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SearchWhat practical things can I do when I get stuck in the ego?
Question:
When we are absolutely in the ego and we are doing the Course and the lessons, what do we do? Because theory is fine, but give us something practical we can do when we get stuck.
Answer:
You have to feel out what works for you. What I did was to use a tape I had of sayings from the Course combined with gentle music, and I would just relax and listen to this tape, and the ego would always melt away. One time when I was in the situation you describe, I went to a chair in my living room and sat down and said to the ego: “I'm not leaving the chair until you leave my mind! I have nowhere to go and nothing to do.” So there were no distractions.
Often the ego wants you to get busy and distracted. "A Course In Miracles" is a quick way to undo the ego, and the ego resistance to it is enormous. If you reach a point where it seems too extreme, it is okay to set the book down for a time. The Holy Spirit and Jesus will never get mad. There are stories of people using the Course as a doorstop or a plant stand. But when the time is right, they pick it back up. There are other stories of people reading the Course and having great difficulty understanding the meaning. Then through a moment of insight and readiness, they can read the Course and understand more deeply. It is really a matter of willingness in the mind, and not a matter of how much you read or how fast you go. Always be gentle with yourself. If you miss a practice period or two, just notice the mistake, give it to the Holy Spirit, and begin to practice again. Don't compound the error by beating yourself up for missing a practice period.
Love,
David
Why am I holding myself back from being able to maintain Knowledge 24/7?
Question:
I'm not knowing why I am holding myself back. I've had the experience of no world and no people, and being the Son of God. I believe it with all my heart. That little knowledge seems to be able to answer any question I can think of about the nature of things. Since I seem to "know" that all this is meaningless, and I do feel that, what am I doing or not doing that might slow myself down? I do know that I have some trouble maintaining the knowledge 24/7. It does seem to slip away from time to time. Is that the problem? Also, I'm not able to "converse" with HS to the degree that I would like. I can get Him to answer me when I ask if He is there, but then ego starts an uproar, and I usually lose Him. Sometimes not, but usually. I love that you're available in this form.
Answer:
The release is seeing that the present moment (knowledge) need not be "maintained" "24/7, but only accepted. The belief that time is linear instead of simultaneous is the only problem, and the vacillation between states of mind reflects the problem. The miracle does nothing. All it does is undo. You are opening to what is known within, watching all self-concepts dissolve, surrendering to the silence of being. As any thoughts of time, of holding yourself back, all questions, and any thoughts of doing or not doing are released, the Holy Instant is all that remains in awareness. The Holy Instant is All. The mind emptied of the meaningless is discovered to be Divine Mind.
The one lesson is undoing, the one way is surrender, and the one life is the experience. This is the advanced course in miracles. When the ego seems to start an uproar, release whatever thoughts appear with the declaration: "this means nothing." Use this as a mantra to release any thought of past or future. Undoing comes first. You will fear Holy Spirit and the surrender to silence and acceptance of Atonement until concepts are undone. Undoing is the practice. Attend to the practice.
Love and Blessings,
David
I sometimes crave the company of others, but more often feel like I just want to be alone. Is this normal?
Question:
I have been a student of ACIM for more than ten years. I live alone and like my own company but occasionally feel the need for contact with others. However, two very long telephone conversations this week and an afternoon spent with friends has sent me into hermit crab mode. I remembered that I really want to be alone. Too much conversation drains me and makes me feel very dull. I'm confused—surely its "normal" to want the company of others?
Answer:
Thanks for writing. Just as the tide of the ocean seems to ebb and flow, so the journey within seems to at times involve the company of others and at times solitude. As the mind releases the body identification, "alone" is retranslated into "All One." Your honest experience and attitudes are your Guide as to what is most helpful at any given moment. Honesty is consistency of thought, and as the ego dissolves the mind remembers its natural Integrity and Wisdom.
The subject/object, perceiver/perceived, observer/observed split is healed through true forgiveness. In the Company of the Holy Spirit, happily the concepts of "others" and "hermit" are washed away like sand castles on the beach when the Tide of Love comes in. You are Perfect just as You are, for God made no mistake in our Identity. I join with you in accepting the Gift of Identity in Christ Which transcends the ego concepts of "personality self” and "others." Now is the rest and alertness and energy of our Self in God.
