In every conflict, it is not one side or another who is right or wins.
They are BOTH losers.
The only one winning is the ego.
If you knew that the ego has a secret agenda to pit you against others and make you become SEPARATE, you would realize there are no real grounds for conflict.
You would not argue with your enemy if you knew that that other person is not really the enemy in the situation. The enemy is the EGO, which wants you both to be fighting, and wants you both to separate.
It has pitted you against each other, because it believes in self attack. It doesn't care who wins. It knows that if you argue and fight, NEITHER of you will be at peace. You both lose.
It doesn't even matter if you think you have won or you are the one who is right. You still lose, because those beliefs are still a belief in attack and that attack will be enacted on you, BY you. Your belief in victory is a belief in your own defeat.
Would you be so quick to hate another person if you knew there was always a third party involved in the argument? How about if you knew that there was this secret ego lurking in the background always plotting for you to be separated from everyone else. And that it has this plan for both you AND that person that you dislike.
It wants both of you to be at war so that IT wins.
If you unite with your brother and recognize the COMMON ENEMY, which is the ego thought system - an idea of being SEPARATE from each other, you would not play the ego's game.
Each fight and argument you fall for the same ego trap and the same ILLUSION that it is possible to defeat another without hurting yourself. You both lose.
Only with what ACIM calls "shared interests" can there be a truly holy instant where you both agree to and recognize that you are on the same side, because you believe in the ONE TRUTH of God.
Only in the light of God's truth is it revealed that the ego's agenda is for you to be at war with this other person and they with you, and it doesn't care who wins just so long as you are fighting. It is an instigator of conflict.
Only when both of you recognize the ploy and the plot and the scheme which is underway to DESTROY YOU BOTH, might you recognize your shared interest of siding WITH each other and saying NO to the ego, instead of saying no to each other.
Then you unite in strength, you defy the ego, you reject conflict, you choose to surrender to peace, you accept each other with love, you support each other, you stop the war, and you completely disable the ego's only weapon - separation.
Come together in this vision of forgiveness. Be reunited with yourself.
It seems as though guilt follows on from sin, but guilt is actually a big lie. When you sinned, you wanted to believe that the separation from God was real, that it has happened in reality with real effects. It was a deliberate choice. It wasn't something that happened to you.
You can equate sin to a deliberate, pre-meditated attack.
To then follow this with guilt, is actually bullshit. The state of guilt is actually an attempt to pretend that you didn't REALLY mean to attack God. That you feel bad about it, remorseful, ashamed, because it was some kind of accident.
This guilt is a lie, which is designed to completely cover up the fact that you very much DID want to attack and to believe in sin.
While the guilt that you have about being separate from God seems real, and you can feel it and experience it, and it feels awful, it is NOT genuine. It is a dishonest guilt.
It is a disguise, designed to cover up the fact that you wanted separation to be real, and that you choose it on purpose. Guilt is the beginning of your attempt to pretend you did not ask for it and didn't choose it, as though you have changed your mind. It is denial. It is an attempt to make sin unconscious and to fixate on feeling guilty in order to make it look like you didn't want to separate at all.
Underneath guilt is the idea of sin, which is a malicious attack and attempted murder. It is a murderous idea. Guilt comes to "save" you from sin, by positioning you as a sorrowful, shameful, guilt-ridden person who is suffering and upset because of what happened. It is a lie.
Guilt goes on to produce further denial and an extension of this idea of disclaiming ownership of sin. It produces a state of fake innocence which portrays you as having absolutely no guilt at all, as if to suggest you were not even the one who sinned. This results in a projection of the cause of sin and blame onto everyone else, in which you come across as a helpless victim who couldn't possibly look like someone who would do anything wrong.
All of these stages of denial are lies and cover-ups to resist and bury the truth. We have to be honest with ourselves that even though we may have a DEEP sense of guilt stemming from the separation from God, and feel awful about it, we are actually using it as a way to demonstrate WHY God would not forgive us.
We argue that our guilt is so big that there is no way that sin could be forgiven. We argue like, sorry God, I know you want to forgive me, but I don't deserve it, because I'm so guilty. And then we use guilt to deflect forgiveness away and disagree with it and deny it and reject it, believing that we do not DESERVE it because of what we did. And while we use this to portray ourselves as justifiably guilty and worthy of punishment, we are doing so IN ORDER TO prevent the undoing of the sin that came before it. It is a defense against the truth.
Guilt protects sin from being undone, and the more we can make ourselves seem "genuinely guilty" the more we are faking it. We do need to release the guilt and let it go and see it as "forgiven" (has no truth to it), but we also need to own up to the fact that it is actually a device for bullshit. We only want to keep it in order to explain why God would not forgive us.
Guilt then protects sin from being forgiven, because it justifies that we should be punished for sin instead of it being overlooked as a mistake. Guilt keeps you separate from God by hiding the fact that YOU CHOSE SIN and you wanted to believe in it. You can wallow in guilt and remorse and shame as a delaying tactic.
The guilt and remorse seem to be experienced as though you are guilty because of someone else, or or what you did to someone else. The fact is, you are guilty because you manufactured guilt out of nothing to make yourself seem like you didn't choose the separation. It is an illusion. And even if you experience the guilt in this way, as something you are suffering from and do not want, be assured that you do want it.
Guilt then is really a sob-story, an ego device, a big lie, a pretense that God could not forgive you. You do not need to be forgiven for being guilty. You need to admit that your guilt is unfounded and is false and artificial. It's a game you play. It doesn't even need God's forgiveness because it's not even real guilt.
The guilt makes it SEEM as though you need God's pardon in order for it to be undone. You don't. You need to get honest and stop "being guilty" for something you did not do, and stop using guilt as a way to keep your distance from God.
It should also be recognized that guilt is a substitute for love and forgiveness. And this is why in so many cases, in the ego's thought system, when you do something to hurt someone you go into GUILT in order to "atone" for sin, rather than going into LOVE, which would actually be a gift to the person rather than your sorry offering of remorsefulness.
So many ego-driven people equate guilt with love and believe that you should then do something "out of guilt" in order to make it up to the person, and that doing so is loving and considerate. It is another bullshit lie. Guilt is not love. Guilt is not a gift. Guilt does not atone. Guilt is not justified. Guilt is not a blessing. Guilt is an attempt to compound sin by adding guilt on top of sin, not undoing it.
Only moving into love would truly "repent" for the sin, bringing about a transformation of the heart which would end the sin and heal its effects. Love would bring a miracle to undo the consequences of your wrong decision, which would be a real atonement.
Guilt is not real. There is no real guilt. Guilt is always a lie.
The truth is plain and clear. It can be presented in a perfectly clear manner. It can be spelled out with such logical clarity that anyone in their right mind would have absolutely no problem accepting it makes sense and is true. "No-one can argue with a fact" IF they are in their right mind.
However, when someone is not in their right mind and has an ego, something very weird happens.
It doesn't even matter how clear the truth is. It doesn't even matter that we are surrounded by and immersed in the absolute truth of God in Heaven RIGHT NOW. We still for some reason do not see it, recognize it, accept it, or want it. What is up with that?
Presenting the truth to someone extremely clearly, with maximal black and white clarity, leaving no room for confusion, STILL is not enough to get someone to accept it. This is why Jesus said he took every measure to make the course as clear as possible, but that people CAN AND WILL find controversy in it IF they look for it (with ego).
