"Every symptom which the ego has made involves a contradiction in terms."

"How strange indeed becomes this war against yourself!"

The ego does not take one side. The ego takes all sides, and pits them all against each other. It pretends to be on one team, while simultaneously being on the other team. It plays the part of both victim and its own victimizer. It attacks itself.

The ego is the idea of self attack, self denial, inner conflict, a split-mindedness. It is a state of being "in two minds", undecided and certain of nothing. It is a state of disassociation, in which there literally seem to be two halves or selves, one against the other. It represents a divided will, where one part of mind wills against the other.

In all wars, all conflicts, all arguments, all political debates, all fights between teams and nations, every form of taking sides, and all the various ways that we buy into the illusion that one person is ego and another is not, the ego delights in playing both parties off against each other.

It does not care who wins anything. It does not care whether one side is victorious while the other suffers. All it cares about is that it is perpetuated and persists because it has attacked and destroyed part of self, leaving only part left as victor, who must therefore suffer being less than whole.

The ego will happily attack itself provided some portion of it remains. It will side with something which seems good, positive, uplifting and true, provided to side with it permits a sacrifice where the "rest" of what is denied, hated, repelled and rejected is regarded as not self.

The ego split mind is divided into persona and shadow. The person is the part that is kept in conscious awareness and seems to allow and accept only that which it thinks is good enough - and nothing is good enough. Systematically it strips away portions of your self, deeming them unworthy and imperfect, relegating them to the unconscious shadow portion of mind. It is never satisfied, prompting you to put on a facade of perfection in order to truly destroy everything about you that you cannot accept. That which seems so innocent and holy is murderous.

Self attack takes on many forms and all of them are deceptive. If you buy into one such appearance and think, this person is a hero or savior, while this other person is guilty and a sinner, you have fallen for the trick. The ego is BOTH OF THEM. And it has no problem attacking itself in order to perpetuate the illusion that there is a *separation* between the two. That they are not the same identity or the same self. That is its aim. To split the mind and emphasize the differences.

It does not want people forgiving each other and seeing each other as equals. It wants war not peace. It has no interest or care as to whether you win or someone else wins. It couldn't care less if you are right or someone else is. All it's interested in that that rift between the two is increased, differences are amplified, the gap increases, and equality is lost.

If you play the game, if you take sides, if you buy into the illusion that one is a sinner and another innocent, you have fallen for its tricks. You have bought into separation. Only when you can see you and your brother as being in the same boat, as both striving toward the same goal, and recognize that the EGO is the third party here, the enemy, who would come between you and drive you apart, then you can join forces to agree NOT to attack each other, so that the EGO will disappear and not each other.

What do you want more, this world, or God?

What do you want more, to be in a real body, or unlimited in God?

What do you want more, to trust that the real world of suffering and sickness and death is what God intended, or an awareness that none of this is God's will and therefore it is not reality?

What do you want more, for sin and guilt to be the real truth about you, or to be free of sin and guilt because they are not real?

Do you want this world to be truth, or God?

Do you want this world to be your home, or the perfect Home of Heavenly Love with God?

Do you want to spiritualize everythiing in this world to make it special and seem worth keeping, or do you want the GIFTS and DELIGHTS which God has prepared for and given you?

Do you want death, or do you want miracles?

Do you want more suffering, or eternal life?

In our default ego react-to-the-world mode, it seems that how we feel is dictated by what happens. The "hierarchy of illusions" tells us that something has a given amount of importance or seriousness and that we should have an appropriate amount and type of reaction.

How much ego emotion you have about external events seems to be driven by those events, as if automatic. As if you should be upset when you find out about cancer, or you should be frightened by a tornado, or you should be hurt when someone attacks you. As if you are merely an effect of the world.

But Jesus is training us to be more responsible for how we feel, what we think, and what we experience or make of things. He's telling us that we are cause, not effect. After a while we start to notice a certain amount of detachment from external stimuli. What happens doesn't necessarily have the power to change who we are, dictate how we feel, or force us to be upset.

This entails a combination of knowing yourself, taking responsibility for thought and sight, not giving away your power, the cessation of playing the victim role, dis-identifying with the attackable body, an increased recognition of reality, and a willingness to forgive.

This movement away from victimhood towards empowerment gives you the strength and clarity to remain "less changed" by what happens. You are not so easily tossed about on a rollercoaster of suffering. And you are equipped with more tools to help you apply principles and techniques to get you out of victim-mode sooner.

You might then start to notice that when you're in a better frame of mind, you feel more invulnerable, more confident and assertive, able to stand your ground and remain true to what you choose to experience. When external problems arise, you are less thrown around and more able to stay centered. Your happiness is less disturbed and your peace of mind less upset.

You will probably also notice that when you are not in such a great fame of mind, have entered into upset, are having reactions, buying into temptation and illusions, suffering and in pain, sorrowful and unhappy, you feel really out of touch with it. As if you're back to square one, forgetting how to forgive and feeling like a powerless victim.

But eventually you'll rise up again in strength and light and love and forgiveness, and remember your training, and return to a state of greater peace and confidence. And then you'll compare the two states and realize that how you feel is not really dependent on the world. What you make of events, how you perceive them, and the effects that you put into yourself, are not quite so strongly bound to the world or other people.

That means you awaken the ability to deliberately choose to remain in the light more often. You start to realize that you aren't happy or unhappy "because of" external things. You realize that if you are unhappy about something it is really an internal state, and not really caused by the external. And that anything that's disturbing you is the result of you putting it there through a mistaken choice.

Gradually you separate yourself off from the external and spend more time in the happiness and strength that you want to be in. You realize that, if you could just be happy right now, a certain event or situation or problem wouldn't be upsetting to you. That you don't "have to" have certain upsets or reactions or ego emotions of despair and fear.

Then it becomes more about moving through life as though you are in the world and less "of" the world, being "passer-by", being less changed and disturbed regardless of what happens, buying into illusions and temptations less, remaining more calm and centered in your truth even if it contradicts what's happening, etc. It means you become more in charge of your destiny and able to not only cause things to happen deliberately but able to withstand the ego's onslaughts more easily.

"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." UrW253

And so you develop a real sense of there being a difference between what happens and what you feel. That how you feel is not based on the world or its problems or how people are doing or what's happening. And you can in a way float above it or beyond it, out of reach of it, regardless of what seems to be transpiring. This places you "above the battleground", where you are safe and invulnerable.

When you dip into ego and nightmares and victimhood you'll probably forget all this, lol. ... but when you rise like a pheonix back out of the ashes, you'll remember again and laugh. And you'll stop making all your feelings dependent on external things. You'll return to being able to stay centered in power and stillness, a calm in the storm, a "need do nothing" of rest, regardless of the world.

