I looked upon a woman who seemed to be sick. She seemed to have problems. In my mind I observed her problems and regarded them as "being there". I thought that she was her sick body. I started to imagine what was becoming of her and what it might lead to.

Jesus stepped in. He corrected me. "Do not condemn her."

Although it seemed like I wasn't doing anything at all, that I was "just observing" passively what she was apparently choosing for herself, Jesus clearly saw otherwise.

I realized then that if *I* choose to believe in what I am seeing and BELIEVE that the person actually is the sickness that they are trying to portray themselves as, I am falling into false empathy and condemnation and am IMPRISONING THEM further. I am holding the person in prison by AGREEING WITH THEM as to their apparent condition, because their condition is once removed from their REALITY as an invulnerable immortal spirit.

I have to realize, the person IS NOT their body. Bodies are separation devices.

From this came an exploration of ideas and insights which blew my mind.

I asked of Jesus, is it true then that we are supposed to overlook absolutely ALL FORMS and not be blinded by them and not BELIEVE ANYTHING that we see suggested by forms, believing only in total perfection and divinity of all people at all times? Is it then that this entire world was set up to blind us so that if we bought into it, we would be failing to overcome the separation ourselves, and that therefore we MUST learn to overlook ALL of it - to not see people as bodies at all - in order to set ourselves free from this TRAP?

Jesus said "yes".

And so, as it turns out, we quite literally have to learn to SEE, by learning to STOP seeing/believing the blinding illusions presented by form. Physical form is a LIE. It is a huge distraction. It affirms things which are not true in God's reality. When a person shows up appearing to be sick, in body, if we believe it is "how they are", we have fallen for the trap. We have bought into the lie that "they" are the body and that "they as the body" are sick. And that therefore this is reality.

As soon as we do that "passive observing" of other's plight, we are condemning them, judging them, attacking them, reinforcing their sickness, accusing them of sin, believing in separation, and are also attacking ourselves. We then will experience that we are attacked BY and WITHIN this perceptual state. This is why "sight of sickness" horrifies.

It is very challenging, it seems, to not believe that people are bodies at all. To recognize that the only truth about them is NOT what their body says. That people are actually spirits TRAPPED in bodies and the body is NOT the person. The body covers up the person. It is a fictional wall of attack, an obstacle to peace, designed to present an illusion that we are NOT ALIKE, due to the appearance of form. "Nothing so blinding as sight of form" literally applies to ALL FORMS including bodies - we are blinded by the physical and must learn to completely look past it to the brother who is hidden by its deception.

That means also recognizing, that no matter what form seems to present to our eyes - be it sickness or death - we are to NOT BELIEVE IT. And in this not believing the lie, we will stop EMPOWERING IT, and therefore will recognize its nothingness, and thus gain POWER OVER IT to heal and dispel any illusion through miracle working. We cannot work a miracle if we are buying into the lies. We are just as much in need to healing when we believe the sickness is real. This doesn't mean to pretend that sickness in the body is not present or to not bother healing it... it just means to RECOGNIZE what it is (an illusion) and to then demonstrate that it CAN be changed, to prove it was an illusion.

This is pretty radical. It's huge. It means to be miracle workers and truly accept atonement we HAVE TO learn to stop believing forms, stop believing in the physical, stop seeing people as bodies, stop holding their bodies against them as a form of injustice, stop identifying WITH our own body or identifying others AS their own bodies. That sick person IS NOT THEIR BODY. "I am not a body I am free" is the eventual culmination of that. It's no small statement, it is absolute and requires TOTAL FORGIVENESS.

Forgiveness overlooks form. It overlooks sin and death. It is the basis of miracles. It overlooks bodies. It allows the mind to extend naturally and be healed and capable of healing. When we join mind-to-mind there is healing, and the body's condition MUST follow suit because the mind is responsible for causing the body's conditions, be it happy ones or hurtful ones.

If you were witness to a miracle happening, you would probably be simultaneously in awe, perhaps frightened, stunned, and it would also defy a whole bunch of 'laws' that you believe are true.

If it seems that it can't be possible that someone's broken leg is suddenly healed, there is just "no way" that you can accept that this is possible, and yet it happens in front of your face, or even to your own body, this is going to produce a whole bunch of reactions.

One of the things that witnessing a miracle will do is it will DEMONSTRATE to your mind, factually and experientially, that something has just happened which does not FIT into your belief system or your idea of reality. Something just occurred which defies all of the laws that you thought were real. That alone will EDUCATE you, by demonstration and experience, that the laws you thought were true cannot be.

It will also cause your mind to become momentarily aware of a state of being which transcends form. "Miracles are temporary shifts into invisibility, that is why they heal" - ACIM.

"Principle 16 - Miracles are teaching devices" - ACIM

If one moment your hand is burnt, and then in the next moment your hand is suddenly not burnt, this miracle will defy and transcend all physical laws. Your mind will not be able to process this at the ego level. It will be bypassed. Your mind will become aware even if just briefly, that bodies can't be real, or at least that physical form can't be 'stuck' being in a certain state, and this will give you access to TRUTH experientially. This will undermine possibly everything you believe in, but you won't be able to deny it. (The attempt to then DENY this 'attack by truth' will make you sick. ;-)

This is similarly what happened when Jesus went through the crucifixion. He did it to demonstrate that the body is not real and death is not real. When one moment the body seems to be being tortured and killed, and then seems to die, and then a few days later shows up again as though nothing happened... it's not just a matter of oh look, there's Jesus.. your mind instead is going to have an instantaneous shift in awareness.

If Jesus is showing you to your face, that bodies can be switched on and off at will, one moment being dead and the next moment being perfectly alive again, you aren't going to initially be able to comprehend HOW, and just the mere fact of you experiencing this will SHOW YOU and make you aware that the body CAN'T be real - that death CAN'T be real, because here is the PROOF of that staring you in the face.

