Questions

Question:
I just cannot understand these statements in ACIM:

In Lesson 135 it states, "...Yet it is not the body that can fear nor be a thing of fear. It has no needs but those which you assign to it. It needs no complicated structures of defense, no health inducing medicine, no care and no concern at all...." But we still have to feed it water, food for sustaining it is it not? I cannot understand this.

In Lesson 132 it states, "...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 further, or perhaps step back a while and then return again....". ACIM says Heaven cannot be reached alone and you have to take everyone with you. Does it mean that those who are ready will only enter heaven and others will have to remain here and work towards it? If Jesus or Buddha attained heaven how come we are still here?

Answer:
Thanks for writing and sharing your sincere questions. The first quotation points to the teaching that the seeming "source" of fear and need is the false "cause"—the belief in separation in the mind, and has nothing to do with the body. The ego belief is a wrong-minded decision to project the fear and needs to the body, as if the body and the environment that seems to surround the body can be "causes" of fear. Needs and fears arise from the sense of lack that the belief in separation induces. You might say that the only need the sleeping mind has is to accept the Atonement or Correction for the belief in separation. The ego attempts to protect itself by making it seem as if the fears and needs are in the cosmos and the body, yet images are neutral to the Holy Spirit and images can neither fear or have needs.

Until the mind is Awakened through retraining via the Holy Spirit it will seem as if there are causes in the world. Hunger, thirst, sexual desire, and the desire for stimulation seem to be based in the body and brain, yet they arise from distorted miracle impulses that pass through the lens of lack. All fears and cravings and needs are wrong-minded perceptions, yet answering the Call to be a miracle worker will yield many miracles and dissolve the lens of lack. Until the lens of lack is dissolved completely the sleeping mind will experience cravings, and cravings are either acted upon and temporarily satisfied or pushed down and denied from awareness. Neither approach will satisfy in a lasting way, yet miracles open the door to lasting peace and joy and freedom and happiness. In miracles are all seeming human needs met without effort. And the final miracle of Atonement brings an end to the belief in need and lack and fear forever.

The second quotation points toward the realization that there is no objective world/cosmos apart from the sleeping mind (ego), and since the ego does not exist neither does the world/cosmos it seemed to produce. Mind Awake is Christ, Eternally in the Mind of God. The Mind of God is Reality and there is nothing "outside" of the all-encompassing Mind of God. Spirit is Eternal and the time-space cosmos is but an illusory dream that has no existence or reality.

The perceived world/cosmos was made by the ego, yet the ego is nothing. It is subjective in that everything which appears as the dream is given pseudo meaning by the ego that made it. The Holy Spirit offers the Perspective of a forgiven world in which all distortions have been straightened out or neutralized. This Perspective is the gateway to Eternity, for this Perspective is one of non-judgment. Judgment makes the world/cosmos hallucination seem real to the perceiver, while forgiveness shows the falsity of the world/cosmos. Everyone Wakes Up as One because the realization dawns that there are no private thoughts or private minds, no individual persons or separate individual "souls,” nothing that "comes to" or "leaves" a cosmos that never was. The Vision of Christ is Pure Light and in this Light the veil of images that seemed to be the world/cosmos has vanished.

Jesus is a symbol of a man who saw the face of Christ and remembered the Eternal Oneness of Heaven or Nirvana. Now is the time to accept that You are that same One and realize that it is impossible to be even a "spiritual person,” for God is no respecter of persons. Mind cannot be broken into separate bits of consciousness and given separate names and roles and meanings. The role model of an "awakened master" is helpful only to a certain step, and then it finally dawns that OneSelf IS the Living One. You are included in the Awakening because forgiveness is unified mind. In the forgiven world it is apparent that there is nothing outside the mind. The world/cosmos was a mind of ideas, and all of mind is included in forgiveness.

Stay devoted to the experience of Awakening through forgiveness, and push off and lay aside the stepping stones which are naturally released as higher awareness dawns. Your desire for God will bring the remembrance of God, and nothing is capable of preventing this inevitable Realization.

Love always,
David