A student will find ACIM is easy when the student is ready to surrender.  A student will learn the Course is impossible when they are not.  ACIM teaches the student to acknowledge and accept that they are not ready.  And that this acknowledgement is not only okay but absolutely necessary to correct the error.

ACIM never demands any sacrifice from a student.  If a student perceives sacrifice, the student is in error and not ready to move forward.  The Holy Spirit tells us there is no sacrifice for the student who is ready.

This is the absolute key to everything: the student must recognize they make a choice every moment.  The student must own 100% of that choice and not only take, but celebrate, their ultimate responsibility choosing the world they created over reality.  Until the student is ready to release the world they made and accept reality, the Course will only frustrate and disappoint them.  To correct this error, the student must own their conscious decision to bathe in the blood and lust and hatred of their imagined world.  The student should welcome and relish the terror and fear and insecurity.  

Metaphorically, the student should eat, fuck, and murder their way through the world they created always guided by the question, “How do you feel?”.  That is how the world they created heals them.  As long as the student believes they are breaking a rule or betraying the Father and their True Self, they will seek out error and find its nectar sweet.  The student should not feel guilty about their love of the physical experience.  The self they made delights in their perceived rebellion from an “angry” Father. 

However, the student’s innocence as a child of God is guaranteed and until the student learns that nothing in this world will ever truly fulfill them and bring lasting peace and joy, the student is not ready to complete the Course.  Until then, the student is only trying to satisfy the self they made.  The student cannot fool their true Self, nor the Holy Spirit, nor the Father.

When the student finally tires of the world they made for the last time, then they are ready and the transition is easy.  At that point, it is effortless to finally throw down the sword of judgement and come back to the Course for the final time.  Then the student can understand and completely surrender the self and the world they created without hesitation.  Then they become as Christ and welcome both reality and Christ’s vision.  It may take a student two weeks or a thousand lifetimes to reach this point.  Time does not matter because Eternity and the Father awaits the Prodigal Child’s guaranteed return.

I don’t know what it is about March but that is the month of the year that acts like a spiritual Christmas for me.  It doesn’t happen every March so perhaps the spiritual Santa skips my house occasionally. It is Spring and a time for renewal with an end to the darkness of winter.

In March 2011, I had my original dream on the evening of the Japanese tsunami as I resigned from my ego and accepted death.  I dedicated myself to writing. Over the course of the next two years I wrote the ideas and chapters on scraps of paper and dinner napkins whenever I felt that connection and inspiration.

In March 2013, I left my job and took a six month sabbatical.  We had moved back to the Bay Area from Denver.  I started the final editing on my first book and began writing the second book.  My spiritual quest was desperate and, like a drowning person, I was flailing my arms and hurting the people around me.  It was a midlife crisis without the new girlfriend or red sports car.

By March 2014, I had found A Course in Miracles.  Midway through 2013 my friend Joe told me about Marianne Williams.  He said her writing was very similar to my own and that she had written this book called A Course in Miracles.  I started listening to her on YouTube.  I quickly understood she didn’t write ACiM but she referenced it a LOT.

In March 2015, I bought A Course in Miracles

“Within the heart are unfathomable depths.  It is but a small vessel and yet dragons and lions are there, and poisonous creatures and all the treasures of wickedness; rough, uneven paths are there, and gaping chasms.  There likewise is God, there are the angels, there life and the Kingdom, the light and the Apostles, the heavenly cities and the treasures of grace: all things are there.”

This passage is from the 50 Spiritual Homilies of St. Macarious the Egyptian.

There is no greater truth than the power and depth of the human heart are beyond measure and comprehension.  Each of us is defined by our actions.  Our capacity for good, selfless acts is balanced by the depth of our desire to preserve and serve our ego and self.  Inside the heart is the Godhead.  We were created in God’s image, given free will, and stained by original sin.  Each day we wake up and choose the roles we will play in our lives and in our

St. Macarious in the tradition of the Desert Fathers rejected a comfortable life and moved to the desert to medidate on God and our role as his creation.  His focus is the human heart and the spiritual battle within.  It is a deeply driven combat manual of spiritual warfare.  Taken as a whole, it is revolutionary in its scope and promise.

When I began reading it, I didn’t appreciate the degree and the forms that evil can take.  In protecting and serving our ego, we sacrifice our godly image and values.

Since reading this book, I have enjoyed several others and will do reviews on those as well. Any fans of Christian Mysticism will enjoy this book. Eckhart’s story and contribution to the philosophical understanding of the Godhead is beyond measure. He doesn’t write in riddles and his parables are sound. He turns a critical eye within himself to arrive at his assertions and they ring true.

