It's difficult to put this into words, but here goes.

To understand letting go, you have to first understand what it means to "hold on". What is it you are doing with your mind?

Before the separation, you knew you were love. After the separation, you believed you were not love, and that your self/love was separate from you. You perceived this as outside of you, disassociated and projected onto others.

You believed other people had stolen your love/self and locked it up inside themselves. You simultaneously valued what seemed to be in them, but wanted to steal it back. You see this as "specialness" which you value highly and is what gives value or reality to illusions - you believe in them. This is all described is "the laws of chaos."

The ego mind then "makes illusions real" and assigns special value to external, separate things. This is idol worship, and part of "seek and do not find." An emphasis on external salvation, believing the body, objects and the world are important, valuing special relationships and so on.

If you place "reality" and "value" outside yourself, you will put something on a pedestal and worship it. For example if you associate a person with their body, you will think their body is part of what's valuable about the person. If you value a car and have a psychological "need" for it, you become attached to and dependent on it as your savior. You see it as having power to do something to or for you, which makes it capable of saving you, makes it able to affect you, and makes you *dependent* on it.

Perceiving an external "cause" of you puts you at the "effect" of that cause. This happens in level confusion and reversal of cause-effect. This external cause now represents your "creator". If it is lost, the cause of you is lost and your savior is lost, and that's symbolic of the idea that God has died.

Your mind in a state of believing in special value, or the reality of external things and people, shifts some of its own sense of identity onto those things. You displace your "self" externally and see it as value/meaning within people and objects. If there were to be a perceived "loss" of those objects or people, you experience it as the loss of your own self.

Now, let's say that you mis-identified that you are a body, and thus saw other people as bodies, and valued them as body-people, and then one of these bodies dies. Because you made the body seem real/valuable, you cannot help but perceive there has been a "real loss" or loss of value. In what you think is reality. This will be experienced as "loss". And this kicks in all kinds of layers of denial, which show up as "stages of grief."

At first, you may not even be able to accept that a loss has happened. It seems pretend, impossible, unreal. You may be what they describe as in shock, but really it's that your mind is still psychologically attached to this external value and even though the valued thing is gone, it still believes in it strongly being there. There is a mismatch between expectation and reality. Really strong belief in specialness can produce very strong denial that a loss has even occurred, and denial that the person died.

If a person can `process` the fact that the person died, they might start to shift perception towards at least acknowledging that "it happened". However, this will at first be a cross between acceptance and denial. The mind still does not WANT to let go of the specialness. It's like the mind forms a "bridge" that connects its psyche to something external like a cord of attachment, which is like "holding on" - like you would with a hand, but using a psychic hand. The mind latches onto the external special thing and doesn't want to let go of it. You can actually FEEL this sense of "attachment" and external connectedness if you are observant.

Acknowledging that a death "happened" is a step in the right direction because it at least admits that, to some degree, the person/value doesn't seem to be there any more. But this also is met with another layer of denial. The denial says, "I do not want to let go". This is partly because the mind in its "belief in" things believes it gives reality TO things, and makes them be there, and gives them value, and so if it will just keep believing in those things, it will "keep them alive". There will be active resistance to actually letting go, and reducing your belief in their specialness means you are trying to destroy them or contribute to the perception that they are lost. To let go, to the ego, seems murderous, which induces guilt.

The mind in this state is not fully conscious because, by projecting specialness outward, it made itself unconscious. To "let go" would have to mean stepping backwards in the mind and getting "behind" the attachment and projection and becoming more aware. This seems insurmountable to a mind that is sleeping, that it needs to somehow tap into a greater awareness that underlies where it's "at". The only way to do that is to actually let go of projection of specialness. But the mind doesn't want to do that yet.

It takes a lot of willingness to "admit the truth" that you do not want to let go. This is because you think, if you let go, the thing will stop existing. If you let go, it will be your responsibility that the thing is lost. If you let go, you will have to admit that there HAS been a loss and that the person isn't there any more. You won't be able to delude yourself that you are maintaining their existence with your belief in them. Admitting that you do not WANT to let go is good because it at least lets in some truth. This is one step away from looking deeper at WHY you don't want to let go.

Not wanting to let go is really a layer of denial which covers up the "fact" that the thing HAS GONE. That there HAS been loss. I struggled with this step a lot in relation to grieving for the loss of someone because I didn't want to admit that I didn't WANT to let go of them. I wanted them to NOT be gone, because I wanted to keep what I valued as special. My letting go would somehow mean they are "even more lost". To admit it removes denial. Once I admitted I wanted to keep them, I was able to move past that to admitting what's underneath - an actual sense of loss - that something HAS been lost and isn't coming back. The ego doesn't like this.

Now, this sense of something being "really lost" is still actually another form of denial, and a layer of delusion, because in truth nothing real can be lost. Real value is not lost. Nothing real can be threatened or die. So if the body dies, it's only a body that is "lost", not the person's immortal spirit. Confusing the two things makes you think there has been a loss of something important. Valuing the body makes you believe ITS loss is important. It's nothing. So in truth, although you have to process the sense of loss, underneath the loss there is a deeper truth: you cannot lose what never existed.

And so at some point you have to realize, the thing you think you couldn't let go of, wasn't even REALLY there to begin with. You were actually letting go of NOTHING, and you stood to GAIN EVERYTHING by letting it go. You thought you'd lost real value, but in the BELIEF in its loss was an illusion of it being lost. Real value isn't special value. And so the loss of the specialness was not actually loss of anything REAL. So there hasn't REALLY been a loss. Getting to that point is what allows you to enter into the "acceptance" state and truly the LETTING GO, which is a state of allowing, surrendering, accepting the truth, and finally "detaching" your mind from its dependence on the illusory external thing. Nothing real can be threatened.

So this letting go thing, it's a process typically, and you go through stages and gradually come to accept that the thing you thought was lost is not really something worth losing. It was not even really valuable to begin with. That's where you become set free from grief and loss and have no more need to grieve. An unwillingness to let go is only based on the belief that you're letting go of something you need, letting go of something special, or letting go of the part of your self/love/salvation that you see as separate from you. All experiences of loss are really experiences reflecting your belief that you have lost yourself and God, which you cannot really do.

You won't let go of something while you think it has special value, or while you think it's real or important. And if it should happen that your ego mind is still valuing it WHILE it is being denied to you - such as when someone dies - your mind WILL experience loss and grief. This is because the mind is still trying to depend on that thing as its salvation and truth, something it values as real, and its absence is experienced as "loss". This loss will induce grieving. Grieving and loss are not NATURAL. You do not need them. But they are generated by a sick mind that believes love is outside of itself and can be threatened.

So it's really all about letting go of psychological attachment, which means your "belief in" the special value of things which don't really exist. Ultimately you are letting go of something that never even existed. You're letting go of holding onto an illusion, which never really had any value other than what you gave it. And in that relinquishing, you are shifting to what is really valuable and accessible - inner love. The re-integration of your self. Letting go of false beliefs by learning to recognize that they ARE false, recognizing them as illusions, and thus giving them no value or credit. Illusions recognized must disappear.

