Remember recoverer...  Focusing on negative, unfriendly influences tends to open one to them and attract them into one's consciousness.

The quality of any book or other material is relative to the person reading it and should be judged on the practical value of what it contributes to your personal understanding in ways that help attain spiritual growth.

It is always wise to look for the significance of concepts that lie beneath the words. Interpretation is always personal to the individual and may or may not be significant to others. Take what is useful for your own personal growth. Absolutes in communication are reflections of ego.

Albert, guides and helpers with a high quality of consciousness in the non-physical couldn’t care less about anyone’s ego needs and therefore wouldn’t bother to communicate whether or not a book or other source of material is good or bad, unless of course you’re communicating with a being that has a low quality of consciousness themselves. In that case they are either playing with you by feeding your fears and ego or you are getting this stuff from within your own consciousness. Probably the latter since speaking out against certain sources seems to be a constant past time of yours. I know you don’t see it, but doing that is all about fear and ego.

Agreed, Lights.

Sometimes standing up for the light means having the courage to stand up to those who oppose the light.

Dude:

   
1. The course says that this World wasn't created by God, because everything God creates is perfect.  This can lead people to believe that the World is separate from God. It also leads to the assumption that something other than God exists, because it contends that something other than God created this World.

2. Related to number one, when you look at the big picture, despite the problems that can be found within this World, the World isn't imperfect. It is just that we have to go through some growing pains. Unfortunately, it seems like we're going through more than we need to go through. This doesn't mean that God created something imperfect. It just means that as a part of his plan he provided us with free will.

3. The course speaks of how nothing you see is real; therefore, you don't have to be concerned about the troubles in the World. It is true that what we go through isn't permanent and not the ultimate end, but while people and other forms of life live in this World their life is real, therefore, they do indeed suffer. Also, the story of this World doesn't come to an end, until we bring it to an end in a hopefully positive way.

4. The course places too much of an emphasis on the ego. To an extent where a person might end up creating an ego like aspect of mind that is beyond what they are already have. We do exist as individual Souls, and even when we become aware of the oneness again our individuality doesn't go away. The bodies we make use of include a self-defense instinct. If we give this instinct more credit than it deserves by creating an ego like aspect of mind, we give our self-defense instinct too much power. If we place too much emphasis on trying to see that we aren't here, we lose track of the goal of developing ourselves as much as possible.

5. ACIM states things such as we are afraid of God, we have guilt because we separated from him, and that we "hate" God. There is actually a statement within the course that says we hate God. I don't buy this. Regarding guilt, why should we feel guilty about taking part in a growth process that is a part of the divine plan? How are we supposed to learn what existence is about and develop and uniqueness and capabilities, if we don't go through some sort of growth process? I believe the course causes people to create a guilt they didn't have to begin with.

6. The course relies on affirmations too much. Spiritual growth doesn't take place by making a bunch of affirmations. It comes by letting go of limitations. If one takes a path that involves making a bunch of affirmations, one will end up encasing one's self in a belief system. This is true regardless of how positive the ingredients of a belief system seem to be. The fact of this can be seen when one becomes defensive when one's belief system is questioned. True knowledge doesn't need to be defended. True knowledge doesn't need to express it self through the words of a course.

7. The course has many words yet there are things it doesn't talk about one would think a course from Christ would talk about. One way in which people try to brainwash people, is by having a person read basically the same thing over and over again. If you get them to read it enough, chances are they will take on a belief system they will be afraid to question. When I read the course for a while I could tell that it has a brainwashing effect. In the past I've posted an article where course teacher Hugh Prather spoke about how most of the course members he met years after they started the course were very narrow minded.

8. If the course doesn't actually come from Christ, then to the extent it disagrees with the truth Christ represents, it will mislead a person.

Kathy:

I did not feel like I'm a bully within my heart chakra when I wrote my posts.  I was careful to look into this when I wrote them. In fact, my state of being felt very positive.

It isn't a matter of being egotistical. It is a matter of my caring enough about deceptive sources not having their way, that I'm willing to speak truthfully about them even though people such as your self throw stones.

If you were balanced on this matter you would've spoken against a false source of information at least once. But you never do so. Instead you defend them, even when you don't know what a source is about.

You claim that I am trying to infringe upon the free will of other people, yet you never complain about misleading sources that try to do so. Not once have I told a person that you have to believe as I do. I simply share what I have found about sources that infringe upon the free will of people by misleading and brainwashing them.

It is a very sad day indeed if people can't speak out against false sources of information, with out people making accusations against them as you have. Perhaps a book such as Mein Kamf would not had been successful, if more people would've spoken against it.  Some people might say it's not the same thing, partly because they don't understand how insidious it is for books such as ACIM to represent themselves in the way they do.

My belief is that there are light beings that don't just stand by passively while unfriendly beings have their way. I believe this partly because I have helped deal with unfriendly spirits, so they'd stop messing with people. If eveybody just sits around and sings "kay sara sara whatever will be will be" nothing will ever be done to take care of the deceptive forces that try to mislead people.

I don't believe it is good to step on people's toes. But such an indiscretion rates about a 2 or 3 on a scale of one to ten, when compared to the indiscretion of not doing anything.  I rate that indiscretion a 10.

I doubt that Christ wants himself to continue to be misrepresented by ACIM. If you don't care about this that's your choice. But please don't tell me that I can't care enough to speak out.

I re-read my posts, and believe that I went along with the flow. I started with one post, and then responded to responses and in one case a question. Is there something wrong with responding?

I do admit that there have been times that I have been pushy.  To tell you the truth, I'd rather be pushy than not do anything at all. To just sit by and do nothing...

If more people put effort into discriminating false sources of information and spoke up against them, they'd have a hard time thriving as much as they do.

Dude:

As I stated earlier, you can probably find a number of statements within ACIM that resonate with love and truth. If a source is going to try to mislead people, it has no choice but to come up with some lines that are positive. The question is, how many things are stated that are misleading, and what is the overall effect. There is also the matter of what is left out.  In various ways I have found that the course can have a brainwashing effect.  Certainly this isn't a postive thing. There is also the already stated matter of how inappropriate it is to misrepresent a light being such as Christ. I won't bend on this point no matter how large my ego supposedly becomes.


I Am Dude wrote on Mar 20^th, 2009 at 6:56pm: