"Who but yourself evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat that has been judged as real? All this cannot be done unconsciously. But afterwards, your plan requires that you must forget you made it, so it seems to be external to your own intent; a happening beyond your state of mind, an outcome with a real effect on you, instead of one effected by yourself.

It is this quick forgetting of the part you play in making your "reality" that makes defenses seem to be beyond your own control."

- ACIM - sickness is a defense against the truth... Here Jesus describes how we create sickness.

We evaluate that the truth is a threat (to our ego truth), we decide we need to defend against it, so we create a sickness by making it real and doing it to ourselves, yet making it look like we didn't choose it. Jesus goes on to say...

"But what you have forgot can be remembered".

He also says:

"Defenses must make facts unrecognizable. They aim at doing this, and it is this they do."

and

"And yet you have forgotten that they stand but for your own decision of what should be real, to take the place of what is real."

i.e. sickness is an attempt to obscure the truth and make it unrecognizable by associating truth with something illusory. Sickness is illusory, so regarding it as truth obscures what the truth really is.

and ie... you use sickness to convert reality to untruth and illusions to reality.

We need to then remember we did this and uncover what the truth really is, to bring about healing.

"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.

At the beginning, prayer seems to be like asking for something you do not have.

But this is the opposite of prayer. It does not produce anything DIRECTLY, it only affirms what you already have, because it emphasizes that it is TRUE that you DO NOT have what you want. This can be asking for help, which is okay, but it's not your proper function as the light of the world.

As you progress, instead of being in a mode of asking a separate God to do separate things in separate ways, you will learn to BE the prayer, BE the power that drives it, and BE the one to deliver the result.

That's much more powerful. Now you aren't just putting in an optional request from your separate ego will and waiting around for God's will to happen. You're fulfilling God's will because you ARE IT.

Initially as Jesus says, we perform miracles based on faith, because we trust there is something unseen and not fully understood (God) but are not fully aligned with Him yet. But later, we will become aware of and aligned with and in the same perspective as God, whereupon miracles will be commanded through and by you. God will support them, either way.

So it all boils down to, whose will are you performing in your prayer? Are you DOING God's will? Or are you DOING the ego's will?

The ego wills that you look like you're asking very intensely without accomplishing anything. Seek and do not find. It wills that everything stay the same and illusions remain real. The ego makes a heck of a lot of noise complaining about what it does not want, but does not actually ACT to change it, because it is praying for the purpose of making victimhood real!

You pray with the ego when you "ask for". You pray with God when you command what must be, per His Will, in the perspective that it ALREADY IS and has ALREADY BEEN GIVEN. Therefore you "receive it into manifestation."

When you EXTEND God, which is a radiation of love and a flow of divine power, anything is possible.

This is quite an interesting teaching. As God created you, you are always the same. You are immortal, eternal, permanently you.

In your spiritual self there is no sense of change, no disturbance, fluctuation, alteration, changes. No tensions, no upsets, no parts that malfunction, no things that fall off, no breakage or damage. There is in fact nothing happening as such, within your self, at all.

You just remain exactly the same, all the time. And because of this total lack of disturbance, of transformation, or changes of any kind, you re totally at peace.

This is not a peace that results from achievements or striving or accumulating or learning. You just are simply the same all the time, and this alone is a stillness so constant and so unaffected that it is totally peaceful.

In the world we keep trying to do a whole lot of stuff. Learn more, become something, accumulate stuff, achieve goals, turn into something, improve yourself, apply techniques, learn concepts, increase understanding, even healing. We keep trying to CHANGE ourselves.

And this leads to the idea that if you change yourself enough, you'll become enlightened. With enough transformation and learning, you'll end up at the ultimate goal. But this doesn't actually work. This is not what is needed.

You see, God has already perfectly accomplished his will. He created you to be a perfect being that is ALWAYS THE SAME FOREVER. A permanently perfect creation, perfect innocence, perfect invulnerability, never changing or turning into anything.

Just BEING that is all you need to do. That is what is natural. You just know yourself as God created you and just be that, always the same, never changing. Just being you, living happily, creating freely, loving endlessly.

There is nothing that you can really DO that can put this in place. You do not establish this. You cannot create it yourself. You cannot cultivate it or make it happen or cause it. You cannot get to that point through tons of polish or perfecting or training or learning.

