Busy, busy, busy. The ego counts on your business. When you give the mind permission to merge with the stillness of Spirit, you experience being. It is so different from doing! The ego is a constant “doer,” while the Spirit is still. This is as simple as it gets: “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10) Cultivate the place of stillness and light in your mind and watch as all thoughts you bring there disappear into light.
Bringing Illusions to Truth
It’s Your Lesson
When confronted with difficult people and difficult situations, it is helpful to remember “It’s your lesson.” Part of the problem is situational thinking. You can never bring peace into situations. God is abstract love and light and does not create situations. Truth is Oneness and situations are the illusion. We need to hand everything over to the Spirit. These are not people, these are thoughts. If there seems to be a nagging thought in your mind that doesn’t seem to go away, it’s because you don’t want it to go away. There is a sick attraction to it.
Relationship Assignments (Part 2)
The guidance of the Holy Spirit is always beneficial to everyone. Assignments are teaching-learning opportunities. The whole point of the mind training is to let go of everything you think you know about form and come into an experience of the content of love in your heart. The more you are concerned about content the less you are concerned with the form. The ego set up very rigid roles. The concepts and illusions need to be brought to the light, and the purpose of assignments is to come into more expansive states of mind and broader self-concepts that approach forgiveness.
Suicidal Depression without Judgment
Allow yourself to feel what you feel without judging it. Don’t conclude anything about your identity as a result. Suicidal depression is the conclusion that your life is worthless, but your ego laughs and pursues you beyond the grave. Just let the feelings come and go, release them.
Denial and Suppression
If you notice the mechanism of denial and suppression, you’ll notice the ego uses it to hold on to secrets and private thoughts. You can smile, put on a happy face, have a stiff upper lip. You can maintain a facade of dignity and peace, and even have a pride about the surface level things. But if you have an inner churning, the thoughts surrounding that upset need to be expressed and released. Jesus points the mind towards a purified state of being. Healing takes place as you clean and clear the mind.
The Rinse Cycle
Everything you think and say and do teaches all the universe. The mind is terrified of its own power because it believes it can miscreate. But there is only Love. The Holy Spirit works with us to rinse our mind of unloving thoughts and beliefs, and through this rinsing we see that there is nothing left BUT Love. In truth, it was impossible to miscreate in the first place.
Simple Healing
Simple healing! “A Course in Miracles” is an answer to the mind that is asking for healing. It is very direct. Jesus says the same thing repeatedly and in many different ways. The world is a hallucination, but that’s not even the problem! The problem isn’t the world. The problem is your mistaken perception of the world. You can see the world in a new way with the Holy Spirit. ACIM daily lessons are the laboratory in which your healing work will take place. The Holy Spirit will give you everything you need for your healing. Carry your lesson like a torch through the day, knowing that every thing that comes into your awareness will help you in your Awakening. There may seem to be millions of complex problems with many accompanying decisions, but the only choice is in your mind. It is the choice between reality and unreality coming to you in many disguises.
Distractions Retranslated
Everything can be seen in a different way. Everything can be reinterpreted. Even distractions? Yes, even distractions! Things that seem to be distractions when used by the ego can be turned around in the mind. Give distractions to the Spirit. The Spirit can use these distractions for your own Awakening.
Everything you seem to see in form is a symbol in the dream. David Hoffmeister discusses specifics: smoking, drinking, movies, music. The ego can use a symbol like a movie or a cigarette to divert the attention of your mind. These symbols are not cause for guilt or self-criticism. They are simply symbols; reinterpreted they are seen as calls for Love.
Working with Upsets
A helpful talk on working with upsets! David Hoffmeister shares his experience of working with the ACIM daily lessons 5, 6, 7, and 8 when upset would arise. “A Course in Miracles” is aimed at “removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance.” (T-In.1) David Hoffmeister shares some practical steps of how to uncover these blocks. The most important thing is not to hide or protect anything.
Modern Mysticism
David Hoffmeister shares on modern mysticism and the miracle of changed perception. “A Course in Miracles” is a pointer towards non-dual awareness. Once you taste the stillness of the mystical, non-dual experience, everything changes. In this teaching, David Hoffmeister reminds us that ACIM guides us towards bringing illusions in to truth, not the other way around. You can’t bring spirit into your workplace; you can’t spiritualize your relationships. If you try to use ACIM to make a better planet, you will fail. Once we have that one non-dual moment, that experience of Oneness, then we begin to apply it without exception. It is an experience of mind. You realize that you are perfect just as you are now.