Beyond the Battlefield: Finding Peace in "Giving Up Attack Thoughts" (ACIM Lesson 23)

"I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts."

If you're new to A Course in Miracles, Lesson 23 might sound a little aggressive- "Giving up attack thoughts" can conjure images of wrestling with your mind, forcefully suppressing negativity. But let's reframe this powerful lesson because its true essence is far from a battle.

Instead, consider it a profound invitation to release our vice-like grip on the idea of attack – both attacking others and feeling attacked ourselves. It’s about recognising that our perception of a hostile world is, in fact, a reflection of our own internal state.

Think about it: when we're consumed by attack thoughts – be they judgments, resentments, fears, or anxieties about what others might do to us – we are constantly engaged in a mental war. We're bracing for impact, strategizing defenses, and reliving past grievances. This isn't just exhausting; it literally creates the world we see. We perceive threats because we are thinking threateningly.

Lesson 23 offers a radical alternative: What if the escape from this perceived battlefield isn't about fleeing, but about disarming ourselves? What if the "world I see" isn't an external reality to be fought, but an internal projection that can be transformed?

By "giving up attack thoughts," we aren't denying reality; we're simply choosing to stop fueling the fire. It’s about:

• Relaxing into the Present Moment: When we're not busy constructing arguments, anticipating slights, or rehearsing our comebacks, a vast space opens up. This space is the present moment, unburdened by the ego's constant need for conflict. We can simply be with what is, without judgment or resistance.

• Acceptance as Liberation: This isn't passive resignation, but active acceptance. It's acknowledging the present moment as it is, without needing to change it, control it, or defend against it. When we accept, we let go of the struggle. And in that letting go, we find peace.

• Dissolving Guilt and Blame: Attack thoughts are inextricably linked to guilt – either self-blame or the projection of blame onto others. When we release the need to attack, we also release the need to feel guilty or to make others guilty. This is a profound liberation from the weight of the past.

• Stepping Out of the Ego's Domain: The ego thrives on separation, conflict, and the constant justification of its own existence through attack and defense. "Giving up attack thoughts" is a direct challenge to the ego's reign. It's a gentle but firm assertion that there's another way to perceive – a way rooted in connection, peace, and understanding.

So, for today, let's approach Lesson 23 not as a struggle, but as a sigh of relief. Imagine releasing all the tension you hold around defending yourself, proving yourself, or judging others. Imagine simply letting go of the mental weapons you've been carrying.

When we truly give up attack thoughts, the world we see begins to shift. It's not that external circumstances magically disappear (although sometimes they do!) but our experience of them transforms. The perceived threats diminish, the need for defense dissolves, and we find ourselves resting in a state of acceptance and peace.

This isn't just escaping from the world; it's escaping into a truer, more peaceful experience of it. It's recognizing that the battlefield was always in our minds, and the disarmament begins with us.

☮䷊🕊

Balancing the teachings and activity with periods of silence.

 

Balancing the teachings and activity with periods of silence

I was recently listening to an old audio tape of Lester Levenson giving a talk to one of his small groups of students around the 1960s in Sedona.

One of the themes that he identified was the idea of the power of silent teachings, or constantly transmitted teachings or 'the teaching' that is given and received in silence or stillness.

This idea was also promoted by a few schools, and Ramana Maharshi was particularly famous for his comments on the highest form of teaching being that given in silence, rather than any verbal pointers. He mentioned some cultural examples, or rather Tamil type myths, involving the legendary Dakshinamurti who gave his teachings under a tree to his 8 or so disciples entirely in silence.

Lester also made a point of the fact that any outer teaching or outer teacher is in fact a projection of the inner teacher and inner teaching, of which, the outer teacher should be aiming to direct and guide the disciple into. This idea is also present in the teachings of A Course in Miracles, where the student is meant to be left in the hands of his "Inner Teacher" by the end of the course, rather than continuing to mill around other "course" teachers and take on some new role or egoic identity.

A final point in the talk was that any teaching that we take on, or intellectually contemplate, as well as action related to that teaching- whether it be ethics, right view, mindfulness, awareness or whatever, should be balanced by periods of silent contemplation. Further, most people have a fair amount of 'ego deconstruction' work to engage in, and this breaking down of egoic identities, roles, norms, beliefs and constructs should be balanced by periods of silence and stillness, listening out Inner Guidance. Issues arise when this isn't done, such as taking the ego itself to be some sort of permanent and immovable structure, or engaging in massive circular efforts by the ego in trying to remove itself.. a cycle many enter into and never actually free themselves from. The other extreme where too much effort is given to silence and stillness without the necessary ego deconstruction can also happen. The issues on that side is that egoic beliefs, and hidden constructs remain in place, and remain operating on a hidden level in the form of spiritual bypassing, shady ethics, and egoic needs playing out in the form of people becoming fully fledged 'teachers' and enjoying that ego role for all its worth. People are shocked when some teachers suddenly and unexpectedly fall from grace or are involved in some scandal.. but this is simply the shadow that was never dealt with or deconstructed making an appearance and coming out from the dark where it always did remain intact.

