personalized copy of my collection of personal essays, Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness, about practicing ACIM’s extraordinary forgiveness in ordinary life or order through Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Ordinary-Forgiveness-Susan-Dugan/dp/1846945585 or your local bookstore. If you read and like the book, please consider posting a review on Amazon and/or as a comment on this site.

Thank you Norman Babbitt for the wonderful new review of Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Ordinary-Forgiveness-Susan-Dugan/product-reviews/1846945585/ref=cm_cr_pr_top_recent?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending.

If you have an ACIM/forgiveness-related question, please feel free to submit it on my Q & A page.

I am now speaking regularly at ACIM Gather Wednesdays, 5-6 p.m. EST www.ACIMGatherRadio.org Access: http://www.acimgather.org/instructions.htm

Individual ACIM mentoring can help students learn to practice the Course’s extraordinary, mind-healing forgiveness in their daily lives. For information on individual ACIM mentoring; please click on the mentoring tab on this site for more information.

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Let me want to want the problem solved

Mar 26th, 2012
by sudugan.
No comments yet

I sighed another of the sighs for which I was justly famous; a gold-medal-caliber sigh, were sighing ever to gain its rightful status as a summer/winter Olympic event. “Jesus,” I said, head bowed, elbows teepeed on his desk.

We sat behind closed doors again in his office. He handed me a box of tissues.

I blew my nose. “Don’t make me go back out there,” I said. “Promise?”

He smiled the way he does; a kind smile, but still.

I’m not going to lie to you. I had been spiraling downward with this Course all week, growing increasingly unable to apply what I had learned to the rapid-fire appearance of incoming problems in the dream apparently hurtling toward me like asteroids with an agenda in a nightmare video game. My reflexes were shot. Worst of all; my emotions appeared to have taken on a life of their own. They fluctuated wildly between fear, worry, and regret; finally unleashing a verbal round of shrapnel on an unsuspecting costar.

“The thing is, I haven’t been this angry in years,” I sniffed. “This convinced the problem was really out there aimed at me; you know what I’m saying? This convinced it could never be solved.”

He smiled the way he does; a kind smile, but still.

“Jesus,” I said, dabbing at my eyes. “I just can’t keep up with the curriculum this semester; you know what I’m saying? I’m falling seriously behind.”

“Seriously?”

I nodded. And sniffed. “Is it too late to take a couple of these classes pass/fail?”

He shrugged.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I said.

“You always do.”

“‘No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth.’ But you also say I have to only want the peace of God. I’m in a body for crying out loud. I mean, go ahead—pinch me. What do I know from God? Anyway this book contradicts itself all over the freaking place; no offense. And what’s up with this passage right here about reluctance?” I cracked open the big, blue book. “‘To give reluctantly is not to gain the gift, because you are reluctant to accept it,’” I read. “I mean, seriously? Just look at me! How could I not be reluctant to forgive?’”

He smiled the way he does; a kind smile, but still.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “That passage in Chapter 25, IX. The Justice of Heaven goes on to say ‘It is saved for you until reluctance to receive it disappears, and you are willing it be given you. God’s justice warrants gratitude, not fear. Nothing you give is lost to you or anyone, but cherished and preserved in Heaven, where all of the treasures given to God’s Son are kept for him, and offered anyone who but holds out his hand in willingness they be received. …’  I thought you said it just took a little willingness? I had a little willingness, right? I kept asking for your help—over and over and over and over—and just look what hit the fan anyway?”

I sighed, another of those gold-medal-caliber sighs. “Jesus,” I said. “Let’s be honest here. Keeping up with this Course, this torrent of forgiveness opportunities—the non-stop lab work required this semester—all this ‘making it about’ them, fielding these incoming demands; getting caught in these triangles and rectangles and freaking hexagons. I mean, all these nut cases seemingly out there I’m supposed to just see as the objects of my projection even as they continue to come at me in droves, venting, requesting, demanding, emoting. Expecting me to listen lovingly; advise and console. It’s not like I’m in graduate school, mister! But ever since I declared forgiveness as my major it’s been a complete, 24-7 immersion. And not a pretty one; trust me.”

“I always do,” he said.

