Many here are familiar with a line that says your "sole responsibility" is to accept atonement for yourself. This has, however, been butchered and used as a separation device, and an excuse for not doing anything. When you look at ALL of the quotes about taking "sole responsibility", every one of them is tied to some manner of ACTIVITY which ensues when you accept atonement.
This phrase has been misunderstood. People have taken it to mean "the only thing you have to do." Or perhaps worse, "the only thing there is to be done." As though to say, once you do this ONE thing, you have NO responsibilities to do anything else. This is unfortunate because it is TOTALLY opposite to the course's teaching. It has been used to justify against miracles, against healing, and against helping others.
What he's really saying is that, because you are a free willed being, you have the right and the freedom to CHOOSE. The secret of salvation tells you that YOU are responsible for what you experience. YOU are responsible for your own suffering. YOU are responsible for your own sickness and death. You "do it to yourself." Owning that, accepting that, admitting that, being aware of that, is "taking responsibility." It's a recognition of WHO is causing stuff to happen. The PURPOSE of taking responsibility is in fact SO THAT you can be miracle minded and perform miracles FOR OTHERS.
What this leads to is the recognition that you are the ONLY ONE (sole) who is responsible for the condition of your mind and your experience. God has already done his part by creating you and giving you free will. YOUR part is to "be you", or to be as God created you. To be your natural true self. To be true to the truth about you and others. Because you have free will, it is YOUR CHOOSING that determines whether you are experiencing heaven or hell. And it is this choice that you are SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR.
What the course actually says is that you have a responsibility for CHOOSING the atonement (accepting it). This is because it is your free will choice whether to accept or not. "No one comes to the atonement except willingly." "Heaven is a choice I must make." Just because it says "for myself" on the end of it, people's egos have taken a hold of it and have used it to mean "this applies only to me and no-one else is involved." This couldn't be further from the truth because atonement means SHARING WITH OTHERS.
Taking that full responsibility and electing to do God's will and align yourself with truth, puts you in a position of accepting the truth ie the atonement. But this is only to do with the scope of your freedoms. What you CAN do. What you ARE in a position to decide about in relation to your free will. You are responsible for accepting the atonement for yourself because no-one else is capable of forcing you to accept it. You have to "do your part."
This however has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with whether or not "there are responsibilities" besides this for you to embark upon. In fact, logically speaking, what is true of you must be true of everyone. This is the Golden Rule. As Jesus states in the course you CANNOT accept atonement WITHOUT sharing it. If you are going to accept that YOU deserve love and power, then you MUST also grant ALL OTHERS the same right to love and power. You also MUST support them in accessing that love and power, which means that, because they are PART OF YOU, you cannot fully rest if your brothers are still experiencing hell.
Miracle Principle 24:
"24 A miracle is a Universal Blessing from God through Me to all My Brothers. Explanation: You once said that ***souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation.*** This happens to be true. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. The Disciples were officially and specifically told to ***heal others, as Physicians of the Lord.*** They were ***also told to heal themselves***, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. ***Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me."***
Atonement is not simply a STATE. It is not something that you do IN ISOLATION. It is not something you CAN accept only for yourself. Only yourself CAN CHOOSE to accept it, but OF ITSELF it is not about "just you"! It is something that applies to the entire sonship and by accepting it you are agreeing to UPHOLD it FOR everyone and to participate in bringing EVERYONE into the atonement. It is PART OF YOU. You become PART OF the atonement itself. The process of it, for the whole sonship. And because your brothers are part of you, you CANNOT rest fully knowing that they are still suffering.
In fact what Jesus says is TOTALLY opposite to what many people believe, ie that "the only thing you have to do" is to accept atonement. Like it's some kind of thing you pick up off a shelf and then you "get it" and possess it and it's yours. And then you sit there on a cloud picking your nose. Jesus's view is that to enter into atonement is to enter into RELATIONSHIP with everyone, and to SUPPORT everyone, and to HEAL everyone. To EXPRESS FROM the atonement. Miracles are EXPRESSIONS from the atoned state.
"The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ and acceptance of his Atonement. The mind is then in a state of Grace, and naturally becomes gracious, both to the Host within and the stranger without. By bringing in the stranger, he becomes your brother."
"I repeat that you will see Miracles through your hands through MINE. Conviction really comes through accomplishment. Remember that ability is the potential, Achievement is its expression, and Atonement is the Purpose."
Atonement is a PURPOSE. The purpose is to bring all your brothers back home to God WITH you. That does not happen by you "just accepting atonement for yourself." In fact, when a person isolates off the atonement as a "me only" thing, they are in fact being utterly selfish. This is the ego's version of accepting the atonement. You get to be included, and everyone else is excluded.
"Refuse to accept anyone as WITHOUT the blessing of Atonement, and bring him INTO it by blessing him. Holiness MUST be shared, for therein lies everything that makes it holy."
So Jesus isn't actually saying, in his wording, that you only have a singular "project", or a singular "thing to do". As if you just need to reach the finish line and then you're done. Jesus is still very active in spite of accepting atonement - if you notice he's written a large book and helps you to learn it. He is an active teacher. ANYONE accepting atonement MUST .... HAS TO.... IS REQUIRED TO... CANNOT AVOID.... DOES NOT WANT TO AVOID ..... helping others to find atonement for themselves. It is in fact a metaphysical and logical and mystic condition that your own peace of mind is NOT complete while others remain in darkness. You can't go home without them.
"Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return."
"only the whole Sonship is a worthy co-creator with God"
"YOUR salvation IS critical to the whole Sonship."
"To teach the WHOLE Sonship WITHOUT EXCEPTION demonstrates that you PERCEIVE ITS WHOLENESS and have learned that it IS One."
"The voice of the Holy Spirit IS the call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind. When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed, there will be no call to return, but what God creates is eternal."
"Every decision is made for the WHOLE SONSHIP, directed in and out, and influencing a constellation larger than anything you ever dreamed of." Jesus does not MEAN that you have only one job to do. He means that there is only one scope of free will that you can be responsible FOR, which is your own free will choice to accept atonement. This in NO WAY means that accepting it absolves you of ALL responsibilities, nor does it mean that you don't HAVE a duty - a responsibility - to help others with their atonement. It is in fact a privilege to do so, not a chore, or some crappy job you don't want.
This is not about spiritual laziness. It's not about you "getting what you want" and then forgetting about everyone else. You can't accept atonement WITHOUT accepting that you are eternally BOUND to everyone else and cannot be entirely at peace knowing that they are still suffering. Regardless of whether that suffering is ultimately real or not. The only thing you CAN be responsible for is your own free willed choice to accept the truth. But you are ALSO responsible for the whole sonship. Once you have accepted atonement and have BECOME TRULY RESPONSIBLE, you are now in a position to BE responsible, and you are now responsible FOR EVERYONE.
"You have a PART to play in the Atonement. But the plan of the Atonement IS beyond you"
"The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO IT."
"Holiness MUST be shared, for therein lies everything that makes it holy." "The sole responsibility of God's teacher is to accept the Atonement for himself (you are responsible for MAKING THE CHOICE TO ACCEPT IT - this says nothing about what you DO IN THE ATONED STATE). Atonement means correction, or the undoing of errors. When this has been accomplished, the teacher of God becomes a miracle worker by definition." ( you can't even be a FULL miracle worker until AFTER you accept atonement and THEN are in a position to DO ANYTHING ).
"The unforgiven HAVE no mercy to bestow upon another. That is why your sole responsibility MUST be to take forgiveness for yourself."
"If the sole responsibility of the miracle-worker is to accept the ATONEMENT, and I assure you that it is, ...."
"Would you take unto yourself the sole responsibility for deciding what can bring ONLY good to everyone?"
"The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept Atonement himself. This means that he knows that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors ARE healed by the Atonement. ***Once he accepts this, HIS mind can only heal.*** 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.*** The message which he then gives to others is the truth that THEIR MINDS are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them."
"Miracle Principle 8
Miracles are a form of healing. They supply a lack, and are performed by those who have more for those who have less."
"I told you you were now restored to your former role in the Plan of Atonement. But you must still ***choose freely to devote your heritage to the greater Restoration. As long as a single slave remains to walk the earth, your release is not complete.*** Complete restoration of the Sonship is the only true goal of the miracle-minded."
"My part in the Atonement is not complete until YOU join it, and give it away. As you teach, so shall you learn. I will never leave you or forsake you, because to forsake you would be to forsake myself and God who created me. You will forsake yourselves and your God if you forsake any of YOUR brothers. You are more than your brother's keeper. "
"The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything TO you. (That is, to restore the awareness. Later clarification.) You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did.
Having been restored to your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. You now share MY inability to tolerate the lack of love in yourself and in everyone else, and *************MUST join the GREAT CRUSADE************* to correct it. The slogan for this Crusade is "Listen, Learn, and DO."
This means Listen to My Voice, Learn to undo the error, and DO something to correct it.
The first two are not enough. The real members of MY party are ACTIVE workers."
Beliefs seem to be something we're supposed to be undoing and getting rid of - at least false ones. And the Course says that you do not necessarily need to have a belief about the truth because it's kind of a given. It doesn't require some kind of extra effort or separate attitude in order to maintain it and it's not something that you make or can put extra energy into to give it reality.
Beliefs usually are something the ego has taken ahold of and is attempting to make real things which are not true. It attempts to feed the belief and build it up and create a stronger illusion. It tries to bring to life that which cannot live, and create a sense of being convinced that this artificial belief is the truth. These kind of beliefs we need to undo.
But as we transition our sense of trust away from the ego and toward God, and as we let go of the sense of truth that we invested into the ego's beliefs, we instead start to place our trust and faith and "belief" if you will, in God's truth.
It also comes down to whether or not you believe that you are worthy of God's love and whether you therefore are worthy of receiving God's blessings. If you don't believe you are worthy of God's love, you will not be able to believe that other people are worthy of it either.
But this is not black and white, because you can begin to put your trust in God and learn to have faith in God's truth even if at the moment it seems distant or hidden behind walls of doubt and illusion. Just because you are not yet fully aware or still believe in sin or have your own problems and false beliefs, it doesn't mean God is disempowered at all.
In fact, God and Holy Spirit and Jesus are permanently miraculous and are absolutely ready right now to perform miracles. For them, miracles are happening all the time. And as you begin to reach out to them in faith, putting your trust and belief in their truth being true, this forms a kind of bridge which connects you to their minds, even if right now you are still vague about them or don't understand them and are not having a direct experience of their fullness.
Forgiveness begins to overlook the illusions and you start to build a relationship with them. This relationship, even if at first it seems minimal and fragile, can be enough for you to participate in performing miracles. They are capable of working with you and using you to extend God's love and healing, even if you yourself are still working on your own spiritual path.
To produce a healing, however, it does require at least some amount of belief that God's truth is true. The degree to which you believe in it is largely the degree to which you will allow and accept God's power to work through you. There is no order of difficulty in miracles, but there is kind of an order of difficulty in terms of you believing in your ego and using the ego to attempt to interfere with or block the miracle.
To put it another way, you could be attempting to perform a miracle and saying that you want it while, at the same time, in various ways, your ego beliefs are causing you to ask for something else. And you end up producing results but the results are not the miraculous-seeming results you hoped you were asking for, and instead you just expressed the ego. Then since the ego's will is not really a will at all, nothing seems to happen.
You do need therefore some amount of belief in God's truth being true, in order for you to accept for yourself and allow to extend through you, God's healing power. It is not enough to stand before someone or even remotely and begin to command their healing or to send them loving vibes. You might be assuming that you automatically "believe" simply because you believe intellectually that you can be miraculous, but the amount of your heart-felt believing may be significantly lower than where it needs to be. You will therefore have doubt and fear and be unsure if it's going to work, which will come against the miracle and discourage you from being convinced that it can happen.
So it can be helpful that when you go to perform a miracle, you actively remind yourself that you must BELIEVE that God is going to heal. This in a way seems like making an "effort", only because at the moment your belief is divided and you have to sort of pull yourself out of the ego *temporarily* in order to exhibit a clearer sense of certainty that God's truth is truth.
This will at first seem like a strain of sorts or that you really have to push the envelope of how much you FEEL that you believe it, and the ego in you will try to thwart your efforts. But as Jesus has said, he who asks BELIEVING that he receives it will be given whatever he asks for.
