Graphic by © Deposit Photos
A COURSE IN MIRACLES
CH 1 "THE INTRODUCTION TO MIRACLES"
I. PRINCIPLES OF MIRACLES continued
58 Darkness is lack of light, as sin is lack of love. It has no unique properties of its own. It is an example of the "scarcity" fallacy, from which only error can proceed. Truth is always abundant. Those who perceive and acknowledge that they have everything have no need for driven behavior of any kind.
|
A COURSE IN MIRACLES WORKBOOK INTRODUCTION<AUDIO><VIDEO>
Voice and Music by CIMS SonShip Radio
1 A theoretical foundation such as the text is necessary as a background to make these exercises meaningful. Yet it is the exercises which will make the goal possible. An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of these exercises to train the mind to think along the lines which the course sets forth.
2 The exercises are very simple. They do not require more than a few minutes, and it does not matter where or when you do them. They need no preparation. They are numbered, running from 1 to 365. The training period is one year. Do not undertake more than one exercise a day.
3 The purpose of these exercises is to train the mind to a different perception of everything in the world. The workbook is divided into two sections, the first dealing with the undoing of what you see now and the second with the restoration of sight. It is recommended that each exercise be repeated several times a day, preferably in a different place each time and, if possible, in every situation in which you spend any long period of time. The purpose is to train the mind to generalize the lessons, so that you will understand that each of them is as applicable to one situation as it is to another.
4 Unless specified to the contrary, the exercise should be practiced with the eyes open, since the aim is to learn how to see. The only rule that should be followed throughout is to practice the exercises with great specificity. Each one applies to every situation in which you find yourself and to everything you see in it. Each day's exercises are planned around one central idea, the exercises themselves consisting of applying that idea to as many specifics as possible. Be sure that you do not decide that there are some things you see to which the idea for the day is inapplicable. The aim of the exercises will always be to increase the application of the idea to everything. This will not require effort. Only be sure that you make no exceptions in applying the idea.
5 Some of the ideas you will find hard to believe, and others will seem quite startling. It does not matter. You are merely asked to apply them to what you see. You are not asked to judge them, nor even to believe them. You are asked only to use them. It is their use which will give them meaning to you, and show you they are true. Remember only this-you need not believe them, you need not accept them, and you need not welcome them. Some of them you may actively resist. None of this will matter nor decrease their efficacy. But allow yourself to make no exceptions in applying the ideas the exercises contain. Whatever your reactions to the ideas may be, use them. Nothing more than this is required.
~ Original Hand Script of ACIM
|
DAILY LESSON
L e s s o n 10
My thoughts do not mean anything.
Voice and Music by CIMS SonShip Radio
1 This idea applies to all the thoughts of which you are aware or become aware in the practice periods. The reason the idea is applicable to all of them is that they are not your real thoughts. We have made this distinction before and will again. You have no basis for comparison as yet. When you do, you will have no doubt that what you once believed were your thoughts did not mean anything.
2 This is the second time we have used this kind of idea. The form is only slightly different. This time the idea is introduced with "My thoughts" instead of "These thoughts" and no link is made overtly with the things around you. The emphasis is now on the lack of reality of what you think you think.
3 This aspect of the correction process began with the idea that the thoughts of which you are aware are meaningless, outside rather than within, and then stressed their past rather than their present status. Now we are emphasizing that the presence of these "thoughts" means that you are not thinking. This is merely another way of repeating our earlier statement that your mind is really a blank. To recognize this is to recognize nothingness when you think you see it. As such, it is the prerequisite for vision.
4 Close your eyes for these exercises and introduce them by repeating the idea for today quite slowly to yourself. Then add:
5 This idea will help to release me from all that I now believe.
6 The exercises consist, as before, in searching your mind for all the thoughts which are available to you, without selection or judgment. Try to avoid classification of any kind. In fact, if you find it helpful to do so, you might imagine that you are watching an oddly assorted procession going by, which has little if any personal meaning to you. As each one crosses your mind, say:
7 This thought about _____ does not mean anything.
That thought about _____ does not mean anything.
8 Today's idea can obviously serve for any thought that distresses you at any time. In addition, five practice periods are recommended, each involving no more than a minute or so of mind searching. It is not recommended that this time period be extended, and it should be reduced to half a minute or even less if you experience discomfort. Remember, however, to repeat the idea slowly before applying it specifically, and also to add:
9 This idea will help to release me from all
that I now believe.