On a macro level, my curriculum seemed equally challenging. Wars raged on. Assassins continued to assassinate. Politicians continued to lie, attack their opponents, and promise the moon. Half of America was popping Xanax, for Christ sake. The economy continued to make its death rattle noises. The earliest and worst allergy season on record loomed. (I had already succumbed to super pollens emitted by trees driven mad by the global warming certain pundits continued to insist did not exist.)

“I mean, I haven’t even finished all my prerequisites,” I said.

“Prerequisites?”

“You haven’t been paying attention have you? They have really great medications for that these days, you know?”

“Seriously?”

“I’m talking about sorting out the valuable from the valueless, OK? I see you haven’t read ‘The Development of Trust’ lately.”

He smiled the way he does; a kind smile, but still.

“All I’m trying to say is can’t we just slow this Course down a little so I can catch my breath? Because I seem to be regressing here. I’ve been filled with this sense of loss, you know? It really feels like I’m being asked to give up something real here. Like, I don’t know; everything I once cared about. And then, last night.” I sighed the sigh. “I don’t suppose you caught that little meltdown of mine?”

His brows shot up?

I leaned toward him and lowered my voice. “Well, let’s just say I definitely wasn’t making it about them. I’m pretty sure my head might have spun around.”

He threw back his head and laughed.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I said, gazing down at the big, blue book. “‘To give a problem to the Holy Spirit to solve for you means that you want it solved. To keep it for yourself to solve without His help is to decide it should remain unsettled, unresolved, and lasting in its power of injustice and attack. No one can be unjust to you, unless you have decided first to be unjust.’ I get that. Intellectually, anyway. The problem is these lessons are coming so fast and furious I completely forget what the real problem is, right?”

He cocked his head, as if considering.

But I knew him better than that.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “The problem is I don’t really want the problem solved. I still want these incoming asteroids. It’s not really the speed of the Course or the nature of the lessons or costars that’s getting to me. I still want to try to solve it all myself so I can prove I have a self. Because a part of me is just too terrified. A part of me doesn’t fully believe there’s a home left to return to. A part of me doesn’t want to give up on Susan. I mean, what would Susan be without these problems?”

“Ah,” he said. “Go on.”

“It really doesn’t matter how well or poorly I seem to be doing with this Course, does it? I can’t flunk out because in truth I’m already home. And every time I’m willing to really talk it out with you like this my split mind heals a tiny bit more. And for a moment—sometimes even an elongated moment—I know all minds are healed, too, forever and always.”

He smiled the way he does; a kind smile. I’m pretty sure he has dimples under that beard.

“Anyway, this isn’t a Course for the spiritually advanced,” I said. “This is a Course for the spiritually challenged. The forgiveness-disabled. If I knew there was really no problem I wouldn’t be here, right? The best thing I can do in every circumstance is admit I don’t know the problem, I don’t know the solution, and ask for truth to reveal itself to me. Then I remember there really is no linear time in which to measure my progress in a program of mind healing from which I have already graduated.”

He nodded.

“How do you always know just what to say to help me get my head screwed on right again?”

He smiled the way he does; a kind smile.

I smiled, too.

 

If you enjoy these posts, please check out my recently published collection of personal essays, Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness, about practicing ACIM’s extraordinary forgiveness in ordinary life. Click on the link on this site’s home page to order your personalized copy or order through Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Ordinary-Forgiveness-Susan-Dugan/dp/1846945585 or your local bookstore. If you read and like the book, please consider posting a review on Amazon and/or as a comment on this site.

If you’re a fiction buff, you might enjoy my just-published collection of linked short stories, Safe Haven http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Haven-Susan-Dugan/dp/0983742006/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1320606573&sr=8-2, also available for kindle http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Haven-ebook/dp/B0061QJYPO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320606573&sr=8-1. This is not an A Course in Miracles work. Nonetheless these characters share a deep longing and active seeking for an elusive seeming love that will never fail them, and a sense of true meaning and purpose in an ultimately meaningless world. Their quest is our own, and what ultimately leads us to find a better way of living in this world.

If you have an ACIM/forgiveness-related question, please feel free to submit it on my Q & A page.

