Everyone is free. Everyone is entirely given total permission to be free by God. That means that even if you choose to deny God, you are free to do so. Even if you want to try to be evil, you are free to do so. Even if you want to hate and attack and murder and destroy, you are technically free to do so.

That doesn't mean that there won't be consequences that happen as a result of what you choose, however. If you hate you will be hating yourself, and cannot love yourself while you hate. If you attack and murder you are in effect attempting to kill yourself, and you will feel guilty and alone as a result, not to mention society's typical punishments.

But that doesn't meant you are not free if you so choose. God doesn't coerce. He does will your happiness and sanity but it's still up to you if you want to try to be insane and choose things which produce suffering. No i'm not condoning that anyone does anything harmful whatsoever, I'm just saying that you have the freedom.

If someone is being hateful and you start trying to resist their hate, you are actually trying to be affected by it. If you let them be hateful you will feel a sense of relief that you are not as affected by it. You are choosing whether or not you are affected by it. If you are not affected by it then you can feel at peace even as someone tries to hate, because it really is up to your own freedom as to what you experience.

It isn't therefore necessary to try to control or resist or stop people from being hateful or mean or vicious, because if you say that you need them to stop then you're also saying that your peace and happiness depend on their choice. And that means you're trying to deny your own freedom. And then you're trying to deny them their freedom, to imprison them, in order to control reality and try to make things be the way you want them.

You have no real right to control the free will of others, to imprison them for anything they think they do, to stop them or prevent them or resist them or attack them in the name of love. Everyone is always free, even what people call criminals or evil or abusers or enemies. This isn't necessarily a popular view but it's reality.

Jesus tells us in ACIM that we should let the people in the world be as vicious as they may, because the only way that we would be affected by that viciousness would by be forgetting that you had the freedom to dream the dream. If you are able to choose not to be affected, because you are free, and immortal, then obviously it's not really the responsibility of anyone else to "behave correctly" to try to make your world right.

You don't need, and shouldn't need, anyone else to change in order for you to be happy and at peace, otherwise your peace depends on them and now you are seeking outside yourself for salvation. Not to mention that you are shifting responsibility outside of yourself and placing the weight of guilt into the hands of others. Wanting the haters to stop hating is a form of scapegoating, and the projection of justified anger as guilt.

You don't need people to stop hating you, or to acknowledge you, or to recognize you, or to treat you well. You need to claim your immortality and invulnerability and stop using people to attack yourself. They have no power over you that you don't give away to them yourself. When you give no power to the illusion to cause you it has no effect on you. Only you can attack yourself, only you can make yourself suffer, and only you can really hate yourself. Let the world spin, let the haters hate, and let them have their madness. It's not yours.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

"For the present IS forgiveness." UrT17D11

This was an eye-opener for me, that you have to be IN THE PRESENT in order to be forgiving. Not only that, but the state of mind that you're in when you're in the present, truly, without a past, is the forgiving state of mind.

There present is where you have no grievances, because all grievances are to do with the past. What someone did or didn't do in the past, past hurts, old arguments, unforgiven conflicts, things which "happened" - past tense. Without a past you cannot have grievances. This is why "the miracle" and the vision of christ ONLY exist in the present.

This also means that when you move into the present, you have to have let go of the past, and brushed it off, and dropped it. So if you had grievances toward a person, you would have to be willing to completely let that go and "forgive" them ie no longer hold it against them as a sin. Because sin is always in the past, along with guilt, and the ego. Only if THERE IS NO PAST is your brother forgiven.

Without a past you see people as they are now, without any history of faults and failures and offences. Being fully and squarely in the present moment of time, with no concern for the future or the past, that's where you find the light. It's where you find the real world, because it means you're taking a look at "reality as it is now", rather than disappearing off into a dream of memory. True accurate perception requires total present attention.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone saying or teaching that forgiveness has to take place in the present moment. And this doesn't mean that when you "do your forgivenesses" you are doing them now in the present. We are not in the present, typically, most of the time, or when we're reciting lessons or quotes or trying to apply the course. Most of the time we're lost in he past and giving lip service to the STATE of forgiveness.

To really forgive, just as Jesus says that miracles are seen in light and the light is in the present and miracles heal only in the present, your mind has to let go of the whole of the past. In fact it has to let go of time, past and future, to experience a holy instant. Being in the "now" is the only way to be actually freed from all forms of suffering, which are always rooted in the past.

You can't really be forgiving toward someone if you still believe they did something, which doesn't just mean writing off what they did and keeping the idea of time. It means actually getting out of time, out of the past, realising the past doesn't even exist, and being in the present. In the present you are taking a fresh new look at a person, immediately and without a history.

"The miracle enables you to see your brother WITHOUT his past, and so perceive him as born again. His errors ARE all past, and by perceiving him WITHOUT them, you are RELEASING him. And since his past is yours, you SHARE in this release. Let no dark cloud out of YOUR past obscure him from you, for truth lies ONLY in the present, and you WILL find it if you seek it there. You have looked for it where it is NOT, and therefore have not found it. Learn, then, to seek it where it IS, and it WILL dawn on eyes that see. Your past was made in anger, and if you use it to ATTACK the present you will NOT SEE the freedom that the present holds. Judgment and condemnation are BEHIND you, and unless you bring them WITH you, you WILL see that you are free of them." UrT12F5

To be in the present is to be forgiving. You can't have any sense of a record of sins people committed, unless you are focused on the past. When you focus on the past you're not really seeing anything at all because you're looking at something that is not there anymore. And so you lose vision. You regain vision, sight, Christ vision, in the light of the present, when you are here now, aligned with the always-now of eternity.

