"Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly." UrW132L4

It cannot be that the physical world was merely 'made' ahead of time, and that we then entered into it as passive spectators. This would have to mean that everything about it was set up beforehand, meaning the entire thing is destined and has a fixed outcome. It would be then impossible to change it because it would be proverbially "set in stone".

The fact that it's been proven many times over that mind can influence the body, that psychokinesis exists, that the mind can change physical matter, that mind can produce and heal sickness etc, clearly shows that this so-called "world" is in an elastic state of flux and redefinement. That we are in effect projecting it NOW, that mind can influence it at any time, and that its state and conditions are not fixed.

It may be true that mind originally did dream of this universe in general and set things in motion, but the fact still remains that the same mind which dreamed it to begin with is continuing to operate in and upon it. Meaning that mind can still alter its dream, even if it's an ancient dream.

In a sense this indicates that the two opposing views - that we just perceive an existing world in different ways, or that we're literally making the world right now, are actually both true. The same mind that made bodies, is continuing to make bodies, and to alter them. The mind that made the sun and the stars is continuing to influence them. And that same mind can end the world in the blink of an eye.

Since we are the dreamer of the dream, even if we established an initial dream, we are still dreaming it, and thus changing it. As Jesus says in the course, in seemingly contradictory terms, you should change your mind ABOUT the world because your perception OF it can vary, BUT at the same time, by doing so, the whole world must change. Because the world is an effect of the mind.

Long story short, we made the world, seemingly in an ancient past, but we're still working on making it and re-making it. We can change how we perceive it, as though it is objective, but it is also still subjective, and mind can still change it.

You could say that the idea of the world being fixed and predestined arises from a sleeping mind that is seeming to dream of arriving in a pre-existing world, which it is at the effect of. You could also say that a more awakened mind comes to the awareness that it is presently dreaming it, can more lucidly change its dream, and can wake up from sleep entirely.

Thus the idea that our job is only to re-perceive an objective world is a closed-minded false-perception based view in which we see ourselves as victims and not causal. And in this view it seems (unforgivingly) that the world is "already there" and the best we can do is change what we "make of" it.

But as we awaken to the power of God in us, we also re-access the original ability which, temporarily unconsciously, was projecting the world to begin with, and then was can master that power and modify the projection, literally changing the world of matter. This then isn't merely a case of changing what we make of it, but of what we make it literally be.

A deeply sleeping mind believes the world is real and objective and that its only salvation is to change its interpretation of the world. Which leads to keeping the world and regarding it as God's creation. In this view we are merely passive powerless observers who have no influence on anything, living out a mindless "script" and having no freedom of thought or effect to change anything.

But a more awakened mind recognises the world is a dream, not God's handiwork, and instead becomes masterful over the dreaming process, to dream in ways the less awakened would consider "miraculous." Gaining access to the mind's ability to orchestrate the dream, to modify bodies, to move mountains, and to radically break with all the laws of physics and limitation. Demonstrating that "mind over matter" is the fundamental fact of what puts the world there to begin with.

"You were willing to accept even death to deny your Father. But He would not have it so, and so it is NOT so. You still could not will against Him, and that is why you have no control over the world you made. It is NOT a world of will, because it is governed by the desire to be unlike Him. And this desire IS NOT WILL. The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it." UrT11D10

"You WILL believe that you are helpless prey to forces far beyond your own control, and far more powerful than you. And you WILL think the world you made directs your destiny." UrT21F3

"For, if you think the world you made has power to make you what IT wills, you ARE confusing Son and Father; effect and Source." UrT21D11

"For time YOU made, and time you CAN command. You are no more a slave to time than to the world you made." UrT22C8

"This single lesson does it try to teach again, and still again, and yet once more; - that it is CAUSE and NOT effect. And YOU are ITS effect, and CANNOT be its cause. Thus are you NOT the dreamer, but the DREAM. And so you wander idly in and out of places and events that IT contrives." UrT27I3

"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No-one is AFRAID of them, when he perceives HE MADE THEM UP. The fear was held in place BECAUSE he did not see that he was AUTHOR of the dream, and not a figure IN the dream. He gives HIMSELF the consequences that he dreams he gave his brother." UrT28C7

"You are immortal BECAUSE you are eternal"

You are immortal. Generally that means you live forever without any kind of end, you can never be changed, and you are permanently the same all the time.

You'll then find that any notion of "change" introduces the potential for coming to an end. If you can change or be changed, you could be stopped, interfered with, attacked, damaged, or caused to die.

"This is the world of time, where all things end."

So change of any kind cannot be part of immortality. Which is why changelessness is your real nature, and this is also why you remain still as God created you. You have not changed a single bit since you were created.

This then has to mean that if there is anything that does change, it cannot be a part of you. If there is a body that can change, it cannot be a part of you. If there is a building that can be destroyed, it cannot be real. If there is a planet which can go through seasons, it cannot be real. Any kind of change is a form of death.

It's very simple really. You can just ask yourself if something will last forever. If the answer is no, then it is not a real creation and not a part of God. If it lasts only a little while in time and then changes and then goes away, it cannot be part of creation or of God. Nor can it be God's will.

"Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

Here Jesus simply affirms this by saying that all things which are visible will have an end. Some will last longer than others but ALL of the visible things will have an end. It then doesn't matter how you are looking at the visible things, whether you hate the visible things or love them. ALL of them will come to an end.

This again tells you essentially that if anything is visible, it is not a part of God's kingdom. If it is visible, ie forms of matter, energy, bodies, planets, stars and so on, they will come to an end some day, and therefore cannot be a part of immortal reality. Anything that does not last forever uninterrupted is not a part of God, nor can it be made into a part of God.

