"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."

This means that your mind is CONSTANTLY CAUSING STUFF TO HAPPEN, AT ALL TIMES, WITHOUT STOPPING.

And that means, regardless of whether you think you have the power to make things happen or not, whether you are very powerful or totally powerless, YOU ARE ALWAYS CAUSING IT WHATEVER STATE YOU ARE IN.

Therefore even if you are in suffering and sickness you MUST BE MAKING IT HAPPEN.

Even if you are dying you MUST BE CHOOSING IT.

Even if you are unhappy because you think someone did something and that you're "held" in this unhappy suffering due to forces outside your control, IT IS NOT TRUE, YOU ARE CHOOSING TO SUFFER.

Your mind never stops causing. It never sleeps. It is always ON. It is always creating or projecting. YOU ARE PERMANENTLY CAUSAL.

Therefore if you can realize this, it means literally that NO MATTER what seems to be happening or what seems to have caused it, YOU CAUSED IT - this is the secret to salvation - and therefore YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR MIND AND CAUSE SOMETHING ELSE. Therefore NOTHING happens outside of your decision, so WHATEVER you are experiencing YOU DID CHOOSE IT!

This is precisely reflected here:

"Decisions CANNOT be difficult. This is obvious if you realize that you must ALREADY have made a decision NOT to be wholly joyous if that is what you feel. Therefore, the first step in the undoing is to recognize that YOU ACTIVELY DECIDED WRONGLY, BUT CAN AS ACTIVELY DECIDE OTHERWISE."

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace.

I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.

I WILL to decide otherwise, because I WANT to be at peace."

This is all about you being 100% FULLY RESPONSIBLE for having DECIDED - CHOSEN - to experience what you are experiencing. If you are afraid, unhappy, sad, grieving, sick, dying, in pain, confused, mentally ill, whatever it is, YOU HAVE CHOSEN IT. You HAVE decided to experience it, and you have ASKED FOR IT. And you have received as you have asked and it has been given you.

This is what the Song of Prayer pamphlet is talking about - that you are ALWAYS ASKING and your prayer is always being answered, and therefore whatever you are receiving YOU DID ASK FOR, and therefore if you want something else you need to "raise your prayer" to a higher happier level - a happier request.

Whenever you think that something is happening that you did not ask for, or that you have no power to stop or change something, or that you are stuck with suffering, or that there is no way to change situations, YOU ARE WRONG. You are mistaken and you are UNCONSCIOUS of the part of your mind that is CHOOSING IT. Therefore you HAVE made a wrong decision. You have to totally own it. And you have to admit that YOU decided it yourself. And then you can also start to realize that you WANT to decide something else, and that IF YOU DO, you WILL EXPERIENCE SOMETHING ELSE, because your decision making has POWER.

This means, in no uncertain terms, that you are NEVER A VICTIM. Victimhood is completely impossible. It is a lie. People who are in a victim state are STILL DOING IT TO THEMSELVES, they just are not aware of it. They are STILL CHOOSING IT AND WANTING IT. Even if it looks like they have absolutely no clue why it's happening to them against their will. They are NOT VICTIMS. They are deliberate choosers who are unconscious of their decision making and who have decided to HURT THEMSELVES.

Jesus affirms that "you cannot be hurt UNLESS YOU HURT YOURSELF" and similarly "those who are sick do not love themselves for if they loved themselves they would heal themselves." He also confirms that "no-one dies without their own consent" because you HAVE TO CHOOSE DEATH in order for it to happen.

This is THE CENTRAL TEACHING of A Course in Miracles, that you have absolute unlimited POWER, EVERYTHING that happens you have chosen, NOTHING happens without your consent, and therefore you ALWAYS are receiving what you are asking for. Therefore if you do not like what you are receiving, CHOOSE AGAIN.

"At least I can decide I do not like what I feel now. " "I want another way to look at this." "Perhaps there is another way to look at this, what can I lose by asking?"

This is Jesus's black and white, absolutely no-exceptions teaching. There is NO SUCH THING as a victim. There is NO SUCH THING as an accident. There is NO SUCH THING as dying against your will. There is NO SUCH THING as "becoming sick" without having decided to be sick. There is NO SUCH THING as unwanted suffering. And there is NO SUCH THING as losing the power of your mind to CAUSE.

"This is a course in CAUSE, not effect". That's what this means. Jesus is trying to get us to see that we ONLY CAUSE. We are NOT AT THE EFFECT OF ANYTHING WHATSOEVER! This is the secret to salvation - that you are just doing this all to yourself. There is NO OTHER WILL. There is no alien will. There are no enemies. There are no external forces. Nothing has power over you. Nothing in the world has the power to make you ill or sick or weak or afraid. Nothing can happen to you against your will.

Therefore if stuff is happening that you seem not to have chosen or do not want, it is ONLY because you DID CHOOSE IT but you are unconscious of that choice. That's why you need to remove the blocks to awareness so that you can BECOME A CONSCIOUS DECISION MAKER. Then you will NOT CHOOSE TO HURT YOURSELF! And this is why it leads to salvation, because literally there IS NO CAUSE OF YOU other than God, and you CANNOT BE CAUSED by anything or anyone else in existence. Therefore if YOU STOP CAUSING YOURSELF HARM, you will be permanently invulnerable! IMMORTAL!!!!

We are simply unconscious day-dreaming lazy choosers who have forgotten our own power and are victims of ourselves and nothing else. This is all we have to own up to and correct. To reclaim our INHERITANCE and our right to freely choose. To claim our freedom from fake stories of external un-asked for victimhood, and to erase ALL trace of believing that there is ANY POWER OVER YOU from anything other than yourself. Not even God goes against your will. Not even Jesus goes against your will.

Your power, shared with God, in holiness, is unlimited. "God is unlimited, there is nothing He cannot do." "There is nothing my holiness cannot do." "There is nothing He (holy spirit) cannot do." UNLIMITED, UNOPPOSED WILL POWER. There is NO ROOM in that for any kind of "it happened because I didn't choose it." or "it was an accident" or "didn't intend it" or "didn't ask for it."

There are no real victims. This is Jesus's message. We are only experiencing the consequences of our OWN DECISIONS. "Heaven is a choice I must make." If you so choose, nothing can go against your will. Your will is as powerful as Jesus's will. It is ALL CHOICE.

To the ego, being powerful means recognizing that there are significant powers outside of you which you have to FIGHT WITH in an attempt to dominate and "over-power" them against their free will. It sees power as a way to FORCE things to happen aggressively. This kind of power is DISEMPOWERING to all involved.

To God, and in the truth of ourselves, REAL POWER means the recognition that THERE IS NO OPPOSITION. There is no OTHER POWER. There is no enemy (thus all are innocent). There is no alien will. There is no hand of oppression or "cause of death" that can come along and choose FOR you when you will suffer and die. Death is always chosen. And so if you do not choose it, you will not die. That's the responsibility you have to own up to.

YOU HAVE THIS POWER NOW. IT IS OPERATING NOW. IT ALWAYS HAS BEEN OPERATING. IT ALWAYS WILL BE. It's just a matter of what you are USING IT to do. And if you are using it to hurt yourself, that's a mistaken decision. "Holy Spirit will undo the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him. I choose to let Him by allowing Him to choose for (in favor of) God for me."

You are only ever afraid of yourself. You are your own worst enemy. You are your only victim. You but victimize yourself. You have no opponent. There is no cause outside of you.

You are FREE TO CHOOSE! Choose again. Only by having the POWER TO CHOOSE EVERYTHING do you have the power to choose HEAVEN!

