Ok here's something you may never have considered about this world. This is an eye opener!

The world itself, by which I mean spacetime and all its contents including Earth, is in fact a projection FROM AND OF a hidden inner state of guilt and fear. We in fact first believed in separation, AND then we projected that idea OUTWARD from our mind, which MADE THE WORLD.

The world is therefore ONCE REMOVED from an inner state of guilt and fear, on which it is based. The world therefore HIDES a deeper layer in the mind. We used projection to pretend that the egoic content IN the mind was not in the mind, and "extended out" (projected) that idea, which then appeared to form an EXTERNAL world. This external world is a decoy and a cover-up for the INTERNAL belief in sin.

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

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

"the ***mad projection*** by which this world was made."

"We also have observed that man can create an empty shell, but cannot create nothing at all. This emptiness provides **the screen** for the misuse of projection."

"Do you REALLY think it strange that a world in which EVERYTHING is backward and upside down, ***arose from this***? IT WAS INEVITABLE."

"**The first dream** has been seen and understood for merely an illusion of the fear ***on which the world was based***."

"The dreaming of the world is but a part of your own dream you gave away, and saw as if it were its start and ending, both. ****Yet was it started by your SECRET dream, which you do NOT perceive, although it CAUSED the part you see and do not doubt is real.****"

What this means is there really are two things going on in the separation. There's our internal mental state of insanity, sin and guilt, which entails the IDEA of separation - the tiny mad idea - and then secondly there is a PROJECTION of this idea outward which forms the physical "universe" of space and time and bodies etc.

"The body is the IDEA OF SIN made flesh and PROJECTED OUTWARDS."

Jesus goes on to describe this "attempting to get rid of" sin, and its SOURCE, in terms of the "circle of fear" which lies BELOW the body level and out of sight. This is quite a profound statement:

"The circle of fear lies ***just below the level the body sees***, and SEEMS to be ***the whole foundation on which the world is based***. Here are all the illusions, all the twisted thoughts, all the insane attacks, the fury, vengeance, and betrayal that were made to keep the guilt in place, ***so that the world could RISE from it***, and ***keep IT hidden***. ****Its SHADOW rises to the surface**** (the physical world), enough to hold its most ***external manifestations*** in darkness, and to bring despair and loneliness to it, and keep it joyless. But its INTENSITY is ***veiled by its heavy coverings*** (the physical world hides it), and kept APART from what was made to keep it hidden."

So below the physical level, behind and prior to the PROJECTION of the world, there is a circle of fear, and of fury and vengeance and betrayal, of sin and guilt, which festered in the mind BEFORE the world was made as a projection. And then this was then projected out to make it seem that this ego shit wasn't IN the mind but OUTSIDE of the mind - which is the ego's use of projection. This HIDES the fact that the ego content is still buried in the mind, and puts all the focus on "the world of bodies is the world of sin."

"The body cannot see this, for ***the body AROSE from this*** for its protection, which must ALWAYS depend on keeping it NOT seen. The body's eyes will NEVER look on it. Yet they will SEE what it dictates. The body will remain guilt's messenger"

So what this is saying is that guilt is in the mind below the physical level and it is projected outward, producing its SHADOW, which is the physical form. The body cannot SEE the underlying origins of itself in the mind because it is not visible or made of matter. Yet because guilt PROJECTS the body, the body remains "guilt's messenger" or speaks for what is hidden. "Its SHADOW rises to the surface"

"Without the IDEA of death there is no world." - the idea is hidden by its projection. The world, as the shadow or projected form of the hidden error, cannot exist if the inner IDEA of death is removed from the mind.

Basically then you can't project a world that's based on the mad idea or the THOUGHT of death and separation, if the thought of death and separation is removed from the mind. And the world is actually the EFFECT of an internal CAUSE. Projection makes perception. You looked within and saw sin and guilt and projected the physical universe out from it to "externalize" and dissociate from the mental content. It was this which also formed a wall of flesh around the mind, as a body. If the SOURCE of the world in the mind is gone, the world can no longer BE projected.

To overcome the world therefore, we have to properly forgive by FIRST recognizing that the world - the physical level of it - is not really the problem. Just as another person is not really the problem. We only think the world is the problem because we are not realizing that it is being PROJECTED. If we stop using this FORM of projection, ie we stop projecting FROM fear and guilt, we will stop projecting a world that appears sinful, and instead project "the real world" FROM an inner state of peace and love.

"But to find the place, you must relinquish your investment in the world ***as YOU have projected it***, allowing the Holy Spirit to project the real world TO you, from the altar of God."

"At first you see a world which has accepted this as true, ***projected from a now corrected mind***. And with this holy sight, perception gives a silent blessing and then disappears, its goal accomplished and its mission done."

The takeaway is that in fact planet Earth, in its physicality, is in fact once removed from the problem. It isn't even WHERE the "sin" really is. The problem is in the mind and is below the physical surface level. The physical HIDES the problem and makes you focus on its projected FORM. The world ITSELF is not where the problem IS. Because underneath the physical world there is a hidden layer of terrible fear, FROM which the world projects.

This practically almost means that there are TWO worlds we made.... an inner world of hidden guilt and fear - a sort of "underworld", and a dissociated PROJECTED world of physical form and sin. This perhaps makes sense given that all of this is taking place in a SPLIT MIND, in which "you are in two minds", and literally one part of mind houses the secret guilt while the other houses the projection which pictures its crucifixion.

"This world IS a ***picture of*** (projection of) the crucifixion of God's Son. And until you realize that God's Son CANNOT be crucified, this is the world you will see (project to perceive)."

"This heavy-seeming barrier, this artificial floor that looks like rock, is like a bank of low, dark clouds that seem to be a solid wall before the sun. Its impenetrable appearance is WHOLLY an illusion."

"It can indeed be said the ego ***MADE its world on sin***. Only in such a world COULD everything be upside down. This IS the strange illusion which makes the clouds of guilt seem heavy and impenetrable. The solidness this world's foundation SEEMS to have is FOUND in this."

In effect, this world IS A DECOY, which in fact hides the "real problem" which is hidden from physical sight, and lies in the mind. If we have sin in the mind we project a sinful world. If we have love in the mind we project a loving world. And neither is first-hand reality because they are both projections. Once the "real world" is projected and "the forgiven" world is perceived, both the real and unreal worlds will disappear, because the mind will stop projecting on ego terms.

The separation will be undone, and only the TRUE CREATION of heaven - the projected extension of pre-separation reality, will remain.

If you know what the secret to the magic trick is, you know that there is not really any magic happening. But if something is hidden, if there is information missing, it becomes possible to enter into an alternative state of awareness - a state of deception and misperception.

In that state, where you don't know that information is missing, or that something is hidden, you believe that you're seeing the whole truth. You therefore make sense of it, and it seems to be what it is, based on its appearance. You think you're seeing the truth because you think you are seeing fully.

But if you are not seeing the whole of the information, and some information is hidden, you aren't seeing the real truth. So when you then believe that you are, you're inside a hallucination.

In other words, you're seeing meaning where there is none, you're convinced you're awake but you're not, you're certain you are making complete sane sense out of what's happening but you're mistaken, and you don't even realize that you're nuts.

This state of insanity is automatically a state of imagining truth where there is none - a hallucination of the truth, which is a state of believing the truth is something it is not.

Puzzles are another good example. When you first encounter a new puzzle, you do not see the answer. It seems obscure, hidden. At first you are confused, and you don't understand it, and it makes no sense, and you can't "see" how it is possible. And yet it seems to be possible that the unsolved state of the puzzle is truth, because you see no way to solve it or see additional truth beyond that. But over time, as you question your perception, you gradually might realize that by undoing your own assumptions and reversing your own conclusions, i.e. collapsing the hallucination, the answer suddenly becomes obvious.

Once you have solved the puzzle, it's because you've seen some information, really a state of greater awareness, which has burst the illusion and suddenly you are seeing outside of it. You are no longer fooled, you've found the answer, it seems clear as day and now you kick yourself for the apparent stupidity of having not seen it earlier. In other words, you realize you were mistaken the whole time and its pretty embarrassing.

