In ACIM there is a theme which says ... we need to surrender control of our lives and hand it over to the Holy Spirit in trust.
We've put ourselves in a position of being greatly disadvantaged, blinded, confused, lost, alone. We can't see the whole picture, we don't have all the facts, we are lacking greatly.
And yet at the same time, we've adopted a position of trying to be an "authority". As though we have rejected the authority of God. We don't want God telling us what to do, what is true, how to live, or anything. We value our own judgement, we value our intellect, we value our experience and education, and think that we know it all - that we don't need or want any help.
In that position, we have to depend on our own strength - which is really a lack of strength, which makes us afraid. We have to make all decisions on our own, which leads to huge amounts of guilt and fear. We have to try to control everything, which leads to everything becoming uncontrollable. And we stubbornly refuse to admit to being mistaken.
What if God came along and said, hey, I will just plan your whole future for you, I will orchestrate everything that is going to happen, I will choose everything for you, I will make all decisions, I will smooth the way, I will cause the right people to show up at the right time, I will put you in the right situations, I will guide the right people to come to you for help from me, and we'll do this all together.
What would you say to handing over control and management of your whole life to the Holy Spirit? Would you accept an off-the-shelf inheritance, rather than one you made up yourself? Would you be willing to admit that you are not in a POSITION to be ABLE to correctly do anything on your own?
The course has several teachings that focus on this in different ways.
1) You cannot decide anything on your own
2) You're not in a position to judge anything correctly
3) You're supposed to put your whole future into God's hands
4) You're supposed to let the Holy Spirit make all decisions
5) You're supposed to go where you're directed
6) You'll be told specifically what to do
7) If you depend on yourself you become afraid
8 ) You are trying to take on the Holy Spirit's function
9) You're being asked to resign as your own teacher
10) There is an atonement plan in place
11) You're asked not to interfere with God's plan for salvation
12) The Holy Spirit leads you to eternal life by his planned events
13) You are nothing without God
14) The right people are being sent to you at the right time
15) You don't know anything because you lost knowledge
16) You have a big problem with God having authority
17) The ego in you has ruined your life and you trust it
18) You don't trust God to look after you
19) You think you are separate and autonomous
20) You keep trying to control and manage reality
The list goes on and on. The central core of all of this is you RECOGNIZING that you are NOT in a position of knowledge or capability. You have put yourself at a disadvantage, with limited abilities, a massive lack of awareness, a great inability to make wise decisions, you're making a mess of your own life. We've even given ourselves learning disabilities.
Rather than carrying on like a bunch of headless chickens, it would be better for us to have humility and humbleness and admit that we are ILL EQUIPPED to run our lives. That we do in fact NEED HELP. This takes surrender and willingness to look at the fact that we are essentially very disabled in our ability to be aware of the whole picture, or to know anything for sure.
In the course Jesus asks us to admit that we cannot judge on our own, and any time that we judge anything without total whole awareness we are making a mistake. That it's not just that we make bad judgements all the time, but factually we cannot actually make any judgement at all. Because we are so out of touch with reality and knowledge.
Instead of us being so arrogant, so dependent on ourselves, so alone and isolated, so putting our egos on pedestals, idols worshipping ourselves, thinking we're better than others and proud of all our useless education and worldly learning, perhaps we should be admitting that we generally suck. We have very limited resources, very limited perception, very limited truth and very limited ability.
So that being the case, we are far better off admitting that without God we are nothing. That since we're not aware of everything right now, we cannot do anything correctly. We are lost in the woods. We need help from outside of the scope of this world. And that means admitting that you are flawed and limited.
Egos everywhere will not like the idea whatsoever of admitting to being limited or incapable. Ego will take it as an affront, suggesting you are inadequate, uneducated, don't know enough, not successful enough, not enough social standing, not intelligent enough, stupid, flawed, lacking in some way. Ego does not like to admit that it is woefully inadequate at fulfilling the ROLE of God. Yet we are all in our egos trying to play at being God - being an authority, because we have a big problem with his authority.
How would it be, if you let the Holy Spirit run everything? Like, put your entire future in his hands, let him decide everything, let him tell you what to do, where to go, what to say. In which you TRUST that whatever he decides, whatever is in HIS plan, is right for all concerned. That you don't NEED to know the details. You don't NEED to be informed of the reasons and why and explanations of what it's based on - which all undermines trust. What if you just trusted that everything he's orchestrating and telling you to do is absolutely correct, and just went with it?
What if you don't need to know everything, don't need to figure everything out, don't need to explain the reasons for everything, don't need to "be sure", don't need to control and manage anything, don't need to find the correct judgement, don't even need to make any decisions? What if you just had faith and trusted? What if you just asked for His Help and listened and followed his guidance, saving you massive amounts of time and effort and thinking and worrying?
Adopting this position of humility and downplaying the ego's importance is not only VITAL to salvation and awakening, it is REQUIRED.
