I found myself skipping through the solid block of small type.
Please, if you can, paragraph your posts.
White space makes it far more readable.
Harry
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Darryl and Natalia wrote:
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Hello Everyone,
It's great to get comments on topics most would rather not become involved in, yet which remain most challenging. Leap of faith to follow reason, once we have shed linear thought sounds good to me. It would never have convinced me as an agnostic, however, at a time when I regarded such faith as solace for times of uncertainty and a crutch for people who could not fulfill their dreams.
Keith asks what is mind. May I ask, without mind, what use is the brain and body ? Can a body create without it? Can it offer its creations all that it is and never incur loss? Mind is the only real thing about you. It is where your thoughts reside, (and as you already suspect, not just your thoughts). It is that which is witness to your thoughts, as you take form around the needs of your special function, and it is that which tells you how you feel from moment to moment, constantly weighing right vs. wrong. You have, in this physical universe both an ego mind (Greek sense of the word), totally concerned with physical matters and self-preservation - which ultimately knows nothing but convinces you that it knows everything, and a right-thinking mind which you will never lose, but will spend most of your life on earth unveiling. Mind and its thoughts are the only things of which you really are in complete control, from moment to moment. No one can tell you how to feel, or what to dream (barring mind control events), and you are free to change your mind at any time.
Each one of us is but an idea, an illusional fragment of a collective mind, seemingly independent and autonomous, and a "reflection of the thought of the mind that is beyond all form" (quoted from a personal letter sent to me by Kenneth Wapnick, format editor for original Course manuscript). I think we are learning the very detailed lesson of how not to be Creator in a collective dream. Arriving at this knowledge, which I do not claim to have arrived at, means finally recognizing fear and judgment and their chaotic projections as illusory, and choosing for the truth of peace and love instead, finally aligning yourself with the only real force that exists--that of love.
The new book Selma cited does sound exciting, and I realize how important these findings are, not just to convince skeptics, but for healing's sake. What I find unfortunate is that for decades, if not centuries, people have experienced spontaneous healing, as well as healing considered otherwise miraculous; countless documented cases supported by the allopathic community to give evidence of mind over body. All of these documented cases have been ignored because they did not conform to hard copy evidence produced by double blind studies, or was it a thing of any excuse to refute what is too much for the scientific mind to bear? We are definitely more afraid of our real strengths and what we could become if we became aware that we really have minds. Hence, a blind eye to the obvious. Religion, often accounting for these phenomena, still demands a change of mind to take place to reverse terminal cancer, stage four, as example. The body is too weak to have an immune system rallying at this point.
Is it alien intervention? Perhaps, but knowing aliens, they would want to take the credit, and when they don't, and faith or positive visual re-enforcement does, scientists should give the individual credit to know the reason for healing. Most drugs that do work were approved by FDA's on anecdotal evidence alone, but where it comes to professionals publishing anything that may liberate the minds of the masses, they feel their power-over will diminish.
Selma, your need for an objective reality is impossible to realize within chaotic existence. Fear breads exponentially, and trying to perceive correctly is, as you have no doubt read before, not something you can do while still on the battleground. Being clear on limitations is a clear limitation on your only reality, which is that of spirit. I agree there is a danger in people expecting that power of the mind will enable them to do whatever they please. We are still bound by the laws of the collective dream that brought about this mindset of physical existence. If, for example, you are physically attacked, protect yourself. Gravity will likely cause you to fall from a mountain top if you lose your footing. The primary goal of A Course In Miracles is not to teach people the power of the mind so much as it is to inspire forgiveness of self and the world we think we see in order to achieve inner peace.
The Course is definitely not for everyone, and the immature mind will not be able to wrap round its message without becoming afraid or feeling incompetent. To unlearn all that we are taught badly requires that we recognise first that we have a mind, next that it is limitless because of its divine source, and then the task of unlearning what we learned badly can begin. The lessons are not merely intellectual, they are experiential, which is how we come to recognise them to be truth. That marks only the beginning; experiencing forgiveness on classroom earth takes a lifetime (may be two or three if re-incarnation is true). If we were meant to accelerate to the point that we could all do the bidding of our minds without the preparation that manifests in wisdom, we would only experience further chaos (not unlike the chaotic moment in which we imagined a physical existence). This is precisely why we should be grateful that we are not in charge of anything but our imagined thoughts.
Take the medicine, whatever form, if it does you no harm. Anything that will allow you a clear state of mind to achieve inner peace--which is the real goal.
Good Night, and choose your dream guides carefully!
Natalia
**************************************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: (818) 352-4141 -- Fax: (818) 353-2242 http://home.attbi.com/~haledward ****************************************************
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