OF THE
TIMES
Tragic and very sad. I hope someone can find out what caused it - was it underwater sonar, or other noises that distrurb the whales or something...
'First city in Canada to require a QR code to exit the city' Islanders big and small are an easy target. by DOREEN APR 25, 2024 [Link]
It's like buying a $1,000 car isn't it? Just keep pouring money in and it's still a $1,000 car. Good song BTW, by the Bottle Rockets.
'Revolt in the Universities' University students across the country, facing mass arrests, suspensions, evictions and explusions are our last, best...
'THE END OF HUMANITY - As Planned By The Global Leaders' [Link]
To submit an article for publication, see our Submission Guidelines
Reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views of the volunteers, editors, and directors of SOTT.net or the Quantum Future Group.
Some icons on this site were created by: Afterglow, Aha-Soft, AntialiasFactory, artdesigner.lv, Artura, DailyOverview, Everaldo, GraphicsFuel, IconFactory, Iconka, IconShock, Icons-Land, i-love-icons, KDE-look.org, Klukeart, mugenb16, Map Icons Collection, PetshopBoxStudio, VisualPharm, wbeiruti, WebIconset
Powered by PikaJS 🐁 and In·Site
Original content © 2002-2024 by Sott.net/Signs of the Times. See: FAIR USE NOTICE
Reader Comments
You have to study the language being used very closely as well. Alot of stuff is loaded with duality, in the way that it can be read and understood in two completely differing contexts which are purposely vague or left open to interpretation.
@stevejc:
Oh, there are still lots of things off the table.
Although Sott does use a lot of dishes and silverware and cups and glasses and such. And makes a nice setting.
Real food has always had a scarceness to it. It is fearful to discuss and hard to swallow. There are valid reasons for this, to some degree, and having to do with general human psychology and the nature of the beast.
But Sott nonetheless is willing to risk (and endure) more than most websites.
I give them credit for that.
When things go 'wrong' it is usually the bravest and most authentic that suffer the most. Along with usual number of mostly innocent bystanders.
Again: It is the nature of the beast.
A very bad token.
ned,
out
Woke employees shut down 'queer-owned' business for being insufficiently woke
A cafe in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, permanently closed its doors after the employees protested the restaurant was perpetrating "anti-blackness, ableism" and "hostility," according to social...*
"In order for ‘trans’ to be a real thing, we must understand that Nature, writ Large, is broken.
The idea for ‘trans’ as a modern ‘thing’ comes from the jews, specifically from the Talmud, in which we find a description of humans as having 6 genders between “breeding male” and “breeding female” for a total of 8 genders. This idea enters the Talmud from the Elohim, those beings who came down to earth 6000 years ago, and by power of superior technology, including many flying machines, conquered the hunter-gatherer tribes for the genetic experimentation that produced modern humanity. The Torah, and Talmud, Zohar, and other jewish religious books are all about the Elohim & their adventures here on earth.
The El (one of the many Elohim) who was in charge of the jews was known as YHWH, or Adonai. He, and his wife/mate had help in organizing, and leading the population that they controlled. Some of this help came from those of the Elohim who were titled as “BAAL”. All of the Cananite tribes used the word ‘BAAL’ to mean ‘Lord’. So it was BAAL YHWH to his tribe. There were also traveling ‘Lords’, such as BAAL ZHBB, which, with the vowels put in sounds out as ‘BAAL ZhiBuB’, or ‘Beelzebub’. These traveling ‘lords’ are thought to have been inspectors, or assurance officers of the Elohim organization. Their jobs were basically quality control, as we may understand from ancient writings. Thus Beelzebub gets a very bad rep with the Adamites (those people from the GAN Eden genetic experiment laboratory complex) as he is in charge of making sure the genetic experiments were up to specifications required, or terminating them.
The idea of the 6 genders between breeding male & breeding female comes directly from the Elohim. Their species may have had such a spectrum of genders. There are historical texts relating just such information. The descriptions that we have of the Elohim include a range of ‘types’ that included androgynous beings that the religious literature refers to as ‘arch angels’ in the christian translations. These many classes, or types, of Elohim are also described in Vedic, and Sumerian, and other historic texts from around this planet that also provide a picture of a species with multiple genders. There are hints in some ancient descriptions that the Elohim ‘managed’ their genders shortly after birth based on the requirements their planning indicated for future generations, and so, even for the Elohim, multiple genders between breeding male and female may have been artificial, and an aspect of how they organized their species.
It is assumed by scholars that the tribe of Jacob, as primitive humans, ruled by YHWH, from whom judaism derives, were victims of a sort of ‘cult of personality’ in which ‘all things Elohim’ were to be imitated, and emulated. This desire to elevate themselves to the status (and technology) of the Elohim is a dominating theme within the Talmud. This proclivity is discussed, and alluded to constantly, with discussions about the Elohim taking their leave of our planet. This departure left a big power vacuum within human society that was filled by people we came to call ‘the priest class’.
The priest class, from all religions, are human bullshit artists who walked into an already sweet set-up & took over when the Elohim bugged off planet. These bovine excrement spewing priest people have been able to keep the scam going up to this present day, though it appears to be falling apart now.
The idea behind ‘trans’ is that the personality does not agree with the body. That is to say, a male personality gets put ‘accidentally’ into a female body, and vice versa. This means that Nature had fucked up. This is analogous to saying that the Sun broke today, or that gravity is puking buildings, & people & stuff out into space.
To my research, observation, and conclusion, there is NO evidence to support ‘trans’ within humans. Maybe in the Elohim, from which the idea originates, but not in humans.
The selling of ‘trans’ as a concept into the society at large is an aspect of the psychological war being waged against white people by the Khazarian Mafia. The Khazarian Mafia believe themselves to be both jews, and the natural heirs to the Elohim. Neither is true. But the Khazarian Mafia are quite convinced of both. The KM believes themselves to be the ‘chosen’ heirs to Earth, Humanity, and all the Resources. The KM recognizes NO LAW that is not in their understanding of the Talmud. They believe themselves to be ‘holding place’ for the Elohim, who they expect to return to earth when ‘conditions’ are correct. Further, the KM believes that they have the absolute right to mess about with humanity in order that such conditions may be created.
The Khazarian Mafia are not nice humans. They are not particularly smart, but are cleaver and manipulative as they believe that they have ‘Elohim (divine) authority’ delegated to them. They think of all humans who are not Khazarian Mafia as ‘herd beasts’, or ‘cattle’.
The Khazarian Mafia is using ‘trans’ as a psychological warfare tactic to reduce the population of white people. They are doing this as part of their continuing, on-going attempt at world domination. They find it easier to control non-white people, and thus want to reduce their problems, now, and in the future where they are totally in charge in an open manner, by greatly reducing, or even eliminating white people.
The Khazarian Mafia created, owns, and controls the complete ‘psychiatry’ industry. Every person that gets gender queered by KM psychiatric warfare is one less breeder causing them problems. This is part of their agenda to proceed to their goal of taking over & creating the conditions for the Elohim to return.
The whole ‘global warming’, and all the ‘planet is doomed’, and ‘overpopulation’ memes are also related tactics in the broader Khazarian Mafia strategy to conquer the world. As is their primary weapon, the Central Bank system led by the Federal Reserve Bank, which is not part of the Federal government, is not a bank and has no reserves. The Khazarian Mafia are ‘name stealers’. They use language confusion as a tactic within their strategy.
So, my conclusion is that ‘trans’ is not a real thing, as for it to be so would require, absolutely require, that Nature be broken. There is no evidence of such.
But if I say this, I will be labeled as ‘transphobic’. This word means to ‘fear trans people’. When you criticize the mind controlled trans people, or their psychiatric handlers, or their woke supporters, you are labeled as ‘transphobic’ by them, the same way that the Khazarian Mafia, the pretend jews, will label you as ‘anti-semite’ for criticizing them. This is a primary, personal, and collective tactic of the name-stealers, to pejoratively label their critics for pointing out their name stealing.I am not transphobic. I don’t fear trans people. As people I sympathize with them being mind control victims of the psychiatric ‘industry’. I feel very bad for them being in this situation as people.
I am not transphobic, I am educated, and thus, ‘trans’ rejecting."
One thought I have about this is connected to understanding Gurdjief's enneagram, which he said was a way to understand and communicate with others and reflected the level of their being. Regarding humanity, they could be divided into 7 groups based on planetary influences and manifested through the endocrine system, probably connected to the science behind astrology. There are lunar, mercurial, venusian, saturn, jovial, and martial types. The seventh type is a solar. Each of these planetary types influences sexual expression, as well as world view.
Since my focus has been social engineering and manipulation of consciousness, it was interesting when John gave the Herodotus anecdote about the Greek king(?) who advised the Persian emperor how to keep the Greeks in check. In regards to the men, take away their means of war and training for war, correct me if this is not quite right. In regards to the boys, teach them poetry, music and other more effeminate arts to remove their readiness for fighting(?). This resonated with me reminding me of the Bush No Child Left Behind and the Obama Race to the Top/Common Core, which were first a centralization of education away from the states, and then the weakening of critical thinking and indoctrination of children into CRT, choose your sexual identity and be a social activist for climate change. Add to that the movement to disarm Americans, distractions in entertainment and sports, the mockingbird media directing attention towards the “true news”, and the plandemic and you have the intent of disarming Americans intellectually, morally, emotionally, and physically. This is not just cancel culture, this is cancel the USA.
The meaning of conspiracy was simply articulated by John: a group of people create a plan with an objective that is kept secret from the people who are adversely affected by it. There are many things to consider: the plan, its contingencies, its breadth and number of threads, its leadership, variables and its dependencies. It also involves secrecy and misdirection of attention. Does everyone know the highest view of the plan? Obviously not. Secrecy depends on compartmentalization: people who know anything only know their part of the plan. At the lowest end of the hierarchy of the plan there are useful idiots or useful ideological believers, like pro-abortionists and anti-white-supremacists. They are moved to action by events or false flags, like the Roe v. Wade ruling and the George Floyd staged murder.
Why is the plan failing? First, Trump was not supposed to be elected, HRC was the selection. However you view him, he did things which threw a wrench into the unfolding plan. He withdrew the USA from the Paris Climate Accord and its carbon tax, he set up the wall in the South to block entry of cartels, drugs, child trafficking, he approved the oil pipeline for the USA to be self-sufficient energetically, he negotiated a more favorable business relationship with China, he created big city programs to build black owned businesses destroyed in the 2020 riots, he began focusing on bringing manufacturing back to the USA, he promoted constitutional law, he brought attention to corruption in government and the mockingbird media. The result of that was the plan had to be accelerated with election fraud to put in the Bribem puppet regime, rejoining the Paris Climate Accord, the plandemic mask, lockdowns, and vax mandates with a bioweapon that is genocide, and the war in the Ukraine which the plan intended to start with their own attack on the Donbass which was preempted by Putin.
The plan is failing because they could not calculate all the variables involved, and those variables are their downfall. The plan has been revealed and people can see it; secrecy and misdirection are no longer successful. The leaders or players in the plan are incompetent and not able to control the plan’s contingencies. Finally, majority of people have morals, they have a soul, they believe in a God and they are waking to their own mistakes in choices.
