Hello there,
As we approach the beginning of a new year with CIM, I'd like to share the following helpful glossary of terms. So often, as new students come into class, I find that they recoil from such words as "Atonement" or "salvation." They've had negative experiences with these concepts and are inclined to flee from any repeat performances.
Though many Course concepts are beyond what words can capture, our reality is that words are the primary vehicle for communication in the physical world. And, as Course reminds us, words are just symbols of symbols. Each of us has a different set of responses to the same set of words, so this makes meaningful communication difficult--particularly written communication, such as we will be doing. At least in verbal communication, we can stop and clarify as need arises. The good news is that the blog will allow you to ask questions when you want or need clarification.
So here's a list of often-used terms in CIM. If you have questions, please let me know.
Namaste,
Jo
Glossary of Terms from A Course in Miracles
Abbreviations:
ACIM=A Course in Miracles
T=from the Text
WB=from the Workbook
MT=from the Manual for Teachers
Note: Pay attention to capitalizations within sentences. Ex: “Here is the only ‘sacrifice’ You ask of Your beloved Son.” The capital You (and Your) refers to God. The capitalization of Son refers to the Christ within you.
Abundance: In our oneness with God, we have everything. This refers to spiritual rather than material gifts. Material gifts, however, may follow. (“Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.”
Attack: Projection of guilt onto others. A call for love.
Atonement: At-one-ment with God. The process of undoing our seeming separation from God.
Attraction of Guilt: The ego’s desire for guilt, which perpetuates its world of illusion through fear.
Authority Problem: The attempt to usurp the power of God. The belief that we can be the author of ourselves and our world. (The belief that we have attacked God is the hidden source of all guilt.)
Body: An illusory prison that seems to wall the mind off from all else. The ego’s temple, communication medium, and learning device.
Cause: God. God is the Cause of all that is real.
Christ: The essence or spiritual make-up of each of us. The Christ nature that is in each of us makes up the body of the Christ, which is the totality of the Sonship.
Christ Vision: True perception.
Consciousness: The part of the mind that perceives (illusions) as opposed to the Christ Mind—the mind that knows (Truth). “Consciousness is the domain of the ego.” (T-3.IV.2:2)
Crucifixion: The symbol of the ego. (T-13.II.6:1)What the ego does to every Son of God that believes in it.
Death: The erroneous belief that eternal life can be extinguished.
Devil: The ego. The self we made and believe we have become, which opposes God and is the sole cause of all suffering and “evil.”
Dream: All experiences the mind has within the world of time and space.
Ego: The self you think you are—a separate mind, living in a separate body.
Extension: The natural dynamic of the mind whereby ideas are expressed outward (thought without leaving the mind) thus causing effects after their nature and likeness.
Eyes of Christ: Spiritual “eyes” in us, which see with true perception.
Face of Christ: The face of innocence. (Not the actual face of Christ.)
Forgiveness: The overlooking of all error you and others made as a result of using the ego thought system. The realization that you and all others are guiltless and sinless in God’s sight. Giving up the false perception that your brother has done something to you and that you are therefore justified in resenting or punishing him.
Form/Content: Form is the shape something takes (words, images, behavior). Content is the essential meaning form is meant to communicate. The ego focuses on form, believing that is where solutions lie. On the form level, all lessons appear to be different. ACIM says the content beneath all forms is one of two things: love or a cry for love. The “solution” is to respond accordingly.
Function: Our function, as our Creator’s, is extension. All guilt and sadness come from not fulfilling our function. In heaven, our function is creation. On earth, our function is healing, which comes from extending forgiveness.
Giving: Giving and receiving, in ACIM, are synonyms. “All that I give is given unto myself.”
God: Our Creator. God is Love. “God has no name” (W-pI.184.12:1), so presumably, we may choose whatever word symbol for Him that has meaning for us—Allah, Father, Mother, Elohim, etc.). Being omnipotent and all encompassing, the Creator can have no opposite; therefore, anything not of Love is an illusion. God has no gender and no form and creates only the non-material, like Himself. God only gives and holds nothing back. When His children seemed to attack Him and descend into error, He did not retaliate but instead gave them the Holy Spirit to help them find their way back home. Though God is not a person, ACIM uses the image of Father to convey the deep and abiding love God feels for us. The Course is fraught with passages that express this ineffable love and dispel the notion that God is an “impersonal force.” He could be said to be impersonal only in the sense that He shows no favoritism. He does not hide himself but is totally accessible and can be known by all through direct revelation. The ego’s view of God is a god of unpredictable beneficence and vengeance. Since we feel we have separated from God, and therefore usurped His power, we fear His punishment. The intense guilt we feel at the core of us, we project onto our brothers. It is this process of projection that causes us to see God’s perfect creation “through a glass darkly.”
Grace: The traditional definition means an undeserved gift from God that saves or sanctifies us. The ACIM definition is the heavenly state in which everything is freely given to the guiltless Son of God (you).
Great Rays: The reflection of God’s Love or Light. In the perceptual world, they represent the light of Christ, which is in all of us.
Guilt: All guilt feelings (anger, inadequacy, fear, not being good enough) come from the erroneous belief that we have separated from God. In reality, this never happened, so in “Reality” we have nothing to forgive or feel guilty about.
Happiness/The Happy Dream: The state of altered perception/joy achieved by knowing and extending who we really are.
Having/Being: In the world of illusion, what you have is different from what you are. In Reality, what you have is what you are, and what you are is everything.
Healing: The undoing of sickness (the illusion of separation). It has nothing to do with the body because the body is never sick. As sickness is in the mind, healing must also take place there.
