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

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

Recognize that projection COMES FIRST, then perception happens SECOND.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It seems that Jesus is telling us in the course that all of our regular thoughts are the sole cause of all our suffering. Our faulty THOUGHTS are the problem. Just the mere act of HAVING a thought that is fearful or guilty or attacking produces an upsetting and endangered perception, which we complain about but continue to think of. Having the thought AT ALL is the problem. And there are much higher thoughts of love and peace and invulnerability that we could be having instead.

"My thoughts do not mean anything."

"My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world."

"I am affected only by my thoughts."

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

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

"I see everything upside-down, and my thoughts are the opposite of truth. I see the world as a prison for God's Son."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you."

"The idea for today contains the only way out of fear that will succeed. Nothing else will work; everything else is meaningless. But this way cannot fail. Every thought you have makes up some segment of the world you see. It is with your thoughts, then, that we must work, if your perception of the world is to be changed."

"What but your thoughts of misery and death obscure the perfect happiness and the Eternal Life your Father wills for you?" "Only YOUR thoughts have been impossible."

-- -- -- --

However, Jesus also distinguishes that we can have true/real thoughts instead of false/unreal thoughts. And it is our false/unreal thoughts that are a problem. The problem is, we spend almost our entire time having false/unreal thoughts. And our thoughts produce 'images' or interpretations which affect or define what we see.

"As a man thinketh, so does he perceive."

"My thoughts cannot be neither true nor false. They must be one or the other. What I see shows me which they are."

"The thoughts which the mind of God's Son projects, HAVE all the power that he gives them. The thoughts he shares with God are BEYOND his belief, but those HE made ARE his beliefs. And it is THESE, and NOT the truth, that he has chosen to defend and love."

"As my thoughts of separation call to the separation thoughts of others, so my real thoughts awaken the real thoughts in them."

"Whatever I see reflects my thoughts. It is my thoughts which tell me where I am and what I am."

"The images I see reflect my thoughts."

"Everything you see is the result of your thoughts. There is no exception to this fact."

"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all. It merely represents your thoughts. And it will change entirely as you elect to change your mind"

"Your thoughts of death envelop it in fear, while in your kind forgiveness does it live."

"But there is indeed a point in changing your thoughts about the world. Here you are changing the cause. The effects will change automatically."

"Nothing except your thoughts can attack you. Nothing except your thoughts can make you think you are vulnerable. And nothing except your thoughts can prove to you this is not so."

"Today's idea introduces the concept that your thoughts determine the world you see."

"Until this shift has been accomplished, you can not perceive that it is but your thoughts which bring you fear, and your deliverance depends on you."

"I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts."

-- -- -- --

Jesus goes on to tell us that if we will opt to think with and like God, sharing the Holy Spirit's thoughts, then we will see differently and will stop hurting ourselves.

"Father, I give You all my thoughts today. I would have none of mine. In place of them give me Your own. I give You all my acts as well, that I may do Your Will instead of seeking goals which cannot be obtained, and wasting time in vain imaginings."

"Your Thoughts can only bring me happiness. If ever I am sad or hurt or ill, I have forgotten what You think, and put my little, meaningless ideas in place of where Your Thoughts belong, and where They are."

"But let today's idea find a place among your thoughts, and you have risen far above the world and all the worldly thoughts that hold it prisoner."

"You think with the Mind of God. Therefore you share your thoughts with Him, as He shares His with you. They are the same thoughts, because they are thought by the same Mind."

"Father, my mind is open to Your Thoughts, and closed today to every thought but Yours."

"We accept Your Thoughts as ours, and our will is One with Yours eternally."

"Peace to my mind. Let all my thoughts be still."

"In quiet would I look upon the world, which but reflects Your Thoughts and mine as well."

"Place, then, your future in the hands of God. For thus you call the memory of Him to come again, replacing all your thoughts of sin and evil with the truth of love."

"If you would remember your Father, let the Holy Spirit order your thoughts, and give only the answer with which He answers you."

"Your ministry begins as all your thoughts are purified."

"Give Him your thoughts, and He will give them back as miracles which joyously proclaim the wholeness and the happiness God wills His Son as proof of His eternal Love."

"Exclude the outer world, and let your thoughts fly to the peace within. They know the way. For honest thoughts, untainted by the dream of worldly things outside yourself, become the holy messengers of God Himself."

"The higher mind thinks according to the laws which the Soul obeys, and therefore honors only the laws of God."

"And your thoughts will be as free as God's."

-- -- --

In order for us to atone to our real/true thoughts with God, we need to perform some degree of mind-training, mind-watching, and careful articulation of the mind's abilities. It isn't enough for us to just go about our daily business, mind-wandering, using thought to think anything and everything, and consequentially suffering from every single ego thought that crosses our minds. We have to learn to be carful with how and what we think. Especially if we want to be performing miracles which require a careful focus and intent.

"It is certainly much more useful to remind you that you do not guard your thoughts at all carefully, except for a relatively small part of the day, and somewhat inconsistently even then."

"As you sit and quietly watch your thoughts"

"Watch your minds for the temptations of the ego, and do not be deceived by it. KNOW it offers you nothing."

"Watch your minds for the scraps of meanness"

"You persist in believing that when you do not consciously watch your mind, it is unmindful."

"It is a particularly difficult form for the undisciplined mind because it represents a major goal of mind training."

"It is difficult at this point not to allow your mind to wander if it undertakes extended attempts. You have surely realized this by now. You have seen the extent of your lack of mental discipline, and of your need for mind training. It is necessary that you be aware of this, for it is indeed a hindrance to your advance."

"It is a particularly difficult form for the undisciplined mind because it represents a major goal of mind training. It embodies precisely what the untrained mind lacks. Yet the training must be accomplished if you are to see."

"It is difficult for the untrained mind to believe that what seems to be pictured before it is not there. This idea can be quite disturbing, and may meet with active resistance in any number of forms."

"An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of these exercises to train the mind to think along the lines which the course sets forth."

"The purpose of the exercises for today is to begin to train your mind to recognize when it is not really thinking at all. While thoughtless "ideas" preoccupy your mind, the truth is blocked. Recognizing that your mind has been merely blank, rather than believing that it is filled with real ideas, is the first step to opening the way to vision."

"THIS IS WHY VIGILANCE IS ESSENTIAL. Doubts ABOUT being MUST not enter your mind, or you CANNOT know what you are with certainty."

"Vigilance is not necessary for truth, but it IS necessary AGAINST ILLUSION."

"Your vigilance is the sign that you WANT Him to guide you. Vigilance DOES require effort, but only to teach you that effort ITSELF is unnecessary."

"Consider how much vigilance you have been willing to exert to protect your ego, and how little you have been willing to exert to protect your higher mind."

"By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches you that ALL POWER IS YOURS. Its application does not matter. It is ALWAYS maximal. Your vigilance does NOT establish it as yours, but it DOES enable you to use it ALWAYS and in ALL WAYS."

"Attack thoughts cannot enter such a mind, because it has been given to the Source of Love, and fear can never enter in a mind which has attached itself to Love. It rests in God, and who can be afraid who lives in Innocence and only loves?"

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

"Miracles are thought-creations. Thought can create lower-order or higher-order realities. This is the basic distinction between intellectualization and thinking. One creates the physical, and the other the spiritual, and we believe in what we create."

