Fear is always produced when you perceive anyone as your enemy.

You cannot have enemies without fear. Fear turns innocent people into enemies.

There has to be a perception within your own self, for whatever reason, which has 'framed' the other person as though they are, can, will, or have done something to you that you didn't seem to want.

This can take on a lot of forms. It can be that someoneis making noises that you don't like. It can be that someone is outright yelling at you or trying to attack you physically. It can be that you don't like the color of someone's hair. It can be that you have a long-standing resentment toward someone for stealing your favorite object many years ago. The entire gamut of human ego experiences fall into this.

So you perceive that the person 'out there', is separate from you, and they are starting to do something, which for some reason seems to be CAUSING ME to experience something less than love, which is starting to have a seeming EFFECT on me. As soon as you perceive this, even slightly, and are having even a slight reaction, you are "under attack".

This is entirely based on, and requires, that you perceive the other person as 'causing you' to be a certain way for some reason. It doesn't even matter what the reason is. Just the mere suggestion that they're doing something 'to you' is enough. Therefore, 'cause' is in them. And if cause is in them, to any degree, then to your ego perception, cause is no longer in you.

It IS possible to see cause in others and to have cause in you - that happens in recognition of Christ and Oneness in all people - but when we lose sight of it in ourselves we DISPLACE it onto others, disown power, start being irresponsible for ourselves, stop being truthful, and enter into a state of unconsciousness, which is ego. If the cause is NOT in you, then you will see it ONLY in others, and that will scare the shit out of you because you have literally MADE YOURSELF POWERLESS by giving your power away. So fear feels like having no power (or hope) of being able to prevent attack.

So basically, ALL FEAR is produced when you perceive someone as being a 'cause' when you are an 'effect'. If you are affected by them, upset by them, don't like them, attacked by them, in any way or form, you ARE believing that you are under attack. You see them as a threat, a danger, a something you do not want and cannot accept. That makes them your enemy. And that means you're now in this... experience, of ego, which feels something like this...

The other person suddenly seems threatening, they approach, your blood pressure goes up, you start to feel anxious and self conscious, and yet at the same time you begin to rise up against the threat in what we call 'anger', and you try to counter-attack because you feel like you're being attacked, and the two of you (egos) come together and 'clash', and are now in a fight or at 'war' with each other, and this is TERRIBLY UPSETTING. You try to fight off the other person but you can't help but feel simultaneously in great danger and threat and therefore very afraid.

Now, the antidote then should be fairly obvious. And it takes the recognition that YOU, not anyone else, but YOU, at some point in this process, YOU decided to perceive the other person as unacceptable, something to be resisted, unworthy of love, in some way offensive, in opposition to you, or representing something you don't believe in, or perhaps have a history of upsetting encounters with you. YOU decided to see them this way. You didn't HAVE to see them this way but you did. You maybe didn't realize that you actually have a CHOICE, and you can choose again.

So you have to recognize the POWER you have, which is the power to CHOOSE, which you DID use, to decide that you would perceive this person as your enemy - in some way. And because of that choice, you AUTOMATICALLY entered into a state of mind in which there was separation between you, a sense of threat and danger emerged, you felt unfairly treated and angry and agitated, and simultaneously FEAR arose. And the strange thing is, that you thought that person was not only causing you to feel this way, but that it was THEM who were RESPONSIBLE for you feeling this way, as though you weren't even contributing to this experience at all. It seems on the surface as though 'they' are doing this 'to you', BUT, the 'it' that they are doing to you, is really ONLY possible because of how you have first perceived them as an enemy.

Perceiving others as against you or causing you or as your enemy automatically makes you a VICTIM. This is absolutely inescapable law. You cannot see someone as an enemy without being both afraid and experiencing victimhood. And no matter how much you are upset about what it feels like to be in that state of mind, and all the feelings that come along with it, and all the fear that floods your system, YOU ARE CHOOSING IT. And it is ONLY happening NOT because of what the other person is doing, but because of how your mind is looking at the situation. Your decision to SEE yourself in the role of victim, to SEE yourself as in opposition, and to essentially see YOUR own unacceptability projected onto someone else, THAT is the only reason why you are upset.

So what happens now is that you decide to take responsibility for choosing. You recognize you DO have a choice, you CAN see the situation differently, you WANT to, and then you do it. That means, realizing the other person is NOT causing this. At all. Not even a tiny bit. This has NOTHING TO DO WITH THEM, EVER. This is all about you. It's your ego. It's your perception. You GOT what you wanted to get in your perception of attack. You GOT WHAT YOU ASKED FOR in asking to be positioned as a victim, and by seeing yourself as one. So if you don't want that, choose not to do that.

Choose to see yourself as not a victim. Choose to see yourself as NOT having this enemy, and that that person is NOT your enemy and is NOT the cause of your upset and does NOT have the power to change you or affect you in any way. Remember miracles..."denies the ability of anything not of God to affect you." So if no causes outside of you can affect you, you are restored to INVULNERABILITY, to IMMORTALITY, to perfect SAFETY, to FEARLESSNESS.

Fear HAS to disappear because you're ripping out its foundation. Its foundation is the mental perceptual construct of seeing yourself as separate from and attacked by others. You cannot experience fear if you do not see yourself and others this way. It is impossible. Fear is separation. Fear is ego. Fear is being a WILLING VICTIM, on purpose, which is why fear - even though it is experienced like some horrible thing you DO NOT WANT, and some terrible experience you SAY you want to end, fear itself is actually YOU CHOOSING TO BE AFRAID because you want to be able to maintain a scapegoat - that someone else is responsible for your life and it's not your fault.

So if you want to wake up and be free of fear FOREVER, you need to take responsibility for your life, your experience, your feelings, your attitude, and for the RESULTS that you get when you 'play with fire', which is that when you play at positioning yourself as a victim, which you do by seeing someone else as your victimizer, you must inevitably experience terror and threat. You do not have to. And if you do not choose to see the situation as though someone is against you or has power over you or is choosing for you or is directly 'causing you', you cannot experience fear. Fear must vanish. And it will.

The instant you take back responsibility for what you're experiencing, right now, fear will massively deflate in a mere moment.

Similarly when you are justifying anger at someone seeming to do something to you, and you realize that underneath that anger there is actually FEAR, watch how that anger deflates and disappears INSTANTLY, because you've shifted to becoming aware of what the real problem is and not its projection. And if you go deeper to look behind fear, you will find your own victimy attitude which got you into this mess. If you can get there, watch as fear dissolves INSTANTLY. Watch as miracles of healing happen INSTANTLY, as you return to peace.

Surrender.

"Accepting the Atonement teaches you WHAT IMMORTALITY IS" UrT11J13

Let's look at the really big picture.

You are an immortal being with eternal life that lives in God forever. You cannot change or be changed. You are permanent and fixed. You cannot be altered, you cannot suffer, you cannot be affected, you cannot be hurt or damaged, you cannot be sick or die. Nothing can ever happen to you or disturb your peace. You are real, and nothing real can be threatened.

