Nothing to Judge in the Unfolding


A couple of weeks ago I wrote how I (this mind) could not have accepted that the self’s life in the world is an expression until I no longer believed in guilt. Why, I wondered? I do speak to students who hear that the self’s life is not a cause for a future effect, but an expression of an idea long since over. And they feel immediately released from guilt and from the pressure of having to make something happen. But before I stopped believing in guilt I could not access that relief because I could not understand, much less accept, the idea. Why did I need guilt removed first?

It was because the idea meant I was not in control. And if I was not in control, I could do nothing to mitigate my guilt and that meant I could be subject to horrific punishment for it. In other words, I could not accept the forgiveness offered in the idea because guilt was too real to me. This was all unconscious, of course. It showed up as my being unable to understand the idea. It simply made no sense to me.

Now that guilt is gone, though, it’s like I knew it all along! Certainly, I had learned along the way to trust my intuitive sense of where things were going (or not going, as the case may be) in this self’s life. I had learned to find the flow instead of to resist it. But I found this just because it was easier to live in the flow.  I changed my behavior, but not my beliefs. I lived in a confused mangle of “there is a flow to the universe I can find and live in” and a belief that “I am autonomous and my choices are mine alone and they have real consequences”. I felt one thing and believed another. I was conflicted until the guilt dropped away.

Lately, I notice when I am under attack from the ego (personal thought system) it always contains at least a nugget of the idea that what I am doing has significance for the future. What I’m doing is a cause for a future effect and I’d better get it right or my life in the world, and/or the world itself, will go horribly wrong. I don’t have these thoughts.  It’s just a feeling and I find those thoughts when I examine the feeling. No wonder I used to be so controlling! What a horrible burden.

Now I switch it around: This that I am doing is only an expression of a past cause. It is not for a future purpose. It is part of a larger unfolding I can just watch. And--foom!--the ego attack drops. There was every reason to judge what I did when I thought it added to or mitigated guilt. Of course, at minimum, I doubted that whatever I did was “good enough” to mitigate guilt. So my choice was doubt or outright certainty that I did add to my guilt. But when I recognize that what I’m doing is just what I’m doing, it’s part of an unfolding, there is nothing to judge.

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Comments

laurie said…
So Liz, where does free will come into play, or does it? I mean free will as it pertains to changing the outer circumstances/experiences of our lives. Do we orchestrate that, or does change just happen, or fail to happen of its own? I'm kinda hoping that you confirm the latter and I can just breathe a sigh of relief and watch the motivation to change arise (or fail to arise). I could see how guilt would just fall away in that case...
ACIM Mentor said…
Laurie, breathe a sigh of relief. If you are to change, you will feel the motivation to do so.
hannah said…
i heard in a talk of ken wapnicks, the line 'time seems to go forward but is really running backwards'. im not sure if thats a direct ACIM quote or not. he went on to say that all we are doing is merely reviewing what has already seemed to happen.
ACIM Mentor said…
Hannah, that is from ACIM. There's something about it being like a rug being rolled up. But I never read it as literal, as in, the details have already happened. I've read it as a metaphor, as in, we are undoing what seems to have been done. We are living in the moment of the-idea-of-not-Truth/the-undoing-of-the-idea-of-not-Truth. Only, in time, it seems to have begun long ago and as if it will be undone in some indefinite future. Time is the illusion on which all other illusions rest.

In other words, I have not sat here at the computer and written this exact response before. I am not "re-viewing" that. But the whole story of time represents and idea that is already over because it was undone the instant it occurred.
hannah said…
i have noticed that what ken taught earlier on was different from what he taught later. for example i have heard him say that 'the script is written' does not mean the details of the choices of our lives, but rather just the 'outcome' of the dream of the tiny mad idea is inevitable.

i couldnt find the part i heard the other day and mentioned above, to see if i had misrepresented what he was saying in that particular talk, though i recall he also presented a few different scenarios which he said were not 100% accurate descriptions in themselves, but served when you put them together, to start to dissolve the rigid idea that time was real, linear, and that we are thus victims of it. again im quoting him from memory and possibly through my own filters of understanding!

