This morning a few of us met for breakfast. This was a diverse group, almost random, farmers, clergy, a health nut laborer, a party animal turned Catholic 'fringe-dweller,' myself and a once diagnosed schizophrenic. The latter is also a mystic, unbeknownst to him. He was uncharacteristically bursting to share with the group and grabbed the crucifix-talking-stick quickly and intently. This is what he said--reading it so that he would not wander off-point--a self-aware concern given his 'diagnosis.' This is it verbatim. He gave me the perfect-cursive ink on legal paper notes on condition he remain anonymous. I told him I wanted to relate them here and in the podcast. Thank-you, anonymous mystic for your letter to God.

     I took up writing you this morning because I wanted to listen to you, and if I listen to you, I can't formulate anything to say. Now, perhaps I should just be quiet, but I have something to share.
    Ever since the fourth of July I have been praying to hang in there with my family because I know if I exclude myself from them I become unhappy, because it is God's will that I include myself with them no matter how hard it is, because in that is true happiness.
     Yesterday, I was sitting outside [the coffee shop] again and asked God if I was forgiven for my sins, and He answered me, no. 
      I asked Him, why,  and he said I have not forgiven all people from my heart. 
        So I told Him that I forgive all, and he said, no, you have not.
     So, I thought about that, about my step-dad in particular, and right away, a dark cloud came to engulf my soul, where I could see my whole life and his involvement in it, and I felt this deep repugnance for him. And I told God that if he was in prison, I would give everything I had to get him out. And God said, that would not be enough. 
     I told God that if he was trapped in a fire that I would sacrifice my life to save him, that if I was in heaven and he was in hell, that if I had the opportunity to allow him in where I was, that I would. I told God, you know I would.
     God said, that is not enough.
     I told God, I just cannot forgive him with my heart. God said, sure you can.
     I asked God how I could forgive him with my heart . God said, you have to come to understand him.
     So I tried really hard to understand him for what seemed like a great while, but the truth is, the harder I tried to understand him, the greater my repugnance I felt for him. I told God that I could not understand him. 
        God said, sure you can. I asked how.
     God said in order to understand him, you must first forsake all being understood yourself.
     Well, this was new to me. So I prayed for it, and forsaking to be understood turned out to be quite easy and relaxing as opposed to spending all that energy to be understood and to justify myself. 
     Then I prayed to understand him in that light by the grace of God, and the truth was, I did so effortlessly.
     
I went home and sat with him at the supper table and looked at him for a long time. I liked to look at him. I told him that I loved him, and I meant it. He told me that he loved me, and it meant something to me.
     In fact, not only had I forgiven him, but I came to see how much he had done for me in my life. In fact, not only did I see how good he was and how much he did for me, but I saw if I was to be saved, it would be through him, and if I was saved, he would be also.
     How many people had God saved through me that I can see? None. And how strangely great it is that this was happening with my step-dad, who earlier that day I felt like strangling.
     I asked God if I was forgiven for my sins. There were others I needed to forgive with my heart, but my step-dad was the first domino in that line, while perhaps I was last. I asked God if I was forgiven for my sins.
     God said, yes.
     I asked if I was saved and going to heaven.
     God said, it is a process [ laughed]. It is a process for the first domino to affect the last.

Stunned, I inwardly pinched myself to hear what was happening. This was a clear, experiential description of forgiveness--the miracle illustrated perfectly among these decidedly conventional, weathered salt-of-the -earth types. I asked him what he would do with the folded yellow pages. He said he would probably throw them away. Here they are. Maybe this is some kind of domino for me--it's a process.   
        


        

Cute title but Jesus answers it pretty clearly--a dual understanding is provisional to experiencing the Truth, which is One, or Non-dual. The Singularity is the goal, and time-space is the vehicle that makes the non-rational moment where dimensions collapse under their own weight into an incomprehensible point--it's the only thing worth talking about, but there is nothing to say. Duality is the nest from which the Son of God fledges. If He finds it too comfortable, the Parent Bird will turn on Him. The once accommodating, fawning, loving  wing of protection becomes the enemy until the twig-surfing lay-about finds itself staggering among harsh forces it feared. Quit before you are fired they say. On a serious note, imagine you are Kenneth Wapnick, [having edited ACIM in trilateral communication with Helen Schucman and Bill Thedford] experiencing the undoing of years of refinement, undone in a court of law, thus releasing the rough edges for popular consumption.
     Mies van der Rohe said God is in the details, but another bromide puts the devil there--Ken found through personal experience that the detail-battleground can lead to pain and worse. Unless ACIM can align itself with a powerful empire like Rome, evangelize itself into the world by missionary force and burn deviants at the stake as heretics, God and the devil will duke it out in the details, mourned and cheered in a Coliseum of the washed and unwashed. "Hey, it's a polemical problem, take your pick, Reality is "I-thou" or maybe just "I." Declaring a clear, enforceable definition of 'what is contraband' helps the compliant and rebellious alike.
     In other words, A Course in Miracles' only meaningful contribution to western thought is its focus on non-dual Reality--everybody is free to be a Presbyterian or Catholic if they want, but give some headroom to the mystics. Maybe, [obviously, unfortunately for the doubtful mystics who would benefit from a vested authority to make 'the narrow way' seem more official], there's a good reason to allow schizoid interpretations of Helen, Bill, and Kenneth's baby to fledge their well-intentioned nest. The drunken walk of ACIM teachers includes statements like, "I guess it all comes down to intuition," or "What do you do when you are doing the work of forgiveness and your brother is not?" "We have to correct our brother in 'love,' and allow Spirit to determine what form our inevitable split will take." These are wormholes of interpretation not included in the text that will lead to some singularity in some other universe. Does it matter?
     Yes--for the mystics.
     True enough, they have Vedanta, Tat Twam Asi, or Aham Brahmasmi to assuage their craving for the 'singularity experience,' somehow, mostly against their better judgement, but these lack something Ken's edit of Jesus' teachings has--"The Holy Spirit"--this is an alternative to the body, a different Mind with which to think, a partner in the project Who does the heavy lifting.
      Indian Advaita-non-dualism can lead to heroic efforts in concentration, mind-control, self-abnegation, and renunciation that often become a new field of striving by a 'spiritualized ego.' There is also the need to wrap the austerities in a soft blanket of guru devotion, to Ramana, Nisargadatta, Papaji or Gangaji. It is 'all good,' assigning values is not the point.
     The Course has a unique dualistic voice to lead relentlessly away from a world of appearances into, and dependent-on a world of meaning, a world of relationship that gives way to 'abiding in The Self' which has no useful "I'" and no functional "thou." Brilliantly and compassionately it does this in a radical schoolroom context of difficult text book, well-defined program of lessons, and supportive materials to answer left-over questions. In addition, the program provides one Face, Jesus, and an ill-defined essential source for reorientation, The Holy Spirit. Someone explain why this is not perfect as it is.
     My argument at a distance of 50 years away is that Kenneth Wapnick is as essential to the imprimatur on Course interpretations as Helen and Bill. Certainly the Cayce family, 'Master teacher's raves in Wisconsin, or any attainments of Atoning Circles have nothing to say beyond the wishes of the original trinitarian psycho-spiritual therapists who etched it in carbon paper by 1978. 'Evil-Ken-Wapnick' would agree--but he had no such dark  sci-fi counterpart and proceeded in due diligence to protect the work through legal means that failed, watching the Psychological-trinity's work get tossed to the hungry hounds of innovative advantage, the kids that want to SEE what all the squeaking is about in the parent's bedroom, the sausage haters who want to show the world how it's made. Mea Culpa, mea maxima culpa.

David Hoffmeister wieghs in on the 'versions' issue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmdZ6Ymv04I

Emily Perry describes ACOA Course Compilation.​         
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yhml7mvC50c

Britney Shawley discusses text options.        
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPRq4N2c8Uo   

Carol Howe shares the most important aspect of ACIM.
 www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUgNE1WAQ4U

Gary Renard has thoughts on it.     
www.youtube.com/shorts/vxvHi9NjtlU

Carl Jung believes in God--does he care if He is in form or or beyond it?
​https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KYgzceVZA9E

     It's my blog-post and I'll cry if I want to, cry if I want to. You might cry too if it happened to you. Here is the deal. Because of the You Tube channel and meeting with Joanna to do our version of deep dives into the text, I have acquired a huge level of respect for this 'monolith that appears among the boomer-generation, tricking bone wielding apes  with indecipherable sounds to the fringes of Bible correction--a clever ruse to make Jesus lovers out of materialistic humanists who are atheists at heart. The apes have to stack boxes to reach bananas; it is in their nature. If the bananas are in the Urtext, Sparkly version, or Circle of Atonement's gift to students, boxes will be stacked. In my awe at the coherence of the 1978 text and the placement of original players I become sad at what looks like opportunism, for what? We all stack boxes. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Dear Ken,

Thank-you for the foundational work you did on the first published version of ACIM. For what it's worth, I think it would have served us best if it had stayed that way and that your interests had been served and not overturned in a Court which is absolutely antithetical to any intention within the Course itself. I also recognize your adherence to certain concepts may have precipitated the relinquishment of your control over the Course content. I may be frustrated with your indictments like , "You made it up!" or "You don't exist!" or "God does not understand what you are saying!" because, though anchored in the Course teaching, they lack subtleties which are also a part of Course teaching. But the distortions you brought could have been considered necessary Canon Laws to be ameliorated with pastoral counsel. Instead, we have a free for all which was, I think, an outcome you feared all along. My own anti-authoritarian streak may have balked at your control back in the day, but maybe the toady acolyte in me would have kept the rebellion to myself. 
     Without personal grounds, knowledge, or reason, I say I love you. Out of loyalty to your dedicated work and persistence that really polished the Gem, I hold you as  Saul turned Paul for those who would embrace this latter-day Good News called A Course in Miracles. Remembering your role is part of the revelation, along with Helen and Bill of course. What did the boomer apes do to deserve it but put coherence itself at risk, eliciting the blessed Avatar to publish. Amen      
​

Who is "The Master?"
Maybe it would be better to start with "What is a master?"

This is from the A.I search just now:
1. One that has control over another person, a group of persons, or a thing, especially. The owner or keeper of an animal.
2. The owner of a slave.
​
And now from Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 1993:
fr OE Magister, akin to L Magnus, large. 1. A male teacher. 2. ..a person with a degree higher than Bachelor's. 3. a religious leader 4. a worker or artisan qualified to teach apprentices. etc...'consummate skill, great figure from the past whose work serves as a model or ideal, one having authority over another, one who conquers or masters. on and on with no reference to slavery or animals. 

