Murder, death and suicide are not particularly pleasant topics. But they are an important part of the teachings of ACIM.

The ego's thought system of separation claims that you can do something to another without experiencing any effects. This is due to the separation of cause and effect, which also means, separation of Father (cause) and Son (effect). Another way of putting this is getting away with murder. As Jesus says in the Course, "What is not love is murder."

Following separation from God, "sin" was the original idea of murdering God. It was as if to say, you as the Son of God successfully attacked God, affected Him 100%, have destroyed Him, produced irreversible consequences, and now there is absolutely NO HOPE of ever being forgiven.

Sin is an attempt to completely oppose forgiveness and to establish that you MUST be guilty and punished for your sin. Your sin was so black and white, so terrible, so murderous of an idea, that there is just no way it will be undone or forgiven. You seem to remain, but God is dead. And now you might as well die.

This left you in a terrible state of mind where you saw no hope, no way home, no possibility of healing, and that you basically might as well just die. All justification for living or carrying on or staying alive was blotted out. Death became your ONLY option after that. All dreams of sin DEMAND death and lead to death.

Now, you might think this is just theory. But think about this some more. How many people have died in bodies? How many people commit obvious suicide because they can see no hope and believe they deserve to die? And how many people who die from all other methods or reasons are also committing suicide because, somewhere deep inside of them, they believe they murdered God?

Within the dream, the belief in ego IS a belief in murder. Jesus tells us that all of our ego thoughts are murderous regardless of their form or severity. A little annoyance is as murderous as outright rage. All thoughts of separation are attempts to murder. All ways that we find someone else guilty while we seem innocent is a state of murder.

Billions of people are walking this earth with a DEATH WISH. They believe, somewhere in their unconscious mind, that they *deserve to die* because they believe they REALLY DID sin against God - that they really did kill Him. Sooner or later their own unconscious belief that they deserve to die is going to override all others and enforce their punishment.

The "inevitability" of death - this notion that everyone dies and there's no escape, is merely symptomatic of this deeply protected, hidden, secret sin, which everyone is carrying around in their mind. It's buried behind layers of denial and unconsciousness, but it's there. It makes people kill themselves! It ultimately is the ONLY reason, and justification, for why anyone would ever deserve to die, and why anyone would arrange for this to happen to them.

Jesus teaches us, ALL death is suicide. Regardless of how it happens or how long it takes or who does it to whom, it is all suicide. It is all because we have this belief in "real sin" in our mind somewhere. If it is unchecked and unhealed and unforgiven, death is likely going to result.

It is in a way very sad to think of this, but, billions of people keep destroying themselves because they don't realize they have hidden hates and secret sins. They believe they've gotten rid of God and ended up in this stupid world just to hate a while, wither and die. Jesus isn't joking when He says that. This is what most of us are doing here.

If you want eternal life, if you want to LIVE, you're going to have to weed out of your mind every ounce of a belief that you really sinned. Every part of the ego's thought system of death has to go. Every way that you separate out what applies to you from what applies to others, must end. While you continue to use ego and believe ego and keep separation alive, you are continuing to keep the murderous intent of sin against God. And it will justify your death.

I don't mean for this to be guilt inducing or frightening either. I don't mean to "make it real" by talking about it. But if we don't talk about it, people go through the illusory experience of dying, unnecessarily. God wants us to live! God wants us to recognize we are forgiven and DID NOT ACTUALLY KILL GOD. He wants us to see that we were just mistaken for believing we actually pulled this off. We did not really sin, it had no effects, and God is just fine. And he's happy with us, and wants us to be with him in love. He loves us.

For many people, this is no joke. Most will continue to choose to die because they don't believe they are worthy of living. Many will die because they give up the will to live. Many will die because they secretly think they deserve it. Many will die because they have not forgiven themselves for the belief in separation from God. It is an epidemic of suicide.

Then there are people "in the world" who commit what seem to be more obvious acts of murder. They kill people to symbolize what they did to God, then proceed to kill themselves because they can see no hope of escaping the wrath of sin. It is the same dynamic of suicide that all belief in sin produces.

This is not God's will. It is God's will that we have eternal life and never suffer and never die. It is God's will that we be forever happy and innocent and holy. It is God's will that we are immortal and invulnerable and can never be upset or hurt. It is God's will that we LIVE FOREVER. We deserve it, we are worthy of it, God wants it for us, and we need to want it for ourselves. This is important. We have to get rid of this belief in real sin. It is destroying us.

Ultimately this whole thing is illusion. No-one can die, nothing is really happening, and there is no sin. But if you don't want to keep having illusory experiences of death and hopelessness, then forgiveness is in order. "Forgiveness is the way out of hell for you." Recognizing that sin is not true is all it takes. You are not a murderer. You are the innocent child of God.

"Behold the Guide your Father gave you, that you might learn you have eternal life. For death is not your Father's Will, nor yours, and whatever is true IS the Will of the Father."

