The thing about the body is that it's a limitation. You as a spirit are unlimited, infinite, everywhere. You are omnipresent like God. To seemingly "enter" a body you have to massively confine yourself to one location, separated off from the rest. It's like having your hands tied. Huge amounts of awareness have to be shut out. Not to mention that your intimate expansive unified relationships with the entire Sonship are shut out.

You are squeezed into this tiny little space that you then seem to inhabit. The body forms this fence around a part of the mind and seems to keep it inside, protected and separate from the rest of the mind which is outside. Large distances are placed between bodies to ensure they are kept separate. This is all the ego's design for isolating and imprisoning God's children.

Then the ego goes one step further and says, ok, now that you are in this body, wouldn't it be great if you could connect with other people? How about we bring your body closer to other bodies? How about we have your bodies try to join with other bodies? Maybe you'll feel wonderful things as you merge and feel close to others. And the usual response to this temptation is that is sounds great, it seems like an improvement, we don't have to be so alone and isolated.

The problem here is that we're accepting a massive artificial limitation as though it can never be changed, we're deliberately confining ourselves to being trapped in a little body, acting from littleness. We're handicapping ourselves, and then pretending that to bring bodies together is going to somehow "undo" this. But so long as the handicapping nature of the body is maintained, so long as we are isolated in space and time, anything the ego offers as a special relationship is a ridiculous substitute for true joining.

Two spirits should share, join, merge, connect, be one, and access each other fully and completely and in a truly unlimited way. You are in your brother's minds. You share everything with them. To do that, you need to not be restricted and limited. Trying to first accept massive limitation and to then try to continue to join, is like two people with a ball and chain around their ankles, chained up to separate prison cells, trying to reach out to be closer to each other. They can't leave the prisons or get past the bars.

It's also a simple fact that nothing in spacetime can truly join. Quantum particles are designed to be separated off. If atoms were to truly occupy the same space they would annihilate each other in a nuclear explosion. Forces repel the particles and keep them separated. Even what seems to be a physical collision or sensation of touch is really what it feels like to bump up against these force fields. Atoms don't ever really touch each other at all. So right off the bat the ego has made this scenario where even if it looks as though you are as physically close to something as possible, you still aren't actually making real contact. All sensations of touch are sensations of two forcefields repelling each other.

To try to join with another spirit while having a body is next to impossible. Someone who knows they are spirit would also find it pointless and very limiting to try to make this connection via the body. Why, when you can experience direct mind-to-mind communication ("minds need not bodies to communicate"), would you first filter all communication through your body, then through another body, in attempting to share something? Why not just go mind-to-mind?

When two bodies attempt to join in sexual acts it also really is an attempt to identify with your own body, to identify the other person with their body, to bring the two bodies together in an attempt to believe that the two persons/spirits are actually joining. This is a body delusion. The physical bodies are all that are coming together, and even their sensations of contact are illusions. Forms, matter, energy, keep individuals separated off at all levels and at all times.

Trying to relate to another brother, a spirit, by trying to relate TO or WITH the body, is almost like you're having a relationship with someone's clothing. If you were to fall in love with someone's jacket and trousers and completely ignore the person wearing them, this would indeed be very strange and somewhat insane. But this is what we do when we relate to people as bodies, completely failing to overlook the illusion of the body, failing to see the real person beyond it.

The ego first established a state of massive lack and deprivation. Its isolating of us made us lonely and in need. It built compulsions to try to join physically, not in an effort to bring us closer together, but in an effort to reinforce and emphasize the reality of the body. Pleasure and pain accomplish the same goal of making the body and illusions of sensations the primary focus. "To sense is not to know", and by focusing on sensations we become blinded by perception of form.

In efforts to bring two bodies together in a special, body-worshipping relationship, we actually necessarily exclude vast quantities of individuals. More is left out than is taken in. Due to the separating and localizing nature of spacetime, bringing 2 bodies together must entail excluding billions. The attempt to make two bodies extra special, psychologically, requires the downplaying and attack upon other bodies. A special body cannot be elevated and idol worshipped without condemning all the rest.

"On this side of the bridge, you see the world of separate bodies, seeking to join each other in SEPARATE UNIONS, and to become one BY LOSING. When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in. For God is left WITHOUT, and NOTHING taken in."

What appears on the surface to be an attempt to join, is ACTUALLY an attempt to separate. And so the ego's promise of body union in fact leads to an increase in separation, unconsciousness, loss, lack, loneliness, isolation and imprisonment. The supposed freedom produced by sexual union actually produces an increased state of exclusion and illness. With the body as the main focus, the mind is shut out and true joining based in real love becomes impossible.

You could say, in fact, that the attempt of two bodies to come together to join to make a baby, is actual a death ritual. The bodies celebrate their triumph over all other bodies, they worship the idol of death, separation ensues and now there are three bodies. Illusions have given birth to illusions. And while this is much celebrated in the world, the ego does have these underpinnings in its mechanics of what is actually happening.

It's possible, for a time, to still use the body for a holier purpose. Love can be extended through it to others, it can be used to teach, to make the body less real, and to overlook form. To the Holy Spirit, the body actually is seen as having NO function.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself."

"When it is used only as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function."

"It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly, having no function except communication. "

"Healing IS the Holy Spirit's form of communication, and the ONLY one He knows."

Trying to make bodies real, to use them as exclusion devices, emphasizing and believing in and falling into the temptation of the flesh, being deceived by physical sensations not recognized as illusions, believing your brother is a body, etc are all ways that the ego uses the body to keep you from what it promises will be the outcome. The ego guarantees separation, while the Holy Spirit guarantees union.

For a time we can use the body with the Holy Spirit, but not to emphasize bodies. Not to use it as a way to focus on the body or believe it can give us anything. Not to use it to get from others. And not to use it as a symbolic act of exclusion. We are to love everyone equally, and this is impossible at the physical level.

"You cannot enter into REAL relationship with any of God's Sons unless you are willing to love them all AND equally."

"Think not that we can relate in peace to God or our brothers with ANYTHING external."

The entire world of bodies has to be more or less "overlooked". "To forgive is to OVERLOOK." To overlook means to "bypass seeing", to see past and beyond. If we stop to dwell on the physical, our sight is blinded. If we stop to focus on the body, the mind stops extending past it. This produces various forms of illness. If we truly want to have a real relationship with anyone, it has to be a real relationship with everyone, at the level of unconditional love, through mind and spirit.

What if the world is really a highly malleable dream, not some fixed objective place, and our minds have the power to change it at will? Then this perhaps redefines physical miracles.