At some point, when you are very thoroughly purified of the ego, and are very certain and strongly convinced of God, your level of what you genuinely believe in will be much higher. You will trust God. You will believe God's word. You will be constantly overlooking ego illusions, including the illusions of sickness and death and real sin. Not just in theory but actually experientially, LIVING it. Walking around in that awareness and knowledge. Expressing it ALL the time.
And then you will not have to make effort to perform miracles because you will naturally, in your HEART, believe deeply that God's will is real and true. You will believe it with your whole heart and your whole being. It will therefore be NATURAL for you to be miraculous. It will be your natural state of being. You will be expressing miracles left right and center every single day, BECAUSE you have a very strong BELIEF, a very strong faith and knowing of the nature of God and believe and trust in HIS power and ability to heal anything.
We have to be honest with ourselves as we learn and experiment with miracles, as to just how much we really do believe God. Don't underestimate how much of a stretch it might be to go from where you're at to where God is at. The ego has long been our trusted company and it can take a LOT of purification and forgiving to truly rise up to the level of Christ.
You do not need christ-level belief in order to facilitate miracles, because Holy Spirit only truly needs a little willingness and your mind only need to be partly corrected. Once you have established SOME faith in God's truth being more true than the ego's truth, miracles will start to become possible, perhaps small ones at first, perhaps minor healings, and you will have a lot of failures and frustrations.
But keep trying and keep learning to BELIEVE firmly AS you do it. That is very important. You can't just get it in your head, your HEART has to feel it and trust it and choose to believe God over the ego.
If you will practice simply switching your belief to high-intensity and back to your regular level, you will see what I mean. Just close your eyes and imagine you're going to heal someone, and then go through the motions of what you think you would do without any particular effort to really believe in it. Like, just saying some words or pointing your hands or whatever.
Then reset and try it again, but this time, BEFORE you start, and sustaining it throughout your effort, make an extra special effort to really STRONGLY BELIEVE that God is going to heal. As soon as you ignite this stronger belief, you should feel it, you will notice it feels like you begin to radiate something. It's almost like you switch on your system and your whole energy field engages and you begin to connect with something beyond yourself.
Then while sustaining that strong heartfelt, whole deep feeling of believing that what you are going to say is TRUE, and that it is backed up by God's love, then proceed with your healing actions such as commanding healing or making statements of truth to speak truth into the situation.
I did this MYSELF today, FOR myself, directing my statements towards some significant sinus pressure and headache that resulted from eating an ice-cream sundae. And the POWER of what Holy Spirit did in me while holding a stronger belief was significantly more noticeable, and I did come away with almost no symptoms left.
I could feel how this was different to simply "showing up" and going through the motions. Too many times in the past I did some of the physical actions of a miracle process and said the words and tried to be commanding or powerful etc but I didn't deep down BELIEVE and I had forgotten entirely to activate belief and to be coming from God's love. I was trying to do miracles intellectually or to treat it like a way to change appearances using appearances.
It's not enough to just assume that you are already fully equipped for miracles, which is the ego's assumption that IT is already whole, and that therefore YOU are already fully in your belief and capability. No. There is more to you which the ego has suppressed, and you are probably not yet acting from a place of pure love and empowerment. You will need to question your belief that you are at your fullest connection to God right now, and learn to open yourself up more and more to His love and to the atonement and to being willing to accept it for yourself so that you can forgive and heal others.
There is a greater strength which you might yet have not even tapped into, and it might require you to really reach out to God and really stand your ground and be CONFIDENT in a way that you might not be comfortable with yet. The extent of your belief in the ego is what holds you back and limits you, and you are walking around with those beliefs ACTIVE in you all the time. So either you have to deliberately poke your head out of the ego's delusion and force yourself to believe more strongly, or continue the longer-term goal of refining your deep acceptance of God's truth.
Eventually, you will simply become so certain of God's ways, and so sure of His nature, and so convinced about the justification for LOVING people - including yourself - that you will automatically BE in a state of strong belief in God, and therefore you will very naturally and EFFORTLESSLY perform miracles. Your word will move mountains, heal the sick, raise the dead, and more.
But for you to believe, truly believe, that God is love, and that you are loved, and that you are justified in loving others, and that you CAN love others STRONGLY and without reservation - i.e. unconditionally - you are going to have to undo all of your own false ego beliefs in sin and guilt and fear and death at some point. They do interfere with your faith and diminish your effectiveness at facilitating miracles.
The miracle itself is unconditional, but your genuine willingness to perform it fully and with wholeness and power depends on your trust and openness with God. If you yourself don't believe you deserve love or healing or forgiveness, because of your belief in your own sinfulness, then you will not be GENUINELY and AUTHENTICALLY willing to extend that blessing to others. But if you have at least forgiven yourself to SOME degree, you WILL be able to begin practicing miracles - literal miracles, and you WILL start to see results.
So go ahead and keep working on your purification and forgiveness, but practice also believing in God's power and believing that God DOES will healing an WILL heal. It all is unlocked when YOU decide to ACT like God would act and therefore align yourself with His will and step out with confidence. As you decide to act according to God's Law, enacting His truth and demonstrating His Flawless Reality, He and all of Heaven will rush in to SUPPORT you, help you perform the miracle, assist in healing, and will empower you.
These are steps of faith. You have to act as if you believe it will happen and that you will be backed up, and the backup will come. Because it is God's love that empowers all miracles and your willingness to love will bring them forth for others.
Gradually as you demonstrate God's power, not only for others but for yourself, you will learn by witnessing the effects of the truth, having shown them to yourself through the miracles you have performed. And this will inspire you and encourage you and teach you that what you believed in was really there, that God really does perform supernatural healing, that you truly CAN do this, and you ARE authorized to do it even if you're still working through your own illusions and beliefs in the ego. You gotta start somewhere.
If you truly believe in God's love, you will BELIEVE that He can heal, and you will allow the healing to move through and around you. If you don't believe in God's miraculous power, then you will not believe in miracles and you will not see miracles through your hands. It's as simple as that.
Learn to believe that God is supernatural, loving, generous and in divine health. Learn to believe He has not become sick or damaged and neither has anyone else. Learn to believe that you made sickness and death and can abolish them. And learn to believe that God's love will move even if you yourself don't yet FULLY believe in it.
You MUST believe in miracles if you are to believe in God!
*BELIEVE* AND IT WILL BE GIVEN YOU!
If we describe the Holy Spirit as having the power of God, of knowing everything, of having a healing solution for every problem, of being able to guide us specifically and tell us what to do, to make all decisions for us, and be an authority, then this should clearly position us in a receptive frame of mind to listen, learn, and do.
If we are unclear as to the absolute and total strength of the Holy Spirit, we will think that there are some things he cannot do, is not equipped to do, and cannot be trusted to do. And then we will doubt him, and we will start to trust our own egos. And then we will usurp his functions and take over control, unwilling to listen to or follow instructions. This means we basically are not giving him enough credit or acknowledging fully what his function is.
Part of the problem is that our egos are inflated and we want to be gatekeepers, in control of everything, making all decisions, knowing what everything is, being special and important, and all the rest of it. All of this clouds our dependence on the Holy Spirit and makes us be in competition with him. We do not want his help and we won't seek it out, listen to it, accept it or welcome it. We think we know better and don't need him.
We need to very fully and clearly spell out precisely what the Holy Spirit's function is and what he is capable of, so that we are in no way mistaken about what his duties and functions are. Only if we can be clear about exactly what he's supposed to be doing, can we be clear about what we are supposed to be doing. What is his role, and what is our role. Otherwise we will have a blurred boundary and the ego will step in.
If I acknowledge that the Holy Spirit has all of the power of God, this power is unlimited, it can heal every sickness, it can solve every problem, he knows absolutely everything that is going on with everyone all the time, he knows exactly what every problem is and how to solve it, has access to all information and facts and variables in the past present and future, and is squarely in a position to KNOW, then this tells me clearly that I can depend on him knowing. He knows how, he is fully equipped, he cannot fail, and he can be depended upon. That means I do not NEED to know everything because I can LET HIM do his part.
This then tells me that I can depend upon him and work with him as a team member, utilizing him for his function and turning to him TO help in all the ways that he is equipped and assigned to do so. Then I will not look to MYSELF to try to fulfill those functions, recognizing that I am not in a POSITION to do so. This tells me that it isn't my function here to know everything, to decide everything, to heal anything, to correct anything, or to pretend that I have all the information. I should be turning to him for that and letting him advise and help.
This also opens up the door for easier trust, because if you are now clear about what He is supposed to be doing and are acknowledging that he CAN do it, you will have more FAITH in him. Part of this entails recognizing that he has the power of God, he is absolutely unlimited in his power, and there is nothing he cannot do. To admit and acknowledge that might, to your ego, strike you as frightening. So you're going to have to work on that and get past it. If you can acknowledge and be comfortable with the Holy Spirit being immensely powerful, and on your side, then you can go forth with greater confidence knowing He is backing you up.
Since he shares God's power, he more or less can be thought of as an extension of God. And that means you should be having faith and trust in him to the same extent and in the same way that you would with God. The Holy Spirit has been appointed by God to help us, on purpose, AS the answer to the separation, TO guarantee our return home to heaven. He knows how we got into this mess, he knows how to get us out of it. We have to learn to let him do that. He also knows how to solve all problems, heal all sickness, and reverse death. We have to learn to let him do that.
Now that you know just how helpful and powerful the Holy Spirit is, you can make room for him and work alongside him as a partner rather than work against him vying for attention. You can let him help you, heal you, resurrect you, and enlighten you. He can solve all your problems and undo all your suffering.
"I will step back and let Him lead the way."
"I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL
the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.
I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me."
"You know not where you go, but One Who knows goes with you. Let Him lead you with the rest."
"I will step back and let Him lead the way,
For I would walk along the road to Him."
"Then let him turn within to his Eternal Guide, and let Him Judge what the response should be."
"Never attempt to OVERLOOK your guilt BEFORE you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is HIS function. Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven."
"I rest in God today, and let Him work
In me and through me, while I rest in Him
In quiet and in perfect certainty."
"And so I give all judgment to the One You gave to me to judge for me. He sees what I behold, and yet He knows the truth. He looks on pain, and yet He understands it is not real, and in His understanding it is healed. He gives the miracles my dreams would hide from my awareness. Let Him judge today."
"That is because I do not yet realize that God has placed the answer together with the problem, so that they cannot be separated by time. The Holy Spirit will teach me this, if I will let Him. And I will understand it is impossible that I could have a problem which has not been solved already."
"Let Him be Judge of what you are, for He has certainty in which there is no doubt because it rests on Certainty so great that doubt is meaningless before Its Face"
"Let Him be Judge as well of everything that seems to happen to you in this world."
"Let Him evaluate each thought that comes to mind, remove the elements of dreams, and give them back to you as clean ideas which do not contradict the Will of God."
"Follow His light and see the world as He beholds it. Hear His Voice alone in all that speaks to you. And let Him give you peace and certainty, which you have thrown away, but Heaven has preserved for you in Him."
"The CAPACITY to empathize is VERY useful to the Holy Spirit, provided you let Him use it in His way."
"The Holy Spirit asks only this little help of you. Whenever your thoughts wander to a special relationship which still ATTRACTS you, enter with Him into a holy instant, and there, LET HIM RELEASE YOU."
"God's Voice alone can tell you how to heal. Listen, and you will never fail to bring His kindly remedy to those He sends to you, to let Him heal them, and to bless all those who serve with Him in healing's name."
"And now I place you in His hands, to be His faithful followers, with Him as Guide through every difficulty and all pain that you may think is real. Nor will He give you pleasures that will pass away, for He gives only the eternal and the good. Let Him prepare you further. He has earned your trust by speaking daily to you of your Father and your brother and your Self. He will continue; now you walk with Him as certain as is He of where you go; as sure as He of how you should proceed, as confident as He is of the goal, and of your safe arrival in the end."
"I place you in His charge, and let Him teach you what to do and say and think each time you turn to Him. He will not fail to be available to you each time you call to Him to help you."
"Let Him uncover the hidden spark of beauty in your relationships, and SHOW it to you."
"Then turn to Him who shares your function with you, and let Him teach you what you need to learn to lay all fear aside, and know your Self as Love Which has no opposite in you."
