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Your Host - Tim Loomis

Anna Kujawa is A Course in Miralces teacher of over 20 years and a psychotherapist who practices in Denver Colorado. Anna has a special love of working with children and their families, and as a Licensed Professional Counselor and a Registered Play Therapist, she has has assisted scores of kids and families to not just survive, but thrive through every type of challenging life transition.

As a Course in Miracles teacher, Anna facilitates Course students in learning and practicing these profound insights to produce undreamed changes for the better in every area of their lives. Anna teaches with great depth of perception as well as playful humor for the purpose of putting her students back into the hands of their own internal teacher.

With her indepth work with the human psche as a Course teacher and a holistic psychotherapist, Anna brings a unique insight and  PURPOSEFUL poserful application to her public classes and personal counseling sessions.

As host of the Television show "Miracles Connection" she hosted fopm  FROM 1999 until 2003, Anna has shared A Course in Mirales in a variety of media, including her curent radio program, Conscious living Radio, that she cohosts with Barbie Edwards. 

Anna is also a mother and a writer and writes a Course in Miracles Blog as well as a parenting blog where she shares her own personal practice of the Course as well as her parenting lessons that she is learning as she goes.

Anna currently teaches A Course in Miracles classes at The Rocky Mountain Miracles Center in Denver of which she is one of the founding members.

ConnectingPointe

I started the morning by preparing for a funeral I wanted to attend at 10, which meant wearing my black suit (the only thing I own that felt appropriate for a funeral) and putting on makeup beyond the eye shadow, mascara and lipstick that is my normal routine. Then, contrary to my normal practice of showing up a few minutes late, I made sure to arrive at my ACIM study group early, so I could talk to Charmaine, who leads the group and has become a true friend. I came early to tell her, first, that I would have to leave early to go to the funeral; second, that I'll be out of town next week, which, combined with the fact that the group isn't meeting for the two weeks after that, means that I won't see my friends in the group for 3 weeks, a seeming eternity; and, last, that I've decided that I want to share my story about being trans with the group.

I've only told Charmaine and one other friend from the group about my history, and I've never talked about it in our group discussions, always being careful to avoid words or experiences that might "out" me (never talking about my experiences as a boy and talking about my "spouse" or "partner," never my (ex-) wife, and rarely about having three daughters). As I wrote in "Trans and Proud," at first that was about fear – fear of what they might think and how they might react. That group, almost all women, has become a very important part of my life, and the thought of no longer being welcome or feeling safe there pains me greatly. Having attended that group every week for almost a year, I know now that many, maybe even most, of the others who attend that group value my insights and are happy that I am part of it, so I know I will always be welcome there. Nonetheless, I continue to avoid inserting the fact that I am trans into our discussions, because it will be disruptive to the normal flow of the group. Finally, I've decided that I want to share my story with that group because I want these people, who I count among my closest friends, to know who I am; in other words, I want to be authentic and to no longer feel the need to censor myself. I also believe that being trans is an important part of my spiritual journey, including my study of A Course in Miracles, and that sharing my story may help others to see how they can implement the principles it teaches (primarily, that love is always the answer, no matter what the question) in their own lives. So, yesterday, I asked Charmaine for some time in one of our future meetings to share my story. She was very happy and very supportive of my decision and wanted to schedule it right away. I deferred, however, until after I come back from my trip to Trinidad with Mari.

After the others arrived and I told them about my need to leave early and my absence next week, we began to read. As I said, the topic was sacrifice and we did much more talking about how the pain of the concept has played itself out in each of our lives, and much less reading, than we normally do. The discussion was lively and moving and exactly what I needed. When I left, I felt centered and connected to my emotions.

The funeral was for a fellow attorney and friend. I didn't know Jim well, but enough to know that he was a very loving man who truly cared about his clients. Jim worked in the public defender's office, representing people charged with crimes who don't have the resources to hire their own attorney. As the attorney who does most of the criminal appeals from Yavapai County for those same people, I look over the shoulder of every other criminal defense attorney in the area, hearing the complaints of their clients, looking for the mistakes my fellow attorneys made that harmed their clients and doing my best to correct them. I've been doing that work for 11 years now. Over that time, my admiration for Jim grew. Eventually, I learned that he carried the highest caseload of any attorney in the public defender's office, and, thus, of any other attorney in the county. Yet, I can recall only a small handful of my cases that came from his clients and only one client who complained about Jim. This record is truly remarkable, given that there are some attorneys who generate numerous appeals and whose clients constantly complain about being mistreated, mostly, about not being heard by their attorneys. Jim's clients didn't complain about that because Jim cared enough to spend the time required to explain what was going on in their cases and because he had the admirable skill of being able to talk to them in language they understood and without projecting that attitude of superiority that many attorneys, much to my regret, project. Also, in all those years, I only found one mistake that Jim made. When I called Jim and explained my research that revealed that he had missed an opportunity to object that would have helped his client immensely (when I got it corrected, the client was released from prison and placed on probation, where he continues to do well), Jim's only response was to ask how he could help to correct it. I view my relationship with other defense attorneys as being on the same side, both working to ensure that our mutual clients get the fairness and justice that our constitution guarantees them. Some attorneys don't see it that way, but Jim always did.

The funeral was in the local Catholic Church, a modern and beautiful cathedral that I've only been to a few times before. I didn't shed many tears during the Mass but felt grateful that I had the opportunity to take that time to honor a man that I admired through the use of ritual developed over thousands of years. After the service, I stood in the receiving line to tell Jim's children and his wife how much I admired him and what a great lawyer I knew he was based on my unique perspective. When I left, my heart felt wide open and I felt more connected to my inner self than I have in a long time.

Fortunately, right after the service, I had an appointment with my friend and advisor, and former therapist, Byron, who I have been seeing on a regular basis for nearly 13 years. Byron has helped me through many hard times and, needless to say, we know each other very well. I told Byron about the funeral and about how I had been afraid to approach the people I saw there who haven't seen me since my transition, some of whom may not even know about it. Then, I began to tell him about my decision to tell my Course in Miracles group about being trans. I explained that I was thinking that I would tell it as a story, beginning with "Once upon a time, there was a little boy," and going on from there to describe the pain and confusion that that little boy, and the man he became, lived in for far, far too long. I began to cry (I feel the tears again as I write this) as I talked about living with severe depression since I was seven and being terrified by the nearly uncontrollable desire, which seemingly came from nowhere, to cut off my penis. Those thoughts scared me to death, and still do to this day, because, for many, many years it took the last ounce of my strength not to give in to that urge. So, I cried, sobbed really, like I haven't in a long time, in recognition of my past. Eventually, the tears ended and we talked about other things – the struggle I've had with feeling motivated to do my work; the feeling I have that something – my work, where I live, something – needs to change; and the thoughts and emotions that are coming up for me as I contemplate traveling to Trinidad with Mari to support and love her through her SRS, and after.

