"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."

Ok so... we talk about GIVING something in a miracle - expressing love. But there is another half to this - the RECEIVING of love. We are actually all quite averse to RECEIVING FROM GOD because we denied that God is our father, threw away our inheritance, and tried NOT TO RECEIVE in the separation. And the only reason we are all so miserable and suffering is because we are not willing to RECEIVE AND EXTEND. God's gift is to simply "give what you have been given."

This is really about the higher level of prayer. In lower prayer, you see yourself or others as lacking and in need, and so you make the need real and then ask for its removal. You pray "God, please take this away" or "God, please help them stop being so whatever."

But these are requests based on a belief that something is wrong. And believing something is wrong with ANYONE is the same as believing they are guilty and dysfunctional. "God, please help my enemy stop being such an asshole." Or, "God, please help my team to win the match." Or, "God, that person is so defective, please heal them."

This isn't miracle working. Miracles operate at the much higher level of true prayer. Real prayer is not based on believing that something is wrong and then asking that it be fixed. It is an acknowledgement and a recognition that NOTHING is wrong, God has ALREADY GIVEN what is needed, and NOTHING is lacking.

This high state of prayer is a willingness to RECEIVE LOVE from God, to acknowledge he is the cause of you, that you have received effect from him, and is a reclaiming of your inheritance.

The ego would say, in order to give something you have to lose it, and so giving is not receiving, and if you give love you will use up your love and run out. That in order to heal another, you have to sacrifice and lose what you have, and they better be grateful for transferring their lack to you.

But in this there is no receiving and no inclusion in what is being received. The golden rule says what you give you receive and all you give is given to yourself. But it also means, you have to be willing to RECEIVE LOVE FROM GOD, in order to HAVE LOVE TO GIVE.

So you cannot work miracles without first receiving God for yourself, because you then have to EXTEND what you have received and GIVE GOD in order to perform a miracle for another. That means a recognition, acknowledgement, and gratitude, that God HAS GIVEN EVERYTHING ALREADY.

Everything was given you in your creation. It is your natural inheritance. You threw that inheritance away by denying it when you bought into the mad idea and adopted an authority problem. The authority problem has to be undone so that you recognize 1) God is your creator 2) You are not God's creator, and therefore 3) God has given something to you.

Recognizing that everything has been given to you should inspire natural gratitude to God, and where there is gratitude there is love. To THANK GOD for what God HAS ALREADY given, and is giving now, is to RECEIVE LOVE. And THAT is what the highest form of prayer really means.

It is more aligned with an experience of a COMMUNION with God in which you are sharing with God, receiving from God, and giving what you receive. It is your natural state. In this state, you are open to BOTH GIVE AND RECEIVE, not just to give.

In this state of what we're calling prayer you are not really asking for something that you DON'T have, or that another LACKS. You are looking to the light and recognizing IT IS THERE already, because God has put it there already. He has fore-given (given ahead of the need) in order to prevent a state of need.

So you be grateful to God and thank God for having already given perfect love to you, and you open to RECEIVE that love and LET yourself BE loved. And then you receive that love from God, which heals your mind in a way like nothing else can. And then you GIVE that love as a miracle.

Once you have love, expressing yourself is miraculous. Every way that you then express the love you have received and shared with God, is a way of EXTENDING and SHARING that love. God is given, and is allowed to extend THROUGH you to another. This also entails recognizing that the light and love that is IN another IS ALREADY THERE, and IS NOT MISSING.

You receive God within yourself, acknowledge and be grateful that God HAS GIVEN IT ALREADY, and so you are blessed with it. And then you recognize that it is ALREADY IN ANOTHER - seeing past all sense of lack and damage and brokenness and sickness as UNREAL and NOT TRUE, seeing past it (which is forgiveness - to overlook), to the light. To see the Holy Spirit IN THE OTHER ALREADY, because God ALREADY PUT IT THERE.

Then you continually extend God from the prayerful awareness of having been given God within you, as love and light and power, and you extend it (unconditionally give it with no strings attached) to the other who HAS IT, in order to amplify the awareness that it is ALREADY IN THEM. And so the light in them intensifies as you strengthen the idea of the Holy Spirit in them, and their mind becomes healed also.

The completed sequence then is simply: "A miracle is a Universal Blessing from God (received in prayer) through Me (extended by me) to all My Brothers (acknowledging they already have it also)." This is achieved through higher prayer, which is now a MEDIUM through which God is extended, in recognition of a pre-existing perfection that overrides any notion that something is wrong.

"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE."

"I give the miracles I have received." "God is but love, and therefore, so am I."

"However, we also noted that prayer is the medium of miracles, and also the natural communication of the Creator and the Created. Prayer is always an affirmation of knowledge, not of accurate perception."

"Prayer is a way of asking for something. When we said that prayer is the medium of miracles, we also said that the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness, because those who have been forgiven HAVE everything. Once forgiveness has been accepted, prayer in the usual sense becomes utterly without meaning. Essentially, a prayer for forgiveness is nothing more than a request that we may be able to recognize something we already have."

"There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the Laws of God."

God is the law. His nature is the law. His creation is an extension of the law. Anything created is within the law and under the law and governed by the law. It is impossible that anything God created can be unlawful or capable of breaking the law, otherwise it would break God. God's will cannot be opposed.

Part of God's law is that everything created is unlimited in its freedom. This includes even the freedom to try to use freedom to imprison oneself and others. This is an attempt to be "freely imprisoned", which is an obvious contradiction and circular logic. This is why it's not really possible.

