An easy “A Course in Miracles” ACIM for complicated minds.
“The secret of awakening to your immortality does not lie in dominating the things of the world but in your way of looking at the world” — Gary R. Renard.
You have ever wondered, What is beyond death? Does God exist? How do you find happiness? What is the meaning of life?
They say we all have all the answers within ourselves; we just need to remember them. Sometimes, it is necessary to go through a traumatic moment or a great crisis to decide to make profound changes, and that is where ACIM leads you to find inner peace and healing.
The vision of ACIM is an extraordinary concept that has the potential to unveil countless possibilities, which we often overlook.
ACIM is a path of self-knowledge. It helps us realize that we are guided by unconscious programs from which we can free ourselves to conquer the long-awaited freedom to decide and choose. The course explains that our great choice is to let the Holy Spirit guide and illuminate us in our wandering through the world of illusion until we wake up and free ourselves from this dream.
- I already knew you were going to talk to me about religion.
- No, nothing could be further from religion. Here, we are going to talk about Spirituality.
Thanks to quantum physics, today we know that everything is energy and that it takes shape somewhere. Often, that place is our own body; our beliefs and judgments converge in it.
Dr. Deepak Chopra says that happiness is both objective and subjective. We can feel it as an emotion, but it produces a quantifiable physical change. It can change heart rate, blood pressure, hormonal secretions, and other physiological parameters. Happiness can, therefore, become a therapeutic instrument. The patient uses Ayurvedic techniques on his head, but his joy also modifies his body. The body receives a signal from its internal scheme, which is not material but exists in its consciousness.
ACIM allows you to return to the most critical moments of your life, the ones that left you marked and the emotions that remained engraved in your mind and in your cells, which you can modify only in the present. And you can change your future, also in the present. That is why many spiritual teachers talk so much about “being in the present” because it is the only place; it is the only moment or state in which you can first be alive and make the change that you want, transform what you want.
ACIM will take you to past moments in your life that you need to heal through forgiveness and will make you change your way of thinking, perceiving, and seeing the world. It will make you change for the better, you will achieve forgiveness processes that you never thought you could accomplish, you will be able to know yourself better, and you will find many of the answers you are looking for if you suffer from anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue, neurosis, etc.; You can be cured by following the Course, and this because when the mind is healthy, the body responds to that. You will learn to listen to what your body wants to tell you when the first symptoms appear.
ACIM is a manual for learning to live without fear, that fear that our EGO is made of and that is basically a mental state; sometimes it is an individual fear and sometimes a collective fear (does the latter resonate with you?), and that prevents us from seeing ourselves as we really are. And What are we? We are spiritual beings going through an earthly experience. No more, no less. The EGO prevents us from seeing the essence of people and our own essence, which is basically LOVE. Understanding love not as romantic love but as the absence of judgments, the lack of fear, that mental state in which you do not condemn or judge. You are simply compassionate and loving with others, and this is achieved by knowing how our system of thoughts works and forgiving everything that contaminates us; that way of thinking influences our way of acting and creates our immediate reality.
Lecturer Marta Salvat says we must start by clarifying the difference between personal growth and Spirituality. Personal growth is all the external resources that I use to reach a zone of peace, external resources that can be videos, workshops, therapies, various things that come into your life and that help you manage your emotions with the outside world and be at peace with yourself and from this zone of peace you can go further in and remember who you are, what your gifts are, why you came here. On the other hand, Spirituality is a path that does not begin outside but begins from within and goes inward with the same objective: Remember who you are, connect with who you really are, connect with your gifts, and put them at the service of humanity.
The book A Course in Miracles ACIM is one hundred percent spirituality. It is not a personal growth resource because it is related to you and is for you. Try to use something other than this book to improve your position with the outside; you will realize that the outside only tells you how bad you are with yourself. The resources that ACIM gives you talk to you about how to be at peace with yourself and, from there, start a new adventure.
It also makes the difference between religion and Spirituality: Religion, whatever it may be, remains an external resource; it is a doctrine, some dogmas, that I use or not, to go to a zone of peace, for me to connect with who I am to look inside me and from this point, if I want, I can look further inwards ACIM is 100% spiritual, it has nothing to do with religion.
When we start reading the Course, we will find words that relate to religion, and this can cause us a certain rejection, for they are the study groups where we share the correct meaning. Marta Salvat recommends that before making ACIM, we read books such as “Back to Love” by Marianne Williamson and “The Disappearance of the Universe” by Gary Renard.
ACIM is a very radical and unique spiritual practice. It is not the same as other spiritual disciplines. It is a non-dualistic metaphysical theory close to Eastern teachings, explained in a Christian language with theoretical support taken from Freudian psychoanalysis. He explains that The Universe is a mental process. It is optional to fully understand this to take the Course. In his introduction, he says that the Course can be summarized very quickly with the following phrase: “Nothing Real can be threatened, Nothing unreal exists”; that is, what is true is true, and what is not true is not true; and there is only the truth. Everything that is not true is an illusion, a dream.