All the emotion I felt yesterday and am still feeling today is exactly what I needed to break through the logjam I've felt with my work, and I was able to begin to work on some things that I've avoided literally for months. And I'm confident that will continue through the weekend, as I do my best to arrange my work life to avoid any crises while I'm gone to Colorado. For that, and for the connection to self that I feel this morning, I'm truly grateful.

All of that is merely a prologue to explain the emotional place I'm in today that led to this response to Callie's post:

Change does require, well, change, but I never thought of it as requiring explosions. Sure, that's one way to do it, but there are other ways, as well.

There are two kinds of change, of course. There are the changes in other people, institutions or society in general, which affect us. Then, there are the changes we ourselves go through. With respect to the first group, we can only control how we react; we cannot stop or control the change, no matter how much pain and energy we are willing to invest in efforts to do just that. With respect to the second group, however, we can choose how to initiate and sustain that change. Yes, we can be the "Dick" (sorry, I couldn't resist) who shows up at Thanksgiving dinner in a dress for the first time (at least, *I* waited until the day after Thanksgiving and merely read a letter to my family and left the dress for much later). But we can also ease that explosiveness by preparing those around us for what is to come. Eventually, of course, we have to grab that bull by the horns and change to embody the persons we know ourselves to be, but we can do so with dignity and fair warning. If we do that, and other people still experience the change as explosive, which some, perhaps many, will, that is their reaction that only they are responsible for and only they can control.

I was saddened, too, to see you refer to your changes as moving from "caretaker to sapper." Life isn't so black and white. Yes, you are a caretaker and that is one of your most honored and valued roles, but I also sense that you ignore yourself when it comes to caretaking. From decades of painful experience, I finally learned that, if I spend all my energy caring for others and ignoring myself, I start to build up expectations that those others should appreciate and reward me with love and acceptance, which only leads to resentment when the others don't understand, or simply refuse to play, their roles the same way I've scripted them. When those resentments do finally emerge, which they *always* do, they truly can be explosive and, in my case, the resulting "explosion" was often very ugly for everyone involved.

It may sound trite, but it is nonetheless true that we cannot care for others if we don't care for ourselves first. You need to care for yourself in order to be truly caring to your parents. That will require you to change, which means your parents will have whatever reaction they choose to have, but that doesn't make you the "sapper" or require that you abandon your role of caretaker. The world isn't so black and white. Whenever I see the world as forcing me to choose between two seeming opposites, one of which feels selfish, while the other seems to require that I give myself away and ignore my own needs, my own identity, I know without doubt that there *is* a third way, a way between, that doesn't require me to ignore either my own needs or the needs of others. It is always my ego that tells me that I have to choose one or the other, that it's impossible to be simultaneously loving to myself, as well as others, because it is a favorite technique of, at least, my ego to trap me perpetually in either guilt or resentment, never seeing that love is possible.

I know that much of what I have just written is my own projection from my own experience and may not relate to your experience at all, but I hope that somehow what I have said will help you to find your own way to be the change that you are with love, not explosives.

Blessings,
Abby

Residential Intensives: Transformational, Process Oriented, Spiritually Based On A Course In Miracles

We have been playing with a new logo for our website or blog and have been exploring symbology. So, what’s in a name? We are actively engaged in iTransPlay. The little “i” stands for the constructed self or ego and its perception through the body’s eye. By process oriented transformation the Self is remembered and with it the vision of spirit, bringing forgiveness and the grace of innocence. On considering those with whom we have facilitated this transformation, we discovered that most came with a troubled mind and a broken heart, suffering from a lost relationship.

With light hearted play, music, and dance we all come to experience peace of mind and an open heart. Thus the appropriateness of foxglove, the source of digitalis, an herbal heart tonic.

The significance of the mobius strip winding around the words is its similarity to the infinity sign and its continuous unbounded surface with no inside or outside thus dissolving duality in eternal Oneness.

In the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, Jesus offered a remarkably Mobius-like observation about the Kingdom of Heaven: "When you make the male as the female, and the female as the male, and the up as the down and the inner as the outer, then shall you see the Kingdom of Heaven."

TS Eliot in Little Gidding also speaks to this continuous journey.

”We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know it for the first time.”

AMEN to that!!!

ACIM: Defenses are the costliest of all the prices which the ego would exact. In them lies madness in a form so grim that hope of sanity seems but to be an idle dream, beyond the possible. The sense of threat the world encourages is so much deeper, and so far beyond the frenzy and intensity of which you can conceive, that you have no idea of all the devastation it has wrought...You are its slave. You know not what you do, in fear of it. You do not understand how much you have been made to sacrifice, who feel its iron grip upon your heart. You do not realize what you have done to sabotage the holy peace of God by your defensiveness. For you behold the Son of God as but a victim to attack by fantasies, by dreams, and by illusions he has made; yet helpless in their presence, needful only of defense by still more fantasies, and dreams by which illusions of his safety comfort him.

I think this is why so many people claim we can only learn such a lesson by going through a dark night of the soul. Something has to shake us to the bone to make us finally realize that we've been defending nothing. Very often ACIM and all religions are used as defense and very often what is thought of as defenselessness/forgiveness is just another means of defense. Ultimately, a teaching is just a teaching. It points the way. But it isn't the way. So there is no reason to defend a teaching, either.

Please Call Me By My True Names by Thich Nhat Hanh

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, in order to fear and to hope, the rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river, and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond, and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks, and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate, and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands, and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to my people, dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life. My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills up the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and my laughs at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up, and so the door of my heart can be left open, the door of compassion.

Funny, I woke up thinking along these lines today. My husband and I have been in a really tight financial situation. A large part of that is because we made the decision for me to remain at home until the kids went off to school which is going to be 8th grade for both of them. (My daughter starts this fall.) The other part of the financial situation is the industry my husband works in is known for lay offs. He has come home to me four times saying he no longer has a job. The first time it was a company wide 15,000 person lay off. The second time, the entire company was let go except for a skeleton crew of 3 people. The third time, he was let go after only having the job for less than 3 months. (The company moved us all the way out to California.) The fourth time was the most gruesome and ugly. My husband had just gotten a fantastic review, a very nice bonus, but there was a changeover in management. The CFO got rid of my husband and hired an old friend just a few weeks before he would have vested in a bunch of stock options. Guess all of those stock options went to the friend. (Both Texas and California are "fire at will" states. :) )

We've worked really hard at managing our money but our lifestyle keeps taking dives rather than making the upward climb we've watched most of our friends make. (Although that has been changing of late, too, as more and more people are getting laid off. Recently we watched two couples go through lay offs. They both lost their homes and both ended their marriages!) Anyway, this last lay off was especially disheartening because it was completely unexpected and my husband ended up taking a HUGE pay cut.

