This is possibly the most threatening and mind-blowing teaching in A Course in Miracles. There is in fact NOT a world here! It's not even a matter of who made the world, it's the even higher truth that it DOES NOT EXIST. Earth is in fact NOTHING.

"There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it"

"There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere?"

Everything that happened in the separation from God, involves a belief in something existing which does not exist, something being true which is false, something being real which is unreal.

For example, we made a separate self which seems to have free will to do as it pleases. However, this self is in fact the DENIAL of self, which is why it results in death. But it APPEARS to be the presence of a self. This is why it's an illusion - it seems to be showing you something which is not there, as if it is. It's supposed freedom of will is in fact an imprisoned will, which is not free, but SEEMS free.

Take a look at the body. "The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist." The body SEEMS to picture "you", presenting an appearance and form, it seems to positively exist and move and do stuff. But, the body is NOT you, it is a replacement for you, and is only an image of what you THINK you are. What it SEEMS to be, is the opposite of what it actually is. The body is the ABSENCE OF YOU. And you do not look like your body. "What you are cannot be seen nor pictured."

It is the same thing with regards the difference between light and darkness. Darkness is not possible. Where there seems to be an absence of light, there must be an ILLUSION of darkness. If you believe the darkness is real, you are giving it false reality and are claiming it "is a something." But a shadow on a wall is not the PRESENCE of darkness, it is the absence of light. It appears to be a something, but is really the lack of a something.

It is also the same with regards to sin and error. Error or mistakes are just illusions of impossibilities, recognized as false. In their "true form" it is clear they cannot be true. But if you invest belief in them, are deceived and tempted by them, and buy into them, they turn into sin. And now it seems that they assert that something has REALLY happened, and something is REALLY possible, that isn't. So sin is really a lie, depicting stuff happening that CANNOT happen, as though it is really happening. It is deceptive.

The same applies to this world. This world is in fact NOTHING. But by believing in it and investing it with reality, it turns from an illusion of a something to an ACTUAL something. It seems to exist. It seems to host events and happenings. Things in it seem possible. But the world is impossible, and the things which happen are impossible, and sin is not real. The world was made to try to prove that sin and guilt are real.

"Their aim is to fulfill the purpose which the world was made to witness and make real. They see in its illusions but a solid base where truth exists, upheld apart from lies."

"The world of bodies is the world of sin."

So basically, we have a world that SEEMS to be here, which is made of sin, which testifies and proves that impossible things are possible, which hosts the idea of the death and murder of reality, and SEEMS to have real consequences. But it has none. And it does nothing. And it causes nothing. And it has no power. And it isn't really there at all.

"It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere."

"The world does nothing to him."

"There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

The really deep thing to realize is this. The world is in fact, the ABSENCE OF EXISTENCE. It is the antithesis of heaven. It is the LACK OF HEAVEN. It is a HOLE, which we call the spacetime bubble, in which are housed impossibilities and unrealities. It is an hallucinated world, because it seems to be there to see, but isn't. You are projecting it and making it up as you go along.

The idea that there is no world isn't simply that the world "exists" and it has to be "undone". It's really the RECOGNITION that the world you thought was here, does not exist. And this doesn't mean there's a better view of it. It means the WHOLE THING IS GONE. It has no reality at all. No presence. No life.

"There is no life outside of heaven."

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

"He does NOT realize that HE MAKES THIS WORLD, for there IS no world outside him."

Through unwillingness, we resisted God. We failed to create. We wanted not to shine. We tried to end eternal life. We wanted to stop reality. We opposed the Kingdom. We attacked will. We tried to deny our own existence. We blocked awareness. We tried to destroy. And ultimately this is all a matter of TRYING NOT TO EXIST.

In so doing, we seemed to make a world which SEEMS to exist, which is really actually the LACK OF A WORLD. It's like you took a part of heaven and DRAINED IT of all life. Held it back and prevented its extension. As though you could attack heaven and remove its presence. This world, which includes the Earth, is the ANTI-world. It is a mis-creation. It is empty and it is nothing.

We have GIVEN the world, the fake world, all manner of belief in trying to MAKE IT BE SIN, so that it is GIVEN reality, so that we can try to make it exist. It's our attempt to give it life and immortality. But we can't. We tried to make the world be a cause. We tried to make it have power. We gave our power to it to try to animate it. We tried to make it appear to be alive with "life forms", which are illusions of life. We tried to imagine it has a mind and alien will of its own. We tried to make ourselves subject to it and affected by it, to confirm its reality. We made bodies to sense it and to tell us that it is there.

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

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

Quite simply, this world, this planet, this galaxy, all the stars, all bodies, all animals and "life forms", are NOTHING. They are life's ABSENCE. They are the LACK OF LIFE. They are something that is really NOT there, appearing to be there. Like an hallucination. A lack of light, appearing to be the presence of a real darkness. And to believe in it is to believe that evil is real, asserting that the world has power OVER heaven. That the world CAN CAUSE immortal beings to die. Believing this world is real is level confusion.

Our task in forgiveness, then, is not to find a way to give EXTRA reality to the world, but to recognize ITS UNREALITY, and see finally that it SO NOTHING, that it disappears and fades into nothingness. All it is is a veil of illusions, a block, hanging in front of the face of christ, pretending to exist. Our guilt makes it seem solid. Our fear gives it reality. Our belief in sin anchors it in our minds. But it is not there at all. It is an empty shell.

"Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous, solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet, within YOU, there is a force which NO illusions can resist."

"What can the causeless BE but nothingness. The picture of your brother that you see is wholly absent, and has never been."

"Sickness is a demand the body be a thing that it is not. Its NOTHINGNESS is guarantee that it can NOT be sick."

"The body that is asked to be a god WILL be attacked, because its nothingness has not been recognized. "

"Yet its nothingness IS your salvation, from which you would flee."

"His body's nothingness releases yours from sickness and from death."

"For here is nothingness, where neither birth nor death is real"

"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.****"

"Your faith is placed in the most trivial and insane symbols; pills, money, "protective" clothing, "influence," "prestige," being liked, knowing the "right" people, and an endless list of forms of nothingness which you endow with magical powers."

"To recognize this is to recognize nothingness when you think you see it. As such, it is the prerequisite for vision."

"Yet how can sight which stops at nothingness, as if it WERE a solid wall, see truly? It is HELD BACK by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else BUT form will be perceived. These eyes, made NOT to see, will NEVER see."

"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."

"But if you refuse to worship him, in whatever form he may appear to you, and wherever you think you see him, he will disappear into the nothingness out of which he was made."

"To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to LET IT GO."

"The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond. It merely ceases to interfere with vision. To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear."

"The "changes" the ego seeks to make are not really changes. They are but deeper shadows, or perhaps different cloud patterns. Yet what is made of nothingness cannot be called new or different."

"We can but go from nothingness to everything; from hell to Heaven." "What loss can be for you in choosing not to value nothingness? This world holds nothing that you really want, but what you choose instead you want indeed!"

"***The world stands like a block*** before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just ***a fragile veil***, so easily dispelled that it can ***last no longer than an instant***. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it ***cannot fail to disappear***, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant ***is the world forgot***, with time forever ended as ***the world spins into nothingness*** from where it came."

"What is the ego? Nothingness, but in a form that seems like something. In a world of form the ego cannot be denied for it alone seems real. How could God's Son as He created him abide in form or in a world of form?"

"What can correct illusions but the truth? And what are errors but illusions which remain unrecognized for what they are? Where truth has entered errors disappear. They merely vanish, leaving not a trace by which to be remembered. They are gone because without belief they have no life, and so they disappear to nothingness, returning whence they came. From dust to dust they come and go, for only truth remains."

"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness, and your heart will be so filled with joy that it will leap into Heaven and into the presence of God."

"God wills salvation be received today, and that the intricacies of your dreams no longer hide their nothingness from you."

"Nothingness will become invisible, for you will at last have seen truly." "Like all things in the world its meaning is temporary, and will ultimately fade into the nothingness from which it came when there is no more use for it."

"All that is veiled in shadows must be raised to understanding to be judged again, this time with Heaven's help, and all mistakes in judgment which the mind had made before are open to correction as the truth dismisses them as causeless. Now are they without effects. They cannot be concealed because their nothingness is recognized."

"How can a battle be perceived as nothingness, when you ENGAGE in it?" "There is a silence covering the world that was an ancient dream so long ago no one remembers now. Its time is done, and in the little space it seemed to have is nothingness. The dream has gone, and all its dreams of gifts have disappeared as well."

"Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness, and while you seek for life you ask for death.

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death."

"The more complicated the results become, the harder it may be to recognize their nothingness, but it is not necessary to examine ALL possible outcomes to which premises give rise to judge the PREMISES truly."

"Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, "My brother, what you think is not the truth.""

"EVERY illusion carries pain and suffering in the dark folds of the heavy garments with which it hides its nothingness."

"And so is ALL time past, and everything EXACTLY as it was before the way to nothingness was made. The tiny tick of time, in which the first mistake was made, and ALL of them within that ONE mistake, held also the Correction for that one, and ALL of them that came within the first. And in that tiny instant time was gone, for that was all it ever was. What God gave Answer to IS answered, and IS gone."

"Specialness is the idea of sin MADE REAL. Sin is impossible even to imagine, without this base. For sin rose from it, out of nothingness, an evil flower with no roots at all."

"In the Divine psyche, the Father and the Holy Spirit are not incomplete at all. The Sonship has the unique faculty of believing in error, or incompleteness, if he so elects. However, it is quite apparent that so to elect IS to believe in the existence of nothingness. The correction of this error is the Atonement."

Catchy title eh.

"God dwells within, and your completion lies in Him. No idol takes His place. Look not to idols. Do not seek outside yourself."

Ok so, this is quite fundamental. Who you are, one with God, is INSIDE of you. God is in your mind. The truth and the love are in your mind. ALL suffering is induced when you go AWAY from God within you, see a lack of love within you, seek to not find it somewhere outside of you, and start seeking externally.

"Peace is an attribute in YOU. You cannot find it outside. All mental illness is some form of EXTERNAL searching. Mental health is INNER peace."

The instant that you go AWAY from God within you, you go "out of your mind" towards hell. You go into sickness. You go into suffering. You go into the body. You go into the world. You go into insanity. And you go towards death.

At the same time, you feel that you need salvation from your problem. The problem seems to be a lack of love inside of you. You think you cannot find the solution there. So you seek outside of you to GET an answer. To solve your problem.

You want salvation from a location where salvation is not. What you do is you set up things - the body, the world, and all its contents, as your savior. As the cause of you. And you position yourself as at its effect. And then you seek to be "affected by" the world. And now you want to be its victim, and its lover. You want it to give you what you want. You want to get everything you need from it. You depend on it for salvation.

All the external sources that you think will SAVE YOU, now become your everyday experience. You are now entering into IDOL WORSHIP. That is, the worshipping of "false Gods". These false Gods are everything external that is not of God. Everything separated off. Everything illusory.

This includes the body, the world, special relationships, special objects, made-up values, special places, buildings and cars and houses and stadiums and forests and mountains and oceans and cities and all manner of external things. All of them are there as idols for you to worship, to get your "needs met". Your need for love, which you formulated inside yourself.

So now you reach out to the world. On the one hand you have special love for it because you want it to save you from hell. Even though the world itself is hell. Then on the other hand you have special hate for it precisely because, deep down, you CAN'T find the love you're missing there. In fact you suspect the world has stolen it from you.

