Would you trust life or death decisions to the Holy Spirit? And if not, why not?

We are ego-identified idiots here. We don't know what we're doing, what's right, what's in anyone's best interests, or how to judge anything. And we're not as expert as we think we are.

We have in this world people who become highly educated, experts in their field, professionals, authorities, experienced individuals. But even these people usually trust their own world-based learning, their own egos, their own judgement.

I have personally experienced many many times over how such exalted persons can be incredibly blind, totally unaware of God or anything spiritual, completely indoctrinated into institutions, and yet proud of their prowess and achievements in highly advanced fields. And they can be VERY mistaken and lost. This includes highly advanced doctors, specialists, scientists, gurus of all kinds.

For me I've had to go through some seriously difficult situations, life-or-death decisions, medical body-health decisions. I've had a partner who was in intensive care twice, in hospitals for over 6 months, and multiple serious health concerns. It was stressful and difficult and filled with very important and serious life choices. Decisions to be made, does she live or die?

Who do you turn to? You might ask family and friends and those you trust. People will give their opinions. But ultimately for me I knew that I could not really "handle" the severity of situations, and had to surrender and get humble. I had to make room for the Holy Spirit and God.

Sometimes when life gets really shit it really pushes you towards God because you can reach some really dark hellish places filled with fear where you just start reaching out and asking God for help. And you then find that the Help he has provided through the Holy Spirit, Jesus, etc, is not only effective and correct it is highly trustworthy.

Their guidance and support and healing has a power and accuracy and rightness far above and beyond all humans and all institutions and all educated fields and professions. Their expertise and knowledge and insight is absolutely unparalleled. Their access to all information, all outcomes, all scenarios all futures etc is absolutely beyond the reach of anyone on the planet.

So when you get into situations like that, and you need help and you reach out for spiritual help, and it comes, and you trust it, and you learn that it works and is right, you trust it more and more. And so you listen and you turn to it, it's like a compass in your back pocked. You whip it out whenever there's something important to deal with. Or even for little things.

Would I trust life or death decisions to the Holy Spirit? Absolutely! If they told me to do or not do something, I would very likely go with that even if it flew in the face of whatever everyone else said or suggested. I would place his truth and rightness above everyone, because he has proven to me over and over again how trustworthy he is, how helpful and healing he is, and how his wisdom is always right.

I cannot pretend to know everything, or to judge anything correctly, or to be educated enough, or professional enough, or experienced enough, or to have accumulated enough facts and information, or done enough research, or any other such way that our little egos go wild with trying to play God. I don't want to play God.

I want God to be God, and me to do his will. That is all it's about. Knowing your place as second to God, dismantling the authority problem, not trusting artificial external authorities, and turning to God for EVERYTHING.

Many people would think that doing this is totally irresponsible, that trusting "spiritual guidance" would be insane and not good enough and not accurate and who knows where it's coming from. They would say you have to listen to the experts and believe the science and follow the rules and laws and all that shit. It's all made up bullshit. You have to trust someone that TRULY KNOWS which is the Holy Spirit. His credentials are massively above and beyond anything any person on this planet can offer you.

It is in fact irresponsible and arrogant to put ourselves into a position where we think we know enough to be able to decide ANYTHING important on our own. ACIM tells us to trust the Holy Spirit in ALL THINGS. For all decisions. Even the risky ones. Even the ones to do with the body and health. Even things to do with serious life scenarios and problems and stuff that no-one can see to solve. Even things which defy all possibilities and seem hopeless. He is there to HELP, so that you are NOT ALONE EVER.

It does take time and willingness to develop this TRUST. And it can be a long process especially if there is fear, trusting in your own strength and the abilities of yourself and others. If you trust in egos and external saviours. If you trust in magic and traditions and regimented groups of people who think they know everything and decide everything for you. It can take time to wean off all that and be spirit-driven. But it is absolutely the best thing you could ever do, guaranteed!

And the good thing is that when you TRUST spirit and RECEIVE the help and can SEE that it is right, you absolve yourself of guilt because you're allowing God to decide FOR you. You don't have to do this all on your own, alone, trusting in your petty arrogant weakness, or that of others who masquerade as unquestionable authorities. Put your life into the hands of God and your way will be made straight. Follow his word and his advice and his path and your life will become much more manageable. Who wants to carry the whole weight of the world on their shoulders? Not me.

"What worry can beset the one who gives his future to the loving hands of God? What can he suffer? What can cause him pain, or bring experience of loss to him? What can he fear? And what can he regard except with love? For he who has escaped all fear of future pain has found his way to present peace, and certainty of care the world can never threaten." UrW194L7

"Place, then, your future in the hands of God." UrW194L8

"NOTHING can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the hands of His Father." UrT3C13

"The Thought of God protects you, cares for you, makes soft your resting place and smooth your way, lighting your mind with happiness and love." UrW165L2

"Who dwells with shadows is alone indeed, and loneliness is NOT the Will of God. Would you allow one shadow to usurp the throne that God appointed for your Friend, if you but realized ITS emptiness has left YOURS empty and unoccupied? Make NO illusion friend, for if you do, it CAN but take the place of him whom God has called your Friend. And it is he who is your ONLY Friend in truth. He brings you gifts that are not of this world, and only he, to whom they have been given, CAN make sure that you receive them. He will place them on YOUR throne, when you make room for him on his." UrT26G3

"That is why we suggested before that there was help in reminding yourselves to allow the Holy Spirit to decide for God for YOU." UrT6G9 "Forget HIM not, and He will make EVERY decision for you, for YOUR Salvation and the peace of God in you." UrT13H13

"Leave ALL decisions to the One Who speaks for God, and for your function as He KNOWS it." UrT13I6

In the beginning of the ACIM Workbook, we're instructed to look around the room and tell ourselves, indiscriminately, that this thing we're looking at doesn't mean anything. And we're asked not to be selective in what we apply it to, applying it to everything equally. This EQUALIZING is what's important.

I'm finding that this basic idea is core to the process of mind training in order to awaken from this world. Basically, our minds have become very used to fragmenting everything into separate boxes, with separate labels.

We become blinded by perception of form, and we take the form of something to determine its meaning. Yet we've given it all the meaning it has. Differences and shifts and changes all seem to stand out as separate and exclusive. One thing is not another etc. And before you know it we have 1000 different responses to 1000 different things and never are we simple unconditional.

But the mind is not supposed to be in this kind of viewpoint, with a massive complicated hierarchy of illusions, with multiple different reactions and responses, treating one thing differently to another, adapting and changing based on circumstances etc. These are all unnatural for the mind which must be unconditionally constant in order to be healthy.

