Acclimating to Peace

This mind thought that all it had to do was stop believing in guilt and it would be at peace and any process would be over. Then it found peace, stopped believing in guilt, but found that it was still in a process. And that process is acclimating to peace. When a mind is used to conflict it does not immediately accept peace.

A couple of weeks ago (http://acimmentor.blogspot.com/2016/03/sorry-no-incantations-here.html) I wrote about how a mind used to forms (thoughts, ideas, feelings, material forms) experiences the Formlessness of Truth as emptiness. The contrast between form and Formlessness is jarring at first. Form is boundaries and busyness and contrasts and conflicts. Formlessness is boundlessness and stillness and the same throughout. This is Absolute Peace! What else could be peace but emptiness? It seems so obvious once you experience It.

But Absolute Peace is not the first peace to which you have to acclimatize. The first peace you have to get used to is the peace that occurs when conflict falls away. It begins at the very beginning of the process of growing your awareness of Truth. Very often new students of A Course in Miracles who are still in the lessons in the Workbook tell me how disturbed they are when they are no longer bothered by something that used to bother them. Isn’t this the peace they sought? Weren’t they looking to get off the up-and-down roller-coaster of drama that is the experience of the ego (personal thought system)? Not only do they not trust this new peace, but along with it comes a sense of something missing. It’s not necessarily a loss they mourn, but it is an uncomfortable sense of something familiar, even if painful, having fallen away. What fell away was conflict. So right away, even as you have years ahead of you of letting go of the belief in guilt, you begin the process of acclimatizing to peace.

The ego thrives in the discomfort of the split-mind. You (the mind split between ego and Truth) are used to listening to it and you are not used to peace. The ego tells you that something is wrong with you because you are no longer in pain, you no longer join with others in suffering, you feel a detachment from the world, etc. And you will fear that something is wrong with you to the extent that you still believe that suffering is normal or right and good and “spiritual”. It’s a hard belief to overcome because it is central to the ego. The ego is conflict and suffering. So it is never in the ego that you come to an awareness of peace. That you can experience peace is how you know you are not the ego.


Since you have to acclimate to the peace that you feel when conflict falls away you can imagine that you also have to acclimate to Absolute Peace. But by the time that It comes into your awareness guilt has fallen away so there is no longer a fear that you are wrong for being detached from the world. You recognize that Absolute Peace is simply not familiar and that now it is time to let It in more and more.

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Learn about the books The ACIM Mentor Articles, The Plain Language A Course in Miracles, 4 Habits for Inner Peace, and Releasing Guilt for Inner Peace at www.acimmentor.com.

Comments

will said…
Liz,
A good piece this week. Hopefully this question is on topic.
In Volume II of ‘The Message of A Course in Miracles’, ‘Practicing A Course in Miracles’ in Lesson 26 you write in the Mentor’s Notes,

“But remember that the witnesses that the world presents to you, you have put there to see.”

The personal mind (Will) in trying to understand this sentence would automatically think both “you’s refer to the personal mind (Will), when in fact each “you” is referring to a separate concept. So the sentence could be re-written:

“But remember that the witnesses that the world presents to the personal mind (Will), the split mind has put them there for the personal mind to see.”
11:47 AM
ACIM Mentor said…
Will, you are always the split-mind, either in identification with the ego (personal mind) or with the Holy Spirit. It would be this: "But remember that the witnesses that the world presents to you, the split-mind, you, the split-mind, has put there to see."

The "witnesses" are the filter (ego or Holy Spirit) through which you, the split-mind, look at the world.
2:05 PM
will said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
5:08 PM
ACIM Mentor said…
Will, all you have to know is that you are a mind that is always able to choose between the ego and the Holy Spirit. Further clarity on this comes as you exercise this choice.
3:01 PM
will said…
OK, that makes sense, thanks.
3:57 PM
Anonymous said…
Please know dear brothers and sisters that the Stillness is so full of ever-new beauty, awe and endless satisfaction. The only thing it is empty of is pain and suffering. Just keep going in your practice! Know also that the only thing we detach from is ego thoughts, images and emotions. When absorbed in Truth we can be wholly engaged with all living things in the world, present to all and radiating the intense love that comes from the Infinite through the heart. May we all open to this Fullness now. In Spirit, Layla
6:29 PM
nicci said…
thank you. nicci
7:44 AM
Hal Seeley said…
Liz's latest blog cannot be overstated and provides the ACIM student with an insight into what has been described as habit energies. If you have ever smoked or had any other habit and tried to quit you have experienced on a physical level what the mind goes through as it sheds it beliefs. There is a very real mental discomfort or pain that is experienced.
8:13 AM
Christine said…
Thank you, Layla...that was our Golden Retriever who passed March '15...she would send the same message.
8:30 AM
will said…
Hal, I ran into the same thing. First time I read it I really didn't pickup on how much was being said. A couple of days later when I went back to it, it was loaded with info that is pertinent to what is going on in my life now. The falling away of a relationship where I feel peace as it's happening and the personal mind wanting to go back to the pain.
8:50 AM
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