i have also heard him saying that we interpret the ideas of ACIM, and all ideas, with a purpose of keeping the self real or opening to our reality as Mind. i can hear him say ' to review something it would actually have to have happened once, let alone twice!'

i do know that we can experience, in time, things that have not yet happened, i have dreamed of things before they have happened, specific and random enough to be beyond any explanation of random, unrelated to any thought processes or life experience before that point. so what this tells me is that the seeming linear aspect of time is as unreal, in time, as ACIM tells me time itself is! hmm.. so, while you are not reviewing sitting at the computer writing that response (well.. maybe you are now ;) ), in time that was always the response you were going to give? honestly, i dont see how it can be any other way *unless* time was real. if everything in the illusion of time is an expression of an idea long since over, then the whole illusion can only seem to have free will/choice from the point of view of selves.. ie in time.
ACIM Mentor said…
Hannah, since time is really just one moment stretched out as a story, it is really all happening at once. Some can tap into that, at least sometimes.
Christine said…
I was thinking this morning...did Jesus heal people of their guilt? I mean, they'd come to him to hear him speak or to receive healings, but was it this guilt which hangs over us like an unacknowledged miasma...maybe a healing of the body seemed to occur when somehow
Anonymous said…
I ran out of room on my phone...when somehow something touched them unbeknownst...a reminder of the Truth which we are...Innocence as Spiritual Identity, etc...? Anyway, the heavy burden over-riding and underlying how a personal self "gets along in the world", w guilt.
nicci said…
Christine,
i have had this same thought about Jesus' healing.

i seem to hear HS reminding me that all healing is of the mind and that He extended the miracle to those who were bodily healed in the same way that He instructs us in ACIM, and the same way that with His help i have internally experienced being raised above the battleground and offering Love to another quietly in my mind in momentary Holy encounters. which has always been for me an overlooking of all guilt and perceiving instead the other's Holy Innocence. in those moments i trust the other is in some way i do know receiving a healing also. and He also reminds me that those brief moments of joining in Love are used by Him to affect situations in the world i have no way of knowing about or even imagining....

more and more i am finding that any question i can think of results in the same answer ~ the extending of the miracle of Love to another. the miracle is the answer to everything for me these days.

thank you for allowing this sharing and the opportunity to learn more deeply. endless Love, n
ACIM Mentor said…
Christine, I always took the healing in the Bible to be metaphorical. The blind can see, the lame can walk, etc. simply a metaphor for being made whole through the Awareness of Truth (Holy Spirit/Christ Consciousness). Touching Jesus' robe meant touching Christ Consciousness (Awareness of Truth) in one's own mind.

Jesus would say after a healing, "Go and sin no more". Some hear this as an admonishment, but I always heard it as "Now that you know Truth you know sin is not real." That would be a lifting of guilt.
hannah said…
this aspect of this blog inspires both Joy and fear; making that connection between control and guilt and a judgemental god.

"Lately, I notice when I am under attack from the ego (personal thought system) it always contains at least a nugget of the idea that what I am doing has significance for the future. What I’m doing is a cause for a future effect and I’d better get it right or my life in the world, and/or the world itself, will go horribly wrong. I don’t have these thoughts. It’s just a feeling and I find those thoughts when I examine the feeling. No wonder I used to be so controlling! What a horrible burden."

so.. if there is any tenseness at all regarding any choice i am making, i am believing that there is a truth/god separate from me with an inherent view of good and evil built into the fibre of It?

did letting go of guilt coincide with letting go of belief in separation from truth and a god? oh! is letting go of guilt recognising that that god is nothing but the ego!!?? and this recognition is what enables you to view social-moral guilt with NO feeling of absolute moral guilt? (im thinking about what i discussed with you re my dad. while i took comfort from what you said about my response to him, i knew that my response contained a belief in absolute guilt still, which is why i felt id attacked him.
ACIM Mentor said…
Hannah, an awareness of Truth as true is what led to letting go of the belief in guilt. There is no god who has decreed an absolute morality. That *is* just a projection of the ego. So, yes, that is why I can now separate out social-moral guilt from absolute-moral guilt.

Yes, you were correct that your belief in absolute-morality is why you felt you'd attacked him. To some degree you see his flaw and mistakes not only as passing human fallibility, but also as a "sin".
hannah said…
thank you Liz.

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