But the mind is free to deny that it's impossible and to pretend that it can be accomplished, even if doing so is insane and makes no sense and still cannot be accomplished. We cannot actually create a body, or create planet Earth, or create space or time, but we can imagine what they might be like if it were possible. And that's all we've done.

So now we seem to live in an imaginary world which seems to be a world where all of the laws of God are violated. Where everything is opposite to God's nature. Where impossible things seem to happen all the time, such as sickness and death. Things which would be a total violation of God's nature if they were possible, but cannot be possible in reality.

Even if you attack and destroy someone or something in this dream, this imagined world, it isn't actually accomplishing anything. Nothing real can be threatened, nothing immortal can die, nothing of God can be hurt. What is being attacked? Nothing but an illusion, attacked by an illusion, with illusory effects which mean nothing at all.

God's law is that we are free forever. Even if we attempt to use that freedom to deny freedom. If we use our freedom to deny the freedom of others we attempt to imprison and destroy them, expressing the idea that they are not free to exist - a seemingly murderous thought.

We are allowed to have this thought, the freedom to be mistaken is entirely within the scope of God's law. It doesn't mean God intends that you be imprisoned or that you imprison others, and in truth you cannot actually imprison or destroy anyone. You can dream of imprisoning and destroying but it isn't actually happening.

So you are free to, in a dream world, do whatever you want, without limits, given that you are free to do whatever you want per God's law. And therefore even if you seem to be a murderous evil person you still are not breaking God's law. That might sound controversial, but the attack isn't real and it has no real effects on anything real. So you are free to imagine you can be evil, but you can't actually be evil.

In effect all you can be is either correct or mistaken. You can either accept reality or deny it. But you can never change the law, you can never break the law, and you can never actually commit a real sin. You can dream of sinning and dream of being guilty, but these are fictional guilts and make-believe sins. They're not even real sins. And believing they are real sins is part of being mistaken.

God still wills that we be free and happy and loving, but he doesn't demand it or stop us from trying to be otherwise. Thus there is no guilt and no sin, no actual attack, no violation and no real victims. There are dreams and nightmares of such things but they're not real. They're just mistakes, all rooted and founded on a lie that such things are even possible in reality. We're kidding ourselves when we think we hurt people, so there's no point in trying to.

Forgiveness isn't about you recognising that you did something and then trying to get over it. It's about recognising that you actually didn't do anything. And your brother didn't actually do anything. It's all a dream fantasy of doing things that can't really be done. A dream of mortality and murder which has no effect on anything real.

This doesn't justify doing such things, because a person who is in touch with unlimited freedom is also unconditionally loving. A person aligned with God's will only wills life and happiness. Ironically and paradoxically, granting everyone total freedom to do anything produces a state of mind in which there is only a desire to do good, as God sees it. In other words, being truly free to 'murder' actually produces a state of having no desire to do so. It's only when you deny freedom that you think you could gain something from attack.

So God's laws can't be broken, we are never breaking them, and we are never in a state of sinning. We never do anything that demands a real guilt, because there isn't even such a thing as real guilt. There's a mistakenness about being guilty which is founded on a lie, that sin is possible when it isn't. You couldn't cause yourself to be destroyed even if you tried because God wills that you live forever, along with everyone else.

So really we need to recognize we cannot break the law of God, and this is the only real law. But if you embrace the law it means having to give freedom and love to everyone, because freedom and love is the law. And anything else you try to do can be nothing but an illusion.

"The ego cannot OPPOSE the laws of God, any more than YOU can. But it can INTERPRET them according to what it wants, just as YOU can."

"The ego, using its own warped version of the laws of God, uses the power of the mind ONLY to defeat the mind's real purpose."

"It is the distorted product of the misapplication of the laws of God by distorted minds which are misusing their own power."

"This IS the law of God, and it HAS NO EXCEPTIONS"

"You do not think this mysterious, even though ALL the laws of what you awake to WERE violated while you slept."

"Anger is never justified." - ACIM

Anger is not natural. It is very common, but not natural or healthy. Anger isn't really a valid feeling. It's actually a device for projecting something. Usually we use it to project guilt or some other hurt. It's a way of hurling stuff out of the mind and trying to pin it on someone or something else. It's a form of irresponsibility.

Anger is also caused by something other than itself, so it's not like some kind of core feeling or inherent central nature. It's a reaction to something else, twice removed from the problem, and only comes about when denial is also being used.

If you have a pain or hurt or guilt or whatever and you try to deny it, you're trying to dissociate yourself from it, disown it, and want to get it out of your awareness/mind. You do that by projecting it and trying to associate it with someone or something else. And the main skapegoating device used to accomplish this is anger.

Behind anger there is always something else going on. Deeper than the anger there is some kind of hurt or pain or fear. It's very easy for fears and hurts and guilts to transform into what appears to be anger, but this ins't their true form. Anger is always a way of hiding something else.

Not because you actually have anger, but because denying deeper feelings leads to an attempt to project those pains or put them out of your mind, which hurls them outward in a kind of broadcast. If you deny being afraid, you will feel angry instead. If you deny feeling guilty you'll become angry. If you deny that you feel hurt or at a loss or deprived in some way it can turn into anger. But the anger always comes after a perceived attack.

The anger is not a primary core feeling, it's a secondary layer on top of it designed to cover feelings up. You first see yourself as hurt or attacked, you then justify that because you didn't seem to ask for it (weren't aware of how you chose it) you are justified in being angry, and then you use that justification to hurl the blame outward.

