"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR OF AWAKENING. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of CONSCIOUSNESS."

The entire problem of the people of the world is that we're very confused about what is true. God, who is truth, has been deeply misunderstood. We've tried to replace God with a false God of vengeance, which we want to have nothing to do with.

"You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor, and God did not give it. For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son. Therefore, you made of Him an UNloving father, demanding of Him what only such a father COULD give. And the peace of God's Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father. He feared what he had made, but still more did he fear his REAL Father, having attacked his glorious equality WITH Him."

God has been framed as a murderous evil tyrant that wants us dead. We've associated him with all the properties of that which is not true, including darkness, evil, enemy, hateful, destructive, murderous, vengeful, sick, and death itself. We've even tried to make out that God is non-existence.

This "anti-christ" attitude is part of the separation idea of being opposite to God. In order to be opposite to God, we've made God out to be opposite to himself. We now believe God is nothing like he really is. We've turned him into a false God of war.

At the same time, we've mistakenly misbelieved and misunderstood and failed to recognize all false things for what they are. We think that non-existence is existence, that death is life, that hell is heaven, that suffering is atonement, that murder is justified, that fear is safety, that sickness is saving your life.

So now we have this worldwide problem that we're trying to move away from God, on the basis that we believe God is what we do NOT want. And we try to move toward the world of illusions, on the basis that we believe it IS what we want.

To put it another way, we now see God as an evil enemy to be feared, we want nothing to do with him, we do not want his affections or help, and we do not want to wake up to exposure to the fact of his existence. We are running away from him. We think that God is death and that we're running towards life. But we are confused, and we are actually running away from life towards death.

So now we have a state where we're all choosing to suffer on purpose because we are afraid of God. We're afraid of what we've made of him, what we think he is like. We don't want to go toward him because we think we'll stop existing. Even though moving away from him was an attempt to stop existing.

When we move away from God we are moving away from happiness and wholeness and love and peace and health and sanity. We'd rather choose suffering and unhappiness and despair and pain and sickness and death. We then want to keep our suffering and NOT let it be healed, because we literally believe it is defending us from God. We'd rather die than let him heal us with his poisonous offering.

This is the state of the world. A hugely common belief that we want the opposite of what God is offering. Even if that means we actually end up choosing to make, and maintain, even more suffering. Because we do not recognize it AS suffering, and do not think it's an insane thing to tolerate pain, and are quite content to put up with all manner of misery for as long as possible.

Not to mention the guilt, which we adore and cherish and want more of, and will preserve in an attempt to keep us and others stuck in bodies and suffering in order to protect us from God. The world actually believes that people leaving their bodies means they've move into the forbidden realm to be swallowed up by death. Something to be avoided at all costs.

The world is incredibly backwards. It has become acceptably normal to not question death, to put up with pain, to reject help, to not want healing, to fear questioning the reality of the world, on the basis that these are all threats to the protection it offers. The only reason we think the world is saving us is because we a very very mistaken about it and do not recognize it as a picture of crucifixion, with nothing to offer and no power to do anything.

It all boils down to this one simple thing. We're afraid of God and we don't want to go home. We think God will never forgive us, and we would rather die and be weak and helpless than admit to being mistaken. We are most afraid of the very thing we mistakenly believe is true, because it is false. And the very things we think are false, are actually true, and yet we hate them and want nothing to do with them.

Our minds have been reversed, our entire reality has been opposed, our sanity has been turned upside down, and our whole sense of what we want has done a 180-degree flip. Trying to convince the world to let God help is quite a challenge. The insane and fearful are heavily suspicious and mistrusting. The sick want to die. The lost want to stay lost and rely on their confusion for navigation.

But there is hope and a light because the reality of God's loving truth in heaven has sent its witnesses and its teachers and its healers and its power to resurrect the dead and lift us into the light. A light which at first we do not want and fear and dread, but which later we might come to trust as our salvation. It is only a false fear, which is a lie about God, that keeps us from happiness and health.

"For anti-Christ becomes more powerful than Christ to those who dream the world is real."

"And you ask help of Christ or anti-Christ, and which you choose WILL join with you, and tell you what to do."

"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

"It is extremely hard for those who still believe sin meaningful to understand the Holy Spirit's justice. They believe He shares their OWN confusion, and can NOT avoid the vengeance that their own belief in justice MUST entail. And so they fear the Holy Spirit, and perceive the wrath of God in Him."

"Who sees a brother as a body sees him as fear's symbol. And he will attack because what he beholds is his own fear external to himself, poised to attack, and howling to unite with him again. Mistake not the intensity of rage projected fear must spawn. It shrieks in wrath, and claws the air in frantic hope it can reach to its maker and devour him."

Ok so, various people have expressed doubt that there are "levels" in ACIM or that this is in any way important or useful. So I thought I'd ramble on a bit about this from my point of view. I can see this being somewhat controversial.

The first thing is this.

Jesus wrote ACIM and he is not in a body, and throughout the Course we're taught we are not a body. That's even today's workbook lesson - I am not a body I am free. That doesn't mean, oh, you're still IN a body but it's not you. Also the course says at no time does the body exist. Ok. So.... WHERE do you exist? Where is there no physical matter? Not this universe.

Clearly this means there is some other seeming 'place', if you will, in which mind - spirit - is able to exist, which does not require a physical form and has nothing to do with the physical world, which, by the way, is not real.

So here we at the very least have 2 `levels`. The level of the physical world of form, and some other spiritual level. Sort of like a 'dimension' if you will. It's non-physical. It's where you end up when your body dies. And its the stopping off point between lifetimes.

Now, each 'level' has to be like a 'place' of sorts.. which the Course refers to as a 'universe'. And if you read the text carefully, when it mentions universe it uses that exact same word even though it's sometimes referring to the universe of form, and sometimes referring to the universe that God created. ie reference to at least some other non-physical level or experiential existence.

So if you don't believe there are levels, and you read the course talking about 'universe' in this way, and you don't discern exactly what that relates to given the context, then you're going to assume it's always talking about the physical universe. And then when it makes statements about 'universe' it's going to throw you into a whole bunch of confusing misunderstandings and ego interpretations. You'll attribute all kinds of 'truth' to the ego universe because you think the course is telling you this is the case.

The course is often quite subtle about this, and it also shifts around quite a lot between which 'level' of experience it's referring to, without necessarily giving you a nice obvious disclaimer that it's doing so.

Now, this other universe, the spiritual universe, also has to be broken down into sub-levels because there are parts of the course which speak of certain truths which cannot possibly apply to a separate place like that. For example whenever the Course speaks of 'heaven', and of 'souls', and of 'Gods Creation', and of 'knowing', and 'oneness' and all these interesting things, they often refer to the very highest 'level' of the metaphysics - heaven if you will.

But then at other times the course speaks of things like the sonship, alluding to you having multiple brothers, a brotherhood, not in terms of all brothers being ONE SON, but in terms of a multitude of sons. Also the urtext speaks of multiple souls. Now, in terms of the metaphysics, it does not make logical consistent sence to group together references to these 'sub-level' ways of looking at things with the highest-level way of looking at things. If you do that, then when the course refers to something like heaven or knowing or whatever, or the son of God, you will lump it all together under a general umbrella of 'heavenly spiritual stuff' and make the only distinction that this apparently is 'not the ego' level. This will result in all manner of confusions, misunderstandings of meaning, wrong implications, false conclusions and just a big mess. The metaphysics will break, the course will become inconsistent and you won't be able to understand it.

So now at the very least, there is a level of heaven, a level where the sonship exists as multiple sons, a level of christ where there is only one son, and a level of the physical universe where the ego plays out in duality. This is all quite clearly in the course text throughout and referred to in multiple ways and in multiple contexts. And if you read it and if you understand what it means, then when you read about christ you know that its referring to the unified one son and when its referring to sonship or brotherhood you know its referring to the level of multiple sons.

