I went to see Helen Schucman, the scribe for ACIM. Helen’s advice was to let my girlfriend go. She always left the door open, “You can still get together again if it is really important.” I’m sure she knew that day would never come. The best advice was to let the relationship go. It took a whole summer of working that one lesson before I was able to see peace.

— Mark Twain

      One of the things I love about the Course is that it is uncompromising, in it’s teaching which is one of the reasons, it works so well. The Course is relentless. It never gives in. It is in not ambiguous, indefinite, or wishy washy in any way. For example, the Course is persistent in trying to help us to see our responsibility in our decision making. Indeed, the ability to decide is, according to the Course – our last remaining freedom. (ACIM 12: VII, 9:1).

      I had a wonderful experience in 2001, after I got cancer. I had an operation to remove a tumor about the size of a lemon in my colon. The next day the oncologist told me that the cancer had spread and the following day at 4 a.m., I had an “awakening.” You could not say I was enlightened. We think of enlightenment as a permanent state. While it would have been wonderful to have “held” to this awakening, I did not. I was able, however, to hold to it for some time. I describe this experience in some detail in Missouri Mystic.

      Cancer gave me the opportunity of looking at death and I decided that it did not matter if I died. I decided to just let go, to not exist – to be nobody. Accepting this reality as “nobody” opened the door to an awareness of simple beingness and beyond that beingness, all-beingness. This was a wonderfully freeing experience! Dying means letting go and I decided to let go, to let everything go -- goals, ambitions, things, the body – everything. The hardest part was the thought of letting go of my wife, daughter, mother, sister – my friends. Still, I let go and in this deep letting go, I understood what I had previously understood only intellectually, what Buddha meant when he said the loss of desire is the key to enlightenment. This experience didn’t leave me right away, so I was sad this past summer when I let something take my peace from me.

     There is a concept in Tibetan Buddhism known as “Shempa” a shempa is a place where we are “hooked.” It’s something that gets under our skin, that works its way into our mind and we find after a while we can’t stop thinking about it and letting it go is difficult. Shempas are little irritants that work away at the mind. They can, if nourished, become very strong and powerful. A shempa is an addiction to a way of thinking – a (seemingly) justified projection. The ego speaks first and loudest and this past year as the readers of Miracles know, a shempa came my way and I let it take my peace away.

    The last church I served before retiring from the parish ministry was Interfaith Fellowship in New York City. I would sometimes get to church early and go to a corner coffee shop to look over my notes. The coffee shop had a U-shaped counter. One day, I noticed a homeless man sitting directly across from me with a cup of coffee in front of him talking to himself. There were few people around at the time. He was talking so loudly that I thought that if I leaned forward and listened carefully, I could hear what he was saying. Most people keep their thoughts to themselves. For some street people, however, the thought goes all the way to the tongue and finds utterance through the mouth. I could not make out everything he was saying but he was practicing a speech he was going to give to a judge or a brother or someone. It was clear that he was building a case and defending himself. Did you ever drive around in your car thinking about some shempa, building a case for yourself, practicing a speech?

      So this last year, a shempa came around and the more I looked at it, the more evidence I found to support this shempa, the less I could ignore it. I could have chosen peace, but the evidence poured in and I let this shempa get past the mind and the brain -- all the way to the tongue.

Henri Suse (Medieval Mystic)

      After my experience with cancer and the awakening that came with it, I was clear that I should seek not to change the world (i.e. other people). I’ve been saying let other people be who they are for a long time. While there are subtle loving ways we can influence others and thus affect the world, seeking to change the world and/or other people by pointing out what is wrong with them, does not lead to peace. So, this shempa came up and got in my face as a kind of test as to whether or not I was there yet. Could I look this thing in the face and not let it distract me? Could I remain silent in the face of what I knew?

      The ego often plays the role of Sneaky Pete and just when we think we’ve gained some freedom, it sneaks in the back door and grabs us and we catch ourselves making a judgment. One day I was driving, listening to a tape of one of my old sermons. I heard myself say something and then thought “what a crock?” I had said something that was blatantly judgmental. Didn’t I know at that time that that was a judgmental statement?

      Jesus in the Gospels calls upon us to “watch” to be “vigilant.” What we’re to be vigilant of is this thing we call an ego, and all of its silly tricks. There is a section in the Ur text of ACIM which talks about “the unwatched mind.” It asks us to watch our minds and to be aware of how often we allow for some distraction, some shempa to come take our peace away. According to the four obstacles to peace in the Course, the first obstacle is our desire to be rid of it. Notice the ease with which we throw our peace away. Some one cuts us off on the highway, a little perturbation comes along, someone says something with the wrong intonation and zoom, peace of mind is gone out the window.

   The Course is about responsibility. It’s about being absolutely responsible for absolutely everything that comes our way. This way we can’t complain and moan and say, “Look how the world has treated me.”

ACIM T 21. II. 2-1-7

      One of the most uncompromising lines in the Course is: Anger is never justified. It does not make any difference if we are right or wrong about what we are angry about, what’s wrong is that we are angry. Thus anger is “always” a mistake. When we are angry and cannot see the face of Christ in our brothers, the best advice is “I need do nothing.” This past year, despite what I knew, it would have been best to have done nothing, to just let the situation play itself out on its own without saying anything. Truth has a way of making itself known without our help.

