When you contrast what is true in God's reality, versus what seems to be true or possible in this world, you will find a great discrepancy. A HUGE contradiction.

In God's truth, nothing real can be threatened. God is permanence. He is absolute factual reality. He is changeless and can never be destroyed. He is purely creative and constructive and totally devoid of suffering. And he can never die. Anything he creates MUST share all of these attributes, because they are extensions of his own nature and kind.

Then look to the physical world you are familiar with. Look at the fact that there is death happening. There are leaves falling from the trees and rotting. Someone's dog just got run over by a car. People are being shot. There are graveyards filled with decaying bodies. You can go there and look at the graves for yourself. You can go visit a morgue perhaps and see death in the flesh.

However, if God's reality is TRUE, and always true, as it must be to BE true, how is it POSSIBLE that there is death or attack of any kind? Can it BE true, that there is attack and death and murder in any form at all, if God's reality is that REAL THINGS are unattackable? How is it possible that you can look at a dead body? How is it possible that you can see leaves falling from trees? How is it possible that you can attack someone's body or be attacked by another?

It cannot both be true, that attack is impossible, and that attack is possible. There is no sense or sanity in that. ONLY ONE of them can be true. When it is blatantly obvious that everything in heaven is utterly immortal, invulnerable, eternal, permanent, and completely incapable of being changed by anyone against God's will. .... what then are the implications of that for the things which appear to COMPLETELY CONTRADICT that truth?

If you hold in your mind the FACT that in reality nothing real can ever be threatened or harmed or made to suffer or die, and then you quickly look at this world and see all of that happening ALL AROUND YOU, HOW "on earth" can you justify that IT IS POSSIBLE AT ALL? How can there be ANY TRUTH to this world at all?

Now we're not merely talking here about states of perception. You can be in false perception and believe very strongly that DEATH IS POSSIBLE. Even though this is obviously in TOTAL VIOLATION of God's reality. Death is UTTERLY impossible to God and his Kingdom.

"Nothing can prevail against our united wills, because nothing can prevail against God's."

"NOTHING can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the hands of His Father."

"Be confident that your creations are as safe as you are. 12 The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it."

You can perceive for example that leaves are falling from trees right now. That IS DEATH. The leaves are going through a process of change. They are affected by the weather. They are under attack by the cold. They are PROVING that death is possible.

Then, you can move into what we call true perception. Supposedly this true perception is going to lift away the BELIEF or MEANING that leaves falling from trees "is real death". It's going to lift away the "proof" that falling leaves succeed in violating God's reality. But even if this is so, even if you interpret them to "not mean death", to see THROUGH their illusion of death, to not BUY INTO their death, you should really NOT SEE THEM AT ALL.

Leaves falling from trees IS STILL a process of dying, no matter how you interpret it or what meaning you give to it. A body laying in the ground ROTTING, is still actually "proof of sin". Why isn't the body upright and moving around, symbolizing life? Why does it not have vitality and strength and health? Why does it SYMBOLIZE attack and suffering and decay? No matter HOW you look at it, the body is still in a FORM which represents the idea "attack is possible." EVEN IF you see it from a healed perspective.

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see."

True perception merely shows you a reinterpretation of the PROOF OF DEATH, in which the proof is disregarded. You RECOGNIZE that it is NOT REAL. That there CANNOT BE death because of God's truth that death is impossible. You OVERLOOK the death and do not buy into it. You do not BELIEVE in it or give it the meaning of fact, truth, or reality. You WITHDRAW reality from it and take back its seeming power to do anything. And this renders it nothing more than an ILLUSION OF A LIE OF A WORLD. It is the recognition that TRULY, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE.

What is impossible, in truth, simply CANNOT EXIST. It CANNOT HAPPEN. It CANNOT BE THERE TO SEE. If you see it, if you perceive it, in ANY way, you are seeing somethign which violates God's reality. This is why "you cannot behold the world and know God."

"The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it."

If you behold the world, if it seems to be THERE AT ALL, you are blinded to God. Because in God, the things of this world are NOT POSSIBLE. There are no falling leaves in God. There are no burial sites. There are no mass graves from war. There is no decay or loss or famine or disease. There is no attack or murder or guns or violence. These are NOT POSSIBLE.

So you have to really deeply ask yourself. When it boils down to it, IF IT IS TRUE that in God's truth all forms of attack and death ARE UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE, that they cannot even show up in ANY WAY, with any interpretation ..... CAN IT BE POSSIBLE that the things you're seeing as "a world", as earth, is even POSSIBLE AT ALL? Can it exist? Can it BE there to be seen? Can it even SEEM to exist? Should it even be HAPPENING?

