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SearchHow can I convince others that God did not create this world?
Question:
I'm having a tough time with some folks refusing to believe that this "world" was not created by God. They believe that it was created by God, as were we, and that He lives in all the pretty flowers, etc. Now I know that's not so, but how does one handle that kind of rigidity?
Answer:
Releasing the belief in a "they" or "some folks" is yielding to the flow that ends all rigidity. Emptying the mind of all concepts and images releases the belief in knowing anything about this world and opens it to acceptance of Atonement. The experience of now sees no "other,” for love is One. ACIM Workbook lessons 29 & 30 eliminate pantheism (seeing God as indwelling in separate objects) as a possibility and reveal God is in everything I see because God is in my Mind. The purpose of the Holy Spirit unifies perception to a single perspective, and even this holy perception must then give way to the light, the Vision of Christ. The lesson of acceptance is our own, and any upset is a call to release the belief that there is anything outside of mind. Love has no object, for love is whole. God creates only Spirit! True forgiveness rests on the idea that God did not create a meaningless world.
David
David, when you started hearing the Holy Spirit, what helped you to open up to it?
This question is asked at the beginning of the following audio, which is part of an interview with David Hoffmeister, Paul & Candace Doyle.
Listen to the audio here: http://www.livingmiraclescenter.org/MP3/QandA_audios/DC5.mp3
How can I remember more consistently throughout the day?
Question:
I know the Course is true and will bring me back to God by the simple application of it in my life. I know that the Course offers only Love, and that my salvation is Now. My problem is that I seem to apply these principles only during certain parts of the day. While I know the Course to be True, I forget to apply it to my everyday life. Do you have any wisdom which might help me to remember more during each day, down to each minute, and finally down to each moment the beauty of the principles of the Course?
Answer:
Fan the flames of your passion for God! Every moment presents the opportunity to be attentive to the Voice within. Every instant is a wonderful chance to experience the inner glee and gratitude that wants to burst forth! Approach the mind training discipline with a feeling of openness and curiosity, for willingness to allow the unlearning of false beliefs is the key. You have had many miracles, and these experiences have increased your faith and willingness to open up even more. As the unlearning proceeds, you will seem to understand less and less about the world and seem to experience more and more happiness, and you will discover that there is no earthly reason for such unlimited happiness! Awakening seems at times very disorienting to the ego, but always allow your mind to be reminded that you are not the ego. As you let go of attempts to control circumstances, events, people, places, and situations, the Divine Principle is applied to everything without exceptions. Expectations and agendas fade and fall away. The River of Love carries You, flowing without obstruction to the Vast Ocean of Spirit that goes on and on forever.
Be willing to practice the thought "I know nothing" as the ever present invitation to empty the mind of everything it thinks it "knows" about the world. As long as the minutes and days and weeks and months and years seem real and familiar, the holy instant will seem obscure and fleeting. Yet the attraction for the holy instant of perfect stillness remains ever present, and as you fan the flames of single desire this instant seems nearer in awareness. While time seems to linger in memory you always have the choice of a tranquil mind, and as the unconscious or unwatched mind is raised to awareness you are vividly aware that every experience is a choice. Peace seems to be an increasingly attractive choice as fear is allowed to surface, openly exposed, and voluntarily released. True Intimacy has nothing to hide and nothing to protect. True Intimacy is innocent and transparent. And true humility makes no attempt to define reality, accepting everything as Is and rejecting nothing.
What seems to be a "letting go” process is simply a retranslation of perception by the Holy Spirit. It is impossible to let go of something you never had in the first place. Belief can make time and space seem very real indeed, yet with the Holy Spirit everything is viewed from a very detached Perspective on High. Freed from the belief in the past, the mind revels in the present moment, the gateway to Eternity.
Practice your daily lessons with great passion and devotion, and give over all thoughts of details and logistics and planning to the Holy Spirit. Watch how easily the meaningless is handled when you give your attention to the meaningful! It always comes as a happy surprise when one realizes the experience of Everything has no cost at all. Yet happily the experience of true freedom comes with an awareness that Now is Everything and nothing at all was ever "given up."
I love You forever and ever!
David
How can I heal my body of parasites without having an attitude of wanting to "kill" or "get rid of" them?
Question:
I have been reading "A Course in Miracles" and am experiencing some confusion.
There is a lot of talk about the attack/guilt sequence, which makes sense to me and I agree with it overall. My particular condition is I have had parasites that have been causing severe symptoms for many years now and have tried an array of different herbal treatments to try to free my body of them, with no success. Now I am reluctantly going the route of conventional antibiotics to purge them from my system. My attitude towards them is not always what I would like it to be, since I directly experience their effects through my body, and I know and appreciate the lessons I have been learning from them in terms of patience, tolerance, compassion, that can come with any disease. My inability up to now to expunge them from my body by meditating on pure light dissolving whatever negative intention that surrounds them has not been fully successful either. So I am looking at discharging them from my body through antibiotics, destroying the bodies of those who would want to remain. In this process, it has been very difficult to look upon them with objective love, and not be tempted to have somewhat of a destructionist attitude. I realize that to kill in itself is an illusion, but I am very conscious of what Christ speaks about in terms of we do to ourselves and that which we inflict upon others.
