ACIM Journal

[Anderz]

My interpretation of ACIM's circle of fear is that the human mind has been formed through struggle for survival. The mind in its limited ego consciousness cannot cope with all of reality which causes confusion and the mind turns the confusion into strategies for protection and since there is still uncertainty it leads to fear leading to more confusion for the mind how to protect itself more and so on in a vicious circle.

The new perception ACIM talks about breaks the circle of fear by an increase of the level consciousness which sees reality as a whole where forgiveness is simply a recognition of attack being a result of limited perception. But how to achieve that in practice? One method is to observe all the survival strategies in oneself and question them. Including putting awareness into the whole body and observe how the primitive and instinctual fight-or-flight response is fueling the mind. That's a very low animalistic ego consciousness and it's reasonable to assume that it can be transcended.

[Anderz]

I suspect that the ego goes insane by its own belief in inevitable death of the physical body. Eckhart Tolle said that some people have pain bodies that are true demons. That could be egos who not only would kill people if they could get away with it but even enjoy doing it even without any profit for themselves. Utter insanity, yet logical in a twisted immoral zero-sum scenario.

Even milder forms of egos, they still go insane by the belief in certain death. My strategy is to be uncertain about my own physical death!  That may sound crazy from a mainstream perspective but my rationale is that we cannot just use the past and expect the future to be like the past. So being uncertain even about physical death is actually a rational position. Especially considering the exponential accelerating progress of evolution. Sure, say 100 years ago, the belief in inevitable death was rational, and throughout all of officially known human history. But nowadays I feel the situation is different, and also all the past is only now, so there is no past outside of the present moment as I see it.

Edited January 13, 2020 by Anderz

[Anderz]

Even without spirituality and things like fourth density, in this video they talk about how aging is caused by epigenetic changes. And epigenetics is affected by our lifestyle! Dr. Bruce Lipton has even said that aging is a belief.

And I even like to speculate about higher consciousness and fourth density bodies. The epigenetics is then an effect not a cause.

Edited January 13, 2020 by Anderz

[Anderz]

Forgiveness in ACIM's sense is not of the ego. When the ego tries to forgive then that's just an addition of hypocrisy on top of unforgiveness. Then what to do when in ego consciousness? My approach is to think of what has happened in the past that it had to happen, it was inevitable and necessary in order to make the present moment what it is which is perfect in its design in relation to the future. So forgiveness then is to recognize that even the evil done in the past, by others or oneself, was necessary! And it couldn't have happened in any other way.

[Anderz]

The ego often wants others to fail. And there may be a deeper logical reason for that than only selfish zero-sum reasons. The ego is like a caterpillar, and boosting the ego is the wrong way today. We are not meant to become super caterpillars. The ego is meant to dissolve and become transformed into a butterfly, to use a simple analogy.

And then what to aim for is to want others to succeed in transforming their egos along with oneself also being successful in dissolving one's own ego. My body armor that Wilhelm Reich described has started to dissolve a bit. That's a part of dissolving the ego! And a breaking of the circle of fear that ACIM talks about. So wanting other to be successful in dissolving their body armor is then a safe and constructive wish for others and for oneself. 

[Anderz]

Wow.  I wrote earlier that the first heaven means fourth density in the Law of One. And in this video the presenter said (at 31:50) that heaven is fourth density in the Egyptian secret mystery school. That's a really good confirmation.

 

[Anderz]

Marianne Williamson has ended her campaign for 2020. I had hoped that she would stay in the race. Okay, then my prediction is that Trump will win in 2020. I haven't followed the Iran conflict. Hopefully Trump can make a new deal with Iran instead of starting another insane war. And later on in spring Durham's report is expected which I think can be beneficial for Trump.

 

[Anderz]

If the ego causes a lot of trouble, then how to deal with regrets? In theory I think that's easy. Simply think of it in the same way as how I interpreted ACIM's concept of forgiveness. The past is as it is because it had to be that way. This even includes past regrets. Those feelings and thoughts of regret were necessary! That doesn't mean however that the regrets must continue. Instead we can look at the Holy Instant and recognize it as being perfect, including all the past in it.

