Unlearning Classroom

Seattle ACIM Workshop, Nov 9th & 10th: How to Hear the Call to Joy

Posted on September 23, 2013

in Spiritual Psychotherapy, Thoughts on A Course in Miracles, Uncategorized, Undoing the Ego, Unlearning Classroom

“When the ego was made, God placed in the mind the Call to joy.
This Call is so strong that the ego always dissolves at its sound.”

So what is the catch? Most of us want to be happy–or claim we do. Then what is preventing you from hearing the Call to joy? … It is your belief in the separate self; it is your belief that you are the body. Happily, “God has given you the means for undoing what you have made. Listen, and you will learn how to remember what you are.”

Let us come together in Truth, satsang, and open our minds to our True Identity. “In this decision lie joy and peace and the glory of creation.” If you are sincere about questioning every belief you have ever held, you will allow satsang to burn away what you are not and reveal the Light which is always within you. In a powerful hybrid of A Course in Miracles special relationship work, Gestalt psychotherapy, yogic self-inquiry, and organic movement, you will have a chance to accelerate the undoing process that leads you back to where you already are.

“Heaven itself is reached with empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find everything and claim it as their own.
We will attempt to reach this state today, with self-deception laid aside, and with an honest willingness to value but the truly valuable and the real.”

Lucky & Sharon’s Sanctuary
Saturday, Nov 9th & Sunday, Nov 10th
10 am – 4 pm
1215 NE 188th St, Shoreline, WA

$150 including
Lucky’s home-cooked free lunch!

To register, visit www.amytorresacim.com/call-to-joy Amy Torres is an interfaith minister, Gestalt psychotherapist, yoga instructor, and writes the popular Course in Miracles e-newsletter, The Unlearning Classroom, to which you can subscribe for free at www.amytorresacim.com. You can also read her column Ask Amy in Miracles magazine, read her articles on EzineArticles.com, watch her videos on YouTube, follow her on Facebook, and subscribe to her online class, Workin’ the Workbook, which supports all 365 lessons from the ACIM Workbook.

Note: All quotes are from A Course in Miracles.

Spiritual Translation

Posted on September 19, 2013

in Spiritual Psychotherapy, Thoughts on A Course in Miracles, Uncategorized, Undoing the Ego, Unlearning Classroom

by Amy Torres

The other day, a student reminded me of something I said that had stuck with him and been truly helpful. Of course, I had forgotten all about it! Here’s the blogpost he was referring to:

When I first started studying A Course in Miracles in 1997, I grappled with the new definition of “forgiveness”* that Jesus offers us. One day, the old English usage of “for to give” popped into my head.

For to give fear to Love
For to give guilt to Innocence
For to give pain to Peace

Then I remembered a lyric from the song, A Horse with No Name by America (not Neil Young 🙂 ):

In the desert you can remember your name
‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain

This pop song, which I had mindlessly sung countless times when it was a hit in 1972, was suddenly offering me a spiritual solution to the riddle of forgiveness.

Didn’t Jesus spent forty days in the desert remembering his Name, that is, his true Identity? And once his true Identity was revealed, so was his Oneness with all his brothers and every living thing, be it animal, vegetable, or mineral. In fact, there ain’t no one for to give you no pain once you awaken to the Truth that we are all One.

The lyric from A Horse with No Name was biblical, mystical–an ancient nomadic sojourn of a twentieth century cowboy using an awkward yet mesmerizing grammatical construction, for to give, that spontaneously inspired me to translate everything.

For to give dreams to Reality
For to give illusions to Truth
For to give separation to Unity

One of the nicknames ACIM uses for the Holy Spirit is the Translator. Once the Holy Spirit became my Spiritual Psychotherapist and Guide, I embarked on a whole new level of translation! Up until then, as a psychotherapist, one potent tool in my healing kit was the idea of translating emotional language from its surface meaning down into the underlying messages.

Psychotherapy is an art, because it is customized to each person’s deep psychological needs and beliefs. I already loved the creativity involved in unraveling dysfunctional behavior through a process of emotional translation. How exciting to discover that A Course in Miracles offered a translation process that frees us from the ego entirely!