A Course in Miracles ACIM, was written between 1965 and 1972 through a process of inner dictation whose transmitting voice identified itself as that of Jesus.
What does the book “A Course in Miracles” teach? — It is a self-taught system of spiritual awakening study that teaches the path to inner peace and healing through the power of love and forgiveness.
The book was edited by the “Foundation for Inner Peace”, the only institution related to the book in charge of independently editing and publishing the Course so that its message is not distorted as happened two thousand years ago. It consists of three parts: (1) Text, (2) Exercise Book & (3) Manual for the Master, and in total, it has 1,445 pages.
Taking “A Course in Miracles” ACIM means that you read, study, and apply the three books in their entirety.
Regarding the terms and words that the book uses, starting with the word MIRACLE, which results from acting from our “Right Mind” or from a state of inner peace or SIN, what for Christianity is sin, and for ACIM is an error. Christianity has been one of the most significant religious currents influencing the world, both for Christians and those who are not. Many of us use words in our daily lives that come from Christianity to which we have given a religious burden. ACIM uses these words, giving them a neutral interpretation without criticizing or contradicting them; it uses them because they are a language understandable to everyone.
A Course in Miracles - ACIM, is a curriculum that guides us on the path of self-knowledge and spiritual awakening. It starts from the premise that the relationship between God and man is that of a father with his son. Emmet Fox, one of the most influential writers on Spirituality of the early 20th century, says that since God is Divine Spirit, man essentially has to be Divine Spirit too. It is a cosmic law that “of such a father such a son.” So, I am also holy; I am a pure and perfect being; I am the co-creator of my reality; I am eternal love, and I can work miracles with God on my side. God is my father, and he is also the loving father of all humanity. (we are all children of the same father, … we are all brothers), Never was God that implacable and cruel tyrant that our ancestors taught us. A father can’t punish his children with eternal fire; that was never true. If we were to meditate on this fact until we understand what it actually means, most of our physical difficulties and ailments would disappear since these are rooted and based on fear. If only we could realize that Omnipotent Wisdom or Higher Power is our loving, living father, most of our fears would go away.
Believing that when we change how we see things, things change is the basis of the Course. All the facts, situations, events, and circumstances that happen in our lives have no value or meaning in themselves; reality is neutral; the important thing is what we do with what we call reality. In the face of an adverse or conflictive event, we have two options: We become victimized, depressed, offended, or attacked, or… we seek to learn from said experience. Furthermore, our thoughts produce emotions that generate physical changes (high pressure, gastritis, stomach ulcer, etc.) and hormones (adrenaline, cortisol, oxytocin, among others). When an emotion is felt intensely, it influences a person’s attitudes and actions. So, we can and should filter our thoughts, let negative thoughts pass, and stay with the right ones.
But the Course goes further. He guides us on the path of enlightenment and returning home to God. The greatest Miracle consists of achieving full awareness of the presence of love in one’s own life. We believe that we are separated from God, from the Divine Presence, that he is “there” and we “here,” that he is big and we are small, that he rewards us and punishes us according to what we have “behaved” and that in the Deep down, we do not deserve to be forgiven but that he, in his infinite mercy, accepts us like this, imperfect as we are. Nothing further from what ACIM proposes. This Course helps us understand how we influence what surrounds us. Its objective is to regain responsibility for our decisions and the experiences that happen in our lives. In practice, it helps us learn to develop coherent and creative solutions to our most common conflicts, becoming, instead of part of the problem, part of the solution we are looking for.
With ACIM, we will discover our purpose in life. Why we wake up every morning? We will choose something that fits our strengths, passions, and the world’s needs (in addition, we can make a living doing $$) and be grateful for what we have. We’ll start letting go of what we can’t control (some things are out of our control, and that’s fine). We will focus our energy on what we can change. We will recognize and accept peace in imperfection, which makes life unique and beautiful. We will find our emotional maturity and self-control, even when facing life’s challenges. We will understand that although we are all part of an incredible Universal Intelligence, at the same time, we have a different timeline and a unique path in this temporal life, which is why the important thing is to focus on what we should learn instead of trying to measure ourselves against others (or fear others).
Thus, having an open mind to everything (literally everything) means we will not stick to anything and seek to improve in all areas of our lives. Even small changes add up and have a significant impact over time.
Every day, more people begin the path of self-knowledge and spiritual awakening. Today is your day! ¿ What’s the first thing to do? — Thank,… breathe deeply and thank …
I am going to finish with a phrase from Borja Vilaseca, a Spanish writer, lecturer, and entrepreneur, who made me decide to follow the Course: “Religion is for those who are afraid to go to Hell. Spirituality is for those of us who have already been there”.
