"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
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God Is Real - Women's Scoop Neck Women's Plus Size V-Neck T-Shirt by Miracle-Mugs Find more & unique gifts at CafePress God Is Real - Women's Scoop Neck Women's Plus Size V-Neck T-Shirt by Miracle-Mugs Find more & unique gifts at CafePressAnd forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Mathew 6:12-15In the Lord's Prayer, given as coming from Jesus himself, the Law of Attraction is offered as a blessing upon oneself. Even if one might be tempted to ask to receive better than what one actually gives, that would not in fact be a good thing. If we want forgiveness, we can have it. If we wish total absolution, just give it and it is ours.
And behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, be of good cheer; thy sins are forgiven. And behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, “This man blasphemes”. And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, “Thy sins are forgiven,” or to say, “Arise, and walk?” But that ye may know that the Son of man hath authority on earth to forgive sins.
Arise, and take up thy bed, and go up unto thy house. And he arose, and departed to his house. But when the multitudes saw it, they were afraid, and glorified God, who had given such authority unto men.
Matthew 9:2 -8God gave the power to forgive to humankind, just as it is described in A Course in Miracles.
And whensoever ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any one; that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.
Mark 11:25If you want forgiveness for yourself alone, you can't have it. To receive forgiveness or to remember that you were never condemned by God in the first place, give forgiveness and relinquish the idea of guilt. Love does not condemn.
Whose soever sins you forgive, they are forgiven unto them.
Whose soever sins you retain, they are retained.
John 20:23
And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying,
“Who is this that speaks blasphemies?
Who can forgive sins, but God alone?”
Luke 5:21
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.
"The world, in its original connotation, included both the proper creation of man by God, AND the proper creation by man in his Right Mind. The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given. Nothing in either of these statements implies any sort of level involvement, or, in fact, anything except one continuous line of creation, in which all aspects are of the same order. When the “lies of the serpent” were introduced, they were specifically called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth. He does not have to continue to believe what is not true, unless he chooses to do so. All of his miscreations can disappear in the well known “twinkling of an eye”, because it is a visual misperception." — ACIM urtextWhat, exactly, does it mean to be "wise as a serpent"?
And, from the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary:
- As sheep in the midst of wolves. Defenseless by human means, among the fierce and cruel; among bitter enemies.
- Wise as serpents. Prudent, discreet. Serpents are very cautious in avoiding danger.
- Harmless as doves. Guileless and innocent as doves. The dove, peaceful, never preying on other birds, has always been a symbol of innocence.
Alone, the wisdom of the serpent is mere cunning, and the harmlessness of the dove little better than weakness: but in combination, the wisdom of the serpent would save them from unnecessary exposure to danger; the harmlessness of the dove, from sinful expedients to escape it. In the apostolic age of Christianity, how harmoniously were these qualities displayed! Instead of the fanatical thirst for martyrdom, to which a later age gave birth, there was a manly combination of unflinching zeal and calm discretion, before which nothing was able to stand.The symbolism of the serpent is dependent upon culture. In the Abrahamic religions, serpents are connected with deceit, and are used to symbolize deceitfulness. An example is the serpent in the Garden of Eden, who tricks Adam and Eve into partaking of the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The symbolic connection between serpents and deceit may depend in part on the observation that snakes have forked tongues. A forked tongue is a tongue which has not one end, but two, pointing in different directions. In humans, the tongue is an essential tool in speech, and the presence of only one tip signifies the unity of truthful speech, and corresponds to the unity of the truth itself. There is only one truth, but there are many lies. The forked tongue represents the disunity of deceitful speech. Wikipedia
"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.