If the state of objects, the events that happen, the people that show up, the things that happen, are all chosen and consented and actually put there by the mind, then the mind is in a position of orchestrating, arranging, organizing and putting in place the contents of the dreamworld. Literally projecting physical matter.

This then means that if the mind is changing, its current state is going to project and manipulate and steer the dream in different directions. If it is in fear and war it's going to produce more conflicting nightmarish dreams, and that literally means causing the physical world to have more fights, arguments, conflicts, and so on. Not merely that you're interpreting such events in a more negative way but literally the physical number of problems increases.

Then if the mind is moving into a lighter, higher perspective, it is projecting a broadcast of more tranquil "surroundings", it will outwardly picture its inner condition and make a world in which there literally is less conflict. Less fights, less arguments, less wars, less attacks. Not merely that wars and attacks are now looked up in a more loving way, but that literally the count of them decreases.

This would then mean that someone who is anti-miraculous will be tending to mis-create life scenarios, events, occurrances etc which are generally more conflicted and upsetting. And someone who is more at peace and in line with God will produce life scenarios which are literally, on the physical level, calmer and more cooperative and easier to deal with.

A miracle worker would then be someone of a high mind who literally "manifests" a more healed world. Not merely healed as in, on I'm looking at the same world in a happier way, but that literally a higher world is projected and made. A higher world is hallucinated. Not a projection onto the world, but the ACTUAL world itself is a higher kind of world, with more peace and less problems and less sickness and so on.

For example, Jesus speaks of this:

"When you have looked on what seemed terrifying, and SEEN it change to sights of loveliness and peace; when you have looked on scenes of violence and death, and WATCHED them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks that never waste away; who need PERSUADE you to accept the gift of vision?"

Jesus isn't merely speaking there of interpreting a warzone AS IF it were a beautiful garden. He is saying that literally it transforms INTO a beautiful garden, a physical garden. How else does "all around the signs of life spring up" when miracles fall like drops of healing rain?

We have to now ask ourselves, is Jesus referring here to vision being some kind of just "happier way of looking at the same stuff", in which there are still wars and conflicts and so on but you "read into" them more positively? OR is he LITERALLY saying, that terrifying scenes, harmful arrangements of objects, frightening events, and so on, are literally erased, and replaced with a different kind of "reality" where there is now literally a beautiful garden instead of a warzone? Not a warzone reimagined or reinterpreted, but a warzone REPLACED by a garden?

What if our attempted understanding of perception is totally fucked up, and Jesus is actually NOT saying that you have "perceptions about" a separate world "out there", but instead that there is NO objective world, there is only a wishful-thinking dream projection hallucination of a world, which takes on different literal FORMS, depending on the content of your mind? Because now we're talking about mind literally changing the physical content, the events that transpire, the people that interact, how relationships go, problems that arise etc, and not merely looking at them in a different way.

Perhaps Jesus has thrown out the idea of there being an "objective world" entirely, and is speaking solely to the fact that our minds are literally PROJECTING A WORLD in realtime? That the reflection of hell on earth isn't merely a darkened interpretation of earth, but an actual projection of a warring world? And that vision or true perception or sight of "the real world" may actually be a way to project a heaven-like illusory world where there is no more sickness or death or suffering? Not a heaven ON earth, but a dream of heaven replacing earth?

When you go back and re-read many of Jesus's statements about perception and what you see and so on, perhaps they take on a different light if you consider them as NOT referring to an objectively separate world. Such as when Jesus says "The world IS perception" and "The world is false perception." Perhaps he is literally saying that when the mind is in false perception it projects planet earth, and when it is in true perception it projects the real world which REPLACES ENTIRELY the "actual world"? That perceptions of the world are always SUBJECTIVE hallucinations.

There is no world to really project onto. There is only an outward picturing of your present inner condition. There is no perceptions "about" the world as such. Changing how you feel about the world actually changes the world, itself, into a different form of a world, a different dream.

You see, when Jesus says that your self is ruler of the universe and nothing happens without your consent, he's not giving any exceptions to that. He's telling us that nothing happens unless we consent to it. That means the events, the happenings, the people, the encounters, the relationships, etc are actually orchestrated by the mind. Not merely interpretations of a world. The mind IS the world. "You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts."

So now when you are a miracle worker, turning water into wine, walking on water, raising the dead, these are not merely perceptual reinterpretations of things. Jesus didn't look at lazarus's body in "a happier light". He transformed the FORM of his body from a dead decaying corpse into a living healthy active form of a body. That is direct reality manipulation. That is mind over matter. That is changing the dream world with the mind. That is what we might call a "physical miracle".

I'm really starting to lean more now toward this idea that there is no objective world here, there is only a dream, and it does not exist without our mind dreaming it. Therefore its content is entirely mind driven, mind chosen, mind consented. What happens is what we desire. If the world is going to pot its because we're making a world that's going to pot. If events are improving its because your mind is improving. And this leads to the notion that eventually we will actually orchestrate a world state which is actually somewhat like "heaven on earth", before we ascend. Where things are PHYSICALLY more harmonious.

What if the world is not a mirror or a screen or something to project onto. What if it IS the projection? And what if there is no world without such dreaming? And what if you as the dreamer can dream any kind of world, and have it become physically manifest?

"But appearances are shown to be unreal BECAUSE they change."

"There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and ***all the world must change accordingly***."

"There is no world apart from your ideas because ideas leave not their source, and ***you maintain the world within your mind in thought***."

"***external conditions are produced by the thoughts of many***, not all of whom are pure in heart as yet."

You can share the power of God, if you know how to pray. "Prayer (asking) is the medium of miracles". - ACIM

How do you ask? How do you pray? How do you accurately communicate with God as to what you want? How do you cause to happen what you want to happen, instead of what your unconscious chooses against you?

One part of miracles is believing you have received what it is you want, or in other words, acceptance of its "reality". But the receiving is only part of it. There is also the asking. "Ask and you shall receive". So how do you ask?

Asking isn't done by there being a sense of separation between you and what you want to happen. It isn't done in a typical asking fashion, where you say, "I do not have this yet, but I want it". That simply affirms and states that you do not have it, and that's going to remain the case. You think this is asking, but this is how a victim asks.

In victim consciousness, where you see yourself as powerless, where there are causes outside of you working against you, and where you are afraid, you tend to withdraw and stay frozen, acting as if you are choosing or wanting, but basically remaining paralyzed. There is no power in it.

