ACIM Notebook

You’re Always Here
by: Ben Gilberti

The fact that you are here rests upon a continuous experience of being that is very simple and never changes. Can you notice it? Notice how you feel exactly the same now as you did when you were 5. Take a moment and notice the sense of self that was exactly the same at age 5 as it is right now. It is subtle and ordinary beyond belief and hence very easily overlooked.

No matter what’s going on, you are here, and you are not affected by anything. Can you notice that? When pain is here, you are the same, when pain is gone, you are the same. No matter what else is going on, underneath it all is you, silent, unchanging, here, and absolutely certain that you are here.

If you will just look at that whenever you can, the idea that anything is at stake in this drama of your life will vanish. Maybe the drama will continue, but who cares. If you see a drama in the movies, no matter how skillfully it’s presented to you, no matter how evocative it is, or how well it creates terror and sorrow and so on, there’s never ever the sense that you are at stake in it.

Now look, you’re here. Just look at that every chance you get. Just look at the fact that you’re here. If you do that you will see that over time even though all kinds of drama may be going on, none of it will affect you; it gives you the revelation of eternal, permanent happiness that has actually always been here. If you get stuck, that’s ok because you’re still here whether you’re stuck or not. Nothing that happens within the dream can hurt or help you in any way whatsoever. Now, isn’t it sweet to be here? And you’re always here, regardless of anything.

So what we do is look at the reality of what we are, instead of trying to fix believing we’re something we are not. Stop and look at this feeling of presence that’s always here, but that is too subtle to speak about, that is never absent, that is always the same, and never changes. What does that feel like? Just look at what this presence feels like, and everything else will be taken care of. It is the secret to eternal happiness. And everything then becomes easy, falling-out-of-bed easy.

But if, instead of directly experiencing the truth about what you are as presence, you instead stay mesmerized within the belief that what you are is your life story. If instead of knowing you’re presence, you believe you’re your life, you plunge yourself into all the immense problems that life stories present to us.

Just notice what happens when you believe you’re your life story instead of your presence. You become obsessed with all kinds of things you want and don’t want. You have to work very hard and make all this effort to be good and true. You have to choose wisely, and avoid the temptation to deviate. You have to struggle for enlightenment with strenuous effort. You have to be very careful that you do the right thing. You have to be very careful that you avoid deception. You have to be very careful that you don’t deviate from the path or you’ll get into trouble. You have to choose well and stick to what you’ve chosen. And the list goes on.

Now what is all of that about. All of that is the total nonsense of a false self. Abject foolishness. Stupidity with which we beat ourselves. The only thing that gives rise to the dream is the idea that you’re the story about your life. The only thing that gives rise to misery and suffering is the belief that you are that story.

And that belief becomes the very lens through which you see everything, through which you see the story and the picture of you that you can relate to and understand and do something about. So you go on about your business of doing something about this story of yourself, this history and conglomeration of thought, trying to understand it, fix it, ignore it, accept it, get rid of it; trying to do something, trying to do anything; anything but hear that there is nothing to do.

Already, in this moment, just as you are, you are eternal freedom itself, permanent, untouched, untouchable, reality itself, no matter what the state of your story might be. Right now in this moment, in the midst of all the craziness, even in the midst of powerful feelings of being separate or alone or worthless, you are free, you are reality itself; and the totality of the story, the good, the bad, all of it, is utterly irrelevant, utterly bullshit. That’s precisely what the false belief is – utter bullshit. That’s what the word bullshit means – something that’s false. Ok, notice how clear it is now that the only solution has to be knowing the truth of what you are; with all the rest just being a story about yourself that’s totally irrelevant.

www.bengilberti.com

About Frank Ellis
by: Frank Ellis

As A Course In Miracles student, I meditate, read, study, and write 8 to 12 hours per day, 365 days a year. During the first five years I read only the Course, spending all my time and effort learning the language, reading and meditating and seeking discernment of the true meaning beyond the symbols of symbols, asking all things of His Teacher. I also attended at least two ACIM group meetings a week without missing one for more than five years.

Once this foundation was established, Holy Spirit led and directed me into other writings. As they became absorbed into my understanding, they began to unite as one truth, one teaching with the Course. I find that the same message, once discerned beyond the symbols of symbols, is in all, and probably the Course has been taught in every generation since the beginning of time. Examples include Buddha, Ernest Holmes’ Science of Mind, Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health, Wallace Wattle’s Science of Growing Rich, Neville’s seven books, Joel Goldsmith, the Bible, Shakti Gawain’s Creative Visualization & Living in the Light, and the Abraham teaching through Esther Hicks.

