When someone comes along and says something to you which seems hurtful, and if you are affected by it, it is because somewhere inside you you've taken it seriously. That means that you believe there is some truth in it.
If you did not believe there was any truth in it, you would recognize that this person is just calling out for love, that they are mistaken, that they need healing and correction, and you would just respond with love and laughter. You would make light of it and not take it seriously or personally at all.
When people come along and provoke you in this way, they are actually attempting to help you, by pointing out places in yourself where you actually believe that something is wrong with you. If you didn't believe something is wrong with you, when people say these things to you you would not react at all. It would not move you or disturb your peace, or your confidence, or your certainty.
Clearly, if you are upset by what someone has said, it is because, sadly enough, deep down, you believed there is some truth to what they said. In other words, you've abandoned your certainty that you are wholly truth and love and light, and have entered into a lower estimation of yourself, which is in agreement with their evaluation of yourself. If it seems that they have so easily triggered you into a reaction of hurt and retaliation, then clearly you have too easily fallen into a belief that you're not good enough, and that you deserve this mis-treatment. And this will be marked with you viciously retorting that 'thats not true at all', in a very upset way, because some part of you actually does believe it's true. You say you don't want it, but you do.
Therefore, people come along and seem to hurt you but in fact, you could not be hurt if you did not agree to be hurt. And then you must in fact be hurting yourself, because the other person isn't the one who forces you to agree. That's your choice. You don't have to agree, you can hold firm in the truth, certain of what the truth about you is. But if you have any fear as to who you are, or any doubt as to your worth, or any undermining of the truth of you, then for sure, you're going to attract people to come along and poke and prod at your sore-spots to try to get to look at them to heal them. And you'll take these helpful provocations as unwanted attacks. ALL of your sense of attack, however, comes from yourself, and you attack yourself plenty enough without needing to claim that anyone else has added to or caused it.
So if someone has said something to me, something that is not true, and if I have a reaction to this, it must mean that I have an ego, which means that I believe I am not as God created me, and therefore I am the one who is not certain of my own integrity. And it is my own lack of certainty in myself that is being pointed out, and it is my own agreement with what they've said about me that sends me into a tailspin. But I have to realize that I really am responsible for this reaction. I am the one who believes this (and probably worse) about myself, it just *seems* like they put the hurt into me by seeming to be the one who attacked me. They did no such thing. All they did was raise to my awareness the pre-existing hurtful attitude about myself that was already inside me, which I put there, because it's what I think of myself.
People who are frequently easily upset and easily triggered and easily angered and easily offended, do not think well of themselves. People who are often reactionary and get extremely worked up when other people seem to say or do things that are unacceptable and 'clearly false', you know that those people are 'weak' in their loyalty to the truth, and have little faith in themselves. They don't realize who they really are, or how much God loves them, or what the truth is about them and others, otherwise they would be in a constant state of invulnerability and joy and peace.
This state of invulnerability is what we all deserve. We are all worthy of it. We are all good enough. None of us are sinners. We've done nothing wrong. All of us are equally innocent and divine. So if that's all we are certain of, we could not be harmed by anyone attempting to say otherwise. We would just laugh and not take it seriously. But if we do not believe and know and experience this truth, then yes, we will have a reaction of 'how dare you say that' and will feel hurt and have justification for blame, to disguise the fact that we ourselves actually are the ones who don't believe in ourselves. The other people just came along to show us that, to point it out, to make us be aware of our own pain, so that we could have an opportunity to choose again as to how we regard ourselves.
And it is our own self-attack that we experience as inner hurt, not an attack by another person. We are 100% responsible for everything we experience and feel. And before we attack others for how they seem to attack us, we need to really honestly take a look at how we are attacking our own self with our own beliefs in unworthiness, negativity, lack and so on. Why is it that we don't deserve absolute love all the time? Why is it that when such and such a person comes along to tell us that we suck, do we recoil in horror that WE ourselves actually believe this is true, and how dare they point it out?
"I am not upset for the reason I think." - ACIM
THIS WORLD DOES NOT CAUSE ANYTHING
The world we seem to live in, which includes planet Earth, does not cause anything to happen. It has no causes in it. And since cause=truth, it has no truth in it. And since truth=reality, it has no reality in it. It however has many many illusions of causes, pretending to be causes.
The world causes nothing. It is nothing but an effect. In order for this to make any sense you'll need to realize that *everything* in this world is being caused from SOMEWHERE ELSE.
In a pantomime, puppets are dangled from strings and made to seem to interact with each other. One can be made to seem to do something, and then it is necessary for the other to be made to do something else, in order to create the illusion that it was affected. There is no causality between them. All of the causality comes from ABOVE, causing what is BELOW.
As it is with miracles. Miracles are expressions from a mind which is ABOVE this world which has CAUSED this world. The world is its effect. That higher mind (the Sonship) has projected this entire universe including the Earth.