The problem boils down to.... the ego IS NOT WILLING to accept it.
We could be shown plain and simple what the truth IS. And yet we could still DENY it by being UNWILLING to accept it is true. This reminds me of Helen S saying that she knew the course was the truth but she could not believe it.
The ego has this very weird thing it does, a kind of blindness, an insanity, a sort of vibe it gets, even if something is totally plain and simple truth, that it will STILL persist with a sense of "I don't believe this", "It's not true". To have that kind of stubbornness in the face of the facts, is nothing less than an act of denial.
For example.
"The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite." (so now we know any opposite to love does not exist)
"Your Love is Heaven" (so now we know heaven is love - and expressed in many other phrases)
"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way." (so now we know, heaven and earth are opposites in EVERY way)
And because of this, logically, 100% bulletproof logic, earth therefore DOES NOT EXIST. Because love, which is the same as heaven, has no opposite that exists.
This is a FACT.
However, you can put this fact down in a post or put it in front of someone's face in big letters, saying:
HEAVEN IS LOVE AND HAS NO OPPOSITE, EARTH IS OPPOSITE TO HEAVEN, THEREFORE EARTH DOES NOT EXIST.
You can even put flashing lights around it if you like. And big giant arrows pointing to it. Even a sign that says "this is the truth, learn it well." And maybe even have it make big loud sounds so as many people come to look at it as possible.
But if someone is IN DENIAL... they will not be WILLING to accept this. They may in more extreme cases bawlk at it like some kind of horrendous lie was just told. Or launch into some kind of tirade trying to find holes or redefine words or come up with SOME RATIONALIZATION that seems to suggest, maybe this is not the truth. It is nothing short of the ego defending itself against the truth.
That denial is utterly insane. It is an unwillingness, nothing else. It's got nothing to do with whether the facts are true or not. The facts are true. They are solid. God established them forever. The only problem is, some people will see these facts and STILL, over and over again, DENY that they are true. There is an UNWILLINGNESS TO ACCEPT IT.
That can only mean, the person (their ego) believes something ELSE is true, which they do not want to accept is FALSE. The unwillingness to accept something is FALSE, that you believe is truth, is the whole problem the ego poses for us. It thinks it knows what's true already. It's already decided, because IT wants to decide what ALL truth is instead of accepting it from God. ITS will to CHOOSE what the truth means, the authority problem, is its UNWILLINGNESS to accept God's Will. The facts. And so the ego WILL DENY the truth, until a person chooses to stop being IN DENIAL, and to become WILLING to accept that the truth is true.
The truth is, there is no Earth. Period. This is the meaning of "there is no world". Period. This isn't opinion. The logic of the metaphysics is utterly irrefutable. Jesus agrees with it. Jesus has expressed it. WE are the ones who WANT to deny it.
Denial of the truth really is the only problem we seem to have. It is an UNWILLINGNESS.
And what that means is, we are WILLING AGAINST GOD's WILL, willing with the ego, willing to have a separate will. Our separate will blocks us from accepting God's Will.
So if someone cannot accept this truth, that there is no world, and Earth does not exist AT ALL, it is because they are still rejecting God's Will.
When we become willing, we will be willing to accept. We have to be willing to accept truth in order to accept the atonement. This requires the willingness to put aside willing against God, and to will WITH Him. To carry out His will. Because his will for us is perfect happiness and eternal life. If we will against it, we will be in denial and choosing suffering and unhappiness and mortality's illusion.
We can stay in denial as long as we like. This is how we delay the curriculum. The time you take it is VOLUNTARY because you have FREE WILL. You need to be willing, to accept the truth as IT defines itself, and to align yourself with it, by being willing to let go of your belief that something else is true. No-one can enter heaven without accepting the truth as it is.
ACIM: "The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end." (clarification of terms, chapter 5, paragraph 1).
Other religions that teach that the physical world is nothing but a dream/illusion...
1. Hinduism (Advaita Vedanta)
Concept: Maya (illusion) – The material world is an illusion created by ignorance (avidya), and ultimate reality (Brahman) is formless and unchanging.
Teachings: The Upanishads and Adi Shankaracharya’s Advaita Vedanta philosophy teach that individual identity (atman) is identical to Brahman, and the world of appearances is like a dream. Only through knowledge (jnana) can one realize this truth.
2. Buddhism
Concept: Śūnyatā (emptiness) & Māyā (illusion) – All phenomena lack intrinsic reality and are conditioned, much like dreams.
Teachings: The Buddha compared the world to an illusion, a mirage, and a dream in texts like the Diamond Sutra. The Madhyamaka school (founded by Nagarjuna) and Yogacara school (which emphasizes "mind-only" reality) both argue that what we perceive as reality is shaped by mental constructs.
3. Platonism & Neoplatonism
Concept: The Cave Allegory – The material world is a shadow of a higher, true reality.
Teachings: Plato described the sensory world as mere reflections of the eternal Forms. Neoplatonists like Plotinus argued that the material world emanates from the One and is a lesser, dreamlike version of true reality.
4. Gnosticism
Concept: The material world is a deceptive prison created by an ignorant or malevolent demiurge.
Teachings: Gnostic texts (like The Gospel of Thomas and The Apocryphon of John) describe the world as an illusion that traps the soul. True knowledge (gnosis) allows one to awaken from this illusion and return to the divine.
5. Taoism
Concept: The relativity of perception and the dream-like nature of experience.
Teachings: Zhuangzi’s famous parable of the butterfly dream questions whether reality is absolute or a shifting illusion. Taoism often portrays distinctions between waking and dreaming as fluid. 6. Sufism (Islamic Mysticism)
Concept: The world as a shadow or veil obscuring divine reality.
Teachings: Rumi and Ibn Arabi describe the world as an ephemeral illusion, with God (Al-Haqq, "the Real") being the only true existence. Sufi thought emphasizes awakening from worldly distractions to experience divine unity.
7. Christian Mysticism & Idealism
Concept: The world as a temporary illusion compared to eternal divine truth.
Teachings: Some Christian mystics, such as Meister Eckhart and Jakob Böhme, emphasized that the physical world is fleeting and that true reality is found in union with God. Later, philosophers like George Berkeley argued that reality exists only as ideas in the mind of God. 8. Sikhism
Concept: Maya (illusion) – The world is transitory and deceptive, keeping people from realizing God.
Teachings: Sikh scriptures, including the Guru Granth Sahib, emphasize that attachment to worldly things is an illusion. True reality is found in devotion to God and spiritual awakening.
9. Hermeticism
Concept: The material world is a lower reflection of the divine mind. Teachings: The Kybalion and other Hermetic texts describe reality as mental in nature ("The All is Mind") and suggest that the physical world is a projection of higher consciousness.
10. Kabbalah (Jewish Mysticism)
Concept: The material world is a lower, imperfect manifestation of divine reality.
Teachings: In the Zohar, the world is described as a series of emanations from the Ein Sof (Infinite). The material realm is an illusion in the sense that it veils the deeper truth of divine unity.
11. Rosicrucianism
Concept: The physical world is a veil hiding spiritual truths. Teachings: Rosicrucian teachings, influenced by Hermeticism and Gnosticism, describe reality as a temporary, symbolic projection meant to teach spiritual lessons.
