"Only salvation can be said to cure."

There is only one problem - the sense of separation from God. God is immortality and permanent health. If you deny God, you are denying life and inducing death. It is ONLY the separation from God which CAUSES ALL SUFFERING, including all forms of sickness and death.

To deny God is to attack your health. Defending yourself against God is an attack thought, attacking your invulnerability. Sickness becomes a defense against the truth (God), made to "protect you from God", but with the actual effect of "protecting you from health." In sickness you are attempting to "save your life" by protecting yourself from life. This is clearly insane and cannot work.

"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival."

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt (are mortal)."

"It is your task to heal the sense of separation that has made him sick."

"The problem of separation, which is really the only problem, has already been solved."

There is no other problem. ALL sickness is caused by separating from God. Denying God induces illness. Your mind is the sole cause of all suffering, even death. The ONLY solution is the atonement, which COMPLETELY erases all sense of separation and accepts God as truth. This makes the denial of health impossible, making sickness and death impossible. Atonement cures wholly because it represents WHOLENESS.

"The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness."

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

"Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take. Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. Atonement does not heal the sick (but does result in this), for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. (which heals the sick) And that is cure indeed.

***For sickness now is gone***, with nothing left to which it can return." Atonement is the restoration of your immortality. It makes you utterly invulnerable. You can no longer be sick or die. Nothing can happen against your will. You have no need for defenses because you know you cannot be attacked. Nothing real can be threatened.

"The mind that serves the Spirit is invulnerable."

"Those who accept Atonement, ARE invulnerable."

"You are invulnerable BECAUSE you are guiltless."

"This heals the Separation, and places within man the one defense against all Separation-mind errors which can make him perfectly invulnerable." When you separate from (deny, oppose) God, you block your awareness of the presence of love (life) within you. Seeing lack and being in need, you seek for what is absent, outside of you. This begins "seek and do not find." You will not find it outside because it is inside.

You look for yourself, your love, your life and health, outside of you, where they do not exist. Seeking outside of yourself for this CAUSES sickness and suffering, because it takes you AWAY from God and life, which are WITHIN you. You try to find them where they do not exist, and the more you try the worse you suffer. Seeking for God outside yourself is the avoidance of God within yourself.

"Peace is an attribute ***in YOU. You cannot find it outside.*** All mental illness is some form of EXTERNAL searching. Mental health is INNER peace." Perceiving a lack of love within, you project lack without. This makes a world of lack. Coming from the internal attack on God, it is a projected attack-world. "The world was made as an attack on God." "The world of bodies is the world of sin." "The world is a (projected) picture of the crucifixion of God's son."

This is also a projection of, and a disowning of, causal power. You don't want to admit that YOU CAUSE YOUR OWN SUFFERING - ie you are the one denying health. You imagine that causation is outside of you, and you see yourself as caused BY it. This frames the world as "sinning against you" ie causing you against your will, making you a powerless effect. This sets you up to be a victim, or receiver of the world, which you now "sense" through the body's inputs.

You have given the world, which you are dreaming/hallucinating, all the power it seems to have. You have given YOUR power away in trying to empower it to have power over you. You have given it your causality and will. You think it has your life, and contains your self. And you see it as causing you. It is therefore attacking you. It is your enemy and your savior, because it does things to you.

The world now is seen as a world of sin, in which the world can hurt you. It decides when you will suffer. It decides how you become sick. It decides when you will die and how much pain you will endure. All of this seems to happen against your will from the outside in. Anything the world can do TO you, is against your will, regardless of it seeming to be positive or negative.

You then divide up the world into separate parts to try to "spiritualize" some and "demonize" others. You pick and choose certain aspects of the world to "do things to you" that you prefer. You try to avoid its attacks, while collecting its lovely treasures. You defend against its harsh weather with your little fragile house. You seek for its fancy cars while trying to avoid a crash. You want only the good food not the bad stuff. And so you make a bargain with the world, to try to induce it to "do only good things to you", while avoiding all the bad things. And when it seems to go well, you think you are "living the dream." But you have gained the world, and lost your soul.

"What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

The world is two-faced. The world is self-contradictory. It offers you pain, and offers you salvation from that pain. It hurts you, then offers you healing. It threatens to destroy you, then tries to save you. This is because the world has come from the belief that BOTH heaven and hell exist. That life and death are both possible. And so the world depicts the contradiction of opposites. It seems to partly help, and partly hurt.

As a result, EVERYTHING in the world is not one thing, but two. It is a world of dualities and a double-edged sword. Everything which seems to help, MUST also hurt. Everything which seems to hurt, in some way helps. Snake venom can be a partial medicine. Surgery can kill you. ALL foods have toxicity to them, some worse than others. All medicines exaggerate certain body functions while depressing others. The external manipulation of the body is thus seen as the only sane solution to being externally manipulated.

This is actually inescapable. Anything the world can seem to do to you against your will is MAGIC. All magic is a mixture of attack and defense. To be "affected by the world" is still a state of being victimized and in need, regardless of whether the effects are preferred.

We try to focus ourselves on finding the "least harmful solution" to problems, to minimize the risks, and to skew the picture to make it seem like there are "completely harmless solutions". We have a fictional idea that some things in the world are totally harmless. But the world HAS NO harmless solutions. EVERY one of its solutions is a problem in its own right. Its effects cause more effects.

In fact, the world has a somewhat sinister motive, which can appear to be hidden. It basically wants you dead. Sooner or later. Even if it gives you scraps and hopes and promises, every one of its helping hands is laced with poison. Its every attempt to "make you happy" sets you up for loss and sadness.

Anything it can give to you, it can just as easily take away. Anything you "get" from it, is a deception with a cost. This is because the world was made WITH and FROM the notion of the REJECTION OF LIFE. The world is made of the idea of death, because it came from rejecting immortality. So it cannot actually offer you life. It cannot give you wholeness. And it cannot provide a CURE for anything - or a cure for ITSELF. And being the inducer of death, it will do anything BUT cure death.

"There is a tendency to think the world can offer consolation and escape from problems that its purpose is to keep."

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

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. ... All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."

Because the world comes from the wish to die, ie the wish to deny God and health, it is driven by a MOTIVE of death. That was the PURPOSE in making it, as an attack upon God and life. Death motivates the world, and everything in the world ultimately drives TOWARD death. It cannot therefore induce immortality, cure you completely, or restore your wholeness. It cannot save you, nor can it give you eternal life. It MUST fail, because it came from the failure to recognize the truth.

"It is not Will for Life, but wish for death, that is the motivation for this world. Its ONLY purpose is TO PROVE GUILT REAL. No worldly thought or act or feeling has a motivation other than this one. These are the witnesses that are called forth to be believed, and lend conviction to the system they speak for and represent."

"Everything in this world is little, because it is a world made out of littleness, in the strange belief that littleness CAN content you. When you strive for anything in the world, WITH THE BELIEF THAT IT WILL BRING YOU PEACE, you are belittling yourself, and blinding yourself to glory." "There is NOTHING in the world to teach him that the logic of the world is totally insane, and leads to nothing."

"There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

"There is a light which this world cannot give."

"It means that nothing outside yourself can save you; nothing outside yourself can give you peace. But it also means that nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb your peace, or upset you in any way."

Anything the world "does to you" is magic. Magic is the idea of a cause outside of yourself affecting you against your will. It is the opposite to internally-sourced miracles. This takes the form of anything the world seems to do to harm you, as well as anything the world seems to do to help you.

While you may prefer the "good stuff", having the world "do good things to you" is just as much a state of victimhood. It still focuses on you getting from the outside, what you lack inside, without your insides changing. It's still a state where you WANT the world to do something "to you" against your will, FORCING you to "be happy." This is "forgiveness to destroy", because you seek for the world to be the source of change, rather than yourself.

Since the world attacks and defends, and since its motive is ultimately death, and since it CANNOT induce wholeness or a total cure, ALL of its remedies are AT BEST partial. All of its remedies MUST therefore do the opposite to what they claim to do, as well. They MUST be two-faced and deceptive. If it is to "help you", it MUST also hurt you. There is ALWAYS a price to pay, and it does not help to deny this.

This means that ALL foods have a negative side-effect. There is no such thing as a perfect diet. It means that ALL medicines have harmful side effects. All surgeries have high risks of serious threats to your health. All vaccines INDUCE what they are ultimately trying to avoid. In some cases literally, while in others the form is less obvious.