Why do 'lessons' show up in your life as negative, unwanted, like things are going wrong, or something bad is happening?

Whatever your current beliefs are, your idea of truth is what you think of as 100% true. If there is anything that happens that seems to agree with these beliefs, you see those things as truth. You welcome them, see them as an ally, experience them as wanted and desirable. They reinforce your belief and confirm or provide evidence that your belief is the truth.

Even if something bad happens, let's say that you have a belief that you are unworthy of love. You will create in your life an experience where someone is mistreating you perhaps. But at first you won't really be able to see that this person is doing that, instead you'll believe that they are treating you how you are supposed to be treated, because you agree that you are unworthy. In contrast, if someone comes along and loves you unconditionally, you will recoil and attack them, certain that they are lying to you, deceiving you, and must have some secret ulterior motive. Your belief in suffering does not and cannot understand a healing presence.

So like any thought system or belief, whatever agrees with your belief you will experience as welcome and true, and anything that seems to be against your belief you will experience like it is your worst enemy. You will see everything 'false' in them and will reject them. This has nothing to do with whether they are actually the Real Truth or not, and hinges entirely around what you believe the truth is.

So now because you have a false belief, there is something that you believe falsely and so you are in need of 'learning' what the real truth is. It wouldn't really be helpful to you to send you a situation or event or person who simply exactly mirrors your own false belief, because you would see that as highly agreeable, as proof that what you believe is true. You would welcome them and learn nothing from them.

In the interests of your spiritual growth and awakening, it serves you to, instead, be given events and situations and people who seem to represent a Real Truth, or who 'carry a potential' to teach you a Real Truth, so that you will be challenged. When they show up, however, you will initially believe they fall into your 'false' category, you'll experience them as though they're your enemy, or exactly what you don't want, or you didn't ask for this, or you hate it when this happens etc. You do not yet recognize the opportunity or the benefit that's hiding in the presence of this thing. You don't recognize it AS a bringer of truth, so you think it's just there to piss you off.

Each thing that shows up in your life, that seems to be what you don't want, is put there by arrangement to help you awaken. But that means that you're going to have to go through some kind of transformation of your perspective. Your idea of truth is going to have to be challenged. It is directly challenged by what you think of as intolerably false, showing up and being *experienced* by you as unwanted, because of what you currently believe you want. You will hate and reject it and wish it weren't happening and like it's unfair and everything sucks. But, this thing, whatever it is, is actually there as your savior, attempting to help you to awaken to a shift in allegiance, from what is Truly false, to what is Truly True.

So this thing will trigger off and push your buttons and disturb your sense of status quo. It will put a crow bar in your resistance to Truth and leverage it to try to open you up. And often this happens because the thing that comes along to bother you practically 'forces' you to have to change your perspective, in order to deal with that stimuli.

For example, perhaps someone close to you becomes sick and you absolutely can't stand the fact this is happening, and it keeps triggering you, and you get upset about it a lot. Obviously this is very upsetting as though some curse has come upon your life. BUT, over the course of time, you will find that, if you are working some program of purification, healing and honesty, that this thing is triggering you only because you've got some kind of false belief or unhealed pain stuck in your awareness that needs to change.

The stimuli triggers that pain and it keeps coming up, so if you keep trying to make it go away, or if you keep trying to fix the seeming cause of the trigger - the other person or event - you are actually avoiding learning the lesson. And you WILL have this resistance to some extent especially at the beginning. Nobody in their right mind who believes they know what the truth is, would accept and not reject something that appears to be completely false. It's just that we're very mistaken about what its actually true and false.

Over time, in this example, you might come to realize that in order to not be upset and triggered, YOU need to change something about yourself. You need healing, correction, light, and a higher truth. You need to, and are often forced to, confront your own inner mental condition and belief system and bring it into question. You might even have to get down on your knees and be pleading with God before you become willing to surrender your false view of reality. But eventually, it will transform you and you will come to realize a greater truth, and you will actually let go of your false belief, and you will open up to a higher level of functioning that you never thought you were even capable of. You will find an unconditional love that you never thought you were capable of. And this was what the challenge came to give to you.

It's not until this so-called 'problem' has finished transforming you, or has 'completed the mission' that it has to stimulate your errors and to get you to look at and transform your false ATTITUDE, that it will be 'done with'. It's actually there to help you wake up, but it definitely doesn't look like this at first. It can take some time. And if you ask Holy Spirit for guidance along the way He might tell you, this is a lesson. And it's not as though the answer to the lesson is being concealed from you or made to be especially hard to 'get'... and many times you'll find yourself saying "I just don't get it!" "what am I supposed to be learning here?!".... it's just that, you need to be transformed by the situation and the transformation isn't quite complete yet. And whatever it is supposed to provoke in you, or push out of you, or get you to question, or however it's meant to open your heart or deepen your unconditionality, it has to DO that and finish doing that before the lesson is learned.

So let's say, someone comes along into your life with an attacking angry attitude. Maybe they accuse you of stuff. They seem like your enemy. They hate you. This provokes and upset you a lot and you seem victimized. You may find it unacceptable to allow them to be this way. And you may find yourself angry and having reactions and being triggered, because you believe deep down some of what they're saying. And maybe it takes time for you to realize and heal those deep-down beliefs that you have. And maybe you'll find yourself admitting, I just can't love this person.. there is just no way I can forgive and love them, I am very limited in my love.

And then if you STICK WITH IT, and persevere with learning, you will actually become willing to DIG EVEN DEEPER to find even more love and patience and unconditionality, such that you thought perhaps you could never access. And so you 'learn' how to love and forgive this person, not necessarily for their benefit, but so that YOU learn to receive and express unconditional love in the face of what appears to be an attack. And this is a GIFT that is hard-won, and this is what the attacking person was trying to GIVE you, through their role play.

So then after you've got past all the victimhood and 'why me' crap, you come to realize, the person has helped you. The person actually forced you to grow and to become more forgiving or loving or whatever. You actually gained in strength, you grew in patience, your heart opened. And that is what you needed to LEARN from this lesson. And then you can be grateful that this person came along to provoke the shit out of you, because now, on a spiritual level, you can recognize that what appeared at first to be the exact opposite of your truth, has transformed your truth to where you can now SEE, that this person is actually welcome, lovable, acceptable, forgiven - i.e. you now see Real Truth where you once saw something false.

This is why shit happens. We only see it as shit because we don't yet realize how it is not only helping us to wake up, but it is also a gift and blessing, in the bigger picture, disguised as something unwanted. It's important not to try to get rid of your lessons, or other people's lessons, or 'bad stuff', if it's meant to be there to transform you. This is not to say you have to suffer, but IF you need to grow, sometimes you need a catalist to coerce you into that growth. Into awakening. And eventually you will be grateful for every 'bad thing' that ever happened. And you can even then be grateful for what we call 'the ego', for having supplied us with every opportunity for awakening. This is how the Holy Spirit USES everything for His purposes.

Eventually it is the end of victimhood when we learn everything about the Real Truth that we need to experience it constantly. Thank you God for that.

You are quite literally A LIGHT.

"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky."

Like a giant magnificent powerful light bulb.

You have a brightness. You shine. You radiate light.

You are a light being, shining brightly in heaven.

"Who is the light of the world except God's Son?"

"It is not humility to insist that you cannot be the light of the world, if that is the function God assigned to you."