"When you are weary, remember you have hurt yourself. Your Comforter will rest with you, but YOU cannot. YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW, for if you did, you could never have grown weary. Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in ANY way, for that is not God's Will for His Son. Pain is not of Him, for He knows no attack, and His peace surrounds you silently. "

"In this depressing state, the Holy Spirit reminds you gently that you are sad because you are not fulfilling your function as co-creators WITH God, and are therefore depriving YOURSELVES of joy. This is not God's will, but YOURS. If your will is out of accord with God's, YOU ARE WILLING WITHOUT MEANING. But because ONLY God's will is unchangeable, no REAL conflict of will is possible. This is the Holy Spirit's perfectly consistent teaching. Creation, not separation, IS your will BECAUSE it is God's. And nothing that opposes this means anything at all."

"One thing is sure; God, Who created neither sin nor death, wills not that you be bound by them. He knows of neither sin NOR its result. The shrouded figures in the funeral procession march not in honor of their Creator, Whose Will it is they LIVE. They are not FOLLOWING it; they are OPPOSING it. And what is the black-draped body they would bury? A body THEY dedicated to death, a symbol of corruption, a sacrifice to sin, OFFERED to sin to feed upon, and keep ITSELF alive. A thing condemned, damned by its maker, and lamented by every mourner who looks upon it as himself.

You who believe you can condemn the Son of God to this ARE arrogant. But you who would RELEASE him are but honoring the Will of his Creator. The arrogance of sin, the pride of guilt, the sepulchre of separation, all are part of your unrecognized dedication to death. The glitter of guilt you laid upon the body would KILL it. For what the ego loves, it kills for its obedience. But what obeys it not, it CANNOT kill. You have ANOTHER dedication which would keep the body incorruptible and perfect as long as it is useful for your holy purpose."

"My brothers, children of our Father, this is a DREAM of death. There is no funeral, no dark altars, no grim commandments, nor twisted rituals of condemnation, to which the BODY leads you. Ask not release of IT. But FREE it from the merciless and unrelenting orders you laid upon it, and forgive it what you ordered it to do. In its exaltation, you COMMANDED it to die, for only death COULD conquer life. And what but insanity could look upon the defeat of God, and think it REAL?"

"And yet, a shadow cannot kill. What is a shadow to the living? They but walk past, and it is gone. But what of those whose dedication it is NOT to live? The black-draped "sinners," the ego's mournful chorus, plodding so heavily AWAY from life, dragging their chains and marching in the slow procession that honors their grim master, lord of death? Touch any one of them with the gentle hand of forgiveness, and watch the chains fall away, along with YOURS. See him throw aside the black robe he was wearing to his funeral, and hear him laugh at death. The sentence sin would lay upon him, he can escape with your forgiveness. This is NOT arrogance. It is the Will of God."

Anyone believing in death or thinks death is inevitable or irreversible needs to read this.

Here is a *FANTASTIC* section of the Course which explicitly details why death is not normal, natural, inevitable, or irreversible. And in fact, that the body can become completely incorruptible when it is free of YOUR attempt to kill it.

It hardly paints a picture of a body which suffers and dies against your will. In fact, it tells us the body can be IMMORTAL AND INVULNERABLE and remain so while it is useful.

I love the opening paragraph about funerals especially!

"The Incorruptible Body

One thing is sure; God, Who created neither sin nor death, wills not that you be bound by them. He knows of neither sin NOR its result. The shrouded figures in the funeral procession march not in honor of their Creator, Whose Will it is they LIVE. They are not FOLLOWING it; they are OPPOSING it. And what is the black-draped body they would bury? A body THEY dedicated to death, a symbol of corruption, a sacrifice to sin, OFFERED to sin to feed upon, and keep ITSELF alive. A thing condemned, damned by its maker, and lamented by every mourner who looks upon it as himself.

You who believe you can condemn the Son of God to this ARE arrogant. But you who would RELEASE him are but honoring the Will of his Creator. The arrogance of sin, the pride of guilt, the sepulchre of separation, all are part of your unrecognized dedication to death. The glitter of guilt you laid upon the body would KILL it. For what the ego loves, it kills for its obedience. But what obeys it not, it CANNOT kill. You have ANOTHER dedication which would keep the body incorruptible and perfect as long as it is useful for your holy purpose.

The body no more dies than it can feel. IT DOES NOTHING. Of itself, it is neither corruptible nor incorruptible. IT IS NOTHING. It is the result of a tiny, mad IDEA of corruption, WHICH CAN BE CORRECTED. For God has ANSWERED this insane idea with His Own, an Answer that left Him not, and therefore brings the Creator to the awareness of every mind which heard His Answer, and ACCEPTED it. You who are dedicated to the incorruptible, have been given, through YOUR acceptance, the power to RELEASE from corruption. What better way to teach the first and fundamental principle in a course on miracles than by showing you the one that SEEMS to be the hardest can be accomplished FIRST?

The body can but serve your purpose. As you look upon it, so will it seem to be. Death, were it true, would be the final and complete disruption of communication, which IS the ego’s goal. Those who fear death see not how often and how loudly they CALL to it, and bid it come to SAVE them from communication. For death is seen as SAFETY, the great dark savior from the light of truth, the answer to the Answer, the silencer of the Voice that speaks for God. Yet the retreat to death is NOT the end of conflict. Only God’s Answer is its end.

