Mind Tools in Action

Using the Forms When Watching a Movie

Watch this video and listen afterwards as a woman having a reaction about the scene fills out an Instrument for Peace form.

Her responses are shown below on a Levels of Mind form and an Instrument for Peace form, along with more in depth information about how the forms are working to release the mind from unsettling thoughts to experience a state of present peace.

Levels of Mind: Taking it off the Screen Back to Desire

The Levels of Mind takes you inward from what you perceive is happening on the screen all the way back in your mind to the desire that something be different than it is right now. Once you see that you are desiring something other than peace of mind, you can choose again.

The Instrument for Peace was developed because people often need some kind of concise tool that can help when they’re starting to feel some kind of upset. They’ll say, “I need to be guided through some steps,” realizing that the more you do the steps the more you are rewiring your mind and reconnecting. It should get easier and easier to just zip back into your right mind as you open to this new way of perceiving, this new way of thinking.

The Instrument for Peace is a way of working through upsets and healing the mind. You want to do it because eventually you start to realize that the pains and the pleasures are two sides of one coin, and they are both capable of distracting you from the peace of nonjudgment and just being still. The Course is very different from that old saying: accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. The positive and the negative are two sides of one continuum of judgment and you have to release the whole continuum.

This is a good way of working with the metaphysics of A Course in Miracles in a very practical way. It doesn’t matter if you feel mild irritation, annoyance, or an intense emotion. You might even work with this on a daily basis, start with some of the smaller upsets and build some confidence with it before you go after the jugular of the ego. It’s like anything else. You learn how to ride a bike. You gain some confidence balancing and peddling before you enter a triathlon.

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