It may not take the form of a certain vaccine "causing the virus" it was trying to prevent, but the real PURPOSE of a vaccine is to "ward off death", which it CANNOT really do. And in fact it must IN SOME WAY, induce it, to some degree. It MUST induce other symptoms as a result of its "interference". Some of these symptoms may be mild to barely noticeable, while others may be life threatening.

This has nothing to do with the competence of medical workers, or the proficiency of scientists, or the wonders of modern medicine, or the seemingly wonderful "benefits" of an extremely wide range of magical solutions. It would APPEAR that "lives are saved" by such things. Provided you recognize that at the same time, lives were also attacked by such things. There is NEVER a possibility of a perfect total "cure" through ANY magical external means. ONLY atonement can be said to cure completely.

This simply goes back to the fact that the ONLY PROBLEM is the separation from God, which is the sole cause of inducing all sickness, suffering and death. The MIND creates what appear to be viruses and invasions, putting them into the world. The world only then APPEARS to be their source. ONLY by correcting THAT problem, will sickness and death TRULY become impossible. Anything which does not address this ACTUAL problem, will not ultimately ward off death, even if it appears to in the short term.

This is the main problem which ALL magical solutions share. They appear to change the body, BUT NOT the mind. They may make the body seem healthier, but do nothing to fix the dripping tap of death-inducing separation.

There is no pill for "the separation". There is no medication that can induce runion with God. There is no surgery which can cut out the ego. There is no bandaid sufficient enough to heal the wound of the denial of health. And no vaccine can EVER fully guarantee your safety or that of others. It may seem to do SOMETHING, but it cannot do everything.

What that leaves you with is one of two options.

1) Heal the separation from God, accept atonement, receive a complete CURE, and never suffer again. This makes all sickness impossible because you choose to stop causing it, and there is no other cause.

2) Avoid healing the separation, MAINTAIN sickness, choose from a selection of LIMITED and PARTIALLY EFFECTIVE magical treatments which WILL hurt you in some way, and try to live with the consequences.

If you think that you can elect to use magical remedies WITHOUT ill effects, you are in denial. They only seem to do anything BECAUSE of your denial. You might weigh up the seeming risks, look at the manmade "statistics", and decide for yourself (or preferably with God) as to whether to indulge in magic or not. But let's be clear, for your health as well, that any magical solution cannot ONLY heal. It has to also cause some form of harm. It is because you BELIEVE in harm that you think you NEED it in the first place, and this belief works against your health.

Maybe you are willing to accept that, although you cannot honestly be fully at peace about it. No-one who recognizes without denial what magical solutions ARE and WHY they exist and WHAT their motive is, can rest in peace. You can resign yourself to a compromise, willing to suffer in some ways to OFFSET the others. But this is how the world worlds. This is the laws of physics and entropy. You become willing to suffer a seemingly "smaller pain" in exchange for the reduction of a larger one. It's a tradeoff. You buy and sell risk in an effort to minimize cost, while always having a cost.

Do not pretend though that medicines or a vaccine or an injection or a pill or a certain kind of food or drink or even any form of salvation - sex, drugs, rock and roll - can undo the separation in the mind and truly prevent illness. Nothing external can fix the INTERNAL problem. The internal problem has CAUSED the external to appear, as an hallucinated world of suffering. And then you are looking to a made-up death-induced world, to save you from death. It cannot ultimately work.

"For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."

This doesn't mean you shouldn't necessarily USE magic IF you need to, want to, or for whatever reason. Sometimes such thing can seem to alleviate suffering. People wouldn't likely take them if they didn't "seem to help". Some people cannot "live" without external support, major medications, physical apparatus, and various other help. Surgery can seem to save lives. But surgery can also induce complications.

"All material means which man accepts as remedies for bodily ills are simply restatements of magic principles. It was the first level of the error to believe that the body created its own illness. Thereafter, it is a second mis-step to attempt to heal it through non-creative agents. It does not follow, however, that the application of these very weak corrective devices are evil."

Your best bet is seeking spiritual guidance from a higher source - the Holy Spirit - Jesus - Angels etc.... as to what to choose. And if that means you have to "settle" for non-miraculous external help, for a non-whole treatment, due to what you are willing to accept right now, so be it. But then keep working on your forgiveness and moving towards the acceptance of atonement as well. Atonement is the GUARANTEE of health forever.

Please don't misinterpret that this post is telling you what to do or not to do, NOR is it trying to paint vaccines in an unfair or negative light or to "put you off". They are what they are. They can only do what they do. If you're okay with that, so be it. It's your free will choice.

----TL;DR: Changing your perception OF a sick body, isn't enough to change what you are projecting. You are projecting your body and the symptoms.----

"Projection makes perception. The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less and so it is important to you. The world that you perceive is the witness to your state of mind, the outward picture of your inward condition. As you think so do you perceive."

Recognize that projection COMES FIRST, then perception happens SECOND.

"The world you see" (perceive) "is what you have put there to see" (what you projected first).

"The world you perceive" (second) "is witness to your state of mind" - your perception "witnesses", perceives, and reflects back to you, your state of mind, because your state of mind PROJECTED what it is that you are now PERCEIVING.

These are two different processes. The act of having a certain state of mind, which you then project FROM, puts stuff "out there", which you THEN perceive as a secondary process.

Even the body itself is a projection. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards". The body then PERCEIVES, AFTER having been projected.

Jesus talks about how this is a circular logic for us, a trap, whereby we believe what we want to see, we project it because we believe in it, we "make it appear" (manifest it), then we "perceive" ie let the body tell us what it is we projected.

Perception then, is distinct from projection. It is a secondary act. Without projecting, there would be nothing TO perceive.

So here's what you need to realize about perceptions of sickness.

The mind, in whatever state it is in, has beliefs in it, thoughts, which then project. These projections MANIFEST the body and many other forms and objects. The mind for example projects the body ITSELF.

If the mind has a belief in separation, it will project a body which shows up with signs and symptoms of sickness, because it is a PICTURE of your inward condition, and your inward condition is one of "I am under attack". So the body SHOWS it. it is a WITNESS ie corresponds to your state of mind. This is why "a broken body is proof the mind has not been healed." The body literally only shows up as the mind's manifestational projection. It's an image being projected by the mind.

Jesus speaks to this in his "special notes to helen"....

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it.. It merely became what it always was. ... The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond... To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness.

I did assume a human form with human attributes afterwards, to speak to those who were to prove the body's worthlessness to the world. This has been much misunderstood.

I came to tell them that death is an illusion, and THE MIND THAT MADE THE BODY CAN MAKE ANOTHER SINCE FORM ITSELF IS AN ILLUSION. They did not understand."

So here we can see, the MIND, MAKES the body. Your mind is projecting your body, and everything about it, right now. However it is showing up, witnesses to your mental content and your belief system. If it is showing up as sick, it is therefore directly correlated, it is PROOF, that your mind is not healed.

This also means, that when the mind IS healed, or close to, and it is still projecting a body, it MUST project a body which appears without signs or symptoms of sickness. This is because the body COMES FROM the mind, mind is its source, and a healthy mind WILL ONLY project a healthy-appearing body image.

Now. There is a problem here in how many people are interpreting the correction of perception.

Remember perception happens to look upon WHAT YOU PROJECTED, after you projected it. The body's eyes receive little photons of light to tell it, oh look, there's a body there. That's part of perception. The illusion that the very thing YOU PROJECTED, is now telling you what IT IS, completely forgetting that you put it there in the first place.

So now perception, is ONCE REMOVED from the direct expression or projection of the mind. Perception therefore is a secondary experience.

So now, let's say that you have projected a body with a broken leg. The broken leg was not caused by anything in the world. It was ONLY projected from the mind. The mind did not project a broken leg ONTO the body. The mind directly projected ONLY an image of a body with a broken leg. The body does not EXIST as a separate object, or a "thing", or something as an end in itself. If you do not project it, nothing shows up! If you do not project it, there is no body!

So now, that you projected an image of a body with a broken leg, you now will perceive. Perception can be in a state of correctness/clarity or in a state of false perception/distortion. Since your MIND has a belief in sickness in it, and has made a sick-appearing body image materialize, it also now believes sickness is real. Perception is now going to take place, and that same mind which PROJECTED the "sick body", is also going to see that same belief in sickness IN the body that was projected.

