The Cosmic Ledger is Canceled | A Course in Miracles Deep Dive | May 27, 2026 | Ch 3, Sect 3, P.11, S2-S5

Transcript

Welcome And Settling In

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All right, everyone. Aloha. I love you. Okay. Let's record. Woo-hoo! Aloha, and welcome to a course in miracles deep dive with Hope Johnson coming to you from Kehenna Beach on the beautiful big island of Hawaii. Yay! Yay! So today we're going into this. This is a course in miracles complete annotated edition. Came out in 2021. And we are beginning on chapter three, section three, paragraph 11, sentence two. I'll start out with a summary for you guys. And yay, Christine, let's just tune in, okay? Yeah. Let's take a breath. Notice how you feel.

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See if there's any place you can get a little bit more relaxed, a little bit more open. Ah, thank you, everyone.

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Thank you for joining. Thank you for your willingness to see the truth. Thank you for being here to listen to the words of Jesus as they're channeled through Helen Cheshman for a Course in Miracles. Thank you, Jesus, for giving us such clear guidance. Thank you for giving us the exact program that we need to train our mind to see things differently and undo what causes this dream. Undo conflict and fear and struggle. Reveal what's always in our mind. Reveal the truth that is always known to us, helping us to be certain that it is true, and that whatever is coming up to tell us that it's not true does not need to be believed. Thank you for that. Thank you for showing us the meaninglessness of this world so that we don't have to continue to punish ourselves. Thank you for showing us that all of our burdens can be released, that there's no sacrifice in salvation, that there's no need to struggle and there's no need for pain. Thank you for showing us that pain isn't useful for learning. Yay! Thank you for showing us that God's will for us is perfect happiness and that our will is also aligned with that. Ah, mahalo, and let's begin.

Big Picture Of Sane Perception

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Ah, thank you, everyone. Okay, so we are on chapter three, same perception. And we're starting now on sentence 11 or paragraph 11. We covered sentence one of paragraph 11 last week, up to sentence one of paragraph 11. And I'm gonna give you the page number here. That is 114. We're at the very end of 114. All right, here's what we've covered so far in this chapter. This chapter is totally about dismantling the ego's assumption, deepest assumption, let's say, that separate separation, sacrifice, attack, suffering, conflict, pain are meaningful or real. So Jesus keeps on redirecting perception in this chapter away from fear and back to the fact that God's perfect innocence and unity is our inheritance. And it's the truth, it's the truth of what's in our mind. So a major theme throughout this chapter so far has been the correction of distorted religious thinking. Now, you may not have even been raised religious, okay? It doesn't matter. What he's saying is that because we're conditioned collectively to believe like this, we're automatically kind of like infected by this disease of believing that it takes sacrifice, that God uses pain, punishment, deprivation. And you know, even if you don't believe in God, in your mind, there is still something known as God. It might not be that word, but even if you believe it's yourself, this belief in karma, right? Karma is also a belief that punishment or sacrifice or deprivation are real because of what happened in the past. So he's been getting into that, and he's gonna get into that a little bit more here.

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So this is exciting.

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So this section is called Atonement Without Sacrifice, and one of the central corrections that we're looking at here is that the crucifixion did not establish the atonement. That's what basically he said that at the beginning of this section, and everything that he's been talking about has been based on this sentence. The crucifixion did not establish the atonement, the resurrection did. So he's showing us how to see how resurrection establishes the atonement, not crucifixion. So that takes all the punishment out of atonement. For most people, when they hear the word atonement, myself included, before I read a course in miracles, thought of it as something. No, I don't want that. That sounds like punishment. That sounds like something I don't deserve. And then there's other people that believe that they do deserve punishment. So they love that word for that reason. So Jesus is changing the entire meaning that we've been trained to think of the atonement as, and saying, This is this is not about crucifixion, it's actually about resurrection. Okay. So the ego's interpretation of spirituality is that it is based on suffering. And that is just totally not true. So that's what we're working on here. That's what we're playing with. So he's explained that many sincere Christians have mistakenly concluded that God wants suffering or that God demanded sacrifice or required punishment in order to redeem humanity, you know, such as Jesus died for our sins. Just that sentence, Jesus died for our sins, is saying that it takes punishment to redeem us. That's not true. So this interpretation that everyone's been learning has made God fearful. So this is reframing crucifixion entirely. It's not payment for sin, it's not some divine punishment, it's not any kind of proof that suffering is holy or anything. It's actually a teaching, it's it's a teaching demonstration that attack, the crucifixion is attack, right? It demonstrates attack, but that attack cannot destroy truth. That's what the crucifixion is showing in the first place. It's showing attack cannot destroy truth, and that's because of the resurrection, which demonstrates that that life cannot be destroyed. It also demonstrates that the Son of God, who's you, you remain as God created you, and that the separation actually didn't occur. So, because of the way Jesus saw himself, you know, it's really a seeing because of the way he saw himself, he could not really be killed. That's why there is a resurrection, and that's what the resurrection is meant to demonstrate. Okay. So the atonement isn't about repaying anything, it's actually about correcting your mind to release burdens that make it seem like suffering is something that you need. It seems like to seem like suffering is somehow uh the the key to salvation. It's not, it's actually when you're released from that idea that you actually know true salvation. Okay. Another major theme that we covered is that God is fact, God is not a symbol. Right? So it says in it says in the text, God Himself is not symbolic, he is fact, and this is very important. Okay, the world is symbolic, bodies are symbolic, all perception is symbolic, thoughts, thought systems, they're all symbolic, but God isn't. God is not a concept, God is not uh an interpretation, God isn't an image or a belief, God is a capital R reality. Okay, and and why is this important? Because when the mind, when your mind treats the truth, God is the truth, as if it's symbolic, it becomes vulnerable to endless interpretations that are not true, endless distortions, projections, theology, right? There's a lot of theology around God, isn't there? Ideology, and most importantly, fear, and that's what Jesus is doing here, he's eliminating the fear of God, because the fear of God prevents the resurrection from occurring within us. So the ego loves religion that's ambiguous, and most religion is ambiguous. This is how the ego thrives. It's like, yeah, get into religion, make God into a concept, and then you will never know God because it's a it's a concept, and God is not a concept, God is fact. We've also covered the ego's reversal of the ego's reversal of true cause and effect. It's repeatedly exposing how the ego reverses reality instead of understanding that mind is the cause and perception is its effect, right? The ego teaches that the world causes experience, the world causes your experience. It looks like that. That's because that's the way we've been conditioned. It's meant to look like that, but it's not like that. Your mind is the cause of everything. Okay, the ego also teaches that other people cause your suffering. Okay. For instance, we seem to have a murderer running around down here in Lower Pune, right? And apparently, at least last time I heard he hadn't even been caught. Apparently, he's running around. And people are fearing for their safety right now. Well, guess what? The fear for our safety is not coming from a murderer running around town, actually. That's an effect of a fearful mind. The murderer seemingly running around town is an effect of a fearful mind. It is not the other way around. His running around and not being caught yet is not really what's causing our fear. See, that's the trick that the ego is presenting. Okay. The ego presents an idea that bodies cause pleasure and pain, that bodies can cause this. No, it's still the mind. So it's it's important for us to see this and and first to be willing to see it. Really, it takes willingness, willing to see that our experience is not caused by the world, but it's actually caused by our own mind, spinning stories in the world. Okay. Another one the ego teaches is that events determine your identity, as in something that you possibly did or was done to you, or or your gender, or anything like that, determines your identity. Nothing in this world determines your identity because you haven't been changed. You're still the same as God created you. Nothing in the world that seems to occur ever changes that. You're you're changeless in the mind of God and you've never left that. This is a dream that you've become anything else. I'm checking on you guys to see if you have any questions. Okay. So raise your hand if you want to talk to me on Zoom. If you're on Zoom, you can do that. If you're on Substack, I still check your messages. And you can also message, just type in the chat on Zoom if you want to have if you have a question or comment. So the the ego's reversal of cause and effect creates fear. It makes fear in in the mind. And anytime you're afraid of anything, that's because of the reversal of cause and effect. Okay, it makes the mind appear vulnerable to external forces. So Jesus keeps on restoring true causation in this chapter. Thought is creative. Thought is the only thing that's creative. Projection makes perception. See that? There's no perception without projection. Perception is a wish in the mind made apparently true, made apparently real, but it still has no reality.

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And the mind experiences what it believes. All right.