There is a world that we made, a world of space-time and of physicality and of forms of matter and objects. These things are visible and will end. They end because of their nature being part of a dream of death. And because of this, they are not a part of God or a part of you. Nor are they a part of heaven.

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

Bottom line, if it's not immortal it doesn't really exist. It's a very simple test for anything. If it's not immortal it's not of God. If it changes it is not of God. If it can be attacked it's not of God. if it goes through a transformation process it is not of God. If it can be born or grows or withers or suffers or dies it is not of God.

It also doesn't matter if you change your perceptions about such things, to see objects in a different light or from a different vantage point. Seeing objects that end in a different way doesn't actually override the fact that they still end.

Just because you are happy it will not make the earth last forever. Just because you are loving it will not stop the seasons from changing. Just because you are peaceful it will not change the falling of leaves when the weather get's cold.

These are still proof that these things are not a part of God's reality. It doesn't matter if you see a unity in these things or a reflection of God in these things, they still behave and act and function in ways that are open to a denial of immortality. If the thing, the object, the matter, the form, the body, the world etc, can in any way ever be modified or changed, then fundamentally it cannot be a part of reality.

This is why "there is no world." This is why "God did not create the body." This is why "the body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist." This is why we withdraw investment in physical sight and open up to a different kind of vision which overlooks/forgives the world. And that the world can BE forgiven is purely because is it an illusion of a world, and not a reality. Only illusions can be overlooked and "a world forgiven cannot last."

We can accept the reality of God's Kingdom, which is to accept God's truth and God's law and God's wholeness. That is the wholeness of the Kingdom of heaven, in which all things live forever and never change. It is not a place where bodies are born and planets spin and stars exhaust their fuel supply. It is not a realm where objects get stuck in crevices and the dust of dead flesh settles on surfaces or where food rots and decays and turns to a corpse. None of these things can be a part of heaven.

Only the immortal is true. Only the immortal is alive. Only the immortal is of God. Only the immortal exists. Everything else is an illusion. Not even what ACIM calls "the real world" will last forever. "Even the real world will vanish from your sight." You cannot convert an illusion into a reality. You cannot turn an unreal world into a real one. Nor can you turn a picture of death into real permanent life.

What lives forever must be created by an immortal creator to live forever from the beginning. What is made in an insane mind out of illusions which intended they die, cannot have eternal life. They have not been created or given immortality and so they do not exist at all. Their illusion of existing is nothing but a deception and the recognition of this fact is enlightenment.

"Only the creations of light are real."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever."

Here's another angle on the problem of regarding ACIM as "non-duality."

In ACIM we're told that God is a creator, and has created sons. You are one of those sons, which means you are a child of God. It means God is your parent. God is the CAUSE of you, and you are an EFFECT. In the separation from God, or "fall of man", there was a rebellion against God being your parent. The sons of God rejected God's causation of them and wanted to reinvent/create themselves.

They developed a problem with God's authority. The wanted to have power over God and to be his equal, instead of being his child. They did not want to be secondary creations, they wanted to be primary. They did not want to be an effect of him, they wanted to be "free from his influence".

This then led to the making of a world of bodies and egos where we would try to reinvent ourselves and deifne what we are, without God. But this means that in order to wake up to reality, to become "one with God", to experience oneness and truth, you have to actually return to a role and function where you are SECOND to God.

It is not about returning to being first, or primary, or God's equal, or having the same function as God. It is not about you going to the top of the mountain and having nothing above you.

In order to get out of hell you have to undo your problem with authority. You can only have a problem with authority if in truth you actually are BELOW God and God is GREATER than you, so that there might be grounds for wanting to overthrow his authority over you.

"recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER."

If you subscribe to a non-duality idea of reality, where you claim to return to oneness, where you claim to be God, where you see yourself as not a fully-created separate being or a "child of God", and where you do not acknowledge God as your father, you are missing a HUGE portion of ACIM's teaching.

ACIM doesn't teach that you are going to just become the oneness and be God and rule reality. It says that you need to accept God as your source, receive your inheritance from him, that you are only what HE has created you to be, that your only function is to EXTEND him, and that you will forever be an EFFECT of him.

This idea of being an effect of God, second to God, is absolutely core in ACIM's metaphysics. There MUST BE a created second being, a child of God, a son of God, in order for there to have ever been a separation ie authority problem in the first place. There could be no rebellion without you being LESS than God, in a sense.

So non-duality doesn't usually accomodate this. Nor does traditional ideas of "its all oneness". It doesn't usually acknowledge that God has created anything, that he has children, that YOU have a parent, or that there is something BIGGER AND GREATER THAN YOU.

But ACIM is telling you that the only way for you to find salvation and return to reality is to accept that God is your father, NOT your equal. You cannot regain your inheritance without accepting that you inherited it FROM God BECAUSE he is your parent. And you cannot resume your role and function in reality as co-creator without acknowledging that God is the FIRST CAUSE and you are SECOND. You are a CO-CREATOR not the PRIMARY creator. God came first.

"Think not HE wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him."

Since for example in Adviata non-duality usually means "there is no second", it is TOTALLY incompatible with ACIM's teaching. It does not acknowledge God having a child, or of you BEING a child. OR that your ultimate role and maximal experience of reality is going to entail you being what SOMEONE ELSE wants you to be. That you are AS GOD created you to be, not what "you chose".

