Map Of Consciousness: 

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ACIM ideas to play with:

The world would be completely changed, should any  two agree these words (I want peace of unified awareness) express the only thing they want. Two minds with one intent become so strong that what they will becomes the Will of unified awareness.

For minds can only join in truth. In dreams, no two can share the same intent. To each, the hero of the dream is different; the outcome wanted not the same for both. Loser and gainer merely shift about in changing patterns, as the ratio of gain to loss and loss to gain takes on a different aspect or another form.

Yet compromise alone a dream can bring. Sometimes it takes the form of union, but only the form. The meaning must escape the dream, for compromising is the goal of dreaming.

Minds cannot unite in dreaming. They merely bargain.   Pg.348

Knowledge is not the remedy  for  false perception since, being another level,  they can never meet.   Pg85

Miracles rearrange perception and  place all levels in true perspective.  This is  healing because sickness comes from confusing the levels.   Pg. 4 

In this world the only remaining freedom is the freedom of choice;  always between two choices or two voices.

Will is not involved in perception at any level, and has nothing to do with choice.

Consciousness  is the receptive mechanism,  receiving  messages from above  or below;  from the Holy Spirit  or  the ego (form-identified self-definition).

Consciousness has levels and awareness can shift quite dramatically,  but it cannot  transcend the perceptual realm.

At its highest  it  becomes aware of  the real world,  and can be trained to do so increasingly.  Yet the very fact that is has levels and can be trained demonstrates that it cannot reach knowledge.   Pg.80

Why should the body be anything to you ?

Certainly what it is made of is not precious.  And just as certainly  it has no feeling.  

It  transmits to you the feeling that  you want.  

Like any communication medium the body receives and sends the messages that  it is given.

It has no feeling for  them.  

All the feeling  with which they are invested  is given by the sender and  the receiver. 

The ego and the Holy Spirit (awareness-based)  both recognize this, and both also recognize that  here the sender and receiver are the same. 

The Holy Spirit tells you  this with joy.

The ego hides it,  for it  would keep  you unaware  of it.  

Who would send messages of hatred and attack  if he but  understood  he sends them to himself? 

Who would accuse,  make guilty and condemn himself?    Pg415

Those who see themselves as whole make no demands.    Pg.56

In the holy instant the condition of  love  is met,  for  minds are joined  without the body's interference,  and where there  is  communication  there  is  peace.     Pg328

The miracle does nothing.  All it does is to undo.

And thus it cancels out the interference to what has been done.

It does not add, but merely takes away. And what it takes away is long since gone, but being kept in memory appears to have immediate effects.

This world was over long ago.

The  thoughts that made it  are no longer in the mind that thought of them and loved them for a little while.

The miracle but shows the past is gone, and what has truly gone has no effects.

Why would you cling to a memory  if you did not desire its effects?

Remembering is as selective as perception,  being its past tense.

It is perception of the past  as if  it were  occurring now, and still were there to see.

Memory, like perception, is  a skill made up by you.

You are so long accustomed to believe that  memory holds only  what is past, that it is hard for you to realize it is a skill that  can remember now  (presence of  wholeness).

The limitations on remembering the world (foreground) imposes on it are as vast as those  you let  the world impose  on you.

There is no link of memory to the past.

Memory holds the message it receives, and does what it is given it to do.

It does not write the message,  nor appoint what it is for.

Like the body, it is purposeless within itself.

And if it seems to serve to cherish ancient hate,  and gives you pictures of injustices and hurts that you were saving,  this is  what you asked its message be and that it is.

Committed to its vaults, the history of all the body’s past is hidden there.  All of the strange associations made to keep the past alive,  the present dead,  are stored within it, waiting your command that they be brought to you, and lived again.

Yet time is but  another  phase of  what does nothing.

It works hand in hand with all the other attributes with which you seek to keep concealed the truth about yourself.

Time neither takes away nor can restore. (time does not devalue anything)

And yet you make strange use of it,  as if  the past had caused the present,  which is but a consequence in which no change can be made possible because its cause has gone.

Yet change must have a cause that will endure, or else it will not last.

No change can be made in the present if its cause is past.

Only the past is held in memory as you make use of it, and so it is a way to hold the past against the now  (imagination  taking place of awareness).

Remember nothing that you taught yourself,  for you were badly taught.

And who would keep a senseless lesson in his mind, when he can learn and can preserve a better one?

When ancient memories of hate appear, remember that their cause is gone. And so you cannot understand what they are for.

What you remember never was.  It came from  causelessness  which you confused  with cause.

It can deserve but laughter, when you learn you have remembered consequences that were causeless and could never be effects.