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It doesn't have any real effects. But because you are creative just like God, your thoughts are not trivial. So your mind can't truly create unlike God. But your mind most certainly can miscreate within perception. See, perception itself isn't real. You know, there's an idea that this is creation, that this what we perceive is creation. It is not, it's not anywhere close to creation, actually. For one thing, everything decays and dies. That is not like creation, that's upside down and backwards. It's fearful thinking that generates this world, it generates distorted perception, and it itself reinforces the underlying belief in separation. So this is where miracles come in. This is why miracle-mindedness really matters. Not because God is offended by what you made, God doesn't care. All right, because it God knows it doesn't mean anything and it doesn't even touch you, and you can fuck with it as long as you want. But distorted perception, which is a world where people are dying, apparently, and being murdered, apparently, hurts your mind. And it hurts your mind because you believe it. Because you believe it. If you don't believe it, it's not even hurtful to your mind. If you don't believe it, your very presence in the world is undoing the underlying cause of the world. People don't understand how they're how they're projecting this world. You know, you can see how people get at each other's throats as if, you know, someone's ruining something. You know, even like in political things, you know, it's like if you're not the same political party as me, suddenly you're a killer. If you're not eating the way I eat, some somehow you're ruining things, you know. If you're using AI, that's that's the latest thing I'm seeing. People are getting on a bandwagon that like if you're using AI now, you're destroying the pet the planet. There's actually nothing to destroy here because there is nothing here. This is only uh the ego's way of making conflict. And when we buy into it, we're the ones making a world where murder and death and aging and sickness seem to take place. And we can undo that. That's the beautiful thing. We don't have to buy into it. So the title

Cause And Effect In The Mind

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here, the title of this chapter here is sane perception, or I should say, this section of the chapter. The title points to the correction, not changing reality, but restoring sane perception. Let me get back to the beginning of this. Yeah. Atonement without sacrifice, sane perception, it is the chapter. And this section is called atonement without without sacrifice. So we're not we're not changing reality. Correction doesn't change reality, it actually restores reality to our perception, which reality is whole and perfect and eternal. It's eternal life. It doesn't even include any conflict, it doesn't include any fear, it doesn't include tiredness, it doesn't include going to the bathroom. That is a funny one, isn't it? I don't know. It's funny to me. So a sane perception recognizes innocence instead of guilt. Everyone's innocent. Whatever they seem to be doing, it is not really happening. That's the innocence of it. It's not good or bad, it's not really happening. It's it's a it's like a dream being weaved. All right. On one hand, the ego loves the dream for reinforcing separation. On the other hand, the Holy Spirit uses your dreaming to help you see clearly and undo the dream. All right. Sane perception is recognizing that we're here to join instead of separate. We're meant to join. Our minds join. This is not having anything to do with bodies joining. Our minds join in truth. You are the son of God. I am the son of God. There's no separation between us. We're perfectly loving and lovable. Okay, where we cannot truly attack. So this is how we demonstrate love instead of attack. And the demonstration is to our own mind. We don't have to go out and try to convince others that this is true. That's not necessary. It's really something that occurs in our own mind. One friend asked me today, what do I say to people who are

