A Conversation with Jeff Seibert: Embracing our challenging classrooms

Jeffrey Seibert worked closely with Kenneth and Gloria Wapnick at the Foundation for A Course in Miracles for decades. Jeff moved with the Foundation to its new location in Henderson, Nevada where he continues to teach seminar and weekly classes, also available through the Foundation’s website https://facim.org/ and https://members.facim.org/. Jeff continues to present Ken’s mind-healing message of A Course in Miracles forgiveness through the lens of his own forgiveness classrooms.

Here in the United States, we’re transitioning from the acute phase of having dealt with this pandemic since early 2020 and it’s been a lot to handle. Sometimes in the collective dream, for example in the United States and parts of Europe in World War II, people seemed to pull together in response to a perceived external threat but that has not been the case with this virus. We were already very polarized politically and the pandemic and its ramifications seemed to polarize us further along with another very contentious presidential election and social turmoil.

Could you talk about the divides and the projection of separation at the root of our perceived differences? It seems like we’re divided into two camps with completely opposing ideas even about what the problems are let alone how to solve them. Even as Course students working to learn that we’re wrong about the real cause of our reactions, we can still find ourselves feeling very judgmental and defensive. How do we use this moment in time as a classroom to learn to find a better way of relating to each other?

What you describe as being polarized seems to apply to almost any issue whether it’s about wearing masks, social distancing, getting vaccinated, moving kids back to school as we move toward returning to normal, whether and when kids should go back to school. And then you had mentioned when we were talking about doing this interview the gun violence, mass shootings and gun legislation and all the conversations around police reform, systemic racism, policies on climate change. As you say, there’s always this division.

I’ve been reflecting on it and realizing that we shouldn’t be surprised. As A Course in Miracles students, we can at least come to recognize that this world of bodies really was made to be in conflict. There isn’t any other spiritual teaching that really says that. Ken was always very, very clear that the Course tells us that is the purpose of the world, as we each try to get rid of the guilt in our mind and see it outside ourselves. Conflict is inevitable. Sometimes maybe the lid is on that a little more but now with social media and instantaneous communication we can just see the divisiveness immediately, it’s right there in front of our eyes.

As Course students, if we stay focused on those problems in the world, we’ll be lost. There is no hope. Not to say at all that we would ever want to deny that these kinds of conflicts are going on but what we really need to do is pay attention to our own reactions to whatever we may be hearing or tuning into that may be a pet peeve for ourselves, an issue in which we find ourselves taking sides. And really begin to recognize that all of this is nothing more than a smokescreen to keep that conflict in the mind hidden and keep our focus here on the world where we keep thinking, why are things like this? Well, this is the way we made them to be. When we become concerned about trying to address them at the level of the world and that’s our focus, we get caught in that desire to make the world a better dream rather than awakening from this dream of conflict.

Ken often talks about how in the mind there’s the sin, guilt and fear and we made up a world to project the guilt onto. In the same way we can say there’s the conflict in the mind because of the guilt that we believe is real. And we’re not in touch with it but we believe it’s a conflict between the self we have stolen from God who’s out to steal it back from us. So, that’s the fundamental conflict but we’ve made it unconscious and then projected it out into the world and focused on that so we don’t ever get back in touch with the choice we’re making to keep guilt real in the mind. Once we recognize we’re in conflict, we don’t want to deny whatever is going on with the world and especially not our reaction to it because that is our classroom. Recognizing that will always take us back to that same fundamental problem that I really am trying to hide from the conflict in my own mind. Again, bodies were made to be in conflict.

Most of the time we either are aware that we’re in conflict or we’re not but that’s simply because our needs are being met. And we don’t realize we’re just moving through our lives, at times thinking we’re at peace, until all of a sudden somebody says something or something doesn’t go quite right and we’re in conflict. We think it’s a reaction to what just happened but the fact is we are living so much of our lives still identified with this thought system of conflict. We just need to be able to recognize how pervasive it is, or we will mindlessly, as Ken was always asking us to recognize, feel like our upset is coming from the situations in the world. And then there is no hope of finding peace.

