In the physical world, events seem to happen where physical objects and bodies are involved. Coupled with the illusion that some objects cause effects on other objects, it seems as though we live in a world where some thing or person does something to someone else.

It seems as though these causes produce real effects, which you can see with your eyes and touch with your hands. The effects seem very tangible and convincing. You could be standing there looking at the effects of an action, proving that it happened because of what has been changed.

The ego uses these physical events to demonstrate and prove its belief that things have really happened, that there has been real sin with real consequences. This can all be very convincing to the body's eyes.

When you witness these things, if you look on them as real and believe in what you are seeing, your mind is actually entering into a belief in illusions. It is not actually true that any of these has happened for real, because it is only a dream. Taken seriously, it seems to be true, proved by what the body is sensing about what has taken place.

Perceiving that, and trusting that to be true, your mind aligns itself with these illusions and therefore is mis-perceiving. This becomes a trap, because by believing in what seems to have happened, you join in the ego's thought system and become convinced of a lie.

Believing that what we see happening in the world is real and true, this leads to a host of psychological deceptions. For example, in this world, scenarios happen where it seems blatantly obvious that one person is wrong and another person is right. If there is a green tree in the yard and one person is claiming the tree is purple, and the other is claiming the tree is green, the person seeing a green tree may see themselves as "right". According to the physical ego evidence, they are right.

But this then becomes a trap for that person. If they are perceiving the illusion of a green tree and are believing they are right about what they are seeing, and that the other person must be wrong, because the tree is "real", that person is still in the ego mind. They will start to become righteous. They will believe they are completely justified in being righteous because of what is obviously a green tree. And so the physical evidence proves that they are justified in being right.

Believing they are "right" is now a trap because their mind is now trying to make the other person wrong, and is believing in an illusion. It's a very subtle trap because, in terms of the physical scenario or events that seem very real, the structure of the events makes it really seem as though they are right. There is physical proof. In this situation, they are correct. But this is a "temptation", to believe psychologically that they are right as well.

Even though it seems true that you are right, in that what is happening in the dream seems to prove that you are the one who is right, if your ego gets involved in this you will use it to become righteous. So the challenge is, that even though you are right, technically, based on what the dream is doing, to be careful not to use it as an opportunity to bolster your ego.

If your mind starts to psychologically align with the physical events and appearances, you will start to defend your position and get into the ego. Being willing to not make yourself right, when technically in this situation you are right, requires some subtle discernment and honesty. When the physical events seem to prove that you are right, and the proof is staring you in the face, you must learn to detach from appearances and stay centered in the real truth.

The real truth is that you do not need to be "right", even if you are right. It's easy enough to realize that you're being egotistical if you are "wrong" and are trying to defend a position which even the physical situation doesn't prove or support, but when the physical situations seems to agree that you are right, it is now much easier to be tempted to fall into its trap.

There is also another way that this subtle temptation happens. When situations arise where it seems like you are innocent, and it seems that someone else really is doing something against you which seems uncalled for, your belief and perception that you are innocent is a trap.

It becomes very easy to believe that you are innocent because, according to what's happening in the physical world, what the person is doing, what your are not doing etc, physical events seem to "prove" that you are innocent. If you're sitting at home and someone comes along and throws a ball through your window, breaking the window, it seems, based on the physical evidence, that that person is guilty and you are innocent. This then is a significant temptation by the ego for you to believe what you're seeing - they are guilty, you are not.

Because the situation seems to physically prove your innocence, it then becomes very easy for your ego to use that as the basis for justifying your anger and counter-attack. If you're not careful, you will use the physical proof to justify retaliation and upset. If events transpired where you were the one who broke the window and were guilty, it would be perhaps a clearer contrast for you to notice the ego at work. But when the ego seems to agree with what you want to believe about yourself, that you're the innocent one, the slippery slope is much harder to stay away from or even notice.

It becomes again a subtle trap, where the physical proof aligns with your ego mind, and you become almost blind to the possibility of being mistaken. When physical events correlate to the ego's beliefs, there is a blindness or unconsciousness. When physical events are in contrast or opposite to what the ego believes, it is more noticeable and discernible. It's easier to be honest and unconditionally loving, it seems, when events support it, than when they don't. It is easier to love someone when they are giving you love, than when they are seeming to attack you.

Our lesson then is to detach ourselves from all appearances, which includes appearances and events which seem to be in our favor, as well as events and appearances which seem to be against us. Even the ones which seem to be on our side, or show us as right, or prove we are innocent, are just as much a trap to fall into. You do not want to be found innocent or guilty by the ego's world. Neither is the truth.

In some ways, when things in the physical world seem to align with your interests, be on your side, support your case, prove your innocence and finds someone else guilty, it's a much bigger temptation than when the world is finding you guilty. If the world says you are guilty, it ties straight into your unconscious guilt, bypassing your ego's fake facade of innocence. It blows the ego's cover-story about why you are not guilty, given that it really believes you are guilty deep down.

So beware of things going your way in this world. Beware of physical situations, evidence and proof, seeming to imply that you are the one who is right or innocent, and someone else is not. It's a temptation to believe the ego and to align with and support its dream. It's an attempt to get you to want to keep the world and stay on the ego's side and maintain allegiance with it.

We have to be honest enough, consistently aligned with the real truth, that even when it seems like we are receiving the long end of the stick, we dispel that and ignore it and find both yourself and others equally innocent. We need to overlook all occurrences of illusions which portray either ourselves or others as either innocent or guilty, based on appearances or physical evidence. None of it is truth.

Neither the ego-proven innocent or the ego-proven guilty are really either. We are all beyond the ego's verdict. We need to learn not to define who we are or what is true based on what is external or physical or proven with evidence. Our innocence lies in the Holy Spirit's viewpoint, which is that none of the ego's illusions are true. We are all equally innocent because nothing that seems to happen physically in a dream is real. No-one is the winner in a world of lies.

Decouple yourself from depending on the world to define whether you are right or wrong, or innocent or guilty. Get your truth and your verdict from the Holy Spirit, who will find you unconditionally innocent, and everyone else along with you. Then in that view, no-one can be considered righteous and no-one is guilty, because nothing has really happened.

Physical events are illusions. They are part of the ego's thought system. Part of the ego's mind. Objects and people and bodies and events and happenings are all part of this dream which isn't real. We need to learn not to depend on or trust or believe any of it. God is the greater reality in which we can trust, and in which our faith is justified.

Physical evidence doesn't prove anyone's guilt or innocence, because physicality is not reality. In God's eyes, everyone is innocent, and unconditional love and forgiveness is always justified.

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while."

"The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?"

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers."

*****"They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die."*****

"Yet they are not deceived by what they see."

******"The body's eyes will continue to see differences."******

"But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them."

******"There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before."*****

"But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal."

This is a vital teaching because it is the reason why, even with a healed mind, even in true perception, you CAN STILL SEE the various bodily states of other figures in the dream. Sick, suffering, and dying. And the ability to SEE these things, has absolutely nothing to do with YOU BEING SICK. You seeing these things has absolutely NOTHING to do with you projecting sickness, judging, attacking, or believing in sickness.

YOUR mind still SEES the same FORMS, through the body's eyes, but RECOGNIZES that none of these IMAGES are REAL. It recognizes them all as UNREAL. It disregards the differences and does not BELIEVE that they are REAL SICKNESS or REAL DEATH. But the mind NEVERTHELESS, SEES THESE THINGS HAPPENING IN THE DREAM STILL.

This is why you as a miracle worker are then able to RECOGNIZE that some person has a broken leg, or just got hit by a car, and has a NEED for a miracle, which you can SUPPLY.

There HAS to be a potential for inequality between your mind and what is seen, otherwise it violates several miracle principles. For example "Miracles supply a lack" "Miracles are given by those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less". It would not be POSSIBLE to supply the lack of love/life to those who have less, IF every single thing you SEE is an EXACT EQUAL MATCH to the content and condition of YOUR MIND.

If you were only seeing the world as a "mirror" of yourself, and if you were the only dreamer, than it would be true that what you see is ONLY what you believe yourself. But the fact is that there are distinct differences between seeing with Christ Vision and seeing with body vision, and both of them happen at once until you reach the atonement.

