To one who warned me of the traps of A Course in Miracles

A Course in Miracles seems to be a large book that can be read and perhaps - though not easily - understood. It was not designed to be intellectually understandable or accessible for it addresses the reader at a level behind or beyond such defences and strategies of self will. Yet the attempt to understand new wine in 'old bottles' persists, and yields frustration.

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Everything in this world can be used against the sharing of love and thus seem to become a witness to a force or will that is false or evil - but in whose mind is this purpose active?
I celebrate your breaking free of an unquestioning following of the Course in Miracles - for the truth is not 'out there' - excepting that its welcome - (Truth's welcome) - is in our heart.
The Course is not originally intended to be used to set ourselves impossible goals - but to awaken the reader to that they are already doing so - and suffering the conflict and frustration of a split mind. So as to let it go.
The you that you think was misled and needs to protect itself from such danger is not you - but it is a sense of yourself that you have grown from image, thought and judgements. I do not attack this sense of yourself but merely invite you to look at it with me.
In the moments of sanity - you feel the peace and integrity of your being. In the times of self conflictedness you are tempted to seek for certainty amidst confusion - such as to put outside your mind the cause of what is troubling you. Thus conflict is shifted outside and a sense of yourself more oderly and in attempt to unify - is made within. But you will never be whole while it is chosen as your home.

It may well be that the A Course in Miracles book is no longer relevant as a tool or a path for you - but whatever path you do accept as a way of releasing the demand that the world serve your private need above all else - will be one in which you do not use IT to validate or prove you to yourself.
The release of this attempt allows God.
In God is a direct relationship - as Holy Spirit and as the Son or Creation revealed - not to thoughtful understanding but to your heart's knowing in silence.
This relationship is eternal - but in time is a step by step rewakening.
It is not the dream role that awakens.
It is you  - the dreamer who awakens - in the light of a pure awareness that is always present and from which you never can separate except in identifying with images and thoughts - in other words - imaginatively.

This email is a gift to yourself - both the one you sent - and my reply.
The one you sent is an expression of a teaching learning that you are in process of awakening through.
To see our 'self' in action is to shift to the perspective that isn't identified with the role we thought was our self.
This is a 'miracle' in that it doesn't operate within the laws that apply within the dream that we make for ourselves and others of how everything is and how it should be. It suddenly is free of these and opens to a different basis from which to live. Now it will be that whenever you live from this basis, your presence will in essence be a blessing, but it is not at all from any conscious sense of the world needing to be fixed. It is only our mind that has believed in loss of Light and Love and Peace. But this mind is simply wrong - not wrong as in punishable - but mistaken, misguided and missing the point.

The traps are never in the teaching - even if there were false teachings whose intent was to ensnare - the trap would still lie in the mind of the one who is not paying attention - and allows himself or herself to be persuaded of the reality of a form based meaning rather than the meaning of love.

Listen to your heart.
Listen to make sure it is your heart and not the chatter and confusion of your thought.
No one can take this away from you.
Nothing can take this away from you.
But in listening to and acting upon the confusion of our unevaluated thought - we experience ourselves as hurt, limitation and loss, from which arises a reaction of self protection.

The evaluation of our thought is the Holy Spirit - because of ourselves we cannot tell the true from the false - and often get them the wrong way round.
The Holy Spirit can be called anything or nothing - but in emptying yourself of the clutter and falsity of a mind involved only with itself, you will feel or know the stirring of a life that you did not make. It may seem to be thought or feeling or coincidence of event or meaning with persons or world - but it speaks to you and through you.

You are quite right to abandon a fruitless exercise - but the frustration is not the conclusion of the lesson - nor is placing responsibility onto A Course in Miracles a true path to resolving the sense of guilt you feel.

If you want to have opposition, then your will is done.
Because it isn't of God, you will have to do the work to maintain its reality for you - which must replace the awareness of God in your mind while you actively pursue your desire.

I tell you that this is not your true desire.
God must be your true desire.
For God is Truth.
Not excluding the truth of you.