Ego likes to use anger because it splits the mind and increases separation and insanity. While you are in denial and projecting pain outwardly your mind is dissociating and splitting and trying to pretend that the pain is not inside itself. But ideas do not leave the mind that conceive of them, so it stays in the mind in a disguised form, hidden behind a layer of denial.

Essentially anger doesn't work. It's an attempt to get rid of something deeper while keeping it. It doesn't make the pain go away. It doesn't heal anything. All it does is disguise and hide and make it seem like it doesn't belong to you. It's just a projected form of denial that says "this is not mine."

Anger is always unjustified because it's always based on a lie. But while the lie is kept in place, it seems as though the only problem solving solution is to project the pain. This won't work, but the mind will believe it's working, but that it needs to intensify the projection in order to get more pain out.

By becoming even more angry your mind reasons that it will be saved, or that by pinning the blame for the wound on something else you can be alleviated of the pain. This leads to a closed kind of scenario in which it seems all you can do is rage more to try to induce more relief, and the more you rage the better off you'll be. But this doesn't actually work because the mind is just splitting and becoming more and more insane. Ans besides, rage is not peace and attack will never induce healing.

Anger never ever works. It is a faulty coping mechanism. It's an attempt not to solve the real problem and to keep it hidden. Behind the anger if you look you'll always find something deeper like some kind of feeling of hurt or loss or guilt or fear. Something that came before it. And all you're doing is using the anger to try to make it go away. Anger is like an absence of feeling, ultimately an absence of love.

Feelings of hurt and attack and pain are always based on faulty perceptions that something outside of you has done something against your will, and that you are suffering as a result. This can NEVER be true because you are an immortal being that is permanently perfect and can never be attacked. Nothing real can be threatened.

So it always starts off with your mind going into a self attack, insinuating that you are not invulnerable, disowning the power of decision and pretending you are not the one causing your own experience, projecting out that responsibility onto others and the world, accusing them of sin, resulting in a perception that they're attacking you and you didn't ask for it, leading to hurt and pain which your mind itself puts into you to correspond to the projection, which pictures you as a victim, which justifies being angry, so then you project out anger in retaliation against the feedback loop of your own projected belief. It's pretty convoluted and crazy and a bottomless pit of hell.

You have to get further into your mind and find out the real deeper causes of things, the root issue behind all problems. It's never to do with what the world has done to you and always to do with your choice to perceive yourself unfairly treated, hurt, attacked, vulnerable etc... some kind of victim role that isn't true of your immortal nature. In that sense you are always and only the one who attacks yourself, undermining yourself first and then blaming it on the world. "Only the self-accused condemn."

This is why anger is totally unfounded and completely irrelevant in all scenarios and situations. You simply have no reason to be upset if you are immortal being that can never be hurt, made guilty, caused to be afraid or hurt for any reason. If you are not happy or at peace you have made a wrong decision and have chosen to see yourself as deprived. And no amount of blaming that on anyone or anything will make it go away. But you can always choose again.

The Kingdom of God has the interesting property of having to be shared and extended in order to exist. And the Course teaches that in order to truly 'have' something, you must give it away, because giving it proves that you must have had it and you can only give what you have. It also tells us that in order to experience anything you must SHARE in it because it is available to all and is not for your private possession.

"To have all, give all to all".

This is also reflected in "giving and receiving are one".

What it means is, things of God don't just sit there idle doing nothing. God isn't just "being God" without any increase or creation. If you are not sharing and extending love, love is not being love. This is why definitions of 'oneness' and 'non-duality' fall far short of the creative, extending, loving qualities of God.

We are also told that miracles which come from love will "go out because of what they are", but that "you are needed that they can begin." What that means is, love simply automatically radiates and extends by its own nature, but in order to allow it to extend through you you have to remove your blocks to it first. Then it moves through you without you having to make it do so.

Everything about God's Kingdom shares this nature. Something is not real unless it is shared, open, extending, increasing. This sharing and extending is like a RADIANCE or a radiation, or radiating outward. This produces LIGHT and PRESENCE. In a sense "God said, let there be light", speaks to God's creative ability to shine and create and extend.

Remember that in God's Kingdom everything is increased by being given, and giving something does not mean there is a loss (an ego idea). Instead, giving anything real increases it because giving does the opposite of losing.

Jesus talks about this in terms of everything being an idea. When you share an idea it is increased and it becomes stronger the more people believe in it. It does not diminish and the person having the idea does not lose anything.

The Course also says, "nothing real can be increased except by sharing". It is also the nature of love to extend and increase, because it has absolutely no reservations or limits or reasons to withhold itself from "shining" and radiating and going out everywhere.

Jesus talks about this in how the children of God contain the same "inner radiance" as the Father, and this is the source of all extension and creation.

Creation and extension and sharing are the same thing. To share to the ego means both parties have less than the whole. To share in Heaven means that both parties SHARE the WHOLE, and there is no decrease, and in fact there is an increase. The total is greater than the sum of the parts.

This is also true of the Sonship - "the combined total of the Sonship is greater than the sum of its parts". This is because each Son in the Sonship is not just a finite unit. Instead, each son SHARES and extends and increases and amplifies the rest of the Sonship. So it's not just like 500 sons lined up alongside each other, it's more like 500 sons overlapping and increasing with each other, creating a wholeness which is far larger than their individual contributions. This is also part of the holographic nature of creation.

Everything about God, His Kingdom, Creation, Extension, Sharing, Reality, Truth, Love, it all has this property of increase and sharing and going out and radiating and illuminating. And if this radiating and extending were not occurring, none of this stuff would be able to exist.