So there is a lot of pressure on me right now. My daughter goes back to school. What am I going to do? My dream was always to finally go back to school and get a masters degree in psychology. But my son graduates in two years - his counselor has even suggested he graduate next year because he has enough credits and early graduation comes with a $3,000 scholarship! But even with the scholarship, my husband can't afford for both of us to be going to school at the same time.

So what is it I want? It's that old adage - you can have anything you want, you just can't have everything you want......

Unless, of course, you are able to appreciate what it is you have!! When you are able to appreciate what it is you have, you realize you already have everything you want!

I get to that realization every now and then and it is very likely I wouldn't understand it had we not been through the financial stuff we've been through. In that regard, I can turn what it is we've been through into a lesson. But I still think it is a meaning I have chosen to accept and not one that has been imposed upon me by the universe. If a lesson is imposed, what happens to our ability to choose? We create the lessons for our own benefit - for our need for meaning. And we are free to choose whatever meaning it is we want to choose. The choice isn't about being in total control of what it is that happens to us through proper thinking. That's just more fear based B.S. The choice is about how we choose to view the situations we find ourselves in.

ACIM: If you have the gift of everything, can loss be real? Can pain be part of peace, or grief of joy? Can fear and sickness enter in a mind where love and perfect holiness abide? Truth must be all-inclusive, if it be the truth at all. Accept no opposites and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely.

When I first started studying ACIM, it was with a study group. The focus of this group was on being able to manipulate our material reality. There is definitely a sense in which we are capable of manipulating "the psychic plastic of the universe". But the focus of ACIM is not about manipulating material existence at all. It's about psychological understanding. It's about a shift in perception. The problem with focusing on material existence is that this focus is necessarily based on a sense of loss. It's fear based. We want to change what it is we don't like about our circumstances. But what ACIM is telling us is that we can experience joy, bliss, etc. in our circumstances, the way they are now, without having to change one material aspect, through a shift in perception. We can see differently. There is no need to physically manipulate anything. Yes, we are capable of shifting our material reality through our thoughts about it as says "The Secret". But so what? That's not really a shift in perception at all because the focus remains on what it is we are lacking. The only shift being made when we use out thoughts to get what it is we want is the means by which we fill what it is we think lacking. We used to be told we would get what we want through hard work, now we are told we can get what we want through focused thought. ACIM is not about this sort of shallow shift. ACIM is referring to something much more radical. The shift ACIM is talking about cannot occur until we finally realize we aren't lacking!!

ACIM: Is it not strange that you believe to think you made the world you see is arrogance? God made it not. Of this you can be sure. What can He know of the ephemeral, the sinful and the guilty, the afraid, the suffering and lonely, and the mind that lives within a body that must die? You but accuse Him of insanity, to think He made a world where such things seem to have reality. He is not mad. Yet only madness makes a world like this.

We give everything all the meaning that it has. The world we see is based on the meaning we have given it. We invented sin, guilt and the idea of the ephemeral because we believe time is an actuality - something other than a simple means of measurement. But time does not exist any more than inches or centimeters exist! The body produces pain to warn us that something is wrong. But pain is not suffering. The pain of birthing a child is one of the most glorious experiences there is - unless you are afraid of the pain. Then it is miserable and could be called suffering.

God did not create all of these things that we find chaotic. We have created them through the meaning we have assigned to them. The universe is meaningless. The things that happen to us are meaningless. We give it all the meaning it has.

ACIM: The power of decision is our own. And we accept of Him that which we are, and humbly recognize the Son of God. To recognize God's Son implies as well that all self-concepts have been laid aside, and recognized as false. Their arrogance has been perceived. And in humility the radiance of God's Son, his gentleness, his perfect sinlessness, his Father's Love, his right to Heaven and release from hell, are joyously accepted as our own.

(But, it might not hurt for me to take the time to learn something about finance. What we call God, after all, can only help those who help themselves! :) )

The idea that everything we go through is a lesson has always somewhat bothered me. It's just never felt right to me. I think it goes back to the idea that we are all meaning junkies. Modern man is addicted to meaning. We can't just experience life, we demand it mean something - that it be a lesson.

I don't think ACIM is trying to tell us that what happens to us is a lesson. The opportunity to experience life at a deeper level is always available to us. That doesn't mean what happens to us is a lesson, although we are certainly able to turn it into a lesson if we think we need that meaning. That can be a helpful idea, but it's not without it's drawbacks - especially in terms of absurdity. The problem isn't that the universe is meaningless, the problem is that we want it to be meaningful and it isn't.

ACIM: You do not seem to doubt the world you see. You do not really question what is shown you through the body's eyes. Nor do you ask why you believe it, even though you learned a long while since your senses do deceive. That you believe them to the last detail which they report is even stranger, when you pause to recollect how frequently they have been faulty witnesses indeed! Why would you trust them so implicitly? Why but because of underlying doubt, which you would hide with show of certainty?

Makes sense to me. I always like the idea that if we were creatures from another planet with completely different sensory experience (who can guess what might be possible?), we'd experience the universe entirely differently. That we experience it through touch, taste, smell, sight, sound is simply because this is our only means of physical experience. But our physical experience of reality is not reality itself. It's simply sensory perception. Any judgment we base on this sensory perception is necessarily faulty because it is so narrowly based.

ACIM: You cannot judge. You merely can believe the ego's judgments, all of which are false.

Well, if not false, at least insufficient and therefore faulty.

ACIM: This thing it speaks of, and would yet defend, it tells you is yourself. And you believe that this is so with stubborn certainty.

Well, not exactly with stubborn certainty. I think most people these days question the validity of an egocentric perspective - maybe not to the extent it needs to be questioned, but we've become a lot more psychologically savvy these days, haven't we? Then again, there are still a lot of parents out there telling their children, "because I said so".

ACIM: Give Him your thoughts, and He will give them back as miracles which joyously proclaim the wholeness and the happiness God wills His Son, as proof of His eternal Love. And as each thought is thus transformed, it takes on healing power from the Mind which saw the truth in it, and failed to be deceived by what was falsely added. All the threads of fantasy are gone. And what remains is unified into a perfect Thought that offers its perfection everywhere.

"Judge not lest ye be judged". Instead, allow your thoughts to be replaced by silence (space, expanse, infinite possibility).

So - last of the review...

My mind holds only what I think with God.

• I will accept Atonement for myself.
• Only salvation can be said to cure.

What does that mean - I will accept the Atonement for myself. Why for myself? I guess that's where forgiveness starts, really. We have to accept ourselves as we are. It does us no good to go the self-bashing route because we didn't turn out to be what it was our parents or society said we should be. The blame game always starts with that feeling of failing to be what it was you were told you were supposed to be. It's even worse for those who pass the conformist test with flying colors - those are the biggest players in the blame game. Everyone else should have denied who they are. They are angry that they had to deny themselves in order to be what they should be. It isn't fair that other people don't deny themselves and conform to the external shoulds, too.

