Let's take a moment to remember our immortality. Forgiveness is based on immortality and symbolises it. If you are immortal nothing can change you in any way, nothing can happen to you, nothing can attack you or hurt you. If that's true, no-one is doing anything to you, nothing has ever been done to you, and sin is impossible.

If we claim ownership of our true nature - to know thyself as immortal spirit - then we are fully centered and holding the reins of our power. But this power and freedom requires total responsibility and ownership of our true identity as Christ.

When we slip and fall and start to displace our responsibility outside of ourselves, through dissociation (separation, split mind), we dis-associate from the immortality and the invulnerability it brings. We start to perceive that power and causation are outside of ourselves, that our own power has done a 180 and is now staring us in the face, doing things to us.

Except now we have disowned ourselves, we have disowned our power, and we have associated it with other people, external things, places and environments, so-called causes of suffering and death. We start believing we can be attacked, we can be caused to change, we can be made to feel one way or another, tossed around on the sea.

Before long this dis-ownership of responsibility has us believing that we are victims of the world, caused by other people, attacked and threatened, made to experience certain feelings against our will, upset "because of" this and that outside of us, things which we seem to have no control or power over.

This all entails a belief in being guilty, because immortality in its harmlessness is also innocence. If we move away from innocence we move into guilt, and you can't believe you are a mortal victim without it. This guilt arises from the self attack upon your own invulnerability, via your own self-attack thoughts. And then before you know it you're projecting it onto other people.

When you are guilty you will become lost and tangled up in what seems to be causes coming from other people. Whatever they do will seem to be about you in some way, causing you, influencing you, commenting on your nature, defining you, condemning you to some fate. A guilty person sees signs and proof of their guilt everywhere.

And this will appear to be actually about you because, in your guilt you become self conscious, with a sense of constant vulnerability. A sense of persecution and being judged, or being constantly under attack and safe nowhere. If someone says something inflammatory about you, you secretly believe it and agree with it. You already decided you're guilty so someone else pointing it out just triggers off your own self-hate. Except now you mistakenly think they're the ones who put the guilt in you.

Then it starts to seem as though what other people are doing is affecting you, that their attacks are really about you personally, that their projections of their own guilt is justified, and that you can be hurt by them. But all they're really doing is triggering off a pre-existing guilt that you put there on your own.

Failing to claim total responsibility for everything you experience, and seeing yourself as disempowered, you'll see others as having power over you to change you. And that means you see them as responsible for you. And that also means you do not recognize that they are responsible for themselves. Anything they choose or experience is their own doing, but in your attempt to disown yourself you also don't recognize they're attacking themselves.

Their self attack seems to bleed over into an attack on you, and vice versa, and before you know it you're all tangled up in a special relationship of mutual victimisation. They're doing stuff to you, you're doing stuff to them, and now it seems like no-one is responsible for anything.

What is needed is a relief from the inner guilt produced by your mistaken decision to try to be mortal. The denial and rejection of God has led to your attempt to make yourself his opposite, to suffer instead of be at peace, to be upset instead of happy, to be vulnerable and weak instead of immortal and powerful. Without the guilt you would not become confused about who is attacking who.

Ultimately we have to take back all of the power that we keep giving away, which requires a total ownership of who and what we are. We can't be playing the role of victim or victimiser - which are the same thing - if we are to be invulnerable. We can't be believing we're doing something to anyone, or that anyone is doing something to us. And that means we have to own up to being immortal, and no longer can claim to be guilty sinners.

In this recognition of your own innocence, you automatically cease to see yourself as a target for punishment. Having not targeted yourself, you are no longer self-conscious or self-absorbed. Having owned yourself and your God-given power, you can no longer see yourself as overpowered by anything in the world.

This recognition leads also to the recognition that other people are not attacking you, they are not talking about you in their attacks, they are not accusing you of anything, and are not doing anything to you at all. Instead, it is a recognition that - just as you were doing this all to yourself (the secret of salvation), they are doing it all to themselves. And this allows you to see that what they're doing is hurting themselves - as a call for love - rather than as hurting you.

This entails a positive "stepping back" or "separating" from the illusion that there is any kind of causation between you and other people, or you and the body, or you and the world. People and bodies and the world do nothing to you ever. What you are cannot be changed by anything or anyone. And your brother is not the cause of you - God is.

Ultimately, accepting that God is your creator, that you are his holy child, and that you are still permanently sustained by his mind and power as an innocent immortal being, is the key to salvation from all suffering. Owning it is total freedom and total responsibility.

