"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."

There are many things often quoted from the course, perhaps loosely from memory, something that stuck in your head when you read it. But which really is not well thought out or deeply considered. "Heaven is not a place" is one of those things, which has been widely misunderstood.

See, places, in general, are an aspect of spacetime. In space, there are many places. Over here, over there. My place, your place. Many places. There are places in spacetime because space separates everything out, based on the idea of separation and lack. But you have to remember, that spacetime itself is nothing but an illusory ego belief. Space time, does not exist.

Now, when Jesus says that Heaven is not a place, he is merely referring to the fact that SPACETIME does not exist in Heaven. There is no localization or confinement to one area, in heaven. There is no cut off piece of it that is kept apart from others and labelled as if it's not the rest. It's all joined. It's one. Heaven is one huge infinite unlimited PLACE, that has no separate places within it. Everything is everywhere.

It's perfectly legitimate to say it is not a place, while still not contradicting the fact that Heaven IS A SOMEWHERE, a locale, a home, somewhere that you can actually BE, live, dwell, and experience reality. It is actually a something, a somewhere. It's just that it is not limited. It is all things real and everywhere real.

But heaven is not an isolated place. It's not a United States. It's not a Russia. It's everywhere without limit. That's why it is "not a place". It's not a separated off thing with a label to distinguish it from the rest.

Especially if you consider the fact that space-time is a belief that is unreal and an illusion. There is no space or time. Both are made up. Which means ALL PLACES within space and time do not really exist. So every single PLACE that you ever thought of as being a place, is not REALLY a place. In fact, it is not a place at all. It's a nowhere. Spacetime is the idea of NOT EXISTING FULLY ANYWHERE, which is why every "place" within it is NOT THE WHOLE.

So when you throw out spacetime and shove it in the trashcan, what are you left with? You are not left with places. You are not left with isolated boxes and confined locations. You are only left with the only REAL SOMEWHERE, the only ACTUAL REALITY, the only REAL PLACE that you can be. And that is Heaven.

Absolutely. Heaven is the ONLY REALITY, the ONLY REAL PLACE you can truly exist. That's why "You are at home in God, dreaming of exile". You can't leave Home. You can't leave heaven. But you can DREAM of being OUTSIDE of it in another WORLD, full of places, where none of those places are really anywhere.

Where is Jesus? He is IN HEAVEN. There are so many references in the Course to being IN heaven, in stark contrast to being ON the earth. Jesus makes it clear that there are two WORLDS, they are two PLACES, they are OPPOSITES. "Heaven remains the one alternative to the strange world you made" for example. "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way." "Heaven is all that remains."

When the world disappears, which it will, where will you be? When there is no world, where do you live? When space and time collapse into nothing, where are you then? When the world spins "into the nothingness from which it came", and "gone is place, as well as time", where will you be? How will you exist SOMEWHERE, in a real SOMEWHERE, without any PLACES to exist? You MUST have a home, a real somewhere that you can experience. Where is that? Where is Jesus, in his home, not of this world? He's is in Heaven.

Heaven absolutely 100% is a PLACE. You can GO THERE. You already are there but you don't realize it because you're sleeping and pretending not to be in Heaven. When the dream world stops existing, you will wake up IN HEAVEN. It's reality. It's a REAL PLACE. It's where God lives. It's not "merely" an "awareness of perfect oneness", as if to imply you will KEEP THE WORLD and have some kind of heavenly mindset at the same time. Newsflash... not possible. "You cannot remain in this world with this knowledge."

There is no world. Central lesson. The world is NOT A REAL PLACE. When there is no world, the ONLY PLACE LEFT, to live and experience and be real, is Heaven. Heaven is THE ONLY PLACE THAT EXISTS. There is no other place. All other places are illusions.

So absolutely, it is false to interpret Jesus as saying that Heaven is NOT A PLACE. That's not what He means. He means only that it is not SPATIAL. And in that He also acknowledges that ALL SPATIAL PLACES ARE ILLUSIONS, which is why Heaven is NOT AN ILLUSORY PLACE. It's real.

It's your home. And it's the ONLY place that you can ever really exist.

Notice the quote also ends "Nothing OUTSIDE this Oneness, and NOTHING ELSE within." Which means heaven as a place does not coexist with THE ILLUSORY WORLD. There is NO WORLD outside the oneness of heaven, the place of heaven. The world you THINK exists right now, is an illusion of being outside the Kingdom. It does not exist. It is not HERE NOW. You are not in a place NOW. You WILL be in a place when you wake up to reality.

This idea, that should always ask "what is it for", is a fairly popular ACIM teaching. And it's useful to remember this. But I struggled to relate to this wording as if, the answer was obscure and unknown. We might find it easier if we ask, "what is my purpose in using this?" ie, WHY am I using this, what is the GOAL I am trying to achieve, what am I using his FOR? What purpose have I given to it? Why did I choose this on purpose?

And this is also tied into recognizing that EVERYTHING has a purpose. Whether it be God creating you for the purpose of joy and extension of the Kingdom, or you choosing to suffer for the purpose of escaping from sin. Sickness similarly always has a purpose, a reason why you are sick, a decision you made as to how you would USE sickness to ACHIEVE something. What is it for? Why did you choose it? How does it serve you? What are you getting out of it? What is its FUNCTION? Everything has a function even in dreams. Even fear, guilt, sin, sickness and death.

Once we can identify what was the true initial inspirational purpose for something, we can see WHY we chose it and made it happen, what we WANTED to achieve. Why we are using it this way. THEN, there is now a opportunity to make another choice, to GIVE the thing as NEW purpose, the Holy Spirit's purpose, to USE IT differently as a way to recognize that you made a choice and want to choose again, or that you would rather USE this thing to reflect truth and healing and acknowledgement of reality, rather than use it to deceive yourself further.

This re-purposing of the world, of all events, all feelings, all perceptions, all experiences, allows you to use what YOU made for purposes of attack, for purposes of forgiveness. When you decide, I will no longer make this ON PUPROSE for THAT PURPOSE that I originally made it for, admitting that you were doing this for some kind of personal gain, you can now decide not to continue with this purpose, which now gives the thing the purpose of release and freedom. You can now "use it" differently, see it differently, and let go of the ego purpose you were using it for before.

"The test of EVERYTHING on earth is simply this: "What is it FOR?" The answer makes it what it IS for you. It has NO meaning of itself, yet you can GIVE reality to it, according to the purpose which YOU serve. Here, YOU are but means, along with it. God is a Means as well as End. In Heaven, means and end are one, and One with Him. This is the state of true creation, found, not within time, but in eternity. To no-one here is this describable. Nor is there any way to learn what this condition means. Not 'til you go PAST learning to the Given; not 'til you make again a holy home for YOUR creations is it understood."