12. Manichaeism
Concept: The material world is a trap created by a lesser, evil power.
Teachings: This ancient dualistic religion, founded by Mani, teaches that the physical world is a deception created by darkness, while the true realm of light exists beyond it.
13. Jainism
Concept: The material world is impermanent and a source of bondage.
Teachings: Jainism teaches that the soul is trapped in illusion and karma. Liberation (moksha) is achieved by transcending attachments to the physical world.
14. Some Indigenous and Shamanic Traditions
Concept: Reality is fluid, dreamlike, and shaped by spiritual forces. Teachings: Many indigenous traditions, such as those in Native American, Aboriginal Australian, and Amazonian cultures, describe reality as a dream, a shifting landscape influenced by spirits, ancestors, or cosmic forces.
15. Pythagoreanism
Concept: The world is a mathematical illusion.
Teachings: Pythagoras and his followers believed that reality was structured by numbers and harmony, with the material world being a lesser, imperfect reflection of the perfect, mathematical order.
16. Theosophy
Concept: The physical world is an illusion created by spiritual ignorance.
Teachings: Helena Blavatsky and later Theosophists describe the world as maya, emphasizing that true knowledge comes through spiritual enlightenment and connection to the higher planes.
17. Catharism (12th–14th Century, Medieval Europe)
Beliefs: The Cathars, a dualist Christian sect, saw the physical world as an evil illusion created by Satan. They believed that the true, divine world was purely spiritual, and human souls had to escape material existence to reunite with God.
18. Eastern Orthodox Hesychasm (Byzantine Christianity)
Beliefs: Some interpretations of Hesychasm (a mystical tradition within Eastern Orthodoxy) suggest that the material world is not truly real compared to the divine presence of God, which can only be known through inner contemplation and prayer.
19. Christian Science (Founded in 19th Century)
Beliefs: Founded by Mary Baker Eddy, Christian Science teaches that the material world, including sickness and death, is an illusion. True reality is purely spiritual, and healing comes through understanding this truth.
20. Some New Age and Esoteric Christian Movements
Some modern Christian esoteric groups, influenced by Theosophy or the New Thought movement, teach that the material world is a mental construct or illusion, similar to Hindu maya.
We often talk about the versions of the course, the editing, whether all the facts are included etc. And then on top of that we try to understand its metaphysical model, its concepts and ideas, and argue over which model is the right one.
But what we should perhaps really be more concerned with is whether true information has been lost. ie whether we have the whole truth represented in word form, or whether key detail has been lost.Information is ... the minimum amount of detail that is needed to represent something with perfect logical accuracy.
In its simplest form, for example, let's say there are two squares next to each other. One is black and one is white. You can distinguish that there are two, because they contrast to each other. This contrast is information. If you were to, for example, color both squares white, you cannot tell whether its one square or two squares. Information has been lost.
In information theory, which is used for such things as data compression algorithms for example, and also in science, there is something called entropy. Entropy is a measure of the absolutely minimum possible size that the information can be, in order to fully and accurately represent something.
When you have files on your computer, or images for example, you can "compress" them. Usually this is based on representing larger repeated things with smaller symbols. You can get back exactly what you started with by "de-compressing" it based on the symbols. But this can only be done up to a point. There is a threshold at which you CANNOT compress the files any smaller, without losing information. All the "information" needed to fully describe the image must be retained in some form.
With images for example, the jpeg file format is not an accurate representation of the image. It LOSES ACCURACY as a trade-off for making the files smaller. The more accuracy it loses, the smaller the representation becomes, the blurrier the image is. It starts to develop artifacts which are visual errors. From that "overly reduced" data, you CANNOT get back the original full fidelity and quality of the original image. Key accuracy of information is LOST.
When we conceive of truth, when we try to describe reality, or talk about God and his creation etc, these lofty and rather abstract metaphysical ideas, the temptation is to make the representation of that truth, the symbol of that truth, be as SMALL AND SHORT as possible. We somehow think that less is always more, and that "simpler" must be more true. This is NOT true. TOO FEW words is INACCURATE.
When an accurate representation of something is reduced SO much, it has to in fact LOSE very important detail. The information becomes blurred, vague, generalized, overly abstract, and really does NOT contain the subtle nuances that are actual aspects of the whole truth. It may SEEM like it represents the whole of the truth but it doesn't. It's an APPROXIMATION, like a jpeg image, which is "sort of close" to being accurate and gives you some idea of it, but IS NOT accurate.
Examples of this happening include "reductionistic" statements like "Everything is God." Well now. For some reason that sounds all mystical and special and lofty. But, such a vague statement lacks enough detail to be accurate. You cannot GET BACK the full story when you BASE logical conclusions on this information. The reconstruction of the whole story is corrupted.
You could say for example, well, it seemed like the Son of God feel asleep and dreamed of death. But ... since ITS ALL GOD.... THIS MUST MEAN, logically, that God HIMSELF fell asleep and dreamed of death. That is absolutely what it implies. You can argue that "no it doesn't" but all you're doing is trying to pretend that it is accurate because the BS alarms are going off to indicate errors. The fact is that the information that's given is NOT ENOUGH, it DOES NOT accurately represent the whole truth, and it's too vague.
MORE WORDS IS BETTER! Or perhaps we can say, you want ideally the fewer number of words which FULLY AND ACCURATELY represent the whole truth. I you can be sure this is not going to be 3 words or even 20 words.
So yes, even in terms of thinking about abstract spiritual stuff, even in terms of oneness, god being all, everything is mind, son and father blending into each other, going beyond words and concepts... all this stuff.... when you are USING LANGUAGE and logical constructs to THINK about it..... and you strip SO much away that you start losing vital information, going BEYOND the entropy threshold, you are literally turning a detailed and nuanced truth into a blob of mush and mud and blurriness and meaninglessness. Because you think that is what spirituality is like .... this oneness thing... must mean, we only need to use one word. Not even close.
There IS an entropy limit beyond which you cannot go, in logical reasoning, in discussion, in theorizing, in metaphysics, in conceptualizing reality, where if you DO go beyond it, you have chopped out SO much information that you're not even really talking about the whole truth anymore. You're making a vague approximation which is NOT accurate enough. And it is therefore MISELADING. The more you push it towards eradicating as many words as possible, down to like "everything's God"... you have seriously censored significant major truths.
If for example I have a flower with 6 petals and I tell you that I have "a flower", but I don't tell you that it has 6 petals, in your mind you may envisage a flower with 8 petals. You are wrong. I did not give you enough information to represent the whole truth about what I have. There is information loss. I have been TOO VAGUE. I have reduced the accuracy of the representation of truth BEYOND the limit of information entropy, and have gone into the realm of a LACK OF TRUTH. A loss of precision.
It is funny then that when we talk about "its all one thing", we are actually LACKING truth, while pretending to talk about truth. We are not being accurate because we are not giving enough information. In fact we're trying to SPIRITUALIZE WORDS by having the fewest words possible. Less words is not more spiritual! In fact less words can be corrupting and destructive and a complete misrepresentation of the truth.
There are some people that go so far with their stripping away of any notion of anything informational - which usually means anything separate-sounding - any contrast or delineation or division or any notion of a "something" or two of anything.... that they enter a logical realm of total abstract bullshit. It devolves into meaningless drivel with specialness all over it. Ego loves to do this because it thinks a count of one is more spiritual than a count of two. It's concept of truth is flawed.
