In this world, "forgiveness is an earthly form of love". What that means is that REAL love is of Heaven, and on earth the best we can do is a REFLECTION of love projected into the mirror of the world. This reflection is heaven-LIKE, but is not heaven itself.

"Earth can reflect heaven or hell" means that the mirror of the world can reflect an IMAGE of heaven or hell in it. Images are not the real thing, but they REPRESENT the real thing and point to it. They act as symbols, and ALL images are symbolic.

Forgiveness itself is therefore an 'image' or reflection of heaven, and therefore is SYMBOLIC OF HEAVEN. It is a representation of heaven within this world, and POINTS TO the real heaven that it symbolizes.

We can then say that, the state of forgiveness, atonement, true-perception, salvation, right-mindedness, miracle-mindedness, sanity, the face of christ, the real world etc..... this is all one SYMBOL of heaven. And being a symbol, it must be heaven LIKE.

To be heaven like is to be SIMILAR to how you are in heaven. Holy Relationships reflect our real relationships in heaven, in which you are in unconditional love with EVERY member of the sonship. Miracles reflect your interpersonal relations, in which you are united with your brother. And forgiveness corresponds to a harmless attitude, devoid of sin and attack.

So what we can simply say is, you are supposed to be heaven-like, while on the earth. So if being heaven like is to be IMMORTAL, then you are to be immortal-like while on the earth. In your real immortality you are invulnerable to suffering, nothing can affect you against your will, you cannot be hurt or made to be sick or dead, and you have permanent life. You must therefore REFLECT this symbolically on earth by demonstrating that you are invulnerable to the world.

This is why in "forgiveness" we try to take an approach that "I am not at the effect of the world" and "no one is doing this to me, I'm doing it to myself" and "I can be hurt by nothing" and "nothing in the world can bring oppression or make me sick" and all these other various forms of being CAUSE, NOT EFFECT.

The whole reason we're trying not to accuse others of sinning against us, is because in truth we cannot BE sinned against, because we are immortal. Other's can't be to blame for hurting you, because you cannot BE hurt. The world cannot be sinful or the cause of your suffering, because you CANNOT really suffer. No-one else can have power over you, because you are ALL POWERFUL. And not even sickness or death can "happen to you" because YOU ARE IMMORTAL.

So it's not just that we're trying not to accuse others, it's that in truth we have absolutely no grounds for believing that we can even BE attacked or be caused against our will. We are immortal beings, and when we're getting into "something's wrong with me" or "you did this to me" we're lying to ourselves and pretending to be MORTAL. Only those who are mortal can be vulnerable, suffer, be attacked, be weakened, be made sick, or be caused to die.

Forgiveness therefore is a SYMBOL OF IMMORTALITY and is a state in which you are as close to your actual immortality as possible. It's a state of invulnerability, where even the body can no longer be sick or die, and where you are completely free from all attack. You do not attack yourself, and you have no belief in sin. You see sinlessness in yourself and in the world and in everyone, because immortal beings HAVE to be sinless. And immortality is innocence.

You can't BE hurt. You can't really suffer. You can't really BE sick. And the Son of God certainly can NEVER die. So what's the point with all this fake suffering and fake sickness and fake death? "Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt" .... but you CAN'T be hurt. Even when you seem to hurt yourself it does NOTHING to your soul. You have NEVER BEEN HURT and you CANNOT BE HURT. Adopting that attitude is in alignment with your immortal soul.

"But the Face of Christ is the great symbol of forgiveness. It is salvation. It is the symbol of the real world. Whoever looks on this no longer sees the world. He is as near to Heaven as is possible outside the gate. Yet from this gate it is no more than just a step inside. It is the final step. And this we leave to God.

It is a symbol, too, but as the symbol of His Will alone it cannot be divided. And so the Unity that it reflects becomes His Will. It is the only thing still in the world in part, and yet the bridge to Heaven."

"The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers. Yet it stands for what is opposite to what you made."

"But a RISEN Christ becomes the symbol of the Son of God's forgiveness upon HIMSELF; the sign he looks upon himself as healed and whole."

"The "spiritual eye" is symbolic, and therefore NOT a device for knowing. It IS, however, a means of right perception, which brings it into the proper domain of the miracle, but NOT of revelation."

"Those who have learned to offer ONLY healing, because of the reflection of holiness in them, are ready at last for Heaven. There, holiness is not a reflection, but rather the ACTUAL CONDITION of what was but reflected TO them here. God is no image, and His creations, as part of Him, hold Him in them in truth. They do not merely REFLECT the truth, for THEY ARE truth."