This has a profound healing effect on the mind and CAUSES awakening.

This is why miracles are also teaching devices because they demonstrate the truth and bypass all of the ego's laws and give examples of, experiences of, the truth in action. They educate by example that the physical laws CANNOT be true. And so they have the potential to instantly awaken and to instantly destroy illusions and false beliefs.

If Jesus showed up next to you right now, and then told you to shoot him dead, and you did it, and then he got up and there was no bullet hole and he was perfectly fine, it would blow your mind. Your mind would HAVE to expand in order to accommodate the evidence. It would show you perhaps for the first time in your life a demonstration of how bodies are not real. And you would've been always assuming that bodies are fixed and objective and constant and all the other illusions about them. And now suddenly Jesus shows you that they are nothing but images which can be flipped into any state at a moment's notice... that totally blows your entire world view about what bodies are. It's highly educational.

That's why Jesus uses miracles for TEACHING, because they demonstrate the truth and teach by experiential example, which defies the ego's thought system and baffles onlookers, causing them to be forced into an awakening.

This is also why many Course students DO NOT REALLY BELIEVE IN MIRACLES, because it is such a world-defying, body-defying, mind-warping, totally transcendent experience that the ego cannot conceive of it, does not support it, doesn't believe in it, can't be open to it, and doesn't understand it. So there is a LOT of resistance against the idea that Jesus LITERALLY is teaching us to perform such miracles.

Sometimes when we're trying to help others, we are taking away their power.

It is more important to help the person become self-empowered, to learn that they can do what they seemed to need help with, even if its a struggle.

It can seem very caring and supportive to be helpful. It can seem like your heart is in the right place and that you're being loving. It can seem like you'd want to bend over backwards to do whatever you can for someone.

But when you do this, you take away their power, strip them of their independence, and don't give them breathing room to learn to harness their own strength.

By trying to help, you end up making the person helpless. By trying to save, you end up condemning the person to a state of neediness and weakness. By trying to be the hero, you end up squashing the very person you were supposedly rescuing. And by trying to fix them, you break them more.

It's okay to help sometimes when it clearly is needed. And I don't mean it to sound like you have to be cold-hearted and ruthless and completely refuse to do anything for anyone. It's just that, it's very easy to erode someone's sense of self empowerment.

The side effect of this also is that, by supposedly helping them, which is in fact a form of disabling them, you take away their power and make them dependent on you. You will resent this dependence even though part of you keeps fostering it.

You will become responsible for their life, and see them as being irresponsible, which will make you angry. But you'll use this to justify being even more helpful. And now that the person is totally dependent on you, you'll find yourself having to do everything for them, leaving no time for yourself.

It's like the old adage that you don't take water to Africa, you give them tools to harvest the water themselves.

When you come swooping in to save people, you are being a hero and you have a "savior complex". It can seem very nice to your ego, to your persona, to be a savior to others. But this is not really salvation. It seems like you are being selfless, but in fact you are being selfish, because underneath the exterior of helpfulness is the ego's ambition to help so much that the other person ends up unable to do anything themselves. And it is therefore an attack.

Salvation would recognize the person has no real needs, that they merely need to become aware of their dependence on God, and that focusing on their weaknesses and helplessness fails to overlook it to the true strength within. And that means not only that you are failing to forgive, you are also in judgement. And not only are you in judgement against them, you are in judgement against yourself.

If you are being the heroic helpful savior fixer, the unlimited giver, the people-pleasing guilt-ridden solution to everyone's problems, you're really interacting with yourself and trying to save yourself, by not saving yourself. It's a cover-up job for real salvation. It's your way of looking like you're coming from love when in fact you're coming from "special love" - a dependency and a state of ego reinforcement.

You'll just find yourself making people depend on you more, allowing them to use you, causing them to get comfortable with not being responsible for their own choices, which ultimately makes you guilty. And before you know it, the person you were trying to bend over backwards to help turns into a leech that expects you to cater to their every whim. This is because you're not learning the lesson.

You need to learn to let go, stop fixing, stop focusing on neediness, and instead focus on providing a true extension of love, an empowering sense of love, which produces corrective miracles that actually are truly helpful. It is helpful to reinforce the truth about a person, that they are Christ, that they are powerful, that they are not victims, that they are responsible for their existence, and that really they have no real needs.

"I am here only to be truly helpful.

I am here to represent Him Who sent me.

I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do,

because He Who sent me will direct me.

I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing He goes there with me.

I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal." - ACIM

Identity is completely tied to how much awareness you have.

Everyone believes that "all of their self" is defined by what they are aware of.

When you look within, whatever you are aware of as being within yourself, you will regard that as all of you. If you do not see yourself causing or choosing things to happen, you will believe you did not do it.

It doesn't matter how much awareness you have, either.

You could have a tiny amount of awareness, a very limited sense of consciousness, and would still regard whatever you are aware of as all of yourself.

But what happens when you take away some blocks to awareness and you become aware of some part of you that you didn't even know was there.

Your sense of self expands.

Who and what you are, is tied to, what you are aware of.

As blocks to awareness are removed, your identity changes. Your sense of who and what you are transitions from an isolated, limited, small little being, to a grand, expansive, unlimited and immortal being of light.

It's kind of like russian dolls. If you were inside the smallest russian doll in the middle of the stack, you would not be aware of much. As each layer is removed from the inside out, your sense of "what is there" or what is present, increases. Eventually all limitations are removed.

Your self does not actually expand, as such. Rather, you are already unlimited and infinite and omnipresent, because you are Created by God to be so.

Rather, you have placed severe limiting devices on your awareness and it has seemed to "narrow down" your sense of what you encompass. This is the idea of "littleness". You have tried to make yourself very small and limited. And you did this by adding blocks to awareness, so that you would not be aware of all that there is to you.

