It doesn't matter what you did or how bad it was, it is forgivable. People make mistakes. Sometimes mistakes seem very serious. Sometimes that seems to justify why should feel guilty. Presumably you hurt someone or did something 'wrong'. Well, did anyone come along and tell you, you know what, even though you did this and you maybe even meant it, you're still unconditionally lovable? Did anyone remind you, so that even you yourself would believe it, that you're lovable in spite of what you did, and that you are permitted to forgive yourself, even if other people don't forgive you?
This society we live in, coupled with the 'ego' in each person, has a very skewed and ridiculous idea of how you should feel when you make a mistake. Especially if people in your past punished you for making mistakes instead of educating you or teaching you of your unconditional lovability.
For example when someone does something wrong, most people would find that person guilty and judge them. And even the person themselves - you in this case - would even agree with them that you did something wrong and therefore 'should' be guilty, like you are supposed to suffer. But why?
The whole purpose of this guilty suffering is to try to atone, to make up for, what you think you did. So supposedly, your 'offering' of guilt, and your wallowing in guilt and shame, is supposed to be some form of compensation. It's as if, you have too suffer 600 days of guilt to make up for the 600 units of sin that you committed. And during that time, you are not allowed to be loved or forgiven. And even you agree to this. You agree that you are unworthy of forgiveness or love, and that you deserve some kind of punishment.
So then you go around being guilty, believing that you're supposed to be, that you deserve to, and that you should especially show everyone else how guilty you are, so that you'll burn off the karma or whatever BS that you think you deserve. And only after you've 'done enough time' like this, might you be allowed to let it go and be forgiven - i.e. pardoned, by the very same people who accused you of sin and who held you in condemnation.
So really guilt is actually your attempt to give a gift to other people, an offering, to make up for whatever crappy mistake you made. Like, somehow if you suffer enough other people will be pleased. You actually believe this lie. It's an egotistical lie and not at all mature. But because of this dynamic, most people actually believe that being guilty for doing something wrong is the same thing as caring about the people that you did it to, and that it is a way of showing that you are making it up to them - that you love them, by giving them what they seem to want. It seems they want guilt from you, and that giving it to them is making it up to them. It's ridiculous. And so in your mind, guilt = love. This is grossly mistaken.
Guilt is not love. Nobody in the entire history of the world has ever truly benefited from anyone being guilty for a mistake. Ever. The only thing that's happened is this.... the whole world was doing perfectly fine, you came along and did something wrong which was attack #1, and then to make up for it, you went ahead and moped around in guilt and negative self pity for 15 years which consequently actually brings everyone else down, lowers everyone's mood, removes a loving contributor from society, and is therefore attack #2 on those same people. Both doing things wrong and feeling guilty for it are attacks of unlove which require a RESTORATION of love to make up for it. And neither of these attacks improve the state of the world for anyone concerned.
If society was more mature and recognized that mistakes call for forgiveness, not punishment, they would also recognize that it is in everyone's best interests that you return to LOVE after you make a mistake, not guilt. Guilt is the opposite of love. If what you've done in your mistake is bring everyone down, then your true 'atoning' for this and making it up to everyone, is to reclaim your innocence, forgive yourself and everyone involved, for everyone involved to forgive you, and for you to be lifted up and restored to a mutually shared state of unconditional love. Then you've truly given something back to make up for the error, i.e. you've offered healing, and correction, and 'repentance' for the 'sin' rather than the completely useless offering of being guilty or ashamed. But society is generally not mature like this. Society loves to blame people and judge and condemn and criticize and find people guilty. And maybe you are part of that system.
So your challenge is, do you keep going along with this system of guilt, where you prove time and again that mistakes call for suffering, and that mistakes demand punishment, and that people should not be forgiven for making mistakes... or do you break out of this ridiculous system and become a leader, a shining example of what it means to be forgiving and loving, in spite of what anyone else says or thinks about it, to show that there is a better way for people to treat each other and that just as you deserve 100% forgiveness for what you did, so does everyone else if they were making mistakes.
So now, if you 'do yourself in', that is not helping anyone. That is just adding another insult to injury. It's cowardly actually. And it's only going to pile on an extra layer of suffering for all involved, not alleviate them from it. You think that they WANT you to suffer and that they want you to be guilty, and maybe they do... and if they do, that's their own egos, that's them being a-holes, that's their lack of maturity, and you should not stand for or accept that. Just because other people find you guilty does not mean you are guilty or that you are not forgivable. Their failure to forgive you is their own choice to choose to believe in guilt and punishment. You do not have to believe that. You can take a higher road.
You have to decide that no matter what anyone else thinks of you or whether anyone is hurt and no matter if you have done something really bad, you have to decide that you are going to choose to be innocent, that you are going to forgive yourself completely, that you are going to claim your own right to be forgiven, and that if nobody else likes it then that's their problem. You have to stand up for yourself. You can't wait for other people to forgive you, they generally are incapable. You deserve to live. You do not deserve to die. You deserve to be completely exonerated.
Know that there is absolutely nothing you can do in this world which is in any way serious enough or bad enough to cause unconditional love to stop loving you, because it loves you no matter what you do or who you are or what mistakes you make. Unconditional love loves you far more than the magnitude of any errors, even if you really really wanted to do something 'bad', it still looks upon you with absolute forgiveness and acceptance, and it passes a judgement on you ALWAYS that you are innocent.