Love could not be love unless love loved to love and radiated love and extended and increased love's presence. Creation would not be possible at all (since nothing real can increase unless it shares) if it weren't for this sharing, giving, increasing.

There would be no light without the ability for it to shine, which means to "project" or extend outward beyond its source. God would have no Sons or Sonship and Heaven could not exist without it being in a constant state of radiance and increase.

Also therefore you cannot have or enjoy or share in anything real unless you also are willing for it to be given and extended. This is because, if you think about it, in order to receive something of God, you cannot just take it and possess it and diminish God's supply of it. Instead you have to be open to receive, to SHARE it, ie both you and God are experiencing the same thing, which also means this openness makes you willing to GIVE it as much as you receive it - giving and receiving are one, and therefore to experience love requires the willingness to share, receive, and give love, which automatically increases it.

God's act of CREATION, which we also possess since God shared it with us and created us capable of creating like Him, is an act of RETAINING your own light and love and yet 'projecting' it outward so that you shine, and this shining produces an increase, and manifests a "new creation" which itself possesses the ability to create and extend to exactly the same degree as yourself and God, and so now there is the whole of God + the whole of you + the whole of your own creations, and nothing is lost, and so there has only been an INCREASE. This is why Heaven rejoices as each Son of God returns Home to increase its light, and why joy increases, and everything just keeps on "growing" infinitely.

As love is received, shared, and extended, it increases because you are now acting like an amplifier or a relay which boosts the signal as it passes through. By giving it, by sharing it, you can 'have it', but you can't 'have' it by claiming it in isolation for yourself (which is ego). And so anything that is real cannot be possessed it has to be shared, and so anything real automatically has this sharing/increasing quality to its "terms and conditions". To exist (to have), it MUST extend. This is also why God creates and why every child of God is imbued with the same will to create. It is NATURAL to extend and create and to increase the presence of love. Nothing can exist without sharing and extension and equal giving and receiving.

"I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM. I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

The Holy Spirit is a real spirit from God that has unlimited power. He can heal anything. He can undo anything. He can also move mountains. There is nothing he cannot do. The Holy Spirit is with you and would like for you to develop trust in him, to the point where you might be willing to allow him to enter you and help you on a practical, experiential level.

It is a matter of willingness, trust, letting go, surrendering your ego attempts to fight with everything, and allowing the Holy Spirit to come into you. He is invited every time you show at least some willingness to move in the direction of atonement and forgiveness. But without your "permission" or your knowing that it's safe to allow Him to help you in a supernatural way, He will not take those measures because He knows that you might be frightened.

I was having a period of time that was very difficult emotionally and kept turning to the Holy Spirit to help me to forgive and to let go. In heated moments of tremendous emotional upset I started to say over and over again, "I surrender". Or, "I let go". I would say it repeatedly many times, and would start to experience a sense of relief. Because if there's one thing the ego does is it controls, holds on, attaches, clings, manipulates, bears grudges, resists, fights, and tries to dig in its heels. By surrendering willingly, you cut right to the core and drop the ego activities quickly.

I did this many weeks, often at night before falling asleep. And each time I would ask the Holy Spirit to help me to forgive and let go. I know he helped me with thoughts and insights and so on. But what was more important, was that over time, each time I went and surrendered, he often would start to remind me to surrender. He would say "relax" or "let me". And so I would relax, physically, because when you relax the body physically it also is a sign that you are willing to receive. Physical tension can be a sign of active resistance. So I would physically relax and let go and just focus on surrendering over and over and over.

And as it turns out, this gradually developed to where my surrendering of ego was, in a way, also an opening up to or surrendering to the Holy Spirit. I was moving away from ego, towards Him. And in surrendering, as you let go, you become more allowing, more trusting, more willing to step aside, more open to receiving love and support and help. And so I developed trust in the Holy Spirit, to the point where I would start to ask Him, willingly, but tentatively at first, to "come into me and heal me". To help me to heal. And in fact, I started to experience things happening.

At first it would be that my hands would shake, involuntarily. Or maybe my feet. And I didn't really know what this was "doing" but I learned that it was a side effect of whatever He was doing. And so I gradually learned to let go more and more and trust Him more, that He knows what He's doing. Over time this increased and the vibrational, spiritual, supernatural healing intensified and became more effective, stronger and more powerful. My whole body would shake and vibrate in ways that I cannot re-enact. And after this period of activity, actual emotional energy would have been significantly reduced, maybe even removed completely, resulting in me laughing, without having to go through the normal processes to release it.

This also escalated through further trust and willingness to allow Him to help me to heal with physical maladies, pains, symptoms and effects in the body. He is just as capable. If I am willing, and not afraid, and trust, and open myself up, I can let Him heal sickness of all kinds. I'm not quite to the point of trust yet where I can let something just disappear instantly but I'm working towards it, continuing to deeper my trust and openness to allowing the Holy Spirit to work miracles through me. And it also has been starting to extend to others.

I say all this not to brag and ONLY to ENCOURAGE that any and everyone try this for themselves if you have not done so already. I have no idea how people relate to the Holy Spirit but I do know that until I invited him to come into my "body" and "do whatever he wants", all of this supernatural healing was not happening. He wasn't seemingly "removing all the consequences" for me, and only through surrender and trust did I start to be WILLING to allow him to actually remove all consequences, emotional or physical or otherwise, FOR ME, through no effort of my own.