"But eternity ITSELF is beyond ALL time. Reach out of time and touch it, with the help of its reflection IN you, and you will turn FROM time to holiness, as surely as the reflection of holiness calls everyone to lay all guilt aside. Reflect the peace of Heaven HERE, and bring this world to Heaven. For the REFLECTION of truth draws everyone TO truth. And as they enter INTO it, they leave ALL reflections behind. In Heaven, reality is SHARED, and not reflected. By sharing its reflection HERE, its truth becomes the only perception which the Son of God accepts. And thus, remembrance of His Father dawns on him, and he can no longer be satisfied with anything but his own reality."

If I see myself as "being attacked" by someone, I am attacking.

If I see myself as "being victimized", I am victimizing.

If I see myself as afraid, I am threatening.

If I see myself as lacking, I am stealing.

If I see myself as judged, I am judging.

If I seem sick against my will, I have deliberately made myself sick in order to accuse others of causing it.

If I am dying and don't want to die, it's a great way to discard all of my power and give up on life, as if death is the total opposite of what I want when in fact I'm choosing it.

If I am feeling unsafe, I'm undermining someone.

If I'm trying to rely on myself, I'm trying to be unreliable.

If I see myself as guilty, I must believe it about others as well.

If I see myself as innocent, it can be that I have put my sin onto others and am in denial.

Always the surface appearance hides the exact opposite motive that lies underneath, because the ego is always two faced. Whatever it seeks to accomplish it accomplishes the exact opposite. Whatever it says its intentions are, they are a cover-story for a completely opposite plan.

No-one dies without their own consent. Death is chosen. Death is suicide. And death is an attempt to prove that you have no will or power to choose anything else, while simultaneously using all of your will and power to make death seem to happen in secret.

This is why death is *failing the Course.*

Let's take a moment to remember our immortality. Forgiveness is based on immortality and symbolises it. If you are immortal nothing can change you in any way, nothing can happen to you, nothing can attack you or hurt you. If that's true, no-one is doing anything to you, nothing has ever been done to you, and sin is impossible.

If we claim ownership of our true nature - to know thyself as immortal spirit - then we are fully centered and holding the reins of our power. But this power and freedom requires total responsibility and ownership of our true identity as Christ.

When we slip and fall and start to displace our responsibility outside of ourselves, through dissociation (separation, split mind), we dis-associate from the immortality and the invulnerability it brings. We start to perceive that power and causation are outside of ourselves, that our own power has done a 180 and is now staring us in the face, doing things to us.

Except now we have disowned ourselves, we have disowned our power, and we have associated it with other people, external things, places and environments, so-called causes of suffering and death. We start believing we can be attacked, we can be caused to change, we can be made to feel one way or another, tossed around on the sea.

Before long this dis-ownership of responsibility has us believing that we are victims of the world, caused by other people, attacked and threatened, made to experience certain feelings against our will, upset "because of" this and that outside of us, things which we seem to have no control or power over.

This all entails a belief in being guilty, because immortality in its harmlessness is also innocence. If we move away from innocence we move into guilt, and you can't believe you are a mortal victim without it. This guilt arises from the self attack upon your own invulnerability, via your own self-attack thoughts. And then before you know it you're projecting it onto other people.

When you are guilty you will become lost and tangled up in what seems to be causes coming from other people. Whatever they do will seem to be about you in some way, causing you, influencing you, commenting on your nature, defining you, condemning you to some fate. A guilty person sees signs and proof of their guilt everywhere.

And this will appear to be actually about you because, in your guilt you become self conscious, with a sense of constant vulnerability. A sense of persecution and being judged, or being constantly under attack and safe nowhere. If someone says something inflammatory about you, you secretly believe it and agree with it. You already decided you're guilty so someone else pointing it out just triggers off your own self-hate. Except now you mistakenly think they're the ones who put the guilt in you.

Then it starts to seem as though what other people are doing is affecting you, that their attacks are really about you personally, that their projections of their own guilt is justified, and that you can be hurt by them. But all they're really doing is triggering off a pre-existing guilt that you put there on your own.

Failing to claim total responsibility for everything you experience, and seeing yourself as disempowered, you'll see others as having power over you to change you. And that means you see them as responsible for you. And that also means you do not recognize that they are responsible for themselves. Anything they choose or experience is their own doing, but in your attempt to disown yourself you also don't recognize they're attacking themselves.

Their self attack seems to bleed over into an attack on you, and vice versa, and before you know it you're all tangled up in a special relationship of mutual victimisation. They're doing stuff to you, you're doing stuff to them, and now it seems like no-one is responsible for anything.