For to give my Amy-identity to the Holy Spirit, Who,
in turn, gives me Love and reveals my God-Identity.

This internal translation process kept working inside my head all day, every day, to this very day. And my inner conviction about the Course’s Message keeps growing.

For to give sleep to Awakening
For to give ignorance to Knowledge
For to give nightmares to Happy Dreams
For to give time to Eternity
For to give space to Infinity
For to give fragmentation to Wholeness
For to give death to Life

Homework
Make your own “for to give” list. Feel free to borrow from mine. Let me know if you come up with some good ones. And if this “technique” illuminates the ACIM forgiveness practice for you in a new way, please share. Email me at [email protected]

* Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. ~ACIM Workbook, 1. What Is Forgiveness?

“The Holy Spirit asks of you but this; bring to Him every secret you have locked away from Him. Open every door to Him, and bid Him enter the darkness and lighten it away. At your request He enters gladly. He brings the light to darkness if you make the darkness open to Him. But what you hide He cannot look upon. He sees for you, and unless you look with Him He cannot see. The vision of Christ is not for Him alone, but for Him with you. Bring, therefore, all your dark and secret thoughts to Him, and look upon them with Him. He holds the light, and you the darkness. They cannot coexist when both of You together look on them. His judgment must prevail, and He will give it to you as you join your perception to His.” ~T-14.VII6:1-11

This Is the Best Moment of Your Life

Posted on August 25, 2013

in Spiritual Psychotherapy, Thoughts on A Course in Miracles, Undoing the Ego, Unlearning Classroom

by Amy Torres

You may be surprised to hear it, but right now, no matter how you are feeling, whatever your circumstances, this very moment is the best moment of your life. For me, this understanding began at the level of my personal self and, at some point, uncovered a timeless revelation.

I believe it was Louise Hay who taught me to approach every day as the best day of my life. She understood that whether the ego deemed it a “good” day or a “bad” day, every day could be considered the “best” day if I was willing to open my mind and not judge anything. At some point, spontaneously, I realized every moment is the best moment, when there is no interpretation.

It was so liberating, empowering, and relaxing to choose to appreciate in any given moment that “this is the best moment of my life.” For the obvious moments, like watching a sunset, the beauty of the moment was enhanced. For the less obvious moments, like sickness of a loved one, a quiet strength and unexpected calm emerged in me, transforming the atmosphere with shining, unspoken, Love.

“This is the best moment of my life”* became a touchstone. Sitting with a cat purring in my lap, listening to my lover read to me, feeling the breeze on my skin, catching the aroma of gardenias in my garden, hearing the cricket symphony after the rain – each of these “best moments” were heightened and intensified as I tuned in to their golden quality as they were happening.

And then there was the sweet sound of people who trusted me crying on my shoulder, releasing the grief and sorrow of their lives, sharing their fears, anxiety, and even panic; telling me of their despair, of the heavy depression they dragged around each day. They gave me their loneliness, their sense of being ostracized, persecuted, abused and ignored. Some felt invisible, disposable, insignificant. Others hated themselves, believed they deserved punishment, were worthless. Each of these holy encounters I deemed “the best moment of my life.” My willingness to join with the Holy Spirit made their holiness obvious. Eventually it was realized that the little “me” was a dream figure and not the one experiencing the “best moment.”

The Holy Spirit helps us look from above the battleground** and the view from there is exalted. Below, in the dreaming mind, puppets seem to act out senseless roles in a drama of death and destruction, betrayal and revenge. They believe in a fantasy that has no truth in it at all. Seeing from above is the best moment of your life — what A Course in Miracles calls the holy instant. And this view is always available – to all of us, as Spirit!

You can never have this moment alone, because you must be in holy relationship with Spirit in order to recognize that you are as God created you – Formlessly One with Him always. Your True Self is simply an extension of that Formless One called God. Claim every moment as the best moment of your life by choosing to be in holy relationship with the Holy Spirit.

The willingness to admit we know nothing, and the willingness to release all judgment, gives every moment the openness to funnel Love from Love’s Source. Being a vessel for Love makes obvious that we are that very Love. “Behold the great projection,” says Jesus in A Course in Miracles. Behold it in order to release the mind from its grip. The ego is just a tiny idea in a conscious mind that has the power to choose again. So choose again and discover your true Self.

