ACIM Journal

[Anderz]

To simplify ACIM, it's about going from fear to love. And going from fear to love is already done. It's already taken care of!

Edited November 9, 2019 by Anderz

[Anderz]

Joe Dispenza said that miracles are things that happen outside of convention, from about 30 minutes into this video:

And Dispenza said that repetition and practice in needed. That makes sense to me from an integral perspective. Miracles become the convention when we learn how and why they happen. ACIM says that miracles "stays within time’s limits" and that it's about a change of perception.

"A miracle is a correction. It does not create, nor really change at all. It merely looks on devastation, and reminds the mind that what it sees is false. It undoes error, but does not attempt to go beyond perception, nor exceed the function of forgiveness. Thus it stays within time’s limits. Yet it paves the way for the return of timelessness and love’s awakening, for fear must slip away under the gentle remedy it brings.

... A miracle inverts perception which was upside down before, and thus it ends the strange distortions that were manifest. Now is perception open to the truth. 

... Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures come to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And every­where the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality." - https://acim.org/workbook/what-is-13/

My own belief is that everything can become known conceptually, which means it's not the actual thing itself; the menu is not the dinner, the map is not the territory. Conceptual knowledge is a useful pointer. And I also believe that it's useful to undertand miracles within a scientific or philosophical framework. And with an intellectual understanding of miracles they will start to happen in our practical everyday life. So the practice and repetition needed then is to learn how and why miracles actually work.

[Anderz]

Ha! I came to think of an idea of how to take Dispenza's methods one step further. He talks a lot about training the mind. If my theory is correct, that fear is a result of turning confusion into protection, training the mind will habitually continue in that direction. This means that the training of the mind has to take confusion into account. Otherwise the method will perpetuate the old habit of the mind trying to develop certainty out of confusion.

From a practical perspective one method is to become mindful of the confusion in one's mind. And then train the mind to stay in the confusion until it dissolves.

[Anderz]

To mindfully focus on the confusion in the mind might seem counterintuitive. The rational for the practice is that if there is a vaster intelligence hidden from our ego minds, then confusion is a result of that higher intelligence being blocked. So the confusion is a sign of the veil still blocking our awareness of the intelligent field.

I was amazed when I read in a medical article that we cannot feel pain in the heart. What we feel in relation to heart problems is instead what is called referred pain. That's a huge neurological disconnect! It can also mean that one has to be cautious when awakening the heart to prevent potential pain from the heart causing nasty situations. A gradual training should prevent that kind of problem.

One simple practice (in theory, pun intended) is to be mindful of the confusion in the mind and at the same time practice inner body awareness of the heart. The idea is that the conscious attention will gradually bring the mind and the heart into harmony by removing the blocked connection between them.

[Anderz]

I noticed that personal responsibility is a huge habit. Just to think about replacing responsibility with holistic action is a very weak approach (at least for me at the moment).

What the ego does is to become incredibly selfish regarding its own personal responsibility. This is understandable for the enormity of responsibility becomes too much of a burden if the ego tries to extend its responsibility to a larger situation. Instead of trying to expand or reduce personal responsibility I came to think of a trick that I will practice. My idea is that my subconscious is firmly programmed with a sense of responsibility and that's true for everybody since all selfish actions are actually a form of personal responsibility.

The idea is to expand one's responsibility to include everyone, everything and every situation! That actually lessens the burden of personal responsibility. The usual habit is to be very concerned about one's own selfish interests. That actually increases the burden since it's a way too narrow focus on separating out a tiny selfish slice out of all of reality. Not possible! So it results in a lot of inner conflict and an immense burden. When the responsibility is for everything it disperses (fancy word, I looked it up :) across all of reality and thereby diminishes.

[Anderz]

And actually, personal responsibility in the narrow ego sense has to be abandoned when we enter a collective consciousness. Even if I as an ego think about caring about other people, my responsible actions will still cause havoc for the collective consciousness since my ego lacks the understanding necessary for making my actions function in harmony with the whole collective.

A collective responsibility is immensely complicated compared to a separate ego's responsibilities. Fortunately we become the higher intelligence of the whole collective so it transcends the need for the ego having to be responsible on its own. And situations that are tricky for the ego become easy for the collective.

