The Epilogue

This isn’t an end; it is a new beginning. I have stated before that Year 2 will be focused on following the inner teacher. The Epilogue shares this same emphasis. Before we close A Course in Miracles and move on to our next step, let’s contemplate some final ideas from the Epilogue.

Whatever troubles you, be certain that He [the inner teacher] has the answer, and will gladly give it to you, if you simply turn to Him and ask it of Him.

As we move forward with Gentle Healing, let’s embrace the opportunity for purification and clarity. Whenever you are upset, turn to your inner teacher. Ask questions in trust that you will receive answers from within. Even if an answer does not come right away, trust that it will, and wait for it. You might sit and wait, as Adyashanti did when he wrote with inner wisdom, or you might go to other things while leaving the question open in your heart, knowing an answer will come in a form that you will recognize. Do not to try to figure out or think up an answer for yourself. Wait for the gift of an answer, and an answer will come that is beyond the limited mental self, an answer that will take you further into healing and awakening.

You are as certain of arriving home as is the pathway of the sun laid down before it rises, … For it can not be possible to change the course of those whom God has called to Him. Therefore, obey your will, and follow Him Whom you accepted as your voice, to speak of what you really want and really need.

The confusion that we suffer from is confusion regarding what we are. When we listen to our mental self and believe our emotional self, that confusion continues. When we trust our intuitive self and follow it, we walk away from confusion and into clarity.

If we feel that the mind and emotions are “me”, and we fear that following intuition may result in some sacrifice of what “I” want, we are still very confused about what we are. If we believe that idea and listen to our thinking over intuition, we cling to confusion.

Before beginning our second year of Gentle Healing, it is good to contemplate what we want now. Are we ready to lean on intuition instead of our thinking and emotions? Do we want to listen to the Subtle Within and follow it as we let our familiar self squirm, weaken and fade?

Let Him prepare you further.

There is more to come for each of us on this journey of awakening. None of us know what lies ahead, nor do we know the experiences we need to prepare us for the next shift or realization. Therefore, it is helpful to trust everything that comes while leaning on the inner teacher completely.

You will be told exactly what God wills for you each time there is a choice to make.

We do not need to make choices anymore. This is good news! However, if you are anything like me, you will need to learn not to make choices. We were taught how to think and make choices; no one taught us how to not make choices. However, the universe will take care of itself, and our role will be given to us through intuition if we give up making choices and become the observer of everything that unfolds.

… ask His Will in everything we do.

Of course, to move beyond choice completely, this is the habit we need to cultivate. We need to remember to ask, “What am I to do now?” Guidance can become a new habit, but we need to put effort into cultivating that habit first.

As we go forward, we will most likely listen to the mental and emotional, familiar, self-centered self sometimes, and to the mysterious, intuitive self other times. Our goal is to live from the former less and less while learning to depend on the latter more and more. Let’s commit ourselves to this goal today, and let’s work towards it in Year 2 with conscious effort.

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Final Lessons

The Introduction to our final lesson says, “We come in honesty to God and say we did not understand, and ask Him to help us learn His lessons, through the Voice of His Own Teacher.”

We are here to let go of our self, which means we cannot rely on our self at all. Clear reasoning can see that as long as we rely on our self, we cannot let go of our self. This is the purpose of coming to know the inner teacher. It gives us something to follow other than the self-centered self.

Most people are not overtly familiar with the inner teacher, because there have been many times in our lives when we dismissed it in favor of our own thinking. Each time we chose our thoughts over intuition, intuition was repressed a little more. That means our thinking is very conscious while our spiritual intuition may be deeply buried beneath the ego. However, this process can be reversed.

By wanting to follow intuition more than thinking, by seeking intuition within and by following intuition when we recognize it, we invite intuition back into our conscious awareness.

As we move forward with Gentle Healing, be prepared to put your thinking aside. Be prepared to put your self aside. To quote Nisargadatta Maharaj:

Try to be, only to be. The all-important word is “try”. Allot enough time daily for sitting quietly and trying, just trying, to go beyond the personality with its addictions and obsessions. Don’t ask how, it cannot be explained. You just keep on trying until you succeed. If you persevere, there can be no failure. What matters supremely is sincerity, earnestness; you must really have had surfeit of being the person you are; now see the urgent need of being free of this unnecessary self-identification with a bundle of memories and habits. This steady resistance against the unnecessary is the secret of success.

Intuition is the alternative to “unnecessary self-identification.”

“Steady resistance against the unnecessary” is not thinking, speaking or acting from self-identification; instead, rest until intuition is known, and then follow the guidance that comes from intuition.

