ACFIP Newsletter 
Issue 13 - June 2007

Quarterly Newsletter of the Australian Centre for Inner Peace

Michael Dawson
PO Box 125, Point Lookout
North Stradbroke Island,
Queensland 4183,
Australia

Email: mdawson@acfip.org     
Web site: http://www.acfip.org


CONTENTS:
*Obstacles to Truth
*Summary of A Course in Miracles
*Story: The Journey of the Soul
*Workshops
*Books and Audio Materials for Sale
*Links
*Inspirational Quotations


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Welcome to the THIRTEENTH issue of the Australian Centre for Inner Peace Newsletter.
This issue is a little early as I am abroad in June.

If you wish to read previous issues please go to http://www.acfip.org/newsletterarchive.html.

If your email address ends with .au I put your address on my Australian list for advance warning of workshops I am giving in Australia. If you do not want to be on this list please let me know. If you reside in Australia and want to be on this list, but you address does not end in .au, please email me and I will include it.

If you are new to the Course you might find my summaries of help.
You can find them at http://www.acfip.org/sum.html and http://www.acfip.org/art4.html

Regards

Michael Dawson
http://www.acfip.org

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Obstacles to Truth

The Course tells us that the truth cannot be taught, but will be revealed to us if we do our part of forgiveness. To forgive is to look past our perceptual errors and thus not judge ourselves or others.

Forgiveness ... is still, and quietly does nothing. .... It merely looks, and waits, and judges not. W-pII.1.4:1,3

Truth was given to us in its entirety at our creation, it was not learned. Thus we cannot learn truth as this implies time, and our creation was outside of time. Our task is to accept truth back into our awareness again. As we meet the necessary conditions required truth will automatically start to dawn upon our minds all by itself.

All that is asked of you is to make room for truth. You are not asked to make or do what lies beyond your understanding. All you are asked to do is let it in ; only to stop your interference with what will happen of itself; simply to recognize again the presence of what you thought you gave away. T-21.II.7:6-8 T449

We are afraid of truth as it will dissolve our sense of separation by revealing the oneness of God's creation. When truth comes the ego is extinguished. Truth is of the mind and not the body. It resides with the Holy Spirit in our split mind. To avoid this threat to its existence the ego always counsels us to stay well away from the mind and focus on the physical world. Spirit cannot make connection with matter and thus the ego is safe.

"Sickness is a defense against the truth" (Lesson 136) the Workbook tells us. As truth begins to dawn upon our mind the ego counsels us that we are in great danger. He tells us that truth will reveal the depths of our sin against god and lead us back to his just punishment of us. To avoid this very fearful situation the ego may counsel us to get sick so we can divert our attention from the mind, where truth can be found, to the body. Now we are safe from God, back in the hiding place of matter.

The ego is always wrong. As we learn to hold the hand of Jesus and look without judgement and blame at the content of our mind we begin to learn that joy and not damnation await us. As we allow the barriers we have built to the presence of truth to be dismantled by the Holy Spirit truth will automatically flow into our mind with no help from ourselves.

Long ago we decided to block the awareness of truth so we could play our game of separation. Tiring of this painful game we begin at last, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to lift the barriers to its presence and find that its still there, unchanged, perfect and joyfully waiting to embrace us again.

You do not have to seek reality. 
It will seek you and find you when you meet its conditions (peace through forgiveness). 
T-8.IX.2. 4 :1-2 p.158


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SUMMARY OF A COURSE IN MIRACLES


Reprinted from Healing the Cause by Michael Dawson.
Published by Findhorn Press, Scotland.


"You may be surprised to hear how very different is reality from what you see."(T348; T-l8.I.5:1) Our senses report to us a seemingly real and substantial world. The Course informs us however, that we spend all our sleeping and waking time in a dream of seeming separation from God. Our true nature is still spirit, as God created us, and will be eternally. God is described as perfect, limitless, formless, eternal and changeless and so therefore His Creation, the Christ or Sonship, must also be. Nothing in our universe can be described by any of these words and therefore it cannot have been created by God. We are ideas in the mind of God and as ideas we cannot leave the mind of God. This perfect unity of God and Christ is Heaven and nothing can threaten this.

For reasons we cannot understand, a thought of separation from God, which the Course calls the ego, entered the collective mind of the Sonship. This idea, at which we "forgot to laugh", stated that we could take the place of God and become the Creator. God's answer to this was the creation of the Holy Spirit in our mind to correct this "tiny mad idea" of separation.

