Sickness in your own body is an attempt to accuse others of sin. It is part of the process of projection. "You but accuse your brother of your own sins" "Sick bodies are accusers".

This is entirely to do with cause and effect. In your natural state you are purely causal. You are not at the effect of anything external. But when you believe in your own sinfulness, you go into denial and disown the sin, projecting it outwards.

In other words, you take the causality from within yourself and hand it over to something outside of you. You now see cause as outside you, and effects as inside of you. Your mind believes both, that someone else is the cause of you, and you are being affected by them. That you have effects in you.

Due to believing in being affected, your mind powerfully manufacture signs and symptoms in your body as a reflection of your own belief, that you are having effects. It puts them through THROUGH its belief in the CAUSES that it sees itself as subject to. This is entirely based on the belief that there is a cause outside of you with power over you, dictating what you are, changing you against your will, and thus that there SHOULD BE effects in you correlating to the hierarchy of illusions.

Your mind itself creates the effects in you, and through believing that you are affected, invents weakness, suffering, sickness and death in the body. This manifests in the body as a symbolic representation of this attitude and thus the body becomes sick. The sickness of the body is entirely a PART OF the process of the projection of sin onto others. As you project mentally, the body communicates the attack by taking on the form of the message.

By using the body to accuse rather than to extend love, the body BECOMES accused, depicts accusation, turns into a form of attack, and is distorted by the mind's belief in its own affectedness. Essentially, "toxic harmful messages" passing through it affect it negatively. The body out-pictures the mind's sick attitude about itself and its brothers. The body now shows what the mind is believing and being used for, as symptoms of sickness and malfunction materialize by the power of the mind.

So there is this thing happening on a mental level where the mind is believing in sin and projecting it outward onto others. Your brother is being accused of sin and is being attacked by your mind. This belief simultaneously affects your PERCEPTION, which is now backwards (false perception), whereby you now see your brother as sinning against you and is the cause of your suffering. He is made into the real sinner who has power over you, as a false perception.

Then at the same time, on the physical level, the body is entirely caught up in this psychological process, is swept up in the attack and is distorted at the level of form to depict the attacking attitude. It becomes a "picture of crucifixion" which testifies and shows PROOF to your brother that HE must have been the CAUSE of you, and here are the EFFECTS to prove it. You show him the effects as part of your accusation and projection, to try to convince him of its wrongfulness. This all happens at once, mentally and physically.

So now the body becomes a physical accuser, demonstrating that there must have been a sin against you, because the body is under attack against your will (so it seem), and symptoms are providing fake evidence to show for it. As your brother looks upon this sick body, even if he has absolutely nothing to actually do with the situation, if he beholds your accusatory body he does not see his forgiveness there. And instead seems himself standing condemned, which weakens his mind.

Unless he is able to forgive himself, and thus completely overlook your demonstration of blame, which would allow him to be unaffected, his own belief in his own sinfulness will be compounded by your demonstration. If he can overlook it and not buy it, he can potentially offer healing to you. If he fails to overlook it, he will merely add to your sickness and compound it, taking the opportunity to rebel and project his own sin onto you in a joint ego encounter of mutual unconsciousness.

Your sick body does nothing at all to help him heal and is an attempt to infect him. It shows this on physical levels such as through infection and disease and contagion. Such sickness show up AS contagious because the mind TRYING to transfer sin to the other person.. I'm not sharing this to make anyone feel guilty. This is just something that we need to look honestly at if we are to move towards healing. But beware that Jesus holds absolutely nothing back when he presents this idea

"***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."

So Jesus is saying here, YOUR sickness, even your physical sickness, is part of an attempt by your ego's belief in sin, to project or give away the sin to others through accusation and projection. And as your body becomes sick, through your OWN indirect causality, as part of your sinful USE of the body, you get to show everyone why someone ELSE caused it.

It even goes as far as to say, that if you cause your body to DIE, in physical death, you are WILLING to do so because it assuages your guilt, portrays you as the innocent helpless victim, allows everyone else to be accused of causing it (external causes of death), and is thus the ego's attempt to exonerate you. This is why we have a belief that people die "against their will", "unchosen", "unfairly", and feel sorry for the whole episode. It's all part of the ego's worship of death as salvation.

This means you would be literally **willing to die**, to pay the price of death, IF it means you can be considered innocent and not the cause of sin. If the world can be considered the cause of it, YOU get off as the innocent party. And so death "saves you" from having sinned. This is what happens upon EVERY death. This is the CAUSE of every single physical death. "No one dies without their own consent". And this is why death of the body PROVES a complete failure to choose against sin and accusation. Death is a state of total disownership of self, life, will, power and responsibility and is an attempt to destroy the Son of God.

So it kind of boils down to this. When your mind believes in sin, it will project that sin onto others, see cause as external, experience backwards/false perception, and induce deliberate illness in the body to correspond to "what effects likely wold be produced" by such a cause. The body then shows proof that your brother is sinful because effects remain in the body. And as you literally SHOW him this sick body, you remain accusing him. And you will not REMOVE the effects from your body, because you want to CONTINUE accusing him.

"For it becomes the symbol of reproach, the sign of guilt whose consequences still are there to see, so that the cause can NEVER be denied."

"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."

"The unhealed CANNOT pardon. For they are the witnesses that pardon is unfair. They would retain the CONSEQUENCES of the guilt they overlook. Yet no-one CAN forgive a sin which he believes is real. And what has consequences MUST be real, because what it has DONE is there to see."

The important thing is, there is a flip side. What happens when you choose NOT to believe in sin? What happens when your mind decides to be holy and healed and loving towards others? With no sin to project, the entire projective process stops. That means the mind stops believing causality is external. It takes causality off the shoulders of your brother. It stops seeing itself as a victim at the effect of anyone else. Perception reverses along with cause and effect, such that you now see yourself as the cause, not the effect. And thus all "effects" in you, and in the body, literally disappear. Because without an externalized cause, they cannot remain.

The result of this is that your body is not USED to accuse, or to attack, but to HEAL. Because the mind MADE the symptoms as "effects" in the body as fake evidence to accuse your brother with, the mind ALSO has the power to UNDO those symptoms. "You made sickness and death and can therefore abolish both." By TAKING BACK YOUR POWER from externally projected "cause", you reclaim causality internally and stop seeing yourself as "having effects". The effects cannot stay WITHOUT projected causality, because you now see yourself as ONLY CAUSAL. "I am not at the effect of the world I see" is healing.

By extending love and healing through the body, the body DEPICTS harmlessness, holiness, innocence and the ABSENCE of sin. Just as the mind invented the symptoms of sickness due to its belief in "being affected", it also UN-INVENTS the symptoms as a result of believing "I am NOT at the effect of the world." Through believing "my brother is NOT the cause of me", the body is healed. By NOT using the body to communicate attack or blame, the body stops SHOWING symbolic signs of attack or blame. All sickness is lifted away from it BY the mind and it is healed through mind power Because you are the CAUSE of all of this. Sickness and death is a CHOICE.

There are NO exceptions or loopholes to this dynamic. When the mind is healed, it heals the body and forces the body to NOT show any signs of attack. "The mind, being sane, heals the body." "Now is the body healed by miracles." When the mind is in a state of sin, it attacks the body and makes it sick. "Sickness is anger taken out upon the body." "Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt (by others)." The body SHOWS what the mind's attitude towards itself and its brothers is. "A broken body SHOWS the mind HAS NOT been healed." Always.

It boils down to, healthy mind, healthy body. Sick mind, sick body. Sin and projection, body depicts attack. Forgiveness and healing, body depicts the absence of attack. Loving shows up as a divinely healed lovely body devoid of all signs of suffering, and symbolizes Christ and eternal life.

"This can be accomplished only if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension. The arrest of the mind's extension is the ***cause of all illness***, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND'S FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND'S JOY."

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you.Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies.Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body's condition. ... He does not suffer either in going or remaining. Sickness is now impossible to him."

Jesus is absolutely NOT saying that the body "sometimes" heals. He is not saying "it might, it might not." He is saying IT HAS TO symbolize the mind at all times. The body is an EFFECT, not a cause. The body is not AT the effect of the world. It does not "become sick" through external causes. Those are fake. It becomes sick only if the mind approves of the sickness for its purposes of projection. The body is being USED, it does hot have a say in it. Effects do not cause anything.

