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Class 5
Meeting Preparation and Format

To prepare or not prepare?

It is widely believed that being spontaneous rather than preparing is the most spiritual way to
give a speech or do a class. However, whether it looks spiritual or not is unimportant. The real
question is: Does it produce a better learning experience for your students?

How to prepare
Really engage with the sections ahead of time
Read and reread—slowly and thoughtfully
(Read the commentaries if you’re in Course Companions)
Engage with the section intellectually
Engage with the section personally—see it as applying to you and apply it
The more you’re engaged with the material, the more that will produce a better learning
experience for your students.

Study the discussion guide

Get very familiar with it.
Have some ideas of how you will take people through it.

Ask for guidance

What do You have to tell me about this meeting?
What should I emphasize most in the meeting?

Set the goal

What is the main thing you want them to get out of this particular meeting?

Get in the right state of mind

a. Have some quiet time beforehand.

b. Get out of image mode: “I put on a great mask to attract the approval of your mask”

c. Get into miracle mode: “I shine the light of truth from my worthy mind into your worthy
mind”

It’s important to remember that you receive not from your performance, not from your clarity or
ability to entertain, but from their learning.

From “Study Group Leader Training, Level 1”

Presented by Robert Perry and Mary Anne Buchowski
September 11–November 6, 2021
Offered by the Circle of Atonement (www.circleofa.org)
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Practices to help you get in the right state

Remember the big three for how to see your group members:
• Equality
• Holiness
• Worth

I am here only to be truly helpful.

I am here to represent Him Who sent me.
I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do,
because He Who sent me will direct me.
I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing He goes there with me.
I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal. (T-4.XI.8:2-6)

My worth is not established by my teaching.

My worth was established by God. (based on T-4.II.14:1)

My ego is never at stake because God did not create it.

My spirit is never at stake because He did. (based on T-4.II.15:3-4)

I recognize the equality of myself and all my students.

There is no halfway point in this.
Either we are equal or not. (based on P-3.II.9:4-6)

I am not an image.
Whatever is true of me is wholly benign. (based on T-3.VIII.12:2-3)

It is my duty to establish beyond doubt

that I am totally unwilling
to side with anyone’s misperceptions of me,
including my own. (based on T-3.VIII.14:1)

I will to be a devoted teacher, rather than an egocentric one.

Therefore, I am not afraid. (based on T-4.II.16:1)

From “Study Group Leader Training, Level 1”

Presented by Robert Perry and Mary Anne Buchowski
September 11–November 6, 2021
Offered by the Circle of Atonement (www.circleofa.org)
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The format of the meeting

Common formats

1. Reading the Course—everyone takes turns; little discussion

2. Discussing favorite ACIM ideas—not very grounded in the book

3. Processing the drama of our lives—which, of course, is endless

4. Book club for related teachings—the latest popular book out there

5. Satsang—sitting in the company of an “enlightened” person

The Circle’s study group format

Discussing and applying teachings from the Text
To make this happen, you need to be the acknowledged leader, not just a facilitator or one of the
gang.

How a Text section works

• Addresses core issues
• Shows us the folly of our current thought system
• Offers a radically different thought system, which is sane and leads to joy
• Wants us to understand the above teaching
• Wants us to internalize the above teaching
• Wants to actually take us from A to B

A text section wants to take you on a journey:

Old New
thought Words Understanding Application Transformation thought
system system

You want to reproduce this basic journey in your study group.

From “Study Group Leader Training, Level 1”

Presented by Robert Perry and Mary Anne Buchowski
September 11–November 6, 2021
Offered by the Circle of Atonement (www.circleofa.org)
 4

Sample Discussion Guide

Week 41 Discussion Guide
Chapter 15, Section IX through
Chapter 16, Section I

“Relationships without Limits” (T-15.IX)

Summary: My ego looks at my brother and sees only his body. The Holy Spirit wants to
release my vision so I see the great rays shining from my brother. In the holy instant I
experience this vision, and this removes the limits that have been placed on
communication and allows me to experience relationships without limits. I enter the holy
instant by relinquishing my desire to limit my brother to his body so that it can meet my
needs.