So as you lift away these artificial blocks, you find yourself (literally). You find more of yourself. More of what there is to you. More power, more choice, more freedom, more will, more responsibility, more causality, more love. Your identity increases. "You" seem to expand because your notion of self is having its limits removed.

As limitations are removed, you may even experience this as though your identity is being threatened and that you are dying.

You may have experienced this for example when you make a big life change and move to live in a new location or city. When many things change, aspects of you which had formed your identity, based on limitations, are shaken up in a big way. You can start to feel overwhelmed by all the new stimuli, behaviors and habits and patterns which are no longer supported start to break down, and you can start to experience a quite strong sense that you are falling apart and "dying".

This is really that the old sense of who you were, your limited self, is being broken down and the limitations themselves are being recognized for what they are. Rather than thought of as defining you, you're learning from a larger perspective that these things are not really a part of your identity. And so they seem to have to be let go, which the ego - who wants to cling to these as "identity", experiences as loss or death. I have experienced this a few times when we moved to a new city and I did not know why I felt like everything was falling apart.

Nevertheless, this gives way to an actual increase in identity, a removal of limitations, a freeing-up of borders and boundaries, and a sense of rising up to a higher level. You are becoming more of yourself and are opening up to awareness of discovering things about yourself that you did not even know were there. Choices and powers that you have that were hidden. Things you have the freedom and power to cause which you forgot you even had.

Eventually when you remove all blocks to awareness your unlimited underlying identity will be revealed. There is really no limit to who and what you are, buried beneath these blocks. So when you finally realize that you literally are unlimited, your identity now shifts away from littleness to the most magnificent expansive beingness. Your true identity as God's Son.

The following passage from "if I defend myself I am attacked", speaks of "confusing" or merging mind and body, a level confusion, or a mis-identification of what you are. Seeing what’s in the mind as if it’s in the body, projected onto the body makes the body sick. ("Sickness is anger taken out upon the body." "All sickness comes from confusing the levels.")

Merging mind and body as if one thing results in sickness because it depicts mind as at the effect of the body/world. Believing that you, as mind, are the body, results in sickness. The body is an illusion, mind is real. Mind is cause, body is effect.

Confusing mind with body puts you at the effect of the body, believing the body is now causal. This is the belief in magic, that the effect is causing you, because of your confusion about which is which. Not believing you are the body heals the body. Not projecting mind stuff onto the body heals the body. The body is nothing and causes nothing. Believing otherwise is mental illness.

"The body needs NO healing. But the mind that thinks it IS a body is sick indeed! And it is here that Christ sets forth the remedy. His PURPOSE folds the body in His light, and fills it with the holiness that shines from HIM. And nothing that the body says or does but makes HIM manifest."

Basically, the mind is distinct from the body. If the mind is having an ego spaz, the mind is sick, and it will spaz all over the body, affecting the body negatively. It will project its spaz onto the body and see the spaz as if its in the body, confusing itself with the body due to level confusion/perception reversal.

The mind’s power/force will then distort the body to try to make it take on the shape/form of the mental illness. This skews the body, warps it, disfigures it, producing symptoms of distress. The body is practically an ‘innocent victim’ in this because it HAS NO WILL of its own and is completely passive to the raging mind’s self harm. Mind is just shitting all over it, destroying it senselessly. It is clearly therefore the mind that needs to be healed.

When the mind is healed and healthy it does not project shit onto the body or distort it or mangle it. It doesn’t try to make the body act out the "plans" derived from insane perceptions, and does not impose its tyrrany onto the body form. The body automatically is freed from these mental distortions and is instead healed by the mind. "The mind, being sane, HEALS THE BODY."!

"The "self " that needs protection is not real. The body, valueless and hardly worth the least defence, NEED MERELY BE PERCEIVED AS QUITE APART FROM YOU, and it becomes a **healthy**, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?"

"Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For you have seen in it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. YOU WILL NOT SEE THE MIND AS SEPARATE FROM BODILY CONDITIONS. And you will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from ***the conception of the mind as limited and fragile***, and apart from other minds and separate from its Source."

"These are the thoughts in need of healing, and **the body will respond with health** when they have been corrected and replaced with truth. This is the body's only real defence. Yet is this where you look for its defence? You offer it protection of a kind from which it gains no benefit at all, but merely adds to your distress of mind. You do not heal, but merely take away the hope of healing, for you fail to see where hope must lie if it be meaningful."

"Enslavement of the body to the plans the unhealed mind sets up to save itself must make the body sick. It is not free to be a means of helping in a plan which far exceeds its own protection, and which needs its service for a little while. In this capacity **is health assured**. For everything the mind employs for this will function flawlessly, and with the strength that has been given it and **cannot fail*

Someone was accusing me of things I believed I didn't really do. They seemed to be just hell-bent on projecting their blame somewhere. It seemed uncalled for, and that I was unfairly treated.

My reaction to this was that I became angry. I felt that I was justified in being angry because it seemed that what the person was claiming was not true. And yet, if it was not true, why was I taking it seriously at all and having a reaction?

I believed I was innocent. I believed I was not guilty of what I was being accused of. They were literally claiming that I had done things which I had literally not done, physically. It seemed so obvious that I did not do these things that this "proved" my innocence. I was using physical evidence of "the world" as proof of what was true, to prove that I was innocent.

I also believed that, therefore, this person was just wrong and doing something to me. It seemed unfair and unwelcome and as though it was causing upset in me.

Each time they accused me of this, I felt more and more angry and annoyed. It seemed like if they would keep doing this, I couldn't see a way to become anything other than more and more upset.

But then I started to look at what was happening in my mind and how I was perceiving this. A key fact came to mind, where I remembered that, at least in theory, I could not be upset about something unless I believed it myself.