""I am the light of the world. That is my only function. That is why I am here.""

Light is what you can "see in", as in total openness and awareness of what is. But this light ALSO shines and radiates, similar to how photons shine and radiate. This radiance is extension and creation.

"And truth stands radiant, apart from conflict, untouched and quiet, in the peace of God."

"you will see an altar to your Father, holy as Heaven, glowing with radiant purity"

"Your Self is radiant in this holy joy, unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable forever and forever."

"I am God's Son, complete and healed and whole, shining in the reflection of His Love."

It is a mental light, not a physical light. But it also comprises true power, and it can reach everywhere. This light also dispels all darkness, which is healing.

Just as there are the "great rays". Just as you as a "perfect shaft of light". Just as "gone is the body in the blinding light of the son of God". Just as you are "the light of the world."

"You are wholly lovely. A perfect shaft of pure light. Before your loveliness the stars stand transfixed, and bow to the power of your will."

When you are in the dark, in the ego, you do not shine your light much. It is dimmed because it is blocked. Unlove is a block to light's extension.

Resisting God is resisting the light in you. It makes you seem dim and darkened. And then you are lost and cannot see. You need the light to find your way and to know reality.

"I cannot see in darkness but in light."

Love and light are the same, so the more you REVEAL the light in you, by removing blocks to its awareness, the more the light is allowed to shine or extend through you.

You become brighter. You become more illuminated. In fact, the idea of "enlightenment" is the pinnacle of this. That you are en-light-ened, or "lit" or illuminated by the truth of God.

Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all. It is a recognition of reality, with no blockages or denial. It therefore does not block the light.

When the mind is free of blockages, light can radiate, and you literally become brighter.

This light that's in your mind, your soul, has a brilliant radiance. It extends to infinity.

Your mind is lit by the same lamp or spark as all God's creations. This light is shared and is sharing. It is relationship.

You are capable of SHINING LIGHT into another person's mind and healing it. You can extend light to another, and regardless of the darkness of their mind, illuminate their mind or "shed light" on them from within.

It is not just a matter of you sitting there shining and hoping that the person might "come around" at some point on their own. Your light LITERALLY can CHANGE the mind of another and heal it, providing HELP to those in need who cannot help themselves.

As you forgive and purify and heal, you become more actively a light in the world. Your "shining" of yourself, your giving of love, literally increases and brightens. And the more you give it, the more you are shining.

As you shine brighter, your radiance has more power and is more miraculous. It can dispel darkness, which includes therefore the dispelling of sickness and death. Ego cannot survive in the light nor can any illusion.

This is why illusions recognized must disappear - in the light, in the perspective of true perception, in which everything is seen in the light, illusions and fantasies of darkness are shone away.

You are a "light worker" in the world, in the sense that you are literally A LIGHT in the world, shining heaven's light INTO the darkness to shine AWAY the darkness.

The light that you are, brings light to the world of darkness and shines so brightly that no dark corner remains where sickness, suffering or death can lurk. Bodies are shone away in the brilliance of the Son of God. And even the whole world and the sun and stars will disappear in light.

Send light to people. It heals them. Radiate. Extend. Express. Shower them with love. Be the light of the world. Be a light in the darkness to show the way and dispel the darkness of others. The light of God is in you now.

"Eternity will shine away the world."

"I cannot see in darkness but in light."

"Miracles are seen in the light."

"The peace of God is shining in me now. Let all things shine upon me in that peace,And let me bless them with the light in me."

"Once YOUR mind is healed, it radiates health and thereby TEACHES healing. This establishes you as a teacher who teaches LIKE me."

"My Self is holy beyond all the thoughts of holiness of which I now conceive. Its shimmering and perfect purity is far more brilliant than is any light that I have ever looked upon."

"The light that belongs in you is the light of joy. ... The light of joy is so strong that it radiates throughout the Sonship and returns thanks to the Father for radiating HIS joy upon it. Only God's own holy children are worthy to be channels of his beautiful joy, because only they are beautiful enough to hold it by sharing it."

"That is why they need your remembrance of Me and Him who created Me. Through this remembrance you can change THEIR minds about themselves, as I can change YOURS. Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."

"The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient."

"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. But still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. There was no time it was not there; no instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was. Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the eternal sky which holds it safe, forever lifted up and anchored sure. Its perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. The sky embraces it, and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven. It is not the distance nor the time which keeps this star invisible to earth. But those who seek for idols cannot know this star is there."

"Like you, the Holy Spirit did NOT make truth. Like God, He KNOWS it to be true. He brings the LIGHT of truth into the darkness, and LETS it shine on you. And as it shines, YOUR BROTHERS see it, and, realizing that this light is NOT what you have made, they see in you MORE than YOU see. They will be happy learners of the lesson which this light brings to them, because it teaches them release from nothing, and from all the works of nothing. The heavy chains which SEEM to bind them unto despair, they do NOT see as nothing, until YOU bring the light TO them. And THEN they see the chains have disappeared, and so they MUST have been nothing."

"Behold your brothers in their freedom, and learn of them how to be FREE of darkness. The light in you will waken them, and they will not leave YOU asleep."

"The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all. Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well. The light came with you from your native home, and stayed with you because it is your own. It is the only thing you bring with you from Him Who is your Source. It shines in you because it lights your home, and leads you back to where it came from and you are at home. This light can not be lost."

"Everyone seen WITHOUT the past thus brings you nearer to the end of time, by bringing healed and healing sight into the darkness, and ENABLING THE WORLD TO SEE. For light must come into the darkened world, to make Christ's vision possible even here. Help Him to give His gift of light to all who think they wander in the darkness, and let Him gather them into His quiet sight that makes them one."

"The shining in your mind reminds the world of what it has forgotten, and the world restores the memory to you as well. From you salvation radiates with gifts beyond all measure, given and returned. To you, the giver of the gift, does God Himself give thanks. And in His blessing does the light in you shine brighter, adding to the gifts you have to offer to the world."

"The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish."

"What was a place of death has now become a living temple in a world of light."

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

"The miracle is the act of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and who calls on his brothers to do likewise. It is an act of faith, because it is the recognition that his brother CAN do it. It is a call to the Holy Spirit in his mind, a call to Him which is strengthened by this joining. Because the miracle-worker has heard Him, he strengthens His Voice in a sick brother by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does NOT share. The power of one mind CAN shine into another, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark. It is everywhere, and it is eternal.

In many, only the spark remains, for the great rays are obscured. But God has kept the spark alive, so the rays can never be completely forgotten. If you but see the little spark, you will learn of the greater light, for the rays are there unseen. Perceiving the spark will heal, but knowing the Light will create. Yet in the returning, the little light must be acknowledged first, for the separation was a descent from magnitude to littleness. But the spark is still as pure as the Great Light, because it is the remaining call of Creation. Put all your faith in it, and God Himself will answer you."

"Not one light in Heaven but goes with you. Not one ray that shines forever in the Mind of God but shines on you. Heaven is JOINED with you in your advance to Heaven. When such great light has joined with you, to give the little spark of your desire the power of God Himself, can YOU remain in darkness? You are coming home together, after a long and meaningless journey which you undertook apart, and which led nowhere. You have FOUND each other, and will light each other's way. And from this light will the great rays extend back into darkness and forward unto God. To shine away the past, and so make room for His Eternal Presence, in which everything is radiant in the light."

