Anderz

ACIM Journal

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Then what about Christ being the ONLY begotten son of God? Is that compatible with ACIM? Again, yes since begotten here means the Word of God being manifested, including becoming flesh in the form of the body of Jesus. So Jesus Christ IS the only begotten son of God. There is only one Word of God, and the whole word being manifested is Christ.

What ACIM calls Sons of God is us individuals being parts of the Word of God. So we are in the Word of God and the Word of God is within us. Or as the Bible says:

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"Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?" - 2 Corinthians 13:5

"On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you." - John 14:20

 

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The global ego is the whole world. And it's the global ego that has shaped our individual egos. So when we dissolve the body armor, the global ego has a tendency to constantly rebuild and reinforce our body armor, also called the pain body and ego tensions. How to prevent the global ego from keep making our bodies and minds tenser and tenser? Becoming aware of this process is a first useful step. The next step is to do the opposite of the usual tendency of the ego to protect itself by becoming more and more defenseless. ACIM says that being defenseless is true protection.

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If being defenseless is true protection, then how to achieve that? To the ego the idea seems absurd, and it will attempt to seek MORE protection, not less. One key is to realize that thoughts about protection are related to what ACIM calls attack thoughts. Without those attack thoughts the ego would lose its need for protection.

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"It is surely obvious that if you can be attacked you are not invulnerable. You see attack as a real threat. That is because you believe that you can really attack. And what would have effects through you must also have effects on you. It is this law that will ultimately save you, but you are misusing it now. You must therefore learn how it can be used for your own best interests, rather than against them.

Because your attack thoughts will be projected, you will fear attack. And if you fear attack, you must believe that you are not invulnerable. Attack thoughts therefore make you vulnerable in your own mind, which is where the attack thoughts are. Attack thoughts and invulnerability cannot be accepted together. They contradict each other." - ACIM Lesson 26

 

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I pondered ACIM's concept of attack thoughts a bit and it's a huge topic. Very powerful concept. And then I realized that it will be very difficult if not impossible for me to drop my protection. And thoughts of protection are a consequence of attack thoughts.

So what to do? I can't just live my life unprotected. And then I came to think of how it's not the job of my ego to drop my attack thoughts. The ego itself is made up of attack thoughts. Therefore my practice now is to be mindful of all my attack thoughts, especially in relation to my perceived need for protection. And then to become deliberately confused about thoughts of protection in combination with the practice of choiceless action.

One can even say, I don't know if it's mention or not in ACIM, that thoughts of protection ARE attack thoughts. It seems like a contradiction to the ego. It's only from a bigger perspective that it's recognized that attack and protection are two sides of the same coin. That's why ACIM says that being defenseless is true protection. Otherwise we will remain stuck on the level of conflict. Oneness in conflict with itself? Only possible with attack thoughts.

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Here I found a good presentation of Lesson 26 about attack thoughts and a walk-through of practicing the lesson. 

 

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Is there a root cause of attack thoughts? Yes, I have an idea about that. Is the fruit of the body armor fear? Only indirectly. The body armor, which is the ego tensions in body and mind, produces confusion. And the ego mistakes the confusion as a threat. So the ego mind takes the confusion and turns it into fear. There is logic to it, since fear is at least useful as protection whereas confusion is immobilizing. The problem is that this is what builds the body armor and perpetuates the attack thoughts.

One practice, then, is to allow to feel the confusion in oneself with full force, and just mindfully observe it. The mindless way of doing it is to fuel a panic attack by turning the confusion into fear which leads to more confusion which in turn leads to even more fear and so on in a vicious circle. A panic attack is an ego response. The mindful approach is the opposite and to be curious about the confusion and to feel it fully and let it dissolve along with the body armor dissolving.

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Are all thoughts attack thoughts? Actually, yes. A desire for example is an attack thought since it contains suffering in the form of longing or even worse of frustration, fear, bitterness and anger etc. Even what the ego calls loving thoughts about another person, thing or event are attack thoughts, because those are special relationships. What ACIM means by special here is that it's a sin, a false perception.