Owning it makes suffering and guilt and murderous attack impossible. It is the end of the confusion that anything in the world is responsible for anything you experience. And it indeed marks the end of this world as well, because a world which has no causal power is not alive.

God created you to live forever, and you will never die.

"But the Face of Christ is the great symbol of forgiveness. It is salvation. It is the symbol of the real world. Whoever looks on this no longer sees the world. He is as near to Heaven as is possible outside the gate."

"You are God's Son. In immortality you live forever. Would you not return your mind to this?"

"And immortality is the opposite of time, for time passes away, while immortality is constant. Accepting the Atonement teaches you WHAT IMMORTALITY IS, for by accepting your guiltlessness, you learn that the past has never been, and so the future is needless."

"There IS no change in immortality, and Heaven knows it not."

"Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for HIMSELF."

"Immortality is a constant state. It is as true now as it ever was or will be, because it implies NO CHANGE AT ALL. It is not a continuum, and it is NOT understood by comparing it with any opposite."

"The Son of Life cannot BE killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed."

"Yet, for all the wild insanity inherent in the whole IDEA of sin, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. For the wages of sin IS death, and how can the immortal die?"

"You are immortal BECAUSE you are eternal, and always MUST be now."

"What is immortal cannot BE attacked; what is but temporal HAS no effect."

Independence can seem like a good thing. It seems to in some way be better than dependency on others, or codependency. It seems to represent being responsible for ones own life, and having the freedom to choose anything.

The ego has an idea about independence. To the ego mind, independence from God is highly sought after. If you can exist and be autonomous without Him, that's your goal. And you can be relatively successful at this, albeit that usually the success will be punctuated with failures and is short lived.

You can, if you want, have your life all to yourself and do whatever you want to do. But at some point it will become obvious that something is missing. There is an emptiness, and your heart yearns for meaning. And that's because your independence is an attempt to be separate from meaning.

Separation from God, in which God's love is heartfelt and meaningful, must lead to a meaningless life in which the ego has taken over control of your life and is running the show on its own. This autonomy is artificial and pretends to be freedom. But it leads to death.

Without God, alone and incapacitated, there is only so much you can do. You cannot move the planets or heal the sick. You cannot raise the dead or bring miracles to those in need. And you cannot experience true peace.

Your independence from God is at a price. You may not realize it at first, but the cost is great. To be separate is to have nothing. And yet independence from God is an attempt to have everything for yourself. This grasping and holding-on to everything cannot accomplish what it aspires to do. Instead, everything is lost and you have nothing of value.

Your very existence, your being, cannot last while it is disconnected from the Source of Life. Cut off from supply, you will become sick and die. Disconnecting from your Real Self and from God is a lonely path of weakness, vulnerability, suffering and death.

If you want to eat real food at the table of God, then it comes with requirements. The Kingdom has some conditions you must meet. It is not that the Kingdom is conditional, but it does not include the ego. The idea of independence from God must be recognized as an ego attempt to be separate from God, to have a will of your own, to overthrow the Authority of God and to play at being God of your own world.

This you must be willing to let go if you are to reconnect and reunite with the only source of True Strength. This you must surrender if you want the benefit of Eternal Life. You must give up your desire for separate control over your life, and allow yourself to receive God again. Together you can share everything, but alone you have nothing but scraps.

The world is a dry and dusty desert where starved and thirsty creatures come to die. Without God, it has no life, and there is no hope of forever. Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven, come to rejuvenate, resurrect and bring life back to the living. Only when you allow God to nourish you in this way might you enjoy the fruits of Heaven.

You can have it your way, exercising all the rights and freedoms to the full extent that individuality and separation allows, yielding every possible result that can come from an single separate self. But you will grow tired and be thirsty for more. And true meaning will not be found in a separate life.

God is your home. The Father shares everything worth having. True Peace can be yours again if you will open your heart and mind and let Him help you with living. Plug yourself back into His Power Source and return to Life. You have been dead without Him. Now is your time of resurrection. It's time for the prodigal son to come home.

Another word for judgement might be "narrowing". You narrow your mind down from wholeness by separating something out, sectioning it off from the rest. But to do this requires you to split your mind. Your mind in wholeness sees only wholeness, and cannot see separation. In order to judge a separate thing you have to first separate out, which isn't a passive act. It requires YOU to separate off your mind from itself.

This narrowing down therefore narrows your sense of identity, which now becomes "ego" and lost, and the result is that you are now "targeting" something exclusive, something separate, something limited. Instead of letting it be what it is in wholeness, without imposing upon it or judging it or evaluating what it is, or even asserting what it is, this ego position is arrogant and attempts to TELL the thing what it is. You are now deciding what it is to you, and therefore making up a MEANING for it.