It makes sense a wide range of articles helps to get people's wheels turning, and to completely ban some author and or only include another, every time, black and white, probably ultimately has undesirable inbreeding type effect, yet complete omission of articles because their topic is considered taboo or too risky since the 'nature of the beast,' is also ultimately harmful, in fact possibly, quite deadly. For example, we are being killed by (((X))), but we can't have articles specifically discussing (((X))).
Just curious, since there's obviously many authors, but you brought up his name in particular out of a quite vast number, are you thinking Matt Ehret is directing reader's attention towards "true news" or someone who's making truly sincere efforts to present an unbiased well-researched view?
Jumping around.. it seems many 'thinkers' these days are busy thinking about thinking, pontificating about pontificating, busy making sure they are "politically and socially" correct, busy defining terms such as conspiracy, controversy and dissidence, rather than boldly going into a particular "off-limits" subject matter. This dancing at the edges doesn't really solve anything.
This said, I'm extremely thankful for this writing by Clif High included above by parzival since it directly highlights an important topic which some may be ready to learn about, and discuss, and can be beneficial to push us to learn more. Of course we may not know 100% if all the details are accurate, but for me, it's these type issues which we must seek to have greater understanding, especially since it could help to dispel the dense fog seemingly encapsulating our society.
Ps. Yes, me too I agree science fiction and any arts stuff is essential, much more so than facts and figures, helping us develop our creative, imaginative, intuitive, non-physical, etc. right mind, and spiritual mind; enabling us to be free with our thoughts not constrained by anything, well, mostly anything.. but even God never seems constraining, rather always encouraging us to do what we're most afraid.. and for me, it's because of His complete and total rule over fear, that evil can never win. Although it seems things will get much worse, I'm always reminded that many truly brave souls (true heroes) from our human history have already declined to bow down to evil, paid for by their very life, physical life, and because their courage they will carry our torch into Eternity.
Let's pray we'll have the courage to join them, to not be led astray, and to keep seeking the Son of Man who is inside us.
Matt Ehret is just one example of the many authors on SOTT who make me think because he makes many connections between people and events. I think his researched version of USA and Canadian history should be taught in schools. Even 60 years ago we were taught a USA propaganda version of history. For example, there is no emphasis on the Russian 27 million who died in WWII, the roll Russia played in winning the war, nor of the Russian assistance during our Civil War. Matt and his wife Cynthia Chung are highly educated, and they believe in teaching literature, history, art, music, science. This means that their presentation is not for many. He also frames the current world conflict as unipolar versus multipolar, which does downplay China's CCP totalitarian government and its implementation of technocracy. Others on SOTT see that China and Russia are also a threat to freedom.
I agree Clif High is one of those I listen to. He was the first for me to mention Khazarian mafia and their name-stealing, identity-stealing method of infiltration and warfare. He attracted my attention because of his linguistic software programming work. He created a software program that gathers internet words that he has identified as containing predictive emotional content that he could use to predict future financial and other events. Since I have researched neuro linguistic programming, I am interested in the meaning and context of words and phrases as they are weaponized to manipulate people.
I remember reading a Robert Heinlein novel about a space team that included all experts in individual area, except for one who was experience in many areas. This ability to cross over silos of information, is necessary for making connections and thinking. Like you I pray for humanity to thrive and renew its moral compass.
Now say this to yourself:
"I am God's Son, complete and healed and whole, shining in the reflection of His Love. In me is His creation sanctified and guaranteed eternal life. In me is love perfected, fear impossible, and joy established without opposite, I am the holy home of God Himself. I am the Heaven where His Love resides. I am His holy Sinlessness Itself, for in my purity abides His own." -ACIM Workbook, Part II #14, What Am I? [Link]
This is our response to everything the ego ever taught is true about ourselves, undoing all fear and guilt, all pain and suffering. What remains is the eternal life given us in creation, unblemished by the ego's sullying thoughts of miscreation and usurpation. Never real, these thoughts evanesce into the nothingness of their own illusion. In our awakening we realize the ending of a journey that never really happened:
"...Not one illusion is accorded faith, and not one spot of darkness still remains to hide the face of Christ from anyone." -ACIM Text-Chapter 31. ' Choose Once Again ' Section VIII. Paragraph 12: sentence 5. [Link]
The shining face of Christ lasts but an instant before its place is taken by the sinless Self that God created, residing in God's holy home.
"... The Son is still, and in the quiet God has given him enters his home and is at peace at last. "-ACIM Clarification of Terms – Epilogue Paragraph 5, sentence 6. [Link]
clif is an interesting study of personality. He knows a lot about the ego's world and may even be able to identify the duality of his thinking. However it would appear that clif knows next to nothing about forgiveness and its purpose in salvation from a world created by the desire for separation from God and therefore all Life. We need too realize that maintaining the ego's purpose of individuality has not made us happy or brought us peace. Our single purpose here is shared by everyone, and it is the need to forgive and realize our simple mistake-which is nothing more than a bad dream that will last only as long as we choose to believe in the ego's purpose of separation. I find this passage a comfort that nicely expresses out shared purpose, revealing to our awakened awareness the Oneness of God's holy Will:
" The Will of God forever lies in those whose hands are joined... when they joined and shared a purpose, they were free to learn their will is one. And thus the Will of God must reach to their awareness. Nor can they forget for long that is is but their own. " T-30. 'The Only Purpose' V. 11:1,3-5 [Link]
The 'enemy' we see outside ourselves, is the enemy we project from within. In this world we aim to forgive, and then let the forgiveness we chose extend through us without introducing anything of our own to interfere with its gentle flow. Left by itself, without the ego, forgiveness naturally extends, and we need not concern ourselves with the truth, but only in giving welcome to it. Forgiveness makes room for truth, already present in us. Thus is it made welcome.
The greatest thing that Jesus ever taught me is that he was able to see the face of Christ in all his brothers and remember God. All he asks is that we accept his forgiving love so that it extends through us.
" Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it is necessary to seek for what is false. .." -ACIM T-16 'The Illusion and the Reality of Love.' IV.6:1-2
Follow after Him! Those who seek Him will find Him.
T-1.II.3:51-13 "...Equals should not be in awe of one another because awe implies inequality. It is therefore an inappropriate reaction to me. An elder brother is entitled to respect for his greater experience, and obedience for his greater wisdom. He is also entitled to love because he is a brother, and to devotion if he is devoted. It is only my devotion that entitles me to yours. There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us now is that I have nothing else. This leaves me in a state which is only potential in you.
T-1.II.4. "No man cometh unto the Father but by me" does not mean that I am in any way separate or different from you except in time, and time does not really exist. The statement is more meaningful in terms of a vertical rather than a horizontal axis. You stand below me and I stand below God. In the process of "rising up," I am higher because without me the distance between God and man would be too great for you to encompass. I bridge the distance as an elder brother to you on the one hand, and as a Son of God on the other. My devotion to my brothers has placed me in charge of the Sonship, which I render complete because I share it. This may appear to contradict the statement "I and my Father are one," but there are two parts to the statement in recognition that the Father is greater.
T-1.II.5. Revelations are indirectly inspired by me because I am close to the Holy Spirit, and alert to the revelation-readiness of my brothers. I can thus bring down to them more than they can draw down to themselves. The Holy Spirit mediates higher to lower communication, keeping the direct channel from God to you open for revelation. Revelation is not reciprocal. It proceeds from God to you, but not from you to God..." -ACIM T-3-4-5. 'Revelation, Time and Miracles' [Link]
This teaching is crucial for undoing Christianity's millennia-old tradition that Jesus is ontologically different from us and thus we are not like him. With such specialness as our foundation, we can only hope to join with him, asking his help and suffering as he did, but never able to see that we are what he is. Jesus can teach and we can learn how to undo the interferences to the remembrance of our Self.
I am not sure about Tucker, since my understanding is he is a friend or associate of Hunter. At the moment, he is waking people up in his audience which is great.
Tucker says this but not that, mostly he's keeping the same audience he's had for 20+ years comfortably numb, and the new ones who've joined his show covertly entranced into the Right wing neo-con Zionist agenda; yet with much needed outlet for everyone's anger, since outside of getting drunk, high or being a closet homo, they can't say how they really feel or else they will lose their job.
Ehret is a misdirection con artist. Never mentions Zionist evil and promotes China, who's implementing massive bio-security surveillance systems, seems right in-line with CoViD scam WEF Davos agenda. I highly doubt he discusses phony vaxx either.
People need to eat, how are they going to eat if they earnestly seek and speak truth!? It becomes very difficult. SOTT also doesn't post ANY article about Zionist take over of America and its unfolding destruction orchestrated by these same Satanic criminals. It's tragic. Off-Guardian and The Corbett Report also have their limitations, but they're head and shoulders above MelK, Ehret or Carlson.
Time is short, good idea for us to have higher (highest) standard. It will raise the level of consciousness for all of us.
We are in spiritual war, to not bring up about God's supposed chosen and those who are truly his chosen vs those who have hijacked this birthright, or completely strayed from it, and are wrecking their Protocols of Elders of Zion mission on all non-Talmudic peoples is either serious oversight or intentional misdirection. I hardly believe he's so ignorant, but it's possible he's Jewish and just doesn't want to see. Same as many 'born and bred' 'intelligent' Americans who refuse or can't see 9/11 was an inside job; that WTC7 47 floors not hit by an airplane collapsing straight down into its own footprint in 6.5 seconds (with 2+ seconds experiencing free fall) is not caused by random office fire and falling debris but rather pre-planned highly orchestrated coordinated precision-timed controlled demolition .
And sadly, very unfortunately, in all this regard, people must experience more pain, more suffering. So b/c refuse truth without and refuse truth within, more 'controlled demolition' is coming.
"There is no living thing that does not share the universal Will that it be whole, and that you do not leave its call unheard. Without your answer is it left to die, as it is saved from death when you have heard its calling as the ancient call to life, and understood that it is but your own. The Christ in you remembers God with all the certainty with which He knows His Love. But only if His Son is innocent can He be Love. For God were fear indeed if he whom He created innocent could be a slave to guilt. God's perfect Son remembers his creation. But in guilt he has forgotten what he really is..." -ACIM T-31. 'The Simplicity of Salvation' I.9.1-7
What is temptation but a wish to make the wrong decision on what you would learn, and have an outcome that you do not want? It is the recognition that it is a state of mind unwanted that becomes the means whereby the choice is reassessed; another outcome seen to be preferred. You are deceived if you believe you want disaster and disunity and pain. Hear not the call for this within yourself. But listen, rather, to the deeper call beyond it that appeals for peace and joy. And all the world will give you joy and peace. For as you hear, you answer. And behold! Your answer is the proof of what you learned. Its outcome is the world you look upon.
Let us be still an instant, and forget all things we ever learned, all thoughts we had, and every preconception that we hold of what things mean and what their purpose is. Let us remember not our own ideas of what the world is for. We do not know. Let every image held of everyone be loosened from our minds and swept away.