"Should’s" and "ought to's" are draining judgments. The Holy Spirit Guides unfailingly and intuitively. You are perfect right Now. The ego's definition of normal is "average,” but you were created Perfectly and therefore will never be content with average. Emotional dullness always results from a compromise attempt. Let the Holy Spirit Guide you steadfastly and you will only experience aliveness, alertness, and joy. The ego's cloud of "people-pleasing" is coming undone as you Answer God's Call to forgive illusions and recognize the truth.
Love & Blessings,
David
What are the characteristics of the miracle?
Question:
What are the characteristics of the miracle?
Answer:
The mind that made up this world, the ego mind, is a closed system. Everything perceived by the five senses witnesses to separation. The five senses of the body are part of the ego system. The miracle is a perspective that sees the false as false. In the Bible there were seeming miracles like the parting of the Red Sea, or raising of the dead, healing the sick, and the multiplication of the fishes and loaves. There may be some byproducts to miracles which seem to involve sudden shifts in form, such as an illness that seems to leave the body immediately. But most of all they are simply shifts in perception, where at one moment you were thinking with the ego and you shift over to alignment with the Holy Spirit.
The most significant miracle is always your state of mind. In a world of darkness, of guilt, your joy will stand out like a bright star in a dark sky. Another sign of miracles is the sense of synchronicity where things happen effortlessly without planning. It is as if you are just watching them, with no personal effort in making them happen. That is the strongest characteristic I find; life seems like a flow. When you have let go of ego investments, you see that you have no control of outcomes. You do not try to control persons or events or situations. You behold the perfection that is always there. The more that you are in this flow, the more natural it feels, and the old way of perceiving is washed away and forgotten. It feels as if the past never happened. The thought of a grievance never arises.
Love,
David
Is it truly helpful to just view all worldly tragedies as "not real"?
Question:
What would you call the collective experience of the people in the Middle East? Collective implies plural, but it cannot be, right? It is unreal by definition since there is only one MInd. I know people with amazing faith who have been tortured and betrayed. They did not think it was possible either. As an abstract concept, unreality is all very clean. The question of helpfulness is another matter.
Answer:
Thanks for writing. It seemed that for years and years the Holy Spirit kept whispering one thought to me over and over and over, again and again: "It is your lesson." At every turn and every temptation to project the split in the mind to the screen of the world, there was always this ever present gentle reminder. I was reminded literally tens of thousands of times that I was looking through a darkened glass and was hallucinating and imagining a world of complete unreality. It was actually a tremendous relief to give my mind and attention so fully, so completely, to applying the principles of the Course to everything I perceived. I used the lessons of the ACIM Workbook as if the experience of my very life, my state of mind, depended on NOT making any exceptions to the "transfer of training" at which the Course aims. Theology truly is laid aside in the experience of peace, for belief and concepts have no validity in the Present Moment. I now see that there is no universal theology, because God and Christ and Spirit ARE Universal and theology was the ego's attempt to explain the impossible. The Holy Spirit led me to release the impossible and to accept the wholly possible as inevitable.
I remember reading and experiencing the peace of Lesson 14: "God did not create a meaningless world." I remember applying the lesson as Christ instructed me to do: "The idea for today is another step in learning to let go the thoughts that you have written on the world, and see the Word of God in their place. The early steps in this exchange, which can truly be called salvation, can be quite difficult and even quite painful. Some of them will lead you directly into fear. You will not be left there. You will go far beyond it. Our direction is toward perfect safety and perfect peace.
With eyes closed, think of all the horrors in the world that cross your mind. Name each one as it occurs to you, and then deny its reality. God did not create it, and so it is not real. Say, for example:
God did not create that war, and so it is not real. God did not create that airplane crash, and so it is not real. God did not create that disaster [specify], and so it is not real.
Suitable subjects for the application of today's idea also include anything you are afraid might happen to you, or to anyone about whom you are concerned. In each case, name the 'disaster' quite specifically. Do not use general terms. For example, do not say,'God did not create illness,' but,'God did not create cancer,' or heart attacks, or whatever may arouse fear in you.
This is your personal repertory of horrors at which you are looking. These things are part of the world you see. Some of them are shared illusions, and others are part of your personal hell. It does not matter. What God did not create can only be in your own mind apart from His. Therefore, it has no meaning. In recognition of this fact, conclude the practice periods by repeating today's idea:
God did not create a meaningless world."