The honest and sane answer to this is NO. The world CANNOT EXIST if God's reality is true. IMPOSSIBLE THINGS cannot be existing, or happening, or showing up, or being perceived in any manner, if God's reality is true. There cannot be graves or guns or gangs or guilt or regurgitation or garages or gargoyles. There cannot be forms. There cannot be objects. There cannot even be planets. There cannot even be EVENTS of any kind. Because there is no time in God.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. ****It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. ****When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

1) What seems to happen has NOT OCCURRED. ("Forgiveness recognizes that what you think your brother did has NOT OCCURRED."

2) The changes wrought are substanceless. ANY KIND OF CHANGE is an illusion. "They can be easily be changed BECAUSE they are illusions." All illusions are changeable, reality is not. Anything which changes IS NOT REAL. They have no real substance or meaning.

3) All events are nowhere. There is no history. There is no time. There is no past and no future. There are no elections, no wars, no celebrations, no tv shows being watched, no food being eaten, no forests burning, no snow melting, no fish swimming in oceans, no people arguing other meaningless piffle, no clouds parting, no sunsets, no puppies and kittens, no icea cream falling on the ground, nothing. NO EVENTS ANYWHERE.

This is because there is no world. That there is no world is the ONLY SANE CONCLUSION you can come to, when you examine that this world is utterly IMPOSSIBLE. Nothing in it can POSSIBLY be happening if God's reality is true. And if you are seeing it happen, if you are believing your eyes, YOU ARE INSANE.

So long as there are graveyards, there is the illusion of something impossible seeming to be possible. Something not true seeming to be true. There CANNOT BE graveyards. Nothing in God can ever die, so what are graveyards for but to try to PROVE that something IMPOSSIBLE is happening? Death is a lie. "There is no death, the son of God is free."

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

What do you WANT to be true? That dying is possible, or that it is not? Your choice. And I am under no laws but God's.

"***Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already*** (earth is not objective reality), hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish (you wished it into being with wishful thinking), and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly.

Ideas leave not their source. This central theme is often stated in the text, and must be borne in mind if you would understand the lesson for today. It is not pride which tells you that you made the world you see, and that it changes as you change your mind. But ***it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself*** (the idea that earth exists objectively and independently from your mode of perception), impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance to think it is.

***There is no world!*** (earth does not exist because IT IS IMPOSSIBLE!) This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.

But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn ***there is no world***, and can accept the lesson now. Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize. Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. Others find it in ***experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world.*** And some will find it in this course, and in the exercises that we do today."

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in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the ego's world, causes are victimizers, and effects are victims

This applies everywhere in the ego's world. Every single "cause" is the idea of victimization. Every single "effect" is the idea of being a victim. What possibly can there even be LEFT when this classifies EVERY phenomenal event in history?

When the wind blows leaves on a tree, the wind is now the victimizer, the tree its helpless victim whom it has power over against its will.

Also in the ego's world, causes turn into effects and back again, because really, both causes and effects in this world are THE SAME ILLUSION.

In truth, both causes and effects in this world, both victims and victimizers, are THE SAME ILLUSION, which shifts and changes based on the circumstances.

They are both EFFECTS. Neither of them are causes.

They are effects of DREAMING from an entirely separate level of causality.

If something in this world is a cause one moment, for example someone kicking a ball, where the ball is the effect, how is it possible that the ball bounces off a wall and hits the person on the head? That person is now victimized by the ball.

How is it possible for the cause to TRULY be a cause, a permanent cause, if it is actually able to be affected?

And so, in this world, causes are AFFECTED, and effects can CAUSE. Meaning, victimizers are also victims, and victims are also victimizers.

And since causes can be changed into effects, which is an attempt to prove that GOD (cause) CAN BE AFFECTED by your sin, they are not REALLY causes. Both causes and effects in this world are FAKE.

Everything in this world is equally an EFFECT OF DREAMING. An effect of the ONLY cause which is in the MIND. The mind is cause, the entire world is the effect.

The body is an effect, all sickness is an effect, all death is an effect, and resurrection is an effect. Mind has power over all matter. Mind is the ONLY CAUSE of what happens here.

This world SEEMS to have many causes in it. The wind SEEMS to blow the tree. The leaves SEEM to be "blown". This is an illusion! The wind blowing, and the leaves moving, HAPPENS TOGETHER as a SIMULTANEOUS PROJECTION from a dreaming mind.

