There is a lot of resistance to this very radical part of ACIM, so let's look at it even more closely.
When you project sin onto others, you are accusing them of your own sins. You do this to dissociate from the sin, deny it and hide from it. You try to associate it WITH someone else, so that they are responsible for it, and you're let off the hook.
If you think of sin as CAUSE, you are trying to disown causal power and put it outside of yourself, making you AT THE EFFECT of it. You believe someone else is CAUSING you, affecting you. and deciding what you are.
However, this doesn't just happen on a mental level. It also happens PHYSICALLY. The body is a symbol, not an end in itself.
"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is NOT an end."
"The body is the symbol of the world."
"The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation."
It is a communication device. It REPRESENTS the MESSAGE that the mind is transmitting to another. It CHANGES FORM to DEPICT a symbol of the kind of relationship you are having with the person! This is because it is a separation device and takes on the form of "how much separation" there is between you and others. And sickness is a greater degree of separation than health, symbolically.
Images of a healthy, unharmed, pain-free, sickness-free body, SYMBOLIZE ideas of eternal life. It represents innocence and the absence of attack. It symbolizes healing and wholeness and harmlessness. It contains no "proof" that sin has ever happened to it, and there is no evidence that anyone has ever attacked it. Therefore it acts as a SYMBOL OF IMMORTALITY.
However, when the mind is sick, having attack thoughts and belief in sin, which starts the ball rolling with projection and scapegoating, this INFLUENCES the picture of the body. The body actually literally CHANGES FORM to a different symbolic form. Forms of sickness, damage, malfunction, attack, pain, deformity, disability, disease, infection, etc, are all attempts to SHOW your brother that you "think ill of him." The body thus because a SYMBOL OF DEATH. Or as Jesus puts it, a "picture of crucifixion."
"Death is the symbol of the fear of God."
"the one you made, out of your split mind, and which IS the symbol of death."
"Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son. You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes (your body in a sick state), that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death (yes PHYSICAL), and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell."
We actually USE the body as a TOOL. It is a communication device. We actually hold it up as a picture for others to look at to REPRESENT what we think and how we relate. When we are in ego, we change the body into forms of sickness. And when we are with the Holy Spirit, we change the body into forms of health. This is because a "healthy body" DOES symbolize life and wholeness and happiness and innocence. Just as sick bodies SYMBOLIZE attack and suffering and pain and death.
Now here's the important part. The reason WHY you make the body sick ON PURPOSE in order to accuse others of sin. When your mind is healthy, cause and effect are in their proper order and you are extending love outward. You see yourself as the cause or dreamer of the dream. However, when you go into ego, your perception becomes backwards, and you start to see cause as OUTSIDE of you, and see yourself as AN EFFECT.
Your own mind does this, and the result is that it starts to "visualize itself" AS an effect. Whatever way it believes someone ELSE is to blame, or someone ELSE is sinful, it also imagines what kind of EFFECTS that would produce in you if it were true. If some person is believed to be attacking you, YOUR mind will DEPICT itself physically as the symbolic image of an ATTACKED body. Your mind implements the EFFECTS within the body, to correspond to its belief in the projected CAUSE that it sees as outside itself.
So now what's happening is, as cause and effect are reversed, your mind starts to attack itself from the outside in, through others. As you go to scapegoat and blame someone for CAUSING you, for sinning against you, you SIMULTANEOUSLY portray yourself as a victim. You do this mentally, BUT it also in turn CHANGES THE BODY. The body PICTURES what you think of yourself and how you see yourself.
"The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE."
Whatever you think you are, your body SYMBOLIZES it physically. If you think of yourself with attack and sin, which you later project, your body takes on a symbolic FORM of that attitude. It represents TWO things ... 1) what you think of yourself, and 2) what you think of others. These are actually one thing, because you are one with others.
So as you go to accuse yourself of sin, you ALSO go to accuse your brother of sin. The body COMES BETWEEN you as a separation device. It is now being USED to symbolically visualize the PRESENCE of attack, darkness, walls, blockages, etc. And so the body shifts its physical appearance (it's just an image in the mind), to represent your relationship to yourself and others. "Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, ***you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son***. ***You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes***, that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell. "
"For accusation is a bar to love, ***and damaged bodies ARE accusers***. They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, ***proclaiming*** that the frail can HAVE no trust, and that the damaged HAVE no grounds for peace. Who has been injured BY his brother, and could love and trust him still? He HAS attacked, and will attack again. Protect him not, because ***your damaged body shows that you must be protected FROM him.***"
Bottom line, when your mind is accusing, your BODY accuses as well. It lines up with the mind's attitude. The body itself does NOT have its OWN state, its own attitude, its own decision, or its own mind. It CANNOT maintain itself. It is maintained by the mind, and the mind has power over it. The mind USES it and TELLS it what to do and HOW to show up. It MAKES the body appear in one form or another. And the PURPOSE of any chosen form is to COMMUNICATE through symbols.
So when you are accusing, which means you are projecting, which means you are splitting your mind, your mind causes the body to be used for separation, and this ATTACKS the body and makes it steer towards a PICTURE of crucifixion and death. The INTENT is that the body is acting to PROVE to your brother the consequences of what you claim HE DID. You cannot scapegoat WITHOUT it changing the body. The body is HELD UP as a picture to SHOW HIM effects, which YOU put there, which you accuse HIM of putting there.
So long as the body remains appearing to be sick in any way, and given the mind is the ONLY cause of it, and given the body can ONLY symbolize because it has no meaning or state of its own, the body HAS TO fall into line with the mind's purpose. If the body remains sick in any way, the mind HAS TO be continuing to use it for attack. The body is still showing a symbol of attack BECAUSE the mind is STILL attacking. There are no exceptions to this. It is so reliable that we can say, if the body is still sick, the mind HAS NOT been healed. And it also means if the body is still sick, IT IS STILL accusing your brother of sin.
"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed."
"A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."
It is NOT enough to claim that the mind can be healed WITHOUT healing the body. When the mind is healed, it FORCES the body to symbolize its new condition. The body cannot stay sick or keep sickness or hold onto any given state, because mind is USING IT as a symbolic form of communication. Whatever the mind wants to show a brother, the body HAS TO show. And so the body CHANGES FORM according to the mind.
This works for sickness just as it works for healing. The body cannot stay sick if the mind decides to be truly healthy. No more than it can stay healthy if the mind decides to be sick. Jesus even goes so far as to say that if your mind is truly healed, it WILL heal the body ALWAYS, and this makes it IMPOSSIBLE for the body to become sick. The mind is OVERRIDING any alleged external (projected) causes of sickness, and is TOTALLY OWNING control and power over it. Therefore, it does not CHOOSE to be sick, and so does not MAKE the body show up as sick. This makes sickness of the body IMPOSSIBLE.
"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for, it will become to you. Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have It not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die."
"The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible." ... ""Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching."
It can't be stressed enough how extreme and unconditional this is. If you so choose, your mind will use the body for attack, which WILL ALWAYS attack the body and FORCE it to depict proof of sin. And this proof of sin will be held up to others to SHOW them what they did to you (allegedly). EVEN to the extent that you are willing to KILL the body entirely, IF it means that you can be exonerated from sin. And he is in fact saying that we do this.
We think it is even a SMALL PRICE to pay, if it means we can be seen as the innocent one, such that a dead body IS VERY STRONG PROOF that someone OTHER than the person CAUSED The death. You'll notice that whenever there is a physical death, it always looks as though the person DID NOTHING to cause it. This is because their mind has DISOWNED the cause by projecting it EXTREMELY, depicting themselves as POWERLESS AND HELPLESS, as if having no ability to choose at all.
"Death is an attempt to resolve conflict by not willing at all."
"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR OF AWAKENING. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of CONSCIOUSNESS. This is a pathetic way of TRYING NOT TO KNOW by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual."
By PRETENDING not to be willing at all, to have no choice and no power and no say in the matter, we attack the body and make it show up as DEAD, in trying to ACCUSE THE WORLD OF SIN, so that WE will seem to be the helpless victim. A person who was "killed" NOT by their own hand. Someone who "died of" ANYTHING other than themselves. Died from cancer, died from starvation, died from a car crash, died from war, whatever. Anything so long as it appears to be NOT THE MIND. So that the person can HIDE the fact that THEY DID IT TO THEMSELVES. This is why death is an extreme LIE.
"The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS. (the body is a symbol) A sick and suffering you (physically) but ***represents your brother's guilt***; the witness which you send (communicate physically), lest he forget the injuries (physical) he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture (of your body) YOU accept, if ***only it can serve to punish him***. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. ******Death seems an easy price*****, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."
So in death, you are using your body to try to PROVE that your BROTHER IS A SINNER. This is the EGO's use of the body. This is what happens when you use the body for attack. It destroys the body. It makes the body show up as sick and suffering and a victim, so that someone or something is framed for sin. That is the ONLY reason this happens. And the mind makes this decision alone.
"The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions which are responsible for the body's condition."
The alternative is that if you move towards RESURRECTION, towards life and wholeness and happiness and holiness, this TOO has an "influence on" the body. It has a healing influence, we could say. It causes the mind to DEPICT itself as a symbol of immortality. A symbol of having NOT been attacked, a symbol of being free from suffering, a symbol of eternal life. A symbol of invulnerability and harmlessness and the IMPOSSIBILITY of being sick or hurt.
As such "the mind, being sane, heals the body" and "now is the body healed by miracles." Again the body has NO SAY in this. It is just a symbol. It gets its FORM from the mind's relationship to others. It SYMBOLIZES the communication. As the mind heals the body CANNOT REMAIN SICK. It cannot maintain sickness or keep it, nor is there ANY OTHER CAUSE of physical sickness. Mind has TOTAL control over it.
"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind MUST BE STRONGER. Every miracle demonstrates this."
The mind is STRONGER than the body and the body can only go along with the mind's wishes. If the mind heals, the mind overrides the body image and projects an image of a HEALTHY body. A body which is free from any symbols or signs of attack, harm, damage, breakage, scars, wounds, or anything else which might symbolize the OPPOSITE of eternal life.
Furthermore, when your mind forces your body to heal, because you WANT to SHOW your brothers that you LOVE him, and think HARMLESSLY of him, HE now looks upon your physical body as a MESSAGE. Its physical form PROVES what you THINK of yourself and him. In its healed form, it says "I have never been hurt and you have never hurt me." It PROVES he is innocent. It even proves this BEYOND anything HE tries to do to you.