If we accept the Course in its fullest, all of these are merely part of the dream, therefore represent the Memory calling us to awaken from our dream. They all point to the truth of what we are, the dreamer, the creator of worlds, the creator of seeing, the creator of our own reality. All show that we are the creator of our world, that we create by every thought and feeling, and the Law manifests for us our exact thoughts. The Laws, all variations of words on the one truth, are spelled out in the Course. The Bible says we will meditate on His Law day and night, learn its proper use and power. Nothing is outside of mind, for mind is the sum of all of God’s Thoughts, His only creation, and God placed in mind Heaven, the awareness of perfect oneness.

I am already perfectly one with Everything, separated from no thing. Every living thing contains Heaven, perfect oneness with GOD IS, Everything, All, every aspect of creation united with Creator. The belief that something is outside of mind, therefore outside of God Himself, is an idol, an Anti-Christ, a thin veil of tiny, mad idea in our mind, between What IS, and our awareness of What IS.

This we did to ourselves, but we remain the unchanged Christ mind as Father created us by extending Himself within Himself where nothing could touch us except Himself. So all that we seem to do, be it this email, or books current or thousands of years old, is never anything more than an idea still within the mind God created Son. Since I and my Father are One, and all that He has is mine, The Mind Which is God is the Mind I am, Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnipresence, Infinite, and Eternal. Every Thought ever thought, and every tiny, mad idea ever dreamed are still within my mind, to be called forth as I choose. Nothing is lost, for nothing leaves the mind of source, the truth of what I am. Forgiveness reveals all of this to me by setting aside the veil of specialness so that I can recognize oneness with All. This setting aside, emptying the imagined gap bewteen awareness and truth, is the miracle.

The miracle empties the gap of the veil of forgetfulness, allowing remembering. I am the creator of what I see, my awareness, my reality, my world, all merely pictures, images, idols within my mind.

Thus, I can forgive ideas to take them out of awareness. I can train my mind to create deliberately, consciously, willfully, anything I desire, and the Law will picture it in my reality, my dream, and I will believe it real because I created it with my thoughts and feelings. So I train but my mind on what I want to see, and all the world must change accordingly. It is my dream. I can dream anything, any experience I desire, if I am merely willing to forgive the idea that I can’t. The dream is all oneness, forgivable.

The reality of Oneness, God IS, lies just beyond the dream idea that separates my awareness. I create the block to awareness, so I can undo the block and remember oneness. This is the goal of the Course, to recognize oneness, first of the dream, then of God Himself, so I then choose between them. He created me to create, so I train my mind to create like and one with Him instead of creating dreams of separation. I am creator of my world, and I can undo it. The realization that I am the creator (dreamer) allows me to choose what I create, in fact to “do nothing.” do no mis-creating, do no thinking and feeling of what is more than God, outside of God, beyond God, special. Thus the reality of specialness dissolves because I need do nothing to give it life and power of a reality. The veil dissolves and now I remember the truth that God created me to create like and One with Him, Thought by Thought, as One Mind. This is the communion, the daily bread, the communication within Father and Son as One Mind.

I have never been other than mind. Nothing experienced was ever outside of mind. I create all that is in mind. The body, world, universe, time, and space are merely the vain imagining of mind, the idol of specialness, belief that something is outside of mind. With this tiny, mad idea forgiven, I return my whole mind to communication with God, leaving no part of the Mind of God/Father/Son asleep and dreaming.

by: Ben Gilberti

Hello everyone.

A friend of mine, a medical doctor who is not involved in any spiritual practice, wrote and asked me these two questions:

“Is it better to be “detached,” or is it more valid to react with unbridled emotion?”

“And what accounts for the difference in the way people react?”

Here’s how I replied to him:

Both of your questions relate to the same phenomenon. Both have to do with one’s sense of identity. Our lives are like the stories we see when we go to the movies, and those stories involve characters or roles, like Richard Burton playing the role of Macbeth. While Burton’s skill at acting does involve his ability to immerse himself in his role emotionally, he at no point forgets that his identity is not Macbeth, but Richard Burton. So while he may display “unbridled emotion” in acting out the Macbeth role, he is at the same time totally “detached” from it, totally free of it, in that he is never fooled into believing that Macbeth is who he really is. If he was, it would be a psychological catastrophe, he would be caught and enslaved in the role, and he would suffer all that Macbeth suffers because he would then believe he actually is Macbeth.