Those who worship an idol have a two-faced attitude, in that on the one hand they seem to put the idol on a pedestal and worship it, wanting it to save them - to do something to them. But at the same time they want the idol destroyed, in order to take everything they have, there is jealously that they have what you lack, and you think they are the one who stole your love.

"Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

So now, everything external is considered the source of you getting your fake needs met. You think you will find YOURSELF outside of you. You think you will find the LOVE you lost (within) outside of you. The source of your SALVATION. The world is now going to SAVE YOU, from suffering. From unhappiness. From a lack of love. And even, from the many symptoms that arise as a RESULT of looking to the world to save you. By trying to get salvation from the world, you are SELLING YOUR SOUL in an attempt to GAIN the world. You want to have the world to substitute for God.

"The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world, and lose your own Soul. The Holy Spirit teaches that you CANNOT lose your Soul and there IS no gain in the world, for OF ITSELF, it profits nothing. To invest in something WITHOUT profit is surely to impoverish yourself, and the overhead is high. Not only is there no profit in the investment, but the cost TO YOU is enormous. For this investment costs you the world's reality, by DENYING YOURS, and gives you nothing in return. You CANNOT sell your Soul, but you CAN sell your AWARENESS of it."

By seeking outside yourself you take yourself AWAY from health and sanity. And then you ask the world to save you from this sickness and insanity, which you think it has induced, and which you induced by making the world your savior. On the one hand the world seems to attack you and hate you and is trying to make you dead. On the other hand the world seems to be offering special magical solutions, potions, medicines, foods, drinks, environments, toys, money, success, playthings, people, bodies, revenge, as a way for you to get saved.

You then become deceived in that you think the world is not the thing attacking you. And instead you try to skew your vision, to select the aspects of the world you think are there to help you, and reject the parts you think are there to hurt you. You gravitate towards making a special life, with a special house, and a special bank account, and a special relationship, while trying to avoid the nasty signs of evil and murder creeping in around you. To create a nice little bubble of artificial safety to keep you protected from the grim reaper.

"Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness, and while you seek for life you ask for death. You look for safety and security while in your heart you pray for danger and protection for the little dream you made."

But you know on some level that the very same world that seems to save you and gives you everything you want and meets your needs, is also the same world that is seemingly the source of ALL your suffering. It hates you and loves you. You hate it and love it. The two of you tango back and forth in a love-hate dynamic of mistrust and absorption. Fighting to be free from it, fighting to keep it. Wanting it, needing it, depending on it for your life. Hating it, rejecting it, wanting nothing to do with its insanity.

But even in the midst of this scenario of the world being both your attacker and your savior, its actually true that the world is NEITHER of these things. The world cannot attack you, nor can the world save you. It is really YOU in your mind who has decided to go away from peace and happiness and safety and love and power, and has "thrown away" this inheritance, and wandered off into "enemy territory", where you are then left fending for your life and trying to make allies.

"It means that nothing outside yourself can save you; nothing outside yourself can give you peace. But it also means that nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb your peace, or upset you in any way."

It's really your choice to go away from God, that leaves you in a position of "sleeping with the enemy". Better the devil you know, and all that. You think you can trust the world but you can't. You think you can trust the body to protect you from love, but it doesn't. You love it for seeming to save you from God, but you hate it for its weakness and its inability to do anything. Nor can it ward of the ultimate self-attack - death by suicide.

Salvation from the darkness that appears WHEN you leave God, can only be found by NOT leaving God. One problem, one solution. You think you are separate from God, and this has given rise to EVERY problem in the world. Even to the world itself. You have invented all the problems around you. You are their source. And the only way to truly find salvation from the "attacking world" and its fake offerings of "help", is to go back within to find God. To reunite with your REAL safety. Where you have no needs.

These then are your only choices. Either stay with God and need nothing, or leave God and form artificial needs which cannot be properly met by the world you invent. In neediness you are always lacking and nothing is ever enough. And the world can never fill the void or the gaping hole in your heart. Nothing the world can do can really SAVE you from your own self induced secret journey to move AWAY from salvation. The world cannot attack you, nor can it give you peace. What you need is a solution from another world - an inner world.

Getting a good job is not going to save you. Eating the right food is not going to save you. Having the right house is not going to save you. Hearing the best music is not going to save you. Traveling to see all the special places is not going to save you. Earning lots of money and getting all the good toys is not going to save you. Finding a special someone in a body is not going to save you. Having lots of sex or drugs is not going to save you. Special tv shows are not going to save you. Harming the body is not going to save you. Fighting with people is not going to save you. Magical medicine and treatments and surgeries are not ultimately going to save you. The world HAS no solution for death because it is made of the idea of death itself.

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

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

This is no idle small thing. The ENTIRE world was set up as a place to suffer and die. And the ENTIRE world is offering you salvation from itself. And the ENTIRE world CANNOT solve your problem. And the ENTIRE world is not the CAUSE of your problem. The cause is inside of you, in your attempt to leave God and throw away your inheritance of happiness. That is THE ONLY problem and the source of ALL needs and problems. And solving that problem will NEVER be done by getting anything from the world.

"It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give."

"Think not the world can add anything to the power and glory of God and his holy sons."

"The worlds nothing that I want."

The world cannot give you ANYTHING real, or anything of value, or anything permanent, or any real solution to your only problem. All it can give you are fake bandaids which look like solutions but ALWAYS have side effects, because they are attacks shrouded as helpfulness. Nothing in the world is devoid of a two-faced counter-attack. Everything it does has the MOTIVE of death.

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

The only real salvation is found within, moving in the direction of God, not outwardly away from where He is. "What the physical eye sees is not corrective, nor can it be corrected by any device which can be physically seen. As long as a man believes in what his physical sight tells him, all his corrective behavior will be misdirected."

"Salvation is our only need. There is no other purpose here, and no other function to fulfill. Learning salvation is our only goal. Let us end the ancient search today, by finding the light in us and holding it up for everyone who searches with us to look upon and rejoice."

"Salvation does depend on recognizing this one problem, and understanding that it has been solved. One problem -- one solution."

"Above all, remember that you have one problem and that the problem has one solution. It is in this that the simplicity of salvation lies. It is because of this that it is guaranteed to work."

"Today I would remember the simplicity of salvation by reinforcing the lesson that there is one problem and one solution."

"Everyone in this world seems to have his own special problems. Yet they are all the same, and must be recognized as one if the one solution which solves them all is to be accepted."

"Begin these practice periods by repeating the idea for today, adding a statement signifying your recognition that salvation comes from nothing outside of you. You might put it this way:

"My salvation comes from me.

It cannot come from anywhere else."

"My salvation comes from me, and only from me."

"For the short and frequent practice periods today, remind yourself that your salvation comes from you, and nothing but your own thoughts can hamper your progress. You are free from all external interference. You are in charge of your salvation. You are in charge of the salvation of the world. Say, then:

"My salvation comes from me."

"Salvation comes from my One Self."

"Salvation comes from this One Self through Him Who is the bridge between your mind and It."

"Salvation comes from my One Self.

Its Thoughts are mine to use."

"Each time today you tell your frantic mind salvation comes from your One Self, you lay another treasure in your growing store."

"Salvation comes from my One Self."

From my One Self, Whose knowledge still remains

Within my mind, I see God's perfect plan

For my salvation perfectly fulfilled."

"My salvation comes from me."

"The search implies you are not whole within, and fear to look upon your devastation, and prefer to seek outside yourself for what you are. Idols must fall BECAUSE they have no life, and what is lifeless IS a sign of death."

Lesson 136, "Sickness is a defense against the truth", contains statements by Jesus which are hard to accept. They seem like extraordinary claims about what sickness is, how it is undone, and the impossibility of a healthy mind producing a sick body. It speaks of immortality, even at a bodily level.

In ACIM, sickness means a belief in separation from God. This applies to the level of the mind and it is in the mind that it is healed. However, the body is being projected by the mind and is "within" the mind, and reflects the mind’s condition. It is an out-picturing of the inward condition.

Every "form" of sickness which shows up in bodies is included in the scope of sickness applying to the mind.

Sickness projects a sick body. Bodies which have forms of sickness, suffering, damage, something broken or missing etc, are expressions of the belief in separation. These things can ONLY show up IF the mind maintains that belief.

Interesting stuff happens to bodies when the mind is healed. Sickness does not stick around on its own, nor is it sustained by the body or by the world. It is solely MAINTAINED by the mind, and so if it is showing up in the body, the mind IS maintaining it, thus believes in separation, thus is not healed. A broken/sick/dead body is PROOF that the mind has not been healed. When the mind IS healed, the body MUST therefore NOT PROVE that sickness is real, and therefore all signs and symptoms of sickness MUST disappear.

Let’s see what Jesus says which is so radical (my emphasis):

— "(Sickness) Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. WHEN THIS IS SEEN, HEALING IS AUTOMATIC. It dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach that carries all of them to truth, and merely leaves them there to disappear."

So right off the bat, Jesus teaches us that all forms and expressions of sickness (including cancer, stroke, heart problems, broken limbs etc, and death), MUST DISAPPEAR when the purpose of the sickness is recogized. Later Jesus tells us that we make sickness in order to DEFEND ourselves against the truth. But we only keep the sickness so long as it serves this purpose, and when the purpose or "need" for the defense is gone, the sickness MUST disappear.

—"Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole."

Clearly then, sickness attacks and defends us against the truth. This includes all physical symtoms which is how the mind’s sickness shows up. If the mind is attacking the truth, it is also going to attack the body. The body will then become weak and sick. Since sickness is an attack on the truth, it is NOT POSSIBLE for there to be sickness if there is not attack, and it is NOT POSSIBLE to wake up to welcoming the truth without putting the sickness aside. Doing so must make it disappear, otherwise if it remains in any way, it continues to prove the mind is not healed.

Notice also how Jesus describes the mind as trying to twist, distort, make inept, and reduce to split-off parts. This act of the mind is HOW SICKNESS IS MADE. If the mind is TWISTING REALITY, it TWISTS THE BODY. If the mind is distorting reality, it distorts the body as well. Holy Spirit showed me this happening in a sudden vision not long ago, where the mind was literally "twisting" and distorting, like applying a psychic force, towards the body, making the body sick.

Our attempt to attack and change reality, attacks and changes our projected body image as well. We can’t hold a belief in attack in the mind AND keep a picture of a healthy body in the mind at the same time. The body WILL suffer if we attack reality, and if we DO NOT attack reality, the body MUST BE HEALED for the same reason - the mind cannot hold a picture of a sick body in the mind at the same time as believing in health/wholeness/truth.

Here is how ALL SICKNESS AND DEATH is implemented:

—"Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you, quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay, when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick, that truth may go away and threaten your establishments no more."

So yes, Jesus is literally saying, we can ONLY be sick if we DECIDE TO BE SICK. We can only be sick when we misperceive the truth and believe it is attacking us, and that we NEED A DEFENSE to keep us "safe" from it. We will then use separation as a device for trying to put distance, or a gap, between us and God. This puts a gap between us and LIFE. The result is that we cut ourselves off from LIFE. And that means, we just chose to be sick and to die.

Jesus also tells us here that sickness DOES NOT HAPPEN TO US against our will. This mean ALL sickness. And death. Neither sickness nor death can appear AT ALL unless YOU decide to make them appear. That’s quite some responsibility that you have! You MAKE sickness from guilt, as an attack, to make the truth go away, so that you can have an illusion of your EGO being safe. Since sickness does not happen against your will, neither does it HAVE any will of its own, and therefore CANNOT STAY if you will to accept God’s truth.