Even if he thinks he HAS attacked you, YOUR miracle of healing proves to him that HE HAS NOT. And therefor he can no longer BELIEVE that he is a sinner, because you've USED the body to show him, symbolically, that anything he THOUGHT he did had NO effects. This triggers a HEALING IN HIS MIND, because your BODY no longer supports or TEMPTS him to believe that he is sinful. Therefore your body now is used as a HEALING DEVICE and IS SYMBOL OF THE INNOCENCE OF YOUR BROTHER.
"What you would **prove to him** you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but ***testifies to what you teach to him***. ***Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him.*** And ********in its healing****** can it *******offer him mute testimony to his innocence*******. It is THIS testimony that can speak ****with power greater than a thousand tongues****. For here is *******his forgiveness PROVED to him*******. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing (physically) show your mind is (also) healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, ****and healed along with you****."
"Health (physically) is the witness unto health. As long as it is unattested, it remains without conviction. ****Only when DEMONSTRATED has it BEEN proved, and MUST compel belief*****. No-one is healed through double messages."
"Show THIS unto your brother, who will see that ****every scar is healed****, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And ****he will look on his forgiveness there****, and with healed eyes will look BEYOND it, to the innocence that he beholds in you. Here is ***the proof that he has NEVER sinned***; that NOTHING that his madness bid him do was ever done, ****or ever had effects of any kind****. That NO reproach he laid upon his heart was EVER justified, and NO attack can touch him with the poisoned sting of fear. Attest (physically) his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing (physically and mentally) is his comfort ***and HIS health***. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true."
So literally, the healing of your mind, without exception forces the healing of your body, which in turn HEALS YOUR BROTHER. Your healing becomes HIS healing. "When I am healed I am not healed alone." And UNLESS this occurs, forgiveness IS NOT complete. Again...
"*****Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself*****. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt?"
If your brother is sinless, psychologically, he CANNOT have done anything to you PHYSICALLY, and therefore the physical is now REPURPOSED as a way to PROVE to him, psychologically, that he HAS NOT sinned. His sins had NO EFFECT on you OR your body. Your miracles REMOVED the evidence. And he can no longer SEE proof that he sinned. Which PHYSICALLY EXONERATES HIM. And this testifies that HE CANNOT have sinned, and now his MIND is healed because your physical body has played a part in weakening HIS belief in his own sinfulness. Something it could NOT do if it remains sick. In fact if it remains sick, your mind IS still accusing him of sin, and he knows it.
Some ACIM students think that there is no validity or importance whatsoever to changing the physical body, healing it, or for any reason. But Jesus is saying something totally opposite. He is literally saying you MUST heal it, otherwise it DOES continue to PROVE that your mind IS NOT healed. And any time physical sickness of any kind is showing up, something in YOUR mind is not healed. Physical sicknesses of different kinds in fact symbolize different mental attitudes.
"Sickness takes many forms, and so does unforgiveness. The forms of one but reproduce the forms of the other, for they are the same illusion." Different unforgivenesses (grievances, special relationships etc) produce different PHYSICAL FORMS of sickness.
"So closely is one translated into the other, that a careful study of the form a sickness takes will point quite clearly to the form of unforgiveness that it represents."
So here he is even saying you can DIAGNOSE what UNFORGIVENESS is present in the mind, based on the physical FORM of the sickness in the body. Because the body is always symbolic and the forms of sickness are symbolic. This is why you get backaches when you are carrying to much mental load, and your eyes develop problems when you don't want to see something, and someone "gives you a headache" when you don't like them, and your blood pressure "boils" when you get angry.
Physical sickness IS HOW you project your sin! If your mind cannot CONCEIVE of attack, it overpowers the body and forces it to show up AS HEALED. A mind that is TRULY devoid of attack produces a LOVELY BODY, devoid of any signs or symbols of attack of any kind. Not only does the body heal by miracles, it now becomes a SYMBOL OF ETERNAL LIFE. And symbolizing immortality, it is DEVOID OF HARM and CANNOT be sick, NOR can it die! It is now impossible for the body to die and decay, it can ONLY be left by TRUTH, by DISAPPEARING IT! "Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."
"The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."
"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."
Forgiveness is a state of mind in which you recognize that there is nothing that NEEDS forgiving. It is a recognition in which you know there is no sin, sin is impossible, attack is impossible, so nothing can have happened to be forgiven. It's an awareness of innocence.
Forgiveness however isn't "passive", it is ACTIVELY converting illusions into truth. It is actively translating sin into error. It is actively interpreting and changing something. It is causing a healing and radiating life.
What you do to get your mind INTO the state of forgiveness, in which forgiveness is "complete", or in which you are "completely forgiving all the time", as an attitude, is what we might call "purification" or correction or healing.
Healing, or shall we say, being in a state in which you or another is healed, must entail similarly a recognition that "there is nothing that NEEDS healing." If we are focusing on "something is wrong", we are reinforcing and giving reality to sickness and damage. If we think a person "is a sick body", that's actually an attack on their immortal nature.
Like forgiveness then, proper healing entails a recognition that there is nothing to heal, because it recognizes immortality and wholeness and harmlessness. It recognizes invulnerability and permanence and the impossibility of attack/sin/guilt. It ASSERTS only "you are fully alive".
Perhaps we can then say that you can ONLY correctly heal, as in correctly forgive a sick person, by looking for and focusing on the NON-SICK self in them. Finding the pre-existing UNCHANGED perfection in them. Recognizing them as NOT SICK, as not broken or damaged, as not guilty or punished, and as not a victim. And certainly not a body.
Holding this light for the person, shining the truth into them, seeing them IN the light WITH light AS light, is the absence of a BELIEF IN sickness. It places no attention ON the sickness. When you have made sickness real and are reacting to it, even trying to "fix it", you're giving it power and reinforcement. In order to heal sickness you have to NOT give sickness any power. Which means giving it no direct attention. The symptoms will disappear naturally when the UN-SICKNESS is given power.
Now, we have to be careful that we're not saying .. I'm not just going to "do nothing". We're not talking about NOT performing a miracle of healing. We're not talking about just idly sitting there. We're talking about HOW TO HEAL. You heal by actively choosing to "see health". To join with your brother's mind in the light and through a light-based vision. To SHINE LIGHT into them on purpose, to deliberately FILL them with light so that they are enlightened.
Just because we're recognizing that the person doesn't REALLY need healing, and isn't REALLY sick, doesn't mean we're just ignoring it or doing nothing about it. We must focus on their immortal self, remembering the truth about them, taking all attention off any illusion of a mortal self or a body self, and putting all attention on who they really are. Acknowledging who they are FOR them.
Recognizing their LACK OF SICKNESS for them. This is a SERVICE. "A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable value simultaneously."
To reject and thus to CANCEL all belief in, reality of, attention given to, power in, sickness or damage, WITHDRAWS power from those things and weakens them in your mind. Because you are joining in love/light with your brother's mind this weakens it in their mind also because you do not support their belief in being mortal.
Simultaneously, to not support death is to ASSERT LIFE. This is an actual active assertion, an EXPRESSION of love. Something which goes out and is given and is can be received by another. Something that can be shared. While you remove all power from death and mortality and ideas of a person being a body, you GIVE all power to where it belongs - to their immortal christ self which is flawless and perfect and has nothing wrong with it.
Miracle don't just "take away" the illusion of sickness which seemed present. They also ASSERT and EXPRESS and RE-ESTABLISH or "repair" what was given by God. By "cancelling" what is not really there, miracles remove the ego and the guilt and the symptoms of sickness. This IS A CHANGE, but it a change in the direction of REMOVAL, resulting from an ASSERTION or expression of love's power. "THE MIRACLE DOES NOTHING. All it does is to UNdo. And thus it cancels out the interference to what HAS BEEN done. It does not add, but merely takes away."
"A miracle inverts perception which was upside-down before, and thus it ends the strange distortions that were manifest."
All fearful reactions to someone's physical state are your own unforgiven deceptions. Trying to manage, control, defend against, make go away, all physical APPEARANCES of sickness is wasted effort. It's part of you giving power away to them, because you do not remember who you are. Having stopped knowing yourself, you have entertained the idea of mortality and death YOURSELF, and have forgotten you are unchangeable. As a result you begin to believe that you are a mortal body, that other people are mortal bodies, that your bodies are being changed and that you need to desperately do something to stop it.
None of that business and reaction helps at all. As Jesus frequently tells me, "relax", ie chill and stop dwelling on what's going wrong. Stop buying into the appearance of a LIE, and let us remember that ALL sickness is an illusion. There is no REAL sickness. And focusing on the body of another results from your OWN body-identification, which is you forgetting your own true nature. That means YOU need a miracle of healing for yourself.
"He MUST heal his perception in this respect. He MUST work a miracle on behalf of himself here (See the point about miracles as a perception corrector) before he can effect miracles as creative energizers, which they are."
To get your own mind right requires you remembering and knowing yourself, tuning into the fact you remain as God created you, recognizing why you cannot change or be changed, and identifying with your IMMORTAL SPIRIT. Knowing that you cannot be hurt, cannot be sick, cannot die and cannot suffer. Once you have accepted this for yourself and have thus received healing and correction, you can now GIVE what you have received. And this is where you become able to give a miracle as "a creative energizer."
It is creative energizers that are GIVEN TO OTHERS. This is where you now EXTEND the light of christ you've seen in yourself, and SHARE it with another. Where you have joined the Holy Spirit in his view of you within yourself, and now see that same unchangeability in another, focusing on their immortal nature and their incapability of being sick. You tell them psychologically, "you are immortal and perfect and you can never be sick." You recognize in the light of truth that their body and their sickness IS NOT TRUE. That it cannot be true in light of God's truth. Only God's truth is true and nothing else is true.
It is in this "joining in christ" or "sharing light" with another that both of you are resurrected. In which "those who temporarily have more give to those who temporarily have less." It is where you recognize your brother's inestimable worth as equal to your lovable value in God. And where you see the other as ALREADY HEALED AND WHOLE. Already perfect, created by God to be perfect forever. ALREADY devoid of sickness. INCAPABLE of suffering. In which death and sickness and deformity and disability as IMPOSSIBLE.
Thus do you know you brother as one with you, like you, whole like you, healed like you. Thus do you know your neighbor as yourself. Thus do you support ONLY LIFE, and completely give no attention whatsoever to the illusion of death or the goal of death. In which your ONLY goal is life, shared with the Holy Spirit, in which you ONLY RESURRECT, and CAN ONLY HEAL.
"The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept Atonement himself. This means that he knows that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors ARE healed by the Atonement. Once he accepts this, HIS mind can only heal (others). By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others (heal others). The message which he then gives to others is the truth that THEIR MINDS are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them (because they are immortal)."
"To the ego, the goal is death, which IS its end. But to the Holy Spirit, the goal is life (life=eternal life/immortality), which HAS no end."
"When you heal, that is exactly what you ARE learning (doing). You are recognizing the changeless mind in your brother by perceiving (knowing) that he could NOT have changed his mind. That is how you perceive the Holy Spirit in him. It is ONLY the Holy Spirit in him that never changes His mind. He himself must think he CAN, or he would not perceive himself as sick. He therefore does not know what his self IS. If YOU see only the changeless in him (his immortal self), you have not really changed (healed) him at all (have seen him as not NEEDING healing). But by changing your mind about HIS FOR him (recognizing his immortality), you help him undo (heal) the change his ego thinks it has made in him. "
"Your brother has a changelessness (immortality) in him beyond appearance and deception both. It is obscured by changing views of him which you PERCEIVE as his reality. The happy dream about him takes the form of the appearance of his perfect health; his perfect freedom from all forms of lack; and safety from disaster of all kinds (symbolic of his immortality). The miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or suffering in any form BECAUSE IT CAN SO EASILY BE CHANGED."
"Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself." It was not His Will to be alone. And neither is it yours."
There are two thought systems, one is God’s system, the other is of the ego’s system. God’s thought system produces Creation/Heaven, the ego’s thought system produces hell/earth. Both systems run on impeccable logic based on a logical premise, and are systems of thought. They both start with a premise and follow through to a logical and natural conclusion. The conclusion of Heaven’s thought system is eternal life, the conclusion of the ego’s thought system is death. Both are arrived at through perfectly logical reasoning. As Jesus describes:
"The ego's logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit"
"From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos MUST follow. It is because it follows that it seems to be a logical conclusion; a valid step in ordered thought. The steps to chaos DO follow neatly from their starting-point. Each is a different form in the progression of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror, and away from truth. Think not one step is smaller than another, nor that return from one is easier. The whole descent from Heaven lies in each one. And where your thinking starts, there must it end."
The two systems THINK differently. The ego’s system is entirely founded on separation and exclusion. Everything in the system obeys the premise of exclusivity. God’s system is totally opposite, and is founded on INCLUSION and sharing. Jesus tasks us to learn to "think like God", which does not merely mean to use EGO thinking to think about God, or to use exclusive logic at all when considering the nature of Heaven.
One of the biggest fundamental errors in ACIM circles is USING the ego’s thought system to THINK ABOUT the thought system of God. God’s system is SO unlike the ego’s, that doing so automatically produces two effects: a) what seems to make sense is nonsense, b) what seems like nonsense is actually true sense.
The ego always thinks in terms of separations and exclusions. And this maps directly onto objects in SPACE. You can say for example, if bananas are yellow, and this fruit is purple, it is not a banana. Or if my car is parked in the first space, it is not parked in the last space. Or if I have the whole pizza, you do not have any. Everything is put into a contained, confined box (body) and what is inside the box is considered separate from what is outside. What is outside is *excluded*, and there is no SHARING between the two regions.
This kind of thinking is based entirely in separation thought, a way of thinking that excludes, isolates, separates off, and "reasons" based on whether something is fully in or out of a box. You think about objcts in the world this way because the world ITSELF is the ego thought system, based on the same reasoning, the same logic, the same functioning and the same relationships of separation.
This WAY of thinking, exclusive logical reasoning, is EXTREMEY POOR at evaluating the nature of God’s thought system. When it looks at God’s system (everything in Heaven), it tries to put everything into nice tidy boxes. It separates things out. IT excludes. It has no regard for ANY form of sharing, oneness, Union, or anything that transcends boundaries.
It cannot SEE or comprehend how it makes SENSE, that something can be in more than one box at once, that the inside and outside of the box are joined, that something can be in more than one place at the same time, that two entities can have full access to share the same thing at the same time without compromise, or that two seemingly opposite statements can be NOT contradictory.
For example, when ACIM says something like "God has one son", the ego is delighted, because it gets to put God’s system into a nice confined box. When ACIM then says something like "We are creation, we, the sons of God", it now concludes either a) they can’t both be true, b) the statement about the one son is true and the statement about multiple sons is false, or c) God has many sons and not one son. These are the ONLY ways that can seem to "make sense" to ego thinking. NONE OF THEM ARE CORRECT.
The correct truth about God’s system,is that God has one Son AND many sons. The truth is also that each son has full unlimited access to share ALL of God, WITHOUT excluding anyone else from doing the same at the same time. The truth is also that as you give, you do not lose anything, and you keep what you had, and now BOTH of you have it. This sounds like absolute nonsense to the ego thinker. It does not conform to boxes. If there were pizza in heaven, you and I both would be able to eat the entire pizza. That sounds ABSURD to the ego. It is the way God’s system works!
His thought system is entirely run by INCLUSIVE logic. This is based entirely on sharing. Logically it means, we BOTH share things. Everything applies to me AND you. This is what the Golden Rule is based on. Equality. Whatever is true of me, is true of you. So if I have the whole of something, and I share it with you, we BOTH have the WHOLE of it. We share space. We overlap. We commune. We share . We are united. We are one. All things real COMPLETELY DEFY exclusive boxes. If you are thinking about Heaven, God, sonship, sons, creation etc WITH exclusivity in your logical reasoning, you HAVE TO come to a false conclusion.
For example, "I and my father are one". What does the EGO make of it? It thinks ok, it said me and my father , that’s two things, two boxes. So now we have two boxes. It then says "are one". So now..... there are two seemingly contradictory things happening (to the ego). Is it two boxes, or one box? And usually this is where an ego thinker wil THROW OUT the first half of the statement or forget it entirely, and home in on the second part., in an attempt to RESOLVE the contradiction. This is BULLSHIT. Total failure. Trying to MAKE it make sense, by butchering it.
The ONLY correct way to grasp what is said, is to literally think outside the box. You have to THINK differently. Use inclusivity. Inclusivity says, two things can SHARE. It says two things can JOIN. It says two things can be mutual in their likeness and nature. And it even says that two things can be TWO THINGS, while simultaneously SHARING EVERYTHING. And so here, being one with God does NOT end the TWO-ness. Two distinct things are SHARING with each other.
Jesus: "This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."
And so oneness, being one-with, are-one, DOES NOT mean "one box". In fact Jesus even says you can "be one with your self". It means BOX DEFYING sharing and singularity of NATURE, in which the two ARE STILL TWO, while ALSO being as if one. They are two AND one. Oneness to THE EGO means "one thing". Oneness to God means OF LIKE KIND. And here also SHARING does not mean "only has one" like a single identity, it means TWO THINGS are joined in their NATURE while still retaining their two-ness and INDIVIDUALITY! AND THIS IS NOT DUALITY. NOR IS IT NONDUALITY!
Similarly when Jesus says something hyper cryptic like "one brother is all brothers, one mind is all minds" or "healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad", IT DOES NOT mean that "the one box" is true, NOR does it mean the "two boxes" is true. It is not oneness (as in a count of one) OR duality. THEY ARE BOTH TRUE. There is simultaneously INDIVIDUALITY AND ONENESS. This is why you have a self AND are one. This is why you are one of many sons of God AND part of THE son of God. And this is also why the idea of many sons is NOT a separation idea. It is NOT an idea of "many boxes". It is more like the idea of many boxes which share the same space and overlap each other and share their contents.
The Kingdom of God, the sonship, creation, the relationship of souls, the nature of reality, the way God thinks, Heaven’s functioning, the Holy Spirit, extension, giving and receiving being one, the golden rule, sharing, communication, multiple minds, etc are all GROSSLY misunderstood, because anyone USING ego logic to think ABOUT them is blind, making no sense, using faulty tools, and coming to automatically false conclusions, putting stuff in boxes that is not in a box, and just creates confusion upon confusion.
You have to THINK LIKE GOD if you want to understand these things correctly. And the Holy Spirit’s thought system is based on this inclusive logic. And you are supposed to be learning HOW to think this way, as part of true perception. You have to let go of thought processes that follow the LAWS OF SEPARATION AND EXCLUSION. Otherwise you will think in terms of boxes and shutting everything out. You cannot INCLUDE your brother with that kind of thought process. And you cannot grasp oneness by locking it in a prison cell and falsely concluding "there is only one thing" or "its all one thing" or "there is only god" or "only one son". All of that is ego bullshit.
Creation is one and many. The "one" sonship has many perrmanent parts. You have brothers who are one with you. God has many children who are a united family. Not one or two. Many AND one. And that is natural.
"The whole power of God's Son lies in all of us, but not in any of us alone. God would not have us be alone because He does not will to be alone. That is why He created His Son and gave him the power to create with Him. Our creations are as holy as we are, and we are the Sons of God Himself, and therefore as holy as He is. Through our creations we extend our Love, and thus increase the joy of the Holy Trinity."
It may sound simple enough to say "you but accuse your brother of your own sins." But if you think on this deeply, you'll realize how strange this is. It holds up even when you are angry at someone, and even when it seems like they are doing something wrong all on their own.
Jesus is basically saying you NEVER accuse your brother of THEIR sins. You actually ONLY EVER accuse your brother of YOUR SINS. When you think about that it's quite strange.
1) You believe YOU have sinned.
2) You try to pin YOUR sin onto someone else.
3) You project YOUR actual sense of sin and guilt ONTO someone else, to try to attach it to them and blame THEM for it.
How deceiving is that? What a disguise! What a way to frame someone for something they didn't do. What is this but finding a scapegoat? Blaming someone who is completely innocent and completely unrelated to your sin, for something YOU think you did.
Jesus goes even further to say that, not only do you only ever accuse others of YOUR shit, you actually are not even capable of seeing THEIR sins, yet alone holding THEIR sins against them. So it can't be possible that you SEE objectively "they are sinning and I am not", to enable you to be able to point a neutral finger and say "you are sinning, and I am not."
If you regard them as sinful or guilty, you are NOT seeing their sin or guilt. You are actually seeing the projection of YOUR OWN. Your own pain is hurled out of your mind onto them, your anger attempts to MAKE them be guilty, and you now see them as the CAUSE of YOUR suffering.
This happens because as you project sin and guilt, your perception inverts and becomes completely backwards. Cause and effect are reversed. You see causation or sin as outside of you coming into you, rather than inside you extending outward.
If your brother is guilty of WHAT YOU DID, then they are now the one who is sinful and "doing it", thus doing it TO YOU. You now see yourself as threatened and attacked BY THEIR sinfulness, but it is in fact YOUR OWN sinfulness coming back at you. You may fear their wrath but really you only fear YOUR OWN.
It's such a bizarre thing to do. It's like someone accuses you of being guilty, you feel bad about it, then because you don't want to heal it in yourself or admit it is yours, you find some random target outside of you, some innocent party, and suddenly hurl all of your guilt onto them, try to FRAME them as being sinners, ACCUSING them of all kinds of stuff, to try to SHIFT THE BLAME, so that you can dissociate from your guilt and associate them with it. So they can take the fall FOR you. And if you can be convincing enough, you may even convince yourself and others that YOU are the innocent one, throwing everyone off the scent.
