Another malady of ACIM students is becoming paralyzed by trying to comply with ACIM principles 24/7, before you are really ready or able to do so.

This entails calling for sacrifices in your own life or that of others. It's an attempt to fit into the model of truth, or to act or behave as though you are doing it right.

It can also manifest as trying not to judge, by holding your tongue, and secretly judging in your mind. In other words, being in denial or using denial that you are judging.

Generally this is the ego trying to "act like" it is doing the Course. The spiritualized ego. It wants to people-please Jesus and never put a foot wrong.

It also results in victimhood and powerlessness whereby you hold off saying anything to upset anyone, you don't want to act, you stop standing up for yourself, you start tolerating crap and are unwilling to "act like an ego" because "its not course". This can get you really stuck in a rut and suffering.

You don't have to try all the time to be perfect at it. You don't have to be walking around biting your tongue and trying to be all nice to everyone. You don't have to be turning the actions of ASSHOLES into some kind of "its okay" attitude, where you don't do anything about it or stand up for yourself because "that wouldn't be forgiving". Then you end up trying to use the course to solve general real-life problems instead of using normal real-life methods.

Many level confusions arise when you have this issue. You try to meet up to an extraordinarily high standard, you compare yourself to advanced teachers, you feel like crap for not getting it yet, and you generally over-reach and over-demand yourself to succeed at it right now. The ego loves to get in there and push you to "be more spiritual" ... secretly because it believes "you're not spiritual enough".

This is a world based on limitation, relativity, differences and lack.

What one thing has, another thing does not.

This is what makes everything different. Apples lack the color of oranges. Bananas lack the shape of apples. You can eat an apple but you can't eat your car, etc.

This is a fundamental built-in law - giving and receiving are not one, and what you give you lose. And so what you have, is lacking, and to gain something is to lose something else.

This unfortunately means that nothing in the world is whole, there are no perfect choices, anything you choose will only give you a partial solution, and every single thiing you choose will be lacking something.

You are very familiar with this. You think of whether to choose A or B. A seems to appeal with its particular attributes, but then again, B has something that A doesn't. But then again, if you pick B, it lacks the things that A has.

After a while of driving yourself mad trying to make a choice, trying to make the right choice, you can't help but get a nagging feeling that if you choose either of them it won't be a complete answer. It won't really totally solve things. It won't be perfect.

So you think to choose A, but then you recognize that B has something going for it. But then, you can't choose B, because it has something missing. And then you think, well, shit, I just can't choose, because both options are not ideal, neither of them is perfect, none of them give me the wholeless I'm looking for, and I can't be satisfied with either of them.

So then you throw up your arms in frustration at the stupidly impossible situation and decide to be done with this whole stupid choosing business, and just compromise and settle and make do and put up with and tolerate, because dis-satisfaction and imperfection are all that's really on offer.

And then you regret your decision because not only did you only have totally incomplete lacking options to choose from, you've now settled for something you don't totally want, and can't get behind, and now you don't want any of them.

This is the malady of human life, and it's not your fault and its not particular to you. It's the same for everyone, because it's built into the system. The entire system of spacetime, of relativity, is a systtem of partiality, because it lacks the wholeness of God. It's a system of impossibilities, contradictions, lacks, scarcities, imperfections, flaws, limits, inadequacies, and frustrating nonsense.

You think you can solve a problem here, but every problem solved produces another problem. You can reduce the overall problematicness of something, but to do it you have to add something else, which brings its own problems with it. The duck tape you fixed that broken whatever with, is now subject to decay and over time it's going to fail. Solutions are problems, and there is no escape.

There is no wholeness to be had in the world. The world cannot ever give you perfection. There is no perfect answer. There is no real lasting solution. There is no correct path to take. There is no completely right choice. The best you can hope for in such a ridiculous sytem is to make do and shut up and put up with shit.

But at least if you recognize that its the system itself that has this limitation, then you can drop your expectation that it SHOULD be able to offer you perfection, and then you can at least stop fighting with it or being utterly disappointed by every single thing you ever go for. Accept it's all shit and play with the turds and recognize it was all meant to be shit right from the start. Then you can laugh about it.

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."