Nor is there such a thing as "death happens against my will." This is entirely a fictional ego belief. Death happens when your mind chooses to attack your brother. Your attempted murder of him, kills your body. When you love and forgive all people, your body CANNOT BE SICK OR DIE. Sickness and death literally become impossible. And this is the resurrection, in which death is surmounted and has NO POWER over you.

Giving and receiving are one. If you give ONLY LIFE, you will receive only life. If you give sin and death, you will receive sin and death. This is also the golden rule. If you believe you brother is sinful and you attack him for it with your body image, you WILL attack yourself and believe you are sinful. This will make you sick, mentally and physically. If you give him healing, you will be healed. "I will heal as I let him teach me to heal."

This is A Course in Miracles. A central teaching. The Holy Spirit has a perfectly healed body and mind to offer you to use in the world as a teaching device. But it is only accessible by not sinning against yourself and others. It IS possible to REVERSE, UNDO, and HEAL, all forms of sickness and death. Not only in yourself, but also in others. This is what it mean to be miraculous.

"And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo.""

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

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

Such a healed body HEALS YOUR BROTHER through its example.

"Correction IS the function given both, but neither one alone. And when it is fulfilled as SHARED, it MUST correct mistakes in both of you. It CANNOT leave mistakes in one unhealed, and make the other free. THAT is DIVIDED purpose, which cannot BE shared, and so it CANNOT be the function which the Holy Spirit sees as His."

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

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt. The ancient Calling of the Father to His Son, and of the Son unto his own, will yet be the last trumpet that the world will ever hear. Brother, there is no death. And this you learn when you but wish to show your brother that you had no hurt of him. He thinks your blood is on his hands, and so he stands condemned. But it is given you to SHOW him, by your healing, that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream.

How just are miracles! For they bestow an equal gift of full deliverance from guilt upon your brother AND yourself. YOUR healing saves HIM pain, as well as you. And YOU are healed BECAUSE you wished him well. This is the law the miracle obeys"

"The ego is certain that love is dangerous, and this is always its central teaching. 2 It never puts it this way; on the contrary, everyone who believes that the ego is salvation seems to be intensely engaged in the search for love. 3 Yet the ego, though encouraging the search for love very actively, makes one proviso; do not find it. 4 Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as: "Seek and do not find." 5 This is the one promise the ego holds out to you, and the one promise it will keep"

The ego is simply an attempt to deny the existence of love. Using it, you deny the existence of love within you. This means you put in place a belief, that you do not have love in you. That you are not made of love or are inherently love.

Since love is the absolute core essence of what you are, your soul, to suggest there is no love in you is an attempt to say "love is not your identity." Your very "self" is brought into question.

This creates the belief in a LACK of love within you, and also the belief you are NOT love and cannot BE loved. This is brought about by the idea of sin, which suggests you are separate from Love - from yourself, and from God.

Since you believe it’s not in you, and you feel empty and lacking, you have now become "needy". You’ve invented a fake need - an absence of love. This compels you to SEEK FOR LOVE. You reason it is not in you, so it must be ANYWHERE else other than in you.

The problem is, it is not ANYWHERE ELSE other than in you, shared with God. So as soon as you start to seek for it, you move AWAY from where it is, and TOWARDS where it is not. It is not "out there", outside of you.

This compulsion to address the "hole" in your heart by finding what’s "missing", sends you on an extraordinary journey away from yourself. You are literally trying to "find yourself" anywhere other than where you are, within. You are also therefore trying to find love, anywhere other than where it is, within.

This then means you don’t believe the love is going to come from yourself. Someone or something OTHER than you has to provide it. So now, whether or not you have love, or even your self, depends on someone or something outside of you providing it. If they fail to provide it, it’s their fault. I they provide it, you worship them. Anything other than seeing it in yourself.

This also means therefore, you now believe that someone else has taken posession or responsibility for your love, and your self, as if having stolen it from you. You now see your self and your love, in other people, locked up inside them, as though it’s stuck in them. And now it’s your job to steal it back from them. You believe it belongs to you, and that you’ve lost it.

What you are looking for in them, however, is not real love. You already believed that there is no real love in you. You already chose not to have real love. You saw yourself as unworthy of it when you believed in sin (separation from love). This made you perceive that there is no love outside you either, because you will perceive externally what is within your beliefs. A lack of love in you will show you its absence outside of you. So real love is nowhere to be found.

Instead, what you seek for is a replacement for love, a substitute for love, and for yourself. You are seeking for specialness, some sense of "value" that you want and think is worth having - or which will save you from your emptiness. And you are also trying to find a substitute identity, something which can stand in for who you really are. Something which seems special and can somehow be similar to the love you lost sight of. You want to become spiritual and special and the best you can be.

This is all described in the laws of chaos.

Law #1) The truth is different for everyone - this results from everyone failing to see an equivalent love in themselves. What they see themselves as they believe is truth. If they are not all the same love, their own selves are different and conflicting, so now the truth is different because identities are different.

Law #2) Everyone must sin and deserves attack and death - comes about from having attacked yourself and believing that someone else did it to you. Disowning your own love and your own self was an act of becoming irresponsible, through disassociation, and therefore someone else is responsible for what you are. That means it seems like they took this love from you, so you are justified in attacking back to re-acquire what they stole, or to force them to give it to you.

3) God is believed to agree with your lack of love - since you yourself believe it is true, see love/God as separate, and as having attacked, you believe the truth is that love is no longer love. That means God is not love, so God agrees you are not love, which means God cannot help you to get your love or self back. If neither of you are love, you have to get it somewhere else.

4) You can get from others what you lack - since they stole it you feel justified in getting it from them. In the least, to have them willingly shower you with specialness. In the worst, to rip it from their dying limbs in a murderous attack. What is it that you are trying to get from them? A replacement for the love you lost - specialness and a replacement identity.

In addition to this process, the absence of love compels you to find a substitute in specialness. A lack of love makes the illusory world seem real to you. You are blind to its fantasy because your lack of love makes you feel imprisoned by it, like a needy inmate. Your mind now is in a split state, because you’ve introduced a separation between you and love. Between you and yourself. This has split your mind and you are now split minded, in two minds.

When the mind is split, it sees one half of the split as different to the other in some way. Typically this skews the mind‘s associations where one part of the mind seems to contain illusions of innocence, and the other part illusions of attack/guilt. One part is thought to be your self, the other not yourself. This is disassociation.

The mind associates more with the part which seems innocent as a way to avoid the pain of "no love", ie sin, and relegates the rest of the belief in sin to unconsciousness. This later is projected out and is not associated with as "my self". It is considered "other than me", even though it is inside the same mind. "Ideas leave not their source", so your "enemy" is now inside your own mind, making it able to attack you. It is you attacking you. All attack is self attack. (The secret to salvation is that you are doing this to yourself).

The part of mind that tries to focus only on an ILLUSION of love, an illusion of innocence, an illusion of spirituality, an illusion of peace and happiness, remains in conscious awareness. It is what has been "permitted" into awareness. "You" then think that this self is ALL of yourself. You do not see the rest, yet alone see it as yourself. You think it is "outside you", because it is external to your persona, but is not outside your mind.

This special part of the mind, the persona, makes the world seem real and then attempts to section it off into "good and bad", "right and wrong", "spiritual and ego". This is because the mind has done the same thing to itself, labeling some parts as innocent and some as guilty. It separates the world and labels some parts or behaviors or diets or clothes or actions as "spiritual" and some parts as "evil". Then it pits them against each other.

The shift towards trying to include and accept only the parts which seem spiritual, and to reject the parts which seem evil, reinforces the artificial sense of sef which your mind is trying to build. It is trying to assemble a fake self, a replacement self, to replace the one you hid from yourself.

Since this all takes place within one "realm", whether your mind or in the world, it means you’ll create an ILLUSION of spirituality, and will try to change the ego into a "more spiritual" self. You’ll surround it with all kinds of things which look and sound spiritual, based on judgement and selecting between illusions.

