When Jesus said heaven is not a place he meant only it is not part of spacetime.

In the following section He talks about this. Notice the section is called "beyond the body", not staying in the body.

"VI. Beyond the Body

1 There is nothing outside you. That is what you must ultimately learn, for it is the realization that the Kingdom of Heaven is restored to you. For God created only this, and He did not depart from it nor leave it separate from Himself. The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God, who left not his Father and dwells not apart from Him. Heaven is not a place nor a condition. It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else; nothing outside this Oneness, and nothing else within."

Anything outside of heaven, which means this universe of illusions, is not part of Heaven, is not real, and does not exist. There is no world. And "there is no life outside of heaven" meaning anything outside heaven (Earth) is not life.

Also, ask yourself this. Where is Jesus? Apparently he is not in a body. He left bodies permanently 2000 years ago. So where is he? You cannot experience heaven while being in a body still. The body has to be disappeared in the overcoming of the illusion of death, before you can be freed of the limitations that the body places on awareness.

Many times Jesus states "in Heaven."

Jesus is in heaven. He is not in a body or in this universe. ACIM was comminicated to Helen through channeling from another dimension.

Being in the reflection of heaven, which is the face of Christ, in this world, is not being in heaven. Heaven is an awareness ONLY of God as real. Abstract, pure, holy and eternal. "Heaven and Earth are opposite in every way" tells us if you are "in Earth"you are not in Heaven. Otherwise God created this world, which is bullshit.

"God is in everything I see"applies only to seeing the face of Christ in this fictional world, which is only preparation for the transition to heaven. It does NOT mean God is in this world or that God is lurking behind its forms. Who can be at peace with death and destruction, or accuse God of creating such a cruel world, when death is a sign of hatred? God is love, not hate, and eternal life does not mean bodies that suffer and die.

Read the lesson "no one can fail who seeks to reach the truth". It takes you BEYOND even the real world, beyond true perception, beyond the face of Christ, beyond the forgiven world, escorted by Angels to Heaven. And Jesus says He can take you to Heaven any time. He wouldn’t exactly have anywhere to take you if being in the world meant you were there already.

Heaven is not Earth. Earth is not real and does not exist.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way.

God does not suffer conflict. Nor is His creation split in two. How could it be His Son could be in hell, when God Himself established him in Heaven? Could he lose what the Eternal Will has given him to be his home forever? Let us not try longer to impose an alien will upon God's single purpose. He is here because He wills to be, and what He wills is present now, beyond the reach of time."

"You cannot fail today. There walks with you the Spirit Heaven sent you, that you might approach this door some day, and through His aid slip effortlessly past it, to the light."

Time and eternity are opposites. The eternal is always existing, always is here and now, and is forever. There is no beginning or end. There is never a possibility of change, or of what has always existed ceasing to exist. There is no death, and only eternal life is real.

Time is an attack on eternity. It is the idea that what has always existed no longer exists, what is here now is not eternal, and what is here now will end. It is the idea of change, and of the idea of loss and therefore death. It is an attempt to insert a delay in eternity and to crease a distance from the here and now. It is avoidance of presence and avoidance of God.

Spacetime is a completely artificial construct and is completely false and unreal. It is nothing like eternity and has no permanent reality. It had a seeming beginning and it absolutely will have a seeming end. Endless time is an impossibility. Infinite time is an impossibility. Time is not real, and neither is space. Delay or distance from the ever-present unceasing and forever permanence of God is nothing more than denial.

Space is an attack on the ever-present existence of God. It suggests that God who is everywhere always, is nowhere ever. That nothing is ever whole, or wholly existing. That what is here is not there, and what is there is not here. That everything is limited and nothing is unlimited. That everything is separate and nothing shares anything.

Given that God is everywhere always, space attacks God by suggesting that there is nowhere that everything exists. And nothing exists everywhere. Meaning the everything exists nowhere, and God therefore does not exist. This is why in spacetime it appears that God has no existence whatsoever. It is false and untrue and completely opposite to reality. Both space and time are nothing but a false belief, believed by insane minds, dreaming of exile from the eternity of truth.

"Ultimately, of course, space is as meaningless as time. The concept is really one of space-time BELIEF. The physical world exists only because man can use it to correct his UNBELIEF, which placed him in it originally. As long as man KNEW he did not need anything, the whole device was unnecessary." UrT1B41AR

"Together, we can laugh them BOTH away, and understand that time can NOT intrude upon eternity. It IS a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which MEANS there is no time. A timelessness in which is time made real; a Part of God Which can attack Itself; a separate brother as an enemy; a mind WITHIN a body; all are forms of circularity, whose ending starts at its beginning, ending at its cause." UrT27I6

"Today the light has come. And you will see the world that has been promised you since time began, and in which is the end of time ensured." UrW75L7

"So do the parts of God's Son gradually join in time, and with each joining is the end of time brought nearer." UrT2F1 "And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time." UrU5A5

"the Holy Spirit KNOWS it is not true. He stands at the end of time, where YOU must be, because He is WITH you." UrT11J8 "And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever." UrU5A7

The idea of your persona is that it rejects everything you don't like, keeping only the good stuff.

If you get really good at using your persona, you will get really brutal at cutting out things which seem even remotely bad.