Whenever someone is reacting to an attack, making it real, taking it seriously, and exclaiming that it is not true, usually it means the person actually does believe it is true on some deeper level. There is denial involved, but here's the problem.

In our state of guilt, we used denial to make our guilt go unconscious. It was pushed out of conscious awareness. We used a mask of fake innocence in order to deny that we are guilty. This fake innocence is something that we actually believe is the truth about us. It completely covers up the guilt makes it look like, even to ourselves, that there is no evidence of being guilty. And then because the guilt is actually unconscious, we are not even AWARE that it is there, so we actually believe that we really are innocent. Imagine believing you are innocent when in fact you are guilty!

So when someone comes along and accuses us of something, we tap into this sense of innocence and rely on it and treasure it and defend it like it's the real truth about ourselves. Based on that being true, we then seem completely justified in being angry and upset and annoyed when someone claims that we are actualy guilty of something. But you'd think that if we really deeply believed in our innocence, we would be unshaken by such accusations. The reason we're not, is because deep down there is guilt, and it is being triggered into conscious awareness.

When I look at this with Jesus, I remembered that those who are upset believe in their own guilt, even if they are claiming to be innocent. I was able to then be open to the idea, that I must actually still believe I am guilty somehow. I must be still accusing myself of sin, otherwise when my brother accuses me of it I would not take it seriously. I saw in myself the presence of this sinfulness, this guilt. I saw that *I* believed in it and thought it was true of me at this time.

What this revealed is that while I was busy accusing the other person of accusing me unfairly, as though I believed they shouldn't be accusing me, I was in fact accusing myself the whole time. I could hardly blame them for doing what they are doing, when I myself am doing the same thing to myself. Admitting to doing this to myself, it was obvious and clear that I in fact did not really believe I was innocent, *I* believed I was guilty. My innocence was fake, and therefore the foundation for my justification for retaliation and anger was completely unfounded.

Seeing my own belief in my own guilt, recognizing it as coming from me about myself, somehow sobered my mind. It brought awareness and honesty. The facade of fake innocence disappeared. What was therefore revealed, was that even though this whole time I thought I had a problem of this other person accusing me unfairly, *I* was actually accusing me unfairly. They were just triggering it off, reminding me of what I actually believed about myself unconsciously, and my own unconscious belief was probably attracting them into my life to accuse me in this way, reflecting my own belief back to me.

I seriously thought I was the innocent one. I thought that I was holier than thou. I thought I was being honest, that I was sincere and genuine and truthful. I thought the other person was clearly the one who was being vicious and mean. I actually believed heavily in my own fake innocence. I was in denial, and not realizing that I had this big belief in my own guilt lurking under the surface. I had no idea that *I* myself believed I was guilty in this way.

Having a good look at this opened my eyes. I could now see the truth, that this person actually was not accusing me of something that I didn't believe in. They were accusing me of something I DID believe in. I was upset because I did believe I was the guilty person they accused me of being. I just didn't want to admit to believing it about myself.

If I myself am believing in my guilt, then the other person is not actually doing anything to me that's different from what I'm doing to me. They're not adding guilt at all. Effectively, they are just making me aware of it. My refusal to recognize that *I* believe I am guilty, was making me project my guilt, and accuse my brother of accusing me of being guilty. I thought the source of the guilt was in him, and not in me. I thought he was the cause of it, but I was.

I am not sure how I managed to stay in such a state of unconsciousness for so long. I do not know how I didn't realize or even suspect that I believed in my own guilt in this way. I thought I was defending my true self. I thought I was being honest. I thought I was innocent and guiltless, and therefore justified in being upset by a false attack. But why would the truly innocent be upset if they know they are not guilty? They would just laugh and it would not affect them at all. That I was reacting and defending my illusion of innocence just showed that deep down I did not really believe in it, or it wasn't real.

I didn't actually really take this any further. I didn't look into whether it was true that I was guilty. I didn't get into whether I really did sin. I didn't get into trying to accept the atonement. I didn't even see this as "doing a forgiveness", necessarily. I just thought it was an interesting insight, which had revealed that I actually wasn't being affected by the other person, I was being affected by myself. It somehow, nevertheless, completely disconnected my ego from the other person's.

The following day, I felt noticeably peaceful and I could not explain it. Somehow my mind was different. Somehow I did not feel engaged with that person in the way that I had. My ego seem deflated. I didn't seem to engage with that person in anywhere near as much of a kind of tug of war manner. I seemed detached and just doing my own thing. I couldn't explain why I kept feeling waves of peace, as though it came out of nowhere. I no longer felt like that person was doing anything to me at all. It was like the entire story and drama had just burst and stopped. It was gone.

All I did was realize that I had been doing this accusing toward myself, and that it wasn't actually the other person who believed this about me. My own belief was my only problem. What they were doing had absolutely nothing to do with me. That was enough to unlock the forgiveness and heal my mind. My experience was so different after that. Finally I felt a peace that I had not felt for a long time.

The fake wall of innocence which hides our unconscious guilt, is a major barrier against realizing that we are doing this all to ourselves. It is the defense against guilt, which protects us from guilt. We do not want to dismantle it. We do not want to question whether it is true. We just want to believe in it as though is is completely true, and that it is defending ourselves from all attacks. And yet this defense, itself, is merely covering up our self attack, and making it look as though we are being vulnerably affected by others. It is a block to awareness, a locked door which is disguising our our guilt and our own death wish, keeping it hidden from awareness so that we dont' even suspect that we ourselves are trying to destroy ourselves.

