Acim Village

(Many thanks to Jean for these notes)

The Wealth of the Indies, July Academy, 2013 – Tuesday

Ken started day with quote from yesterday.

We can let every experience become a community of love…. and then K talked about the three levels on learning and that all can be holy encounters, there are no chance encounters, all contain the potential of a community of love. Remember this is internal, nothing about behavior.

Text p. 549, last two paragraphs…..

We need to project onto people to keep them separate from ourselves…we don’t want to get in touch with our self hatred that goes into projection.

“how little is the hindrance that keeps the wealth of heaven from you”

Text p. 433 paragraph 5…’the sinless give’… when I become aware I don’t see the sinlessness in you, it is because I don’t see that in myself.

We like the world and the body because we made it.

We are born over and over at this moment…. not years ago.

I am/ we are the effect of guilt, we are creatures of guilt.

Ken stated that his nonduality workshop given years ago is the most important one ever given.
The Course speaks in metaphors, symbols. There is no one else to forgive, when the Course speaks of forgiving your brother that is a metaphor. We forgive our own projections onto our brothers and our brothers are everyone and everything in form, one is not different from another.

The Course is written to us who believe we are separate ….Text. p. 519, para 5…since you believe……….Text p. 520 para 7

You cannot understand this Course with a brain but with your heart, see everyone and everything as your community of love.

Text p. 443, para 5….we are all walking the same pathway home…we are really forgiving ourselves for choosing the ego but looks like we are forgiving others,

We are not projecting if we perceive shared interests.

Our practice is to be vigilant for our unkindness and forgive ourselves when we see our unkindness, this is our inner work for undoing the ego.

What is important is finding out what is in the mind that causes us to ‘slam’ everything.
If nothing is out there then why am I repulsed by the world? We can’t change our minds if we don’t look at what we believe is in our minds.

We see our projections and realize it comes from me/mind, not from anything out there. This is indirect learning.

Initially and continually I treat myself unkindly by joining with the ego, the teacher of unkindness. Who would I be if I were kind to myself?

We play the ‘dualistic’ game knowing it is a game. Instead, ask for help, ask to see this differently, to see what the problem is and not the way I set it up.

The course doesn’t ask us to change, it asks us to look at our projections, and that undoes them.
Forgiveness quietly looks and waits and judges not. If we just say, OK Jesus or HS, take this from me, then we have NOT looked, we are saying I can’t handle this, it is too bad, too much of a problem and you take it from me. That is not what the Course is saying.
That is giving the problem, the world power. WE have to look at what we believe and if we are willing to look and not judge ourselves, then we have already joined with Jesus.

The ego can cite the Course for its own purpose. There is no world and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are symbols of a love that is not of this world. Trying to bring them into the world makes them part of the problem. We are trying to control the Course instead of growing into the magnitude of the Course. They don’t/can’t do anything in the illusion.
They are a thought in the mind of the memory of God and we return to the mind and join with that thought. Everything occurs in the mind. The world is either the projection of the wrong mind or extension of the right mind each instant.

I am a decision making mind and I set all this up and I as mind can ask for Help, I previously chose judgment but now I can choose peace because I am a mind that has the power of decision and I now want peace instead of conflict. This is kindness.

We can use this Course to destroy, to try and convert ‘the happy pagans’ (a joke)
This Course is only meant for the one that is reading it and when that one is healed I will know there is no one to convert. We have to do our own work and not subvert it by trying to teach others about the Course.

We don’t let the Course become our life, we allow our life to become the Course.
We become the embodiment of the Course which has nothing to do with form or formal teaching. Helen’s Jesus Prayer poem, which says…’ and when they look up they see only You (Jesus)’

The ego is insidious and spiritual specialness has ruined all religions and it is no surprise it’s alive within the Course community. How to avoid spiritual specialness…do the inner work. People think they are enlightened when they are in the fourth stage of the development of trust instead of the sixth or the real world. There is the line….and they haven’t come as far as they think…..because there is a sense of ‘I’ and in the real world there is no ‘I”

Questions after break….

Our problems are set up…I think my problem is oh I have a headache so I can’t be peaceful……no, I am defining the problem as being in the illusion/world, and I can say instead, I can be peaceful headache or not…. if I realize I am not at peace because I chose conflict and then everything is transformed into a classroom instead of a prison or battleground…..there is no time or place where the purpose of remembering God is absent.

Question about the Koran saying there is God and there is no son…..
A. Course says…….God is and then we cease to speak. The reality is there is only God. The Course talks about a son to teach us with the dualistic language we can understand since we think we are separate from our Creator.

Q…someone talked about being angry at God instead of God being angry at us as ego says
A.. the ego doesn’t care whether we think God is angry at us, or we are the ones angry it is all made up, someone is to blame and there is separation, a God and an us, that is all a story
If we blame God we are trying to avoid responsibility for being the dreamer of the dream/world. Basically you have to let God off the hook. God know nothing about the dream, nothing about the you you think you are.

Q….about ‘soul’
A. Course doesn’t use soul but we can equate soul with the split mind on the journey home.

Q…about feeling anger at Jesus for pushing this Course on us.
A. who is the you that wants to kill Jesus if you aren’t even here? It is not Jesus but ourselves that decide everything…..we decide when we move up the ladder.

The ego is the home of the specific. The mind doesn’t think in words, it either identifies with love or fear. And we will come to know we are the love/Jesus/Holy Spirit as these are symbols of the right mind. We are symbols of the wrong mind. There are nothing here but symbols.

Helen would say it was Jesus who told her where to stand it NYC, etc. but in a sense she abdicated her responsibility for her right mind to Jesus. Ken thought Helen could take down more pamphlets but she said no. The choice changes what the script would be.

The presence of love/Jesus was out of the dream and invited us to come out of the dream like when we are dreaming at night and the phone rings and we can wake up and take the call. But instead the world whittles Jesus down to its size and brought him into the dream to do things in the world. But a Jesus that does things here is not the Course’s Jesus and we should not try to bring Jesus who is the symbol for the love that is not of this world, into our world. We should grow toward this Jesus and the Course.

Even if the Course is not your path you can respect it. It is totally antithetical to everything the world believes. Lesson 189, paragraph 7, ….come with wholly open hands……..

If the Course is our path then we will establish a community of love between our self and the Course.

Thoughts are choices, they do not come unbidden but because we are afraid. Who would I be without my thoughts, memories, concerns?

Our short range goal is not to be ego free, but to to be ego free of the ego…..
Not judge the ego.

Our goal is to have the veil of forgetfulness disappear. Lesson 136….the ego is a thought, a nothing, tickle it and let it slink away. Text p. 433, paragraph 5,
Sickness is mind’s belief that is it better off choosing guilt.

What makes you a happy learner is discovering how miserable you are.

There is no hope in the world and never will be. The thought of hope is buried in our right mind.

Jesus says, the problem you see outside is the picture of your inward condition and you can learn to hear only this voice.

Jesus says, no matter what, it has no effect on my love for you.