Notes on the Text of A Course in - Stephen Wingate

Main Theme: The idols of specialness as substitutes
for God's love. And awakening from the dream of
separation.
We start by looking at the Atonement principle.
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This is the Atonement principle: God is constant.
Love is constant. Truth is constant, and truth is
whole. There is no compromise at all in God. It is
impossible for even a tiny mad idea to arise in the
mind of perfect wholeness and oneness. God's
oneness and wholeness are represented in the perfect
non-dual thought system of the Course. God in His
perfection has nothing at all to do with the world.
Heaven and the world represent two mutually
exclusive states. Imperfection has no place in God's
perfection. Fear and hate have no place in God's
love. Separation has no place in non-duality.
•
The tiny mad idea that separation from God is
possible does not change God's perfect oneness. The
world of change "passes by" the eyes of God
unnoticed and unseen. It is crucial to understand that
God has absolutely nothing to do with the world. The
ego needs to somehow involve God in the world, as
God's acknowledgment verifies the existence of the
ego and its world. If God gives reality to the illusory
world, He is as insane as we are. If God is insane, to
whom can we turn for salvation? And that is why the
ego tries to involve God in the world; to keep us
identified with the body, imprisoned in the world
with no way back to the love, wholeness and sanity
of the true God.
•
The ego's uses idols as substitutes for God's love and
wholeness.
•
The ego's supreme idol is the body. The body is not
life, but a symbol of the ego's desire for separate
existence. Life is infinite, eternal, universal spirit;
life is not limited to a body. God is eternal life. By
choosing to believe we are separate from God's
eternal life, we have chosen to identify with the
symbol of death.
•
Before the beginning we are whole and complete as
God's one Son in Heaven; but that was not good
enough, we wanted more than everything. And here
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE AWAKENING
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we find ourselves in the world we made trying to
find everything in nothing.
•
The path from the hell we made to our true Home in
Heaven is the path of Atonement through
forgiveness.
•
Being identified as an ego in a separate body, every
day is a life and death battle with others in the world,
and ultimately with God. Believing we are separate
from God, we have made our lives a living hell; until
we choose again. We have made ourselves a
prisoner, locked behind the bars of the body, at the
mercy of a vicious and brutal jail keeper we call the
world.
•
The separate body and world are nothing. Believing
the body and world are something, we suffer. It is
that simple; and it is our choice.
•
We prefer our dreams of idols (special love and hate
relationships) because in the presence of God's love
we believe we would disappear.
•
There is no love between two people; there is no
peace between two countries; there is no salvation in
the world of bodies that was made to solidify and
guarantee we all remain separate, fearful and in
conflict. We were born in the thought of separation
and conflict with God, and the world is a perfect
projection of our separation and conflict. There is no
love, no peace, no happiness, and no salvation in the
world. There is no love in hate. There is no joy in
suffering. There is no Truth in illusion. There is no
Heaven in hell.
•
The mind is the cause of separation. The body and
world are effects. To heal the belief in separation and
return to wholeness and love, we must let go of the
illusory effects and get back to the real cause in the
mind. Wholeness, love, peace and joy are of the
mind; not the world of special relationships.
•
Our fear of finding the wholeness and love of God is
that we will lose ourselves. What is this self we fear
we will lose?
•
The ego uses the death of the body as proof the
separation from God is real, but the body was never