In order to have loving thoughts, the ego has to divide its world with judgment about what is loving and what is not loving. That division is sin made of attack thoughts. And through that false division, fear arises. Only love is real and the realization of that is vision and the holy relationship. Then what about evil in the world? Evil is a result of attack thoughts, causing love seemingly to be blocked.

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Aaron Abke has a great new video about the ego delusion:

 

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For example Alex Jones will probably say that Marianne Williamson is bad and Donald Trump good. A beta male soy boy on the other hand xD, will say about Trump: "Orange man, bad." And perspectives can change. I might like Donald Trump today and then if he does something too stupid even for my taste, then I may change my judgment.

Is judgement always wrong? No, but judgment is dependent on context in the form of perspectives. I think Ken Wilber said that some perspectives are more true than others. And when it comes to the ego, ALL its perspectives are false when seen from a higher (and hopefully more true) perspective. The ego perspectives are still true however on their own level.

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I got a new idea about an almost funny practice. The idea is to use traditional mindfulness all the time. So what's the different between that and practicing mindfulness in the usual way? The difference is that with the new practice one's thoughts and emotions are observed all the time, nonjudgmentally as usual. And here is the trick: the thoughts are observed.

So, what? One might think. Isn't that the same as usual mindfulness practice? Yes, but since the practice is all the time, it means observing one's thoughts nonjudgmentally even in everyday life. The thoughts are considered neither good nor bad. So then what thoughts to follow and what thoughts to reject? The answer is that the thoughts are observed, and only observed. There is no acting out of the thoughts.

So the difference is that with how mindulness is usually practiced, it's as something done only occasionally. And the rest of the day the ego continues its usual mischief. With the new approach the ego's thoughts are observed without being acted on. Simple in theory but will produce a lot of confusion in practice in the beginning because we are so used to always follow our thinking in practical circumstances.

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Hmm... I started practicing perpetual mindfulness, the use of mindfulness all the time. And I noticed that I actually don't know which thoughts are good and which thoughts are bad. Because reality is an interconnected immensely complicated web of utterly advanced synchronicities. My ego mind is incapable of making a correct judgment about what thoughts to follow and what thoughts to reject.

Even when feeling the emotions behind the thoughts, it's still impossible for my ego to know for sure. Therefore to just nonjudgmentally keep observing all thoughts is a rational approach from a higher perspective. And it's directly in line with what ACIM says. The ego is deluded and confused about everything. So I will continue practice a bit more even though I suspect that my usual ego habits will kick in oftentimes.

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Some thoughts can actually be judged I now realized. Harmful ego thoughts such as the wish to hurt others can safely be rejected. Because that's ego activity. Nevertheless, the idea with perpetual mindfulness is to just keep observing all thoughts including judgments. Perpetual mindfulness can be combined with choiceless action so that after a while the state of mindfulness becomes automatic.

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Huge almost monopolistic tech corporations such as Google and Huawei might seem like big threat to democracy, but these kinds of new companies are actually much better than the old school corporations who in the past and perhaps even today only focus on maximizing profit. Here is professor Huang Weiwei saying: "Huawei's business goal is to pursue rapid growth while ensuring a certain profit margin, not to maximize profits."

I think Google's business strategy is similar. Of course there is a risk that giants like that become too dominating and a threat to democracy. But I think governments can handle that with regulations if necessary. I still like Google but now I'm more optimistic about Huawei. Amazing technological progress.

And immense as these corporations seem, there is an even more powerful trend going on which is the general overall and accelerating progress of technology. This is as I see it a sign of the global ego as a caterpillar reaching full maturity. And I predict another process is going on at the same time which is as Bruce Lipton said the building of the butterfly stage of humanity.

ACIM is like a manual for moving from the caterpillar stage to the butterfly stage. What will happen is that automation becomes more and more dominating in the world, not to make us humans slaves to technology but as a means of automating the caterpillar. And this frees up people to start focusing on the new butterfly stage in the form of fourth density described in the Law of One.

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ACIM is very good at explaining the ego but I haven't yet found that ACIM mentions the purpose of the ego. That's probably on purpose to produce a clear focus on describing the ego dysfunction.