So there is a level of the metaphysics, which has its own 'universe' and its own 'state of mind', like a 'place' of experience if you will, for each of these aspects of the course. This is the structure of the dream that the ego made. Different levels of 'splits' in the one mind. And these are on a colossal scale. Astronomical. The ego dream comprises separation from God, resulting in a separate son 'level', and then a split into a sonship/brotherhood which is a whole other universe/level, and then there's the level just above the physical (level 2) where the holy spirit resides, and then the physical level. All of these levels are explicitly referred to in the course and if you really can grasp the logical and subtle implications of every thing Jesus says in each section, you can tell that these levels 'exist' in the metaphysical structure.

So now, if you don't believe in these levels, then as mentioned, you will draw all kinds of false conclusions. It results in all kinds of behaviors where you try to attain states of mind/being/experience which are extremely far beyond the 'level' of the dream that you find yourself on. You generally can only transition to the next highest level, one level at a time, you can't easily jump to the top - to heaven. Holy Spirit is on level '2', in a different 'dimension' if you will, which is where we all are being asked to get to as our main next step. When we try to move beyond that to things like awareness of the sonship, total equality, oneness, christ-mind, etc... we basically CANNOT do it and it leads us into all kinds of ego deceptions - a spiritualized ego.

The spiritualized ego is what happens when the ego, or shall we say the mindset, of a given 'level 'of the ego's total dream, attempts to transfer itself to a higher-order level of existence. It tries to KEEP its mindset (e.g. level 1 ego duality) but at the same time take itself to the next level where there is really a totally different mind (Holy Spirit's mind). But this is impossible, of course, but this doesn't stop it trying. And this creates a great amount of specialness and fake spirituality and fake progress and ego images and behavioral fuckups which call for sacrifice and illusions and all kinds of madness. It's not possible. We have to let the 'mindset' of level 1 - the ego - we have to let it GO, detach from it, so that who WE are can travel up to level 2 and proceed from there.

So anyway... if there's only one level, or even only 2 levels, you will develop a spiritual ego from it because it will lead you to so many false conclusions and so many attempts to greatly spiritualize lower-order levels of existence that cannot contain those truths. The lower mind cannot grasp and experience the higher states.

If you read the Course with these levels in mind, it is much more clear where and when Jesus is referring to certain specific levels of the dream - different dimensions, different universes, different mindsets and different aspects of the metaphysics. Also if you look at your own 'course attitude' based on these levels, you will see that you've been attempting to become an achiever of very high-level metaphysics but still while being a level-1 identity/mind. This produces bliss-ninny spiritualization of the ego, and it is rife in the course community. And in myself as well. I'm just starting to realize how far this has gone.

So anyway. The levels are just a way to map actual levels of experiential existence in the hierarchy of the total dream, which comprises several 'dimensions' of which the physical universe is only one, and therefore it's really just a clear and truthful acknowledgement of this fact, allowing you to navigate realistically and to understand what the heck the course really means when it says something. Very high-level truths are of NO USE TO YOU when you are on level 1. You cannot be christ when you are a level-1 ego. You have to become level 2, then 3, then 4, then 5. It is also a relief to let go of the pressure of trying to attain such impossibly high spiritual states which are out of reach of the level-1 mind. You can attain them but your ego cannot, and until you let go of 'level 1' thinking you cannot get to level 2 yet alone up to heaven.

This will be a touchy and controversial subject. But we need to be more honest about death and what exactly is going on when spiritual people keep getting sick.

When someone's body dies, and when people have believed that the body IS the person through body-identification, there is a sense of loss. And this makes sense.

Something "real" seems to have been destroyed. If this were true, it SHOULD induce grief. If a real being has ended, it is definitely grounds for grief. This perceived "real death" can induce horrifyingly intense feelings of loss, massive waves of grieving and anger and hurt and loneliness etc.

All of those experiences and feelings can be extremely difficult to go through. Pangs of grief that come out of nowhere. Constant floods of emotions causing huge amounts of crying. A sense of missing and longing, an unfairness, and a justified anger. All of this accompanies the belief that something real has died.

Because of this, it then becomes very difficult to say ANYTHING about death, about what the person chose, about how the sickness came about, or to QUESTION in any way whether the person themselves had something to do with it. To even suggest that someone wanted to die, caused it to happen, chose it, or used it on purpose, seems like a horrible slander against the central character in the dying.

Indeed, when some body person dies, the dying, as the ego interprets it, appears to be the loss of an innocent victim. Ego beliefs tell you that they did not ask for this, they could not stop it, they did not want it, it could not be avoided, it happened unfairly, it victimized them, the person suffered greatly, it was horrible to watch, it was so sad and such a loss, etc. All of this appears to be true when a person is regarded as a body.

In light of this, when we are framing a person as the face of innocence, an innocent helpless victim of death "happening to them" or of diseases being "acquired" from the world, or the environment hurting someone etc, we make it look like the person is "untouchable" in their innocence. We start talking about them as if they were an angel. We go into a total denial of anything they seemed to do wrong. And no-one then dares to say a single word which might imply the person was anything OTHER than absolutely pure and perfect.

As a result of this behavior and this "falling for" the APPEARANCE that the person died against their will, death itself becomes protected. It becomes shielded by a facade of innocence and victimhood, helplessness and powerlessness. As if the person couldn't lift a single finger to influence anything that happened, and as a result was completely unfairly ripped away by forces beyond their control.

Death itself benefits from this view. By framing "dyers" as innocent victims, it puts up a powerful shield of denial, which seems impenetrable. And because it is framed as innocence, everyone suddenly is watchful of anyone even remotely suggesting that the person was "not innocent" in any way. There is a protectiveness that suddenly comes over people, which then justifies immense anger and projection, if anyone should dare to even HINT at the idea that the death was not how it appeared to be. As if death is an innocent baby that no-one can touch with a bargepole.

To even then question death at all, to suggest a person might've chosen it, that they caused it, or wanted it, or made it happen, or used it to try to kill the Son of God, would be considered a kind of blasphemy. And anyone who speaks out against death then is considered some kind of horrible insensitive accuser, victimizer and attacker, who has come to trample on the very carefully laid picture-frame of death-encrusted jewels that surrounds the tomb. To question death then seems completely off-topic, inappropriate, un-asked for, unwanted, and an act of war. How dare you suggest death is a lie or that all death is suicide?

By doing do, we never really get to question death itself. We keep hiding it behind this shield of illusions. We keep framing people as innocent victims who never wanted what happened. We keep denying that anyone ever chose any of it. And all that revolves around false perceptions, perceptions of a person AS a body, and AS a victim of the world.

It is a fact, however, that A Course in Miracles takes a radically OPPOSITE view of death than this. A view which would actually reveal a lot of activities taking place by the egos of not only those who die, but by those who mourn for them also. Those who are in grief and loss, as horrible as those experiences may be, are revealed to nevertheless be mistaken. Jesus even goes so far as to quite blatantly point out that those who attend funerals and who grieve over dead bodies, are completely going against God's will. He basically calls them death-worshippers.

"But what of those whose dedication it is NOT to live? The black-draped "sinners," the ego's mournful chorus, plodding so heavily AWAY from life, dragging their chains and marching in the slow procession that honors their grim master, lord of death."

"One thing is sure; God, Who created neither sin nor death, wills not that you be bound by them. He knows of neither sin NOR its result. The shrouded figures in the funeral procession march not in honor of their Creator, ***Whose Will it is they LIVE. They are not FOLLOWING it; they are OPPOSING it.*** And what is the black-draped body they would bury? A body THEY dedicated to death, a symbol of corruption, a sacrifice to sin, OFFERED to sin to feed upon, and keep ITSELF alive. A thing condemned, ***damned by its maker***, and lamented by every mourner who looks upon it as himself."

So the way Jesus describes this is that, those who die, AND those who react to the death on the basis of body-identification and ego loss and "something real died", which is a mistaken perception, are death worshippers. They are people who are themselves dead. The walking psychologically dead, who are actually worshippers of death and sickness, who make bodies real, who react to body deaths in horror, but whose egos are secretly celebrating the proof that yet another Son of God has been slain.

