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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God loves you. Just so you know.

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

The ego's experience of someone dying is horrible. Ego thinks in transactional, finite terms. As if relationship is some commodity amount that you give and lose, and then you lack, and then you need the other to give it back by losing. This is the sacrifice of specialness.

This is the opposite of the golden rule, where the ego says giving and receiving are not one. That what you give you do not give to yourself. And therefore giving is loss. It sees someone's death in rather physical terms, meaning that the form has gone and therefore there has been a one-sided loss, and now they are not giving you what you gave. The thing that was supposed to give you back, albeit separately, has stopped giving, and so you now are in a state of lack because you depended on them.

From this viewpoint the only thing you can feel is loss, which feels horrendous. It's like saying, the person is dead and thats a true fact and there's nothing you can do about it, so you might as well just be in total despair forever. But this ego perception is rooted in victimhood, ingratitude, not recognising, not appreciating, seeing oneself as deprived, unfairly treated, taken from, stolen from, and diminished. And then the ego cries. A lot.

It can reason that there is no other way, and it will have no insight into the opposite of loss, which is gain. But the Holy Spirit gives another view entirely, a totally opposite view in fact. Because as far as He's concerned, there is no loss possible in the golden rule of God. What is given is received by both. What is given is given to yourself forever. There is no room for loss at all, and there is only gain.

The way forgiveness looks at death, it regards it as a gift and a blessing, rather than a curse. It sees that the event has simply purely given to you, by which you have purely gained. You have not been deprived at all, you have only increased. A great gift has been given, and you have received it, and by recognising that you have received it you can enter into justified gratitude. And this is how gratitude becomes part of forgiveness - the recognition of the truth that there is only gain and increase under God's laws.

Gratitude is the total opposite of loss. It acknowledges that you have not lost, that nothing is missing, and that in fact you have received so much that you are overwhelmed with how much you have been given, so much that not a single trace of loss remains. And how can you then feel loss in such a perspective of having been utterly blessed? Loss is literally a lack of gratitude, an unwillingness to receive, and a denial of God's blessing.

Of course, recognising this requires dismantling the ego's interpretation of death, which sees nothing except loss and no gain at all. It sees the situation as utterly hopeless and futile, with no possibility of finding any gain in it at all, dwelling entirely on what seems to be absent, what has been stolen away, and what is no longer there. As if loss is real and permanent and total. And this is the idea of "real death".

But of course this depends on form, because the ego only really registers form "as" content, and does not recognise content at all. If a physical body is gone, yes form is gone, but the love that was in and through the body is not gone. In fact it has been given in a blessing through the person's body to you, and you have received it, and now you are it, and you extend it, and it is alive in you, continuing to be given. And that is because miracles mean endless giving - they continually extend love.

To the ego there is no benefit to you that someone has gone away. It sees only the horrifying and seemingly real deprivation, the taking away of the specialness that you loved, the exclusive source that you thought was the love itself. It sees only a dark and deceitful treachery, that has ripped its beloved treasure away and utterly destroyed it beyond all hope of recovery. And it's never coming back - a stark and horrible fact. Such is the proof of sin and death and dissolution. Then it holds this up as the only reality and truth, as if there is nothing else to it. A total fact. And within this truth, you must simply feel like absolute shit because your whole world has been destroyed forever.

But the ego is utterly blind to the truth, it has no acknowledgement of roles played, of higher purposes, of the way that someone gave transcendent of form, that what was given is still with you and still giving, that loss is impossible, and in a forgiving view you can only possibly be blessed by everything. To forgive is to truly recognise that the world is not doing anything to you, death has no power over you, and therefore it cannot cause something to be taken from you. You cannot lose, you can only win. And if you cannot lose, you must be only gaining. You must be purely receiving, and to receive unconditionally with no strings attached is love. Upon receiving such unending love the only logic response in the mind is gratitude. And gratitude is also a part of giving.

It's similar to what happens when you at first seem to be a victim of someone, and you hate them and fight with them and they seem to deprive and hurt you. But then later you forgive, and you come to realise you hired them, and they played a role that you needed for your spiritual growth, and you gained tremendously from your enemies even if they seemed to be the very people you did not want to be around. You benefited. And then as your perspective grows, you come to more fully understand who did what and why, how you consented, how you used it, and what you did to yourself. And out of that comes a recognition of the innocence of the other and yourself, and the realisation that you have only happily gained from the encounter - that it is not a loss or an attack at all. And then you can be grateful to them for helping you to learn this lesson - to move you closer to God.

Another aspect of this is that if you believe someone else has become lost to you, or that love is lost, then by the golden rule you will also believe that you are lost. And then you will become lost as well, lost in despair and grieving and feelings of loss and hopelessness. And that is because you believe it's true that some other person can be completely lost, and if thats true of them it's true of you. This is why when the loss seems to happen, you feel like you have lost part of yourself. As if it was you that died. And then you stop living. But this is the ego's reasoning as well, because nothing real can die or be lost, and certainly nothing is missing from heaven.

The antidote to loss then is the broader and deeper perspective that you have not lost anything, and have in fact only gained. When you can see that you have only gained, then your response can only be gratitude, because you have been truly blessed and given everything. You've been given freedom and life and opportunity and a future. You've been given room to grow and learn and enjoy further relationships. This isn't a fake positivity either. It's not about just trying to put on a brave face and act as if things are great in denial of loss and feelings. It's a total uprooting of the belief in loss, which is really a lack of recognition. When lessons - and death is a lesson - is correctly perceived, it is recognised as being entirely beneficial. Something that happens only for your highest good.