Honestly, it did not seem a definition search comparison between on-line and a hard copy on the shelf would be so poignant, depressing, and appropriate to the topic of 'the challenge of commitment.' 
     I could cry. A master seems to have become a DEI liability or, like the billboard for Kansas State on I-70 which shows a happy black youth in cap and gown, captioned in huge italicized letters, "We've got this, World." Yes indeedy, the graduating class of 2025 from KU will take care of everything, starting with an AI search for all the information they need. We begin as masters and reverse engineer what we do as mastery. Is that it?
     The Master, was a 2012 movie written and directed by Paul Thomas Watson and brilliantly presented by Joaquim Phoenix as a troubled subject of Philip Seymour Hoffman's depiction of an L. Ron Hubbard type "master." In this case, a guy who, like the Scientology guru/sci fi author, has far-reaching ideas and techniques about the problems of humanity and how to solve them. The movie is nearly perfect in every way [If you like that sort of thing] in its depiction of the complex relationship of an accidental student and a determined teacher. A question lingers behind every scene, "Who has the power in this relationship?" Go watch it again.
      When do you bow down, press face into the feet of the one who knows and say, Take me, if you will.? When do you recognize the master, the one who you have realized is above, perched, positioned to grasp, identify, and lift up the one who is below. When do you say to yourself, I am below this one. This is right. It is right to submit to this one. It is right to commit to this one. When does the realization of that relationship finally cause you to put aside your ineffective tools and the half-baked results they brought, and humble yourself before one who has to love you because they have come to be above you, to lift you up. When do you put aside the rusty tool of bogus pride, "I've got this World" and say, "I never did and never will get this. The world has me, and I don't know what to do about it--behold the master and the call to commitment!"

7. The Atonement is a total commitment. ²You may still think this is associated with loss, a mistake all the separated Sons of God make in one way or another. (ACIM, T-2.II.7:1-2)
     "No, man, no, I can't do it."
     "Sure you can..."
     "No--It's not there."
      "Do you WANT to--I mean, if you Could do it, would you?" 
     "I guess so, I mean, why even think about it?"
    "Let's not pretend you can do it. Forget it, no need to try. Let's pretend pitiful is the goal--now, even though you can't do it, or you'll get creamed if you try, forget all that--do you want to. No risk." 
     "No risk? Okay. Yes. If I could just end up there, no risk, I would do it."
     "Good. Now let's pretend there's a magic friend--somebody else's, not yours. You are just sitting there with no friends, but this magic friend of someone you know just likes to do stuff. Fulfill wishes, for no reason you know of."
     "Okay. Magic friend--easy enough."
     "Say to yourself, "Magic friend, do that thing I can't do--but I want to, but I won't even try because I'll get killed." 
     "Okay. Done. I said it."
     "I'm the magic friend. Just go with it. It's just words. Tell ME like you mean it."
     "Okay. You just like to fulfill wishes--I want to do this thing, be over there but I am scared shitless. No risk, no strings, here I go, 'magic friend, save my ass and keep me alive in the process. No 'shards of a shattered ego' lying around to hurt people"
     "Done." 
     
Spoiler alert, the student has all the power, (until they give it to the master.) The student chooses the master (after the master chooses the student). If they don't know they have all the power, they will strike up a relationship that conforms to the AI definition--beast master, slave-owner. 
     ACIM could also be called ADAI, A Description of Irony. The half-baked student  holds all power over the mighty Father-God-Creator until the student admits they need help. They want help and  will commit to the better way. It is often is a case of driving with the brakes on--the wanna be student craves the promise held out by enlightenment which is a happy, purposeful life of ease and grace but clings to the self-persona that longs for release from what they have rather than what they seem to be. There's no way forward here without first person singular.
     I have pursued an abundance of modalities aimed at self-improvement, even freedom, release, and enlightenment. I'm still the same thing plus more experiences. The problem is that "I" want to change or empower "I" to have the enlightened life. "I" have no intention of tossing the steering wheel to someone else; that seems like suicide. This whole idea of staying in control is the problem, but it seems like a smaller problem than giving control to some other thing that will eventually betray me, no doubt about it, got all the proof starting with birth when they drugged me into oblivion so they could pluck me out of the birth canal like the electrician recently extracted a comatose bat out of my attic with a pair of pliers. I am afraid of being used, that being a best case scenario.
     The 'practice makes perfect' strategy can achieve "mastery" given enough "commitment" to the necessary steps and an awareness of the pitfalls. Master of the World even, like Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Vlad the Impaler, or Gandhi the Mahatma.
     Jesus the Christ, by contrast, did not submit to a strategy. He volunteered to vacate the Right Hand of God to do time on earth--apparently because that other 'Morning Star; named Lucifer, was cast here like lightening. The Christ would have arrived at roughly the same time for an opposite purpose. The Luciferian morning star came to get control of the situation while the Christ-impulse came to undo the concept of "getting control" and instead "give control" to the One that actually runs all strategies and circumstances.
     I recognize that it can be repugnant to the Course student to drag the right hand of God into it because it is symbolic of religious fatalism, punishment, and queasy memories of eternal damnation--that is a personal problem. Whatever mythic verbiage one uses to express a 'master worthy of the steering wheel' will work. "Lucifer" by any name is still the ego in ACIM. "Sin" by any other name is still a mistake that functions as an anvil around the neck until it is recognized as a mistake. The paradigm of traditional Christian constructs  is intentionally parallel to ACIM symbolic language in the same way that Lucifer and Jesus are after the same thing--both want control where it truly belongs. The Christian referent is not an accident in any dimension. The Euro-Western world has done with 'masters' what they did with Dodos, Carrier Pigeons, buffalos and the people that pray to them before hunting. Christianity was our last stop on the Master-Teacher line and it has been effectively sterilized. Choose your master, If you are in a body, he has already chosen you--so there is the "choose again" strategy. Blah blah blah. Even in first person singular there is nowhere to go. 
     I ran into Peggy, an old art class chum in the last week of the last year in college. I had not seen her since my freshman year when we sat near each other, exchanging cynical comments while we did art stuff, portraits and blind contour drawings and other elective activities. Four years later, Peggy glowed. The sarcastic smirk was transformed into a sincere smile. She was happy and told me about it. Of course she did--it's called evangelization, telling the good news. 
     A jaded, sarcastic ex-cheerleader from Knoxville High goes to a frat party and meets a guy in an Izod shirt, khaki pants and docksider shoes who tells her [with point for point accuracy] how she feels, how unhappy she is, why she is that way, and gives her the way out. She is amazed at his prescience and takes the next step. he puts his hand on her head and says, "Do you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior." She feels faint, undone, she says yes and is changed--permanently, easily, gracefully. There is nothing else for her to do but let Jesus the Christ steer her vehicle through life.  She tells me it's easy, just say it and mean it, or just say and don't mean it. 
     I apologize for coming to this crossroads once again and falling short. I don't see any difference between Peggy's born-again experience and the meeting of an ACIM student with the Holy Spirit, Jesus, or The Master--whatever language the student's special condition can tolerate. It is all the same. So far I can cry at the beauty of escape and believe in its reality, but I am still so many years later, unable to say, "It is finished, Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85cAFs65o1U
​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAQiAQROi7g
​​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN49cvR05Nc