Abide In Your Smile magnet

* A Course in Miracles uses the term “holy instant” to describe what spontaneously came to me as “the best moment” … more on the holy instant can be found in Webinar 9: The Holy Relationship (holy instants and holy encounters).

** “The lovely light of your relationship [with the Holy Spirit] is like the Love of God. It cannot yet assume the holy function God gave His Son, for your forgiveness of your brother is not complete as yet, and so it cannot be extended to all creation. Each form of murder and attack that still attracts you and that you do not recognize for what it is, limits the healing and the miracles you have the power to extend to all. Yet does the Holy Spirit understand how to increase your little gifts and make them mighty. Also He understands how your relationship is raised above the battleground, in it no more. This is your part; to realize that murder in any form is not your will. The overlooking of the battleground is now your purpose. Be lifted up, and from a higher place look down upon it. From there will your perspective be quite different.” (T-23.IV.4:1-7; 5:1-2)

You might also enjoy reading Gatita Sparkles, Gatita’s Metamorphosis Into The Lady, and A Better Way to Say “I Miss You”.

How to Deal with Your Worst Moments, Especially When They Seem to Go On Forever

Posted on August 2, 2013

in Spiritual Psychotherapy, Thoughts on A Course in Miracles, Uncategorized, Undoing the Ego, Unlearning Classroom

by Amy Torres

What makes a “worst moment”? It boils down to pain. Pain can be physical (sensation), emotional (loss, helplessness, despair), or psychological (fear). Much more common than a “worst moment” is the dread of a worst moment. I call this “futurizing.”

When pain is unbearable we pass out (literally black out, go unconscious) or check out (this ranges from not hearing people talking to us to having a psychotic break — losing touch with worldly reality). This level of pain is rare, and this reaction is relatively rare. When you relentlessly worry about and imagine upcoming pain, you’re futurizing. You’re not living – you’re holding your breath, walking on eggshells, and dreading what the future will bring even though it is highly unlikely.

“The worst thing you’ll ever have to face in life is a thought, a sensation, a feeling, a sound, a smell, happening in THIS moment,” says spiritual teacher Jeff Foster.

When you actually take a look at your pain, rather than avoid it or try to deaden it, pain breaks out into thoughts, sensations, feelings, sounds, smells, tastes, sights–anything the five senses have to offer.

Is your pain unbearable right now? If it was, you couldn’t be reading this essay.

Moment by moment, pain, be it physical, emotional, or psychological, is not only bearable, but potentially the moment when your perception shifts and you realize what seemed to be “the worst” was actually the opening you had been waiting for.

Peace comes when you realize that you’ve been making yourself god by taking your fears seriously. Fears that the pain you have now will never stop, fears that you’ll never meet someone and have a family, fears that you’ll never get a good job (or you’ll lose the job you have), fears that you won’t be able to pay the bills, fears that you’ll never realize your potential, fears that your health will fail and you won’t be able to take care of yourself and those you love, fears that you’ll be at the mercy of unkind people, or people who are incompetent, fears that you can’t overcome your addictions. Fears, fears, fears. It’s best to get well-acquainted with your own, so that you can stop futurizing and choose to enter the present moment.

This moment, now, is where peace is.

There’s an opening, a holy instant, where time dissolves into timelessness, and the “you” you thought you were melts away. Here lies freedom. And this moment is available right now. Feel it? There’s no time like the present to recognize what you really are. Turn your attention to Truth. You don’t have to know how. You don’t have to do anything. Just stop playing god, and instead, “… spend a quiet moment opening your mind to His correction, and His love”* now.

You may also find The Challenge of Physical Pain and Disability a useful read.

*A Course in Miracles, Workbook for Students, Lesson 126

Ask Amy: How Does God Know What’s Best for Us If He Doesn’t Even Know We’re Here?