The so-called separation from God was an attempt to BE MORTAL. To invent death. It is a belief in EVERY single form imaginable of something OPPOSITE to your immortal nature. An insinuation, a lie, and a denial, that you can in fact "be changed", that you can be affected, victimised, hurt, damaged, broken, or even made to be sick, or even destroyed completely by death.

The entire world of space and time and everything in it was entry into a "dream of death", in which every single aspect is part of the attempt to believe that you are NOT immortal.

Even the slightest hint of fear is evidence of believing that you might not live forever. The slightest twinge of sickness is an attempt to PROVE that you can be hurt. The merest disturbance to your total peace signals a sense that somehow, in some way, your eternal extension and permanence MIGHT be in question.

And so as we entered into the separation, the tiny mad idea, we thought to ourselves that MAYBE we might not last forever. Maybe we could be changed, maybe we could alter ourselves even, maybe we could be changed by something other than ourselves. And maybe this would bring into question who and what we are, questioning even our permanence and eternal life.

This gave rise of course to fear, because the merest hint of a belief that you might not live forever induces a sense of threat to your existence, which frightens you. So we entered the "detour into fear", the "dream of death", an attempt to play a game of mortality.

We made this world, came to this world, to question our very NATURE. To draw into doubt what we are, and whether we can be what we are. We undermined ourselves. We attacked our own invulnerability. We tried to make ourselves into something that COULD be attacked, could be hurt, could suffer in some way.

So now when you look at the world and you look at ALL the massive number of forms of suffering, all fears, all victimhood, all sense of threat and danger, all sicknesses and mental illnesses, all death and destruction, every problem, all conflicts and competitions, all war and disagreement, every single nuance of body identification and believing you might be affected by something, is ALL merely a symptom of "trying to die". Trying to NOT BE IMMORTAL.

The solution to all this madness - the acceptance of the atonement - requires us to RELINQUISH DEATH in all its many forms. It requires us to ACCEPT once again that we are PURELY AND ONLY immortal beings with eternal life. It requires us to completely reject EVERY single little speck of a belief that says anything to the contrary.

All victimhood, all fears, all attack, all guilts and sins, all sense of suffering, all sense of threat and danger, all bodily identification, all belief in separations and conflicts, even the belief in change, all of it has to be questioned and let go. So that ALL that remains of you, all that you ARE, is your PURE immortal eternal self - the Christ - the soul, which resides in heaven with God PERMANENTLY safe and permanently alive.

You are life itself. You are eternal life. You are immortality. You are extension. You are the openness to never-ending. And because you know deep in your being that you are absolutely BEYOND all possible threats to your eternal nature, you are in a state of absolute peace and happiness. Not a single hint of threat, no danger, no concerns, no problems, no doubts, no suffering, no possibility of changing, not even the slightest hint of death in any form whatsoever.

You continue on. You are the immortal son of God. You have lived forever and you will always live forever. This is the central CORE TRUTH that the course is leading us to. Wake up to KNOW THYSELF AS YOU ARE IN GOD. The perfect pure immortal eternal being that is utterly beyond every form of death and every form of suffering forever, in total peace and absolute certainty. There is no death, the Son of God is free.

"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die." URT29I

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you." UrW191L9

"Judgment is but a toy, a whim, the senseless means to play the idle game of death in your imagination." UrT20I7

"The Son of Life cannot BE killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that MUST be One." UrT29G1

"Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are." UrW139L6

"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do." UrT9K8

"The graciousness of God will take them gently in, and cover all their sense of pain and loss, with the immortal assurance of their Father's Love." UrT14E4

"You are immortal BECAUSE you are eternal, and always MUST be now." UrT11J12

"What is immortal cannot BE attacked; what is but temporal HAS no effect." UrT25H5

"My brothers, children of our Father, this is a DREAM of death. " UrT19J7

"And we will sleep no more and dream of death. " UrW191L10

"For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever." UrU5A7

Lately what I've been trying to focus on is what can be *experienced*. The truth can be described in thousands of words but really it is an experience. We're really talking about you getting to the point where you can experience happiness, experience love, experience peace, experience God. God is an experience.

So what this means is looking at what you are experiencing NOW, and looking at what tools you can practically USE to actaully shift your experience to a happier, fuller, more truthful/authentic one.

And this has nothing really to do with what you are thinking about what you're experiencing or what's going on around it or what you should be experiencing, but the actual direct immediate experience - your feelings, your psychological reactions, your perception of reality, your union with God. What is reality to you right now, in honesty and not trying to 'please' Jesus?

This isn't done on a mental level or in terms of theory or discussion. What you really need is practical tools that WORK that bring about a real TRANSFORMATION of what you are experiencing. You are meant to LIVE the truth, not just talk about it. You're meant to actually feel God's love, live in God's love and be God's love.

What I've been seeing also is that when you try to be or attain a goal or theoretical truth that is too far beyond what you can actually EXPERIENCE, all of your energies start to flow into the intellect because they aren't grounded or rooted in what is real to you. You try to grasp at it and affirm it and think about it and make it seem like you understand it but you're not actually *experiencing* it because it's outside your envelope. It's very easy to conceptualize 'oneness' but, are you actually fully omnipresent and experience absolute unlimited psychological access to every part of existence? Nope.

I can testify that I went to great lengths in my mind and intellect in understanding the Course and the metaphysics and the high-level statements of truth and how it all fits together and all that. I was looking for some kind of a way to experience truth by having the biggest or best thought about it, or the widest grasp of where it fits, or the most abstract or subtle aspects of what Jesus has taught about the truth.

But even when I thought I really really really was getting it and understanding it, mentally, it was NOT followed by a result of experiencing love, or experiencing God. It did not bring peace. And it was like getting to the end of a path that you thought would lead you to the truth or to God only to find out that it does NOT lead there.

It doesn't lead there because its a journey in thinking and intellectualizing rather than the much more real, direct EXPERIENCING of truth. So I had to learn this, the hard way, that it can't be all about the talk or all about the theory or all about the metaphysics. It IS okay to seek for understanding (ACIM says understanding is appreciation of the truth), but you can't EXPERIENCE it on a purely theoretical level.

When we're not actually dealing with what we are experiencing - the immediate interaction of you vs what's in front of your face right now and how your mind is having a RELATIONSHIP with it - then it moves away from here-and-now and becomes removed and distant, turning into just a theory or concept.

Your head, your intellect, is quite capable of handling concepts and theories and thoughts about them, but its as though the intellect is an artificial ego device to be separated from reality, from the here and now. I would find myself tending to even intellectualize my feelings, transferring emotional energy into my head and trying to process it there through thought. Instead of feeling. Instead of experiencing.

I've also seen people get caught up in what they 'should' be doing or are supposed to be believing, launching into 'trying' really hard to force yourself to be those things, without ACTUALLY being able to do so. It creates the spiritualized ego. And when asked questions about what they are experiencing now or what they are really feeling, they are disconnected from it.

