Here are some of the ACIM/Easter themes from the class today:
7. The Holy Spirit teaches thus: There is no hell. 2 Hell is only what the ego has made of the present. 3 The belief in hell is what prevents you from understanding the present, because you are afraid of it. 4 The Holy Spirit leads as steadily to Heaven as the ego drives to hell. 5 For the Holy Spirit, Who knows only the present, uses it to undo the fear by which the ego would make the present useless. 6 There is no escape from fear in the ego's use of time. 7 For time, according to its teaching, is nothing but a teaching device for compounding guilt until it becomes all-encompassing, demanding vengeance forever. T-15.I.8. The Holy Spirit would undo all of this now. 2 Fear is not of the present, but only of the past and future, which do not exist. p302 3 There is no fear in the present when each instant stands clear and separated from the past, without its shadow reaching out into the future. 4 Each instant is a clean, untarnished birth, in which the Son of God emerges from the past into the present. 5 And the present extends forever. 6 It is so beautiful and so clean and free of guilt that nothing but happiness is there. 7 No darkness is remembered, and immortality and joy are now. T-15.I.9. This lesson takes no time. 2 For what is time without a past and future? 3 It has taken time to misguide you so completely, but it takes no time at all to be what you are. 4 Begin to practice the Holy Spirit's use of time as a teaching aid to happiness and peace. 5 Take this very instant, now, and think of it as all there is of time. 6 Nothing can reach you here out of the past, and it is here that you are completely absolved, completely free and wholly without condemnation. 7 From this holy instant wherein holiness was born again you will go forth in time without fear, and with no sense of change with time. T-15.I.10. Time is inconceivable without change, yet holiness does not change. 2 Learn from this instant more than merely that hell does not exist. 3 In this redeeming instant lies Heaven
T-15.I.11. If you are tempted to be dispirited by thinking how long it would take to change your mind so completely, ask yourself, "How long is an instant?" 2 Could you not give so short a time to the Holy Spirit for your salvation? 3 He asks no more, for He has no need of more. 4 It takes far longer to teach you to be willing to give Him this than for Him to use this tiny instant to offer you the whole of Heaven. 5 In exchange for this instant He stands ready to give you the remembrance of eternity.
T-15.II.3. How long can it take to be where God would have you? 2 For you are where you have forever been and will forever be. 3 All that you have, you have forever. 4 The blessed instant reaches out to encompass time, as God extends Himself to encompass you. 5 You who have spent days, hours and even years in chaining your brothers to your ego in an attempt to support it and uphold its weakness, do not perceive the Source of strength. 6 In this holy instant you will unchain all your brothers, and refuse to support either their weakness or your own.
T-15.II.4. You do not realize how much you have misused your brothers by seeing them as sources of ego support.
13. Each day, and every minute in each day, and every instant that each minute holds, you but relive the single instant when the time of terror took the place of love. 2 And so you die each day to live again, until you cross the gap between the past and present, which is not a gap at all. 3 Such is each life; a seeming interval from birth to death and on to life again, a repetition of an instant gone by long ago that cannot be relived. 4 And all of time is but the mad belief that what is over is still here and now.
T-26.V.14. Forgive the past and let it go, for it is gone. 2 You stand no longer on the ground that lies between the worlds. 3 You have gone on, and reached the world that lies at Heaven's gate. 4 There is no hindrance to the Will of God, nor any need that you repeat again a journey that was over long ago. 5 Look gently on your brother, and behold the world in which perception of your hate has been transformed into a world of love. p553
III. Beyond All Idols T-30.III.1. Idols are quite specific. 2 But your will is universal, being limitless. 3 And so it has no form, nor is content for its expression in the terms of form. 4 Idols are limits. 5 They are the belief that there are forms that will bring happiness, and that, by limiting, is all attained. 6 It is as if you said, "I have no need of everything. 7 This little thing I want, and it will be as everything to me." 8 And this must fail to satisfy, because it is your will that everything be yours. 9 Decide for idols and you ask for loss. 10 Decide for truth and everything is yours.
LESSON 7.