"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life." UrW136L19
"Resign NOW as your own teachers. THIS resignation will NOT lead to depression. It is merely the result of an honest appraisal of what you have taught yourselves, and of the learning outcomes which have resulted." UrT11F11
"If you are trusting your own strength, you have every reason to be apprehensive, anxious, and fearful. What can you predict or control? What is there in you that can be counted on? What would give you the ability to be aware of all the facets of any problem, and to resolve them in such a way that only good can come of it? What is there in you that gives you the recognition of the right solution, and the guarantee that it will be accomplished?" UrW47L1
"There is another advantage,- and a very important one, - in referring decisions to the Holy Spirit with increasing frequency. Perhaps you have not thought of this aspect, but its centrality is obvious. To follow the Holy Spirit's guidance is to let yourself be absolved of guilt. It is the essence of the Atonement. It is the core of the curriculum." UrM30A3
"Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow HIS plan of Salvation, in recognition of the FACT that you do NOT know what it is. His work is NOT your function, and unless you accept this, you CANNOT learn what your function IS." UrT9C6
"You would make no ATTEMPT to judge, because it would be quite apparent to you that you do not know WHAT ANYTHING MEANS." UrT15F1
"The giving up of judgment, the obvious prerequisite for hearing God's Voice, is usually a fairly slow process, not because it is difficult, but because it is apt to be perceived as personally insulting. The world's training is directed toward achieving a goal in direct opposition to that of our curriculum. The world trains for reliance on one's judgment as the criterion for maturity and strength. Our curriculum trains for the relinquishment of judgment as the necessary condition of salvation." UrM10A2
"You are still convinced YOUR understanding is a powerful contribution to the truth, and MAKES IT WHAT IT IS. Yet we have emphasized that you need understand nothing." UrT18E8
"The Thought of God protects you, cares for you, makes soft your resting place and smooth your way, lighting your mind with happiness and love." UrW165L2
"EVERYTHING you have taught yourselves has made your power more and more obscure to you. You know not WHAT it is, nor WHERE. You have made a SEMBLANCE of power, and a SHOW of strength, so pitiful that it MUST fail you. For power is not seeming strength, and truth is beyond a semblance of any kind." UrT14G1
"You taught YOURSELVES the most unnatural habit of NOT communicating with your Creator." UrT13H16
"You do not know how to OVERLOOK errors, or you would not make them. It would merely be further error to think either that you do NOT make them, or that you can CORRECT them without a GUIDE TO CORRECTION." UrT9C2
"The Bible tells you to become as little children. Little children recognize that they do not understand what they perceive, and so they ASK WHAT IT MEANS. Do not make the mistake of believing that YOU understand what YOU perceive, for its meaning IS lost to you. But the Holy Spirit has saved its meaning FOR you, and if you will LET Him interpret it FOR you, He will restore what you have thrown away. As long as you THINK YOU KNOW its meaning, you will see no need to ask it OF Him. You do not know the meaning of ANYTHING you perceive. NOT ONE THOUGHT YOU HOLD IS WHOLLY TRUE." UrT10H6
"There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this:
"I do not know the thing I am, and THEREFORE do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world and on myself." Yet in this learning is salvation born. And what you are will TELL you of Itself. UrT31E16
It may be easier to understand the differences in perception, when you consider inanimate objects. Objects which appear to just sit there and do nothing at all.
A good example is a rock. It just sits there. It has no will or mind and isn't particularly alive. At the subatomic level maybe it wiggles around but over time it generally does nothing but vegetate. It cannot move itself, it cannot articulate an attack, it cannot think, it cannot cause of its own will. It has no power and is just a lump of stuff, inert and unmoving.
If you a walking by and you stub your toe on the rock, you might yell at the rock for seeming to attack you. In pain your anger projects and you find the rock to be an enemy. This is your perception of the rock. In your mind, you are giving meaning to the rock. You now believe the rock is a sinful enemy, a guilty attacker. And as you look at it with hate you see it as real and threatening.
But the rock is just sitting there. And if you come to your senses you have to admit that really the rock didn't do anything at all. It was all you. Your own movement caused you to stub your toe. The rock just sat uninvolved and uncausing. So is it really the rock's fault? No. It's something you did to yourself.
So then you admit ok, I am only thinking the rock is an evil sinner because I am choosing to project guilt and sin onto it. I'm framing it as sinful and believing it is an attacker. That's happening in my own mind. I'm projecting stuff onto it and it's making me perceive it as hated and unwanted.
Then you have to realize that since the rock isn't really the cause of the upset, that you are the one who actually attacked the rock with your toe, it's really your own doing. And now you take back your accusation. The rock isn't a person, so there's no point yelling at it and calling it names. It can't hear your swear-words.
You shift "your perception" from false to true. You decide to believe that the rock is innocent and harmless, not an attacker or an evil sinner. You recognize the rock as incapable of hurting you against your will. You realize it has no will or mind or power to do anything on its own. So it cannot have wanted to hurt you. It must be innocent. So now you're willing to believe the rock is not sinful, or guilty, or an attacker. The inverse of which is a belief that it is innocent, loveable, beautiful even.
Your mind is able to decide what it sees in the rock, ie what meaning it projects onto it. When the mind is deciding to project from love, it sees the rock in a loving way, which makes it appear as though the rock is lovable rather than hatable. And so now you love the rock, because you are projecting love, in spite of the rock's own nature.
But the rock isn't changing. The rock isnt inherently sinful, nor is it sinless. It doesn't really have its own meaning. In a way it's kind of like a neutral mirror. You actually see yourself in it. Whatever you think is true you visualize in it. You see refleted back to you what you put there to see. So the rock is doing its own thing, and you are having varying types of beliefs about it, seemingly independent of it.
It's possible to project a mental state of hell onto the world of rocks, just as it is possible to project a mental state of heaven's reflection onto the rocks. True perception can be very close to heaven's nature. You reach within and find love and peace and joy and light and shine it outward and light up the world with it. What appeared to be a harmful rock is now a healing rock. What used to be an attacking rock is an innocent rock.
This is the translation, in your mind, of earth into heaven's reflection. A translation is an interpretative process which evaluates the meaning of something. It gives meaning to it, based on what you believe or WANT it to mean. This is in spite of any seemingly inherent properties that the thing has. Because it has none.
Earth, the world, the galaxies, space time, rocks and plants and animals, human bodies, cities and forests etc, is all essentially a neutral mirror. It's a veil of images which the mind is making and inventing. It holds pictures of forms and illusions of life and death. And yet it is a meaningless world. And so it only has the meaning that you GIVE to it. "The world is what you gave it, nothing more." "There is no world apart from what you wish." "Projection makes perception and makes the world you see."
So on the one hand, we made a world in an attack on God, which was made to be completely opposite to heaven, and which is therefore hell. Or at least, we came up with it in a state of false perception, ie misperception. In that state it appears to be hell because we see it in a hellish way. So we project hell and fragmentation and separation and attack and guilt onto it. And so it appears to be a hellish world. But this view of it (this projected world) only exists while you are having false perception (false projection).
What the course is saying is that you can change your vantage point. But the change in vantage point is huge. It's a 180-degree total opposition to false perception. It's a way of seeing totally alien to the world and to how the body functions. It flies in the face of every seeming law of physics and reality, and completely denies the apparently separated world. It's a lofty, heaven-based perception, which does not buy into anything the world appears to be.
It is in fact difficult for minds to comprehend how it's possible to see the world through loving eyes. The mind has trouble breaking through its own defenses against love. It can't sense or feel or experience what it is like to see from the vantage point of the Holy Spirit, without a whole lot of purificaiton and correction. And so most of the time, it seems impossible to love the world. Or indeed it seems as if the world is inherently sinful and wrong and bad.
The hell seen in false perception motivates a person to not want to love the world. Indeed the course says that such a world "cannot be the world God loves". Yet also that "God does love the world". He does not love the world seen in false perception, where rocks are separated and death seems real and attack seems commonplace. He does not love that world. No one can love such a thing and still behold it. No one can love death. "You cannot behold the world and know God."
But God does love the "real" world. The real world is a world seen in true perception, in which reality's love is projected onto it. And it does not show you separations of forms, or illusions of meaning. It is an accurate view of what the world IS, and the world is nothing but a flat image. It is a neutral inert meaningless lifeless powerless willless uncausal incapable valueluess veil of illusions. It has nothing of its own because it is nothing, and so at best it is symbolic. It can symbolize heaven or hell, but it cannot ever really be either.
If you look upon war you see war and you hate it. But if you see war as war, it is because you are giving war. If you give love and peace and extend and express these higher vantage points, then what you see comes from what you GIVE, not from what is THERE. You project the real world and see it as forgiven and holy because that's what you're projecting, and so it's all that you can see because you can ONLY see what you project.
You give love to the image of a world and the image reflects the love you are giving, and now you see the reflection of love in it. But this reflection also completely ignores anything the image itself possesses as its own properties. It overlooks forms, ignores shapes and sizes and distance or delay, and sees no orders of hierarchy anywhere. It doesn't distinguish individual bodies or places or times. And it sees no orders of difficulty.
If you extend love toward the world, it makes you blind to the world seen in false perception. It causes the dark twisted world to not be seen, and for this layer of interpretation to be lifted from what the world is. In a sense, the world of false perception is a world of specifics, and the world of true perception is abstract and transcendental. This doesn't necessarily mean the world stops having the form of attack. In fact it cannot ever have anything BUT forms. And it is this the body's eyes always and only see.
Even as the mind is healed and views love from love, the forms of the world remain much unchanged. The dogs still bark, the trees still lose their leaves, murderers still kill, and the graveyards are still populated. But they are translated, re-interpreted, overlooked, ignored, and do not stand out as different. All the differences are ignored, all properties of appearances are ignored, all ways that the objects could compete with one another for attention are ignored. The world becomes flattened and regarded as a singular unreal image. A veil of illusions, in which none of it is true.
As the veil is seen with love, in which its own nature is recognized as false, and yet which simultaneously acts like a mirror for your own meaning to be clearly projected, the veil is also losing its solidity. It becomes transparent before the light. And ultimately the reflection of God is seen. But to see God's reflection you cannot see bodies and spacetime, vying for attention. When "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind", God becomes ALL that you see, and you see nothing else. "A world forgiven cannot last." "Forgiveness sees it not."
And so the veil of a world lifts from sight, as all differences become ignored. And the face of Christ is revealed as heaven's reflection reaching across what still remains as a world of chaos. And all forms and differences are no longer seen. And to such an extent is the mind in the holy instant, fully present, that things of past and future such as bodies cannot be seen at all. The world is forgotten, and disappears. It is as though it has become so deflated and equalized and transcended that it does not exist at all. And all that remains is the face of Christ, which once seen leads to the immediate return to heaven. And "heaven is all that remains."
If a person - ie a body - does something wrong, and you focus on their body and what it did, you are being unforgiving. It isn't possible to keep focusing on the body and forgive the person. You can't be psychologically aiming your focus at the person's body while exclaiming that you forgive them. To focus on their body IS to imprison them AND accuse them AND not forgive them.
What is required then is to completely disregard ANYTHING that the body person seems to have done, on the basis that they are NOT that body self. That body self - the combination of the body and the ego - is NOT their soul. It is not who or what they really are. This means basically dismissing anything anyone physical ever seems to do, with a thought that completely ignores anything involving the body, recognizing NONE of its behaviors are real.
This of course takes an initial willingness to approach the idea that a person IS NOT their body. This can be very difficult and threatening at first, especially with strong special-relating tied up in it, valuing the body, associating a sense of identity of the person WITH their body, and constantly referring to their body-self whenever thinking of "them". We have to become open to the idea or the possibility that the person's identity or self IS NOT their body, or their ego. And everything the ego-body does is not real or relevant.
That means challenging your own belief and conviction that people are fundamentally bodies. This is a HUGE change. That when you look and your physical eyes see a body, you think "that's a person", and you give it a name such as Michael or Jane or whatever, referring to IT as if its the person. We do this all the time. If you watch and notice whether or not your references to a person are including the body, you'll probably find that ALL of them are. You barely can even think of anyone without your mind bringing up pictures of their body in your mind.
"For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU. Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA? Everything you recognize you identify by EXTERNALS, something OUTSIDE itself. You cannot even think of GOD without a body, or some form you think you recognize."
We essentially have to deprogram ourselves away from regarding the ego-body-self as the truth about the person, or that it even IS the person at all. We have to be open to the idea that their ego-body-self IS NOT who or what they are. It is entirely unreal and fictional and NOT part of their self. That's completely bizarre to contemplate and rather threatening when you are very much bound to living in a world of bodies, as a body. The bottom line is, ALL relationships with bodies are special relationships.
But we need to find a way to not hold anyone's ego-body stuff against them. If their ego-body stuff is real or happening or associated with them, it DOES ACCUSE THEM OF SIN. Just even merely looking upon it accuses them of sin, if we're identifying them with their body and its actions. To NOT accuse them of sin, to be forgiving, to overlook, actually REQUIRES that we look beyond the body. It's can't be that the person IS a body if we are to forgive them. The forgiveness has to include the recognition that people ARE NOT BODIES AT ALL.
So anything the "person's" ego body does, any actions you see with your physical eyes, any mistakes they make, anything that comes out of "their" mouth, any behaviors, any attacks "they" seem to make, any way at all that their body is regarded as "the person", HAS to be undone. We have to learn that this world is not populated directly by souls or real identities, it is populated by FAKE IMAGES of FAKE BODIES doing fake things. And if ANY thing that any such body-self does is held against anyone, you are accusing them of sin.
That effectively means that we have to be willing to let go of a person's body-self, stop referring to them as their body self, stop binding them to their body whenever we think of them, and realize the quite shocking revelation that you've been in a relationship with AN UNREAL BODY SELF all this time, which has had nothing to do with their real self.
