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Going Deeper part 21 Editor's note: This transcript has been lightly edited to bring clarification to certain points of the dialogue and for easier readability. For this reason, it does not match the corresponding audio mp3 word-for-word. However, the overall content and the expressed ideas remain unchanged. Part 1 \| Part 2 \| Part 3 \| Part 4 \| Part 5 \| Part 6 \| Part 7 \| Part 8 \| Part 9 \| Part 10 \| Part 11 \| Part 12 \| Part 13 \| Part 14 Part 15 \| Part 16 \| Part 17 \| Part 18 \| Part 19 \| Part 20 \| Part 21 \| Part 22 \| Part 23 \| Part 24 \| Part 25 \| Part 26 To Experience a New Meaning for the World Speaker: To have a new meaning for the world would be to question all of the purposes and meanings and goals that one has had for the world, and it gets back to our uses of the body and so on and so forth, to ask the Holy Spirit to help sort out in the mind the true from the false and then to lay aside the false. And this is where the Resurrection comes in, a final decision, a final letting go of all other strivings and purposes and desires and just having a desire only for the Father. Participant: So the resurrection of Jesus preceded what we think of as his physical resurrection, it that right? Speaker: Well, if you take it back to a time sense, yes, he says that the resurrection is the acceptance of the Atonement for ones self. So this is a decision that’s made in the mind and, as we’ve just read, the body functions perfectly after that decision. In other words, once the decision is made, then the body is simply a vehicle or a manifestation to be used by the Holy Spirit to let the light shine into the world so to speak or let the Spirit be demonstrated, be manifested to the world. And so, in that sense, the Atonement is a decision, and it appears to be a decision Jesus made before the crucifixion, that the crucifixion and drama and the resurrection and drama were all part of a playing out or a teaching example that was to be left for the world to see. Now of course, we’re still talking in metaphors because whenever you ask a question about the past, about when Jesus accepted the Atonement and so on and so forth, we’re still speaking in metaphors, because what the Course is telling us is that this is a decision that I must make. This is a decision that the student of the Course must make, the teacher of God must make. And, as we go deeper into the Course, we find that there is only one time that the Atonement can be accepted and that’s now. So, it takes us out of the context of a linear sense of trying to say, “Now when did Jesus…?”, the ego will go on with questions of, “What point in his life did Jesus accept it?” and all kinds of fascinating, ingenious questions. But they’re all at subtle levels still distractions away from the central point that Jesus makes, is that the teacher of God, the student of the Course, has to accept that decision for the Atonement for himself. That’s the sole responsibility of the miracle worker and the teacher of God . The next question often times is like, “OK, having heard that, how do I do that?” or “What do I do?” It’s a very common question and, once again, we have ACIM, we have a tool for awakening. A curriculum if you will to follow. It has a text, it has a workbook or a lab and it has a teacher’s manual. This is something that is to be applied. Not just read or talked about. When he gives instructions in the workbook to do certain things, to try to remember this thought so many times a day or to apply this thought to particular things in the room or out the window or so on or so forth, this is a training program for the mind. This is a very practical training program that’s been given to the deceived mind to be used to wake up, to make that final decision for the Atonement. And the resistance, as anyone who has attempted to work with the Course, the resistance is experienced because the mind is still split between the ego and the Holy Spirit and the ego is very, very resistant to learning this Course, to applying this Course because literally, this Course, when applied, is the undoing of the ego. Participant: That’s where the mind watching comes in that you talk about, do you want to go into that a little bit? Speaker: Yes.. After one’s worked with the Course for a while and particularly gets into the workbook, there are a number of passages in the workbook that talk about searching the mind, watching the thoughts go by as dispassionately as possible. One point is, it’s as if you were watching an oddly sort of parade going by or different metaphors for watching the thoughts. Being able to step back a bit and watching dispassionately and, if we look at the Bible even, there are a number of parables, for instance, “The Ten Virgins”, five with oil for their lamps and five of the foolish ones that didn’t bring oil and that, in the parable, miss the bridegroom because they weren’t prepared. The preparation in that particular parable, as well as some of the other ones in the bible, and the emphasis on watch, keep watch. It translates in the Course to watch your mind. You must always keep watch of your mind. Be vigilant only for God and His Kingdom. At one point Jesus says, “You’re much too tolerant of mind wandering”. The mind has to be trained to be attentive to the thoughts. Once again, what we see is that there are two thought systems in the mind. In the sense of the Holy Spirit’s thought system which is referred to as your ‘real thoughts’ as Jesus calls them in the Course. And then, the ego’s thought system which is a fear based thought system. It’s referred to, or you might say, the thoughts are referred to as unreal. At other points they are referred to as ‘attack thoughts’. So basically, the mind has to sort out, has to discern between these two thought systems, relinquish the fear based thought system and then, what’s left are the real thoughts in the mind. The light that is in the mind