Everything that seems to "happen" in it, is not happening because of one thing causing something else. Instead, both the things which seem to cause, and the things which seem to be affected, are simultaneously projected in parallel from another place entirely.
The wind does not blow the trees. The wind blowing and the trees moving are BOTH accomplished at the same time by the same ONE CAUSE, the mind of the dreamer.
Gravity does not cause a ball to roll down a hill.
Eating food does not cause you to make poop.
Throwing a rock at a window does not cause the window to break, unless the higher mind says "ok, I will now break the window", and the breaking of the window is implemented BY THE MIND, not by the rock.
Nothing in this world causes anything at all. We are not made sick by things in the environment. We are not hurt by other people. We are not upset because of things we see. Nothing happens to us, not even death.
Nothing can happen to you, a Son of God, without your say so. Nothing can happen, without your consent. "No-one dies without their own consent". Mind, from a higher level, has to PUT IN PLACE both the apparent causes and apparent effects of EVERYTHING that takes place on planet Earth. EVERYTHING!
The world does not spin because of inertia or gravitational forces or attraction to the sun. It spins because the MIND SPINS IT.
Rain does not fall from a cloud on its own as part of an accumulation of water particles. Rain does not fall unless the mind makes it do so.
This is a world of ANIMATION, it is an animation, like a movie, being projected out and played by a mind that is causing everything in the scene to occur. Everything.
You wouldn't imagine for a second that someone could be sat at the movie theater watching the movie on the screen, and that they could CHANGE the content of the movie by doing something with the screen. If you want the movie to change, you have to get in touch with the folk who MADE the movie, and the mechanism of projecting it, so that the movie appears differently.
Similarly the world can easily be changed by someone who has access to the miraculous mind of the Son of God, who is a miracle worker. This mind has the power to ERASE the world. This mind has the power to CHANGE the world. This mind has the power to do ANYTHING. "There is nothing your holiness cannot do."
The world itself does not DO anything at all. Nothing happens to anything anywhere against any will. Nothing can happen AT ALL unless it is part of the one who is DREAMING IT. Only the dreamer can determine what shows up in the dream. Only the dreamer can make objects appear to interact. Only the dreamer has access to the level of freedom and capability to make the dream appear to do stuff that DEFIES the illusion of linear causality.
If the dreamer decides, hey, when this forest fire rages, which I made rage, I will ensure no harm will come to that house. And so the house will not suffer the fire. And if the dreamer decides, when that rock is thrown at that window, there shall be no damage, so be it.... there will not be a broken window. And if the dreamer decides, this body will have no sickness and show no signs of damage and it will be impossible to destroy it... so be it. The body will be invulnerable.
Miracles appear to defy the LINEAR causality of this world. They prove and demonstrate that the ILLUSION of cause and effect here is FALSE, is fictional, and that it can easily be modified and defied. The mind could easily suppress the effects of an explosion. It could easily levitate a mountain. It could easily cause someone to walk on water. It could easily show that gravity has no effect on the body.
There is an analogy to this freedom and flexibility of writing the rules of what's going to happen in a fictional world, in this world. It's in the area of creating digital worlds. Movies, games, visualizations, 3d objects and so on. In this arena, we get to make entire environments out of nowhere. We can populate them with characters and make stuff happen. But guess what, there are no laws.
Nothing is impossible there. If you want to make a huge ball representing the sun suddenly turn into ice-cream, that's easy enough. And objects in a virtual world have no inherent laws of physics. If you want to make them repel each other or bump into each other and rebound off each other, you have to ADD a whole bunch of extra rules and conditions. But the fact is, YOU add them. And without them, objects would pass right through each other.
This world, this universe, is an illusion. It causes nothing at all and it has no causes inside of it. All causes here are illusions of causes. This is why as a miracle worker you can demonstrate this fact by making something occur which, according to the linear laws, is impossible. It should be impossible to reverse death, it should be impossible to levitate a mountain, it should be impossible to walk on water, and it should be impossible to heal all sickness, but it's not true. There is nothing a holy Son of God cannot do.
Open your mind. Question what you're looking at. Planet Earth isn't a "thing" in its own right functioning according to universal laws. It's nothing but a simultaneous parallel projection from a place UNSEEN. And as a projection, it has no will and no life and no mind of its own. It has no identity. That is why it does not really exist. There is no world. It's imagined.
"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way."
"There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you."
"There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."
"The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less."
"A miracle of healing proves that separation is without effect."
"Time lasted but an instant in your mind, with no effect upon eternity."
"The world may seem to cause you pain. And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect, it cannot make effects. As an illusion, it is what you wish."
Being vulnerable in itself isn't a bad thing. To be vulnerable is to be exposed and open to something. Able to be affected by it. If you expose yourself to God openly you would resurrect into eternal life and joy. That's a good thing.