This lack of power, or empowerment, literally means that the Holy Spirit - who is the expression of God's Power, has been blocked. Or basically, you are choosing not to USE His Power. His Power is shared with Christ, who you are, but if you are in a victim consciousness you have disowned yourself, and therefore disowned this power.

To ask correctly must entail the presence of POWER, because it is that power which actually gives you power OVER illusions, and actually is like a "force" which can make actual changes. If you are not empowered, then you are cut off from the power you share with God, and therefore do not have the power to do anything. So when you ask, in a disempowered state, you really strongly believe that there is no power that can actually act, and therefore the power does not do anything.

So you could be in a victim mindset and be very very strongly "asking" for help or change, pleading with God, begging for someone to be healed, and nothing is happening. Because even though you're making a lot of noise, most of which is a reaction to perceiving that there's a "really big real problem", it's all ego expressions, not expressions of empowerment.

You can also be in wishful thinking. You could be saying "I wish I wasn't sick". There is no power in that whatsoever. So it's a wish, but it doesn't do anything. So it's not really a request. You're not really asking for the sickness to be healed even if you're wishing very hard. You can really really strongly feel that you really really "want" a person to be not sick, because you think the sickness is real and want to help, but this "wanting" is not asking. It is just making the problem real and reacting to that delusional perception, taking the form of "looking like" you're asking, but really doing absolutely nothing.

God has the power to do anything. And the Holy Spirit can express that power with no limits. This power comes because God EXTENDS. And you are meant to be sharing in that power, causing you to be ABLE to actually CAUSE ANYTHING to happen. But you're not going to be able to wield that power if you are not in alignment with "being empowered". So victimhood has to go. You have to become responsible for being what you really are. You have to claim the truth and own up to your causality, which you share with God.

When you are in the victim mindset, you have disempowered yourself, and you are used to having no power. You think that if you do spiritual practices and "wake up" then you will still be a disempowered being, perhaps more responsible and aware but you don't realize it means you will have ACCESS TO REAL POWER. The power that creates worlds. There is a line in ACIM urtext which says "your mind has the power to create planets". No joke.

So if you want to get access to the power, first and foremost, you need to get out of the victim mind, which is your long-term goal of becoming closer to God's truth. As you approach that truth and align yourself with it, you are opting to become an extender of God's power (love). Meanwhile, you need to learn how to ask.

Asking is more of an act of stating that something is already manifest. It is a command. It isn't really a question. It's like writing reality. You don't ask by begging or traditional ego asking. You state what you believe in. There is, however, a caveat to this.

Such power can only be used for the highest good of all. You cannot be a "power ego" that gets access to God's power but uses it for all kinds of ego whims and purposes. The power only works through ego relinquishment, which automatically means it cannot be even accessed for malevolent purposes. It can only be accessed and used for loving purposes. This is why you need to be clear about what God's will is, because you can only use His Power if it is God's will that you do so.

if you want, lovingly, for a person's sickness to be healed, you do not say, "I'd like that healed please". You also do not ask God "are you going to heal this" or "can you heal this please?". You instead state a "new reality". You command the old reality to go, by cancelling the illusions psychologically, then you state what you want to change. You tell it to change, using that power. Your word becomes powerful.

"All your sins are forgiven, get up and walk" - Jesus' example.

Jesus isn't wishy washy in his asking. He is commanding. Authoritative. That's the key to asking. He doesn't ask God to maybe do something. He joined WITH God, BECOMES the power, SHARES the power, and EXPRESSES the power. THAT is correct prayer. That is the highest level of prayer. When there is a separation in the prayer where you think there is some obstacle to overcome, some time delay, some real problem, or some doubt as to whether it's going to transfer, that's basically ego and it will rob you of your power.

True prayer, the highest song, ACTS, as if it is real already. Jesus says his "workers are ACTIVE workers". It's not a form of asking that the ego is used to. It's counter to the ego's intuition. It's almost like, looking into the future and visualizing what it's going to be like, believing it is true, and pulling the future state into the present by receiving the truth that it WILL happen and already has. This is totally the opposite of the ego's form of asking, which focuses on the PAST and the reality of existing problems, causing there to be no power in the present and no ability to affect the future.

Thus, since asking is prayer, prayer must mean commanding results, ie expressing LOVE from love's perspective, as a representative of love, and it means that whatever song you are singing, whatever truth you are radiating, whatever you are ASSERTING, that is what you are giving, and that is what you are asking for. So asking in a way is backwards, you do not ask, you command. You receive.

You believe God's truth and make it a reality, regardless of what form looks like currently. How can a new form be expressed (e.g. a healed body) if you are dwelling on what the existing form looks like, or if you keep looking to the existing form to see if it has changed? Instead you focus squarely on the reality in the mind - what you are CAUSING TO HAPPEN. You do have a right to this power and you can access this power. It is your inheritance. But you need to unlearn the ego's ways of causing stuff to not happen, in order to reawaken the proper FUNCTIONING of the Son of God.

There are people who live in fear all the time. They are so afraid and see themselves as such vulnerable victims, that they are very unaware of the fact that they are doing this to themselves.

In "victim consciousness", part of the mind sees itself as very threatened and weakened. This is the persona. The persona is an attempt to get rid of parts of the Self, keeping certain select parts and chopping out the rest. It seems to do this in an attempt to make itself special, or to give special value or meaning to what it keeps. You will find that victims are somewhat self absorbed, thinking of themselves as superior.

But the act of getting rid of parts of yourself and stripping yourself away simply weakens you, is a form of self mutilation, diminishes you and therefore you can't help but experience yourself as having become weaker. Then you will be much more likely to experience fear and threat and danger, because you see yourself as "little". This littleness, cowering in a corner, is a natural result of trying to be good, trying to be perfect, trying to deny and reject things about yourself that you cannot accept or love. It also the result of not being able to grant the same acceptability to others.

Simultaneously, as you make yourself small and even more prone to danger, where do all of the parts of you go that you have disapproved of? They go into an unconscious part of the mind called the shadow. You relegate them there through means of denial, suppression, avoidance, attack, labelling as wrong or bad, judgement as inferior or unworthy, making guilty, being angry, etc. So the victim will be doing all of these things to themselves. And as such they will have portioned off a significant part of themselves and have made it unconscious - outside of awareness.

However, this unconscious stuff, is still in your mind. And it is now a part of the mind/Self which has been additionally attacked. It's been judged, hated, relegated, rejected, abandoned and so on. You've piled all of your guilt into it. And this has actually turned it into a kind of monster. A dark twisted vicious-seeming monster which is hurt and angry and wants revenge, and which threatens to attack the perfection-seeking persona part of the mind.