As we peruse the room and identify that one different seeming object is really to be treated no differently than another, we're beginning the process of collapsing the hierarchy of illusions, undoing the belief in separation, dispelling the illusion that one thing is NOT the same as another, and are gradually reprogramming the mind to be less conditional.

For me a huge way this has recently come to light is in the idea of the death of a body. On the physical level the ego world says that a body has been utterly destroyed and irreversibly erased from existence. But on the spiritual level the person still persists in eternal life. And they can't both be true.

Given that God would never allow one of his immortal creations to ever be destroyed, and there is no power greater than God's to overthrow his will, death is an absolute lie. The body's demise means absolutely nothing. It does not mean a person is dead, it does not mean God's son is destroyed, and it does not imply anything. Death is ultimately meaningless.

"The death of an illusion means nothing."

So then if you look at this closely and see that death cannot have a meaning, it causes nothing and has no effect, it is completely meaningless. And this then means that it doesn't MEAN anything DIFFERENT to a living body. And both of those bodies do not really mean anything.

"Nothing I see means anything."

It's in this erasing of the MEANING of separation, whereby you isolate something and give it a different unique meaning compared to something else, that the mind begins to split and fragment. Believing in separation plays out as believing the seeming messages we get from separate different objects.

It's as though the whole of physical unreality is screaming constantly to tell you that this one thing IS NOT another thing, this thing is NOT the same, this thing has unique properties, this one's red and that one's green, this one's bigger, that one's smaller etc. All constantly tempting you to believe that EVERYTHING is separate. And this couldn't be more OPPOSITE to how the mind is supposed to function.

When we see objects meaning something unique we are deceived by illusion, blinded by form, deceived by temptation, lost in a dream, and find our mind to be imprisoned. When we EQUALIZE forms and give them the SAME meaning, recognizing they have NO meaning of their own, that's when mind is entering a state of unconditionality, which means love.

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal."

So then we look at a body that seems dead and we do not assign it any meaning. And we look at bodies which seem alive and we do not assign them any meaning. And we recognize that both types of bodies are not really different in their meaning, or in what they are. They are both illusions, both unreal, both in ONE category.

Consider then that the mind in this state is a very cohesive whole unified mind. It's not a mind that goes putting labels on everything, putting things in separate boxes, emphasizing differences, or thinking of the things of the physical world as unique.

It's a mind that has ONE state, one feeling, one undivided will, one power, one wholeness, one unconditional action. It treats everyone and everything with the same singular completely still peaceful loving relationship. It responds to everything in the same way, and sees no "orders of difficulty".

Such a mind is not deceived by forms. Such a mind does not really pay any special attention to things which seem different, more important, less important, more serious, less serious. It has learned to see that both living and dead bodies are the same one illusion, the same one lie.

On a way then, the waking mind is finding a way to be whole and unmoved by the world, always constant and honest, always peaceful and loving. It doesn't buy into any temptations, it doesn't fall for the appearance of something seeming easier or harder, bigger or heavier. It finds a way to transcend all differences. And it really is about psychological transcendence. Completely disregarding the appearance of any differences of form whatsoever.

Such a mind isn't finding a way to see that the forms are ONE, or that God is the forms. It isn't finding oneness in them as such. It's transcending them toward the oneness that is behind and beyond them, a oneness that the forms don't even touch or influence in any way.

Because mind becomes whole and unified and loving and disregards differences, it sees in a sense a "reflection of heaven" - a unified transcendental perception - looking upon the physical separate objects still but NOT believing them, NOT falling for their forms, NOT blinded, NOT regarding them as truly different or true at all. But seeing them with a unified mind can't help but see unity IN PLACE of the differences, reflected there.

Cars are still separately driving down separate roads. Bodies are still separately walking down separate streets. Dogs are still barking at separate cats. But the healed mind is not deceived by how any of these things look. The healed mind becomes transcendental of all separate forms, all separate labels, all separate distinctions and differences.

So really in the start of the Workbook we're basically in at the deep end, starting off running, because we're already practicing this simple idea - getting the mind to wean off interacting with the world from a complicated chaotic jumble of vantage points, and shifting toward a singular vantage point which pays no attention to form whatsoever.

Its an odd idea really. Adopting a state of mind which is centered on a singular oneness, and unchanging wholeness, an unconditional love, rather than being 1000 separate things to 1000 separate people. Just being you, knowing thyself, unmoved and unchanged and unaffected. Simple and unified. Ignoring all separations and divisons. Having no belief in the false illusion of the material world at all. A wholeness of mind from another world.

"And what more transcendent aim can there be than to recall the Way, the Truth and the Life, and to remember God?"

"Reality is changeless. It is this that MAKES it real, and KEEPS it separate from all appearances. It MUST transcend all form to be itself. It CANNOT change."

"The resurrection is the complete triumph of Christ over the ego, not by attack, but by transcendence. For Christ DOES rise above the ego and all its works, and ascends to the Father and HIS Kingdom."

"Would you transcend YOUR prison and ascend to the Father?"

"Communion comes with peace, and peace MUST transcend the body."

"Then lay aside the body and quietly TRANSCEND it, rising to welcome what you REALLY want. And from His holy temple look you not back on what you have awakened FROM. For no illusions CAN attract the minds that have TRANSCENDED them, and left them far behind."

Sometimes, we can use the truth to deny what we really believe. We can say, ok in theory I get it, there is no world, people are not bodies, death isn't real, sickness is a lie etc. It all makes sense. But, that doesn't mean we really really deep down believe it. If we really believed it we wouldn't be here in sick bodies trying to die.

So then the truth is that at this time, right now, we do believe in death and sickness and that people are bodies. We can bring in the truth as a concept that people are not bodies, and that which gets sick is not really a person, and if the body dies the person hasn't really died. But at the same time the mind is still actually believing that people are bodies that get sick and die, and that still generates suffering. I'm doing the course, but life still sucks, and this is why.

Given that we do believe all kinds of lies, all kinds of mistakes, all kinds of illusions and falsehoods, as if they are real, we could be using these higher loftier truths, these theories, to hide from how we're doing right now. We could be hiding behind it and using it as a shield to cover up and deny and not look at and not recognize what we ACTUALLY believe right now. More of a spiritualised-ego wishful thinking, in love with the ideas but not living it.

I suppose that's some kind of a "bypass". We are giving lip service and partial belief to something higher, but are then using it to deceive ourselves into thinking that we no longer believe anything else. As if just by getting it intellectually that's going to undo all of our investment and belief and commitment to suffering and death. And doing a few lessons is going to fix it overnight. And just because I read some text it means I have no ego left.