The problem is that this fake self which is trying to only accept the most spiritual illusions as a sign of awakening, is also attacking the rest of the world, and yourself, to try to get rid of any trace of evil/sin.

In the name of "perfecting your self" - your fake self - you’ll attack your real self constantly to pick it apart and find any little thing wrong with it (which you judged/condemned as true of you), to get rid of that and keep only the best parts. This gradually rips you apart piece by piece. It is actually an act of self destruction, because eventually there will be nothing less. It is self attack in the name of self improvement or "self help".

The more that you try to develop a replacement self, and to make it spiritual, the less there will be of you. It will create a facade of niceness, seeming spiritual, trying to love everyone, being positive, people pleasing, idol worship, wearing the right clothes, saying the right words, getting dressed up for the lord on sundays to asuage guilt, having all the special books and charms and magical things. All to create an illusion of spirituality.

The problem is this spirituality is constantly under attack by the very parts of Self which that same fake self has judged as evil. Having made sin real, the "sinful others" - your own unconscious self, is now your constant enemy. You’ll try to hide from it and avoid it. You’ll try to keep it "in others" or "other than yourself". You’ll see it outside of you and attack it and condemn it to disassociate from it. And yet it will haunt you and keep coming back into your awareness, back into your life, to remind you of what you think of yourself. Because it is in your mind and you can’t make it go away without healing the split.

This fake spirituality takes constant defense. It is exhausting. It also does not work - to undo sin or guilt. Yet it is filled with promise and hope and yearning and striving and trying and being passionate about all these magical illusions of wonderfulness. And it still leads to death, be sure of that.

The more you seek for love the less love you have, the less life you have, the more you will become sick and die. "All sickness is a form of seeking outside of yourself." When this fakeness is pointed out, it is taken as a terrible attack. A horrifying truth. In particular when the special relationship is undermined, or shown to be fake, it can be very upsetting. And so wages the supposed spiritual war between good an evil. Between yourself and yourself.

The ego is simply a device you made to show you a distorted version of the truth. It only has one function, to block love. To shut out spirit. It will never have another function. But a person with fake spirituality will try to change the ego into something spiritual. To take it into the light. To make it be closer to God. This will threaten its destruction, and the "you" who is identified with it, will take this as an attack. This is the source of all ego rebounds, and much sickness, which implements defenses against truth to "protect" the ego.

The problem here is, your sense of identity has become associated with the ego. You are then trying to convert yourself from emptiness into "having love" or "being spiritual", but while still holding onto the ego. This makes you try to change the ego into something spiritual. It cannot change. It cannot become spiritual. It has a fixed function and a one-track mind focused on death. You’ll have a constant bouncing back and forth between fictional spirituality and despair and fear. Identifying with it automatically keeps it. Keeping it and trying to change it into the truth does not work. Ever. It has to be dis-identified from, to reclaim who you are.

But because we have identified with the ego, and we’re tired of suffering, and want to become more spiritual, we try to change "our self", which now is the ego. All this will do is transform the form that the ego is showing up as. It means changing up your life to "look" more spiritual. To do the spiritual things and not the non-spiritual things. To emphasize how evil the evil stuff is, and how spiritual the spiritual stuff is. To create a special little corner of the world safe from the bad stuff. For a while.

You can see many Christians doing this. Not all, but many. Some, in fundamentalist extremes of ego, heavily believe in "good and evil" and will do anything they can in a war against evil to judge it and make it very wrong, while also trying to cultivate an "image" of being more spiritual. This then entails wearing the "Sunday best", being "good", condemning "evil", adjusting behavior, avoiding sinful behavior, and generally creating an illusion of spirituality. It is very judgemental because there is so much separation in it.

You can also see this in most of the world’s religions. People with their false Gods, their idols, their shrines, their special songs, their statues, their rituals and traditions, their special clothing, daily behaviors, sacred images, holy locations, and various other magical things. You also see this in all super-positive approaches (magical unicorns) and all super-negative approaches (witchcraft etc). Both, being a belief in a special external power, or external love, are beliefs in magic. Just different sides of it.

These are all ego distractions of false spirituality. Also the new-age movement with its positive thinking, magical charms and paraphenalia, law of attraction, yoga, special kinds of body activities, etc is all part and parcel of an illusion of spirituality. Things which seem like they will achieve something, but achieve the opposite, is the hallmark of the ego. The test of any genuine spirituality is whether it "really works" to bring about more awareness of love.

All of this is an attempt to "find yourself". It’s the same thing as trying to find love. Believing that it is OUT THERE, and that if you just try hard enough you will find it. The ego has a response for you. It will tell you that you need to make a lot of passionate effort to become spiritual. It will encourage you to do lots and lots of "spiritual practice". Even if it overwhelms you. Why?

Because it denies that you are already very spiritual. It takes you away from the love that is already in you. Having a really strong passion for "finding the truth" and "finding love" and "becoming spiritual" actually makes you feel hopeless and worthless and unloved. It takes you away from the love that you are already. Appreciating what you already have (gratitude for what God has given) is a better strategy.

The more the ego can emphasize how much love you lack, the more it can compel you to seek for it. The more estranged your are from your own self, the more you think you will find it outside you or in someone else. The more you disown your own love, the more you will blame others for making it go away. And the more you try to find it, the LESS you will find it.

You already had it! Seeking for it makes it seem like it’s not here. Seek, and you will not find it. And you will not find love or truth, or health, or happiness, or wholeness, or peace, or willingness, or power, or unity, or joy, "in" the world outside of you. If you are doing that, prepare to be disappointed. This is the ego’s guarantee.

After you have recognized these illusions and have stopped trying to pretend to be loving or spiritual, through radical honesty and authenticity and responsibility, sorting out what is really true and what is really false, and have surrendered the seeking, and have seen through the TRAP of believing that you are not ALREADY love, you will return back to where you started from. This is the "journey without distance". Your destination, the love within you, where God put it, required no real distance at all. To find it, you didn’t need to travel in dreams at all.

Love is already in you. God put it there.

Your SELF, your real identity, is already in you. God put it there. No-one can give it you you and you can’t find it anywhere. Because you have not lost it.

The only problem you have are the blocks to the *awareness* of love’s presence WITHIN YOU. It’s already there!

It’s just covered up. It’s hidden. Love being hidden makes it seem like love has "gone away". This suggests that you really did become sinful, as if you sin made innocence become corrupted. You never did. You just *covered up* your innocence with a cloud of images of sin, and then tried to cover that up with illusions of innocence. Sin did not corrupt your innocence, or make you unworthy of love. It just temporarily blocked your awareness of it being PRESENT, right here, in you, as you, right now.

You have no needs. You need do nothing. You need not seek for love. "You are the love you’ve been looking for." All that is needed for enlightenment is the recognition of this truth. "Enlightenment is a recognition and not a change at all." It means recognizing where love IS, that you ARE IT, accepting that it is COMPLETELY TRUE OF YOU, your willingness to receive it from God, and your willingness to accept it is IN YOURSELF ALREADY! Accepting the atonement is accepting that you never did lose the love that you are.

You already have the light in you. You already have the truth in you. You just don’t believe it’s there or that you’re worthy of it, or that you want it, or that you need it, or that you can have it, or that it hasn’t gone way. Love didn’t leave you. Love didn’t reject you. You left love. This is the inheritance that we threw away. And which is waiting for us to reclaim. God has kept our love safe for us, forever.

We ALREADY HAD EVERYTHING we needed. God already gave it fully and shared it with us. It was after having it that we tried to throw it away. But we could not get rid of it. You can’t make love go away. You can’t get rid of God. But you can deny it is there by blocking awareness of it. Remove the blocts, and hey presto, OH LOOK, I AM ALREADY LOVE!!!! I’ve been the love that I‘ve been trying to find, all along! Surprise!

There is a lot of resistance to this very radical part of ACIM, so let's look at it even more closely.

When you project sin onto others, you are accusing them of your own sins. You do this to dissociate from the sin, deny it and hide from it. You try to associate it WITH someone else, so that they are responsible for it, and you're let off the hook.

If you think of sin as CAUSE, you are trying to disown causal power and put it outside of yourself, making you AT THE EFFECT of it. You believe someone else is CAUSING you, affecting you. and deciding what you are.