I am now speaking regularly at ACIM Gather Wednesdays, 5-6 p.m. EST www.ACIMGatherRadio.org Access: http://www.acimgather.org/instructions.htm

Individual ACIM mentoring can help students learn to practice the Course’s extraordinary, mind-healing forgiveness in their daily lives. For information on individual ACIM mentoring; please click on the mentoring tab on this site for more information.

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Hakuna matata

Mar 20th, 2012
by sudugan.
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“Hakuna, matata; Hakuna, matata!”

I woke the Monday after the change to daylight savings time to find the ego surreally cavorting around my still-darkened bedroom, belting out the famed Lion King tune.

“It means no worries for the rest of your days,” he sang.

“Scram,” I said.

I sat up and rubbed my eyes; the sense of having been engaged in a really important conversation with our inner teacher about the difficulty I seemed to be having lately with including myself in the forgiveness I seemed to be making progress with extending to others rapidly fading.

“It’s our problem-free, philosophy,” the ego sang.

“I can’t hear you,” I said, in no mood for blissninnies. Upset anew over the elusive nature of right-mindedness, still apparently–on a level beyond my awareness in a galaxy far, far away–convinced the real Love I was seeking lay always just out of reach, in a part of my mind I seemed able to access when teaching and writing about the Course or even when interacting with seemingly difficult costars lately but not so much when interacting with the physical and psychological body I believe I inhabit.

“Hakuna, matata, Hakuna matata,” the ego sang, staggering around the room like a derelict cartoon meerkat.

I found it doubly irritating he had hijacked a song from my inner, past playlist, an acapella duet my delightful, little daughter and I used to croon 24/7 to the profound annoyance–I’m sure–of anyone within unlucky earshot. My little girl was in college now—sniff, sniff–and I had pretty much exhausted all worldly versions of problem-free philosophies; recognizing at last that the only seeming problem lay in the mind of the dreamer of a world filled with problems. Problems we were far better off first acknowledging and then learning to see truly with a part of our mind that can truly see as expressions of the one defense against indivisible Love they reflected.  Instead of trying to shout them down with platitudes, a la you know who. Unfortunately, those lyrics didn’t fit comfortably into a Disney score.

By the time I’d showered, tended to the dog, wolfed down breakfast, and sat down at my computer with my cup of Joe, the ego had at least quit with the grating musical numbers. But he was still quite the chatty little Carl and had done a 180 in his approach, morphing in his chameleon-like way this time into a TV drama-type courtroom lawyer. And so I decided to take a shot at trying to hear my call for love in his relentless interrogation.

“Has it ever occurred to you that regular readers of this blog might be wondering just about now what the F’s wrong with you anyway?” he began.

“Nope,” I said, although, unfortunately, it all too often had.

“I mean, if the Course is so freaking simple, why can’t you just do what it says and be done with it already? Allow your inner Holy Highness”

“Holy Spirit”

“Whatever; to undo all this gunky, funky guilt you keep talking about and open your imaginary eyes on the heart of the perfect, eternal oneness within which you claim to continue to beat?”

I sighed. “It’s a journey,” I said. “A process; and not always a graceful one.”

“I see. Even though there is no time, according to the big, blue book.”

“A journey without distance,” I said.

“To a place you never left. Right. I’ve read that, too.”

“I didn’t know you’d read any of it.”

“I always do my homework, missy. Anyway, we’re one, remember? Seamlessly fused, am I right? ‘A oneness joined as one.’ ”

“Ha; you’re good,” I said.

“So I’m told. Constantly. Now, let’s review the progress you’ve made with this Course.”

I started to roll my eyes and caught myself. There really is no point in rolling your eyes at the ego; you’re just never going to win that contest. “Never try to judge your progress with this Course,” I said, instead. Of course, I’d been doing exactly that earlier. Note to puny little s self.

“Right. But I mean, I’m just wondering how things are going in those special relationships you’ve found so trying?”

“Much better, thank you.”

“Seriously?”

“‘Nothing so blinding as perception of form,’” I said. After all, I was finally learning we can never look to form for evidence of inner healing because, well; there is in truth no form. Healing is always, only in the mind we never left. A mind that can learn it is already whole and healed by choosing the inner teacher that remembered to smile at the impossibility of the thought of separation from the seeming beginning.

