Fishman is the co-host of the ACIM Gather Room at PalTalk, where passionate Course students present lessons and discuss ACIM-based ideas for up to 4 to 6 hours every day. “It’s a service kind of thing,” says Fishman. “I don’t even consider it mine at this point. I’m always kind of present. I have it on in the background and I listen. However, it belongs to the participants.” Fishman does more work behind the scenes than he admits to.

Along with Linda Card, the other co-host, Fishman publishes and distributes a weekly topics/events schedule for their mailing list; maintains a website on The Peace of God at Yahoo Groups where past presentations are archived; and he invites a steady stream of advanced Course practitioners to be guest speakers. In fact, the roster of speakers in the ACIM Gather Room is like a Who’s Who in the Course community. It includes Judith Skutch, Tom & Linda Carpenter, Robert Perry, Jon Mundy, Rev. Tony Ponticello, David Hoffmeister, Carol Howe, Vicki Poppe, Rev. Sue Borg, Gary Renard, Doug & Linda Geiger, Alden & Darla Hughes, and many other Course voices, all eager to join with their brothers in our One spiritual family. This writer presented twice. “It just seems to be growing and expanding. Every evening there’s something going on.”

Fishman recognizes there are different interpretations of the Course, but he makes no judgment about any particular version or spin. “My way of looking at it is to recognize that each of us is a whole complete person. There is no reason to censor, defend or protect anyone from anything. Each person is free to choose to learn from a teacher according to where they are. It’s really not different than a TV set with many channels. If one channel isn’t offering you something you choose to spend time listening to, you’re certainly free to switch the channel to another, or shut it off. What we provide at ACIM Gather is a platform for teachers to present topics of their choice. I have learned from all of them. I just get myself out of the way and listen.”

“ACIM Gather came about quite by accident a year ago. For years we were doing a text-only chat group on Wednesday and Sunday evenings on AOL. Then Gary Renard and David Hoffmeister offered to be guest teachers, and there were so many requests, we decided to go to the internet to accommodate the strong demand. That’s how it all started. It’s not that ACIM Gather is my focus. My focus is my own healing. That is our purpose for being here. For me, healing is in the joining. It’s not about the information being given. That’s a biggie! I’ve always been attached to the information being shared. Yet in reality, form has nothing to do with it. It’s always in the joining.

The Course states it clearly in the Clarification of Terms in the Manual for Teachers. I read it many years ago and didn’t realize what it was saying then. Recently, I heard a Ken Wapnick commentary on it, saying not to turn the Course concepts into another ritual. The goal is to experience the underlying Content available to us all and choose to go beyond the form. I recommend re-reading the Introduction to the Clarification of Terms as a way to save time from the invested belief that words and concepts are what’s important.”

Fishman has been living the Course since it first came into our world. “I had just completed the Werner Erhard EST program in 1975, which was all inclusive about how the ego mind works, and I thought nothing could go beyond EST. Then I heard about a new program called Actualizations by Stewart Emory, who had helped start EST along with Werner. Emory spoke about these typewritten pages he received from his next door neighbor, Dr. Jerry Jampolsky, in Tiburon, CA and how reading it had been a lifesaver for Jerry. After six months, Emory asked to meet Helen Schucman in New York. He wasn’t in her presence for 30 minutes when he realized she couldn’t possibly have written it. I asked aloud, if she didn’t write it, who did?, and a stranger sitting next to me said, it doesn’t matter who wrote it, just get the books and do the lessons. I guess you might say my curiosity brought me to this path and I’m glad it has.”

“As many years as I’ve been doing the Course, I recognize it’s not about talking the talk, it’s walking the walk. It’s about stepping back and allowing the love to flow. Of course, every now and then, you find that it doesn’t, and that is always an opportunity to learn. I give a course called Relationships R Us. It teaches that the people in our life who annoy and irritate us are the perfect lessons for us to heal our Self. They are the perfect mirror for us to see our hidden thoughts. Life becomes a learning/awakening process. The unhealed healer is one who has more learning and healing to do.”

“When I have an unloving thought, I go by the book. I recognize that I’m not seeing clearly due to my own lack of forgiveness, prejudgment, or a mistaken thought that I’ve held to be true. I’m just seeing through the filter of the false ego thoughts I’ve made. I bring the dark to the Light by asking the Holy Spirit to exchange this thought for true perception, which is seeing this person or situation clearly. When I do this, I experience inner peace. After that, the hateful thought is not there for me anymore. Miracles transcend the body, and happen naturally when we learn to take our self out of the movie. We simply join with the spiritual eye of the Holy Spirit, and see it completely anew.”

“The past election has been a way to witness many of our judgments about politics and personalities and to understand that judgments are no different at the level of a presidential election than they are at the level of our own family. So whether the person is in your family or the President of the United States, a judging thought is always the same. If you think some member of your family shouldn’t be a member of your family, then that requires healing. Certainly the 6 pm news and world drama carries all kinds of lessons for us to learn from. Until we are able to see each person in the light of who they truly are, not what we made or believe they are, we are not walking the Path the Course offers.”

The purpose of this world is nothing more than an attack against God. We came here to witness our 4-dimensional movie screen/dream that a loving God has given us a world out of control where pain and suffering exists and thrives. From the belief in our separation from love, we made a world where shared interest is impossible and love doesn’t exist. The idea that I can make a difference or a change in this world is just more of the same belief that I can fix and legislate the way things should be, to be God in my own world. Given this upside-down insanity, my only purpose becomes to heal my mind; to awaken and restore my mind to its original place in the Sonship. As Tom Carpenter said recently, when each person fulfills their particular function, it makes it easier for those still on the path to heal. When we are healed we are not healed alone. It’s a critical mass kind of thing, a hologram if you will, which works like an amplifier effect. Each of us is responsible to accept healing for our self. Physician, heal thyself.”

The ACIM Gather room can be found in the Distance Learning Group at www.paltalk.com . Sunday evenings at 8:30 pm ET is a good time for a first visit. For information about ACIM Gather activities and to be added to the mail list, send an email to David with the words “ACIM Gather” in the subject at hdfishman@aol.com or call him at 866.425.5344. David’s website is www.intooneness.com .

Karen Bentley is the author of 10 Radiant Ideas, The Book of Love, and The Power to Stop, which is forthcoming.