It thus requires humility to accept that God is greater than you and that in ultimate reality you are going to return to a position in which you are NOT FIRST, you are not the prime creator, you are not the all-encompassing source of reality, and you DO NOT MAKE THE RULES.

Non-duality rarely suggests any compatibility with this idea of being a CHILD of God, or of there being any grounds for an authority problem, or a necessity for its undoing. Usually it points to the dissolution of your self, the erasing of God's CHILD, and some kind of lofty return to you being "only God". As if you are the oneness and you are the ultimate. YOU ARE NOT!!!!

God is first, you are second. That is what acceptance of the atonement means. God is your father and he is greater than you, and you're going to have to "suck it up" and accept it instead of wanting to be the central figure and star of the show. You are a secondary being. Not less than God but also not greater, and not equal. You are not equal to ultimate reality. You are a part within it.

To recognize this is to recognize that ACIM cannot be non-duality because it has to accommodate SONS OF GOD in order to accommodate the authority problem AND its proper undoing. You cannot wake up to reality without accepting that you are AN EFFECT of a creator other than yourself, that you did not create yourself, that you are not "God" in this sense, and that your function is to PASS ON what you have RECEIVED from him.

"The extension of God's Being is the Soul's only function."

What you are is given by God and decided by God. You will have to be willing to accept there is a creator GREATER THAN YOU if you want to experience the truth. As such non-duality is generally speaking a problem with the authority of God, because it positions you AS God or AS his equal, and this is inappropriate. It suggests even in some cases that God is dreaming and making death. To say "I am God" is the arrogance of the ego.

Unless you can accept that reality contains you as a second-level creation, you are not listening to what A Course in Miracles is saying. And you are then missing out on the beautiful relaltionship which comes from the recognition that you HAVE A REAL PARENT. Someone who is in fact literally protecting you always, is maintaining you forever, and is making sure that your innocence is permanently guaranteed FOR you. This is not all about "me me me" self-centered non-dualtiy "I will be God" garbage.

Let's say that the entire contents of spacetime is sin. It is an idea of sin. Sin is a lack of love. The world was made as an attack on God, as a sin against him. Let's say that sin is the absence of truth, and so is a false world. Let's say that sin is also insanity, in which the true and the false are swapped and nothing means anything.

And let's say that all of spacetime is therefore a realm of sin, a realm in which everything is always attacked. Because sin is attack. And bodies were made to make attack seem possible. Bodies are the idea of sin, and this includes human and animal and vegetable and mineral and planetary bodies.

It is all sin, and it is sinning all the time. Every time it suggests something impossible has happened, which cannot happen in heaven, it is attempting to provide the proof of sin. Physical matter is "the granite block of sin" which the body's eyes look upon and cannot see past. Sin appears to be irreversible and unsealable, like a permanent crime, stepping ever closer to inevitable death. And death is the wages in sin, in a world where all roads lead to death.

Let's then simply say that the physical world is the idea of sin and of evil, of destruction and death. It is a dream of death and a fantasy of sin being possible. The world is false perception. Flesh and bones were made to sin with. Every atom can attack every other atom and sin against it. Destruction of any kind is sin. And if the mind takes all of this world to be true or real, it has believed in sin instead of innocence.

The function of forgiveness is to forgive the ENTIRE world of spacetime, including all of planet earth and every other planet. It has to be forgiven because it constantly sinning. Every part of it is constantly trying to murder. The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son.

Every part of it sins against the rest and holds sins up before your eyes to testify that sin is real. It is a world of sin. It must be forgiven because it has sinned, and it can be forgiven only because it has sinned. It has offended you and your function now is to recognize it as merely a mistake, an error in judgement, and to release it from your belief that sin is the truth.

The world can be seen in another light, which reframes the sin and regards it as a mistake. Which does not hold the world against itself, despite its continued efforts to induce death. You don't merely need to forgive a murderer, you need to forgive an entire planet of death. An entire solar system and galaxy of death. The world is an attempt to tempt you to believe that sin is reality. Your job is to forgive its sinful nature and let it go.

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant SEEMS to be life. An instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water, and set uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the Son of God stop briefly by, to offer his devotion to death's idols, and then pass on."

"The body's eyes see ONLY form. They cannot see BEYOND what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on error, and NOT see past it. Theirs 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. To this distorted form of vision, the OUTSIDE of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."

"To see a SINLESS body is impossible. For holiness is POSITIVE, and the body is merely neutral. It is NOT sinful, but neither is it sinless."

"The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible."

"Forgiveness is this world's equivalent of Heaven's justice. It translates the world of sin into a simple world"

"Forgiveness turns the world of sin into a world of glory, wonderful to see."

"Except for God's teachers there would be no hope of salvation, for the world of sin would be forever real."

"Sin is belief attack can be projected OUTSIDE the mind where the belief arose. Here is the firm conviction that ideas CAN leave their source made real and meaningful. And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise."

"Let us unite in bringing blessing to the world of sin and death."

"ITS effects are changelessly eternal, BEYOND fear, and PAST the world of sin entirely."

"You brand it sinful, and you hate its acts, judging it evil." "The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought which gave it birth is cherished. When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear, and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well."

"Sin would maintain you MUST be separate. But REASON tells you that this must be WRONG."

"My body, Father, cannot be Your Son. And what is not created cannot be sinful or sinless; neither good nor bad."

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for, it will become to you. Use it 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."

"All that is real proclaims his sinlessness. All that is false proclaims his sins as real."

"In kind forgiveness will the world sparkle and shine, and everything you once thought sinful now will be re-interpreted as part of Heaven."