Eventually you'll be trying to be SO good and perfect, that there will be practically nothing left to relegate to your 'bad' category. Like you hear people saying, "nothing is ever good enough for them" - a sign of a lack of self acceptance.

And if that carries on, there will be nothing left to get rid of, you will cease to exist. Death.

So you can see, the persona, which seems all sweet and nice and special and important, glowing with a false innocence, is in fact the ego's wish to destroy you, piece by piece, by gradually stripping off more and more parts of you and relegating them to hell, in the pursuit of 'being a God'. And along the way it will complement you on how fantastic your 'good bits' are, even though your 'good bits' are soon to come under scrutiny.

The persona attacks everything that is contrary to what it wants to keep. And its eventual mission is the total removal of absolutely everything that could be conceived of as less than absolutely perfect. It thinks that by doing this, what you'll end up with is some kind of totally 'perfect self'. The perfect ego, a shining glory, the jewel in the crown.

It should be clear that the only ambition the ego really has is to get rid of you. The only purpose of the persona is to slice you up and separate you out and throw large chunks in the trash. What it keeps, it temporarily exalts like some kind of hero or savior or idol. But slowly it continues to find flaws in that idol, demanding even more vigorous 'purification' and sacrifice.

It says, well, if you give this up, and give that up, you'll be better off. It tells you you don't need all of what is, you only need the special good bits. But it doesn't tell you what happens if you take that to its ultimate goal. Keep going, and there will be nothing left of you. You'll live in a world where everything and everyone seems like your enemy, you are totally cut off and alone, depressed and frightened and weak, barely recognizing that you even exist, BUT .... drumroll... you'll have your perfect little fake self. Yay. And then you'll die alone.

So you can see... as you dabble even a little bit in being dishonest, inauthentic, not yourself, or trying to manipulate reality to get some kind of special value, special attention, special love... you're basically buying into a death trap. The temptation is you will indeed seem to get some special love, but.... it calls for a sacrifice. You've got to give up an arm and a leg for it. And then it's still not enough.

This is the promise the ego has for you. Go along with its plan for salvation, seem to achieve some kind of fake goal, or seem to find some kind of fake trophy, or seem to present yourself as some kind of ruler of the universe, and, in return, all of the rest of what you really are will be suppressed and attacked and gotten rid of.

Ultimately, the ego's perfectionism guarantees that NOTHING is acceptable. And sooner or later this will become apparent. Until you wake up and realize there has to be a better way.

You don't need a persona. You don't need an ego. You have God.

Attack actually means withdrawal. The Kingdom of God cannot be attacked. When you try to attack, you withdraw away from what you are attacking.

It's funny how all of the ego's illusions always look like one thing but are actually totally the opposite.

In the ego, free will looks like being tremendously independent and having great breadth of choice, but in truth the ego's free will is actually an imprisoned will and all its choices are attempts to isolate and be limited. The ego is the imprisoner of will.

When you attempt to attack a brother, you withdraw away from him and isolate. Therefore your attack cannot access the reality of what He is. Only in sharing of love can you actually "connect" with your brother's real self, because his real self is made of love and can only be accessed through love.

It's the same with God. If you try to attack God or oppose His will, instead of actually being ABLE to cause some kind of change in him, you instead withdraw away from him. It seems to be experienced by you as if it's a positive outward expression of attack away from yourself, but in truth it is a withdrawal away from the perceived enemy and a failure to attack at all.

Attack cannot have any real effects. You cannot really sin. You cannot attack anything real. Nothing real can be threatened. This is why God and His Kingdom are totally beyond the reach of the ego.

Similarly with power, when you are empowered you automatically must be aligned with love because love is strength and only by being aligned with love can you access the Power of God. If you try to use God's power to attack, you automatically lose that power and become weak.

In the ego, whenever there is an attack trying to be perpetrated, it is in fact a lack of attack. It is a failure to cause. It is an attempt to stop causing. It is the opposite of causal power. It's like a fearful dog barking its head off in hopes that the threat will go away, making it look like it is attacking when in fact it is terrified and will run away at the slightest advance.

This means literally you literally CANNOT ATTACK ANYTHING REAL. You cannot attack your brother, you cannot attack God, and you cannot attack yourself. This is why your innocence is guaranteed. Any time you try to attack you automatically place yourself under arrest. When you try to attack, you arrest the extension of your mind, which produces sickness. When you attack, you create illusions of being hurt.

When you try to attack your brother, you arrest your mind and attack yourself. This causes you to withdraw away from your brother into your body. It makes you isolate yourself and identify yourself with a physical form in a specific location in space. You are supposed to be everywhere in your omnipresence but attack puts you in prison. You imprison yourself by not loving yourself and others.

Joining minds with others through expressions of love (miracles) heals the separation, releases you from prison, ceases attack and allows you to gain access to sharing with others again and with God. Only through love can you connect with loving brothers. Attack is a breakdown in communication and it attacks communication itself, causing the attacking effort itself to be attacked. This is because all ego efforts to attack are self attack.

God is absolutely protected from the ego and all its ways. It cannot even approach God because its attempts to approach are actually running away. Every time it lurches forward with a spear, it recoils in terror. Nothing real can be threatened because the ego can only attack the ego and reality does not attack reality. Nothing unreal can threaten anything real, and nothing unreal exists.

