Some people cannot understand what ACIM is. So in this post, I’ve decided to explain it the way that I understand it.

I’ve studied this course several times in the past, yet I never seriously nor fully did its lessons. Now I again went over the whole text, workbook for teachers, and supplementary material.

Only the lessons are left, and I’m at the moment on lesson 46 (in the video I say it’s around the 43rd lesson but now I’ve checked and it’s the 46th).

In total, there are 365 lessons.

What ACIM is about

It’s the course designed to get you back into the Kingdom of God.

Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is within you. He also urged to seek it first, and then everything else will be added to you.

We have actually never lost the Kingdom that we seek. And we seek it in every experience and thing in this world. This search is going to last forever because that which we actually seek cannot be found outside of ourselves.

We believe that we have separated ourselves from God and we seem to even forget what it is that we are searching for. Yet the Kingdom is always there, waiting for us, and God is always with us – in our minds, behind the chaotic thoughts and feelings.

We believe that we have separated ourselves from the Source and created our own private worlds. But those are not real creations as they were created apart from God. So the world that we see now, though it looks very real, is only an illusion.

Only that which is immortal is true. Everything in this world disintegrates, sooner or later. Creations without God have no power. They are not even real, as we cannot in actuality create anything without That which gives life.

That which is of death makes us feel unhappy and scared. This whole world is the world of death, because it was created without God. Though we seek and seek for various things here, nothing will ever make us truly happy in this world.

So the goal of ACIM is to get us to recognize that which we are searching for in every experience of this physical existence. That which we search is already in us and it is actually us – just our attention is now away from it, and that’s why it escapes our recognition.

How ACIM accomplishes its goal

This course gets you to see that which you have never lost by deconditioning your mind. It took years for us to think the way that we do, so by doing daily lessons (which mainly include affirmations, meditations, and light exercises), little by little we start thinking in a different way.

When we start thinking in a different way, we start seeing a different world. The course teaches that what we think and see is identical; but because there’s so much chaos and unawareness in our minds, we cannot establish a connection between the world and our mental content.

So the course gently corrects the chaos and errors in thinking, for us to see a better and happier world, until the bridge from illusions to the Kingdom of God is so short that we cross over.

The ego keeps us in the illusion

ACIM teaches that our illusory creation is the ego. Because God was not part of creating it, it doesn’t really exist. Since God did not create it, its nature is that of death which equals evil.

The ego tries to make us feel separate from others and more special or different because that’s what convinces the ego that it actually exists. The ego hates us yet it’s only through us that it can live. ACIM says that its secret desire is to destroy us yet for itself to live forever, which is an impossibility.

It is the ego that causes people to be upset without any reason or by expanding a tiny problem until it looks unmanageable. It’s the ego that makes people sad when they know they should be happy. The course gently shows you the insanity of this creation and a way to escape it.

Here are some relevant ACIM quotes showing the nature of the ego to meditate on and share:

What stops some people from studying ACIM

ACIM is a channeled material of a woman that was once a baptist. I believe that’s why the course has a strongly Christian flavor. It can get annoying to read that you are the Son of God, when you’re actually a Daughter. Yet, what I do is to change this wording in my mind.

I know a few people who stopped studying this course because of the Christian terms. But I believe that the course is so valuable that it’s best to overlook such wording and to be focused on the core of the message.

After all, what it teaches is what Hindu enlightened people taught too, such as Ramana Maharshi or Nisargadatta Maharaj. Just the words are different, as it came through the mind conditioned by Christian culture.

Summary

ACIM aims to restore the inheritance that we have never lost – the Kingdom of God.

The Kingdom of God is within us, and the Kingdom of God is us. But because we believe that we are separate from the Source, at the moment we live in our private projected illusory worlds.

By reading the text and doing the lessons, gently attention will start withdrawing from personal illusory creations and it will start recognizing the true home. We have never lost connection with God, just our attention shifted away from it.

I believe many people now are looking for a way back, and this course is one of the ways to get our heavenly inheritance restored.