Be innocent of judgment, unaware of any thoughts of evil or of good that ever crossed your mind of anyone. Now do you know him not. But you are free to learn of him, and learn of him anew. Now is he born again to you, and you are born again to him, without the past that sentenced him to die, and you with him. Now is he free to live as you are free, because an ancient learning passed away, and left a place for truth to be reborn."-ACIM T-31.I.11-12-13. [Link]
The Christ is in Jews, Zionists, Communists, aliens, satanists, whatever label you want to assign to what appears to be 'other' and enemy. Why should you fear to see the Christ in him? You but behold yourself in what you see. As he is healed are you made free of guilt, for his appearance is your own to you.
1. Jesus was ambushed and hounded at nearly every turn, especially later in his ministry. Then ultimately, he was wrongfully accused, beaten, spit on and nailed to a tree. Similar abuse has been heaped on his followers over the centuries. Are you saying, all this was only a war within and or with oneself? I'm not saying it's not possible.
2. Actually two purposes. Jesus says first most important is to love Father, second is like it, to love brother and sister
3. I didn't say I wanted disaster, disunity and pain. I said it must happen. Why? It must happen b/c that's what it says in Revelation to John. Jesus also alludes to it in other teaching.
4. In Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, 8 Beatitudes, #7 is 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called Sons of the Most High.' My reasons for writing in the comment section is to bring about true peace, true community and true love; not fake blah blah blah
5. When I'm still, I am aware of my being and its connection to the Most High. This is not about forgetting, rather always remembering. Yes, some idea or belief perhaps require forgetting or unlearning, yet essential others must be held tightly, never abandoned.
6. Jesus says do not judge. Maybe speaking my mind, speaking what I feel is truth, is judging, maybe not. it's a fine line. I have roots of evil which I must still pull out. I haven't given up.. Related to this is praying for our enemy and or those who we may think have gone astray, such as the lots and lots of Jesus haters in our world. Tis part of speaking how I feel, speaking truth from my heart, is hope it will cause awakening, not for me to feel better, but for make so I can travel freely again, and enjoy music festival, hang out with brothers and sisters who aren't soulless system suck-ups, who sincerely care about Truth, and True Love, Nature and so forth..
7. I have dear brother and sister born in Russia. I have dear brother and sister born in Israel, and also of Jewish family in America. Same for Arab, Chinese, Thai, Malay and many other. I look to person not else or outside. What is in the heart? anyhow, Jesus says some are from their devil father, and some are of the synagogue of Satan. Love our brother and sister, even if they want to kill us; forgive them Father for they know not what they do, Jesus said.
Yes, thank you for reminding me to see myself in all others, to see from their perspective. Place myself in their shoes as much as possible. Make effort to understand why they may chose path they chose, while recognizing my own weakness and shortcomings.
Have you read The Gospels According to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? Have you read them recently, really read them? It's not painful. It may even be joyful. This is essential foundation necessary before going off on ACIM or any other direction.
Somehow this 'acclaimed' (ACIM) A Course in Miracles doesn't sit quite right with me. It seems a mixture of truth and confusion, and too much replacing of what Jesus said, with some guy's interpretation. Jesus' words and teaching can also be found in other gospels not included in the KJB. If you search for Nag Hammadi Library, you may find them..
My life is following Jesus Christ, his words and actions first and foremost, second is his apostles, his family, including Mary, his mom, sister and companion, and most of what Paul says, also including the major and minor prophets, law of Moses, Psalms and writings.
All Jesus said is enough. Many can't handle what he says, or can't 'hear' what he says, so they find their comfort in someone's interpretation or parallel teaching of another 'spiritual master,' which may be close or layers removed, but it's not what he says. I want to go Home, I want to learn directly from my beyond words awesome Master, the Uniquely Begotten Son of the Most High, the Supreme Lord, the Light that is above them All.
This said, learning teaching can come from any many different directions. We must keep our ears attuned for God's message in its many forms and his many messengers. I think this is also one of your points perhaps. This said, it's really not healthy for me to call anyone a troll or shill or whatever this or that, but rather be mindful enough to take the gold and leave behind the gravel of each situation. Set aside ego and master fear, knowing that Holy Spirit will guide me in every situation.
Of course there are other brothers and sisters who also love Jesus dearly, with their whole life, and birds of a feather flock together, IOW, I can tell when I come across writers who have a beyond words love for Him and Father and Mother Holy Spirit, and then I'm very excited to read what they say. Watchman Nee is an example. You can listen to his audio books. There are others...
Our world is temporary phase. Not all will succeed to next phase. As I understand only a small number. Seeking to be with God is infinitely more important than anything else, including daily obsession with "news" and forcing yourself to see Jesus in the Devil. Father controls all, and Jesus and Mother are at the Almighty's right and left hand. The All comes from them and the All will go back to them.
Anyhow, I'm sure it's much more involved than that, but that for me is long and short of things. For NOW, I want to stay focused on Jesus' promise, and pick up my sorry life to align with what he wants. I understand you're trying to remind me to love my brothers and sisters, and pray and do good to them. I'm thankful for that reminder.
In my limited view, Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and I want to cling to Him day and night. Just as the servant helped prepared his body for burial, I want to help prepare the way for his eternal Kingship, as King of Kings of Kings of the New Jerusalem, the New Earth, the New Heaven, the Totality, the everlasting sovereign King of the All.
the real me want more than anything to ride my bicycle in his Kingdom, but even more than that is to truly smile and laugh like no tomorrow. my life up to now tells me it's real this dream it will happen so fall i will but get back up keep going there going Home
I find your personal testimony is beautiful and true. In this regard I find it inspiring and I would read your powerful testimony more than two or three times.
I was introduced to the Bible at age 5 following a serious auto accident that had my parents in the hospital for some days recovering from the head on collision that luckily didn't kill us all. It was the first miracle that I was introduced to, along with Jesus. All I can remember is the love and gratitude toward Jesus my whole family felt together for our surviving a very bad accident. As a child you can imagine being very impressed by a grandmother who was very devoted to Jesus and his teachings. That started me on my course.
Since then, and through my parochial school years, I have read the Gospels many, many times, and continue to read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, along with St. Paul and all his letters today.
I know you love Jesus intensely. I know that intensity.
As far as A Course In Miracles goes, what does not sit well with you may be your interpretation of its premise. What it is not, is some guys interpretation of Jesus's words. They are Jesus words. A Course In Miracles is Jesus' course. It was even difficult for Helen who was receiving and scribing Jesus' words.
I spent the last ten years reading everything I could about ACIM, who, what, where, why, when. My love for Jesus is the driving factor. The more I read his words and listened to them, the more I knew that this was the truth. So for ten years I have been doing research reading everything I can about ACIM. A great start is a book about Dr. Helen Schucman and her scribing of ACIM called 'Absence from Felicity' by Dr. Kenneth Wapnick. In fact Dr. Wapnick was so prolific in his writings about ACIM I have purchased nearly every book he has ever written about the course over the last 5 years. I feel like I know the lives of these people intimately, and in time grew to know Jesus intimately. ACIM has even enriched the Gospels for me.
Imagine if you will, being made aware of a 'voice,' not your own, speaking to you and saying I want you to write down these words I have for you to scribe for the next 7 years. I want you and your Dr. partner to put them together in book form and present it to the world. Needless to say there were some issues that arose over those 7 years.
One phase of seeming complication occurred when Helen & Bill were complaining that the course was not making any sense and was too complicated. This, of course was not true, since Helen understood it very well. However, she did not like what she understood. In characteristic fashion, she tried to blame Jesus. This is his response to Helen, and to all of us:
"...This course is perfectly clear. If you do not see it clearly, it is because you are interpreting against it, and therefore do not believe it. And since belief determines perception, you do not perceive what it means and therefore do not accept it..." -ACIM T-11.VI.'Waking to redemption' 3.1-3 [Link]
Jesus is saying that problems with his course do not arise because it lacks clarity. Many students, for example, complain that it does not always make sense , nor is it written clearly. To be sure, the referent of pronouns sometimes is obscure, the double and triple negatives can make some sentences difficult to understand, and there is always the iambic pentameter to confound the nonpoetic reader. But the text's overall meaning is so clear that we cannot truly miss it, unless we want to. And that is Jesus' point; we want to miss what he is teaching because it frightens us. Nevertheless, despite the attempts of many students to blend A Course in Miracles with the world and turn it into an imperfect non-dualistic system, if not an outright duality, on some level they know it is teaching the opposite. After all, throughout the course we are repeatedly told that we are not here, for how could God know what is inherently illusory and insane?
Jesus tells us that his course is perfectly clear, which is what we fear. Living its principles is what makes this course difficult, not its language or style of writing. The ultimate goal of A Course in Miracles is to teach us that the world and body are illusions. Deep within, we know that each time we ask Jesus' help to look at the situation differently, we drive another nail into the coffin of our individuality. Fearing the inevitability of this choice, we try to change the Course's teachings to reinforce and protect our 'separated' and 'special' existence.
"...This is a very simple course. Perhaps you do not feel you need a course which, in the end, teaches that only reality is true. But do you believe it?..." ACIM T-11.VIII. 'The Problem and the Answer'1.1-3 [Link]
A Course in Miracles continually tells us that only reality is true, and that the ego thought system is illusion. Everything born of separation, - i.e., our individual self - is not real. This dos not leave our ego selves in a happy or secure pace, and we need a course and teacher to help us alleviate our anxiety so that we may reach the certainty of God. These next comments were again originally meant for Helen, who once again was complaining to Jesus:
"...You may complain that this course is not sufficiently specific for you to understand and use. Yet perhaps you have not done what it specifically advocates. This is not a course in the play of ideas, but in their practical application..." -ACIM T-11.VIII.'The Problem and the Answer' 5. 1-3 [Link]
In a section of A Course in Miracles called The Clarification of Terms, Jesus says: "This is not a course in philosophical speculation..." -ACIM C-introduction, 1:1
While metaphysical ideas in A Course in Miracles are essential to its understanding , the course's purpose is not to turn us into metaphysicians but rather to teach us to forgive. We will understand from within what the course means by saying that the world is an illusion, rather than merely understanding it intellectually. Applying its principles of forgiveness to our every day lives is how we come to recognize and accept the innate truth of Jesus' teachings.
Just as words spoken by any of Jesus' disciples or his family are not Jesus' words, but are words of the disciples or his family. They were certainly closer to Jesus by far than this guy or these Columbia University people, they received Power from on high well before anyone involved with this ACIM group; yet even so, their words are still their own words , and always will be their own words , and will never be the words spoken by Jesus, just as His words would never be theirs.
It's not how it works. There's no precedence for what you are claiming in all history, except by madman.
Your Grandma has the right idea, the right way, the only way of the great I Am, to follow teaching of Jesus Christ. But, for some reason, you've strayed from her message to you. Obviously you felt unfulfilled, so instead of trying to understand why Jesus' teaching, his words alone couldn't fulfill you anymore, you got snookered in to some incorrect idea that Jesus has taken over someone else and has started literally speaking through them. Sorry, but that's not how it works.
Jesus inspires us to be in His likeness, a manifestation of Him, of which there may be an infinite number of, yet not an exact copy.