So now the persona part of the mind has good seeming "reasons" and explanations for why it should be terrified, because the other part of the mind has become an enemy. And since the other part of the mind is WITHIN the single mind, it's like being locked in a room with a monster. It has access to 'you' - or at least the persona you, and so you will feel exposed to it, able to be affected by it, and will try to escape. And as you try to escape by rejecting it more and more and hating it more and more, it becomes ever more empowered and aggressive and even more of a threat, chasing you down and terrifying you.

All of this inner drama will project outward onto the world and will play out in all manner of ways. It will recruit people to seem to come along and attack you. It will create scenarios where you seem to be terribly threatened. It will orchestrate events through the power of the mind to make stuff happen to fulfill what you think should be happening to you. Whatever is happening on the inside, will happen on the outside. And this will give weight and justification to continuing to believe that this monster is 'out there', everywhere, and not within you.

What the victim does not realize is that it needs to make peace with the victimizer, and that the Self - who you are - your identity, is NOT the victim OR the victimizer. They both are WITHIN what is you - the wholeness of your mind. They are both artificial characters that you have invented and which you've made to be at war with each other. You invented them. And the only reason that you allow it to continue and don't realize you're doing it to yourself, is because you don't realize they are both inside you, are both a part of your ONE SELF, and therefore continue to see them as separate.

If they are separate, and if there is something about the victimizer part that the victim part 'claims' is not themselves, and if there is something about the victim part which the victimizer part 'claims' is not part of themselves, an ILLUSION is maintained - requiring a certain amount of unawareness - that they are SEPARATE IDENTITIES. So long as the victim therefore sees themselves as 'not the victimizer', the mind which houses both parts won't be able to realize that it is both of them.

You must realize that you are both parts, and that both parts are within the whole of what you are. And therefore, any ILLUSIONS relating to how they are not each other, MUST be illusions. You therefore recognize the illusion as just that, see through it, and can no longer believe it. This will instantaneously collapse the persona and the shadow, because they are now seen as artificial constructs in the one mind.

They can't both be true. You have to recognize that within you, you've created a victim-self, AND a victimizer-self, and that YOU are the one who is choosing, animating, giving life to, orchestrating, controlling and USING both of them against each other. And therefore both of them are puppets that you are using, to wage war. The victimizer puppet is attacking the victim puppet, but the victim puppet is also attacking the victimizer puppet. The victim puppet came into being when the mind decided to also create the victimizer. You MUST recognize therefore that you are your own enemy, that you have been the one who has been threatening yourself, and that you are BOTH the victim and the victimizer.

Then you can see that since you are BOTH of them, and since they APPEAR to be different, those differences MUST be illusions. You can then no longer believe in the illusion that they are separate or that either of their sob-stories are valid. If you are the one who is pulling all the strings to perform this self-against-self drama, then these puppets are nothing more than puppets, and they are NOT WHO YOU ARE. And you are the whole. This shift in identity from being either victim or victimizer, to being both, to being neither, is AWAKENING. And only in awakening to a more whole self can you be FREE from this self-attacking, fear-producing, self-destructive state of no peace. It's all been happening inside yourself, and has nothing to do with the world or other people.

And so as the victim walks around the world suffering and feeling exposed and vulnerable all the time, thinking that there is nowhere safe to go and nowhere to be that isn't open to attack, they simply are NOT AWARE of who they are, they are heavily identified with the persona victim self, they are heavily PROJECTING their shadow onto the world and see themselves as very threatened by it. In other words, there is a lot of perceived difference and separation between the two warring parts of their mind. There are many illusions that the person is falling for, because they do not have enough AWARENESS of the fact that they are doing this all to themselves.

And so they think that they have enemies and the world is not safe and they can't go anywhere or do any thing or even move an inch because absolutely everyone seems to be against them. But they are ONLY against themselves. And if they could see this and realize this, they would learn to stop attacking themselves, to stop seeing themselves as the persona self, stop seeing themselves as victims, stop trying to be only good and only special, and embrace the WHOLENESS of who they are. Which is actually unconditional love. And they will experience safety, invulnerability, and immortality. And that is a state in which there is NO REASON TO BE AFRAID. Yes

If you're seeing bodies, your vision is blinded by sight of form.

Christ's vision LOOKS PAST bodies to the truth and does not see physical forms.

"The BODY'S EYES are therefore ***NOT THE MEANS BY WHICH THE REAL WORLD CAN BE SEEN***, for the ILLUSIONS THEY LOOK UPON must lead to more ILLUSIONS of reality. And so they do. For EVERYTHING THEY SEE not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."

"Christ's vision has one law. 2 It DOES NOT LOOK UPON THE BODY, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. 3 It BEHOLDS A LIGHT BEYOND THE BODY; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. 4 It sees no separation. 5 And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

"THE OPPOSITE OF SEEING THROUGH THE BODY'S EYES IS THE VISION OF CHRIST, which reflects strength rather than weakness, unity rather than separation, and love rather than fear. The OPPOSITE OF HEARING THROUGH THE BODY'S EARS is communication through the Voice for God, the Holy Spirit, which abides in each of us. His Voice seems distant and difficult to hear because the ego, which speaks for the little, separated self, seems to be much louder. This is actually reversed. The Holy Spirit speaks with unmistakable clarity and overwhelming appeal. No one who does not choose to identify with the body could possibly be deaf to His messages of release and hope, nor could he fail to accept joyously the vision of Christ in glad exchange for his MISERABLE PICTURE OF HIMSELF."

"Christ's vision is the HOLY SPIRIT'S GIFT, GOD'S ALTERNATIVE to the ILLUSION of separation and to the belief in the reality of sin, guilt and death (seeing the physical world which is made of sin and death). It is the one correction for all errors of perception; the reconciliation of the seeming opposites on which THIS WORLD IS BASED. Its kindly light shows all things from another point of view, reflecting the thought system that arises from knowledge and making return to God not only possible but inevitable."

"Learning MUST LEAD BEYOND THE BODY to the re-establishment of the power of the mind in it."

"The body cannot be looked upon EXCEPT THROUGH JUDGEMENT. 2 To SEE THE BODY is the sign that you LACK VISION, and have DENIED the means the Holy Spirit offers you to serve His purpose."

"Today the lights of Heaven bend to you, to shine upon your eyelids as you rest BEYOND THE WORLD OF DARKNESS. Here is light YOUR EYES CANNOT BEHOLD. And yet your MIND CAN SEE it plainly, and can understand."

