The thing it realize about perception is this. The physical body itself has a form of sight. It can only see differences. Its sight is based on the reflection of photons of light, which seem to illuminate the surface of objects. This light enters the biological eyeballs and passes ”images” or sensory impressions on to the mind.

The physical body is actually permanently locked into FALSE perception. ”The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen.” It CANNOT SEE reality. Which in turn means EVERYTHING IT CAN SEE IS NOT REAL! What it is looking at is therefore NOT reality. Physical objects, photonic images, differences of form, shapes and sizes, colors and brightnesses, is not reality. These is ALL a part of false perception. “The world is false perception.”

It is not really seeing. It is in fact blindness. “Nothing so blinding as perception of form.” Since the body cannot see through or beyond physical surfaces, its seeing is in fact BLOCKED by objects. Objects blind it from seeing what is beyond. And therefore physical sight pretends to be seeing, but is in fact a lack of seeing.

These messages which the body seems to receive from the outside world, transmit into the mind, and the mind is sitting there EVALUATING THE MEANING of the messages. The mind is flexible in its beliefs, and can choose. It can decide what is true, and therefore what something MEANS.

The mind takes the ”physical images” provided by the body senses, and decides what they MEAN. It has perceptions ”about” the images, or projected ONTO the images. In a sense you could say the mind projects stuff ONTO the world or has perceptions ABOUT the world. But it’s really about the sensory signals being interpreted internally, once the body has received them.

The mind can decide whether these images represent the truth, or whether they are false. It can decide whether to believe in them or deny them. It can choose whether to regard them as real or as illusions. It can project sin and guilt ONTO these images and USE these images to mean attack, just as it can also project innocence and love ONTO these images which re-frames them as harmless. “I have given everything all the meaning it has for me.”

In and of themselves, the images actually have NO MEANING. They come from a world which itself HAS NO MEANING. This is why the course describes it as “a meaningless world”, and one which God DID NOT CREATE. The physical world is not merely meaningless ONLY when viewed in false perception, as if meaningful when perceived truly. It is in fact NEVER inherently meaningful. Meaning can be PROJECTED ONTO it, but in and of itself it is literally nothing. “The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it.”

So what actually happens is, the physical body provides a FIXED state of FALSE perception. And everything it sees is what we typically refer to as “the world” or planet Earth. Bodies, trees, houses, buildings, streets, the sky etc. Differences, changes, transitions, growth, decay, etc. This is all false perception and CAN ONLY been seen IN and WITH false perception.

Then at the same time, the MIND is sitting there INTERPRETING the physical signals. So the mind can ALIGN or IDENTIFY with the body, with physicality, and make the world seem real to it. When it does this, the MIND is now having false perception OF a false world - a false interpretation of a false image, at the same time as the physical body having false perception. They are in seeming agreement.

So what the falsely perceiving mind sees as coming from the body, it regards as TOTALLY REAL, because it is tempted anad DECEIVED BY the illusion. It totally agrees with and accepts it as true. That is what false perception means - not recognizing that an illusion is unreal. Just as true perception recognizes the world IS an illusion and not reality.

The mind can also move into a totally opposite state of TRUE perception, which is accurate perception. In this state, the BODY is actually STILL insisting on sending signals of physical unreality to the mind for interpretation. But the mind is not DECEIVED BY their falseness or their forms and appearances. Instead, the mind puts ALL of these physical signals into ONE category - THEY ARE ALL UNREAL. This is because it RECOGNIZES WHAT THEY ACTUALLY ARE, and is not deceived into thinking the physical world is reality. It recognizes these images ARE ILLUSIONS.

It regards them as UN real because it does not AGREE with or align or identify with the physical. It has identified with spirit, which is NON-physical and OPPOSITE to the physical world. Being fulled on the side of reality, everything unreal is now clearly and obviously unreal. And that means everything FALSE is ”truly seen” as false. As it is. And since the body can ONLY see falsely, and everything it sees IS FALSE, the sane mind now recognizes that the physical world is NOT REAL. Or even really there at all.

The body is trying to tell the mind that there is a world of differences and forms and attack and death ”out there”, BUT the mind is not BUYING INTO it at all. It does not fall for THE ILLUSION. It is not tempted. It RECOGNIZES what the physical really IS, which is that it is NOT TRUE. “The one you made is false.” It’s a false world which ONLY exists WITHIN false perception.

So now you’ve got FALSE signals of FALSE perception coming in from the body, and you’ve got a mind looking AT and USING these signals for a certain purpose. And its goal is the TOTAL OPPOSITE of the physical. So it does not believe in, accept, have faith in, nor is it deceived BY, anything the body is seeing. It’s a strange state, almost a paradox, where something UNREAL is recognized as an illusory physical world, while at the same time the mind is in a state of truth. “The world you see must be denied.”

True perception, christ vision, the spiritual eye, does not depend on, use, or rely upon, the physical sight mechanism. It is actually direct mind seeing. But this mind seeing does not SEE the physical world, because it regards it as FALSE, and what is false is shut out from awareness. This is why “It is impossible to see both worlds.” Either you see the false physical world AS IF it is real and true, or you see beyond it to reality. The mind’s eye also does not utilize physical photons for seeing, which is why in effect it cannot see the physical world. “Forgiveness sees it not.” It‘s sight is not based in space or time or distance or measure.

Truly, “To forgive is to OVERLOOK” and overlooking means ”forgetting to see”, or not seeing. You cannot look AT what you forgive. Looking AT it is unforgiveness. You look PAST it and fail to see it. That is what overlooking means. This is why “A world forgiven cannot last.” You cannot forgive the physical and still see the physical. When the mind is sane and healed, it categorizes ALL physical materials, worlds, energies, SPACE TIME, as entirely UNREAL. And this is the recognition of illusions which causes them to DISAPPEAR. And why “there is no world.”

The physical body is an illusion and sees ONLY illusions, in an agreein-with-illusions manner, which makes them seem real. “Only the body makes the world seem real.” All things physical are illusory and unreal. They are blindness. The blind body can only look upon the blind world, which was made to HIDE REALITY from your sight. “The world is drawn like a vail across the face of christ, but it can last no longer than an instant.” Only by recognizing that ALL body signals are FALSE AND UNREAL, can your spiritual eye rest upon the face of Christ, making you ready to return to God, ending perception forever.

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. "

It's difficult to put this into words, but here goes.

To understand letting go, you have to first understand what it means to "hold on". What is it you are doing with your mind?

Before the separation, you knew you were love. After the separation, you believed you were not love, and that your self/love was separate from you. You perceived this as outside of you, disassociated and projected onto others.

You believed other people had stolen your love/self and locked it up inside themselves. You simultaneously valued what seemed to be in them, but wanted to steal it back. You see this as "specialness" which you value highly and is what gives value or reality to illusions - you believe in them. This is all described is "the laws of chaos."

The ego mind then "makes illusions real" and assigns special value to external, separate things. This is idol worship, and part of "seek and do not find." An emphasis on external salvation, believing the body, objects and the world are important, valuing special relationships and so on.

If you place "reality" and "value" outside yourself, you will put something on a pedestal and worship it. For example if you associate a person with their body, you will think their body is part of what's valuable about the person. If you value a car and have a psychological "need" for it, you become attached to and dependent on it as your savior. You see it as having power to do something to or for you, which makes it capable of saving you, makes it able to affect you, and makes you *dependent* on it.