It's only when you expose yourself and open up to the ego, or really to the idea of the opposite of life, to attack, that you are becoming vulnerable to suffering. Exposing yourself to the ego produces sickness and death. It's like it's toxic, and the more you make yourself able to be affected by it, the more dead you become.
Now, in the victim mentality, which is ego, we always seem to be exposed to and at the effect of something in the world. Something other than God. Really it's an exposure to attack and sin, and ultimately to death. We accuse death of making us dead. We claim that external causes have the power to destroy us and make us sick and suffer. As if "death" happens to us.
In this kind of a mindset, a person is really rejecting invulnerability. They're saying, I am small and weak and frail and easily affected by everything. Everything has power over me and causes me against my will all the time. I barely hang onto life by a thread and live in constant fear that I will be attacked. I have to hide from everyone and everything and become paralized with terror. And anyone who wants to take anything from me can do so.
This mindset of blame and projection, or the reversal of cause and effect, of the disowning of power and playing small and weak, is the opposite of the mindset of immortality. Immortality means you cannot be affected, you are only at the effect of God, and you can only be exposed to life. It makes you invulnerable to attack or threat or danger of any kind, because what you are being vulnerable to is harmless. It is life-giving, not death-giving.
So the question is, what do I want to be vulnerable TO? To life or to death? What do I want to be affected by and open to? By life or by death? If I want to be not affected by the world, not made to suffer, not caused to react, not upset by anything, not terrorized, not threatened or hurt, and actually completely invulnerable to the world, then I need to choose to make myself vulnerable to God. Because God is my safety.
So we have this choice to make between heaven and hell, between life and death. A choice of what I will be an effect of. I am either an effect of God who is life, or I am an effect of death. I will become the spawn of satan. If I become an effect of death I will show up in the world as dead. If I don't want that the only alternative is to be vulnerable with God and open up to him through trust, so that I can be exposed to the life-giving power of his mind.
Just being in his presence can resurrect you back to life and permanent health and eradicate all attackability. Opening up to God reclaims your immortality. It makes you literally invulnerable to anything in the world. And that is the only way you can be safe. Exposing yourself to God IS exposing yourself TO safety. And when you are safe in God, you can never die.
"In my defenselessness my safety lies."
"Nothing except your thoughts can make you think you are vulnerable. And nothing except your thoughts can prove to you this is not so."
"The mind that serves the Spirit is invulnerable."
"Casting spells" merely means "affirming error", and error is lack of love. When man projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made. This distortion makes them vulnerable to the curse of others, since they have already cursed themselves. The miracle worker can only bless, and this undoes the curse and frees the soul from prison."
"It is not YOU that is so vulnerable and open to attack that just a word, a little whisper that you do not like, a circumstance that suits you not, or an event that you did not anticipate upsets your world, and hurls it into chaos."
"Illness of any kind may be defined as the result of a view of the self as weak, vulnerable, evil and endangered, and thus in need of constant defense."
"Concerns about the body demonstrate how frail and vulnerable is your life; how easily destroyed is what you love. Depression speaks of death and vanity of real concern with anything at all."
"Listen to what the ego says, and see what it DIRECTS you see, and it is sure that you will see YOURSELF as tiny, vulnerable, and afraid. You WILL experience depression, a sense of worthlessness, and feelings of impermanence and unreality. You WILL believe that you are helpless prey to forces far beyond your own control, and far more powerful than you. And you WILL think the world you made directs your destiny."
"This would not be YOUR wish unless you saw yourself AS ONE with the ego, which ALWAYS looks upon itself, and therefore on you, as UNDER attack, and highly VULNERABLE to it."
"You do NOT need God's blessing, because that you have forever. But you DO need YOURS. The picture you see of yourselves is deprived, unloving, and very vulnerable. You CANNOT love this. But you can very easily escape FROM it, or better, leave it behind."
"The idea that knowledge will make the individual invulnerable. This is the reaction formation against the underlying fear of vulnerability."
"You see yourself as vulnerable, frail, and easily destroyed. And at the mercy of countless attackers more powerful than you."
"A mind which has been blocked has allowed itself to be vulnerable to attack, because it has TURNED AGAINST ITSELF."
"A sick god MUST be an idol, made in the image of what its maker thinks HE is. And that is exactly what the ego DOES perceive in a Son of God; -- a sick god, self-created, self-sufficient, very vicious, and very vulnerable."
"Their OWN thoughts have made them vulnerable."
"The vulnerable are essentially miscreators, because they misperceive Creation."
"See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning."
Physical sight is blinded by perception of form. It looks only at the forms of error. It regards form as all that exists. The physical sight is blindness, because it cannot see everywhere, and is easily obscured be meaningless objects.
Form doesn't mean anything. But mind then takes the form and decides that certain forms mean certain things. We make up meanings and project them onto the forms. Now there is a hierarchy of illusions, varying degrees of difficulty, and the form of life seems to mean something different to the form of death.
"Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life."
The form of death is not really death, and the form of life is not really life. We decided that death and decay "means" death and decay, and that living forms are "more alive". Who told you this? The myths of the world told you this. People made this up.
The form of death is not really death at all. It's just one configuration of materials. A kind of state. One possible way that form can appear. And when the same form appears more animated or fresh or vital, or capable of giving rise to more forms, then we say it means life. But these forms are neither alive or dead.
"In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning."
We give all forms all the meaning they have. We decide that a broken object means there's something wrong. We decide that a rotten corpse means something is beyond the hope of living. We look at the form of things and use the form to substitute for meaning, as if the form something takes MEANS something.
But all forms are illusions, and death is not death, and life is not life. They are all just equal images, appearances and illusions. All easily changed into other forms by the power of the mind.
"The miracle is means to demonstrate that ALL appearances can change BECAUSE they are appearances, and CANNOT have the changelessness reality entails. The miracle attests salvation FROM appearances by SHOWING they can change."
When no artificial meaning is given to the forms of the world, and the world's inherent meaninglessness is recognized, we end up with a level playing field. And now miracles can operate, disregarding any orders of difficulty or "reasons why" you can or cannot change one thing into another.
And now the seemingly dead bodies can be resurrected to "the living", to symbolize eternal life. And forms of sickness can be undone, to testify to innocence. And now water turns into wine and bread and fish multiply and who cares about the so-called law of gravity.
Here's some quotes explaining why what ACIM terms as "the real world" IS NOT Heaven - they are two entirely difference "places" or experiences. The real world is firmly rooted in perception, Heaven is beyond perception, beyond Earth, beyond this universe, beyond bodies of any kind, and can only be known and experiences in real awareness. This is why "Heaven is an AWARENESS (not perception) of perfect Oneness".
You are to reach the "real world" first and then God will scoop you up into Heaven. But the real world, itself, is actually NOT REALITY, and is UNREAL. This terminology has confused many people. It merely means, "the world AS IT IS" (the "real" version of it) rather than your perceptual distortion about it. It's "relative" terminology, not absolute.
Also Heaven is still very DIFFERENT to Earth, due to the fact that even the real world and Earth are still illusions based on separation.
"THE REAL WORLD STILL IS BUT A DREAM. Except the figures have been changed. They are not seen as idols which betray. IT IS A DREAM in which no-one is used to substitute for something else, or interposed between the thoughts the mind conceives and what it sees. No-one is used for something he is not, for childish things have all been put away. And what was once a dream of judgment now has changed into A DREAM where all is joy, because that is the PURPOSE that it has. Only forgiving dreams can enter here, for time is almost over. And the forms which enter in the dreams are now perceived as brothers, not in judgment, but in love."
"Perception of the truth is not the same as KNOWING it."
"For true perception is a remedy with many names. Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one. They are the one beginning, with the end to lead to oneness far beyond themselves."
"The world stands like a block before Christ’s face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."
"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible."
"Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God."
"For where God’s memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, NO BODIES"
"The Holy Spirit has no need of time when it has served His purpose. Now He waits but that one instant more for God to take His final step, and time has disappeared, taking perception with it as it goes, and leaving but the Truth to be Itself."
"The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers."
"For, as your sleeping and your waking dreams represent the same wishes in YOUR mind, so do the real world and the truth of Heaven join in the Will of God. The dream of waking is easily transferred to its reality."
Here is where you move BEYOND THE REAL WORLD:
"Here (in the real world) are YOU forgiven, for here you have forgiven everyone. Here is the new PERCEPTION, where everything is bright and shining with innocence, washed in the waters of forgiveness, and cleansed of every evil thought you laid upon it. Here there is no attack upon the Son of God, and YOU are welcome. Here is your innocence, waiting to clothe you and protect you, and make you READY FOR the final step (to heaven) in the journey inward. Here are the dark and heavy garments of guilt laid by, and gently replaced by purity and joy.
Yet even forgiveness is NOT THE END. Forgiveness DOES make lovely, but it does NOT create. It IS the source of healing, but it is the MESSENGER of love, and NOTits Source. Here you are led, that God Himself can take the FINAL STEP unhindered. For here does nothing INTERFERE with love, letting it be Itself. A step BEYOND this holy place of forgiveness (beyond the real world). A step still FURTHER inward, but one you CANNOT take, transports you to something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT (heaven). Here is the SOURCE OF LIGHT; NOTHING PERCEIVED, forgiven, nor transformed. But merely KNOWN." (heaven).
Also
"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange WORLD *YOU* MADE and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."
"There walks with you the Spirit Heaven sent you that you might approach this door some day, and through His aid slip effortlessly past it to the light. Today that day has come. Today God keeps His ancient promise to His holy Son, as does His Son remember his to Him. This is a day of gladness, for we come to the appointed time and place where you will find the goal of all your searching here and all the seeking of the world, WHICH ENDS together as you pass beyond the door."