Heaven: The state of being aware of oneness with God.
Hell: The state of believing one is separate from God and therefore vulnerable to “outside” or “evil” forces.
Holy Instant: The instant we choose to listen to the Holy Spirit’s Voice rather than the ego. Being in the “now,” with no guilt from the past or worries about the future.
Holy Relationship: A reversal of the “special relationship,” in which two people come together to complete each other. In the holy relationship we recognize our own completeness and join not out of dependency but out of the desire to extend Love.
Holy Spirit: The communication link between God and his separated sons. The Voice for God that continually speaks to us though we may not listen. HS sees and understands our illusions but leads us past them to the Truth.
Idols: Substitutes for the love we feel God cannot or will not give us. What we believe will restore the joy we experienced in God and lost in the separation.
Illusion: Anything not of God. The foundational illusion is the belief we have separated from God.
Jesus: Our elder brother who has chosen to share his experiences with us so that we can reclaim our true identity as he did. Jesus dictated the Course to Helen Schucman. Whenever the word “I” appears, it is referring to Jesus. The word “Jesus” is not used exclusively or interchangeably with the word “Christ,” because Christ is in each of us. Jesus does not portray himself in the Course as special or superior to anyone else, only as a guide.
Journey Without Distance: Awakening from our dream of separation from God.
Judgment: The process by which the ego decides who and what deserves special treatment or punishment and thereby surrounds itself with those illusions it thinks will support it. ACIM says judgment is not our function because we cannot see rightly to judge justly. Judgment is the function of the Holy Spirit, who sees everyone as the whole and holy creation of God.
Knowledge: The condition of knowing Reality through direct and total union with it. Knowledge and perception are mutually exclusive, for perception involves a separation between the knower and the known. This makes certainty impossible. Yet knowledge is completely certain and without question.
Last Judgment: The final healing of our erroneous thoughts about ourselves. This judgment is done through us by God based on His proclamation that “what is false is false and what is true has never changed.” (W-pII.10.1:1) We are still His holy Son, forever sinless, changeless, and pure.
Level Confusion: Confusing the three levels of body, mind, and spirit by thinking correction applies to a level other than the mind. Spirit is pure and needs no correction. The body cannot make errors since it has no volition of its own and no power to hurt the mind or make it happy. The mind is the only level that needs correction—the correction of its faulty thinking.
Magic: The power to save or heal that we ascribe to our own selves, to special people, or various external things (ex. Medicine, psychotherapy, etc.) These entities have no real power to save or heal us, for salvation is of the mind and comes from a change of mind. Like the stage magician, all these devices can do is rearrange illusions. (Note: ACIM, however, does not advise against the use of medicine or medical procedures as long as the mind remains too fearful to recognize its true identity as the invulnerable child of God.)
Making: The unreal counterpart of creating. The process by which we produce illusions. Creations are eternal. Everything else is “made” by man (ex. Gardens, cities, wars).
Miracle: The love and willingness behind a choice for correction of error thoughts. A divine healing of human perception in which the “laws” of the ego are temporarily suspended. This is carried out by the Holy Spirit, Who shifts our perception from false to true and thereby grants us instantaneous deliverance from the illusions of this world. It is a correction of error thoughts, not a change in what a condition or situation appears to be. However, a change, sometimes visible, sometimes not, always occurs as a result of a miracle. This change occurs naturally through the universal laws of cause and effect. Both the miracle and the atonement are correction of YOUR MIND about who, what and where you and all others are in Reality.
Perception: The process of trying to know something while separate from it by interpreting it with our physical senses.
Projection: The ego’s distorted use of extension, which seems to reverse cause and effect. In extension, an idea goes forth from our mind without leaving it, thus linking our mind with the minds we extend to. In projection, we try to throw an idea out of our mind onto an “external” world. This makes the idea appear to be outside us, an independent cause with power over us. (Ex. Idea: “I deserve to be punished.” My brother obliges by attacking me. Sickness obliges by crippling me.) Projection makes perception.
Reality: God’s perfect creation.
Real Thoughts: The thoughts we think with God.
Real World (aka The Happy Dream): The world of happiness and joy revealed by forgiveness and looked upon with true perception.
Resurrection: The rising of the mind from the ego’s dream of death.
Revelation: God revealing knowledge through direct, wordless experience.
Salvation: Healing the illusion of being separate from God and all the human ills that come from it.
Second Coming: The collective return of our awareness as the Son of God
Separation, the: The event in which we dreamed of separation from God, which gave rise to the entire phenomenal universe, including time, space, and form.
Sickness: Wrong-mindedness. Sickness is made by projecting onto the body our mental dis-ease.
Sin: Error.
Son of God: The true identity of every living thing.
Sonship: The sum total of all God created. All the seeming parts of the Son of God.
Special Function: The special form or vehicle given to each individual of the one function of extending forgiveness. Our special way of serving and exalting the Sonship.
Special Relationships: Relationships in which we try to have a special arrangement with someone special so that we may receive special treatment and feel more special ourselves. There are no special Sons of God. They are all equal. The separation was an attempt to be special—to usurp the power of God. The Holy Spirit would not deprive us of our special relationships but would transform them into holy relationships through forgiveness.
Truth: Transcendental reality, beyond space and time. Truth was created by God. It is total, all-inclusive, and changeless. The truth is perfection, joy, and safety. All else is illusion.
Will of God: God wills only eternal love, happiness, and oneness
Wrong-Mindedness: The state of mind based on the ego’s thought system. The source of false perception.
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