Acim Village

~ Love Without Needs Seminar, Temecula, March 2011 ~

(Jean Weston’s notes posted at Acimvillage.com. Many thanks to Jean from Bernard)

• If you are not in perfect Oneness then you are in separation.
• Defenselessness says that the spark in me is also in you.
• None of this is possible until we have a relationship with Holy Spirit or Jesus – a presence in our mind to which we can go that is not ego’s voice.
• Intimacy begins with an intimate relationship with our inner teacher. We became an ego because we love our individuality. This became our beloved.
• The only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness; to remember Jesus.
• Ego talks all the time about our needs. We are always needy, always seeking to meet our needs, whether physical, emotional or psychological.
• This Course is not about the body but about the mind. We will get off ‘Course’ if we don’t make this shift.
• When we find ourselves in a relationship with another person, we have to be clear about our neediness coloring it.
Generally, the purpose of our relationships here stem from our neediness.
• Remember that the ‘world is a delusional system of those made mad by guilt.’ We made the body as a huge sense of need. Why? Because it keeps us focusing on these needs of the body so we forget about the mind.
• My simply existing is not enough – I need to prove I am innocent and someone else is guilty. We are in search of evil doers (no, George Bush did not invent this phrase – he just perfected it!).
• When our need for intimacy is focused on Holy Spirit/Jesus, we won’t have the neediness we grew up with. There will be no ego, no judgment.
• When we don’t choose Holy Spirit/Jesus as our friend, we are friendless.
• When we are true to this Love, we can’t hold an unkind thought for anyone.
• When we step outside the arch or leave the garden, we make judgments.
• The Bible Jesus never smiles. He is serious. Never tells a joke. You want the ACIM Jesus who sees the ego thought systems as silly and laughs.
• Recently everyone is writing about intimacy – as if one person could be truly intimate with another person.
• If you want love without needs look to the mind and realize you have two choices. When you choose the ego you become the ego. This is the meaning of intimacy – becoming one with the ‘other.’ Who is your beloved?
• When I choose Holy Spirit as my creator everyone is my beloved.
• We are all different on the level of bodies, but not on the level of mind.
• In Jesus’ world there is no difference between torture and an unkind thought.
• Anger is a basic human emotion. But why do you want to be human?
• In Truth you are always in a state of intimacy.
• Our inner teacher sees that everyone’s interests are the same.
• Choose to see yourself more and more as the dreamer, not the dream figure.
• Jesus is not talking about forgiving a person out there, but letting go of my ego’s need for it to be different.
• It’s not about changing the other person. (Refer T.15.8.6.5)
• The only real relationship is between Holy Spirit and the mind. I am to use my relationship with you as a means to get back to the mind.
• If you want to teach this Course you have to realize you can’t become intimate with a book!
• Ken shared his own experience in listening to Beethoven. He could listen to the symphonies, but found the quartets he was not quite ready for. This was his striving for intimacy, so there would be nothing between him and the beloved (the music).
• Where are your blocks to the beloved? It’s the intimacy with the love the Course leads to that you want – else it’s just another special relationship.
• Intimacy with Love is intimacy with every person.
• We need each other to learn we are not each other to learn we are each other.
• Future loss is not your fear but present joining is your dread (joining with H.S./Jesus. (Refer T.26.VI.2)
• Pleasure and pain are the opposite sides of the same coin. You cannot have a relationship with anyone outside yourself.
• We want to take what is nothing (world) and make it special.
• We embrace special relationships to keep us from our True Friend.
• Without the Holy Spirit you are friendless. The ego is not your friend.
• Bible, Koran and Torah were made ‘divine.’ Don’t do this with ACIM. Don’t worship a book or the people responsible for the book. Look to the altar the book leads us to.
• Love inspires everything – scripture, Shakespeare, Peyton Place are books.
• Don’t listen to the voices of the world (the dead). Don’t make anyone or anything special.
• Be a Son of God who is in love with his Beloved.
• God appointed Holy Spirit/Jesus as our teacher. Accept no substitutes.
• Why embrace your anxiety or bodily pain when you can embrace your Friend, instead?
• Our decision for guilt is the cause of our suffering.
• Observe how we choose things here to keep God’s Love away. By choosing ego we are treating ourselves unfairly.
• In Jesus there is no judgment, just pure and gentle Love.
• There is nothing in this world that can console you. Focus on yourSelf. The work is in the mind, not in the world.
• Do you want to make a relationship with a puppet work?
• Use relationships in the world as a springboard to return you to the mind.
• Many people stay with ACIM by changing what it says. There is only the mind. Use everything here as a way to return to the mind.
• Physicists say that matter is an illusion and the result of thoughts. They don’t go so far as to say matter is a result of thoughts of guilt, however.
• The dream seems so real because we are sleeping. Jesus sees that it is not real, however, so ask him for help.