ACIM Journal

[Anderz]

Without free will, then what about moral responsibility? Someone even said that the ego is sadistic. Without free will a person deeply stuck in ego consciousness may go berserk! My guess is that the belief in free will will remain as long as we are too stuck in ego consciousness. It's an automatic developmental process. When we have reached a high enough level of development the belief in free will will drop away.

[Anderz]

I have been curious about if my ego is a false perception, then all my personal memories are based on that false belief in separation. And so, then how to fix that? One solution that I came to think of is to look at my entire past as an object. Just like how a chair is separate from me yet part of me as oneness, so too is my personal past. The only thing personal in my past is that it's because my unique perspective of totality. Other people have their unique perspectives as a part of the same one totality.

ACIM says:

Quote

"How can the Holy Spirit bring His interpretation of the body as a means of communication into relationships whose only purpose is separation from reality? 2 What forgiveness is enables Him to do so. 3 If all but loving thoughts have been forgotten, what remains is eternal. 4 And the transformed past is made like the present. 5 No longer does the past conflict with now. 6 This continuity extends the present by increasing its reality and its value in your perception of it. 7 In these loving thoughts is the spark of beauty hidden in the ugliness of the unholy relationship where hatred is remembered; yet there to come alive as the relationship is given to Him Who gives it life and beauty. 8 That is why Atonement centers on the past, which is the source of separation, and where it must be undone. 9 For separation must be corrected where it was made." - ACIM T-17.III.5.

 

Edited February 17, 2020 by Anderz

[Anderz]

Here is a new mainstream science article moving in the direction of what Leo and for example Ken Wilber have talked about, that only objective studies are insufficient:

Quote

"We are now at the point, it seems to a growing number of thinkers who are finally listening to Schrödinger, where we must abandon, where appropriate, the principle of objectivation. It is time for us to employ a “principle of subjectivation” and in doing so understand not just half of reality—the objective world—but the whole, the external and internal worlds." - How to Make the Study of Consciousness Scientifically Tractable, Scientific American,  Feb 16, 2020

 

[Anderz]

I believe it's true that the individual self is just a unique perspective within the totality. A perspective cannot do anything! It just is. That can sound boring as f from an ego perspective so the actual realization of that, if it's true, will involve a leap into a higher stage of development. From that new and higher perspective, the ego belief in personal doership and free will will appear as boring toys. So my guess at the moment is that the situation will flip around, so that what previously was exciting from an ego perspective becomes boring and what was boring from the ego perspective becomes exciting from the new perspective.

[Anderz]

One tricky thing I discovered is that the ego ALREADY has the true perspective of self, except for itself. The ego says things like: I have a body, my memories, I have a name, a career and so on. So the ego already has the sense of separation even from its own personal memories. And it's just that, as spiritual teachers have pointed out again and again, that it's the identification of the ego as being a separate self that is the false perception.

The mistake the ego makes is that it adds its identification to its "possessions". The ego says that it has personal memories and at the same time identifies itself with those memories. That's the mistake. That's sin. It's fine to say that one did this or that in the past, when it's recognized that the actual doer of those things is the totality, not the ego as a separate self.

[Anderz]

Is spiritual enlightenment just about removing the ego's identification as a separate self? Yes, that seems to be the main theme according to nonduality teachers and ACIM at least. In practice this is a huge thing. Why? Because all our personal memories were formed from that ego belief in a separate self. And the same with our whole society, and our whole human history and probably our whole biological evolution up to now. So the ego is a massive heap of false conditioning.

[Anderz]

I'm experimenting with the idea that personal memories and tensions in body and mind go together. Previously I overlooked the fact that all personal memories themselves contain the false belief of being a separate self. It seems reasonable to believe therefore that the false belief in separation is what builds the tensions. And then when I continue living from my personal memories I keep building and maintaining the tensions. That would explain why the tensions seemed so suspicious; they are a "conspiracy" of inner conflict caused by the ego.

[Anderz]

My latest take on karma is that it means ego conditioning. It will be interesting to compare my interpretation of karma with Aaron Abke's new video about it:

 

[Anderz]

One amazing concept Ken Wilber has talked a lot about is integral transcend and include. I often use that when feeling stuck in duality ideas. Actually, ACIM is a bit too much duality sometimes, because of its black and white comparison between ego and Holy Spirit.

The same with personal memories. It's true that all personal memories in ego consciousness were created from that false sense of separation. But it's also important to keep the "baby" when throwing out the bathwater. So our personal ego memories need to be transcended and included.

My practice at the moment is to take my personal memories as valuable knowledge without letting its emotional content jerk me around. Sad memories, happy memories, memories of pride, guilt, shame, hatred, envy, love and loneliness and so on, all that is ego crap! It's crap because it's a result of a false perspective. So our personal memories come with lies in the form of emotional content.

Even some of the emotional content in personal memories can be valuable, BUT in ego consciousness we are incapable of knowing what emotional content to preserve and what to throw away. The usual habit is of the ego to cling to all personal memories like crazy and especially to the sticky emotional content that goes along with the personal memories.

The Bible taks about forgetting past memories which I believe means in a transcend and include way rather than some amnesia.

Quote

"See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind." - Isaiah 65:17

 

[Anderz]

Personal memories are extremely heavy content. It's not just something that we can easily throw away based on a simple intellectual understanding. As an extreme example, imagine a person in ego consciousness who was raped as a child. That childhood memory IS a false conditioning but it can be an enormous psychological burden for the person, including mental traumas etc, so it's a massive process of sorting out what emotional content to preserve and what to throw away.