Many people believe that you only have "one perception" and that this perception gradually shifts and changes and "turns into" true perception. THIS IS NOT TRUE. And when you believe this, you will believe that you simply "cannot see sickness unless you are sick". It disregards the fact that the body has one kind of perception, the spiritual eye has another, and they BOTH happen at once. All the way up to ascension to Heaven you're still going to be receiving signals from the body, into your mind, which you will perceive, ALONG WITH, perceptions you are having of what is BEYOND what the body is showing you, the face of Christ. BEING HEALED, DOES NOT MAKE YOU BLIND TO THE SICKNESS THAT THE BODY CAN STILL SEE.

The body is permanently stuck seeing with false perception. It sees with false perception even if you are 99% done with the curriculum. "These eyes made not to see, will never see". And yet the body, while you have it, WILL continue to send you images of hell, pictures of objects and bodies moving around in various states.

The fact is that you don't JUST have this one kind of perception. You develop Christ Vision AS a SECOND WAY OF PERCEIVING, which occurs initially IN PARALLEL to body eyesight. The development of Christ Vision and your gradual ascension towards true perception WITH it, awakening the spiritual eye, is the perception you TRANSFORM, and which later becomes perfectly healed. Meanwhile, the body is STILL going to send images to the mind. These images will now begin to change in their seeming meaning or "how they strike you", how they register, and will transition from "seeming to be true/real" to "seeming to be false/unreal". YET STILL SEEING THEM.

At this point you still have TWO INPUTS OF PERCEPTION coming into the mind. One is coming from the body senses, the other is coming from the Christ mind. From spirit. The spirit-to-spirit perception is happening at the same time as the false perception of the body. Only when the true/christ perception is perfected, does the body perception become SO "seen through" and disregarded as false, that it starts to disappear, and eventually you ONLY see with Christ Vision. Which means seeing the face of Christ ONLY and NOT SEEING THE WORLD OF FORM OR THE BODY OR WITH THE BODY.

Many people don't seem to understand the mechanism of perception. Jesus explains it in the course. The body's eyes send signals to the mind, which passes through a belief system which filters and changes the meaning or projects meaning onto the images, changing them and then presenting them to the mind which looks upon these filtered images and "sees". The belief system therefore acts as an interpreter of the signals that are coming in from the body.

When the belief system believes in ego and separations, it categorizes the images from the body's eyes in many different conflicting ways and the mind looks upon these categorizations. When the belief system is unified and cleared it becomes empty and transparent, seeing in a correct and truthful way. The body still sends images into the system from "outside" and the belief system now reinterprets (holy spirit) and frames them from a perspective of truth, which causes the images to be recognized as images of unreality and are all false. The mind thus categorizes them all as unreal - that everything the body sees is an illusion.

Here the mind is SEEING the reinterpreted layer of filtration, through the Holy Spirit's corrected perception, and is seeing the truth ABOUT the images coming from the body. The truth about these body signals is that they are false and unreal. The mind at this point is still able to receive these images and look upon them and interpret them as unreal illusions. This is how the mind can still "look upon dreams a while".

Simultaneously, as vision by body eyes is continuing, Christ Vision is developed which does not use the body's eyes at all. It is a "direct seeing", the seeing function of the mind. "Only the mind sees". This seeing initially takes place through true perception, shared with the Holy Spirit, whereby the body signals are OVERLOOKED (forgiveness) and all things physical are *seen through* as if they are a wall of illusions trying to deceive you. Temptation. You look through this, with the mind, literally, and see PAST the surface of objects showing up in these images. BEYOND these images, there is sight of the face of christ which is BEYOND the physical.

As the mind learns to use the spiritual eye and christ vision this strengthens and the signals from the body are labeled as "false" more and more. They are recognized as "false perception". "The world is false perception". It looks past the false perception that IS the world, and sees beyond it to another world, Heaven. The forgiven world is OVERLOOKED. The veil of "matter" becomes thin and transparent and eventually is seen through (not believed) so much that it disappears entirely. This is the state of perfect christ vision, which sees ONLY the face of Christ and does not even see with the body's eyes at all. The body is forgotten, it disappears entirely, and you return to God.

IN Heaven, you now resume mind-to-mind communication which could be considered "the vision of the son of God", where there is "no thing" to see, nothing separate to look at, only God and creation to know and be aware of.

Until you get to perfect pure christ vision you WILL still see with the body's eyes to some degree. And because of this, you WIL be able to still see the forms in this world. Doing whatever they do. Just because you are becoming more spiritually awake it does not change in ANY WAY the free-willed activities of other brothers in their bodies. If they are sick, or well, or alive, or dead, or attacking, or being friendly, all of it can be easily seen and accurately rendered to the mind. The mind has perfectly clarity about it, and can even see more in it than was seen before. It is thus perfectly possible to still SEE someone having a broken leg, without it in any way implying that YOU have a broken leg or a belief in sickness.

For a while, you have this "double vision", two types of perception, two mechanisms for looking. Which is why you are perfectly capable of being wholly truthful in Christ Vision while at the same time SEEING the body's images and recognizing them as wholly false. This is how God's teachers look upon dreams, recognize them as illusions, can recognize anyone in distress, can see sick bodies and healthy bodies, can tell the ways someone is mistaken, can recognize the errors someone is making, can discern correctly what is true and what is false about what they see, and thereby are in a POSITION TO HELP THOSE IN THE DREAM. BY OFFERING THEM MIRACLES.

When we are introduced to this world, it is through false perception. That means we SEEM to "see it with" the body's eyes, and we believe the body's way of seeing. And the body shows us the world of form, which is cruel and dark and a place of death.

We do not even realize our mind is in any way making, or interpreting, how the world is. We observe. We see its suffering and carnage. And we decide the world is an inherently bad place.

Jesus then tells us:

"The world is false perception".

"The world IS perception."

"There is no world apart from what you wish"

"Projection makes perception."

What this suggests is, when your mind is in a dark attitude, it projects a world which it simultaneously perceives as a dark place. And when the mind is in a light attitude, it projects a world which is simultaneously perceived as a light place.

What it also suggests is, there IS no world, beyond your mind's dreaming and projecting of one. Ie the world is in your mind. And Jesus agrees to that.

"You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts."

"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that. But, though it is no more than that, it is not less. Therefore, to you, it is important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive."

What this tells us is there is not really an objective world. The world doesn't exist without someone dreaming of it, in their mind.

It may appear, conceptually, that there is a neutral, meaningless world, like a mirror, waiting for you to project whatever kind of images you want onto. And it might suggest this neutral world is a receiver of either your dark projections or your light projections. And that you see this darkness or light "in" "it" accordingly.

But He is also telling us that at no time does the body or world exist. That it is an hallucination.

"Perception is a result, not a cause."

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you really understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal?"

"Hallucinations serve to meet the goal of madness. They are the means by which the outside world, projected from within, adjusts to sin, and seems to witness to its reality. ***It still is true that nothing is without.*** Yet, upon nothing, are ALL projections made. For it is the PROJECTION which gives the "nothing" all the meaning that it holds. ***What has no meaning, cannot BE perceived.*** And meaning always looks within, to find itself. And THEN looks out. ***All meaning that you give the world outside, must thus reflect the sight you saw within.*** Or better, if you saw at all, or merely judged against."

You look within your mind first, and then you project. And what you see, is only what you have projected, because projection MAKES what you perceive, and perceiving is the RESULT of what you projected.

Therefore you see only "a world" "out there" because you are projecting it inside your mind. It is not really out there at all. It is nothing. There is nothing to project onto. Only what you project AS.

This tells you essentially that the world you see in false perception, when your mind is dark, when you look within and see darkness, and then project it outward for perceiving, is seen ONLY in the dark of mind.

And this tells you that, essentially, there is ANOTHER WORLD, another "version" of a world, unlike what you saw in false perception, which is seen in light. It is seen only by looking within, seeing the light of Christ, and then projecting outward as Christ Vision. That "real world" has no resemblance to the world of false perception.

In fact, because there is no objective world, and you maintain it entirely in your mind, and because your mental attitude "tunes you out" of one world and "into" another, the Holy Spirit's happy dream, seeing one makes you unable to see the other.

"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS. For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER."

"Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you, as the amount to which you hold it dear. And yet their power is NOT the same, because their real attraction to you IS unequal. You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began."

It's kind of like saying, when you are in a bad mood, you project a hellish version of a planet Earth. When you are in a good mood, you project the real world, which contains no forms, no suffering, no sickness, no death. They are like tuning into different TV stations. Investment in the spiritual eye weakens investment in the physical sight.

"Everything looked upon with vision is healed and holy. Nothing perceived without it means anything. And where there is no meaning, there is chaos."