There is in fact part of me still that does believe, for example, that my wife was a body, and that the body became horribly sick, so sick that it died completely, and now she is dead. That's an actual ongoing belief that I have, even if I strive towards higher truths that death is not real and she is still living in Spirit eternally. And that belief does still generate suffering.

Avoiding the fact that we do still believe in all kinds of ego bullshit, is a way to keep those beliefs protected. Covered over with a layer of garnish in the form of higher truths and platitudes. We keep telling ourselves we don't believe these things over and over again but deep down we still do.

And so the ego uses the truth to hide the lies, and keep them as sacred treasures. We can look and sound and seem all spiritual and as though we're clever at grasping metaphysics and are doing the lessons and all that to try to wake up. But it can easily be used by the ego, which is totally committed to the reality of death, to avoid admitting to what we DO believe. We're perfectly adept at using ACIM to add another layer of denial over everything the ego treasures in order to keep it going.

We do believe in suffering and death and sickness and pain and misery. We do believe Earth is reality and is God's cruel creation. We do believe that death is salvation and suffering is atonement. We do believe that guilt is justified and fear is totally rational. We do believe that we're not safe and that we are in constant danger. We do believe that the death of a body is an absolute loss of a part of reality that can never be regained.

We can't get past these beliefs if we aren't willing to at least admit that we do believe them. And we can't get past it by just going into denial and trying to take on a higher truth in order to COVER OVER those beliefs and pretend they're not there. A thorough investigation of what you DO believe in all honesty is required, to at least admit that you DO believe in it, in order to change your mind. Otherwise why would you bother.

This is also why Jesus says that we are supposed to admit that we DO believe the separation from God happened, that we DO believe we are a body, that we DO believe in things going wrong. But only so that we can THEN, in light of that, realize that we need and want to do something to correct it, and can properly undo those beliefs. If we just cover it up, Jesus refers it to a "misuse of denial".

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay." UrT2E50

So we do need to accept at least temporarily that we do not want anything to do with God. That we DO believe we are separate from God living apart from him devoid of him and that we do not want him. We hate God and want him dead. We have these beliefs. We find ourselves in spacetime in a human body pretending to be flesh and bones and believing this it is what we really are. We have to admit that this is our position if we want to get out of it. We can't get out of it by just hammering ourselves with theories and statements about what is true while keeping these beliefs going.

For me, I recently looked at this and recognised that I do in fact believe I am separate from God. And therefore, because of that, I need to now find a way to return to God. Almost like the very beginning of the journey, starting from scratch. It was as though I hadn't wanted to look at the fact that I did squarely believe in being separate, and had spent years avoiding that belief and pretending that I didn't believe it.

What keeps us from awakening and reality is the hidden desires we have to want nothing to do with it, and that has to be uncovered and relinquished. In effect, we don't get to God by just trying to go there, we have to unshackle ourselves from the chains that bind us to hell first. The ego commitment to death and the fact that you do want to die, has to be looked at. You want the opposite of God, which is why you're here in the first place. Just smothering that with shiny icing isn't going to make it go away.

Similarly in grief and loss I was not feeling happy, and had to admit that I was not happy, and that therefore because I wanted something else i wanted to be happy. And that was a stepping stone to seeking out that happiness, and realising that God is that happiness. I might not have done that if I would have kept pretending that I was happy. I didn't want to admit I was not happy because I thought that was "being more ego", but in fact it's merely admitting to how much ego I already believe in. I was trying to cover it over with denial and illusions of truth and fanciful ideas and lofty metaphysics.

We have to realise we're in the shitty stinky pig-pen if we want to realise that you're the prodigal son and want to go home. The way out of hell requires realising that you're in there in the first place. And the fact is that most of us in the world are so in denial that we don't even believe we're really suffering at all. Suffering has to be recognised AS suffering before you'll be willing to want something else. So long as it is kept hidden behind an illusion of the truth, you'll keep it going.

"It is NEVER God Who coerces you, because He SHARES His Will WITH you." God has given you freedom. This cannot be revoked. You are free to create, or to mis-create. God cannot oppose your will because it is part of his own freedom.

This means that you have to decide to go back to God, of your free will. You can't be forced, coerced, manipulated or made to do anything you don't want to. You have to willingly choose heaven again.

"The attraction of light must draw you willingly, and willingness is signified by GIVING."

"But to accomplish this, all your dark lessons MUST be brought willingly to truth"

"Heaven is a choice I must make."

Does this mean that you can take forever? Does it mean that you can decide NEVER to return to God? Does it mean that you could stay in separation and never wake up?

Given that you have total freedom, it should mean that you can take as long as you please, and even to never return.

The thing is, that while God wills that you be free forever, he also wills that you be one with him forever. And here we have signs of a "natural limit" placed by God.

"Free will does not mean that you establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what to take when. It is just because you are not ready to do what you should elect to do that time exists at all."

"Free will can temporize, and is capable of enormous procrastination. But it cannot depart entirely from its Creator, who set the limits on its ability to miscreate by virtue of its own real purpose."

The way I read this, "will" always has an element of freedom to it, even when will is being USED to try to be unwilling. You cannot escape willingness. You will always have some willingness even if you are highly unwilling, which means that you will eventually will to be back with God.

"He can wait, delay, paralyze himself, reduce his creativity almost to nothing, and even introduce a real developmental arrest or regression. But he CANNOT abolish his creativity. He CAN destroy his medium of communication, but NOT his potential."

God has also placed a limit on spacetime, ie the separation. It has been repurposed as a classroom to learn lessons, which involves consent. And we have all willed freely to participate. In effect, there is a guarantee that we will wake up eventually.

"The Atonement was built into the space-time belief in order to set a limit on the need for the belief, and ultimately to make learning complete."

"For if you could REALLY separate yourselves from the Mind of God, you WOULD die."

Another thing is that trying to be away from God is painful. It is a rejection of happiness and love and ease and joy. A rejection of health and wholeness. It is a state riddled with suffering. And eventually this is intolerable, especially when it becomes extreme.

The more extreme the separation, the more it hurts. The more you try to be evil, the worse your life gets, and the more you become insane. The harder you try not to exist, the more you repress and hate yourself. And it does not feel good. Some people have extreme tolerance levels but not unlimited.

"The misuse of will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way."

This is part of the fact that there is a safeguard built into free will. Basically, in order to fully will something, you have to be fully willing. If you become unwilling, ie try to use will to NOT will, you are arresting the will. This causes you to shut off access to your power to create, and you become "weaker".

Effectively, if you oppose God's will, you become powerless. If you deny your freedom, you imprison the will. It all gets automatically shut down because by choosing separation you're literally denying freedom and power.