The thing about the body is that it's a limitation. You as a spirit are unlimited, infinite, everywhere. You are omnipresent like God. To seemingly "enter" a body you have to massively confine yourself to one location, separated off from the rest. It's like having your hands tied. Huge amounts of awareness have to be shut out. Not to mention that your intimate expansive unified relationships with the entire Sonship are shut out.

You are squeezed into this tiny little space that you then seem to inhabit. The body forms this fence around a part of the mind and seems to keep it inside, protected and separate from the rest of the mind which is outside. Large distances are placed between bodies to ensure they are kept separate. This is all the ego's design for isolating and imprisoning God's children.

Then the ego goes one step further and says, ok, now that you are in this body, wouldn't it be great if you could connect with other people? How about we bring your body closer to other bodies? How about we have your bodies try to join with other bodies? Maybe you'll feel wonderful things as you merge and feel close to others. And the usual response to this temptation is that is sounds great, it seems like an improvement, we don't have to be so alone and isolated.

The problem here is that we're accepting a massive artificial limitation as though it can never be changed, we're deliberately confining ourselves to being trapped in a little body, acting from littleness. We're handicapping ourselves, and then pretending that to bring bodies together is going to somehow "undo" this. But so long as the handicapping nature of the body is maintained, so long as we are isolated in space and time, anything the ego offers as a special relationship is a ridiculous substitute for true joining.

Two spirits should share, join, merge, connect, be one, and access each other fully and completely and in a truly unlimited way. You are in your brother's minds. You share everything with them. To do that, you need to not be restricted and limited. Trying to first accept massive limitation and to then try to continue to join, is like two people with a ball and chain around their ankles, chained up to separate prison cells, trying to reach out to be closer to each other. They can't leave the prisons or get past the bars.

It's also a simple fact that nothing in spacetime can truly join. Quantum particles are designed to be separated off. If atoms were to truly occupy the same space they would annihilate each other in a nuclear explosion. Forces repel the particles and keep them separated. Even what seems to be a physical collision or sensation of touch is really what it feels like to bump up against these force fields. Atoms don't ever really touch each other at all. So right off the bat the ego has made this scenario where even if it looks as though you are as physically close to something as possible, you still aren't actually making real contact. All sensations of touch are sensations of two forcefields repelling each other.

To try to join with another spirit while having a body is next to impossible. Someone who knows they are spirit would also find it pointless and very limiting to try to make this connection via the body. Why, when you can experience direct mind-to-mind communication ("minds need not bodies to communicate"), would you first filter all communication through your body, then through another body, in attempting to share something? Why not just go mind-to-mind?

When two bodies attempt to join in sexual acts it also really is an attempt to identify with your own body, to identify the other person with their body, to bring the two bodies together in an attempt to believe that the two persons/spirits are actually joining. This is a body delusion. The physical bodies are all that are coming together, and even their sensations of contact are illusions. Forms, matter, energy, keep individuals separated off at all levels and at all times.

Trying to relate to another brother, a spirit, by trying to relate TO or WITH the body, is almost like you're having a relationship with someone's clothing. If you were to fall in love with someone's jacket and trousers and completely ignore the person wearing them, this would indeed be very strange and somewhat insane. But this is what we do when we relate to people as bodies, completely failing to overlook the illusion of the body, failing to see the real person beyond it.

The ego first established a state of massive lack and deprivation. Its isolating of us made us lonely and in need. It built compulsions to try to join physically, not in an effort to bring us closer together, but in an effort to reinforce and emphasize the reality of the body. Pleasure and pain accomplish the same goal of making the body and illusions of sensations the primary focus. "To sense is not to know", and by focusing on sensations we become blinded by perception of form.

In efforts to bring two bodies together in a special, body-worshipping relationship, we actually necessarily exclude vast quantities of individuals. More is left out than is taken in. Due to the separating and localizing nature of spacetime, bringing 2 bodies together must entail excluding billions. The attempt to make two bodies extra special, psychologically, requires the downplaying and attack upon other bodies. A special body cannot be elevated and idol worshipped without condemning all the rest.

"On this side of the bridge, you see the world of separate bodies, seeking to join each other in SEPARATE UNIONS, and to become one BY LOSING. When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in. For God is left WITHOUT, and NOTHING taken in."

What appears on the surface to be an attempt to join, is ACTUALLY an attempt to separate. And so the ego's promise of body union in fact leads to an increase in separation, unconsciousness, loss, lack, loneliness, isolation and imprisonment. The supposed freedom produced by sexual union actually produces an increased state of exclusion and illness. With the body as the main focus, the mind is shut out and true joining based in real love becomes impossible.

You could say, in fact, that the attempt of two bodies to come together to join to make a baby, is actual a death ritual. The bodies celebrate their triumph over all other bodies, they worship the idol of death, separation ensues and now there are three bodies. Illusions have given birth to illusions. And while this is much celebrated in the world, the ego does have these underpinnings in its mechanics of what is actually happening.

It's possible, for a time, to still use the body for a holier purpose. Love can be extended through it to others, it can be used to teach, to make the body less real, and to overlook form. To the Holy Spirit, the body actually is seen as having NO function.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself."

"When it is used only as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function."

"It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly, having no function except communication. "

"Healing IS the Holy Spirit's form of communication, and the ONLY one He knows."

Trying to make bodies real, to use them as exclusion devices, emphasizing and believing in and falling into the temptation of the flesh, being deceived by physical sensations not recognized as illusions, believing your brother is a body, etc are all ways that the ego uses the body to keep you from what it promises will be the outcome. The ego guarantees separation, while the Holy Spirit guarantees union.

For a time we can use the body with the Holy Spirit, but not to emphasize bodies. Not to use it as a way to focus on the body or believe it can give us anything. Not to use it to get from others. And not to use it as a symbolic act of exclusion. We are to love everyone equally, and this is impossible at the physical level.

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

"Think not that we can relate in peace to God or our brothers with ANYTHING external."

The entire world of bodies has to be more or less "overlooked". "To forgive is to OVERLOOK." To overlook means to "bypass seeing", to see past and beyond. If we stop to dwell on the physical, our sight is blinded. If we stop to focus on the body, the mind stops extending past it. This produces various forms of illness. If we truly want to have a real relationship with anyone, it has to be a real relationship with everyone, at the level of unconditional love, through mind and spirit.

Sickness in your own body is an attempt to accuse others of sin. It is part of the process of projection. "You but accuse your brother of your own sins" "Sick bodies are accusers".

This is entirely to do with cause and effect. In your natural state you are purely causal. You are not at the effect of anything external. But when you believe in your own sinfulness, you go into denial and disown the sin, projecting it outwards.

In other words, you take the causality from within yourself and hand it over to something outside of you. You now see cause as outside you, and effects as inside of you. Your mind believes both, that someone else is the cause of you, and you are being affected by them. That you have effects in you.

Due to believing in being affected, your mind powerfully manufacture signs and symptoms in your body as a reflection of your own belief, that you are having effects. It puts them through THROUGH its belief in the CAUSES that it sees itself as subject to. This is entirely based on the belief that there is a cause outside of you with power over you, dictating what you are, changing you against your will, and thus that there SHOULD BE effects in you correlating to the hierarchy of illusions.

Your mind itself creates the effects in you, and through believing that you are affected, invents weakness, suffering, sickness and death in the body. This manifests in the body as a symbolic representation of this attitude and thus the body becomes sick. The sickness of the body is entirely a PART OF the process of the projection of sin onto others. As you project mentally, the body communicates the attack by taking on the form of the message.