Bringing this around to A Course in Miracles, it is the same with the "illusion" that this world is a reality. There is an illusion here, in front of your face, which if you were able to see ALL of it clearly, you'd see past the hallucinations and the misinterpretations and the misunderstandings, and suddenly realize, in a state of greater awareness, that what you THOUGHT was true before, was actually false. And you'll understand why. Because now you have revealed some kind of awareness of information that was hidden before, and this information is vital to being able to see the illusion correctly. Ie to overlook the deception, to overlook the delusion and insanity, which was telling you that all kinds of other stuff was true.

So right now, unless you're in full awareness, you're still inside what seems to be a puzzle. And because there's some stuff you are blocking from awareness, there's some information you are not privy to. And because of that limitation, and because you don't even know that the extra information exists yet, you believe that you're seeing the entire truth as it appears to you. That's in spite of the fact that you're only seeing part of a scene, are coming to false conclusions, are seeing "truths" which actually aren't quite true, and are therefore having hallucinations about the meaning of what you see.

You see a dark shadow behind a door, and because you lack information - awareness of "God facts" - in your belief that you are seeing correctly you believe that "its true" that there is a scary monster behind the door. However, if you turn on the light, which reveals to your awareness extra information, now it becomes obvious it was just clothing, and you once again kick yourself for falling for the silly belief that there was a real monster there. But before that, you really believed there was a real monster, and you were therefore frightened. Frightened by an hallucination - a false belief about the truth.

When there is enough awareness of "what is here", of what this illusion IS, its structure and purpose and functioning, and the ways that it deceives, it is no longer possible to believe the magic trick. You've seen through and past all of the mistaken perceptions which you thought were showing you reality.

All of the horrifying mis-truths that you believed in, such as that sin and death were real, are revealed to be completely false. All of the reasons you ever had to be afraid, suddenly have no foundation whatsoever because the truth emerges and shows you that the things you thought were frightening were not TRUE, they were delusions and hallucinated meanings, and thankfully there is a larger explanation for them. When you don't understand what is happening or why its happening, it will scare you, because the illusory truth it presents makes it seem real. When a correct explanation is given, you're like, oh... okay then. Then you drop the false belief, with relief that you no longer have a valid reason to be afraid.

So a blockage placed on awareness leads you to believing that the meaning of reality is obscured, the truth no longer quite makes sense but still seems true, you see things IN and ON TOP OF the illusion that are not even really there (thereby hallucinating), and the sense that you make of it is actually a deception. When the blockage to awareness is lifted, you can no longer be deceived. It's like hearing the punchline to the joke, and never again can you hear the joke and have quite as much of a laugh because you know the answer. Knowing the real answer, the real truth, is revealed by awareness.

So here's a question. If there is a grand illusion of a physical universe, a world, and a body, and if the only reason that you believe you're even seeing them is because you are lacking awareness, then doesn't it suggest that if you had enough awareness, you might suddenly see past that illusion and realize the world does not even really exist? It was just a kind of twisting of consciousness, a distortion, which you could only experience while insane and hallucinating? Maybe the world you thought existed was your misinterpretation of reality, and only existed as a hallucination based on a lack of awareness. Maybe there is no world.

Jesus said in relation to seeing through illusions, "What is understood as nothing must disappear."

and

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. "!!

It's not just that there really is an illusion. It's only even an illusion because you believe there is one. Really, you are just misperceiving reality. That misperception shows you an illusion that there is a world. Once the puzzle is seen through and the truth is revealed, you will no longer be able to perceive that there really is a world. You will not believe it. You will recognize it was just an illusion, and nothing about it was ever really true. Like a dream. Not a real dream, but a dream-dream.

Form, matter, bodies, the universe, events, people, places, sins, guilts, death, sickness, it's all an illusion, a deception that APPEARS TO MAKE SENSE or appears to be real and true, ONLY because we lack awareness, and ONLY be cause there is some hidden information. When all is revealed, all of these illusions must disappear into the perfect omnipresent light of God, in which they DO NOT EXIST.

In reality, the world does not exist. We're dreaming it, hallucinating it, imagining it, reading into it, and are TRYING to make it a reality. It's just what you get when you haven't solved the puzzle yet, because the truth is obscured. When the truth is revealed, it will be obvious that there isn't really a world there. It was part of the puzzle while you fell for it. And now that the light has come, it is gone.

Lesson 75, "The light has come":

"The light has come. You are healed and you can heal. The light has come. You are saved and you can save. You are at peace, and you bring peace with you wherever you go. Darkness and turmoil and death have disappeared. The light has come. Today we celebrate the happy ending to your long dream of disaster. There are no dark dreams now. The light has come. Today the time of light begins for you and everyone. " - ACIM

It is a scene in the mind. It is an imagined scene. A dream.

It is inside of a mind. It is made of thought. It presents images but these images are only there because of imagination.

Physical matter is not fixed and is not separate from the mind that dreams it into being. Bodies, made of this matter, are similarly just images in the mind - the mind that is dreaming the world.

You could liken it, symbolically, to as if we are living inside someone's brain. Inside someone's imagination. The universe is a giant idea. A thought. Even physical matter itself is not really physical or fixed matter, it is just an imagined idea.

It is all mind. And it is all within the mind. There is no such thing as outside the mind, and ideas leave not their source.

Objects, bodies, people, cars, houses, planets, they are all just ideas in the mind. They are being held in suspension and made to seem as though they have their own personal history and a "state" of their own, but this is entirely an illusion.

All forms are being regenerated and reprojected by the mind, within the mind, every quantum of time. Each object is completely forgotten and regenerated.

The only reason that objects appears to maintain their "state" or have a "history" over time, is because the mind that is dreaming them maintains a certain belief over time, and therefore keeps re-generating an almost identical image of form.

You think objects such as your body have a history, but they do not. They are being recreated now by the mind. What they appeared to be a year ago only seems to correlate to how they appear now because the mind that is making them keeps making them in the same way, based on the same beliefs.

Your body does not have a will of its own, or a story of its own, or a history of its own, or a state of its own. It is nothing but an image coming out of a projector. The projector is running a movie and keeps projecting a similar-looking object with similar properties, to create an illusion of consistency over time. Your body now has nothing in common with your body a moment ago, at the bodily level.

This is all happening in the mind. Inside a giant mind. This entire planet and everything happening on it is just a bunch of images in a mind. Imagination. A dream of the Son of God.

When this mind changes its mind, you can bet that the dream it is imagining is going to change as well. When this mind chooses forgiveness, you can bet that the images in the mind are going to out-picture a forgiven state of being as well.

This is why miracles - as expressions of love which CURE - and as expressions of love which DEMONSTRATE that the body has not been harmed, to symbolize the fact that the mind is unharmed, MUST be expressed on the level of "form".

This world is not just some place. It is not just a physical location. It is a place in the MIND. All of the objects in it are THOUGHTS. All of the forms and all of the so-called matter is nothing but a fluidic, liquid state of mind which can change at any moment.

It is not fixed, it is not permanent, and all of its illusions of continuity are just that - an illusion, maintained by a mind which keeps on projecting the same or similar images. That does not mean the mind cannot project different images if it wants to.

Miracles then, as demonstrations that you are healed, will manifest as the so-called "body" being healed, which means that the MIND is healed. And since the body is IN the mind, the undoing of the ILLUSION of a body will make the body change. It has to.

The body is not separate from mind or outside of mind. It is made OF mind. And if the mind chooses to stop dreaming a particular part of the dream, or to dream something different, that dream - physicality - will change.

You are living in a thought-world. It is a thought-form in the mind of the Son of God. Where else could you be but in the mind that you exist in, shared with God? There is nowhere else. There is no separate place to go.

Therefore, miracles, in A Course in Miracles, must be expressed as changes to FORM - which really are changes of MIND - whereby the "personal mind" that hides in the body and the body itself as an extension of that mind, must show up in the same way.

This is why Jesus, when he ascended, saw that his body - an image of a body - was just an illusion, and that it had no real meaning, it disappeared. It disappeared WITHIN the larger mind. The mind that is dreaming the dream. He erased part of the dream, because it was nothing more than illusory images - imagination. Clearly, if a dreaming mind decides to stop dreaming, whatever it was dreaming will cease to exist. And as such the "physical body" will disappear, IN the mind, because it was always in the mind all along.