Perceiving an external "cause" of you puts you at the "effect" of that cause. This happens in level confusion and reversal of cause-effect. This external cause now represents your "creator". If it is lost, the cause of you is lost and your savior is lost, and that's symbolic of the idea that God has died.

Your mind in a state of believing in special value, or the reality of external things and people, shifts some of its own sense of identity onto those things. You displace your "self" externally and see it as value/meaning within people and objects. If there were to be a perceived "loss" of those objects or people, you experience it as the loss of your own self.

Now, let's say that you mis-identified that you are a body, and thus saw other people as bodies, and valued them as body-people, and then one of these bodies dies. Because you made the body seem real/valuable, you cannot help but perceive there has been a "real loss" or loss of value. In what you think is reality. This will be experienced as "loss". And this kicks in all kinds of layers of denial, which show up as "stages of grief."

At first, you may not even be able to accept that a loss has happened. It seems pretend, impossible, unreal. You may be what they describe as in shock, but really it's that your mind is still psychologically attached to this external value and even though the valued thing is gone, it still believes in it strongly being there. There is a mismatch between expectation and reality. Really strong belief in specialness can produce very strong denial that a loss has even occurred, and denial that the person died.

If a person can `process` the fact that the person died, they might start to shift perception towards at least acknowledging that "it happened". However, this will at first be a cross between acceptance and denial. The mind still does not WANT to let go of the specialness. It's like the mind forms a "bridge" that connects its psyche to something external like a cord of attachment, which is like "holding on" - like you would with a hand, but using a psychic hand. The mind latches onto the external special thing and doesn't want to let go of it. You can actually FEEL this sense of "attachment" and external connectedness if you are observant.

Acknowledging that a death "happened" is a step in the right direction because it at least admits that, to some degree, the person/value doesn't seem to be there any more. But this also is met with another layer of denial. The denial says, "I do not want to let go". This is partly because the mind in its "belief in" things believes it gives reality TO things, and makes them be there, and gives them value, and so if it will just keep believing in those things, it will "keep them alive". There will be active resistance to actually letting go, and reducing your belief in their specialness means you are trying to destroy them or contribute to the perception that they are lost. To let go, to the ego, seems murderous, which induces guilt.

The mind in this state is not fully conscious because, by projecting specialness outward, it made itself unconscious. To "let go" would have to mean stepping backwards in the mind and getting "behind" the attachment and projection and becoming more aware. This seems insurmountable to a mind that is sleeping, that it needs to somehow tap into a greater awareness that underlies where it's "at". The only way to do that is to actually let go of projection of specialness. But the mind doesn't want to do that yet.

It takes a lot of willingness to "admit the truth" that you do not want to let go. This is because you think, if you let go, the thing will stop existing. If you let go, it will be your responsibility that the thing is lost. If you let go, you will have to admit that there HAS been a loss and that the person isn't there any more. You won't be able to delude yourself that you are maintaining their existence with your belief in them. Admitting that you do not WANT to let go is good because it at least lets in some truth. This is one step away from looking deeper at WHY you don't want to let go.

Not wanting to let go is really a layer of denial which covers up the "fact" that the thing HAS GONE. That there HAS been loss. I struggled with this step a lot in relation to grieving for the loss of someone because I didn't want to admit that I didn't WANT to let go of them. I wanted them to NOT be gone, because I wanted to keep what I valued as special. My letting go would somehow mean they are "even more lost". To admit it removes denial. Once I admitted I wanted to keep them, I was able to move past that to admitting what's underneath - an actual sense of loss - that something HAS been lost and isn't coming back. The ego doesn't like this.

Now, this sense of something being "really lost" is still actually another form of denial, and a layer of delusion, because in truth nothing real can be lost. Real value is not lost. Nothing real can be threatened or die. So if the body dies, it's only a body that is "lost", not the person's immortal spirit. Confusing the two things makes you think there has been a loss of something important. Valuing the body makes you believe ITS loss is important. It's nothing. So in truth, although you have to process the sense of loss, underneath the loss there is a deeper truth: you cannot lose what never existed.

And so at some point you have to realize, the thing you think you couldn't let go of, wasn't even REALLY there to begin with. You were actually letting go of NOTHING, and you stood to GAIN EVERYTHING by letting it go. You thought you'd lost real value, but in the BELIEF in its loss was an illusion of it being lost. Real value isn't special value. And so the loss of the specialness was not actually loss of anything REAL. So there hasn't REALLY been a loss. Getting to that point is what allows you to enter into the "acceptance" state and truly the LETTING GO, which is a state of allowing, surrendering, accepting the truth, and finally "detaching" your mind from its dependence on the illusory external thing. Nothing real can be threatened.

So this letting go thing, it's a process typically, and you go through stages and gradually come to accept that the thing you thought was lost is not really something worth losing. It was not even really valuable to begin with. That's where you become set free from grief and loss and have no more need to grieve. An unwillingness to let go is only based on the belief that you're letting go of something you need, letting go of something special, or letting go of the part of your self/love/salvation that you see as separate from you. All experiences of loss are really experiences reflecting your belief that you have lost yourself and God, which you cannot really do.

You won't let go of something while you think it has special value, or while you think it's real or important. And if it should happen that your ego mind is still valuing it WHILE it is being denied to you - such as when someone dies - your mind WILL experience loss and grief. This is because the mind is still trying to depend on that thing as its salvation and truth, something it values as real, and its absence is experienced as "loss". This loss will induce grieving. Grieving and loss are not NATURAL. You do not need them. But they are generated by a sick mind that believes love is outside of itself and can be threatened.

So it's really all about letting go of psychological attachment, which means your "belief in" the special value of things which don't really exist. Ultimately you are letting go of something that never even existed. You're letting go of holding onto an illusion, which never really had any value other than what you gave it. And in that relinquishing, you are shifting to what is really valuable and accessible - inner love. The re-integration of your self. Letting go of false beliefs by learning to recognize that they ARE false, recognizing them as illusions, and thus giving them no value or credit. Illusions recognized must disappear.

Quite often Jesus says to me, "let them". He is telling me to let go - to allow, to let other people be free, and to stop controlling. That means accepting that they are free to do whatever they want, and it doesn't matter because it's an illusion. They can't really hurt their real self. He has also been telling me "let go" through various waves of grief recently and I just couldn't see to gain the awareness to let go. Not until I could admit that I didn't want to, which opened up the door to a sense of loss, which eventually cleared away to reveal that nothing real had been lost, and thus acceptance and peace returned. Letting go, especially at an emotional level, is hard. It takes willingness, acceptance, admittance, letting go of fake values, removing dependencies, detaching and setting yourself free.

"Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first."

"The power to work miracles belong to you."

Sometimes when I am thinking about ACIM matters, Jesus interjects and finishes my sentences. I was thinking "miracles are..." and Jesus interjected, "the power to heal."

This kicked in a sudden cascade of many insights, as I saw a wide array of ACIM material "coming together" under a single umbrella. A final missing piece of the puzzle that I've been trying to find for years.

I've struggled to be able to tie certain parts of miracle-working together. For example Jesus talks about miracles as expressions of love. He talks about changes in perception. He talks about healing the body.

He also talks about moving mountains with a power surge. And about the power of thought to produce effects. He talks of how the Holy Spirit enables you to do things not of this world. And then of course there's Jesus's demonstrations of e.g. walking on water, raising the dead, multiplying food.

