ACIM Journal

[Anderz]

The world is still dominated by ego structures, based on the belief that things actually are separate. This applies both to individual egos and to collective egos, of which the U.S. and China are the biggest ones.

Quote

"The ego believes it is completely on its own, which is merely another way of describing how it thinks it originated. 2 This is such a fearful state that it can only turn to other egos and try to unite with them in a feeble attempt at identification, or attack them in an equally feeble show of strength." - ACIM T-4.II.8:1-2

I think Leo mentioned that he will make a video about holons, wholes that at the same time are parts. And evolution, not just biological evolution but also social evolution, is a move towards larger and larger holons. And there is also a process of creativity so evolution is a very complex process that not just repeats the past and mechanically produces larger structures. There is complicated integration going on with old structures falling apart and new structures emerging. Some things are preserved and used as building blocks for larger and more advanced structures.

For the whole world to become a larger holon requires that much of the ego structures first need to break down. But I think this mostly applies to the individual ego and not so much to collective egos although there will most likely be external changes of society too. The personal ego is a necessary development but it can't form a larger holon by itself. It's like how individual cells are unable to form a multicellular organism without some higher guiding principle that unites the separate cells into a larger whole.

Edited July 31, 2020 by Anderz

[kagaria]

@Anderz Shunyamurti explains very well the dynamics of how this world came to be dreamed into being and how it can be redreamed. If you are not familiar with him, you can check his blog and the members site

[Anderz]

Then what about individual sovereignty and personal integrity if the world is to become one big planetary organism? Here I think is where the cell analogy breaks down. If we as individuals just become "cells" in a larger planetary organism, that would be a destruction of individuality. That's a non-integral scenario.

Ken Wilber has talked about how integral development means transcend and include. This means in the cell analogy that we will not become like the hive mind Borg in Star Trek without individuality. Instead each individual will become the whole planetary organism! That's why I sometimes call it Gaia consciousness. Gaia will not be a goddess ruling over us. Instead, we ourselves will become Gaia, with our personal individuality and willpower preserved.

And the ego conflicts are transcended by Gaia being one being. So it's a both/and approach to unity and individuality. And A Course in Miracles talks about the Atonement which sounds like the integration into a larger whole:

Quote

"The Atonement is a total commitment. 2 You may still think this is associated with loss, a mistake all the separated Sons of God make in one way or another. 3 It is hard to believe a defense that cannot attack is the best defense. 4 This is what is meant by "the meek shall inherit the earth." 5 They will literally take it over because of their strength. 6 A two-way defense is inherently weak precisely because it has two edges, and can be turned against you very unexpectedly. 7 This possibility cannot be controlled except by miracles. 8 The miracle turns the defense of Atonement to your real protection, and as you become more and more secure you assume your natural talent of protecting others, knowing yourself as both a brother and a Son." - ACIM T-2.II.7.

 

[Anderz]

@kagaria Shunyamurti has amazing knowledge. I especially like how he goes beyond the mainstream view of the world. And I now found this video which I will take a look at:

 

[kagaria]

@Anderz nice!

[Anderz]

ACIM says that what becoming meek means in the Bible means gaining strength. That might seem puzzling from an ego perspective. But it's logical. When we are non-meek or what to call it we struggle against 7 billion people in ego consciousness.

When we instead join with 7 billion people as a collective consciousness, then we gain enormous strength. The ego cannot do that. It's difficult for a couple in ego consciousness to to join and that's only two people! So it's a huge shift in consciousness needed to form a collective consciousness which means that the individual ego needs to first become meek to remove the conflicts and from there a higher level of consciousness can emerge.

The ego needs to struggle, compete, manipulate, dominate and in other ways deal with others through conflict in order to maintain power and control. Imagine what will happen if the person instead joins with the collective field. Then the collective will support the ego in all decisions and actions. That's a huge difference.

[Anderz]

One tricky part of the ego is that the personal ego is a result of society, which is a collective ego. Or more precisely, society is made of a bunch of different collective egos. And the tricky part is that we are very much trapped in the collective ego structures.

So it's challenging to transcend one's own personal ego today since the whole society is still dominated by ego consciousness. But if it's true as I believe that a collective consciousness is emerging, then it will deal with the collective egos since it's more powerful than them. And without conflict, because the collective egos are a part of Gaia already and it's just that they haven't been integrated into wholeness yet.

