The only problem we have is that we are not recognizing what is true and what is false correctly.

There are things that the ego says are true, which are actually false. But we believe they are true.

There are things which God says are true, which we believe are false, but are actually true.

It has a lot to do with willingness. The willingness to ACCEPT that God's truth is true, and the ego's truth is not true.

But see... if we think the ego's truth actually IS true, we're going to automatically think God's truth is false.

For example.

If we believe we sinned and are guilty, we will believe we deserve punishment and not love.

This belief will distort our perception.

We will see the worthiness of being punished as TRUTH, and we will agree with it.

We will then see the punishment NOT as punishment, but as welcome. Something we want.

We will even welcome death, seeing it as salvation.

As soon as we start being convinced that what the ego says is the truth, our perception just gets all flipped upside down and the things which would HURT us start to look like they're going to be HELPFUL.

Things which are NOT true, start to look true. Things which HURT us, start to seem appealing. Things which make things WORSE for us, start to look like solutions. Things which make us SUFFER, start to look like they are helping us.

And then, things which REALLY are true, start to look false. Things which would HEAL us, start to seem like a threat. Things which would make things BETTER, start to seem like something that would make things worse. Things which would UNDO suffering, start to seem like things which would ADD suffering.

This is how mixed up we become. We do not ****RECOGNIZE**** what is true and what is false.

We MISTAKE false things for true things, and true things for false things.

This makes us very CONFUSED, and yet we will still believe in the midst of that insanity, that we are TOTALLY sane, things TOTALLY make sense, we are TOTALLY right, we HAVE the whole truth, and we're seeing everything PERFECTLY. We will not even REALIZE that we are in a state of suffering or denial or unhappiness. We will not ACKNOWLEDGE it, or see it, or recognize it for what it is.

By believing the ego's lies are truth, those lies STOP LOOKING LIKE LIES, and start looking like truth. It doesn't matter how sane or insane someone is, or how confused, EVERYONE will always believe they are seeing fully, clearly, perfectly, correctly, rightly, accurately, and that their discernment is 100% correct. Even if the are believing the death is the only way to live, they will believe they are TOTALLY CORRECT in that perception. They simply have become BLIND to the ability to DISCERN that their own perception is very distorted.

We would, in the ego, happily jump into a vat of acid, or destroy ourselves in any number of horrific ways, BELIEVING SINCERELY, that it is going to SAVE US FROM GOD's WRATH. Death actually start to look APPEALING to those who are insane and whose thought system is so backwards that they think SUICIDE is actually SALVATION.

The ego has flipped everything around. It sees lies in the truth and truth in lies. It sees life in death and death in life. it sees gains in losses and losses in gains. It sees hurt in love and love in hurt. It sees sin in innocence and innocence as sinful. It sees death as the doorway to eternal peace. It sees sacrifice as a way to gain everything. It becomes ATTRACTED TO GUILT AND DEATH, simply because it does not RECOGNIZE them as guilt and death, it instead thinks they are sacred and HOLY and PURE and WELCOMING!!!

This is how insane it gets. And all death is suicide, CHOSEN, by people whose perception is so back to front that they think that moving AWAY from life will bring them closer to it. That death is a way OUT of the suffering that seems real. That death is a "real option" that will "solve all problems". Only the blind would choose such a solution.

"Forgive them father for they know not what they do."

Literally, anyone in the ego DOES NOT KNOW that they are in the ego. They don't RECOGNIZE it for what it is. They think they are in heaven when they are in hell. They think they are in hell when they are in heaven. They think their successes are failures and their failures are successes. It's all back to front, and it's not even RECOGNIZED.

Being in the ego means being UNCONSCIOUS, and in unconsciousness, what is true and what is false loses ALL CONTEXT. That means REAL TRUTH has been shut out of awareness, and now there is nothing to COMPARE anything to. No yard stick or hard and fast reliable consistent truth to compare things to to say, is THIS true, or is THIS false? There is a loss of perspective. A loss of sight. A loss of contrast. A loss of sanity. And all that remains is to thrash about in the dark MAKING UP truth and being totally confused about whether it is actually true or not.

To correct this we need to do only really ONE THING. That is, to become willing to consider we might be MISTAKEN about what we believe is true.... to consider, maybe we were mistaken about God's truth, and maybe what we BELIEVE IS TRUE, is actually FALSE. Every belief of the ego SEEMS true, but is false. Yet we currently believe it. Whether it be a belief that we sinned, a belief that we're guilty, a believe that we're unworthy of love, a belief that we're not good enough, or don't deserve forgiveness, or are lacking, or whatever.

These "false beliefs", these untruths masquerading as truth, NEED to be CORRECTED. The course says that perception needs to be corrected but its really your BELIEFS, because belief is your conviction about what is true. What you BELIEVE you WILL PERCEIVE. And you will perceive it BECAUSE you believed it. And then, upon perceiving it, it will seem to CONFIRM that what you believe is true, not realizing you're stuck inside a closed box of your own making.

You have to be willing to dig out and challenge your ego beliefs. Then you need to be willing to RECOGNIZE THEM AS FALSE, by "deprogramming" yourself. Whatever way works for you. To DISBELIEVE these lies, to strip them of all belief, to collapse your trust in them, to REVERSE them, to stop believing they are TRUE, and to start believing, simply, THEY ARE NOT TRUE. They are false. It's NOT TRUE that you are a sinner. It's NOT TRUE that you are guilty. It's NOT TRUE that you don't deserve love. It's NOT TRUE that you can't be forgiven. etc.

I have found personally that any act of affirming or clarifying or emphasizing that some false ego belief IS NOT TRUE, is an act of moving towards God and towards healing. It is an act of transitioning from a mistaken truth to a real truth. It seems to be ONLY this changing of hands, this willingness to CHANGE BELIEF, so that what you thought had truth to it, is BELIEVED LESS, and what you thought was false, is BELIEVED MORE. ***THAT*** right there is the way to change your perception, and THE ONLY WAY.

This sorting out of what is true and what is false will take you ALL THE WAY to the atonement. It's the ONLY process to get there. Somehow, you have to shift allegiance from listening to and trusting the ego's voice, to listening to and trusting the Holy Spirit's voice. To stop BELIEVING that the ego's beliefs are true, and to RECOGNIZE them as FALSE. That's all you need to do! Just keep systematically reversing these beliefs, undoing them, stopping believing them, withdrawing faith from them, learning to MISTRUST the ego and to TRUST God, and to CLEARLY DISTINGUISH.. what is true, from what is false.

This clarification is what will make your perception CORRECT. Correct perception, or true perception, means you are perceiving WITHOUT DISTORTION. It means you can SEE, but what you see ... you recognize which parts of it are actually true, and which parts are actually false, in terms of the REAL TRUTH. Rather than, MIS-IDENTIFYING some parts as false which are true, or some parts as true which are false.

For example do you believe people have real sickness? All those people in hospitals? THEY DO NOT HAVE "real sickness". They only have FAKE SICKNESS. There IS no such thing as real sickness. So this is a major belief which has to be CORRECTED. How about your belief that something "bad happened"? That's a belief that sin is real. Is it true? You have to question that. It did not REALLY HAPPEN. It was an illusion in a dream. There have NOT been any real consequences in reality. You did NOT lose your innocence.

Discernment. What is true. What is false. Being completely clear about which is which in reality, and not what you've made them to be. This will liberate you from all suffering and make you CONVINCED that God's truth is the ONLY TRUTH, and the ego's truth is THE ONLY LIE. Then you are ready to accept the atonement.

You are not of this world. This world isn't the only world.

You are of another world, the Kingdom of God, in which you have immortality - eternal life as given by God Himself.

This world is an illusory world. It's kind of like a layer on top of reality. A pretend world, a picture, of a form and nature opposite to reality.

The things in the illusory world can appear to change, shift, grow, die, etc. But it really has no effect at all on the deeper underlying world of God. God's Kingdom is completely permanently unassailable and impenetrable and perfect forever. It is "the living world of light."

"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world. But the REAL world HAS the power to touch you even here, BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT."

"Let your Guide teach you their unsubstantial nature as He leads you past them, for beneath them is a world of light whereon they cast no shadows."

What you are, as an immortal spirit, is firmly anchored in Heaven. Nothing can attack you or change you in any way.

"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there."