"He will remain when you forget, and the body's activities return to occupy your conscious mind. But there will always be this place of rest, to which you can return. And you will be more aware of the quiet center of the storm, than all its raging activity. This quiet center, IN WHICH YOU DO NOTHING, will remain with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent." UrT18H10

Eventually you'll master this so much that you'll remain in your "happy place" forever. No longer driven by outside events, deceived by appearances, tossed around by threats or made to be anything not of God.

"It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events OUTSIDE him. It is impossible that the happenings that come to him were NOT his choice. His power of decision is the DETERMINER of every situation in which he seems to FIND himself by chance or accident. No accident or chance is POSSIBLE within the universe as God created it, OUTSIDE of which is nothing. Suffer, and YOU decided sin was your goal. Be happy, and you GAVE the power of decision to Him Who MUST decide for God for you. This is the little gift you offer to the Holy Spirit, and even this He gave to you to give yourself. For, BY this gift, is given you the power to release your Savior, that HE may give salvation unto YOU." UrT21C3

Attempting to take your self closer to the truth in any way, will be met with ego resistance.

The ego itself is nothing, just a "way of looking" which is the opposite to seeing the truth. It distorts everything and makes everything seem the opposite to what it is. It inverts reality. It changes God into death/evil/murderous. It sees Holy Spirit as an enemy. It sees the truth as a threat. And it does not want anything to do with this idea of "waking up and not having an ego."

The ego by itself doesn’t do anything. The problem is that YOU have taken it on AS IF it is your own Self. You regard IT as the same thing as your identity.

What that does is it causes you to perceive WITH it, through it’s eyes. You then will see things the way the ego sees them.

So if you are "tied to" an ego identity which wants absolutely nothing to do with truth, cannot exist in the truth, and sees the truth as proof that it does not exist, then "YOU" will become very threatened by approaching the truth.

If for example the truth says, there is no sin, and the ego believe that sin is real and true, and therefore sin is your *identity*, to your sense of self this will SEEM to say "I do not exist."

Regardless of the fact that you may have sided with an insane ego, you do not RECOGNIZE it is insane. You think it makes perfect sense. It seems logical, sensible, rational. You will also want to defend it as though to do so is defending "your" life, because you think it is you. Therefore it makes sense to you to AVOID the truth at all costs.

The ego sees the truth as attack, vengeance, evil, warring, deadly, hateful, loss, non-existence, etc. If you identify with the ego, you will also see the truth as meaning this.

So then, you will attempt to reach out to the truth, to become closer to God, to go into the light, but because part of you is STILL holding onto the ego and is using it to perceive, that part of you seeing with the ego will think you’re trying to kill yourself.

No-one in their "right mind" would go against what seems sensible and true, and expose themselves to what must be the END of themselves. The truth is the end of the ego, and if you believe it, it means it’s the end of your self. Approaching the truth WITH the ego, pulling it along with you, is nothing short of you SCARING THE CRAP out of yourself by exposing yourself to your worst enemy, complete with no defenses.

This is the sole cause of all ego rebounds and resistance - the mis-perception that welcoming the truth is welcoming your own death. No-one wants to do this. IT seems sensible to protect yourself and defend yourself against this. In spite of your best efforts to "become more spiritual" by opening up to the light of truth, or to love, the rest of you - still perceiving the opposite to the truth, will fear out when you try to do it.

What can even happen is your ego self will create DEFENSES AGAINST THE TRUTH, which it thinks are *needed* in order to protect your "self". Or to put it another way, you who are identified with the ego, interpret the truth as your mortal enemy, and do not want it, are threatened by it and want to "naturally" defend yourself. In the name of preserving your own life, you will erect DEFENSES psychologically.

The only ego defense is *separation*, attempting to create a gap or sense of "distance" between yourself and the threat. Implementing this is an attempt to shut out the truth, by implementing a BLOCK. The purpose of this block is to block your awareness of the threat, because if you are not aware of it, to you this is practically the same experience as though it does not exist. You use DENIAL to hide the perceived danger from yourself, so you can enter an *illusion of safety*. This illusion of safety, this block, made of guilt, shows up as SICKNESS. Sickness is a defense against the truth.

The purpose of sickness then is to defend you against what you think is going to hurt you. But to implement it, you actually HURT YOURSELF. It should be obvious why this is insane. Perceiving your best interests through the filter of the ego is insane, because it shows you the *opposite* of what will actually help you. What would really help you, and what is the UNDOING of sickness, is to correctly perceive WITHOUT the ego, that the truth is NOT a threat or hurtful, is FOR you not against you, is welcome, you want it, and it does NOT mean you will not exist.

When you can perceive correctly that you are not being threatened by the truth, you will UNDO the NEED for the defense, and this will make the sickness *disappear*. Literally. All symptoms will be dropped, because you have no further need for them. Sickness is always serving the PURPOSE of being a defense to keep you safe, even though it does the opposite. Without its purpose, it will not exist because you will withdraw your belief from it.

Essentially, approaching the truth is going to make your ego-identified self threatened. It will want to defend itself and it will be horrified, offended, upset and scared of the truth. This can lead people to BECOME SICK by doing the course. It can also cause peoples lives to turn upside down, as reactions to the misinterpretation of the truth.

Gradually the way to undo this is the development of trust and coming to perceive correctly WITHOUT the ego’s interpretation. This will naturally lead to a WILLINGNESS to accept the atonement, and accept God’s truth as true. And then you will have no resistance whatsoever. It is only your beliefs to the contrary that try to defend you against the truth.

So each time you have an ego rebound, don’t belittle yourself or judge yourself as failing to do the course right. I used to think I was making big mistakes when I had rebounds, like I was guilty for having them. But I had to learn to be gentle and acknowledge what they were saying, recognizing it was a part of my SELF that was afraid and offended by the truth I was opening up to. It’s perfectly okay to take a BREAK from pushing yourself towards the truth, to let your ego settle down a bit, and integrate what you’ve learned so that you can move forward with more willingness and less fear.

"A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct. This sense of separation would never have arisen if you had not distorted your perception of truth, and had thus perceived yourself as lacking."

Let's be clear. Every single manifestation of form in this world, all problems, all upsets and conflicts, every single sickness, all forms of "life" and death, every event, all people in all bodies, all creatures, all planets, every single civilization, all of time and space... absolutely all of this is a SYMPTOM of lacking God. ie being separate from God.

There is not "God over here" and "a world of problems over there". The world and its problems are not distinct problems, or many problems. Nor are they just random problems or nothing to do with your relationship with God.