They will respond about what they think of it or what it means or what they think they're supposed to say or what lofty course idea they're meant to believe, but they don't REALLY believe it. They don't REALLY mean it. And they're out of touch with where they're really at, cut off from FEELING. Feeling is much closer to being than intellectualizing. But people don't want to feel. They don't want the immediate experience of reality, preferring to be buffered against it by all of these intellectual walls of thought and guilt and shame and force and pressure and ... using the wrong tool for the job.

What you may find as I have, as well, is that what I can experience has certain boundaries that prevent me from experiencing anything too far outside my 'comfort zone'. My mind won't stretch that far. If there's a suggestion to be or do something that I'm just not ready for, there's no way I'm going to be ABLE to do it yet alone willing to do it.

You can be willing enough to take small steps from where you actually are to where you want to get to next, but giant leaps are next to impossible. And when you try to make giant leaps before you're really ready, you will BYPASS, which means you're in denial about what you're really believing and experiencing and are pretending to be further along than you want to admit to. It's the ego that tries to throw you into 'advanced spirituality' before you are really ready or willing or able to actually BE it, because it wants the prowess of 'mastery' without ACTUALLY letting go of enough ego to experience it truly.

So you need to stop, go within, and look much closer to home, much closer to where you are realistically at right now. What are you experiencing right now. What are you feeling. And this is where you have to be really honest. Do you REALLY believe what the course is saying? Probably not. What do you believe instead? You have to work through this stuff. You can't pretend not to have blocks to awareness, you have to ACTUALLY look for them and acknowledge that they're there and then work on transforming your beliefs/viewpoints/attitudes so that you can ACTUALLY be free of these blocks.

They don't go away by sweeping them under the carpet, or by using denial, or by shutting them out, or making yourself unconscious, or bypassing to a level of advancement you're not ready for. There is nothing to be ashamed of in admitting that you are NOT the advanced spiritual successor to Jesus just yet. If you don't acknowledge what you're actually experiencing then you aren't going to be able to change your experience. And I think that's what this is all about - transforming what you are experiencing so that you can experience something better. And this means dealing with the 'reality' of your situation, not some ACIM-driven fairytale about how spiritual you are or how lofty the concepts are or what you are 'supposed' to be like.

How do you feel? Where are you at? What is honestly true for you right now? Have the courage to look at it, feel it, experience it, be with it. Acknowledge how fucked up you are. Then re-interpret your evaluation of yourself and transform your experience of yourself into a genuinely higher version of yourself.

Authenticity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It can be but myself I crucify." W196

"Only the self-accused condemn." UrT31C

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

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

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

You are outside of the world, looking in upon it from the outside in. From this perspective, the body is given no value at all. The world is recognized as completely fictional. The body is used temporarily only as a tool for sensing the vibrations of the illusory world, so as to detect its current configuration and seemingly interact with its inhabitants.

At no point is the body mistaken for your self, nor awarded attributes it does not have. It is not regarded as spiritual or scared or special or worshipped. All sense of personal use of the body has gone. It is rendered nothing more than a functionless instrument through which light may flow into the dream as the light of the world.

In this view, the body is not mistaken even slightly for your sense of self. It's appearance says nothing about who or what you are. Its particular configuration or attributes make no statement whatsoever as to your true nature or creative abilities. It is merely a picture, a portal, into a fake world, through which you briefly peer in order to look at the surface of objects and see bodies moving around.

You recognize that everything the body senses is not real or true. It picks up on vibratory signals of a world that seems to be there but which is not. It shows you pictures of this pretend world, registers sound vibrations, and even seems to be able to touch the surface of imaginary objects. But there is no delusion that any of these things really exist or that these signals are conveying the truth. All they do is relay messages about what seems to be there, but which is not believed in. And so the mind does not use the body to "sense reality", it uses it only to sense unreality.

The dream world continues to depict scenes of fighting, abuse, conflict, physical and mental sickness, trees, buildings, storms, war and chaos, and all manner of activities. Flowers growing and dying, birds eating, fish swimming, and every imaginable form of forms changing form.

The mind observes this through the body senses which register perceptions of such things occurring, but the mind is not deceived by any of them. It knows it is witnessing a lie, a false world, a temporary fiction, which has no inherent truth and absolutely no reality. And it uses the body thus only to temporarily interact with those who see themselves as bodies, that there might be communication, teaching and healing, to guide them similarly to the recognition of a sane perspective on this world and on the bodies they utilize.

For now the mind is standing on the outskirts of the world, not immersed and not lost within its illusions. It is no longer tempted by appearances. It knows with certainty that nothing is happening here, and even when the ego demonstrates its prowess in manufacturing scenes of horror and destruction, these happenings have no influence over the mind. It reacts not and is unmoved and undisturbed by such illusory occurrences. And it continues to look past all of them to the real truth, which these appearances once hid, to the real light and the real show, which is occurring beyond the world entirely.

The mind then has lost interest in the world. It has come to recognize the world has nothing to give. It has surrendered all investment in the world and all attempts to believe it can do or achieve or give anything of value. It is recognized as nothing but a distractor device, made of denial, pretending to be something but is ultimately nothingness. There is no further worshipping of idols, there is no emotional investment, there is nothing that it wants in the world, because it knows the world has nothing to offer. It is nothing but a prison for insane minds who come to suffer and die in dreams of pain. And it is clear there is no such thing as sin.

Such a mind is the light of the world and has come to bless, only because it recognizes the truth and does not fall for the traps and illusions of a world of errors. It does not believe anything the body witnesses or suggests is happening, and realizes the limitations of the senses. It uses them only to serve to the extent they are able and is under no delusions that they represent reality or its experience. The body is known to be only what it is and nothing more, and it is nothing but an illusion. It has no life nor death.

From this view, the world is recognized as nothing. A sphere of un-happenings and illusory events. All events are nowhere. All changes wrought are substance-less. Not one thing occuring has any truth to it. Not even the dying bodies are really dying, nor the sick bodies really sick, nor the living bodies really alive. It is all the same, one illusion, one picture of strange objects and interactions, none of which are real or true.

The hierarchy of illusions has been flattened, and along with it the illusion of orders of difficulty. Nothing is regarded as more or less important or valuable than another, nor more difficult to reverse or change or heal. Nothing is given to the world but the love that would dispel it. And no meaning is attributed it beyond the meaning of forgiveness. Every occurrence has no effects. Every cause seen as an effect of dreaming. And nowhere is there a real consequence believed.

Only for a time does the teacher of God occupy a body thus, using it as a scalpel to dissect the illusions of the world and see beyond them to the truth. The mind no longer loses sight of what is true and real beyond the world, fixated on the reality of light outside the dream. There is no longer deception or temptation capable of inflicting suffering. And not one single aspect of the world has the power to do anything.