For you as an immortal being, death is not possible. It's not an option. You cannot choose it to happen to your spirit. Your spirit is invulnerable.

So what is it that can ever die, or seem to die? It can't be you. A body is an illusion, part of the illusory dream world of death. Everything in the dream world is made of illusions and all illusions are the idea of the opposite of reality. Since reality is life, all illusions are the idea of death.

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem."

So we know that every illusion, whether it appears to show up as a healthy body, or a sick body, or a dead body, or no body, or even just an environment, or a planet, is still essentially made of the idea of death. Even Earth is the idea of an opposite to God's Kingdom.

"Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."

So from the outset, since what you are cannot die whatsoever, the things that can seem to die cannot even be who or what you are. You are spirit, not a body. You exist on an entire other level.

So really you do not need a body, it adds nothing to you, it doesn't improve you, it doesn't allow you to do things that you couldn't do already, and it only essentially was designed as a limit. It can be used in different ways, by an immortal spirit, but the body is not ever what you are.

As spirit, and being on a higher level, you have power over everything on the lower level of the illusory world. All of the world's laws are secondary and once-removed. This world is not primary reality, or the starting point of anything. It is not a cause but an effect of a higher mind's dreaming.

So this means, you on the level of Christ, have power over, total power over, everything in the world. That includes the body, it includes all states of sickness and death, it includes matter and energy, it includes all of the so-called laws of physics and biology, and in effect you have power over everything in this universe.

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

""My Self is ruler of the universe." ... It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept. "

Since you have power over everything in the universe, "there is nothing my holiness cannot do", "what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world.", you get to dictate what happens to the body. You, from a higher more vertically causal level, get to choose how to USE any aspect of this secondary world.

You can choose to use the body to attack through, which is a toxic idea which affects the body and attacks it. This produces sickness and death of the body on this level. The body then conveys the idea that being dead is the only truth.

You can choose to use the body to heal through, which is a healing idea which affects the body and heals it. This produces a picture of a healed body, an illusion of a healthy body, which then demonstrates the thought/belief that being alive is the only truth.

So your mind gets to decide whether or not the body dies. And this depends entirely on what you use the body FOR. If you use it for attack it will be attacked. If you use it to heal it becomes healed. And in its healed condition, sustained by the mind, sickness death cannot "happen" to the body against your will and your power.

"You cannot die unless you choose to do so."

"No one dies without their own consent"

"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

"The mind being sane heals the body."

"Now is the body healed by miracles."

So in effect, you could choose to use the body for healing and to symbolize eternal life, resulting in it being healed. By the power of your mind, the body is not allowed to be in a state of sickness, yet alone physical death.

The body can be sustained indefinitely, at least in time. It can't be eternal because the mind has to constantly maintain it and it is not natural to constantly project bodies. It could stick around for a million years if the mind so chose. Aging can be reversed and halted. But eventually once the purpose of healing is fulfilled in the help of others, there is no longer a need for a body to use to reach those who dream of death. Its purpose of healing is part of the atonement plan.

"Illusions recognized must disappear"

"Eternity will shine away the world."

"A forgiven world cannot last."

"The body cannot remain without illusions."

When the entire idea of death, which the world and body is founded on, is recognized, it must disappear. When it is no longer useful for the atonement plan, and all souls have returned home, there is nothing more to keep the world intact. Nor is there any need or will to maintain it.

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible."

You don't have to automatically go towards physical death. Death is a choice made by an immortal being pretending it can die. You cannot die. "Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt." "Swear not to die, you holy son of God. You've made a bargain that you cannot keep."

"You are immortal and you cannot die. But you can confuse yourself with things that do."

There is no point choosing to make death happen when you acknowledge that you already have eternal life. What sense would it make? It would be not only futile but a completely pointless waste of time. If you knew you could NEVER die, would you CHOOSE to attempt to make death happen? That's what we do when we cause sickness and death. And if we were to never do that, would sickness or death happen?

No. Because there are no other causes of it. The only cause of death is your mind's power to choose to attack through the body. If you don't do that, the body cannot physically die or become sick.

"Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions responsible for the condition of the body"

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

"18. 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. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable value simultaneously."

This touches on the essence of A Course in Miracles and the Golden Rule. Jesus is literally telling us that YOU ARE ONE WITH OTHERS. This means you are literally IN THEM. And therefore the way that you treat them is the SAME as the way you treat yourself.

There is no exception to this. You treat BOTH yourself and others the same way at the same time. To recoil for another is to recoil from yourself. To not love another is to not love yourself. To hate another is to hate yourself. There is no escaping this because fundamentally, by the Law of God, you ARE them.

"One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds. Such is the truth."

So per the Golden Rule, that means that every person you encounter, you should love them, IF you want to be loved and if you love yourself. You should SEE YOUR SELF in them. Because both you AND them are Christ. And your love of them IS your love of yourself, directly. What you give to them you receive. What you transmit to them, you transmit to the part of you that is in them.

The "part of you" that is "in them" is the target of everything you give to them, so you have a VESTED INTEREST - a shared interest, in treating them well in order for YOU to be treated well. This is not a play on words or an option. This is how minds share and relate. This is how they were created. This is the dynamics of the laws of God which are always applying.

It is always the ego that suggests, the way you treat another is NOT the way you are treating yourself. Or that you can attack without being attacked. Or you can be murderous without experiencing the consequences. Or you can judge without being judged. Or you can hate without being hated. Or you can be right and they can be wrong and there is no equality between you.

These are all LIES because they fly in the face of the inescapable LAW. It can SEEM as if you can treat someone differently to how you treat yourself, but all of that MUST be an illusion. Because the only truth is that ALL of God's children are perfect EQUALS. Making them perfect brothers in the sonship. And this is permanent fact.

Any kind of inequality is an illusion. And that not only means that you and your brother are SEPARATELY EQUAL as individuals, like two identical twins standing next to each other. It in fact means that you SHARE EVERYTHING, which means you OVERLAP with each other, are ONE with each other, JOINED with each other, IN each other. You literally are in your brother's mind with him. Even if that means part of you seems to be "over there" in another person, from a separated point of view.

This is really the only thing to be learned. How to love yourself AND others equally. How to recognize that you are ONE with all people. To realize that, you cannot GET AWAY WITH anything. You cannot hurt without being hurt. You cannot attack without being attacked. Scapegoating and blame are delusional and denial. When you attack anyone you are hurting yourself, and you have to ask yourself, do you want to keep hurting yourself?

Anger and attack towards "others" drives a RIFT into your mind between the part of your mind which seems to be isolated to "inside your body" and the part of you which seems to be "inside other people's bodies". The more you attack what you THINK is a "separate them", the more you are SPLITTING OFF part of you which is in "you" (as a body identified self) and the part of you which is ONE WITH THEM. Which means you are directly attacking yourself and splitting your mind.

The split mind is divided by bodily boundaries, and as you focus on the ways in which you are NOT ONE, by emphasizing the solidity and reality and restriction of bodily obstacles, it simply SPLITS your mind and causes you to disassociate from yourself. And now you think you are literally two selves, with one part of you trapped in your body and the other part of you trapped in another person's body. You've now made an ego for both of you. And now you want to attack another to steal back from them the part of your SELF that you believe they have kept from you. As discussed in "the laws of chaos", everyone is looking for the self they think they lost.

So this seems to be a catch. The catch is, that if you choose to attack someone, you WILL be attacked, and you will suffer consequences, directly inflicted BY YOURSELF upon yourself. This is the secret of salvation, that you are doing it to yourself. And the only way to alleviate this suffering is to LOVE the other person. If you love them you will be loved. If you hate them you will be hated. By yourself. You cannot escape this "clause". It is the law of God. It is the Golden Rule. It is both a curse if ignored, and a clue to how to be happy if embraced.

The Golden Rule doesn't just mean that if you might treat someone as you would have them treat you, they MIGHT elect to treat you in a similar fashion. If there is any possibility that cause and effect breaks down and they MIGHT NOT treat you how you are treating them, then the law is breakable, and it is not a law, and it has devolved to the level of physical behaviors. The true nature of the Golden Rule is the oneness you always have with everyone in the mind, whereby you LITERALLY are DIRECTLY treating yourself the way you are treating them, because you are IN THEM.

"Do unto others because you ARE doing unto yourself." is what it should say.