If for example it is true that God has at least one son. And if we say that this son IS God. And that is ALL that we tell you. If we tell you that is the WHOLE truth. Then someone is going to think ok.... the son IS God, so.... when the son fucks up and dreams of death and imagines murder, this must be God doing it right? Sure thing. God is now dreaming of death. We weren't specific enough or accurate enough.
It's a nice idea to imagine that God is this total 100% abstraction which is SO abstract that there is NO detail to it, no properties, no structure, no qualities, no characteristics, nothing. Just a nice blob of existence sitting there all by itself. That is NOT an accurate enough representation using words and symbols and language. It is a massive information loss. And God DOES in fact have properties, qualities, a "nature", a premise, law, mind, thought, causation, will, love, etc. The attempt to reduce truth to NOTHING, is an attempt by the ego to destroy the truth!
We HAVE to understand that God is for example infinite and absolute. We have to properly specify what God'e nature actually is before we can start basing conclusions on it. If you knew that God is causal and a creator, you would also know that God MUST have creations which MUST in turn have creations. The logic in this is utterly impeccable. But you can't see that or come to that conclusion is you DON'T specify that God is causal, or that his creations have to inherit through extension, or that he is a creator at all.
So when you become too vague, thinking it is spiritual, thinking you are representing truth more, thinking that "its oneness" is the most spiritual thing anyone has ever conceived of. ... it is not true. You CANNOT go that far into the loss of information and represent the whole truth using language and logic. But people are doing it all the time. "It's all God" ... well, sort of... but no. It's not. God has creations. "God is everything" .. well.. sort of, but no. God is not an illusion. Did you specify that? You need to.
So in terms of the editions of the course and the editing and the words in the book and the repetition of concepts and ideas and whether it contains ALL distinct information, fact, accuracy, precision and is "complete" informationally, you really need to think more in terms of ..... is there a full and accurate representation of the whole truth here. Is there ENOUGH words to represent the whole message. And that does NOT mean there should be too FEW words OR more than is needed. More words is not always an improvement either.
We might ask if something has been LOST, vital information, which is not repeated, which is missing, and that without it the picture is incomplete. It doesn't matter so much if the same ideas are presented many times, or if the concepts taught are built upon by others, etc. We need the whole accuracy and full scope of the truth, enough description to leave no loopholes, but we don't necessarily need 550,000 words to do that. But what matters is when you become SO reductionistic that you chop out VITAL information and disappear up your own arse.
So perhaps we can steer away from all these super-short ultra-vague trying-to-be-mystical statements of vagueness, and instead realize that you HAVE to use enough words in order to fully communicate an idea. You can't JUST say "God is" at this level and expect someone to understand that this DOESN'T imply that God is a piece of dog poop on the sidewalk. A more accurate, more detailed definition is needed, to close loopholes and stop logical errors from happening. This is why ACIM is presented as rather a lot of words, and not just one.
The course tries to represent a picture of the whole truth. It tries to talk about God and his nature. It doesn't do it in 2 words. It does it with a great many words because Jesus knows that you CANNOT represent the nuances of reality in such a small number of symbols. There is a certain level of entropy to this. You can't properly represent God, creation, kingdom, sonship, holy spirit, souls, your creations, eternal life, immortality, etc... in two words.
It has nothing to do with a person's inability to "grasp the truth of oneness" either. No one is grasping the truth of oneness by using the word oneness in a sentence. Oneness actually encapsulates rather a lot of details which you might not think are a part of it. Oneness doesn't forego God having a son. But it implies that there is no son at all. That is wrong. It is not an accurate representation and not enough information. The son is literally lost in that formulation.
Nor is someone being "all spiritual" just because they talk about God as if he's SO abstract that you can't say anything about him accurately at all. We might as well say that God is so beyond everything that you can't even say that God is beyond everything. What then? If you're GOING to use words, and language, and logical arguments, you CANNOT REDUCE IT beyond a certain point and expect to be accurately representing it.
God is ... much more than... just oneness.
You can't sin. What is sin but the ability to actually achieve separation from God in some way? Whichever way that separation manifests, whether it is a thought of murder or attack or withdrawal or hate or a split mind or a tiny mad idea or whatever, the fact remains it is impossible for it to happen in *reality*.
God CANNOT be separated from. God is so pervasive and so everywhere that there just is nowhere to go that He is not. Believing it is *possible* to do this is just insane.
You can't sin because you are permanently innocent.
If you are completely pure and holy, do you think it's really possible for you to do anything or act in a certain way that is not pure and holy? How could you even CONCEIVE of it being possible to do anything that isn't innocent? It can't even occur to you or enter your mind. Your innocence is permanent because it is established by and recognized by God, forever.
It is SO holy and pure that it simply CANNOT PRODUCE SIN. Sin cannot COME FROM innocence. So it is utterly impossible for there to one moment be a state of perfect innocence, and then the next moment, for sin to suddenly show up. Sin CANNOT have come from innocence or from an innocent mind or an innocent Son of God. Sin 'appearing' has to be totally unreal and fictional.
Sin therefore HAS to be a huge lie. It is causeless. Sin is bullshit.
Symbolically speaking, it would be like saying that a newborn baby is capable of murdering thousands of people as soon as it emerges from the womb. It's obviously absurd because the "innocence" of the baby is so obvious (even at the level of illusion). No-one in their right mind would even begin to consider that this crime is possible, it is utterly ridiculous. (nb: this is just an analogy, innocence in bodies is not real innocence)
As the course says, "no one can argue with a fact." When something is plainly obvious and has not been denied, it simply cannot BE denied. You just have to admit that it is plainly true. It is plainly true that you are STILL 100% as innocent as you always were and that you are utterly incapable of anything you could call "real" sin.
Sin is not real. It doesn't take place in reality. It does not have consequences which are real. It does not affect what is real. It has no truth to it and is entirely a fictional story you are dreaming. The sin is INSIDE the dream, not outside of it in reality. All of the consequences that sin supposedly has inflicted or produced, are HALLUCINATIONS. Not one of them is accurate or truthful or real.
The intent of sin is to murder God, to get rid of yourself, and to deny Life. Its natural consequence is death. From the very start it is an act of war and vengeance and a strong belief that sin has power OVER the will of God, able to affect God, hurt God, change God, and destroy God. It is the authority problem - believing you have power over God's will, which you don't. Right off the bat, sin is a lie.
One of the problems is that, since you are dreaming and you THINK you are a PART of the dream, inside the dream, you believe that sin is real. You think it is real because you think the dream is reality. The dream is NOT reality, even if it seems real.
You think that your sin against God REALLY HAPPENED. Somewhere in the dark recessed of your mind hidden behind layers of denial is a belief that you sinned IN REALITY, caused reality to change, and now deserve to die. This gave rise to the death wish, which will not stop until it finishes you off, unless you undo the belief that sin is real.
When you start to explore your mind and undo denial and remove blocks to awareness you will likely encounter this belief in sin within yourself. You'll experience it as though it is real and true, as if you actually DID something horrendous, causing you to be guilty. But as you question sin and take a closer look at the facts, admitting the truth, you can actually start to RECOGNIZE that this thing you referred to as "real sin" is actually FAKE SIN. It is an ILLUSION of sin happening. You thought it was real, which is why you have freaked out. But it's not. It's a PRETEND CRIME.