You'll also find that you will be afraid of admitting that their body is not really the person, because this implies that the very people (bodies) that you love the most don't exist as those bodies. They are beyond them. And your ego may interpret that as a loss, or a threat to your relationship, or an attempt to kill off the people you value.
You can more or less disregard all bodies, and basically ignore what any body does, on the basis that it is nothing. It is basically part of a dream. "The body is a dream." The body is not real and it is not the person. Anything you've seen them do or heard them say basically HAS NOT HAPPENED. It has no real consequence and means nothing whatsoever. Your challenge is to basically not hold ANYTHING IN THE WORLD against anyone!
So you might as well just brush off absolutely everything you ever see "any-body" seeming to do, simply on the basis that it is NOT THEM. And thus not hold their own body against them, nor the ego behaviors that seem to emit from it. If you try this you will find that you move into a much more forgiving space and are much happier, because now you're actually BEING forgiving by recognizing that bodies are not real, sins are not happening, no-one is doing anything, and nothing REAL has been threatened.
"Your brother's body is as little use to you as it is to him. When it is used ONLY as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function. For minds NEED not the body to communicate. The sight that SEES the body, has no use which serves the purpose of a holy relationship. And while you look upon each other thus, the means and end have NOT been brought in line. "
"This is no gift your brother's BODY offers you. The veil that hides the gift hides him as well. He IS the gift, and yet he knows it not. No more do you."
"Your brother's BODY shows not Christ to you. He IS set forth within his holiness."
"You who believe it easier to see your brother's body than his holiness, be sure you understand what made this judgment. Here is the voice of specialness heard clearly, judging AGAINST the Christ, and setting forth, for YOU, the purpose that you CAN attain, and what you can NOT do."
"Who sees a brother's body has laid a JUDGMENT on him, and sees him not. He does not REALLY see him as sinful; he does not see him at all. In the darkness of sin, he is INVISIBLE. He can but be IMAGINED in the darkness, and it is here that the illusions you hold about him are NOT held up to his reality. Here are illusions and reality kept SEPARATED. Here are illusions NEVER brought to truth, and ALWAYS hidden from it. And here, in darkness, is your brother's reality IMAGINED as a body, in unholy relationships with other bodies, serving the cause of sin an instant, before he dies."
"Be willing, then, to see your brother sinless, that Christ may rise before your vision, and give you joy. And place NO value on your brother's body, which held him to illusions of what he is. It is HIS desire to see his sinlessness, as it is YOURS. And bless the Son of God in your relationship, nor see in him what you have MADE of him. "
"Let your awareness of your brother NOT be blocked by your perception of his sins, and of his body. What is there in him that you would attack, EXCEPT what you associate with his body, which YOU believe can sin? BEYOND his errors is his holiness, and YOUR salvation."
"When you call upon a brother, it is to his body that you make appeal. His true identity is hidden from you by what you believe he really is. His body makes response to what you call him, for his mind consents to take the name you give him as his own. And thus his unity is twice denied, for you perceive him separate from you, and he accepts this separate name as his."
"He is not brother made by what he DREAMS, nor is his body, "hero" of the dream, your brother. It is his REALITY that is your brother, as is yours to him. Your mind and his ARE joined in brotherhood. His body and his dreams but SEEM to make a little gap, where yours have joined with his. And yet, between your MINDS there IS no gap. To join his dreams is thus to meet him NOT, because his dreams would SEPARATE from you."
"And as you see him shining in the space of light where God abides within the darkness, you will see that God Himself is where his body is. Before this light the body disappears, as heavy shadows MUST give way to light."
"Choose, then, his body OR his holiness as what you WANT to see, and which you choose is yours to look upon."
"The Christ in you beholds his holiness. Your specialness looks on his body, and beholds him not."
"Limit your vision of a brother to his body, which you WILL do, as long as you would not release him FROM it, and you have denied HIS gift to YOU. HIS BODY CANNOT GIVE IT. And seek it not through YOURS."
"Framed in his body you will see YOUR sinfulness, wherein YOU stand condemned. Set in his holiness, the Christ in him proclaims HIMSELF as you."
"As long as you believe that, to be with a body, is companionship, you will be COMPELLED to attempt to keep your brother IN his body, HELD THERE BY GUILT. And you will see SAFETY IN GUILT, and DANGER IN COMMUNICATION."
"Everyone can use his body best by enlarging man's perception, so he can see the real VISION. THIS VISION is invisible to the physical eye. The ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary. Learning to do this is the only real reason for its creation."
The secret to salvation is that "we are doing this only to ourselves". This means taking full responsibility for everything we experience, all of our feelings, all of our reactions. It means owning everything about who and what we really are in truth, being in truth, being whole, surrendering all ego, and stopping all victimhood. This is the goal, the atonement, the awakening. So we're all working on moving towards this.
Now, as you work on realizing that you only do things to yourself, sooner or later this idea will pop into your mind as well - that other people are only doing things to themselves. And this also means, they are not doing anything to you, which helps you with clarifying the fact that you are not a victim either.
But the reason why this is difficult to 'get', is because of the way things appear when someone else 'attacks you'. But as we'll see... even the idea of 'attacks you' is completely false and is a mistake in our own perception of ourselves. It's part of us not admitting that we only do things to ourselves, and therefore we cannot be attacked.
So let's take for example some person you know who appears to be attacking or upset in any way. This person has an ego. Because of the ego, they have separation in their mind. The separation means they have a split mind, or they are "in two minds". When someone goes from having one whole unified mind to having two minds, something very weird happens.
The person retains one part of their own mind and thinks of it as the acceptable part, which they identify with, and think is all of who they are. Even though they have this whole other part to their mind which they deny. The part they keep is what we call the persona. Then, a profound denial and separation and unconsciousness is happening in between this part of their mind and the rest of their mind. They use denial to repress the rest of themselves and to relegate the rest of themselves to unconsciousness, hatred, darkness, and everything that seems to be 'not who they are'. They disassociate from this other part of their mind and think of it as 'not me'. This is what's called the 'shadow'.
Now, where is mind? Mind is supposed to be everywhere, inside and out, and is supposed to be the same everywhere, and it's also supposed to be whole and unified. That means that what is outside of you is also inside of you and is the same in all areas. This is what it means when the Course says "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind" i.e. the same experience is out there and in here and its all one joined-together oneness.