""Free will is the attribute of the mind, NOT the Soul."" ... "If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants."

The end result is that you cannot use will to attack will, or to attack or change God. Or to change the truth or anything real. When you try to, there is a lack of will, which shuts it down and causes nothing to happen. You might hallucinate that the nothing is something, but nothing is really created.

Also the Holy Spirit has been created to guarantee holographically that the whole is always in the part, and thus no matter how many times mind tries to split itself the whole of God is still there. You cannot leave eternity or really separate.

"There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the Laws of God. NOT as the Law Itself upholds the universe as God created it. But in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes he has. Corrected error IS the error's end. And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error."

So God has naturally caused a number of things all which guarantee you are not only protected and safe (immortal) and have not really done anything, but also has the side-effect that when you choose away from him you do not like it, and inevitably choose against it. It's almost like saying the impluse to return is built-into the attempt to leave. And you never did quite leave in the first place.

"I CAN offer you my will to make yours invincible by this sharing, but I CANNOT oppose yours without competing with it and thereby violating God's Will for you. Nothing God created can oppose your will, as nothing God created can oppose His. God GAVE your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honor of His."

We could say then that, we are always free, and can choose when to return to God, but at the same time staying away from God is fundamentally unpleasant, and eventually you will seek to return.

Another aspect of this is that God is so certain and so powerful, and the Holy Spirit shares his infinite power, such that he CANNOT FAIL in helping us to return. In his repurposing of the world we made, he guarantees that we will return to heaven. There are no loopholes in God's plan for salvation.

The Holy Spirit has effectively already finished the job.

"His task is mighty, but the power of God is with Him. Therefore, to Him, it is so easy, that it was accomplished the instant it was given Him for you."

"God's promises make no exceptions. And He guarantees that only joy can be the final outcome found for everything. Yet it is up to us when this is reached; how long we let an alien will appear to be opposing His."

"God's guarantee will hold against ALL obstacles, for it rests on certainty, and NOT contingency."

"Reality observes the laws of God, and NOT the rules you set. It is His laws which GUARANTEE your safety. All illusions that you believe about yourself obey NO laws."

"The Atonement is the GUARANTEE of the safety of the Kingdom. Nothing good is lost, because it comes from the Holy Spirit, the voice for Creation."

"The world WAS a way of healing the Separation, and the Atonement is the GUARANTEE that the device will ultimately do so."

"No force except your own will is strong enough or worthy enough to guide you. In this you are as free as God, and must remain so forever."

"The truth is still that the attraction of God is irresistible at ALL levels, and the acceptance of this totally unavoidable truth is only a matter of time. But you should consider whether you WANT to wait, because you CAN return now, if you choose."

ACIM: "Miracle Principle 7

Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first."

DICITIONARY: "the process of making something spiritually or ceremonially clean."

What is purification? It is the process of removing "impurities", so that you end up with something that is "pure" and has no impurities in it.

What is it we are purifying? Our minds. We are removing "impure thoughts", beliefs, values and attitudes, so that we can be pure. Or rather, aware of our purity in God.

What are examples of impurities? All of the ego stuff, including evil thoughts, attack thoughts, grievances, unforgiveness, blame, anger, murderousness, all forms of sickness and death, separation ideas, body identification, guilt, fear, a sense of sinfulness, unworthiness, etc.

Heaven is a state of perfect purity. Another word for purity is innocence. It's a state completely devoid of any kind of sin or evil. It's so pure, that there isn't even a tiny trace of desire to attack or hurt, there isn't the slightest hint of anger or resentment, and absolutely no sense of fear resulting from seeing others as attackers.

Heaven is SO pure, it is very likely far more pure than you can imagine. And in order to enter awareness of heaven, you have to purify yourself of all states and attitudes that are impure. This actually entails being willing to give up a whole bucketload of ego things, which you may not be currently totally happy about giving up.

You have to give up ALL anger. You have to give up ALL attacking. You have to give up ALL guilt. You have to give up ALL sin. You have to give up ALL temptation to see yourself as victimized. You have to give up ALL desire to hurt other people. You have to give up ALL guilt, shame, and sense of not being good enough. You have to give up ALL motives relating to trying to get stuff. You have to give up all specialness, all selfishness, and all trace of conditional love. You have to give up unhappiness, sickness, suffering and death. And you have to give up the entire ego thought system.

The end result of this relinquishment, is a state of PERFECT PURITY. It is a purity SO pure that it is utterly immaculate, undefiled, and completely holy. The degree of holiness is off the charts in the extreme. You cannot enter such a state with any trace of malice in your heart or any amount of unforgiveness. You have to have forgiven absolutely everyone and everything, and hold nothing against anyone, and see yourself as utterly absolutely sinless.

Only through the complete removal of the belief in sin can you achieve this, because it is the atonement. It is the recognition that there is no sin anywhere, not in you, and not in anyone or anything. It is a state of TOTAL SINLESSNESS. That doesn't mean like, sin is real and evil is real and you have to stop being that through repentance, but more like, the recognition that these things are NOT real and you CANNOT BE them. That sin does not exist for you. There is only total harmlessness, gentleness, softness and love.

The most holy and pure, the most innocent and harmless, the most gentle and clean, the most unwilling to hurt, the most beautiful and new, are those who have purified themselves of the ego, of temptation and of death. It is the purity of the angels. It is absolute allegiance to God. It is a complete and total surrender of all control and egotism and all false ideas of self. It is the complete letting go of all false goals and made-up laws and artificial identities, and any attempt to be other than God created you.

So ACIM is saying that in order to become miraculous, to access the miracle-minded state in which you can PERFORM MIRACLES, which is a very loving state of sinlessness and holiness, you have to FIRST purify yourself. Your mind has to be decluttered and washed out with the spirit and ALL ego in you has to be utterly removed. You have to be cleansed and spiritually renewed. Jesus refers to this in ACIM also as a "rebirth", like becoming new again, as if nothing had ever happened to turn you into an evil monster.

You purify through whatever process works for you. But let's also realize that forgiveness is really the state OF purity, of atonement and of true perception. We are trying to reach that state. Because "only christ forgives" and that means we need total acceptance and alignment and awareness of Christ, TOTAL, MAXIMAL LOVE, in order to be in a state of forgiveness. Anything we do towards that goal is our "practice" or "application" of course principles in which we are trying to move ourselves CLOSER to that state.

This is why ultimately our entire work with the course up to its end goal of resurrection, is really a process of PURIFICATION, which RESULTS IN a state of total forgiveness. In which you have completely forgiven yourself, ie, have recognized that there is absolutely zero ego or sin or death in you. Where your mind is completely open and clear and in the service of spirit. Where Christ can now move through you, and Jesus can perform miracles through your hands.

