Acim Village

~ One Brother Is All Brothers Academy, April 2011 ~

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

• Title of this workshop is from WB.161.4.1.
• As long as we think we are here, we can’t transcend our experience here.
• Words of ACIM are difficult to understand because we have learned to think specifically. World of specificity was made to conceal perfect oneness. Once we perceive form we blind ourselves to perfect oneness.
• We are all part of that one error and are still one son, but think we are many.
• We can be taught we are all the same by ‘seeing a little to learn a lot.’
• How can a world that doesn’t exist be a problem? We are all trapped in a world made by the ego thought system. So we are all the same.
• Everything a person does is a shadowy thought that ‘I exist because I triumphed over God.’
• We keep trying to find a special something that will fix this, whether it is an addiction to alcohol or drugs, or even a certain blue book!
• ‘Make this year different by making it is all the same.’ (T.15.XI.10.11)
• We like the freedom separation gave us and want to be in control. (T.22.VI.1)
• Our Self has no freedom – no thought apart from God.
• I exist to prove that separation is reality and Oneness is illusion.
• We spend time and money to come to the FACIM, but how can you like it when it is denying your very existence?
• I like being a separated self that is reading a separated book that is better than your separated book, and being guided by a separated teacher that is better than your separated teacher.
• Jesus can’t stand a serious ACIM student or one that says they love him. If you don’t look at your resistance to this Course you will never learn it.
• If your goal is to be a body your guilt will assure this and you will project it.
• What is your goal? To become a kinder person or to realize you are not a person at all? Realize that kindness comes from the mind.
• Bible states ‘Seek and ye shall find.’ It depends what I want.
• Do I want to be a mind or a body? Came into the world to be mindless, so it takes looking, work, because it is not natural here.
• I people my world with victims and victimizers. (Refer WB.161.7)
• Being different means one is innocent and one is sinful.
• Every person comes into the world believing someone else did this to them. If you don’t realize this you can’t choose differently.
• It is not comfortable to be told you are not here. Begin by seeing there is another way of being here.
• See all experiences here as a mind and not a body. Who is the you that is living in this world?
• We want to put the world ‘front and center’ and ACIM in the background.
• Jesus told Helen ‘The thing to do in the desert is to leave.’ Same is true with the ego thought system.
• Knowledge is not the goal of this Course, peace is.
• It’s no longer o.k. that I continue to judge or find fault with people. Having these thoughts is not bad, but there should be none that I would keep.
• Truth in this world is sameness. See what you see but don’t uphold it.
• You will really understand this is a dream when you don’t give anything power to effect you.
• Don’t deny the little steps He asks of you. (Refer WB.193) Don’t judge your brother for 15 seconds. Then for 20 seconds. Continue like this and soon you won’t be here! Quantitative changes for qualitative shift.
• When you change your mind and enter Oneness, everyone must come with you because there is only One!
• Can’t have private thoughts because others will sense your feelings about them, and even if they don’t, you will know and this affects the mind. I can’t be affected by your ego thoughts, however, unless I want to be.
• If you only want to be with right-minded people you are actually reinforcing the ego thought system and trying to let others do your work for you.
• To want to ‘dropout’ from the world can be a defense. (Refer WB.184.9) To be a teacher of God speak the language of the world but don’t identify with it.
• Learning ACIM is like learning to read and write. The challenge is not to think these skills are special. Be ‘in the world but not of it.’
• ACIM is particularly helpful for our world at this point in time. It may not be so in 500 years or so.
• I don’t know I’m part of everything. We need this classroom to learn there is only one real relationship.
• No matter how well meaning we are, we cannot ask Jesus to fix our screens. We need to ask Him to take us back to the projection booth (our mind).
• A dark spot on the lens of the projector will contaminate everything on the screen.
• This Course has NOTHING to do with the body. Don’t believe that Jesus tells you things about being here. He is only telling you to come home.
• A special relationship is form over content.
• Do not confuse symbol with source or content with form.
• If you believe you are a body you will believe what the ego thought system tells you.
• Don’t deny your experience as a body, but don’t believe it as true.
• Your unforgiving thought protects projection. Like a veil of amnesia it protects the unforgiveness in the mind.
• Question every single thought you have. If it doesn’t embrace every single person it is of ego.
• Form always excludes and throws Jesus away. The ego is embraced due to guilt. (Refer WB.136.1-5)