"He is the strong protector of your innocence, which sets you free. And it is HIS decision to undo EVERYTHING that would obscure your innocence from your unclouded mind. Let Him, therefore, be the only guide that you would follow to Salvation. He knows the way, and leads you gladly on it. WITH Him, you will not fail to learn what God wills FOR you IS your will."
"Then let Him teach you quietly how to perceive your guiltlessness, which is ALREADY there."
"The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE. Remember that you ARE choosing a guide for helping, and the wrong choice will NOT help. But remember also that THE RIGHT ONE WILL. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God."
"The Holy Spirit knows NO-ONE IS SPECIAL. But He also perceives that you have MADE special relationships, which He would purify, and NOT let YOU destroy. However UNholy the reason why you made them may be, He can TRANSLATE them into holiness, by removing AS MUCH FEAR AS YOU WILL LET HIM. You can place ANY relationship under His care, and be sure that it will NOT result in pain, if you offer Him your willingness TO HAVE IT SERVE NO NEED BUT HIS."
"And yet he is NOT crucified. For here is both his pain AND his healing, for the Holy Spirit's vision is merciful, and His remedy is quick. Do not HIDE suffering from His sight, but bring it gladly TO Him. Lay before His eternal sanity ALL your hurt, and LET Him heal you. Do not leave any spot of pain hidden from His Light, and search your minds carefully for any thoughts which you may fear to uncover. For He will heal every little thought that you have kept to hurt you, and cleanse it of its littleness, restoring it to the magnitude of God."
"Thank God that He is there, and works through you. And all His works are yours. He offers YOU a miracle, with every one you LET Him do through you."
"Do not make the mistake of believing that YOU understand what YOU perceive, for its meaning IS lost to you. But the Holy Spirit has saved its meaning FOR you, and if you will LET Him interpret it FOR you, He will restore what you have thrown away. As long as you THINK YOU KNOW its meaning, you will see no need to ask it OF Him. You do not know the meaning of ANYTHING you perceive. NOT ONE THOUGHT YOU HOLD IS WHOLLY TRUE."
There may be a few I missed but this is most of the references to SOULS in A Course in Miracles. Souls are God's Children, they are permanent creations of light, and there are MANY of them.
"Revelations induce complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear. They represent the original form of communication between God and His Souls, before the intrusion of fire and ice made this impossible."
"The Revelation unites Souls directly with God."
"The Miracle unites Souls directly with each other."
"Miracles praise God through men. They praise God by honoring his Creations, affirming their perfection. They heal because they deny body-identification and affirm Soul-identification."
"By perceiving the Spirit, they adjust the levels and see them in proper alignment. This places the Spirit at the center, where Souls can communicate directly."
"Eternal validity belongs only to the Soul. The miracle acknowledges only the Truth. It thus dispels man's illusions about himself, and puts him into communion with himself and with God."
"The Soul never loses its communion with God. Only the mind and body need Atonement."
"The miracle restores the Soul to its fullness. By atoning for lack, it establishes perfect protection."
"The strength of the Soul leaves no room for intrusions."
"The forgiven are filled with the Soul, and their Soul forgives in return."
"The soul is in a state of grace forever. Man's reality is ONLY his soul. Therefore, man is in a state of Grace forever."
"The miracle worker can only bless, and this undoes the curse and frees the soul from prison."
"HIS slip (rivet) was an expression of a Soul gaining enough strength to request freedom from prison. It will ultimately DEMAND it."
"The Soul is therefore unalterable because it is ALREADY perfect, but the mind can elect the level it chooses to serve. The only limit which is put on its choice is that it CANNOT serve two masters."
"Free will is the attribute of the mind, NOT the Soul. The Soul always remains changeless, because it never leaves the sight of God."
"The Creation of the Soul is already fully accomplished."
"The mind, if it votes to do so, becomes a medium by which the Soul can create along the line of its own creation. If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants."
"Most of the abilities man now possesses are only shadows of his real strengths. The Soul knows, loves, and creates. These are its unequivocal functions."
"Perception did not exist until the Separation had introduced degrees, aspects and intervals. The Soul has no levels, and ALL conflict arises from the concept of levels."
"The Soul does not need healing, but the mind DOES."
"Any attempt to endow the ego with the attributes of the Soul, is merely confused thinking."
"The mind returns itself to its proper function only when it WILLS TO KNOW. This places it in the Soul's service, where perception is meaningless. The superconscious is the level of the mind which wills to do this."
"The mind DID divide itself when it willed to create its own levels AND the ability to perceive them. But it could NOT entirely separate itself from the Soul, because it is FROM the Soul that it derives its whole power to create."
"Even in miscreating, will is affirming its source, or it would merely cease to be. This is impossible, because it IS part of the Soul, which God created, and which is therefore eternal."
"But I was a man who remembered the Soul and its knowledge."
"God and the Souls He created remain in surety, and therefore KNOW that no miscreation exists."
"I demonstrated both the powerlessness of the body AND the power of the mind, by uniting MY will with that of my Creator, which naturally remembered the Soul and its own real purpose."
"Strong wills can do this NOW. And you WILL find rest for your Souls. God knows you only in peace, and this IS your reality."
"Never forget that the Sonship is your salvation, for the Sonship is your Soul."
"Your Soul does not need salvation, but your mind needs to learn what salvation IS. You are not saved FROM anything, but you ARE saved FOR glory"
"Glory is your inheritance, given your Soul by its Creator, that you might EXTEND it."
"But if you hate part of your own Soul, ALL your understanding is lost, because you are looking on what God creates AS YOURSELF without love. And since what He created IS part of Him, you are denying Him His place in His own altar."
"The peace of YOUR Soul lies in its limitlessness."
"Limit the peace you share, and your own Soul MUST be unknown to you."
"Every altar to God is part of your Soul, because the Light He created is One with Him."
"We have repeatedly emphasized the fact that one level of the mind is not understandable to another. So it is with the ego and the soul, and with time and eternity. "
"Eternity is an idea of God, so the soul understands it perfectly. Time is a belief of the ego, so the lower mind, which IS the ego's domain, accepts it without question."
"The Holy Spirit is the mediator between the interpretations of the ego and the knowledge of the Soul. Its ability to deal with symbols enables it to work AGAINST the ego's beliefs in its own language. Its equal ability to look BEYOND symbols into eternity also enables it to understand the laws of God, for which it speaks. It can thus perform the function of RE-INTERPRETING what the ego makes, not by destruction, but by understanding."
"In the Creation, God projected his Creative Ability out of Himself toward the Souls which He created, and also imbued them with the same loving wish (or will) to create."
"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him."
"The Soul, because of its own likeness to its Creator, is creative. No Child of God is capable of losing this ability, because it is inherent in what he IS."
"With full recognition of its transitory nature, (a recognition which I hope you both share), Helen offers a very good teaching example of alternations between Soul and ego, with concomitant variation between peace and frenzy."
"In answer to Bill's question, it is perfectly apparent that when she is ego-dominated, she DOES NOT KNOW her Soul."
"Man reacts to his ego much as God does to His Souls, - with love, protection, and great charity."
"The ego's ceaseless attempts to gain the Soul's acknowledgement and thus establish its own existence are utterly useless."
"The Soul in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does NOT attack the ego. It merely cannot conceive of it at all."
"While the ego is equally unaware of the Soul, it DOES perceive itself as rejected by something which is greater than itself. This is why self-esteem in ego terms MUST be a delusion."
"The religiously ego-oriented tend to believe that the Soul existed before, and will continue to exist afterward, after a temporary lapse into ego-life. Some actually believe that the Soul will be punished for this lapse, even though in reality it could not possibly know anything about it."
"The term "salvation" does NOT apply to the Soul, which is not in danger and does not need to be salvaged. Salvation is nothing more that "right-mindedness" which is NOT the one-mindedness of the Soul, but which must be accomplished before one-mindedness can be restored."
"Attack is ALWAYS made on a stranger. You are MAKING him a stranger by misperceiving him, so that you CANNOT know him. It is BECAUSE you have made him into a stranger that you are afraid of him. PERCEIVE him correctly, so that your Soul can KNOW him."
"To be fatigued is to be DIS-spirited, but to be inspired is to be IN the spirit. To be egocentric IS to be dispirited. But to be self-centered in the RIGHT sense is to be inspired, or in the Soul. The truly inspired are enlightened, and cannot abide in darkness."
"He can speak from his Soul or from his ego, precisely as he chooses. If he speaks from his Soul, he has chosen to "be still and know that am God."
"Your real worth IS your divine authorship, and your Soul is its acknowledgement. I cannot guide your egos EXCEPT as you associate them with your Souls."
"Chesterton wrote an excellent description of Cervantes and his perception of his "unheroic hero," a view of man which the ego tolerates all too frequently, but the Soul NEVER countenances."
"The ego may will them because the ego IS both lean and foolish. But the Soul CANNOT embark on them because it is forever UNwilling to depart from its Foundation. The journey to the cross should be the LAST foolish journey for every mind."
"The soul's true functions are knowing, loving, and creating."
"Note again that the functions of the Soul were not referred to as abilities."
"The clear-cut implications of relativity, which properly inheres in this statement, DEMONSTRATE that abilities are not functions of the Soul. The Soul's functions are NOT relative. They are ABSOLUTE. They are OF God and BY God, and therefore God-like."
"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."
"Peace is a natural heritage of the Soul. Everyone is free to refuse to accept his inheritance, but he is NOT free to establish what his inheritance IS."
"Remember that the Soul knows no difference between being and having. The higher mind thinks according to the laws which the Soul obeys, and therefore honors only the laws of God. To Him, getting is meaningless, and giving is all."
"Having everything, the Soul HOLDS everything by GIVING it, thus creating as the Father created."
"Can the Creations of God Himself take joy in what is not real? And what is real except the Creations of God and those which are created like His? Your creations love you as your Soul loves your Father FOR THE GIFT OF CREATION. There IS no other gift that is eternal, and therefore THERE IS NO OTHER GIFT THAT IS TRUE."
"In every case you have thought wrongly about some Soul that God created, and are perceiving images your ego makes in a darkened glass."
"It is possible even in this world to hear ONLY that voice and no other. It takes effort and great willingness to learn. It is the final lesson that I learned, and God's Sons are as equal as learners as they are as Souls."
"What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?" This means that if he listens to the wrong voice, he has LOST SIGHT of his Soul. He CANNOT lose it, but he CAN not know it. It is therefore LOST TO HIM, until he chooses right."
"In contrast, the Soul reacts in the same way to everything it knows is true, and does not respond at all to anything else. Nor does it make any attempt to ESTABLISH what is true. It knows that what is true is everything that God created. It is in complete and direct communication with every aspect of Creation, because it is in complete and direct communication with its Creator."
Jesus said this:
"The world, in the original connotation of the term, included both the proper creation of man by God and the proper creation by man in his right mind."
Here we’re told that God created "man’ (souls) and gave man (souls) the ability to create, when in his right mind (as God intended). All of this is taking place within God’s realm, the Kingdom of Heaven. Heaven also IS God’s Creation and everything in it including the souls.
The souls together comprise "the sonship" and since they share oneness with all of Creation, they are all "the One Son" ie the one/united creation. At this point it has absolutely nothing to do with physicality or planet Earth or separation.
"The latter (man’s ability to create in his right mind) required the endowment of man by God with free will because all loving creation is freely given."
So we know that it is natural to have free will, for each "individual soul", who is part of oneness, and who is also christ. Each individual soul is therefore "free" to independently dream or not.
At this point, pre-separation, in my opinion all of this is encompassed within God’s Kingdom, Heaven, which IS the sonship and IS creation and INCLUDES all souls. All as one Sonship, one creation, on being, on sense of identity yet still many parts. (I know I know, suspend disbelief).
All of this content, is what the Course originally refers to as WORLD. This was God’s world, God’s creation. What really exists. (Not the "real world"). This is the same thing as "the universe" of God.
God gave a world to His Son, spoken of here:
"The statement ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life’ needs only slight correction to be meaningful in this context; ‘He gave it to His only begotten Son.’"
I believe, the world referred to is simply the Kingdom of God, heaven. It is the only place where there is everlasting life. This is true in both versions - that "God gave His Son" = world (God’s created universe, not earth, God expressed/gave the Sonship), and that "God gave the world to His Son" = God’s creation, heaven, given "to" his Son to SHARE and be a part of as God’s Kingdom/expression. This has nothing to do with the physical universe, a world made by separation, or planet Earth in any way.