"Who can resolve the senseless conflicts which a dream presents? What could the resolution mean in truth? What purpose could it serve? What is it for?"

"In any situation in which YOU are uncertain, the FIRST thing to consider, very simply, is, "What do I want to come of this? What is it FOR?" The clarification of the goal belongs at the BEGINNING, for it is this that will DETERMINE the outcome. In the ego's procedure, this is reversed. The SITUATION becomes the determiner of the outcome, WHICH CAN BE ANYTHING. The reason for this disorganized approach is evident. The ego does not know what it WANTS to come of it. It IS aware of what it does NOT want, but only that. It has no POSITIVE goal at all.

Without a clear-cut, positive goal, set at the outset, the situation just seems to happen, and makes no sense until it has ALREADY HAPPENED. Then you look BACK at it, and try to piece together what it MUST have meant. AND YOU WILL BE WRONG. Not only is your judgment IN THE PAST, but you have no idea what SHOULD have happened. No goal was set, with which to bring the means IN LINE. And now, the only judgment LEFT to make is whether or not the ego LIKES it; is it acceptable, or does it call for vengeance? The absence of a criterion for outcome, SET IN ADVANCE, makes understanding doubtful, and evaluation impossible.

The value of deciding, in advance, what you WANT to happen, is simply that you will perceive the situation as a means to MAKE it happen. You will therefore make every effort to OVERLOOK what interferes with the accomplishment of your objective, and concentrate on everything that helps you meet it. It is quite noticeable that THIS approach has brought you closer to the Holy Spirit's SORTING OUT of truth and falsity. The "true" becomes what can be used to MEET the goal. The "false" becomes the useless FROM THIS POINT OF VIEW. The situation now HAS meaning, but only because the goal has MADE it meaningful.

The goal of truth has further practical advantages. If the situation is used for truth and sanity, its outcome MUST be peace. And this is quite APART from what the outcome IS. For, if peace is the CONDITION of truth and sanity, and CANNOT be WITHOUT them, where peace is, they MUST be. Truth comes of itself. If you experience PEACE, it is because the truth HAS come to you. And you WILL see the outcome truly, for deception cannot prevail against you. And you will RECOGNIZE the outcome, BECAUSE you are at peace. Here, again, you see the OPPOSITE of the ego's way of looking. For the EGO believes the situation BRINGS the experience. The Holy Spirit knows the situation IS as the goal determines it, and is experienced ACCORDING to the goal."

There is a reason why we believe death is inevitable, and why we think there isn't any other choice.

At the beginning of separation from God, we attempted to sin against him. That means we tried to attack God, cause Him, and therefore produce real effects to change Him against His will. This was the Son attempting to be the Father's father.

More simply, we attempted to reverse cause and effect. We who are an effect/creation of God, tried to be the cause of Him, and to make Him the effect of us. This is a simple logical reversal of states. This is level confusion.

Having believed that we accomplished this, which is the belief that sin is real, that we really did it and there are real consequences, we automatically believed that God has been attacked against His will. The automatic logical state for God now is that He is now JUSTIFIED in anger and revenge, because he's been unfairly treated.

Part of the belief in real sin includes this "re-framing" of God as someone who rightly SHOULD be angry at us, should want revenge toward us, whose will is in opposition to ours, and who is an enemy that we've attacked. This frames God as unforgiving, not recognizing our innocence, and not wanting us to live with Him.

By believing in sin, we believed also in the false idea of God, and in the idea that we cannot be forgiven and don't want to be forgiven. We did not want to believe in being forgivable because we wanted to keep the idea of sin real. And real sin would depend on God agreeing with us that we are sinful. We believe he should agree with us because we believe in what we did to hurt Him and his right to seek compensation.

This belief in real sin leads automatically to the belief that God wills that we be dead, which logically produces the fear of God. We appear to then be unwelcome to God, we consider ourselves as exiled, we see our Home as "off limits", and God's unforgiveness seems to cast us out. Believing in our sinfulness makes us believe that it is not possible to BE forgiven, OR to return Home, OR to be innocent, OR to ever share ETERNAL LIFE with God.

This sets us up for the next step in the ego's logical progression of conclusions. That is, that since we can't return to eternal life, life is no longer an OPTION. It is no longer possible for us to return to the Kingdom of eternal life. We've banished ourselves. And on this basis alone, we believe that since life is not possible for us, DEATH is the only possibility that remains.

It seems all we can do is slither away in shame and darkness, hide in a corner, suffer and die. And we believe this is all we rightly deserve, in order to not only comply with God's will that we die, but also to support and KEEP the idea that our sin is irreversible and unforgivable. We demand that we MUST die, in order to "pay for" the sin we firmly believe we committed. And so all death is a chosen suicide.

And so now we "accept" that because "sin is real" to us, death is INEVITABLE. It appears to not even be a choice, because it seems to be the ONLY outcome that's possible. There doesn't appear to be any alternative. And so we seem to come into the world, to "come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

It's almost as if we gave up on eternal life right from the start, threw it away, and left God behind to go and die alone in hell. This "death wish" and its foundation is responsible for EVERY death that happens in this world. Every death is a form of self attack and suicide, no matter how it looks or what happens or who does what to whom. "No-one dies without their own consent."

The good news is that this need not be, nor is it God's will. We need to learn that sin is not real, we did not attack God, we are still innocent, God still loves and welcomes us, we can go Home, we are forgiven, we did not really do anything at all, no consequences came from it, it was nothing but a delusional dream of death, and we can be reunited with love and RE-ACCESS ETERNAL LIFE. We've been MISTAKEN about God and ourselves and what we thought we did, and all is forgiven.

This means that as we progress in our return to sanity and awareness, we'll gradually accept the atonement truth that nothing real was threatened, nothing unreal happened, and all is well. Upon realizing that we did not sin, LIFE becomes an option again. It becomes possible to return to eternal life and to trust that God wants us to live. It becomes possible to not HAVE TO die. There now appears to be a choice, between life and death. And now death is no longer the inevitable single outcome,. Death is merely an "fake alternative" to what God wills for you.

At some point we will fully accept not only that death is unreal and has no consequences, but also that LIFE is all that we choose. We re-invest in the Kingdom, we open up to forgiveness, we allow ourselves to recognize the truth about us and our brother's innocence, that there is no sin, and we prepare to return Home to God - in recognition that we never really left.