The world, which we call Earth, seems to exist only so long as we dream of it. A forgiven world, is how Earth appears to be when seen through forgiving eyes. It is not the real world, because in the real world there are no forms. But it may appear close.

Earth is a veil, hanging in front of the real world, and must be seen through to the light. This is what Christ Vision does, overlooking the world. And eventually this veil lifts entirely to reveal the real world/face of Christ in its fullness. And in this Vision, the world - Earth, is completely forgotten, and disappears from sight entirely.

"This world of idols is a veil across the face of Christ, because its purpose is to separate your brother from yourself."

"Forgiveness lets the veil be lifted up that hides the face of Christ from those who look with unforgiving eyes upon the world."

"the veil of sin that hangs between you and the face of Christ."

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible."

The Earth, hell, the forgiven world, the real world even, are all dreams in your mind. The real world offers you an entirely different outlook, vision, and something to look at, beyond the world of bodies and sin.

"This is the shift that true perception brings: What was projected out is seen within, and there forgiveness lets it disappear. "

"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all."

"No-one in this distracted world but has not seen some glimpses of the other world about him. But while he still lays value on his own, he will DENY the vision of the other world, maintaining that he loves WHAT HE LOVES NOT, and following not the road that love points out."

"Vision is the means by which the Holy Spirit translates your nightmares into happy dreams; your wild hallucinations, that show you all fearful outcomes of imagined sin, into the calm and reassuring sights with which He would replace them. These gentle sights and sounds are looked on happily, and heard with joy. "

"When you have looked on what seemed terrifying, and seen it change to sights of loveliness and peace; when you have looked on scenes of violence and death, and watched them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks that never waste away; who need persuade you to accept the gift of vision?"

"Damnation is your judgment on YOURSELF. And this you WILL project upon the world. See it as damned, and all you see is what you did to hurt the Son of God. If you behold disaster and catastrophe, you tried to crucify him. If you see holiness and hope, you joined the Will of God to set him free. There is no choice that lies between these two decisions. And you will see the witness to the choice you made, and learn from this to RECOGNIZE the one you made. The world you see but shows you how much joy YOU have allowed yourself to see in you, and to accept as YOURS. And, if this IS its meaning, then the power to GIVE it joy MUST lie WITHIN you."

"You HAVE been wrong about the world, because you have misjudged YOURSELF. From such a twisted reference point, what COULD you see? All vision starts WITH THE PERCEIVER, who judges what is true and what is false. And what he judges false, HE DOES NOT SEE. You who would JUDGE reality CANNOT see it, for whenever judgment enters, reality has slipped away. The out of mind is out of sight because what is denied is THERE, but is not recognized. Christ is still there, although you know Him not. His Being does NOT depend upon your recognition. He lives within you in the quiet present, and waits for you to leave the past behind, and enter into the world He holds out to you in love."

In times when I am moving into uncertainty about whether it's true that this world is unreal, I refer back to some key statements in the course which seem very clear to me. One of them is "the body is a dream".

This anchors the truth that the body, and therefore everything the body is made of, and therefore by extension anything ELSE in the same environment which is made of similar stuff or is covered by similar laws, MUST ALSO be a dream.

This then implies logically that the whole world and universe is a dream, and the body is merely one part or character within that dream. And the course similarly backs this up. The body is the hero of the dream, and it cannot exist WITHOUT a dream.

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. ****There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream****, in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed."

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

"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real."

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

The body IS a dream, and can only exist INSIDE a dream, and DEPENDS ON dreaming, and cannot exist WITHOUT dreaming. Which means that it REQUIRES SLEEP in the mind in order for a DREAM to be taking place in order for a body to show up. It exists WITHIN perception and NOT in knowldge. There can be no body without this sleep, and there can be no dream without this sleep.

Even those who seem to have "awareness of dreaming", who seem more awake than others but still are in bodies, are still having DREAM bodies. And these bodies are STILL dreams. And these people are STILL dreaming. Awareness that you ARE DREAMING is not the end of dreaming, it is merely a point of perspective on the fact that you are NOT AWAKE. And this perspective on being "awake in the dream" is NOT the same as BEING FULLY AWAKE, never again to dream a single dream.

"No-one asleep and dreaming in the world remembers his attack upon himself. No-one believes there really was a time when ****he knew nothing of a body, and could never have conceived this world as real.**** He would have seen at once that ****these ideas are one illusion****, too ridiculous for anything but to be laughed away. How serious they now appear to be!"

The metaphysics of this is very simple and clear. When mind is FULLY AWAKE in heaven's reality, there is NO dreaming, NO sleep, and therefore there CANNOT BE BODIES. Bodies are dreams, and unless you are dreaming you cannot dream of bodies. Bodies are made up in the mind as part of the dreaming process. They are characters in the dream. Just as trees and houses and cars are characters in the dream. And none of them exist when you truly wake up to Reality.

"What seems to be the opposite of life (heaven - "there is no life outside of heaven") is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely ****seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time****; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

It is also very simple and evident, therefore, to realize that WITHOUT SLEEP, you cannot have a body. You cannot BE IN ONE and be fully awake. You CANNOT be in the full awareness of heaven, in which you are FULLY AWAKE, and at the same time claim that "you have a dream body". Dream bodies ONLY seem to exist for those who are asleep and dreaming still. The body cannot enter heaven because heaven is a waking state, not a dreaming state, and the body REQUIRES a dreamer.

This is also why you CANNOT be "Christ in a body", or "God in a body". Or "awake in a body". Or "in heaven in a body." And also why Jesus was NOT "christ in a body."

"God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there.""Love was never in the world of dreams."

To suggest this is possible, is to suggest that you can be in the full awareness of the Christ WHO IS IN HEAVEN, in the WAKING AND NOT DREAMING state, while simultaneously BEING ASLEEP AND DREAMING and therefore materializing a body. It is simply impossible. If/when Jesus shows up as a body now, to Earth people, it is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. A temporary image within dreaming, used to symbolize something that is BEYOND the dream. Because Jesus is permanently in heaven.

"Christ has never slept."

"Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit"

"I am the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and when you see me, it will be because you have invited Him."

Either you are squarely in heaven 100% in total awareness of God and reality. Or, you are in some way ASLEEP, having perception, dreaming of a world and inventing fake bodies. The only special exception to this is the Holy Spirit who spans the waking and dreaming states as a bridge, temporarily, to offer you a SYMBOL of heaven within the dreaming state - the real world, to prepare you for a full and gentle awakening.

The body is a dream, a fiction, an imagined fantasy, an image, a fake symbol, not an end in itself, a representative, an avatar, a depiction of something it can never truly picture.

"It is a picture of a body still, for what you are cannot be seen nor pictured."

It is not possible for your body, or anyone's body, to FULLY REPRESENT what you are as spirit. You are INVISIBLE to this realm. You cannot be seen by the body's eyes. The body CANNOT SEE REALITY or spirit.

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."So for example if Jesus were to show up here, his body would NOT BE HIM, because he is not body identified. His spirit would NOT be seen. And the body would be nothing but a SYMBOL, vaguely approximating an appearance that you might find appealing or reassuring, for some purpose. And the body that shows up is NOT HIM. It is merely a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Even if it looks just as 3D and real as other bodies. Because Christ cannot "be a body" any more than God can.

"Jesus was a man who remembered his soul." "But I was a man who remembered the Soul and its knowledge. "

You will not ever see GOD directly in a dream. He is not a body. He does not have a body. He cannot be IN a body. He is not in your body or in anyone's body. Even the idea that "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind" is an idea of seeing the REAL world BEYOND bodies, in which there ARE NO BODIES. God in his unlimited infinite nature will not EVER be reducible to a finite form or shape or appearance. Even "visions" of God are perceptual illusions.

"PROPERLY speaking, a "vision of God" is a miracle rather than a revelation. The fact that perception is involved at all removes the experience from the realm of knowledge."

So you see, if you follow what ACIM says, it is very clear and consistent. Bodies are dreams which only exist inside of dreams for those who dream of them during sleep. And while you can become more aware of the dreaming state, this too is only preparation for true awakening FROM the dream state. And to awaken FROM the dream state you CANNOT maintain a body, or be in one, or have one. It cannot go with you to heaven. And as soon as you stop dreaming the DREAM BODY made of DREAM STUFF has to disappear entirely.