You are deciding what you would have it be, as though a thing comes along and you sit there pointing a finger and telling it what it is, even if this has nothing to do with what it is. This finger-pointing is always condemning because it is narrow and unwhole, and this "narrowing" has a feeling of attack and limiting and confining - like an accusation, like hate. This judgement is always wrong because it cannot see the whole truth, the whole picture, or know anything completely.

It is out of touch with reality and limited due to the narrowing and splitting of mind. Not only does it then result in a FALSE CONCLUSION, which is fundamentally founded on ego lies and war and conflict, it also then distorts perception. You then SEE what you want to see, with the meaning you want it to have, judged to be what you think of it, rather than truly seeing what is actually real. This becomes a private seeing, an insane seeing, twisted and distorted and self-deceiving, like believing your own hallucination.

The result is false perception, which is warring and fearful and full of attempts to separate off. The more you focus on separation the more judgemental you become, resulting in perception becoming more fragmented, dark and insane. Narrowing your mind from wholeness to limitation darkens your mind and puts you into a state of self-imposed imprisonment. The very imprisonment that you think belongs to the thing you judge, is the very imprisonment that imprisons you. You get what you ask for, and you see what you believe is there.

To find the "real" world, a perception of the world without this narrowing, requires you to align with Christ Vision via the Holy Spirit who only sees from a perspective of wholeness.

"Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles."

"Judgment was made to be a weapon used against the truth. It separates what it is being used against, and sets it off as if it were a thing apart. And then it makes of it what you would have it be. It judges what it cannot understand, because it cannot see totality and therefore judges falsely."

"Perception follows judgment. Having judged, you therefore see what you would look upon. For vision merely serves to offer you what you would have. It is impossible to overlook what you would see, and fail to see what you have chosen to behold."

How can His Son AWAKEN from the dream? It is a dream of judgment. So must he judge NOT, and he WILL waken. For the dream will seem to last while he is PART of it. Judge not, for he who judges WILL have need of idols, which will hold the judgment off from resting on himself. Nor CAN he know the Self he has condemned. Judge not, because you make yourself a PART of evil dreams, where idols are your "true" identity, and your salvation from the judgment laid, in terror and in guilt, upon yourself. All figures in the dream are idols, made to save you FROM the dream. Yet they are PART of what they have been made to save you FROM.

This is a conclusion I've come to over time, and I'll explain why it makes sense to me.

God is whole. Everything God does is whole. When God creates he fully creates. What he creates is fully created and is whole.

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him."

God is a creator and has many thoughts. Each of those many thoughts are also whole thoughts, and thoughts of wholeness. Each of those thoughts contains the other thoughts, because there is one wholeness shared by all of them - that's oneness.

"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."

God has created many children, each of which therefore must be whole, and they all share the whole of God.

Now, in terms of relationship, God can ONLY relate fully. With each of those thoughts or created beings, God must have a full-on complete relationship. It is a whole relationship, in which God shares the whole of Himself. And all of Himself is received by his creations.

If you take a definition of "personal", to mean that you get the fullest most undivided attention, where someone totally commits to you and gives to you without any lack or limitation, ie you're getting "fully personal service", then God IS giving fully personal service. He is giving you ALL of the attention and service possible for anyone to ever receive. The best personal service you ever had.

God gives his full total whole attention and being to one child. That child receives the whole of God. God does not lack or limit or hold back anything he is sharing with that one child. The relationship they have is totally whole. Therefore as far as that child is concerned, God is being fully attentive, fully relating, fully present, fully focused and fully giving to them.

That is the MAXIMUM amount of personal service possible in any scenario. It's not even possible for God to be MORE personal, because he is meeting ALL of the needs of that child. He is giving them absolutely everything. There is no definition of getting fully personal attention from God than this.

The truth also is that EACH of the children of God are being given the FULL attention of God. God is wholly fully giving all of himself to child A, and to child B, and to child C. This is where God's abilities transcend ordinary states of spatial relationship, limitations, compartments and categories.

God is omnipresent. This not only means that God is everywhere but it also means that all of God is in every part of God fully, simultaneously, and without restriction or limit. God is actually capable of giving FULL attention to any given part, while also giving FULL attention to any other part.

All the parts of God, all of his creations, therefore individually experience a full, whole, completely, total, unlimited relationship with their creator. EACH of them experiences God as fully and wholly relating with them personally. Not that God is distracted with other children, or only has a short amount of time to spare.

God is entirely 100% personally attending to each child individually. Every child of God has God's full attention at all times, in a maximally personal relationship. And every child of God is receiving all of God at all times, without there being conflict, because they all share God's omnipresent transcendental nature.