It is not and will not help anyone to punish yourself, or to believe that you deserve it, or to enact it upon yourself on behalf of other people, which is really you doing it to yourself. And you're doing it to yourself only because you have not forgiven yourself, and that's really the main issue. You have to decide to heal and forgive your shame and guilt. You deserve love. You do not deserve to be unhappy for the rest of forever just because you did something wrong. You need to heal from what you did and allow yourself to be worthy of forgiveness.
Know this. Nobody in their truly right mind ever does anything wrong on purpose. To do something wrong you have to be temporarily mistaken and insane, which means you do not know what you're doing, and therefore it is forgivable.
Also know this. Shame is self imposed. And it will cause you to walk around the world feeling like there is a target on your back that everyone can see, that you are super-self conscious all the time and like everyone knows about your little secret sin that you committed. You'll feel like you can never hide enough or get away from it. And you'll start to withdraw from people in order for them not to find out about how evil you are. And eventually you'll become self-destructive and punish yourself because you don't believe you are worthy of love.
Who deserves to be loved and forgiven when they have committed some crime or sin? That's what the collective egotism of society says. That you don't. But the answer is, YOU DO. Your shame is telling you that you don't deserve love and that nobody wants you and nobody accepts you, and that they're justified in that, and that you even agree with them that you should be put to death. YOU agree with it, because YOU are the one who thinks you are unworthy.
You decided that. You need to forgive yourself and change your belief so that it doesn't run you into the ground. You've already suffered waaaaaaay more than you even needed to to begin with. Let yourself off the hook and reclaim your power, your entitlement to be happy, your deserving to be loved and accepted, and brush off anyone who says you have no right. Because if you believe them when the say you have no right, you will believe it yourself, and then you will make darn sure that your life goes to hell.
Ultimately you are your own worst and only enemy. This has nothing to do with anyone else. It's to do with you learning that you can be forgiven even when you make mistakes, that you can be loved even when you don't see to deserve it, and that you can come to accept yourself for doing something unacceptable. That's called learning to be UNCONDITIONAL. Otherwise you are practicing conditional love, conditional acceptance, and conditional forgiveness.
That's the kind of attitude of an egotistical maniac - that you only deserve if it you meet some special conditions or terms or social rules or regulations. You need to rise above conditional love, both for yourself and for others, and that's going to mean that if YOU want to find love for yourself in spite of what you did, then you're also going to have to learn to love other people regardless of what they do. It works both ways. You can't believe in your own innocence unless you believe in other people's innocence too. And you won't be able to accept that you deserve love instead of punishment, unless you believe that other people deserve love instead of punishment. So you need to extend TO others, do unto others as you would have them do to you... be forgiving as much as you want to be forgiven - unconditionally. Be loving as much as you want to be loved, unconditionally.
Nobody deserves to die for making a mistake. Everyone deserves to live and be happy and enjoy life and be loved forever regardless, by a love that is so full and whole and strong and unconditionally that it doesn't even blink an eye when you make a mistake, it just keeps on loving you endlessly. Can you handle that? Total endless love? That's what God has to offer.
When a situation presents itself, on a physical level, with signs and symptoms and effects that you can see and touch, it seems to be real to you. If you do not overlook it, they form evidence and proof that something seems to be going wrong. On the basis of this you can't help but go into fear as a logical consequence. If the problem is real, you should be concerned.
What then happens is you'll start going into the "I have to do something about it" mode. This compulsion will arise as a natural logical consequence, following on from the belief that the problem is real. If it's real, it really needs solving. If it's real, it's seen as a real threat, calling for a real solution.
Before you know it, you'll be launching into a tirade of all the things that you thin should happen, need to happen, should be done, that other people should be doing, etc, in order to "save" the situation. And this will take the form of what appears to be genuine concern, caring, wanting to help, trying to fix, compelling others to act, trying to get something to be done about it, a sense or urgency and demand and even anger in the name of getting someone to solve it.
While on the surface this will look and feel like some fervent effort to help, and even if it might bring what many would consider forms of assistance and magical solutions that many would consider a resolution, this performance of drama and urgency is heavily laden with attack. If a person were totally fine and nothing were going wrong, and you were expressing these compulsions toward and about them, it would be attacking their invulnerability.
Claiming "something seriously needs to be done about it" relies entirely on the strong belief that there is attack, there is weakness, there is compromise and suffering. You can't have these kind of thoughts without buying into the belief in these things. And the belief in these things IS a form of attack. It contributes to supporting the notion that the problem exists, and you can't be doing that if you are trying to make it go away.
If I say, ok, someone needs to do something about this right now because there's really a major problem, then mixed in with what seems like selfless helpful attitudes is a whole array of undermining, making real, believing in suffering, giving power away, energizing the problem, holding it in a space of attack, and just generally having a negative fearful attitude about it. And fear, even if it seems to be an experience of being under attack, is itself a form of attack.
While it's seemingly true that a person might really "need help", at least on a physical level, through some magical means, and that this help might indeed seem to help the situation, there is also the fact that this help is in part harmful. And it will always have side effects to prove it. These side effects come from the fact that fear is a form of attack, and concern for physical appearances is actually an attempt to reinforce them, making them worse. The person trying to "save" with the ego is actually against salvation.
There is alternative way to help and to save, and it moves the mind and perception in the direction of true healing. Not just the illusion of healing but actual miraculous support. And for this, the entire ego mechanic of making the problem real and coming from fear and urgency has to be let go. It has to be recognized as fake help, a reaction based on the assumption that the problem is real. As fear turns to anger and insistence, it becomes murderous.