This means perception is now going to show you a hallucination of "sickness is real", "something is wrong", "sin and guilt" etc, as though it is *IN* the body. It is not in the body, it's in the mind. Thus the idea of sickness, which made the body to begin with, is now SECONDARILY projected ON TOP OF the body that you projected.

Then you will have various ego reactions to what you are misperceiving, and will start to seek a resolution. But your planned strategy here isn't typically anything to do with fixing your PROJECTION, it's always to do with fixing your PERCEPTION. And that means, something very obvious is about to happen.

If all you do, is fix your perception OF what you projected, you might be able to seem to "be at peace" with what is showing up. You might seem to become less upset or resistant or less fighting with, your broken leg. You'll tell yourself, if your perception OF the body is healed, you will be TOTALLY DONE. But this leaves you with a problem, and a state of denial.

Fact is, even if your so-called "perception" is perceiving your broken leg as "lovely and wonderful", oh how lovely that death looks.... your leg is STILL BROKEN. And that's a problem. Because now you are demonstrating that you can be hurt, you are attacking the entire world by claiming that something OTHER THAN YOU put the break there, you are holding this broken leg up for everyone to see to make them guilty and accuse them of sin, and you are attempting to demonstrate that God's Son can be killed.

It also means that since ALL sickness manifests as a DEFENSE against the truth, in the mind, which then projects a "defending body", which shows up as attacked, you CANNOT accept full and total peace while still maintaining that defense. It is impossible. The defense has to go, which means the belief in separation has to go, which MUST produce a projected body which shows up as HEALED.

Nothing happens to the body that was sick that you projected previously. It does not exist. You just RE-PROJECT A NEW ONE, every moment. Sickness in the body can only show up if the mind is defending against truth, and sickness can only show up in the body if the mind has GUILT. "Sickness is but another form of guilt". Therefore, if the mind does not have guilt and defenses, the body WILL ONLY show up as healed, as PROOF, that the mind is healed. The mind will PROJECT a healed-appearing body to testify to ITS inner condition.

So while that broken leg persists, you are in denial. You may be owning up to the fact that you have some control over your PERCEPTION. But you are not admitting that you have the power to PROJECT what you are even looking at.

This is a fundamental difference and there is a pretty big divide in the ACIM community based around this one distinction. Many people believe all they need to do is fix their perception OF the world, or what's showing up, and then they are done. In this belief system, it becomes justified that you can still have sickness show up and have a "healthy mind", that you can still DIE and be innocent, you can welcome death, you can keep your sickness and be totally happy, etc.

Yes, to a degree, as a preparatory step, you can come to be "relatively peaceful" about these things through changing your perception. What you are INDIRECTLY doing there, is that it's not actually your perception that you're fixing, is the content of your mind that PROJECTS the body in the first place. Attempting to change your perception is a second-hand roundabout way of trying to address the content in your mind, which is "showing you" a belief in sin and sickness "in" the broken leg. But at some point.... you're going to hit a wall.

The wall will simply be, that in order for you to really thoroughly change your perception so that you do not believe in sickness, and have no sickness in your mind, you're going to have to also ADMIT, that your mind is projecting the FORM OF SICKNESS *AS* the body, in the first place, regardless of your perception OF it.

So many people are onto this "change my mind about the world" kick, which changes perception OF the world. But they do not realize, at some point, if you are not going to perceive sickness, your mind has to be emptied of all belief in sickness, AND THIS MUST result in the PROJECTION changing. It has to. The mind can't retain some small amount of belief in separation and have *perception* be a state of peace.

If that broken leg is still showing up, but you are relatively "ok with it", you are IN DENIAL. That broken leg is NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SHOWING UP AT ALL. A sick body is PROOF the mind HAS NOT been healed.

There is this second camp of ACIM folk then who see this, and acknowledge, that the mind projects the body. Jesus Himself said it in that quote above. The mind that projects the body can make another. And if the mind can project the ENTIRE BODY, then IT is 100% responsible for making the body show up with ANY sign of sickness or death. This is how no-one can die without his own consent! If your mind does not put it there, it cannot be.

So if you just stop at.... I'm going to just be okay with this sickness, I'm going to perceive this sickness differently, I'm going to perceive this BODY differently, I'm going to look at this body in a more loving way etc.... that's a step TOWARDS healing the mind's content. But if that body is still showing up as BROKEN, you are NOT DONE.

This is where there comes to be a lot of denial, because not only is it often difficult to see that you projected the sickness AS the body (it can happen really fast and then go unconscious), there is also a lot of FEAR about this idea that your mind is THAT POWERFUL, that it can not only make sickness and death happen to you BY your will, but that the mind can also reverse that. Yet Jesus teaches:

"You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both." ABOLISH means, to TOTALLY REMOVE. That means, the reversal of ALL forms and signs and symptoms of sickness in the body AND mind, and EVEN DEATH. It Literally means, the ability to reverse death, to raise the dead, and to completely restore life. It is the ability to REWIND SIN and UNDO ALL OF THE CONSEQUENCES (effects) of your wrong decision.

Your mind is cause. Your body is your effect. The body is NOT CAUSED by the world in any way whatsoever. Ever. Your sickness is NOT PUT THERE by any cause outside of your mind, EVER. You are responsible for what you have chosen. And because you are, you can CHANGE YOUR MIND and it MUST CHANGE THE PROJECTION.

So yes it's one thing to work on changing your perception, but your perception has arisen from what you have projected. And that means, if you are GENUINELY undoing the sinful content in your mind, are taking full ownership of your power, are NOT believing that anything in the world has the power to affect you or your body, and are NOT attempting to demonstrate that the Son of God can be hurt and killed THROUGH the symbol of the body (the body can become a sign of immortality), then YOU WILL STOP PROJECTING SICKNESS AND DEATH.

You do not project it ONTO the body. You project it AS the body. No-one else put the body there. Your parents did not put the body there. Biology did not put the body there. Chemical reactions and physical interactions did not put the body there. The world, the dream, other people, did not put the body there. ONLY YOU DID.

So that means, if you're to go all the way with this.... this is where you get into MIRACLE WORKING. Because it means, you are willing to DEMONSTRATE, to live by example, that it is possible to reverse all sickness and death in yourself, AND IN OTHERS.

You first reverse it in yourself by accepting atonement. This allows you to receive miracles. Then you are able to express those miracles to and for others. If they are willing to accept it.

We are not supposed to be walking around with limbs hanging off and body parts failing and organs malfunctioning and eyesight going bad and developing a limp and a having cancers and diseases and various other forms of SIN.

Death is an attempt to demonstrate that the Son of God can be killed. Pain is an attempt to bind the son to the body to fixate him on and identify with being a real body. Sickness is an attempt to prove the Son can be hurt. Sickness is an attack on your brother. Sickness is the result of seeking outside of yourself, and demonstrates level confusion. None of this is God's will. It is a demonstration of the OPPOSITE OF GOD'S WILL for you.

No-one is supposed to be dying. Bodies are not supposed to be decaying and dying. There is NOT supposed to be 7 billion people planning their own death, who will very likely die in the next 100 years, putting 7 billion corpses in the ground, just because they did not want God's healing and love. That's their choice. It does not have to be yours.

If we are to demonstrate that we are immortal and invulnerable, we ARE supposed to demonstrate here, in the flesh, that the body cannot be hurt, BECAUSE, the body is ONLY coming from the mind, and therefore if you project a healthy body it will STAY HEALTHY at all times. And nothing can attack it. It is IMPOSSIBLE for it to be sick. NOR CAN IT DIE.

"Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. The mind makes this decision, as IT MAKES ALL DECISIONS THAT ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BODY'S CONDITION."

Later, when it's done being useful, it is simply DISAPPEARED. Just as Jesus did:

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it.. It merely became what it always was. And that is what 'rolling the stone away means.' The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond... To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. "

It was not a matter of it disappearing from his perception OF it. The body ITSELF disappeared because HE STOPPED PROJECTING IT.

THIS is our natural inheritance, this ability to work miracles, to reverse all sickness and death, to not only correct perception but to CORRECT PROJECTION. To UNDO everything we have PROJECTED. AND that ultimately includes your body, everyone else's body, all sickness, all death, all forms of separation, all objects, all planets, and this entire ILLUSORY UNIVERSE which is a PROJECTION coming from the mind.