“OK; what say we cut to the chase. Is it not true that at the moment when the so-called ‘tiny, mad idea’ arose in the so-called one (wink; wink) Son of God’s mind, you—Susan—took it seriously, destroyed perfect wholeness, burned down the house on your way out the door, and set in motion an entire projected universe of fragmented forms competing for survival? And then tried to pin the crime on some other nut case to prove you exist at God’s expense but it’s not your fault?”

“‘In my defenselessness my safety lies,’” I said.

“Ha! And you accuse me of resorting to platitudes.”

“Eavesdropping is never a wise idea,” I said.

He folded his hands—bowed his head, and lowered his voice. “Listen, sweetheart. I’m just going to have to be blunt, for your sake. One of us has completely lost it here, and I’m like a hundred and ten percent sure it’s not me. I mean, have you seen the way your friends look at you when you try to explain this new need-free philosophy you’ve been practicing?”

Unfortunately, I had.

“Like you’ve grown two heads; that’s how,” he said. “And need to be smacked upside both of them. Ladies and gentleman of the jury,” he continued.

And I suddenly saw the two heads he was talking about clearly. His balding, bobble head–the part of my mind that still clung to the unworthy identity of a Susan unable to awaken through forgiveness–and the abstract, headless, disembodied part of my mind that knew only my identity as one with our creator, awake in God beyond this dream of exile from infinite, all-inclusive Love.

I turned away from him then. The big, blue book lay open to workbook lesson 330: “I will not hurt myself again today.”

“Let us this day accept forgiveness as our only function. Why should we attack our minds, and give them images of pain? Why should we teach them they are powerless, when God holds out His power and His Love, and bids them take what is already theirs?”

In truth; at least here in the embodied condition I still think I’m in—the power to remember my true identity stems from my power to choose between the ego/wrong mind and the Holy (Whole) Spirit/right mind. My power to choose against the ego’s attempts to convince me with his elaborately presented but nonetheless imaginary, insane body of evidence that guilt is real, God is not, and this Course is so not working for Susan. As if there was something outside me to work. As if I could awaken to undifferentiated, eternal Love as an individual.  As if the “tiny, mad idea” that we could fragment perfect wholeness we took seriously that allegedly started this whole imaginary flight from home had had any real effects.

The ego appeared to have vacated the premises. The “important” conversation with the inner teacher of forgiveness ACIM-style I’d been having earlier in my sleeping dream resumed as words on a page. I read on, a decision-making mind, with new-found willingness to know. And with no more worries (at least for now) about Susan’s progress with this Course.

“The mind that is made willing to accept God’s gifts has been restored to spirit, and extends its freedom and its joy, as is the Will of God united with its own. The Self which God created cannot sin, and therefore cannot suffer. Let us choose today that He be our Identity, and thus escape forever from all things the dream of fear appears to offer us.”

 

If you enjoy these posts, please check out my recently published collection of personal essays, Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness, about practicing ACIM’s extraordinary forgiveness in ordinary life. Click on the link on this site’s home page to order your personalized copy or order through Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Ordinary-Forgiveness-Susan-Dugan/dp/1846945585 or your local bookstore. If you read and like the book, please consider posting a review on Amazon and/or as a comment on this site.

If you’re a fiction buff, you might enjoy my just-published collection of linked short stories, Safe Haven http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Haven-Susan-Dugan/dp/0983742006/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1320606573&sr=8-2, also available for kindle http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Haven-ebook/dp/B0061QJYPO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320606573&sr=8-1. This is not an A Course in Miracles work. Nonetheless these characters share a deep longing and active seeking for an elusive seeming love that will never fail them, and a sense of true meaning and purpose in an ultimately meaningless world. Their quest is our own, and what ultimately leads us to find a better way of living in this world.

I am now speaking regularly at ACIM Gather Wednesdays, 5-6 p.m. EST www.ACIMGatherRadio.org Access: http://www.acimgather.org/instructions.htm

Individual ACIM mentoring can help students learn to practice the Course’s extraordinary, mind-healing forgiveness in their daily lives. For information on individual ACIM mentoring; please click on the mentoring tab on this site for more information.

Posted in: Uncategorized.