It's same as Nature, nothing is 100% exact copy. God doesn't make robots. Plus Jesus is uniquely begotten which from what little I understand, is different from being created. So we all humans strive to be like Jesus, and closer we come to him, relinquishing our soul to him, the more he indwells in us, something like this, yet he doesn't stop being who he is to be someone else, nor do we stop being who we are to be him; that unique essence of each of us remains unique, ultimately ideally becoming one in Spirit, same as Jesus and Father are one in Spirit, yet they still retain their unique essence of being.
Perhaps in Ultimate Truth, all is Spirit, no mind and no body, but here we have body and mind and spirit
What Jesus said was enough. It's what God wanted Him to say. If God wanted Him to say more, he would've said more. If he wanted Him to say less, He would've said less. And since Jesus' resurrection, many many loving highly devote followers servants students and perhaps near fellow masters have been greatly inspired by Him, have allowed Him to indwell in them, have also the Holy Spirit indwelling in them, and thus they have said and say and written and write many beyond words beautiful sayings.
Take for example what Paul of Tarsus wrote and said, it's mostly with great power, and no doubt in my mind that Father and Jesus and the Holy Spirit were working through him, yet still it is Paul's writing, his talks, his treasured loving uniquely special spoken words.
Many will say that Jesus inspired them, they were inspired by Jesus or similar that the Holy Spirit was guiding them and or working thru them, etc., but still ultimately it was spoken or written by each individual unique being, each unique person. As I understand, this is how Paul truly felt in his heart, how he believed, how he lived his life; a knowing that he was always seeking to do Father's will.
People can say all they want, until the cows come home even, how it felt as if Jesus was speaking to them, thru them, etc., and yes, I can understand that feeling maybe, or at least see their perspective, yet still they aren't words spoken by Jesus himself. Perhaps a very similar manifestation of Him, a dear truly sincerely loving brother or sister of His, a near equal to him, but not exactly Him.
Anyway, the ACIM group sayings don't have to be Jesus' words. If you feel close to these people who you've been studying or corresponding with for 10+ years and you feel that what they are saying is very similar in meaning or has congruence to or collaborates with Jesus' teaching based on your study of the synoptic Gospels and Gospel According to John, then why not just leave it at that. If it helps you to feel closer to Jesus by reading their teaching, then that's super great! But deceiving yourself that it's Jesus actual words is not right and somewhat dangerous, and you must clear this in your head, and clear it up with Jesus, asap.
Re Jesus' ministry, there's many extraneous teaching - Baptist, Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, Martin Luther, Billy Graham, and on and on... All these people have spoken and written their own words, while of course also quoting Jesus and Paul and James and John and Peter and others here and there, otherwise besides that, what they say is their own words.
Someday God may ask these ACIM people, 'hey why you say Jesus spoke through you and that your words were his words?' Why are you hijacking Jesus? I made you too, and also endowed you with special gifts, so why cower and not say what workings I made thru you, came out of you, why? No.
Maybe they felt He was speaking through them, and or others also felt the same, or that they were inspired by God or Jesus or His Spirit was indwelling in them while they were speaking or writing, but still their words that came from them are their own words. God doesn't shove a recorder in anyone's brain and press play. He's not like the devil where he possesses someone and may force them to say or do things against their will or even in align with their will, yet still it is ultimately their own will, their own being that enables the words to come out or be written.
I can say the same thing, 'oh hey y'all, what I say is Jesus words not mine, you better listen!' That's pretty crazy isn't it!? No, rather I love Jesus with all, and outside of quoting him, even if he's completely indwelling in me, my words are still my words. Otherwise, I wouldn't exist would I!? Or only exist sometimes but not other times!? No. Of course God teaches us that sometimes the Holy Spirit may talk through us, and not to worry beforehand, or maybe similar in case of speaking in tongues, but still it is me or that other person doing the speaking. How about the Buddha!?, are those Jesus' words? No, of course not. They were spoken by Buddha. How about Mohammad's words!? Are they Jesus' words? No, of course not. They are spoken or written by Mohammad. Perhaps all these great teachers are inspired by God and His spirit, yet still the words are spoken or written by the being that speaks or writes them.
Anyway, my dear brother, it sounds like you've been traveling this road for many years, and you think it's working for you. For me, I view it as a slap in Jesus' face to say that He said something when actually it wasn't said by Him, but by someone else. And further, that someone can't find ALL in what He did actually truly say, and must somehow add on to it, or twist it or change it in some way.
In the book mentioned above, Ken Wapnick wrote that "after Helen had died, my mother asked (Louis, Helen's husband) him whether he thought that Jesus (or God) had written A Course In Miracles , and he quickly replied: Of course not, Helen did."
Continuing Wapnick shares his story; "A few years ago an article on the Course appeared in the New York Times . It was a relatively brief on that it sketched the origins of the Course and the growing interest in it. The article was not the best, but it was positive in attitude and did have some facts correct. The Times was Louis' Bible, and so he was impressed with the fact that it would print something about "his wife's book." Later that day he called to tell me about the article, and when I asked him if he liked it, he replied in characteristic fashion how he did not read it. After all, he said, I knew how hearing or reading about Helen and the Course made him uncomfortable. In point of fact, it was his cousin Dave who had called to tell him about it. And then he said, "But Ken, I have to ask you a question. Dave told me that the article said that the Course had been dictated to Helen from Jesus. That's not true, is it? Helen never told me that." I explained to Louis that I was afraid that it was true, but I was sure he remembered how uncomfortable all of this made Helen, and that was why she never spoke about it. "That's right," Louis said, "she never liked to talk about it." And there the matter rested..."
"...In returning now to Helen's reactions to the scribing, we note that it was clear to her, despite her strong ambivalence about Jesus, that she was not the source of the writing. (The bold my own emphasis) On that she was unequivocal. It was also clear that Jesus had made use of her "educational background, interests and experience, but that was in matters of style rather than content..."
Now let's talk a little about form & content:
"...Let us consider a glass of water. For the purposes of this example, we shall think of water as abstract and formless, thereby having the properties of spirit. Thus water will here symbolize for us the abstract and formless nature of God's Love, which alone is reality, and which is a reality we truly share as God's Son. As the Course states: "Complete abstraction is the natural condition of the mind" -ACIM (Workbook-part 1. Lesson 161. paragraph 2: 1 [Link] ). This reality as Christ, however, is beyond our limited and separate ego self, to which we give a name, history, anticipated future, etc. It is therefore impossible to know God in this world, because as the Course explains, this world in general, and bodies and brains in particular were made to fulfill the ego's purpose of keeping knowledge of God, Christ, and Their unity away from us ("Thus were specifics made" -ACIM [W-P1. 161. 3:1] [Link] ).
When we call upon the Love of God, turning to Him as our Self, we are in effect able to transcend our ego identification, if only for an instant. In that holy instant which transcends time and our entire ego thought system, we remember our reality and Identity as God's Son. Thus we become that Identity, abstract and formless as our Creator. Love has rejoined itself, and that Love is one. Again, I am using water as a symbol for that unity of self and Self, love and Love.
That part of our minds that chooses to return where we never truly left is "where" God "speaks" to us. However, when our minds return to their belief in separation, and we once again experience ourselves as a personal self in relation to our Creator - as opposed to being one with Him - the "speaking" is mediated through our separate minds and comes out as words, which our minds can understand. It is thus our separated minds that structure the unstructured, shape the shapeless, and form the formless. It is not God Who does this, because He does not know of shape and form. His Love, which simply is, supplies the content; our minds supply the shape or words. Returning to our image of the water and glass, we understand the that the Love of God is the water, and the separated mind is the glass which gives shape to the water, limiting its accessibility to what the glass can hold, or what our minds' fear can tolerate.
To restate this, in the holy instant our minds have chosen to become one with God's Love, which is not a state our egos allow us to continue with, since it means the end of the ego itself. As the Course explains:
Sometimes a teacher of God may have a brief experience of direct union with God. In this world, it is almost impossible that this endure... All worldly states must be illusory. If God were reached directly in sustained awareness, the body would not be long maintained..."-ACIM (Manual For Teachers,-Chapter 26, Paragraph 3: Sentences 1-2, 7-8).'Can God Be Reached Directly?' [Link]
And so the mind chooses to return to the ego identification, yet it brings the Love of God with it. To the extent to which fear remains in the mind, however, the body's words will obscure and distort the purity of the love; the less fear, the more transparent are the words, which then but serve to express the love in a form that can be accepted without fear...." "...it is not our words that are important, but the content of love that they express...."
"...Jesus then, and the specific way we experience him for ourselves, is the glass which allows us to experience God's Love in a form that we can grow to accept. The form is not God's Love, yet it will ultimately blend that Love, as we all will..." Absence From Felicity by Kenneth Wapnick Ph.D;
"... Returning now to Helen and the Course, while her experience most definitely was of Jesus - a person outside herself - relating to her and dictating to her, in truth the reality is much different. Helen was able to return her mind to that memory of God's Love - her true Identity - symbolized by her as Jesus. By uniting with him, she united with love. That union has no form or specifics, for love, as we have seen, is abstract and beyond all division of the ego. This love, of which Jesus was the manifestation, flowed through the separated mind we know as Helen (the water taking shape in the glass) and came out to the world as the three books we know as A Course In Miracles . Thus, it was Helen's mind that gave the Course its form ; the content came from outside her ego mind, from a love that nonetheless is within her mind, as indeed it is in all of us. Recall again Helen's own description that Jesus made use of her "educational background, interests and experience, but that was in matters of style rather than content..."
As one looks at the particulars of the Course's form and structure, one can find almost exact parallels with Helen's own life. Helen was American and obviously English speaking, the idiom and language of the Course. She was a Freudian psychologist and educator, and the Course contains a sophisticated psychodynamic study of the ego, coming within a curricular format: text, workbook for students, and manual for teachers. It's goal, moreover, is that we learn from our inner Teacher, the Holy Spirit, so as to become teachers of God. Despite her ambivalence, Helen nonetheless identified with the Christian tradition, more specifically Roman Catholicism, and was very well versed in the Bible. A Course In Miracles falls within the traditional Christian framework, correcting the distortions and misunderstandings of this two-thousand year old tradition, in addition to containing over eight hundred quotations and allusions to the Bible. Helen was a lover of Shakespeare as well as the great English poets, and the writing of the Course is quite Shakespearean in form, with large portions of the material coming in blank verse and iambic pentameter, the poetic meter of Shakespeare. Helen possessed a keenly logical mind - the reader may recall her love if not worship of logic as a college student - and the Course's theory is presented with rigorous logic, that once its basic premises are accepted, cannot be argued with. Finally, Helen had great respect and love for Plato, and a number of specific allusions to Plato's work are included. In addition, as I pointed out in ' Love Does Not Condemn ,' A Course In Miracles comes within the philosophical tradition that, even though it traces its beginnings to the pre-Socratics, more properly begins with Plato, the true father of Western philosophy, along with Socrates.
The one seeming exception to this list in terms of the formal characteristics of the Course is the strong Gnostic theme that runs throughout the material, not to mention usage of specific Gnostic terminology..." "...since Platonists were among the leading Gnostics, and Platonic Gnosticism is reflected in much of the Course's teachings, there must have been a part of Helen's mind that was familiar with this tradition.