That's what we're doing every single time we are angry at someone, trying to make them guilty, accusing them, seeing them as doing something to us. In fact, when there is any judgemental sense at all of them "doing something wrong" or not being good enough or failing or sinning or attacking, it MUST MEAN that we ourselves are projecting OUR OWN inner misery, pain, unhealed wounds, onto them.
Jesus is clearly saying that you are actually INCAPABLE of judging another's innocence or guilt. You can ONLY see that either you believe BOTH of you are guilty, or BOTH of you are innocent. Because if you have guilt in your own mind, you can ONLY see guilt. And being unable to see innocence at all, you have no way to discern whether they are separately innocent. And if there is innocence in you, you CANNOT see their guilt, because your own innocence blinds you to guilt. So again you cannot discern separately whether they are innocent or guilty.
If you accuse yourself of sin or guilt, you ARE accusing BOTH yourself AND others. And the truth is that NEITHER of you are guilty or sinful. This is why it's not enough to simply take back projections and reclaim ownership responsibility for the sinful junk in your mind. You have to actually UNDO it, FOR BOTH of you, through forgiving yourself. Because you and your brother are one, and either you condemn you both to hell or lift you both to heaven.
Next time you are in the middle of heated anger or blame or judgement to any degree, even if it seems the other person is definitely doing something wrong, even if it seems they are the whole CAUSE of the problem, and MAKING you suffer, even if it seems you have done nothing to ask for this, and especially then because you are in denial, YOU ARE in the middle of hurling YOUR GUILT onto them.
It will seem like it is NOT your guilt at all, and entirely theirs. And you will make them responsible for CHANGING in order that YOUR upset be resolved, so that they stop seeming to CAUSE YOU to be at the effect of them. And you will seek for THEM to stop their sinful behavior so that YOU can be happy, believing THEY have the POWER OVER YOU to cause you to suffer. How dare they be so guilty! How dare they infect you with THEIR sin! But it's all YOURS!
You take your hidden hates and secret sins and sense of guilt and unworthiness and self-hate and miserableness and hurt and pain and unhealed disgust, and you try to PIN IT ON innocent passers by who have nothing to do with it. And now they look like an enemy, and you hate YOUR sin IN them, you attack them for YOUR sin, and you try to destroy YOUR sin IN them. But ideas leave not their source, and it is still your mind attacking ITSELF. Your mind is still containing the shit you are accusing them of.
How strange that you would first of all hurt yourself, then displace the hurt onto someone else who has nothing to do with it. That you would then attack the hurt that is in them, trying to destroy it and the owner of the hurt along with it, to get rid of it. All the while still secretly believing it is YOU who is hurt, and YOU who you are attacking FOR it. Because if you attack your brother for YOUR guilt, that really means you are trying to destroy YOURSELF for being guilty.
This is why the secret of salvation is ALWAYS true. No matter who seems to be the victim or victimizer, or who seems to be doing what to whom, it is always YOU DOING IT TO YOU, even when it seems like someone else is doing it to you. Barking at someone for doing something wrong is your way of hating the sin in you in an externalized way, so that you pretend that you're not targeting yourself. Attack is always made upon a stranger, and that stranger is you.
"Learn this, and learn it well, for it is here delay of happiness is shortened by a span of time you cannot realize. You NEVER hate your brother for HIS "sins", but ONLY for your own. Whatever form his sins appear to take, the form obscures the fact that you believe it to be yours, and THEREFORE meriting a just attack."
"As prayer is always for yourself, so is forgiveness given you. It is impossible to forgive another, for it is only your sins you see in him. You want to see them there, and not in you."
"Only in someone else can you forgive yourself, for you have called him guilty of your sins, and in him must your innocence be found. Who but the sinful need to be forgiven? And do not ever think you can see sin in anyone except yourself."
"Let it never be forgotten that prayer at any level is always for yourself. If you unite with anyone in prayer, you make him part of you. The enemy is you, as is the Christ. Before it can become holy, then, prayer becomes a choice. You do not choose for another. You can but choose for yourself. Pray truly for your enemies, then, for herein lies your own salvation. Forgive them for your sins, and you will be forgiven indeed."
"If he be lost in sin so must you be; if you see light in him your sins have been forgiven by yourself."
"How can he live, with all your sins upon him?"
"BEYOND his errors is his holiness, and YOUR salvation. You gave him not his holiness, but tried to see your sins in him, to save yourself. And yet his holiness IS your forgiveness. Can YOU be saved by making sinful the one whose holiness IS your salvation?"
"And you are each the symbol of your sins to one another, silently, and yet with ceaseless urgency condemning still your brother for the hated thing you are."
"For I became the symbol of your sin, and so I had to die INSTEAD of you."
"When you feel that you are tempted to accuse someone of sin in any form, do not allow your mind to dwell on what you think he did, for this is self-deception. Ask instead, "Should I accuse myself of doing this?"
"Who would send messages of hatred and attack, if he but understood he sends them to HIMSELF? Who would accuse, make guilty and condemn HIMSELF?The ego's messages are ALWAYS sent AWAY from you, in the belief that, for your message of attack and guilt, will someone OTHER than yourself suffer. And, even if YOU suffer, yet someone ELSE will suffer more."
"What you project you disown, and therefore DO NOT BELIEVE IS YOURS. You are therefore EXCLUDING yourself from it, by the very statement you are making that you are DIFFERENT from someone else. Since you have also judged AGAINST what you project, you attack it because you have already attacked it BY rejecting it. By doing this UNCONSCIOUSLY, you try to keep the fact that you must have attacked yourself FIRST out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe."
"It can be but myself I crucify." All that I do I do unto myself. If I attack, I suffer. But if I forgive, salvation will be given me."
"You will not attack yourself, and you will realize that to attack another is but to attack yourself. You will be free of the insane belief that to attack a brother saves yourself."
"The dreary, hopeless thought that you can make attacks on others and escape yourself has nailed you to the cross."
"Such is the form of madness you believe, if you accept the fearful thought you can attack another and be free yourself."
"Each of your perceptions of "external reality" is a pictorial representation of your own attack thoughts."
"In every condemnation that you offer the Son of God, lies the conviction of your OWN guilt."
"You cannot see his sins and not your own."
A glossary of christianity terms reinterpreted and clarified by Jesus in A Course in Miracles.
Here are some elements of ACIM which may sound christianity-oriented, but of course Jesus redefines and clarifies their meaning.
1. Heaven - is the kingdom of God which God created one with Him and which is immortal and eternal. You are part of it, as is everyone. It is reality. It is a living creation in which all things are alive forever. It is not Earth.
2. Hell - the attempt to oppose heaven, reality, God, yourself and others, by believing in a state which really does not exist, as if it does. A state opposite to the nature of God, which lacks everything and is therefore devoid of meaning. Onto this empty shell you can project ideas of hell or or heaven, which are seen as a reflection. A belief that hell is real turns the nothingness into hallucinations of something evil. Earth is part of the empty shell, the veil of illusions.
3. Being cast out of heaven - if you are not in heaven, you are dreaming of being exiled. God didn't cast you out, you left. Or at least, you believe you are no longer where God is. This produces an illusion of a world outside of heaven, which includes the Earth. God didn't abandon or reject you, you wanted to not have him be your father and to receive nothing from him. You became the prodigal son who thought he could be better off on his own.
4. The devil - anyone who denies God is against God. They are also against Christ, making them the anti-christ. Being against God you are attempting to turn yourself into a devil. The devil is your belief in an impossible opposite to God. It is your ego. Every separated individual is the anti-christ. But these states are not real. They are make-believe fiction and fantasy in which someone who is confused believes they are something they can never be. Thus there is no real devil or anti-christ, only people with mental illness.
5. Sin - the idea that separation is possible and real and has real consequences. That you can cause reality, therefore you can cause God. Therefore you have committed the "original sin" of trying to attack God. Except nothing real (immortal) can be attacked, so sin is really just a mistaken belief that sin is possible. When correctly recognized as a mistaken belief, it is regarded as error, and errors can be corrected without punishment. If sin were real, punishment by death is inevitable. But if sin is a false idea, then there is no death.
6. Salvation - to the ego-oriented person, salvation is anything opposite to God which takes you further away from God. In this light death is seen as salvation from life. In truth salvation is the return to God through willingness and acceptance that only his truth is true. To be saved is to be free from sin, ie error. Which means simply to be sane and to recognize correctly what is really true. Salvation is the same thing as atonement, true perception and true forgiveness.
7. Atonement - to the ego-oriented person, this is punishment for sin, demanding death. To pay for what you did. Ego says you attacked life so your life will now be attacked. Real atonement is the recognition that attack is impossible, there is no sin, and only what God created really exists. Atonement is the final miracle in which you recognize reality for what it is and reject anything not of God. Where you realize that only God's Kingdom exists and there is no world. That you are still as God created you, causing you to wake up from your dream and return to reality.
8. Evil - the notion that some power other than God exists and can cause changes in the immortal. Evil is nothing but mental illness, insanity, confusion, and just a belief in an opposite to God. It's an attempt to overthrow the kingdom and rebel against reality, making a person seem insane. Believing truth is false and false is true, all properties of nothingness and evil are assigned to God, while all properties of God are assigned to nothing. This produces hallucinations of enemies and attack and hell. There is no evil because it is nothing but a false belief in something impossible.
9. Repentance - you must repent of sins, or choose to stop being a sinner. In truth you cannot really be a sinner because sin is not possible. You can believe you are a sinner, however. And it is this belief that must be undone. To "choose again" is to repent by aligning yourself closer to God and rejecting the ego/devil.
10. Confession - really means to admit the truth, but only to admit the truth of God is true. To admit to having seemingly done something that is impossible in reality, may seem like honesty, but it's really admitting to something unreal. A true confession admits that you are christ and are purely innocent forever.
11. Word of God - the true nature of God expressed and manifested in creation. God's authenticity and honesty and trustworthiness. The expression of God's love, his voice, and his creations. It is the whole kingdom and its truth. 12. Faith - similar to trust, in terms of who or what you are placing your faith and allegiance in. Faith in the ego/devil means trusting a lie and moving towards death. Faith in God means trusting the turth and moving towards life. It's also tied into what you give "credit" to, and therefore what you value or want. If you value God you want God and credit him with being true. Therefore you trust him and side with him, and therefore have faith (know) that his laws are the only laws.
