Acim Village

(Many thanks to Jean for these notes)

The Wealth of the Indies………July Academy, 2013

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau on Wilhelm Furtwangler: ”He once said to me that the most important thing for a performing artist was to build up a community of love for the music with the audience, to create one fellow feeling among so many people who have come from so many different places and feelings. I have lived with that ideal all my life as a performer.”

Phil Jackson: ”Basketball is a great mystery. You can do everything right. You can have the perfect mix of talent and the best system of offense in the game. You can devise a foolproof defensive strategy and prepare your players for every possible eventuality. But if the players don’t have a sense of oneness as a group, your efforts won’t pay off. And the bond that unites a team can be so fragile, so elusive…Oneness is not something you can turn on with a switch. You need to create the right environment for it to grow, then nurture it carefully every day.

Charlie Parker, saxophonist:”If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.”

To have the wealth of the Indies, we must carry the wealth of the Indies within us, paraphrasing the Spanish proverb from which Ken takes the title of this academy, to have the wealth of the Course, we must carry the wealth of the Course within us, we cannot give what we do not already have.

Issac Stern: ”The music is the silence between the notes”

Let A Course in Miracles become part of us until the ego thoughts drop away. We must embrace the Source/Jesus/unconditional love and make a community of love in our mind/heart, dropping all ideas of separate interests. Let the Course penetrate to the music, the Source behind the words, and see this week as a symphony where voices blend to the harmonic whole…….we are here to remember that forgotten song.

We must first experience the Course within. Lesson 154 para 6. If you love this Course you must give it to yourself. If you want to teach that the ego thought system is non existent then live as ego free as possible, if not then you are just living out of specialness.

When you think you are guided by specifics, STOP, the only message of Jesus/Holy Spirit is abstract love. Run the other way if someone wants to get the word out to the world about the Course.

The sole responsibility of the miracle worker to accept the Atonement for themselves.

How many teachers of God does it take to save the world? There is only one son of god, the Course has to be accepted within and undo our belief in the reality of the ego/guilt, that is our function, everybody’s function.

To be a minister of God, is wanting to be that, to chose the right mind which is the holy instant and love will flow through.

What is the differences between holiness and specialness? There is no hierarchy of illusion, do I think what I do in the world is different from anyone else? What the mind has chosen is the difference, what the mind wants to learn and teach. Purpose is everything, always ask, what is this for?

If it feels so good to do holy work=specialness. It doesn’t feel good to look at the ego, illusion is illusion whether it looks holy or unholy.

You are not the one doing in the world, love does it through you.

The only person to bring ACIM to you is yourself, your right mind.

The miracle is not external, it is correction for the ego, the only message is love and mind translates to specifics.

The hallmark of mistakes is to get into specifics.

Everything in life is opportunity to practice forgiveness.

When I think I have to resolve things in the world, I can go back within and see what I am perceiving, it will be differences and I am making them external/without so I don’t have to see the guilt in my mind.

Forgiveness to destroy breeds separation.

To be a minister of God, first I must deliver the message to myself. Everything is an opportunity to establish a community of love for this Course in my mind, this has nothing to do with behavior or externals. In my mind this community of love is between me and seeming other person, group, situation. I identify with the Course in my self.

Don’t identify with the outer work, there is really nothing out there, there is no world, I identify with my inner world. It is my mind that has to be healed.

Imagine my day if I decided to establish a community of Love………..to bring this about I must be aware first that this is what I want, purpose is everything. People want to build empires instead of doing the work.

If I don’t live the Course it won’t be expressed in my behavior. A Course in Miracles means a course in correction in mind, internal, only, ever.

Every encounter is a holy encounter because we shift to His purpose, nothing of our own.

We can use differences in the world to learn that differences don’t matter.

Questions about resistance……A. .it is helpful to see and have the information of how much we don’t want to do this Course and see the difference between indulging the ego and resisting.

We believe this message came from the Source/God given work, “Holy work” so the ego gets in and we think we are right as Course students so is easy to not look and push away all our unconscious resistance.