At this Level, Heaven, Creation, God, Sonship, The Son, The Sonship, Souls, Reality, Universe, World, Eternity, Oneness, Christ, Children of God, and Christ’s Creations, and the creations from Souls, are essentially all part of a single experiential realm or state of mind/being in which there is perfect sharing, multiple minds, yet all sharing and reflections of God’s mind as well.
"God has but one Son, knowing them all as one."
"It should especially be noted that God has only one Son. If all His creations are His Sons, every one must be an integral part of the whole Sonship. The Sonship in its oneness transcends the sum of its parts."
ie, "the son" IS the sonship, which contains multiple sons of God, all equal, and perhaps there is no single "first begotten son" kind of identity. Just the multitude souls? Yet every soul is fully one with the whole sonship, sort of implying two levels or aspects to identity? "Soul-self" and "shared-self’? And that when the "sharing" is severed, what’s left is the soul estranged as a separated son, still having its own identity but seemingly disconnected from the whole.
Then there was the separation...
"All fear is ultimately reducible to the basic misperception that man has the ability to usurp the power of God."
Or to put it another way, each soul can choose to sleep (or they all slept at once?), and "dreaming" (authority problem, separation, sin, level confusion, fear) is the mis-creation of each soul’s free will. Each soul tried to "withdraw" from the unity of the whole sonship, going into a state of isolation with artificial walls around it (later to become bodies), seeming to no longer be part of oneness, no longer sharing, no longer connected.
Jesus says this:
"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, possible of both accomplishment and real effects."
Notice it says "the son of God". Given all souls form the sonship and together they are collectively "the son of God", along with whatever else God created (angels etc?), does this not mean that all (or some of?) God’s "Creation" collectively had the tiny mad idea? Ie we’re not just talking about a single son, but many sons "falling" together?
We’re also told this:
"What God does know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His children are wholly joyous….God's extending outward, though not His completeness, is blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. So He thought, "My children sleep and must be awakened."
So we’re told there that when some parts of the sonship (souls) are blocking, the entire sonship is affected and so God then knows he needs to create the Holy Spirit.
Here is the version from the urtext, which is more clarifying:
"It should be noted that God has begotten only one Son. If you believe that all of the Souls that God created are His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul must be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship. You do not find the concept that the whole is greater than its parts difficult to understand. You should therefore not have too great difficulty with this. The Sonship in its Oneness does transcend the sum of its parts. However, it loses this special state as long as any of its parts are missing. This is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved until all of the individual parts of the Sonship have returned. Only then, in the true sense, can the meaning of wholeness be understood."
When the sonship, or even one part of it, still believes in separation, is dreaming, unaware of the whole, or rejecting the sonship, the sonship is incomplete. In this state, what the sonship experiences now is the "fall" into, and the dreaming OF, collectively, the "second world".... the world of death and separation.
This second world comprises everything that is "inside" the tiny mad idea, all thoughts of sin and death, the entire physical universe which was made a "place" (actually a state of mind) in which God seems not to exist. This second "world" is the world in which we experience perception (of all kinds). This "world" is the entire physical universe. It may additionally comprise further fake universes in higher dimensions because the separation from God progressed through various stages.
So then there are two worlds. God’s universe/creation/heaven, and the illusory universe/what we made/physical universe which is artificial ("Earth is opposite to heaven in every way"). We typically think of world as the planet, but it means the entire realm in which we seem to exist. All of the "universe" we think is the universe, all planets and stars, all galaxies and nebula and civilizations. And all of the massive expanses of space and time. All of this is "the world" - the world WE MADE, which God DID NOT CREATE. A world of separation. And within this world, this realm, planet Earth is just one of many illusory locations.
There is a series of workbook lessons, I posted about this recently, which tell us 1) we’re experiencing a hell of false perception laid on top of the world we made, 2) true perception is then introduced as an alternative way to view "this world" (this fake universe), 3) we’re guided to experiment with discerning true from false, 4) we’re then told about how HEAVEN is ANOTHER world (a 3rd experience, beyond false and true perception) reachable when "this world" is left behind (the world/realm/universe we made).
The lesson "No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth" specifically describes us leaving this "world" and returning to Heaven, to the realm of Creation, to God’s universe. Which is not the Earth or even the physical universe.
This also means that, the collective "Son of God" dreamed the fictional "world" which houses the fictional planet earth (there is no world). This also means then that if true perception shows you the "accurate perception" of the world YOU MADE (physical universe), to see accurately/truly the world you made is to see what THE SON projected. Since this "world", the physical universe, is the "One Son’s dream" or, the collective dream of the Sonship, which we all made together, and since the course says "The world IS perception", seeing this world with true perception is us perceiving PERCEPTION. Perception twice removed!
As individual souls we’re looking upon what the One Son projected as a fake universe. Within this context alone, we EACH have a false perception OF the One Son’s perception. A false perception of "the world" (and you can include Earth in that world). False perception ADDS a "personal layer" on top of the world we made, true perception removes that layer and reveals what is "there" without distortion. Yet this world we’ll see, the "real world", is STILL within perception. It is STILL the 2nd world, the one WE MADE, not the one God created.
We will disappear this 2nd world. This 2nd world is one we made up, invented, it is a DREAM. An illusory universe. It doesn’t really even exist at all. IT is the opposite to the nature of heaven in EVERY WAY. It is not a part of heaven now, and it will never be. Being an illusion, it must disappear entirely. Being literally NOTHING, it never was, does not exist NOW, and never will. It simply will vanish when recognized in the light of truth. The light will shine it away. It will be no more because it never was. We don’t need it.
God has created a "world" - Heaven - a "place" (as much as any, though different to the physical experience), "fit for a King" ... a realm of permanent joy and love and eternal life. It is EVERTHING, where the "world" we made is nothing. The world we made is not real. "There is no world" is a direct statement speaking to this - this world we made, which includes planet Earth and more, does not exist. "The world holds nothing that I want" ... not just the world of false perception, OR the world of true perception. The world we made, to replace God’s world, holds nothing that I want. The "real world" is an illusion, not a reality. God’s reality is the REAL, real world.
These are, to me, essentially the two worlds. And within the world we made, because perception is selective and has degrees, there is a really screwed up state of false perception (hell), and a much more preferable and closer-to-reality state of "true" perception. As clear a state of perception as we can possibly have while still being OUTSIDE of heaven. And "there is no life outside of heaven", because the world we made is not life.
I guess I’m just putting this out there. FInding my way to a clarity about this which makes sense to me. Take what you like leave the rest.
"Illusions recognized must disappear."
Let's say there is a monster behind the door. It's dark back there, and there was a strange noise. Something seemed to move. Because of the darkness, there is a lack of ability to see clearly, and things are obscure. You're having to make evaluations based on a lack of clarity and not having all the facts. You can't see the whole context so it seems reasonable to conclude there is some strange dark beast lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce.
However, when you switch on the light, and you move the door aside, you see that in fact there is no monster there. It was a trick, a deception. What you thought was there, is not there. And all you see is some clothing which was hanging on the door which slipped off the door hook and fell down. You suddenly realize this is what made the sound you heard, and are relieved to realize this is "all that it is". You simply see the whole picture clearly, you have all the information, nothing is hidden or obscure, and "in the light" it becomes clearly obvious what is there and what is not. And upon seeing this, the illusion of a monster has disappeared.
This is what it's like to go through a transition from believing that illusions are real, to realizing and recognizing that they are not. Learning to recognize what the situation actually IS, rather than what you thought it was. Learning to SEE clearly, so that you only see things for what they actually ARE, instead of what you were making of them. And once you see the illusion for only what it is without adding to or removing anything, it no longer holds any threat or implication. It only is what it is, nothing more and nothing less, and what it is is false, not something to believe in or be upset about. And seeing it for what it IS, doesn't make it REAL.
A similar thing happens with puzzle solving. Let's say you have some puzzle, perhaps a three dimensional set of object pieces that you're supposed to disconnect but you can't see how to do it. You start out deceived by illusions. Something about the appearance of the puzzle has deceived you, causing you to make assumptions that are false, and so you're starting out with distorted perception OF an illusion. But you believe them, and so you are blind to the "solution" because you can't see past your deluded mis-perceptions and mistaken evaluations.
Eventually after much trying, it suddenly occurs to you that something you were seeing was not actually the case. It seemed to be something, but was actually something else. You suddenly remark "oh" and recognize what's actually happening. You recognize the illusion, see through the illusion, and awareness of a larger context dawns on you. In that greater light or perspective, outside of the illusions, you can suddenly "see" the answer, and WHY the puzzle was deceiving you.
You see through its deception and recognize the mechanisms of deception, and now can solve the puzzle. It is obvious then. And you kick yourself for having not seen something so blatantly obvious all along. Afterwards you can never see the puzzle the same way again or be deceived by it, because you have learned to recognize the truth and would have to deliberately blind yourself.
The same thing also happens with your beliefs, which have an effect on your perception and how things register to your awareness. What you believe is true, will seem real to you. And it will take on properties of power, causality, will, intensity and permanence. And by investing it WITH truth you will take it to be telling you the truth, as though it is factually real. But just because illusions appear to be real, doesn't mean they are. And so if you have illusions ABOUT illusions, you are having false perception.
If you have a belief, let's say, that you are an unworthy person who doesn't deserve love because of something you did 3 years ago, that's going to skew your perception and make it appear that it's TRUE of you that you don't deserve love. And because you believe in that, which ultimately is untrue in the big picture, you are blinded by this belief. You can't see past it or accept the truth about you - that you deserve love. Illusions about you seem to be true, rather than illusions about you being recognized as false.
But then if you work on this "true" belief, you transition from believing it is true, to recognizing and believing it is false. As you make that transition, how that belief "strikes" you or registers with your mind, changes. When you believed it was true it seemed to hold power and truth, to threaten and define you, and upset you, and seemed to be a CAUSE or reason why you are unlovable. It seemed to have truth in it and you were upset by it. But now, as you see it from a different vantage point, you STILL SEE IT, but it registers to your perception in a different way. It now just seems false, you don't feel like you believe in it, it doesn't appear to be true to you, and it doesn't hold any of that seeming "charge" that gave it a sense of power and causality. You now see the belief as nothing, nonsense, totally untrue, and something you are now WILLING to surrender and let go of.
As you work on transitioning from false perception to true perception, this is more or less the same process you will go through. False perception is a state where you are experiencing or presented with illusions but you are having illusions ABOUT those illusions, causing you to BELIEVE THEY ARE REAL. You believe they are true, are blinded by them, deceived by them, tempted by them, and you can't see past their *appearance*. You think they make sense and are valid, because you believe IN them and have placed a sense of trust and truth into them, seeing no reason to question their "reality."
Over time, you will still continue to see these same illusions, BUT, how they APPEAR to you, how they strike you, how they register to your awareness, will transition from that state where they seem to have power and causality and loom over you like they are unquestionable, to where they have lost all their seeming strength, all their power and causality, all their truth and validity, you have WITHDRAWN your belief in them, you see PAST their appearances, you no longer put your belief IN them, and therefore they simply now seem to be UNREAL. They have deflated and collapsed down into nothing. They register to your mind as FALSE. You see a bigger truth, in light of which these smaller lies are OBVIOUSLY false and cannot be believed. You wonder why you ever believed such nonsense in the first place.
Recognize here then that up until you are done perfecting your true perception/christ vision, you are in a state of being surrounded WITH illusions (the physical world), but are learning to RECOGNIZE them for what they REALLY ARE, rather than being deceived by them and believing they are true. And that means you're still going to PERCEIVE them, it's just that HOW you perceive them is going to change, and how they LOOK to you is going to change. What they MEAN to you is going to change. And whether or not you believe they are TRUE is going to change. The world is going to transition from seeming to be REAL, to being clearly UNREAL!
When illusions are seen but NOT recognized for what they are, two things are happening. There is a seemingly external illusion, PLUS you have a distorted vision which can't see past the appearances and takes the illusion to be real. So now there are TWO layers of illusions. When you are learning to OVERLOOK (forgive) the illusion, it is STILL SEEN for a while, BUT the DISTORTED INTERPRETATION *OF AN ILLUSION* changes to an ACCURATE interpretation of the illusion. That which is illusory is not merely your mistaken perception OF something. There are two layers to illusions. The illusion ITSELF (e.g. physical world, bodies), and whether or not you are DECEIVED by it (believe in it). Just because you undo your deception/misperception doesn't mean that you are done undoing the illusion ITSELF. Your misperceptions OF the world, merely reveal to you the truth ABOUT the world, the "reality" of it, which is that IT IS NOT REALITY.
