Hi Whitney--I went through the whole past lives phase, too. While it was interesting, it doesn't really resolve anything. There is a good section in the Manual in ACIM (Chapter 24, p. 60), that talks about reincarnation.
Like anything else, it depends on how we use it and whether we allow it to be a helpful tool or just another excuse and distraction of the ego mind. The idea of karma is just another way of carrying on the unconscious guilt in our mind to a new "body" after this one "dies". We'll keep recycling until we decide to cut to the chase and wake up from the dream we made.
Our reality is Spirit, not a body--and the goal of the ego is for us to forget that, because if we ever remember who and what we really are---the ego is done for. The Course gives us a practical curriculum to achieve experiences that will "prove" to us there is another and a better way. Our true Self can be discovered by practicing forgiveness as the Course defines it, and getting in touch with the guidance of our Inner Teacher. As the Course says, it is "highly individualized" in the sense that we each may follow a different path to get to this point. It also says that once we become aware of this better way, we will be guided to awakening.
The hardest thing for us to accept is the personal responsibility for our own predicament. We are not a victim of "others" or circumstance:
"Outside the Kingdom, the law that prevails inside is adapted to "What you project you believe". This is its teaching form, because outside the Kingdom learning is essential. This form implies that you will learn what you are from what you have projected onto others, and therefore believe they are. In the Kingdom, there is no teaching or learning, because there is no belief. There is only certainty. God and his Sons, in the surety of being, know that what you extend you are." T-7.II.3
What we see in others that upset us or anger us, is really what we have projected out from our mind so we can believe it is not in us. We have to bring it all back inside the mind and let the Holy Spirit "undo" this belief in separate others--so we can remember and uncloud the blocks to memory of who we really are. Once we accept the fact that this world is a projection (think about a movie in a movie theater when you get lost in the movie), then it becomes a classroom that reflects back to us what is really going on in our own mind. This is what we have to undo. We projected a giant smokescreen of a world to block us from the light of reality.
This undoing takes a while (may be thousands of years or may be an instant), because we have a powerful mind which we have used wrongly and had the "tiny mad idea" that we could actually exist apart from or be God. This one tiny idea--a speck in the timeless universe of Thought was powerful enough to create what we call our world. The problem is--it didn't work. We can never separate ourselves from God because God created us. God will not interfere with our "experiment" because He knows we never really left. We created the concept of "time and space" to give meaning to our illusion. God is outside time and space. Our so-called separation was over and corrected simultaneously---outside time and space. However we are trapped in our own dream because we layered so much illusion and distraction over our guilt from separation from God--that we took ourselves deeper and deeper into the dream. But in reality we never left, and this memory of God (the Holy Spirit) can never leave
us. We all will eventually wake up.
God's Love is extended constantly and continuously---it is always there for us to receive. We block it. Jesus is a man who woke up. His message in ACIM leads us to awaken:
"If you want something else you will make something else, but because it is something else, it will attack your thought system and divide your allegiance. You cannot create in this divided state, and you must be vigilant against this divided state because only peace can be extended. Your divided mind is blocking the extension of the Kingdom, and its extension is your joy. If you do not extend the Kingdom, you are not thinking with your Creator and creating as He created." T-7.VI.12
In other words, we're our own worst enemy. God is not out to get us for the "separation"--it was a blip on God's radar screen that is already over. We did this "oh my god, oh my god...we thought about being God ourselves and now He's going to get us" thing and took it to the degree of ridiculous. Now we see that reflected in the world we made to hide in--it's ridiculous. That's basically it. It's ridiculous. No one in their right mind would actually choose to come here. We're like the kid that got caught and then keeps digging himself deeper and deeper with lies about what he did. "Oh, what a tangled web we weave....", etc.
What the Course does is explain to us what happened and how and why---then proceeds to teach us how it can be undone. As we do this, the benefits we receive experientially--little tastes of Heaven--become more frequent until the scales are tipped in the other direction about what we believe is real and unreal. Once we come to believe and accept who we are 100% without reservation---the rest disappears--poof! Just like a dream does when we wake up. How long "in time" it takes to do this is up to us. We are the ones "in time"--not God, so it really is irrelevant outside time and space.
Forgiveness, as practiced in ACIM is practical because once we realize all of our "problems" are our own projections we can change our mind about how we deal with them. We don't. We let the Holy Spirit deal with them. So we turn our "world into a classroom" and have the opportunity to take everything in our past and present life which causes us anything but peace and joy---and look at it with Jesus or the Holy Spirit for what it is. Nothing. As we change our perception of the world, it begins to reflect back to us in "right perception" and if I love you, I will see love. What we believe about "others" is what we will believe about ourselves.
Simple, but not easy. Our mind is powerful and has a lot "vested" in the illusion we made. But as the Course says, it may be foolproof, but it isn't God-proof. We are still God's creation with all of His power which is more than a match for the ego we made up---but like the Prodigal son, we left Home as One, and we must return as One. Every act of forgiveness, every loving thought, every time we let the Holy Spirit guide us instead of our own wrong-mindedness---we are undoing separation and moving back Home---not just for ourselves but for each other. Because in reality, we are each other.
Love and Peace--Joe
loveholdsnogrievances <loveholdsnogrievances@...> wrote:<<<I don't want to hang around here anymore and try to collect some good karma for a better life next time -- I don't want make up for any bad Karma life after life. I don't want bad karma, and I don't want good karma -- I don't want any karma -- I just want out. It may have sounded shallow to the girl I was talking to -- but I did not care -- it was the most honest thing I could say -- and hear for myself -- and it felt right -- and it was just one more step in realizing I was heading in the right direction with my thinking. It was another major breakthrough for me in wakinging up -- by hearing myself say that to her.
Anyway, thought I was share that for people who are wondering if their lack of interest in the world on the "Mother Teresa" level makes them feel shallow or uncaring. Or to think they have to stick around to do so called "good things" in order to win God's favor - is another insance thought --
It is better to do good from a place where we know we are already good and perfect, and from a place where we already know that we can never be anything else.
Thanks for listening.
Love & Light,
Whitney
--- In Disappearance_of_the_Universe@..., "garyrrenard"
<garyrrenard@y...> wrote:
For those of you who may be too young to remember Carnation Instant
Breakfast, I apologize for the pun. Am I dating myself? (Hee hee) In
any case, even though ACIM teaches that reincarnation is impossible
because the body isn't real (so we must just be dreaming that we're
living these different incarnations) it also says on P.61 of the
Manual for Teachers, "All that must be recognized however, is that
birth was not the beginning, and death is not the end." Arten and
Pursah talked a lot about different lifetimes, past and future,
including theirs and even a couple of mine. They always reminded me
at some point that like the entire universe, these lifetimes are
only
dreams within a dream. I think that like with Buddhism and Hinduism,
an interest in reincarnation is a major part of most people's
spiritual path at some point, and it certainly was mine. I'd like to
hear any experiences you may have had in this area, whether in
remembering past lives or what your thoughts are on this subject.
Love and peace, Gary.
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