ACIM cont'd

(Chapter 8 cont'd.)
Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind that is working through the body, but not in it. If the mind believes the body is its goal it will distort its perception of the body, and by blocking its own extension beyond it, will induce illness by fostering separation [from the source of all life].....Health is therefore nothing more than united purpose. If the body is brought under the purpose of the mind, it becomes whole because the mind's purpose is one.....The power of wholeness is extension.

(pt. 8 The Body as as Means or End)
You must have noticed an outstanding characteristic of every end that the ego has accepted as its own. When you have achieved it, it has not satisfied you. This is why the ego is forced to shift ceaselessly from one goal to another, so that you cwill continue to hope it can yet offer you something.

Sickness is meaningful only if the two basic premises on which the ego's interpretation of the body rests are true; that the body is for attack, and that you are a body. Without these premses sickness is inconceivable.

[The body is a learning device] A learning device is not a teacher. It cannot tell you how you feel. You do not know how you feel because you have accepted the ego's confusion, and you therefore believe that a learning device can tell you how you feel.....Health is the result of relinquishing all attempts to use the body lovelessly.

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These passages are next to impossible to separate from religious overtones, which really give them their meaning, so for now I'll stop here and continue to try to live in the Now, or as ACIM states, the Holy Instant. By doing this, the past and future don't exist, and so it is easier to accept others as they come to you now and extend only healing thoughts to them.
"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."(Chapt. 16)
Chapter 16 talks all about the Holy Instant and the healing that is extended and returned by your willingness to "[release] your brothers from the slavery of their illusions by forgiving them for the illusions you perceive in them. Thus will you learn that you have been forgiven, for it is you who offered them illusions." Overlook perceived mistakes, let go of the past that condition your perception of someone in the present, and your perception of reality is transformed with this practice. "In the transition there is a period of confusion, in which a sense of actual disorientation may occur. But fear it not,for it means only that you have been willing to let go your hold on the distorted frame of reference that seemed to hold your world together."
"To forgive is merelyto remember only the loving thoughts you gave in the past, and those that were given you. All the rest must be forgotten. Forgiveness is a selective remembering, based not on your selection.....But first, be sure you fully realize what you have made the past to represent, and why. The past becomes the justification for entering into a continuing, unholy alliance with the ego against the present. For the present is forgiveness."