Similarly, if an "accident" happens which hurts someone and their body becomes damaged, the accident itself AND the damage in the body were BOTH MANIFESTED AT THE SAME TIME BY THE SAME MIND. By the same cause.

Therefore it is NOT TRUE that the accident caused the body to be damaged! The accident happening and the body showing damage is a DECEPTION by the mind to make it APPEAR, in linear time, that there are causes in the world which terrorize other parts of the world, producing effects against their will.

Buying into this view of horizontal cause and effect, will make you buy into the illusion that YOU ARE A VICTIM, because you will not be able to help but believe that stuff "happens to you" by worldly external causes, and that symptoms show up "as effects" against your will. It is an ILLUSION.

If your body becomes hurt by an incident, caused by something external, YOU ARE PUTTING THE HURT IN YOUR BODY in an attempt to make it seem true that you are at the effect of the world! YOUR MIND puts your sickness in your body to CORRELATE to the heirarchy of illusions - the belief that a separate cause caused this. It's a cover-up. It's pretend. It's fake.

You as spirit, joined with God's mind, cannot be at the effect of the world, because the world is at the effect of YOU. This means the world HAS NO CAUSAL POWER of its own. ZERO! Absolutely no ability whatsoever to make anything happen. Jesus's own words:

""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 that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail.""

"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all. "

The world DOES NOTHING. It is not a cause. Everything in the world is the EFFECT of YOUR MIND.

This is why you have power over the whole world. This is why "my self is ruler of the universe". This is why whatever your mind chooses to see, it will PUT INTO THE WORLD in form, manifestationally!

"There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see and all the world must change accordingly."

ie the world "out there" is what your mind PUTS THERE. Change your mind and that outward picture MUST CHANGE. The world will change, "physically"!

All of the course’s METAPHYSICS is based on perfectly clear, black and white, impeccable logical reasoning. REASON is the attribute of a sane mind. Through reason, you can literally SEE SENSE. What makes perfect sense is true.

"The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite."

(something which is everything, leaves no room for anything else, right? Something that takes up all the space leaves no room for an opposite. That’s perfectly logical)

"Noting real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists."

(if real things cannot be threatened, and ending existence requires threat/attack, then everything that produces non-existence must be unreal. That’s perfectly logical)

"If perfect love casts out fear, and if fear exists, then there is NOT perfect love. But only perfect love really exists. Therefore, if there is fear, it creates a state which does not exist."

(if there is fear, there is not love, ie there is a lack of love, because love’s presence casts out or shines away fear. Lights dispells darkness. This seems to suggest if darkness is present, light is not. Or if fear is present, love is not. But believing that is believing illusions. Only love exists, and love is all encompassing, so fearful states do not really exist. This is perfectly logical)

"You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING."

(believing that what is true is false, and that what is false is true, is total confusion about what is true and real. Ego is a state of total confusion. Which is inanity - believing illusions are real, believing lies are true, beliving the impossible is possible. This is perfectly logical)

"A sick body does not make any sense. It could not make any sense, since sickness is not what it is for."

(bodies are communication devices. Confusing their purpose and attacking them for you seeming to fail to communicate is insane. Thus sickness (attack upon the body) is nonsense. It’s implementing on false grounds as a defense against truth and against sense. No one in their right mind can be sick. This is perfectly logical)

Jesus goes on, and the course is littered with blatantly logical statements. If you can SEE the logic in them, behind the words, you are seeing the metaphysics. The metaphysics is totally flawless and not open to interpretation or opinion. There aren’t 1500 different versions of the LOGIC. There is only ONE. Otherwise you are making logical errors. And this is also why only the ONE truth is true.

Anyone reasoning correctly should have no option but to accept and admit and agree with it. Seeing sense means seeing the LOGIC. WHY it makes sense. This is why the atonement eventually becomes so obvious that it makes sense, is the only truth that makes sense, and nothing else makes any sense. When you can see why it is the only TRUTH, logically, reasonably, you will have no OPINION left to defend against it, and will submit yourself to God.

The atonement is the logical concluson of God providing a perfect answer to the mistaken logic of the separation. This is why it is a flawless response, making ascension absolutely inevitable. It makes perfect sense that God knows how to perfectly resolve the logical thinking ERRORS of his children.

A tree ... well.... at first a seed, is planted, and there is husk and germ, and then there is sprout, and now leaves, and a stem, and then a trunk with bark, and then flowers are emerging with petals and pollen, and now the emergence of apples with sweetness, and then there is a seed forming in the apple, and the apple falls to the ground, and now there is a seed again which could become a new tree, and on it goes.