13. Resurrection - A return to life, meaning a return to immortality and eternity. This is possible only in the context that currently those who reject God are to some degree "playing dead" and are trying not to live. Resurrection is the assertion of pure life and is the opposite of choosing to die. It surmounts death and abolishes it and has power over it. It might be expressed or demonstrated as in Jesus's resurrection in which he showed through physical form that death has no power over him. It also includes the power to abolish sickness and death in all its forms, including physically in self and others.
14. Savior - Jesus is an example of a savior in that he united his will with God's, therefore uniting the will of the whole sonship with God's for us. Part of us therefore became united with God again in Jesus's resurrection. In this sense he has now in a position of being able to save ie help us - to become saviors.
15. Prayer - Ultimately communion with God in which everything is given and received. Love is received and love is expressed. It is a request for and an acceptance of everything. In its lower forms it devolves into specifics and requests which include a wish for some kind of attack or control or special favor.
16. Revelation - a true revelation is a state in which fear is totally abolished. It is a one-way communication from God to a child of God, and is like being imprinted with God. In the experience it is deeply personal and there's only you and God there. It does not include others. But its content can later be shared with others. It is not a mere insight or download or slight upgrade, it's a powerful world-blotting-out intense expression directly from God.
17. Soul - God created many souls which are individual beings who comprise the sonship and are the Kingdom. They are simultaneously all one as the Christ, also known as the one son of God. They are not children of Christ, they are children of God. They share everything with each other and therefore are each other. Souls are permanently perfect co-creators with God and create their own kingdoms of living beings together. You have a soul which is your real self/identity in christ, and you have your own kingdom of creations in heaven, which are your children.
18. Christ - Christ is also referred to as the one son, a part of the holy trinity, but christ is also EVERY son of God. Each soul is christ and you are christ just as Jesus is. Which means you are also part of Jesus and vice versa. We are all joined together in christ. Christ is the perfect holy state of being of all souls and the christ-mind is shared by all minds.
19. Trinity - Before the separation from God there was a duality, ie God and his Sonship. But in the separation God also added the Holy Spirit, producing a trinity. The Holy Spirit is the call to awaken, God's Voice speaking to His Son, which guarantees his healing and his return to reality. All three aspects of the trinity are now permanent and only the trinity is real.
20. Holy Spirit - God's creation which was added in the separation to keep a link between God and his children so that they could never be lost. It is God's guarantee of their union with him and the permanent potential for their return home to share everything with him. He bridges the gap between parts of mind that seem united in christ and parts which seem separate. He is the appointed friend and help and corrector and therapist and comforter and healer God has designated to lead us out of hell.
21. Forgiveness - really the recognition that there is nothing to forgive. In this recognition is the clear sane recognition of what is true and what is false. And only God's truth is regarded as true. In that truth sin is utterly impossible and nothing real can be changed. Therefore it's the acknowledgement that everyone is as God created them and nothing has ever happened to change God's will. It disregards all notions of an opposite to immortality and shines a beacon of light in the darkness for all those who think they are unforgivable. Forgiveness is a reflection of your immortal nature, and therefore entails invulnerability in which no-one can ever be accused of doing anything to you.
22. Angel - beings created by God as part of the Kingdom. They are created below the sons of God (or from?) and act in roles of protection and guidance and healing. You can communicate and work with them even while on earth.
23. The fall of man - the separation from God, which was an attempted belief that separation is possible, a tiny mad idea, took place in the minds of souls. But also some angels became involved and believed in the separation. This produced what is termed "the fall" in which we exiled/projected ourselves from heaven, into a fictional realm of exile outside of heaven, which is not really anywhere. Lucifer, an actual angel, was included in the fall. He symbolizes the devil perhaps but all separated souls are just as much the anti-christ. This was an actual rebellion in heaven against God and a desire to be God, producing the authority problem and the rejection of God's fatherhood/authorship. A desire for their own kingdom they could rule without him. This produced spacetime, the world, and earth, which was the idea of hell as heaven's opposite.
24. Blasphemy - technically real blasphemy is impossible because God cannot be opposed or offended. But you can believe things which are seemingly against God's nature. Any form of fear, suffering, sickness, death, an annoyance, even a slight lack of joy, unhappiness, lack of peace, are all blasphemous in that they claim something that is not true in God's reality. Therefore they are trying to work against God's truth and oppose his laws. This is of course all a fantasy and there is no sin.
25. The last judgement - God's evaluation of you is the same as it was when he created you perfect, which is that you remain exactly as you were intended to be and nothing can change you. Therefore you are worthy of God and are perfectly innocent forever. Nothing has ever been done to affect your entitlement to his love and you have never sinned or attacked anything real. You merely dreamed of it in a nightmare of your own making, where you deceived yourself. The last judgement upon the world we made (earth etc) is that it is nothing and does not exist.
26. Church - perhaps a term best used as a synonym for the sonship or the kingdom, which are the same thing. The body of God, if you will, is the outer expression of God - his creation. All members of the sonship are part of the church of christ, and this membership is permanent.
27. Communion - while "holy communion" may be a symbolic act, real communion takes place in heaven as the perfect symbiotic union of God and his children. It is the total immersion and openness to God, receiving from Him and expressing in return. To commune is to know, to be, to share. On Earth this devolves into "communication" which can have varying degrees. The separation from God was really a communication breakdown, ie an unwillingness to receive or to see eye-to-eye. Miracles raise the level of communication until communion becomes possible again.
28. Creation - a term only applicable to what takes place in heaven and not on earth. It requires the perfect total whole extension or giving of what the creator has, to what the creation is. The creation inherits everything of its creator and has nothing else. It shares everything with him, having not left him, and therefore can only exist to share it. All creations are co-creators therefore because they inherit the ability to create. Creations are living beings of light, and can only create living beings of light. They cannot create physical objects or forms of matter or energy or other elements of spacetime. Earth is not a creation because it cannot create more earths. Everything in spacetime is a "dead end".
29. Crucifixion - while Jesus's activity on the cross is mostly referred to as "the crucifixion", crucifixion itself really means the attempt to crucify christ, which is everyone, through allegiance to the ego and to death. It's the attempt to prove that God's immortal son can be killed. Every form of fear and suffering and unhappiness and death is a form of crucifixion. This includes the making of an entire seeming universe of spacetime which is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son ie kingdom. It depicts all possible forms of death and is run by laws of death. Being hell, everything in it is crucified and crucifying. Ressurrection marks the ascension back to heaven.
30. Disciple - someone who freely wills to follow someone who may be more advanced, above, or wiser than themselves. Jesus does state in ACIM that if you were not to follow someone of greater wisdom you would be unwise. This indirectly suggests you should follow Jesus as his discipline and learn from him, but is not a mandate. We're also told that Jesus told the disciples to be physicians of the lord, that is to go out and heal the sick and raise the dead, and to heal themselves, with the power of the holy spirit. It is again implied that we are asked to do the same.
31. Garden of Eden - originally really the state of heaven, in which there was no need or lack of anything. Everyone had everything. It wasn't literally a garden with apple trees in it. Adam and Eve were just a couple of God's children. The tree of knowledge of life and death is symbolically the ego thought system, which if believed in (partaken of, eaten, consumed, believed) seems to "poison" the mind, make a person self-conscious of their shameful existence, and attempt to hide in the bushes of the darkness of the mind, to hide from God. They seem then to be expelled from heaven but really have believed in their own expulsion because they want to be exiled, having bought into temptation by believing the tiny mad idea of "the serpent" (ego).
32. God - of course, the prime first creator, the absolute reality, the only true law, the infinite immortal being who shares everything of himself in order to express and apply himself through creation. The father of all eternally living beings and the source of all existence. The all in all. The guarantee of eternal peace and perfection. God relates to every child fully and personally while relating to all children the same way, making him both personal and impersonal. Everyone knows God.
33. Holiness - related to wholeness and purity, innocence and the lack of belief in sin. A state of alignment with God's reality and with truth. Sanity, harmlessness, gentleness, light, healing, power, certainty and openness. Just one of many synonyms for the state of being in heaven.
34. Miracle - in the big picture everything real is permanently miraculous. Miraculousness is the nature of reality in which one thing is all things and all thing are one. This breaks all rules relating to limitation and separate boxes and isolation and exclusion. All expressions of love (God) are miraculous. God creates miracles. You are a miracle of God. God extends through you, God works miracles. You are a miracle capable of creating miracles. Miracles are expressions of life. Even in the world of dreams, on earth, miracles mirror creation in heaven, and are thought-creations which give life, provide love, fill a lack, resurrect, and correct the mind from its mistaken beliefs, producing healing. Since their nature is extension, they are received from God and given to your brothers. There are without number or limit and there is nothing they cannot do. They are truly supernatural - above the nature of the world, based solely on the laws of another world (heaven).
35. Temptation - really just the way that illusions of nothingness seem to symbolically assert and represent things which are opposite to God, as if to try to persuade you to buy into and believe in them. Illusions present themselves as things happening which cannot happen in reality, sins occurring, attacks having effects, real suffering, to "tempt you" to believe further that such things are possible. If you give them your belief, you buy into it and are deceived. If you see through the illusion and frame it in the truth, you deny it and reject its lies and do not believe in it. You can be tempted but not coerced against your will. Being tempted to believe sons of God are bodies is a major hurdle to be overcome because it is not true, but difficulty to recognize as false. The ego/devil is said to tempt souls deeper into hell, which is our own mind/beliefs making faulty decisions.
36. Commandment - not talked about much in ACIM except to say that God's will cannot be opposed, his laws are unbreakable, his nature has permanently established reality, and you cannot do anything to interfere with it. What God has created, no man can put asunder. This does not include the rather social-religious commandments or "guidelines for behavior" on earth. God does not coerce. Thou shalt be free. Thou shalt love your brother as yourself. Thou shalt live forever. Thou shalt come to no harm. Thou shalt be always happy. Thou shalt give and receive as one. Thou shalt share everything with everyone.
37. Worship - Appreciation and awe of God is appropriate, as is loving God and thanking Him, but he does not have an ego with which to receive any kind of praise. You cannot tell him how great he is as if to give him something he does not have. He cannot receive offerings of sacrifice or exalting words. He has no need of anything. But you can celebrate what has been given and rejoice and be glad that only his truth is true. You can thank him for what you are and for what you have been given, and for what your brothers have as well. But you're not supposed to idolize him or your brothers or jesus or turn anyone into a figure "above" you. Only God is above you and that's why you have awe of him.
38. Healing - in ACIM this usually refers to the transformative process of change whereby something begins in a less healed state and moves towards a more healed state. Miracles can induce healing but a "miracle of healing" is a level confusion. Miracles are a remedy, like a drop of detergent upon dirt, which causes the dirt to be removed. Healing is the result, but the miracle itself is not the healing. This is also why miracles can cause shifts in perception but are not the shifts, because the shifts are part of the healing effect, not the miracle that caused them. To heal you give healing and learn to receive healing as you give it. All those who become healed become instruments of healing. Your function on earth is the healing of the sonship as a miracle-worker.