EVERY form of matter, every event in time, every spatial relationship, is a symptom of attempting to be without God.

All of these things are built from lack. They are all based on the idea of lacking love. This ENTIRE UNIVERSE, is a picture of the attempted crucifixion of God's Son. Or to put it another way, this entire universe is what we will seem to experience when we try to reject God.

There is absolutely no exception to this. There are not random things in the world that have "other reasons" for existing. There are no sicknesses which have come about for "other reasons". There is no death that happens because of circumstances or free-willed events outside of this one problem.

The separation from God is THE ONLY PROBLEM in this entire universe, and it is the source and explanation for everything in this universe.

This also tells us what the solution is, and what the solution is going to "do". See, the problem is only one problem - believing you are not with God. The solution is coming to recognize this is not true and that you are with God and never left. What's going to happen to all of the SYMPTOMS of separation, when the separation has ended? What's going to happen to the EFFECTS of lack and being without God, on a universal scale - absolutely massive scale, when you return to God?

All of these things are going to DISAPPEAR.

These problems are not going to disappear merely as the result of finding answers or figuring out how to fix broken stuff or building a better toolkit or whatever else. There IS only one problem - separation. When THAT problem is fixed, every other symptom and consequence of this wrong decision will be undone completely by the Holy Spirit.

So let's put it this way. Every sickness in the world is actually being fed by and based on and coming from and symptomatic of, the absence of God. That's the ONLY cause.

Every death that occurs, is entirely related to the attempt to be separate from Life, from God, and to prove there is no God. When this is disproved, what's going to happen to death? It will be undone completely. This is the resurrection.

Every war, every argument, every upset, every mistrust, every state of suffering and lack, every lack and emptiness, is all the absence of God. Period. There is no other lack and no other problem.

All of the FORMS of problems, are designed by ego as illusions, to try to trick you to believing that not only are there many very different problems, but also separation from God is not the problem.

While you're fixated on fixing the leaky pipes in your kitchen, you're probably not noticing that it's got anything whatsoever to do with being away from God. While you're trying to do your taxes, you're probably unaware of the fact that there would be no taxes without separation from God. When you're struggling with a relationship, thinking it's all about the two of you and nothing else, you may not realize it's entirely about how you are failing to relate fully with God.

There is NO PROBLEM in this world, and NO WORLD, other than "within" the BELIEF, that you are separate from God.

Returning to God solves every problem. "There is no problem that trust would not solve now".

Lesson 109 "I rest in God" : ""I rest in God." Completely undismayed, this thought will carry you through storms and strife, past misery and pain, past loss and death, and onward to the certainty of God. There is no suffering it cannot heal. There is no problem that it cannot solve. And no appearance but will turn to truth before the eyes of you who rest in God."

Apparently according to Jesus, if you simply be in God all your problems are solved! It's true.

If you have a bunch of fears, doubts, questions, concerns, worries, and you go try to commune with God for a while... if you let God in even a little bit, if you sense love even a little bit, you might notice something. All your questions vanish. Why?

Why didn't you get your important questions answered with what seem to be the answers or form of answers you were anticipating were needed? Because the questions themselves were the problem. The questions were arising out of a lack of God. They were forms of fear, coming from believing God does not love you. When you receive God's love, you have no NEED for the questions anymore. It all just vanishes.

Love is the answer. Love is all that you need. Love can solve everything. Love is the answer given by God, as the Holy Spirit. It literally is the solution to all separation, and is the solution to this ENTIRE universe, because it literally UNDEOS this entire universe. This whole universe is based on and is the expression of the belief in separation being real. When recognized as unreal, this universe simply has to vanish. ie be recognized as having never really existed.

This is the meaning also of "there is no world". There is no universe here. Only God's creation of Heaven is real. This is why this universe is going to "disappear", ie be recognized as having never really existed at all. It's purely an illusion and an hallucination.

There is nothing in the world that cannot be solved by God. There is nothing in the world that God cannot heal. There is nothing in the world with the power to stop the Son of God from returning to happiness and health. There is nothing in the world capable of preventing the undoing of the universe, because it is God's will that you be with Him forever. And you are.

"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and its content is not true."

First let's be clear that all true properties belong to God. God's reality entails what is real, permanent, certain, true, exists, is happening, is powerful, has will, causes, with real effects (creation), is eternal and immortal.

The separation from God was an attempt to conceive of an opposite to God's reality. It ultimately produced what appears to be an entire world. In light of the fact that God's reality is real, this second world we made as its OPPOSITE is unreal. It inherently has the properties of the opposite of God's properties.

The world we made is unreal, temporary, uncertain, false, it doesn't exist, nothing in it really happens, it is powerless, has no will of its own, causes nothing, has no real effect, is not eternal, and everything in it is mortal. It is an illusion of a world because it is not a reality of a world.

"it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere."

"The world you see does not exist BECAUSE the place where you perceive it is not real."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what he creates must be eternal as himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever."

So now we have these two seeming worlds. One is completely real, one is completely unreal. One holds all the truth, one is utterly false. One is permanent and powerful, the other is temporary and powerless.

The unreal world, which is the world of bodies, is a mistake. It presents ideas that are not possible. It is not possible for example for anything real to die or be threatened, but in the unreal world it seems things can die and be threatened. In reality everything is immortal, yet in the unreal world everything has mortality. In reality everything is unlimited, and in unreality everything is limited.

The unreal world is actually an idea of what is not possible, founded on a "mad idea". God's reality holds all possibility. The opposite of possibility is impossibility. The unreal world seems to show things happening which are not possible in God. In God nothing can die, so leaves falling from trees and flowers dying and bodies dying is not really possible.

The unreal world presents pictures of impossibilities all the time. Everything in it is impossible because the world itself is the idea of impossibility. The world "is not" - which is why ultimately "there is no world."

"It is the world you see that is impossible."

Now. In ADDITION to the reality of God, and the unreal world, there is also a matter of BELIEF, resulting in an act of projection UPON these worlds. There is something that happens in the mind in terms of belief. Mind can choose to be fully aware and accepting of the sane fact that ONLY God's truth is true - that only heaven's reality is real. OR, it can go into a state of denial.

When the mind is in denial, it flips everything around. It takes ALL the properties of God's reality, and assigns it to the unreal world. It then takes all the properties of the unreal world and assigns is to God's reality. This produces total confusion and insanity. It is insane because you've lost track of what is really real and what isn't, and can no longer distinguish between them, making you lost and confused - ie mistaken.

"You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING."