The world has been forgiven, overlooked, and not believed. The body is nothing and unnecessary. All the pleasures and pains of the world have been surrendered as useless futilities designed to waste time and avoid the truth. Death has no further appeal, for it is realized it accomplishes nothing real at all and is a worthless pursuit. No one in their right mind chooses to make such demonstrations occur, and what use is a dead body as a tool for communication and healing?

As a teacher of God, you have one foot in the world, but your spiritual eye perceives the light beyond it. Your mind is aligned with the truth but your body is doing body things. You don't fall for the ego's tricks, nor do you react to its worst attacks. You know that nothing can affect you because you have remembered what you are. You are as God created you, and you live outside of the world in another world of light, a world untouched by sin and danger, out of reach of war and pain.

Nothing can disturb you because you are safe in God. The dream of exile is nothing but a strange dream where strange things don't really happen. Where nothing can be believed. And where there is no truth. It is but a desert, arid and empty, a lifeless container of nothingness. And not once has it changed anything real or true. You come a while to offer a message from beyond, to remind your brothers what they believe is not true. You set them free by example and demonstration of your freedom from the world's evidence of irreversible sin. And they see in you a light shining from beyond your body.

This world isn't real. It is not your home. It is false. Nothing in it is true. It holds no value. It is not what you want. And eventually you will learn to recognize it as nothing, realizing that to gain all of heaven you are giving up nothing at all. And not one memory of the dream world will linger as you awaken beyond the world into the reality of the Kingdom. For everything you ever thought happened was nothing and nowhere. Only love is real and only the living world of light is true. And in this light you will know what you are and have always been.

"W-pII.14.1. I am God’s Son, complete and healed and whole, shining in the reflection of His Love. 2 In me is His creation sanctified and guaranteed eternal life. 3 In me is love perfected, fear impossible, and joy established without opposite. 4 I am the holy home of God Himself. 5 I am the Heaven where His Love resides. 6 I am His holy Sinlessness Itself, for in my purity abides His Own."

"This means that I cannot allow them to leave their mind unguarded, or they will not be able to help me. Miracle-working entails a full realization of the power of thought, and real avoidance of miscreation. Otherwise, the miracle will be necessary to set the mind ITSELF straight, a circular process which would hardly foster the time-collapse for which the miracle was intended. Nor would it induce the healthy respect that every miracle-worker must have for true cause and effect."

When you're having emotions, typically they are reactions. You have a thought which produces a perception of the world. And in this thought you're seeing yourself as a victim or being affected in some way. And this produces a negative emotion.

These ego emotions seem to be changes in you, which you believe are the effect of causes outside of you. They cause you to change against your will, and so your "emotions" or "effects" go on a rollercoaster ride or constant shifts, seemingly chosen BY the world and enforced upon you.

But if you'll look you'll notice that all ego emotions have this backwards cause-effect quality to them. They all seem like they are telling YOU what you feel. They seem like they are happening to you. And the basis for these feelings always seems to be something you believe is happening to you outside of you.

How can it be that if you are the cause of everything you experience, per the secret of salvation, that you can be at the effect of emotions? How can it even be that you even HAVE emotions that have this affected quality to them? Emotions of fear and guilt, emotions of grief and loss, emotions of suffering?

If you are cause, and are owning up to being the cause, then you must realize your emotions are coming from you. You are causing them. Not the world, not the circumstances, not other people or the body. You must be choosing them. You must have made a wrong decision if your emotion is not peace.

Surely you have the ability to choose what you are going to feel? Or at least, you have the ability to choose whether to produce upset feelings or not. You can choose whether you feel guilty. You can choose whether to feel grief. You can choose whether to feel unhappy for any reason. It is always you that chooses what you are experiencing.

So this then means we have to get behind the feelings and stop regarding them as just "happening to us". And stop interacting with them as if they are telling US how we feel. We need to stop listening to them as if looking to them to guide us and inform us of what state we're in. WE PUT THEM THERE. We shouldn't be asking something WE PUT THERE to tell us how we feel, as if they know and we don't.

All ego emotions are "effects" which your mind puts in place, under the belief that the world puts them in place. If you believe the world has power over you then you will produce emotions, effects, symptoms, reactions, which all seem to try to TELL YOU what you are and how you feel and what you must experience. You have to stop listening to them. But even more you have to stop creating them.

This all goes back to the mind. It goes back to thought. If you look at thought you will notice that it is the CAUSE of all your suffering. You can be affected by nothing but your thoughts. It is your thoughts alone that bring you pain. Nothing in the world can bring oppression. Your thoughts literally cause all of your upset emotions.

The origin of upset feelings therefore is the nature of your thinking. You might be used to thinking and feeling like a victim, in which you seem to only have feelings if they happen "to you", and you only have thoughts as a kind of passive "commentary" on what is "happening to you." But this is really a destructive use of thought, which reverses cause and effect, and sees you as at the effect of the world.

You have to realize also then that your thoughts have been acting just like a victim, just like your ego emotions, pretending to be happening to you. They have been thoughts of suffering, thoughts of despair, thoughts of being victimized, thoughts of being attacked, thoughts of sickness and death. These thoughts have CAUSED what you have been experiencing, emotionally and physically.

Your thoughts, or rather your thinking, therefore has to go through a transformation in terms of how much destructiveness they contain. Thought has been used by the mind in its belief in death, to produce suffering. Thought can similarly be used far more constructively, positively, in a life affirming way, to uplift and heal and bring life. Thought can be used to give strength.

But you are not used to thinking like this. You are used to being a victim on a battlefield where everything happens to you. You even think that your thoughts are thinking you. This has to be reversed. You have to start using your POWER to think higher thoughts. To think well of yourself and others. To think of happiness. To elect light and love and life.

At first it will seem like you can't do this because you have been so used to just "having" thought and you don't realize you can control it and master it. This is why it takes some practice. But you need to learn that you can actively choose to have uplifting thoughts. You can just as easily have a thought that someone actually is doing well, as you can have a thought that they are suffering. And you have to realize your thoughts have a REAL POWER which can produce REAL EFFECTS.

Your thoughts can and do affect you AND other people. You are not alone in experiencing the EFFECTS of YOUR THINKING. Probably all your life you've been thinking in an egoic way, in a victimy way, which has actually contributed to the suffering of yourself and others. Now you are going to think deliberate, intentional, chosen, free-willed and higher thoughts. Purposeful thoughts of deciding that someone IS doing well, IS healthy, IS healed, IS happy, IS safe, IS innocent, IS resurrected.

You may have never even conceived that your thoughts even have any power. You might've only experienced thoughts like a mental chatter which seems to ramble on without seeming to affect anyone or anything. You might not have put two-and-two together to realize your thoughts have a causal power in them. That they are creative. And that you have been using them TO destroy.

