Say you have some illusions. Something that isn't true. It could be a physical thing, or some belief or whatever.

If your mind is open, it is open to the possibility of being mistaken, the possibility of not knowing, the possibility that the thing could be true or false. The mind isn't locked into some position or defending some viewpoint or prior belief. It's open to considering possibilities.

This openness allows you to "see" all of what is there, without filtering anything out with some kind of bias. It lets you recognize what things are, without distortions and without preferences. It's just sort of a way of saying, "tell me what you are", "what is this really?". it requires honesty and a willingness to be mistaken.

Open mindedness can allow you to see a mistake, recognize it as a mistake, and recognize that it needs correcting. It is a light which is open to everything, so it can see all sides and all angles, all perspectives. Including being able to see from a perspective of wholeness, which holds things in its light and in its true perspective to reveal what things really are.

Open-mindedness could be said to be the same thing as forgiveness. It's a mind that is willing to accept the truth regardless of what the truth is, and is not deceived by appearances. It's open to questioning what it sees and considering that it may or may not be true or real. It's the same thing as true perception - openness to the whole truth.

Sin on the other hand is a state of close-mindedness, which we could call false perception. You could call it narrow-mindedness as well. The mind narrows down and instead of being open to the whole, to everything, it becomes very focused and specific. It shuts out the peripheral vision, so to speak, and focuses only on what things appear to be on the surface.

A closed mind is not open to considering that anything is mistaken, or to questioning the reality or truth of anything at all. It takes everything at face value. Illusions are taken to be reality, lies are considered truth. Whatever seems to happen is believed to be really happening.

A closed mind also narrows down and homes in on specific things, so will focus on "what someone did" to the exclusion of all else. Even if the person has merit or does good dees in addition to their mistakes, sin focuses only on the mistakes and shuts out the good deeds.

Thus a closed mind becomes a darkened mind, focusing only on what people are doing wrong - given that everything in form is basically a mistake it turns everything into a sin. It mistakes illusions for truth and believes that whatever appears to be happening is permanently irreversibly true.

Sin has no openness to correction, to healing, to another viewpoint. It is very rigid and stuck and fixated on nothingness. It will not budge or allow any change to its viewpoint, or any way by which anything can be questioned. It takes everything as gospel and without question at all, accepting illusions into the mind without any sense of real perspective.

A sinful false perception therefore, a closed mind, does not see that there is even a possibility of mistakenness, a possibility of unintentionally, or of a need for gentle correction. It sees only deliberate evil acts, which appear to be utterly unforgivable, and sees that there is no other way to look at anything. It does not allow any openness to consider its position being flawed, or to register any sense of sin itself being a mistaken view.

As such a closed mind is an unforgiving mind, a mind which will not allow forgiveness because it will not question whether or not what happens is really happening. Whether that it sees is really there to see, or the truth at all. It believes it knows everything already, has all of the truth already, cannot be told anything new, and will not listen to reason. It won't consider the possibility of any alternative viewpoint, because to sin there is only one factual truth - you sinned and you should die for it.

As we awaken, we are moving from the viewpoint of sin - or closed-mindedness, and are opening up the mind and expanding our viewpoint so that we are more inclusive, more open, considerate, willing to question, willing to be mistaken, and willing to recognize that other people's choices are mistakes and not sins. This requires broadening the focal point and expanding it out to see the whole picture. To reframe everything in the light of the whole.

In forgiveness, everything false is recognised as false, without judgement. And everything true is recognised as true without distortion. It recognizes that all illusions are just mistakes, and there is no sin, because there is nothing closed off from the light of truth. The whole is recognised, perception is open to wholeness, and the whole informs everything. To forgive, you must open your mind and question illusions and let go of trying to make everything into a sin. There is no sin.

