The Message is Peace

ACIM, (a Course In Miracles) is  self teaching device of which the first affirmation in the daily lesson plan is “I want only peace of mind.”

Came I day I grabbed unto that affirmation like a drowning person in the desert. I admitted it was the priority after all. If I don’t have peace of mind, now after more than 20 years of following it’s teachings, then I’d like somebody to come along and show me why I don’t have it, because it sure feels like peace to me. Sort of a happy feeling. I wake up with a smile on my face. Where have I been? Someplace happy.

It’s simplicity and poetry at it’s best but it has to be lived out. The Course says we have two voices inside of us. Sound familiar? Remember we live in a duality world, so that’s not hard to understand.
  The first voice that speak in your mind is always the ego. The ego will say things like “I know the way for you to follow, or you are right, you know, or you are smarter, better, lovelier, larger, whatever, your dog is more vicious than mine,” etc etc etc and the wheels keep turning.

The other voice speaks for the holy spirit, the voice for goodness, the voice for god, the voice of love. It offers you another choice as we always have a choice how we shall react to the slings and arrows of life, whether we will have our peace of mind taken from us, or whether we will give our peace or piece, away before it can be stolen because we know there's more peace where it came from. We can never run dry of what we give away.
   The ego will attempt to gain power over others for it’s own self satisfaction. It does not know what peace of mind is and does not offer peace to others, nor to you. The ego can be insructed in correct thinking patterns but it cannot be thrust from you, and it’s not something you have to beat up; it just needs training, like any animal would need training to serve man.
   As I said, after more than 20 years of trying to get rid of my ego according to some eastern teachings, I’ve finally learned to live with it comfortably and still have peace of mind and I automatically know which voice I'm listening to.

This issue of two voices in our heads is what produces a conflicted state of mind. If you would have peace of mind, you would have to learn how to not be conflicted about anything in order to have a greater degree of peaceful co-existence with all others on this planet. This is why training of the ego thought pattern is necessary to think correctly and perceive correctly any given situation you come across as well as issues you may have buried in the past should be addressed for resolution.

Here’s some ideas of what I’ve learned through reading ACIM:
1) Not everybody loves me, but they don’t necessarily hate me either; what others do is use your mind as a mirror into their own mind; we reflect each other this way, in a oneness concept; we utilize each other to grow in understanding. Sometimes what they see in you, is something in themselves they wish to disown, you’re pointing it out is like a seed thought which sprouts the truth later on. And of course we do this to each other and we call it getting into a reality space because we are all learning things.
2) Suffering has another side to it. It can make you a more compassionate and understanding person to have suffered through your ego fallacies and then come out on the other side to see we are all equally loved and equally valuable in the sight of whatever let us come here to live.
3) Recognizing another’s value acts to enhance your own value leading to peace of mind.
4) Anger can turn into a passion for the truth of our being, the will to express love, but anger must be looked at closely to see where it comes from; the ego, or HS. It is injurious if coming from the former voice, and healing if coming from HS, you will be held responsible if you injure another through the voice of the ego, you will convict yourself.
5) What goes around comes around. If you’re constantly giving, it comes back to you, not always from the place that you made your deposit, but in unexpected ways, what you give comes back. And there’s never a shortage of either love or peace once you get plugged into the voice for HS.
6) Every person is a part of god. If you can’t find the god in them you learn to train the ego to question this. You ask for what you want to see, then you release your desire to the knowing you have just spoken the word, just like JC did. Whenever you speak the word, it will happen, like I said sometimes in the most unexpected circumstances you will see what you missed the first time. My favorite ACIM affirmation which has never failed me in times of difficulty to understand is: “I wish to see this differently.”
Then be quiet as long as you need to be and you will surely see a new slant on an old question which will free your soul once more to fly to peace, your heritage, and delivered in gracefulness and forgiveness.

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I don't agree with this Alysia.  There is only one voice (which is the ego) hearing two voices is a sign of possession in my opinion and not healthy.  

