"The surface traits of God's teachers are not at all alike. They do not look alike to the body's eyes, they come from vastly different backgrounds, their experiences of the world vary greatly, and their superficial "personalities" are quite distinct. Nor at the beginning stages of their functioning as teachers of God, have they yet acquired the deeper characteristics that will establish them as what they are."

Seems to me that the biggest influence on what anyone sees in ACIM, how they relate to it, what they think it's saying, what's important, is PERSONALITY. We all seem to filter it through our human ego personalities.

I've noticed this over and over again. A highly intellectual person has a very different 'view' of the course and how to "do it" than someone who is much more emotional, for example. And there are emotional people who struggle with the metaphysics. And people who get the metaphysics and are emotionally cold.

Some people are very intense about the course, others more laid back. Some are very open minded, others more closed off. Some are highly conservative, others very liberal. Some like the emphasis non-duality views, others find them to be missing something major. Some feel very aligned with the earth and interpret the course as affirming their love of the earth, while others see the world as nothing and want to get the hell out of here. And all of these attitudes were in place BEFORE anyone started the course.

It seems that the personality remains largely unchanged throughout our practice, and is more or less the same after many years of doing the course. And this personality acts like a huge filter, a flavouring, which massively influences preferences, what we resonate with, what seems to feel right to us, etc.

In the case of the course itself, the book, this results in a wide range of disagreements about what it is, what it says, what it means, how to do it etc. Because the course itself remains fixed and thus people's personalities project onto it.

In the case of our lives it's different, because each person's curriculum is very personalised and individualises to suit what their needs are, what their path is, what their background is, what their personality does to relate to things.

The curriculum and what is written in the book are somewhat different things, although leading to the same goal. Our life lessons are highly varied and personal. In that way, what one person needs is highly different to another, and this can also extend to each person USING the course different, seeing different things in it, emphasising different parts of it.

I've noticed how different personalities will tend to relate to certain aspects of the teachings and ignore others, gravitating towards parts that speak to them. This is because of the personality filter.

I'm not sure what we can do to ignore or rise above the personality, it has a strong influence on everything we do. Perhaps in the more advanced stages we are able to see past it and be more unified in our outlook. But it certainly is a very very strong flavouring of our whole experience.

What thus works for one person doesn't work for another, what one person tends to focus on in the course may be very very different to another. Some get heavily into analysis, some into feeling, some into practical everyday applications, some into high lofty abstract theories, etc.

And typically we all defend our viewpoints and opinions, because it's a reflection of our personality. And we all do a pretty poor job of being outside outside our own personality as well.

People gravitate to certain personalities as well, in terms of what videos they will watch, what posts they will read, who they'll agree with, what groups they'll join, whose version of the course they'll listen to, etc. And certain personalities which are more charismatic or outspoken or intense or talkative tend to become content creators and teachers and have followings, and then their personalities become worshipped.

In all my time with this I've rarely seen ANYONE really change their general core attitude about the course, regardless of any amount of attempted persuasion. Because most people are simply using the personality as guidance.

People who have held a general belief and attitude 10 years ago are still holding it now. How they speak to people has hardly changed. Which parts of the course they think affirm their view have not changed. It's all very locked in. And because everyone is so locked into the personality it gives rise to a lot of conflict.

We need to find a way to transcend the individual differences and personal attributes and look outside of our ego selves to see a broader more inclusive picture.

People like to think they don't have an ego, or that if they have one it's tucked away somewhere. Distancing from it is a way to protect it. But having ego means being to ANY degree, even slightly, outside of heaven. The tiniest belief in separation is all it takes. And that applies to just about everyone on the planet.

So we have to at least acknowledge honestly that if we're still here we probably still have egotism to some degree. And that means we can't just pretend that we don't have one. It means that there's some part of our mind which is mentally ill, and distorted, and lost and confused. A part of the mind that believes things which are not true, but still believes them anyway. And that part of mind has a sense of identity attached to it, a sense of truth about oneself.

And that ego-identifying mind is going to have false perceptions and egoic viewpoints, regardless of how much a person is doing ACIM, how often, or for how long. So we can't just be in denial and pretend we're not being egotistical, we are being egoistical pretty much 100% of the time in one way or another. And denying this will only produce sacrifice and repression and even more separation in the mind.

There has come to be an ACIM 'culture' now of ego denial. It's one thing to recognize that yes we have to work on undoing our egotism and return to wholeness, but it's another to just pretend we don't have egotism when we do. Shoving it under the carpet isn't healing the mind, any more than throwing the book at it 24/7. It will generally take a long a slow and gradual process to correct all of the mind's errors and until then you have to 'work with' your ego and be gentle with yourself.

We have to admit that we DO have an ego right now and we - at times, need to be IN that ego, in order to feel a sense of being "what we are", because our sense of what we are has become ego-identified. If we pretend not to be e.g. body-identified, while still being so, we will move into sacrifice and body shaming and other things which are unhealthy. People are developing increased senses of shame and guilt over 'having an ego', or outright denial at having one while demonstrating it, instead of being gentler with ourselves about where we are at.

It's ok to acknowledge that you're being/having an ego while you are doing it, while you are working on undoing it, and not pretend that just because you believe the truth of the theory of ACIM that you somehow are above it all. Or that you can live as though you don't have an ego, before you are truly ready to do so. Everyone is mired in ego and mental illness until they reach enlightenment, and no-one is excluded from that.

So we have to then recognize this and be gentle with our self-deceptions and our delusions, even if that isn't an ideal scenario, and isn't healing it. We have to be where we're 'at', while we're trying to move closer to God. Once we've moved closer, great, we're more spiritually aligned, but while we have ego we shouldn't be treating it like some kind of enemy or bashing it or hating it or trying to lock it in a box, because YOU will experience the effects of that.

It comprises part of your belief about yourself, and a sense of your current identity, and denying or attacking that will be experienced as an attack upon yourself, which will not make you happy. You don't have to snuggle up beside it and love it and want to keep it, but you also shouldn't be demonising it or not having compassion for where you're at. Everyone's trying to run and they don't even know how to walk.

Many ACIM students think that they are not only miracle workers but also egoless selfless lovers of everyone, having barely stepped foot on the road to God. This is part of the ego arrogance itself. Can we just for goodness sake just be where we're at and relax and stop pressuring ourselves to be perfect and flawless when we're clearly riddled with issues that we're working on? It's okay to be a mess while you're working on cleaning up the mess.

"The Soul in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does NOT attack the ego."

"The voice of the Holy Spirit does not command, because it is incapable of arrogance. It does not demand, because it does not seek control. It does not overcome, because it does not attack. It merely REMINDS. It is compelling only because of what it reminds you OF."

"Truth does not struggle AGAINST ignorance, and love does not ATTACK fear."

"Light does not ATTACK darkness, but it DOES shine it away."

You are in a dream world. Everything here is symbolic. Nothing that appears visible is whole, because symbols are not the whole of something. Symbols represent something beyond themselves, and all physical matter is symbolic of something greater.

Physical matter, at all, is symbolic of the idea of separation and fragmentation. The multitude. The opposite of oneness.

The physical body is symbolic of the idea that you are separated from the whole and are only a part of it.

Outer space is symbolic of the unconscious mind in which anti-matter is unconscious guilt, and stars are all that's left of a light which was once everywhere.

All bodies, be they stars or planets or people or animals, are symbolic of the ego, individuate identities roaming around cut off from the rest.

Clouds, above which the sun shines, are symbolic of blocks to awareness, in which sunlight on a clear day is symbolic of seeing clearly.

Light and darkness, visibility and shadows, are symbolic of the polarization of good vs bad, persona and shadow, as well as symbolic of the light of truth vs the obstruction of darkness.

Even in the physical world, when light shines, it obliterates the darkness, being symbolic of the way that the light of truth shines away illusions.

Things that happen in the world are symbolic as well, being shifts in symbolism and psychological content, and this is also why most of your dreams at night become even more symbolic representations of what happened in the day.

Waking in the morning is symbolic of awakening from unconsciousness and sleep. Going to sleep at night is symbolic of going into unconsciousness and dreaming of a world that doesn't exist.

The people you meet are symbolic of other stuff in your life. Phases of life are symbolic. Certain events happening and significant life changes are symbolic.

The sky is symbolic of heaven, the Earth symbolic of hell.

Each time that you experience rejection or abandonment or separation, it is symbolic of the separation from God.

Each time that you experience a sense of loss and grief, it is symbolic of the loss of God.

Each time that something suddenly comes out of the blue and changes things for the worse, it is symbolic of the moment of the separation from God and the sudden entry into terror and sin.

Everytime something is born or dies, it symbolizes the limitation of form and the fact that it must have a beginning and and, making it inherently mortal.

Each time there is intense weather and storms, it is symbolic of stormy attitudes in the public and the threat of punishment.

Each time someone says a prayer, it is symbolic of commitment to God and an acknowledgement of reality.

Birth is symbolic of the separation from God. Death is symbolic of succeeding in separating from God.

Pretty much everything that you do in your so-called physical life is SYMBOLIC. Your body is MADE of a symbol. All of the events in your life are symbolic. It all represents ideas and concepts in the greater mind.

By not realizing that everything going on in your life is symbolic, and that this is entirely a DREAM, and that there is not ANYTHING that isnt symbolic, you instead focus on appearances of objects and events, as though you're seeing the entirety of what it is. This means you are turning symbols into 'things' in their own right, as though they don't allude to anything else and really have no symbolic meaning. You look at meaningless "form" in this way and then project other meanings onto it, but the only reason you think it is meaningless is because you are in denial that you're in a symbolic dream.

All around you everything that's happening right now is symbolic. All of the objects in your room are symbolic or representative of something. Every event that happened today was symbolic of the separation from God. Every time something "happened" in form it was symbolic of sin happening, proving your guilt.

This world is not a world of end results or finite objects or mortal bodies or stuff that is "complete" in its own right. Nothing is WHOLE here. Everything is a symbol, and is less than whole, and less than perfect. There is stuff missing that you do not see. There is more than meets the eye.

If you look into it, you might start to recognize some of the symbols in your life, that certain people are symbolic of other people, or that certain relationships are symbolic of certain ways that you are relating to God. You think this world is physically real and objective and final. It is not at all. It is a dream, and dreams are always made of symbols, meaning that there is always something ELSE that they're not showing you. To OVERLOOK the symbols, to forgive, and to shift awareness to the WHOLE MEANING, awakens you from the dream.

Sweet dreams.

You have your real self, which is your `higher self`, which God created. Then you have your ego self, your 'false self', which you made.

Interestingly, the ego which you made, seems to turn against you and tries to take away your identity. It tries to stop you from being your real self. It wants you to become the ego self.

The ego then is like a black hole, sucking the life out of you, covering up your real self, distracting you from remembering who you are, closing down your mind and awareness, stealing from you, possessing you, getting you to align with it, getting you to trust it and side with it and want it, and above all else, getting you to believe that you ARE it. The ego is attempting to remove your real self from existence, so that all that is left is the false ego self, to whom you have handed over all your power and life.

In ACIM, Jesus speaks with very clear awareness of the fact that there is YOU - your real self - and then there is "the ego" - your false self. He speaks of how the ego is trying to get you to believe that you are it, but that you are not it and cannot be it. He also warns of how you willingly give the ego all of its power by choosing to deny and reject who you really are.

So here we have this strange battle going on, where the ego is trying to absorb you into itself. And for most people, it's done a really good job of it. To such an extent, that most people believe they are ONLY their ego. They don't even suspect that they have a hidden 'true self'. They have no idea that they are not themselves, or that their real self is covered up by layer upon layer of ego bullshit.

The challenge you have, and the entire purpose of 'awakening', is to get you to wake up to the truth of this situation and to 'pull away' from your identification with the ego, remember who you really are, and become really really clear that you are NOT the ego. Every time you buy into or listen to or side with or use the ego, you are reinforcing the belief that you ARE the ego.

You are not the ego. You are not what happens to the ego. You are not the ego that becomes affected by stupid events and attackers and bad people. You are not the self that feels hurt. You are not the self that is guilty. You are not the self that suffers and dies. You are not the self that fears death and fears life. You are not the self that is all caught up in drama and the rollercoaster of life's events. You are not the self that can be affected or feels triggered off by things happening around them. YOU ARE NOT THAT SELF. THAT IS NOT YOU.

Your ego is the repository of all things ego, and your ego is not who you are. You do not NEED an ego in order to exist. You do not need anything the ego is attached to, believes in, values or thinks is real. You are not dependent on it. It is dependent upon you. But while you think you depend on it - for your life - because you think you ARE it - because you've listened to and chosen to believe the ego's bullshit cover-story - you will keep experiencing things AS IF you are it, and AS IF all these things are happening to YOU.

Nothing can happen to YOU, ever. Because YOU are not the ego, you are not guilt, you are not fear, you are not upset, you are not drama, you are not the body, you are not vulnerable, you are not attackable, you are not hurt, you are not suffering, you are not sick or diseased, you cannot die, and you cannot change. Not one iota.

So the real lie is this... who you really are, cannot be changed, and is a permanent identity that God has put in place, and there's nothing you can do about it. BUT... your mind is capable of DENYING this fact, and pretending otherwise, and when it presents otherwise it hallucinates ego. And once ego is in the picture there are all kinds of backwards distortions of how things look and who you think you are. And you start to lose sight of yourself. And you lose track of your completely unchangeable perfection and innocence, and start to ACTUALLY BELIEVE that ITS POSSIBLE that the 'life of the ego' is your life, that you CAN be hurt and suffer and die, and that this big ego nightmare is actually happening to YOU.

Like, hello.

Forgiveness corrects a reversal of cause and effect.

In every single situation, every false perception, every belief, every error or mistake you can make, every relationship, every drama, you CAN only really make one mistake.

You can only get cause and effect back to front.

The ENTIRE ego thought system, all of the separation, everything that happens in this world, all events and experiences, are ALL entirely based on a reversal of cause and effect.

God is cause. You are God's effect. You also can cause, because you are like God. But you cannot cause God, being His effect.

HOWEVER, because you are free to choose, when you choose to TRY to cause God, all hell breaks loose.

This is simply because you are trying to upset the divine order. You are trying to convert God, who is PURE CAUSE, into an effect. And you are simultaneously trying to change YOU, who are purely an effect of God, INTO the cause of yourself.

In this is the entire authority problem, usurping of God's will, all sense of sin, and every consequence that comes from sin including guilt and fear and sickness and death.

Every form of level confusion is a reversal of cause and effect. All belief in magic, every state of victimhood, every delusion possible in the mind, all conditions of the ego and its thinking, the emergence of a physical body, even death, are all SYMPTOMS of an inverted cause-effect relationship.

Therefore, THE ONLY CORRECTION, the only "forgiveness you need do", is to set cause and effect back into their proper relationship. In all ways, at all levels.

So when you're in the midst of some drama story about who did what to whom, or why you're afraid of this and that, or how you've been caused to be sick against your will, or why death is looming, or why you "can't" or "won't", or why someone else is responsible for your existence etc, this is ALL because somewhere in your mind you are mis-perceiving and have attempted to reverse cause and effect.

There are two parts to this error.

1) The belief that God is causing you against your will and you don't want to be affected.

2) The belief that you are the cause of making yourself and do not need to be an effect of God.

This plays out in all kinds of ways and in all kinds of dramas.

ALL you have to do, to forgive, is fix the causality.

That means, you need to UNDO, ANY belief that says anything to the contrary of how God naturally creates. If there is any aspect of what you believe or perceive that is saying "its happening to me against my will" or "I did not choose this" or "I am not responsible for causing this" or "they did this to me", that's a mistake. That must be flipped around.

It's very EXTREMELY SIMPLE. There is NOTHING ELSE that has gone wrong. It's not merely a sense of separation from God being corrected. That sense of separation arose through attempting to change causality. You wanted to be the cause of God instead of his effect. That's all. And because of that, you now see other people as being the cause of you against your will, which SECRETLY is your desire to be NOT caused BY God.

So you fix the causality. I am not being caused by that person. That person is not doing anything to me at all. I am not experiencing anything because of them. They did not cause this. I am not a victim of them. They can do nothing to me. I take back all of my power that I gave to them. They are not responsible for my life or existence or feelings or experiences. I chose everything I am experiencing myself. I am completely responsible for this whole thing. I am not at the effect of the world I see. I am not a victim of anyone or anything. etc

This is placing you in your proper role of *causing the dream*, but also is placing you in your proper role of BEING THE EFFECT OF GOD.

Because as you acknowledge YOUR causal power, which you inherited from Him, you are acknowledging that God's causal nature is IN YOUR MIND, and therefore so is God.

All you are doing is cancelling out all belief in "horizontal cause-and-effect". There are no causes on this level. There are only effects on this level. You are NOT one of those effects, because you CAUSED this whole level from above.

Fix the broken causality and EVERYTHING ELSE will fall into place.

Miracles are examples of vertical causality which defy all horizontal laws of cause and effect.

When we typically experience the world from an ego viewpoint, we might encounter lessons and people and problems. And then we attempt to forgive these things. And we think we are then done with forgiveness. And then another one comes along. And then we do another forgiveness. And this gives you the impression that you are doing forgiveness.

But over time, you are really moving horizontally through the world, encountering obstacles, one at a time, and these obstacles always seem specific. The form of the obstacle is what deceives you. The problem with your mother, the problem with the plumbing, the problem with the sick brother, the problem with your boss. Each one seems specifically different and unrelated to the rest. And so you perform a string of seeming forgivenesses through time.

But as you perform each forgiveness and move towards truth, you are in fact moving UPWARDS, towards the light. And this upwards movement may seem to be more subtle and gradual, such that it isn't even specific and it may be difficult to realize whether you are making upwards progress. But over time, it will start to occur to you that each of the seemingly different "forms" that problems take, is itself an illusion.

You will start to see that each of these forgiveness opportunities have something in common. Common characteristics. There's always some problem with your belief in who is causing who. And there's always some issue of authority and power. And there's always fear and reaction involved. And there's always the same stresses. And as you progress you start to generalize the learning and start to transcend the forms and differences. And then it starts to occur to you that these are not all different situations.

What forgiveness reveals to you, is that you aren't really in fact having to deal with a multitude of totally different problems, but that in fact the whole world, ALL of the problems, are doing the same thing. And ALL of the problems have the same characteristics. And ALL of them are forgiven in the same way. And this starts to show you that it's not really a specific problem with specific people, or specific groups, or specific situations, it's a problem with THE WHOLE WORLD.

And then you start to question the nature of the whole world. Maybe the WHOLE world is a collection of attacks. Maybe all of it, regardless of the form it takes, is ONE problem. And now you are starting to not fall for the illusion of form or the shape that a problem takes. You are realizing that either you move downwards into the darkness of hell, or upwards into the light of heaven. And either you are lost in the battlefield of stress and misery, or you are above the WHOLE battlefield in light and happiness.

Forgiveness starts to now take on a different direction. Its not so much to do with having a DIFFERENT way of handling each situation, but of developing a SINGLE "way" of dealing with them all. And you start to see through the deception or form that each one presents. And you stop falling for the obvious temptations. And now forgiveness is seen as vertical, in which either you are moving into hell or out of it, as a whole. And the qualities of the whole WORLD are now being brought into question.

You are now asking yourself, whether ANY of the things that happen are real. Whether ANY problem is really happening. Whether ANY person's attack has anything to do with you. Whether there even IS anything specific or different about any of it. And as you broaden your horizons to learn very large abstract truths such as that there is no world, this is just a dream, NONE of it is happening to you, loving everyone equally is the way to holy relationship, unity is the truth, sharing with everyone is unconditional love, etc... you move away from the specific towards the abstract.

And now it boils down the real "root cause" of the WHOLE of suffering, the reason for EVERY reaction, the purpose behind EVERY sickness. And you discover there not only really is only one problem, there is also only one solution. One solution to rule them all. And only one lesson that the Holy Spirit is teaching. Either the world is real or its not. And if it is real, you will suffer. And if it's not, you are free. If it's a dream, you have no basis for reactions or fear. If it's not a dream, you cannot help but react in fear. This is a fundamental lesson in the generalization of the teaching. That every form the illusion takes is just as DECOY to distract you from realizing that it's ALL the same.

This causes you to also start realizing that the hierarchy of illusions is a lie. Some things are NOT harder or more difficult than another. The form of a problem lies about its severity. You start to question whether a giant cancer is really any more threatening than a headache. You see how the ego tries to correlate the seriousness of a cause with the appropriate level of reaction, and you stop falling for this lie. The hierarchy starts to flatten, and all of the deceptions that make it seem like a world-sized maze of confusing corridors and disjointed pieces, simply start to fuse into each other as they're all seen as ONE DREAM. One problem, one solution.

"Miracles entail a sudden shift into vertical perception".

"Yet they are all the same and must be recognized as one if the one solution which solves them all is to be accepted."

"Without the values from the past you WOULD see them all the same"

"We will try to realize that we have only one problem, which we have failed to recognize. We will ask what it is, and wait for the answer. We will be told."

"Today I would remember the simplicity of salvation by reinforcing the lesson that there is one problem and one solution."

"The Holy Spirit will repeat this ONE inclusive lesson of deliverance, until it has been learned, REGARDLESS of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him, He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form."

"I want the peace of God." W185

I've been realising more and more lately that peace is a vital core part of awakening to reality. And here's why.

Before "the separation" there was union and oneness. The idea of separation first began as nothing more perhaps than a very subtle sense of taking sides. Of there being a very slight difference between what seemed to be two things, instead of one thing. A hint of inequality and a vague notion of something belonging to one part and not another.

This mad idea later snowballed to the fullest extent of possibility, into greater and stronger senses of separateness, opposition, inequality, difference and all manner of exclusivity. In effect, "war broke out". A state of psychological war in which the peace of oneness was brought into question.

"And the peace of God's Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father." UrT12C11

"Angels came, too, but their protection was not enough, because the Separated ones were not interested in peace. They had already split themselves, and were bent on dividing rather than reintegrating. The levels they introduced into themselves turned against each other, and they, in turn, turned against each other. They established differences, divisions, cleavages, dispersion, and all the other concepts related to the increasing splits they produced." UrT2B43

Ultimately all of what we think of space and time, all physical matter, all objects, planet Earth, human bodies, and all the rest of it, descended as the crystallizing of this simple idea of being separate - separate instead of whole. And that was an idea of conflict, of war, of things disagreeing, of nothing being the same.

In heaven there is perfect peace because there is no possibility of war. There are no separated off things that can be enemies, nor can they attack anything else. There is no sense of threat or danger, no ability to harm or alter God's perfect creations. And without such threats there is no sense of fear, or a "loss of peace" or a disruption to "peace of mind."

Our minds did little more than enter into a state of believing in separate things. That sense of separation took on every conceivable form, including war and attack, blame and murder, sickness and death, destruction and change, judgement and condemnation, danger and threat, conflict and disagreement, inequality and disharmony, and everything we're all familiar with in our lives on earth - a planet which itself depends entirely on separation and war for its illusory existence.

We then need to seek to reclaim our peace of mind. That means, all the ways that we be SEPARATE have to end. All sense of attacking, all desire to hurt, all cruelty, all murderousness, all blame and judgement, all condemnation and grievances, it all has to collapse so that the SEPARATIONS between things are collapsed, restoring unity and oneness.

ONLY in that unity of oneness is true peace fully possible, because it's a state in which all sense of separation is absent. War becomes impossible, and without war there is no fighting, no conflict, no disturbance, no loss, no imbalance, no sin or guilt or death. Peace is an attribute of a sane healthy mind which has been restored to wholeness. Because in wholeness there is no split mind, no divided will, and you are no longer at war with yourself. This is accomplished through forgiveness.