"What is forgiveness, but a willingness that truth be true? What can remain unhealed and broken from a Unity Which holds all things within Itself? There is NO sin. And EVERY miracle is possible the INSTANT that the Son of God perceives his wishes and the Will of God are One." UrT26H9

"Our lessons now are geared specifically to widening horizons, and direct approaches to the special blocks which keep your vision narrow, and too limited to let you see the value of our goal." UrW180 "Only by doing this is it possible to transcend the narrow boundaries the ego would impose upon the self." UrP3C8

"And if I need but stillness and a tranquil, open mind, these are the gifts I will receive of Him." UrW365

"It is therefore essential that you keep a perfectly open mind, unhampered by judgment, in selecting the things to which the idea for the day is to be applied." UrW3L2

"Accept atonement with an open mind which cherishes no lingering belief that you have made a devil of God's Son." UrW101

"Dwell not upon the past today. Keep a completely open mind, washed of all past ideas and clean of every concept you have made." UrW75L5

"An open mind is more honest than this." UrT12D3

"Healing will flash across your open mind as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings." UrW136L16

"The Savior's vision is as innocent of what your brother is as it is free of any judgment made upon yourself. It sees no past in anyone at all. And thus it serves a wholly open mind, unclouded by old concepts and prepared to look on ONLY what the present holds." UrT31G13

"It is to this unsealed and open mind that truth returns, unhindered and unbound. Where concepts of the self have been laid by is truth revealed exactly as it is." UrT31E16

I have another miracle manifestation story to share.

Years ago also, still in England, I was in my bedroom standing at the window. It was spring time. My window looked out on the back yards of a row of houses which led up a hill. At the top of the hill was the extended back yard of another house which was actually where my grandparents lived. A foot path ran along the side of that, and some people were walking.

Being springtime, there was a tree up there right next to the foot path which was in blossom with light pink blossoms. The wind was blowing and the blossoms were sprinkling down onto the ground below - actually blowing across the foot path.

For some reason, at the time, I was very relaxed and I suddenly had this experience of a tremendous high "joy", which seemed to be high up in my mind. It gleamed and beamed with joyousness and playfulness, with no intent of harm of any kind. As I saw the people walking near the tree, I imagined that it would be fun to sprinkle the blossoms on their heads. For some reason it was a very innocent playful idea.

Even though I was at my window, the window was actually closed. I was resting my arms on the window sill - the ledge that spans the width of the window area. Suddenly in front of me, like, literally right in front of me, inside the window, as I was imagining petals falling on the people, some petals materialized out of thin air and fell down onto the window sill right in front of my eyes.

There was just this splendid feeling of joy at the time which I had no idea how it came about or how to repeat it in any way. It just happened. It was a moment. And somehow what I'd visualized happening to these people happened to myself. Somehow I had accidentally manifested flower petals.

I picked them up off the window sill and looked at them, curious how they could possible have shown up there. It was at least a 100-200 yards distance to the tree and there was no way they could have blown that far, plus the window was closed. Yet here I was holding these petals in my hand, smiling at them happily.

It was surreal.

With regards to your ego and the ego of your brother, everything about it is self inflicted and separate. What is in your ego is not in your brother's ego. They are two separate, private worlds. They do not connect or join or communicate or share.

Everything happening within your own ego is not happening because of or in connection with or caused by what's happening in someone else's ego. It's all happening entirely independently.

Therefore, where the ego is concerned, you need to be completely responsible for the self-contained world that your ego lives in, which is a closed world, closed to your brother. Everything about it, all of the ego experiences, feelings, reactions, perceptions, are all entirely within yourself and are yours. Own them.

You need to disconnect your ego from the egos of other people. You need to realize that two egos do not communicate. You need to realize that what another person's ego is doing (anything unloving) is not in any way shape or form a cause of anything happening in your own ego. And vice versa. You are not doing anything to their ego and their ego is not doing anything to you. Egos are separate. Egos are individuals.

However, there is something that you do share with your brother. The only thing you can share with your brother, is sharing itself. Sharing means love, joining, communication, openness, equality, freedom, truth. These things, you DO share with your brother. These things, happen to both of you at the same time. These things are mutual, shared interests. These things connect you to your brother and join you together.

So be clear about this. The parts of your experience that are ego, you need to become very clear that these are SEPARATE from your brother and have nothing to do with him. They are your own private hallucinatory world. Nothing goes outside of this world. Ideas leave not their source. Your brother's ego ideas do not leave your brother either. Neither of you causes anything in each other through the ego. Your egos are completely separate and disconnected. All they can do is make noises and postulate before each other, but it is up to each person to decide whether to use their ego or Holy Spirit in perceiving the activities of another.

If it's ego, its yours. If it's love, it's shared. Never do egos really communicate and never do egos really cause things to happen to each other. The idea of attack is entirely an illusion because attack is withdrawal into a private world. Nothing any ego says is ever about you. Nothing your ego says is ever about anyone else.

Only in the holy relationship is there any real sharing or real communication or real relationship because it is a relationship based in reality. Ego relationships are not relationships at all.