By using the body to accuse rather than to extend love, the body BECOMES accused, depicts accusation, turns into a form of attack, and is distorted by the mind's belief in its own affectedness. Essentially, "toxic harmful messages" passing through it affect it negatively. The body out-pictures the mind's sick attitude about itself and its brothers. The body now shows what the mind is believing and being used for, as symptoms of sickness and malfunction materialize by the power of the mind.

So there is this thing happening on a mental level where the mind is believing in sin and projecting it outward onto others. Your brother is being accused of sin and is being attacked by your mind. This belief simultaneously affects your PERCEPTION, which is now backwards (false perception), whereby you now see your brother as sinning against you and is the cause of your suffering. He is made into the real sinner who has power over you, as a false perception.

Then at the same time, on the physical level, the body is entirely caught up in this psychological process, is swept up in the attack and is distorted at the level of form to depict the attacking attitude. It becomes a "picture of crucifixion" which testifies and shows PROOF to your brother that HE must have been the CAUSE of you, and here are the EFFECTS to prove it. You show him the effects as part of your accusation and projection, to try to convince him of its wrongfulness. This all happens at once, mentally and physically.

So now the body becomes a physical accuser, demonstrating that there must have been a sin against you, because the body is under attack against your will (so it seem), and symptoms are providing fake evidence to show for it. As your brother looks upon this sick body, even if he has absolutely nothing to actually do with the situation, if he beholds your accusatory body he does not see his forgiveness there. And instead seems himself standing condemned, which weakens his mind.

Unless he is able to forgive himself, and thus completely overlook your demonstration of blame, which would allow him to be unaffected, his own belief in his own sinfulness will be compounded by your demonstration. If he can overlook it and not buy it, he can potentially offer healing to you. If he fails to overlook it, he will merely add to your sickness and compound it, taking the opportunity to rebel and project his own sin onto you in a joint ego encounter of mutual unconsciousness.

Your sick body does nothing at all to help him heal and is an attempt to infect him. It shows this on physical levels such as through infection and disease and contagion. Such sickness show up AS contagious because the mind TRYING to transfer sin to the other person.. I'm not sharing this to make anyone feel guilty. This is just something that we need to look honestly at if we are to move towards healing. But beware that Jesus holds absolutely nothing back when he presents this idea

"***The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill.*** Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

So Jesus is saying here, YOUR sickness, even your physical sickness, is part of an attempt by your ego's belief in sin, to project or give away the sin to others through accusation and projection. And as your body becomes sick, through your OWN indirect causality, as part of your sinful USE of the body, you get to show everyone why someone ELSE caused it.

It even goes as far as to say, that if you cause your body to DIE, in physical death, you are WILLING to do so because it assuages your guilt, portrays you as the innocent helpless victim, allows everyone else to be accused of causing it (external causes of death), and is thus the ego's attempt to exonerate you. This is why we have a belief that people die "against their will", "unchosen", "unfairly", and feel sorry for the whole episode. It's all part of the ego's worship of death as salvation.

This means you would be literally **willing to die**, to pay the price of death, IF it means you can be considered innocent and not the cause of sin. If the world can be considered the cause of it, YOU get off as the innocent party. And so death "saves you" from having sinned. This is what happens upon EVERY death. This is the CAUSE of every single physical death. "No one dies without their own consent". And this is why death of the body PROVES a complete failure to choose against sin and accusation. Death is a state of total disownership of self, life, will, power and responsibility and is an attempt to destroy the Son of God.

So it kind of boils down to this. When your mind believes in sin, it will project that sin onto others, see cause as external, experience backwards/false perception, and induce deliberate illness in the body to correspond to "what effects likely wold be produced" by such a cause. The body then shows proof that your brother is sinful because effects remain in the body. And as you literally SHOW him this sick body, you remain accusing him. And you will not REMOVE the effects from your body, because you want to CONTINUE accusing him.

"For it becomes the symbol of reproach, the sign of guilt whose consequences still are there to see, so that the cause can NEVER be denied."

"A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape."

"The unhealed CANNOT pardon. For they are the witnesses that pardon is unfair. They would retain the CONSEQUENCES of the guilt they overlook. Yet no-one CAN forgive a sin which he believes is real. And what has consequences MUST be real, because what it has DONE is there to see."

The important thing is, there is a flip side. What happens when you choose NOT to believe in sin? What happens when your mind decides to be holy and healed and loving towards others? With no sin to project, the entire projective process stops. That means the mind stops believing causality is external. It takes causality off the shoulders of your brother. It stops seeing itself as a victim at the effect of anyone else. Perception reverses along with cause and effect, such that you now see yourself as the cause, not the effect. And thus all "effects" in you, and in the body, literally disappear. Because without an externalized cause, they cannot remain.

The result of this is that your body is not USED to accuse, or to attack, but to HEAL. Because the mind MADE the symptoms as "effects" in the body as fake evidence to accuse your brother with, the mind ALSO has the power to UNDO those symptoms. "You made sickness and death and can therefore abolish both." By TAKING BACK YOUR POWER from externally projected "cause", you reclaim causality internally and stop seeing yourself as "having effects". The effects cannot stay WITHOUT projected causality, because you now see yourself as ONLY CAUSAL. "I am not at the effect of the world I see" is healing.

By extending love and healing through the body, the body DEPICTS harmlessness, holiness, innocence and the ABSENCE of sin. Just as the mind invented the symptoms of sickness due to its belief in "being affected", it also UN-INVENTS the symptoms as a result of believing "I am NOT at the effect of the world." Through believing "my brother is NOT the cause of me", the body is healed. By NOT using the body to communicate attack or blame, the body stops SHOWING symbolic signs of attack or blame. All sickness is lifted away from it BY the mind and it is healed through mind power Because you are the CAUSE of all of this. Sickness and death is a CHOICE.

There are NO exceptions or loopholes to this dynamic. When the mind is healed, it heals the body and forces the body to NOT show any signs of attack. "The mind, being sane, heals the body." "Now is the body healed by miracles." When the mind is in a state of sin, it attacks the body and makes it sick. "Sickness is anger taken out upon the body." "Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt (by others)." The body SHOWS what the mind's attitude towards itself and its brothers is. "A broken body SHOWS the mind HAS NOT been healed." Always.

It boils down to, healthy mind, healthy body. Sick mind, sick body. Sin and projection, body depicts attack. Forgiveness and healing, body depicts the absence of attack. Loving shows up as a divinely healed lovely body devoid of all signs of suffering, and symbolizes Christ and eternal life.

"This can be accomplished only if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension. The arrest of the mind's extension is the ***cause of all illness***, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND'S FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND'S JOY."

"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.Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body's condition. ... He does not suffer either in going or remaining. Sickness is now impossible to him."

Jesus is absolutely NOT saying that the body "sometimes" heals. He is not saying "it might, it might not." He is saying IT HAS TO symbolize the mind at all times. The body is an EFFECT, not a cause. The body is not AT the effect of the world. It does not "become sick" through external causes. Those are fake. It becomes sick only if the mind approves of the sickness for its purposes of projection. The body is being USED, it does hot have a say in it. Effects do not cause anything.

Nor is there such a thing as "death happens against my will." This is entirely a fictional ego belief. Death happens when your mind chooses to attack your brother. Your attempted murder of him, kills your body. When you love and forgive all people, your body CANNOT BE SICK OR DIE. Sickness and death literally become impossible. And this is the resurrection, in which death is surmounted and has NO POWER over you.