I see only the past. W-7.1. This idea is particularly difficult to believe at first. 2 Yet it is the rationale for all of the preceding ones. 3 It is the reason why nothing that you see means anything. 4 It is the reason why you have given everything you see all the meaning that it has for you. 5 It is the reason why you do not understand anything you see. 6 It is the reason why your thoughts do not mean anything, and why they are like the things you see. 7 It is the reason why you are never upset for the reason you think. 8 It is the reason why you are upset because you see something that is not there. W-7.2. Old ideas about time are very difficult to change, because everything you believe is rooted in time, and depends on your not learning these new ideas about it. 2 Yet that is precisely why you need new ideas about time. 3 This first time idea is not really so strange as it may sound at first. W-7.3. Look at a cup, for example. 2 Do you see a cup, or are you merely reviewing your past experiences of picking up a cup, being thirsty, drinking from a cup, feeling the rim of a cup against your lips, having breakfast and so on? 3 Are not your aesthetic reactions to the cup, too, based on past experiences? 4 How else would you know whether or not this kind of cup will break if you drop it? 5 What do you know about this cup except what you learned in the past? 6 You would have no idea what this cup is, except for your past learning. 7 Do you, then, really see it? W-7.4. Look about you. 2 This is equally true of whatever you look at. 3 Acknowledge this by applying the idea for today indiscriminately to whatever catches your eye. 4 For example:
5 I see only the past in this pencil. 6 I see only the past in this shoe. 7 I see only the past in this hand. 8 I see only the past in that body. 9 I see only the past in that face.
W-7.5. Do not linger over any one thing in particular, but remember to omit nothing specifically. 2 Glance briefly at each subject, and then move on to the next. 3 Three or four practice periods, each to last a minute or so, will be enough.
LESSON 8.
My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts. W-8.1. This idea is, of course, the reason why you see only the past. 2 No one really sees anything. 3 He sees only his thoughts projected outward. 4 The mind's preoccupation with the past is the cause of the misconception about time from which your seeing suffers. 5 Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is. 6 It therefore cannot understand time, and cannot, in fact, understand anything. W-8.2. The one wholly true thought one can hold about the past is that it is not here. 2 To think about it at all is therefore to think about illusions. 3 Very few have realized what is actually entailed in picturing the past or in anticipating the future. 4 The mind is actually blank when it does this, because it is not really thinking about anything. W-8.3. The purpose of the exercises for today is to begin to train your mind to recognize when it is not really thinking at all. 2 While thoughtless ideas preoccupy your mind, the truth is blocked. 3 Recognizing that your mind has been merely blank, rather than believing that it is filled with real ideas, is the first step to opening the way to vision. W-8.4. The exercises for today should be done with eyes closed. 2 This is because you actually cannot see anything, and it is easier to recognize that no matter how vividly you may picture a thought, you are not seeing anything. 3 With as little investment as possible, search your mind for the usual minute or so, merely noting the thoughts you find there. 4 Name each one by the central figure or theme it contains, and pass on to the next. 5 Introduce the practice period by saying:
LESSON 75.
The light has come. W-75.1. The light has come. 2 You are healed and you can heal. 3 The light has come. 4 You are saved and you can save. 5 You are at peace, and you bring peace with you wherever you go. 6 Darkness and turmoil and death have disappeared. 7 The light has come. W-75.2. Today we celebrate the happy ending to your long dream of disaster. 2 There are no dark dreams now. 3 The light has come. 4 Today the time of light begins for you and everyone. 5 It is a new era, in which a new world is born. 6 The old one has left no trace upon it in its passing. 7 Today we see a different world, because the light has come. W-75.3. Our exercises for today will be happy ones, in which we offer thanks for the passing of the old and the beginning of the new. 2 No shadows from the past remain to darken our sight and hide the world forgiveness offers us. 3 Today we will accept the new world as what we want to see. 4 We will be given what we desire. 5 We will to see the light; the light has come. W-75.4. Our longer practice periods will be devoted to looking at the world that our forgiveness shows us. 2 This is what we want to see, and only this. 3 Our single purpose makes our goal inevitable. 4 Today the real world rises before us in gladness, to be seen at last. 5 Sight is given us, now that the light has come. W-75.5. We do not want to see the ego's shadow on the world today. 2 We see the light, and in it we see Heaven's reflection lie across the world. 3 Begin the longer practice periods by telling yourself the glad tidings of your release:
4 The light has come. 5 I have forgiven the world.
W-75.6. Dwell not upon the past today. 2 Keep a completely open mind, washed of all past ideas and clean of every concept you have made. 3 You have forgiven the world today. 4 You can look upon it now as if you never saw it before. 5 You do not know yet what it looks like. 6 You merely wait to have it shown to you. 7 While you wait, repeat several times, slowly and in complete patience:
8 The light has come. 9 I have forgiven the world.
1 Comments:
Here are some of the ACIM/Easter themes from the class today:
7. The Holy Spirit teaches thus: There is no hell. 2 Hell is only what the ego has made of the present. 3 The belief in hell is what prevents you from understanding the present, because you are afraid of it. 4 The Holy Spirit leads as steadily to Heaven as the ego drives to hell. 5 For the Holy Spirit, Who knows only the present, uses it to undo the fear by which the ego would make the present useless. 6 There is no escape from fear in the ego's use of time. 7 For time, according to its teaching, is nothing but a teaching device for compounding guilt until it becomes all-encompassing, demanding vengeance forever.