When Christ vision is perfected and you no longer believe in ANY illusions, the illusion DOES disappear. Or shall we say, when you no longer believe that this ILLUSORY WORLD is real, and can RECOGNIZE IT for what it is - a dream - it will disappear. Along the way, as you undo your belief in ANY illusion being real, the illusion "THAT IT IS REAL" disappears, revealing the illusion FOR WHAT IT IS. That it IS an illusion, not a reality. And eventually the view that it is ALL an illusion becomes very clear and obvious, and then the entire thing disappears.
To "see through" the illusion is to OVERLOOK it, which is what forgiving it means. "To forgive is to overlook". By NOT BEING DECEIVED *BY* the illusory world, causes you to forgive the world and therefore produces "the forgiven world". But "a forgiven world cannot last", because IF you forgive it, ie if you recognize it for what is "really is", you WILL recognize that IT IS AN ILLUSION OF A WORLD. NOT a real world. "The real world still is but a dream." And this is why forgiven worlds MUST disappear BECAUSE they don't really exist!
This world, including Earth, is an illusion of a world. It is illusory ITSELF, a fake world made of illusions and deceptions. regardless of whether you RECOGNIZE it as that or not. And if you DON'T recognize it as that, you WILL believe it is REAL. And that is FALSE PERCEPTION. It was made to tempt you and deceive you. If you are still seeing it, you must believe in it to some degree. But as you transition towards Christ vision, you will gradually learn to regard it as FALSE, unreal, and untrue. This means you will be withdrawing your belief in it, withdrawing your faith from it, and learning to register it as false, or in the category of "unreality". You will no longer be deceived BY the illusion, or have illusions ABOUT the illusion.
***Just because your misperceptions become corrected DOES NOT MEAN that you are unveiling reality to yourself. It means you are unveiling the TRUE NATURE OF the ILLUSION!*** And reality is BEYOND IT!!!
Just because you have illusions ABOUT the world, does not mean that the world itself is REAL! Or that by "seeing what is true about it" is to see it AS true. Or to "see the reality of it" means it IS real. IT IS NOT REAL. Just because you misunderstand what the world IS, doesn't automatically mean it IS REAL or true BEHIND your misunderstandings. Your misunderstanding OF the world is that YOU THINK IT IS REAL WHEN IT ISN'T!!!!! It only means that you are not seeing WHATEVER IT IS, correctly. False perception does that. And it does not follow that seeing the world "truly" will show you that it is REAL, only that its "true nature" will be revealed, real OR illusory. It will show you the truth ABOUT the world. It will show you the "reality of" the world. But what the world is, in reality, in truth, IS UNREALITY. The world *ITSELF* is an illusion of a world, which you have been having illusions ABOUT.
***False perception falsely perceives illusions (with more illusions) and believes they are real.***
***True perception CORRECTLY perceives ILLUSIONS and RECOGNIZES them as FALSE.***
Undoing your illusions ABOUT the world therefore isn't going to lead to you realizing that this world is REAL, or reveal to you "its underlying reality". It SHOULD lead to you realizing that this world is UNREAL, and that it couldn't possibly have come from God, only from YOUR DREAMING. It's unreal precisely BECAUSE when you believed it was real, you were MISTAKEN. When you thought IT was true, you were mistaken and having misperceptions of insanity - believing that something illusory HAS REALITY. And so learning the truth ABOUT it, should revel to you that it is NOT REAL, AND NOT WHAT YOU THOUGHT IT WAS. False perception is a state of FALSELY INTERPRETING AN ILLUSORY WORLD. ***It is a state of HAVING ILLUSIONS ABOUT AN ILLUSION.*** Not falsely interpreting reality. True perception is a state of CORRECTLY INTERPRETING AN ILLUSORY WORLD TO BE FALSE, whereby the illusory world is OVERLOOKED (forgiven) and the REAL WORLD (heaven) comes into sight in place of it.
What the course typically calls "the real world" is that state of mind you get into when you solve the puzzle, or realize there is no monster behind the door. It's a state where the world is still briefly SEEN, but NOT BELIEVED. So that means, as you approach the real world, and you are seemingly IN THIS WORLD, in a body still, you SHOULD be realizing AND recognizing and perceiving this world AS. .... nothing but A DREAM, a fiction, UNTRUTH, UNREALITY. Walking around it in the "awareness of dreaming" KNOWING that it IS a dream, NOT a reality. Being aware that this world IS ILLUSION and holds nothing that you want. "It takes great learning to both recognize and accept that this world has nothing to give." And in that state of recognition, you are like dipping your toe into an unreal hell only for the sake of helping others to leave it.
The world should hold NO REALITY FOR YOU!!! NONE. The world IS NOTHING. IT DOES NOT EXIST! THERE IS NO WORLD! "The world will spin into the NOTHINGNESS from which it came."
To be a teacher of God is to be aware of dreaming. That means being aware that you are IN A DREAM WORLD. It is not the END of dreaming. You are still IN the dream, RECOGNIZING that it IS a dream, not a reality. NOT believing it is true or real. NOT believing in it. NOT buying into what you see. NOT buying into sickness. NOT believing bodies are really people. NOT believing that anything you see is TRUE or permanent or irreversible or happening in reality.
Yet still perceiving it, just enough that you can still operate in it temporarily. And eventually your clarity about the truth becomes so complete, there you will see THROUGH the illusory world fully, having NO ILLUSIONS ABOUT THE ILLUSION, such that the illusory world completely disappears, revealing the real world, and then you will transition effortlessly to heaven. Where is the illusory world then? It does not exist, and it never did, because there is no world.
When illusions are fully recognized, THEY DISAPPEAR. The illusory world, Earth, WILL disappear, BECAUSE it is an illusion. The body's eyes can see it BECAUSE the body can ONLY see illusions. The world and the body are both dreams. None of them are real. That is what true perception is supposed to reveal to you, NOT that this world is "actually real" behind your misperceptions of it.
Reality is BEYOND ANY PERCEIVED WORLD. It is beyond the falsely perceived illusory world, and it is beyond the truly perceived illusory world. It is beyond perception ENTIRELY.
The great lie of the world is that we are all separate. Each of our bodies testifies to this. I have my own body, my own feelings, my own mind, my own thoughts, my own beliefs. It seems that you have your own as well, and mine is separate from yours. We don't seem to really share anything. And any changes I make seem not to affect you.
This is what bodies were designed to do. They were meant to be "separation devices", to separate me off from you, to isolate each of us in our own little prisons, keeping us apart. They were made to imply that nothing is shared, what is mine is not yours, I am not like you, we are not the same in any way, I am unique and so are you. We're cut off and different. What I have you lack. What you have I lack. And thus we have no oneness.
But this is utterly completely opposite to the nature of spirit and mind as God created it. It's utterly opposite to your true nature, and mine as well. We're not meant to think of ourselves as separate from each other, sharing nothing, not overlapping, or kept at arm's length. We have to transcend the limits of the body entirely.
The truth is that there is a part of you which is shared by me. And there is a part of me that is shared by you. Kind of like one thing which has two people controlling it simultaneously. Kind of like siamese twins, with two heads and one torso. There is actually some of you in me and vice versa. There are actually aspects of your self which is what I am, and aspects of my own self which is you.
In truth we are joined together as one. In truth we share everything. And this is not in any way the same thing as sharing between two separate people, where they remain separate but there is some kind of transfer between them to bridge the gap. It's a real sharing where I literally am overlapping with where you are located, and vice versa. Where we are literally fused together as one thing, but from two vantage points. One mind, with two focal points.
Because of this, we are actually part of a collective consciousness. And the really big thing is this. Everything that I do or think or feel or choose or believe, affects the entire universe. And everything you do or think or feel or choose or believe, affects the entire universe. If I lift myself up, it must lift you up in some way as well because I am a part of your self. If you lift yourself up, I must be lifted up in some way because part of me is you.
We are NOT isolated, alone, separate, cut-off, imprisoned, separated, orphaned, divorced, abandoned, relegated, split apart or confined. Everything that we each do, affects us both. And even affects the whole sonship beyond us. What that means is that there are no private thoughts. Not simply from the vantage point of there being two separate people who send thought transmissions across the gap between them which they pick up on, but where my mind and your mind are literally welded together such that when I think something YOU think it with me. Part of your thought process is taking place in my mind and vice versa.
Jesus teaches similarly that if I am healed, I am never healed alone. If some kind of healing takes place for me, it is also on behalf of the whole universe, which is the sonship (not spacetime). Jesus also tells us that we are not alone in experiencing the effects of our thoughts. That if I have a thought, both me and you are affected by it. And your thoughts affect me. Not in terms of you sending them over to me across a brick wall but in terms of part of me BEING you and vice versa, SHARING those effects as one, transcendentally of space of time.
Jesus is even telling us that vision transcends all spatial limitations, depends not on any thing physical, can see and experience without regard for distance or seeming remoteness. Simply because you can BE everywhere, in everyone. This is the true nature of mind, that it is not really naturally limited to any one location at a time. Or to any one person at a time.
What this also leads to is a matter of responsibility. Anything that I think affects the whole world. Anything you think affects the whole world. In that sense, and given that these thoughts are never private or isolated from anyone, everyone experiences the effects of our thoughts, and therefore I have to consider that I need to "think responsibly", and without guilt, because my thoughts are actually affecting everyone.
I think on behalf of everyone, just as you do, and just as everyone does. And all our minds are joined. Which means that we're sort of like this one tapestry where each of us seems anchored to the fabric of it in different places, but if I pull upwards I'm pulling you all with me. And if you pull down you're going to drag a lot of others down with you. Unless of course they are pulling up at the same time. This means that we really are all a TEAM. Because we have to now consider that EACH PART of the sonship INFLUENCES THE WHOLE.
You ARE part of a holographic system and since you are the whole of the sonship at the same time as being part of it, your relationship INCLUDES everyone. It affects everyone. Every thought is offered to everyone. Every healing brings peace to everyone. Maybe in ways they might not entirely be aware of but in some way on some level, everyone affects everyone.
This also brings me to the proper understanding of why joined minds produce the healing of sickness in others. A part of your mind is actually my mind. And my mind is part of your mind. We are NOT separated off with entirely isolated minds. Our minds overlap and are shared. I actually manipulate part of your mind, so to speak, and you manipulate part of mine. Our minds are actually one and shared. Mutual minds. Like two people driving the same bus.
So let's say you believe in your part of the mind that you are sick, which is really an attempt to believe the whole sonship is sick. And then let's say that normally this belief would attempt to weaken me and others. But then let's say that I'm in a particularly loving space in my mind which is more powerful than your assertion of weakness.
If I choose to believe that there is nothing wrong with you, while you are believing there is something wrong with you, I override your belief. The part of your mind which is shared with me, which is my mind, changes your belief FOR you. Part of your mind is in me. If I change my mind, I am literally changing a part of your mind. And that actually influences what you might think of as the rest of your own mind.
As Jesus says, when you do not believe the falsehoods that your brother believes about himself, you weaken his own belief in being faulty. And so you weaken his sickness. If your mind, which is part of his, and his as part of yours, asserts strongly that your brother and you are not sick, then you are actually taking a part of HIS mind (as yours) and are causing it to not believe in sickness. And so he cannot get "his" mind to project sickness onto his body because YOU, as part of his mind, are not allowing it.
This is why Jesus says that you are your brother's keeper. This is why he says you should not allow your brother to be sick. This is why you are in a sense responsible for everyone, because your contribution to their experience is part of the fact that your minds are shared.
It's not simply that you are joining minds, because God actually joined all minds together in the creation. But moving away from the belief in being separate/isolated and returning to an awareness that your minds ARE joined, naturally, lets you tap into the ability to influence the minds of others more consciously. And naturally this openness to sharing is rooted in love, so can only be used for good.
So instead of seeing ourselves as separate people, living separate lives in separate bodies, as if everything we think and do is utterly isolated and affects no-one else, we need to really think of ourselves as part of a combined mind-mesh, part of a team, part of a collective hive mind, and there isn't anything we can think without it being shared by everyone in that collective. And any effects which those thoughts might produce are going to be shared by everyone.