Who me? Innocent me? Me who is not guilty? Me who has no awareness of being guilty at all? Little sweet little innocent me? Yes.... this layer of innocence is FAKE. It is not the truth. It is protecting me from the deeper layer of belief, that I am actually sinful and guilty and deserve to die. I have to stop believing that I am innocent, become aware that I believe I am guilty, then work on undoing that guilt and the sin behind it, to get back to REAL innocence. Fake innocence is a terrible impediment, masking our guilt and deflecting our self-attack onto everyone else. To realize that we ourselves believe in our own sinfulness, and that it is not other people doing this to us, completely collapses the entire state of false perception which shows us others people as though they are causing us to be hurt.

It is me that I must forgive. Other people are not the problem at all. They are just reflecting what I am doing to myself. I have my own self attack, hidden behind layers of denial and projection. This is what I need to recognize and own up to and heal. This will automatically heal all of my relationships because everyone else truly is innocent and this has nothing to do with them. We but accuse our brothers of our own sin.

What appears to be the physical world is not actually "direct reality". It is in fact once removed. It is an effect of an entirely other layer of causality which seems hidden. Just as in the holographic model, the underlying "source" of the appearances you see, is obscured by "sight of form" and you end up believing that this physical world is "verbatim", ie this is all there is.

In understanding why miracles are supernatural, it is very important to recognize this. In order to be supernatural there has to be an order or layer of reality deeper or higher than what appears to be the physical surface of this universe. We have to recognize that bodies and objects are not "immediate reality", they are once removed, and are EFFECTS caused by some other hidden level of causality. There is a whole other layer of causality, and everything in this world is "coming from" that hidden realm, making this world entirely an secondary effect.

When observing just the appearances of the surface of this world, there is a tremendous vast illusion before your eyes, which seems to operate in terms of "horizontal cause and effect". It seems as if some parts of the world cause and effect other parts. But this IS entirely an illusion. It's not what is happening. Anything which looks like being "different" in this world, ie one thing is a cause and another thing is an effect, is an illusion.

What secretly is happening is a higher, hidden level, a more immediate level of reality, is causing this entire universe all at once. Causality moves in a "vertical" direction from above, downwards, projecting the universe below. This means that there is a realm where you are "outside of" or above the entire field of horizontal illusions, outside the dream, where you are under absolutely none of the illusory horizontal laws and free of ALL limitations.

In that realm, you essentially are like a movie editor, someone who can reach into the movie and rearrange parts of it, orchestrate what goes where, and make significant changes. While within the movie itself it seems there is this consistent "story" playing, which utterly depends on the existence of many limitations and props and illusions of things which "must" happen according to certain rules or laws, realize that all of these stories of causality are entirely a fiction, where nothing seems to betray the illusion, nothing hints at this not being all there is, and nothing "blows the illusion" of horizontal or linear causality.

An example is a movie that you go to the cinema to watch. When you watch the movie you believe it is a single seamless story, in which certain limits and rules have been put in place in order to paint a seemingly "consistent" picture. But the fact is, if you could've been in the studio when the movie was being created, you would realize it was simply a bunch of people "acting" and a bunch of computers producing CGI special effects, working "behind the scenes". You as as a miracle worker as a BEHIND THE SCENES OPERATOR who orchestrates and produces the second-hand "effects" or "results" of a creative process. We used this same process initially when FORMING the physical universe, which is an entire order of reality removed from those who pull the strings.

When expression is made from the higher level, the more immediate level of causality, that expression is able to cause changes to the expressed world below. Just as an editor would make changes to a movie sequence from outside the movie which has the potentially to "break the illusion" of linear consistency within the movie itself. And when it DOES "perform a miracle", it literally BREAKS the illusion of linear cause and effect - the horizontal consistency or predictability of one thing leading only to another specific consequence. It's like someone editing the movie, and to those observing from WITHIN the movie, it will look like reality just did something "impossible".

If you seem to be living in the movie and you think that all that can happen is what's inside the movie, then suddenly a spaceship appears out of nowhere because the movie director decided to insert one, you will "witness" what appears to be a miracle. Something happening that seems impossible based on the linear laws. If you think of The Truman Show - a great movie, the same laws and rules and limitations had to happen day after day to maintain an illusion that nothing could happen outside the law, but when the main character started to "wake up" and see through the limitations, the world around him started to "break" and he eventually stepped outside of the whole illusion, coming face to face with the "directory" of the movie. You as a miracle worker are a director of the physical movie.

Or similarly, if it appears that there is a law of gravity where, over time, objects are attracted towards the center of the earth, and therefore human bodies are almost glued to the surface (you can jump, but only so high before you are attracted back down), and if suddenly a human body were to fly up in the air or walk on water, this would BREAK the illusion of horizontal laws. That means, the laws "within" the linear dream, within appearances of horizontal causality, could not have "resulted in" this effect, and it must have required someone to reach in from OUTSIDE of the laws and make an adjustment that the laws themselves are incapable of producing.

The key point to realize is that all of the linear laws are VERY LIMITING. We are confined by them. We are trapped by them. They seem to play out as if having a force or power over us. We don't seem able to escape gravity, time seems to proceed in one direction, one object seems to collide with another, no objects share the same space, very large heavy objects like mountains seem completely immovable, even sickness seems to have a causality in the body or due to external forces. These are all very limiting illusions of things on the SAME LEVEL causing other things on the SAME LEVEL to change.

From the point of view of the miracle worker, who is under no laws but God's, there are NO LIMITS. And so when the miracle worker manipulates the limitations in ways which defy and BREAK the linear laws, this appears to those in the horizontal dream as SUPERNATURAL MIRACLES. Things which should technically be "impossible" according to the limits we have accepted, suddenly become possible. Things we have assumed to be "normal" or "natural" are shown to be ARTIFICIAL LIMITATIONS.

Since we don't generally recognize that we LIVE IN WORLD OF LIMITATIONS, we don't realize that there are additional FREEDOMS and flexibilities that we have decided are off-limits or impossible. Miracles are capable of exercising that freedom and of PROVING that you are NOT BOUND by the horizontal laws of the ego's illusory world. This is why miracles are super-natural, they have a freedom of potential way beyond what any physical law in this second-hand universe suggests is possible.