How do you know that you have a body?

Do you see it with your body's eyes?

Do you hear it with your body's ears?

Do you taste it with the body's tongue, touch it with the body's flesh, and smell it with the body's nose?

Is this not a completely circular logic within a closed system?

You are using the very device that you are trying to detect, to detect that same device.

It cannot see outside of its own self. It cannot objectively report whether its own form exists or not.

Its own eyes show you a picture of a body, but the picture is seen with the body that the body is looking at. And so using the thing itself to detect itself, is completely invalid.

You would need proof outside of your own body, that your body exists. And you have none. A scientist could come along and tell you that, per their study, your body does in fact exist. But this would also be a lie. Because they used bodies to look at bodies. They uses eyes to look at eyes. It's entirely invalid within a closed loop.

The body therefore cannot be relied upon to tell you of its own existence. And therefore, there is no proof whatsoever that the body really exists.

You think you see your body in a mirror. But your body is using itself to look at itself. It is completely biased. It cannot tell you if it exists or not, it is designed ONLY to report a false positive that it "has been sensed". It's not capable of telling you of its own non-existence, and is totally one-sided.

The body does not really exist. All it can do is sense what it was designed to sense and NOT see reality.

"To sense is not to know." - ACIM

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen." - ACIM

"The body is the instrument the mind made in its striving to deceive itself." - ACIM

"At no time does the body really exist." - ACIM

"Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not." - ACIM

"Here is a world established that is sick, and this the world the body's eyes perceive. Here are the sounds it hears; the voices which its ears were made to hear. Yet sights and sounds the body can perceive are meaningless. It cannot see nor hear. It does not know what seeing IS; what listening is FOR. It is as little able to perceive as it can judge, or understand, or know. Its eyes are blind, its ears are deaf. It can NOT think, and so it cannot HAVE effects." - ACIM

"The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist." - ACIM

"The ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary. Learning to do this is the only real reason for its creation." - ACIM

"Minds need not bodies to communicate." - ACIM

"To be without a body is to be in your natural state." - ACIM

Here is an easier, simple way to go into "slow smooth breathing" as a form of meditation.

You don't have to control the breathing itself at all. In fact, that's guaranteed to interfere with it and make it not smooth. I've tried that before, controlling the breathing muscles etc and it takes much longer to work up to a slower smoother breath.

Instead, think of a balloon. The balloon is inflated. You take the opening of the balloon and you open it up just a little bit, just enough to let some air seep out. You then HOLD that opening at the same amount of openness, without moving it. What happens? The balloon deflates VERY smoothly all by itself.

The smoothness and rate of airflow is PRECISELY controlled only by how big the opening is. It's got nothing to do with you squeezing the balloon, trying to make the balloon collapse at a certain rate, etc. So the trick here is, do not try to control the breathing ITSELF, whatsoever. All you need to do is regulate the SIZE OF THE OPENING and keep it steady, which is very easy.

1. Close your mouth, breathe through your nose.

2. Hold your breath for a moment then let it go. Try that a few times. There is a sensation of some muscles in the throat closing off the airway. There is also (i think) the nasopharynx which is kind of in the back of the nose, behind the soft palette. This action of holding breath closes the nasopharynx so that no air can go in or out of the nose. So it feels like the back of the nose is closing and opening.

3. You have the ability to decide "how open" that thing is. This is a physical action above the throat and nothing to do with the lungs or diaphragm. Close it off again but not all the way. Just tighten it up a bit and try breathing out while it's "almost closed". You'll notice even if you try to push the breath harder to come out faster it won't. It can only come out at a rate determined by the size of the air opening. So you can operate this kind of like an air valve.

4. So this is all you need to do. Just "mostly close" that "valve" and hold it in that position. Relax. Let your body do its own normal breathing without you trying to mess with the breathing at all. Don't push the breath or pull it or try to make it slow or anything. You don't need to. Just because the opening is narrower, your breath will be long and slow and smooth.

5. Relaxing your body, just let it breathe, while you hold that opening in a partly closed position. Notice how the body just naturally "inflates" long and slow, like a balloon that inflates by itself. Then when it's done, as you keep holding the valve partly open, it starts to deflate all by itself, like a big bag of wind which just gradually empties by itself under its own air pressure (actually the normal diaphragm action).