What is needed is a relief from the inner guilt produced by your mistaken decision to try to be mortal. The denial and rejection of God has led to your attempt to make yourself his opposite, to suffer instead of be at peace, to be upset instead of happy, to be vulnerable and weak instead of immortal and powerful. Without the guilt you would not become confused about who is attacking who.

Ultimately we have to take back all of the power that we keep giving away, which requires a total ownership of who and what we are. We can't be playing the role of victim or victimiser - which are the same thing - if we are to be invulnerable. We can't be believing we're doing something to anyone, or that anyone is doing something to us. And that means we have to own up to being immortal, and no longer can claim to be guilty sinners.

In this recognition of your own innocence, you automatically cease to see yourself as a target for punishment. Having not targeted yourself, you are no longer self-conscious or self-absorbed. Having owned yourself and your God-given power, you can no longer see yourself as overpowered by anything in the world.

This recognition leads also to the recognition that other people are not attacking you, they are not talking about you in their attacks, they are not accusing you of anything, and are not doing anything to you at all. Instead, it is a recognition that - just as you were doing this all to yourself (the secret of salvation), they are doing it all to themselves. And this allows you to see that what they're doing is hurting themselves - as a call for love - rather than as hurting you.

This entails a positive "stepping back" or "separating" from the illusion that there is any kind of causation between you and other people, or you and the body, or you and the world. People and bodies and the world do nothing to you ever. What you are cannot be changed by anything or anyone. And your brother is not the cause of you - God is.

Ultimately, accepting that God is your creator, that you are his holy child, and that you are still permanently sustained by his mind and power as an innocent immortal being, is the key to salvation from all suffering. Owning it is total freedom and total responsibility.

Owning it makes suffering and guilt and murderous attack impossible. It is the end of the confusion that anything in the world is responsible for anything you experience. And it indeed marks the end of this world as well, because a world which has no causal power is not alive.

God created you to live forever, and you will never die.

"But the Face of Christ is the great symbol of forgiveness. It is salvation. It is the symbol of the real world. Whoever looks on this no longer sees the world. He is as near to Heaven as is possible outside the gate."

"You are God's Son. In immortality you live forever. Would you not return your mind to this?"

"And immortality is the opposite of time, for time passes away, while immortality is constant. Accepting the Atonement teaches you WHAT IMMORTALITY IS, for by accepting your guiltlessness, you learn that the past has never been, and so the future is needless."

"There IS no change in immortality, and Heaven knows it not."

"Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for HIMSELF."

"Immortality is a constant state. It is as true now as it ever was or will be, because it implies NO CHANGE AT ALL. It is not a continuum, and it is NOT understood by comparing it with any opposite."

"The Son of Life cannot BE killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed."

"Yet, for all the wild insanity inherent in the whole IDEA of sin, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. For the wages of sin IS death, and how can the immortal die?"

"You are immortal BECAUSE you are eternal, and always MUST be now."

"What is immortal cannot BE attacked; what is but temporal HAS no effect."

Sickness is an attack on BOTH you AND your brother. It seeks to come BETWEEN you. It is a double-edged sword. Both are attacked and separated off. This is why you cannot be sick in isolation or without attacking another. All sickness is an attempt to be contagious. "Sick bodies are accusers."

Your sick body does not stand in isolation separate from others. It makes a statement that BOTH of you are sick. It accuses your brother of sin and renders him PROVEN to be not innocent, for what he appears to have caused in you.

Therefore do not think that you can get away with KEEPING your body sick when you are awake, nor that you can get away with DYING when you are awake. To do so must mean you ARE coming between you and your brother still, are placing an attack in between you and are still accusing your brother of sin.

This is why sickness and death are not God's will, are not part of God's program, are not part of Jesus's teaching as to what you should do, and are opposing God's will. No-one can demonstrate sickness and death and live.

People think that what happens to their own body has nothing to do with another person. That's what the body was MADE to make you believe - that you are separated off. It is not true. The body is a separation device that BREAKS YOU APART from your brother. You are supposed to be joined. Any time the body is sick it is an assault on BOTH of you.

For there to be true healing therefore, your mind has to no longer believe in that which comes BETWEEN you and your brother, which means it MUST HEAL THE BODY, otherwise it is still accusing your brother of sin. And in your sickness is HIS sin proven. And yet in YOUR HEALING, is HIS INNOCENCE proven also.

"17. Miracles are the absence of the body. They are sudden shifts into invisibility, away from lower order reality. That is why they heal. "

"And as you see him shining in the space of light where God abides within the darkness, you will see that God Himself is where his body is. Before this light the body disappears, as heavy shadows MUST give way to light. The darkness cannot CHOOSE that it remain. The coming of the light MEANS it is gone."