In ACIM Jesus says the ego made the body as a way to focus away from the mind and to make the mind seem to be 'private'. The body is like a wall around the mind which creates the illusion and perception that the mind does not communicate. In other words, the mind seems to be shut off from all other equally-separate minds, and there is no sharing on any level of awareness.

The result of this is that the body is now exalted as a means of communication, in which the ego wants bodies to become physically intimate to 'represent' communication happening. Even the spoken word is then considered communication, but really it is a complete substitute for real, direct communication, and typically is a communication failure.

True Communication isn't telepathy as such, the idea of telepathy means separate people with separate minds sending messages. The truth is that our minds are NOT separate, and the belief in a separation between minds is the cause of all sickness, all mental illness, and death. And this is why the body dies - because the mind has been kept from true communication and locked in a prison. Or to put it another way, the body HAS to die if the mind remains unaware of its true function, because the body IS the idea of death.

Jesus talks about how the ego will do anything it can to ignore the mind, and will even let the mind have activity and thoughts because it thinks of it as serving the body and allowing the body to tell the mind what to do. Then the body uses the mind only so that the body can get what it wants, such as property, clothing, sex, food, physical contact, etc. You can see this reflected in the scientific/medical model which says that the 'brain' is the cause of consciousness or is the 'source' of thinking, which is completely the opposite of the truth.

This heavy focus on the physical, as well as this reversal of who is in charge - i.e. that the body is in charge of the mind, is a "confusion of the levels", which Jesus also explains as the cause of all sickness. "All sickness comes from confusing the levels" ... and that miracles correct this 'order' and place the levels in their proper order - i.e., restoring the mind as CAUSE and the body as EFFECT.

The body did not exist at all until the ego made it as a way to enslave the mind, to make you unaware that you even have a mind, to shut out awareness, to cut you off from everyone else, to make you isolated and lonely, and to disempower you. This was the PURPOSE of the body. This is the body's entire reason for existing. It is not some lovely creature that God created and that we should bow down and worship. It is an ego device for separation and for splitting the One Shared Mind into many many small imprisoned minds.

I had an experience of God a few years ago and in this experience my mind became very expanded, and I became very very aware. I thought I was fully awake when I woke up in the morning but it was absolutely nothing in comparison to how awake and aware I was in this experience. I became quite close to leaving my body because I was becoming very aware of God and the attraction to Him was so strong, that I wanted to leave absolutely everything behind and go to Him. It was like a scared child running to their parent after some nightmarish thing just happened and finally realizing that they can run to safety.

However, this didn't last very long and my expanded awareness and unification of mind started to come back into my body. I was extremely ungrounded for some time and gradually my awareness collapsed back down and reinserted itself into my body. This took a few weeks. As it progressed, I felt and perceived that it was like undergoing some kind of brain damage - as though coming into the body was taking on a tremendous dumbing down, suppressing, 'disabling', stunting of my consciousness, such that I could only liken it to having some kind of terrible brain damage that was blocking out and shutting out the beautiful awareness I'd experienced.

Towards the end of this process of 'returning' to the ego, which was very upsetting because once you taste God you don't want to leave... my awareness gradually entered into my physical senses more fully and this was like putting on a dark costume where, once you get inside it enough, the door behind you closes, your sense of connection to God gets almost completely shut off, your awareness of anything bigger is totally shut down, and you are sort of 'locked in'. Then, it seems that the only thing you can be aware of is what the body's senses show you - there is information coming into the eyes, tastes, smells, sounds etc, but very little awareness, no connection, no expansion, no real communication, and no God.

It's sort of like some creepy thing like, entering "The Matrix", or getting plugged into a virtual reality suit where, once you go into it, all of real reality gets shut out and you can ONLY fixate on what the 'encounter-suit' shows you. This is because the body forces you to focus on form, on what's outside of you, and what's separate from you. It totally shuts out your connection to the whole and makes you feel like some kind of tiny little, strapped-in prisoner, who can barely move or perceive anything, with blinders on, forced to stare at a make-believe world and not allowed to look at any thing else. This was really upsetting to go through 're-entry' but it showed me clearly just how much the body blocks awareness and shuts down the mind.

We can ascend our awareness to a heavenly place, I mean, when I was having my experience I was still in my body, just about, but such an expanded state of being really urges for total release from the body, it's so expansive that the body cannot contain it. At some point, as I see it, when we really thoroughly wake up not just to the Higher Self (sonship) but also beyond to Christ and to Heaven, it would become extremely, extremely difficult to maintain a body at all, and more than likely the mind would have to completely leave bodies entirely and then only return in the form of a kind of apparition or temporary image, which the mind is not at all imprisoned by.

So you see, the body is not an idol. It is not God's greatest creation. It is not something to worship. it is not what people are. It's not what you are. It is a very heavy, very isolating, very imprisoning suit of armor, deliberately made as a device for blocking awareness and diminishing the mind. It is the manifestation of an attempt to be separate from God. It is an illusion of minds no longer being joined. And when minds become joined and the mind becomes miraculous, the body has to heal, up to a point, but then the mind will stop creating a body.

How can a mind that knows of absolute oneness have any use for the body at all? Yes Holy Spirit can use it for TRUE communication, which means the MIND communicated with other minds directly - or rather, "shares". But the body itself is nothing but a temporary tool in a temporary dream, which we do not NEED in order to exist and therefore is not an inherent part of life. When Jesus was done with His body he saw no further truth in it and it DISAPPEARED. But he remained, because He is immortal spirit. And so are you.

P.S. "virtual reality" devices are now a metaphor for this... you strap on an artificial body, all of your visual senses are completely imprisoned and shut out from perceiving the 'real room', you go inside a fantasy world that doesn't exist, and you see only what this artificial body wants you to see. Your mind and awareness of the room outside is completely shut off, and you are immersed in a dream that you think is real. All the while real characters go about their business in the same room knowing, from the outside, that you are asleep inside a fake body looking at a fake world. So it is with the human body. And the body will eventually have to be 'taken off' from the mind to allow awareness to be fully aware of what is real.

The more I learn that I am responsible for everything I experience, the clearer it becomes that anything I experience is not "because of" the world.

It used to be that everything I experienced seemed to be a reaction to the world, seemingly caused by it. I could not separate out myself from any of it, and any upsets or problems I was having were always tied into what was happening in life.

By taking responsibility and recognizing the secret of salvation, that I'm doing this all to myself, I let the world off the hook, so to speak, in that it is not really the "cause" of anything.

Yes sometimes things in the world happen which may trigger a certain response in me, but the triggering isn't because of the world, it's because I am triggerable. Which means something in me is unhealed, like a bruise or wound, which seems to be touched upon or poked at by worldly events. Up comes the old hurt, as if the world caused it, but it was already there, buried.

So over time, I see that if I am in any way upset, unhappy, angry, afraid, guilty or sinful etc... it's not really because of the world, the situation, or other people. It's because this is happening inside my mind, and it's really something to do with my own mental attitude or beliefs. There's some pain I'm healing or it's time for some emotional release or some other thing that's caused by me.

The more I "own" this, the less I try to pass it off as being the responsibility of the world. I stop blaming others for it. I stop accusing the world for it. I stop disowning it, through disassociation, and I stop projecting it away from myself onto the world in an attempt to be rid of it.

