Surround search terms with " " double quotes for exact matches e,g, "drops of healing rain"

Forgiveness is a constant state of knowing there is nothing to forgive. God is "forgiving" but only in the sense that He knows there is nothing to forgive. Forgiveness is more of a sustaining of the truth, an extension of love and a clarity about what is true.

If you have a forgiving attitude it means you overlook errors because you do not make them and recognize they do not exist. You are forgiving because by looking with forgiveness you shine a kind and gentle light on all that you see, acknowledging its innocence and yours.

It's when you fail to be forgiving that you enter into making illusions, perceiving guilt, and are calling for punishment.

God's attitude is that you are always innocent. Holy Spirit's attitude is the same. Holy Spirit is always forgiving. If there is anything you think you've done wrong, it is forgivable. Forgiveness extends from unconditional love and recognizes you have not really done anything at all. That is why forgiveness is a key part of the atonement principle - there is nothing to forgive because nothing has happened.

When we do fail to be forgiving, we enter into a state of judgement in an attempt to explain why we are not forgiving. If I can judge another and condemn them, this is my attempt to explain that I did not forgive because clearly the other person is in error and this calls for me to righteously judge them.

"He who would not forgive must judge to justify his failure to forgive." - ACIM

What I need to then do is stop and recognize that I am not being forgiving, and that I need to get back to a forgiving, overlooking attitude, which recognizes innocence and acknowledges the atonement. This doesn't necessarily refer to the `process` that we seem to go through to get TO a forgiving state of mind. When we're in the forgiving state of mind - Holy Spirit - all is forgiven already. But if I'm in a state of condemnation, I need help to get my mind to stop this and to resume forgiveness.

We call it forgiveness when we undo these illusions and when we work on correction of thought and adjustment of perception. But such corrections are only there for the sake of getting mind back to a state of constant pure permanent forgiveness. Forgiveness isn't therefore something you 'do' its a way of being in love. The curriculum of returning to a forgiving attitude is just that, an illusory path of corrections of the mistakes that we're making in our forgiveness.

Some call it practice - to practice forgiveness, in order to learn what forgiveness really is. Or moreso, to unlearn what forgiveness is not. But it isn't practice that produces forgiveness - the light of truth is already established by God and it is His unconditional love that is constantly forgiving through us. We share in that. Our so called 'application' of ACIM principles is more to do with undoing the ways in which we have failed at forgiveness, removing blocks to the awareness that all is forgiven already, so that we can be restored to a constant state of pure forgiving.

Once we reach that complete awareness of forgiveness, and join with Holy Spirit fully, we will cease to make errors such as judgements and will recognize there is nothing left 'to forgive' because forgiveness is complete. And this forgiveness is a protection because it pro-actively fore-gives in order not to enter into error of judgement. So long as you stick with Holy Spirit and see as He sees, you're good to go.

All is forgiven because nothing has happened to assail the Kingdom of God and nothing ever will. This is good news.

God created a perfect kingdom, in which we are created as perfect beings. We have perfect minds, we are perfectly innocent, we have perfect relationships, we are perfectly safe and happy, we are perfectly loving and sharing, we are immortal and can never suffer or have any problems, it's all good. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG!

But then there was this strange separation event where we had an idea of denying all this. So now we deny reality, we avoid it, we hide from it, we attack it, we don't want it, we try to be something else, we try to value opposite things, we try to make a world nothing like it to live in, we fake everything, we block out awareness of even our own self, we deny that God has created us, we bury our head in the sand and repeat mantras of death over and over to try to keep us away from God.

The situation we're in then does not call for us to try to make or create that which is perfect. We're not asked to hit ourselves over the head with affirmations trying to enforce or cause or make ourselves be more perfect. We're not asked to infuse ourselves with innocence or hammer sinlessness into ourselves or stretch ourselves out to be more inclusive. God has already done all this. God has already given a perfect system, a perfect environment, a perfect life with perfect relationships. WE ARE ALREADY ONE!

The issue is that we're blocking it all. We're saying we don't want it. So the solution is to remove the blocks and stop denying it. And that is all. Many approaches to dealing with the 'issue' is that we start trying to reinvent ourselves, we try to take our ego self into a more real place, we try to transform our sense of what we are. But we're not really asked to do that. God has already established a perfect life for us. We just need to uncover it.