Here we decide to side with life so fully that we will not even support notions of death AT ALL on any level or in any way. Not even while in a dream, not even while still having a body. We prepare to exhibit our conviction that we are immortal and eternal, by demonstrating it symbolically through the body's condition. The more we accept our innocence and extend love, the more the body is healed along with us. All the way to the point where even the slightest sign of sickness and death is no longer a part of your physical demonstration.

You then are teaching only life on all levels, mentally and physically, for as long as it is useful. And then the appointed time arrives for the completion of your journey without distance, back to where you never left. A complete awakening from the dream of death, our of bodies an out of the world, into the Kingdom of Heaven, remembering your immortal soul and continuing as a co-creator with God. Forever, and ever, and ever. Permanently alive. Permanently immortal.

In recognition that death is nothing but an illusion, death now becomes the "impossibility". It is now seen as having no effect, no causality, and no consequences. It is surmounted and overcome. It is seen as nothing. And not one single thing in all the world can make it happen to you against your will. When the illusion of death is recognized, it disappears. And now the only outcome truly possible, is the INEVITABILITY OF LIVING FOREVER.

You no longer have a choice, because there IS no death TO choose. Death has ended and is snuffed out. Only Real Life is possible for you now, and now you cannot fail to continue as an immortal being, Created by God to share eternal life with Him Forever. There is no death.

"There is no death, the Son of God is free."

Fail not in your function of loving in a loveless place, made out of darkness and deceit, for thus are darkness and deception UNdone.

This is something I think we've all struggled with. It seems the world is cruel, vicious, hateful, dangerous, murderous, and at times evil. It is filled with horros and torment and suffering and death. How can you love such a place?

It seems that when the world is being evil, you can't love it. More likely you will despise it, hate it, fear it, judge it as wrong, or consider it broken. How can you feel love in the face of atrocities and attack, or when you are witnessing war and destruction?

It then seems even insane to suggest that while the world is being evil, you can love it. Because this implies that somehow you love evil. If the evil is really happening, and it seems real to you, you logically HAVE to despise it. To love evil is itself unthinkable, and seems insane.

What occurred to me today, is that approaching the "how to love it" from this angle, is really looking at a special relationship. We're talking in terms of what the world is causing in us, how we are reacting to it, and how we are affected by it. What IT is doing to us and others, and whether or not IT is CAUSING US to love it. ie we JUDGE it to be lovable.

In specialness, we believe that something outside of us affects us. It can affect us positively or negatively. We believe it causes us and has power over us. We then seem to PREFER that it treat us well, and if it does, we will love it. And if it turns on us, we will hate it.

It's within that framework that we are stuck, when asking how we can love a cruel world. And it seems we can never love the world, because it is always messing up. If the world remains cruel, it is not going to inspire love. More likely it will inspire revoltion and bitterness.

If I allow my relationship with the world to be based on what the world "does to me", and if I'm waiting for the world to be RESPONSIBLE for causing me to love it, then chances are that how I feel about the world will waver by the minute.

Sometimes the world might seem loving, perhaps a lovely sunset or a pleasant smell. We then say that we love it, and become enamored with it. Then we see a car crash and are horrified, just as the smell of death wafts into our noses.

When we are worshipping idols, we are looking for those aspects of the world which "we like" or approve of, or prefer. We may even become obsessed with them, collectors or them, trying to gather them up to surround and immerse ourselves in them. The foods we like, our favorite color, the music we like, our favorite shows, toys and games we like to play with, etc. So long as we avoid the rest and pretend it's not there.

In this mindset we can only sporadically, conditionally, love the world. We love it when it seems to CAUSE us to love it. When it does something TO us that we prefer, we clap our hands. When it seems to meet our rules and does FOR us what we have assigned it responsibility to do.

Responsibility, however, also ties into the cause of sin. If we assign responsibility to the world, and it does not do what we want it to do, we consider it in violation of its duties. And now it has failed to act responsibly, or do what we wanted it to do, and it has now acted against our will, sinning against us.

We can't love the world like this. We can't love it on a basis of what it does to us or for us. In fact we can't love it on a basis of it doing anything at all. It can't be what the world IS that makes us love it. Nor can it be because of what it DOES, whether things we like or not. It can't be some effects we prefer, while despising others. Our love can't be based on the world being RESPONSIBLE for whether we love it or not.

What I'm learning is that a feeling of love or happiness is not supposed to be a REACTION to the world, or something the world causes in me. I shouldn't be feeling love for the world on the basis of what I GET from it or what IT is like. Love based on the world's CONDITIONS is conditional love - special love.

Love actually is supposed to be an outward expression FROM WITHIN, extended from the unconditionality and permanence of God. It is something I GIVE TO what is out there. And this giving should not happen as a reaction, or on the basis of adjusting to external conditions. Nor should I be doing it ONLY when the world lines up with my wishes. Expectation is not love.

The world should be loved, ONLY because YOU are loving, and not because OF the world. We're not loving it for its lovely scenery. We're not loving it's cute animals. And we're not loving it for the things it does for us. These are all special relationships.

We don't want to be getting lost in a state of idol worship or external dependency or only being happy based on worldly conditions. If we jump up and down when the world is in a certain configuration, or cower in fear and hate when it is in another, we are merely on a rollercoaster ride of fake happiness and despair.

The world, itself, is going to keep on being intermittently cruel and vicious and hateful and warring and decaying and deadly. It is going to continue operating within the laws which established it as a weapon against God.

It will try to delight you some of the time, and try to take away your peace at others. It will inspire guilt and fear and continue to attack itself in all its ways. You can't place your happiness or love on such unsure footing, or give the world the POWER to take it away from you when it wishes.

An inner love arises as you forgive yourself and love yourself, applying love at all times. This inner love has permanent qualities. It is unconditional. It is not a REACTION of love. It is not a love you only feel IF or WHEN certain conditions are met. It's a love you just feel, hopefully all the time, for "no seeming reason". "Happiness is a constant state."

It comes FROM WITHIN, and expresses outward. It shines ONTO the world. It is something you GIVE to the world. You PROJECT love onto it. And you then SEE the love you put there, mixed in with the world's cruelty. You enjoy it ONLY because you EN-JOY it, which means to GIVE IT JOY. Love is its own reward.

"Peace is impossible to those who look on war. Peace is inevitable to those who ***offer peace***. How easily, then, is your judgment of the world escaped. It is not the world which makes peace seem impossible. It is the world you see that is impossible."

The world IS a world of impossibilities. It cannot represent love or freedom. It cannot be real. It cannot be true. It is its nature to attack and destroy. That was what it was made to do. But to see only this is to judge it and hold it against itself. Only by GIVING peace and love TO it can you FEEL peace and love in relationship with it.

