r/ACIM

I think most people here know about the famous K. Wapnick speech where he tells people to be normal. I agree with him and think it's a great speech, but I find that people misinterpret it.

When he tells people to be normal, I don't think he's saying that people should go out and find a good paying job, buy a house, find a wife, have two children and a dog. He isn't telling people to become like the "normal" consumerist drone obsessed with social media, status, money, dating and other illusory stuff.

What he's trying to say, I guess, is that we shouldn't use ACIM as a reason to act weird in society. We shouldn't use the course to build a special identity where we try to stand out from others by acting in ways that are unconventional. And we shouldn't stop doing what is meaningful to us in the name of practicing the course, since this would be a confusion of levels, where we try to do the course by changing things on the level of the personality, instead of changing things on the level of the mind.

LESSON 116.

For morning and evening review:

(101) God’s Will for me is perfect happiness.

God’s Will is perfect happiness for me. And I can suffer but from the belief there is another will apart from His.

(102) I share God’s Will for happiness for me.

I share my Father’s Will for me, His Son. What He has given me is all I want. What He has given me is all there is.

On the hour:

God’s Will for me is perfect happiness.

On the half hour:

I share God’s Will for happiness for me.

The ego's meaning for happiness is pleasure.

It depends on form (people, outcomes, sensations), it comes and goes, and it often flips into its opposite (loss, boredom, craving more).

God's meaning for happiness is joy/bliss.

It is stable, permanent, independent, uncaused, quietly fulfilling, and already present beneath fluctuations.

Notice how pleasure rises and falls.

Notice that something in you does not rise and fall with it.

That "something" is closer to real happiness than any peak experience.

God know you NOW. He remembers nothing, having ALWAYS known you exactly as He knows you now. The holy instant parallels His knowing by bringing ALL perception out of the past, thus removing the frame of reference you have built by which to judge your brothers. Once this is gone, the Holy Spirit substitutes His frame of reference for it. His frame of reference is simply God. The Holy Spirit’s timelessness lies only here. For in the holy instant, free of the past, you see the love is in you, and you have no heed to look WITHOUT and snatch it from where you thought it was.

Everyone on earth has formed special relationships, and although this is not so in Heaven, the Holy Spirit knows how to bring a touch of Heaven to them here. In the holy instant no-one is special, for your personal needs intrude on no-one to make them different. Without the values from the past you WOULD see them all the some, and like YOURSELF. Nor would you see any separation between yourself and them. In the holy instant, you see in each relationship what it WILL be when you perceive only the present.

LESSON 115.

For morning and evening review:

(99) Salvation is my only function here.

My function here is to forgive the world for all the errors I have made. For thus am I released from them with all the world.

(100) My part is essential to God’s plan for salvation.

I am essential to the plan of God for the salvation of the world. For He gave me His plan that I might save the world.

On the hour:

Salvation is my only function here.

On the half hour:

My part is essential to God’s plan for salvation.

The lovely light of your relationship is like the Love of God. It cannot yet assume the holy function God gave His Son, for your forgiveness of your brother is not complete as yet, and so it cannot be extended to all creation. Each form of murder and attack that still attracts you and that you do not recognize for what it is, limits the healing and the miracles you have the power to extend to all. Yet does the Holy Spirit understand how to increase your little gifts and make them mighty. Also He understands how your relationship is raised above the battleground, in it no more. This is your part; to realize that murder in any form is not your will. The overlooking of the battleground is now your purpose.

T-23.IV.4, Above the Battleground

LESSON 114.

For morning and evening review:

(97) I am spirit.

I am the Son of God. No body can contain my spirit, nor impose on me a limitation God created not.

(98) I will accept my part in God’s plan for salvation.

What can my function be but to accept the Word of God, Who has created me for what I am and will forever be?

On the hour:

I am spirit.

On the half hour:

I will accept my part in God’s plan for salvation.

Zeno leaves you in paradox.
Parmenides leaves you in abstraction.
Advaita points to realization.

ACIM gives you a method:

• Notice change, movement, time
• Recognize: this is part of the illusion
• Withdraw belief from it
• Forgive (reinterpret everything as unreal in truth)

This is not denial, it’s correction.

The ego’s use of relationships is so fragmented that it frequently goes even father; one part of one aspect suits its purposes, while it prefers different parts of another aspect. Thus does it assemble reality to its own capricious liking, offering for your seeking a picture whose likeness does not exist. For there is noting in Heaven or earth that it resembles, and so, however much you seek for its reality, you cannot find it because it is not real.