To purify, you do whatever works, provided it entails the successful progress of moving closer toward total purity. Closer towards God, who is utterly pure, sinless and innocent. You can't be having attitudes of ego, attack, anger, blame, guilt, shaming, destruction etc, if you are to be pure. You can't be a keyboard warrior on facebook. This is the part the ego in you does not like or want, because it means giving up the things the ego CHERISHES and wants. Its way of relating to others through murderous attitudes. It does not WANT purity or holiness, it wants to be evil and wrong and bad, vulnerable and unhappy and destructive.

You can use catharsis, letting go, surrendering, development of trust, opening your mind, trusting God, various modalities of healing, practicing performing miracles, tuning into the love and light in you, prayer, asking for help, receiving love and healing, inviting the Holy Spirit to operate on you (mind/body/emotions), affirmations, cancelling error, reprogramming yourself, convincing yourself, reminding yourself, doing workbook lessons.

You can purify by forgiving people, polishing up your relationships to make them holy and equal and sharing, learning to be more unconditionally loving, working with the angels, giving the day to the Holy Spirit, seeking out blocks to love and removing them, digging out old hurts and unforgivenesses, getting rid of secret sins and hidden hates in the light, handing stuff over to the Holy Spirit, receiving guidance, doing Christ's work etc.

Whatever works. However you purify, however it is you can get yourself into a state of PURITY, of innocence and holiness. A state where you no longer WANT to hurt yourself, or others. A state where you see your TOTAL SINLESSNESS, and therefore project sinlessness onto others and the world, seeing them as sinless, and therefore having no grounds for fear or blame. Purity gives you harmlessness, just as it also puts your mind into a supernatural state of being invulnerable and IMMORTAL.

The innocent are strong and powerful. They are protected by God. They cannot BE hurt and DO not hurt themselves. "You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself." "My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability" etc. They feel safe and secure and protected and guided. They cannot be attacked and are above the battleground. Nothing can intrude upon them because of the strength of spirit. And they can bestow healing and miracles and life upon those who are not yet purified - those who believe they are the living dead.

Once purification is reached, in part or in whole, you will have access to miraculous power. You will have the innocence with which to love, and the light with which to see. You will have the purity of heart and the total angelic harmlessness and gentleness with which to heal others. "Those who are healed become instruments of healing." You will become a miracle worker, able to raise the dead and resurrect the impure.

You will be able to actually purify others for them. "It is the privilege of the forgiven (pure) to forgive (purify)." And now you are doing God's work, until you go home to heaven, to the state of total and utter purity and innocence forever.

It's a deadly trap to believe that you need to get that person to love you in order to prove you are lovable.

You can feel very sorry for yourself because of how other people seem to mistreat you or how they don't love you enough.

You can get into a state where you see yourself as unworthy and unlovable purely because other people don't seem to love you.

Then you will be yearning for them to love you, will try to manipulate them into loving you, will secretly want to take love from the, and will try to steal it from them, in order to get some love for yourself.

You think that if they will love you, you will feel better about yourself.

Well here's some news. It doesn't work this way.

Love has to come from God and come through you and be shared. Love is sharing. You have to share in it in order to have it, and by sharing in it you must also share it, meaning you must extend it and give it.

Now, this also leads people to another mistake which is the belief that you should always give give give in an attempt to give everyone what they want, so that you might be able to get them to give some love back to you.

This is a deadly trap as well. If you're waiting for or are dependent on other people to be the source of love for you, or to approve of you, or to give you attention, or make you be okay, or accept you, then you're going to be waiting a very long time and suffer the consequences.

Other people are not supposed to be the source of love for you. Other people are not supposed to approve of you. Other people are not supposed to accept you. Other people are not supposed to give you attention. Other people are not supposed to love you more than others. Other people are not supposed to save you. Other people are not supposed to be your savior or your idol or your hero. Other people are not where you should be receiving love from.

You can't experience love unless you are in it. You can't be in it unless you are sharing it with God because God is the only source of love. You can't share in it unless you are willing to receive it from God. You can't get it into you unless you are willing to remove all of your false beliefs which say that you don't deserve it, can't receive it, aren't good enough, or that you are in need of it. You can't share it unless you're willing to let others also receive it just as much as you. And you can't have it unless you are willing to give it away.

To your ego, giving away love means losing it, which means you are sacrificing it, which means if you give give give you will end up with none for yourself. This won't coerce others into loving you, nor will it make them love you in return in order to have an equal or fair relationship. That's bullshit. That's not a relationship, it's a bargain. Your ego needs to get out of the way if you are going to experience love.

You need to realize that God's love is infinitely abundant and always available and is unconditional and freely given to all equally, all the time. That includes you. You must be included in the love and having the love, even when you give it. If you are overflowing with God's love, from WITHIN, having received it inside of yourself directly from the source (God), then you will be so happy to share it and spread it around.

And here's the little secret. When you share and receive God's love and are open to an unlimited supply of it coming into you from Him, which He has already put there, you will have so much that even if you give it away, it will not decrease whatsoever. The secret is, that as you give real love, unconditional love, you not only get to keep that love, but the love INCREASES.

You don't need, and cannot get, love from someone else. It must come from God to you to others, in that order. If you don't feel lovable or loved, YOU are not loving yourself and YOU are not letting God love you. It's an inside job.

You will not EVER find love outside of you, and you will not EVER be loved from outside of you. "Outside of you" means separate from you, and anything separate from you is impossible to experience. You can only experience love when it is NOT separate from you, meaning it's INSIDE you, meaning God put it there and you're experiencing it where it IS.

You already have it. You just have blocks to awareness which is preventing you from accepting and allowing it. Your ego is getting in the way. It's making you believe, falsely, that you do not have love in you, cannot have love in you, don't deserve love in you, and that you are not love. YOU ARE LOVE ITSELF. You are an extension of love. How can you not be love, when Love (God) created you like Itself? You aren't going to get this love by force-feeding it from the outside in. You aren't really lacking it! You just need to UNCOVER IT, because it's already been given.

God has already given you 100% of all the love in existence. If you are blocking it, you're going to go seeking for it outside of yourself, and it will stay outside of yourself, and you will never have it that way. It's not anyone's job to love you. It's only God's function to love you, and He already has. The only part left now is your WILLINGNESS to accept and allow it and RECOGNIZE it where it is, within you, where God already put it. You are already loved, unconditionally and eternally, so if that's not what you are experiencing, YOU are blocking yourself from being loved.