There is therefore literally NOTHING that they cannot do. We have to open our minds to see past the limitations of physical illusion and realize that even the things we think are impossible are perfectly possible. There is NO REASON why you cannot do anything you can imagine. "There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

So the main keys to this are:

1) This physical world is once removed from true cause, it is not immediate reality

2) This world has no real causes in it, they are all effects of a higher reality

3) Cause-and-effect in this world are totally fictional illusions designed BY a higher level causer, to create a "story" in which limited things happen according to limited rules

4) Miracles wield a freedom way beyond the limitations of this world and express and demonstrate that ANYTHING is possible because they originate in the FIRST ORDER of causal reality, and therefore can BREAK and OVERRIDE any of the limitations or laws present on the physical level, since those laws are limitations PUT IN PLACE BY someone from the more primal level of reality. This is why Jesus says "you made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."

Here's what ACIM says:

"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you can see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them."

"Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance and limits of any kind. Your holiness is totally unlimited in its power because it establishes you as a Son of God, at one with the Mind of his Creator. Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do."

"You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see His manifestations. And unless you do, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence."

The body is a symbol. It teaches either healing and life, or it teaches attack and death.

The body symbolizes and represents the attitude of the MIND that is using the body. The body is a SYMBOLIC MESSAGE.

When the mind is loving, its message is love and healing. The body TAKES ON THE FORM of this, by showing up as healed, whole, unharmed, free from attack or pain, devoid of all suffering, functioning perfectly, flawless and immaculate, free from all forms of sickness.

When the mind is not loving, its message is attack and death. The body TAKES ON THE FORM of this, by showing up as damaged, broken, attacked, defective, malfunctioning, hurt, diseased, infectious, half-dead and eventually fully dead.

Whatever comes THROUGH your body FROM your mind, CHANGES your body's form. Your body, as a FORM, takes on a form that represents the message. Healed minds automatically result in bodies showing up in a healed configuration. Attacking minds see themselves as vulnerable victims, project this onto the body, attack the body, and thus make it sick.

"Sickness is anger taken out upon the body."

It's not possible to USE the body for a purpose beyond the body, WITHOUT having an attitude about the body ITSELF. If your attitude toward your brother is love, through the body, the body ITSELF will be loved. And being loved it will be healed. If your attitude toward your brother is attack, through the body, the body ITSELF will also be attacked, and it will show up as sick and damaged.

Bodies do not choose their own condition. The condition of the body is NOT determined OR caused by ANTHING in the world.

"The mind makes this decision as it makes ALL decisions responsible for the condition of the body."

"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."

Nothing in the world can injure you. Nothing in the world can CAUSE death. Nothing in the world can make the body sick. Nothing in the world has ANY POWER OVER your body because YOUR MIND has total power OVER your body.

"That the mind can heal the body but the body cannot heal the mind proves the mind must be stronger than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this."

Your mind's decision and attitude is the SOLE CAUSAL POWER determining the health or sickness of your body. When your mind is loving, your body becomes lovely and healed. When your mind is attacking, your body becomes sick and dead. This is LAW. There are no exceptions.

The reason it is law is simple. It's all based on cause and effect. When you are CAUSAL, you simply do not regard yourself as "effect", so you don't PERCEIVE yourself BEING affected or "at the effect of" anything else. Not seeing yourself as a weak vulnerable attacked victim, you simply do not radiate this through the body, and the body is HEALED by your forgiving attitude.

"Now is the body healed by miracles."

"Being sane, the mind heals the body because it has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness because it cannot conceive of attacking anyone or anything."

"Sickness is a defense against the truth."

When your mind sees itself as EFFECT, not cause, its entire attitude and approach to itself and others and to the body changes. It now sees itself as CAUSED from the OUTSIDE IN. This is experienced as being attacked, as being WILLED AGAINST, and as being CHANGED against your will by others.

This automatically sets up a situation where you now perceive that all your brothers are SINNING against you, CAUSING you, HURTING you, affecting you against your will. This is really your own mind at war with itself and split in its ambitions. But you PROJECT SIN onto your brother BY HURTING YOUR BODY, so that you have a way to SHOW HIM that he has affected you.

What happens here is simple. Your mind, manufactures attack, projects it onto your body, MAKES YOUR BODY SICK, by believing it is AT THE EFFECT of your brother, who is simultaneously ACCUSED BY THE BODY, of making you AFFECTED. Seeing cause in him rather than in yourself, your mind INVENTS EFFECTS that come FROM his causality, and holds them in place, as judgement upon your brother, so that HE IS RESPONSIBLE for your health.

You either can believe and experience that YOU are responsible for the body's health, OR that OTHERS are responsible for YOUR body's health. These are your only options. If you choose to believe your body is NOT caused by you, you MUST believe it is caused by someone ELSE. And THEY now stand ACCUSED, responsible, sinful, for causing your body's condition "against your will." And in this belief your body WILL be sick because YOU are attacking.

Sickness in the body now becomes PROOF OF SIN. It forms what Jesus calls "a picture of crucifixion." You HOLD this picture in front of your brother's physical eyes so that he deliberately SEES IT, SO THAT he stands accused. By the mere fact that your body HAS a physical malfunction, damaged, harm, disease etc, IT IS ACCUSING HIM.

It does not matter what you THINK your mental state is. It does not matter how much you claim to be at peace. It does not matter how much you think you have forgiven him. The ONLY WAY your body BECOMES sick, the only way it STAYS sick, and the only way its sickness is NOT OVERRIDDEN by another cause, is by YOUR MIND NOT BEING HEALED.

This is why "damaged bodies REMAIN ACCUSERS."