The cost of living

Mar 12th, 2012
by sudugan.
No comments yet

“THE ONLY THING WORTH DYING FOR IS LIVING,” read the marquee outside a nearby church. My foot popped off the accelerator and moved toward the brake. But another car, tight on my tail, prevented me from slowing down to make sure I’d read correctly. I drove around the block and reread the caption:

“THE ONLY THING WORTH DYING FOR IS LIVING.”

I’d been thinking a lot lately about what it really means to be a body vying for survival in this world we think we’re in. Thinking about reports of body-to-body violence in remote and not-so-remote corners of the world, the physical and psychological violence waged in sports arenas, board rooms, union halls, and kitchens. The violence of my personal thoughts on the body I believe I inhabit. Escalating violent, personal, political attacks by politicians and talk show hosts, violent weather tossing bodies around like tumbleweed; the horrifying report of a baby sent sailing 10 miles by a ravaging twister only to perish two days later.

The marquee caption had been offered, I supposed, in kindness; meant to somehow comfort parishioners likewise challenged by the cost of living in this dream of exile from infinite, non-dualistic, unconditional  Love. It might mean we should live life to the fullest, making the most of our time with each other here on earth. Or it might mean we had nothing to fear from dying because a better life awaited us. At least those of us willing to sacrifice for others and obey God’s laws would be rewarded with eternal life in Heaven. While the miserable sinners unwilling to comply with Heaven’s entrance requirements would receive their scorched just desserts you know where.

Either way the marquee’s assertion seemed to succinctly sum up the ego’s thought system, the insane premise that death at least somehow proves we exist at God’s expense; actually pulled off our experiment in striking off on our own. According to the Course’s mythology used to explain the unconscious psychological dynamics playing out in the theatre of our so-called lives, in Truth, only God (non-dualistic, eternal, all-inclusive wholeness) exists. Into that state of perfect oneness there arose a tiny mad idea—what would it be like to experience myself apart from this?–at which the one child of God we remain forgot to laugh.

Because we took the “sin” of separation seriously we then experienced ourselves plunged into proverbial darkness, no longer aware of the light of our true nature seamlessly fused with our creator. Our fear and guilt over believing we’d gotten our wish was so enormous that our mind then appeared to split into the ego (the part of our mind that believed in and supported our wish for individuality) and the Holy (Whole) Spirit (the part of our mind that knew our mad wish had no effect and retained the memory and gentle smile of our one true Self awake in God, merely dreaming of exile).

We could have listened to that part of our mind at the seeming beginning. But fear and curiosity got the best of us and we chose to go with the ego’s solution to the imaginary problem: projecting the guilt over our belief in separation into an entire universe of forms. And then claiming “special” bodies with which to “strut and fret” our “hour upon the stage,” as Shakespeare so aptly put it; willing to die to prove we actually lived but it’s not our fault (we came in as helpless babies, after all; a result of irresponsible parents). We then forgot we had chosen to believe the ego in the first place, repressed the whole bloody thing, and got to work blaming other bodies for our problems. Striving to establish our relative innocence as a way of exonerating ourselves for the original imaginary crime against God, and dying before the vengeful God we cooked up in the ego’s image could hunt us down and kill us.

But our wild hallucinations aside, “ideas leave not their source.” We have never left the mind of God with which we remain “a oneness joined as one.” The mind is not in the body; the body is in the mind, the figment of an idle wish, a mistaken idea; a fleeting fantasy that signifies nothing. We remain awake in God, merely dreaming of exile, perfectly, infinitely supported and guiltless; loved and loving. As we’re reminded in A Course in Miracles Chapter 19, The Obstacles to Peace, C. The Third Obstacle: The Attraction of Death, i. The Incorruptible Body: paragraph 5:

“ … The body no more dies than it can feel. It does nothing. Of itself it is neither corruptible nor incorruptible. It is nothing. It is the result of a tiny, mad idea of corruption that can be corrected. For God has answered this insane idea with His Own; an Answer which left Him not, and therefore brings the Creator to the awareness of every mind which heard His Answer and accepted It.”