What would the world be like if we were creating masterpieces out of our lives rather than forcing ourselves to be a mechanistic cog in the wheel? What if we quit manipulating one another to fit our personal agendas, needs and desires and simply allowed everyone to be who and what it is they are? The more controlling among us will tell you such a notion is highly dangerous. If you let people be who they are, then there is no telling the horrors that would be committed. But take a look around - we've already experimented in control and it is obvious that it doesn't work. People can only be controlled up to a point and then they crack. It's the attempted control and manipulation that make people turn on one another. Not the allowing of self-expression. There is no way we can become whole until we allow each individual to fully experience who he/she is. And that allowing has to start at our own individuality. The more we are free to be who it is we are, the less we feel the need to demand that others be for us what we want them to be. To me, that's one of the beautiful things about a long-term conscious marriage. After a while, you quit trying to make the other be what it is you want them to be and just love them for who they are. Of course, kids teach you that right from the beginning. (Kids are definitely Zen masters for their parents! :) )

Salvation is waking up - realizing the ego has woven a dream by means of the blame game. Sin and guilt aren't real. Time to drop the obsession and wake up!

Just... Wake up!

• When I am healed I am not healed alone.
• Heaven is the decision I must make.

OK. So instead of getting irritated, I should offer forgiveness to the person who hides behind his/her anonymity and leaves anonymous comments around the blogosphere with my blog name on them. I have no idea at all what motivates anon to do this. Is it meant to be helpful, hurtful, funny? What's the point? Mostly what bothers me is that it is done anonymously rather than honestly.

Anonymous says that the commenters at iwillfuckingtearyouapart.blogspot.com where he/she submitted my blog for a review are not in the same league as me. (Or maybe it was the other way around?) I don't know what league it is anon thinks I am in but I enjoyed reading through the comments over there. I'm not above that sort of sarcasm. But maybe anon meant that they are in a higher league than me?

So why is it I let this sort of stuff bother me so much? A big part of it is that I'm not yet fully comfortable with putting my thoughts out there - especially when I'm using such blatantly religious terms. Saying that "heaven is the decision I must make" and that "God is the mind with which I think" literally make my stomach hurt. It takes some major mental gymnastics to overcome my prejudices toward these sorts of terms to see the point behind the terminology. But I can see it.

The point of this lesson is that what irks me is about me and not about the anonymous commenter. But I do have to give myself a little bit of credit - it doesn't irk me near as badly as it has in the past. This has happened periodically over the past 3 years and I used to go into an absolute panic over it. But I'm far more comfortable with what it is I think now and it doesn't bother me as much. The panic was about my own lack of confidence rather than what it was anon was doing.

The reality is, most of the blogosphere doesn't take kindly to anonymous comments. If you have the courage to put your thoughts out there for the public, whatever those thoughts may be, then it's difficult to relate to someone who feels the need to voice their views anonymously. Sometimes it makes sense. Maybe someone is shy and has something important they want to share but only feel comfortable doing so anonymously. Anonymous comments can be sincerely offered. But they are also very often sneaky and deceitful and so feel dishonest and manipulative rather than sincere.

I guess when you quit allowing such attempts at manipulation to be irksome, it takes away the power people attempting manipulation have over you. That's what is partially meant by "When I am healed, I am not healed alone." It takes the power away from Iago, so to speak. Heaven is the decision I must make" simply means I have the ability to drop my defenses and to be open to what is.

• If I defend myself I am attacked.
• Sickness is a defense against the truth.

Williamson's blurb: By being defensive, you use vast amounts of energy to ward off attacks that are illusions offering a false sense of power. Defensive behavior is fear based, and you can choose not to be defensive. In the same way, healing occurs in the mind and you are more than a body. As you accept this Truth, you understand that even sickness is a defense against the Truth and you chose the healing of your mind and the peace of God.

• I will not value what is valueless.
• Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.

It's not that we ask too much of life, we ask far too little because we value what is valueless and forget to seek what is valuable. It is through forgiveness that we begin to let go of the meaningless values that mask what is truly valuable.

• No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth.
• I loose the world from all I thought it was.

Truth seeking.  Truth seeker.

Williamson's blurb:  When you understand that by seeking the truth, there is no failure, it is a time to rejoice. This shift in perception allows you to loose the world from all you thought it was by changing your mind. As you retrain your mind to believe that you cannot fail, you are choosing the reality of success with God.

• Beyond this world there is a world I want.
• It is impossible to see two worlds.

I truly am understanding this so differently now. It' s so exciting! This isn't magical mumbo jumbo about a world that exists separate from this one. Just the opposite. (It's a fun play on words!)

Huston Smith said that modern world gets the medal for cosmological achievement, the postmodern world gets the medal for achievement in social justice, and the traditional world view gets the medal for metaphysics. (Smith defines the traditional world view as before the middle ages - before Constantine made Christianity the political religion of Rome.)

The Enlightenment was so influential at creating the belief that the world of nature as science conceives it is all there is that we are no longer able to conceive metaphysics in the same sense as those in the traditional world view understood it. This is true within modern religion, too. Modern religion equated cosmology (which is clearly the realm of science) with metaphysics and turned God into an actual physical, entity that requires our defense against claims that God is "not true". But the question of whether God exists or not is a purely scientific question and any religious person who insists that God does, in fact, exist is engaged in a scientific query, not a metaphysical query as it was understood from within the traditional world view.

God was understood as metaphor. But as Joseph Campbell has pointed out, we moderns are almost completely incapable of understanding metaphor. We mistake it with simile. We are taught that difference between simile and metaphor is that a simile uses "like or as" and a metaphor does not. But it's not just a difference of words, it is a difference of meaning. He uses the example of a man (John) who runs very fast and people exclaim - "John runs like a deer." That's a simile. But imagine that we are so in awe of how fast John runs that we exclain, "John is a deer." We know on the one hand he isn't a deer. But on the other hand, he is a deer. That's metaphor and it's also metaphysics in the traditional worldview sense. God (and the gods) were understood in this metaphorical sense. Just like it makes no sense to try and prove that John is or is not a deer in the physical sense (we know he's not), it makes no sense to try and prove that God does or does not exist. When we say John is a deer, we aren't talking about a physical reality, we are talking about a metaphorical/metaphysical understanding.

Metaphysics is the study of everything and includes science. From this perspective, it makes no sense to reject science in favor of religion. Cosmology is the domain of science and there is no reason to challenge this. But the view that physical nature is all there is has created a lot of really big problems in terms of meaning. It's created nihilism in both the secular world and the religious world.

