Join us this Sunday, Jan. 7, 2018
9:00 AM to 10:30 AM
The Spontaneous Discussion Group:
Group Leadership of The Way of Mastery
11:00 AM to Noon
Sunday Gathering
Topic: My Brother’s Keeper
Facilitated by Ron Grow
A community dedicated to the study and application of the teaching of A Course In Miracles
Join us this Sunday, Jan. 7, 2018
The Spontaneous Discussion Group:
Group Leadership of The Way of Mastery
11:00 AM to Noon
Sunday Gathering
Topic: My Brother’s Keeper
Facilitated by Ron Grow
T.18.VIII.9-13. Jesus: “Still waiting at the imagined barrier you built against it, the Thought of God surrounds your little kingdom, and once welcomed, It will come inside and shine upon the barren ground. See how life springs up everywhere!
The desert becomes a garden, green and deep and quiet, offering rest to those who lost their way and wander in the dust. Give them a place of refuge, prepared by love for them, where once a desert was! And everyone you welcome in will bring love with him from Heaven for you. They enter one by one into this holy place, but they will not depart alone as they had come. The love they brought with them will stay with them, as it will stay with you.
Under love’s beneficence your little garden will expand, reaching out to everyone who thirsts for living water, but has grown too weary to go on alone. Go out and find them now, for they bring your Self with them to you! Lead them gently to your quiet garden, and receive their blessing there. Thus will it grow and stretch across the desert, leaving no lonely little kingdoms locked away from love, nor leaving you alone inside of yours. And you will recognize your Self, and see your little garden gently transformed into the Kingdom of Heaven, with all the love of its Creator shining upon it.
The holy instant is your invitation addressed to love, inviting it to enter your bleak and joyless kingdom, and transform it into a garden of peace and welcome. Love’s answer is inevitable! It will come because you came to it, without the body, and interposed no barriers to interfere with love’s glad coming.
In the holy instant, you ask of love only what it offers everyone, neither less nor more. Asking for everything, you will receive it. And your shining Self will lift the tiny aspect that you tried to hide from Heaven, straight into Heaven. No part of love calls on the whole in vain. No Son of God remains outside His Fatherhood!
Be sure of this; real love has entered your special relationship, and entered fully, even at your weak request! You may not recognize that love has come, because you have not yet let go of all the barriers you hold against your brother. And you and he will not be able to give love welcome separately. You could no more know God alone than He knows you without your brother. But together you could no more be ‘unaware of love’ than love could know you not, or fail to recognize itself in you.
You have reached the end of an ancient journey, not realizing yet that it is over. You are still worn and tired, and the desert’s dust still seems to cloud your eyes and keep you sightless. Yet He Whom you welcomed, has come to you and would welcome you. He has waited long to give you this. Receive it now of Him, for He would have you know Him!
Only a little wall of dust still stands between you and your brother. Blow on it lightly and with happy laughter, and it will fall away. And walk into the garden love has prepared for both of you!”
Join us this Sunday, Dec. 31, 2017
The Group will discuss topics from A Course in Miracles, The Way of Mastery, A Course of Love, and other channeled materials. For more information, contact Robert Bennett.
11:00 AM to Noon
Sunday Gathering
Topic: “The Time That Never Was,” ACIM Manual for Teachers, 1. & 2.
Facilitated by Robert Bennett
School For A Course In Miracles (SFACIM.org) is grateful to the RMMC for the opportunities in past years to do Sunday Gatherings, classes, and seminars at their facility on Monroe Street in Denver, CO. However, SFACIM’s principal aim as a school is now to conduct all SFACIM activities online, so no SFACIM programs are being held currently at the RMMC facility or through their online systems. Please contact SFACIM for current info about all SFACIM classes and programs, and the SFACIM YouTube Channel and SFACIM Podcast.
T. 17. IV. 4 – 6. Jesus: “In a sense, the special relationship was the ego’s answer to the Holy Spirit, who was and is God’s Answer to the separation. For although the ego did not understand what had been created, it was aware of threat. The whole defense system the ego evolved to protect the separation from the Holy Spirit was in response to this Gift with which God blessed the mind, and by His blessing enabled it to be healed.
This blessing holds within itself the truth of everything. And the truth is that the Holy Spirit is in a real relationship with you, because in Him is your relationship with God restored to you. The relationship with Him has never been broken, because the Holy Spirit has not been separate from anyone since the separation. And through Him have all your holy relationships been carefully preserved, to serve God’s purpose for you.
The ego is always alert to threat, and the part of your mind into which the ego thought system was accepted is very anxious to preserve its distorted reasoning, just as it sees it. It does not realize that it is totally insane. And you must realize just what this means if you would be restored to sanity. The insane protect their thought systems, but they do so insanely. And all their defenses are as insane as what they are supposed to protect.
The mindset of separation has nothing in it, no part, no ‘reason,’ and no attribute that is not insane. And its ‘protection’ is part of it, as insane as the whole. The special relationship, which is its chief defense, must therefore be insane! By now you have but little remaining difficulty in realizing that the thought system the special relationship protects is an elaborate system of delusions. You also recognize, at least in general terms, that the ego is insane. But the special relationship still seems to you to be ‘somehow different.’
