The world is just a motion picture of thoughts, but as I’m able to forgive these ego thoughts, then I start to feel connected with everyone and everything in the world. And then I start to see, I have never been a victim of the world, I was only hurting myself with my thoughts. This awareness is very rewarding because the reward for this realization is peace of mind, and you no longer have a need to react to anything. People can express what they need to express, but it doesn’t mean you react to what their saying. The key is that you are no longer dependent or in need of something from these images. When we believe in all the roles, then we also believe in all the needs, and the ego expects everybody to play their roles that the ego set up. So you can see how important this forgiveness is: it’s really the key to happiness, and you can also see that as you practice it you will also see immediate results. When you really are able to free yourself of the ego expectations, then the world (which is but a reflection of mind) leaves you alone. But if you want something from the world, the world will want something from you, because the world is your mind.

a course in miracles
David Hoffmeister
PO Box 789
Kamas, UT 84036
435-548-2479

What I learned from A Course in Miracles and experienced in my heart is that the entire world is built on beliefs. So everyone who comes to this world, or seems to come, is a believer. As for God, God is just pure Spirit, pure Love and God doesn’t have beliefs at all. And so when we make a distinction, between a believer and a non-believer, we’re making a judgment. One time I went to get my car fixed and I was sitting in the waiting room and this woman across the waiting room just started smiling, and smiling, and she came over and sat next to me. And then she looked at me and she said, “Do you know the name of God?” And I said, “Tell me.” She was so happy and I would listen to whatever name she would give me, and so she said, “God’s name is Yahweh.” I said, “Oh that’s wonderful,” but she could have said anything really. “Oh that’s wonderful.” Because I realize that we are actually the same Spirit, we come from the same God no matter what name we give to God. So often times when I’m on a plane, or a train, or a bus, people will tell me all kinds of things about their life, about God, spirituality, everything, and I do enjoy listening because I’m listening on the inside, if there’s anything that I’m to say or do. It really that just comes from that feeling that we’re really all the same and we don’t have to fall for any of the tricks that would try to teach us that we’re different. And even more important I think is, that everybody wants to be safe, and the only danger comes when you start to hold onto a concept and then project it outside and see that there’s someone or something different from you. That’s where the danger comes, that’s where danger starts, when you project a concept and think, oh I’m glad I’m not like that, and you think that there’s something outside of you. There isn’t something really outside of you, so that’s when it gets dangerous. That’s how the war starts in the mind, by seeing differences and believing there actually are real differences. So it really depends on who I’m traveling with when they say, “Are you Christian, are you Buddhist?” I never know what Spirit is going to say through me.

How do we cleanse the mind of false beliefs and judgments? The workbook of A Course in Miracles has many different variations of the same ideas but you are asked to practice them every day and to follow the instructions of the workbook. Now transfer of training can only occur when you do not make exceptions to the lessons. So for example you may be doing Lesson 48, “There is nothing to fear,” but then the phone rings and you answer it and the voice on the other end tells you a good friend of yours has just had a heart attack and is in the hospital, and then you get a chance to practice your lesson for the day, “There is nothing to fear.” I noticed that when I was doing the workbook lessons, that everything that was happening in the world was really a reflection of my daily lesson. It was almost as if it was planned, like the lesson was coordinated with all the events that were happening around me and that is the core of the mind training, to be able to carry a true lesson and practice it in any situation that arises. Often times it’s whatever comes up out of your mouth, when you make a declaration Jesus will come right in with an opportunity to practice that declaration. You may say, “I’m never going to hurry,” or” I’m never going to rush again,” and then you’re at the airport and something comes over the speaker, “Last call for boarding at the gate,” it’s like Jesus’s humor, oh do you really mean that? So it can be very light and playful but it does come down to practicing the best you can and trying not to make exceptions to what you are learning and experiencing. To realize that there will be some effort involved in this transfer of training. The only reason there is effort required is because the ego will resist the transfer of training, because if you transfer the training, the ego is out of business and the ego wants to exist so it will tell you, oh, you can skip that, it will say, a little compromise is a good thing. And it will tell you all kinds of things to have you not transfer the training and it will say, you can make an exception this one time, it will say, it’s ok to lie, everybody lies, besides that’s not a big lie it’s just a little white lie. It will do anything again to have you compromised but always remember that the compromise is only coming in your mind.

It is important to go through the ACIM workbook lessons and follow the instructions because at the beginning the mind is so strong in its preferences and that’s why it will say, let your eyes move around from object to object without focusing on a particular object or giving it too much importance. It’s pretty much the same in any spiritual pathway, there’s a period of time of great discipline and following the instructions so that you loosen up from those judgments. But then there comes a time when you are much more advanced and it turns into a time of devotion and so you may just need just a few words, or a few sentences to kind of get you started in that dropping much, much deeper into the Stillness. That Stillness is a Healed Mind, the natural State of Mind that God created perfect.