Posted on August 1, 2013

in Ask Amy, Spiritual Psychotherapy, Thoughts on A Course in Miracles, Undoing the Ego, Unlearning Classroom

by Amy Torres

Guy Question Q: I think I’m having a little crisis. How does God know what is best for us if he doesn’t even know we are here? How can I have trust/faith with this notion? Another ACIM teacher told me “But the Holy Spirit knows you are here.” What do you think, Amy?

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA A: It is true that A Course in Miracles explains that God doesn’t know we’re here. Many ACIM students find this scary and even devastating. It begins to make sense, and actually feel comforting and liberating, when we realize that God doesn’t know we’re “here” because we’re not “here” — we’re with Him in Heaven.

Heaven is a metaphor for being eternally alive and unified in the formless Mind of God. We are God’s Creation, and we are always joined together in a Limitless Life of Creating and Being Love.

Remember, the metaphysics of the Course teach us that this world, our bodies and belief that we are separate people with personal lives is only a dream! Once we accept that we are dreaming (and, in fact, that we are the dreamer of this dream) then it makes sense that God doesn’t know we’re here because we’ve never left Him. Just because we dream that we have separated from the Wholeness of His Mind, doesn’t make it so.

“You are at home in God, dreaming of exile but perfectly capable of awakening to reality. Is it your decision to do so?” (T-10.I.2:1)

God’s Holy Spirit lives within us as a memory of our True Self. The Holy Spirit can be visualized as Light, like a lighthouse illuminating the way Home. When we decide to awaken to reality, we feel motivated to look towards the Holy Spirit’s Light more and more. Following His Loving guidance strengthens our trust and faith.

Lesson 26 puts it like this, “My home awaits me. I will hasten there. If I so choose, I can depart this world entirely. It is not death which makes this possible, but it is change of mind about the purpose of the world. If I believe it has a value as I see it now, so will it still remain for me. But if I see no value in the world as I behold it, nothing that I want to keep as mine or search for as a goal, it will depart from me. For I have not sought for illusions to replace the truth.

Father, my home awaits my glad return. Your Arms are open and I hear Your Voice. What need have I to linger in a place of vain desires and of shattered dreams, when Heaven can so easily be mine?”

This Q&A appears in the Ask Amy column from the July-Aug 2013 issue of Miracles magazine. Miracles is a well-loved staple in the ACIM community. To get a subscription, email [email protected] or call 845-496-9089. To ask Amy a question, email miracles (at) amytorresacim (dot) com

Special Relationships

Posted on July 28, 2013

in Spiritual Psychotherapy, Thoughts on A Course in Miracles, Undoing the Ego, Unlearning Classroom

by Amy Torres

“Everyone on earth has formed special relationships, and although this is not so in Heaven, the Holy Spirit knows how to bring a touch of Heaven to them here.” (T-15.V.8:1)

A Course in Miracles students are often very afraid that their special relationships will be torn from them if they put ACIM principles into practice. Or they mistakenly believe they are supposed to stop having special relationships and, finding this impossible, beat themselves up for continuing to relate to certain people in their lives as special and more important than others. Rest assured that Jesus will neither tear away your special relationships, nor expect you to give them up. All he asks is that we give our belief in special relationships to the Holy Spirit.

“Bring, then, all forms of suffering to Him Who knows that every one is like the rest. He sees no differences where none exists, and He will teach you how each one is caused.” (T-27.VIII.12:1-2)

When we unconsciously believe in specialness, which is the source of the “life” we lead, we project that belief outward, and are convinced there are people in a world ruled by a cruel ego-god. Even if we have a poor opinion of ourselves, even if we are atheists, even if we are obviously the innocent victims of other people’s viciousness, we are still unconsciously subscribing to the tiny, mad idea that we are special–different from God and from our brothers.

“Specialness is the idea of sin* made real.” (T-24.II.3:1)

We start on the personal level, looking within the ego self we think we are, working with what seems to be our individual sense of sin and guilt (even if it seems the “other guy” is guilty–not us). Little by little, as we learn to practice forgiveness, and clear the guilt from our personal relationships, we discover there is nothing personal to forgive. First it seems as though we draw our projections back into our personal selves, like a spider devouring its own web. This leads to a miraculous shift in perception and we realize that “I” is one ego mind, all-inclusive of every single brother in the whole wide world.