Realize this. The physical universe is made of MIND! It is made of thoughts and thinking. It is constructed by consciousness. It is entirely within the bounds of the imagination. All of the forms and objects are just images in the mind. That is why when you change your mind, when you forgive, FORM WILL CHANGE. Because mind will change.

World events, tragedies, disasters, wars, attacks, celebrations, weddings, carnivals, shows, sporting events, whatever... all of it is happening in the mind. Its all a MIND-show. Mind events. Mind choosing to create dreams. Absolutely anything is possible. The mind could even create a fantastically perfect-looking world filled with abundance and incredible creatures, if it chooses to.

And people are collectively, worldwide, constantly choosing and creating futures which comprise of all kinds of stuff happening, because they chose to believe in it. We are changing "reality" because we are changing the dream as we go along.

And this is also why certain parties attempt to manipulate global consciousness to bring about a mental manifestation of certain outcomes. (Conspiracy theory alert! lol) - they know that mind creates this world and that mind can be coerced to create preferably futures. It's all part of manipulating the dreamer.

To believe that form will not change is purely the belief that mind is limited to the body and that the body is not inside or made of the mind. And that is a very common misperception, because that's precisely what the ILLUSION shows, if you believe it.

Your car is in your mind. Your house is in your mind. Your body is in your mind. Your job is in your mind. Your family is in your mind. Your entire life is in your mind. Even the physical stuff. It's all mental. Thus, changes of MIND, changes FORM, and that is why supernatural miracles happen.

They are demonstrations of truth, that the mind that is BEHIND the form has chosen something different, defying all of the illusory laws that the IMAGES in the mind appear to follow.

And this is also why the Course's REAL definition of "miracles" is that they are SUPERNATURAL. They defy the natural laws implied by illusions and come from a mind which is dreaming the world, easily capable of changing them and producing "healed" images of bodies.

Ultimately, a completely healed mind will acknowledge that the body does not really exist at all, and that it was just a dream coming from the mind. The mind was just projecting it and making it up. And it showed up in the "world" because the world is in the mind. And then, it will cease to dream the body, and the body will disappear.

A disappeared body is the ultimate body in perfect health, because perfect divine health means freedom from illusions and forms. Thus the perfect body is disappeared into perfection and by perfection, as the ultimate HEALING of the mind that dreamed it.

The body was made to come between the mind and God, and to make it seem like the Son of God was not Himself. It must go. And its ultimate healing is its removal. Its total undoing. This is the final demonstration that you are not a body. And if you want, you could re-manifest one later to demonstrate this, just like Jesus did after the cruxifixction.

The world is just a dream in your mind. Anything goes.

We here in spacetime are accustomed to living well within the confines of the ego thought system. This whole world, this universe, was made in a thought of separation. It IS the ego thought system - a system of thought which seems like an order of reality, founded on sin.

All of space and time and its contents embody the idea of sin being real. It was made to tempt you to believe that sin is happening and has happened, with lasting irreversible effects. "The world of bodies is the world of sin."

But the thing is, outside of this bubble, sin is seen in quite a different light. In truth, sin is impossible. God is real and permanent and eternal, making it impossible to affect Him. In fact it's impossible to attack or change anything real. Reality is changeless and unassailable. Which means it is literally impossible for you or anyone to sin against it.

So the notion that you can sin, are sinning, or have sinned, or will sin, is completely nonsense. It's a totally mistaken wishful-thinking belief. From this perspective, Jesus refers to it as an "error", not a sin. It's a mistake to even BELEIVE in it, and nothing more.

It's a mistake to believe that, given sin is literally impossible, that you can sin. It is a mistake to believe that, given nothing real can be threatened, that you have in fact sinned against God by attacking Him against His will. It is a mistake to believe that, given you cannot sin or change anything real, that you have in fact produced irreversible consequences in something real.

To believe that you can or have done this is obviously a completely FALSE belief. It's utterly not true. There is no truth to it whatsoever. The belief that it is true is completely mistaken. It literally is false and always will be false.

The thing is, once you go INTO the ego thought system, and enter into the bubble of spacetime, and start to BELIEVE that what is impossible is actually possible, which is an insane idea (a tiny 'mad' idea), it starts to look AS IF sin is real. You see a world of sin, a world of sinful bodies, a world of sinful happenings, evidence of irreversible attack, and everything seemingly real can be threatened.

Since we've been living "inside" this bubble of sin for so long, confined by it, tempted by it, upset by it, we're not used to the idea that the ENTIRE THING is mistaken. That NONE of it can be true. All of our ego reactions, all of our upset feelings, all of our stresses and dramas, all sickness and suffering, seem to prove that sin is real and permanent.

We're so used to this and so blinded by the mere idea that sin IS possible, that we are not used to thinking COMPLETELY outside this box. This is where forgiveness comes in. Because forgiveness, as the atonement, shows us a doorway which borders on true reality, allowing us to step OUTSIDE the bubble of sin and death, and peer into heaven, to recognize that the idea of sin is utterly bullshit.

When you can get your mind to move to a perspective PRIOR to "sin is real", which is required to accept atonement, it makes total sense to realize that sin is impossible. Forgiveness recognizes that you literally have not sinned, cannot sin, and nor can anyone else. Just even the BELIEF that sin is possible, is a mistake. It's a false conclusion.

It's a conclusion that we must've come to by making an ERROR in reasoning. We must've had to have turned a blind eye to facts, and imagined, and defiantly and absurdly WANTED sin to be real, in spite of the hugely obvious reality that sin is forever impossible. There is, in truth, NO real sin ANYWHERE in reality. And God's Kingdom has not been changed in the slightest by any kind of sin.

This is why the belief in sin, the separation, the tiny mad idea, WAS an insane idea. It is insane to even suggest that reality can be attacked. It is insane to believe that you can exist where God does not exist, given God is all encompassing. It is insane to believe you can attack what is permanent. And it is insane to believe you have a power stronger than God's will to affect His will against His will.

But this is what we did. We defiantly, stubbornly, ridiculously, mistakenly, simply made a huge MISTAKE, a silly childish choice, to BELIEVE that we COULD do what we could NEVER do. Even faced with the facts of reality that sin is impossible, we INSISTED that sin is possible. You DEMANDED that sin be possible, even though it is not. Like some rioter or picketer making a huge pointless protest for something that can never happen, against the truth, in defiance of God.

To do this is insane. And it is what made us go into a state of insanity. It is insane to believe the impossible is possible. And in this insanity we believe and thus perceive that sin is real, happening, permanent and seemingly solid. But we are ONLY mistaken. It's just a big ERROR that we made.

We are mistaken for believing sin is possible. We are mistaken for believing we attacked God murderously. We are mistaken for believing God is affected by our will. We are mistaken for believing we have a power capable of overthrowing reality. We are mistaken for believing we can be anything other than innocent. We are mistaken for accepting the ego into our minds, believing that it is the truth. Were's simply mistaken. And mistakes can forgivingly be corrected without punishment.

The whole world is false. There is no truth in it at all. The entire separation idea is false. The whole of spacetime is false. Every single supposed sin is a false sin. There is no sin! Real sin is not possible and does not exist. No one has ever sinned. You have never sinned nor have you ever been sinned against.

The bizarre thing is just this sensation, this familiarity, that sin ACTUALLY is real and has happened. We believe in it too much. We seem to experience it every day. Stuff happens against our will. We do stuff against the will of others. The world attacks us. There is no safety anywhere. And all of spacetime seems hell-bent on murder and self destruction. We have become used to this. We think it's normal, but it's not.

We have to get our minds OUTSIDE of the idea, the belief, that sin is real. It is necessary in order to complete forgiveness. It is necessary in order to correctly FRAME sin in its PROPER light, recognizing it for what it IS, not for how it appears when you are trapped "inside" it. Sin has to be recognized as impossible. It has to be correctly identified as having never happened. And the truth of reality's immortality and perfect changelessness has to be acknowledged.