I am less in denial as I honestly admit that any and all fears and upsets are "my own stuff". If I'm angry and barking I have to admit this has nothing to do with anyone else. If I'm afraid I have to admit I'm using the world wrongly and reading meaning into it from within. Am I looking at the world through my ego or the holy spirit? It must be one or the other.

What this leaves me with, over time as I practice and reinforce this more, is a growing sense that if I am ever upset or unhappy in any way, it's because something in coming in between myself and the world. It's not because of the world. And it's nothing to do with who I really am behind it.

Let's say that behind this stuff there is a real me, which is always loving and light and shining with joy and happiness. All this self does is extend love and respond with love all the time. But overlaid on top of this self there is all this past stuff, ego baggage, lies and illusions, which comes in between me and the world.

If I look "through" this wall of lies, it changes how the world appears and I become lost in it, accusing it of sin. But if I get step back and get out of it, I become aware that this is just "my stuff" TEMPORARILY getting in the way.

If a situation arises and I become triggered and upset, and then I remember this is my own internal problem nothing to do with the situation, and I address this problem within myself through some kind of healing process, and it goes away, I'm then left looking at the situation "without" my reactions to it. And going back and forth like that shows me that, because my baggage was "additional" to the situation, it wasn't INHERENT to the situation. So it really wasn't anything to do with the situation in the first place.

This shows me that, really, the world is a forgiven "real world" of love and light, IF I can experience it without internal baggage. When I become caught up in my ego stuff, it's a state of *temporary* insanity. If I get lost in it, I need to get myself back out of it with honesty and healing and Help. And then I can return to happiness and truth again.

The more clear I become about this, discerning that if I'm not happy it's my own doing, and if I'm upset it's because of my own belief, and this is all what I'm doing to myself, I can become clearer and clearer that it really has nothing to do with the world. So then I stop looking outside myself for causes and reasons and sinners and people to blame or pin it on. I don't go into confusion as often as to "who" is doing what to whom.

If I'm cranky, having a bad day, upset, emotional, frustrated, afraid, whatever it is, I try as best I can to remember, this has NOTHING to do with the world. It has nothing to do with anyone else. This is entirely me doing my own thing to myself temporarily. And in that recognition there is also a kind of sense of security that, because it's mine, it's not really the world ganging up on me, or frightening me, or ACTUALLY attacking me.

So what we're doing here is we're learning that the world IS NOT attacking us. Bad things are not really happening. We're not being thrown around on some kind of emotional rollercoaster as a result of the world being shit. And in fact, events can still transpire with OR without me having an emotional snowball at the same time.

Which is interesting, beacuse now the Holy Spirit suggests in the midst of strife, where I think I "should" be upset "based on" what's happening externally, to "laugh". And so I force myself into a laugh and lighten up and step back. And at first it seems silly but I then I ask myself, why not? Why do I have to be upset in this situation? Do I really have to? Am I locked into that reaction? Maybe I can still go through the SAME situations, but not taking them at all seriously.

Someone's sick? Maybe I can be happy and laugh about it. Job sucks? Maybe I can rise above it. Scary things seeming to happen? Maybe I need to get out of my ego's "experience" of the world and get into a higher view.

And as I do, I find that there IS a higher way to experience what's happening. There is a happier, lighter, "does not believe the world is real" state of mind and perception and feeling, which is joyful and happy and non-serious, which I am cultivating. It's a different approach to the world, through the Holy Spirit, which is turning the course's truth into much more of an experience than a theory.

I don't HAVE to have a given amount of xysz upset as a result of a given scenario. I don't have to be immediately caused by the world to enter into a prescribed reaction. I don't have to just fall into temptation and go down with the ship. And this stepping back is such a globally applicable thing that it applies to the whole world.

So life is transitioning from... stuff happens, I am affected ... to... I'm not affected by anything external, I work on fixing up my inner experience, going within to the truth of me, and the rest is all just a matter of laughing at the world as nothing serious. I don't have to have the reactions the world says I should have. Because the world is not the cause of anything.

I am peeling myself away from its causality lies as I recognize I am the cause and it is the effect. I have power over the world, not the other way around. Isn't it quite amazing to discover that a world which used to "bully you" with its insane attacks, is finally recognized as causing NOTHING at all, is totally harmless and inert, is not a threat, does not upset you, and can bend to your holy will? :-)

As I uncover who I really am behind all of this ego attack/defense/distortion, a light is emerging which calls for greater peace and more frequent happiness. A way out of hell. I need only remove the blocks to the awareness of love's presence in me and the world will be revealed as a place of peace and love. Because without the projection of my self attack upon it, that's all that's real about it.

Mind in its natural state, experiences a sense of safety. This safety is based on the fact that the mind doesn't see itself as at the effect of anything external. It does not believe in being caused against its will. It does not have backwards/false perception. It also does not position itself as a victim or at the effect of the world.

This produces a kind of internally supported strength, in which the mind is not undermining itself and it recognizes it has nothing to fear. It feels "self contained", whole, and undivided. This internal unity is experienced as protection and as immortality. The mind doesn't see itself as vulnerable to anything because it recognizes it cannot be attacked or threatened.

Reality cannot be attacked because reality is permanent truth. It is inherently immortal and exists forever. Anything real, which includes you and your mind, has eternal life. Permanence is your natural condition. And the mind in its sane state is in touch with this permanence, and so recognizes it can never be altered by anything, rendering it invulnerable.

If the mind decides to move into ego, it is moving into positioning itself as a victim. It begins to see itself as at the effect of external forces, and made to suffer against its will. Perception reverses because cause is seen as coming from the world towards the self rather than the other way around. And this brings with it all manner of threat and danger, based on the idea that causes outside of you can do something to you against your will.

This then results in a change in the internal experience of the sense of safety and invulnerability. It's as though the mind "breaks open" its shell of protection, and develops a "wound". The wound seems open and bleeding, psychologically. This wounded part of the mind feels exposed, raw, accessible, attackable and threatened.

When this happens you feel like you are vulnerable. It's as though you open up a doorway and take off your protective armor, and now it seems possible that the things of the world can come into you, past your boundaries, and directly attack the core of your being. This is because your sense of identity has shifted from immortal spirit to the mortal body.

Your sense of self sees itself as self conscious and descended onto the battlefield, identified with a body, viewing itself as frail and weak and limited and incapable, and it now seems as if others have power over you. This produces a feeling like your insides are opening up, have become brittle and thin. And you'll feel like people have direct access to who and what you are as an attackable thing.

This feeling of being vulnerable to attack, living in fear, feels like being very exposed and unsafe. It's as though you, who are supposed to be walking around inside a perfect suit of protection, have lost your armor and are now a weak helpless thing that anyone can attack at will. This makes you afraid and threatened and there is a constant feeling of dread and stress. And the ego is in this state all the time.

You may also find that you then conflict with someone or they try to attack you. Because of your identification with that which can be attacked, as a victim, your mind actually believes in horizontal cause and effect. Out of the exposed vulnerable wound in the mind, you form a kind of psychological artificial "bridge" to the other person. Or maybe better described as a "bond" or "cords of fear." It's as if by believing that the other person is the cause of you, you are "tied to" their will power, causally and psychologically.