All sickness is merely a lack of love. When love is lacking, life is lacking. There is a diminishing of light, of presence, of strength. In the darkness there begins to be limitation, deterioration, fragmentation, weakness and corruption.

The simple task of miracle-working then becomes to "supply what is lacking". What is lacking is love. This is why "Miracles are expressions of love." "Miracles are a form of healing. They supply a lack, and are performed by those who have more for those who have less."

If you have more of this "life", this light and love, this power, you give it to another. What can that mean other than to simply extend love from God to the person. God is life and to give love is to give life. "Miracles mean life, and God is the giver of life." "Miracles are a universal blessing from God".

Can it be any simpler really? To give life is to resurrect, to strengthen, to encourage, to uplift, to inspire, to rejuvenate, to energize. "Miracles are energizers." A lack of love or life is a lack of "energy", for want of a better word. A seeming withering or weakness, a reduction in the brightness of the spark of life.

Let's simply say that love is life, it is light, it is power, it is strength, it is innocence, it is invulnerability, and it is healing. If someone is seeming to "lack love", remembering that "sin" is merely a seeming absence of lack of love, and the "proof of sin" are merely the outward appearances of the "presence of an absence", then simply supplying the lack corrects the problem.

"Sickness is but another name for sin (a lack of love/life). Healing is but another Name for God. The miracle is thus a call to Him."

Where there was darkness light is given. Where there was a manifestation of a lack of wholeness, wholeness re-establishes life. Where glimpses of death seemed to be showing up, they are merely shadows of the seeming absence of life. Evidence of sin, or of "unforgiveness". Because "forgiveness is an earthly form of LOVE."

Miracles are restorative. They resurrect and raise the dead. They raise the dead in the sense that someone lacking in love is "not fully alive." "No man who lives in fear is really alive." Fear is another name for the absence of love and life, especially since love is safety.

A lack of life is an illusion of a state of death, and "sickness is but a little death". The miraculous power of God that is love, enlivens and renews and undoes the consequences of wrong decisions. It removes the interference to perfection. By infusing the other person with life you are "raising them up", in terms of psychology and energy.

A person with more "life" in their mind and experience will stop manifesting symptoms of death. As the inner spark is ignited and amplified, the outer manifestations of that raised, more enlightened awareness, must give rise to what would outwardly appear to be the disappearance of sickness and death. And thus will the body literally appear to return from death.

Miracle-working is about giving love and life. It is about FUELING another through a flow of energetic healing power from God. People in absent states suffer from "drained batteries" if you will, and need to be recharged. Emphasizing the higher truth of the person, giving love, and extending God to them, must lift their spirits. You have to "pour love into them."

Miracles energize the weak and give them life. Loving expressions support and uplift and empower. What has light has life, and what has life is immortal.

"I raised the dead by KNOWING that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the living God Created. Why do you believe that it is harder for me to inspire the dis-spirited or to stabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty in miracles: YOU do."

"Prayer is the medium of miracles. Prayer is the natural communication of the Created with the Creator. Through prayer, love is received, and through miracles love is expressed."

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures came to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality."

Forgiveness absolutely depends on your ability to recognize and believe that NOTHING HAPPENED.

And I give you this profound and inspiring quote re forgiveness:

"It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in that view are all your sins forgiven."

So simple yet so fucking profound.

It means ALL sins are not real! It means that in order to "accept the atonement", you HAVE to get your mind to where it is convinced that:

a) sin is not real, EVER, and

b) because of that, NOTHING has really ever happened.

This MUST also mean that the entire world in which "stuff happens" CANNOT BE HAPPENING. It cannot be real.

Sin is the idea that stuff is really happening. This world is the illusion that stuff is really happening. IT IS NOT!

So the only way that you can forgive yourself "all the way", is by absolutely and without exception accepting these facts:

1) The world is not reality, it is entirely 100% illusion

2) You have not ever done anything here

3) You cannot be sinful because sin is not reality

4) There is no real sin

5) Therefore, in reality, in truth, NOTHING HAS HAPPENED.

Forgiveness=Atonement=World is not real=There is no sin!

"...I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him.

I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

In order for you to fully allow Holy Spirit to decide for you, whether you are truly innocent or guilty, you need to be fully willing to accept His verdict.

That means, unconditional acceptance.

If I go to Holy Spirit holding onto some kind of hope that He will decide one way or another, or some kind of belief in the reasons why I will keep my guilt, then I'm not really allowing HIM to decide for me. It means I'm still using my own decision-making processes to evaluate my own guilt and am judging myself and having an authority problem.

So let's put it this way.

Think of Holy Spirit like a courtroom judge who is going to listen to your case. In this courtroom session, you do not have any say in what the law is. The law will be perfectly enacted. You will not be able to squirm your way out of or into anything. So really, you do not have any say in what the verdict is going to be. Holy Spirit knows about all of the evidence and nothing is hidden. So you really are not in a position to be able to control anything. It is impossible for you to sway the verdict or get off lightly or persuade the jury or anyway. All you're going to be able to do is receive a verdict. Whatever that verdict says, is going to be the law, and you are going to have to accept it. There is no point in fighting it or resisting it.

So in order to get yourself ready for Holy Spirit's verdict, you are going to need to SURRENDER. And that means, unconditionally, that you give up trying to evaluate for yourself whether you are guilty or innocent. It's no use trying to believe EITHER that you are innocent when you feel guilty, or that you are guilty when you're really innocent. You do not know. You do not have the faculties to know. That's why you've come to court, to allow He Who Knows to make a completely informed decision.