"The body is a dream. Like other dreams, it sometimes seems to picture happiness, but can quite suddenly revert to fear, where every dream is born. For only love creates in truth, and truth can never fear. Made to be fearful, must the body serve the purpose given it. But we can change the purpose which the body will obey by changing what we think that it is for.

The body is the means by which God's Son returns to sanity. Though it was made to fence him into hell without escape, yet has the goal of Heaven been exchanged for the pursuit of hell. The Son of God extends his hand to reach his brother, and to help him walk along the road with him. Now is the body holy. Now it serves to heal the mind that it was made to kill."

"And now God's knowledge, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. ****And gone are bodies**** in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, ***no bodies***, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

I have been noticing in myself lately that I keep being judgemental. My thoughts feel like judgements. Even just basic thoughts of "what something is" feels like a judgement. I wondered to myself why I seem to be judging all the time. I hadn't realized just how judgmental I seem to be all the time.

This could be in the form of just having some opinion about everything. It didn't even necessarily need to be in terms of anger or projecting blame, just a kind of incessant "believing I know". Just constantly and consistently labelling everything in terms of what I believe it means.

I would just keep labeling everything in course terms. "That's an illusion", "They're level confused", "This is unreal", etc. I seemed to be just using the whole course to add a layer of naming and shaming to everything I was aware of.

I noticed also that I couldn't seemingly just look at something without "coursifying it". I couldn't just enjoy something or do normal activities without having to have an ACIM commentary running alongside it. Just constantly trying to "counteract" the world and everything I see with statements, trying to deny it, trying to change it, trying to push it away.

This also seems to be tied into a general sense of unhappiness about everything. My ego would sometimes really flare up with attack thoughts which clearly were attempts to increase separation. It increased a sense of being alone, and further justified a sort of seeming "bitterness" about the world. It kind of felt like kind of slipping down further into hell rather than rising out of it.

I also have been growing weary of ACIM, quite honestly. I've chewed on its words and metaphysics and have written about it to such an extent that I was becoming tired of it. Tired of thinking about it. Like I'd done it all and seen it all and there was nothing left to figure out. As if figuring it out, or understanding it, was the whole point.

I wanted some kind of more direct, simplified experience. Something more practical that works. Something more direct, that didn't have a layer of interpretation or second-hand thinking alongside it. I didn't want more affirmations or course statements flying around in my mind. I didn't want just another commentary or people just parroting the course's words as if knowing what it means. I and I didn't want to keep doing forgiveness on the basis of some bunch of statements, trying to use words to fend off ego attacks.

I had to step away from all this for a bit to just settle down and get a sense of something more basic and simple and fundamental. And this is when I started opening up to wanting the Holy Spirit to inform me of a better way. I wanted to see things how he sees things and to join with him more, to just very simply take some small little step that would be enough to fix my mind without all the psychobabble. Some kind of simple something I could just "do" that would produce a happier experience without all the course crap alongside it.

I saw that having conversations about the course just wasn't really working. Everyone's just talking about it. We use its statements as if they are magic wands. But I wasn't seeing a satisfying effect from this. Just figuring out what it means and repeating its words didn't do much. I didn't want to be just another parrot regurgitating the same stuff while staying entirely confined in this same "way" of trying to apply it. I wanted something much closer to my being, that I didn't have to think about. Something much more basic and intimate that I could "live" without mental gymnastics.

This is when I started to discover that I was in general laying an entire interpretation of everything on top of it. This interpretation was based on my thinking that I knew what things were. An attempt to understand it. I saw that I was giving everything meaning through this interpretation. I was deciding that things sucked or were negative and was then reacting to my own decision as to what I thought it was. My interpretation of everything was being mistaken for the thing itself.

So then I considered the fact that every single time that I was less than happy in any way, it was a part of this "way" that I was interpreting. I was filtering or translating or changing, twisting, whatever was "out there", into some kind of decided-upon "version" that I was then experiencing as my "perception of it". Because if you remember, "perception is a result not a cause" and "projection makes perception".

It's really what I project that produces perceptual issues. If I perceived a result or conclusion of "unhappy", I must have projected and wanted that. If I was interpreting that something happening "meant" that I should be afraid, I must've decided that it meant this. I gave it this meaning. And this meaning changed my perception and produces "experiences" or effects which were generally unpleasant.

In the truest sense, I was doing this to myself, as in the secret of salvation, because it was this whole "layer" of interpretation, coming in between me and the world so to speak, that was responsible for causing my "experience" of the world to be faulty. I was willing to consider that any time I was not happy I MUST have mis-interpreted and had come up with some kind of MISTAKEN opiniion about what it MEANS.

I had to be willing to recognize that it was my chosen interpretation that was entirely responsible for the "effects" of that interpretation upon myself, the seeming ego reactions or fears or upset emotions or any kind of annoyance or disturbance. All of my suffering was really rooted in that layer of interpreting, NOT in what lied "beyond it" as the world. And that meant that I was making a lot of mistaken interpretations, resulting in a lot of unhappiness.

Light a light-switch, I then found that simply by recognizing I had made an interpretation, and just being willing to admit that it was the entire reason why I was not happy, my mind would become open to just "letting that interpretation go." I didn't seem to have to do anything else for this to happen. As they say, "illusions recognized must disappear." My interpretation IS the illusion. It was a way of turning "reality" into something it's not. Just recognizing it as an illusory, self-made, made-up, filtered "view", was enough to make it disappear.

As soon as it would just disappear, immediately my mind would light up with light and happiness. It would seem as though a higher me, rooted in the "back" of my mind, would suddenly shine outward. It was as if secretly behind all my ego upset sense of self, there was this higher me that was just always happy and filled with light and wasn't taking anything seriously. It seemed to already be there. I didn't invent it myself. Perhaps this was the real me.

This has started a revolution in my mind and in my outlook and in my way of experiencing the world. It isn't a forgiveness based on some kind of long-winded, elaborate story that I have to tell myself, trying to deprogram myself, trying to counteract perceived problems with a long litany of affirmative statements, or trying to remember course principles, or trying to grasp at straws to make it go away.

It was very very simple. It was much more a sort of change in how I EXPERIENCE what's going on. And that was far more immediate. More like just a kind of attitude change. Not something "thought about", or arrived at through understanding, or made out of complicated metaphysics, or logically deduced. It was a kind of forgiveness that was just a much more intimate matter of psychological engagement.

Either I was interpreting or I wasn't. Either I had chosen to invent some kind of "meaning" for something, or I had let it go. Either I was filtering and believing I knew what something was, or I was just willing to stop doing it. It wasn't a matter of replacing it with something or justifying it or explaining it or writing a book about it. It was kind of like just stepping back. Getting out of my analysis. Stopping my self-made attempt to determine what something is.

The bizarre thing is just how effortless it is and how immediately a whole world of low-level ego experience, suffering, upset and darkness, is immediately overruled by a much much higher bright light of happiness and lightness.

It almost seems wrong, in that the light-heartedness of it doesn't even seem to care to "address"the many doubts and fears and concerns that the ego had. It just sort of leaps above it and pays no attention to it. Like, who would have thought THAT would be a solution? Not to change the ego but to just get OUT of it? To just leave the desert without even dealing with all the many loose ends and questioning fears.

I think for a ton of years now I've generally been locked into the ego mind. Regardless of how lofty my thoughts have been, and regardless of efforts to forgive. It's always still been accompanied by ego feelings, upsets, emotions, fears, reactions, ego rebounds.

I was just kind of getting fed up with the fact that every time I tried to do anything with the course, it ALWAYS had a stupid ego rebound afterwards. Catharsis, release, upset emotions, fear reactions etc. It was just so annoying. I was kind of getting tired of the course in this sense because I couldn't seem to do any of it without having this sense of ... I just don't want to do this. My ego self or whatever just is wired against God and does not want to wake up, and can't. "I", mixed up in that sense of lower-suffering-self, couldn't stop being the way it was.

So there's been this tug of war between the part of mind that just basically couldn't care less about the course and just wants to live a normal life in a body, versus this constant barrage of attempts to awaken to some kind of higher life and perspective that's totally incompatible. The contrast between the two was becoming very acute and I couldn't find a way to satisfy both. I had to even take a break from ACIM for a while and just be in "my ego" to just be normal and stop hitting it over the head with a hammer of spirituality.

But I think what's come out of that now is this very very unexpected movement in which I let the ego stuff remain ego and just seem to step outside of it. It's quite odd. Because I now see that within myself there's this sort of self-contained internal bubble of my suffering self, complete with all the ego emotions and upsets, which is generally most of the time unhappy, riddled with fears and grief and uncertainty and so on. And it seems like this is all within my body. And then somehow there's this higher me that is totally outside of all that, shining a light from a vantage point of not even trying to understand or interpret anything.