So really it's much more about melting back into an acceptance of what is already true, letting go of things that are false, remembering who we really are, re-identifying with our real self that God already created perfect, opening up to the natural shared state of joined minds, stopping denying God's reality, and removing any blocks which are stopping us from being aware ... that everything in heaven is already perfect and doesn't need any fixing.

This is a very different approach of waking up from a dream, waking up TO a pre-existing ready-made perfect reality, rather than trying to 'convert' our fake world, fake self, fake reality, into something better. Our job is not really to re-create ourselves, to re-invent ourselves, or to cause ourselves to be innocent or perfect. That's God's job. God's will has already been done perfectly. We have to let him be the one that defines us and establishes our perfection and sets us up in a system where we have perfect relationships forever.

Our job is more to do with simply uncovering the truth, revealing what's already there, tuning into reality, accepting the truth/atonement, going back into the light, leaving the desert, becoming aware again of the perfect kingdom that God has created for us in which we live forever in total happiness and effortlessness. We're not builders of ourselves, nor are we really making a better version of ourselves. We're just letting go of those efforts and allowing what already is - to be. Awakening an ancient memory of heaven.

You don't have to become more of anything. God's done the work. You just need to reclaim your inheritance. This is why enlightenment is merely a recognition of what is already true, and is not a change at all. The only actual purpose of LEARNING, is to learn that you do not need to learn anything!

Key words: Uncover, reveal, remember, rediscover, accept, open up to, reintegrate, access, tap into, tune into, allow, re-identify, re-awaken, recognize, know, receive, unveil, return to, wake up to.

"Everything OUTSIDE the Kingdom IS ILLUSION. But you must learn to ACCEPT truth because YOU THREW IT AWAY."

"Your inheritance awaits only the recognition that you have BEEN redeemed."

"God's Law of Creation, in perfect form, does NOT involve the USE of truth to convince His sons OF truth. The EXTENSION of truth, which IS the Law of the Kingdom, rests only on the knowledge of WHAT TRUTH IS. This is your INHERITANCE, and requires no learning at all."

"Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all. Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well. The light came with you from your native home, and stayed with you because it is your own. It is the only thing you bring with you from Him Who is your Source. It shines in you because it lights your home, and leads you back to where it came from and you are at home."

"Very simply, the purpose of psychotherapy is to remove the blocks to truth."

"All blocks to the remembrance of God are forms of unforgiveness, and nothing else."

"Your task is NOT to seek for love, but merely to seek and FIND all of the barriers WITHIN YOURSELF that you have built AGAINST it."

Recently I find myself waiting for someone to decide for me what it is I will do. I even ask within to Jesus or Holy Spirit for them to decide for me. It is one thing to surrender and open up to guidance and to express from love, but part of the lesson I've been learning is that I need to learn how to make real decisions.

What has become apparent is that most of life is spent simply reacting to the world, dealing with stuff that crops up, managing day-to-day maintenance activities, working 9-5, just doing 'stuff' - stuff that everyone else wants or needs me to do. Stuff that the world itself wants me to do. Stuff that the ego is organizing to try to keep me from being responsible for my own life.

And this makes me realize just how much I have not really been decisive before and have not really known how to make a firm decision. To be causal, instead of reactionary. To really choose something, commit to it and follow through. To be so aligned with being responsible for my experience that I choose what my experience is going to be, or I choose what I am going to experience, instead of simply waiting for experiences to happen passively.

So when I go to Jesus and try to get Him to decide for me, and He remains quiet, or He nudges me, and I don't get it, it's because He's trying to get me to act from a place of certainty instead of fear. A place of knowing, instead of figuring out. A place of being tuned within, instead of tuned out. And then he says, "decide". And I'm like... yah.. I am just blowing out hot air going around in circles in what I'm calling decision making which is really just "not deciding" and spinning my wheels.

To make a 'real decision', which isn't a reaction, and which involves being true to myself, and not doing anything that I don't want to do (which produces fear).... it's a new thing.

When I am in a state of indecision, I am clueless about what to do. I don't have any sense of certainty or clarity. I think somehow it's possible to 'become clear' while in that state, or that the clarity is lurking somewhere in the midst of options and if I just figure out the right option, it will become clear. It doesn't apparently work this way. The clarity needs to come FIRST.

So the way forward is, get out of indecision. Recognize it for what it is, that it is not decision making, but decision avoidance. Get out of all of that behavior, and COME BACK to certainty, back to clarity, to confidence, to knowing, to within the heart, and THEN I rediscover an obviousness - a clear path, which I already know is the right way to move forward, which was simply sitting there the whole time with me not being aware of it. So then the decision is easy and certain. And when you make certain decisions in clarity and not in fear, then you will have commitment.

"Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life."

"you made death, and it is but illusion of an end."

"Miracles make time and tide wait for all men. They can heal the sick and raise the dead because man himself made both death and taxes, and can abolish both."

This world we seem to be in, is not really a world. It is an illusion of a world, hallucinated by an insane mind, imagining that something impossible exists. It is a meaningless world. It is not good or bad, or evil or holy, or positive or negative, it is absolutely nothing at all.

What we call "the ego" then picks out certain parts of this singular illusion, and says that some parts of it are more alive than others, and other parts more dead. We GIVE it this meaning. We say, ok, this form and shape and behavior means death, and other forms and shapes and behaviors mean life.

And so we assign death to certain states or conditions. We say ok, there's decay and decomposition and damage and seeming lack of life or motion, so we're going to call this death. And when there is motion and vitality and symbols of aliveness, we're going to call this life.

This is literally what you made up. You decided some parts of the one illusion mean death just based purely on appearances. As Jesus says, life and death then seem like opposites in the SAME illusory world, made of ONE substance, and you then decided within that scope that "death ends life". Or that some of the illusions cause other illusions to change and lean towards the "dead state" that you gave the meaning of death to.

It's all made up. There is no part of the illusory world that is more alive OR dead than another part. A dead tree is not really any more dead than a living tree. A dead body in a grave decomposing is really not any different to an exuberant newborn baby smiling at its parents. Nor is a healthy dude at a gym any more alive than a seeming sickly old woman in a hospital. It's all the same stuff.

The ILLUSION is that they are NOT the same. That's the whole trick of it. The suggestion that some FORMS MEAN SOMETHING DIFFERENT to other forms. That their FORM IS their meaning, and their meaning sets them apart as not the same.

"See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning."

"It is HELD BACK by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else BUT form will be perceived."

"The FORM it takes cannot conceal its emptiness from REASON's eyes."

"Therefore, He (Holy Spirit) OPPOSES differences in form as meaningful, and emphasizes always that THESE DIFFERENCES DO NOT MATTER."

In the big picture, ALL of the contents of the illusory world are EQUAL in the illusory nature, EQUALLY unreal, and EQUALLY nothing. There are NOT parts which are more alive, and there are NOT parts which are more dead. The body and the world are not alive, or dead. They are neither and nothing.

"The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life."

"The body cannot heal, because it cannot MAKE ITSELF SICK. It NEEDS no healing. Its health or sickness depends ENTIRELY on how the mind perceives it, and the purpose which the mind would use it FOR."

What this means is the body as a meaningless illusion in a meaningless world, cannot HAVE any properties inherent to it. The world HAS no inherent meaning. When you USE it for an ego purpose, you actually distort the body and steer it towards unnatural states which produces what appears to be physical sickness and death. But as we just said even these states are illusions equal to the rest.

When the mind uses the body to bring the word of God, or the perspective of sanity in which the world is all one illusion, to those who lack this awareness, ie when we love and extend God, we stop distorting the world into states of difference, contrasts, conflicts and opposites, and this lifts away from the "body image" the signs of sickness and attack and conflict. Thus the body "resurrects" to what SYMBOLICALLY is a state of health and life. But even this is still not really life.

There is no death because it only seems to happen in a made-up world with made-up meaning based on made-up forms. A dead body is no more dead in truth than what we call a living body. They are totally the same illusion. One illusion of strange separate things, to which we've assigned arbitrary meaning based on nothing in particular.

WHEN the mind can recognize this, it is no longer participating in the hierarchy of illusions, recognizes both "life and death" as the same one illusion, and now has power over ALL states of matter. It has become miraculous because it sees no order of difficulty. It is no longer believed to be any harder or more difficult or strange or intense or chronic or stubborn to make one thing change into another thing.

Then it becomes EASY to change one state of matter into another, just as Jesus demonstrated materializing food and converting a branch into a snake and back, raising the dead and so on.