In fact the whole purpose of learning is to learn to stop learning. Learning is supposed to expire itself and outlive its usefulness. The aim of learning is to learn that there is nothing to learn, and that learning itself is actually preventing you from accepting what you are.

The whole RE-PURPOSING of learning is to try to use learning, which was made as a weapon against yourself, to try to lead to the REALIZATION that you need do nothing. Or that you need learn nothing, because you're already perfect.

So this whole business of an ultimate goal, of spiritual awakening, it's NOT about accumulating stuff and getting yourself to change into something. It's in fact just a matter of realising what you already are, what God already created, recognizing the existing truth about yourself. It's an uncovering, an unlearning, an undoing of everything that interferes with that awareness.

This waking up, it's not the same thing as a producing. You don't cause or create or produce your perfect self. God did that already. So the journey isn't about you starting out with nothing and ending up with everything. You already had everything before the separation. It's just about being RESTORED to what you already are, REMEMBERING what is already true, and sort of coming to your senses again.

You don't need to do God's job of creating yourself. That was the whole ego problem to begin with - believing that you could CHANGE YOURSELF, that you could change what God created, and thus turn yourself INTO what you wanted. And now you are using that same approach to try to turn your ego self into what you want - some kind of more spiritual self. It won't work.

It's not your job to create or put in place the enlightened self that you want to be. God has willed that you be that forever, and you ARE that right now. All you are doing is being in denial of it and trying not to accept it. So all you have to do is be willing to accept what is ALREADY true of you. That is just a matter of realisation and recognition, not a matter of accomplishment or achievement or some kind of skill you learn.

So basically what you really need to do is to GO AGAINST everything that says you are not perfect already. That includes learning, it includes denial, it includes trying to be a body, it includes identifying with form, it includes any sense of self that is limited or not permanent. And instead it asks only that you simply JUST BE THE SAME ALL THE TIME. Just carry on being absolutely perfect. In other words, STOP TRYING TO CHANGE.

All this seeking, striving, learning, accumulating, perfecting, studying, conceptualising, thinking, it's all ultimately in and of itself getting in the way of you JUST BEING YOU. Enlightenment has NOTHING to do with changing or transforming or achieving. It is NOT a change. Your spiritual self is already in the light. It IS light. When you seek to change you are seeking to move AWAY FROM the changelessness that you are.

Consider instead that you are perfect now. Continue being perfect. You are constantly perfect. You don't NEED anything. You don't lack anything, you haven't lost anything, you haven't turned into evil, you haven't stopped being innocent and holy, you can never change or become lost or degrade or malfunction. You just are always the same. Always you. Always unchanging. And that is why your soul is at peace.

"Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all." UrW188L1

"The response of holiness, to ANY form of error, is ALWAYS the same. There is no contradiction in what holiness CALLS FORTH. Its ONE response is healing, without ANY regard for what is brought TO it." UrT14E7

"This may threaten my ego, but cannot change my function in any way." UrW82L6

"You were NOT born to die. You CANNOT change, because your Function HAS been fixed by God." UrT29G4

"The mind can think it sleeps, but that is all. It cannot change what is its waking state." UrW167L6

"You cannot change laws you did not make, and the laws of happiness were created FOR you, NOT BY you." UrT8J13

"It is impossible that God lose His identity, for if He did, YOU WOULD LOSE YOURS. And BEING yours, He cannot change Himself, for your identity IS changeless." UrT14G8

"Whatever is true and real is eternal, and CANNOT change or be changed. The Soul is therefore unalterable because it is ALREADY perfect, but the mind can elect the level it chooses to serve. The only limit which is put on its choice is that it CANNOT serve two masters." UrT1B37C

There is a physical time, in terms of spacetime, which is actually just a 'now moment' that keeps shifting its form. The present of time is the only time that seems to exist. Once stuff "as it was" is no longer, the past is gone. There is no actual past or future.

We are located in the present moment, but in the present we keep dreaming of the past and future. We drift away from the present to hide from the light, and to keep replaying the ego/past. All grievances and suffering is in the past.

If you are seeing the past you are psychologically focusing in on what is not here now. In time, the present moment is all that remains. The present moment of time symbolises the always-here-now foreverness of eternity. The present of time is also WHERE you will find access to heaven.

The present moment is where the reflection of God is because presence means immediacy and hereness and actuality. It's where reality is. It's where there is light and love. It's where you'll find peace and happiness and heaven. It's allocated in the now because that's the only "place" where stuff actually is.