So your position now is that you will ACCEPT whatever Holy Spirit's verdict is. If Holy Spirit says that you are 100% guilty, then you are going to WILLINGLY ACCEPT THIS, even if it sucks. If Holy Spirit says you are 100% innocent, you are going to WILLINGLY ACCEPT THIS also, even if you think you're meant to be guilty. See, regardless of what YOU think, you have to put ALL of that aside and be willing to really hand over the decision-making to Him. It's not up to you whether you're innocent or guilty. That's for God to decide. You have to admit to yourself you are not in a position to 'invent' innocence or guilt. You are willing to surrender and accept whatever God says is true. And that means unconditionally, no matter what He says. You're just going to have to live with it.

I don't mean that to sound dire like some kind of terrible fate, but you do need to have that unconditional willingness to ACCEPT and allow Him to decide. So then you ask Him. Ok Holy Spirit, here's all the shit that I believe, all my guilt, etc... what do YOU think of this? Am I really guilty? You decide. If he says you're guilty, you're guilty. If he says you're innocent, you're innocent. So you listen. And he says.... drumroll please....

His unconditional response is ALWAYS, YOU ARE INNOCENT.

And as He tells you this, any fear relating to what His verdict will be, will lift. And you will be relieved that you are NOT GUILTY. None of what you thought about yourself or others was true. And because you were willing to fully accept, unconditionally, His verdict, you are now in a position to actually ACCEPT IT. So you allow it. And this allows His HEALING to come into you, and literally to undo and correct all of the consequences of your wrong decision, which actually does mean undoing all negative feelings and energies in your mind/body, removing all guilt, and leaving you PURIFIED. It may take a bit of practice for you to allow Him to do this, but He can indeed 'supernaturally' heal you of all consequences that came from your guilt, especially now that you have accepted that you are innocent.

Party time!

I've been wrong about the world. Again.

My view of what the world IS has changed a lot recently. I see now that ACIM is telling me the world itself was projected out as "nothing", or an empty screen, and THEN we projected secondary meaning onto it and "gave" it meaning. We can give it egoic meaning, or we can give it heavenly meaning. And thus it acts like a mirror to REFLECT an outward picture of an inward condition. This is projected on top of what the world IS, which is a veil of illusions.

What I USED to believe was quite different. Some people say there is an "objective world", and that the course is telling us we have "subjective" perceptions about it. In this view we have beliefs ABOUT the world. I never liked this approach because it seemed to imply the world had to be objective, which meant it was real. And clearly other parts of ACIM tell us God did NOT create the world. So then I threw out the idea that we were really having ideas ABOUT the world, which led to believing the world ITSELF was a more direct "belief".

What seemed to make more sense was to say that there is no objective world, especially in light of "there is no world." And there are statements like "the world is false perception" and "there is no world apart from what you wish", etc. These seem to imply, coupled with "projection makes perception", that we literally project out the physical world in one single act, and how it appears to us depends on "how we made it" or what we projected it from. Such that there is no objective world, ONLY subjective fluctuating worlds that live INSIDE of subjectivity.

I thought this made sense for a long time because there is a lot in the course about how you cannot see both worlds, how you can have either false or true perception, how you see what you project, and how forgiveness/christ-vision doesn't look upon bodies. Again, major parts of the course seemed to click into place, but there were always a few things which seemed to not quite line up.

I'd also find that there would always be SOME people who believed certain other chunks of the course, which contradicted my ideas about the world. Maybe they got those parts RIGHT, BUT also got OTHER parts wrong, and so still didn't have the whole picture. Some things they said seemed to side with a partial view, that the world must be objectively real, created by God, and that's why the course talks about projecting ONTO it. But this couldn't be based on what else is written.

So it always seemed like everyone had a big chunk of the truth but not the whole picture. And I thought I had the whole picture too. But apparently I did not. Because what I see in the course now tells me something different. Something which produces far less contradictions and seems to be a more complete picture.

What it says is that in the separation, we came up with the idea of an opposite to God, which is really an idea of nothingness, since God is everything. This was projected out from the mind, which "made the world". We're talking here about the making of space and time and setting the wheels of physical objects/evolution in motion. But because this was an idea of nothing, it really had no meaning of its own. You might also notice that "outer space" is really mostly empty nothingness.

"That was the first projection of error outward. ***The world arose to hide it (a first projection), and became the screen on which it was projected ( a second projection)***, and drawn between you and truth."

"The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it."

"***The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning.*** And what you behold ***upon it*** are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real."

"It represents a situation in which God and the ego "challenge" each other as to whose meaning is to be written ***in the empty space*** which meaninglessness provides. The ego rushes in frantically to establish its own "ideas" there, fearful that ******the void****** may otherwise be used to demonstrate its own unreality."

"Yet separation is but empty space, enclosing nothing, doing nothing, and as unsubstantial as the vacant place between the ripples that a ship has made in passing by."

Clearly then, what has taken place are TWO steps. The first is that we projected out the physical world of bodies - really empty nothingness ("the body is nothing" etc). This was a world of nothing and the idea of sin or "absence of love/everything". It's really neutral because it's nothing and has no meaning. A meaningless world. This world then became A SCREEN onto which we SECONDARILY PROJECTED the mind's belief in it, which GAVE it meaning, GAVE it reality, and projected sin and guilt onto it.

In a sense then, there ARE two kinds of layers to the world. What the world IS, and what we MAKE OF IT. This then doesn't mean the world is objectively real, only that it is in some way "separate" from the secondary projections we put ONTO it. The meaning we GIVE to it. This also corresponds to the idea that the world itself is an illusion, which we have further illusions ABOUT.