The religious don't really need to care about this world because there is another world waiting for them. And the more secular deny this world by placing their primary focus on the possibility of a future, better world through technological progress, future medical breakthroughs, more perfect forms of government, etc. It is more subtle, but it's not that different than what the religious have done. It's not this world that matters - it's a future world that matters. (And so we destroy the earth in the name of progress.)

It is impossible to see two worlds. So which world is it that we see? The world as it is, or some future, better world? When ACIM says "Beyond this world there is a world I want" it isn't trying to say there is a future better world waiting for us. This is about a shift in perception that allows us to see the world as it is rather than through the eyes of egoic desire that rejects what is. What is the use of wanting anything other than what is? It's like Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence. If we had to live our same life over and over and over again - would we say "no thanks - don't want to do that" or do we have the sort of gratitude toward life (this life!!) to enthusiastically exclaim "Yes!" The ego, on the other hand, must forever say "no" to what is in order to uphold desire. We think the ego shows us what it is we want. But what happens once we get it? We don't want it anymore and so the ego finds something else for us to want. But is that what we really want? Do we, in fact, want (as in lack)?

• There is no love but God's.
• The world I see holds nothing that I want.

The world I see holds nothing that I want. I shall not want. Everything I need I already have. What is there to want? I think I want the things of this world, but that's because I believe there are two worlds.

Makes me understand Psalm 23 completely differently:

The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want;
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters;
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness
for His name's sake.

Even though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of death,
I fear no evil;
for You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life;
and I shall dwell in the house of the
Lord forever.

• In quiet I receive God's Word today.
• All that I give is given to myself.

• I thank my Father for His gifts to me.
• Let me remember I am one with God.

Substitute reality for God.  We think we are separate from reality because we think what we think about is reality.  But it's actually illusionary because when we have a rational thought about something and put words to it (labels and categories, etc.), it is already in the past.   Alan Watts provides an example from Marshall McLuhan, it's as though we are "driving a car while looking at the rearview mirror."  The environment in which we believe our self to exist is always a past environment.  It isn't the one we are actually in.

Clearly, the past no longer exists.  And all that lies before us is infinite potential (Nietzsche's analogy of being out at sea and realizing we've burned both the land and the bridges and all there is, is sea, sea, sea.)   When we put too much faith in our past (the land and bridges), then we can't be open to the present.  But if we fully recognize that we exist in infinite potential, how could we not be grateful?

Hubert Dreyfus said this was exactly how Dostoevsky "existentialized" (de-magicalized) God.  God, for Dostoevsky, was a field of infinite possibility.   We live, breathe, and have our being within this field of infinite possibility.   When we realize this, what is there to blame?  The past doesn't bind us unless we allow it to bind us.  We give the past all the meaning it has and it doesn't even exist!!  Make it a good story - one that opens you to infinite possibility and frees you from the past rather than a story that keeps you mired in the past.

Be thankful.  We are one with all that is and all that is exists in infinite potentiality.

• Forgiveness is the key to happiness.
• Forgiveness offers everything I want.

I've got all of these thoughts from Nietzsche right now because I just finished Philip Novak's book on Nietzsche.

In Human All to Human, Nietzsche writes, "The man of the ages of barbarous primordial culture believed that in the dream he was getting to know a second real world: here is the origin of all metaphysics. Without the dream, one would have had no occasion to divide the world into two. The dissection into soul and body is also connected with the oldest idea of the dream, likewise the postulation of a life of the soul, thus the origin of all belief in spirits and probably also of the belief in gods."

While Nietzsche admits there very well could be a metaphysical world, it's not worth a dispute because there is nothing we can do with it and knowledge of it would be useless. "More useless even than knowledge of the chemical composition of water must be to the sailor in danger of shipwreck."

This seems to be the opposite of what ACIM is teaching, but I don't think it is. We think there are two worlds: the one we are currently living and a more ideal one (secular or spiritual) that awaits us at some future point when we have "purified" and perfected ourselves. Nietzsche says this second ideal world doesn't exist and it is our belief in it that makes us guilty.

The idea of free will originated with this belief in a second, more ideal world than this one which likewise relies on the idea that morality is externally imposed upon us from this second world:  if everyone, because they have supposedly been given free will, would live according to this externally imposed morality that comes from this ideal world (and is therefore anit-natural),  we could have that ideal.   We are held accountable for our actions based on this idealized other world.   But Nietzsche says we are no more accountable for our actions than water is for being wet. Human action is always innocent.  Morality based on idealism is the cause of human decadence and the decline of humanity.  From Novak:  "It's poisoned the actuality of human life with transcendental lies, made healthy instincts sick, and divided the self against itself. It creates ressentiment and revenge."

I think there is Biblical support for this. The term "sin" makes it's first appearance in the Bible not with the story of Adam and Eve but with the story of Cain and Abel. Cain killed Abel because both made a sacrifice to God and God rejected Cains sacrifice but accepted Abel's (Abel's flock flourished while Cain's crops brought forth no fruit.) There is no indication that God asked for this sacrifice. It was common in the ancient times to show love by offering something dear to you. It wasn’t that God or the gods needed it as much as the act provided meaning to the people making the sacrifice.

It's important to note that it isn't Abel that rejected Cain. It is God/reality that "rejected" Cain (by not giving him the material abundance that Abel received). Yet Cain takes his revenge out on Abel rather than dealing with reality. God had told him in Genesis 4:6 that he needed to master his sin (this is first occurrence of the "sin" in the Bible and the only time it is personified in this way). By 4:8, he has killed Abel.

In society at that time, Cain should have been killed. (It was an eye for an eye society.) But God doesn't kill Cain, he is banished to the Land of Nod which isn't an actual place. It means wandering. This indicates that it is Cain's conscious that is punishing him, not God/Reality. He has to live with what it is he has done and so no matter where he goes, he is in the Land of Nod. He worries that others will kill him, but God says that whoever tries to kill Cain will be punished seven fold. Cain is protected by God, not punished by him.

Nietzsche writes: "It's your fault that we are sick and you are healthy; it's your fault that we are plain and you are beautiful; it's your fault that we nibble at life while you feast! We will punish you!" This desire to blame and punish is a pathology of sin that moral rhetoric conceals. Man wants to punish because he is sick of himself. Nietzsche says we must learn to love our fate. Loving our fate blesses everything that is.

Cain is asked of God, "Where is Abel"? Cain replies, "Am I my brother's keeper?" God doesn't answer the question. But the entire Bible is a response to this question: by being our brother's keeper, we show our gratitude to all that is. If we are not our brother's keeper, how can we possibly find meaning in our existence?

An ideal is an ideal. It isn't reality. We blame one another for not meeting with our idealization of how things should be. We are free to become who it is we are. But this does not mean we can overcome our human tendencies. We need to quit holding one another guilty for being human. "Where you see an ideal", Nietzsche said, "I see something human - all too human." Idealism is not an acceptance of reality. It's a subtle form of rejection and ingratitude.