If anything, if we remember the world and our bodies are our classroom, the world has been giving us an even greater opportunity to recognize this because everything is just so much in our face if we pay attention to anything at all whether through conversations with family and friends, social media or the news. And of course, we can choose which news channel we want depending on what side we want to listen to and reinforce. The key is not to keep our attention focused in the world and reinforce the conflict here but to bring it back to the real source of the conflict in the mind.

The whole goal is to recognize what’s fueling these feelings. And the answer is always so simple, like you were saying, it’s this desire to be separate. We’re not being asked to give up the separation in terms of this self that we think we are but when we are willing to join with our inner, right-minded teacher, Jesus, Holy Spirit, that symbol of Love and joining in our mind, we can recognize how we’re all caught in conflict and everybody is really making the same cry for love. When we are caught in conflict, I think it’s helpful to recognize how much we want to stay in conflict, we don’t want to let the other person off the hook whether in our personal life or in the world. And then recognize the pain that we are keeping ourselves in by not asking for help with the internal conflict and guilt that is being projected.

There’s a huge attraction to it, don’t you think? This entire experience of 2020 and 2021 has given me a deeper; I don’t know if appreciation is the right word, but certainly awareness of just how attracted I am to the appearance of guilt in someone else, in others, to the belief that we do have real, opposite viewpoints. A lot of my thoughts which I recognized as ego thoughts because of the content nevertheless revolved around how I couldn’t wrap my brain around the logic of whoever the perceived “other” was. And how it didn’t add up in my view of the world, in what Ken used to refer to as the “2 + 2 = 4” (When 2 + 2 = 5) world. What they believe doesn’t add up. How can you come to that conclusion, how can you be equally educated and believe this? Whatever the “this” is, doesn’t really matter. And to really see around the pandemic and deeply entrenched and felt ideological beliefs, how life-threatening the stakes within the dream feel.

Within the dream of bodies, those stakes are real. We were constantly hearing death counts and watching people on respirators, racial injustice, murder, mass shootings and insurrection in Washington. It was really difficult to watch and then to witness new divides within ourselves that we weren’t even fully aware of. What I noticed in myself is that the Course says there’s “no hierarchy of illusions” but I felt sort of overwhelmed by the high-stakes nature of these threats to bodies and to my body, my special relationships and the more immediate circle of bodies I identify with. 

It’s so very easy to be drawn into it. To just turn on the news with all those images. And of course, the media has an investment because that’s what draws audiences but the reason it draws audiences is because we are attracted to conflict. Nobody wants to watch something with no drama. We are drawn to it even though it feels so threatening to the self we think we are. So, it’s been especially challenging to remember and to put into practice what the Course is offering and what Ken has tried to remind us about over and over again. The desire to maintain the guilt and conflict but to put it outside ourselves, that’s what the world is all about and it’s been doing a beautiful job with that over the last year or so and a few more years before. In terms of drama and things that seem hard to believe are going on in this country, depending on what your perception of what does and doesn’t work in the world is. And everyone thinks their position is reasonable and the other side is being duped. And no one realizes that, because they are taking sides and making a big deal about it, everyone is being duped—by the ego!

So, the only hope as Ken often emphasized is to take it above the battleground. We first have to remember that there is an “above the battleground” (Text 23 IV.) with Jesus/Holy Spirit in the mind because there’s absolutely no hope here at this level. But I know while watching the news over the last year or so it would seem like things were going in the right direction and there was some hope and then all of a sudden, the situation would reverse.

Like 10 minutes later!

Yes, up and down, up and down.

(Mutual laughter)

And it keeps us mindless which is the whole unconscious intention.

Right. It keeps us completely focused at this level. It is helpful to recognize how much we are still drawn to it even when it seems like it’s painful and fearful. We’re drawn to it because it keeps it outside of ourselves so we don’t have to look at it inside. The reason we don’t want to look at it inside isn’t really because it’s horrible and what we think we did to God. It’s because it isn’t anything. But when we’re identified with the ego, we don’t want to get anywhere close to that realization. And that of course is what Jesus is representing and that’s why we can go for long periods of time and forget that he’s there right beside us saying, you know, there really is another way to look at this which starts with looking at yourself differently.