There is nothing that sin claims that can be true. It is not possible to oppose the will of God. It is not possible to change God. It is not possible to make God hate you. It is not possible to hurt or attack or damage God. It is not possible to make God disappear. It is not possible to kill God. It is not possible to kill yourself. It is not possible to change your permanent innocence. It is not possible to oppose reality and replace it with an illusion which isn't even real. Everything sin claims you HAVE DONE, is not true.
It's like, you're this kid who THINKS that they did something terribly wrong, because they were in a state of fear and misunderstanding and did not really perceive correctly what happened. They think they did something really terribly bad and that they're going to be horribly punished, and because they think they really did it, they will be convinced they deserve to die, and will refuse any suggestion to the contrary. But this is all based on a MISUNDERSTANDING.
Another example might be, if someone were driving a car and accidentally didn't see someone step into the street, and their car seems like it hit something right at that moment, which you thought was the person. You were so horrified that you fled the scene, without having actually seen IF it was true, and lived the rest of your life in guilt and self-torture. What you didn't realize is that you did NOT hit the person, no-one got hurt, and you're not even guilty. You just drove over a piece of wood in the road that you didn't see. So then you try to kill yourself for something YOU DID NOT EVEN REALLY DO.
God is here to tell you, "My Son, you are innocent and always will be. There is nothing you can do to deter me from loving you. I am forever in your presence and reminding you gently of your lovability and worthiness. You have done nothing to offend me. I am at peace. I am unharmed. I love you now and have for eternity. There is nothing you can do to make me resent you. My only will is for your return to me to embrace in love and live forever in my sight. I love you now and always will."
Sin is not true of you. You did not do what you think you did. You imagined a crime and made it up, wanting to believe it was real and possible. THANK GOD it is NOT TREU! Sin isn't real. It's a fantasy. "What if you looked within and saw there was no sin?"
You are forgiven. Come home.
If you're going through a loss, it can be hard to deal with the feelings.
At first I felt that the feelings were just overpowering and I was a victim of them, unable to control or stop them, albeit that I tried.
Gradually over time and after a lot of crying, I've somehow become more honest about it and more acknowledging of the feelings.
Or I should reword that, I've been pushed by the feelings so much to have to feel them no matter whether I want to or not, that I've had to surrender to it and go with it.
More recently that seems to be turning more into a kind of willingness to grieve. I think I had a lot of spiritual bypass crap from ACIM that was getting in the way of just being human about it.
I've been starting to see that there are places in me where I simply, ego or not, "want" something. At the core of loss there is always a sense of love or identification or some kind of valuing.
Within me, there is a place, it's even in the heart, that simply says, "I want to be with my wife." And there is another part that says "I want to go home".
This is because I lived in America and have let there now to live in the UK and have a lot of loss around the end of that entire chapter of life.
What I've been seeing lately is that although it sounds like some kind of backwards step, or going in the wrong direction, I have to be willing to acknowledge much more fully that I DO WANT these things.
It's as though up till now everything was sort of circling around it like a cloud of emotion and I just couldn't see clearly. As I home in on the "core" of this "suffering", its like it's coming into focus more, and revealing that at the centre there is this human bonding and love and caring and so on, which drives the loss.
It's not in my opinion "worse" or a regression to just own and admit and feel the "I want". Even if it's ego. Even if it's bullshit or not in line with God's truth. The wanting is there. Nor can I try to force myself to just "not want it", because that's brutal and not healing.
I'm making it okay to acknowledge how I feel and okay to feel it and to even throw myself into feeling it. Being more open and honest with the feeling rather than avoiding it, judging it, trying to get rid of it.
What I am finding is that, when I am willing to admit that I just want to be with her, or that I want to go home, it doesn't entail any denial. And this reveals something, it sheds a light on it.
Only by admitting that I want it and letting myself feel the wanting, does it make room for some "reality" to come in. The reality says, well.... even though you want this, the truth is, in practical terms, you can't actually have this. This thing that you want, isn't available any more.
It's a bit of a harsh truth, but if there FIRST isn't the willingness to admit to having the wanting - the yearning, the expectation - you can't get to the point where you can face reality.
You have to face the suffering head-on first before any light can be shed on it. And that means absolutely no spiritual bypasses, no denial, no avoidance, no judging, no defences, no making it wrong.
Upon looking more squarely and being "in" the wanting, it has made me realize that all the clouds of loss and confusion were disguising a rather simple AND limited thing - that this is about one person, and about a home that is gone.
It's not about the whole world, or my whole life. By bringing it into focus it's narrowed it down and now it seems perhaps more manageable. It's not the end of the whole world. It's just specifically about these two areas, two things that I want to be with. Regardless of whether that seems popular with other people or socially normal or anything else.
Once it's admitted that I really want these things, the situational truth starts to enter - it's not possible to have these things. This fact, this truth, starts to shed a light on the wanting, and reframes it. That, yes, I want something I can't have, but perhaps I should let go of that wanting because it's not a possibility. The reality of the "it's not possible" starts to come in, and in a way that starts to counteract and act upon the wanting.
Ultimately it's a sort of recognition or realisation, that I might as well let go, because what I want just isn't realistic or feasible. It's not like a defeat or some kind of horrible disappointment, it's just sort of facing facts, and as the course says "no one can argue with a fact." And "the truth shall set you free."
I'm still sort of. . squirming a bit about this insight, and with trying to acknowledge this "fact" of the impossibility of what I want, and thus the need to let it go due to it being "pointless". But as a step forward at least it's providing some sense of an ending being in sight, or a sort of "solution" to the problem.
I want to be with my wife, but I can't. It's okay to acknowledge that. I want to go home to America and be with what's been familiar for 25 years, but I can't. My ego cries out with "it's all gone" and "I want it" but that will change. Somehow at least admitting to the wanting of it is bringing it into the light to see it clearly, and to thus shed light upon it, and it is that light which perhaps is the source of liberation.
"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which sets him off from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are more valuable, and therefore true. And each establishes this for himself, and MAKES it true by his attack on what another values. This is justified because the values differ, and those who hold them seem to be unlike, and therefore enemies."
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The truth is not something that we make up, decide upon, invent, have to "believe in", or have as a kind of personal preference. The truth does not come in a billion forms. There is only one truth, and that truth is set in stone forever by God. God is the creator of actual reality and no-one else. Not even His creations, his souls/sons, have the ability to change reality or to define what the truth is.
This means that when we are in the business of accepting the truth, we must also be in the business of putting aside personal opinion, a desire for a special or different or exclusive viewpoint, and in fact even the ownership of "this is my view". Beliefs only take you so far and are too personalized.
In this ego world, we are very accustomed to everyone seeming to have their own opinion. This is because everyone with an ego stands like a gatekeeper in between the truth, acting like a filter or go-between or authority, with a need to "approve" of anything being claimed. This is because the false ego authority wants to constantly define the truth, invent it, change it, decide what it is, author it, distort it and basically make-believe whatever it wants to.