It has raised questions of, who even am I. What aspects of myself or of my experience actually is "the ego" and should be something to "get rid of", versus what aspects of this is actually a permanent part of my true nature? Are my emotional reactions just an ego thing? Is this sense of "me suffering" the ego? In particular, where do I draw the line?

But I'm finding that maybe I don't actually have to answer that in terms of a description of it. Because what I seem to be realizing is that ALL of that internal seeming "struggling self" is entirely sort of the "byproduct" of this whole "thinking I know" thing. This whole interpretation of everything. Having a judgement about what everything is. Labelling everything in course terms. Trying to describe everything in explicit detail.

That whole approach of trying to "understand" the world and everything in my experience, is precicely what CAUSES all of the suffering. It's as if, when I try to interpret "reality", it produces generally negative forms of consequence, in a cause-effect kind of way. And the outcome of that is what we might call "the ego" in me. It's this collection of reactions, emotions, upsets, perceived threats, fears, guilts, etc... which all seem to revolve around victimhood and being at the effect of something. That all seems to actually be the END RESULT OF, my minds attempts to INTERPRET reality.

So I put out some kind of negative faulty mistaken interpretation or effort to understand what something is, this results in a false perception, which in turn results in a bunch of suffering, which in turn assembles as a collection of unhappy elements that bundle together as an "ego experience". And that ego experience seems like it's somewhat outside of me. And when my mind is going there, it seems that I am the one having this experience, that my identity IS the suffering, that I AM the upset and the unhappiness. And that anchors and confines and limits my whole awareness INSIDE OF that whole viewpoint.

So if my view is so narrow and limited and false, producing heavy false dark perceptions, then my whole sense of self seems to become imprisoned and confined, alone and afraid, small and weak and vulnerable. It seems like my entire life has been spent accumulating sufferings in this little internal storehouse, surrounding and forming this confused and separated-off sense of self or of "my experience" of life. All gathered up in a ball, even which seems to be housed within my body and especially within the "emotional center" in the stomache area.

If this ENTIRE experience of life is the end RESULT, ie perceptual consequence of, the various mistaken MEANINGS that I keep putting onto things, then it stands to reason (lol) that if I fundamentally CHANGE my entire approach and alter the process of "giving meaning", then it's going to totally override that ENTIRE realm of expeirence.

It's going to basically switch off the ego experience, it's going to totally override all the upsets and reactions, all the unhappy emotions etc. Because it was as though, all along, all this time, ALL of my sufferings have been the RESULT of the meaning that I'VE been giving to everything.

I've become very good at describing things, explainig things, analyzing the world, picking apart illusions, labelling stuff, counter-attacking attacks, and generally just reacting to MY OWN decisions. And suddenly I seem to be embarking on an entirely different ballgame. I guess it can be described as moving above the battlefield in a way. It's like a HUGE stepping back and just stopping trying to fucking figure everything out. Not just because it can't be figured out but because the act of trying to do so is BLOCKING me. It shuts down my light and decreases my awareness and turns me into a judger.

So now for me, this whole course thing, it's turning into something very very simplified. It's just some basic sort of flip of the switch thing, between whether I want to carry on with my faulty judgements/interpretations/translations of what's going on, or whether I want to just let those go.

As I let them go, it's like a huge cloud of psychological blockage is lifted away. A bright HAPPY light switches on out of nowhere, as if I'm getting back in touch with the REAL me that is in the back of all this, and has been there all along covered up by all the mental distortions. It immediately feels remarkably happy and light, regardless of how heavy and dark the ego experience was "before" I stepped out of it.

What the ego is, I think it really is just the "effects" that are produced when we try to "narrow" (Jesus interjected) reality down to being this or that, to describe it, to judge it, to assess or evaluate what stuff "is". The labels and meanings we keep trying to give things. And then mistakedly confusing that effort for reality, believing that reality now inherently IS the meaning that WE decided it has. That produces all the ego reactions, all suffering, all unhappiness and dissatisfaction.

When we stop producing these illusions of interpreation, trying to think we know what things are, trying to understand the ego and the world, trying to filter what's happening, trying to insist that something is what we think it is, trying to be right about our labels and projections, all that just immediately switches off the "ego effect" and puts our mind back in touch with cause.

We settle back into reality, we return to our baseline, we get back in touch with who we are BEHIND all these layers of interpretation, and the clouds part and the light comes shining forth. And it feels SO much happier than the deluge of suffering that ALL interpretations produce.

So it's not a matter of trying to get "that ego" to change and grow and wake up and become spiritual, the ego is just the result of "shutting down". If we are to "open up" we have to be willing to actually be open all the time. Because any time we judge or label or describe or analyze or think we know about or seem certain of what stuff is or means, we are actually narrowing and closing down, casting anchors into the wind. And that just diminishes our light and makes us feel dark and alone and afraid.

We step out of the ego by stepping into the light of "not knowing", of forgetting what you taught yourself, or letting go of thinking you know, and of learning NOT to try interpreting anything. When you stop projecting your made-up meanings onto everything, you leave an open space for the Holy Spirit and God to project THEIR meaning instead, in the emptiness that you've left there. In the space you've provided for light to shine through you. Really it's more like, getting out of your own way.

I am finding this is what forgiveness means to me now. It's the simple movement away from having made the mistake of deciding what something must mean, which is pretty much always in error and leads to suffering, and just being willing to not do that. My own meanings are what blocks my sight. My own judgements of reality are what keeps reality from me. This is how we undo perception itself, by undoing the basis for judgement. And it takes no more than a slight willingness to recognize my self-inflicted suffering is coming from my self-imposed meanings, to let them disappear to reveal the light within.

Yesterday I saw for the first time, myself just pivoting differently, in a situation where someone had clearly "done something wrong", breaking some rules. I could've "held it against" the person, and yet somehow I remembered that this entire experience of it being "wrong" or sinful was a meaning I was giving it, and as I stepped back from that I found myself expressing that the person was still lovable regardless of this mistake, and it was only a mistake. It was as kind of "experiential forgiveness", so basic and simple, a psychological act of just "withholding judgement" in a way, that I felt it produced some kind of miraculous effects afterwards. And it felt good.

Ultimately it all boils down to the simple idea that we have en experiential realitionship with truth and reality, and we are either going to be fully open it and let it be what it is without trying to define it, or we're going to narrow our perception and lay judgements and labels on it, trying to dissect it. And as soon as we do that we will shut down our light and go into darkness (ego). If we want light and happiness, we have to learn to just accept reality in the fullness of "what is" (not the world as such), by not "having an opinion about it". Not laying a meaning on it. So that the light can fully shine and illuminate our happiness.

"Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, ****nor seeks to twist it to appearance that it likes.**** It merely looks and waits and judges not. ****He who would not forgive must judge****, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must ****learn to welcome truth exactly as it is.****"

"If you could accept the world as meaningless and ***let the truth be written upon it for you****, it would make you indescribably happy." "In the world you, can become a spotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you, to all around you. You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves."

"The reflection of God NEEDS no interpretation. IT IS CLEAR. Clear but the mirror, and the message which shines forth from what the mirror holds out for everyone to see, NO-ONE will fail to understand. It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to the mirror that is in HIM. He recognizes it, because he has been taught his NEED for it, but knows not where to look to FIND it. Let him, then, see it in YOU, and share it WITH you. Could you but realize, for a single instant, the power of healing that the reflection of God, shining in YOU, can bring to all the world, you COULD not wait to make the mirror of your mind clean, to receive the image of the Holiness that heals the world."

"Lesson 253 "My Self is ruler of the universe. ... It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. ******What happens is what I desire.***** What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

We're familiar with the idea of scapegoating. Something that seems separate from you happens, someone does something, and then you become triggered. You use the opportunity to project some guilt onto the person to relieve yourself.

But what if we said that the things that happen, do not happen on their own without your consent? What if we say that you cause things to happen, you coerce people to do things, and you put the events in place? And what if the reason you do this is so that you can position yourself as a victim, prime yourself for being upset about the situation, disown responsibility, and project blame for it onto someone else?

Is it possible that before you even scapegoat, you dream a dream and put the figures there and make them act out for you? What if the ego in you seeks to sabotage everything, find people sinful, and condemn them, long before you even seem to be projecting stuff onto them or reacting to them?

