A resource for students of A Course In Miracles
Memory is a skill we have taught ourselves. It is not the same as viewing the past. Memory can be used to remember the Presence of the Presence. In this Holy Instant I allow myself to experience Beingness which is the Thought of God.
Continuing our exploration of specialness - what the Course means by it, and how it manifests in our lives.
Sunday April 16: 2 pm - 5 pm
Bookings ESSENTIAL.
There is no charge.
The Course teaches that we are all teachers and learners every second of the day whether we realise it or not. We teach by demonstration and by demonstration we teach not only others but primarily and most importantly ourselves. There are two possible curriculums or thought systems that are possible to teach and therefore learn. The thought system of the ego (the world’s curriculum) or the thought system of the Holy Spirit (the system the Course is designed to introduce us to.)
We are asked to be vigilant only for God and His Kingdom. Jesus tells us we must be if we are to become a teacher of God in the way He is. He tells us we must use the same vigilance we have used for the ego to use it against it.
In believing we are separated from wholeness, love and truth we experience ourselves as fragmented, incomplete and lacking. This is intolerable and we are therefore compelled to constantly seek outside ourselves for the completion we lack. This completion, this sense of being whole is dependant on us feeling special. We seek to extract or take that specialness from others overtly and covertly in the associations we form.
Stress arises when we endeavor to use form as a means to arrive at content. Events and circumstances are used to arrive at a condition that we deem is better than what is the case now. Stress can only occur when we are in an action of becoming.
Easter is the single most important festival in the Christian Church. It is the commemoration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection being the culmination of his ministry on earth. It was the ordination of a new covenant, where man was redeemed from sin and death. It has, since that event which it commemorates, influenced by way of its interpretation most of the western world regardless of the faith of those it touched.
We began our discussion last time with the first two obstacles to peace;
1 The desire to get rid of it, and
2 The belief that the body is valuable for what it offers.
We also likened these two obstacles to a dynamic of attack, first attack outside, then attack on oneself. In this light we spoke of the third obstacle as being viewed as the ultimate payment for this attack, be it directed outward or inward. As we shall see however, this "ultimate" cost is but a veil to hide from our sight the final obstacle that peace must flow across. But more of that later, for now let us look at the third obstacle to peace.
The collection of sections, The Obstacles To Peace appear just past the half way point through the Course. It follows on from the discussion of the holy relationship and the transformation of our perception of the world as a place of attack and fear to one of peace, through the invitation extended to the Holy Spirit to enter with us into our relationships.
All our struggles in trying to understand the Course, our very struggle to understand it arises because we are attempting to understand it through the filter of our belief in object(s) or an objectified reality out there. It simply means that we are attempting to reconcile its principles with an unexamined image of “the [...]
The Course’s concept of healing, particularly in our time of spiritual revival and New Age movements is likely to be misunderstood, or at least be somewhat confusing if not seen from an understanding of the Course’s metaphysical foundation. If our aim or purpose is, as the Course defines it, healing, it is necessary we be very clear about what it is we need to avoid and therefore by implication, seek.
Magic, one of those words we use quite freely in our everyday life, receives a radical overhaul in its meaning as given in ACIM.
Exploring the concept of specialness confronts us with the challenge of looking at all that we value and all that we believe about what we are and the nature of the world we live in. As the introduction makes clear, each decision we make is a conclusion based on all that we believe
In Part I, we explored the topic of specialness–how it began, what it is, how it expresses itself and its purpose. Specialness is, in essence, the least decision to choose attack instead of love. The original and primary attack was the attempt by the Son of God to substitute his own self-concept in place of his Self as created by God. His true Self can only be known in his relationship to the Father, because that is what he is. In that knowledge the Son is also creator:
To judge is to re-enact the authority problem. It is an existential gesture of “ I want it thus”. It is a gesture that implies there is an “I” to judge, a person who understands something and a person who understands or sees something correctly. It is a gesture that presumes to select from [...]