In a state where the attributes of God are assigned to its opposite, you are confused and insane. This puts you into what we call "false perception". In false perception, everything about God is assigned to the unreal world, and vice versa. The ramification of that, is that a simple MISTAKEN world, an IMPOSSIBLE world, begins to take on properties of actual reality. This interprets mistakes as SIN, because sin mean "a real error that can't be undone because it's real."

So now, the unreal world is considered to be real, have permanent qualities, to be eternal, to depict the truth, to house all possibilities, to have a will of its own, to be meaningful, to be heaven, to be life, to be really existing and really happening. In this mode, you have "made illusions real", ie have "made the world real", because you have GIVEN it reality. You are assigned reality's properties to it. You BELIEVE it's real.

There is also a flipside to this. All the properties of UNreality are now assigned to God's reality. God is now considered to be false, non-existence, lacking will power, not happening, being totally unreal, having no life, being mortal and dead, being impossible, being insane, and making no sense. God is considered to be nothing, is rejected as untrue, and relegated to oblivion.

When mind is in this state, this is where the world is experienced like a nightmare. Given that an unreal world is very UNNATURAL and disturbing, if it is REAL then you'll experience it as a horror show. This is what is happening when you see problems arise and you feel like you cannot do anything to change them. The reason they seem unchangeable, is because you've assigned properties of permanence, existence, happening and reality to them. This in a sense "locks them in". ONLY illusions can be forgiven or undone or changed, and not whatever is regarded as real.

If it is true that this world is REAL, then everything in it is permanent, fixed, unchangeable, irreversible, absolute, total, certain, and eternal. Because these were all attributes of God's reality before the confusion. Given that you believe this about the world, you CANNOT bring yourself to conceive of how you can possibly do anything about anything. Everything will seem like some horrible fate, some pointless hopeless disaster, some kind of cruel unchangeable unhealable trauma, that just happens by its own will leaving you a helpless victim.

In this state of false perception you will also completely forget about God's reality. It will seem like it does not exist. Mind will shut down. Any sense of being above the battlefield, stepping back, detaching, being able to wield supernatural miracles, anything to do with healing or correcting problems genuinely will go out the window. Your mind will fixate on THIS world, the unreal world, as if it is THE ONLY REALITY, and all that exists is happening before your body's eyes. Everything it sees is now real to you and you are powerless over it. If an unnatural, "evil", impossible world of conflict and disaster is REAL, you MUST suffer without escape, and death is now the wages of sin. "Only the body makes the world seem real."

This is the state that produces all despair and suffering, all sense of the "irreversibility of sin", all notions that what happens cannot be undone, that sickness is progressive, that death is inevitable, that your fate is set in stone and you have absolutely no say in what happens. This is the state of being a victim, with the world doing everything in its power to simply be horrifying and traumatic, throwing up unsolvable problems all over the place every single day.

So the world in the state of false perception is a COMBINATION of .... 1) an unreal world of mistakes and impossibilities, and 2) the properties of reality being confused with and assigned to it. You MAKE the world seem real by GIVING it properties of reality, and this converts all illusions of sin into what seems like REAL sin.

Once illusory events, which really cannot be happening, are UNITED or "made one with" properties of reality, everything that happens will appears to be a sin. The whole hierarchy of illusions will demand specific responses, reactions and effects. You'll feel compelled to just go along for the ride and have every single reaction that the world says you should be having. And anything anyone does that appears in any way wrong will be regarded as a REAL SIN. An unforgiveable act, and you will NOT be able to forgive it because you believe it is REAL, and therefore permanent.

"The purpose of Atonement is to dispel illusions, NOT to establish them as real, and THEN forgive them."

"Good cannot BE returned for evil, for forgiveness does not first ESTABLISH sin, and THEN forgive it"

What the world IS, in terms of it being an UNREAL world, an ILLUSION of a world in which nothing is true, is distinct from your interpretation of that world - ie what it means to you. If you GIVE the world reality, then you BIND reality WITH illusions and the result is a nightmare of inescapable sin and irreversible suffering. If the world is REAL, nothing in it can be undone, because reality is permanent and can never end.

But your way out of this hell of suffering is simply then to change your mind. This is NOTHING more than a change in the PREMISE of the world. It's a shift from "the world is real" to "the world is not real." Every single attribute of reality and God that you have mistakenly given to the world, you have to TAKE BACK from it.

You have to dis-identify everything God created from the world, and RE-IDENTIFY it with spirit. This is the same as shifting from body-identification to spirit-identification. What is TRUE AND REAL about you has to be re-identified with what God created, requiring your IDENTITY to transition from a limited body to an unlimited soul.

"If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God. YOU CAN REMEMBER THIS FOR ALL THE SONSHIP."

You have ASSIGNED power to the unreal world. That's why it seems to have power over you. You can and must TAKE BACK that power, and assign it back to God/spirit/soul where it belongs. This is the only real change of mind. It's a change of belief. It's a restoration of your acceptance of, and recognition of, WHAT REALLY IS TRUE. Or of what really is REAL.

"This is a very simple course. Perhaps you do not feel that a course which, in the end, teaches nothing more than that only reality is true is necessary. BUT DO YOU BELIEVE IT?"

"Only the truth is true, and nothing else is true."

Our task in "applying forgiveness" then is nothing more or less than properly assigning the properties of reality to GOD's reality, and the properties of unreality to the unreal world. To undo the confusion between the two. To become very clear only God's stuff is real, and all the illusory stuff is not. That only God's world is TRUE, and the world you made out of illusions IS FALSE.

"The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

The unreality of this world has to be recognized. This is what "true perception" means. It is accurate perception, or the ability to recognize accurately WITHOUT confusion, what the world "actually is". Or in a sense, to see "the truth of" or "the reality of" this world. When you see the reality of an UNREAL world, ie the truth that IT IS unreal, you are seeing it for what it "actually is". Yet an unreal world isn't "actually" anything, because IT IS unreal. Recognizing this recognizes IT IS NOTHING AT ALL.

To then transition from being heavily absorbed, confused, lost, and threatened by, a mistakenly mis-assigned property ... where you've given the world or something in it - some body or event or thing - properties of God, you need to go through some kind of purification or process to revert your mind back to the truth. To return to sanity. We call this sort of "applying the principle of forgiveness", or trying to "atone".

"To atone is to undo." What we are undoing is our CONFUSION about what the world is and is not, and what God is and is not. BOTH the truth AND what is false have to be fully and clearly distinguished and recognized, and NOT confused with each other.

"The real world can ACTUALLY BE PERCEIVED. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive nothing ELSE. For if you perceive both good AND evil, you are accepting both the false AND the true, AND MAKING NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM." By correctly identifying all properties of God WITH God, and taking them AWAY from the world - or undoing their mis-association with the world, your mind returns to sanity.

"Sin is insanity", meaning that when you combine the insanity of confusion about what is real, WITH an unreal world, you turn a mistaken world into a sinful world. You make sin seem real when you are insane, but when you return to sanity sin converts back to a mistake - or what Jesus calls an error. The world is simply an error, not a truth.

To forgive then, we simply need to undo, reverse, cancel out, heal, purify, and correct, the mistaken beliefs that we have about what the world's nature is. We need to remind ourselves, maybe we need to talk ourselves into it, maybe we need help and healing from the Holy Spirit or Jesus, maybe we need affirmations or reminders or cue cards or whatever it is. We need to LIFT AWAY from the world all the properties of reality which we gave away TO it, and give them back to God. The ACIM workbook is designed to facilitate this correction, e.g.:

"God did not create that war, and so it is not real."

"God did not create that airplane crash, and so it is not real."

"God did not create that disaster (specify) so it is not real."

"God did not create that illness (specify with name of person) and so it is not real."

This could simply be in the form of you telling yourself, "this world is not real, it is just a dream." "This is an illusion of a world, not a reality." "Nothing is really happening here." "No-one has sinned because it did not take place in reality." "Nothing is held against anyone because it's a dream and is not true." "People are not really bodies." "My identity is not a body." "The world is urneal." "Only God is real." "Only heaven's reality is my reality." etc. Whatever form it takes.

All that needs to happen is the proper re-categorization of everything in the world. To put the world itself into the "unreal, non-existing, not-happening, not permanent, entirely undoable and nothing" bucket. And at the same time, putting heaven back into the "really does exist and has reality and is the only reality" bucket.

"There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal."

To forgive then is simply to RECOGNIZE what is true and what isn't. To get the mind back into a state where it has been deprogrammed of the LIES that appears as real sins. Nothing in the world is real. Nothing in the world is causing anything. Nothing in the world is happening. Nothing in the world is permanent. Nothing in the world is changeless. Nothing in the world is true. "Nothing the world believes is true."

"There is no sin" because "real sin" requires the combination of an unreal illusion, incorrectly mixed with "a sense of reality." When you withdraw the sense of "it is real" from the "sinful act", it is no longer a REAL sin. It is only a mistake, an error, a forgiveable nothingness which hasn't even really occurred.

"Forgiveness recognizes what what you think your brother did has not OCCURRED."

This LITERALLY means that anything you think ever happened in this world, HAS NOT OCCURRED. It has not occurred FOR REAL, because it is taking place in an UNREALITY, in a dream, which is NOT real, and nothing real happens in a dream. Dreams by definition are fantasies and hallucinations. Everything in them is false. No events in the history of planet Earth have ever occurred. Accepting this is to accept atonement, in which only the truth of God is true, and the world is false.

"When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear, and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well."

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt. The ancient Calling of the Father to His Son, and of the Son unto his own, will yet be the last trumpet that the world will ever hear. Brother, there is no death. And this you learn when you but wish to show your brother that you had no hurt of him. He thinks your blood is on his hands, and so he stands condemned. But it is given you to SHOW him, by your healing, that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream."

"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No-one is AFRAID of them, when he perceives HE MADE THEM UP. The fear was held in place BECAUSE he did not see that he was AUTHOR of the dream, and not a figure IN the dream. He gives HIMSELF the consequences that he dreams he gave his brother. And it is but this the dream has put together and has offered him, to show him that his wishes have been done. Thus does he fear his OWN attack, but sees it at another's hands. As victim, he is suffering from its effects, but NOT their cause. He authored NOT his own attack, and he is innocent of what he caused."

Perception of form is blindness.

What seems to save you destroys you.

Salvation has been equated with death and attack.

Love has been replaced with fake love.

What seems special is meaningless.

The body, a device for sensing, is aware of nothing.

The mind is idle, yet seems filled with activity.

Cause and effect have been reversed and separated.

What seems like innocence is denial of sinfulness.

Victims are attackers.

What seems valuable is worthless.

Love is equated with guilt.

Suffering is considered atonement.

Seeming to have no choice is a choice.

What seems visible is actually a block to sight.

What was visible has become invisible.

Identity has been replaced with a fake one.

Body has taken over the mind as if it runs the show.

Body has been equated with people, even though people wear bodies.

Immortal beings seem capable of hurt and being hurt.

Those who are eternally innocent are accused of sin.

There is no truth in the world.

What seems real is unreal.

If you seek you will not find.

All is not as it appears.

When I came to A Course in Miracles, it was largely based on "non-duality" teachings from certain ACIM teachers.

The books spoke of the world as being a shitty place, a hell hole, psycho planet, a world of death and suffering, spinning its wheels and going nowhere. A world which you would not want and should want to leave behind. This seemed to provide a kind of motivation to want to escape it.

The solution that was presented then was a form of forgiveness which largely entailed maintaining the view that the world sucked, but realizing that it was not real. That it was just a dream. This formed a picture where, you're in the world, dreaming of the world, the world STILL sucks, but you recognize it's not real. There was nothing positive about this, it was a very clinical view.

More importantly, in this view there was NEVER a single mention of the "real world". There was no mention of saving the world, the great crusade, being a miracle worker, performing miracles to help others, healing others, healing bodies, or anything else which could be construed as "making the world better".

It was kind of an attitude of, the world is hell, so let's jump straight out of hell into heaven. And that the way we do this is by remembering it's a dream of hell, will always be hell, and once you can just "not believe it" you'll be saved. This basically reinforces a view that the world still is hell, it can only ever be hell, and there is no point or way to actually come to love or forgive the world. It was more like a message of, the world it shit, let's escape it.

In fact part of what made those books popular was the self-proclaimed "brutal honesty" about the world, which acted to judge it harshly and point out its flaws. This was supposedly a refreshing honesty but at the same time portrayed the world as only CAPABLE of being a negative place. And that therefore you had to do what you could, psychologically, to try not to be affected by it, by remembering it's just a dream of death.

The problem as I see it now, is that this model was largely fostered by the non-duality conceptualization of the course, which is deeply flawed. That is, this idea that there's either heaven as the only reality, or earth as the opposite ie hell. And nothing in between. Either duality, or pure non-duality. Either you're in the shit world, or you're in God's arms. But that's a major issue, because it COMPLETELY ignores a vast majority of what ACIM actually teaches.

In particular, there is absolutely no mention made of the real world. There is no presentation of the idea that the Holy Spirit has MADE an alternative dream world which is seen through the eyes of Christ, is a forgiven world, has no sin or guilt in it, and is not seen as hell. It's true also that the real world does not contain bodies, since it transcends forms. And it's also true that we're supposed to be learning to SEE the real world, by learning to LOVE the world.