You know, as you were talking, I think that the benefit in all of these challenges we’ve had over the last years and more for me as a Course student was that eventually I had to go within. There wasn’t anything “without” to reach for, depend on or trust. And we didn’t have those times of solace or distraction that help us distance ourselves or soften the awareness of our own reactions. Everything that was happening was just so much in our face. As egos we like drama in our lives up to a point but not so much that it becomes so painful that we’re forced to reach for something real within us. I found that it deepened my practice in some ways and consequently my trust in Jesus because there was such a feeling of free fall. You had to let go of any illusion of control over what seemed to be happening to the personal self, humanity. And maybe that was a good thing.

Yes, it looks like you’ve found the silver lining in all the external chaos. That’s a really helpful awareness to come to. The whole planet was going through some variation of that experience of being overwhelmed and while there was a sense that we were all in this together clearly, we had different ways of perceiving it and reacting to it. But I think it was and is an opportunity to remember we have shared interests rather than separate interests. It’s not really shared interests in saving the planet but that can be a step along the way that some people may take. But it really is to recognize how caught up in this nightmare we all are. Most people are not ready to hear it at the level of the truth the Course is asking but we can still be a reminder to others of the choice for a different inner teacher that we all have when we remember for ourselves because that does get communicated by the mind without our saying anything in those moments when we really are peaceful.

In spite of the seeming chaos and all the conflict outside us, when we’re not buying into it, that does get shared. Others may or may not change because it’s too frightening but the good news is that’s not our responsibility. We don’t have to be concerned about anybody’s reaction but our own. And that’s one of the things that makes the Course so simple. We don’t have to convert anybody else to this. We’ve got enough of a challenge allowing ourselves to be converted to Jesus’ way of looking at things.

That’s so true. And even those little moments of recognizing that my own anxiety and sense of vulnerability is shared, that everyone is feeling that even if they have different ways of experiencing it and dealing with it, are so healing. Maybe our immediate reaction is that they’re acting out in a way or denying in a way that we can’t relate to but if we’re sensitive to that vulnerability, pain and fear that comes up when we’ve identified with the ego in ourselves and choose to reach for that loving presence in the mind, we can see past the seemingly hateful defenses that might appear as attacks.

It’s easy at this level to make assumptions and believe that somehow, I’m concerned about shared interests and they’re only concerned about self-interest but the shared interest I’m focused on when I’m still caught in the dream is nevertheless that “2 + 2 = 4” that says my way is the right way and your way is the wrong way. It’s focused on the world, where we are all different, rather than on the mind, where we are all the same.

And it just gets us deeper into nowhere.

Yeah. It doesn’t matter what side I’m taking if I’ve invested in the ego thought system, I’m wrong.

Yes, exactly. I wanted to also ask you about your recent March 2021 seminar that’s available as a podcast on https://members.facim.org streaming website entitled “Happiness that Doesn’t Last Is Really Fear.” I highly recommend it to any students reading this. There’s just so much helpful content. I found the descriptions you gave about the topic and your conversation with Virginia Tucker who also has worked at the Foundation for many years really illuminating.  Of course, the recognition that the world is not bringing us the happiness we want is what launches us on a spiritual path in the first place.

I know for me it was an internal awareness that I didn’t feel loved or loving. I went through all the right motions in my relationships and tried to be a nice person but I was hyper aware of my own sense of inadequacy, lack, judgments and unkind thoughts. What invited the Course into the world was that idea expressed by Bill Thetford to Helen Schucman that “there has to be another way,” a better way, of relating to each other. So, the awareness that the world is not bringing us what we want is kind of the beginning of the spiritual journey. But even when we come to Course and we know that the Course is the answer for us, we still keep trying to have the Course and make our lives in the world work, too. I just wanted to get some of your thoughts about that and some other things that came up in that seminar.

I think I mentioned in the class that I found this theme particularly challenging for me personally. It was very helpful to take a look at how as much as I understand intellectually what the Course is telling me I still do look for happiness in the transitory and the ephemeral and want things to work here. So, for me it was a very in-depth process of uncovering all of the ego’s “gifts” and taking the realization that nothing in the world is really satisfying a little deeper in myself. For me personally it was a matter of cataloging the things I still seek after like beauty in the world, the whole idea of love, and to see how everything in this world changes, doesn’t last, and how that’s built into the system. And I can still sense the same attraction to pain. Somehow, beneath all of that, there has to be this sense that I’m just not deserving of love. Why else would I seek after that externally?