"This is the same as saying that by seeing light, darkness automatically disappears."

" The Great Rays would establish the total LACK of value of the special relationship, IF THEY WERE SEEN. For, in seeing THEM, the body WOULD disappear, BECAUSE ITS VALUE WOULD BE LOST. And so your whole INVESTMENT in seeing it would be WITHDRAWN from it. "

"Dreams disappear when light has come, AND YOU CAN SEE."

"All of his miscreations can disappear in the well known "twinkling of an eye."

"The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish. "

"Idols MUST disappear, and leave no trace behind their going."

"...the body. It has faded at times from your sight, but it has not yet COMPLETELY DISAPPEARED."

"Here does the dream of separation start to fade and disappear."

"What disappears in light is NOT attacked. It merely vanishes, because it is not true."

"The body disappears because you have no need of it except the need the Holy Spirit sees."

"As darkness disappears in light, so ignorance fades away when knowledge dawns."

"Every illusion brought to its forgiveness is gently overlooked, and disappears."

"Darkness and turmoil and death have disappeared"

"Acknowledge but that you have been mistaken, and all effects of your mistakes will disappear"

"If you choose to see the body, you behold a world of separation, unrelated things, and happenings that make no sense at all."

"But you will not realize this, until you accept the eternal fact that God's Son is NOT GUILTY. He DESERVES only love, because he has GIVEN only love."

"Love, Which created me, is what I am."

"Having offered love, only love can be received"

You are love, created by love, with love, in love. God loves you permanently. Love is your real identity. It's what you are. But in order to accept this and be this, you have to love yourself. It's not simply a matter of loving others, you must love everyone including you. Which means if you do not love yourself, you have some healing to do in your relationship to yourself.

To accept atonement you have to love yourself fully. If you believe that you do not deserve this love, or are anything other than love, you will not accept it. Your unwillingness to accept it will stem from believing that you have accepted something else, something opposite, which seems true of you.

If you believe you are guilty, you cannot believe you are innocent. If you believe you've sinned, you cannot recognize your sinlessness. If you are ashamed, you in self condemnation and are still attacking yourself for some perceived failure to love.

So essentially, you believe you failed to love, and now you are failing to love yourself as a result of that, because you entered into a state of unlove. But that just means you're still doing what you thought you did wrong in the first place. And the only reason you're not loving yourself is because you didn't love yourself. If you would decide to love yourself, you would love yourself. If you would decide you are innocent, you would not be guilty.

Does it seem arrogant that you are allowed to find yourself innocent? Even if you did something, seemingly sinned, and now find yourself guilty, do you deserve to be forgiven? Will you let yourself off the hook and love yourself again? Can you let go of what you think you did, and recognize nothing real can be threatened? And therefore that you cannot have done anything in reality?

You are not guilty. You are sinless, guiltless, deathless, fearless. You have no valid reason to be ashamed. You have not sinned. You cannot attack God and you have not attacked God. Nothing real has been affected at all. You are merely MISTAKEN about yourself. You believe something is true of you which is not. You cannot be guilty because guilt isn't real. There is no such thing as real, valid, justified, correct guilt. All guilt is an illusion.

When you are guilty you are merely mistaken about what you are. You believe you are something you are NOT. You are innocent and holy, how can you be guilty? To believe in your guilt is to be mistaken about yourself. You need correction because you CANNOT be guilty.

There is nothing you have ever supposedly done that cannot be forgiven and undone, because you have not done anything. There is no sin so terrible it cannot be shown to have had no effects on anything real. There is no murderous idea so horrible that God would change His mind about you because of it. You literally are incapable of doing anything to change God's opinion of you. God can't stop loving you no matter how hard you build a case against yourself and try to overthrow his verdict of permanent innocence.

If you do not love yourself, you are in need of healing. It means your mind is sick, because it is believing something that isn't true. "Those who are sick do not love themselves, for if they loved themselves they would heal themselves." Do you deserve healing? Of course you do. You deserve absolute permanent health, another word for which is immortality. God has already given you eternal life. If you are not accepting it, because you are busy trying to prove you are mortal and deserve to die, you obviously need healing.

You are not guilty because you cannot sin. You have not sinned. You have never attacked reality. God has not changed or been changed. Heaven is perfectly intact. You have not changed your holy self. All you've done is become mistaken, moving into beliefs that something UNTRUE of you is actually true. You couldn't be really guilty if you tried. Nothing you are holding against yourself is true. You are innocent, holy and pure. And God loves you as much now as He ever did.

Forgive yourself for what you have not done. You deserve peace and happiness. You deserve love and life. You deserve to be with God again in awareness of His eternal love for you. You are endless and you cannot die. Love is the answer.