Let's say as a funny example that my mind is connected to the mind of Donald Trump in a collective consciousness. Since our minds then are connected, in theory my ego can read Trump's mind and figure out how to transfer a million dollars from Trump's bank account to my own bank account.

That example is a false problem however. My ego is included in the collective consciousness but not my shadow. So it's impossible for me to do some mischief like that. Personal integrity is guaranteed in a collective consciousness. Only if Trump wanted me to transfer a million dollars to my bank account will it work and only if I want to receive that money. And in a collective consciousness that situation is automatically resolved and seen.

[Anderz]

I interpret this from ACIM as an actual heart-energy connection and not just as some flowery metaphor:

"Let me attend Your Answer, not my own. Father, my heart is beating in the peace the Heart of Love created. It is there and only there that I can be at home." - https://acim.org/workbook/lesson-267/

The ACIM description of the heart connection is to all-that-is. HeartMath Institute has shown that the energy field of the heart extends outside the body:

Figure 6.1 The heart’s magnetic field, which is the strongest rhythmic field produced by the human body, not only envelops every cell of the body, but also extends out in all directions into the space around us. The heart’s magnetic field can be measured several feet away from the body by sensitive magnetometers. Research conducted at HMI suggests the heart’s field is an important carrier of information. - https://www.heartmath.org/research/science-of-the-heart/energetic-communication/

That's what can be called a local heart connection and it's probably an important part of the collective consciousness. There must as I see it also be a nonlocal heart connection that connects to the hearts of all people on the planet and even to animals, plants and inanimate objects I believe.

Dr. Joe Dispenza said that when the heart opens, over a thousand different chemicals are released in the body, including things like oxytocin that is correlated with the feeling of pleasure and comfort. That is useful knowledge when practicing inner body awareness of the heart. When it's successful we will feel pleasure and peace! That's a first person metric for the practice.

The ACIM description of the heart goes beyond even our whole planet yet from an evolutionary perspective I believe our civilization will first take an emergent leap into a global consciousness confined "only" to our planet. The next evolutionary leap is from a fractal and holarchy perspective a galactic consciousness but that's something way bigger and will for us happen much later in the future.

[Anderz]

I think it's sometimes necessary to speculate to reach outside of the "consensus box" of society. One thing that hit me is that with a global collective consciousness our physical body will become the whole planet earth! We will still have our separate physical bodies. The difference will be that our sense of self will literally extend to include the whole planet, even on a physical level. Highly speculative, I know haha, but anyway I think it's a real possibility of what will happen when we take the evolutionary leap into a collective consciousness.

[Anderz]

We are already nonlocally connected to everything. So then why do we need time to realize a collective consciousness? The answer is that there is a difference between local connections and nonlocal connections. Evolution/Creation emerges out of local connections. This means that the material world needs to catch up enough with the nonlocal reality before we can make leaps into higher stages of development, including third order structures such as technology.

The internet is a local form of connections. We cannot (generally) "cheat" and become telepathic and skip the internet for fast communication over long distances. Dr. Bruce Lipton said something about how the internet is a part of what he calls fractal evolution and is the equivalence of the information system that makes all the cells in the body coherent.

And also, the internet and other third order structures like that are a part of the whole "body" of planet earth. which indicates that we have reached a sufficiently high level of development here on earth where the leap into a global consciousness starts to become possible. ACIM describes how miracles use time while their origin is beyond time:

"the miracle makes use of time, but is not ruled by it" - https://acim.org/workbook/lesson-97/

[Anderz]

In this video Gregg Braden said that there is new evidence for how all organs in our body can heal themselves, even to the point of reversing aging!

Now that's what I call healing! And he even talked about healing in relation to the heart. Although I have changed my mind about healthcare and now think it's useful, going to the doctor should be the LAST option, not the first in my opinion.

Edited November 12, 2019 by Anderz

[Anderz]

I wrote earlier that oxytocin is correlated with pleasant feeling. I did that deliberately to point out that my model has chemicals in the body as second order structures, and the actual cause is from the first order reality, which in turn means that hormones and peptides such as oxytocin are correlated with effects but they are NOT the cause of those effects.

Even medicin, such as pills which are third order structures do NOT cause changes in the body or in the mind. This is an absolutely incredible reversal of the common view today of how reality works. The medicin is correlated with the effects, just as natural hormones are. The third order structures are correlated in even more complicated ways with first order causes than second order structures are.