“And you will understand that miracles reflect this simple statement, ‘I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo.’” (T-27.VIII.11:6)

This “I” is the original thought of separation itself–what we now call “ego.” The “undoing” is a change of mind from believing in specialness (that we could leave God’s Mind to be “my self”) to a gentle laugh at the absurdity of such an impossible idea. And here are all special relationships left behind, not with grief and mourning, but with joy and liberation from a false identity that bred only war, slaughter, and revenge.

“We had a wish that God would fail to have the Son whom He created for Himself. We wanted God to change Himself, and be what we would make of Him. And we believed that our insane desires were the truth. Now we are glad that this is all undone, and we no longer think illusions true. The memory of God is shimmering across the wide horizons of our minds. A moment more, and it will rise again. A moment more, and we who are God’s Sons are safely home, where He would have us be.” (W-pII.Intro.9:1-7)

heaven horizon

* “Sin” in A Course in Miracles means the belief in separation and serves the ego brilliantly in that the ego views sin as an unforgiveable crime to be punished. The Holy Spirit disarms the ego’s purpose for sin by reframing sin as a mistake, a mere error to be corrected and healed with unconditional Love. Thus, we release the ego’s plan for salvation (sin, guilt and fear; kill or be killed) and embrace God’s plan for salvation instead (Sameness, Innocence and Unity; Love and Be Loved).

Forgiveness is Illusion that is Answer to the Rest

Posted on July 17, 2013

in Spiritual Psychotherapy, Thoughts on A Course in Miracles, Unlearning Classroom

by Amy Torres

“Condemn and you are made a prisoner. Forgive and you are freed. Such is the law that rules perception. It is not a law that knowledge understands, for freedom is a part of knowledge. To condemn is thus impossible in truth. What seems to be its influence and its effects have not occurred at all. Yet must we deal with them a while as if they had. Illusion makes illusion. Except one. Forgiveness is illusion that is answer to the rest.” ~from Lesson 198: Only my condemnation injures me.

What does this passage from Lesson 198 mean?

A Course in Miracles is using the word “condemn” to mean that we have chosen to believe a tiny, mad idea that we could separate from God’s Mind. God’s Mind is our Home. We were born there, and we live there right now. It is possible to daydream nightmares in Heaven, and once upon a time we had a thought that we could leave the Formless, Changeless, Perfect, Abstract Mind of God and be God ourself.* It was an idea that couldn’t be taken seriously because that would be like wishing to be human while extracting our own DNA–not gonna happen.

Anway, we went ahead and “remembered not to laugh” as the Course puts it, and believed our fantasy that we had separated from God’s Mind. In order to talk ourselves into this idea of splitting off and being an autonomous god, we had to divorce ourself from Infinity and Eternity. So we made up space and time. This was simply to put God out of our mind … or, more accurately, to become mindless about the fact that we are forever one with God’s Mind.

We tried to forget God and His quality of Unified Oneness (which the Course also calls “knowledge”). We fooled ourself into thinking there was more than one of us. Remember, this is all a game of pretend: if you see it you believe it–if you didn’t know better, an airplane in the sky would seem to be the size of an ant, but that doesn’t make it so! We pretended we were a separate thought from God and projected images out of God’s Mind that seemed real. Then we started a game of war: if I oppose you, that proves there is someone out there, which also disproves the Oneness of God. What a grand distraction!

This sense of being separate from God is called “ego.” The ego came up with the delusional idea that we could fence God’s Oneness off within individual bodies–bodies with senses with which to perceive the world. The perceptions we have seem to be facts–we believe the world happens to us. The Course teaches us we are the dreamer of this illusory dream world.

The Holy Spirit is the memory of God within our minds which we can never lose, just as a human can’t be human without DNA. This memory is restored to us through forgiveness, which the Course defines as recognizing this world, our senses, and the belief that we are separate individuals, is actually a tiny, mad idea–a game of pretend. Since we are so convinced, the Holy Spirit meets us halfway and uses our dream to help us awaken to God’s Truth. Forgiveness uses the medium of illusion to undo our belief in illusion. Forgiveness is the only illusion, within our illusion, which leads to awakening and recognizing what we already are: God’s Child, safe at Home, never alone, always at One with Each Other.

