"The Atonement will be accomplished by miracle workers, who understand and implement the miracles principles taught in ACIM. Principles, as in laws established by God and not subject to projected meaning by students wishing to change the curriculum. Miracles based on the complete equality of the real Sons of God and real brothers, not fear projected anti-miracles predicated on brothers as dream figures with no soul, and no individuality.
"Atonement as the complete restoration of the Sonship, not the disappearance of the Sonship."
Helen Schucman: Last night I felt briefly but intensely depressed, temporarily under the impression that I was abandoned. I tried, but couldn’t get through at all. After a while, I decided to give up for the time being, and . . .
He [the voice] said,“Don’t worry. I will never leave or forsake you.”
Helen Schucman: I did feel a little better, and decided I was really not sick, so I could return to my exercises. While I was exercising, I had some part-vision experiences which I found only mildly frightening at times, and quite reassuring at others. I am not too sure of the sequence, but it began with a very clear assurance of love, and an equally clear emphasis on my own great value, beauty and purity. Things got a little confusing after that.
First, the idea of “Bride of Christ” occurred to me with vaguely inappropriate undertones. Then there was a repetition of “the way of Love”, and a restatement of an earlier experience, now as if it were from Him to me:
He [the voice] “Behold the Handmaid of the Lord; Be it done unto you according to His Word.”
This threw me into panic before, but at that time, it was stated in the more accurate Biblical phrasing:
He [the voice]“Be it done unto ME according to HIS Word.”
This time I was a bit uneasy, but remembered I had misperceived it last time, and was probably still not seeing it right. Actually, it is really just a statement of allegiance to the Divine Service, which can hardly be dangerous.
Then there was a strange sequence, in which Christ seemed to be making very obvious advances, which became quite sexual in my perception of them. I almost thought briefly that he turned into a devil. I got just a little scared, and the possession idea came in for a while, but I thought it SO silly, that there is no point in taking it seriously.
This morning we reviewed the whole episode.
He said he was: “Very pleased at the COMPARATIVE lack of fear, and also the concomitant awareness that it WAS misperception. This showed much greater strength, and a much increased Right- Mindedness. This is because defenses are now being used much better, on behalf of truth more than error, though not completely so.The weaker use of mis-projection is shown by my recognition that it can’t REALLY be that way, which became possible as soon as denial was applied against error, NOT truth. This permitted a much greater awareness of alternative interpretations."
It was also explained:
“Remember the section in “Letters from the Scattered Brotherhood” you read last evening about ‘Hold fast’, and please do so. You know that when defenses are disrupted there is a period of real disorientation, accompanied by fear, guilt, and usually vacillations between anxiety and depression.
This process is different only in that defenses are not being disrupted, but re-interpreted, even though it may be experienced as the same thing. In the reinterpretation of defenses, they are not disrupted but their use for ATTACK is lost. Since this means they can be used only ONE way, they became MUCH stronger, and much more dependable. They no longer oppose the Atonement, but greatly facilitate it. The Atonement can only be accepted within you."
If I told you that every time you pressed your finger on a given spot the wishes of your heart would be fulfilled, you would come here and press your finger on this spot. There is reality in doing a sensuous thing that you can feel. But if I told you that you could do the same thing with your mind, at once there would be a strange barrier.
This childlike lesson illustrates the whole teaching of Christ; his spirit must be felt as this touch is felt, then you have control. You feel this reality of the flesh, but it appears that when you are asked to touch with the mind, a lost feeling comes because man is so constituted that it is difficult for him to shape his imagination so that it is as one-pointed as this feeling of physical contact. To tell an ordinary man he can touch a spirit with his mind bewilders him; even you who have been trained in this way of life realize how far away you are from the practice of being in actual contact. And yet the traffic of daily living is carried on through thought, though even the presentation of the idea confuses the average man.