It doesn't matter what you did or how bad it was, it is forgivable. People make mistakes. Sometimes mistakes seem very serious. Sometimes that seems to justify why should feel guilty. Presumably you hurt someone or did something 'wrong'. Well, did anyone come along and tell you, you know what, even though you did this and you maybe even meant it, you're still unconditionally lovable? Did anyone remind you, so that even you yourself would believe it, that you're lovable in spite of what you did, and that you are permitted to forgive yourself, even if other people don't forgive you?

This society we live in, coupled with the 'ego' in each person, has a very skewed and ridiculous idea of how you should feel when you make a mistake. Especially if people in your past punished you for making mistakes instead of educating you or teaching you of your unconditional lovability.

For example when someone does something wrong, most people would find that person guilty and judge them. And even the person themselves - you in this case - would even agree with them that you did something wrong and therefore 'should' be guilty, like you are supposed to suffer. But why?

The whole purpose of this guilty suffering is to try to atone, to make up for, what you think you did. So supposedly, your 'offering' of guilt, and your wallowing in guilt and shame, is supposed to be some form of compensation. It's as if, you have too suffer 600 days of guilt to make up for the 600 units of sin that you committed. And during that time, you are not allowed to be loved or forgiven. And even you agree to this. You agree that you are unworthy of forgiveness or love, and that you deserve some kind of punishment.

So then you go around being guilty, believing that you're supposed to be, that you deserve to, and that you should especially show everyone else how guilty you are, so that you'll burn off the karma or whatever BS that you think you deserve. And only after you've 'done enough time' like this, might you be allowed to let it go and be forgiven - i.e. pardoned, by the very same people who accused you of sin and who held you in condemnation.

So really guilt is actually your attempt to give a gift to other people, an offering, to make up for whatever crappy mistake you made. Like, somehow if you suffer enough other people will be pleased. You actually believe this lie. It's an egotistical lie and not at all mature. But because of this dynamic, most people actually believe that being guilty for doing something wrong is the same thing as caring about the people that you did it to, and that it is a way of showing that you are making it up to them - that you love them, by giving them what they seem to want. It seems they want guilt from you, and that giving it to them is making it up to them. It's ridiculous. And so in your mind, guilt = love. This is grossly mistaken.

Guilt is not love. Nobody in the entire history of the world has ever truly benefited from anyone being guilty for a mistake. Ever. The only thing that's happened is this.... the whole world was doing perfectly fine, you came along and did something wrong which was attack #1, and then to make up for it, you went ahead and moped around in guilt and negative self pity for 15 years which consequently actually brings everyone else down, lowers everyone's mood, removes a loving contributor from society, and is therefore attack #2 on those same people. Both doing things wrong and feeling guilty for it are attacks of unlove which require a RESTORATION of love to make up for it. And neither of these attacks improve the state of the world for anyone concerned.

If society was more mature and recognized that mistakes call for forgiveness, not punishment, they would also recognize that it is in everyone's best interests that you return to LOVE after you make a mistake, not guilt. Guilt is the opposite of love. If what you've done in your mistake is bring everyone down, then your true 'atoning' for this and making it up to everyone, is to reclaim your innocence, forgive yourself and everyone involved, for everyone involved to forgive you, and for you to be lifted up and restored to a mutually shared state of unconditional love. Then you've truly given something back to make up for the error, i.e. you've offered healing, and correction, and 'repentance' for the 'sin' rather than the completely useless offering of being guilty or ashamed. But society is generally not mature like this. Society loves to blame people and judge and condemn and criticize and find people guilty. And maybe you are part of that system.

So your challenge is, do you keep going along with this system of guilt, where you prove time and again that mistakes call for suffering, and that mistakes demand punishment, and that people should not be forgiven for making mistakes... or do you break out of this ridiculous system and become a leader, a shining example of what it means to be forgiving and loving, in spite of what anyone else says or thinks about it, to show that there is a better way for people to treat each other and that just as you deserve 100% forgiveness for what you did, so does everyone else if they were making mistakes.

So now, if you 'do yourself in', that is not helping anyone. That is just adding another insult to injury. It's cowardly actually. And it's only going to pile on an extra layer of suffering for all involved, not alleviate them from it. You think that they WANT you to suffer and that they want you to be guilty, and maybe they do... and if they do, that's their own egos, that's them being a-holes, that's their lack of maturity, and you should not stand for or accept that. Just because other people find you guilty does not mean you are guilty or that you are not forgivable. Their failure to forgive you is their own choice to choose to believe in guilt and punishment. You do not have to believe that. You can take a higher road.

You have to decide that no matter what anyone else thinks of you or whether anyone is hurt and no matter if you have done something really bad, you have to decide that you are going to choose to be innocent, that you are going to forgive yourself completely, that you are going to claim your own right to be forgiven, and that if nobody else likes it then that's their problem. You have to stand up for yourself. You can't wait for other people to forgive you, they generally are incapable. You deserve to live. You do not deserve to die. You deserve to be completely exonerated.