These truths are underneath the grief and the loss and the horrible aftershocks of "someone dying", and as such remain buried in the minds of most people. These truths are so opposite to "how terrible it is that someone died" attitudes that it would embarrass and likely induce guilt in someone to whom it were revealed. And that's because people who are circling around death like vultures are trying to perpetuate death and keep it going.

Jesus is very clear in A Course in Miracles that this is a course in life, in living, in resurrection, and in the surmounting of death. We are being asked to "swear not to die", and to be so committed to the goal of LIFE, that we completely blot out and make death IMPOSSIBLE. Even that our bodies should enter a state of completely healthy functioning, not merely devoid of sickness but actually INCAPABLE of becoming sick or dead. Where they are locked into health because the mind is healed.

Jesus once told me personally, that the entire purpose of this life, is "to eradicate death in all its forms."

Such a teaching is obviously completely diametrically opposed to death, to sickness, to suffering, and to any kind of pity party about someone's body seeming to come to an end. We're even told that the Holy Spirit will produce a "picture of you" (a body) which has never been hurt or suffered pain in any way, and therefore symbolizes eternal life and immortality, teaching your brothers who look upon it that they are sinless.

"Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have It not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die."

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

There is even an entire radical teaching in ACIM about the fact that when you project sin or use the body for attack in any way, the body itself becomes sick. And the body is thus used as a messenger to try to communicate to those who look upon it that they are the CAUSE of its sickness. Thus, a body which is sick, broken, damaged, diseased, or in any way defective, in fact physically ACCUSES others of being sinful. It is what the course calls "a picture of crucifixion", which you show to your brothers in order to condemn them and be contagious in negatively affecting them.

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

As a result, Jesus is EXTREMELY clear that any amount of sickness in the physical body at all IS PROOF that the mind HAS NOT been healed. That if there is still physical sickness, there has NOT been a forgiveness. The forgiveness is not REAL, unless it has brought a healing to your body and to the body of your brother. That if the body remains broken, it CONTINUES to accuse your brother of sin, and teaches by double messages. That no-one can learn from this contradictory demonstration because a) mind is claiming to be healed and b) body is proving otherwise. No-one will listen to such a hypocritical assertion.

So basically Jesus is saying that we need to put our money where our mouth is, and we need to become genuinely healed in the mind, SO THAT the body is FORCED to be healthy. And by doing so, we make all physical sickness and death IMPOSSIBLE. So much so, that the body can no longer become sick, be made to be sick, be caused to die against your will, or in any way decay. That it cannot even age and grow old, or become decrepit over time, or malfunction as a result of "natural processes."

Jesus wants us to learn that we are NOT at the effect of death. That we have power OVER death. And in fact that we MUST gain power over death if we are to reach atonement and resurrection. If there is any way, any loophole, any exception, in which the body could potentially still be made to be sick WITHOUT your consent, there is still a power in the separation that can KEEP the son of God in hell forever. The notion that there is a force in the world that can MAKE you die, against your will, is nothing more than a fantasy belief in death and an attempt to GIVE it power over you.

"No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent."

Whether you are an ACIM person or not, if the body is sick, it is simply because the MIND is sick. And if the mind is sick, it projects its sickness onto the body. And therefore the mind has to be healed. And when the main is healed, the mind DOES ALWAYS heal the body. And the body cannot resist this, it cannot maintain its own sickness, it cannot keep dying on its own, and it cannot stop the mind from forcing it to be well. A guiltless mind HEALS the body and makes sickness and death impossible.

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

THIS ..,. is what everyone is supposed to be achieving...

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

If you do not reach this state, then you have not reached the resurrection, and you have not finished the curriculum of ACIM. The curriculum of ACIM ends in resurrection, NOT death, and resurrection means LIFE, which is the opposite of death. Anyone who produces sickness in the body HAS in truth CAUSED it to be sick on purpose, for the purpose of hatred and attack and murder, in an attempt to prove that the son of God is guilty and deserves to die. Anyone who HAS died as a seeming "effect" of physical sicknesses such as cancer, HAS NOT HEALED THEIR MIND fully.

So to put it simply, people keep dying because they have not reached resurrection. They keep dying because they keep identifying with the body. They keep dying because they have not fully healed their minds. They keep dying because they are not done with the curriculum. A person can become closer to not dying, for sure, and can still cause death while being mostly healed. But until a person is fully healed the body will be attacked. Only in TOTAL RESURRECTION does a person reach a state in which they can be said to be "fully awake" and able to leave the dream permanently. "A dream of death is not left by death but by truth."

In such a state, the body is INCAPABLE of being sick or becoming sick. It cannot rot or decay. It cannot contain cancers or any other malfunctions. In fact, the only way to remove it then is to make it disappear. And this is precisely what Jesus did in his resurrection, causing his body to DISAPPEAR because he recognized it was NOTHING. This happened because recognized that the body IS an illusion of death (separation) and that it was not true. He erased the body and erased the separation in his mind, attaining total resurrection.

We need to drop the idol worship, we need to stop thinking that death is natural and inevitable, we need to stop buying into body identification which is guaranteed to induce grief and loss, we need to stop thinking that death is God's will, we need to stop believing that you OR your body can die as a result of causes outside of your control, we need to question death and recognize it as a lie, and we need to STOP CHOOSING IT. You do NOT have to die!!!

"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."

"To witness sin, and yet forgive it, is a paradox which reason cannot see. For it maintains what has been done to you DESERVES no pardon. And, by GIVING it, you grant your brother mercy, but retain the proof (a sick body) he is not REALLY innocent. The sick remain accusers. They cannot forgive their brothers AND themselves as well."

"The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS. A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely."

"Here the curriculum ends."

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt."

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

Jesus "My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. The last one had gone. It was laid in the tomb, but there was nothing left to bury. It did not disintegrate because the unreal cannot die. It merely became what it always was. And that is what "rolling the stone away" means. The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond. It merely ceases to interfere with vision. To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear."

"Listening to the ego's voice MEANS that you believe it is possible to attack God. You believe that a part of Him has been torn away by YOU."

"We have repeatedly emphasized that the ego DOES believe it can attack God, and tries to persuade you that YOU have done this."

"But sin, were it possible, WOULD be irreversible."

So you have this part of your mind, which believes in ego ideas of attack, which is the same as sin. The ego in you believes that you CAN attack real things, even though "nothing real can be threatened." It also believes that not only can it attack God, but it HAS attacked God.

It's the part of you that believes, deceives, and is trying to convince yourself, that you are the ego. That you are not as God created you. And therefore that YOU can attack God, and that you have done so.

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects."

If you believe this, you will believe that you've sinned. This is what the "original sin" is all about. It's the authority problem, the notion you can cause your own cause. That you can cause God against His will, and therefore change him and destroy him.

It is utterly impossible that you're able to do this. God cannot ever be attacked because He is permanent and immortal. You cannot have attacked anything real, at any time. You have never sinned. Not only have you never sinned, sin is actually literally impossible.

The ego however believes that sin IS possible and HAS happened. So you have these two perspectives. The truth in you is asserting that you must still be sinless, but the lies in you are fighting against it and trying to insist you have done something awful. Something totally EXTREMELY awful, as to try to murder God. The ego even thinks it has succeeded.

The belief that you HAVE attacked God, produces a death wish. If you've attacked Him and hurt Him, then he would logically be in a position to be completely justified in revenge. And that now means that God is angry and attacking and threatening. This goes hand in hand with believing that you've attacked and threatened him through anger.

"Death wishes ... DO kill spiritually. ALL destructive thinking is dangerous. Given a death wish, a man has no choice except to ACT upon his thought, or behave CONTRARY TO it. He can thus choose ONLY between homicide and fear."