For example, the world is an illusion and is unreal. When we then project untruth onto it, trying to MAKE it real by GIVING it reality, this is what we call false perception. It makes a world which is actually an illusion, SEEM as if it's is REAL world. And now physical form is believed and appearances deceive and the mind is lost, insane and confused. The alternative is true perception which recognizes the world for WHAT IT IS, "accurate perception", which reveals the world IS an illusion, IS nothing, and does not really exist.

So it all still lines up perfectly with what the course says, provided you now recognize that the interpretation of what you THOUGHT it MEANT, or what it was referring to, might be a little different. That the world is "distinct" from what you project onto it, doesn't have to mean or imply that God created it. And because it IS "separate" from your projections onto it, or beliefs about it, you CAN change your mind ABOUT it. And we are indeed asked over and over again to do this.

"The world you see (false perceptions about an illusory world) cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world (loves the illusory world through truth). God's Word has promised us that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be impossible. But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact (as though, a distinct separate "thing"). You cannot choose what this should be (because it was projected in the first projection). But you can choose how you would see it (per the second projection). Indeed, you must choose this."

So now it becomes possible to reinterpret the "world you made", by reinterpreting the "world you see" ie your psychological interpretation of what you made, or what you "make of" what you made. When you take the neutral meaningless illusory world you made, and you take away from it the projection of sin and guilt, and leave "an empty space", uncluttered from ego projections, UPON which you project God, love, light, holiness, the "world you made" now reflects heaven's light, and you see "God in everything you see." But bear in mind this is a REFLECTION in a mirror which has no meaning of its own, and is STILL just nothing. It does not mean the mirror is God or is heaven.

What this means for me is that I now recognize there ARE two parts to this world. There is the world we made, the physical world of forms, which in and of itself is nothing and means nothing. Then there is meaning we GIVE to it which is what I project ONTO it which produces my perceptions ABOUT it.

This results in my "joining the camp" which claimed that perception was always "about the world", but WITHOUT the clause that suggested "this must mean God created it." Rather than merely think that "the world is in my mind", ie that its contents are my mind's contents, I can now approach "the world I made" but without the false-perception ego baggage.

In a way this means no longer "throwing the world out with the bathwater". The dirty water of ego projections ONTO it can be let go, and I can then become more willing to look at this same world, the physical world, through eyes of Christ. Devoid of the projected sin and guilt, or labels of wrongfulness. Which also overlooks appearances and differences and forms and transcends the hierarchy of illusions.

Recognizing that, eventually, I can still look at "this world" through more loving eyes, WITHOUT it having to mean that God created it, because of the clarity that we DID project it out in a first step BEFORE we projected ONTO it. I notice now many references to how we look UPON the world, project UPON the world, and therefore FILTER the world, depending on where our mind is at, and this can be thought of as SEPARATE FROM the physical world itself.

I can now stop resisting the idea of blades of grass being "a sign of God's perfection", because if seen through loving eyes they are reinterpreted as SYMBOLS that REFLECT God's perfection. Not because they are made of God or are created BY him, but because they are forgiven.

"All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally TRANSFORMS vision, and lets you see the real world, reaching quietly and gently across chaos, and removing all illusions that had twisted your perception, and fixed it on the past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God's perfection. From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily to his home. And there, he knows that he has ALWAYS rested there in peace."

What this means is that a kind of ... reunion of sorts, between me and the physical world, up to a point of course. A willingness to recognize that it can MAKE SENSE, to suggest I can look at it still but in a way that doesn't take its illusions seriously, OR condemn it, OR needing to make it out to be negative. Because what the world IS is in fact completely neutral and nothing, ultimately.

My egoic false perceptions about it, were mistaken for what the world IS. Guilt and sin and fear we ASSOCIATED WITH the world, thought to be ONE THING, when in fact they are two things. I did this as part of my DIS-association of guilt in my mind, which bound my guilt to the world and made me believe IT was inherently guilty. The world cannot be inherently anything, because it is really nothing. There is no world at all.

If what the world IS is not inherently evil, because it is nothing, then this at least provides the logical basis for being able to project love onto it. Rather than the impossibility of loving an inherently false world. If the world can act to reflect heaven, then it makes it OK to "love it", even if this is a temporary love designed ultimately to dispel it.

I also see that I thought that moving into a higher perception meant "not seeing the physical world", and I had associated the physical world with false perception. I thought it should become invisible and unseen, when approaching christ vision. But I see now that in fact a big part of reaching forgiveness still entails looking upon the physical world but WITH forgiveness, which overlooks its forms and such and gives it a love to reflect back. Recognizing it as a mirror with no meaning of its own. As such blades of grass and leaves can become "things of wonder" and the world can appear beautiful, as it prepares to vanish.

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body and mistake it for the Son whom God created (but still looks upon a body). It beholds a light beyond the body (at the same time); an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events (which is still physical), without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

"For you will not interpret what you see without the Aid that God has given you. And in His sight there IS another world. You live in that world just as much as this, for BOTH are concepts of yourself, which can be interchanged, but never jointly held."

"Have you wondered what the world is REALLY like? How would it look through HAPPY eyes? The world you see is but a judgment on YOURSELF. IT is not there at all. But judgment lays a sentence on it, JUSTIFIES it, and MAKES IT REAL. Such is the world you see; a judgment on yourself, and made by YOU. This sickly picture of yourself is carefully preserved by the ego, whose image it IS and which it loves, and placed OUTSIDE you, in the world.”

Notice how that paragraph is really talking about your secondary projection onto the world, which places an image INTO the world, seemingly outside of you, which is a picture of your sick self you projected ONTO it. This is what the EGO makes of you and of the world - the void - the emptiness, in trying to fill it with images.

"It is essential, therefore, that you learn to ***recognize the meaningless, and accept it without fear***. If you are fearful (in ego/false perception), it is certain that you will endow the world with attributes which it does not possess, and crowd it (project onto it secondarily) with images that do not exist."