Entry to heaven: "Put out your hand and see how easily the door swings open with your one intent to go beyond it. Angels light the way, so that all darkness vanishes and you are standing in a light so bright and clear that you can understand all things you see. A tiny moment of surprise, perhaps, will make you pause before you realize the world you see before you in the light reflects the truth you knew, and did not quite forget in wandering away in dreams."
Sometimes people say that concepts have to be let go. The course even says that concepts have to be let go. The course even says to let go of the course and come to God with empty hands.
Yes. However, the entire ACIM "Text" is conceptual. It's entirely theoretical. The workbook is part conceptual and part practical. And the manual for teachers is also conceptual.
Concepts are needed to help people's minds to adapt to a new paradigm of thought. I think there is even somewhere in the Text where it says you should do the text first in order to alleviate the likelihood of becoming afraid when you do the practice, because without a firm footing in the theory you are likely to come to a number of false conclusions and become frightened.
It seems that even with the Text under people's belts, moving on to the workbook in many cases still gives rise to a lot of confusion and misunderstanding. That's partly because the Text is not well understood and the Course's metaphysics are not well understood.
I'm no saying to be purely conceptual or to get totally obsessed with theory, but it sure does help to clarify what the course is saying and what it means.
At some point the concepts will give way to experience, given that even in course terms a universal theology is impossible. But concepts help to pave the way to the truth and are important in learning to clearly perceive the workings of the ego mind so that you are not so easily deceived by it.
It's not possible to teach "love", because love is an experience without words or symbols. So if anything is going to be taught, it's going to have to be a concept about not just the truth but about the nature and behavior of illusions. To teach the concepts is to learn how to identify illusions, how to look at blocks to awareness, and discovering what your hidden motivations are. Concepts help you with your "work" of undoing the ego.
Obviously at some point they will be no longer useful when reality dawns on the mind. But until then, it is definitely helpful to have a firm footing in the metaphysical "theory" and to be informed about how the ego functions. Without that you're likely to take a lot longer to find your way to the truth and will be more easily confused or mistaken about how to get there.
Concepts that can be applied are especially helpful. It's all part of learning to discern what is true and what is false. The truth is taken first on faith, which means, believing in it conceptually and not as a direct experience. We need to be careful of course not to get lost in the concepts or spin our wheels in the intellect, but so long as it's helping us to move forward it's all good.
While ACIM does not always use every single word in the English language, it does nevertheless speak of various topics in various ways. The meaning of the words is deeper than the words.
Here are some statements about surrendering the ego, even though "surrender" as a word never appears.
"You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it. You can give it up as easily as you made it up."
"If you want peace, you must give up the idea of conflict entirely."
"Be willing to give up the goals you have established for everything."
"The Holy Spirit guides you into life eternal, but you must relinquish your investment in death, or you will not see life though it is all around you."
"The sick are healed as you let go of all thoughts of sickness, and the dead are raised when you let thoughts of life replace all thoughts you ever held of death."
"You cannot really not let go what has already gone."
"I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts."
"It is crucial to your learning to be willing to give up the goals you have established for everything. The recognition that they are meaningless, rather than "good" or "bad," is the only way to accomplish this. "
"He can learn this only as he actually does give up the valueless."
"What you give up is merely the illusion of protecting illusions."
"I can give up but what was never real"
"If they cannot coexist in peace, and if you want peace, you must give up the idea of conflict entirely and for all time"
"Go on to meet them gladly, and learn how much awaits you for the simple willingness to give up nothing because it is nothing."
"And He Himself will place a spark of truth within your mind wherever you give up a false belief, a dark illusion of your own reality and what love means."
" I would give up my insane wishes and walk into the sunlight"
"But the experience of freedom and of peace that comes as you give up your tight control of what you see speaks for itself."
"Where all reality has been withdrawn from what was never true, can it be hard to give it up, and choose what must be true"
"Give up this frantic and insane attempt that cheats you of the joy of living with your God and Father, and of waking gladly to His Love and Holiness that join together as the truth in you, making you one with Him."
"A teacher of God gives up his own judgement."
"It has never really entered your mind to give up every idea you ever had that opposes knowledge."
"You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it. You can give it up as easily as you made it up."
"Guidance is evaluative, because it implies there is a right way and also a wrong way, one to be chosen and the other to be avoided. 3 By choosing one you give up the other"
Over time with ACIM you may come to realize that you're making everything up as you go along. What things mean when stuff happens isn't actually a part of what happens. There is a judgement happening which comes in between you and the events.
You could also call it a projection or a decision, an intention or an attitude. An expression or a wish. There is this entire layer or filtering and choosing and deciding what to MAKE OF things which happens in between you and all external happenings.