This means that God is fully personal in relationship with each child. But God is also fully giving the same fullness to each child. This means there is no difference between what God is giving to one child, or what God is giving to another child. God is giving the same total wholeness to child A, and child B, and child C. They are all treated equally and fully.

Therefore, this means that God is truly being "impersonal", in the sense that none of his children are receiving SPECIAL FAVOR, and every one of them is receiving the fullness of his attention. Each child has a fully total personal whole relationship with ALL of God. While from God's perspective, he is having this full total relationship with EACH child simultaneously, and fully, without limit.

God therefore is impersonal because every single creation is related to in the SAME way, with the same wholeness and fullness and love. Nothing is given to one which is not given to another. EACH child of God has the WHOLE of God. Every child of God has EVERYTHING. All the children of God share ALL of God, and the same one whole is shared by them all. That is their oneness in holographic relationship with the whole, as whole parts.

This means, in conclusion, that God is fully entirely personal in relationship with EACH of his creations, and yet simultaneously is fully entirely personal in relationship to EVERY creation, and is therefore ALSO fully impersonal. Impersonal does not mean remote and distant and cold. It means not differentiating between any two persons, and not giving something different to one and not another.

Being impersonal is inclusive, but many people think that being personal is exclusive. And this is why many people think God cannot be personal. It is also why many people think God is COMPLETELY impersonal, without ANY "personal" (ie not fully attentive) relationship at all, which portrays God as some kind of remote uncaring generalized abstract blob that has no real personal relationship with ANYONE. That is not what God is like.

Similarly, because in the world of form and ego, people recognize that ego is selfish and exclusive, many of us also think that being personal is an ego thing. That it means exclusive, or something applies to one person and not another, or someone gets special treatment, or that someone is lacking something that another has. That is an earthly definition of "personal", based on separation, and rooted in the ego thought system. It is NOT the proper definition of personal as it applies to God.

God gives all of himself to every child, in a fully personal relationship, while also giving all of himself to the whole of creation at once, transcending earthly limits and seeming to do the impossible - being wholly in relationship with multiple beings at the same time without the slightest indication of loss or limitation or sacrifice or compromise or being distracted or special.

This is why I firmly believe God to be BOTH impersonal and personal. Fully personal, indeed MORE personal than any kind of ego-based specialness idea of personal, MORE personal than even a single person receiving something exclusively that others lack. MORE personal than the ego's definition of personal, which is a definition of lack and limitation and selfishness and hoarding. God is MORE personal than what most people think would be a maximal amount of "personal".

It is also why God is fully impersonal, in the MOST spiritual way. Impersonal not in a cold detached remote way, but in terms of absolute equality and fairness, totally treating every single person in the same way, relating with the same ONE unconditional love towards EVERYONE at the same time, and giving everything TO everyone simultaneously. This is far beyond the ego's definition of impersonal relationship, and is the guarantee that God fully personally relates to EACH AND EVERY child of God in exactly the same absolute way.

You can see these facts reflected in many statements from A Course in Miracles. For example Jesus speaks about revelations, which are communications FROM GOD, to an INDIVIDUAL soul, in which the soul experiences a HIGHLY PERSONAL relationship with God, which doesn't even entail the inclusion of others. This relationship moment reflects the original form of communication between God and ONE child, which continues to be a reflection of the PERSONAL aspect of God's relationship with EACH child.

God knows YOU personally, and fully. You have a full total whole relationship with God, personally. But at the same time, God has personal full relationships with your brothers. And his treatment of the whole Kingdom as one is his impersonal consistency and honesty with every creation. This is why I believe God to be A PERSON (or, an "impersonal fully-personal person"), why the Holy Spirit is A PERSON, why the children of God are PERSONS, and why being a person/being is completely natural. We all share everything with everyone.

"Revelation is intensely personal"

"He DOES want revelation brought to others. This cannot be done with the actual revelation, because its content cannot be expressed, and it is intensely personal to the mind which receives it."

"Revelations induce complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear. They represent the original form of communication between God and His Souls"

"God HAS kept your kingdom for you, but He cannot share His joy with you until you know it with your whole mind."

"The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything TO you. You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

1) Recognize that you are not happy.

2) Recognize that happiness IS God, is part of his nature, and there is no happiness other than God's happiness.

3) Recognize that you are not happy because you believe you are separate from THE happiness, ie separate from God. You think you are living in exile in an alien world cut off from him.

4) Recognize that you cannot find happiness anywhere except in God, because God is ALL happiness and there is no other source of happiness.