However, this doesn't just happen on a mental level. It also happens PHYSICALLY. The body is a symbol, not an end in itself.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is NOT an end."

"The body is the symbol of the world."

"The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation."

It is a communication device. It REPRESENTS the MESSAGE that the mind is transmitting to another. It CHANGES FORM to DEPICT a symbol of the kind of relationship you are having with the person! This is because it is a separation device and takes on the form of "how much separation" there is between you and others. And sickness is a greater degree of separation than health, symbolically.

Images of a healthy, unharmed, pain-free, sickness-free body, SYMBOLIZE ideas of eternal life. It represents innocence and the absence of attack. It symbolizes healing and wholeness and harmlessness. It contains no "proof" that sin has ever happened to it, and there is no evidence that anyone has ever attacked it. Therefore it acts as a SYMBOL OF IMMORTALITY.

However, when the mind is sick, having attack thoughts and belief in sin, which starts the ball rolling with projection and scapegoating, this INFLUENCES the picture of the body. The body actually literally CHANGES FORM to a different symbolic form. Forms of sickness, damage, malfunction, attack, pain, deformity, disability, disease, infection, etc, are all attempts to SHOW your brother that you "think ill of him." The body thus because a SYMBOL OF DEATH. Or as Jesus puts it, a "picture of crucifixion."

"Death is the symbol of the fear of God."

"the one you made, out of your split mind, and which IS the symbol of death."

"Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son. You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes (your body in a sick state), that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death (yes PHYSICAL), and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell."

We actually USE the body as a TOOL. It is a communication device. We actually hold it up as a picture for others to look at to REPRESENT what we think and how we relate. When we are in ego, we change the body into forms of sickness. And when we are with the Holy Spirit, we change the body into forms of health. This is because a "healthy body" DOES symbolize life and wholeness and happiness and innocence. Just as sick bodies SYMBOLIZE attack and suffering and pain and death.

Now here's the important part. The reason WHY you make the body sick ON PURPOSE in order to accuse others of sin. When your mind is healthy, cause and effect are in their proper order and you are extending love outward. You see yourself as the cause or dreamer of the dream. However, when you go into ego, your perception becomes backwards, and you start to see cause as OUTSIDE of you, and see yourself as AN EFFECT.

Your own mind does this, and the result is that it starts to "visualize itself" AS an effect. Whatever way it believes someone ELSE is to blame, or someone ELSE is sinful, it also imagines what kind of EFFECTS that would produce in you if it were true. If some person is believed to be attacking you, YOUR mind will DEPICT itself physically as the symbolic image of an ATTACKED body. Your mind implements the EFFECTS within the body, to correspond to its belief in the projected CAUSE that it sees as outside itself.

So now what's happening is, as cause and effect are reversed, your mind starts to attack itself from the outside in, through others. As you go to scapegoat and blame someone for CAUSING you, for sinning against you, you SIMULTANEOUSLY portray yourself as a victim. You do this mentally, BUT it also in turn CHANGES THE BODY. The body PICTURES what you think of yourself and how you see yourself.

"The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE."

Whatever you think you are, your body SYMBOLIZES it physically. If you think of yourself with attack and sin, which you later project, your body takes on a symbolic FORM of that attitude. It represents TWO things ... 1) what you think of yourself, and 2) what you think of others. These are actually one thing, because you are one with others.

So as you go to accuse yourself of sin, you ALSO go to accuse your brother of sin. The body COMES BETWEEN you as a separation device. It is now being USED to symbolically visualize the PRESENCE of attack, darkness, walls, blockages, etc. And so the body shifts its physical appearance (it's just an image in the mind), to represent your relationship to yourself and others. "Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, ***you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son***. ***You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes***, that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell. "

"For accusation is a bar to love, ***and damaged bodies ARE accusers***. They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, ***proclaiming*** that the frail can HAVE no trust, and that the damaged HAVE no grounds for peace. Who has been injured BY his brother, and could love and trust him still? He HAS attacked, and will attack again. Protect him not, because ***your damaged body shows that you must be protected FROM him.***"

Bottom line, when your mind is accusing, your BODY accuses as well. It lines up with the mind's attitude. The body itself does NOT have its OWN state, its own attitude, its own decision, or its own mind. It CANNOT maintain itself. It is maintained by the mind, and the mind has power over it. The mind USES it and TELLS it what to do and HOW to show up. It MAKES the body appear in one form or another. And the PURPOSE of any chosen form is to COMMUNICATE through symbols.

So when you are accusing, which means you are projecting, which means you are splitting your mind, your mind causes the body to be used for separation, and this ATTACKS the body and makes it steer towards a PICTURE of crucifixion and death. The INTENT is that the body is acting to PROVE to your brother the consequences of what you claim HE DID. You cannot scapegoat WITHOUT it changing the body. The body is HELD UP as a picture to SHOW HIM effects, which YOU put there, which you accuse HIM of putting there.

So long as the body remains appearing to be sick in any way, and given the mind is the ONLY cause of it, and given the body can ONLY symbolize because it has no meaning or state of its own, the body HAS TO fall into line with the mind's purpose. If the body remains sick in any way, the mind HAS TO be continuing to use it for attack. The body is still showing a symbol of attack BECAUSE the mind is STILL attacking. There are no exceptions to this. It is so reliable that we can say, if the body is still sick, the mind HAS NOT been healed. And it also means if the body is still sick, IT IS STILL accusing your brother of sin.

"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed."

"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."

It is NOT enough to claim that the mind can be healed WITHOUT healing the body. When the mind is healed, it FORCES the body to symbolize its new condition. The body cannot stay sick or keep sickness or hold onto any given state, because mind is USING IT as a symbolic form of communication. Whatever the mind wants to show a brother, the body HAS TO show. And so the body CHANGES FORM according to the mind.

This works for sickness just as it works for healing. The body cannot stay sick if the mind decides to be truly healthy. No more than it can stay healthy if the mind decides to be sick. Jesus even goes so far as to say that if your mind is truly healed, it WILL heal the body ALWAYS, and this makes it IMPOSSIBLE for the body to become sick. The mind is OVERRIDING any alleged external (projected) causes of sickness, and is TOTALLY OWNING control and power over it. Therefore, it does not CHOOSE to be sick, and so does not MAKE the body show up as sick. This makes sickness of the body IMPOSSIBLE.

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for, it will become to you. Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have It not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die."

"The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible." ... ""Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching."

It can't be stressed enough how extreme and unconditional this is. If you so choose, your mind will use the body for attack, which WILL ALWAYS attack the body and FORCE it to depict proof of sin. And this proof of sin will be held up to others to SHOW them what they did to you (allegedly). EVEN to the extent that you are willing to KILL the body entirely, IF it means that you can be exonerated from sin. And he is in fact saying that we do this.

We think it is even a SMALL PRICE to pay, if it means we can be seen as the innocent one, such that a dead body IS VERY STRONG PROOF that someone OTHER than the person CAUSED The death. You'll notice that whenever there is a physical death, it always looks as though the person DID NOTHING to cause it. This is because their mind has DISOWNED the cause by projecting it EXTREMELY, depicting themselves as POWERLESS AND HELPLESS, as if having no ability to choose at all.

"Death is an attempt to resolve conflict by not willing at all."

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR OF AWAKENING. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of CONSCIOUSNESS. This is a pathetic way of TRYING NOT TO KNOW by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual."

By PRETENDING not to be willing at all, to have no choice and no power and no say in the matter, we attack the body and make it show up as DEAD, in trying to ACCUSE THE WORLD OF SIN, so that WE will seem to be the helpless victim. A person who was "killed" NOT by their own hand. Someone who "died of" ANYTHING other than themselves. Died from cancer, died from starvation, died from a car crash, died from war, whatever. Anything so long as it appears to be NOT THE MIND. So that the person can HIDE the fact that THEY DID IT TO THEMSELVES. This is why death is an extreme LIE.

"The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS. (the body is a symbol) A sick and suffering you (physically) but ***represents your brother's guilt***; the witness which you send (communicate physically), lest he forget the injuries (physical) he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture (of your body) 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."