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Final Lessons

The Introduction to the final lesson says, “It is our function to remember Him on earth, as it is given us to be His Own completion in reality. … And shall we not forgive our brother, who can offer this to us? He is the way, the truth, and life that shows the way to us. In him resides salvation, offered us through our forgiveness, given unto him.”

As we approach the gate to Heaven, one thing that will show up in our path along the way are challenging personalities, those that we are willing to shut outside of our heart. Or, if we are not willing to go that far, we are at least willing to disregard them as something less than God. For this tendency, we need to be wary.

Love is a matter for the heart, not the mind. The inner teacher knows how to love. The mind and our prior conditioning does not. That means that whenever we face a challenging personality, we must rely heavily on inner intuition and not rely on the mind at all.

Our thinking is the ego. It’s purpose for any challenging personality that we come across is to keep us securely locked within our own false personality. If you look carefully, you can feel your false personality balloon up when you attend to thoughts about a challenging personality. You may be filled with anxiety, fear, guilt, unworthiness, anger, annoyance, control, righteousness or some other feeling, but it definitely fills up.

Know that every challenging personality you meet is a chance to enhance the ego or deflate it, and then turn carefully, quietly and consistently to inner guidance regarding how you are to be with this one.

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Final Lessons

The Introduction to the final lesson says, “Let us together follow in the way that truth points out to us. … And to this purpose let us dedicate our minds, directing all our thoughts to serve the function of salvation. Unto us the aim is given to forgive the world.”

Yesterday I addressed the spiritual persona. Today, I would like to address the political persona. It is a tricky ego persona that gets in the way of “directing all our thoughts to serve the function of salvation” and keeps us from forgiving the world.

Spiritual students sometimes lose all clarity when it comes to politics or pet political issues like the environment, women’s rights, minorities’ rights, etcetera. They may argue that their emotional involvement is coming from compassion, but there is a distinct difference between compassion and the political ego.

Compassion comes from the right-mind. Compassion can move us to become involved in world-issues in some helpful way, but it is humble in feeling and non-judgmental in thought. It accepts the world as it is, does not pick one side over another and acts with right-action too. This is a balance the ego cannot maintain.

In contrast, the political ego is typically aggressive in some way. Its thought system is filled with judgment and attack.

For example, compassion for displaced refugees might give money to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) or volunteer in refugee camps, but it is able to do these things without attacking the President for his refugee policy.

On the other hand, the political ego is very judgmental. It feels right in its point of view and sees others as wrong. In fact, the tricky political ego often does nothing at all to help; it only attacks. It might attack the President in Facebook for his refugee policy without taking any positive action or giving any money to help people who are currently having the refugee experience. The political ego is not as concerned with helping the world as it pretends. Its primary interest is taking a stand. In its own way, it wages war from its point of view.

To be moved by compassion without taking a stand is an aspect of humility. A stand, regardless of what the stand is, is ego’s way, not salvation’s way.

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Final Lessons

The Introduction to the final lesson says, “His is the only way to find the peace that God has given us. … It is His ending to the dream we seek and not our own.”

As you contemplate the final lesson throughout the day today, it is also helpful to contemplate this excerpt from the Introduction. We seek “His ending” and “not our own.”

Recently I read The Final Understanding by Floyd Henderson. In that book, he wrote:

So many take their favorite teaching method and its teachings as the final step, adopting a religious or spiritual persona and fixating in that role for the remainder of the manifestation…doing spiritual stuff and eating spiritual stuff and wearing spiritual stuff and—in all of their spiritual doingness—living in what they take to be a most non-natural, supernatural, “elevated,” “higher” (and yes, “separate and different”) manner.

In other words, the ego can play the spiritual game. It can believe the teachings and imagine itself living them. The ego gets a sense of satisfaction out of being the spiritual one. However, we aren’t seeking a new game for the ego to play. We do not seek an elevated, spiritual persona or even an elevated, spiritual community. We seek “His ending” and “not our own.”

Let humility be the name of our game. We are students until the very end (even if we happen to be placed in a teaching role).

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Final Lessons

Welcome to the final five lessons of A Course in Miracles Workbook for Students.

As we wind down our first year of Gentle Healing, we prepare for our second year. The final lesson, which will be with you for five days, is the perfect beginning of Year 2. As we go into the second year of Gentle Healing, we go into a year that has three primary focuses:

1. Coming to know and follow your individual inner teacher.
2. Purifying false beliefs and unwholesome conditioning.
3. Becoming increasingly familiar with awareness as your Self.

The final lesson, which is repeated for five days, is a lesson of surrender and trust. Surrender and trust are the very skills needed to accomplish the objectives for Year 2. Therefore, I encourage you to spend the next five days immersing yourself in the final lesson. I recommend taking breaks to read it slowly and contemplatively several times a day. If you feel to, you can also write based on a phrase, sentence or excerpt from the lesson that you feel particularly attracted to. Writing will allow you to go into the heart of the lesson more deeply. If you happen to write on all five days, you may experience a deepening each and every day.