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"Let us begin this lesson in "ego dynamics" by understanding that the term itself does not mean anything. 2 It contains the very contradiction in terms that makes it meaningless. 3 "Dynamics" implies the power to do something, and the whole separation fallacy lies in the belief that the ego has the power to do anything. 4 The ego is fearful to you because you believe this. 5 Yet the truth is very simple:

All power is of God.
7 What is not of Him has no power to do anything." - ACIM T-11.V.3.

ACIM says that the ego has ZERO power. That seems correct to me. But why the ego in the first place? For a broader picture the Law of One is useful. And Eckhart Tolle gives a really excellent explanation of why the ego has been necessary in this video; Did The Universe Make A Mistake With The Ego? The same as I have written about earlier, although to be fair, I probably got those ideas from Tolle.

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I have now tried the perpetual mindfulness practice. Often my mind has jumped back into usual ego mode with being identified with my thoughts. And even when I have awareness of my thoughts it's still as if my ego is my real identity. Not very successful practice but I will give it some more time because it may take a long time for more significant changes to happen. Just to repeat, by perpetual mindfulness I mean observing one's thoughts and emotions all the time and not just during separate practice intervals.

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Now I discovered one major obstacle with the perpetual mindfulness practice. My mind still very much dislikes confusion. That's actually what to expect because the ego mind is incredibly heavily conditioned. That's I believe why ACIM contains so much text; pages and pages of hammering the intellect with explaining the difference between the ego and true perception (vision).

There is a very strong habit of the ego mind to avoid confusion. ACIM says that the ego is totally confused about everything. That seems like an accurate description to me. So to me it's worthwhile to continue the perpetual mindfulness practice. And I will start focusing more on the confusion in my mind and how I feel about it.

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Interesting. What I call perpetual mindfulness is something the monks in Thailand already do. The presenter said in this video from about 5:40 that a monk explained to her that they practice all the time, moment by moment, not just when they are meditating, but in every moment:

 

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ACIM has this explanation about confusion:

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"The mind is therefore confused, because only One-mindedness can be without confusion. A separated or divided mind must be confused." - ACIM T-3.IV.3:3-4

And in relation to mindfulness practice I noticed that thoughts that bring suffering such as worrisome thoughts, are produced and allowed to catch the attention of our conscious awareness because confusion feels even worse! In theory what needs to happen is that the confusion will start to bring less suffering than the thoughts of the ego mind. This will allow the mind to mindfully rest in confusion instead of being drawn back into the ego mind.

The mind resting in confusion? That might sound horrible, but remember as ACIM says, the ego mind is already confused, so the aim is to uproot the whole confusion/tension body-mind construct. The goal is to dissolve the confusion and therefore having the mind resting in confusion is a deliberate practice method.

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Mindfulness and meditation expert Emily Fletcher said that mindfulness and meditation are different and at Ziva they teach meditation that is giving the body five times deeper rest than sleep. I only practice mindfulness at the moment because meditation, even though it probably can boost the practice, is too tedious for me. And ACIM expert Amy Torres wrote this:

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"The Course is not against meditation.  Sometimes people misunderstand the passage where Jesus says, “Nor is a lifetime of contemplation and long periods of meditation aimed at detachment from the body necessary.” Taken out of context, that sentence might seem to be against meditation.

But in context, Jesus is telling us that fighting sin and temptation are actually ways of staying engaged with the ego. He explains that ritualistic meditation is counterproductive: “Routines as such are dangerous, because they easily become gods in their own right, threatening the very goals for which they were set up.” (M-16)  In other words, the ego is only too happy to cleverly take over meditation for its own goal of “doing” rather than surrendering to the much happier realization that “I need do nothing” but allow the Holy Spirit to completely take over." - Amy Torres

That sounds more like the way I'm practicing now. Except the "I need do nothing" part is too advanced still for me. I still practice mindfulness as an ego.

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Lazy Yoga removes the need for mindfulness practice through the following observation: Oneness in motion is the truth. Ego activity is an illusion. This means that realizing the One-mindedness that ACIM described automatically removes the illusion along with dissolving confusion and ego tensions.

Edited by Anderz

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