—"How do you think that sickness can succeed in shielding you from truth? Because it proves the body is not separate from you, and so you must be separate from the truth. You suffer pain because the body does, and in this pain are you made one with it. Thus is your "true" identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this little pile of dust silenced and stilled. For see, this dust can make you suffer, twist your limbs and stop your heart, commanding you to die and cease to be."

Here Jesus is telling us that we attempt to BIND OURSELVES to the body in order to DEFEND ourselves against God/Life. By equating/identifying yourself with the body, you align yourself with the physical and attempt to SHUT OUT the mind. If you can identify yourself with the body, and if the body will then be sick and dead, this is HOW the ego attempts to kill the Son of God.

He also tells us that believing this distortion, which is also a belief in magic, and is also the authority problem, has the capability of bringing about DEATH. All death is a choice. Suicide. There is no accidental death. No-one dies without their own consent. He continues:

—"Thus is the body stronger than the truth, which asks you live, but cannot overcome your choice to die. And so the body is more powerful than everlasting life, Heaven more frail than hell, and God's design for the salvation of His Son opposed by a decision stronger than His Will"

"Your choice to die". Hmm. Yes. We CHOOSE it. Which means, it CANNOT HAPPEN if we do not choose it. Death is not caused by ANYTHING except your own mind. Sickness is not caused by ANYTHING except your own mind. Furthermore, sickness and death (which you made, and can abolish), does not continue when you decide NOT to be sick or die. When you decide NOT to be sick or die, SICKNESS AND DEATH CANNOT HAPPEN.

—"You can but choose to think you die, or suffer sickness or distort the truth in any way. What is created is apart from all of this. Defenses are plans to defeat what cannot be attacked. What is unalterable cannot change. And what is wholly sinless cannot sin."

So you can pretend to die, if you want. You can pretend to be sick, if you want. But sickness and death are both a dream, not real, and what you really are cannot die. God does NOT SUPPORT SICKNESS AND DEATH in any way. He does not create them, he does not view them in a special way, he does not include them, he does not believe in them. God is ONLY LIFE, not life and death.

Here’s a clincher:

—"Truth has a power far beyond defense, for no illusions can remain where truth has been allowed to enter. And it comes to any mind that would lay down its arms, and cease to play with folly"

Read this and read it again. Sickness (illusions) cannot remain where truth has been allowed to enter. This means, ALL SICKNESS AND DEATH cannot *REMAIN* if the mind chooses to accept the truth. Accepting the atonement, or any act of forgiveness or miracles, MUST undo sickness and death in some way. And that includes at the body level.

Read it again. Truth has a POWER stronger than defenses (sickness, death). When truth’s POWER has entered the mind, sickness and death CANNOT REMAIN. Neither in the mind, nor in the body. NOWHERE. Because truth knows that sickness and death DO NOT EXIST at any level. If you STOP ATTACKING YOURSELF with sickness and death, you will STOP BEING SICK AND DEAD.

—"Healing will flash across your open mind, as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings."

Peace an truth TAKES THE PLACE of the vain imaginings that were "sickness and death". All sickness is imagined, made by the MIND. Stop dreaming it and it will cease to be.

Does the undoing of sickness affect the body? ABSOLUTELY!

—"It (mind) will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey. Now is the body healed, because the source of sickness has been opened to relief."

NOW IS THE BODY HEALED. When the mind heals its belief in sickness, the body MUST HEAL. The SOURCE of the sickness has received relief, and therefore the sickness must "clear up". It must disappear in a MIRACLE.

Now let’s break out the big one.... the IMMORTALITY OF THE BODY:

—"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body's health is FULLY GUARANTEED, because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible."

Wowza! The body‘s health is guaranteed, ie it is IMPOSSIBLE for the body to be sick or die. In a state of truth in the mind, SICKNESS IS IMPOSSIBLE. It cannot exist, it cannot stay, it MUST be healed, 100%! You cannot have a sick body and a healthy mind at the same time!!!! This is also supported when Jesus says elsewhere:

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for IT WILL BECOME to you. Use if for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will SEE IT as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes HOLY. Because it is holy it CANNOT BE SICK, NOR CAN IT DIE. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all."

So as Jesus has said here, the state of the body is ALWAYS a direct reflection or correlation to the state of the mind. If mind SEES it as sinful, it becomes SICK, and dies. This accounts for the sole cause of ALL SICKNESS in the entire world. And all death. BUT... IF you SEE IT AS HOLY, it becomes whole, it becomes INVULNERABLE TO ATTACK, it becomes INCAPABLE OF BEING SICK, and IT CANNOT DIE! Another word for that is, IMMORTALITY!

Let’s be clear here, before the controversy takes root, that Jesus also says that at some point this "invulnerable, deathless body", which doesn’t even need food or water (!), will likely at some point be laid aside. When it is not longer USEFUL it will disappear. But this does not mean it will be put down on the ground and made to rot. THAT IS DEATH! The holy body can only be "ended" by DISAPPEARING IT by the power of the mind. Nothing else can end it, and it CANNOT be ended by attack. Attack will merely KEEP it and create more sickness and reincarnation.

So yes, at some point the body can become incapable of being attacked in any way. Sustained by the power of God supernaturally. Eventually we will RECOGNIZE that we are not a body at all, and it has no usefulness, so our TRANSPARENT MIND will extend only transparency (total honesty). This will mean it STOPS PROJECTING A BODY. The body thus disappears into the nothingness from which it came. This is how the dream is left! It is the only exit. Leaving via DEATH is the TOTAL OPPOSITE OF CHOOSING LIFE.

Jesus concludes with a reminder:

—"Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick."

Note here that Jesus says we make a body identity which, separately, attacks the body. This gives a different meaning to body identification.

If we believe we are separate from God we will see ourselves as being an illusion, which will show up as an IMAGE - a body. He warns us here to be careful of MAKING OURSELVES SICK, beause our mind literally does have this power over matter/form. Every miracle demonstrates that the mind must be more powerful than the body. Therefore the mind has power over ALL matter.

Hoepfully it is clear from this chapter alone, that we do not NEED to be sick, sickness CANNOT STAY unless we want to KEEP mental illness along with it, when we choose the TRUTH it is *GUARANTEED* that all sickness and death must be UNDONE COMPLETELY, and it is God’s will that we be perfectly happy and healthy even in a body.

No-one needs to suffer. No-one needs to die. The body cannot be sick unless you make it so, and doing so will keep you from God. But choose again, and sickness will vanish before your eyes. All sickness can be reversed. All death can be reversed. There is nothing your holiness cannot do.

The physical universe is not what it appears to be. It is a wall, constructed of a mad idea of sin, formed from lies, to tempt you to believe a great many horrible things are happening. It has been inserted as a gap of hell, in between you and yourself, between you and God. It depicts every form of suffering imaginable, is designed to tempt you to believe all of it is real, and deceives at every turn.

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant."

"The world was made as a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."

"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality. And so they do. For everything they see not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."

So hanging in between you and God's Son, there is a three dimensional image, physical matter, "the world of bodies is the world of sin", depicting God's son as crucified, attacked, murdered, fragmented, suffering, vulnerable and sick. This is what planet Earth was designed to be. A giant holographic presentation of the idea of an attack on God and His Holy Son.

"The world was made as an attack on God."

All of its forms, all events, all occurrences, every interaction and movement, is all part of a shifting picture of change, in which every possible unreality except permanent perfection is depicted. Every car crash, every disease, every murderous war, every pain, every destructive habit, every unhappiness, all the tears, short and long term death, it's all designed on purpose to show you a picture of crucifixion.

Crucifixion is another word for death and this is a dream of death. And being an illusion of death, with stories of death running through it, it does not depict life and is not capable of doing so.

"What you are cannot be seen nor pictured."

"Nothing so blinding as perception of form."

So here you are, in your human dream body, looking out upon what seems to be a world, which you are blinded by. The body was deliberately designed to use its own senses to attempt to self-prove its own existence and the existence of other bodies. Its eyesight is blocked by the surface of sin (flesh, matter) so that by seeing it you do not see past it to the light of truth.

"You cannot behold the world and know God."

"Theirs (body's eyes) is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing."

And so, every day, you wake up, and you see this world - the hell you made. And in it, things go wrong, all the time. You see someone you love in pain or suffering sickness and fear. You see animals being abused. You see wars waging on foreign continents. You try not to drive your dream car over the road kill. You see the dead deer on the side of the street. And the whole thing is one big pile of torture and terror.

The thing is, just the mere fact of "feasting your eyes" upon any of this worlds contents, immediately instills fear. Just the mere act of seeing it at all, means christ vision has become blocked and you are now losing sight of the truth. Illusions of a world rise before your sight, claimed as true and real by the body's senses. And now the world seems real to you. People seem to be suffering.

Things seems to be going wrong. There is murder and death on the news. And if that is true, if you see it, if it has become real to you, if you are experiencing it at all, it is because you now believe it is reality. And by virtue of equating this world with reality, you MUST now be horrified and afraid, because if suffering is reality, there is no way to exist anywhere in reality without suffering.

And if pain and misery are true, there is no way to exist in truth without pain and misery. And in this there is no hope and no light and no salvation, because if reality is now hell, there is no heaven. And all this occurs in a split second just merely by "sensing" this world. Just merely by seeing someone walking as a cripple. Just merely receiving signals that someone is crying in pain. Just merely witnessing bodies moving around. This is enough to produce an ego reaction of terror.

The instant you believe, are deceived by, witness as true, and fail to overlook this ENTIRE world, this picture of crucifixion and lies, your mind MUST now equate that reality is harmful. And this will instill a sense of being at the effect of harm. And this will incite fear. And now your mind will spring into action with "why is this happening" "how can I fix this" "how can I avoid this" "what's gone wrong" "what caused it". All based on the belief that IT IS HAPPENING AT ALL.

At this point we have already fallen for the ego's trap. The instant we are deceived by the world, tempted to believe "it's happening" or "there is a world", we've already slipped on the slope and are now descending into ego responses. And our entire struggle now becomes one of trying to escape, while falling ever deeper into a pit. With the walls of the world closing in. And no matter what we do, WITHIN that kind of mindset, it does not bring peace. Because now we're in the desert where there is no life or love, and we need to leave.

It's like, we're being bombarded night and day with visions of hell. A world of lies. Where not one single thing is true. Where the whole world is a temptation to buy into an illusion of a world, as if it's really here. As if events are happening. As if things are being threatened. It's a nightmare to believe this world is happening. It's a dream of death, and all dreams are of death. A dream of life is still a dream of death, because life isn't a dream.

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem."

So if there is someone in pain, if someone is suffering, and you see it or hear it or sense it, and you take this to mean "its happening", and you believe that, that alone means you are now tempted by the ego and are not forgiving. Because "to forgive is to OVERLOOK". And "falling for the world" or "gaining the whole world" causes you to lose your soul.

Failing to recognize this is JUST an illusion, NOT something "really happening", NOT something to react to, is a failure to be in christ vision. It's a failure to SEE reality. The screeching sounds of the ego have blotted out the real world. Not only is form blinding, it's *extremely* blinding, and every single thing that this picture of crucifixion DOES or SHOWS, is an illusion. A lie. A not truth. A false witness. A testimony of death. An attempt to prove that sin is real and death is truth.

If you watch yourself you'll see this happen. The moment you "experience" anything in this world, where you see something seem to go wrong, watch how your mind instantly reacts with ego. Watch how the fear increases rapidly. Notice how you immediately slip into the context of "I accept it is happening, but what is causing it"? rather than realizing, or questioning, is this even happening? If I believe what my senses are telling me at all, I am deceived.