If there is a person you hate, you will drive a separation between you. In this separation you will believe that person is completely separate from you, and you want to have as much distance and dis-association between you as possible. You do not want to be associated with them. You want to destroy them and have them not exist. And in this intensity of hatred and rage and attack and anger, you believe THEY ARE NOT YOU. And as such you can hurl as much blame and condemnation upon them as you can muster, and it seems to be 100% about their faults, and 0% about yours. This is a state of insanity.

This is a great way to split your mind, leading to states of personal suffering, unlove, a total lack of peace, and literal self destruction. Those who murder are trying to kill themselves. And those who attack are undermining their own integrity. And those who hate do not love themselves. Just as those who are sick have made themselves sick in an attempt to accuse OTHERS of sin as well as themselves.

"You but accuse your brothers of your own sin."

"Damaged bodies remain accusers."

The only solution, and the only option, and the only law which you HAVE to abide by, and cannot escape, is the law of God, that how you DO treat others IS how you are treating yourself, because YOU ARE ONE WITH THEM. And being literally part of that person, anything you hurl at them you are hurling at yourself. And you WILL experience the consequences. So really, your hands are tied and you do not have any loopholes or ways to get out of it.

Either you love BOTH you and your brother, or you hate both you and your brother. Either you love both you and your brother, or you attack both you and your brother. Either you attempt to make both you and your brother sick, or you HEAL both you and your brother. When you suffer you suffer along with him. The truth that applies to you applies to them equally and to the same degree. And not simply because they are your equal, but because THEY ARE YOU.

"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."When this is recognized as true, when cause and effect are reunited so that anything you cause you also experience the effects of instantly, and when there is no way to attack without attacking yourself, you now have shared interests and the only option is to love. The only sane choice is to love. If you don't love you will hurt yourself and others. If you do love you will uplift and heal yourself and others. And "when I heal I am not healed alone."

It is by recognizing that you have a vested interest in loving others, because it allows you to be loved, that you will automatically steer clear of attack upon yourself. You will realize that you CANNOT attack another person WITHOUT suffering the consequences. And there is no way to hurt them without being hurt. So your only sane choice is to love unconditionally, so that you will be loved. Otherwise a failure to recognize your oneness leads to it seeming plausible, justifiable and warranted, that you can attack without consequence. And then you are on the slippery slope to hell.

There are really only two modes of functioning of which you are capable. It really does boil down to a simple "this or that" decision. Either you are in love, or you are in fear. Love has only one nature, but fear masquerades as an untold number of illusions. All of them are fearful and they represent egotism. But they are all essentially a withdrawal away from love.

To love is an outward expression. It is extension. Love shines and radiates out of you towards others. This love seeks to uplift, empower, heal, nurture, strengthen, join, share, communicate, connect, give, supply, support, make whole. Love is always given/extended through you from God and goes out to your brothers and to the world. It is an outward transfer which entails you loving and joining with everything.

Love, and all expressions of love, are miraculous and healing. Love is powerful, it is happy and joyful, and it is peaceful. It is meaningful. Love is sanity. Love heals and resurrects. And love can reverse all forms of suffering. Love shines like a bright light, and as you give it, you receive it because it is shared and for all. As you give it, you shine, and in this shining you illuminate both yourself and others, and in this light you can see, and what you look upon is illuminated with love and is lovable.

The opposite of this is fear. Fear is separation, contraction, withdrawal, and inward focus. Fear is selfish, victimizing and victimized. In fear you feel afraid, angry, upset, hurt, weakened, sick, tired, stressed and damaged. In fear you pull way from others and the world, you hate and attack, you feel imposed upon and controlled, and eventually die. Fear is an attempt not to extend love, not to give life, and to be alone. In fear you will feel alone, cut off, isolated, imprisoned.

In fear you will feel like you've been taken hostage, all the happenings around you will seem like they are against you with no escape, all problems will seem insurmountable and unfair and cruel, and you will feel like you're in a dark pit of hellish despair that you can't get out of. It's as if you've been taken hostage by a tyrannical ruler who has imprisoned you and kept you in a dark hole in the ground. And everywhere you turn there will be enemies and haters and attackers and prison guards.

What it boils down to is a very, very simple difference between the two approaches to life. Each approach entails a different kind of seeing. Fear places you in false perception, where the whole world seems like a prison. Love places you in true perception, where the whole world is harmless and forgiven.

Love entails giving in order to receive. As you give love, as you shine your light, as you extend, you yourself are uplifted. "Miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver." Even if you start out in fear and lack, efforting to love more will empower you and lift you out of darkness. To love is to fulfill your natural function. You are supposed to shine. You are supposed to radiate. You are supposed to give and extend and reach out to join with others in love. AS you do this you automatically are protected and saved and it raises you up into the light where you are happy and at peace.

When you don't do this, you must recoil and withdraw into fear. You will step back and not give. And it will now seem that the world has taken from you. A gap will form in between you and others. You will develop enemies and opponents. You will hate some of them and hate yourself for hating them. You will become weak, afraid, lost, alone, and suffer in the dark. You will feel isolated and sick and like no-one is on your side. The world will loom heavily over you as if it has power to make your life hell. And all the while you will be trying to get, to take, to have, to own, to possess, to be special, and you will feel selfish. And everything offered by love will be missing.

It really is as simple as if you have only one choice. Either you give love or you lose love. It's like there's an emotional beacon in you, in your heart, where either your heart is giving outwardly and energy and light are flowing out of you in support of others, or your heart is cold and empty and you are withdrawing and escaping as an enemy of the world. Either your energies express and extend outward, or you hold yourself back. Either you feel loving and warm and bright, or you feel hateful and cold and dark.

You get to make this simple choice at all times. You can switch on love at any time. You can feel it in your heart. Even in the midst of any other illusion of suffering. And yet the ego is expert at making it seem like there is no way out of suffering and love will not help. Can it be as simple as that your heart is not switched on? Of all the many seeming problems, stresses, upsets, emotions, can it be that simply loving more will cure it?

The ego would say no, it will tell you that each of these problems is unique and needs a separate solution. And what it thinks it needs it tries to get. And yet getting it does not make you happy. Underneath all the complicated forms in which fear arises, and all the ways you can feel unloved, there IS in fact only simple solution to all of them. Simply love more. It lifts you out of all upset feelings, it brightens you, makes you feel happier, stronger, more confident. It dispels fear and erases upsets. It heals you.

Being 'human' can seem so complicated but actually what's happening in your mind is incredibly simple. You are like a piece of machinery whose function is to extend the love of God to others. That is all. "The only function of spirit is to extend God's being." You are host to God and extend God. That is all. Your only choice is to continue extending God at all times, or separate yourself off into isolation and fear, in which you will experience all forms of suffering. And at any time you can switch back into fulfilling your function as the light of the world.

The only way to be happy is to fulfill your function. To love. To express love. It's completely natural and produces miracles. It is holy relationship. It is God's will. It is God's will that you love and be happy and healthy. Love makes this possible and guarantees your health and perfection. Either you extend God's love, or you will attack yourself and make yourself sick.

This is why Jesus says "teach only love for that is what you are." It's an extremely simple choice, between love or suffering. To love is to heal and to be happy. To love your brother is to uplift and resurrect him along with you. Your focus should not be on yourself and your needs, or your body. These vanish when you love your brother. Focusing on your body makes it sick because mind is supposed to extend PAST it to others. The light has to shine, to produce health. The light shines PAST sickness and bodies, because it is forgiving.

To love or not to love, that is the question. And only love can make you happy.

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

"Salvation is a lesson in giving, as the Holy Spirit interprets it. It is the re-awakening of the laws of God in minds that have established other laws, and given them power to enforce what God created not."