Giving and receiving are one. If you give ONLY LIFE, you will receive only life. If you give sin and death, you will receive sin and death. This is also the golden rule. If you believe you brother is sinful and you attack him for it with your body image, you WILL attack yourself and believe you are sinful. This will make you sick, mentally and physically. If you give him healing, you will be healed. "I will heal as I let him teach me to heal."

This is A Course in Miracles. A central teaching. The Holy Spirit has a perfectly healed body and mind to offer you to use in the world as a teaching device. But it is only accessible by not sinning against yourself and others. It IS possible to REVERSE, UNDO, and HEAL, all forms of sickness and death. Not only in yourself, but also in others. This is what it mean to be miraculous.

"And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo.""

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."

"The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and ***by its health and loveliness*** proclaim the truth and value ***that it represents***. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live.""

Such a healed body HEALS YOUR BROTHER through its example.

"Correction IS the function given both, but neither one alone. And when it is fulfilled as SHARED, it MUST correct mistakes in both of you. It CANNOT leave mistakes in one unhealed, and make the other free. THAT is DIVIDED purpose, which cannot BE shared, and so it CANNOT be the function which the Holy Spirit sees as His."

"What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt. The ancient Calling of the Father to His Son, and of the Son unto his own, will yet be the last trumpet that the world will ever hear. Brother, there is no death. And this you learn when you but wish to show your brother that you had no hurt of him. He thinks your blood is on his hands, and so he stands condemned. But it is given you to SHOW him, by your healing, that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream.

How just are miracles! For they bestow an equal gift of full deliverance from guilt upon your brother AND yourself. YOUR healing saves HIM pain, as well as you. And YOU are healed BECAUSE you wished him well. This is the law the miracle obeys"

"What COULD you choose between, but life or death, waking or sleeping, war or peace, your dream or your reality?"

There is only one choice in the world. Not a million choices. Not a million scenarios. Not a million conditions to judge and evaluate and decide upon. There is only one choice. You are always choosing either life or death.

Life here means eternal life, immortality, invulnerability, perfect health, wholeness, happiness, love, peace, joy, etc. The attributes of God and His Kingdom of creation.

Death here means the cessation of eternity, an attack on God, a rejection of health and wholeness, a desire for destruction and death, and an attempt to make God non-existent.

The physical world itself is set up such that everything in it tends to lead towards death. It is not in support of God because it was made as an attack on him. This is why everything in it seems to make death inevitable.

But just because the world says all things must die, it doesn't mean you don't have a choice. It doesn't mean you have to go along with it and just give up and drop dead. Nor does it mean you have to find a way to try to accept death and cozy up to it.

What many in the world do not know is that there IS an alternative to death and dying and destruction and degradation. To embrace it requires a recognition of two things.

1) The world is ONLY offering death and there is no hope of life. 2) There is ANOTHER world which is offering only life and no hope of death.

Only if you can recognize that there IS AN ALTERNATIVE to the world's ways, do you even have a real choice. If there is no better world, no God, no eternal life, no miracles, no healing, no resurrection, then you really DON'T have a choice. You are set on a rollercoaster ride to hell and death and will not get off it until you're worm food.

We might think there are choices be made along the way, electing for different states of dying, different kinds of sicknesses, different unhappinesses, trying to trade-off one thing for another to come out on top. But the world has news for you - it is not ever going to let you come out on top in the long run.

So you have no real choice at all, because death is looming and you have no way to stop it. Or do you? Only IF there is another option do you actually have any real choice in life at all. Otherwise you're destined to die. And you cannot be at peace with such a fate because it is utterly insane.

Only if there is another world, another way, another option, and only if you have some kind of power of decision to choose it and make it be your experience, is there any REAL HOPE at all. There is REAL HOPE if you can in fact CHOOSE not to suffer, be sick, or die. And there is REAL HOPE if you have in your mind the POWER to actually make that choice, to choose away from death, and actually CAUSE life and REVERSE death.

Only if you can surmount death and overcome the world, can you be free from the descent into hell. Only if you can resurrect and raise the dead and reverse sickness and perform miracles, can you head in the direction of God who is life. Only if you can demonstrate harmlessness and invulnerability can you prove your commitment to immortality.

The world does not think immortality is possible. It is seen as a silly idea thought by crazy people. It is seen as having had almost zero examples and certainly does not appear to be commonplace. It seems like no-one gets out of here alive. And everyone has just decided to try and accept this fate and "live with it". To then adjust to it and try to "make the most" of the little lot of life we have, begging death for scraps of time and asking for little gifts of nothingness before we're extinguished.

Unless you are open to God and open to immortality and open to resurrection and miracles and healing, you are NOT open to life. You are committed to dying. And that is the only reason it will happen. You are CHOOSING it by not choosing away from it. And you are free to make this choice. If you do not choose God, you are choosing destruction. If you do not choose resurrection and healing, you are choosing to die.

This is your responsibility because you actually have a power in you to decide what you want. You do not HAVE to die or go through sickness or suffering. You CAN in fact elect not to have any of these things happen, and make it so. This is not a fantasy. Your mind is just as capable of causing life as it is of causing death. But to choose eternal life IS going to require you to fly in the face of the entire world, all its supporters, all its believers, and all of its pathways.

Only with help from beyond the world can you be liberated from the world. Only with the Holy Spirit can you find a solution, an answer, a way, which breaks all the laws of physics and violates all the seeming laws of reality. Only with his power can you recover and heal and resurrect even in the face of what the world would say is an impossible irreversible situation.

You have to choose towards God and towards life, away from death and way from destruction, if you want to live. If you want to escape from death and from sickness and hell, you have to choose life. This is really a no-brainer. If you are choosing life you will have life, if you are choosing death you will have death. You are free to choose.

"You who fear salvation are WILLING death. Life and death, light and darkness, knowledge and perception are irreconcilable."

"Either you give each other life or death; either you are each other's Savior or his judge, offering him sanctuary or condemnation."

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt. The ancient Calling of the Father to His Son, and of the Son unto his own, will yet be the last trumpet that the world will ever hear. Brother, there is no death. And this you learn when you but wish to show your brother that you had no hurt of him. He thinks your blood is on his hands, and so he stands condemned. But it is given you to SHOW him, by your healing, that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream."

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die."

"Either all things die, or else they live and cannot die. No compromise is possible."

"The emphasis this course has placed on that idea is due to its centrality in our attempts to change your mind about yourself. It is the reason you can heal. It is the cause of healing. It is why you cannot die. Its truth established you as one with God."

"Now do we live, for now we cannot die. The wish for death is answered, and the sight that looked upon it now has been replaced by vision which perceives that you are not what you pretend to be."

"Even in time you cannot live apart from Him, for sleep is not death. What He created can sleep, but it CANNOT die. Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for HIMSELF. Yet God's Son cannot will death for himself, because His Father is Life, and HIS SON IS LIKE HIM."

"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do."

"And BEING loving, they are like the Father, and therefore cannot die."

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

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures came to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality."

In all encounters with people, you have basically two ways of relating. Either you will give love, or you will withhold love. When you give love, you are in alignment with the Golden Rule, and recognize that the only strategy that will work without hurting yourself is to love the person. In so doing, you become empowered by that love, become invulnerable to attack, and gain a boost in confidence due to the absence of fear that it induces. This is a natural "extension" of love and is the healthy way to relate to people. To teach only love.

But learning to be this way and to do this, in actual encounters, is not always easy and for me used to be far from what I thought would "work". For a large portion of my life I was extremely painfully shy, socially anxious, and really not liking people in general. There was so much fear and worry about interacting, and everyone seemed to be a powerful stranger. It was a very isolated and lonely state of being, very fragile, weak and filled with suffering. I would people please all the time and never felt seen or acknowledged, as if I had no right to be equal to anyone.