If you were to try to present the idea of loving the world to the non-duality folks, they would run the other way. It's incompatible with the cold, clinical view of the course's structures, which attempt to maintain that the world is hell at all costs - kind of a form of false forgiveness really in which the world is made real and then you try to forgive it. If we BYPASS the real world, as a VITAL stepping stone on our way to awakening, we're NOT really getting the course's message.

The course isn't asking us to love hell. It's not saying hey, this world has ONE form, one nature, and you need to learn to love it. Rather, it's saying that, the world of form seems like hell because of HOW you are looking at it, and WHO you are looking at it with. Which yes btw means a HUGE emphasis on looking WITH the holy spirit, with christ vision, which was more or less obliterated from these teachings about non-duality (because certain teachers do no like the idea of the Holy Spirit having anything to do with this).

It is telling us that the reason you see bodies, forms, objects, planets, is because this is how the BODY was made to see, and it can ONLY see falsely. Everything it sees is a false INTERPRETATION of the world ladened with sin and guilt. It's not capable of seeing the world as it is. The body can never see the real world. But that does not mean you should not attempt to see the real world. In fact, this is what the ENTIRE course is aimed towards.

You are meant to awaken another form of vision - the spiritual eye, which does not use the body's eyes, and sees BEYOND what the physical sees, so that you are not really looking at or distracted by forms, bodies, appearances of sickness and death, etc. You temporarily use the body to allow you to interact with "the world", but "the world" as you have known it is actually a combination of a neutral world + false perceptions. And without the false perceptions, the neutral world becomes the FORGIVEN world - the real world. And this real world is beautiful, lovely, forgiving, shining and sparkling like new, innocent and free from all sense of sin and guilt. You are meant to be learning to SEE THAT in place of the physical separations of form. An underlying, transcendental unity BEHIND all forms.

And when you do this, instead of seeing "the world is a shit hole", which focuses on the closed box of being blinded by sight of form, you start to see a "world" beyond the physical, a canvas of love, which IS LOVABLE, and which God loves, and which the Holy Spirit sees as the face of Christ. This is a VITAL step in the course. Becoming able to see that happier dream. The happy dream is the forgiven world. A reinterpreted world, reinterpreted by the Holy Spirit, where sin and guilt and fear no longer exist and where you have forgiven yourself and everyone. ie not simply a "hell recognized as a dream" world, but a world which is practically almost the same thing as HEAVEN, because you see PAST its illusory forms and separations.

I was fooled by this omission. I bought into it totally, that yes it's true, the world of bodies is a world of sin and death and suffering and victims and war and murder. As Jesus himself even tells us in the course, THAT world IS a cruel world, a world God did not create, a world opposite in its nature to heaven, basically hell on earth. A nightmare world. That IS what you see when you have NOT forgiven. The UNFORGIVEN world. That's the hell you'll see when your mind has sin and guilt in it. That's NOT the world you'll see when your mind has forgiven itself. Because it will now look within, see love, and extend love TO the world, seeing love IN IT.

This is why we're supposed to learn to see God in the world. Not to see God equated at the same level as forms and physicality, but to see that God is "in" or rather BEHIND or UNDERLYING the illusions of forms and objects. That this "Real world" is there, a world of love, which can be seen INSTEAD of the world of bodies. This is what the whole teaching about "you cannot see both worlds" is about. "Beyond this world there is a world I want" speaks to this also - there is a "real world" that you should WANT TO LOVE (not heaven), which is hidden behind the illusion of form. And developing "vision", the entire function of the workbook, is what allows you to see it.

So if someone had told me years ago, hey, the world you see seems like hell but only because you have sin in your mind, and when you remove the sin in your mind you'll see PAST the world and see a world that you can love and forgive.... that would've painted a very different picture, and would've set things up quite differently to come to different conclusions about the world. It would've changed my attitude, and I would've have become so negative about the world's faults.

We are to learn to forgive and love the world FIRST, to approach the happy dream of the holy spirit's christ vision, which looks upon OUR wold WITH forgiveness to show us an underlying love that we didn't see before, in it... and THEN transition to heaven. We can't get there by making the world's sinfulness real to ourselves and to then attempt to forgive it. This is exactly what we do in false perception - body perception. There is another way of looking at the world, this is a VITAL piece of information. And it means you no longer have to hate the world or think of it as "inherently hell."

Change your mind about what you want to see IN the world, and it's transform into a reflection of heaven. Not physically as such, because the physicality ONLY exists in FALSE perception, but psychologically and perceptually you'll see the truth.

"Vision already holds a replacement for everything you think you see now. Loveliness can light your images, and so transform them that you will love them, even though they were made of hate. For you will not be making them alone."

"The world you see (with false perception) cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the (real) world."

"God's Word has promised that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be impossible."

"But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this."

"God's Word assures you that He loves the world; your judgment says it is unlovable. Who is right? For one of you is wrong. It must be so."

"Peace is impossible to those who look on war. Peace is inevitable to those who offer peace. How easily, then, is your judgment of the world escaped!"

"It is not the world (as neutral) that makes peace seem impossible. It is the world you see (in false perception of the neutral world) that is impossible. Yet has God's Judgment on this distorted (false) world redeemed it (neutral world seen with true perception) and made it fit to welcome peace. And peace descends on it in joyous answer"

"Knowledge (flipping to a non-duality level 1 viewpoint) is not the remedy for false perception since, being another level, they can never meet. The one correction possible for false perception must be true perception (a third state which we should focus on attaining first). It will not endure. But for the time it lasts it comes to heal. For true perception is a remedy with many names. Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one. They are the one beginning, with the end to lead to oneness far beyond themselves. True perception is the means by which the world is saved from sin, for sin does not exist. And it is this that true perception sees."

I had a re-read of much of Chapter 21: Reason and perception, to try to better understand the workings of perception. Below are some takeaways. Feel free to correct me if I’m mistaken.

Typically, we look out upon a world which seems to be there independently, and however it looks to us, we take it to be how it is. If it seems like a horrible place, some kind of hell, we believe it actually IS that way. We don’t question it. We don’t for a moment think that there is something we are doing to make it LOOK that way.

But the Course is telling us that in fact, we are doing this all the time. It is telling us, there is a "forgiven world" right here in front of our faces, which has no guilt in it, no sin, which is shiny and sparkly and new, and even seems to have a reflection of heaven in it. But we’re not SEEING it, because our own minds have some kind of "gunk" in them which is making the world seem dim and dark and lonely and depressing.