"Forgiveness IS your peace, for herein lies the end of separation, and the dream of danger and destruction, sin and death; of madness and of murder, grief and loss." UrT29G1

"Peace is an attribute in YOU. You cannot find it outside. All mental illness is some form of EXTERNAL searching. Mental health is INNER peace. It enables you to remain unshaken by lack of love from without, and capable, through your own miracles of correcting the external conditions, which proceed from lack of love in others." UrT2A32

To gain peace, all your psychological weapons have to be laid down. All sense of wanting to attack, wanting to resist and fight, wanting to hurt and destroy has to be undone. And undoing all of this is a surrender. It is this surrender that ends the war, a surrendering of all ego pursuits and beliefs. When you wave the white flag, you return to peace, because the end of war is indeed peace. Nor will your peace mean defeat, but victory and invulnerability.

"Judgment is the weapon I would use against myself to keep all miracles away from me." URW347

"Now must you once again lay down your sword, although you will not recognize that you have picked it up again" UrM21A4

"Every time you feel a stab of anger, realize you hold a sword above your head." UrW192L9

"Nor is it possible the two can ever be the same, while specialness stands like a flaming sword of death between them, and makes them enemies." UrT24D4

"Lay down the cruel sword of judgment that you hold against your throat, and put aside the withering assaults with which you seek to hide your holiness." UrW190L9

"How long, oh Son of God, will you maintain the game of sin? Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children's toys?" UrW250W45

Before the separation, there was only the truth of God. God's Kingdom was the only reality. Everything in it was directly known and cognized. There was no interpretation, no judgement, no evaluation, and no decisions about what things mean. It was a very direct unified experience and everything was a given.

In this state of perfection, we knew that only God's truth was true. That only God's laws applied. There was nothing else to oppose this. There was, you could say, a recognition, that only the truth is true, AND that only the false is false. But you also knew that the false means nothingness and non-existence - that nothing is false. So there was no experience of the false, only of the true, and love had no opposite.

Let's then consider the tiny mad idea, BEFORE you believed in it. Let's imagine the idea has only just formed and you are considering what it is. The idea is that there is an opposite to God, as an opposite to what has no opposite. It's the idea of an opposite to the truth, which had to be nothing like the truth in order to BE opposite. We made-up in our minds an imagined notion of what it might be like it God were completely opposed, and something completely different were to exist. But note at this point you had not "gone into it" with belief or conviction.

This mad idea was an idea filled with opposites to God's nature. It was an idea of that which is false, untrue, unreal, impossible, non-existing, murderous, deadly, vulnerable, weak, powerless, unloving, impermanent, corrupt, distorted, deceptive, valueless, meaningless, nothingness, evil and every other notion that opposes some quality of God.

If you would have remained in your right mind, examining this idea, you would not have given it a moment's belief. It would have been completely obvious to you how impossible and unbelievable it is. You would have had no faith in it, on trust in it, and it would appear to be you be completely nothing. You would see no value in it, no merit to it, and would not want it at all. You would turn away from it instantly knowing that it was so profoundly false, you could not help but laugh at it.

Let's now say that you, nevertheless, chose to start to entertain the idea, began to persuade yourself that it was possible and true, and listened to it. You gave it a second thought and started to take it more seriously. What this meant is that you suddenly began to lose touch with what is objectively real. You lost touch with God's reality, and started to enter into a subjective reality. A reality which seemed to be different for you than for others, where reality was unstable.

This subjective position was what we call "perception", which put you into a slightly removed mode of "reading into" what you saw. A slight delay or gap was introduced between what was there and what you knew, producing a sense of space and time, and also removing you a little from the direct experience. Your mind began to twist and distort, it began to lose touch with context, it began to hallucinate, it entered into doubt and lost track of meaning. It started to interpret everything according to what it thought it might mean, making up meanings, and judging everything to try to assess what it was. And this was also a hallucinatory experience.

By believing that there was some truth to what was false, the mind began to swap the true and the false. Perception acted like a layer of interpretation overlaid on top of the clarity that the true and the false were completely opposite. That the false didn't even exist. Truth and reality was given to the false, combining with it into a blurred soup of meaninglessness and confusion. And similarly aspects of the false were incorrectly associated with the truth, further distorting your view of reality and driving you insane.

This process continued in the "descent into hell", whereby all things true were confused with all things false, and vice versa. This eventually produced a complete inversion of the facts. All true things were believed to be false, and all false things were believed to be true. This produced a completely upside down viewpoint. Whereas we might say truth was above and the false was below, the true was now placed below and the false above. This backwards perception was overlaid on top of the actual arrangement of the facts or levels.

The state of false perception turns everything into its opposite. So we also perceived from a vantage point of believing that unreality was real, the false was true, the impossible was possible, death was life, suffering was salvation, hell was heaven, and god was non-existent. It was this combination of the false and the true which was the state of false perception in the mind, and it was this which as projected out AS THE PHYSICAL WORLD. A world where everything is backwards, the impossible happens, and everything is insane.