"What is seen outside must lie beyond forgiveness, for it seems to be forever sinful. Where is hope while sin is seen as outside?" "Who could see the world as dark and sinful when God's Son has come again at last to set it free?"

"Who but the sinful need to be forgiven?"

The simple change that must occur in order to wake up to reality, is a change in premise. If the premise is that this world (earth etc) is real, then everything that happens in the world is real, and is God's will. Because God is the author of reality.

So now everything you see in the world is real and cannot be undone, and cannot be forgiven, and sin is real and death is real and there is no escape from hell. Or more to the point, murder is no longer a sin but is God's blessing.

But if the premise changes from "this world is real" to "this world is a dream", ie is not real, then this changes the entire perspective on the world and what seems to happen in it. EVERYTHING in the world now must take on a new meaning in light of this information, because if the world is NOT real, it changes your ENTIRE relationship to it.

All events ultimately are therefore nowhere, the changes wrought are substanceless, nothing is really causing anything, there is no meaning in the world of itself, it is all just a dream, the whole planet is an illusion, nothing is really being hurt or attacked, all sickness is a lie, death is impossible, and there isn't even really a world here.

That is the simple change in vantage point which ACIM and any spiritual path entails. Ultimately it leads to the simple recognition that only God's reality is real, and this world is NOT God's reality. This world is a dream in which imaginary figures seem to come and go and try to destroy each other. Where lovely illusions come to soften the blow of death, and where everything turns into something it is not.

Either the world is real, or it isn't. If it is real, it cannot be changed or undone, or forgiven or overlooked. You are then required to love death and murder, to look on war as justified and attack as healing. All of hell seems to be heaven to you, as you use it to avoid God and to hide from sanity. If the world is real, God himself ordains its every property, all happenings are his doing, and there is nowhere else to go.

But fortunately the world is not God's doing, nor does it represent him, nor is it anything like him. Fortunately when your mind fully reframes the world as "this is just a dream", it changes the ENTIRE context of the WHOLE universe in which you think you live.

If it is just a dream, nothing here really matters, nothing is really any more difficult or easy than anything else, nothing really means anything more or less than anything else, all senses of separation and difference are illusions, the very form of objects is a fantasy disguise pretending that it is not the same as something else, and everything your body sees is not really there.

It ultimately and simply leads to the fact that there is no world. A world which is just a dream isn't really a world. It's an illusion of a world, held in a mind that is seeming to be asleep a while. When that mind awakens, it does not awaken to the world it was already dreaming of, it stops dreaming it entirely and awakens to God's reality of heaven.

There is really no world here because the world is not real. Anything you take seriously in the world is deception. Any time you buy into it you are falling for temptation. Any time you think someone is a body and refer to their body as their self, you do not see them. Bodies are illusions of life which are not even really alive, or really anything. Everything in a dream world is literally NOTHING pretending to be something.

All things in this world are impossible. It was made to be impossible. There is no permanent solution to anything. There is no escape from problems. There is an endless barrage of attack and strife. Death is waiting inevitably for every single thing that thinks it lives. And everything in the entire cosmos eventually destroys itself. There is no salvation here, no freedom, no real safety, and nothing to gain. It is a tired old world that was ready to rot as soon as you dreamed of living like a mortal.

In truth you are an immortal being in heaven who is simply asleep at the wheel, dreaming of being not mortal. Of being not yourself, being opposite to your God-given nature, pretending to be things you are not, believing false truths, and trying to GIVE reality to a world that isn't real. To a premise that isn't real. A premise that God is dead and you can make of yourself what you will. None of that is possible or true beacuse God means permanence.

There is no world, there is no sickness, there is no suffering, there is no pain, there is no death, there is no cancer, there is no heart disease, there is no war, there is no torture, there is no abuse, there is no attack, there is no sin, there is no guilt, there is no fear, there is no difference, there are no races, there is no earth, there is no solar system, there are no galaxies, there is no sun, there is nothing here whatsoever.

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions 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."

"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No-one is AFRAID of them, when he perceives HE MADE THEM UP. The fear was held in place BECAUSE he did not see that he was AUTHOR of the dream, and not a figure IN the dream. He gives HIMSELF the consequences that he dreams he gave his brother. And it is but this the dream has put together and has offered him, to show him that his wishes have been done. Thus does he fear his OWN attack, but sees it at another's hands. As victim, he is suffering from its effects, but NOT their cause. He authored NOT his own attack, and he is innocent of what he caused."

The ego is sneaky about projecting sin and guilt onto others. If someone else is not really doing anything wrong, it is riskier and perhaps more difficult for you to "unfairly" project your own sin and guilt onto them. If you do, it will appear much more obvious that you are the one doing the attacking, and that it is not called for. This is too "overt". Just picking some random innocent target and attacking it would indeed be vicious, but our ego tends not to do this.

Instead, we lay a trap and lay in wait, trying to find a target. A target is someone who, of their apparent own free will, is sinning on their own. Someone who is digging their own grave. Someone who is hurting, attacking, being at fault, choosing poorly, doing something offensive, believing wrongly, saying harmful words, punishing or whatever. So long as the person is, themselves, seeming to be clearly the one who is sinning.

"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."

Once we see this "proof of sin" in someone else, it becomes a strong temptation. It tempts you to believe it. It almost invites you to agree with it, to see judgement as justified, and to therefore launch an attack which reinforces the person's sinfulness. But this is a slippery slope, even though it's what the ego enjoys as its less overt tactic.