"All forms of sickness even unto death are physical expressions of the FEAR of awakening."

If you are afraid, you are trying to be dead. If you are afraid, you are in fact attacking. Fear is unloving. It is the opposite of love. Fear and love are the only two emotions. Fear may take many forms but it's all still fear, or a lack of life. Fear is therefore sin.

Lacking life means a lack of permanence, which brings with it a belief that you are going to die at some point, which incites more fear. Closeness to God is life, because God is eternal. Distance from God, in psychological terms of belief, is death. It is the attempt to be far from life or to deny it - to deny you are alive.

If you deny God, which is the ego's religion, you are denying life itself, which blocks life and induces states of sickness and death. If you deny life, you are denying health. The denial of health is obviously an attack on health, which produces all states of sickness, illness and disease.

"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival." What this essentially means is that every form of fear, every lack of love (which is also sin), every attack of grievance, every way that we are distancing ourselves from God, is a choice for death. And if you move towards God instead, embracing immortality and life, then you are moving towards health as well.

Sickness cannot exist in a healthy state of mind, which results in the undoing of sickness in the body. But it also means that if your mind is well, you are blessing others with life. You are GIVING LIFE to them, which is the miracle.

If you choose to see them with love, you are enlivening them. But if you choose to see them with fear, for any reason, you are in fact being murderous. "What is not love is murder." So when you go into fear, in which it seems like you are "being murdered" by some external thing, it in fact is because YOU are being murderous.

Fear disguises this well because you experience the effects of your thoughts. When you are being attacking, YOU feel like you are under attack. And because you feel attacked, you think that you can't possibly be attacking right now. That either you are the victim OR the victimizer. But in truth all victims are victimizers because they attack themselves.

If you become afraid in relation to something you see, someone's body condition, some's choices, stuff happening around you etc, you are in fact being unloving. Which means you are being murderous. And by being afraid you are not "caring", you are hurting. You are in fact condemning someone when you "worry" about them or "doubt" their safety etc

Fear can as such seem well-meaning and protective, which is also an illusion. Because really fear is part of the attempt to undermine life and health and to bring about states of suffering and death. It's a belief that death is real.

"As fear is witness unto death, so is the miracle the witness unto Life". If you are not being a miracle-worker, ie a lover, you are being fearful, which means you are a death-worker. You're attempting to destroy yourself and you project this destruction onto others, seeing it in them.

All fear witnesses to, testifies to the truth of, reinforces, tries to bring about, makes happen, death. It is not EVER on the side of life and love and support. The opposite of fear is love. Love IS miraculous and life-giving and supportive.

To see with love is to see without fear because it does not attack. If you do not attack yourself you do not feel attacked, and therefore are not afraid. It has nothing to do with what other people do. YOU do it to yourself - this is the secret of salvation.

What I am experimenting with now is to recognize, to catch myself, if I am in a state of fearful perception. If I see reasons to be afraid, causes of fear, things going wrong, broken bodies or whatever else, I am stopping myself and recognizing - this is not just fear, this is MY attempt to bring about death. This is a belief in death. I need to choose otherwise and choose to stop trying to MAKE death happen.

I am finding this shuts off the fear very quickly, because it's uprooting it at its foundation. If fear is really attack, ie an attack thought, and is an attempt to give power TO death and to the ego, then if I don't WANT that, then obviously I will stop choosing that. And as I choose not to want death, I stop projecting death, and stop seeing with fear. The fear switches off and I return to seeing with love. And only love can be helpful.

This all hinges around associating fear with death, which is completely accurate and appropriate. By NOT recognizing that fear is death, I will be inclined to think it is "just fear" and not realize the GOAL that it is trying to achieve. The goal of fear is destruction and murder and attack. I can't be having and wanting such a goal if I want to be happy and free from fear.

To be free from fear is a RELIEF, because it actually is liberation from death. By overcoming fear you overcome death. By choosing away from death you are choosing eternal life. You become immortal and resurrected by becoming unafraid.

This is why "miracles cannot be performed in a spirit of doubt and fear". Miracles abolish fear and death, which are one thing, but they require you to be in states of LOVE. Love abolishes fear, just as life abolishes death.

Choosing away from fear isn't just a matter of feeling safer and not being afraid any more, it's a matter of resurrecting and being the LIFE, becoming able to give life to others, to raise them from the dead. Fear of death is a meaningless circular logic, because fear IS death, and fearing it chooses it. Choose life instead.

"What is not love is murder.

"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick."

We are either loving ourselves and others or we are attacking ourselves and others.