Choosing not to listen to the Voice for God, we experienced an overwhelming sense of sin at what we thought we had accomplished. From this act of sin came guilt and the fear of God's punishment. Our minds became split into the wrong mind of the ego, the right mind of the Holy Spirit and the sleeping Son of God (the decision maker) who has now to decide who to listen to. The ego part counsels us that we cannot survive the avenging anger of God as represented by the presence of the Holy Spirit in our mind. Out of fear, we listen and identify with the ego's counsel and project the thought of separation out of our mind as an image. This image is the physical universe where we can now hide from God's anger and our guilt.

A veil of forgetfulness falls over our decision and this illusory world appears very real to us. Yet we are still safe in heaven although lost in our dream of exile. So powerful is this illusion that we could not awaken without the help of the Holy Spirit. Our body now seems a reality and not spirit which vision would reveal to us. The ego teaches us to deny our guilt and project it onto others. Our guilt (self-hate) now seems to be created by people and circumstances outside ourselves. We now feel justified in feeling anger towards others and attack in self-defence becomes a necessity (special hate relationships). Feeling a great lack within us, the ego counsels us to find people who can fulfil our imagined needs - security, sex, money career etc. (special love relationships).

To awaken from this dream and regain our lost vision, we need to undo our belief in separation from God. The Holy Spirit's plan for our awakening is called the Atonement (correction of perception). We begin to learn that the world is but a neutral mirror to the beliefs in our mind. No person or event has the power to give or take our peace from us. When we get disturbed about someone or something "out there" in the world we are only seeing a projection of some part of our mind that is not forgiven.

If we can have the "little willingness" to allow the Holy Spirit's counsel of forgiveness to enter our mind we can begin the journey of undoing separation by joining with others. We forgive by first removing our projections from the world and then bringing them back to our mind where they originated. Now we have the opportunity to heal our mind by ceasing to judge its ego content. It is our self-judgment that prevents our mind being healed by the Holy Spirit. Guilt demands punishment, not healing.

As we learn to stop judging ourselves we allow the ever present love of the Holy Spirit to shine away the clouds of guilt in our mind. This shift of perception from the ego's world of separation and attack, to the Holy Spirit's counsel of joining and forgiveness is called a miracle. As we practice forgiveness in our relationships, we start to undo the guilt that covers the memory of God's love in our mind. We begin to see that we have not been running away from God's anger, but from God's love. To allow the awareness of God's love back into our mind will cause our ego to disappear, and this is our greatest fear.

Relationships become classrooms in which we learn to forgive ourselves by forgiving others (holy relationships). Jesus is the greatest example to us in teaching this lesson of forgiveness. Increasingly, we realise that when people attack us through fear, they are really asking for our love. Thus we begin to allow the Holy Spirit to transform our world from the prison of the ego to a teaching device that will awaken us from the dream of separation and allow us to enter the real world of vision.

With the reawakening in our mind of the knowledge of who we really are, we will walk this world in complete peace with an inner joy that nothing can take from us. We will now perceive everyone as our brothers and sisters whose reality is eternal spirit and to whom we extend the love of the Holy Spirit.

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The Journey of the Soul

Spirit came to my Soul and said, "Let us go on a journey together." There was nothing in all the universe but My Soul and Spirit. The night was crystal clear, the sky was studded with a million stars, and the air carried a fragrance as if all the flowers upon the earth had released their perfume for our pleasure. I laughed aloud from pure joy as Spirit and I went into the night. There was no pavement beneath our feet, we walked on air that was as a gossamer road stretched out before us, and we sang together all the songs of ages long since past.

As we journeyed on, My mind said to me "Let us stop here at the house of our friends and take them with us on our happy journey," so we stopped at the house and the friends came out and joined us; but somehow the music did not ring so clearly and the odour from the flowers seemed more faint.

Then it was that the friend said, "Let us stop here and take these other friends with us." We did so and the other friends were singing also, but the music lacked the sweet harmony of that which we, as Soul and Spirit, sang alone together. As we all journeyed on, a fog settled over the night and the stars were lost behind the silken veil; the perfume of the flowers came from so far away that we soon lost it altogether, and the air became heavy and hard to tread.