It doesn't even matter if other people love you or not. Other people could be loving you 100% unconditionally and totally all the time, but you could still be shutting it out, ignoring it, rejecting it, and not believing you deserve it. How are you going to get that love into you if your entire reason for trying to find it out there is because you don't really believe you deserve it? No-one can give it to you if you don't allow it to be in you, and to allow it to be in you is to accept it from God.

Love has already been shared with you. Love is already available permanently. Love is what you are really made of. You can't not be loved or lovable or loving. But you can pretend, and you can cover it up, and you can be in denial. That simply means you need to uncover all these ways that you keep love from yourself. It's not because other people are keeping love from you, it's YOU that does not really want it. You say you do, but evidently you don't, or you would accept it from God right now.

God loves you. Just so you know.

When we all love each other, it means that we have love within us, because we are love, and are sharing that love, NOT BECAUSE OTHER PEOPLE NEED IT, because they also have the love coming from God within themselves. To love everyone is not to substitute for their belief in lack, or to love them FOR them, or to force love upon them. We all are responsible for and naturally function as extenders of GOD'S LOVE, because God is the only source of love that's real. Access your own unique connection to Him, your own relationship, and heal it, so that you can experience love again.

The "physical world", exists only IN false perception. This is why the body's eyes can see it. The body's eyes are rooted in false perception permanently.

"Everything the body sees is an illusion."

"These eyes made not to see will never see."

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."

"Eyes perceive falsely"

The world is like a veil that hangs in front of the face of Christ to block your vision. It must be seen THROUGH and past, which is what it means to OVERLOOK it, which IS forgiveness.

When you overlook the world, and look to the light beyond all forms and bodies, the light of the real world, you will become UNABLE to see the world. At its peak, christ vision makes the veil become totally invisible, the world is utterly forgotten, and it disappears.

You only become able to see the physical world by LOWERING your "frequency" to one less loving, causing you to enter into illusions and start to allow them into your mind, making them real, causing you to "see them". Without false perception, you CANNOT SEE the false world. And you cannot see BOTH the false world and the true world in their simultaneous entirety.

"The world you see (the false world) must be denied, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision."

"You cannot behold the world and know God."

In order TO see the real world, the TRUE world, you have to make the false world - Earth, FALSE, and not believe it's TRUE, otherwise you are making NO distinction between what is true and false and are CONFUSED (ego). Only by being clear about what is true and what is false, or what is good and what is evil, can you DISCERN with accurate (true) perception what is REAL and what is UNREAL.

The world that exists ONLY in false perception, DOES NOT exist in true perception. In true perception you see the real world, in which there ARE no streets, buildings, houses, shopping malls, street lights, not even night and day, and not even the sun and the earth.

If you want to see the face of christ, you have to LET GO OF this world. You have to access the spiritual eye and use christ vision. And you have to see PAST physical matter, IGNORING IT. Making it unreal to yourself. Recognizing it as false. Realizing it IS just an illusory world, not a real world. It is by recognizing that illusions ARE NOT REAL, that you transition from false to true perception. True perception recognizes what is real and what is illusion.

You cannot forgive the world and keep the world. "A world forgiven cannot last." You can ONLY forgive that which is an ILLUSION, and see through its illusory nature to the truth beyond it. Doing this makes the illusion DISAPPEAR. Forgiving the world UNDOES it, and makes it disappear. You cannot SEE IT when you see the face of Christ. Because then, the world is forgotten entirely.

In the following quotes, Jesus outlines clearly why you CANNOT see BOTH worlds at once, in full. And sight of one REQUIRES that you NOT SEE the other. You cannot therefore keep both heaven and Earth, you have to choose one or the other. And ONLY one of the two is real.

"The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought that gave it birth is cherished. When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, ****where all the world must disappear**** and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well."

"***The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it***, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when ***all things visible will have an end.***"

"The world as YOU perceive it cannot have been created by the Father, for the world is NOT as you see it. God created ONLY the eternal, and ***everything YOU see is perishable***. Therefore, there must be another world which you do NOT see."

"The real world can ACTUALLY BE PERCEIVED. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive ***nothing ELSE***. For if you perceive both good AND evil, you are accepting both the false AND the true, AND MAKING NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM."

"Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; ***the world forgotten***, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream"

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

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever." ***This world you see MUST BE DENIED***, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. ***YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS.*** For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. ***The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER.***

***Both are not true***, yet either one will seem as real to you, as the amount to which you hold it dear. And yet their power is NOT the same, because their real attraction to you IS unequal. You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it.

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

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences. But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal. This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two, but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place—for differences cannot exist within it—so too are illusions without distinctions. The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. The one answer to all illusions is truth."

"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, ***simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight.*** The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute.'

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

We may not think that people are trying to destroy themselves. People can seem relatively happy, fairly sane, living a seemingly active life, enjoying success in their career, raising families and so on. But the fact of what is happening in the big picture is still there.

God's Kingdom is the realm of creation, of the constructive use of the power of the mind. It is there that life is wholeheartedly supported and sustained eternally. Any degree of suffering or sickness is completely impossible. Everyone enjoys perfection and eternal life and immortality.

But in the separation, all who participated in it did reject the Kingdom, and thus rejected immortality and perfection. This rejection of God was a rejection of life, a rejection of innocence, and a rejection of existence. It thus led to a death wish, or a desire to not create. The opposite of creation is destruction, and it was the destruction of God and Self that was the aim.

"The world was made as an attack on God."

"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."

"This is a dream of death."

And so we entered into dreaming, in which all dreams are based in the rejection of creation and life. And so all dreams are dreams of death. And the physical universe is a system of death. All its laws are based on death, and all its roads lead to death.

We seem to have a seeming escape for a while, a kind of in-between state where we have a "life", before we die. But this is still essentially a period of dying. And it still leads to the grave, which is something we can deny and avoid but this denial doesn't stop it happening.

Nevertheless, this all only happens as a result of choosing death, ie choosing the opposite of creation. Choosing to not be with God. Which means choosing self destruction.

So if you are willing to look, you'll notice that everyone who is here is in various degrees or stages of self attack and punishment. This is not something pretty to look at. Many people are so riddled with guilt they can't even look you in the eye.

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its power declines if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end?"

Why does this happen? It happens because each individual person believes they are a sinner. And in whatever way, somewhere in the mind there is a belief that sin is real and true, has happened, has had real irreversible consequences, and that they can never return to God.

But even moreso, we believe we actively deserve to be punished for it. That we want the punishment and want to suffer, because it is expected of us and we agree with it. And so the people inflict self attack upon themselves in all manner of ways and this eventually leads to the death of the body. And all of this is chosen and self inflicted. And if it were not for this, there would be no suffering or sickness or death.