has been covered over by the cloud banks of the attack thoughts. Participant: And the untrained mind basically is just full of unreal thoughts? Speaker: Yes. Participant: The mind is blank as one of the lessons says. Speaker: Yes. When the mind is invested in these thoughts and believes that they are real thoughts though they are unreal attack thoughts and did not come from God, then literally the mind thinks that it’s thinking real thoughts. It thinks it’s in a real world because these thoughts are projected and show up so to speak on the screen as a world. And there seems to be an inner world and an outer world. For instance, one can say, “Boy, I’m glad I didn’t say what I was thinking there.” as if what they’re saying or their behaviour or what’s on the world is one thing and thinking is another. And the workbook is a sense of training the mind to see that the thoughts that you think you think are not real and, in the ultimate sense, you think you’re thinking but your mind is literally blank when it’s preoccupied with these attack thoughts which include thoughts of the past and thoughts of the future. Participant: So any thinking that has a component of form is not thinking at all, is that right? Speaker: Well…I think it might be a better distinction to say that, to use our time distinction that any thought constructed about the past or the future is not thinking. The real thoughts I feel are a metaphor for the miracle or true perception. And, once again, true perception still involves form. Participant: OK, because it’s still perceptual. Speaker: But all meaning of a past tense and a future tense has been removed from it. So in other words it’s like a blank slate but there isn’t meaning being read into the form except for the Holy Spirit’s one purpose which then frees the mind and that’s the real world. Again, we’re getting into subtle points but we can say that attack thoughts represent distorted perception and once these thoughts have been questioned, and once the mind has been able to disidentify or dispassionately watch these thoughts and see them as merely false without investing in them and believing in them, then we get down to the real thoughts which are representative of the real world or true perception or healed mind… Participant: And do the unreal thoughts diminish as that occurs? Speaker: Well, in a sense diminish still brings it to like a quantifiable thing, where I think the best way of coming at it is what Jesus says, that they will ‘fade’. It’s like they fade, they become more distant, they become more and more peripheral and less noticed as attention is withdrawn from them. As in getting away from a sense of diminishing or… Participant: More or less… Speaker: …or quantifiable. They just fade and fade and fade. Participant: So, the attention of the mind is given to the real thoughts instead? Speaker: Yes…yes, which is automatic once the mind keeps focused on the Atonement and literally protects the mind with the Atonement. Literally, the Atonement, one cannot have attention on the Atonement and on those thoughts as well. It’s one of those decisions, an either/or decision. So when the mind becomes very good at consistently choosing the miracle, keeping it’s attention on the Atonement, then the other thoughts begin to fade because attention and investment has been withdrawn from the attack thoughts. In the ultimate sense, we can speak of Thought, with a capital ‘T’, as being Christ. In other words that Jesus describes Christ as a Thought or an Idea in the Mind of God. And you notice how that’s capital ‘T’ and it’s singular. Singular is very important here because even real thoughts still has a plural sense and still gives us a sense of, there’s still a bit of perception involved in that even though it’s healed, even though the impurities or the wheat and the chaff have been separated out so to speak and we just have the grain, the fruit of the grain, the real thoughts. The Thought of God, Christ, is literally beyond perception. Christ and the Father are part of the Kingdom of Heaven and part of the state of Knowledge, with a capital ‘K’ which again just IS. It does not involve form in any way. Participant: So go back to the mind watching a little bit in terms of how to do that, practical application, just bring it down into the everyday a little bit more if you can. Speaker: OK. At the beginning, the early lessons really work at first helping the mind to see that there really is no difference between the inner and the outer. Which is a very fundamental principle or fundamental idea in the Course, in the undoing of the false, and, even if we look at the early lessons in terms of the way they are arranged in form, I mean, the first lesson starts out, “Nothing I see means anything.” “Nothing I see”. Right away we’re talking about perception and objects that seem to be in the room and so on and so forth. Followed by a lesson, “I have given everything I see all the meaning it has for me.” It brings it back to a sense of the mind, “I have given” The mind is reading meaning into everything it sees. The ideas presented in the workbook go back and forth from the inner and outer. They focus on, ‘thinking’ versus ‘perceiving’. Lesson number 5, “I am never upset for the reason I think.” OK, here we’re talking about upset but we’re also talking about thoughts, “I am never upset for the reason I think.” Followed by Lesson number 6, “I am upset because I see something that is not there.” Well here comes the perception back in. If you look at a lot of the early lessons, he goes back and forth, and back and forth between thinking and the mind, and perceiving which is seen to be something separate than thinking, something different from my private world of thoughts. Continue to Part 22
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Home \|\| About this Website \|\| Study Materials \|\| Contact \|\| Donate \|\| Order Materials
Laying the Foundation \|\| Unlearning the World \|\| Transfer of Training