The miracle reminds you of   a Cause forever present,  perfectly untouched by time and interference.

Never changed from what It is.

And  you are Its Effect,  as changeless  and as perfect as Itself.

Its memory does not lie in the past, nor waits the future.

It is not revealed in miracles. They but remind you that It has not gone.

When you forgive It for  your mistakes, It will no longer be denied.

In quietness, see in the miracle a lesson in allowing Cause to have Its Own Effects, and doing nothing that would interfere.       Pg 590-1

“I am responsible for what I see. I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide upon the goal I would achieve. And everything that seems to happen to me I ask for, and receive as I have asked.”    Pg 448

This Christmas (or this day)  give the Holy Spirit everything that would hurt you (all thoughts that just thinking them weakens you).   Let yourself be healed completely that you may join with Him in healing,  and let us celebrate our release together by releasing everyone with us.     Pg327

Projection makes perception.

The world you see  is  what  you gave it,  nothing more than that.

But though it is no more than that, it is not less. Therefore, to you it is important.

It is the witness to your state of mind,  the outside picture of  an inward condition.

As a man thinks, so does he perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world.  Perception is a result and not a cause.

The world you see but shows you how much  joy  you have allowed yourself  to see  in you, and to accept as yours. 

And, if  this is  its meaning, then the power to give it joy must lie within.

Never forget the world the sightless “see” must be imagined, for what it really looks like is  unknown to them.

They must infer what could be seen from evidence forever indirect; and reconstruct their inferences as they stumble and fall  because of what they did not recognize.    Pg445

The mind is very powerful, and never loses its creative force.

It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating.

It is hard to recognize that  thought and  belief combine into  a power surge that can literally move mountains.

It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is arrogant, but that is not the real reason you do not believe it.

You prefer to believe that your thoughts cannot exert real influence because you are actually afraid of them.

This may allay awareness of the guilt,  but  at the cost of perceiving the mind as impotent.  If you believe that what  you think is ineffectual  you may cease to be afraid of it,  but you are hardly likely to respect it. 

There are no idle thoughts. 

All thinking  produces form at some level.   Pg31

There is a confusion here that you would do well to look at clearly.  You may believe that you are responsible for what you do,  but not for what you think. 

The truth is that  you are responsible for what you think, because it is only  at this level that  you can exercise choice. 

What you do comes from what you think.   Pg29

It should be emphasized that the body does not learn any more that it creates.  As a learning device it merely follows the learner,  but if it is falsely endowed with  self-initiative,  it becomes a serious obstruction to the very learning it should facilitate. 

Only the mind is capable of  illumination.  Spirit is already illuminated and the body in itself is too  dense (vibrating mass).

The mind, however, can bring its illumination to the body  by recognizing  that  it is not  the learner, and is therefore  unamenable to learning. 

The body is,  however,  easily brought into alignment with a mind  that has learned  to  look  beyond  it  toward  the light.   Pg26

The term mind  is used to represent  the activating agent of spirit, supplying its  creative energy. 

The mind  can be right or wrong,  depending on the voice to which  it listens  (awareness level; spirit or ego).   Pg79

There is no need to  learn  through  pain.

The blind become accustomed to their world by their adjustment to it.  They  think  they  know  their way about  in it. 

They learned it, not through  joyous lessons,  but through the stern necessity of  limits  they believed they  could not overcome. 

And still believing this,  they  hold  those lessons dear, and cling to them because they cannot see.

They do  not understand  the lessons  keep  them  blind.

This they do not believe. 

And so they keep  the world  they learned to "see"   in their imagination,  believing  that their choice is  that or nothing. 

They hate the world they learned  through pain.  And everything they think is in it  serves to remind  them that  they are  incomplete  and bitterly deprived.    Pg.446

Beyond the body,  beyond the sun and stars,  past everything you see and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of  golden light that stretches as  you look into a great and shining circle.  And all the circle fills with light before your eyes. The edges of the circle disappear, and  what is in it  is no longer contained at all. 

The light expands and covers everything,  extending to  infinity forever shining and with no break or limit anywhere.  Within it  everything is joined in  perfect continuity.

Nor is it possible to imagine that anything could be outside,  for  there  is nowhere that this light  is not.   Pg. 447

Can you  find light  by analyzing darkness, as the psychotherapist does, or like the theologian,  by acknowledging darkness  in yourself and looking for a distant light  to remove it,  while emphasizing the distance?

Healing is not mysterious. Nothing will change unless it is understood, since  light  is  understanding.        Pg.172

It seems to  you that  Holy Spirit  (Soul) does not  produce  joy consistently  in  you only because  you do not consistently arouse joy  in others.