When we look at other people, our focus is almost entirely on the body, how it looks and what it
does. This seems completely natural to us, for what else can we see of others but their bodies?
This focus is also driven by the fact that we think we need those bodies. We are attracted to them
and think they can do things for us.

What we don’t realize is how much this limits our experience of them. First, it limits our vision
of them. Jesus says, “As the ego would limit your perception of your brothers to the body, so
would the Holy Spirit release your vision and let you see the great rays shining from them, so
unlimited that they reach to God” (1:1). What would you prefer to see in someone else: a mere
physical body or a radiant being with “great rays” shining from her that reach to infinity?

Second, seeing others as bodies limits our communication with them and thus our relationship
with them. Communication is ultimately between minds. By focusing on our brother’s bodies,
we see them primarily as hunks of flesh housing little bits of mind, which are separated off from
us. How much communication is then possible? And how much relationship is possible?

Seeing our brother as a mind that shines with great rays and can limitlessly communicate with us
seems to be beyond our ability. That is why we need the holy instant. In the holy instant, we gain
a glimpse of who our brother really is. We actually see the great rays and we experience
communication without limits:

The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation. And both are
nothing more than attempts to limit communication, and thereby to make it impossible.
For communication must be unlimited in order to have meaning, and deprived of
meaning, it will not satisfy you completely. Yet it remains the only means by which you
can establish real relationships.

From “Study Group Leader Training, Level 1”

Presented by Robert Perry and Mary Anne Buchowski
September 11–November 6, 2021
Offered by the Circle of Atonement (www.circleofa.org)
 5

Real relationships have no limits, having been established by God. In the holy
instant, where the great rays replace the body in awareness, the recognition of
relationships without limits is given you. But to see this, it is necessary to give up every
use the ego has for the body, and to accept the fact that the ego has no purpose you would
share with it. (2:3-3:3)

Discussion question
How often would you say you remember to see other people as more than a body? What do you
think could help you remember this more often?

“The Demand for Sacrifice” (T-15.X)

Summary: I believe that love demands sacrifice, that the lover must sacrifice for the sake
of the beloved. This makes sacrifice attacking and makes love fearful. I have therefore
thrown God away, fearing that His total love would demand total sacrifice. And I have
invited the ego in, believing it asks only partial sacrifice. Yet it is the ego that asks for
total sacrifice. I must face and relinquish the demand for sacrifice in me and invite God
back in to take its place.

Sacrifice is a central idea in human psychology. To sacrifice is to give up something as a noble

act of self-purification and as a way of getting something in return. This concept is intimately
connected to love in our minds. We believe that loving someone comes along with a demand to
sacrifice for her as proof of our love for her.

This brings us to the topic of fear. Jesus in this section says that all fear, no matter what form it
takes, comes down to one idea: “You believe that it is possible to be host to the ego or hostage to
God” (2:1). This idea generates fear because no matter which way we turn—to the ego or to
God—someone is going to demand sacrifice of us. This turns life into a fearful enterprise indeed.

Now let’s look at the two options: the ego and God. Because we associate love with sacrifice,
and somewhere inside we realize that God is love, we think that God’s total love would demand
total sacrifice:

How fearful, then, has God become to you, and how great a sacrifice do you
believe His love demands! For total love would demand total sacrifice. And so the ego
seems to demand less of you than God, and of the two is judged as the lesser of two evils,
one to be feared a little, but the Other to be destroyed. (5:1-3)

In other words, we see God’s voracious love as demanding a life of utter sacrifice, asking us to
become a monk who serves God around the clock with nothing to sustain us but a begging bowl.
And so we turn to the ego, who says to us, “If you come to my side, I’ll let you indulge yourself.
Yes, there are a few sacrifices I require, but my terms are far more lenient than God’s.” What we
don’t realize is that we have gotten the two options confused:

From “Study Group Leader Training, Level 1”

Presented by Robert Perry and Mary Anne Buchowski
September 11–November 6, 2021
Offered by the Circle of Atonement (www.circleofa.org)
 6

To Him [God] you ascribed the ego’s treachery, inviting it to take His place and protect
you from Him. And you do not recognize that it is what you invited in that would destroy
you, and does demand total sacrifice of you. No partial sacrifice will appease this savage
guest, for it is an invader who but seems to offer kindness, but always to make the
sacrifice complete. (7:3-5)

The real options are that we can be host to a generous and caring God or hostage to an ego that
demands total sacrifice. Which have we chosen? Which do we want to choose?

Discussion question
How have you seen God as demanding sacrifice in the past? Can you see that this belief is still in
you? What forms of sacrifice do you see God (or the Course) demanding of you now?
Alternately, what kind of sacrifice do you feel the ego demands of you?

“Release from Sacrifice” (T-15.XI)

Summary: I have sacrificed my unity with my Father and my brothers. Now I feel like a
victim of sacrifice and seek to fill my sense of deprivation by demanding sacrifice of
others. But I never find the love I seek. I need to instead release others from my demands.
I will thereby enter a holy instant in which communication is unlimited. This will usher
me into a state of peace, and since peace is the condition of love, the love I seek will at
last dawn upon me.

This section continues with the important theme of sacrifice. It says that by identifying with our
body, we have sacrificed our sense of unity with God and our brothers. We thus feel lonely and,
forgetting we did this to ourselves, believe we have been deprived by a cruel world. We think we
are “a victim of sacrifice, justified in sacrificing others” (2:2).

How do we then try to restore what we think life has deprives us of? We demand sacrifice of
others. We tell them that if they love us, they will sacrifice for us. We think this is how we will
find love and reverse our deprivation. But how can we find love through attack?

So is it that, in all your seeking for love, you seek for sacrifice and find it. Yet you
find not love. For it is impossible to deny what love is and still recognize it. (3:1-3)

The real way to find love is the opposite: to release others from our demands of sacrifice. That is
the purpose of the beautiful practice we are given near the end of this section. Once you realize
that this is its aim, every line shines with meaning:

Say this to your brother and understand it:

I give you to the Holy Spirit, as part of myself.

I know that you will be released, unless I want to use you to imprison myself.
In the name of my freedom, I will your release,

From “Study Group Leader Training, Level 1”

Presented by Robert Perry and Mary Anne Buchowski
September 11–November 6, 2021
Offered by the Circle of Atonement (www.circleofa.org)
 7

because I recognize that we will be released together. (7:4-7)

By releasing others from our demands, we enter into a holy instant. And there, and only there, do
we find the love, peace, and unlimited communication that we have sought continually since we
ourselves threw them away.

Discussion question
What are the main ways in which you demand that others sacrifice for you? This is a difficult
question to face, but facing it can be truly freeing. If you released everyone from any and all of
your demands, what do you realistically think the results would be for you?

“True Empathy” (T-16.I)

Summary: When I empathize with someone’s pain, I am sharing in his delusion of

suffering and reinforcing his weakness. I am relating through my ego, which is joining
forces with him in shared blame. My ego is just trying to strengthen itself. Instead, I need
to realize that I don’t know what healing is. I need to step aside and let the Holy Spirit
relate through me. If I do, I will find myself empathizing not with this person’s weakness
but with his strength.

In this unforgettable section, Jesus gives us a new meaning of the word empathy. As we use the
word now, it means “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another” (Google),
especially the pain of another. Yet this precisely what Jesus takes issue with. He says, “To
empathize does not mean to join in suffering, for this is what you must refuse to understand”
(1:1).