In the past you might have thought that all these interpretations and experiences and the meaning of things was locked into what happens. As if the form of the situation dictates what you feel, the people involved decide your experience, and the consequences dictate what is true.
But there actually isn't any inherent meaning in the world, or the body, or in anything that happens here. Everyone has totally and utterly made up the entire thing as they've gone along. At some point in time someone has decided to give certain things certain meanings and labels. Totally arbitrary and out of the blue.
We've all inherited a lot of these labels from society etc. But what you have to realize is you're actually deciding what to MAKE OF things all the time. You have to ask yourself, is this thing really what you think it is, or are YOU determining that it is that? Are you the one GIVING it this meaning? Does it only seem to be "this bad thing" because YOU have said that it is? And what if it isn't?
As you start to explore the fact that you give everything all the meaning it has for you, that you project your decisions about what you want to see, that you decide often wrongly what to make of situations, and you are the one who judges that you should be in fear, you may realize that you're doing all this to yourself. Your "attacking thoughts" make the world seem attacking, but it isn't.
"I have given everything I see in this room (on this street, from this window, in this place) all the meaning that it has for me."
"I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts."
Now the secret of salvation says you're doing it to yourself which makes you think of an inward direction, as if you are attacking yourself from the outside in. But what you actually do is you, from the inside out, reach inside and decide what you want, what you believe, what you want to see and experience, what meanings you think are true, and THEN you project them out onto or as the world. And then you perceive it. And as you perceive it you take it as total fact.
What that means is that it is your judging, labeling, deciding, projecting, expressing, intending, your attitude, your viewpoint, your desires, your completely arbitrary choice of what you want to MAKE OF the world, that you then put ONTO it and decide is real. As such you do everything "to" the world, so to speak, and the side-effect is that you then experience exactly what you decided it was going to cause you to experience. You experience what you make of it. So then indirectly you are doing it to yourself.
As you realize that all your engagement with the world has been forced through a filter which is in you, in which you direct what to make of the world before you see things in it, you might also then realize that you can choose something else. You could conceivably choose to believe or make of the world something other than what you had been making of it. And why not? Why not just arbitrarily decide to see good in it?
Certainly if you are not at peace, you have made a wrong decision. But what this means is that you have chosen to PROJECT a decision ie a judgement about the world ONTO the world, choosing WHAT you want to make of it, and this has resulted in a loss of peace through the feedback loop of perception. Therefore, you are not at peace because you made a wrong decision ... about what you wanted to see in it.
You may not have realized yet that you actually have the freedom and control and power TO decide what you want to see in the world, and you don't HAVE to just adopt the automatic unconscious inherited interpretations of things that everyone buys into. You need to realize that the world really is totally meaningless and has no inherent meaning. Nothing that happens really means what people have decided it means. Even death is not really death.
"Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life."
We've taken certain physical states and have given them labels. We've decided that a body laying motionless is death and bodies moving around are life. This is NOT the truth. They are both just different forms of the same images with NO meaning. The whole world is mistaken in even thinking that a motionless body MEANS death. It is no more alive OR dead because bodies are equally illusions in all states. So YOU in your mind decide that one of the states is bad and awful and tragic and the other is not.
We might think there's a whole host of meanings and definitions for things in the world as if they are just accepted by everyone, but ALL of these have to be questioned. They have in fact all been GIVEN TO the world by you.
"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that."
So now as you refine and heal your mind, and practice forgiveness and responsibility, it becomes more clear that you're making up all the meanings that things seem to have, and you are reacting to the very meanings you give to them. You MAKE OF situations what you would have them be. You COULD potentially make of a situation something far more light, than the dooming tragedy that you're making it out TO be. In other words, there IS another way of looking at this.
"In dreams, YOU arrange everything. People BECOME what you would have them be, and what they do YOU order."
"Since the purpose of the world is not the one I ascribed to it, there must be another way of looking at it."
So this is where we have to recognize that we have the power of decision to choose, we always choose what meaning we give to everything, we're not in a position to choose or judge accurately because we don't have all the facts, we should open up to the Holy Spirit's judgement or interpretation and stop hurting ourselves with faulty evaluations.
We can potentially just as easily DECIDE, that someone is going to do well, as we can decide that they are going to do poorly. We might think ok if the situation looks like it's bad, then I will decide to agree that it's bad, and will suffer. But does it have to be seen as bad or wrong or going south? You COULD just as easily decide to believe that it's going to go well. You COULD adopt a brighter outlook. There is nothing stopping you.
It may seem at first that this is like playing with insanity or just throwing out all morality or values or sense of what things are, like some kind of LIE that you're telling yourself, some kind of thing that you're "making up". As if you're being totally fictional or in "in denial" about what's "really happening", pretending things are not bad. And indeed forgiveness IS "a happy fiction". You are MAKING a different interpretation of the world, one where you decide to see it right instead of wrong and not use it for attack.
