My thoughts* on ACIM Urtext Lesson 4, for January 4, 2024. (Included is a commentary on conflict due to our thinking that our thoughts do mean something.)
These thoughts do not mean anything. They are like the things I see in this room [on this street, from this window, in this place].
1. Unlike the preceding ones, these exercises do not begin with the idea for the day. ²In these practice periods, begin with noting the thoughts that are crossing your mind for about a minute. ³Then apply the idea to them. ⁴If you are already aware of unhappy thoughts, use them as subjects for the idea. ⁵Do not, however, select only the thoughts you think are “bad.” ⁶You will find, if you train yourself to look at your thoughts, that they represent such a mixture that, in a sense, none of them can be called “good” or “bad.” ⁷This is why they do not mean anything.
2. In selecting the subjects for the application of today’s idea, the usual specificity is required. ²Do not be afraid to use “good” thoughts as well as “bad.” ³None of them represents your real thoughts, which are being covered up by them. ⁴The “good” ones are but shadows of what lies beyond, and shadows make sight difficult. ⁵The “bad” ones are blocks to sight, and make seeing impossible. ⁶You do not want either.
3. This is a major exercise, and will be repeated from time to time in somewhat different form. ²The aim here is to train you in the first steps toward the goal of separating the meaningless from the meaningful. ³It is a first attempt in the long-range purpose of learning to see the meaningless as outside you, and the meaningful within. ⁴It is also the beginning of training your mind to recognize what is the same and what is different.
4. In using your thoughts for application of the idea for today, identify each thought by the central figure or event it contains; for example:
²This thought about _________ does not mean anything.
³It is like the things I see in this room [on this street, and so on].
5. You can also use the idea for a particular thought that you recognize as harmful. ²This practice is useful, but is not a substitute for the more random procedures to be followed for the exercises. ³Do not, however, examine your mind for more than a minute or so. ⁴You are too inexperienced as yet to avoid a tendency to become pointlessly preoccupied.
6. Further, since these exercises are the first of their kind, you may find the suspension of judgment in connection with thoughts particularly difficult. ²Do not repeat these exercises more than three or four times during the day. ³We will return to them later.
(ACIM, W-4.1:1–6:3)
* Letting go of the attachment to my own thoughts is something that I have been working on for some time.
* I want God’s Thoughts coming through my mind and they are ALWAYS laced in Love and a Witness of His Son’s Innocence. They bring a soft smile to my face.
* For the most part I have accomplished this. However, in the presence of those who believe that evil is real I find myself needing to stop the projection of where evil goes and what it does.
* These exercises are the assistance that we need to allow the ego, whose identification is only with the body and is not aligned with God at all, to be seen as benign and uninfluential in the reality of what we truly are.
* Here is a passage from the text on page 440 that reflects this. “Be certain that it is impossible God and the ego, or yourself and it, will EVER meet. You SEEM to meet, and make your strange alliances, on grounds that have no meaning. For your beliefs converge upon the body, the ego’s chosen home, which you believe is YOURS. You meet at a mistake; — an error in your self-appraisal. The ego joins with an ILLUSION of yourself you SHARE with it. And yet illusions cannot join. They ARE the same, and they are nothing. Their joining lies in nothingness; two are as meaningless as one, or as a thousand. The ego joins with nothing, BEING nothing. The victory it seeks is meaningless as is itself.
* We interact with other people true enough however I suspect that Jesus is telling us that we want to understand that this is not our true identity.
* At this time, I still suspect that God would have us see Heaven while we are on the earth. This clashes with most everyone I speak with yet, I live there. I know God’s existence and His Love for His Son. We have been created that we may have joy and that is just what roles out for us eternally because God IS.
* Near this same passage is this: “This is no war. Only the mad belief the Will of God can be attacked and overthrown. You may IDENTIFY with this belief, but never will it be more than madness. And fear will reign in madness, and will SEEM to have replaced love there. This is the conflict’s PURPOSE. And to those who think that it is possible, the means seem real.”
* There always seems to be a justification for fear. Yet, God IS all that there could be or He would not be God. If only I could share the peace, joy, and happiness that I know because I know this. With it, I walk in Eternal Life and reside in Heaven at all times. The love that I feel for all of creation is tremendous and I cannot tell you how much God wants to bless us. If we would only get out of the way and let Him do so.
* Also from page 440:
“Brothers, the war against yourself is almost over. The journey’s end is at the place of peace. Would you not now ACCEPT the peace offered you here? This enemy you fought as an INTRUDER on your peace is here transformed before your sight into the GIVER of your peace. Your “enemy” was God Himself, to Whom all conflict, triumph, and attack of ANY kind are all unknown. He loves you perfectly, completely, and eternally. The Son of God at war with his Creator is a condition as ridiculous as nature roaring at the wind in anger, and proclaiming that it is part of itself no longer.