In theory then, and even in practice I have experienced a significant change, regrets can be replaced by taking the past as being inevitable as it is and that it's necessarily so. That removes the need for regret. In fact, regrets from this perspective are recognized as a false perspective along with feelings of guilt that ACIM even says is a sick attraction.

Quote

"The sick attraction of guilt must be recognized for what it is. For having been made real to you, it is essential to look at it clearly, and by withdrawing your investment in it, to learn to let it go. No one would choose to let go what he believes has value. Yet the attraction of guilt has value to you only because you have not looked at what it is, and have judged it completely in the dark. As we bring it to light, your only question will be why it was you ever wanted it. You have nothing to lose by looking open-eyed, for ugliness such as this belongs not in your holy mind. This host of God can have no real investment here." - ACIM T15

"In Him you have no cares and no concerns, no burdens, no anxiety, no pain, no fear of future and no past regrets." - ACIM Lesson 109

 

[Anderz]

Sadhguru said that the way we think all the time is a form of insanity and we don't notice it because the whole society is like a mental asylum. Ego and thinking go very much together so that's similar to what ACIM says. Then what about thinking with the whole body? In my experience thinking slows down and stops when I put conscious awareness into the body. So personally I can't think with the whole body yet, and then after some practice if I manage to think with the whole body it will be a higher level and a sane form of thinking.

 

[Anderz]

Something I find really tricky is that ACIM says that defenselessness is true protection. I can see the logic behind that but only in an enlightened world. In today's world with lots of sadistic egos, what prevents them from attacking us if we become defenseless? One idea is that defenselessness makes the body armor dissolve and the pain body dissolve so that our consciousness becomes stronger/higher. And the higher consciousness will automatically shine away attacks. Do I know this to be true? No, but it can be tested by having it as a hypothesis and then mindfully observe within oneself if dissolving tensions leads to stronger consciousness.

[Anderz]

If being defenseless works by increasing consciousness, then what about biological defense? What about viruses and bacteria attacking our immune system? Even there I think being defenseless is protection! It's the ego consciousness with its duality-thinking that believes that the immune system needs to be an internal war machine instead of a peaceful cleaning system. The human body and the environment are one whole process, not separate objects who need to fight each other.

[Anderz]

If neti-neti is duality, which it obviously is, since oneness cannot say "not this" about itself, then why is it taught in nonduality? One possibility is that the original teachers of neti-neti used it to see which disciples were just parroting and aping the masters. If someone promoted neti-neti then that was a clear sign that the student was just imitating the masters since that's a duality teaching pretending to be nonduality, not actual nonduality teaching.

[Anderz]

I watched some videos about energy vampires. The global ego is like a huge energy vampire because it's based on "sin", missing the mark; a belief in total separation. And as individual egos we are parts of the global ego and become to lesser or greater degree energy vampires ourselves. The cause of this is a belief in a zero-sum game, that in order for someone to gain energy others have to lose energy.

The remedy is a collective consciousness which fuels the energy of everybody. What ACIM calls special relationships are then always energy vampire relationships. It's unrealistic to just drop all our personal relationships. Instead what can be done is to work on ourselves and become aware of people trying to drain us, and of ourselves trying to drain others. And then be open to a new collective kind of energy to flow into us instead of the conscious and subconscious ego struggles in relationships.

[Anderz]

And of course, the biggest energy vampire is ...... money! It doesn't matter whether we have an abundance of money or a lack of money, it still sucks the energy out of us. So for example a divorce may involve two separate egos struggling with each other, and at the same time there is a bigger energy vampire in the form of money sucking both spouses dry.

An efficient practice is to be mindful of money, and to observe worry, greed, fear, anger and struggle for survival in oneself. And then start to question all ideas about money. And also to recognize that money is the primary control tool of the global ego and that's how it sucks most of its energy from people. Just look at how basically all countries in the world have huge national debts. Debt to who?! Somewhere there is an "Illuminati" capstone of the money pyramid which like a black hole is sucking trillions of dollars and euros into itself.