Therefore, again, Helen was responsible for the Course's specific form: the abstract love of Jesus - the source - for its content. To a question raised by a North Carolina group that had once visited, Helen responded that naturally A Course In Miracles was psychological and set up as a curriculum, since she was a psychologist and educator. I reminded her afterwards, however, that she became a psychologist and teacher because of a decision she made prior to , and on a level different from her conscious existence as Helen Schucman. This was similar to the fact that the three people closest to the Course - Helen, Bill and I - all had Ph.D.'s in Clinical Psychology. The Course teaches that time is not linear, and choices are made on the level of the mind - outside time - independent of the brain and body with which we identify. Therefore, our choices to become psychologists, and Helen's to become an educator as well, were hardly accidental. Helen's becoming a psychologist and teacher was necessary so that her brain could accept the Course's teachings in that form. The difficulty in understanding this phenomenon, as mentioned briefly above, comes from our linear - programmed brains which cannot go beyond their own programming, to understand the mind's non-linearity..." -Absence From Felicity by Kenneth Wapnick Ph.D. Chapter 17 The Reality Of Jesus; 'Helen and Jesus: The Illusion and the Reality. Pages 459-460.
i love You
You may chose to shun them, that's your regretful decision.
Fact: ACIM = Satanic garbage
... though come the end, I was left wondering if my years would have been better spent cross legged on a himalayan mountainside, far from the countless consuming diversions that've been laden upon the unsighted through many generations, making them subjugated playthings for the noisiest bidder with the dumbest of plans.
When you examine languages, I have only studied German, Spanish and English, what are their characteristics? Do some emphasize McGilchrist left-brain? Do some emphasize a more emotional frequency? In regards to the globalist direction, what kind of language would serve their strategy? Is the Oriental mind's approach different thinking because of the symbolic language used? Is the war on terror that focuses on the Middle East, in part an attack on the Arabic or Farsi languages because they are a threat to globalist left-brain thinking?
All of these questions came out of being awake at 3 am, and reading about the Lamsa translation of the Bible and New Testament from the original Aramaic language. Apparently Lamsa spoke Aramaic as his first language. From Rocco Errico's continuation of that work, the Biblical "jealous God" becomes the "zealous God", Jesus saying from the cross "Why have thou forsaken me?" becomes more like "My destiny is fulfilled."
"...Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another".
Cheers.
At three o'clock, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which means "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (The Gospel According to Mark 15:34)
A jar of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of Hyssop and held it up to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, "It is finished." Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. (The Gospel According to John 19:29-30)
Instead of 100% focusing exactly on what Jesus says, many, for many reasons, prefer to have confusion.
He also told them a parable: "Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit?" (The Gospel According to Luke 6:39)
Why is it different? In this quote Jesus has no doubt, no question.
For example, in the quote in question, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani!" which appears in The Gospel According to Mark 15:34 and The Gospel According to Matthew 27:46 as "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani!," this, according to foot note in my New Oxford Annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Edition (NRSE) is quoted from Psalms 22:1 My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? The George Lamsa translation for Psalms 22:1 is MY God, my God, why hast thou let me to live? and yet thou hast delayed my salvation from me, because of the words of my folly.
It's helpful to read scripture before and after these quotes to have some perspective. A fair amount of Jesus' sayings are based on Old Testament scripture, the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms. Regarding The Gospel According to Mark 15:34, my Bible has a foot note: Other ancient authorities read made me a reproach . Regarding Psalms 22, my Bible says in the foot notes, that it's a Prayer for deliverance from mortal illness (A lament). 1-2: Cry for help. 1: Quoted by Jesus on the cross (Mk 15.34)
So, what is the difference? As you stated the Lamsa translation for these quote in question is "My God, my God, for this I was kept!" (Btw, it's interesting to note, it looks like there is an asterisk after this sentence, but my eyes and glasses bit old, yet I don't see any reference to this at page bottom or elsewhere.)
IMHumbleO, there's layered meaning or even dual meaning (paradoxical?) or varied or multiple or other.. Jesus' words may convey slightly different meaning depending on the listener, what he is able to hear, what he is able to see. What comes to my mind now, reflecting on this, is that he knows he is doing God's will, yet he is also in exceedingly great pain. He knows that Father loves him dearly (it's impossible for me to adequately convey in written or spoken words the magnitude of this love) and he knows he must continue to fulfill his destiny / drink from his cup, yet in his humanness he is crying our for help, for end to suffering, for salvation.
Perhaps some day we will, on a very personal level, know better what He meant. It's awesome to see your enthusiasm for His Word, the Word which became flesh and lived among us.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. (The Gospel According to John 1:14) (Foot note: Or the Father's only son )
As a side note, what I have learned through prayer, study and intuition, is that rather than Father's only son, He (Jesus Christ) is His uniquely begotten son. And as such, that we are all, through belief in Jesus Christ, His (God's) children, His sons and daughters.
I was a little bit critical in my previous reply to you b/c, although I see quest for understanding of true meaning, I also saw what I perceived as rounding the corners, making generalizations 'like this or like that' rather than in depth study of His Word. The dark forces which "control" our world, always make every effort to water down Jesus' Word, to spin confusion, to say He said other things beyond what He said, and so forth, overall, to distract from His Word as Truth and as our bright shining beacon guiding Light salvation for going Home.
I pray you will continue to study all the Gospels, and that that essential Truth will become a beyond words beautiful truly eternal life-giving foundation for reading studying learning many other essential teaching of the Bible, and from there, is more and more and more
"Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I tell you? I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them. That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on the rock; when the flood arose, the river burst against that house but could not shake it, because it had been well built (Ancient authorities read: founded upon the rock). But the one who hears and does not act is like a man who built his house on the ground without a foundation. When the river burst against it, immediately it fell, and great was the ruin of that house." (The Gospel According to Luke 6:46-49 NRSE)
Why do you call me, My Lord, my Lord, and do not do what I say? Every man who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like. He is like a man who built a house, and dug deep, and laid its foundations upon the rock; and when the flood came, the flood beat upon that house, and could not shake it; for its foundation was laid upon a rock. And he who hears and does not, is like a man who built his house on the earth without a foundation; and when the river beat against it, it fell immediately, and the fall of that house was great. (The Gospel According to Luke 6:46-49 Lamsa translation)
"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell---and great (elsewhere I've seen this word: titanic) was its fall!"
Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes. (The Gospel According to Matthew 7:24-29 NRSE)
Therefore whoever hears these words of mine, and does them, he is like a wise man, who built his house upon a rock. And the rain came down, and the rivers overflowed, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house; but it did not fall down, because its foundations were laid upon a rock. And whoever hears these words of mine, and does them not, is like a foolish man, who built his house upon sand. And the rain came down, and the rivers overflowed, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house; and it fell down, and its fall was very great. And it happened when Jesus finished these words, the crowds were stunned at his teaching. For he taught them as one who had the power, and not like their own scribes and Pharisees. (The Gospel According to Matthew 7:24-29 Lamsa translation)
Foot notes: Matthew 7.24-27 : Lk 6.47-49; Jas 1.22-25. 28 : When Jesus had finished saying these things , this (or a similar) formula marks the conclusion of each of the five main discourses in the gospel (see introduction and 11.1; 13.53; 19.1; 26.1). 29 : Not as their scribes , Jesus speaks on his own responsibility, without appeal to traditional authority (Mk 1.22; 11.18; Lk 4.32).
In a comment some weeks ago I first read the KJV Gospel of Matthew in a college class on world literature. It touched me deeply. At that time I saw him as a great teacher. I've read The Way of a Pilgrim and the Philokalis of the Orthodox Greek and Russian which emphasize prayer. I do use the Lord's Prayer.
At this time, my aim is to awaken people to the manipulation of their lives, and that truth will turn them to realize their heart has been corrupted by the media and entertainment. They are like the two criminals hung with Christ on the cross. One realizes the Truth.
you yourself are infected / heavily manipulated, yet can't see it. to have possibility to awaken others, must first awaken self
'use' the Lord's prayer or reverentially Say the Lord's prayer? When you begin speaking to Father from your heart, then you begin..
truly begin. (Btw, 'him' is Jesus is his name, Jesus Christ, don't be afraid to say His name, saying His Name will bring power and miracle into your life. He is infinitely more than a great teacher. The more you lose your self to Him, the more You will fly.)
i love You
One key is emotional reaction which leads to less perception. Therefore emotional intelligence is required. There are lower emotion like the crowd at a football game which sucks people in. There are higher emotions as Jesus saw through the hypocrite words to there intent.
Why A Course in Miracles Is Not Good For You, or Those You Love [Link]
October 21, 2021
An Open Letter from a Former Student
Matthew Remski April 17
Dear student of A Course in Miracles —
To this day I remember the warm wash of peace that seemed to flow over me as I read the first few lessons of the Course . Nothing I see in this room means anything… These thoughts do not mean anything… I am never upset for the reason I think… I see only the past… I am upset because I see a meaningless world… God did not create a meaningless world.
Even now, two decades after first opening the heavy, hardcover book with the onion skin paper, I can read these lines, close my eyes, and put myself back into that place where all of the loneliness, anxiety, and despair seemed to melt away. The voice floating above the page was soothing, radiant. It seemed to understand my nameless predicament, and to speak directly to it, helping me, step by step, to slow down and disassemble the internal machine of endless conflict that had become my mind.
I had tried many things to soothe myself. I had travelled to India, and learned to meditate. I had poured over yoga books and prostrated in temples. I had fasted and chanted. I had taken Buddhist vows. But the Course spoke to me in English, with a directness, simplicity and rhythm that felt so at home. That the voice said it belonged to Jesus, and that he spoke of forgiveness and resurrection: this mended the broken shards of Christianity at the bottom of my soul.
The spell began to break after a little more than two years — a few weeks into circling through the round of 365 lessons for the third time.
Why did it break? Context is everything.
I had been introduced to the book by the charismatic leader of a cult. He thrilled me with his knowledge of the book, his commitment to it. I moved across the country to listen to him teach from it every day.
But at some mysterious point it became clear that, despite his seeming brilliance, he was emotionally manipulating and financially exploiting the hundreds of us who gathered around him. He wasn’t an outright criminal. My impression after all of these years was that he was a deeply traumatized former alcoholic who had learned to present his emotional turmoil as a form of enlightenment. He was using A Course in Miracles as a fig leaf for his mania and its resulting abuses of power.
I eventually left the group. I went to therapy. I slowly rebuilt my relationships. I started writing again, which took a while, because my brain was so full of the Course it was impossible at first to hear my own voice. I remarried, and became a parent. Now I am a cult researcher.
The woman who introduced me to the Course said: “If a group begins to form around the Course , run in the opposite direction.” I think almost all Course in Miracles devotees have heard this saying. The reasoning is that the Course is a personal journey undertaken by forging a personal connection with the voice of Jesus. And the book is emphatic about the reader needing no other authority beside itself. So, you may say: “You weren’t really studying the Course . Sadly, you didn’t get the experience in its authentic form.” And you would have a good point.
You might also want to defend against where this letter is going by saying: “It wasn’t the Course that abused you. That cult leader could have used the Bible, or the Quran.” And you would be right about that, too. In fact, the cult leader also used the Blue Book, from Alcoholics Anonymous. If he hadn’t found the Course , he would have found something. He craved to be at the centre of the universe, and the Course merely gave him permission.
