From a human perspective we might think of life as starting and birth and ending in death. This is typical ego self-interest of course.

The world itself is more of a cyclic, regurgitating, constant transformation and change, transitioning from birth to death and back to birth again.

There are things in this world which seem to be new, to be born, new babies, new leaves, new offspring, new mornings, etc. It's not all about endings.

There are foods which are technically dead foods, which are fed to babies. What do baby tigers eat other than the carcasses of dead animals?

The rotting corpses of humans become food for worms and bacterias and flies, which use it to manufacture newborn worms and bacterias and flies. And so death becomes life again.

Cells divide and produce what seems to be new life forms. And yet the very same division ensures their eventual breakdown and dysfunction. They are born in separation and end in separation.

Technically when a human body dies, the materials the body is made of do not vanish. They just change form and redistribute. If buried they become the soil from which flowers grow. The chemical compounds become fertiliser and the building blocks for new growths.

Even as the tree leaves die off, the leaves settle to the ground and rot, but thus turn into rich soil, which in turn becomes the fertile ground for the emergence of new trees.

Around and around it goes, cycling from starts to endings and back to starts again. Birth and death are just two sides of the same coin. We seem to prefer one over the other, celebrating births and hating deaths, but they're really part of the same system.

As science would say, nothing here can really be destroyed, it can only change form. It's all energy, moving around and turning into one thing then another. This is the world's way. It's not really just a world of what we'd call death, it's also a world of what we'd call life. Life from corpses.

"It holds an image of the Son of God in which he is "laid to rest" in devastation's arms, where worms await to greet him and to last a little while by his destruction."

Illusions back and forth, sometimes it seems alive, sometimes dead. A world of opposites. A world of contrasts. A world of changes. Where even death is not a final end, because the materials of the dead become the materials of the living.

The whole system is one of every possible form of change, every appearance, every shift and change and transformation. Every way possible that there is no permanence and no absolutes. Not even physical death is absolute. It's all relativity.

A birth is just as much an illusion as a death. A newborn flower is just as much dead as a wilted one. And so the world mixes life and death together without really differentiating them, and thus producing confusion. It's only us humans who keep segmenting it out and labelling some parts as one thing or another.

"This is regarded as "the way of nature," not to be raised to question, but to be accepted as the "natural" law of life. The cyclical, the changing and unsure; the undependable and the unsteady, waxing and waning in a certain way upon a certain path"

Yes ultimately all physical things lead to what we call death, but so too are the new things just as much a part of dreaming. Sunrises and sunsets. Births and deaths. A phoenix rising from the ashes. Ashes becoming bodies again. It's all a big soup of uncertainty and untruth.

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning."

What if you decide that you are not going to die?

Immediately this flies in the face of everything the world's population holds as true and inevitable. It flies in the face of an entire weight of collective thoughts and beliefs about what is normal and natural in this universe.

You wouldn't be the first to accomplish this either. St Germain for example was known to be "in a body", maintaining agelessness, for several centuries. Babaji is known to be hanging around without aging. There are others.

Jesus calls for every A Course in Miracles student to accomplish this also. He asks us to swear not to die. He tells us to choose resurrection, to not attack the body, to not make it sick, and to heal it. He asks us to make it a picture of health not a picture of crucifixion.

He asks us not to make the body age, or decay, or be sick, or die, but instead to maintain it in a state of guaranteed perfect health indefinitely, for as long as this is useful. That could mean thousands of years, or just a few.

You probably have assumed all your life that just because everyone else's bodies grow old and die and no-one can seem to cure death, that this is the only option. That death is inevitability and it's your fate. Particularly that death cannot be reversed, yet alone prevented.

You see the seasons come and go, the leaves die off, the flowers wilt, the animals turn to carcasses, and people are put in the ground. And we think this is normal and natural and unavoidable. Something to be "accepted" and adjusted to and made out to be something you can do "in peace".

But Jesus is asking a much higher calling for us. He wants us to use the body as a symbol of eternal life, a breath of immortality, to those who have grown tired of the fetid scent of death.

He wants us to allow the Holy Spirit to heal and resurrect the body through miracles, to present a picture of total health and loveliness to your brothers so as to teach them there is no sin and no attack.

He wants us to demonstrate, in person, physically, that there is no death, and that we have power over death. And that means that we make it possible for this exact body we have right now to not die. To not decay. To not grow old and withered and look like a prune. And to be incapable of corruption.

Are you willing to take up this challenge? If you're going to take this course the whole way then it is going to require of you at some time to actually commit to not dying. You cannot have a shred of belief in death or experience of death in your mind and being if you are to reach the end of the curriculum, which is resurrection - death's total opposite.

So you might as well decide right now. I am not going to die this time. I am going to move towards health, life, happiness, wholeness, healing, miracles, the power of the mind over the body, and I refuse to simply go the way of the worms along the funeral procession of death and decay.

How about you decide today, that you will not intent to die this time, you will not merely unconsciously accept notions that you will die, and you will not allow the body to die. It is your challenge to become miraculous and to heal the body's ailments and cure its diseases and undo death itself. To demonstrate your immortality using the body as a tool to prove your mind is stronger than death.

Few will rise to the challenge. It seems ridiculous. It seems impossible. It flies in the face of everything. Just stop and think for a minute. What if in this lifetime right now, with this body, you simply are not going to go through death? What if you're going to simply keep this body, heal it, resurrect it, protect it through miracles and the Holy Spirit, and maintain it in perfect functioning? For as long as you like?

Once the body is being healed by a sane mind, it cannot become sick, nor can it die. So now it is not possible to leave it through death. "A dream of death cannot be left through death but by truth". Truth means resurrection and life.

The body becomes a shining symbol of immortality and you can longer leave it through sickness or decay or suffering. The old doorway to darkness is closed. And the only way to then leave is to simply lay it aside, without decay, without attack, without sickness, in which the body does not corrupt or destroy or symbolize hell. And then it disappears.

What if you don't have to die physically? And what if you can resurrect all the way to invulnerability and immortality? And what if you can prevent the body from being attackable? And what if you do not have to keep aging? What if you can fly in the face of everything the world believes and choose not to die?

"You cannot die unless you choose to do so."

"No one dies without their own consent."

"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

"The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked."

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all."

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you.Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies.Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all."

"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible. ... Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching"

"What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."

"Swear not to die, you holy Son of God! You make a bargain that you cannot keep. The Son of Life cannot be killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that must be one."

Here's something that is very radical to many people. And this will sound crazy and ridiculous. But here is a fact.

Anything that seems to happen in this world is taking place in a dream, has NO REAL CONSEQUENCES, and does not cause anything to really happen. Ever!

Mind... "It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen (ANYTHING YOU DO) never has occurred, the changes wrought (sins you commit) are substance-less, and all events (every consequence you seem to cause, ANYTHING that occurs) are nowhere."

Sin occurs in this world, through the body. "The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible."

And this means, any SIN that you committed here, through your body, anything you DID TO SOMEONE, anything that you "hurt", any damage you inflicted, anything you CAUSED here, any mistakes you made, any names you called people, any arguments you had, any attacks you perpetrated, anything murderous you committed, any crime, any hateful relationship, any accusation, ALL OF IT... HAS NOT HAPPENED IN REALITY.

This leads to a simple fact, relating to your HEALING. A REQUIREMENT for healing, remembering that only the ATONEMENT can be said to truly CURE you of this sense of "I sinned"....

YOU WILL NOT be able to LET GO of WHAT YOU DID IN SPACETIME, UNTIL you are able to recognize, believe, and accept, that you DID NOT DO what you think you did.

This truth flies in the face of everything that your senses are telling you. It flies in the face of all evidence, all proof, all consequences. It flies in the face of the ramifications, fallout, consequences, chain reactions, effects, and all outcomes that seemed to be set in motion "because of what you did".

It literally means that you MUST DENY, WITH TRUTH, that you DID what you think you did. You MUST DENY all of the consequences and all "proof". This is where it becomes radical and seemingly ridiculously crazy, because in order to accept the ATONEMENT truth that THERE IS NO SIN, or that NOTHING HAPPENED, you HAVE to IGNORE all of this so-called "evidence".

In fact, you have to get your mind to the point where you recognize that "what you did" (sin) in space and time, in the past, or what you are doing now, IS NOT HAPPENING and DID NOT HAPPEN IN REALITY. Because this world IS NOT REALITY. This world has to BE not reality, IN ORDER FOR the atonement to be true. Because you can't be accepting that what bodies do is REAL and expect to escape from sin. It's impossible!

You MUST not believe in anything that has happened in this world otherwise EVERYTHING that "has happened" is the literal unquestionable, irreversible sinful truth. If bodies and what bodies DO is real or has any truth in it, it CANNOT be undone. If bodily activities have REAL consequences, real effects, the body is CAUSAL. Which makes sin real. Anything the body does is effectively sin, even breathing. It must be recognized as NOT REAL otherwise sin becomes real.

The body and its sins were the entire device by which we TRIED TO MAKE SIN REAL. We made bodies in order to have something to attack WITH. Bodies attacking bodies, sinning against bodies. We made bodies in order to try to prove that SINS HAPPEN. That sins produce PROOF and EVIDENCE that "something happened". Something you can look at with the body, and point to with the body's finger, and label as "THAT EVIDENCE PROVES THERE WAS A SIN". The world's entire "legal" system is based on this lie.

So it's very radical but until you can get to the point where you recognize and correctly frame your DEEDS as "DID NOT OCCUR IN REALITY"... that NOTHING REAL was threatened, that reality has not been hurt or damaged or caused BY you, you will find that you CANNOT LET GO. You won't be able to let go of a feeling of guilt, inferiority, unworthiness, shame, fear etc. In fact, until this is accepted fully and completely we cannot let go of death.

The atonement CURES. FULLY! It literally ERASES all trace of sin and death and makes them IMPOSSIBLE. And "only atonement can be said to cure." It is a REAL CURE, because it uproots the ENTIRE "event" that you think happened. It recognized, AS FORGIVENESS, that what you think you did YOU DID NOT DO, IT DID NOT HAPPEN, IT WAS NOT REAL, IT DID NOT TAKE PLACE IN REALITY, YOU DID NOT SIN AND THERE ARE NO CONSEQUENCES. And therefore, you MUST STILL BE INNOCENT.

This leads to the recognition, and acceptance, and allowance, that GOD STILL FINDS YOU INNOCENT, and therefore that God still loves you! That you ACCEPT GOD'S TRUTH. You will ONLY be able accept the love of God by accepting that you have NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG. Any belief that you sinned, you will hold as PROOF that you CANNOT BE LOVED because you find yourself unworthy of love, because you are not innocent enough. You will reason that God DOES NOT, SHOULD NOT, AND CANNOT love you, because you "really did sin". And "real sin" IS a belief in unforgiveness. Not merely the belief that you DID something, but also the belief that IT CANNOT BE UNDONE.

**MIRACLES** are the movement towards forgiveness, as atonement, which UNDOES what the world of sin testifies can never be undone. This DIRECTLY ties into the fact that you MUST DEMONSTRATE THE ABSENCE OF PROOF OF SIN in order to TRULY believe and live the truth that you did not cause sinful effects. TRUE forgiveness heals the mind, AND ERASES THE EVIDENCE. Proof that "it happened" cannot remain. In the acceptance that you DID NOT DO what you think you did, you are setting in motion the UNDOING of the consequences. The Holy Spirit HAS the power to undo ALL the consequences of your sinful decisions if you will let him.

To set yourself free from GUILT, you MUST accept the CURE of the atonement. You must accept that you DID NOT SIN. Not that you "did something but it wasn't sinful". But rather that you WERE MISTAKEN TO BELIEVE THAT YOU DID IT AT ALL! Yes, this means you must accept that it did not really OCCUR. That any "occurrence" was A DREAM. It was an ILLUSION of a sin "happening". It did NOT HAPPEN in reality and so did not really happen at all. What your BODY told you HAPPENED was a LIE! This requires you to QUESTION even your OWN EVIDENCE, even your MEMORY, even lingering "physical proof", that seems to "tell you" that you really DID do something that you can't deny.

YOU MUST DENY THAT SIN HAPPENED. Sin is impossible! You must deny that you ever DID anything here at all. We are ONLY dreaming of a made up fantasy world in which MADE UP FANTASY STUFF seems to happen. NONE of it is really happening. NO ONE IS GUILTY. NO ONE HAS **EVER** SINNED. All sin is an illusion and a lie. EVERYONE IS PERMANENTLY INNOCENT. Accepting that is the ONLY way to become WILLING TO LET THE SIN GO, because only by recognizing it WAS NOT REALLY SIN will you ALLOW yourself to forgive yourself.

Accepting your innocence is your goal and it will HEAL YOU and set you FREE FROM ALL SUFFERING. This is why accepting atonement is your number one responsibility. It is the only act that FINALLY WORKS. ONLY accepting atonement can truly CURE YOU! It has the power to undo sin and death and restore your IMMORTALITY.

YOU ARE INNOCENT AND HOLY FOREVER. GOD CREATED YOU INNOCENT AND HOLY FOREVER. Accepting that this is TRUE, CURES the separation.

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone (anything you DID!). And ***hopelessness and death MUST disappear*** before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt. The ancient Calling of the Father to His Son, and of the Son unto his own, will yet be the last trumpet that the world will ever hear. Brother, there is no death. And this you learn when you but wish to ***show your brother that you had no hurt of him***. He thinks your blood is on his hands, and so he stands condemned. But it is given you to ***SHOW him, by your healing***, that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream."

"***Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred*** (HAS NOT OCCURRED!!!). It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees ***there was no sin*** (YOU DID NOT DO ANYTHING EVEN IF YOU THINK YOU DID!!!) And in this 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."

"I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace.

I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.

I want to decide otherwise, because I want to be at peace.

I do not feel guilty, because ***the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him***.

I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

When Jesus says that nothing can happen without our consent, and that nobody can die without their own consent, what he's saying seems pretty extreme.

We are so used to living in such a way that we constantly believe things happen by accident, or that something can "go wrong", or that there is unfairness and injustice, or that victims have nothing to do with asking to be victimized, or that war is a haphazard chaos.

Yes these are very common perceptions and this is what we're up against, these beliefs and ways of perceiving which fall for all kinds of illusions and trickery. On the surface it definitely appears that all of these things are true, that nobody wants to be victimized, that bad stuff just happens, that things go wrong, and that we don't want to die.

But that's the challenge, you see. That's the spiritual challenge, because what many do not know is that this entire world is a big trick, a set up, orchestrated by those to whom nothing happens by mistake, and who have such power of creation that if they so choose it, it will happen, and nothing else will happen. I know this sounds like some kind of 'God' pulling the strings. But in truth you are God-like.

So all these beliefs about having not chosen, about not having freedom, about being affected, about stuff happening that we don't want, and about the horrible idea that death is just going to happen to you against your will, ALL of these have to be questioned and undone completely. Because they are all false. They are all lies, that everyone is falling for 24/7. Yet as Jesus says in ACIM, you made sickness and death and you can abolish both.

This is why A Course in Miracles is so radical. The Truth flies in the face of how everything appears in this world. It goes against how everything is set up and how everything was deliberately designed to look like it proved we did not choose this. This entire world is a cover-up in which the Son of God is pretending to hide from a made-up enemy, and He very much is responsible for animating every single character and event in this dream regardless of whether He appears to suffer at His own hand.

Attempting to 'wake up' from the illusion of this world does not seem to be easy. It's a huge mind-fuck. As the Course says, we do not escape this illusion through death, but by TRUTH. Only the real Truth can set you free. And as a certain movie says, "you can't handle the truth".

Well, you can handle it... when you're ready to accept it. Because it's a pretty huge Truth that is not at all like what this world seems to suggest is true. And to go there, to be open to it, seems like a huge journey somewhat 'against' the world. But everyone is making this journey, and sooner or later everyone will come to realize what the Truth really is, and this entire universe will disappear.

The ego is a state of insanity, in which what is true and false are completely confused with each other. In ego we have conditional love. We believe that some things are just downright evil, guilty, bad and wrong. We categorize the world into a hierarchy and we decide certain things like murder, war, sickness etc are all hell, while other things like sunsets and rainbows are lovable.

Unconditional love on the other hand would say that it loves ALL the time regardless. It sees innocence and harmlessness everywhere. Which means it continues feeling love even in the face of evil and war, attack and murder and death. It keeps smiling regardless. It even finds something beautiful to see in it.

To the ego it's going to have a reaction that this is completely insane. To suggest that war is not bad, and sickness is not wrong, and all forms of suffering are lovable. You'll feel like protesting against the idea of awakening because it flies in the face of everything the world believes. It goes against your moral compass and your sense of values and of what is good and evil.

Real love doesn't change when situations change, it doesn't adapt to the situation and it doesn't pay any attention to the form of what's happening. It could be considered oblivious and seemingly inconsiderate in a sense.

ACIM it telling us that we need to find a way to love the world even though, in and of itself, its own nature seems unlovable. Even the war and destruction and murder has to be somehow forgivable, and forgiveness is an earthly form of love. A form of unconditional love. But the idea of loving hell, or loving attackers, or loving abusers, or loving punishment, it all starts seeming outrageously blasphemous and offensive to the ego.

The ego in its insanity always believes that anything truly sane is insane. It thinks God is evil. It believes heaven is hell. It wants nothing to do with the truth or the Holy Spirit. Ideas of unconditional love are seen as treacherous and ignorant and lacking compassion for the "real suffering". Anything which really makes true sense is seen as completely nonsense.

This is why it can seem challenging to "wake up" because our egos actually believe the direction we need to head in is going to take us further into insanity, closer to evil, and away from safety. At first the notion that you can see beauty in something "the son of God made in hate" seems impossible and ridiculous. The idea that objects and forms of separation and attack could be regarded as representing the truth, seems completely false.

But somehow we still have to find a way to consider how it may be possible that there is a higher vantage point, capable of being forgiving towards attackers, capable of loving hell, and even capable of translating hell into heaven. The idea that earth can reflect heaven in spite of its completely flawed-seeming nature, at least on the level of form, seems far out of reach, and unwanted, but must be accomplished if we are to rise above the battlefield into the light.

The happy truth behind every seeming disasterous illusion in this world, is that nothing has gone wrong at all and we are still with God.

The happy truth is also that it is actually possible to be immortal, as spirit, and to even manifest a seemingly incorruptible body if you so choose. Doing so is nothing compared to your real power.

All things that could ever go wrong to hurt you, come from you, and are a choice, and therefore not choosing them renders you invulnerable. If you do not see this clearly it's because you believe the *illusion* that people don't do things to themselves.

Nothing happens to anyone without not only their consent but without them actually literally orchestrating and doing it to themselves. So this myth of vulnerability, that you can be affected, or that death can come along and attack you without having the power to stop it, is a complete lie that has been perpetuated for millennia.

The happy truth is that all the things that you're concerned about, are not true. And nothing is really wrong. And nobody is really getting hurt. Of course that flies in the face of what *appears* to be happening, because that's us falling for the illusion that people aren't choosing.

If we could recognize and see the choices everyone is making and expose the entire back-story of how everyone has deliberately chosen every single thing they have ever experienced, we would not be able to believe for a second that something can happen to us against our will. And our belief in death would be totally blown out of the water.

It's only because the truth seems to be hidden, i.e. your are unaware of it, that it seems plausible that things are happening to you that you did not ask for. And this also means that once you are aware, you will no longer make yourself suffer and die, and lo-and-behold will find that nothing beyond you has the power to make you die either.

As such you are completely protected, perfectly safe, only love is real, and really this is all just a big joke. The Son of God is playing with illusions and toying with death as part of His little fantasy story-telling adventure, and one day we will wake up to experience this truth and know that nothing ever really happened to anyone.

And then we'll remember to laugh

"Temptation has one lesson it would teach, in all its forms, wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach. Would you BE this, if Christ appeared to you in all His glory, asking you but this, "Choose once again if you would take your place among the Saviors of the world, or would remain in hell, and hold your brothers there." For He HAS come, and He IS asking this."

Temptation is quite a big thing. The entire world was made as a temptation. There is an ACIM quote that says exactly that but I couldn't find it. What does it tempt you to do or believe? In and of itself it is nothing but it has the "potential", if you are not vigilant for reality, to seemingly coerce you into believing that something is true that is not. That something is real or happening that is not.

This was the purpose of the world you made. It was designed not only to shut God out but to also tempt you, taunt you, suggest to you, and to try to convince you, that some things are true and real which are not. In your "susceptibility" to temptation you fall for these illusions, these tricks, these deceptions, and believe in them. Only by not believing in them are you able to overlook the temptation and not be caught in it, which is forgiveness. To forgive is to overlook temptation.

So often we are tempted to believe something based merely on its seeming presence in the world. Someone's body seems sick. Something bad seemed to happen. Something went wrong. Whatever it is, it's a temptation. You are being tempted by "the ego" to believe lies and illusions. Your body's sense are stimulated by these sources of temptation all the time. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile inputs, all designed to suggest to you "something is there", "something is real", "something is happening".

When you ARE being tempted and have fallen for it, and you are in this heavily tempted ego unconscious state where you are just on autopilot believing the world is real, there isn't a significant seeming contrast between what's happening and reality. But as you start to step back from illusions and question the world's bullshit, a growing contrast arises between what appears in front of your face, and what is true.

And then you'll start to feel challenged or caught between.... do I believe what my senses are telling me and buy into the disaster and believe the sickness and go along with the magic and fall for the fear-inducing hell, or do I circumvent all of that, disbelieve it, seek the Holy Spirit and try to find a way to forgive and undo and perform a miracle, which completely flies in the face of the entire planet, goes against the grain, seems totally contradictory and seems almost crazy to even contemplate? Do you put your trust in a truth which is unseen and a possibility that the entire world testifies is impossible? And this then is all to do with overcoming an order of difficulty in miracles.

You are tempted to believe that the world is filled with difficulty, of all different levels, and that it's even difficult to change or correct even a tiny thing, yet alone a big thing. This has to be disbelieved. Not fallen for. Cancelled. The whole world is a lie. How will you stand in the face of a lie and not believe it, when the whole world is screaming for you to believe it? To know better. To recognize the world is an illusion, unreal, untrue, false, completely bullshit. While you're in it. Immersed in the lying. Immersed in the stimulation and temptation.

"Teachers of God choose to look upon dreams a while..... they are not deceived by what they see."

Jesus's redefinition of terms continues to amaze me. When you suddenly realize that he has a whole different MEANING to a term, it suddenly opens up a whole box of insights.

For example "The world of bodies is the world of sin. For only if there were a body is sin possible." Jesus says that bodies are needed for sin. But you might think, sin came before guilt and made the world. But no. He's saying that sin is more like an all encompassing term describing ALL illusions and the ENTIRE ego world of death. Wherein everything was designed to BE sin. ie, sin is like a way of proving that illusions are real. And ALL illusions, by their seeming reality, proven by laws of physics and by "evidence", testify against reality.

A better definition of SIN might be, that "twisting" or "distorting" of reality and truth, which results in what is true and false being swapped, and what is real and unreal being confused. It is "the evil" that seems to turn reality into illusions, and make illusions seem real.

"Sin is insanity. It is the means by which the mind is driven mad, and seeks to let illusions take the place of truth. And being mad, it sees illusions where truth should be, and where it really is."

Here he says that sin is insanity, and so the whole ego thought system can be said to be sin. It's the way by which there is a distortion in what is true, where true and false are confused, and real and unreal are confused. So it's not just that you commit a crime and call it a sin, it's actually that the entire physical world is deeply rooted in sin - the attempt to prove that illusion are real. The whole world is an attempt to do this. Even the rocks and grains of sand. This is because:

"The world is false perception"

And all false perception, ie distortion of mind, inaccurate perception, believing that illusions are real, thinking that death is life, thinking that what is false is true, is what the physical world is composed of. It's laws are literally the laws of sin and death.

"Sin is the home of all illusions, which but stand for things imagined, issuing from thoughts which are untrue. They are the "proof " that what has no reality is real."

Here he tells us that ALL illusions are rooted in sin. And so "the world of bodies (the illusory world) is the world of sin." The WHOLE thing is sin. Which is why Jesus refers to the physical world, the veil across the face of Christ, as "the granite block of sin". By its laws, it acts as a mechanism for manufacturing "proof", through "physical evidence", which is maintained in order to testify that sin is real and has happened. All of the worlds happenings, seen through unforgiving eyes and insanity, are sin.

"Sin "proves" God's Son is evil; timelessness must have an end; Eternal life must die."

What this means is that, the fact that ANYTHING can seem to die, is A SIN. It's sin embodied as proof of death. Dead carcasses, dead flies, dead humans, dead planets. It was all made to try to make sin, ie "separation from God", or "that hell is real and heaven is not" be the new truth.

"A madman's dreams are frightening, and sin appears indeed to terrify. And yet what sin perceives is but a childish game."

So all dreams, the whole dream world, is made of sin.

"The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards."

"Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold?"

Sin, or, the physicalized material laws of the ego thought system, resulted in the eyeballs.

"Except for God's teachers there would be little hope of salvation, for the world of sin would seem forever real."

"And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise. This world is an attempt to prove your innocence, while cherishing attack."

"It translates the world of sin into a simple world, where justice can be reflected from BEYOND the gate behind which total lack of limits lies."

"ITS effects are changelessly eternal, BEYOND fear, and PAST the world of sin entirely."

If someone were to whisper in your ear, the one key secret thing which allows you to overcome the world, overcome death, be happy forever, and experience eternal life with God, you'd take that to be a pretty important secret, right? The ONE THING that unlocks the universe, sets you free from all suffering, and gives you back your real identity? You'd want that, right? And in a sense, you'd want to uphold that at all costs lest you lose sight of the way out of hell, right?

Well the "secret of salvation" is that you are doing this all to yourself, you cannot be hurt or attacked by anyone or the world, nothing causes you to suffer but yourself, and if you could fully OWN this you would be free from all forms of suffering forever and ever.

But this also means, if you want the way out of hell, and you want to ensure that it is POSSIBLE for you to get out of hell, then you're going to have to allow this truth to be true at all times, in all situations, without exception. Because if you compromise, or make an exception, or believe in any way that this secret is NOT TRUE, then you've literally taken the ONLY WAY OUT off the table, have hidden salvation from yourself, have made yourself hopeless and have disempowered yourself.

No matter how controversial it is, no matter how it flies in the face of societal norms, no matter how radical or extreme it seems to be, if the secret of salvation EVER seems to be untrue, then you are stuck in the hell of your making. If it EVER seems like you did not choose something or did not cause something or aren't the reason why you are experiencing something, you are lost, and you've lost sight of salvation.

If you did not do this to you, all of a sudden this means there is a power and a cause separate from you which determines your fate and your suffering, against your will. It means the dream is choosing for you. It means the day of your death has been decided by some seemingly external will and there' nothing you can do about it. And that means you have no power or ability to get OUT of it or be free of it, because it can do something against your will. That belief is the end of hope and the end of freedom.

This is why it's so important to realize, that this ONE SECRET is THE WAY TO BE SAVED. It is the core exit strategy. It is the ONLY way to leave hell behind. So it's pretty darn important that you don't compromise it or undermine it or believe something contradictory more than this. As soon as you slip into victim roles, victimizer roles, or belief in external causes, you are losing sight of the way home. Only by taking full responsibility for the power of your choice and 100% owning your freedom from YOUR OWN TYRANNY, can you be free from all suffering forever.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

"Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit. Only Love creates, and only like Itself. There was no time when all that It created was not there. Nor will there be a time when anything that It created suffers any pain. Forever and forever are God's Thoughts exactly as They were and as They are, unchanged through time and after time is done." W320W111 urtext.

Many people have an idea in their head, before they even come to ACIM, that reality must be some kind of "oneness". It's based on their idea of God as "one great big giant thing". But A Course in Miracles has a very different definition of God and reality, so this idea of oneness has to be thrown in the trash if you want to do ACIM.

ACIM's model is that God is a creator. God is a cause. God creates many things. God has children. God has created an entire sonship comprising many sons. God's children are also creators who cause the creation of living beings. And God has also created a permanent Holy Spirit, and angels.

Without the idea of God as a creator of many things, there is no notion of God having ANY sons. There is no way to explain the authority problem or its undoing. God is now the one who separates and has to atone. There is no way for mind to be in the service of spirit. There is no way for you to be as God created you. There is no way for you to have permanent brothers to share with so that you're not alone forever. And without God as cause, you cannot have an inheritance.

ACIM's model is very very fundamental on this. God HAS to be thought of as your creator, the source, out of whom not only you but also others are created. God has to be acknowledged as your father otherwise you cannot share his power or give his gifts. God has to be seen as the cause of you and of everyone else, otherwise you are at the effect of your brothers. God has to be fundamentally acknowledged as having created A FAMILY.

This flies in the face of the idea that reality is just one thing, or its one giant expanse of energy, or there is only God being alone, or God doesn't cause anything, or that there is a kind of oneness that is all just a great big "one" without anything in it or any parts or anything to share with.

If you like, A Course in Miracles is a kind of "creationist" teaching, not that God created the Earth and bodies but God IS a creator of something. And that makes it impossible that reality just be one big blob or some void or some kind of giant emptiness or expanse of singularity. This fundamental idea of reality being "a oneness with nothing in it" IS NOT what ACIM teaches.

If someone wants a path that teaches that God is just sitting there on his own and that you are him in his entirety, then you really are barking up the wrong tree by taking this course. ACIM is not for you if you want to believe that God has no family. Or that YOU in turn are not a co-creator with your own creations. Your mind HAS TO EXTEND in order to live and to be healthy, just as God's does, which automatically implies that creation is the only true nature of anything real. Without it God is dead.

ACIM is a teaching on cause and effect, with God as cause of his effects, who inherit everything from him, and in turn become causes with effects. Reality has to be accepted as a very large "place" within which God hosts a great many things he has created. And which is forever increasing. An entire Kingdom of souls and beings and life. A Kingdom of unlimited thoughts and power and creation.

If that's not what you "like" or you think reality is not like that, then you probably should chose a different path which frames God as an inert blob. Trying to force ACIM to BE that path is just mangling its teaching, creating denial in your mind, splitting you away from the truth and producing a fairytale about not existing with no brothers to relate to. It's a shame that some people consistently assert that they have no self and there is no one else. If that were true, God has no creative power whatsoever.

God has a mind. God has awareness. God has many thoughts. God has creations. God has a Kingdom. God has power. God has a will. God has love. God feels. God knows. God be's. Gid us an author. God causes. God shares himself. God communicates. God has relationships. God is far more than just some expanse of existence.