"We have said that you have but two emotions, love and fear. One is changeless but continually exchanged, being offered BY the eternal TO the eternal. In this exchange it is extended, for it INCREASES as it is given. The other has many forms, for the content of INDIVIDUAL delusions differs greatly. But they have one thing in common; they are all insane. They are made of sights which are NOT seen, and sounds which are NOT heard. They make up a PRIVATE world, which CANNOT be shared. For they are meaningful ONLY to their maker, and so they have no meaning at all. In this world their maker moves alone, for only HE perceives them. "

"You have but two emotions, yet in your private world you react to each of them AS THOUGH IT WERE THE OTHER. For love cannot abide in a world apart, where, when it comes, it is not recognized. If you see your own hatred AS your brother, you are not seeing HIM. Everyone draws nigh unto what he loves, and recoils from what he fears. And you react with fear to love, and draw AWAY from it. But fear ATTRACTS you, and believing it is love, you call it to yourself. Your private world is filled with the figures of fear you have invited into it. And all the love your brothers offer you, YOU DO NOT SEE. "

"You have but two emotions, and one you made and one was GIVEN you. Each is a WAY OF SEEING, and different worlds arise from their different visions. See through the vision that is GIVEN you, for through Christ's vision, He beholds Himself. And seeing what HE is, He knows His Father. Beyond your darkest dreams, He sees God's guiltless Son within you, shining in perfect radiance, which is undimmed by your dreams. And this YOU will see as you look with Him, for His vision is His gift of love to you, given Him of the Father FOR you."

When someone seems to die, it is an opportunity. Either you can experience the death as a symbol of separation, or as meaning nothing has happened at all (the atonement).

When you experience it as separation, you will resist it and a you'll think of it as being an end. You'll think something has been lost. Someone bad has happened. Something sad has occurred. Something of value has ended. Because these all take the illusion of 'an end' and believe it is real. IF something really has ended, then all of these experiences would be appropriate. So it really depends on how you see things.

Its possible when someone 'dies' to not have an experience of there having been an end at all. You can think of it as the person transitioning to a different place, that they continue on, and there hasn't been an end at all. Just like a change of rooms, or moving to a different location. Nothing is lost, there hasn't become an absence of value, separation hasn't been increased, the person hasn't been diminished, who and what they are hasn't had anything happen to them, and, essentially, its nothing to be upset about. You can see things this way, but only if you really are ready and willing to do so, which means having to question separation and all of its forms, which can take a lot of time and forgiveness.

So it's okay if you are in the 'something really happened' camp, having the feelings, feeling grief and loss and separation. Those are normal 'natural' feelings to have IF you are perceiving that "real death" has happened. But this isn't the only way to interpret death. It's also possible to recognize that nothing has happened. The person is not affected. They are Christ. They are immortal spirit. They are not a body. They never were a body. They have not ended and nothing has really come to an end at all. It's just a continuation of life - eternal life. That's the only real truth about it. And when you can experience it in this way, not believing in separation and not USING it to separate, you can be free of the 'side effects' of grief, loss, sadness, loneliness, anger etc... ALL of which arise out of *believing in* separation, which is a choice.

So when we get REAAAALLY honest and spiritual about this... it is in fact our OWN belief in separation which creates all sense of grief and loss. It is our own belief in it that gives it its power. The perceptions we have of something 'real' being lost or ending IS an optional way to perceive and you do not HAVE to perceive this way. There is another way. You can choose not to believe in separation at all and you can choose not to use death as an attack or a demonstration that ends are real.

So we have to admit that, even though when we perceive someone has died, which WILL make us very upset because we think separation has happened, WE are the one who is actually choosing to perceive separation and to USE the death to reinforce our belief in separation. AND, the use of it for that purpose IS in fact using it to prove that GOD IS DEAD... which is not exactly an insignificant side-effect. In fact it is the ego's secret intention, to make sure that all of the grief and upset and anger and abandonment that stems from 'they left me' or 'they died' is actually secretly WANTED, because it reinforces the belief that we are separate from God and this is precisely what our little ego wants to accomplish. So while we are in grief, we MUST also be secretly glad that the person or whatever has 'really died', and that there has really been a separation, because without that belief in separation you CANNOT GRIEVE. There is no loss.

This is all very hard to accept, of course. But that doesn't mean it is impossible, and it IS what is REQUIRED to come to if we are to FULLY accept Holy Spirit's healing and Jesus's truth and God's reality. We HAVE to be willing to stop using death to drive a wedge between ourselves and others. We have to stop using it as an ATTACK on them AND on ourselves.

In fact, when we use death to make a demonstration/statement about how the person 'does not exist', that is an ATTACK on that person. That isn't exactly a way of honoring them, and it isn't a way of respecting them or acknowledging their life or their innocence. Why do we launch automatically into an attitude of "you're dead" as soon as the person croaks? It's kind of like kicking the door shut as they leave, having just thrown them under the bus. Hardly loving or appreciative of who they are OR the fact that they are immortal. We effectively "celebrate the fact they died", regardless of the fact that we do it with tears and grief and sadness, when instead we should be celebrating that they are ALIVE. Maybe if we celebrated their immortality they WOULD NOT DIE and instead be HEALED? Hmmm, fancy that. So yes, now you're responsible for their death because you did not offer them healing. ;-)

We have to stop making out that it's ALL terrible and bad that a person 'really died' because we're only being dishonest about our ego motives. And we have to stop making out that when bodies 'die', there is an end of any kind. Ends are separations and separations are NOT REAL.

Jesus said, "let the dead bury the dead". This means, the people who believe in death - who are thus already dead themselves - are the only ones who VALUE it and are the only ones who GRIEVE and are the only ones who BELIEVE it has really happened and therefore they are the only ones who NEED a funeral. And when you think about it, although we love to hark on about the specialness of a person at a funeral - and I know this will push some buttons so I apologize - but let's be truthful. .. we must simultaneously be glad that the person is dead because if death is real that means we WANTED it. There is no escaping that. Either we support death or we don't. Either we say "yes death happened" or "there is only life". Which will you choose? And what you choose will completely determine the 'reactions' that you'll have when such events seem to transpire.

I am writing this partly because my Grandfather died yesterday. And I was thinking that I would or should feel upset, and Jesus stopped me, and he asked, "why?"... or more to the point, it was an assertion of strength that... NO.. you do not have to enter into perceptions of grief and loss and separation. You don't. It's optional. I can choose to focus on the TRUTH, which is that my "grandfather" is actually secretly CHRIST and he is completely immortal and innocent and nothing has ever happened to him, and he has never died, and he was never a body. If I DON'T perceive and believe this (without being in denial either - this is about honesty), then I am literally also saying that I AM DEAD AS WELL... or that I DIED WITH HIM.

To the ego what happens to others does not happen to us, due to the sense of separation - "he is dead, but I am alive, poor sod, rather him than me". But in truth, we are all joined and we are all ONE. And what we believe is true of others we HAVE to believe it applies to us also, whether consciously or unconsciously. So if I believe, ok, yes, that person is dead and separation is real and there has been a great big loss... then... that's what I'm saying about MYSELF, and it's what I'm saying about my relationship with God!

Because ultimately, all 'deaths' are symbolic expressions of the ego's attempt to destroy God, at which it chuckles with a sinister laugh and wrings its hands in glee. So I will not be party to that - to MY OWN death vicariously through that of another. I will not be party to the support of the idea of death and I will not be party to reinforcing the idea that the Son of God can be killed or that God is dead. And that means, I will only acknowledge our shared eternal life - that we are invulnerable and everlasting and DEATH HAS NOT OCCURRED.

So thanks Granddad for all the life and death that you demonstrated, but it's not true and I'm not buying it. And I know you still exist, so your cover is blown and death didn't work. Oh well.

God is life. "I can see peace instead of this". And I believe my Gramps would be proud of my standing up FOR him by supporting his LIFE rather than making his illusion of death into a big drama. I do not feel upset and I don't believe I'm in denial. Nothing has happened and death doesn't mean anything.

What you are, what everyone is, is only that which God has given you to be. There is no other truth about you. The only truth about you is the truth you have inherited from God, who is the only truth.

Since God is immortal and God has created you, you are immortal. You cannot be anything else. You cannot be mortal.

Since God created you to be permanent, nothing can ever interrupt or end your permanence. You cannot be attacked, degraded, changed, damaged, manipulated, destroyed, made to suffer, to be sick or dead.

It is simply literally IMPOSSIBLE that who you really are can ever be sick. There can never ever be anything wrong with you. You were created perfect by God and you are still perfect.

So if it seems that sickness is showing up, and in light of the fact that it is IMPOSSIBLE for you to be sick, the sickness CANNOT be telling the truth. It cannot be real. It cannot be actually happening.

Everything the sickness suggests HAS to be an illusion, some kind of fiction. It can't even be there. It can have no reality, no truth, no validity, no function, no value, no true purpose, no meaning, nothing. It is literally nothing because there is no sickness.