The world we made ITSELF, can be "a thing of wonder." But only if it is seen through "loving eyes".

"There IS another purpose in the world that error made because it has another Maker, Who CAN reconcile its goal with His Creator's Purpose."

"The real world is attained simply by the COMPLETE forgiveness of the old; the world you see WITHOUT forgiveness. The Great Transformer of perception will undertake WITH you the careful searching of the mind that MADE this world, and uncover TO YOU the SEEMING reasons for your making it. In the light of the REAL reason that He brings, as you follow Him, He will SHOW you that there is NO reason here at all. Each spot HIS reason touches, grows alive with beauty. And what SEEMED ugly, in the darkness of your LACK of reason, is suddenly released to loveliness. Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release."

"Again we come to the question of judgment. This time, ask yourself whether your judgment or the Word of God is more likely to be true. For they say different things about the world, and things so opposite that it is pointless to try to reconcile them. God offers the world salvation; your judgment would condemn it. God says there is no death; your judgment sees but death as the inevitable end of life. God's Word assures you that He loves the world; your judgment says it is unlovable. Who is right? For one of you is wrong. It must be so."

"Peace is impossible to those who look on war. Peace is inevitable to those who offer peace. How easily, then, is your judgment of the world escaped. It is not the world which makes peace seem impossible. It is the world you see that is impossible. Yet has God's Judgment on this distorted world redeemed it and made it fit to welcome peace. And peace descends on it in joyous answer. Peace now belongs here, because a Thought of God has entered. What else but a Thought of God turns hell to Heaven merely by being what It is? The earth bows down before Its gracious Presence, and It leans down in answer to raise it up again. Now is the question different. It is no longer, "Can peace be possible in this world?" but instead, "Is it not impossible that peace be absent here?"

"Into this empty space, from which the GOAL of sin has been removed, is Heaven free to be remembered. Here its peace can come, and perfect healing take the place of death. 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."

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

It's important for us to be willing to look at the world and recognize that it HAS NO MEANING. The world ITSELF is utterly meaningless. It was made as a projected idea of the opposite of God. God is entirely meaningful, so his opposite means nothing at all.

A meaningless world is not necessarily therefore an upsetting world, or lacking world, or a world that can't reflect positivity. It can't of ITSELF be positive, or holy, because it is nothing. But it CAN act like a completely neutral mirror in which holiness can be reflected.

And meaninglessness does NOT necessarily mean depression, darkness, boredom, despair, suicidal tendencies, or lack of purpose. These are in fact all MEANINGS of the ego which it projects onto the world. True meaninglessness is devoid of ANY meaning, either positive OR negative.

The world is therefore really nothing, or you might think of it as neutral. It has no meaning of its own and can only act to symbolize something GIVEN to it. You therefore have to give or project meaning ONTO it to make it mean something at all.

"The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real."

The world thus acts like an empty mirror. You can project egoic ideas of hell onto it, or ideas of heaven and love. You can project God onto it. Since the world HAS no meaning, the ego rushes in to try to give it a hellish meaning. It projects meaning of sin and fear and attack and death. But this only happens when you don't recognize that the world is meaningless. If you don't regard the world as a MIRROR, in which a REFLECTION is seen, because it has no real image of its own, you mistakenly associate the reflection FOR the mirror itself. And now you think that what you projected ONTO it is what it inherently IS.

The world is kind of like a void, or am empty shell. It is nothing in itself. So you give it meaning. You ego gives it the meaning of hell, while the Holy Spirit helps you to give it a the meaning of heaven. Whatever meaning you give it, it REFLECTS back to you. It reflects rather than IS anything, because it is meaningless and so does not have ITS OWN meaning to give you. This makes it act like a mirror.

This reflection IS an image, and is not heaven itself, but is a reflection of heaven. God can be seen reflected IN the world (because he's in your mind), because the world ITSELF is NOT God. Being NOT God, or God's opposite, it has NO meaning of its own, and so CAN reflect HIS. The challenge then is to put aside the projections of hell that you have GIVEN to the world, the meanings you have given to everything, and allow yourself to RECOGNIZE that the world IS meaningless. Without your projections of hell, it is NOT hell, OR heaven. It is just a blank canvas.

"In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning."

The thing is that when the mirror is crowded with egoic images, dreams you project onto it and perceive, it becomes dark. And now you are looking at a reflection of darkness IN the mirror, and mistake the darkness FOR the mirror. And now the world seems like hell, and the darkness makes it impossible to see God's reflection.

When you are willing to recognize that the world is a neutral meaningless mirror, really NOTHING, with no meaning of ITS OWN, this is in fact a good thing, and not a depressing thing. It means you are willing to stop projecting FALSE images onto it, or to give it a meaning it DOES NOT have, or to try to MAKE it mean hell. By not putting images of hell onto it, you do not see hell IN it. Recognizing it AS a mirror opens your mind to NOT KNOW what it is, and to instead allow the Holy Spirit to project the real world's reflection for you to see.

When the mirror is spotless and clean and devoid of ego projections, this LACK of meaning acts like a shiny surface in which EVERYTHINGNESS is reflected, rather than like a dirty dark mirror which filters OUT the reflection.

In the true reflection of God's meaning IN the mirror of the world, God's reflection is seen IN the world, and now the world appears to REFLECT heaven. It now appears to share heaven's MEANING, because heaven's meaning (love etc) is projected ONTO it, an so reflects BACK to you through perception. "Projection makes perception." "Perception is a result not a cause."