[Anderz]

The cyber begging habit has to stop. People on YouTube saying "hit that like button, subscribe to my channel" why do they need to say that? Because it increases the likelihood of getting likes and subscriptions of course, not least because it's a reminder. Nevertheless, it's starting to feel like spam. And EVERYBODY begging for likes and subscriptions, that's pathetic seen from a larger perspective. I suspect that people who have been cyber beggars will cringe at their own behavior a few years from now. We need to evolve out of the simplistic and mindless Darwinian struggle for survival and and ensnarement into dominator hierarchies.

Quote

"Developmental hierarchies should lead to greater degrees of freedom than what we continually experiencing in the world. Nonetheless, dominator hierarchies and pathologies are recreated again and again with each subsequent developmental hierarchy. These hierarchies are formed by individual subjective holons (by people) that de-emphasize communion in favor of control. Is it because they carry a deep fear and/or sense of incompletion and pending danger?" - integralworld.net Giorgio Piacenza Cabrera

 

[Anderz]

When ACIM talks about ego it actually also applies to collective egos. Collectively east seems to have less ego consciousness than in the west when looking at technological progress. Western companies like Google, Apple, Nokia and Ericsson are starting to look like clunky dinosaurs compared to the Chinese companies. I suspect that Google for example has a stupid human resource strategy where they recruit people focused on individual technical skills but who lack the social skills necessary for a more collective kind of development. And also the management of the western and eastern companies (and even politics) is probably different.

Edited January 16, 2020 by Anderz

[Anderz]

Roger Castillo has quoted ACIM and he is a hardcore nonduality teacher and he has a new video together with Gautam Sachdeva another nonduality teacher (both are disciples of Ramesh Balsekar I think).

 

[Anderz]

The ego has a sense of doership. ACIM says that only God's will is real. Actually, the Bible says basically the same thing:

Quote

"In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps." - Proverbs 16:9

ACIM and the Bible also seem to say that God's plan is already established. That's what nonduality teacher Ramesh Balsekar said too, that reality is like a movie already made.

It seems that the ego is not meant to grasp/grok that it is not the doer. Maybe the ego and doership are even inseparable. The Law of One calls it the Law of Confusion. Personally I think of the idea of life as an automatic and predetermined process as excellent. It means absolute certainty. But I need to add the belief in evolutionary progress to find the idea appealing to me. Including things like moving to fourth density as described in the Law of One. What makes determinism and nonduality great in my opinion is the addition of unpredictability and infinite intelligence.

There is a Bible version called the New American Standard Bible and I really like this translation:

Quote

"this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death." - Acts 2:23 (NASB) [italic original, bold text my emphasis]

Notice that the ego cannot choose to drop its will, since even that is predetermined, but the idea can be tested by letting go of worries. If there is truth to idea of determinism and infinite intelligence, then it may happen that the worries dissolve for real!

[Anderz]

Ah! The future as predetermined can be treated as a meta perspective. The ordinary mind puts a lot of attention and effort into planning, predicting and controlling the future. From the meta perspective of determinism, non-randomness and infinite intelligence ALL concerns about the future are dropped. All future planning is recognized as being redundant from that meta perspective. I will experiment with this idea and be mindful of my own thinking about and trying to control the future.

[Anderz]

The collective consciousness is super simple! Why? Because infinite intelligence will take care of it. "All" we need to do is to recognize that our personal doership is redundant. And then the infinite intelligence can start operating through us, in us and between us. The ego is like a scaffolding, necessary to form our individual personalities and sense of doership, so that then infinite intelligence can be plugged into us. When we recognize that the ego is redundant it has served its purpose and can be dissolved/transformed. And I also believe that's what ACIM describes with terms like Holy Spirit, God's will, Sons of God and so on. ACIM points out in great detail all the falseness of the ego, and that's useful when the ego has served its purpose and is about to be transcended and included (the valuable traits of the ego).