Text, p. 503, para 4/5…you are not special.. If what we do seems special or holy we are caught in spiritual specialness and the world worships specialness and reinforces it particularly spiritual specialness. I need only to pay attention to the healing of my mind.

Look for the signs of what seems to separate me from someone else…..”love makes no comparisons”……who will I be without my ‘holy work’?

I don’t identify with the book, I identify with the Source of the book.

Thought is in the mind not the brain.

Our job is not to teach the Course(the symbol)………..but to exemplify the Source of the Course.

To teach is to demonstrate the community of love in my mind is real.

The community of love says minds are joined, shared interests are exemplified, everyone comes along with me, no one is excluded, the living and the dead, (whatever thoughts are in my mind about anyone living or dead.)

Question about moving? A……ask what is this for……..does it facilitate the healing of my mind?

Who are God’s teachers? Manual, p. 3…..don’t see interests separate from someone else.

How can we not suffer here, this world is not our home. Every sigh and tear is because we think our innocence is lost. The world fosters a community of special love which is really hate.

After Break………

Love, the community of Love is the quiet center. Lesson 109, beautiful, I rest in God, that is the goal to be in the world and rest in God, then we know we are not in the world.

Whether terror or annoyances, they come from the same mistake of misidentification.

Question about Jesus’ lessons? A…..J is a Rorschach Ink Blot for everyone. You can think that he laughed right away when the separation seemed to happen.

There is a difference between being psychic and being spiritual.

The Course does not contain specifics, it doesn’t tell how to live in the world but how to live in your mind.

To ask about specifics is an ego trap, at the bottom of the symbolic ladder.

Prayer in the Course is a process.

It is not a ‘sin’ to ask for specifics but that is a delaying tactic. This Course will take you home….why would you settle for a pup tent in the middle of the desert when you can go Home?

Ask Jesus/Holy Spirit to help me remember why I am getting out of bed in the morning.

Bodies love specifics, Forgiveness is not between bodies and we want to make it between me and you and that is not the Course’s forgiveness. Forgiveness is always about going to Jesus’ love in my mind. The ego is specific, God’s truth is abstract. We are creatures of specificity.

After Lunch……..

What we are doing is forgiving ourselves for choosing the ego.

Joke….someone asked Ken to do something and he said……..”when a brother asks something outrageous……then he said….I do have a life you know (he more and less than anyone!!!!)

Question about form? A…you do whatever you do but you do it lovingly, form is nothing, it all depends on purpose….ask, does this hinder or facilitate my atonement path?

All grievances are based on the past. The ego made memory to retain grievances. I can have the peace of God now……..except for my mind’s fear of peace…….God comes to the quiet mind.

Even if we don’t know we are a mind we can question the thought system of the ego.

Question about a soldier being able to shoot someone lovingly? A…Ken told story of Arjuna and Krishna and saying, how can the immortal die and the kinsmen are already dead………and said the soldier’s atonement path was to learn he could be peaceful and not punishing although he was being the best soldier he could be. So we can fill in the blank and say _______’s_atonement path is to divorce/work/live/move/eat/be sick/peacefully and learn _____is not a body.

In the Course, Jesus is continually showing us what our ego is doing.

Text. p. 586, para 6

The problem is not what anyone has done, the problem is my insane thought and forgetting my part in making the world and then taking it seriously.

We have given the ego/a thought, the power to take the love and peace of God away.

What if….I am not a body but the dreamer of the body?

You can hurt the body but you can’t hurt the mind/the dreamer of the body. And I never hurt for the reason I think because I chose the ego and projected out my thought of the body to be hurt.

The problem is never the world or the ego thought system but the wanting/choosing of guilt (Ask Jesus to help me remember to laugh at my beliefs and my serious take on hate.)

The wealth of the Course is returning to the mind and claiming it and we claim it by not taking the ego thought seriously.

What will disappear is the world’s ability to cause me suffering.

Don’t make the Course your life. Let the Course help you live life with gentleness and kindness.

Finished for Monday__________________________________________________