"Whatever you accept INTO your mind has reality for you."

If I just fall into "its happening" mode, I will automatically start having thoughts like "why is this happening", "what's making this happen", "how can I stop this happening". Which is all ego. We then turn into fixers, managers, controllers, resisters, trying to change what we believe is happening. Trying to change an illusion based on believing that the illusion is real. And this is not forgiveness at all.

Forgiveness is profound. It literally means that this world IS NOT HERE. It requires the recognition and acceptance that THERE IS NO WORLD. It entails seeing PAST this world entirely, not falling for ANYTHING YOU SEE. Not being deceived by the powerful tempting illusions of suffering. To literally completely IGNORE extremely loud shrieks of suffering and war presented as physical proof. To look past the world as if it's not there. To not believe for an instant that someone's appearance of sickness is REAL or TRUE or HAPPENING. To realize your brother literally did not do anything that he appeared to do, and there are no real events here.

"All events are nowhere."

"Forgiveness recognizes that what you think your brother did HAS NOT OCCURRED."

Not just you thinking, well, yes he did something, he moved, he writhed, he suffered, he spoke, whatever... but that this wasn't real. It means being willing to pay NO ATTENTION to any of that, to ignore those signals, to not even TRUST your body senses, and to instead fixate on the light of truth beyond the body. Beyond matter. Beyond all physical objects and planets. Beyond the universe. A vision in the light so bright that it completely looks PAST (overlooks) and practically ignores everything in the world.

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

Anything the body does is not true. It's an extraordinary picture of lies.

"The body is the instrument the mind made in its striving to deceive itself."

We have to learn, this is a really profound lesson. This whole world was designed to deceive us. We have to learn to NOT believe its lies and NOT take its appearances as literal reality.

"The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."

"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him. Here was perception born, for knowledge could not cause such insane thoughts. But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely."

"Temptation has one lesson it would teach, **in all its forms** (all objects), wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach."

"The temptation to regard problems as many is the temptation to keep the problem of separation unsolved. The world seems to present you with a vast number of problems, each requiring a different answer. This perception places you in a position in which your problem solving must be inadequate, and failure must be inevitable.

No-one could solve all the problems the world appears to hold. They seem to be on so many levels, in such varying forms and with such varied content, that they confront you with an impossible situation. Dismay and depression are inevitable as you regard them. Some spring up unexpectedly, just as you think you have resolved the previous ones. Others remain unsolved under a cloud of denial, and rise to haunt you from time to time, only to be hidden again but still unsolved.

All this complexity is but a desperate attempt not to recognize the problem, and therefore not to let it be resolved. If you could recognize that your only problem is separation, no matter what form it takes, you could accept the answer because you would see its relevance. Perceiving the underlying constancy in all the problems which confront you, you would understand that you have the means to solve them all. And you would use the means because you recognize the problem."

There is a world beyond this world. It's reality. This world, Earth, is a giant advertisement for everything OTHER THAN reality. "Earth, heaven's opposite in every way." Every aspect of this universe is a dream about "what is it like to be dead". "The world has disappointed you since time began." It will never satisfy us. "This world holds nothing that I want."

"Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it. This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all."

The escape from hell is the escape from this world, into the light of reality. Leaving behind every temptation, deception, denial, resistance, darkness, horror and hellish vision. To awaken from this dream of suffering and return to awareness of immortal reality.

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice.For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences.The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. ***They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die.Yet they are not deceived by what they see.*** They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."

Unconditionality, means that something applies the same way to many things. In a sense this is impersonal, in that it does not treat a given person differently from others. At the same time, if the treatment is TOTAL all inclusive love, then EACH person can be FULLY loved, provided that it means this love does not EXCLUDE ANYONE.

This means that you literally cannot unconditionally love only one other person. Nor can you unconditoinally love a million people. You can ONLY unconditionally love the ENTIRE WHOLE of creation. There cannot be any exceptions or conditions, otherwise it is not unconditional.

We might say well, I unconditionally love my kids or my parents etc, but this isn't really true. Because the same maximal love is not felt in relationship to EVERYONE. So it isn't unconditional in the broader sense. It may seen unconditional in that, the child or parent is loved quite fully or that they're loved regardless of what they do or say or believe or how they live. That's a form of unconditionality. But it isn't TOTAL unconditionality.

Total unconditionality requires that the entirety of existence be loved as one, and equally. You have to love EVERY person the same if you want to claim unconditional love. Similarly, you cannot claim holiness until you do this because conditions mean a lack of wholeness.

Holiness means wholeness. It recognizes that you are whole. It recognizes that other people are whole. But it also recognizes that the whole of you is the whole of them in truth. It is a holographic principle.

To be holy, ie whole, in and of yourself, you cannot be in need of anyone. It sounds like a paradox but to to love anyone in a holy way you have be whole in and of yourself so that you have wholeness to share with them. And by being whole, you do not NEED them. Moreso it means you HAVE them because you ARE them. All of them.

Holiness, and unconditoinal love, have to go hand in hand with a complete lack of limits or confinement of any kind. It can't just apply to you, or to your closest partner, or to only your friends and family. It has to be the same everywhere. To be whole is to be the whole of creation. You have to be the entire Kingdom of God to be holy. Which means you cannot have a holy relationship without EVERYONE being included.

No one can claim to unconditionally love only A PART of the totality. This is partial love. That love is not unconditional. It may be approaching it but so long as it remains applying ONLY to certain individuals it is NOT unconditional love.

Unconditional love is universal love. It has to apply to EVERYONE equally and all at the same time. Nor can it apply only to some person that is temporarily "nearby" while applying later to someone else who happens to be "nearby." It has to transcend time and space as well. It is unlimited in every way.

This means that a real holy relationship is one where you are whole in your soul, and you know intimately that EVERYONE is included in you. And therefore you love EVERYONE simultaneously. This is the only way for it to be holy, and the only way to be whole. There is no other unconditional love that is as fully unconditional as this.

What that means is, you cannot have a truly holy relationship which its just between TWO people. That is too confining. Any sense of walls, barriers, exclusiveness, limits of any kind, any way that it is not FULLY SHARED, is a limit on holiness and on love. The love has to totally transcend ALL FORMS of relationship. Like how Jesus loves everyone the same.

When a special relationship, which is really a lack of relationship, is taken and repurposed for a holy purpose, it is used as a framework to develop wholeness. Holiness is the goal so wholeness is the goal. To be whole, EACH person, as a soul, must individually attain THEIR OWN wholeness. And their wholeness cannot be held back by each other. To be whole, EACH individual has to be open to loving EVERYONE equally. And if I am whole, I am recognizing that I AM THE WHOLE OF YOU as well, so you cannot limit me.

At the highest level, this means that the specialness which began as "two" for practical or collaborative learning purposes, is transcended. Even if there are still seeming to be two bodies in proximity, or a marriage, or a friendship, or any other FORM of a relationship that seems to isolate individuals, even for those two people "relationship" has to transcend the boundaries of that container.

If it does not transcend the boundaries, it cannot be whole. It is ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE for a confined pair of individuals to be holy together while NOT being holy in relationship to EVERYONE. However, if they ARE holy towards everyone, they CAN be holy in relation to each other.

We need to perhaps then SEPARATE OUT, the difference between an arrangement of bodies, versus psychological relationship. If you decouple the two, it becomes more obvious how it works. In the atonement plan, TWO OR MORE individuals (tied to bodies) are orchestrated to meet and form a special connection. A time spent seemingly in proximity. This is not a relationship. This is just being near to each other for the sake of working on THEMSELVES in the company of each other and with each other's support. To learn to fully share themselves with everyone. They cannot fully share themselves with EACH OTHER because this excudes everyone else - UNTIL they can share with everyone.

While the two are together, they EACH may be becoming more unconditionally loving, which melts the specialness or form that holds the two of them in proximity. But at some point a threshold has to be reached, in which they cannot increase the love any further if the love is thought to have to be LIMITED to the two of them, or that it excludes anyone, or is switched off in certain encounters.

In order for the love to become IMPERSONALLY PERSONAL, which means total full love given in FULL to EACH of ALL individuals at once (this is ominpresence), the sense of two-ness has to be dissolved completely, BEFORE even getting close to total holiness. The twoness is just there as a repurposing of the device of physical closeness. It has nothing to do with relationship or holiness. It's just a way to focus on a project.

To go beyond this ceiling, EITHER of them has to decide to transcend their 'relationship' and love OTHERS in the same way. The only way TO love unconditionally and ALL the time, is to love everyone the same way all the time, no matter who they are, and no matter where they are. That means you are IN love, at all times, regardless of location. This has nothing then to do with whether you are with a particular person's body/mind or not.

At its absolute maximal expression, then, a holy relationship has gone BEYOND the necessity of two people, and now applies simultaneously to ONESELF, and to ALL SELVES. And ALL holy relationships MERGE INTO ONE. It is then not a question of whether a holy relationship requires ONE person OR TWO... which is an either/or reasoning, but actually in a holographic manner, it applies to ONE AND INFINITE.

Therefore I, as an individual soul, who God created in full love and completion, who is also sharing everything with all other souls, who in turn love EVERYONE, have the task of individually accepting atonement for MYSELF, so that it is SHARED, so that it is given to EVERYONE. THIS is holy relationship. It is one soul sharing all of itself wholly and fully in holiness with the entire sonship at once. This reflects this logical statement:

"You cannot enter into real relationship with any of God's Sons unless you are willing to love them all, AND equally."

Total real relationship, in heaven, which a holy relationship is based on or becomes a reflection of, requires YOU to love everyone. It does NOT require everyone to be aware of loving you. In reality, yes, all souls love all souls. In the dream, where minds are blocked, it does not entail all minds being AWARE of that oneness. But ideally, everyone should eventually love everyone. This allows the ENTIRE sonship to unite in a single relationship of co-creation with God.

"Everyone should love everyone".

While it is possible for example for me to be in total love which means unconditionally loving the entire universe - universal love, this is because I am a free soul. I am in freedom and therefore NOT TIED to anyone in the sense of, no one can impede my freedom or require me to do anything in order to be FULLY myself. God established me perfect from the start. And that means i can go into holiness/wholeness and unconditionally love everyone, EVEN IF they do not reciprocate. Nor can their lack of love hold me in hell against my will. I am free to choose to love. "Heaven is a choice I must make."

If another person happens to also be in a very unconditional state of mind, then it is possible, that that person can connect with you and be AWARE OF sharing everything with you. BUT, this is NOT JUST personal. It is personal and impersonal. Everything is shared with YOU, BUT at the same time, it is also being shared with everyone. It is not exclusive to you. It is completely open. It is fully given to you, AND fully given to everyone equally. Such a person can fully love you, but ONLY because they are unconditionally loving the whole sonship at the same time. You receive the PERSONAL love, while the IMPERSONAL aspect is personally loving all the others. It's almost like, two people just happening to 'bump into each other'.

When two people consent to FULLY LOVE, the "each other" part does not enter into it. They happen to fully love EVERYONE. Two people, who fully love everyone, and who are in intimate relationship with EVERY SOUL as their own wholeness, "meet", and experience their mutual position of unconditional love. They fully embrace and express their shared nature in TOTAL holy relationship. But IT DOES NOT EXCLUDE ANYONE ELSE. It is not exclusive to them. An analogy might be one parent who equally loves all their children. They don't stop loving the OTHER kids just because they love you.