It's better that we move into true forgiveness, where we withdraw belief in the problem, we stop fearing by stopping believing that there is even a real problem happening, we move into a mindset of recognizing the person's wholeness and health, we get our mind out of the gutter of ego temptation, we affirm what is really true about them beyond appearances, step back and allow the Holy Spirit to heal, and dismantle the artificial forms of salvation that were making the problem worse.
In this we undo, take away, cancel, reverse, disbelieve, disempower, disappear, vanish and generally make non-existent the problem. There is no real problem. There is no real suffering. There is nothing real going on here that calls for serious reactions and actions. This stepping back has a power in it far greater and able to actually heal and correct the signs and symptoms and effects, than the measly magical efforts that were an attempt to extend fear. By NOT supporting the existence of the situation, you weaken it and move it towards undoing.
We either get to simply react to what appears to be happening, as though it were dreamed by someone else. Or we get to express God's Power and assert what IS true and make it so. We are the dreamer of the dream. We can change what we choose to occur in the dream. The power of decision is your own. Choosing what must be is far more powerful than reacting to what appears to have come from an alien will. Paradoxically it's by withholding the ego's outward reactions that your inner light intensifies and shines forth to correct all ills. By not trying to fix, you can truly save.
Everyone is immortal and cannot die. So anything suggesting otherwise MUST be an illusion and not a reality. Any sign or symptom MUST be a disguise, a lie, a mistake and is correctable. There can be no suffering in God because it's not God's will that you suffer. Only the truth is true and nothing else is true.
The thing about idol worship, is that it puts you down.
You can't put someone or something up on a pedestal without diminishing your own value.
Jesus speaks to this many times in ACIM where, for example, we give a gift to another person that we think they 'deserve' or are 'worthy of' and this values them at equality with that gift, and so basically says "you're only worth a box of chocolates".
And our society is actually quite hell bent on putting things up on pedestals, making us chase after objects and possessions and statuses that we seem to exalt 'above us' to make them seem special. All the while making those idols hared to reach and kept apart, in order to give them their appeal and addictive qualities. But if they are special and golden, it's only because we're not.
"We are not worthy" comes to mind, as an idol-worshipping mantra.
So all of industry is pushing this idea that you don't deserve the good stuff because you suck, and yet you should want the good stuff - the big flat screen Tv's on Black Friday - because then you've claimed a right to such treasures. And somehow they are now cherished toys to radiate and beam about. Because you're not as worthy as a television.
Similarly you can't be in a position where you are putting Jesus up on a pedestal without diminishing your birthright of being His equal. It puts you down and positions you as perpetually separate from Him.
Idolizing anyone or anything is a strange psychological condition where you praise and adore and exalt this thing to be so magnificently above you, hoping that it will somehow shower you with its mighty blessings that you barely deserve, all the while diminishing your sense of worth.
Eventually if the 'leader' that you are following becomes such an icon, you turn into a worthless sheep who can't even recognize their own value. In the ego's reasoning, the best idol worshippers are those who believe they will never allow themselves to take anything away from the idol, and so will sacrifice themselves as an offering, hoping to be ignored and attacked, and to then turn around and thank them for doing it.
Nothing is more worthy than a Child of God, which you are.
I'm learning at the moment that healing of the body is impossible. Healing of the mind is possible, but the body cannot be directly healed.
The mind creates the body.
The mind is constantly projecting the body and basically 'overriding' anything you do `to` the body.
So it's like this... there's a blender in the kitchen and the lid is off and its spinning and there's juices and ooze flying all over the kitchen making a mess. So what do you do. You fetch a mop to clean up the floor. But you don't switch the blender off. So now you are FIGHTING against the cause of the problem by trying to address the symptoms/effects directly. And doing this is basically a way to IGNORE the cause and NOT FIX IT.
You better turn the tap off before you mop up a flood.
You better put the lid on the beehive before you start to address the bee stings.
You better get out of the burning building before you start trying to put the fire out.
The mind needs to be corrected. There's something in the mind that is mistaken.
Now, this is where the ego cackles because it's done a very good job of making it seem like you do not have a mind. The mind seems invisible. Where is it? What does it look like? How does it function? What does it contain? How does it store stuff? How does it get changed? Do you even know any of this? I have no clue.
Yet the mind is where the problem is. In our mind there is something that needs to be corrected because it is mistaken. It believes wrongly. It sees wrongly. It has conditioning that's running against itself. That's where the problem is. And that's what needs to be healed.
So then we go looking for the switch, in the mind, that needs to be flipped, in order to fix the body problem indirectly. But its not the body problem that's an issue. It's the mind-content that projecting onto it. Belief in the body being real. Belief in sickness. Use of disease as a defense. Use of lack and rejection as a defense. What's going on in the mind that needs to change in order to be healed?
The secret of salvation tells us that we are doing everything to ourselves, but this is often used only to try to "re-frame" the stuff we thought other people were doing to us. If we open it up, there's a bigger picture here.
It's really actually about our RELATIONSHIP with God and with ourselves and our brothers.
We need to first be clear God is always loving. He does not attack, hurt, damage, threaten, reject, abandon, inflict pain and sickness and death, make anyone afraid, nor does he produce any form of unhappiness. He is continually constantly perfect and holy and innocent and pure and kind.
With that in mind, look then at what you are experiencing in your RELATIONSHIP with God. It is easy in ego to believe that God has abandoned you, God is a dangerous threat, God is out to kill you, God wants revenge etc, because the ego has misinterpreted God and tried to turn him into an evil monster.