So I do that a while. It's MUCH easier to just hold that position of restricting the outlet, than it is to try to manipulate the breathing muscles. I just hold it a while and let the body breathe slowly by itself. It's effortless, especially when you relax. "How slow" you breathe is entirely determined by how much you close off the airway, and nothing else. You can go immediately into a long slow breath without having to work up to it, and it takes hardly any effort. After a while you should feel calmer and your mind is "smoother".

What we do in secret, and separately from God, and thinking that it is not something God is aware of, and which we hope other people do not know about, and how we suffer in silence, and feel things that we don't want other people to know we feel, and think things that we don't want to admit to thinking, this is all us doing it in the 'darkness' of the ego.

Darkness is the absence of light (God) and there can only be a darkness if light is SHUT OUT, which you do by entering into some kind of private, secret world, where you do not 100% fully share things openly. Indeed, coming into the physical world is an attempt to enter into a secret, private world, where God's light is absent - a world of darkness and despair.

If you are not fully 'open', like the shutter on a camera, light cannot get all the way in. If the shutter is closed, you will have a picture of darkness. When you 'shut down', become closed, withdraw, hide, go into secret fantasy land, conceal, deny, resist, attack, or in any way enter into EGO, you are shutting out the light.

Things that you KEEP in the dark, remain seemingly unhealable because you are not allowing them to gain light exposure. Exposure to light shows them for what they are and dismisses them, effectively revealing that they only existed IN the dark and do not really exist IN the light at all.

Therefore, everything that you do in the dark, or in secret, or which you keep buried, or do not want to admit to, ONLY EXISTS so long as you KEEP it in the dark, because it is MADE FROM darkness itself. All illusions are made from darkness. They are not made from light.

So as you expose yourself to God/light/love, these dark things must be exposed to the light and seen IN the light, and since they are not made OF light they do not exist in the light, so when you look IN the light for them you will not find them, because they will have DISAPPEARED. Light shines away darkness because darkness is only the absence of light, not a real thing in itself. This is why shadows disappear when light illuminates the scene. This is why the darkness of night disappears when the sun comes up. Where does it go? It does not exist.

You can stay in the dark and keep your dark illusions and dark fantasies about how dark you are and how real the darkness is, OR, you can open up and expose yourself courageously to God, knowing that GOD DOES NOT ATTACK, and GOD LOVES YOU UNCONDITIONALLY, and ALLOW the light to heal you of this darkness. Love replaces darkness with itself, and you are NOT held accountable for being dark, because you are MADE OF LIGHT.

Darkness is illusion. Light is reality. In truth you are innocent and holy, but if you don't allow yourself to step into the light, you will believe you are sinful and guilty. Only in the dark, where you cannot even see properly, could you think you are sinful and guilty. Only in the light, where you can finally SEE, can you be ABLE to recognize that you are only pure and innocent.

"I cannot see in darkness but in light"

"I am not an illusion but a reality"

- ACIM

Introductory text prior to lesson 221 in the ACIM workbook - one of the Course's masterpieces on Forgiveness:

"What is Forgiveness?

Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in that view are all your sins forgiven. What is sin, except a false idea about God's Son? Forgiveness merely sees its falsity, and therefore lets it go. What then is free to take its place is now the Will of God.

An unforgiving thought is one which makes a judgment that it will not raise to doubt, although it is not true. The mind is closed, and will not be released. The thought protects projection, tightening its chains, so that distortions are more veiled and more obscure; less easily accessible to doubt, and further kept from reason. What can come between a fixed projection and the aim that it has chosen as its wanted goal?

An unforgiving thought does many things. In frantic action it pursues its goal, twisting and overturning what it sees as interfering with its chosen path. Distortion is its purpose, and the means by which it would accomplish it as well. It sets about its furious attempts to smash reality, without concern for anything that would appear to pose a contradiction to its point of view.

Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. It merely looks, and waits, and judges not. He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is.

Do nothing, then, and let forgiveness show you what to do, through Him Who is your Guide, your Savior and Protector, strong in hope, and certain of your ultimate success. He has forgiven you already, for such is His function, given Him by God. Now must you share His function, and forgive whom He has saved, whose sinlessness He sees, and whom He honors as the Son of God."

For many years I have thought that there are kind of 3 states. There is false perception, then true perception, then heaven. And this is kind of true, and some aspects of ACIM support this.

However, what there really is are just two states. Heaven and hell, reality and illusions. Life and death. Knowledge and Perception.When we think about true perception it's easy to think of it as a state in and of itself. But we need to remember we're talking about PERCEIVING. And that means it's much more to do with "looking at" something.