"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."The only requirement for you to enter heaven, is that you reflect heaven's relationship status. That is, I am in a relationship with EVERYONE EQUALLY. You "enter into real relationship" with ALL of God's children. And thus you "enter into reality" itself. This is the only requirement for entry to heaven by ANY INDIVIDUAL SOUL. That is, all you have to do is accept and love all of yourself which IS all of the sonship, loving every son of God equally.

No one can keep you from this. No partner can hold you back. No duo or pair or special relationship or repurposed relationship has a quality that causes any REQUIREMENT that TWO such people are doing this at the same time. The two-ness is part of specialness and it will always be. Two-ness has to be TOTALLY TRANSCENDED in order to have ANY holiness. EVERY person has to be loved equally otherwise NONE OF THEM ARE TRULY LOVED AT ALL.

To meet another person who is fully in christ, is a pleasure. And it is a total relationship with that person AND with everyone else. But it doesn't mean that you need that person's love, or that they are imprisoning you. You are completely free to come and go. You are the free willed soul that God created one with him. You have no needs and are not bound by any special rules other than God's law. You are under no laws but God's and God himself established you as holy forever.

In essence, first there is JUST ME. Then there is JUST ME AND YOU. Then there is US trying to transcend JUST US (a "holy relationship couple"). And then there is EVERYONE. That is the progression of relationship towards holiness. And anyone can go there WITHOUT a partner.

So really the requirement of having to have another "special person" to have a holy relationship with, is false. A repurposed special relationship goes THROUGH a purpose or goal of holiness, and DISSOLVES away, leaving only unconditional love for everyone. The two are no longer two, they are THE ENTIRE KINGDOM. Or maybe one of them went there and is the entire kingdom, and the other lagged behind still. Everyone is free to come and go.

Only then, when ONE PERSON has attained a state of unconditional universal love and equality, can that ONE person enter heaven. It does not require anyone else to do this. It's just that, in this world, the holy spirit is repurposing what we MADE (specialness) for a holy PURPOSE, so that it can be USED like a device or tool, to help us to move towards unconditionality. But this cannot mean that you ONLY learn to love another single person unconditionally. If you ONLY love them unconditionally you are NOT LOVING UNCONDITIONALLY. Walls cannot remain if it is to be universally applied and extended. Unconditional love MUST be impersonal as well as personal.

Therefore, any single person/soul CAN enter heaven WITHOUT the need for particular encounters, relations, conversations, physical proximities, lengths of time, or any other "requirement". They may in fact have enjoyed MULTIPLE relationships to get to that point. They may have had many partners, even simultaneously. They may have even had NO ONE ELSE. They might've even been sitting in a cave in a mountain and seeing no one since 50 years ago. It doesn't matter. If any one person attains holographic love, they are done and out of here, entering real relationship with the ENTIRE sonship.

I've come up with a new model of ACIM which promises to resolve numerous contradictions and potentially unite the two major camps: those who believe they can experience heaven while in the dream, and those who believe heaven is elsewhere.

In this model, think of "the world you made" as a room with no windows, like a prison cell. You are currently in the room, perceiving the inside walls of the room. This is "false perception". Everything inside that room is false. "The world is false perception." You are blinded by perception of form and cannot see past the walls.

As you develop true perception, the walls start to become TRANSPARENT, and you start to see BEYOND them. You are IN the world, SEEING THROUGH IT, to something OUTSIDE it. This is what it means to OVERLOOK ie forgive the world. By forgiving the FALSE world, you become able to SEE the TRUE world. The true world is Heaven. Heaven is outside of the room. But you can SEE IT, from inside the room, using perception. True perception/christ vision is CAPABLE OF SEEING REALITY.

This is backed up by statements such as "God is in everything I see", that you can "see the son of God", having a "vision of God", "see the face of Christ", etc. To be able to SEE these things, you MUST be seeing reality directly with perception. Which means you are inside the dream, peering OUTSIDE OF IT from the inside out.

This also entails a major adjustment to older models. "The real world" is a synonym for HEAVEN. It is correctly labelled as REAL because it is real. When you PERCEIVE "the real world" you are literally perceiving heaven. This is also backed up by statements saying it is only possible to SEE what REALLY EXISTS, which MUST mean it is reality you are seeing.

Perception CAN SEE REALITY. But you have to also remember that "perception is a separated state". Therefore perception is happening FROM INSIDE the dream of separation, LOOKING AT WHAT'S OUTSIDE OF IT. When you are NOT blinded by the WALLS of the dream world, you have true perception. When you cannot see PAST the illusions of form, you have false perception.

We also have to remember a couple of key facts.

1. Perception of the truth is not the same as knowledge. That means you can perceive heaven, but this perception is kind of an "image" of heaven. A vision. This perception is not the same thing as being IN heaven. It is not cognition or knowledge or certainty or communion. But, it's kind of like window shopping. You are on the street (in the false physical world of false perception), looking through the window of the Kingdom of God (overlooking the world, forgiving the world, seeing beyond the veil), and are looking INTO or AT the contents of the Kingdom (seeing the face of Christ).

2. It is necessary to still accept that the FALSE world IS AN ILLUSION. The physical world. "The world of bodies is the world of sin" "The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it" "The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came" "There is no world" etc are all STILL TRUE of this world of forms, bodies, planets. "The world is false perception" means that if you LOOK AT THIS WORLD, you are having false perception. And that means you have to LOOK AWAY FROM this world, and look AT HEAVEN.

This is also totally backed up by statements about not being able to see two worlds. There ARE two worlds. Heaven/reality, and the illusory world. Sight of one costs you sight of the other because they deny each other. This does not mean TWO VIEWS OF THIS WORLD. It means if you see this world in ANY way you are having false perception, and sight of THIS world is costing you sight OF HEAVEN. Heaven is ANOTHER WORLD. And in order for this world to disappear from your sight, heaven must BECOME VISIBLE.

This is also totally backed up by the fact that The Holy Spirit loves to LOOK UPON CHRIST. He is using PERCEPTION, to look AT CHRIST. Christ in IN HEAVEN! The Holy Spirit is having true perception OF CHRIST IN HEAVEN. That proves that true perception MUST be capable of breaking out of the physical world, looking beyond the veil of forms (wall of sin), and must be cable of looking direct AT REALITY. At Christ. Who is in heaven.

There are a number of statements in the course which previously alluded to being able to perceive holiness, reality, christ, god etc from INSIDE the dream. And some people latched on this since it correlated to their experience and much of what happens in the workbook, and it SEEMED to imply that God must somehow be able to be SEEN from within this world. There is validity in those statements (e.g. God is in everything I see etc), BUT the conclusion drawn from that is a polarized ego conclusion based on thinking of THE ROOM (the world you made) as being REAL. AS if to say, perception ABOUT the inside of the room can change from false to true, in order to try to make sense of the seeming references to SEEING real stuff. But that was a false conclusion based on exclusive boxes.

Also in the old models people often thought of "the real world" as a reference to some kind of in-between state, still illusory (thus inappropriately named) and NOT the same thing as reality itself. I suggest that is wrong, and that HEAVEN is a the actual "real world". When we have perceptions OF "the real world", we are seeing HEAVEN ITSELF. We are looking OUTSIDE OF the dream, from the inside. This is also backed up by the fact there is a quote about the real world which speaks of there being no bodies, no streets and stores, no day and night (no sun) etc... which is accurate of HEAVEN. The IMAGE of the real world that perception SEES, is SEEING heaven, and the IMAGE is an illusion, but the world it is looking AT is reality!

This is also then helps us to see that not only can you LOOK OUTSIDE OF THE DREAM from the inside, but also the LIGHT OF HEAVEN can shine INTO or upon the dream from the outside in. And that TOO is backed up by various quotes. Heaven is spread across the world but you do not see it etc. The world seems to become holy. You shine your light upon the world by "reflecting it here" within yourself, etc. Because the CEILING on top of the room, is only SOLID when you have false perception. The ceiling becomes TRANSPARENT when you have true perception, allowing you to SEE OUT (like a window onto reality), AND allowing the light to PENETRATE the world. This is part of how "eternity will shine away the world." When we think of the separation between heaven and earth as SOLID we arrive at a false conclusion that you cannot experience God AT ALL in the world, which is incorrect.

A forgiven world, similarly, must be correctly understood. "To forgive is to overlook" Overlooking THE FALSE WORLD, "the world is false perception", means overlooking the PHYSICAL WORLD, overlooking bodies ("you're brother's reality is beyond his body"), "forgiveness does not look upon bodies" etc... and therefore to FORGIVE the world, does not mean keep LOOKING AT IT in a more loving way. It means to OVERLOOK it, see PAST it, and LOOK AT HEAVEN. The reality of heaven is what true perception (spiritual sight) sees. It is a perception of SPIRIT. And this means the physical veil of illusions, wall of sin, wall of flesh etc all has to VANISH from your sight. This happens when you SEE CHRIST (face of christ). The world is FORGOTTEN.

That's what it means to forgive the world. It means to RECOGNIZE the WORLD IS FALSE. And to put ALL of your attention ON REALITY. To look AT reality, bypassing this world and seeing the truth which is BEYOND IT. And that means what you are "falling in love with" as you wake up, isn't the FALSE world, it's HEAVEN! You are starting to become able to SEE REALITY, and it is WHERE the beauty, light, and love are. Your ability to SEE IT, "in" the world, overlaid on the world, is what makes the world seem lovely. But it is HEAVEN that you are in love with, not an illusory world of forms. Proven here:

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while (the false world/physical world)...The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?...Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die.Yet they are ***not deceived by what they see*** (not tempted, not believing in the world)....Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as ***behind the dream***, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."

Unity, is reality. Unity, is heaven. Unity is the ACTUALLY REAL WORLD of Heaven. The Kingdom of God. Which is BEHIND the dream world. The dream world is FALSE, as in there is no world. EVERYTHING in the physical world is false. It is all illusion. You are not supposed to try to make it real and keep it and dress it up and turn it into heaven. It is a veil of illusions. It is NOTHING. You are meant to learn to STOP BEING DISTRACTED BY IT, and LOOK AT SOMETHING ELSE. Look at ANOTHER WORLD entirely. You are in THIS world, and have to learn to SEE ANOTHER WORLD BEYOND IT.

So the model is quite simple. You're in a seemingly solid room with no windows. You gradually learn to LOOK THROUGH THE WALLS, and start to see ANOTHER WORLD outside of the room. When the walls become totally transparent you will SEE CHRIST and will SEE GOD "in" everything you see (beyond it, not hidden by it), and then ..... when you are ready, you will GET OUT OF THE ROOM. Leaving the room is what takes you BEYOND THE WALLS, and immerses you directly in the REAL WORLD OF HEAVEN that you were SEEING WITH PERCEPTION prior to awakening. You first window shop and SEE reality, then you go BE IN IT. "Gone is perception". And of course there is no real "going" because you simply realize YOU ARE EVERYWHERE and have always BEEN in heaven, and THE ROOM DOES NOT EXIST. The world is gone, reality is your home.

I believe this far more accurately encapsulates what ACIM is saying. I believe there is not one single quote which speaks against this from any perspective. Especially, this BRINGS HEAVEN CLOSER to those who are IN the dream (room), because it means even while you are dreaming, you can to some degree EXPERIENCE heaven through perception. You can SEE HEAVEN while in a body. BUT.... if you want to be totally immersed in it, you have to leave the body, leave the false world, leave the room, and become expanded everywhere. "Heaven is the dwelling place of the son of God." "There is no world."