The simple thing to realize then is that this whole world is filled with people who are trying to die. "a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures come to die." Where we come to hate a while, wither and die. Jesus doesn't pull any punches on this stuff, he's very blunt about it.

So you've got a world full of sacrificial lambs, people destroying themselves in various ways, all manner of self attack, and all of it is essentially suicide. "You cannot die unless you choose to do so." "No one dies without their own consent." Which means that all of the sickness, all suffering, all forms of unhappiness, all death, is all a choice made by people who believe they deserve it.

Except that, they don't deserve it. No-one does. No one deserves suffering even if it's an illusion of suffering. No one deserves to be punished in any way. No one deserves to have to go through any kind of psychological hell or experience of pain or disfigurement or disability or disease. These are all forms of self abuse. Every single example is someone trying to hurt themselves.

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."

We're a world filled with self attacking, self hurting, self abusing, self harming, self destructive, self sabotaging, self denying, self hating, self loathing, self corrupting people, all of whom think they deserve to suffer because they're guilty. But they're not really guilty, and the ENTIRE thing is just one huge mistake.

Sin is not real, or possible. Meaning attack on God is not real or possible. Meaning there is never justification for guilt, meaning there is never a PURPOSE for suffering, to inflict just desserts or due justified punishment. There is never a valid grounds for unhappiness or disease or depression or anything less than God's will that we be happy and healthy. The whole thing is a giant mistake.

So all that's really happening is that everyone is seriously mistaken, confused, lacking recognition, insane, unclear, uncertain, afraid, not sure of anything, and really kind of lost in a nightmare of their own making. All as a result of denial and an unwillingness to look at their own innocence. Which in a way is kind of funny, because if we'd just look at the fact that we could never have sinned, we'd stop trying to kill ourselves over it.

"What if you looked within and saw no sin? This "fearful" question is one the ego never asks. And you who ask it now are threatening the ego's whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to pretend it is your friend."

Death isn't real, and nothing real can be threatened. But we certainly can go through the motions and try to make it happen, to have the experience of being a corrupt body, feeling pain and sensations, torturing ourselves in our dreams. All of which is unnecessary. All that's needed is the awakening to the truth. The acceptance of the facts. The recognition of what really is real and what is not. Because there really is no sin, in reality. And that means there is no grounds for any kind of self punishment, suicide or death.

No-one needs to be dying. No-one needs to be suffering or sick. No-one needs to be unhappy. We all just need forgiveness - the recognition of sin's impossibility, and the continuance of our absolute immortal endless innocence. And those who are innocent can never suffer, nor do they want to or choose to.

Because if you are just as perfect now as when God created you, and if you have never done anything to anyone, and if nothing you thought you did ever even happened, then all that's left is to thank God that you have been given eternal life.

Lesson 136, "Sickness is a defense against the truth", contains statements by Jesus which are hard to accept. They seem like extraordinary claims about what sickness is, how it is undone, and the impossibility of a healthy mind producing a sick body. It speaks of immortality, even at a bodily level.

In ACIM, sickness means a belief in separation from God. This applies to the level of the mind and it is in the mind that it is healed. However, the body is being projected by the mind and is "within" the mind, and reflects the mind’s condition. It is an out-picturing of the inward condition.

Every "form" of sickness which shows up in bodies is included in the scope of sickness applying to the mind.

Sickness projects a sick body. Bodies which have forms of sickness, suffering, damage, something broken or missing etc, are expressions of the belief in separation. These things can ONLY show up IF the mind maintains that belief.

Interesting stuff happens to bodies when the mind is healed. Sickness does not stick around on its own, nor is it sustained by the body or by the world. It is solely MAINTAINED by the mind, and so if it is showing up in the body, the mind IS maintaining it, thus believes in separation, thus is not healed. A broken/sick/dead body is PROOF that the mind has not been healed. When the mind IS healed, the body MUST therefore NOT PROVE that sickness is real, and therefore all signs and symptoms of sickness MUST disappear.

Let’s see what Jesus says which is so radical (my emphasis):

— "(Sickness) Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. WHEN THIS IS SEEN, HEALING IS AUTOMATIC. It dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach that carries all of them to truth, and merely leaves them there to disappear."

So right off the bat, Jesus teaches us that all forms and expressions of sickness (including cancer, stroke, heart problems, broken limbs etc, and death), MUST DISAPPEAR when the purpose of the sickness is recogized. Later Jesus tells us that we make sickness in order to DEFEND ourselves against the truth. But we only keep the sickness so long as it serves this purpose, and when the purpose or "need" for the defense is gone, the sickness MUST disappear.

—"Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole."

Clearly then, sickness attacks and defends us against the truth. This includes all physical symtoms which is how the mind’s sickness shows up. If the mind is attacking the truth, it is also going to attack the body. The body will then become weak and sick. Since sickness is an attack on the truth, it is NOT POSSIBLE for there to be sickness if there is not attack, and it is NOT POSSIBLE to wake up to welcoming the truth without putting the sickness aside. Doing so must make it disappear, otherwise if it remains in any way, it continues to prove the mind is not healed.

Notice also how Jesus describes the mind as trying to twist, distort, make inept, and reduce to split-off parts. This act of the mind is HOW SICKNESS IS MADE. If the mind is TWISTING REALITY, it TWISTS THE BODY. If the mind is distorting reality, it distorts the body as well. Holy Spirit showed me this happening in a sudden vision not long ago, where the mind was literally "twisting" and distorting, like applying a psychic force, towards the body, making the body sick.

Our attempt to attack and change reality, attacks and changes our projected body image as well. We can’t hold a belief in attack in the mind AND keep a picture of a healthy body in the mind at the same time. The body WILL suffer if we attack reality, and if we DO NOT attack reality, the body MUST BE HEALED for the same reason - the mind cannot hold a picture of a sick body in the mind at the same time as believing in health/wholeness/truth.

Here is how ALL SICKNESS AND DEATH is implemented:

—"Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you, quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay, when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick, that truth may go away and threaten your establishments no more."

So yes, Jesus is literally saying, we can ONLY be sick if we DECIDE TO BE SICK. We can only be sick when we misperceive the truth and believe it is attacking us, and that we NEED A DEFENSE to keep us "safe" from it. We will then use separation as a device for trying to put distance, or a gap, between us and God. This puts a gap between us and LIFE. The result is that we cut ourselves off from LIFE. And that means, we just chose to be sick and to die.

Jesus also tells us here that sickness DOES NOT HAPPEN TO US against our will. This mean ALL sickness. And death. Neither sickness nor death can appear AT ALL unless YOU decide to make them appear. That’s quite some responsibility that you have! You MAKE sickness from guilt, as an attack, to make the truth go away, so that you can have an illusion of your EGO being safe. Since sickness does not happen against your will, neither does it HAVE any will of its own, and therefore CANNOT STAY if you will to accept God’s truth.