When it's clearly someone else who seems to be wrong, it presents a wonderful opportunity for your own ego. Since all attention is on the other person, and since they appear to be the one who is making things worse for themselves and everyone, your ego takes the "opportunity" to sneak in and USE it for its purposes.

If it can now condemn and accuse the person, based on "what they are doing", it seems completely justified. But the sneaky thing is that you aren't having to "invent" a sin for them to be accused of. They have already provided a nice sin for you to latch onto. All you have to do is "point it out". So now the ego simply seems to be mirroring what the person is already doing, rather than making a "fresh accusation".

By doing this, the attack upon the person becomes disguised. It hides in the darkness of the other person's actions. They were already sinning, so it seems like you're not ADDING anything to them. And so simply by "identifying it" and "pointing it out" and labelling it AS a sin, you appear to be not attacking them at all. But if you step back, you ARE still in fact accusing them of sin still, you are attacking them, you are compounding their own sin, and are being just as judgemental as before.

It's just that, when someone else provides the "material", you seem to not be the one who is "inventing" the sin, so your accusation against them seems invisible. It doesn't stand out from what they are already going. It's like you slip in a little sin of your own hidden by theirs. All the focus is on them, by their own doing, so your ego gets to hide from being the center of attention. It's still attacking but now it seems like you're not doing anything.

This becomes quite risky though, to yourself, because you can become quite blinded by this sleight of hand, even unto yourself as you're doing it. You may not even realize that you have been "tempted" by the sin of another, and that you fell for it, believed in it, and recognized it as a perfect opportunity to condemn without the implication fo yourself. You can then find yourself accusing the other of "doing what they're obviosuly doing", convincing yourself that YOU are not doing anything, and therefore are now are attacking even more unconsciously.

It's one thing to be more aware of your desire to project your own shit onto someone else. It's another to be attacking someone on the basis of what they are seeming to do, and then not even realizing that you're attacking them. When they are the "source" of the sin, you can easily lose sight of how you are contributing to it, or mirroring it. Your own attack becomes invisible to you, and then you believe that you're not even doing anything wrong at all.

Thus you end up in a pattern of not attacking people unless they sin first, and then when they do seem to sin, you take it as an ideal opportunity to scapegoat. Because you think no-one will notice what YOU are doing because they'll be so busy focusing on what THEY are doing. A good decoy goes a long way. Except that you even distract your own attention, and now you much more easily allow your mind to fall into a scapegoating mode.

Overall I personally experience this as "falling for temptation", in that the world is constantly presenting "opportunities" to focus on sin and make it real. It's a constant vigilance to try not to "take a cheap shot", when someone is obviously mistaken in some way. If I don't recognize it as "just a mistake", I will make it real and try to compound it, drawing myself away from myself, trying to displace my own guilt onto someone else. But only if "they started it."

No-one wants to overly be seen as an unjustified attacker, so we wait until someone makes the first move, before we pounce on it. Then the gloves come off and the claws come out, and rightly so, because now the other person has invited us to attack them. They want punishment, and if we agree with that we will give it to them, and benefit from doing so. It's much easier to "fall for" this temptation to "beat someone when they are down" than to look like a total a-hole hurting people for no apparent reason. This is why almost all attacks on others are "justified" as being "called for" based on what we think other people "did wrong first."

Of course, "only the self-accused condemn" and "we but accuse our brother of our own sins."

In A Course in Miracles, Jesus speaks of the face of innocence. This is an aspect of the ego identity which tends to side with "positivity" and "being good" and "people pleasing" and trying to portray itself as innocent, harmless, even weak and frail. This face of innocence is "the innocent victim", and sides with victims. The illusion of innocence is there to cover up secret hidden desires to attack and victimize. And the innocent face is a way to pretend you are not the cause of anything that happens.

In psychological terms the face of innocence is what we also call "the persona". It's part of the split mind. It's a device we use to only accept that which appears to be acceptable, positive, good, desirable, etc. But it also acts like a knife, splitting the mind and rejecting parts that it finds not good enough. It is in fact a way that the mind attacks itself by identifying aspects which are unacceptable and dissociating from them. This places them into the "shadow" behind walls of denial (blocks to awareness). It is perfectionistic, because it always asserts that you are not perfect enough.

Jesus: "The concept of the self the world would teach is not the thing that it appears to be. For it is made to serve two purposes, but one of which the mind can recognize. The first presents the face of innocence, the aspect acted ON. It is this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. It searches for companions, and it looks at times with pity on the suffering, and sometimes offers solace. It believes that it is good, within an evil world. This aspect can grow angry, for the world is wicked, and unable to provide the love and shelter innocence deserves. And so this face is often wet with tears, at the injustices the world accords to those who would be generous and good."

"This aspect NEVER makes the first attack. But every day a hundred little things make small assaults upon its innocence, provoking it to irritation, and at last to open insult and abuse."

He goes on to describe how this face of innocence covers up a terrible secret. That behind this "special love" there is "special hate". Underlying the face of innocence and the innocent victim, is an attack and judgement and condemnation. And in it, others stand accused of sinning against you. The face becomes a way to portray oneself as "at the effect of the world", such that if it appears to be the innocent party, then others must stand accused at the slightest provocation. It is a device for scapegoating.

"Beneath the face of innocence there is a lesson that the concept of the self was made to teach. It is a lesson in a terrible displacement, and a fear so devastating that the face which smiles above it must forever look away, lest it perceive the treachery it hides. The lesson teaches this; "I am the thing you made of me, and as you look on me you stand condemned, because of what I am." On this conception of the self the world smiles with approval, for it guarantees the pathways of the world are safely kept, and those who walk on them will not escape."