Could nature possibly ESTABLISH this, and make it true? Nor IS it up to you to say what shall be part of you, and what is kept apart. The war against yourself was undertaken to teach the Son of God that he is NOT himself, and NOT his Father’s Son. For this, the memory of his Father MUST be forgotten. It IS forgotten in the body’s life, and, if you think you ARE a body, you will believe you HAVE forgotten it. But truth can never be forgotten by ITSELF. And you have NOT forgotten what you are. Only a strange illusion of yourself, a wish to triumph OVER what you are, remembers not.
The war against yourself is but the battle of two illusions, struggling to make them DIFFERENT from each other, in the belief the one which conquers will be true. There IS no conflict between them and the TRUTH. Nor ARE they different from each other. Both are NOT true. And so it matters not what form they take. What made them is insane, and they remain part of what made them. Madness holds out no menace to reality, and has no influence upon it. Illusions CANNOT triumph over truth, nor can they threaten it in any way. And the reality which they deny is NOT a part of them.
What YOU remember IS a part of you. For you MUST be as God created you. Truth does not fight against illusions, nor do illusions fight against the truth. Illusions battle ONLY with themselves. Being fragmented, they fragment. But truth is indivisible, and FAR beyond their little reach. You will remember what you know when you have learned you CANNOT be in conflict. One ILLUSION about yourself can battle with another, yet the war of two illusions is a state where NOTHING HAPPENS. There is no victor, and — pg. 441 — there is no victory. And truth stands radiant, APART from conflict, untouched and quiet, in the peace of God.
Conflict must be between two FORCES. It can NOT exist between one power and nothingness. There is nothing you COULD attack that is not part of you. And, BY attacking it, you make two illusions of yourself, IN CONFLICT with each other. And this occurs whenever you look on ANYTHING that God created with anything but love. Conflict is fearful, for it is the birth of fear. Yet what is born of nothing cannot WIN reality through battle. Why would you fill your world with conflicts with yourself? Let all this madness be undone for you, and turn in peace to the rememberance of God, still shining in your quiet mind.”
* Conflict CAN END because it is not real and is able to be seen as the illusion that it is when we are willing to allow God’s existence to be seen as REAL. The world can be seen as part of the Body of Christ Within the Mind and Will of God and there resides Heaven. And the peace that passes understanding.
* Continued on page 441, Urtext of A Course in Miracles:
“See how the conflict of illusions disappears, when it is brought to truth! For it seems real ONLY as long as it is seen as war between CONFLICTING truths, the conqueror to be the truer, the MORE real, the VANQUISHER of the illusion that was less real, MADE an illusion by defeat. For conflict is the choice BETWEEN illusions, one to be crowned as real, the other vanquished and despised. Here will the Father NEVER be remembered. Yet NO illusion can invade His home, and drive Him out of what He loves forever. And what He loves MUST be forever quiet and at peace BECAUSE it is His home. And you who are beloved of Him are no illusions, being as true and holy as Himself.
The stillness of your certainty of Him and of yourself is home to both of you, who dwell as one, and NOT apart. Open the doors of His most holy home, and let forgiveness sweep away all trace of the belief in sin that keeps God homeless, and His Son with Him. You are not strangers in the house of God. Welcome your brother to the home where God has set him in serenity and peace, and dwells with him. Illusions have no place where Love abides, protecting you from EVERYTHING that is not true. You dwell in peace as limitless as its Creator. And EVERYTHING is given those who would remember Him.
Over His home the Holy Spirit watches, sure that its peace can never BE disturbed.
How can the resting place of God turn on itself, and seek to overcome the One Who dwells there? And think what happens when the house of God perceives itself divided. The altar disappears, the light grows dim, the temple of the Holy One becomes a house of sin. And nothing is remembered, EXCEPT illusions. Illusions CAN conflict, because their forms ARE different. And they do battle ONLY to establish which FORM is true.
Illusion meets illusion; truth, itself. The meeting of illusions leads to war. Peace looking on itself EXTENDS itself. War is the condition in which fear is born, and grows and seeks to dominate. Peace is the state where love abides, and seeks to share itself. Conflict and peace are opposites; where one abides, the other CANNOT be; where either goes, the other disappears. So is the memory of God obscured in minds that have become illusion’s battleground. Yet far beyond this senseless war it shines, ready to BE remembered when you side with peace.”
* Again, Conflict CAN END because it is not real and is able to be seen as the illusion that it is when we are willing to allow God’s existence to be seen as REAL. The world can be seen as part of the Body of Christ Within the Mind and Will of God and there resides Heaven. And the peace that passes understanding.
* Free stock photo: “Pink is a color that has a calming effect on people. It is not aggressive like red, but rather suggests safety and vulnerability. IN SMALL DOSES, pink calms people, but if it is overused it can lead to irritation and inspire feelings of weakness, especially in men.” * I added the emphasis. I wonder if “thinking” could have similar affects at this time in the United Consciousness? Hmm.
Till next time, God bless, debi.
