When you wrote ‘the scaffolding of ACIM was gone’ I pictured the handrails used in a rehab centre with someone learning to walk again.
I’ve had this uncomfortable sense for a while now that ALL handrails (texts), whilst invaluable in offering support and guidance, can also be let go of. Then they become one more enriching offering, as precious as a sunset or as satisfying as finding a matching sock thought lost in a drawer of sock eating gremlins.
Many teachers of law of attraction and abundance emphasise the power of the mind over the body. Physical pain has lead me to scour the internet for the ‘formula’ to escape the body’s failings. I’ve also recognised the body’s responses to resistance that lead to a variety of ailments. I’m told it’s because I block the flow of energy and instead allow my beliefs about my worthiness to impact my physical form. Again…mind and body separate, needing to do battle with each other.
Very few non dualists address this. When one of them got very sick with a life threatening illness, it was a worldwide circus of judgement and advice and lofty spiritual bypassing. Now, 2 years on, with radical treatments and desperate self re evaluation, he has released all his previously held beliefs and dissolved into this moment, with all its pain, fear, joy, confusion, laughter and tears.
My prayer No.1 is…..Show me.
My prayer No.2 is…..Thank you.
All else seems to get frozen mid sentence.
So I have to trust now. What else is there if All is of God.
This is beautiful, Liz. Thank you for sharing. It is my sense too that when we "let go" of a text or tradition it doesn't go anywhere - we don't "lose" it - but it transforms because we're no longer investing/attaching - we're no longer demanding it play a pre-determined part in our private and personal drama. Trust is such a critical part of this and the thing is, our experience of trust rests on the deeper experience - which is intuited more than sensed - of love as our foundation, love as the function AND the form of creation. The beauty of the world and the grace of relationship and the love of God are enfolded in us from the beginning. "Waking up" is realizing what was always true . . .
I’m not sure yet why I feel this way but I feel like this might be one of the most provocative and important things about the Course I’ve heard you say. One thing for sure. I’ve never wished more that I could meet you for coffee somewhere to discuss this.
Thanks, Dan . . . it's in a lot of ways a kind of confrontational post, especially with respect to the ACIM tradition shepherded by Ken Wapnick . . . A lot of my struggling in the past few months has been trying to sort through these ideas (some of which just don't land for me the way they did for Ken and others) and I finally feel like I can write about it.
Thanks for being here, Dan. I appreciate it very much 🙏🙏
Thanks for the huge smile, Tricia. That's my favorite ACIM passage :).
Yes - empty hands! But also, the desire to share the experience - to extend it - with you.
For those following along:
Simply do this: Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God (W-pI.189.7:1-5).
I’ve always been very in tune with, somewhat attached to, my body, yet felt I was more. I don’t really like how the ACIM makes me feel about it. Like it’s not really worthy as a vessel, but we can make due with it, put it to use, until you’re done with this charade…
Yet, I can’t help but recall how many NDE stories recount how unattached and unemotional the experiencers felt about their bodies, once they left it. Almost as if they had no association with it! So in that sense, ACIM helps me understand why that might be.
My own internal voice/guide repeatedly tells me, that I am “here” to experience, and transmit, and that is a valuable contribution. I can’t help but think that the All, relishes these illusions of separation to get a fuller idea of it’s own grandeur. We are valuable, as we are…and all of our sensations, good and bad, are contributions. This whole experience is our creation, and worthy gift to the knowledge base of the All.
Thanks immensely for your candor and your bravery in challenging some of the assertions. It could be that we are past the need to differentiate, as we may have needed back in the time it was written?
Thank you Laura. I really appreciate your insights here, especially the last paragraph. I'm going to mull that for a while.
Bodies matter! However we settle our relationship with them, they matter. My sense is simply that the mind/body dualism question - which underlies the rigidity of the course on "I am not a body" and "the world is not real" - is downstream of the self, the one who is asking, wanting an answer, et cetera. And when we make contact with that self, the dualism disappears. It's not that it was wrong anymore than that it was right. It's just not relevant; it clouds rather than reveals reality.
I also think it's a deeply personal question, one that everybody should consider and figure out on their own. I guess that's the other thing here - just hopefully opening the door to fruitful inquiry.
Thank you, you are addressing the struggle that I have been having with ACIM. It resembles Buddhist teachings in many ways, which I love and need, but it leaves me cold in a way that Hindu teachings do not. I need to have faith that all is God, body mind and spirit, and while it may be a dream, it is God’s dream.
