Nothing

It takes great learning both to realize and to accept that the world has nothing to give.
- Ken Wapnick

Proactive forgiveness

I believe in proactive forgiveness. :)

For instance, today I noticed a hint of shame in my thinking. Now, seeing as how, as a human being, I don't have all that much to be ashamed of (comparatively:), I had assumed that I did not have much shame. But when I started to just look at it with the HS, it turned out I had loads! It just ballooned and ballooned. It was not easy, but I like confronting things. And I get the impression that I got a good ways towards defusing something today.

Retaliation

If retaliation worked, then countries which retaliate would be more safe.

From The Disappearance Of The Universe

New eyes

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -- Marcel Proust

Remarkably this is the key to almost any progress, even progress which leads to God. This is profound.
It is not what you do, it's how you think.

Life in a computer

It is funny how the HS has all kinds of ways of telling us the world is made up.

Shifting minds

For some reason it suddenly seems clearer to me:

You have two minds. One is the little human one, the ego mind. It is a robot and believes in conflict.
The other one is the Big Mind. It is outside the universe and knows the universe is not real. (It is solely a construct of the Mind believing in it.)

The way to freedom is the deliberate shifting from the first mind to the second one.

"Exorcising" the body

Finally in my middle age, I've started to "exorcise".
The thought occurred to me that this would amount to focusing on the body, thus making it real.
But heaven knows it's real enough already. And I find that exercising is forcing me to focus on the body, and so nudging me to forgive it a lot more than I've been doing.

Of course the reason I've been grossly neglecting the body is not just that I'm only interested in the spirit, as I've been telling myself, but that I have/had a profound resentment towards it. And of course I need to work through this. Resentment is the epitome of not-forgiven.

Forgiveness and emotion

I said:
"The essence of forgiveness is just looking at the ego."

And Laurie commented:
I really like that. I had a bit of difficulty with the emphasis on "forgiveness" in ACIM at first because I grew up in a false notion of forgiveness and was seeped in it. I had an alcoholic parent who verbally abused the lot of us, and I, a good Christian girl, just kept forgiving her, going back to her with open heart and warmth, and kept getting pounded emotionally. My "forgiveness" was based on feelings, thinking I had to "love" my enemy through warm fuzzy feelings. But now, I'm learning that true forgiveness has little to do with feelings of "love", and nothing at all to do with what appears "out there" -- it has to do with looking at the Truth, looking calmly at ego, and all the false images and beliefs fade away. i.e. "I am being hurt", i.e. "I have to love this person". Love is already and always present.
True forgiveness is seeing rightly, it is not an emotion.

Quite right. Ken Wapnick writes:
"It is possible to be free of judgment (condemnation and anger) toward another person, yet still not trust his ego -- egos are not trustworthy."

Being healthy

"The psychologically healthy may have reached a compromise with the world that allows them to function with some degree of satisfaction, as well as a certain level of acceptance of their personal and the world's limitations But there is a quiet desperation that must lie beneath the surface, for life in the world is like a house of cards, always on the verge of falling apart"

-- fACIM FAQ #836

Owning insults

"If someone offers you a gift, and you decline to accept it, the other person still owns that gift. The same is true of insults and verbal attacks."
-- Steve Pavlina

Only you can attack yourself. Only you exist.

Just looking

The Disappearance Of The Universe taught me almost all the essentials about ACIM, making the entry into the philosophy wonderfully easy.
One thing I feel is missing though, is a thing I learned from Ken Wapnick:

The essence of forgiveness is just looking at the ego.
Just looking, without guilt or fear.
Or looking with the holy spirit, if you will.
The ego can't look at itself.
This must be why therapy works sometimes. If you're really looking, you must be looking with the holy spirit.

It can be applied to anything. Anytime you are not 100% peaceful and happy (and how many of us are thus most of the time?) just look at what's happening and what you're feeling and thinking about it. Just look, without judgement, without fear.

For example today I was watching a documentary about police and vigilantism. And I was getting all upset about how people were conned into the idea that only the selected forces in society has any right to use force. Then they showed a governor who a long time ago went on TV and spoke supportively of a mob who had lynched two kidnappers/murderers. And I got all upset about this idiot. I suddenly noticed that I had seamlessly changed viewpoint 180º within seconds! Total ego thinking.

And just by watching this and not judging it, I have defused the ego thinking a little bit more.