We look for value in things in form and that’s such a setup because nothing in form is going to last. What Jesus is trying to get us to recognize is that there’s a whole other experience available if we’re just willing to let go of what we’re clinging to. But the challenge is that if we don’t allow ourselves to do that then we don’t allow ourselves to have an experience of the everything that Jesus is offering. So, it really is a choice for one or the other.  If there still is something here, I’m hanging onto, I really am precluding myself from having another experience. And that was what I really began to see immediately. You can’t have a little bit of Heaven in hell but that’s the compromise we still try to make. So, taking that awareness deeper and deeper we see that this is an invitation to wake up.

Not to say that we can’t have pleasure within the world but it’s that neediness and dependency on seeking and finding happiness in the world. I really liked your reference to the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli Romeo and Juliet film which I remember so vividly as a starstruck, angst-filled junior high student. And you mentioned some of the lyrics to the theme song— “a rose will bloom; it then will fade.”

Shakespeare’s story of Romeo and Juliet is such a tragic tale of ill-fated lovers that ends in death at an early age, seemingly innocent lives cut short. But you were talking about our attraction to that. Love and happiness as bodies in the world is inherently bittersweet and ultimately a shabby substitute for the love that we think we’re lacking and no longer deserve from God. And we find out pretty quickly that relationships in the world can’t really fill that lack within us, there’s never enough and they don’t last.

It’s never enough and never really satisfies that longing. And yet we do keep seeking. Not that we should stop doing that. It’s not about changing the behavior but becoming aware of what it is we are choosing. Because if we try to give something up because Jesus is telling us it’s not going to make us happy but we still believe it will, it’s going to feel like a sacrifice and that’s not going to be helpful. An important part of that class for me was just looking at how much I still want those things, just recognizing that it really wasn’t going to bring me what I was really seeking. And getting in touch with that underlying attraction to the bittersweet.

Leading up to this interview I went back to look at the lyrics to that song called Love Theme. You quoted “A love will bloom; it then will fade.” It goes on “So does a youth, so does the fairest maid.” And a little further on there are some lines that say “Death will come soon to hush us along. Sweeter than honey, bitter as gall. Love is a pastime that never will pall, sweeter than honey, bitter as gall.” There’s an attraction to that. We’re drawn to tearjerkers. It’s that special love that can never last, it’s always heading toward loss, sometimes tragic loss, memories of loved ones that are gone, that bittersweet.

Yes. I was on a Zoom call the other day and we were trying to schedule the next meeting and one of the women said she couldn’t make it on Sunday because that was “family day.” She’s about my age and has grown kids and grandchildren and I watched myself become instantly enamored with the idea of “family day.” My daughter’s getting married this summer and I launched into this whole fantasy involving her and her fiancé moving back to Denver and starting a family. And I was visualizing grandchildren and them coming to these wonderful Sunday family dinners I would cook up and playing Frisbee and games in the park like the Kennedys or something years ago. It was hilarious, really. I was laughing at myself because we all know how those fantasies go. Nobody wants to comply with your fantasy of family day, they have their own fantasy of family day. It would be wonderful if we did have family day but most family days just like any other day are filled with conflict.

So, it’s funny to see how we’re always fantasizing about something pleasurable in the world and our relationships that’s not real, thinking we can somehow substitute or replace our relationship with God and make something better. It works only if we change the purpose of our relationships. If I made “family day” a classroom for forgiveness in which I remember our deeper shared interest and learn to “make it about them” as Ken says, instead of about me, then it has meaning and mind-healing potential to lead me toward the real happiness of awakening.

I think that’s wonderful to be able to recognize that in the midst of the fantasy, to be able to laugh at it. The last thing we want to do is judge ourselves for still wanting to find happiness in the world. The goal is not to stop valuing the valueless, the goal is to recognize how valueless the valueless is. Then we won’t want it anymore. While we still want it, obviously we think it still has value. So, it’s really a matter of recognizing that, like you said, it will lead to conflict which, as we were talking about earlier, is the purpose of our special relationships.