It is this very same psychological catastrophe that afflicts the great majority of people — their sense of identity is identical to the character or role they’re playing in their life story, they’re caught and enslaved in it, and they suffer all that’s in their story’s plot.

But in doing so they’ve assumed a mistaken identity. Just as much as Richard Burton, were he to get mesmerized into believing he was really Macbeth, would have assumed a mistaken identity.

Any sense of identity that is entangled with the drama and plot of a life story is an object of awareness that awareness is aware of. Clearly this has to be so. Before you can believe you are something other than awareness, you have to in the first place be the awareness that can be aware of that. If you weren’t awareness in the first place, you would never be able to be aware of identifying as something else, like a role or character in your life story.

So your true identity is in fact pure awareness. If you realize that, and identify as pure awareness, then you are never caught or enslaved in any role or character you play in your life story. You can act out any role you please, and with great emotional flamboyance if you like, but you’re just like Richard Burton having a grand time acting out the role of Macbeth with great flamboyance and convincing emotion, yet always absolutely free of that role, never for one second caught in that role, despite how much he may enjoy playing it and we may enjoy seeing him play it.

Now, as a practical matter, when we identify as pure awareness, we most often are not very interested in flamboyant drama, and so our lives become more emotionally tranquil. Yet if an occasion calls for it, we can act out overwhelmingly intense emotion. But we’re never caught in it. The instant we’re done, we’re again quiet inside.

Much Love,

Ben

http://www.bengilberti.com

by Robert Perry

In the July/August 2007 edition of Miracle Worker, the newsletter of the UK Miracle Network, Ian Patrick interviews Judith Skutch-Whitson. Judy communicates a wealth of information about the early history of the Course. She also shares that she and Ken Wapnick understand the Course in exactly the same way. Why? Because both of them had the same teacher: Helen Schucman, the scribe of A Course in Miracles. Here is what she says: (more…)

Pollyanna and True Perception
by: Liz Cronkhite

There is some confusion about the difference between true perception, denial and being a “Pollyanna”.

Denial and Pollyannishness both start from the premise that how you perceive what the body’s eyes show you is fact, and that your experience (your feelings about it) comes from the person, thing, situation or event you are looking upon. In denial, you pretend you are not seeing and experiencing what you really do believe is fact. If you are a Pollyanna, you believe the situation is “bad” but that you are going to make the best of it. You are going to make lemonade from lemons. (more…)

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by Gene W. Smith

In this article we undertake to compare the Second Edition of A Course in Miracles with the Hugh Lynn Cayce (HLC) version of the Text. We adopt a system of referencing a sentence from this version of the Text by means of four numbers separated by periods. The first number is the chapter, the second the section, the third the paragraph within the section, and the fourth the sentence within the paragraph.

Let us begin by looking at the following passage from the Second Edition:

“I have repeatedly emphasized that one level of the mind is not understandable to another. So it is with the ego and the Holy Spirit; with time and eternity. (more…)

by Hugh Prather
published in The Holy Encounter

A consistently restful and comforting approach to mental change reflects the same throughout our body, relationships, and in all aspect of our life.

The root meaning of the word forgive is to release, to give back, to let go. Forgiveness heals because it permits all forms of attack and abuse to pass from thought. (more…)

by Hugh Prather
published in The Holy Encounter

I once heard someone ask Bill Thetford, “How do you forgive?” He answered with his usual wry humor, “You just call the S.O.B. out and forgive him.”

It took several years before I realized forgiveness actually is this simple. Anyone we want to forgive, we forgive instantly. Anyone we are conflicted about forgiving, we never quite forgive. (more…)

by Hugh Prather
published in The Holy Encounter

“Love.” Even the sound seems almost sibilant, the lisp of a wave across fragile sands, the song of a breeze through a pipework of vines, the peaceful hiss of a lazy lizard. Yet love can be a stone carried in the heart to the end of life’s groaning. Or a quick shattering blow to the spine of hope.

Only those who know full well the jeopardy of opening their hearts can dismiss thunder in pursuit of a ray of sun. Only those who dissolve in love’s waters and rise with love’s rising, a single soundless swell, clear as sight, can know the I that is you and the you that is I. (more…)