Feel free to ask questions 🙂 Email me at [email protected].

* I use “ourself” rather than “ourselves” because there is only one ego mind which seems to be split into all of our individual personal selves–but that, too, is an illusion.

Death Is Just A Belief

Posted on June 29, 2013

in Spiritual Psychotherapy, Thoughts on A Course in Miracles, Undoing the Ego, Unlearning Classroom

by Amy Torres

starlit sky As a child, I felt terrified at the idea of death. No one had spoken with me about death, and no one close to me had died. Yet there was a picture in my mind of my body floating in an endless night sky, surrounded by stars, completely helpless, painfully alone, and frozen with terror.

This fear affected my entire early childhood. It was more important to play it safe, than learn to ride a bicycle, swim, or meet new friends. I was shy, and spent most of my time reading books. As I grew older, there was an uneasy feeling inside me that I was a coward. I admired people in stories I read, who would throw themselves in front of a bus to save another, and I sensed that I was not one of them.

It became crucial that I overcome my fear of death–but I no longer remembered that it was death of which I was afraid. I was now wrestling with the shame of calling myself a “coward.” This was my dirty little secret–I was yellow. cowardlylion

And cowardice infected my whole life. First, I was afraid of sports, then dogs, then water, then other kids, then summer camp, on and on. In order to feel safe, I had to withdraw from life. Safety came at a high price-loneliness and a great longing to play and participate; but instead I stayed in my room.

Although this was my plight as a child and young adult, paradoxically, I was not alone. Many people suffer from this kind of withdrawal. Lonely, terrified people are probably the majority of human beings. I found this out because eventually I went into psychotherapy–first as a client, and then when the therapy worked, as a professional. And I discovered that every client that walked through my door was lonely and terrified. Even when, externally, their lives appeared successful.

As I faced my fear of death, spiritual wisdom came my way. Rather than comforting myself reading novels about lonely people, I started reading mystical literature. “If there is any death, it is that of death itself, for life will not die,” said the great Sufi teacher, Hazrat Inayat Khan. Such elegant logic. How can life die?

A Course in Miracles (ACIM) explains, “The ‘reality’ of death is firmly rooted in the belief that God’s Son is a body. And if God created bodies, death would indeed be real. But God would not be loving.” Again, impeccable logic laverne-ross-while-adam-slept . If God is Loving, how could He create death? But what did “if God created bodies” mean? Where did bodies come from, if not God?

According to Advaita Vedanta, also known as non-dualism, this world and the bodies in it are an illusion, maya, the play of consciousness. As ACIM puts it, “What is seen in dreams seems to be very real. Yet the Bible says that a deep sleep fell upon Adam, and nowhere is there reference to his waking up.”

What? I read that over and over again, and then checked the Bible. I could not find a passage about Adam awakening. Could this all simply be, as the song goes, “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”?

dreaming aboriginal Australian Aboriginals believe in “dreamtime,” an infinite spiritual belief about the time of creation. The “Dreaming” is eternal and life exists before a person is born and after the individual person ends.

Quantum physics has theories about non-linear and simultaneous time. There is no past and future. Time is a limited and limiting concept made up by humans. There cannot be death without the grim reaper, Father Time. Yet if God is understood as formless, infinite and eternal, there can be no death at all. It turns out death is just a belief.

“It is not you dying. It is what you are not that is dying. In fact, you are never going to die! Death is a myth. This body, you have to give it up. But you must come to know, while you have the body, that you are eternal,” says Mooji, a contemporary mystic, who teaches self-inquiry.