When you are dwelling on the past you are in the present dreaming of the past, thinking of old hurts, remembering pain and suffering, attached to things that are gone, hiding in darkness. It is an avoidance of the presence, because the present is where light is.

When you are psychologically focused on the past you do not see anything as it is now in the present, but instead project the darkness of the past onto the present. When you are in the present you are closer to heaven and project heaven's reflection onto it instead, seeing the real world.

You can ONLY find the real world, happiness, love, light, God, peace, etc in the present. You cannot find it in the past or future. NOW is where God is. The past does not exist.

The ego tries to drag the past into the present to keep it going, blotting out the present by projecting the past onto it, and then trying to extend the past into the future producing an illusory 'continuum'. This erases the present from time.

The holy spirit's view is that the present is the only time, there is no past or future, and remaining centred in the presence he extends the present into eternity.

Everything to do with 'level 2' which we might call the separation or the lower order reality or spacetime or the ego thought system, is all to do with the psychological past. All darkness, suffering, sickness and death, victimhood, grief and guilt, fear and sin etc, is all movements into the past. 'Level 2' is the past and its projected future, Level almost-1 is the present in time, and level 1 is eternity.

Eventually time and the present-now-moment of time will disappear, leaving only eternity. The now of time symbolises eternity and is as close as you can get to God/heaven etc while still in spacetime. It's where you see the world "as it is", the real world, the forgiven world, the present "reality".

It's where the happy dream is, where you can see in the light, and where miracles are born. You cannot perform miracles in the past, only in the present. Holy instants are moments in the present without a past. Every part of ACIM's teaching leads toward becoming totally present in the here and now and letting go of everything past and future.

Forgiveness IS the present!

"I see only the past." W7

"My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts." W8

"The mind's preoccupation with the past is the cause of the total misconception about time from which your seeing suffers. Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is." W8

"now is the only time" UrT5E8

"This instant is the only time there is." W308

"Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is." W8

"The present is the only time there is." W164

"The present now remains the only time." W132

"There is no past nor future" UrM25A1

"You HAVE "sinned" IN THE PAST, but there IS no past. Always has no direction." UrT11J7

"A miracle is a beginning and an end(ing). It thus abolishes time. It is always an affirmation of re-birth, which seems to go back, but really goes forward. It undoes the past in the present, and thus releases the future." UrT1B13

"For healing CANNOT be accomplished in the past, and MUST be accomplished in the present to RELEASE the future. THIS interpretation ties the future to the present, and EXTENDS THE PRESENT, rather than the past." UrT12D10

"NO SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP IS EXPERIENCED IN THE PRESENT." UrT16H2

"His past has NO reality in the present, and you CANNOT see it." UrT12F1

"Let no dark cloud out of YOUR past obscure him from you, for truth lies ONLY in the present" UrT12F5

"Here in the present is the world set free." UrW132L3

"He is as safe in the present as he was before illusions were accepted into his mind, and as he will be when he has let them go." URM17A7

"There is no fear in the present, when each instant stands clear and separated from the past, without its shadow reaching out into the future." UrT15B7

"In the holy instant, you see, in each relationship, what it WILL be, when you perceive ONLY the present." UrT15F8

"Let no defenses but your present trust direct the future" UrW137L20 "The miracle reminds you of a Cause forever present, perfectly untouched by time and interference." UrT28B7

"Past, present, and future are not continuous" UrT12F4

"Yet in the present love is obvious, and its effects apparent. All the world shines in reflection of its holy light, and I perceive a world forgiven at last." W293

"The birth of Christ is now, without a past or future. He has come to give His present blessing to the world, restoring it to timelessness and love. And love is ever present, here and now." W308

"FUTURE loss is not your fear. But PRESENT joining IS your dread." UrT26I3

When he said "mind is the builder," he did not realize that it is only what it is building NOW that really creates the future. The past, in itself, does not have the ability to do this. Whenever we move from one instant to the next, the previous one no longer exists.

"In brief, the past is NOW your justification for entering into a continuing, unholy alliance with the ego AGAINST THE PRESENT. For the present IS forgiveness." UrT17D11

The present is before time WAS, and WILL BE when time is no more. In it is everything that is eternal, and they ARE one. THEIR continuity is timeless, and their communication is unbroken, for they are NOT SEPARATED by the past. Only the past CAN separate, and IT is nowhere.