"A WORLD FORGIVEN CANNOT LAST. IT WAS THE HOME OF BODIES. ***BUT FORGIVENESS LOOKS PAST BODIES*** This is its holiness; this is how it heals. ***THE WORLD OF BODIES IS A WORLD OF SIN***, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains TO KEEP A SEPARATED WORLD IN PLACE? For PLACE HAS GONE as well, ALONG WITH TIME. ONLY THE BODY MAKES THE WORLD SEEM REAL, for BEING SEPARATE IT COULD NOT REMAIN WHERE SEPARATION IS IMPOSSIBLE. Forgiveness proves it is impossible BECAUSE IT SEES IT NOT. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."

"BEYOND THE BODY, beyond the sun and stars, PAST EVERYTHING YOU SEE and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light"

"The Holy Spirit's messengers are sent FAR BEYOND THE BODY, calling the mind to join in holy communion and be at peace"

"It must reach out beyond itself, as you reached out BEYOND THE BODY, to let you and your brother be joined."

"Yet what is that to those who have been given one true relationship BEYOND THE BODY? 10 Can they be long held back from looking on the face of Christ?"

"THE BODY'S EYES SEE ONLY FORM. 4 THEY CANNOT SEE BEYOND what they were made to see. 5 And they were MADE TO LOOK ON ERROR AND NOT SEE PAST IT."

"You do not doubt that the body's eyes can see. 4 You do not doubt the images they show you are reality. 5 Your faith lies in the DARKNESS, not the light."

"Here is a WORLD established THAT IS SICK, and this THE WORLD THE BODY'S EYES PERCEIVE."

"It is impossible to see your brother as sinless and yet to look upon him AS A BODY. 2 Is this not perfectly consistent with the goal of HOLINESS? 3 For holiness is merely the result of letting THE EFFECTS OF SIN BE LIFTED (body veil disappears), so what was always true is recognized. 4 ****TO SEE A SINLESS BODY IS IMPOSSIBLE****, for HOLINESS IS POSITIVE AND THE BODY IS MERELY NEUTRAL. 5 It is not sinful, but NEITHER IS IT SINLESS. 6 AS NOTHING, WHICH IT IS, THE BODY CANNOT MEANINGFULLY BE INVESTED WITH ATTRIBUTES OF CHRIST OR OF THE EGO. 7 Either must be an error, for both would place the attributes where they cannot be. 8 And both must be undone for purposes of truth."

"WHO SEES A BROTHER'S BODY HAS LAID A JUDGEMENT ON HIM, AND SEES HIM NOT. 2 He does not really see him as sinful; HE DOES NOT SEE HIM AT ALL. 3 In the darkness of sin he is INVISIBLE. 4 He can but be imagined in the darkness, and it is here that the illusions you hold about him are not held up to his reality. 5 Here are illusions and reality kept separated. 6 Here are illusions never brought to truth, and always hidden from it. 7 And here, in darkness, is your brother's reality IMAGINED AS A BODY, in unholy relationships with other bodies, SERVING THE CAUSE OF SIN an instant before he dies."

"Your question should not be, "How can I see my brother without the body?" 2 Ask only, "Do I really wish to see him sinless?" 3 And as you ask, forget not that his sinlessness is your escape from fear. 4 Salvation is the Holy Spirit's goal. 5 THE MEANS IS VISION. 6 For what the SEEING (with christ vision) look upon (overlooking bodies to something beyond) is sinless. 7 No one who loves can judge, and what he sees is free of condemnation. 8 And WHAT HE SEES HE DID NOT MAKE (heaven), for it was GIVEN HIM TO SEE (by God), as was the vision that made his seeing possible."

"You believe that what your PHYSICAL EYES CANNOT SEE does not exist."

"Let love draw near them and OVERLOOK THE BODY, as it will surely do"

"For FAITHLESSNESS is the perception of a brother AS A BODY"

"IT DOES NOT LOOK UPON A BODY, and mistake it for the Son whom God created."

"Perception is a FUNCTION OF THE BODY, and therefore represents A LIMIT ON AWARENESS. Perception sees *THROUGH* THE BODY'S EYES and hears through the body's ears. It evokes the limited responses which the BODY makes."

"If you are SIN, YOU ARE A BODY, for the mind acts not."

"Let not the FORM of his mistakes keep you from him whose holiness is yours. Let not the vision of his holiness, the sight of which would show you your forgiveness, be kept from you by what the BODY'S EYES can see. Let your awareness of your brother NOT BE BLOCKED BY YOUR PERCEPTION OF HIS SINS, ***AND OF HIS BODY***."

"(sin) The body's eyes behold it as solid granite, so thick it would be madness to attempt to pass it. Yet REASON SEES THROUGH IT easily, BECAUSE it is an error. The form it takes cannot conceal its emptiness from reason's eyes. "

"EVERYTHING that the BODY'S EYES can see is a MISTAKE, an ERROR in perception"

"THE BODY'S EYES SEE ONLY FORM. They cannot see beyond what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on ERROR, and NOT SEE PAST IT."

"See how the body's eyes REST ON EXTERNALS, and CANNOT GO BEYOND. Watch how they STOP AT NOTHINGNESS, UNABLE TO GO BEYOND THE FORM TO MEANING. "

Giving and receiving must occur simultaneously.

This means that in order to receive love and healing, you must give love and healing.

Which in turn means, that the only way for you to be healed, is to extend healing to others.

Which therefore means, that your willingness to heal your brothers heals you.

"I will be healed as I let him teach me to heal (self and others)."

This is a key point because when you focus on "your" healing or "your body" that in fact is falling short of extension. As you fixate on "what is wrong with me", you are failing to forgive and overlook it.

What's needed is the re-establishing of your function of healing, which happens through extending PAST the body to others.

If you seem to be sick, it is because you have not loved yourself AND other enough. As ACIM says, those who are sick do not love themselves. But to love yourself you have to love PAST yourself because love has to be shared.

"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves."

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

As you become willing to give, you are praying to receive. You can only receive by becoming part of the giving. When prayer is asking to get and not give, it is asking for sacrifice. And when prayer is asking to give and not receive, it is asking for sacrifice.

You have to be included in the prayer that asks to receive, because you must be part of the functioning of giving. The "flow" through you as a conduit for God only works when you are willing to be part of the transmission of that which you want to affirm is in you and through you.