Responding To Local Violence

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upset that, you know, two people apparently that we know were murdered in the past couple of days. Two of them are, two of them are very close to me. It's Bob Schein and Chitta. You, if you've been listening to Wisdom Dialogues and Of course in Miracles, you know these guys. These guys were kind of like the guys who start started wisdom dialogues with me the second time. I started the first time in 2014. But it was just me, Chitta, and Bob when Wisdom Dialogues started. And apparently those two men were murdered in the past couple of days. Okay. So sane perception recognizing recognizes all forms of attack as a call for love, right? So a friend asked me, what do I say? Because the whole community is kind of like, wow, these are our kupuna, which means, you know, like respected elders in the community. And all of a sudden they're just gone, apparently at the hands of a murderer. So she's like, I know people are going to come up to me and talk to me about this. What do I say? And the answer is ask the Holy Spirit for a different interpretation, which in her case, she says, you know, I have that different interpretation. I'm just wondering what to say to these people. Well, you don't have to know what to say because once you have that different interpretation, let the Holy Spirit use your mouth and use your body to demonstrate what's actually true. Okay, so this is demonstration. Our shared interests instead of private agendas. You know, for me, when I heard first I heard about Bob before before I did an ACIM lesson yesterday, I heard about Bob and immediately I was like, wow, you know, that was the the kind of wow, that was that was I didn't see that coming. But then immediately I could sense Bob telepathically, you know, I could sense him telepathically, and he's kind of kind of coming to me in a in a comedic way, you know, like like like hooray, like, like this is this is this is useful. Not saying that, you know, we should be killing people so it could be useful, nothing like that. It's just that the Holy Spirit uses whatever it is that is perceived, right? So it's kind of like you're welcome, you know, it's kind of like you're welcome, and then chitta too, and then the two of them together, just just playing around and joking around, you know. When we open up to that, we see that everything's really light and comical, even when it comes to something like this. See? Okay, Celeste, yeah. Wow, you remember their names. Yeah, God bless them. Yes, definitely. Yep, yep. I'll be writing something. I have I'm I'm almost done with it. I'm just polishing it up a little bit. I'll be writing something about the the two of them, kind of like a tribute and sharing a couple photos. I got a great video of Bob dancing. He is a wild dancer, me and Bob actually dancing. So look for that on my Facebook page. And might end up on Substack too, but I post mostly on Facebook. So if you want to look at my writings and stuff, follow me there. I'm Hope Johnson and I'm in Hawaii. So I think there's only one of me like that. We'll see. All right. So miracles themselves, they don't create the truth. The truth doesn't need to be created, the truth is just true. What the miracles are doing is removing blocks to the awareness of truth. And remember what a miracle is. The miracle is establishing in your mind that you dream a dream and none of its content is true. That's why Chitta and Bob, they are not gone. They're not gone from us. Uh, their bodies are not here in the perception anymore. They're not, they're not reflecting in the perception anymore. But bodies are also really like fences and uh and you know, people identify with a body identity. So it's actually easier to communicate with each other because true communication is telepathic, anyways. So I'm not in myself feeling any loss that their bodies don't seem to be here. In fact, they feel to me very celebratory about it. Okay. The the word that keeps on coming into my mind is volunteer, as if they volunteered. Okay. I'm even getting the sense that they are helping this person who would what whatever was going on with this person that made him want to commit murders in his dream, right? That has to be extreme suffering. So, and it was just, I think it was both of them on the same night. He may have gone to one and then another. It was different houses. And it's just it's it's really interesting that it's those two specifically, you know, Chitta and Bob, two very tuned-in elders in the community, Kupuna. Okay, we also went over the Trinity and perfect integration. Okay, the Holy Trinity. Jesus explained the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are perfectly unified without confusion of levels. So it's not like Father, Son, Holy Spirit, or however it's leveled, the levels are projected in the mind. What Jesus is saying is that they're perfectly unified. It is not a hierarchy of beings. Okay, it's a perfect integration within one mind and one will. We all share the same will. The ego's will is an imposter will. So this is this becomes a model for healing. Okay, this really is a model for healing because true peace and healing comes from this unified purpose, and conflict is only arising when we believe that there are competing wills. You notice that with people's competing interests, private goals, right? When we seem to be, we we seem to need to be in competition with each other, that's where conflict is. Anastasia says, I hope you don't volunteer. You're such a sweetheart. Well, you know what? Here's the thing, Anastasia. If in the event that that does occur, you can know for sure that I did volunteer, okay? You can know for sure that that's the case. It was voluntary because you know, nothing can occur, nothing can can even seem to happen in our dream without a wish, without a wish, okay? And and one thing let and let me clarify this too. When there is self-doubt in the mind, we really, really want to resolve it. And we're asking the Holy Spirit to to help us see through whatever it is that we're projecting. Remember, perception, perception is projection, okay? Perception is projection. There are no accidents, there are no mistakes. So, so one thing that uh that you know helps with this is looking at self-doubt, okay? Self-doubt, the idea that you cannot have salvation. Somehow you're not good enough, you're not getting it, anything like that. It's always the ego's voice, okay? All right, another another one we covered is fear of God. A major undercurrent throughout this whole chapter is that the ego has made God fearful. All right, through projection, we've invented these things: punishment, exile, sacrifice, wrath, rejection, loss. Okay, and we've been attributing those to God. So we're learning how to see through with a Course in Miracles. This is what it's teaching, to see through these ideas that anyone deserves punishment. Okay, this really hurts your mind. It attacks your mind when you think anyone deserves punishment. I often hear spiritual people talking about how they wish Donald Trump would get killed. That is projecting death. Okay, not just an attack on your own form, but attack on form. So looking at that, any kind of exile, believing that you're in exile, believing that you need to sacrifice or that you have sacrificed or that Jesus sacrificed for your sins, even. The belief in wrath, God's wrath. You know, that's a that's a thing that spiritual people subscribe to all the time, right? It's as if, it's as if God can or wants to bring down a wrath on anyone. God is not involved with punishment one bit. There's no punishment in God. God is perfect love, okay? We tend to punish ourselves by believing punishment is possible, by believing God is vengeful. You know, we even went over in this chapter, God saying vengeance is mine. That is what Jesus did was correct that. He said, No way, that's an insane God that would say, Vengeance is mine. God is love. There's no vengeance, okay? There's no rejection of anyone, okay, and there's no loss. There's no such thing as loss, right? Even when bodies pass away, the the connection, the communion, the communication, it's never lost because the only way we really can communicate is more like telepathically. It doesn't have anything to do with bodies. We set up bodies that seem to be dying and are vulnerable to death as if they can really be used for communication. And while we're dreaming, we are using them, let's say, as a communication device, a communication device because we believe they're necessary for communication. So whenever anyone passes away, you know, and and I've and I've talked to people and they're experiencing loss, and I go, well, do you still hear from them? And every single time people tell me, yes, I do hear from them. I too. And I go, yes, that is actually evidence that there's no loss, right? It may even be easier to communicate in truth with them because now they're not believing that they're subject to whatever you're subject to when you have a body, all of that vulnerability, loneliness, scarcity. Okay, none of that stuff is present anymore once there is no body attached to the Son of God, right? This is this body image itself is a distortion. Okay. So Jesus was is this is specifically addressing distorted interpretations here. Okay. One of them is God throwing Adam out, Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. Okay, he said that's not a thing. They didn't get thrown, no one got thrown out of the the Garden of Eden. Anyways, it's a symbolic story, okay? And the symbolism is really that Adam and Eve believed that they, and this this symbolizes humanity, all of us believed that they sinned against God. And that's why they were, they ended up dreaming that they were in a world of separation where they had to labor and be burdened and have conflict and have death and have aging and all this other stuff. Okay. And he also corrected the idea that God demands any kind of suffering or sacrifice, and the idea that God rejected humanity somehow. See, the Bible is the Bible is largely set up. There's a lot of truth in the Bible, and then it's also written by humans who don't understand actually what God is and don't realize what they are. So it's set up as it's like God rejected humanity, and then you have to somehow find your way back to him by sacrificing. And then somehow Jesus came in there and sacrificed enough for us that, you know, we don't have to sacrifice anymore, but no one really believes that because everyone's still sacrificing, anyways, you know? And he's saying, Yeah, would would would a God really, you know, would God really sacrifice his own son? Jesus is saying, Christians, please look at this. Christians, please, please take note that this that just look at this. Would a loving God, would you sacrifice your own son? How's that? You think God's you think God is less loving than you? Right? So this fear of God is really fear of losing ego identification. That's all it is. So the ego thrives on you remaining fearful of God. That's how the ego thrives, okay? So just to let you know, if you just joined, we are reviewing what we've covered in a course in miracles, chapter three, section three, called Atonement Without Sacrifice. In the in the the whole section or the whole chapter is called Sane Perception. So we're getting back to sane perception. And so, and so we're we're reviewing right now what we've gone over. We're about to start in chapter three, section three, paragraph 11. All right, so another thing we've covered is that attack on other people is actually attack on ourselves. So we moved into this section, exposing error of self-victimization. Jesus has been pointing out how people recognize, how many people recognize that attacking others is wrong, right? But they still believe that the attacking themselves is somehow virtuous, that it's humble, right? It's humble and spirit and or spiritual or somehow harmless to attack yourself. And one way you attack yourself is I'm not there yet. Really? And that's what this is helping with. So you can see that you have never left the truth, and you can see truly self-attack is still attack, and this is undoing that. So once the mind uses this, what Jesus calls two-edged defense, attacking self and others, it's the same thing really. Perception is unstable because I can't attack, attack, like, like, you know, attacking yourself is basically saying that you're guilty. Remorse, I shouldn't have done that, something like that. It can't be controlled once it's accepted as valid. So, you know, I was go going back to the Trump example. If you're projecting that you want Trump to die, that's an attack, and you cannot control it. It's gonna come out all over the place. It's gonna come out with the people that you love, it's gonna come out with the people that you don't want to be like that with, because you cannot control this defense. It doesn't stay just just projected toward a particular inner individual or in a case toward yourself. You know, I've heard in my mind the the saying, I hate my life, I want to die. And then when I saw that, you know, I saw that many years ago, I go, that's not me. And that's really what that's really what takes you out of it right there. That's actually not me. But it's a very common thing for people to think that way and even not know that they're thinking that way. It's a suicide thought. And the reason I was able to see this thought in my mind was because of willingness to see without judgment, without guilt, to actually see what is going on in the unconscious mind. And in the unconscious mind, what's going on is a wish for death. And then, you know, this is not to make you wrong for having this unconscious thought in your mind. It's to help you recognize that when the thought arises, it's a meaningless thought. You don't have to do anything with it except see it and see it as a meaningless thought. The reason why most people don't see it is because they'll believe that there's that that something is wrong, right? There it's believing that something is wrong. Oh no, I don't want that. Uh okay, the but the fact is that it's not reality. So when it occurs to you, all that there is to do is deny any reality to it. Okay. This is actually what keeps us safe, you guys. So so this is all leading toward a deeper understanding. This even keeps us safe in the world. It really does. This because there's this underlying unconscious, you know, that's what Jesus is saying. Unconscious, which actually means unwatched thoughts that are basically a death wish. Okay. Guilt is always attacking, feeling guilty. You know, this idea, I was talking to a woman the other day who seems to be around my age, you know, and she was, and she was saying, Oh, I don't have to believe that it's just downhill from here. I'm like, no, that's actually attacking your mind, believing that, right? It's just it just don't have to believe that it only gets more painful from here, right? And this is really the reason that bodies seem to be going toward death, because there's this belief that that's inevitable. And those thoughts are not being looked at. That's the thing. So whether it's directed outward or inward, all attack rests on this belief that separation is real. So here's the overall arc of the chapter that we've covered so far. I know this has been a pretty long review, but it's been three weeks since we've met. So we're going over it extensively today. So the whole movement of this chapter so far, now we're up to paragraph 11, where we're starting in a minute. First, we've we've gone through correcting false religious ideas about sacrifice and suffering, restoring God as pure love instead of a punisher, exposing the ego's reversal of perception, right? Making the world a cause instead of our mind the cause, and reestablishing the creative power of our mind. And then clarifying what projection and miscreation are, so we don't get confused about this, believing that we're vulnerable to things in the world. Also, restoring our unified perception through miracles, and more recently, undoing guilt and self-attack and fear of God, and now returning the mind to the same perception. You know, we talked about how innocence is wisdom, innocence is wisdom, and that's how we join through innocence. So the chapter keeps on returning to one foundational truth that nothing real can ever be harmed, nothing real can ever be killed. The Son of God remains exactly as God created him. He was never a body, he was never born. And this is how perception becomes sane. It becomes sane the moment that attack isn't valued in your mind. That's where innocence is known and shared and extended. That's a miracle. Yes, Anastasia. I look pretty. Oh, thank you, Anastasia. Oh, your connection is bad, it kicks you out. Oh, well, you know, maybe you can join on Zoom. Maybe Substack isn't isn't really the place. Maybe you can join on Zoom. If you need the Zoom link, let me know and I'll type it right in there. In fact, I'll just type it right in there. I'll tell you guys in case you want to know. I've got a short link, it makes it really easy. It's bit.ly forward slash love is one. And I just put that into Substack. If you follow that, you'll get on Zoom, okay? All right. Yes, thank you. I feel pretty. I feel pretty. I think it's a song. All right. Let's go. Let's go back to the text here