The obstacle of your seeming love for death, which peace must flow across, SEEMS to be very great. For in it lies hidden all the ego’s secrets, all its strange devices for deception, all its sick ideas and weird imaginings. Here is the final end of union, the triumph of the ego’s making over creation, the victory of lifelessness on life Itself. Under the dusty edge of its distorted world, the ego would lay the Son of God, slain by its orders, proof in his decay that God Himself is powerless before the ego’s might, unable to protect the life that He created, against the ego’s savage wish to kill.

My brothers, children of our Father, this is a DREAM of death. There is no funeral, no dark altars, no grim commandments, nor twisted rituals of condemnation, to which the BODY leads you. Ask not release of IT. But FREE it from the merciless and unrelenting orders you laid upon it, and forgive it what you ordered it to do. In its exaltation, you COMMANDED it to die, for only death COULD conquer life. And what but insanity could look upon the defeat of God, and think it REAL?

The fear of death will go as its appeal is yielded to love’s REAL attraction. The end of sin, which nestles quietly in the safety of your relationship, protected by your union, ready to grow into a mighty force for God, is very near. The infancy of salvation is carefully guarded by love, preserved from every thought that would attack it, and quietly made ready to fulfill the mighty task for which it was GIVEN you. Your new-born purpose is nursed by angels, cherished by the Holy Spirit, and protected by God Himself. It NEEDS not your protection; it is YOURS. For it is deathless, and within it lies the END of death. What danger can assail the wholly innocent? What can attack the guiltless?

What fear can enter and disturb the peace of sinlessness? What has been given you, even in its infancy, is in full communication with God AND you. In its tiny hands, it holds, in perfect safety, every miracle you will perform, held out to YOU. The miracle of life is ageless, born in time, but nourished in eternity. Behold this infant, to whom you gave a resting-place by your forgiveness of EACH OTHER, and see in it the Will of God. Here is the babe of Bethlehem reborn. And everyone who gives him shelter will follow him, NOT to the cross, but to the Resurrection and the Life.

When anything seems to you to be a source of fear, when any situation strikes you with terror and makes your body tremble and the cold sweat of fear comes over it, remember it is ALWAYS for one reason; the ego has perceived it as a symbol of fear, a sign of sin and death. Remember, then, that neither sign nor symbol should be CONFUSED with source, for they must STAND FOR something OTHER than themselves. Their meaning CANNOT lie in them, but must be sought in what they REPRESENT. And they may thus mean everything or nothing, according to the truth or falsity of the IDEA which they reflect.

Confronted with such seeming uncertainty of meaning, judge it not. Remember the holy Presence of the One GIVEN you to be the Source of judgment. Give it to Him to judge FOR you, and say:

"Take this from me and look upon it, judging it for me.

Let me not see it as a sign of sin and death, nor use it for destruction.

Teach me how NOT to make of it an OBSTACLE to peace,

but let You use it FOR me, to FACILITATE its coming."

"

The world is set up such that certain foods seem to cause certain things to happen in the body. And so we all go on this diet obsession trying to find the foods that will 'kill us the least'. Foods which seem to claim some kind of property of 'healing', or 'good for you', or 'purity'. And there are people who are quite celebrated as being very very much informed and aware of the seeming 'truth' of how certain foods do certain things to you, and how there are 'special' foods that you should only eat otherwise you're committing some kind of sin.

Well, that's all well and good. And you can pursue a perfect diet and get to the point where you are only eating lettuce. And you better make sure it's the right kind of lettuce, grown in exactly the right soil in the right conditions and harvested with its roots on and it better have been exposed to real sunlight, or else.

Although this can seem completely sane, and rational, and sensible, at some point you have to realize, this is absolutely nuts.

The more you try to feed yourself only the most perfect, "harmless", "supportive" foods, and the more you focus on this perfection of picking only what the ego says will not hurt you, the weaker you become, the more vulnerable you become, the more you become sensitive to everything, the more you become affected by everything.

If you keep focusing on trying to be "positively affected" by the world, as some kind of idolized goal, where you only allow into yourself the very best the world has to offer, that's persona bullshit. That's the ego pretending that doing so will make you strong or healthy or protect you. It does the exact opposite. It undermines you inner power. It disempowers you and portrays you as so completely fragile and weak and powerless that you NEED the very very more purest foods as input, otherwise you're going to keel over and die.

You don't want this.

What you want is to get your power back so that you are invulnerable, so that you do not have to care about what you eat, so that you do not have to constantly obsess over trying to find this MYTH of a "perfect diet". All foods are deadly. All foods are toxic. And all foods kill, just so you know. All foods, external foods, supply from outside of yourself, WILL create sickness, if you believe in their power to affect you positively or negatively. It doesn't make any difference that you regard certain foods as profoundly positive versus others there are allegedly negative, both perceptions are ego perceptions that weaken and attack your invulnerability.