Hi Alysia-

Yes, ACIM is a beautiful book.  Almost every page is filled with powerful prose and uplifting language.  I personally am convinced it was not, and could not have been, written by a human being unless so directed by a higher force.  Whether it was written by Jesus is something I cannot affirm.  I just don't know.  But that's probably not relevant in any case.

One thing that continues to bother me, however, is that I have yet to hear an explanation as to why we separated from God in the first place.  I corresponded with the author of The Disappearance of the Universe (based on ACIM), but he was not able to adequately explain this.

For those who haven't read the book, it goes something like this- there was a "time" when we and God were One.  But at some point, because of some "mad" or insane idea we had, we made the decision to separate from Him (altho in some sense we really never did separate, but that's another mystery!).  Our job is to repair this separation and rejoin God, and the book gives many pointers and lessons in terms of how to do this.

The reason this doesn't compute for me is that in other parts of the book, we are told that God is Perfect, and therefore is incapable of creating anything that is less than perfect.  Obviously therefore He could not have created our bodies or even the earth, because our bodies eventually die and decay and the earth someday will also be destroyed.  What God creates is both perfect and eternal.

Ok so far.  The problem arises because if God created us, we too must be perfect.  At least our spiritual being...our real self....must be perfect.  So the question arises, how did we, as perfect beings, make such an imperfect (actually disastrous) decision to separate from Him in the first place and create this planet with all of its snares and delusions?  A perfect being should be, by definition, incapable of such a monumental mistake.

That is the dilemma.  I would love for an explanation.  We can't have it both ways. 

I know, I know, it's my ego talking!  And my ego is always wrong.  But for me, if my ego is satisfied with an explanation that makes sense to it, then the rest of me can progress.  If no explanation is forthcoming, then my darn ego puts up a STOP sign and I get gridlocked.

Rondele:

I agree that everything God creates is perfect, yet look at this World. While we're here we are free to act separate from God. Why exactly we've ended up doing so I can't say for certain. The best I can figure is that through us God explores the possibilites, and finds out what the creative part of himself is all about. As he explores through us, we are given the gift of life. As opposed to treating us like a bunch of puppets and providing us with prewritten programs of thought, he gives us the opportunity to find our own way. Doing so carries some risks, but how else can God give us the freedom to become unique souls who eventually find their way out of confusion, and reunite in perfect union with God and all of his other children in an eternal now?

Recoverer

Have you read Disappearance of the Universe? One of its strongest ideas is that God did not create the universe, we (our oversouls?) did.

Lucy-

Actually the Disappearance book is just a knock-off of ACIM.  The author took all of the concepts and reformulated them to make the concept easier to explain and understand.

Frankly the two characters that he supposedly talked with are, as far as I am concerned, figments of his own imagination.  I don't for a second think they were real.  But they were an effective tool for getting his points across.  The fact that he supposedly destroyed all of his tapes that would have documented his conversations is a big tip off. 

All the Course is saying is we are all love at our core after we get clear of all our various belief systems, like racism, or I should say our distortions which we alone invent in this world and we alone are responsible in a collective sense for the wars that take place by our generated collective thought systems, which is the world.
therefore god did not create these imperfections we see around us. Like Albert said, we were given choices when we decided to become physical beings. this is our world, but we can bring in a better world through choosing to do that, one by one, by not seeing others as separate from us, it's a oneness concept, which love at our core, is an energy which unites people, while there are belief systems which act to divide people, as in a war situation, where the enemy is divided and conquered that way. This love energy, a PUL concept is intelligent. One thing I've noticed is my awareness expands, my left and right brain becomes more active in an expansion and enjoyment process also, so while PUL unites, brings together, it also expands. I think PUL is god. many have said love is god down through the ages. so I say nothing new.

god did not make a warring planet. we did. we can change the world.

  Nice post Alysia. 