"Yet has God's Judgment on this distorted world redeemed it and made it fit to welcome peace. And peace descends on it in joyous answer. Peace now belongs here, because a Thought of God has entered. What else but a Thought of God turns hell to Heaven merely by being what it is?"

This projected love changes the framing of the world, and what it means. It shows you that the world's cruelty is not true or real. That it is just an illusion of sickness and suffering. That its images of death are not really death, because they are fake, and powerless to change you.

And at the same time, you look upon love IN SPITE OF the world, thus PUTTING LOVE THERE to see. This is the projection of the "real world", with which you OVERRIDE hell with heaven. And what you project you will perceive.

You OVERRIDE the world with your extension of happiness. You remain happy NO MATTER WHAT is happening, not because of some kind of "acceptance of it" but because of your REFUSAL to allow the world to come INTO you from the outside. You have power OVER it and dominate it with what you radiate. You are master of it. And you experience love because you chose to.

You really cannot love the world from the perspective of expecting the world to BE LOVABLE. The world is NOT lovable. No-one can make murder and death real and love it. That would be insane, to be in love with evil.

The only way to love is to recognize the evil is NOT REAL. It is not compatible with love. The world makes love IMPOSSIBLE. The only way TO love is to love it in spite of itself. And as such, you can love unconditionally precisely because you love IN SPITE OF the world being cruel. This also grants you the miraculous power to override its cruelty.

I find myself now, more often, smiling upon the world - upon subtle things, small objects, textures, colors. Feeling an inner sense of projected beauty. A sort of gentle happiness that bestows love, which shines upon, the world. And this is not because of what the world IS or what it DOES. It is because of what I am GIVING to it. Because I am staying IN MY LIGHT and shining it ONTO what I see, even if faced with a twisted hell.

It is more like an inner choice. A choice to love, regardless of what something is. To love something, even if it is a picture of brokenness or damage or malfunction. Not because IT is lovable, in its form or nature, but because I can CHOOSE to love, and will not ALLOW the thing to interfere with whether I am loving or not.

This means a love which is not DEPENDENT upon the world, triggered BY the world, or an EFFECT OF the world. It is not a love I GET FROM the world, and reciprocate, in some kind of bargain.

It is a love which is given outward TO the world, regardless of whether it seems to deserve it. Because *I* deserve it. Because if I stop being love, then I stop experiencing love. If I let my love switch on and off depending on externals, then I am a victim of the world, allowing it to affect me both positively and negatively.

Real love, or let's say, a holy relationship with the world, can only take place by IGNORING what the world suggests, and REPLACING IT with love. Giving it love even when IT hates, recognizing IT as calling for love.

We're told in ACIM that the cruel world is NOT the world God could love. And this makes perfect sense. But it also tells us that God loves the REAL world. God DOES love HIS PROJECTION OF LOVE. He gives peace, and sees peace. He feels love, and so is loving "toward" the world REGARDLESS of what the world is like. He doesn't love it BECAUSE OF what it is. He loves it IN SPITE of what it is. In spite of its evil ways.

If you think about this, it ties in properly with forgiveness. Unconditional love overlooks and ignores what something claims about itself, and sees past its illusion, and sees love instead. And only because it GIVES love and innocence.

Not because the thing is "being innocent". The world cannot be sinless or guiltless. "To see a sinless body is impossible." But we can choose to not believe in sin and guilt, and to thus project forgiveness and light UPON a sinful world. And we then see the reflection of our light, or of God, IN it. Because we PUT it there.

No one can love the world we made, on the basis of it being lovable, or on the basis of it acting lovingly. It is not that, and it cannot be that. It will always be a world of separation and death for as long as it appears to exist.

But we can love ... while the world seems to be there... in spite of what IT says or does, even WHILE it is being cruel, because the choice to love does not DEPEND on the world, or come from it. We can love in the FACE OF cruelty, in spite of the cruelty, which will render the cruelty seen with loving eyes. But this will not JUSTIFY the cruelty, because the love is not BASED ON the cruelty.

This is the only way to "love hell". No one can love hell, on the basis of what hell does to or offers them. The world in fact holds NOTHING that you want, and has NOTHING to give you. It effectively has NO redeeming qualities. Because it is nothing.

"The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons"

But you can "love hell" - which does not mean BEING IN SPECIAL LOVE WITH hell, on the basis of what you OFFER TO IT. You be loving, even when surrounded with evil people. You can love unconditionally regardless of whether the world was made from love. It wasn't made of love, and never will be. But this must not stop us from loving. Otherwise we cannot feel happy.

Our challenge is to stay strong IN OUR LIGHT, even when confronted with evil. To remain IN THE TRUTH, even when faced with lies and deception. To remain IN POWER, even when the world pretends to take power away. And to NOT ADJUST to the world in any way, or allow it to cause us to waver or change our decision to love. This is the only way God is able to love the world. To love it, because he can do nothing BUT love, REGARDLESS of whether the world "is lovable" or not.

"The world you see cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world. God's Word has promised us that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be impossible. But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this."

The appearance of the sickness is actually an illusion which covers up what the problem is. The sickness, the symptoms, are actually there to function as a distraction, to make you focus on the body and to make the body real. This is a protective mechanism to try to defend your ego-aligned self against a misperception of the truth.

It's not that the form of the sickness is the problem. The PURPOSE of the sickness is the problem, which is to act as a defense. There is a perceived NEED for a defense, and that manifests as physical symptoms. But the appearance of it, the physicality of the sickness, is not really the cause or the thing that's happening.

What's happening is the underlying attempt by the MIND to shut out God and to cling to the body. It just happens to CREATE symptoms such as pain and disease, in order to try to get the awareness to fixate on the body, to think that the body is very real, and therefore IGNORE the truth - to shut it out of awareness.

So sickness is an escape from reality. If someone has cancer they don't need to be healed of cancer. They need to be healed of the belief that they need cancer in order to protect them from reality. As Jesus says, when the purpose of the sickness is recognized, and when it is understood to be an illusion, it must disappear. If you had no more "use" for the sickness, and it wasn't serving a purpose of any kind, it would have no basis for the mind to keep sustaining it, and it would vanish.

So it's like, someone gets exposed to truth but their ego misinterprets it and their interpretation scares or threatens them, so they put up a "shield" of protection, which cuts them off from Life and blocks life-sustaining "energy" flowing in the system, and creates distortions in the body image. The body image then shows a sickness to symbolize the need for escape, and to provide an escape. Therefore the sickness is always a form of distraction and an attempt to make the body MORE real than the truth. Trying to make illusions more real than reality produces sickness.