"And you do not recognize that it is WHAT YOU INVITED IN that would destroy you, and DOES demand total sacrifice of you."

"The ego wants YOU dead"

That being your "new truth", you will then believe that because sin has actually happened, you deserve to be punished. That you are guilty and should die to atone for it. Or that death will allow you to escape from God's wrath. Because now you see God as having vengeance, as having a very good reason to hate you and to want you dead. That your death is God's will.

You will also then see that by believing you attacked God and hurt him, he is not happy with you. That he cannot possibly love you any more. And therefore you find yourself unworthy and unlovable. And even moreso that you cannot go home. That you are expelled from Heaven and are not welcome there, nor do you ever want to go back there.

What this does is it sets you up for the belief in "death as inevitable." Because if you can't go back home to LIFE, then your ONLY choice is to head towards death. It means you can kind of "never live again". And so you crawl away with your tail between your legs, licking your wounds, condemning yourself for what you think you did, and trying to guarantee your own punishment. And to think this is only because you LISTENED to the ego and BELIEVED it's lies about you being sinful.

Thus you become suicidal because now you yourself believe you deserve punishment for sin, that it makes complete sense that you're guilty, that God would never forgive you, and that what you did is irreversible. It's not even that you think others will punish you for this crime, it's that you yourself believe you deserve to be punished, and you yourself begin to actually enact it upon yourself.

This then frightens you because now you are actually against yourself and are entering into self-harm and self-punishment. You are trying to make yourself dead to pay for what you did. So that now means that you've become suicidal. And your only seeming hope to take away from God all power and rights over you, is to head towards death as a doorway out. You reason that if you will die, you will be saved. And now although you fear it, death becomes salvation and is attractive to you as a solution.

This is literally how every single person chooses to CAUSE their own death, and why all death is suicide, and why "no one dies without their own consent." It's all because you don't think you deserve to live. The ego in you believes so strongly that sin exists, you CAN sin, and you HAVE sinned, that a whole cascade of logical conclusions follow on from it, condemning you to death as the ONLY remaining option.

The only way you will get out of this downward spiral into hell and self-destruction, is to move away from the ego's "version" of what is true, and embrace God's version of what is true. That means questioning the belief in sin, that sin is possible or that you're guilty of doing it. This means the undoing of guilt as well, and therefore also fear.

While the ego in you is screaming "I have sinned", the God in you is gently reminding you that "sin is impossible." While the ego is trying to condemn yourself to hell, God is reminding you that you can't attack anything real. While the ego in you believes and is committed to keeping guilt, and to project it, in order to keep the separation going, the Holy Spirit is trying to teach you that you're not guilty because you have never sinned. Because sin is impossible. That everything the ego believes and asserts is a lie.

"You think if anyone could see the truth about you he would be repelled, recoiling from you as if from a poisonous snake."

"Whatever mistakes you made, the truth about you is unchanged."

"You need to hear the truth about yourself as frequently as possible, because your mind is so preoccupied with false self-images."

"The truth about YOU is so lofty that nothing that is unworthy of God is worthy of you."

"The Holy Spirit knows the truth about you. The image you made does not."

"Only what God creates is irreversible and unchangeable."

"You have NOT attacked God, and you DO love Him. Can you change your reality? No-one can will to destroy himself."

When you first perceive that someone has something wrong with them, is sick or suffering in some way, and this strikes you as real, you will have a reaction.

Your reaction will be part of what you have put in place in your mind, because both what you see in the other as sickness and your reaction to it coexist in a single split-minded dynamic.

You will react to what you've shown yourself, believing it. If it is real to you, you will be horrified and upset and will want to stop the suffering as if that will solve your upset, but the other person's suffering isn't the cause of your upset - your split minded perception is.

You will want for the person to be free of this pain or sickness or situation. You think that if you solve that, your own upset will go away, but it won't. You will then automatically start trying to fix them and change them and even force them to be different.

Your attempts to fix them will then compel you a great deal and produce a lot of what seems like a genuine desire to help, a motivation to research and figure out and find solutions. You can get into that quite deeply.

You will convince yourself that you are being caring, that you just want to help the person, are trying to heal them, want to take away their hurt and save them.

But what you don't realize is that you're doing all this as a reaction to something you perceived which frightened you and upset you. You think that your response is based in helpfulness and selflessness but it's really a selfish reaction to what you showed yourself and what you saw in the person.

Your use of them entailed you seeing truth within their sickness, believing their sickness to be real, showing yourself their illusion of sickness as though it is the truth and is really happening. That is actually an attack on your part. That is you using the opportunity to imprison them by holding these perceptions as true of them, maintaining the sickness and keeping it.

Your efforts later to get rid of the sickness, as extremely caring as they may appear to be, are actually an egoic cover-up to the fact that you are keeping the sickness in place, have attacked the person with the sickness by agreeing with it, and some part of you actually wants them to be sick.

The truth can be upsetting to admit to. Shocking isn't it, that you thought you were just trying to help and care about them and in fact you were hurting them, contributing to their suffering and keeping them imprisoned.

All you've been doing this whole time is rebounding off your own false, erroneous perception, which showed you an illusion of sickness as though it was God's given truth, which must be horrifying if sickness is the truth, and then were attempting to get rid of that as though it was in the person and not in your own mind. The making-real of what you thought was in the person, was just a projected portion of your of mind attacking itself.

If you admit to this then you will learn to stop trying to fix and heal and correct and help and solve the person's problem, because in REAL truth they do NOT have a problem. You do. YOU are upset about what you see. YOU are upset about what appears to be a real suffering. IF it were real, your upset would be justified indeed. But it's not. You are mistaken. And that means that all your attempts to help based on keeping it real and believing it's truly happening, are actually counter-attacks and are NOT forms of healing.

So all this time you thought you were trying to help, you were hurting, agreeing with what the person believes about themselves, and holding them captive to their own suffering. Your failure to UNDO their sickness is an attack. Your failure to see through and overlook the illusion of their sickness - which is not REAL sickness (it doesn't exist), is actually an attack. Since you did not forgive, you must have judged, and judgement is condemnation.

If you can admit this to yourself and collapse this whole illusory response to a misperception, you will stop trying to fix and solve the person based on what is "really happening to them." It's a false reaction, because it's not TRUE that something is really happening to them. Their sickness is an illusion, not a reality. Their immortal self is NOT threatened. There is no real danger. Life isn't under attack. Only by perceiving and believing as such do you support life and set your brother free from their imprisonment.

Once you admit you were only reacting to your own upset, because of what seemed like a really deep "genuine" feeling of caring and wanting to help and make everything better, you will see that this desire to help is really an illusion. It's part of the ego. As supportive as it SEEMS, it is not helping at all. It is just your own emotional upset flaring up into a nightmare and causing you to go on the offensive trying to solve everything that doesn't exist. Pretty funny actually.

When this denial has been undone, you are now more clearly confronted with a greater degree of truth about the situation. Your challenge now is to ACTUALLY FORGIVE what you see, to not believe in it, to truly UNDO it, by correcting your mind and offering this correction to your brother. Your lack of support for their belief that they are sick will be healing, helping to guide them towards the truth that will set them free.

Now you can be TRULY HELPFUL, by offering a miracle of forgiveness and coming from real love, which isn't a love that enters into FALSE EMPATHY. False empathy means you are believing in the suffering of others and agree with it and therefore are attacking them and yourself with it by joining in it with them. That isn't helping you or them. True empathy means representing God, genuinely, offering miracles of love, and shining a light for your brother to see.

There are parts of the Course describing miracles where it says that they shine a light to reveal all the ways that we are in error. It doesn't necessarily do anything but it reveals how we are in fear and let's us see that clearly so that we can recognize illusions and thus make them disappear. It points the way to the truth.

We must learn to OVERLOOK the appearance of sickness, instead of reacting to it. We must learn not to believe our eyes or think that this is proof. We must recognize our own ego reactions based on our own nightmare of hallucinating that sickness contains the truth. Sickness is always an illusion and if we're not recognizing that we will become upset and try to attack it with "help". That is not forgiveness and it is not healing or helpful. Such helpfulness is hurtful.