If you ask yourself, what does false perception LOOK AT, it really kind of looks AT itself. Because false perception IS an internalized, isolated, exclusive state, where perception feeds upon itself and is blinded by form. It does not really see anything, and it cannot see reality. It is selfish and self-deceptive. It's like an obsession with itself, a closed perception that does not see.

When you then look at what the course says about true perception, it's much more to do with NOT dwelling on itself. NOT dwelling on the body. Looking BEYOND illusion. Overlooking. Seeing past. And there is a great deal of evidence that it entails an ability to literally SEE reality. To see God, Christ, the Sonship, perfection, etc, which are IN heaven.

The more I look into it the more it makes sense. Perception is about "what you look at" or how you look at it. Yes you have states of mind - for example wrong mindendess (or closed mindedness) produces false perception. While open mindedness or miracle/right mindedness produces true perception. But from these seeming "states" or the states from which perception EMITS, perception itself LOOKS and is a form of vision. So it needs something to look AT. So let's say...

False perception LOOKS AT HELL.

True perception LOOKS AT HEAVEN.

While there seem to be two "states of mind" within dreaming, ie wrong-mindedness and right-mindedness, really when it comes to perception there is either "the inability to see reality' (per the body which cannot really see reality), and the vision of christ which can see christ. "Love looks upon love" etc.

If wrong mindedness CAUSES perceptual blindness and an inability to see PAST the illusions of falseness itself, right mindedness CAUSES vision and an ability to see PAST illusions. The only thing that is BEYOND illusions, is GODS KINGDOM.

This seems to in many cases line up with what the course says and in its wording, as to how "the real world" is a PERCEPTION OF THE KINGDOM. That the innocence can see God. That perception can even see "the real world" (heaven) under the holy spirit's guidance. That you can see the face of christ, who is in heaven. etc.

So again I come back to, false perception being like living in a prison cell inside a room with no windows. And true perception is like living in a glass greenhouse where you can see THROUGH the walls and see the outside environment (heaven). The PERCEPTION OF the real world - the perception OF heaven, using perception TO see, is still an illusion. "The real world still is but a dream"... BUT, it IS a perception ABOUT heaven - reality. And it is so close to true sight that it makes crossing over to reality easy. It's like window-shopping then going inside the store.

I don't really see anything that contradicts this model. In fact I see MORE contradictions in the model that true perception is "cut off from heaven" completely. As though, we're hiding inside a completely dark room the whole time with NO ACCESS whatsoever to reality, and only upon leaving the room AFTER true perception do we experience even a hint of God. This seems to fly in the face of so much of what the course says, about you bringing light to the world, a reflection of heaven on earth, how earth can reflect heaven's light, how the light of heaven can shine into the world, how love of God can shine into the world, etc. Heaven clearly LEAKS INTO the dream realm through its radiance. That's how you be the light of the world.

I am finding that this simpler model of "two states", heaven and hell, or reality and illusions, makes things a lot SIMPLER to deal with. We can just look to "what is true in reality" versus "illusions which are false". Or look to God's laws and the nature of the soul, versus the laws of the world and the nature of the ego. It's a much easier comparison, between opposites.

We can also then see that forgiveness really is about overlooking illusions entirely, looking BEYOND them, and there's nothing beyond them but reality. So forgiveness, ie atonement as acceptance of truth, is really about reaching out to heaven from WITHIN the dream. Sitting in the dream with goggles on, looking out beyond the walls of spacetime, to heaven... which is truly "the real world". A reality.

This also then makes more sense in terms of how the course says that God gave the real world to his son.... if the real world is a state in the middle of two other states, it would imply god created the real world to be a permanent creation, which it cannot be.

The quesiton then becomes much easier to think about. Are you aligning with God, or with ego? With life or with death? With light or darkness? With truth or lies? And as you APPRAOCH total alignment with truth you are still within the realm of perception, up until the end, when you cross over into heaven completely. This is akin to walking towards the transparent walls, then passing through the door into the reality of the kingdom beyond.

It's then not so much to do with trying to aim to enter a state of forgiveness or atonement, but that you want to become ABLE TO SEE REALITY, to see past this world to the Kingdom. This also reveals that "it its impossible to see two worlds" and "beyond this world there is a world I want" ties into wanting the Kingdom, or at least a perception of it, NOT some kind of pretend "in-between" state. An inbetween state has no meaning of its own and is logically unsupported. It means nothing other than to say it LOOKS AT one of two opposites. There is either the Kingdom or not the Kingdom, there is nothing else.