"Appearances deceive BUT CAN BE CHANGED."

"You CAN change form, BECAUSE it is not true. It COULD not be reality, BECAUSE it can be changed."

You become able to change material objects into any particular form, as part of your awakening to the fact that they are in fact ALL THE SAME. Overlooking their differences is forgiveness. Recognizing there is only ONE PROBLEM is forgiveness. Seeing the world as having no meaning of its own is overlooking illusions. Recognizing that a body IS NOT REALLY DEAD, and is no more dead than another living body, allows you to convert that body back to the living. Or at least to the symbolic illusion of living.

There are a number of stories in the book "The saints who raised the dead" which is a great read to hear about actual miracles. For example one saint visited a woman who was insane, and had attacked her children and killed them, and then was actually chopping them up and cooking them and eating them. And some of the parts had already been eaten. Totally greusome story yes. However, the saint arrived and, knowing none of these appearances were TRUE, performed a miracle and re-constructed the bodies of the children, putting all of the material back together into fully-formed, fully functioning, unharmed and seemingly totally alive and happy young kids again.

In another story, a man had died and was buried and had already been in the ground for several days starting to decompose. Surely this would mean that it was "too difficult" to resurrect the person to life. But a saint arrived and performed a miracle, recognizing that again the states and forms of matter meant nothing at all. And raised the body up out of the grave and recomposed it into a healthy living body, and the man walked away happily.

There are NO LIMITS on what your holiness can do because your holiness has the power of God in it, plus the awareness that this entire world is NOTHING, and so how can it be DIFFICULT to do anything? All forms CAN be changed precisely because they ARE illusions. Nothing here is permanent or fixed or beyond help. It is precisely because the world is NOT real that it CAN be changed by miracles.

"If sin were real it would forever be beyond the hope of healing."

"Yet nothing in the world of dreams remains without the hope of change and betterment, for here is NOT where changelessness is found."

You made death. You invented death. You decided it is death. You made it up, imagined it, labelled in, assigned it to certain forms, and tried to separate it out from other forms. It is not any of that. Death is no different than life in a world of singular illusion. Raising the dead should be effortless for someone who knows this deeply and uses it.

"I raised the dead by KNOWING that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the living God Created. Why do you believe that it is harder for me to inspire the dis-spirited or to stabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty in miracles: YOU do."

In the separation, we entered a state of mind opposite to God. THEN we projected this state of mind outward, trying to hide from it. This produced the world of spacetime.

"That was the first projection of error outward. ***The world arose to hide it***, and became the screen on which it was projected, and drawn between you and truth."

"***The world you made*** is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was ***made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind***, because you were AFRAID of it."

This means that the world is actually once removed from the state of mind of the separation. It is a second stage in separation. The first dream is of being separate, and was then projected as a second shadow dream of a physical universe.

This in turn implies that all things physical are a decoy, a kind of "effect" being projected from a hidden mental state. Therefore, anything physical is not a cause, nor is it capable of sinning, or of doing anything. It is a symbol of something hidden.

The whole world is an illusion of a world, an image, projected from a sick mind. It is being put there by an unseen process. It is not the world that needs to be forgiven and corrected. Or to put it another way, we must forgive the world in the sense that it has not done what we think it is responsible for. It is "following orders."

As purely an effect, the world cannot decide for itself, or choose what happens. It is the mind that is orchestrating every dream, every circumstance, all events and encounters. Behind the physical world its a state of mind which needs to be healed. It is the circle of fear. It is not seen by the body's eyes or by perception. It is prior to projection, and without projection there is no perception.

This is what we might call unconscious guilt, or at least a hidden and more direct sense of attack and sin. Its projected form, the physical world, was made to hide its viciousness.

"You would be willing to look upon your savage wish to kill God's Son, IF YOU DID NOT BELIEVE THAT IT SAVES YOU FROM LOVE. For this wish CAUSED the separation. You have protected it (producing the physical world), because you do not WANT the separation healed, and you realize that, by REMOVING the dark cloud that obscures it (the underlying belief in separation obscures God), your love for your Father would IMPEL you to answer His call, and leap into Heaven."

The world is a symbol of what it has been projected from. Just as the body is a symbol of the ego. It is not an end in itself. This whole world, this universe, is not an end, but a secondary expression from another state of mind. It represents that state of mind, an outward picture projected from an inward condition.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is NOT an end."