Behind the innocent face therefore, there is a hidden accusation that others are sinful, and the face is held up as a mask ready to "receive" their attack, like a trap. The face is easily offended and easily upset by the world and the acts of others, as it was designed to be. It is produced by the condemnation of oneself, the partitioning off of parts of self as "evil", hiding this from ones own awareness (in the shadow) and then projecting it onto others. Thus behind the face of innocence there is judgement and condemnation, unforgiveness and victimization of others.

"Here is the central lesson that ensures your brother is condemned eternally. For what YOU are has now become his sin. For this is no forgiveness possible. No longer does it matter what he does, for your accusing finger points to him, unwavering and deadly in its aim. It points to you as well, but this is kept still deeper in the mists below the face of innocence. And in these shrouded vaults are all his sins and yours preserved, and kept in darkness, where they cannot be perceived as errors, which the light would surely show. "

False innocence is not real innocence. It's a mask that people wear to pretend to be spiritual or holier than thou. It is not authentic and isn't your self. It's a disguise, designed to make you look like the innocent one so that you are not identified as the source of guilt. Always the ego takes steps to DENY what it does, to deny your soul, to deny even that you sinned, to deny that you are even guilty, resulting in the production of a facade which hides your own guilt from you. You will then "look" innocent but only in appearance, and no-one would suspect you are the one who is attacking.

The persona and the shadow - the accepted parts of self and the rejected parts of self, are the two halves of the split mind. You keep the rejected parts in darkness because, if they were brought into the light, you would see that the mind is one, not two. And this would heal and undo the split, removing both the persona and the shadow. And it is this the persona avoids at all costs.

"Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking, whereby two systems of belief, which CANNOT coexist, are BOTH MAINTAINED. It HAS BEEN recognized that, if they were BROUGHT TOGETHER, their joint acceptance WOULD become impossible. But, if one is kept in darkness FROM THE OTHER, their SEPARATION seems to keep them both alive, and equal in their reality. Their JOINING thus becomes the source of fear, for, if they meet, acceptance MUST be withdrawn from one of them."

"The light of guiltlessness shines guilt away because, when they are BROUGHT TOGETHER, the truth of one MUST make the falsity of its OPPOSITE perfectly clear. "

"WHAT DO YOU WANT? Light or darkness, knowledge or ignorance are yours, but not both. Opposites must be brought together, and not kept apart. For their separation is only in your mind, and they are reconciled by union, as YOU are. In union, everything that is not real MUST disappear, for truth IS union. As darkness disappears in light, so ignorance fades away when knowledge dawns."

The ego is a belief that you are sinful and guilty. It really believes this is true. It believes in attack, that it has attacked, and that therefore it is sinful, is due for some punishment, and someone is going to deliver it.

When YOU, who are not the ego, are identifying yourself with it, and are confused in believing that what applies to IT applies to YOU, you will experience whatever applies to it.

So if someone comes along and attacks or targets "you", this will be an attack on the ego. The ego will believe it is real, and valid, and justified, and that it is the truth about you. The sin and the guilt that it believes in makes the attack real, and produces effects within itself. Thus it is vulnerable, and seems to suffer and feel hurt.

When YOU, who are not the ego, are identified with it, when it perceives attack, YOU will also experience what the ego is experiencing. Therefore you will perceive that YOU yourself are actually being attacked, because you are sinful and guilty. Your ego sin and guilt will fly up in your face, you will be upset, hurt, and perceive that you've been damaged. But you're only able to experience this because you are aligned with, attempting to be one with, the ego, and to share in its perspective. However, YOU are not the ego.

What YOU are, is a being, a mind, which is able to choose to either align itself with God, or pretend to align itself with an imaginary mind - the ego. But who you are, is not really the ego, and can choose to unalign itself from the ego and return to alignment with God.

When you do this, through forgiveness, it entails that you come to the awareness that sin is not real, which therefore means that you are not really guilty, and need not be afraid. Who you ARE, is not the ego collection of thoughts and beliefs that are composed from sin/guilt/fear. Instead, if sin is not real, then separation can't have really happened, the events that led to the guilt cannot have really happened, therefore the sin and guilt are invalid. They cannot apply to you, define you, represent you, describe you, or modify you to fit them.

If you can see that YOU do not have to be defined by the ego, and do not have to stay associated with its thought system, you can come to recognize that you are innocent. God's truth describes you are innocent, always loveable, already forgiven, and completely invulnerable to attack. It also gives you the recognition that the ego is nothing more than an illusion, because sin and guilt are illusions. They aren't real.

This means you now realize that you never really were guilty, never really can be guilty, and sin that could possibly ever prove your unworthiness cannot be true of you. You simply have not sinned. Therefore YOU are not made of sin, and you are not made of guilt. That's the same thing as saying, you do not really have an ego. And that also means, you therefore cannot be targeted or attacked in the way that the ego attacks itself through belief in attack.

It is not that you have to do anything special to the ego to defend yourself against it. It is not that you need a special barrier of protection. It is not that you need to constantly put in effort to maintain a certain kind of thought system in order to not slip up and allow attack to get you. Rather, when this all becomes clear, that you are not sinful at all and never really could be, and that God sees you as PERMANENTLY INNOCENT, your identity can no longer contain "ego".

So now, when someone comes along and they do some activities that you previously would've thought of as an attack, and reacted to, there won't be sin and guilt in you. You will know through experiential fact that you are permanent innocence, therefore any claims by anyone that you are sinful or guilty or unworthy or worthy of attack MUST be false. They simply cannot apply to you.

So when someone claims "you are guilty" in some way, what they're really saying is "you are made of guilt", and this is not true. So they're referring to someone by the name of "guilt", and it's not you, because obviously you're innocent. So they're not even talking to you. Your name is innocence, and you will only respond to confirmations of your innocence.

Any reference to a guilty person cannot be a reference to what you are, therefore it does not even REGISTER with "you" as being about "you", because it's not. Your identity is not what they are targeting. You suddenly realize that they are apparently targeting SOMEONE or SOMETHING, but it's certainly not YOU! And since nobody else is around, it is clearly obvious they are actually just having a spazz and attacking themselves, projecting their own guilt all over the place believing it applies to you. And there you are, invulnerable, bullets bouncing off left and right, because you are inaccessible to the idea of attack.

What becomes clear, simply through clarity alone, with no need to have any thoughts about it or interpretations or it or special treatment of it, is that... simply.... in all truth and clarity, when you are sane. ..... the ego simply is not real. Attack is not real. It cannot and does not do anything to you. It only ever seemed to do something to a sinful guilty self, which is no longer what you are. And never were.

The ego, when seen with True Perception and perfect clarity, is RECOGNIZED as being 100% illusion, 100% not the truth, 100% artificial and unreal. Therefore it is simply just clear, and obvious, that it does not apply to you. It can do nothing to what you are. What you ARE is perfect innocence, holiness, immortality, eternal life. You ARE as God created you. There is not a single illusion that can ever claim anything true about you and therefore can never apply to you. And knowing this, you have the peace of God.

Illusions cannot assail the Kingdom of heaven. The ego will never enter it. The kingdom is perfectly protected without any defenses by the sheer fact that all attack is not real and does not apply! It's just simply the truth. The truth is safe from all lies and all corruption. This is why you are forever immortal, forever safe, forever innocent, and if you will let go of your false sense of identity as "sinful, guilty, afraid", you will experience an invulnerability that you never thought was possible, and which is completely void of any trace of vulnerability or susceptibility.

You cannot be attacked because you are not attackable, because attack is not real and it does not apply to those who are innocent.

There is a mistake that many of us make when it comes to ACIM, where we seem to think we should change our minds about the world in order to find peace.

It seems like the Course is saying we shouldn't change the world, or the body, or our lives, and therefore we should only change our mind.

And this leads people to believe that the world, and the body, are going to continue being filled with war and conflict and disease, but that somehow we are going to find some kind of 'peace' or safe-haven within ourselves which allows us to not be upset about it.

But this really is an ego perspective. The ego has made the world be filled with war and disaster and disease. The ego has created the perspective that causes and power are outside of you beyond yourself. The ego has made it seem like it is natural for us to go around having the world do stuff to us, and that we just need to find a way to let it do stuff to us without it upsetting us. We are so used to the world being broken that we don't know what it could be like.

What we don't realize is that the only reason the world or our body seem to contain war and disease is precisely because we are at war with ourselves, and are attacking ourselves, and are using the projected dream of suffering against ourselves. And we are the ones who are putting it out there. We, with our powerful minds, are projecting a world of suffering.

So I think it's a gross mistake to say, well, if I just recoil from this harsh world and go into hiding and be a nice well-behaved Course student and keep to myself and be forgiving, then I will be able to *survive* better, which is really part of the ego's survival strategy.

We don't realize that all the stuff out there in the world, and all of the things wrong in the body, are ALL COMING FROM US.

So if we truly change, if we truly take back our power, if we truly access and accept the mind's CAUSAL POWER over everything, recognizing that we are the dreamer of this fricking dream, this allows us to STOP making a world of disease, to STOP creating sickness, to STOP war, and to stop making the world real.

We have made the world seem real through mistaken perceptions, and then we are reacting to those mistaken perceptions with an effort of being forgiving or trying to find peace, all the while keeping those perceptions of the world being real intact. So then we think, well, it seems like the Course is telling us to just focus on changing our mind and this won't have anything to do with the world.

Is sure as fuck will have something to do with the world because the world is coming from YOU. You are expressing the world. You are contributing to the world. As Jesus says in the urtext (edited out), your mind is powerful enough to create planets. Planets! And who do you think made this one? ;-)

So no. It's not our job to figure out how we can stay INSIDE an illusion of the world existing objectively on its own, in such a way that it has power and causality over us, while simultaneously trying to be at peace. It is not our job to learn to live with sickness. It is not our job to try to be okay with suffering and war and conflict.

How can anyone accept death, as though it is real and allowed and normal and natural? Death is a state of non-acceptance. It is the physical expression of not accepting the truth. You can't be IN it at the same time as accepting the truth. You can't be IN it at the same time as being all nice and peaceful and detached. Try it!

If you want true peace, you need to realize that you are POWERFUL, that you are not at the effect of a DREAM WORLD that is not only not even real, but is itself ONLY an effect and not a cause. There is NO CAUSE in this world at all, and you are the ONLY cause, so how exactly does that add up to tolerating sickness, allowing the body to continue to suffer?

If you are masterful you don't care what's going on in the dream, or in the body, or whether there's sickness, as such, because you know it's not real. And it's not affecting you. But as Jesus says, until every single brother has been woken up, your awakening is INCOMPLETE. We need to ALL wake up and all be causal and all come to agree that the world does not exist, and then it will literally disappear, because it does not have the power to stop us.

There is nothing you cannot do. There is nothing your power, shared with God, cannot accomplish. This is the only way that you can have freedom. Freedom means there are no limitations. This is the freedom that God has given you forever. Freedom from all limitations. Freedom from death. Freedom from sickness. Freedom even from a DREAM of death. Freedom from a world of death. Freedom in all ways at all levels.