So don't stop at "I will just change how I see the world." "Seek not to change the world, seek to change your mind about the world. Perception is a RESULT (effect of projecting) and not a cause (the body that shows up is not alive!). "And that is why order of difficulty in miracles is meaningless." ie... change your MIND, your body and the world MUST CHANGE to reflect the content of your mind. Without exception.

There are people who wake up in this world. There are people who are awake in the dream. There are people who have purified perception to such an extent that they seem to be seeing the real world or something close to it. They recognize that they were contributing sin to what is here, projecting it "onto" the body and world. But what they usually do not realize is, THEY are projecting the body and the world. And therefore, typically, they age, and they die. And then they reincarnate and make another body. Why? Because they did not get to the level where they woke up FROM dreaming, and FROM perceiving.

To wake up FROM the dream, you have to get in touch with the fact that you are the DREAMER of it, the one who is PROJECTING IT, and you are the one who is PUTTING ALL OF ITS OBJECTS OUT THERE. This puts you in touch with miracle working because now you are able to enact VERTICAL PERCEPTION, cause and effect are now vertical not linear, and you recognize the power of YOUR MIND to manifest absolutely anything in this dream, or change it, at will. Because you will realize, you have been DOING THAT all along. Your body was coming from YOUR MIND, and your mind only.

To wake up from the dream requires the undoing of dreaming, which overrides ALL perception, deals with separation at ITS CAUSE, and therefore DISAPPEARS THE DREAM UNIVERSE. That means, the disappearance of the physical universe, including precious "planet earth", which was never anything but a mental projection. All that is then left, is God's creation, which is Heaven.

How was the tiny mad idea possible? How was it possible for us to mis-create? Why did God give us the ability to try to sin? Did we lose our innocence in the separation? How is it that this world seems to exist?

When God created his children, He gave them the freedom to will and create. The mind is not capable of ever doing anything that God didn't give it the ability to do. It cannot add abilities to itself, it can only operate within the parameters of its design. This means you literally cannot go against God's will or do anything He did not make possible.

"God creates only mind awake. He does not sleep, and His creations cannot share what He gives not, nor make conditions which He does not share with them."

But what God did do, was give you freedom. The power of the mind to freely choose to will to co-create. And this freedom is fully given.

"The world, in its original connotation, included both the proper creation of man by God, AND the proper creation by man in his Right Mind. The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given. "

Within the context of being "completely free", it is technically possible for you to try to USE your freedom against itself. You HAVE to be free to do this, in order to truly have freedom. While you have free will, it HAS to be possible for you to potentially USE that free will to try NOT to will anything. If this weren't a part of the freedom of will, you would not have free will. It's not a productive USE of will, since it creates nothing, but it is still part of it.

The thing is, although you are free to TRY to deny freedom, something completely pointless happens when you do so. Since it remains true that God's will cannot be opposed, and you cannot remove your freedom from yourself, and you cannot make yourself unpowerful, and you cannot be changed in any way, the exercise of TRYING to use your will to NOT will, to be "unwilling" or to oppose God's will, HAS to be futile.

It's not that you aren't free to TRY to do this, it's just that there is really no point in doing it. It's not possible to cause anything real to happen this way, because it denies creation. So it's like saying, I want to use my free will against itself to cause nothing to happen. I want to will not to will. I want to not create anything. I want to deny myself.

There is a circular logic which enters into this. You are trying to use your free will to cause your free will to stop being free and to will nothing. But how can you still be WILLING that you will nothing? You have to still USE the will to will that you don't will anything. So the notion is really absurd. You have to keep using the will, while claiming that you're not using it. And so it has to entail denial and it has to NOT accomplish what you're trying to make it accomplish. And never can you will the WILL itself to cease to exist, because you'd have to USE will to do that.

It has to be a state of denial, because the fact remains you can't change your freedom or power. So trying to DO so can only mean you are going into a DENIAL of what is true of you, and are PRETENDING to do whatever you're doing. You can't actually make yourself un-free or destroy your power. You can, however, seemingly deceive yourself in believing that its possible. Precisely BECAUSE you are free to do so. God did make it possible for you to be free to try to not be free, but He did not make it possible for you to ACTUALLY affect your freedom.

"Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

Another way to put it is, it is not possible to change God's will or to cause your own will to stop. It is literally impossible to separate from God or be where God is not. However, you are FREE to use your freedom to TRY to do so. You can INSIST that it is possible, and invest belief in it, and try to GIVE IT truth and make it real and convince yourself of it and deceive yourself, but you STILL cannot make it a reality or actually do it in reality.

As you try to do so, as you attempt to use your freedom to stop being free, as you try to will not to will anything, or as you try to will nothingness, or try to give reality and meaning to something impossible, you go into what we're calling the "tiny mad idea". The idea of separation and sin. Which just means you're insisting that something impossible is possible - that something false is true. That you CAN separate, you CAN sin, you have done so, and there is proof that the impossible is happening.

This can only be self deception and denial, because it's still impossible. But you are free to believe it if you want to. To believe it you have to DENY what is true, try to be out of touch with the facts, and pretend that the will has been denied. You are free to pretend that you have no freedom, which seems to place the mind in a state of "sleep" or dormancy, as though it is not creating or has no power, or is not alive. A sort of "stand-by mode", in which the mind believes that everything impossible is possible, and thus imagines that the opposite of God is happening through a kind of hallucinatory process of wishful thinking. ("There is no world apart from what you wish").

"When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere."

Now, going into this state, is NOT A SIN. NOR is it outside of the scope of what God made possible. You can never actually rewrite the laws of God. You can't give yourself something He did not give you. You cannot change yourself. You cannot destroy yourself or your freedom or your will. But it IS within your rights and within your power to deny or pretend that you can do these things.

Pretending that you are not immortal is the best you can do, because you cannot cause yourself to die. But you certainly can produce illusions, fabrications, that its happening, through the DESIRE to have it be possible. You can confuse your identity with these illusions. You can also believe that the suffering is real. But it remains unreal, and the truth is unchanged.

What this simply means is that by "mis-using" the mind to believe that impossibilities are possible and happening, you hallucinate a world of make-believe, which you try to invest in and convince yourself is true and real. You even try to give it immortality and life and will and a mind of its own. But you can't succeed. You can only fake it. But you are free to fake it.

Entering into this state of "denying that you are free", using your freedom of will to try to will not to have freedom of will, you are ONLY entering into a state of being MISTAKEN. If it is true that you HAVE freedom and will, you are mistaken when you believe that you don't. If it is true that you are immortal, you are mistaken when you believe death is possible. If it is true that sin is utterly impossible, you are mistaken when you believe sin is happening.

Being mistaken is still an "innocent" condition. Guilt does not have to enter into it at all. Someone can make an "innocent mistake", which is simply a failure to willingly admit that you're trying to do something which makes no sense. You can be mistaken in believing that willing against God's free will is possible. It's not possible. Nor can you really will against yourself. But you are free to believe it's possible, and to try to do it, and to try to convince yourself that you've done it. But you cannot do it, and so are mistaken when you believe this.

Believing that you can be separate from God, is a simple mistake. Since it's not possible, you can't do it. But you can try to convince yourself that it's possible. Doing that is pointless and futile because it can't BE possible. But you are free to try. You are free to resist the truth. Or to use your power to try to pretend to be powerless. You are innocent in this because all you're doing is using your God-given powers in a way that is a pointless exercise. A way which results in nothing really happening, as you "play small" and try to be little and powerless.

Provided that you recognize that mis-creation is just a state of being mistaken, and is not a sin, and is still well within the laws of God, and that at no time is God's will violated, even when you are mistaken, then you can also see that mis-creating is an innocent act. It's really not an act at all. And it does not change the truth about you. All it does is set up some illusion of deception and some confusion about what's really possible.

"There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the laws of God; NOT as the law itself upholds the universe as God created it, but in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes he has. Corrected error IS the error's end. And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error."

"Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release."

The Course also talks about how entering into this "detour into fear", which is just an attempt to make true what is not true, or to use will against itself, produced a "lower order mind" or a "system of thought" which seems to function opposite to how God originally indended it in higher reality. This lower (ego) mind is a mind of denial, deception, untruth and confusion. But it is not a sin. It's just a mis-configured and unwise mis-use of your God-given abilities.

"Thoughts can represent the lower or bodily level of experience, or the higher or spiritual level of experience. One makes the physical, and the other creates the spiritual."

The physical world of bodies is what is produced in the deceptive state of being mistaken about the truth. In the state of denial, the dream of death, the illusion of separation, the pretense at being powerless and imprisoned, it produces the "forms of error" which the body sees. Error is just a mistake.