Before, I thought I had to do all the correcting and undoing on my own, which was my ego trying to do the course by itself. If you have never experienced the Holy Spirit actively DOING SOMETHING, in ways that have manifestations that you can SEE and FEEL, then you are in for a surprise. There is literally nothing He cannot do if you will let him. He frequently says to me, when I am tempted to solve or fix something myself, "let me", I stop and allow, and immediately he shakes me all over the place (side effects) as he proceeds to heal it for me. I don't have to do anything but allow and try to not interfere, and stay relaxed.

Have a go, if you have time. Spend time time each day surrendering and letting go, feel the relief, open up to allow and trust and invite the Holy Spirit to work in and through you. Put aside fear of "disembodied spirit doing stuff"... you have to learn to trust past that. Spirit is perfectly capable of doing ANYTHING, it's only a matter of how much we are willing to get out of the way and LET HIM. If you develop this trust far enough there is no miracle you cannot perform, nothing you cannot heal and no limits to what He can do through you for others. I've already started to allow Him to heal others through me, and he is quite effective.

If you make sin real to you, you enter into a state of NOT forgiving. While you maintain that the sin is real, you are not being forgiving. In order to be forgiving, you have to shift into the position of recognizing the sin is not real.

It seems that if you make the sin real first, you cannot overlook it. But the fact is, you probably have ALREADY made the sins real to you. This is part of your unconsciousness. You already MADE the world real to you by believing in it. You are already IN a state of believing it is real. If it were not possible to forgive, considering that you are already IN this state, forgiveness would be impossible. Forgiveness is NOT possible SO LONG AS you maintain that the sin is real.

Even IF you make sins real, which causes you to not BE overlooking them, this doesn't mean you CAN'T choose again. It doesn't mean you are stuck in not being able to forgive. It just means you are not forgiving it right now. So long as you maintain the belief that it is real, you are in an unforgiving attitude, in judgement.

But this doesn't mean you cannot adopt a forgiving attitude and TAKE BACK your belief that it is real. If this were not true, you would be stuck forever in the belief that sin is real. You HAVE made many sins real to you, many illusions that you think are reality, and now you are in a position where you DO need to change your mind about them.

You ARE in a state of "false perception". You're already starting from the bottom up to try to return to true perception. It HAS to be possible to transition from making sins real, to not making them real. Forgiveness isn't impossible, it's just that you have to let go of the "making real" in order to RETURN to a forgiving state.

You cannot forgive "real sins" WHILE believing or maintaining that they are real to you. But forgiveness would show you they are NOT real. And you CAN change your mind and believe they are not real. You can take back your beliefs. You can change your perceptions. You can shift into a more truthful way of perceiving, in which the sin is RECOGNIZED as being just an illusion of a sin, not a REAL sin, and in fact it is nothing at all. "Illusions recognized must disappear."

Ideally, you would not have entered into the belief that sin is real in the first place. If you were squarely in the Holy Spirit all the time you would not do this. True forgiveness is "fore-giving". It entails giving love AHEAD of time, in order NOT TO MAKE ERRORS (sins), so that there IS nothing to fix. It is only when you enter into judgement that you become UNFORGIVING, this unforgiveness MAKES errors, and then makes it seem that illusions are real to you.

"He would not forgive MUST judge, to justify his failure to forgive."

THEN you will believe "there is really something I have to DO TO this to make it go away." It's a perspective where you believe the problem really does exist and is happening, is threatening, and now you need a way to handle it, fix it, correct it. It means now you think you have MADE an error. And having believed that you have made an error you will now believe you MUST UNDO or "do something about" this "real" error BEFORE you can be forgiven.

But then you will seek to fight with, tackle, adjust, condemn, attack the error, that you think is real, trying to make it go away. Which means you are still judging, because it is YOUR UNFORGIVENESS that is KEEPING the error happening. And it won't go away because you are still assuming IT IS REAL to begin with. You see the error as if its outside of you, but it's YOUR UNFORGIVENESS looking back at you. This is a failure to overlook it. It means you see a "real threat" that is "doing something against my will" (sinning). Why? Because YOU are attacking.

And this real sin will remain IN PLACE, so long as you believe it REALLY IS there. It's seeming presence as "real sin" also implies, you are sinful, suggesting you are not forgiven. To even see it at all is an accusation against you. ("Sick bodies are accusers.") To try to asuage your guilt you will try to "heal it", but it won't go away so long as you believe it is even really there to begin with.

Having MADE sin real, you now need a remedy. The remedy is therefore obviously to STOP making it real. And you can do this. It requires that you withdraw all belief in its reality, because what you believe in is real to you. By cancelling all belief in its reality, in your mind, you are unlearning the lie you taught yourself, and returning to the state of forgiveness.

Once you no longer believe in the sin, which really was an attempt to "make it happen", your mind can remain in that primary state of FORE-giving, in which you do not MAKE errors. You overlook what is not there, because you have not PUT IT THERE. You do not see errors or ego or think them real, because you are not MAKING these errors (failures to forgive).

To be forgiving is to recognize, THERE IS NO SIN. What seems to be there, is not there. It is nothing. It is ALREADY GONE. And all that remains is innocence. To be forgiving therefore means to NOT SEE sin, to not MAKE errors real, to not BELIEVE IN sickness, and to not JUDGE. Recognition that there is no sin, and accepting of this universal fact, is acceptance of the Atonement, and the Atonement and Forgiveness are the same thing.

"Forgiveness recognizes what you think your bother DID, .... HAS NOT OCCURRED."

"The ego’s plan is to have you see error clearly first and then overlook it. Yet how can you overlook what you have made real? By seeing it clearly, you have made it real and cannot overlook it."

"Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in this view are all your sins forgiven. "

"Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning and thus keeping it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your minds at all, or you will also believe that you must undo what you have made in order to be forgiven."

There are a lot of ACIM students believing that they are working miracles. There's often talk of shifting perception, changing beliefs and so on.

But when you look deeply at what ACIM says, not only does it rarely mention shifts in perception etc it tells you that you aren't even the one who performs miracles.

"The holy spirit is the mechanism of miracles."

"Concern yourself not with the extension of holiness, for the nature of miracles you do not understand. ***Nor do you do them.*** It is their extension, far beyond the limits you perceive, that demonstrates you do not do them."

What the Holy Spirit can do is not of this world, and His power is unlimited.

"What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world."

"All power in Heaven and earth is therefore given him and he will share it with you when you have completed yours."

Sometimes I feel like I'm going out on a limb and saying something which most ACIM people don't believe.... in that, it is really the Holy Spirit who performs miracles. Yes he needs you and performs them with and though you, but Jesus is repeatedly telling us we don't even understand miracles, and although we inherit God's power it is really the Holy Spirit who knows what to do AND does it.

"The Holy Spirit does NOT work by chance, and healing that is of Him ALWAYS works. And unless the healer ALWAYS heals BY Him, the results WILL vary."

"The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the Guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE.

... Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God."

"As you awaken other minds TO Him through HIM, and not yourself, you will understand that you are not obeying the laws of this world, but that the laws you ARE obeying WORK."

"You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see His manifestations. And unless you do, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the witnesses who speak for it. For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, as its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth."

It is the Holy Spirit who performs miracles. And the miracles he performs are not mere shifts of perception or adjustments to your beliefs. And while His Help can benefit YOU, and heal YOU, it is also there to help OTHERS.

I think at times that a lot of ACIM people do not get this. They are not in touch with the Holy Spirit, do not work with Him, do not talk to Him, do not trust Him, do not heal with Him, maybe don't even believe He is a Spirit with POWER. The power to heal. It is the Holy Spirit who raises the dead and heals the sick.

YOU are needed in order to fulfill a functional role of being a conduit for Him, a point of prayer and request, a servant, and what ACIM refers to as a "physician of the Lord". But your function does not entail knowing what the heck a miracle IS, yet alone knowing how it WORKS, or what it DOES. Do you really honestly know how the human body functions such that you can repair it supernaturally? No you don't. But the Holy Spirit does. And it therefore requires trust in Him to do so.

"The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it, and show it rested on a world more real than what you saw before; a world redeemed from what you thought was there."You can also see that YOU are not the SOURCE of miracles, though you may be a relay-station for them.

"Miracles are a universal blessing FROM GOD, through me (or you), to all my brothers."

"Miracles mean life and God is the giver of life."

God provides the miracles. Not you. But you perform them. He does them through you, with you. You are asked to be in an open minded state of trust in which there is love present, SO THAT you are a facilitator of HIS WORK, through you. So that you can "do his works."

"Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth."

There is nowhere near enough openness to the Holy Spirit in the ACIM community. In fact it seems at times that hardly anyone ever mentions Him. A lot of people are doing the course "on their own" as a "self study", which strips it of all power and completely avoids the Holy Spirit. If it's some book you can tinker with on the toilet without ever having to develop trust in a supernatural entity, then.... it's more like school homework than a way to become empowered with the SPIRIT of God.

We are supposed to be developing trust in HIM, and allowing HIM to heal through us, and to USE our bodies, and to SPEAK through our mouths, and to WRITE with our fingertips, and to express love with others. He wants to use our bodies as a communication device. This does not exalt the body, it makes the body nothing OTHER than a tool through which HIS importance shines and extends. HE is the one that we are supposed to be working with.

Where is the Holy Spirit in all this? Where is the supernatural?

Where is the revival and the miracles?

Where is the Holy Spirit in the activities of those who claim to be awake already?

ACIM is not really non-duality, or duality. It's sort of both. ACIM makes this clear statement about the nature of God and reality:

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you" UrT16C3

This is the holographic principle. There is a whole (God) which has parts (sons of God), and each part contains the whole (oneness with God). The one whole is shared by the whole and the parts (brothers, inheritance etc).

Most people think of reality as sort of "one thing". Like one large area or an expanse or some kind of bigness. But that's more or less the same as the idea of spacetime or the universe. God is not actually like that. God is holographic.

In a holographic system there is a singular wholeness, which we call God. But there is also a characteristic of this wholeness - the entire wholeness is in every part. Every part of God contains the whole of God. ALL of God pays FULL attention to EVERY part simultaneously - because God is infinitely transcendental and can do this even if it sounds impossible.

God is also a creator and is capable of fully absolutely creating secondary beings who are like himself. But he cannot add-on anything outside of himself, so instead he adds on INSIDE of himself.

He does this by SHARING himself entirely with that which he creates, and that means that his creation has to also SHARE all of itself with everything. This is a kind of "internal expansion" of the Kingdom. It does not involve creating OUTSIDE the kingdom or beyond be pre-existing totality of God.

This sharing produces fully-created beings who inherit everything from God and share everything with God. They have a oneness with God. But they ARE fully created individual beings. They are completely full in every sense of the word. They contain everything like God does. Which means they absolutely exist, and yet at the same time are one with the absolute.

This results in a holographic system in which God is the main whole who creates "additional wholes" that share everything with him and with each other. Each part of God has the whole of God in it. Each son of God contains the whole of God and everyone else. We are all unified and merged and fused together.

