ACIM ~ Lesson 173. God is but Love, and therefore so am I.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ratnam Nadarajah on June 21, 2012 at 2:55am

Yes God is Love and love  is God

In the day to living we see goodness , kindness etc but also hatred,greed etc.

End of the day we have to try to mould our lives the best way we can, without harming,hurting and lead  a meanigful life. Life is not always a bed of roses

Permalink Reply by Andrew Hooper on June 21, 2012 at 4:42am

God? I've heard of him, and I've heard from him - but only when I'm ill. Please, someone pass me some more meds to get rid of him, it's the only reliable way.

Permalink Reply by Sébastien on June 21, 2012 at 5:04pm

Hi Andrew, thank you for your comments. you've raised a lot of questions and made many points (though I can't see your posts anymore).I will attempt to respond and clarify with the help of some ACIM resources.

A Course of Miracles is a non-dualistic teaching, which means that A Course in Miracles recognizes only one dimension of reality -- spirit and the state of perfect oneness, perfect love, what the Course refers to as the realm of knowledge. Everything else -- the dualistic world of separation and perception, of form and matter, of thinking and concepts -- is illusion, and thus does not really exist.

This non-dualism is what you find in the higher teachings of Hinduism and Buddhism, but rarely in the West. What makes A Course in Miracles unique as a spiritual system -- ancient and contemporary -- is its integration of this non-dualistic metaphysics with a sophisticated psychology, heavily based on the insights of Freud and his followers.

This means essentially that at the same time that the Course teaches that the world is an illusion and is nothing but a dream, outside the Mind of God, we are urged to practice our daily lessons of forgiveness, paying careful attention to our everyday experiences here. Key to this integration is the Course’s emphasis on purpose, the introduction of which idea sets A Course in Miracles apart from other spiritual paths.

The Course teaches that not only is the world an illusion, but that it is a purposive illusion; the purpose being to make a world of bodies, thoroughly focused on solving the myriad number of physical and psychological problems that beset us daily, clamoring for attention and solution. In this way the mind, the true source of our problems, is kept hidden from awareness.

In addition, A Course in Miracles is unique among spiritualities in its insistence that we look at the ego -- the dark side -- as the way of moving beyond to the light. Its focus, therefore, is not on the truth, but on removing our ego’s thought system of guilt, fear, and attack, which allows the light of truth to shine. As Jesus teaches in one representative passage: "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false" (T.16.IV.6:1,2).

A Course in Miracles (ACIM) adopts a christian language, and Jesus as a central figure. This can pose some challenges for ACIM students, as the content has very little to do with christianity and the Bible. Jesus is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, which is present in our mind, but which we chose to forget to remember. If it is more appealing, you can replace Jesus with Mary, angels, Buddha, any loving figure you can relate with. 

Permalink Reply by Andrew Hooper on June 22, 2012 at 1:25am

"Hi Andrew, thank you for your comments. you've raised a lot of questions and made many points (though I can't see your posts anymore).I will attempt to respond and clarify with the help of some ACIM resources."

I deleted them myself. They had already served their purpose. I felt better after saying it, and once it had been in the cosmic collective far enough in regards to this timeline, I decided to go ahead and delete it before it was consciously seen my anyone else... deliberately leaving only 1 comment left that best described my mood: I can no longer be bothered discussing religion, metaphysics, spirituality, mythology, the very nature of reality itself, who or where God/Goddess even is because either noone would believe me, they would be call me a nut, hate me, disagree with what I said and accuse me of shoving my beliefs down their throats or not being sufficiently knowledgeable, not rational from their viewpoint, and excuse the language - but frankly I can't be fucking bothered with it anymore, I've decided that in the hopefully extremely unlikely event that I was the promised messiah with all of the answers, that basically everyone can go and get fucked unless they are on my friends or relatives list, one of my pets, or my fulltime Spirit Guide/Angel Christine/Ishtar ... I don't owe anyone any explanations of anything, my karmic debt is almost zero, and quite frankly Allah, Yahweh, Jesus Christ, or Michael the fucking Archangel can come down in person and sort everything out. Sorry for sounding so angry, but most people don't even bloody notice that I exist at all when I am nice, and I am so fucking lonely that you wouldn't believe what it feels to feel like almost everyone in the entire cosmos hates you including all of the angels - Archangel Michael in particular - loved only by a single one of them - Christine... and I probably won't even bother posting on this in the forseeable future but rather just keep my apparently unwanted beliefs or opinions about any fucking subject at all including what emotions I may be feeling at that moment to myself and my Spirit Guide/Deity Christine/Ishtar... I've made myself so unwelcome in so many places for saying things as I understand it that I'm not even fucking welcome in Heaven, and in fact it was fucking written in the book or revelation that I was cast down to earth before I was even fucking born at all, let alone had a buddhist awakening about who I truly was... so please excuse me if I don't say anything more about anything other than what can be physically proven by mutual consensus least I wind up in the fucking psyche ward again and told that my beliefs are delusional or my mood isn't good enough... I'm keeping all of my fucking facts and opinions to myself from now on, and only reading those of other peoples :-)