"No one CAN be "taken over" unless he wills to be. However, if he places his mind under tyranny, rather than authority, he intrudes the submission/dominance onto free will himself. This produces the obvious contradiction inherent in any formulation that associates free will with imprisonment."

Attempting to assert that will can cause will not to will, produced an illusion of an "unwilling world." A world in opposition to God. But this is STILL within the confines of the Son of God's freedom. The angels also have this freedom.

"Error cannot really threaten truth, which can always withstand it. Only the error is actually vulnerable. You are free to establish your kingdom where you see fit..."

"The "Princes of this World" are princes only because they are really angels. But they are free to establish their kingdom where they see fit.""God does not coerce".

"When the "lies of the serpent" were introduced, they were specifically called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth. He does not have to continue to believe what is not true, unless he chooses to do so. All of his miscreations can disappear in the well known "twinkling of an eye", because it is a visual misperception. "

God is not viewing your excursion into "trying to make impossible things possible", as being a sin. He doesn't see it as a real threat to what you are, either. Nor does he coerce you into stopping doing this against your will. For God to oppose your free will he would have to oppose his own. He does however "encourage" and guide and help his children to "come to their senses". Because it remains true that "trying not to will anything" is a rather pointless exercise which can't really result in anything creative. It's more like, taking a nap where you dream of destruction or "the opposite of creating". A dream of mortality and death as "the opposite of eternal life."

We mis-created the world, but only as a mistake. Not as a sin. When it is recognized as only a mistake, sin is lifted away from it and it is regarded as forgiven. Being an illusion of something impossible seeming to be possible, this is seen through and beyond, and this overlooking is forgiveness. It's a forgiveness which looks past bodies and the physical to the light of reality, not deceived by the illusion that false things are true. To the the light of sanity and reason. We simply made the world in error and it can be undone.

"You made the body in attempting to deceive yourself."

"Miracles reflect..." "I have done this thing and it is this I would undo."All we're doing here, is basically, innocently, trying to do something which isn't really possible. We're using our freedom to try to imprison ourselves. We're using our immortality to pretend to be mortal. We're using our holiness to pretend to be sinners. And we're using the power of the mind to pretend to be weak and powerless. We can't ACTUALLY be imprisoned, or mortal, or sinful, or powerless. And so we're using all these things against themselves, to PRETEND that we don't have these things. This BLOCKS and disguises them, using illusions to make it appear something is true which isn't.

Seen as nothing more than an error, a mistake, a futile attempt, a pointless exercise, the dream of death is not "against" God's will, which cannot be opposed, but is an ATTEMPT to believe that opposing God's will is possible or has merit. The mind is just stretching the truth. But using the mind in a "destructive" way, against its own nature, isn't constructive or creative and it also doesn't allow you to experience happiness.

"The thought of death is not the opposite to thoughts of life. Forever unopposed by opposites of any kind, the Thoughts of God remain forever changeless, with the power to extend forever changelessly but yet within Themselves, for They are everywhere."

"By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others."

God DOES will that you maintain the sanity of the clear recognition that there is NO POINT trying to use your freedom against itself. That it is truly impossible to WILL nothing. Or to make yourself have no power. Believing you are powerless when you are powerful, or that you are imprisoned when you are free, is obviously a state of denial, and this denial of life can only produce illusions of suffering and pain and misery."We also have observed that man can create an empty shell, but cannot create nothing at all."

"Whenever projection (creation) in its inappropriate sense is utilized, it ALWAYS implies that some emptiness (or lack of everything) must exist, and that it is within man's ability to put his own ideas there INSTEAD of the truth."

When you try NOT to create, you enter into "making" illusions. You produce an "emptiness" or lack of love, which is the world of "sin", meaning just the illusion of love's absence, or the absence of light. It isn't the presence of darkness, or of sin, or of real death, it is the illusion of the absence of their opposite. Because even in illusions you can't get outside of God's laws. You can never violate the parameters of your functioning as given by God. And so the world remains ONLY a mistake, not a real sin.

God's own will follows the knowledge that it is pointless to use will against itself, even though its possible to TRY to do so. Because when you try to do so, nothing is willed, and so nothing happens. God knows this and he is sane. His will is that you know it also. When you refuse to know it or you deny it, insisting that you CAN will nothingness to be something, you become deceived and confused. And God does not will that you enter into such suffering. "God's will for me is perfect happiness". And you can only be happy when you will in accord with God's true will - purely constructively and using your freedom to create. Free from self destruction.

"God Himself gave you the perfect correction for everything you have made which is not in accord with His Holy Will."

"The miracle compares the creations of man with the higher level of creation, accepting what is in ACCORD as true, and rejecting the DISCORDANT as false."

In all this, you always remain innocent, you can be correct or mistaken, but you cannot change the laws of God or of your true nature. You can be asleep in a denial state of trying to pretend that impossibilities are possible, but you can't ACTUALLY cause an opposite to God to happen. You can dream of it, imagine it, try to give it reality, even convince yourself of it, but you can't make it true. So at some point you have to admit, it's a fruitless exercise, and just return to creating with God. Using will to willingly will your creations, as God intended.

It can be very difficult to forgive abuse. Typically in abusive situations, both persons are identified with their bodies. One person does something to the other person's body, which is taken very personally and hurtfully.

It seems that one person has power to affect the other, to do something to them against their will. And the whole scenario seems to paint a very closed picture of unfair treatment, unwilling participation, obvious fault on the part of the abuser, and total helplessness on the part of the victim.

If you look solely at what is happening at the physical level, and if this is believed to be reality, then all of this makes sense. The abuser physically does do something. The victim physically or emotionally or mentally does seem to receive the fallout of the abuse. The separation between the bodies and wills seems to portray the victim as "not wanting it" etc. At a purely surface-appearance level, this is all very real and threatening and traumatic. As if the is the whole story.

But viewing the situation purely in terms of surface appearance, is actually an unforgiving perception. It means the form of what happened was blinding. It means you were identified with your body, such that anything happening from the outside in seemed to affect your actual self. There is no recognition that "its just a dream." And there certainly doesn't appear to be any hope of escape from the hellish nightmare.

The difficult part comes when you start to explore how to heal this, forgive it, undo the consequences, or to become free from the aftereffects, some of which can be debilitating and even life threatening. But at some point, there has to be a willingness to entertain the possibility that there was "more happening" than met the eye, and that there might be a different way of looking at it. It is this unwillingness to remain in pain, that inspires the beginning of opening up to spirit.

"The misuse of will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight."

Even if you are left with pain and scars, emotional hurt, physical damage, psychological wounds or forms of insanity, carrying this baggage around forever becomes intolerable. Pain is not pleasant. Constant fear is a nightmare. The sheer weight of suffering can potentially inspire a person to try to find a way out of hell, unless they become so distraught that it leads to suicide.

For those who do find at least "a little willingness", there becomes a glimmer of openness to at least the possibility that, just maybe, there is some way to heal and be free of this. That maybe if you look at it from a different vantage point you might find out some hidden facts, previously unrecognized influences, or even some ways that you might have caused it. Of course, for abused people, leaping to "I did this to myself" is a pretty huge leap, when everything the physical reports testifies to "they did everything to me and I did nothing."

It can even seem horrendously offensive to a person who is very heavily believing in "what appeared to happen" as the only reality. When pain backs it up, when suffering seemed to come from it, and when the person didn't seem to want any of it, there is tremendous resistance to healing and forgiveness. It is in fact, part of the pyschological blindness that placed their mind in an unforgiving experience to begin with, and this denial may even have been increased through the abusive experiences.

This is why it can take time, a lot of willingness and gradual transformation, to work through the ins-and-outs of everything that happened, all the pain it entailed, to be able to purge and purify the suffering, to even get to a point where you might be open to another way of looking at it. But if there is to be another way of looking at it, it can't be at the physical level. It can't be just another attempt to frame the situation in terms of "it was real, but the person had their reasons."

True forgiveness has to entail moving away from the sheer physcality of the abusive situation, away from appearances and forms, and away from the illusion of causality. It has to rise above the "he did this to me" and the "she did that to me". And it has to go into the "Maybe I had something to do with this." Given how intense and horrifying abuse can be, and the seeming unhealable wounds it leaves behind, even being open to that suggestion can be a seemingly insurmountable stretch.