So the question then is, what is this thing? Is it a seed? Well, temporarily, but it turns into something else. Is it a tree? Well not entirely, it was a seed at one point. Is it an apple? For a while, but it used to be bark and petals. So what is this thing? What is this so-called organism that just keeps on changing?

Really the whole cycle of what we call life is a temporary mix of things shifting and changing, as though to say, it has no permanent truth. It is never always something, it's always turning into something else. It shifts and changes, and so says it is one thing one moment and another the next. Another word for that is a lie, or untruth. A physical lie.

There is really no absolute truth of this shapeshifting "lifeform", it's one thing one minute and then you come back some days later and it's become something else. It is partly something, but not wholly anything. Bits of parts sprouting here, other parts sprouting there, at first buds and leaves, then flowers and fruits, who knows what it even is.

This is the transient cyclic undependable uncertain (fear) constantly shifting deceptive dishonest delusional system of the physical world. It has no fixed truth, and it presents one thing as true one moment and changes it's "mind" the next. It has no permanent identity, no absolute anything, nothing dependable, nothing reliable, you can't even trust it.

Such a world symbolises the ego thought system, full of illusions, deceptions, lies, shiftings and changes, nothing ever truly dependable or reliable. Always uncertain, an entire system of fear, always uncertain as to what it is or will be, impossible to depend on, undecided in its insanity, committed to nothing, incapable of being. And as physical objects it has become PHYSICAL FEAR. A physical lie, shifting before your eyes. And who knows what it is or was or ever will be next.

The world is a physical version of insanity. A mind solidified into concrete and walls. All its workings the laws of madness. Its entire system one of total uncertainty and deception. An illusion of a world, driven by insanity and rooted in lies. Not one single part of it is eternal or true.

"The world is the symbol of fear."

""A meaningless world engenders fear."

The totally insane engenders fear because it is completely undependable, and offers no grounds for trust. Nothing in madness is dependable. It holds out no safety and no hope. But such a world is not real. I have given it the illusion of reality, and have suffered from my belief in it. Now I choose to withdraw this belief, and place my trust in reality. In choosing this, I will escape all the effects of the world of fear because I am acknowledging that it does not exist."

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."

If you are feeling unworthy or unwanted, know this.

In spacetime, cause and effect seem to occur whereby you cause something temporarily, it produces something temporary, and then the cause is withdrawn. As if it has deposited a creation and left it alone, essentially similar to the idea of birth.

Physical creations are like discarded pieces of trash, made momentarily and then forgotten about. In effect, its creator abandons it, does not want to maintain it, withdraws life from it, and leaves it to die alone.

What is deposited upon the Earth is merely thrown away, discarded and no longer nurtured by its creator. And being without a cause, it must die. This is true of all bodies and objects and forms, which are nothing but discarded rejects from a temporary creator who creates nothing that lasts and who wants none of his creations.

This is the metaphysical origin of feelings of unworthiness, of rejection by God, of being discarded and abandoned, of deserving death and of being orphaned in a trashcan of a world. If you ARE a body, then you are disconnected from your source, and your creator has rejected you as unworthy.

It is simply because you believe you are identified with something that is not permanent, came from a creator who does not permanently love you, were produced by a sinful evil cause who hated you and no longer wanted you, and who has left you for dead in a graveyard, lost and alone to wither and die.

No one can be sustained or maintained without a cause. Effects do not exist unless their cause is ongoing. You cannot step away from something, believing you have caused it, and have it remain. To do so is to reject and discard and abandon it to death. A creation which can exist on its own without its creator is a total illusion in this world. Without your creator you are nothing.

God is a permanent creator and he creates only that which is permanent, and he maintains you in his mind forever by his thought and will and power. He cannot ever stop loving you or stop creating you or sustaining you. That is why you are able to live forever, because he is permanently holding you in existence. You are forever ever-present and ever-perfect. He WANTS YOU permanently and so does NOT leave you.

Only in such a way can you BE worthy, or WANTED, or DESIRED by your creator, or VALUED enough to have permanent ongoing nurturing, support, maintenance and continued existence. Only if you were wanted FOREVER could you have eternal life. And this is how we have to learn to think of ourselves.