It still accounts for the two levels which are Reality and Unreality, true and false, light and dark, heaven and hell, God's world and the world you made. These ARE the two levels, not "two ways to perceive a false world." It still incorporates all aspects of perceiving in recognizing that false perception is an inability to see past walls, while true perception overlooks walls and sees what is beyond them. It supports everything said about the ability to SEE REAL STUFF. "Perception can reach everywhere under the guidance of the holy spirit" (even to reality).

It also supports the EXPERIENCES people have had (me included) IN this world such as having visions of God, seeing Christ in others, SEEING love everywhere, etc. AND it still supports the larger model that we are to WAKE UP FROM some kind of dream world to a reality that were were becoming gradually aware of prior to awakening. You can essentially PERCEIVE or "perceptually experience" reality while in a body in this world. BUT if you want the TOTAL communion with God, knowledge, absolute wakening, total reality, WITHOUT perception (because "those who perceive still need healing"), you have to TRANSCEND THE ROOM, and wake up in infinite reality. "Nothing seen, only know." Because then, you no longer have perception, nor do you need it.

Have a think about it. Open your mind. Put aside "traditional" ACIM models. Consider this. I think it unites the two camps quite a lot and it also is wholly inclusive of ALL ACIM STATEMENTS, something which could not be said for the older models. It has to be possible to SEE reality (God/Christ). It HAS to be possible to see what is ACTUALLY the REAL world (heaven). And it HAS to be possible that the world of false perception disappear when ANOTHER world becomes visible. And it has to be possible that there IS another world entirely BEYOND the one that false perception sees. And that means the world you see with true perception is BEYOND this world. It is heaven. It is the Kingdom of God. And "you cannot remain in this world (false world), with this knowledge."

I know this shakes up a LOT of what people have become accustomed to thinking. And I've had to let go of many of my own conclusions in order to get to this. I had made adjustments, justifications, and false conclusions in order to try to make things "fit" before and I see now where that was flawed because it omitted too many quotes and ways of perceiving love and reality while still in a body. I encourage everyone to think about this and see if you feel that it fits and works for you. If not, that's fine. But for me I feel this is the most accurate model of the course I've ever seen. It is so clear-cut and makes so much sense and supports everything.

Is there a power OTHER than the mind that can cause things to happen to us? What causes sickness? What makes death happen? Do we actually have any control over this world? Do we have a power, to such an extent, that we can actually determine what happens or doesn't happen? Can we actually CHOOSE to cause or not cause sickness and death?

This is an important issue because if we are not the ones orchestrating everything that occurs, everything we experience, then that places us in a rather vulnerable position. If there is a power or cause or law or something that drives stuff to occur, without our consent, without our choosing it, this basically means we are capable of being victims. Stuff can happen to us against our will.

It may seem SUPER radical to suggest that you could be in a position of having so much deliberateness, so much choice, so much power, that you could be orchestrating an entire dream. That the things that happen are what YOU decide will happen. That nothing else happens, because you haven't chosen it. It really then boils down to, are you actually able to choose not to suffer, to not be sick, to not die? Can you choose that events don't occur at all? Do you have the power to CAUSE these to not happen, and do you have the power to cause them TO happen?

This then really becomes a question of RESPONSIBILITY. Who or what is responsible, in every case, for what happens in your life? Do you shift responsibility and therefore "blame" onto others, onto the body or the world itself? For what seems to happen TO you? Who is responsible for whether you are attacked or not? Who is responsible for whether your body becomes sick, or is healed, or just carries on being sick without hope of relief? Because ultimately someone or some "thing" HAS to be the cause. It's either you, or it's something else. There are NO effects without causes.

If you look at the teachings of ACIM closely you will see that there is a huge theme of EMPOWERMENT. This empowerment is saying that you are so powerful that you literally are the dreamer of the dream. It says that you are ruler of the universe. It says that you can be attacked by nothing but your thoughts. It says you cannot die without your own consent. It says that you are not the victim of the world you see. All of these themes point towards you having POWER OVER what happens. YOU CHOOSE!

"If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God."

"Here again is the paradox often referred to in the course. To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power."

Indeed it leads to what ACIM calls "the secret of salvation". This is quite a radical passage because it basically says that unless you were to go into a kind of unconscious state of denial in which you disown power and see the dream as "happening against your will", NOTHING In the world can do anything to you - no matter how vicious it seems. And in fact, that the secret to being SAVED FROM all forms of suffering, is to realize and own fully that you are "doing it to yourself." That takes great OWNERSHIP of power.

We immediately start to bark with objections about how this can't be true in all situations. But the passage tells us that no matter who is the victim or victimizer, it is true. No matter who seems to do what to whom, or what the apparent severity, it is still true. So it's then telling us that despite any appearances, despite what may look like external causes or separate people acting in certain ways, no matter what it looks like on the surface, it is ALWAYS TRUE that you are doing it to yourself.

And it calls this the "secret of salvation" because it talks of how this is the ONE LESSON the holy spirit is teaching to SAVE YOU from ALL forms of suffering. That the cause of ALL forms of suffering, no matter what form it takes, including physical sickness, is the fact that you are the one doing it to yourself. And because you are doing it yourself, you can change your mind and STOP doing it.

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace. I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise."

Because in truth, really, UNLESS you are actually the one with the power to CAUSE anything to happen, you would not be in a position to be able to USE that power to NOT cause it to happen, or to undo it. It is because you DO cause it, that there is IS hope for salvation. There is a way out of hell and suffering and sickness and death BECAUSE you are the one that keeps putting it in place. And if you weren't the one putting it in place, you'd be stuck having to tolerate it, experience it, suffer from it, and go through it, without any hope of relief, ie no salvation.

This is quite a radical teaching and it is extremely central to the entire A Course in Miracles view of cause and effect, of who causes what, and of how POWERFUL you are. It rests on the fact that you are an immortal being, a permanent changeless being, who is always the same and is incapable of change or of being changed. A being that is NOT AFFECTED by the world.

"The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did."

Forgiveness rests on this immortal fact, because obviously if you are immortal nothing can happen to you, so you have no grounds for playing at being a victim, no grounds for believing that something is happening against your will, and no grounds for suffering. If you are immortal then you quite literally are invulnerable to the entire world, and there is not a single thing in all the world that has even the slightest power to cause anything that you do not want. In fact it means you have power OVER DEATH, because you cannot die.

This is what the entire teaching of ACIM is leading to. The total identification with spirit as Christ, the immortal son of God. The total owning of RESPONSIBILITY FOR BEING CAUSAL - a causal CREATOR. The total reclaiming of absolute unlimited POWER, which can do literally anything. The reclaiming of the power to work miracles, to heal sickness and to prevent death, and to change the world if needed. It is asking of you to reclaim a role and position of nothing LESS than TOTAL ABSOLUTE POWER.

By having such a power, a power so great that literally the entire dream is being dreamed up BY your mind, a power that puts the world in place and makes it spin, a power that materializes bodies, a power that causes events to transpire, we're talking about you being extremely DELIBERATE and CHOOSING everything that occurs or is experienced. And this does mean without exception. Not one single thing occurs that you do not choose, and because the power of decision is yours, you CAN CHOOSE not to have the body be sick, or die. YOU make the world go round.

This isn't a course in leaving any room open for some kind of fictional "alien will", a separate power, an external power, some kind of power the "dream" seems to have over you, some victim consciousness, some kind of external causation that can do things to you against your will, some kind of power that puts sickness into your body without your asking for it, or some kind of power other than your choice that seems to make death happen.

These are all the views that the EGO has, in its sense of weakness and powerlessness and vulnerability and fear. It sees itself as utterly at war with a separated-off power not within itself, that does things to it against its desires. And it sees itself as having no control or real power over anything, so instead to uses "force" and "doing" to try to make things happen.

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR OF AWAKENING. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of CONSCIOUSNESS. This is a pathetic way of TRYING NOT TO KNOW by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual."

We are being asked to own up to being immortal beings. Beings who are purely CAUSAL and CREATIVE. Beings who express from love and whose expressions come out as what you want, and as what you create and thus as what happens or exists. Where you are constantly choosing WHAT shows up and what occurs. There is no room in the mind of a creator/co-creator for stuff happening "by some other means", or of your choices being unheard, or of your decisions lacking power, or of your causation lacking effects.

This is a course in TAKING BACK YOUR POWER. And that means and includes the total responsibility and ownership of being THE CAUSE OF all your suffering, in every form it takes, INCLUDING the condition of the body, all of its forms and sickness and suffering, and even over death itself. You even have the power to literally move mountains and to make worlds. Only in this extreme of absolute ownership of the POWER OF GOD, which is your inheritance, is victimhood and vulnerability and pain and misery snuffed out forever. There is no power OTHER THAN the power of God that you share with him.

The question is whether you are willing to go all the way to accept this power, to take on this role and position of being ruler of the universe, whether you are willing to OWN this power and regain access to USE it consciously. Whether you are ready to let go of all victimhood roles and all sense of not choosing or not being the one who makes things happen. It's putting you in the hot-seat. If you are to reach the resurrection and FINISH the curriculum, you MUST gain the absolute power over death, which gives you the ability to cancel and reverse and prevent it EVEN on a physical level.

"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."

If you believe that sickness happens through some other reason, by some other cause, something in the world or body, something environmental, something someone else does to you, if events happen on their own chaotically or randomly, if death chooses for you when you will die, if sickness happens to the body, if sickness can remain within the body against the mind's choice, and if you believe that you do NOT have the power to do anything about this, that IS an egoic position of victimhood and powerlessness. And we are all-too comfortable playing this role.

It means you are "playing the game of death", as an immortal being, PRETENDING that you do NOT have the power of God, and trying to pull off a stunt of making it look AS IF you are not the one causing everything to occur. When it appears you did not choose something, it is an illusion. You are ALWAYS choosing what you experience, what you feel, what happens with the body, what events transpire. NOTHING happens without your consent. This is because you are an infinitely powerful being with an extremely powerful unlimited mind capable of creating entire worlds.

"There are no accidents in salvation."

"Your Father created you Wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

Owning up to this power - the shared Power of God - which is UNLIMITED, and there is NOTHING that this power (thus your holiness) cannot do .... places you in a position of being co-creator with God. For a creator there is nothing that comes IN to you from the outside, there is ONLY an outflowing from the inside outward. An extension so strong it cannot be stopped. The unlimited will of God.

You cannot have things coming at you, attacking you, changing you, affecting you, choosing for you. YOU are the master. You dominate everything. You are the ultimate cause. YOU are in charge of your destiny. You are NEVER a victim, and NOTHING happens without your choosing it and causing it. OWN THIS, and you will be free from suffering and death forever.

"My Self is ruler of the universe." It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is."

"I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts."

"When you are weary, remember you have hurt yourself. Your Comforter will rest you, but YOU cannot. YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW, for if you did, you could never have grown weary. Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in ANY way, for that is not God's Will for His Son. Pain is not of Him, for He knows no attack, and His peace surrounds you silently."

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

"The Holy Spirit will repeat this ONE inclusive lesson of deliverance, until it has been learned, REGARDLESS of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him, He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you."

"Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance, and limits of any kind. Your holiness is totally unlimited in its power because it establishes you as a Son of God, at one with the Mind of his Creator. Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do."

"Say ONLY this, but MEAN it with NO reservations, for here the power of salvation lies: ... I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked. ... Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done TO you. Acknowledge but that YOU have been mistaken, and ALL effects of your mistakes will disappear."

Before the separation, you were simply in heaven having a great time. Immortal, invulnerable, happy, loving, full of life.