As we move towards atonement, what HAS to happen is the relinquishment of this egocentric ownership of opinion making. The truth is true all by itself. We cannot define it, our only options are to either a) accept it or b) deny it. When we deny it we attempt to invent the truth ourselves, to reinforce it through beliefs, and to play at being God. This is egotism. But as we SURRENDER the ego, we are also becoming willing to give up on being the AUTHOR of the truth.
What this then leads to is that you become wiling to "take on" the "off the shelf" truth that God has established, to accept it, to allow it, to align with it, and to integrate it as "your own". Without changing it, we give up trying to fight with reality and instead settle in to accepting it. The reality as God has defined it, that is - the nature of the Kingdom.
This absolutely means that as we become more attuned with the real truth, the entire idea of "having an opinion" is being dissolved. Personalized, "everyone has their own truth" bullshit is dissolved. We become representatives of a truth that we did not invent. We become spokespersons for a truth that isn't an "interpretation". We allow the one truth to function through us and to organize our mind.
That means that over time, as we continue to awaken, the things that we express, the words we use, the statements we make, the documents we write, the various expressions that we perform, cannot be logically attributed to ourselves. When we express something we can no longer say that this is our own opinion. The truth, God's truth, is ONE truth, and it is FACTUAL REALITY. It cannot be argued with, it cannot be changed. As this truth becomes our truth, we stop being the "sole owner" of truth, of a personal opinion, and we instead become a reflection of God's truth.
So we then start to express things which are factually true, which are not an opinion, and which others can also either accept or deny. In many cases people will mistake your expressions for you having an opinion, it being just your beliefs, just your interpretations. They will argue that you are trying to be ego or right just because you have a sense of certainty. But the fact is that when you get with the facts, which HAS to be possible, and you are in accord with God's truth, you ARE CORRECT. Because you have accepted correction.
Some people will not like this especially when they have an ego and especially when they do not understand how any kind of truth could be "impersonal". The truth is something to be shared and joined with, not something to possess and control. As representatives of God, teachers of God act almost in the same way as the Holy Spirit who is the Voice for God. He speaks FOR God because He is "the same" as God and has no "different" opinion of His own. We listen to Him because we trust that the truth for Him matches God's truth. As a corrected individual, we too become voices for God, correctly representative of what is true.
It's important to then realize that because we are surrendering artificial truths, interpretations, opinions, beliefs, playing God, authority problems, false exclusive ownership etc, being spiritual does not remain a "personal" exercise. Moreso it means that you are becoming a salesperson for God, peddling His wares, sharing His contributions, relaying His messages, being His eyes and ears. You take on the eyes of Christ and cease to have "your own" separate viewpoint.
So when we are evaluating whether someone is just having a belief, or whether to listen to them, or whether it's all just opinion, or whether everyone's truth is different, we should remember also that those who DO have alignment with ACTUAL TRUTH, will appear to the ego to be egos claiming total righteousness, when in fact all they are doing is being a medium through which a truth BEYOND themselves is being expressed.
In the factual truth there ARE no opinions. There is no wiggle room. There are no exceptions. There are no loopholes. There is no uncertainty. There is nowhere that some kind of "maybe" comes into it. There's no room for interpretation or opinion. The truth is either true or it's not.
The entire realm of having opinions is founded on the idea that something is open ended and doesn't make sense and is not factual. Which leaves everything open to interpretation. And where there is interpretation, there is hallucination and insanity and a complete breakdown of any kind of factual consistency.
There is no room for having a different viewpoint in God's Kingdom. We are to accept the truth that God has GIVEN and to make it our own, and to then express that same truth without distortion. This erases the ego and leaves no doors through which it can mangle and distort and personalize the facts. In God's logical system of thought there is no error and everyone is in perfect agreement. There is one truth, and we are to accept the Holy Spirit's message, in accord with it, without question.
It is obvious that in this world there is very little agreement. Everyone sees to still have an ego and an opinion. We can barely agree to what the course says and means. Each person has their own interpretation and viewpoint. There is a tremendous amount of mistakenness. Yet Jesus states that teachers of God truly should all share ONE truth and agree on EVERYTHING. There should be a single reflection coming through all such persons which is the same in all of them, not thousands of different versions. One truth, one voice.
"God's teachers appear to be many, for that is what is the world's need.Yet being joined in one purpose, and one they share with God, how could they be separate from each other? "
"As they advance in their profession, they become more and more certain that the body's function is but to let God's Voice speak through it to human ears. And these ears will carry to the mind of the hearer messages that are not of this world, and the mind will understand because of their Source."
Miracle principle 11 says "A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable value simultaneously."
If you believe and perceive that your neighbor is not yourself, that they are a separate person, and you are not one, you will find yourself unwilling to give to them.
There is a very simple reason for this. If the two of you are separate, then logically when you give something to them, you are excluded from receiving it. What is theirs is not yours.
This leads to the quite sensible conclusion that, since your brother seems separate from you, you should NOT give to them, because if you do, you will stand to lose everything that you give.
It makes perfect sense because if the premise is that the two of you are separated, then it also makes sense to say that what belongs to you does not belong to them, and vice versa.
Believing that the two of you are separate, you will therefore find yourself "naturally" unwilling to give to others. You will not want to perform any miracles. You will not want to share yourself or give love.
Giving love across a divide, to a separate person, who is cut off from you, can only seem to entail a sense of loss. You believe quite logically that whatever you give you will lose, and giving will be a sacrifice.
This is rooted in the fundamental dynamic that giving and receiving are not one. If you and your brother are separated, then giving and receiving are also separated. Who you give to will appear to exclude your self, and so you will see yourself as not the receiver. If you do not stand to receive, then you will not want to give away, because it will seem detrimental to you.
In a sense, you could say that this appears to be selfish. However, the person is really just doing what seems logical based on the premise that they are separate. A person is unwilling to give because they want to keep what they give. They want to be included in the receipt of it. But because they see themselves as not included in the "list of receivers", they conclude that hoarding is a better strategy. This is entirely sensible and logical.
What this means then is that if you see yourself as separate from another, and you think you have something they lack, or you see yourself as a healer or giver, but do not see yourself as one with the other person, you will not want to give to them. You will be unwilling to perform a miracle of union on the grounds that giving so fully will deprive you of everything. And no-one is going to argue that this makes no sense.
If your brother is indeed separate from you, then by all means you should not give anything to him, because what he stands to gain you stand to lose. And so the ego will counsel that it's important to recognize the separation, make it real, and therefore stay within your private prison. And that it is in your best interests not to even try to give, or to perform a miracle of love, because this runs against your best interests.
So long as this separateness is maintained, you will of course maintain separate interests. What is in your own best interests is not the same as what is in the interests of another. If the two of you are not actually one, then there is no way for you to really receive or keep what you're giving. Only IF the two of you are one, can your interests be mutual, and therefore shared.
Only through shared interests, recognizing that you are one with the other person, they are a part of your self, and therefore it IS in your best interest to give to the part of you that you share with them, can you be naturally and logically willing to perform a miracle.
The ego will suggest this is impossible because it claims that you are currently separate. And if you are separate, there is no logical basis for saying that giving is going to help your situation. In fact giving will appear to deprive you, so long as you remain separate. And it's clue here is that if you give love, in an attempt to heal, the healing will have no effect on YOU, and therefore there is no way to bridge the gap anyway.