—"How do you think that sickness can succeed in shielding you from truth? Because it proves the body is not separate from you, and so you must be separate from the truth. You suffer pain because the body does, and in this pain are you made one with it. Thus is your "true" identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this little pile of dust silenced and stilled. For see, this dust can make you suffer, twist your limbs and stop your heart, commanding you to die and cease to be."

Here Jesus is telling us that we attempt to BIND OURSELVES to the body in order to DEFEND ourselves against God/Life. By equating/identifying yourself with the body, you align yourself with the physical and attempt to SHUT OUT the mind. If you can identify yourself with the body, and if the body will then be sick and dead, this is HOW the ego attempts to kill the Son of God.

He also tells us that believing this distortion, which is also a belief in magic, and is also the authority problem, has the capability of bringing about DEATH. All death is a choice. Suicide. There is no accidental death. No-one dies without their own consent. He continues:

—"Thus is the body stronger than the truth, which asks you live, but cannot overcome your choice to die. And so the body is more powerful than everlasting life, Heaven more frail than hell, and God's design for the salvation of His Son opposed by a decision stronger than His Will"

"Your choice to die". Hmm. Yes. We CHOOSE it. Which means, it CANNOT HAPPEN if we do not choose it. Death is not caused by ANYTHING except your own mind. Sickness is not caused by ANYTHING except your own mind. Furthermore, sickness and death (which you made, and can abolish), does not continue when you decide NOT to be sick or die. When you decide NOT to be sick or die, SICKNESS AND DEATH CANNOT HAPPEN.

—"You can but choose to think you die, or suffer sickness or distort the truth in any way. What is created is apart from all of this. Defenses are plans to defeat what cannot be attacked. What is unalterable cannot change. And what is wholly sinless cannot sin."

So you can pretend to die, if you want. You can pretend to be sick, if you want. But sickness and death are both a dream, not real, and what you really are cannot die. God does NOT SUPPORT SICKNESS AND DEATH in any way. He does not create them, he does not view them in a special way, he does not include them, he does not believe in them. God is ONLY LIFE, not life and death.

Here’s a clincher:

—"Truth has a power far beyond defense, for no illusions can remain where truth has been allowed to enter. And it comes to any mind that would lay down its arms, and cease to play with folly"

Read this and read it again. Sickness (illusions) cannot remain where truth has been allowed to enter. This means, ALL SICKNESS AND DEATH cannot *REMAIN* if the mind chooses to accept the truth. Accepting the atonement, or any act of forgiveness or miracles, MUST undo sickness and death in some way. And that includes at the body level.

Read it again. Truth has a POWER stronger than defenses (sickness, death). When truth’s POWER has entered the mind, sickness and death CANNOT REMAIN. Neither in the mind, nor in the body. NOWHERE. Because truth knows that sickness and death DO NOT EXIST at any level. If you STOP ATTACKING YOURSELF with sickness and death, you will STOP BEING SICK AND DEAD.

—"Healing will flash across your open mind, as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings."

Peace an truth TAKES THE PLACE of the vain imaginings that were "sickness and death". All sickness is imagined, made by the MIND. Stop dreaming it and it will cease to be.

Does the undoing of sickness affect the body? ABSOLUTELY!

—"It (mind) will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey. Now is the body healed, because the source of sickness has been opened to relief."

NOW IS THE BODY HEALED. When the mind heals its belief in sickness, the body MUST HEAL. The SOURCE of the sickness has received relief, and therefore the sickness must "clear up". It must disappear in a MIRACLE.

Now let’s break out the big one.... the IMMORTALITY OF THE BODY:

—"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. 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."

Wowza! The body‘s health is guaranteed, ie it is IMPOSSIBLE for the body to be sick or die. In a state of truth in the mind, SICKNESS IS IMPOSSIBLE. It cannot exist, it cannot stay, it MUST be healed, 100%! You cannot have a sick body and a healthy mind at the same time!!!! This is also supported when Jesus says elsewhere:

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for IT WILL BECOME to you. Use if 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."

So as Jesus has said here, the state of the body is ALWAYS a direct reflection or correlation to the state of the mind. If mind SEES it as sinful, it becomes SICK, and dies. This accounts for the sole cause of ALL SICKNESS in the entire world. And all death. BUT... IF you SEE IT AS HOLY, it becomes whole, it becomes INVULNERABLE TO ATTACK, it becomes INCAPABLE OF BEING SICK, and IT CANNOT DIE! Another word for that is, IMMORTALITY!

Let’s be clear here, before the controversy takes root, that Jesus also says that at some point this "invulnerable, deathless body", which doesn’t even need food or water (!), will likely at some point be laid aside. When it is not longer USEFUL it will disappear. But this does not mean it will be put down on the ground and made to rot. THAT IS DEATH! The holy body can only be "ended" by DISAPPEARING IT by the power of the mind. Nothing else can end it, and it CANNOT be ended by attack. Attack will merely KEEP it and create more sickness and reincarnation.

So yes, at some point the body can become incapable of being attacked in any way. Sustained by the power of God supernaturally. Eventually we will RECOGNIZE that we are not a body at all, and it has no usefulness, so our TRANSPARENT MIND will extend only transparency (total honesty). This will mean it STOPS PROJECTING A BODY. The body thus disappears into the nothingness from which it came. This is how the dream is left! It is the only exit. Leaving via DEATH is the TOTAL OPPOSITE OF CHOOSING LIFE.

Jesus concludes with a reminder:

—"Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment 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."

Note here that Jesus says we make a body identity which, separately, attacks the body. This gives a different meaning to body identification.

If we believe we are separate from God we will see ourselves as being an illusion, which will show up as an IMAGE - a body. He warns us here to be careful of MAKING OURSELVES SICK, beause our mind literally does have this power over matter/form. Every miracle demonstrates that the mind must be more powerful than the body. Therefore the mind has power over ALL matter.

Hoepfully it is clear from this chapter alone, that we do not NEED to be sick, sickness CANNOT STAY unless we want to KEEP mental illness along with it, when we choose the TRUTH it is *GUARANTEED* that all sickness and death must be UNDONE COMPLETELY, and it is God’s will that we be perfectly happy and healthy even in a body.

No-one needs to suffer. No-one needs to die. The body cannot be sick unless you make it so, and doing so will keep you from God. But choose again, and sickness will vanish before your eyes. All sickness can be reversed. All death can be reversed. There is nothing your holiness cannot do.