Then the separation happened and we produced a state exactly opposite to heaven - heaven's logical opposite. A physical world in which bodies gave us constant "false perception", deceived by everything, seemingly at the effect of everything and prone to attack.

"Earth, heaven's opposite in every way."

"For this world is the opposite of Heaven, being made to be its opposite, and everything here takes a direction exactly opposite of what is true."

"Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions are but forms. Their content is never true."

"Heaven remains your one alternative to the strange world you made."

These are really the only two states. These are the two worlds, heaven and hell.

The question then becomes, how do you get out of the second world and go back to the first?

As the course says, you might find a sudden leap into heaven as frightening, if you retained your ego and interpreted it through it. In fact the ego interprets heaven as hell, beings its unwanted opposite.

So instead, we gradually transition towards heaven. But let's be clear that heaven IS your only alternative to the physical world. There is no other place to go. It's one or the other.

It's also a fact that the world you made is false, and heaven is true. In the denial of God and the rejection of heaven, you came to believe that a world of lies and illusions is true and real.

That puts you in a position where, to return to a full awareness and acceptance of heaven's truth, you're going to have to both invest belief and acceptance in heaven's truth, while shifting your whole focus away from the physical.

As the course describes, beginning to do this begins the process of "opening the spiritual eye" and "weakening the investment in physical sight".

"Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that there must be a better way. As this recognition becomes more firmly established, it becomes a turning point. This ultimately reawakens spiritual vision, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict, which can become very acute."

Now, we need to keep in mind that you are either in a realm of perception or a realm of knowledge. We really only made false perception, built into the functioning of the body senses. And leapt straight from heaven to false perception, placing us in bodies.

"The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive something and with something."

"The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and complete idea."

Your goal, really, is to return to heaven. The goal of God. Any goal less than this is not enough. You are to return to your original state of reality and immortality. To identifying as Christ. To being as God created you and co-creating with Him in reality.

But trying to leap into heaven from a perspective of false perception, which is total confusion about what is true, would be too jarring. The contrast is too great, and we have gone deeply into the ego thought system.

Instead, there is a seeming path, the atonement plan, the personal curriculum, which lays out a more gradual transition. This is partly because the use of your free will choice is required in order for you to make any changes in your beliefs at all.

So it seems that, in time, we gradually then progress from abject hell, which is a heavy identification with a body, special relationships, attack thoughts, fear of death, sickness and suffering seeming real, etc, towards a more God-given inheritance of perfection and immortality.

This doesn't just mean you're going to run up against the "ceiling" or external walls of the perceptual realm, before experiencing ANY heaven. It means that you need to transition so that you are experiencing ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY heaven, just before you leave this world.

But how do you do that? How do you move "towards heaven", towards reality and truth and immortality, while still being within the realm of perceptual dreams? How do you become heaven-like or as close to your original nature as possible, while still being in a state which is fundamentally separate?

"Perception is a separated state. Those who perceive still need healing."

It's going to entail some kind of re-purposing of perception, some way to use it against itself. To use what we made, to undo what we made, from the inside out. We need a reinterpretation of the meaning of the world. Or a different vantage point or way of looking, that makes it seem like hell has been turned into something similar to heaven.

"Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it."

What we find out now is that there are kind of two components to what we're experiencing. There's whatever "the world is" that we made, and then there's our interpretation of it. We seem to be able to change its meaning or how it looks to us.

What we're then told is that there is a "forgiven world" or a version of hell which, seen with some kind of light, or seen with loving eyes, doesn't look like hell anymore. It's still a dream world, still an illusion, still unreal, and still false, but seems to reflect heaven's innocence.

So where does this light come from, or this loving perspective? Well, a clue is that "Perception is a result, not a cause". And "projection makes perception". We look within first, at our idea of what truth is, and then we broadcast that out, and the end result is a kind of hallucinated image, which we call perception.

So the main deal is, the question of whether when you look within you see a belief in the reality of the world, that false things are true, that you yourself are something false and evil, or whether when you look within you see sinlessness, a lack of guilt and fear, innocence and holiness. Those spiritual attributes are not attributes of a dream figure, they are attributes of YOUR SOUL, which needs to come into your awareness while you're still dreaming.

How do you go about changing your inner landscape, so that it contains only attributes which seem to reflect the state of heaven, so that when you look out you see then projected?

Well if you remember, perception is always essentially false, and the realm of knowledge is always true. The illusory world is always illusory, and heaven is reality. So in order to transition your inner world so that it "matches" heaven or is heaven-like, you're going to have to reach out beyond the illusory world and start identifying with God's creation.

"The world you see must be denied" "Beyond this world is a world I want." "No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth."

So now you're in a position where, you're inside a dream, and trying to shift your attention to not only see but identify with, to recognize as true, and to accept, a reality which is entirely OUTSIDE of the dream.

"The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it, and show it rested on a world more real than what you saw before; a world redeemed from what you thought was there."

You're trying to learn what you ARE in the Kingdom, while still being inside of the classroom of hell. Your real identity is your soul which God created which has inherited its truth from Him.

In order for you to transition your inner identity to christ, you're going to have to start identifying with something that isn't even in the world.

The best analogy I've come up with is the comparison of two rooms. We made a room with no windows, inside heaven, kind of like a prison cell. It's a dark room which shuts out the light. The walls seem solid and impassable. There is no awareness of what is outside the walls. Your whole identity seems bound to a lump of matter, the same thing that the prison seems to be made of.

Then as you begin to reach out beyond the dream, beyond the prison, beyond believing the walls are true - the granite block of sin, the veil which hangs before the face of christ, the walls of the prison begin to become transparent. They lose their heaviness and solidity. Even your own body seems to start to disappear.

This happens only by extending your mind past the separating limits of the walls, reaching out (or in) to heaven's truth, and latching onto (identifying with) the ever-growing awareness of who you are outside the prison. Your real self, which God created, and which stands beyond the world of form.

As your mind starts to associate with being a christ-soul, and starts to believe in God's truth, and starts to accept that only heaven is real, and shifts all of its attention away from the tempting deceptions and lies of physical matter, it puts its faith and belief in reality and love and light. Things which are not even INSIDE the dream world.

"Love was never in the world of dreams."

While still inside the prison, which is fast becoming a glass room with a door, enabling you to see through the walls and beyond them to the light with "christ vision", you become able to see again.

You can see a light beyond the body and beyond the world, beyond the room, and your sense of "who and what I am" or "what is true of me" is shifting away from the body and onto spirit - a spirit which is well outside of the room entirely.

Eventually this room, which acts like a veil covering up the greater environment of heaven, becomes so transparent that it disappears, and finally you are able to see christ clearly. To recognize what you are. And to see the contents of heaven. You then move through or past the walls of the room, the room disappears, and you find yourself squarely and fully in the shoes God created for you to fill.

We may talk about true perception, atonement, forgiveness, salvation, right mindedness, miracle mindedness, sanity, the spiritual eye, and various other aspects of the awakening mind. But ultimately true perception is an act of OVERLOOKING the realm of perception, overlooking hell, overlooking the opposition to God, and fixating on the Kingdom.

Essentially, true perception is a re-purposing of perception, such that it actually UNDOES ITSELF. Similarly to how forgiveness is way of using illusions to point AWAY from illusions. True perception is a cancellation of perception. Just as false perception was an attempt to fixate perception on itself and make perceptions real. True perception points AWAY from the realm of perception entirely, and towards the light of God, beyond the dream.

"Forgiveness is illusion that is answer to the rest."

"Forgiveness sweeps all other dreams away, and though it is itself a dream, it breeds no others."

"Forgiveness is the end of dreams, because it is a dream of waking."

"Forgiveness is the only road that leads out of disaster, past all suffering, and finally away from death."

To dream of awakening, which is the happy dream, is to dream of what it is like to BE AWAKE. To be awake is to be IN HEAVEN. Therefore, forgiveness is a dream in which you imagine yourself to be NOT ASLEEP. To be similar to the way you actually are in reality, outside of dreaming. It is a dream based on the knowledge of heaven, in which, while still technically being in a dream-perception realm, you dream a dream so close to heaven that it's almost like being in heaven itself.

Just prior to leaving the prison, with sight firmly fixed on christ, who is in heaven and not in the world, you see the face of christ through the perceptual system (based on judgement/evaluation), and this "vision" is "the real world". It's you being able to see. "God is the light in which I see."

The real world is really heaven. It is the only reality and the only world truly deserving of being described as real. From within perception we see it through a perceptual filter, then we leave perception behind and KNOW its reality. "First you dream of peace, then awaken to it."

To see the real world, is to look out from within spacetime, within the perceptual realm, using perception, but using it in a special way which enalbles you to look OUTSIDE the perceptual realm. To peer into heaven beyond the separate bubble of spacetime. You don't actually become able to BE IN heaven at this point, outside the dream, but you stand within the dream, looking through its transparent walls like an window onto God.

As you do this, as you open up to reality while still dreaming, as you disbelieve in the solidity of the prison walls, as you form a bridge to the Kingdom, as you reunite gradually with God and with love, light seems to stream into your mind.

In fact an awareness of God gradually seems to return to your mind, and starts to be "seen in" the things you see. "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind." Eventually God is ALL that you see, which causes the "things you were seeing him in" to disappear.

So what we're really doing is, shifting our attention, away from hell, towards heaven. Shifting it away from God's absence, towards God. Away from body identification to spirit identification. Away from darkenss to light.

Away from fear to love. God, christ, soul, spirit, light, love, truth and everything real, is squarely NOT a part of the illusory prison world. It is "outside" of it, psychologically. So our job is to "position" oursleves in heaven, while still in the separated realm, and shine our light from heaven, into this world, erasing it.

This is why the closer your mind comes to aligning with God's will, with heaven's light, the more that light and love are able to stream into the dream through you.

The miraculousness of heaven begins to seep into the dream. The laws of spacetime begin to be overruled as you learn "I am under no laws but God's." You start becoming able to do things which "are not of this world." Your body returns to health as a symbol of eternal life. And you become empowered to overrule death.

To be the light of the world, is to extend heaven's light into the dream. To shine into the darkness, to illuminate it and shine away death. "Eternity will shine away the world." "The stars will disappear in light."

As your perception becomes "truer", it simply means that you are not mis-perceiving, so become able to "accurately" perceive what God created. This isn't the same as knowing what's there, but we can use perception to interpret what's there. "To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it." - but you CAN perceive the truth, which is heaven.

As the walls of spacetime melt, as the granite block of sin turns to whisps of smoke easily dispelled, as the light of God shines into the world through forgiveness, and as the hell we made no longer has internal sin projected onto it, the world is seen as beautiful and forgiven. A beautiful illusion. Yet "A world forgiven cannot last" because it's still an illusion of a world. And it will disappear.

"Illusions recognized must disappear."

"The old one has left no trace upon it in its passing."

"Idols must disappear, and leave no trace behind their going."

"And you will be with him when time is over and no trace remains of dreams of spite in which you dance to death's thin melody."

"Heaven is all that remains."

"When your body and your ego and your dreams are gone, you will know that you will last forever."

This is pretty much the "model" of the course's levels and metaphysics that I've converged towards over time. Simply that there are only two states, realms or worlds. They are logical opposites. And while we're in the world opposite to heaven, we gradually transition our truth, reality and identity over to the other world, such that toward the end we are almost entirely heaven-identified and vigilant only for the Kingdom.

Our task is simply to ANCHOR ourselves into our soul, remember who we really are outside of the perceptual dream environment, tune into God, leave all perception of form behind, forget the world and embrace our true nature, inherited from God.