The interesting thing, however, is that regardless of how separated you are right now, when you TRY to give, you will find that the giving of love actually heals you along with it. You cannot heal without being healed. The love that you try to squeeze through to share with another is actually received by you as well. It includes you in it. And this inclusiveness of love actually unifies your minds and lifts your spirits.
If you can recognize therefore, however dimly, that your brother is yourself, and is part of you, and therefore you are not losing by giving, then you will become willing to give. Giving is sharing and inclusion, not loss If you believe that giving is going to deprive you, then you have to recognize you currently see yourself as separate. It's actually then a necessity to be willing to try to overcome this sense of separateness, in order for you to be okay with giving.
Indeed the course suggests that "miracles are taken first on faith", because you may be in a position where you do NOT really recognize your oneness with another, and you do not see them as part of yourself. They still seem separate to you. Which means that you're going to have to "take it on faith" that IF you give love and attempt to join, to heal the isolation that keeps you apart, then the love will do its job and make it clearer to you that you are in fact NOT separate, AND that you stand to gain from the giving.
"A miracle is a reversal of the physical order because it brings more love to the giver AND the receiver."
Your willingness to try to share, join, be one with, see yourself as, with others, brings a healing love to you, to heal the gap in your own mind, and to lift you up in addition to lifting another up. You actually receive the love that you give. When you try to heal another, therefore, you should find that you yourself become healed as well. Both of you are recipients of love's benefit because it is inclusive.
So if you assess how much you see another as separate from you, you'll also find that this correlates to how much of an "unhealed healer" you are. If you regard yourself as having something others lack, you are seeing yourself as separate. And then you will feel that you can expend effort and therefore become taxed by trying to give healing.
This sense of limitation or that "healing is a sacrifice", is all part of the unhealed healer's thought process. To overcome this the healer has to be included in the healing and thus receive what is given. If I feel that I cannot perform miracles because it would be too much effort, would require me to give a lot, and I'm not willing to lose a lot in order to do so - because I'm selfish, then obviously I need to learn that by giving I will receive and the sense of separation and sacrifice is unfounded.
By learning to give to another AS yourself, you can actually take that all the way, and through such equality of giving and receving you will find God.
"Atonement is for all, because it is the way to UNDO the belief that ANYTHING is for you ALONE."
"It is impossible for a Child of God to love his neighbor EXCEPT as himself. That is why the healer's prayer is, "let me know this brother as I know myself."
"The unforgiving mind does not believe that giving and receiving are the same."
"The interval you think lies in between the giving and receiving of the gift SEEMS to be one in which you sacrifice, and suffer loss."
"Yet it is always God Who calls to you, and he who asks your help is but yourself. Who is the giver and the receiver then? Who asks the gift and who is given it?"
"Each miracle is an example of what justice can accomplish, when it is offered to everyone alike. It is received and GIVEN equally. It IS awareness that giving and receiving ARE the same."
""Father, I must return Your Love for me. For giving and receiving are the same, and You have given all Your Love to me. I must return It, for I want It mine in full awareness, blazing in my mind, and keeping it within Its kindly light, inviolate, beloved, with fear behind and only peace ahead. How still the way Your loving Son is led along to You!""
"Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone. THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember."
I am going to create a new book based entirely on the metaphysical logic of the Course, which will dispel all myths and misunderstandings and arguments about what the Course is teaching, saying and meaning, on an irrefutably logical, black-and-white basis. It will be so clear and accurate that only unwillingness to accept it will see fault in it.
Everything about the Course is logic-based and every outcome of any thought system is a logical conclusion. There is no room for opinion, neither my own nor that of anyone else. Jesus is extremely logical in his presentation of the metaphysics. People will see this as either arrogant or impossible or perfectly acceptable. But it IS possible to spell out everything Jesus is teaching in a logical manner. Jesus already proved that with His Course.
"The ego has a purpose, just as the Holy Spirit has. The ego’s purpose is FEAR, because ONLY the fearful can be egotistic. The ego’s logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit, because your mind has all the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects."
Everything to do with Heaven and Holy Spirit's thought system is perfectly logical.
Everything to do with the ego's thought system, behavior, conclusions and goals is also perfectly logical.
Everything to do with separation from God and all of the steps which followed it, the outcome of the separation, what is or is not real, the nature of time, even the formation of physical matter, and the consequence of death, all come about through perfect logic.
It follows, logically, that if you grasp a correct understanding of the logic behind all this, you can come to the correct conclusions and understand why things have happened the way they have, and how to reverse it.
The flow of logic, when understood clearly without making errors, removes all questions, doubts, confusions, conflicts and arguments about what ACIM is teaching, saying or meaning. You can fight with people but you can't fight with perfect irrefutable logical facts.
The logical consistency is irrefutable, and you can also see that Jesus is very black-and-white and very extremely accurate and specific in His logical descriptions of mind and ego and everything else. Most of what He says is based on logical conclusions. This logical basis is referred to in the course as REASONING. Logical reasoning produces sane conclusions. Insane reasoning is still logical but produces false conclusions. EVERYTHING about the ego and all of its functioning and subtleties is a false conclusion.
Most of the debate surrounding the Course and what it means or teaches comes from a lack of clarity about the underlying metaphysical logic. The logic determines what the course MUST be saying, regardless of the words used or how it says it. Even debates about whether God creates souls or whether the world is real or whether God is in the world or whether miracles are supernatural or anything else, all has a LOGICAL metaphysical foundation which is irrefutable when seen clearly.
A common problem I also see is that Jesus says one thing in one part of the course on a given topic, and a person might take that in isolation and draw conclusions based on it. But then the same topic may be discussed elsewhere in the course in such a manner that it clarifies or gives a slightly different understanding. Because the Course is so large, it can be difficult to keep all of these things in mind simultaneously, to cross-reference them, to ensure that you are being completely consistent and not producing contradictions.
The Course is also often said to be contradictory in many places and many people do not understand why this is. I will say this. There are NO contradictions in the Course at all. Nor is there ANY basis for describing parts of it as metaphor, except for when Jesus is explicitly and deliberately using a metaphor for teaching purposes. The idea of the Course being filled with metaphor or symbols is a poorly illogical way to explain-away or gloss-over a poor grasp of the underlying metaphysical logic. It is usually based in poor reasoning, fear, denial, and unwillingness to accept the truth.
Jesus does not contradict Himself. He is not unclear about anything. He has deliberately tried to be as black-and-white as possible because this ensures perfect clarity and avoids any ambiguous false conclusions as much as possible. From what I've seen, most confusion or conflict over the meaning of the Course has nothing to do with what Jesus says, and is only to do with a temporary lack of grasp of the whole picture by the student, ie there are some parts they have not yet added up, they have not seen how it all fits together, or are not yet willing to accept certain things and so are blocked.
Behind all of our opinions and interpretations, there is an absolutely 100% rock solid underlying metaphysical logic, which can be spelled out in black and white terms. Everything that happens in the ego thought system, all of its dynamics, every interaction and relationship, all ways of perceiving and projecting, every reaction, is all describable in terms of completely logical conclusions, each one building upon the foundation of another. There is no part of this world or the ego or mind or anything that is not completely logical in terms of why it is happening or what it is based on.