The reason for that is that if you can make out that God is the one who DID SIN, and who is responsible for making hell, then you can disown it and hide the fact that He absolutely DID NOT do that. He becomes a convenient scapegoat and decoy to disguise your own sinfulness.
So if we recognize what God really is like, and realize He cannot possibly be the one making our lives hell, upsetting us, making us suffer, etc.... then it must be us. And this is a turning point because now you start to own up to the fact that YOU are the one making your life a living hell.
It's really you that tried to abandon and reject God. It's you that tried to sin against Him. It's you that left Heaven. It's you that threw away everything He gave you. It's you that turned away and sought something more. It's you that is actively pushing Him away. Jesus also says "You attack the real world every second of every day."
Indeed we made an entire world as an attack on God. This world was made as a defense AGAINST God, to shut him out and thus sever our relationship with Him. To hide in form and bodies trying to disguise who and what we are, so that He isn't part of our lives any more. Like holding a major grudge, we wanted nothing to do with Him. We wanted him dead.
It wasn't God that did this. God didn't make an attack planet. He does not attack us WITH the planet or WITH bodies or through sickness and suffering. He is not responsible for wars and murders and all manner of vile things. It's not even remotely His doing at all. God CANNOT do these things, He is utterly incapable of sin, and would never EVER attack you. You are part of Him, and He would be insane if He were to attack Himself.
So you then realize, as clearly as possible, that YOU are the one who has "done this to yourself". You have been hiding from God, rejecting God, abandoning God, attacking God, resisting God, not wanting God, fearing God, trying to make God sick and dead, speaking against God, and trying to live without God. That's your doing, not His, and it's not His will for you.
When you can own that, you can also then decide to choose again. And this is the major theme in the course. You can make a different decision and always be free and capable of returning to a loving relationship with God, in which you share everything and are fully open to Him being in you and with you. God wants that, because from His perspective, He has done nothing but continually love you. And it's just you who has been bearing completely unfounded grudges against Him.
This is why in a sense you need to "forgive God" of what you think He is responsible for, or what you think He "did" (sin), recognizing that He DID NOT do that, and HE is still innocent. But you have to go even further to then also forgive yourself. It's not enough JUST to recognize that God isn't the guilty party. You MUST also undo your own guilt and belief in real sin, that "you really did it, not God."
God knows you have not actually really done anything sinful at all. You have never attacked Him, hurt Him, damaged Him, upset Him, threatened Him, made Him sick or dead, or indeed affected or changed Him even in the tiniest of ways. And the whole authority problem was your attempt to believe you could, or had. Yet you cannot change God, period. Ever. And He still loves you. For-ever.
So His INVITATION, through the Holy Spirit, the "call to return", is merely asking you to come to your senses and accept the truth instead of what you THINK you did to God. Recognize how HE sees you. Recognize and reclaim your innocence. Laugh at the idea that you could ever sin. And thus return to relating TO Him from the same love that He relates to you.
This is what the journey Home is all about. Repairing your sense of a broken relationship with God, and thus with your Self, and with your Divine Brothers. Developing TRUST in Him again, as someone you can have a meaningful and SAFE relationship with. Opening up to re-discovering what He is really LIKE. Opening yourself to RECEIVE every gift that you temporarily shelved, including miracles.
It's a relief to really recognize that the only thing coming between you and God, between you and total happiness and peace and love, is the "hurt relationship" stuff BETWEEN you, that YOU put in place, and YOU can undo. Really, even if you ignore having to deal with other people, or with the body, or the world, the SOLE (soul) issue is your connection with God. First and foremost. And if you seek first the Kingdom of God, the way is made straight. All other relationships will fall into place when you get yourself "right with God."
Love God again. Job done.
I've seen recently a new perspective on the healing of self and others.
I noticed that as I was helping a person to realise that they had been hurting themselves, that they were making themselves guilty, and that they deserved love, I also felt a greater love within myself. I was becoming healed as I conveyed to the other person how much they deserved to be healed.
I hadn't experienced this much before, probably because I hadn't focused on how someone else needed help with their own self-attack. The more it became clear to me that they were hurting themselves, and that they deserved better, I felt better myself.
This kind of turned a key in my mind and is now causing me to see people differently. I recognise now that we are all created equal and perfect in Christ, we have temporarily fallen into self destruction, and now we are attempting to return. This means that it can appear someone is evil, sinful, guilty, wrong etc, but this is only a kind of self-denial, a sickness they have in which they are attacking themselves. And it has nothing to do with anyone else, or the world.
I think that to see this clearly you have to not be confused about who is attacking who. When we're in ego and filled with our own guilt, an unhealed healer, we keep getting lost in the projections of others, taking things personally, and don't perceive that they're doing something to themselves. It takes the removal of enough self destruction within oneself, to be able to then recognise that someone else deserves what you've given to yourself. As the course says, you can only give the miracles you have received.
Once we take responsibility for what we're doing to ourselves, as in the secret of salvation, and cease to project guilt, and cease to make ourselves guilty in the first place, it becomes a lot clearer that other people's attacks are not against you but against themselves. Everyone's trying to destroy themselves, and only attack others in an attempt to shift the guilt and pain away from themselves. People can't stand the agony of their self inflicted wounds, so they try to give them to others as a coping strategy.