God is laughing at our belief that sin is possible. If you go look at reality, you will find that there is no trace of proof that you ever attacked anything real. God is unharmed. Heaven has not skipped a single note in its song. All the Children of God are perfectly protected. There is not a single stain or bruise or blemish or hint of attack anywhere in reality. And all of Heaven is exactly as perfect now as it always was. God's world is STILL PERFECT!

This seems alien to us. The idea that reality is utterly unaffected and unchanged. That God is totally happy with us. Given how much we believe that sin is happening and has happened. But accepting and recognizing the constancy of reality is vital to accepting atonement. The ENTIRE belief in sin is mistaken. It has not one shred of truth to it. All who believe in it are insane. All who think it proves something are mistaken.

"Sin is insanity."

"Reality is a constant state."

From God's perspective, all of us here are simply having a bizarre, fictional dream, filled with strange twisted worlds and meaningless environments. Not one single thing has really happened. Every single sin, every evidence of attack, is a lie. We're all just very confused, mistaken people. We have a belief in something which is completely false. We want it to be true for ridiculous reasons. But the facts remain. There is no sin anywhere, sin is impossible, and you are still as God created you.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

"Do not perceive ANYTHING God did not create, or you ARE denying Him."So you can PERCEIVE something God CREATED, which is in heaven?

"ALL His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they were created neither partially nor in part. ... The Holy Spirit enables you to PERCEIVE THIS WHOLENESS NOW."

These statements clearly tell you that you are able to PERCEIVE the contents of heaven. To perceive Christ. To perceive Creation.

This doesn't mean that perception is the same as knowledge. "To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it". But this again implies that you CAN perceive the truth - and God is truth.

"God is in everything I see because God is in my mind?" should perhaps read "I can use perception to perceive God."

"Perception, at its loftiest, is never complete. Even the perception of the Holy Spirit, as perfect as perception can be, is without meaning in Heaven. Perception can reach everywhere under His guidance, for the vision of Christ beholds everything in light. Yet no perception, however holy, will last forever."

I did a very in-depth study of EVERYTHING that ACIM says about "the real world". It seemed ultimately very clear that the real world is a little removed from heaven itself. e.g "The real world still is but a dream."

It also became clear that there is such a thing as perceiving the "face of Christ". Yet.... Christ is in heaven, so are you not perceiving heaven?

I STILL keep coming back to this idea, that the real world, the reflection of heaven, the face of christ, the perception of truth, perceiving God, seeing the Son of God, etc.... is in some manner... YOU LOOKING AT HEAVEN, but THROUGH the filter of perception.

This would seem to make more sense in terms of the "real world" being used a a term (which is not the same as the forgiven world). The forgiven world is the overlooked ILLUSORY world (earth etc), while the real world is the PERCEPTION or vision of reality. Appropriately named "real" as in, it reflects reality or is "true". True perception can perceive the truth.

We know that the real world is a "borderland of thought" in between the illusory world and heaven. Just outside the gates. But we also know it is so much on the 'border' of the illusory world of dreams that it is practically outside of it and beyond the VEIL of illusions, which was covering the face of Christ. ie it IS the face of Christ.

It makes more sense also to say that the FACE of christ, is the PERCEPTION of Christ (which is not the same as the KNOWLEDGE of Christ). And that the real world isn't just some static state, but is you looking AT heaven through perception.

"You will first dream of peace (heaven) then awaken to it."

I continue to come back to this idea that the "real world" really is a kind of "window shopping" into heaven. Like looking into heaven from the outside, from a vantage point of separation. Because "perception is a separated state." It is like an IMAGE or a photograph of heaven. A reflection in a mirror. Just once removed slightly from the actual thing.

It's appropriate to then say that the REAL real world is heaven, and "the real world" we PERCEIVE through interpretation, is "the real world" ie the light seen through the filter of consciousness. This is also why ACIM says that "nothing there but shines and shines forever" and that everyting in the real world IS ETERNAL.

If eternal means PERMANENT, the real world HAS to be a perception OF that which is permanent (heaven)... even though the real world "state of mind" ITSELF is temporary, because it's happening via perception. So what you see in true perception is heaven, eternity, but through a judgement/interpreration based way of seeing, which is itself removed from the direct experience.

In the first quote above, it is implied that you CAN see things that God created. I also did a very deep study of all terms relating to VISION, and SEEING within heaven, and there is very strong evidence that congition is able to SEE... the mind can SEE... in reality. This seeing isn't PERCEPTION, which is an interpretative function and a substitute for knowledge. "Nothing there is perceived, only known."But knowing, cognizing, is a direct awareness of what is really there. e.g. "The soul never leaves the SIGHT of God." And we're told many times that Christ lends us HIS EYES. There is a whole lot of material about being able to see in reality, without a need for perception. There, seeing is KNOWING what is there.

We should then perhaps think of "the real world", aka the face of christ, or the "interpretative image of heaven", as an actual PERCEPTUAL experience of the Kingdom. It's not quite the same as being IN the Kingdom or KNOWING it, but it is very closely correlated. "Those who perceive still need healing."

And as another quote says, perception can reach ANYWHERE under the Holy Spirit's guidance. That should include being able to perceive the Kingdom. And how would the Holy Spirit look upon CHRIST, given Christ is IN the Kingdom?

There is a curious line, like this, for example, which perhaps is literal, relating to seeing gardens and endless dancing brooks..."When you have looked on what seemed terrifying, and seen it change to sights of loveliness and peace; when you have looked on scenes of ****violence and death, and watched them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear, life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks that never waste away****; who need persuade you to accept the gift of vision? And after vision (knowing heaven), who is there who could refuse what must come after? Think but an instant just on this; you can behold the holiness God gave His Son. And never need you think that there is something else for you to see."

It also clues you in that when the course talks of "you cannot see both worlds" and "beyond the world there is a world I want" etc... it's ACTUALLY referring to the comparison of Earth vs Heaven, but it saying that you can at first PERCEIVE heaven using vision/true perception, THEN go there. ie the perception of the real world is not like an internal vision inside a closed box where you see the interior walls, like its own 'state'. It's actually like a GLASS ROOM where you can perceive heaven beyond it, so clear that it's almost like being there.

So what if, false perception shows you the unforgiven world, earth. .... true perception renders the false world untrue and forgiven, recognized as an illusion, overlooked, and seen beyond, and true perception/christ vision also allows you to look to the LIGHT of heaven beyond the world, to christ and God, which you first perceive, then know. ie we're being asked to see the IMAGE or REFLECTION of heaven, using perception, before we cross over into it.

If we say that seeing the face of Christ, is really a use of perception from WITHIN the realm of perception, INSIDE the separation, LOOKING OUT BEYOND the separation at heaven OUTSIDE the bubble of spacetime and matter, then the true perception we are cultivating is really an ability to SEE Christ, who is OUTSIDE the dream, FROM the inside. The veil of matter becomes invisible, like a glass room, allowing you to look OUTSIDE its walls.

This renders "the real world" - a perception - not as simply some kind of "inbetween state", where all it sees is its own content, but rather than it is a PERCEPTION of reality, seen from a separated vantage point, but with such clarity and accuracy and openness that it is like peering into heaven itself. There is no perceptual function IN heaven (where you have true sight), but there is a perception OF heaven from the outside looking in.

And so forgiveness brings the ability to SEE truth, reality, love, light, heaven, holiness, christ, God, peace, perfection, etc."The miracle perceives everything (in heaven) as it is. If nothing but the truth (heaven/reality) exists, right-minded seeing cannot see anything but perfection. I have said that only what God creates or what you create with the same Will has any real existence. This, then, is all ***the innocent can see*** (can see perfection, which is in heaven). They do not suffer from distorted perception."

"That is why the healer's prayer is, "let me know this brother as I know myself."

In truth we are all part of a collective family. It's like a kind of collective consciousness or hive mind. We each have full access to everyone and our minds are joined. Our identity is shared as the one Christ, the "one Son" of God. We share everything and are everything and have everything all at once.

This means your brother is a part of yourself. A part of your actual being and soul, a part of your identity. Not that when the two of you meet you annihilate the fact that you have your own soul and they theirs, but your souls join and merge into a oneness so deep there is no exclusion between you.