This doesn't mean we lose our duality. It doesn't mean we lose individuality, or that we can't tell where we end and God begins. We DO have a discrete independent existence as absolute beings. But we ALSO have total oneness with the whole.

This seems like a paradox to most people. But it is actually miraculous.

Because a holographic system has wholeness to it, we identify that wholeness as "oneness" and might call it "non-duality". However, a holographic system ALSO has parts to it - whole parts, which share the whole and yet are whole in their own right. These "parts" might be called "duality".

This means that IN REALITY, the nature of God as a holographic system comprises BOTH ... non-duality AND duality, fused together as one. Everything is God, but God has parts which are living beings in their own right.

This is what A Course in Miracles teaches. And it means that there is material which in a certain CONTEXT is focusing on the non-dual aspects of the hologram, such as the oneness and the "God is" and "there is no opposite" and all that. But in other contexts it also speaks of God's infinite creations, the many sons of God, your own creations, your own kingdom, permanent brothers and so on.

ALL of these aspects of the course are simultaneously true. Even if they sound contradictory. If God's reality was NOT holographic they would indeed be contradictory and you'd have to resolve that by separating off some parts as "ego" or "separation" or "illusions". That's what many people do, in error. Because they don't realize reality actually is a holographic system not a "blob".

Ultimately then ACIM is not non-duality, or duality. But it is PARTLY non-duality and PARTLY duality. The two are fused together in a kind of "trans-duality". Transcendent of both exclusive-oneness and exclusive-separateness. God is not EXCLUSIVE anything - God is INCLUSIVE. Which is why the "non-duality" INCLUDES "the duality".

By duality here I do not mean spacetime. Spacetime is duality WITHOUT the non-duality, ie exclusively dual. That's not the same as the trans-duality of God in which every part is the whole. In space time, every part is PARTIAL and incomplete. The opposite of duality is not-nonduality, it's transcendental of the whole "either this or that" mindset.

"The whole does define the part, but the part does NOT define the whole. This is as true of knowledge as it is of perception." UrT8H2

"There IS no difference between the whole and the part where change is impossible." UrT8H2

"Because the Sonship MUST create as one, you remember creation whenever you recognize part of creation. Each part you remember adds to YOUR wholeness, because each part IS whole." UrT9E5

"Creation is the holy Son of God, for in Creation is His Will complete in every aspect, making every part container of the whole." UrW320W113

"The whole power of God is in every part of Him, and nothing contradictory to His Will is either great or small." UrT10G10

"It shines in every part of Him, as in the Whole." UrT17E16

"Every loving thought held in ANY part (of the Sonship) belongs to every part. It is shared BECAUSE it is loving. Sharing is God's way of creating, and also YOURS." URT5F9

"The creations of every Son of God are yours, because every creation belongs to everyone, being created for the Sonship as a whole." UrT7J6

"But the Resurrection IS the symbol of sharing, because the re-awakening of every Son of God is necessary to enable the Sonship to know its wholeness." UrT6B13

There is a fundamental difficulty in choosing anything in this world. Everything in this world lacks everything else. Everything has taken a side, has separated itself off, has made itself different, and does not have what other things have. This means that nothing is whole, nothing has everything, and nothing is perfect.

There is a fiction perpetrated that suggests you can have it all, get it all, win everything, find the best, be the best, choose the best option, be on a perfect diet, get the perfect body, etc. These are all make-believe, achieve a dream, conquer the world etc.

The separation even applies to colors. Red lacks green, blue lacks orange, and yellow lacks purple. In order to get one color you have to lose its opposite. Picking one color denies aspects which other colors have. So none of the colors are the perfect whole divine color. And you can drive yourself up the wall trying to choose the best one.

So then as you're trying to choose between options, you find yourself in a state of paralysis. You seek to make the perfect choice, the best choice, and to entirely win and succeed in whichever choice to make. But the truth is that whichever thing you choose, will lack something. Whatever option to take, it's going to be defective and limited and lacking.

This drives you nuts, when you're trying to decide what is the best course of action, or the right thing to buy, or the most appropriate selection, or whether to do one thing or another. Both options appeal with equal potential, and with equal lack. Neither of them is completely ideal. So then most of the time you end up throwing your hands in the air and "settling" for whichever one seems the least offensive. Or whichever one seems to have more pros than cons.

I'll just go with this one. I'll settle for that one. I guess this one will do. That one's probably good enough. So then you learn that in this world you usually have to lower your standards, be willing to accept that everything is limited, be okay with scarcity and sacrifice, and realize that every single choice is a compromise. You cannot get anything without losing something. That's how it's all set up.

Some people will have higher standards and will try to fine-tune the selection process. They will have in their minds the idealistic idea that some choices are actually completely perfect. That you can win without losing. That you can gain without loss. That you can get without having to give. And much of society and industry is geared towards trying to maximize the "return on investment". To get as much of what seems perfect and ideal, with as little loss as possible. There's an art to it, but it can never succeed.

If you are perfectionistic, thus, usually because you see yourself as imperfect and are trying to find what you think you don't have, you'll find this familiar. It drives you nuts trying to ideally look for the absolute best possible outcome, the most amazing toy, the completely perfect choice. It literally can make you more insane by expecting, or rather misunderstanding, that the world has the capability of offering you something that is whole and complete. It can't.

You will feel far more at ease and sane about your interactions and goals in the world if you can recognize that, fundamentally, all physical matter is a state of partiality. It's based on separation, so everything has only a small portion of the whole. Each item is lacking something that the other items have. If you go for the TV with the bigger speakers you lose out on the TV with the cool remote. You can't win everything. You can't have it all.