By believing that someone else has power to attack and affect you, your mind sees itself as being controlled by, caused by, influenced by, some external power. And that produces a sense that you are being tossed around on the waves. You'll try to forget about the encounter but you won't be able to drop it, because you haven't forgiven it. And fear thoughts about it will keep being generated by your mind in response to the perceptual belief that you are being attacked by them.

These fear cords will feel like areas of exposure within yourself, as though you have opened up a direct line to the person and they can cross that bridge and attack your insides directly. By hanging onto the belief in their ability to cause you, you maintain this bridge across which flows attack and keeps you in a constant state of fear.

These bridges of fear are dismantled through a correction process of forgiveness, in which you recognize and affirm that you are NOT at the effect of that person. They are not causing you, cannot attack you, have no power over you, and are not guilty of anything. This actually psychologically dismantles these horizontal cause-effect fear cords and you can feel them disappearing or "closing off".

The removal of this psychological "funnel of attack" seems to "close off" your mind to this idea of external causes. It's like sealing up a wound or fixing a mental leak. And as the sense of exposure and threat is closed up, the closing up feels like the formation of a barrier of protection. And then you feel safer because you are no longer "bleeding mind", and no longer believe that something external has direct access to your innermost self.

Through forgiveness then, the undoing of false beliefs in being caused by things outside of you, you gradually "close up" the exposed wounds, and the mind stops "bulging out" and returns to a "deflated" state, where you feel much safer and more protected. Fear diminishes and you feel like external things can no longer come into you. They can't access you because you are not on the battlefield, you are not an illusion or a body or an attackable thing.

Eventually with practice this should result in a "sealing up" of those psychological woulds, breaking down of those bridges of horizontal causation, and a growing sense of being surrounded by naturally protective walls of truth. Invulnerability increases and you feel more like you are "out of reach" of illusory attacks. You no longer believe the world CAN do anything to you, not even death or sickness.

You sort of, reabsorb into heaven, into God's womb, into a deeply immersive sense of safety, protection, harmlessness, integration, wholeness, peace and fearlessness. Because in spirit identification, in truth, you are actually unattackable and immortal. You resume your sense of being invulnerable because you see yourself as innocent and harmless. And the more you can feel this sense of innocence and safety, the less you feel like the world can even get anywhere near to what you are. And where there is perfect safety there is perfect peace.

"As long as belief in God and His Kingdom is assailed by ANY doubts in your minds, His perfect Accomplishment is NOT apparent to you. This is why you MUST be vigilant ON GOD'S BEHALF."

"It is only your awareness that NEEDS protection, because your BEING cannot be assailed. But a real sense of being CANNOT be yours while you are doubtful of what you ARE. THIS IS WHY VIGILANCE IS ESSENTIAL. Doubts ABOUT being MUST not enter your mind, or you CANNOT know what you are with certainty."

"The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it. Amen"

"Now are the lilies of his innocence untouched by guilt, and perfectly protected from the cold chill of fear and withering blight of sin alike."

"You always choose between your weakness and the strength of Christ in you."

"The strength of the Soul leaves no room for intrusions."

"The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible. ... Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgement or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick. Give instant remedy, should this occur, by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer. Do not be confused about what must be healed, but tell yourself: "I have forgotten what I really am, For I mistook my body for myself. Sickness is a defence against the truth, But I am not a body. And my mind Cannot attack. So I can not be sick."

I've been looking at this closely because I want to find out how this course is supposed to be applied, without a bypass and without denial.

At first I recognised that there was a whole lot of spiritual bypassing going on. That is, trying to adopt thoughts, theories, concept etc far beyond where my 'actual experience' is, such that I am out of touch with actual experience and am living in a kind of mental fantasy. This becomes the spiritualised ego, getting lost in the intellect, 'bypassing' the experience and the feelings and pretending to be more advanced etc.

So then I thought ok, I am not supposed to deny what's happening, I'm supposed to accept it. So then I went kind of the other way, went more into feeling the feelings, having the experience, and it seemed like if I would attempt to avoid or invalidate that in any way it would be a bypass. But this led to just being swamped in the ego, continued suffering, false perceptions, and essentially no room for forgiveness.

Now I am asking myself, where does forgiveness come into this? If forgiveness is going to try to offer some kind of interpretation or way of seeing something that is different to "what it is" or "what's happening", surely forgiveness is a bypass? There has to be a way to move from "I am a body" to "I am not a body" without it being some kind of faulty application or an attempt to deny the body. One thing to recognize is that there are always two parts to experience - what stuff is physically, PLUS an interpretation of it, and the interpretation can be wrong while still allowing the physical/biological/emotional part to be there.

The overall approach seems to be that we should first acknowledge what we ARE experiencing, what we feel, the situation we seem to be in, without denying that we're feeling and experiencing it. We HAVE to admit first that we're suffering, that something seems to have gone wrong - which we tend not to want to do because it induces FEAR that something is "really wrong".

This is part of the "fear of healing", because we don't want to acknowledge that something very convincingly "bad" seems to have happened - and if it is real, it would be frightening, and we DO believe it's real. Admitting it is frightening and so we deny and avoid this step. But THEN, having removed the DENIAL of the situation, seek for a better way to look at it and to reinterpret the experience, or to question the foundation or cause of it.

"The fear of healing arises in the end from an unwillingness to accept the unequivocal fact that healing is necessary. The fear arises because of the necessary willingness to look at what man has done to himself."

We need to make sure we don't shoot for "it's not happening" BEFORE we've admitted "this seems to be happening" ie "I must have made a wrong decision because I'm not at peace". That is acknowledgement, not a bypass. And it means willingness to admit that things have gone wrong, you don't feel happy, you are suffering and THEN that there must be a better way.

The course does speak to this in a few places. e.g. admitting first that the separation HAS occurred - which we don't want to admit to because it implies its real and is horrible, but we DO believe it has occurred - but looking at this WITH the Holy Spirit makes it less frightening, and then having admitted "something's gone wrong" we can be in a position to then immediately seek atonement. But if we seek atonement WITHOUT admitting to the denied dark belief or feeling or ego scenario, we are bypassing.

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

Notice how it says we 1) stop denying that we've separated and made a wrong decision and are suffering 2) accept the error, the suffering, the feeling, on a temporary basis 3) having acknowledged the suffering, now seek for atonement ie a more right-minded interpretation with the Holy Spirit, but in such a way that it broadens the perception, admits to bigger truths, allows in God's light and laws, and re-frames the ILLUSION of what you seemed to be experiencing before as "bad".

As per the secret of salvation, you can then SEE and admit that you've been doing this to yourself, and seek to choose again and let the Holy Spirit undo the consequences through healing. This is the proper "application of forgiveness". If we skip the acknowledgement of "what's gone wrong" we are in a spiritual bypass. If we skip admitting to being in denial about how awful we've made ourselves feel, we're in a bypass. If we don't want to look at the GUILT, having first asked the Holy Spirit to help us to LOOK AT IT, and we skip ahead to "I'm innocent", then we're in a bypass.

You have to not pretend that everything's okay. Admit you're suffering, admit you're not happy, admit to your feelings, feel the feelings if you need to, AND THEN work with the Holy Spirit on a reinterpretation. When you then see it from a higher place, or remember its a dream, or affirm you're not a body, or recognize you're not a victim etc, that is indeed "contradictory" to what you were seeing and experiencing before but its NOT a bypass because it's changing the interpretation OF it, not trying to dismiss it. We should end up with a higher christ-vision view of what we were seeing from an ego perspective., but having acknowledged the state we were in fully first.