By being open to acknowledging that the world it NOTHING in itself, and is MEANINGLESS in itself, you are in fact becoming open to allowing God to put HIS meaning there. And thus is the world redeemed and saved from projections of hell onto it. And in an empty space, devoid of ego attack and sin ideas, the world can now reflect heaven.

And thus doing this can make you HAPPY because you can recognize that hell does not really exist when you don't GIVE hell to the world. And the world can now seem to turn into a happy dream, where heaven is reflected and God is seen IN everything (as a reflected IMAGE of God). Such a world is the forgiven world, in which everything seems sparkling and bright and new and lovely. And in this state the body is healed and incapable of sickness. And now you are ready to go home.

"In the world you can become a spotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you, to all around you. You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves."

"Recognition of meaninglessness arouses intense anxiety in all the separated ones. It represents a situation in which God and the ego "challenge" each other as to whose meaning is to be written in the empty space which meaninglessness provides. The ego rushes in frantically to establish its own "ideas" there, fearful that the void may otherwise be used to demonstrate its own unreality. And on this alone it is correct."

"It is essential, therefore, that you learn to recognize the meaningless, and accept it without fear. If you are fearful, it is certain that you will endow the world with attributes which it does not possess, and crowd it with images that do not exist. To the ego illusions are safety devices, as they must also be to you who equate yourself with the ego."

"You think that what upsets you is a frightening world, or a sad world, or a violent world, or an insane world. All these attributes are given it by you. The world is meaningless in itself."

"What is meaningless is neither good nor bad. Why, then, should a meaningless world upset you? If you could accept the world as meaningless and let the truth be written upon it for you, it would make you indescribably happy. But because it is meaningless, you are impelled to write upon it what you would have it be. It is this you see in it. It is this that is meaningless in truth. Beneath your words is written the Word of God. The truth upsets you now, but when your words have been erased, you will see His. That is the ultimate purpose of these exercises."

The problem we have mainly is we do not correctly recognize what anything is. Even if we're looking right at it.

In the separation, we stopped recognizing that God is God, that we are immortal, that separation is impossible, and that there is no ego. We started to believe that these things were not true, failing to acknowledge, accept, allow or be aware of them being true. We started to perceive something else as though it were true.

That means, we started to "recognize" that ego really exists, that separation is possible, that we are not immortal, and that we're sinful. These things started to seem like reality and truth to us. So when we look at them, we seem to "recognize" that there is truth in them, even though it is not there, because we're actually failing to recognize that these things are obviously not true.

So while we're asleep and trying to wake up, we're going from a state where we don't see, or correctly recognize, what is here, transitioning to a state where we get a much clearer view of things and can tell what is what.

As we do this, removing blocks to awareness and becoming much clearer about what something is and what it isn't (true vs false), things which we never used to recognize as something become more obvious.

One thing I've noticed for example is that various forms of sickness are starting to be recognized by me as the ego at work. I see egoic tendencies, victimhood, self destruction and unwillingness "within" the sickness. I also am seeing the sickness "as" something that has gone wrong, rather than the strange prior condition of awarding it reality or truth or acceptability.

Some people claim that as you wake up more, approaching true perception, you should become unable to see sickness. The fact is, when you are in false perception where people appear to be sick, you are NOT seeing sickness. You are not recognizing it as sickness. Sure you see some of the surface attributes to be able to say it is sickness, but you do not SEE it correctly because to you it seems like truth and reality and irreversibility and natural.

You in fact are seeing it as though it has truth and reality and something worth protecting in it. You don't in that state SEE the sickness, you are actually seeing something IN the sickness that is not there... distorting your perception of the sickness and turning it into reality.

As your perception becomes CORRECTED, you start to see things without those distortions. You step outside of the sickness. You see it from outside of itself instead of from the inside. You learn to *recognize* it for what it is, and not for what you thought it was. That's an increase in awareness and an increase in the clarity of perception. It has absolutely nothing to do with "not being able to see sickness", in fact it has everything to do with becoming ABLE to *correctly* see sickness, recognizing it as false, and not as truth.

This still correlates to the fact that you are becoming aware that sickness is not real, that it is fake, that it has no reality to it and is not the truth about a person. So you are still overlooking the ILLUSION that sickness is the truth. But the removal of the illusions ABOUT the sickness, reveals to you what the sickness IS, rather than what it isn't. What it IS, is something false, something unreal, an ego deception.

Most people who are sick DO NOT recognize the sickness for what it is, they instead experience an unconscious interpretation of it which renders it real and threatening and unchosen and filled with truth. That is not awareness of sickness, that is unconsciousness. And as you look upon someone who is sick, if their sickness appears to you not as it really is but as a tragedy or real or irreversible or set in stone or natural or understandable or it makes sense etc, then there is something wrong with your perception. "A sick body makes no sense."

Yes ultimately you will realize that all sickness is an illusion and eventually you would recognize that there literally is no sickness anywhere. Or at least, that there is no REAL sickness. All of the sickness will be recognized as make-believe and self-inflicted pretense which has no real effect on anything real. That does not mean you won't still perceive it in others while you are in a body. Having true perception is still having perception. It just means that you see the TRUTH of the situation, rather than seeing it falsely. Seeing sickness truthfully shows you that it IS false.

It's the same thing with regards to the real world. In clear perception, the world is RECOGNIZED AS FALSE. It does not mean the world becomes reality or truth. In fact, it is while you believe that the world is true and real that you are in FALSE perception, a state in which you've attempted to convert something which is inherently false, into something true.

This entire world is made-up and does not exist. This is the central lesson the course would attempt to teach - that there is NO WORLD HERE. This whole universe is fake. And when you have true perception, you see truthfully, and this will show you - it will strike you - that this world is in fact FALSE. There is an inherent falseness to it. An unbelievability. Like a vast sea of lies. When you *RECOGNIZE* it for what it IS, and not for what you were making of it, you will simultaneously see it clearly, and see that it is NOT God's creation.