39. Christian - apparently someone who follows christ, but you should recognize that you are christ as well. You are supposed to return to the state of owning up to being christ, recognizing that everyone is christ. Acting as christ and being christ-like is to be christian.
40. Second coming - really has nothing to do with a singular person coming down from heaven for a second time for a second go-around. It's really what happens when all those on earth are choosing to return to heaven and, of themselves, become the christ. The first coming was Jesus showing the way to return to heaven, and the second coming is us actually implementing and following that and doing the same.
41. Eternal life - really granted by God the instant he created you and everyone. It means permanence and the impossibility of anything ever happening that could interrupt, damage or change that permanence. This means it is a state of total immortality and invulnerability. Everything real lives forever.
42. Eternity - a state of heaven and reality in which everything real always exists, is always the same, never changes, and exists here and now and forever. There is no "time" involved, only presence.
43. Golden rule - Not an optional rule, but really the unbreakable law of God that you are everyone. Therefore how you treat them you are immediately and directly and personally treating youreslf. The part of you that is in them is the receiver of what you give, because giving and receiving are one. This produces an incentive for only shared interests and for giving only love, otherwise you will hurt yourself by trying to hurt another. What you do unto others you do unto yourself. By treating them how you would want to be treated, you directly do treat yourself that way and directly receive that treatment, regardless of whether other opt to reciprocate or not.
Some ACIM quotes...
"I told you that I could reach up and bring the Holy Spirit down to you. But I can bring Him to you only at your own invitation. The Holy Spirit is nothing more than your own right mind. He was also mine. The Bible says, "May the mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus," and uses this as a BLESSING. It is the blessing of miracle-mindedness. It asks that you may think as I thought, joining with me in Christ-thinking."
"The Holy Spirit is the only part of the Holy Trinity which is symbolic. He is referred to in the Bible as the Healer, the Comforter, and the Guide. He is also described as something separate, apart from the Father and from the Son. I myself said, "and if I go I will send you ANOTHER comforter, and he will abide with you."
"The Bible enjoins you to be perfect, to heal ALL errors, to take no thought of the body AS SEPARATE, and to accomplish all things IN MY NAME."
"The Bible instructs you to "KNOW thyself," or BE CERTAIN. Certainty is always of God. When you love someone, you have PERCEIVED him as he is, and this makes it possible for you to KNOW him."
"The Garden of Eden, which is described as a literal garden in the Bible, was not originally an actual garden at all. It was merely a mental state of complete need-lack. Even in the literal account, it is noteworthy that the pre-Separation state was essentially one in which man needed nothing. The Tree of Knowledge, again an overly-literal concept, (as is clearly shown by the subsequent reference to "eating of the fruit of the tree") is a symbolic reference to some of the misuses of knowledge referred to in the section immediately preceding this one."
"The Bible repeatedly states that you should praise God. This hardly means that you should tell Him how wonderful He is. He has no ego with which to accept thanks, and no perceptions with which to judge your offerings. But unless you take your part in the creation, His joy is not complete because YOURS is incomplete. And THIS He does know. He knows it in his own Being and its experience of His Sons' experience. The constant GOING OUT of His love is blocked when His Channels are closed, and He IS lonely when the minds He created do not communicate fully with Him."
"That is why the Bible says "There is no death," and that is why I demonstrated that death does not exist."
""No man cometh to the Father but by me" is among the most misunderstood statements in the Bible. It DOES NOT mean that I am in any way separate (or different) from you, EXCEPT IN TIME. Now, we know that time does not exist. Actually, the statement is much more meaningful if it is considered on a vertical rather than a horizontal axis. Regarded along the vertical, man stands below me, and I stand below God. In the process of "rising up", I AM higher. This is because without me the distance between God and man is too great for man to encompass. I bridge the distance as an Elder Brother to man, on the one hand, and a Son of God on the other. My devotion to my brothers has placed me in charge of the Sonship, which I can render complete only to the extent I can SHARE it."
"When the Bible says "Judge not that ye be not judged" it merely means that if you judge the reality of others at all, you will be unable to avoid judging your own."
"I have been correctly referred to in the Bible as "The Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world."
Ok so, this is possibly a touchy subject, and I'm not trying to make anyone feel guilty. If you have some kind of a sickness, pain, upset, disability, whatever, this is going to be talking about that and I don't mean to make anyone feel attacked. But I want to look at something the course discusses.
"***The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill.*** Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."
I've been looking at this lately because I've been having to heal a sense of guilt and blame for someone else being sick. Once I started to look at what the course says about my own situation, I saw that we basically are immortal beings who keep attacking ourselves, making ourselves suffer, inducing our own sickness, and trying to die. And then I started to think about whether other people were doing this, and this is where some lightbulbs went off.
If a person is having a physical sickness, it does mean that they are attacking themselves. It means that they, as an immortal being, are trying to destroy themselves. They believe they are guilty and sinful for attacking God. This is then projected onto and through the body. The body in turn takes on forms of sickness as a shadow of the guilt in the mind, a shadow of deformity.
"Illness can be but guilt's shadow, grotesque and ugly since it mimics deformity. If a deformity is seen as real, what could its shadow be except deformed?"
But the sickness in the body isn't just there as a sickness, it's there for a purpose. The purpose is accusation. The sickness is actually part of the attempt to project sin onto others. The body is made to appear sick and weak and suffering, so that the person appears to be innocent, and so that someone else is accused of sin. The sight of a sick body therefore means someone is holding a "picture of crucifixion" up to accuse you of sin, and "sick bodies remain accusers."
"The sick remain accusers."
"You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes, that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell."
Jesus has gone even further than this, to say that in this self-destructive, projective situation, we actually are trying to kill others. As we scapegoat, ie project sin, we make the body sick, in order to prove another's guilt. And one of the ways this takes shape is in terms of contagion of physical illness, such as with a cold or flu, where someone is trying to "infect" others with their sin and guilt, so that if others become sick and suffer for it, this exonerates the sick person.
Jesus even says that when we are sick, we are being merciless, like we have this intense almost evil attitude of destruction, first towards ourselves and then towards others. We're actually even willing to die, if it means someone else is accused of causing it. And so the dead body testifies to the sinfulness of another. That we're literally willing to destroy the body in order to try to exonerate ourselves of the original sin, and pin it on something external.
"Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die."
So this then made me realize that, a major reason that I often have a sense of guilt or self-blame around other people's sicknesses, is because they are in fact attempting to accuse me of their sin. Their sick body is attempting to project guilt onto me, its a way they are using their body for attack, and having tried to destroy themselves they now are projecting destruction onto me. So then I end up feeling guilty because, essentially, if I "make their body real" to myself, I'll buy the temptation that the sickness is literally accusing me of sin.
I think part of realizing this, for me, entailed having to be willing to look at someone else and ask myself if they are doing the very same thing the course says I am doing to myself. ie are they trying to destroy themselves, do they have guilt from the separation, are they punising themselves, are they projecting and are they using their body for attack? And the answer is yes.
But this answer also gives rise to the realization that, the truth about myself, also applies to them. Just as I might realize that I am not sinful or guilty, that God has not been attacked, and I don't deserve to suffer, and I need to stop blaming myself or making myself guilty..... so too does this apply to others.
So now my approach to the "sick person" changes to one of compassion for them doing the exact same self-attack that I've been doing, a recognition that they are similarly not sinful, realizing that they are mistaken to believe they should be guilty, and therefore shifting to a more supportive position of reminding them of what is really true of them. And this in turn alleviates my guilt because it means I am not responsible for their condition, and its "truth" doesn't apply to either of us.
What's really true of them is that they have not sinned, their innocence is intact, they have no reason to be guilty, they have no need for sickness, they have no basis for punishing themselves, and they don't need to destroy themselves, because they haven't done anything wrong.
I am finding in fact that this kind of attitude toward them is in fact "miracle working". Because the more I express toward someone "the atonement" principle of their sinlessness, the more I am being loving, and also am treating my neighbor as myself. If my "work" is to express toward someone that they deserve love and health and happiness because they have not sinned, I am in fact joining my mind to theirs by accessing the part of them that's innocent. The "innocent self" BEHIND the self-accusation. And the accused guilty self is not who they really are.
And so it's important to overlook their self-accusation and not see it as applying to them. As I do this, I feel a POWER, and a sense of ENERGY, funneling through me. And I am quite certain this is opening the door to working miracles. If I can accept my own atonement ie my sinlessness, then I can also recognize other people have been similarly attacking themselves needlessly and can help to support them in finding their way back to their innate perfection.
"By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others. The message which he then gives to others is the truth that THEIR MINDS are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them."
"He MUST work a miracle on behalf of himself here (See the point about miracles as a perception corrector) before he can effect miracles as creative energizers, which they are."
What this reveals to me is also that, when I have ever done forgiveness, it's almost always been with a somewhat selfish intent. Even if I am forgiving "others", it mostly revolves around taking stuff off them and putting it back on me, so that I can address the deeper problem in "my separate self". But what I see now is, that in fact, the very same practice which I might use to apply to myself, to undo my own belief in my own sinfulness, I can use that very same approach FOR SOMEONE ELSE on their behalf, and forgive them FOR THEM.
In effect, it's like "doing a forgiveness" for someone else on their behalf, applying it TO them, reminding them of what THEIR truth is, and helping them to see their own innocence. Just as I would do for myself, but applying to them instead.
I am certain this has a lot to do with working a miracle. Because a miracle worker begins by seeing the light in another, which you an only do if you see light in yourself, and then you reinforce their light by shining your light into their mind, as you "pick them up" and "lift them up" through the expression of the truth about them.
It's kind of like telling someone that they've been hard on themselves, mean to themselves, unfair to themselves, and have not loved themselves.... and that the reason they've done this is unfounded, and they don't deserve this self-abuse, nor do they deserve to suffer in sickness or pain or misery. To set them back on the right path and get them back in touch with their own innate soul perfection. To be like, hey, brother, what you think about yourself is not true, you are .... and then list all the things which are true of them in reality.
(Forgiveness) "It looks on lies but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, "My brother, what you think is not the truth."
This IS forgiveness because it's what it means to overlook the layers of ego sin, guilt, fear, self-attack, symptoms, body-stuff, in another, and look to the fact they are a christ entity, perfect and holy, temporarily mistaken, believing stuff about themselves that isn't true, and knowing and remembering FOR them that their lies are not true of them.