Quite often Jesus says to me, "let them". He is telling me to let go - to allow, to let other people be free, and to stop controlling. That means accepting that they are free to do whatever they want, and it doesn't matter because it's an illusion. They can't really hurt their real self. He has also been telling me "let go" through various waves of grief recently and I just couldn't see to gain the awareness to let go. Not until I could admit that I didn't want to, which opened up the door to a sense of loss, which eventually cleared away to reveal that nothing real had been lost, and thus acceptance and peace returned. Letting go, especially at an emotional level, is hard. It takes willingness, acceptance, admittance, letting go of fake values, removing dependencies, detaching and setting yourself free.

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

"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and its content is not true."

First let's be clear that all true properties belong to God. God's reality entails what is real, permanent, certain, true, exists, is happening, is powerful, has will, causes, with real effects (creation), is eternal and immortal.

The separation from God was an attempt to conceive of an opposite to God's reality. It ultimately produced what appears to be an entire world. In light of the fact that God's reality is real, this second world we made as its OPPOSITE is unreal. It inherently has the properties of the opposite of God's properties.

The world we made is unreal, temporary, uncertain, false, it doesn't exist, nothing in it really happens, it is powerless, has no will of its own, causes nothing, has no real effect, is not eternal, and everything in it is mortal. It is an illusion of a world because it is not a reality of a world.

"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 substanceless, and all events are nowhere."

"The world you see does not exist BECAUSE the place where you perceive it is not real."

"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."

So now we have these two seeming worlds. One is completely real, one is completely unreal. One holds all the truth, one is utterly false. One is permanent and powerful, the other is temporary and powerless.

The unreal world, which is the world of bodies, is a mistake. It presents ideas that are not possible. It is not possible for example for anything real to die or be threatened, but in the unreal world it seems things can die and be threatened. In reality everything is immortal, yet in the unreal world everything has mortality. In reality everything is unlimited, and in unreality everything is limited.

The unreal world is actually an idea of what is not possible, founded on a "mad idea". God's reality holds all possibility. The opposite of possibility is impossibility. The unreal world seems to show things happening which are not possible in God. In God nothing can die, so leaves falling from trees and flowers dying and bodies dying is not really possible.

The unreal world presents pictures of impossibilities all the time. Everything in it is impossible because the world itself is the idea of impossibility. The world "is not" - which is why ultimately "there is no world."

"It is the world you see that is impossible."

Now. In ADDITION to the reality of God, and the unreal world, there is also a matter of BELIEF, resulting in an act of projection UPON these worlds. There is something that happens in the mind in terms of belief. Mind can choose to be fully aware and accepting of the sane fact that ONLY God's truth is true - that only heaven's reality is real. OR, it can go into a state of denial.

When the mind is in denial, it flips everything around. It takes ALL the properties of God's reality, and assigns it to the unreal world. It then takes all the properties of the unreal world and assigns is to God's reality. This produces total confusion and insanity. It is insane because you've lost track of what is really real and what isn't, and can no longer distinguish between them, making you lost and confused - ie mistaken.

"You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING."

In a state where the attributes of God are assigned to its opposite, you are confused and insane. This puts you into what we call "false perception". In false perception, everything about God is assigned to the unreal world, and vice versa. The ramification of that, is that a simple MISTAKEN world, an IMPOSSIBLE world, begins to take on properties of actual reality. This interprets mistakes as SIN, because sin mean "a real error that can't be undone because it's real."

So now, the unreal world is considered to be real, have permanent qualities, to be eternal, to depict the truth, to house all possibilities, to have a will of its own, to be meaningful, to be heaven, to be life, to be really existing and really happening. In this mode, you have "made illusions real", ie have "made the world real", because you have GIVEN it reality. You are assigned reality's properties to it. You BELIEVE it's real.

There is also a flipside to this. All the properties of UNreality are now assigned to God's reality. God is now considered to be false, non-existence, lacking will power, not happening, being totally unreal, having no life, being mortal and dead, being impossible, being insane, and making no sense. God is considered to be nothing, is rejected as untrue, and relegated to oblivion.

When mind is in this state, this is where the world is experienced like a nightmare. Given that an unreal world is very UNNATURAL and disturbing, if it is REAL then you'll experience it as a horror show. This is what is happening when you see problems arise and you feel like you cannot do anything to change them. The reason they seem unchangeable, is because you've assigned properties of permanence, existence, happening and reality to them. This in a sense "locks them in". ONLY illusions can be forgiven or undone or changed, and not whatever is regarded as real.

If it is true that this world is REAL, then everything in it is permanent, fixed, unchangeable, irreversible, absolute, total, certain, and eternal. Because these were all attributes of God's reality before the confusion. Given that you believe this about the world, you CANNOT bring yourself to conceive of how you can possibly do anything about anything. Everything will seem like some horrible fate, some pointless hopeless disaster, some kind of cruel unchangeable unhealable trauma, that just happens by its own will leaving you a helpless victim.

In this state of false perception you will also completely forget about God's reality. It will seem like it does not exist. Mind will shut down. Any sense of being above the battlefield, stepping back, detaching, being able to wield supernatural miracles, anything to do with healing or correcting problems genuinely will go out the window. Your mind will fixate on THIS world, the unreal world, as if it is THE ONLY REALITY, and all that exists is happening before your body's eyes. Everything it sees is now real to you and you are powerless over it. If an unnatural, "evil", impossible world of conflict and disaster is REAL, you MUST suffer without escape, and death is now the wages of sin. "Only the body makes the world seem real."

This is the state that produces all despair and suffering, all sense of the "irreversibility of sin", all notions that what happens cannot be undone, that sickness is progressive, that death is inevitable, that your fate is set in stone and you have absolutely no say in what happens. This is the state of being a victim, with the world doing everything in its power to simply be horrifying and traumatic, throwing up unsolvable problems all over the place every single day.

So the world in the state of false perception is a COMBINATION of .... 1) an unreal world of mistakes and impossibilities, and 2) the properties of reality being confused with and assigned to it. You MAKE the world seem real by GIVING it properties of reality, and this converts all illusions of sin into what seems like REAL sin.

Once illusory events, which really cannot be happening, are UNITED or "made one with" properties of reality, everything that happens will appears to be a sin. The whole hierarchy of illusions will demand specific responses, reactions and effects. You'll feel compelled to just go along for the ride and have every single reaction that the world says you should be having. And anything anyone does that appears in any way wrong will be regarded as a REAL SIN. An unforgiveable act, and you will NOT be able to forgive it because you believe it is REAL, and therefore permanent.

"The purpose of Atonement is to dispel illusions, NOT to establish them as real, and THEN forgive them."

"Good cannot BE returned for evil, for forgiveness does not first ESTABLISH sin, and THEN forgive it"

What the world IS, in terms of it being an UNREAL world, an ILLUSION of a world in which nothing is true, is distinct from your interpretation of that world - ie what it means to you. If you GIVE the world reality, then you BIND reality WITH illusions and the result is a nightmare of inescapable sin and irreversible suffering. If the world is REAL, nothing in it can be undone, because reality is permanent and can never end.

But your way out of this hell of suffering is simply then to change your mind. This is NOTHING more than a change in the PREMISE of the world. It's a shift from "the world is real" to "the world is not real." Every single attribute of reality and God that you have mistakenly given to the world, you have to TAKE BACK from it.