The thought of the body that has never left the mind is completely neutral apart from our interpretation. Our interpretation of what bodies do or don’t do merely reflects which inner teacher we have chosen in the mind. Under the ego’s tutelage, we perceive a body of evidence that proves we successfully fragmented the Sonship and now must pay a price for our sin. We live lives in which we bargain with others to temporarily replace the love we think we lost when we destroyed God/our true Self, and find others to mistreat us to prove our greater innocence versus their greater guilt. Finally, we die to prove the dualistic, finite world complete with dualistic, finite bodies we made up prevails over the eternity of Heaven.

But when we choose the Holy Spirit as our teacher we side with our one Christ Self, the part of our mind that accepted God’s figurative correction—nothing happened!–for the crazy notion that we could separate from our indivisible source. Our Christ Self responded sanely when the idea surfaced, smiled, and retained its awareness of our continuing, all-inclusive nature within God’s endless embrace.

If part of our mind accepted itself from the very beginning; we have accepted it too. Despite our trippy dreams, despite marquees that attempt to offer temporary comfort, there is no cost to living in this imaginary world. When we choose the Holy Spirit as our inner teacher, our smile returns and we remember our uninterrupted wholeness. And we remember from moment to moment–when tempted by the inner teacher of fear again and again to forget–that we have a choice to learn we are never upset by something real “out there” in a performance of our own making, but only by the reenactment of a mistaken thought in the mind. Despite the actions of bodies on the stage of our so–called lives we remain whole, completely unaffected by the violence bodies appear to inflict on each other in a futile effort to deny their guilt over a crime that never occurred as well as the violence we inflict on the bodies we think we are in an effort to kill ourselves off to prove we exist apart from God while avoiding responsibility for it.

There is no cost to living because there is no life here. We can learn when tempted to make the horrible things bodies do real–when we believe we are unloved and unloving, will never be accepted back into the loving fold, and must therefore strive to make things go our way here in the autonomous condition we think we’re in–to choose a kind, sane inner teacher. A teacher sure that “nothing real is threatened” because “nothing unreal exists.” Every mind made mad by guilt in this dream in reality remains endlessly united, forever cradled in our creator’s boundless, ever-extending Love.

THERE IS NO COST TO LIVING! Let these words fill the one marquee in our one mind!

As i. The Incorruptible Body, paragraph 7 so exquisitely puts it:

“When anything seems to you to be a source of fear, when any situation strikes you with terror and makes your body tremble and the cold sweat of fear comes over it, remember it is always for one reason; the ego has perceived it as a symbol of fear, a sign of sin and death. Remember, then, that neither sign nor symbol should be confused with source, for they must stand for something other than themselves. Their meaning cannot lie in them, but must be sought in what they represent. And they may thus mean everything or nothing, according to the truth of falsity of the idea which they reflect. Confronted with such seeming uncertainty of meaning, judge it not. Remember the holy Presence of the One given to you to be the Source of judgment. Give it to Him to judge for you, and say:

            Take this from me and look upon it, judging it for me.

            Let me not see it as a sign of sin and death, nor use it for

              destruction.

            Teach me how not to make of it an obstacle to peace, but

               Let You use it for me, to facilitate its coming.

 

If you enjoy these posts, please check out my recently published collection of personal essays, Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness, about practicing ACIM’s extraordinary forgiveness in ordinary life. Click on the link on this site’s home page to order your personalized copy or order through Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Ordinary-Forgiveness-Susan-Dugan/dp/1846945585 or your local bookstore. If you read and like the book, please consider posting a review on Amazon and/or as a comment on this site.

If you’re a fiction buff, you might enjoy my just-published collection of linked short stories, Safe Haven http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Haven-Susan-Dugan/dp/0983742006/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1320606573&sr=8-2, also available for kindle http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Haven-ebook/dp/B0061QJYPO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320606573&sr=8-1. This is not an A Course in Miracles work. Nonetheless these characters share a deep longing and active seeking for an elusive seeming love that will never fail them, and a sense of true meaning and purpose in an ultimately meaningless world. Their quest is our own, and what ultimately leads us to find a better way of living in this world.

I am now speaking regularly at ACIM Gather Wednesdays, 5-6 p.m. EST www.ACIMGatherRadio.org Access: http://www.acimgather.org/instructions.htm

Individual ACIM mentoring can help students learn to practice the Course’s extraordinary, mind-healing forgiveness in their daily lives. For information on individual ACIM mentoring; please click on the mentoring tab on this site for more information.

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