We would rather lay down and pretend to be dead than face what we think is the wrath of God.

We would hope to take over His duty of punishing us, by punishing ourselves in suffering and martyrdom so much that He might actually pass us by.

We tell ourselves, if we suffer enough and really put on a good show for how much we should suffer, then God might take 'pity' on us and, while laughing at ourpatheticness, decide to pass us by as being 'not worth the effort'.

Sickness is a defense against the truth, and this kind of behavior is a defense mechanism to try to defend ourselves from God.

We would worship sickness as an idol, by making sure that we suffer in silence. We would prefer to do it in isolation, and especially keep it hidden so that nobody knows about it.

We would also keep away from us all loved ones and friends and anyone who might offer signs of 'love' or 'joining' because those are outlawed when sickness is being worshipped.

Also when a person is in sickness, sickness will itself become 'all powerful' and overthrow all other rules and demand that it be obeyed and worshipped and give a special 'free pass' to get away with anything. All other normal modes of interaction are off and nothing that might bring healing is allowed in.

A fortress is erected around sickness to protect it and to keep it in the dark, just in case anyone might realize that it has no foundation or who might strip it of its false decorations. Only in the dark, behind closed doors, secretly suffered, can it maintain a sense of power or torture or truth.

Expose sickness to the light and it's crumbles and withers and disappears. Light, love, sharing, joining, oneness, all are antidotes for sickness. Openness and a willingness to reveal sick ideas of separation and punishment to the One Who Is Open (God) is sure to shine a healing light. And that is what the sick person does not want.

Lives of quiet desperation. Suffering in silence. Taking a hit for the team. Being the martyr who carries all the burden. Being the whipping boy or the one who keeps everything afloat, leeched off by everyone else. The poor sucker who gets to suffer in the dark, alone and quiet and abandoned. All of these are identities and roles that arise in the worship of sickness, put on the altar as an offering to the God of Death. Which, by the way, does not exist.

The ego's God is the God of sickness and punishment. The real God could not conceive of such things. The real God has no concept of sickness in Him, knowing it is forever impossible to separate from Himself or not be completely joined with His creation.

In truth there is no sickness and there is no death. All of the rest is just denial, a pretend play at acting as if you should suffer for some good reason. There is no good reason. There is no justification for separation because it is impossible.

You are not sick, you are just playing dead.

God still loves you.

What if our mind has the power to modify the world, given we are the dreamer and it is a dream - our effect? What if by mental intention you can cause events to proceed differently? What if you can steer outcomes? What if you can change physical matter? What if the world is really NOT the seemingly fixed, closed, solid, permanent-seeming thing that we think it is, and that's all an illusion?

This is the next area of exploration for me having recently focused very much on how the world is very locked into its nature. By realizing the world is stuck being the way it is, I had to then naturally ask myself, how does one go about escaping its impossible ways, forgiving it, and being free of it? How can it be overridden? And this is now leading to me to the simple progression of QUESTIONING the world, what it is, and what our minds can do to CHANGE IT DIRECTLY. And the fact that IT IS THE EFFECT OF MY DREAMING.

Jesus says in ACIM that if you change your mind about the world, ALL THE WORLD MUST CHANGE. He also says the world is an effect, and therefore, that if you change the CAUSE in your mind the world MUST change. Like LITERALLY PHYSICALLY change. He also tells us we are the dreamer of the dream. To me what he is actually getting at is that our minds are powerful, thought exerts real influence, the physical is not really physical but dream-stuff, and we have the POWER to modify it.

I've seen some evidence for this INFLUENCE of mind over the "physical world". so I'll tell you some stories.

At my job, I deal with computer stuff, as a sort of IT-department fix-it person at times. But it would turn out that very often the problems people came up with would seem to "fix themselves" when I showed up. They definitely had the problem beforehand, but then suddenly it seemed like something "in the world" just happened out of the blue to changed the course of events. The problem became seemingly "magically" (miraculously really) solved. It usually took the form of someone realizing something, a change of mind, some fact that was overlooked comes to light, or even literally physical devices which were not working suddenly work and no-one could explain why.