Usually my way of dealing with people was to shut them out, avoid them, deny them, and try to escape them. They all seemed to be threatening and I was very dis-empowered. I lacked confidence and felt insecure all the time. I dreaded social situations and when I was forced into them it was excruciating. My perception of and belief that everyone was judging me made me profoundly embarrassed and this inflicted the most horrendously negative, deep emotional pain, not because they actually judged but because I believed they were. I had no idea what I was doing to myself. What I felt as a result of my self attack was 10 times worse than any other emotional upset I've ever experienced resulting from what anyone else ever did.

The strategy I had, which is entirely an ego strategy, was that in order to become safe or better off in any way, I needed to separate myself from people. I didn't see a possibility of feeling calm and happy and confident in any situation, only afraid, and just wanted to escape. It seemed as if escaping would work, and so I had trust in it. But all that escaping did was isolate me more and make me withdrawn from society. This also actually led to years of depression in my late teens and a sense that my life was so stuck that it was coming to an end.

It was around that time also though that I started to get into spiritual things and there was this strange period of mystical experiences at the same time as being mixed in with a lot of fear and inadequacy. I started to work on healing myself in whatever way seemed to work, although at first that was very haphazard and flawed. It was about that time that I suddenly met my wife, whose spiritual light and strength was so bright and filled with unconditional love, that I thought she was literally an angel. It wasn't until my late 20's that I found A Course in Miracles and everything continued to spiral upwards from there.

So for me the idea that in a situation, when I perhaps don't even feel like interacting, trying to push people away doesn't really work. It has a side effect of attacking myself. Whatever I try to make apply to others applies to me. An alternative approach has been gradually revealing itself, and it's one where I realize that I need to extend love, and that by doing so I'm not only going to be healed but the love will also shine away my fears, strengthen me and make my more invulnerable. The love gives me what seemed lacking when I wasn't extending it, and then I feel that I have what is needed to genuinely relate to the person. And then I don't feel like escaping, because the love is there.

It's a strange flipflop but it's like you spend your whole life using this one strategy of separating yourself from others, to "deal with" the way the world seems to be when you have that perspective/perception, only to find that there is another totally opposite alternative whereby you deliberately decide to bring the love and stay put, knowing that it's really the only approach that is going to work in your favor. This is "new" to me as I guess it is to most people but I'm finding out quickly just how beneficial it is to broadcast, radiate, transmit, extend love, in situations that previously I might have wanted to "stop".

I can testify that when you psychologically try to make people go away, stop, you resist them in any way, wish the wouldn't do what they're doing etc, it attacks you and induces sickness and pain. Physically. Very quickly. You can believe that what you're doing is just an attempt to defend yourself in which it does something to them and does nothing to you, but it's not true. It's double-sided and you both get attacked. You are attacked by your own defenses, and never was that more true that "my defenses are attacking my invulnerability". Only by letting the defenses down and shining love instead, exposing yourself, being open and accessible, paradoxically makes you completely invulnerable and strong and unattackable. You can in a sense "hide in plain sight" that way. The light protects you.

It kind of feels like breaking out of a shell or coming out of an egg. Holy Spirit's guidance to me lately has been to "bring" the love to the world that seems to be lacking in it, and to "extend" love in order to work miracles. It's through expressions of love, which is its natural extension, that miracles occur. They are "given" this way. And for sure, living in fear is totally anti-miraculous and more like being a psychic black hole. And it's not merely enough to ask God or Holy Spirit to send love to someone. You yourself have to actually feel and express and extend the love, if you want to benefit from it.

It's actually for our highest good and in our own best interest, and a shared interest, to "only love". The extending of love to others has a profound affect on your OWN mind. But at first it seems unnatural. Like some kind of "new trick" that you need to practice more. To be able to actually muster some love, and really feel it. It's been through all these years of trying to forgive and healing and releasing old pains and so on that I've very gradually "shifted" to being "able" to find this new "mode" of relationship. And it's for the most part still quite spotty. But there's a sort of underlying "more loving" baseline that's there all the time, which was not there in years past, and that's thanks to the course.

I suppose you could correctly call it being the light of the world, it's like you choose to shine and love comes out of you, even if the world itself is so severely lacking in love (which it is). It gives you the protection you were lacking when you were afraid, and it strengthens and empowers you. It solves all of the problems that the ego's remedies never really solved. And it gives you a whole new sense of purpose in life. Not forgetting how much happier it feels :-) It provides strength and confidence. It empowers you and puts you in a position where you can be truly helpful, rather than completely useless.

All it takes is seemingly a change of direction. Rather than being so withdrawing, it is more of a confronting. Instead of being escaping, it's a willingness to be present. Instead of running away in fear, it gives you the power to stand your ground and assert yourself in a healthy way. It's taken a long time to learn this and I'm still learning. But if you could put who I am now alongside who I used to be 20 years ago, you would probably think we're not even the same person. And thank God for that!

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.

I'm learning recently that my mind and attitude may well affect other people. I think this is part of being more responsible for what my mind is doing "to itself", and extends to others, in that whatever I am doing to myself I am also attempting to do to others. Whatever sense of sin or guilt I have about myself I am likely to project. And this projecting is a kind of psychological attack that accuses and weakens others.

I notice that all the various thoughts I have about a person, all the fears, wonderings, ideas, visualizations of what may or may not happen, form a kind of "broadcast" that I experience as kind of "in front of me". Perhaps I experience it as being outside of me or coming out of me, due to the disassociation of projection.

So there is this whole "wall" or screen filled with ego thoughts that I am pushing out of me. And so by even having these thoughts at all, "about" someone, it's as if I am putting those thoughts onto the person and holding them within it. Framing them in my ideas about them, and trying to make it apply to them. Even if these thoughts seem harmless in the thinking of them.

Whatever I think about them is a form of framing them, interpreting them, deciding what to see in them, having an opinion about their condition etc. And the thing is, the ego has this really sneaky way of suggesting that "all thoughts are neutral", "you can think anything without having any effect", "your opinion is unbiased".

Early in the workbook we're told that "I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts". That's a pretty major deal right there. And it also taps into the fact that our minds are powerful and our thoughts have effects. It also says "I have no neutral thoughts", so the ego myth of a neutral unbiased objective opinion or evaluation of what something is or is not doing, is a lie. Every thought is biased and has an influence and an effect and is a DECISION to see or believe in a certain way, NOT an impartial detached idea.

The power of the mind to affect real consequences is something which Jesus says we are afraid of.

"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them. Therapists try to help people who are afraid of their own death wishes by depreciating the power of the wish. They even attempt to "free" the patient by persuading him that he can think whatever he wants, without ANY real effect at all."

So you could put it this way. Either you are broadcasting love to people, or you are broadcasting fear and attack to people. How's that for responsibility? The whole collection of ego interference, predictions, controls, visualizations, imaginings, worries, concerns, etc that my mind has, are all forms of attack. So if I'm not loving, I'm attacking. "What is not love is murder." Gotta get honest here. We are either healers and blessers, or we are attackers.

I see that if I'm in attack mode, which is unto myself but also now seems to be "about someone not myself", and is still an idea in my own mind, that can't exactly be helpful to others. In fact it's what Jesus refers to as imprisoning your brother. And he even goes as far as to say that we're capable of cursing people with this.

