If I'm afraid or anxious, and I want to do something about it, I will probably start asking myself "why am I afraid?"

My ego believes that asking this question will help me to find the cause of it, and that I might then be able to fix the problem.

But what's going to happen is, I'll start searching for causes. If I seem to find a possible cause, it's going to tell me "the fear is caused by..." But no matter what it says, it is not really the truth.

Every cause of fear that we think is the cause of it, is not the cause. Fear is not caused by something happening to us. But it seems to arise at the same time as perceiving there's something happening to us, or threatening to happen.

If this.... then that's going to happen. If I do this.... that might happen. But it's still me perceiving and imagining the situation and creating the fear.

I'll think the fear is caused by the 'thing' that threatens me, but the thing that threatens me is not really the cause of fear. So long as I perceive that there is a threat, there WILL be fear. I can't keep the perception of the threat and get rid of the fear. I have to change my perception.

The reason I am afraid is because I am choosing to be afraid. I am choosing fear by choosing to see myself victimized and threatened. I THEN perceive the threat and experience the fear, but neither is the cause of each other.

I am afraid because I am using fear to deny God. I am afraid because I believe fear is a trustworthy guide that tells me the truth. I'm afraid because I want to invent a reason not to be happy and awake. I'm afraid because it allows me to have an ego.

It would seem fear is stopping me from doing what I want, but really fear is an excuse, a made-up reason why not. Without making it real, or believing in the threat being true, I couldn't be afraid, and then there'd be no reason not to.

Fear is part of the device for separation.

I still feel compelled to find out "why" I am afraid, but I sense that the "reason" will be an illusion, and that there will be deeper dynamics than just that I am afraid. Ultimately it cannot be true that I am afraid, it can only be an illusion.

As Jesus says, we only become afraid when we think that illusions are real, and that God is not on our side. I must be incorrectly perceiving an illusion as real truth, or wanting it to be truth, otherwise there'd be no grounds for fear. If nothing has really gone wrong and nothing real can be threatened, there is no basis for fear.

I need to forgive myself for my self-made fear and undo the need for it.

Sometimes when I am upset and I am asking God to help, I am in a state of begging, and that's because I believe there is such a tremendous distance (separation) between where I am and where the solution seems to be.

As I "ask" God to "do things" (lol)... the suggestion to me by Holy Spirit is to, instead, THANK GOD. Well... in a state of upset and begging, the idea of thanking seems totally opposite of what I can muster or believe in, because when I am EXPERIENCING things happening that I DO NOT WANT, I am being the OPPOSITE OF GRATEFUL.

I seem to be having a pity party in my upset feelings and here it's being simply suggested that I lighten up and 'rejoice' in God by ACCEPTING that God IS helping or HAS/WILL help, by entering into the stream of thought which appreciates and THANKS Him for doing so.. like, it's a given, because then I am PARTICIPATING IN THE MIRACLE.

There's a world of difference between "God please help, things are so fucked", and "Thank you God, thank you for restoring ... to peace and love" or whatever.

The question is, can we love, can we be willing to rise up out of despair and actually JOIN GOD in love, and to then have a celebration party about how wonderful he already is and how much he is already going to solve this entire problem... THANK GOD.... can we jump to that from the middle of despair?

It's hard. But not impossible. Sometimes you have to have good old fit first of all and feel it all and get it out of your system to use up all that stupid ego energy. Then you might be more ready and able to reach up to the higher truth of God and align with it in gratitude.

It's a leap. And to go from 'I need help' to 'thank you for helping' also requires that I LET GO OF my ego misery pot. I mean, after all, if I'm asking for help, then I better dam well get prepared to RECEIVE THE HELP and stop just wallowing in the darkness, right? I'm asking for it, so I need to shift gears and actually open up to receiving and thanking.

Ego doesn't want to thank God for anything ;-) But this is the simple difference between ego prayers and Holy prayers. Ego prayers come from the dark and cry out in anguish and in belief at how everything sucks and there's nothing to be thankful for. Holy prayers align with Heaven and extend and express love in gratitude and happiness. Big difference. It's night and day, as well, in terms of the POWER that will come when you enter gratitude and COMMAND situations to heal instead of being a victim.

Thank you God for extending your love through me.

This section of the course is fairly explicit about how God created many sons. It also uses the term "one with him", which does not in any way undo the fact that there are many sons, showing that "one with" does not mean "there is only one".

As I type this, Jesus is clarifying for me that oneness means "joined". Multiple individuals who are joined. Notice also at the end of this section it says God’s holiness is *PART* of us. That means some part of us IS God Himself, and some part of us is a distinct creation with its own free will. Being JOINED to God therefore does not mean we are ONLY God. God has CREATED sons!

Are a mother and her baby, "joined" by an umbilical cord, "one" self? Birth is after all a SYMBOL of creation, followed by a SYMBOL of separation.

"Creation is the sum of all God’s Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit. Only Love creates, and only like Itself. There was no time when all that It created was not there. Nor will there be a time when anything that It created suffers any pain.

Forever and forever are God’s Thoughts exactly as They were and as They are, unchanged through time and after time is done. God’s Thoughts are given all the power that Their own Creator has. For He would add to Love by Its extension. Thus His Son shares in creation, and must therefore share in power to create. What God has willed be forever one will still be one when time is over; and will not be changed throughout the course of time, remaining as it was before the thought of time began.

Creation is the opposite of all illusions, for Creation is the truth. Creation is the holy Son of God, for in Creation is His Will complete in every aspect, making every part container of the whole. Its oneness is forever guaranteed inviolate; forever held within His holy Will beyond all possibility of harm, of separation, imperfection and of any spot upon its sinlessness. We are creation; we the Sons of God.

We seem to be discrete and unaware of our eternal unity with Him. Yet back of all our doubts, past all our fears, there still is certainty. For Love remains with all Its Thought, Its sureness being Theirs. God’s memory is in our holy minds, which know their oneness and their unity with their Creator. Let our function be only to let this memory return, only to let God’s Will be done on earth, only to be restored to sanity, and to be but as God created us.

Our Father calls to us. We hear His Voice, and we forgive creation in the Name of its Creator, Holiness Itself, Whose holiness His own creation shares; Whose holiness is still a part of us."

Beliefs seem to be something we're supposed to be undoing and getting rid of - at least false ones. And the Course says that you do not necessarily need to have a belief about the truth because it's kind of a given. It doesn't require some kind of extra effort or separate attitude in order to maintain it and it's not something that you make or can put extra energy into to give it reality.

Beliefs usually are something the ego has taken ahold of and is attempting to make real things which are not true. It attempts to feed the belief and build it up and create a stronger illusion. It tries to bring to life that which cannot live, and create a sense of being convinced that this artificial belief is the truth. These kind of beliefs we need to undo.

But as we transition our sense of trust away from the ego and toward God, and as we let go of the sense of truth that we invested into the ego's beliefs, we instead start to place our trust and faith and "belief" if you will, in God's truth.

It also comes down to whether or not you believe that you are worthy of God's love and whether you therefore are worthy of receiving God's blessings. If you don't believe you are worthy of God's love, you will not be able to believe that other people are worthy of it either.

But this is not black and white, because you can begin to put your trust in God and learn to have faith in God's truth even if at the moment it seems distant or hidden behind walls of doubt and illusion. Just because you are not yet fully aware or still believe in sin or have your own problems and false beliefs, it doesn't mean God is disempowered at all.

In fact, God and Holy Spirit and Jesus are permanently miraculous and are absolutely ready right now to perform miracles. For them, miracles are happening all the time. And as you begin to reach out to them in faith, putting your trust and belief in their truth being true, this forms a kind of bridge which connects you to their minds, even if right now you are still vague about them or don't understand them and are not having a direct experience of their fullness.

Forgiveness begins to overlook the illusions and you start to build a relationship with them. This relationship, even if at first it seems minimal and fragile, can be enough for you to participate in performing miracles. They are capable of working with you and using you to extend God's love and healing, even if you yourself are still working on your own spiritual path.

To produce a healing, however, it does require at least some amount of belief that God's truth is true. The degree to which you believe in it is largely the degree to which you will allow and accept God's power to work through you. There is no order of difficulty in miracles, but there is kind of an order of difficulty in terms of you believing in your ego and using the ego to attempt to interfere with or block the miracle.

To put it another way, you could be attempting to perform a miracle and saying that you want it while, at the same time, in various ways, your ego beliefs are causing you to ask for something else. And you end up producing results but the results are not the miraculous-seeming results you hoped you were asking for, and instead you just expressed the ego. Then since the ego's will is not really a will at all, nothing seems to happen.

You do need therefore some amount of belief in God's truth being true, in order for you to accept for yourself and allow to extend through you, God's healing power. It is not enough to stand before someone or even remotely and begin to command their healing or to send them loving vibes. You might be assuming that you automatically "believe" simply because you believe intellectually that you can be miraculous, but the amount of your heart-felt believing may be significantly lower than where it needs to be. You will therefore have doubt and fear and be unsure if it's going to work, which will come against the miracle and discourage you from being convinced that it can happen.

So it can be helpful that when you go to perform a miracle, you actively remind yourself that you must BELIEVE that God is going to heal. This in a way seems like making an "effort", only because at the moment your belief is divided and you have to sort of pull yourself out of the ego *temporarily* in order to exhibit a clearer sense of certainty that God's truth is truth.

This will at first seem like a strain of sorts or that you really have to push the envelope of how much you FEEL that you believe it, and the ego in you will try to thwart your efforts. But as Jesus has said, he who asks BELIEVING that he receives it will be given whatever he asks for.

At some point, when you are very thoroughly purified of the ego, and are very certain and strongly convinced of God, your level of what you genuinely believe in will be much higher. You will trust God. You will believe God's word. You will be constantly overlooking ego illusions, including the illusions of sickness and death and real sin. Not just in theory but actually experientially, LIVING it. Walking around in that awareness and knowledge. Expressing it ALL the time.

And then you will not have to make effort to perform miracles because you will naturally, in your HEART, believe deeply that God's will is real and true. You will believe it with your whole heart and your whole being. It will therefore be NATURAL for you to be miraculous. It will be your natural state of being. You will be expressing miracles left right and center every single day, BECAUSE you have a very strong BELIEF, a very strong faith and knowing of the nature of God and believe and trust in HIS power and ability to heal anything.

We have to be honest with ourselves as we learn and experiment with miracles, as to just how much we really do believe God. Don't underestimate how much of a stretch it might be to go from where you're at to where God is at. The ego has long been our trusted company and it can take a LOT of purification and forgiving to truly rise up to the level of Christ.

You do not need christ-level belief in order to facilitate miracles, because Holy Spirit only truly needs a little willingness and your mind only need to be partly corrected. Once you have established SOME faith in God's truth being more true than the ego's truth, miracles will start to become possible, perhaps small ones at first, perhaps minor healings, and you will have a lot of failures and frustrations.

But keep trying and keep learning to BELIEVE firmly AS you do it. That is very important. You can't just get it in your head, your HEART has to feel it and trust it and choose to believe God over the ego.

If you will practice simply switching your belief to high-intensity and back to your regular level, you will see what I mean. Just close your eyes and imagine you're going to heal someone, and then go through the motions of what you think you would do without any particular effort to really believe in it. Like, just saying some words or pointing your hands or whatever.

Then reset and try it again, but this time, BEFORE you start, and sustaining it throughout your effort, make an extra special effort to really STRONGLY BELIEVE that God is going to heal. As soon as you ignite this stronger belief, you should feel it, you will notice it feels like you begin to radiate something. It's almost like you switch on your system and your whole energy field engages and you begin to connect with something beyond yourself.

Then while sustaining that strong heartfelt, whole deep feeling of believing that what you are going to say is TRUE, and that it is backed up by God's love, then proceed with your healing actions such as commanding healing or making statements of truth to speak truth into the situation.

I did this MYSELF today, FOR myself, directing my statements towards some significant sinus pressure and headache that resulted from eating an ice-cream sundae. And the POWER of what Holy Spirit did in me while holding a stronger belief was significantly more noticeable, and I did come away with almost no symptoms left.

I could feel how this was different to simply "showing up" and going through the motions. Too many times in the past I did some of the physical actions of a miracle process and said the words and tried to be commanding or powerful etc but I didn't deep down BELIEVE and I had forgotten entirely to activate belief and to be coming from God's love. I was trying to do miracles intellectually or to treat it like a way to change appearances using appearances.

It's not enough to just assume that you are already fully equipped for miracles, which is the ego's assumption that IT is already whole, and that therefore YOU are already fully in your belief and capability. No. There is more to you which the ego has suppressed, and you are probably not yet acting from a place of pure love and empowerment. You will need to question your belief that you are at your fullest connection to God right now, and learn to open yourself up more and more to His love and to the atonement and to being willing to accept it for yourself so that you can forgive and heal others.

There is a greater strength which you might yet have not even tapped into, and it might require you to really reach out to God and really stand your ground and be CONFIDENT in a way that you might not be comfortable with yet. The extent of your belief in the ego is what holds you back and limits you, and you are walking around with those beliefs ACTIVE in you all the time. So either you have to deliberately poke your head out of the ego's delusion and force yourself to believe more strongly, or continue the longer-term goal of refining your deep acceptance of God's truth.

Eventually, you will simply become so certain of God's ways, and so sure of His nature, and so convinced about the justification for LOVING people - including yourself - that you will automatically BE in a state of strong belief in God, and therefore you will very naturally and EFFORTLESSLY perform miracles. Your word will move mountains, heal the sick, raise the dead, and more.

But for you to believe, truly believe, that God is love, and that you are loved, and that you are justified in loving others, and that you CAN love others STRONGLY and without reservation - i.e. unconditionally - you are going to have to undo all of your own false ego beliefs in sin and guilt and fear and death at some point. They do interfere with your faith and diminish your effectiveness at facilitating miracles.

The miracle itself is unconditional, but your genuine willingness to perform it fully and with wholeness and power depends on your trust and openness with God. If you yourself don't believe you deserve love or healing or forgiveness, because of your belief in your own sinfulness, then you will not be GENUINELY and AUTHENTICALLY willing to extend that blessing to others. But if you have at least forgiven yourself to SOME degree, you WILL be able to begin practicing miracles - literal miracles, and you WILL start to see results.

So go ahead and keep working on your purification and forgiveness, but practice also believing in God's power and believing that God DOES will healing an WILL heal. It all is unlocked when YOU decide to ACT like God would act and therefore align yourself with His will and step out with confidence. As you decide to act according to God's Law, enacting His truth and demonstrating His Flawless Reality, He and all of Heaven will rush in to SUPPORT you, help you perform the miracle, assist in healing, and will empower you.

These are steps of faith. You have to act as if you believe it will happen and that you will be backed up, and the backup will come. Because it is God's love that empowers all miracles and your willingness to love will bring them forth for others.

Gradually as you demonstrate God's power, not only for others but for yourself, you will learn by witnessing the effects of the truth, having shown them to yourself through the miracles you have performed. And this will inspire you and encourage you and teach you that what you believed in was really there, that God really does perform supernatural healing, that you truly CAN do this, and you ARE authorized to do it even if you're still working through your own illusions and beliefs in the ego. You gotta start somewhere.

If you truly believe in God's love, you will BELIEVE that He can heal, and you will allow the healing to move through and around you. If you don't believe in God's miraculous power, then you will not believe in miracles and you will not see miracles through your hands. It's as simple as that.

Learn to believe that God is supernatural, loving, generous and in divine health. Learn to believe He has not become sick or damaged and neither has anyone else. Learn to believe that you made sickness and death and can abolish them. And learn to believe that God's love will move even if you yourself don't yet FULLY believe in it.

You MUST believe in miracles if you are to believe in God!

*BELIEVE* AND IT WILL BE GIVEN YOU!

The idea of non-duality is an attempt to describe reality or the nature of God. What is really real and really exists. At first we have the idea of duality or polar opposites. Then we reach the idea that the world is secretly "all one thing", as though all the objects are connected together by a singular "one" something.

Then we're presented even further with the idea that if we're being really "pure" about it, the forms and objects really don't exist at all, and the "oneness" beyond them is all that really exists, ie God. In this model of "pure non-duality", there is no world", and this is what SEEMS to correlate to SOME of what ACIM says. This usually leads to conclusions such as "oneness" as in "a count of one something", "its all God", "it's all mind" etc.

So various people took up the idea that ACIM is pure non-duality. But this has some problems. Let's put it this way - the idea is not pure enough. Because if this is a logical concept and we're trying to get down to the purest essence of "what is", usually you'll find that the pure non-duality folk will ACCEPT that "God has one son". There's a lot of material about God having a son - "The Son of God". And while this is accepted, it's not actually pure.

How can God have a son, at all, if there is only God? How can you even label some aspect of God - like his "radiance", as "a son"? God would not be able to have parts, or aspects, or anything you can ever attach a label too. Not even in the most vague of ways. Some people like to try to get around this by suggesting that the Son of God is so joined to God that there is nowhere he ends and God begins... while STILL keeping somehow in their minds this loose idea that SOMEHOW, you can still point a finger at this "part of God" and call it God's Son. THAT is still not pure. It's a bandaid attempt to explain it.

The problem is that if you get really pure about it, and we remove all sense of separations, divisions, multitudes, labels, parts and aspects etc... and we REALLY boil it down to "one thing" as in the traditional idea of "oneness" (the ego's idea of purity), we end up with .... there literally is only God. And that means God, sitting there ALONE, by Himself, WITHOUT a Son, without a sonship, without any creations or thoughts, just totally alone, no-one to share with, nothing to communicate with, just complete a total loneliness. THAT, actually, is the purest possible interpretation of "pure" non-duality. That "there is only God" all by Himself and he doesn't even have a Son at all. Not even one.

But many people will not want to "go there" because to suggest there isn't even one Son flies in the face of a lot of ACIM material. And certain popular teachers have taught for a long time that a) there is only one thing but b) a slight exception is made for there being a single son. This sort of hybrid mishmash of logical concepts has been quite widely accepted as a correct mapping to what ACIM is saying. One God + One Son, who is God, but isn't, but is. It's a bandaid and not logically pure nor does it match what the Course itself says.

The fact is, if there is truly this "oneness" in which there are not "many" of anything, in an effort to avoid "duality", there is **no son** there whatsoever. Not even as an aspect or expression or radiance or thought or part of God. And that leads also to the super watered-down conclusion of "it's all God" ie "there is nothing else". And that conclusion by itself has problems because e.g. the Course speaks of how a) God does not will to be alone and b) God is a creator and c) God has at least one Son and d) God created the Holy Spirit and e) God created angels and f) the Son has his own creations as well. Which is shaping up to be a lot of "parts", a lot of "somethings" that are sufficient enough to say there isn't "just" God there - that there HAS BEEN an act of creation. That something has been ADDED TO reality.

There is also an issue of freedom. If everything in reality is God and God is just being God in all of His ways, then there is no freedom in which any part or aspect has any free will. There is no way that you as a Son of God can dream of exile. There is no way that anything can occur without it being God doing it Himself, directly. And any idea of a Son must really be an idea of some kind of PUPPET that God is manipulating that has no mind or life or will of its own - no freedom at all. Which really runs counter to what Jesus tells us of the Son of God, free will, the ability to choose and the separation seeming to happen.

If you also blob it all together and say "its all God" then you end up with the alarming scenario that God therefore MUST be dreaming of exile, God must have invented the illusion of death, God is REALLY cruel, and God has attacked himself. This renders God insane, and that just isn't acceptable. Because if God could go off the rails, there is no way He would ever return to sanity, and all of existence would vanish.

It is vital that there be some kind of freedom between God and the Son in order for God NOT to be pulled into insanity along with His Son's dreaming. Free Will is absolutely vital in order to prevent this. But to have free will means, you guessed it, there MUST be a kind of "independence" or individuality, in which the Son CAN, if He so chooses, try to will against God. And this is based on the fact that God is the CAUSE of His Son, His Son is the EFFECT of Him, and God has given His son FREEDOM to SHARE His freedom with Him, or deny it. Either way, without freedom there is no free will and no son at all.

There is also another major problem with non-duality. God by His nature is love and love MUST be given. Unless it is given ie shared, it does not extend or shine and so becomes essentially lifeless. IT MUST go out and create. If God has no son, there is nothing TO love or to SHARE it with. And so love cannot love. And this means, ultimately, logically, that God is dead because He isn't LOVING. This again is unacceptable as a conclusion. God can't be dead or unloving. But to be alive, GOD MUST CREATE, so we must accept God has created ADDITIONAL BEINGS in a state of freedom.

And this is the key part that non-duality shits all over. Regardless of the fact that it destroys the sonship and ignores God's creations, it basically denies that God CREATES at all. It's the idea that God is just sitting there alone twiddling his thumbs. And this means He is not creating a son, not even one. It means there is no Kingdom. No Heaven. No HOME for the Son of God. No inheritance. It means the denial that God has a family. It denies that God's SON is a creator, AND it denies that God's son has created children. It's not conceptually a good FIT for ACIM's metaphysics.

So non-duality basically suppresses the MANY thought creations of God, denies many aspects of REALITY, and overthrows the Kingdom. It kills off God, puts a stop to Creation, eradicates sharing, makes it impossible for God to create many children, and interprets the Sonship as a collection of egos. Now, WHO exactly do you think comes up with such a concept of "what reality is like"? THE EGO. These are the EGO's conclusions, non-duality is an EGO CONCEPT, and like all ego concepts it actually NEGATES what is true and cancels or denies reality.

All non-duality models are the ridiculous FALSE conclusions that the ego comes to when trying to understand something TOTALLY BEYOND the ego. Something whose nature is NOTHING LIKE the ego, and so the ego is utterly clueless as to its nature. Non-duality is not really an attempt to define or describe reality, it's an attempt to destroy it.

At best, and only loosely, non-duality MIGHT describe "God Himself", if you could isolate Him and say, God is one whole being, PRIOR to creation. But beyond that, in terms of God being a CREATOR, who HAS CREATED CHILDREN, it totally falls flat on its face. There is no sonship without creation. Non-duality is Kingdom-denying. Reality IS NOT a state of "its all God" or "its all mind". It's all God AND God's creations AND their creations. Because you can ADD TO REALITY, reality cannot be non-dualistic.

"HE created the Sonship, and YOU increase it. You HAVE the power to ADD to the Kingdom, but NOT to add to the Creator OF the Kingdom."

"God created His **Sons** by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. ALL His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they were created neither partially nor in part."

"You should know that all God's children are fully worthy of COMPLETE courtesy."

"We are creation, WE, the Sons of God."

"And we, God's children, rise up from the dust and look upon our perfect sinlessness."

But let's back up a moment. The Course DOES say that there is only God. It DOES say God has one Son. It DOES say there is only one mind (Christ mind). It DOES speak of oneness. "Into eternity where all is one" "I and my father are one" "God has but one son" etc. And that *seems* to support the idea that "its all God". But here's the thing. IT IS all God, it IS all "one", BUT.... THERE IS **ALSO** CREATION. And all created BEINGS are LIKE God, share with God, are one with God (of the same nature, joined to Him), yet have THEIR OWN FREEDOM.

God HAS created a family of beings. God IS a creator. God DID create at least one son. SO non-duality is out the window. Reality is not some giant expanse of singularity. It's more like a womb in which God has given birth to creations, WITHIN His own being, and has given them FREEDOM. Living, whole-minded, willfully free beings. Children of God. And if that makes you uncomfortable because it "does not compute" or "it sounds like duality", too bad. It is what it is and its your job to accept it.

It's not the same thing as duality. Duality means the localization of parts which are split off and kept separate by NOT SHARING with each other, confined and isolated and different. Duality is the nature of space and time, where nothing shares. Non-duality is the idea of the opposite of that - that the differences are illusions and everything is one thing. But that too is not accurate. Reality isn't some "state" where God is contemplating his navel. Reality isn't like duality even with its many parts because they STILL are all "one" AND YET also many. And each part SHARES with all the rest and IS EVERYWHERE. "One mind is all minds."

Love is EXPRESSIVE. "Divine abstraction takes joy in application." "God did not will to be alone." And as such God has gone BEYOND the concept of "there's only one thing there". God has CREATED children. He has ADDED to existence, and your function is to add to it further. That's not non-duality by a long shot. Nor is it duality (spacetime where things are separated and limited).

God has created a Kingdom. A home for His Sons. Who are one, but many. This is what's miraculous and ego defying. Because of SHARING ("nothing real can be increased, except by sharing"), God has "made room" for beings within Him who share with Him FULLY (oneness) but who STILL retain their own souls. The soul has been FULLY ADDED to existence.

"The soul has not only been created perfect, it has been FULLY created. There is no lack in it."

After the ego is undone, after the separation has ended, after the universe has disappeared, after all divisions and artificial UNNATURAL separations are gone, when duality is no more... the children of God WILL REMAIN children of God, just as they were BEFORE the separation.

"I am as God created me".

"The Holy Spirit promotes healing by looking beyond it to what the children of God were before healing was needed, and will be when they have been healed."

"The Voice of the Holy Spirit is the Call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind. When the Atonement is complete ***and the whole Sonship is healed*** there will be no Call to return. But what God creates (Holy Spirit) is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with ***the Sons of God***, to bless ***their creations*** and keep them in the light of joy."

A Course in Miracles is NOT non-duality. It only loosely teaches that "its all ONE" or "we are all one". That's TRUE. We're woven from the same cloth. BUT, it's not the WHOLE truth. We are ONE, BUT, God as the Oneness has created many of us WITHIN His being. And this is NOT contradictory to God, only to the ego. It is miraculous. And this is because God is MIRACULOUS. He HAS done what seems impossible to the ego. He HAS created a Kingdom filled with souls, beings of light, who share everything together as one united family, WITHOUT destroying reality and without fragmenting existence.

"God, who encompasses all being, NEVERTHELESS (regardless of whether you like this or it makes sense) created **separate beings**, who have everything **individually** and want to share it to increase their joy."

A lie is when something false is presented as if it's true. The false thing is still false, but it is disguised as truth. This false thing is deceptive because it isn't what it seems to be. It seems true on the surface, but it isn't.

If someone presents something false as if it's true, that person is being deceptive. They are hiding what the truth really is, behind a pretend truth, which substitutes for it.

What then seems to be true is actually false, but while you don't recognize it AS false, you are fixated on it. The way that a false thing seems to be true, is what we call an illusion. It appears like truth but isn't. Perhaps its shape, its form, its color, its movement, all are a facade covering up the lie.

To fall for this presentation of something false "as if its true" is to be deceived. The presentation of this illusion is a temptation. It tempts you to believe that something false is true when it isn't. It is lying to you. If you fall for the trick you will buy into it and be convinced. But you can only fall for it by not knowing or recognizing what the truth really is.

The real truth, God's truth, is like a light which frames everything in its proper perspective. In light of what you are aware of as true, it is impossible to be convinced that something false is true. The real truth is obvious, and provided you remain aware of it, you cannot but laugh at the ridiculous efforts of illusions to pretend to be the truth. They are obviously false when you are sane.

As you lose sight of the truth, blocked in your awareness, confused about whether the truth really is true or not, you will enter into a doubting of the truth, and doubt is fear. Being uncertain what the truth is is automatically a state of fear. And so fear (and death) are the nature of all illusions.

To question the truth is the authority problem, an attempt to assert that the truth (God) isn't what it is, and is something else. It's an accusation that the truth is an illusion, that it is deceptive, that it can't be trusted, and is false.

In other words, the deceptive nature of illusions - false things pretending to be truth - is projected onto the truth to try to make out that the truth is deceptive and is "not really true." While claiming that God's truth is lying to you, the ego simultaneously lies to you with untruths masquerading as truth.

Simultaneously, that which is false begins to seem plausible, believable, realistic, convincing, possible, tempting, and seemingly true. You couldn't possibly experience it this way if you were recognizing what the truth really is. "You aren't seriously buying into that lie, are you?"

But because you don't, or have lost sight of it, or it's unclear, false things seem to "make sense", take on an air of reality, and are assumed to be unchallengeable.

The world is a lie. It is false. It was made to oppose the nature of the Kingdom of God. Since the Kingdom is the real truth, the artificial world must take on all the characteristics of something false.

That means the world must be an illusion, it must be deceptive, it must be a lie, it must be made to tempt you to believe it's real, it must seem like reality, it must seem believable based on surface appearances (forms), it seems to true, and it must also seem to block reality.

Lies also have a lot to do with honesty. Someone who is honest does not lie, is not deceived or deceptive, does not tempt sin and does not believe in illusions. An honest person recognizes what is really true AND what is really false. They go hand in hand. Only the truth is true, and everything false is false.

Someone who is honest does not deceive, just as someone who is dishonest does seek to deceive. The ego, as we call it, is a label for an attempt to deceive or be deceived. It is a symbol for "a liar", someone who is putting forth a state of something false, made of illusions, pretending they are the truth. It claims that false things are true and true things are false. It lies to you.

The ego's lies have taken on the form of a physical planet, human bodies, birds in the sky, forests and mountains, lakes and rivers and fish, weather, solar systems, galaxies and the like. These are all false. They are all illusions. They are lies. They are not what they appear to be. They are not the Kingdom of God and they are not real, but they tempt you to believe they are.

Death is a lie. Sickness is a lie. Suffering is a lie. Unhappiness is a lie. Guilt is a lie. Sin is a lie. Fear is a lie. Bodies are lies. Planets are lies. The sun is a lie. Physics is a lie. Cancer and heart disease and strokes and trauma and abuse and pain are lies. Aging is a lie. Time is a lie. Facebook is a lie. Your clothes are lies. This whole universe is a lie. Separation from God is a lie.

It's a lie because it is literally a vast illusory realm of utter nonsense, manufacturer by a "lying" dishonest mind, projected based on the lie of separation, taking on myriad forms of lies, all trying to tempt you to believe the lie. The whole world was made to tempt you to think you are a body, that others are bodies, and that the world is real. It's a big stinking lie.

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

The only way not to be tempted by the world, is to not believe in it. And the only way not to believe is to not attribute truth to it. Which means recognizing that it is purely false. To see the falseness that it is made of, recognizing it AS false, and not for an instant giving it the slightest credit as anything true or real.

You might seem to be surrounded and bombarded by a lying world day in and day out but you must not be deceived by it if you want to be aware of the truth. The truth is of God and it is completely opposite to everything this world presents to your senses.

This world is as if someone told the biggest lie that could ever possibly be told, so big, so vast, so far reaching, that it produced an entire universe-sized lie. The world holds nothing that you want. It's not your home. It's not even really existing. The whole idea of "there is no world" is telling you that the world is fiction, a dream, imagined, made up.

All lies are made up. They are like stories. We invent them. We make them out of nowhere, weave them into what seem like feasible meaningful sequences, but they are total nonsense. Like fairtytales. They're not even based on the truth. Just outright total lies. Lies of things happening and people doing things that are impossible. Things that in reality could NEVER be true.

It could NEVER be true that God's son suffers, is sick, dies, reincarnates as a horse, shits on his former grave, and is then blown up by a rocket. It could NEVER be true that anything real be threatenable or damaged or that you could ever sin against it. It could NEVER be true that you can die or really suffer in any way. And it could NEVER be true that THE LIE ITSELF can ever take the place of or have power over the real truth.

It's a world of lies, based on a lie, made of lies, telling lies all the time. The body lies all the time. There is nothing to see or hear or touch or taste or smell. There isn't even a world here. Nothing has even happened.

(Mind).. "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."

To be aware of the real truth is to be clear about what really is true, and what is false. It merely is a recognition of the truth. To accept atonement is to accept that ONLY God's truth is true, and there are no lies mixed in with it. It is not mistaken for something it is not.

It is fully embraced as ONLY God intended it, unchanged and unaltered, free of all deceit and denial. It's a state where the truth is recognized as true and false things are recognized as false. To be clear about this is enlightenment.

"Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all."

You not only have to be extremely honest you have to be ABSOLUTELY perfectly honest. Perfect honesty means fully willing to admit (allow access to) that the truth is true. It means completely accepting and supporting that truth without taking a side against it.

"The peace of mind which the advanced teachers of God experience is largely due to their perfect honesty. It is only the wish to deceive that makes for war. No one at one with himself can even conceive of conflict. Conflict is the inevitable result of self-deception, and self-deception is dishonesty."

"Honesty does not apply only to what you say. The term actually means consistency. There is nothing you say that contradicts what you think or do; no thought opposes any other thought; no act belies your word; and no word lacks agreement with another. Such are the truly honest. At no level are they in conflict with themselves. Therefore it is impossible for them to be in conflict with anyone or anything."

It means honestly presenting and representing that truth without a shred of deception, denial, avoidance, pretense, manipulation, change or distortion. God's teachers are completely honest with themselves and with everything.

Any degree of denial, any block or unwillingness to be aware of the truth, any lack of recognition of what the truth really is (via the real world then heaven), any avoidance of God, any fear, any belief in the world, any movement away from what is, is going into the lie. The state of not truth. Either you want the truth or you want the lie. Either you speak the truth or you speak the lies.

The world simply is false. It is nothing. It is not reality. It is not God's creation. It has nothing to offer. It isn't doing anything. It has no power or meaning. It produces no real consequences. Everything it depicts is false. It has no life. It has no sharing. It has no truth. The truth is not out there in the world. There is no world for the truth to be out there in.

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

"When the "lies of the serpent" were introduced, they were specifically called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth. He does not have to continue to believe what is not true, unless he chooses to do so. All of his miscreations can disappear in the well known "twinkling of an eye", because it is a visual misperception."

"The Son of God CAN be mistaken; he CAN deceive himself"

"The mind can not attack, but it CAN deceive itself."

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

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end.

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

Knowledge is not the remedy for false perception since, being another level, they can never meet. The one correction possible for false perception must be true perception. It will not endure. But for the time it lasts it comes to heal. For true perception is a remedy with many names. Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one. They are the one beginning, with the end to lead to oneness far beyond themselves. True perception is the means by which the world is saved from sin, for sin does not exist. And it is this that true perception sees.

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

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. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."

Recently I find myself waiting for someone to decide for me what it is I will do. I even ask within to Jesus or Holy Spirit for them to decide for me. It is one thing to surrender and open up to guidance and to express from love, but part of the lesson I've been learning is that I need to learn how to make real decisions.

What has become apparent is that most of life is spent simply reacting to the world, dealing with stuff that crops up, managing day-to-day maintenance activities, working 9-5, just doing 'stuff' - stuff that everyone else wants or needs me to do. Stuff that the world itself wants me to do. Stuff that the ego is organizing to try to keep me from being responsible for my own life.

And this makes me realize just how much I have not really been decisive before and have not really known how to make a firm decision. To be causal, instead of reactionary. To really choose something, commit to it and follow through. To be so aligned with being responsible for my experience that I choose what my experience is going to be, or I choose what I am going to experience, instead of simply waiting for experiences to happen passively.

So when I go to Jesus and try to get Him to decide for me, and He remains quiet, or He nudges me, and I don't get it, it's because He's trying to get me to act from a place of certainty instead of fear. A place of knowing, instead of figuring out. A place of being tuned within, instead of tuned out. And then he says, "decide". And I'm like... yah.. I am just blowing out hot air going around in circles in what I'm calling decision making which is really just "not deciding" and spinning my wheels.

To make a 'real decision', which isn't a reaction, and which involves being true to myself, and not doing anything that I don't want to do (which produces fear).... it's a new thing.

When I am in a state of indecision, I am clueless about what to do. I don't have any sense of certainty or clarity. I think somehow it's possible to 'become clear' while in that state, or that the clarity is lurking somewhere in the midst of options and if I just figure out the right option, it will become clear. It doesn't apparently work this way. The clarity needs to come FIRST.

So the way forward is, get out of indecision. Recognize it for what it is, that it is not decision making, but decision avoidance. Get out of all of that behavior, and COME BACK to certainty, back to clarity, to confidence, to knowing, to within the heart, and THEN I rediscover an obviousness - a clear path, which I already know is the right way to move forward, which was simply sitting there the whole time with me not being aware of it. So then the decision is easy and certain. And when you make certain decisions in clarity and not in fear, then you will have commitment.

A few years ago, my wife was diagnosed with cancer and had to have surgery.

At the time, this seemed like a big threat. This is because I believed in the hierarchy of illusions, and so it seems like a big dangerous threatening problem.

My initial reaction to the news was actually that I almost fainted and had a panic attack. The perception that this was a serious external threat produced a lot of fear.

During the time at the hospital when she was having surgery, I felt very afraid. It took longer than expected which didn't help, and I felt very nervous about whether she was even going to make it through the surgery in one piece.

My mind started to become flooded with ego fear thoughts. I of course tried to "battle" with these and convince myself that they weren't true or that something else was true, like that she was going to be ok. But it was hard. I prayed fervently and raged at God demanding that He make sure she was ok.

The problem was, I couldn't stop having these fearful thoughts, which were coming in thick and fast. I tried to not think them but couldn't. But then something suddenly occurred to me.

In the midst of the ego "revealing" itself in the open, and showing its viciousness, it inadvertently exposed itself a bit too much. It seemed like it was trying to make me upset on purpose, and some part of me saw this as unnecessary. I realized that the hierarchy of illusions was dictating to me "how much reaction" I should have.

Given the cancer seemed like a big serious external threat, it appeared to correspond that I would have a "big reaction" to that perception. The two went hand in hand. Big problem, big reaction. The moment I saw this, it suddenly dawned on me that I was ONLY having this big insurmountable reaction because the problem seemed so big. And moreso, that I was the one perceiving it to be a big serious problem, causing this fear to erupt.