This is how we must regard all sickness, whether seemingly in ourselves or others. Sickness must be recognized as IMPOSSIBLE. The Son of God cannot become sick, get sick, contract illness, be infected, or become diseased. God's son is perfect and immortal forever.

If sickness is showing up, a lie is showing up. It has to be recognized as false. Sickness is not true. Everything about it must be a deception. It must be a fake sickness. Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing real can become sick.

When the illusion of sickness is fully recognized as false, and as impossible, and that this must mean it is LITERALLY NOT THERE, the power of God can shine through and ASSERT LIFE.

Resurrection is the assertion of life, and it has tremendous power because there is truth in it. Life is reality. Life is truth. Life is immortal. To assert that your immortal being is the only truth, is to assert and cause life. Anything that was "not alive" must resurrect. Anything that "was sick" must be overridden.

You cannot die. "You are immortal and you cannot die." "There is no death, the Son of God is free." You can never die. You will never die. You have never died. You are absolutely beyond the reach of all lies of sin and guilt and suffering and punishment.

Simply ask yourself, this simple comparison. If I am immortal and perfect forever, can it be possible that this sickness is real? Either the sickness is real, or the immortality is real. They can't both be true. As you side with the immortality, the sickness has to go.

"Did God create the mortal and corruptible?"

"I will awaken from the dream that I am mortal, fallible and full of sin, and know I am the perfect Son of God."

"You were not born to die."

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

Health, is simply alignment with your true nature. It is simply "being immortal". By being your true self, you can never die. By being true to yourself, you cannot suffer. Being as God created you, and not trying to be anything opposite or contradictory, there can be no sickness in you.

Using denial, through the proper use of denial, you should reject sickness and death. You should assert that only eternal life is true. You should assert that only eternal life is POSSIBLE, because it is all that God willed there to be. And in this recognition, you should recognize that sickness and death are simply NOT POSSIBLE.

When it seems like sickness is happening, that a little death is taking hold, something illusory must be happening. It can't be actually happening. It can seem to be happening. There can be symptoms and signs and pains and disfigurements and seeming malfunctions and lacks and deprivations and decay etc. But these CANNOT be possible.

"There is no pain in God and therefore none in me."

A son of God cannot be sick, otherwise God would have to be sick, because a son of God is only the inherited attributes of the father. If sickness is real, God is sick, and is the God of sickness. This is what the ego believes in.

Through the assertion of your immortal nature, you express love, which is life. You express power, which is life. You express miraculousness, which is life. "Miracles mean life and God is the giver of life." Miracles break all the laws of spacetime which say that sickness is possible and happening. Miracles override the laws of physics. Miracles heal and undo all sickness and death.

"T-10.III.3. To believe that a Son of God can be sick is to believe that part of God can suffer. 2 Love cannot suffer, because it cannot attack. 3 The remembrance of love therefore brings invulnerability with it. 4 Do not side with sickness in the presence of a Son of God even if he believes in it, for your acceptance of God in him acknowledges the Love of God he has forgotten. 5 Your recognition of him as part of God reminds him of the truth about himself, which he is denying. 6 Would you strengthen his denial of God and thus lose sight of yourself? 7 Or would you remind him of his wholeness and remember your Creator with him?"

"To believe a Son of God is sick is to worship the same idol he does. 2 God created love, not idolatry. 3 All forms of idolatry are caricatures of creation, taught by sick minds too divided to know that creation shares power and never usurps it. 4 Sickness is idolatry, because it is the belief that power can be taken from you. 5 Yet this is impossible, because you are part of God, Who is all power."

"You made the god of sickness, and by making him you made yourself able to hear him. 5 Yet you did not create him, because he is not the Will of the Father. 6 He is therefore not eternal and will be unmade for you the instant you signify your willingness to accept only the eternal."

"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. 5 For if you see the god of sickness anywhere, you have accepted him. 6 And if you accept him you will bow down and worship him, because he was made as God's replacement. 7 He is the belief that you can choose which god is real. 8 Although it is clear this has nothing to do with reality, it is equally clear that it has everything to do with reality as you perceive it."

"Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead." "You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."

"You can do anything I ask. 2 I have asked you to perform miracles, and have made it clear that miracles are natural, corrective, healing and universal. 3 There is nothing they cannot do, but they cannot be performed in the spirit of doubt or fear. 4 When you are afraid of anything, you are acknowledging its power to hurt you. 5 Remember that where your heart is, there is your treasure also. 6 You believe in what you value. 7 If you are afraid, you are valuing wrongly. 8 Your understanding will then inevitably value wrongly, and by endowing all thoughts with equal power will inevitably destroy peace. 9 That is why the Bible speaks of "the peace of God which passeth understanding." 10 This peace is totally incapable of being shaken by errors of any kind. 11 It denies the ability of anything not of God to affect you. 12 This is the proper use of denial. 13 It is not used to hide anything, but to correct error. 14 It brings all error into the light, and since error and darkness are the same, it corrects error automatically.

T-2.II.2. True denial is a powerful protective device. 2 You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you. 3 This kind of denial is not a concealment but a correction. 4 Your right mind depends on it. 5 Denial of error is a strong defense of truth, but denial of truth results in miscreation, the projections of the ego. 6 In the service of the right mind the denial of error frees the mind, and re-establishes the freedom of the will. 7 When the will is really free it cannot miscreate, because it recognizes only truth."

(And why the idea of only one son, one dreamer, one perceiver, no individuals, non-duality, etc are bullshit)

"Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time."

(This means God's will is not forced upon YOUR will, you CAN choose when to take the curriculum, or to delay it as long as you like, it's YOUR CHOICE. People have used this statement to justify a sense of "having no choice" and no freedom, as if the curriculum is handed down like a commandment from God. It should be obvious that your "freedom to elect" IS a use of FREE WILL. Even "the script is written" does not prove you don't have free will, because you have to CONSENT to it and are FREE to ignore it.)

"However, if he places his mind under tyranny, rather than Authority, he intrudes the submission/dominance onto free will himself. This produces the obvious contradiction inherent in any formulation that associates free will with imprisonment."

(Having free will does not mean you are an ego, but when you attempt to imprison your will, that's when you produce ego. In other words, by trying to have a will which wills differently to your natural will, you create the illusion of there being an alternative "real choice" but simultaneously puts your will into a prison of UNWILLINGNESS. Yet, you are FREE to be un-willing - that is a USE of will).

"It is not your will to be imprisoned, because your will is free. That is why the ego IS the denial of free will. It is never God Who coerces you, because He shares His Will WITH you."

(See, the ego is the attempt to repress your personal freedom, not to establish personal freedom, but it makes an illusion of personal freedom to cover it over. Also notice, VERY IMPORTANT, "It is never God who coerces you." - meaning that YOUR WILL is not enforced by God, because you are free and independent!)

"Free will MUST lead to freedom."

(This also means freedom from a tyrannical ruler. God is not a tyrannical ruler, he loves you, and has given you a gift of freedom to choose for yourself to willingly want to will like Him, in unison, co-creatively).

"Awaking unto Christ is following the laws of love OF YOUR FREE WILL, and out of quiet recognition of the truth in them. The attraction of light must draw you willingly, and willingness is signified by GIVING."

(Willingness is required in order to want to be with God. It is the EGO that lacks willingness and lacks freedom and lacks true independence. Ego means imprisonment and loss of self, not gaining of self. It is an illusion of gaining self while simultaneously losing it. It is also an illusion of willing independently while isolating your will. You can only be with God WILLINGLY, which means freely, which means no coercion and not being forced by God. Love does not enter where it is not welcome) .

"In reality, this is his ONLY choice, because his free will was made for his own joy in creating the perfect."

(YOUR free will was given you by God for YOUR own joy in creating the perfect.)

"You will never know that you are co-creator with God, until you learn that your brother is a co-creator with YOU."

(Ok so now not only do you have the position of co-creating with God, which means you COLLABORATE WILLINGLY AND FREELY AND INDEPENDENTLY, but also you co-create with your brother. Guess what happened when you co-created with your brother in an egoic way? You CO-DREAMED the dream!)

"It is this Thought by which the Father gave creation to the Son, establishing the Son as co-creator with Himself."