When you can see that someone's main problem isn't other people, being a victim, or anything outside of them - just as it isn't for you, it becomes more obvious that their whole problem is their own self-attitude. They are crucifying and condemning themselves, making themselves out to be sinful and guilty, believing they deserve punishment, fearing that punishment, and trying to kill themselves off.
The key though is the fact that they don't deserve this guilt anymore than you do. The fact that they are christ, temporarily at war with themselves, and are actually in need of healing. To recognise that their true nature is the healed son of God, an immortal being, correctly frames their suffering or projections as self inflicted lies. They've done this to themselves, they don't love themselves, they want to die.
As a healer, who might be perhaps more healed than the patient, you are then in a position to help them. This has to entail not regarding the surface appearance of their projected guilt as true, looking past it to finding an innocent person inside, a person who deserves love, a person who is their own worst enemy. If you are more healed, you are able to look past the appearance and illusion of their ego and see them as in need of healing. The course calls it "calling out for love". Certainly they are in need of love because they don't love themselves.
Helping someone to recognise that they are doing this to themselves, that they are making themselves guilty, that they are accusing themselves of things they have not done, and assisting them to learn to recognise their innocence and worth, is an act of healing. It moves your mind closer to the lovable being that is inside of them, a lovable being who temporarily denies its value. And as you help point them toward their lovability, you can't help but find that you are pointing yourself toward your own. As such the healing of your brother becomes the healing of yourself, and both of you are healed at the same time.
I think the main difference or shift for me has been to not see people as their surface appearance, their ego, their body, their sickness, and instead to regard them as immortal christ beings who are not loving themselves enough. Their mind is split because they are denying the truth about themselves. They project because they've put themselves into pain. They need to be resurrected and restored to their natural condition of wholeness.
A person's ego condition is nothing more than self attack, and all attack is self attack. The only remedy needed is to stop them from attacking themselves. Helping them to love themselves helps you to love yourself. Shining a light of love into their minds heals your own.
This enlightens me to realise also that people who might on the surface appear to have ego, be evil, sinful, criminal, hateful, murderous etc, are just as much victims of themselves and in need of love. It doesn't even matter how far gone someone is, how twisted and aggressive, how abusive and dark, everyone is deserving of God's love and is in need of healing. Everyone has the potential to transform into a fully integrated christ being, fully loving and fully loved, fully alive and never again to die.
"A miracle is a reversal of the physical order because it brings more love to the giver AND the receiver."
"Miracles are a form of healing. They supply a lack, and are performed by those who have more for those who have less."
"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH. The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."
"To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember."
Someone who is in their right mind, who is sane, and who is correct, and who is not believing illusions, has a whole mind and recognizes what is true.
Their mind is filled with love because love is the quality of what is natural and correct. A natural mind, or being miracle minded, is a state of correct accurate perception. It's an awareness of the truth and a willingness to accept it.
If a person makes a mistake, produces an error, or slips into a fantasy, in which the truth is mistaken for something else, they go into illusions. Their mind has become incorrect. This is simply a mistake, an error they are making. It is not a sin.
In this state, the "curriculum" now becomes to "learn love" again. The aim is to restore the mind to its wholeness, to return to sanity, to regain right mindedness, and to recognize what is true. The only thing the student needs is the correction of the mistake.
A loving teacher, such as the Holy Spirit, recognizes that the student has simply made a mistake in their understanding or grasp of the truth, or what is real, and therefore needs a simple correction.This loving teacher offers and provides correction in a loving and gentle manner, which does not dwell on the error or make the student out to be sinful for making it, and especially He does not move into inducing guilt for having made a mistake. He is also not deceived by the illusion. He recognizes that all mistakes are simply innocent mistakes which do not call for any kind of punishment.
True correction, to such a teacher, is to restore the sanity of the mind. To return the mind to a loving condition. The curriculum thus is to re-learn love, and to accept what is true. To reintegrate the REAL ANSWER to correct the wrong one. And this real answers corrects the false conclusion which the student came to.
In order for the student to be corrected, they have to move upwards, back into the truth and into love. They have to become the truth and the love in order to BE correct. To be as God intended. To be real. They must become part of the atonement itself.
The movement away from the truth placed the student into a state of mistakenness, and since this seemed to be an investment in LACK of love, the correction is actually the SUPPLY of the lack of love to the student.
In other words, punishing the student for a mistake will not move them into a loving state. It will not correct them. What they need is to be treated with love and gentleness, and healed. The loving teacher needs to show the student a larger truth, a light, which correctly frames the mistake they made AS a mistake and not a true sin, so that they can SEE what the truth really is.
Upon seeing and recognizing the truth, the student can acknowledge it and move into it, accepting atonement. Their mind becomes whole again and they are restored to sanity and to love.
A miracle therefore, is the blessing of love and forgiveness given by the loving teacher, which could be any teacher of God, which recognizes the sinless innocence of the student, the fact they are temporarily mistaken, the recognition of the truth, and the offering of what the truth is. The truth is offered by being GIVEN to the student through an expression of love.
The truth, or love, must actually be GIVEN by the teacher, TO the student, or from the giver to the receiver, so that the student can HAVE what they were missing. The student must RECEIVE the love, the correction, allowing it to heal their mind and perception.
That which transfers from above to below, from "those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less", since "miracles supply a lack", is a blessing of love and life and clarity and power, which corrects the mind of the student and clarifies what is true. In this sense, a miracle falls like a drop fo healing rain from those who are closer to heaven, down, onto those who need resurrection, bring them back to life. We can thus say that ALL miracles raise the dead.