You have to dis-identify everything God created from the world, and RE-IDENTIFY it with spirit. This is the same as shifting from body-identification to spirit-identification. What is TRUE AND REAL about you has to be re-identified with what God created, requiring your IDENTITY to transition from a limited body to an unlimited soul.

"If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God. YOU CAN REMEMBER THIS FOR ALL THE SONSHIP."

You have ASSIGNED power to the unreal world. That's why it seems to have power over you. You can and must TAKE BACK that power, and assign it back to God/spirit/soul where it belongs. This is the only real change of mind. It's a change of belief. It's a restoration of your acceptance of, and recognition of, WHAT REALLY IS TRUE. Or of what really is REAL.

"This is a very simple course. Perhaps you do not feel that a course which, in the end, teaches nothing more than that only reality is true is necessary. BUT DO YOU BELIEVE IT?"

"Only the truth is true, and nothing else is true."

Our task in "applying forgiveness" then is nothing more or less than properly assigning the properties of reality to GOD's reality, and the properties of unreality to the unreal world. To undo the confusion between the two. To become very clear only God's stuff is real, and all the illusory stuff is not. That only God's world is TRUE, and the world you made out of illusions IS FALSE.

"The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

The unreality of this world has to be recognized. This is what "true perception" means. It is accurate perception, or the ability to recognize accurately WITHOUT confusion, what the world "actually is". Or in a sense, to see "the truth of" or "the reality of" this world. When you see the reality of an UNREAL world, ie the truth that IT IS unreal, you are seeing it for what it "actually is". Yet an unreal world isn't "actually" anything, because IT IS unreal. Recognizing this recognizes IT IS NOTHING AT ALL.

To then transition from being heavily absorbed, confused, lost, and threatened by, a mistakenly mis-assigned property ... where you've given the world or something in it - some body or event or thing - properties of God, you need to go through some kind of purification or process to revert your mind back to the truth. To return to sanity. We call this sort of "applying the principle of forgiveness", or trying to "atone".

"To atone is to undo." What we are undoing is our CONFUSION about what the world is and is not, and what God is and is not. BOTH the truth AND what is false have to be fully and clearly distinguished and recognized, and NOT confused with each other.

"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." By correctly identifying all properties of God WITH God, and taking them AWAY from the world - or undoing their mis-association with the world, your mind returns to sanity.

"Sin is insanity", meaning that when you combine the insanity of confusion about what is real, WITH an unreal world, you turn a mistaken world into a sinful world. You make sin seem real when you are insane, but when you return to sanity sin converts back to a mistake - or what Jesus calls an error. The world is simply an error, not a truth.

To forgive then, we simply need to undo, reverse, cancel out, heal, purify, and correct, the mistaken beliefs that we have about what the world's nature is. We need to remind ourselves, maybe we need to talk ourselves into it, maybe we need help and healing from the Holy Spirit or Jesus, maybe we need affirmations or reminders or cue cards or whatever it is. We need to LIFT AWAY from the world all the properties of reality which we gave away TO it, and give them back to God. The ACIM workbook is designed to facilitate this correction, e.g.:

"God did not create that war, and so it is not real."

"God did not create that airplane crash, and so it is not real."

"God did not create that disaster (specify) so it is not real."

"God did not create that illness (specify with name of person) and so it is not real."

This could simply be in the form of you telling yourself, "this world is not real, it is just a dream." "This is an illusion of a world, not a reality." "Nothing is really happening here." "No-one has sinned because it did not take place in reality." "Nothing is held against anyone because it's a dream and is not true." "People are not really bodies." "My identity is not a body." "The world is urneal." "Only God is real." "Only heaven's reality is my reality." etc. Whatever form it takes.

All that needs to happen is the proper re-categorization of everything in the world. To put the world itself into the "unreal, non-existing, not-happening, not permanent, entirely undoable and nothing" bucket. And at the same time, putting heaven back into the "really does exist and has reality and is the only reality" bucket.

"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."

To forgive then is simply to RECOGNIZE what is true and what isn't. To get the mind back into a state where it has been deprogrammed of the LIES that appears as real sins. Nothing in the world is real. Nothing in the world is causing anything. Nothing in the world is happening. Nothing in the world is permanent. Nothing in the world is changeless. Nothing in the world is true. "Nothing the world believes is true."

"There is no sin" because "real sin" requires the combination of an unreal illusion, incorrectly mixed with "a sense of reality." When you withdraw the sense of "it is real" from the "sinful act", it is no longer a REAL sin. It is only a mistake, an error, a forgiveable nothingness which hasn't even really occurred.

"Forgiveness recognizes what what you think your brother did has not OCCURRED."

This LITERALLY means that anything you think ever happened in this world, HAS NOT OCCURRED. It has not occurred FOR REAL, because it is taking place in an UNREALITY, in a dream, which is NOT real, and nothing real happens in a dream. Dreams by definition are fantasies and hallucinations. Everything in them is false. No events in the history of planet Earth have ever occurred. Accepting this is to accept atonement, in which only the truth of God is true, and the world is false.

"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."

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

"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No-one is AFRAID of them, when he perceives HE MADE THEM UP. The fear was held in place BECAUSE he did not see that he was AUTHOR of the dream, and not a figure IN the dream. He gives HIMSELF the consequences that he dreams he gave his brother. And it is but this the dream has put together and has offered him, to show him that his wishes have been done. Thus does he fear his OWN attack, but sees it at another's hands. As victim, he is suffering from its effects, but NOT their cause. He authored NOT his own attack, and he is innocent of what he caused."

To be a healer of another person's mind, you have to begin by forming a connection to that person. Somehow your mind has to be in a state where it has ACCESS to the other mind.

The only way to gain access to a brother is through joining in love. Only love can be truly shared, and love is communication. Love opens you up and plugs you in, facilitating oneness, union, connection and joining.

This means that at the very least, you cannot effectively heal someone if you have not connected with them through love. The gap of separation between you has to be surpassed first.

This leads to the question of whether you are being truly healing and helpful, or whether you are being harmful and attacking. If you are lacking in love in some way, there is an attempt to separate off your mind from another. If there is any belief in harm or hurting or scapegoating or making sins real, it's going to pull you away from their mind and erect walls that come between you.

This obviously tells you that it's not truly possible to even get access to the mind of another while you're in a state of attack. If you are not healing, you are hurting. "What is not love is murder."

In order to, on your part, cease contributing to suffering in the other person, you yourself have to be free from attack. When you are not in "attack mode", you are in healing mode. Attack mode separates you off, healing mode joins you together with your brother.

Love is a bridge, fusing minds together as one. In order to access the bridge you have to be sufficiently loving. A transmission of anything less than love places the bridge out of reach. But fully loving the other person is a very intimate, visible, exposed and embracing state.

So in one way or another, healing requires that you join with the other person in a fusion of oneness and love. Generally speaking this means you have to be in a loving state, generate love, or transmit and receive love.

The state of joined minds must transcend space and time. In fact you are able to do this at a distance ie remotely, for someone you are not even physically close to, because space doesn't enter into it. Your mind is able to communicate with another mind regardless of distance.

Which leads to realizing that the state of "sharing" places you more or less "in the mind" of the other person. You can visualize this in terms of you being physically one with the other person's body. You can visualize it as resonating with their frequency/energy. You can do it through feeling and empathy. You can also tune in by feeling that where you are, you are IN the other person or their body, as if you are where their body is, and your own body is overlapping theirs.