This lesson is the very reason why attack is impossible. This lesson is the experience that there can never be a victim or even the slightest mistreatment or abuse of anything or anyone. A world of pleasure and pain, of good and bad, of health and sickness, of peace and war, of life and death simply cannot be created by Absolute Oneness and Divine Love. And I discovered it was far easier to change my mind on this point than it was to continue fighting against accepting it as true.
I surrendered the attempt at being right about duality and multiplicity. I came into a moment of true humility. Instead of telling God how to be God, and telling God how reality must be, I decided to let the Holy Spirit inform and illuminate my mind. I discovered that ACIM was a practical tool and that Christ meant exactly what was Given as instruction. Everything once believed about the world was overturned in one profound experience.
Now I am happy. I am no longer identified with a "personality self,” and gone from mind are beliefs about persons, places, things, groups, countries, and the collective consciousness of humankind. I see that Who I am is Who everyone is. If it be true for the One Mind, it cannot be that a contradictory experience is possible as well, for there is nothing but this One Mind. Peace is its own reward, for it is the experience that reflects the Love of God. The body eyes and ears and senses seem to report differences, yet the healed mind has only one category for them: they are not real. A peaceful perception of the world arises from the awareness of the inability to judge. God does not judge, and the Holy Spirit restores a darkened mind to sanity by seeing the false as false. A "human mind" is false, for what God creates and what reflects God shares the attributes of its Creator. The thought of a collective experience of war or strife is a Call for Love, and if one is looking at the world through the darkened glass of the ego this is one's own Call to return to sanity. Distorted perception is the only error to be released, and it can be said that to see partially is not to see at all. There comes the Point in which error is seen as nonexistent arrogance, and healed perception is experienced with humility. Thanks be to the Grace of God Which knows of the Oneness of Love.
I am joined with You as One in the experience of peace. My peace I extend freely, for there is literally nothing else to extend. Peace be with You this moment and always.
Love,
David
Is it normal to feel MORE crazy, like I have a split personality, on this spiritual path?
Question:
Dear David, I am having difficulty listening to the voice for God. I am continually on and off peace and conflict. I have been studying ACIM for I think three or four years and I no longer see things as I did before, although in meditation I feel a wonderful, peaceful and loving sensation, during the rest of the day I almost feel enraged and furious at whatever. I really feel I am going crazy, I feel I have split mentality, split personality, I see myself as evil and awful and also as innocent and impeccable. It takes an effort to remember to breathe profoundly and recall who I am, and the fact is that intellectually ACIM has been a constant awe for me. I can see how teaching and learning work, how perception, illusion and ego work. I don't know how to express myself. I feel terrible at this moment and feel I need help.
I feel trapped and cheated in this body of mine and I want out! I don't know what I expect you to do or why I am turning to you at this point. I know I can delete this message and feel wonderful tomorrow but I really would like to know if this happens to many students of ACIM or not. The Course has become my almost obsession for the last years. I feel I would only like to be around ACIM students, only talking about God and the HS, only feeling peace and love. I don't know if I am making sense or not, I am just crying out my feeling to you whom I don't know, but whom I can feel is devoted to helping others. I am sorry I cannot express myself more clearly. I am sorry to intrude like this. Tomorrow or even later today everything will be different. I just feel tired of these changes of mind and feelings. To realize that I am voluntarily trying to believe differently than I had always believed everything to be, seems so crazy. If instead of just myself I had a "guru" or someone else (physical being) telling me to brainwash myself to believe this, I would indeed be very afraid. But I have felt the love and peace that this belief offers and I want it. I suppose I am desperate. Sorry! Could you please send me some words of comfort? Am I the only one having these problems with the practice of ACIM?
Answer:
You are soooooo loved. I am with you all the way in awakening! The conflict of belief is surfacing in consciousness, as it must, and though it may feel as though you are going insane to the ego, the false is merely being exposed or brought to truth. The darkness is being brought to the light. The emotions you experience are part of the illusion of undoing and are not unusual in the purification of thought, in the transformation of mind to Mind. ACIM is your path and you follow it with devotion. It is an accelerated path of going through fear to love, and as you call on God's love, everything that blocks the awareness of love is being brought to awareness so it can be released. As you approach the core of the ego thought system, the feelings can seem very intense, for the ego is highly threatened by the light and identification with the ego produces the illusion of upset. Take heart, for the end of dreaming is close at hand.