ACIM is literally trying to get us to remember that WE are shared beings. Our minds overlap. Our identity isn't supposed to be exclusive, special, isolated or different to others. There aren't supposed to be special rules that apply only to myself, or special truths that apply only to you.

We are asked to remember and re-access a shared state, a truly shared open intimate state, in which we literally experience each other as a part of ourselves. That we actually recognize and see "what I am" within other people. There is something in you and something in me which is the same one thing. And this is reflected in the Holy Spirit, who is in both our minds, keeping them joined as one.

You have to learn to recognize that other people are part of yourself. Your neighbor is you. Your friends and relatives are you. Your family and loved ones are you. Even strangers and people in far off lands are you.

In order to tap into this unity and reunite with yourself and with others, with whom you have been estranged and at war, it requires you to become more inclusive. It also requires you to expand your sense of identity - the sense of who you are, what you are, what is included in yourself, and where the boundaries of your identity are. In fact, ultimately you are the whole universe.

When the boundaries of your identity stop at the body, or the identity of others is confined to a physical form, you are in separation. If mind believes and perceives itself to be excluded from other minds by a body separation-device, it does not know itself. To regard others as "not me" is to regard yourself as "not you". You do not know yourself in truth when you do not know your brother IS yourself.

We have to expand our minds, expand our sense of self, expand our idea of what is included within ourselves. Only if your brother's interests become part of your own can you have shared interests. And only when they are part of you will you value them as much as yourself.

Miracles require a joining of minds, a reuniting with a brother, a shared identity, an openness and intimacy of relationship. If you think that two bodies being together is intimate, you have not seen anything yet. To transcend bodies and join in mind in total absorption and merging and oneness is an intimacy beyond any physical contact you can ever imagine. And that is a holy relationship and the way to work miracles.

Jesus is asking us to love ALL BEINGS. The only way to love all beings truly is to include and welcome them into yourself, to recognize and actually experience that they are a part of yourself, and know them as part of you. It is not merely a matter of trying to love some strange person that you don't really know. It is more a matter of merging with them so fully that they are literally a part of you and you love them because they are in no way rejected from your own being.

Total union is the way to know who they really are. Total union is the only way to know who you really are. There is a part of you in them. If you do not love that part of you that is in them, you do not love all of yourself. Loving everyone as a part of yourself incorporates and integrates them into yourself, and you then love them as you love yourself. And you love yourself because you love everyone who is one with you. This is the only path to resurrection, to atonement, to miracles, and to ascension.

"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself."

"You accept forgiveness as accomplished in yourself when you forgive. You recognize your brother as yourself, and thus do you perceive that you are whole."

"The law of Creation is that you love your creations as yourself, BECAUSE THEY ARE PART OF YOU."

"The message and the messenger ARE one. And you MUST see your brother as yourself."

"It is no dream to love your brother as yourself. Nor is your holy relationship a dream."

"When you have seen your brothers as yourself, you will be RELEASED to knowledge, having learned to FREE yourself, of Him who knows of freedom."

"And would He give a Brother unto you except he be as perfect as yourself, and just as like to Him in holiness as YOU must be?"

"But love EVERYTHING He created, of which YOU are part, or you cannot learn of His peace and accept His gift FOR yourself and AS yourself. You CANNOT know your own perfection until you have honored all those who were created LIKE you."

"Look at your holy brother, sinless as yourself, and let him LEAD you there."

"It is the gracious acknowledgment of everyone as a Son of your most loving Father, loved by Him like you, and therefore loved by you as yourself. It is HIS Love that joins you, and FOR His Love, you would keep no-one separate from YOURS."

"For sin would keep you separate, but your Redeemer would have you look upon each other as yourself."

"For your Father wills you to know your brother AS yourself. Answer HIS call for love, and YOURS is answered. Healing is the love of Christ for His Father, and for HIMSELF."

"So would I look on everyone today. My brothers are Your Sons. Your Fatherhood created them, and gave them all to me as part of You and my own Self as well. Today I honor You through them, and thus I hope this day to recognize my Self."

"For he is part of me and I of him, and we are part of You Who are our Source, eternally united in Your Love; eternally the holy Son of God."

"Fail not your brothers, or you fail yourself. Look lovingly on them that they may know that they are part of you and you of them."

"If your brothers ARE part of you, will you ACCEPT them?"

"If what you do to my brother you do to me, and if you do everything for yourself because we are PART of you, everything WE do belongs to you as well. Every Soul God created is part of you, and shares His glory WITH you."

"If you unite with anyone in prayer, you make him part of you."

"Every altar to God is part of your Soul, because the Light He created is One with Him. Would you cut a brother off from the Light that is yours?"

"If your brothers are part of YOU, and you blame THEM for your deprivation, you ARE blaming yourself. And you cannot blame yourself WITHOUT blaming them."

"The beautiful relationship you have with all your brothers is a part of you BECAUSE it is a part of God Himself."

"A holy relationship is one in which you join with what IS part of you in TRUTH."

(rejection of) ... "This is your brother, focus of your hate, unworthy to be part of you, and thus OUTSIDE your self, the other half, which is denied."

"By accepting the Atonement for YOURSELF, you are deciding AGAINST the belief that you can BE alone, thus dispelling the idea of separation and affirming your true identification with the whole Kingdom as literally PART OF YOU."

"And thus IS every living thing a part of you as of Himself."

"Your teaching has already DONE this, for the Holy Spirit is PART OF YOU."

"But see the love of God in you, and you will see it everywhere because it IS everywhere. See His abundance in everyone, and you will know that you are in Him WITH them. They are part of you as you are part of God. YOU are as lonely without understanding this as God Himself is lonely when His Sons do not know Him."

"He is in need of your acceptance of himself as part of you, as you for his."

"you will realize that it is a sudden UNawareness of the body, and a joining of your self and SOMETHING ELSE, in which your mind ENLARGES to encompass it. It becomes PART of you, as you UNITE with it. And BOTH become whole, as NEITHER is perceived as separate."

"Brother, we heal together as we live together, and love together. Be not deceived in God's Son, for he is one with himself, and One with his Father."

In the separation, you confused the true and the false. You assigned God's properties to the false world, BUT YOU ALSO assigned false properties to God. This turned God into an evil enemy to you in your perception of him. This was necessary in order to believe that the world you made was something you would want instead.

This means you actually framed God as opposite to his nature. As if God is evil, destructive, attacking, sinful, deadly, sick, suffering, weak, powerless, unreal, illusory, vengeful and special. While many people focus on how they are going to forgive the false world, which entails lifting truth from it, you ALSO have to forgive God and lift the FALSE from him.

You may not realize that you have assigned false properties to God. But you have in fact framed God as a special false God. You have tried to make out that God is evil and an enemy. The ego believes this. It wants nothing to do with God because IT believes and perceives God as "everything evil", while seeing itself as holy.

"No-one who hates but is afraid of love, and therefore MUST he be afraid of God."

"You are more afraid of God than of the ego, and love cannot enter where it is not welcome."

"And being deceived in yourself you ARE deceived in your Father, in Whom no deceit is possible."

This means you do in fact have within you various reasons to avoid God, to fear God, to not want God, and to hate God. Part of you wants God to be dead. You have to therefore actually forgive God of the projections and misperceptions that you have laid upon him, and recognize that he is not those things.

It is your attempt to AVOID looking at your "attack on God" blasphemy that compels you to focus on forgiving the WORLD instead. You do not want to look at this because you actually believe that your attack on God has made you GUILTY. And you do not want to revisit the idea of approaching God because you believe it means admitting to having sinned against him, and you think he's going to kill you for it.

"You do NOT see that EVERY sin and EVERY condemnation which you perceive and justify IS an attack upon your Father."

"Your brothers and your Father have become VERY fearful to you, and you would bargain with them for a few special relationships, in which you think you see some scraps of safety."

"For through guilt, you EXCLUDE your Father and your brothers FROM yourself."

"It is your Father Whom you would defend against."

If you think that God is evil you will not want to go home. If you think the world is NOT evil you will not want to go home. You've turned God into an enemy and do not trust him. That's why there is a whole process of "the development of trust". You have misplaced your trust in the ego world. You have to learn to trust God again.

"You CHOSE to forget your Father, but you did NOT will to do so."