If you could be convinced that you don't really have a need for the sickness because the purpose of it was misinformed, and what you experienced as a threat is not really a threat, and it's not a threat because you're not really the ego self that sees it as a threat, then you'd be willing to let it go and stop using it to protect you. You'd see no purpose in it, no need for it, and no use for it. So it would disappear.

The trouble is that once sickness is implemented, its symptoms and suffering can be so effective at distraction, so effective at absorbing your attention, so effective at making the body seem real and frightening, that you have all kinds of peripheral reactions as a whole other "layer" of experiences. You start trying to defend yourself against the defense! And that means you start to view the sickness as though you did not choose it.

Theres's a very good reason why you do not want to admit to having chosen the sickness, and it's because if you did, you'd have to own up to that and wouldn't be able to hide behind it. The sickness was made to block awareness and to shut out the truth, so if you were to admit you made it, you would not longer be able to receive its benefits of defending you.

You don't want that, so instead you shut out awareness that you made it, perceive that you did not want it or ask for it, and then launch into a series of reactions to the sickness as though it is attacking you, you want it to go away, etc... but you really don't. Not honestly. If you really wanted it to be done with you wouldn't react to it at all, you'd just admit to the ways you wanted and needed it and would drop those, having come to accept that the truth was true and your misinterpretation of the truth was invalid.

Fighting with sickness therefore is part of the huge distraction that sickness presents, and can have you spinning your wheels trying to just deal with the symptoms and discomforts. Part of you is saying you want it to go away, while another part of you - now unconscious - is actively choosing to keep it, because in the bigger picture you're still terrified of what you saw in the truth and are trying to protect yourself. It therefore frightens you to think of actually being HEALTHY, because that would mean you'd take away your PROTECTION, and then the truth would be able to attack you again. So efforts to become "well" actually can have a lot of resistance and a lot of defense against, because it actually threatens you more to become free of the sickness, IF you are still misperceiving the truth.

Perhaps a key then lies simply in the mistaken perception you originally had which seemed to show you that you needed to become sick in order to defend yourself. You need to look at what you perceived and why you perceived it. But you need to look at it with Holy Spirit or a higher perspective of truth. You need to be willing to have been mistaken. This is why you need to APPLY FORGIVENESS, to undo the ILLUSIONS that you were under that made you misperceive, creating the need for a defense. You need to disassociate from the ego identity in some way so that you do not take the truth as a threat, and do not see it as meaning that you are going to stop existing.

The primary "cause" of sickness, if you will, is the simple fact that you have bound yourself to the ego, are perceiving what IT perceives, are interpreting the truth THROUGH it, and therefore you become frightened whenever you are exposed to the truth. The truth is that the ego is not real and does not exist, and everything it believes in is false. If you are identified with it and think that it is you, then whenever the truth comes along you will be frightened that you are being attacked by it, that it implies you do not exist, that you are not real, and that's horrifying. It is a misperception, but it's horrifying. And who would not want to defend themselves against that?!

Correction is needed therefore, and a forgiveness is needed and a willingness to consider that who you are is not the ego. You need some reassurance and clarity and perspective that just because the truth says something, does not mean it is attacking you. Who you thought you were was mistaken. How you were perceiving was mistaken. What you saw in the truth was projected onto it by your own mistakes. It amounts to a willingness to accept that the truth is TRUE, and not that the truth contains evil intentions. If you can accept that the truth is true, and not false, and that what you thought was true is false, then you have the key to unlock the NEED for sickness to protect you from it.

When there is no misperception of the truth, there is no need for sickness, and you will not create it or use it.

Sickness isn't really the problem that needs healing. Sickness showing up in form is an ILLUSION, because it covers up the underlying secret ambition of self preservation, and is meant to be a distraction and a smoke-screen. That's why sickness isn't real. It's not the problem that needs to be corrected. Trying to treat the sickness or the symptoms of sickness therefore will fail.

It should be obvious that since sickness is an attempt at self-preservation, making oneself sick and likely to die in the name of self-preservation is insane.

I seem to be operating through a male body in this lifetime. It has a certain appearance. A certain shape. It functions in a given way and has certain seeming abilities and inabilities. There are appendages and shapes and features which other bodies don't seem to have. It seems to have a physical gender. It seems to have needs. When it looks upon itself in the mirror using its own eyes it sees an image of what it seems to be.

But this body is not who I am. I am not a male, or a humanoid. I do not really have arms and legs or a head. This strange creature I inhabit is not my self. It is but one of many possible iterations of bodies, all of which are distinctly different, and none of which are an accurate representation of my soul. None of them, not even this one, depicts who I really am.

"What you are cannot be seen nor pictured."

Your face is not how you look, any more than the face of another person's body is how they look. The face is a disguise designed to present a picture of what appears to be a "person", or someone looking, or someone speaking. But this face is just an instrument, a device, a facade, like the outside of a building. It actually hides the invisible self which cannot be seen with the body's eyes. This face is merely an arrangement of bones and flesh and muscles and sensory organs operating in a certain, very specific way.

What you are as a permanent, perfect creation of God, cannot possibly bend to become the shape of a particular body. In one lifetime you might show up as a woman, in another as a man, and in another as a woman again. Shapes and features of different sizes and proportions and colors and behaviors. None of these conform precisely to the true nature of what you are, and not one of them is wholly a perfect depiction of yourself.

In fact, because the core of you is so perfect and formless, every single body that you could ever utilize cannot come close to or even touch upon your true nature. Every one of them is distanced from your identity and set apart from or is external to your soul's true nature. They are all strange pictures of persons, who are not really persons, portraying physicalized images of artificial identity, as temporary substitutes for who and what you are.

When you identify with or as this body, believing it is completely yourself, there must be quite a jump of the gap between your true nature and the nature of this strange image. You must distort yourself, confine yourself, mangle yourself, in order to consider yourself to BE IT. You must be not yourself, in the most extreme way, in order to regard it as who and what you are. Are you at toe? Are you a buttock? Are you teeth? Do you chop off parts of yourself when you get a haircut? Do you shed yourself? Are you constantly changing? You are not these things. And trying to identify as these things, alone, must induce mental illness simply because these things are so unlike you.

There was a gospel of Judas which was discovered, I think it was part of the dead sea scrolls. I watched this on tv some years ago... in which, for one thing, Judas was properly recognized as being the one who was closest to Jesus and most believing him, which is why the authorities later depicted him as the worst traitor, to slander him. And in this gospel there were accounts that Jesus had already accomplished such spirit identification that he was able to transfigure in and out of different bodies. Sometimes appearing as a woman, sometimes as a child, or an old man, depending on what form was suitable to meet with particular people.