There are currents of thought that flow in all directions, and you can touch a layer, a sort of strata of impulses and be caught and held captive. An irritating presence concentrates the finger of the mind on a layer of dislike and its attending mutations. Because of the pleasure of dislike the mind is held, the contact is easy. Again the mind touches the current of material success. You hear that success breeds success; why? Because the flush of excitement, pleasure, gaiety involuntarily keeps the finger in contact. So it is with evil; you can touch it with all the passions. In fact, once started in the negative, and more familiar layer, the concentrated finger of the mind is held fast, touching these unseen realities.
The question is, have you the will necessary to make you one-pointed toward the spiritual impulses? Perhaps not as yet; and that is why our sympathy is profound and long-suffering, because you are asked to transcend all known experience. You are asked to believe in the invisible, in something beyond all known experience. We ask you to make as real as the touching of your finger in the physical contact this other experience-and that is to keep the finger of the mind on this thought of awareness. Awareness of the Presence in oneness with your inner you; to be aware of him about you and in every activity of your daily life. This taxes all your forces. It is hard, with everything flowing against you, snatching at you, to do this. And yet you have already known a curious breaking through the clouds, glimpses of a great reality that can be sustained. It is as if you saw a shaft of light so golden, so crystal clear,,,, so unlike any light of your experience that you were struck dumb, and even while you looked, it has gone, and in trying to reconstruct it you had dulled it.
But these are indeed glimpses of the Light of the Spirit; be not faint-hearted. Turn to it; stretch out the finger of your mind and touch this light; touch it, touch it all through the day and it will clear the mind of vain imagining, of fear thoughts. It will empty the sub cellars of lurking fears; it will keep you from overstraining. Don’t live like waltzing mice in a cage; wake up, stop wherever you are and touch with your mind this high state, this high spirit, this light where you are!
Who is master? The world or you? It is the eternal struggle; the world, so dramatic, so exciting; the Spirit, so gentle, so . . . still.
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"It has never really entered your mind to give up every idea you ever had that OPPOSES knowledge. You retain thousands of little scraps of meanness which prevent the Holy One from entering."
"You retain thousands of little scraps of fear . . . . "
The real world can actually be perrceived. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive nothing else. For if you perceive both good and evil, you are accepting both the false and the true and making no distinction between them. The ego sees some good, but never only good. That is why its perceptions are so variable. It does not reject goodness entirely for that you could not accept, but it always adds something that is not real to the real, thus confusing illusion and reality. For perceptions cannot be partly true. If you believe in truth and illusion you cannot tell which is true. To establish your personal autonomy you tried to create unlike your Father, believing what you made to be capable of being unlike Him. Yet everything in what you have made that is true IS like Him. Only this is the real world, and perceiving only this will lead you to the real Heaven because it will make you capable of understanding it. The perception of goodness is not knowledge, but the denial of the opposite of goodness enables you to perceive a condition in which opposites do not exist. And this IS the condition of knowledge. — A Course in Miracles
If experience were just receiving sensory input, then it would not exist in Heaven
"Existentialist philosophers use the term "angst" with a different connotation. The use of the term was first attributed to Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). In The Concept of Anxiety (also known as The Concept of Dread, depending on the translation), Kierkegaard used the word Angest (in common Danish, angst, meaning "dread" or "anxiety") to describe a profound and deep-seeded spiritual condition of insecurity and fear in the free human being. Where the animal is a slave to its instincts but always conscious in its own actions, Kierkegaard believed that the freedom given to people leaves the human in a constant fear of failing his/her responsibilities to God. Kierkegaard's concept of angst is considered to be an important stepping stone for 20th-century existentialism. While Kierkegaard's feeling of angst is fear of actual responsibility to God, in modern use, angst was broadened by the later existentialists to include general frustration associated with the conflict between actual responsibilities to self, one's principles, and others (possibly including God). Martin Heidegger used the term in a slightly different way."
from Wikipedia
That why expressions of love are natural, and when they do not occur something has gone wrong. Expressions of love are merely the sign of your willingness to follow spirit's plan of salvation, recognizing that you do not understand what it is. Spirit's work is not your function, and unless you accept this you cannot learn what your function is.