Sacrifice And Fear Of Records

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now. We are on again, paragraph 11, and that's on page 114 of A Course in Miracles, complete and annotated edition. Came out in 2021. That's the edition I'm in. You do not need it to follow this with me because I'm going to go very slowly through each sentence. We already covered sentence one of paragraph 11 last time, which was three weeks ago, and that is sacrifice is a notion totally unknown to God. Okay. So we're going to sentence two. And sentence two says, it, as in sacrifice, sacrifice, it says it, but it means sacrifice, arises solely from fear of the records. Okay, so let's get into this. It arises, okay. Sacrifice is the it here, arises solely from fear of the records. And then there's a footnote here that clarifies this means being afraid of quote, the records of one's past thoughts and deeds. Now, to me, this includes akashic records, okay? This includes the idea of karma. In fact, earlier on in this same section, Jesus said, karma is not of God, okay? Because karma includes past deeds and thoughts, and there's only now, there's not past deeds and thoughts. So it sacrifice arises solely from fear of one's past thoughts and deeds. All right. So Jesus is now explaining that the belief in sacrifice actually comes from fear of the past. And more specifically, fear of guilt. See, the ego believes there's a record being kept. And that's what the Akashic records are too. It's not to say that you shouldn't get your Akashic records read. It's fine. It's what you would use them for. Are you using them to go into the past? Are you using them to go in the future? Or are you using them for presence now? It's all a matter of what you would use it for. Okay. These records, Akashic records, are ego records. There is no real record of anything. Okay? Because it's all after the separation that all of these records began being kept. All right. These are like psychological records or a moral record or a karmic record. This is how the ego uses it. Look at it. It's kind of like a spiritual ledger of debt, right? It's like a ledger of uh of debt and credit, right? Isn't that isn't that cute and funny? We're not anything that's subject to that. It's has it's been cutting out for you on Substack 2. You know what? My connection might not be that good here because I am in Kehenna Beach. So it might be good for you guys to try to get on Zoom. I posted the link. I think Zoom is more stable. I'm not hearing any anyone having any trouble on Zoom. Everyone seems to be stoked on Zoom, although there's only three people over there. Most of you guys are in Substack today, which is unusual. But I but my time changed too. So it kind of messed people up. Not only did my time change, but then I didn't change it in Zoom. So until later. I know it's all perfect. All right. So something in the mind believes when it believes in these records, right? Records of rights and wrongs, that that you have done something wrong, that you somehow did become guilty and deserve consequences. It's like it, it's like we owe something. This idea of karma, right? I heard, I heard a friend say today, well, they're gonna get their karma something like that, you know. Uh I forgot what she was referring to, but something about, and I go, I go, oh no, I don't subscribe to that at all. Karma is not real. You know, if you're if you're projecting karma for one person, you're projecting karma for everyone and yourself. That's the thing. These things cannot be controlled. You cannot control these things. All you can do is undo them. All you can undo, all you can do is recognize that karma is not of God, because that's a belief that someone owes something for what they've done and nothing has been done. So nothing needs to be paid back. As soon as that belief is accepted, then sacrifice becomes necessary, okay? Because the ego assumes that guilt demands some kind of payment. And in the first place, guilt isn't a reality. Guilt itself is a misperception, so there's no payment being demanded of anyone. So this is actually the hidden foundation beneath almost all suffering is that guilt demands payment. Okay. The belief that somehow loss, someone losing something, someone suffering restores balance. And you know, that's how our system is set up, too. I notice with this murderer situation, you know, people are hoping that the murderer somehow gets some kind of punishment. The thing is, I know, I know it seems like it seems like the right thing that the murderer should have some kind of punishment. But the thing is, do we want more murders? It's our believing that that's actually perpetuating everything all the way up to war and child trafficking and all that kind of stuff, and murders in our community, of course. So, this belief that there's some kind of payment being demanded, like somehow we're gonna balance the scales by punishing a person. Actually, the per what the person needs is redemption, and there's no redemption through pain. There's no way to get redemption through pain. Suffering does not purify anything, it does not help, it does not purify, okay? Uh now there's a little bit of a paradox here because everything becomes helpful when it's given to the Holy Spirit. It everything does, but it doesn't mean that making anyone suffer is not helpful. When your mind is going to projecting suffering, all you're doing is projecting suffering in a very uncontrollable way. It goes across the board, it doesn't stick with the person that you thought was that you thought deserved punishment. It goes to you, it goes to your loved ones. Okay, it hasn't been cutting out for you on Substack. Oh, thank you, Celeste. Sorry, I read that wrong. Yeah, and on Zoom, people are saying it's good, it works well. So I don't know what to tell you, Anastasia, but I can say that I love you and I'm so glad you're here. All right, so Jesus is exposing all of this as arising from fear of these imagined records. Look at the sentence, it's fear of these imagined records. Whether you believe in Akashic records or something else, you're fearing the records, which is what is what is the records again? It's believing in past deeds, right? It's a it's fear of your past thoughts and deeds. And fear of your own past thoughts and deeds is really what has you projecting that someone else deserves punishment, right? So so let that let let that thought become meaningless to you in your mind just by giving a little willingness, a little nod to God. Everything that seems to happen in your perception is all for this, if you allow it to be for this. Okay, this is this is kind of saying as if God would maintain a cosmic archive, like of your sins and failures and mistakes and debts to be settled somehow. But earlier in the section, Jesus already told us God does not hold the evil deeds of a person even against himself. That's a quote from the text in this section. God does not hold the evil deeds of a person even against himself. And that's because God does not perceive through guilt at all. Okay, so it's like the records exist only within the ego's thought system, and they're only for propping up the ego. They're really not useful for anything else. So this is very important in ACIM because the past is one of the ego's primary tools for maintaining this separate identity. See how spirituality gets turned like this. Now, there's another way to look at Akashic Records, too. You can look at it as, oh, this is this is reflecting to me what my mind's unconscious tendencies are right now, so that you could see through them. That's the way to use things. It's not to use them to project a future or to try to try to try to manifest the kind of life that you want, but actually to see what your tendencies all are because it's all reflections. So the ego is saying this happened. You did this, they did that, right? This proves what you are, this proves what they are. But the miracle's interrupting that completely. The miracle interrupts this continuity that the ego made from the past to the present to the future. That's the ego's contigua, right? Like the past has been caused, has caused what's occurring now, and then there's a future coming too. It's like just bring it all back to now. So without the belief in guilt, this whole sacrificial system just collapses. There is nothing to sacrifice about. Yay, welcome. Thank you for joining. It's good to see you. So if innocence is still the truth and it's the only truth, then what needs to be paid for? Where's karma then? Right? Where what needs to what really needs to be paid for? See, this is the belief that actually has us coming back to this illusion, coming back to being being images in a dream, because it's believing that we have some kind of debt to settle here. There is no debt. If separation never occurred, where is the debt? Where is the debt if separation never occurred? All instances of a parent debt occur after separation. So then it's this idea that it needs to be repaid. You know, I've talked about it before, like with my my perception as a child, as I had this dynamic with my stepdad where he molested me, right? And and it's like if if you're if you're not forgiving and you're not recognizing that this is an illusion and it's caused by the thought of separation, automatically the mind goes to settling the score. And instead of settling the score, what it's doing, it's projecting lifetimes where we could play out where I'm doing something bad to him later on so we can try to settle it, never get settled because this is the ego's idea. The debt is ongoing and we just keep on manifesting more bodies so we can experience this BS over and over again. All right. If God, if God didn't condemn his son in the first in the first place, who's demanding sacrifice? Who could really be demanding sacrifice but the ego?

unknown 53:47

Right?

SPEAKER_01 53:48

And this is why true forgiveness is really so liberating. And this is why the ego is so afraid of it. And you know, to the ego, this sounds horrible, you know. Like let's say, you know, one of the these two guys who were apparently murdered, they're close friends of mine. Okay, let's say they're close friends of yours, and and you don't really understand what true forgiveness is, or let's say, let's say you're related to them, you know, I happen to know one of their daughters, right? Let's say you're related to them and and you go, we're all related, really, but you know, in the dream you're related to them. And and it's like, no, I'm not gonna forgive the person who murdered my fucking father, right? I mean, it sounds logical, it sounds reasonable. No, I'm not gonna wish him well. I wish him to get hung by his toenails, you know. But but what's what what Jesus is saying here is that true forgiveness actually ends this thing where we have to perceive death over and over again. So this is giving us an opportunity in whatever capacity we we seem to be close with the people that seem to have been murdered, let's say, in this case, this is an opportunity for forgiveness. And this actually is so liberating once we get past the ego's defenses and feel the liberation of it. So it's this isn't merely an emotional relief. It's like that's not like this, you know. Of course, you do get emotional release relief too, but that's not all it is. This is recognizing that the records, the guilty deeds, okay, the guilty deeds, that the records that the ego worships as proof that someone is guilty has no power to define reality. This is demonstrating that to your mind that evil deeds have no power to define your reality. And if you think that they define their reality, again, you can't control this. It's automatically gonna be as if in your mind that it affected your reality. Okay, whatever you're projecting is what you believe about yourself in secret. That's why you really want forgiveness. And you know, when fear loosens up like this, the need for sacrifice, your need for sacrifice, your need to demand sacrifice of anything else also loosens up. And this is the miracle. This is really the miracle, okay? So that's sentence two. And let's look at that one more time, that sentence one more time. So, what Jesus is saying here is that sacrifice arises solely from fear of the records. The records are past wrongs, okay? Past thoughts, past deeds. That's the records, right? So, once again, sacrifice arises solely from fear of the records. All right. Does anyone have any questions about that? Okay, you guys are looking good. Yep, okay. Thank you for joining. I love you. All right. Let's go to sentence three of paragraph 11. We have turned the page now. We're on page 115. And here's the text.

Why Fear Turns Vicious

SPEAKER_01 57:11

This is particularly unfortunate. What's particularly unfortunate? Fear of the records. This is particularly unfortunate because frightened, frightened people are apt to be vicious. See that? Frightened people are apt to be vicious. So this sentence is profoundly compassionate, isn't it? Because a vicious person, this is Jesus talking here. Remember Jesus' experience, he was hung on a cross. Okay, you talk about you talk about murder, a public murder in front of everyone, right? And he's saying frightened people are apt to be vicious. So he's not condemning viciousness, he's explaining it. He's saying fear is the root, fear is the root of viciousness. When people are frightened, they attack. Okay. It's not because attack really protects them, but the ego believes somehow attack preserves the self. So this is self-preservation. Even murder, it's self-preservation. It doesn't work, but the ego's ideas never work. Right? They don't really preserve the self. They preserve a false self-image, right? They preserve a false self-image that's vulnerable. And in the context of everything we just covered, this fear it's specifically tied to guilt. Okay? So so like so take the murderer, for instance, right? If he's attacking, it's because of fear, which is specifically tied to guilt. It's a guilty mind. A guilty mind attacks. If someone unconsciously believes, I'm guilty, I deserve punishment. This is what's going on in the person's mind. They they're believing they deserve punishment. And because they have not watched that thought and they have not denied meaning to that thought, it was allowed to proliferate. And like like Jesus is saying earlier on, it cannot be controlled. Once you are projecting that, it's like going across the board.