So there are two ingredients here. 1. Loving enough to activate a shared communication channel or bridge across which love can be shared. And 2. Transcending space and being one with the other person beyond bodies. In the sharing of space, you overlap with your brother and are in him.

This forming of a loving connection and sharing a space, now places you in a position to SHARE what you have to give. You can now offer and give and radiate and bestow love to this person in a blessing ("Miracles are a universal blessing from God"), feeling it within yourself, which is shared in intimacy with the person due to your overlapping oneness. What is yours is theirs and vice versa. What is happening in you is happening in them.

This sharing state of union now allows your mind to light up the other mind. To restore sanity to it. To supply a lack of love, life and energy to it. With your minds joined, in a oneness kind of state, you kind of now become "co-thinkers". A mutual team. Two minds acting as one. Kind of like siamese twins where the two minds have to cooperate to get anything done.

That now means that it requires for BOTH of you to agree to believe and express the same thing, in order for it to be possible. If one of the two does not agree, they are in conflict and the action is prevented. This means then that if the other person believes they are sick, and you do not, they are prevented from being able to believe in, strengthen and express that belief.

They are thus trying to assert various lies about themselves which are destructive. Their mind is weaker. You are asserting truth about them which is constructive. Your mind is stronger. Your mind can thus influence their mind and "override" their weaker belief. Or to put it another way, you can enlighten them by shining your light into their mind so that that mind is theirs and is strengthened in them, because you share the same light.

"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH. The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, ****the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs.****"

The simple task therefore is to "supply a lack of light" ("miracles supply a lack" "given by those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less".) To supply the lack of light, you must shine brighter than the other person in terms of the degree of love.

To SUPPLY it at all, to get that light INTO their mind, your light has to not only be bright enough, but your mind has to be loving enough, so that your mind can actually gain ACCESS to the other mind through a connection of sharing.

To be able to "amplify" the light in another mind, like kindling a fire and enhancing the flame, you have to at first see the light in the other person. You have to recognize that they ARE light by knowing the truth about them. Which means looking to their christ self and beyond their body and beyond their sickness. You overlook those things through forgiveness, which is facilitated by a loving attitude, and look to their innocence and holiness. And upon finding the light in them, you acknowledge it is there.

"The miracle-worker ****begins by PERCEIVING light****, and translates HIS perception into sureness by ****continually extending it****, and ****ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT****." - this is talking about a SUSTAINED TRASMISSION OF LIGHT to another person and acknowledging/accepting that it HAS been received.

"****Its EFFECTS**** (increase in light, healing etc) assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient."

In effect, your true perception, loving perception, allows you to forgive your brother and see the truth in him. See the light of christ or soul in him. And as you focus on constructively amplifying his truth, appreciating his light, his light is strengthened. The Holy Spirit in him is that light also.

"The idea of the Holy Spirit shares the property of other ideas because it follows the laws of the universe of which it is a part. It is strengthened ***by being given*** away. It increases in you ***as you give it to your brother***. Your brother does not have to be aware of the Holy Spirit in himself or in you for ***this miracle*** to occur."

Here Jesus is literally saying that if you GIVE THE HOLY SPIRIT (light) to your brother, it is PERFORMING A MIRACLE! Increasing your awareness of the Holy Spirit IN your brother, even if your brother has no idea that He is there, heals his mind.

This light that you shine, comes from God. God put the light in you, and you extend and express it. Your natural function is to "pass on" this light to others, to shine into them, to illuminate them, which shines away their darkness. The brighter you shine with love, the more sharing and connected you are, the more powerfully you will be able to "enlighten" them.

"Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."

This is clearly a simple matter of SHINING brightly at people. The higher the level of sharing in oneness, the higher the level of love and light and miraculousness and healing. High love plugs you into their mind and shares it with them, transcending the gap of spacetime and the bodies and the world. You dwell with them in union and joining and sharing of oneness. And as you dwell there brightly, you light up their soul for them to see.

"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad.""Miracles unite you with your brother."

"Miracles make minds one in God."

In this world it's becoming increasingly popular to regard "all bodies" as equal. This is a good step towards the recognition of true equality, but right now it's still heavily focused on making bodies real and then trying to equalize them and be more accepting of them. To accept a body as real is to make sin real.

The whole purpose of the body, to the ego, is to create an image of difference. Difference is an attack on the equality of God's children. Bodies show images of how we are not the same, live by different rules, have different values, and are imprisoned by forms.

So you get for example social movements to treat men and women equally. And you get the feminists and whatever the male counterpart of that is. And then you get the people with certain sexual orientations and gender identities having their say. And then it all gradually moves toward attempting to KEEP all of these different bodies, but somehow regard them as equal to each other.

The ideal is to have no racism, no sexism, no gender discrimination, no abuse of people who are different. But the ego wants to keep the differences and find a way to accept the differences. That is insanity and it is impossible, but it does show that on a deeper level, mentally, we're trying to move towards the truth.

What should and will eventually happen, is that we all *recognize* each other as immortal spirit, as beings of light, as completely identical children of God, who have no differences, are equal in *every* possible way, and this will completely ERASE the body which is a separation device. The body only shows up when minds believe in separation and differences.

So the goal shouldn't really be to find ways to "accept other bodies as they are", although that's a good step in the right direction. At least if we try to accept bodies as neutral or indifferent or that form doesn't matter, we're starting to foster the right kind of thinking towards a sane mind.

But at some point we have to admit, bodies come between people, bodies are illusions, you are not a body you are free, and the body is not the person at all. Bodies are nothing, bodies are not important, and if we're TRULY interested in equality then it has to go completely beyond bodies to the recognition of perfect identical christhood in each of us. And that means overlooking the body in a state of forgiveness.

Until then I guess we'll continue to see the stepping stones, the social movements and the mens/womens rights and the appreciation of the minorities and all the rest of it. It's just that, ultimately, that's limited and can only go so far before you realize bodies themselves are the problem.

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

Miracles assert only life. That there is nothing wrong. There is only innocence and wholeness.

"The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness."

Basically, the only way there can be a healing of any real kind, is if something which is NOT sick, is applied to that which is.

That which is not sick, is a mind which does not give any power or credit or reality to sickness. A mind that does not believe sickness is even real, or that a person can have something truly wrong with them.

Only an outlook rooted in holiness, looking out from that holiness, to see the holiness of others, can bestow holiness upon others. This supplies to them the holiness they were lacking.

"Miracles supply a lack."

"There are given by those who temporarily have more, to those who temporarily have less."

You have more life, love, wholeness to give, when you yourself are these things. Which means you have to purify yourself enough to be free from ego and separation and sickness/death beliefs. Once you are purified enough, you become miraculous.

"It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive."

"I can only give the miracles I have received."

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

"Those who are healed become instruments of healing."

So if you want to be a miracle worker, a healer, you have to get yourself healed, and then you will have healing to give.

Healing occurs when one who has more wholeness, life, innocence, bestows that upon another mind and shares it with them, raising them up. All healing is resurrection. It is life-giving.

You cannot give life if you believe in death. You cannot give life if you believe sickness is real, or that the forms physical sickness takes is true, or that it's even possible for something to be wrong with a person.