It's either love, or a call for love. But it can be difficult to recognize that someone's attack is a call for love. It does not seem to take the form of "please love me" or "I need love". Usually it takes the form of inciting counter-attack, laden with temptation and conflict.

Especially for example if someone is using your name, using attributing words like "you", pointing a physical finger, looking at you in a certain way, or doing something that seems to be affecting you. It all seems to be a way to attempt to say "its about you" or "its your fault" or that they are attacking YOU, not themselves.

Can you recognize that this is them expressing "I need more love because I'm lacking love", when everything they are expressing appears at first to be murderous and unloving? When they seem to present a picture of "I do not love you", which is the same as "I do not want love", how do you see it as a call to be loved?

It's fairly accurate to say that almost everyone on the planet is sick in the mind and body. And that isn't an overestimate.

Anyone who is not being completely loving is not in their right mind. Anyone attacking is not in their right mind. No-one in their right mind would do anything other than love, because they are one with you and to attack you would attack themselves. No sane person would ever treat anyone else in any way other than lovingly. So if someone is not being wholly loving, they are sick.

The problem with this sickness is that the person's mind is in denial, awareness is blocked, and they are unconscious, they don't realize what they are doing otherwise they wouldn't do it.

Only someone who is unaware of the consequences of their attack, an attempt to cause effects in someone else and not themselves, would proceed to do it. It's an attempt to get away with murder, which is the whole ego system of thought - that something is true of another that is different than what applies to you.

So now their mind is denying their own light, they have attacked themselves, they are guilty and sinful and afraid, and now they are acting out. Almost certainly they are projecting onto scapegoats and looking for a target to create an illusion of alleviating their suffering. To try to escape from the responsibility of owning what they are doing to themselves. And by being in denial they do not really seem to want help, though deep down they do.

So what is your role now? Faced with a world full of mentally-ill and physically expressive nut jobs, how do you respond? The Holy Spirit would have you respond with love at all times. He would say, well, these people, they are forgiveable because they literally are not aware of what they are doing. They are insane. No-one sane would act this way and no-one sane would attack a brother. So if they're doing that, they are insane and need help.

The only help that can work is to fix the problem. The problem is the person is blocking love and so seems to be lacking love. What they need therefore is love. Love is the only thing that can be supplied to correct the only thing that's lacking. If someone is not being loving they are believing in a lack or absence of love, and the presence or supply of this love is the only remedy. This is why expressions of love are miraculous and can cure.

So in a way we have to learn, to reframe everything we see happening, and all expressions coming from people. Either they are being christly and loving, in recognition that that is their real self, OR they are being unconscious, lost in the ego, lacking love, are mentally ill and need healing. Being in denial they DO NOT KNOW what they are doing and are mistaken.

If we can remember that people are "not being themselves", that they are "sick" and that they are not aware of what they are doing or why, and if we can remember that they WOULD NOT act this way if they were healed and whole, this makes it easier to not "hold it against them", take it personally, think of it as true or serious, and helps you to stay out of the ego response.

Really this is what forgiveness is about. Faced with an insane attacking ego-driven person, we need to OVERLOOK all of these appearances and remember the person's divinity, which is hidden behind their call for love, which is showing up as a call to be unloved. They seem to WANT to be attacked, they seem to WANT suffering, but this is only because they have rejected the very thing that would give them the sanity to make a wiser choice.

We have to laugh at people's insane behavior because it's not really true of them. This is part of realizing this is just a dream and the nutjobs it's populated with don't even know they are dreaming. No-one in their right mind would deliberately be unloving. Their lack of love is sickness that appears to ask for love to be withheld but is mistaken in that request. What they really want and need is love. And this love has to overlook and shine past all of these obstacles.

Not just for their benefit, but also to keep your own mind sane. Because if you yourself have stopped being loving and have slipped into reactions, counter attacks, taking it personally or seriously, being tempted or distracted to engage their ego, then you now also have joined the ranks of the insane and you yourself now need healing as well.

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

"Forgiveness recognizes that what you think you brother did has not OCCURRED."

"Only Atonement can be said to cure."

"There is no sin."

This is the title of ACIM lesson 125. The essence here is to realize that everything you give, you receive, because giving and receiving are one. Per the golden rule, whatever you "do to another", you literally and directly and personally do to yourself. Anything at all that comes out of you, goes back into you.

This is the law of God, and it is inescapable. But it seems to be very difficult to recognize this law is in effect. It seems possible that you do something to another and experience none of the consequences. That somehow there is a separation between what applies to the giver and the receiver.

The body in particular makes it seem possible to do something to another while escaping the effects. One body can seem to hurt another, and yet come away with no apparent harm. This violates the law of God and seems to suggest the golden rule does not apply. But the laws of God always apply.