Your mind can heal. Your mind can raise the dead. Your mind can think of miracles. Your mind can decide someone is not sick. Your mind can strengthen and reinforce the truth. Your mind can give life. And your mind can be filled with the power of God. Your thoughts are extremely powerful. The misuse of them has been the sole cause of all your suffering. And now you can turn your thoughts to God and to reality and truth and light and love and express the power of love through thought to others.

"Miracles are thought-creations. Thought can create lower-order or higher-order realities."

"He, too, MUST begin to think of himself as a very powerful receiving and sending channel"

"The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will. Many of your ordinary expressions reflect this. For example, when you say "don't give it a thought", you are implying that if you do not think about something, it will have no effect on you. This is true enough."

"While expressions like "think big" give some recognition to the power of thought, they still come nowhere near the truth. You do not expect to grow when you say it, because you don't really believe it. It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains."

At all times you perceive ONLY what you believe is true. This can be a trap when you're not ACTUALLY believing the Real Truth.

What it does, is it makes you think that you are seeing everything there is to see, when in fact you are only seeing a 'version' of reality that has your idea of truth/reality projected onto it.

So then you get stuck, because you think, well, today I feel afraid because the world is scary. Or, today I am happy and everyone seems happy too. Or, today I am terrorized and the world is full of terrorists, etc.

What I've noticed is, that the kind of world I see totally depends on what is going on inside of me. And I'll be convinced that I'm seeing OBJECTIVELY, as though I'm not having anything to do with why the world appears to me the way it does. And so then I don't see any way out of it - my only choice is to try to 'cope' with it.

So if you think of the world as being like a mirror, in which you see reflected your own mind's content, you'll be basically looking at yourself everywhere you go. And by yourself I mean, your belief in whatever you think is true. Because whatever is 'true' for you, you take that as your identity and as your reality, regardless of whether it is actually true.

So your perception of the world is usually SUBJECTIVE, and limited, BUT you do not realize that you are being subjective and limiting in the way you're looking at what's there. You don't realize you're filtering OUT stuff because of the way that your idea of truth filters IN stuff. You select some attitudes or beliefs as 'correct' and others as 'incorrect' and all of that incorrect stuff ends up outside of your awareness - you make it unconscious through rejection and denial.

For example, if I choose to be loving, it is extraordinary that, all of a sudden, it seems like there aren't any reasons to be afraid. People seem less threatening. Life seems more fun. But if I don't be loving, I feel more afraid, and more threatened, and it really seems like other people are the cause of the threat - like they 'really are' being threatening. But them seeming to be that way and me experiencing fear go hand in hand... they go together.

What you experience in your perception is ALWAYS matched up to/aligned with what kind of a world you will see. If you are in fear, you can ONLY see a fear-inducing world. If you are in love, you can ONLY see a love-inducing world. And so if the world seems to suck, it's because you believe that you suck. Or rather, you believe in some things which suck but you think they don't suck.

And that's part of the trap. You can get lost in your narrow filtered perception, thinking you're really seeing everything there is to see, and that you're seeing correctly and clearly, when in fact you are majorly distorting and blocking out many parts of 'what is out there', because you're blocking it in your mind. When there are no blocks, you'll see 'the forgiven world', because you will have forgiven yourself. But when you haven't forgiven yourself, you will see a condemned world, because you have condemned yourself.

You'll notice then that whatever experience you're having of the world 'out there', it seems to 'call for' or directly map to certain 'reactions' of a given amount of severity. And when the world 'out there' seems to be intense and serious, you seem compelled to also have an intense serious reaction, because you always connect what you perceive out there with what's going on inside of you.

If the world out there seems to 'make a move' and do something to 'make' situations worse, your ego self is pulled right along with the story and down into the story, where YOU become the mirror of what's happened. And you have a severe reaction. Whereas when YOU decide to make a move, realizing that you are NOT seeing everything there is to see, that you are only seeing the past, and that everything that's happening right now is because of PAST decisions and the future DOES NOT have to be the same, now you are starting to step outside of your own 'reality bubble'. You can deliberately choose to accept more love into yourself, within, and therefore REVEAL to yourself more love without - which, by the way, was always there, just hidden.

The way that the out-there maps to the in-here is what sets up the "hierarchy of illusions". ie, varying kinds of inner and outer statements of truth cause reactions of equivalent amounts. It's almost like in the law of physics where each action has an equal and opposite reaction. Each external-seeming event produces an equal response in the ego within - because secretly, that's where it CAME FROM.

So be careful not to get stuck in thinking that you are being objective. The only objectivity is PURE LOVE. If you are not in pure total love, you are filtering reality and have blocked yourself from being aware that LOVE IS PRESENT. You do not see God because you think he is not there, and you think this is an objective fact, but the only reason you don't see God is because you do not believe God is in your mind. Your mental blocks to love cause the world outside of you to seem like a blocked, insane place.

It is extremely easy to get stuck in this, for example if you are afraid, you will perceive that the whole world 'really is' a fearful place, and that fear is JUSTIFIED because of the kind of world you see. But you don't realize that the fearful world you see is fearful BECAUSE you are being afraid. It did not cause the fear, it is a PROJECTION of the fear. A mirror. A reflection. So while you're having your insane nightmare, and really believe that bad stuff is happening outside you, it's because bad stuff is happening inside you. They go together hand in hand.

So you have to be willing to make a kind of leap of faith. The leap of faith says, maybe there is a greater reality, a greater truth, outside of what I currently believe, outside of my self-imposed prison, and outside of the condition of the world as I currently see it. Maybe there is are hidden parts to what's out there, that I don't currently see, because I am blocking it. And maybe, maybe God is out there, and maybe God is love, and maybe I am just not seeing and experiencing God's presence because I'm blocking it. Maybe BEHIND and BEYOND my blocks, love is still there, with me.

This is what faith is about... hurdling over the obstacles to peace and trusting that God is still love and you are still love regardless of how your perception CURRENTLY looks. It isn't about staying IN your current subjective perception and believing that it is objective reality or that you have to stay there, because in order to BECOME aware of God's love you must actually GO past those blocks and OPEN UP to the awareness that God really is present. And for that, you have to remove those blocks and filters from your mind, otherwise you simply cannot see Him right in front of your face.

God is right with you right now, smiling and happy. If you're not experiencing that, you've got some healing to do. The forgiven world is right in front of your face right now, filled with love and light, and if you're not seeing that, you've got some forgiving to do. Ultimately, you are still with God right now and the separation hasn't happened, and if you're not seeing that, you've got some undoing to do.

Be willing to be mistaken about how the world looks to you. You're not seeing it clearly unless you're seeing love.

So ultimately, when you are afraid, or you're struggling with the world in the way that the world 'is' (seems to be). .pause a moment and ask yourself, is it possible I am not seeing all of reality? Is it possible that my justification for being afraid or upset is actually CAUSING myself to see the world incorrectly and PRODUCING the justification? What if ... what if I choose instead to be more loving or truthful or authentic, and maybe keep my mind open to the possibility that WHEN I CHOOSE LOVE, I WILL SEE LOVE.