5) Recognize that to be happy this means you'll have to go and join with him and share HIS happiness such that, literally speaking, his happiness becomes your happiness.

Literally, everything that you want to be yours, which is worth having, is actually God's, and the only reason you're able to have it at all is because God has already GIVEN it to you. it is your natural inheritance in your creation.

The only reason you don't seem to have these things - happiness, love, peace, power, etc is because you have rejected and denied your inheritance. Your blocks to the awareness of love's presence is making you cut off from love.

So that means you need to reclaim your rightful inheritance, ie accept once again that you were already GIVEN all these things to share with God. Because you too are a part of God, and all of HIS stuff becomes your stuff.

"God is my strength." This means that in fact, your own strength, is actually God being strong within you, because you don't really have a strength of your own - you share God's strength and he be's strong for you within you.

"God is the mind with which I think." This means that you don't actually have a mind of your own as such, you share God's mind and you even share his thoughts. The thoughts you think WITH God are partly HIS thoughts.

"God is the light in which I see." This means that without God there is no light and no way to see. So now you need God in order to have light for vision, and that means that you see WITH God what God sees, and you see it in HIS light, as he illuminates that which you look upon as part of himself. You don't have any other light source.

"Love created me loving." This means that any love you are capable of feeling IS God, and must be shared with and include him. You can't love without him. So you and God love together, with you extending his love and giving his love. You do not have a love of your own and you cannot muster a love of your own while excluding him. The only way to love is to love together.

In all ways, you are created in the image and likeness of your father/creator. Any you do not HAVE anything whatsoever that is exclusively your own. You do not even have a mind or a self or a love or happiness or peace or power or will or anything whatsoever. You are totally nothing without God. If you could be without God you would be nothing.

But you are not without God, you are with God in all ways and all things. So what IS HIS, what is part OF HIM, is yours. And you are part of his own things. You are his property. You SHARE everything with him and with the whole sonship/heaven.

"Nothing is for you alone."

"Atonement is a lesson in sharing."

God is literally what you are made of. God is literally the substance that your self and identity is comprised of. You are literally a part of his own being and mind. You belong to him like part of his own body. You are symbiotic and one with God and if you try to not be one with God you end up bereft and empty and nothing. You literally cannot live without him. God is all you need. God is all you want. God is all you have.

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you."

Many many times in the Course it talks about the importance of *extension* - that if you do not share what you have you cannot have anything. 'Having' to the ego means not sharing. 'Having' to Holy Spirit means sharing. But why is this?

God extends Himself AS you to Create you and sustain you. You are His Creation. And because He gives you all the properties of Himself - his 'Fatherhood', you also therefore would naturally be a Creator and express your own fatherhood by further extending. So provided there is all this extension going on, everything is natural and normal. It's when we refuse to extend, that we enter into ego, because we're trying to stop Creation.

Now, Course stuff is sometimes hard to really understand using our regular language. In Heaven there really isn't any time or distance and there isn't a before-and-after scenario. But the idea of extending you can't really get a sense of it unless you put it sort of a chronological order like that, i.e. God extends from him to you, then you extend from you to others etc.

So I asked myself, if it weren't for this way of looking at it, how would I understand extension and why does God even extend at all.

I see it as... God radiates everywhere. Like a glow of light. It is his Presence (I'm hearing). Presence everywhere, God everywhere. God being everywhere. It's not like, God is separate from you and he shines outward onto you or through you. It's more like, God radiates His Presence everywhere and you ARE this 'radiation', somehow. I know we really can't properly put it into words, but.

So God being everywhere shares Himself everywhere. This idea of 'sharing' really means... God is present everywhere. There is nowhere that God is not, so that must mean he is 'fully shared'. The opposite of that would be that God is absent somewhere, so that would mean God does not 'share in' that part of existence (thats the ego's idea). So sharing has a lot to do with presence and Oneness and wholeness.

So God shares himself, be's whole himself, shines himself everywhere, and that is extension. The Course then says God did not will to be alone. By this I assume it to mean alone as in lonely. The Course also describes being alone a an ego concept of being separate. God doesn't will to be separate. But God is ONE, and whole, so it's not like God's sitting there twiddling his thumbs wondering if anyone is going to show up to play with. But for some reason, at least in Course terms, he 'creates' a Son. The Son is this idea of the 'end result' or effect of His Cause.. but really cause and effect are One and this doesn't happen over the course of time. The effect is always present forever because God causes/sustains forever.

