ACIM Lessons- 13 Plus Text with Commentary by David Hoffmeister

David's commentary: "So today Jesus has turned cause and effect in a right-thinking manner, and instead of the false declaration that the world engenders fear in the mind, it's really focusing on the idea that the fear that is engendered is coming from the thoughts that are held to be real and dear in the mind. And so we have this first statement of cause and effect - cause being mind and world being effect, cause being mind and emotion being effect; when he brings in the idea that 'a meaningless world engenders fear because I think I am in competition with God'. And so we see from our reading in the text that the mind that is sleeping is actually afraid of thoughts, it's afraid of the power of the mind, it's afraid of the idea that belief and thought combine in a way that is like a power surge that has the power to literally move mountains; it's afraid of the power of the mind because of the belief that it can miscreate, that it can use the power of the mind in a destructive way. And holding on to a meaningless belief system of the ego, holding on to meaningless thoughts, and holding on to the perception of a meaningless world, all are indicators of the idea that 'I think I am in competition with God'. It's an amazing cause-effect idea that Jesus says you may find it difficult to avoid resistance to this concluding statement. This is like the atomic bomb of metaphysics - the metaphysics of cause and effect that were covered over by an entire world of linear time to guard against the intense fear of this thought. And yet, as we recall our reading about fear in the text, we are given an idea of how this fear seemed to arise, and how the fear cannot be controlled by Jesus, but he can give us the conditions in which the fear seemed to arise, and having given us these conditions, he can help us to make another choice. And that choice is always at the mind level, it's not at the behavioral level, it's not at the symptom level. This choice is not going to come about trying to change the world or thinking something would be better if it were different in form. We must actually be willing to be healed and give over the belief in these so-called choices in form to Jesus, saying, 'Please direct me at the mind level. I am willing to heal.'

David's commentary continued: "And this also reminds me of our instructions about level confusion that we received from the text reading today: that Jesus must wait as long as we raise body thoughts to the level of mind. What does that mean? As long as we believe that bodies are causative, that people cause things, that events and images cause things, then we are raising body thoughts to the level of mind, and preventing ourselves from being guided by Jesus, and having the Atonement accepted in our mind. We cannot believe that these images, the effects of the ego, are causative. If the ego is a puff of nothing, how can it's images that it generated be causative? Think about this backwards causation as we were growing up as children: 'You make me mad; You hurt my feelings; You are the reason I am upset.' It's all impossible - the world of images cannot make us feel ANY way. And this has been demonstrated by the eastern yogis who meditate and train their mind, transcending all concepts: hot and cold; all apparent needs for protection of the body - simply by sinking deep inward in the mind and coming into that stillness, which is invulnerable, which transcends the belief in being cold, transcends the belief in the body being harmed. So we are told of this amazing idea in the text that mind is the only causative area and we are not to raise body thoughts to the level of mind. Because when we raise body thoughts to the level of mind, or give them causation, then we think we are in competition with God. How is this so? God did not create bodies, God creates in Spirit, God creates in eternal love. And if we give autonomy to bodies, we give causation to bodies, we make them something in our mind that is real. We have first said 'no' to Spirit, said 'no' the awareness that we are Spirit, and THEN we think that something OUTSIDE in the world of linear time and form - images, constructs - is causative. So today we go beyond fear - all fear; by recognizing that mind cannot create beyond itself. And if there is any attempt to believe the opposite of that, to believe the error, we must remind ourselves, throughout the day: 'A meaningless world engenders fear'."