This also taps into a new "mode" of forgiveness, in which we attempt to reap the benefits not by forgiving "for ourselves" or by withdrawing from others into our separate minds, but by reaching OUT to others and telling THEM what we want to be true of US.
Expressing towards someone a higher truth, simultaneously makes it true of YOU, but without the selfish component. In this sense yes your brother is your savior. You can only give the miracles you have received but you can also bolster what you receive by giving. This is why "miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver."
To pour love into someone, to recognize when they themselves do not love themselves, and to supply the lack of love, by reminding them of what is really true about them, joins your mind to theirs and enlightens it, shines truth into their mind, empowers them, awakens them, and resurrects them.
"To forgive is to OVERLOOK."
Your mind in its natural healthy state, extends outwards and joins with other minds, connecting to them intimately. Your mind extends past your body, past the body of others, and joins with the holiness in them. It shares itself with them and thus unites with the Holy Spirit in them.
But if your mind is not allowed to fully extend all the way to the other mind, past all physical obstacles, your mind "falls short". It seems to focus on something "in between" you and another. Whether it be that you are focusing on the body of another, or your own body.
This focusing on the obstacle between you, usually bodies, means you actually have dipped down into false perception. And now your mind is blinded by perception of form. And that means you are failing to OVERLOOK or extend or fully move past the obstacles. Your mind basically "stops at" the outside surface of apparent forms and bodies.
This lack of full extension, sort of stopping off along the way to pay attention to form, is a state of mental sickness. It really only occurs due to some kind of "withdrawal" from others, an unwillingness to share, a lack of openness, a lack of joining. Which means that you have pulled back from the relationship and are only going part way towards union with them.
That's a problem, because that means part of your mind is in your brother, and part of it is now "separated off" within yourself, and the two parts are not connecting fully. And this "gap" forms, the separation gap, in which the body exists. And now you perceive obstacles and appearances and bodies "in between" you and the REST of you.
Having done this, you are now sick, and your mind is now starting to TARGET the body. It's becoming blocked by form and "blinded" by sight of form. Your perception is dropping into false perception and you're dipping down into ego. And by doing so, you are now making illusions seem real to you.
Sight of the body now becomes an obstacle, and a target, and a weapon, and something used to SEPARATE you and your brother, or you and the rest of you. And this is the use of body for attack. And by doing this you are kind of holding the body up in-between you and your brother and are pretending it is a picture of your self. And it now becomes a picture of crucifixion.
Since your mind is no longer extending fully all the way to the light in another mind, instead of going OUT, it is not aimed DOWN. And it starts heading into the darkness rather than the light above.
This is going to push the body into states of darkness and distortion, and the body now literally becomes sick. And the mind is now USING the body for attack, by making it real, and focusing on it. And by so doing the body will now turn into the absence of health and healing.
You then enter a state which is familiar to most of us, where you now seem to "have a problem", and the problem seems real. Your body is sick and having issues. And your attention is on it. And it seems real. And you can't seem to get past it. And seeing it frightens you. And now you begin looking for solutions.
The ego solution at this point is to try to ATTACK the BLOCKAGE that you're seeing, ie target the body or the apparent sickness, with weapons of truth, trying to make it go away. You can hurl courseisms at it in the hope that you will undo it. Like you can say ok, this sickness is not real, it's an illusion, it's not really there etc. But this all still depends on believing that it IS THERE. And having failed to overlook it is really the problem in the first place.
So what is the trick to it? This will sound a bit counter intuitive but essentially, in order to heal the body you have to not make it real. You have to stop focusing on it. Stop making it an obstacle coming between you and others. And stop using it as proof that your mind is not REACHING your brother. If it is seen as an obstacle, and in fact if it is seen AT ALL, your mind is not fully extending.
It's really only the mind's choice of whether to fully extend, or partly extend, which produces health or sickness in the body. When it fails to extend fully (to give unconditional love), it falls short and "invents" separation devices in-between itself and others. And this shows up AS A BODY, and proceeds to turn from a healthy body to a sick body. The more you make this obstacle real the worse it gets, until it dies from attacking it.
So in fact when the mind RETURNS TO EXTENDING, which essentially IGNORES the body entirely, overlooking it, looking PAST it to the light, that is what "indirectly" heals the body. It lifts away from the body all of its attack and its use of the body for separation. So by practically forgetting about the body completely and SEEING PAST it to the light in another mind, joining with them, the body moves into INVISIBILITY. And it is this that is miraculous and heals the body.
So the trick is to actually just LOOK PAST the problem, push beyond the obstacle, see THROUGH the physical matter, seek out THE LIGHT beyond, and focus ONLY on that (seeking the Kingdom first), and this automatically heals the body. It heals because the mind is not not an attacking mind, it's a whole mind, a sane mind, and a whole mind has a HEALING EFFECT on the body as it "passes through it."
So there's a knack to it because there's great temptation to make the body REAL and THEN try to heal it, which locks in the sickness. And now you're at war with it which is a double denial. You have to stop being blocked by it, stop focusing on it, expand your mind, focus on the light, and therefore OVERLOOK the body. That is FORGIVENESS. And this UNDOES all of the strange distortions of sickness in the body because now a non-attacking, HEALTHY mind is moving through it.
The Holy Spirit in fact, when using the body solely for communication, communicates ONLY HEALING, and recognizes essentially that the body is NOT important AT ALL. This isn't a spiritualization of the body, it's more like IGNORING IT completely. It is recognized as having NO FUNCTION. And the only thing happening is the mind basically ignoring it and moving PAST it to do its business. This then heals the body because it is not given any reality.
"17. Miracles are the absence of the body. They are sudden shifts into invisibility, away from lower order reality. That is why they heal."
"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is not an end."
"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."
"But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. "
"Learning must lead beyond the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. This can be accomplished only if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension. The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of all illness, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND'S FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND'S JOY."
"To see a body as anything EXCEPT a means of pure extension is to limit your mind and hurt yourself. Health is therefore nothing more than united purpose. If the body is brought under the purpose of the mind, it becomes whole because mind's purpose is one."
"Freedom from illusions lies only in not believing them. THERE IS NOT ATTACK, but there is unlimited communication and therefore unlimited power and wholeness. The power of wholeness is EXTENSION. Do not arrest your thought in this world, and you will open your mind to Creation in God."
"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."
"You have done miracles, but it is QUITE apparent that you have NOT done them alone. You have succeeded whenever you have reached another mind, and joined with it. When two minds join as one, and share one idea equally, the first link in the awareness of the Sonship as one has been made."
"Christ's vision has one law. 2It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."
"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient.
The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the Guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE. Remember that you ARE choosing a guide for helping, and the wrong choice will NOT help. But remember also that THE RIGHT ONE WILL. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God."
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."
A major theme in ACIM is that you are supposed to come out of the PAST into the PRESENT. Basically it's saying that in the separation from God, we made time, by inventing a sense of the past being different to what is here now. Or as an attempt to change what is here now into something it is not, resulting in a different future. Time was an attempt to destroy or deny what exists, by claiming that it has changed, being no longer like it was.
In doing this we kind of avoided the eternal always now of the present in ETERNITY, which is timeless. And instead we positioned ourselves separate and distanced from that sense of now-ness, inventing the past and the future which are both avoidances of the now. The past is also the idea of sin, suggesting that your past sin caused a guilty present and will be punished in the future, as a kind of chain of cause and effect.
So we literally invented time displacement, which is also distance, and is thus also space. We invented spacetime, a belief in not being now or of being distanced from what is. The "now" moment in time, while still being IN time, is actually symbolic of eternity. It is the holy instant. It is not eternity but it is very close to it because it centers time on a rejection of "past and future", and therefore invites the end of time.
In ACIM therefore we are literally being asked to bring about the END OF TIME AND SPACE, by moving out of the past and future into the present. Because it's only in the present that you can be forgiving, and have vision, and be healed. Love is present, God is present.
We are told that "I see only the past", and to then gradually learn to come out of the past into the present so that "I see only the present." To see relationships in terms of what your brother is NOW without his past, which is forgiveness, laying the basis for holy-relating.
This is rather similar to the "Power of Now" that Eckhart Tolle has touted. ACIM is actually asking us to stop believing in the past and the future and to become very focused and centered in the present, so that we can align our mind with the eternal now. Heaven is always in a state of "now is always and forever", unchanging and never moving away from what is here now - never avoiding God.
Avoiding the present is the avoidance of God. Which is why the ego is dedicated to the past, and to maintaining time - or a gap between what is and where you are. We are literally being asked to come out of time, out of the sense of history or future, and into a pristine, clean, "new", fresh look at what is here NOW, so that we can truly see what is here now, which allows us to see the real world, and thereby forgive the world.
All condemnation of sin is always about the past. All projections of guilt and blame are based on past doings. Even in the moment that someone sins, it is already old. Holding it against them is holding the past against them and against ourselves. PRESENCE, therefore, is a major central pillar in ACIM's teaching.
We are being asked to be fully present, fully aware, fully attentive to what is, fully wholly undivided in our dedication to the immediacy of reality. This leads to holy instants, to the real world, and lays the path back to heaven. By coming out of the past and future we literally are undoing the gap of separation, and are therefore collapsing both time and space.
The present is the key to the disappearing of spacetime and everything it. And it is the doorway to resurrection and to miracles. It is in the PRESENT that we become a "born again Christ-ian."
"To be born again is to let the PAST go, and LOOK WITHOUT CONDEMNATION UPON THE PRESENT. For the cloud which obscures God's Son to you IS the past, and if you would have it past AND GONE, you must NOT SEE IT NOW."
"At no SINGLE instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but NEVER experienced just now. Only its past and future make it seem real. Time controls it entirely. For sin is never present."
"The miracle enables you to see your brother WITHOUT his past, and so perceive him as born again. His errors ARE all past, and by perceiving him WITHOUT them, you are RELEASING him. And since his past is yours, you SHARE in this release."
"His past has NO reality in the present, and you CANNOT see it."
"Your past was made in anger, and if you use it to ATTACK the present you will NOT SEE the freedom that the present holds."
"Look lovingly upon the present, for it holds the ONLY things that are forever true."
"The present is before time WAS, and WILL BE when time is no more. In it is everything that is eternal, and they ARE one."
"The ego invests heavily in the past, and in the end, believes that the past is the ONLY aspect of time that is meaningful. You will remember that we said its emphasis on guilt enables it to ensure its continuity, by MAKING THE FUTURE LIKE THE PAST, and thus AVOIDING the present."
"For the ego uses the present ONLY as a brief transition TO the future, in which it brings the past TO the future, BY INTERPRETING THE PRESENT IN PAST TERMS."
"NOW has no meaning to the ego. The present merely reminds it of PAST hurts, and it reacts to the present AS IF it were past."
