Understanding A Course in Miracles

Are you your body?
Or are you something much more?
Below is the video and full transcript for Notes to Special Theme #14: What Am I? from the Understanding A Course in Miracles Workbook commentary. This theme invites a direct inquiry into identity and gently leads the mind beyond fear, limitation, and separation.
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Video Transcript
Notes to Special Theme #14: What AM I?
Covers ACIM Workbook Lessons 351–360
In truth, there is just the One Self. You are an indivisible part of that One. The Father is Cause. The Son is the Father’s Effect. The Holy Spirit is the link that connects the two sides of one indivisible coin called God. There is no separation for in that Trinity there is just a Oneness of All That Is.
Yet, within our split minds that perceive rather than know, we think in terms of duality and therefore, see ourselves as God’s Creation, an Effect of the Thought of God. As such, you are God’s Son, complete, healed and whole. You are a reflection of God’s eternal love. In you, love is perfected, fear impossible and joy established without opposite. You are the completion of God.
As the Christ, you are perfect, whole and complete. You are the home of God, holy and sinless as God Himself. In time, you help the Holy Spirit reawaken sleeping minds that currently look upon a sinful world that requires redemption. Through your forgiveness, you save your world. Through your forgiveness, you reawaken sleeping minds to the truth that they, like you, are the Christ.
We are the messengers of God and speak for God with love in our hearts. We have changed our egoic mind from fear-based thinking to the realization that we are only love. Now, endowed with the vision of Christ, we see the world free of all thoughts of sin and recognize everything as kind and good. In time, we are the bringers of salvation. Yet, in Heaven, we will disappear into the heart of God and remain eternally one with the indivisible One Self.
In time, our purpose is to change our world of perception from a witness for the false to a witness for the truth. Because of our minds’ erroneous beliefs about the existence of lack, limitation, sin and separation, our minds have created a false ego for everything that it envisions. Time allows us to correct those erroneous beliefs about ourselves and our world. Since time provides us the opportunity to change our minds, we can now deliberately choose to see all God’s creations as innocent, sinless and forever one with God. God and the Holy Spirit know the world as sinless. Who are we to argue with God and defend our mind’s belief in fear?
Fear arises any time we believe that we lack the creative power to handle a given situation. Whenever we fail to answer either of the following two questions correctly, fear will raise its ugly head.
The first question is. What am I?
The second question is. What do I value and why?
Previously, we discussed the second question. What do I value and why? We said that the miracle temporarily corrects your mind’s mistaken answers to either of the two above questions. The Holy Spirit uses the miracle to reframe your misperception and move your mind from victim consciousness to responsibility consciousness and the truth.
Obviously, if you fail to see yourself as Christ, perfect, whole and complete, you have answered the first question, what am I, incorrectly. Because of this, you will find yourself in a state of constant fear.
When you perceive that you are a limited ego-body with needs, you will value something because you will believe that obtaining that item will make or improve your safety, survival or happiness. As long as an item is perceived to be something outside of your mind’s control, you will continue to see yourself as a victim.
In the illusion of time, you have come here to reawaken to the truth that you are not the body but are free. You are still as God created you, part of the indivisible One Self. Nothing sources your individuated experience but you and nothing has the ability to rob you of your inner peace unless you choose to allow it. In time and space, your mind rules your world of perception.
In this playschool of time, you are an infinite focus of consciousness. You are a feedback loop that can witness the effects of the choices that you are making in the depth of your mind that rests within the Mind of God. Therefore, each thought is a vibration of creation to communicate to the world in an attempt to experience communion with all life. This feedback loop provides the learning experiences that you desire.
In reality you are perfect spirit, unaffected by anything. You have been given the full power to choose and to create your experiences as you would have them be. You are not the egoic part of your mind that perceives itself to be a little “s” self. Instead, you are 100% responsible for your feelings and all that you call into your awareness. Your mind gives all the meaning to your world through its power of interpretation.
You are the creator of your world of perception. You are the decision-maker that determines what you desire to call into your awareness. You write the mental program that determines the beliefs that will govern how you will interact with life.
You, as decision-maker, ask the question, “What am I?” You, as the decision-maker then fill in the answer. The answer to the question, “What am I?” forms the basis for your beliefs that become the thought system which governs and limits what you believe you are and how you are capable of relating to your world.
Your ego is your current answer to the question, what am I. The ego, like a computer, can only run programs. A computer has no power to write the program. Yet, when we choose to forget that our mind originally decided to write the program that became our ego, it will appear as if our mind is powerless to control our experiences.
It will seem as if you are a victim of outside powers that are beyond your mind’s control. Yet, these experiences are the natural effect of which mental programs you choose to write and run. You have just failed to remember that your mind writes, holds, runs and projects the images that comprise your private world of individuated perception.
These images seem to be caused by some mysterious external force. Yet, it is your mind that is projecting these images. It is the same mind that forgot it ran the program that also made the observation. Forgetting that your mind is the computer operator, it appears that the events being viewed on the screen of consciousness have no relationship with your mind. You now believe that you can only respond to what you observe on the screen of consciousness rather than simply choosing to run a different program.
By deciding to forget that you control the mental input, your faulty memory leads you into victim consciousness. Only when you remember that you are the decision-maker can you realize that you also have the power to choose differently. You can choose differently by deciding to stop arguing for your littleness and instead follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit Who knows the correct answer to the question, what am I.
Why not make that decision today?
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— Tom Wakechild
Understanding A Course in Miracles