"Perception seems to TEACH you what you see. Yet it but witnesses to what YOU taught. It is the outward picture of a wish, an image that you WANTED to be true."

"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that. But, though it is no MORE than that, it is NOT less. Therefore, to YOU, it IS important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the OUTSIDE picture of an INWARD condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the WORLD, but will to change your mind ABOUT the world. "

The whole point of forgiveness then is to recognize that the world is once-removed from what is causing it, and what it causing it is in the mind. Therefore, cause, mind, will, and power, have to be brought back into the mind and recognized as being there. This is where the answer and the healing is. To take back your projection really means to take back the physical world.

Nothing physical is sinful, because it isn't the SOURCE of what it is doing. It is a projected image. It's where the world is coming FROM that is where you'll find the sin. The world was made to disguise the internal sin, to make it look like sin is externalized. That's why "the world of bodies is the world of sin." But it is really a projection of the idea of sin. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outward."

To lift the belief in sin away from the world, to see "the forgiven world", simply means recognizing that all of spacetime is not the cause of itself. It is coming from somewhere in the mind. Anything it does is a second-hand projected form of what is projecting it. Being solely AN EFFECT of an internal belief, it can't be held accountable for anything. The belief in sin is internal, and not perceived out there.

This is why the world really has no meaning of its own. Why it's a meaningless world. Why it's neutral. Why it can act like a mirror to reflect internal ideas of sin, or internal ideas of love. Because it is really nothing but a screen onto which we project stuff. It is an externalization of what's inside us. To blame it for anything, or to even look to it to identify "what to heal", is to misplace what is causing it. The world is a SYMPTOM AND SIDE EFFECT of the belief in separation. The belief in separation is the real problem, and the only problem.

If "all my problems have been solved", it is because the world is NOT the problem. The underlying secret sins and hidden hates are the problem. The unforgiven grievances. The attack thoughts. The belief in sin and death. The idea of separation. All the mental content which projects as the body and the world. Those are the problem that needs healing. The physical world will reflect whatever internal changes we make.

This is why sickness is a projected form of guilt. The inside becomes the outside. This is why death can only happen if the mind chooses it. This is why the mind has power over the body, and why miracles can resurrect and heal it. This is why changing your mind about the world changes the whole world. You're really changing your mind about yourself and God, and this results in a different projection.

First we will project a world of sin and death. Then, changing our internal material, we will project a world of harmlessness and peace and love. And then we will so fully extend our projecting in line with God's will that we will simply resume the full extension of heaven. And in total extension there is no denial or dissociation or "ego projection" or disowning. And so the projected world, which came from the tiny mad idea projected outward, will simply cease to have a source. And without a cause in the mind, without the idea of death, it will simply cease to be made.

"The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin, and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness. There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless."

The world, the physical world, BEGAN IN a dream. A secret hidden dream of sin and ideas of attack and death. Without this IN the mind, the world has no cause to PROJECT it. It came from nothingness and must return to nothingness.

Jesus gave us a nice analogy this evening for how we reverse cause and effect, how the ego functions, how we create scapegoats, and how we do stuff to ourselves.

The analogy is that of a hand puppet or glove puppet. The ego is like a puppet we use.

By itself, the puppet has no will, no life, no power to do anything. It lies motionless when you are not using it. It doesn't do anything to you or to anyone else. It's just a tool that goes unused and sits on a shelf.

At this point, you know that you are the one who has all the power to make stuff happen, and you know that you are the only one who can do stuff to yourself. All the puppets are dormant.

You decide to pick up the puppet and put your hand into it. You're now wearing it. And immediately, you start to move your arm around to move the puppet. And then you start to move your fingers to make its little arms and legs wiggle and maybe make its face move. Maybe you'll even give it a funny voice to add to the illusion that it is alive. You are trying to bring it to life, to "make it real", and to imbue it with the belief that can really do something.

At this point, you start to make believe. You start to weave a fantasy where the puppet is brought to life, where it animates, it moves and makes noises, and inevitably, you'll start to make it do things. Maybe its suddenly able to pick up objects. Maybe its able to poke people or tickle them. Maybe it can do stuff even to your own body.

The issue here is, once you start to pretend that the puppet is the one that is doing these things, you've introduced a major error in your mind. You've placed a separation between you - as the source of all power and life - and this puppet, even though your hand is still animating it - which makes it now seem that the puppet is not getting its power from you.