Yet we have looked at it far closer than we have at many other aspects of the ego’s thought system that you have been more willing to let go. While this one remains, you will not really let the others go! For this one is not different. Retain this one, and you have retained the whole of separation in your mind.”
>>> During the holidays we have many opportunities to revisit relationships we have seen as special and from which we may have expected to get our needs fulfilled. Each one becomes a real and holy relationship as I pause for a holy instant in each one and just “let the Holy Spirit be in charge.”
Join us this Sunday, Dec. 24, 2017
The Group will discuss topics from A Course in Miracles, The Way of Mastery, A Course of Love, and other channeled materials. For more information, contact Robert Bennett.
11:00 AM to Noon
Sunday Gathering
Topic: T.B.A.
Facilitated by Whitney W.
This essay originally appeared on Susan Dugan’s blog on August 7, 2011.
“You always. You never. Why can’t you just? Do you realize you?”
I stood in my kitchen, futilely swatting at fruit flies with a pot holder, again replaying the recent accusations of a special relationship like a favorite song stuck in my head. Vaguely, increasingly, and uncomfortably aware that a part of me actually enjoyed the volleyed, verbal return of my silent recriminations; relished the proof that I didn’t deserve to awaken from this dream given my many less than admirable qualities and undeniably hateful nature. It had been that kind of week in the dream; the lid on my personal Pandora ’s Box of unforgiven ego issues inexplicably blown wide open. The moods of the dream figure I still sometimes completely forget I am not vacillated as wildly as the disingenuous accusations of the buffoons in Congress I so wanted to blame for the downward trajectory of the country I still sometimes completely forget has nothing to do with what we are.
Then, too, I was recovering from yet another sinus infection, the miserably ironic result of allergies to an explosion of breathtaking wildflowers during a visit to the idyllic mountain town of Crested Butte, Colorado, to attend a wedding. A trip during which a blister resulting from a pair of brand new hiking boots derailed further mountain forays and an ill-fated attempt to act my daughter’s age on the dance floor resulted in a pinched nerve in my hip that has left me hobbling around in battered flip flops since.
Meanwhile, on the home front, a battalion of fruit flies having hitched a ride on a bag of produce were breeding like bunnies in our kitchen, despite the little bowls of apple cider vinegar laced with dish detergent recommended on the internet, strips of fly paper dangling above the sink (which doesn’t work on fruit flies, by the way), and my vigorous attempts to annihilate them with said pot holder. On the TV, The Discovery Channel’s annual Shark Week—that peculiar, addictive celebration of all things good, bad, and horrific about that most feared of oceanic creatures—had just commenced, spewing spine-tingling footage of sharks in all shapes, sizes, and varieties insatiably hunting their prey.
Whack! Another fly met its maker while my little dog cowered in the corner and the TV narrator at last revealed the venue of the most shark attacks ever recorded in the world (The U.S. House of Representatives, notwithstanding): Florida.
“I knew it,” I thought, my mind on ego suddenly reviewing a more-than-decade-old video involving the highly suspect shenanigans of another set of politicians in that great Southern state. Until the lyrics of my special relationship misery came boomeranging back again and I found myself once more in that rawest of places, begging for help from you know who to see things differently even as a part of me secretly reveled in the personal feeding frenzy born of a drop of human blood a shark can smell a quarter mile away.
“Jesus,” I said, and presto, there he was again–my imaginary friend–in full fantasized regalia. In honor of Shark Week, he had donned a wet suit and flippers, but had not given up those wacky pink shades I had so come to envy these past few months. He stared down at a bowl of vinegar wherein a dozen fruit fly corpses lay perpetually suspended.
“I did try catching them in a Dixie Cup and taking them outside,” I said, understandably growing defensive under his knowing gaze. “Have you ever tried to catch a fruit fly? It doesn’t work. I just can’t let them take over in here. I mean, they carry disease.”
He nodded.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I said.
“You usually do.”
“A minor twinge of annoyance conceals the thought of murder. There’s no hierarchy of illusions, blah, blah, blah.”
“An illusion is an illusion is an illusion.”
“Easy for you to say.”
He smiled, adjusting his glasses.
I lowered my voice. “The thing is, there are still sharks everywhere you look in this dream.”
“You think they can hear us?” He was whispering, too, just in case.
“Let’s get real, J. I’ve been practicing this Course for a pretty long time now. God knows how earnest I’ve been.”
His brows shot up above the frames of his shades.
“OK, maybe not so much with the God part. But I’m here to tell you I honestly don’t think.” My hip throbbed. Fruit flies swarmed around my head, evoking thoughts of another “f” word if only for the sake of alliteration. I grabbed his arm. “Come on,” I said.