""Casting spells" merely means "affirming error", and error is lack of love. When man projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made. This distortion makes them vulnerable to the curse of others, since they have already cursed themselves. The miracle worker can only bless, and this undoes the curse and frees the soul from prison."

So if someone is already in some ways cursing themselves, weakening themselves, and you then start to go into a reaction, and start to join with them in this belief, and fall for ego illusions, and have fears and other attack (non-light) thoughts about them, you are cursing them and reinforcing their errors. Your thoughts are NOT idle or private, they are having effects. Fortunately, negative ego thoughts are likely "weaker" than light-filled miracle thoughts.

Most likely it's accurate to say, we are all pretty sick minded and spend most of our time attacking each other psychologically. If I am in sin and guilt, I am not really going to be very helpful to others. I am likely cursing people all the time, not blessing them. If I want to be a miracle worker, in which I express love to people which actually has the power to affect them positively, to heal their minds and bodies, to set them free from imprisonment, then I am going to get my own mind healed so that I can bless, not curse.

When you withhold or cease to attack/project sin with the mind, when you are not being in fear, when your ego isn't running wild with interference and planning and deciding everything and playing God, when you are listening and following God's will and trusting Him in love, you effectively "take off of" others the chains of imprisonment and the curses you have been putting onto them. This DOES appear to have an EFFECT on them. You are now "not supporting" THEIR own self-curse and are not reinforcing their own weakness. Instead you supply the lack and strengthen them through your miraculous blessing.

"The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

So there is this pivotal message in the course. Either we are in a state of attack upon ourselves and others, which imprisons us AND them, in which we actually act like a prison guard controlling and isolating and defining people's confinement to ideas of limitation, OR we are setting ourselves and our brothers free by shining freedom onto them which actually HELPS them. By not supporting their self curse, we can perform miracles to alleviate their own imprisonment. Your loving mind CAN HEAL OTHER MINDS!

"The miracle is the act of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and who calls on his brothers to do likewise. It is an act of faith, because it is the recognition that his brother CAN do it. It is a call to the Holy Spirit in his mind, a call to Him which is strengthened by this joining. Because the miracle-worker has heard Him, he strengthens His Voice in a sick brother by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does NOT share. The power of one mind CAN shine into another, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark. It is everywhere, and it is eternal."

So we have to ask ourselves a humble question. Do we want to be a prison guard, controller, attacker, limiter, interferer, free-will denyer, and curser today.... or will we get out of the way and be miracle working healers who can only bless and extend love and who can literally bring about the release of others by our willingness to ONLY bless with thoughts of light, strength, support and love? We can resurrect the dead by believing in our own life. We can heal our brothers. This is the goal.

Our thoughts exert real influence. This is why we have to learn about the power of the mind. This is why we have to learn to be careful and responsible about what we think. Even our so-called "private thoughts" are being received by others. If you think poorly of someone, watch how they start to act negatively in return, because they DID receive your broadcasts even if you didn't speak in person.

If you take back all your projected bullshit and stop attacking yourself and others, watch how people start to miraculously awaken and heal in your presence. The strength of the Holy Spirit's light in you is powerful enough to resurrect the dead, waken the sleeping, and cure the sick.

"Very few people appreciate the real power of the mind. Nobody remains fully aware of it all the time. This is inevitable in this world, because the human being has many things he must do, and cannot engage in constant thought-watching. However, if he hopes to spare himself from fear, there are some things he must realize, and realize them fully, at least some of the time.

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."

"While expressions like "think big" give some recognition to the power of thought, they still come nowhere near the truth. You do not expect to grow when you say it, because you don't really believe it. It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains. "

"Miracle-working entails a full realization of the power of thought, and real avoidance of miscreation."

"Now is Christ's power in your mind to heal as you were healed."

"The thoughts which the mind of God's Son projects, HAVE all the power that he has"

"Father, I come to You through Him Who is Your Son and my true Self as well. Amen."

"To be alive and not to know yourself is to believe that you are really dead. For what is life except to be yourself, and what but you can be alive instead?"

"The sudden EXPANSION of the self that takes place with your DESIRE for it, is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds. It calls to you to be yourself, within its safe embrace."

It's really just a matter of, are you really being your true self, or are you pretending to be something you're not?

If you're pretending, you're people-pleasing. That means you're putting on a persona. The persona is a fake mask, sometimes the "face of innocence", which tries to show people what you want them to see, or what you think will manipulate them into giving you the love and attention and validation that you yearn for as a result of hating your real self.

But even though the pleasing of others might please them, and maybe elicit some of the positive responses that you think you need, it's not really you that gets validated. It's the fake mask of a self that you put over the top of you. People like your little fake self but you only hold it up because you think people will hate and judge and reject the real you.

The truth though is that you yourself are hating and judging and rejecting the real you, by putting on this false image of yourself. While you try to be what you think other people want, and what will make them want you, you simultaneously hide and bury who you actually are.

It also prevents anyone from really loving you for who you are. Which means that even if you can get people to adore your fake presentation, it's still not you that they adore. And you constantly have to bend over backwards, walk on eggshells, hide yourself, stuff your feelings and avoid being seen, just to get some scraps of external love.

Another aspect to this is that by being unwilling to look within and to let people know that you have "defiled yourself", you also become unable to recognize the limitations of others. This produces false grandiose expectations that other people will be perfect toward you, because your persona is only willing to acknowledge what appears to be "good and acceptable". By only wanting to admit to that in yourself, in denial of the darkness, you become unable to see the darkness of others.

This then leads to an inability to acknowledge that other people are unloving, will never love you due to their chosen limits, that they can't give you what you want, cannot appease or validate you, and that they don't really want you because of their own egos. This harsh seeming truth lies hidden behind attempts to only find appealing "surface" signals that look as if nothing is wrong. It's an illusion of peace and acceptable and love that blinds you and covers over the deeper truth that things are not okay in you OR in them, and that therefore they can't save you from your self attack.

Often this all starts in childhood, seemingly, when the parents are not totally unconditionally loving, coupled with the physically-induced belief that you as a baby depend on the whole world to look after you. It sets up a dependency and an expectation that you will get everything from your parents or from the world. And if the world is not forthcoming with total love and validation, you'll feel empty and lost and alone, which will then compel you to overcompensate by busting a gut to try to get some response out of it/them, but it's like sucking blood from a stone. The broken saviours can't rescue you from your self destruction.

The less you can get the love from the world the more desperate you become, trying to suck up to it, putting yourself beneath it as though you are worthless, acting like a slave, hating yourself, castrating yourself and whipping yourself, trying to diminish who you are in order to only be what you think other people want you to be. And all this is a form of bargaining, trying to create a deal in which if you will let other people use you for their own selfish needs and wants, then you might at least get a little bit of something in return. So then you become a willing doormat with low self-esteem. Punish me please, thank you.

When you are not willing to confess to being broken, exposing the darkness and allowing others to see that you are not perfect, it makes it impossible for you to recognize that other people are imperfect also. Imagining that your ego is perfect and the your persona is without flaw, you other people as artificially flawless, which ignores their limitations and sets up huge expectations for them to serve you. And then they can't, and then there's anger and disappointment.

Only when you become willing to look at the dark stuff and let the light shine on it, will that same light illuminate the darkness of others, revealing their calls for love and their limitations. And this will bring an end to the external dependency, desperation for love, and the unwillingness to be your real self. And yet, paradoxically, by confessing to your "secret sins and hidden hates", which are not true of you anyway, it shines a light on them and dispels them. This reveals the real you, which has no faults or problems or weaknesses to be solved or defended against.