This also leads into why the Holy Spirit's atonement plan is solely functioning for your highest good, and everything he arranges for you to go through - which you consent to - is leading you to eternal life. If you can see it from the perspective of gratitude and blessing, without the egoic interpretation of "its a loss" or "its difficult" or "i've been deprived" etc - which is a denial of the golden rule, then it is recognised as gentle and helpful and only a blessing. If the ego enters into it, it interprets the lessons as cruel and unwanted and a curse. Something that you want to go away and stop, to fear and resist. When you stop resisting you enter acceptance and presence, and then you also find forgiveness and gratitude. God has only given, he has never taken away.

The big picture truth is simply this: everything that happens is leading you home to God. Everything. Even people seeming to die. Only forms and illusions seem to die, anyway. What is true and real and our identity is permanent and eternal. And you literally are those who seem to move on, who must still be you as well. There is no loss in truth, no loss in God, and no loss in you. There is only a complete willingness to receive God's blessing and be fully grateful for it. Really, the only reason we despair is because we think God isn't loving us anymore, and this can only be a lack of recognition of what is actually true, or an unwillingness to see it. Undoing the belief in death as a block to love brings about a revolution into gratitude and happiness.

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life."

"The laws of God work only for your good, and there ARE no other laws beside His."

"A happy outcome to all things is sure."

Sometimes it's very hard to forgive someone. You become fixated on what they did to you, or what they were supposed to do that they didn't do. And sometimes this might've been something that occurred over a very long period of time, such that you can't even imagine life without this grievance. You just can't see how you can forgive this person.

This way of perceiving someone is very hard to get past especially if the person is important or valuable to you. And especially if your involvement with them has been largely a 'special relationship', or a victim/victimizer role. When all your focus is on how they affected you, you become blocked and unconscious as if there is no other way of looking at this.

So there you are, your mind is fixated on this person, on what they did to hurt you, and you just can't seem to get past this experience. One thing you do need to do is allow yourself to FEEL the feelings that have arisen as a result of what seemed to happen. By not feeling it you are in profound denial. Never mind that you had anything to do with how you perceive the situation, but to even deny that you feel hurt at all is a whole other layer of denial on top of it. Pretending it didn't happen when your whole being is screaming that 'it did' is an attempt to protect yourself from it, to hide it in order to pretend it is healed. But it does not go away, and it will eat a hole in you until you acknowledge it.

So as you gather a little willingness to explore 'healing', you can begin to at first allow yourself to acknowledge more of yourself, of what you are, and of what you believe has happened to you. Let yourself feel. The feeling has to come up for release. Up and out. This isn't necessarily forgiveness, but it is a form of catharsis to release old stuck energies which do obscure your perception. It's hard to see someone with innocence or calm when you're really feeling angry and hurt. Acknowledging and feeling the feelings, by FEELING them, not describing them, is a step forward in your healing.

Once some of that is past, you have cleared the way to experience a new way of perceiving. You may already have experienced cognitive shifts as a result of releasing emotion, like clouds clearing away which expose the sun. But you need to go deeper. Because this whole dynamic of "they did this to me" leaves you a victim, and if you stay there, you are stuck. Almost all feelings besides LOVE arise from perceiving yourself unfairly treated, or outright hurt. Fears, doubts, anger, hurt, suffering, pain, embarrassment, abandonment, etc all arise from 'its happening to me'. You need to move past this way of looking at the situation. But this is where it's hard, because it requires some form of detachment or greater perspective.

This is where Holy Spirit comes in because you're now willing to change your mind/perception about what happened and potentially see it differently, even if you can't yet see how that's possible. Until you take that inward journey you won't discover the answers and clarity that you need. You must seek reunion with God by joining with Holy Spirit and asking for His Help to overlook the way you've been seeing.

Now, what you have to get past is the belief and perception that ALL of your upset is the direct result of, and put there by, the other person. That it's their fault. That they are the sole cause. That you did absolutely nothing to ask for it at any time. That's irresponsibility. You MUST take some responsibility, even if a little at first. You can't be free from the victim role if you are not responsible. So let yourself be a little willing, however small, to open up to the possibility that there might be another way to look at this. Maybe you participated somehow. Maybe you made a decision or chose a way of experiencing the situation, which resulted in the evidence of hurt that you're left with.

Maybe you choose to AGREE with what the person was doing. Maybe you choose to BELIEVE that you deserved the treatment they gave. Maybe you chose to change your own sense of who you are, based on what they seemed to demonstrate was true of you. Maybe at some point in between what they 'offered' and what you 'took' from what happened, there was a little interval of choice where you came to your OWN CONCLUSION about what this means. Maybe you therefore did this formation of a false belief to yourself, USING the situation by taking it personally. Your belief in it, your agreement with it, your perception that it is the truth having lost sight of the real truth about you, WAS the 'attack' that you perpetrated against yourself, regardless of what the person modeled for you.

Ultimately you're 100% responsible for choosing. You made up the belief you're left with, on your own. Maybe you didn't know any better. Maybe you were too young. Maybe you forgot you are unconditionally lovable. Maybe nobody told you and you lost track of who you really are. But if you're 100% responsible for AGREEING to this punishment, then you also have the POWER to "choose again". And you can do that at any time that you are willing to admit to choosing this belief, and being willing to SURRENDER it to Holy Spirit, because it is simply false.