• Be attentive at how you exclude.
• We revel in the thought that we have power over God.
• When I judge you, I am pushing you down and I go up.
• Jesus asks us to look at our judging, unkindnesses, gossiping, or harboring of prejudices with Him. He doesn’t want to take them away from us but is offering us the whole song. Why do we want to settle for a little crumb?
• Don’t force yourself to disengage from the lie while you still believe it.
• The first obstacle to peace is our desire to be without it. Why? Because we want to maintain our specialness.
• When we see with our eyes we are seeing form. When we see through our eyes we are seeing with vision.
• Don’t believe what people tell you or what the world tells you. Believe what Jesus tells you.
• Only fear will drive us to be unkind.
• Some people are better at fooling other people. Don’t judge spirituality by form, but rather by content.
• The goal is to be mindful, not mindless.
• How can the world be doing anything to me when it is not out there?
• Jesus is a symbol. He no more existed than you do. Use the symbol to help you get back to the mind.
• To give something to the Holy Spirit means to look at it with Him. “..together we have the lamp that will dispel it..” (T.11.V.1.3)
• All things in the world are symbols. The purpose we give them is to keep us mindless. The purpose the Holy Spirit gives is to lead us back to the mind.
• When we deny our thoughts, Holy Spirit can’t use them to help us return to the mind. He doesn’t take them away from us, but transforms them – shifts them from a prison to a classroom.
• A question was asked about Jesus helping with specifics in the world. Ken explained that as we climb the ladder of understanding we take different things from it. On one level it can sound like Jesus can help us here. But as we climb the ladder we realize he can’t help us with anything in the world because the world does not exist. We need to see the ‘whole,’ however, so don’t take the parts out of context.
• The only reason anyone suffers is because they pushed love away.
• We think the world is the cause and my suffering self is the effect. The truth is that my decision for guilt is the cause. The miracle restores to mind its function as causation. This is a course in cause and not effect.
• When your heart goes out to the victims, this means you are seeing part of the Sonship as guilty or at fault. Jesus reminds us that everyone deserves our love. Suffering comes when the mind chooses the ego.
• The world you see is a pictorial representation of our attack thoughts.
• The more we get upset and the more people get upset with us, the more it reinforces our belief that it is not my fault.
• Two most important words of salvation: without exception.
• True empathy looks on everyone as the same.
• ‘I’m never upset for the reason I think’ doesn’t mean to deny what you are feeling. Just don’t believe it.
• When we choose to hate what goes on in the world we don’t have to deal with the self-hate in the mind so that we might choose again.
• A question was asked about the situation in Japan and this prompted Ken to use the analogy of fruit falling from a tree. Some fruit fall closer to the tree (like Jesus) and others fall farther away. Similarly, some land near each other in clusters. This is analogous to nations, races or genders. This is helpful in understanding that some of us review mentally as a collective.
• Intimacy is the ability to be fully present with no needs from another.
• Having no needs makes room for love in everyone’s mind to manifest itself.
• Our needs block seeing the other; we only see our projection of differences; that they have what we don’t.
• Recognize it’s my neediness that is distorting my recognition of the other as they truly are. Just recognize this, without judgment.
• True learning is unlearning. Love must embrace everyone.
• If only certain people can fulfill my needs, I believe in a hierarchy of good.
• There is only one problem and one solution. (Refer WB.79 and WB.80)
• Through relationships I become aware of my needs and learn not to indulge; I see the forms of many problems to keep the one problem hidden.
• Salvation is the decision-making mind’s choice for Holy Spirit.
• The answer is where the problem is; not in the world but in the mind.
• I can’t have both vision and judgment.
• When I have uncorrected unkind thoughts, I want to be here.
• To overlook does not mean not to see something, but to look at it and then beyond it; to see ‘through’ it.
• First look, then look beyond to truth.
• I must understand the defenses that have me keep the body as real.
• Look at the judgments without judgment.
• It is more honest to admit how much I hate the Course than talk about how much I love it. Just look at the hate to get to the love underneath.
• One brother is all brothers means that I can’t forgive one without forgiving ALL!
• Don’t tolerate mind-wandering which is equivalent to projection and the mind’s decision to stay asleep.
• Jesus is the bodily symbol of a bodiless ego. Jesus is the great western symbol of love and hate. Jesus is the shining symbol of love. I can’t grow up and be like Jesus if I have an ego.
• The academy ended by reading ‘A Jesus Prayer’ from ‘The Gifts of God.’