I think it's useful to recognize even the collective ego structures, especially since our personal egos are very much a product of them. Leo has this video about collective egos:

 

[Anderz]

Leo mentioned how the ego struggles against entropy. I found an even deeper truth to that! At least based on the idea that entropy is actually complexity in disguise.

Entropy means disorder and complexity means order. The ego, because of its belief in separations and its limited perspective, perceives entropy as always increasing in the world. And it does! But with deeper realization, the entropy is recognized as complexity and not as disorder at all.

In practice this idea can be tested by expecting entropy to dissolve, not by struggling against it, but by dissolving one's own ego instead. Since the world still is in ego consciousness, there will of course still be entropy in the form of dirty dishes and cars breaking down, but actually even that is complexity that in the future can be revealed by household robots and self-healing cars.

What technological progress does is to reveal more of the complexity that already exists hidden beneath the entropy. And personal spiritual development is something similar where higher consciousness is reached by turning entropy into complexity. Evolution is a process of turning entropy into complexity.

[Anderz]

Leo also mentioned that egos, both individual and collective, have a lack of transparency. I came to think of how the ego has a persona. And the persona is the facade of the ego. Even a collective ego such as a corporation has a persona which is how it presents itself to the market.

Leo mentioned that people can become trapped in low consciousness of collective egos. That's especially the case I think when the ego has a very different persona than his or her inner ego. Then the collective ego allows the individual persona to drop and nasty behavior can result if the inner ego is very much in selfish survival mode and the persona is a whitewashed facade for the purpose of appearing more angelic than the devil inside, haha.

It's easier to have a lighter persona which is more in alignment with the inner ego, but really it's the whole ego structure, including the persona, that needs to be transcended. Improving the persona removes fear but only a part of it. As A Course in Miracles explains, the whole defense mechanism of the ego is insane, and that includes the personas used in special relationships.

Quote

"The ego is always alert to threat, and the part of your mind into which the ego was accepted is very anxious to preserve its reason, as it sees it. 2 It does not realize that it is totally insane. 3 And you must realize just what this means if you would be restored to sanity. 4 The insane protect their thought systems, but they do so insanely. 5 And all their defenses are as insane as what they are supposed to protect. 6 The separation has nothing in it, no part, no "reason," and no attribute that is not insane. 7 And its "protection" is part of it, as insane as the whole. 8 The special relationship, which is its chief defense, must therefore be insane." - ACIM T-17.IV.5. 

 

Edited July 31, 2020 by Anderz

[Anderz]

Hmm... does ACIM say that we should drop our whole persona? Of course, the persona is a part of the individual so the removal of the persona needs to be a result of understanding instead of some attempt by the ego to modify itself.

But yes! I think removing the entire persona will happen. Because the persona keeps the individual phony, and it's impossible to build something truly genuine on top of something phony. It's however possible to add all kinds of phony personas on top of a genuine self.

And the inner ego always has fear as a foundation, for it is a construction made out of fear and desire. So ego self-esteem is in realty a phony state where the ego has developed to itself agreeable special relationships with the outside world. The self-esteem is phony since the fear remains under it.

Quote

""Self-esteem" in ego terms means nothing more than that the ego has deluded itself into accepting its reality, and is therefore temporarily less predatory. 9 This "self-esteem" is always vulnerable to stress, a term which refers to any perceived threat to the ego's existence." - ACIM T-4.II.6:8-9

 

[Anderz]

Notice that ego structures such as individual personas and PR departments are valuable. It's only when we have reached a high enough level of development that the ego structures can fall away and be replaced by a higher state of consciousness.

The ego structures are valuable because they produce creativity and unique development because of all the strife, friction, deceptions, lies and manipulations they produce. But we can also see that the ego structures produce a lot of suffering, and also it seems to me that we have reached a point in history where the ego structures can start to dissolve, not only for a few sages as in the past, but for our whole civilization.

[Anderz]

Instead of using mindfulness practice to observe one's thoughts, I came up with another approach. Because observing thoughts seems too tedious to me. A better approach, for me at least, is to focus on high-level thinking. And not in a complicated way. Instead my idea is to learn all kinds of high level concepts and then just let my mind absorb and digest it subconsciously and turn it into a higher level of thinking.