And when you do choose love, that love in you will shine away all of the fear and all of the seeming 'reasons' to be afraid. And all problems will melt. And you'll have no way to justify the ego, because all of its justifications only seem true from WITHIN it. Once you step outside of your private reality bubble, the ego is gone and there is NO REASON to be afraid or upset, because all that's left is God's love. When there is only love, and that is true for you, there is no reason to be afraid. Literally. There only seems to be reasons to be afraid when you are afraid. If you CHOOSE not to be afraid and to be love instead, all of the 'reasons' for fear will completely disappear from your awareness. They were just illusions.

So it takes a willingness to go beyond yourself, beyond your blocks and self-made limits, and to realize YOU ARE NOT STUCK because you have a CHOICE and if you exercise that choice and stop believing your own HALLUCINATIONS, and your own filtered version of reality, and realize that all your reactions TO it are PART OF you MAKING IT seem to be the way it is, you can make a LEAP into a more truthful, loving experience, in which you are absolutely safe because there is only love there.

There is no fear or danger or death in reality. There is no cause for alarm. There is only safety and love and peace. How else can God be constantly at peace if there were ever reasons to threaten that? God is the peace that God experiences. Herein lies the peace of God.

When someone says or does something that you judge and perceive as wrong, you become upset.

In your upset, you claim that you are upset because they said or did something that was wrong - i.e. something incorrect, something that is a mistake, or something untrue.

But, even though YOU are claiming to believe that this thing is untrue and wrong, you are still upset.

Why are you upset, if what the person said is not true? Why do you become upset when someone says something untrue about you, something that seems to attack you, to slander you, to accuse you, to portray you as unfairly guilty, or to label you with something derogatory? Why are you upset if its not true?

The truth is, even though you are to some degree aware that it is not true, you're upset because some part of YOU does believe it is true.

If you didn't believe it, you'd just laugh. You wouldn't take it seriously. You'd KNOW with so much certainty that it's just ridiculous and completely false, that it wouldn't even seem to touch you or engage with you at all.... like it's got nothing to do with you.

But you DO think it's got something to do with you. On some level, deeper down, there is some part of you that actually thinks there is truth to what someone has said about you, even if you are simultaneously horrified and upset and are claiming that it's completely false in a very intense way.

You could be experience a very intense sense of it being unfair, of the slander being vicious, of the person being totally nuts in their accusations, and all of this other framing of the situation that makes it looks like they are wrong and you are not... and yet, you're still upset, despite your claims about how mistaken they are.

You don't really, really, really believe that they are mistaken, you actually believe that they are REAL, and what is real is true. So if you are 'really' being attacked, then you are being attacked with truth, and you believe in this truth so you will be upset. What you receive as real will strike you as the truth and you will accept it. i.e., you took it seriously and didn't overlook/forgive it.

And so this boils down to this simple fact: you are upset because YOU believe these things about YOURSELF.

So then it's really not so much anything to do with what anyone else has said or done. It's not really that they have accused you of something so incredibly - potentially - hurtful. It's not that there is even some kind of inherent attack-power embedded into their slander, or some kind of force in their words that can actually come into you and MAKE true whatever they are judging you for.

Instead, it all boils down to your own beliefs about yourself - your own sense of identity. Has this *attempted* attack got anything to do with what I AM? If it hasn't, because I'm clear about what I am, and I am immortal spirit, and I am eternally innocent, then in that clear identity I have absolutely no grounds for even thinking that it's got something to do with me.

But if I do not believe in my own innocence, if I myself am actually in some way AGAINST MYSELF, or have undermined myself, or think of myself as unworthy or not good enough, or think that I don't deserve love, or I don't like something about myself, you can bet that when someone comes along to appear to provoke you, you WILL think that it has something to do with who and what you are - you will think that they're talking about YOU and you will 'take it' as an attack on that identity.

So you can see this in people who are very against themselves, who have a lot of self-hate or self-loathing or low worth etc. When someone seems to attack them or judge them, they become very upset very quickly. This is because they themselves very strongly believe in and AGREE WITH what the other person is claiming is true of them.

The person is so upset by the stimuli because they themselves are very upset about their own self, they are upset about how they see themselves, they are already walking around with a huge baggage of pain and suffering within themselves that they feel very badly about, and this is now tapped into by the other person.

The pimple then seems to pop and the cover of denial laid over the top of this mountain of self-attack is taken off, and out pours the gush of a "reaction"... which typically is then blamed on and projected on and targeted at the other person, as though they created all of it.

But all the other person is doing.... is nothing. Absolutely nothing. They're just showing up and mirroring back to you a reflection of what YOU think of yourself. People will come into your life "as if by magic", attracted to the vibrational frequency or mental focus of content in your mind, that reflect to you what you currently think of yourself. And you will hate them for doing this, because you hate yourself. And each time they come along and seemingly do TO you what YOU are already doing to YOURSELF, you don't like it. And the only reason you don't like it is because they are doing to you exactly what you're already doing to you.

And so even if you are upset, deep down you in some way must agree with that person, even if they seem to be a horrible enemy, otherwise, why would you be upset? Why would you be having a reaction, if their judgements were completely false and you knew it? Why would you lose your peace and blow up in a rage or whatever if you're calmly certain that that person is very mistaken about who you are, and you are very clear about who you are? And I don't mean, clear about your ego self, but clear about your REAL self as God created you - innocent immortal spirit. Your real identity.

So every time you get upset, and it seems like someone caused it, it just means that YOU HIRED SOMEONE to come along (attracted them mentally) to come and point out, within you, what it is that you believe is true, about yourself and God, so that you will become aware of what is in you, and get an opportunity to question it. Is it really true? Do I really want to hold onto this belief? And if all you're doing at that point is falling for the appearance that someone else is causing everything you're feeling, then you've totally missed the point. And you're being dishonest.

It's more honest to step back and look at why you are upset. You are upset because you believe that your worst enemy's attack is actually true of you and deserved by you. You actually want it. You chose it. You asked for it. Yes you did. And that means that they're not actually doing it 'to' you, as much as YOU have done it to you. And since you're the one who actually believes this bullshit about yourself, YOU are the one who needs some correction. The other person is only there to "trigger" you, to draw your attention to areas of yourself where you thought you were pure but are not, or areas where you believe bullshit that needs to be purified. They're helping you. They're actually on your side, in the bigger scheme of things. And you hired them to do so. All those enemies of yours? They're your servants.

So at some point you have to get past this fireworks of blame and denial and projection, and take some responsibility. It's you that believes you suck and are not worth shit. When someone does something to highlight this, you should be thanking them. AND then you should work on undoing YOUR belief that this is true. If you are upset, you DO believe it is true, and you DO agree with them, no matter what you are experiencing and no matter how much you think this is not the case. If you are upset, you are believing something untrue about yourself, and the only way to be not upset is to undo that.

So yes, it's not anyone else's fault that you're upset. Look at yourself. What have you decided about yourself? What is it you believe about yourself?