As an invulnerable, immortal creator, you do not need food at all. You are sustained by the love of God! You should have no regard for the MYTH that certain foods are better than others, which is a completely unmiraculous state of mind. You should pay no attention to the bullshit stories that make certain things out to be better for you than other things. That's ego bullshit. You should be focusing on how you are absolutely invulnerable, how you do not depend on anything outside of you, how you are not negatively affected by food and how food does not have power over you, positive or negative. You should be focusing on undoing this dependency on it and this belief that different hierarchies of the illusion of food do different things to you. Food does not do anything to you! Stop being a victim.

God is the one source of Life, and food is not life-giving. Food will eventually kill you. And just so you know, people who fast and avoid eating as much food live longer. Do you know why? Because all foods are forms of the illusion of separation and have some aspect of attack in them. They are all special, all of them are limited, all of them have side effects, and none of them can make you holy. Even the most 'pure' of foods which other claim are the 'best' for you, will destroy and attack your body eventually. There is no perfection out there. You even have to go to the lengths of becoming a breatharian, feeding off of environmental chi or whatever, in order to try to avoid the toxic effects of this world. And even then you will die.

It's just stuff. It's just materials. It's just external illusions designed to make you dependent on what is separate from you, so that you will stop looking for the source of Life inside yourself. God it your supply, not the world.

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. And no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose." - Lesson 152

This is an extremely black and white level of responsibility. If you give your CONSENT, then sickness and death will occur. If you do NOT give your consent, then sickness and death of the body become IMPOSSIBLE.

Paraphrase: What you use the body for it becomes to you. If you use it to attack it becomes weak and sick and dies. If you use it for love it is healed and sickness is reversed and death becomes *IMPOSSIBLE*. "A sane mind heals the body."

This as Jesus says is a CENTRAL TEACHING of ACIM - that sickness and death of the body are OPTIONS THAT YOU CHOOSE (or not).

The body is not supposed to die or go through the death process. The body is not supposed to get sick. Death is nothing but another more extreme form of sickness, and sickness is just an earlier form of death. It's all the same thing. The ego mind attacks and kills the body as a result of a belief that sin and death are real, in an ARROGANT attempt to symbolically kill the Son of God. If you do not have that belief, you will not attack the body, it will not become sick, and it cannot die.

"Use it (the body) to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. 5 Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. 6 When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. 7 The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body's condition."

The mind makes ALL decisions about the body's condition, including whether it is sick, and whether it dies. It CANNOT DIE if the mind does not CONSENT and CHOOSE to kill it. "From the ego came sin and guilt and death" .... "The glitter of guilt you laid upon the body would kill it. For what the ego loves, it kills for its obedience".

The body then becomes a "symbol of immortality" in the dream, as a DEMONSTRATION that your mind truly believes in God's laws over the egos. It is useful purely as a communication device.

"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."

You will then retain the body, which is really nothing, but in this state effectively is invulnerable and cannot be destroyed. This produces a supernatural protection because "a broken body is proof the mind has not been healed" and therefore if the mind IS healed it WILL heal the body. It must.

"Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick."

When you have ceased attacking the body, "a sane mind heals the body", the body will be restored miraculously to "perfect health" and become "holy", in the dream. It is used to bring God to those who need help, to perform miracles and raise the dead. And then when its usefulness is done, the body is DISAPPEARED, not laid down on the ground to rot and die. The dream of death is not left by death, but by truth.

Anyone whose body dies does so because THEY BELIEVE IN DEATH AND HAVE CONSENTED TO DIE. Death is a choice against God's Will. Death is NEVER a doorway out of dreaming. Death is DENIAL OF GOD.

Jesus describes how he finished dreaming not through death but through the recognition that the body was nothing/illusion and thus made it literally disappear:

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it.. It merely became what it always was. And that is what 'rolling the stone away means.' The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond... To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. I did assume a human form with human attributes afterwards, to speak to those who were to prove the body's worthlessness to the world. This has been much misunderstood. I came to tell them that death is an illusion, and the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. They did not understand."

Death of the body is optional and is a FAILURE to live according to the Will of God. Whatever you believe you demonstrate. If you demonstrate death, you MUST believe in death. If you do not believe in death, you CANNOT demonstrate death. We are to demonstrate "immortality" of the body, in the dream, before we can stop dreaming. "There is no death, the Son of God is free" applies ONLY AFTER PROVING IT by making the body free of death, as demonstration of your actual acceptance that you are under no laws but God's.

Denial denies that the truth is true.

Denial attempts to make something else be true, which is false.

Denial is a lie.

Denial is essentially the only ego device. It is another word for separation - the attempt to make the truth go away, to get rid of God, to kill of God's Son, to go unconscious.

You have to own up to and admit to everything, and that is an act of surrender. To stop denying the truth is to surrender or give up the ego position of fighting against it.

In the example of someone who has committed a crime but who is denying that they did it, until they are willing to surrender and stop hiding from the truth, they will maintain denial as a defense. To give up that denial is to admit the truth, which means surrendering to Authority. In the world this usually means the authority of others over them, to decide their fate, but psychologically is means surrendering to the Authority of God, which is a blessing.