But how do we explain that God created a Son out of the need to not be alone? Perhaps this means that God didn't will to not receive. He willed to both give and receive, and in a sense, what he receives 'from' - although it is One with Himself - is what the Course is calling 'the Son'. The feedback, if you will. But again there is no separation or time involved here. God shines everywhere and the radiance of God upon Himself is the Son.... even though this again suggests a gap of separation of time or separate caused and effects etc... this is why it's impossible to really describe.

Anyway. God extends us and we therefore must be extenders also because we are like Him. When we withhold extending or deny extension, we're trying to put a stop to Creation and to being an end to Life. That is the ego's choice for death. So to choose Life you must extend in the same natural way that He Created you. This means God radiates 'through' you, in a sense, although again there is no space or time involved here. God doesn't broadcast and then the broadcast travels through space and time a bit and then is received by you or relays through you. There is no spacetime. Extension is His shared Presence. Extension is the idea that God is already everywhere.

So when we have blocks to love, are trying to deny God, are trying to stop Life's extension, are trying to bring about an end/death, we're standing in the way of Creation and suffering. When we lift those blocks away and ALLOW GOD, everything 'flows' naturally and there is no blockage, thus no sickness or death.

Sometimes God's suggestion to me is.. ... "shine".

So here I am, shining a bit.

Let's get back to 'having'. If you don't extend you can't have anything. What this means is... the presence of God is blocked when it is not extended, so it if is really thoroughly inhibited, this essentially prevents God's presence. God's presence is WHAT IS, which means that's what you can HAVE i.e. experience in reality, so you can't join in that experience if God's presence is not being allowed to extend. So in effect it's like snuffing out a candle... if you stop the light you can't have the light. If you stop God you can't have God. And you can't really have anything other than God because nothing that He didn't Create exists.

So if you want to 'have' you have to "give all to all" i.e. give God - all that is - to God - to everything. This sharing, giving, extending of presence, shining, radiating, allows God's presence and thus for you to 'have' and own your real Self, which is One with Him. You can have all of your real self by extending it. It gives because it shines and is present everywhere. Without shining/extending you have nothing - by not extending, you prove there is nothing to extend, which implies you have nothing to extend.

Something like that.

If you are upset or having issues with a person, try doing a forgiveness which includes them. A forgiveness which applies to both of you at the same time. Forgive them, for them.

At each step of your forgiveness, as you remind yourself about what the truth is and as you undo your false belief, affirm also that this is also not true for the other person. Everything you say relating to yourself, also say it in relation to the other person. Use words like "both of us are not really guilty..." "neither of us have sinned" "we are both innocent" etc.

Take yourself and the other person all the way to the atonement, together. See how not only you are innocent and forgiven, having not really sinned, but how also the other person is innocent and forgiven, having not really sinned.

You may find that this works particularly well, because it includes a sense of joining, a sense of being equals, a sense of mutual agreement as to your mutual innocence, and emphasizes your shared interests. It also undoes any illusions you might have associated with the person as to what their attitude is, separate from your own.

Rather than forgive in isolation and only accept the atonement for yourself, claim it for yourself and your brother simultaneously.

I found this very helpful last night as I went all the way to atonement with a forgiveness about a person, seeing them as right there with me standing alongside me receiving God's love and radiating our innocence together.

Forgive yourself and your brother together and you may find it works rather well to heal a relationship.

Denial is an attempt to get rid of something, make it go away, place it anywhere other than here, push it outside of conscious awareness, and to disassociate from it. It’s an attempt to pretend it does not exist. This is a psychological act.

When there is denial, the "displacement" of what is being avoided appears to become separate from where it is (in you) and is sort of "pushed away" from you. Thus you push it outwards - outside of yourself.

So where there is denial, there is a pushing away, ie projection.

You can often experience this happening if you are ever around someone who represses their feelings. Regardless of how they feel, they will attempt to pretend they’re not feeling it, or they try to hide the feeling from themselves in an attempt to hide it from others. They think that if they are not aware of something, others won’t be aware of it either.

This is quite funny really and is similar to how we hide from God in order to pretend that God is not there. It’s also why we hide our secret sins and hidden hates, to KEEP them but pretend they are not there. Out of sight out of mind, but it doesn’t work.

What then happens is these people, because of denial, broadcast their stuff outward quite intensely. The more the denial, the more they project. This can especially be true of more intellectual people who do not like to feel emotions. They become loud broadcasters of what they do not want to feel. They are trying to get rid of it by projecting it away from themselves. They think that hiding it from themselves makes it go away from everyone, but it does not. Their feelings, pushed onto others, are even EASIER to see by others.