So now the puppet seems to have its own power, its own will, its own life. It has become the culprit. And now it is the one that gets blamed for doing stuff to yourself or others. You have turned it into a scapegoat. You can pretend to do stuff to yourself or others, through the puppet, pretending the puppet is the one doing it, so that the puppet is to blame and not you.

So let's invent a scenario. Let's say that this puppet, which symbolizes the ego, as a tool for you to use and give power to, isn't really able to do anything at all. But you decide to use the puppet to punch yourself in the face. So you do it. It hurts. You've attacked yourself. But because you believe responsibility for the puppets actions is no longer your responsibility, its obviously the puppets fault. It should be apparent how it is insanity to blame the puppet or to believe it has causal power over you.

In this there are two things happening. You are now a victim of the puppet and your disassociation from being the puppeteer makes it seem as though YOUR OWN ACTIONS against yourself are not coming from you. So not only can you blame the puppet for hurting you but you can claim that you had nothing to do with it, which justifies anger. So not only are you victimized by yourself but you cover it up by scapegoating, but you also now justify that scapegoating because it seems you didn't do it to yourself.

This is literally what happens in life whenever you believe that someone else or something else has power over you, is causing you, is affecting you, is changing you, influencing you, making you, forcing you, attacking you, victimizing you, whatever. If there is any ounce of this kind of perception or belief, you have disassociated from your own participation. You're actually attacking YOURSELF, through the puppet/ego/person/attacker, and pretending its not you. You do this in your mind. You attack yourself vicariously.

As we reveal the truth of this, you can see that as you slip your hand into the puppet and bring it to life and make it seem to have its own will, and then you punch yourself in the face, you will probably believe you are not the one punching yourself in the face. You blame the puppet, the person, the attacker. But if you don't take responsibility for it, you are stuck in the victim mentality.

So what you need to do is, stop pretending that your own puppets are doing stuff against you with their own willpower. It is YOUR OWN POWER that is attacking you THROUGH these externalized puppets. You send out your own self-attack, self-guilt, projecting it out into the puppets in the world (also your body), into things you eat, into things you see, into things you say you don't like, and you ANIMATE these things to seem to attack you. And you fear the power they seem to have. But here's the secret...

The power that you fear is attacking you against your will, by these puppets, IS YOUR OWN POWER. Its your arm, in the puppet, that's punching you in the face. It's your mind, that's extending out through other people and then turning on you. So the power you fear is your own power. And you see it in other things but its really yours. And there IS NO OTHER POWER acting against you other than your own. There is no other arm in the puppet. There is no other puppeteer out to get you or trying to work against you. It's you. You are doing this to yourself.

Owning up to being the puppeteer is the key to salvation. Taking responsibility for making stuff happen to you. Being the mind that is choosing to see situations in such a way that you perceive it as though the puppets in your life are doing this stuff of their own decision. They are nothing more than tools that your mind is using for self-attack. And here's the good news...

If everything that attacks you is YOUR OWN POWER being used against yourself, and if everything you are afraid of IS YOUR OWN POWER being used against yourself, and if you CHOOSE to stop condemning yourself.... who's going to do anything to you? Nobody. Nobody else is out there to do stuff to you. This is all an inside job. It's you as your own enemy. You need to forgive yourself for what you have not done and recognize your innocence. You need to own up to being the puppet master and take the gloves off! Stop hitting yourself. Stop punishing yourself. Stop judging and condemning yourself. Stop finding yourself guilty and stop proceeding to punish yourself for stuff you have not done.

Take the puppet off your hand and own your power. It has no power of its own. Take it back. Its yours. It was yours all along. And then you can recognize.. this is the key to the atonement...

The puppet is just a puppet. It cannot and does not do anything. It never has. It is not real. It is not alive. Nothing has ever happened to you. Job done. The ego is a puppet. It's your puppet. That's all it is. Once you take back your power and own up to who you are, you put down the ego and it is lifeless and powerless. Cause and effect have been placed back in their proper orientation and you are no longer a victim.

Freedom.

I had no idea, that I had been spending vast majority of my life attempting to use the ego's persona in order to 'make life better'.

All the times that I people-pleased to try to make bad people go away.

