Ah!  A New Year and a Review!  Good thing - I was very sporadic about getting through the last few lessons.

I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.

I trust my brothers, who are one with me.

No one but is my brother. I am blessed with oneness with the universe and God, my Father, one Creator of the whole that is my Self, forever One with me.

I am not a body. I am free.
For I am still as God created me.

I trust my brothers who are one with me.   Wow!  Could you imagine what it would be to truly trust one another?    It’s such a difficult thing to do because we’re so intent on getting others to see things the way we see them at the expense of the way they see things and we blame others for what we don’t like about our own lives because they don’t adopt our view.

There was a fairly recent report that 43 states are in financial trouble and can’t meet their budgets.   The Governor of New York has come up with all kinds of things to try and close the deficit, which is the largest in New York’s history.  He’s proposed an obesity tax, increasing the tuition fees of state schools, cutting education costs by $700 million.  and raising taxes on the middle class.   If 43 states are going through something similar, times are about to get very tough because these proposals will mean more loss of jobs and increased difficulty getting a higher education, decent public education, and health care.

It is in times like these that it is most important to trust our brothers, but its also the most difficult because we become fearful and seek to protect our self-interests which very often become crusades for the “greater good”.   This makes it very difficult to genuinely “see” our brother becaue the focus is on an external salvation.  It’s ironic, really - because salvation can only come through trust, yet it’s impossible to trust when we seek salvation “out there” in ideas.    If we can’t see our brother, we can’t trust him.   We must be willing to “see”.

I’ve been thinking lately, about a comment a friend accidentally relayed many years ago.  Her husband had said something about all of the great books I read and how you’d think I’d be….  She didn’t finish the comment which said enough.   You’d think I’d be more enlightened. 

I remember wondering what enlightenment would look like.  I had a fairly specific image of what spiritual people were like based on images of Jesus being peaceful and loving.  You know, graceful, slim, athletic looking, kind eyes, gentle voice, Greek goddish.   Someone who is fat and anxious like me couldn’t possibly be enlightened.  Or maybe enlightenment was Mother Teresa: giving, patient, quiet, kind.  Of course, both of those images have totally been busted since.   Jesus was a total rabble rouser and had my friend met him as a rabble rouser, I don’t think she would have thought him enlightened.   And there are those who claim Mother Teresa was extremely difficult to work with.  Had my friend encountered this difficulty in her, she may not have thought her enlightened, either.

I get the feeling that Enlightened people have their personality flaws just like the rest of us.  But we create our needy, utopianistic myths and stories about them.  This turns them into something separate and apart from the rest of humanity.  I think this is a travesty because it makes enlightenment seem like something to accomplish rather than an internal recognition.  Thinking of it as an accomplishment allows us to judge one another based on how “enlightened” people are.  We can compare one another by levels of enlightenment.   But whatever judgment we bestow on another is merely a means to define ourselves and not about the other at all.  These judgments merely serve to further separate us from one another.

Anyway, I think all of the books I read would more likely be a signal of seeking enlightenment which is definitely not enlightenment although I do think it has offered a form of unlearning in many ways.  But if God is within, then to seek peace anywhere but within is a delusion.  We’re not going to find peace or enlightenment in books.

Lesson 200 says:

Seek you no further. You will not find peace except the peace of God. Accept this fact, and save yourself the agony of yet more bitter disappointments, bleak despair, and sense of icy hopelessness and doubt. Seek you no further. There is nothing else for you to find except the peace of God, unless you seek for misery and pain…

Today we seek no idols. Peace can not be found in them. The peace of God is ours, and only this will we accept and want. Peace be to us today. For we have found a simple, happy way to leave the world of ambiguity, and to replace our shifting goals and solitary dreams with single purpose and companionship. For peace is union, if it be of God. We seek no further. We are close to home, and draw still nearer every time we say:

There is no peace except the peace of God,
And I am glad and thankful it is so.

Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself. The body is a limit. Who would seek for freedom in a body looks for it where it can not be found. The mind can be made free when it no longer sees itself as in a body, firmly tied to it and sheltered by its presence. If this were the truth, the mind were vulnerable indeed!

The body is a limit.  That makes sense.  It comes into being and it goes out of being.  I suppose this is the shift:  we are not human beings with a spirit, we are spirits who have a human being.  Or something like that.  :)  But this gets tricky because what, exactly, is our mind?   It would seem that ACIM does not consider it to be our brain.  It’s something beyond the brain.   I just barely get this.