This reveals that probably you have been floating around in a completely untethered free-roaming state, washed around by the crashing waves, believing that the world has decided for you what situations mean while all along just flitting back and forth between made-up meanings. You have been undecided and fickle and unstable and changing your mind and just all over the place with inconsistency.
Most likely you have adopted a general "attitude" or "mood" about life, maybe it's filled with bitterness, maybe it's very judgmental, maybe you attack a lot, maybe you have become pessimistic, maybe you hate people, maybe you just have "learned" that everything sucks. Or maybe you have TAUGHT YOURSELF that it does. Maybe you haven't realized that you decided every single thing you perceived in it, and COULD have changed your mind to seek a better way.
"Judgment was made to be a weapon used against the truth. It separates what it is being used against, and sets it off as if it were a thing apart. And then it makes of it what you would have it be."
"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace.
I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.
I WILL to decide otherwise, because I WANT to be at peace."
Jesus simply is saying that the world doesn't mean anything at all, we are constantly making up meanings and PRETENDING that they are inherent to the situation or the forms you see, and we can EASILY just elect to believe something else. There are brighter happier outlooks that are possible, there are miraculous loving viewpoints that you could just as easily adopt. There is a higher happier healthier outlook you could have.
And again this goes back to your thoughts, because everything you think is praying for, asking for, and producing, the very thing you want to experience. It's GIVING the meanings that you have decided things have. The key is realizing YOU are in the driver's seat making all these decisions, usually deciding on your own, and it's you that's made up all the dire meanings that you see in things. You can instead adopt the holy spirit's meanings and see with his vision instead. By letting him decide FOR ME what everything is and means, from a very lofty perspective, I can experience the world in a much happier way.
I am never upset for the reason I think.
"I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.
I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me."
You know sometimes when you're doing something on a computer and there's a progress bar, and sometimes there are actually two progress bars - overall progress and the progress of one of many smaller tasks? Well I think it's kind of like that with forgiveness too.
There is an overall progress which slowly evolves along similar steps to how each individual forgiveness progresses, but it goes a lot slower. This means that in general, you will start out really strongly believing that forgiveness has something to do with other people, that it's their fault, that you have to forgive them in some way.
Then gradually you will pull away from that and start to realize that it's not really about other people, it's about you. Each time something happens, over time you are a little less convinced that you're starting out with someone else being the problem. So you sort of start a little further along the process.
Each time you do a small forgiveness, each time you tackle some individual issue, and you take it all the way to it being forgiven, you are sort of practicing. You wear away at the rock of sin. And then you do another one, and another one.
What I've seen is that as a result of all these practices, all these forgiveness of individual events and people and situations, in the big long-term picture my mind seems to be gradually moving its 'starting position' away from others and more toward myself.
Instead of falling for some of the more obvious ego traps that convince and tempt me to believe that it's all someone else's fault, there's been a progression where I at least don't fall for those basic starting illusions as easily. I start my forgivenesses a bit further along the process.
Lately I've been encroaching more closely on the idea that forgiveness has nothing at all to do with other people. Instead I'm seeing that there is stuff going on in my own mind, a conflict between two parts of my own split mind, and that I play both the role of victim and victimizer. Whatever way I am using my mind to judge or attack others, I see that this is just my own mind content playing out, there's activity in my own mind about myself, and I'm doing this to myself. I am sort of learning that I can completely ignore any suggestion that this upset has anything to do with other people.
So I think gradually we erode this overall attitude of unforgiveness, we gradually chop down trees and the forest starts to clear. We keep winning little battles and gradually we're winning the war, so to speak. I am much quicker now to recognize that my issues have nothing to do with other people, and can quickly jump over the whole emotional drama tangle of "they are doing this to me", "I'm a victim of them", "I don't want this etc". I've had to take that illusion, that perceptual fault, so many times that I guess I've learned, overall, or have become able to generalize that learning, so that I just kind of 'know it' now.
I think this is really how things progress. I can well imagine that as time continues to unfold I will just keep having fewer reactions, less belief in victimhood, less fear, that I will fall for illusions less, that I will inevitably gradually be sustaining a certain level of 'awareness' and 'wakefulness' which acts as the starting point for any further corrections that are needed.
We wake up gradually. We make progress. And once we've done enough of the undoing of the grosser, more ego-extreme aspects of our mistaken perceptions, we will learn and won't be so easily fooled by them. Then it will come down to the subtler aspects of what's happening, what I'm doing to myself, how my mind is functioning, as we gradually 'home in' on revealing to our awareness what the simple truth really is about us.
And someday we'll realize, there is nothing left to forgive, and forgiveness isn't even needed, because now we are in a permanently forgiving attitude with Holy Spirit that shows us a forgiven world all the time. Ultimately there is nothing to forgive when you get to that point because you're seeing clearly, and really you were only ever forgiving your mistaken belief that there was something wrong that needed to be undone. Nothing has really happened. We're all doing fine. Congratulations on your progress.