If we see ourselves as children of temporary parents, or deposits of a creator who has turned his back on us, or effects who have become orphaned from their cause, or fatherless sons, or motherless daughters, or in any way disconnected from our source, then we will see ourselves as unwanted. This is why all those walking the earth feel themselves to be unworthy, because they think they have become separate from God.

Separation is really the idea that cause and effect have become separated. That father and son have been separated. That the son no longer has a father. That the father is no longer a father and does not want a son. That the father has rejected the son and is trying to destroy him. And that the son has rejected the father and is trying to destroy him also. This MUST produce a sense of unworthiness because it means the father does not want the sons and does not value his life.

If you are the child of a permanent creator, who wants you permanently, and who can never stop wanting you, then you must be worthy and you must be wanted. If you are something lost and forgotten, discarded like a piece of trash, hated and reviled, evil and ugly, then obviously you're going to feel unworthy. Identifying with a body you MUST reject God and msut therefore feel valueless. The body is not worth ANYTHING, and if it is your self, then you have no creator.

A lack of worth therefore is nothing more than a breakdown in cause and effect. To be an effect without a cause, is to have been disowned. If you are disowned by your creator then what can that say of your value, who has turned his back and left you behind to suffer alone? Only if cause and effect are permanent can you be worthy of God. You cannot be some lump of flesh that was squirted out and became a separate thing, otherwise you ARE literally separate from your creator and are PHYSICALLY unwanted.

Fortunately God never leaves his children comfortless. He never abandons you. He never forgets you. He never stops loving and wanting you. He never finds you to be imperfect or worth discarding. He never stops suspending you in his mind, or making sure theat you live forever. He never leaves you and he never forsakes you. And most of all, he never fails to value you, because he has decided to hold you in his heart forever.

"You have not left me comfortless. I have within me both the memory of You, and One Who leads me to It."

"You do not walk alone. God's angels hover close, and all about. His Love surrounds you, and of this be sure: that I will never leave you comfortless."

"Before that, there was no need for healing and no-one was comfortless."

"It was accomplished FOR you by the Will of God, who has not left you comfortless."

"He will not leave you comfortless, nor fail to send His angels down to answer you in His Own Name."

"He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your minds from everything that hides His Face from you."

"God did not leave His Children comfortless, even though they left Him."

"And he is entitled to everything, because it is his birthright as a Son of God."

"The Children of God are entitled to perfect comfort, which comes from a sense of perfect trust."

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. ALL His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they, were created neither partially nor in part."

"It is because the thoughts you think you think ****appear as images**** that you do not recognize them as nothing. You think you think them, and so you think you see them. This is how your "seeing" was made. ****This is the function you have given your body's eyes.**** It is not seeing. It is image-making. It takes the place of seeing, replacing vision with illusions."

Consider a photograph. A photograph appears to be an image of something. Maybe it's an image of a city, which you took while on vacation. As you look at the photograph it appears to you to be a city, and you think there is a city there. Just as when you look at people on the TV you think you're seeing people, and even react as if they were real sometimes. This is because the images are very convincing and lifelike.

However, consider the difference between the photograph and the actual place. The photograph is not really a city, it just looks like one. And the real city is somewhere else. Well, how about we suggest that this physical world, planet Earth etc, is in fact not a real world, but is in fact like a photograph of a world? It LOOKS LIKE a world, but isn't an ACTUAL world. It's an IMAGE OF a world, or what a world would LOOK LIKE, but isn't one.

A tree that you look at, isn't actually a tree. It is a three-dimensional "hologram" of a tree. It sure looks like one, feels like one, moves like one. It even seems alive. But it is still just an image of a tree. A kind of 3D animated picture. Like a movie clip. As it plays out, it sees to sway in the wind and drop its leaves and sprout new ones, but all the while it's not an ACTUAL tree. It's just a picture of one.

This is because everything in this world is not actually a world. It's an IMAGE of a world. A collection of pictures. The body is a picture. The trees and houses and cars are just images. The planet is in fact just a PROJECTED IMAGE from the mind, which has tried to depict what such things would look like if they existed. It is a representation or symbol of such things, but is not really those things.

The body's eyes were designed to "see images" of a world made of images. To reflect back those images into the mind, to form some kind of "sight". And so now you look upon images. And the body can only see images, it cannot see real actual places.

Recognizing that this world is really just a collection of pictures, imagining a world, visualizing forms that don't really exist, you can better understand why this world is a dream or hallucination. The mind is "seeing" what it thinks it wants to see. It is picturing a world of bodies. And these images are made to block true vision. You look upon them thinking you are surrounded by an ACTUAL world, when all you are surrounded by is a hollow empty picture.