(Postscipt 1)
"Let go and let God"
"Let go and let God Be you"
Yes - and as God is all that is truly be-ing you in this moment it is an allowing of what already Is - to Be (as it Is).
The 'let go' bit is the automatic result of truly seeing the mechanism of control for what it is.
The 'work' or hard part humanly is the willingness to look upon the ego rather than act according to its dictate.
This is like watching thoughts go past rather than becoming involved and distracted by them. Innocent perception can look on what would otherwise trigger fear and guilt and see or discern truth - which does not give rise to guilt or fear, (though our subsequent thinking about it may indeed trigger a blind spot and engage attention in distraction again.
The trap is always that of making an identity for oneself - whether out of spiritual or profane components.
When we experience the results of our false identity, we blame it on (insert scapegoat here).
The conviction that some thing or one or teaching is Truth is very likely if not always going to give rise to idolotry and a false sense of self because our images, symbols and concepts are at best reflections of truth - or Holy Spirit communication towards opening our mind to truth.

(Postscript 2) No ego - no problem?
Yes - when the problem seems to define or limit You - then the self-centric perspective is active.
When willingness re-aligns to truth, then wholeness replaces conflicting desires and the movement of being is expressed as actions or non actions - that bear or behold witness to wholeness.
The ego is quieted by truth as irrelevant. It doesn't matter whose ego it seems to be - if our peace is obscured then we are in a position to become willing to quiet the ego by our disregard. But the way of that is by giving our whole regard to the Living - or that which is revealed to our willingness for truth that we do not make,  can not control, and are totally dependent on.
In light of such a joy - we can discern limitation that before we were blind to but now are becoming responsible for.
We are responsible for what we think - or accept in our minds. But we are never to blame.
To accept the idea of blame is to starve ourselves of love.

(Postscript 3) To an expression of gratitude for this writing.

Yes. We meet in shared purpose and find ourselves in communication.
The ego perspective has a different purpose and 'finds' itself in forms that look like communication and may either seem devoutly following of - or oppose a teaching path of truth.
I felt to tell her she is right - for she cannot be wrong in her being - and I join with her in truth. In this context I offer correction for the error in what she is accepting in her own mind - not at the level of arguing 'teachings' and their 'meanings' - but in addressing to loss of peace and the restoration of sanity.
Because I was not identified with asserting or protecting the truth of A Course in Miracles, I do not need to react as if truth were attacked. How can Truth be attacked? It cannot - but colluding with the false will obscure the truth in our mind.
Though her mail is fearful in blaming teachings as false, there is much in it that is almost being shared with Holy Spirit that needs to come into the light to be undone or made clear. Sometimes we don't know how to ask - or are in a culture where speaking different from the accepted 'truths' is fearfully prohibited. So we only let it out in anger when we leave and slam the door - as a parting shot of self justification amidst a painful or emotional process of change.
This is just such an occasion where a human kindness may serve a greater good than to argue teachings.
I feel that our growing understanding of and awakening to the truth of what life is - and what we are - will from time to time occasion fundamental shifts in our awareness of mind that initiate a desire or need to shut down and back off.
If this becomes active, then panic and 'self survival' trample on and use - anyone and anything to maintain the separate self sense - and this does generate a sense of guilt - or love unworthiness - which is denied or hidden and at least partially offloaded onto God and Brother in such a way that isolates the heart in a private mind and a Lightless world of separation, conflict and density.
All that is needed is calm in which the truth can be felt.
For Truth is not the picture we make in fear - and when we let that realisation in - even as instants or steps of a 'little willingness' - we are awakened at least to a living path in which we can take our next step as a living step in which we grow in trust and our capacity of willingness and love.
It would be unwise to underestimate the capacity of the mind to deceive itself while the seed desire for a special self remains hidden.
My fellow man and woman are often helping me to become aware of - and to own - my hidden desire to be special. It is only when I see it as it is that I can also see that I do not want it. When I see it as the lens of the desire itself would have me see - I believe I do want it.
A Course in Miracles can be made a special relationship; a way to avoid a real relationship that shares from a prior wholeness.
But all such attempts to get for oneself are inherently self defeating - and break down. That's where we either seek and find another candidate for a special relationship (looking outside our self) - or open to truth because it is true.
I am grateful with you.


 in Love's blessing
Brian