So when the ego splits the mind like this, the part it seems to keep becomes our own body and our persona, and the part it rejects (which is still part of that person), becomes the shadow and the projection of that. So everything seemingly 'outside' the person's body houses everything the person believes they are 'not', and everything inside their body houses the part of their mind they think they 'are'. And because of this intense repression of the 'what I am not' part, it *SEEMS* in a very distracting apparent way, that a) only what is inside the person's body is the whole of the person and there are no other parts, and b) everything outside the person has nothing to do with what person.
Of course this is not true at all. But this is how it shows up. People are walking around in two minds, one inside the body and one projected outside and disowned/denied. And, here is a law or rule, which applies all of the time no matter what kind of mind you have: You are always in a relationship with yourself. This is always true, no matter how you see yourself, and it also is part of the truth that you only do things to yourself.
So a person with a whole mind is always in a relationship to themselves as a whole mind and sees wholeness everywhere. A person with a split mind/ego is still always in a relationship to themselves, but it shows up as two parts - the inner/me and the outer/other. People only ever talk to themselves! People only ever relate with themselves! People only ever interact with themselves! People only ever see themselves! This is true at all times no matter how aware the person is.
Now this is where we get lost. We get lost when WE have an ego split mind ourselves. Only when you have a mind that is WHOLE, can you recognize when there is a split mind and can identify that both parts of the split are part of ONE mind. If your mind is not whole, and is split, then you are too unconscious to recognize or see this. And the result of that, is that you will believe in a separation between what is inside the person and what is outside. And that means, when someone comes along expressing 'split mind' in your general direction, you will fall for the appearance that the 'outside parts' of their relationship with themselves are in fact NOT anything to do with that person, and are to do with you. You will take that to be personal, and about you, instead of about them. And so will begin your experience of being a VICTIM.
You will be a victim whenever you do not remember that you can only do things to yourself, and that other people can only do things to themselves. You will be a victim when your own mind is split and therefore you perceive other people's splits as 'real', and take the split-off part of what other people are doing to themselves and believe that it applies to or does something to you. The other person's disassociation from this part of their mind makes it APPEAR that they do not own and are not identified with it, and therefore it really MUST be about you.
So when someone comes along being an asshole to themselves ;-) and they come up to you, and they call you an asshole, here's what's going on.
They are having a relationship with themselves and to their own mind in its entirety, so they are calling themselves an asshole. They are seeing a reflection back in a mirror of their own self attack. They have projected their separation/split mind onto the outside environment, which randomly happens to include you, and now they are attacking their own projected externalized part of their own mind using words. And because they believe that they are NOT this other part of their mind, they will 'frame' the attack in such a way as to believe they are not attacking themselves, but instead that YOU are the one they are attacking. Like, "hey Paul, you asshole". No, the person is not talking to me. They're talking to themselves.
If a person has an ego, they do not see you. If a person has a split mind, they cannot recognize your wholeness. If a person has a split mind, they are having a hallucinatory experience in a private reality that has absolutely nothing to do with you, and are projecting their split outward, and it's getting confused with what's out there, and so the person thinks that YOU have something to do with the hate they SEE, but the hate they SEE is their own hate toward themselves, which they are USING in order to maintain their split mind.
Hate and fear are tools and devices which create the illusion of disassociation and disownership and irresponsibility for the content of guilt in that person's mind. So if someone has an ego, they do not love you and they do not recognize love in you and they literally do not SEE you clearly. They do not recognize you as love, because they do not recognize themselves as love, because their mind is not whole. Love is wholeness. And if they were to have a whole mind, they would see you with wholeness and also recognize not only themselves as love but recognize you as love as well, regardless of your ego, and would see that the two of you are ONE.
So we get lost in this a LOT. I know I do. This is the main issue that keeps us being a victimized. The ego split in our own mind makes us buy into the ego splits in other people's minds. We keep taking personally expressions that other people are making, in a split mind state, toward themselves, which they project outward and make 'other'-oriented. It's still all about that person. It's still them attacking and doing this to themselves. It's still them accusing you of THEIR sins. And so other people never really accuse you of YOUR sins. And so other people are never really talking about YOU when they attack you or call you names. It's not about you.
This is really important to remember and to hone this skill of seeing with wholeness and recognizing the split minds of others and how it manifests as expressions of attack on 'otherness' (i.e. you) when in fact that person is really just at war with themselves. It's NOT about you. It's not you that they are really attacking. You have to learn to overlook the appearance of this. The form it takes, the words they use, the direction they aim it in, it's all part of their delusion.
So if someone is telling you they don't love you in some way, it's not true. They'r not even telling you that they don't love you. They are telling themselves that they don't love themselves. That's all. They're in a private world. They don't know what they're doing. Taking it personally and thinking that it is about you is a major error that YOU are making because YOU have a split mind that needs healing. Your own split is what causes you to be upset and hurt by other people's blind, impersonal attacks. So if there's someone in your life somewhere that seems to not like you or is your enemy... they don't like themselves. They are their own enemy. And no matter how it looks on the surface or how they express it, and no matter how much they seem to make it about 'you', it is NOT ABOUT YOU.
Remember the secret to salvation - you are doing this to yourself, and they are doing this to themselves.
If other people only do stuff to themselves, and if you only do stuff to yourself, and if nobody ever does anything to anyone else, then you are invulnerable, right?
When someone seems to do something to someone else, they are actually going into withdrawal, not attack. What looks like attack to us is a recoil. It's a withdrawal away from oneness. It's taking steps back away from love. It's hiding. Attack is hiding is the dark. Attack does not exist in the light. So nobody actually has any effect on anyone else. This is how God is unaffected by our attempted attacks as well. God doesn't even need to defend Himself because any kind of attack is a RETREAT away from love even if it takes on a form that LOOKS LIKE it's a forward attack. Attack is always a contraction away from love. So if you are love, you know that attack is always a form of avoidance. And that is complete truth, metaphysically and experientially, and it's built into reality.
So quite literally, you ARE invulnerable, and immortal, and cannot be attacked by anyone else, and have never been attacked by anyone else. You can only attack yourself and play with illusions of stories of how you attacked them or how they attacked you. None of that story is true whatsoever. We are all PERMANENTLY INVULNERABLE, and we are all completely, totally, wholly INCAPABLE of actually attacking anyone.
Nothing can assail the Kingdom of God. Nothing real can be threatened.