The friends we had gathered with us pulled at my garment saying "Come go our way, it is a good way to go." As I turned to go with them I saw through the fog a dim light. It was the lighted candle of SpIrit, the light within the Soul which forever burns, waiting for us to find it. Then did a great awakening come to Me and I swiftly tore off the clinging hands, and stood forth, free.

The lighted candle of Spirit then became the light of a glorious sunrise, the fog lifted and a world of beauty lay before Me. Again Spirit spoke to My Soul, saying "When you journey forth with Me you must journey alone, for it is only as you disentangle yourself from the outward form of earth things that you can make the journey from Sense to Soul. Until you have made this journey, alone with Me, you are not fitted to guide others on the Path."

I awoke and a great peace was upon Me. I know that in the still watches of the night Spirit had taught My Soul a great lesson.

From "The Journey with the Master"
through Eva Bell Werber. Pub: DeVorss   
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PLEASE NOTE: The Australian Centre for Inner Peace is not a counselling or psychotherapy centre; therefore, we do not offer telephone or email service or counselling, therapy, or crisis intervention for personal problems related to the Course. Please see the Contacts section at the end of this newsletter.

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A Course in Miracles Workshops in Australia
by Michael Dawson



Brisbane

Sun 15 July 2007 - 1 day workshop
9.30am to 4.45pm

Attaining a Quiet Mind
A Course in Miracles workshop
9.30am-4.45pm

The memory of God comes to the quiet mind.
It cannot come where there is conflict, for a mind at war against itself remembers not eternal gentleness.
A Course in Miracles T-23.I.1


Only when our mind becomes quiet can the memory of of our spiritual reality return.
This workshop will explore the obstacles to peace and use exercises to help discover and remove them.

No previous knowledge of A Course in Miracles is required.

Fee: $55

VENUE:
Relaxation Centre,
cnr Brookes and Wickham Streets,
Fortitude Valley
Brisbane 4006

BOOKINGS:
Relaxation Centre
07 3854 1986
(Please do not book through me)

Times: 9.30 a.m. to 4.45 p.m.
Cost: $55
Bring lunch to share

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Clare - Sat 15 and Sun 16, September 2007
(2hrs drive north of Adelaide)

A Full Heart and an Empty Mind
- A Course in Miracles workshop

Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God. LESSON 189


The deepest but forgotten truth about ourselves is that we are one with the love and mind of God.

To let this memory return to our awareness we need to question everything we think is true, to realise we know nothing about how to awaken to peace and joy, and learn to extend kindness and goodwill to others. Insight of the mind must be balanced with compassion of the heart.

This workshop will explore how we can awaken to our spiritual reality through the healing power of insight, kindness, gentleness, awareness and forgiveness.

No previous knowledge of A Course in Miracles is required.

VENUE:
Clare
SA 5453
(2hrs drive north of Adelaide)

DATE:
Sat 15 and Sun 16, September 2007


TIME:
Sat 28 - 9.30 TO 5.30
Sun 29 - 9.30 TO 4.30


BOOKINGS:
Tel: 08 8842 3114
PO Box 614
Clare, SA 5453


Cost
Deposit: $60 to cover basic costs
plus a donation for the workshop.
Food provided.

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Hillier (Gawler) SA - Sat 22 and Sun 23 September 2007
(40 minutes drive from the centre of Adelaide)

HEALING OURSELVES and OTHERS
from the perspective of A Course in Miracles


Health Is Inner Peace....Health is the result of relinquishing all attempts to use the body lovelessly.
A Course in Miracles

Using the spiritual path of A Course in Miracles we will explore what true healing is - the return to our awareness of our spiritual identity. Identification with our body as our home is the origin of all our physical and psychological suffering.

The basis of this workshop is that the cause of all disease lies in the mind and not the body. Disease is a shadow on the body, of the guilt in our minds.

During the workshop we will focus on undoing the blocks we have built to the presence of God's love and joy within us through the understanding and practising of forgiveness.Only this love heals.

We will investigate what the Course means by healing ourselves and others and contrast the differences between the healed and the unhealed healer. Practical exercises will be used to help understand the ego and to practice forgiveness and turning within for guidance.

An overview of the Course's metaphysical, psychological and spiritual teachings especially in regard to healing will be covered.
No previous knowledge of the book A Course in Miracles is required.