Doesn't matter who you are or how advanced you think you are in the course. IF the physical body still shows up as damaged, somewhree in your MIND there is an UNFORGIVENESS. And there is STILL A DEFENSE against the truth. Because sickness is ALWAYS held in place by DEFENSES against God and therefore against love. Loving minds do not have sick bodies.

"If they loved themselves they would heal themselves."

"To witness sin and yet forgive it is a paradox which reason cannot see. For it maintains what has been done to you DESERVES no pardon. And, by GIVING it, you grant your brother mercy, but ***retain the proof he is not REALLY innocent.*** ***The sick remain accusers.*** They cannot forgive their brothers AND themselves as well. For no-one in whom true forgiveness reigns CAN suffer. He holds not the proof of sin before his brother's eyes. And thus he MUST have overlooked it, and removed it from his own. Forgiveness CANNOT be for one, and not the other. Who forgives IS healed. And in his healing lies the PROOF that he has truly pardoned, and retains no trace of condemnation that he still would hold against himself or any living thing.

***Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself*** (this includes BOTH YOUR BODIES!). 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."

Realize this. Jesus here is literally saying that if you RETAIN THE PROOF OF SIN in the physical body, if the body is still damaged and sick, IT IS STILL accusing your brother, and YOU HAVE NOT made forgiveness real. You are not done with forgiveness if the physical body has any TRACE of attack in it. And when it DOES NOT have a trace of attack in it, it now serves a higher purpose.

"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."

Jesus actually is stating here that your PHYSICAL BODY has something to do with whether or not you are accusing your brother or sin or whether you are finding him innocent. That's because PROJECTION makes your body sick as part of the accusation process! You must PHYSICALLY FORGIVE HIM and PHYSICALLY RESURRECT and PHYSICALLY HEAL, otherwise your psychological condition CANNOT be one of healing and love.

"Only the mind AND body need atonement."

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

In order for his madness to have had NO EFFECTS of any kind, and if his madness was stabbing your body 50 times with a knife, it is your responsibility through forgiveness to REMOVE ALL THE KNIFE WOUNDS, otherwise there is still proof of sin and accusation. He MUST be able to look at a HEALED BODY, in order to TRULY BELIEVE that he no longer stands accused. If the EVIDENCE remains, he is STILL BEING ACCUSED. His sin is PROVEN by it.

Just the mere FACT that there is STILL DAMAGE TO BE SEEN, that you can point a finger at, PROVES THAT SIN HAPPENED. You cannot CLAIM to have forgiven him WHILE STILL showing him a picture of PROOF that HE DID IT. If the body PROVES, SHOWS, DEMONSTRATES FOR ALL TO SEE, that "there was an attack", forgiveness is NOT complete and your mind IS NOT HEALED.

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

The body's HEALTH AND LOVELINESS will EXONERATE your brother and PHYSICALLY PROVE he is not a sinner.

While we have bodies, this is what we have to do. WE can't just pretend it does not matter. HERE, among others who look upon our body image, IT matters, because our body is a teaching device, and it IS THE MESSAGE. It takes on the form symbolizing the message. Messages of attack show up as sick bodies. Messages of healing and love show up as PHYSICAL HEALTH.

"Sick bodies remain accusers".

Healed bodies remain HEALERS.

YOUR PHYSICAL HEALTH has an effect on your brother's MENTAL HEALTH.

"Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. ***YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health.*** BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true."

"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."

You must show him through your physical healing that HE DID NOT ATTACK YOU. You must undo the wounds.

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

Your mental AND physical healing SAVES HIM PAIN.

"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."

This is important. A POWER greater than a thousand tongues. The body, showing your brother HIS innocence, by way of ITS healed condition. A POWERFUL TEACHING DEVICE! He is convinced of his innocence when he sees YOUR INNOCENT BODY, because this MUST MEAN he has never attacked you, and so he is HEALED BY this recognition of your PHYSICAL HEALTH. He is healed ALONG WITH YOU.

Here is a simple and effective forgiveness process which I did this morning with Holy Spirit.

You start by figuring out where you are on a spectrum from Life to Death. The spectrum has these stages:

Love/Innocence > Separation > Sin > Guilt > Fear > Punishment/Suffering > Death.

On whatever issue you want to do forgiveness, or even just a general forgiveness, locate what you seem to be *most directly aware* of right now. For me this was "fear".

Whatever stage you are most aware of, thats the stage which has not yet fully "projected" into the next stage. And all the stages beneath it are currently unconscious. I was experiencing fear because separation/sin/guilt were unconscious and I hadn't yet entered punishment.

Once you've located where your conscious mind is at, work your way backwards through the stages to undo each layer of belief. If you don't need one or more of the earlier steps because you didn't find yourself in them at the beginning, you can skip them. e.g. if you mostly feel guilty, you probably don't need to undo fear.

At each layer of awareness/belief, there are a few steps to go through.

1) You believe that the step is real, and you need to undo this belief. Holy Spirit can help here. Recognize you believe in "real" this (e.g. real fear), and affirm that it is not real (e.g. "fear is not real, I am not afraid").

2) You should then start to have the insight that the only reason you are experiencing this step is because the step you didn't get to yet (unconscious) is CAUSING this step. Separation demands sin. Sin demands guilt. Guilt demands fear. Fear demands punishment. Punishment demands death. Therefore the step isn't there in its "own right", as an isolated 'thing'. It's a projection from another level and is being generated by another level. Seeing this helps you to realize the current level of belief is not the CAUSE of it. It is an EFFECT. And since it's not a cause, it is not real, so you can let it go. Undo the belief by affirming it is not REAL. "There is no real fear" "There is no real guilt" etc. Fear does not cause fear. Guilt does not cause guilt. Sin does not cause sin.