Because if what the other person has 'done to you' is not the truth, then why are you still upset? It MUST be because you actually don't FULLY believe that it's not true. Some part of you agrees and some part of you has attacked your own self.

And what this will lead to is the simple insight, that ALL of your upset is really the result of your own belief about yourself, and NONE of it is really because of other people. And therefore, if you can change your own attitude about yourself, and learn to love yourself, you will be learning your LESSONS and will wake up to the truth about who you are. And then you will have peace, and you will stop putting 'helpers' in your life to provoke you "painfully". Instead your way will be made straight and Holy Spirit will go before you to smooth the way, such that nothing is about your little ego self anymore and you are fully convinced of your own innocence.

Not until you are fully convinced of your own innocence will you cease to be upset when other people accuse you of guilt. But when you get there, you will experience invulnerability, confidence, empowerment, peace and immortality.

I used to attack myself pretty severely through the fear of being judged by others. I was painfully shy and perceived a need to withdraw in an effort to protect myself, but all this did was hurt myself deeply.

My shyness was a coping mechanism for protecting my sensitivity. I had failed to learn how to express myself fully, and it didn't help that I was an introvert. I had trouble learning social skills and asserting myself. Every social interaction was literally painful.

I did not realize what I was doing to myself. My perception was that other people were perceiving me in a certain way, which I was simply trying to get away from.

After a social encounter, particularly one with strangers or where I had to go into someone else's home or be surrounded by a crowd, I would feel deeply, deeply hurt. I would become strongly embarrassed in the midst of the situation, would tense up, become very quiet (paralyzed) and experience things as though everyone was judging me.

I would return home with a very very deep inner emotional pain, a feeling of "hurt", that was so strong I had no choice but to have a deep cry in order to deal with it. Every social encounter seemed like a total failure and something I did not want to be a part of, making me avoid them even more. It was deeper and stronger than any other emotional upset about any other situation in life. It felt absolutely horrible.

When strangers would even walk past I would immediately cringe and feel attacked. I suspected they were a threat, and saw them as enemies or someone I did not want to be around. They seemed to have power over me and I hid away and withdrew in an effort to avoid people.

I had no idea what was happening in my perception or what I was doing to myself. I only thought that other people were hurting me and causing me to feel like shit. It seemed to all be their fault, and they were the ones who we being judgmental.

But over time I have gradually, slowly learned, that this is not the case. It was difficult to come to realize this.

I saw that I was in fact judging everyone else. I saw them as judged in some way, although this seemed to be subtler and concealed behind my reaction to this perception. Seeing them as judgers automatically meant I was judged by them and therefore at their effect. The effects this produced in my own self was the deep hurt.

I had to realize that in order to see them as judgers, I had to believe they were the ones being judgmental, which was in fact my own belief. I was making them out to be judgers. And that meant, I was simultaneously judging my own self by seeing myself in the role of "judged" by them.

It never really had anything to do with other people judging me either. In fact, probably in 99% of cases they were not being judgmental at all. They were not even interested. They weren't saying anything about me or pointing a finger or anything. But I had this "mental illness" of strongly believing that I couldn't go anywhere without being under attack. And it wouldn't matter if someone pointed out that no-one really cared to judge me because they were too busy with their own selfish interests, I couldn't see it.

What I was really doing was seeing myself as judge-worthy, disassociating a part of my mind and projecting it onto others, seeing them as the judger rather than myself, and then creating the effects within myself that correspond to how I perceived others to be perceiving me. I literally was hurting myself. The hurt I did to myself was far worse than anything anyone else ever did, and it was all because of how I was mis-perceiving.

Underneath this fear of judgement there was a belief that I deserved to be judged, because I believed I had sinned and was guilty. I didn't see myself as worthy of love and therefore perceived that others agreed with me. My direct self-attack turned into indirect self-attack that appeared to be coming at me from other people, but was really coming at me from within a part of my mind that I did not recognize as myself.

I was being both the judger of myself, and the one who was judged. Or in other words, a victimizer and a victim. I played both roles but only saw myself as playing the victim role, and unfairly so. The mere act of perceiving oneself in a victim role automatically creates effects in yourself, typically emotional reactions which try to correspond to the causes that you see as outside of yourself. Because I saw others as judging me severely, I felt severely hurt. Truth is, both the perception that others were judging and the hurtful effects of the judgement were both put in place simultaneously by myself.

I needed to forgive myself. And this has taken a very long time and it's been a very gradual slow process. Over the years, a sense of being separate from others has diminished. A sense of being trapped in myself has diminished. A sense of frustration at not being able to fully express has diminished. A sense of it not being okay to simply be the way I am has diminished. In fact, recently there has been a growing, wonderful freedom, of finally not giving a fuck.

This funnily enough manifested in recent hairstyles. It suddenly became fun to play with looking ugly, rather than trying to look pleasing. And I don't mean this ugliness is another judgement, just that, I've found myself being really "ok" with looking whatever way I look without it meaning anything or causing a judgement.

This is so freeing. It now becomes more of a "playful" experience, where it doesn't matter one way or another, and where I'm growing stronger in my willingness to present myself in whatever way I like without caring (worrying) about what people will think of it.

You may have noticed over time that in my writing I now swear a lot more often. I used to be so repressed that I would never swear, and thought I was more special or holier than others by not doing so. It's now more of a pleasure to swear. To some this may seem like I'm turning 'evil' but that's not the case. I'm becoming more authentic and more myself, censoring myself less and recognizing that I am free.

Taking responsibility for everything I am experiencing shows me that I can only be upset if I hurt myself, no-one else is the cause of what I feel, and therefore I am set free of concern for massive people pleasing or not showing up fully as myself. I was trying to be everyone but myself, to be something I am not, and to disown myself. There is nothing but pain and suffering there when we do that.

There are some people out there especially those who are painfully shy, who appear on the surface to be sweet and nice but have a strong persona, a facade of everything being alright all the time when underneath there is a searing self hatred and repression and sense of unworthiness and of not being "allowed" to do anything. It's a state of self imprisonment. I still at times struggle with limiting myself and Holy Spirit having to remind me "you are allowed". I often thought I was imprisoned by someone else in life, but really it was my own doing.

Some of these people who are suffering from self-inflicted unworthiness and quiet suffering, turn to suicide as an escape. My own life became one of depression and despearation and a growing feeling that I was approaching some kind of "end". If I had not met my wife at about that time I probably wouldn't be here.

A sense of an "end" was a sense of intense separation, isolation and being cut off from everyone. I was ostracized "by society" for an earlier "accident", but really it was a way for me to do this to myself, to give me a good reason why I should suffer in silence and be unhappy. I have had to crawl out of my own self-inflicted hell-hole. Some people are not able to do this. There was a guy at my workplace who was similarly shy who no one would suspect was suffering painfully every day through false perceptions, and he shot himself.