In fact, it even tells us there is a reflection of Christ (the face of Christ) and God right here, that we can "See God" here, to a degree, if we have awareness of God in our mind. That we could look at flowers and tables and trees and such and see God twinkling back at us somehow. But that if we do not SEE that, due to some kind of "filtering" that is going on in our perception, the world becomes lackluster and dull and we don’t seem to see God at all.

There is a kind of perceptual trap, whereby if you believe that how the world looks, is how it IS, inherently, you will not realize that there is ANOTHER world hidden behind the one you’re seeing, that you COULD be seeing, if you were to change your mind. Since "projection makes perception", it produces CIRCULAR LOGIC in which a) you decide what you want to see, b) you project it, c) you see/perceive it, d) it tells YOU what is there, e) you believe what you perceive. Kind of a vicious cycle.

Not realizing that your mind has something to do with how things appear to you, you will just ASSUME that this world simply IS the way that you’ve always seen it to be. If it seems to really suck bad, if all your relationships seem strained by separation, if you feel lonely and cut off, if you are depressed and living in darkness, you may think that this is HOW THE WORLD IS, not realizing that you are actually MAKING IT look that way because of the content of your mind.

So in order to get out of that trap, you have to suspend belief for a moment, consider that what you are seeing is POSSIBLY not how the world actually is, that there is a world here you WANT to see - in which you’ll have to place some faith that it is here but simply hidden from view temporarily, and then take steps to change your mind so that you can finally SEE it. You almost have to IGNORE what you are perceiving now, stop accepting that you are stuck with the "results of past decisions", and that if you choose to believe differently, this shitty world will disappear and be replaced by a much lovelier version.

The course also basically says that when you are seeing the projected content of your own self-hate, sin etc, which makes the WHOLE WORLD look hateful and sinful to you, you are not SEEING correctly. Or rather, you are lacking VISION. Vision is the ability to see what is here, without distortion, without sin, without any dark content in your mind, so that you can see the forgiven world simply for how it IS.

Jesus says we need to become able to SEE, first, before we can RECOGNIZE what it is we are seeing as an illusory world. To see the "real world", relatively speaking, is to regain vision, ie to see without filtering it with your ego junk, such that you can simply look upon what’s there without adding or removing anything. This will show you clearly, correctly, what is THERE, without your contribution added to it, and in that clarity you will RECOGNIZE that even the real/forgiven world is an illusory world made as the opposite to heaven.

So right now, if you are having an experience that this world seems like a nightmare of hell, it’s not because it IS, it’s because you have a nightmare of hell happening in your MIND, which is making this world SEEM like it is hell. I’ve personally had experiences which at the time seemed like a horrible nightmare. Later, after much healing, the nightmare was over and the world did not seem so bad anymore.

The content of our mind massively influences what we see, because we will project that content out TO see, and WILL see it, overlaid on top of the "real world". It is imagined content, but it hugely influences our perception. False ego beliefs really have the "power", because we put faith in them, to greatly distort how the world registers with us, what we see it as, whether it seems harmless or harmful, and whether it feels like a happy place or a miserable place. It is not any of the things we project ONTO it. It is only what it is - a pretend planet that we dreamed, essentially neutral and meaningless.

"I have given the world all the meaning it has for me" is precisely talking about perception. You may not realize it, but your consciousness, your mind, your experience of "reality", can become significantly DISTORTED by any ego beliefs that you have, such that it will make you PERCEIVE things which are not even there at all. It causes you to hallucinate! To see imagined meaning or content where it does not exist. Your perception is capable of "shifting" from experiencing the "real word" as a nightmarish hell, to seemingly to be a reflection of heaven.

Have you ever had a day, where you are in a really bad mood... where you are perhaps having an emotional release of some heavy feelings. On that day, it seems to you as though everyone is in a bad mood! Everyone seems angry and intense and upset. Then you let yourself cry and you cathart this painful content. Suddenly, when you’re done, you feel better, but you also notice, what the heck happened to everyone else’s mood?

Suddenly other people don’t seem like they are unhappy at all? They don’t seem angry or stressed out or upset with you. You then find yourself wondering, were they really nightmarish figures who were against you and pissed off along with you or.... were you making that up this whole time? That all this time you thought they were also upset, they were actually happy?! That you just couldn’t see it and your mind was hallucinating that they were upset with you?

That’s because your ego beliefs that were in your conscious awareness were majorly distorting your perception of reality.

Jesus talks about how we get "stuck" in the circle of projecting then perceiving, whereby since we think that how the world looks is how it IS, that somehow IT decided to be the way it is, and that we didn’t MAKE IT BE that way at all, we simply accept it as if objectively real and then "make adjustments" to try to "live with it" or accomodate as though simply accepting it is really this way. We can spend a very long time living in a perceived "bad world" trying to cope with how it seems to be, making horizontal/linear adjustments instead of rising above it into "vertical perception", not even realizing that if we were to change our mind, our perception would shift UPWARDS, and we’d see a very different "higher vibrational" world that doesn’t call for any of those adjustments. ie, we don’t have to STAY in hell.

Another experience you might have is where you see the form of someone’s body, perhaps they have a broken arm or scars on their face from a fire. It will depend entirely on the content of your mind as to HOW you will perceive this, and what you will see IN it. If you believe in real sin and real sickness, and if that belief is heavy, when you see this person with theirs scars and a broken arm, you will not ONLY experience what’s there in form, their body in its condition, you will ALSO experience the content of your mind.

You might therefore be horrified, repulsed, upset, saddened, guilty, etc... seeing the disfigurement as something the person is stuck with for life, seeing sin in it like they must’ve done something wrong, holding it against them, fearing it like it will infect you if you get too close. The horror show in your mind has nothing to do with the person’s body or its form, it’s entirely to do with YOUR beliefs that you are seeing ON TOP OF what’s there. They still have a "broken body", but you are seeing "YOUR sickness" added to it.

If you then go away and do some forgiveness and undo these beliefs in real sin and real sickness, you may later be walking around and see that person again. And their body may well be in *exactly* the same condition, form-wise, because that’s something that they still believe in and they are still putting it there.

But instead of seeing it as attacking you, or repulsing you, or threatening, or being ugly, or judging them for it, or seeing it as irreversible, or hating them for it, you may instead see them with love and freedom and recognize, they are not bound by this, they are not this form, they are not this body, and you could offer them a miracle. *RECOGNIZING* what is there, versus failing to recognize what is there (seeing your own added shit), is the difference between true perception and false perception. Both of them perceive the form, but true perception does not ADD sin to it.