When the mind's extension is arrested ie held back, through the body, and begins to fixate on your body or another body, it is not fully joining minds. It is falling short. Love is being held back. There is resistance and fear. This induces illness.

Once illness is induced and you are deceived, the temptation is to continue believing that since you are sick, you need to address the sickness. But focusing on the sickness does not look past it. It is the sharing, extending, and looking past your body that re-establishes the proper functioning of the mind. Once mind is extending/forgiving past the body, it is shining a light, and that light heals your body indirectly.

So the trick to this is that if you need healing it is because you are not healing. To heal, you need to heal others. By being of service, you receive support. By extending love you receive love. As ACIM says "Love goes out because of what it is, but you are needed that it can begin." If you block it is cannot extend. You must participate in the giving, to open up your vessel so that love can flow through.

Jesus tells us, "you are healed because you wished him well." As you wish your brother well it heals you. If you attack your brother you will attack yourself. If you try to accuse your brother of sin, you will be accused. If you prepare a list of effects and suffering that you wish your brother to endure, you can be sure that you will be the one who experiences them. You cannot be healed alone, nor can you escape the effects of your thinking.

It's important to realize then that not only is healing not "just you getting healed alone", but also sickness is not about "you being sick alone". Sickness is an attempt to come between brothers and to attack BOTH you and your brother, driving a separation between you, using the body as a separation device and attempting to increase the rift.

Making the body "more real" by focusing in it, increases its symptoms, in an effort to convey that it strongly comes between you. Your sick body acts like a solid brick wall blocking you off from others, attacking them keeping you imprisoned. Similarly healing cannot entail merely the repair of "your self", it HAS to entail the REJOINING and SHARING with your brother, to undo the rift that caused the sickness in the first place.

No-one is sick in isolation. In contagion do the sick seek to kill others. Sick bodies are accusers. If "you" seem to go into sickness it is because you are attempting to accuse your brother of your sins. Which means you believe you are sinful AND that your brother is sinful. And this means you see yourself in a sickened state AND your brother in a sickened state. It may well be that you seem to be the only one suffering but it is because psychologically you have separated yourself off from others.

No-one heals in isolation. Isolation must end for there to be healing. To be healed yourself, you cannot hold grievances against others, you cannot project sin, and you cannot find your brother to be guilty. By the Golden Rule, what applies to you applies to them. For you to experience healing, mentally and or physically, you have to be willing to see your brother healed. "Forgiveness is not real unless it has brought a healing to your brother AND yourself."

The temptation is to think you are the only one sick. The belief in "I am alone" produces sickness because it ends sharing. Therefore the opposite, "We are joined", produces health because it acknowledges that in their natural healthy state, minds are joined as one. And you can only ever join in LOVE.

It's almost as though you should "ignore" (overlook) what seems to be "exclusive sickness" and focus more on extending love to others, which shines past the sickness and erases it. If your sickness is a barrier to sharing, sharing is the remedy. The sickness was an attempt to disable yourself so that you could NOT share. The solution is to share and extend love in defiance of the barriers you've erected so that they are shone away.

Sickness then is an attempt to isolate, to cut yourself off, to be exclusive and special, to be different, to not share, to hide and to be in the dark. Healing must then be a matter of joining, reunion, equality, sharing, coming into the light, opening up to extension, and allowing your brother back in. This means receiving all of the sonship again, developing holy relationships, and moving past the illusions of separation.

When Christ Mind is shining through a body in wholeness and love, the body is shone past, making it illuminated and healed and transparent, eventually to disappear entirely. Bodies are interference, originally made as devices for separation. To use them with the Holy Spirit is to UNDO them. "The body cannot remain without illusions."

"Christ is within a frame of holiness, whose ONLY purpose is that He may be made manifest to those who know Him not; that He may call to them to come to Him, and see Him where they THOUGHT their bodies were. Then will their bodies melt away, that they may frame His holiness in them."

"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. To those who know Him not it carries Him, in gentleness and love, to heal their minds. Such is the mission that your brother has for YOU. And such it MUST be that YOUR mission is for HIM."

The whole problem with false perception is really just one of confusion about "what is the cause." Or more to the point, who is causing it. We could rephrase that as "I don't know what God (cause) is."

In the separation there was a disassociation from the role of "causer" or chooser (creator), and the ownership and responsibility of this causing was projected onto others. We then ended up in an extremely confused state of not being able to clearly discern, "who is doing what to whom?"

In the ego thought system, cause and effect are completely reversed, things which are true seem false, things which are false seem true. There is a breakdown of the Golden Rule, in which anything that's true is true of both of us.

It's replaced with the ego's idea that what is true for me is not true for you. Which really is another way of saying, cause and effect are separate. I can cause you without being affected. And you can cause me without being affected. I can accuse you of doing something I did not do, and thereby believe I am innocent while you're guilty.

This is the ego's idea of "getting away with murder", because it believes it can cause things to happen and escape the consequences. So when we get into "its you not me", or "you did this to me", any kind of blame or finger-pointing or scapegoating or believing that "cause" is outside of you, you will instantly go into a victim role. And victims are always confused about who is attacking them.

In that confused state of ego reactions, it always seems like it's someone else doing this to us, some external event happened, some unforseen circumstance, some unwanted happening

Usually you'll feel devoid of all responsibility for causing it. ie it'll seem like you didn't choose any of it, and you don't want it. But this is because you have no clue whatsoever what is really causing anything. And so random fingers point at random targets hoping some mud will stick.

As you apply forgiveness, ie you become more honest and less in denial about your contribution, you start to sort out exactly WHO is causing stuff to happen. At first it seems like it's everyone except you, but then gradually each time you see that YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF, or was something you did in fact choose, or that it did have an effect on you, the picture starts to become clearer.

The more you can take responsibility for choosing the more you will discern clearly and recognize that you are the cause of your suffering. You will also start to notice that the ego's breaking of God's laws does not work, and in fact when you do attack or scapegoat another you do NOT escape the consequences. It makes you feel guilty, it frightens you, it upsets and stresses you out.

Eventually, there becomes a clear association between "being a victim" and "attacking yourself". A clear line of causation from what you are choosing and the effect YOU experience as a result. You'll see it's not possible to blame another without feeling blamed. It's not possible to judge without feeling judged. It's not possible to attack without feeling attacked. And it's not possible to accuse someone of being the cause of you without you feeling like a vulnerable victim.