While the world and its hierarchy of illusions would tell you that some sicknesses are far more severe than others, ultimately there is no world and there is no difference between them.
When the world suggests for example that a stroke, brain damage, severe paralysis, is irreversible, serious, extremely bad, wrong, progressive, unhealable and proof of threat and danger, you are heavily deceived. But when reframed, it is literally nothing. A tiny little nothingness.
And if perchance a miracle were to occur where what is in fact tiny and nothing were to simply be changed into health and wholeness, this would not be surprising, given that it was nothing to begin with and hardly a serious challenge or obstacle.
It should become second nature, even habitual, to be able to heal the sick and raise the dead in the blink of an eye. These should not be even considered difficult or serious or big challenges, because all of those impressions of its difficulty are in fact illusions.
It is the ego world that testifies and claims and asserts that there is tremendous difficulty in raising the dead, or reversing brain damage, or undoing paralysis, or repairing organs, but this is because the world has defined all the terms for just how important and serious the body is. And it is all a lie.
What if the body is nothing. And what if sickness is so nothing that it does not exist. And what if what seems immense and insurmountable if taken to be real, is in fact minuscule and easy to change and brushed off like it were nothing at all? Such is the outlook of miracle mindedness.
"Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles."
We are simply too deceived by the world's lies and have fallen for its assertions of difficulty so many times, that we really think the hierarchy of illusions is true. That there are big scary impossible things in the world like cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, amputation, chronic illness, even death. And that all these things are so far toward the end of the extreme spectrum that they have no chance of being healed. This is part of the deception.
The world makes everything difficult, taxing, an effort, and a problem.
"The world was made that problems could not be solved."
"All its roads lead to death."
"It is the world you see that is impossible."
"When he is not in a state of grace he IS out of his natural environment, and does NOT function well. Everything he does becomes a strain, because he was not created for the environment which he has made. He therefore cannot adapt to it, nor can he adapt it to him. There is no point in trying."
But here's the thing. If the world truly is so filled with impossibility, if it testifies to the immense difficulty and hardness and irreversibility of its conditions, then it isn't actually far to go to realize that because it IS impossible, it is IMPOSSIBLE that it really exists. All you have to do is realize its impossibility is NOT REAL, and DOES NOT EXIST. Because impossibility IS impossible.
And so impossible sickness.... things too hard to heal.... things too big and intense and difficult to even change slightly.... these are all lies, told by a world of illusions, bought into by all magical medical institutions, and believed by the masses. If limbs were suddenly restored and bodies were raising from death left right and center and sickness were just vanishing before your eyes on a daily basis, you wouldn't give a shit what the world suggested can't be done.
All sickness is a lie. Every form of it, all of its properties, all of the medical stories about why it is so impossible to heal it, all of the physical laws, every appearance, it's all part of a huge f'ing deception. And you stop believing it the second you regard the entire world as unreal. It's a dream of death, not a reality of death. It's a dream of sickness, not real sickness. And Jesus says the illusions can EASILY be changed BECAUSE they are illusions.
Seen in their proper light, that which is an illusion, when not taken to be real, is recognized as EFFORTLESSLY modified by the mind's power. It is regarded as SO NOTHING that it has no power and no ability to resist the will of God. As an illusion, it can EASILY be altered.
"He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God."
Believing you cannot work miracles is very heavily influenced by the belief in orders of difficulty. Buying into the hierarchy of illusions and taking individual separate forms to be different to others.
Believing that some things are harder or easier. Being deceived that you simply can't go up against "big real sicknesses" because of the tremendous weight and power and immensity of their established realities. But if they are not real, if they are nothing, if they have no value, and do not exist at all, then what obstacle can they possibly present, and how would such an obstacle be different to wafting a fart in the wind?
Miracles are effortless and easy and commonplace and automatic and natural, for one who recognizes there is no world, and for whom they are not deceived by any illusion of difficulty. The only reason you think you cannot do this is because you ARE deceived by illusions of difficulty, and thus you fear the power of sickness, and want to keep it. Sickness must be recognized as NOTHING in order to strip it of this power, so that you realize it presents NO obstacle and is EASILY dismissed.
"Miracles are natural and should be happening all the time."
"Every day should be devoted to miracles."
"There are no orders of difficulty among them. One is not harder than another."
"There is nothing so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form means understanding has been obscured. Only MISTAKES have different forms, and so they can deceive. You can change form, BECAUSE it is not true. It could not be reality, BECAUSE it can be changed. Reason will tell you that, if form is not reality, it must be an illusion, and is not THERE to see. And, if you see it, you must be mistaken, for you are seeing what can NOT be real, as if it were. What cannot see beyond what is not there, MUST be distorted perception. And must perceive illusions as the truth. Could it, then, RECOGNIZE the truth?"