Acim Village

~ Peace to Such Foolishness Workshop, Temecula, March 2011 ~
Part 3
(Winnie’s notes posted at Acimvillage.com. Many thanks to Winnie from Bernard)

Q……Could you speak more about how the body doesn`t exist in any single instant?

Ken…… Take an aspirin for the pain but don`t believe it

same questioner…… What do you mean?

Ken……..Recognize the body is in pain and take the pill but dont believe that the pill will do anything.
Use the pain to show you that you are still attracted to pain Use it as a stepping-stone.

Q……….I`ve read the Course right through and i don`t remember seeing the term “decision-maker”.

Ken………The term is used only once and that is in the Manual and is used in a slightly
different way. My wife Gloria and I came up with the
term for pedagogical reasons because it is implied throughout the Course. In the old days i used to say Charlie the Chooser but
Gloria thought we needed a more sophisticated term.

Q…………..I`m wondering what the Course says about animal suffering. I get blocked at this point.

Ken………….Let me read you something from Page 60 – “I thank you, Father, knowing You will come to close each little gap that lies between
the broken pieces of Your holy Son. Your holiness, complete and perfect, lies in every one of them. And they are joined because
what is in one is in them all. How holy is the smallest grain of sand, when it is recognized as being part of the completed picture
of God`s Son ! The forms the broken pieces seem to take are nothing. For the whole is in each one. And every aspect of the Son
of God is just the same as every other part.”

……………

Don`t believe the “meaningful” distinctions. Science talks about the “great chain of being”, and guess who is at the top?
{ audience laughs nervously} homo sapiens and “sapiens” means wise. Who gave us that name? It wasn`t God and it wasn`t a turtle.
Ask any member of homo sapiens what two plus two equals. It isn`t four.

The first Law of Chaos is that the truth is different for everyone. Forms mean nothing. Nothing here is alive. When we first believed we separated from God, it`s as if we said to Him “You think you`re some kind of big shot…. well I`ll show you – I`m going to make a new God and make a new world that will be so impressive”.
Differentiation becomes salvation, proof positive that I am right and God is wrong. The ego loves to study itself, but there is nothing so blinding as perception of form.

As William Blake, English poet, says in his poem Everlasting Gospel :-

“This life’s five windows of the soul
Distorts the Heavens from pole to pole,
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not thro’, the eye. ”

Look not with the eyes but through the eyes. If there is a world then ideas leave their source. The still small voice says – peace to such foolishness. We are always trying to prove Jesus wrong. We say – of course there`s a world ! Look at my pain !
It`s not okay to prove Jesus wrong – stop with the baby business.
How can you find joy in a joyless place ? The only way to find joy is to recognize that there is no joy here.
We luxuriate in our bodies as they break down. Then the ego had to invent the telephone and the internet so we can tell everyone about it.

When we choose the ego we choose a 100% logically coherent and entirely consistent thought system and we get the whole package.
When we choose the Holy Instant, we choose no body. People see you as a body, but you are not here. At no single instant does the body exist at all – that`s why you are joyful all the time. The body is not who you are.
A shadow has no substance. Turn to page 409. “Look upon the little wall of shadows. ” {At this point, Annie nudged me to point out Ken`s life-size shadow on the screen behind. There were 2 large speakers between it and us and so we listened to Ken`s animated shadow go on to recite further – “How can a shadow keep you from the sun? No more can you be kept by shadows from the light in which illusions end. Every miracle is but the end of an illusion.

A shadow has no substance. A shadow has no power. Sin is substanceless.
Anytime you feel upset it is always because you have pushed the Holy Spirit out. It is a shadowy fragment of the beginning when we told God that His love was not enough.
We asked God for special favour and he would not give it, so we made of him an unloving father.
Perfect oneness cannot see us, cannot hear us. We wanted individual oneness.
The god in the bible is a most unloving father. He recognizes sin as real and is so unloving, read insane, that he banished us from Home.