~ Original Hand Script of ACIM
|
|
ACIM Edmonton - Sarah's Reflections
Lesson 10
My thoughts do not mean anything.
Sarah's Commentary:
Jesus tells us this is the second time this idea has been used. The first time was in Lesson 4. The only difference is a change from "These thoughts" to "My thoughts do not mean anything." In Lesson 4, we were told, "This is a major exercise, and will be repeated from time to time in different form." (W.4.3.1)
Why would this Lesson be so important? To address that question, we need to look at what is said in the text. If we look at Chapter 21, Introduction, we read that "Projection makes perception." (T.21.IN.1.1)(ACIM OE T.21.I.1) This is a significant statement, but what exactly does it mean? To start with, we need to see the connection between our thoughts and what we perceive. We think our thoughts are real, but Jesus tells us our minds are actually blank. We are holding thoughts and ideas in our minds that are not real. They are meaningless thoughts projected out to show us a meaningless world, but we all believe there is a real world outside of our minds we can see with our eyes and experience with our senses. The world seems to reflect reality, yet we are told "The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that. Though it is no more than that, it is not less. Therefore, to you it is important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition." (T.21.IN.1.2)(ACIM OE T.21.I.1) Thus, all we are seeing in the world comes from our thoughts. They are not good or bad thoughts, only meaningless because they come from a false belief that we could be separate from God. This is important because it is the basis for forgiveness. If the world is not real, but only a projection of our thoughts, we are not the victim of the world and we can change how we see it.
We project our meaningless thoughts out, and now see them as what appear to us to be real images in a world that seems real to us. What starts in our minds as thoughts is actually the source of the images we see. We have it backwards, because we think the world acts on us and we are innocent victims at its mercy. If I hold a thought that someone is hurting me by what they have said or done, I am perceiving my own belief that I can be hurt, my reality is that of a body, and there is someone outside my own mind who has power to hurt me. All of these beliefs are false. When given to the Holy Spirit for His interpretation, He reminds us this seeming attack is a call for love from a brother. Nothing else is happening. It is much like our nighttime dreams where something real seems to be going on, but it is all coming from our minds. We only see the unreality of the dream when we wake up from it. In the same way, this is a world of illusion and it is not real. It is just our dream. We are holding a belief system about the world as being outside our own thoughts, but it is simply a reflection of our thoughts.
What do we do when we are feeling distressed, troubled, unhappy about a situation in our lives? We try to make changes in the world don't we? We try to solve the problem by changing something "out there." Yet Jesus reminds us, "Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world." (T.21.IN.1.7)(ACIM OE T.21.I.1) Because we currently hold the belief that the world is separate from our thoughts, we try to work with the effects of our thoughts, but working with effects cannot bring real change. The only change that has meaning is to heal our misperceptions. We can only do that by seeing that what we are seeing is false. It has no meaning because it comes from a meaningless thought. We don't see that the cause of everything we see in the world is our own thoughts. We are asked to look at our thoughts without selection or judgment and remind ourselves the thought about____ does not mean anything. Our minds are full of thoughts and ideas that don't mean anything. We are to try to look at these thoughts with no personal attachment. What this means is that the 'you' doing the looking is not the same one who is thinking the thoughts.
Apply this practice to "all the thoughts of which you are aware, or become aware in the practice periods." (W.10.1.1) Jesus tells us, "The reason the idea is applicable to all of them is that they are not your real thoughts." (W.10.1.2) What are our "real thoughts?" The thoughts that currently occupy our minds do seem like real thoughts, don't they? Yet we are told there is no reality to what we think we think! Jesus says we don't really know our real thoughts. He says we "have no basis for comparison as yet." (W.10.1.4) And we won't until we have some experience of our real thoughts behind the illusory thoughts we are thinking. When we do have an experience of our real thoughts, he says we "will have no doubt that what you [we] once believed were your [our] thoughts did not mean anything." (W.10.1.5) What we have assurance of, however, is that real thoughts are currently in our right mind while illusory thoughts come from our wrong mind, which is the part of the mind that has identified itself with the ego thought system of separation. The right mind is where the truth of what we are is hidden from us by our illusory thoughts. It is where the Holy Spirit waits for us to turn to Him for His reinterpretation of what we are currently thinking. It is wonderful that we have the decision making power within us to change what we believe simply by bringing our false thoughts to the truth, and thus experience the miracle, where our false perceptions are shifted.