Denial then is an authority problem, where you are attempting to have authority over the truth by redefining what it is and making it be something it is not. It's your ego's attempt to assert itself and make itself valid. To surrender to the truth, to God, is the undoing of the authority problem, the relinquishment of the ego, and is a rejoining of mind in wholeness.

To put down denial is to open up to God, to receive love, to accept reality, and to return to sanity. It means admitting that there is nothing you can do to make the truth be something it isn't, and to gladly accept it and welcome it as it is. That doesn't mean accepting that the world is real or that things in the world really are happening. That's not the truth. It means accepting that this world doesn't exist because God did not create it, and being untrue means there is no reason to be upset about it.

You cannot change the fact you live forever. You cannot undo eternal life, because it is immortality. Spirit is in a state of grace forever and has never changed. But you can deny it. You can pretend it is not true. You can try to avoid it, you can make-believe it isn't real, and you can weave illusions to try to make it seems like it isn't true. You can try to invent death and make death seem to happen. But you cannot kill what God created. Death isn't real and it never will be.

To die is to deny Real Life, and death is just a state of heavily denying what the truth is. Death therefore cannot be the truth, and must be reversible if you are willing to surrender the illusion of lies. Death, being denial, cannot be considered a true state, a final state, a whole state. It requires considerable effort to maintain, and cannot last. Like all things made without God, it has a limit to what it can seem to do. That is why the Spirit escapes it, and why we then have more lifetimes.

You can deny the truth up and down and left and right and pretend to be something you are not and try to die in every way imaginable, pretending you deserve it and make-believing it is justified, but it is always a state of lies. You simply are not being honest. The honest truth is that God has created you eternal and you cannot die and this world does not exist. So, what is there to be concerned about? Why pretend you are vulnerable? Why attempt to make out that you can be attacked? You are immortal spirit.

The whole thought system of ego and being separate from God, is rooted in the idea of murder. This might not be apparent, and you might not think that many of the things you do are murderous. We reserve that term for when a body kills a body for example.

But in the course, "murderousness" is any form of inequality. It's a denial of the Golden Rule, the law of God. In truth what we do to another we do to ourselves, because we are one. But to the ego there is a breakdown in cause and effect, and between self and other. And this gives rise to what seems like a possibility that you can attack (cause) without being attacked (effect). Or that what you do to your brother you do not do to yourself - that what is true of him is not true of you.

This is a murderous idea because it now means that you can attack and escape the consequences. It means you can assign guilt to someone else and not yourself. That someone else can be hurt without you being hurt. And this is the very definition of murder.

Make no mistake also that the ego heavily believes in this, and as a result heavily believes that YOU are murderous, and that you are extremely guilty for having done so. Murderousness is the idea of sin. The ego believes that you have literally murdered God and his son. And as a result, it claims that you should be extremely guilty. This is the core of its belief.

The truth is that it is impossible to murder anything real, the Golden Rule cannot be violated, what you do to another you still do to yourself, you cannot escape consequences, and you have NOT murdered anyone or anything in reality. Therefore you are NOT guilty.

But you're going to find that as you explore this and attempt to undo this belief in your murderous nature, which the ego does heavily believe, the ego is going to put up quite a fight, and its going to keep insisting that you're a very guilty person. Deep down you do believe this, and it's a belief that it highly mistaken and will have to be systematically dismantled with the Holy Spirit.

The ego's desire to kill YOU off, is its belief that YOU have killed yourself off. And since you are the son of God, it believes that you not only are against yourself but that you want yourself to die. This murderousness is a suicidal belief of self attack. But if you cannot be killed, because you are immortal, then you also cannot be guilty, and definitely do not deserve to die.

What we are undoing through forgiveness is a seemingly murderous intention, which claims you have committed the ultimate sin, and therefore at completely guilty and worthy of death. The ego will hold this up in your face and wave it in front of you like it's true, because it believes it is real and has happened. But your job is to NOT believe this, because it can't possibly be true in God's reality.

The ego belief in you IS murderous and wants the total destruction and death of God and his sonship. And it would try to persuade you that YOU are itself, and thus are just as guilty. But you are NOT a murderer, you are innocent and holy. Your belief that you are guilty is mistaken. You are not guilty. You have not sinned. And God still welcomes you with open arms.

"What is NOT love IS murder. What is not loving MUST be an attack. EVERY illusion is an assault on truth. And every one does violence to the IDEA of love, because it SEEMS to be of equal truth. What can be EQUAL to the truth, yet different? Murder and love are incompatible."

"The darkest of your hidden cornerstones holds your belief in guilt from your own awareness. For in that dark and secret place is the realization that you have betrayed God's Son, by condemning him to death. You do not even SUSPECT that this murderous but insane idea lies hidden there. For the ego's destructive urge is so intense, that nothing short of the crucifixion of God's Son can ultimately satisfy it."

"Of this you dream. And, UNDERNEATH this dream, is yet another, in which YOU become the murderer, the secret enemy, the scavenger and the destroyer of the brother and the world you fear alike. Here is the CAUSE of suffering, the space BETWEEN your dreams and your reality. The little gap you do not even see, the birthplace of illusions and of fear, the time of terror and of ancient hate, the instant of disaster; -- all are here. Here is the CAUSE of unreality. And it is here that it will be undone."