Thank you for sharing Gregory. Yeah, this is a tough nut to crack with ACIM - I've really had to develop a lot of patience with the material, be willing to let a lot go. Nor am I done with that project! But I think for me it has been worth it. There is a lot in the course that is healing, clarifying, inspiring and so forth. I'm grateful for it.
A course in miracles is gold, and divinely inspired. But I don’t think that we’re offered the complete answers in any text or download, that would be too easy lol
Interesting. I too find myself in constant debate about the body. Should I care, shouldn’t I care. Exercise, don’t exercise. Eat meat don’t eat meat. And on and on and on. Til I realized it’s another way to keep me distracted from the truth. To keep me stuck in a cycle. So, when I get like that I say to myself- it doesn’t matter. It. Doesn’t. Matter. Not harshly or judgey in any way, simply that it just doesn’t matter. Usually helps to bring me back.
Thanks Kate. I hear this - the debate over what to do is a distraction from happiness and peace. Krishnamurti used to say, be a vegetarian (or celibate or a guitar player or whatever) or don't be a vegetarian, but get on with it. It's good advice.
I also really appreciate the importance of not lapsing into judgment. Just noticing, oh, there I go again obsessing over what to do or not do with the body and then moving on. I think that's a real deep part of the ACIM practice - being able to notice we've slipped back into the egoic cycles and patterns and, without additional guilt or anger or disappointment, just gently come back to the present.
Appreciate you, your commitment to ACIM in the form of your dedicated posts. Have been contemplating that there are only 2 prayers… I would say there is only one, “Thank You for helping me.” Namaste, Cathy Ray
A Course of Love, which I believe is a continuation of ACIM by the same author, helped me understand this. Mind, body and heart combined together help us strive towards realizing an elevated self, which helps us understand that relationship with unity is all there really is.
Unless I missed something over the time with the course the physical body is an ego projection in the illusion. Keeping it simple prayer is help (knowing I will get it) and thanks (the same). Also since I can’t get down on my knees I practice where ever. Keep me questioning my perception against knowledge.
Thanks for being here, Jack . . . I think that's a pretty standard read of the ACIM text and very consistent with Ken Wapnick's understanding and teaching . . . And honestly, I don't want to take that away from anybody. If it works, if it helps, that's enough. My own experience and study point in a different direction - but I'm just another learner, just another traveler, and the road holds all of us. I'm grateful and still willing to learn - thank you again for sharing, Jack 🙏🙏
Yes Sean - thank you! So many things I love about your post. It reminds me of Bernadette Roberts quote, "It was here that nature finally yielded its secret to me in a simple, still moment in which I saw how it all worked. God or life was not in anything. It was just the reverse; everything was in God." The difference is distinct. Seeking is unnecessary - God is present now, active now.
I find the Course full of contradiction with regards to duality. I have struggled with it too. How can I be a body when I am one Mind? However, I do like the following passage from chapter 25, which uses the word "manifest" to help clarify the mind/body situation (for me).
"It cannot be that it is hard to do the task that Christ appointed you to do, since it is He Who does it. ²And in the doing of it will you learn the body merely seems to be the means to do it. ³For the Mind is His. ⁴And so it must be yours. ⁵His Holiness directs the body through the mind at one with Him. ⁶And you are manifest unto your holy brother, as he to you." (T-25.I.1:1-6)
"It was clear: the mind/body split - cherished by A Course in Miracles and fundamental to so much human tragedy - wasn't necessary. You could - you could literally - just let it go."
For one to literally let something go, one has to hold an object in her hands and then open those hands and actually let it go physically.
The body is the structure and the mind is a function of that structure. They are not dualistic, and nothing is. One former gives rise to the latter. They are not separate things to be synthesized.
Of course, dualism is a tempting religion to the male; it means the male and female "manifest" or whatever simultaneously, rather than admitting that the female begets the male. Alas.
When you wrote ‘the scaffolding of ACIM was gone’ I pictured the handrails used in a rehab centre with someone learning to walk again.
I’ve had this uncomfortable sense for a while now that ALL handrails (texts), whilst invaluable in offering support and guidance, can also be let go of. Then they become one more enriching offering, as precious as a sunset or as satisfying as finding a matching sock thought lost in a drawer of sock eating gremlins.