SPEAKER_02 59:40

It's in a different language, it means the angel of death.

SPEAKER_01 59:43

Okay.

unknown 59:44

He was ready for it.

SPEAKER_01 59:45

Okay. All right. Tony's giving us some details about the murderer now. It's up to four. It's up to four murders now, okay? So it's four murders in the community. I guess the dude's still running around and he's got a tattoo under his eye that says Angel of Death. I think a lot of people are thinking about maybe like taking a little vacation from Pune for a little while while this dude's running around.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:10

See if you're an elderly male, apparently.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:13

Oh, it's elderly men. Okay, I see. Well, yeah, it's just, you know, basically, this is this is guilt playing out. It's collective, it's really collective guilt playing out, really, is what it is. Uh so if some c if someone's unconsciously believing that they deserve punishment, see, he made himself into the angel of death to run away from the thought that he deserves punishment. So he's going around punishing to try to run away from this idea that he deserves punishment. Okay. It's like it's like it's it's like for from the ego's perspective, this protects him somehow. Maybe it protects him from spiritual conflict consequences. It's probably very convoluted in his own mind, but the ego ends up running the show. Okay, then fear becomes chronic. Brightened minds, minds that are afraid, become defensive minds, and defensive minds attack. So defensiveness appears those a lot of different ways. You know, in our in our perception right now, we've got a murderer running around. But defensiveness appears in a lot of different ways. And, you know, it's important to look at all of the ways that it occurs. Anger. Are we are we experiencing anger? You know, yesterday Tony said he he's pissed. He wants to go kick someone's ass, maybe kill them. I don't know. But you know, he he's also he's also very willing. He's also very willing to see. And that's not saying that, you know, that you know, killing him, killing the murderer could not occur. It's actually what we're what we're looking at here is not the manifestation, but the thought projections, the thought projections that are defensive. So anger, manipulation. This is something that just about everyone does. I noticed from relating with people. Okay. It's this idea that you need something to go a certain way. You're attached to outcomes. People will unconsciously manipulate each other. They're not trying to be mean, they're just trying to get things the way they think they need them to be because they feel like a vulnerable body. Blame, blaming every anyone. Look at how common that is, right? Just this is what I'm talking about. This is all on the same level as murder. It actually is. Because it's the same, it's based on the same thought of separation. Anger, manipulation, blame, cruelty, any kind of cruelty, right? And notice how how that's you know present in a lot of people's minds, feeling justified to be cruel, right? To be cruel to people that they think deserve cruelty, control, can trying to control outcomes. This is all I'm saying. It's on the same level, right? It's on the same ego level. So it's like we're all complicit in this to some good to some degree, which is really the only degree, right? It's a really, all right. So we're actually innocent, but in not believing we're innocent, we're projecting a world and being tempted to buy into these kinds of things to justify things like judgment, withdrawal. That's another thing. Withdrawal. You know, the other day I was walking up to Kehenna, and one of my friends didn't want to give me a hug in the moment. And I noticed my mind go to projecting. And I and I just go, Jesus, I do not want that. And, you know, immediately I'm released from it. So I'm not holding anything, I'm not holding any attack thoughts. Withdrawal. See, that's an attack thought, too. Like to withdraw your love, to withdraw your presence from a person, because you get the feeling that they and the perception that they slighted you. These are all opportunities. Okay. Another one is any kind of domination over another person, okay, or trying to punish a person. Parents do it with children, even taking away their toys to try to teach them something. It's on the same level as murder, is what I'm saying. And it's actually projecting that. So this is a really this is a this is a really different view of how to see our minds and how we're using our minds. This is Jesus turning everything around. The world, the way we've been taught, is totally upside down and backwards. Okay. Viciousness is not really, really natural. It's just fear. It's an it's a manifestation of fear. And the reason why there's any kind of viciousness is that the ego believes that its survival depends on protecting itself from what? Imagined danger. All danger is imagined, but imagination becomes so real for people. When there's an idea that's danger, you know, look at the belief that the government is dangerous. That's really asking for death. It's really asking for death to take that belief and believe that it's true. Now, the belief is not anything to be fearful about. When the belief appears in your mind, when the belief occurs to you, don't hide it, don't hide it, don't repress it. Just look on it squarely and recognize it has no meaning. All right. Then there will be no need for you to lash out ever. When you perceive yourself lashing out ever, it's because you've secretly believed something that's against you, that's against truth, that's against creation, and your mind needs correction.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:46

Division, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:47

It's division, right? Division, exactly. So so this isn't to say that you know, Tony's walking down the street and he sees that dude, and he fucking let's say he kills him, right? He doesn't have to take that on as anything because nothing happened. It's just, it's really just the writing of the story playing out through everyone. We don't really even have a choice in what we do, but we have a choice in what we make meaningful in the mind. So to not be projecting punishment for anyone, irrespective of what they seem to have done. So Jesus isn't asking us to approve harmful behavior. That is not what I'm saying. I know the ego loves to distort shit. Okay. This is not approval or condoning harmful behavior. Murder is harmful behavior. We're not approving or condoning that. All right. Jesus is just teaching us how to understand the source of it correctly, the cause of it correctly. When we understand the cause of it correctly, we can undo its cause so that we don't have to experience harmful behavior ever again. That's what we're doing. We're undoing the cause of it, which is the thought of separation itself. All of this trauma, it originates from outside of time, not in time. We've gone over that before, either this chapter or chapter two. All right. So when behavior is interpreted at the level of form, as in that person murdered, let's say, the cycle continues. Attack, counterattack. Fear, more fear. Guilt deepening guilt. Right? But when we recognize that there's fear beneath the attack, that's when our perception begins to heal. It's a very compassionate thing. We're recognizing the fear beneath the attack. Tony has been in contact with this person who's apparently the murderer. We we don't know this for sure, but it kind of looks like it is this dude. And you know, Tony's like, man, he seems like a nice Pono kind of guy, right? Some kind of flip, uh like a switch flipped, right? And and yeah, that's what it's like. It's like this this fear and this guilt builds up in the unconscious, and then it manifests. And this is how we heal it. We're we're seeing how to heal it here. This is why the belief in a God that punishment that punishes becomes destructive to our mind. Because if someone believes God's threatening, then fear becomes something that's part of existence and it's not. Fear is something that is anti-existence. There's actually no fear in existence. That's why we can deny any meaning to a fearful thought. And when we believe, but but when we believe in fear, like you know, in this case, I've had people reaching out to me and telling me they're just trying to feel like they're safe. And, you know, it's believing that this perception that there's a murderer running around is making us feel unsafe. That's not really true. See, that's how it is in my mind when it when it arises, you know, I find myself locking my doors over here, right? And and noticing that uh that that wow, a thought arises. Wow, I hope the murderer doesn't come over here to Kohenna, you know, come over here and murder my ass, you know what I mean? When the when the fear, the fearful thought, it's just natural because it's spinning around in the mind, right? It's spinning around the mind, so it's coming up. And when the fear thought comes up with up in my mind, I'm just meeting it with the truth that only innocence is possible because only innocence is true, you know, and and in the event I happen to meet the person, it's like that's what I want to extend to him, no matter what he physically seems to be doing to me, right? That's what I want to extend to him because I want to end this this illusion that we have to have punishment or death or aging or any of this shit, right? So this is how when when we let's say uh let's say I didn't uh I didn't address it like that, and the fearful thought occurred to me, and then I believed in the fearful thought, then all of a sudden to me the whole universe would appear unsafe. Right? Uh I wouldn't walk around. My son told me uh when he found out about it, you know, it happened down on Papaya Farms Road, and he said, You used to let me walk around Papaya Farms Road all alone when I was just a little kid. You know, all of a sudden, to him, the universe became unsafe. Even the even the past became unsafe all of a sudden. And his mom is somehow neglectful because she let him walk around 20 years ago where there's a murderer today. You know, it's like you could see how how the universe just all of a sudden becomes unsafe. You know, I could also relate it to being in a car accident, you know, and I've I've had that experience myself and I've heard from other people too. It's like they have a car accident and then all of a sudden they're afraid of a car accident at every turn, you know. So so it's recognizing that it's only caused by fear and being released from fear, which is that which is actually predicated on guilt, is actually what keeps us safe, even in form. So frightened people who think punishment is just justified, often are punitive toward themselves. And that manifests in a lot of ways. A lot of people do it with exercise, actually. They believe that they need punishment to get in shape. And, you know, I've had that kind of way of looking at the world too. Even the way I went to the gym, it was like I was punishing myself. And the way I was eating and designing my diet and everything, it was a whole punishment thing, right? And all of those things get turned over, turned around, all the different ways that we seem to punish ourselves get turned around to where, oh, I'm entitled to be perfectly joyful, I'm entitled to peace, right? And that is actually what what protects this apparent form while it's being used for the Holy Spirit's function in a dream. So what we're doing is always projecting our inner system outward, and this is how entire cultures get into persecution, shame, sacrifice, and normalizing violence. All of this comes from fear, mistaken for the truth. So fear is often mistaken for the truth. And you know, our news systems, our news systems and governmental systems feed this, and this is by design. This is the way we've set it up. It's not like there's some bad people out there doing it to us, although it looks like that in a dream, but it's actually the way we set it up so that we can get these reflections and take them as real and not recognize what we're doing to ourselves. So Jesus is helping us to see viciousness with this sentence. Let's look at this sentence one more time. Jesus is helping us to see this is particularly unfortunate. Okay, what's particularly unfortunate that sacrifice arises solely from fear of the records. This is particularly unfortunate because frightened people are apt to be vicious. Okay, so he's helping us see that viciousness is meaningless. We do not have to make it real as our identity. The vicious self is not the truth of anyone. Look at that. This this guy who's apparently murdering is giving all of us a very great opportunity here. Okay, because he seems vicious. Apparently, he murdered four people. That seems pretty fucking vicious, doesn't it? Right? So it's helping us to see viciousness without making it real as anyone's identity. That's not his identity. He is not vicious, he's still the son of God. The vicious self is not anyone's truth. That's not anyone's truth. This is still the child of God. He has not changed from his perfect reality. He remains as God created him if he kills a hundred more people or more. It doesn't matter. It really just doesn't matter. This is just fear acting out of confusion. It's acting out its own confusion. Yeah, it's our shadow, right? Look, remember, perception is projection, right? This is this is our secret wish.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:03