Yes, unless we choose to give them a different purpose. This process of looking with Jesus at our reactions and learning to recognize that what we’re attributing our unhappiness to is not the problem. Eventually we really begin to be very sensitive to what we’re doing, that those kinds of fantasies are always about my neediness as a person. We don’t really care about the other people involved, we want to have our needs met as we see them and that’s what special relationship “bargains” are all about. Trying to cajole other people to cooperate with our fantasies. And it usually doesn’t go all that well.

It can only work temporarily. The bottom line is we’re trying to fill a hole that isn’t really there except in our own feverish imagination and so there’s no way anything from the outside can fill that hole. We have to recognize that we are not empty. When we do recognize that it includes everyone else and that’s the happiness that can’t go away because it doesn’t depend on anything, it’s just there. But we keep wanting something here. And I think it’s very helpful and Ken always helps us recognize that we are trying to protect this individual self. But that’s only at the very end of the journey that we let go of that. The ego tries to use that to scare us by saying, oh, you’re going to lose yourself. But when we no longer experience a separate self it’s because we don’t want to. It’s never being taken away from us.

And I love that you just made that point because we don’t ever have to let go of the identification with the personal self until we’re ready, until all the guilt driving that personal identification is undone. Through the process of learning to make the purpose of our lives a classroom, we begin to want to move a little faster at times. We go back and forth into fear and resistance but we also begin to realize that we don’t really lose anything and finally find what we’re really yearning for when we have those shifts to an experience of happiness that’s not of this world.

Right. It may not last in our experience but it’s there as soon as we’re ready to go back to it. Unlike anything to do with happiness here which, when conditions shift, is gone.

You also talked in that seminar about just how exhausting it becomes, trying to make our lives work as bodies. The ego’s saga of seeking and never finding, incarnating again and again hoping this time will be different. On some level the Course tells us we’re reviewing mentally what’s already gone by but at some point, we become really exhausted with the whole thing. I don’t think we even have to be aware of the exhaustion of having searched for happiness in the world over many lifetimes, we become aware of it eventually within the lifetime we seem to be living now.

That reference to our weariness really struck me because I think there’s a collective sense of exhaustion from this pandemic along with the political strife, the entire Western United States and other parts of the world on fire in 2020. A summer filled with all kinds of protests and violence and this very divisive presidential election. More and more people are getting vaccines but there are still terrible outbreaks of new COVID cases in parts of the world and potentially more threatening viral mutations continuing to arise. We think all those problems and situations are what we’re so tired of but that’s not the real cause, is it?

It really comes down to our judgments. It’s our judgments that tire us. They’re judgments that keep us separate. We think we’re keeping ourselves separate from others but really, we’re keeping ourselves separate from Love. And I know Ken has talked about how all pain comes from resistance and its really resistance to Love. We try to keep ourselves secure in our own little spheres and what we’re really doing is blocking ourselves from opening up to the Love. So, all the fatigue and exhaustion seem a legitimate reaction to everything that’s going on around us and the world would agree with that. The challenge when I’m feeling that is to recognize that it isn’t really coming from these situations that I’m so focused on.

Just like the purpose of conflict, the purpose of fatigue, feeling worn out, is to make it look like there’s a world out there that’s affecting me. But it’s the way I’m engaging the world that’s fatiguing me, not what’s happening in the world. It’s like the ante has been upped and the classroom feels a lot more challenging. And as you were saying earlier the things that would help distract us aren’t as easily available and accessible. And again, never would we want to judge ourselves for whatever magic we’re using to take care of ourselves, that’s important to do while we still do identify as bodies here. But it’s just helpful to remind ourselves more and more of the time that I’m never upset, I’m never in conflict, I’m never fatigued for the reason, I think. The fatigue is coming from this thought of conflict in the mind.

Yes. It’s the exhaustion of trying to defend ourselves as these vulnerable bodies. I remember Ken often saying, and I think of it all the time, that the ego’s agenda is to prove that “I really exist but it’s not my fault.” Even though deep down we believe it is our fault, we’re always trying to position ourselves relative to others as the less guilty one. That’s exhausting because you have to be in constant conflict to fulfill that agenda. You have to be in relationship with someone who is the guilty one, someone to disagree with, to perceive as the antagonist.

Yeah, exactly. And that’s the attraction to the conflict. The ego tells us that is the protection and we are protecting ourselves from Love. Just to be with Love requires nothing.