T-15.I.8. The Holy Spirit would undo all of this now. 2 Fear is not of the present, but only of the past and future, which do not exist. p302 3 There is no fear in the present when each instant stands clear and separated from the past, without its shadow reaching out into the future. 4 Each instant is a clean, untarnished birth, in which the Son of God emerges from the past into the present. 5 And the present extends forever. 6 It is so beautiful and so clean and free of guilt that nothing but happiness is there. 7 No darkness is remembered, and immortality and joy are now.
T-15.I.9. This lesson takes no time. 2 For what is time without a past and future? 3 It has taken time to misguide you so completely, but it takes no time at all to be what you are. 4 Begin to practice the Holy Spirit's use of time as a teaching aid to happiness and peace. 5 Take this very instant, now, and think of it as all there is of time. 6 Nothing can reach you here out of the past, and it is here that you are completely absolved, completely free and wholly without condemnation. 7 From this holy instant wherein holiness was born again you will go forth in time without fear, and with no sense of change with time.
T-15.I.10. Time is inconceivable without change, yet holiness does not change. 2 Learn from this instant more than merely that hell does not exist. 3 In this redeeming instant lies Heaven
T-15.I.11. If you are tempted to be dispirited by thinking how long it would take to change your mind so completely, ask yourself, "How long is an instant?" 2 Could you not give so short a time to the Holy Spirit for your salvation? 3 He asks no more, for He has no need of more. 4 It takes far longer to teach you to be willing to give Him this than for Him to use this tiny instant to offer you the whole of Heaven. 5 In exchange for this instant He stands ready to give you the remembrance of eternity.
T-15.II.3. How long can it take to be where God would have you? 2 For you are where you have forever been and will forever be. 3 All that you have, you have forever. 4 The blessed instant reaches out to encompass time, as God extends Himself to encompass you. 5 You who have spent days, hours and even years in chaining your brothers to your ego in an attempt to support it and uphold its weakness, do not perceive the Source of strength. 6 In this holy instant you will unchain all your brothers, and refuse to support either their weakness or your own.
T-15.II.4. You do not realize how much you have misused your brothers by seeing them as sources of ego support.
13. Each day, and every minute in each day, and every instant that each minute holds, you but relive the single instant when the time of terror took the place of love. 2 And so you die each day to live again, until you cross the gap between the past and present, which is not a gap at all. 3 Such is each life; a seeming interval from birth to death and on to life again, a repetition of an instant gone by long ago that cannot be relived. 4 And all of time is but the mad belief that what is over is still here and now.
T-26.V.14. Forgive the past and let it go, for it is gone. 2 You stand no longer on the ground that lies between the worlds. 3 You have gone on, and reached the world that lies at Heaven's gate. 4 There is no hindrance to the Will of God, nor any need that you repeat again a journey that was over long ago. 5 Look gently on your brother, and behold the world in which perception of your hate has been transformed into a world of love. p553
III. Beyond All Idols
T-30.III.1. Idols are quite specific. 2 But your will is universal, being limitless. 3 And so it has no form, nor is content for its expression in the terms of form. 4 Idols are limits. 5 They are the belief that there are forms that will bring happiness, and that, by limiting, is all attained. 6 It is as if you said, "I have no need of everything. 7 This little thing I want, and it will be as everything to me." 8 And this must fail to satisfy, because it is your will that everything be yours. 9 Decide for idols and you ask for loss. 10 Decide for truth and everything is yours.
LESSON 7.
I see only the past.
W-7.1. This idea is particularly difficult to believe at first. 2 Yet it is the rationale for all of the preceding ones.
3 It is the reason why nothing that you see means anything.
4 It is the reason why you have given everything you see all the meaning that it has for you.
5 It is the reason why you do not understand anything you see.
6 It is the reason why your thoughts do not mean anything, and why they are like the things you see.
7 It is the reason why you are never upset for the reason you think.
8 It is the reason why you are upset because you see something that is not there.
W-7.2. Old ideas about time are very difficult to change, because everything you believe is rooted in time, and depends on your not learning these new ideas about it. 2 Yet that is precisely why you need new ideas about time. 3 This first time idea is not really so strange as it may sound at first.