(God Himself has established you and others as co-creators with Him. That means it's not just God creating everything on His own, or that the son is just an effect of Him, or that the son is forced to do God's will like some kind of robot. We participate joyfully in sharing God's will, sharing the same interest, sharing the same desire to create.)

"And it is the AGREEMENT of their Thought that makes the Son a co-creator with the Mind Whose Thought created him."

(See, what makes you a co-creator and what makes you "do God's will" isn't that His will forces you, it's that you AGREE WITH HIS WILL FREELY. Doing God's will is VOLUNTARY.)

"A co-creator with the Father must have a Son. Yet must this Son have been created like Himself. A perfect Being, all-encompassing and all-encompassed, nothing to add and nothing taken FROM; not born of size nor weight nor time, nor held to limits or uncertainties of ANY kind."

(I think this is talking about YOUR creations. Note that it also says that the creation you create is a PERFECT BEING, and since it is LIKE YOU, you also are a perfect being.)

"Think not He wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him. He would but keep your will forever and forever limitless."

(This is clear. God's will DOES NOT BIND YOU. He created you as a WILLING, FREE-WILLED INDIVIDUAL, who is capable of desiring to and agreeing freely to will WITH God and in alignment with what God wants to create. He will keep YOUR WILL forever limitless, meaning that even Himself and His own will does not impose limits on your will.)

"Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it."

(See. Now, if God will not go against YOUR will AT ALL, ever, not even a tiny bit, this MUST MEAN, that you are effectively a SEPARATE INDIVIDUAL in heaven! It MUST also mean that your own will is FREE to choose WHETHER to will the same thing as God wills or not. Because it's only possible that you MIGHT do something God would oppose, by virtue of you being ABLE to will something ELSE. You can will to "try" to make something UNLIKE God's will would create, which is what produced the separation. And God does not OPPOSE your will to do that, although He offers help and guidance for you to return to Him and will like Him, freely. If God does not go against your will, YOU MUST HAVE INDIVIDUALITY. Note Jesus also says YOUR WILL is as free as HIS... meaning that THERE IS NOT JUST ONE SON, and you cannot oppose His will anymore than He can oppose yours, because you RESPECT each other's individual freedom!)

"Would God let this be real, if He did not will to be alone Himself?"

(God did not will to be alone! So He CREATED YOU! This is because nothing real can be real unless it is given, because it has to be given in order to have HAD it to give, so God automatically creates YOU!)

"They remind you that you are the co-creator of all things that live."

(Remembering that "there is no life outside of heaven", you have co-created WITH God, freely, all things that LIVE, because everything in heaven is alive, including your soul.)

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it. That is why God Himself created you. Divine Abstraction takes joy in application, and that is what creation MEANS."

(There you have it plainly and simply, God created "separate" distinct beings who have everything "individually", have their own free will, and WANT to share what they have in order to increase THEIR joy. Note is also says that nothing real can increase except through sharing - sharing means extension or creation, and also making sort of "room for" something ADDITIONAL, which is why God ADDED you to creation, increasing it, and He did this because it brings him joy to apply what He is - to create.)

"God does not need revelation returned to Him, which would clearly be impossible, but He DOES want revelation brought to others. This cannot be done with the actual revelation, because its content cannot be expressed, and it is intensely personal to the mind which receives it. But it can still be returned BY that mind through its attitudes to other minds which the knowledge from the revelation brings."

(Information about revelations helps us to see that God communicates directly to individual PERSONAL selves, he does not and cannot communicate directly with an EGO, so it must be to the SOUL, and yet is personal, because there are OTHERS. Many sons, many brothers, many souls, many minds. "God is praised whenever any mind learns to be wholly helpful.")

"The truly helpful are God’s miracle-workers, whom I direct until we are all united in the joy of the kingdom."

(God has MANY miracle workers!)

Clearly there is SIGNIFICANT PROOF here that God created many individuals who are independent and HAVE THEIR OWN FREE WILL.

This leads to having to re-evaluate many other beliefs and conclusions that people have FALSELY come to, such as that there is only one dreamer of the dream, that other people are literally you, that you are responsible for other people's choices, that your perception's correction makes it impossible to see other people's poor choices, that your acceptance of atonement undoes the entire dream for everyone, etc... these are ALL false conclusions based on the DENIAL OF FREE WILL and the DENIAL OF INDIVIDUALITY IN HEAVEN.

Think of the physical body as having a purpose. It has a purpose, because it has a USE, because it has a USER. It is being used FOR something, other than the body in and of itself - because the body is not an end in itself. It is a tool.

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

The ego - ie insanity in your mind - can use the body for a negative purpose. This purpose is attack and destruction. When you are using the body for this purpose, the mind uses the body like it's a weapon.

It actually transforms the form of the body into what looks like "a picture of crucifixion." This is a picture of body which has things like damage, sickness, disease, signs of death, cancers and deformities and so on. Basically various forms of DEATH, to try to GIVE DEATH to others.

These are USED by the ego mind to send a message to those who look upon the body. At the same time the ego is using the body to try to ATTACK others. The sickened states that it invents in the body are themselves attempts to reach out and "infect others" with suffering.

"The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

Not to induce guilt in anyone who might be doing this or experiencing the difficulties of sickness, but the course is indeed teaching that when the ego USES the body it uses it as a weapon to try to inflict suffering on others.

Its primary method is to put sickness "symptoms" into the body so that the body itself, physically, becomes a way to "spread death" to others. In particularly virile forms the body becomes contagious and capable of causing to others what seems to have happened to itself, thus extending sickness and death.

When the body is sick, it also sends a kind of visual physical message to those who witness it, that says "look what you did to me." It induces guilt, it accuses of sin, it projects an egoic message of the proof of sin, and we hold this suffering up for others to see so that they will be accused of causing it. And thus by our own desire to make our own body sick, we're willing to suffer if it means others are accused of sinning against God and can take on the guilt and the punishment.

In effect, a sick mind uses the body to make the body sick so that the body can make others sick. But the mind can also be healed of its sickness and its attempts to attack or to make guilty. And then the mind is more healed and now the mind is still USING the body but it is now using it for a higher purpose.

A healed mind USES the body not as a weapon or to try to project guilt or to scapegoat or to prove others to be the sinful cause of its symptoms. Instead a healed mind sends healing through the body. This healing love literally heals the body and removes from it the signs and symbols of attack and death.

As the body is healed, it now changes its symbolic message, and instead of now showing a picture of crucifixion to another it instead shows a symbolic image of something "unharmed", something innocent and free from attack. Such a healed healthy body sends a broadcast, visually, symbolically, that other people have not done anything to it, and therefore they cannot have sinned. This "physical message", a literal physical embodiment of the mind's belief in wholeness, exonerates those who look upon it, and in turn CAUSES their minds and bodies to be also healed.

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

In effect, a sick body provides a powerful TEMPTATION to others to believe that they are guilty because of its suffering. While a healed body provides a powerful LIBERATION to others to believe that they are NOT guilty because the body is obviously unharmed.

What actually happens is an interesting repurposing of things. Given that a person with an ego will believe the body is real, and give a great amount of weight to the FORM that the body takes, they will tend to derive MEANING from the form of the body. As such we might say, because the body has the shape of a cancerous growth, "that means" there has been an attack and a sickness.

And by thus deriving meaning from the body based on its appearance, the mind of the viewer BELIEVES and gives POWER TO that body, making it real to them. And now it cannot escape being at the EFFECT of that body. The unhealed mind of the viewer now sees that body as confirming their guilt, providing their sinfulness, suggesting they must have attacked it, and they basically AGREE with its condition. Entering into false empathy, they cannot help but feel personally responsible - guilty - that the other "real body" is sick. And this cannot be escaped while the person believes bodies are real.

The result of this is that those with egos view sick bodies as offensive and accusatory and harmful and not to be trusted and as attacking and threatening them. I couldn't find the exact quote wording but the course does say the ego hates sick bodies and feels threatened by them.

"That is really why you recoil from the demands of the dependent, and from the sight of a broken body. Your ego is threatened, and blocks your natural impulse to help, placing you under the strain of divided will."

What then happens when your mind is more healed, and thus removes the sickness from the body, is that you TAKE ADVANTAGE of the fact that other people are making your body real still. They still have an ego, their minds are still sick, they still need healing.