Strangely, you will become more loving and truly compassionate when you are not having your own gigantic mega reaction to someone's plight. You'll be more present and available and productive and constructive. You'll be able to truly help them and support them, rather than making it all real and going on a rollercoaster ride. It's not easy. The ego has lots of traps up its sleeves and this is one of the big ones.

It basically works like this. You believe you are not loveable and are separate from the love that you ARE. You experience a sense of lacking love. This creates a false need. The need motivates you to search. You search externally outside of yourself for what you've lost. You deny your own value and lovability so you project this onto others. You set them up to look like they can save you, that they are better than you, that they are above you, and that they will fulfill your need. You put them on a pedestal in order to put yourself down, and you worship them hoping to get some small scrap of love (that you don't deserve).

We do this with our children. We project so much of our own missing value onto them (by sacrificing ourselves), that we turn them into idols. As idols, they are more important than we are, they are more valuable than we are, we would just about kill ourselves to save them, and we worship them. We set them up to look like they can do no wrong. We enter into denial about any flaws that they might possibly have. We see them as 'can do no wrong'. We imagine that they absolutely are supposed to love us back and that they are only loving and completely overlook any faults. We make them seem like they are our savior and that they have something we don't have, capable of doing for us what we refuse to do for ourselves. And ultimately we live vicariously through them because we've made them into 'everything'.

This all can seem extremely noble and humble and prideful and correct. But it is filled with self deprivation, self denial, unworthiness, self sacrifice, martyrdom, loss, exhaustion, having no time for yourself, being less important, and generally all forms of inequality. Inequality also includes of course the flipside of idol worship which is what happens when YOU believe you are the idol and that the child (or other audience) should worship you. This is just another expression of the same egotism and may result in the child becoming the idol-worshipper (of you). If you are the idol, then you believe you are secretly flawed and NEED to have people worship you to prove that you are good enough - except you never believe it, and it never works, and it's never enough. Idol worshippers are the more obvious victims of the world (those who are bullied), and idols are the more obvious victimizers (those who bully). BOTH of them believe they are not loveable.

This dynamic also extends to all other special relationships, because they are all based on you having a LACK of love, and therefore being compelled to find it in another. The other now contains something valuable and special that you want but don't have. You want to get it from them. Except that you don't REALLY want to receive it because doing so would undo your belief that you're not worthy of it. So you would steal it away and destroy it, to deprive yourself. "If I can't have it, nor can anyone else."

Another great example of idol worship takes place in many Christians/Catholics who worship Jesus. They will put Jesus on a pedestal and endow him with all kinds of special value and worth. At the same time, they will claim that they themselves cannot possibly have EQUAL value, so they must be unworthy. Secretly they STARTED by saying they are unworthy, and this is why they see Jesus AS worthier than they are. They may thus 'worship' Jesus AS an idol (even though he doesn't want this), and continually believe that Jesus will save them for them. They will, however, constantly REFUSE to believe or admit that they in any way deserve saving, that they can be saved, that they can be loved to the degree Jesus would offer. That is, unless they believe they have atoned enough to be the 'chosen ones' who are in Jesus' favor and better than those suckers who are even less worthy and who clearly are going to hell (throwing them under a bus).

So with one hand they are trying to reach out to Jesus to say, "hey, please love me for me and save me from my (wretched) self because I can't", while the other hand says "stay the fuck away from me I am not worthy to be your equal." The ego here has conflicting voices - one which sounds like it is filled with adoration and justified worship, but the other which clearly does not REALLY want Jesus to love them fully. If Christians were to fully receive and acknowledge Jesus's love for them, they would have to ADMIT that they too are just as loveable as he is. Otherwise, how could they possibly receive His love? This is what they do not want, because they do not want their own love which God already gave to them.

When you idolize someone you make them more valuable than yourself because you've projected your own value and worth. You then say you want them to save you FOR you, but secretly you hope that they won't. It becomes especially toxic when the person you idolize refuses to be your idol. If they pull away from you or separate from you, they might occasionally throw you a tiny scrap or mosel of attention, which you think is all you deserve. And when that scrap comes, you feel like the entire relationship has been saved - finally you got a blessing from that person on-high and now that means they love you and that they will save you. Your tremendous need/lack of lovability gets a little bit of attention and now it seems like there's hope. And then they withdraw their love again and you feel devastated.

The problem is, you're not really devastated by their lack of loving you, you're devastated by YOUR not loving you. When they withdraw their idol status without you withdrawing your idolizing of them, ie they separate or distance themselves or fail to deliver, you are left with nowhere else to go. You can't get the love from within or from God because you don't believe that is where the love IS, and if your idol ditches you your mind is now reminded of just how empty it is. This is painful and is experienced as loss and grief. The loss of your own self. The grief of your own separation from God.

This is a spiritual lesson, and a hard one. And essentially it is the only lesson. You believe you are separate from love and will never get back to that love, or that it is NOT love, and now you've projected the source outside yourself where it does not exist. To resolve and complete the lesson, you have to UNDO the beliefs you've formed about YOURSELF which tell you that love is not who you are, love is not what you deserve (from within), that you do not love or forgive yourself (and God), that God is not love, that you are not loveable or worthy of love, and that you are not yourself. This belief in separation is what drives the entire projection and idolization of external love. But YOU ARE THE LOVE YOU SEEK.

God knows this. He hasn't forgotten you. Holy Spirit knows it. Jesus knows it. The angels know it. Even you as Christ know it and can't forget it. But somewhere along the lines some part of your mind became convinced by a lie - a LIE - that you are not love itself. This needs correction. And it cannot be corrected by anyone else outside of you because they are not the source of the correction OR of the separation. You might blame them because they seem to be separate from you and they seem to not be fulfilling your 'secret bargain' to love you for you, but it's not really their fault. It's not their fault they fail to love you for you. They're not supposed to. You need to learn to love yourself again so that you no longer NEED to get it from somewhere else, and consequently so that nobody else CAN take it away or deny you.

You are the way, the truth and the light. You are Jesus's equal. You are equal to your children. You are equal to your parents. You are loveable by God and in God and as God's extension of love. And you are absolutely worthy of the joy and happiness of RECLAIMING YOUR VALUE.

On of the most life-changing things I've learned from ACIM, is simply realising this idea that we "scapegoat" in order to get rid of our own guilt. That we start out first attacking ourselves, making ourselves guilty, and then we project that guilt through seemingly justified anger onto other people. This whole "blame game" is of finger pointing and finding people to be sinful, trying to enforce people's guilt through anger and attack, so that we can get rid of our own guilt and come off innocent.

Most people in the world are blameful and believe that who they are angry at is the one who is wrong. When I first got this idea that "the person who is blaming is the one with the PROBLEM", it was a 180-degree paradigm shift. It was a revelation that it's not the person being blamed that has the problem, it's the person doing the blaming. Because for the most part it is easy to believe that anger is justified, and the person we're angry at must be the one who is wrong. But it's always the projecting person who has a problem.

If more people could adopt this, relationships would be 90% healthier. In a vast majority of special relationships in the world, even marriages, there is rampant scapegoating, anger and blame. People essentially have unhealed wounds, inner guilts, unforgiven sins etc, which are triggered off, which lead to an eruption of emotion and a hurling outward of it to try to pin it on someone else. When it gets really bad, it's just one reaction after another back and forth, keeping score and trying hard to make sure the other person is guilty.

To realize that we have to take responsibility for what we feel and experience is key. Instead of it being other people or the world who are responsible for what we're feeling, we have to take back that power and recognize WE are the ones doing it to ourselves. WE are the ones who are "to blame" for this suffering. It's the secret of salvation. If they aren't the ones with the problem, it must be me. And that takes honesty.