ACIM teaches us that we must be willing to see one another as innocent. Anything else is just a continuation of the blame game which is a denial of reality. This is the purpose of forgiveness.

What we want is to be accepted. To be whole. But it is ultimately we who reject ourselves.

ACIM: "Cure" is a word that cannot be applied to any remedy the world accepts as beneficial. What the world perceives as therapeutic is but what will make the body "better." When it tries to heal the mind, it sees no separation from the body, where it thinks the mind exists. Its forms of healing thus must substitute illusion for illusion. One belief in sickness takes another form, and so the patient now perceives himself as well.

Confusing. When the world tries to heal the mind, it sees no separation from the body where it thinks the mind exists. I tend to think our main problem is the mind/body split we were left with from Descartes (and Augustine before him). But I guess what ACIM is saying here is that we've relegated the mind to the body and so we don't understand it's nature.

Healing occurs when we awaken from the dream that we are a body. This seems like a split, but it's not. Thomas Moore uses soul in terms of individuals having a soul. I remember discussing this after having read Care of the Soul with a really cool old Catholic priest who told me that was backwards. We don't have a soul, the soul has us. I don't think Moore would disagree with this. It's simply more practical based on the restrictions of our language to speak in terms of having a soul. But I think the priest is right. The soul has us (in the egoic sense). We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

I can't quite go so far as to say the human experience is the dream because that's misleading.  We have no way of proving whether reality exists behind appearances or not so why argue it?  It doesn't really matter (materialize?) The dream is that we think we are human beings having a human experience. It places a limitation on our experience that doesn't exist. We've created that limitation.  Nietzsche has a beautiful analogy for what happens to us when we cut ourselves loose from our beliefs about ourselves. It's like being out at sea and realizing that not only have we burned all the bridges but we have likewise burned the land and now there is nothing but sea, sea, sea!  It's boundless freedom which is terrifying from the aspect of the ego.  That's why the ego has to set limits on it.    Nietzsche says, "Take care little boat."

ACIM:  Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take. Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. And that is cure indeed. For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return.

This is very Nietzschean, too.  Guilt was created as a form of suppression and we've had to invent all kinds of ideas to keep that suppression in place - like psychic pain.    According to Nietzsche, guilt undermines our animal instincts which suppresses our power.  He says, "the bite of conscious, like the bite of a dog into stone, is stupidity."  (Nietzsche said consciousness came about through the creation of language.)

ACIM says that the thought that cures is not one that makes distinctions between unrealities.  Everything that comes out of our conscious awareness is an unreality because it relies on language.  The thought that cures does not seek to heal what is not sick.  It doesn't try to deny our dark nights of the soul.

ACIM:  The mind that brings illusions to the truth is really changed. There is no change but this. (Emphasis mine.)...  Today we seek to change our minds about the source of sickness, for we seek a cure for all illusions, not another shift among them.

This is the end of choice because we accept ourselves as God created us.

ACIM:  Uncertainty about what you must be is self-deception on a scale so vast, its magnitude can hardly be conceived. To be alive and not to know yourself is to believe that you are really dead. For what is life except to be yourself, and what but you can be alive instead? Who is the doubter? What is it he doubts? Whom does he question? Who can answer him?

This is vastly different than what the Christianity I was taught in Sunday School.  I was definitely taught to doubt myself - that the inner voice was really the devil and that I should believe what the Bible said about God and nothing else.   Trusting yourself was a "no-no".   It was all about trusting the authority of the Bible.

But who could we possibly be if we are not ourselves?   Why is it we ask "Who am I?" and "What am I?"  Surely we are what it is we are.  :)  It's always a bizarre thing - to be conscious of oneself.   But what is it we are actually conscious of?  Our reality?  Or just thoughts and ideas (words, labels and categories) about ourselves?

To get caught up in the concepts (the ideas, words, labels, etc.) about ourselves is denial of what we are - a distraction.  It doesn't change who we are, but it does make us doubt that we are who it is we.

ACIM:  Atonement remedies the strange idea that it is possible to doubt yourself, and be unsure of what you really are. This is the depth of madness. Yet it is the universal question of the world. What does this mean except the world is mad? Why share its madness in the sad belief that what is universal here is true?

Acceptance is beyond all doubt.  It doesn't require proof.   Acceptance is all that can be asked of us.

ACIM: You need to be reminded that you think a thousand choices are confronting you, when there is really only one to make. And even this but seems to be a choice. Do not confuse yourself with all the doubts that myriad decisions would induce. You make but one. And when that one is made, you will perceive it was no choice at all. For truth is true, and nothing else is true. There is no opposite to choose instead. There is no contradiction to the truth.

I'm feeling conflicted about this right now. My husband's family is conservative Catholic. His father was a German Jew who escaped the Holocaust but married a Latin American Catholic female and converted to Catholicism rather than "choosing" his German Judaism. That is something I don't get but he must have had his reasons. It was clearly an issue within his immediate family even though they weren't religious, practicing Jews. If you are driven from your home because of your religious beliefs and racial orientation, how do you so easily give in to that which has denied you?  It couldn't have been easy.

He married a Latin American Catholic who didn't demand that he convert and didn't expect him to convert. But he did. His family is far more connected than most and that connection can very likely be linked to its religion and the fact that he "chose" Catholicism.

My husband and I are on the outside of the family religion. There are 20 people in the family altogether and our little family of four are the only non-Catholics.  What's interesting is that my husband's parents have never said anything about our decision to leave the church although the siblings sometimes grumble about it now and then.   I imagine his parents had to deal with their fair share of religious issues when my father in-law converted to Catholicism.  It was Christianity that made what happened to the Jews so easy to accomplish. Christians at that time still blamed the Jews for Jesus death. Martin Luther hundreds of years earlier had said that any Jew who wouldn't convert should be burned.

I sometimes wonder if those of us who discover that we cannot authentically follow the same religion of our forefathers function as a sort of necessary consciousness.  We are thankfully free to disagree even if we get chastised for it.  It's much easier now to take the chastisement in jest because we are far more comfortable with who it is we are absent our former belief system.  The more we were able to gain distance on being defined by that belief system, the less we were bothered by being called "wrong".

ACIM: Heaven is chosen consciously. The choice cannot be made until alternatives are accurately seen and understood. All that is veiled in shadows must be raised to understanding, to be judged again, this time with Heaven's help. And all mistakes in judgment that the mind had made before are open to correction, as the truth dismisses them as causeless. Now are they without effects. They cannot be concealed, because their nothingness is recognized.

It is fear and belief that has created our sickness. But the focus isn't on a sickness in the physical body (although the physical body is certainly not separate from this sickness). It's about a sickness that makes us place more faith in our egoic understanding of being separate than a loving acceptance of our interconnectedness.

Williamson's blurb: "All healing comes from joining, just as sickness comes from separation. As we let go of the barriers that hold healing at bay, we by definition rejoin the Sonship. Everyone is thereby in some way healed."