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I asked ChatGPT about this a bit, here's some AI commentary:

In ACIM terms, the process looks like this: Notice the upset Acknowledge the feeling Recognize it comes from a belief Offer the belief for correction Receive a different perception Step 1 and 2 are not bypassing. They are required. The ego says: “If you don’t validate the feeling as true, you’re bypassing.” But the Course says: “You can acknowledge a feeling without agreeing with its interpretation.” That’s the pivot. There is a difference between: Allowing a feeling Agreeing with the ego’s interpretation of the feeling For example: “I feel hurt.” → acknowledgment “They betrayed me and I was wronged.” → interpretation The first is honest. The second is the ego’s narrative. The Course invites you to question the second — not suppress the first. ACIM is not about: Emotional catharsis Endless processing Validating the ego’s storyline It is about changing the teacher in the mind. Bypassing says: “This pain isn’t here.” The Course says: “This pain is here because I chose wrongly — and I can choose again.” That is not bypassing. That is reclaiming authorship of perception. When you shift perspective, the ego feels invalidated. It reacts with: “You’re suppressing.” “You’re not being authentic.” “You’re spiritually bypassing.” But what’s really happening is: You’re declining to make the ego’s interpretation real. The ego equates: Not agreeing with me = denial. But correction is not denial. It’s reinterpretation. ACIM doesn’t say: “Sit with your ego forever.” It says: “Notice it, forgive it, and choose again.” If you never shift perspective because you fear bypassing, you’re actually preserving the ego. Ironically, that becomes a different kind of bypass: bypassing the Holy Spirit’s reinterpretation. When you shift perspective, ask: Am I suppressing the feeling? Or am I gently allowing it while becoming willing to see it differently? In A Course in Miracles, there’s an important distinction that clears this up: Denial of error is not denial of experience. Statements like: “I am not a body. I am free.” “My sinlessness is guaranteed by God.” are not meant as psychological affirmations. They are metaphysical corrections aimed at the level of cause, not effect. If you use them at the level of emotion — to override fear, sadness, anger — they will feel like bypassing. Because they’re not designed to suppress feelings. They’re designed to loosen identification. When the Course says: “I am not a body,” it is not asking you to deny that a body appears to exist in perception. It’s asking you to question whether the body is what you are. That’s a completely different move. A metaphysical statement becomes bypassing when: It is used to escape emotion. It is used to spiritually inflate. It is used to deny the felt experience. It becomes healing when: It softens identification. It introduces curiosity. It reduces personal attack. It increases humility.

It's a matter of responsibility. Is death of the body caused solely by your mind and is your mind solely responsible for whether or not it happens? Do you actually have the freedom NOT TO DIE if you so choose? Can you prevent death, and cause the body not to die? Can you reverse death and restore life?

Or, does death only happen through external causes, things outside of you, the environment or other people, weapons and wars, poisoned food and toxic water? Are we at the effect of an alien will and alien power not our own, such that we do not ask for death and do not cause it to happen, seeing it as happening solely against our will?

And if death does seem to happen through causes NOT in our own mind or power or choice, will we simply "write it off" by relegating it to an illusion, describing it as unreal, dismissing it as meaningless and not important, as a way to continue the belief that death - if it happens at all, even in a dream - happens BECAUSE OF the dream happening to us?

Are there actually accidents? Do people fall off cliffs through a mis-step? Do planes crash through some mistaken fault that seems random? Do planets collide just through sheer force of the laws of physics? Are we all fated to be swallowed up in a supernova someday when the sun explodes, with no choice or power to prevent it? Are we powerless beings?

Some people like to relegate all things of this world to a bucket of illusions, slap a label of unreality on it, and toss it under the rug. But we can't be dismissing this and writing it off. Yes only the soul/spirit is real and has eternal life and nothing real can be threatened. Yes bodies are illusions and don't even really exist.

But let's look at it another way, right now you have a body, and it has an illusion of existence. There are billions of them. People's minds inhabit them and walk around in them. And for the most part, most of these bodies are sick and have issues. Some much worse than others. And all of these issues are forms of death - as the course says, sickness is but a little death. So most people have a little death going on, "a form of vengeance not yet total", which later becomes total.

If the body seems to "become sick", is that because something happened OTHER THAN your mind and its power? Because if that is the case, then death does in fact have power over the mind. If mind cannot choose away from it, cannot undo it, and did not cause it to begin with, then mind has NO WAY that it can see itself as not at the effect of the dream.

If death just "happens to you", you are a victim. If there can be causes which are beyond the mind, beyond your power, beyond your control, you are a victim. It doesn't matter that the world is just a dream and real things can't be threatened. At the body level, mind is supposed to have power over everything. Might I remind you that your self is ruler of the universe, and nothing is supposed to happen other than what you decide.

There is NO POWER in the view that we do not have power over death. There is NO POWER in the view that death doesn't matter because bodies aren't real. There is NO POWER in the view that we can have bodies becoming sick "on their own" or staying sick "on their own" WITHOUT our consent. There is NO POWER in having bodies die "against our will". And there is NO POWER in pretending that this is all okay to happen "because it's an illusion."

The only place where there is any power, is where your mind has power OVER these things, is RESPONSIBLE FOR these things, CAUSES these things, and therefore HAS THE POWER to choose otherwise. A Course in Miracles is a course in cause and not effect, it is a course is reclaiming your POWER. And might I remind you that Jesus says that our minds are extremely powerful, capable of creating worlds, of moving mountains, and that we are supposed to reach a state of resurrection which means "the surmounting of death."

There is no surmounting of death by just writing it off as an illusion. If your mind does not have the POWER to prevent it from occurring, and does not have the power to raise the dead as Jesus did, then the mind has not reached a state of resurrection. A Course in Miracles' curriculum ends in the resurrection, in which death is OVERCOME FOREVER. Which means, no more sickness, no more death, and no more reincarnation.

It is NOT ENOUGH to accuse the world of causing sickness and death to happen. It is NOT ENOUGH to shift responsibility for the body's condition onto a dream. It is NOT ENOUGH to claim that someone else caused your body to be sick. It is NOT ENOUGH to suggest that death can continue to happen to the body against your will. It is NOT ENOUGH to take a position of continued POWERLESSNESS over death, in which death remains victor at the end of the day, as it proves again and again that a separate alien will is stronger than your own power of decision.

I will remind you that A Course in Miracles makes this unequivocal statement:

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

DO you see where it says that no-one dies without his own consent? That means that if you DO NOT give consent, through your mind's power and responsibility, death WILL NOT happen. That means having power OVER death, not merely sidestepping it or jumping onto a theological high-horse trying to be holier than thou. This is real responsibility. It is BECAUSE nothing happens without your consent that you HAVE the possibility of salvation.

If sickness or death can ever happen or be maintained or continue in a any way, through any cause or responsibility OTHER THAN your mind and its power and choice, YOU DO NOT have any hope whatsoever of salvation. It means there is a power that has power over you which can keep you in hell and suffering for as long as it wants. It means you cannot return to heaven and can be locked into a hellish experience forever. It means endless reincarnation and never waking up. It means death has power over God.