I am thankful for the Holy Spirit and Jesus who have helped me immensely to come out of my nightmares and into a happier place. I still have work to do but everything keeps heading in the direction of heaven. A Course in Miracles has been a God-send in terms of correcting my perceptual distortions and helping me to undo the grossly self-inflicted false beliefs that torture and condemn from the inside out. I am so different to how I used to be now that I don't recognize myself in photos.

Freedom and relief from suffering comes from the recognition of what we are doing to ourselves. We are the ones who need to forgive ourselves and undo our own self attack. There is a way out of hell, because we are the only ones keeping us in hell. No-one is keeping us here but ourselves. Fear of judgement is secretly the fear of being judged by God, which is an attempt not to go Home by justifying self attack. But there is a better way. And that means, if we will become willing, we can go Home to God and be happy. Thank God for that!

When we are introduced to this world, it is through false perception. That means we SEEM to "see it with" the body's eyes, and we believe the body's way of seeing. And the body shows us the world of form, which is cruel and dark and a place of death.

We do not even realize our mind is in any way making, or interpreting, how the world is. We observe. We see its suffering and carnage. And we decide the world is an inherently bad place.

Jesus then tells us:

"The world is false perception".

"The world IS perception."

"There is no world apart from what you wish"

"Projection makes perception."

What this suggests is, when your mind is in a dark attitude, it projects a world which it simultaneously perceives as a dark place. And when the mind is in a light attitude, it projects a world which is simultaneously perceived as a light place.

What it also suggests is, there IS no world, beyond your mind's dreaming and projecting of one. Ie the world is in your mind. And Jesus agrees to that.

"You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts."

"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that. But, though it is no more than that, it is not less. Therefore, to you, it is important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive."

What this tells us is there is not really an objective world. The world doesn't exist without someone dreaming of it, in their mind.

It may appear, conceptually, that there is a neutral, meaningless world, like a mirror, waiting for you to project whatever kind of images you want onto. And it might suggest this neutral world is a receiver of either your dark projections or your light projections. And that you see this darkness or light "in" "it" accordingly.

But He is also telling us that at no time does the body or world exist. That it is an hallucination.

"Perception is a result, not a cause."

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you really understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal?"

"Hallucinations serve to meet the goal of madness. They are the means by which the outside world, projected from within, adjusts to sin, and seems to witness to its reality. ***It still is true that nothing is without.*** Yet, upon nothing, are ALL projections made. For it is the PROJECTION which gives the "nothing" all the meaning that it holds. ***What has no meaning, cannot BE perceived.*** And meaning always looks within, to find itself. And THEN looks out. ***All meaning that you give the world outside, must thus reflect the sight you saw within.*** Or better, if you saw at all, or merely judged against."

You look within your mind first, and then you project. And what you see, is only what you have projected, because projection MAKES what you perceive, and perceiving is the RESULT of what you projected.

Therefore you see only "a world" "out there" because you are projecting it inside your mind. It is not really out there at all. It is nothing. There is nothing to project onto. Only what you project AS.

This tells you essentially that the world you see in false perception, when your mind is dark, when you look within and see darkness, and then project it outward for perceiving, is seen ONLY in the dark of mind.

And this tells you that, essentially, there is ANOTHER WORLD, another "version" of a world, unlike what you saw in false perception, which is seen in light. It is seen only by looking within, seeing the light of Christ, and then projecting outward as Christ Vision. That "real world" has no resemblance to the world of false perception.

In fact, because there is no objective world, and you maintain it entirely in your mind, and because your mental attitude "tunes you out" of one world and "into" another, the Holy Spirit's happy dream, seeing one makes you unable to see the other.

"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS. For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER."

"Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you, as the amount to which you hold it dear. And yet their power is NOT the same, because their real attraction to you IS unequal. You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began."

It's kind of like saying, when you are in a bad mood, you project a hellish version of a planet Earth. When you are in a good mood, you project the real world, which contains no forms, no suffering, no sickness, no death. They are like tuning into different TV stations. Investment in the spiritual eye weakens investment in the physical sight.

"Everything looked upon with vision is healed and holy. Nothing perceived without it means anything. And where there is no meaning, there is chaos."

The world, which we call Earth, seems to exist only so long as we dream of it. A forgiven world, is how Earth appears to be when seen through forgiving eyes. It is not the real world, because in the real world there are no forms. But it may appear close.

Earth is a veil, hanging in front of the real world, and must be seen through to the light. This is what Christ Vision does, overlooking the world. And eventually this veil lifts entirely to reveal the real world/face of Christ in its fullness. And in this Vision, the world - Earth, is completely forgotten, and disappears from sight entirely.

"This world of idols is a veil across the face of Christ, because its purpose is to separate your brother from yourself."

"Forgiveness lets the veil be lifted up that hides the face of Christ from those who look with unforgiving eyes upon the world."

"the veil of sin that hangs between you and the face of Christ."

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible."

The Earth, hell, the forgiven world, the real world even, are all dreams in your mind. The real world offers you an entirely different outlook, vision, and something to look at, beyond the world of bodies and sin.

"This is the shift that true perception brings: What was projected out is seen within, and there forgiveness lets it disappear. "

"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all."

"No-one in this distracted world but has not seen some glimpses of the other world about him. But while he still lays value on his own, he will DENY the vision of the other world, maintaining that he loves WHAT HE LOVES NOT, and following not the road that love points out."

"Vision is the means by which the Holy Spirit translates your nightmares into happy dreams; your wild hallucinations, that show you all fearful outcomes of imagined sin, into the calm and reassuring sights with which He would replace them. These gentle sights and sounds are looked on happily, and heard with joy. "

"When you have looked on what seemed terrifying, and seen it change to sights of loveliness and peace; when you have looked on scenes of violence and death, and watched them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks that never waste away; who need persuade you to accept the gift of vision?"

"Damnation is your judgment on YOURSELF. And this you WILL project upon the world. See it as damned, and all you see is what you did to hurt the Son of God. If you behold disaster and catastrophe, you tried to crucify him. If you see holiness and hope, you joined the Will of God to set him free. There is no choice that lies between these two decisions. And you will see the witness to the choice you made, and learn from this to RECOGNIZE the one you made. The world you see but shows you how much joy YOU have allowed yourself to see in you, and to accept as YOURS. And, if this IS its meaning, then the power to GIVE it joy MUST lie WITHIN you."

"You HAVE been wrong about the world, because you have misjudged YOURSELF. From such a twisted reference point, what COULD you see? All vision starts WITH THE PERCEIVER, who judges what is true and what is false. And what he judges false, HE DOES NOT SEE. You who would JUDGE reality CANNOT see it, for whenever judgment enters, reality has slipped away. The out of mind is out of sight because what is denied is THERE, but is not recognized. Christ is still there, although you know Him not. His Being does NOT depend upon your recognition. He lives within you in the quiet present, and waits for you to leave the past behind, and enter into the world He holds out to you in love."