And so then it becomes obvious, that you feel like a victim BECAUSE you positioned yourself as one, seeing yourself in that role, and wanting to do so in order to try and get a payoff of scapegoating. But you no longer can pretend that your attacks on another don't hurt yourself. You can't help but notice that the instant you try to shift guilt to someone else, you will immediately feel that familiar weakness, threat and lack of safety that accompanies a victim mentality.

It then becomes an unavoidable no-brainer. That is, you clearly recognize and distinguish, whenever I attack, I feel attacked. Whenever I want to make someone out to be guilty, I feel like a victim. Whenever I try to be unforgiving, I feel unforgiven. It has a direct correlation, because I AM the cause of everything I experience, NOT the other person.

It then becomes harder to pretend to yourself that your attempted attacks on others have no effect on you. You are affected every time. You simply cannot maintain peace and happiness at the same time as being angry with someone. You can't truly honestly justify anger in any situation because you know that it's bullshit. And it'll become increasingly noticeable that you're bullshitting yourself as you sort out exactly who is causing everything you feel.

So then it becomes quicker and easier to catch yourself. You can see, well, as soon as I went to point a finger at someone and use them as a scapegoat, I felt like a victim under attack. Funny that. I made that happen. I gave myself that experience. And so I can choose again and withdraw that self-attack, that self-positioning of "I'm the victim here!". That demand that I be weak and vulnerable and recognized as a suffering frightened liar.

Since I then see that I do this to myself and it was very obvious that I did this, the entire "appeal" of playing the victim role withers away. There's no point to it when you can more accurately discern that it very much does hurt you. There are consequences. And so the challenge then is to no longer see yourself unfairly treated or as a victim of anyone or anything, recognizing that it's only when you do that you feel that way at all. And you no longer want to feel that way.

Fortunately since it's an inside job where you're the only one causing, and other people are never the cause of you AT ALL, it really boils down to your own willingness to admit to what you're doing to yourself and to want a better way. To prefer not suffering over suffering. To recognize that hurting hurts and attack attacks, rather than believing it does something else. Because in our confusion we don't even realize what the fuck we're doing to ourselves, and we end up killing ourselves in the name of self preservation.

True perception is accurate perception. It is recognition. It is awareness and discernment. It is the ability to SEE, clearly, what the truth of this situation is. What is really going on. Who is really causing and choosing. Where things really originate and what their effects actually are. It's the willingness and ability to not be blinded or confused by the ego temptation to think its one-sidedness can work. It's simply honesty and openness to the truth.

Who would hurt themselves unless they thought they weren't hurting themselves in doing so?

Who would hurt themelves once they recognized that they cannot be hurt unless they do so?

Who would hurt themselves if they recognized that even the slightest attempt to hurt others diminishes your own happiness?

Who would hurt themselves when joy and peace and love are the price?

"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

"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."

""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."

The true nature of your Holy Self is that you are a CHANNEL FOR GOD. You are a medium. You are not an island, you are not the source of anything, and you do not have anything other than what God has given you.

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE."

Your relationship with God is that He has created you by his will, has shared everything of himself with you, has given you what you are, has put everything into you that you have, and now you must share it.

It is also true that "nothing is for you alone", because everything God gives is universal. It is given to you, and it is FOR you, but it is ALSO FOR everyone. It belongs to everyone because it is shared by everywhere, and if you want to have it for yourself you must share it.

Nothing given by God is ever exclusive or special. You cannot have anything exclusively for yourself. Nevertheless, everything IS yours, because God does share everything with you. It's just that it ALSO belongs to everyone else. And so are not anything special, and nothing is yours alone. Not even your self.

This means that what you are, what is in you, and what you are capable of, is PUT THERE by God. It is in fact him, himself, in you. Such that, any abilities, qualities, characteristics or attributes that you have, are SHARED with him and are part of him still.

This is why "God is my strength". This does not merely mean that God is strong when you are weak. It means there is a strength in you which is yours, which is very strong, and that strength IS GOD. Because God is in you, and you are forever host to him. But without him, you would have no strength at all.

Being a host is being a channel. The stuff that is flowing out of you, the stuff you have to give, the is the same as the stuff you have received. You can ONLY give what you have received from him, because without him you have NOTHING AT ALL. You ARE nothing at all without him. But with him, you are everything. And his only requirement is that you give what you have been given.

The idea of the ego is the rejection of inheritance, the rejection of being caused by or an effect of God, and the attempt to be separated off in isolation. This makes you selfish and self-reliant, with self-interests and special needs. And now you see yourself as having special powers that others do not have, and which are not given you by God, and which you do not want to share so that you can remain special.

In truth, what you are is an extender or relay for God. He supplies you and you give what you have been given. He shares with you so that you can share with others. And what you have been given you MUST share, otherwise you cannot have it. Everything is like a giant buffet where everyone is entitled to everything, and everything belongs to everyone.

"Though prayer love is received (from God). Through miracles love is expressed (from God through you)."

This mean you are ONLY what God has decided that you are, and you have ONLY what God has given you. And in turn this means that you are NOT anything "not of God". You do not have anything not of God. All that you are and all that you have is GIVEN to you by him. Even the Kingdom which is your home is GIVEN to you by him.

In truth you literally have nothing other than what God has given you. You are not anything other than what he has decided that you are. You cannot do anything other than what he has willed that you can do. And you cannot change any of his laws.

This means that anything "not of God" has absolutely no power over you, no power to change you or define you. Nothing can happen to you in defiance of his will. You cannot become anything he did not decide that you are, and you will never be anything but his perfect creation.

You are not an island. You are a CHANNEL through which God extends. The light that is in you is yours and it is in you, as part of you, it is HIS light. It is FROM him. And it IS him. The light in you has been put there FOR you, because it is there FOR you, but it is also FOR everyone. You are not your own possession, you are his. And he has deemed that YOU are to be shared with everyone.

You do not own anything exclusively, and you are not special. You are not a hero, because you are not the source of what you cause. The miracles you perform come from HIM, through you. "Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers."

You can only GIVE GOD. Because you have only received God. You can only EXTEND HIS love, because He has given HIS love to you to share. You do not have your "own" love, or your own magical power. But you have HIS love and power, which you can give to others on his behalf. This means you are a representative of God. "I am here to represent Christ who sent me."

We need to learn that we are not isolated discreet entities. We are not fenced off by walls or kept separate from each other. Sharing is our true nature. We cannot have anything, be anything, or do anything, other than what GOD has ordained. Nothing can be true of us other than what HE decides is true. Nothing can HAPPEN that is not his will.