And yet we’re still terrified of disappearing into the heart of God, the heart of Love, our abstract union. But it’s a process, right, we’re way too fearful to do it all at once. By the time we’re ready to let it go, there’s no conflict. We know that it’s only bringing us joy.

And it’s a process of recognizing the cost of choosing the ego. And Ken has said over and over this is not a Course in affirming the positive, it’s a Course in uncovering and saying no to the negative, to the ego. And that’s why as I say, a big part of the seminar on happiness for me was just looking at everything I was still saying yes to and recognizing that none of it could really give me what I wanted. Ultimately, we don’t want the things of this world, we want the experience, the prayer of the heart. The things we think we want in the dream don’t give us the experience. It’s not in the thing. Likewise, the problem is not in the thing, it’s in the mind that’s interpreting through the lens of opposition. That’s where the conflict comes from. But it will never get addressed at this level. Temporary fixes will always fail and temporary fixes are all we get in this world.

Part of this path is looking at what we’re doing and that’s painful. It is painful to see that I know on some level that my life isn’t working and yet I’m not ready for the answer, I’m not there yet and I continue to keep projecting, judging others and myself.  From the Course’s perspective, I couldn’t be judging others if I hadn’t first condemned myself and it does get us very in touch with that hatred and self-hatred of the ego thought system. That part is painful.

That is painful but not looking at it was already painful.

Yes, absolutely. The ego would tell us it’s the journey with the Course that’s painful, that’s making me unhappy. But it was my recognition of unhappiness that brought me to the Course in the first place. 

Right. So, it can be painful but if we’re not willing to do it we’re just guaranteeing the pain. We can only get temporary relief in our special relationships.

Sometimes. And sometimes even more pain. It can be so painful when we feel a special relationship is failing or betraying us.

There’s that line where Jesus says “In looking at the special relationship it is necessary to realize that it involves a great amount of pain.” (Text Chapter 16, V., sentence 1)

I was just reading that this morning and it’s so true. You were talking about our resistance to love and Ken has that wonderful little book called Ending Our Resistance to Love . Learning to not judge ourselves for our resistance to love is really what this whole path is about.

Yeah, letting go of all of our judgments, including our judgments of ourselves. But that’s how the ego gets us as a student of the Course. As we begin to understand what the ego is all about and begin to uncover more the ego is happy to join us in judging us. Jesus reminds us over and over that this can be a gentle process but if we’re looking at our choice for the ego by ourselves, it won’t be. We need to remember that there’s this gentle presence within that’s always there. If I do find myself condemning myself it’s helpful to just take a step back and recognize that this is not at all what I’m being asked to do.

Right. It’s helpful to me when I catch myself judging myself to remember that Jesus doesn’t agree with me about this at all. When we’re in resistance we feel estranged from Jesus. We feel he has abandoned us; Love has abandoned us. And that can’t be true. So sometimes it’s just reminding yourself that you’re wrong and waiting it out. And knowing, as you said, that loving presence within is still there. Jesus tells us in the workbook “I am so close to you, we cannot fail.” (Workbook Part II Introduction, paragraph 6, sentence 1) I love that quote and sometimes just connecting with a line like that when we feel resistant is really helpful.

That is a very comforting line! Pain from resistance isn’t something that’s happening to me against my will. It’s a choice but there’s always another choice. Just to be able to recognize that there is another choice is so helpful. Jesus is always saying there is no reason for judgment, no reason for pain.

No cause, right?

Yes.

Could you talk just a little bit about the newly released audio set of Ken’s called Strengthening the Mind’s Immune System available for purchase now on your website. Could you just describe that topic? I bought it and just started listening and it certainly is a relevant theme right now.

This was from a seminar in 2005 and listening to it makes you realize that things don’t change that much, it was very relevant at that time, too. Ken talks about all the interest in things we can do to strengthen the body’s immune system and defenses against the threats to bodies that are out there and the Course is not saying not do these kinds of things. But it is saying we need to be aware of what we’re doing which is making the threat real in the body and reinforcing our belief that there is a danger “out there” and reinforcing our identification with the body. But Ken never says not do these kinds of things, you’d be a fool not to if this is what you believe. But we need to recognize that the only thing that can really protect us is to strengthen the mind’s immune system and essentially, we do that through practicing forgiveness.