W-7.3. Look at a cup, for example. 2 Do you see a cup, or are you merely reviewing your past experiences of picking up a cup, being thirsty, drinking from a cup, feeling the rim of a cup against your lips, having breakfast and so on? 3 Are not your aesthetic reactions to the cup, too, based on past experiences? 4 How else would you know whether or not this kind of cup will break if you drop it? 5 What do you know about this cup except what you learned in the past? 6 You would have no idea what this cup is, except for your past learning. 7 Do you, then, really see it?
W-7.4. Look about you. 2 This is equally true of whatever you look at. 3 Acknowledge this by applying the idea for today indiscriminately to whatever catches your eye. 4 For example:
5 I see only the past in this pencil.
6 I see only the past in this shoe.
7 I see only the past in this hand.
8 I see only the past in that body.
9 I see only the past in that face.
W-7.5. Do not linger over any one thing in particular, but remember to omit nothing specifically. 2 Glance briefly at each subject, and then move on to the next. 3 Three or four practice periods, each to last a minute or so, will be enough.
LESSON 8.
My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts.
W-8.1. This idea is, of course, the reason why you see only the past. 2 No one really sees anything. 3 He sees only his thoughts projected outward. 4 The mind's preoccupation with the past is the cause of the misconception about time from which your seeing suffers. 5 Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is. 6 It therefore cannot understand time, and cannot, in fact, understand anything.
W-8.2. The one wholly true thought one can hold about the past is that it is not here. 2 To think about it at all is therefore to think about illusions. 3 Very few have realized what is actually entailed in picturing the past or in anticipating the future. 4 The mind is actually blank when it does this, because it is not really thinking about anything.
W-8.3. The purpose of the exercises for today is to begin to train your mind to recognize when it is not really thinking at all. 2 While thoughtless ideas preoccupy your mind, the truth is blocked. 3 Recognizing that your mind has been merely blank, rather than believing that it is filled with real ideas, is the first step to opening the way to vision.
W-8.4. The exercises for today should be done with eyes closed. 2 This is because you actually cannot see anything, and it is easier to recognize that no matter how vividly you may picture a thought, you are not seeing anything. 3 With as little investment as possible, search your mind for the usual minute or so, merely noting the thoughts you find there. 4 Name each one by the central figure or theme it contains, and pass on to the next. 5 Introduce the practice period by saying:
LESSON 75.
The light has come.
W-75.1. The light has come. 2 You are healed and you can heal. 3 The light has come. 4 You are saved and you can save. 5 You are at peace, and you bring peace with you wherever you go. 6 Darkness and turmoil and death have disappeared. 7 The light has come.
W-75.2. Today we celebrate the happy ending to your long dream of disaster. 2 There are no dark dreams now. 3 The light has come. 4 Today the time of light begins for you and everyone. 5 It is a new era, in which a new world is born. 6 The old one has left no trace upon it in its passing. 7 Today we see a different world, because the light has come.
W-75.3. Our exercises for today will be happy ones, in which we offer thanks for the passing of the old and the beginning of the new. 2 No shadows from the past remain to darken our sight and hide the world forgiveness offers us. 3 Today we will accept the new world as what we want to see. 4 We will be given what we desire. 5 We will to see the light; the light has come.
W-75.4. Our longer practice periods will be devoted to looking at the world that our forgiveness shows us. 2 This is what we want to see, and only this. 3 Our single purpose makes our goal inevitable. 4 Today the real world rises before us in gladness, to be seen at last. 5 Sight is given us, now that the light has come.
W-75.5. We do not want to see the ego's shadow on the world today. 2 We see the light, and in it we see Heaven's reflection lie across the world. 3 Begin the longer practice periods by telling yourself the glad tidings of your release:
4 The light has come. 5 I have forgiven the world.
W-75.6. Dwell not upon the past today. 2 Keep a completely open mind, washed of all past ideas and clean of every concept you have made. 3 You have forgiven the world today. 4 You can look upon it now as if you never saw it before. 5 You do not know yet what it looks like. 6 You merely wait to have it shown to you. 7 While you wait, repeat several times, slowly and in complete patience:
8 The light has come. 9 I have forgiven the world.
Post a Comment
<< Home