I don't find this to be improbable or impossible. Some of the great masters of the East have acquired similar abilities, dissolving the body and turning into a ball of light which then flies over the land and then rematerializes as a body later. Clearly when one has total clarity about what one is, and has power over the body and all forms, this kind of thing becomes easy and possible.

We are not bodies. We are spirit beings. And we do not need bodies in order to exist. "To be without a body is to be in your natural state." You do not need a body to be with God, or to be yourself. "God did not create the body." and so it is not a natural part of you or your inheritance. We must learn to correctly recognize that even the body we have right now, is not our identity. I am not a 6-foot caucasian male in his 40's. This is just the particular picture that my mind is projecting or that I chose to show up as or "incarnate into". In my last life, I was probably a woman.

In order to love yourself and to love everyone equally you cannot be offended by, putt of by, judging of, preferring, or being biased in any way about particular types of bodies. Fat or thin, large or small, tall or short, gay or straight, masculine or feminine, hairy or bald, ugly or beautiful, it should not matter, because these are all just clothing. Just flesh suits which our real selves are temporarily using. And no matter how a particular body appears, it is not the person.

Holding the body against them is like accusing them of sin. You must learn to look beyond your body and theirs, to recognize that deep within, there is a shining light, a perfect soul, just the same as yours, and all the children of God are perfectly identical and equal in Christ.

"Yet in this learning is salvation born. And what you are will TELL you of Itself."

"I am come to tell you that the choice of which is true is not yours."

I consider myself fairly devoted to ACIM. My attitude about is that it contains an expression of Truth, and that Jesus knows what the truth is. I have respect for his Authority and for the Word of God which comes through. I want to learn. I want to be receptive. I want the course to tell me what the truth is and guide me toward an ACCEPTANCE of it.

This means that I have to learn to trust, to allow God’s truth to be true, and to define what is true and what is not. Being in ego is entirely a game of playing God, trying to be the one who decides everything, not listening, not accepting a truth which has already been established. Ego is all about dreaming of a different truth, a different reality. It wants to be the author of itself. To undo God’s handiwork.

When we read the course and the course says something, which is almost certainly literal in almost every case, if we do not like what it is saying, we will go into denial. If we have other beliefs that we think are true, which we cherish and want to keep, and are unwilling to let go of, we will defend them against what the course says. Even if the course is explicit, we will instantly react with "that’s not true" or "I don’t believe that". Or we’ll make up some excuse why the course "doesn’t mean that" and why other interpretations are possible.

The course is really straightforward, clear, literal and intense. That is why the ego hates it. It wants to change it, deny it, distort it, mangle its meaning, give it its own definitions, change words, adjust its theology, and even use it to keep its pre-existing beliefs about everything AND strengthen them. It’s perfectly capable of reframing everything the course says to make it fit into a view of reality that a person already came with. To even reinforce that view more deeply.

There are some people doing ACIM who are totally deluded about what it is saying because they have so much denial and unwillingness to let go of what they believe. They are not ready for the fullness of the truth yet. And this course is not for everyone.

We have to be willing to put aside our egoic denial. We can’t be continually questioning everything Jesus says. When he says something, it is true. Otherwise we are claiming he is a liar, and that we know better. That is arrogant. And it is dishonest. It indicates we are not willing to surrender our ego position and are not willing to ACCEPT anything that we’re being told. If we do not believe what Jesus is telling us, it means our beliefs are WRONG, not his. He is the sane one. We have to be more willing to learn a NEW truth.

Are we willing to trust that, and thus question every belief we hold dear, if needed? If it does not correlate to what Jesus says, it has to go. If it does not line up with God’s truth, it has to be false. If it is out of accord with God’s will, we must become willing to surrender it and get ourselves in line. The truth will tell us of itself what it is. We must simply be willing to accept, receive it, and listen to it. To allow God to be God. This is the only way you can accept the atonement. Accepting the truth is the opposite of trying to change it or author it. God is the author, not you.

It’s not your function to create yourself, reinvent yourself, define yourself, establish what is real, establish what is true, create laws, or to act against God’s will. When you do any of this you are in the ego. The truth, reality, can ONLY be accepted. You have to accept the truth God has created, off the shelf, as is, without you messing with it. Without you wanting it to be different. Without you not liking it or rejecting it, or trying to adjust it to be the way you want it. God’s choice FOR you has to be good enough. It has to be wholly welcomed with free will.

"I choose to let him by allowing Him to choose for God for me".

Look at all the ways in that sentence that Jesus is taking the responsibility of defining truth AWAY from you.

"I choose to LET HIM" (I choose whatever HE chooses FOR me)

"by ALLOWING Him to choose" (He decides what is the truth I will accept and take as my own)

"choose for God FOR me" (He chooses the truth about me, on behalf of God, and does so so that I can ACCEPT and

ALLOW whatever He chooses to be true of me, TRUSTING Him over my own ego ideas)

This is what your inheritance is about. You must INHERIT from God. You must receive what He has given you, how he has established you, what you ARE, by His will. You CANNOT change the truth, and trying to do so is insane. You cannot change what you ARE in reality. Atonement is the acceptance that you HAVE NOT done so, while sin is the rejection of this fact and nothing more than denial. Be glad you are ONLY the perfection God created and be open to receive your inheritance at last. What you stand to gain is yourself.

"I am forever an effect of God"

"I am still as God created me"

"The soul is the idea of self fullness"

"Nothing real can be threatened"

"You are immortal and you cannot die."

In your attempt to move away from God, you are basically trying to disown yourself.

You do this by denying who you are, covering up awareness of who you are, and displacing your sense of self onto anything that you perceive as "not me".

What you do is you take part of your mind and retain it as conscious awareness (your persona), and then shield it from the rest of your mind which becomes unconscious (your shadow).

The unconscious part of the mind is disassociated from, denied and rejected. You hide it from yourself so that you can pretend to be only a limited identity.

What is then part of your own unconscious mind then seems to "project" outward, creating hallucinations of an external world. Since you've placed a barrier between your conscious awareness and "the rest of yourself", you do not experience what's out there as yourself.

So now it seems like there is an entire world that is not you, filled with identities and people who are not you.

At the same time, in order to disown yourself, you have to give ownership of yourself away. That means your sense of identity has to become the possession of some other self, namely the ego.

It is not that the ego has any power of its own to take possession of you. Your attempt to disown your own self produces the ego. You make it everything it is on purpose. And yet at the same time as disowning yourself, you appear to grant it permission to possess you.

It seems then that the ego is a separate entity, largely in your unconscious, filled with all the unwanted parts of yourself which you judge as unacceptable, wrong, bad, guilty etc. Yet at the same time, the ego is also in the conscious persona which is at war with the unconscious. It is the separation between them that is the ego.

