ACIM Journal

[Anderz]

The ego can believe thoughts are equally important regardless of the emotional content that goes along with the thoughts. ACIM as usual has a very radical explanation:

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"Your manifestations of emotions are the opposite of what the emotions are. 4 You communicate with no one, and you are as isolated from reality as if you were alone in all the universe. 5 In your madness you overlook reality completely, and you see only your own split mind everywhere you look. 6 God calls you and you do not hear, for you are preoccupied with your own voice. 7 And the vision of Christ is not in your sight, for you look upon yourself alone." - ACIM T-13.V.6:3-7

Imagine removing emotions from the thoughts. Then a thought about a horrible condition would feel the same as a lovely thought, or rather, no feeling at all. So in reality the ego is totally driven by emotions. Why does ACIM say that the ego's emotions are manifested opposite to what they actually are? Because the ego's emotions lack true intersubjectivity, so they trick us to believe that they represent the actual situation when in fact they are local to the isolated ego mind.

Here again I believe being mindful of one's confusion is a useful practice. It allows the mind to rearrange itself both in terms of thoughts and emotions. And the feeling of confusion can be compared to emotions in addition to the thoughts. The ego's emotions are actually true, but only in relation to its own isolated perspective, so they need to be replaced by a new kind of emotions.

[Anderz]

I mentioned intersubjective emotions. A dictionary definition is: "intersubjective adjective existing between conscious minds; shared by more than one conscious mind."

In this video Brad Johnson talks about what sounds like such emotions. He uses New Age sounding concept so it's outside the mainstream consensus view. That's useful in this case since the mainstream knowledge in this area is limited. Is Brad's information correct? I don't know so this is something for me to take as a hypothesis. It could be that he has much more knowledge than me about this.

 

[Anderz]

ACIM says that our emotions are isolated and misleading, and it also says that all minds are connected. Is that really a consistent message? Yes! It is. My take is that the ego tensions are not only a result of our own protections but also connected between all people on the planet. And that's a form of intersubjectivity, but a nasty one.

What I call the global ego manifests in us as tensions in body and mind. It's an intersubjective field with lots of conflicts and confusion. Even our own thoughts are actually the global ego's thoughts and we feed it with our energy. Positive orgone energy is to a large extent blocked by the global ego, leading to a body armor made of deadly orgone, that literally kills us by slowly making the body age, deteriorate and die.

The way out of the global ego is through developing true intersubjective feelings which will emerge when the body armor dissolves. The body armor is a third density trait, like an energy straightjacket. Moving into fourth density is about activating the heart-body-mind energy connection and dissolving fear.

[Anderz]

I suspect that money is a big part of the body armor. I still have a plan to attract money. It's tricky. The idea is to suck money from the "Illuminati" power pyramid capstone which actually is above the global ego. I'm a fan of entrepreneurship and things like that but I want to avoid participating in the global ego too much. Instead I will use the Law of Attraction in a much more unconventional way by expecting money from outside the global ego.

[Anderz]

I supported ACIM expert Marianne Williamson for President. Unfortunately she dropped out of the race. I will support Trump if he wins in 2020. Because I believe there is more to his presidency than meets the eye. He may seem like a total opposite to Williamson but I look at it from a unifying perspective. Sure, first I thought for example that the Trump wall was a horrible idea. Then later I learned that it may be necessary to deal with child trafficking and other organized crime, not only from Mexico, also from the U.S. and via Mexico out to other destinations in the world.

And there is a possibility for a huge Watergate level scandal building up this summer. And I'm also interested in QAnon and even if as someone pointed out they use cult-like language such as "trust the plan" which is eerily similar to "trust the leader" I believe there is a good "white hat" purpose behind that movement, such as dealing with massive corruption.

[Anderz]

And also, even big politics is only a temporary stage which I believe will be transcended by moving into fourth density. The Bible even says that the "victorious one" will smash all nations like pottery, which I interpret as replacing governments with another form of social structure. This will require removing the ego and moving into Holy Spirit control, which is the same as in eastern traditions such as nonduality and Taoism like in this new video:

 

[Anderz]

I found something called perspectivism.

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"Perspectivism is the philosophical view developed by Friedrich Nietzsche that all ideations take place from particular perspectives. This means that there are many possible conceptual schemes, or perspectives which determine any possible judgment of truth or value that we may make; this implies that no way of seeing the world can be taken as definitively "true", but does not necessarily propose that all perspectives are equally valid." - Wikia.org

Are the ACIM concepts of fear and love then only perspectives? Not necessarily. Leo often makes a distinction between relative concepts and the absolute. For example Love (with capital L) can include both love (relative love) and fear.

The idea of perspectivism is older than Nietzsche's view. Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu (4th century BC) described perspectivism according to this video:

The presenter said that in Taoism looking at for example a tree and a flower as separate things is only a conceptual view. That seems to me to be what the ego does. The ego misses the Tao, the totality flow, and only looks through its own conceptual map of reality. The concept of love in ACIM is the Tao, because the Holy Spirit is the totality flow of life.