Does that mean we deny what we see in the world as just an illusion? Definitely not, as that would just be a denial of what we currently believe. It only means we look at our thoughts and be willing to acknowledge they do not mean anything. Currently, I am involved in addressing a difficult situation that seems to have no easy solution. Lawyers are involved and everything seems tenuous. What a tremendous opportunity for me to look at all of my obsessive concerns and all of my neurotic future projections as I remember "My thought about [this situation] does not mean anything." (W.10.4.3) When I acknowledge maybe there is another way to see this situation, I am willing to be shown. When I think I know how to see this situation and what to do, I am using my own past experience to try to solve a problem in form that seems beyond solving. When I do, I do not make way for the Holy Spirit to reinterpret how this situation can be used for healing my wrong perception. His purpose is that I might use every situation that shows up for me to see I don't understand and can be shown another way. There is a miracle behind every problem I perceive.
Today we search our minds for "all the thoughts that are available to you, without selection or judgment." (W.10.4.4) "You might imagine that you are watching an oddly assorted procession going by, which has little if any personal meaning to you." (W.10.4.6) We are practicing a kind of detachment here. We are simply witnessing our thoughts. We are told, "Try to avoid classification of any kind." (W.10.4.5) It matters only that I look at the thoughts and watch them pass by without any judgment. Who is it looking at thoughts that include odd assortments of worry, hatred, anger, jealousy, sadness, frustration, discomfort, fantasies, planning, anticipation, strategizing, discomfort, or whatever? My mind may be chewing on a grievance against someone, strategizing how to get even, looking at how to fix a relationship, solve a problem, or myriad odd assortment of thoughts. When I step back to a place outside this thinking mind, I can join with Jesus or the Holy Spirit, or whatever the symbol of eternal love is for you, and watch the self that is doing this thinking. This thinker is just a character in the dream, but the aware mind behind the dream figure can step out of the dream and become the observer of this character thinking what it believes are meaningful thoughts. It is an important exercise because "This idea will help to release me from all that I now believe." (W.10.4.3) Incredible as that sounds, the basis for what I believe is that I have actually left the truth of who I am and separated from Love! It is my belief that I am now different and separate from you and everyone else and have a special, individual self I call Sarah.
It is not an easy exercise, because our thoughts are so much on automatic pilot we are not aware of them most of the time. When we try to look at what we are thinking about, it can be difficult for the untrained mind to do.
If any of these exercises are a strain, we should then reduce the time to less than a minute. Just be aware of any resistance. It will be there! Try not to judge the thoughts that come up. It is helpful to recognize that they are not important, meaningful, good, bad, big, insignificant, beautiful, or tragic. They are nothing. When we categorize them and put judgment on them, we are believing that what is actually nothing, and means nothing, is indeed important and something. I find if I am feeling particularly vengeful or angry, I judge myself for these kinds of thoughts and reactions. I think of them as bad thoughts. I then think of myself as not loving and not spiritual, or I judge that some of my thoughts are meaningful and important. Based on those judgments, I think of myself as loving or spiritual, but I need to remind myself it is important to look at all thoughts without judgment. Behind these thoughts is where the truth lies. Judging my thoughts simply makes them real and important. They are not!
The purpose of what we are doing in this exercise is to recognize the blocks that are keeping our real thoughts away. These thoughts cover over the truth of who we are, and also keep us from hearing guidance from the Holy Spirit. Our thoughts are what keep us from recognizing the Self that wants to reveal Its Self to us, yet we are afraid to know it. Who will I be without my thoughts, I may wonder? We have used all kinds of words and ideas about ourselves in constructing who we think we are. This self-concept we have constructed, and the world we think is real, is all that covers over the mystical, which we think we have lost. Yes, we have lost our way, but we can never change who we are as the Christ Self. This journey is about coming to awareness of this Self. We may be nervous about what it means to know the Self we are, but that is just another meaningless thought.