Just recently I've been rediscovering an increased awareness of love, which includes receiving love from God and experiencing it within myself - in the heart. When I feel this, any sense of loss and grief disappears, I feel literally more whole, more awake, more myself, and happier.
I've been dealing with the loss of my wife since 2024 and it's been difficult. But it's also been an education and has inspired a lot of insights. What suddenly dawned on me this morning is that maybe I've been seeking for a love that is missing within, outside of myself, because of some kind of lack within.
Maybe even when she was still around, I had certain senses of lack and unlove - a lack of self love - and she seemed to become "an idol", a seeming symbol of love, a source of love, and a way to get my needs met.
This is what ACIM would call "special love", which is driven by lack and need. First we look within and believe that love is missing, which can only happen through self-condemnation and judgement and a general lack of love (denial of God/Self). Then we go seeking externally to find salvation through someone else. Someone who seems to "do it to us and for us."
We might then form a sense of or degree of love toward a person, but it is often then a conditional love with strings attached. You start off with a neediness within, the other person seems to make up for some of your shortcomings, they support you and prop you up, and you seem to mostly cover up your internal lack. It feels like love because some degree of love is there, but there are also conditions involved - a narrowing of love and freedom to the limits of form.
Two people can then "cling" to each other in the storm and support each other and grow together, but at the same time the underlying "need" forms dependency, which we might also call "attachment". I see this attachment also as the attempt to associate love with form/physicality, such as believing you love a person "as a body". This narrows the love to the limits of form and makes it more exclusive, "attaching" love to something physical.
The problem comes when the narrowed form-based love interest goes away, you believe that LOVE ITSELF goes with them. ie if the body dies, then the love dies with it, attached to it. Then there's a belief that love is lost, and a sense of despair ensues. This of course makes sense because if love is dead and you lack love within, there is nowhere to get love and you must despair in darkness.
I see also that despair comes from the sense of unresolvable lack/need within. If I lack love in some way internally, and I "need" to get it from anywhere other than within/God, and begin to "seek and do not find" with the ego - seeking for it in some external source, and that seeming external "solution" to the lack/need goes away, the mind is left holding the needy compulsion.
When you are in a position where you have a need, and you have no way to meet the need, or when you have a problem that cannot be solved, or you depend on someone to fulfil some role or function for you and then they stop doing it, your mind sees no way out and becomes lost and hopeless. And this then produces a sense of horror and rage and despair and loss. Or, what ACIM would call, "special hate." The rage of the ego comes out as an unhealable wound gushing all over the place.
The underlying lack/need comes into awareness and is experienced as unresolvable, and then continually creates more loss as it wants, needs, depends on and expects that which has gone away externally. This shows up like the withdrawal symptoms of an addict. Similarly, the mind remains "dependent" on the external thing for its source of salvation, and keeps seeking it for a solution, but the thing is gone and isn't providing what it once was, causing the mind to feel a sense of loss, deprivation, abandonment, etc.
The thing that's been dropping in for me now is that this so-called "loss" that seems to be focused on the "death of" an external figure, is actually a PROJECTED FORM of an internal lack of love. I thought perhaps I was "getting love" from some external source and needed to do so, and kept continually trying to do so even after the external source was gone. In other words, the internal "lack of love" was not addressed, and trying to solve it externally just kept reinforcing it. "How unloved I am" became the source of despair.
But what really needed to happen was to realize that this was a second-hand solution. Loss, or "hankering for the idol that died", was only a secondary solution to the internal lack of love. And when there is a presence of love within, the mind no longer needs to seek without to get its "needs" met. A loving mind HAS no needs, and it is only "needing someone" that produces loss. And need is not love.
I've been finding that if I connect with love within, receive love from God, allow myself to see myself as loved by God and lovable etc, then it seems to automatically switch off the loss. The loss can't even "go there" because it has no foundation - no guilt/lack/sin/hate of self to feed from.
In effect, I saw that it wasn't so much that I had loss about a person dying, but that I really believed that LOVE ITSELF had died. As if part of God had died, was nowhere to be found WITHOUT, and therefore could not be felt within either. When I affirmed that love was not dead but still alive, as God, as my SELF, this seemed to lift me up to a whole new level of wholeness.
What I've also found is that having more love within seems to automatically alleviate the entire foundation of that part of me that seems to want to "seek for" the missing person. The part that is very emotional which felt attached and yearning for and needing the person to be there, which asks "I want them, where are they", wondering where they'd gone, wanting them to come back etc... was a sort of deflected projection of a deeper internal lack of love.
In other words, the loss of a dead partner isn't really the cause of a sense of loss. It's not even their absence that causes it. It's what the absence MEANS for your attempt to solve the problem of lacking love within yourself. What it means for how you will get your "needs" met.
It's much more to do with the dynamic of special love, the sense of a lack of love within for yourself, and the attempt to "attach to" the person as the symbol of the love that's missing, to milk them for all they're worth. As if only they can provide what you lack. As if only their presence can console you. As if you need them just to exist. As if without them you are dead and hopeless with no way to resolve your lack. And dependency isn't even really the issue because it's just HOW you tried to resolve your lack by tapping into a seeming source.
Perhaps the bigger truth then is that if I/we had love within ourselves, from and shared with God, and would allow ourselves to BE loved more, we would actually have far less of a sense of "I need you", or "you complete me", or "I depend on you", or "I want you back" etc... which is the psychologically twisted attachment that forms when you are IN NEED. If we are not in need, within, internally, then we are more whole and no longer seeing ourselves as "dependent on" someone else for happiness, wholeness, identity, or anything else. We get it all from God in our creation.
As I find an increasing love within, and allow myself to BE loved more, to receive and be grateful for love that God has given already, the sense of loss is greatly reducing. I literally feel a letting go of that psychological external dependency, that emotional reaching out, that longing for what's not there, that wanting what I cannot have and then thinking that there is no other solution to my "problem". The problem of a lack of love.
There IS another solution to loss and death. The solution is LOVE. Love heals and restores and maintains the wholeness of what we are. Without love we ARE lost and are in a constant state of loss, and in that loss we project the cause of it and try to fill the hole using another person externally. We may partially love them but if our love was whole we would not NEED them, depend on them, or be "attached" to them. That's neediness is a special relationship rather than a holy relationship.