[Anderz]

The intellect tends to protest against practicing mindful confusion. Because the intellect deals with concepts and is unable to do anything about confusion on that level. One solution is to use the intellect to take a meta perspective of the concept of all concepts. And then the mind becomes happy when it realizes that the confusion is a result of concepts clashing within one's own mind, and that the meta perspective is in theory free from that conflict.

The Tao as I understand it is the wholeness flow of totality. And what ACIM points out is that the ego misses the Tao and that the Holy Spirit is the solution since that is the Tao. The Tao includes the ego mind with its confusion but is not itself confused. And it's only the actualization of Tao, the realization of the Holy Spirit, that can dissolve confusion.

[Anderz]

The ego is the opposite of Tao. That's impossible! Because the Tao is the wholeness flow of totality. At least if I have understood it correctly. So the ego is a mistaken view, a distorted perspective. The ego is a sinful sinner, born in sin and living in sin.  Of course, sin here means missing the mark. Sin is a mistaken view, a distorted perspective. Sin is to miss Tao. And sin is therefore to miss the Holy Spirit which is the same as Tao.

ACIM has a great explanation of sin as not being an error. Because an error can be corrected. Sin is a distorted perspective, like dirt on a mirror. One cannot correct the dirt and expect a clear mirror. One has to remove the dirt to make the mirror clear.

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"It is essential that error be not confused with sin, and it is this distinction that makes salvation possible. 2 For error can be corrected, and the wrong made right. 3 But sin, were it possible, would be irreversible." - ACIM T-19.II.1.

 

[Anderz]

It seems to me that the Bible contains profound truths. It's just that the meaning must be interpreted correctly.

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"Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come." - Matthew 12:30-32

Eternal sin? Never forgiven by God? It means that missing the mark forever never leads to forgiveness. ACIM says that sin is illusions in the mind:

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"Sin is insanity. It is the means by which the mind is driven mad, and seeks to let illusions take the place of truth. And being mad, it sees illusions where the truth should be, and where it really is." - ACIM W-2.4

And forgiveness according to ACIM is:

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"Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin." - W-2.1

As long as we live in the illusion of separation we speak against the Holy Spirit, which simply means failing to recognize the Tao, the wholeness flow of the totality of life. The Tao is the same as the Holy Spirit and Christ, the way and the truth and the life. Actually Tao can literally be interpreted as the way.

[Anderz]

I came to think of first order vs second order information. Leo has talked about first and second order reality, but not in terms of pure information as far as I know. Is it a duality description to divide reality into first and second order? No, because the first order reality, which is an interconnected wholeness, contains the second order reality.

I defined complexity as interconnected information. For first order information that's easy in my model since that's just points in Indra's net. All points in Indra's net are connected to all other points. It's maximum complexity already.

The second order information is different. Second order information consists of separate bits having clearly defined states 0 or 1. That's an incredible feat! Why? Because nothing in reality is truly separate, so to produce the effect of separate bits requires extraordinary design of how all of reality fits together perfectly into a oneness. And that's where infinite intelligence is needed. Although no designer needed.

As an example of actual second order information, think of a Blu-ray disc containing a Hollywood movie. That information has very large complexity since it's not just some random separate bits, which in itself is already an amazingly complex achievement. The information on the Blu-ray disc produces the movie when being played. And the movie itself is a product of huge complexity dependent on interconnected things in our modern society.

[Anderz]

Maybe calendar time is an even bigger tool of the global ego than money, because it's directly connected to the actual movement of earth. Calendar time is useful and necessary. The problem is that we have as a civilization become totally trapped in calendar time which makes our lives mechanical and robotic.

I will experiment with being mindful of calendar time. Eckhart Tolle suggested using what he calls clock time for practical purposes. That may be a good start, however that's still a split between "practical" and "not practical". My intent is to particularly focus on calendar time in practical everyday life, and relax my ego conditioning of it.

[Anderz]

In Buddhism desire is described as the cause of suffering. ACIM has a different take on desire it seems:

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"Truth is restored to you through your desire, as it was lost to you through your desire for something else. Open the holy place that you closed off by valuing the "something else," and what was never lost will quietly return. It has been saved for you. Vision would not be necessary had judgment not been made. Desire now its whole undoing, and it is done for you." - ACIM T-20.VIII:2-6

My view is that desire causes suffering for the ego because it has its foundation in fear (which has a deeper ground in confusion). So ego desire becomes a restless pull away from the now, as Eckhart Tolle has explained it. However, it seems to me that when we have found true inner peace desire will be useful as a motivator. I will look into the original meaning of the Buddhist concept of desire and compare it to my interpretation of desire.