Whether you believe in the bible or not doesn`t matter. We love it, because if he is angry with me, he notices me. Whether he loves us, or destroys us, at least there`s an us.
The god of ACIM doesn`t even know who you are.
The biblical god is all about specialness as is his son, if you read the New Testament carefully. Where did he learn this from?
We wrote the book and signed God`s name to it forgetting that we wrote it. The one concept the bible rests on is sin. It is magnificent and all-powerful. We live this out every single day when we think we are important. Whether we are the greatest or the least, at least there is an I.

Even comedians, whose job is humour, have to take humour seriously, because it is their livelihood.

The thought of replacing God has no power. It is a shadow.
We are becoming right-minded. All our specialness thoughts are feathers in the wind. Let them all go. Everything involving the body and form lies.”This feather of a wish… is all that remains of what once seemed to be the world.”

I must have decided wrongly if I am not at peace. My peace must embrace everyone without exemption.
What decided wrongly? – cant be the body.
I gave reality to this little insane wish. Our experience with the world in the body lasts 30, 40, 50 years and we hold onto this. We choose up sides. We get affected by what goes on in the world and who the bad guys are – Peace to this foolishness.
You want the effects.
What are the effects of believing in the tiny mad idea……………. = Me.

~ Peace to Such Foolishness Workshop, Temecula, March 2011 ~
Part 4
(Winnie’s notes posted at Acimvillage.com. Many thanks to Winnie from Bernard)

This Course requires an 180 degree shift. Everything here is the same. The forms of broken pieces of God`s son are equal. Dont justify your misperceptions. Dont justify anything. Tape a note to your bathroom mirror that says “2 + 2 = 5 ”

We are hell-bent on believing that everything we see is real. You want to be upset. You lust for it. You thirst for it. You seize upon it.
You dont want to watch the news with Jesus sitting beside you because if you wanted to, you would.

You want to take the nothingness of the ego and make it into something. This world was made from the thought of nothingness. The tiny mad idea became solidified by guilt, preserved by fear of punishment and manifested into matter/body.

We give Nobel prizes to the “brilliant” minds who we think make the most sense of this. If I can be hurt, grow old and die to prove I am right and God is wrong, it is worth it…..That is how insane we are.

No one takes love/peace away from me… no matter what you do to my body.

There is nothing stopping from you from having absolutely perfect peace and letting that peace embrace everyone including yourself.

Ask yourself the question why is it okay for me to be upset / to be thinking about my body 24/7. It is not okay. i deserve better than that. This Course will give you better than that but you have to choose the right teacher.

page 587 – “It is not easy to perceive the jest when all around you do your eyes perceive their heavy consequences”
If we were a body, it would be cruel to tell us that suffering is a joke.

Every single paragraph in this book is about our becoming mindful. The bible drags Jesus from the mind to a world of bodies. A mindless world of healed bodies is not going to get us anywhere. Jesus wants to get us Home. Every time you react with seriousness, it`s because you believe the tiny mad idea happened. You chose the teacher of seriousness instead of the teacher of gentle laughter.

Jesus takes nothing in this world seriously. Jesus hates serious ACIM students. {laughter}

How could there be anything other than Perfect Love? We say there is and I`m it. Stop with the baby business.
It is absurd to think that part of God could separate from itself. Jesus keeps bringing us back to the cause.
Look at each and every time you think there is something important in this world and choose to look with gentle laughter instead.
The tiny mad idea taken seriously is behind everything in this world.

There is no hope in this world.
All we have to do is to choose the teacher of gentle laughter. Become a light of laughing flowers right now.
It is no longer okay to give the world of bodies power over me. Peace to such foolishness.
We can choose to identify with the joy of God instead of the pain of the ego.

Turn to Lesson 190. “Lay down your arms, and come without defense into the quiet place where Heaven`s peace holds all things still at last. Lay down all thoughts of danger and of fear. Lay down the cruel sword of judgment that you hold against your throat, and put aside the withering assaults with which you seek to hide your holiness.”

You can be a light of laughing flowers. Begin wherever you are. Whenever you are upset, say peace to such foolishness.