How is ALL of this a miracle?

I couldn't reconcile how a form of "healing" could be said to "move a mountain". Or how Jesus walking on water was an "expression of love". I almost suspected there were two separate threads in the course - one of "mind over matter" and one of "miracle expression/healing" But there isn't, they are intimately related. Because BEHIND both of them, there is one thing.

The key... is POWER.

And by that I mean, SUPERNATURAL power. The Power of God.In ACIM, there is talk of power. There is also talk of STRENGTH. And there is also talk of ABILITY. These are all very closely related. If you have the power to do something, you have an ability to do it. To be powerful you must also be strong. And when we look to ACIM we start to see the pieces come together:

"The POWER to work miracles (what comes before miracles happen) BELONGS to you."

"To recognize that all POWER is of God is to gain all power."

"I am not weak but strong." "I am not afraid but ALL POWERFUL."

"It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a POWER-SURGE that can literally move mountains."

"See the point about miracles as a perception corrector before he can effect miracles as CREATIVE ENERGIZERS, which they are."

"The fact that each Soul has this POWER completely"

"Miracle-working entails a full realization of THE POWER OF THOUGHT, and real avoidance of miscreation."

"Miracles are seen in light, and light and STRENGTH are one."

"When you have FELT THE STRENGTH IN YOU, which makes all miracles within your easy reach, you will not doubt."

"This holy relationship, lovely in its innocence, mighty in STRENGTH"

"He will offer all His STRENGTH to every little effort which you make."

"Our home is safe, protection guaranteed in all we do, POWER and STRENGTH available to us in all our undertakings."

"No miracle can ever be denied to those who know that they are one with God. No thought of theirs but HAS THE POWER to heal all forms of suffering in anyone in times gone by and times as yet to come as easily as in the ones who walk beside them now."

"For you have brought your weakness unto Him, and He has given you His STRENGTH instead."

"releasing the STRENGTH of God into everything you think and will and do."

"Every GAIN IN OUR STRENGTH is offered for all, so they, too, can lay aside their weakness and add their strength to us."

"A pure mind knows the truth, and this IS its STRENGTH."

"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot EXERT REAL CONTROL because they are literally AFRAID of them."

"The miracle is the MEANS, the Atonement the principle, and the healing is the result."

The list goes on. When you look, there are MANY many statements testifying that as our minds heal, they become STRONGER. And this strength is POWER. And this power is CAUSAL and is shared with God. And our thoughts have the power to cause things to happen.

Light and strength are one. Strength and miracle are one. "Miracles are a universal blessing from God" tells you that God uses his POWER. "What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world" entails the fact that He has all the POWER in heaven and earth.

"All POWER in Heaven and earth is therefore given him and he will share it with you when you have completed yours."

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

It is too easy to be deceived by word associations, such as human notions of love. If we talk about "expression of love" as miracles, we might be tempted to think in terms of softness, gentleness, weakness, a LACK of power. This is an ego definition. Gentleness and innocence are actually very POWERFUL.

It is VERY clear, that BEHIND all miraculous ability, the driving force, is POWER, and it is the Power of God and it is ours to WIELD when we unite with God's Will. This power is EXTREMELY strong. This power POWERS miracles. This is how miracles are ENERGIZING. They supply a lack of power and strength.

"They will strengthen him and stabilize you."

"Healing ONLY STRENGTHENS."

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the MIND MUST BE STRONGER than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this."

"A miracle is a reversal of the physical order because it brings MORE LOVE to the giver AND the receiver."

Love, is not just love. Love is POWERFUL. God, who is love, is all powerful. This power, is UNLIMITED. That means it is CAPABLE of anything. It is "the power to" do anything. Love is not weak, it is strong. In sanity the mind is strong. To be miraculous is to be POWERFUL. By forgiving, you become STRONGER. Approaching light, you are approaching STRENGTH.

What this certainly means is, BEFORE a miracle takes place, a miraculous state of mind - miracle mindedness - is a STRONG MIND, a mind which has access to the POWER OF GOD - and it is the EXPRESSION OF THAT LOVING POWER which CAUSES a miracle to occur, which in turn produces effects. Power is the MEANS of miracle working. It is the ABILITY.

"The POWER ***to*** work Miracles BELONGS to you. I will create the right opportunities for you to do them. But you must be ready and willing to do them, since you are already ***able to***. Doing them will bring conviction in the ***ability*** (power). I repeat that you will see Miracles through your hands through MINE. Conviction (strength/power) really comes through accomplishment."

Ultimately then, the key thread which binds all the "powers of the mind" together, is the POWER OF GOD. This is why when Jesus walks on water, he uses THE POWER of the mind to do so, and this is a miraculous power. When he heals the sick and raises the dead, it is because he USES power to SUPPLY a lack of power. When perception is caused to change, it is because a "spark of life", a "power surge", an "energizer", is injected into the mind and CAUSES a change.

If we become too caught up in the EFFECTS that miracles cause, that is why it becomes confusing. If we think of miracles as "the expression that came from love" or as "the mountain that was moved" or "the body that was healed", we become confused. Because now we have some level confusion.

"Those who speak of "the miracle OF healing" are combining two orders of reality inappropriately. Healing is NOT a miracle. The Atonement, or the final miracle, is a REMEDY. ***It is purely a means***, while any type of healing is a result."

Here Jesus is clear. Miracles are a MEANS. "The Holy Spirit is the mechanism (means) of miracles." The MEANS of being able to PERFORM a miracle, is having the POWER. The POWER is HOW the miracle is performed. The expression of the LOVING POWER OF GOD, is how miracles happen.

So when we look higher, beyond the RESULTS of miracles, beyond the changes, and the moved mountains, and the healed bodies, to the source, we see that in fact it all starts out with THE POWER. And this power EXPRESSES. And this power is UNLIMITED. And this power can do all of the above. The FORM that the effects take is highly varied and potentially a distraction from recognizing that they all originate in the SAME premise.

That you HAVE THE POWER to perform.

"Very few people appreciate the REAL POWER OF THE MIND."

"The mind is a VERY POWERFUL CREATOR, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will."

So when we say, "this is a course in miracles", what we are really talking about is, this is a course in BECOMING VERY POWERFUL. It is a course in becoming STRONG mentally. It is a course in lining up with the power and will and mind of God. It is a course in EMPOWERMENT and taking your power back (having given it away to the ego and to weakness). It is a course in becoming ABLE to perform POWERFUL miracles. To USE the POWER of the mind to accomplish anything.

"Teachers of God will take over the world because of their STRENGTH."

POWERFUL SUPERNATURAL MIRACLE WORKERS. .... is a far cry from how miracle working is typically portrayed. A mere "shift in perception" hardly testifies to "what the Holy Spirit (power) enables you to do is clearly not of this world", nor to the ability to heal others, or to move mountains. A miracle CAPABLE of being "a potential spectacle" is hardly likely when miracles are not given any credit for being POWERFUL.

We are in training to develop the ABILITY, the power, to use the power of God. And that is very exciting!

I have actually experienced God's power, once so far. It happened while attempting to heal my wife. A sudden immeasureable presence arrived and felt incredibly strong. Like a super force, so intense and so powerful in its presence, it felt like it could cause anything to happen. That it could move any object. That it was SO STRONG that nothing could resist it. As if it could have literally moved the planet. It lasted only a few seconds, leaving a complete miraculous healing in its wake (all pain vanished).