3) Once you can realize that your current level of awareness/belief (the stage you're at) is coming from a hidden level, and you undo the current level by cancelling the belief and the illusion that it was real in its own right, notice that if you do not correct the next level, it will REPRODUCE the experience that you just got done removing! You can remove fear, but if you don't remove guilt, it will reproduce fear. You can remove guilt, but if you don't remove sin, it will reproduce guilt and fear. We have to work our way ALL the way to the Atonement in order to uproot the whole problem.

4) Having undone belief that the current step is real, and affirming you do not believe in it, and having released it (Holy Spirit can help), your mind should have shifted to being aware of the next step/level. If you undid the belief properly, you will feel "free" of the step you were on, should no longer be experiencing it, and will become aware of the experience of the next step. So if you were feeling fear, you should no longer be feeling fear, and will now be feeling guilty. Guilt will be the main thing you are conscious of. Or whatever comes as the next level from where you're at.

5) Continue on through the steps this way until you get to the recognition that sin is not real, separation has not happened, and therefore you are IN the experience of the atonement. If you have undone the belief that the punishment is real, that the fear is real, that the guilt is real, and that the sin is real, and that the separation really happened, you should now be in the TRUTH.

The truth should make you aware of GOD. God's truth should be in some way in your mind, whereby you should now be able to ACCEPT that you are innocent, because you do not believe you sinned. You should be able to realize that you are forgiven, because you did not really do anything. And you should be aware that God still LOVES YOU 100% because you are WORTHY of love, having not done anything wrong.

You may find yourself feeling "I AM FREE". You may experience JOY. You should feel RELIEF. Especially now that you can affirm "I have not sinned, I am innocent". Your mind is now experiencing the truth as your primary, conscious experience. Forgiveness accomplished. And because this has been ACCEPTED and OWNED, and because you've seen through all the illusory levels of the ego thought system, you are now PERMANENTLY FREE of what you forgave. It will not come back, because it has no foundation. The Atonement principle has completely undone the "cause" at its roots.

Your mind is now IN a state of forgiveness. You are in the Holy Spirit. You are now the light of the world. You are the Prodigal Son, and you've come Home!

It's not possible to judge others.

It's not possible to forgive others.

It's not possible to correct others.

It's not possible to communicate with others.

It's not possible to attack others.

It's not possible to be hurt by others.

It nevertheless SEEMS possible to do all of the above. This "seeming possibility", and the belief in this possibility, is the DELUSION of the ego mind. It is insane to believe in this possibility because it is impossible.

As soon as there is an "other", there is a separation between you and them. This separation PREVENTS a transfer or a sharing of anything. This "gap" which appears between you immediately disconnects you from the other, making both of you separate, and keeps you from experiencing anything together that's real.

What you are is the whole of everything. All inclusive. Oneness. There are no real others. Love has no opposite.

When you start to believe that you are actually capable of doing any of the above, or have done so, you MUST be mistaken. You are perceiving incorrectly. You're doing something VERY WEIRD with your mind which is filled with delusion and pretense and denial. You're trying to create a perceptual state where it SEEMS like it's true, that you can in fact judge or forgive or change other people, or experience these things coming from them. It is NEVER REALITY. It is always an illusion.

Your job is not to forgive other people. It is not possible to forgive other people. They are not the cause of your perceptual malfunction. They, or your perception of them as a separate cause, is the RESULT of YOUR perceptual malfunction. You are the one hallucinating, projecting, blaming, and trying to make out that this sudden "enemy" which has shown up "out there" as "not you" is somehow attacking you. It is your own mind attacking itself, disassociating from itself, and believing that some part of itself is not itself. It is insanity.

Your only capability is in terms of what you are doing to yourself. This is the secret to salvation. This can't be said enough times. The ONLY way to find salvation from all suffering is through SELF FORGIVENESS. It is only you who has ever condemned or judged or attacked yourself, and it is only you who are mistaken, and you are the only cause of it, and you are the one who needs to be willing to change your mind about yourself. It never has anything whatsoever to do with "other people".

Literally everything outside of your own body is not there. Literally even your body itself is outside of you and is not there. Nothing outside of your "self" causes anything inside of your self. There is no outside. There are no others. There is no separation.

It is only possible for you, as the Son of God, to seem to experience (hallucinate, dream, imagine) that an entire physical universe is taking place INSIDE YOURSELF. It is only possible also that the illusion of sin take place WITHIN YOURSELF, as a state of self-attack, or inner conflict, where you have split off parts of yourself and pitted them against other parts, to wage a fictional war, which has then shown up as an entire universe of madness.

All of the separation from God and every single part of the "consequences" of it is taking place inside the mind of the Son of God. It is not anywhere else. And there is no one else to cause it. Everything that happens inside it is happening BY that mind TO that mind WITHIN that mind. One mind attacking itself and trying to get rid of itself, to try to deny what it is, to deny the truth of its identity. There is no-one else to attack it. The fictional characters it is dreaming of attacking other fictional characters are all a part of that same one mind's dream of self-attack. It is pulling all the strings.

Nothing can happen to you without you making it happen to you. You cannot get anything you do not ask for. You can only get what you ask for, and you will get exactly what you ask for. There are no victims or victimizers. There is no attack outside of the scope of you attacking yourself. There is no grounds for blame because there are no other Onenesses to blame it on.

Other people are not attacking you. Other people are not causing you. Other people are not upsetting you. Other people are not making you be or do anything against your will. Your body is not against you. There is no alien will outside of you. You are not a victim of the world you see. The world you see DOES NOT EVEN EXIST.

It's not possible to judge others. You have judged yourself.

It's not possible to forgive others. You must forgive yourself.

It's not possible to correct others. You need correction.

It's not possible to communicate with others. Communication is union with God in Oneness.

It's not possible to attack others. Only you can attack yourself.

It's not possible to be hurt by others. You cannot be hurt, you are immortal spirit.