We teach what we need to learn and sometimes our teaching is done “out loud” and in public, though it would be better if it were done more quietly. It is possible to just read ACIM and “get it” without having to experience why it is true. That is not the usual way we learn things in this world. Getting it is one thing, living it is another, and you can easily say that we don’t really “get it” unless we actually put it into practice.

      The Course is trying to help us hear one voice only -- “the inner voice of reason.” In this case, the inner voice of reason was drowned out by the ego’s voice of outrage. Outrage comes from the Anglo-French ut-rage, or outer or uter – like other. It’s the other that’s the problem. To be outraged, we must feel that either we or others have been injured or insulted. Yet the Course teaches.

ACIM 14, III, 8:2

The movie The Secret, points out that it’s how we think that brings into our lives the various things that we see. Does what I see make me outraged? Is there ever a time when we could be justifiable outraged? No, Nunca, Never. A mystic cannot be insulted. You cannot be insulted. Only an ego can be insulted and we’re not egos. Anyone can say all manner of evil against us falsely and it will have no affect on us if we know who we are in truth.

ACIM, T. 4. 6:1-5

      The Course is about raising our awareness to the point where we can both see and learn how to say “no thank you” to the demands of the ego. We need vigilance. According to the Course, we are far too vigilant for the ego and hardly vigilant at all for the right mind.

      One of the ancient “apocryphal” books which never got included in the Bible is The Life of Adam and Eve. In this recounting of the story, the devil, disguised as an angel, appears to Eve to tempt her. So this devil, shempa thing that does not exist came along dressed up as an angel named righteousness. One of the translations for “Satan” is the separator or the divider. According to the Course, there is no hell and there is no devil. That is, there is no external force which is trying to get control over our souls. Within this world of illusion, however, there “appears” to be something we call “temptation.” The Course makes 72 references to temptation or temptations. The ego is analogous to the devil, though -- just as there is no devil, there is also no ego. Within the illusion, however, it certainly “seems” that way. Our task is to be free of this devil thing, this shempa, this ego.

and "correct" them.

His ego is always wrong, no matter what it says or does.

ACIM, 9 III

     It is always a mistake to try and fix another persons ego. Egos can’t be fixed. Egos don’t need to be fixed. They don’t exist. The task is to discover who one is in truth not who one is as an ego which has no reality in it.

      1. First of all, if we see the problem in our brother’s ego, we must be seeing through our

      own and this is blinding.

      2. Furthermore, when we attack, what we are attacking is another ego. How is that ego

      going to respond? It is going to get angry and defensive and attack back.

      Only someone who is very mature will be able to listen to criticism, find the value in it, and then think about what they might do to correct the situation by changing something within themselves. This is a rare experience. 99.99% of the time, when we offer up our critiques to others, we’re not going to get through to their right mind – we’re going to be hitting on their ego and the ego is going to respond the same way egos always have responded -- with defense and attack. Thus it is that attack never works and safety lies in defenselessness. Correction, the Course tells us, is at another level. The only way we can help a brother is to be able to get through to the Holy Spirit within. We must speak to their right mind. This is the only part of him which is sane.

ACIM, T-9.III.5.

      How many times do I have to get slapped in the face with reality in order to see it? So, “this seeming thing” which does not exist, this “shempa” led my mind down a mine shaft of righteousness. Anger is an interesting, often not so subtle, thing. As this shempa began to rise, I did not think at first that I was angry. There was, however, annoyance and where there is smoke there is fire.

ACIM Workbook Lesson 21 2:4-6

      As long as I am in the attack mode, or the complaint mode, even the slightly “annoyed” mode, I’m blinding myself and I’ve still not learned my lesson. We use a great deal of vigilance to protect our egos; we use very little vigilance in the protection of our right mind. We can, however, be as vigilant against the ego's dictates as for them.

                                                                                                                               (ACIM, T-4. IV. 4)

ACIM, T-7, VI, 1:3

      I slipped. Two contradictory thought systems cannot share the truth. Something is true or it is not. Anger is never justified. Truth is everything.

Correct and learn, and be open to learning. You have not made truth,

but truth can still set you free.

ACIM T, III. 11:4-5

Mark Twain

       What I should have done with this shempa was to take it kindly and forgivingly by the hand to a quiet place and there given it over to the Holy Spirit for disposal. Instead, the evidence grew to the point where I could not help but think about it and like the homeless man in the coffee shop it got to my tongue and spilled out. I’m literally too old for this sort of distraction. I’ve been around too long. I’ve been working with this material for a long time and have been through enough hard knocks that I should have known better.

-- Anonymous

      They say that the more times you quit smoking, the more likely it is that someday you will actually stop. So it is with falling into judgment. I thought I was beyond such nonsense, this was a big test and I failed. I pray that if any shempa like this comes my way again, I will have enough sense not to step in it – to turn around and walk away and return again another day. If I say anything more on this topic it will be in the continued acceptance of my responsibility in this – it will not be about one of my brothers.

Peace,