The world therefore took on a nature which is completely impossible and contradictory. It appeared to be in some ways both true and false. In it the impossible seemed to always be happening, as though it were possible. Death could occur even though this is not possible. It gives only to take away. There was a cost to everything. And since there was this overlaid blend of true and false, everything in the world was something other than what it appeared to be on the surface.

False perception therefore looks upon a false unreal world, riddled with impossibilities, and believes it to be real and true. It in a sense sees heaven in it, but not through recognizing heaven as it it. Instead by believing that something that is NOT heaven is heaven. The world itself was made on this basis. The body was made on this basis. And the body's eyes now look out upon the unreal world and make it seem real.

As Jesus states in the course "The world is false perception." This means that so long as your mind is backwards and confused, having swapped the true and the false, it will perceive what we call the physical world. And this way of perceiving will line up with the world's nature. When the mind is in false perception, ie upside-down belief, or backwards cause-and-effect, everything in the world seems natural and makes sense and seems like the only reality.

So long as the mind remains in false perception it will see the physical world, along with its seeming laws and its insane ways, because it is a projection of madness. False perception sees all false things as if they are true, all illusions as if they are real, and buys into all the impossible things that seem to happen. It falls for temptation and is deceived.

The way out of such a world is through true perception. The only thing that is needed to move into true perception, is to reverse the upside-down inverting lens of perception. Remember this is a layer of interpretation overlaid on top of the facts. False perception turns the truth upside down and associates it with the false, and true perception corrects this and lines up the filter of truth with the actual truth. Now both the actual truth and the perceived truth are on the top, lined-up, and the actual false and the perceived false are on the bottom.

True or "accurate" perception now very closely matches knowledge, in which you are much more directly and accurately recognizing what things are. That which is false is now clearly recognized AS false, instead of believing it has truth to it. The false world, which includes Earth, is no longer given value and belief, and instead it is recognized as unreal and untrue. It is seen as nothing, which causes it to become transparent to your perception. You see through it because you see through the lie.

True perception therefore focuses on the actual real truth of the real world, or of heaven, and lines up with it. It wants to see it because it values it. And in order TO see it, it denies that the false world has any reality. The world you see in false perception is completely denied, because seeing it shuts out awareness of the real world. You deny the physical world - anything not of God - and this steers your perceptual reality filter towards the right-side-up truth.

Heaven is then perceived through the lens of perception, because the truth in belief now lines up with the actual truth. It becomes so close to it and so alike its nature that it can "accurately interpret" reality. It forms reality contact and recognition, which is also enlightenment. The true is recognized as all that is true, and the false is recognized as completely false. The false world is recognized as nothing, and disappears, as the face of Christ - symbol of the real truth, appears to your vision.

While some amount of perception remains, and while you seem to still have a false body, the body still continues to see WITH totally false perception. It is worth noting this because this does not change. The body still continues to send images of a false world to the mind, and all the things it sees are still JUST AS false as they ever were. The mind has to learn that they ARE false and categorize them as unreal. This doesn't stop the mind seeing them, until the most advanced state, so it has to learn that everything the body shows it is unreal. And this acutely conflicts with its growing awareness of reality.

Also at the same time, true perception (vision) is developing. Note that false perception manifests through physical sight, and true perception manifests through a spiritual non-physical sight - the spiritual eye or mind's eye. While the mind is still looking at the false world temporarily, yet from a very healed state, it is seeing from a vantage point that is very filled with truth. It is very heaven-like, operating in a loving and forgiving manner. This loving sight looks upon the false unreal world and forgives it, and also even loves it. But it is not a special love of attachment and still does not want it.

The vantage point of true perception comes from a mind that has lined itself up with God and the soul. And so it is itself a reflection of heaven. And therefore what it projects is a reflection of heaven, still within perception. And this "glosses over" the false world's falseness and sees love "in" it, seeing God's reflection in it. Not because the false world contains God but because God is there in spite of and beyond the false images. This is how the reflection of heaven is seen in the world. This doesn't change the world's nature either, but it does see it in a beautiful way.

The real world, or heaven, looks away from and beyond the forgiven world, beyond spacetime, beyond form and matter and bodies, and looks to the light of reality. It's the minds desire to value only reality and to accept the truth (atonement). It therefore becomes able to see the real world, ie reality's reflection in perception, as a kind of "perception of heaven", as though outside of heaven peering in slightly removed from it. You see the real world, in which everything shines forever, and this is just prior to your total movement INTO the Kingdom.

Once this point is reached, all perception ends and its re-purposing is done, because it has now lined up with reality as much as is possible. Perception vanishes, the physical world vanishes, the real world vanishes, and all that remains is heaven. You wake up in reality knowing that you never left, and that you merely slept a while, and now you continue co-creating with God as though nothing ever happened. Your mind has been restored to knowledge and the direct cognition of the Kingdom.