"Now, for an instant, is a murderer perceived within you, eager for your death, intent on plotting punishment for you until the time when it can kill at last. Yet in this instant is the time as well in which salvation comes. For fear of God has disappeared. And you can call on Him to save you from illusions in His Love, calling Him Father and yourself His Son."

"A murderer IS frightened, and those who kill FEAR death."

"How can a battle be perceived as nothingness, when you ENGAGE in it? How can the truth of miracles be RECOGNIZED, if murder is your choice? When the temptation to attack rises to make your mind darkened and murderous, remember you CAN see the battle from above."

When we are greatly distracted by, tempted by, and lost in the world, it is hard to recognize the secret of salvation.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF."

But the real key part of this isn't just that you are doing things to yourself, rather than it being others who do it. It's that it can ONLY BE YOU who can hurt yourself.

Jesus describes many times that you have hurt yourself. You have hurt your mind. You have attacked yourself.

"Because you had attacked yourself, and BELIEVED THAT THE ATTACK WAS EFFECTIVE, you behold yourself as weakened."

"Although you have attacked yourself, and very brutally, you will demonstrate that NOTHING HAPPENED. Therefore, by attacking, you have NOT DONE ANYTHING."

"By doing this UNCONSCIOUSLY, you try to keep the fact that you must have attacked yourself FIRST out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe."

"You HAVE attacked him, and you MUST have attacked yourself first."

It is easy to place a lot of focus on other people. On forgiving the world. On healing the body. On world events and problems. It is easy to spend a great deal of time caught up in relationships and dramas. But all of these forms of suffering are really quite far down the line in terms of what came first, and where the real power is.

What comes first happens quickly and so close to home, that it is easy to miss. YOU .... attack yourself....... BEFORE. ... the entire world happens.

"Only the self-accused condemn."

You accuse yourself FIRST. You attack your invulnerability FIRST. You try to undermine your immortality FIRST. You position yourself as afraid FIRST. You make yourself a victim FIRST. You see yourself as lacking FIRST. You condemn yourself FIRST. You accuse yourself of sin FIRST. You do everything to yourself FIRST.

THEN ..... having attacked yourself, the whole thing starts to cascade into projection and blame and dissociation and denial and displacement and various other ways to "disown" responsibility for what you have done to yourself.

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you."

It then becomes possible to become confused as to WHO did this to you. You deny that you did it to you. You pretend that someone else did it to you. You shift the responsibility. You hide from your own self attack. You don't want to look at the fact that YOU are trying to self destruct. All self attack is an attempt to kill God's son - which is YOU - which is suicide. And eventually this results in suffering, sickness, and death, ALL OF WHICH are self inflicted.

"It means that you cannot be hurt, and do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness." "YOU CAN BUT HURT YOURSELF. This has been oft repeated, but is difficult to grasp as yet."

"For you HAVE hurt yourself, and made your Self your enemy. And now you MUST believe you are not you, but something alien to yourself and "something else," a "something" to be feared instead of loved."

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."

This doesn't have ANYTHING to do with anyone else, or the body, or the world, or spacetime. It's entirely to do with. ... do you love yourself or not? Do you accept and live in your IMMORTAL nature which is given by God, or do you DENY that you are immortal and TRY to make yourself mortal? The only ambition of trying not to be mortal, is that you try to destroy (kill) yourself. But since your immortal self cannot die, you confuse yourself with a body and kill it instead, as a representation of yourself dying.

"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves"

"Yet you CANNOT crucify God's Son, for the Will of God cannot die"

"What He created can sleep, but it CANNOT die. Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for HIMSELF."

"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do."

The attack upon YOURSELF, is all the only problem. You thinking that you attack others, is YOUR problem of being confused, and you are mistaken. You thinking that others attack you, is you being confused, and you are mistaken. NO ONE has ever attacked you against your will. You have never suffered against your will. You have never been sick against your will. You have never died against your will.

"Would you not rather live than choose to die?"

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is."

Salvation, and the secret of salvation, is simply that ANYTHING you experience other than immortality, YOU are doing to yourself. You are the SOLE cause of it. There are no external causes of suffering. There are no external causes of sickness or death. "There are no accidents in salvation." Nothing in the world can do ANYTHING to you against your will. No one can vioalte you or offend you or hurt you against your will. You CANNOT BE A VICTIM unless you deliberately decide to be one.

So this really has nothing at all to do with anyone else. It is entirely to do with .... are you going to forgive yourself, or not? Are you going to love yourself, or not? There is another subtle part to this though. Your soul and your mind are two different things. Your soul is your self, your identity in christ. But your mind is a medium that your soul uses for expression. Your soul does NOT need salvation because it is permanently immortal. It has never been attacked and never will. But your MIND is confused and HAS tried to hurt itself. It DOES need "healing" or correction.