But even if my experience with the Course was not “pure”, it did leave me with an interesting split. My devotion to the text left it seared into my memory, while my disillusionment with how it had been used against me allowed me to examine its ideas dispassionately. The fact that I had to run far away from the Course for my own mental health meant that I got to talk to others who had as well. It forced me to broaden my reading, better understand the strange origins of the Course , and learn where it fits within the broader history of New Age — formerly “New Thought” — religion. Yes: religion.
The Course and those who love it like to think of it as though it has somehow completed and transcended religion, but this is not true. I’m writing this letter to say that this double vision — knowing the Course well enough to see through it — has convinced me that its ideas are really harmful . Not just because they don’t make sense, but because they are presented in a hypnotic, thought-scrambling form that needs no cult leader to weaponize it. It is a book that teaches the reader to isolate and manipulate themselves.
You might think that my contact with other Course devotees is limited to those who also were in cults. But as a journalist on the New Age and wellness beat, I have spoken to dozens of people who came to the Course on their own, or through the popular Course -based books by people like Marianne Williamson and Gabrielle Bernstein. I’ve listened to the stories of how the Course has changed them. Some are still devoted students. Some have left it. Some have family members invested in it. My general takeaway from my personal, group, and now research experience, is that the Course works — if it can be said to work— by turning its student into a cult of one.
What do I mean by that?
Here’s the standard — not popular or sensationalistic — definition of “cult”, as formulated by Michael Langone and Dr. Louis West in the 1980s — around the same time that the Course enjoyed exponential growth: The Course has primarily spread through word-of-mouth, which means that social influence plays an important role in how it is practiced. For example: while Marianne Williamson presents herself as a neutral “teacher” and humble servant of the Course , her status as a charismatic influencer cannot be ignored when we consider how broadly her teachings have reached. If it was really about the Course , everyone who taught it would enjoy similar exposure.
But for the sake of argument I’ll agree for the moment with the belief that “groups” that form around the Course are either illegitimate (they miss the core message) or too decentralized to really function for the benefit of any “leader”. Even with that agreement, I can turn back to West and Langone’s definition and strip away references to groups and leaders, and render a list of troubling conditions that true for most, if not all, of the Course students I have known.
1. “This is a Course in Miracles. It is a required course.” With this famous opening, Course students convince themselves over time that it is the only book and set of ideas they need, and ever will need. It is totalizing.
2. As a totalizing worldview, it slowly but surely begins to pry the student away from friends and family. Course students begin to feel that it is natural for those who “awaken from the dream of separation” in the non- Course world to find themselves alone, or only able to communicate with fellow students. I feel that one of the more pernicious aspects of the Course is its definition of all intimate human relationships as “Special Relationships”, which “Jesus” claims are contrived to keep him sidelined, or to pretend that human relationships can replace the divine plan. One thing that might be of interest to consider is that it is standard practice for cults to separate marriages and families, so that there are no emotional bonds that can compete with the bond between the member and the group. The question is whether this narrowing of relationships is healthy over time. Toxic or abusive relationships should be boundaried. But in general, a trend toward self-isolation does not seem healthy to me.
3. “Debilitation”. I have known and heard of dozens of Course students who have refused to seek out psychotherapy, addiction treatment, medical treatment, social services, and even alimony and child support that is due to them because they were convinced by the Course that “I am not my body”, or “sickness is a defence against the Truth”, or that “love offers everything forever”, or that “forgiveness offers everything I want”. I have known people to suffer with acute and chronic illness, pain, or mental health issues because of these beliefs. I knew one woman who died, riddled with painful and treatable cancer, because she believed that “sickness and separation are not of God”. She died alone, alienated from her children, who found they could not talk to her without her deflecting every conversation back to Jesus, or the lesson of the day. It was as if she had forgotten the most intimate anchors of her life —who she had parented—or simply lost interest in them.
4. “Special methods to heighten suggestibility and subservience.” The requirement of daily and often hourly prayer sessions can create a psychosocial bubble around the student that sharply limits other inputs, and begins to dictate all responses to circumstance through the instructions of the Course . Also, we cannot ignore the hypnotic rhythm of the text. An astonishing 75% of the Lessons are written in iambic pentameter, and about half of the actual 600-page plus text is as well — the latter half. I’ve looked for neuropsychological research on the effects of iambic pentameter, and it seems that there isn’t much. But anecdotally I am convinced that it is hypnotic, with registers that can switch back and forth between the monotonous and the coercive. I am also convinced that the rhythm is a contrivance, i.e., not consistent with a “channelled” voice from “out of time”. (“One in /stant out / of time / can bring / a- bout / time’s end .”) Even if we accept that the book really comes from a disembodied Jesus, why would this incredibly influential rhythm become central to the text part-way through? And to whom is the “subservience”? I believe that the Course effectively implants the voice of “Jesus” in the student’s brain as a kind of superego, an internal voice of discipline and sanctimony. The subservience is not to an external authority, but to an internalized brainworm. I have seen countless Course students stop in the middle of a conversation to close their eyes and “listen to what Jesus is saying.” I used to do this as well. What I heard were memorized lines from the book.
5. “Information management”. Dedicated Course students will use the book to interpret every piece of information they come across through the voice of “Jesus”. For many students I have known, this has meant cutting themselves off from all news of the world, because the stress of constant re-interpretation can be very tiring. They default to the article of faith: “There is no world.” When this process goes mainstream, it looks like the political campaigns of Marianne Williamson, in which the rhetoric of love, peace, light, and miracles displaces any educated or realistic conversation of political and economic policy. On an interpersonal level, the consequences of information management can be tragic. I have heard many stories of Course students being told by their friend, partners, or even children that they have suffered some kind of abuse. And instead of empathizing with the survivor, the Course student will them that “pain is an ego illusion”, or that “God knows nothing of your pain”, or that everything that has happened has a higher or divine purpose.
6. “Suspension of individuality or critical judgment.” There’s something oddly homogenous about Course students — and I don’t just mean most of them are white, although that’s another part of the story. I remember the feeling that I should always be standing upright, that I should always have a gentle smile of equanimity. It was very important to feel and show that I had overcome all internal conflicts through the inner guidance of “Jesus”. In my case this entailed a severe amount of emotional repression, and I have heard as much from many former students as well. The homogeneity acts as a kind of social buffer that both proves that the student has attained a higher states, and protects them from having to engage with others, except for when they are proselytizing. The affect and vibe is quite similar to that of Jehovah’s Witnesses who recruit from door to door — minus the suits. The “critical judgment” piece is reflected in all of the above points, but I can add here that every Course student I have ever known has gone through a period — sometimes permanent— of complete depoliticization. They even stop voting. It’s not just the belief that having a critical perspective on something displaces the unity of God in their minds. It’s also the belief that taking any action in the world is a denial of the eternal perfection of things .
(to be continued in next post)
Why A Course in Miracles Is Not Good For You, or Those You Love [Link]
October 21, 2021
An Open Letter from a Former Student
Matthew Remski April 17 (continued)
I don’t want this letter to be too long, or to feel like it’s hitting you over the head. To sum up:
Why does A Course in Miracles feel so good? I believe it’s because it provides a hypnotic bubble of escape from the world. Its duet form — “Jesus” is speaking directly to you— is very intimate and highly charged. It can feel like an intensely personal experience. These feelings can be useful for a time. But there’s an addictive quality to it, and with enough repetition, the bubble can become a kind of armour against the world that “Jesus” claims does not exist, but that you are still living in and dependent on. In so many cases I have seen, that armour stands between the people that the book claims to want to bring together. Students become islands unto themselves, comforted only by their capacity to recite the lessons over and over again.
And where do these lessons come from? What is the Course? You are likely aware of the buckets of ink spilled on sorting out the various editions, how Helen Schucman and Bill Thetford“took dictation” and edited it, and then Ken Wapnick edited it again. Maybe you are aware that Bill Thetford worked as a psychological consultant on the CIA MKUltra programme, which was dedicated to discovering and weaponizing techniques of mind control. The full history of the Course has yet to be investigated, corroborated, and written. But we know enough to honestly say that this book emerged through a very human process. Which leaves us all with the question of whether it is deceptive, or self-deceptive, to claim that the voice of the text comes from some divine source.
What is much more plausible is that two psychologists with a complex and intimate relationship, who likely had easy access to mind-altering chemicals, recorded together a strange and compelling trip that made them feel better about life. A different turn of the screw might have produced an opera, or play, perhaps in iambic pentameter.
What is much more plausible is that two psychologists with a complex and intimate relationship, who likely had easy access to mind-altering chemicals, recorded together a strange and compelling trip that made them feel better about life. A different turn of the screw might have produced an opera, or play, perhaps in iambic pentameter.
Things that make us feel better at the expense of our relationships and connections with the world, and our political will, exact a price. What I’ve seen is that while A Course in Miracles is always “given away freely”, the costs are very high.
I can end by saying: it’s okay to stop reading it. When I did, I didn’t lose anything but a sense of inner authoritarianism that had disguised itself in wisdom.
Over time, I found I had my own internal voice. It wasn’t “Jesus”’s, Helen’s, or Bill’s. But it was good enough: curious, inventive, capable of reassurance, able to reach out to others, and able to rest.
Sincerely,
Matthew Remski
More from Matthew Remski
Investigative journo: conspirituality & cults. Co-host at [Link] Bylines: GEN, The Walrus. More @ [Link]
By Timothy Conway -- © Copyright 2007.
Debunking A Course in Miracles (ACIM) and Spiritual Scams [Link]
A cursory inspection of what we know reveals that A Course in Miracles is a spiritual scam. I just name it especially because it is quite “big” and popular and am not going to take time into going into all of the reasons it is nonsense, but am just listing it as one of the examples of some of the types of spiritual scams that exist. So, ACIM was written by a ‘spirit’ claiming to be Jesus. As ‘channeled’ by Helen. So, one has to believe in Jesus to believe in ACIM. Otherwise, the “spirit” is lying and shouldn’t be believed. Correct? But, if you do believe in Jesus, you kinda also have to believe in the New Testament in some fashion. And, Jesus is recorded to have said: “For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets…they shall deceive the very elect. Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not. For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” So, if you are going to literally believe those words, Jesus said not to believe in anyone claiming to BE him or speak for him. And yet that is what ACIM is. Which means you can’t believe both literally in the words to have been reported by the New Testament figure known as Jesus saying not to believe anyone claiming to be him AND ACIM (which requires believing in Jesus, according to the ‘channeler’). ACIM contradicts its own existence, in other words. [Link]
Fear Is Not The Opposite of Love: A Critique of A Course in Miracles [Link]
A Course in Miracles Fraud [Link]
A Course in Miracles or in Brainwashing? [Link]
Fear Is Not The Opposite of Love: A Critique of A Course in Miracles [Link]
A Course in Miracles or in Brainwashing? [Link]
About World Trade Center 7 Building 7 was destroyed in the manner of a classic implosion, falling suddenly, symmetrically, and in absolute free fall into its own footprint. [Link]
About the Twin Towers The Twin Towers were destroyed by waves of explosions that pulverized the building contents and hurled steel beams up to 600 ft in all directions. [Link]
Stand for the Truth (31 min) [Link]
The Unspeakable (90 min) [Link]
Solving the Mystery of WTC 7 (15 min) [Link]
Posted on 8 Sep 2012 by Truth in Reality
A Course in Miracles has an interesting history and it all started when Dr. Helen Schucman, a non-religious Jew began working with Dr. William Thetford in 1958.