In the Course, the "real world" or forgiven world therefore refers to how this world appears to us when we are seeing it through eyes of love and forgiveness ie CORRECTLY PERCEIVING it without adding to or denying it. It shows us the "truth about" this world, which is why Jesus uses the term "real world" - the reality of this world, is that it is not real. To see the "real world" is to see a glimpse of heaven (which is real), a reflection (face of Christ) in which you can compare and realize, that this world is in fact NOT real and is not part of God.

It's all about recognition. Do I recognize this thing for what it actually IS in the truest perspective, or do I think that it means something else? "I have given the world all the meaning that is has" literally tells us that in false perceptual states, we have tried to turn something fake into something true, something unreal into something real, and have convinced ourselves that we're living inside a real world. This is false. This means we're not perceiving correctly or clearly and do not RECOGNIZE this world for what it actually is. And so we are deluded and deceived.

As we become clearer about what is, we are also becoming clearer about what God is, instead of believing as the ego has that God is evil or dead or the opposite of what you want. Sickness starts to be seen for the blight that it is, and not for something worth keeping.

Jesus speaks in the course about his "inability to tolerate the suffering of others". This doesn't mean He freaks out and gets mad about people being sick. It means he recognizes all forms of suffering as UNNECESSARY and as expressions of false beliefs, coming from distorted perception, and having RECOGNIZED them for the 'guiltless mistakes' that they are, can easily discern and know that they can be corrected. And he can correct them. That's what miracles are for.

But if we do not even recognize sickness or suffering for what it IS, we will actually keep it and support it and fight with it and continue to suffer, because we don't see how easily it can be changed or why it is not what we thought it was. It's almost like learning a language or something... at first all the words seem confusing and we get lost and say the wrong things. But later we become fluent and are able to discern which words are correct. We start to recognize them. Another word for recognition is simply clarity. Awareness. Knowledge.

"The ego is the idea of selfishness."

At the very foundation of the entire ego thought system is the idea of selfishness. But more accurately, it is the idea of not sharing. It's an idea of being exclusive, the ownership of something which is considered "yours alone", and inaccessible to others.

"You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."

God's Kingdom was set up so that everyone has everything. And this goes way beyond the kind of sharing that you experience on a physical level. In Heaven, every being has literally 100% of everything. Everyone has full access, simultaneously, to the totality of all that exists. Even your SELF is shared with everyone, as are all your creations.

This is oneness. And just because one person has full access to everything it does not shut out access to anyone else, there is no limitation, no compromise, no partitioning, no need to only access part of everything, and there is no private ownership. In reality is it possible for everyone to have everything always. You ARE everything always.

The entire idea of the ego is the idea of not sharing in this way. It's the idea of exclusivity. It's an attempt to own some portion of reality that you can call "yours alone", protected and fenced off by some kind of wall (such as the body), so that not only is your prized possession kept isolated inside the walls (such as within the body), but everyone else is also kept outside the walls (such as outside the body).

The desire not to share, is the entire basis of the separation. The ego is built on it. And this means that any attempt to have something for yourself that you want others NOT to have, or anything which is true of you and not true of them, or any sense of inequality of any kind, produces egotism. And this egotism is essentially SELFISHNESS.

The result of this selfishness is that you experience yourself as being fenced into a prison, ie the body. You see yourself as though everything which is "yours" is inside the prison. And everything outside the prison is not yours. In turn, you see that you are the only one allowed access to what is inside the prison walls, meaning that you experience yourself as being entirely alone within its confines.

This leads to the perception of yourself as though you are inside a body, you are the only one inside the body, the body is your private property, no other mind shares your body with you, you are alone and lonely and trapped inside of it, and the body's walls defend your hoard from the rest of the sonship.

This is how most people experience their sense of identity. That they are a single isolated "separated self", living within prison walls, everyone else is "outside" the walls, and nothing is shared across this boundary. The body acts then as a separation device, keeping them out and keeping you in, so that what is yours within is yours alone and your private possession.

"The body is clearly a device for separation"

From here, of course, upon seeing oneself as special, with a deeply rooted selfishness, a desire to be given special favor by God, and seeing oneself as excluded (separated) from sharing the Kingdom (exiled), so-called "relationships" with others take on the form of what we call special relationships. Basically this means that relating to others is always tainted with elements of selfishness, elements of exclusivity, elements of ownership or possession, and attempts to control and manipulate.

You see, a selfish self, ie a self that is "being selfish", has to believe that something is owned by others that it does not have access to. By cutting itself off from sharing it is able to believe in something privately hoarded and exclusive to it, but to do this it MUST also believe that others own something that it is excluded from. So now others are seen as hoarding privately hidden secret "stuff" that the selfish self wants and is jealous of, and so begins the attempts to wrestle it from others through what ultimately becomes attempted control and murder.

This is outlined in the "laws of chaos". Having seen yourself as an excluded, exclusive self, whose value is special and whose importance and truth is unequal to others, you believe other people also have something "special" locked up inside their bodies. And now you will seek to enter into relationship of some manner with them, to try to steal from the inside of their body the secret treasure that you believe should be yours.

So long as you lack what they have, you will feel an emptiness and a compulsion to steal it from them - a sense of "need" or neediness, in which you will make demands of them and place conditions on the relationship. This of course leads to conditional love and various forms of bargaining and betrayal. It can even become violent and lethal if it is strongly perceived that the other has what you significantly lack, is therefore guilty of stealing it from you, that you are justified in any action to retrieve it, and being denied it is a slap in the face that compels revenge.