Masterfully you could allow sickness to seem to remain in the body, but only in the knowing that you put it there, on purpose, and that it is only there because you say so, and you do not suffer from it because you have mastery over it, and you know it is not real. But that doesn't mean you will therefore just 'put up with' sickness remaining in the body, or that you can't do anything about it.

Many people who have woken up have experienced instantaneous healing of all sicknesses that their body exhibited before, things for which there was no known cure. Why do you need sickness? Why do you need to keep it around when you're done with buying into the ego completely? It cannot stay when it has no purpose. As Jesus says, sickness will disappear when the purpose for which you needed it no longer exists. What purpose can it serve other than to defend against the truth? And if you're not defending against the truth, how are you going to create or sustain sickness?

You are immortal.

A fear years ago, I was at an ACIM retreat and we were doing a breathing exercise. I became filled up with some kind of energy, which lifted my "vibration" very high. My mind started to see past the physical and reach out and started to see God BEYOND the veil. In that moment I would've left the entire world behind to be with Him.

I'll skip some details but after that, I was seeing with true perception. The amount of awareness and wakefulness I had was off the charts. Everywhere I looked, still seeing physical objects with my eyes, I saw God. God was in everything I saw and God was in my mind. My mind had expanded in some way, moving up the hologram, to where my ego self seemed dissipated and diffused into the back of my awareness, as though I had no center. My mind somehow pulled back away from the world and I began to feel like I was melting into the background, one with it. I felt like I was becoming Christ.

My awareness for some days after, entailed the ability to see a profound gentleness in everything. Everywhere I looked there was unconditional love, in all things. This love seemed so whole and complete, no matter where I looked, that I felt I had no need to look anywhere else to go find anything. I saw it in a chair leg. In a water bottle. In the shadows on a wall.

People were still going about their business doing exactly everything in the same egoic way as before - nothing changed there, because the body's eyes can ONLY see the physical form of things. But at the same time, there was awareness of a love and presence. I was aware of something that it seemed no-one knew was there, even though it seemed obvious. I became so soft. God was so gentle, so soft and joyous. And he was very, very intimate, which was shocking at first because I had previously always put God far away in the sky and here he was well under my skin.

I also became aware of the higher levels of the hologram, an experience of unity, in which the whole was in each part. All of God was in each object I saw. I therefore recognized for the first time in experience, that even though physical objects seemed to assert that "nothing is the same anywhere" or "there is nothing that is whole" or "the whole is not in any of the parts", here in my awareness I could still see this forms and yet, simultaneously, my mind was aware that a single consistent unified whole was present in all parts, fully, transcending their limitations and differences. This taught me the way in which physical matter is a lie, a deception designed to shut out awareness of God's nature.

I was in an altered state for a couple of weeks. I was very ungrounded. I could barely do tasks because my mind was quite expanded and out of body. Yet each time I did something "grounding", this energy that was in me started to funnel down, and this produced immense joy. Joy would beam out of my face toward others as I started at them very directly, something I had shy'd away from before, recognizing I had no needs, no lack, and that there was only outward extension. Nothing could "come in" to me from the outside. I felt so safe and protected and free from needs. I didn't even want to eat food, it felt so alien.

Gradually as I grounded back into my body my expanded awareness narrowed down, became more focused into and through the body, and I became more immersed in the physical body again. This was like receiving some kind of brain damage. My awareness diminished greatly and it felt like being greatly subdued and suppressed, shut down and locked inside a prison suit. This also stripped away most of the intense wakefulness that I had, which felt like "leaving God", which was VERY upsetting.

This made it impossible for me to have God in my mind, and thus I stopped seeing God outside of me in all things. It seemed God left. I kept trying to find God outside of me because I thought that He was out there, having seen Him there, but I couldn't find Him because I was no longer aware of Him WITHIN my mind. And for weeks this was depressing and infuriating, although gradually I adjusted and was reassured by a few momentary glimpses that God was still with me. Returning to my body felt like a huge isolation. As my eye sight returned to looking out solely through the body's eyes, it was like building a brick wall "behind" me such that I could no longer have any sense of what was there. The body cut me off from awareness of God, and so I got to see first hand just how limiting bodies are.

What I later came to realize was this was an experience of true perception. A state of seeing a forgiven world. It was as though layer upon layer of thick "judgement" had been scraped off the surface of the world revealing an extremely gently held picture of something very lovable. And yet at the same time, the physicality was the same. The appearance physically to my eyes was the same. It was what I saw IN it, in SPITE of the physicality, that I longed to reconnect with.

This is why, for me personally, I know that this physical world is not real. I know how much the body lies. I know how the body's sense are massively limiting. I know how matter lies to try to obscure the holographic nature of God and his omnipresence. I've seen it and experienced the transition back and forth. God gave me a glimpse of awakening and it was the most profoundly directly educational experience of my entire life.

This is why I know first hand that there is something very much beyond this world, a reality which is completely obscured by forms and trapped by bodies. This world is not my home. I have grieved for the "loss of God" and gradually over time use this as incentive, a taste of what's to come, to find my way back to God again.

The attraction to Him was SO STRONG that I would've leapt into His arms in an instant without so much as a consideration for anything else in all the world. We have protected ourselves from remembering just how appealing God is, and why NOTHING else means anything even remotely close to Him. We only block awareness in order to hide this extreme attraction. Otherwise we would awaken in a heartbeat.