It seems Dr. Thetford had ties with the CIA and was working on Project Bluebird, which was later rolled over into the MK-Ultra Project. MK-Ultra was a program focused on mind control created in the 1950s by the CIA with the goal to learn ways to manipulate people’s mental states, alter brain function and create Manchurian Candidates often through the use of drugs and hypnosis.
Under the MK-Ultra umbrella there were purported to be over a hundred sub projects from the 1950s well into the 1970s and Thetford purportedly worked on Personality Theory, subproject 130.
Schucman was employed at Columbia University with Thetford as a research psychologist for seven years without incident, but then one night on the subway she had a vision. A beautiful light filled the subway car and upon arriving home, the quiet voice, claiming to be Jesus, spoke to her for the first time. Soon, she and Thetford, a relationship that had always been strained according to reports, developed a close partnership while transcribing what this voice relayed. It’s an interesting coincidence that while working with Thetford, Schucman, a spiritual sceptic and scientist, had such an amazing transformation of spirit and mind.
Father Groeschel met Schucman at Columbia University while she was scribing the Course and he was writing his dissertation on the relationship between science and theology, he found her to be witty, engaging and a stimulating conversationalist. “Helen was a very scientific lady,” he recalled, “a Jewish intellectual who considered herself to be an extreme agnostic, though not quite an atheist, and very sceptical about everything having to do with religion or spirituality.” Groeschel also found Schucman to be an enigma, while writing the Course, she spent a lot of time in the Catholic Church, but refused to join, stating that as a Jew and a former Catholic “you Gentiles came along and made all these rules.” He was confused by her reactions to writing A Course in Miracles, as she would often state, “I hate that damn book.” The Making Of A Course In Miracles
Groeschel also knew Thetford during his time at Columbia University and described him as “probably the most sinister person I ever met” and “the most religious atheist I have ever known.” Groeschel stated that Thetford was very excited about A Course in Miracles and personally arranged for its publication. It seems Thetford was quite a mystery at the University and none of his colleagues knew, until after he retired, that he had also been working for the CIA during his employment.
Although a friend of Schucman, Thetford, and Wapnik, Benedict J. Groeschel has since criticized ACIM and the related organizations. Finding some elements of the Course to be what he called, “severe and potentially dangerous distortions of Christian theology”, he wrote that the Course is “a good example of a false revelation” and that “it has . . . become a spiritual menace to many.”
Although Father Groeschel felt that A Course in Miracles undermined authentic Christianity, he and Dr. Schucman maintained a friendship until her death. Most disturbing to him was the “black hole of rage and depression that Schucman fell into during the last two years of her life.” According to Groeschel, who sat with Schucman while she was dying, “she cursed, in the coarsest bar-room language you could imagine, `that book, that goddamn book.’ She said it was the worst thing that ever happened to her. I mean, she raised the hair on the back of my neck. It was truly terrible to witness.”
Other Christian authors, such as evangelical Bob Larson, have similarly criticized A Course In Miracles , saying it contradicts basic tenets of Christianity, twisting its core teachings and “deceiving people who are sincerely looking for God.” Larson also criticizes ACIM populariser Marianne Williamson personally, saying that her work on behalf of ACIM denies “essential qualities of faith” such as guilt and forgiveness, and necessitates the Biblically forbidden practice of transpossession mediumship.
Evangelical editor Elliot Miller says that Christian terminology employed in ACIM is “thoroughly redefined” to resemble New Age teachings. Other Christian critics say ACIM is “intensely anti-Biblical” and incompatible with Christianity, blurring the distinction between creator and created and forcefully supporting the occult and New Age world view.
Dr. Colin Ross, a psychiatrist specializing in dissociative disorders, has written a summary about Project Bluebird based on documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Ross states that many prisoners and mental patients were subjected to unethical mind control experiments by leading psychiatrists and medical schools and that academic psychiatry has never acknowledged the truth of these events. Dr. Ross believes that the “network” of mind control doctors utilized in the Bluebird Project has done great harm to the field of psychiatry and to psychiatric patients.
He states, “The participation of psychiatrists and medical schools in mind control research was not a matter of a few scattered doctors pursuing questionable lines of investigation. Rather, the mind control experimentation was systematic, organized, and involved many leading psychiatrists and medical schools. The mind control experiments were interwoven with radiation experiments, and research on chemical and biological weapons. They were funded by the CIA, Army, Navy, Air Force, and by other agencies including the Public Health Service and the Scottish Rite Foundation. The psychiatrists, psychologists, neurosurgeons, and other contractors conducting the work were imbedded in a broad network of doctors, and much of the research was published in medical journals. The climate was permissive, supportive, and approving of mind control experimentation.”
Dr. Ross continues to list a disturbing number of experimentations and manipulations done on ill-informed and innocent American citizens, including the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, where illiterate, poor, rural black men with syphilis were recruited as subjects, told they had bad blood and were deliberately not treated. He states that unethical radiations experiments were performed on about 600 people beginning in the 1940s and ending in the 1970s, including injecting patients with plutonium, without their informed consent. And in Washington and Oregon state prisoners were offered five dollars a month to have their testicles irradiated.
But besides the frightening evil of the physical experimentations done on innocents, Project Bluebird was focused on the mind and how to manipulation and control through the use of drugs and hypnosis. The goal was to create Manchurian Candidates by causing amnesic barriers, by shattering the old personality to birth new and efficient ones and implanting hypnotic codes and triggers so that the person being manipulated would never understand his role. And according to the documents obtained by Ross, they were actually quite successful.
Interestingly enough, this was the world in which Dr. Thetford was involved when his research assistant suddenly began hearing the voice of Jesus in her head and A Course in Miracles was born.
A Course in Miracles was published in 1975 and Dr. Schucman signed over the copyright to the Foundation of Inner Peace, later FIP assigned the copyright and trademark to the Foundation for A Course in Miracles. The same year Gerald Ford instructed the Rockefeller Commission to investigate the CIA’s activities in the US and MK-Ultra briefly became known to the world, before drifting back out of the minds of most Americans. Dr. Schucman left Columbia University in 1976, never claiming financial rewards or celebrity status for the book that has been sold around the globe and translated into 17 different languages. Schucman often lamented to Father Groeschel that she was afraid that the book would gain a cult following and it seems she was correct.
According to The Miracle Times website, in January, Marianne Williams will begin teaching the 365 day Course on Oprah and Friends XM Satellite Radio. The site states, “A Course In Miracles is a masterpiece of mind training, impeccably crafted to catalyse within the individual an experience of thought not bound by the constraints of time, space, or human organizational principles. Through our practical application of lessons in the art of forgiveness and in the psychology of self-responsibility, we are awakened to the memory of our Divine Inheritance.” The Miracle Times
I wonder if the black despair and hatred for all things spiritual Dr. Schucman felt at the end of her life had anything to do with the dawning realization that she may have been brutally manipulated? I wonder if the people pushing this book and “mind training” have any idea of the dark place this New Age Jesus was hatched? If intention is everything, what was the intent of this book? To relieve suffering or to instill it? To point us in the right direction or trap us in a web of deceit? Perhaps to many how A Course in Miracles was crafted does not matter, but to me, to adopt a spiritual “truth” developed on a foundation littered with dark deeds, suffering, government intrusions and deceptions seems like the ultimate manipulation.
Victoria Hardy, American Chronicle, Dec 2007
July 8, 2008 Constantine Report from Tal Levesque's Research Services June 11, 2007 ‘Creating a mythos’ to control people. Program of psychological warfare (PSYOP) or ‘Mind War’. .. .
A Course in Miracles (also referred to as ACIM or "the Course"), [originally published in 1975] is a book considered by its students to be their "spiritual path".
According to Dr. Helen Schucman and the Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP), Dr. Helen Schucman and Dr. William Thetford "scribed" the book by means of a process coming from a divine source through a form of channeling which Schucman referred to as "inner dictation". Schucman described the divine source of her channeling as none other than the person of Jesus Christ.
Well.... Dr. William Thetford, headed the CIA's "Mind Control" MK-ULTRA SubProject 130: Personality Theory, while at Columbia University between 1971-1978.
Dr. Thetford’s Professional Bio, also available on the A Course in Miracles web site, makes reference to his involvement in a Personality Theory Research Project while Professor of Medical Psychology at Columbia University, but the information does not specifically cite this as a CIA MK- ULTRA SubProject.
ce399.typepad.com...
There is a connection between Unity Church, "A Course In Miracles", MK-ULTRA Artichoke Subproject 130 ; Scientology ; the UFO Myth and the Stanford Research Institute.
"A Course in Miracles" was a CIA manipulation device.
It was an experiment orchestrated by the CIA/US government.
Many were DAMAGED by it.
It was implemented by Bill Thetford (an agent of the CIA) at Columbia University.
Search for info on Thetford and MKUltra (the government's well-documented mind-control program) to find more.
The agenda, according to those interested in this sphere of investigation, is to inflitrate and dilute the American left with New Age ideas and inward-focussed, anti-rational religious movements.
www.hometown.aol.com
The Making of 'A Course in Miracles'
Excerpt from : www.beliefnet.com...
William Thetford, also a Columbia professor, was a mysterious character, and "probably the most sinister person I ever met," the priest recalled. Only after he retired from teaching did Thetford's Columbia colleagues (who knew him best as a rare-books expert) discover that all during the years they worked with him, the man had been employed as an agent of the CIA--one who was, among other things, present at the first fission experiment conducted by physicists assigned to the Manhattan Project. Thetford also was "the most religious atheist I have ever known," Groeschel recalled, and conceived a great enthusiasm for A Course in Miracles, personally arranging for its publication. Schucman was embarrassed, Groeschel remembered, and confided to the priest her fear that the book would create a cult, which of course it did.
Groeschel initially read the Course as "religious poetry," but grew steadily more negative in his assessment of it as the years passed and sales of the three volumes passed into the millions of copies. From his point of view, A Course in Miracles served to undermine authentic Christianity more effectively than just about any other work he could recall, and while he was inclined to reject the position of St. John of the Cross that "these things are diabolical unless proven otherwise," doubts had crept in over the years. Most troubling to him by far was the "black hole of rage and depression that Schucman fell into during the last two years of her life," the priest explained. She had become frightening to be with, Groeschel recalled, spewing psychotic hatred not only for A Course in Miracles but "for all things spiritual." When he sat at Schucman's bedside as she lay dying, "she cursed, in the coarsest barroom language you could imagine, `that book, that goddamn book.' She said it was the worst thing that ever happened to her. I mean, she raised the hair on the back of my neck. It was truly terrible to witness." (END OF QUOTE) [Link]
William Thetford
William N. Thetford, Ph.D. (April 23, 1923–July 4, 1988) was trained as a psychologist, and remained professionally active in this field throughout his life. Thetford worked in a collaborative venture with Dr. Helen Schucman in writing A Course In Miracles (ACIM), and also with its initial edits. [1] He died in 1988, aged 65, in Tiburon, California, after having made his involvement with the ACIM material and its study the most central focus of his life.