It's our opportunity to integrate a shadow that we don't like.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:08

Tony said it's our opportunity to integrate a shadow that we don't like. And you know, this is coming from Tony, the guy who is, you know, in the in this dream, protector type, right? His avatar is kind of like a protector. If someone's killing, he'll kill them, right? That's his avatar. But he's seeing through it, he's seeing past it. So this is an opportunity. He's seeing the opportunity and taking the opportunity. So when we use whatever is in the perception for undoing the thought of separation, that's when we're really healing any kind of apparent need for any form of death. And all form of death is actually more like suicide, whether it's apparently from disease or murder or anything like that. Once the fear is healed, this impulse to attack, it's going to dissolve naturally and it dissolves for everyone. I mean, it may not be that much longer in the illusion of time that we continue to see a world of separation, that we continue to see a world where murders can even take place in any form. All right, that concludes our commentary here on chapter three, section three, paragraph 11, sentence three. That sentence one last time is this meaning sacrifice arising solely from fear of the records, basically, fear of the records. Let's say fear of the records is particularly unfortunate because frightened people are apt to be vicious. All right. On to sentence four. I'm checking on you guys and making sure you are not asking any questions or raising your hand. Feel free to do that if you want some clarification or you want to make a comment, even. On to sentence four, page 115.

Teaching Without Terror

SPEAKER_01 1:17:15

Good teachers never terrorize their students. So this is a very simple sentence. Good teachers never terrorize their students. Okay, it's simple, but it's overturning an enormous amount of religious conditioning. You know, you talk about terror, you're going to hell if you fucking do it wrong, you know. That's terror, right? So Jesus here is correcting the idea that fear is any kind of valid path to awakening, right? Making people afraid to try to help them. There's no need to make people afraid. If you keep doing that, here's another example that comes up. If you keep doing that, you're going to destroy your body, you're going to destroy your reputation. See, that's making cause and effect in the real in the world true. And it's an attempt to terrorize a person. It's very common for parents to do this with children, actually, to terrify them. Like if you don't, if you don't uh do good in school and get your good grades, you're going to live in poverty your whole life or something like that. People believe that. And then they perceive that because they believe it. Our mind is ridiculously powerful, you guys. Way more powerful than it seems. So a true teacher does not use terror as motivation, right? It doesn't use God as a terrorizer, it doesn't use Jesus. A lot of people hear the word Jesus and they get terrorized by it. They hear his name and get terrorized. Imagine that. The Prince of Peace associated with terror, right? Because so many people have killed in the name of Jesus. Also, the Holy Spirit, you know, these things are not meant to be fear-inducing, but religion has made them that way. Fear cannot produce genuine learning. That's why Jesus is saying good teachers never terrorize their students because fear doesn't produce genuine learning, true learning. It lets you learn that fear is meaningful, that guilt is meaningful, that guilt has consequences that are real. It does have consequences in the illusion. Your believing that you're guilty has consequences in the illusion. For one thing, it's projecting the whole world. It's, you know, it's meant to, this terrorizing is really meant to, look at it, produce compliance, isn't it? It's meant to produ it's meant to produce your compliance with the church, compliance with your parents, compliance with teachers. It's meant to confuse you. It's meant to suppress your authentic expression. It's meant to make you defensive and fragment, fragment your mind. So a frightened mind can't perceive clearly because fear is distorting perception already. That's why the ego teaches through threat. And look at the parent-child relationship, especially for us Gen Xers, right? Obey or suffer. Keep crying, and I'll give you something to cry about. Right? Believe in church, it's believe or be punished. If you don't believe, like we tell you to believe, you're going to hell. This is what Jesus is talking about when he's saying about when he's saying that good teachers never terrorize their students. They'll say, get this wrong, believe this wrong, and terrible things are going to happen. You're in danger unless you unless you conform. Right? And that's the teaching of the world. You know, it's kind of like an unsaid thing. If you don't do what everyone else is doing, when I was in school, it was like if you don't dress like everyone else is dressing, Jesus, I wear the wrong clothes and fuck. All of a sudden I'm I'm something that deserves all kinds of ridicule because I wore the wrong clothes that everyone's not wearing. They're not in the style of the moment, right? Even kids pick up on this shit. And they become the most vicious too, and they're little kids because they just pick up on this thing and they're like, oh, this is what saves me. Being vicious saves me. And then they start doing that in school, right? This isn't the voice for God. You know, I'm coming in there, I'm like trained as a missionary, and then all of a sudden I'm in school and I'm like, what the fuck is this? Right? You know, we we also believed in a punishing God because we believed that Jesus died for our sins. But then at the same time, you know, I was hearing from Jesus because I was taught to hear from Jesus and just being kind to people, you know, never wanting to say something to someone that would make them feel bad. I've always felt really deeply. And I've noticed whenever I have said something that made a person feel bad, I feel it right away, even as a little kid. So I would avoid doing something like that. But with my classmates, what I noticed was they weren't avoiding it, they were using that cruelty to keep safe, to be safe, to be safe in the crowd, right? So it was fun for me though. Don't feel bad. I had a great time. So it's the ego projecting its own the ego's own fear outward and calling it it authority. That's what the churches are using. They're using ego fear and they're calling it authority, right? Eternal damnation for just not believing the way the church tells you to believe, you're going to suffer eternal damnation. That's what they teach, okay? So that's what Jesus is really clarifying a lot through this whole section. So this connects to the previous sentence, too, that frightened people are apt to be vicious, right? So teachers who are still identified with fear teach through fear unconsciously. They're actually teaching viciousness. It's not, and again, it's not because they're evil people, they're not evil people. They are what Jesus said earlier, sincere people. He said they're sincere people who are misguided, right? So we're not we're not here to project onto religious people as if they're evil somehow. These are misguided people because they believe, they they sincerely believe that fear protects the truth. What they're protecting is a concept of the truth. Jesus is dismantling this in this section. Truth doesn't require any kind of intimidation to sustain itself. Look at that. See how religion has been used to intimidating people. Truth, that's not truth. Anything that requires intimidation is not the truth. You're not protecting the truth. Love doesn't threaten anyone. Reality isn't coerted using coercion. So this applies far beyond religion. He's using religion a lot in this section, but this applies far beyond formal religion. Parents terrorizing their children, which I've been gone over, governments terrorizing their citizens. Right? If you don't do this, we're gonna do this to you again. Teaching through terror, partners terrorizing each other emotionally as well, right? Spiritual communities. Okay, this is kind of a spiritual community. Does it terrorize through shame? Does it terrorize through exclusion? Right? Does it terrorize people through superiority or fear of being wrong? Right? I mean, I can say for myself, when I started sharing, you know, there was a lot of that shaming me, excluding me. Definitely witness that, you know. And for a lot of people, they they see that and they take it as I better be quiet. I better not speak up about the way I'm perceiving because my very survival depends on it. My community could oust me. See, for me, I just don't have that kind of I just don't have that kind of fear. It's not, it's not programmed into me. I'm I know if I get ousted, it's gonna be deep and good, right? I know it's gonna be a good spiritual teaching for me. So I'm not afraid of that. So I've always been very vocal, like just like saying whatever it is and letting people do what that whatever they will with it, using everything for forgiveness. So the ego always believes that fear increases control. And and you know, this could be going on subtly or it could be going on not so subtly. We're gonna cancel you, you're not gonna be allowed to go to the dances anymore. That's one of the things, you know. You get excluded from the dances. Oh no, if I get for people who get included from the dances, you know, I've talked to some of them. I go, the dance you're not allowed to go to is the dance you don't need to go to. That's the thing. See, that's that's the whole that's a whole stronghold that it has on people. They're like, oh no, that would be the worst if I'm not allowed to attend ecstatic dance. It's like for me, I'm like anywhere I don't, I'm not invited, I don't fucking want to be there. I don't care. You know, if I'm not invited there, that's that that means I don't need that particular experience. But when we believe we need something, we believe we need people, we need believe we need in inclusion, then it makes us vulnerable to their control. And this is how people control people. During COVID, that was so prevalent, right? Uh people were just so controlled by other people's reactions. Oh, if I don't wear a mask, other people are going to react. I was like, good, let them react. And I'll smile back at them and let them know that I love them and that it's okay, right? Fear blocks our learning because it blocks our openness. And what what allows us to see, what allows us to learn and see and discover is authentic relating, authentic expression, allowing people to express authentically and showing them love. So the Holy Spirit always teaches through gentleness. Because why does the Holy Spirit teach through gentleness? Because it doesn't trigger defensive resistance. When defensive resistance is triggered, no learning can take place. Okay, so that's why the Holy Spirit teaches through gentleness. And that's why, of course, in miracles is constantly emphasizing patience, willingness, gentleness, non-coercion, right? It's like even, you know, Jesus even says, He takes care of your ego. He's not trying to get your ego all riled up, he takes care of your ego too. So it's so you're so you're not in this reactive mode as you're identified as an ego. So that way you can see. It's a gentle correction, it's a loving correction, it's a correction toward release of your burden, not adding burdens to you. The spirit does not force anything on you, it invites you. That's why it's like I don't have a lesson to teach people as I'm walking around town or whatever, or people tell me something that's obviously whatever. What I find myself in just listening to the Holy Spirit and allowing the Holy Spirit to use my voice, I find myself relating to people in a very gentle way, right? Not in trying to force them. And as soon as I perceive the defenses going up, right? As soon as I notice that there's just this willingness to let the Holy Spirit take care of it, it's not for for me. So I'm only listening to the Holy Spirit in as much as the Holy Spirit wants me to be doing that. Well, maybe that's not the way to say it. I'm only I'm only expressing as much as the Holy Spirit guides me to express. As soon as that stops, I stop. I don't keep on going. I don't see keep on trying to push anything on anyone. And I could feel that as a message internally. Okay, that part of it is over. Now rest. Let the Holy Spirit take over. So it's a it's a nice, gentle invitation to people. I noticed when I was talking with a woman, she was just the other day, she was showing some openness. It was obvious that she was open. And also, you know, I could notice that there's there's some ego identity there that's kind of like protecting what's already known. And the way it came across, you know, the way the Holy Spirit was guiding it through me was just kind of like, well, I would look at it a little bit different than that. It's kind of like taking what you're saying and just taking it to another level of freedom. And then she was like, Oh, tell me more, right? It's not like saying, you're wrong. You're you're hurting yourself with that thought. You know what I mean? Even though I could see that that's that's the case, it's hurting the mind, but that's not the way it comes across when we're listening to the Holy Spirit. We're actually holding the ego in a kind of a protected space so it's not flaring up because it's if it's not flaring up, then then the person can see your point. If the ego's flaring up, they can't even see your point. And you know, sometimes the ego's flaring up, they're not going to see your point. Then it's time to quiet down and love them without any kind of words, because the Holy Spirit is never guiding us to push past their defenses. We're never guided to push past their defensive look, kind of like pull their eyes like this and make them see.