~*~*~*~Light & Love~*~*~*~

"Laurie Michelle um ANDREW...love is love....god is not love....if that were true everyone who believed in god would peaceful, not blowing themselves up....really now...." ~ spoken to me on face book :-)

Permalink Reply by Andrew Hooper on June 22, 2012 at 2:38am

"A Course of Miracles is a non-dualistic teaching, which means that A Course in Miracles recognizes only one dimension of reality -- spirit and the state of perfect oneness, perfect love, what the Course refers to as the realm of knowledge. Everything else -- the dualistic world of separation and perception, of form and matter, of thinking and concepts -- is illusion, and thus does not really exist."

- Truly wonderful. I shall use that as my excuse for simulataneously being in both worlds at once (am I? I'm not obligated to prove that I even exist at all in either the spiritual or physcial realites or any other dimensions... my body must conveniently be likewise an illusion, as well as my spirit, soul, emotions, and anything else - believed in only by my Spirit Guide/Angel (Christine/Ishtar) and Myself by both of our mutual consensus to believe in each other fully as a sworn and declared eternally wholly independent binary system from the very cosmic collective itself)

"This non-dualism is what you find in the higher teachings of Hinduism and Buddhism, but rarely in the West. What makes A Course in Miracles unique as a spiritual system -- ancient and contemporary -- is its integration of this non-dualistic metaphysics with a sophisticated psychology, heavily based on the insights of Freud and his followers."

- Thanks all the same, but Myself and my Spiritual partner in crime/Soulmate/SpiritGuide/Angel/Deity/SpiritualTwinSister/OtherHalf/BestFriend Christine/Ishtar have permanently declined said invitation and prefer YinYang status

"This means essentially that at the same time that the Course teaches that the world is an illusion and is nothing but a dream, outside the Mind of God, we are urged to practice our daily lessons of forgiveness, paying careful attention to our everyday experiences here. Key to this integration is the Course’s emphasis on purpose, the introduction of which idea sets A Course in Miracles apart from other spiritual paths."

- most convenient for everyone concerned. Myself and My spiritual other half (two who are at one) will sincerely enjoy everyone's dream and get up to all sorts of fun and mischief along with all of Ishtar's children that noone in the spirit world believed to even exist... and we will then have new children of our own with the very souls that the others cheerfully volunteered to vacate and leave behind unwanted and discarded :-)

"The Course teaches that not only is the world an illusion, but that it is a purposive illusion; the purpose being to make a world of bodies, thoroughly focused on solving the myriad number of physical and psychological problems that beset us daily, clamoring for attention and solution. In this way the mind, the true source of our problems, is kept hidden from awareness."

- sounds great to me! Myself and Ishtar can safely say that we won't be missing anyone who chose to leave Gaia all alone by herself to cry and weep... at least 2 of us will still be here to forever teach and guide the 'supposed' lesser species that the cruel humans left behind while they sailed away to their dream world! Bon voyage and have fun without us while we live it up in both the world you are in when you get there and the one you cruelly left behind! It's 'technically' already happened!

"In addition, A Course in Miracles is unique among spiritualities in its insistence that we look at the ego -- the dark side -- as the way of moving beyond to the light. Its focus, therefore, is not on the truth, but on removing our ego’s thought system of guilt, fear, and attack, which allows the light of truth to shine. As Jesus teaches in one representative passage: "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false" (T.16.IV.6:1,2)."