This is why a miracle can correct a mistake in the mind, undo level confusion, resurrect the dead, raise the level of communication, unite brothers, and intervene for their holiness. It is a blessing, an emitting of life and power, which is bestowed upon someone and shone into their mind, so that the person is reminded of what is true and awareness of light increases. Miracles correct the mistakes the student was making by shining a light which enlightens their mind.
"Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."
"The miracle does not awaken you, but merely shows you who the DREAMER is."
"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE."
"A miracle is a correction introduced into false thinking by me. It acts as a catalyst, breaking up erroneous perception and reorganizing it properly. This places you under the Atonement principle, where perception is healed."
"undoing fear is an essential part of the miracle.
"Miracles are healing because they supply a lack; they are performed by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less."
"Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love."
"Miracles are a universal blessing from God"
"Miracles bear witness to truth."
"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service you can render to another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself.""Miracles rearrange perception and place all levels in true perspective. This is healing because sickness comes from confusing the levels."
"I inspire all miracles, which are really intercessions. They intercede for your holiness and make your perceptions holy.""Miracles restore the mind to its fullness. By atoning for lack they establish perfect protection. The spirit's strength leaves no room for intrusions."
"The miracle dissolves error because the Holy Spirit identifies error as false or unreal. This is the same as saying that by perceiving light, darkness automatically disappears."
"A major contribution of miracles is their strength in releasing you from your false sense of isolation, deprivation and lack.""Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind, or a state of miracle-readiness."
"The miracle compares what you have made with creation, accepting what is in accord with it as true, and rejecting what is out of accord as false."
If we are really trying not to be racist, then we really need to recognize that people are equal regardless of their body shapes or sizes or colors right? And this means regarding people as NOT bodies. Because the only way to say that all skin colors are equal is to say that people are not their skin colors. Which leads to recognizing that people are not their bodies. We can't be claiming to be less racist by locking people into their bodies, making their skin color real and important, and then trying to transcend these differences. Coexisting differences is an illusion of peace, and skin color should not matter at all.
The only way that life matters, that all lives matter, is when life is recognized as not a body. Only by recognizing that people are spirit, not bodies, can there be equality. Bodies were made specifically to mis-represent every single person who has one, and to set them apart, and make them look different, and therefore make them fundamentally at war with each other. Only when there are no bodies or when bodies are completely overlooked and not part of what a person is, can there be a true respect for every person.
We should not be aiming for trying to isolate a group of persons based on body types, in the name of trying to make those body types matter. No body types matter. The body is nothing. It is an illusion in a dream. Confusing people with their bodies is mental illness, given that they are not bodies at all. Failing to look past a skin color is a faulty perception based on an unforgiving attitude. To really see a person you have to look past the body entirely.
The body was made to imprison people and to make them out to be something they are not. It was made to attack with. It was made for separating people off based on appearances. All of that has to be overlooked if there is to be true justice and recognition of people's sacredness as spiritual beings. Making certain kinds of bodies matter is really just another ego protest, protesting against its own attacks, having made bodies to make people not matter in the first place, to try to convince us that bodies are important. So long as bodies are the focus, no lives matter at all.
Unforgiving police officers or unforgiving rioters or unforgiving onlookers are all part of the same ego equation of believing mistakenly that people are physical objects. Seeing people that way can only inspire conflict because all physical objects conflict. Spacetime itself was made for that purpose. Racism will not ever end so long as people see each other as physical objects and therefore make the differences real and make it impossible to overlook them. You cannot see difference and equality at the same time.
Only beyond bodies is it possible that we all be totally equal and one and united and whole and recognized and respected. Don't fall for the illusion that upholding certain body types is spiritual. Identifying people as any kind of body is an attack on their true nature, regardless of the skin color or shape or size or persuasion or gender. Bodies are not real. People matter, bodies do not.
"At no time does the body really exist."
"The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist."
"The body is a dream."
"You made the body in attempting to deceive yourself."
"The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards."
"God did not create the body."
What does it mean that you are not the body? It's not what you think.
What you are, is whole, within. Like you are this little orb of light which contains the whole of God.
As a whole self, you increase by extending and creating.
When the separation idea was introduced, it was suggested that there was something separate from you or outside of you, or indeed that you were separate and outside of yourself.
This was the idea of sin, and it ultimately led to the invention of the body through OUTWARD PROJECTION FROM THE MIND. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards."
The body then is sort of this "shell", really an IDEA, which you have surrounded yourself with as a result of this belief that a) you are outside of yourself and b) there is something separate from your inner self.
It has thus formed a picture which seems to surround and enclose you. This is why when there is a body showing up it seems like you are "inside" it.
But it also then simultaneously seems as if you "are" the body and the stuff inside you is invisible and not yourself. This leads you to build a "bodily identity", to be identified with the body. In more extreme cases the outer bodily self seems to be the ONLY self, and the inner self is very hidden. We need to reverse that.
So the part of your mind that you split off and think of as separate from your inner self, forms a fake identity composed of a body image, which you now think is yourself.
So what happens when you stop having a split mind?
What is the purpose of saying "I am not a body I am free"?
The purpose is not to deny the body. It is not to identify yourself as being that which is inside the body while the outer bodily image remains either. It is not to disassociate from the body. It is not to escape the body. And it is not to think of yourself as "only mind and not a body."
The state you are meant to be returning to, is a state in which there is no separation in you, there is no sense of something having been split off as outside of you, and therefore of being whole "within" yourself. When you do that, what is going to happen to the body which was "outside you"? How is it going to even show up if there is no part of you that identifies AS IT because there is no part of you which exists outside of your inner self?