If you are sensitive or empathic you will likely easily pick up on these broadcasts and wonder why you are suddenly flooded with confusing feelings. Being around "projectors" can be quite toxic. They are emotionally irresponsible people who want to maintain a persona of everything being okay all the time, instead of being authentic. People-pleasers do this too.

This is also how we project stuff in our mind. Projection makes perception. Or you could say, denial makes projection. Upon "not wanting to see" what is being denied, it will be projected outward and then seen even more intensely. The only difference is there is a disassociation and a denial that it is inside yourself or has anything to do with you.

Always, being more responsible for everything you experience and feel will put you much more in touch with who you really are, give you strength, make you more aware and loving, and you will be much more authentic. You will also then stop sliming everyone else with your garbage disposal system.

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR OF AWAKENING. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of CONSCIOUSNESS."

The entire problem of the people of the world is that we're very confused about what is true. God, who is truth, has been deeply misunderstood. We've tried to replace God with a false God of vengeance, which we want to have nothing to do with.

"You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor, and God did not give it. For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son. Therefore, you made of Him an UNloving father, demanding of Him what only such a father COULD give. And the peace of God's Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father. He feared what he had made, but still more did he fear his REAL Father, having attacked his glorious equality WITH Him."

God has been framed as a murderous evil tyrant that wants us dead. We've associated him with all the properties of that which is not true, including darkness, evil, enemy, hateful, destructive, murderous, vengeful, sick, and death itself. We've even tried to make out that God is non-existence.

This "anti-christ" attitude is part of the separation idea of being opposite to God. In order to be opposite to God, we've made God out to be opposite to himself. We now believe God is nothing like he really is. We've turned him into a false God of war.

At the same time, we've mistakenly misbelieved and misunderstood and failed to recognize all false things for what they are. We think that non-existence is existence, that death is life, that hell is heaven, that suffering is atonement, that murder is justified, that fear is safety, that sickness is saving your life.

So now we have this worldwide problem that we're trying to move away from God, on the basis that we believe God is what we do NOT want. And we try to move toward the world of illusions, on the basis that we believe it IS what we want.

To put it another way, we now see God as an evil enemy to be feared, we want nothing to do with him, we do not want his affections or help, and we do not want to wake up to exposure to the fact of his existence. We are running away from him. We think that God is death and that we're running towards life. But we are confused, and we are actually running away from life towards death.

So now we have a state where we're all choosing to suffer on purpose because we are afraid of God. We're afraid of what we've made of him, what we think he is like. We don't want to go toward him because we think we'll stop existing. Even though moving away from him was an attempt to stop existing.

When we move away from God we are moving away from happiness and wholeness and love and peace and health and sanity. We'd rather choose suffering and unhappiness and despair and pain and sickness and death. We then want to keep our suffering and NOT let it be healed, because we literally believe it is defending us from God. We'd rather die than let him heal us with his poisonous offering.

This is the state of the world. A hugely common belief that we want the opposite of what God is offering. Even if that means we actually end up choosing to make, and maintain, even more suffering. Because we do not recognize it AS suffering, and do not think it's an insane thing to tolerate pain, and are quite content to put up with all manner of misery for as long as possible.

Not to mention the guilt, which we adore and cherish and want more of, and will preserve in an attempt to keep us and others stuck in bodies and suffering in order to protect us from God. The world actually believes that people leaving their bodies means they've move into the forbidden realm to be swallowed up by death. Something to be avoided at all costs.

The world is incredibly backwards. It has become acceptably normal to not question death, to put up with pain, to reject help, to not want healing, to fear questioning the reality of the world, on the basis that these are all threats to the protection it offers. The only reason we think the world is saving us is because we a very very mistaken about it and do not recognize it as a picture of crucifixion, with nothing to offer and no power to do anything.

It all boils down to this one simple thing. We're afraid of God and we don't want to go home. We think God will never forgive us, and we would rather die and be weak and helpless than admit to being mistaken. We are most afraid of the very thing we mistakenly believe is true, because it is false. And the very things we think are false, are actually true, and yet we hate them and want nothing to do with them.

Our minds have been reversed, our entire reality has been opposed, our sanity has been turned upside down, and our whole sense of what we want has done a 180-degree flip. Trying to convince the world to let God help is quite a challenge. The insane and fearful are heavily suspicious and mistrusting. The sick want to die. The lost want to stay lost and rely on their confusion for navigation.

But there is hope and a light because the reality of God's loving truth in heaven has sent its witnesses and its teachers and its healers and its power to resurrect the dead and lift us into the light. A light which at first we do not want and fear and dread, but which later we might come to trust as our salvation. It is only a false fear, which is a lie about God, that keeps us from happiness and health.