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

"You see the world which you have made, but you do not see yourself as the ****image-maker****. You cannot be saved from the world, but you can escape from its cause. This is what salvation means, for where is the world you see when its cause is gone? Vision already holds a replacement for everything you think you see now. Loveliness can ****light your images****, and so transform them that you will love them even though they were made of hate. For you will not be making them alone."

"What I see reflects a process in my mind, which starts with my idea of what I want. From there, the mind makes up an image of the thing the mind desires, judges valuable, and therefore seeks to find. These images are then projected outward, looked upon, esteemed as real, and guarded as one's own."

"All the images His Son appears to make have no effect on what he is. They blow across his mind like wind-swept leaves that form a patterning an instant, break apart to group again, and scamper off. Or like mirages seen above a desert, rising from the dust."

"These images, with no reality in truth, bear witness to the fear of God, forgetting being Love. He must be joy."

"You ARE as God created you, and so is every living thing you look upon, REGARDLESS of the images you see."

"That is because you surround yourself with the environment you want. And you want it to protect the image of yourself which you have made. The image is part of it. What you see while you believe you are in it is seen through the eyes of the image. It is not vision. Images cannot see."

"To be told that what you do not see is there sounds like insanity. It is very difficult to become convinced that it is insanity not to see what is there, and to see what is not there instead. You do not doubt that the body's eyes can see. You do not doubt the images they show you are reality. Your faith lies in the darkness, not the light."

Gradually over time as you recognize more clearly who is responsible for doing what to whom, and that all attack is self-attack, you will start noticing that other people's attacks are not really attacks.

Their attack, is not really something which connects to you, bridges a gap between you, or leaves the other person to come into you.

Instead, you will start to get this idea, or simply to notice, to recognize, that although they are TRYING to attack you, it isn't actually attacking you.

If you recognize the person is the one "under attack", and that it's not really about you, you can choose not to USE IT to attack yourself. You can choose not to participate.

Deciding not to participate in their attempted madness makes it possible for you to be present and loving in spite of their attack, to see them as innocent and guiltless, and to offer healing.

Someone could be ranting and raving right in front of your face and, somehow, it's not about you. They're the one who is in pain or calling out for love. It's their expression. And their attempted attack doesn't necessarily have to have any effect on you.

When you are more in-tune with being causal, taking responsibility for what you experience, and knowing that you can only be hurt by yourself, this just becomes clearer and clearer.

This is the beginning of invulnerability and a step towards your immortality and permanent peace.

To accept the atonement for yourself isn't the end. You must help others to awaken also.

"29. The miracle restores the Soul to its fullness. By atoning for lack, it establishes perfect protection. The strength of the Soul leaves no room for intrusions. The forgiven are filled with the Soul, and their Soul forgives in return. It is the duty of the released to release their brothers.

The forgiven ARE the means of Atonement. Those released by Christ must join in releasing their brothers, for this is the plan of Atonement."

Also...

"You once said that souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation. This happens to be true. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. The Disciples were officially & specifically told to heal others, as Physicians of the Lord. They were also told to heal themselves, & were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me."

Anyone who follow's Jesus and atones, becomes a disciple of Jesus, and must also heal the sick and raise the dead as a physician of the Lord.

"I must found His church on you, because you, who accept me as a model, are literally my disciples. Disciples are followers, but if the model they follow has chosen to SAVE THEM PAIN IN ALL RESPECTS, they are probably unwise NOT to follow him."

God makes room within his own being to SHARE his being, and then places thoughts within his mind/being which are His Holy Children. These are within his being, but He in a sense steps aside to "allow" them to be free. These thought-creations, children of God, do not leave God’s mind. God "hosts" us.

Then, within the individual minds of each of these creations, we each have our own creations. We share and extend and create beings "within" the scope of our own being and mind, which do not leave our minds. We make room for them within our being and share ourselves with them as "host" to our children.

In this way, nothing real ever leaves the mind of God or the mind of the Sons of God. Everything is created INSIDE the being of what is already created. Since these LIVING BEIGNS are "ideas" or "thoughts", these ideas do not leave their source. They do not live "outside" of their host-mind.

In this way, real ideas do not leave their source. Thoughts must always occur WITHIN the mind that thinks them, just as all creation takes place WITHIN the creator. We are host to our creations just as God is host to us. Similarly, because God has made room to share Himself with us, we therefore co-create our children WITH Him, and share equally with all our brothers who are equally existing within the realm of God’s being.

We have not left our source.