The key factor which lifts a person out of perception of abuse, is becoming identified with spirit instead of the body. And that all by itself is a journey. And it also requires that you recognize that you can be free from suffering, even if people seem to be vicious and hurtful. As the Course says:

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true.

Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

To allow there to be a maximum amount of viciousness and attack by others, yet to be in such a state of mind in which this has NO effect on you, seems like a very tall order. But it is not impossible. It entails the recognition that this world is a dream, and not a reality. Yes it will seem like the abuse was VERY real, with disturbing memories and wounds to show for it, but in the really big picture it nevertheless was still part of a dream.

Jesus suggests that if we can approach the awareness and recognition that this IS a dream world, and not a reality, we will become more identified as spirit, or as the dreamer of the dream. We are the mind/soul that is beyond the dream which houses it within ourselves.

With willingness, it's going to become apparent that the events in dreams are something WE are contributing to. This produces a profound shift in how we look at what the other person "did to us", because now we're starting to question not only whether it really happened in reality at all, but also who was really causing what.

It can seem to be a bitter pill to swallow, that we would be hurtful to ourselves, that we ourselves might've agreed to or arranged or produced suffering, that in effect we wanted to be abused for some other purpose of scapegoating. It's especially heinous to many people to suggest that someone in a victim role is not entirely faultless, that they in fact are using the opportunity to position themselves as victim in order to be ABLE to find the abuser guilty. And as the course says, this has a tremendous payoff in allowing us to position ourselves as innocent, as a way to asuage our OWN guilt for our own sense of sin.

Could it be then, quite a shocking but deep truth, that we may well not only consent to abuse but even encourage it and bring it upon ourselves, because of the benefit to us psychologically - that we can convince ourselves that if the other person is especially evil, it portrays us as especially good. And given that we are loaded with uhealed guilt over the separation from God, it provides a wonderful opportunity to exonerate ourselves by finding someone else to be especially sinful. We may in fact be using the abuser as a fall-guy for our own sin.

This then completely turns the tables on the situation, and is the secret hidden truth that the abusive situation seems to reject. While the situation said, "they did this to me, I did nothing", in truth the fact is "I did this to me and used them to make myself look better." That is not something that is easy to admit to, but it has to be admitted to if you want freedom.

Here is Jesus saying that we are even willing to BE KILLED, if it means the payoff that we can find someone ELSE to be the sinner and to exonerate ourselves. And that we may even welcome being highly severly abused, attacked, afflicted, murdered and destroyed, as a tremendously opportunistic bargain, if it means we can be found guiltless. Even that what WE get out of it is even MORE than they get out of it - a great deal!

"Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

This isn't simply a teaching about sickness and how we use the body to try to show proof that our brother caused us to be sick, so that we'll be exonerated of sin. It's a general teaching that in many ways, abuse included, we try to position ourselves as victims in order to get a great payoff. That we're even willing to enter into highly abusive, detrimental, suffering situations, with terrible power loss and mistreatment, if it means that secretly this causes the OTHER person to seem like the sinner. What did abuse turn you into, if not someone justified in anger and blame?

Jesus doesn't hold back, in that he is even saying that we are WILLING TO DIE, if it will provide us with an opportunity to point a finger at the CAUSE of death, other than ourselves, and say "look there, that's where the sin is". And thus to say, "Look at me, I didn't do anything at all." We even lay down in death in a kind of passive way, totally hands-off, making ourselves appear to be COMPLETELY at the effect of something outside our control, so that it paints a very vivid picture of unfair destruction, un-asked for killing, and unwanted torment. In which we appear innocent.

The driving force behind all of this is the guilt that WE feel in OUR mind, over a situation which doesn't even have anything to do with these abusers. It's the fact that we are bringing some very heavy shit, TO the situation, from our past. And we're causing and involving ourselves in relationships and situations which afford us opportunities to PROJECT, dissociate from, and disown this hidden secret suffering, in order to try to deal with it.

What could be so big and deep and hidden and painful that we would want to go so far as to ALLOW ourselves to seem to be destroyed by another, if it would mean escaping it? What possible severity of sin could we have possibly either committed tor accused ourselves of, that we would ENCOURAGE sickness in an attempt to be seen with pity and favor? What kind of hideous act did we commit which could possibly require death as the only "solution", in which by accusing anyone OTHER than ourselves of TERRIBLE mistreatment, we can try to make a dent in it and be seen as the innocent one?

Don't doubt for a second that the ego's entire drive is to use denial to its full extent. It denies who you are, it denies God through sin, it denies sin through guilt, it denies guilt through the face of innocence, and it denies the face of innocence by destroying the body through "a will of punishment not my own." Denial upon denial upon denial are used to gradually remove you from existence and to disown everything. Even in abuse we are disowning the way in which we are abusing ourselves.

All of this is really based on our secret sins and hidden hates, the self accusation, the condenation upon yourself BY yourself, the belief in the reality of sin, the authority problem and desire to overthrow God, and indeed the belief that you HAVE attacked God against His will. It is really the original sin, the belief that you opposed the entire Kingdom of God through evil, that you are running and hiding from. And it is the unforgiven guilt for that perceived sin that you try to push onto others when you form abusive relationships.

Those who feel particularly guilty are apt to not only cause physical sickness, they are also apt to be vicious and very accusatory. They project heavily because trying to dissociate that unconscious guilt from their minds seems like the only way to hide from it. By putting it onto someone else and framing them as an abuser or attacker, it SEEMS to make it look like they are more evil than you, thus you are partly exonerated for your belief in sin against God. And those who are especially OPEN to being a victim, unfairly treated, abused, in fact are the most deceptive and blameful. He who has "been destroyed against his will" has gotten away with the crime of the century.

So now as the tables turn, we find out that a person who on the surface seemed to be the innocent party in the abuse, who was purely victimized, who asked for nothing and who made no contribution to it at all, actually turns out to be the ONLY one who was really doing anything at all, who did it all to themselves, and EVEN went so far as to USE the "abuser" for their own aims. What more benefit could a guilty person find than to position themselves as helplesly suffering, if it would create the illusion that SOMEONE ELSE is guilty? And how sick is it that we would actively WANT to do this, even if it meant we had to suffer to pull it off?

You can see why the truth of these situations is so hard to accept. It litearlly suggests that "the abused" are abusers, that victims are in fact victimizers, that those who are afraid are vicious, and that this is all a secret plot to GAIN from suffering. Even that we would happily die if it meant someone else would pay for what we've done to God.

"We said before that those who are afraid are apt to be vicious. " On the surface, the world being so back to front, it always seems at first glance that those who are suffering are NOT the ones doing the attacking. And that those who are seeming to be the cause of the suffering, are NOT the victims. But this is literally what Jesus is telling us. And it is this complete "180" that our minds have to go through in order to heal this psychological conditioning. And that's not easy.

If I was abused, even if the abuse and the emotional pain tells me that it happened, it was unfair, I did not ask for it, the abusers were evil monsters, and they ought to receive a death sentence, my act to MAINTAIN this position is in fact driven by a motive of wanting to keep BENEFITING from it. And that is not an easy thing to admit to. Yet alone to look at the fact that I was the one doing the abuse to myself and to the abusers. That I was USING them as a scapegoat, and WANTED to be abused in order to get away with FRAMING THEM for my own murder.

It's even harder to admit to any of this if the victim is a helpless innocent young child who appears, at the face of it, to be utterly devoid of sin and guilt, and who has no power or ability to stop anything happening. This all sets up the perfect scenario for the ego to manipulate the situation and USE it to its advantage. Not o much to cause the child to suffer cruelly, but to cause the child to WANT to suffer in order to develop a wonderful collection of scapegoats. Of course, saying something like this is NOT going to be popular with most of society.

Admitting to all this is, nevertheless, the eventual place our mind has to get to if we truly want to be free from pain and suffering. We have to approach the secret of salvation. We have to be willing to admit to what we are doing and the part we play. And we certainly have to completely let the abusers off the hook, otherwise we cannot experience psycholgoical repair. So long as we are looking to project and get rid of our own inner guilt onto these people, we keep ourselves in a prison of denial and suffering. And we can't feel happy while we're AVOIDING the original guilt that we were using the abuser to try to get rid of.