All the times that I tried to fix everything bad that ever seemed to be happening.

All the times that I tried to appear to be innocent and yet was acting like a victim.

All the times that I tried to look pleasing to others so that they would maybe not hurt me.

All the times that I thought I had to give others what they wanted, and that I was not inherently wanted in a loving way - only in terms of what others wanted to take from me.

There was even a time in my life that was especially low where I felt so bad about myself, such low self 'esteem', ie shame and unworthiness, that I believed I did not deserve any love, and that the only people who would 'want me' were those who wanted to use me or take from me or have me be a slave to. It was tremendously disempowering.

Ultimately this was all because I had such a strong belief that my personas (personii?), were actually capable of IMPROVING my life, making things more palatable, protecting me or defending me from what I did not want. I wanted to simply shut out all the bad icky stuff and focus solely on the good stuff.

And I remember actually believing that I was becoming 'very spiritual' by rejecting even the everyday egos of other people, which I relegated and judged and condemned for 'being ego' or 'being selfish' etc. This sort of twisted double-edged idea of spirituality arose out of this in my late teens where I was simultaneously terrified and hounded by scary stuff in my mind, while thinking that I was also having deep spiritual insights. And maybe I was in a way, but it was strongly dualistic, and my mind was very split. There was a 'rift' in my life, a strong sense of separation, and that persona of exalted, lofty specialness, really holier-than thou, simultaneously felt like I was approaching death.

I used the persona to get rid of and attack everything that I was against, believing that what I 'kept' was all good and acceptable and allowed. BUT, the more that I got rid of... and believe me I included a LOT of stuff in the list of what I rejected, way above and beyond normal classifications (ie most of the world), the more what I had LEFT OVER got smaller and smaller. The more I found myself in a hole of isolation and loneliness. And the more I became depressed. I felt like this impending sense of everything coming to an 'end'. My whole reality just felt like it was saturated with a sense of impending doom, with no way out. Because I was hiding in the persona and not being authentic at all, even though I felt justified by my pain.

I was repressing so much and rejecting so much, perhaps in attempt to heal myself of strong wounds, which I had projected onto everyone else, that I was perhaps trying to find a way to get away from it all and at least 'fake' that I was healing, as a starting point. Very much fortunately, things gradually started to turn around at that point, massively fuelled by my meeting my beloved wife who came into the darkness like an angel of light. Then the healing commenced.

Now, looking back, I can see how my entire time was spent choosing the persona, putting on a fake image, trying to give people what they wanted, trying to please, trying not to upset anyone, trying to maintain status quo or 'peace' by never asserting myself or standing out, etc. It was a rough lesson! And all of that resisting, all of that... rejecting of life... merely diminished my own. Now I am learning that using the persona at all is an attack on myself. It is a way to buy into the belief that I need to cover myself up because there's something wrong with me. As self-love increases - genuine honest God-shared love - so too does the need for these masks diminish.

I am seeing clearer and clearer that all of the confidence, all of the fearlessness, all of the certainty, all of the clarity and strength, that I thought I was going to find by using rejection, separation, persona denial, etc... are actually already IN ME... it was being denied BY the use of the persona. I just needed to learn WHERE the truth is, what WHAT the truth is. I was looking in the wrong place for my whole life - outside of me, and was rejecting myself the entire time.

Now I see that if you stand with yourself in your truth and don't reject yourself, you don't even NEED any of the persona masks, because you already HAVE what God has given you, you already ARE powerful and safe and strong. You don't need to hide from people, because you are unconditionally loving yourself. You're saying, I'm going to ALWAYS be real, true and honest, in all situations and with all people. I am ALWAYS going to come from unconditional love no matter what. And in that, you not only drop all of the efforts to 'get rid of bad stuff', you also drop all of the efforts to 'choose only the good stuff'. And along with that goes all sense of depending on, or caring about, what anyone else thinks of you or what you do. It is a freedom. In a sense, an independence - being set free from the energy-sucking vampire that the ego is and being AVAILABLE now to God, to allow Him to live through you.

It wasn't getting rid of bad stuff that made my life better. Trying to do that made it worse. Accepting myself fully is the goal.

It's not where I thought life would go. But this is where it is heading for all of us. Back to our true selves. Back to love.

Unless we are in heaven with God right now, and only that, and have relinquished all of the ego and its world, we are in a state of DEATH right now. Fictional death yes, but still death.