The power is in us to do our part. No one can do it for us. As Jesus reminds us, "You may still complain about fear, but you nevertheless persist in making yourself fearful. I have already indicated that you cannot ask me to release you from fear. I know it does not exist, but you do not. If I intervened between your thoughts and their results, I would be tampering with a basic law of cause and effect, the most fundamental law there is. I would hardly help you if I depreciated the power of your own thinking. This would be in direct opposition to the purpose of this course. It is much more helpful to remind you that you do not guard your thoughts carefully enough. You may feel at this point it would take a miracle to enable you to do this, which is perfectly true. You are not used to miracle-minded thinking, but you can be trained to think that way." (T.2.VII.1.)(ACIM OE T.2.V.93)
Love and blessings, Sarah
|
PAUSED FOR WEEKEND
I. Principles of Miracles continued
40. 57 The miracle dissolves error because the Spiritual eye identifies error as false or unreal. This is the same as saying that by perceiving light, darkness automatically disappears. 58 Darkness is lack of light, as sin is lack of love. It has no unique properties of its own. It is an example of the "scarcity" fallacy, from which only error can proceed. Truth is always abundant. Those who perceive and acknowledge that they have everything have no need for driven behavior of any kind. 41. 59 The miracle acknowledges all men as your brothers and mine. It is a way of perceiving the universal mark of God in them. The specialness of God's Sons does not stem from exclusion but from inclusion. All my brothers are special. If they believe they are deprived of anything, their perception becomes distorted. When this occurs, the whole family of God, or the Sonship, is impaired in its relationships. Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return. The miracle calls him to return because it blesses and honors him even though he may be absent in spirit. 60 "God is not mocked" is not a warning but a reassurance on this point. God would be mocked if any of His creations lacked holiness. The creation is whole, and the mark of wholeness is holiness. 42. 61 Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles. It thus corrects or atones for the faulty perception of lack anywhere. 62 Here we begin to make the fundamental distinction between miracles and projection. The stimulus must precede the response and will also determine the kind of response that is evoked. Behavior is response, so that the question "response to what?" becomes crucial. Since stimuli are identified through perception, you first perceive the stimulus and then behave accordingly. It follows, then, that: 64 The Golden Rule asks you to behave toward others as you would have them behave toward you. This means that the perception of both must be accurate. The Golden Rule is the rule for appropriate behavior. You cannot behave appropriately unless you perceive accurately, because appropriate behavior depends on lack of level confusion. The presence of level confusion always results in variable reality testing and therefore in variability in behavioral appropriateness. Since you and your neighbor are equal members of the same family, as you perceive both, so you will behave toward both. The way to perceive for Golden Rule behavior is to look out from the perception of your own holiness and perceive the holiness of others. 65 The emptiness engendered by fear should be replaced by love because love and its absence are in the same dimension, and correction cannot be undertaken except within a dimension. Otherwise, there has been a confusion of levels. Death is a human affirmation of a belief in fate, or level confusion. That is why the Bible says, "There is no death" and why I demonstrated that death does not exist. I came to fulfill the law by reinterpreting it. The law itself, if properly understood, offers only protection to man. It is those who have not yet "changed their minds" who entered the "hellfire" concept into it. 66 I assure you that I will witness for anyone who lets me and to whatever extent he permits it. Your witnessing demonstrates your belief and thus strengthens it. Those who witness for me are expressing through their miracles that they have abandoned the belief in deprivation in favor of the abundance they have learned belongs to them. 43. 67 A major contribution of miracles is their strength in releasing man from his misplaced sense of isolation, deprivation, and lack. 68 Miracles are affirmations of Sonship, which is a state of completion and abundance. Whatever is true and real is eternal and cannot change or be changed. The Soul is therefore unalterable because it is already perfect, but the mind can elect the level it chooses to serve. The only limit which is put on its choice is that it cannot serve two masters. 69 The mind, if it elects to do so, becomes a medium by which the Soul creates along the line of its own creation. If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains its creative potential but places itself under tyrannous rather than genuinely authoritative control. As a result it imprisons, because such are the dictates of tyrants. To change your mind means to place it at the disposal of true Authority. 70 The miracle is thus a sign that the mind has chosen to be led by Christ in His service. The abundance of Christ is the natural result of choosing to follow Him. All shallow roots must be uprooted because they are not deep enough to sustain you. The illusion that shallow roots can be deepened and thus made to hold is one of the distortions on which the reversal of the Golden Rule rests. As these false underpinnings are given up, the equilibrium is temporarily experienced as unstable. However, the fact is that nothing is less stable than an orientation that is upside down. Nor can anything which holds it that way be really conducive to greater stability.
ON LINE SEARCHABLE Original Edition
Hope you will click Heart to LIKE Us
Click this Heart and then click heart on SoundCloud page
to LIKE Us
|
|
|