Here is a definition from an ACIM Glossary:

The aspect of the self that includes the faculties of awareness, volition, thought and emotion. Mind is completely non-physical; it should not be confused with the physical brain. Mind’s true nature is one with spirit. Yet, unlike spirit, mind can temporarily fall into error, sleep or illusion (see level confusion). 1. When capitalized, refers to the Mind of God, of Christ or of the Holy Spirit. 2. In lower case, refers to the separated mind, or split mind, the mind we currently use. This is the part of our total mind that has fallen asleep and dreams of separate existence. As such, it is in substance part of reality, part of God (see W-pI.35). It will awaken in God when it is fully healed and continue in creation. Yet its form — its appearance of being a separate mind with a separate will, private thoughts and changing emotions — is the ego, an illusion that will disappear when we awaken. 3. In lower case occasionally refers to the heavenly mind of a Son of God. See C-1.

So, I’m still confused.  The brain gives rise to these functions (awareness, thought, emotion, volition, etc.) right?   So in effect, isn’t the mind still a function of the brain?

OK - got some help from Kenneth Wapnick on this:  There is God (knowledge, truth) and there is the ego (perception, illusion).  Within the world of perceptual illusion, there is the right-mind and wrong-mind.  That helps.  Mind (at least with a little “m”) is understood as perceptual.  There is a level at which we “know” and this is beyond the perceptual mind.  That was where I was getting tripped up.  When we are talking mind, we are still talking about the perceptual realm.  Our freedom lies in our ability to choose between right-mindedness and wrong-mindedness.  If the mind sees itself as a body, this is the stuff of the ego and wrong-mindedness.  This is what produces sin, guilt, fear, denial, and special relationships.

The mind that serves the Holy Spirit is unlimited forever, in all ways, beyond the laws of time and space, unbound by any preconceptions, and with strength and power to do whatever it is asked. Attack thoughts cannot enter such a mind, because it has been given to the Source of love, and fear can never enter in a mind that has attached itself to love. It rests in God. And who can be afraid who lives in Innocence, and only loves?

In servitude to the Holy Spirit, the nind is free, but the mind that serves the ego is bound and limited.    Wow!  That’s almost making sense and it’s kind of blowing my mind.  The Holy Spirit in ACIM is metaphorically understood as the Answer to the separation.  The Holy Spirit is the communication link between God and the separated mind.

This is knocking at something long forgotten but I can’t quite call it forth.   I’m going to try.  Back in my younger (very young) Christian years when I tried to make sense of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit was the easiest for me to understand.  God was inconceivable.  Jesus was just some old dead guy.  But the Holy Spirit made sense because every now and then, I’d have these really deep understandings that seemed to come from no where.  I’ve noticed this in both my kids, too, who haven’t been raised with religion.  They’ll just realize things at a very deep level - like how beautiful and diverse nature is (or something like that).   I guess what I’m trying to say is every now and then, something connects at a very deep level and where is it that connection comes from?  That was how I explained the Holy Spirit to myself - as that sense of unmistakable connection to some deeper understanding.   I think that probably fits with ACIM.

I liked Wapnick’s explanation:  Let’s say you have made plans for an outdoor event it is threatening rain.  This threat brings with it disappointment and upset.   To pray for sunshine would be wrong-mindedness because this is the stuff of a mind that doesn’t recognize it is free.   It seeks to change the world (that which is exterior) rather than itself.   If instead we accept the possibility of rain and understand it as an opportunity, then we have chosen to learn a lesso in forgiveness from the Holy Spirit.  The world is the effect and the mind is the cause.   Change your mind, and the world will change.  But if you seek to change the world without changing your mind, you are living in delusion.

I am not a body, I am free!  That’s one of those things I’ve known all my life but forget all the time!  (Unfortunately, sometimes for very long periods of time!)

The Holy Spirit is the home of minds that seek for freedom. In Him they have found what they have sought. The body’s purpose now is unambiguous. And it becomes perfect in the ability to serve an undivided goal. In conflict-free and unequivocal response to mind with but the thought of freedom as its goal, the body serves, and serves its purpose well. Without the power to enslave, it is a worthy servant of the freedom which the mind within the Holy Spirit seeks.

Condemn and you are made a prisoner. Forgive and you are freed. Such is the law that rules perception. It is not a law that knowledge understands, for freedom is a part of knowledge. To condemn is thus impossible in truth. What seems to be its influence and its effects have not occurred at all. Yet must we deal with them a while as if they had. Illusion makes illusion. Except one. Forgiveness is illusion that is answer to the rest.