​​I remind myself to not shoot the messenger. There's no way to get past the world's most uncomfortable moment except to go through it.

Tooth Is Stranger Than Friction

The Real World that Jesus describes in ACIM is just over the obscuring hill of perception--it's there; we just don't see it. This past week I went to the priest [dentist] confessed my sins [x-rays showing root decay] and she gave absolution [yes, we'll accept you as a client] on the condition I do the required penance [go to an endodontist for 2 root canals]--let's find the Real World of joy and peace, hidden just beyond the needles, rubber mouth dam, inability to swallow for 2 hours, and the smell of roasted bone. It is there--Jesus told me so.
    "Miracles as such do not matter. ²The only thing that matters is their Source, which is far beyond evaluation." (ACIM, T-1.I.2:1-2)
        Intensity. The pain, '10 on a 10-scale,' Saturday night that allowed for no sleep. The emergency appointment. The reality of the process--long and expensive, promising pain but not miracles. The root canal itself would be there, already is there in the mind--jaw-drugged into submission, sheet rubber square stretched over the target area, high-pitched drills, 3 inch needles, and constant vigilance for the jack-in-the-box pain spike, "Sorry about that." Intense--yet tedious, unimportant, even stupid. And it's all about the body. Is it? is this about the body, or something else? 
     NOW begins the healing miracle to escape a nightmare over which there is no control except the hand of God. Pain intensity on Saturday was a 'go signal.'  I submit to the message, "All things are lessons I must learn; all things are echoes of the Voice for God." I respond in a 'special way' by making an appointment ASAP, suspending judgement, going through motions that, from here on, are dictated by apparent others--the brothers, the saviors. They issue the call Home in a form that is made to obscure their gesture of love. Now I am lost, not journeying but wandering in a foreign land, at God's mercy or His Hand--as I see it--as I choose. I have known 'the way of pain.' The landscape of equipment, drugs and paid professionals is my usual territory. But thirty years ago I found a testament , ACIM, that tells me 'to find what is not findable,' only 'offered, as experience,' as revelation, as a formless vision.
     Looking for signs--Google Maps, street view shows the location in Manhattan (Kansas)--just behind a service called Ascension Via Christi [Ascension of Christ]. The Doctor's name is Christopher, or 'Christ bearer.' This is for me--the first miracles of light piercing the physical pall of procedural doom. They will see me on Friday, 'a good day to die.' Prepared for inevitable outcomes, I am fully prepared to be amazed and or 'crucified.'
     Nothing happens--it was meet and greet. Christopher says, "What do you want? Do you have a plan? And reviewed the costs, pointing at the 3-D tell all x-ray. "Figure, uh, this one, then this, and this at so much--do the math and, well, we are in for 15 thousand, at least--per plan, anyway. And why do anything without the full plan?" Again , for the third time he says, "What do you want to do?" I say, "As far as I know, I'm here for 2 root canals." He looks at his hygienist assistant like they are deciding between Arby's and Burger King for lunch and says, "Well, I guess we'll go with that."
     It is about free will, isn't it?
     Four days pass and I'm in a chair, lips thick and tingling--I could bite them off and would not notice. There is something else here, isn't there? Isn't that what Jesus said? Am I making this up? "

Yet it is given you to be beyond its laws in all respects, in every way and every circumstance, in all temptation to perceive what is not there, and all belief God’s Son can suffer pain because he sees himself as he is not. (ACIM, T-24.VI.4:5)

"Give me your blessing holy Son of God." It's a dental visit. There is a moment where the drill goes rogue , "Oh, Sorry about that," and I'm thrown back to Dr. St. Eve the army dentist drilling sans Novocain when I was a tender sprout--but here is the temptation. No! there is something else beyond view. What is it? "Give me your blessing holy Son of God." This is intensity, love through a filter, not pain, pain is the form. There is something inside or beyond the form. "Give me your blessing holy Son of God." 
     It ends--a dental visit. Not more or less than I thought. "Give me your blessing Holy Son of God." I will not be tempted to think I was right and Jesus was wrong. I refuse this 'making' under the power of my own dream-weaving. "I claim God's apparent insanity as my only hope of sanity--crazy as it seems." 

2. Miracles as such do not matter. ²The only thing that matters is their Source, which is far beyond evaluation.
3. Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. ²The real miracle is the love that inspires them. ³In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.
4. All miracles mean life, and God is the Giver of life. ²His Voice will direct you very specifically. ³You will be told all you need to know.
(ACIM, T-1.I.2:1–4:3)

     Take it or leave it.

"So Jesus asked the twelve, "Do you want to leave too?" 
Simon Peter replied, "Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."

Wait a second--ACIM is just one of those books, like the Four Agreements, Urantia, The Nature of personal Reality, no reason to get out over our skis, is there? If free will is the defining characteristic of what it means to be human, what is the best use of that endowment--To freely let a fog of inattention settle over free will's injunctions or to do a fundamentalist number on it, twisting my perceptual machinery around some idea that those mechanisms obscure things rather than reveal something true?     

