A Course in Miracles Monk

[1:52pm] Had a very healing meeting with Ken this morning. We sat outside for it, and just as we got to the crux of the matter, a rabbit ran by (previous posts will explain the significance). Symbols are nice, but I’ll take what happened during our meeting any day; namely, releasing thoughts of guilt and fear. The latter moves you up the ladder, above the brier patch.

The latest Ken Wapnick YouTube video is now embedded in the sidebar section bearing his name. (The sidebar is the right-hand column.) Each time he adds a new video, the one in my sidebar will be updated. The latest clip is titled God Themes.

As usual, I will get home late tonight, so will post today’s notes tomorrow. However, I will post them under this the June 16th post for the sake of continuity.

[11:48pm] Arrived home at 11:22pm. The drive took 5 hours 33 minutes. It began in the sun, showered in the mountains, and ended in the dark. “Lobby notes” coming tomorrow afternoon.

[The Next Day, 3:10pm] Straight from the cozy confines of the lobby… Class Notes: Day 3, The Neutral World

• Implications of a neutral world: It means nothing here has meaning or value, and any meaning it seems to have can only come from the mind. It means that anything that attracts or repulses you in the world can’t come from the world, it must come from the mind’s decision.

• If I don’t know I have a mind I can’t change my mind, and if I can’t change my mind my original and ongoing decision for the ego is upheld. The value of the world, then, is to monitor our feelings and projections, whether they are positive or negative.

• All great works of art must also be neutral. If you have an experience of beauty, or you are moved, it was because you made a decision to be in your right mind, and not knowing I am a mind, my mind translates the decision into form. The problem is when we think it’s the form we love; it’s the triumph of form over content. Instead of a means to get back to the love in your mind, it becomes an idol — a substitute for the true beauty of love that is within us. The right-minded value of anything is that it leads us back to the mind. If we don’t use it to get back to the mind it becomes just another special relationship.

• Everything of itself is meaningless because I have given it all the meaning it has for me.

• What is meaningful to the ego is differences.

• The  world is a pictorial representation of our attack thoughts, so the pictorial representation is not the problem, it’s the attack thoughts.

• There is nothing holy or unholy about any form or behavior in this world. Even murder or rape are not unholy, it’s the thought system they come from.

• Whatever you push down (guilt) you push out (project).

• The problem is not what behavior is, but which thought system I have chosen. So the value of monitoring your thoughts is seeing which teacher you’ve chosen so you can correct a choice that has hurt you.

• When you are in your wrong mind you see yourself in a prison cell called a body and a penitentiary called the world.

• The world is neutral because everything comes from your mind.

• Regarding marriage: That person is not better than other people; that person is just a part of your script. If you are attracted to someone or something and you see it with the Holy Spirit then you can see it as part of your classroom. When you see it from the ego, you judge those who are different. We make choices, but the choices don’t have to be attacks.

• Move from the differences in the world to the sameness in our mind.

• What we forgive is our misperceptions that we are different. And there’s one core difference: sin and holiness, guilt and innocence. The core difference is you are the sinner and I am the sinned against.

• We’re at war with everyone here because we think we’re at war with God.

• The world is neutral because the mind is neutral, and the mind is neutral because it has choice. (Once it chooses it’s not neutral anymore. ) That’s where Jesus wants us to be all the time — to know that we could choose.

• Practice: to watch how you go throughout the day judging, whether it’s positive or negative. Our happiness does not depend on another person so it’s very helpful to see how quickly we give it away, and it’s my mind that has given it away. Watch how quickly you ascribe how you feel to your body. Just notice, without judgment, what you are doing, its purpose, and cost.

• A Course in Miracles is not a book; it’s an extension in form of the thought of Atonement in the mind.

• I think I am upset because the world has failed me.

• QUESTION: How can I remind myself I am a mind when circumstances are so compelling? ANSWER: It takes a lot of discipline, vigilance and work to recognize the circumstances are not the determiner of my peace. At first the practice is intellectual, but after awhile, if you do this with a reasonable amount of discipline, you will begin to see that the peace in your mind is unaffected by the highs and lows of the world.

• Everything in the world is trivial.

• The miracle solves every problem the same way: by taking us from the body to the mind.

• Once you understand the principle, you spend the rest of your life, day after day, practicing; seeing the problem as it is and not the way you’ve set it up.

• Practice: When you see your ego in action: “I became afraid of love again. Big deal. Tell me something I don’t know.”

• Practice: When you get excited about something don’t feel guilty; just remember that you’re making the mindless world into salvation again. When this happens, don’t judge, just look. Don’t fight or struggle against the ego.

• As you practice this Course you begin to break your identity with the body, and the body becomes holy because of its purpose.

• As you become more and more right-minded you feel less and less emotion. To the ego this is boring.

• Re: fears. Use everything in your body, and all your thoughts, to get you back to the mind, so that you can realize that what makes my body negative or positive in my experience is a decision in my mind.

Snapshots taken on the way home (while doing… the, uh, speed limit).