This is why we need RESURRECTION. Resurrection wouldn’t even be called for if we were already ALIVE. Resurrection means to BRING BACK TO LIFE from a state of death, aka "raising the dead".

What you think is life in this world (earth) is not life. It is death. People are already dead. Bodies are already walking around dead. There are degrees of death, it seems, but actually even a newborn baby is *already in death*. ALL BODIES ARE FORMS OF DEATH.

We do not recognize what death is, because we are deluded by the ego’s illusions about what is life. It has attempted to make an ILLUSION OF LIFE from death.

This entire universe is a dream of death. We are not living here. There are no life forms here. There are only forms of death. That is why we should not WANT this world.

If we do not recognize the LIE the ego has made, to try to suggest that this universe contains LIFE, then we will be deluded and deceived and will buy into this illusion. We will think our body is life or we are living. We are not. This world is not a place of living.

We will then start to think that parts of this world are more alive than others, that there are life forms, that there is "nature", that the little cute puppies and kittens are "alive". This is not life. These are just IMAGES the ego made as SUBSTITUTES FOR ETERNAL LIFE.

Mortal life is not life. It’s an idea of dying. The world is RUN by laws of death, not laws of life, or laws of life and death. Just death. But if we do not recognize it AS death, we are going to think, we’re already alive and therefore DO NOT NEED RESURRECTION. And so we will KEEP DEATH by keeping the ILLUSION OF LIFE, and WILL END UP IN THE GROUND!!

We do not have to be like this. God has a creation for us to live in, our HOME, in heaven, where there is REAL LIFE. It is a "place" (state) of perfect joy, peace, love, happiness, eternal safety, completely harmlessness, innocence, and it is 100% ALIVE! And you are part of that! It’s the only reality. This world is NOTHING in comparison.

We need resurrection beacuse we are mostly dead and heading for death. BUT we know, death is illusion, so NOTHING TO FEAR OR HAVE A REACTION ABOUT ;-) .... but we do need to still choose God again. Or rather, stop being in denial that we DO HAVE eternal life already and can never die.

Resurrection restores life where there was death. Raising the dead is NEEDED in this world to REVERSE SIN AND DEATH in all ways imaginable, both in mind and in body. This is why Jesus speaks of miracles as drops of healing rain which bring signs of live back to a dead world.

Did a healing for myself after feeling pain in my hand, which was anger I was holding onto.

After a process of visualizing the healing and commanding it to leave etc, I was again not expecting it but.... there was an angel kneeling at my side holding my hand very gently. It kissed my hand.

I felt extremely touched that a being so innocent and pure would bow down and kiss "me"... the impure. It made me feel very worthy beyond my own unworthiness. It then maneuvered and kissed the back of my hand a few times.

I could feel its presence beside me. Again I did not ask for it to come nor did I in any way imagine that there would be an angel involved in what I was doing. But what I was doing once again attracted the angels to assist me.

All pain has disappeared, such that I didn't even remember that this happened until now.

Clearly when we are fulfilling God's will and are expressing the truth that sickness is unreal and that we deserve healing and love, and actually take steps to bring that about, we "align" ourselves with heaven and do what Heaven would do, and Heaven comes to support us in that!

Recently I saw a video where a couple were talking of a simple 'technique'.

When you are upset and feeling emotions, usually you feel them in your belly area.

Simply, move your focus of attention from in your head (typically) down into the area of the body where the feeling is mostly centered, typically the belly.

Then simply invite Jesus to come in and join with you there and heal it. I say, "Jesus, please come into me/this and heal this for me".

A couple of times I've tried this and immediately there will be something happening. I feel something come down into my torso and immediately the 'feeling' that was there starts to disappear, and I lighten up really quickly, and start laughing. The unpleasant emotion that seemed intensely upsetting is simply gone, transmuted into love.

Then I just have to thank Jesus :-)

I know I've posted this before, just wanted to share a bit of experience with it. I don't know to what extent you need to have developed a relationship or openness to Jesus helping you but it works for me. Beats having to suffer through it or cry it out.

I go back to something Jesus said to me several times...

"There is no need to suffer."

A Course in Miracles - Urtext material - reproduced with permission from the Foundation for Inner Peace (acim.org), and the Foundation for A Course in Miracles (facim.org).
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