VENUE
"Riverdell"
Clifford Road
Hillier
South Australia
(40 minutes drive from the centre of Adelaide)

TIME:
Sat and Sun - 9.30 TO 5.00

COST
Booking Fee - $30 (non refundable)
Workshop - By Donation
Some accommodation on site - $40
Bring food to share for lunch both days

For Details Contact:
Pamela St Claire
(08) 8322 0444
email: pstclaire@chariot.net.au

People should send their Booking Fee to:

Pamela St Claire
36 The Causeway
O'Halloran Hill SA 5158
and include a cheque made payable to P. St Claire



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GERMANY 2007 WORKSHOPS


RAVENSBURG - 1 day w/s Sun 24th June 2007

RELATIONSHIPS AS PATH OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH
- from the perspective of A Course in Miracles

with Michael Dawson

9.30 to 5.30

Learning to understand ourselves
by seeing how we relate to others.

"When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter.
As you see him you will see yourself. As you treat him you will treat yourself.
As you think of him you will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him
you will find yourself or lose yourself." from "A Course in Miracles"



A relationship based on truth and awareness is one of the most powerful tools for healing and growth. How we relate in the instant we pass someone in the street, how we relate to our friends, an employer, family members or our partners all provides us with mirrors reflecting our own beliefs about ourselves and the world.

In our lives we create barriers to the presence of peace and love within us. We pursue substitutes of power, money, sex, possessions, status and so on, which can never satisfy the yearning within for deeper fulfilment - our relationship with God.

In this workshop, using the mirror of relationships, we will look at what needs to be healed in ourselves and how, by changing our relationships based on dependency to ones based on honesty and forgiveness, we can discover a path that will return us to the awareness of love's presence within us. A gentle and safe space is created enabling participants to trust and go deep.

This workshop is not specifically for partners. It is designed for anyone who wishes to improve how they relate to others in any type of relationship.

An introduction to the Course’s metaphysical, psychological and spiritual teachings especially regarding relationships will be covered.


Location of workshop:

ULEN Centre
Felz - 88212
Ravensburg
Germany


CONTACT

ULEN Centre
Felz - 88212
Ravensburg
Germany
Tel: 49 [0]751-26985 (Sybil)
Tel: 49 [0]751-24896 (Christiane)

Fax: 49 [0]751-3527933
Email: uelen@t-online.de

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FREIBURG - weekend w/s Sat 30 June and Sun 1 July 2007

The Healing Power of Forgiveness
- from the perspective of A Course in Miracles


Sat 30 June/Sun 1 July 2007

Cost: 160 EUR


10 to 6pm

Forget not that the healing of God's Son is all the world is for.
That is the only purpose the Holy Spirit sees in it, and thus the only one it has.
Until you see the healing of the Son as all you wish to be accomplished by the world,
by time and all appearances, you will not know the Father nor yourself.
A Course in Miracles T-24.VI.4:1-3


How can we heal ourselves and help others to heal? The Course asks us not to try to change ourselves or others but to look past our perceptual errors, our distorted self-concepts, which is to forgive.

Forgiveness, like the miracle, does not 'do' anything but undoes the judgement we hold against ourselves and others. What we find disturbing are but symbols of what is unhealed in our minds.

The cause of all disease lies in the mind and not the body.
This workshop will explore what is meant by 'healing' and how forgiveness can restore our minds to peace - the condition in which God is remembered. We will also investigate how we can help others to heal themselves and the differences between the true and false healing.

Exercises will be used to help contact the source of healing in our minds so it can be extended to ourselves and others.

No previous knowledge of A Course in Miracles is required.



Introductory talk on A Course in Miracles - evening Fri 29 June at 8pm. Cost 10 EUR

Location of workshop:
Center Margarete Sennekamp
Schauinslandstr. 39
79100 Freiburg-Günterstal
Tram 4, Klosterplatz

Contact:
Sophia-Institut
Margarete Sennekamp
Adalbert-Stifter-Str. 16
79102 Freiburg
Tel/Fax : 0761-73930
www.Sophia-Institut.de



Biography
Michael discovered A Course in Miracles whilst visiting the Findhorn Foundation in 1982. He subsequently became a member of the Foundation for about six years and involved himself with healing and teaching. In 1994 he published Healing the Cause - A Path of Forgiveness which serves as an introduction to the Course. His second book, The Findhorn Book of Forgiveness (Findhorn Press) uses exercises, stories and case histories to guide the reader to inner peace through forgiveness. Michael now lives in Australia and gives workshops on the Course world-wide.