So in death, you are using your body to try to PROVE that your BROTHER IS A SINNER. This is the EGO's use of the body. This is what happens when you use the body for attack. It destroys the body. It makes the body show up as sick and suffering and a victim, so that someone or something is framed for sin. That is the ONLY reason this happens. And the mind makes this decision alone.

"The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions which are responsible for the body's condition."

The alternative is that if you move towards RESURRECTION, towards life and wholeness and happiness and holiness, this TOO has an "influence on" the body. It has a healing influence, we could say. It causes the mind to DEPICT itself as a symbol of immortality. A symbol of having NOT been attacked, a symbol of being free from suffering, a symbol of eternal life. A symbol of invulnerability and harmlessness and the IMPOSSIBILITY of being sick or hurt.

As such "the mind, being sane, heals the body" and "now is the body healed by miracles." Again the body has NO SAY in this. It is just a symbol. It gets its FORM from the mind's relationship to others. It SYMBOLIZES the communication. As the mind heals the body CANNOT REMAIN SICK. It cannot maintain sickness or keep it, nor is there ANY OTHER CAUSE of physical sickness. Mind has TOTAL control over it.

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind MUST BE STRONGER. Every miracle demonstrates this."

The mind is STRONGER than the body and the body can only go along with the mind's wishes. If the mind heals, the mind overrides the body image and projects an image of a HEALTHY body. A body which is free from any symbols or signs of attack, harm, damage, breakage, scars, wounds, or anything else which might symbolize the OPPOSITE of eternal life.

Furthermore, when your mind forces your body to heal, because you WANT to SHOW your brothers that you LOVE him, and think HARMLESSLY of him, HE now looks upon your physical body as a MESSAGE. Its physical form PROVES what you THINK of yourself and him. In its healed form, it says "I have never been hurt and you have never hurt me." It PROVES he is innocent. It even proves this BEYOND anything HE tries to do to you.

Even if he thinks he HAS attacked you, YOUR miracle of healing proves to him that HE HAS NOT. And therefor he can no longer BELIEVE that he is a sinner, because you've USED the body to show him, symbolically, that anything he THOUGHT he did had NO effects. This triggers a HEALING IN HIS MIND, because your BODY no longer supports or TEMPTS him to believe that he is sinful. Therefore your body now is used as a HEALING DEVICE and IS SYMBOL OF THE INNOCENCE OF YOUR BROTHER.

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

"Health (physically) is the witness unto health. As long as it is unattested, it remains without conviction. ****Only when DEMONSTRATED has it BEEN proved, and MUST compel belief*****. No-one is healed through double messages."

"Show THIS unto your brother, who will see that ****every scar is healed****, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And ****he will look on his forgiveness there****, and with healed eyes will look BEYOND it, to the innocence that he beholds in you. Here is ***the proof that he has NEVER sinned***; that NOTHING that his madness bid him do was ever done, ****or ever had effects of any kind****. That NO reproach he laid upon his heart was EVER justified, and NO attack can touch him with the poisoned sting of fear. Attest (physically) his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing (physically and mentally) is his comfort ***and HIS health***. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true."

So literally, the healing of your mind, without exception forces the healing of your body, which in turn HEALS YOUR BROTHER. Your healing becomes HIS healing. "When I am healed I am not healed alone." And UNLESS this occurs, forgiveness IS NOT complete. Again...

"*****Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself*****. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt?"

If your brother is sinless, psychologically, he CANNOT have done anything to you PHYSICALLY, and therefore the physical is now REPURPOSED as a way to PROVE to him, psychologically, that he HAS NOT sinned. His sins had NO EFFECT on you OR your body. Your miracles REMOVED the evidence. And he can no longer SEE proof that he sinned. Which PHYSICALLY EXONERATES HIM. And this testifies that HE CANNOT have sinned, and now his MIND is healed because your physical body has played a part in weakening HIS belief in his own sinfulness. Something it could NOT do if it remains sick. In fact if it remains sick, your mind IS still accusing him of sin, and he knows it.

Some ACIM students think that there is no validity or importance whatsoever to changing the physical body, healing it, or for any reason. But Jesus is saying something totally opposite. He is literally saying you MUST heal it, otherwise it DOES continue to PROVE that your mind IS NOT healed. And any time physical sickness of any kind is showing up, something in YOUR mind is not healed. Physical sicknesses of different kinds in fact symbolize different mental attitudes.

"Sickness takes many forms, and so does unforgiveness. The forms of one but reproduce the forms of the other, for they are the same illusion." Different unforgivenesses (grievances, special relationships etc) produce different PHYSICAL FORMS of sickness.

"So closely is one translated into the other, that a careful study of the form a sickness takes will point quite clearly to the form of unforgiveness that it represents."

So here he is even saying you can DIAGNOSE what UNFORGIVENESS is present in the mind, based on the physical FORM of the sickness in the body. Because the body is always symbolic and the forms of sickness are symbolic. This is why you get backaches when you are carrying to much mental load, and your eyes develop problems when you don't want to see something, and someone "gives you a headache" when you don't like them, and your blood pressure "boils" when you get angry.

Physical sickness IS HOW you project your sin! If your mind cannot CONCEIVE of attack, it overpowers the body and forces it to show up AS HEALED. A mind that is TRULY devoid of attack produces a LOVELY BODY, devoid of any signs or symbols of attack of any kind. Not only does the body heal by miracles, it now becomes a SYMBOL OF ETERNAL LIFE. And symbolizing immortality, it is DEVOID OF HARM and CANNOT be sick, NOR can it die! It is now impossible for the body to die and decay, it can ONLY be left by TRUTH, by DISAPPEARING IT! "Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."

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

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

A radical teaching in the Course which not many are willing to accept, is that the condition of your body is still subject to the Golden Rule. That means that what applies to you applies to others equally. So when your body is sick, it IS attempting to attack both you AND your brother. It is not sick in isolation, it is a double-edged sword. And while your body is sick, it IS accusing your brother of sin, attempting to show to Him HIS sinfulness, attempting to attack Him and make Him dead.

Therefore the ONLY way to exonerate Him and to PROVE to Him in an undeniable way, that He must be innocent, is to demonstrate a body which has no signs of sickness or attack. YOUR health is HIS health. The body must become a symbol and representation of immortality, a sign of life, so that when your brother looks upon its loveliness He recognizes HE must be innocent because YOUR body shows no signs of effects, and therefore He cannot have attacked you. This is not merely wishful thinking. It requires a supernatural state of protection in which it becomes IMPOSSIBLE for your body to be attacked, sick, or dead.

This is also very clearly and radically spelled out in Chapter 27, section 2... "the picture of crucifixion", in which Jesus states we are to stop demonstrating sickness TO others, in order to teach only life and innocence. He even goes on to say that the Holy Spirit has prepared an alternative BODY, which is free from all signs of attack, and we are to show it to others to prove "brother, at your hand I live", defying all attempts by others to find signs of the effects of their attempted attacks, thus exonerating them.

There are few sections of the course less understood and more denied than this one.

Additionally, in Chapter 27 section 3 "the fear of healing" (!!) which follows on, Jesus opens with this statement, building upon this:

"Is healing frightening? To many, yes. For accusation is a bar to love, and damaged bodies ARE accusers. They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, proclaiming that the frail can HAVE no trust, and that the damaged HAVE no grounds for peace. Who has been injured BY his brother, and could love and trust him still? He HAS attacked, and will attack again. Protect him not, because your damaged body shows that you must be protected FROM him. To forgive may be an act of charity, but NOT his due. He may be PITIED for his guilt, but NOT exonerated. And if you forgive him his transgressions, you but ADD to all the guilt that he has really earned."

So what he is saying here is that a damaged body (sick, ill, diseased, broken, in pain etc) is ACTIVELY ACCUSING. In order to BE in states of sickness the mind has to entertain level confusion, has to project causality outside itself, sees itself as at the effect of external causes, and thus sees brothers as the CAUSE of the sickness, thus accusing anything other than yourself of causing the suffering. And then the body SHOWS a representation of this mindset, accusing your brother through PHYSICAL EVIDENCE, that HE must be the sinner who caused this. "Brother at your hand I die".