As an example, when a person takes a pill, that seemingly simple event is connected with everything in the entire universe. So the actual cause of the person taking the pill is not some separate processes but the whole universe in motion and regulated as one single unit. Astronomically complicated management!! Second and third order structures such as hormones and pills have zero actual power to cause change by themselves.

[Anderz]

Transhumanism includes the idea of achieving immortal life through things like biotech and nanotech. Those are third order structures. One tricky thing with my model is that only the first order reality is an actual cause. And one question is about whether transhumanism will be necessary or if we can achieve the same kind of healing through natural, meaning second order means?

That's a difficult question for me at the moment. However I found something interesting in the following video where Bruce Lipton explained how viruses prevent the immune system from attacking the fetus when it develops inside the mother, from about 4 minutes into the video:

So some viruses are good! And serve useful functions inside the body. Viruses then are like the second order version of nanotech. Then which method will be necessary, natural healing or transhumanism? One possibility is that we can't know that yet and that there will be a competition between those different approaches. I don't have expert knowledge about things like biotech and nanotech so I'm trying the natural healing approach with mindfulness and practices like that, but it could be that transhumanism will be necessary or both approaches.

[Anderz]

Second and third order structures are only seeming separate objects, like trees and rocks which are second order structures and money and calendar time which are third order structures. In reality all structures are interconnected in an immensely complicate wholeness. That's why structures that the ego has a lot of attachment to, e.g. personal money, are very heavy to deal with. I feel that especially money and calendar time are causing huge tensions in my body and mind, something I have discovered through inner body awareness practice.

The key to remove those burdens is mentioned in ACIM:

"1. Here is the answer to every problem that will confront you, today and tomorrow and throughout time. In this world, you believe you are sustained by everything but God. Your faith is placed in the most trivial and insane symbols; pills, money, “protective” clothing, influence, prestige, being liked, knowing the “right” people, and an endless list of forms of nothingness that you endow with magical powers." - https://acim.org/workbook/lesson-50/

"God" to me means the totality of life. The ego separates things without understanding that nothing can be truly separate. This is the cause of the heavy tensions in body and mind. 

"2. All these things are your replacements for the Love of God. All these things are cherished to ensure a body identification. They are songs of praise to the ego. Do not put your faith in the worthless. It will not sustain you.

3. Only the Love of God will protect you in all circumstances. It will lift you out of every trial, and raise you high above all the perceived dangers of this world into a climate of perfect peace and safety. It will transport you into a state of mind that nothing can threaten, nothing can disturb, and where nothing can intrude upon the eternal calm of the Son of God.

4. Put not your faith in illusions. They will fail you. Put all your faith in the Love of God within you; eternal, changeless and for­ever unfailing. This is the answer to whatever confronts you to­day. Through the Love of God within you, you can resolve all seeming difficulties without effort and in sure confidence. Tell yourself this often today. It is a declaration of release from the belief in idols. It is your acknowledgment of the truth about yourself."

[Anderz]

I couldn't find the camel and the eye of the needle comparison in ACIM. Maybe it uses another similar analogy. In the Bible it says that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God".

The explanation of that comparison is easily explained using my model. The ego treats money as something separate, and the ego is very attached to personal money. The true understanding is that there is no such actual separation. So as long as that misunderstanding remains it's impossible to enter "the kingdom of God" which means realizing the first order reality. The Bible also says that we cannot serve both God and money, which is about the same thing. And the Bible says that the love of money is the root of all evil. In my model "love of money" is the belief that money is something separate.

[Anderz]

Aren't some people already in a collective consciousness? Maybe, but then not many are in an integral stage of the evolutionary leap into a planetary consciousness. My guess is that the "lion" in the Bible represents people in an undeveloped collective consciousness and the "dragon" represents people in separate ego consciousness, and the "lamb" represents people in a planetary consciousness that integrates both the collective and the ego.

Jesus represents the Passover lamb while the lamb in general refers to "the victorious one" in Revelation 2. The victorious lamb is also mentioned in Revelation 5:

"And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?” But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside. Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.”

Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. He went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne." - Revelation 5:2-7

[Anderz]

If life is automatic as I propose then why do we need to struggle as individuals? The struggle is a result of the ego separation. Reality is a very advanced feedback loop, and that's why consciousness is needed. Imagine a zombie without consciousness doing the exact same task as an ordinary person in the conscious waken state. On a mechanical level both the zombie and the person are doing exactly the same thing, which seemingly will produce the same outcome. But it doesn't! Why? Because there is a huge difference between an action carried out with consciousness and the same action done unconsciously.

With consciousness the feedback loop becomes amazingly advanced. Subjective experience is the key. If there was no consciousness a surgeon could simply strap down a person and start cutting into his or her body without anesthesia. That would be a real horror experience, haha. So the difference between being conscious and unconscious is enormous.

And the struggle comes from consciousness experiencing a sense of separation in a world with a steady increase of entropy (disorder). The need for struggle lessens when we reach higher levels of development

Edited November 13, 2019 by Anderz

[Anderz]

If reality is an advanced feedback loop can't it be done without consciousness? No, not possible. Alternative researcher Nassim Haramein made an illustration of the feedback loop. He said that giving a blind person a Rubik's cube who makes one move a second, then it will on average take billions of years longer than the age of the universe to solve the cube. Compare that to adding a simple feedback to the blind person in the form of a yes or no whether the move was closer to the solution or further away from the solution. With the feedback loop the blind person will solve the cube within around 2 minutes! Talk about astronomical difference.

Without consciousness there is no actual experience, no subjective reality, which would severely limit the power of the feedback loop of the entire reality. So consciousness is necessary for reaching the higher levels of development for reality as a whole.

The ego has a mistaken view of reality so the feedback loop becomes very limited and distorted. That's what ACIM is describing. And the solution is to get a correct view so that consciousness can work on a higher level of awareness and also make it possible for a collective consciousness to emerge.

I wrote previously that some people may already be in a collective consciousness. If so, why can't they just tell us so? They can't yet because they are on a much higher level of development already and trying to explain it to us prematurely makes no difference to our own ego level of consciousness. We must wake up into a collective consciousness, and therefore those who already are in a collective consciousness can only start telling us so when we reach a high enough level of development.

Those in a collective consciousness are trapped in the global ego too. And since the global ego is a monstrosity of lies, manipulation and deception those in a collective consciousness have to participate in that low level of social development until we together can start breaking out of it. The feedback loop for a collective consciousness is way more advanced than the feedback loop for the individual ego and it takes time for our civilization to reach a high enough level of development where the global collective feedback loop for consciousness becomes possible.

[Anderz]

The ego will always see entropy. ACIM says that the ego has a false perception and seeing entropy is a part of that. Leonard Susskind who is one of the leading mainstream physicists said that entropy is hidden information. So what the ego does is to miss information.

Entropy is disorder and by seeing entropy the person's physical body ages and dies. Even enlightened spiritual masters have aged and died, many of them died in cancer! Does that mean that those were fake teachers? Not necessarily. It could simply mean that even the enlightened teachers were trapped in the global ego which forced a sense of entropy upon them.

Notice that hidden information means that the information is still there. And another leading physicist, the late Stephen Hawking, suggested that quantum mechanics may be about only waves so that there is no actual uncertainty principle. This means as I interpret it that in theory, even the physical body will heal and live forever when the global ego is transcended. 

[Anderz]

Aha! I think I have already mentioned it but I see it more clearly in practice now. My physical body is information experienced in the present moment. This means that my body and the rest of planet earth are one and the same body. And even the whole universe and I also think there is a multiverse and all of that is my physical body.

Then what about people who have died? What people? Everything is only information experienced in the now. Your physical body is a part of my physical body. To age and die is a complete misperception. ACIM says that the ego sees only the past and that the ego has a mistaken view and that actually as I see it includes believing that people have died in the past!

[Anderz]

Consider Nassim Haramein's example of solving Rubik's cube I mentioned earlier. With correct feedback the solution is found extraordinary fast. If ACIM is a correct form of feedback, then why do people struggle with ACIM for years without much result? My answer is that not only needs there to be correct feedback; the person receiving the feedback also needs to interpret it correctly, or it will have little effect.

Imagine in Nassim's example if the blind person was unable to receive the feedback correctly. Then it could still take billions of years to solve the cube instead of around 2 minutes as when the feedback is interpreted correctly.