David read ACIM with passion, often reading eight or more hours a day. He devoted himself to the Course for two years, participating in five groups a week.
Learn to recognize the ego’s purpose for acim relationship and accept Holy Spirit’s forgiveness. This includes the ego’s seeming death wish for the body and world.
1. What is the mind?
The mind is an abstract concept that characterizes thoughts, feelings and subjective states. It is sometimes equated with the soul or spirit and has been the subject of much debate since Rene Descartes developed his dualistic view of mind and body that pitted it against matter. This dichotomy has challenged philosophers, physicists and psychologists ever since.
The problem of the nature of the mind is an important one that touches on many other topics such as metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of religion, logic and morality. It also intersects with such empirical disciplines as neurology, psychology and anthropology.
Various theories of the mind attempt to explain its origin, functioning and content. It is commonly assumed that the mind gives rise to ideas and feelings and that it enables us to perceive the physical world around us. Some philosophers, however, have argued that the brain cannot give rise to these concepts and feelings and have favored the primacy of the soul over the brain.
In the last century, several theories have attempted to link the mind with certain specific parts of the brain. For example, it was suggested that the area of the cerebrum called Broca’s area relates to language abilities. Research has shown that damage to this area impairs speech. Other studies have linked a part of the prefrontal lobe to intelligence and another part to spatial reasoning. Some researchers have also suggested that the right and left hemispheres of the brain are related to different types of thinking.
Some researchers have used technological metaphors to describe the workings of the mind, such as John Locke’s blank slate or Freud’s hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems. The current favorite metaphor is a computer, with scientists such as John Hale attempting to explain the mind’s unique language-using abilities in terms of particular algorithms and data structures that are analogous to those found on computers.
A common element in all these theories of the mind is thought itself, which is reflexive. This feature is viewed as the very essence of mentality and is often given the name self-knowledge or self-consciousness. It is believed that a world without this ability would not be able to conceive of the traditional conception of the mind.
2. The ego’s purpose for relationship
When the ego is involved, there are always implications around relationships of all kinds. In this case, the ego’s goal is to maintain its own identity and make sure that its version of reality is accepted. Therefore, it will attack everything that threatens its view of the world and try to protect itself by making sure that nobody sees what it is doing. In order to do this, the ego will make relationships that are not helpful, and it will attack what is perceived as harmful. This can be seen in relationships of all kinds from family to friendships to business partnerships.
When it comes to romantic relationships, the ego will look for someone “special” who can satisfy all of its needs and take away all the pain. This can lead to betrayal, deception and broken vows. The ego will also be unable to admit that it has made mistakes and will not accept responsibility for them. This can create a toxic environment in which everyone feels resentful and angry.
However, the Holy Spirit offers a holy relationship as a substitute for the special relationships the ego sponsors to support itself. These relationships will still contain some form of fear, but the Holy Spirit teaches that love can overcome all of these fears.
The ego cannot understand this because it thinks that God would destroy the world it has made. This is why it is so adamant in protecting its own existence and why it will not allow you to see how the Holy Spirit’s forgiveness works. The Holy Spirit is the one who reveals that what the ego perceives as love is not, and that God’s true plan for the universe is peace.
The ego’s goal is to keep guilt alive, but the Holy Spirit’s function is to teach forgiveness. The Holy Spirit does this by consistently canceling out the effects of all of the ego’s errors. This is why He devotes 9 chapters (end of 15-beginning of 24) in ACIM to the subject of relationships and their relation to truth.
3. The death of the body
A human body does not disappear when someone dies. Instead, the body decomposes into bones and dust. This process is called putrefaction. It is facilitated by the concerted action of fungi, insects, and bacteria over time until all soft tissue has been consumed and only the skeleton remains. This process is not quick and can take up to two or three months after death.
This slow and gruesome process is what has led people to embalm bodies, in which a variety of substances are used to "pickle" a corpse so that it can be kept for a period of mourning or display. In addition to this, people have developed a number of other practices to try to slow the rate of decomposition, including burial in deep graves and the use of chemicals such as vinegar and alcohol to keep the body fresher longer.
It is important to know about these post mortem changes because they can give valuable information on the cause and manner of death. Moreover, they also play a vital role in estimating the time since death (TSD or PMI).
The first postmortem change is hypostasis. This occurs when the blood vessels in the body collapse. It causes pooling of blood in certain pressure areas and leaves white gaps at these sites. It is the most accurate indicator of death in the first hours after death.
For the next few hours after a person's death the body becomes stiff due to a range of chemical changes in the muscle fibres. It takes about 3-8 hours to reach the stage of rigor mortis, after which it will remain stiff until about 36 hours after death when the bonds that cause the stiffness break down. Afterwards, the body will slowly revert back to its flaccid state.
4. Forgiveness
Forgiveness is the act of releasing negative emotions like anger and resentment. It can be done for anyone that has hurt you or someone you care about, even those who are no longer in your life. It can be a difficult process, but it is essential for our health and well-being. There are several different ways to forgive, and there are a variety of benefits for doing so. Forgiveness can help you heal, it can free up mental and physical space that was being taken by these negative feelings and it can also help to improve relationships with those around you.
Forgiving is usually described as a form of reconciliation in a dyadic relationship between a wrongdoer and a victim, in which the victim alters their status relative to a wrongdoer by letting go of resentment, or some other form of morally inflected anger, or behavior such as seeking revenge (Griswold 2007). However, there are also other views about forgiveness that do not involve any sense of a offer to the wrongdoer, and some of these have emphasized the forward-looking aspects of forgiveness, such as Emmanuel Levinas’s claim that forgiving transforms the past, “purifying it” of its debilitating effects on both victims and perpetrators (Levinas 1961).
Some accounts of forgiveness argue that forgiveness has a performative dimension that involves a clear illocutionary force, such as the recitation of the words, “I forgive you” (Warmke 2016b). Others, however, argue that this performative aspect of forgiveness does not have to be present in all cases, and that forgiveness can still function effectively even without this illocutionary force.
For example, it is widely believed that the overcoming of resentment that is implicated in forgiveness involves changing one’s assumptions, beliefs, standards or perceptions regarding the wrongdoer and the wrongdoing. Furthermore, the process of letting go of this resentment is often accompanied by the replacement of these feelings with positive ones, such as empathy. It is this letting go of the false self that is considered to be forgiveness.