And so when you are making your body show up as sick, demonstrating self-attack, you attack both you and your brother, because separation comes BETWEEN you. The physical form of sickness is a weapon of accusation against both of you. Therefore... and this should be obvious unless you are into justifications and level confusions and denial, that the ONLY WAY to EXONERATE your brother, while you still have a body, is to NOT SHOW HIM any signs of sickness or damage in your body. If your body is still in a state of sickness, you ARE still accusing him, and therefore your mind CANNOT be healed. This is why, without exception, "a broken body is proof the mind has not been healed." There is no escape from this. You cannot have a sick body and a healthy mind.

This is a Course in miracles and it is a course in LIFE. It is not a course in being sick, which is a little death. It is a course in HEALTH. It is a course in healing. It is a course in removing ALL signs of attack and separation in the body PRIOR to being in a mental state capable of resurrection. The course ends in resurrection, not death. You MUST NOT SHOW SICKNESS OR DEATH TO THE WORLD!

Jesus goes on to say "Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt?"

And so when your brother attempts to accuse or attack your body, you must DEMONSTRATE (which means to show physically), that his efforts produced no EFFCTS, your body HAS no effects of sickness or damage, your body could not BE attacked, and you are a picture of invulnerability. "Sickness is a defense against the truth" speaks of this protection, which is SUPERNATURAL and defies all ego laws and laws of physics:

"The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible. Yet THIS PROTECTION needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgement or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick. "

And let us also remember from the manual for teachers:

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies.

Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. THE MIND MAKES THIS DECISION, AS IT MAKES ALL DECISIONS THAT ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BODY'S CONDITION. ...Sickness is now impossible to him. ....Oneness and sickness cannot coexist."

In this there are no exceptions. The condition of the body REFLECTS the condition of the mind, and the mind is the ONLY CAUSE of the body's condition. There are NO outside powers that bring oppression or suffering, including death. You are supposed to DEMONSTRATE LIVE that nothing can hurt you or your body. Not even your brothers attacks. And even as he attempts to attack you, it has NO EFFECT, proving IN FORM in undeniable evidence, that he MUST NOT have sinned because it had no consequences, and therefore He is innocent. His innocence is proved to him through your miraculous demonstration. "The mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle DEMONSTRATES this."

To suggest you can have sane healthy mind while the body remains sick is DENIAL, it is a split mind, and impossible. It is your responsibility to SHOW that nothing happens to you against your will, you cannot be attacked unless you attack yourself, and "no one dies unless they choose to do so" - which means NO ONE ELSE can make you die if you do not choose it. The message given by the mind and the message given by the BODY MUST BE ONE, otherwise you are giving double messages and are a LIAR.

So yes, this DOES MEAN, that the state of your PHYSICAL BODY is actually important while you have it, it is part of the MIND's experience, it is not exempt from your demonstration of sanity, it is supposed to be USED to communicate health and healing, and therefore YOU MUST STOP MAKING IT SICK OR DEAD in order to complete the Course! The course ends in resurrection, not death. No-one escapes a dream of death through death. You HAVE to make the body healthy and healed and whole and free from sickness of every kind BEFORE your mind can be ready to overcome death entirely. And that means there is a supernatural POWER that you must demonstrate to others. This is why "Miracles are teaching devices."

All those who would say the body doesn't matter, or it isn't able to be sick, or it doesn't exist, or mind is separate from body, or sickness isn't real, or whatever other DENIAL BULLSHIT, I suggest you reconsider and read what Jesus has actually said. HE says the body must be used as evidence of immortality and innocence, and you can't do that if it's still in a state of corruption. I suggest you look at Chapter 19 - obstacles to peace - the INCORRUPTIBLE BODY. Here is the opening paragraphs:

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

You who believe you can condemn the Son of God to this ARE arrogant. But you who would RELEASE him are but honoring the Will of his Creator. The arrogance of sin, the pride of guilt, the sepulchre of separation, all are part of your unrecognized dedication to death. The glitter of guilt you laid upon the body would KILL it. For what the ego loves, it kills for its obedience. But what obeys it not, it CANNOT kill. You have ANOTHER dedication which would keep the body incorruptible and perfect as long as it is useful for your holy purpose."

It's time to start raising the dead and showing that you cannot be hurt in any way, on any level, even in form.

We are not supposed to be moving TOWARDS death, in any way. Not even physically.

From Chapter 19 section 9 - "the attraction of death":

"And so it is with death. Made by the ego, its dark shadow falls across all living things, because the ego is the "enemy" of life.

And yet, a shadow cannot kill. What is a shadow to the living? They but walk past, and it is gone. But what of those whose dedication it is NOT to live? The black-draped "sinners," the ego's mournful chorus, plodding so heavily AWAY from life, dragging their chains and marching in the slow procession that honors their grim master, lord of death? Touch any one of them with the gentle hand of forgiveness, and watch the chains fall away, along with YOURS. See him throw aside the black robe he was wearing to his funeral, and hear him laugh at death. The sentence sin would lay upon him, he can escape with your forgiveness.

This is NOT arrogance. It is the Will of God. What is impossible to you who choose His Will as yours? What is death to you? Your dedication is NOT to death, nor to its master."

CLEARLY, if you are moving toward death, you are moving away from LIFE, and God's Will is that YOU LIVE. "It is not God's will that you suffer". You MUST NOT MAKE YOUR BODY DIE otherwise you are NOT DOING GOD'S WILL. This IS what the Course is teaching. STOP DYING!

Even if the body is not real, even if it is an illusion, you CANNOT continue having it be sick or dead while maintaining the you are awake and spiritual. You MUST use it to demonstrate immortality, health, happiness and holiness. You MUST use it to bring healing to others. You MUST use it as a communication medium through which miracles are performed for others. And you must use it to EXONERATE your brother of all sin. If you are moving into physical sickness, you HAVE defenses against the truth. If you are moving toward death, YOU DO WORSHIP IT.

You are supposed to become CAPABLE of overcoming death entirely, making death impossible for you, PROVING it is impossible for you, and not ALLOWING OR CHOOSING death to "happen to" the body against your will. "No one dies without his own consent." You CANNOT have a sane mind without a healthy body. "The mind, being sane, heals the body." "Those who are sick do not love themselves for if they loved themselves they would heal themselves".

It is all simple and clear. This is a Course in the LIVING and a moving closer TO LIFE, which is God. You cannot approach God, who is life, and have sickness and death be maintained on any level. The body MUST RESURRECT and become holy. Failure to do so is failing the course.

---

Below is the full quote from the course about how you use the body to teach the innocence or sinfulness of another:

"Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son. You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes, that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell. Yet this is writ in hell and NOT in Heaven, where you are BEYOND attack, and prove his INNOCENCE. The picture of yourself you offer him you show YOURSELF, and give it all your faith. The Holy Spirit offers you, to give to him, a picture of yourself in which there is NO pain, and NO reproach at all. And what was martyred to his guilt becomes the perfect witness to his innocence.

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

Sickness is but a "little" death; a form of vengeance not yet total. Yet it speaks with certainty for what it represents. The bleak and bitter picture you have sent your brother, YOU have looked upon in grief. And everything that it has shown to him have you believed, BECAUSE it witnessed to the guilt in him, which you perceived and loved. Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS.

Show THIS unto your brother, who will see that every scar is healed, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And he will look on his forgiveness there, and with healed eyes will look BEYOND it, to the innocence that he beholds in you. Here is the proof that he has NEVER sinned; that NOTHING that his madness bid him do was ever done, or ever had effects of any kind. That NO reproach he laid upon his heart was EVER justified, and NO attack can touch him with the poisoned sting of fear. Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true.

It is not Will for Life, but wish for death, that is the motivation for this world. Its ONLY purpose is TO PROVE GUILT REAL. No worldly thought or act or feeling has a motivation other than this one. These are the witnesses that are called forth to be believed, and lend conviction to the system they speak for and represent. And each has many voices, speaking to your brother and yourself in different tongues. And yet to both the message is the same. Adornment of the body seeks to show how lovely are the witnesses for guilt. Concerns about the body demonstrate how frail and vulnerable is your life; how easily destroyed is what you love. Depression speaks of death and vanity of real concern with anything at all.