Quote On bad, seemingly small habits, made powerful.
    “I was bound not by an iron imposed by anyone else but by the iron of my own choice. The enemy had a grip on my will and so made a chain for me to hold me a prisoner. The consequence of a distorted will is passion. By servitude to passion, habit is formed, and habit to which there is no resistance becomes a compulsion. By these links, as it were, connected one to another (hence my term a chain), a harsh bondage held me under restraint" --St. Augustine

Quote On good seemingly small habits made powerful. "
​     Throw self overboard and work. Remember, the grass when made into a rope by being joined together  can even chain a mad elephant.'"
--Swami Vivekanada

The procedures of the second root canal were the same as the first except that I knew what was coming--and they knew that I knew what the process would be. This made for fewer explanations and more expectations. This is the very set up for the word 'sin' used in ACIM. The concept of sin is not about breaking divine laws or committing a moral transgression, but rather about a fundamental misperception of reality. In this instance it would be the temptation to know what this was going to be, by what it had been the first time. "I am one Self united with my Creator; safe, and healed, and whole; at one with my brothers and with all creation; free to forgive and free to save the world," is a comprehensive reminder that I am not an object reclining on a chair with a rubber block to keep the mouth open so that a guy can work in there. Christ has fragmented into 4 human forms, 2 female assistants 1 endodontist, and 1 patient. It is one 'thing,' one 'event,'  pulled apart so the miracle of a unified Son of God can be experienced by all. 
     Recognizing the 'tendency to sin,' that is, to lapse into an easy understanding of the situation--I noticed every wave of anxiety, and they came rapidly, one after another. There was no rest from vigilance and so I visualized myself as suckling at God's teat--mouth wide open, trying to swallow and only awkwardly successful. Dr. Christopher, dedicated to performing his name's sake--to be the Christ bearer--drilled and washed, 'love incoming,' and with each wash of anxiety, expecting a shock of pain, my inner chatter went something like this:

"This is love. This is the milk of kindness. The sensation of pure love is not frightening. Thank-you for caring for me. Let me receive love in the form You intend. Bless my brothers who are one with me that I might be blessed. I am blessed to receive love like the Infant Christ at His Mother's Breast. Let me savor this time and experience love in this form, the only form I can understand."

The inner talk went on, mostly unbroken for about an hour. It was, like the rubber dam in my mouth, designed to keep 'sin' outside and to not allow myself to be overwhelmed by the idea I was involved in a dental visit. If the dental visit overshadowed the rain of love that took form as 'human'  care, then I would miss this obvious opportunity to receive the 'reinterpretation' by the Holy Spirit. It does seem mad, doesn't it? Occupational hazards of taking the Course seriously. 
     When it was finished, there was a light feeling in the room, warm. The assistants chatted about  diets, concerts, and plans. The doctor and I talked about REM, the only concert he apparently ever went to. He asked again about what I wanted at the next visit--to do the final caps one at a time or both at once. I said both. He said it seemed like I was okay with the time, the mouth, the whole dam thing, etc... 
​     Pulling out of the parking lot I wondered about the forms miracles can take; as dramatic relief, a gentle unfolding, deliverance seen in hindsight, recognition of what was always there, or like in this case, peace and love where it seemed unlikely.

The following interaction was the first time Ramakrishna's 'biographer' met with the Hindu sage privately. It is a good introduction to Who God is, how close He remains, and why, for some reason, we do not notice.

MASTER: "Well, do you believe in God with form or without form?"

M., rather surprised, said to himself: "How can one believe in God without form when one believes in God with form? And if one believes in God without form, how can one believe that God has a form? Can these two contradictory ideas be true at the same time? Can a white liquid like milk be black?"

M: "Sir, I like to think of God as formless."
MASTER: "Very good. It is enough to have faith in either aspect. You believe in God without form; that is quite all right. But never for a moment think that this alone is true and all else false. Remember that God with form is just as true as God without form. But hold fast to your own conviction."

The assertion that both are equally true amazed M.; he had never learnt this from his books. Thus his ego received a third blow; but since it was not yet completely crushed, he came forward to argue with the Master a little more.

M: "Sir, suppose one believes in God with form. Certainly He is not the clay image!"
MASTER (interrupting): "But why clay? It is an image of Spirit."
M. could not quite understand the significance of this "image of Spirit". "But, sir," he said to the Master, "one should explain to those who worship the clay image that it is not God, and that, while worshipping it, they should have God in view and not the clay image. One should not worship clay."

MASTER (sharply): "That's the one hobby of you Calcutta people � giving lectures and bringing others to the light! Nobody ever stops to consider how to get the light himself. Who are you to teach others?

"He who is the Lord of the Universe will teach everyone. He alone teaches us, who has created this universe; who has made the sun and moon, men and beasts, and all other beings; who has provided means for their sustenance; who has given children parents and endowed them with love to bring them up. The Lord has done so many things � will He not show people the way to worship Him? If they need teaching, then He will be the Teacher. He is our Inner Guide.
"Suppose there is an error in worshipping the clay image; doesn't God know that through it He alone is being invoked? He will he pleased with that very worship. Why should you get a headache over it? You had better try for knowledge and devotion yourself."

In calculus or chemistry class my mind would fall into a dreamlike trance--like dreams where the exit ramp was too tight and the tires didn't hold the road or running with legs that seemed like they would not move no matter how I coaxed them.
                                              
                                               BEWARE:

The following information could turn the reader's mind into a non-stick surface.
 
HOLD THE BRAIN LEVEL SO THE IDEA DOES NOT SLIDE OFF!

God is the body. There--I said it.