Many teachers of law of attraction and abundance emphasise the power of the mind over the body. Physical pain has lead me to scour the internet for the ‘formula’ to escape the body’s failings. I’ve also recognised the body’s responses to resistance that lead to a variety of ailments. I’m told it’s because I block the flow of energy and instead allow my beliefs about my worthiness to impact my physical form. Again…mind and body separate, needing to do battle with each other.
Very few non dualists address this. When one of them got very sick with a life threatening illness, it was a worldwide circus of judgement and advice and lofty spiritual bypassing. Now, 2 years on, with radical treatments and desperate self re evaluation, he has released all his previously held beliefs and dissolved into this moment, with all its pain, fear, joy, confusion, laughter and tears.
My prayer No.1 is…..Show me.
My prayer No.2 is…..Thank you.
All else seems to get frozen mid sentence.
So I have to trust now. What else is there if All is of God.
This is beautiful, Liz. Thank you for sharing. It is my sense too that when we "let go" of a text or tradition it doesn't go anywhere - we don't "lose" it - but it transforms because we're no longer investing/attaching - we're no longer demanding it play a pre-determined part in our private and personal drama. Trust is such a critical part of this and the thing is, our experience of trust rests on the deeper experience - which is intuited more than sensed - of love as our foundation, love as the function AND the form of creation. The beauty of the world and the grace of relationship and the love of God are enfolded in us from the beginning. "Waking up" is realizing what was always true . . .
Thank you again for being here and sharing 🙏🙏
~ Sean
You say it so eloquently Sean and you reassemble my thoughts to become more poetic under your pen. Thank you 🙏
I’m not sure yet why I feel this way but I feel like this might be one of the most provocative and important things about the Course I’ve heard you say. One thing for sure. I’ve never wished more that I could meet you for coffee somewhere to discuss this.
I'm all for coffee :)
Thanks, Dan . . . it's in a lot of ways a kind of confrontational post, especially with respect to the ACIM tradition shepherded by Ken Wapnick . . . A lot of my struggling in the past few months has been trying to sort through these ideas (some of which just don't land for me the way they did for Ken and others) and I finally feel like I can write about it.
Thanks for being here, Dan. I appreciate it very much 🙏🙏
~ Sean
Looks like you've had direct experience of paragraph seven, lesson one eighty nine 🪷✨️💜
Thanks for the huge smile, Tricia. That's my favorite ACIM passage :).
Yes - empty hands! But also, the desire to share the experience - to extend it - with you.
For those following along:
Simply do this: Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, of every thought it judges worthy, and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God (W-pI.189.7:1-5).
Thanks again, Tricia - hope all is well 🙏🙏
~ Sean
Very refreshing! Also, comforting.
I’ve always been very in tune with, somewhat attached to, my body, yet felt I was more. I don’t really like how the ACIM makes me feel about it. Like it’s not really worthy as a vessel, but we can make due with it, put it to use, until you’re done with this charade…
Yet, I can’t help but recall how many NDE stories recount how unattached and unemotional the experiencers felt about their bodies, once they left it. Almost as if they had no association with it! So in that sense, ACIM helps me understand why that might be.
My own internal voice/guide repeatedly tells me, that I am “here” to experience, and transmit, and that is a valuable contribution. I can’t help but think that the All, relishes these illusions of separation to get a fuller idea of it’s own grandeur. We are valuable, as we are…and all of our sensations, good and bad, are contributions. This whole experience is our creation, and worthy gift to the knowledge base of the All.
Thanks immensely for your candor and your bravery in challenging some of the assertions. It could be that we are past the need to differentiate, as we may have needed back in the time it was written?
Thank you Laura. I really appreciate your insights here, especially the last paragraph. I'm going to mull that for a while.
Bodies matter! However we settle our relationship with them, they matter. My sense is simply that the mind/body dualism question - which underlies the rigidity of the course on "I am not a body" and "the world is not real" - is downstream of the self, the one who is asking, wanting an answer, et cetera. And when we make contact with that self, the dualism disappears. It's not that it was wrong anymore than that it was right. It's just not relevant; it clouds rather than reveals reality.
I also think it's a deeply personal question, one that everybody should consider and figure out on their own. I guess that's the other thing here - just hopefully opening the door to fruitful inquiry.
Thank you again - good points and observations.
~ Sean
Thank you, you are addressing the struggle that I have been having with ACIM. It resembles Buddhist teachings in many ways, which I love and need, but it leaves me cold in a way that Hindu teachings do not. I need to have faith that all is God, body mind and spirit, and while it may be a dream, it is God’s dream.