This is also of course the foundation for shared interests. Because if mind is really yours AND your brother's, then what you use it for is being used on his behalf as well as your own. As per the golden rule, whatever applies to him applies to you equally. This is also why Jesus says that forgiveness is not real unless it brings a healing to both your brother and yourself. Your healing IS HIS healing. When you heal, HE ALSO is healed along with you in a very direct way - because he is part of your self.
And further, this also tells us that forgiveness is not just a gift of healing you give to yourself, it is also something that extends and is given to everyone. If you are healed you become an instrument of healing. If you are the light you shed light into other's minds and enlighten them. If you are filled with the Holy Spirit you can fill others with the Holy Spirit. If you are whole you can make others whole. And atonement is a lesson in sharing, not a lesson in isolated enlightenment.
When you forgive, you actually do heal both yourself and the mind of your brother. When you forgive and undo your belief in someone being sick, you do actually in fact undo some of their belief in being sick. This is sort of tied into the idea of "holding them in the light", not through some wishful thinking that the light might rub off on them but much moreso the fact that since you ARE them, you being the light "forces" them to be the light also.
Your mind influences other people! Your mind is not JUST your mind. It is yours AND it belongs to others. You are thinking on behalf of everyone. Your whole resurrection is for the benefit of the entire sonship. This is why Jesus's resurrection reconnected the ENTIRE sonship to God, and why in his awakening YOU woke up in some way to some degree as well. How could the whole world not be affected by such an event? Jesus did in fact "save you" from the belief in sin, through his own atonement.
I am you and you are me and we are one and everyone is us and we are all the collective sonship family of God. If I choose the light, you're coming with me.
"And as you let yourself be healed, you see all those around you, or who cross your mind, or whom you touch, or those who seem to have no contact with you, healed along with you. Perhaps you will not recognize them all, nor realize how great your offering to all the world, when you let healing come to you. But you are never healed alone. And legions upon legions will receive the gift which you receive when you are healed."
"Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."
"Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health. "
"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt? Sins are beyond forgiveness just BECAUSE they would entail effects which CANNOT be undone and overlooked entirely. In their UNDOING lies the proof that they were merely errors. LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother AND yourself."
"Then let him turn within to his Eternal Guide, and let Him Judge what the response should be. So is he healed, and in his healing is his pupil healed with him. The sole responsibility of God's teacher is to accept the Atonement for himself. Atonement means correction, or the undoing of errors. When this has been accomplished, the teacher of God becomes a miracle worker by definition."
"Healing is an act of thought by which two minds perceive their oneness, and become glad. This gladness calls to every part of the Sonship to rejoice with them, and let God Himself go out into them and through them."
"Two minds with one intent become so strong that what they will becomes the Will of God. For minds can only join in truth."
"When two minds join as one, and share one idea equally, the first link in the awareness of the Sonship as one has been made."
"Whoever says, "There IS no gap between my mind and yours," has kept GOD's promise, NOT his tiny oath to be forever faithful unto death. And by his healing IS his brother healed. Let THIS be your agreement with each one; that you be one with him and NOT apart."
"Do not accept your brother's variable perception of himself, for his split mind is yours, and you will not accept YOUR healing without his. For you share the real world as you share Heaven, and his healing IS yours. To love yourself is to HEAL yourself, and you cannot perceive part of you as sick and achieve your OWN goal. Brother, we heal together as we live together, and love together."
"Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone. THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember."
"You will forsake yourselves and your God if you forsake any of YOUR brothers. You are more than your brother's keeper." "Concern yourselves not with the EXTENSION of holiness, for the nature of miracles you do NOT understand. Nor do you DO them. It is their extension, far beyond the limits you perceive, that demonstrates you did NOT do them. Why should you worry how the miracle extends to all the Sonship, when you do not understand the miracle itself?"
Lesson 54: ""I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts." ... I am alone in nothing. Everything I think or say or do touches all the universe. A Son of God cannot think or speak or act in vain. He cannot be alone in anything. It is therefore in my power to change every mind along with mine, for mine is the power of God."
"You HAVE been wrong about the world, because you have misjudged YOURSELF. From such a twisted reference point, what COULD you see? All vision starts WITH THE PERCEIVER, who judges what is true and what is false. And what he judges false, HE DOES NOT SEE. You who would JUDGE reality CANNOT see it, for whenever judgment enters, reality has slipped away. The out of mind is out of sight because what is denied is THERE, but is not recognized. Christ is still there, although you know Him not. His Being does NOT depend upon your recognition. He lives within you in the quiet present, and waits for you to leave the past behind, and enter into the world He holds out to you in love."
Here, Jesus appears to simply say that whatever you believe is true, you will see. The kind of world you will see depends entirely on your mind's decision as to what to accept. Whatever you accept into your mind becomes your reality. Therefore inversely, whatever you reject as false does not enter your mind, and therefore you do not see it.
This means that if you believe the world of bodies is true and real, you will see it, and as a result of seeing it, you will make the real world invisible to you. Because the real world is blotted out by this choice to perceive an illusory world and not a real world.
Similarly, if you desire to see only love, you will see only the real world. As a result, that which is now recognized as false, will not be seen. This is reflected in the teaching "you cannot see both worlds." And "The world you see must be denied, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision."
Jesus also confirmed this basic law here: "This is in strict accord with vision's FUNDAMENTAL law: You see what you believe is there, and you believe it there because you WANT it there. Perception HAS no other law than this."
So very simply, whatever you want to see, you will see. In all cases. Whether it be "I want to see a sinful world" or "I want to see reality" or "I want to see love" or "I want to see death as though it's really happening." Whatever you value, desire and believe in, you want to see, and so you see it.
"Vision adapts to wish, for sight is always secondary to desire. And ****if you see the body, you have chosen judgment, and not vision****. For vision, like relationships, has no order. You either SEE, or not."
The spectrum of choice here is in terms of whether you want to see death, darkness, evil nightmares, sin and guilt and murder etc, or whether you want to see harmlessness, peace, joy, love, safety etc. Consider this a vertical spectrum, ranging from darkness to light.
At the bottom in the greatest darkness, there is the most belief that illusions are real. Here there is significant denial, blockage, unwillingness, condemnation, belief in sin, horizontal causality, suffering and death. As resurrection towards the light is made, all of this diminishes and is replaced with calm, happiness, peace, love, gentleness, loveliness, forgiveness etc.
The darkened state of perception, Jesus is calling false perception. The lightened state of perception, Jesus is calling true perception. ie, in false perception, that which is FALSE is SEEN because you WANT TO. In true perception the TRUTH is seen, because you want to. This is a spectrum between illusions and reality, between death and life, between fear and love, between chaos and peace.
So this depends on what is happening in your mind and what you believe is true. Your mind decides this FIRST, and THEN sees what it has believed in. Projection of the belief makes perception. "Perception is a result, not a cause". Jesus also likens this process to HALLUCINATION, in which you basically make up IMAGES based on what you want to see, regardless of whether it's really there.
Someone in great darkness is hallucinating strongly (insanity). They SEE a world that strikes them as horrifying and upsetting. As the focus shifts to love, the hallucinations diminish and "what is really there" is revealed. ie the real world, or rather, the illusory world "as it is" with nothing added to judge it. The world is now "forgiven" and appears neutral and lovely. You wanted to see love in it, so you do. "Love looks upon itself."
Jesus also appears to be quite clear, that by choosing to "shift perception" towards Christ Vision, which enables you to become aware of and see "the real world", doing so causes you NOT TO SEE the dark icky world. In fact, he even goes so far as to say that in the purest true perception, the world of bodies is completely forgotten, you don't even see bodies AT ALL. And the real world HAS no bodies.
"And if you see the body, you have chosen judgment, and not vision."
"You have the vision that enables you to see the body not."
"Thus is the concept of himself laid by, for nothing stands between his sight and what he looks upon, to judge what he beholds. And in this single vision does he see the Face of Christ, and understands he looks on everyone as he beholds this One. For there is light where darkness was before, and now the veil is lifted from his sight."
He is clear that you cannot see both worlds. You cannot see BOTH the false perception world and the true perception world as the same time. At least, not seeing either of them fully. To fully have vision is to NOT see the world of bodies. "Forgiveness does not look upon bodies." And this is simply because the Spiritual Eye does not USE the body's eyesight to see. And ALL it sees is the face of Christ. It does not see a world based on photons of light because it does not use the body's light sensors (eyes).
"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. 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."
This is key because it means, either you will look at the false world, or the true world. Either the illusory world, or the real world. Either the world that has no buildings or streets or stores or the sun, OR the world that has buildings and streets and stores and the sun.
"For vision, like relationships, has no order. You either SEE, or not."
This means, either you are using the body's physical sight, OR you are using the Spiritual eye. The Holy Spirit correlates to the spiritual eye and He only looks upon Christ.
I have come to think of these as like two "devices." Both of them are also illusions, and therefore technically ego. But the illusion of forgiveness can point towards the truth. You can either use the body's physical sight sensors to pick up images of a physical world, or you can use the Spiritual Eye, which CAN ONLY SEE SPIRIT. The spiritual eye CANNOT BE USED to look upon the world of form! It can only look at REALITY. And the world of form is an ILLUSION.
For you, as mind, you can decide how much of the Spiritual Eye you will behold. ie how much you believe it's messages are true. But here is the catch. To the extent that you ATUNE to the spiritual eye, you inversely TUNE OUT of the physical eye. Which means, you're going to either emphasize or deemphasize what the body's eyes are showing you, based on how much you have forgiven.
"Corrective learning always begins with awakening the spiritual eye, and turning away from belief in physical sight."
"This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight."
The body's sight is one source of "input" to your mind's awareness. The spiritual eye is the second source of input to your mind's awareness. Dialing the knob tunes between the two. Your mind thus ALIGNS WITH, ie agrees with as real, either the physical world or the spiritual world. And agreement means, you believe it is true and real. By tuning into one, you tune OUT of the other. You cannot see BOTH!
In order to SEE the physical world, therefore, your mind has to CLOSE the spiritual eye. Guilt is required in order to tune into it. A belief in sin is required. A belief in death is required. The physical is also tuned into through body identification.
By believing in narrowness, blockage, sin, guilt, fear, death, attack, isolation, separation, selfishness, upset, unhappiness, sickness etc... your mind confines itself to the body. The more it binds itself to the body the LESS it sees with the spiritual eye. The more it believes these things are TRUE, the more it will SEE them in the world it sees.
The body is like a fixed frequency of hell. The spiritual eye is like a fixed frequency of heaven. The more you tune into one the more real it becomes to you. And this then determines what of the TWO worlds you will see.
The world you made, is the illusory world, which includes all dreams and includes the real world and the physical. Within this, christ vision shows you this world as having NO FORMS, while the BODY shows you this world as having solid forms.
There are no objects or bodies in the real world. If you see bodies your mind is in judgement and is starting to sin, causing you to see bodies made of sin. "Only if there were a body is sin possible." "It is impossible to see a sinless body." Christ Vision does not see the body AT ALL, because innocence ERASES the separation idea and bodies are incompatible with innocence.
Essentially, the belief in ego causes your spiritual eye to close, your mind to shut down, your perception to ATUNE to the body's frequency of permanent FALSE perception, which shows ONLY a false world, and then you will have visions of hell. And the world will now seem upsetting and threatening and dark and dangerous, and not deserving of forgiveness.
THe whole purpose of the body was to accomplish this, such that if the mind were to believe that it is ONLY a body, a perception of hell would ensue. "Only the body makes the world seem real" tells you that if you tune INTO the body level of sight, physical sight, and believe it, the world WILL seem to be the ONLY reality. It will take on greater solidity, firmness, tangibility and intensity.
"Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous, solid body, immovable as is a mountain."
"Sin is a block" ... "The body's eyes behold it as solid granite"
"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."
If you tune into body identification, a belief in sin, fear, or any kind of denial of reality, any form of judgement or egoic attempt to defend against God, you will narrow your focus and isolate to a body, causing you to see more exclusively through its eyes, and project onto its images heavy judgements of sin and guilt, which will turn the body's images into visions of hell and real suffering.