Their reactions to you are  your evaluations of  His  (Holy Spirit)  consistency.  When  you are inconsistent  you will not always give rise to joy,  and so  you  will not always recognize His consistency.

What  you offer  to your brother you offer  to Holy Spirit ,  because He cannot go beyond  your offering  in His giving.

This is not because He limits His giving,  but simply because  you have limited   your receiving.      Pg.173

The simplest level of teaching appears to be quite superficial.  It consists of what seems to be very casual encounters;  a “chance” meeting of two apparent strangers in an elevator,  a child who is not looking where he is going running into an adult  “by chance,”  two students “happening” to walk home together.  These are not chance encounters.

Each of them has the potential for becoming a teaching-learning situation.  Perhaps the seeming strangers in the elevator will smile to one another, perhaps the adult will not scold the child for bumping into him; perhaps the students will become friends.

Even at the level of the most casual encounter,  it is possible for  two people to  lose sight of separate interests,  if only for a moment.   That moment will  be enough.

Each teaching-learning situation is maximal in the sense that each person involved will learn the most that he can  from the other person at that time.  In this sense, and in this sense only,  we can speak of levels of teaching.

Using the term in this way,  the second level of teaching is a more sustained relationship,  in which, for a time,  two people enter into a fairly intense teaching-learning situation and then appear to separate.   As with the first level,  these meetings are not accidental,  nor is what appears to be the end  of the relationship  a real end.  

Again, each has  learned the most  he can at the time.

Yet  all  who meet  will someday  meet again, for it  is the destiny of  all relationships  to  become holy.

The third level of teaching occurs in relationships which, once they are formed, are life-long.  These are teaching-learning situations in which each person is given a chosen learning partner who presents him with  unlimited opportunities for learning.

These relationships are generally few, because their existence implies that those involved have reached a stage simultaneously in which the teaching-learning  balance is actually perfect.  This does not mean that they necessarily recognize this;  in fact, they generally do not.  They may even be quite hostile to each other for some time, and perhaps for life.

Yet should they decide to learn it,  the perfect lesson is before them and can be learned.   pg8 (MFT)

When  you meet  anyone, remember it is a holy encounter.  As you see him  you will see yourself. 

As you treat  him  you will treat yourself. 

As  you  think of  him  you will think of  yourself.

Never  forget  this,  for  in him  you will  find  yourself  or  lose  yourself.   Pg.142

You see  the flesh  or recognize  the spirit. 

There is no compromise between the two.  If  one is real  the other must be false, for what is real denies its opposite.

There is no choice in vision but this one.

What  you decide in this  determines all  you see and think is real and hold as true.

On this one choice does all  your world depend,  for here have  you established  what you are,  as flesh or spirit   in  your own  belief.  

If  you choose  flesh,  you never will escape the body as your own reality,  for you have chosen that   you want  it so.

If you choose  to see the body,  you behold  a world of  separation, unrelated things,  and happenings that make  no sense at all.  

This one appears and disappears in death; that one is doomed to suffering and loss.  And no one is exactly as he was an instant previous,  nor will he be the same as he is now an instance hence.  Who could have trust where so much change is seen,  for who is  worthy  if  he  be but  dust?    Pg.660

You can see the body without help,  but do not understand how to behold a world apart from it.  It is your world forgiveness will undo,  and let you see another world your  eyes could never find.

Be not concerned how  this could ever be.   You do not understand  how what you see  arose to meet  your sight.

 For  if  you did,  it would be gone.  

The veil of  ignorance is drawn across the evil and the good,  and must be passed that both may disappear, so that  perception finds no  hiding place. 

Are you  invulnerable?  Then the world  is harmless  in your sight.

Do you forgive?  Then is the world forgiving,  for you have forgiven it its trespasses,  and so it looks  on you  with eyes  that  see as yours.

Are you a body?  So is all the world perceived as treacherous, and out to kill.

Are you a spirit,  deathless,  and  without the promise of corruption and the stain of sin (absence of love)  upon you? 

So the world  is seen as  stable,  fully worthy of  your trust;  a happy place to rest in for a while,  where  nothing need  be feared,  but only loved.   Pg.661

The world can teach no  images of you  unless you want  (your choice is your power)  to learn  them.

There will come a time when images have all gone by,  and you will see  you know not what you are.  It is to this unsealed and  open mind  that truth returns, unhindered and unbound. 

Where concepts of the self have been laid by is truth  revealed  exactly as it is.