Why does Jesus reject the normal meaning of empathy? He begins by describing it as a tactic of
the ego, whereby the ego joins forces with select people experiencing particular injustices in
order to strengthen itself:

The clearest proof that empathy as the ego uses it is destructive lies in the fact that
it is applied only to certain types of problems and in certain people. These it selects out
and joins forces with, and it never joins except to strengthen itself. Having identified
what it thinks it understands, it sees itself and would increase itself by sharing what is
like itself. Make no mistake about this maneuver—the ego always empathizes to weaken.
And to weaken is always to attack. (2:1-5)

How does our ego’s use of empathy strengthen itself? It basically says to another, “I understand
your pain because the same thing happened to me. You are thus the proof that what happened to
me was the terrible injustice I thought it was. Through the two of us being joined in your pain,
we are also joined in the belief that I deserved better than what I got.” While this strengthens our
ego, it weakens the other person. It says that he is utterly at the mercy of whatever the world
does to him.

From “Study Group Leader Training, Level 1”

Presented by Robert Perry and Mary Anne Buchowski
September 11–November 6, 2021
Offered by the Circle of Atonement (www.circleofa.org)
 8

How, then, can we use empathy in a new way? We need to realize that our use of it is based on
the past and would simply perpetuate the past. It is our attempt to heal another, yet we don’t
know what healing is. Instead of empathizing with our ego, we need to step aside and let the
Holy Spirit empathize through us. That is the point of the practice in paragraph 4:

I am not alone, and I would not intrude the past upon my Guest.
I have invited Him, and He is here.
I need do nothing except not to interfere. (4:5-7)

When you let the Holy Spirit empathize through you, “you will empathize with strength, and
both of you will gain in strength and not in weakness” (3:2). In other words, rather than
empathizing with what is weak and vulnerable in someone, you will empathize with what is
strong in her, what is capable of rising above her current difficulty. Going back to the meaning of
empathy, you will “understand and share the feelings” of strength in her, even if she is not very
in touch with those feelings at this moment. How different this is from the normal way in which
we empathize! No wonder we need to step aside and let the Holy Spirit relate through us.

Discussion question
Can you think of any instances in which you have empathized with someone’s pain and used it to
strengthen your own sense of being treated unfairly? How does seeing this make you feel about
empathy as normally understood?

Exercise (based on “Release from Sacrifice”)

Think of someone on whom you have placed great demands.
Perhaps they are demands to behave in certain ways or think in certain ways.
Perhaps they are just demands to love you or demands to stay.
Realize that rather than getting love for you, these demands have cut you off from love.
For they have made love into another form of attack.
And thus you have lost sight of what love is.
Realize that these attacks have not only imprisoned the other person, but have imprisoned you as
well.
Take a moment now and ask the Holy Spirit to tell you one specific demand that you can release
this person from.
I’ll give you a moment to ask this and listen for the answer.

Be determined now to release this person and thus release yourself as well.
Say these lines to them, with as much sincerity as you can muster.
I will repeat each line and then give you time to say it in your own mind:

I give you to the Holy Spirit, as part of myself. [Pause]

I know that you will be released, unless I want to use you to imprison myself. [Pause]
In the name of my freedom, I will your release, [Pause]
because I recognize that we will be released together. [Pause]

From “Study Group Leader Training, Level 1”

Presented by Robert Perry and Mary Anne Buchowski
September 11–November 6, 2021
Offered by the Circle of Atonement (www.circleofa.org)
 9

Let’s go through this practice again.

Try to mean it even more this time.

I give you to the Holy Spirit, as part of myself. [Pause]

I know that you will be released, unless I want to use you to imprison myself. [Pause]
In the name of my freedom, I will your release, [Pause]
because I recognize that we will be released together. [Pause]

You can open your eyes and return to the room whenever you like.

From “Study Group Leader Training, Level 1”

Presented by Robert Perry and Mary Anne Buchowski
September 11–November 6, 2021
Offered by the Circle of Atonement (www.circleofa.org)