But you can't tell a belief is false just by saying it is. You need to know what is true. You need to transfer your allegiance and faith. You need to therefore open up to a greater truth, perhaps reminding yourself of what is true of you, or how God views you, or what God thinks of this false belief, or how Holy Spirit sees you in His Light. Ultimately, to FORGIVE, you need to get `into` the light of the Holy Spirit, at least a little bit, so that it can "shed light" on your belief and SHOW YOU that it is false. False beliefs simply ARE false, and you only need to see them clearly to recognize this. It's not seeing them clearly that makes you trust them. In the light of forgiveness you can witness the obvious fact that what you thought was true of you, is completely untrue, and THEN you will be perfectly willing to let it go. You'll know it was a ridiculous, untrue belief, not in line with the Truth of God. Or in other words, you'll see the VALUE of the real truth about you, and the LACK of value of what is false, and therefore RECOGNIZE that what is false does not even apply to you.

It doesn't apply to you. Because you're innocent and holy and forgiven already. You're loved by God. You're safe. You're at peace. You're with Holy Spirit. You're whole and healed. That's the truth. This event never happened. The person never really did anything to you. You did this to yourself and now you can see that you don't want to keep doing so. So you surrender. You surrender the false sense that is MADE FROM this false belief.. this false identity that isn't a true description of you. It wasn't really who you are anyway.

Then you remember who you are as God's Innocent Child and receive HEALING.

When we are playing the role of victim, of being at the effect of anything, we are out of touch with the power of decision. We think that stuff is happening against our will. Then we enter into a problem-solving mode, where we ask, "how am I going to deal with this?"

In the victimhood we feel trapped and disempowered, as if we have no choice. We seem forced to deal with whatever is happening, as though it is happening all on its own. We seem to be left with no option but to deal with it, and then we start trying to find ways to make it go away, or to mitigate it and find the least painful way out.

The thing we're then missing is that we actually chose whatever is happening, we are making it happen, and we can choose again. We have a power of decision and we are the rulers of the universe. We do not have things happen to us. We are immortal beings. We act deliberately and intentionally and everything that occurs is consciously chosen.

If we do not like what we are getting, we must have made a wrong decision because we are not at peace. We have to recognize we made that decision and we want to choose otherwise because we want to be happy. So this means owning our power and owning our choice and owning what we have already chosen, so that we can choose something else.

We then have to step into the position of decisiveness, which is fearlessness, in which we exclaim that we have the power to choose and we decide what WILL happen. Instead of dealing with cleaning up problems or trying to fix issues or trying to find ways to build defences against these horrible things that are threatening us, we simply elect to stop making such bullshit and we powerfully choose something else.

I must have chosen whatever is happening, because nothing can happen against my will or without my consent. If I do not like it or feel like it is looming over me or happening without my consent or as if it is random or chaotic or just came out of nowhere, them I am very mistaken and am not being responsible. Spiritual responsibility requires owning the power of God and using it to make a better choice.

Instead of playing with options or trying to mitigate problems, we instead decide what we do want, we completely ignore the problem, we don't bother getting into problem management or problem solving or defences, and instead we simply flip the entire mental conversation to a new path. I choose this, instead of that, and this will be my future, and this is what I want, and I elect that this happen as I have requested. And so it is.

We no longer are in the business of putting up with things, tolerating, making do, putting out fires, diminishing, avoiding, fixing things up, or trying to prevent a bigger disaster. We are now in the business of choosing what we want, and only this can happen, and nothing else can happen. We are not at the effect of the world or anything in it. We are choosers and creators and wielders of God's power.

"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."

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences."

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is."

Imagine that you live in a reality where you are always included in everything. Anything that happens, happens to others, and it happens to you. Anything that you give, you give to others, but you also receive. Anything that transpires happens to all at once.

Anything that is expressed by you is received by everyone, and received by yourself. Like, you literally ARE the whole of everything. The whole is your self. The entire realm of reality, the kingdom of God, is your self. So anything that takes place, you know about it, you feel it, you experience it along with everyone.

Everyone co-creates together. You are never excluded in any way. That's the fundamental fact of how reality actually IS. This is the law of God. This is the golden rule. What you do to another you do to yourself. You are one with everyone. You are the whole environment, not just a figure in the environment. You are heaven. The kingdom is your self. The sonship is your soul. All your brothers are part of you. No-one escapes anything ever. Everyone is always included, shares everything, has everything.

This is how reality really is. This is what produces shared interests. How would you act, think, feel, behave, if you knew that this was the fundamental law of existence? That anything you do even slightly you will do to yourself as well? This provides the incentive that you should only love, otherwise you will deprive yourself of love. You should only heal, otherwise you will make yourself sick. You should only include, otherwise you will become alone.

This is what ACIM is teaching you to remember and to attune to. Knowing your neighbor and brother as yourself. Realizing that if you do something you do it to yourself. The secret of salvation. Whatever you give you receive. Anything you see as being in your own interest is to be seen as being in the interests of everyone. Miracles are given to you in order that the be given through you to others and thus shared by everyone. Miracles are a universal blessing from God to the entire sonship all at once.

We need to re-learn this because we have forgotten how to live as shared entities, with shared identities. We think we are separated off by bodies, exclusive, omitted, rejected, lost, alone, not qualifying, left out. As though others can do something that doesn't include themselves, and you can do things in return that don't include yourself. As if you can get away with murder. As if you can attack without being attacked, or project guilt and escape from it without it still belonging to you. This is all the ego's realm of lies and deceit, denial and projection, dissociation and separation.

You have to learn to remember again that you are not just some separate figure in the world, separated off from others, separate from effects. You are the entire environment. You are the whole. You are the sonship. You are the kingdom of God. You are included in everything at all times. Every thought affects everyone. Every act impacts the entire universe. You are the one, shared with all. Everything belongs to you and to everyone else simultaneously. Everyone has full access to everything at all times. There are no limits anywhere.