"It is the FIGURES in the dream, and what THEY do that seem to MAKE THE DREAM. You do not realize that ****you are making them act out FOR you****, for if you did, the guilt would not be theirs, and the illusion of satisfaction would be gone."

What if you actively seek to set people up for failure, actively try to cause problems to happen, actively amplify suffering and actively want things to go wrong so that you can have an opportunity TO scapegoat? What if life only sucks because you are CAUSING it to distort towards hell? What if your mind is actually INFLUENCING the dream, orchestrating events, changing behaviors, and is causing you to SET UP unpleasant situations?

Jesus in ACIM says that your self is ruler of the universe, and nothing comes to you unbidden by yourself. Whatever happens is what you desire. And what does not happen you have not chosen. This sure seems to suggest that your mind is a powerful creator, that events don't just happen on their own without your consent, and that you actually have a psychological influence over the world. This is your dream, after all.

What we maybe need to be willing to look at, and this is very deep, is that we don't just have a problem projecting guilt onto people, supposedly justified by "what they do", or the sins they commit, but we actually also orchestrate events and manipulate happenings and sabotage proceedings and cause problems to arise, just so that we can have scenarios in which scapegoating becomes possible. We ARRANGE the world into configurations of suffering.

Is it too much of a stretch to suggest that your mind is actually asking for trouble? Or that you are wanting there to be unsolvable problems? Or that you're making your life a living hell on purpose? Or that your ego wants there to be war? That your mind actually induces problems and holds them as real and maintains and energizes them in order to keep you in a position of victimhood, so that you'll be primed and ready to project crap onto all those involved?

What if it's that you secretly want there to be a problem? What if you secretly want to suffer, have unsolvable issues, be confronted with conflict and see yourself as powerless and hopeless and unable to see a way out? What if your descent into hell and your attempt to push everyone there with you, is actually a choice you're making that demands the dream conform to your wishes? What if your desire to see yourself unfairly treated actually manipulates spacetime and world events and people's health and so on, just so that you can keep the lie of "I didn't choose this" going?

After all, how are you going to scapegoat if no-one is doing anything to bother you? How are you going to project your guilt if no-one is sinning or making mistakes? Maybe you have to trip them up. Maybe you have to put obstacles in place. Maybe you actively seek to destroy your life and your relationships. Maybe you want things to go wrong so that you'll find yourself in an impossible situation, a nightmare of your own making, so that you'll seem imprisoned and powerless and can blame everyone else for making you feel this way?

I really do think that our minds are powerful enough that we actually influence events, manipulate happenings, induce and increase problems, make issues persist through resistance, attract even more suffering through fear, and so on. Our minds influence the dream world. Our focus, especially if it's coming from ego on some subtle level, can actually attempt to sabotage and destroy and tear down and constantly throw things into stressful states. Our egos want this, so that we can have the perfect justification for seeing ourselves unfairly treated.

"The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will." We are not idle spectators in this world, we are creators, and our minds are powerful and never stop creating. And while we pretend not to create with or like God, we instead mis-create. And our mis-creations become a world that we make and look upon and react to. It may be completely wrong to assume that this physical world is just some objectively solid real fixed thing, there on its own, doing its own thing. Maybe instead it is a fluid dream fabric which our minds are constantly manipulating, causing things to happen, asking for certain people to show up, putting problems there etc. After all, the world IS an hallucination OUR mind is having.

"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them."

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up?"

I've seen for myself how when I'm in a more egoic mood or angry, more things go wrong than usual. It's not just that I'm annoyed and can't stay patient with everyday things, it's more that there's an actual increase in how many things mess up. If I'm in fear the same thing occurs. Stuff breaks, falls, drops, slips, gets bumped into, goes missing, malfunctions etc, a lot more than usual. As children of God we need to learn to realize and master the fact that we are not just sitting here passively perceiving the world, we are MAKING IT.

Could it be that we actually are far more powerful creators than we realize? Could it be that even in this dream world we are rulers of our destiny and have to learn to create constructively and responsibly, even of dream stuff? Could it be that when we're having one of those days where everything goes wrong it's because we're making it go wrong on purpose?

Could it be that if we master this ability of mind power, mind over matter so to speak, that we could in fact orchestrate what happens, how it happens, who it happens to, and thereby be truly ruler of the universe? And what if when your mind is more peaceful, it INDUCES a life in which events are smoothed out and problems melt and attacks diminish and the so-called physical world actually bends to your will? That "all around the signs of life spring up" as you walk by, simply by the power of your mind to organize and turn chaos into order?

"external conditions are produced by the thoughts of many, not all of whom are pure in heart as yet."

"Miracle-working entails a full realization of the power of thought, and real avoidance of miscreation. Otherwise, the miracle will be necessary to set the mind ITSELF straight."

"He will go before you, making straight your path, and leaving in your way no stones to trip on, and no obstacles to bar your way. NOTHING you need will be denied you. ****Not one seeming difficulty but will melt away BEFORE you reach it.****"

"The scent of flowers is their gift to you. The waves bow down before you, and the trees extend their arms to shield you from the heat and lay their leaves before you on the ground, that you may walk in softness, while the wind sinks to a whisper 'round your holy head."

In order to uncover a blocked awareness, we need to be willing to admit to the truth. And that means being willing to admit that we are NOT doing what we are claiming to be doing, we DO want the suffering we are experiencing, and we ARE actively forcing ourselves to be victims.

There is a very simple law at work. And it is this: You are completely free. Which means that whatever you are experiencing, YOU MUST WANT IT. There are no exceptions to this. And this is very difficult to fully and deeply look at, yet alone to accept. Yet it is the secret of salvation.

Half the time we might be saying things like, I really want to be with God, I want to love everyone, I love my kids, I believe in healing and health, I don't believe I'm guilty, etc... BUT, at the same time, EXPERIENCING the exact opposite.

This is the ego talking. The ego is VERY good at lies. It's very good at disguises. It's very good at talking out of both sides of its mouth and being two faced. Generally speaking, the ego is the idea of dishonesty. And in dishonest states, you are quite capable of saying or even believing things that you do not REALLY believe deep down, and do not believe fully.

When you take a look at the evidence, either you ARE ACTUALLY EXPERIENCING what you say you believe is real, or you are lying to yourself. You can wrap up all kinds of lovely statements in what seem to be well-meaning fervent desires for something, but this doesn't mean you are CHOOSING TO DO these things.

For example, someone who sees themselves as being unfairly treated or victimized, will complain a lot. They will make a whole lot of noise about how much they DO NOT WANT what is happening. But all of this noise is utter bullshit. What's happening is the person HAS chosen to suffer, WANTS to keep suffering, does NOT want to actually take the steps of healing that would UNDO it, and so is literally STUCK in a state that they CLAIM to want to get out of, but which they are not ACTUALLY getting out of.

Instead, the ego victim tries to point fingers at all the reasons and powers other than themselves, that are keeping them bound to hell and upset. Waiting for someone else to bail them out. Waiting for someone to save them. Waiting for someone to change on their behalf. Or even waiting for someone to do something to them to make a difference. This is all an UNWILLINGNESS to ACTUALLY look within and undo the ACTUAL belief in sin that is lurking in the background, causing the suffering.

You have it in your power to undo all forms of suffering if you so choose, because you have free will. Your free will means you can NEVER get away with finding ANY excuse for why you are in the situation you are in. NOR that you can find any excuse for why you cannot get out of it, or why getting out of it depends on ANYTHING. Not on another person, not on the body, not on forces of nature, not on money or circumstances, nothing.

There is NOTHING STOPPING YOU FROM CHOOSING HEAVEN. No-one is holding you in hell but yourself. This is the secret of salvation. If you would simply ACTUALLY go ahead and CLEARLY, CONCISELY, CONFIDENTLY COMMIT to a more healed state of mind, your mind would be healed instantly. Nothing can stop you but yourself. All the beliefs we have about WHY we can't, are made up lies.

"If you wish ONLY to be healed, you heal. Your single PURPOSE makes this possible."

Jesus states clearly in the course that your completely clear single-minded decision to heal causes you to heal. Because in this unwavering commitment to ONE OUTCOME, your will is completely unopposed BY ITSELF, and therefore does not thwart its own efforts to CHOOSE. The power of decision is your own, enabling you to DISTINCTLY CHOOSE what you WILL. Whatever happens you have asked for, and whatever you do not want does not happen. This is why you are ruler of the universe.