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Before going to our final lessons, let’s review the special themes:

What is Forgiveness? Forgiveness is recognizing yourself as the unaffected Self. Therefore, “what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred.”

What is Salvation? Salvation is healing by “failing to support the world of dreams … it lets illusions go. By not supporting them, it merely lets them quietly go down to dust.”

What is the World? It is a “false perception” where “mechanisms of illusion … go to find what has been given them to seek.” Yet, “all perception can be given a new purpose.”

What is Sin? Sin is ignorance or outward focus. “Sin is the home of all illusions, which but stand for things imagined issuing from thoughts that are untrue.”

What is the Body? “The body is a fence” that seems to separate us from everything else. It makes duality seem real and makes it seem as if we experience duality directly. However, its purpose can be changed.

What is Christ? Christ is consciousness. It is the process of creation and the unaffected witness of creation. It is what we are. It is our higher Self. (Note: There is a more ultimate reality beyond Christ, compared to which Christ is an illusion.)

What is the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is a Judeo-Christian term for spiritual intuition, which issues forth from our Self as consciousness. Its sole purpose is to help us awaken to consciousness. Once this goal is accomplished, its purpose is done. (God takes the last step to awaken us beyond consciousness.)

What is the Real World? The real world is the world as it is seen from the perspective of consciousness. It is a world blessed by forgiven eyes, seen through true perception. The real world is still a dream, but it is a dream that reflects Truth. It prepares us for the next and final awakening.

What is the Second Coming? It is the first awakening, awakening to our Self as consciousness. From this awakening we see with true perception and experience the real world.

What is the Last Judgment? It is the second and final awakening, awakening beyond consciousness into Nirvana. With this step, consciousness itself is seen to be untrue.

What is Creation? “Creation” is a term A Course in Miracles uses for eternal reality. It is known after the death of our sense of self as mind-consciousness. It is our true Self beyond any sense of self. It is our actual existence.

What is the Ego? It is the sense of self. The lower ego is the self-centered self, sometimes called the lower self. Usually when people use the term “ego,” they are referring to the lower self. However, the higher Self or “I am presence” is also part of the ego sense of self. The lower self is separation consciousness, and the higher Self is unity consciousness. Both the lower and higher selves are transcended when the final awakening occurs.

What is a Miracle? Miracles are shifts in perception that move one from the lower self to the higher Self. Some people refer to these shifts as awakenings, although each shift is a subset of the total awakening experience. Awakening to consciousness (the higher Self) may be gradual or sudden and varies greatly among individuals.

What am I? The answer to this question can be known as a direct experience when the sense of self disappears completely.

Peace be to me, the holy Son of God. Peace to my brother, who is one with me. Let all the world be blessed with peace through us.

Please read today’s workbook lesson in full. Notice a phrase, sentence or excerpt that you feel particularly attracted to and go into it more deeply through writing.

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What Am I?

Although our final special theme did not directly answer the question, “What am I?” it has given us some final thoughts to contemplate before A Course in Miracles Workbook for Students comes to an end.

We were given these words to contemplate as pointers to what we are:

• Complete and healed and whole
• Guaranteed eternal life
• Love perfected, fear impossible, and joy established without opposite
• The holy home of God Himself
• Sinlessness Itself
• Purity

We were also told:

The truth of what we are is not for words to speak of nor describe. Yet we can realize our function here, and words can speak of this and teach it, too, if we exemplify the words in us. …

And thus our minds are changed about the aim for which we came, and which we seek to serve.

As the workbook nears its end, we are left with a decision to make. Do we want to practice our function here to the best of our ability so we can prepare ourselves for the final awakening, which is the realization that answers the question, “What am I?”

How committed are we to discovering the answer to the workbook’s final question?

God’s answer is some form of peace. All pain is healed; all misery replaced with joy. All prison doors are opened. And all sin is understood as merely a mistake.

Please read today’s workbook lesson in full. Notice a phrase, sentence or excerpt that you feel particularly attracted to and go into it more deeply through writing.

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What Am I?

Our special theme says, “We bring glad tidings to the Son of God, who thought he suffered. Now is he redeemed. And as he sees the gate of Heaven stand open before him, he will enter in and disappear into the Heart of God.”

Our special theme began with the question, “What am I?” and ended with, “disappear into the Heart of God.” In between that beginning and ending, although we were given words to contemplate, we were not given an answer to the question, “What am I?” That answer comes best in those last few words, “disappear into the Heart of God,” especially in the word “disappear.”

