Forgiveness and Relationships Articles

“Shadow figure” is a term that occurs in A Course in Miracles nine times, in four different Text sections. It is a little-known Course concept, but a very important one. We can readily see the truth in this concept, yet the Course takes it to depths that are...

How do we respond to strangers? We usually maintain our reserve. We might be polite even while we remain unconcerned. And we are probably at least a little afraid. Behind this person's face might lurk a sick mind, even a criminal mind. Who knows what would happen if...

Forgiveness practice is Workbook practice and vice versa. All practices in the Course are merely different forms of forgiveness. Forgiveness is the core of all of them. Every difficulty in our lives is a forgiveness lesson. Be willing to practice forgiveness every...

This article was originally written for a column I did in Jon Mundy's Inspiration magazine. This column is about ACIM dialogue, and since it's pointless to dialogue about things that we already agree on, I thought I would bring up something that hardly anyone agrees...

Being treated specially and made to feel special is a good thing. Having a special partner is a good thing. Other people can make me happy. Some people can give me more than others. It matters what people think of me. It matters how people treat me. I can be treated...

In an earlier article entitled "The Course on Childhood," I characterized childhood as a state of manifold need. Then, in Part I of this article (A Better Way, issue #23), I said that in response, we could choose to see this state as a sin, or see it as a call for...

Pick a particularly significant person in your life, ideally one with whom you've had a fair amount of friction and/or frustration. What role, in your mind, was this person supposed to play? What function was he or she meant to fulfill? If this person fulfilled that...

I did a CCC class yesterday on the ego's use of the past. More specifically, it was on what the Course calls "shadow figures." These are our images/memories of key people from our past who didn't give us the love and special treatment we wanted. I tried to make the...

I hear it from so many quarters: In A Course in Miracles, we can forgive because the world we see is our own subjective creation, and therefore has no power to really hurt us. I hear this in so many forms. We are the storyteller. The world is merely the mirror of our...

I am practicing Lesson 198 today ("Only my condemnation injures me"), and had an insight I wanted to share. One of the interesting things about this lesson is that it openly says that forgiveness is an illusion (2:10). What does that mean? This puzzling idea has...

What is the core teaching of A Course in Miracles? Is there something fairly specific we can latch onto and that can guide our whole journey to God? Discussion: We all know that forgiveness is the central teaching of the Course, but we need to make it more specific...

I recently came across a moving story of human kindness. I encountered it in a remarkable book that I would recommend to anyone. The book is entitled War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, by veteran war correspondent and former divinity student Chris Hedges. The title...