This means that, even your own self attack, even your mind's efforts to destroy you, even your belief in sin and evil, even your death wish, in truth has NO EFFECT on your immortal soul. Nothing changes about the truth of you. Even your self induced suffering is not REAL suffering. Even your self inflicted pain is not real pain. And as you try to kill yourself off, you as the son of God is totally unaffected.

This means that EVEN IF you attack yourself, you are not REALLY attacking yourself. You have not REALLY ever done anything to yourself. "I am still as God created me."

Recognize first that ALL attack is SELF attack. This is not easy when you have slipped down the slipper slope into projection. It has to all come back to YOU being totally responsible for sin. BUT, you must not stop at being responsible for sin because it is not real. You need swift correction, so that you will recognize you HAVE NOT even sinned against yourself. You must admit that YOU are the ONLY cause of ALL your suffering, and decide to STOP HURTING YOURSELF. And then you can receive healing.

This simple truth, that YOU are the only one hurting yourself, and YOU can decide to love yourself instead. .. is the CORE of A Course in Miracles. Once you love yourself, or. .. seek first the Kingdom of God (which is you) .... your way will be made straight. Everythign else will fall into line naturally, including performing miracles, healing the body, and undoing the world.

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

"When you are weary, remember you have hurt yourself. Your Comforter will rest you, but YOU cannot. YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW, for if you did, you could never have grown weary. Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in ANY way, for that is not God's Will for His Son."

"It can be but myself I crucify."

All that I do I do unto myself.

If I attack, I suffer. But if I

forgive, salvation will be given me."

"As prayer is always for yourself, so is forgiveness given you. It is impossible to forgive another, for it is only your sins you see in him."

"I repeat again that if you ATTACK error, you will hurt yourself."

"To see a body as anything EXCEPT a means of pure extension is to limit your mind and HURT YOURSELF."

"To you the miracle CANNOT seem natural, because what you have done to hurt your minds, has made THEM so UNnatural that they do not remember what is natural to them."

"I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts."

"When he thinks that he is hurt in any way, it is because he has forgotten who he is, and that he is as You created him." "If ever I am sad or hurt or ill, I have forgotten what You think, and put my little, meaningless ideas in place of where Your Thoughts belong, and where They are. I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts."

"I will not hurt myself today."

"His thoughts can frighten him, but since these thoughts belong to him alone, he has the power to change them, and exchange each fear thought for a happy thought of love. He crucified himself. Yet God has planned that His beloved Son will be redeemed."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

The body is the idea of sin. It is an extension of the idea of being separate. The body cannot become sinless in and of itself, although it can be used for a holy purpose.

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh and then projected outward." - ACIM

"At no single instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but never experienced just now. Only its past and future make it seem real. Time controls it entirely, for sin is never present. " - ACIM

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. " - ACIM

The body is always a symbol of being separate from God. It must be imperfect and it must be an illusion. Otherwise, if it were not, it would be possible for the body to have power over the mind and could prevent the Son of God from awakening or healing.

The body itself, in its fullness, must be fundamentally an illusion of separation, and therefore sin. IT MUST BE FALSE. It can't be a truth and it can't have any truth to it. If truth were associated with the body, we'd be totally stuck in the dream.

To say that the body is inherently holy or perfect or anything other than a symbol of sin is to say that God, who is holiness and perfection, is a body. That is a way the ego wants to make God be a body so that it can kill God, just as it makes the Son of God a body in order to kill him.

"Any thought system that confuses God and the body must be insane." - ACIM

At its core, metaphysically, the body is an illusion of sin. It cannot be the central truth of who or what you are. It cannot be holiness. It cannot be wholeness. It cannot be innocence. It can only exist inside of the dream of separation. It cannot enter heaven. It is never present. And it never really exists at all.

We need to learn to recognize that the body is the idea of sin, and then undo it. If we are to undo sin, the body must disappear, being an illusion that we believe is really there as a real sin. You can perceive the body with love or use it with love to give it a holier purpose, in which it can appear to be free from sickness and so on, but it is still a body. It is still an idea and representation of sin, and so long as it remains, the mind cannot be 100% free. This is why Jesus had to disappear his body in order to completely remove its blockage to the awareness of God's presence.

The body is never present. It cannot exist in the now. It does not live. It is always a memory or an idea of the future, with an artificial history and a fabricated illusion of continuation. The body IS the symbol of sin. It is false. It does not exist. It not who or what you are. You do not need it. You are immortal spirit.

"Miracles reawaken the awareness that the spirit, not the body, is the altar of truth. This is the recognition that leads to the healing power of the miracle." - ACIM

"Although you have attacked yourself, and very brutally"

In the separation from God, each of us has condemned ourselves. We've accused ourselves of sin, and condemned ourselves to suffer. We want ourselves to be punished, murdered, and destroyed. Ultimately this is a death wish, in which we have become suicidal because we don't believe we deserve to live or to be loved by God. You might be thinking, suicidal? I'm not suicidal. Well think again.

At the same time as trying to destroy yourself to prove you don't exist in God, your true self is utterly sinless, guiltless, innocent, holy and pure. You have never sinned or hurt or commit a crime or broke a law. You have never done anything to anyone, and no-one has ever attacked you. You are immortal and eternal and endless and permanent. And no harm can come to you because God himself protects you.