Recognize this. The body was made to have permanently false perception. To be permanently unforgiving. It is absolutely incapable of ever forgiving anything. All it can do is sense what it detects seemingly in the world, and report it back as REAL. It cannot question it. It cannot rise above the battlefield. It will NEVER see reality. It cannot get even the slightest glimpse of real light or real truth It is permanently fixated on the physical form of objects, utterly blinded by them and incapable of seeing past them. It takes the form of objects as utter reality and meaning. It is completely convinced by the hierarchy of illusions, orders of difficulty, levels of problems and all manner of suffering. And to the body, every difference or change is real.

Every sickness appears utterly real to its senses. Every death is seen as undeniable proof of termination. It is tempted by literally everything it looks up or senses. It has never made even the slightest progress towards forgiveness, and it never will. It cannot step out of hell, it cannot wake up, it cannot even begin to suspect there is another reality, and it will not ever look upon God. What was made in vegas stays in vegas, and the body is MADE OF unreality.

This is just what the body is. It is a limited piece of biological machinery designed to deceive. It has one specific function of turning illusions into reality. It is an embodiment of the belief that separation is possible, and implements that belief. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh".

It is a reality inverter. It absolutely shuts out all trace of reality and light and truth and God, and only allows illusions and unreality and falsehoods to pass through its filters. And as false things pass through its filters, it regards them as the whole truth. What is false is seen as true, what is unreal is seen as real, and what is evil is seen as holy. This is because it was in an attempt to swap all the properties of what is true with what is false.

The body is a polarizer. It takes what is not true and makes it seem true. It takes what is true and makes it seem false. It denies God's Kingdom of heaven and opens itself up to hell. It makes itself "invulnerable" to eternal life and makes itself vulnerable to death. It is the very idea of exposure to death and to hell, to murder and sin, to suffering and fear. It is the inside-out expression of the desire to be unnatural and uncreated.

The body is always going to be like this. You can change the purpose that you use it FOR, but you cannot change its nature. You cannot make the body see reality, or wake up, or know what's true, or discern facts from fiction. The body is limited. It was made TO limit and to remain limited forever. It is the "lens" through which hell is looked upon and regarded as real, and not for a single second will any body EVER gain access to the light of reality.

The body ALWAYS sees with UNFORGIVENESS. It is absolutely locked into false perception. It constantly makes all unreal things real to itself. It cannot forgive, overlook, see past, recognize, correctly judge, discern, or recognize anything. It is blind to reality, and sees only unrealities.

And because the body itself is made of that same unreality, an unreality seeing an unreality registers as "truth". The body thinks an unreal world is true because unreality is the body's truth. Two negatives seem to make a positive. It does not see the world as opposite to its own nature, and so regards it with agreement. Even though both the body and the world are false. And this makes it utterly biased toward always regarding unreality as real.

The body will not ever show you God. The body will not allow you to be with God. The body will not bridge the gap to God. The body cannot open your mind. The body will never ever see the light of truth, or the real world, or heaven. The body cannot have visions of God or Christ. The body will never see Christ in your brothers. It is NOT CAPABLE. And it will always be incapable. And it cannot love.

The body is only what it is. It was made to confine and to limit and to imprison. You cannot use a prison to experience freedom from prisons. You cannot use handcuffs to know what it's like to be unlimited. You will not EVER turn the body into an awakened being, or get it to look upon reality, or make it able to forgive anything whatsoever. It cannot even BEGIN to forgive because it is absolutely PERMANENTLY HARDWIRED into hell.

There must be a better way, yes? There must be ANOTHER WAY TO SEE. There must be some way that your MIND can choose away from the body and experience without it. A way to escape from hell. There has to be freedom FROM the body. "Do you want freedom of the body, or of the mind? For both you cannot have." If you want your mind to be free, it has to be free FROM the body. The body itself cannot be free because the body IS imprisonment. And there's no point polishing a turd.

We have to then learn to recognize the body for what it is and what it is not. The body is a JUDGER and a condemner. It is an accuser. It cannot stop judging sin to be real. It cannot stop testifying to the proof of sin. The body is utterly selfish. The body is so locked into unreality that the ego actually sees the body as its ally, something it is in "agreement with", because both the body and the ego identify hell as reality. That's why the body became the ego's "chosen home."

As Jesus says, we have to leave the desert. The body has to be transcended and the mind has to open up to ANOTHER WORLD, another vista, through another sight, which does not depend on the body at all. It has to get out of the box and step out of limitation. And if you are going to forgive at all, it CANNOT be that the body forgives. Your mind has to overlook what the body shows it and recognize it as false. Only if all of hell is false can heaven be true.

"Real vision is not only unlimited by space and distance, but it does not depend on the body's eyes at all. The mind is its only source."