This unconscious repository of darkness is your "pain body". At times your pain body, the emotional body of the ego, will take possession of your conscious mind/persona, becoming extremely anti-persona and believing the exact opposite of what the persona-self believes.

When this happens it quite literally is like being possessed by some kind of dark twisted being who is very strongly in denial, very deeply opposed to any kind of truth, and it can flood the mind with negative fearful thoughts.

It in a way feeds off of you, in that by throwing your own repressed stuff into your awareness (ultimately as an act of attempted healing), your mind becomes overwhelmed with fearful reactions and this generates a negative energy which it appears to feed off.

Depending on how much separation you have experienced in your existence, will somewhat determine the 'body' of pain i.e. everything you judged or rejected, which has become stored any our unconscious and which needs to be purified and released.

Going through this process is often something that is randomly triggered and seemingly unwanted and horrifying, because it is as though a person can become literally possessed by some dark being, losing significant awareness, going into an unconscious state of paranoia and fear and guilt and dwelling upon the past.

For some people the pain body is so strong that it can produce violence and suffering, while for others it may come and go more quickly. It returns to being somewhat dormant if the person is able to maintain a non-reactionary consciousness, i.e. awareness. But if it is allowed to take over awareness it can turn a person into seemingly someone possessed, who you may barely recognize, and who may suddenly become what many people would consider either depressed or mentally ill.

These periods of "release" of unconscious dark baggage are punctuated after a usually short period of time with a period of relief in which a lightness and happiness takes over. This is similar to what happens when you have a cathartic cry, which initially is painful and dark and upsetting to go through, but at the end once the energy is cleared out you may find yourself laughing.

Ultimately this is a process of healing and release and a way for a person to let go of a large body of unconscious pain which needs to be permitted, allowed, accepted and observed, without becoming too lost in the clouds along the way. Since we repress a great amount of negativity into the unconscious, or otherwise known as the "shadow", there can be a lot of self abuse to be cleansed.

Ultimately the ego itself is not an entity and nor can it truly possess you against your will, but since it is something that you yourself set in motion and gave power to, you have to go through a process of allowing the shadow and persona to cancel each other out. The conscious mind is overcome by what appears to be mind-altering and even behavior-altering unconsciousness, but it is only happening because the person has become ready to work through their baggage and release it.

If this is happening to you or to people you know, you might think they are crazy or that something terrible has happened medically. No many people understand this. But at some point sooner or later you as you progress on your steps towards returning to your true self, reclaiming your identity, waking up to reality and accepting God's truth, it's going to mean you need to purify and flush out all of the ways in which you have created separation in yourself, and so it's as though the lid is lifted off your denial, producing a profound release. And so this really is a part of the awakening process.

This may be the way that you proceed in your path, to varying degrees, or it may not be. It can be very difficult and extremely confusing to go through. But we are all heading home to God one way or another and for some people it takes a direct expression of unconscious fear, guilt and rage, in order to cleanse the mind of the darkness which has been stored there. We all have our skeletons and we all could use a closet spring-clean.

None of use are stuck in the ego. Nobody is a victim of evil. Nothing is happening in our mind that we haven't put in place. And our own ego, our alternate identity, is just a part of our own self that we've pretended to split off. It is no more a separate entity than that it is our own self pretending to not be our own self. And so it's an interesting paradox that as we attempt to disown ourselves, we become owned by ourselves, albeit around a wall of unawareness. Moral of the story being, you cannot stop being what God created.

We're all loved by God and there is no real way to be separate from Him.

This may sound like a sweeping generalisation but it is true. It applies to EVERYONE. EVERY sick person has REJECTED health, love and God. They do NOT want healing.

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR OF AWAKENING."

When a person is out of touch with God, and with love, they enter into fear. Fear and love are opposites. In the fear they are confused and are now afraid of love. This requires not recognising love AS love, and instead framing it as an enemy. So now love is perceived to be "unloving" and a threat. Which also means something unloving (death) begins to be "loved."

In this state the person has a backwards perception and a split mind. They see God as harmful and evil as helpful. They see fear as something to trust and they won't trust real help.

They might be complaining that they want to not suffer, but at the same time they want to suffer. They might be saying they want healing, but they push it away. They see help as dangerous, especially to their experience of being weakened and unsafe.

Love and healing are now viewed as poison and an attack, something to stay away from, something to reject. The fearful person is saying NO to God, denying love and reality. They literally believe however that they are saying YES to what they believe is true - their allies in the ego, in the body, in fear and suffering.

Sickness and its physical symptoms are now defences against the truth - against love and God - to keep them away. Because God is misperceived as the enemy. The mind is sick because it is attempting to deny mind, causing self repression and self attack. This shows up in the body as symbolic physical symptoms of sickness and death.

The fearful person thinks that by shielding themselves from love they will be better off. To get away from eternal life is seen as a way to live longer. To be distanced from wholeness is seen as a protection. They say they don't want to die, but they do.

This places all healers in a somewhat difficult situation. The patient is ALWAYS in a state of fear, suspicious of help, afraid of healing, wary of their defences being removed. They don't want you to do anything at all in case it increases their suffering, even if what you're offering is relief. The sick person is always saying "help me, but don't help me."

This can especially be seen for example in someone who has induced tremendous bodily pain. The body can be so painful, and the person so consumed and overwhelmed by the pain, that they begin to not want anyone to do anything in case it might make things worse. They will reject sources of relief and will be fearful of even physical remedies and medicines.

So now the challenge for the "therapist" or healer is that the people in need of help are always rejecting help. Deep down they want it, but in their mind they do not trust it. How do you get through to someone who thinks that everything you're offering is going to make them worse off? How do you talk to someone who has lost their mind and believes the opposite of what is true?

Essentially, all sick people do not want to be healed. If they did truly want wholeness and love sickness would be impossible for them. They have not sided with love, they have sided against it. So at the same time they're now starting to experience the unfortunate suffering that comes with the ego insanity, while secretly wanting it. They want it because it serves a purpose, to protect them from their enemy.

So the issue maybe isn't so much that the person is having symptoms and is insane, it's more a matter of them not being willing to be mistaken or to receive help. To let themselves be loved. They don't want love to enter because it seems to threaten their sense of ego-identified self, suggesting the thing they cling to would be taken from them.

It's like a scared animal, hiding in a corner in the dark, terrified of a person approaching, barking and making noises to keep them away, unwilling to trust and very tentative about allowing the person to help them. Even if the person could be offering food and water and healing and support.