[Anderz]

I found this description of the Buddhist meaning of desire:

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"“Craving” is the word we use to translate the Pali word tanha, and the root meaning of tanha is “thirst.” Sometimes this is expressed as “the fever of unsatisfied longing.” When we think of thirst or the fever of unsatisfied longing, it gives us a very visceral sense of what craving is like. Often the words “craving” and “desire” are used interchangeably, as I will use them here. But “desire” has many meanings: it can be the motivation to do something, to accomplish something—a desire for enlightenment, perhaps, or to become more compassionate, or to serve. That is a very different mind state from the mind state of craving. The desire of craving—the thirst, the fever of unsatisfied longing—is rooted in greed and attachment." - Joseph Goldstein tricycle.org

That sounds like a good explanation. And I will even examine desire in relation to a predetermined future and see if that can change my ego perspective, because even though my desires feel manageable my feeling of anxiety, worry and fear is to me an indication of still being stuck in ego consciousness. Plus I do have a strong desire for inner peace. And hopefully that is the good kind of desire ACIM described and not a craving.

[Anderz]

I believe that the Rapture in Christianity is about moving into fourth density, not about some ascension into heaven as a place away from earth. It says in the Bible that we will meet Christ in the air among the clouds. That's on earth, and about the ability to levitate with our fourth density bodies I think. The Bible also mentions that the dead will be raised to eternal life and that we will be transformed. That too is about earth, not in heaven because there is no need for resurrection there. The first new heaven in Revelation 21 is fourth density it seems to me, on the new earth, which is the same planet as we live on now and not some astral plane away from earth. Old earth and "old order of things" as the Bible calls it is third density, our current fallen world.

ACIM has a similar passage:

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"He will select the elements in them which represent the truth, and disregard those aspects which reflect but idle dreams. And He will reinterpret all you see, and all occurrences, each circumstance, and every happening that seems to touch on you in any way from His one frame of reference, wholly unified and sure. And you will see the love beyond the hate, the constancy in change, the pure in sin, and only Heaven’s blessing on the world.

Such is your resurrection, for your life is not a part of anything you see. It stands beyond the body and the world, past every witness for unholiness, within the Holy, holy as Itself. In every­one and everything His Voice would speak to you of nothing but your Self and your Creator, Who is one with Him. So will you see the holy face of Christ in everything, and hear in everything no sound except the echo of God’s Voice." - ACIM Lesson 151

 

[Anderz]

Wu wei is about doing nothing and thereby being more successful that way. It may seem counterintuitive to our western way of thinking, although I believe Jesus Christ was saying the same thing in parables, such as "deny thyself".

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"Wu wei (Chinese: 無爲; pinyin: wú wéi) is a concept literally meaning "inexertion", "inaction", or "effortless action".[1][2] Wu wei emerged in the Spring and Autumn period, and from Confucianism, to become an important concept in Chinese statecraft and Taoism, and was most commonly used to refer to an ideal form of government,[3] including the behavior of the emperor." - Wikipedia

And the Tao Te Ching mentions this:

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"The Tao is hidden and nameless
Yet it is only the Tao
That excels in giving and completing everything

The Master does nothing, yet he leaves nothing undone.
The ordinary man is always doing things, yet many more are left to be done." - Tao Te Ching 

That sounds like the Holy Spirit action in ACIM (and in the Bible and possibly even in the Torah and in the Quran, I haven't checked that yet).

[Anderz]

I found this video - "Do Nothing" Meditation ~ Shinzen Young: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ6cdIaUZCA

The practice in the video seems a bit complicated but I believe it can be useful, because in my experience the doing nothing practice is very challenging for the ego mind. I feel a massive pull by my mind to try to manage my future. So a lot of reconditioning of the mind is needed, including using effort such as this kind of meditation in order to reach an effortless state. Although I will use the practice in everyday life instead of as a form of dedicated meditation.

[Anderz]

I found a way of simplifying the "do nothing" practice that Shinzen Young described! The whole practice can be included in my mindful confusion technique. Then when the mind attempts to manage the future attention is directed into feeling the confusion in body and mind. For me that kind of practice is easier to do. All I need to do is to be mindful of my control tendencies and then focus my attention on my confusion. And ACIM says that the ego is already confused, so the practice is in line with A Course in Miracles.

[Anderz]

Wu wei also makes sense according to my model. I'm really convinced that the future is predetermined. And the future is generally also unpredictable (because of computational irreducibility). So Tao as the total flow of life is the natural and most efficient way. That's also I believe the same as Jesus Christ saying that he is the way.

Actual free will would require a self as some agent outside of reality able to make actual choices. And actual randomness would require an extra principle. The Bible says that man casts the lot in the lap but God determines the outcome, and even that man plans his course yet God determines his steps. And as I see it, both actual free will and true randomness are redundant concepts.

My model includes eternal individual souls, but as points, not as some agents able to make choices or controlling reality in other ways. The Holy Spirit is the Tao, the total flow of life, which to make it even simpler is the unfolding of the Word of God, which in turn to make it even simpler is the instant manifestation of timeless information in the eternal now.

The reason for why the ego experiences having free will is that it's way of developing us humans as individual beings. So it's necessary on that level of development. The next evolutionary step for humanity is to realize and actualize wu wei. We will come to discover that our attempts of controlling life are actually a delusion, a necessary one for a while until we are ready to remove the training wheels of personal doership.

[Anderz]

Oh! In his video about Do Nothing Meditation Leo said that he got it from Shinzen Young which I posted about above.