Over time some people called me "the computer whisperer" because it literally seemed uncanny that when I came along to help them the problem just melted into "not a problem any more". And I mean on a physical level. Something kept transpiring in terms of the FORM of how it seemed to change, something tangible or what you might call what APPEAR to be natural changes in circumstances, environmental factors, whatever, but although it LOOKED LIKE just normal "reasons why" stuff got fixed, it was actually due to something in my mind that caused a change.

There are also some times where in my mind I am not interested in playing into a problem or having to deal with an issue. So my mental attitude is one of "I do not agree with this", not like in an annoyed wanting it to go away sense, but like I don't believe in this - not buying it. I hold firm somehow to another truth, or perhaps to another intent or desire, and somehow this has a power in it. And this power seems to alter the course of events and cause problems to go away.

A boss approaches with some issue and then I mentally reject it or want nothing to do with it and suddenly he seems to realize something or changes his mind or things just suddenly resolve themselves. And I can't tell you how man times when I've needed some "time to myself" he just seems to have somewhere else to be. What I'm literally saying here is along the lines of .... when you walk through a dying forest flowers start springing up around your feet out of nowhere. That would be a very vivid example and I'm not at that level but it seems like that is possible.

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures came to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality."

Mind can have such power and influence that it can actually produce real changes in what we call "physical stuff". In effect, your mind can "dream" a different dream and have power over what the dream contains. And as I read about how the physical world/earth IS A DREAM, and see Jesus's references to us dreaming of worldly events and how he calls it a dream, it seems to make so much sense that our mind ACTUALLY IS dreaming and producing the environment in realtime, AND it can change the environment to another form at will. And behind material happenings there are "mind forces" at play, including the atonement plan.

"But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life."

Some years ago some people were walking down a path and it was spring, so the blossom petals on a tree were falling across the path. The couple walked under it and the petals fell onto them and for some reason this was a happy thing to me. I watched this from inside a room with a closed window, from probably a couple-hundred feet away. I had a sudden feeling of joy in my mind out of nowhere, and suddenly literal blossom petals materialized in front of my face, inside the closed window in the room with me.

Another time I was looking for money in a coin box, in which there was no "pound coins". There were only 1p a 2p bronze coins left (british). I rifled through insisting that there must be higher value money there. I did this for some time maybe even a minute, and somehow in my mind I was convinced and insistent that there MUST be some higher currency in there. Suddenly in front of my eyes as if they had been there all along, yet out of nowhere, two pound coins appeared on the top of the pile. There was no magical effect of anything to them being there, they were just not there one moment and the next they were there. And they were definitely not in the coin box hidden before.

There have also been other times where if I am fairly centered in my mind and in what I believe is true, or perhaps what Jesus calls "being strong in the truth" or at least clear about when someone is bullshitting, if I mentally stand my ground and do not buy into someone projecting or scapegoating me, it actually has an influence on them. Something changes in their mind and they suddenly become self-aware of what they're doing as if they adopted my view of them, and will suddenly realize there's something about what they said which isn't true. And then they will take it back and reconsider what their position is, because somehow the truth-focus in MY mind influenced theirs.

"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them."

"The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will."

I've had to pick up subtle clues and nuances to come to realize this and this is definitely still new territory, but it seems clear that this world we're calling a physical solid world IS NOT THAT. It is in truth actually just a bunch of dream images. And our minds are not just inert little observers, they are powerful and quite capable of CAUSING the dream to change. And by dream I am NOT talking about projected meanings and interpretations of perception, I'm talking about the PHYSICAL MATERIAL WORLD. It can be changed by the mind. Mind literally has power over matter. It can steer events, cause objects to materialize, can manipulate weather, and can do all kinds of stuff - including healing sickness and reversing death and decay.

My wife has a strong will also and she has this ability too. In the past we would joke about having power to control the weather, which has proven a number of times. If I ask her to pray for me for example, my whole inner experience lights up and becomes far more happy and light and energized. She is quite capable of having a powerful influence, even at a distance. One time that we went to visit the UK for example usually the weather is crap and very consistently cloudy, but for like 3 days solid as soon as we arrived it became very clear and sunny non-stop which was very unusual. Also I know I've had influence in calming storms a couple times that I've tried to do that.

I am also convinced from some stories other people have shared that our minds influence each other including each other's bodies. Such as that for example a person was in fear and this fear was affecting the other person they were with and causing a medical condition. And then as this was pointed out the fear lifted and the medical condition just went away quickly. How is that possible unless mind has the power to influence the minds and bodies of others? That it can actually cause a different dream to just emerge out of nowhere?