ACIM: Yet think not healing is unworthy of your function here. For anti-Christ becomes more powerful than Christ to those who dream the world is real. The body seems to be more solid and more stable than the mind. And love becomes a dream, while fear remains the one reality that can be seen and justified and fully understood.

It's that good old need for certainty. We are afraid so we latch on to something that seems certain - something physical like the written word of a sacred text or the material physicality of the world or a belief system that promises us something certain. We need to justify our beliefs because we think that by not justifying them, they aren't real. But could you imagine having to justify love? Love is made known to us in a completely different way than is belief.

ACIM: Let healing be through you this very day. And as you rest in quiet, be prepared to give as you receive, to hold but what you give, and to receive the Word of God to take the place of all the foolish thoughts that ever were imagined. Now we come together to make well all that was sick, and offer blessing where there was attack. Nor will we let this function be forgot as every hour of the day slips by, remembering our purpose with this thought:

Wow!!  I never thought of it in that way, but it makes sense to me.    On the surface, I can easily see sickness as a defense against truth.   It's a matter of the mind/body connection.  What we deny is going to come out in some way and very often comes out as sickness.

But then what is it we mean by sickness?  I immediately think of Ken Wilber's book about his wife who had cancer.  Her preferred form of spirituality was ACIM.  He said she practiced it every day.   But rather than take the new age belief that her cancer was caused because her thinking was off and that she had created it as a defense against truth, she fully accepted her cancer.  That's how she finally found peace in her situation and how she helped others find peace in similar situations.   The frantic search to "perform the right procedure"; eat the right things; or think the right thoughts she said were based on fear, not love.  Which isn't to say she gave up on life.  What she did was regain her life even though her body was failing.  What she gave up was the idea that she was sick.  As long as she thought of herself as sick, she was frantically searching for a cure.  But when she came to terms with the truth of her situation, she was able to calm down and enjoy life again.   She started living in the present rather than in the future frantically trying to control or ward off what was to come.  She faithfully followed a very strict diet, exercise plan, and medical advice.  She didn't give up trying to do what would give her body strength.  What she gave up was an attachment to the end result and that allowed her to focus on living rather than on sickness and death.

ACIM:  Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you, quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay, when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick, that truth may go away and threaten your establishments no more.

Our bodies are not meant to last forever.  Dr. Weil says that we need to come to terms with the fact that we will from time to time have to deal with diseases and other bodily issues.  He says the best way to overcome illness is to surrender to it.    That the body suffers does not mean that the whole of our reality is sick.  To say, "I'm sick" is perhaps a form of blame because we don't think it is how things are supposed to be.  I don't think ACIM is trying to say that if we have the right thoughts, our bodies will never undergo disease.  That sort of thinking creates fear, pain and suffering.  Sickness is a psychological response - it's a value judgment.  It doesn't exist so it doesn't "happen" to us.   It is a meaning we have created as a form of defense against the truth.

ACIM:  Healing will flash across your open mind, as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. There will be no dark corners sickness can conceal, and keep defended from the light of truth. There will be no dim figures from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in your mind. It will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey...If you have been successful, there will be no sense of feeling ill or feeling well, of pain or pleasure. No response at all is in the mind to what the body does. Its usefulness remains and nothing more.

I have forgotten what I really am, for I mistook my body for myself. Sickness is a defense against the truth. But I am not a body. And my mind cannot attack. So I can not be sick.

ACIM: Who would defend himself unless he thought he were attacked, that the attack were real, and that his own defense could save himself? And herein lies the folly of defense; it gives illusions full reality, and then attempts to handle them as real. It adds illusions to illusions, thus making correction doubly difficult. And it is this you do when you attempt to plan the future, activate the past, or organize the present as you wish.

That's a really good point. :)

ACIM: The mind that plans is thus refusing to allow for change. What it has learned before becomes the basis for its future goals. Its past experience directs its choice of what will happen. And it does not see that here and now is everything it needs to guarantee a future quite unlike the past, without a continuity of any old ideas and sick beliefs. Anticipation plays no part at all, for present confidence directs the way.

Defenses are the plans you undertake to make against the truth. Their aim is to select what you approve, and disregard what you consider incompatible with your beliefs of your reality. Yet what remains is meaningless indeed. For it is your reality that is the "threat" which your defenses would attack, obscure, and take apart and crucify.

I think that is what Nietzsche understood. The "truth" is so far removed from the beliefs we have about it. If we hold to any belief dogmatically, however scientifically valid, we are doing nothing more than defending what is meaningless. We forget that we have given everything all the meaning it has for us and hold to that meaning as though it is some sort of God given truth. But we have created the meaning and it is that meaning that must be slain in the lion stage to make room for the openness available to us in the Child stage.

ACIM: Let no defenses but your present trust direct the future, and this life becomes a meaningful encounter with the truth that only your defenses would conceal.

I like Williamson's quote today: "We can't fake authenticity. We think we need to create ourselves, always doing a paste-up job on our personalities. That is because we're trying to be special rather than real. We're pathetically trying to conform with all the other people trying to do the same."

ACIM: The major difficulty that you find in genuine forgiveness on your part is that you still believe you must forgive the truth, and not illusions. You conceive of pardon as a vain attempt to look past what is there; to overlook the truth, in an unfounded effort to deceive yourself by making an illusion true. This twisted viewpoint but reflects the hold that the idea of sin retains as yet upon your mind, as you regard yourself.

What would be the point of forgiving the truth? That makes so much sense now!  What we forgive isn't the truth.  What we forgive are our perceptions of it!  I mean, I've known that for many, many years.  But I understand it totally differently now.  Or maybe I just feel more firmly grounded in the understanding.  Whatever the case may be, another onion layer of delusion has definitely been peeled away!!

ACIM:  Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks straight through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies, but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, "My brother, what you think is not the truth."

What we forgive is not the other person or what it is we think the other person did to us.  What we forgive are our own misperceptions.  We forgive thoughts.  I've known that for a while, too, but I understand that more deeply now as well!!

This sounds like Nietzsche's lion stage when Zarathustra realizes there is no need to slay the dragon so dances and sings instead.  (It's no wonder the most spiritually enlightened among us are often thought to be crazy!):

ACIM:  He does not have to fight to save himself. He does not have to kill the dragons which he thought pursued him. Nor need he erect the heavy walls of stone and iron doors he thought would make him safe. He can remove the ponderous and useless armor made to chain his mind to fear and misery. His step is light, and as he lifts his foot to stride ahead a star is left behind, to point the way to those who follow him.

Forgiveness must be practiced.  It's a spiritual discipline.

Let me perceive forgiveness as it is. Would I accuse myself of doing this? I will not lay this chain upon myself.