unknown 1:31:39

Right?

SPEAKER_01 1:31:41

So if the voice is terrorizing at all, that's not of God. That's not the Holy Spirit. If the voice is condemning them, that's not the spirit. The spirit is always kind. The voice says your the if the voice says your worth depends on performance, right? Because that's where the ego comes in. It's like the ego wants to be right. See, it doesn't really want to join with anyone. If it says that your worth depends on you sacrificing, a lot of the times we find ourselves sacrificing our peace when we're not listening to the Holy Spirit to try to tell someone something. And that's not what that's not where we want to go. This is not the voice for love. So the real teacher restores peace. And who is the real teacher, anyways, in a dream? You guys know who the real teacher is. Well, Jesus is known as the master teacher, but the teacher in your mind is the Holy Spirit, you can say. And you can say it's Jesus too, either way, whatever lets you know that it's not an individual in a dream that's a teacher, right? It's not an individual in a dream. There, there's one teacher that's coming through all minds to the extent that we're a listening to that teacher, because there's two voices we can listen to in the mind. One's the voice for truth, and one's the voice for illusion. One's the voice that terrorize, one's the voice that teaches through gentleness. And oftentimes we're listening to the voice that's teaching through gentleness, but then we stop listening thinking that we need to keep pursuing. Okay. So back to that sentence one more time. Good teachers never terrorize their students. Yay. All right. On to the next sentence. On to the next sentence. And that is sentence five of paragraph 11, page 115.