The immune system functions, as my studies reveal, very much like an army. And when foreign intruders (microbes, unfriendly bacteria, etc.) enter the body's system and would cause distress, the different aspects of the immune system work together to systematically level, and in most cases destroy or dissolve the unwelcome guests.
In trying to handle my condition and purge myself of my unwanted guests, I am trying to keep an attitude of higher Love and Understanding which will help me see all this in light of spiritual understandings such as ACIM provides. I have read that all disease is one, in the sense it is all a desire to be separate from our creator. Since my desire is one of unity, I want to carry an intention of this into my dealings with my body.
Answer:
It is true that our deepest desire is one of Unity, for Creation is Pure Unity. The deepest desire of mind asleep, therefore, is to Wake Up and remember the Unity with God that can never be broken. This deepest desire was seemingly covered by clouds of doubt and confusion, the ego, and Awakening is simply going beyond the dark clouds of error to the Light of Truth within. The error was as you have stated it: "...all disease is one, in the sense it is all a desire to be separate from our Creator." The way you bring the intention of unity into all dealings with the body is to accept the Atonement (complete forgiveness), Which is the undoing or dissolving of the ego IN THE mind. This requires unlearning and releasing everything you seemed to believe and learn about yourself (as a person) and the time-space cosmos. Included in this unlearning is the release of the belief that there is any causation whatsoever in form or matter. This will require questioning the belief in the "medical model" which assumes that symptoms and disease have a physical origin. All seeming dis-ease is rooted in an ontological feeling of guilt (the attack-guilt sequence you referred to in the beginning of your e-mail) and this guilt seems to arise from what ACIM calls "wrong-mindedness,” which is belief that there is causation in matter or form.
Acceptance of the healed mind or the forgiven world might be described as seeing that there is nothing apart from mind. This cosmos is the belief that Divine Mind, Spirit, can be made "manifest" as "the physical,” yet Spirit remains forever Spirit and Eternal. The time-space cosmos is the illusion of "temporal, ephemeral, transitory, changing, physical manifestations" and is not Reality, for True Reality is Eternal and Changeless. Forgiveness is an illusion, for in Oneness there is nothing to forgive. Yet forgiveness is the illusion (healed mind) that leads beyond the belief in multiple illusions (specific forms) and toward the remembrance of Christ and God (Whole Mind, Divine Mind). The parasites perceived in wrong-mindedness were a reflection of the belief in dependency and attack, and this belief is a call for Help, a call for forgiveness or right-mindedness. To accept the Correction, Atonement or complete forgiveness, it is necessary to realize that only mind is causative and that there is no world apart from mind. This opens the way for the remembrance of God, the recognition that only Love is Real.
Forgiveness is complete inclusion in mind and thus the seeming release of any scrap of thought that anything could ever be apart from mind. The concept of a parasite is something that feeds off of something else. Right-mindedness sees the wholeness of the tapestry and therefore happily transcends the dualistic concepts of competition and conflict and scarcity and dependency on form, which are the same error: wrong-mindedness. There is no causation in form. Beloved One, if you could but see that all dualistic concepts attempt to veil the Love and Unity of Creation you would be instantly healed. God's Will is for Perfect Happiness, and Awakening is the acceptance that God's Will and our Will as the Christ are One. This is the Unity of Spirit in Which there is no end or limit.
True immunity is immunity of mind: forgiveness, for forgiveness sees the impossibility of attack and defense. In forgiveness, there is only inclusion and wholeness, and thus destruction is impossible. As the mind is purged of the unwanted guests (attack thoughts) the result is inevitably an experience of Love and Understanding. By studying and applying ACIM you are focusing your efforts on healing the cause: mind. Our "immunity system" of mind, which is the only immunity system that works, relies on peace of mind. Peace of mind rests on purity of thought. Realize that attack thoughts and grievances are the only "parasites" to release, for they have no place in our Holy Mind. What is perceived as "in the world and apart from mind" is only what is believed. It is well worth the effort to question the false belief in physical causation. "Physical causation" is a contradiction in terms, for only mind is causative.
We are joined in the same Purpose. Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the Peace of God.
I Love You forever,
David
David, now that you just ARE the Holy Spirit and don't have a split mind, do you ever still find yourself asking the Holy Spirit for Guidance?
Description:
This question is asked at 29 minutes and 50 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
Is there a specific technique you've taught people in the past for learning to hear the Holy Spirit?
Description:
This question is asked at 2 minutes and 48 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/DC8.mp3
Should I be trying to disect the ego emotions rising to the surface, or is it really all the same?
