I really wanted to end my A Course in Miracles series with my last post, but then I came across some of my notes on essential quotes from the course, and I knew, that I can’t withhold them from you. :)
Each and every one has the potential to change your view on „reality“.
They are very concentrated insights, and I will add my comments to each one. My recommendation with them is to don’t ingest them all at once, since they will grow and unfold over time in your life…
This classroom is not about our relationship with the world, but our relationship with Truth.
The course often refers to our life as a classroom. In this quote, Jesus makes clear, that the main curriculum is not about our relationships in (and with) the world.
ACIM is a course in content and not form. It will never tell you, what to do in the world of form, because form is illusionary. So the focus is on the content and the content is always the same: The decision in the Mind between the thought system of the ego or that of Truth. Only one brings you to Truth. So the question is: What is my relationship with Truth?
The world is a maladapted solution for a non-existent problem.
There is really only one problem: The belief in the separation from God.
The world is the manifestation of this belief. Inside the world, there are endless solutions - all stem from the first problem - the separation from God, that never happened.
It’s not that the world is everything, and beyond that is the big nothingness - it’s exactly the opposite: the world is nothing and beyond that is everything (Love, Peace etc)
Forgiveness is still and quietly does nothing; it merely looks and waits and judges not.
Forgiveness as explained in Part 1 of my series, is the word the course uses for undoing the basic misunderstanding of separation. It’s not really something you do. Basically it’s looking at your 2 options every moment: the thought system of the ego and the thought system of the holy spirit. (see Part 5). With that you will also see what follows with each of them.
No need to judge - just looking innocently at the results of your decision will make it obvious. If you experience guilt or fear, you will know, which thought system you have decided for and you can make a different decision each and every moment.
Love is the absence of the belief in cause
This is maybe my all-time favorite description of Love. Since ideas leave not their source, cause and effect are the same in Oneness.
Guilt on the contrary is the result of believing that there is cause and effect - and therefore separation.
„You did X and that’s why I felt Y“ or „Because I did X in the past, Y was the result“.
This is the linear way our human (ego) minds work - it is called „logic“.
Truth is not logical and there is no way to tell, what caused what - even more though, they are not separate at all!
Love is Oneness and therefore there is no cause and effect in Love.
Love is. Period.
Forgiving is the means by which you overcome your fear of death, because death does not attract you when guilt is gone.
This is a very deep one, that needs further explanation.
There are basically 4 obstacles to peace mentioned in ACIM and one of them is the attraction of death. The reason why it’s called attraction and not fear alone is, because from inside the insane ego’s thought system, death is the proof, that we separated from God. In other words: the existence of death proofs, that the ego has a life on it’s own and the separation really happened. Death is basically the thought, that we are separate from our creator.
That’s why we are attracted to the concept of death and fear it at the same time. Remember, that guilt is used in the course to describe the result of the belief in the separation from God and forgiveness is its antidote.
So when through forgiveness, the guilt is gone, with it goes also the interest (and fear) in the concept of death (as a proof of the separation).
All the course does, is switching our focus from mindlessness to mindfulness - from us being a body to us being the universal Mind.
The Ego’s greatest fear - and the reason it made up a world - is, that the son of god (the decision maker) may change his mind. The world is made to prevent a change of mind. To make this possible, the Ego convinced us, that we don’t have a Mind at all - that we are a physical body and that our life will end with death.
The moment we realize, that „we“ are (universal) Mind (=Spirit), the concept of death becomes obsolete. This won’t happen as long as there is still the hidden purpose described above.
God has absolutely nothing to do with this world
Another all time favorite of mine and a quote from Ken Wapnick and not from the course itself.
There are basically two different myths of how the world came to be. The scientific myth of the big bang and the religious myth of some God creating the world.
ACIM has none of those in its metaphysics. It says very clearly, that the world is just a dream. God being pure Oneness, Love and Peace didn’t create a world of duality, guilt, fear and suffering.
Even more though, God can’t create something, that is the opposite of himself and therefore, God doesn’t even know about something like „a world of form“. Since he doesn’t know about the world, he can’t have any effect on it. That’s why, God seems so absent in this world - because he is - and there is no world!
…and that’s why - as a final quote:
There is no life outside of Heaven
Life is not the opposite of death. Life is eternal. Life is only in God.
So contrary to the Nietzsche quote „God is dead“, it’s much more like „We (=the world of form and bodies) are dead“ and the real life - the real world - is the place we never left and where we will live forever as One Mind.
Thanks for reading this short (but intense) epilogue to the ACIM series.
I know, that many of these topics are controversial and you may had some „wait….but….!“ moments.
This is an expected result, because the course is basically turning our world view upside down on purpose - not because it speaks the Truth („The truth that can be spoken, is not the real Truth“ as the Tao the Ching says), but because it’s the undoing of our previous held believes.
The thought systems of Ego Inc and Heaven Inc cancel each other out, and what is left is Truth.
This process has to trigger many resistances. I would go so far to say, that if you didn’t experience resistances, you have not understood what is written here. ;) …but the topic of resistances is a whole other one…
I promise you, that for the next article, I’ll try to think about a more lighthearted and fun topic! ;) Nevertheless, ACIM tells us, that if we begin to really understand the course, we smile more often at our own insanity and the one of the perceived world.
So in the end, also a course this deep and radical, has to be taken in lighthearted way.
Much Love,