When Attack Blocks Learning

SPEAKER_01 1:33:45

To terrorize is to attack, and this results in rejection of what the teacher offers. That's kind of like what I was just talking about when going over the last sentence. It results in rejection, because to terrorize is to attack. So we don't want to terrorize anyone ever, even if we think we're doing it for truth, right? So he's explaining here, Jesus is explaining here why fear-based teaching fails. Because terror is attack, and an attack automatically generates defensiveness. The ego believes, this is what the ego believes, and I see a lot of people doing it, especially on Facebook. You know, I write a bunch on Facebook, and I'll tell you what, the group with the most vicious people I have ever seen on Facebook is called Buddha at the Gas Pump. It's amazing. It's it's kind of it's it's kind of interesting and you know, kind of kind of fun for me. So I'll post things and and I'll see people just ganging up in the comments about you know how I shouldn't be over there saying things like that. They're accusing me of using AI, which I do use AI. It's just that I'm not having AI write the thing for me. It's not like that at all. But it's like there's the there's this, you know, sense that like if it's too articulate, it's too true, it must be AI. People are always getting accused of it being AI, and people are thinking AI is ruining the world and stuff like that. So then all these people start ganging up, right? So these people are believing, what I'm noticing is these people are believing that to attack it that somehow is project protecting something, right? It's like they're browbeating me, but you know, I'm not really feeling the effects of being browbeat because I'm recognizing where it's coming from. I'm recognizing the innocence behind it. And, you know, I'll I'll find myself, you know, talking to them. And then when I notice that they're really committed to attacking, I just block them. That way they don't have to see my posts anymore. And I can communicate with people who are actually interested in joining rather than separation, rather than division. So I'm finding that a lot of people on spiritual groups, which I started posting my things to recently, a lot of people on spiritual groups believe that through attacking, they can protect the truth. Through attacking, they can get people to see their side and their way. So yeah, thankfully, there's a thing called block on Facebook. So that just just so that the whole thing doesn't get convoluted in people who are sincerely looking for communication, looking to communicate, can communicate. So when someone feels attacked, they're gonna move into protective mode. They're gonna contract, they're gonna defend, they're gonna resist, they're gonna shut down, right? This doesn't mean that you can't put your boundaries like I just gave you the uh I gave you the example. And you know, for me, I'm always listening to the Holy Spirit. What is the most helpful? And you know, the Holy Spirit shows me this is the most helpful to not have these people seeing your posts. They don't need to see your posts, right? Because they're not interested in any kind of joining. So just in listening, we can see where we need to have boundaries, and we can see where we don't need to have boundaries, and these are not really our boundaries either. So even if the content being offered contains the truth, the attack makes the mind reject the truth, right? Because fear to fear and opening, openness can't coexist. And there's no fear where openness is present. Tony said the truth ki teaches you what it is when you're curious, yeah. Yeah. So coercion is never gonna be healing. The ego could produce obedience through fear. We see that with the government and its constituents, peasants, whatever. We see that we see that in in school, right? Coercion, right? It produces obedience through fear, parents and children, but that doesn't lead to understanding. Just because people are obeying the laws that you're putting putting onto them doesn't mean that they're actually understanding. That's not genuine willingness, it's not truly learning. So spirit never attacks, actually, attacks, strengthens the separation, which, of course, in miracles, Jesus through Course in Miracles is undoing. And it's important to understand that to understand this deeply, okay? People are often trying to force their own awakening in other people's awaiting awakening through pressure or shame or superiority or urgency or fear. That's the way people operate when they're listening to the ego. And you know, I even have that projected onto what I'm sharing. Oh, you think you know so much. Oh, you think you're so superior and stuff like that. And and you know, it's it's kind of like too. Well, there's one thing that I do know. If you're attacking, you don't know. You know, if you're shaming, you don't know. If you're sad, your mind needs a correction, you don't know. If you're sad about the world, you don't know. That's what's going on. Do I go around telling people that all the time? No. But we're doing an ACIM deep dive right now. That's why I'm telling you guys that. You're here voluntarily. And and Glenn made a comment. He said, Angel of death is no match for the angel of love. Hooray! Yeah, in fact, the angel of death is meaningless, meaningless. So we don't have to apply and oh, that makes that makes it real somehow. That he got a tattoo that says angel of death, right? It's like the angel of death is meaningless. It's based on a meaningless thought in a meaningless world. Fear doesn't awaken the mind. That's what's important to understand very deeply. Fear does not awaken the mind, and it's not useful for teaching. That's what Jesus is saying. It actually just reinforces the belief that danger is real. And once fear enters into your teaching process, your mind becomes focused on self-protection instead of truth. Because once again, when you're fearing someone, you're the one accepting the fear for yourself. So this applies spiritually, emotionally, rationally, and even politically. Whenever someone feels manipulated or cornered or threatened, right? And you can say this about the murderer, right? The apparent murderer. No one's really the murderer. I'm just using this for symbolic language, right? You could say all of us are the murderer or none of us are the murderer, really. Okay, but when someone feels cornered, threatened, emotionally overpowered, shamed, or terrified, they instinctively defend themselves, which looks like attack. That's why Jesus is saying terrorizing results in rejection of what the teacher offers. Terrorizing people actually results in rejection, even if it makes them compliant. People become compliant out of fear, just like a kid, right? We're afraid of getting spanked. So we fucking act a certain way because we're afraid of getting spanked. That doesn't mean we actually understand anything, right? That doesn't make us understand the principle or anything like that. We just understand that, okay, if I do that, I get hurt, right? If I do this, the IRS comes and levies my account, for instance. Okay. Attack blocks receptivity. And this also explains something that that's going on subtly in our own mind, okay? If we attack ourselves or we're trying to heal, we make ourselves wrong. There's remorse for anything that we've done, for anything that we've thought, for anything that we've said, for any way that we've acted. Part of our mind is resisting healing itself. And that's what the ego wants because it allows the ego to thrive, right? Self-content condemnation, that's inner defensiveness. A defensive mind cannot accept healing. Healing is accepted through laying down defenses. So the mind cannot accept the truth while it's also using fear against itself. That's why the Holy Spirit teaches so gently, which a lot of people don't know that the Holy Spirit's teaching is gentle. And that's why Jesus came with this course in miracles to express this to everyone, to show that this is not really the way. The way you've been taught, the way the world's been taught, through punishment and suffering and guilt doesn't work. It's never worked and it's never gonna work. So correction without attack is allowing the mind to relax. That's one reason why I love to do block therapy with people. You know, one of my friends said, you know what? I notice I'm much, much more patient since I've been doing block therapy. And it's like, yeah, because it's encouraging relaxation. We're encouraging relaxation in the somatic sense. All right, I don't get any money for block therapy. Block therapy doesn't give me any money. I'm not an affiliate or anything, but you know, I recommend if it resonates with you, go to blocktherapy.com and check it out. Okay. Even if you say Hope Johnson referred you, they do not care. They do not give Hope Johnson any money. So truth doesn't need to force itself on anyone, right? The reality does not need to be intimidating toward anyone. Love persuades, it's gentle persuasion, right? It's gentle persuasion through recognition of the truth of what we are. You know, I shared with my with one friend, I was just meeting her for the first time, and she said, How old are you? And I go, Well, I'm apparently almost 54, but I'm actually an eternal being just like you. And she just started tearing. She started tearing up. She's like, Oh my God. She's like, I feel that. You see that? So that's recognition. That's what Jesus is talking about. It persuades, love persuades through recognition. I'm recognizing it for myself. I'm not trying to teach this person anyway, anything. This is just the way I talk about it, right? For my own mind. So I don't reinforce an idea that I'm a certain age on a path toward death. When people ask me my age, I tell them what my apparent age is. And I usually also remind myself that I'm an eternal being, and that actually doesn't mean anything. So if someone catches wind of that and they recognize themselves, that's a healing right there. It's like, holy shit, I feel that too. We are eternal beings. I actually said when I'm I'm an eternal being, just like you. She's like, whoa, whoa, oh my goodness. Thank you for telling me that, you know. And and and there wasn't anything in me that was like making her wrong for asking my age, right? That's another thing that spiritual people do. They get on this kick, like, okay, the age isn't real, so I'm gonna shame anyone who asked me of my age, right? It's some fun stuff. I love it. So where did we where did we get to here? We got to sentence five. So we've covered four sentences in this one, plus a pretty lengthy introduction that was a summary of what we've covered so far in paragraphs one through 10.

Events Resources And Donations

SPEAKER_01 1:46:41

And we've gotten to paragraph five. So for next week, I'll be back next week on Wednesday. We're gonna start with, or not paragraph five, paragraph 11, sentence five. Next week, when I come back, we're gonna start on paragraph 11, sentence six. We'll have a shorter introduction since we're just coming back one week later, and we'll get back into it again. Meanwhile, I have three events a week right now, and I don't think that the second one is is able to be joined on Zoom or anything because it just kind of convolutes all the Zoom notifications so much. I don't think I'm gonna do that. I may, you know what I may do? I may, I may stream it live on Facebook because people have been asking me for something. Give me something live on Facebook. You know, some people aren't so technical that they want to go to anything else, they just want to stay on Facebook. And I got a lot of friends there. So it's coming to me right now that that is most likely what I'm gonna do on Tuesdays when I'm doing the lesson of the day. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna stream it to Facebook. It's not gonna be on Zoom or Substack, but Mondays and Wednesdays at 3 p.m. Hawaii time, I'm gonna be doing my regular events. One of them is wisdom dialogues. That's gonna be Monday, 3 p.m. Hawaii time. And this is every week right now while I'm here in Kehenna till sometime in September. Okay. Every week, 3 p.m. Hawaii time is when I do wisdom dialogues. And then at 1 p.m. on Tuesdays, I'm doing ACIM lesson of the day. You guys can show up. The address is on my calendar at hopejohnson.org. When you go to my events calendar, you'll see the address there and also zoom addresses for the two that I'm doing Zoom with. You can show up here at 1 p.m. on Tuesday or at 3 p.m. on Mondays or Wednesdays. Mondays is wisdom dialogues, Wednesdays is a course in miracles deep dive. You could also go to my Facebook page, Hope Johnson on Facebook. There's a lot of Hope Johnsons, but I may be the only one in Hawaii. And I'm a little bit popular just because I've been doing this shit for a while. So it's like the algorithms know me. So if you look for Hope Johnson Hawaii, I think you're gonna find me. And and go over there, follow me, andor friend request me. If you friend request me, send me a message. Let me know why you're friend requesting me. I don't just I don't just accept all friend requests. You're only allowed 5,000 friends for one thing. Let me know. I'll be happy to let you in on my circle of friends on Facebook, but I have that image, an image of of the events that I'm doing and the link and everything. It's posted there to my Facebook page. I have it pinned to the top. I also have it as my cover photo so everyone can find it very easily when my events are taking place. The other one is hopejohnson.org, but you can't join the you can't join the Tuesday one through hopejohnson.org. You're gonna be able to see that one on Facebook. So also go to hopejohnson.org if you want more resources, more videos, things that I'm written, I've written different links right on the front page. There's all kinds of links to things. I've written a book called Unschooling for Parents for People Who Are Awakening with Children. You can find that there. You can find ways to connect to me one-to-one through a paid service that I'm offering. And and really, if you listen to wisdom dialogues or you come to ACIM Deep Dives and you feel like you don't have the resources to pay me to talk to, talk to you, let me know. Reach out to me. I have I have a chat box right on my website, right in the lower right hand corner. Let me know. I'm a minister. I offer this stuff free. There's a reason why I offer it for paid on my site, and that's just so that random people that don't even know what I'm offering are just not always engaging my services for free. Okay. But if you have that, let me know. And for those of you who like to donate to my ministry, my ministry is funded 100% through donations. That includes all these Zoom things, that includes all kinds of free resources that I'm offering. And if you feel to donate, that helps me too to disseminate the message more. The more donations I get, the more I disseminate the message through different channels. Okay. It could be TikTok coming up. I don't know. I just got Facebook verified so people who don't follow me can see me when I do posts and they can see me when I make comments on posts. So there's a donate link there. And you can even set it up to donate to me monthly if you just want to be a sponsor of mine. I really appreciate that. Thank you so much. That's hopejohnson.org. Until next time, I'll be back on Monday at three p.m. Hawaii time. Mahalo, aloha, and a hooey hoo.