All elements of this special way of relating stem from the foundation of the whole system of thinking. It all starts with this deeply rooted sense of selfishness, leading to isolation, leading to specialness and special relationships, and ultimately death.

The fundamental ONLY problem therefore is the unwillingness to share. The unwillingness to be equal. The consideration of one's own selfish made-up needs above and beyond the freedom and wishes of others. As you become presented with your own selfishness staring you in the face, you will learn to move past it and to start considering what other people want, on their terms, per their own choice, regardless of any "special interests" that you have. Once their interests become untainted by your selfishness, your interests become shared.

I should comment briefly that being "not selfish" does not in any way mean having no self, nor does it mean self sacrifice, or putting others first and you last, or any other form of inequality. It does not mean getting rid of your identity or individuality. All it means is changing your attitude, so that you are now SHARING EQUALLY with everyone, rather than isolating, excluding, or seeing to "get" something of special value "just for yourself".

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

Essentially our entire journey to undo the ego is simply to undo our selfishness. We have to look at this. We may be far more selfish than we want to admit to, or in ways that we had not realized. We may be more controlling than we'd like to admit. We may be claiming to put the interests of others first while secretly having needs or wants that depend on others fulfilling us in order for us to be satisfied.

To be not selfish might be what some (with ego thinking) would call the opposite - selflessness - but this can be misleading. We are not aiming here to have no self. We are aiming to SHARE, which some would refer to as joining in holy relationship. To truly think of others interests is to acknowledge that you have no needs that are interfering with being of service to them.

It means allowing and letting go and giving up controlling them. It means seeing them free from the tyranny of your control, dominance, interference, manipulation, selfish neediness, inferiority, superiority, judgement and specialness. The relinquishment of specialness is the relinquishment of selfishness.

This actually restores you to the fullness of your self, because by sharing everything you also share in all of yourself, and share all of yourself with others. You literally tried to steal yourself from God and keep it hidden. We have to open back up to allow God in and to let ourselves be visible and accessible to others, sharing fully with them and extending love with them. This is essentially a reunion with your own soul, in which all God's children share.

"The soul is the idea of self fulness."

For some time I've been confused about freedom.

A term I am often told by spirit is "you're free."

This always felt uncomfortable. It seems to allow me to do absolutely whatever I wanted to do.

It always seemed like spirit was giving me permission to do things, even things that seemed unhealthy. And this is because freedom really is unconditional, regardless of what you use it for.

Often when I would ask about what to do, whether to do something or not, they'd say "you're free". It didn't seem like a helpful response.

But I see now that it seemed to prefer to give me the freedom of choice, and to not impose any sense of one thing being more guilty than another.

Even so, I would often feel a need to then push further to ask for guidance or advice as to what to do - from someone who knows better. Because this freedom would also highlight that maybe what I was considering choosing wasn't in the spirit of freedom, ie was unloving in some way.

I still couldn't quite come to terms with "being free" though. I would ask my wife (in spirit) something for example, something perhaps relating to our relationship or earth life, and she would say "you're free". If it was ever a request about whether some kind of ego-need was 'okay', she's say I'm free.

In some way it almost seemed like a sort of "i'd prefer you don't do that, but do it if you want to" sort of begrudging. But I am sure it's my own mind that couldn't help but project that onto it.

I also struggled with the idea of being free in general, especially as it relates to my wife's passing and trying to move on and get over grief and loss.

She has been reminding me often "you're free". This hasn't always sat well, because it often was interpreted to mean "we're separate". I have since come to see that this is a sense of physical freedom - or a breaking of relationship, as though to say we have no relationship anymore, but that's not what it means.

It's finally sort of sinking in, especially from the huge download I received last night, that all this talk of freedom doesn't really mean what I thought it did.

I suddenly see now that freedom is really something that was given by God in my creation. It's a wholesale unlimited unrevokable freedom. And it has no strings attached, nor is there any suggestion of guilt for choosing one thing or another.

In this freedom is responsibility for choosing, the power to choose, the power to cause and create, and the inability to BE guilty. If we are free, and God has said "have at it", there is no coercion or requirement or pressure or punishment or judgement of any kind.

This has revealed the truth that, by being free I literally am free to come and go, free to choose, free to do one thing or another, with no strings attached anywhere. Strings are not of heaven or of God or spirit. Strings are conditions, part of conditional love. There are no chains or ties, no limits, no imprisonment.

We are all each one of us individually completely 100% free to dream or awaken, stay in hell or move toward heaven, remain suffering or regain our power, act like an effect or a cause, do evil things or good things, whatever. God does not forceable stop anything, but he does will and encourage us through his plan and help to choose a better way - a more loving happier way.

This is why I keep being told "you're free". It's a God-given right. I don't have to do anything I don't want to do. Whatever I want to do comes to pass. I a responsible for everything I experience. I consent to whatever I cause to happen. There is no victimhood, no specialness, no ties and no conditions.

It doesn't matter what I do, coming or going, advancing or retreating. God still loves me and so does all of heaven. I am guided gently forward and gently upward, and so long as I trust and have willingness I will return to God. Not because I have to, but because I want to.

"Forget not that the choice of truth or sin, power or helplessness, IS the choice of whether to attack or HEAL. For healing comes of POWER, and ATTACK of helplessness. Whom you attack, you CANNOT want to heal. And whom you would have healed, MUST be the one you chose to be PROTECTED from attack. And what IS this decision, but the choice whether to see him through the body's eyes, or let him be REVEALED to you through vision? HOW this decision leads to its effects is NOT your problem. But what you WANT to see, MUST be your choice. This is a course in CAUSE, and NOT effect." UrT21H8