To GAIN this power, ALL power must be recognized as being SHARED with God. "To recognize that all power is OF GOD (from Him, hosted by you), is to gain all power." With the Holy Spirit working THROUGH you, you become ABLE to do anything. "Do His works". And there is LITERALLY NOTHING our holiness cannot do.

"The POWER to work miracles belongs to you."

God and his Kingdom are unlimited. They are EVERYTHING. In the separation from God, we tried to be opposite to God. We made-up a world opposite to everything. The opposite of everything is NOTHING At the same time, we confused the true with the false, and so believed that the nothing was actually SOMETHING. This is the entire problem to be corrected. It is a lack of recognition that the world is absolutely NOTHING. It is because you believe it is SOMETHING, that you think it has something to offer, or something to do to you.

What is nothing has no real effects because it is not really a cause. The world isn't right or wrong or good or bad. The world isn't anything at all. It is meaningless because of this nothingness.

God's Kingdom is all meaningful and means everything to you. The world you made means NOTHING AT ALL. But you tried to GIVE IT meaning that it does not have. Because it is NOTHING it can reflect the meaning you project onto it. But of itself it has none. Of itself it has nothing of anything. The world is not a something, it is an ABSENCE.

Our task then is simply to see through the lies and appearances produced by the wishful thinking, ie the denial, that the world IS something, when it isn't. To stop believing it can BE something it is not. Or indeed that it can be anything at all. There is nothing there. It's not really a world. It's an illusion of a world. A smokescreen. A hallucination of a world. It is unreal and does not exist. There is no world at all.

To recognize it AS nothing requires seeing through illusions. It requires correctly discerning that the world is NOT what you thought it was. It also requires the recognition of what it IS, which is nothing. You are not really afraid of nothing because, being afraid of nothing means you have no fear at all. You are afraid of nothingNESS because you think it's something you can experience - as if it is somethingNESS. Yet it cannot be both something and nothing at the same time.

Jesus asks us merely to come to our senses and realize that the world is nothing whatsoever. The body is nothing. Events are nothing. Nothing is happening. Or indeed, the nothingness is not happening. It's only because we think there really is a world there that we suffer. It's only because we give the body roles and duties and laws and purposes that it seems to become sick. We keep trying to twist a world of nothing into a dedicated something, which it cannot be. And so this denial attacks it.

Let the world be nothing. Only by it being nothing can you truly let it go. Its meaninglessness, emptiness, nothingness and absence must be recognized. What is absent CANNOT BE THERE. what is nothing cannot be the truth of everything. What is nothingness CANNOT HAPPEN. There is no world.

The world is not a guilty world or a sinful world. Nor is it an innocent world or a holy world. It is not a forgiven world or an accused world. The world isn't anything at all. To forgive it is to overlook it and to not see it. And so the world must disappear because it is not there to be seen or believed. Only the Kingdom of God remains.

"What is the ego? Nothingness, but in a form that seems like something. In a world of form the ego cannot be denied for it alone seems real."

"Symbols which but represent ideas that cannot BE, must stand for empty space and nothingness. Yet nothingness and empty space can NOT be interference. What CAN interfere with the awareness of reality is the belief that there is SOMETHING THERE."

"The body that is asked to be a god WILL be attacked, because its nothingness has not been recognized. And so it seems to be a thing with power IN ITSELF. As something, it CAN be perceived, and thought to feel and act, and hold you in its grasp as prisoner to itself." ... "Yet its nothingness IS your salvation, from which you would flee."

"His body's nothingness releases yours from sickness and from death."

"Sickness is a demand the body be a thing that it is not. Its NOTHINGNESS is guarantee that it can NOT be sick. In your demand that it be MORE than this lies the idea of sickness."

"What can the causeless BE but nothingness. The picture of your brother that you see is wholly absent, and has never been. Let, then, the empty space it occupies be RECOGNIZED as vacant, and the time devoted to its seeing be perceived as idly spent, a time unoccupied."

"For here is nothingness, where neither birth nor death is real, nor any form in the misshapen mind that spawned it has any meaning in the Mind of God."

"Dreams are dreams, and every one is equally untrue. This is the only lesson to be learned. Yet will fear linger until every one is recognized as nothingness, and seen exactly as it is and nothing more."

"Now the hosts of Heaven come with us, to sweep away all vestiges of dreams and every thought that rests on nothingness."

"The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin, and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness. There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless."

"Your faith is placed in the most trivial and insane symbols; pills, money, "protective" clothing, "influence," "prestige," being liked, knowing the "right" people, and an endless list of forms of nothingness which you endow with magical powers."

"Yet how can sight which stops at nothingness, as if it WERE a solid wall, see truly? It is HELD BACK by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else BUT form will be perceived. These eyes, made NOT to see, will NEVER see." ... "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."

"To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to LET IT GO."

"To recognize this is to recognize nothingness when you think you see it. As such, it is the prerequisite for vision."

"The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond. It merely ceases to interfere with vision. To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear."

"The "changes" the ego seeks to make are not really changes. They are but deeper shadows, or perhaps different cloud patterns. Yet what is made of nothingness cannot be called new or different. Illusions are illusions; truth is truth."

"God's Will is all there is. We can but go from nothingness to everything; from hell to Heaven."

"Such is the choice. What loss can be for you in choosing not to value nothingness? This world holds nothing that you really want, but what you choose instead you want indeed!"

"Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."

"But hold out your JOINED hands and touch this heavy-seeming block, and you will learn how easily your fingers slip through its nothingness. It is no solid wall. And only an illusion stands between you and the holy Self you share."

"What is the SENSE in seeking to be safe in what was MADE for danger and for fear? Why burden it with further locks and chains and heavy anchors, when its weakness lies, NOT in itself, but in the frailty of the little gap of nothingness whereon it stands?"

"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness, and your heart will be so filled with joy that it will leap into Heaven and into the presence of God."

"God wills salvation be received today, and that the intricacies of your dreams no longer hide their nothingness from you."

"Nothingness will become invisible, for you will at last have seen truly."

"Like all things in the world its meaning is temporary, and will ultimately fade into the nothingness from which it came when there is no more use for it."

"Now are they without effects. They cannot be concealed because their nothingness is recognized."

"And the alternative you think you chose seems fearful and too dangerous to be the nothingness it actually is."

"How can a battle be perceived as nothingness, when you ENGAGE in it? How can the truth of miracles be RECOGNIZED, if murder is your choice?"

"There is a silence covering the world that was an ancient dream so long ago no one remembers now. Its time is done, and in the little space it seemed to have is nothingness. The dream has gone, and all its dreams of gifts have disappeared as well. The first dream has been seen and understood for merely an illusion of the fear on which the world was based."

"To mean these words acknowledges illusions are in vain, requesting the eternal in the place of shifting dreams which seem to change in what they offer, but are one in nothingness."

"Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness, and while you seek for life you ask for death"

"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."

"The more complicated the results become, the harder it may be to recognize their nothingness, but it is not necessary to examine ALL possible outcomes to which premises give rise to judge the PREMISES truly."

"Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt."

"EVERY illusion carries pain and suffering in the dark folds of the heavy garments with which it hides its nothingness."

"And so is ALL time past, and everything EXACTLY as it was before the way to nothingness was made."

"Specialness is the idea of sin MADE REAL. Sin is impossible even to imagine, without this base. For sin rose from it, out of nothingness, an evil flower with no roots at all."