The idea that something is wrong with someone, even in terms of it being a sickness they didn't seem to ask for, is no different than saying they are guilty of something. That they are less than perfect.

You must assert perfection and equality and light and love if you want to be truly helpful in undoing sickness and death.

This is why you are to become the light of the world. And everyone who becomes the light becomes a healer.

"To heal, or to make joyous, is therefore the same as to integrate and MAKE ONE."

"ACCEPT the miracle of healing, and it WILL go forth, because of what it IS. It is its NATURE to extend itself the instant it is born. And it is born the instant it is offered and RECEIVED. No-one can ask ANOTHER to be healed. But he can let HIMSELF be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received. Who can bestow upon another what he does not HAVE? And who can SHARE what he denies HIMSELF?"

"The ONLY thing that is required for a healing is a lack of fear."

"Healing is a sign that HE WANTS TO MAKE WHOLE."

"Healing must occur in exact proportion in which the valuelessness of sickness is recognized."

"Healing is holy. Nothing in the world is holier than helping one who asks for help."

"The new emphasis will now be on healing. The miracle is the means, the Atonement the principle, and the healing is the result."

"By accepting healing he can give it."

"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt? Sins are beyond forgiveness just BECAUSE they would entail effects which CANNOT be undone and overlooked entirely. In their UNDOING lies the proof that they were merely errors. LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother AND yourself. A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."

"The Disciples were officially and specifically told to heal others, as Physicians of the Lord. They were also told to heal themselves, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me."

"The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist."

The body is nothing. It's not something. It's not this or that or these states or conditions. It's not really well or sick. It's not alive or dead. It's actually nothing at all. It doesn't have a meaning or its own purpose. It doesn't have mind or will or causality or power. It doesn't really do anything. It's literally not really there.

When we believe that the body IS something, that it has reality, or has a mind or will, or causes things, or is doing something on its own, or has its own power, this is actually a distortion of the body. It's an attempt to force the body to comply with made up delusional rules and to be something it cannot be. This actually attacks the body and makes it sick. The mind is not accepting that the body is nothing, so instead it's really DENYING what the body is (ie nothing), which is a rejection of it, thus an attack.

To get the body to be healthy, the body has to be recognized as absolutely nothing. This is really forgiveness. The recognition of what is true. If the body is given any credit it does not have, in an attempt to defend it or keep it alive or make it be something, this actually destroys it. When its nothingness is recognized this actually takes all attack away and the body is restored to health. Trying to make the body out to be a real body, or a something body, or a working body, or a living body etc, actually brings about death.

The body is not supposed to be loved, OR hated. You're not supposed to have any real relation to it at all, because it's not there. It's not supposed to be given ANY meaning, either positive or negative. You don't hear this much in ACIM circles or spiritual disciplines. The idea that the body is actually nothing, neutral in a sense, and not biased positively OR negatively.

Jesus refers to the body in the course as not being able to BE sick. That's because it is NOTHING. It isn't a something, so it can't have properties of any kind. It's like an empty image of a body. It's the lack of the presence of spirit, shall we say.

It's the absence of God like a shadow on a wall. Its nothingness means it of itself cannot really be sick or healthy. But the mind that believes the body is real MAKES the body appear to be in sickened forms. Believing in bodies attacks them because it's an attempt to make them be something they're not.

We might think that spirituality is about only being positive, or only denying the negative. But Jesus isn't saying the world or body are fundamentally negative. He's saying they are NOTHINGNESS, pretending to be something. And that's very different from being negative. Their nothingness has to be recognized which means ALL attributes, positive OR negative, have to be taken away. That's why the body cannot be really endowed with attributes of Christ OR the ego. It is nothing at all.

"Sickness is a demand the body be a thing that it is not. Its NOTHINGNESS is guarantee that it can NOT be sick. In your demand that it be MORE than this lies the idea of sickness."

"The body that is asked to be a god WILL be attacked, because its nothingness has not been recognized. And so it seems to be a thing with power IN ITSELF. As something, it CAN be perceived, and thought to feel and act, and hold you in its grasp as prisoner to itself. And it CAN fail to be what you demanded it to be."

"As something, is the body asked to be God's enemy, replacing what He is with littleness and limit and despair. It is HIS loss you celebrate when you behold the body as a thing you love, or look upon it as a thing you hate"

"His body's nothingness releases yours from sickness and from death."

"To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear."

"For holiness is POSITIVE, and the body is merely neutral. It is NOT sinful, but neither is it sinless. As nothing, which it IS, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes of Christ OR of the ego. EITHER must be an error, for both would place the attributes where they cannot BE. And BOTH must be undone, for purposes of truth."

"The truth is true and nothing else is true"

Here's the facts.

1) God established what is true, forever. It is permanent and cannot be changed by anyone.

2) You have only two options.

a) Accept that it is true and be glad that the truth is loving.

b) Reject the truth and pretend it is not true and suffer.

You have no other choice. Acceptance or denial.

Acceptance aligns you with Life. Denial aligns you with death.

When we reject the truth and go into denial, we simply are not willing to admit that we cannot change the truth. We start believing that we can change it, and that we have. That's the idea of sin and it puts us into ego thinking. It's also the authority problem because now we believe we can change God.

This is a very uncomfortable truth for the ego. It literally means up there on the hill there is a shining light which shines forever, and either you can go there and be part of the light or you can hide away in a cave and pretend it's not there. But nothing you can do can stop it shining.

This means you are POWERLESS OVER GOD. You are powerless over truth. And you are powerless to change reality. "Nothing real can be threatened."

To admit this takes great willingness to surrender all egotism, all opinions, all other viewpoints, all independent efforts to decide what the truth IS, and entails a total letting go of the protest against reality. That means giving up fighting with the truth. It means stopping this insane effort to DENY that it is true and to try to make it go away.

To hide from it and to block it out of awareness produces a state of "un-consciousness" or un-awareness, also known as death. Death is the denial of the truth, the denial of life, and represents an unwillingness to admit or demonstrate that you are immortal.

We have to come out of our dark hiding place and into the light but we will only do that by dropping the ego and being VERY VERY HONEST with ourselves, radically honest, in admitting that WE CANNOT CHANGE THE FACTS. We cannot change the truth. We cannot change what God established. We cannot change what God created us to be. And therefore we MUST still be as God created us to be.

This is why the curriculum ends in the Atonement, which entails TOTAL ACCEPTANCE OF THE TRUTH. The key word there is "acceptance". It means the total surrendering of all denial, the absolute complete letting go of the authority problem, relinquishing all attempts to DENY that the truth is true, and being FULLY willing to simply ALLOW God to be God.

It's almost a moment where you'll say, okay God, I give up, I surrender, you win. Except God isn't a dictator or tyrant. His will for you is perfect happiness. And that means that by surrendering to His will and His truth and His power you SHARE in it and enjoy perfect happiness, eternal life, and peace forever.

We simply do not have the option to ESTABLISH what the truth is. It is already established by God, it is permanent, it never changes, and nothing of the ego can modify it. Either we are squirming all over the place trying to avoid admitting to it, or we are coming to it quietly and gently and accepting it with holiness and willingness. And God welcomes us home.

"Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true and nothing else is true. This you have heard before, but may not yet accept both parts of it. Without the first the second has no meaning, but without the second is the first no longer true. Truth cannot have an opposite. This can not be too often said and thought about. For if what is not true is true as well as what is true, then part of truth is false, and truth has lost its meaning. Nothing but the truth is true, and what is false is false.

This is the simplest of distinctions, yet the most obscure. But not because it is a difficult distinction to perceive. It is concealed behind a vast array of choices which do not appear to be entirely your own. And thus the truth appears to have some aspects that belie consistency, but do not seem to be but contradictions introduced by you."

... "Now do we join in glad acknowledgment that lies are false and only truth is true."

Looking for love outside of yourself is the primary function of the ego and one of the toughest lessons to overcome. We all seem to want other people to love us. We have some kind of need to have parents and children love us, to be loved by another special person or persons, to be surrounded with friends who love us, etc.

Being loved by a lot of people is a trap, if you depend on it. And if you haven't become willing to NOT be loved by others, you still are in the ego. You will not be able to be true to yourself or to speak the truth or demonstrate love's reality if you are not willing to allow others to reject it.

God is the source of love, as are all your brothers in Heaven, but the love they share with you is no different to the love that is in you, which you are created from. You already have this love inherently, so do not really need it at all from anywhere else. You are not being loved by God due to some "need", you are loved by God as an act of sharing His love with you who are already love. You were created by love, as love, to love, and there is no lack of love in you, therefore no neediness.

What happens is, due to the separation ie egoic blocks to the awareness that we already have all the love we need, we perceive a lack of love in ourselves. This is the same thing as believing God is absent - that we ourselves are absent. This perceived lack is a darkness, and it compels us to want to alleviate the unhappy sensation of that absence.

But the ego counsels, instead of actually questioning if the blocks are real, or that the love might STILL be present behind them (if you were to just remove them), to believe the blocks have really made the love go away and to then seek for a solution somewhere else.

This seeking is a sense of false neediness, which believes that the only way to have salvation is by finding it anywhere other than within yourself. The ego suggests it is not in you already, so you better look elsewhere, and that by looking elsewhere there is some kind of hope or possibility of finding it. This is a lie.

So then begins the external searching, and since you are not responsible for or aware of the love in yourself, you now look to make others responsible for providing it for you. So now they automatically are perceived as having to fulfill this "function" of being the source of love and salvation for you. Absolutely everyone will perceive this function as belonging to others if there is any block to awareness or ego present in the mind, guaranteed.

First of all, there is a fundamental problem with this. By believing there is not already the love of God in you, you believe it is absent due to some kind of unworthiness or impossibility. That belief, which is an error, when left uncorrected, lingers in the mind and asserts that you will NOT ACCEPT love within yourself. Separation from the awareness that love is in you already was an act of rejection, not acceptance, so now you are not willing to let there be love in you.

So even though your mind is now making others responsible for supplying the lack due to the belief that it's not inside you, and cannot come from God (this is one of the ego's "laws of chaos"), even IF someone external were to try to supply you with love, you would not be willing to actually let it enter you. You will do what you can to try to get it inside of you, but so long as you believe in your inner lack of it, and therefore the need for it, you are actively blocking its receipt. So then people could be surrounding you with the most magnificent love and you STILL would not believe you are loved enough.

The other part to this then, is that by believing the only possible location of love is "not in you" ie outside of you, you depend entirely on other people or objects or idols or false Gods or specialness to do FOR you and TO you what you refuse to do yourself. This is another step in the ego's laws of chaos - seeking for this "special something" which is supposed to solve your inner lack, by finding it outside of you in people or drugs or alcohol or possessions or money or success or idol worship etc.

IF those external sources, for some reason, seem to be willing to give to you something that you think you want, be it specialness or some kind of semblance of "love", your ego will to some degree seem to be satisfied. The problem is, you won't be able to fully receive it. Not only is it impossible to get fictional special love into you, you are not really wanting to receive it anyway. So now you will go back and forth between delighting in what this person "does to you", and resenting them for failing to undo your emptiness. You'll think that them loving you is the most wonderful thing you ever experienced, but it still falls short of the love of God or, more importantly, falls short of your own willingness to accept love for yourself.

IF on the other hand, the person or external source is taken away or denied or there is a refusal or rejection, well now you are really up shit creek. Because now your mind is believing the only source of salvation is external, you have this huge pressing need to "get" it, and the external is saying "no" and sticking its middle finger up at you. So now you are left hanging. You have this huge unconscious self hatred, a huge sense of neediness and lack, and no-one is willing to supply something to fill the hole.

That leaves you in a state of unfulfillable turmoil, like there is absolutely no way to solve your problem, and that throws you into a rage. This is essentially the definition of hell - a state in which you need something and the need can never be filled, so you have absolutely no hope of "escape", there is no one to save you, you are left suffering alone and with no way to solve it, and so you are more or less eternally damned. That is, unless you question the lies this is based on.

The unconscious self hatred will then surface as "special hate" and will blame the other for not doing to you what they are supposed to be doing to you. It will be all their fault that they are not "loving you" or giving you what you think you want. And this can be in the form of a bad parent or an abusive partner or a job that makes your life suck or the government sucking off all your money or whatever. When the love is denied you, you go off the rails with insanity because all you can see before you is a hopelessness and an impossibility of meeting your need.

This can also be the driving force behind people turning to crimes like rape and murder in an effort to forceably "take" from others what they are refusing to give you. It's a state of desperation. The ego has convinced the person they are so lacking in love that they are so empty and so unlovable that there is a really, really strong neediness and dependency on others to supply it, and no-one seems willing to supply it, so other people must be evil hoarders of the "specialness'' and it now has to be wrestled from them against their will.

This is the culmination of the ego's laws of chaos, in which it inspires attack and rape and murder and hatred in an effort to get from others what they refuse to give. And such a person will see those others are being entirely to blame for failing to love them, and they will see themselves as completely justified and entitled to take what they want, as if it is what they deserve and are being unfairly denied. They will believe that others have "stolen" what is theirs, and that they must rightfully take it back. Things get pretty vicious at this stage.

If you look at this with compassion and understanding you can see that when people get really desperate and needy for external sources of salvation like this, which is mental illness (inner peace is healthy, external searching is mental illness), they are really just trying to address this sense of lack and emptiness and the absence of love within themselves. They are just going about it in the only way that their broken perception tells them is possible - getting it from outside - and if the sense of it being denied is too great internally, they will feel *dependant* on getting it from outside and driven to HAVE to take it by force, almost like someone who is gasping for air and trying to stay alive.

Therefore the attempted rape and murder of others is actually someone who perceives such absence of love within themselves that no matter how hard they try they can't get the love into themselves, and so claw at others viciously and violently trying to take it, as if their life depends on it. All that's happening is their perception is very backwards and they are so convinced of their unworthiness and unlovability that they see others are unworthy and unlovable and so deserving of being taken from. It is really that the person has taken away from themselves and now perceives this denial of love as if coming from others.

So while some of us are in sort of in-between states of feeling a neediness or "why it is unfair that other people don't love me" and "surely I'm lovable, why are people not liking me" and "if only they would love me more" or whatever... we are still on the downward spiral towards viciousness. We just didn't become quite so desperate yet as for it to turn into a violent attempt to take it from others, but we're doing basically the same process. A perceived absence of love within, leads to an automatic quest to get it from without. And then it is everyone else's responsibility to supply it, and if they do not, it is their fault not ours. "What is not love is murder" because when love is perceived to be absent it produces a murderous desire to take it from someone else against their will.