It's my own personal observation that the 'teachings', or rather the constant silent teachings that are immanent at all times, tend to work in spite of any of our efforts, rather than due to the apparent efforts we seem to be making. Sometimes just sitting and letting go can be one of the best ways to actually receive 'The Teaching'. 

Balancing both ego-deconstruction and silent listening/contemplation can be helpful, if not essential, in making progress on both these fronts. 

Ego preservation strategies (1)

Saw this conversation recently online in a 'nonduality' forum:


Questioner: What do people think about the ego? It's hard to find when it is looked for. Maybe these practices are just engaging the ego itself?


Respondent 1: Well I've never found the ego.. I don't know what people are talking about when they talk about 'ego'.


Respondent 2: Who's asking??


----------------


Are these sorts of question / answer sessions really helpful?


No. Neither for the questioner who is none the wiser, nor for the respondent.


What are these sorts of responses, actually?


Ego preservation strategies.


Ego preservation strategy 1) Blatant denial of the ego by the ego-- "It doesn't exist!", "What? There's no such thing as an ego.. find me one!", "I can't find any ego here!"


Ego preservation strategy 2) Over-exertion or over-effort in trying to extinguish the ego by the ego-- "Kill the ego!", "I need to fight the ego, suppress it, and conquer it!", "I need to detach from the ego!"




Stay calm. Keep practicing.

To practice or not to practice - nonduality notes - 1

I was reading a post on a Tony Parsons group, whereby someone questioned why TP seemed to be promoting  'his' message, and that it almost seemed evangelical. There was a response given by one of the members, detailing how 'this message' wasn't anyone's in particular, and that it differed from other nondual teachings. 

The difference given was that most nondual paths involve 'doing and performing action in order to become more aware, more nondual, whole etc.', while with TP's message, the idea is that things are already as they are, and that you are just THIS. That's it. Nothing to do, and nobody to do it. Nothing can be attained that trumps this already existing perfection that is nondual unity. No practices are necessary, or effective.



My response to the above is both agreement, and disagreement, and a note that this (above) view of nondual paths that use practices, is almost always misconstrued by the neo-Advaita type do-nothing-nowhere-to-go crowd.



Let's set the record straight- practices in regards to nonduality and nondual teachings do not aim at attaining anything new. Nothing new CAN be attained apart from what already is. They are not aimed at developing the individual (as opposed to self-development trainings), although some training in basic attention or concentration may often be involved. This is because even to read this sentence, some training is needed by the apparent individual, and an amount of attentiveness and focus is required to contemplate. The same can be said for attending a Tony Parsons meeting, reading a book on nonduality, or sitting in a satsang with a nonduality teacher that advises individuals present to do nothing and cease seeking.



What nondual practices aim at doing is this: creating space for the apparent invidivual to awaken from the dream that he/she finds themselves in, and seeing that all of it was nothing more than a dream, an illusion, and case of mistaken identity. Nothing changes, and nothing new is attained. An error in perception, and belief (thought), is seen through. That's it. The rope laying on the ground that was mistaken for a snake, is seen as just being a rope. The snake never existed except as a thought/belief, and thus the idea/belief/perception that there was a snake, is dropped. Things are allowed to be as they always have been and always will be. The story that there was a practice to complete becomes just another part of the dream story that has ceased to take place along with the individual.



There is a big fat proviso however, in assuming that one need do nothing-- and it is this-- does the individual see the snake or the rope right now on the ground?? This cannot be reasoned away or thought about or intellectualised away. If someone sees a snake, and is in a state of fear, then yes, there's apparently some work that needs to take place!! Advising such a person that there's nothing to do sounds idiotic, even though it may ultimately be true. It shows clearly that such an adviser is working in a state of level confusion, and speaking a language that the receiver cannot understand.


Hence practice!


Not doing anything in such a situation, or trying to intellectualise things in a nondual way is a huge ego trap that leads nowhere.. as many a burned-out nonduality student/teacher/former seeker can show. Being thus disillusioned with the teachings, who knows when such an individual will then approach the teachings again, or have another opportunity to awaken. Hence the admonition in traditional nondual paths to find a valid teacher, path, etc.



So yes, practice is important. It matters. Not for gaining anything, but for undoing the illusion of separation and individuality that seems to have taken place.

 

The ego has no being. (ACIM)

I had been listening to and reading A Course in Miracles (Text), when I came across this quote:


"The ego is incapable of knowing how you feel. When I said that the ego does not know anything, I said the one thing about the ego that is wholly true. But there is a corollary; if only knowledge has being and the ego has no knowledge, then the ego as no being." (Text 8-VIII.7)


This reminded me of the use (in some circles) whereby the word 'knowledge' is interpreted as 'knowing' or the act of knowing (i.e. being aware) only, rather than in the usual sense of amassing intellectual data/facts/thoughts etc.


In this sense, 'knowledge' or 'knowing only' equates exactly with being, since both as also synonyms for just awareness or consciousness.