It seems so reasonable, doesn’t it?  If we condemn another, it is simply because we believe we can be injured.  Illusion creates illusion.  But forgiveness is different because it sees through the illusion.  It understands misperception and forgives it for what it is, rather than creating further illusion.

Forgiveness sweeps all other dreams away, and though it is itself a dream, it breeds no others. All illusions save this one must multiply a thousandfold. But this is where illusions end. Forgiveness is the end of dreams, because it is a dream of waking. It is not itself the truth. Yet does it point to where the truth must be, and gives direction with the certainty of God Himself. It is a dream in which the Son of God awakens to his Self and to his Father, knowing They are One.

I love that!  Forgiveness is the dream of waking.

Only my condemnation injures me.
Only my own forgiveness sets me free.

How easily are God and guilt confused by those who know not what their thoughts can do. Deny your strength, and weakness must become salvation to you. See yourself as bound, and bars become your home. Nor will you leave the prison house, or claim your strength, until guilt and salvation are not seen as one, and freedom and salvation are perceived as joined, with strength beside them, to be sought and claimed, and found and fully recognized.

Wow!

Thanks be to you, the holy Son of God. For as you were created, you contain all things within your Self. And you are still as God created you. Nor can you dim the light of your perfection. In your heart the Heart of God is laid. He holds you dear, because you are Himself. All gratitude belongs to you, because of what you are.

Give thanks as you receive it. Be you free of all ingratitude to anyone who makes your Self complete. And from this Self is no one left outside. Give thanks for all the countless channels which extend this Self. All that you do is given unto Him. All that you think can only be His Thoughts, sharing with Him the holy Thoughts of God. Earn now the gratitude you have denied yourself when you forgot the function God has given you. But never think that He has ever ceased to offer thanks to you.

Traditional Christianity, at least Protestantism (Catholicism, too - but to a much lesser extent) is so big on the fallen man theory.  The idea I was brought up with is that we will destroy ourselves in the end because we are sinful.  Our salvation is that we stroke both God’s and Jesus’ ego in just the right way and they’ll let us into heaven.   It’s strange to read, “Thanks be to you, Holy Son of God”.  The Holy Son of God in ACIM is all of humanity.   Perhaps our small, insignificant thoughts about ourselves are what set us against one another.  In a sense, we are small and insignificant, even when taken as a whole.  But in another sense, we are magnificent.

This makes me think of Harold Kushner’s idea that original sin was not when Eve at of the apple or Cain killed Abel, but when Cain blamed Abel for receiving more favors from God.  It was the comparison/blame game that set sin in motion.

If instead, we turned that around, and became grateful for the existence of the “other”, what would happen?

The dreary, hopeless thought that you can make attacks on others and escape yourself has nailed you to the cross. Perhaps it seemed to be salvation. Yet it merely stood for the belief the fear of God is real. And what is that but hell? Who could believe his Father is his deadly enemy, separate from him, and waiting to destroy his life and blot him from the universe, without the fear of hell upon his heart?

Makes me think of the War on Iraq.   We kept calling for the eradication of evil “out there” but didn’t take the time to recognize our own inherent evil which has created huge problems for us.   I hadn’t really thought about it before, but now this makes sense:  Arrogance is fear based on trust in egoic delusions.  No wonder pride cometh before a fall.  What need is there of pride and arrogance if we understand who it is we are?

Such is the form of madness you believe, if you accept the fearful thought you can attack another and be free yourself. Until this form is changed, there is no hope. Until you see that this, at least, must be entirely impossible, how could there be escape? The fear of God is real to anyone who thinks this thought is true. And he will not perceive its foolishness, or even see that it is there, so that it would be possible to question it.

The “fear of God”.  What does that really mean?  I think the fear of God is really just a fear of reality.  We don’t want to see things as they are, so we manipulate what “is” in our minds and spin it to meet our own egoic needs, whatever they may be.  Attacking the “other” is an attempt to escape reality.

I love this:

Gratitude is a lesson hard to learn for those who look upon the world amiss. The most that they can do is see themselves as better off than others. And they try to be content because another seems to suffer more than they. How pitiful and deprecating are such thoughts! For who has cause for thanks while others have less cause? And who could suffer less because he sees another suffer more? Your gratitude is due to Him alone Who made all cause of sorrow disappear throughout the world.

This is Nietzsche’s problem with pity.  If it makes one individual feel better off than another, it misses the point of our existence.  It is true that our lives may be easier than the lives of others, but this gives us no reason to believe we hold the right to be more thankful.  And it is an absolutely ridiculous notion that by being thankful for having what others do not that we somehow suffer less.  The comparison is meaningless.  No matter how much we try to get in the shoes of another, we can only imagine what it is like.  We can never actually get in them to make the comparison.