When they look upon your body with the same mentality of "making it real", and believing that its FORM defines MEANING, it looks there and sees no evidence of attack, no suffering, no pain, no proof of sin. Because your mind has truly forgiven and has PROVED forgiveness by healing the body of any side effects.

When a sick mind looks upon a healed body, the sick mind still believes the body is real and that its form is meaningful, and thus is "giving its power away" to that body to define FOR IT what is true. When you thus show an egoic mind a HEALED BODY, it taps into THEIR belief that they've given power to your body, THEIR belief that your body defines the truth, and because your body is depicting a healed FORM, they now automatically derive a MEANING from its form that "there's nothing wrong with it."

Because of their own giving away of their own power to your body, they can't help now but be AFFECTED BY your healed body, having given it power over them. And thus your healed body now taps into this dynamic in their mind and gives them the message "I have the power to inform you that you have not sinned."

And by this kind of indirect "back door" in a way, a re-purposing of their belief that your body DEFINES their guilt or innocence, your healed body TEACHES THEM, through its repurposed use of symbolic FORM, that they must be innocent because there is no sign of suffering. That they cannot have done anything. The impact of this teaching has massive amounts of POWER to educate them that, because your body is healed, THEY ARE INNOCENT.

And thus by witnessing that their nightmare has turned into a happy dream, your body has turned into a herald of harmlessness, their mind is now ACCEPTING the message - on their own terms - that they must be innocent. And thus, indirectly, their mind will now allow your body to exonerate them and this (by their own causation) causes them to believe they are innocent.

Thus does a healed body become a messenger to the sick, to tell them that they are not sick, because there is no evidence of them having caused sickness. It shows them they are not guilty, and uses their belief in your body's "power" to tell them what's true, to correct their view of themselves. So they think, I cannot have done anything because your body is in great condition and it is literally inspiring me to believe in life and health and wholeness.

As such their mind now accepts healing, becomes itself more whole, is lifted up, resurrected, and it in turn facilitates the side-effect that it also heals their own body. Thus the miracle of healing which was given to YOUR mind to heal YOUR body, extends and transfers to the minds of OTHERS as they witness your miracle. And thus is your brother HEALED ALONG WITH YOU. And now HIS BODY HEALS AS WELL!

"And as you let yourself be healed, you see all those around you, or who cross your mind, or whom you touch, or those who seem to have no contact with you, healed along with you."

"Whoever says, "There IS no gap between my mind and yours," has kept GOD's promise, NOT his tiny oath to be forever faithful unto death. And by his healing IS his brother healed."

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

"The ego is nothing more than a PART of your belief about yourselves. Your other life has continued without interruption, and has been and always will be totally unaffected by your attempts to dissociate (separate)."

"Ego" is just a label, for what seems to happen within a PART of your own mind, when that part of your mind BELIEVES in separation. It is a label for the mind's insanity, its confusion, its attempt to be separate.

This "ego" is nothing more than a "lack of light", or the seeming darkness that appears to be there when light is lacking. But the darkness itself is not the PRESENCE of a darkness, it is merely the ABSENCE of a light.

Like a shadow, the shadow only forms when there is a limitation on the light, ie a blockage. When something is denying the light, it produces a seeming area of darkness. You would be DECEIVED to believe that this darkness itself was the PRESENCE of something, as if to say that "darkness can hide the light", or that darkness has a POWER to CAUSE light to go away.

"Miracles are associated with fear only because of the fallacy that darkness can hide."

The idea that the darkness has "come alive", has a mind or will of its own, has an evil nature, has evil intentions, is an enemy, is working against you on its own, etc, can only be believed by a confused mind. This is a "temptation" to be deceived.

To believe that the appearance of darkness means the PRESENCE of a "real evil", is delusional. It would be like saying that the darkness of night has caused the sun to go away.

In truth, the darkness COMPLETELY DEPENDS on the sustained blockage of the light. It depends on light's seeming absence. If the light were to shine, the absence of light would end, and whatever seemed to be "in" or "as" the darkness would literally disappear instantly into nothing. Light ALWAYS dispels darkness.

"Light dispels darkness automatically, by definition."

When mind is confused, insane, split, at war with itself, believing in separation, is twisted, believes that true things are false and false things are true, it develops a system of thought which seems backwards or "evil". It seems opposite to God and to goodness. It seems mad and selfish and special and exclusive, a mindset of war and destruction and death.

When this part of your mind believes wrongly, it somewhat hallucinates that the darkness is there. It invests the darkness with belief. It tries to give the darkness the properties of God, such as permanence, life, existence, power, will, etc. This is an attempt to believe that darkness or evil "really exists".

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects."

This illusion of darkness, which is NOT anything because it is a LACK OF anything, seems to a deluded mind to have its own existence. It seems to come alive, to have a voice, to have power, to have evil intentions of death. This is what we call the "ego". It is an illusion of a separate self, some kind of alien will or separate mind that seems to have its own power.

But at no time does this illusion of an ego or a "real darkness" ever become anything more than the absence of light. It never stops being a mere shadow on a wall, a temporary appearance of something missing. It is not a self, it is the LACK of self. It is not a real entity, it is the ABSENCE OF a real entity. It is like an empty dark hole.

The key thing is that this seeming darkness only persists so long as the MIND is believing in separation. The darkness completely depends on the continuation of this belief. The mind is the seat of all power. The mind is USING its power to PRETEND to be powerless, in which it SEEMS that this "dark self" has power over it. But in truth the powerful mind is animating this dark self, using this dark self, making this dark self act out like a puppet on a string.

This taps into the secret of salvation - that you are doing this all to yourself. The ego is not doing anything on its own. There is merely a part of your mind which YOU - as your mind - are pitting AGAINST the rest of you. You are at war with yourself. You are the mind that is "being egoic". You have an attitude problem. You have a faulty belief. That part of your mind which is believing wrongly seems to be "ego-like". It's trying to be evil. It's a part of YOU that you are trying to convert into the "devil."

In absolute truth, however, this egotism is nothing but an hallucination, this darkness is nothing but a lack of anything, its world and its body are nothing but illusions of nothingness pretending to be something, and there is no real separation anywhere. In absolute truth, there is no such thing as a real ego, a real devil, a real evil, and nor is the body or the world real. This is all part of the dream of separation, in which YOUR MIND is trying to hide from the light.

We should then not think of the ego as a separate entity, or the presence of a real evil, or some enemy with a will of its own to be fought and overcome. You do not do "battle with" the devil. There is no real war going on here beyond your BELIEF. Literally a part of your mind is "doing it all to itself." A part of your mind is trying to be evil. It is mistaken, but you DO have to own up to it.

You, as the soul, or the utilizer of the whole of mind, must find a way to reintegrate ALL of your mind into one whole. This INCLUDES the part of mind that is being ego. It does not include "the ego" itself, because that's just a description of a temporary "bad attitude" that part of mind is having. When that SAME mind receives correction from the Holy Spirit for its bad attitude, that same mind becomes holy again and reunites with the rest.

In truth then we have to at least temporarily own up to being the one who is trying to be separate. That ego in us - that's just a part of our own mind which is not healed yet. It's filled with ambitions that are twisted and evil-like. It needs significant correction and purification. That part of mind is sick and needs to be resurrected. Or rather, needs to awaken again to the awareness of the light. The light will dispel its hallucinations of darkness, and with it "the ego" - the lack of anything - will vanish completely.

The ego therefore has no power or will of its own to cause itself to exist, to maintain its existence, to fight against reality, or to stop "you" from undoing it. Literally there IS NO SEPARATE EGO. It's just part of YOU. Part of your mind that has gone astray.

When you own up to this, you RECLAIM ALL POWER from it, and no longer GIVE it power over you. How can it have power over you at all when it was really YOU having power over yourself all along? All you were ever really doing was using this puppet to have power OVER YOURSELF. You played BOTH victim AND victimizer. All the while believing you were being victimized by something which "is not me doing it."

When you finally see that ego is nothing but YOUR own self attack, and that you are the one doing all of the attacking, where is an enemy then? When you have owned up entirely to being the one who is being the devil/ego, your mind can now choose again, decide better, embrace the true self, and undo the separateness of the split. Mind reintegrates with mind, you reclaim ALL the power as your own, and never again will you victimize yourself with this fantasy of an enemy.