If there is a pain in my hand, and if I believe there is a pain in my hand, I will begin to experience reactions about the pain.

This is simply because I see there being some kind of causality coming from the pain. I think it has a power over me. I see it as happening to me. I seem to be experiencing it as though it has happened without me asking for it. And so it seems unfair, malicious, unwanted, unwelcome, as though these sentiments are somehow justified expressions of me being holier or more innocent than this.

And if this pain in the hand continues or increases, then I will likely increase in my perception of victim hood, and simply by the reversal of cause and effect, seeing cause as outside of myself, I am actively creating responsive conditions inside of myself which show up as reactions, having threatened my own self with my own mistaken perception of this pain.

I myself am creating my own reactions, including fear which begins to mount in response, as though the pain is causing me to be afraid - what does it mean, what is it leading to, why is it happening, but simply also the sheer apparent fact (albeit unreal) that it is even happening at all, is enough to provide an upset.

"I am upset because I see something that is not there." - ACIM

And so as my fearful reaction increases, so too does my conviction that this is a more serious problem than before, that it calls for magical curative measures which will attack it and manipulate it and try to make it go away. And the more strongly I feel passionate about the need to be rid of it, the more I will actually add empowerment to it, seeing it as being so strong and mighty as to deserve serious counter-measures.

These perceptions of the need for a counter measure, a retaliation, a reaction of any justified kind, a fear, or any sense of taking this seriously or treating it as real, simply shows the extent of my mistakedness and the fact that what I am ACTUALLY doing is CREATING THIS. I create it with my fear of it, I create it with my rejection of it, I create it with my desire to be rid of it, and I create it with my attempt to fix it.

And the more real of a problem it seems to become, the more certain I will be that I really need to get something done about this because it's very very serious indeed. And yet in perceiving it, describing it, envisioning it, interacting with it and making it be serious as such - believing in its appearance - I am merely choosing to manifest it, to give energy to it, to feed it.

The reason that we do this is because when we are using the mind incorrectly and are entering into illusions, false perceptions and errors, we start to experience the opposite of what we attempt to achieve. We think that we do not want pain in the hand, but this means that we will put it there. We think the pain in the hand should not be happening, and such intensify its happening. We think that it is making us very afraid, and as such we literally are causing it to become more monstrous.

We do not realize that as soon as we have stepped away from real truth and have entered into mistaken truth, we've lost our mind and our way, have become deceived, and are now operating our mental powers 'inversed' or back to front.

The ego is an entire thought system based on this back-to-front inversion of truth, and when we are in this mind, we quite literally ask for what we do not want, attract what we are trying to get away from, try to fix what is not even a problem, and generally compound the very issues that we suffer from, not realizing all along that we are inadvertently causing ourselves to prolong the suffering, simply because we're applying ourselves through an inverting filter, a reality flip, which gives us back the exact opposite of what we think we are asking for. And this is simply because once in the ego perception, we are in opposition to the real truth, and therefore are bringing about opposite effects.

Indeed the incorrect form of forgiveness correlates to the ego activities and behaviors of believing that you are sincerely attempting to rid the world of that which is wrong with it, by taking a purer or more innocent standpoint, all the while actually reinforcing, manifesting, increasing and generally adding to the conditions of sinfulness. Such forgiveness then becomes an attack rather than a correction of error, a judgement instead of a miracle.

True forgiveness therefore must entail the cessation of all of the above egoic behaviors, reactions, self-caused chaos, and general inversion of truth and opposition to it. All of these symptoms are expressing merely because you are using the mind backwards, expressing opposition and resistance instead of unity, order and health.

True forgiveness entails the complete UN-doing of all of these egoic thought patterns, attitudes that reinforce the reality of the monster, reactions to it founded in fear which really are created by your own self as part of your psychological reversal and belief in threat, and the cessation of "making real" this problem. To lend reality to it, to believe in it, dwell upon it, give it credit, think of it seriously, forget to laugh at it, mistake it for real danger (which does not exist), and to generally actually side with it while claiming and portraying yourself as doing the exact opposite, is simply to keep the problem and make it worse.

We need to learn to forget this world. As Jesus says, forget this world and come with wholly empty hands unto your God. To forget is to literally pay no further attention, knowing that the thing was unreal, and requires no upkeep to defend against it.