Know that there is absolutely nothing you can do in this world which is in any way serious enough or bad enough to cause unconditional love to stop loving you, because it loves you no matter what you do or who you are or what mistakes you make. Unconditional love loves you far more than the magnitude of any errors, even if you really really wanted to do something 'bad', it still looks upon you with absolute forgiveness and acceptance, and it passes a judgement on you ALWAYS that you are innocent.

It is not and will not help anyone to punish yourself, or to believe that you deserve it, or to enact it upon yourself on behalf of other people, which is really you doing it to yourself. And you're doing it to yourself only because you have not forgiven yourself, and that's really the main issue. You have to decide to heal and forgive your shame and guilt. You deserve love. You do not deserve to be unhappy for the rest of forever just because you did something wrong. You need to heal from what you did and allow yourself to be worthy of forgiveness.

Know this. Nobody in their truly right mind ever does anything wrong on purpose. To do something wrong you have to be temporarily mistaken and insane, which means you do not know what you're doing, and therefore it is forgivable.

Also know this. Shame is self imposed. And it will cause you to walk around the world feeling like there is a target on your back that everyone can see, that you are super-self conscious all the time and like everyone knows about your little secret sin that you committed. You'll feel like you can never hide enough or get away from it. And you'll start to withdraw from people in order for them not to find out about how evil you are. And eventually you'll become self-destructive and punish yourself because you don't believe you are worthy of love.

Who deserves to be loved and forgiven when they have committed some crime or sin? That's what the collective egotism of society says. That you don't. But the answer is, YOU DO. Your shame is telling you that you don't deserve love and that nobody wants you and nobody accepts you, and that they're justified in that, and that you even agree with them that you should be put to death. YOU agree with it, because YOU are the one who thinks you are unworthy.

You decided that. You need to forgive yourself and change your belief so that it doesn't run you into the ground. You've already suffered waaaaaaay more than you even needed to to begin with. Let yourself off the hook and reclaim your power, your entitlement to be happy, your deserving to be loved and accepted, and brush off anyone who says you have no right. Because if you believe them when the say you have no right, you will believe it yourself, and then you will make darn sure that your life goes to hell.

Ultimately you are your own worst and only enemy. This has nothing to do with anyone else. It's to do with you learning that you can be forgiven even when you make mistakes, that you can be loved even when you don't see to deserve it, and that you can come to accept yourself for doing something unacceptable. That's called learning to be UNCONDITIONAL. Otherwise you are practicing conditional love, conditional acceptance, and conditional forgiveness.

That's the kind of attitude of an egotistical maniac - that you only deserve if it you meet some special conditions or terms or social rules or regulations. You need to rise above conditional love, both for yourself and for others, and that's going to mean that if YOU want to find love for yourself in spite of what you did, then you're also going to have to learn to love other people regardless of what they do. It works both ways. You can't believe in your own innocence unless you believe in other people's innocence too. And you won't be able to accept that you deserve love instead of punishment, unless you believe that other people deserve love instead of punishment. So you need to extend TO others, do unto others as you would have them do to you... be forgiving as much as you want to be forgiven - unconditionally. Be loving as much as you want to be loved, unconditionally.

Nobody deserves to die for making a mistake. Everyone deserves to live and be happy and enjoy life and be loved forever regardless, by a love that is so full and whole and strong and unconditionally that it doesn't even blink an eye when you make a mistake, it just keeps on loving you endlessly. Can you handle that? Total endless love? That's what God has to offer.

"You but accuse your brother of your own sins." - ACIM

Every single occurrence of you being angry at someone, blaming them, being afraid of them, believing they are doing something to you, being hurt by them, getting revenge, or whatever... every single interaction with people that is anything other than pure LOVE, is your attempt to GET RID OF YOUR OWN SINFULNESS.

You have no other reason to be doing this. It is purely an exercise in trying to deny that you believe you're sinful. That is enough to account for the ENTIRE spectrum of all ego-based relationships and interactions with others.

You really don't have issues with anyone else. You really don't have a problem that's got ANYTHING even REMOTELY to do with another person.

You have a problem with YOU.

YOU believe that you really sinned. That's all.

That's absolutely your only problem in the entire world. Your belief in your own sin is driving ALL of the other ego expressions, nightmares, attacks, reactions, upsets, fears, all suffering, and even death.

ALL of it. Just stemming from YOUR OWN belief that you are truly, honest-to-God SINFUL.

Therefore, you do not even really need any kind of corrections that attempt to address ANY of that other stuff. That other stuff is NOT the problem. It's all symptoms! It's all side-effects of your attempt to avoid your real problem.

Your ONLY problem in the entire world, in your entire life, is your self hate. And for that, you need to undo it with FORGIVENESS.

You ONLY need healing for your belief that sin is real, and that therefore YOU ARE SINFUL. This idea of sin is the idea that it is possible to ACTUALLY separate from God, and that you have done so. It is an attempt to make this idea REAL, and to own responsibility for achieving it.

This is the root of all evil. This is the cause of all sickness. This is the belief in death and that death is both justified and deserved.

If ALL you ever do from now on, is throw out ALL of your practices which attempt to bandaid your life, and every strategy that tries to deal with egoic relationships problems, and focus SOLELY on undoing YOUR belief that YOU are sinful, I do believe that is ALL that will be necessary to wake up.

The "sinful self" must go. And with it will go ALL of the effects that come from it - guilt, fear, punishment, suffering and death.