If you were aware that anything you do is done to BOTH yourself and others, you would be very careful in choosing what to do. If when you poked another's body, you felt a poke of your own body, you would hesitate to poke them. If you attacked their body and immediately felt the hurt and impact and effects of the attack, you would instantly recoil and reconsider your actions.

If it were impossible for you to do something to another without it also being done instantly to you, you would realize that you cannot do anything harmful without hurting yourself. You would literally find it insane to suggest that you WON'T be hurt when you hurt someone else. You would know this is not true, and that you are guaranteed to suffer when you inflict suffering.

The motivation this gives you then is the clear sanity that, in order to be happy and loved, your only option is to give happiness and love to others. If for an instant you choose to give hurt or to make guilty, you know that you will instantly feel awful and would be quick to stop yourself. If the very dagger with which you attempt to pierce the heart of a brother literally sticks into your own body, you would stop in your tracks.

In truth, when you are more aware of reality, you actually are in touch with this law. It may not appear to apply at the physical level, but it does apply at the level of mind. Any seeming psychological state of attack which you think you project onto another, you do not escape. Any angry attempt to make another guilty reinforces your guilt. Any desire to be murderous and hurtful threatens you and instills fear.

v There IS no escape from the golden rule. The ego counsels that you can easily escape it, even that you can commit the most horrendous attack and come away without remorse or damage. That you can get away with murder. But the only way you would seem to convince yourself that you've done this, is to be in denial.

It requires you to separate yourself off, dis-associate from your brother, form a separate identity which is different and at war, believe that your brother is in no way part of yourself, isolate and imprison yourself in the body, and then perhaps be convinced that your actions won't hurt you. Only by severing yourself from the sonship could you possibly convince yourself that this would work, but at the cost of making you imprisoned and alone.

In truth, your real nature is that you are one with all others. That we are all joined together in sharing as a single family of equality. I am you and you are me and we are each other.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

Everyone is everyone. We are each individually the whole sonship. Everyone else is a part of your self. Not one single thing can occur against a single individual without it happening to the whole. When one suffers, the whole suffers, because the whole is in every part. We have a holographic relationship and this is the will of God.

The fact is then that if we fall into the ego delusion that we are separate from each other, we will then automatically believe that we can indeed attack without being attacked. And so begins the spiral down the slippery slope to hell in which you believe and then perceive that you are justified in murder, capable of revenge, and can get away with it unaffected. This state of mind itself is mental illness, suffering, self-attack, self-abuse, and self-destructive.

The simple truth then is that everything you give, you are included in the receipt of. Anything you do, you do to yourself. Anything you give or radiate or share or express, is being expressed toward you as well. It may seem on the physical level that something has to leave and travel and be sacrificed and lost, in order to be given or done to another, but in truth you always keep what you

give, because sharing is reality and not separation. To receive what you give is the golden rule and the inescapable law of God. It is functioning even when you don't believe it is functioning. It is functioning when you believe you are getting away with separating yourself off from receiving. It is also the secret of salvation, in the recognition that if you are suffering, you must have done this to yourself. You must have given suffering and then received it, believing that you would escape the receipt.

If you are suffering, you have attempted to attack the sonship. Not just yourself, but everyone. But just as every attack thought, and attitude, angry guilt-mongering, or outright violence, is always an attempt to give yourself death. It makes you unhappy to make others unhappy. It hurts you to hurt them. You cannot escape this. Anything you do to attempt to destroy a son of God will have self-inflicted repercussions. And as such, if you are not at peace, you must have made a wrong decision.

To find salvation therefore we have to learn the simplicity of lesson 125 - that at all times, what I am giving I am receiving. If I do not like what I am experiencing, I must recognize I have chosen it and have given it, and have therefore received it. And I have done this to myself. I must be mistaken if I have given myself suffering, and I made the decision myself, but I want to choose otherwise because I want to be at peace.

This is all tied together. It is the one law of God that everything is always shared, everyone is always included, and you will never escape the consequences of your giving. If want to stop suffering, learn to stop making others suffer. If you want to be happy, give happiness. If you want to feel loved, learn to love. You will heal as you let the Holy Spirit teach you to heal. And you will find God in your brother as you learn that your brother is a part of your shared identity in Christ.

"The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is KNOW THYSELF. There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

"The Bible instructs you to "KNOW thyself," or BE CERTAIN. Certainty is always of God."

Do you know who you really are? What you really are is an immortal, eternal, changeless, endless, permanent, absolute being. As an immortal being, you can never change, never become anything, never turn into anything and never die. Nothing can ever happen to change you, and you cannot change yourself.