We need to learn to stop learning the wrong things. We keep teaching ourselves with the ego, we keep learning that sickness is real, that sin is irreversible, and that death is inevitable. This must all be corrected and undone and vanquished from the mind, replaced with the Holy Light of the Truth, which comes to set you free.

The truth does set you free, literally, actually, and in reality. Because the Truth is God and only Love is Real.

"The fear of healing arises in the end from an unwillingness to accept the unequivocal fact that healing is necessary. The fear arises because of the necessary willingness to look at what man has done to himself."

Jesus tells us ..... we do not want to ADMIT .... that we NEED healing. Because if we admit to it, it seems like it's REAL, and therefore it seems frightening.

But if you can't admit that you are in a position where you NEED healing, you also can't acknowledge that indeed healing is called for and be open to receiving it.

So then the fear of "being in need of healing" becomes a fear of healing itself.

Again this goes back to more fucking DENIAL. ie by denying that you HAVE actually done something to hurt yourself, or that something has happened that you do not want, you are AVOIDING (bypassing) the fact that it HAS occurred.

We do the same thing with this whole world. As Jesus says, the separation HAS occurred, and denying this is a very unworthy use of denial. We are NOT supposed to be denying that the separation has occurred because we are IN the state of it happening. Or at least the strong believing of it. And so it DOES seem real to us. And because of that we DO NEED atonement, we DO NEED healing, we DO NEED correction.

And that means admitting that we've fucked up somehow, and that we're going to have to actually do something about it to change our minds, heal our perceptions, undo errors, etc. There is in effect work to be done, and DENYING IT does not get the work done. Instead it results in a state of denial and spiritual bypassing "cus it never happened."

We need to stop pretending that the world isn't right in front of our faces. So long as we are in a body the world is real to us. And we're going to have to deal with it.

If we can't admit that we've put ourselves into a precarious position, we're not going to be seeing the NEED for a solution. And we DO NEED healing. Denying "the wound" is not the solution to healing the wound. It's just avoidance of admitting that it's even there, while keeping it.

Burying your head in the spiritual sandpit won't get you out of hell.

"To you the miracle CANNOT seem natural, because what you have done to hurt your minds, has made THEM so UNnatural that they do not remember what is natural to them. And when you are TOLD about it, you cannot UNDERSTAND it."

"You do NOT know, because the journey into darkness has been long and cruel, and you have gone deep into it."

It's quite interesting that you could be completely surrounded with safety and love and happiness, and yet not be able to see it, and to then believe that you are not safe or happy.

This is the fundamental ego problem. It is a blindness, an inability to see what is really there. It is a denial of reality.

You could be surrounded by loving, supportive people, completely protected and safe, and yet, within yourself, hiding in a private prison world of insanity, believe that there's all kinds of reasons to be afraid and upset and not feel safe. Because you cannot SEE the safety that is present, and are not ACCEPTING it, you remain in isolation and despair. Even though you're immersed in love!

You are still within God. God is still with you. You are still as God created you. And yet, here you are, in your little private ego world, believing that God is not here at all. You believe its not safe in this existence, that there are many reasons to be upset and afraid, that you are alone and unloved, unworthy, unhappy. But you're INSIDE GOD! And you don't see it. You don't recognize it. You don't realize how incredibly perfectly okay everything is.

So it's really NOT a matter of, or a question of, are you okay, or are you safe, or do you have reasons to be upset, etc... that's not really what's going on. Because, behind your BLOCKS TO AWARENESS, there IS perfect safety and love and happiness surrounding you RIGHT NOW. Fully and completely. Love everywhere. But you are now AWARE of it, because you are blocking it, and so SIMULTANEOUSLY you believe that it is not there.

It's like you're swimming in a lake and wondering where the water is.

It's like you're laying on a beach perfectly dry and believing you are drowning.

It's like being terrified that everything's going wrong when all around you are miracles and love and joy and celebration.

You simple are not AWARE of what is REALLY happening, WHERE you really are, WHO you really are, or WHAT really is.

Removing the blocks to awareness IS THE ONLY WAY for you to become AWARE that you ARE SAFE, and loved, and happy, and that you are still with God as God created you. The blocks to awareness are showing you a cruel world. The blocks to awareness are making you believe and hallucinate that dangerous monsters are all around you, when in fact GOD is all around you.