"Only the ANTICIPATION will frighten you, for the reality of nothingness cannot be frightening."

"Very simply, then, you may BELIEVE you are afraid of nothingNESS, but you are REALLY afraid of NOTHING. And in THAT awareness you ARE healed."

"In the Divine psyche, the Father and the Holy Spirit are not incomplete at all. The Sonship has the unique faculty of believing in error, or incompleteness, if he so elects. However, it is quite apparent that so to elect IS to believe in the existence of nothingness. The correction of this error is the Atonement."

Continuing with the "it's bullshit" theme, let's look at how guilt is also bullshit.

Guilt is not atonement. It is not compensation. It does not make up for doing something wrong. It does not help the person who you hurt. It does not undo what happened. It does absolutely nothing to correct sin. It does not give a gift to the person you attacked. Guilt does not heal anyone.

It doesn't pay for or correlate to the amount of sin that you caused. It does not prove that you did not want to sin. It does not demonstrate that you have "repented". It does not equate to atonement or forgiveness. It does not indicate that you really did not want to do what you did. And it does not raise the overall level of happiness in the world.

Guilt is justified self-attack, resulting from a failure to forgive. But guilt has an even deeper motive.

When you sin, or believe in sin, it is very deliberate. Whatever act it is that you "did", you did it by choosing to do it. Make no mistake that in your ego belief, you wanted to attack, intended to attack, wanted to destroy God, desired to be opposed to God, were being murderous and hateful, wanted the consequences of your attack to be real, desired to overthrow God's will and power, wanted to affect God and make Him dead, and wanted to really believe strongly in sin being "reality" - that you really did bring about real "success" in your attempted separation. Sin is a belief that death is real.

Realize also that at every stage of separation from God, denial is used to try to make whatever is present go unconscious. It is an act of trying to get rid of yourself, because the whole purpose for the dream of death is to destroy yourself. You tried to get rid of yourself by getting rid of God, shutting Him out of awareness, making him unconscious to you. Then you are left staring sin in the face.

But this wasn't enough for you. Just "sinning" did not completely destroy you. So you had to keep on denying yourself, keep on making stuff go unconscious, and keep progressing towards a state of TOTAL DEATH. Sin demands death and will stop at nothing until it is enacted, because only when it is completely implemented will the belief in the permanence and non-reversibility of sin be completed.

So what you did next was make sin go unconscious, denied that sin had happened, and covered it over with another layer of illusion. On purpose. The purpose was to KEEP the sin real, not heal or reverse it, and to add another layer of denial to take you closer to death. You implemented this by INVENTING GUILT.

Guilt, then, is this state of mind in which you start to claim, and make illusions which appear to show, that you DID NOT WANT TO SIN. OOoo.... so ok, first you are believing in murder and death and killing God, and then.... you start to pretend that you did not want to do it, even though you did. Guilt therefore is your attempt to FAKE that you really felt remorseful, guilty, ashamed, that you somehow RECOGNIZED that you did something that you should not have done, and that now you somehow want to "take it back" or "wish that it had no consequences" or "yearn for re-uinion" or whatever else bullshit.

Guilt will position you as APPEARING to claim that you didn't want to sin and "wish" that it hadn't happened, BUT a WISH is not a WILL. The guilt will not actually *do anything* whatsoever to undo the sin. The guilt merely establishes that you believe heavily in the sin, because you think it has reality and truth to it, and you have NO intention whatsoever of undoing that or challenging it. The guilt is a total facade to try to make out that you feel sorry about it or didn't mean it, in a completely powerless, non-active, non-consequence-producing way, which has absolutely no effect on the sin itself or its consequences.

Realize also then that guilt or shame is completely self-serving, and also contains a component of feeling sorry for YOURSELF that, because you sinned, you now are going to lose out or be punished. Guilt is a reaction to sin, the opposite of forgiveness. Forgiveness will say you did not really sin and nothing was hurt and there's no reason to be upset. But guilt goes the other way, and says the sin was so real that you don't deserve forgiveness.

This lack of deserving or worthiness of being forgiven, then starts to establish your belief that you are "not good enough" or you don't deserve to be loved or you are unworthy of God or forgiveness. And this will create a belief in you that God couldn't love you, SHOULD NOT love you, and that you REFUSE to accept that He DOES love you, because really you have NO interest at that point in retracing your steps. The positioning of yourself as unworthy and unlovable, which comes across even to yourself as a kind of sorrowful, pityful, unfairly-treated sort of experience, is actually the total opposite in its purpose. IT IS FAKE. It's nothing less than an attempt to KEEP sin and guilt and do *NOTHING* about them to actually change them in any way.

Just as there is no such thing as real sin, there is no such thing as real guilt. All guilt is fake. A "guilty conscience" is a bullshit conscience. Guilt has been put on a pedestal by the ego to celebrate its success at murdering God, and to pretend that it is innocent. It wants someone else to be *responsible* for it, to accuse someone else of sin (even if that means they kill you), but only so that the "evidence" that YOU were the one who chose to make sin real is completely hidden. No-one would suspect you of murder if you APPEAR to be innocent.

No-one would accuse you of being the one who sins if you come across as having a facade of sweetness and niceness, guiltlessness, weakness, powerlessness, hopelessness, unworthiness, fearfulness, vulnerability, littleness, or ignorance. The ego's entire strategy for IMPLEMENTING DEATH is to first of all set up the belief in death by believing in sin, then enacting every step necessary to bring about death. It does this by attempting to strip you of all responsibility, all power, all will, all mind, and to portray you as a weak helpless VICTIM, who can't POSSIBLY have chosen to sin and who is now being completely unfairly accused by external sources. Those external sources will then come to be the pretend jduge and jury who deal a death sentence and inflict the final blow on your now completely helpless, victim-ridden self, to prove that YOU DID NOT SIN.

Who could suspect you of sin if you were just innocently, inevitably, unfairly attacked and mistreated, in such a way that is destroys you and APPEARS to be against your will? It is a fake death. You are faking your own death by pretending to not believe in sin when you still believe in deep down. People who APPEAR innocent are NOT INNOCENT. They are very filled with sin and guilt. The fake innocence facade is a perfect disguise. Guilt is the 2nd step in implementing it, and the belief in deserving punishment which comes from guilt lays the groundwork for implementing the 3rd step - fear of punishment, which is also 100% bullshit.

So you see, guilt is not genuine. It does not help anyone or correct anything or atone for anything to be guilty. It just keeps all of the consequences of what you did and protects them behind layers of denial. If you were really, really interested in "atoning" for sin, you would actually take action steps which would UNDO THE SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. You wouldn't be like, oh I guess you have to live with the consequences now, nothing I can do about it. Instead, you'd be choosing MIRACLES to correct and undo all of the side-effects of your wrong decision, with Holy Spirit. And that means lifting all of the signs of attack off of yourself and anyone who was involved.

Going into guilt also is usually SUPPORTED by the person that you attacked, whereby they feel justified in proving you are guilty, leaping at the opportunity to condemn you, and failing to forgive entirely. To hold you condemned in guilt for your sin, the other person thinks they are righteous and justified but they are just as much enacting bullshit. It does not help anyone to be guilty. What the attacked person should be doing is finding you INNOCENT, forgiving you, overlooking the belief in sin, PROVING that they cannot be hurt by you by disallowing any effects in their mind or emotions or body, and therefore teaching you that YOU DID NOT attack them and are innocent.