We sat on the leather couch in the living room. I turned down the volume, but allowed the TV to continue zooming in on the seductive image of a Great White feeding off an Australian reef, revealing a close-up of its jagged grin and serial killer eyes. I sighed. “The thing is; I must still feel so guilty, you know? I mean, I go along all right-minded and peaceful for a while and then—bam! I can’t seem to stop judging, the incoming attacks begin, and all hell breaks loose.”
He handed me a tissue from his infinite, invisible supply.
“You want to know the truth?” I asked.
He nodded.
I leaned toward him, and lowered my voice some more. “I can’t stand any of them, sometimes. Not him, not her, not those Bozos in Washington, not me. And don’t even get me started on the fruit flies.”
On the screen a shark opened its enormous mouth and lunged toward a cage containing an evidently lobotomized photographer in a wet suit. And I found myself secretly rooting for the shark. I dabbed at my eyes. “I just can’t wake up, J!” I said. “It’s never going to happen.”
Jesus took my hand. On the screen, a person stood on a surfboard off the coast of South Africa, paddling through translucent, turquoise waters above the shadow of a long, fluid, strikingly beautiful shark. My shoulders relaxed.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I said, recalling a section from that morning’s A Course in Miracles Workbook lesson 181.
A major hazard to success has been involvement with your past and future goals. You have been quite preoccupied with how extremely different the goals this course is advocating are from those you held before. And you have also been dismayed by your depressing and restricting thought that, even if you should succeed, you will inevitably lose your way again…These concerns are but defenses against present change of focus in perception. Nothing more.
“Jesus,” I said, smacking myself upside the head.
“Hey.” He smiled.
“It’s only about now, isn’t it? What I choose now, in this moment. Not what happened last week or this morning. Not where I’m going. Just right now. That’s where my Mind is and has always been and will always be. That’s the only place I can go to choose again. The only place I can go to be with you. The only place I could ever be to see things differently. I am so going to ace this course,” I said.
Jesus had his feet up on the coffee table and was fiddling with the volume on the remote. “Now that we got that straightened out, do we get popcorn?” he asked.
NOTE: A Course in Miracles uses the character of Jesus as a symbol of the awakened mind we can relate to and call on in the condition we think we’re in here in the dream. Although he doesn’t join with us in making our dream of exile from all-inclusive, eternal Love real, he does ask us to bring him all the illusions that arise in the classroom of our lives for review and re-interpretation from evidence of separate interests to proof positive that we never severed our connection from our true, non-dualistic nature and in truth remain awake in God, merely dreaming.
Susan Dugan’s books Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness, Forgiveness Offers Everything I Want, and Forgiveness: The Key to Happiness are available at RMMC and on Amazon. She writes about ACIM based on Ken Wapnick’s teachings at ForaysInForgiveness.com and teaches Tuesday nights at RMMC.
T. 18. VIII. 7 – 10. Jesus: “Do not accept the body as yourself, for it is but a little fenced-off aspect of what you are! The sun and ocean are as nothing beside what you really are. The little sunbeam sparkles only in the sunlight, and the tiny ripple dances as it rests upon the ocean. Yet in neither sun nor ocean is the power that rests in you!
Would you remain within your tiny kingdom, a sorry king, a bitter ruler of all that he surveys, who looks on what is really nothing, yet would still die to defend it?
What this little self looks upon is not your real kingdom! Arched high above the world you see, and surrounding it with love, is the glorious whole, which offers all its happiness and deep contentment to every part. The little aspect that you think you set apart is no exception!
Love knows no bodies, and reaches to everything created like itself. Its total lack of limit is its meaning! It is completely impartial in its giving, encompassing only to preserve and keep complete what it would give.
In your tiny kingdom you have so little! Should it not, then, be from there that you would call on love to enter? Look at the desert; dry and barren, scorched and joyless; that makes up your little kingdom. Seek now to realize the life and joy that love would bring to it from where love comes, and where it would return with you.
The Thought of God surrounds your little kingdom, waiting at the barrier you’ve built around it! It waits for but your little willingness to let it come inside and shine upon the barren ground. See how life springs up everywhere! The desert becomes a garden, green and deep and quiet, offering rest to those who lost their way and wander in the dust.
Give them now a place of refuge, prepared by love for them, where once a desert was! And everyone you welcome will bring love with him from Heaven for you. They enter one by one into this newly holy place, but they will not depart alone, as they had come. The love they brought with them for you will stay with them, as it will stay with you! And under love’s beneficence your little garden will expand, and reach out to everyone who thirsts for living water, but has grown too weary to go on alone.
Go out and find them, for they bring your Self with them. Lead them gently to your quiet garden, and receive their blessing there! Then will it grow and stretch across the desert, leaving no lonely little kingdoms locked away from love, nor leaving you locked inside of yours. Now will you recognize yourself, and see your little garden gently transformed into the Kingdom of Heaven, with all the love of its Creator shining upon it.”
Join us this Sunday, Dec. 17, 2017
The Group will discuss topics from A Course in Miracles, The Way of Mastery, A Course of Love, and other channeled materials. For more information, contact Robert Bennett.
Topic: “Christmas is an Invitation – Learning how to love again.”
Facilitated by Chris Dixon-Bubick