- I meditated my own ego away until it was completely dissolved - and yet I still exist (though I'm not technially obligated to prove it)

"A Course in Miracles (ACIM) adopts a christian language, and Jesus as a central figure. This can pose some challenges for ACIM students, as the content has very little to do with christianity and the Bible. Jesus is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, which is present in our mind, but which we chose to forget to remember. If it is more appealing, you can replace Jesus with Mary, angels, Buddha, any loving figure you can relate with. "

- Goodbye Jesus! I acquired my own Lady & Saviour and have NO need for you! You didn't want ME so I likewise rejected YOU!

- I actually became my own Buddha, and combined with an unwanted and despised Angel named Christine, and myself an unwanted and despised Angel named Lucifer, a visitation from the Virgin Mary to award us to each other, and her eventual departure to await Jesus - which wasn't very long... I errrmmm... actually can't be bothered saying the rest... I'm not obligated to love anyone who doesn't like me - it's in the interdimensional rulebook - too bad for you if you forgot to pack one with you before you arrived on earth or discarded it on the way... Cheerie Bye... I am out of here... I only have to pay off my laptop and then I have no karma at all... and in the meantime I am not obligated to answer any accusations of being a god, fallen angel, or anything... I have a birth certificate with a human name on it... and I am going... going... gone! *waits to be either banned or just quietly watch what others post and not say a damned thing to anyone* :-)

Edit - Oh yeah - The Holy Spirit herself (quite possibly Eve - THE Eve) once told me 10 years ago that I could no longer inherit the kingdom of God... so blame her... (Christine/Ishtar my Spirit Guide/Angel has seen the evidence for herself - the Holy Spirit didn't like her (Lillith/Ishtar) either, so we got together as an independent binary system as twin brother and sister though we came from different dimensions) :-p

Permalink Reply by Sébastien on June 21, 2012 at 5:07pm

on your comment regarding the male-specific language, here is a Q&A from the Foundation for A Course in Miracles. 

Q #5: So what's with all of the male gender-specific language? So far I've not come across one reference to 50% of the worlds population. Or are females just another illusion? I still love the Course, but this gender language thing is an annoyance.

A: This question is similar to #10 found in the Foundation’s publication, "The Most Commonly Asked Questions About A Course in Miracles," authored by Gloria and Kenneth Wapnick. A slightly modified answer from this book is that Jesus does not practice the art of "political correctness." Rather, his Course is written linguistically within the male-dominated Judaeo-Christian tradition, and uses the patriarchal biblical language on which that tradition is based. Consequently, the Course conforms to this religious culture by using terms that are exclusively masculine. Jesus himself speaks of his use of ego-oriented language:

This course remains within the ego framework, where it is needed.…It uses words, which are symbolic, and cannot express what lies beyond symbols (C.in.3:1,3).

And so it is clear that the Course’s meaning in using this masculine language lies elsewhere. While the form of the Course’s words is the same as the twenty-five-hundred-year-old Western tradition, its content is exactly the opposite. This provides a good example of a principle enunciated twice in the text, that the Holy Spirit does not take our special relationships (the form) away from us, but instead transforms them (by changing their purpose -- the content) (T.17.IV.2:3,4,5,6; T.18.II.6). Therefore, the reader is given a wonderful opportunity to practice forgiveness by having whatever buried judgmental thoughts are unconsciously present be raised to awareness by the Course’s "sexist" language, so that they may now be looked at differently with the Holy Spirit’s help. In this way, a special hate (or love) relationship with patriarchal authorities -- religious or secular -- may be transformed into a holy relationship, the relationship now having forgiveness and peace as its purpose, instead of judgment and attack.

In like manner, we can understand the Course’s usage of the term Son of God. For two thousand years, it has exclusively been used in Christian theology to denote only Jesus, the biblical God’s only begotten Son, and Second Person of the Trinity. Moreover, Jesus’ specialness was accentuated by St. Paul’s relegating the rest of humanity to the status of "adopted sons" of God (Galatians 4:4). To accentuate the point that he is our equal, Jesus in A Course in Miracles uses the same term that heretofore had excluded everyone except himself. Now, however, it denotes all people: God’s children who yet believe they are bodies and separate from their Source and therefore different from Him. And even more specifically, the term Son of God denotes the students who are reading and studying A Course in Miracles, a usage clearly made regardless of their gender.