     The evidence is more than circumstantial. [The usual drill] Move your hand--did it do what you 'told it to?' Of course not. It went all over the place in ways you did not specify. Did it perform EXACTLY as you wanted it to? Probably--even though you didn't specify the rotation, twists, flourishes etc..it just 'did that on its own.' Are you telling yourself some vague story about the nervous system, brain, and some command center that you apparently occupy? Probably-maybe--but then the material slides right off the Teflon onto the floor--"Move on! Unsolvable! Who cares?!"
 
                                        HOLD THE BRAIN LEVEL...

Comment then-- if it is not God, who moves the hand?. That is the practical portion of the presentation. Now look at the circumstantial evidence.
     
1. The body provides an accurate mirror of the mind.
     It does whatever you want it to, all the while providing exacting feedback on the wisdom of, let's say,  5 instead of 3 drinks, driving past the point of total exhaustion, giving an extra angry turn to the new faucet in the bathroom, taking on a profession for the money-a relationship for the sex-a lifetime for a gold watch or paying too much or not enough attention to anything, based on a little voice that says, "Maybe a little more would be good" or "Maybe this is good enough." Scars, zits, hangovers, brain death are just a few graphic illustrations the body gives as feedback. You say, "Of course, so what," as the idea finds itself rubbing elbows with 'why men wear ties' and 'what does sex mean.' We take the symbolic, precise feedback for granted.

2. All bodies are connected physically.
     Think about the air, water, food cycles. Excrement flowing into sewers, along with blood, semen, dead skin cells, or like Charlie Brown told Pigpen about his dust,  along with other body observations.
 www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkXaSgrTXSg
​We are all in the mix from beginning to end, regardless of how many boundaries and safeguards we set. Per ACIM THIS IS SYMBOLIC! It is not a 'physical fact' it is a metaphysical teaching about something we hate. We take proximity for granted.

3. All bodies are energetically enmeshed.
     It's just a fact that people move in simultaneous synchronization with each other when they are engaged in conversation etc...That movement of the hand whose mobilization defies a clear origination extends to the interweaving of human energy that lacks hard edges or controllable gateways. The Rockefeller research Cabal has figured it out but its used for weapons and advertising, as if there were a difference. We take embedded inter-communication for granted.

4. Molecular biology is not other than 'Deus in machina.' We are clueless as 'worms in a watch' about DNA, RNA, and genetics. Learning how to saw the 'Pieta' into pieces, cast molds and recombine those into other sculptures is not the same as Michelangelo's original work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hk9jct2ozY&list=WL&index=17&t=24s
We take our incomprehensible microbiological platform for granted. 

"Body" is a word. That is all. A word is a symbol--or as Jesus in ACIM says, "a symbol of a symbol" since the thing it names is a symbol of separation. That's why 'a body can't be God'--it is a symbol of something that God is not. There is sticky nuance in this. The body has to 'not be God' since that is the intention, but like every other earthly aspiration examined in the Course, does our idea about the body succeed in 'eliminating God from body?' More accurately, did 'The Son" succeed in making something [a body] that was not God? Of course the answer is, "No, So what?" So is the body 'inert?' Does it have any agency? You have to say, "Yes." Bullet points one through 4 are not inert, non-intelligent, random fluxes of mindless-bonding. The precision of the body makes the mind dull in comparison. Nature is, for practical purposes, "perfect in every way," especially when compared to human motivations, endeavors, and outcomes.
     "God is the body," or as the Paramahamsa said in the opening, " But why clay? It is the image of Spirit."  We have to call this thing something, and we settled on "body" to obfuscate the absolutely blindingly obvious experience that it is not at all a 'body' as even we would define the bounded boundary of mortal flesh. Spirit--not clay implies, as does the Course, that form is irrelevant to content. "Bone, muscle, and blood" are words, like "the body." Microbiology gives way to molecular biology, then molecules, then quanta, then light--there is no 'flesh' there is no 'body'--but we have to call it something. The hazard of 'calling it something' is that the mind clings to the concept as real in order to invest in it, crunch, grok and work with it. But the only true reality of a body is that it 'symbolizes the separation' and that it is made out of light. Evolution, Pleiadean interventions or The Grays and Archons might be historically accurate. That would not negate the basic 'light formed into symbol."
      It is our vehicle whose possibilities we explore from the first moment of conception. It quickly becomes a tool for navigation, then accomplishment, then enjoyment, and eventually a thing to 'train' by stretching its envelope of original possibilities; mentally, physically, in endurance, in tolerance of the intolerable, in acceptance of what we once found unacceptable. We indulge 'our will' to 'read the riot act' to this body-thing, then beat it one way or another, ignore or ridicule it in a variety of civil or debased idioms, then identify the hill to die on. Then we screw and glue it to our fucked-up, wooden idea of what this whole thing is about, hoist it up in the air and say--good for us, 'Life it a bitch, and then you die."
     Notice we never-the-hell talk to it. Sit down with it like the loyal man or girl Friday it is and say, What about you? Oh, thanks by the way. Ouch, I'm sorry about that". Wanna know why? We know this 5D interconnected environmental suit is God, The Almighty God who refused to abandon his shit-heel Son who has to take the gift for granted or he would die of shame and grief. God loves His Son and doesn't mind the crucifixion and all the other shit we do to Him, our Royal, Loyal Partner in this crime--until we look at Him and say, "What about You. Do you have any ideas about this thing?" 
    If we have that heart to heart, He will remain mute. The body will look back at us like a hound dog, blinking soulful eyes, waiting for us to take charge--in a way, that's been the problem all along. "Okay mutt, it's you and me--let's go birdin'." The partner endures wind and weather with tail wagging absolutely happy and purposeful to shag down whatever the master manages to shoot out of the sky. "That's my God" we say and wonder if we could train it to 'bring me my slippers.' Christians call God as dog the suffering servant, well acquainted with grief. The Almighty Lord has such a small ego His only interest is to exhaust us of our desire to manipulate Him in our fantasies." His love endures forever" spells out the curse/blessing situation. Like so many ideas in A Course in Miracles, if a student locks down the understanding that God is NOT the body, the ego can easily confiscate that unclaimed resource for itself, believing it IS the body.
     A mind whose goal is to navigate a world of forms has no choice but to 'own' the body as resource. The mind that changes its goal to 'think with the New Mind of Holy Spirit' receives the revelation: God did not leave His Son and actually safeguarded his adventure by becoming the seat of the son of God, to inform, accompany, and reward him on a physical journey to answer every impossible question. Then the now-time will arrive when the last interesting realization arrives. "I never did anything. It was always Him." The person on the porch, his slippers, a dead pheasant at his feet and a Blue-Tick Coon Hound with baleful eyes fold into light.    