Even if others were to supply huge amounts of love to us, if we are not willing to accept that it is deep inside of us and therefore has been deeply received and acknowledged as something we are worthy of, we will reject it. You can be surrounded by people loving the heck out of you and still believe there is something wrong with you. It's really got nothing to do with whether someone else loves you or not.

Them loving you does not make you believe you are lovable. Them not loving you does not make you believe you are lovable. The only way to believe you are lovable is for YOU to believe it ABOUT YOURSELF, IN SPITE OF what anyone else believes or does. And this boils down to simply accepting that love is INSIDE you, it is present, and it's there because God is there, and God is love, and God is the ONLY SOURCE OF LOVE. "There is no love but God's". God IS the only source of love, you cannot get it anywhere else, it does not exist separate from you, and seeking for it externally is absolutely guaranteed to fail every time because it is NOT OUT THERE.

So we all go through this dynamic and to varying degrees, some of us accept God's love more than others. It's all about degrees of awareness of the presence of love within us, and therefore a WILLINGNESS to ACCEPT that it is there and that we are worthy of it. We ARE worthy of God's love, but even though we are worthy of it, we can still choose to deny it believe otherwise if we want to. In other words, love does not FORCE us to be loved.

Love does not enter where it is not welcome! And that means, love from other people CANNOT get into you if it is not welcome. And so in order to welcome and receive the love from others, you HAVE to be willing to have love be welcome WITHIN YOU FIRST, which means you then accept there is love within you ALREADY, are aware of it (God's Presence in your mind and heart), and therefore DO NOT NEED TO GET IT FROM ELSEWHERE.

Opening up to accept the atonement, which is the acknowledgement and recognition and acceptance and awareness of the CONSTANT LOVE being shared by God and your TOTAL WILLINGNESS to receive it and accept it as the truth about you, is the *ONLY SOLUTION* to this problem of love's absence.

And once this problem is solved, there is no further need to get love from anywhere else, no need to have people love you or not love you, no need to be special, no need for special attention, no neediness or attention-seeking or acting out or being a sexual slave or selling yourself out or abandoning yourself or people pleasing or vicious attempts to take "yourself" from those who supposedly stole YOU from you. Since you are love, you believe that if others have the love and are supposed to give it to you, you believe they are supposed to give YOU to you and therefore are responsible for making you what you are. And it doesn't work.

You ARE love. Accepting that you are love accepts the love is IN YOU and therefore there is no LACK and therefore no NEED to seek for it where it does not exist, and therefore you couldn't GIVE A SHIT what anyone thinks of you, whether they love you or hate you, it has absolutely no bearing on whether you are happy or not. YOU are responsible for choosing your happiness, no-one else is responsible for your happiness, and no-one else has any power to take it from you.

Getting your love from within/God gives you thus tremendous psychological strength and invulnerability and resilience and confidence and certainty and knowing, which cannot be swayed or affected by anything external. Having not GIVEN anything external the power to give TO you the love you are lacking, you also have not given anything external the power to deny your lovability on your behalf, and therefore you are NOT at the effect of the world. Accepting the atonement is the key to immortality.

Once you accept it from God, it's a done deal. Permanent love within you and flowing through you. Then it becomes more about you extending love to others through you so that you SHARE IN IT and thus experience it as having been received by you from God (to have all, give all to all), rather than trying to manipulate others into making this decision for you. Now that you are able to love IN SPITE OF whether other people are loving you back or not, that is unconditional love. To love others even if they hate your guts, are attacking you, are pushing you away, and want nothing to do with you. Even if they don't see you, or acknowledge you, or recognize you. To love them anyway. Teach only love because that is what you are.

God loves you right now 100%. Can you accept it? You already ARE it, whether you accept it or not.

False perception is not merely a state in which you have illusions ABOUT the world. It’s a state in which TWO things are happening:

1) Things which are illusions, false, unreal, are MISTAKEN for things that are real and true.

2) Things which are actually real and true, are MISTAKEN for things which are illusions.

BOTH of these are happening in false perception. Which means it’s a state where you do not RECOGNIZE what is actually real, OR what is actually unreal. You are confused about BOTH illusions and reality. You have them both mixed up and swapped around. This is why the course entails a prolonged period of SORTING OUT, the difference between what is REALLY true, and what is ACTUALLY false, which develops true perception. True perception means RECOGNITION of BOTH, the true and the false.

What you then have to realize about true perception, is it ALSO is a state in which TWO things are happening:

1) Things which are illusions are RECOGNIZED as illusions, they clearly and obviously are unreal, and there is no confusion about them being true. They are recognized as false. Ie Only the false is false.

2) Things which are ACTUALLY true, are RECOGNIZED as true, clearly ACCEPTED as true, and regarded as real. For example accepting the Atonement. ie Only the truth is true.

That state of true perception arises when you have become ACCURATE and CORRECT in your evaluation of what is REALLY true, and what is actually false. This state entails BOTH the clarity about the truth, AND the clarity about the false.

Now, it’s not possible to have absolutely false perception. You would have to be dead. You can only be relatively confused. It is also not possible to have absolutely true perception. You would have to be having NO perception because perception is ALWAYS fundamentally a little removed from the absolute. (There is no perception in Heaven, etc). "Perception is a separated state" "Those who perceive still need healing" "To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it."

So here’s what’s going to happen, as you transition from false perception to true perception.

You will bring into question things which you thought were true and real, things which in the biggest picture are actually illusions, and you will learn to discern the FACT that they actually ARE NOT true or real. You will discover that what you thought was true, IS NOT, and that what you thought was untrue/unreal is in fact trustworthy. Of course, this transition requires a little WILLINGNESS to admit to the real truth, to RECOGNIZE lies as false, and a willingness to LET THEM GO in favor of ACCEPTING the real truth.

Gradually, as you sort out and clarify what is really true and what is really false, you develop true perception ie christ vision. Here you can still SEE what is true AND what is false, but you can tell them apart.

Now, as this is happening, as you are "in between" and partly sane or saner than you were, you will start to SEE more truth clearly distinguished from the things which are false. However, in this period you will STILL SEE ALSO things which are false. It’s just that now they are starting to be RECOGNIZED as false, but still seen. You don’t see truth IN them, because the truth has been clearly discerned and kept apart from what’s false, which is correct.

Actually Jesus talks about the difference between using the body’s eyes and using christ vision or the spiritual eye. The body’s eyes are PHYSICALLY fixed in how they function. They can ONLY see falsely, and they acually CANNOT see truly. "These eyes, made not to see, will NEVER see." And Christ Vision does not even USE the body’s eyes at all. IT is a direct mind-to-mind vision. Just as the body cannot see the real world, christ vision, once complete, CANNOT see the world of bodies or forms or planets.

Jesus also talks about this in terms of "you cannot see two worlds" and "sight of one is costing you sight of the other" because each WAY of seeing DENIES the other. Christ vision DENIES the world. Body sight DENIES heaven. Body sight (via photons) is locked into false perception. And the body keeps showing images of falsety to the mind. And the body ONLY looks upon illusions, meaning THE WORLD is an illusion BECAUSE the body can see it.