"The ego teaches that you always encounter your PAST, and because your dreams WERE not holy, the future CANNOT be, and the present is without meaning."
"The continuity of past and future, UNDER ITS DIRECTION, is the only purpose it perceives in time, and it closes over the present, so that no gap in the EGO's continuity can occur. ITS continuity, then, would KEEP you in time, while the Holy Spirit would release you FROM it."
"For healing CANNOT be accomplished in the past, and MUST be accomplished in the present to RELEASE the future. THIS interpretation ties the future to the present, and EXTENDS THE PRESENT, rather than the past. But if you interpret your function as DESTRUCTION, you will lose sight of the present, and hold on to the past TO ENSURE A DESTRUCTIVE FUTURE."
"Who can grieve or suffer, when the present has been freed, extending its security and peace into a quiet future filled with hope?"
"Father, we were mistaken in the past, and choose to use the present to be free. Now do we leave the future in Your hands, leaving behind our past mistakes, and sure that You will keep Your present Promises, and guide the future in their holy light."
"There is a real world which the present holds safe from all past mistakes." "The Holy Spirit teaches thus: There IS no hell. Hell is only what the ego has made OF THE PRESENT."
"Fear is NOT of the present, but ONLY of the past and future, which do not exist."
"The choice is not whether to see the past or the present: it is merely whether to see or not."
"For the present IS forgiveness."
"The special relationship TAKES VENGEANCE ON THE PAST. By seeking to remove suffering IN THE PAST, it OVERLOOKS the present, in its preoccupation with the past, and its TOTAL COMMITMENT to it. NO SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP IS EXPERIENCED IN THE PRESENT."
"Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is. It therefore cannot understand time, and cannot, in fact, understand anything." "Sometimes the past seems real, as if it WERE the present. Voices FROM the past are heard, and then are doubted."
"The aim of prayer is to release the present from its chains of past illusions; to let it be a freely chosen remedy from every choice that stood for a mistake."
"Your learning gives the present NO MEANING AT ALL. Nothing you have ever learned can help you understand the present, or teach you how to undo the past. Your past IS what you have taught yourselves."
"The present now remains the only time."
"A miracle is a beginning and an end(ing). It thus abolishes time. It is always an affirmation of re-birth, which seems to go back, but really goes forward. It undoes the past in the present, and thus releases the future."
"We look neither ahead nor backwards. We look straight into the present. And we give our trust to the experience we ask for now."
"What time but now can truth be recognized? The present is the only time there is."
"The making of time, to TAKE THE PLACE of timelessness, lay in the decision to BE NOT as you WERE. Thus, truth was made past, and the present was dedicated to illusion. And the past, too, was changed, and INTERPOSED between what ALWAYS was, and NOW. The past that YOU remember NEVER was, and represents only denial of what ALWAYS was."
"the Son of God is risen from the past, and has awakened to the present. Now is he free, unlimited in his communion with all that is within him."
"In the holy instant, you see, in each relationship, what it WILL be, when you perceive ONLY the present."
"He is as safe in the present as he was before illusions were accepted into his mind, and as he will be when he has let them go."
"The real world signifies the end of time, for its perception makes time purposeless."
"Today the light has come. And you will see the world that has been promised you since time began, and in which is the end of time ensured."
"So do the parts of God's Son gradually join in time, and with each joining is the end of time brought nearer. Each miracle of joining is a mighty herald of eternity."
"Everyone seen WITHOUT the past thus brings you nearer to the end of time, by bringing healed and healing sight into the darkness, and ENABLING THE WORLD TO SEE."
"And it is given you to be the means
Through which His Voice is heard around the world
To close all things of time, to end the sight
Of all things visible; and to undo
All things that change. Through you is ushered in
A world unseen, unheard, yet truly there."
"I do not know what anything, INCLUDING THIS, means. And so I do NOT know HOW TO RESPOND TO IT. And I will not use my own past learning as the light to guide me now."
Real vision means unlimited seeing. The ability to see anywhere at anytime, without limits. That means being able to see across the universe even, ignoring the laws of physics.
"Perception can reach EVERYWHERE under His guidance, for the vision of Christ beholds EVERYTHING in light."
"This can occur REGARDLESS of the physical distance that SEEMS to be between you and what you join; of your respective positions in space; and of your differences in size and seeming quality. Time is not relevant; it can occur with something past, present, or anticipated."
When we made the separate world, we also invented obstacles to sight. PHYSICAL OBJECTS ARE BLOCKS TO AWARENESS. Physical matter became seemingly solid walls, which Jesus refers to as "the granite block of sin." All physical matter is made of the idea of sin. "The world of bodies is the world of sin." This sin takes on many different forms, and each forms an image that seems to stand between you and reality.
"The body's eyes see ONLY form. They cannot see BEYOND what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on error, and NOT see past it. Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see ONLY illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside FORM of nothing. To this distorted form of vision, the OUTSIDE of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."
Physical sight falls short of unlimited seeing. It relies on photons to rebound off "the outer surface of nothing" (objects) in order to see at all. It depends on laws of physics, which are illusions. It cannot see past or through solid walls because the walls repel light. This is also symbolic (IMO) of the repulsion of heaven that the granite blocks of sin represent.
"See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning."
"And Christ is invisible to you BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU HAVE MADE VISIBLE TO YOURSELVES."
In effect your physical sight stops whenever it is presented with a physical object, and so is actually "blinded", in terms of the big picture idea of unlimited vision. You seem to "see" what is physically there, but by seeing it, you actually are BLINDED TO seeing what is BEYOND it. You can't seem to see THROUGH it like x-ray vision because its physical form stands in the way. This is because the world was made like a veil to hang BETWEEN you and Christ.
"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant"
"That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected, and drawn between you and truth."
By seeing physical objects, such as human bodies, you are in effect blinded by form. Form is not meaning. Form is sin, or correctly reinterpreted is "error", which calls for correction. Everything the body sees is the forms of error. "The body's eyes see ONLY form. They cannot see BEYOND what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on error, and NOT see past it."
So Jesus is literally telling you that we made the body's physical sight mechanism ON PURPOSE to BLIND US to seeing reality. It was made to FIXATE on the form of error (world of sin), a world which seems to depict things happening that cannot happen in reality. A world of impossibilities and blasphemies and pictures of evil and death, all of which violate the truth of God.
"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."
"Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold? What need have they of sights or sounds or touch? What would they hear or reach to grasp? What would they sense at all? To sense is not to know."
So now we have a kind of prison world, a closed-in box, with solid interior walls, in which you find yourself imprisoned, standing in a prison body, seeming to walk around in freedom but only because the prison is so large (all of spacetime). And everything the body sees is a prison wall which it cannot see past. And it will never see past. And so its eyes cannot be used to see reality - you need a different kind of vision. Which is why:
"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision."
In effect, when your MIND uses the body and believes what the body shows to it, given only the mind actually sees, it is blinded by perception of form. Physical matter presents false images of imaginary things which don't exist. If you believe what you're shown by the body's eyes then you are blinded. Which is interesting given the eyes are supposed to give you the ability TO SEE - they do the exact opposite.
"Man believes that what he cannot see does not exist, and his physical eyes cannot see in the dark. This is a very primitive solution, and has led to a denial of the spiritual eye, which always depends on light."
It also goes further that when you look at FORM, you are blinded to MEANING. Because "reality is meaning." God is meaningful. When reality is obscured by physical matter, it shuts out all meaning. Again this is why the physical world is a meaningless world. It has NO meaning of its own. "The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real."
"Nothing so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form MEANS understanding HAS BEEN obscured. Only MISTAKES have different forms, and so they CAN deceive. You CAN change form, BECAUSE it is not true. It COULD not be reality, BECAUSE it can be changed. Reason will tell you that, if form is NOT reality, it MUST be an illusion. And is Not THERE to see. And, IF you see it, you MUST be mistaken, for you are seeing what can NOT be real, as if it WERE. What cannot see BEYOND what is not there, MUST be distorted perception. And must perceive illusions AS THE TRUTH. Could it, then, RECOGNIZE the truth?"
Certain shapes, colors, sizes, arrangements, conditions, states, now appear to dictate, potentially as a temptation, what something MEANS. Because being void of meaning, you have to decide what it means. The ego would make its FORMS reality, and therefore construct a hierarchy of illusions, where certain forms MEAN certain things. Where forms of sickness appear to be real and important. And now in false perception, physical form BLINDS you and DICTATES what everything is, as if meaning IS the form and there is no other meaning.
This can become especially upsetting because you can for example be faced with an image of a physical body that seems to be malfunctioning. And just seeing this at all is an assertion of the proof of sin, of possibilities that cannot happen in God's reality. Yet it's there, staring you in the face, forcing you to look at it, such that you can hardly deny it. Yet you MUST deny it, otherwise you will believe it is TRUE. And then you will derive MEANING from it, and will start to react to it as if it's really there.
If you look upon a meaningless world, through the body's physical sight, and you believe the FORM of what you see, as if it is reality, then you are in "false perception". Your mind is believing an illusion of opposite things to God, opposite to possibility, as if they are real. It is deceived. "The world is false perception."
Then, because the world's physicality means NOTHING, the mind actually tries to GIVE it meaning. Either it projects ego meaning onto it or it projects God's meaning onto it. "Recognition of meaninglessness arouses intense anxiety in all the separated ones. It represents a situation in which God and the ego "challenge" each other as to whose meaning is to be written in the empty space which meaninglessness provides. The ego rushes in frantically to establish its own "ideas" there, fearful that the void may otherwise be used to demonstrate its own unreality."
"If you are fearful, it is certain that you will endow the world with attributes which it does not possess, and crowd it with images that do not exist."
Since real meaning is BEYOND the physical, BEHIND the prison walls, BEYOND space and time, and the body cannot see it, you need a spiritual sight to see it. And in order to see it, you have to SEE PAST the physical. This means you have to overlook it.
This is why forgiveness OVERLOOKS the physical world of matter and looks TOWARDS the light. "To forgive is to OVERLOOK." It's like ignoring the physical form and looking straight through it, NOT blocked by appearances and NOT limited in how far your sight can reach.
"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched (physically), a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation (ignores physical differences). And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events (which is the physical level), without the slightest fading of the light it sees (beyond the physical simultaneously)."
This is like seeing THROUGH the veil as if the veil is thin and light and transparent, as if physical matter no longer HIDES the face of Christ. As if you an see God "in" everything you see. Because christ vision pierces the PHYSICAL VEIL OF SIN, and allows you to see reality BEYOND what the body can see.
"By focusing upon the "good" in him, the body grows decreasingly persistent in your sight, and will at length be seen as little more than just a shadow circling round the "good."
"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is (a meaningless illusion of a physical world). And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."