Many years later, I was led to A Course in Miracles [ACIM], and after going through the Text back in 1978, I found on Page 87 (page 95 in the numbered Foundation for Inner Peace edition, CH 6, I 15), under Chapter 6, The Lessons of love and the Message of the Crucifixion, where Jesus speaks very personally in the "first person" of his experience with his own Apostles, and comes back to correct the record of  his relationship with "Judas" his brother and an Equal Son of God. Equality and inclusion invites Atonement automatically.

Even as it is impossible, yet we believe in it, as we believe in guilt. Guilt equates to "betrayal" or "denial" which is as total as Love is. So the lesson of Judas is for our own healing, for while I see betrayal and guilt in another, to protect my own rusty halo, Love is denied and what is not love is murder, as Jesus says. 

Continued in FULL ARTICLE 

                                                  ~*~

*[FROM HIS WEBSITE] H. David Fishman has been a leading teacher of A Course In Miracles for over 25 years. He has used its principles of spiritual psychology as a basis for relationship counseling.  David is author of Into Oneness, Thoughts and Prayers on the Way and is currently hosting meetings on the Internet at ACIM GATHER. For many years, David served as Commissioner of Human Rights for the city of Yonkers, New York and recently established the One Mind Foundation.

David can be reached at hdfishman@aol.com 

Time flows along like a river taking us along like guests floating in its current like fallen leaves. When I look back at how the eddies and rapids pushed me into new territory unseen around the bend of the river, I am always amazed at where I have ended up and excited about what will come next.

The books entitled "A Course in Miracles" floated into my life in 1976 when I was searching for something other than a religious upbringing that just didn't fit. Ever since then its philosophy and discipline have become the foundation for my spiritual, emotional and physical health. Then, in 1977, I was introduced to Judith Skutch (Whitson) who encouraged me to do something for children, and so the Holy Spirit guided me to write The Childrens' Material, which, since 1978, has been recognized internationally as a children's version of the Course.( This past year the original material was divided into two age appropriate books: Book - Little Lamb's Big Book, with large illustrations and new color and color projects. Plus, Help is on the Way!, a complete novel that includes within it the workbook, for preteens, a much forgotten group when it comes to spiritual studies.)

The river, however was always pushing me through the rapids, and by the 1980's I had been setting up groups and national conferences on the Course around the U.S. as well as Canada and Australia for the now thousands of its students studying these books. In 1985 another leaf floated by and I asked a good friend and guest speaker at these conferences to join me in writing a small comparative booklet on the Twelve Steps and A Course in Miracles. J.R. Richmond and myself titled it Side by Side. (The newest edition with Spanish translation.)From that time forward my talks revolved around applying the Course in the healing of relationships, or what was becoming known as the area of co-dependency recovery.

Like most families, the flowing water sometimes becomes turbulent with swirling rapids. My husband and I discovered .....

 Continued in Full Article

* Bette Cundiff has been a teacher of A Course in Miracles since 1977 and has traveled throughout the US, Canada and Australia setting up conferences which teach about forgiveness. She is author of the internationally recognized children's version of A Course in Miracles, "The Children's Material" and has also produced a full miracles course in a novel for the young reader "Help is on the Way!". In addition Bette is author of "Side by Side, the Twelve Steps and A Course in Miracles". Many of her books have been translated into Spanish. Bette's blog for more info:
http://www.miracleexperiences.blogspot.com/
 

 

Looking back now, my path to A Course in Miracles probably all started in 1969 when I accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior, under the influence of the Campus Crusade for Christ. However, after joining a Christian brotherhood of aspiring monks, where I was daily quizzed on how many Bible verses I had memorized and could recite verbatim, I was totally confused by it all. Their version of reality just didn't sit well with me. I felt like a parrot of Bible verses, that I didn't even begin to understand, or the town crier that nobody wanted to hear. Jesus would show me more, much more. 

As divine synchronicity would have it, I ingested a hallucinogen that resulted in a near death experience the day after Christmas, 1970. When I was in the black void, with only the consciousness that "I Am", George Harrison's song My Sweet Lord began playing.  That was my voice singing to God, not George's! Soon a brilliant white light began appearing out of the darkness, as my soul sang "I really want to see you Lord". Then somebody started to emerge out of the light. This Holy One oscillated between masculine and feminine. As I'd been praying to Jesus, I thought it might be him, but without a beard. I began crying from the depths of my soul, as the Holy One communicated telepathically into my heart. I knew this Being to be nothing but pure love. Then it was over. I was shot back into my body, hearing the words to a new song telling me "it's been a long time coming, it's going to be a long time gone." How true that has been.

A year later, I saw the cover of Autobiography of a Yogi. It was Paramahansa Yogananda who had come to me! Next came meeting Baba Ram Dass, who confirmed that I wasn't crazy and stated that Yogananda had appeared to many young spiritual seekers on drugs. He also autographed my copy of Be Here Now. My next decade was spent being an aspiring yogi and practicing Yogananda's Self-Realization Fellowship lessons and exercises, chanting, meditating and receiving initiation into Kriya yoga. Yogananda's path and linage of gurus brought the much needed clarity for me to understand Jesus and Christianity better. Yogananda also showed me the essential truth behind the oneness of all religions.And he brought me to Babaji, the Mahavatar who sent him to America back in the 1920s. Ever since I heard the name Babaji, I knew I knew Him. He and Jesus work together, behind the scenes, in the cosmic scheme of things. And Babaji was to be the next step in my ongoing spiritual evolution. However, I did not know at this point that He had supposedly manifested a body again and was residing in the small village of Haidakhan, in northern India. That would come later, along with the mystery and myth of this current manifestation.

After hearing Bhagavan Das sing, I bought a dotara and began chanting mantras to God daily. This simple, ancient two- stringed instrument is easy to play and lets one follow the drone sound into silence. At this point, I purchased my own place in the woods and met a man who'd lived with Babaji. He conducted a Vedic fire ceremony that Babaji had taught him to initiate my new abode. I questioned and grilled him repeatedly, asking if this new Babaji was the same entity Yogananda had written about. Yes, one and the same but peoples egos still question His true identity. Babaji's new Kriya yoga was the path of truth, simplicity and love while performing karma yoga- work - and keeping one's mind on God, through repetition of the ancient mantra Om Namaha Shivaya. Babaji stated that this mantra alone was more powerful than a thousand atomic bombs and His 1-800 number. I began at this point seriously doing japa, or the repetition of the mantra on 108 rudraksha beads, to get this vibration into my sub consciousness. I also learned many ways to chant it on my dotara. With all of this going on, I bought A Course in Miracles and began the daily lessons immediately. I tried to make sense of the Text but got nowhere; each sentence bogged me down and had to be re-read over too many times to assimilate. I was just too young, I told myself. I was thirty-three. I'd deal with this Text later, someday, maybe.

Then after a year of being married, our house burns down- a real karmic fire ceremony. In the ashes, untouched by the fire, was a picture of Babaji and His cymbals from Haidakhan. Talk about miracles! Next, was the unexpected news that .....