Going Deeper part 21 Editor's note: This transcript has been lightly edited to bring clarification to certain points of the dialogue and for easier readability. For this reason, it does not match the corresponding audio mp3 word-for-word. However, the overall content and the expressed ideas remain unchanged. Part 1 \| Part 2 \| Part 3 \| Part 4 \| Part 5 \| Part 6 \| Part 7 \| Part 8 \| Part 9 \| Part 10 \| Part 11 \| Part 12 \| Part 13 \| Part 14 Part 15 \| Part 16 \| Part 17 \| Part 18 \| Part 19 \| Part 20 \| Part 21 \| Part 22 \| Part 23 \| Part 24 \| Part 25 \| Part 26 To Experience a New Meaning for the World Speaker: To have a new meaning for the world would be to question all of the purposes and meanings and goals that one has had for the world, and it gets back to our uses of the body and so on and so forth, to ask the Holy Spirit to help sort out in the mind the true from the false and then to lay aside the false. And this is where the Resurrection comes in, a final decision, a final letting go of all other strivings and purposes and desires and just having a desire only for the Father. Participant: So the resurrection of Jesus preceded what we think of as his physical resurrection, it that right? Speaker: Well, if you take it back to a time sense, yes, he says that the resurrection is the acceptance of the Atonement for ones self. So this is a decision that’s made in the mind and, as we’ve just read, the body functions perfectly after that decision. In other words, once the decision is made, then the body is simply a vehicle or a manifestation to be used by the Holy Spirit to let the light shine into the world so to speak or let the Spirit be demonstrated, be manifested to the world. And so, in that sense, the Atonement is a decision, and it appears to be a decision Jesus made before the crucifixion, that the crucifixion and drama and the resurrection and drama were all part of a playing out or a teaching example that was to be left for the world to see. Now of course, we’re still talking in metaphors because whenever you ask a question about the past, about when Jesus accepted the Atonement and so on and so forth, we’re still speaking in metaphors, because what the Course is telling us is that this is a decision that I must make. This is a decision that the student of the Course must make, the teacher of God must make. And, as we go deeper into the Course, we find that there is only one time that the Atonement can be accepted and that’s now. So, it takes us out of the context of a linear sense of trying to say, “Now when did Jesus…?”, the ego will go on with questions of, “What point in his life did Jesus accept it?” and all kinds of fascinating, ingenious questions. But they’re all at subtle levels still distractions away from the central point that Jesus makes, is that the teacher of God, the student of the Course, has to accept that decision for the Atonement for himself. That’s the sole responsibility of the miracle worker and the teacher of God . The next question often times is like, “OK, having heard that, how do I do that?” or “What do I do?” It’s a very common question and, once again, we have ACIM, we have a tool for awakening. A curriculum if you will to follow. It has a text, it has a workbook or a lab and it has a teacher’s manual. This is something that is to be applied. Not just read or talked about. When he gives instructions in the workbook to do certain things, to try to remember this thought so many times a day or to apply this thought to particular things in the room or out the window or so on or so forth, this is a training program for the mind. This is a very practical training program that’s been given to the deceived mind to be used to wake up, to make that final decision for the Atonement. And the resistance, as anyone who has attempted to work with the Course, the resistance is experienced because the mind is still split between the ego and the Holy Spirit and the ego is very, very resistant to learning this Course, to applying this Course because literally, this Course, when applied, is the undoing of the ego. Participant: That’s where the mind watching comes in that you talk about, do you want to go into that a little bit? Speaker: Yes.. After one’s worked with the Course for a while and particularly gets into the workbook, there are a number of passages in the workbook that talk about searching the mind, watching the thoughts go by as dispassionately as possible. One point is, it’s as if you were watching an oddly sort of parade going by or different metaphors for watching the thoughts. Being able to step back a bit and watching dispassionately and, if we look at the Bible even, there are a number of parables, for instance, “The Ten Virgins”, five with oil for their lamps and five of the foolish ones that didn’t bring oil and that, in the parable, miss the bridegroom because they weren’t prepared. The preparation in that particular parable, as well as some of the other ones in the bible, and the emphasis on watch, keep watch. It translates in the Course to watch your mind. You must always keep watch of your mind. Be vigilant only for God and His Kingdom. At one point Jesus says, “You’re much too tolerant of mind wandering”. The mind has to be trained to be attentive to the thoughts. Once again, what we see is that there are two thought systems in the mind. In the sense of the Holy Spirit’s thought system which is referred to as your ‘real thoughts’ as Jesus calls them in the Course. And then, the ego’s thought system which is a fear based thought system. It’s referred to, or you might say, the thoughts are referred to as unreal. At other points they are referred to as ‘attack thoughts’. So basically, the mind has to sort out, has to discern between these two thought systems, relinquish the fear based thought system and then, what’s left are the real thoughts in the mind. The light that is in the mind has been covered over by the cloud