This is the unfortunate situation we're faced with. Sick people want to be sick and do not entirely want help. But at the same time, part of them does. No-one in their right mind would want to suffer, but in insanity it becomes appealing. The mind has to somehow be changed, its perceptions reversed, and its belief system upended. The fear of God, of love, and of awakening, has to be undone and the whole thought system reversed.

I think this probably applies to all of us, whether we consider ourselves healed or sick, sane or insane, far gone or a work in progress. We're all resisting God and love to some degree, which means we're all in need to being "talked off the ledge" a bit. Everyone who denies God is choosing death and is suicidal to varying degrees.

The way out of course is with a little willingness, a willingness to be mistaken, to want a better way, to open up to a light and a truth bigger than what was believed before. A desire to become closer to God, to forgive, to let go of the fight and the war and the resistance. Something in the mind has to change if there is to be healing.

"He has asked for love, but only that he might give it to you. You do not love yourself."

"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH. The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

"Sometimes the illness has sufficiently great a hold over an individual's mind to render him inaccessible to Atonement. In this case, one may be wise to utilize a compromise approach to mind and body, in which something from the OUTSIDE is temporarily given healing belief. This is because the last thing that can help the non-Right-Minded (or the sick) is an increase in fear. They are already in a fear-weakened state. If they are inappropriately exposed to a straight and undiluted miracle, they may be precipitated into panic. This is particularly likely to occur when upside down perception has induced the belief that miracles are frightening."

This is quite an interesting teaching. As God created you, you are always the same. You are immortal, eternal, permanently you.

In your spiritual self there is no sense of change, no disturbance, fluctuation, alteration, changes. No tensions, no upsets, no parts that malfunction, no things that fall off, no breakage or damage. There is in fact nothing happening as such, within your self, at all.

You just remain exactly the same, all the time. And because of this total lack of disturbance, of transformation, or changes of any kind, you re totally at peace.

This is not a peace that results from achievements or striving or accumulating or learning. You just are simply the same all the time, and this alone is a stillness so constant and so unaffected that it is totally peaceful.

In the world we keep trying to do a whole lot of stuff. Learn more, become something, accumulate stuff, achieve goals, turn into something, improve yourself, apply techniques, learn concepts, increase understanding, even healing. We keep trying to CHANGE ourselves.

And this leads to the idea that if you change yourself enough, you'll become enlightened. With enough transformation and learning, you'll end up at the ultimate goal. But this doesn't actually work. This is not what is needed.

You see, God has already perfectly accomplished his will. He created you to be a perfect being that is ALWAYS THE SAME FOREVER. A permanently perfect creation, perfect innocence, perfect invulnerability, never changing or turning into anything.

Just BEING that is all you need to do. That is what is natural. You just know yourself as God created you and just be that, always the same, never changing. Just being you, living happily, creating freely, loving endlessly.

There is nothing that you can really DO that can put this in place. You do not establish this. You cannot create it yourself. You cannot cultivate it or make it happen or cause it. You cannot get to that point through tons of polish or perfecting or training or learning.

In fact the whole purpose of learning is to learn to stop learning. Learning is supposed to expire itself and outlive its usefulness. The aim of learning is to learn that there is nothing to learn, and that learning itself is actually preventing you from accepting what you are.

The whole RE-PURPOSING of learning is to try to use learning, which was made as a weapon against yourself, to try to lead to the REALIZATION that you need do nothing. Or that you need learn nothing, because you're already perfect.

So this whole business of an ultimate goal, of spiritual awakening, it's NOT about accumulating stuff and getting yourself to change into something. It's in fact just a matter of realising what you already are, what God already created, recognizing the existing truth about yourself. It's an uncovering, an unlearning, an undoing of everything that interferes with that awareness.

This waking up, it's not the same thing as a producing. You don't cause or create or produce your perfect self. God did that already. So the journey isn't about you starting out with nothing and ending up with everything. You already had everything before the separation. It's just about being RESTORED to what you already are, REMEMBERING what is already true, and sort of coming to your senses again.

You don't need to do God's job of creating yourself. That was the whole ego problem to begin with - believing that you could CHANGE YOURSELF, that you could change what God created, and thus turn yourself INTO what you wanted. And now you are using that same approach to try to turn your ego self into what you want - some kind of more spiritual self. It won't work.

It's not your job to create or put in place the enlightened self that you want to be. God has willed that you be that forever, and you ARE that right now. All you are doing is being in denial of it and trying not to accept it. So all you have to do is be willing to accept what is ALREADY true of you. That is just a matter of realisation and recognition, not a matter of accomplishment or achievement or some kind of skill you learn.

So basically what you really need to do is to GO AGAINST everything that says you are not perfect already. That includes learning, it includes denial, it includes trying to be a body, it includes identifying with form, it includes any sense of self that is limited or not permanent. And instead it asks only that you simply JUST BE THE SAME ALL THE TIME. Just carry on being absolutely perfect. In other words, STOP TRYING TO CHANGE.

All this seeking, striving, learning, accumulating, perfecting, studying, conceptualising, thinking, it's all ultimately in and of itself getting in the way of you JUST BEING YOU. Enlightenment has NOTHING to do with changing or transforming or achieving. It is NOT a change. Your spiritual self is already in the light. It IS light. When you seek to change you are seeking to move AWAY FROM the changelessness that you are.

Consider instead that you are perfect now. Continue being perfect. You are constantly perfect. You don't NEED anything. You don't lack anything, you haven't lost anything, you haven't turned into evil, you haven't stopped being innocent and holy, you can never change or become lost or degrade or malfunction. You just are always the same. Always you. Always unchanging. And that is why your soul is at peace.

"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." UrW188L1

"The response of holiness, to ANY form of error, is ALWAYS the same. There is no contradiction in what holiness CALLS FORTH. Its ONE response is healing, without ANY regard for what is brought TO it." UrT14E7

"This may threaten my ego, but cannot change my function in any way." UrW82L6

"You were NOT born to die. You CANNOT change, because your Function HAS been fixed by God." UrT29G4

"The mind can think it sleeps, but that is all. It cannot change what is its waking state." UrW167L6

"You cannot change laws you did not make, and the laws of happiness were created FOR you, NOT BY you." UrT8J13

"It is impossible that God lose His identity, for if He did, YOU WOULD LOSE YOURS. And BEING yours, He cannot change Himself, for your identity IS changeless." UrT14G8

"Whatever is true and real is eternal, and CANNOT change or be changed. The Soul is therefore unalterable because it is ALREADY perfect, but the mind can elect the level it chooses to serve. The only limit which is put on its choice is that it CANNOT serve two masters." UrT1B37C