I always think of Ken’s chart that shows our focus down on the world and there’s an arrow that goes around on the right side of the chart from the world back up to the decision maker – the miracle. It’s that path that needs to be strengthened in our awareness so that when we’re in conflict or enticed by special love, we remember the miracle and it becomes more and more accessible. We are strengthening our awareness that we are a mind, strengthening our practice of forgiveness. And that’s what makes us safe and really protects us because whenever we get caught in problems in the world that is always reinforcing our belief that we’re vulnerable and there is danger. Ken does address that we will have resistance to this because of our desire to protect our personal identity as a separate self. There are a lot of questions included in this recording addressing other issues as well.

Related to this topic I couldn’t help but think of that line in the workbook (Lesson 76, paragraph 3, line 3) that says you really think “some fluid pushed into your veins through a sharpened needle will ward off disease and death.” And we do.

And it does within the dream. It seems to.

We have lots of things we still believe protect us like disinfectant sprays and wipes.

I’m still kind of hooked on that. I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop.

(Mutual laughter)

The Course would never take a position one way or the other about whether to get a vaccine or use a disinfectant but Ken says what Jesus is asking us to do is look and see what our thoughts are.  Are we trying to do it to address a fear? If we are then we’re saying the fear is real. Is that really what we want to do? And that’s why Ken says whatever we decide to do as bodies, try to do it with a smile.

And as that compromise approach that the Course talks about. As long as we are identified as bodies, and it’s really only at the very top of the ladder that we no longer are, it’s probably a wise thing to take the precautions and do the normal things to protect your body. But look with Jesus while you’re doing it, change the purpose of it to learning true forgiveness, ultimately learning we are not vulnerable bodies but one, all-loving mind. Reminding yourself of where your real safety lies and that you’re just too afraid to accept yet that the body is only a defense against our real safety. But while we’re in bodies, be kind to them.

That’s right. Use your body as a classroom and watch yourself doing these things. And then to look at these things we’ve been talking about in terms of conflict and polarization, the value and judgment I place on doing it or not doing it. To see how I’m not just using it to protect myself I’m using it to make myself the less guilty one.

That’s what I notice come up most for me. The awareness of how much I want to make my way of protecting me from COVID or anything else right, and the other way wrong. Whenever I’ve had an individual conversation with someone who maybe thinks differently about getting the vaccine for example, then I usually don’t see it as a “I’m right; they’re wrong” situation, I can understand their viewpoint. So, it’s always important to just notice how these kneejerk reactions and judgments we have always reveal our choice for the ego.

And the goal is never to not have these reactions. The goal is to recognize what they are really all about. We’re going to react; we still have this bodily identification and perceive things as dangerous to us. The whole purpose of the Course is just to become increasingly mindful about how we’re trying to be mindless and the purpose that it serves.

I like that way of putting it. You also have another announcement about a long-anticipated book that’s going to be coming out soon?

Yes. There is enough material in what has been known as Ken’s Freud book to publish a two-volume set, called Touching the Heart of God: Psychoanalysis, Psychotherapy, and a Course in Miracles. Ken had developed enough of the early sections to make it clear what his intentions were with both volumes. He also had a lot of notes and excerpts pulled from various sources, especially from the collected works of Freud and Jung, whose writings and relationship Ken was focusing on in what was to be the first volume. We felt there was enough there to publish. It’s nowhere close to a finished project but our sense was it would give people a good feeling for what Ken was intending to do. And so that’s going to be released in the next month, so you’re getting the scoop on that.

Wonderful! And people can sign up on your website www.facim.org to receive those announcements you send out regularly about new releases and programs and bookstore sales?

That’s right.

Well, thank you so much again, Jeff, for taking the time to talk with me and share your teaching and experience with the Course. Anything else you’d like to share?

I think we’ve covered a lot. I’m not sure we’ve solved the problems of the world but I don’t think they can ever be solved. Other than the one problem. We know how to do that, at least.

Right. We’ll never agree on the problems in the world or the solutions but the Course identifies the one problem of the mistaken belief in separation and the one solution of learning and practicing the Course’s forgiveness in the classroom of our lives. That seems like a good place to conclude. Thank you so much again. It’s always a pleasure talking with you.

I’ve enjoyed it, too, Susan. Thanks.