Hence, a thought construct, including the primal thought-construct-tendency which is the 'ego' ('I-thought'), cannot actually know anything, in the sense that it is not self-aware or endowed with any form of awareness itself-- but rather lives only as a construct existing in our awareness. The ego doesn't assert itself in deep sleep (or death) for instance, and at times when our waking consciousness seems to be in abeyance.


Being without awareness (knowledge) and being just a thought-construct, the ego thus has no being itself, and is rather just like a computer program- playing out its programming as it was created to do, relying on power beyond itself, and mostly for the sake of the body and its own survival.


This leads to the inquiry of what one really is, if the ego ("I-construct) and the body have no inherent being in themselves.. and taking into account that we normally regard ourselves as a body-mind entity.


Without jumping into further concepts, such as 'we are soul, spirit, Otherness' etc.. it is possible to stop and enquire directly into the nature of what we are in this moment, with the understanding that we are prior to the awareness of ourselves as a body, and prior to the awareness of ourselves as an ego. One means for doing this is via the practiced habit of self-attentiveness and patient observation directed squarely at one's "self" (or the feeling of one's "self").

Sitting before all else.

I find that a neat way to "trick" the ego (ie. conditioned personality) into sitting, is to promise its desires AFTER one has sat for a small period of time.

Normally, our meditation practice goes through stages and cycles of interest and disinterest, however, it's important to keep our practice going, since it's all too easy to fall back into conditioning which we've been acting out since time immemorial.

The only way we can actually overcome conditioning and the ego's love of focusing on the external world (rather than the inner world and SELF) is to actually sit in formal meditation.

Despite the thousands of suggestions in existence on how to gain "happiness", it is a fact that nobody has come up with anything remotely as effective as meditation and/or contemplation as a way to reduce our mind's conditioning and thereby reduce ours and our world's suffering. 

Psychological work, external gratification, material wealth, intellectual understandings, rationalisation, belief systems, and an endless universe of egoic pursuits have not yet matched the simple results of sitting in silence/stillness/awareness for a period of time. We can all test this for ourself.

The conditioned personality, of course, knows this- and does all within its power to constantly sabotage our spiritual practice in order to 1) frustrate the practitioner 2) give itself power and autonomy through such frustration, and/or 3) failing this, come in through the back door and introduce striving, expectations, ownership and goal objectives into the practice.

One simple way to plant small "seeds" of awareness throughout one's day, and also bypass the ego's attempts at thwarting our practice, is to perform a small sitting before any entertainment or leasure project whatsoever.

The project (or promise to the ego) then goes ahead after the sitting. The ego is satisfied and is OK to wait, and the sitting gets done. The length of the sitting does not matter so much as the actual performance of some sitting for more than 5 minutes. Whether for not the all-important-project still goes ahead later matters not, but the small "seed" of conscious awareness and the introduction of some SELF into one's day can make a subtle, but definite impact long-term. 

This also ensures we are doing what needs to be done, rather than what doesn't need to be done. What do I mean by this? In short, when we are on our DEATH BED, it will not be the computer games, movies, home-projects, after-work projects, friend-catch-ups, or thousand other leasure-pursuits that help us. It will be the accumulated acquaintance that we have with SELF or GOD that ultimately ensures our peace.

Giving up attachment to this life.. and other volitional impossibilities.

From an article in Tricyle:

"Again, an elder was once circumambulating the outer perimeter at Radreng Monastery. Dromtönpa asked him, “O elder, performing circumambulation may be satisfying, but wouldn’t it be better if you practiced the Dharma?”
The elder felt that, instead of performing circumambulations, perhaps it would be more effective if he were to read Mahayana sutras, so he began to read sutras on the temple veranda. Dromtönpa then asked him, “Reading sutras might also be satisfying, but wouldn’t it be better if you practiced the Dharma?”
The elder took this as a sign that, when contrasted with reading sutras, engaging in meditative absorption is more profitable, so he abandoned reading sutras and sat down with his eyes closed. Again, Dromtönpa asked, “Meditating might also be satisfying, but wouldn’t it be better to practice the Dharma instead?”
Failing to think of any other method, the elder asked, “O spiritual mentor, then what kind of Dharma practice would you have me undertake?”
It is said that Drom replied, “O elder, give up this life; give up this life.”
In this way Dromtönpa stated that so long as we fail to forsake attachment to this life, whatever we undertake does not become Dharma practice, for such an act remains within the bounds of the eight mundane concerns. By contrast, if we let go of attachment to this life, we will remain untainted by the eight mundane concerns. Only then will whatever we do become a path to liberation.
Once Potowa asked the spiritual mentor Dromtönpa, “What is the demarcation between Dharma and non-Dharma?”
Dromtönpa replied, “If it is a remedy against affliction, it is Dharma; if not, it is not Dharma. If it is at variance with all worldly people, it is Dharma; if it is in accord with the worldly, it is not Dharma. If its trace is positive, it is Dharma; if not, it is not Dharma.”"

From Wisdom of the Kadam Masters, edited by Thupten Jinpa, © 2013. Reprinted by arrangement with Wisdom Publications, Inc., Somerville, MA. www.wisdompubs.org.