So if we're in a state where we're complaining about the state we're in, or we feel stuck in it, or can't get out of it, or are claiming to have the best intentions, or would do something "IF" a dependency on something else is fulfilled, we are really not being completely honest. We are not admitting to how we ourselves are holding ourselves in hell by NOT undoing the ACTUAL problem.

If the real problem is a belief in sin, we need to stop believing in sin. This will take care of ALL problems. But if we do not WANT to undo the sin, we will remain in guilt and suffering, complaining about why the suffering is unfair and making tremendous steam about just how much we "really want" to get out of it. Or to be rescued. But we have to stop and get really honest. If we are STILL suffering, we MUST NOT WANT TO STOP IT. Even if we are screaming at the top of our lungs "I want this to stop". Saying so is not taking constructive action steps to DO IT.

This deeper desire is the choice to continue suffering, and this choice is the deeper problem. It's what's blocking awareness. We have to be willing to ADMIT that we HAVE CHOSEN to suffer, and become willing to CHOOSE AGAIN, a better way, which means being willing to actually address and undo the "real cause" of the problem in our mind.

All of our positive-sounded well-meaning wishful-thinking pleasantries about how much we want the truth and love and light and God, do not actually take us closer to God. They take us away from God because they are forms of denial covering up desires NOT to be with God. Either we will choose to be with God or not to be. But when we're choosing not to be, and claiming that we want to be, we must be lying. We can't have it both ways.

Looking within to the honest facts of what we are ACTUALLY DOING, and admitting that if we are not with God it MUST be because we want some kind of sinful suffering, this opens up the doorways, lifts away the denial, removes the illusions of peace, and allows us to shed real light of truth on the situation. Then we can SEE, that in fact we have a grievance, or an unhealed wound, or a secret sin or hidden hate. And this hidden stuff's REMOVAL is what will actually brings us closer WITHIN to awareness of God's presence.

Going through the dark shit is unfortunately a lot harder and requires a lot more radical honesty than the fluffy externalized "happy seeker" route of rainbows and nice-sounding fluff. We DID choose to reject God. We did actually push away our inheritance. As Jesus states in ACIM, "the separation HAS occurred." We have to admit that we're STILL choosing it, if we are not GETTING the result of reunion with God.

We did seem to WANT to suffer. We DID make a mistaken decision by choosing that, and we need to choose again if we want peace. That means looking at what we ACTUALLY DO BELIEVE, and not at what we THINK we believe. And these dark beliefs can then be brought into the light and released.

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace. (meaning, I literally CHOSE TO SUFFER, and I have to admit I have chosen that, in order to recognize that I need to choose again)

I made the decision myself (no one else made me suffer, I did), but I can also decide otherwise. (meaning I have the power to CHOOSE NOT TO SUFFER, and to force this to happen).

I WILL to decide otherwise, because I WANT to be at peace. (I want to stop suffering and by WILLING NOT TO SUFFER, the suffering stops - if I'm doing so honestly and fully)

I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM. (I am not GUILTY for making a wrong decision, I am just mistaken and need correction of the ACTUAL problem, which is a belief in the desire to suffer)

I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me." (I receive healing help from the Holy Spirit and open up to His Light of Truth to shine into my mind and illuminate it, so that I can ACTUALLY experience what I've been saying I want.)

Freedom of Choice > Responsibility > Power > Causation > Effects.

To simplify, think of cause and effect. You are either the cause, or the effect. If you see yourself as the cause, you cannot be an effect. Your casual outpouring is so strong nothing can come at you. If you see yourself as not the cause, you MUST see yourself as being highly affected and therefore ARE an effect of something.

When you project responsibility outside yourself, onto another or the world, you are disowning and giving away your power. You are giving power TO them. You are framing them in your mind as having the power to CAUSE YOU, and to make you have effects. And it will seem these effects are against your will - something you did not choose.

But you are choosing it, because you are using your power to PRETEND to disown your power, you are still using your power to frame someone as having power over you, and the power that you see IN them acting against you IS YOUR POWER. You just are seeing it as though it belongs to someone else and is not a part of you.

You've separated yourself from your power and now your power is seeming to turn around 180 degrees and come back at you in the form of "an alien will", causing you, changing you, defining you, altering you without your choosing. Or so it seems. Because you ARE choosing this. You are choosing to see your power as against yourself, doing things to you. Even if it seems to be being done "through" others vicariously.

This means you're in a position which is rather strange, where you are FIGHTING YOURSELF. Like literally you are taking your power, moving it away from you, turning it around, and then launching it at yourself in an attack mode, causing you to have effects.

Your mind believes the power is out there against you. Your mind ALSO must believe therefore that since you are NOT having the power, you are NOT the cause, you are NOT responsible, you MUST BE AN EFFECT. The belief in being not the cause and being affected go hand in hand.

This means that your mind is putting in place both the framing of something external as "attacking you", AND it is putting in place the SYMPTOMS, physically mentally or emotionally, that you would expect to occur IF that power were acting upon you. Your mind ITSELF, makes up effects, that correspond to the perceived cause.

This literally means your mind makes symptoms in the body, makes up sickness and disease and even death, makes up wounds and heartache, makes up emotional reactions and loss and sadness and anger and hurt, to correspond to the perceived external cause. Not just imagining it, but actually MAKING IT, producing it, putting it into your experience, changing your feelings, changing your body.

This especially happens when you project guilt, in which you are basically projecting responsibility, which is cause. You are saying, I am not the cause of this, you are, and are pointing a finger and hurling guilt at another to try to make it stick to them. But moreso what you are doing is you are trying to give them power and responsibility and will and freedom and choice and causation to have these things INSTEAD of you.

It's rather bizarre then that we literally give power to people, to frame them as capable of attacking us, threatening us, making us afraid, upsetting us, doing things to us. We effectively WANT THEM TO. Even if on the surface we are claiming to be innocent, even if we are feeling that feeling of "I didn't choose this, I don't want this, I didn't ask for it."

You see, that victim perspective in which you feel like you are being unfairly treated, that's the feeling you get when you are becoming "an effect". It's the recognition that you have indeed projected power, cause, responsibility etc, and so see yourself as NOT responsible, NOT the cause, NOT the one using power to make something happen.

In victimhood (ego) you perceive that you are not the cause of what's happening, and you are in denial of this, and having denied it you are projecting it. So now you see cause as outside of you, in someone else, acting upon you, at the same time as NOT seeing that you are causing anything yourself. The denial acts as a barrier blocking awareness of what YOU are doing, that YOU are using power, that YOU are responsible, that YOU are causing this.

It's understandable then that as the victimhood role strengthens, the denial and disownership of power, causation and responsibility increases. You believe less and less that "it's your fault" (guilt-related). You believe less and less that you chose it, wanted it, made it happen, or had anything to do with it. Almost as if you were just minding your own business doing nothing at all and someone came out of the blue and attacked you for no good reason. As if you were just completely innocent (the face of innocence).

And that's simply because the power has been projected. The power has been given away, disowned, you don't want it, and you WANT the other to have it. So you simultaneously have this experience of "I didn't ask for this, how could you do this to me", and "that person is having power over me and is the cause of me." You can't have one part without the other. Just as you can't have a belief in an external cause WITHOUT a belief in having effects as well. "I want you to have my power, please use it against me, and I will pretend I don't want you to."

So we quite literally use the power of our mind to dissociate from our power, we hand it over to all kinds of things out there that HAVE NO POWER, other than us giving it to it in our minds. And then having given it to them, they seem to loom over us and we now fear them and feel powerless and weak and feeble. Unable to go up against such a power, as though we have no power at all. And now we are tempted to see ourselves as unfairly treated.

What we have to recognize of course is the secret of salvation - that we are doing this to ourselves. We have to recognize and own the power and responsibility. We have to take back the power of decision and use it to choose otherwise with the Holy Spirit. We have to stop believing that ANYTHING outside of us HAS OUR POWER, and indeed need to recognize that the power we THOUGHT was theirs is in fact our own. It only seemed like theirs because we disowned it and didn't want it.

So we take our power back. We claim responsibility for causing everything we are experiencing. We acknowledge, I have caused this thing, I have done this to myself, it is not being done by this other person or something in the body or the world, I am not a victim of this, I am not being affected by them, they have no power over me. I own and take back and reclaim my own power which I gave away, and take full responsibility for it. Which means that I must be CHOOSING what happens, I must be CAUSING what happens, and I MUST have caused all of my own suffering.