It begs the question, far more importantly, not "why did they do that to me"... but "why did I do this to me?". That's the really deeper issue. Why did you accuse yourself of sin FIRST, before you arranged for someone to sin against you? Why did you believe in sin, at all, before inviting others to seem to sin against you? Why did you fall into the authority problem, prior to ever needing an external authority to pretend to have power over you? Why did you attack yourself first? Why were you overtly vicious against yourself and God, before portraying yourself as a helpless victim? That's the bigger deal to heal.

"I but accuse my brother of my own sins."

"It can be but myself I crucify."

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

"You are doing this to yourself."

"There is no sin."

Self destruction and self attack and self victimization and self punishment, are far more the problem and death-inducing than the two-times removed scapegoats that we find externally. The abuser isn't even the beginning of the process, they're a device that we use later down the line to try to deal with what we've done to oursevles. And the ultimate freedom can only come when you find YOURSELF to be innocent, having never sinned in reality, forming the basis for the total lack of NEED to have an "abuser" take on the burden for you.

These external influencers are not even the cause of anything. They're scapegoats that we use to project sin and disown responsibility. And until this power is taken back and reclaimed, a "victim" cannot feel empowered or free of victimization. It's kind of a two-way street. You can't be secretly victimizing, which all victims do, if you want to be free of being victimized. If you believe in victimization you become a victimizer and pretend you are the opposite. Obviously that's not a sane position to take.

There is hope for healing and true release from all suffering, all abuse, all symptoms and effects, all baggage and all pain. But it does require that you take full responsibility for your choices and your participation on making happen what you thought happened against your will. You cannot see yourself as being an unwilling participant if you want to find the power of the wil. And the only way to be truly free is to accept the atonement truth that you never sinned in the first place, such that you don't need anyone to exonerate you through suffering.

Who is the abuser who really needs your forgiveness? It's you.

I took a deep dive into every single statement about "the real world", to find out all possible implication of what it IS and IS NOT referring to.

It is clear to me that what Jesus calls "the real world" IS "the borderland of thought" in between the world we MADE in false perception, and the reality of Heaven. The real world is a REFLECTION of heaven, seen in forgiveness through the eyes of Christ. It includes your ability to see WITH love, looking with forgiveness upon/past the world you made, so that the world you made in attack is seen in the holy instant present as the forgiven world.

The real world also clearly comes BEFORE your re-entry to heaven, and this is backed up in numerous statements. It is entirely within the realm of perception and consciousness, as the highest state of consciousness possible prior to awakening to knowledge. It is still a DREAM but it is a happy dream, a forgiving dream, in which there is no idol worship or illusion or fantasy. And Jesus does distinguish that it has "reality" to the extent that it shares or reflects the reality of heaven.

The real world was also given by God to REPLACE the world you made. In essence, you MADE hell, which is an illusory world of sin and death. Then the Holy Spirit answered this in the co-making of the real world, which is like an alternative dream. A dream of forgiveness and light and love. It REFLECTS heaven, but is not heaven. It is true perception, salvation, atonement, the miracle, right mindedness, and is GIVEN by God. God GAVE you this real world to replace the one you made, made by the Holy Spirit.

God loves the real world, because it is seen WITH love, and seeing the world you made WITH love makes it impossible to see the world of sin and death. Forgiveness overlooks bodies and looks beyond to the light of the real world, the face of Christ. BY loving the world, the UNREAL world is not seen, because love influences perception. And by projecting love, the HOly Spirit projects the real world for you to see, IN PLACE OF the unforgiven world.

What I found also are many statements clearly discerning that the term ILLUSION refers to an UNFORGIVEN world only, to false perception. The world we originally tried to make without God/Holy Spirit. The world of sin and death and sickness. The world of bodies and forms and planets. That is the world WE made, through unforgiveness, and through attack and guilt and sin and fear.

Jesus refers to THAT world as "an illusory world" and quite consistently, all references to ILLUSION appear to refer ONLY to that world, not the forgiven/real world. Because IN the "real world" state you reflect truth and DISPEL all illusions, RECOGNIZING what is there. This is why true perception is ACCURATE perception.

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it." thus refers to the false perceptual world of bodies, UNFORGIVEN, unreal, untrue, in which the truth is obscured and lies seem like truth. A world seen without any reason or sanity or light. A world of deception. When you approach true perception, ILLUSIONS are seen through and undone and removed, and so true perception does not see an ILLUSORY world, it sees "the real world". The world as it is WITHOUT the distortion of illusion, and free from the ego's shadow. It's kind of like the world with minimal ego.

The real world, or the sense of it "having reality", doesn't mean it IS reality as in Heaven, but it does mean it is "as is", founded on love, and is not MIS-perceived. True perception is accurate perception and LINES UP WITH what knowledge or direct sight would see. It is truthful.

I also saw references indicating that THE VEIL, which is a reference to the physical world hanging in front of the face of Christ (whereby the face of christ is another synonym for the real world/true perception), refers ONLY to the unforgiven world. The veil entails the world of bodies, the granite block of sin, the forms of error, the gap, etc.

This veil is SEEN THROUGH AND PAST to see the real world/face of Christ. Also when you see the real world you DO NOT SEE the unforgiven world of sin and bodies. It is forgotten. And in its TOTAL forgetting you ONLY see the real world. And as Jesus says, you will barely have time to thank God for this before he takes you home. The veil of illusions parts, the real world is seen, then you go to heaven.

There are numerous references to you FIRST arriving at the real world, the borderland of thought between the world of sin that you made, and actual Heaven which is God's Kingdom, and THEN God taking the last step to take you home. Out of time, into eternity. Out of bodies, into the light of eternal life. There is a clear distinction between Heaven and the real world, whereby the real world is at most Heaven's REFLECTION, and is seen through the eyes of Christ. And also interestingly, we are to recognize Christ FIRST, before we move onto the love of God.

So the "real world" is a state of light and awareness and wakefulness, WHILE still dreaming. It is a DREAM OF being awake. And in this sense as you approach the real world you DO seem to be waking up, becoming more aware. And at the real world you are practically fully awake, but slightly asleep still. Only moving on from the real world INTO heaven do you fully awaken. But prior to this you can be exceedingly wakeful while still in a body.

The real world, being a reflection of heaven, also is a state that reflects sharing. Holy relationships reflect real relationships. There is equality and a kind of oneness. There is a lack of separations and divisions. A kind of unity is seen spread across chaos. And what used to be a world of sin and death is reinterpreted in such a way that a hidden song of gratitude and light is seen and heard radiating from it. Sights of war and death are reinterpreted, through perception, as harmless and gentle and welcome. And the healed peaceful mind projects peace and love and sees only peace and love in it.

Note that seeing from love, you look toward love, which is a light BEYOND BODIES. The illusory world, the veil, is seen through, and overlooked, by forgiveness, through extension, which is christ vision. The world is seen as "forgiven" because it is recognizes as an illusion and is not seen as real sin. It is seen PAST. And this overlooking makes the illusory world seem holy and forgiven. But simultaneously sight (spiritual eye) reaches beyond the illusory world TO the light of the real world. Eventually it sees ONLY this light, as the veil disappears, fully revealing the face of Christ.

After this, the real world DOES END, because it IS a dream, except for the eternal love that was reflected in it through thoughts of love, which are saved as gifts. Because the real world IS still a dream and it vanishes as true perception is converted into knowledge. Being FULLY in the real world is like being on the OUTSKIRTS of the world, standing on the edge, not involved, not confused, not caught up in the world. Being passer by. Seeing from love and truth. Illusions recognized and dispelled. In a state of mind outside of separateness and form. Awareness of dreaming. A borderland of thought just shy of heaven and outside of heaven's gate.

I have a lot of quotes, but here's a handful of the clearer snippets that I highlighted along the way...

"Only this is the real world, and perceiving ONLY this will lead you to the real Heaven"

"The real world is all that the Holy Spirit has saved for you, out of what you have made"

"your new and ONLY real perception"

"For as Heaven and earth become one, even the real world will vanish from your sight."

"In the real world, there is no sickness, for there is no separation and no division."

"For you share the real world as you share Heaven"

"When you perceive yourself without deceit, you will accept the real world in place of the false one you have made. And then your Father will lean down to you, and take the last step for you, by raising you unto Himself."

"If only the loving thoughts of God’s Son ARE the world’s reality, the real world MUST be IN HIS MIND"

"God DOES love the real world, and those who perceive its reality CANNOT see the world of death."

"For death is not OF the real world, in which everything is eternal." (eternal means something a bit different than "will be there forever", because the real world does end).