Jesus is teaching us to be powerful responsible creative beings. To reclaim the power of God, which is not only unlimited, there is nothing it cannot do. It can have power over all forms of sickness be they mental or physical. It can have power over all matter and energy and every force in spacetime. ONLY IF we have consented to and thus chose AND CAUSED sickness and death to occur, are we ever in a position to CHOOSE AGAIN, and choose otherwise, choosing NOT to die.

"Swear not to die, thou holy Son of God! You make a bargain that you cannot keep. The Son of Life cannot BE killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that MUST be One."

You are responsible for whether or not sickness happens. You are responsible for whether or not death happens. You are ruler of the universe. Nothing happens against your will.

"My Self is ruler of the universe. It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

EVEN IN THIS WORLD ..... even in the illusion/dream of Earth, you RULE your destiny. You have power to choose what happens, and what does not happen. If sickness happens, YOU CHOSE IT. If death happens, YOU CHOSE IT. YOU MUST CHOOSE NOT TO CAUSE SICKNESS AND DEATH, and it is within your power to do so, because you are 100% responsible for everything that happens.

If you in any way assign responsibility for death to ANYTHING anywhere other than your own mind, you have a victim consciousness and cannot be healed. A mind that believes in BEING AT THE EFFECT OF THE WORLD, is not an awakened mind.

A classical definition of sin might be that it's some kind of attack you perform which is "against the rules." Some breaking of the law or some unholy evil act which is disallowed and undermines everything that is good. In A Course in Miracles, the definition of sin is a lot broader than this. For example:

"The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible."

This suggests that the whole world is made of sin. And this isn't just a speculation, because ACIM goes on to say that physical matter is in fact a "granite block of sin" masquerading as something solid.

"The body's eyes see ONLY form. They cannot see BEYOND what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on error, and NOT see past it. 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. To this distorted form of vision, the OUTSIDE of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."

Here we're told that the body's physical sight can only see error and not see past it. An error which is not "overlooked", is not forgiven, and so it is regarded as sin, demanding punishment. Everything that the physical sight sees is an illusion, therefore, because the physical sight is completely unforgiving and cannot transcend the illusion to reach the truth. These illusions - really a reference to anything the body can see - therefore all things physical - is called "the granite block of sin." Jesus uses the term "granite" symbolically because this is a very hard form of physical material.

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master."

So now the physical body, which is part of the physical environment, is made by projecting the idea of sin outward and turning it into flesh, which symbolizes sin. Effectively everything that we regard as physical is made of the idea of sin, projected as physical matter. Physical matter comprises "outside surfaces" which you cannot see past with the physical eyes, and is really "nothing" pretending to be a solid block.

"Sin is the proclamation that attack is real, and guilt is JUSTIFIED."

Sin is also the idea of attack. If attack is real, then the world is real, because "the world was made as an attack on God." Being "the world of sin", the world of bodies was made as an attack on God. Its forms testify that God's son has been attacked. That is, "the world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son." So now all physical forms are a form of attack, or attempted attack, upon God and his son. And this is sin, because indeed if attack were possible, the world would be sinful.

"Sickness is but another name for sin."

Here Jesus goes further to include that any form of sickness is also the same thing as sin. Whether it be a headache or a broken body or a heart attack or a wound or severe death. These are all signs and proofs that sin is real. In fact, we even make the body sick to try to prove that our brother has sinned against us, per "brother at your hand I die", and the willingness to use the body as "a picture of crucifixion" to demonstrate that our brother is the one who caused our suffering.

"Sin is insanity."

Sin and insanity are also the same thing. Which means, the entire ego thought system, all mental illness, and all its physical expressions, is sin. Any belief in an opposite to God, any attack thought or grievance, all forms of sickness, all unforgiveness, it is all sin. This include all false perceptions, all physical perceptions, all body identification, all fixating on what things appear to be physically, and all blindness by perception of form, all testifies that sin is real. These are the beliefs of an insane mind which lacks vision and is unconscious.

This also ties in with the fact that sin is death, because "without the idea of death (sin) there is no world." "Sickness is but a little death", and since sickness is another form of sin, sin is death. This relates closely also to the fact that "the wages of sin is death", ie if you are in sin it logically follows that sin demands punishment and therefore you as a body must suffer and die in order to atone for your sin.

"They do not realize that, to deny God, is to deny their own identity, and in this sense, the wages of sin IS death. The sense is very literal; -- denial of Life perceives its opposite, as ALL forms of denial replace what IS, with what is NOT."

The denial of life perceives death, which is the opposite of life. Sin is the denial of life, and therefore induces death. All forms of death are forms of sin.

"If sin is real then punishment is just, and cannot be escaped."

"If sin is real, salvation must be pain."

"Pain is the cost of sin, and suffering can never be escaped if sin is real."

"If sin is real Its offering is death, and meted out in cruel form to match the vicious wishes in which sin is born."

Essentially, anything other than the truth of God, is the idea of sin. Just as it is also the idea of fear, and the idea of guilt, and the idea of sickness, and the idea of death. It is all the same single system of darkness, delusion and insanity. And WITHIN this system of insanity lives "the world", the unforgiven world, in which only the physical is regarded as real because "only the body makes the world seem real."

"The world is false perception."

When your vision is narrowed to see and focus only on the physical world or what the physical senses testify to, you are blinded by perception of form. And now you see only sin. Which means seeing any body, any physical sickness, any symptoms, any problems, any kind of suffering or unhappiness, any breakdowns or breakages, and dangers, any reasons to be afraid, this all means you've entered into a sinful perception and are now making sin real.

And this is the stuff of nightmares, because once you have closed your mind to the openness of innocence, you've decided only sin exists and cannot be escaped. When the mind is shutting out the light of truth and is becoming unforgiving, which means it is attacking and separating, other people will appear to be "only bodies", as if they are purely physical, with no component to them that is anything but physical. This is an imprisonment of yourself and them anchoring you both into the level of form and inescapable problems.

"For bodies cannot forgive."

To be in sin is to be insane, to perceive falsely, to give reality to physicality, to be unforgiving, to be in fear, to feel horrified and terrified in a nightmare, to regard problems as utterly unsolvable, to feel imprisoned and locked in with no hope, to believe all sickness is real and permanent, to forget to laugh, and to hate yourself.

There HAS to be more than the physical in order for there to be innocence. There HAS to be more than bodies, more than physical suffering, more than physical problems, and more than a physical world. There HAS to be a transcendence of all things physical if there is to be forgiveness, because to forgive is to overlook and NOT see illusions. Illusions not recognized are a false perception which is horribly blinding and upsetting. Illusions recognized dispels them and disregards the physical as nothing real at all.

"There is no sin", in ultimate truth, because "nothing real can be threatened." The immortal cannot be sick or suffer or die. God's creations are permanently perfect. There cannot be an attack and nothing can be in danger. Therefore, there cannot be a physical world, bodies cannot be real, and suffering cannot be true. Problems cannot really exist, and you cannot be alone.

Given that the world of bodies is the world of unforgiveness and sin, in which sin is not recognized as a mistake, recognizing the world as a mistake also recognizes that it is false. Mistakes can be undone and corrected. Forgiving the world is its undoing. First the veil of sin is lifted away so that we can recognize it is nothing but an illusion, we see through and past its illusion of being real and solid and physical, and see beyond it to the light of the real world. And in this light, the physical world, seen only in false perception, is gone forever.