Where is the ego when the light has come? Nowhere. What was the ego? It was just an illusion of nothing seeming to be something. What was it made of? The lack of anything real. What did it seem to be? The darkness come alive. What was it really? The absence of the light. Where is it now that there is light? Nowhere. What is the ego? Nothing at all. It never really existed.

"The ego depends SOLELY on your willingness to tolerate it. But if you are willing to look upon your grandeur, you CANNOT despair, and therefore you CANNOT want the ego."

"Accept atonement with an open mind which cherishes no lingering belief that you have made a devil of God's Son."

"By steadily and consistently canceling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT."

"This is the one fact which MEANS that the ego does not exist, and which therefore makes it profoundly afraid."

"Where there was darkness now we see the light. What was the ego? What the darkness was. Where was the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: Its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God's Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the ego? Who has need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?"

"My purpose, then, IS to overcome the world. I do not attack it, but my light must dispel it because of WHAT IT IS. Light does not ATTACK darkness, but it DOES shine it away."

"For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and can never be. Without guilt the ego HAS no life, and God's Son IS without guilt."

It seems that Jesus is telling us in the course that all of our regular thoughts are the sole cause of all our suffering. Our faulty THOUGHTS are the problem. Just the mere act of HAVING a thought that is fearful or guilty or attacking produces an upsetting and endangered perception, which we complain about but continue to think of. Having the thought AT ALL is the problem. And there are much higher thoughts of love and peace and invulnerability that we could be having instead.

"My thoughts do not mean anything."

"My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world."

"I am affected only by my thoughts."

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

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

"I see everything upside-down, and my thoughts are the opposite of truth. I see the world as a prison for God's Son."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you."

"The idea for today contains the only way out of fear that will succeed. Nothing else will work; everything else is meaningless. But this way cannot fail. Every thought you have makes up some segment of the world you see. It is with your thoughts, then, that we must work, if your perception of the world is to be changed."

"What but your thoughts of misery and death obscure the perfect happiness and the Eternal Life your Father wills for you?" "Only YOUR thoughts have been impossible."

-- -- -- --

However, Jesus also distinguishes that we can have true/real thoughts instead of false/unreal thoughts. And it is our false/unreal thoughts that are a problem. The problem is, we spend almost our entire time having false/unreal thoughts. And our thoughts produce 'images' or interpretations which affect or define what we see.

"As a man thinketh, so does he perceive."

"My thoughts cannot be neither true nor false. They must be one or the other. What I see shows me which they are."

"The thoughts which the mind of God's Son projects, HAVE all the power that he gives them. The thoughts he shares with God are BEYOND his belief, but those HE made ARE his beliefs. And it is THESE, and NOT the truth, that he has chosen to defend and love."

"As my thoughts of separation call to the separation thoughts of others, so my real thoughts awaken the real thoughts in them."

"Whatever I see reflects my thoughts. It is my thoughts which tell me where I am and what I am."

"The images I see reflect my thoughts."

"Everything you see is the result of your thoughts. There is no exception to this fact."

"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all. It merely represents your thoughts. And it will change entirely as you elect to change your mind"

"Your thoughts of death envelop it in fear, while in your kind forgiveness does it live."

"But there is indeed a point in changing your thoughts about the world. Here you are changing the cause. The effects will change automatically."

"Nothing except your thoughts can attack you. Nothing except your thoughts can make you think you are vulnerable. And nothing except your thoughts can prove to you this is not so."

"Today's idea introduces the concept that your thoughts determine the world you see."

"Until this shift has been accomplished, you can not perceive that it is but your thoughts which bring you fear, and your deliverance depends on you."

"I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts."

-- -- -- --

Jesus goes on to tell us that if we will opt to think with and like God, sharing the Holy Spirit's thoughts, then we will see differently and will stop hurting ourselves.

"Father, I give You all my thoughts today. I would have none of mine. In place of them give me Your own. I give You all my acts as well, that I may do Your Will instead of seeking goals which cannot be obtained, and wasting time in vain imaginings."

"Your Thoughts can only bring me happiness. If ever I am sad or hurt or ill, I have forgotten what You think, and put my little, meaningless ideas in place of where Your Thoughts belong, and where They are."

"But let today's idea find a place among your thoughts, and you have risen far above the world and all the worldly thoughts that hold it prisoner."

"You think with the Mind of God. Therefore you share your thoughts with Him, as He shares His with you. They are the same thoughts, because they are thought by the same Mind."

"Father, my mind is open to Your Thoughts, and closed today to every thought but Yours."

"We accept Your Thoughts as ours, and our will is One with Yours eternally."

"Peace to my mind. Let all my thoughts be still."

"In quiet would I look upon the world, which but reflects Your Thoughts and mine as well."

"Place, then, your future in the hands of God. For thus you call the memory of Him to come again, replacing all your thoughts of sin and evil with the truth of love."

"If you would remember your Father, let the Holy Spirit order your thoughts, and give only the answer with which He answers you."

"Your ministry begins as all your thoughts are purified."

"Give Him your thoughts, and He will give them back as miracles which joyously proclaim the wholeness and the happiness God wills His Son as proof of His eternal Love."

"Exclude the outer world, and let your thoughts fly to the peace within. They know the way. For honest thoughts, untainted by the dream of worldly things outside yourself, become the holy messengers of God Himself."

"The higher mind thinks according to the laws which the Soul obeys, and therefore honors only the laws of God."

"And your thoughts will be as free as God's."

-- -- --

In order for us to atone to our real/true thoughts with God, we need to perform some degree of mind-training, mind-watching, and careful articulation of the mind's abilities. It isn't enough for us to just go about our daily business, mind-wandering, using thought to think anything and everything, and consequentially suffering from every single ego thought that crosses our minds. We have to learn to be carful with how and what we think. Especially if we want to be performing miracles which require a careful focus and intent.

"It is certainly much more useful to remind you that you do not guard your thoughts at all carefully, except for a relatively small part of the day, and somewhat inconsistently even then."

"As you sit and quietly watch your thoughts"

"Watch your minds for the temptations of the ego, and do not be deceived by it. KNOW it offers you nothing."

"Watch your minds for the scraps of meanness"

"You persist in believing that when you do not consciously watch your mind, it is unmindful."

"It is a particularly difficult form for the undisciplined mind because it represents a major goal of mind training."

"It is difficult at this point not to allow your mind to wander if it undertakes extended attempts. You have surely realized this by now. You have seen the extent of your lack of mental discipline, and of your need for mind training. It is necessary that you be aware of this, for it is indeed a hindrance to your advance."

"It is a particularly difficult form for the undisciplined mind because it represents a major goal of mind training. It embodies precisely what the untrained mind lacks. Yet the training must be accomplished if you are to see."

"It is difficult for the untrained mind to believe that what seems to be pictured before it is not there. This idea can be quite disturbing, and may meet with active resistance in any number of forms."

"An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of these exercises to train the mind to think along the lines which the course sets forth."

"The purpose of the exercises for today is to begin to train your mind to recognize when it is not really thinking at all. While thoughtless "ideas" preoccupy your mind, the truth is blocked. Recognizing that your mind has been merely blank, rather than believing that it is filled with real ideas, is the first step to opening the way to vision."

"THIS IS WHY VIGILANCE IS ESSENTIAL. Doubts ABOUT being MUST not enter your mind, or you CANNOT know what you are with certainty."

"Vigilance is not necessary for truth, but it IS necessary AGAINST ILLUSION."

"Your vigilance is the sign that you WANT Him to guide you. Vigilance DOES require effort, but only to teach you that effort ITSELF is unnecessary."

"Consider how much vigilance you have been willing to exert to protect your ego, and how little you have been willing to exert to protect your higher mind."

"By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches you that ALL POWER IS YOURS. Its application does not matter. It is ALWAYS maximal. Your vigilance does NOT establish it as yours, but it DOES enable you to use it ALWAYS and in ALL WAYS."

"Attack thoughts cannot enter such a mind, because it has been given to the Source of Love, and fear can never enter in a mind which has attached itself to Love. It rests in God, and who can be afraid who lives in Innocence and only loves?"

"Miracle-working entails a full realization of the power of thought, and real avoidance of miscreation. Otherwise, the miracle will be necessary to set the mind ITSELF straight"

"Miracles are thought-creations. Thought can create lower-order or higher-order realities. This is the basic distinction between intellectualization and thinking. One creates the physical, and the other the spiritual, and we believe in what we create."