Only when there is "redemption", ie both parties are lifted UP closer to the light, closer to forgiveness, closer to truth, closer to the undoing of sin and guilt, that is the ONLY real form of atonement. If you're not approaching the atonement then you're going into the ego, no matter who you are or what side the victim/victimizer drama you fall on.

Guilt is a lie. A big fat stinking lie. It's just another ego ILLUSION designed to LOOK LIKE you gave a crap about sinning, while doing nothing about it, using it as JUSTIFICATION to attack yourself even more and put yourself down and destroy yourself as a SACRIFICIAL OFFERING to the person you supposedly did this to. Dying is not atonement. Self destruction is not atonement. Guilt is not atonement.

Another way many people fall into this is by believing that if they hurt a loved one, they should be GUILTY in order to show that they are LOVING. They will go into guilt-ridden justifications and compulsions to try to "make it up" to the person. They will do housework out of guilt. They will buy make-up gifts out of guilt. They will "owe" the person something. They will try to do stuff to compensate and "balance out" the offense, to try to win back favor. This is not love! It is so often believed to be what it means to give a shit or to love someone. IT IS ATTACK. It's like rubbing salt in the wound.

All guilt is bullshit. We need to look at this and admit to it and stop using this EGO WEAPON as a disguise to pretend that we didn't want to sin. We did want to sin. Every death celebrates that fact. If we truly give a shit, we will undo guilt, undo sin, undo death, undo ILLUSIONS of consequences that we think we caused, recognize our PERMANENT INNOCENCE, and return to God. Guilt is arrogant. You ARE worthy of love and forgiveness.

"Lesson 253 "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."

We're familiar with the idea of scapegoating. Something that seems separate from you happens, someone does something, and then you become triggered. You use the opportunity to project some guilt onto the person to relieve yourself.

But what if we said that the things that happen, do not happen on their own without your consent? What if we say that you cause things to happen, you coerce people to do things, and you put the events in place? And what if the reason you do this is so that you can position yourself as a victim, prime yourself for being upset about the situation, disown responsibility, and project blame for it onto someone else?

Is it possible that before you even scapegoat, you dream a dream and put the figures there and make them act out for you? What if the ego in you seeks to sabotage everything, find people sinful, and condemn them, long before you even seem to be projecting stuff onto them or reacting to them?

"It is the FIGURES in the dream, and what THEY do that seem to MAKE THE DREAM. You do not realize that ****you are making them act out FOR you****, for if you did, the guilt would not be theirs, and the illusion of satisfaction would be gone."

What if you actively seek to set people up for failure, actively try to cause problems to happen, actively amplify suffering and actively want things to go wrong so that you can have an opportunity TO scapegoat? What if life only sucks because you are CAUSING it to distort towards hell? What if your mind is actually INFLUENCING the dream, orchestrating events, changing behaviors, and is causing you to SET UP unpleasant situations?

Jesus in ACIM says that your self is ruler of the universe, and nothing comes to you unbidden by yourself. Whatever happens is what you desire. And what does not happen you have not chosen. This sure seems to suggest that your mind is a powerful creator, that events don't just happen on their own without your consent, and that you actually have a psychological influence over the world. This is your dream, after all.

What we maybe need to be willing to look at, and this is very deep, is that we don't just have a problem projecting guilt onto people, supposedly justified by "what they do", or the sins they commit, but we actually also orchestrate events and manipulate happenings and sabotage proceedings and cause problems to arise, just so that we can have scenarios in which scapegoating becomes possible. We ARRANGE the world into configurations of suffering.

Is it too much of a stretch to suggest that your mind is actually asking for trouble? Or that you are wanting there to be unsolvable problems? Or that you're making your life a living hell on purpose? Or that your ego wants there to be war? That your mind actually induces problems and holds them as real and maintains and energizes them in order to keep you in a position of victimhood, so that you'll be primed and ready to project crap onto all those involved?

What if it's that you secretly want there to be a problem? What if you secretly want to suffer, have unsolvable issues, be confronted with conflict and see yourself as powerless and hopeless and unable to see a way out? What if your descent into hell and your attempt to push everyone there with you, is actually a choice you're making that demands the dream conform to your wishes? What if your desire to see yourself unfairly treated actually manipulates spacetime and world events and people's health and so on, just so that you can keep the lie of "I didn't choose this" going?

After all, how are you going to scapegoat if no-one is doing anything to bother you? How are you going to project your guilt if no-one is sinning or making mistakes? Maybe you have to trip them up. Maybe you have to put obstacles in place. Maybe you actively seek to destroy your life and your relationships. Maybe you want things to go wrong so that you'll find yourself in an impossible situation, a nightmare of your own making, so that you'll seem imprisoned and powerless and can blame everyone else for making you feel this way?

I really do think that our minds are powerful enough that we actually influence events, manipulate happenings, induce and increase problems, make issues persist through resistance, attract even more suffering through fear, and so on. Our minds influence the dream world. Our focus, especially if it's coming from ego on some subtle level, can actually attempt to sabotage and destroy and tear down and constantly throw things into stressful states. Our egos want this, so that we can have the perfect justification for seeing ourselves unfairly treated.

"The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will." We are not idle spectators in this world, we are creators, and our minds are powerful and never stop creating. And while we pretend not to create with or like God, we instead mis-create. And our mis-creations become a world that we make and look upon and react to. It may be completely wrong to assume that this physical world is just some objectively solid real fixed thing, there on its own, doing its own thing. Maybe instead it is a fluid dream fabric which our minds are constantly manipulating, causing things to happen, asking for certain people to show up, putting problems there etc. After all, the world IS an hallucination OUR mind is having.

"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them."

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up?"

I've seen for myself how when I'm in a more egoic mood or angry, more things go wrong than usual. It's not just that I'm annoyed and can't stay patient with everyday things, it's more that there's an actual increase in how many things mess up. If I'm in fear the same thing occurs. Stuff breaks, falls, drops, slips, gets bumped into, goes missing, malfunctions etc, a lot more than usual. As children of God we need to learn to realize and master the fact that we are not just sitting here passively perceiving the world, we are MAKING IT.

Could it be that we actually are far more powerful creators than we realize? Could it be that even in this dream world we are rulers of our destiny and have to learn to create constructively and responsibly, even of dream stuff? Could it be that when we're having one of those days where everything goes wrong it's because we're making it go wrong on purpose?

Could it be that if we master this ability of mind power, mind over matter so to speak, that we could in fact orchestrate what happens, how it happens, who it happens to, and thereby be truly ruler of the universe? And what if when your mind is more peaceful, it INDUCES a life in which events are smoothed out and problems melt and attacks diminish and the so-called physical world actually bends to your will? That "all around the signs of life spring up" as you walk by, simply by the power of your mind to organize and turn chaos into order?

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

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

"He will go before you, making straight your path, and leaving in your way no stones to trip on, and no obstacles to bar your way. NOTHING you need will be denied you. ****Not one seeming difficulty but will melt away BEFORE you reach it.****"

"The scent of flowers is their gift to you. The waves bow down before you, and the trees extend their arms to shield you from the heat and lay their leaves before you on the ground, that you may walk in softness, while the wind sinks to a whisper 'round your holy head."

In A Course in Miracles, whenever Jesus uses the term "oneness" or "one with" or "are one", he DOES NOT MEAN that they are "one thing" like a count of 1.