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BOOKS AND AUDIO MATERIALS FOR SALE - by Michael Dawson

Books:
Healing the Cause - A Path of Forgiveness. Findhorn Press. 1994
The Findhorn Book of Forgiveness. Findhorn Press. 2003

For more details and how to purchase please visit: http://www.acfip.org/books_tapes.html

Audio Tapes and CDs
Since 1986 I have been conducting healing workshops in the UK and abroad, and have continually experimented to find healing and forgiveness exercises that are effective. I have found that a particular exercise can be effective for one person but not another. Accordingly, I was led to develop a series of exercises. Over the years workshop participants asked if these exercises could be put onto audio cassettes and CDs so they could repeat them. This has resulted in the Healing the Cause - Exercise series - Tapes 1 to 4 (2 exercises on each tape) and CD1 and 2 (4 exercises on each CD)

For more details and how to purchase please visit: http://www.acfip.org/audio.html

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CONTACTS

Resources
Foundation for A Course In Miracles
41397 Buecking Drive, Temecula, CA 92590
Tel: 909 296 6261 Fax: 909296 9117

Books, videos, CDs and audio tapes by Kenneth and Gloria Wapnick are available from their web site http://www.facim.org

Question and Answer Service:
Their electronic outreach section has a question and answer service http://www.facimoutreach.org/ on the theory and practice of the Course. Their database of hundreds of questions and answers is searchable and you can ask your own questions.

Their publications can also be ordered in Australia at:
Adyar Bookshop
230 Clarence Street
Sydney, NSW 2000

Foundation for Inner Peace - the publishers of A Course in Miracles
http://www.acim.org/

ACIM study groups.
Go to The Miracle Distribution Center http://www.miraclecenter.org/ for the largest and most frequently updated list of A Course in Miracles study groups available anywhere.

Miracles Studies Australia  http://www.miracle-studies.net.au lists study groups for Australia and new Zealand

A Course In Miracles Pen Pals
The Miracle Network http://www.miracles.org.uk hosts a A Course in Miracles pen pals group:
To join this e-mail discussion group, send your e-mail address to e.pals@miracles.org.uk. They will send you updated lists of other e.pals and inform them of your e-mail address.

A Course In Miracles Chat Groups
The aim of this board is to provide a place for people to chat about ACIM.
Any related discussions are more than welcome and I believe helpful! - moderated by Glyn Milhench
http://glynbo.proboards84.com/index.cgi?board=acim

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INSPIRATIONAL QUOTATIONS

About three or four times a week I send a short quotation from some spiritual teacher or poet to people who have requested some uplifting thoughts. I have included some below. If you wish I can add your name to the email list.


Do understand that you are destined for enlightenment.
Co-operate with your destiny, don't go against it, don't thwart it.
Allow it to fulfil itself.
All you have to do is to give attention to the obstacles created by the foolish mind.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

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      When you listen to the voice in your head, that
is to say, do not judge. You'll soon realize: there
is the voice, and here I am listening to it, watching
it. This I am realization, this sense of your own
presence, is not a thought. It arises from beyond
the mind.
     
- Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now


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In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do, and that
sign becomes this art.

- Rumi

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One is more likely to awaken through surrender than through seeking to waken. The effort to awaken is the effort of ego, whereas to surrender is to give up all efforts and to place oneself in the hands of a vast force that is more powerful than any realization of non duality.

When one finally gives up one's futile attempts to make reality conform to one's own wishes, and allows it to unfold on its own terms, all the energy that was tied up in foolish attempts to manipulate the universe is freed up.

Mariana Caplan
Halfway Up the Mountain - The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment

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Yet searching is inevitable here. For this you came, and you will surely do the thing you came for. But the world can not dictate the goal for which you search, unless you give it power to do so. Otherwise, you still are free to choose a goal that lies beyond the world and every worldly thought, and one that comes to you from an idea relinquished yet remembered, old yet new; an echo of a heritage forgot, yet holding everything you really want.

A Course in Miracles Lesson 131

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There's one great delusion that lies at the core
of all of our suffering: the false belief in the reality
of the separation of life and in the subsequent
true existence of an individual ego.

All fervent attempts to control or to mortify this
illusory ego through penance, rituals and sacrifice,
however, will only serve to intensify the delusion
that this ego is actually very real and that it only
needs to be, somehow, subdued, conquered or
destroyed.
      
- Chuck Hillig


Seeds for the Soul
Chuck Hillig
Black Dot Publications, 2003