This book, specifically, is pop culture Eckhart. It is the best, most understandable, and most memorable discussions and sermons he produced. I can’t cite or say a single negative thing about this book or Eckhart after reading it. And that bothers me. I am accustomed to disagreements. I welcome positions that challenge my own understanding or beliefs and I didn’t feel that way reading this book. His other books, available through your local library, will help push that individual envelope should the Eckhart fan want challenges. This book is very well thought out. The organization and structure is smooth.

Is there anything wrong with reading a book that doesn’t challenge your perceptions? No. Did I gain valuable insight into myself, God, and Eckhart? Absolutely. Would I recommend it?  Without hesitation. Almost every page in this book has a highlight mark or a dog-eared page. I devoured it and it resounded within me. However, if you discover Eckhart speaks to you personally like I felt, don’t stop with this book. There are many more that you won’t find on Amazon. Check out eBay!

I continued to pursue a greater understanding of Maximus the Confessor and next on my reading list was On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ. As I read, I experienced Maximus asking the tough questions about our own humanity and Jesus’ role in our salvation. Ask ten different people “Who was Jesus?” and you will get ten different, but related, answers. Maximus was unafraid to address the impressive philosophical challenges of such a question. My reading was well rewarded. Inside the pages, I learned to appreciate the greater role and gift each human being possesses by its creation in God’s Image.

As I read, I like to dog ear and highlight passages that I really enjoy or that speak to me. Just like in life, there are times when you see, hear, or discover something about yourself or the world that just feels right. Feels down to our being that what you now understand is a universal certainty or conviction. During these blog post reviews, I want to make a practice of sharing these passages. Like any famous quote, it can inspire further study in its author.

“One man sets forth an admirable example of superior perseverance and pious courage for other human beings, if indeed there were a man distinguished in intelligence and virtue, and competent in himself to uncover, through unwavering engagement in formidable struggles, the truth which has meanwhile lay hidden.”   Ambiguum 8

For me, this is the challenge for humanity. While the person described above sounds like a super hero, there is no talk of flying faster than a speeding bullet. If one can heroically aspire to heavenly virtues upon this physical world, this passage describes that aspiration.

“Perhaps it is even the case that the present inequality is allowed to prevail in order to display our rational capacity for preferring virtue above everything else. For the change and alteration of the body and of things external are for all human beings one and the same thing-both a bearing and a being born along- which also knows chaos and conductibility as its only stability and its only security.” Ambiguum 8

I cannot count the number of times I read or heard the story of the Garden of Eden and it always caused something in the pit of my stomach to turn over.  From a very early time, I questioned everything.  Although I like my world to fit in simple, explainable little boxes that I could organize, meditate on, and follow the chain of consequences backward and forward through the experiences I watched in others and later saw in myself, the Old Testament was a tough sell for me.

Positioning a perfect  and perfectly supreme, all-knowing and all-powerful entity that was the beginning and ending of all existence wasn’t the hard part.  That pill I can swallow easily.  I can accept that our lives and our choices were test and testament to our own value.  The difficult part was how this perfect entity of love was described to have very human failings and emotions.  Anger.  Jealousy.

Our ego would tell us we are defined by the clothes we wear  The car we drive.  Where we work or what school we attended.  How much money we make.  None of it matters.  When your time is up, none of it matters.  The ego quests for external validation, rather than validation from within.  It wants to be praised.  It wants to be loved.  It wants to be fed these temporal gifts in an unceasingly greater quantity.

We sacrifice our ethics.  Our very sense of right and wrong in this quest.  We make ourselves feel better by finding faults in others rather than helping those that want our help.  Each of us must make a decision.  We can worship ourselves and tie our identity to the material world or we can free ourselves of these bonds.

I have seen the God Machine.  I have dipped my toe in the river of the Holy Spirit.  I have felt the bliss of connecting with the Source.  God gives each of us the power to free ourselves of our ego.  In 1996, I received my class ring and the words inscribed on it are my personal mantra.  “You are, What you do, When it counts”.

For most of human beings, we don’t roll out of bed in the morning with a daily plan to wreak havoc and destroy others.

When I asked God for help and wisdom, I was asking for “on the fly” help to my daily decision making.  Whether that was related to acting with generosity and love or catching myself protecting my ego.

What I was granted was the self-awareness to Pause.  To recognize true power is perfect defenselessness.  The choice NOT to respond.  Stillness.  Quiet.