The classic idea of "oneness" is this ego concept of "one thing" - what you'd be left with if you removed all egoic separations and ended up with a single unified "whole", which had no other parts. This idea of oneness is actually NOT what Jesus refers to in the course!

What I've come to learn is that instead, to be "one" with something means to be "of one kind". ie, to be in the same LIKENESS, or the SAME EXACT NATURE AS. In terms of brothers for example, this means brothers being "one" are like identical twins.

Jesus also makes statements about how you are one WITHIN YOURSELF. This has the same meaning, that within yourself there is only one consistent nature, no differences, no parts that are different from other parts, all "unified" and "united" within yourself. This is what it means to be one with YOURSELF. e.g. if you are made only of LIGHT, then all of you is LIGHT and so you are consistently "one nature".

So to Him, in His use of these terms, he is not referring to OUR idea of oneness. He has redefined its meaning as "of one kind" or "identical to" or "the same quality as" or "the same nature as" or "is still distinct but not different in appearance or form or character".

So now.. have a read of these statements below which all use this terminology, and instead of reading it to mean the typical idea of "oneness" or "one thing"... read it instead as saying, are OF ONE KIND or are identical, or that they share a likeness. It gives a whole different meaning to what He is saying, and it ALSO clarifies some of the subtler points that He is making where He distinguishes that there are TWO things in another portion of His statement and this TWONESS is not contradicted when the part mentioning "one" is recognized to mean THE SAME KIND, rather than "one thing."

This is all in recognition of the FACT that God has created many "separate beings who have everything individually" and recognizes that they are in the LIKENESS of God but still have their own distinct "self" or soul. Souls are ONE WITH GOD, meaning, they are LIKE HIM. Not that they ARE Him.

---

"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."

"Helpers are given you in many forms, although upon the altar they are one." (are similar)

"Today s idea accurately describes you as God created you. You are one within yourself, and One with Him. Yours is the unity of all creation. Your perfect unity makes change in you impossible." (one with yourself = consistent throughout) (perfect unity means the same thing, a state of consistency and one KIND)

"Miracles are seen in light, and light and strength are one." (are the same)

"I trust my brothers who are one with me." (you still have brothers, they are IDENTICAL to you)

"What can this mean, EXCEPT your minds are one?" (you still have your own minds, but they are IDENTICAL in nature)

"To and to receive are one in truth." (are identical)

"This recognition is the recognition that his will and God's are one." (shared, mutual, in agreement)

"He does not judge BETWEEN them, KNOWING they are one. Being united, they are one BECAUSE THEY ARE THE SAME" (ie identical - being united doesn't mean one thing, it means teamwork)

"No miracle can ever be denied to those who know that they are one with God." (how could you do a miracle if you are "as God"? You still have a self, which is LIKE GOD)

"For we are one in purpose, and the end of hell is near." (one in purpose, meaning identical purpose)

"THEY are one." (identical)

"I and by father are one" (we are identical to God's nature, in his likeness)

"And I, who am among them, am one with them and with Him" (still Jesus has his own self, and "them" has their own selves, and God has his self, and we are all one ie alike)

"So he became identified with Christ, a man no longer, but at one with God." (Christ is still distinct from God, they are alike)

"If you were one with Him, and RECOGNIZED this oneness, you would know His power is YOURS." ("his" and "yours" still coexist as TWO THINGS, but are sharing a similarity)

"And He will speak to you, reminding you that you are Spirit, one with Him and God, your brothers and your Self." (See how Jesus says you still have brothers, being one with them does not UNDO the brotherhood)

"Now are we One with Him Who is our Source." (we still have our self, yet are one, ie of one nature)

"Let me remember I am one with God." (but you still have an *I*)

"And everything we see reflects the holiness within the mind at one with God and with itself." (see how here again he says that your mind is one WITH ITSELF and therefore still is a distinct thing in its own right, and its oneness with God is a reflection or similarity TO God, it does not mean "god is you")

"Aspects of reality can be seen IN EVERYTHING and EVERYWHERE. Yet only God can gather them together by crowning them AS ONE with the final gift of eternity." (as identical)

"Yet its frame is JOINED to its Creator, One with Him AND with His masterpiece." (alike)

"And yet, unless your will is one with His, His gifts are not received." (you still have your own WILL! ... but your will being one with God's means its a second will that is identical in intention to God's - elsewhere Jesus says "in accord with" or agreement with)

"It remains forever and forever like its Creator, being one with Him." (it still remains forever! Just because it's one with its creator doesn't mean it isn't a thing in its own right)

"No-one who shares his purpose with him can NOT be one with him." (identical to)

"Praise be unto you, who make the Father One with His Own Son." (Here again the father HAS A SON, but they are one, and this doesn't mean the son IS God, it means the son is LIKE GOD or of one kind)

"Your mind IS one with God's." (you still have a mind, it is LIKE God's mind)

"We thank our Father for one thing alone; that we are separate from no living thing, and therefore one with Him." (separation mean isolation ie no sharing. You still share with God, and being one with him means being in total harmony)

"This little aspect is NO DIFFERENT from the whole, being continuous with it, and at one with it." (there is still a little aspect, it is LIKE the whole)

"No pathway in the world can lead to Him, nor any worldly goal is one with His." (one with as in identical to)

"But, as you cross to JOIN it, IT will JOIN WITH YOU, and BECOME ONE with you." (identical with you)

"I am one with God." (You still have an *I* in this statement! It doesn't mean you are God.)

"No-one unites with enemies, nor is at one with them in purpose." (here Jesus uses "one" interestingly in the 'negative' to again refer to "at one" as meaning "not identical to".)

"For Christ takes many forms with different names until their oneness can be recognized." (oneness means identical selves/souls)

"The single vision, which the Holy Spirit offers you, will bring this Oneness to your mind" (notice that YOUR MIND is still a distinct thing. Oneness comes to it, and it still remains a distinct mind. It becomes LIKE God's mind and united within itself rather than against itself)

"Its oneness is forever guaranteed inviolate" (wholeness, unity, self-supporting, free of conflict)

"As we share this goal, we increase its power to attract the whole Sonship, and to bring it back into the Oneness in which it was created." (the sonship still exists with MANY SONS in it, its oneness is the IDENTICALITY of the nature of each son)

"If you were one with Him, and RECOGNIZED this oneness, you would know His power is YOURS." (there is still "him" and "you" in this)

"And ONLY as you look upon him as guiltless, can you understand his Oneness." (oneness is also holiness and innocence)

"My oneness with the Christ establishes me as Your Son, beyond the reach of time, and wholly free of every law but Yours." (being like all others)

"Your role in the redemption LEADS you to it, by re-establishing its oneness in your minds." (there are still multiple minds here, even after oneness is established... oneness means a healed state of unity and freedom from conflict and wholeness and single-minded intention and similarity to God's likeness)

tl;dr ... but it's a forgivable mistake.

Heaven is an environment of spirit, of sharing and openness, of oneness and love. It permits the shared overlapping presence of many created beings. All of spirit PERMEATES each other and PASSES THROUGH each other.

Remember that "nothing real can be threatened." Heaven does not permit any part of the environment to act against any other part. It does not put up boundaries, there are no walls to keep things out or in.

Everything has access to everything at all times. There are no prisons, nothing to imprison, and nothing to attack the prison. There are no objects that are solid, with surfaces that collide, or which can attack or damage other objects.