Thank you for sharing Gregory. Yeah, this is a tough nut to crack with ACIM - I've really had to develop a lot of patience with the material, be willing to let a lot go. Nor am I done with that project! But I think for me it has been worth it. There is a lot in the course that is healing, clarifying, inspiring and so forth. I'm grateful for it.
Thanks again for reading and sharing.
Sean
A course in miracles is gold, and divinely inspired. But I don’t think that we’re offered the complete answers in any text or download, that would be too easy lol
Interesting. I too find myself in constant debate about the body. Should I care, shouldn’t I care. Exercise, don’t exercise. Eat meat don’t eat meat. And on and on and on. Til I realized it’s another way to keep me distracted from the truth. To keep me stuck in a cycle. So, when I get like that I say to myself- it doesn’t matter. It. Doesn’t. Matter. Not harshly or judgey in any way, simply that it just doesn’t matter. Usually helps to bring me back.
Thanks Kate. I hear this - the debate over what to do is a distraction from happiness and peace. Krishnamurti used to say, be a vegetarian (or celibate or a guitar player or whatever) or don't be a vegetarian, but get on with it. It's good advice.
I also really appreciate the importance of not lapsing into judgment. Just noticing, oh, there I go again obsessing over what to do or not do with the body and then moving on. I think that's a real deep part of the ACIM practice - being able to notice we've slipped back into the egoic cycles and patterns and, without additional guilt or anger or disappointment, just gently come back to the present.
Thanks again, Kate. I hope all is well 🙏🙏
~ Sean
Hi Sean,
Appreciate you, your commitment to ACIM in the form of your dedicated posts. Have been contemplating that there are only 2 prayers… I would say there is only one, “Thank You for helping me.” Namaste, Cathy Ray
That prayer works for me :) Thanks for reading and sharing, Cathy 🙏
~ Sean
Hi Sean,
A Course of Love, which I believe is a continuation of ACIM by the same author, helped me understand this. Mind, body and heart combined together help us strive towards realizing an elevated self, which helps us understand that relationship with unity is all there really is.
Thanks Again
Gary
Thanks, Gary. I'm glad ACOL was helpful!
~ Sean
Sean
Unless I missed something over the time with the course the physical body is an ego projection in the illusion. Keeping it simple prayer is help (knowing I will get it) and thanks (the same). Also since I can’t get down on my knees I practice where ever. Keep me questioning my perception against knowledge.
Thanks Jack T❤️🙏😄
Thanks for being here, Jack . . . I think that's a pretty standard read of the ACIM text and very consistent with Ken Wapnick's understanding and teaching . . . And honestly, I don't want to take that away from anybody. If it works, if it helps, that's enough. My own experience and study point in a different direction - but I'm just another learner, just another traveler, and the road holds all of us. I'm grateful and still willing to learn - thank you again for sharing, Jack 🙏🙏
~ Sean
Magnificent 🙏♥️
Thank you !
You're welcome, Glenda - thanks for being here - I hope all is well 🙏🙏
~ Sean
Yes. Thank you!
🙏🙏
Thank you.🌸
🙏🙏
Yes Sean - thank you! So many things I love about your post. It reminds me of Bernadette Roberts quote, "It was here that nature finally yielded its secret to me in a simple, still moment in which I saw how it all worked. God or life was not in anything. It was just the reverse; everything was in God." The difference is distinct. Seeking is unnecessary - God is present now, active now.
I find the Course full of contradiction with regards to duality. I have struggled with it too. How can I be a body when I am one Mind? However, I do like the following passage from chapter 25, which uses the word "manifest" to help clarify the mind/body situation (for me).
"It cannot be that it is hard to do the task that Christ appointed you to do, since it is He Who does it. ²And in the doing of it will you learn the body merely seems to be the means to do it. ³For the Mind is His. ⁴And so it must be yours. ⁵His Holiness directs the body through the mind at one with Him. ⁶And you are manifest unto your holy brother, as he to you." (T-25.I.1:1-6)
"It was clear: the mind/body split - cherished by A Course in Miracles and fundamental to so much human tragedy - wasn't necessary. You could - you could literally - just let it go."
For one to literally let something go, one has to hold an object in her hands and then open those hands and actually let it go physically.
The body is the structure and the mind is a function of that structure. They are not dualistic, and nothing is. One former gives rise to the latter. They are not separate things to be synthesized.
Of course, dualism is a tempting religion to the male; it means the male and female "manifest" or whatever simultaneously, rather than admitting that the female begets the male. Alas.