"The secret of salvation is that you are doing this to yourself."

"I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thinking."

"When I heal I am not healed alone."

"Nothing is for you alone."

"Atonement is a lesson in sharing."

"I will not judge lest I be judged."

"Giving and receiving are one."

"Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers."

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

"You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."

"The sonship is your soul."

"We are the kingdom, WE, the sons of God."

"The Kingdom of heaven includes all his children and their creations."

"I and my father are one."

While you have an ego, you will actually defend it and protect it. You will be afraid of the truth because the truth shows that the ego is not real, and if you believe you are the ego, that means you are not real. That would of course be frightening.

It's not so much that our ego resists waking up. It can't wake up. It's just a machine, a structure made of illusions. But WE resist waking up because we're identified with the ego. We interpret the truth through it, ask it what its interpretation of the truth is, and take the truth's "attack" on it personally.

If for example you are identified with the ego and the truth tells you that the world is an illusion, or that your body is an illusion, you - identified with ego - will take that personally. You'll think that it means you are an illusion. Obviously that's confused but you also think it's real, so you'll see the truth as an attack on your very existence.

This is why it can be so difficult to accept the truth and wake up. Our ties to the ego make us believe the illusion is real and that we are the illusion. IF that were true, it's totally understandable that you wouldn't want to let go of your self.

This can be why, when you open up to some truth, letting the light in, you will on the one hand welcome courageously but on the other hand react to it like it's come to destroy you. You will have an ego rebound and feel upset and angry and scared, as though you're being threatened.

Often when I am in a flow or a upswing of inspiration, teaching, writing etc... I am opening up to new truths and expanding my awareness, but at the same time, it is easy to become overwhelmed. I start to have a lot of emotions come up for release. And if I push too hard, I will actually start to feel afraid and guilty. This is the parts of me still attached to the ego which do not understand or accept the truth, and perceive it as meaning all kinds of wrong conclusions. I've found particularly that when I talk about unconscious guilt it can produce a lot of fear because my ego interprets it to mean the guilt is real and therefore I should be afraid.

Exposing yourself to the truth can therefore produce all kinds of reactions, including sickness. Sickness defends against the truth, because you think the truth has come to attack the ego. So basically if you're closely attached to and identified with the ego, the truth will seem very threatening and you will likely produce a lot of sickness in an attempt to protect your sense of "self". It's just self-preservation. The only distortion is that your sense of identity is misplaced so you're taking things personally that do not really apply to who you really are. They apply to the ego, but not you.

Sometimes then I have to take a break from "too much input" and from pushing myself into so much truth at once. But I think over time my rebounds have in general become less intense now. I can talk about the truth for longer before my sense of reality feels the pressure and starts to retaliate. I guess that's good, it means that I am not as ego-identified as I used to be, or that I've woken up some.

Jesus also talks about how when we are at first taking responsibility for everything, we may take it to be a major attack, because to the ego-identified self it implies we must be very guilty. But over time, as we dis-identify with the false self, we don't take it as personally, or to mean that we are guilty as much. Over time it becomes easier to take responsibility knowing that it does not imply you are guilty, as you start to "separate" yourself from the ego's interpretation of it.

Starting to grasp how I have chosen everything I am experiencing, has been blowing my mind and expanding my awareness, but also scaring my ego identification some. Time to relax a bit.

Seeing yourself as deprived makes you perceive others as taking from you, and that you don't have enough left to give.

For example when I'm having some emotional release/healing, maybe I cried and I'm tired and crabby and feeling vulnerable. Maybe I'm not totally past it all yet and still am feeling whatever the lack is - lack of love, lack of peace, whatever... I'll see myself as being quite 'in need', i.e. needy.

When I see myself this way, I start to perceive everyone else as being needy too. Even if they're not. I'll perceive they're trying to take from me or demand something of me that I can't supply. I'll feel put upon and taxed and offended by the demand I see in them.

And especially if the other person is in a state of need themselves, it'll trigger anger that someone is so insensitively expecting something from me when I apparently don't have anything to give. I see them as trying to 'take take take'.

But what's really happening is I'm seeing myself - the demand in them is ME demanding FROM them. So I'm needy AND demanding, stating that I do not have what I need and someone else needs to give it to me. (Secret side-tip: although I'm saying I am in need and want to GET from others, I secretly do NOT want to get because then I would't be able to see myself as needy).

I'm the one who is actually trying to 'take take take'. I'm trying to GET, in order to make up for the lack that I perceive in myself. I'm accusing other people of trying to take because they're thwarting MY effort to take.

So as I see myself deprived and lacking, it's because I believe I don't have enough love. I believe the love is not in me and that I need to get it from someone else. So if they fail to give it, or if they demand it from ME, then I am left totally empty-handed with no way to resolve my problem, and that produces fear and anger... A sense that 'I can't and I won't... which often is in the form of a lot of reluctance or resistance or, comedically, "I can't take it anymore" (when secretly I am taking big-time).

But the thing is, seeing myself as deprived is actually the CAUSE of my perceiving a sense of lack of love, which led to the feeling of neediness, which led to the drama of being pressured to give what I don't have to needy people.

So an antidote for this... if I'm seeing myself as needy, and realizing it, is simply this:

Give love.

IMMEDIATELY this cancels out and dissolves all trace of a sense of neediness, all trace of not having enough, all trace of anger and reason for fear or resentment.

I'll be honest, I've only remember this a couple of times in real situations. One of them was just now. As soon as I suddenly remembered (after asking Holy Spirit to help) that my neediness is making me try to 'get' because I am seeing myself as deprived, it made me LAUGH. Because it introduces truth at the root of this bullshit and immediately corrected all of the EFFECTS.

I have to learn to remember this more often. When I feel shit and like I am deprived and don't have anything to give and don't want to give..... the way I am feeling is BECAUSE I don't want to give, not the other way around.

I choose to position myself as unloved and in need, which creates feelings of deprivation, which leads to the whole drama. If I choose NOT to see myself unloved by SHARING love (remember giving and receiving are both required, not sacrifice or greed), the whole problem is corrected.

And then, now that I've accepted healing of the actual problem - a lack of love - I can now give love and FULFILL the needs of others, which in fact then disappear, because they were never really needy to begin with. I was just seeing my own neediness projected.

Problem solved.

For a while now I've been experiencing the Holy Spirit working in me quite actively to clear and heal my mind, emotions and body. And I've been unsure how this correlates with A Course in Miracles because I don't hear hardly anyone talking about having interactions with Holy Spirit that involve any kind of manifest 'activities'.

Indeed many people still think Holy Spirit is just some kind of metaphor or inaccessible state of mind. Much of the ACIM community has a very cerebral, nervous, intellectual relationship with Holy Spirit, if at all. So I've been reluctant to share about it thinking myself to be doing something 'weird'. But maybe I am pioneering.

For me, this seemed to begin quite naturally as the next step in my exploration of trusting Him. I think that some day when I lay down to sleep I just had this idea to ask Holy Spirit to help me in some way, or to heal whatever I was feeling, and it was part of me opening up to exploring whether He would take some steps on my behalf.

Previously I think that I believed and acted as though my forgiveness process was something that I would do on my own and that any 'progress' or 'results' from it were due to my own willingness to see differently. But this then shifted, because after a certain point, after enough surrender and willingness and development of trust, I started to get this sense that Holy Spirit was meant to do more than just be an onlooker or advisor.

The first few times this happened I felt what I would probably describe as an 'energy' or a sensation of energy moving, through what seemed to be my body. It was sometimes accompanied by little jerks or motions in my hands or feet. Sometimes some subtle contractions of muscles. But over time, this has greatly increased.

I started then to learn to simply 'invite Him in' or to ask Him to come into me or to join with me. I didn't know if this was 'proper' or allowed or normal or anything but I was willing to explore it. I would invite Him in. He would quite often then say to me, "relax" or "surrender". And it seemed in a way that this was either a 'condition' or a prerequisite for supporting this thing happening. So I'd do some surrendering and relax my body physically. And then stuff would start to happen.

I will sincerely invite Him into me and then I will relax and allow and I will start to feel 'energy' move, whatever that is. Manifestations of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes this takes a pattern where it starts at my feet then works its way up my legs. As it goes, these limbs become more tensed as though sort of 'electrified'. Holy Spirit's energy is like electricity in a way, or how you might imagine someone if they were being electrocuted... but in a non-harmful non-painful way. Often my legs all the way up into my hips and pelvis will 'energize' and tense, seeming to form a certain specific 'posture' which, once established, immediately begins to 'drain' energy out of my upper torso, particularly any negative emotions or upset energies. These just flow down and out through my root chakra or feet like someone is flushing the toilet.

Then after a while this electricity will come up through my upper torso and into my arms and chest there can be at times some quite vigorous shaking, tensing and pulsing of stomache muscles, and various energetic changes taking place. When it works its way up to my shoulders and head area, I quite often now will experience what I can only describe as a very rapid intense oscillation/vibration of my head, which will suddenly shake at a very fast rate, as though something is being dislodged and removed upward. After this process is basically done I will be 'buzzing' somewhat and yet usually feeling quite peaceful and relieved, especially if upset emotions were healed in the process.

Now, not only does this happen for me on almost a daily basis now, but also it is becoming much easier for me to 'access' this electrical energy - in other words, to work with Holy Spirit 'supernaturally' in me, by just my mere willingness to allow Him to do something. And I'm finding that this is making it possible to apply this to any particular seeming condition that's going on in my body. For example I might have stuffy sinuses from eating some icecream, and if I'm willing I will sort of give a brief 'nod' to Holy Spirit, and he will instantly start to shake something and energize something and extract all of the symptoms. Or lets say I am under slept and I turn to Holy Spirit and he 'zaps' me, lol, I do my little shaky thing, and then I'm not longer experiencing that tiredness.

Also this is manifesting in the healing of others now, where I have an increasingly spontaneous willingness to lay my hand on a person and allow Holy Spirit to be immediately engaged through me to heal something. This has been developed somewhat through my openness to explore supernatural healing and commanding away sickness and so on. By developing some trust in that area, I am now growing in 'strength' and confidence in that if I simply do my part and join with Holy Spirit, miracles can happen, without any preparation whatsoever. God doesn't need preparation. God is ready to heal right now!

In particular, I've also been inviting Jesus into me, and I ask him to come in and heal certain feelings I feel in my torso. And immediately he comes in and makes corrections, which I may experience as tightening of muscles or pulses in the stomache area or contractions and other shaking, and then somehow these negative feelings will have simply disappeared without me really noticing how or when, and I will feel happy and start to laugh. And so I've been exploring that more too. What is the next step?

Well, I've also more actively started to invite GOD to come into me, to be in me, to dwell in me, to shine through me, to love through me. God is the one whose presence regularly moves me to tears. Realizing that God is HERE right now, and that it's really me that believes in separation or unawareness of God's PRESENCE. So as I open up to accepting and being aware of and open to God's presence here, I have to open to God being inside of me also, in my 'body' and mind. And so I invited God to be in me.

Then instead of referring to Holy Spirit as Holy Spirit, I referred to Him as 'Spirit of God', to make that kind of 'connection' between the two, which maybe I wasn't making before. So I invited 'spirit of God' to come into me, while also affirming "I receive God's healing". And let me tell you, the amount of activity that Holy Spirit them did in me was probably the most intense I've ever experienced. All up my spine I felt this intense presence and electrical energy radiating out of both sides of my spine all the way up and down several inches, accompanied but much more intense body-part shaking and energy dislodging. You have to really try to just trust and allow and relax while He's shaking the crap out of your body, literally. And afterwards, I felt healed and renewed and peaceful.

And I can tell you one other thing that I am noticing, is that... because of these 'sessions' of healing, I think... I'm noticing more often now moments where I just feel... calm, present, and there aren't any thoughts happening. It's quite unusual and unlike any other 'mode' of functioning that I am used to. Like, as if I am ALWAYS thinking, and then... there isn't any thinking happening, and I'm like... what is this? It's a feeling like there is this 'love' present, and it's just very calming and relaxing. And I've remarked to myself, that this is like the 'first time' that I am 'being', aware, without having any thoughts about anything. Also last night I was doing this and also experimenting with 'not controlling anything' and I heard myself exclaim, "this is the first time I am actually finally RESTING." To be aware, relaxed, and to have no sense of having to do do do do do anything, and just BEING there. Ahhhhh. Felt like real rest and relief. Relief from the ego mind. For the first time ever!

So what's on my mind now is... the interesting transition from ... doing forgiveness mentally, taking steps in changing perception....following some procedure (which still helps)... versus.... starting to be transformed SUPER-NATURALLY, by Holy Spirit directly. I used to not really ask Holy Spirit to 'do' the healing in me, thinking that I just needed to change my perception and accept my innocence etc, and that Holy Spirit was just sort of looking on from above and guiding me with word phrases and so on.

But then I came to realize, particularly spurred by some other people who ask Holy Spirit to actually do something, that Holy Spirit is not only meant to do something but to actually supernaturally HEAL me. And not just a little bit. I completely saw one passage of ACIM in a different light when it says "Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision IF I will LET HIM" - and "I choose to LET HIM, by allowing Him to choose for God for me". This for me has become, to let Him choose for God, to decide my innocence, AND THEN TO COME INTO ME AND PERFORM HEALING MIRACLES - which quite *literally* remove the consequences of my wrong decision - literally the healing and removal of upset emotions, the correction of body sickness, all of it! And this all entirely hinges around "If I will LET HIM." He isn't the one who lacks an ability to heal EVERYTHING... we are the ones who won't conceive of, allow or open up to letting Him wield his unlimited POWER in our lives.

I have a little willingness, then he does some super amazing - I have no idea what He really does - THING - and then I am better off. Yes I continue to do forgiveness in a more formal sort of sequence of perceptual corrections, but I am opening up more now to, what Holy Spirit just told me... "direct transfer", of experiential truth - the healing power of love - the presence of the One Mind - to accept and receive God's healing directly and to then extend it, rather than this whole ACIM thing of some kind of monotonous, intellectual, do-it-yourself 'study' of a book or manipulation of thoughts or thinking that YOU do the healing and correction. YOU do not heal. God is the healer. God has appointed Holy Spirit to HEAL YOU, FOR YOU. So this requires you to let go of even the process of your own forgiveness, to LET HIM actively work in you and through you. Otherwise you are just staying separate and missing out on a HUGE amount of support and divine help in your process of awakening. You don't have to do this all yourself, and in fact you HAVE to relinquish doing it yourself in order to open up to accepting and allowing God's love!

I'm sharing this because I feel more confident over time that regardless of what I am experiencing, it is real enough to me and transformative enough to me, that I think other people are supposed to know more about this. There isn't enough of an awareness of the Power of Holy Spirit in the ACIM community, especially not in terms of performing miracles and other super-natural manifestations. Some branches of religion are much more familiar with this than most of us are. But I said to Holy Spirit, I don't know how I could possibly 'teach this' to anyone, because it's not like it's based on some kind of metaphysics or logic or whatever. I have no idea what Holy Spirit actually does or how He does it. It's much more of an experience that I sort of stumbled into.

Then Holy Spirit simply said, and this is His instruction to YOU:

"Invite me in."

"Some illusions are shared, and some are part of your personal hell."

In this world, there are circumstances, events, happenings, situations, scenarios, some of which seem tolerable, and some of which are a nightmare. And rest assured that the world is set up in such a way that problems are endless and inescapable, all roads lead to death, and it is only a matter of time before things go wrong. It's built into spacetime itself. And according to the world's laws, everything is dead as soon as it is born.

But what makes it hell, isn't so much "what happens" or the current configuration of the external world. It's more to do with how you experience it. Whether you experience it like a happy dream, or like a horrifying nightmare, depends entirely on what's going on in your mind.

Regardless of whether you are in a good place mentally, or a bad place, the world will still keep functioning according to its nature. Animals die. Trees burn. Houses crumble. Cars break. Food rots. And planets are consumed by supernovae. This is built into spacetime. This is the rules of physics by which the world seems to be governed.

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it."

The question is, what meaning, purpose, use, attitude and way of perceiving you are going to have, while this stuff is happening. And what you make of it is going to determine whether or not you experience happiness or unhappiness, invulnerability or suffering, health or death. And you do in fact have it within your power to experience this script of the world, in a way that entails NO negative reaction at all.

Reactions to the world are ENTIRELY based on a belief that you are at the effect of the world. That the world is the cause of you. If you believe this in a way, in any situation, your mind will inflict imagined states of suffering upon itself. It will perceive itself as victimized, demoralized, attacked, hurt, threatened, abused and upset. And all of this is ONLY in response to how the mind is perceiving and using the situation. These experiences don't depend on what is "happening" in the world, it only depends on your use of them. Or the meaning you give them.

When you are lost in the ego, in specialness and self interest and attachment and arrogance, confused and blinded and lost and afraid, you likely will feel like you are ONE WITH the world. In this experience, there is no distinction between what the world seems to be doing, and what you seem to be experiencing. There is no "positive separation" between you and events. And when they happen, they seem to happen directly to you, causing you to suffer, upsetting you, threatening you and making you hurt. And you can see no seeming way to stop them.

But when you step back and remember that you have responsibility for your thoughts, your perception, your attitude, your beliefs, etc... you are in fact CONTRIBUTING to how you experience what is happening. If you suffer and are upset when something "bad" seems to happening, it is not really because of what happens, but because of your beliefs about it.

Let's say, you value human bodies and believe bodies are really people. You have some favorite bodies and you want to keep them around. You are attached to them and value them, and use them for self interests. And then one of these bodies is attacked and dies. And now you will experience what seems like real loss and terrible grief, will be sad and in despair. And it will seem cruel and unfair and you will feel victimized by it, angry at the person for leaving and abandoning you. But this is ONLY because of your mind's attitude about the body, about the events that transpired, and what it means to you. And you could just as easily laugh about it.

What happens, is not why you suffer. The world does not cause the suffering. Events don't have any power to do anything to you. No-one can cause you. Nothing in the world can oppress you or make you sick or dead. There is no causal power, no will, no mind in the world, capable of influencing you in any way at all. At least, not if you are in your right mind. Not if you are recognizing that the world is FICTION. And not if your beliefs are fully lined up with the truth. No one who recognizes that the world is a dream could possible take it seriously.

"You would not react at all to figures in a dream that you knew you were dreaming."

So it isn't the state of the world, or what happens, or who does what to whom, that makes you suffer in any way. It's not the reason why you are unhappy or upset or afraid. Any "re-actions" you have are EFFECTS that your mind is inventing to correspond to and are consequences of the CAUSES that your same mind is believing exist, happening against you from the outside in.

Your mind, attacks itself, and believes it is hurt by these attacks. And it believes the cause of these attacks is not itself, but something external to itself. This is because your mind disassociates from itself and is split. Two parts of mind at war with each other. And this split minded state is the only way your mind can experience suffering, at its own hand, and disowned.

I went through hellish experiences a little over a year ago. I managed to try to stay strong through some of it, as much as I could muster, but I was still beaten down, tempted, torn apart by it, terribly upset, stressed, like going through the worst living nightmare possible. But time has passed, and healing has occurred, and forgiveness has been applied. And I now look back and can ask myself, what is it that made it seem like hell at the time?

The answer is always that it only seemed like hell because I took it seriously, I forgot to laugh, I thought it was real, I believed in bodies, I believed in external threats, I saw others as enemies, I decided what things meant, I read into it, I feared for possible futures, and basically MADE the whole thing a nightmare. Internally. I allowed it INTO my mind, by my belief in it being real.

"Whatever you accept INTO your mind has reality for you."

I accepted it into my mind, through belief in external causes, which was really MY mind causing itself against itself, perceptions of hell and nightmarish threatening situations. It wasn't merely that the situations were there to make me stronger at the ego level, but they were there for me to rise above my own self attack. The lesson was not to suffer and become stronger because of it, but to become stronger in rejection of the suffering. Realizing I was doing it to myself, making it worse, inflating it, reading into it, giving it meaning.

At the time, yes, I was not ready or able to stop myself from doing this. I was not far enough along in my clarification of what I was doing to not make it worse for myself. I didn't know the many ways I believed bodies were real and hospitals were threats and all the rest of it. I "did my best at the time", certainly. But I still made it hell for myself, within, in spite of that. And that is where the real lesson is.

It is not what happens, it's what you make of it. And if you believe the world is real, you will suffer. And if you believe that other people are bodies, you will fear for their lives. And if you believe the world can attack someone and make them sick against their will, you will suffer along with them. And in all this false empathy you will feel victimized as much as the person you think has been victimized. And this is all an inside job.

I could-a should-a would-a laughed through the whole thing and not taken it remotely seriously and simply resurrected and healed and brushed it off as nonsense. But I wasn't ready to be able to do that at the time, so I suffered. But I suffered because of my beliefs, my attachments, my valuing of unreal things. And in every way, all of my suffering was really INSIDE myself, not really anything that anyone was actually doing outside of me. It was my inner experience that became hellish. It was my inner feelings and reactions that were my suffering, and it was all ultimately self inflicted. I chose it through believing in it.

Many people would say it's completely understandable that I would feel so upset given what was happening. And many would say that anyone would feel that way. And that when such things happen everyone is stricken with fear. And that this is all completely normal and natural. But it IS NOT. It is mental illness, and it is extremely widespread. Because we're not willing to look deeply and honestly enough at what is really happening in our minds, and what and HOW we are doing it to ourselves. No one is supposed to be unhappy, or suffering, or sick or dead, ever.

For a time I could not see my involvement in it, and just kept having these upsetting flashbacks of how "it was hell" and how upsetting and ridiculous it was. Because I could not "positively separate out" the what from the meaning. And emotional memories of ego experiences are always from a victim vantage point - the "one with the suffering" viewpoint.