Regardless of what the words say, regardless of illusions of contradiction, vagueness, or lack of evidence, if you grasp the logical basis CORRECTLY, you not only can logically find the right answer yourself, you also can extrapolate the logic yourself, meaning that you can not only gain NEW insights which were not previously mentioned based on the SAME metaphysics that Jesus teaches, but also that is completely consistent with it and an extension of it, producing clarifications and understanding of the metaphysics even beyond your current personal experiences.
This is why it can also become a possible trap, because the logic of the mind is able to grasp the metaphysics conceptually prior to it being your actual experience. And yet to grasp the conceptual logic is important because it becomes a GUIDANCE TOOL, correcting your mistakes in thinking and helping LEAD YOU towards the truth. Every part of the Holy Spirit's thought system is perfectly logical so each piece that you grasp accurately builds upon the rest and not only reinforces the thought system it also adds missing pieces by automatic implication.
You can "figure out" what Jesus means by using perfect logical conclusions, and can therefore even say things which are TRUE and which Jesus would agree with, which Jesus Himself never said, and have it NOT be "outside of the Course's teachings". The excuse "Jesus didn't say that" or "that's not written in the course" is a blindness which fixates only on the form of what was said, NOT the underlying logic, and this causes many students to put up unnecessary defenses, to put the course in a box, to dwell unnecessarily on different versions of the book, and to make the form of its words all important. It is what the words are BASED ON that is important. The fundamental logical basis IS the metaphysics, and IS aligned with the thought system of Jesus, from which He speaks.
For example, the only reason that someone projects responsibility for causing something onto another person, is because awareness of being the cause of it has been blocked in their own mind, meaning logically they are not aware that they are responsible for causing it, which means they MUST now look elsewhere to try to find the cause. This is not optional. There are no exceptions to the rule. This is simply what must happen given the logical foundation. If you did not do this, someone or something else did.
As another example, you can explain why every mistake is forgivable by recognizing that a person is only attacking because they are believing that someone else is the cause of the problem. Having simply not been aware of their own actions of mind, they see cause as separate from themselves. And so this justifies all anger and attack. And the only reason the person is becoming angry and attacking is because of this logical framework which has been established.
If the person were to remove the block to awareness to look at the FACTS ("no one can argue with a fact"), that they themselves did this to themselves, it is then OBVIOUS that there is no justification for attack. So anyone who is attacking is simply temporarily unaware, and THAT IS ALL, and because of that unawareness they do not know what they are doing to themselves, and so their attacks are merely MISTAKES they are making in unconsciousness, and so they must be FORGIVABLE because they did not do this on purpose consciously. They are not in their right mind, therefore forgiveness is justified in every case. This is logical, and Holy Spirit's logical thought system recognizes this and therefore sees forgiveness as being always justified.
Impeccable logic can properly explain the "levels" of separation, all states of mind, the dynamics of every interaction, the automatic, predictable flow of ego thoughts, and all logical outcomes of the ego thought system, including the formation of forms and matter and bodies and planets and sickness and death. Nothing is happening other than an entirely CLOSED system of logical conclusions, based on a false premise.
All of these steps in separation, all of the dynamics of the ego, all of the ways that mind does or does not do something, all states of perception and misperception, the state of Heaven and its conditions, the functioning of minds of oneness, all of the parts of the Holy Spirit's thought system and the ego's thought system are ENTIRELY LOGIC BASED.
Love and fear are opposites. But only love is real. Therefore fear is not real and love has no opposite. If there is fear, it produces a state which does not exist. This is PERFECT LOGIC. This describes for example the foundation of the separation. And also explains why "there is no world", because a world based on fear cannot exist. This is why "there is no life outside of heaven".
Or here is another way to do it. God is cause. You are effect. You cannot cause what caused you because you are 100% the effect of it. Therefore attempting to cause God is impossible and will produce states which do not exist (dreams of nothing). This is perfectly logical.
Since everything in the Course's teachings including the foundation for working miracles is based entirely on metaphysical logic, this is going to be the foundation of the new book I am working on. It is going to spell out all of this in such clear black-and-white terms it will be extremely difficult to deny it or to become confused by it. It's got nothing to do with personal opinion. Metaphysics means FACTS, and this is what we need to overcome our constant debates and confusions and states of misunderstanding.
Here are some examples of Jesus talking about metaphysical logic:
"From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos MUST follow. It is because it follows that it seems to be a logical conclusion; a valid step in ordered thought. The steps to chaos DO follow neatly from their starting-point. Each is a different form in the progression of truth’s reversal, leading still deeper into terror, and away from truth."
"The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily, and as well, as does the ego, except that HIS conclusions are NOT insane. They take a direction EXACTLY opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death. We have followed much of the ego’s logic, and have seen its logical conclusions. And, HAVING seen them, we have realized that they can NOT be seen but in delusions. For there alone their SEEMING clearness SEEMS TO BE CLEARLY SEEN. Let us now turn AWAY from them, and follow the simple logic, by which the Holy Spirit teaches you the simple conclusions that speak for truth, and ONLY truth."
"Like the text for which this workbook was written, the ideas which are used for the exercises are very simple, very clear and totally unambiguous. We are not concerned with intellectual feats nor logical toys. We are dealing only in the very obvious, which has been overlooked in the clouds of complexity in which you think you think."
""God gives me only happiness."
"He has given my function to me."
"Therefore my function must be happiness."
Try to see the logic in this sequence"
"Only the DIFFERENT can attack. So you conclude, BECAUSE you can attack, you must be different. Yet does the Holy Spirit explain this differently. BECAUSE you are not different, you CAN NOT attack. Either position is a logical conclusion, if only the different can attack. Either could be maintained, but never both. "
"And reason now can lead you to the logical conclusion of your union."
"The logic of the world MUST therefore lead to nothing, for its GOAL is nothing."
"There is NOTHING in the world to teach him that the logic of the world is totally insane, and leads to nothing. But in him who MADE this insane logic, there is One Who KNOWS it leads to nothing, for He knows of EVERYTHING."
"Yet the logical outcome of your decision is perfectly clear, if you will LOOK at it. By deciding AGAINST your reality, you have made yourself vigilant AGAINST God and His Kingdom. And it is THIS vigilance that makes you afraid to remember Him."
"You therefore ARE willing to look at the ego’s premises but NOT at their logical outcome. Is it not possible that you have done the same thing with the premises of God? Your creations ARE the logical outcome of His premises. "
"They are the logical outcome of what you ARE. The ability to SEE a logical outcome depends on the WILLINGNESS TO SEE IT, but its TRUTH has nothing to do with your willingness at all."
"This means that the ego attacks WHAT IS PRESERVING IT, and this MUST be a source of extreme anxiety. This is why it NEVER knows what it is doing. This is perfectly logical, though clearly insane."
"Remaining logical but still insane, the ego resolves this completely insane dilemma in a completely insane way."
"In one sense, the ego’s fear of the idea of God is at least logical, because this idea DOES dispel it. "
"Test validity can be judged by logic, by theory, and by practice, each being regarded as a different dimension."
"Upside-down logic produces this kind of thinking."
"Now take this personally, and listen to Divine logic: If, when you have been forgiven, you have everything else, and If you have been forgiven, Then you have everything else. This happens to be the simplest of all propositions. IF P then Q. P. Therefore, Q. The real question is, is P true. If you will review the evidence, I think you will find this inescapable. I went on very personal record to this effect, and I am the only completely True Witness for God."