If you can accept that every choice in the world falls short, every option is incomplete, every possible outcome is not ideal, and realize this is just how a world of separation must be, then you can stop fighting with it or setting yourself up for disappointment. As jesus says in the course, "the world has disappointed you since time began." That's because everything it promises, it fails to deliver. Everything it gives you, it takes away.

"The world you see is merciless indeed, unstable, cruel, unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate. It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while. No lasting love is found, for none is here. This is the world of time, where all things end."

Nothing in the world is whole. It was designed to reject wholeness. Space is an assertion of the idea that nothing is everywhere and the everywhere (God) is nowhere. Every object, every piece of matter, every physical attribute, every choice, is divided. It is only because there has BEEN a division that you even have two things to choose between, and each of those options is only half of the whole. So at best, any choice you make leaves you empty handed, second-guessing, and wishing you picked the other one. And surely the best of the best will bring you salvation!

The world is two-faced, just as the ego is. It gives and takes away. If you gain you lose. If you win you lose. If you get you lack. If you want not to share anything with anyone you end up with nothing. What you get is taken from you. What you accomplish is destroyed. What you build comes tumbling down. Nothing lasts, nothing is whole, nothing completes you. That's how this world is. The sooner you accept that this is its nature you can work within its limits and use it for a higher purpose without trying to expect it to suddenly act like heaven. Pigs will never be able to fly.

In ACIM Jesus sometimes says some things which would be .... possibly offensive... to many people. These truth bombs don't go so far as to point fingers or to try to make people guilty, but it's quite likely that people will either feel guilt or anger about it. For example when he says basically that all sick people are trying to kill others through contagion. ....

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

He's literally saying that those of us who choose sickness, or really any form of victimhood or suffering, even fear, are ATTACKING others. "The ego's purpose is FEAR, because only the fearful can be egotistic."

"frightened people are apt to be vicious"

"those who are afraid are apt to be vicious"

This isn't exactly sugar-coating anything or walking on eggshells. Again he doesn't linger on it such as to try to make people feel guilty for it or worsen their state, but he IS literally saying that if you are afraid you are being vicious. That fear is a state of attacking others.

You'll notice that in both sickness and in fear, it always SEEMS like we're victims. Someone or something else is causing it. WE didn't cause it. WE aren't doing anything! WE are the innocent one! As little victims we get to portray ourselves with the "face of innocent", exonerated and harmless and helpless. SO THAT someone else can play the role of victimizer, accusers, inflicter of wounds and source of viciousness.

But let's make no mistake either that if we go into fear, we ARE in fact attacking love, trying to oppose love, and are trying to bring about a state of love's absence. We might not LIKE how it feels, but we're willing to do it for a payoff of ACCUSING someone else of causing it. It's part of how we scapegoat and project our sins onto others. So the fearful are actually frightening THEMSELVES by projecting "the cause of sin" onto someone else, making themselves the EFFECT of their own efforts to attack.

Similarly with sickness, no one seems to really WANT to be sick. Sickness sucks bigtime. Pain is a bitch. But we put sickness there so that someone else is accused of causing it, so that we again get a secret payoff of appearing to be innocent. We didn't apparently choose it or cause it, so we can blame it on the world. And now we are willing to be helpless, powerless, victimized and suffering, if it means we can accuse the world of causing it. There's a big payoff in that.

It means we're actually very vicious when we're in fear, and we're also very vicious when we're sick. Just as we're vicious in death, vicious when depressed, vicious when unhappy, vicious when unfairly treated, and vicious when terrorized. The ILLUSION OF victimhood covers up the underlying desire TO ATTACK.

And so attack is COVERED UP by defensiveness. Sickness COVERS UP a desire to CAUSE others to be sick. Fear COVERS UP an accusation that others have power over you, affecting you against your will. ie that you WANT to be use them to victimize yourself. There is a whole lot of vicious attack under the surface.

This is what Jesus is pointing to. Not to make anyone MORE guilty or to accuse anyone of anything, but just calmly to look at what's going on and to be honest about it. When I am afraid I am far more likely to become vicious and angry. When I am sick I am somehow trying to prove that the world sucks. That's just what it is.

But the world is ignorant of this and blinded by appearances, and so has "sympathy" for sickness and fear, protecting it like it's unasked for and unchosen. As if the sick or fearful person is innocent. This is a huge trap, and the fearful person DELIGHTS in persuading others to go along with the lie and side with them. Fearful people act like black holes sucking the life out of others.

I know because I used to be that. I've seen it up close. I had to learn that my fear was really MY vicious attack on others which framed them as evil and produced reactions of "fear" in my mind. That my sickness was an attempt to avoid and accuse and be victimized and suffer, for various reasons. What the world thinks is normal is not normal. The false empathy it has for suffering is a total ego smokescreen which we all have fallen for. We have to look deeper and not buy into the bullshit.

We even have to look at the fact that "being a victim" is not only always chosen, it's an attempt by the victim TO victimize. Do you think that's enough of an eggshell to walk around and not touch with a bargepole? Because most people will react to that with ego and hate and accusation of guilt, as if to even utter it is a sin. But the truth is, as Jesus would confirm, is that if I become victimy I AM victimizing the world. I am accusing it of doing things to me. I am WANTING to suffer. And that's entirely my doing it to myself.

We have to outgrow all these old ego modes of operating, of problem solving, and of functioning. They are attempts to solve the separation from God in ways that don't work. They are efforts to deal with the fallout and psychological effects. But they have to be replaced with something that does work. Real honesty and willingness and forgiveness.