ACIM – What Are You Focusing on?
Posted on by dreamingson in ACIM, Spirituality
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Yesterday I was driving over to have Christmas lunch with my family. During the journey a car was in front of me and the sun was reflecting of the rear window. This caused my eyes great discomfort. But strangely I continued to stare straight at the reflecting light!
Then it struck me that all I had to do was slightly change the focus of my gaze and all the discomfort would disappear. I thought how simple. This was really just a simple metaphor for other aspects of my life where I am focusing on the problem instead of the solution – its 101 in mind direction.
I have heard so many times phrases such as “where attention goes energy flows” and “what you focus on you get more of.” What I thought about on this trip is that a lot of times I simply don’t want to re-direct the “focus” of my gaze to the solution. I thought “how curious” and began to try to understand why it is so hard to take my attention off the problem and onto the solution. I searched my mind as I was driving for ACIM principles that would help me explain this curiosity.
Firstly I remembered that the course talked about how we “confuse pleasure and pain.” So many times I complain, both internally and externally about something that is frustrating me, swearing black and blue I want this problem solved. However by remembering the above course principle I understand I have such investment in the pain of the problem because to my ego it is really pleasure. It is pleasurable to my ego because it confirms the reality of the thought of separation and therefore the separated self – the dream figure. The ego then starts to direct the mind to find the causes of the frustration in the world outside of the mind – its most pleasured activity!
I was reminded of the passage (The attraction of guilt) that talked about how the ego sends out the hunger dogs of fear to search out sin in everyone else. This is so pleasurable to the ego because every time it finds sin in the world it walks free of execution – it is not the one that will be punished for the denying Reality and erecting a substitute in its place.
And then I was reminded that the vicious dogs are only let loose after something else has occur, and that something else is a decision, a choice for what I want the truth to be. And if judgment, anger and attack are experienced instead of the peace of God then I want the separation to be the truth. I want to hold onto the deluded belief that an idol can give an answer in place of the principle of the atonement, to believe a love outside of me can fill the lack caused by my denial of my SELF, only to mercilessly attack it when it fails the role the ego has assigned to it (to offer completion.)
And so I will continue in my pursuit of specialness, and to blame things outside of myself for my lack of peace, but at the same time I will have the awareness that “I am never upset for the reason I think.” (I am upset because I want to be outside perfect oneness.)
I think this is how healing is done the quickest, to make all the projections the ego would make, not denying them because “they not spiritual.” To remind the mind that what it sees is false and that it never hate another for their sins but only its own. To forgive the projections I have placed on others and therefore freeing myself from the ravages of guilt.
In time, as peace becomes more valued in my awareness I will become more and more willing to divert my focus from the hypnotic reflection of the sun that strikes me blind and onto the the gentle perception of Christ Vision.
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