Instead of ... what if something terrible has happened (separation from God) ..... what if..... you are still in God and everything is ok and nothing has happened?

Removing the blocks to awareness REVEALS what is really here, which is God, and love, and all is well

It doesn't matter what you did or how bad it was, it is forgivable. People make mistakes. Sometimes mistakes seem very serious. Sometimes that seems to justify why should feel guilty. Presumably you hurt someone or did something 'wrong'. Well, did anyone come along and tell you, you know what, even though you did this and you maybe even meant it, you're still unconditionally lovable? Did anyone remind you, so that even you yourself would believe it, that you're lovable in spite of what you did, and that you are permitted to forgive yourself, even if other people don't forgive you?

This society we live in, coupled with the 'ego' in each person, has a very skewed and ridiculous idea of how you should feel when you make a mistake. Especially if people in your past punished you for making mistakes instead of educating you or teaching you of your unconditional lovability.

For example when someone does something wrong, most people would find that person guilty and judge them. And even the person themselves - you in this case - would even agree with them that you did something wrong and therefore 'should' be guilty, like you are supposed to suffer. But why?

The whole purpose of this guilty suffering is to try to atone, to make up for, what you think you did. So supposedly, your 'offering' of guilt, and your wallowing in guilt and shame, is supposed to be some form of compensation. It's as if, you have too suffer 600 days of guilt to make up for the 600 units of sin that you committed. And during that time, you are not allowed to be loved or forgiven. And even you agree to this. You agree that you are unworthy of forgiveness or love, and that you deserve some kind of punishment.

So then you go around being guilty, believing that you're supposed to be, that you deserve to, and that you should especially show everyone else how guilty you are, so that you'll burn off the karma or whatever BS that you think you deserve. And only after you've 'done enough time' like this, might you be allowed to let it go and be forgiven - i.e. pardoned, by the very same people who accused you of sin and who held you in condemnation.

So really guilt is actually your attempt to give a gift to other people, an offering, to make up for whatever crappy mistake you made. Like, somehow if you suffer enough other people will be pleased. You actually believe this lie. It's an egotistical lie and not at all mature. But because of this dynamic, most people actually believe that being guilty for doing something wrong is the same thing as caring about the people that you did it to, and that it is a way of showing that you are making it up to them - that you love them, by giving them what they seem to want. It seems they want guilt from you, and that giving it to them is making it up to them. It's ridiculous. And so in your mind, guilt = love. This is grossly mistaken.

Guilt is not love. Nobody in the entire history of the world has ever truly benefited from anyone being guilty for a mistake. Ever. The only thing that's happened is this.... the whole world was doing perfectly fine, you came along and did something wrong which was attack #1, and then to make up for it, you went ahead and moped around in guilt and negative self pity for 15 years which consequently actually brings everyone else down, lowers everyone's mood, removes a loving contributor from society, and is therefore attack #2 on those same people. Both doing things wrong and feeling guilty for it are attacks of unlove which require a RESTORATION of love to make up for it. And neither of these attacks improve the state of the world for anyone concerned.

If society was more mature and recognized that mistakes call for forgiveness, not punishment, they would also recognize that it is in everyone's best interests that you return to LOVE after you make a mistake, not guilt. Guilt is the opposite of love. If what you've done in your mistake is bring everyone down, then your true 'atoning' for this and making it up to everyone, is to reclaim your innocence, forgive yourself and everyone involved, for everyone involved to forgive you, and for you to be lifted up and restored to a mutually shared state of unconditional love. Then you've truly given something back to make up for the error, i.e. you've offered healing, and correction, and 'repentance' for the 'sin' rather than the completely useless offering of being guilty or ashamed. But society is generally not mature like this. Society loves to blame people and judge and condemn and criticize and find people guilty. And maybe you are part of that system.

So your challenge is, do you keep going along with this system of guilt, where you prove time and again that mistakes call for suffering, and that mistakes demand punishment, and that people should not be forgiven for making mistakes... or do you break out of this ridiculous system and become a leader, a shining example of what it means to be forgiving and loving, in spite of what anyone else says or thinks about it, to show that there is a better way for people to treat each other and that just as you deserve 100% forgiveness for what you did, so does everyone else if they were making mistakes.