Just work on forgiving yourself. Just purely focus on owning up to your own self hate, and how you BELIEVE that you have committed "real sin". Undo that belief, accept the atonement. You did NOT really sin. You are innocent.

It's not even really about forgiving others or taking back projections or any of that. The big secret is your own DEATH WISH which comes from your OWN BELIEF THAT YOU ARE SINFUL. You have no other problems.

You think you are not worthy of God's love because you think you are sinful, and that God could not love you as a result. Well, there's good news. YOU DID NOT REALLY SIN because sin is not reality, and that means GOD DOES LOVE YOU and you are WORTHY of being loved. You are NOT worthy of dying.

Absolutely everything else will fall inline if you correct this. Everything else will take care of itself AUTOMATICALLY once that illusion of sin is removed.

What is self-attack and a belief in sin, other than suicide? It is your self crucifixion.

It is just a device with a single, fixed function. It does what it was designed to do, like a machine. It can't be upgraded or changed or transformed into something more spiritual.

Like an old car, the fact is, at some point you have to just admit that the car is old and broken and it's time to let it go. It simply can no longer provide the function that you want it to provide. The ego is the same.

When you realize that the ego is just a fixed device, that means that you know letting it go is the only way to be free of it. You actually have a choice of whether to USE the ego device or not.

The device itself does not have any power over you. It can't stop you. It can only do what it does. It can create the illusions it was designed to create, which you might be convinced by, and that may indeed "stop you", but if you recognize these illusions and see that they are just a part of this ego thing, and not your self, then your self is free to choose again - free to step aside, put the ego device down, and let it go.

The ego can do absolutely nothing about this. It cannot stop you from waking up. It cannot act against your will or against the function it was designed to fulfill. It can only do what the ego was meant to do, and that is to paint a picture which is false and to pretend that it is true. If you no longer have a USE for that, and no longer see any PURPOSE in it, and it is no longer what you WANT, you will just put it down and stop using it.

You are free to choose again. You are free to drop the ego entirely. There is no power in all of existence that can stop you. There is no-one and no alien will capable of preventing you from waking up. The ONLY person or will that seems able to stop you from waking up is YOU, and the only way you can act against yourself in that way is when you choose to keep USING the ego and to keep denying that you have total freedom, total power, total choice, and that you are not in any way a victim of this ego thing.

To admit the truth is to admit that the ego is nothing but something you were using for a purpose. To admit the truth is to admit that your sickness was only put in place by you on purpose to defend you against admitting to your freedom. To admit the truth is to admit your upset and anger and retaliation against the attacks of others was only there to serve the purpose of you getting rid of your belief in sin, which was part of your belief in the ego being real. And to admit the truth is to own up to and accept the fact that, in truth, YOU ARE NOT LIMITED OR BOUND BY ILLUSIONS.

Literally, no-one is keeping you asleep. No-one is stopping you from being with God. No-one is keeping you imprisoned. No-one has power over you. No-one can stop you. There is nothing you cannot do. YOU ARE FREE! To believe otherwise, to be bound by illusions, to be caused to die, to be sick and suffer, to be incapable of performing miracles, to be unable to manipulate any of the ego's illusions, is to continue to USE the ego and to fail to recognize the whole truth of what you are. You are not an illusion but a reality.

You are completely 100% free of the ego if you choose to be so. And then it has absolutely no power over you, this entire world is at your command, and you are immortal.

"Every symptom which the ego has made involves a contradiction in terms."

"How strange indeed becomes this war against yourself!"

The ego does not take one side. The ego takes all sides, and pits them all against each other. It pretends to be on one team, while simultaneously being on the other team. It plays the part of both victim and its own victimizer. It attacks itself.

The ego is the idea of self attack, self denial, inner conflict, a split-mindedness. It is a state of being "in two minds", undecided and certain of nothing. It is a state of disassociation, in which there literally seem to be two halves or selves, one against the other. It represents a divided will, where one part of mind wills against the other.

In all wars, all conflicts, all arguments, all political debates, all fights between teams and nations, every form of taking sides, and all the various ways that we buy into the illusion that one person is ego and another is not, the ego delights in playing both parties off against each other.

It does not care who wins anything. It does not care whether one side is victorious while the other suffers. All it cares about is that it is perpetuated and persists because it has attacked and destroyed part of self, leaving only part left as victor, who must therefore suffer being less than whole.

The ego will happily attack itself provided some portion of it remains. It will side with something which seems good, positive, uplifting and true, provided to side with it permits a sacrifice where the "rest" of what is denied, hated, repelled and rejected is regarded as not self.

The ego split mind is divided into persona and shadow. The person is the part that is kept in conscious awareness and seems to allow and accept only that which it thinks is good enough - and nothing is good enough. Systematically it strips away portions of your self, deeming them unworthy and imperfect, relegating them to the unconscious shadow portion of mind. It is never satisfied, prompting you to put on a facade of perfection in order to truly destroy everything about you that you cannot accept. That which seems so innocent and holy is murderous.

Self attack takes on many forms and all of them are deceptive. If you buy into one such appearance and think, this person is a hero or savior, while this other person is guilty and a sinner, you have fallen for the trick. The ego is BOTH OF THEM. And it has no problem attacking itself in order to perpetuate the illusion that there is a *separation* between the two. That they are not the same identity or the same self. That is its aim. To split the mind and emphasize the differences.