"God gave you the real world in exchange for the one you made, out of your split mind, and which IS the symbol of death."

"relinquish your investment in the world as YOU have projected it, allowing the Holy Spirit to project the real world TO you"

"Make the world real (loving, innocent etc) unto YOURSELF, for the real world is the gift of the Holy Spirit"

"In His sight, the Son of God is perfect" "He will SHOW you the real world"

"The awakening of His Son begins with his investment in the REAL world"

"And then the real world will spring to your sight, for Christ has never slept. He is waiting to be seen" "He looks quietly on the real world, which He would SHARE with you"

"we will look upon the world as God "created" it together. Through the eyes of Christ, ONLY the real world exists, and can BE seen"

"The real world was given you by God, in loving exchange for the world YOU made, and which you SEE. But take it from the hand of Christ, and look upon it. ITS reality will make everything ELSE invisible, for beholding it is TOTAL perception"

"And perception has never been. Being corrected, it gives place to knowledge, which is forever the ONLY reality."

"as His from Love. And He sees FOR you, as your witness to the real world. "

"Even in sleep has Christ protected you, ensuring the real world FOR you when you wake" (sleep means false perception, waking is true perception, but is not the FINAL awakening FROM sleep)

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever."

"YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS, for each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have denied the other.

"The real world is the way that leads you to remembrance"

"You will first DREAM of peace (the real world), and THEN awaken to it (heaven)."

"This loveliness is NOT a fantasy. It is the real world, bright, and clean and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun. Nothing is hidden here, for everything has BEEN forgiven, and there ARE no fantasies to hide the truth. The bridge between that world and this is SO little and SO easy to cross that you could not believe it is the meeting-place of worlds so different. Yet this little bridge is the strongest thing that touches on this world at all. This little step, so small it has escaped your notice, is a stride through time into eternity, and beyond all ugliness, into beauty that will enchant you, and will never cease to cause you wonderment at its perfection."

"The real world, in its loveliness, YOU learn to reach. Fantasies are all undone"

"by YOUR OWN forgiveness, you are FREE TO SEE. And WHAT you see is only what YOU HAVE MADE, with the blessing of your forgiveness on it."

"the REAL perception, born of the new perspective he has learned, has served its purpose."

"The perception of the real world will be so short, that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world, and have been made ready for Him."

"The real world is attained simply by the COMPLETE forgiveness of the old; the world you see WITHOUT forgiveness"

"All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally TRANSFORMS vision, and lets you see the real world, reaching quietly and gently across chaos, and removing all illusions that had twisted your perception, and fixed it on the T(634) - 461 - past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God’s perfection. From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily to his home (heaven). "

"For salvation IS the end of dreams, and, with the closing of the dream, will have no meaning. Who, awake in Heaven, COULD dream that there could ever be NEED of salvation? "

"The spark of beauty, or the veil of ugliness (the veil is the unreal world seen in false perception only!); the real world, or the world of guilt and fear; truth or illusion; freedom or slavery"

"The holy relationship, a MAJOR step toward the perception of the real world, is LEARNED. It is the old, unholy relationship, transformed and seen anew."

"In your relationship, the Holy Spirit has gently laid the real world; the world of happy dreams, from which awaking is so easy and so natural."

"The dream of waking is easily transferred to its reality. For this dream comes from your will, JOINED with the Will of God."

"This world of light, this circle of brightness, is the real world, where guilt meets with forgiveness. Here, the world OUTSIDE is seen anew, WITHOUT the shadow of guilt upon it."

"There is a borderland of thought that stands between this world and Heaven. It is not a place, and WHEN you reach it is APART from time. Here is the meeting place where thoughts are brought TOGETHER; where conflicting values MEET, and ALL illusions are laid down beside the truth, where they are judged to be untrue. This borderland is just beyond the gate of Heaven. Here is every thought made pure and wholly simple. Here is sin denied, and everything that IS, received instead.

This is the journey’s end. We have referred to it as the "real world.""

"Salvation IS a borderland"

"Salvation (real world/forgiven world) stops just short of Heaven, for only perception NEEDS salvation. Heaven was never lost, and so can not be saved. "

"The real world is the second part of the hallucination time and death are real, and have existence which can be perceived. This terrible illusion was denied in but the time it took for God to give His Answer to illusion"

"The real world still is but a dream. Except the figures have been changed. They are not seen as idols which betray (idols are part of false perception)"

"And what was once a dream of judgment now has changed into a dream where all is joy, because that is the PURPOSE that it has. Only forgiving dreams can enter here, for time is almost over. And the forms which enter in the dreams are now perceived as brothers, not in judgment, but in love."

"The real world is the state of mind in which the ONLY purpose of the world is seen to be forgiveness. "

"No-one outside of Heaven knows how this can be. For understanding this is Heaven itself. Even the real world has a purpose still beneath creation and eternity. But fear is gone, because its purpose is forgiveness, NOT idolatry."

"The real world is a state in which the mind has learned how easily do idols go when they are still perceived, but wanted not."

"Thus is the real world’s purpose gently brought into awareness, to REPLACE the goal of sin and guilt. "

"Here is the real world given in exchange for dreams of terror"

"This understanding is the ONLY change that lets the real world rise to take the place of dreams of terror."

"The real world is achieved when you perceive the basis of FORGIVENESS is quite real and fully justified."

"As the world I see arises from my thinking errors, so will the real world rise before my eyes as I let my errors be corrected. "

"Today the real world rises before us in gladness, to be seen at last. Sight is given us, now that the light has come. We do not see the ego's shadow on the world today. We see the light, and in it we see Heaven's reflection lie across the world."

"and the sight of the real world which has come to replace the unforgiven world you thought was real."

"Healing might thus be called a counter-dream which cancels out the dream of sickness in the name of truth"

"Just as forgiveness shines away all sin, and the real world will occupy the place of what you made, so healing must replace the fantasies of sickness which you hold before the simple truth. When sickness has been seen to disappear in spite of all the laws which hold it cannot but be real, then questions have been answered."

"Christ's vision pictures Heaven, for it sees a world so like to Heaven that what God created perfect can be mirrored there. The darkened glass the world presents can show but twisted images in broken parts. The real world pictures Heaven's innocence."

"The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers. Yet it stands for what is opposite to what you made. Your world is seen through eyes of fear (world you made without hs, false perception), and brings the witnesses of terror to your mind. The real world cannot be perceived except through eyes forgiveness blesses, so they see a world where terror is impossible, and witnesses to fear can not be found."

"The real world holds a counterpart for each unhappy thought reflected in your world"

"The real world shows a world seen differently, through quiet eyes and with a mind at peace. "

"There are no cries of pain and sorrow heard, for nothing here remains outside forgiveness. And the sights are gentle. Only happy sights and sounds can reach the mind that has forgiven itself."

"The real world is the symbol that the dream of sin and guilt is over, and God's Son no longer sleeps. His waking eyes perceive the sure reflection of his Father's Love; the certain promise that he is redeemed. The real world signifies the end of time, for its perception makes time purposeless."

"hymns of gratitude the world is singing underneath the sounds of fear. There is a real world which the present holds safe from all past mistakes. "

"How surely, therefore, must the real world come to greet the holy sight of anyone who takes the Holy Spirit's purpose as his goal for seeing. And he cannot fail to look upon what Christ would have him see, and share Christ's love for what he looks upon."

"There is no point at which the contrast between the perception of the real world and that of the world of illusions becomes more sharply evident."

"RIGHT-MINDEDNESS listens to the Holy Spirit, forgives the world, and through Christ's vision sees the real world in its place. This is the final vision, the last perception, the condition in which God takes the final step Himself. "

"Both this world and the real world are illusions because right-mindedness merely overlooks, or forgives, what never happened. Therefore it is not the ONE-MINDEDNESS of the Christ Mind"

"Consciousness has levels and awareness can shift quite dramatically, but it cannot transcend the perceptual realm. At its highest it becomes aware of the real world, and can be trained to do so increasingly. "

"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality."

"THE FACE OF CHRIST has to be seen before the memory of God can return. The reason is obvious. Seeing the Face of Christ is perception"

"But the Face of Christ is[5] the great symbol of forgiveness. It is salvation. It is the symbol of the real world."

"Whoever looks on this no longer sees the world. He is as near to Heaven as is possible outside the gate. Yet from this gate it is no more than just a step inside. It is the final step. And this we leave to God. "