Holidays and The Holy Instant: A conversation with Susan Dugan and Bruce Rawles

In this video, Susan Dugan and Bruce Rawles talk about two sections from ACIM’s Chapter 15 including “The Only Real Relationship” – the eighth section in Chapter 15 in the text of A Course In Miracles entitled “The Holy Instant” which was scribed during the holidays. Here is the third paragraph of that section:

“Relate only with what will never leave you, and what you can never leave. The loneliness of God’s Son is the loneliness of his Father. Refuse not the awareness of your completion, and seek not to restore it to yourself. Fear not to give redemption over to your Redeemer’s Love. He will not fail you, for He comes from One Who cannot fail. Accept your sense of failure as nothing more than a mistake in who you are. For the holy host of God is beyond failure, and nothing that he wills can be denied. You are forever in a relationship so holy that it calls to everyone to escape from loneliness, and join you in your love. And where you are must everyone seek, and find you there.” – T-15.VIII

We also shared from “The Time of Rebirth” which is the tenth section in section in Chapter 15 in the text of A Course In Miracles. “Release me as I choose your own release. The time of Christ we celebrate together, for it has no meaning if we are apart.” – T-15.X.1:9-10

In this conversation, we talk about how the holidays provide an excellent classroom for examining the contents of our minds, including motivations that aren’t always completely selfless despite appearances, as well as true forgiveness of ourselves as the mechanism for going beyond ego pettiness, pushiness and impatience, which are symptoms of choosing individual specialness (ego’s dubious “gift”) instead of Holy Spirit’s eternally genuine loving kindness that has no attachment to or investment in outcomes in the world. Shared interests (and deep listening – reflective of real caring) transcend the silliness of ego’s special interests which alternate between special love and special hate, which we can observe – without condemnation – to return to our right minds. Other topics included our “Inner GPS” and Workbook Lesson 182‘s message of the eternal child within all of us, imploring us for attention to our true identity by seeing it in others.

Related holiday (and other) movies:

We touched on several movies that related to our conversation such as “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)“, and two about (Mr.) Fred Rogers: Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (2018), A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019) starring Tom Hanks, and Joyeux Noel (2005). We typically heal our inner conflicts by reeling in our projections onto others, releasing our ego investments in these relationships and allow our Inner Kindness Teacher to replace our misunderstandings with inclusive thinking that sees everyone as our dearest friend and eternal family.

Susan writes with clarity about A Course in Miracles in her helpful blog, ForaysInForgiveness.

Since these video recordings have been a “labor of love” for many years, we thought it would be helpful to remind viewers that donations are always appreciated to enable us to continue devoting time to making these conversations available publicly to fellow students of ACIM worldwide; our intent is to be truly helpful. The (PayPal) Donate button on Susan’s site is toward the top of the middle column on each page of her ForaysInForgiveness site, and a similar donation button on my site is at the bottom in the sidebar on each page of ACIMblog. (Please note that ACIMblog.com and ForaysInForgiveness.com do not represent charitable organizations and any donations are not tax-deductible.)

We recommend these websites to all students of ACIM, both of which have recently updated websites with great resources: