God and the ego work in completely opposite ways, but we are so used to how the ego works that even our prayers function according to the ego's laws, we ask for ego with the ego, and receive the ego, and therefore it seems our prayer was not answered.

The ego says, there is a problem here now, and I want help to fix it. In so doing, the ego makes the problem real, turns it into an enemy, then wants to fight to remove it. This produces NO ACTION, because it is a stalemate. You can't be both holding onto something and wanting to be free of it at the same time. A split will, willing two things at once, is a divided will, which is unwillingness, and produces NO RESULTS.

So when you pray with the ego, you first have believed you've got a serious problem and now you turn to God and ask, please heal this for me. It will not work. Indeed you can beg and plead. That especially will not work. The more that you believe this problem exists, the more you are actually asking to keep it.

Regardless of your words, regardless of your motives, expressing the belief behind the words that "I have this giant problem", says to God, "I want to have this giant problem and I'm going to keep believing in it, so don't take it away." Essentially, ALL PRAYERS ARE ALWAYS ANSWERED. So when you are asking and you are praying, "please fix my big problem", you are literally actually praying, "I believe in this big problem so I value it so I want it so let me have it"

And so God GRANTS that and accepts and allows it, because He does not want to take away from you YOUR free will (which He gave all souls) to choose to want to suffer, if you want to. The fact however that all prayers are answered ALSO tells us that IF YOU ASK CORRECTLY, you CAN AND WILL be given what you ask for, so you need to be clear about what you are ACTUALLY asking. Are you asking with "my illusions are real" - ego, asking for more ego - or are you AFFIRMING and BEING AWARE OF what you ALREADY HAVE, as given by God already, as the joyful experience of manifest perfection?

So the ego's dynamic always boils down to this simple structure. You believe the problem exists now or is like a wall blocking your way to the future. You believe it is real, and seek for power to rise against it, as if to overpower it and destroy it forcefully. This is absolutely not the way God operates. It is totally opposite. God doesn't fight with imaginary problems.

God is present. God knows there are no real problems now. He knows that only His Creation/Kingdom is real and present right now, and nothing unreal exists. God knows that everything is already healed and perfect and that there never has been a problem. He does not see problems in the future, nor does He see problems that "exist now" that need to be fixed in the next moment. He does not think in terms of time. He does not make problems real to then address them. He does not even really acknowledge that there is a problem at all. God simply EXPRESSES PERFECTION at all times, establishing the presence of perfection pro-actively rather than ever having to deal with its absence.

This attitude correlates to the law of forgiveness, which is that forgiveness recognizes that there IS NO SIN and therefore all the sins are forgiven, all the consequences do not exist, and there is only perfection (innocence, health, happiness etc). Forgiveness expresses - ie extends - the present reality and truth of God only. It does not look for stuff to forgive, it does not make errors real, and it does not move into judgement. It does not attack and it does not really "do" anything, recognizing that there is nothing that need be done, because no problems exist.

Therefore, in order to receive God's "help" with healing something, you need to get totally out of the ego's way of "asking because I need it", and get into God's way of "expressing so that I have no needs". YOU need to be a conduit through which God's healing flows and expresses, as though you are sitting in Heaven WITH God and He is shining and extending love through you. This puts you at the SOURCE of the healing, not as the end recipient as such. This is because healing must be GIVEN, in order to be received, and vice versa. YOU have to become the giver of the miracle in order to receive it. YOU must PARTICIPATE in the function of providing the miracle from above, and not just sit there like a potato waiting for God to fix you passively.

It also means you need to think about "the problem" in an entirely different way. You must look at all of the ways that you are thinking about the problem with the ego - the belief that the problem is real, the belief in how it was caused outside of you, the belief in how severe it is, the belief in it being "not healed yet", the belief that healing is "in the future", the belief that you "do not want it" (a lie), the belief that you did not choose it, and the belief that it even exists. These are all FALSE ideas, which actually BLOCK God's help, even if they masquerade as attempts to attract God's help.

"I really suck bad, help me", is not a question asking for help. It's a statement asserting how much you do not accept or want love. It is not ever a matter of whether God is providing love and perfection or not. He is ALWAYS HEALING and ALWAYS EXPRESSING PERFECTION. It is YOU who are not being willing to truly receive and acknowledge it, and that is the only problem standing in the way of complete healing. You threw heaven away, now you must reclaim it.

So how you work with God, goes more like this.. and this can seem "backwards" to the ego so there's a bit of a knack to it. You need to collapse and let go of every single belief that suggests you have a problem at all. All of these beliefs are attempts to keep it, and God will not take it from you while you value it. God honors your freedom. So you have to be WILLING to GENUINELY let go of all of this story and drama you've INVENTED about why this thing exists, why it is still present, and why it has a power preventing it from being let go. Wipe the slate clean of the entire story about what is causing this thing to be present.

Then you need to get to where you recognize and affirm and accept that this thing DOES NOT EXIST. It is NOT happening, there is NOT a sickness, there is NOT suffering, there is NO REALITY to this problem, it is NOT real, it has NO truth in it, it has NO power, etc. This is TRUTH! It is truth because, in truth, ONLY God's Kingdom exists, only what is real (perfection, happiness, health) exists here now, and all other things are LIES - illusions which are not true. There is NO SUCH THING as "real sickness" or "real guilt" or "real sin" or "real death." If you want the thing to go away, you need to RECOGNIZE THAT IT IS ALREADY GONE and was never really there to begin with. To really believe that and thus perceive it.

Then, you are getting yourself out of the bullshit victim story and into a position of power, a position of responsibility, a position of willingness, a position of acceptance of truth, and an openness to RECEIVING.

This is the key part. You need to acknowledge and be greateful for GOD HAVING ALREADY GIVEN what you thought you needed or lacked. So that in essence, you do NOT lack it OR NEED IT any more, because God HAS already provided. That means, acknowledging that God has ALREADY GIVEN the healing for this thing, and that IT IS ALREADY HEALED. This confirmation that it is healed already, means that the healing must've already been GIVEN, the healing must have already been RECEIVED, and therefore almost as though the healing was "in the past", not in the future. ie, you are NOW experiencing God's perfection in your life with no trace of problems whatsoever.

The ego puts all healing into the future, keeping it hidden behind a gap or brick wall which separates you from it. God places all healing in the past, because God's creation was ALREADY PERFECT before time began. You need to acknowledge the pre-existing already-established perfection of God's creation, and ITS PRESENCE NOW. So you focus not on... I have a problem now and its not fixed yet. You focus on, the situation NOW (here and now present) is that HEALING HAS ARRIVED and HEALTH IS PRESENT and CORRECTNESS IS HERE and EVERYTHING IS ALREADY PERFECT.

This acknowledgement of perfection does NOT mean the way that the ego would use it, which is to say, well, stuff is still broken and unhealed and I'm still going to die but "I'm at peace with it". Bullshit. That's the ego trying to justify death by making it out to be acceptable. It is not acceptable. Instead, acknowledge WITH THANKS, that God HAS GIVEN a miracle, and YOU HAVE RECEIVED IT ALREADY. It is here now! You are already enjoying the absence of problems. You are focused on what God has given and what you have extended from God, rather than what seemed to lack, because the only problem you need correct is the sense that God is absent or that He failed to give perfection.

By focusing on being grateful to God for you having ALREADY BEEN HEALED, and health being your PRESENT condition, you automatically open up the gateway to RECEIVE a flood of healing power from God. This is how you "unlock" access to Heaven's help, by aligning with it and putting yourself in its shoes and expressing how IT would express, believing what IT would believe, perceiving how IT would perceive, and acknowledging what is real in the way that IT would acknowledge it right now.

By saying, thank you God for having already healed this, and actually BELIEVING IT, accepting it as true, and thus EXPERIENCING IT, you are not only inviting God's presence (which will heal and manifest Heaven in you) but you are also saying "I HAVE received from you God", which... if for any reason you have not seemingly "yet" received, will now trigger a grand receiving.

It seems almost backwards, because you have to acknowledge receipt seemingly "before" it seems to have been given. You assert that you have NOW what you seem "not to have" so that it comes to you! You be grateful for what you WANT, as if you HAVE IT, so that it comes to you!

There is a line in the bible which says this: "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."

The believing in the receipt of it is VITAL and key. If you do not believe you HAVE IT NOW, it WILL NOT COME. In other words, you need to focus on expressing belief NOW in what it is that you want your "condition" to be, instead of even giving ANY attention to "what you do not want" or what you seem to have that you want to change. Get all of your attention off of trying to deal with what seems to be manifest now that you don't prefer, and put all of your attention on what you are RECEIVING FROM GOD, acknowledging its receipt, IN ORDER TO welcome it into the present and receive it HERE AND NOW.

This is totally backwards from how you would pray with the ego. It is totally the opposite of how the ego asks for things. It puts the receiving ahead of the giving, so that the giving flows, rather than focusing on lack first and then asking for it to be filled. This is how God functions.

You cannot be in a pity party feeling sorry for yourself about how much of a victim you are and expect God to bail you out. By doing that you are putting yourself into the role of NOT receiving, by focusing on God's absence, creating a distance between where you are at now and what you think you want in the future. This is no different than avoiding the Holy Instant. This is also what the Course means when it says "miracles are by believers, for believers", because YOU have do YOUR PART of the work to believe in what God is wanting to share with you, in order to receive it, otherwise your disbelief will reject the miracles.

If you want God's help - remembering also the Biblical teaching that "God helps those who help themselves" - you MUST be willing to fulfill the ROLE and FUNCTION of forgiveness and being the light of the world and acknowledging and receiving God's pre-existing abundance and perfection. You can't be saying, "I can't fix this" and then asking God to do the work "for you". You need to LINE UP with the way God functions and thinks, get yourself into the HELPING mode of GIVING, acknowledge receipt and welcome love, so that you are PART OF THE ATONEMENT.

You don't just go to God and pray and say, "hey, my life sucks, fix it". You have to stop believing your life sucks otherwise God can't help. And once you stop believing your life sucks, it would SEEM then that you do not NEED God's help because your life doesn't seem to suck any more, right? Which seems pointless. But it's not. It is the prerequisite for you RECEIVING God's help to clean up the mess of your previously sucky life, by ALLOWING Him to help.

"He will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM." If you are not truly willing to allow and receive that help, you are blocking Him, and He will honor your free will. Holy Spirit CAN HEAL ANYTHING if you allow it, but you MUST be willing. You can't be in a victimy state of unwillingness, resistance, fear and making problems real, if you want help. You need to show some willingness to go TOWARD GOD, to melt the separation, to undo the ego beliefs and to put yourself back into your proper FUNCTION as outward extender of love, IN ORDER that you can HAVE what you are GIVING. "To have all, give all to all."

God's healing has to be shared, it has to be received in order to be given, and it has to be given in order to be received. It is not something you can get in isolation just for yourself, it entails a willingness that you accept it is TRUE FOR EVERYONE. If you deserve it, so does everyone, because you no longer believe in undeservedness. It's almost like "be the change you want to see in the world." Be the healing that you want to receive from God. "I will heal as I let Him teach me to heal" literally says this... if I become willing to be PART OF the healing flow, then I will receive healing myself as well as become able to extend it.

So focus on God having already given full perfection and healing NOW and since forever, recognize its PRESENCE, get your attention totally off the illusion of a "real problem", and find gratitude which opens you to RECEIVE and manifest Heaven on Earth. It is here now! Do you want to focus on your problem and be right about it being real, or do you want to be happy? God already gave perfection in Eternity and in Heaven, and we already resisted it and threw it away with illusions of problems to come between us. Get rid of these illusions and acknowledge and demonstrate the presence of the Kingdom here and now!

Here is an interesting teaching.

In its natural state, the body is a communication medium. The mind is supposed to flow through it and extend BEYOND it outwards. The body itself is not supposed to be part of the message as such.

But when the mind starts to STOP at the body, or to be blocked by the body, or runs up against the body, it prevents it from extending PAST the body. The communication medium can no longer communicate because the flow is blocked. This is what blocks to love do. They make you fixate on form and be blinded by illusion, which get in the way of seeing Christ.

When there are blocks to love, mind cannot extend through and past and overlook the body, and so fixates ON the body. This causes you to perceive that the body is what is there, in the mind, rather than looking PAST it. The body becomes what you are looking AT, rather than that you are looking at Christ PAST the body.

Making perception stop AT the body and blocking the flow of love, basically cuts that flow off and stops it from moving outward. That means it has become stifled, and now there is a kind of "separation" which has been introduced between the body and the outside. Or a gap, where extension of love was supposed to fill it externally, but is now left empty due to the blocked expression.

This blocking of extension makes the body SICK, because it focuses the mind ON the body and AT the body, instead of PAST the body. The body then becomes attacked by the mind as though "colliding with it" instead of flowing naturally through it and past it and onward in communication. Kind of like a dirty camera lens, or a blocked toilet, or a bunch of boarded up windows made to block the light. Another example would be a "blocked artery", making the blood flow impeded, and resulting in death.

So the blocks to love have to be removed so that the "surface" of the communication medium doesn't turn into the "message" and so that love can flow and extend, which means love is radiated and increased, which means HEALING comes through the body and the body is MADE WHOLE because it is COMMUNICATING WHOLENESS. When the mind is sane and flowing fully and freely THROUGH the body, the body is HEALED as the love passes through it making it essentially immortal, incapable of sickness or death.

Here is how Jesus says it:

"The removal of blocks, then, is the ONLY way to guarantee help and healing. Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind which is working through the body but not in it. If the mind believes the body is its GOAL, it WILL distort its perception OF the body, and by blocking its own extension BEYOND it, will INDUCE illness by FOSTERING SEPARATION. Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot but foster illness, because it is not true. A medium of communication WILL lose its usefulness if it is used for anything else.

To use a medium of communication as a medium of ATTACK is an obvious confusion in purpose. To communicate is to join and to attack is to separate. How can you do both simultaneously WITH THE SAME THING, and NOT suffer? Perception of the body can be unified only by ONE PURPOSE. This releases the mind from the temptation to see it in many lights, and gives it over ENTIRELY to the One Light in which it can be really understood at all."

To the ego, it will not attempt to teach anything that it does not already know. It relies entirely on its own learning or what it already believes is true.

In this sense, everything within the ego thought system has already been there for a very long time and there is "nothing new".

The ego does not therefore really learn anything. It just reveals to itself more pieces of what was already within its thought system, but kept unconscious.

The ego pretends to learn by gradually bringing into the open more information which seemed hidden before, from its vast reserves of useless information, laws and regulations, any anything that sustains its thought system or makes it more real.

The ego does not want you to be open to guidance, it does not want you to trust a source of information outside of its thought system, and it's not really interested in learning. It's entire purpose is to unlearn the truth, to block the truth, and to keep you in the dark. And it can do that very effectively with an ILLUSION of learning, in the guise of learning something which is not really God's truth. And we've done this a lot.

There is a line in the Course for example which says "your mind is a blank". Even though the ego mind seems filled with thoughts and activities, it is really filled with nothing but illusions and so nothing is really happening. Even our ego thinking is not real activity. It is not creation. Plus we're given ourselves what Jesus describes as a "learning disability", an attempt to make our ability to learn more difficult, so that we will resist the truth.

Now, as you become willing to un-learn the ego's bullshit, and reveal the real truth to yourself, you'll begin to develop trust in a source of information outside of the ego's mind. Holy Spirit is there to help, along with many Mighty Companions.

But in order to "learn" what is outside of the ego's thought system, it requires the un-doing or un-learning of the ego, to make room for what's to come IN from outside. And also the rules for learning change as you open up to the Holy Mind.

In the ego's system, it will only attempt to teach if it ensures that you will not learn anything, or it sets you up as solely a teacher who is not a student, a dictatorship basically. The students are considered inferior and the teacher is superior. Teaching or the classroom is then more or less a prison.

It won't let you attempt to teach or even feel confident about teaching, unless you seem to already know everything there is to know, and are certain enough of being in control of that enough to be able to seem to give it to someone else. And when the teaching is occurring, the teacher is not intent on learning at all.

This works differently with Holy Spirit. In order to learn the truth, conditions have to be set up where you are willing to receive new input. But because in the One Mind giving and receiving are equal/one/balanced, there cannot be input without output. You cannot "share" and thus experience the new truth, or learn it, unless you are also willing to have it flow through you and extend out of you. In a way this means you cannot "learn the truth" without the truth flowing through you and being shared, in a "teaching and learning" role.

The Kingdom of God must be extended in order to exist, and that means the truth has to be shared. You have to be open to having that truth come through you, even if you do not seem to know what that truth is going to say. You won't necessarily get a head's up and you aren't going to be able to learn it all ahead of time. Instead, it's going to only be fed to you, shared with you, and shared through and beyond you, in the moment, in the instant that you are actually attempting to give it to another.

This requires that you drop what you think you know, open up to trust in a higher source, and that source may not even be seen or directly accessed yet. This therefore requires FAITH, ie trust that even if you yourself do not know, you're going to be supported and given what you need and told what to do and where to go, spontaneously, as and when it's the right time. In a way it's like being blind or in the dark blindfolded, but trusting someone else to guide you safely to the exact right destination without hurting yourself.

If you are unwilling to "teach" because you don't think you know the subject matter well enough, you will never learn it. Teaching means demonstrating, so it doesn't necessarily have to be through writing or traditional roles, it can just be by being a living example of love. But what is true for you, you will demonstrate/teach. If you stop yourself from TRYING, you won't gain access to support and guidance. You have to take a leap of faith. You have to be willing to be mistaken, and you need to be open to learning AS you teach. You teach, in order to learn.

Basically you just need to show up, be willing, and step into a FLOW. As the flow begins, as you start to express, IF you trust the truth you are attempting to express, MORE TRUTH WILL COME AS YOU GO. The new truth will only enter once the flow is flowing.

It's kind of like plumbing. You've got this water in the pipe, but the only way new water is going to enter the pipe, is when the water that's already in the pipe starts to flow out the other end. Otherwise there is no room, and there's no flow. A lack of flow is a lack of extension. The water can't extend out of the pipe if you won't RECEIVE and if you are not willing to just be open minded to let whatever comes in, come in, just as it's needed, spontaneously.

Heaven's support, and the flow of truth, is very spontaneous. It is ready to act NOW. You don't get the whole download on the spot and then go write about it. You just make yourself flow out the stuff you already know, albeit limited, maybe based on just one little insight, and then you get into a flow about it.

As you do, Heaven comes to support you. The reason is that you are now fulfilling your function. You are aligning yourself with the truth by being willing to have it express through you, you are letting truth sort of align your wavelength to Heaven/Holy Spirit, and the result of that is that Heaven actually rushes in to support and help you. Mighty companions show up. Jesus and Holy Spirit start to wisper in your ear. You start to be told specific words and corrections and things you weren't expecting.

You start to "channel". And as you do this, you receive stuff that you didn't even know beforehand, and you therefore learn, often just as much as anyone else reading or hearing what you expressed. And then you may find yourself going back to read what you wrote because you yourself are its student as well.

This also means you are learning to COMMUNICATE. Communication in the Course is different to the ego's communication. The ego only communicates what it thinks its already knows and nothing else, regurgitating the past. Real communication entails the EXTENSION OF TRUTH, the flow of truth, in true sharing, where receiving and giving are one, and where there is an openness to spontaneously, creatively express from a place that's totally outside the ego. Just in the moment, freely flowing a loving expression.

So it takes an act of faith. Miracles are taken first on faith, because you may come to trust something which is as yet unseen, but which is there, and which has proven it must be there by its witnesses, ie evidence or proof which manifests as a result of taking a leap and putting one foot in front of the next. You don't have to teach alone, and you can't. You can only truly teach truth if you are open to receiving it at the same time, and then it speaks through you.

Holy Spirit is the highest communication medium, in that He is so pure and devoid of ego that he can perfectly "channel God", as it were, to be the Voice for God. You also can become a Voice for God if you are willing to spontaneously flow Heaven and therefore to actually communicate. Just speaking words is not communication, because the ego is very good at just waffling on about bullshit. But when the words are coming from a higher place, extending God as a "Teacher of God", now you are learning God because you are teaching God.

In essence you should ALWAYS be in this state of "learning", not so much a state of accumulating or building up some knowledge base, but being always RECEPTIVE and CREATIVE in the flow of truth without having to know beforehand what's going to be said or what will happen.

As you learn to trust this, you will teach and it will become your own teaching of yourself as well. The best way to learn is to try to teach someone else what the truth is, to prove to yourself what the truth is. If you can communicate, truly, to another, you will learn the truth. The act of attempting to tell someone else what the truth is, causes your mind to become creative and dynamic and spontaneous in visualizing and sort of filling in the blanks as you go. The MODE of mind functioning to "express" puts it into a state of flow, and you just need to get stuff MOVING OUT even if it feels like you are totally winging it, or even "fake it till you make it". Just the act of expressing even without knowing what the next word is going to be, allows guidance to come IN immediately as it is needed.

You only need to start out with a little idea. What I usually am doing is I just had some kind of spontaneous idea or insight, or I just learned some basic thing, or something became relevant for me in the past 24 hours. So I will start to write about it based on what I already know... ego learning.... but I go about it with Holy Spirit/Jesus at hand, and then they start to inject more flow and more idea and more clarifications and as the whole thing unfolds, it ends up being an education not just for others but for me also.

When I get to the end I then have to go back and re-read it myself, to digest it and take it in more, because what came out was usually mind-expanding in some way. This very post itself for example, I was not planning to write whatsoever, until I was inspired by a post that Myron Jones wrote today, and felt this intuitive "excitement" about elaborating on. I did not know how this would come out or in what words until I just started to do it.

So just start with what you think you know and be open to extending truth and just making yourself available, just sit down and start writing something, and so long as you are expressing truth in some way, Heaven will rush in to support you and give you help and put words in your mouth. This is how you learn to "channel" or be a Voice for God.

Speaking or writing the truth gets the attention of Heaven, angels will come to you to help you, and Holy Spirit and Jesus will be right there to support you and guide you. This is also partly how miracles come about, because as you spontaneously trust and start to speak the truth about someone and diffuse illusions and authoritatively command an expression of the truth of God, things line up and you magnetize Heaven's strength to you and through you, and then the earth moves. It's a collaboration. Your willingness is all it takes to get into the flow. Just start somewhere and see what happens as you go. But if you don't start at all, you'll never see the miracles and you won't learn.

Teach like a fool. Teach even when you don't know what to say. Just start doing it. The rest will follow automatically. Seek the Kingdom of God and express it and your way will be made straight and will be held up by Heaven's helpers.

For example, on my website I started a 'questions and answers' service, because I felt that I wanted to be pushed to have to answer things that I did not know how to answer, and wanted people to come up with questions so that I wouldn't be able to premeditate or just write about what was relevant to me at the time. What I found happens is, when someone asks something, it's usually not something I even thought of as being a topic people needed help with.

And then I'll ask Holy Spirit what He wants to say about this, and to please help me with it. And then I start writing about it, and I just get into this place where the most amazing stuff gets written, especially when I didn't really know what I was going to say or what there even was to say about it. It all just comes together because I TRUST that I'm going to be helped and the help shows up. Provided I am willing to just show up and be available and let the truth be written through me.

God just wants to love us.

But we fight it. We fight by trying to be in control of our lives. By trying to manage our own minds. By thinking. By directing things. By figuring out. By wanting to be in charge. Wanting to do.

But we need to become receptive.

The most frequent guidance I receive from Holy Spirit which ALWAYS runs contrary to my ego-mind's efforts, and always seems like it's asking me to do something totally the opposite of what I'm doing, is to SURRENDER.

Surrender. Relax. Let go. Receive. Yield. Step aside. Get out of the way.

There's a very important reason for us to do this. In order to receive from God, to experience His love and healing, we MUST open up to receiving. We can't be receptive if we are trying to broadcast our own ambitions and intentions. We can't receive when we're trying to control or to make things happen on our own.

Our ego mind is totally addicted to trying to MAKE stuff happen, to force it to occur, to control it, to manipulate it, to screw it up, and to resist the FLOW of God's love. Totally addicted. We just can't seem to stop ourselves from interfering, acting, doing, adjusting, planning, COMING BETWEEN ourselves and God, and generally trying to be God in place of Him.

Why are we trying to be God?

We're trying to be God because that's the only way we have of shutting God out. We are trying to be the SOURCE. We want everything to start with us, rather than it start with God. This is how the ego disconnects us from God. It puts a separation between us and God, between us and real love, so that it makes it seem like there's no CONNECTION between God and us.

Once there is no connection, and you're separate, and all alone, now you have no choice but to 'go it alone', to try to live by yourself, to make EFFORT to force life to be the way you want it, in desperate measures. We're constantly trying to collect together some semblance of safety and security having just experienced what seemed to be ejection from Heaven, or original sin, or to run away from God's wrath. We're trying to scurry off on our own with our own limited resources, our own 'separate self', trying to RELY ON OURSELVES to accomplish everything.

Once we are separated from God we don't believe we can (or want to) depend on God at all. We want to be in charge. We want to be God now. And we want to keep it that way. This its the ego operating - a sense of self that begins following the separation. A sense of self that is divorced from God and wants nothing to do with Him. A sense of self that does not WANT help from God and does not want God to GIVE help, and therefore we do not want to RECEIVE help.

The total opposite of this ego paradigm, is a simple paradigm where God gives, we receive, and we give in turn (extend). God FLOWS to us an unlimited supply of love and power, we open to and WELCOME it, we receive it thankfully, we share in it and experience it, and it OVERFLOWS NATURALLY from us. And notice here that there is no part where you suddenly take over and start to force it on someone, or do it to someone, or make something happen, which is all ego.

Instead, we have to be willing to stand IN the flow like an open door. Like a medium. We are the open door through which God flows. We have to get out of the way and not interfere. And to the ego-addicted mind that can seen very counter-intuitive and unwanted. So we have to repeatedly be guided by Holy Spirit to surrender, to let go, to stop controlling, to relax, to lighten up, to release, to receive love. We need to open our hearts back up to God again to RECONNECT with God, to plug ourselves back into God, and to then be willing to receive the flow of God THROUGH us. And this is how miracles occur.

We must be plugged into God to flow God's power. Like an electrical cord. Me must plug our hearts back into God, switch on the power, funnel and channel the power, and DO NOTHING so that it can flow. It's quite unusual to experience this.... doing nothing while EVERYTHING is happening... doing nothing while, simultaneously, trusting and having faith that GOD WILL DO IT FOR YOU. It's like being silent yet active, or still yet moving, or at peace yet enlivened. It's not how the ego wants to be at all and it seems very unusual and kind of awkward at first.

So this is what I am continuing to learn. To simply yield to God, to open to God, to expect God's love/miracle, to receive from God, to experience what God is sharing, to align with God's will, and to then be OPEN to allowing that to go beyond myself. If I connect with God I simultaneously connect with my brother. If I share in what God is, I share what God is with what God has created. "Miracles praise God's son through you."

So there is more to the PURPOSE of surrendering than just that it undoes ego and helps us to relax. The purpose is to get everything that interferes with and separates you from God out of the way, so that you can be open to RECEIVE and SHARE in an experience of God. That's the ultimate prize. To be One with Him again. But even moreso, it is the total RESTORATION of your natural relationship with God in which He is Father, you are Son, you receive and you extend creation miraculously.

In order to perform healing miracles for others, you do not necessarily need to be what's thought of as a 'miracle worker', ie someone who has attained a high level of advancement.

The fact is, it is not you, in isolation, that can heal. Of yourself you can do nothing. You do not have a special healing power and you are not a healer.

The fact is, God is the healer. God is love and love heals. And it is also not necessary for you to be in perfect alignment with God's will in order for healing to occur.

If we were required to be enlightened in order to facilitate healing, nobody would be able to receive healing and there'd be no hope for the sick.

The fact is, Holy Spirit has been given to us as the answer to the ego and to undo every aspect of the entire ego illusion. He is capable of functioning to heal us FROM the dream, even when we're in the dream, and even when we're still dreaming. If he did not have this ability, we'd never wake up.

Nor are you required to be free from all sin or ego thoughts. Nor do you need to have a perfect relationship with Christ.

All that God needs in order for a healing to take place, is for you to have enough belief that it is TRUE that God can heal, that God will heal, that God HAS healed, that God wants to heal, and that God IS healing.

And all you then need is enough acceptance of this to step out of the way and to act as a channel, medium, conduit or bridge through which God's healing can flow. That can take the form of you simply being open to RECEIVING and BELIEVING God's providence of healing, which you then are infused with and radiate, or it may come in the form of you laying on your physical hands to someone else, or by you using words which are spoken in a God-aligned way.

Since God's nature is absolute, not relative, God doesn't do things by half measures. God is certain. God is consistent. God is completion and wholeness. So if there are aspects of incompleteness or waiting for the future or uncertainty, in how you approach someone (ie forms of fear), that will block God's flow.

But if you take on an 'absolute' attitude which has no question in it, no uncertainty in it, and it is resolute and firm and truth-filled, you now are forming a bridge for God to flow across. This can come in the form of words which you speak, and these words really don't matter. As you speak, words are energy conduits which allow Holy Spirit to transfer.

And as you speak, you speak TO the problem, directly, and you tell it what to do. You don't talk about the problem. You don't ask God about the problem. You don't ask God to do something about the problem. God has already provided healing. It is your job now to extend it, to share it. And you don't ask the problem to go. You don't request that it go. You don't sidestep around it. You get VERY DIRECT. God is very direct. Immediate. Direct in terms of you directly confronting the exact thing (e.g. pain, sickness), and immediate in terms of time (ie this will be fully healed NOW).

You must expect the result to be immediate and complete, not partial or off in the future. You must also have an expectation that healing definitely will occur, that you could bet your life on it. Certainty. That you will walk away having commanded it to heal and it WILL be healed. And you can't waver from that or go into doubt based on how things appear to be. That's losing faith.

For example, you put your hand on someone, maybe in the area of sickness, and you COMMAND IT TO GO. You tell it what you want it to do. "pain, leave right now, GO!" "tooth, be whole, right now" "brain, return to normal functioning right now" etc.. You have to be firm and assertive. This is how God is. God knows what is true. God doesn't waver. God doesn't listen to the ego's illusions that try to distract you. You have AUTHORITY over the ego.

This takes some practice. It's good to experiment.

1) Join with Holy Spirit/Jesus/God. Feel love.

2) Place hand on person

3) Believe and expect total healing, not taking no for an answer

4) Command it to leave. Repeat if necessary.

5) Allow Holy Spirit to flow through you. You don't need to do anything else.

You can do this whether you're awake or not because this is what God has set up to be possible. It does take some amount of certainty and belief and conviction in God's truth, so the more you have of that the better, but you don't need to be an ascended master to get some results.

It may be the most counter-intuitive, impossible thing you can imagine, but if you are feeling like shit, the best thing you can do is to send love to someone.

That sounds like a tall order, in fact maybe seemingly the hardest thing you could do at the time. Because it you feel shit then you really don't want to love, don't have love, don't seem to be able to give anything, and are in no position to help anyone. You feel separate and cut off and probably angry at someone.

But that's just the thing. It's the lack of love in you that is really the problem, and when you SEND it to someone, you RECEIVE it. Giving and receiving are one.

As you effort to transmit love, even if it takes a while to rev up the engines, even if you don't feel loving at all to begin with, it lifts YOU up. You become healed along with them, it brightens you, it opens you and heals you.

The thing is, even if it seems like you have no love to give, if you TRY anyway, you'll find that you in fact have the ability to "get the flow moving". If you PUSH, express, send, flow, love like an energy, it actually gets the juices flowing.

You're able to move yourself from unlove to love, even if love seems absent, and even if it seems like you have no love to give.

The key that unlocks the infinite reservoir of love, even from "standing still" and being very unloving, is your little willingness. Your will has the power to direct the flow. Your will has the power to express and to cause the love to express.

So even if you are stuck, even if you feel very upset, you have the freedom of will that allows you to unstick yourself.

If at first you can't possibly feel any love, you just start to say some loving things. Even if you don't feel them. Express how thankful you are to God for creating someone's perfection and describe their perfect nature. Put into words what is true of them and you. It will lift you up.

Before long, you'll get the stuck-ness moving, and you'll start to tune into the love, and you'll start to feel it in your heart. Especially as you open up to sending/relaying God's love as an extender of love.

Love heals you when you share it. You are included in the healing. So you are giving it to yourself. That may sound weird that you can transmit love to yourself, but you can, provided it includes another.

Ideas are increased by being given away. To have love, give love. Giving it, you must have it, and so it increases in you and the other. You have the ability to express love at any time, and it has the power to melt all walls and blockages.

We're all holding hands. You either lift others up or you drag them down. And always you are included in which direction you aim. Be the light of the world.

"Miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver."

There is a certain leap of faith required in learning to trust and work with Spirit. It's like opening up to trusting that something completely out of sight and out of control is going to be there when you need it. We are completely unaccustomed to seeing situations this way and it requires a lot of TRUST.

Since we have been relying on our own self all this time, on our ego intellect, our own abilities, our knowledge etc.... we are very used to needing to have a sense of personal confidence in a situation in order to proceed with an action.

So we'll have to make sure that we're in the right mood, we have to have all the ducks in a row, we need reassurance that this is the right thing to do, and we feel that we need to kind of talk ourselves into the right frame of mind to 'perform'. We have to ready ourselves, and we won't move ahead to take actions until we have gathered enough ego information and enough reliance on our own capabilities. And to create something of quality simply threatens us to have to perform at the top of our game, which is nerve-wracking.

But the problem with this is that it shuts out Spirit. The problem is, since we are experiencing ourselves as disconnected from Spirit, we keep having to rely on ourselves, depend on ourselves, accumulate our own skills, develop our own prowess, acquire our own knowledge, and build ourselves up to try to handle situations. But this puts all of our sense of TRUST squarely in our own ego abilities. Trusting our own ego produces FEAR which undermines any sense of reliability.

Spirit doesn't work the same way the ego works. Spirit is much more spontaneous. Spirit is also extremely capable and unlimited and doesn't suffer from the inadequacies, limitations, insecurities and difficulties that our ego self has to deal with constantly.

Spirit is actually ready to fly right now, right away, without any preparation. God is immediately on hand and ready to heal, right now. Holy Spirit is immediately on hand and ready to teach the highest of truths, right now. They don't need time to get ready. They don't have to figure out what to do. They don't need to get themselves into the right mood or to be on their best form or to have put aside as many fears as possible in order to take some decisive action.

So what this means is, if you want to work with Spirit, such as to express Holy Spirit's Voice or to teach from a higher place or to perform a healing miracle, there has to be a certain amount of 'blind faith' and a different kind of trust. This trust quite literally means that you really need to actually START taking steps to move forward and express, knowing that Spirit is going to show up immediately and be there to help you.

It actually kind of requires you to be much more spontaneous and UNPREPARED. (Who knew that being unprepared could lead to greater confidence when trusting Spirit?!) And even if you feel unprepared and uncertain and afraid and doubtful about whether YOU can pull off whatever it is that you're about to attempt - teaching, healing, writing, whatever.... even though you do not know what the heck you are going to say, even though do not know how the heck you're going to 'do this', you have to actually start doing it with faith that Holy Spirit is right with you in the MOMENT.... and that as you begin to 'flow', all of Heaven is going to rush in to support and help you.

There are people who receive healing miracles, let's say for example they have a broken arm or something. The person prays for them and healing begins, but the person still believes they don't have a healing, and the arms seems to be a problem. But then the healer tells the person, MOVE YOUR ARM. And the person moves their arm, and AS they move their arm, healing comes to the arm.

There are countless examples of this in Jesus's miracles where he tells someone to actually DO something, to do something that they supposedly currently cannot do, so that WHEN they attempt to do it, with some faith that it will BECOME possible, their willingness and openness is what actually brings the miracle into them and healing occurs, AS they ACT AS IF they are healed. For example Jesus might've commanded 'get up and walk', and a paralyzed person who could not walk, would at least ATTEMPT to get up and walk, with enough trust and faith that perhaps it COULD work, and then as they get up, suddenly they can walk. But not until they started trying to do so.

So you see, Spirit is very immediate and becomes a part of the flow as and when you are willing to actually take some action on faith. You will not be prepared. You will not be ready. You will not know how you're going to do this. You'll get to the very limits of the edges of your own ego abilities and all the information you could possibly have gathered and all the preparedness you could've possible done, and still there is another step needed. To trust Spirit, you have to take the leap. You have to ACT AS IF miraculous things can happen, ACT AS IF healing is going to flow when you say it will, ACT AS IF Spirit is going to back you, even if right now you don't feel even connected to Spirit. And Spirit will rush in and be right there to support you.

For example, I am writing a book and I have procrastinated on this for a long time because I kept feeling that I wasn't quite ready, or in the right mood, or I just wasn't prepared. I felt like I needed to get MYSELF into the best possible frame of mind, the most purified readiness, the most spiritual of mindsets etc, in order to be ABLE to pull off this writing. And I could never really rise up to the occasion. I couldn't get myself into the 'heights' of what I knew needed to be written down, and was just always riddled with insecurities and excuses and fears and worries about how was *I* going to write this and how was *I* going to be able to know what to say or to say it correctly etc. So I avoided it.

But then what broke, was that I came to a place of at least realizing it's not going to be me doing this on my own. It's not going to come FROM me, its going to come from Spirit. And I'm going to write it down, but I'm not going to know WHAT to write. I'm not going to be able to prepare for it or study for it or have everything all organized to try to get a sense of confidence about it. Instead, what its going to call for is for me to actually sit down, hands on the keyboard, and to be in that moment WITH Spirit, inviting Spirit to be the one to write, and to then just start doing it. Just GO. And that means trusting something totally outside of myself, totally beyond my own abilities, beyond my mind, beyond any personal readiness. And in that moment, in the now, in the present 'flow' of it, Spirit is right there and started talking, and I started typing, and out it came.

Surprisingly easy once it got going, but I'd avoided it so much because my mind, my ego mind, my separate mind, couldn't see past itself. It couldn't get outside of its own box or its own reliance on "I must do this all by myself". The mind needs to be handed over to Spirit. Spirit is meant to be in charge of how the mind is used. And this really does mean actually surrendering this constant reliance on independent self, on separately having 'the power' or 'the skills' to do whatever. To be Spirit-backed we have to stop being so independent and so self-reliant and trust something that we don't even seem to have any control over, a source of confidence and teaching and creation that is beyond our own self. And nothing can prepare you for that. You have to just do it and try to trust that you're going to be backed up, and you will be.

This is why development of trust is so important. Learning to trust that Spirit has got your back, that Spirit can heal, that Spirit can do miracles through you, and that Spirit can help you no matter whether you have everything under control or not. It's all about learning to be part of a TEAM, instead of going solo all the time. You don't have to do this all by yourself, and you DO NOT have to find the confidence and prowess to pull off some amazing feat of expression all on your own. It's much easier to let Spirit do the heavy lifting, if you can let go enough to take a shot in the dark. And that's what it's like often, just blindly assuming that Spirit will do its thing when you take action to begin the flow.

I'm glad to say I got a whole chapter written, once I finally stopped fearing (depending on my own strength) and trusted that I just had to 'show up' in the present moment and be ready and willing and that Spirit would do the rest. It can really be daunting to have this kind of trust, to trust in something you can't see and doesn't even seem to be there until the very moment that you're having the faith that it will show up. Something outside your control, outside your mind.

Our minds are supposed to be connected to Spirit in this way. They're not supposed to be separated off and trying to rely on themselves. We're not supposed to be bolstered up, or turned into 'models of success', or superheroes. We're not meant to be thoroughly educated and learned. We're not meant to develop this extraordinary prowess at doing something amazing all by ourselves. This is not how the mind is meant to operate in isolation. It's meant to be connected to and a RECEIVER of a flow of spiritual power from Spirit. It's meant to be in service to Spirit. It's meant to receive God and to extend God, not to come up with its own separate power or its own separate abilities. Transitioning over from self-reliance to God-reliance is a tough challenge and goes entirely against our entire ego-centric way of living, but it's what we're called to do.

It adds a whole new level of meaning to "let go and let God".

Love is the active ingredient in miracles. Everything which expresses from love is miraculous. This doesn't simply mean that "love just loves", it means love actually has a miraculous, miracle-working power to it. It is capable of healing absolutely anything.

With this in mind, a very simple healing approach is to give love.

1) Attempt to become ONE with another person in your mind. Imagine you are merging with them and occupying the same space as them. Be in their body. Join with them. Their mind is your mind. They are you.

2) Access love within your mind. If you need to remind yourself of love by remembering some moment in life where you felt strong love, that's ok. Ultimately you want to tune into God and Holy Spirit and feel their love. Love is the active ingredient so you must be able to feel it. Being able to feel God's love may take some time to develop depending on your degree of trust and openness etc.

3) Command that the person's sickness, as though a 'thing' in its own right, be fully healed right now. Address it directly as though talking to a person. Tell it what to do, like leave right now. Command that the area in question be fully healed right now. Realize that your command itself is not power, it is like a key that open a door for God to flow. Command and then let go and trust and expect God to flow.

4) Visualize Holy Spirit flooding the area with love. Visualize God Himself being in that exact location, radiating His Presence. You should aim to feel His love in that location. You should be able to also sense how His love is such a healing balm, so soft and refreshing and restorative, that its mere presence is miraculous and able to cure and heal anything.

In summary, and simplifying:

Tune into love and send love to the person and experience God's loving presence in the area that needs healing.

Miracle principle 15: "Each day should be devoted to miracles."

Miracles are supposed to happening all the time. That's because God is giving love all the time.

That miracles are not happening, means we're doing something wrong. We're making mistakes, we're blocking God's love, and we're actually rejecting miracles constantly.

When we are in victimhood, we are are rejecting miracles. When we are believing in sin/guilt/fear, we are rejecting miracles.

All activities of the ego are actually attempts to STOP GOD, and therefore to stop miracles. They are attempts to block the flow of love and life.

So just because you're in the ego, in the ego world, stuck in a body, suffering, being a victim etc, you think maybe that this is not having any "effect", or you're just coasting along passively, etc... but maybe you don't realize..... every way that you are aligning with the ego is STOPPING GOD.

Even if you're just wallowing in a state of weakness, or fear, or guilt, or you'r all caught up projecting shit onto other people, or you think someone's sickness is real, or you're lounging semi-unconsciously watching a tv show, or whatever.... if it's BLOCKING GOD in some way, you're causing miracles to stop flowing.

So if you look at just how much ego is present in the world, in people's lives, those are all BLOCKS to awareness, and therefore are BLOCKS TO GOD. Blocks to love. Blocks to miracles.

The world is greatly lacking an expression of love. It's constipated and resistant to miracles. Death is the ultimate claim that God isn't giving life anymore, and it happens a lot.

When miracles aren't happening CONSTANTLY, something has gone wrong. If miracles are HARDLY EVER happening, something really has gone wrong. And this is very widespread.

But partly it is because you do not REALIZE, or are not willing to admit, that even something as disempowering as fear or dying is actually an attempt to STOP GOD.

The things in which we seem to be the most a victim, where we seem to have the least power, the least choice, where stuff happens to us against our will significantly, and where we don't seem to be wanting it at all... THOSE are the ways that we most severely are blocking God. Fear blocks God even more than guilt, and even more than sin. And death, the ultimate passive aggression, is the ultimate attempt to end the miracle while looking like you're not doing anything at all.

Death is an attempt to bring an end to Life - to stop God from being Life, and regardless of how victimy and unwanted and terrible it seems to be "happening to us", it IS actually a choice to PREVENT the expression and receipt of God's UNLIMITED LOVE.

Let the love flow. Shine!

Faith (trust in God) reaches outside of the illusory world and connects to a Source of miracles you may as yet not see or fully understand. But your willingness and openness to even conceive of it, coupled with even a vague belief that it holds truth and reality, is sufficient to establish a psychological "connection" to a higher mind.

Believing there is a possibility beyond the physical laws, or a potential or freedom that transcends appearances, is the same thing as believing a Higher Power and disbelieving that the ego's laws have complete power over what happens.

Even if you can't see God or Jesus, or you are not even sure if they really exist, if you have even a little willingness - which is all the Course asks us to have - this is an invitation to the Holy Spirit. It's not just a little willingness to be mistaken, but a willingness to be open to a source of healing and truth which is more true than how things currently appear.

This works both in the areas of healing your illusory mistaken perceptions, in which your willingness invites Holy Spirit to correct your mind, but also in the grander area of the entire illusion, in which your willingness invites Holy Spirit to perform demonstrations of miracles through you for others.

Your mind has the ability to open itself to connect to a Source of miracles even if the majority of the mind is still in the dark. If there is enough of a "leap of faith", this will create a pipeline across which the Power of God can flow. You are able to them become a conduit for the Holy Spirit to work through you, in spite of you having a large body of delusions of your own that need to as yet be corrected.

Reaching outside the illusory world to join with God is all that it takes. Some measure of belief in the real truth. Many people just don't as yet realize that it is as easy as this, and so don't act in the role of extender of God's love through miracle working. You may not realize that you really only need to have some faith/trust and believe in the truth in order to now be a vessel for Holy Spirit to flow through.

A vast majority of miracles performed in the world today are performed by students of whatever spiritual system, students who are still "in process" of awakening and who are still learning about the truth. They do not need to be completely purified in order for such miracles to work through them, if they have willingess to allow Holy Spirit to "use them" and work with them.

Some trust in God is all it takes, a little willingness to accept that God's truth is true.