A holy relationship would be rooted in internal wholeness and a lack of needs, such that we feel and experience wholeness and happiness within ourselves BEFORE the other person even enters into it. We then come from love, instead of coming from neediness and lack and selfishness. We bring and give and extend love, instead of trying to take it, and receive it from God as our supply.
In loss, the ego is like a little child that cries because its favourite toys have been taken away and it wants them back. It is a self-interest of seeing oneself as deprived and lacking (lacking love, self, identity, God, other), and therefore dependent on external things to seem to complete us. But we can't even really be completed by external things, they just cover up the continued lack within. And while they may be loving us, we may be failing to fully love them.
I think in the bigger picture the lesson long term has been more along the lines of learning to love myself more and letting myself receive God's love more, and finding love here and now within myself AS myself, rather than trying to get it from somewhere else as a bandaid. An opening up to a more unconditional love, and lifting love away from being attached to physical objects or conditions. An expansion in my sense of love and identity and realising that love is not physical. And what is made of love can never be dead.
I think in particular that I spent many years trying to be a caregiver and helper and fixer as a form of love, but there was still an underlying lesson of not really getting my own needs met and not loving myself fully enough. I gave extremely but would not let myself receive much. And the more externally focused my life situation became the more I became lost and unhappy. My source of love was gradually taken away and so I've been having to learn where to find the love again, and whether it even exists.
Fortunately I do now feel a movement toward finding it WITHIN, rather than without, and this is a whole new adventure in discovery and opening and awakening. Realising that what I sought for externally is actually inside. Realising that the whole spiritual path of seeking has been the problem all along, and lifting out of that toward a focus on recognition, acceptance, and awakening to a pre-existing love that God has given is a massive shift in orientation and "problem solving approach."
It's been like a 180-degree turning point, shifting from the seek and do not find approach to life, to more of a "finding and not seeking" approach. And truly I have to say that finding and FEELING love within is the biggest revelation - I am still discovering the depths of it as if I forget it was even possible. The more I feel love within the happier I feel. It makes me literally feel more whole, like I have more personality, like I'm being me more. And all my "energies" and emotion seems to be returning to a much more centred and whole state rather than all over the place.
But the major "reward" of it all, is that it is making the terrible LOSS melt away. A loss which felt like it would never end. A loss which ultimately is caused by moving AWAY from love. Because in truth, loss is a desire for death, and is a belief in it, rather than a belief in love and life. And loss can only seem to be experienced as the loss of something separate from you. It's part of the separation idea and the ego. Yet where there is love, there is nothing lacking and no needs and no deprivation.
Love is the answer. Love is the atonement. Love is the undoing of death and despair. We must learn once again that we are very, very loved.
"I am sustained by the Love of God. - Here is the answer to every problem that confronts you today and tomorrow and throughout time."
"Put all your faith in the Love of God within you, eternal, changeless and forever unfailing. This is the answer to whatever confronts you today."
"Here is the answer! Seek for it no more. You will not find another one instead."
"Here is the answer! Do not turn away in aimless wandering again. Accept salvation now. It is the gift of God and not the world."
"The text explains that the Holy Spirit is the Answer to all problems you have made."
"Your holiness is the answer to every question that was ever asked, is being asked now, or will be asked in the future. Your holiness means the end of guilt, and therefore the end of hell."
"Forgiveness is the ANSWER to attack of any kind. So is attack DEPRIVED of its effects, and hate is answered in the Name of Love."
To the ego, it will not attempt to teach anything that it does not already know. It relies entirely on its own learning or what it already believes is true.
In this sense, everything within the ego thought system has already been there for a very long time and there is "nothing new".
The ego does not therefore really learn anything. It just reveals to itself more pieces of what was already within its thought system, but kept unconscious.
The ego pretends to learn by gradually bringing into the open more information which seemed hidden before, from its vast reserves of useless information, laws and regulations, any anything that sustains its thought system or makes it more real.
The ego does not want you to be open to guidance, it does not want you to trust a source of information outside of its thought system, and it's not really interested in learning. It's entire purpose is to unlearn the truth, to block the truth, and to keep you in the dark. And it can do that very effectively with an ILLUSION of learning, in the guise of learning something which is not really God's truth. And we've done this a lot.
There is a line in the Course for example which says "your mind is a blank". Even though the ego mind seems filled with thoughts and activities, it is really filled with nothing but illusions and so nothing is really happening. Even our ego thinking is not real activity. It is not creation. Plus we're given ourselves what Jesus describes as a "learning disability", an attempt to make our ability to learn more difficult, so that we will resist the truth.
Now, as you become willing to un-learn the ego's bullshit, and reveal the real truth to yourself, you'll begin to develop trust in a source of information outside of the ego's mind. Holy Spirit is there to help, along with many Mighty Companions.
But in order to "learn" what is outside of the ego's thought system, it requires the un-doing or un-learning of the ego, to make room for what's to come IN from outside. And also the rules for learning change as you open up to the Holy Mind.
In the ego's system, it will only attempt to teach if it ensures that you will not learn anything, or it sets you up as solely a teacher who is not a student, a dictatorship basically. The students are considered inferior and the teacher is superior. Teaching or the classroom is then more or less a prison.
It won't let you attempt to teach or even feel confident about teaching, unless you seem to already know everything there is to know, and are certain enough of being in control of that enough to be able to seem to give it to someone else. And when the teaching is occurring, the teacher is not intent on learning at all.
This works differently with Holy Spirit. In order to learn the truth, conditions have to be set up where you are willing to receive new input. But because in the One Mind giving and receiving are equal/one/balanced, there cannot be input without output. You cannot "share" and thus experience the new truth, or learn it, unless you are also willing to have it flow through you and extend out of you. In a way this means you cannot "learn the truth" without the truth flowing through you and being shared, in a "teaching and learning" role.
The Kingdom of God must be extended in order to exist, and that means the truth has to be shared. You have to be open to having that truth come through you, even if you do not seem to know what that truth is going to say. You won't necessarily get a head's up and you aren't going to be able to learn it all ahead of time. Instead, it's going to only be fed to you, shared with you, and shared through and beyond you, in the moment, in the instant that you are actually attempting to give it to another.
This requires that you drop what you think you know, open up to trust in a higher source, and that source may not even be seen or directly accessed yet. This therefore requires FAITH, ie trust that even if you yourself do not know, you're going to be supported and given what you need and told what to do and where to go, spontaneously, as and when it's the right time. In a way it's like being blind or in the dark blindfolded, but trusting someone else to guide you safely to the exact right destination without hurting yourself.