IT IS GOING TO DISAPPEAR.
It was only showing up there because your inner self projected it (the idea of sin projected outward) and it is only showing up because part of you believed that you were outside of yourself.
Your sense of identity formed a "bodily identity" or an identification not just with a body but AS a body. You can also think of it as an "external self". And however the mind is relating to its own identity, that is how it shows up. If the mind is thinking that it has separation in it, ie walls, it will materialize a body! And yet if the mind does not believe it has any walls within itself, the body will disappear because the mind is seeing itself as a WHOLENESS, not a split-off self.
This is also correlates to the creation of sickness. When the mind is more strongly believing that it is separated from itself, split in two and part of itself is outside the inner self, this belief in separation attacks yourself and makes you SICK. And that sickness will now manifest IN, or more accurately, is projected outward AS, a sick-looking body, which is really just a mental image of yourself as sick. The less you believe in separation, therefore, the less your mind is split and the less you believe you ARE an external self, the less your body image will show up as sick, and thus sickness will appear to disappear as well, leaving a "holy" and "immortal" body, just prior to its complete disappearance.
When that externalized identity is returned to your true "inner" identity, the "outer" illusory separate self is not there anymore. It's been integrated into the whole of what you are within. So there is no basis for the body. It has no grounds, no function, no purpose, no reason to be there. SO IT DISAPPEARS. The mind is not seeing itself AS one, it does not believe it has a second identity, so it STOPS PROJECTING THE BODY.
The presence of a body is simply a symptom or side-effect of you believing that you are not pure spirit and therefore you have a separate second identity. Identification "with" the body is nothing more than the strength of your belief that you MUST BE a body, because you must be outside of yourself , having gone "out of your mind."
It's not that the body exists on its own and you happen to "come into it" or incarnate into it or that it was there before you arrived or that it will remain after you leave. If you seem to go through that process of discarding bodies, you will reincarnate, because the discarding process (death) is really an attempt to SEVER yourself from yourself. What that means is, you have tried so hard to DISCONNECT your inner self from the part of you which became "outer", the part which identified with being "a body", and so CUT OFF part of yourself and destroyed it. All death occurs to the "projected self", not the inner self. And all death is just a testimony to how much SEPARATION and therefore false identification there was within you. And that mental state REMAINS, and will CAUSE ANOTHER BODY to be desired and projected.
That's what causes all death. Death is the self-attack of the inner self upon the outer self. Or to put it another way, what we think of as "mind" seems to be the inner self only, and we say that this mind-self attacks the body self, but the body self is actually another PART of your mind which is temporarily identified with being an external illusion. So one part of mind is attacking another part of mind. Mind is not just the part of you that is INNER, and it is not just the part of you which is INSIDE the body.
The body IS WITHIN THE MIND and it is an image being thought of, projected, imagined WITHIN the mind as a whole. One part of mind attacks the other and tries to destroy it, and that results in the illusory sickness and death of that other part of mind, but does not heal the desire to attack, and so the mind "makes" another body (reincarnation) and proceeds to attack it again. This will keep on happening until both parts of mind are rejoined as one so that there is no separation, then there will be no more bodies materializing as ideas of sin.
So then having destroyed part of yourself and yet still believing your identity WAS the outer self, your inner self is still projecting and split and MUST manifest another body. And this forms the basis for reincarnation - that you still believe you are a body and must have a body and so this magnetizes you to a body or causes one to materialize. YOU put your body into your mother's womb and YOU grow it and YOU cause it to show up the way it shows up. Sperm and egg coming together does NOT CAUSE bodies to appear. It is an illusion. Mind causes bodies to appear and arranges FAKE JOINING on an ego level (which must be an illusion of joining) to pretend that you are inherited from the dream.
So death is not a way to leave the dream, or to heal separation. It cannot accomplish this because it means that you simply attacked part of yourself with hatred and tried to destroy it and had identified strongly with "being a body" at least in part. The only way out of the dream is NOT THROUGH DEATH. "The dream is not left by death but by truth."
The dream is only left by truth by re-integrating the part of you which you split off and associated with a body, and returning its identity to be identified with the INNER self which remains hidden behind the body or seemingly trapped inside the body invisibly. You do not withdraw FROM the body, you withdraw the body itself. You withdraw belief in BEING a body. You must not try to "separate yourself from the body"!
If you do that all you're doing is adding denial on top of denial. Denial of the body is an unworthy form of denial - that's what this means. If you believe the body exists ON ITS OWN and HAS ITS OWN WILL and you then try to get away from it to "be only mind", you are SEPARATING YOURSELF MORE. You are trying to separate yourself off from the separate self which you already split off from yourself, adding another whole layer of denial and separation. This will make you more sick. The body in a sense should be embraced but only up to the point where you recognize that you are projecting it and therefore can un-project it through its PROPER UNDOING, by reversing your belief in separation. Without a belief in separation, there is no sin, and therefore sin cannot be made flesh and projected outward. No more body.
You withdraw the PROJECTION of the body through re-owning yourself and identifying with Spirit. This does NOT mean that the body exist at the same time as the spirit. It does NOT mean that the body WILL REMAIN once you have shifted identity to being ONLY spirit. It means the body MUST DISAPPEAR. It is only showing up because it is what you believe about your identity and what you think you are. When your mind is no longer believing that you are a body AT ALL and is completely whole and healed and no longer split or divided or separated off, there is no NEED for a body, no BELIEF in a body, no PROJECTION of a body, and your mind will STOP MAKING ONE.