When every concept has been raised to doubt and question, and been recognized as made on no assumptions  that would stand  the light (awareness),  then is  the truth  left free  to enter  in its sanctuary, clean and free of guilt. 

There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this:

               I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know

               What I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon

               The world or on myself.

What you are  will tell you of  Itself.    Pg.660

The past becomes the justification for entering into a continuing, unholy alliance with the ego (incomplete self) against the present.

For the present is forgiveness.

Therefore, the relationships the unholy alliance dictates are not perceived nor felt as now.

Yet  the frame of reference  to which  the present is referred for meaning  is an illusion of the past,  in which those elements that fit the purpose of the unholy alliance are retained, and all the rest let go.

And what is thus let go is all the truth the past could ever offer to the present as witnesses for its reality. What is kept but witnesses to the reality of dreams.

It is still up to you to choose to join with truth or with illusion.

But remember that to choose one is to let the other go. Which one you choose you will endow with beauty and reality, because the choice depends on which you value more.

The spark of beauty or the veil of ugliness, the real world or the world of guilt and fear, truth or illusion, freedom or slavery – it is all the same.

Thought systems are true or false, and all their attributes come simply from what they are.

Your brothers were not created to enable you  to hurt yourself  through them.

They were created to create with you.    Pg357

The ego (fear-based) is always alert to threat, and the part of your mind into which the ego was accepted  is very anxious to preserve its reason, as it sees it.

It does not realize that it is totally insane.

And you must realize just what this means if you would be restored to sanity.

The insane protect their thought systems, but they do so insanely.  And all their defenses are as insane as what they are supposed to protect.

You have but little difficulty now in realizing that the thought system the special relationship protects (a form of front end interference) is but a system of delusions.

You recognize, at least in general term, that the ego is insane. Yet the special relationship still seems to you somehow to be “different.”

While this thought system remains, you will not let the others go. For this one is not different.

Retain this one, and you have retained the whole.

It is essential to realize that all defenses do  what they would defend. The underlying basis for their effectiveness is that  they offer what they defend.

What they defend is placed in them for safe-keeping, and as they operate they bring it to you.

Every defense operates by giving gifts, and the gifts are always a miniature of the thought system (program, belief)  the defense protects, set in a golden frame.   

Look at the picture.  Do not let the frame distract you.

This gift is given you for your damnation, and if you take it  you will believe  that you are damned.     Pg 359

In this world it is impossible to create. Yet it is possible to make happy.   Pg.358

The holy instant is a miniature of Heaven (awareness-based experience), sent you from Heaven.

The holy instant is a miniature of eternity.

It is a picture of timelessness, set in a frame of time.      Pg.360

You  who have not yet brought all of the darkness you have taught yourself into the light in you, can hardly judge the truth and value of this course.

Pg. 297

Do not be concerned about how you can learn a lesson so completely different from what you have taught yourself.

How would you know?

Your part is very simple. You need only to recognize that everything you learned you do not want.

Ask to be taught, and do not use your experiences to confirm what you have learned.

When your peace is threatened or disturbed in any way, say to yourself:

            I do not know what anything, including this, means.

            And so I do not know how to respond to it.

            And I will not use my own past learning as the light to guide me now.

How can you, so firmly bound to guilt and committed so to remain, establish for yourself your guiltlessness?

That is impossible. But be sure that you are willing to acknowledge that it is impossible.

It is only because you think that you can run some little part, or deal with certain aspects of your life alone, that the guidance of the Holy Spirit (Back end) is limited.

Thus would you make Him undependable, and use this fancied undependability as an excuse for keeping certain dark lessons from Him.

And so by limiting the guidance that you would accept, you are unable to depend on miracles to answer all your problems for you.

Do you think that what the Holy Spirit would have you give He would withhold from you?

You have no problems that He cannot solve by offering you a miracle.

Miracles are for you. And every fear or pain or trial you have has been undone.

He has brought all of them to light, having accepted them instead of you, and recognized they never were.

There are no dark lessons He has not already lightened for you.

The lessons you would teach yourself He has corrected already.

They do not exist in His Mind at all.

For the past binds Him not, and therefore binds not you.

He does not see time as you do.

And each miracle He offers you corrects your use of time, and makes it His.

He Who has freed you from the past would teach you are free of it.     Pg.299

It does not matter if another thinks your gifts are unworthy.

It does not matter if your gifts seem lost and ineffectual.

They are received where they are given.   377

Freedom must be impossible

As long as you perceive a body as yourself.

The body is a limit.    382

 GIVING UP ILLNESS THROUGH A COURSE IN MIRACLES 

  by David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. :

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