If you are unwilling to "teach" because you don't think you know the subject matter well enough, you will never learn it. Teaching means demonstrating, so it doesn't necessarily have to be through writing or traditional roles, it can just be by being a living example of love. But what is true for you, you will demonstrate/teach. If you stop yourself from TRYING, you won't gain access to support and guidance. You have to take a leap of faith. You have to be willing to be mistaken, and you need to be open to learning AS you teach. You teach, in order to learn.
Basically you just need to show up, be willing, and step into a FLOW. As the flow begins, as you start to express, IF you trust the truth you are attempting to express, MORE TRUTH WILL COME AS YOU GO. The new truth will only enter once the flow is flowing.
It's kind of like plumbing. You've got this water in the pipe, but the only way new water is going to enter the pipe, is when the water that's already in the pipe starts to flow out the other end. Otherwise there is no room, and there's no flow. A lack of flow is a lack of extension. The water can't extend out of the pipe if you won't RECEIVE and if you are not willing to just be open minded to let whatever comes in, come in, just as it's needed, spontaneously.
Heaven's support, and the flow of truth, is very spontaneous. It is ready to act NOW. You don't get the whole download on the spot and then go write about it. You just make yourself flow out the stuff you already know, albeit limited, maybe based on just one little insight, and then you get into a flow about it.
As you do, Heaven comes to support you. The reason is that you are now fulfilling your function. You are aligning yourself with the truth by being willing to have it express through you, you are letting truth sort of align your wavelength to Heaven/Holy Spirit, and the result of that is that Heaven actually rushes in to support and help you. Mighty companions show up. Jesus and Holy Spirit start to wisper in your ear. You start to be told specific words and corrections and things you weren't expecting.
You start to "channel". And as you do this, you receive stuff that you didn't even know beforehand, and you therefore learn, often just as much as anyone else reading or hearing what you expressed. And then you may find yourself going back to read what you wrote because you yourself are its student as well.
This also means you are learning to COMMUNICATE. Communication in the Course is different to the ego's communication. The ego only communicates what it thinks its already knows and nothing else, regurgitating the past. Real communication entails the EXTENSION OF TRUTH, the flow of truth, in true sharing, where receiving and giving are one, and where there is an openness to spontaneously, creatively express from a place that's totally outside the ego. Just in the moment, freely flowing a loving expression.
So it takes an act of faith. Miracles are taken first on faith, because you may come to trust something which is as yet unseen, but which is there, and which has proven it must be there by its witnesses, ie evidence or proof which manifests as a result of taking a leap and putting one foot in front of the next. You don't have to teach alone, and you can't. You can only truly teach truth if you are open to receiving it at the same time, and then it speaks through you.
Holy Spirit is the highest communication medium, in that He is so pure and devoid of ego that he can perfectly "channel God", as it were, to be the Voice for God. You also can become a Voice for God if you are willing to spontaneously flow Heaven and therefore to actually communicate. Just speaking words is not communication, because the ego is very good at just waffling on about bullshit. But when the words are coming from a higher place, extending God as a "Teacher of God", now you are learning God because you are teaching God.
In essence you should ALWAYS be in this state of "learning", not so much a state of accumulating or building up some knowledge base, but being always RECEPTIVE and CREATIVE in the flow of truth without having to know beforehand what's going to be said or what will happen.
As you learn to trust this, you will teach and it will become your own teaching of yourself as well. The best way to learn is to try to teach someone else what the truth is, to prove to yourself what the truth is. If you can communicate, truly, to another, you will learn the truth. The act of attempting to tell someone else what the truth is, causes your mind to become creative and dynamic and spontaneous in visualizing and sort of filling in the blanks as you go. The MODE of mind functioning to "express" puts it into a state of flow, and you just need to get stuff MOVING OUT even if it feels like you are totally winging it, or even "fake it till you make it". Just the act of expressing even without knowing what the next word is going to be, allows guidance to come IN immediately as it is needed.
You only need to start out with a little idea. What I usually am doing is I just had some kind of spontaneous idea or insight, or I just learned some basic thing, or something became relevant for me in the past 24 hours. So I will start to write about it based on what I already know... ego learning.... but I go about it with Holy Spirit/Jesus at hand, and then they start to inject more flow and more idea and more clarifications and as the whole thing unfolds, it ends up being an education not just for others but for me also.
When I get to the end I then have to go back and re-read it myself, to digest it and take it in more, because what came out was usually mind-expanding in some way. This very post itself for example, I was not planning to write whatsoever, until I was inspired by a post that Myron Jones wrote today, and felt this intuitive "excitement" about elaborating on. I did not know how this would come out or in what words until I just started to do it.
So just start with what you think you know and be open to extending truth and just making yourself available, just sit down and start writing something, and so long as you are expressing truth in some way, Heaven will rush in to support you and give you help and put words in your mouth. This is how you learn to "channel" or be a Voice for God.
Speaking or writing the truth gets the attention of Heaven, angels will come to you to help you, and Holy Spirit and Jesus will be right there to support you and guide you. This is also partly how miracles come about, because as you spontaneously trust and start to speak the truth about someone and diffuse illusions and authoritatively command an expression of the truth of God, things line up and you magnetize Heaven's strength to you and through you, and then the earth moves. It's a collaboration. Your willingness is all it takes to get into the flow. Just start somewhere and see what happens as you go. But if you don't start at all, you'll never see the miracles and you won't learn.
Teach like a fool. Teach even when you don't know what to say. Just start doing it. The rest will follow automatically. Seek the Kingdom of God and express it and your way will be made straight and will be held up by Heaven's helpers.
For example, on my website I started a 'questions and answers' service, because I felt that I wanted to be pushed to have to answer things that I did not know how to answer, and wanted people to come up with questions so that I wouldn't be able to premeditate or just write about what was relevant to me at the time. What I found happens is, when someone asks something, it's usually not something I even thought of as being a topic people needed help with.
And then I'll ask Holy Spirit what He wants to say about this, and to please help me with it. And then I start writing about it, and I just get into this place where the most amazing stuff gets written, especially when I didn't really know what I was going to say or what there even was to say about it. It all just comes together because I TRUST that I'm going to be helped and the help shows up. Provided I am willing to just show up and be available and let the truth be written through me.