Are we to really believe that the world is literally this kind of paper-thin fragile tentative sort of "material only" existence, in which everything is just the laws of physics holding it together and there's nothing else to it besides solid form? Because that's just how it APPEARS to be. The world is not actually that, because it's a dream, and it is an illusion, and it presents an illusion of a world, and this illusion CAN BE CHANGED BY THE MIND.

"Appearances deceive BUT CAN BE CHANGED."

"Yet nothing in the world of dreams remains without the hope of change and betterment, for here is NOT where changelessness is found."

"You CAN change form, BECAUSE it is not true. It COULD not be reality, BECAUSE it can be changed."

We are being asked to become aware that the world is an EFFECT of our mind. Jesus literally says "You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts" and "Both heaven and earth are in your mind." The whole planet, the whole dream, is a mental construct. It's a fairytale of imagination in the mind, and the mind is literally projecting an imaginary world complete with all its "physical" details. And even though it LOOKS physical and as if it has laws that govern it and reasons why it cannot BE changed, that's all illusions, because it can EASILY be changed by a mind that knows it is dreaming.

"But hold out your JOINED hands and touch this heavy-seeming block, and you will learn how easily your fingers slip through its nothingness. It is no solid wall. And only an illusion stands between you and the holy Self you share."

So imagine the physical world is in fact like a LUCID DREAM. A dream in which you are awake and aware that IT IS a dream. And then you are aware that even though it appears solid and fixed, it is in fact your dream, and you CAN DO ANYTHING. "There is nothing my holiness cannot do." You can literally put your hands through physical matter, you can materialize objects, you can fly if you want to. You can change one thing into another. This is all a totally malleable dream environment, NOT really a hard solid fixed physical reality.

Do not be deceived by its illusion of hardness, solidity and so on. "What He (Holy Spirit) enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them."

And as MIRACLE WORKERS we are being trained and asked to adopt a position as the "dreamers of the dream", where we recognize it IS coming from us, and WE CAN CHANGE IT in any way we see fit at any time, just by the power of the mind. The Holy Spirit is capable of manipulating the atoms of the world, just as Jesus also says that space and time are under his control.

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind MUST BE STRONGER. Every miracle demonstrates this."

Jesus was masterful at this "dream manipulation". His mind was in touch with being THE CAUSE (the dreamer), and knew the world was HIS EFFECT. Therefore he was not a victim of it in any way, and had power OVER IT. He recognized he was not affected BY IT in any way because he was DREAMING it - putting it there. This is what resurrection is about, the SURMOUNTING of death - the ability to have POWER OVER DEATH. Which includes the ability to reverse "physical death" and to manipulate bodies by the mind, into any state, and any form.

He was able to give body parts that were missing, he could walk on water, calm storms, change outcomes, turn objects into other objects, multiply and materialize objects out of nowhere, appear in different body forms, could likely levitate and fly if he so willed it, and pretty much NO LIMIT to what he could do. The examples of his USE OF his power only paints a limited picture of the fact that he was able to do literally anything. And so can you, because this world is NOT a fixed solid world, it's totally at your whim and under your power!

We have barely begun to realize the sheer power of our minds, the influence our minds have on the world, the ability of our minds to change matter, the ability of our minds to heal both mind AND body, and the influence we have on ALL THE WORLD when we change our mind. Our healing literally heals the world. Our focus on truth literally awakens our brothers. And our broadcast signal of love literally transforms the dream in unlimited ways.

Miracles as expressions of love are expressions of love from a powerful mind. I think in ACIM terms perhaps miracles are actually a SUBSET of what the mind can do. When mind is aware and expresses, which must also be a loving state, it has tremendous power, and this can CHANGE THE DREAM. It can cause literal physical transformations, impossible changes, violation of laws, breaking of space and time and distance and possibility. It can heal the sick and raise the dead, produce and change objects, and even move entire mountains.

This is not even a difficult feat for such a power, but so many people are afraid and skeptical and not even suspecting that such a power of POSSIBLE, yet alone that it is in their own minds. "While expressions like "think big" give some recognition to the power of thought, they still come nowhere near the truth. You do not expect to grow when you say it, because you don't really believe it. It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains."

"Why is it strange to you that faith can move mountains? This is indeed a little feat for such a power."