Today’s ACIM Lesson

Level Confusion part 2

“You cannot behave effectively while you function on different levels.” ~T-1.VI.3:2~

Last class we started a conversation about the way A Course in Miracles uses the word “levels”. To recap, Level 1 is God Mind, Level 2 is ego mind, and there are only two levels.

One way of understanding levels in the Course is that there is Level 1: God Mind aka One Mind, Being, Presence, Awareness, the Absolute, the Kingdom of Heaven, Love, Life, Light, etc. And there is Level 2: ego mind aka wrong-mind, separation, darkness, fear, guilt, sin, hatred, self-hatred, I, me, etc.

Within Level 2, ego mind, God installs the Holy Spirit aka the memory of God, right-mind, the bridge, the comforter, the translator, etc., as a constant light at the end of the ego tunnel.

Ken Wapnick often spoke of level confusion to mitigate the ways in which Course students were misapplying ACIM concepts. For example, if you had a health emergency and went to the hospital, your ACIM friend might visit you and say, “Sickness is only in the mind so stop making yourself sick and let’s get out of here.” The visitor is projecting their fear onto the sick friend and trying to escape sickness themself by blaming the victim.

Note: Jesus tells us in ACIM, “Sickness is insanity because all illness is mental illness, and in it there are no degrees.” P-2.IV. The mental illness Jesus is referring to has nothing to do with human diagnoses. Jesus is talking about the Son of God’s split mind.

Last week’s question, “Do I have to give up the ‘me’ that I’ve worked so hard to love?” is another kind of level confusion. It assumes that giving up ‘me’ is a loss because the question is asked from the fearful Level 2 ego position. Technically, it is inevitable that ‘me’ is given up in the vertical sense of rising to Truth. But the process of developing healthy self-esteem and self-love is worthwhile on the human level because it increases our spiritual capacity to lose interest in ‘me’ and look beyond ‘me’ to We, the sameness in everyone.

When you apply the perfection of God Mind to the forgiveness practice, you are experiencing level confusion. If you were capable of living from Level 1 God Mind, you would not be a human in earth world. What you are actually doing is trying to pull God into the ego dream to improve your human story. In earth school that translates to old-fashioned perfectionism. Perfectionism is the ego’s distortion of God’s Perfection.

“The idea of orders of need, which follows from the original error that one can be separated from God, requires correction at its own level before the error of perceiving levels at all can be corrected. You cannot behave effectively while you function on different levels. However, while you do, correction must be introduced vertically from the bottom up. This is because you think you live in space, where concepts such as “up” and “down” are meaningful. Ultimately, space is as meaningless as time. Both are merely beliefs.” ~T-1.VI.3:1-6~

Level confusion is a juicy topic. Bring examples from your own life to ACIM with Amy class this week, and help us look together at how we make this mistake and how the Holy Spirit can correct it.

Level confusion part 1

An earnest ACIM student asked, “Do I have to give up the ‘me’ that I’ve worked so hard to love?”

Last week a beautiful, earnest question was asked in class about unconditionally loving ourselves, including our dark side. And once we accomplish this hard-earned, unconditional love, are we being asked to give up the person we worked so hard to accept and love?

This is a good example of level confusion. Let’s clarify some points.

First, Jesus loves us unconditionally because we are the same as he is–we are Spirit. We are not asked to love our dark side–we are asked to give the darkness to the Light (the Holy Spirit) and then Light shines away darkness. This is on the metaphysical/spiritual level. Ken Wapnick refers to this as Level One. Level Two is ego mind and the manifest world that ego mind dreams up including humanity and the person you are taking yourself to be.

Second, on the level of the person, all you’re asked to give up is your belief in fear. Jesus advised Helen Schucman (the scribe of A Course in Miracles) to ask him to remove the conditions for her fear–not to ask that he remove her fear. The distinction is that if Jesus were to remove fear, he would be agreeing that the ego exists and that there is something to be afraid of. This is what he calls, “making the error real”.

In Chapter 9, Jesus explains, “When a brother behaves insanely, you can heal him only by perceiving the sanity in him. If you perceive his errors and accept them, you are accepting yours.” T-9.III.5:1-2

Jesus further clarifies in Chapter 12, “You have been told not to make error real, and the way to do this is very simple. If you want to believe in error, you would have to make it real because it is not true. But truth is real in its own right, and to believe in truth you do not have to do anything. Understand that you do not respond to anything directly, but to your interpretation of it. Your interpretation thus becomes the justification for the response. That is why analyzing the motives of others is hazardous to you. If you decide that someone is really trying to attack you or desert you or enslave you, you will respond as if he had actually done so, having made his error real to you. To interpret error is to give it power, and having done this you will overlook truth.” T-12.I.1:1-8

If we drag Jesus down into our dream world, this would undermine our power of decision. We would establish that we are powerless and Jesus holds all the power. But the miracle in A Course in Miracles is meant to jog our memory that we are perfectly capable of choice. We have free will and when we connect our perception of a personal will with God’s Will we realize we are “at Home in God, dreaming of exile.” T-10.1.2:1

In other words:

On the level of the person, you practice forgiveness by choosing to give the Holy Spirit your belief in separation–which results in giving up fear, little by little. This is accomplished within your individual curriculum and may include psychotherapy, 12-step groups, yoga, meditation, athletics, art, working with children, animals or humans-in-need, learning self-love, healing codependency or narcissism, studying conflict negotiation, conscious relationships, active listening, among countless other possibilities.