Early childhood
Thetford was born on April 23, 1923 in Chicago, Illinois to John R. and Mabel K. Thetford as the youngest of three children. At the time of his birth and early childhood, his parents were both regular members of the Christian Science Church. At the age of seven, the untimely death of his older sister caused his parents to disavow their affiliation with the Church of Christian Science. Afterwards, for the next few years, Thetford sampled various other Protestant denominations.
At the age of nine he contracted a severe case of scarlet fever, which led to rheumatic fever and a debilitating heart condition. These resulting health problems forced him to spend the next three years at home recuperating. During his forced recuperation period he took advantage of the many free hours, using the time to satisfy his voracious appetite for reading. Despite his absence from the classroom, he entered high school at the age of twelve.
[edit]University education
Following graduation from high school, he was awarded a four-year scholarship to DePauw University in Indiana where he graduated with majors in psychology and pre-medicine in 1944. During the course of his university studies, Thetford eventually settled on the idea of specializing in psychology, and in 1949 he received his Ph.D. in this field from the University of Chicago.
While he was a student during the early 1940s he served for a time as an administrative assistant for the Manhattan Project, the World War II atom bomb development project.[citation needed] The Metallurgical Laboratory where the first atomic reactor was assembled was located under Stagg Field at the University of Chicago during those years. In his graduate studies he was fortunate to be one of the first students of the renowned psychologist, Carl Rogers.
Career and hiring of Dr. Helen Schucman
For the next five years after his graduation in 1949, Thetford worked as a research psychologist in both Chicago, and later in Washington, DC. According to Dr Colin Ross, from 1951 to 1953 Thetford worked on Project BLUEBIRD, an early CIA mind control program [2]. He spent 1954 and 1955 as the director of clinical psychology at the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut. From 1955 to 1957 he was an assistant professor of psychology at Cornell University's CIA-funded[3] Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology[4].
In 1958 he accepted an assistant professorship, which later developed into a full professorship, at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. During a portion of this same period he also served as the director of clinical psychology at the Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. It was here that he would stay for the next 20 years, and it was here that he first met and hired Dr. Helen Schucman, hiring her as a research psychologist and assistant.
Thetford's "Invitation" for ACIM
The working relationship between Thetford and Schucman was apparently often somewhat strained, yet throughout these difficulties they would always maintain a certain level of professional courtesy and respect for one another. The story is often retold that it was into this environment of inter-relational strain between Thetford and Schucman that the ACIM material was in a sense first “invited” into this world. This “invitation” came in the form of an exclamation by Thetford one day, in the midst of one of their periodic difficulties, in which Thetford exclaimed, “There must be another way!” This exclamation was followed by a certain speech he made to Schucman describing how he believed that it was time for them to try to refocus their energies on constructive and helpful agendas, rather than being forever hyper critical and hyper competitive with one another. Expecting a typically condescending response from Schucman, the studied silence that followed his speech was then followed by a most surprising concurrence from Schucman, fully supporting his new proposal. This speech was given in June of 1965.[5][6]
The next four months were filled with a number of unusually vivid dream sequences and even some unusual waking experiences for Schucman.
Amongst her vivid dream sequences, she began to become familiar with a certain internal character who spoke to her as Jesus in her dreams. Little did she know that the voice of this dream character would soon come to dominate the rest of her life. Many of her unusual experiences during these four months are recorded in the biographical work, ‘Absence from Felicity’, by Kenneth Wapnick.[7] Schucman appears to have confided her experiences with Thetford, who acted as a sort of a calming, encouraging and stabilizing influence for Schucman during this period.
(Continued in next post)
July 8, 2008 Constantine Report from Tal Levesque's Research Services June 11, 2007 ‘Creating a mythos’ to control people. Program of psychological warfare (PSYOP) or ‘Mind War’. .. .
(continued from previous post)
The years of ACIM transcription
Finally in October of that year, the transcriptions of what is now known as ACIM first began. According to both Thetford and Schucman, due to Schucman’s intensely divided feelings about the work of the transcription, Schucman would at times require a great deal of reassurance from Thetford in order to complete the process that eventually resulted in the first typewritten copy of ACIM, (which later became known as the Urtext).
According to Thetford, Schucman was sitting at home on the night of October 21st, 1965, when she heard an internal "voice" say to her, "This is a course in miracles. Please take notes." When she first heard this internal voice, she thought she recognized it as the same voice of the dream-sequence character that in her recent dream sequences had represented the person of Jesus to her. Schucman then wrote down about a page of notes before she realized that this request was going to be of much greater significance, and would require a far greater commitment in time than it had ever asked of her before. In a panic, she phoned Thetford to ask for his advice. Thetford encouraged Schucman to do what the voice asked, and to take the notes. He offered to meet with her the next morning before work, to review her notes, to discuss them further with her, and then to determine what she should do with this "Voice".[8]
On the following morning, after Thetford's review of the notes, he was so impressed with what she read to him that he encouraged Schucman to continue with the note taking. Schucman was initially taken aback by Thetford's reaction, but then apparently after giving herself enough time to recover from her initial jitters to honestly review the notes herself, she agreed. Soon they recognized that the notes, which eventually became ACIM (referred to as The Course by ACIM students), was their answer, the "other way" that they had agreed to find together four months earlier.
Classifying this transcription process as one of Schucman’s unusual waking experiences is an understatement at best. During the process Schucman claimed to have the mental equivalent of a tape recorder in her thoughts, which she described as being able to turn on and off at will, at her convenience, so that she might be able to transcribe into shorthand notes, what she was internally hearing. This voice identified itself as none other than the historical Jesus.
During the beginning of this process, one of Thetford’s gentle complaints was, “In the beginning I spent most of my time while typing these notes with one hand on the typewriter and the other on Helen’s shoulder”. After some months of experiencing an initial struggle in this process, eventually they both began to experience less subconscious resistance to the process, and the initial transcription began to move along more smoothly.
From 1965 through 1972 Thetford directly assisted Schucman with the transcription of the first three sections of the work, which was in fact the great bulk of the material. Then in 1972, somewhat to both of their reliefs (yet on some levels to their dismay) it appeared that the writing was complete, which for the most part it was.
In 1972 Thetford and Schucman were first introduced to Dr. Kenneth Wapnick whom they later invited to assist them with the voluminous amount of editing that was required to render the rough draft of the ACIM manuscript into a publishable format. Wapnick readily accepted this invitation, and was eventually instrumental in assisting them in accomplishing this task. Thetford, Wapnick and Schucman, the three principle transcriber-editors of ACIM were to remain friends for the rest of their lives, throughout the arduous process of seeing this manuscript through to first successful publication, and beyond to witness the initial spreading of its teachings.
After the completion of the bulk of the initial scribing/ transcribing process, for brief periods during 1973, 1975, and 1977 the short transcriptions of Psychotherapy,[9] of Clarification of Terms, and of the Song of Prayer,[9] which are the remainder of the standard material of ACIM, were transcribed in similar fashion.
From 1971 to 1978 Thetford, along with David Saunders, headed the CIA mind control Project MKULTRA Subproject 130: Personality Theory. [10] [11]
Move to California
In 1978 Thetford resigned from his positions at both Columbia University and at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. In 1980 he packed up his household, and at the apparent invitation of Judith Skutch Whitson, moved to Tiburon California, where Whitson was by now employed full time in the publication and distribution of ACIM.
Now at age 57, in Tiburon Thetford transitioned into a sort of semi-retirement, no longer accepting any demanding positions of heavy responsibility in either his professional life, or in his involvement with the ever growing readership of ACIM. In California Thetford took on two part time professional positions; one as a psychology consultant at Travis Air Force Base and the other as one of the directors of the ACIM related Center for Attitudinal Healing in Tiburon, as offered to him by his friend and fellow student of ACIM, Dr. Gerald Jampolsky.
Here in California, Thetford spent the final eight years of his life, regularly attending meetings of fellow ACIM students where ACIM principles would be discussed, but only rarely engaging in these discussions in any kind of an authoritative manner. Instead, during this final period of his life, he appears to have been primarily concerned with his own personal study of the ACIM material, and with enriching his own grasp of its message. Still, some of his interchanges with his associates during this period are somewhat illuminating.
Anecdotal accounts of Thetford's California life
During one such interchange with his friend Judith Skutch Whitson[12], Whitson describes calling Thetford during a moment of extremely high tension in her relationship with Jampolsky. In the phone conversation Whitson went on at length, describing what she perceived to be Jampolski’s many faults. Thetford listened intently until Whitson finally ran out of breath. He then quietly said, "Judy, the Course (ACIM) can be summed up in the question, 'Are you willing to see your brother sinless?' "
"No!" Whitson screamed.
"Well, dear," Thetford replied, "when you are, you will feel much better." And then he hung up!
On July 4th, 1988, at age 65 Thetford died of a massive heart attack. In this instance another illuminating account, related to this, is told by Whitson. According to Whitson, just prior to Thetford’s heart attack, she and Thetford had been having an interesting conversation. Thetford explained to Whitson that he was feeling particularly good on this July 4th, because for some reason he felt especially ‘independent and liberated’ on this day. He then went out for a ‘short’ walk, but never returned.
Notes
^ The Scribing of A Course in Miracles. Foundation for Inner Peace. Retrieved on 2007-04-29.
^ Ross, Colin (2000). Bluebird: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personalities by Psychiatrists. Manitou Communications.
^ Marks, John (1991). The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN-10: 0393307948; ISBN-13: 978-0393307948.Available online [1]
^ Price, David H. (June 2007). "Buying a piece of anthropology - Part 1: Human Ecology and unwitting anthropological research for the CIA". . Anthropology Today, Vol 23 No 3, June 2007 Available online [2].
^ Wapnick, Kenneth (1991). Absence from Felicity, pp. 93 ff ^ Foundation for Inner Peace, The Scribing of A Course in Miracles
^ pp. 97-131
^ ibid., p. 199
^ a b (1996) Supplements to A Course in Miracles: 1. Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and Practice 2. The Song of Prayer. Viking Adult. ISBN 0-670-86994-5.
^ RA: MKULTRA de-classified documents
^ Dr. Willian N, Thetford Vita
^ Jessuph, Joe Miracle_Studies
References
Wapnick, Kenneth (1999). Absence from Felicity: The Story of Helen Schucman and Her Scribing of A Course in Miracles, 2nd Ed., New York:
Foundation for A Course in Miracles. ISBN 0-933291-08-6.
Miller, D. Patrick (Aug 1997). Complete Story of the Course. Fearless Books. ISBN 0-9656809-0-8.
Skutch, Robert (1996). Journey Without Distance: The Story Behind A Course in Miracles. Mill Valley: Foundation for Inner Peace. ISBN 1-883360-02-1.
[Link]
Obviously you cannot, sad for you because that is how you will sleep walk through this dream world you are engaged in. One day you'll learn, and then you'll know the Peace of God that is already within you.
In the meantime, I forgive you and wish you well on your journey home to God.