As I began to understand that I am not a body, and the reality that seems so real to all of us is merely a dream, the fear of death dissolved. The real me-and you–can never die. The spiritual Self in which we are all One prevails. This is the truth that Jesus said would set us free. This is the Truth that dissolves all fear, including the fear of death. om sky

Death Is Just A Belief is an essay in my ongoing series, How to Use the Body While You Think It’s You. If you liked this, you may also enjoy “Gatita Sparkles,” “Gatita’s Metamorphosis,” “Body Health Is Not a Measurement of Spiritual Unfolding,” “How to Take Yourself Less Personally”, “Flossing and Feldenkrais,” and “I Am Not My Hair” Also, be sure to watch Webinar #10, The Purpose of the Body on YouTube And you may be interested in my Facebook page devoted to body issues: http://facebook.com/acimbodyimage

Body Health Is Not a Measurement of Spiritual Unfolding

Posted on June 27, 2013

in ACIM Body Image, Thoughts on A Course in Miracles, Undoing the Ego, Unlearning Classroom

by Amy Torres

It is a common misinterpretation of the Course to believe that body illness is an indication of giving in to the ego.*

Jesus is very clear in ACIM that the only illness is mental illness and that illness is believing we could separate from God and the guilt that perpetuates this mistaken belief.

There are places in A Course in Miracles that could be misinterpreted when read at a superficial level, but go deeper and it is clear: the only use for the body is to serve the Holy Spirit’s purpose of forgiveness. The form this takes is not for us to judge.

Physical “maladies” are of no consequence when we have peace of Mind. The body is a vessel for the Holy Spirit to send miracles through us. Miracles are mind-healing.

Mind-healing gives us peace of Mind. Taking care of the body is common sense and an outcome of Love, but simply the way we would maintenance the car or any other device we are using for a while. You are not your body. You are God’s Child, the Formless, Timeless Self which also goes by many other names, such as, Awareness and Presence.

It can seem very unfair to have an illness like COPD when, for instance, you were never a smoker. Certainly, it could be linked to repressed emotions, but that’s only one of many possibilities. The ego’s world represents an insane thought system, so there are many reasons from an earthly point of view to account for illness. Don’t blame yourself, but do be accountable and look at your health situation with the Holy Spirit.

In my case, I was guided to do lots of work releasing deep feelings in psychotherapy. It’s a great way to open up, flow, and release hidden shame, guilt, anger, hatred, grief, aggression, etc. It helps us come out of denial. The work was so liberating for me, that I became a psychotherapist myself, and assisted many people in this same process.

However, as a Course student, it is missing the point if we only work on the body level. And to use body health as a measurement of spiritual unfolding is to disregard everything Jesus is teaching us. There is so much confusion around this, I started http://facebook.com/acimbodyimage. Visit there for more on this subject. Also, watch this video from Mooji, which points “beyond the body” (as ACIM says) to Eternal Life: Mooji on Eternal Life

* “Giving in to the ego” is a blatant indication that we believe we have to fight the ego, which is exactly what the ego wants. That would “make the error real”– to engage with the ego is to operate as if the ego exists, when the real solution is to give our fears to the Holy Spirit. Request to recognize What you already are, and remind yourself that you could “see Peace instead of this” (the seeming problem). Open your mind and guidance will come in a form that serves you well at this point in time in your dream — that form might even be physical illness. Remember, as Jesus tells us over and over again in ACIM: we don’t know anything and we cannot judge anything.

If you liked “Body Health Is Not a Measurement of Spiritual Unfolding,” you may enjoy other essays in my ongoing series, How to Use the Body While You Think It’s You, including, “The Purpose of the Body,” “How to Take Yourself Less Personally,” “Death Is Just a Belief,” and “Flossing and Feldenkrais.” Be sure to watch Webinar #10: The Purpose of the Body on YouTube 🙂 And check out my Facebook page devoted to body issues: http://facebook.com/acimbodyimage

How To Find God Through Percussion

Posted on June 21, 2013

in ACIM Body Image, Spiritual Psychotherapy, Thoughts on A Course in Miracles, Undoing the Ego, Unlearning Classroom

by Amy Torres

More than one student has commented on my measured reading of A Course in Miracles. They say it’s soothing, or grounding, or helps them slow down; they say the reading is unhurried and steady. I attribute that to my dance background. I’ve always had a great love of rhythm and percussion. The melody was always secondary to the beat when it came to my enjoyment of music. Back in the days when I first started attending kirtans,* I heard someone say, “God is in the space between the notes.” Another way of putting it is, “God is in the space between the thoughts.” Is&Amy check

The ego mind uses “splitting” to keep us unaware of God. (Splitting is a psychological term that means dissociating from what’s real because it is too painful or disturbing to tolerate. A Course in Miracles explains that the ego mind uses this device of splitting and dissociating from God to believe it is autonomous–although that is impossible.) Along with splitting comes a racing sensation. In yoga they speak of “monkey mind” which is a ceaseless chatter that keeps us unaware of God’s Stillness which is ever-present.