"Levelling at its maximum is like the stillness of death, where one can hear one's own heartbeat, a stillness like death, into which nothing can penetrate, in which everything sinks, powerless. One person can head a rebellion, but one person cannot head this levelling process, for that would make him a leader and he would avoid being levelled. Each individual can in his little circle participate in this levelling, but it is an abstract process, and levelling is abstraction conquering individuality."A Course in Miracles does not present or support a philosophy of existential nihilism.
– Søren Kierkegaard, The Present Age
Jesus has led the way. This course has come from him because his words have reached you in a language you can love and understand. - ACIMOver a period of forty-three years, the great Sufi master Jalaluddin Rumi (1207 - 1273) dictated his Spiritual Couplets (Mathnawi-i-Manawi) to a scribe.
"It contains jokes, fables, conversations, references to former teachers and ecstatogenic [ecstasy-inducing] methods — a phenomenal example of the method of scatter, whereby a picture is built up by multiple impact to infuse into the mind the Sufi method. This message, with Rumi as with all Sufi masters, is arranged partially in response to the environment in which he is working."Assume for a moment that A Course in Miracles is a rare spiritual classic at least on par with Rumi's 750 year old Mathnawi. How would Shah's remarks about Rumi's work apply to the Course?
"I took a ride I didn't know what I would find there,
Another road where maybe I could see some other kind of mind there."
Got to Get You Into My Life — Lennon & McCartney
"Laws must be communicated if they are to be helpful. In effect, they must be translated for those who speak different languages. Nevertheless, a good translator, although he must alter the form of what he translates, never changes the meaning. In fact, his whole purpose is to change the form so that the original meaning is retained."White trumpet lilies normally do not bloom in nature until June and July. Considerable planning and expense go into creating the artificial conditions required to force Easter lilies to bloom in time for Easter Sunday in late March or April. The final phase of forcing potted lily bulbs to bloom at Easter time involves several months of cultivation in hothouse conditions.
"Offer your brother the gift of lilies, not the crown of thorns; the gift of love and not the 'gift' of fear. You stand beside your brother, thorns in one hand and lilies in the other, uncertain which to give. Join now with me and throw away the thorns, offering the lilies to replace them."
"A church is where an altar is, and the presence of the altar is what makes the church holy. 5 A church that does not inspire love has a hidden altar that is not serving the purpose for which God intended it. 6 I must found His church on you, because those who accept me as a model are literally my disciples. 7 Disciples are followers, and if the model they follow has chosen to save them pain in all respects, they are unwise not to follow him.
"I elected, for your sake and mine, to demonstrate that the most outrageous assault, as judged by the ego, does not matter. 2 As the world judges these things, but not as God knows them, I was betrayed, abandoned, beaten, torn, and finally killed. 3 It was clear that this was only because of the projection of others onto me, since I had not harmed anyone and had healed many.
"We are still equal as learners, although we do not need to have equal experiences. 2 The Holy Spirit is glad when you can learn from mine, and be reawakened by them. 3 That is their only purpose, and that is the only way in which I can be perceived as the way, the truth and the life. 4 When you hear only one Voice you are never called on to sacrifice. 5 On the contrary, by being able to hear the Holy Spirit in others you can learn from their experiences, and can gain from them without experiencing them directly yourself. 6 That is because the Holy Spirit is One, and anyone who listens is inevitably led to demonstrate His way for all."Billy: In this passage, Jesus is referring to what we might call the "true" church and altar (here is an example of him using metaphorical language -- you and I are not literally a church with an altar inside), his crucifixion and resurrection, us as disciples, him as "the way, the truth and the life," etc. I don't understand how someone could say, "Oh, but that is not really Jesus saying those things. And, he doesn't mean any of that literally." It sounds pretty clear to me.