ACIM:  You do not ask too much of life, but far too little. When you let your mind be drawn to bodily concerns, to things you buy, to eminence as valued by the world, you ask for sorrow, not for happiness. This course does not attempt to take from you the little that you have. It does not try to substitute utopian ideas for satisfactions which the world contains. There are no satisfactions in the world.

I love this!!  ACIM is not trying to create another sort of utopian idealism.  That is not what it is about.  But that is how a lot of students approach it.  "There is only love.  You don't have to worry about all the evils in the world because they don't exist."  Blah, blah, blah...  That's utopian idealism and it's bullshit because it's really nothing more than form of anger and fear.   We don't like what we see so we want to say it doesn't exist.  This is just another way to ask for sorrow.   If we truly realized it was an illusion, we wouldn't fear it and there would be no reason to discuss the nature of it's existence.  Realizing that suffering is an illusion is what helps us go through it so that we can transcend it.  Denying that suffering exists keeps us in fear of suffering.

The criteria by which we test the things we think we want:

1. If you choose a thing that will not last forever, what you chose is valueless. What about valuing relationships?   In a sense, relationship lasts forever, doesn't it?  I mean, I know that our specific desires within a relationship don't last forever so those aren't worth valuing.  But the relationship itself is there, even after death.  We're all interconnected.
2. If you choose to take a thing away from someone else, you will have nothing left. ... Who seeks to take away has been deceived by the illusion loss can offer gain. Yet loss must offer loss, and nothing more. That makes sense to me!  Especially in terms of relationship.   There is a horrible country song I used to hear all the time a few years ago about a woman she wants to take someone's love who chooses to give it to someone else by cheating.  So she retaliates by destroying his car - writing her name in the leather seats, busting the headlights, and keying the side of the car.  He didn't get what she wanted to take so she attempts to take away the "beauty" of something he loves, claiming she is giving to the girl what it was she couldn't get.   But how can you give what you don't have?   Very scary, psychotic song that was extremely popular.
3. Why is the choice you make of value to you? What attracts your mind to it? What purpose does it serve? This is the question upon which all other considerations rest.  Here it is easiest of all to be deceived. For what the ego wants it fails to recognize. It does not even tell the truth as it perceives it, for it needs to keep the halo which it uses to protect its goals from tarnish and from rust, that you may see how "innocent" it is.
4. If you feel any guilt about your choice, you have allowed the ego's goals to come between the real alternatives. I really believe this is true.   I tend to make choices based on a sort of gut intuition.  That doesn't mean I don't have to overcome fear.  But if I am able to get quiet enough to notice the decision has within it a place of calm (which I typically immediately recognize), I go with it.   It's a lot harder to notice this "inner wisdom" when my life gets busy and crazy or when I over-think it (which I do a lot!).

ACIM:  All things are valuable or valueless, worthy or not of being sought at all, entirely desirable or not worth the slightest effort to obtain. Choosing is easy just because of this. Complexity is nothing but a screen of smoke, which hides the very simple fact that no decision can be difficult. What is the gain to you in learning this? It is far more than merely letting you make choices easily and without pain.

It's not difficult.  We make it difficult.  I had a friend who wrote me with a dilemma that would be excruciatingly difficult to decide for most people.  In talking through it, what we both realized is that whatever it is she decides will be OK.  It's almost like we get so scared about making the "right" decision that we can't decide at all.  If we could just free ourselves from that sense of perfection that so drastically clutters our lives, we'd be able to listen better.

But it's been a really long weekend - our living room was overtaken by a teenage rock band on Friday with hoards of teens coming and going all night long.  Eight kids spent the night and were up making noise until 4 in the morning.   On Saturday, I had to help cart band equipment to a Crawfish festival which was really fun but I'm pooped.  Beyond pooped!   My brain is very likely malfunctioning.

But here are my thoughts...

ACIM:  The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real. Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came.

That seems right in line with the Existentialism and with Buddhism.  Nothing outrageous.  I'm OK with that.

But ACIM goes on to say:  There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.

Now this seems like nihilism!!  There is no world.   Buddhism teaches something similar - nothingness.  But it's only nothing because it is everything.  Is that what ACIM is saying?

I think it is probably important to remember that ACIM speaks in metaphors and is not meant to be taken literally.   If I panic when someone says the world doesn't exist, then what does that say about my beliefs?  If I experience myself as "in the world", then why do I care whether the world exists or not?   It only matters when I think of myself as "of the world".   That is a direct threat to my own existence.  And, of course, what else but the ego would care about the existence or non-existence of the world?  That which observes and is aware of the world doesn't make an issue over whether it exists or not.

But existence doesn't rely on meaning does it?   I don't know what makes something extant.  But what's interesting about the term is that it comes from the Latin exstare which means to stand out.   That something can stand out is illusory because our existence is entirely dependent upon our interconnectedness.   The word "existence" comes from the Latin word existere which means "to cause to stand".  There are several meanings for stand, but all seem to be based on the idea of maintaining a position (physically or mentally).   If everything is in constant flux, how can something be caused to stand?  Something else kind of cool, the original meaning of stand had to do with pausing, hesitation.

ACIM:  Release the world! Your real creations wait for this release to give you fatherhood, not of illusions, but as God in truth. God shares His Fatherhood with you who are His Son, for He makes no distinctions in what is Himself and what is still Himself. What He creates is not apart from Him, and nowhere does the Father end, the Son begin as something separate from Him.

Reminds me of Huston Smiths version of the well known analogy about reality being like the ocean and humanity like a drop of water.  The drop of water falls into the ocean and is consumed by it.  But Smith says he doesn’t really like this analogy because it sounds too much like annihilation. The better analogy, he says, is that the drop of water opens to the ocean and in the opening, takes the ocean in and becomes the ocean.

ACIM:  There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His Wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere? Deny illusions, but accept the truth. Deny you are a shadow briefly laid upon a dying world. Release your mind, and you will look upon a world released.

This is where I have trouble because it makes me confused about what ACIM means by "world".  An interconnection of relationships?  Or a physical reality?

ACIM:  Deny illusions, but accept the truth. Deny you are a shadow briefly laid upon a dying world. Release your mind, and you will look upon a world released.

Don't like this terminology, either.  What we deny, we tend to hold onto.  But it at least makes sense that our existence is a shadow briefly laid upon a dying world.  Our physical existence is but a pause, a hesitation. :) The physical world is likewise nothing more than a hesitation.

I who remain as God created me would loose the world from all I thought it was. For I am real because the world is not, and I would know my own reality.

I am real because the world is not?  This is the first thing in ACIM I think I've really had a problem with.  It's one thing to say the world is illusory.  It's another to say that understanding my reality relies upon the denial of the reality of the world.  I think that is highly problematic.  

I loose the world from all I thought it was, and choose my own reality instead.

I really need to catch up on the reading.  Maybe this will make more sense later.