The strongest witness to futility, which bolsters all the rest and helps them paint the picture in which sin is justified, is sickness in whatever form it takes. The sick have reason for each one of their unnatural desires and strange needs. For who could live a life so soon cut short, and NOT esteem the worth of passing joys? What pleasures COULD there be that will endure? Are not the frail ENTITLED to believe that every stolen scrap of pleasure is their righteous payment for their little lives? Their death will pay the price for all of them, if they enjoy their benefits or not. The end of life must come, whatever way that life be spent. And so take pleasure in the quickly passing and ephemeral.

These are NOT sins, but witnesses unto the strange belief that sin and death are real, and innocence and sin will end alike, within the termination of the grave. If this were true, there WOULD be reason to remain content to seek for passing joys, and cherish little pleasures where you can. But in this picture is the body NOT perceived as neutral and WITHOUT a goal inherent in itself. For it becomes the symbol of reproach, the sign of guilt whose consequences still are there to see, so that the cause can NEVER be denied. Your function is to PROVE to him that sin can HAVE no cause. How futile MUST it be to see yourself a picture of the proof that what your function IS can never be.

The Holy Spirit's picture changes not the body into something it is not. It only takes away from it ALL signs of accusation and of blamefulness. Pictured WITHOUT a purpose, it is seen as neither sick nor well, nor bad nor good. No grounds are offered that it may be judged in ANY way at all. It has no life, but neither is it dead. It stands apart from ALL experience of fear OR love. For now it witnesses to NOTHING yet, its purpose being open, and the mind made free again to choose what it is FOR. Now is it not condemned, but waiting for a purpose to be GIVEN, that it may fulfill the function that it will receive.

Into this empty space, from which the GOAL of sin has been removed, is Heaven free to be remembered. Here its peace can come, and perfect healing take the place of death. The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."

The simple way to let this be achieved is merely this; to let the body have no purpose from the past, when you were sure you KNEW its purpose was to foster guilt. For this insists your crippled picture is a lasting sign of what it represents. This leaves no space in which a DIFFERENT view, ANOTHER purpose, can be given it. You do NOT know its purpose. You but gave ILLUSIONS of a purpose to a thing you made to hide your function from yourself. This thing WITHOUT a purpose CANNOT hide the function that the Holy Spirit gave. Let, then, ITS purpose and YOUR function be both reconciled at last, and seen as one."

God has given you free will. Anything you choose is yours to choose. No-one else has any say in what your choices are. No-one has any right to decide for you what your choices are, to make commentary about your choices, to judge your choices, or to accuse you of making the wrong choice. It is none of their business.

Each person is solely responsible for their own personal freedom, which means that anything that a person experiences is entirely chosen, and not induced by anyone or anything else. God is the only cause of anyone. "I am forever an effect of God." One brother does not cause or create another brother. All brothers are equals as siblings precisely because they are not the cause of each other. No one else has EVER been the cause of anything you have experienced. If you believe otherwise you are confused.

You do not have the power to cause anyone else. No one else has the power to cause you. Being entirely responsible for your own freedom can only arise when you grant everyone else total responsibility for their own freedom. If you attempt to control, manipulate, judge, coerce, persuade, condemn, or otherwise alter other people's freedoms, you are denying your own and imprisoning yourself. It will not help you.

When you are entirely responsible for your own perfect freedom, which is a gift from God, you will recognize that absolutely nothing happens against your will. Not suffering, not sickness, not even death. "The power of decision is my own." Your sole responsibility is acceptance of atonement for yourself, so that you can offer it to others. But it is not for you to shove it down their throats, nor can you force anyone to be at peace, or to be loving, or to choose what you think they should.

When a person begins to lose sight of their own freedom, they lose touch with responsibility for the power of choice. And they begin to believe that causation and power are outside of them. They disempower themselves by blaming others. And then they automatically begin to try to make sense of why things are happening seemingly outside of their choosing, and it starts to make sense that someone else is choosing for you. And now you have assigned responsibility for your freedom to someone else.

When you think that someone else is responsible for your freedom, you are being irresponsible, and you will now depend on them making decisions that you approve of. You will encourage them to choose for you, provided it's the right choice that you indirectly want. If they do not choose what you want, for you, you will attack them for failing to give you what you want.

This then becomes the ego's mandate of "forgiveness to destroy", in which responsibility for freedom and for change is assigned to someone other than yourself, instead of you taking the responsibility to make your own decisions. You also cannot claim total responsibility for your own decision-making, while simultaneously believing that other persons are responsible for your decisions. Which means you have to allow other people to be entirely responsible for whatever decisions they make.

When you enter into coercion, control, blame, judgement, accusation, condemnation, taking sides, demanding that people comply with your beliefs, trying to force people to act a certain way, requiring people to make certain choices that you think are the right choices (for any reason), or have expectations or "needs" relating to what they do to or for you, you are entering into insanity, a special relationship, and false perception.

"God does not coerce".

"Your will is lost to you in this strange bartering, in which guilt is traded back and forth, and grievances increase with each exchange."

"Your will is free, and nothing can prevail against it."

You can easily spot when someone is moving into ego. Instead of being responsible ONLY for their own free will choice, they begin to displace responsibility onto other people. Causation is placed outside of them. They then begin trying to manipulate or "guilt-trip" others into acting certain ways, to comply indirectly with their wishes. The seeming "boundary" of freedom between them and others is disrupted, they trespass on the sacred territory of another, and the invasion of war begins.

When people are arguing about whether they should or should not do something, or what is the right thing to do, or who did what to whom, or who is responsible for causing other people to be sick, or who is putting who in danger, or any other dynamic where one person is accused of being responsible for another, the ego is involved. The two people are becoming tangled in a special relationship, anchored at the body level of insane illusions and fictional causes.

Interestingly, when someone is doing this, which always involves projection and anger, which is an attempt to make someone guilty, the person is claiming to be acting in the interests of freedom and the good of all, but are simultaneously rejecting their own freedom by trying to control the freedom of others. Or rather, they place their own freedom into the hands of other people and then try to accuse them of mis-handling it, meaning you don't really believe that other people are free to use YOUR freedom as they see fit.

To make a long story short, what other people choose to do is absolutely none of your business. This is why Jesus asks you to "be passerby". You are only free when you recognize that your brother is free. You cannot recognize his freedom if you are trying to control him, trying to get him to side with you, are waging a war and trying to win allies, or when you're accusing him of inappropriate choices (sin).

If you reject the freedom of others you are in fact shutting down your own freedom, but you do this in the name of trying to uphold your freedom, which is insane. You clearly cannot increase your freedom, or secure your rights, by taking freedom and rights away from other people. If other people are making poor decisions, then the consequences of those decisions are their responsibility only. You cannot be affected by them, unless you yourself personally make a poor choice as well. You cannot be cursed unless you curse yourself first, and other people's poor decisions DO NOT affect you against your will.

"Casting spells" merely means "affirming error", and error is lack of love. When man projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made. This distortion makes them vulnerable to the curse of others, since they have already cursed themselves. The miracle worker can only bless, and this undoes the curse and frees the soul from prison."

When you move into an area of believing that other people greatly affect you, can destroy your life, can interfere with your health, can threaten your family, or can in any way do anything to you by their free choosing, you yourself have a mental health problem. You are denying your own freedom to such an extent that you think other people are the owners of your freedom. You have given them the power to do this to and for you, meaning also that you do not love yourself. And yet you accuse them of acting against your love.

You in fact want other people to be responsible for you, and in fact you want them to do things to you against your will, so that you can maintain that you are not free. You therefore use your enemies as devices to keep yourself imprisoned, and the more you hate them the more you succeed in imprisoning yourself. The only way to be free yourself is to grant freedom to everyone. Blaming people for imprisoning you or violating your rights is a great way to violate your own rights.

You might think that if you were to do this there would be anarchy, you would be vulnerable, idiots would run the country, fools would steal your possessions, stupid nutjobs would try to hurt your family, and the broken would try to infect you with their diseases. But these are actually part of your own attempt to reject health, reject life, reject protection, reject invulnerability, and reject safety. None of this can happen without your psychological consent.

