A Course in Miracles Monk

Today Ken announced that Loral would be joining the Academy teaching staff, and her first class will be Tuesday morning. I’m looking forward to it. So this means that Jeff, Rose Marie, and Laurel will each be doing one class per Academy.

You may have noticed the new monk in the Monk sidebar box near the top of the page. It is actually lifted from a photo I took of an oil painting I have in my bedroom; it is a meaningful symbol for me.

The winner of the name-that-room contest is Nina. OK, so she was the only one who entered, but she nailed it with The Sunset Room. Great suggestion — thanks, Nina!

Got to see monk and monkette Nick and Heather this morning (you’ll know them from their whispers in the cloister), which was a real treat. In class Ken mentioned they are getting married in a couple months; congratulations guys! Here is my monkly advice: One of you find a new path. Seriously, best wishes and much happiness to you both. You’re a beautiful couple.

Today was day one of a three-day Academy entitled, Leading Lives of Quiet Desperation. Here are some of my notes:

• We all live lives of quiet desperation, it’s just that we’re often not aware of it. There is an inherent hopelessness and despair we all carry within us. A part of us knows this is not Home, but doesn’t know where Home is, and believes if we did find it, we wouldn’t be let back in.

• Even when you consciously feel despair, it never holds a candle to the despair in our mind.

• We spend our whole lives trying to make life work, but it will never work because all roads lead to death. It might sometimes work on the level of form, but that will never undo our desperation.

• The Holy Spirit needs us to know how miserable we are. He wants us to know how we lead lives of quiet desperation, are always distressed. You will never be motivated to learn this Course if you are not aware that the way you have chosen does not work.

• You can’t say all this is silly as a body. Don’t even try. You can only say it as a mind.

• If you’re not aware of the quiet desperation, you’re doomed to keep projecting it. You must feel the pain of continually choosing the ego and specialness.

• If you are not miserable, nothing will work. You won’t have the motivation to practice this Course. You will walk around thinking you are the embodiment of the peace of God.

• There is no way of changing anything if we think we are bodies in a world.

• Practice: The way out is to recognize it’s coming from choosing my ego, not from what is happening in the world, or what I am experiencing in the world.

• The part of us that is in pain is the part of us that doesn’t want to change.

• We’re not afraid of the horrifying content of the wrong mind, we’re afraid of the right mind. We’re afraid that if we went back to the mind we would leap into our Father’s arms and the world and our illusory self would disappear.

• How do you find joy in a joyless place? Not by trying to make it joyful, but by recognizing you are not there.

• Guilt has no power, it’s our decision for guilt that has power. When you recognize you put the guilt there, you recognize the guilt is not the problem.

• When we recognize the world holds nothing that we want, then we are ready to say there must be a better way.

• Nothing here will give us the peace of God.

• Realizing nothing here works is what motivates us to finally choose differently. As long as we think form works, or might work, we’ll be focused on the body and not the mind.

• The lesson is not that the world sucks, that nothing here works — the lesson is that the decision making power of the mind does work.

• Practice: We are too afraid of direct learning, so we use indirect learning; we use the world to get back to the mind.

• The world is an outside of picture of an inward condition, so I need the world to get me back to the mind, it’s the only way I can access the unconscious activity of the mind. Unconscious activity = decision making activity. This is the oly value of the world… to learn everything here is a projection of what’s going on in my unconscious mind. This changes everything. Now I have hope.

• There is no greater joy than truly knowing you are forgiven. Nothing here comes close, and nothing here will give us that.

• Practice: The way out of all suffering is to see the problem as it is (chose wrong teacher in the mind), not the way you set it up (problem in the world).