Leo has a video about systems thinking which seems like an advanced and complicated principle. But I will take a look at this video again and listen mindfully and see if it can be turned into something very simple that still retains the high level power.

 

[Anderz]

That was fast. I had only listened to a few minutes of Leo's video when an idea came to my mind. Instead of systems thinking it's even more high level to use holon thinking!

A holon is simply a whole that also is a part. So holon thinking can be kept on a very high level. And especially in my spiritual approach, our whole planet can be seen as a single holon. And it's the development of that planetary holon we are entering into historically now according to people like Bruce Lipton and Shunyamurti.

And instead of complicated thinking it's possible to boil it down to simple principles. For example the difference between fear and love in A Course in Miracles. Fear obviously causes separations so that no planetary holon can form. And love causes integration so that a planetary holon does form!

[Anderz]

I still have the belief that reality is 100% certain. And the ego is almost always uncertain! So what does that tell us about the ego? Surely the ego is completely delusional. I'm not sure yet, but I strongly suspect that's the case.

And I found this ACIM paragraph that says the same thing:

Quote

"There must be doubt before there can be conflict. 2 And every doubt must be about yourself. 3 Christ has no doubt, and from His certainty His quiet comes. 4 He will exchange His certainty for all your doubts, if you agree that He is One with you, and that this Oneness is endless, timeless, and within your grasp because your hands are His. 5 He is within you, yet He walks beside you and before, leading the way that He must go to find Himself complete. 6 His quietness becomes your certainty. 7 And where is doubt when certainty has come?" - ACIM T-24.V.9.

 

[Anderz]

Yay! Shunyamurti has this new video with what seems to be a very interesting topic to me.

 

[Anderz]

Shunymurti talked about how emptiness is fullness. In Buddhism they have something similar (or the same) where they say that emptiness is form. And many spiritual teachers talk about reality being emptiness.

Does the claim that reality is emptiness fit into my model? Yes, because the emptiness is infinite fullness. If something is finite, it's not fullness. And infinite fullness that at the same time is a no-thing is in my model the unmanifested! That's Brahman and Para Brahman, Indra's net in unmanifested form.

Brahman is the infinite Father, and Christ is the finite manifested Word. And Christ and the Father are one. So even though seemingly very different from Buddhism, the Christian terminologi here is exactly the same!

[Anderz]

Oh noes! Leo's new video is about Spiral Dynamics stage Red. I was hoping for a video about holons.  Well, I guess stage Red is very much ego consciousness so it can be interesting from that perspective.

 

[Anderz]

Wow, Leo's video soon made me realize that Spiral Dynamics stages can be applied to counties! Because countries are collective egos.

China today I think can be considered a developed nation (I even suspect that China at the moment is leading the development of information technology). And the U.S. is a developed nation. And look at the childish, narcissistic and egocentric behavior of both nations in the ongoing U.S. - China conflict.

U.S. and China are, in their totality, totally at stage Red! Haha, that explains the ridiculous mainstream news about the ongoing conflict, and why leaders and experts seem to behave like little children.

[Anderz]

Is eating meat stage Red behavior? Not exactly, but in a way sort of because it's not much care about the animals we eat, except how they taste. So I think that in the future we will grow and cultivate meat instead of killing animals.

Someone at stage Red would laugh at the idea of being concerned about animals, except as property or means for domination. Leo mentioned that for example narcissism isn't necessary a psychological disorder and can be a result of level of development. Interesting point and I think there is truth to that but also that there is a collective level of development of humanity that we all are at globally.

[Anderz]

Is Donald Trump stage Red in Spiral Dynamics? On level of optics (if I have understood that QAnon term correctly) expect a lot of Red behavior before the election, because he needs to resonate at the lowest common denominator level of fear, protection, aggression and egocentrism.

But my impression is that Trump is at stage Turquoise in Spiral Dynamics. Some people may think, whoa how can you even compare Turquoise to Red? Well, remember that second tier transcends and includes the first tier levels, including Red. So Trump can use Red behavior and ace at it.

Edited August 2, 2020 by Anderz