"The Thought of God protects you, cares for you"

The problem is, there is a seeming "gap" between what is really true of you, and what you currently BELIEVE. And if you are not in touch with your utter immaculate sinlessness, then some part of you DOES believe you are condemned to hell. God isn't doing this condemnation, nor are your brothers.

It's all an inside job of your own self attack. It is your self destruction. And this is suicidal. Even though death isn't real, this needs to be undone because the belief in your non-existence keeps you from being happy.

Looking at what you are doing to yourself is not pretty. If you are not accepting your sinlessness, it means you are believing you are sinful. It means you don't love yourself. It means you actively attack yourself and are trying to destroy yourself. Such as in "my attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability." It means you don't really like yourself, yet alone love yourself with the love of God.

So now if you think about it in terms of the "relationship" that you have "with yourself", as if you could relate to yourself like a third party, how do you really feel about yourself? What is your honest current attitude towards yourself? If it's not one of total unconditional perfect love, then it isn't a very healthy relationship.

If there is a belief in being sinful, or evil, or a monster, or unworthy, or not good enough, or you resent yourself, or are angry at yourself, or keep judging yourself, or see yourself as weak, or hurt yourself emotionally or physically, or keep being abusive towards yourself, there are all signs of a breakdown in relationship.

And what that ultimately means is that you have not forgiven yourself. You're in this relationship with someone that you don't want to be with. And that is going to split your mind and hurt your mind. If you don't love yourself and embrace yourself with acceptance then how can you possibly relate to yourself at all?

Think of yourself as in the shoes of a person that you don't like in a similar way. If you don't like that person you don't want to be near them. You don't want to give them things. You don't want to share with them or spend time with them. You don't want them to exist. You don't care if they get hurt or suffer. You want them to suffer. And you may even feel so bitter towards them that you wish they were dead. Is that the relationship you are having with YOURSELF?

You have to look deep within yourself with much honesty to find this out. And it's probably going to be somewhat painful or even scary. You may not actually even realize or recognize that you have it in for yourself, or want yourself to suffer, because you may be so used to a general level of background destructiveness that you think it's totally normal. You might not have even seen how much you hate yourself.

"You who think you hate your bodies, deceive yourselves. YOU HATE YOUR MINDS, for guilt has entered into them, and they would remain separate, which they CANNOT DO."

"You HATE the prison that you made, and would destroy it."

"You are afraid of Him, and do not see you hate and fear your Self as enemy."

"And why do you attack them anywhere except you hate yourself?"

"But if you hate part of your own Soul, ALL your understanding is lost, because you are looking on what God creates AS YOURSELF without love."

"You do not realize how much you hate each other. You will not get rid of this until you DO realize it, for UNTIL then, you will think you want to get rid of EACH OTHER and KEEP THE HATRED. "

So you have to look at this stuff. And typically you need a strong contrast in order to recognize it. Get in touch with what it means to be sinless. That your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Get a feel for total pure innocence and the complete absence of all attack, even slight annoyances. And then in that light, look at how you feel about yourself.

Do you still feel like attacking? Do you still feel a need or requirement to judge and blame? Do you condemn others to hide your self condemnation? Are you constantly fighting with people? Do you feel unhappy most of the time? If you have any of the "symptoms" of the ego, which is anything not of God, then certainly there is room for improvement in your relationship with yourself.

First you need to recognize that you even DO hate yourself, before you can be willing to take steps to heal that relationship. And you can't see that unless you have some kind of higher truth about you to compare it to. Your utter pure sinlessness in God, your immortal innocence, the guarantee of eternal life, can act as a contrast and at reality-tester to find out just how you really do feel about yourself. And once you find that out, you have healing work to be done upon yourself. You need correction and forgiveness. You need to FORGIVE YOURSELF, in order to recognize you are sinless and free.

"You have condemned yourself, but condemnation is not of God."

"You who believe you have condemned the Son of God"

"But in the dream of judgment, you attack and ARE condemned."

"And unless He had given you a way to remember, you would have condemned yourselves to oblivion."

"Now has the mind condemned itself to seek without finding; to be forever dissatisfied and discontented; to know not what it really wants to find."

"If the Son of God is guilty, then is he condemned, and he DESERVES no mercy from the God of justice."

"Guilt is ALWAYS in your OWN mind, WHICH HAS CONDEMNED ITSELF. Project it not, for while you do, it cannot BE undone."

"The delusional can be very destructive, for they do not recognize they have condemned THEMSELVES."

"It is not God Who has condemned His Son. But ONLY you, to save his specialness, and kill his Self."

"Remember, then, that whenever you look without and react unfavorably to what you see, you have judged yourself unworthy, and have condemned yourself to death."

"You have handled this wish TO KILL YOURSELF by NOT KNOWING WHO YOU ARE, and identifying with something ELSE. You have projected guilt blindly and indiscriminately, but you have NOT uncovered its source. For the ego DOES want to kill you, and if you identify WITH it, you MUST believe ITS GOAL IS YOURS."

You don't need to die. You need to forgive yourself.