I’d like to share something that was written by Floyd Henderson, a student of Nisargadatta Maharaj. In his book, The Final Understanding, Floyd wrote:

Thus, the invitation is (to those ready, and only for those ready) to receive the final understanding…

Go back—follow the trail in order to trace what you think yourself to be. Move back from (8) the conception to (7) a sperm set into motion to spontaneously seek an egg to (6) an act of friction to (5) plant food cells being transformed into sperm and egg cells to (4) plant food being prepared and eaten to (3) plant food being acquired to (2) plants growing to (1) the elements.

Where in that chain—which can be traced back and can be seen to have been repeated for trillions upon trillions of times for millions upon millions of years on this planet—could you possibly claim the existence of any “you-ness” or “You-ness”?

Who would want to make such a claim? Only one motivated by arrogance, … Only one so trapped in one or more ego-states and in so much egotism that one would want to trace his or her lineage back to some “famous, big name people” and beyond that to “God” or “a god” or “a goddess” or some “Supreme Self.”

It may take time for some of you to contemplate the significance of what Floyd points to in this excerpt. It was more quickly apparent to me, because my dad pointed to this on a hike with me in Southern Missouri about 25 years ago, and I have had ample time to contemplate it since then.

I asked my dad what his spiritual beliefs were. My dad has never been a religious man, so I had no idea what he thought when it came to spirituality. He told me that one day he would die and be buried in the ground; his body would turn to dirt and mix with the soil; plants would grow in that soil; birds and animals would eat the plants, and then they would die and mix with the soil, so on. In that way he would live forever.

My dad was communicating truth. He is not my dad. He is not his body, his personality or his mind. He is not his sense of being human. He is not even the sense of “I am.” He is life, which continues as forms come and go. There is no “me” in life. There is no “you” either. And that is the answer to the question, “What am I?”

Each of us needs to come to this answer through our own unique, genuine awakening process. Therefore, the best our special theme could do to answer the question, “What am I?” is give us this word:

Disappear

When “me” disappears—when even the “I am” of consciousness disappears—then and only then is the answer to, “What am I?” known.

No call to God can be unheard nor left Unanswered. And of this I can be sure; His answer is the one I really want.

Please read today’s workbook lesson in full. Notice a phrase, sentence or excerpt that you feel particularly attracted to and go into it more deeply through writing.

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What Am I?

Our special theme says, “We are the holy messengers of God who speak for Him, and carrying His Word to everyone whom He has sent to us, we learn that it is written on our hearts.”

With these words, our special theme points to one of the objectives for Gentle Healing Year 2. I don’t mean that we are going to become evangelizers. In fact, I feel it is a mistake to overtly or covertly attempt to convert someone. It’s better to allow everyone to be as they are.

What I mean when I say that our special theme points to a Year 2 objective is that we will use words to discover “that [His Word] is written on our hearts.” Or said another way, we will use contemplation and writing to discover the clarity that lies within us.

Our first year has been focused on learning from teachings that appear outside of us. Although learning has a place on the spiritual path, learning can only take us so far. The real purpose of the spiritual path is to learn who we are. A part of learning who we are is realizing the wisdom that lies within us.

Over the past several days, I have asked you to select an excerpt from our daily lesson and write based on that excerpt. In Year 2, daily writing will be a key component of the curriculum. Each day you will contemplate a thought from Thoughts of Awakening: 365 Thoughts for Contemplation, and you will write with inner wisdom based on that day’s thought. The purpose of this writing is to discover the wisdom that is waiting to be discovered inside of you. (Speaking into a recorder is also an option.)

Although there are similarities in spiritual paths, no two awakening processes are exactly alike. Each one walks a unique spiritual path. Your way is written on your heart, and so you must go within, find it and follow it. Your inner wisdom is your teacher, and it is the key to your awakening.

Nisgargadatta Maharaj referred to the outer guru as “time-bound” and “not forever.” He said the outer guru “fulfills his purpose and yields his place to the next.” He continued, “The outer represents the inner; the inner accepts the outer—for a time.”

We could say that the outer guru is like training wheels, which help to get us started but limit how far we can go. When one is ready and the training wheels are removed, one soars to previously unimagined heights with the inner guru.

I do not feel I would be a truly effective teacher if I did not help you become Self-reliant with your inner teacher. Although it is nice to be appreciated, I hope to make myself completely unnecessary within two years. In fact, I hope to make all outer teachers unnecessary for you. For now, I hope you will trust me and do as I say, because it is my intention to effectively hand you off to your inner teacher.

Truth answers every call we make to God, responding first with miracles, and then returning unto us to be itself.

Please read today’s workbook lesson in full. Notice a phrase, sentence or excerpt that you feel particularly attracted to and go into it more deeply through writing.

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