If you tune out of the body, into spirit, and into the spiritual eye, you tune out of body perceptions. Out of false perception. Physical sight becomes de-emphasized, and it is given less credit. Thus what was seen as the physical material world through the body's eyes begins to be seen as a transparent, thin veil, rather than a heavy solid surface of matter.
"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant."
"Its thinness and transparency are not apparent, until you see the light BEHIND it. And then you see it as a fragile veil, before the light."
"For there is light where darkness was before, and now the veil is lifted from his sight."
"Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the Face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream. This is the gift the Holy Spirit holds for you from God your Father."
As you tune into the radio station of the real world, you tune out of the radio station of the physical world of forms. Christ enters your awareness and the world of bodies leaves. "The world of bodies is the world of sin". As your belief in sin leaves, so does the world of sin.
In the transition, temporarily there is a parallel of utilizing the body's sight in part, and the spiritual eye in part. These are occurring simultaneously. This causes the physical world to still be seen, up to a point (before christ's face is unveiled) but all the judgement and fear and guilt are lifted away from this image of a fake world. It becomes but a thin veil, a forgiven world, an image of loveliness and a reflection of heaven. But simultaneously it is becoming thin, light, transparent, and is fading from sight, because you DON'T WANT IT. Upon reaching the face of Christ, the physical world is forgotten ENTIRELY and completely VANISHES from view. It literally becomes INVISIBLE to you. "Illusions recognized (as false) must disappear."
Becoming able to see the real world is the final step just prior to going to heaven. But the fact is that to be ABLE to see it, you have to NOT USE the body's eyes AT ALL. And in fact the Spiritual eye does not depend on OR use the body's eyes, and can even function without a body. The Spiritual eye is direct mind-to-mind seeing, and BYPASSES anything physical entirely, overlooking it. When the shift to true perception is complete, Christ is ALL that is seen, AND NOT THE WORLD OF BODIES. It is NOT POSSIBLE TO SEE BOTH! "You cannot see both worlds."
Here, then, as the world is GONE from view, you are ready to return to heaven, and in this state, the physical world has literally faded out of view. It is no longer there TO see, and you do not believe in it, or want it. You do not see it because you do not WANT to see it, and you do not see it because you have CHOSEN to ONLY see reality - vigilance only for the Kingdom. Here, only the truth is true.
By focusing on truth, you DO NOT SEE WHAT IS FALSE. What is false does not exist. And there literally IS NO WORLD to perceive. The world is GONE. It never was, and sights of it were hallucinations. Only reality is real. And now perception has finished its function and you are ready to ascend from the real world into Heaven.
"Without the idea of death there is no world."
"You cannot behold the world and know God."
"Now is there silence all around the world. Now is there stillness where before there was a frantic rush of thoughts that made no sense. Now is there tranquil light across the face of earth, made quiet in a dreamless sleep. And now the Word of God alone remains upon it. Only That can be perceived an instant longer. Then are symbols done, and everything you ever thought you made completely vanished from the mind which God forever knows to be His only Son."
"And now God's knowledge, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God."
"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."
Everything that we consider to be a sin, is nothing more than being mistaken. Being mistaken means you are making an error in judgement. You've come to a false conclusion. It means you are incorrect. You have faulty reasoning. You are not recognizing what is true.
Sin is also the idea of insanity, and insanity really is nothing more than confusion about what is true and real. Believing that something is true which is not, is simply a state of being mistaken. You have simply made an error, and now you are confused.
While you are in the confusion, believing that your false truth is true, you ARE mistaken, but you do not recognize that you are mistaken. You believe that you have actually sinned, pulled off the impossible, and accomplished something that can never happen in reality.
To believe this IS, nevertheless, being very mistaken. Just as denial hides the truth from you. Just as framing all acts as sins is a failure to recognize they are JUST mistakes. God knows that his children as simply mistaken, and can never be sinners, and all they need is to recognize their error and accept the truth.
In fact let's put it this way. You should reframe EVERY sin, as nothing more than being mistaken. Every single thing which you consider sinful, evil, wrong, bad, negative, etc should be recognized for what it IS and not for what you think it is.
If someone is trying to attack another, they are simply mistaken. They are mistaken about who they are. They are mistaken in believing the other person is not one with them. They are mistaken for believing they are guilty, and they are mistaken in believing that projecting that guilt onto someone else is going to make it leave their mind. Even if they go through with this, they are still simply making a sequence of mistakes.
Even serious attack such as murder is a state of being mistaken. The person is obviously insane, which means they are confused and do not recognize what is true. They are very much mistaken about what the truth is. They believe that they are justified in the attack, when in fact they aren't, and so they are mistaken. They believe that the death of the other will allow them to gain something, which isn't true, and so they are mistaken. And by finding the other person to be deserving of death, is a totally mistaken notion, since no-one deserves death.
No matter how you look at it, if you look at the big picture and recognize what is true - the immortal innocence and perfection of all beings, it becomes very clear that we can simply be MISTAKEN, but we cannot sin. All evil acts are mistakes. All scapegoating is a mistake. All belief in your own unworthiness is a mistake. Every abuse, torture, rape, killing, destruction, is all to do with people being very mistaken. Even the causation of horrible events is a mis-creation, a mistaken choice in what to cause.
No one in their right mind is mistaken. Being sane means recognizing reality and knowing what is true. If you know what is really true, you are not mistaken about what is true. If you are in touch with reality, you are not mistaken about what is possible. No one in their right mind would even try to sin or attack anyone, because they recognize that they would have to be VERY mistaken to believe it could a) be accomplished and b) be justified.
If you feel guilty, you are simply incorrect about being guilty. You cannot be guilty in God's eyes, because He created you to be innocent forever. So your belief that you are guilty is an error. You are incorrect. You are confused about what is true. You might be insisting that you are RIGHT, but it's not going to make you HAPPY, because being right about something which is false is a state of the denial of happiness.
Forgiveness, in the purest sense, is nothing more than recognizing what is true. It's a state of NOT being mistaken. It's a state of recognition, sanity, and having the whole story. It lacks no information and is not deceived. It simply looks and notices that everything ego or evil is simply false, impossible, untrue, unreal, has no consequences, and does not prove anything. It also recognizes that to believe in such things as possible would be a mistake.
It's kind of like, a question of whether or not you have the facts. If you have all the facts, you are in touch with reality. You know what the whole picture is. But if some facts (information) are missing, you probably are going to start drawing some false conclusions. And now you are entering into illusions, into temptation and deception, because something now appears to be something it isn't.
So let's put it this way. Right now this instant, there is no sin anywhere. There is no evil anywhere. All there is, is a bunch of people who are, temporarily, very mistaken. That is all. They're not evil. They're not sinners. They're just confused. They are out of touch with who they are. They don't recognize their brothers. They believe things are true which aren't. They are just temporarily insane. And insanity is nothing but being mistaken.
Mistakes can always be corrected. They are just temporary errors that you are making. Kind of an "oops". You concluded something which was incorrect. You decided that something means something that it doesn't. You reasoned with faults and ended up confused. You are perhaps unwilling to accept the truth and are in denial of it, which is just a desire to stay mistaken, due to not recognizing that you are.
Those who are insane therefore don't recognize they are simply mistaken, and believe their beliefs are completely true. Those who are in denial do not recognize that they are in denial, they believe they are fully aware of everything and are accepting all of the truth. They aren't, and so they are mistaken. But they believe they are not mistaken.
This then ends up being the key to the turning point in the mind. It's a matter of having to have that "little willingness", to be open to the possibility, that what you believe MIGHT simply be a mistake that you've made. Not like having to admit to being in sin, or that you really are guilty, but just that you are somehow "technically" incorrect. This doesn't have to entail shame or guilt or other rebounds related to being "wrong". It's just a simple fact.
If, while you are in the midst of believing you are completely right, and are not mistaken, and are not recognizing why you are mistaken, you become at least a little willing to consider with some humility that you MIGHT not be "correct", then you start to open up to CORRECTION. You have to be able to get some larger truth into your mind. You need a miracle to shine in the mind and remind you of what is true. To correct your level confusion. Being CORRECT has nothing to do with being RIGHTEOUS.
Correction, which is provided by the Holy Spirit and the truth he represents, is simple the radiant fact of "the miracle", the truth, reflecting the truth of God. It acts as a light of sanity, correctness, accuracy, truth, recognition and reason. You need correction, having made ERRORS, so that you will become "corrected". When you are corrected, you are sane. When you are corrected, you are happy.
So really it all boils down to a simple matter of whether you are correct or whether you are mistaken. Sin never really enters into it, nor does guilt or fear. Those are all the seeming side effects of being mistaken, coupled with the rejection of correction. The rejection of forgiveness. Forgiveness is really just a matter of diffusing the drama of "sin guilt and punishment" and looking at the facts. Looking with sight, with reason, at what things ACTUALLY are. Recognizing that ALL you are right now is in a mistaken state, you've made an error somewhere along the lines, and now all you need is to correct it.
"CORRECTION of the error brings release."
"The term "right-mindedness" is properly used as the correction for wrong- mindedness, and applies to the state of mind which induces accurate perception."
ALL sin must be re-framed as nothing more than being mistaken. Every person you hate, is just mistaken. And you are just mistaken for hating them. Anyone who ever hurt you, was simply mistaken for hurting you, because they made an error. And any hurt you experienced was simply you being mistaken, believing you can be hurt at all, given you are immortal. So now you, and the other person, are just mutually mistaken. And that is all.
And what that tells you is that if someone's attack upon you was merely a consequence of them being MISTAKEN about yourself and themselves, they DID NOT REALLY MEAN IT. They were NOT in their right mind when they expressed this action, based on a mistaken state of mind. They did not realize what they were doing. They THOUGHT they were right and correct and true, but they were mistaken. They were CONFUSED. And they attacked you BY MISTAKE. Since what they did was out of a state of mind of being mistaken and in error, an error which they THEMSELVES did not even realize they were making, you cannot hold it against them.
To forgive someone, therefore, for sin or abuse or attack or harm of any kind, for any kind of upset or broken relating or outright onslaught, is merely to RECOGNIZE that they are NOT in their right mind, they ARE very mistaken. And if you buy into it, into the belief that they are TOTALLY sane in all their decisions and are acting against you ON PURPOSE knowing exactly what they are doing, deliberately, YOU are very mistaken as well. There's just got all these people making mistakes all over the place, NOT sinning, NOT being truly guilty.
The world is just a world of insanity. A mad world, within a mad idea. Even the tiny mad idea that you can do the impossible, was simply a mistaken conclusion. It was an effort to assert something that can NEVER be true. It was an attempt to claim that God can be attacked or opposed. That is not possible. Anyone who believes in that is SIMPLY MISTAKEN. And any belief in sin or separation or bodies or spacetime is SIMPLY a mistaken belief. These things are all false, untrue and impossible.
It utterly boils down to nothing more than a question of accuracy. Are you correct, or are you mistaken? Are you really in touch with what is true, or are you confused and mistaken? Are your beliefs lined up with God's will and truth, or have you invented some MISTAKEN truth which contracts the truth and is therefore mistaken? Do you recognize you are mistaken and are you willing to accept correction?
When Jesus says (biblically) "Forgive them Father for they know not what they do", this encapsulates the whole thing. If you were to recognize what people are doing, or what their state of mind is being driven by, you'd recognize they simply DO NOT KNOW what they are doing. They are MISTAKEN, in a mistaken state of mind, a state of insanity. They aren't even aware of what they're doing. They think they are doing something else. And if they do not love you they don't even recognize you.
By recognizing that all "sinful behavior" is simply by confused, temporarily mentally ill people acting out from states of mistakenness, not realizing what they are doing, not really knowing why they are doing it, how can you accuse them or hold it against them? All they're doing is making a mistake and being in error, doing something by mistake, believing it was something else, not REALLY intending to. No-one REALLY wants to hurt anyone. No one REALLY in a right-minded sane state WANTS to induce suffering.
Let's say that simply, when someone's mind goes into a state of confusion, they lose touch with reality. How they act or express themselves then is going to be coming from a kind of unconsciousness, a lack of awareness, not really knowing what they are doing. They are going to act in error. They BELIEVE they know what is true, but they don't. And everyone simply acts on what they believe is true. It's not possible to do otherwise. So now you've got people seeming to exhibit insane evil behavior, justifying it, but who are only acting WITHIN the confines of their thought system - within the confines of their truth.