All of these disguises and facades and dishonesties and ways of not being yourself have to be undone. It means being willing to be exposed. And that means being willing to let people see and be aware of the various ways that you think you're defective. Your flaws, your sicknesses, your limitations, your faults, your bad attitudes, your off-days, the fact that things are sucking right now and you don't want to keep hiding it. That also leads to a willingness to be seen to be broken in public, crying and emoting and being upset around people and letting them know that no, you're not doing okay today, you're having a shit time of it.

But this exposure begins to let the truth in, admits the truth, and sheds light on what's going on. And actually this means that you're starting to step out into the light and let God see you. It means you're stopping hiding, no longer willing to be a fake self, wanting to be true to yourself. And you'll find that in fact your real self is profoundly strong and powerful and capable of remaining centred and peaceful no matter what is happening outside, if you'll only stay true to it and not keep abandoning yourself.

The more you are willing to be seen and heard, faults and all, crappy days and all, depression and anxiety and sickness and terrible attitudes and all, the more you're letting the healing come in. It means you're dropping your defences and lowering your walls and learning to trust yourself. It takes some courage to stand up and be seen. To tell people that you're not doing well. To own up to anything that's going on with you instead of just putting on a smile and pretending life is all roses. But this ownership is exactly what you need to own your true self, your real life, and your whole mind. Your sanity and freedom depends on it.

To know yourself, to be yourself, to trust yourself, to love yourself, to let yourself exist and be seen, to find peace from not having to modify who you are constantly, having a single unconditional response of love to everything, and meeting your brothers on this firm footing of reality and truth is our ultimate goal. Because God exists in the light and if we want to go home to God we have to expose ourselves fully. And in that exposure we are completely protected and safe. It is only the darkness that haunts us. And light always dispels darkness.

"It is only in darkness and in ignorance that you perceive the frightening, and you shrink away from it to further darkness."

"The steady brilliance of this light remains, and leads you out of darkness, nor will you be able to forget the way again."

"Everyone here has entered darkness, yet no-one has entered it alone. Nor need he stay more than an instant. For he has come with Heaven's help within him, ready to lead him OUT of darkness into light at ANY time."

"Coming out of the dark. I finally see the light now. It's shining on me. I know that love can save me." - Gloria Estephan

God was talking to me last night.

I began to ask Him to forgive me for some things. Jesus nudged me that I was making a mistake to ask this. I then wondered if God would forgive me then. God said, "You are my Holy Creation. How could I not love you?". I melted, with an immediate emotional response.

The sense of love pouring out was palpable. It seemed so obvious and clear that, simply by the fact that He had created me, that MUST have meant He loved me. There was no other interference or reason not to. It was so simple.

As I opened up to try to absorb this truth and feel this love, it was curious how suddenly a voice popped up from inside my belly. It was like the ego just suddenly got really pissed off and came out of its little house with its fists in the air shouting "how dare you, this can't be true, look at what you've done!".

It was referring then, and starting to bring into my awareness (because light was shining brightly upon me) things that I'd done in the past which I apparently still felt that I was SINFUL for. It particularly revolved around an event when I was 11 where a terrible event happened and someone got injured "because of me".

Apparently some part of me still believed I was sinful for this, having done it. And this is in spite of spending 30+ years working on this event trying to heal it, trying to find different ways of looking at it. I'd even become aware of how it transpired due to a past last reversal of karma, and how it was a lesson, and the various aspects of whether or not I really wanted to hurt the person. I thought I'd come to what seemed to be peace about it, but apparently it was not quite done with.

The ego (really me), screamed at myself, pointing to how I'd sinned and was guilty. How could God POSSIBLY love me without any strings attached whatsoever, when so OBVIOUSLY I had done something so "wrong"? It seemed to have a point. Deep down I still believed in my guilt.

However, what then transpired was a true forgiveness. It was clear that God loved me and as I felt into this, I could tell how God was not accusing me. Somehow in my mind I had to reconcile this because either what God was saying was true, or what my ego/hurt-self was saying was true. They couldn't both be true.

This is when God told me the simple, pivotal, clarifying fact which is the very foundation of the Atonement and of ALL forgiveness: "It wasn't real".

This brought on a tremendous sense of relief and began to make me laugh extensively. I started to explore this idea, because I didn't quite believe it yet, but if it was true, it seemed like FINALLY, after all this time, and after all of the ways that I tried to rationalize why I was innocent, this was the key to a REAL INNOCENCE.

If the events that transpired at 11 were not REAL, and were just illusions, then absolutely everything that seemed to occur did not REALLY happen. And therefore that is why I cannot have possibly have REALLY sinned. If the world was not real, if the person was not real, if my body was not real, if the events were not real, and if what I "did" was not real, how could it have been a real sin?

For the first time, I could finally see how if the events weren't real, I *ACTUALLY* could be forgiven. Like, all the way forgiven. Forgiveness apparently is completely dependent on this FACT, because if the world is actually "happening", if it is "real", if events in it are having "real effects" on real people, then there is just no way that there can be any innocence. And so there I was, finally after all these years, revealing in this simply clear truth, that I CANNOT be sinful because it didn't even really happen!

Trusting God's word on this, I explored this a little further, because it now had to imply something. If THAT sin was not real because it didn't really happen, then.... doesn't that mean that there is no such thing as a REAL SIN? Yes! There cannot be any such thing as a real sin. This made me think of some people's view of sin as that you actually did sin and need to get forgiveness. The TRUE perspective on this is that the sin you thought you did, you DID NOT REALLY DO, and that is why you are forgiven!

This then started to extend to, well, if I have not ever sinned and I'm innocent, then doesn't that mean, nobody else has ever sinned either? That there has never been a real sin? Yes! Everyone is TRULY innocent because sin has never happened.

This just seemed so simple and so clear and so easy. Once again, withdrawing a sense of "reality" from illusions presented the truth. And the truth set me free. Finally I was able to feel a genuine sense of love-ability, a genuine sense of innocence, a genuine sense that God DOES see me with forgiveness, that this "sin is forgiven". I believe all of the laughter that followed was a healing release from my belly area.

By the way these things spring from the belly because that's actually the area of the "2nd brain" which is an emotional center where most feelings are felt. We carry most emotional pain there.

For years I had been secretly hanging on to the supposed "need" that I needed to have this other person forgive me in order for me to be forgiven. I was able to let that go! I do not need that person's forgiveness because I am not really sinful. Those events were not real, the person has not really been hurt because they are immortal spirit, NOTHING HAPPENED, and therefore .... I could see, this new truth emerging.....

I DID THIS TO MYSELF!

All of the events, all of the people involved, all of the activities, all of what transpired, all of the reactions from myself and other people, all of it was orchestrated by me! This was when Jesus stepped in and told me "It was a lesson". "In forgiveness". And indeed it was, because I'd learned so much about forgiveness from this one calamity in my efforts to heal from it. Seeing I did it to myself I could see that ALL aspects of it were "within" my own doing, and NONE of it was done "to me" by anyone else. Freeing!

The simple truth then was completely obvious. The atonement principle! "Nothing happened". This is literally, factually true. The world is an illusion. All events in the world are an illusion. People's bodies are illusions. The whole physical universe is an illusion. Nothing REAL has happened. There have not been any REAL problems or REAL wars or REAL deaths or REAL sicknesses. There has been no REAL damage. It is all a fucking illusion!!!

I could see this finally, relating to this incident, and it brough such relief and a sense of JOY. I could actually feel joy. Joyful because there was no real reason not to be. Naturally joyful. And I was smiling as I fell asleep.