Many spiritual paths teach that the ego is using the past and future to keep us out of the present moment which is where God resides. The ego seduces us with guilt, fear and worry based on past experience (or even without experience– cautionary stories we’ve been told and swallowed) and projects those fears onto the future nimbly bypassing the present.

A Course in Miracles explains that the ego is actually reviewing the past, which is over and never even happened–the past is actually a delusional state of mind. That’s a juicy subject for another day. For now, suffice it to say, speeding up is a ploy for keeping us from our natural Stillness.

We each have an internal rhythm of our own. My Sufi teachers, Puran and Susanna Bair, say the heart is our signature rhythm, akin to our fingerprint–wholly unique to each of us. When we are able to slow down and focus on ourselves internally, we discover our signature rhythm. Once we’ve done this, we can honor our rhythm by connecting our voice and our breath and our movement to our organic flow.

The more we are loyal and true to our own flow, the calmer life gets. Phones and cars and cyberspace can zip and zoom around and we can remain unshaken. This provides the opening to recognize Spirit.

22178_1229352977280_1332755229_30579231_4122325_n As a yoga teacher, I find this important because it keeps students centered and calm, and keeps the practice balanced as we hold a pose on the right side of the body, and then switch to the left. Many yoga teachers hurry a little and the second side gets short shrift.

Puran Bair taught me to have more impact on the world than the world has on me. He demonstrated the potential in this when he participated in an experiment where he placed his arm in ice while being monitored on medical equipment. Normally the body rejects the arm to save its life. Puran connected with his heart and mindfully sent warmth to his arm–eventually he melted the ice. Pretty impressive. But more important than this sort of feat is the practical application in everyday life of remaining connected with our own internal rhythm so we can be open receptors for God’s Stillness.

Many people believe that God’s Stillness is boring. And that it means doing nothing. But think about it–isn’t music riveting in the moment when all sound stops–just before it kicks in again? Don’t we hold our breath with pleasurable anticipation during that musical pause? Stillness is the Absolute–absolute Peace, Love and Joy … Unified Oneness. As long as we believe we are human, we can choose to apply the wisdom of rhythm to experience the space between the notes.

Musicians might experience this as a unified oneness while they jam. Dancers feel a seamless communion as they dance with a partner, a group, or God Itself, whether the movement is improvisational or choreographed. When doing the Sufi turn (the dance Rumi discovered to heal himself of a broken heart from losing his spiritual teacher, Shams), I feel the Oneness and the Joy of Cosmic Self. Union is natural and reveals itself between the beats–we become One with the Universal Heart.

A Course in Miracles tells me I can change my mind and experience a shift in perception called a “miracle.” One way of making this happen is, like any good percussionist, plugging in to a solid pulse and holding that beat no matter how many other sounds and distractions are around me. I practice this until I can stay the course, hold the rhythm, become constant. In this way I become an open conduit for God’s Rhythm. When that happens, I recognize what I’ve always been–the Source of percussion Itself. zmarmay2013_506_w435_h580

*In Sanskrit, “kirtan” means “to repeat” and is used in devotional services. Live musicians play the harmonium, tamboura and other instruments, and lead chants or mantras (repetition of sacred sounds to facilitate direct connection with God–Om Namah Shivaya is a classic) in a call and response format. Krishna Das is a well-known contemporary Westerner who has embraced this genre, performs regularly, and has recorded many CDs. ACIM Lesson 183. “I call upon God’s Name and on my own” in the reading below, expresses something similar.

Amy Torres is an established spiritual teacher, as well as a Gestalt psychotherapist, interfaith minister, and yoga instructor. A Course in Miracles is the foundation of all her work. To contact her, call 212-340-1201 or email: [email protected]