When their truth is not true, when they are mistaken and confused, they are LOST. And when they are lost they are out of touch with themselves and with others. And all their actions now become ACCIDENTAL. They keep making mistakes. They keep justifying things based on mistakes. They keep being motivated by mistakes. Compelled by mistakes. Urged into certain reactions based on mistakes. Because they are not awake. And the whole time they don't even know they are doing this because their conscious mind is disconnected from reality and everything they do they believe is totally justified.
There is no sin. There is only a temporary error. And all errors can be corrected. And making a mistake does not call for PUNISHMENT of any kind. If someone is taking a math test and makes a mis-calculation and comes up with a confused result, which they think is accurate, and which they will defend, they hardly deserve to be punished, hit, abused, damaged or destroyed. Because those are not the things that the person NEEDS, and those things are NOT CORRECTION. It does not provide them with the CORRECT ANSWER in any way.
PUNISHMENT DOES NOT CORRECT MISTAKES. THOSE WHO PUNISH ARE MAKING MISTAKES.
In fact, punishment is itself a mistake. It's based on a false perception that the error was a SIN, and not just a mistake, and that a person can undo their temporary insanity by experiencing pain and suffering, to "motivate" them towards the truth. This is utterly ridiculous. All that punishment does is cover up the mistake, turn it into a sin, solidify it, lock it in, and add to the mental illness in the mind by adding more confusion-inducing pain and suffering. It does not work. All it does is lead to even more resentment and mistaken conclusions later.
If someone has made an error on their math test, what it really calls for is proper correction of the mistake. The person needs to be SHOWN, by example, what the CORRECT truth is, and why it is true. The MISTAKE needs to be identified and pointed out, not as a sin, but simply to bring awareness and recognition. Then the student recognizes WHY it was a mistake, because the true truth makes more sense, and automatically justifies alignment with it because it is OBVIOUS. The student than "takes on" the greater truth and receives it and is now corrected, such that in future they will not be mistaken again. They have become the truth. This is the true correction of errors without punishment ever entering into it.
A belief in sin calls for punishment and death. A belief that a mistake is NOT merely a harmless correctable mistake, is a belief that it deserves to be punished. Evaluating that all mistakes CAN'T be corrected, due to severity or consequences, is still a further mistake, which justifies punishment. Oops sorry, your mistake was TOO BIG, so it's overflowed into sin territory, so now we're going to attack you and take something from you so that you suffer, to "atone for it". Punishment then becomes atonement.
Yet even murder is JUST A MISTAKE, and through miracles all the consequences of that wrong decision can be undone by the holy spirit. "He will correct all the consequences of my wrong (mistaken) decision IF I will let Him."
Real atonement, the undoing of error, which is forgiving, and which always recognizing that we're all JUST mistaken, not sinners, is a gentle correction, a loving correction, a harmless correction, which merely makes you aware of what the truth really is and shines a light so that you can see. And then in that light the mistake is recognized for what it is, its underpinnings are exposed, the steps are retraced, and it is undone at its source. Now is the mind corrected and correct, accurate and truthful. And now forgiveness has brought a healing and life instead of death.
You hear often that 'the world' as a term becomes substituted with terms like "its a dream", "its an illusion", "its not real", "we made it up", "its a projection" etc.
But, this doesn't really grasp what an illusion is. It's not just some word you can replace other words with.
The definition of an illusion is something appearing tobe something it is not, designed to deliberately deceive and block awareness of the truth. It is a device that lies to you and tricks you into believing something that isn't true. But in order to even KNOW that it is an illusion, you have to have enough awareness of what it's like to NOT be deceived by the illusion. You have to be aware of how the illusion works, what it's actually 'doing' to portray an appearance, how it is distracting you, and basically to 'see through it'.
Overlooking illusions is forgiveness. This means being aware of all of the 'tricks' that the illusion attempts to perform, but seeing through them and past them and not being fooled by them. And this is an entirely different state of consciousness and awareness, than to simply stay IN the ego illusion and start labeling it 'illusion'. That's like just switching out the term "planet earth" for "planet illusion". That doesn't really reveal HOW it deceives you.
So the big problem we have is that we do NOT realize how the illusion is an illusion. We do not recognize it AS an illusion. We do not see through it, or past it. We are fooled by it. We are made unconscious by it. It's like being hypnotized or put into an unconscious stupor, in which we take the illusion seriously, at face value, and listen to its appearance as if that is reality. Mistaking an illusion for reality is our only mistake.
Here's an example of an illusion. You are in the dark. The room is unlit. In the room there are objects. One of the objects you touch and it feels really strange and it seems to move as you touch it, and this makes you suddenly afraid that there's maybe a person in the room, and you scream. So you've fallen for the illusion, the impression, that there is something serious and frightening happening. But what happens when you switch the light on, suddenly you have MORE INFORMATION. You are now aware of more parts and pieces that you couldn't even see before, and were not aware of at all. Suddenly you realize that the thing you touched was in fact just a large house plant which you brushed up against, and it's completely safe and not scary at all. You feel relieved, right?
This is what it means to see through the illusion. It means, you have seen the truth, which has revealed to you, by shining a light of increased awareness, ALL of what is present, rather than only a narrow context or portion of what is present. When things are taken out of context they become a nightmare. Meaning becomes distorted. Reality becomes disjointed. We start to hallucinate that things might be happening that aren't really happening. This is how someone experiences insanity - losing touch with the bigger picture and becoming fixated on something whose relationship to real meaning has been distorted and blocked, such that you can no longer tell what anything really is and everything becomes frighteningly animated and motivated by bizarre nonsense forces that you don't understand.
The physical world, in the form that it appears, is an illusion. This does not mean that the physical world of form is being seen 'correctly' and fully, by seeing objects as they are. Or like, you become more aware of how all the objects contain beauty or contain God etc. That isn't seeing through the whole illusion. What you do not realize, because you have forgotten what it means to be NOT DELUDED AT ALL, is that the physical world of forms is, in its entirety, designed to block and distract away from the awareness of the presence of God. Even if you awaken to some 'stage' in which you see God in all things, if you are still seeing forms you are still deluded by the illusion.
"Nothing so blinding as sight of form" - ACIM
"Everything the body's eyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception, a distorted fragment of the whole without the meaning that the whole would give." - ACIM - "T-22.III.4."
Also.. "T-22.III.5. 3 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. 6 Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing. 7 To this distorted form of vision the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true. 8 Yet how can sight that stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall, see truly? 9 It is held back by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form will be perceived." - ACIM
What you may not realize is, this entire physical universe is a holographic projection, designed SPECIFICALLY and INTENTIONALLY, to distort and block all trace of the nature of God. It is deliberately designed to obfuscate, distort, give an opposite appearance to, and completely make it appear, that God does not exist at all. The form that it takes is DELIBERATELY designed by the ego to show you something that looks nothing like God, has no properties of God, completely diffuses and blocks God's character, and makes you completely BLIND to God. The body's eyes then can only see this form, the appearance of the absence of God, and cannot see past it TO God. The entire physical universe is a DECEPTION!
The way this works is, every 'form', every object, presents to your awareness the idea that all things are different. It presents the idea that all objects are separate from each other, none of them share anything at all including the same space or time, none of them truly are equal or perfectly alike, and all of them are in conflict. Does that sound like a picture of God? No. That's intentional. Form, the form of error, was deliberately made make God not apparent, and to make it seem to your awareness that God does not exist at all anymore. That's the ego's wish. That's why it made this illusion.
So the 'illusion' is, that forms present an image to you which is not the truth, which is extremely deceptive, and which you fall for easily. For example, consider problems. The ego presents to you a specific problem which is usually limited to a handful of forms. It tells you that only these forms are a problem, so you need to solve it. You solve it, but this has no effect on the 50 billion other problems in the world. The ego's solution to problems only seems to apply to a tiny portion of the world, and has no transfer value to other problems.
The ego absolutely hates the idea of it being possible to solve ALL problems with ONE solution - that is the Holy Spirit's attitude. It does not want that at all. So it keeps you focussed on looking at objects as being very DIFFERENT to each other. A dog is not a cat. A car is not a house. An attack by a coworkers is not an attack by a neighbor. The ego makes it all APPEAR different and separate. THAT is how it deceives you. Because in truth, there is only ONE problem and ONLY solution resolves the entirety of it completely.
The abstraction needed to SEE and to RECOGNIZE that all forms are THE SAME THING, the same illusion, takes some significant forgiveness and awakening. Being able to look at all forms and recognize, every single one of the deceptions and temptations that every one of these forms is trying to SHOW me, to try to convince me that they are TRUE, is the SAME LIE, and they are all using the SAME STRATEGY. Ultimately, the entire world is the same ONE illusion, presented by the ONE ego, using ONE set of seemingly diverse and apparently highly fragmented deceptions. Each time that you fall for one of its deceptions and think, hey, yes, this illusion is real and this problem is separate from others, and this object is not one with other objects, and that person is separate from this person etc... that's you FAILING to see through the illusion. That's you FALLING FOR THE TRICK!
So yes, there is a way of seeing, which doesn't just overlook illusions but which is AWARE ONLY OF GOD. There is a way of recognizing everything that is false for what it is - false. There is a way of no longer believing a single thing that any appearance of object or form or separation or expression of fragmentation/multiplicity suggests to you in any way. There is a way of COMPLETELY IGNORING what the senses are shown via external signals. There is a way of absolutely not listening to a single shred of ego consciousness whatsoever. And there is a way of SEEING GOD DIRECTLY AND FULLY. And guess what? God does not look ANYTHING like how the physical world looks, and they have nothing in common at all.
In revelation, the entire world disappears. The entire illusion disappears. All physical objects disappear and are replaced with brilliant bright light and total awareness of love. That is all. This is reality. This is an experience of no illusions. Compare that to the PURPOSE of the world that the ego made, and recognize that forms looks like forms FOR A REASON, and separate objects appear to be separate FOR A REASON, and separate problems appear to be distinct and unique FOR A REASON, and all temptations and deceptions are designed to distract you and lead you into unconsciousness FOR A REASON.
The ego's use of the world is NOT that it is neutral. The ego's use of the world is to create a 'veil', an illusion, a huge TRICK, a distortion of consciousness, a BLOCK to awareness, over your awareness, so that you can no longer fully experience God or recognize His nature. God is the same everywhere. God is in all parts equally. All of God is in every part of God. When you are presented with objects which appears to only contain distinct separate parts in each part and there is no sign of any sharing or oneness whatsoever, in form, THAT is the illusion that there is no God. You have to learn NOT TO BELIEVE YOUR EYES!
This is what illusion means. You have to get out of the illusion to know that it is an illusion. You have to awaken to a greater reality in which you are aware of how God is everywhere, God shares everything, God is in everything fully, all of God is in all parts of existence, there is no separation, and all appearances are a LIE. Lies are not meant to be paid attention to, you are meant to discern that they are lies and not listen to them and not take what they present to you seriously or as though it is even real. Recognize the entire physical universe was made to SHUT OUT GOD, and not just in terms of you having a separate perception OF the world that has errors in it, but that the world ITSELF is an error and has taken on a multitude of forms to completely deceive your comprehension of 'what is'. We fall for this every single day and every time we believe in any kind of differences whatsoever.
There are no forms in God, not even forms that seem like they have God in them. NO FORMS. Complete formlessness. Forms are separation and separation is not real.
Every time we think one thing is not something else. Every time we think one object is not another object. Every time we experience separate problems and separate solutions. Every time we believe that we are separated from other people by bodies. Every time we don't recognize that there is only ONE problem, and only ONE solution is needed once and for all to solve them all, permanently. Every time we fall for this grand illusion and can't find a vantage point in awareness from which we can see 'the whole', the one, we fall for the ego's deception. Truly this world is not just a 'thing' and not just a 'place', it is a mechanism for reality distortion, consciousness obstruction, enforced unconsciousness, fragmentation of mind, and loss of life. This is what we have to see past and not believe what our senses are saying is out there.
"There is no world. This is the central thought the Course would attempt to teach." - ACIM - think about that deeply, the entire physical world is a magic trick aimed at stopping Creation, stopping awareness, and stopping God.
We are immortal Spirit. We are God's creation. We are infinite and unlimited by form. We are equal everywhere. And we are real. And we have no differences. And we are not separate objects. And we are not limited by space or time.
"I cannot see in darkness but in light" - "I am not an illusion but a reality." - ACIM