All my symptoms I put in place myself. All my upset emotions I put in place myself. All my despair and loss and shame and guilt I did to myself. All sense that I'd been attacked or mistreated or shamed or attacked by anyone else was MY MISTAKE in perceiving this wrongly. I did not recognize that I was using my power to pretend to disown my power, and using it to set up others to attack me for me. I didn't realize I was fighting against myself with a divided will. I have been using my power to try to destroy myself, attacking myself, using others to do my bidding, and then blaming them for it.

Ultimately you need to resume your role and position as ruler of the universe. You are the CAUSE of everything you see and feel and think and experience. You are the co-creator with God with unlimited power. What you say happens, what you do not want does not happen. You articulate reality. You CREATE. You cause what happens and you WANT what happens because you chose it. Everything that happens YOU MUST BE CHOOSING. And by the power of your decision you choose NOT TO SUFFER AND TO STOP ATTACKING YOURSELF LIKE THIS.

Indeed, when you realize that nothing at all has been attacking you OTHER THAN YOURSELF, through your mis-use of your power and will, you can find relief in knowing that if you would just stop hurting your own self, stop giving away your power so that you can be indirectly attacked by yourself, stop disowning responsibility for CAUSING, for CHOOSING, you would stop suffering entirely, and forever. Because NO ONE HAS POWER OVER YOU OTHER THAN YOURSELF! And no-one and nothing can ever cause you to suffer, to be sick, or to die without your consent.

"For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

Ego is identification with form. That means, first believing in separation, so that there can be different things, and thus forms. And then attempting to be ONE WITH those things, so that they become associated with what you ARE, as part of you.

This begins with the denial of self, which is also the denial of God. We place within ourselves a belief that we are LACKING self in some way. That we are not enough, that we have been diminished, that we have experienced a loss of self.

We attack and hide from and distort our view of ourselves and thus believe we are a wretched wicked evil monster, sorely lacking and impoverished and powerless and lost.

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

The belief that you lack in some way, produces a sense of being “not enough”, and that something is missing. Therefore you Are lacking and “in need.” This in turn produces a compulsion driven by a NEED to get what you are missing. What you are missing is ENOUGH SELF, or wholeness.

But with the belief that you are not enough of a self - or unwholesome/unholy, at the root, this belief is not questioning. Instead we accept it as true, see ourselves as lacking love and identity, become very much “in need”, and then feel compelled to fill those needs. By not knowing who we really are, and seeing ourselves as empty of self - as if nothing at all - we then start to try to DEVELOP a self - to get a self.

This produces DESIRE, which is “wanting to get” what you do not have. The more the ego sees itself as lacking, the more it wants to get, and thus the greater its desire. It’s a kind of psychological mechanism where we’re trying to rectify a problem - a lack of self - by trying to get it from somewhere, to alleviate the feeling of dis-satisfaction, not being enough, not having enough etc. This can become desperation.

This intense wanting turns into seeking. We will seek to find self or identity or value anywhere other than where it really is. It really is buried underneath the belief that we are LACKING in some way - sinful, guilty, diminished. But the ego mindset doesn’t want to question the denial of self, it wants to keep that in place. Effectively, the ego mindset then WANTS to LACK self, AND wants to gain self, at the same time. And thus it can never reach a point of satisfaction.

From the strong drive to “find yourself”, and driven by the sense of lack of self, you feel a compulsion for MORE. You need more, of everything. You need to gain. You need to make up for what you seem to be lacking. You need to fill the gaping hole of emptiness within. And so this produces GREED and SELFISHNESS, because we now seek to get more and more and more to try to satisfy the emptiness. Even though we don’t really want to satisfy because we want to deny self.

The way by which we then attempt to GAIN SELF, or to get MORE SELF, is to IDENTIFY WITH form. To identify with separate things. Things which we think are valuable or important. Things which differentiate and make us unique. Things which, by way of association, rubs off on us favorably and gives us a sense of being MORE than we were. The ego thus identifies WITH OBJECTS, with bodies, with thoughts and feelings, with the mind, in an attempt to increase its sense of existence - of being a self.

We thus literally identify with a country, a culture, a body, a relationship partner, their body, valued treasures, objects and toys, buildings and land and vehicles, money, sex, and all kinds of things. We identify with them by trying to ATTACH SELF to them, to in a sense posses them, by trying to equate the object with our sense of self, to suggest “this thing is the SAME as me” or “I am the same as this thing.” It’s an attempt to find ONENESS WITH FORM, ie oneness with separateness, which is impossible.

Ego is amplified by an increase in a sense of “setting it apart” from the whole, by which it reasons that it if can become a more significant SEPARATE thing, it is more established and exists more and thus has more identity - more self. It in a way wants to be the whole, such as to be the OWNER of the world, but it also thwarts this fundamentally by its belief that it MUST be less than whole in order to seem to “be something.”

Psychological ownership, psychological possession, psychological attachment, identification, trying to be one with form, trying to gain more self, forming a self image, trying to enhance the self, trying to improve the self, trying to make the things that ego is identified with be in themselves better so that it rubs off on us and we can take credit for it, are all the SAME method of trying to BECOME something we are NOT, in an effort to become a real self that “we are.”

Since all temporal things, all different things, all forms, all objects, all thoughts and feelings, are transient and temporary, they fundamentally do not last. The ego knows this in a way, and is constantly in a state of dissatisfaction that it not only never has enough, it aways feels a compulsion to become MORE SELF. This is due to the deep belief in having NO SELF, which it MUST maintain in order to seem to be relevant.

But temporary things come and go, and so the ego then experiences a sense of LOSS. It now loses the things it wants, as those treasured things leave its existence. Whether it be a person’s body that dies, or some family member falls ill, or a possession becomes broken, or some toy is lost, or money is wasted, or whatever, there is a disappointment.

But it’s not simply a matter of feeling that something valuable has gone away, it actually it is much more selfish than that. Loss is driven by the recognition that the things which you were IDENTIFIED WITH have gone away, and therefore PART OF YOUR SELF has gone away. Through the loss of idols and favorites and possessions and things we have owned and become attached to, even things with sentimental value, the ego is not upset about the THING being gone - it’s upset about ITS SELF being gone.

And so loss is really experienced by the ego as a reminder of the loss or lack of self, a reminder of the inner emptiness that was there before the compulsion to ”seek and do not find.” It is a triggering of the sense that you have lost YOUR SELF, and now you are diminished, and now you are lacking, and now you have less, and now you are not enough.

This produces what we call a feeling of loss or grief, but it’s not REALLY a grief over the loss of some valuable thing or person or place, it’s a much more selfish upset that what you wanted from your neediness has been lost and so your very IDENTITY has been lost. And then you are sad because it is YOU that has died again. Ultimately all sense of loss over external things are just reflections of the inner sense of the loss of a real self, driven by self denial.

What needs to take place to undo all of this madness, this impossible seeking for something that does not exist anywhere except underneath the self denial, is to undo the self denial. To stop denying that you are a fully created and WHOLE self, that God created, and that you are still the whole of that self.

It requires a shift in IDENTIFICATION, in which your sense of “what am I” stops being attached to and possessing of things like the body and thoughts and feelings and objects, and instead recognizes self to be one with the spirit - the soul, the Christ holy self. But not only that, but the identification with and as the WHOLE KINGDOM OF GOD, in which identity is SHARED and whole and one, because it is NOT based on separation or lack.

And this will require what will seem to be the dismantling of the false sense of self, rooted deeply in lack and imperfection and the absence of identity - an insecure and impossibly unhappy and deprived self. This self is BASED ON self denial, so the denial has to be lifted and the mind has to re-identify with spirit. Fundamentally this requires the recognition that your real self is NOT lost, nothing has happened to it, it can never be changed, and you are still as God created you to be forever. You are Christ, not anti-Christ.

When there is no self-denial, there is no lack of self, and so there is no neediness, and thus no wanting, and thus no desire, and thus no seeking externally, and thus no drive to get or to attach or own or possess, and thus no attempt to ADD MORE SELF to yourself in an effort to BUILD a self to overcome the shortcomings of the one you hate.

Self hate and self denial and self attack and self destruction all have to end, as you open up to accept and recognize the real self that you really are. Without the belief in being anything other than God created you to be - and which in truth you STILL ARE, there is no basis for the ego whatsoever, and so it cannot exist. This ends with the return to simply knowing yourself as you really are in reality - the whole of yourself which needs nothing.