The Holy Spirit will direct all unlearning, and if you are having difficulty hearing His voice I suggest asking the question: "What is this for?" about the situations and events you experience daily. This questioning, if done sincerely and persistently, leads deeper and deeper into the ego's belief system and is helpful in relinquishing faith in the ego. This will help in the task of releasing linear perception and allowing the miracle to rearrange perception to the simultaneous perspective. To use the symbol of the cross, the horizontal collapses and dissolves, and all that remains is the vertical (communion with God).
At some point you may be guided to participate more fully in a "spiritual community," and this form will be a symbol to you of open communication and the safety and stability to allow error to surface and be released. Everything is a reflection of thought, and happily it is learned that changing thoughts by releasing attack thoughts is our salvation. The world can only reflect belief, yet belief can change from judgment to forgiveness as the willingness to lay aside all judgment arises. This is the surrender into God's grace.
"Spiritual community" is a reflection of willingness to call for help and be used in extending help, and this will open up even greater willingness to hear God's voice. The key is not hiding or protecting false thoughts and beliefs. Sharing with your brothers and sisters is symbolic of hiding nothing from the loving light of the Holy Spirit. This opportunity is readily available in all apparent forms of community, including physical contacts and the Internet. It is always helpful to remember, however, that laying aside the horizontal (belief in a linear world 'out there') at the point of intersection (the miracle) leads to the vertical (vision of Christ). "Spiritual community" is a helpful step toward recognizing the communion with God within.
I join with you in your devotion, for Christ calls and we answer. What more holy aim could there be? I love you and walk the selfsame road to God.
Peace & Blessings,
David
How do I explain ACIM teachings to others?
Question:
I've been studying ACIM for a year, and your website "Awakening Mind" has totally transformed my "Mind." Thank you! I like it so much that I want my 3 teenagers to learn it too. My husband (their father) died 2 yrs ago of a bacterial infection, so I had them listen to one of the audios about healing your mind, not your body. Now they think I'm saying their Dad chose to get the infection and die. Can you please help me explain this to them?
Answer:
Thank you so much for writing and for your willingness to share the Purpose and ideas that the Holy Spirit offers. Our happiness and joy demonstrate that there is indeed another Way of looking upon the world. This demonstration is the most helpful witness that can be offered. Words but serve as tools that can point to an experience, yet it is the experience ItSelf which truly teaches. Truth cannot be described or explained, only experienced. Our happiness and joy teach that there is no death and that life is a state of mind worth choosing. The peace of forgiveness offers a quiet and calm opening for everyone to question what they believe and what they have invested in. Forgiveness gently offers an alternative to the belief that life is of the body and to the belief that death and loss are real. How does one explain that this world is backwards and upside down? In a world that seems solid and real it is the Kingdom of Heaven that may seem to be a fantasy or a dream. The choice for Heaven is the simple choice to look upon the world without judgment and to allow the Holy Spirit to interpret it anew. And from this healed Perspective the Holy Spirit will offer words that inspire and bless and point beyond the body-based perspective of ego thinking.
There once was an apostle that was so inspired by Christ that all he could say, with a sparkle in his eyes and filled with the glee of the Spirit, was: "Come and see!" This is what he meant by these three words: "Experience the miracle!" The miracle of joy shows that death and pain and sickness must have been replaced for they have gone! The miracle has taken the place of the ego belief that separation from God is possible.
The ego was a "death wish,” a wish that Christ could leave the Mind of God and have a "life" apart from God's Divine Love. Sickness and death are the same illusion, a wrong-minded decision that proclaims that error could take the place of Life Eternal. Yet the Eternal cannot die or grow sick. The illusion of the body and world are a dream in which the impossible but seems to happen. In our transformation of mind is error brought to the Light within, and as perfect Love casts out fear so the Light of Love dispels error.
Your children are the opportunity to teach what you would learn. Teach only Love and experience only Love. All questions and doubt thoughts dissolve as they are brought to Light. Allow the questions to rise into awareness and pour forth. In allowing the questions to surface and taking the "lid" off of the subconscious, you are making way for the Answer to dawn in awareness. I rejoice with you and am with you all the way!