You are the spirit that God created. You are the reality that God established. You are the power that God extended. You are the will that God has expressed. You are the light which God radiated. You are the truth which God gave you. You are nothing and have nothing that does not come from God. And nothing in the world of illusions has ever changed that.

"So fearful is the dream, so seeming real, he could not waken to reality without the sweat of terror and a scream of mortal fear, unless a gentler dream preceded his awaking, and allowed his calmer mind to welcome, not to fear, the Voice that calls with love to waken him; a gentler dream, in which his suffering was healed and where his brother was his friend. God willed he waken gently and with joy, and gave him means to waken without fear."

"Dream softly of your sinless brother, who unites with you in holy innocence. And from this dream the Lord of Heaven will Himself awaken His beloved Son."

Since my wife "died" in January, my perspective on this world and the body, sickness and death has changed drastically.

My wife (her body) was afflicted with various disabilities and medical conditions for over 12 years. For the past 4 years she lived in a bed, and unable to walk. We're talking amputations and strokes/paralysis and heart conditions and sleep disorders and cancer and diabetes and kidney failure, brain damage and dementia, eye problems, breathing problems, digestive problems, multiple trips to the ICU, declared brain-dead one time and barely making it through a triple-heart-bypass another.

The horror show compelled me to want to perform miracles, to heal her body and undo her limitations. Like any person would, driven to alleviate suffering and to make things easier. Avoiding death became the whole focus. And obviously this revolved around my mistaken belief that she was at least in part a physical body. A body with seemingly "real" sicknesses and serious problems.

For years we had this dynamic of me trying to get her (body) back to health, to keep her (body) going, to keep her (body) alive, to resurrect her (body) and fix her (body) and undo everything that happened to her (body). But it all took a toll and over time her body's condition deteriorated. It just couldn't function enough anymore to keep her going. While I helped in some ways, I failed.

Just before she passed, I reached a point where I finally found a willingness to consider, maybe I should just stop trying to keep her (body) alive. Maybe I should just let her go and let her die. All the years of fighting against it, resisting it, avoiding both sicknesses and interventions, trying to prop her up and keep her ticking, it all just kind of came to a point of surrender. It was long and cruel and stressful and fear-inducing. She'd had enough long before, and so had I. Eventually it becomes so ridiculous you just can't keep going.

It was then within a week or two that her body was really giving out, and quickly led to a brush with death, and then a very rapid but mostly peaceful passing. All the time spent resisting death, trying to stop the body being sick, and trying to keep it going indefinitely, culminated in what seemed to be a total failure. A failure to raise the dead, a failure to be miraculous, a failure to stop death itself. But despite appearances, it turns out that wasn't a bad thing.

Actually death turned out to be liberating for both of us. It wasn't what I thought it would be like, and nothing like I feared. In fact, as she continued to live in spirit and communicate me on many occasions in many ways, it proved to me that she was far better off now. She was thrilled and excited and happy, peaceful and calm, liberated and empowered. After she went through a kind of rehabilitation period, she showed up even more, refined and purified and centered in her soul.

Meanwhile her body was on ice shoved in a cardboard box, awaiting cremation. As I looked upon it I could shift perceptions back and forth between believing it was her and that it was nothing to do with her. Clearly something had left it, regardless of how convincing it looked and seemed to have all her features intact. But it wasn't her.

I deliberately viewed the corpse a few times to make the most use of the opportunity to forgive and see it correctly. To distinguish that the body was not her, and to separate out her spirit from the form. So now I was presented with this intense contrast between - the body says she's dead, and the reality and experience of spirit/mind says she's totally alive. And they can't both be true.

It became apparent while communicating to her and thinking about the soul's journey, spanning lifetimes and many bodies, that it never really was 'the plan' in this life for her body to reach an resurrected state. We had this dream that we would ascend to heaven together, and that was a total flop - but partly because in the big picture plan of atonement she is due to wake up in another lifetime, and I'm due for some radical change.

And that was ok, because there was a bigger picture. The really big picture has souls using bodies across many lifetimes, and they are just as easily discarded when no longer functioning well as they are picked up in the first place. They are just tools, devices, vehicles, that we temporarily use for a purpose and then throw away as worthless.

The destruction of the idea of saving her body from death, the complete failure to cause her to avoid death, the surprising discovery that death was liberating and "not all bad", the experience of her continuing to live and interact, the expansive perspective of the soul and its use of bodies, and the way her passing into the light lifted me into the light also, has altered how I look at all this.

What has become super clear is that as soon as we identify with bodies, we immediately go into fear, and start feeling compelled to defend the body against its own nature - its ultimate purpose of dying. As a body we want the body to carry on forever. I wanted to be with my wife's body forever. Then the body snuffs it. Good luck with that, cus you're all gunna die, unless you stop being a body.

By believing a person is a body we develop an entire culture of body preservation, keeping people in their bodies as long as possible, freaking out when the body is attacked or sick, not allowing anyone to leave their bodies voluntarily, trying to stop the body being sick, and generally just resisting the body's death at all costs. It all adds up to a mindset of the fear of death and an attempt to protect and defend the body at all costs. Until that entire mindset goes crashing against the rocks and is smashed to smithereens.

That's what's happened for me. The whole mindset of "lets keep the body going forever" has been destroyed. All the cultural and social ways that we have concern for it, fear of dying happening, avoiding things, trying to create security and safety, freaking out when "someone dies", valuing the body, wanting it to live, even the idea of using miracles to rescue the body endlessly, all has been destroyed for me. And that's a good thing because it was all rooted in believing bodies are people, valuable objects, and something to keep.

I've shifted from a horizontal to a vertical perspective. I would even go so far now as to say "let it all die". Not just the bodies, but all the things of the world. It's dying anyway, and it's going to. All the resistance I had and the fear of it happening was pointless and worthless and ended in a total inability to stop it. It was actually good that I ended up at the end of this lesson surrendering and "letting death happen". Because funnily enough, that was a key to stopping preserving it through the wish to defend the body at all costs. I'm guided now to simply "let her be dead". Because in truth, she isn't.

Trying to prevent death induces it. And I also realized that trying to stop sickness is just making it real and fueling it. So you can imagine that being exposed to someone with many severe sicknesses for a long time has drilled this home for me. I had to get past her body, get past believing she was sick, get past trying to resist the sickness, and get past believing she could even die. And she's proven to me many times over now that she absolutely has not died.

That then becomes a strange irreconcilable contrast. On the one hand the body is sprinkled in the wind as ashes and is no more, seeming to suggest the person is totally destroyed, and yet there she is even more alive than ever, happier than ever, having a great time. When I told her it would be great to be able to see her walking again, and she showed me herself running through fields, she even said "I can fly!". So she's having a great time, and what appeared to be "death" on a physical level did nothing but leave her better off.

So now my whole perspective on bodies and the world and sickness and death is different. I've used her death against death. I see people believing they are bodies, when it's been shown to me that people are not bodies. I see people fearing the body's vulnerabilities, when it's been shown to me that this is because they think they are bodies. The whole culture of body preservation and trying to stop people being sick is a joke. And even in this world the idea of voluntarily going to heaven is illegal and taboo, forcing people to suffer horrible conditions until they "naturally" snuff it.

I know this sounds a bit potentially anti-miraculous but, the hard lesson has actually been to let someone die and to stop fighting it. It was actually less spiritual and much more psychologically unhealthy to believe someone was a body and to be constantly worried for their safety and fearing for their life. What dies is not even a real thing, its not the person, and they cannot die. What dies is a lie, and death is a lie, and the whole basis for avoiding it is a lie.

So now I am much more flippant. Not to say like, okay, go ahead and die on purpose just so you can realize that being in heaven is totally amazing. Because we are still using bodies to learn shit. But in the big picture souls don't give a shit about the body really, they just use them temporarily as learning devices. Then they throw them in the trash. In and of themselves they are worthless junk. They are nothing. They are not people and they are not life.

My view now is much more aligned with my wife's view, seeing from her perspective and from the vantage point of the bigger picture. Souls coming and going, taking on bodies and then discarding them. Not identifying with them. Not falling into the trap of believing they are people, or the nightmare of fear that comes from that. My fear of death has melted because a) dying and going to heaven is wonderful and b) I can't die. Just as my wife can't die.

I've lifted up out of the body-identified body-worshipping death-avoiding culture of the world. Avoidance of death is definitely the same thing as promoting it. Nothing real can be threatened. The whole problem of the world is people believing they are a body and not knowing they are spirit, which results in a nightmare of danger and threat and attack and vulnerability. Then everyone starts barricading themselves in trying to avoid the bad stuff happening, and the sicknesses set in and the people want it to all go away so they can stay in their bodies forever and never go home to God.

I couldn't care less about stuff dying now. It's everywhere and relentless. It's the way of the world, driven by laws of death. Stuff is dead before it's even born. Everything here is guaranteed to end, to rot and decay and turn to dust. So I say, let it. Fuck it all. Who gives a shit about it anyway. It has no effect whatsoever on our reality as spiritual beings. And trying to stop it happening is madness. But what does it matter when an illusion dies? It really means nothing at all. The death of an illusion means nothing.

No-one who believes that bodies dying means something can work miracles. No-one who believes that a person is really sick can work miracles. No-one who believes that death can actually change the sons of God can work miracles. And no-one who fights against it happening can have any power over it. I had to go through the lesson of associating my beliefs in sickness and death with my wife's body, so that as her body died so too did my beliefs in these things.

I failed to raise the dead or to stop sickness happening, and it was the best thing I could've learned. The lesson is that death doesn't matter. But the key is to let death be what it is, because in truth it is not anything. Surrender the fear of death and let it all go, let it all die, and you'll be free from it. And then maybe you'll be ready to be a miracle worker. To surmount death is to transcend it, and you can't do that while you're resisting it. But letting it be also lets it go, and then you can rise above it and have power over it.

"But time, with its illusions of change and death, wears out the world and all things in it."

"But this you do not see; that you made death, and it is but illusion of an end."

"Behold the body, and you will believe that you are there. ⁴And every body that you look upon reminds you of yourself; your sinfulness, your evil and, above all, your death."

"There is a risk of thinking death is peace, because the world equates the body with the Self which God created."

"And fear, denying love and using pain to prove that God is dead, has shown that death is victor over life. ⁷The body is the Son of God, corruptible in death, as mortal as the Father he has slain."

"The “reality” of death is firmly rooted in the belief that God’s Son is a body."

"This is what death should be; a quiet choice, made joyfully and with a sense of peace, because the body has been kindly used to help the Son of God along the way he goes to God. ²We thank the body, then, for all the service it has given us. ³But we are thankful, too, the need is done to walk the world of limits, and to reach the Christ in hidden forms and clearly seen at most in lovely flashes. ⁴Now we can behold Him without blinders, in the light that we have learned to look upon again."

"False healing rests upon the body’s cure, leaving the cause of illness still unchanged, ready to strike again until it brings a cruel death in seeming victory. ²It can be held at bay a little while, and there can be brief respite as it waits to take its vengeance on the Son of God. ³Yet it cannot be overcome until all faith in it has been laid by, and placed upon God’s substitute for evil dreams; a world in which there is no veil of sin to keep it dark and comfortless. ⁴At last the gate of Heaven opens and God’s Son is free to enter in the home that stands ready to welcome him, and was prepared before time was and still but waits for him."

"The “self” that needs protection is not real. ²The body, valueless and hardly worth the least defense, need merely be perceived as quite apart from you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. ³Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?"

"From here the body can be seen as what it is, and neither less nor more in worth than the extent to which it can be used to liberate God's Son unto is home."