If I am upset, something is wrong with me, not anyone else. If I am getting angry at someone, something is wrong with me and not anyone else. The more angry I get, the more I am in denial that I have a problem. The more I am in denial, the more I split my mind, the more I reinforce separation, and the more I dissociate my mind from itself. The more dissociated I become the more I believe something "not me" is to blame, and become extremely convinced that I am NOT the one with the problem.

The key is that we have to forgive ourselves all the guilts that we've piled onto ourselves. All the self-accusation and self-hate and self-destruction. All the hidden sins and hates and unworthiness and all the rest of the ways we attack ourselves. Without that guilt, we have nothing to project, and no reason to project it.

I think one thing I feel quite good about is that after all these 20+ years of working on this with ACIM, I've managed to heal quite a lot of guilts and shames and hidden sins and hates and all that - to do with myself, that I don't very often scapegoat anymore. You can't scapegoat unless you need one, and if you aren't full of guilt it's harder to be triggered by stuff. I have become more benevolent and softer and more loving, kinder and more peaceful, and that's a good thing.

I see a lot of relationships where this simple thing hasn't been learned. The absolute default for the ego is to just go into rage mode whenever someone triggers off some guilt. Then there's defensiveness and anger and hurling abuse and separation. There a war of words, broken relationships, abuse and all the rest of it, all springing from wounded people getting their insecurities and unhealed stuff triggered off. And not taking responsibility for it.

It's tough at times to keep having to come back to this idea that, I'm the one who is responsible for this suffering. But it's a vital practice. If I'm upset, it is never for the reason I think. If I am angry and I think it is justified, anger is never justified. The cause and reason of the problem is in my mind, not out in the world or in anyone else. No-one is doing anything to me or causing me to be upset for any reason. It's all an inside job. If the world could learn this we'd have absolutely incredible relationships and the end of so much conflict.

If someone or something outside of you is the cause of you, you are powerless to stop it affecting you and are playing a victim role. Only if you are invulnerable to the world are you no longer affected by it. Its a transition from victimhood to the impossibility of being a victim, from vulnerability to invulnerability, from mortality to immortality, from effect to cause.

And that means recognising your immortality. It always comes back to you being an immortal being, nothing can happen against your will, so if you think someone's causing you to suffer, you're deceiving yourself. You have to get really honest and own up to what you are doing to yourself and admit you are mistaken, be willing to have humility and step back with the blame game. To totally own your causal power and how you are using it against yourself, is forgiveness. Coming from a position of not being in conflict and at war with yourself, so that you look out from that peace onto others.

Blaming someone splits your mind. The mind hallucinates that it's talking to another separate person in third-person speak like "you're doing this" while the person isn't even in front of them. The more angry we become the more we enforce separation and guilt. That's literal insanity, to project guilt in an attempt to get rid of it, while causing it to get worse.

Anger increases separation and splits the mind producing mental illness and ultimately physical illness. It's in all our best interests that we learn to own up to who and what we are, take responsibility for our own shit, and stop putting it onto everyone else.

Whenever we feel compelled to look outside ourselves for a cause or will or power to explain why something is happening, we're lost. If we can totally take full responsibility for what we are, such that we no longer accuse anyone of being the reason why we are what we are, we will be completely forgiving and kind and benevolent - to ourselves and others.

The whole of ACIM is simply geared toward this goal of complete undoing of the separation in the mind, the removal of all guilt, the end of all blame, and the complete reversal of all conflict. And without guilt there is no ego.

"I am never upset for the reason I think." W5

"Anger is NEVER justified. Attack has NO foundation. It is here escape from fear begins, and will be made complete. Here is the real world given in exchange for dreams of terror. For it is on this forgiveness rests, AND IS BUT NATURAL." UrT30G1

"I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts." W281

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail" UrW195L5

"It can be but myself I crucify." W196

"Only the self-accused condemn." UrT31C

"You NEVER hate your brother for HIS "sins", but ONLY for your own. Whatever form his sins appear to take, the form obscures the fact that you believe it to be yours, and THEREFORE meriting a just attack." UrT31C

"Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel DIFFERENT from your brothers and separated FROM them. The ego justifies this on the wholly spurious grounds that it makes you seem better than they are, thus obscuring equality WITH them still further." UrT6C3

"Guilt hides Christ from your sight, for it is the denial of the blamelessness of God's Son. In this strange world which you have made, the Son of God HAS sinned. How could you SEE him, then? By making HIM invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt which you accepted, and you hold it dear. For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and can never be. Without guilt the ego HAS no life, and God's Son IS without guilt." UrT11J6

For me I read ACIM in a fairly straightforward way. I don't think it's really meant to be that hard. It says things in plain enough language, the meaning of which we should all mostly be grasping in the same way.

If I were to say to you, I left the car keys on the table, that doesn't need an explanation. You know what it means. There's nothing more to it.

If the course says to you, God didn't create your body, then you should be like, okay, I understand what you're saying. So my body isn't a creation of God's.

If the course says to you, you are not a body you are free, then your response should be, okay, simple enough, I'm not a physical body, I'm free of bodies. It's not exactly rocket science here.

There are many things Jesus says in the course in a very honest, straightforward, simple manner. He is direct and unambiguous. In fact he says he's taken every effort to try to make things as plain and obvious as possible.

"Like the Text for which this Workbook was written, the ideas which are used for these exercises are very simple, very clear, and totally unambiguous."

"Contradictions in MY word mean lack of understanding, or scribal failures, which I make every effort to correct."

"I have made every effort to use words which are ALMOST impossible to distort, but man is very inventive when it comes to twisting symbols around."

"The reason why this course is simple, is that TRUTH is simple. Complexity is of the ego, and is nothing more than the ego's attempt to obscure the obvious."

Generally speaking if Jesus has done a good job of teaching, then most people who read the course should come away with roughly the same message and learning.

When he refers to things, we should recognize that he is referring most often to the standard things we recognize. Because he's using what we already know and understand to try to teach us.

So if he refers to "the body" you know he's very likely talking about your physical body. Everyone in the world knows what a body is. If he refers to "Earth", you know it's the name of this physical planet. It's not anything else.

Fortunately most people have the same definitions of things and this makes it easier for Jesus to "speak our language" and make his points.

When he says something like, "Earth, which is heaven's opposite in every way", we should be able to grasp that, okay, planet Earth is apparently opposite to and nothing like heaven. And they're two distinct places. There isn't anything more complicated to it.

If he says, "the body is clearly destructible and therefore not of the kingdom", we should be able to very easily glean some facts. Firstly that he's talking about our physical bodies - nothing more strange than that.

Secondly that our bodies are indeed "clearly" destructive - everyone should really be able to grasp and agree with that fact because we've all experienced the proof of it.

And thirdly that because these bodies are destructible, they cannot be a part of God's creation/kingdom. Which means, the body, and the environment the body is a part of, such as the things it feeds on, and uses, and touches and so on, cannot be the kingdom of God.

This is very easy to deduce. It doesn't take much thought whatsoever. Jesus is using our simple language and learning and using it to point is towards truths. When he says for example that "the body is a dream", you know he's referring again to your physical body, and is telling you it's not really real - it's a dream. You can then quite easily conclude that, if the body is a dream, then the body and its environment must be a dream, and not reality.

These kinds of simple conclusions are very easy to come by, and don't take a particularly high level of intelligence to figure out. In fact I think Jesus prefers that we don't have to figure things out so much. "Usability", the ease with which something can be used by the user/reader, has to be high, otherwise we would just become very confused and lost in the course.

There are of course some times where Jesus shows his mastery and genius, his great wisdom and intelligence and insight, and sometimes those things might be more subtle and harder to figure out. But for the most part the basics of the course are NOT difficult or complicated.

Sometimes people reading the course will massively alter everything it says, over-think and over-analyse, read into it all manner of meanings it doesn't haver, distort its message, pull things out of context, not see the bigger picture, and generally lose track of what should be simple and obvious.