Someone close to me has paralysis. Her left arm can barely move and hardly any movement in any fingers. She had a stroke. When this first happened, each time that I saw this I was very upset. Or I should say... each time that I saw this form and ALSO some dark content in my own mind, I was very upset. I saw sickness as real. I believed in it. And this had apparently already been established in my belief system before this event happened. Instantly it would trigger off deep upset and guilt and grief whenever I saw it. However, it wasn’t the form or the tragedy or the paralysis that was actually upsetting, it was what I saw IN it.

Over time, I forgave this and more or less HAD to use this as a way to learn that sickness is not real, that I am not the cause of the sickness, that I am not guilty for otherse being sick, and that there is no TRUTH in that sickness. My personal perception of that person now, is that when I see this paralysis that she STILL HAS, and which has not changed whatsoever, I am not upset by it. I don’t see it as tragic or despairing. I don’t see guilt in it. I don’t see it as something having gone very wrong. I don’t see it as unfair or unchosen. It does not trigger me into deeply hurt feelings. All of that has been healed in me, and therefore in my perception. And yet, I still see - perceive - this person, and they stil have the symptoms of this stroke. They are still paralyzed. I simply do not see it with the ADDED content of my own personal beliefs in sin.

Quite possibly at some time, if I choose to really thoroughly excavate all trace of belief in sickness from my mind, maybe that will offer healing to her and undo that sickness. But if she is not ready to receive it, or if that would be frightening, it would not be appropriate to force it. This too is a lesson, that often the sick do not want to be healed against their will or readiness. My perception has changed of "what is there" and I now see it more squarely for what it IS... an illusion of sickness that doesn’t mean anything and has no power of its own. Of course this is still an area of experimental miracle-working so we’ll see what happens in future.

Regarding another’s sickness, since you are no longer believing in irreversible sin, you would not be holding their form "against them", or believing that they are stuck with it, or seeing them as victimized by it. You would not see it as "real sickness". It will strike you as an ILLUSION of sickness. Fake sickness. A simple choice to pretend to be hurt. You would not believe it has the power to stay on its own, and you could offer to heal it. It depends on the person as to whether they can accept and receive the healing, however. They have free will and their will is just as powerful as yours. Similarly Jesus cannot remove stuff from us that we are unwilling to give up because our will is as powerful as his.

One other thing I want to touch upon is the kind of experience you will have when in false perception vs true. In false perception, since you believe heavily that separation is real, and since you project what you will later perceive, you project separation. When you perceive it, you’re going to perceive that you are seeing something that has separations in it. The world is going to look to you as though it is separate from "you". It will seem like it has causal power, a will of its own, a mind of its own, and that it is not an effect, and therefore that because it is cause not effect, "you" surely did not cause IT.

You can see how this is a vicious cycle because if your mind has separation content in it, you will project that separation content onto the world, it will appear to be separate from you, and this will justify your belief that you DID NOT project it or cause it. This undermines the awareness that you projected in the first place, and somewhat "locks in" the idea that how the world appears to you is how IT IS inherently. That you are not contributing to how it appears at all. So false perception is its own trap, making it harder to tell that your mind alone determines what things look like to you.

The counter to this, is what happens in true perception.

There, your mind does not have a belief in separation. You don’t believe in real sin, or level confusions, nor do you see yourself as at the effect of anything outside of you. You recognize yourself as cause, and even see yourself projecting. Therefore, as you project, you are practically not projecting ANYTHING "onto" the world, or are not adding to it or removing anything from it, and so when you then PERCEIVE what’s there, you see it only for what it inherently IS. It shows YOU what is there, and you may even see God in it. This shows you the "real world", real in the sense that, in comparison to your unreal world of false perception and hallucinated hell, it is "real-er".

In true perception then, you will not be experiencing that the world is its own thing, that it has a will, or a mind or a power over you. You will not believe it has cause in it. You will recognize it as EFFECT only. And you will recognize that you are CAUSE only, not effect. Seeing God "in it" also will not mean that this world is "cause". God is cause, so seeing God "in" the world does NOT mean God IS the world or that the world is a cause! In this awareness, whatever the world ‘is’, MUST be coming entirely from you, and you see God IN it because God is IN your mind, not really out there. This means, you will also recognize, not simply what the world inherently IS (an illusion you made), but that EVERYTHING it is, is coming from YOU. You are dreaming it!

At this level, you are capable of manipulating it in any way you see fit simply by changing your mind, by adjusting your desire, or shifting your focus. "The word is only what you gave it" indicates that in false perception, there seemed to be you AND the world, and in true perception, there is only YOU. At this level, being aware that you are THE DREAMER of this world, reveals to you that it is 100% illusion, that the real world is an illusion, that even its forms are coming from your mind, and that therefore..... drumroll please..... THERE IS NO WORLD APART FROM WHAT YOU WISH. Meaning, there is literally no world there, just a bunch of wishes.

There is no world here because it is ONLY the content of our mind being projected. There is no world because even the real world, the "happy dream", is but a dream. When perception is perfected, it shows us there is NO SEPARATION between what is within and what is without. That planet out there, is inside our mind. It’s just an idea that has not left its source. "The real world is still an illusion". We made it up and are dreaming it, it’s not really there at all.

As dreaming ends, the entire content of this dream, this made-up world, this projected fantasy, will simply cease to be. It is not changed, it is simply unprotected. It does not live on, it simply vanishes. It is not converted into reality or heaven, ONLY THE TRUTH REMAINS and everything else NEVER REALLY EXISTED. Hence there is no world and Earth does not exist beyond our dreaming of it.

The ego was His idea of exploring what it might be like to be separate from God - to end Life.

The ego has since done a pretty good job of ending life, or at least, pretending to.

The ego is thus just a device that we're using to explore, "innocently", what it might be like IF we could separate from God.

All of this entire planet, the whole physical universe, is the contents of this idea, inside of this idea. We're inside the ego - the dream.

It isn't helpful to be against the ego because we are the ones who made it, and it's just doing its job. It's fulfilling the adventure of fantasy that we created it to do.

It's just that, at some point we're going to be done with playing with this "toy" and will be ready to give it up.

The ego is not an enemy. It has no power to do anything that we don't ask it to do. We are the ones who use it against ourselves. It is just doing what it was meant to do, like a piece of machinery that just keeps doing what it was designed for.

The ego is only meant to offer us the idea of illusions being real, that death is possible, that separation can have real consequences on God. Which isn't true or possible. It's only there as our make-believe story about things happening that can never happen.

So at some point, we'll decide we just aren't going to use it anymore. We're going to just let go of this game that we're playing. We're going to put the toys away, and turn around and give God a big hug.

No harm done.