This is all about Ken, (Dr. Kenneth Wapnick, editor of ACIM)--Christopher and David are incidental to the goal--here are three guys who, unlike Abraham, Martin, and John, will not get the public legacy they deserve, not even a false one based on half-truths. At least the social justice heroes in the song merited a mythos which may or may not have anything to do with what they really accomplished. And unlike the namesakes in the Dion anthem, Christopher, David, and Ken were not tools of larger forces--they were tools of the largest Force. 
     Christopher Alexander rejected a placard among famous architects to inherit a kooky reputation for reimagining the entire profession. His trilogy of beautiful books dedicated to that cause read like scripture--and get just about as much wear from a clueless public. His book, A Pattern Language  is an ambitious template for fragmented moderns to reclaim beauty and control over their own environments--from window seats to cities.  The Last whole Earth Catalog called it the best book in the of 1970's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbwnDdPWjig
​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmlo0Lva5AU​
     
'David' refers to Dave McGowan, a personal hero of mine who maybe paid with his life for exposing the games behind major social narratives, particularly, 9-11, The Lincoln Assassination, the Moon Landings, The Boston Bombing and spectacularly, the rock and roll industry as a manufactured social engineering project of the military industrial complex. His You Tube deliveries are a dazed and confused everyman who spends nights on his blogsite, writing in hugely entertaining fashion about the surprises he uncovers for we the uninformed.

https://centerforaninformedamerica.com 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzA8iZkpixQ&t=3416s

     I include these unrelated creators with our subject to make the syllabic-conceptual parallel with classic song work--and to link Ken in with 2 others who will never get the credit they deserve. Arguably all three were tapped by a divine hand to throw a wrench into something that begged tweaking. 
    The messages from Helen came into an atheistic, barely humanist milieu. Ken happened into the situation, fresh-off dedicating himself to writing and contemplating St. Theresa of Avila's mystical revelations mostly in Interior Castle and The Way of Perfection. The godless, scientific, secular context makes Ken's appearance all the more miraculous, baked-into the form Jesus desired for the teaching. Arguably, Ken is as important to the process as Bill who hired Helen and Helen who received the dictations from Jesus ; without him, the text, lessons and book structure could have been like the Seth Material, a meandering message that faded in and out of personal observations for the scribes and straight teachings. Clear thought aimed at the illusion, the structure of the real world, and the essential relationship of Creator and Created could well have been lost. Did we get lucky or is Ken's role ordained? I think the latter.
     The importance of this is easily understated by those who saw him as heavy handed in his editing choices, That he hid juicy discourses by Jesus about psychology and personal notes to Helen and Bill. Thank God, literally, that Kenneth Wapnick got hold of it in the vacuum one can imagine around that pile of dictation.  With anal-retentive precision that few possess, he coaxed  reams of paper into what stands now as A Course in Miracles, Lessons for Students, Manual for teachers, and Clarification of Terms. Apostle Ken conducted his seminar, 'Duality as metaphor in A Course in Miracles' as a reaction to distortions perpetrated by well-intentioned students-as-teachers of the Course.
     Errors are rife among on-line presenters of ACIM--not on nuances of interpretation, but glaring pivots from Jesus himself on the nature of forgiveness, miracles, and our role as saviors. If A Foundation for Inner Peace, and a Foundation for A Course in Miracles had not grappled aggressively with the 'final form' of the three Blue-books--7 years of  profound insight into the structure of mind and phenomena could have been diluted among extraneous comments to the scribes. Dr Wapnick's work set it apart as Holy Writ, qualitatively different from other channeled messages. As the Apostle Paul is axiomatic to Christian thought in spite of questionable credentials and doubtful methods, critiques of St Ken have to be weighed against his anointing from beyond as 'first eyes' on the teaching,  integral to the fixed form of the Course. Carol Howe, Gary Renard, Robert Perry, Marianne Williamson, David Hoffmeister, Emily Bennington, Keith, Alan Cohen, and every other presenter should be held accountable against the classic text, if not the interpretations of that text by those first eyes. Ken emphasized points that one may differ with--but the more exposure I get to Course teachers at large, the more affection I feel for Dr. Wapnick's methodical insistence on core concepts, seeing past the narrative aspect of the channel and adhering to pure scripture.
​
​​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWkHOYxd7q4&t=302s