The forgiveness practice offered in A Course in Miracles Workbook for Students helps you recognize yourself as Spirit (through holy instants and miracles) and no longer identify as the person you took yourself to be. This eventually results in a loss of individual identity, which does not register as a loss because Spirit is Whole and the belief in individual identity which seemingly ruptured that Wholeness is no longer believed in.

The Kingdom of Heaven

Last week in class* we touched on how the Kingdom of Heaven is not in you–it is you. You are the Kingdom. Chapter 7, The Gifts of God, is filled with uplifting paradoxical statements and enigmatic reversals which unclog the frightened ego mind and let Love flow again.

“All being is in Him Who is all Being” is one these statements, which, if you sponge it in, let yourself be permeated and illuminated by it, you will emerge from your contemplation irreversibly transformed. Just enough to know that though you appear to be in this world, you are not of it.

* If you are interested in joining ACIM w Amy Zoom class, just add your name and email to the box on the right side of this page and you will receive weekly invitations to class.

Declaration of Independence

In Chapter 4 of A Course in Miracles, Jesus tells us, “The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it. Amen.” He explains that this statement, “is written in the form of a prayer because it is useful in moments of temptation. It is a declaration of independence. You will find it very helpful if you understand it fully.” (T-4.III.1:12-2:3) How do we understand it fully?

By sinking down and inward in contemplation of the deeper wisdom expressed in those words. We do not need to intellectually understand. We need to trust that praying to the Holy Spirit within will reveal the meaning of the statement. Especially since we are also told in Chapter 4 that we are the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus clarifies that the the phrase the Kingdom of Heaven is within you is inaccurate because the Kingdom of Heaven is you. The only way to accept the power implicit in knowing ourselves as the Kingdom is to lean on God’s Guidance through His Emissary, the Holy Spirit.

Paradoxically, our independence is discovered through our dependence on our elder brother, Jesus, and the Voice for God, the Holy Spirit. They are actually One and the Same. As are We, in our collective essence, the Sonship.

Question the reality of the problem

Last week we got into how the cause of the world is attack thoughts. This can feel overwhelming because it turns out that everything in this world is based on an attack thought–a fear-based thought–including our very breath.

The original attack thought came from the ego. The ego spun a tale that God would seek vengeance against us because we stole life from Him. That fear-based idea was embraced by the Son of God and he/we rapidly descended into “little me” identity as we bought into the ego’s story of sin, guilt and fear.

The ego’s purpose for each breath we take is to testify to the body’s reality. Realizing this has a deeply healing effect on us. Realizing this is a profound change of mind. Realizing this requires looking at our guilty attack thoughts and overcoming our resistance to looking at them.

For me, this realization arrives inch by inch, as much as I can tolerate releasing personal identity, little by little. The Holy Spirit uses time, which the ego invented, to undo time … and that takes time :).

Lesson 41 in the ACIM Workbook encourages us to “question the reality of the problem” because as we question, we become aware that deep within us is the Truth. And “the way will open, if you believe that it is possible”.

So let’s sink down and inward and be willing to believe it is quite possible to reach God because it is the most natural thing in the world.

There is no point in lamenting the world.

My focus in these initial classes has been the metaphysics of A Course in Miracles. We’ve been opening our minds to the cause of our unhappiness so that we don’t feel at the mercy of the effects–our problems in the world, both personal and global.

We now dip into the ACIM Workbook, specifically Lesson 23: I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts. Give it a read on your own. It outlines the three steps of the forgiveness practice which is the underpinning of the miracle.

Forgiveness is our way out of the ego’s dream of sin, guilt and fear. Forgiveness is the method, the process, the formula for allowing miracles to flow through us, paving the way to spiritual awakening.

“There is no point in lamenting the world” is one of my favorite Course quotes. It goes well with “…seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world.” (T-21.Intro.1:7) Forgiveness is how we change our minds. The miracle is the healing, whether we are aware of it or not. Trust is what keeps us coming back to the forgiveness practice, using time to build certainty in the Holy Spirit’s guidance.

A Course in Miracles is an inside job. If you want to save the world, you must recognize your Self first. Then you will become a Love transmitter and a new kind of solution will inform you.

“Who is the ‘you’ who are living in this world?”

Each week we begin class by invoking the prayer for forgiveness from Chapter 3 of A Course in Miracles. “The prayer for forgiveness is nothing more than a request that you may be able to recognize what you already have*.” T-3.V.6:5

If we assume the one recognizing “what you already have” is the human you, the flesh and blood you, the you with a name and personality, a huge mistake is in progress. This is to be expected. It is why we have come to A Course in Miracles in the first place, whether we know it or not. This is the mistake Jesus is correcting from many different angles all throughout the entire 1,200 some odd pages of the Course.