It does not want people forgiving each other and seeing each other as equals. It wants war not peace. It has no interest or care as to whether you win or someone else wins. It couldn't care less if you are right or someone else is. All it's interested in that that rift between the two is increased, differences are amplified, the gap increases, and equality is lost.

If you play the game, if you take sides, if you buy into the illusion that one is a sinner and another innocent, you have fallen for its tricks. You have bought into separation. Only when you can see you and your brother as being in the same boat, as both striving toward the same goal, and recognize that the EGO is the third party here, the enemy, who would come between you and drive you apart, then you can join forces to agree NOT to attack each other, so that the EGO will disappear and not each other.

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began."

Let me first just say that I don't intend for this to be a "negative" post. Nor is it being pessimistic. But it's going to point out the inherent negativity of the world. Not to try to make it real or be drawn into despair over it, but to just recognize it for what it is. And there is no need to react to it with assertions of "happier interpretations."

There is a tremendous need for us to stop believing that the world is something we WANT. Or something that can offer us any redeeming qualities or content. Jesus actually wants us to learn to recognize that this world has nothing to offer, nothing to give, does nothing, means nothing, and is nothing.

Jesus frames the world - by which I mean EARTH and its physical neighbors regardless of your perceptions - as nothing. And that we are to recognize its nothingness in order to realize that giving it up is not a sacrifice. And that by giving it up, we stand to GAIN EVERYTHING by accepting the reality of the Kingdom that God created for us.

"The world I see has nothing that I want."

"But if I see no value in the world as I behold it, nothing that I want to keep as mine or search for as a goal, it will depart from me. For I have not sought for illusions to replace the truth."

"It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give. What can the sacrifice of nothing mean?"

ACIM is teaching that the world is nothing, it has no value, and everything in it is a pain. It says you do not want this world. That even though you made it you do not want it. And even that you made it BY not wanting it - by not wanting what was in your mind, which you projected outward as a world to try to get rid of it.

"the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, but do not want."

We are confused and caught up in the world because we keep believing that it can offer us salvation, something of value, something beneficial, something we want. And before you start dreaming up denials via the repurposing of the body and world, let just just clarify that the purpose of the world does not change what it IS.

"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."

Our problem is that we do believe the world has something to offer. That it is a great place to live forever, and never leave. That it has real pleasures and that its pleasures entail no pain. But Jesus also teaches that even the pleasures of the world are really pains in disguise, because the cost is that by indulging in temptation you are separating from God, and real pleasure only comes from doing God's will. Pleasure binds you to the body and takes you away from reality, just as pain does.

He wants us to recognize that pain IS pain, and pleasure IS pain, because truthfully we actually don't quite recognize what anything is. We think that pain is pleasure. We even think that sickness is saving us from life, and death is salvation. In our confusion we keep trying to dress up this world and frame it as somewhere that you can enjoy the full fruits of heaven. But as Jesus aptly explains, you CANNOT ESCAPE from the world's suffering by staying in it.

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."

Much of our problem then is that we think there really is a way to be in the world that fixes it up and makes it great and provides room for an entire civilizations to emerge. A massive attempt to tame hell and "civilize" it. But this is really a form of DENIAL. The truth is that ALL of the world's roads lead to death, suffering, loss and disappointment. If you are willing to look at it you'll see this is true. And it will just keep on disappointing you until it disappears. That is its NATURE. It is a device for guaranteeing death.

"The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it"

"Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life."

These are the facts. Everything in spacetime is limited, it is not even really life (only eternal life is life), bodies are mostly destined to die, flowers can't bloom without dying off, entire planets cease to exist after a while, there is decay and destruction everywhere, sacrifice is built into spacetime itself, and there is scarcity everywhere. The world is TURD floating in cess-pool toilet-bowl of spacetime. Failure is inherent to the entire cosmos. This is not being negative about it either, it's being honest and truthful. This is a dream of mortality.

"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."

If we go into DENIAL that the world is basically a one-way trip to hell and death, we will start trying to find ways to PRETEND it's not true. We in fact have built up what we call a "civilized society" (a dysfunction), complete with the "comforts" that avoid as much pain as possible, the clever manipulations of matter that result in seeming "fixes" for problems, we've found all kinds of distractions and ways of making life seem "interesting", and have discovered every imaginable toy and play-thing to occupy our time. And yet all the while death can strike at any instant in any number of ways. And no-one knows what the heck they're doing.

"The intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then."

The world really, in truth, is fundamentally broken, and it was broken from the start. It was made from the idea of the malfunction of reality. It was an attack on order and peace and love and harmony. Its separations are constant and relentless. Its isolation and exclusion are rampant. And not one single particle in all of spacetime is without a form that symbolizes separation, repulsion and rejection. The world is made of denial, and it even denies its own existence.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What ***denies its own existence and attacks itself*** is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and ***earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite*** in every way."

If you look, you'll notice that the world has a plentiful supply of problems lined up for you, and even if you seem to solve one using a highly specific customized solution made just to perfectly fix this one problem, it WILL NOT EVER stop the onslaught of all the other problems it has lined up for you. Not to mention death. The one problem that everyone seems to be in TOTAL denial about, as if it doesn't matter because it's off in the future. And so we pretend we won't die, while nevertheless rushing towards it and making sure it happens.