So now, if you 'do yourself in', that is not helping anyone. That is just adding another insult to injury. It's cowardly actually. And it's only going to pile on an extra layer of suffering for all involved, not alleviate them from it. You think that they WANT you to suffer and that they want you to be guilty, and maybe they do... and if they do, that's their own egos, that's them being a-holes, that's their lack of maturity, and you should not stand for or accept that. Just because other people find you guilty does not mean you are guilty or that you are not forgivable. Their failure to forgive you is their own choice to choose to believe in guilt and punishment. You do not have to believe that. You can take a higher road.

You have to decide that no matter what anyone else thinks of you or whether anyone is hurt and no matter if you have done something really bad, you have to decide that you are going to choose to be innocent, that you are going to forgive yourself completely, that you are going to claim your own right to be forgiven, and that if nobody else likes it then that's their problem. You have to stand up for yourself. You can't wait for other people to forgive you, they generally are incapable. You deserve to live. You do not deserve to die. You deserve to be completely exonerated.

Know that there is absolutely nothing you can do in this world which is in any way serious enough or bad enough to cause unconditional love to stop loving you, because it loves you no matter what you do or who you are or what mistakes you make. Unconditional love loves you far more than the magnitude of any errors, even if you really really wanted to do something 'bad', it still looks upon you with absolute forgiveness and acceptance, and it passes a judgement on you ALWAYS that you are innocent.

It is not and will not help anyone to punish yourself, or to believe that you deserve it, or to enact it upon yourself on behalf of other people, which is really you doing it to yourself. And you're doing it to yourself only because you have not forgiven yourself, and that's really the main issue. You have to decide to heal and forgive your shame and guilt. You deserve love. You do not deserve to be unhappy for the rest of forever just because you did something wrong. You need to heal from what you did and allow yourself to be worthy of forgiveness.

Know this. Nobody in their truly right mind ever does anything wrong on purpose. To do something wrong you have to be temporarily mistaken and insane, which means you do not know what you're doing, and therefore it is forgivable.

Also know this. Shame is self imposed. And it will cause you to walk around the world feeling like there is a target on your back that everyone can see, that you are super-self conscious all the time and like everyone knows about your little secret sin that you committed. You'll feel like you can never hide enough or get away from it. And you'll start to withdraw from people in order for them not to find out about how evil you are. And eventually you'll become self-destructive and punish yourself because you don't believe you are worthy of love.

Who deserves to be loved and forgiven when they have committed some crime or sin? That's what the collective egotism of society says. That you don't. But the answer is, YOU DO. Your shame is telling you that you don't deserve love and that nobody wants you and nobody accepts you, and that they're justified in that, and that you even agree with them that you should be put to death. YOU agree with it, because YOU are the one who thinks you are unworthy.

You decided that. You need to forgive yourself and change your belief so that it doesn't run you into the ground. You've already suffered waaaaaaay more than you even needed to to begin with. Let yourself off the hook and reclaim your power, your entitlement to be happy, your deserving to be loved and accepted, and brush off anyone who says you have no right. Because if you believe them when the say you have no right, you will believe it yourself, and then you will make darn sure that your life goes to hell.

Ultimately you are your own worst and only enemy. This has nothing to do with anyone else. It's to do with you learning that you can be forgiven even when you make mistakes, that you can be loved even when you don't see to deserve it, and that you can come to accept yourself for doing something unacceptable. That's called learning to be UNCONDITIONAL. Otherwise you are practicing conditional love, conditional acceptance, and conditional forgiveness.

That's the kind of attitude of an egotistical maniac - that you only deserve if it you meet some special conditions or terms or social rules or regulations. You need to rise above conditional love, both for yourself and for others, and that's going to mean that if YOU want to find love for yourself in spite of what you did, then you're also going to have to learn to love other people regardless of what they do. It works both ways. You can't believe in your own innocence unless you believe in other people's innocence too. And you won't be able to accept that you deserve love instead of punishment, unless you believe that other people deserve love instead of punishment. So you need to extend TO others, do unto others as you would have them do to you... be forgiving as much as you want to be forgiven - unconditionally. Be loving as much as you want to be loved, unconditionally.

Nobody deserves to die for making a mistake. Everyone deserves to live and be happy and enjoy life and be loved forever regardless, by a love that is so full and whole and strong and unconditionally that it doesn't even blink an eye when you make a mistake, it just keeps on loving you endlessly. Can you handle that? Total endless love? That's what God has to offer.