Not even a professional psychotherapist will know how to sort out personal memories. Especially when the psychotherapist is in ego consciousness himself or herself. Not even an enlightened teacher will know how to deal with our personal memories, because it's way too complicated. Only the Holy Spirit can correctly sort out our personal memories.

[Anderz]

Is there good and bad karma? As Leo has pointed out, ultimately everything is Good in an absolute sense. So all karma is useful. Relatively speaking there is good and bad karma. My explanation is that the bad karma is that which needs to be removed and the good karma is that which needs to be preserved in an integral transcend and include way.

[Anderz]

How can reality be absolute Good? One answer is that the evil, violence, disease, natural disasters and so on in our world can be seen as collective karma. And from an absolute perspective all karma is good. Even the bad karma serves a Good purpose. So, again as Leo said, there is a difference between the absolute Good and relative good and bad. The Good includes the good/bad duality.

And look at it from a cosmic perspective. Compare a human lifetime of suffering to trillions and trillions of years of higher development where suffering has been transcended. That's a tiny amount of suffering! At least when seen as a part of a bigger picture. AND, in order to reach higher stages of development, the experience of suffering is needed as a contrast.

[Anderz]

Then, how do we know that there really are higher stages of development where suffering has been transcended? Probably difficult to prove but to me reality seems like an enormously intelligent design. And we can see progress through evolution and even through history. Even violence, as Steven Pinker's research shows, has been in a steady decline throughout all human history. And as Ray Kurzweil explained, the Law of Accelerating Returns is not just about exponential technological progress. Even biological evolution follows that law, he wrote.

And both ACIM and the Law of One, and basically all spiritual teachings and religions, have the concept of moving from our current Kali Yuga / fallen world / third density to a new evolutionary fourth density stage on earth.

Quote

"‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." - Revelation 21:4

"On this mountain he will destroy
    the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
    he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears
    from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
    from all the earth.
The Lord has spoken." - Isaiah 25:7-8

 

[Anderz]

Also Spiral Dynamics is an excellent model showing how there are stages of development for humanity. Some people have even suggested that there is a third Tier. As a crude analogy we can think of the New Age concept of dimensions in relation to the different tiers in Spiral Dynamics. The first Tier is the third dimension. The second Tier is the fourth dimension where individuals have transcended the us vs them duality. And the third Tier is the fifth dimension where humanity as a collective has transcended ego consciousness.

From a Law of One perspective third density means third dimension, and the fourth dimension means higher third density and the fifth dimension is the fourth density. ACIM is about moving from the third dimension via miracles in the fourth dimension to the first new heaven/earth in the Bible which is the fifth dimension.

[Anderz]

Yikes! ALL thoughts in ego consciousness are sinful. Why? Because all our personal memories are then tainted by the false belief in separation. And that's the real meaning of sin. So somehow we need to transcend our whole way of thinking, in an integral transcend and include way. Our knowledge will be preserved and our ability to think will be preserved, but it will be a whole new level of thinking.

[Anderz]

I like this presentation, very esoteric:

That made me think of the story of Atlantis. I have been thinking about Atlantis as a myth with some historical reality to it but not as some ancient advanced civilizations. But humanity is much older than our modern history! According to Wikipedia homo sapiens sapiens emerged 350-260,000 years ago. And imagine that a part of the original population of humanity developed a collective consciousness from the beginning. That means prehistoric super intelligence among humans. So there could have been a very advanced civilization on earth say 100,000 years ago. And then they went "under the surface" to allow the rest of humanity, us in separate ego consciousness, to develop on our own.

[Anderz]

Oh, my! The Great Flood was probably the ancient collective consciousness "Atlantis" going "under the surface" and when doing so they removed the traces of evidence of advanced technology in a so-called "flood". There are many of ancient stories around the world about a great flood.

[Anderz]

Nonduality teacher Roger Castillo who sometimes quotes from ACIM said that some people start to suffer directly when they wake up in the morning, regardless of the actual external circumstances. That has probably happened to all of us. That's the mind causing suffering by itself!

That simple fact is suspicion enough to at least consider what ACIM says as a possible truth. Why would the mind torture itself? Eckhart Tolle has mentioned something similar about the ego mind. So a simple practice I will try is to observe my mind and how it creates suffering by itself.

[Anderz]

The ego believes that the universe can be against it. That's one of the things ACIM points out about the ego. It looks like a self-fulfilling prophecy. And it may be that this will always be the case in third density. In third density the body deteriorates and all kinds of nasty things can happen. That's entropy, which means it's "just" hidden information. In fourth density the entropy becomes useful information and the universe will always then be supportive.

[Anderz]

It feels like I'm ranting endlessly about tensions in body and mind, but I think it's important. Because that's direct evidence of our state of being in physical reality. With continuing practice I discovered that it's possible to inhabit the tensions in the body. And it also may require a belief in fourth density and that the tensions are a third density trait.

Reconditioning the thinking mind and the subconscious then becomes a part of the practice. One method is to allow confusion in the mind and let it dissolve. Another way is to learn from esoteric teachings like the Law of One, and also from newer teachings such as presented by Anna in her new video:

Instead of struggling against the ego tensions, Anna's message inspired me to maybe not love my tensions but at least inhabit them with awareness. The subconscious and habitual conditioning of the ego is to avoid the tensions so they gradually become numbed out which just hides the problem more and more and strengthens the body armor.