When Jesus asks us, “Who is the ‘you’ who are living in this world?” (T-4.II.11:8) it is an invitation to recognize what we already are. To be told, “You are a Oneness joined as One” is very nice but without experience, it is just words. Self-inquiry and practice reduce fear and resistance and train the mind to be still and Know Itself.

Lesson 169 eloquently states, “Grace is not learned. The final step must go beyond all learning. Grace is not the goal this course aspires to attain. Yet we prepare for grace in that an open mind can hear the Call to waken. It is not shut tight against God’s Voice. It has become aware that there are things it does not know, and thus is ready to accept a state completely different from experience with which it is familiarly at home.”

We meet on Wednesdays to prepare for Grace, to open our minds and hearts so we can hear the Call to waken; to challenge the belief in personal identity by practicing forgiveness; to unlearn unconscious ego conditioning and discern between ego interference and the Holy Spirit’s Wordless communication.

If you’d like to join us, join my email list and you will receive announcements with details before each class.

Happy Learner

“If you would be a happy learner, you must give everything you have learned to the Holy Spirit, to be unlearned for you.” T-14.II.6:1

At the end of last class, we touched briefly on being a happy learner. As always, with A Course in Miracles, we’re working with reversals. In order to be a happy learner, we must first realize we are unhappy. In order to be a happy learner, we must first realize we have chosen the ego as our teacher.

“You have taught yourself to believe that you are not What You Are.”* T-6.III.1:8

When We, as Spirit, went rogue and dug into the tiny, mad idea that We could separate from God-Mind, We made a choice to play at being “I-mind” aka ego mind. At that point, the ego began its teaching of sin, guilt and fear.

“You taught yourself the most unnatural habit of not communicating with your Creator. … Unlearn isolation through His loving guidance, and learn of all the happy communication that you have thrown away but could not lose.” T-14.III.18:1-3

Reversing the learning situation is what we do in class on Wednesdays. Turning ourselves over to the Holy Spirit, we unlearn isolation and open our minds to happy communication.

To join us on Wednesdays, sign up for Amy’s email list and watch for announcements from [email protected] in your inbox.

Mirror of a split mind

“Do not allow the body to be a mirror of a split mind.” T-8.VIII.9:5

Last week, I mentioned that ego is defined differently in A Course in Miracles than Sigmund Freud’s explanation of ego, id and superego. After class, I did a quick Google search and found that the id is our primitive pleasure-seeking impulse, the superego is our perfectionistic moral conscience, and the ego navigates between the id and superego in ways that allow a person to function in society. Obviously, this is a very simplified version. But it struck me that ego, id and superego are an unholy trinity 🙂

What I found even more interesting is that Freud did not actually use the terms id, ego or superego — those words are a translation of Freud writing in German, das Es (the It), das Ich (the I) and das Uber-Ich (the Over-I) into the id, the ego and the super-ego, respectively. In English, ego is the translation of the word “I.”

A Course in Miracles explains the ego is the part of the Son of God’s Mind that mistakenly believes it separated from God. So identifying as “me,” “myself” and “I” is the self-concept thought that keeps reinforcing the belief that we separated from God. Ego is just the Latin word for “I” translated into English. Before the individual “I” is a collective “I”. Before the collective “I” there is no “I”.

Jesus gives us exercises in the early Workbook lessons that show us a world of objects. After a while, it becomes clear that our body is one of those objects. Eventually, we realize our entire sense of self is a thought-object. The collective ego mind (Ken Wapnick called it the “decision-maker” and I use that term also) is the subjective observer/witness/dreamer of objects. “My thoughts are images that I have made.” W-15

Awakening from the ego dream through the forgiveness practice offered in ACIM is the undoing of identification with your personal self. It is a process of becoming aware of the ego, how it operates (“Do not allow the body to be a mirror of a split mind.” T-8.VIII.9:5) and where it originated (“You are the dreamer of the world of dreams.” T-27.VII.13:1

This leads to what some non-duality teachers call ego death and what the Course calls the discovery of inner peace. Each week in class, we look with the Holy Spirit at what the ego made and, hopefully, experience the holy instant — “… a miniature of Heaven, sent you from Heaven.” T-17.IV.11:1 as we unravel our belief in the personal “I” thought. What I call “unravelization” — unraveling naturally leads to realization 🙂

To join us on Wednesdays, sign up for Amy’s email list and watch for announcements from [email protected] in your inbox.

The peace of God.

“I want the peace of God. To say these words is nothing. But to mean these words is everything.” W-185

How do we mean what we say? How do we discern between a heartfelt ego yearning for the peace of God which seems sincere … and actually tuning into God “Whose pull is so strong that you cannot resist it.” T-13.II.1:2

Let’s get into this in class tomorrow. Hint: it always comes down to discernment between “ego guidance” and Holy Spirit Guidance.

To join us on Wednesdays, sign up for Amy’s email list and watch for announcements from [email protected] in your inbox.