This means also giving up all belief that the world is the cause of you, has power over you, defines you, determines what is true, or that you are a victim of change. Or that even YOU can change what God has given YOU to be. You cannot BE changed from the permanence that God has given. You are STILL exactly what HE wills that you be. You still INHERIT everything he gave you in your creation. And you can still GIVE everything that you are, along with Him.

"Only God's own holy children are worthy to be channels of his beautiful joy, because only they are beautiful enough to hold it by sharing it."

"Let us today open God's channels to Him, and let His Will extend through us to Him."

"The constant GOING OUT of His love is blocked when His Channels are closed"

"The gifts you have are not for you alone. What He has come to offer you, you now must learn to give."

"***God is the ONLY Cause***, and guilt is NOT of Him. Teach no-one he has hurt you, for, if you do, you teach YOURSELF that what is NOT of God, HAS POWER OVER YOU. THE CAUSELESS CANNOT BE."

"THIS peace is totally incapable of being shaken by human errors of any kind. It denies the ability of anything which is not of God to effect you in any way." ... "True denial is a very powerful protective device. You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you."

"The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient."

"Glory is your inheritance, given your Soul by its Creator, that you might EXTEND it."

It's important for us to be willing to look at the world and recognize that it HAS NO MEANING. The world ITSELF is utterly meaningless. It was made as a projected idea of the opposite of God. God is entirely meaningful, so his opposite means nothing at all.

A meaningless world is not necessarily therefore an upsetting world, or lacking world, or a world that can't reflect positivity. It can't of ITSELF be positive, or holy, because it is nothing. But it CAN act like a completely neutral mirror in which holiness can be reflected.

And meaninglessness does NOT necessarily mean depression, darkness, boredom, despair, suicidal tendencies, or lack of purpose. These are in fact all MEANINGS of the ego which it projects onto the world. True meaninglessness is devoid of ANY meaning, either positive OR negative.

The world is therefore really nothing, or you might think of it as neutral. It has no meaning of its own and can only act to symbolize something GIVEN to it. You therefore have to give or project meaning ONTO it to make it mean something at all.

"The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real."

The world thus acts like an empty mirror. You can project egoic ideas of hell onto it, or ideas of heaven and love. You can project God onto it. Since the world HAS no meaning, the ego rushes in to try to give it a hellish meaning. It projects meaning of sin and fear and attack and death. But this only happens when you don't recognize that the world is meaningless. If you don't regard the world as a MIRROR, in which a REFLECTION is seen, because it has no real image of its own, you mistakenly associate the reflection FOR the mirror itself. And now you think that what you projected ONTO it is what it inherently IS.

The world is kind of like a void, or am empty shell. It is nothing in itself. So you give it meaning. You ego gives it the meaning of hell, while the Holy Spirit helps you to give it a the meaning of heaven. Whatever meaning you give it, it REFLECTS back to you. It reflects rather than IS anything, because it is meaningless and so does not have ITS OWN meaning to give you. This makes it act like a mirror.

This reflection IS an image, and is not heaven itself, but is a reflection of heaven. God can be seen reflected IN the world (because he's in your mind), because the world ITSELF is NOT God. Being NOT God, or God's opposite, it has NO meaning of its own, and so CAN reflect HIS. The challenge then is to put aside the projections of hell that you have GIVEN to the world, the meanings you have given to everything, and allow yourself to RECOGNIZE that the world IS meaningless. Without your projections of hell, it is NOT hell, OR heaven. It is just a blank canvas.

"In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning."

The thing is that when the mirror is crowded with egoic images, dreams you project onto it and perceive, it becomes dark. And now you are looking at a reflection of darkness IN the mirror, and mistake the darkness FOR the mirror. And now the world seems like hell, and the darkness makes it impossible to see God's reflection.

When you are willing to recognize that the world is a neutral meaningless mirror, really NOTHING, with no meaning of ITS OWN, this is in fact a good thing, and not a depressing thing. It means you are willing to stop projecting FALSE images onto it, or to give it a meaning it DOES NOT have, or to try to MAKE it mean hell. By not putting images of hell onto it, you do not see hell IN it. Recognizing it AS a mirror opens your mind to NOT KNOW what it is, and to instead allow the Holy Spirit to project the real world's reflection for you to see.

When the mirror is spotless and clean and devoid of ego projections, this LACK of meaning acts like a shiny surface in which EVERYTHINGNESS is reflected, rather than like a dirty dark mirror which filters OUT the reflection.

In the true reflection of God's meaning IN the mirror of the world, God's reflection is seen IN the world, and now the world appears to REFLECT heaven. It now appears to share heaven's MEANING, because heaven's meaning (love etc) is projected ONTO it, an so reflects BACK to you through perception. "Projection makes perception." "Perception is a result not a cause."

By being open to acknowledging that the world it NOTHING in itself, and is MEANINGLESS in itself, you are in fact becoming open to allowing God to put HIS meaning there. And thus is the world redeemed and saved from projections of hell onto it. And in an empty space, devoid of ego attack and sin ideas, the world can now reflect heaven.

And thus doing this can make you HAPPY because you can recognize that hell does not really exist when you don't GIVE hell to the world. And the world can now seem to turn into a happy dream, where heaven is reflected and God is seen IN everything (as a reflected IMAGE of God). Such a world is the forgiven world, in which everything seems sparkling and bright and new and lovely. And in this state the body is healed and incapable of sickness. And now you are ready to go home.

"In the world you can become a spotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you, to all around you. You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves."

"Recognition of meaninglessness arouses intense anxiety in all the separated ones. It represents a situation in which God and the ego "challenge" each other as to whose meaning is to be written in the empty space which meaninglessness provides. The ego rushes in frantically to establish its own "ideas" there, fearful that the void may otherwise be used to demonstrate its own unreality. And on this alone it is correct."

"It is essential, therefore, that you learn to recognize the meaningless, and accept it without fear. If you are fearful, it is certain that you will endow the world with attributes which it does not possess, and crowd it with images that do not exist. To the ego illusions are safety devices, as they must also be to you who equate yourself with the ego."

"You think that what upsets you is a frightening world, or a sad world, or a violent world, or an insane world. All these attributes are given it by you. The world is meaningless in itself."

"What is meaningless is neither good nor bad. Why, then, should a meaningless world upset you? If you could accept the world as meaningless and let the truth be written upon it for you, it would make you indescribably happy. But because it is meaningless, you are impelled to write upon it what you would have it be. It is this you see in it. It is this that is meaningless in truth. Beneath your words is written the Word of God. The truth upsets you now, but when your words have been erased, you will see His. That is the ultimate purpose of these exercises."