In Peace & Stillness,
David
David, if you overlook all error, what would the experience be like for you if you saw two people arguing in front of you?
Description:
This question is asked at 40 minutes and 22 seconds into the following audio, which is part of an interview of David by DavidPaul & Candace Doyle.
Listen to the audio here: http://www.livingmiraclescenter.org/MP3/QandA_audios/DC11.mp3
Are there seemingly "physical changes" that happen during the process of Awakening?
Question:
Has awareness something to do with a state in which you are only a witness: peace, joy and silence? To enter this state I only have to close my eyes and I perceive a joy starting from my heart; it is a kind of love, but more like a peace full of love. The top of my head is expanded, and behind the head too. My head feels physically changed, although nothing can be seen from the outside, naturally. I can "see" feelings coming out at the height of the heart; after a while, if I observe them, they disappear. Sometimes I perceive a light which pervades me completely, which makes me SO happy. It is as if a lamp is turned on, but it's a light which I don't see with my physical eyes, I am seeing it with another sense organ which I never had before. I can’t explain it.
Now I have much more energy than before, and can even perceive a kind of vibration. I think I am taking energy from the air. All of this makes me feel "complete" in myself. I know it sounds weird, but it is what's really happening to me. I never read or heard of this kind of thing happening before, so it cannot be suggestion. Before all of this happened I asked God for liberation, although I didn't really know what it meant, and repeated the name of Jesus with all my heart and love, many many times. Now I don't need any more words to pray; I just go there.
Answer:
How wonderful to hear of your transformative experiences! What you are experiencing is a very natural Awakening, and only the ego would attempt to look back on it and judge what seems to be occurring as "weird” things. It does SEEM as if there are physical changes during the process of shifting from horizontal (or ego) perception to vertical (or spirit-aligned) perception. All of the seeming physical changes are forms involving the body, and are within the realm of the imagination or perception. Nothing in form really changes since form is illusion, and a changing illusion means a changing nothing, and that means no physical change at all. Yet the expanded perceptions which seem to be in the top of or back of the head, at the height of the heart, and the ability to “watch” feelings come out from a point of detachment are all witnesses to the removal of the limits of belief. As the limits of belief about a body-based identity dissolve and are released, perceptual experiences reflect an ever-more expansive self concept. These self concepts are illusions as well, yet each one comes closer to the forgiven world or the Perspective of the Holy Spirit. Even this Perspective, the Dreamer of the dream, is an illusion, for in Reality there is nothing to forgive, but this is the last illusion which ends the dream entirely.
The Vision of Christ is the Light beyond all concepts, beliefs, and limits of the ego. Clearly you have had a glimpse of this Light in your awareness, witnessed by the words you expressed:
"Sometimes I perceive a light which pervades me completely, which makes me SO happy. It is as if a lamp would be turned on, but it's a light which I don't see with my physical eyes. It feels like I am seeing it with another sense organ which I never had before. I can’t explain it."
I rejoice with You as One in the Great Awakening!!! These expansive experiences herald the happy dream and the end of dreaming. All is calm ...all is bright. Thanks for sharing these experiences in awareness and expressing what you feel. Spiritual experiences are directly of Christ and God, transcending explanations and the need to explain. The ego wants to figure out what it can never Know. What is real cannot be described or explained ...only experienced. Words and images are symbols the Holy Spirit uses in Guiding the mind inward until the need for symbols has vanished with the Experience of Pure, Eternal Spirit. Such is a Silent Mind.
With overflowing Love,
David
Thoughts and Actions: What we do follows from what we think.
Thoughts and Actions
General description of video:
What we do follows from what we think. We must become consistent and clear in our thought processes in order for our actions to flow clearly from them. When we think of them as not connected there is not a sense of harmony. This whole world is the Pinocchio syndrome. Human beings believe that they are autonomous people. We have to start to acknowledge the invisible strings and conditions. There is a very direct connection between action and thought. It seems invisible because the ego belief is that we have minds, thoughts and bodies of our own which all support the belief that we are autonomous individuals. Nothing could be further from the truth. To the ego pure Oneness is boring. We want to let the Holy Spirit guide our thoughts and let the actions flow from this clarity in mind.
Watch the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHypm_cZ0Oo