I think if Jesus's message about this world, our bodies, our life, our real identities and our home in heaven, required extraordinary levels of scholarship and study, incredible insight and intellectual ability, and extraordinary grasp of subtle nuance and esoteric contexts, then most people would fail and get lost.

And if Jesus's actual message was indeed so strangely nuanced that it seems to actually mean the total opposite of what it obviously says, in which only a tiny handful of people actually grasp it, that doesn't say much about Jesus's teaching ability. In fact it's rather a slap in the face to him, suggesting that he is so awful at presenting information in a way people can understand and follow, that only the elite few are capable of getting its true meaning. And that means Jesus sucks pretty bad as a teacher.

I don't think Jesus sucks as a teacher. In fact I think he is the best teacher, and extremely masterful at teaching, and very carful to avoid confusion and distortion and ambiguity. He presents things very clearly and in no uncertain terms, such that a vast majority of people reading the course come away with the same basic understanding. And that's a good thing, and hat's off to him.

This is why we have to be careful listening to people who have "alternative" views of the course, such as that planet Earth is God's most incredible creation, or that bodies are spirit, or that God didn't create any sons, or other strange things which aren't really in the book. Some people do do this, changing meanings and twisting things and making things fit into existing worldviews. We need to be careful to discern when this is happening and try to stay true to Jesus's obvious and clear intentions.

This is meant to be a simple and obvious course. A learnable course. A useful and practical course. It should not require someone to be among 'the few' who grasp its "real hidden message" in order to make use of it. And indeed if its message is so obscure that hardly anyone sees it, then it's probably not a course worth learning.

Forgiveness is rooted in your immortality. Accepting atonement means recognizing fully that you are immortal, and letting go of everything that is incompatible with your immortal nature.

"But the guarantee of your continuity is God's, not the ego's. And immortality is the opposite of time, for time passes away, while immortality is constant. Accepting the Atonement teaches you WHAT IMMORTALITY IS" UrT11J13

It is extremely simple. You simply recognize what it means to be immortal, the qualities and characteristics of that, and then compare that to the position you are trying to take. Anything which is out of accord is false and can be let go, as you remind yourself of what is true.

"Everything that stems from the ego is the natural outcome of its central belief, and the way to undo its RESULTS, is merely to recognize that their SOURCE is NOT natural, being out of accord with your TRUE nature." UrT10F5

Anything which is not in accord with, compatible with, your immortal nature in spirit, cannot be true. All you have to do is put your immortality first and foremost, and then look to see if what you are believing, experiencing, perceiving, feeling etc, is in accord with it.

A huge thing to be forgiven is the basic idea that things are happening to you which are causing you to change. It takes many forms including that other people are affecting you, someone is doing something to you, the environment is causing you to be afraid, situations are making you anxious, your body is making things difficult, etc. All various ways that you seem to be being changed.

Look to your immortality. Your immortality says you cannot change even slightly because you are always the same forever. I am immortal. If I am immortal, can it be true that I am affected by this person? Can it be true that they are making me feel this? Can it be true that I am suffering? Can it be true that I am weak and vulnerable and threatened?

What does your immortality have to say about this? You can also ask Jesus or the Holy Spirit - who are also immortal - and they can tell you the exact same things. The truth about you will set you free.

What about the secret of salvation? Basically the idea is that you cannot suffer because you are immortal. If you seem to be suffering, you must have lost track of your immortality and have started to see yourself as being affected by something. You've started to believe you can be changed, hurt, influenced.

This then means you need to look at what you are doing to yourself, because only your mind can attack itself with faulty thoughts. You must be participating in choosing to suffer, and to fake the suffering, because your immortal self cannot suffer.

The fact that you are immortal should tell you that whatever you think other people are doing to you, that can't be true, because you can't have things done to you - they're not guilty. So if things seem to be happening to you, you must be doing them to yourself, but you can't really be doing it to yourself because you can't even change yourself. So you're not guilty either.

It ALWAYS comes back to your immortality. To your self. To knowing yourself as you really are, as God created you. This is the whole point "I am not a body I am free for I am still as God created me." You are remembering what is true of you and becoming ever more clear about what is NOT POSSIBLE.

A simple line of questioning to begin any forgiveness might start: "I am immortal." You can then take it from there. If you simply reiterate the various properties and characteristics of being immortal, that alone injects so much truth into your mind that it dispels a ton of myths and lies and brings great clarity.

I am immortal. I can never change. I cannot be changed. I cannot change myself. Not even God changes me. No-one in the world is changing me. I am permanent. I will live forever. There will never be an end to my existence. I have no reason to be afraid of anything because I will never stop existing. Nothing can threaten me whatsoever because nothing can change me. I can't be affected by anyone or anything because I am immortal. This is a forgiveness process. An articulation based on a simple fact of your true nature.

Projections of guilt onto other people? It's just a way that you're trying to free yourself from guilt in a way that doesn't really work. The solution is to recognize you are immortal. If you are immortal you cannot attack or be attacked. You are invulnerable and see everyone as harmless and unharmed. You bring healing and life only. You resurrect, you do not destroy. Therefore you cannot have ever sinned, and cannot be guilty, and have no guilt to project. Neither you or the other person is guilty of anything.

How about the fact that other people are also immortal? If they are immortal, they cannot be sinning or guilty either. There can't be anything wrong with them. They can't be corrupt, they can't be sinful, they can't be broken, they can't be in fear, they can't be suffering, they can't be sick or dead, they can't be attacking or attacked.

So then there is no basis for you to project or scapegoat because you recognize they are absolutely invulnerable. What point would there be to project guilt through anger in an attempt to bind guilt into someone, if you knew this was impossible? There'd be no point even trying. You can't take away anyone's innocence.

How about you playing the role of victim? Seeing yourself as unfairly treated, victimised, hurt, abused, attacked, offended, upset, made to feel certain feelings, forced to suffer, things happening to you against your will, pain and misery? NONE of this is possible. If you are immortal, you cannot experience or be in a position where any of this can happen to you.

How can you be a victim if you cannot be attacked? You can't accuse anyone of anything if you are unattackable. How can you be hurt, if you are so invulnerable that you can't be changed in anyway? Hurt, what is that? Some kind of lie that you are not immortal, that some parts of you can be bruised and injured and damaged. Impossible for an immortal being. So you cannot be a victim, you cannot be affected, made to hurt, caused to change, defined, redefined, attacked, damaged, or made to malfunction.

This is what forgiveness is about. Getting your mind to approach the TRUTH, and to ACCEPT THE TRUTH. This is accepting the atonement. The acceptance of the truth is the acceptance of the truth ABOUT YOU. What is the truth about you? You are an absolutely immortal innocent being that lives forever and is absolutely beyond all attack and threat. Nothing real can be threatened - your immortal self is your reality. Your life is never in danger.

Keep it simple. There are many many ways that you can word and articulate forgiving ideas. Ideas designed to undo lies, to untangle cause-effect confusions, ways to try to take back errors and stop yourself from making them.

It all starts with your immortality. It all starts with you as an immortal being deciding to PRETEND that you are mortal, that you can suffer, be a victim, be hurt, be destroyed. It's you playing a game of death, and you have to take full responsibility for that and stop doing it. It's pointless anyway because not only can you not ever BE something that is destructible, like the body, you are so beyond all attack that you can never be even slightly influenced toward death.

Center on your immortal nature. Focus on it. Learn about it. Live it. Let it inform your perceptions. Let it unravel the lies and egotism in your mind. Use it as the litmus test to compare everything to. If anything in any way suggests that you are even SLIGHTLY vulnerable, weak, afraid, as though your existence is being brought into question somehow, as if you can be hurt and changed somehow, you must be listening to "the ego". ie, you are trying to pretend that you can die.

This is really all you need. Salvation comes from your one self - your immortal self. Know thyself as immortal and be free from all forms of suffering and death forever.