Question:
This ACIM curriculum makes sense down to the depths of my heart and soul. It brings all my searching to an end and centers it within myself. But here I am, the emotional yo-yo. Can you tell me, how do I know what specific negative thought is being brought up in my consciousness? Is it even specifics at all? Or is it just a general negative illusion? Should I be trying to dissect it? Or should I just let it flow out? Thank you!
Answer:
It is a Joy to hear from you! I am joined with you in this walk of faith and appreciate you opening up and sharing your thoughts. The emotions surfacing for you do not have anything to do with specifics or specific "aspects" of mind, but rather the unconscious belief in specifics. This belief is being undone. Christ reminds in ACIM:
"Complete abstraction is the natural condition of the mind. But part of it is now unnatural. It does not look on everything as one. It sees instead but fragments of the whole, for only thus could it invent the partial world you see. The purpose of all seeing is to show you what you wish to see. All hearing but brings to your mind the sounds it wants to hear.
Thus were specifics made. And now it is specifics we must use in practicing. We give them to the Holy Spirit, that He may employ them for a purpose which is different from the one we gave to them. Yet He can use but what we made, to teach us from a different point of view, so we can see a different use in everything." (W-161.3)
It is helpful to allow what has been repressed and pushed out of awareness to surface so it can be released. At times the disturbing emotions will seem general and other times they will seem to have a specific reference—this does not matter. Just let it flow. The ego belief that made and IS the world of specifics is being exposed, for you are asking that it be released. The Abstract Light of Christ is still deeper within, beneath the belief in separation from God.
The ego can seem to be a tangled web of beliefs, yet it is all one error—the belief that Christ could be separate from God. As a belief in separation and fragmentation, the ego seems to have fragmented itself into many selves and many beliefs. This is not so. Illusions are one. This world is the belief that something can happen to the Son of God against His Will. And thus it seems as if there are causes "in the world" (people, places, things, events, circumstances and situations) that can bring pleasures and pains, happiness and sadness, love and fear. This is not so. The Holy Spirit offers a complete reversal of thought (from world as cause, to mind as cause) and this reversal is already accomplished. The acceptance of this reversal is the Atonement.
The seeming emotional roller coaster ride of emotions with shifts in consciousness can indeed seem like a yo-yo. It is important to remember that you are asked to release all specific judgments, or all judgment of "specifics." The Holy Spirit's Perspective is the only "Judgment" that is wholly kind, for it simply sees the false as false. Non-judgment is the Correction called Atonement, for what is one tapestry cannot be divided or fragmented. This Perspective reflects the Wholeness of Abstract Love & Light, Which is Reality. God did not create a Child to "judge,” for there is nothing to judge between in Perfect Oneness. So it does not matter what seems to rise into awareness during Awakening - what is important is the release of whatever arises. Thus is the ego undone, for in Truth it does not exist and never could "do" anything. You but seem to be cleaning the mirror of mind, imagining that what is over and gone is still in mind. The past cannot dictate your emotions unless you give it the power to do so. Do not cling to past associations, and experience that you are already free. Nothing of the past has any value, for in the present moment is our Perfection. We have been Called out of the thinking of the world, for only Heaven is our Home.
The seeming "yo-yo" experience is the belief in compromise. Yet it is impossible to serve two masters and it is impossible to see two worlds. The only meaningful use of time is to release the belief in linear time, for Eternity and time cannot co-exist. Time is specific and appears to have increments of measurement. Eternity is Abstract, Infinite, and cannot be "measured." It dawns in awareness that time is the grievance to be forgiven. Time is the unquestioned premise of this world. Time is the assumption that seems to bring confusion and conflict, until the assumption is questioned and raised to Light.
Be not concerned about where or what you seem to be, for now we have joined in a Purpose of Awakening. The Holy Spirit will Guide you very specifically as long as the belief in specifics persists in awareness. Thanks for your devotion to Awakening!
I love You forever and ever,
David
How should I handle it when conflict arises in a relationship and emotions escalate?
General description of video:
This topic is brought up around 26 minutes and 55 seconds into the first video, and the discussion continues on into the second video below. Part 4 and 5 from a 7-part, three-hour gathering held on Feb 13th, 2011 in San Anselmo, CA with David Hoffmeister and friends. This joy-filled and insightful gathering was all about the practical application of A Course in Miracles to relationships, especially focused on "couple" relationships!
Watch the videos here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvPqI3shf-8#t=26m55s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOQg8e2VRNo
Are ALL private thoughts ego thoughts? Do you, David, have private thoughts?
General description of video:
This discussion begins at 24 minutes and 46 second into the first video below, and continues on into the second video. Part 5 & 6 from a 7-part, three-hour gathering held on Feb 13th, 2011 in San Anselmo, CA with David Hoffmeister and friends. This joy-filled and insightful gathering was all about the practical application of A Course in Miracles to relationships, especially focused on "couple" relationships!
Watch the videos here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOQg8e2VRNo#t=24m46s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_u3VIUX_cQ
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