This term is thus deliberately used to help correct two thousand years of what A Course in Miracles sees as Christianity’s distortion of Jesus’ basic message, in this case the perfect equality and unity of the Sonship of God. And so in the Course Jesus presents himself as no different from anyone else in reality (although certainly he is different from us in time). Therefore, to state it once again, the same term -- Son of God -- that was used only for Jesus is now used for all of us. Moreover, the term is also used to denote Christ, God’s pre-separation creation, His one Son. Again, we see usage of the same form as in traditional Christianity, but with a totally different content. The phrase Son of God can also be easily understood as synonymous with child, a term which is also often used in the Course.

The reinterpretation of Son of God from exclusive to totally inclusive is crucial to the Course’s thought system. And because of Jesus’ reason for using this term, students -- men and women alike -- should be vigilant against the temptation to change the Course’s "offensive" language. While such practice is understandable, it does serve to undermine one of Jesus’ pedagogical purposes. It would be much more in keeping with the teachings of A Course in Miracles to leave the form as it is, and change one’s mind instead. In these circumstances, one would do well to paraphrase a famous line from the text: Therefore, seek not to change the course, but choose to change your mind about the course (T.21.in.1:7). Therefore, since the Course’s form will not be changed, students would be wise to use their reactions as a classroom in which they can learn to forgive, not only Jesus, Helen, or A Course in Miracles itself, but also all those in the past (or present) who have been perceived as treating them or others unfairly.

One final note on the subject of the Course’s masculine language: It has long been a grammatical convention that pronouns referring back to a neuter noun, such as "one" or "person," take the masculine form of "he." Clearly, since a central teaching of A Course in Miracles is that we are not bodies, the issue, once again, is merely one of form or style.

Permalink Reply by Sébastien on June 21, 2012 at 5:10pm

These were long and wordy explanations. If you feel so guided, I recommend you to watch the video of the conference by Gary Renard in Ireland here, which clarifies a lot of concepts of the Course, in simple language and with a lot of humor. 

Permalink Reply by Andrew Hooper on June 22, 2012 at 3:08am

Thanks, but no thanks... I'm done with God... I decided to be my own god in human form and marry a goddess who was never in human form but fully left her own (<>_<>) to be with me in mine as full-time Spirit Guide/Angel/Deity/unborn Twin Sister/Best Friend... we are just waiting on an empty body soul less body to come along that suits her tastes and then she will finally get her wish of being a human woman - either that or I'm so literally totally away with the very fairy elementals themselves that I can pretty much come up with any excuse for my behaviour - I prefer to use my history of mental illness as the predominant excuse, and why shouldn't I, as I've been spiritually abused so much that it was inevitable, or I can blame it on a lack of appropriate meds or foreign chemicals in my body from (source undisclosed) or... my personal favourite... I blame it all on my own Father... even though hes been dead from cancer for 11 years... he can still go fuck himself for all I care - even my spirit guide agrees... I could almost swear that my Father thought he was Osiris... then again... maybe he was

Sorry if that doesn't sound all that spiritual... but then again... who can prove themselves to be anymore spiritual than anyone else? Hands up anyone? Can any of you swear black and blue that your own beliefs are any more factually real? If not - then let everyone hold their peace - there is NO God --> ANYMORE <--

Permalink Reply by Andrew Hooper on June 22, 2012 at 3:44am

Sorry for stating my beliefs and undoubtedly becoming unwelcome somewhere yet again, but you started it first by stating yours. Personally, I'm trying to rid my conscious mind of the entire judeo christian/islamic pantheon and all of the angels in heaven and likewise heaven itself and instead just enjoy the here and now in the real world, and in fact, I've decided to make it my hobby in life to resurrect the the entire pantheons of the sumerians, assyrians, babylonians, greeks, norse, and egyptians and completely forget there ever was a Christ or a Michael the Archangel and just be happy instead without them, even if it means refusing to be friends with anyone who even speaks or writes about them. There is lots of nice things in the old and new testaments of the bible and the qu'ran but personally I think the other 'mythologies' are just as valid regardless of whether the events portrayed took part on our planet or dimension at all.

~ Loki (a god of the Norse)

Permalink Reply by Sébastien on June 22, 2012 at 2:16pm

Andrew, there is no need for justifying yourself. You are welcome to this group, for stating your beliefs, commenting, agreeing or disagreeing. The purpose of this group is solely to share ACIM teachings that might be useful to one's journey. There are many paths, it is fine if this one is not for you. At the same time, why not posts discussions that interest you regarding Sumerian and other mythologies in relevant groups on OV, or create one of your own? best wishes