Your brother is your “enemy” because you see in him the rival for your peace; a plunderer who takes his joy from you, and leaves you nothing but a black despair so bitter and relentless that there is no hope remaining. Now is vengeance all there is to wish for. Now can you but try to bring him down to lie in death with you, as useless as yourself; as little left within his grasping fingers as in yours.

You do not offer God your gratitude because your brother is more slave than you, nor could you sanely be enraged if he seems freer. Love makes no comparisons. And gratitude can only be sincere if it be joined to love. We offer thanks to God our Father that in us all things will find their freedom. It will never be that some are loosed while others still are bound. For who can bargain in the name of love?

Our brother, who doesn’t hold the right belief system, is enslaved by it and we must free him through ours.  Yet we are equally enslaved by our belief systems so to see our brother as more slave than us is hugely problematic.    Just think about this a minute - what happens when we give up the belief that we are morally superior to others, that we are more free than others, and especially that we are more deserving of peace than others?   All bargaining power would be gone!

Therefore give thanks, but in sincerity. And let your gratitude make room for all who will escape with you; the sick, the weak, the needy and afraid, and those who mourn a seeming loss or feel apparent pain, who suffer cold or hunger, or who walk the way of hatred and the path of death. All these go with you. Let us not compare ourselves with them, for thus we split them off from our awareness of the unity we share with them, as they must share with us.

We are not better than the sick, the weak, the needy and afraid because in we are these people!

Walk, then, in gratitude the way of love. For hatred is forgotten when we lay comparisons aside. What more remains as obstacles to peace? The fear of God is now undone at last, and we forgive without comparing. Thus we cannot choose to overlook some things, and yet retain some other things still locked away as “sins.” When your forgiveness is complete you will have total gratitude, for you will see that everything has earned the right to love by being loving, even as your Self.

I just had this thought - God in ACIM is a metaphor for the pathless path and the nameless name.

I love this!  I would have totally cringed at this sort of statement 5 years ago but now I get it - at least from the ACIM perspective.

Our fears about the future are about something that doesn’t exist.  We think it exists because we tend to think of time as linear.  But time is nothing more than a tool - a means of measurement: the means by which we measure one event after the other.  We cannot possibly measure that which has not occurred.

Christians who say they place the future in the hands of God typically mean they know everything will be OK because God will destroy the bad and uphold the good and they’ll eventually get to go to Heaven.  That’s not placing the future in the hands of God.  That’s placing the future in the hands of a fearful personal ideology.   Atheists who place the future in the hands of reason are doing the exact same thing.  Educate or exterminate the unreasonable and uphold the reasonable and we’ll be able to perfect the future.

Kenneth Wapnick says ACIM is an atheism.  It uses Christian terminology so that it can be unlearned.  Those who don’t understand this are destined to abuse ACIM.  To become complacent because all is well is not what ACIM has in mind here.

Our salvation is not based on a deluded ideology or some future event.  We are enslaved by nothing more than own perceptions and ideologies.  Change those perceptions and let go the ideologies and we are free.  That doesn’t mean that human suffering will cease to exist and so we don’t have to worry about it any more.  What it means is that we will no longer fear it so may actually be able to do something about it.  As long as we fear suffering, we’ll continue to push our salvation off to some future, more perfect time.  This gets our egos off the hook and allows them to continue committing atrocities in the name of bettering humanity.

Release the future. For the past is gone, and what is present, freed from its bequest of grief and misery, of pain and loss, becomes the instant in which time escapes the bondage of illusions where it runs its pitiless, inevitable course. Then is each instant which was slave to time transformed into a holy instant, when the light that was kept hidden in God’s Son is freed to bless the world. Now is he free, and all his glory shines upon a world made free with him, to share his holiness.

Trusting in God means trusting in Reality with the understanding that the human brain necessarily places limits upon that reality. We are already free.

Certain it is that all distress does not appear to be but unforgiveness. Yet that is the content underneath the form. It is this sameness which makes learning sure, because the lesson is so simple that it cannot be rejected in the end. No one can hide forever from a truth so very obvious that it appears in countless forms, and yet is recognized as easily in all of them, if one but wants to see the simple lesson there.

Forgive, and you will see this differently.