In heaven, there is nothing acting against the freedom of will. There is nothing to oppose the will of God. There is no way to will against anyone. This produces an environment where there are no COLLISIONS between things, there are no hard surfaces that keep things out, there are no separate wills or forces which can act upon objects and cause them to change or move against their will.

In the separation from God, we introduced an idea of SIN. It's the idea that will can be used against will, that you can attack and affect something without be affected, that one thing can act upon another without its consent, that something can be hurt with no power to stop it. It's an idea of destruction and damage, of sickness and death.

This idea alone produced what we call SPACE TIME, a whole second order of "reality" rooted in the idea that one part can be separate from another, that one thing can act upon another without its consent, and real irreversible effects can be produced. Where one thing can act upon another thing against its will and change it forever.

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

SPACE TIME is an environment, a system of thought in mind, completely dependent on the idea of sin. The idea of attack. That one thing can act against another. That there can be a war, a conflict, and a COLLISION. It is a world of attack on the will of God.

"The world (spacetime) was made as an attack on God."

This is why we have here physical matter, with objects which can act upon other objects without their consent. A rock can fall down a mountain and slam into a tree. The tree didn't ask for this. The tree is changed irreversibly. This is sin. Physical sin. One thing acting upon another without its consent.

It requires that there be solid surfaces. There has to be a resistance that is strong enough to REPEL something. This is why physical matter has atomic forces. The repulsion, a form of unwillingness, PUSHES AGAINST other things. It allows two objects to push against each other, thus affecting each other, moving each other, changing each other. Without solidity, sin is impossible. Without OPPOSING FORCES (wills) solid matter cannot exist and cannot have any properties.

"The world of bodies is the world of sin. For without a body sin is impossible."

A body, a solid material physical object, be it human or animal or a mountain or a planet, is required in order to have sin. There has to be a separation, to keep the things apart. This takes the form of materials which seem to have mass and solidity. These two "separate" things can now act upon each other independently, not sharing a will, not sharing a mind, not sharing interests. They are in CONFLICT with each other constantly.

Conflict and war and murder and attack and sin are BUILT IN TO SPACE TIME. It is its fundamental nature. The entirety of spacetime is an hallucinated image, a PICTURE, of what it would look like if heaven (God's Son) were attacked against its will, complete with forces acting upon each other and opposing each other and conflicting and damaging and destroying.

"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."

One thing acting upon another thing against its will. That's the root of all of spacetime, the tiny mad idea, the violation of God's will, the attempt to oppose reality. The mere idea of FORCING something to happen TO something OTHER than (separate from) oneself. The idea of sin, of murder, and of death.

Because now if you can use power to cause/will a change in something else, and it changes, and the change is IRREVERSIBLE, that is the idea of sin. If I throw a brick through a glass window and the glass is broken and the brick is chipped, these are effectively PERMANENT changes. The broken window is now THE PROOF OF SIN, and testifies that someone DID throw a brick through the window. So long as the window remains broken, the proof is still there. And the window will never be the same again.

The ability to DAMAGE, to destroy, to attack, to rot and decay, to change anything at all, is the idea of sin. It's sort of like, we've tried to suggest that heaven can be attacked, hurt, changed, destroyed, and mangled into some new form. The entirety of spacetime is testifying to this at all times without end. Even when the objects are not touching. Even when they do. Even when the planets are far apart from each other. They are still at war.

It is an entire system of war, conflict, attack and death. The important thing to realize is that WITHOUT the idea that will can act against will, ALL of this is impossible. You cannot have WALLS, you cannot have OBJECTS, you cannot have BODIES, you cannot have PLANETS, you cannot have attack or murder or destruction, you cannot have MATTER, without the idea of sin.

Heaven is a system of total access. Spacetime is a system of denied access. Heaven is a system of everything being shared. Spacetime is a system of nothing being shared. Heaven is a system of nothing being separate or kept apart of unable to merge or overlap. Spacetime is a system where everything is kept apart and nothing ever joins or shares. They are TOTALLY OPPOSITE to each other in nature.

This also means that you CANNOT take Earth, bodies, space or time, INTO heaven, and keep it. They are absolutely incompatible. One denies the other. Sin is a "lack of love". You cannot take a lack of love INTO love and have it still BE a lack of love. Nothing about its LACK nature can be maintained if there is love. Just as light shines away darkness and REPLACES the darkness. You cannot take the darkness into the light and have it still retain its dark properties.

Earth, human bodies, space and time, are all ideas of sin and darkness and a lack of love. They will NEVER be that which they deny. They cannot be integrated into heaven because they ABSOLUTELY REQUIRE and DEPEND ON a LACK of heaven for their nature. As soon as you introduce the oneness, sharing, lack of walls, lack of hard surfaces, lack of collisions, lack of spatial separations, that is true of heaven's nature, there is nothing left to SUPPORT matter existing at all in ANY way. Earth DISSOLVES in the light and CEASES to exist. It is made of separateness.

You will not be able to "walk on the surface of the earth" in heaven's reality under heaven's laws. There are NO surfaces. There is NO gravity. There is no COLLISION between feet and ground. There is no SEPARATENESS to keep you from sinking into the planet. There is no POSSIBILITY of Earth or bodies whatsoever there.

What you CAN do, is you can adopt heaven's laws and viewpoint and look up the world of sin with forgiveness. It forgives the world BECAUSE of the world's limitations. It recognizes that the world (spacetime/earth) is not REAL sin, it is an ILLUSION of sin. And that really it is just A MISTAKE. Earth is a mistake. Spacetime is a mistake. It is FALSE. Not attacked, not condemned, simply nothing.

This is a key point which people need to really deeply realize. Spacetime is totally opposite to heaven. "Earth, which is heaven's opposite in EVERY way." There are no collideable solid material objects in heaven's reality. The world, earth, space and time, all bodies, must eventually be LET GO AND FORGOTTEN. Because they are nothing. And they cannot exist WITHOUT sin and death.

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

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant SEEMS to be life. An instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water, and set uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the Son of God stop briefly by, to offer his devotion to death's idols, and then pass on."

"And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise."

"A mind and body cannot both exist. Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real. If you are physical your mind is gone from your self-concept, for it has no place in which it could be really part of you. If you are Spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality."

"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."

"To see a SINLESS body is impossible. For holiness is POSITIVE, and the body is merely neutral. It is NOT sinful, but neither is it sinless."

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings"

"How long can contradiction stand, when its impossible nature is clearly revealed? What disappears in light is NOT attacked. It merely vanishes, because it is not true."

"The body is NOT attacked, but merely PROPERLY PERCEIVED."

"The world will end in an illusion, as it began. Yet will its ending be an illusion of mercy. The illusion of forgiveness, complete, excluding no-one, limitless in gentleness, will cover it, hiding all evil, concealing all sin and ending guilt forever. So ends the world that guilt had made, for now it has no purpose and is gone."

"The world will end with the benediction of holiness upon it. When not one thought of sin remains, the world is over. It will not be destroyed nor attacked nor even touched. It will merely cease to seem to be."

"The body is the symbol of the world. Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven."

"Forgiveness is this world's equivalent of Heaven's justice. It translates the world of sin into a simple world, where justice can be reflected from BEYOND the gate behind which total lack of limits lies."

"Forgiveness turns the world of sin into a world of glory, wonderful to see."

"Let us unite in bringing blessing to the world of sin and death."

"They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."