In order to KNOW who you are, you will have to be willing to fully embrace and acknowledge that you are an immortal being. If you are immortal, it is impossible that anyone has attacked you, has power over you, has hurt you, offended or upset you, or that the world has the power to do anything to you.

When you suggest that the world or its inhabitants have caused you in some way, causing you to change in some way, you are insinuating that you DO NOT know yourself. If you knew you were immortal you could not believe these things. If you enter into believing these things, you are losing touch with who you are and no longer know who you are.

It cannot be that you know yourself while someone else has the power to modify what you are. If someone can change you in ANY way, influence you in ANY way, you are unknown and are lost and confused about who and what you are. If you are absolutely certain of who and what you are, nothing and no-one can in ANY way change you or define you or modify you or cause you or hurt you or influence you. You must be unmoved and undisturbed by the world.

This means that anyone who believes in any way that they are affected by the world, does not know who they are. Anyone who believes they can suffer, be sick, die, be unhappy, be upset or offended, caused to change against their will in any way, does NOT know who they are.

You cannot remain in the knowledge that you are immortal while believing that you are vulnerable and susceptible. That you can be affected and attacked. You cannot maintain that you are invulnerable and permanently alive if you are asserting that you have been assailed by someone, damaged by something, destroyed in some way.

These are beliefs in mortality, which is a belief that you are dead and not alive. You can't know yourself to be immortal if you are confused about whether you have eternal life or not. Any suggestion we have that someone has done something to us is an attack upon our own immortality. Just as in "my attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability" and "I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts" and "nothing in the world can bring oppression."

The question of forgiveness then, as to whether I am forgiving or not, or how much, boils down to the degree to which I am CERTAIN about WHO I AM. If I KNOW myself with perfect certainty, then I am automatically forgiving. I will not accuse anyone of doing anything to me, because this is literally an attempt to assert that I am mortal. I will not produce a sickness because this also is an attempt to prove I can be hurt.

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."

By acknowledging your immortality you are automatically going to detach yourself from all the supposed causes in the world, you will take back all your power that you've given away, you'll see yourself as an immovable object in the river, and completely DOMINANT of everything you see. This is how you have power over death and power to overcome the world. NOTHING can prevail against a son of God who knows who he is, and his power is unlimited and absolute and unopposed.

"But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you seem to have to deal with fear or guilt, upsets of any kind, any kind of stress or suffering, any sense of shame or unworthiness, any apparent sickness or loss or malfunction, or even death, you MUST have forgotten who you really are. You must be out of touch with knowing that you are immortal, and you are trying to prove that you are susceptible, vulnerable, damageable, hurtable, attackable, weakened, capable of being destroyed and able to be CHANGED by something.

The immortal can never be changed by anything or anyone. If I claim that such and such a person upset me, I am literally claiming that I am changeable, malleable, affect-able, underminable, weak, victimizable, and destructible. It is a belief in mortality. When I am being unforgiving, I am asserting and choosing death. When I am suffering in any way, I am forgetting that I am still as God created me. When I am blaming people for stuff, I am doing myself a disservice.

Your task then is to remember who you are, be certain of who you are, be extremely in touch with who you are, be absolutely clear about the fact that you are an immortal permanent being that can never be changed by anyone or anything, and KNOW your self. To know yourself you have to remember your SOUL, the you that God created to live forever. And through this knowing you are in perfect forgiveness, because nothing can happen to those who have eternal life.

"That is why blame must be UNDONE, NOT re-allocated. Lay it to yourself, and you cannot KNOW yourself, for ONLY THE EGO BLAMES AT ALL. Self-blame is therefore ego identification, and as strong an ego defense as blaming others. YOU CANNOT ENTER GOD's PRESENCE IF YOU ATTACK HIS SON."

"You can know yourself only as God knows His Son, for KNOWLEDGE is shared WITH God."

"Separation is only the decision NOT to know yourself. Its whole thought-system is a carefully-contrived learning experience, designed to lead AWAY from truth, and into fantasy."

"To be alive and not to know yourself is to believe that you are really dead"

"This is a course in how to KNOW yourself. You have TAUGHT what you are, but have NOT let what you are, teach YOU."

"Accept as true only what your brother IS, if you would know yourself. Perceive what he is NOT, and you CANNOT know what you are, BECAUSE you see HIM falsely. "

"Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA?"

"Blasphemy, then, is SELF-destructive, not God destructive. It means that you are willing NOT to know yourself, IN ORDER to be sick."

"Identity and function are the same, and BY your function do you know yourself. "

"To believe that you can perceive the real world is to believe that you can know yourself."