We have to be willing to put aside all of these adjustments, these wishful thinkings, these rose-tinted glasses, the ignorant bliss, the framing the world as heaven, the trying to make it be our home, our adjustments to it and our attempts to make it out to be a great place. It is nothing. It can be forgiven, like all illusions can, but its nothingness is what makes this possible.

"YOU make the world and THEN adjust to it."

Adjusting to the world, trying to cope with the world, trying to make it more palatable, trying to make it softer and safer and seem to be a place that's not all that bad, is all forms of denial. The desire for the nice materials, the riches, the shiny objects, the fancy cars and expensive buildings, it's all an attempt to pretend that the world is desirable and that it WON'T disappoint you, as you seem to enjoy SHORT LIVED temporary reprieves from its hell-bent destructiveness. And as you hide behind the next "new thing" which claims to offer escape from death.

It is an avoidance of the fact that the world is just fundamentally not EVER going to really work correctly. It cannot function correctly because it is based on an idea of death and destruction. It is fundamentally a world of suicide and self-attack. Everything in it will always go wrong sooner or later. Expecting it not to will make you suffer.

This isn't a pessimistic view, by the way. This is a truthful view. I am not saying that we should be sad and unhappy and despairing because of it. Or that there is no alternative. In fact, Jesus is trying to get us to look at this truth SO THAT we can be recognize it is something we DO NOT WANT, so that we will in turn change our minds and choose the one reality that God created for us. And in which we will be infinitely happy forever. We only keep choosing the world because we mistakenly think it is WORTH HAVING, but how can you want a world made of rejection?

The world is not supposed to be your home, the thing you are in love with, your special adored idol, or your salvation. If you watch honestly you'll see that everything just goes wrong, eventually. It happens, again and again. Stuff breaks. Things get lost. Objects fall off tabletops. Food splats on the floor. The clothes become worn. The beds become mis-shapen. The roofs leak and cave in. The cars break down. The rust creeps in. I like to say, "there goes the physics again". And the assault of time, which is the idea of change and therefore death, guarantees that everything comes to an end.

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

Shall we live in denial that this is true, that the world can NEVER BE HEAVEN? Shall we live in denial that everything in the worl WILL END? Or even that it has death built into it from the start? That it can never turn into a perfect society or an ideal civilization or even a safe place? We try to make it safer with our defenses and castles and our potions and rituals and our avoidance of dangers, but it remains an unsafe place. Can you escape a supernova?

"The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus."

The world cannot GIVE us what we want. It cannot make us happy. It cannot provide us with peace. It cannot satisfy us. It gives only to take away. It fails in order to disappoint. Every road, path, way, direction, goal, ambition and achievement in the world is pointless. Yet the world can present seeming illusions of "things going well", for a while, before it attacks and destroys what it has given. It can tempt you will fake happiness and fake values and fake salvation, only to fail you once again and deceive you in doing so.

"On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once."

"The world you see is merciless indeed, unstable, cruel, unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate. It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while."

Jesus is not being negative when he describes the world like this. The world IS like this, isn't it? It's not a matter of how you look at it. There is no real loss in admitting to this, nor is this an attack upon the world. It isn't an unforgiving accusation. It is just a simple clear look at the world we made, its inherent nature, and its limitations. It is a world of limits, not a world of freedom, which is why it is like a prison for everyone in it.

"Are you not weary of imprisonment? God did not choose this sorry path for you."

"If it (mind) does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants."

The world itself is tyrrannical. It is selfish and separate. Each part of it is separate and at war with every other. Even the forms of objects are in conflict, which is why they are different. Conflicting shapes, sizes, colors, textures, they are all forms of war. Everything the body sees is a form of conflict. Every atom is at war. You cannot turn something that is fundamentally conflicting into something that isn't, because this will erase all of its properties and it will cease to exist.

It is by recognizing the world as "the hell you made", that we might be willing to go the other way. It is when we sugarcoat it as "not hell" in a spiritualizing pretense to make it seem wanted and worthy, that we put ourselves to sleep. We are blinded by perception of form and tempted by its luster and flair. Its picture frame of jewel-encrusted death suggests it is not a world of death but our most cherished possession.

We are to correctly identify that the world IS meaningless and IS nothing and HAS nothing that we want and DOES nothing for or to us and ISN'T our inheritance from God and IS NOT real and HAS no power and is basically absolutely NOTHING. The recognition that "there is no world." How can a world which does not really exist appeal to us and be something we want INSTEAD OF God? At the cost of heaven? And in a bargain where we "gain the whole world and lose our soul"?

True escape from the battleground does not entail the faulty belief that the battleground can be made into a pleasant place. You can rise above it, and you can leave the desert, and you can see it in a better light. But you cannot change what it IS. And denying what it is merely keeps you in hell for longer. And that isn't going to make you very happy.

"The world you see must be denied."

"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."

"A desert is a desert is a desert. You can do anything you want in it, but you CANNOT change it from what it IS. It still lacks water, which is why it IS a desert." ... "The thing to do with a deserve is to LEAVE."

"Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."

"A Son of God is happy ONLY when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make."

"That is the only environment in which you can be happy. You cannot make it, any more than you can make yourselves. But it has been created for you, as you were created for it. God watches over His children and denies them nothing."

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it."

"God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. Is it a sacrifice to give up pain? Does an adult resent the giving up of children's toys? Does one whose vision has already glimpsed the Face of Christ look back with longing on a slaughter house? No-one who has escaped the world and all its ills looks back on it with condemnation. Yet he must rejoice that he is free of all the sacrifice which its values would demand of him. To them he sacrifices all his freedom. To them he sacrifices all his peace. And to possess them must he sacrifice his hope of Heaven and remembrance of his Father's Love. Who in his sane mind chooses nothing as a substitute for everything?"

"What is the real meaning of sacrifice? It is the cost of believing in illusions. It is the price that must be paid for the denial of truth. There is no pleasure of the world that does not demand this, for otherwise the pleasure would be seen as pain. And no-one asks for pain if he recognizes it. It is the idea of sacrifice that makes him blind. He does not see what he is asking for. And so he seeks it in a thousand ways and in a thousand places, each time believing it is there and each time disappointed in the end. "Seek but do not find" remains this world's stern decree, and no-one who pursues the world's goals can do otherwise."

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end?"

"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. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its powers decline if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."

"YOU DO NOT WANT THE WORLD. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it YOU look upon with love. This GIVES it the only reality it will ever have. ITS value is NOT in itself, but yours IS in you."

"What is meaningless is neither good nor bad. Why, then, should a meaningless world upset you? If you could accept the world as meaningless and let the truth be written upon it for you, it would make you indescribably happy."

Holy Spirit is performing perfect forgiveness all the time. He is 'forgiving' all the time. This doesn't so much mean he is constantly beavering around trying to fix stuff and undo stuff. He isn't MAKING errors, so there is nothing to un-make. He gives ahead of the need for correction, so that correction already 'is'. He is already correct, and he fore-gives (gives first) in order to be protected FROM making mistakes.

Only a failure to fore-give means you have withheld the truth and therefore have projected an error, and therefore will perceive an error seeming to be real, and it will attack you, and you will try to attack it back to make it go away.

Clearly we need to get back to the kind of way of 'perceiving' that Holy Spirit is a constant example of, so that the presence of the errors we are making will cease. What we need to 'undo' is our failure to forgive, our error-making or errors in judgement. If we're seeing something incorrectly we will see something in need of correction. So how do you get to where something incorrect is corrected? You stop seeing incorrectly.

The process of transitioning from our failure to forgive, to 'being forgiving always', is what we usually think of as our 'forgiveness process', but really it is a PROCESS of correction, which LEADS TO a forgiving attitude. Forgiveness looks back upon what has been corrected and perceives that it is forgiven, because it is perceived forgivingly. Forgiveness is a CONSTANT STATE, not a one-off event.

Although Holy Spirit is constantly 'forgiving', as in has a forgiving attitude, this forgiving attitude ENSURES there is nothing to forgive. Forgiveness is pro-active. It is a state of grace and innocence from which errors are not made or seen. Once you make errors, you make errors seem real, and you do need correction because forgiveness has failed and you've entered into a false judgement. But when no errors are being made, you are 'fore-giving' all the time.

So it seems like another paradox that the ego struggles to understand. When you are fore-giving, there is nothing to forgive BECAUSE of the forgiving attitude. But when you fail to fore-give, you CREATE stuff that needs to be forgiven. It needs forgiveness then in the sense that you need to RETURN to forgiveness in order to dispel it, which MUST mean moving PAST the error to return back to where forgiveness IS.

Thus forgiveness OVERLOOKS the error in order to recognize that it does not exist and is not continuing to be made. When you fail to overlook, you look AT, and this is what the error is - a failure to extend love by stopping it. Love that has been stopped becomes 'form', including the body. Once love overlooks the body in forgiveness, it no longer MAKES the body real (the body is an error), and thus undoes it, having no need for it.

For a mind that is used to everything proceeding backwards and in the form of ego thoughts and counter-attacks and reactions, it can be hard at first to grasp how to 'un-do' rather than 'do'. Forgiveness isn't something you do TO errors, it's something you do INSTEAD of errors, so that you can be RESTORED to a forgiving mind where the error doesn't exist.

God shares the forgiving attitude of the Holy Spirit. This doesn't as such mean that God forgives, because there is nothing to forgive and God does not condemn. Yet God IS 'forgiving' in the sense of being 'fore-giving' because if he failed to be forgiving he would enter into condemnation (of himself) and all would be lost. In this sense, God forgives you for having NOT REALLY DONE any of the things you think you did in error and mistake, because He knows that they have not happened. Your belief that they have is your failure to forgive and he does not share this mistake.

Fortunately, because God IS fore-giving, this ensures there is always a forgiving home to return to, where error/dreams/bodies/worlds do not exist, and where we are always completely loved unconditionally. Forgiveness calls for overlooking all errors all of the time with absolutely no single moment of 'dwelling on' them to ponder how they demand punishment. Forgiveness relinquishes the need for punishment of any kind, including death, because in forgiveness you are innocent, holy and error-free forever.