You can't have it both ways. You can't be in the business of disempowering yourself and disowning your supernatural power of immortality, while at the same time claiming that other people are responsible for your wellbeing and are able to hurt you. You do in fact have a mind-over-matter power innate to all children of God, capable of rendering you immune and invulnerable to all the things of the world. You have an automatic God-given miraculous ability to heal anything and overcome anything. And nothing can prevail against you.

"Today it is the ego which stands powerless before your will. Your will is free, and nothing can prevail against it."

"Nothing can prevail against our united wills, because nothing can prevail against God's."

"NOTHING can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the hands of His Father."

When you are in the business of making other people's business your business, you are not in business. You are out of business, which is why you are trying to get the business of others by being involved in their business. You busy yourself with their business because you have no business doing so. And by doing so, you have no business at all.

The people who are having an utter shit fit about whether or not to vaccinate need to pay attention to sanity and reason. You are immortal and you cannot die. No-one and nothing can happen against your will. So who are you accusing of being responsible for things happening to you? It is in fact you who is disempowering yourself and setting yourself up as a victim, and you want to have victimizers in your life who you believe oppose you, to pretend that you don't want their opposition, so that you can keep being a victim about it.

All forms of sickness are illusions produced by an insane mind, acted out upon a body. This is something that you do to yourself. "The mind makes this decision as it makes all decisions responsible for the condition of the body." Your mind has the power to decide whether or not to live or die, to be sick or well, to be happy or unhappy. No one has the right or the responsibility to take this power or freedom away from you. And no-one can. Only you can give it away, disown it, or try to lose it, by your own free will. That's your choice.

If you fear that you can be infected by another's contagion, or by some random environmental evil, then your mind is already sick and needs help. If you are not willing to receive the help, then you are in a bind. It means you do not want to be healthy and you want to die. And yet in this condition you will claim that you want to be healthy and not be sick. But you cannot be even believe that you can be sick while simultaneously bringing about the ONLY decision capable of making you suffer. Nor can you be blaming the cause of your suffering on a speck of particles, or a car crash, or any kind of external causation.

"No-one can die, unless he chooses death. What seems to be the FEAR of death, is really its ATTRACTION."

The real deeper issue behind all this covid panick, is the fear of death and "how to be safe". However...

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."

"There IS no safety in a battleground. You can look down on it in safety from above, and NOT be touched. But, from within it, you can find NO safety."

"The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus."

When we are body identified, we place ourselves on the battlefield and accuse ourselves of weakness. Then we set ourselves up for being subject to a warzone and threaten ourselves with causes on the same level. We then try to escape this threat with magical means and silly maneuvers which are supposed to somehow make you invulnerable and safe, as if this solves the problem. The problem is not whether or not you are susceptible to a disease, the problem is that you are choosing to believe in disease in the first place, therefore threatening yourself with inducing it.

It then does not matter whatsoever whether you choose to get a vaccine or not. Getting one is insane. Not getting one is insane. Both are insane because they are based on a false premise. If the premise is "sickness is real and I am vulnerable to death against my will", then you are already insane. And making the decision to be vaccined OR not vaccinnated are both equally insane outcomes based on a lie.

"The world was made that problems could not be escaped." You cannot go either way and claim to be making a sane decision.

You cannot escape from or have external salvation from sickness, while looking for external solutions to an externalized problem. If the world does not exist, who is doing this to you? Who is deciding that you are weak and vulnerable and attackable and destroyable? This is nothing other than your resposnibility and your belief. "I can be attacked by nothing but my thoughts." ...

"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. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

If you are not able to accept total responsibility, which is atonement, then you are in a predicament. You say you want salvation but you don't. You say you want life but you keep choosing death. You say you want health but you believe in sickness and then panick in fear trying to scramble to find ways to defend agaisnt it, knowing it cannot work. What are you going to do? If you are not willing to entertain a miracle, then you are left with no other option. If you are not willing to forgive and rise above the battlefield, you have no other option.

The only remedy you are then left with is a solution which can at best seem to partially work, and at worst destroy you. This is true of any vaccine as much as it is true of ANY magical solution. No magical solution will ever induce wholeness, nor will it make you invulnerable, nor cause you to be what you are. Magic will not correct your mind, it will likely have no effect on your insane beliefs, and it will not ultimately save you from death. It is your thoughts alone that decide whether or not you are choosing to die, and this overrides all magic, and the world.

So you are then in a predicament because you cannot possibly choose a remedy that truly works, all the remedies are broken, the only action you can take is incomplete, and nothing external can truly cause you to be peaceful. "salvation comes from nothing outside of you."

"THERE IS NOTHING OUTSIDE YOU. That is what you must ultimately learn, for it is in that realization that the Kingdom of Heaven is restored to you."

A vaccine is, at best, an illusion of a solution. It might seem to work for some people and not for others. It may seem to work to a degree, but not totally. It absolutely MUST attack the body in some way as all magic does. It will not stop any virus from entering your body and beginning to take hold.

It will not prevent your body from being vulnerable. It will not ward off death nor will it cause you to feel safe. It might, potentially, seem to manipulate the body so that it might, perhaps, if your mind consents, avoid contagion or transmission of a disease some of the time. But it will not bring peace to your soul. God doesn't live in a syringe. Nor does God need booster shots.

If all you can choose is a senseless insane choice, a partial choice, a choice which you know cannot truly work, which can at best produce an illusion of health, and which may in fact hurt you, what are you to do? This is where you need to ideally be willing to turn to someone who knows better than you. Ask the Holy Spirit. Ask Jesus. Ask your angels. Get some guidance from a higher perspective. If you are not willing or ready to go there yourself, get their input. Let them decide for you.

And this again is where we must acknowledge the freedom of your will. No divine being is ever going to mandate a vaccination, nor are they necessarily going to always advise against it in a given situation. What is right for YOU, is dependent upon every speck of your mental state and what is appropriate, not only for you, but in the atonement plan and in the script for your life.

There may be a reason for you to elect temporary sickness. There may be a reason for you to meet certain people. There may be a good reason for YOU in particular NOT to choose a vaccine. There may be a cascade of outcomes that are only possible if you do, or do not, get medicated. There may be a good reason why you SHOULD, just as there may be a good reason you shouldn't. And it has absolutely NOTHING to do with anyone else, solely because the curriculum is individualized.

The Holy Spirit knows what is best for you given YOUR situation, where you are at and what you are ready for. He knows where your trust is. He knows what you are capable of and will accept. Turn to his advice rather than that of fear or the ego. And especially beware of the egos of other well-meaning people especially the ones who are religious about the "reasons why" you should or should not make a certain choice. EVERY reason on this level is fiction.

If you cannot or will not turn to the advice of a wiser counsel, and if you refuse health, and if you actively are choosing sickness, and if you are living therefore in fear of contagion, then your options are limited. Love does not enter where it is not welcome. You can be prayed for. You can be loved. But you may reject all support. You may have a death wish. You may want to die. It might be "your time", based on your plan. Who knows. I do not know and no-one else likely knows either. Matters are far deeper than some "statics" about viruses or medicines.

Long story short, if you made it this far. .... you are always absolutely free to make any choice you want to make, and it has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else. If anyone is trying to control your decision for ANY reason at all, they are denying their own freedom and are trying to make you responsible for them. They are like children looking for a parent to depend on, to decide everything for them.

This is because they have become undependeable and irresponsible. It's up to YOU to decide how to discern where they are at, and to be responsible yourself for your own choice. And whatever you choose, God loves you.

At the end of the day all you can do is make your own choice in freedom, and free from guilt, and do so decisively and with conviction. But not a conviction that turns into tyranny, or the attempt to recruit others to your cause. Let people be where they are at. Let them make their own decisions. Let them be mistaken and recognize that they are.

Not because they don't do what you want them to do, but because they are free of you. You have no business trying to coerce people to agree with YOUR fearful belief in laws that are not of God.

What I decide to do is none of your business, or anyone's. What guidance I receive regarding my own choices, is none of your business either. What I decide to do or not do has nothing to do with you either. And if you think that my choice affects you, you are deliberately disempowering yourself, because nothing happens to you against your will. This is not supposed to be a selfish free-for-all, or a war, where people are opposing each other and digging in their heels thinking they know what's true. Nothing in this world is true, it's just a dream.

Go within, and go above. That's the only place where there is any sanity.