To trust God you have to be willing to accept the possibility that God is not the scary monster that you think he is. That he is not going to hurt or attack or reject you. That he still loves you because he is still love. You have to take away from God the false accusations you've made that he is evil and vicious and not to be trusted. You have hurled abuse at God and have accused him of sin. This has to be undone.

You will only approach God, tentatively, if you can have a little willingness to be mistaken about him. And this requires that you trust and have faith that he isn't out to destroy you. You have to be wrong about God, because you have become mistaken about him and his nature. You cannot conceive of him without a body, or think of him as anything but selfish like your ego. This has to be reversed.

"And either the ego, which you made, IS your father, or its whole thought system will not stand."

"Your gods are nothing, because your Father did not create them." "You who have been unmerciful unto yourselves, do not remember your Father's love."

This aspect of forgiveness doesn't seem to be talked about very much in ACIM circles. A lot of time is spent talking about forgiving the world and its contents and the people that piss you off, but very little about looking at the fact that you rejected God, hate God, do not want God, and are trying to destroy him and his son. This picturing of God as an enemy has to be undone in order for you to feel safe to be intimate with God again.

You have to unlearn your rejection of God and learn to love him again. Perhaps the real reason that many people do NOT focus on forgiving God, or looking at how they have framed God as evil, is because it would suggest tremendous guilt and fear, to admit that you have tried to attack and kill off God himself. Fortunately God has not held any of this against you and dispels it entirely, and is his hands are held open in welcome to receive you as his most loved creation once again.

To want to go towards your brothers in Christ, to want to forgive anything, you have to be willing to forgive God. You have accused him and must correct this. The world was made as an attack on God. You can forgive the world but you also have to forgive the idea that you've attacked God. You have made God into a false God and have redefined what you think God is like. This has to be corrected. You have to learn to love God again, and you can start by admitting that you don't.

"You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor, and God did not give it. For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son. Therefore, you made of Him an UNloving father, demanding of Him what only such a father COULD give. And the peace of God's Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father. He feared what he had made, but still more did he fear his REAL Father, having attacked his glorious equality WITH Him."

"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival."

"The "attack on God" made His Son think he was fatherless, and out of his depression he made the god of depression."

"Do not look to the god of sickness for healing, but only to the God of love, for healing is the acknowledgment of Him."

"The god of the crucifixion demands that he crucify, and his worshippers obey."

"You MADE the god of sickness, and BY making him, you made yourself ABLE to hear him. But you did NOT create him, because he is NOT the Will of the Father. He is therefore not eternal, and will be UNmade for you, the instant you signify your willingness to accept ONLY the eternal."

"You were willing to accept even death to deny your Father."

"You have interpreted the separation as a means which you have made for BREAKING your communication with your Father."

"You can give up the god of sickness for your brothers; in fact, you would HAVE to do so, if you give him up for yourself. For if you see him anywhere, YOU are accepting him."

"GOD is not at war with the god of sickness which you made, but YOU are. He is the symbol of willing AGAINST God, and you are afraid of him BECAUSE he cannot be reconciled with God's will. If you ATTACK him, you will make him real to you. But if you refuse to worship him, in whatever form he may appear to you, and wherever you think you see him, he will disappear into the nothingness out of which he was made."

"Embodiment of fear, the host of sin, god of the guilty and the lord of all illusions and deceptions, does the thought of death seem mighty. For it seems to hold all living things within its withered hand; all hopes and wishes in its blighting grasp; all goals perceived but in its sightless eyes. The frail, the helpless and the sick bow down before its image, thinking it alone is real, inevitable, worthy of their trust. For it alone will surely come."

"There is either a god of fear or One of Love."

"Or will you make another idol to replace it? For the god of cruelty takes many forms."

"The ego is not a traitor to God to Whom treachery is impossible. But it IS a traitor TO YOU who believe you have been treacherous to your Father." "You who have played that you are lost to hope, abandoned by your Father, left alone in terror in a fearful world made mad by sin and guilt, be happy now. That game is over."

"The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is KNOW THYSELF. There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost. Whenever you are with anyone ELSE, you have another opportunity to find them. Your power and glory are in HIM BECAUSE they are yours. The ego tries to find them in YOURSELF, because he does not know where to look. But the Holy Spirit teaches you that if you look only at yourself you CANNOT find yourself because that is NOT what you are."

Each of us has an identity. God gave us an identity in and as part of Christ or the Sonship, which we share. But in the separation from God, we denied who we were and sought an identity that wasn't shared. That meant denying our mutual identity, placing us in a state of not being certain of who we are. Another way of saying that is that we became afraid of who we are.

Then we started trying to make an identity that would replace the identity we lost. We were out of touch with reality. So we started trying to assemble an identity from various illusions, and from things which are not really who or what we are. In particular we tried to identify with something isolated and alone, that you could call "only yours", rather than sharing an identity with others.

This included identifying with our bodies, believing that our body is our self. To do this our mind has to literally "attach" itself to "mix itself with" the body, trying to become "one" with it. As if to blur the lines between what is the body and what is our self. So that there is only one seeming self, not two. By trying to identify with a body, we're trying to hide our real identity and forget it, so that all that remains is the body self.

If I bind my definition of who and what I am, or what is true of me, to the body, then I am saying I AM a body. And then everything about the body I take personally as if it speaks of and defines me. Maybe I'll feel positive about my body for various reasons, due to how it looks or what it is capable of. Or maybe I'll feel negative about it based on it being ugly or defective. But both are still identifications with the body.

We can also shift to identifying with the mind, or with thoughts. When we have thoughts we can get a sense of an artificial sense of self, mixed in with the thinking. The mind can chatter away with its noise and the more it talks the more you mistake the talking for the person doing the talking. As if the sound of thought is the presence of someone. As if the thoughts are a self. And now you've identified with thinking, perhaps with intelligence or intellect, with memory or accumulation of knowledge.

You can also identify with social standing, your social background, class, race, gender, how much money you have, where your family seems to rank in terms of some social hierarchy, whether you are upper-class or lower, living in wealth or in poverty etc. You can also identify with failing to have much of a worthwhile identity in any of these areas, perhaps with a poor body and poor finances and poor living conditions, seeing yourself as identified as a helpless victim.

I think we can also identify with objects, with animals and pets, with places, with homes and cars etc. We can identify with our children, and literally feel as though what happens to them happens to us. As though they are a part of us, to such an extent that when they suffer we suffer, or we take everything that happens to them as a personal attack. This can lead to the identity of being a father or mother, someone who wants to keep that identity and not let it go, and who cannot deal with the empty nest.

These are all confused senses of who and what you are. And we're all looking for ourselves because think we lost ourselves. We sense that we are uncertain, thus afraid, of who and what we really are - or don't want to know. We don't remember our identity. It's like we have an amnesia. Whether it be an amnesia imposed by birth through crossing the barrier of dimensions and entering a body prison, or the illusion that every time you're born you start from scratch to build an identity.

"Each man makes one ego for himself, although it is subject to enormous variation because of its instability, and one for everyone he perceives, which is equally variable." "The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all."

So the big question really is, who are you? What are you? Are you the son of God as He created you? Or have you become something else? Do you want to be something else? Are you a body? Are you a relationship, or a child that you possess, or an object you own? Are you a social status or a financial position? Are you your job, or your role as a parent? Are you made of the guilt and fear and sin that you feel? Are you your thoughts and your thinking? Are you the intellect? Are you awareness? Do you have a soul?

Finding out who you really are, knowing yourself, is what Jesus says is the entire point of this course. It's about remembering and waking up to the recognition that you are still exactly the same identity that God created you to be forever. You are still Christ, you are still a soul, still part of the sonship, still perfect. Still a spiritual being. And your real identity is shared with all the other Sons of God.

So our whole process here is just sorting out, what are we experiencing as being our identity, who or what have we identified with or latched onto, what is it that we think is our self, and where have we put that? What have we tried to become "one with", other than God? What have we wrapped ourselves around in trying to portray ourselves as something God did not create?

If I think I am my body or my thoughts and have actually bound myself to them such that I seem to experience them "as me", then I am in need of correction. I am out of touch with who I really am and am believing I am something I am not. This means I lack awareness or awakening, or am unconscious. These mis-identifiations with things we are not, are blocks to awareness.