As Julie Andrews sang to her adopted family in The Sound of Music, "Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start, when you read you begin with ABC, when you're God you begin 'Con-spir-a-see'..."
     It seems like God decides to talk directly to people whenever huge forces of social manipulation are at work. Now, wait a second! I didn't say what you think I said--you added the part about "Religion is a tool of the state and the scripture they spin-off is fakery." There's no way to prove it, but I'd say that God opportunes Himself of such fissures in the collective mind to make collective statements about the truth. Further, the more intense the effort at lock-down social control by massive imperial gears, the clearer and more pristine His message, as in A Course in Miracles. Before returning to the well-worn urban legends about Helen and Bill's call out to spirit, let's look at the the theme of conspiracy in scripture using a couple of earlier examples.
     Take The Vedanta Society, instituted by Swami Vivekanda who was the anointed devotee of Ramakrishna Paramahansa. Naren Datta was a Freemason and member of the Brahmo Samaj, a British inspired group that intended to civilize the wild cultic religious of India toward measured views of God and reality that were befitting of this 'Jewel in the Crown'--in other words, Vivekananda was tapped by forces of social control to transmit a garden variety of Hinduism to the Western world. He did this in 1923 at the World Council of religions in Chicago. The comely version of esoteric thought was itself a social control wedge designed to temper white, protestant sensibilities in the US toward broader, more globalist ways of thinking. Not ironically, Annie Besant was setting up theosophical head-quarters in South India to temper Hindu sensibilities, while Swami V was establishing Hindu hubs around America. 
   "Who really knows? and So what if it's true?" I agree. The pattern is interesting and throws no shade whatsoever on the value of Vedantic teaching or Theosophical ideas. The main question might be, "What is God doing here?"
     Something similar happened in Christianity. Jesus was a little known blip in time and teaching if it had not been for Paul, the devoted apostle who had at one time been a diehard antagonist-persecutor of those very Jews turned Christians. Like Vivekanda, he blew out the sides of the tiny sect and turned it into a global phenomenon. This took place in the context of a waning Roman Empire that split into Eastern and Western aspects, a Jewish elite who could help or hinder the floundering  Imperial cause, and the Silk Road that connected Europe and Asia. Just saying--these observations are not intended for Encyclopedia Britannica--it is to notice a pattern of religious flowering in the context of powerful people trying to move the minds of populations for their own benefit.
     As a formula state it thus; Bid for Global Empire> Social Control Engine> Manipulation of indigenous belief systems> emergence of powerful hybrid, aka, 'Revelation.' The recent historical pattern is 'Cecil Rhodes willed his fortune to Lord Rothschild to establish round table groups that plotted strategies to shape the world in the image and likeness of the British Empire. This created covert coporate/media/political cabals within every institution on the planet to shape societies according to plan. This effectively tilted every '-ology' toward interpretations of science and history in favor of a centralized Anglo-American elite who put human society on a lathe. In this context there have been no organic wars or uprisings, scientific developments or economic/political theories proposed since 1885. The French Revolution, American revolution, all the color revolutions, the World Wars, Viet Nam, Korea, Hiroshima, Holocaust, everything is not what it is advertised and has been a part of a larger schematic . I would be surprised if Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and Zoroastrianism were not similarly enhanced to promote some bigger picture. As the Ultimately Comprehensive Opportunist, God does not notice.
     Along the way we should mention Julian Jaynes and his book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. It's a broad theory to explain how traumatic mind fractures led to our egoic understanding of acting alone in the world. In short, he implies that self-consciousness resulted from extreme stresses on the tribal mind, caused by a cataclysmic flood or similar around 2000 years before the Christian era. Anthropos went from a collective awareness of his essential identity to a fragmented, schizophrenic split where he 'heard the voice of God.' Do a shred of interpolation and one can deduce that stress induces revelation under specific circumstances. It was probably as true for Helen as for Ramakrishna and the Apostle Paul. Given the CIA associations and Columbia University, one would be safe to assume a conspiracy pass that includes severe duress that may have looked like torture to a fly on the wall.
   My wife tells me this all sounds like I'm discounting the reality of vision, revelation, even hearing God's Voice--I'm not! I'm saying God works Himself out in our world according to the available forms in this world. One man's emotional breakdown is another man's softening of the heart--one person's mental split is another person's crack in the cosmic egg. Was Ramakrishna crazy when he 'became Hanuman' the monkey-god and allegedly grew a bit of a longer tailbone in the process? Did Jesus appear to Paul on the road to Damascus or was it a guilty conscience? is it a coincidence that Catholic cultic expressions look a lot like Mithraism, which was centered in Tarsus, which was Paul's home-town?--and that good St Ignatius' Jesuit codes were used as a basis for 'Round Table groups' funded by Cecil Rhodes to Anglicize the world? The goal is not to vicariously recreate the fly on the wall in any of those settings, fascinating as that might be. We are trying to get back to Helen and Bill as they argue there must be a better way to get along-- and out pops ACIM, all 1200 page, all at once, over 7 years, literal phrasing intact.
     Why this exercise in loose historical opportunism? A Course in Miracles, like other powerful scriptures, emerged from U.S. imperial ambitions through social manipulation by way of CIA funding to complicit universities like Columbia in NYC where Bill Thetford worked. Probably it was MK Ultra related, had to do with child psychology--Helen Schucman's area, and had something to do with other CIA operations related to the manufactured consciousness revolution of the 1960's--work on the Course spanned the years 1965 to 1972.
​     And what does the Seth Material have to do with it? Three and a half hours drive away in Elmira New York a female writer/poet channels provocative, coherent material to her visual artist/ husband between 1963 and 1984. Robert Butz, her scribe said Jane's health suffered when she refused to admit Seth material on the historical Jesus. She did not want the controversy. What is God doing? Is He? Doing? Let us close with a prayer:
    Oh God, whose only begotten Son seeks Your Face in the millions,
   Grant we beseech thee to guide Your Son toward that Holy Face that causes all to fall silent in the joy of true knowledge.
Thank-you heavenly Father for the gift of Helen your daughter, Bill your son and Kenneth your Holy Apostle who form your will in the Trinity of Source, Receiver, and Interpreter. Thank you for this and for those 1200 pages that offer us Your Word. "Love is All."