But what happens as you’re sorting out the true from the false, is you‘re gradually "fading in" true perception, and gradually "fading out" false perception. This transition is happening in your mind, in your belief system, but it IS NOT happening physically. The body cannot help but always look at illusions as if they are real. And so as you develop true perception, the ILLUSIONS (the world, Earth), which the body is showing to your mind, starts to be RECOGNIZED as FALSE. As unreal. As untrue. The illusions are still SHOWN to you by the eyeballs, but the MIND (which sees) is learning to categorize ALL of those image as UNREAL. As Jesus states here:

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences. 2 But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. 3 There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. 4 ***But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal.*** 5 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. 6 And of these two, but one is real"

Note three important points:

1) The body still reports ILLUSIONS to the mind even when christ vision has developed because you now have TWO types of seeing occuring simultaneously - body physical sight and spiritual sight.

2) ALL images the body sees will be categorized as unreal, because true perception RECOGNIZES that ALL illusions are unreal and EVERYTHING the body sees is ILLUSION - the world is an illusion recognized as UNREAL.

3) There are TWO categorizes into which the mind sorts all messages - messages from body vision AND messages from christ vision, either they are REAL or unreal. Everything the body sees, which is THIS PLANET, and all bodies, and all objects and physical things, all matter, is RECOGNIZED AS UNREAL. And everything Christ Vision sees which is BEYOND MATTER and beyond what the BODY can see, is recognized as REAL. ONLY the face of christ is real. ONLY perception of the real world, BEYOND the world of form, is real.

What’s happening here is that true perception , which is FORGIVENESS, and atonement, is OVERLOOKING everything the body’s vision presents to the mind and LOOKS PAST IT, THROUGH IT, to a truth, a light, a reality, WHICH IS BEYOND THE PHYSICAL. Beyond the world of bodies. "The world of bodies is the world of sin." "Forgiveness DOES NOT LOOK UPON BODIES." The world of bodies is the world of sin which is drawn as a thin veil over the face of Christ, and true perception SEES IT NOT.

"The forgiven world", therefore, IS NOT merely you looking AT the REAL world and recognizing its innocence, it is also looking PAST, OVERLOOKING, everything physical and all of spacetime. It does not look AT spacetime in a forgiving way, it IGNORES IT and looks BEYOND it to the reality of Heaven that spacetime was made to HIDE. The physical world is THE VEIL that was made to BLOCK THE TRUTH. The world is a block to awareness (made as an attack on God).

A forgiven world is not only a world that you look at in a friendly way, it is a world that you no longer look at at all! If you shine enough light onto a world made of darkness, the world disappears. This is why "a forgiven world cannot last", why eternity will shine away the world", and why "the world will spin into the nothingness from whih which it came." You don’t forgive a REAL world! You only forgive ILLUSORY worlds, and arriving at a forgiven world is going to be very brief before it disappears in light completely!

You don’t forgive a world and keep it. That would only be true if the world was fundamentally real. IT IS NOT. "The world you see is an ILLUSION OF A WORLD." You turn it into a forgiven world BECAUSE IT IS OVERLOOKED. Which means, forgotten! The forgiven world is not a reference to reality or seeing reality truly, it’s an reference to the ILLUSORY WORLD which you RECOGNIZE AS FALSE and realize is NOTHING, because you need to recognize illusory things ARE illusions. True perception RECOGNIZES this illusory world IS NOT REAL. Reality is beyond this world. Heaven is another world entirely. A world which spacetime was made to OBSCURE.

Only when true perception is perfected and the face of christ is seen, and the veil of physical matter completely disappears, only then do you see ONLY the truth. Because the FALSE WORLD has been completely vanished from your mind. And now perception ends, because perception cannot exist without its TWO categories of what is true and what is false. The false vanishes, the wrong mind vanishes, and the right mind transfers into the ONE mind of Heaven. In the kingdom, there IS only truth, nothing unreal exists, and there is no illusory forgiven world at all. The forgiven world vanishes. Truth has no opposite. There is no world!

Yes, while you are "forgiving the world", which really means learning NOT TO SEE IT, NOT TO BELIEVE IT, NOT TO MISTAKE IT FOR REALITY, you may experience increased truth and thus increase love. And it may seem you love the world more. But you love more IN SPITE OF the world. Not because the world is love but because it is nothing and it is GETTING OUT OF YOUR WAY and allowing you to see that which IS LOVABLE BEYOND IT. The real world is lovable. At first perceived, then entered. And who cares about the imaginary planet you made when it’s recognized as NOTHING and has been replaced with EVERYTHING REAL?

"Only the creations of light are real." "There is no life outside of heaven."

After a while you realize that many things are really the same thing. And there are really only two categories of things. There's what's real, and what isn't. Love/life and its opposite - a seeming lack of love/life.

For example, fear is a lack of love. Sin is a lack of love. Guilt is obviously unloving. Sickness is an absence of love/life. Death is a lack of love/life. All forms of attack or grievance are lacks of love. All weakness or corruption or deficiency or blockage or denial are just more signs of a lack or resistance against love/life.

So there's just really the presence of love/life and then there's the seeming absence of it. The absence of it shows up as the opposite of love/life in all its many forms, including all forms of sickness, all symptoms, all forms of fear, all less than perfect states.

Healing then is purely about a supplying of this lack, a restoration and a resurrection, in which the seemingly "lacking" love/life is given to fill what's missing. Like how a battery can be empty or charged.

As a miracle worker it becomes much simpler to realize that all states of suffering, all sickness, all problems, all fear and guilt, all seeming sin, is all just one thing - a lack of something. Some kind of distance from God, from love and life, from happiness and wholeness.

One category is true, one category is false. It doesn't matter what form it's taking. It doesn't matter if it's fear or a sickness or a deadly disease or death. It's all just different disguises for one single problem - God appears to be lacking in some way.

Healing can be nothing more than simply the supplying of what is lacking. This is why God created the Holy Spirit as "the idea of healing", or in other words, the idea of supplying the love that was lacking in the separated children of God. By offering the love and life, the Holy Spirit restores the mind to a healed state by making it whole again. He is the resurrector of life.

"If you consider what the process really means, it is nothing more than a series of pragmatic steps in the larger process of accepting the Atonement as THE remedy. From this viewpoint, the steps can be reworded as follows:

1.) Know first this is fear.

2.) Fear arises from lack of love.

3.) The ONLY remedy for lack of love is perfect love.

4.) Perfect love IS the Atonement."

"Miracles are a form of healing. They supply a lack, and are performed by those who have more for those who have less."

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely."

"The power of God IS limitless. And, being always maximal, it offers EVERYTHING to EVERY call from ANYONE. There is no order here. A call for help is GIVEN help. The only judgment involved at all is in the Holy Spirit's one division into two categories; one of love, and the other, the call for 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. 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."

"The Spiritual eye is the mechanism of miracles, because what the Spiritual eye perceives IS truth. The Spiritual eye perceives both the Creations of God AND the creations of man. Among the creations of man, it can also separate the true from the false by its ability to perceive totally rather than selectively. It thus becomes the proper instrument for reality testing, which always involves the necessary distinction between the true and the false."

"My Atonement was for the canceling out of all sins (i.e., lack of love) which human beings could not otherwise correct."