Table of Contents
David Hoffmeister returns to Next Level Soul to discuss A Course in Miracles and a film he presents as guided. He calls the book a curriculum in Christian and psychological language whose aim is happiness through inner listening, not through fixing circumstances. Usual forgiveness, he says, still assumes the other person did the harm and then tries to drop the anger. The Course, in his reading, calls the hurt a mistake of perception, so the work is in the mind, releasing someone for an act that at that level did not occur. Separate personalities, including his and the host’s, stand in for what he calls true creation. He will expose the ego, but he saves the word recognize for spirit. A frightening world is what a mind sees while it believes it is separate. The film follows a maker with no directing background, offered as guidance in action, plus an exercise with no private thoughts. Healing, for him, is a state of love, and the body is only the mind’s learning device.
Key points
- Hoffmeister presents the Course as training in happiness through inner guidance, not as circumstance management.
- He says ordinary forgiveness still assumes a real offense, while the book denies the offense at the level of mind.
- He treats separate personalities as substitutes for what he calls an original creation.
- Exposing the ego is useful, he says, but recognition belongs to spirit.
- A film made without professional training is his example of letting guidance direct the work.
- He calls healing a condition of love and the body a learning tool that itself makes no moral mistakes.
Short quotes
It's kind of like Gandhi taught it's not it's not really the environment that imprisons you.
David Hoffmeister, Hoffmeister on the Course in Miracles
He uses Gandhi to say inner belief, not the setting, is the prison. Watch at 4:00
Jesus is teaching us in the course it's a perceptual problem, so you have to deal with it at the mind level.
David Hoffmeister, Hoffmeister on the Course in Miracles
He locates the Course’s forgiveness in perception rather than in a social bargain. Watch at 10:53
The course is saying you forgive your brother, you forgive your sister for what they did not do.
David Hoffmeister, Hoffmeister on the Course in Miracles
His reading says the offense did not happen in the sense the book means. Watch at 13:15
The Atonement is the first miracle, the last miracle, and all the miracles in between.
David Hoffmeister, Hoffmeister on the Course in Miracles
He treats the Atonement as the miracle that contains the others. Watch at 23:43
I've worked with it for decades, and I could see the value of authenticity, transparency and not hiding and protecting things under the mask.
David Hoffmeister, Hoffmeister on the Course in Miracles
He links a long practice of openness to the film’s no-secrets exercise. Watch at 38:58
I think that healing is just a state of mind of perfect love and connectedness.
David Hoffmeister, Hoffmeister on the Course in Miracles
He defines healing as love and connection rather than as a bodily repair. Watch at 54:43
Video by Next Level Soul Podcast. Watch on YouTube.