"We have spoken of many different human symptoms, and at this level there is almost endless variation. There is, however, only ONE cause of all them. The authority problem IS "the root of all evil." Money is but one of its many reflections, and is a reasonably representative example of the kind of thinking which stems from it. The idea of buying and selling implies precisely the kind of exchange that the Soul cannot understand at all, because its Supply is always abundant and all its demands are fully met."G. I Gurdjieff
Anyone discussing “money” and “spirituality” in the same breath bears a heavy burden. Gurdjieff carried this burden lightly. Moreover, his actions revealed unique relationships with and attitudes toward money. Turning to the final chapter of Meetings with Remarkable Men, “The Material Question”—which we assume our readers have read—we are awed by the extraordinary money-making talents that Gurdjieff mastered. Other narratives describing how he dealt with money—earning, “shearing,” spending, giving, using it to bring unconscious attitudes out of the shadows and into the light—indicate Gurdjieff’s amazing skill and freedom. Reading about his directness in going-for-the-money, as reported in the piece by Jean Toomer, some of us will react admiringly and others will be disquieted. Are we clear about the internal foundations of these reactions?
Several pupils reported that Gurdjieff wasn’t always “above” money. C. S. Nott witnessed a period when Gurdjieff was virtually broke. The fact that Gurdjieff, too, had difficulties can help us to accept the fact that most of us live beneath forces that entwine our lives with money-insecurities, whether arising from avidity, tightness, carelessness, the use of money to gain approval, or in connection with unearned money. His skill, his freedom in “shearing” people, and the vast sums that flowed through his fingers are especially striking because Gurdjieff’s teaching points to a higher level, untouched by money.
Gurdjieff said, “I am colleague of life.” Who among his living legacy can possibly say that? To be, in relation to life, with all of its pressures—including money matters—a “colleague”
. . . . ( read more )Gurdjieff said, “Weak in life, weak in the work.” But what is real strength? Can we participate in bringing our attitudes related to money out of the shadows, into the light?
Editorial: “The Material Question”
By James Opie, Guest Editor
"The miracle involves a small vial containing a brown crusty substance alleged to be the blood of San Gennaro . . . when the crowd shouts at the vial, the brown crusty substance changes into a bubbling, bright red liquid. There is little doubt that the liquid is real blood. In 1902 a group of scientists from the University of Naples made a spectroscopic analysis of the liquid by passing a beam of light through it, verifying that it was blood. Unfortunately, because the reliquary containing the blood is so old and fragile, the church will not allow it to be cracked open so that other tests can be done, and so the phenomenon has never been thoroughly studied."It is difficult to see how that event, by itself, amounts to an expression of love, and the odds are pretty good that the vial of blood is some Medieval forgery from a time when saint's bones were bought and sold as collectibles with considerable commercial value. Nonetheless, something strange is going on with this, as Talbot explains:
"Occasionally throughout history (the first written account of the public performance of the miracle dates back to 1389) when the vial is brought out, the blood refuses to liquefy. Although rare, this is considered a very bad omen by the citizens of Naples. In the past, the failure of the miracle has directly preceded the eruption of Vesuvius and the Napoleonic invasion of Naples. More recently, in 1976 and 1978, it presaged the worst earthquake in Italian history and the election of a communist city government in Naples, respectively."One might conclude the event is simply demonstrating the power of mind, and particularly the power of group mind. This is how Talbot sees it.
"Is the liquefaction of San Gennaro’s blood a miracle? It appears to be, at least in the sense that it seems impossible to explain by known scientific laws. Is the liquefaction caused by San Gennaro himself? My own feeling is that its more likely cause is the intense devotion and belief of the people witnessing the miracle. I say this because nearly all of the miracles performed by saints and wonder-workers of the world’s great religions have also been duplicated by psychics."The phenomena defies the ability of accepted science to explain. By all rights it should be a wake-up call to all genuine scientists to be open minded. To all miracle workers, light workers, and healers it can be more evidence of the power that lays hidden in the world.
The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they said unto the olive tree, Reign thou over us. But the olive tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honor God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees? And the trees said to the fi g tree, Come thou, and reign over us. But the fi g tree said unto them, Should I forsake my sweetness, and my good fruit, and go to be promoted over the trees? Then said the trees unto the vine, Come thou, and reign over us. And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine, which cheers God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees? Then said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou, and reign over us. And the bramble said unto the trees, If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow: and if not, let fi re come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon.
Judges 9:8 - 15