"The world goes AGAINST your nature, because it is out of accord with God's laws." UrT7L1

"Forgiveness, then, is an illusion, but because of its purpose, which is the Holy Spirit's, it has one difference. Unlike all other illusions it leads away from error and not toward it." UrU4A1

"Forgiveness might be called a kind of happy fiction; a way in which the unknowing can bridge the gap between their perception and the truth." UrU4A2

"Whatever is IN ACCORD with this light He retains, to strengthen the Kingdom in YOU. When it is PARTLY in accord with truth He accepts it and purifies it. But what is OUT OF ACCORD ENTIRELY He rejects by judging against. This is how He keeps the Kingdom perfectly consistent and perfectly unified." UrT6H1

"God's guarantee will hold against ALL obstacles, for it rests on certainty, and NOT contingency. IT RESTS ON YOU. And what can be more certain than the Son of God?" UrT20E9

"Yet what is it except a game you play in which identity can be denied? You are as God created you. All else but this one thing is folly to believe. In this one thought is everything set free. In this one truth are all illusions gone. In this one fact is sinlessness proclaimed to be forever part of everything; the central core of its existence and its guarantee of immortality." UrW191L4

When we come to the course, typically we come with a pretty big bag of beliefs.

One major belief, accrued over a lifetime, is that we are separate from the world. The world is this huge thing outside us. We learned "by experience" that it does things on its own, against our will, and we do not SEEM to have any direct mental power OVER it at all.

Only a rare few have even a slight hint of what we might call "telekinesis".. mind over matter. Some bend spoons thinking it's amazing but it's barely anything.

This is what the ego set up... to be in bodies shut off from the power of the mind and *disabled* so much that we can't even use the mind DIRECTLY to make anything happen. And then we just... got used to it.

We do have SOME power over the body, even regular non ACIM folk do... like you can cause the body to change in various ways based on your experiences and moods and so on. You can choose to go into anger and make your blood pressure go up. You can manifest headaches when you don't want to go somewhere. You can develop sore throats when you didn't speak your mind. All kinds of stuff happens to the body just in normal ways as a result of the mind's power - just a little bit of power, demonstrating itself.

But beyond the body, we generally see ourselves as "cut off", disconnected, powerless, completely unable to affect anything outside of it.

Then we come to the course.

And then we hear the course saying stuff about how we need to change our perception and that what exists in the world is an outward picture of an inward condition. We REFERENCE our EXISTING BELIEF SYSTEM of "I am not connected to the world", and then try to make sense of it.

So this lead us to think, ok... My mind is not outside my body and has no power over what's out there, so this MUST MEAN, that within my own body, inside my mind inside my body, there are some false perceptions which I need to change, and this will change how I SEE the world out there... BUT, it will not actually CHANGE the world out there whatsoever.

This is because the old belief system of powerlessness, littleness, being stuck in a body, having no mental power, is still circulating as a "foundation" for what you are learning. And so you learn WITHIN that context without questioning it or thinking that it even CAN be questioned. What you learned prior to the course closed your mind, and you proved it to yourself over and over again by how many times you couldn't stop the ice-cream from falling on the sidewalk, had to suffer from the weather, or couldn't prevent an accident.

So then you learn the entire course and try to make it "fit" inside this framework, building UPON what you think you already know. This leads to GROSS DISTORTIONS of the meaning of what Jesus says. It leads to the belief that he is talking about "you in a body" when he refers to "the world you see" as being something you made up... therefore, since you believe you can only change what's INSIDE your body, which you think is all of your mind, you do not even begin to think that changing your mind would change your BODY, yet alone anything OUTSIDE OF IT. And so when Jesus says things like "the world you see", you will dilute and mangle it to fit into what it would mean INSIDE your body, therefore.. referring to your private personal misperceptions OF the world, rather than literally or directly the world.

The disconnection or rather, separation between cause and effect, between your mind and what it believes, and the out picturing of that AS body and AS THE WORLD - the physical planet - forms - bodies - people - objects - the spearation between you and that stuff seems insurmountable and too far-fetched to believe you might be able to have power over it, or that it MUST change, or that you CAN change it with your mental changes. You simply do not see, or believe, that your mind is the cause of what is literally out there.

This leads people to believe also that if they change their internal perception, housed inside the limits of their body, they will be able to become PEACEFUL and happy, IN SPITE OF, the conditions which are in the body or outside of it. They see both of them as outside of their "self" and so outside of their own mind's power or reach or control. This leads people to believe that they can a) be at peace without healing sickness, b) can be at peace with the body dying, c) can be at peace even though people continue to be able to attack their body, d) are happy to just put up with sickness because somehow, there is a way to be peaceful in spite of it.

This of course is the distortion that entirely arises because of the FOUNDATION of the thought system, which has been built up over many years, teaching us that we are CUT OFF from the world, that there is huge SEPARATION between cause (us) and effect (the world). We don't seem to have ANY mental powers at all to make objects move, to heal sick people, to stop death, to reverse suffering, or any of the rest of it. This is because our mind is BLOCKED, and we are not aware of the whole truth.

Jesus is in fact teaching us in the course that we DO HAVE THIS POWER, which is a power to LITERALLY MOVE A PHYSICAL MOUNTAIN, or even to create a planet, because this is the natural result of having CAUSAL POWER over the EFFECT which is out there. The inner picture MUST be reflected outward. So when the mind decides, hey, I am going to rearrange this entire forest but uprooting all the trees and putting them in a different assortment, that's what will happen. But we do not believe we have even REMOTELY anything near that power, because of just how radically LIMITED our mental power seems to be.

We are GROSSLY out of touch with the power of the mind. Just even being in a body seems to shut us off form being able to do this. And yet these things are miraculous. These miracles demonstrate the power the mind has OVER MATTER, because the mind that KNOWS it is CAUSE, simply knows that everything else MUST be at its effect, and so its power over it is UNLIMITED.

It is only because we believe STRONGLY that we are limited by this body, limited by the isolation of being a separate self, totally out of touch with the MIND, believing we have a mind when in fact we just have a TINY LITTLE BIT OF MIND operating as a conscious self, shut off from what we really are capable of, that we won't consider it even POSSIBLE that the Course is telling us we literally made the world, or that we can change it with our mind alone.

This is the level of resistance to miracles. This is the resistance to all ways that mind may exert its power "over matter". "That the mind can heal the body but the body cannot heal the mind is proof that the mind must be stronger than the body." ... the mind is supposed to be ABLE to COMPLETELY do whatever it wants to do with the body. No limits. "There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

But so long as we believe we are these little piddly WEAK little body-identified selves, MINDLESS, cut off from everything external, seeing no oneness or ability to join, and having no power over any forms whatsoever, we are going to just CONTINUE TO BE VICTIMS AND DIE. And that's simply because we do not recognize that we are choosing that, because we have yet to wake up to the power of the mind. We are accidentally choosing death, until we realize that we are the Son of God for whom nothing is impossible.

So there is a LOT of this resistance in the ACIM community, and even those who are on the cutting edge of opening up to the power of the mind are still like little babies in terms of the development of this power. I would sort of put myself in that category and there still seems to be so little I can actually do, definitely nothing of my own will, and even with God acting with me I am still very limited. But I am willing to be open to the possiblity that my mind, shared with God, has far more power over this world than it appears, and WAY more than I have been led to believe by the ILLUSION the ego created to make it seem I have no power at all.

We have to realize that just by being in a body, we made ourselves TOTALLY POWERLESS, victims at the effect of the world. No power whatsoever to stop things from happening. That's extremely the OPPOSITE to our natural state of miracle mindedness. We need to UNLEARN what this illusion has taught us, and reclaim the power of the mind over matter to be able to perform magnificent miracles and be free of these limitations. This is why Jesus says time and again that there is nothing you cannot do, and ALL THE POWER IN HEAVEN AND EARTH HAS BEEN GIVEN YOU. But we do not see it, or believe it, because we're so used to being blinded by this illusion of separation between what is inside me and what is outside. That must be undone.