  I bought and read ACIM.   Had an odd energy reaction to it, it didn't matter if i started out with plenty of energy, often when i read it for anytime longer than say 10 minutes, i would start to get real tired and i would click out. 


  Anyways, in a more general vein, i believe that while God is perfect, and created perfect children, it also allowed for the children to create or more aptly manifest imperfection, true freewill in other words.  Also, maybe even God was experimenting somewhat in creating, and some who were originally created, perhaps weren't as perfect as they could have been?

Notice how i changed what i said, and said "more aptly manifest", this is because true creating is creating when aligned to Source.  This is eternal and joyful creating.   

  But as beings with freewill, some of us decided to try to create outside of God's way of creating and its very nature or beingness.   The results of this are more aptly called manifesting, and what we manifest is temporal and oft times manifests suffering within us, as well as out of us (in relation to the other children of God).

   It doesn't last, its has no real energy behind it, because the real energy behind true creation is love.    And when our manifesting lacks this real energy, these manifestations cannot be maintained in and of themselves.   They are as of dust, and to dust they return. 

  Not all of us originally separated from God at the same moment.   Many kept to the ways of Source, and in creating as a Co-Creator with same, emphasis on "Co", not just "self" as some psychically channeled beings would have us believe. 

  Some of those that originally separated, were created during the experiment part of Source's creating of individual freewilled Souls, and lacked love as their base.   And so, they innately have a harder time returning to Source, its really not their fault, hence why Retriever Souls were created to try to help retrieve these.   

Others were created while love and Christ were an active part of the plan, and some of these too decided to try to become little gods of their own, but not co-creating, but convincing themselves that they were a power unto themselves, and in doing so kept attracting more and more fear and suffering, all the wayward Souls both the original "lost sparks" and the ones who in some part of themselves knew better, ended up manifesting and densifying what was originally nonphysical patterns.   

  The physical is a result of these and of un-Source like manifesting and choosing, and not of God originally.  It was all originally Soul and Spirit energy, but when Soul the individual part of Spirit started to manifest outside of the ways of the Creator, it had the effect to slower and slower the vibratory patterns of their own Soul energies thus effectively getting themselves ever more stuck and separated in consciousness (not in reality) from the Creator.   Thus the physical became a projected image of Soul energy, a densified pattern and reflection, and it is a distorted and inaccurate version or representation of same.  But, because it wasn't and isn't based on true creating, it is a temporal existance which will eventually fade once enough stuck Souls speed up their inner vibratory patterns, and redeem the physical to that of its true nature, pure energy. 

  This is the whole meaning behind the Resurrection.   A Soul took on the physical, speeded up the vibrations of the physical enough to release the real energy behind it, pure Light but yet pure Light fused with form/reflected image and now this person has attributes of both.  Matter is Light energy, but in a very concentrated and very slow vibration form.  It may never be "proven" scientifically, but this is and this process is what created the image of the Shroud. 

   Many Souls originally didn't get stuck, and weren't part of the process of manifesting the physical out of the original nonphysical energies.   But they became aware of what was happening to their fellow siblings, and they felt great compassion and a desire to help to un-stick their stuck siblings.    Some were foolhardy brave and decided to get directly involved, and they started to concentrate their energies in-physical as well.    Little did they know, the full force and pull of the physical.  Many of these became stuck to various degrees as well, though often not as stuck as the ones they originally came to help.

  There were various waves of rescue groups, and the Earth was a primary system of energies in which this effort was concentrated in.   Why, because this was a particularly dense and slow vibratory "area" of consciousness in which many were particularly stuck.   After awhile, some of the original retrievers regained a certain amount of their former consciousness and degree of fast vibratory patterns, and they became much more careful and choosy in how they would help.   There was and still is a certain amount of direct in-physical help needed, but overall the concentration became oriented more to nonphysical assistance and guidance simply because it is easier on part of most of the helpers to resist the pull and distortion effect of the physical.  And of course its tendency to really limit one's perceptions and perceiving capacity.