Today I feel strangely peaceful, like something that was once present is no longer present.

Jesus said to me, "Because you were willing to receive love, this will enable you to perform miracles"!

This clued me into something else. "It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive" - ACIM .... i.e., if you have reasons to believe that YOU do not deserve healing, that YOU are sinful, that YOU really did something bad that proves you aren't lovable, then YOU will not be WILLING to receive healing for yourself. Your unwillingness to allow yourself to be forgiven means that you will not allow yourself to receive the miracle on behalf of someone else. Therefore this will prevent you from performing miracles!

When you can therefore become healed and willing to receive God's love, to receive the Atonement, to recognize you are WORTHY, this WILLINGNESS for healing now opens up the doors to allow you to be willing to heal others. Before this you would be fighting against your own belief that healing should not occur, because your belief in your own sinfulness blocks your belief that the other person deserves healing either.

This reveals a simple truth. There is no real sin! Sin is not REAL. You have not REALLY done anything wrong. You deserve God's love because you HAVE NOT really sinned. Whatever you did was an ILLUSION, not a reality. THANK FUCKING GOD FOR THAT!

"Hold onto nothing."

Loss is self-induced suffering. It is a feeling of not getting what you want, like a childish temper tantrum. It's produced by the demand that things should be the way you want them to be, at the same time as them NOT being that way.

There is a sense of space and time, a gap, a separation, between what you seem to want, and what is. This gap is produced by two anchors. One anchor is the thing which is already gone, has left, has died, doesn't exist, is now in the past. The other anchor is your WANTING that thing to be not gone, to be still here in the present with you.

The stronger you want something to be a certain way, and the greater the contrast between that and how things actually are, the more you will suffer and feel despair, a feeling that something you really want strongly has been taken away or denied to you. But this is because YOU are denying how things are now, and so experience as though you are being denied something. If you deny, you will be denied due to the golden rule.

Wanting is actually denial, in which you are denying that things are the way they are, instead of accepting the facts. It is an unwillingness to accept the "reality" of what has changed. If something or someone has left, they have left. This is a fact. But if you want it to not be this way, you are in denial.

This denial produces lack, which produces neediness, which produces desire and wanting. If you are wanting, it means you do not have something - wanting=lacking, as in "you are left wanting." But wanting masquerades as an attraction or desire to have something, which the ego uses as a substitute for love. Wanting is part of specialness, and wanting is a way of saying "I do not want this."

When something leaves, it has left. It is in the past. It is not here. This is a fact. You should allow it to be free to be gone. But if you cannot accept and allow this fact, you will resist it. This resistance is like insisting that it shouldn't be this way, it's not right, it's not fair, you don't "want" it, because you want things to carry on as they were.

This insistence that worldly things NOT change, is in direct contradiction to the nature of all things in this world - which is that they AWAYS change, and sooner or later they "die" (change). It is their nature to change because they are illusions, and illusions are always temporary, with beginnings and endings alike.

Trying to make changing things NOT change, is an attempt to control "reality" and deny what has changed, because you "want it thus." It also means you are trying to give permanence to something that is not permanent, such as body or home or whatever.

"Dreams are perceptual temper tantrums, in which you literally scream, 'I want it THUS!'"

When things have changed, and you have not accepted that they have changed, you are denying the change. You do this to try to suggest that - if you hold on, if you resist, if you don't want the change, if you keep wanting things strongly to be the way they were, then you'll actually stop the thing from going away, you'll stop it from leaving, you'll stop the loss. This is like a desperate pleading that something doesn't leave when it's already left.

When this involves the seeming loss of a person - really just a change in the status of the body - you can resist and deny that they've gone, because you believe that by doing so you'll prevent their death. You try to keep them around by holding onto them, attaching to them, wanting them. And it seems counter to your desires to have to question whether you should even "want them" anymore, as if that would mean itself the loss of what you want.

The thing is, that the stronger you deny what has changed, the more you go into denial, the more you will feel that you are being denied something. It could take the form of you being in a different country with an inability to travel to see your family at christmas for example, and just because you are denied access, it creates a sense of a rift or gap or spacetime, a distance of separateness, which induces horrible feelings of despair - which we call loss or grief.

The intensity of the loss is really in proportion to how much you are denying and holding onto something which is not there. The more you want to keep it and not let it go, the more you feel awful when faced with the fact that it has already gone. And indeed the desire to keep it around is a way to NOT SEE that it has already gone, because you do not WANT that to be true. You want the person to still be around etc.

So there becomes this mismatch between... what is in front of your face as the "reality" or configuration of the illusory world right now, and what you PREFER that it be. If you prefer that your dead partner or family member be still in a body, and they are not, that is a contrast between what is and what is not. That contrast is a separation of spacetime, which turns into a pit of hell and despair.

Jesus in the course is leading us to learn to let everything go. To hold onto nothing. That means letting everything that is in the past be in the past. It means not WANTING to control whether something seems present or not. It means not DENYING what is happening now.

Ultimately there is a plot twist here, in that the use of denial to deny that something has gone, which places focus on something that is past and amplifies the sense of its absence while simultaneously focusing on it, takes you away from the PRESENT. And so the denial of death for example becomes a way to choose it and thus to avoid life. Being in a state of despairing loss is a way to not live in the present moment, and instead to focus on what is NOT present.

Eventually we have to get to a place where we are so detached from whatever seems to come and go, recognizing that all illusory things like bodies and places are indeed just transient fleeting things, in no way deceived into the idea that they can be permanent or last forever. When you are a "under no illusion" that temporary things are temporary, then you become able to accept the illusion's transient nature, and can ALLOW it to be the way it is.

Essentially the antidote to loss and grief is then is to learn recognize the that you are in denial and cannot allow things to be the way they are, you have to stop wanting something that you cannot have, let go of the thing so that it CAN go, allow it to move away from you, accept that it is gone and not present, give it freedom and set it free so that it can come and go without your controlling it (conditional love), and therefore reach a point of acceptance and freedom.

When you can GIVE freedom to the thing that has gone away, you can RECEIVE freedom for yourself that enables you to "move on." If you do not let the thing itself "move on" ie into the past, away from you, then you will not be able to move on either. If you deny the thing its nature of change and temporariness, you will feel denied by the way that the illusory world keeps changing in ways that you do not want. But as you come to allow the thing to go, you will allow yourself to live and be set free. And as you can accept that the thing HAS gone, you can set yourself free by accepting where you ARE in the present. Life and living is always in the present, not the past.

Essentially it all boils down to something very simple. Let all illusory things leave when they leave, live in the present, and stop trying to "stop change" from happening. Find away to accept the circumstance that you "do not want" rather than fighting against it and "wishing" it were different. This is a kind of "sobering up".

Do not BECOME attached, which will only set you up for loss when you find you have difficulty allowing the cord to be severed when the thing leaves. Non-attachment doesn't mean no life or relationship it just means not being confused about whether illusory things are permanent or temporary. People are not bodies. Places are not your real home - which is in God. Everyone in spirit are always joined to each other forever.

Accept that all temporary things are temporary, let them all come and go, and you will enter into acceptance. This is simply a willingness to accept the FACT of what has changed. In acceptance you will be in the present, because you have let all past things stay in the past instead of trying to drag them into the present as baggage. This acceptance opens the way to the acceptance of that which IS permanent, as changeless reality, in which nothing real is ever lost, no-one created ever dies, and there is no possibility of despair.

We are all a part of each other in God. You are the person you think you lost. Everyone is you. There is no death and no separation. Everyone is everyone forever.

"Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God."