"I am not a body I am free, for I am still as God created me."

"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. "

"The ego IS therefore a confusion in identification, which never had a consistent model, and never developed consistently."

"By accepting the Atonement for YOURSELF, you are deciding AGAINST the belief that you can BE alone, thus dispelling the idea of separation and affirming your true identification with the whole Kingdom as literally PART OF YOU. This identification is as beyond doubt as it is beyond belief. Your wholeness HAS no limits, because its being is in Infinity."

"EVERYTHING you perceive as the outside world, is merely your attempt to maintain your ego identification, for everyone believes that identification is salvation."

"They are reflections both of your own proper identification WITH your brothers, and of your own awareness that YOUR identification IS maintained by extension."

"The IDEA of separation PRODUCED the body, and remains connected TO it, MAKING it sick because of its identification WITH it."

"This false identification makes you incapable of understanding what anything is for."

"When you imprison yourself, you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father. Your identification IS with the Father and with the Son. It CANNOT be with one and not the other. If you are part of one, you MUST be part of the other because they ARE One."

"In his complete identification with the Christ--the perfect Son of God, His one creation and His happiness, forever like Himself and One with Him - Jesus became what all of us must be."

"As long as your identification vacillates, (and B's is weak) you cannot accept the gift that belongs to you."

"Your identification with the Kingdom is totally beyond question except by you WHEN YOU ARE THINKING INSANELY."

"ALL attack is self attack. It cannot BE anything else. Arising from your OWN decision NOT to be what you ARE, IT IS AN ATTACK ON YOUR IDENTIFICATION. "

"Miracles praise God through men. They praise God by honoring his Creations, affirming their perfection. They heal because they deny body-identification and affirm Soul-identification. By perceiving the Spirit, they adjust the levels and see them in proper alignment. This places the Spirit at the center, where Souls can communicate directly."

"This is not my name alone, for ours is a shared identification. "

"The body is the ego's home by its own election. It is the only identification with which it feels safe, because the body's vulnerability is its own best argument that you CANNOT be of God."

"For example, if the identification is with the body, consciousness may distort superconscious impulses by denying their Source, and seeking their impact in the orgasm."

Jesus speaks in ACIM about translating hell into heaven, converting somehow the Earth into heaven's reflection. ie that the Earth is neutral/devoid of meaning and we project meaning onto it. Or to put it another way, we decided that certain states or forms or situations "must mean" something in partcular.

We associate meanings like they are outcomes or inherent definitions of what is happening. As if, when such and such happens it always means "this". As if the meaning is inherent in the form. Jesus speaks of this as form appearing to shut out all meaning to the extend that the form itself seems to describe what the forms means. And that this is a total illusion.

"See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning."

The truth is that we give everything all the meaning it has, and the world has NO inherent meaning of its own. It is indeed a meaningless world, which is why it acts like a mirror reflecting back whatever you project onto it. We actually decide that it means whatever we think it means, and then pretend it meant this without our contribution.

But when you think about it, he's talking about a process of interpretation or translation. There's plenty of interesting quotes about both those terms. We basically interpret the world. Interpretation means, a process of judging or evaluating, what WE BELIEVE something is, which in some way TRANSLATES it into some other preferred form in our minds that we find acceptable. We decide to interpret it to mean whatever we WANT it to mean, hence "there is no world apart from what you wish."

Similarly, the idea of a translation does not simply mean that the thing itself changes. The world doesn't actually "turn into" the meaning that you give it. You can take the example of translating a language.

If the world is writen in English, and you translate the world into Spanish, and you can only speak Spanish, then you can "read" or interpret a VERSION of the world, an image of it, written in the Spanish language, that seems to represent the world. But the translation you are reading isn't the ORIGINAL form. The world is essentially still in English, but your interpretation of it is transforming its meaning.

Translation is also a kind of math term, translating means to move something from one location to another. And it's part of a broader group of operations such as rotation and scaling, which are all types of "transforms". In effect the thing goes through a transformation of some kind and ends up different to how it began.

So in ACIM terms, our minds are giving the world meaning by interpreting it, putting that meaning onto it. Sometimes we give it meaning from our egos and sometimes from the Holy Spirit. When the ego gives it meaning, we believe the world is inherently hell or reflects a hell-like nature. When the Holy Spirit gives it his meaning, the world now reflects the love of God.

But we should note here that the TRANSLATED VERSION of the world is in fact once removed from the world, just as a Spanish translation is once removed from the original English. When you have interpreted the world to mean that it reflects heaven's meaning, we're saying that we now look AT the translated version, a sort of copy of the world, which is a different way of looking at it.

So when ACIM talks of earth translating into heaven etc it's not really saying that a meaningless world, having the meaning of God projected ONTO it, reflected back, now is actually a meaningful world. But that the REFLECTION is meaningful, and the TRANSLATED alternative dream which INTERPRETS the world is heaven-like. You are then seeing what you put there to see, rather than necessarily what is there. Because really the world is not there at all.

Our task then is simply to recognize that we do not want the translations that are converting the world into a hell-like language, and we instead want to "read into" the world a heaven-like language. We want the Holy Spirit's translation of the world, his purpose for it, his use of it, instead of what the ego is trying to "make of" it or use it for. And that applies to the body too.

"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth."

"The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive SOMETHING, and WITH something. This is why perception involves an exchange, or a translation, which knowledge does NOT need. The interpretive function of perception, (actually, a distorted form of creation), then permitted man to interpret the body as HIMSELF, which, although depressing, was a way out of the conflict he induced."

"Thus are the Holy Spirit's lesson plans arranged in easy steps, that, though there be some lack of ease at times, and some distress, there is no shattering of what was learned, but just a re-translation of what seems to be the evidence on its behalf."

"For as Heaven and earth become one, even the real world will vanish from your sight. The end of the world is not its destruction, but its TRANSLATION into Heaven. The RE-INTERPRETATION of the world is the transfer of ALL perception to knowledge."

""Father, Christ's vision is Your gift to me, and it has power to translate all that the body's eyes behold into the sight of a forgiven world. How glorious and gracious is this world! Yet how much more will I perceive in it than sight can give."

"For the instant of peace is eternal, BECAUSE it is wholly WITHOUT fear. It WILL come, being the lesson God gives you, through the Teacher HE has appointed, to translate time to eternity."

"Blessed is God's Teacher, Whose joy it is to teach God's holy Son his holiness. His joy is not contained in time. His teaching is for you, BECAUSE His joy is yours. Through Him, YOU stand before God's altar, where He gently translated hell into Heaven."

"Creation cannot even be conceived of in the world. It has no meaning here. Forgiveness is the closest it can come to earth. For being Heaven-borne, it has no form at all. Yet God created One Who has the power to translate into form the wholly formless."

"Forgiveness is the ONLY function meaningful in time. It is the means the Holy Spirit uses to TRANSLATE specialness from sin into salvation. "

"For to RECOGNIZE fear is not enough to escape FROM it, although the recognition IS necessary to demonstrate the NEED for escape. The Holy Spirit must still TRANSLATE it into truth. If you were LEFT with the fear, having RECOGNIZED it, you would have taken a step AWAY from reality, not TOWARD it."

"Never forget that the Holy Spirit does not depend on your words. He understands the requests of your heart and answers them. Does this mean that, while attack remains attractive to you He will respond with evil? Hardly! For God has given Him the power to translate your prayers of the heart into His language. He understands that an attack is a call for help. And He responds with help accordingly."

"Miracles are natural to God, and to the One Who speaks for Him. For His task is to TRANSLATE the miracle into the knowledge which it REPRESENTS, and which IS lost to you."

"However UNholy the reason why you made them may be, He can TRANSLATE them into holiness, by removing AS MUCH FEAR AS YOU WILL LET HIM. You can place ANY relationship under His care, and be sure that it will NOT result in pain, if you offer Him your willingness TO HAVE IT SERVE NO NEED BUT HIS." "Every attack is a call for His patience, because ONLY His patience can translate attack into blessing."

"Thus does the Holy Spirit replace fear with love, and translate error into truth. And thus will YOU learn of Him how to replace your dream of separation with the fact of unity."