That is when you are free. Not free of a body that carries on existing. Not free through deathin which the body CONTINUES. Not free because you laid the body down to die and then headed on over to God's party. But simply free of MAKING bodies at all. If you want to be free of reincarnation, and free of DEATH, you MUST STOP BELIEVING YOU ARE SEPARATE FROM YOURSELF, which means you must stop believing you are, or need to be, a body. And thus you will stop making bodies and your body will disappear entirely.
Doing this alleviates all signs of sickness and makes the body temporarily invulnerable and useful only as a communication device. Just prior to the body disappearing completely, it becomes a sign of immortality. Jesus writes about this clearly here:
"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."
And here...
"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. 2 Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. 3 Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies. 4 Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. 5 Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. 6 When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. 7 The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body's condition."
Note that when he says "laid by" here he is not talking about making it die and laying it on the ground and letting it rot while you whiz off to heaven. He means literally, you stop making it, as evidenced by his statements about how he did exactly that.
Jesus already accomplished and demonstrated this through the PROPER UNDOING OF THE BODY through truth and the DISSOLVING of it through spirit identification, not "escape" from it through death or separation or denial or thinking that it still exist OR making it still exist. We are responsible for making ourselves show up as bodies, WE made the body with our mind and can un-make it! We made all sickness, all death, and the body itself. " "You made sickness and death and can therefore abolish both."
Here is what Jesus has to say about this whole process, which ultimately is the completion of the atonement and the RESURRECTION.... and guess what... not just the disappearing of the body, but the disappearing of THE WORLD (this universe), which is only showing up based on the exact same principle of mind believing in separation, and MUST DISAPPEAR when mind has returned to spirit identification.
""My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. The last one had gone. It was laid in the tomb, but there was nothing left to bury. It did not disintegrate because the unreal cannot die. It merely became what it always was. And that is what "rolling the stone away" means. 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.
"I did assume a human form with human attributes afterwards, to speak to those who were to prove the body’s worthlessness to the world. This has been much misunderstood. I came to tell them that death is illusion, and the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. They did not understand. But now I talk to you and give you the same message. The death of an illusion means nothing. It disappears when you awaken and decide to dream no more. And you still do have the power to make this decision as I did.
"God holds out His hand to His Son to help him rise and return to Him. I can help because the world is illusion, and I have overcome the world. Look past the tomb, the body, the illusion. Have faith in nothing but the spirit and the guidance God gives you. He could not have created the body because it is a limit. He must have created the spirit because it is immortal. Can those who are created like Him be limited? The body is the symbol of the world. Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven. But I can take you there any time that you choose. Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does so. And then, and then — I cannot speak of that.
"A body can not stay without illusion and the last one to be overcome is death. This is the message of the crucifixion; There is no order of difficulties in miracles. This is the message of the resurrection: Illusions are illusions. Truth is true. Illusions vanish. Only truth remains.
"These lessons needed to be taught but once, for when the stone of death is rolled away, what can be seen but an empty tomb? And that is what you see who follow me into the sunlight and away from death, past all illusions, on to Heaven’s gate, where God will come Himself to take you home"
Last night I was talking with Jesus about letting go, and I was thinking the words "I need to surrender" ....and Jesus interjected and changed the word 'surrender' to "let go" .... so then I repeated the modified words. ... I need to let go, except Jesus again interjected and added on some words.... "trying to be God".
And then I was stunned. The realization that I was trying to be God seemed to 'fit' my ego exactly, not just sending me off on some other ego tangent or train of thought, but actually kind of 'disabling' my entire ego for a moment. I felt like I had absolutely no come-back, and no defense. It was true. I felt in myself not just a kind of mental unmasking of myself, but even right down into my torso, as if I've just been stripped bare of all defenses and could do nothing but be stunned from head to toe.
It seemed brilliant, on Jesus's part, to make this observation. The ego - my ego - our egos - really are trying to be God. Our attempt to separate ourselves off form God and to then have various characteristics that would normally be God's characteristics, but without Him, is TOTALLY us trying to be God.
I believe I am God when I am in charge, in control, or having dominion over the world. I believe I'm God by making myself right about things. I believe I'm God by making decisions on my own. I believe I'm God by believing that I know stuff and am informed enough to direct outcomes. I believe I'm God when I think this is 'my own life' and that I am the one who is in charge of it. But it seems more fundamental than this even. It runs to the ego's core.
The ego is literally trying to 'take over' and 'take away from God' everything that God is. It wants to take away God's power, God's fullness, God's mind, God's reality, God's thought system, God's heart, God's eternal life, everything. It wants God not to have it, which means a choice for death, but at the same time, it wants to have all of this for itself without any of the 'conditions' that come with these things - the conditions of Heaven. Or real responsibility.
So I am trying to be God. Holy shit. This doesn't just speak to one portion of 'my life' but to ALL of it. I need to let go of trying to be God. We all do. Can you feel how much of your ego self just 'drops away' when you say this?
I let go of trying to be God.
All the uptight tension and control and fear and attack and manipulation and engagement with stories just falls away when we admit this. And when we do let go of trying to do this... in surrender, and allow God to be God, and allow ourselves to be His creation (not the other way around), the authority problem melts with it.
The authority problem is us attempting to be God, which causes us to be at war with God, and in constant struggles. Letting go of trying to be the one who is God lets go of all of that role-play... it is a heavenly surrender.