What this taught me is that I don't HAVE to have the level of reaction that the hierarchy of illusions dictates. I don't HAVE to be severely affected by a severe cause. And that really put my mind into a different perspective, above the battlefield as it were. I had an increase in awareness and started to take steps of forgiveness to see through or not believe that this was a big problem, or that its appearance was the truth. This quickly diminished the presence of the fear thoughts/fear-attack, and the ego quieted down a lot.

She made it through the surgery ok and that was the end of that drama. It was an important lesson. Sometimes you need to be shown the full-on rage of the ego's thought system in order to expose it enough to realize how it is self-defeating. We don't HAVE to have big reactions to ILLUSIONS of big problems. And this is a step towards becoming miracle minded.

All thoughts create form at some level. This is because thoughts (ego thoughts) are ideas about separation. Regardless of their specific content they are always separation ideas.

Separation ideas always therefore lead to "form" in some way.

What this means is, the idea of separation from God, having that tiny mad idea, AUTOMATICALLY means that form MUST come from it. Form must be the end result of an idea of separation. The thought ITSELF shows up as form - separate images appearing real, and eventually being so "firm" that they seem like solid matter.

Form results from thoughts of separation because separation requires us to make an illusion of how two things are different and disconnected, not sharing space or properties. These illusory appearances make it seem like separation is real and result in the illusion of "separate objects".

Any ego thought therefore emphasizes separation between illusions. As the division between thoughts intensifies, or becomes more "dense", it HAS to eventually lead to the illusory manifestation of what we would call "physical solid matter" - a physical universe - which is essentially just a very heavy/serious thought.

Or to put it simply, the mad idea of being separate from God HAD to create a physical universe. It is a completely logical progression and consequence of having such an idea. Form derives from separation.

If separation is perceived or believed to be real, some kind of universe of forms, to some degree, must seem to manifest.

Before the physical universe there were also prior "stages" if you will, subtler levels of this, which have produced additional levels in the dream. Other dimensions. These are all part of the same ego holographic dream and many of these levels feature form to varying degrees.

As Jesus says for example, nighttime and waking dreams differ only in their forms/content. Being in the physical world is nothing more than being inside the tiny mad idea of separation. It is just an idea, and is not really happening. This is why the physical universe is an illusion. It's an illusory thought of separation - a thought of impossibility.

When you can recognize the illusion correctly, you have completed forgiveness. This means being able to transcend and overlook the thought which has made the physical world. Seeing the truth of this, is seeing the "real world", ie the true nature of the worlds of form (which may pertain to physical level as well as higher levels/dimensions of form).

Overlooking illusions makes them disappear. Overlooking the thought of separation makes it, and everything which has come from it (is inside it), disappear. This is why the physical and other higher dimensional universes MUST eventually disappear, or rather be recognized as having been nothing more than a dream/illusion to begin with. Illusions recognized must disappear. The tiny mad idea, recognized as purely false, must end.

Only Heaven is reality, the home of Immortal Spirit. Only Heaven will be left when all of these illusory universes disappear. Only Heaven is the Home of God and the Son of God. Only Heaven, God's Creation, is the real truth - the real universe of oneness.

We need to learn to not believe anything we see in this world.

We must learn it is all FALSE. Nothing more than an illusion that isn’t really there, is completely powerless, and cannot resist your undivided will.

We must stop seeing people as bodies.

We must learn to overlook ALL FORMS, because they are deceptive illusions, images of lies which the ego made to cover up the truth.

We must walk around this world as though this world is not even here.

We must IGNORE every sign and signal which suggests that the ego’s "laws" are in effect and that they have real power.

We must learn to completely OVERLOOK absolutely every deceiving appearance, including all sickness (which is fake), all suffering (which is fake), all victimhood (which is fake), and even death (which is fake).

This is quite an unusual state to exist in. Being in a world but not of it. Being here and showing up as a miracle worker, BUT not believing anything you see. Not listening to any ego lies. Not believing the sob story of victims. Not believing the reasons people have for why they are sick. Not believing anything that isn’t OF GOD!

If it’s not aligned with God and God’s Will, and if it is not absolutely TRUE, then it is FALSE!

In this way, we BRING the truth, the light, the love, the power, and the will of God, TO those who falsely believe they "need help", and so shine upon them and HEAL THEM through the MIRACLE WORKING POWER OF LOVE.

Love overlooks all illusions of sickness and suffering because love is *forgiving*. It is not confused about what is real and what is an illusion.

As a miracle worker, YOU must learn to distinguish clearly what is reality and what is illusion. If you are thinking that someone‘s sickness is real, you have lessons to learn. Once you have learned that all sickness is a LIE, and there is no such thing as "real sin", you will be able to say as Jesus did many times, "all your sins are forgiven", because all of your OWN sins have been overlooked as false.

Love then becomes extraordinarily powerful. It can heal anything. There is nothing your holiness cannot do. Your willingness to fixate only on God’s truth and to NOT BELEIVE the ego’s truth at all, makes you extremely powerful. All of the ego’s laws are NOTHING to you. They are all entirely illusions, just puffs of smoke. So EASILY you will be able to bend them to your will, to bring healing to the sick, to restore sight and hearing to those in need, to raise the dead, and to move mountains, LITERALLY.

Love is all you need. Love is the power. And that means, you must accept the atonement for yourself so that you can be open to loving to such a high and truly unconditional degree. Unconditional love knows no orders of difficulty. You are UNLIMITED in what you can do.