"When a child is helped to translate his "ghost" into a curtain, his "monster" into a shadow and his "dragon" into a dream, he is no longer afraid, and laughs happily at his own fear."

"The Holy Spirit, as always, takes what you have made and translates it into a learning device FOR you. Again, as always, it re-interprets what the ego uses as an argument FOR separation into an argument AGAINST it."

"Forgiveness is this world's equivalent of Heaven's justice. It translates the world of sin into a simple world, where justice can be reflected from BEYOND the gate behind which total lack of limits lies."

"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT."

"Vision is the means by which the Holy Spirit translates your nightmares into happy dreams; your wild hallucinations, that show you all fearful outcomes of imagined sin, into the calm and reassuring sights with which He would replace them. These gentle sights and sounds are looked on happily, and heard with joy. They are HIS substitutes for all the terrifying sights and screaming sounds the ego's purpose brought to your horrified awareness. They step AWAY from sin, reminding you that it is NOT reality that frightens you, and that the errors which you made CAN be corrected."

"By RE-INTERPRETING the ability to ATTACK, which you DID make, into the ability to SHARE, He TRANSLATES what you have made, into what God created."

When we say something is unnatural, we think of it being creepy, disgusting, maybe bad for your health, opposed to the way that a loving person would be, not supposed to be happening, a bad idea, going against the grain and sure to produce suffering etc.

The world is unnatural. God did not create it.

We think of it is "natural", and we call it natural. We think of "nature" and all the forests and oceans and trees and animals and plants and fish in the sea, and puppies and kittens and rainbows and sunsets, we think it is all natural. Part of the "nature" of how things are in this so-called universe.

We even think the body is natural, part of nature, a given thing. We think having babies is natural. We think that dying is natural. We think that growth and evolution are natural. We think it is natural to be able to see and sense things with the body. We think it is natural that we are here and that we should enjoy it as much as possible then die. All of this is UN-NATURAL.

We even think that this universe is run by natural laws. We think there are laws of physics, chemistry, biology, which govern the functioning of all things we see. Laws about how two being have relationships. Laws about having to eat food and consume liquids from the external world in order to survive. We think surviving is natural. We think wanting to avoid death is natural, and yet believe death is natural. All of the ego's laws are unnatural. They are laws of chaos.

We may even think that this world is SO natural that God created it, with its natural beauty and its lovely sunsets and beautiful animals and wonderful ocean beaches. But are these things natural, an extension of the "true nature" of being, true nature of Creation or a loving creator? No.

Nothing in this world is natural. Nothing to do with our bodies is natural. Nothing in this entire physical universe is natural. This is an UNNATURAL PLACE TO BE. This world is not your home!

You would only come to recognize this IF you were to become aware of a DIFFERENT way of existing which you knew was incredibly natural, and that by contrast to it, you could recognize that the physical world is so incredibly unnatural by comparison.

Is it natural that light can be blocked by form and then produces shadows of darkness? Does that seem natural? What if it is natural that light is everywhere and darkness (matter) cannot block it at all?

Is it natural that things are born and multiply and change and evolve and grow and wither and die? How about if cell division is separation and fragmentation? How about if an increasing population is a sign of increasing fragmentation? How about if growth and change are symptomatic of trying to CHANGE GOD, and to cover up permanence? What if change and time are unnatural?

What if you experienced permanence and knew it to be changeless and constant and consistent and something you can truly TRUST and RELY ON, and then could contrast the world against that to recognize that the world is utterly UNRELIABLE, cannot be trusted, and that its changes are a pathetic substitute for life?

Change itself is an expression of the idea that we left God. Something changed. What we were experiencing before, stopped being our experience and we shifted to something else. Reality seems to adjust, change, adapt, become forever altered, incapable of returning to how it was previously. Hence time and space, which are UNNATURAL. The body itself is an idea of SIN made flesh and projected outwards. The entire physical universe is the idea of SIN projected outwards. That's hardly natural, more like a cancerous growth.

Change is not natural. Change is an illusion of impossibility - that you are succeeding in changing yourself into something you are not, and changing God's will against His will. Is this world God's will? Not in the slightest. A loving God could not create a world like this and subject his Children to it and be loving.

Is it natural for bodies to sense environments and to have the environment tell the body what exists? This is not natural. What exists is WITHIN YOU ALREADY. To have to "sense" what is out there is a poor substitute, an attempt to suggest that you have NO INNER VISION and therefore need to ask SOMETHING ELSE to tell you what exists. How unnatural is that? The bodies eyes are made to make you blind, not to make you see what exists. The world that the body looks upon is NOT THERE.

How can it be in God's nature, for any of the things that we witness in this world to be correlated with complete unconditional love and perfect PERMANENT creation? All things that perish and wither and die, including bodies, cannot be God's creation. God did not create trees and animals and people and planets. God can only create more of what he ALREADY IS, which is pure love. Nothing else. No exceptions. Anything else showing up is UNNATURAL. Something has gone wrong.

Miracles are supposed to be happening ALL THE TIME. When miracles are not happening all the time, something has gone wrong. This is because miracles express the timeless perfection and TRUTH of Love, the NATURE of God. The NATURE of real existence. It is natural to be miraculous. It is natural to be capable of ANYTHING. There is NOTHING your holiness cannot do.

When you are failing to be able to do hardly anything, but move a little body around and only do things which the body says you can do, having no direct power of the mind over matter, and no ability to affect anything external from the body, SOMETHING HAS GONE WRONG. The body was made to block vision, to block life, to block God. It is not natural to be in or showing up as a body. It goes against your God-given nature.

Miracles express the idea that what is of God is SUPERNATURAL. Or to put it more accurately, everything of God is truly NATURAL, and everything else is UNNATURAL. The world, bodies, life/death, growth/change, planets and stars, events in time, are all unnatural. This is not creation. God's creation has power over all of these unnatural things. Heaven has power over all these unnatural things. And all of these unnatural things are EASILY CHANGED if so desired, by the power of the mind.

Miracles always PROVE that the mind is more powerful than the body/form/illusion because they are capable of changing those things at will, or making or unmaking them at will, and those things can do NOTHING to prevent it. All miracles demonstrate that the mind is more powerful than the body. As demonstrations, they demonstrate what us "nature-believers" would call SUPER-NATURAL. Beyond the nature of THIS world, beyond what we think is NATURAL, because what we think is natural is NOT NATURAL.

The ego's laws are not natural. Death is not natural. Aging is not natural. Sickness is not natural. Needing to DEPEND ON something in the world to exist and survive is NOT NATURAL. We are supposed to be FULLY SUSTAINED BY THE LOVE OF GOD AT ALL TIMES, needing NOTHING ELSE. That's what is natural. Powered by love! We have no other real needs. All other needs are UNNATURAL NEEDS that we made up to replace nature, not to be nature.

When miracles demonstrate that the ego's "nature" is BULLSHIT, perhaps by instantly reversing blindness, or curing cancer, or rematerializing a missing limb, or raising someone's body from death, or curing a mental illness, or parting the ocean, or walking on water, or whatever... it is only POSSIBLE because the ego's world is UNNATURAL. What is NATURAL is to be completely free of the ego's laws, able to totally overthrow them, to IGNORE them, to demonstrate that NONE OF THEM APPLY, and therefore prove that THIS WORLD'S "NATURE" IS NOT THE WAY THINGS ARE. The world's nature is fake nature.

It is natural to be with God. It is natural to be happy all the time. It is natural to be miraculous all the time. It is is natural to receive absolutely all needs and supplies directly from God, even if that means materializing items out of thin air on demand. It is natural to be directed by God's will where to go and what to do and what to say and how to heal.

It is natural to be in a permanent state of HEALTH and HEALING. It is natural to be a healer at all times. It is natural to be awake and free of all fear, sin, guilt, suffering, sickness and death. It is natural to be IMMORTAL. It is natural to have total power over all illusions, all forms, bodies, worldly "laws" and everything else which is ego bullshit lies. That's what's natural.

God's nature is the only true nature. All other natures are false. You want the nature of the world and its naturalness? The world holds NOTHING that you want. You really want God. That's the nature you should be recognizing as real.