I couldn't realize how I DID have a choice and I WAS choosing and the way I suffered was actually my own choice, albeit somewhat unconscious at the time. I didn't realize I could believe otherwise because I believed too heavily in the body and the world being reality. So the suffering was somewhat inevitable. And it was not the world's fault. It was my mistaken mindset. I had to learn that bodies aren't real and the loss of body parts has no effect on the spirit.

I used to also have a fear that it was going to repeat and something just as bad would happen again. But this too is melting because I can't fear that "hell will happen again" if I am realizing that I am the one who caused it to seem like hell. In choosing not to do that to myself again, I can render myself invulnerable. No matter what seems to transpire. A happy dream is an empowered dream, in which I am cause, not effect.

The only benefit perhaps to such trials, such suffering experiences, isn't so much that you learn skills or abilities to get through it and survive, but more that you learn the part you play in making it seem to be what it is. In taking responsibility for sight. In owning your power of decision to choose differently. To use it as an opportunity to forgive, and not as an opportunity to attack yourself. Because at the end of the day we really are just using the world to try to prove that we are weak and vulnerable and must die in guilt, which none of us really deserve or need.

You can set yourself free from hell, but it does require that you learn the beliefs you hold about the world are false. The valuing of bodies and the fear of sickness and death has to go. The indentifying with a body, and others with theirs, has to go. Otherwise you are going to suffer sooner or later, by your own choice. The secret of salvation tells you this. Nothing happens without your own consent. And all the ways that you experience any situation is you doing it to yourself, no matter whether it seems like you are the victim or the victimizer or who seems to play what role, in what is essentially a non-existent illusion of happenings.

You can't get out of hell by talking yourself into it, justifying why the world is real and why it's okay that there is suffering, by telling yourself that it's okay that bodies are dying, or trying to adjust to hell. You cannot find peace through making the world real and then trying to make yourself at peace with its real hell. The only way to escape it is to not believe in it at all, otherwise you do hell to yourself long before the world becomes hell to you.

The Holy Spirit will repeat this ONE inclusive lesson of deliverance, until it has been learned, REGARDLESS of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him, He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

A couple of days ago, I rubbed my eyes a bit too much and triggered some swelling. Maybe a small blood vessel was broken or something. My upper eyelid swelled up and was red and sore and uncomfortable all day.

I at first wasn't sure whether to try to perform some kind of miracle on it or not. I knew that if I were to "fight it" I would be making it real and making a drama about it, which wouldn't help. At first that made me feel like I had to just accept it and live with it.

But part of me also wondered, what is it that stops me from accepting a complete and total healing instantaneously right now? Why should I tolerate this? How can I accept it and have it disappear as well?

So then I went to Holy Spirit. I asked, should I do something about this?

He said no.

But I had this sense that, I hadn't asked the right question. I indeed needed to DO nothing in the truest sense that, really, this thing had not really happened. But this also keyed me in to realize that, I needed to believe that it had not happened in order to truly embody the need to do nothing.

So I set about cancelling it by collapsing every belief and sense of truth about what had caused it. I told myself plainly that it did not exist, was not there, was already healed, there was no swelling, no soreness, no discomfort, no damage.

I undid all belief in the various causes that I'd convinced myself of such as "because I rubbed it" or "too many tears" or "didn't want to see something" or that issues about certain people were responsible.

When there were no more imagined "reasons why" it should be there, I really got into the sense that it is gone already and did not exist at all. This is an important point because we need to assert the state that we choose to manifest right now, not something off in the future. It's like painting a new picture of what you believe is real now - a vision of divine health and present happiness - rather than in any way accepting that sickness still exists.

So as part of that, I started to affirm gratitude to God that He had already healed this, that it was already resolved, already undone, had already disappeared, and that there was now a completely restored and healed eyelid free from all problems.

This was when I think Holy Spirit stepped in and suddenly I started with the energetic shaking. But also something 'new' happened, right after I thanked God for having healed it already.

Thanking God for healing in effect invites the receiving of healing while simultaneously affirming that the problem is gone, which is the proper mental "direction" for allowing God to extend and flow. God works in the now and in the awareness that the problem is solved already, so we need to learn to shine "thank you that it is healed already" (acknowledgement of receipt) rather than "please heal it because it's not healed".

Note that in the bible there is a phrase about asking, and that if you believe you have received it, you shall have it. The believing it is received, through thanks to God, and therefore acknowledgement of its PRESENCE, is the key to miracles flowing.

The area in question suddenly was filled with what I can only describe as an extremely high "heat", so hot and intense that I wondered for a moment if something had burst or become worse. It was very intensely focused right in the middle spot where this issue was located. It seemed to cover an area no more than a couple of millimeters, and held there in one spot.

I just observed it for what seemed like maybe 20 seconds or more. It didn't move or change. It was just there. It seemed hotter than any physical heat you could experience. Yet it didn't burn and was not uncomfortable at all. It was not pain. It almost felt like an intense presence, hard to ignore. Like some kind of "liquid fire".

I've heard some Christian healers etc talking about Holy Fire and this idea that Holy Spirit can bring some kind of intense healing "fire" from heaven or something, which heals stuff. I am presuming this was my first encounter with it.

I then relaxed and eventually went to sleep. I could already tell even then, that it was much less sore, I couldn't barely feel it anymore, and it was much more comfortable. This morning the problem has almost disappeared. It looks and feels a lot better.

Sometimes I am grateful for little, relatively minor physical issues, because they can present good opportunities for practicing miracle-working and healing. They indeed are lessons when used appropriately.