To go from desperation to inspiration is allowing yourself to be done through by spirit. In his book “Walden,” Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” This certainly applies to the human condition, which is a projection of the ego, or the belief in separation from God. Everyone who believes they are in this world has a deep, unconscious fear of God, which is experienced as a fear of future consequences. In David’s life, he began to recognize how much his life and his behaviors were motivated by this fear of consequences and how this was leading him nowhere.
Obstacles
What Is the Cutting Edge of Healing?
What is the cutting edge of healing? It’s in learning the principles Jesus teaches and applying them without exception. Explore the ACIM healing principle that you can only offer the world a gift of lilies, or a crown of thorns. There are only two options. These two states of mind are really all that you can offer the world. What lens are you looking through? This takes mind training. Without mind training, we have no idea what we are offering beyond the words. We’re clueless until we start to see clearly the subtleties of the ego and its defense mechanisms.
Who Assigned Us the Roles We Play?
The essence of who we are is not the role and it is not the name. When I free my mind of thinking of people as those roles and names, and that they are limited by a role and by a name, by a history, by their ambitions, or who they seem to be in a personality way, then I feel all this love. This happens when I do not hold them to something from the past.
Reason and Faith
Remove everything that is not truth. ACIM uses reason as synonymous with the Holy Spirit. The ego’s premises are false. Follow out the Holy Spirit’s premises to the truth. Learn to not put your faith in the laws of the world, the ego’s thought system. Put your faith in the Holy Spirit.
Introductory Talk, Part 1
David welcomes a group at the start of a weekend retreat and gives an overview of the spiritual journey. Topics include: removing grievances, judgments, and attack thoughts from the mind and being grateful; placing faith in the Holy Spirit to find peace of mind; the nature of problems; stepping back and opening to guidance/intuition.
What Is Meditation and ACIM
In this clip, David Hoffmeister has been asked about meditation. He says that “A Course in Miracles” is a pathway to meditation. The Course is designed to remove any obstacles to peace that are in the mind. This leads perfectly into being able to meditate without the “monkey mind” and all its distractions. The latter part of this talk introduces the idea of living from inspiration and not doing things merely from a sense of obligation. Here, true peace and freedom is found. “What is meditation?” is a question many people ask. This video answers the questions: “How do I meditate?” and “How can I get into a state of relaxation through meditating using the ‘A Course in Miracles’ Workbook?” Being in a state of mindfulness deepens the meditative state and gives a sense of stress relief.
Can Children Do Mind Training?
David shares his experiences of working with young children and teaching them mind training. Young and old are both part of the same construct. Your mind is THE MIND.
Remove the Obstacles to Love’s Presence
We must approach Truth through negation, not directly. We discover what it is not. Affirmations have their place but we must remove the obstacles to love’s presence. The ego uses the world to make “effects” to hide the Truth. But these effects have no real source and therefore they are not actual or real. Relationships can be fun with this purpose: uncovering the errors that hide our true nature. Hurray for everything that helps expose the ego in its deception! No private thoughts—can you dig it?
Positive Thinking and Healing Pleasure (Part 1)
To use positive affirmations without getting down to what is underneath is like putting sweet icing on a cake of mud. Your task is not to seek for love but to find and remove all the obstacles to the awareness of love’s presence. Everything you have built against love needs to be exposed and released. Any authentic spiritual path is more a journey through the darkness into the light. As you go much deeper, you realize that the ego set up a dualistic thought system of opposites to cover over the truth of being, the truth of pure Oneness. In that sense, the positive and negative were set up as a trick. Positive thinking may have initial benefits but people are then usually faced with dark unconscious guilt that is underneath the positive and the negative. They are both part of a defense mechanism that covers over the pure truth.