"For anti-Christ becomes more powerful than Christ to those who dream the world is real."

"And you ask help of Christ or anti-Christ, and which you choose WILL join with you, and tell you what to do."

"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

"It is extremely hard for those who still believe sin meaningful to understand the Holy Spirit's justice. They believe He shares their OWN confusion, and can NOT avoid the vengeance that their own belief in justice MUST entail. And so they fear the Holy Spirit, and perceive the wrath of God in Him."

"Who sees a brother as a body sees him as fear's symbol. And he will attack because what he beholds is his own fear external to himself, poised to attack, and howling to unite with him again. Mistake not the intensity of rage projected fear must spawn. It shrieks in wrath, and claws the air in frantic hope it can reach to its maker and devour him."

When I write or read ACIM stuff, after a while I'll start to feel upset. I may feel overwhelmed, or agitated, even hurt, and might feel like I want to cry. It's almost like someone just said a whole string of lies about me.

I look at what part of me feels this way and I acknowledge what it is likely feeling. It feels offended by everything the truth says. It feels threatened by it. It does not want anything to do with the stupid-ass course and does not want to wake up at all. It wants it all to go away. It wants the truth to shut the hell up. It sees it as constantly attacking it, and it won't leave it alone. It feels victimized and threatened and hurt. It is offended by everything the truth said, as if it were all a personal insult and attack. It is frightened about the notion of the truth being true, and hates the Holy Spirit.

This "part of me" does not want anything to do with ACIM, or any spiritual path, or any kind of waking up, or anything to do with God. It just wants to be the way it is. It is reluctant to have anything to do with God or making truthful statements or reading what is true and or studying. It just reacts to it all from an ego perspective.

This is something maybe not spoken about by many people but it happens with me all the time and I think it probably does with most people too.

This stuff happens because the ego's vantage point is actually totally opposite to the truth, opposite to God, opposite to reality. It interprets everything to do with God as false, wrong, bad, evil, vengeful, an attack, offensive, abusive, hurtful, to be avoided, etc. Every possible attribute of "evil" is assigned to God by the ego. Every possible way to want nothing to do with it is given him. This is simply because the ego believes that what is true is false, and what is false is true, and in this it is actually insane and confused.

Then, there is my mind, which is "doing this ego", or is identified with the concept of it. So part of MY mind or self is latched onto this perspective, caught up in it, identified with it as if it is true of my own self, as if it IS me. So part of my mind is turning my back on God and is peering back at God through highly negating opposing ego glasses, and everything it sees is backwards and upside down and inside out. But it doesn't realize this. And so as I look "through" the ego, everything true is false, and everything real is an illusion, and God is death and death is life.

We have this stuff going on in us so long as we are identified with the ego/body. A bodily identification, an ego-thought-system identification, a sense of limitedness or exclusion or specialness. That collections of vantage points seems to form "the ego self" or false self, an "area" of our mind that is temporarily flipped inside out. And so long as we're still bound to it in that way, exposure to the light will be experienced as attack by darkness. And moving closer to truth is experienced as reality falling apart. And trying to open up to love and sharing and union is interpreted as a threat to my very life.

It's tough to go through this because on the one hand the majority of me is wanting to awaken and be loving and spiritual while this ego portion wants the exact opposite. And so doing the course, reading the words, doing the lessons, writing about the topics, whatever related to it, sooner or later pushes these buttons and out comes the tears and the tantrums and the emotional breakdowns and the resistance and the procrastination and all the rest of the dysfunction.

We perhaps have to be gentle with ourselves, with the part of our self that is still confused, still bound and identified with a way of perceiving that is backwards. And some times that part of ourselves needs a break, it needs a rest from course shit, it needs to stop reading and writing and thinking about it 24/7, and it needs to just live and do some basic earthly ego things for a while, to cool off, to feel less threatened and pressured. Because that self, typically filled with childhood traumas and twisted early beliefs, is completely confused about God and truth and everything real.

It wants nothing to do with it. And actually it can become seemingly "happier" when you ease up on threatening it. Gotta throw it some bones sometimes. Relax, take a study break, go shopping, eat some fun food, whatever. Be "normal" for a while. This can actually bring you a feeling of peace, at the ego level, temporarily. Then when you are rested and ready to press forward, go exposure yourself to what the ego interprets as "its demise" all over again.

"NO evidence will convince you of the truth of what you do NOT want."

""Give up what you do not want, and keep what you do." How simple is the obvious! "

"When you think you are projecting what you do NOT want, it is still because you DO want it. "

"You must have noticed that the emphasis has been on bringing what is undesirable TO the desirable, what you do NOT want to what you DO. "