That’s always true, isn’t it?  I’ve been reading Chris Hedges I Don’t Believe in Atheists and the thing that I keep coming back to while reading it is the idea that in our pursuit of human perfection, we’ve lost what it means to be human.  Rather than extend forgiveness to one another, we increasingly chastise, demean, coerce, manipulate, demand, etc. that others be what we want them to be.   But human beings are what they have always been - imperfect.   The idea that if we just get everyone to believe in the same religion we believe in or, get everyone to think the way we do is problematic.  This includes the atheistic idea that the more rational and reasonable we can get everyone to be, the more perfect society will become.   But this idea of perfecting humanity is just plain bull shit.  We hurt one another.  That’s what we do.  And we aren’t going to be able to stop that by getting people to buy into our perfect plan.  Imperfection is simply part of the human condition.

My new agey friend claimed that we are all developing empathic abilities and she thought this would make us all more compassionate human beings.  But that doesn’t make any sense.  There are plenty of people with empathic abilities in the world right now who use that ability for their own gain.  They aren’t more compassionate than those who aren’t empathic.   I remember a question asked of a priest and I loved his answer because I didn’t expect it - he was asked if he thought if we all came telepathic, we’d be better human beings.  He laughed and said “no”.  Is a sighted person a better human being than one without sight?  Of course not!  Perfecting our faculties, technology, scientific saavy, economies, brain structure, etc. has no correlation with the perfection of morality.

But what we can do is become self-reflective.  We can teach ourselves to see things differently.   And I think ACIM is absolutely right - the only real lesson we have to learn is forgiveness.   This makes so much more sense now!   Forgiveness is not forgetting.  It’s simply the recognition of human limitation - the limitation of egoic perception.

Shall we not learn to say these words when we are tempted to believe that pain is real, and death becomes our choice instead of life? Shall we not learn to say these words when we have understood their power to release all minds from bondage? These are words which give you power over all events that seem to have been given power over you. You see them rightly when you hold these words in full awareness, and do not forget these words apply to everything you see or any brother looks upon amiss.

It is fear that makes us want to perfect our humanity rather than accept it as it is.  This fear drives us to do crazy, horrible, horrific things to one another in the guise of bettering humanity.   The power that we have over events that ACIM refers to here is not egoic control.    It’s simply the ability to see things differently - to change our perspective.  And when that perspective changes, everything changes.

…you have a function in the world in its own terms. For who can understand a language far beyond his simple grasp? Forgiveness represents your function here. It is not God’s creation, for it is the means by which untruth can be undone. And who would pardon Heaven? Yet on earth, you need the means to let illusions go. Creation merely waits for your return to be acknowledged, not to be complete.

Creation cannot even be conceived of in the world. It has no meaning here. Forgiveness is the closest it can come to earth. For being Heaven-born, it has no form at all. Yet God created One Who has the power to translate in form the wholly formless. What He makes are dreams, but of a kind so close to waking that the light of day already shines in them, and eyes already opening behold the joyful sights their offerings contain.

This makes me think of the Hindu idea that there are several layers of consciousness that mask reality.  Our human brain cannot fathom reality as it is, so we can only understand through a sort of dream world.  What level do we reside within?  The dream of the dream, or the dream of reality?   Most of us exist within the dream of the dream because we don’t know it’s a dream.

Forgiveness gently looks upon all things unknown in Heaven, sees them disappear, and leaves the world a clean and unmarked slate on which the Word of God can now replace the senseless symbols written there before. Forgiveness is the means by which the fear of death is overcome, because it holds no fierce attraction now and guilt is gone. Forgiveness lets the body be perceived as what it is; a simple teaching aid, to be laid by when learning is complete, but hardly changing him who learns at all.

To me, this is very Nietzschean.  It is through forgiveness that we can finally leave the lion stage and the slaying of the dragons of past symbols to become the child who is open and innocent.  We know, somewhere in our depths, that who we are is not solely a body.  We can’t explain it or define it or prove it.  But we know it.

Who can be born again in Christ but him who has forgiven everyone he sees or thinks of or imagines? Who could be set free while he imprisons anyone? A jailer is not free, for he is bound together with his prisoner. He must be sure that he does not escape, and so he spends his time in keeping watch on him. The bars that limit him become the world in which his jailer lives, along with him. And it is on his freedom that the way to liberty depends for both of them.

As long as we are angry, we are enslaved by that anger.  As long as we seek to control, we are controlled.  As long as we seek to harm, we are harmed.

Therefore, hold no one prisoner. Release instead of bind, for thus are you made free. The way is simple. Every time you feel a stab of anger, realize you hold a sword above your head. And it will fall or be averted as you choose to be condemned or free. Thus does each one who seems to tempt you to be angry represent your savior from the prison house of death. And so you owe him thanks instead of pain.

That seems very Buddhist to me.