banks of the attack thoughts. Participant: And the untrained mind basically is just full of unreal thoughts? Speaker: Yes. Participant: The mind is blank as one of the lessons says. Speaker: Yes. When the mind is invested in these thoughts and believes that they are real thoughts though they are unreal attack thoughts and did not come from God, then literally the mind thinks that it’s thinking real thoughts. It thinks it’s in a real world because these thoughts are projected and show up so to speak on the screen as a world. And there seems to be an inner world and an outer world. For instance, one can say, “Boy, I’m glad I didn’t say what I was thinking there.” as if what they’re saying or their behaviour or what’s on the world is one thing and thinking is another. And the workbook is a sense of training the mind to see that the thoughts that you think you think are not real and, in the ultimate sense, you think you’re thinking but your mind is literally blank when it’s preoccupied with these attack thoughts which include thoughts of the past and thoughts of the future. Participant: So any thinking that has a component of form is not thinking at all, is that right? Speaker: Well…I think it might be a better distinction to say that, to use our time distinction that any thought constructed about the past or the future is not thinking. The real thoughts I feel are a metaphor for the miracle or true perception. And, once again, true perception still involves form. Participant: OK, because it’s still perceptual. Speaker: But all meaning of a past tense and a future tense has been removed from it. So in other words it’s like a blank slate but there isn’t meaning being read into the form except for the Holy Spirit’s one purpose which then frees the mind and that’s the real world. Again, we’re getting into subtle points but we can say that attack thoughts represent distorted perception and once these thoughts have been questioned, and once the mind has been able to disidentify or dispassionately watch these thoughts and see them as merely false without investing in them and believing in them, then we get down to the real thoughts which are representative of the real world or true perception or healed mind… Participant: And do the unreal thoughts diminish as that occurs? Speaker: Well, in a sense diminish still brings it to like a quantifiable thing, where I think the best way of coming at it is what Jesus says, that they will ‘fade’. It’s like they fade, they become more distant, they become more and more peripheral and less noticed as attention is withdrawn from them. As in getting away from a sense of diminishing or… Participant: More or less… Speaker: …or quantifiable. They just fade and fade and fade. Participant: So, the attention of the mind is given to the real thoughts instead? Speaker: Yes…yes, which is automatic once the mind keeps focused on the Atonement and literally protects the mind with the Atonement. Literally, the Atonement, one cannot have attention on the Atonement and on those thoughts as well. It’s one of those decisions, an either/or decision. So when the mind becomes very good at consistently choosing the miracle, keeping it’s attention on the Atonement, then the other thoughts begin to fade because attention and investment has been withdrawn from the attack thoughts. In the ultimate sense, we can speak of Thought, with a capital ‘T’, as being Christ. In other words that Jesus describes Christ as a Thought or an Idea in the Mind of God. And you notice how that’s capital ‘T’ and it’s singular. Singular is very important here because even real thoughts still has a plural sense and still gives us a sense of, there’s still a bit of perception involved in that even though it’s healed, even though the impurities or the wheat and the chaff have been separated out so to speak and we just have the grain, the fruit of the grain, the real thoughts. The Thought of God, Christ, is literally beyond perception. Christ and the Father are part of the Kingdom of Heaven and part of the state of Knowledge, with a capital ‘K’ which again just IS. It does not involve form in any way. Participant: So go back to the mind watching a little bit in terms of how to do that, practical application, just bring it down into the everyday a little bit more if you can. Speaker: OK. At the beginning, the early lessons really work at first helping the mind to see that there really is no difference between the inner and the outer. Which is a very fundamental principle or fundamental idea in the Course, in the undoing of the false, and, even if we look at the early lessons in terms of the way they are arranged in form, I mean, the first lesson starts out, “Nothing I see means anything.” “Nothing I see”. Right away we’re talking about perception and objects that seem to be in the room and so on and so forth. Followed by a lesson, “I have given everything I see all the meaning it has for me.” It brings it back to a sense of the mind, “I have given” The mind is reading meaning into everything it sees. The ideas presented in the workbook go back and forth from the inner and outer. They focus on, ‘thinking’ versus ‘perceiving’. Lesson number 5, “I am never upset for the reason I think.” OK, here we’re talking about upset but we’re also talking about thoughts, “I am never upset for the reason I think.” Followed by Lesson number 6, “I am upset because I see something that is not there.” Well here comes the perception back in. If you look at a lot of the early lessons, he goes back and forth, and back and forth between thinking and the mind, and perceiving which is seen to be something separate than thinking, something different from my private world of thoughts. Continue to Part 22
Home \| About this Website \| Study Materials \| Contact \| Donate \| Order Materials You are welcome to share the ideas offered here. If you would like to participate in distributing these materials please contact us. We love to hear from you.