"The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought that gave it birth is cherished. When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well.

The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him."

...This section of the Course is interesting. It clearly says that "the world IS false perception", having not left the mind. In other words, the world is inside the mind, is made of mind-stuff/images/illusions, and is not physically real or objectively real. But notice it says the world *IS* false perception, not just that you are misperceiving a world.

Notice also it doesn't say the world is 'out there' and you PERCEIVE IT falsely. The world ITSELF IS perception. Your perceiving hallucinates a world, because "projection makes perception". Projection making perception does NOT mean that you are just projecting ONTO the world and perceiving things that are not there, it means that you are projecting THE WORLD ITSELF and are then perceiving it. Your interpretations of what you then PERCEIVE is just another LAYER of projection on top of the projected world. You are projecting the world in your mind and THEN you perceive it with the body.

This is an important distinction because so many Course folks are thinking that you just need to fix your perception OF something that exists kind of on its own, and that if you can get the right perception of it then you'll be in reality. That's not how it works. The world seeming to exist AT ALL is because of perception, which is false.

When the thought of separation (which hallucinated the world) is seen in another light (ie right-minded perception), you may see the forgiven world (which is lovely), BUT only as a stepping stone to LEAD TO the truth, "where all the world must disappear".

"WHERE ALL THE WORLD MUST DISAPPEAR". Because it's not real to begin with. It's just a great big IDEA of separation in the mind.

"Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well". Its source is the idea of separation, and the effect of that idea was the hallucination of a world existing. Not just a hallucination ABOUT a pre-existing world or on TOP of a world, but THE world itself.

I think one of the main reasons a lot of people think they just need to "change their mind about the world" is because that IS a stepping stone toward the truth - but is not the final goal. It's just a way to get to where you stop protecting the illusion and are ready to dissolve the underlying thought of separation/attack-on-God which caused it to appear. And since the Course does speak to taking those steps toward undoing distorted perception, people get caught up thinking that's all they need to do, and that after that the 'real world' will be kept - the physical world. That's not what it means. There are steps after that where the world disappears because it as only ever an illusion in the mind.

I think also this has a lot to do with how people perceive themselves as a separate body. That's what we come to the course with. I'm separate from 'the world out there'. I have a mind 'in here' in my body which is separate from the world 'out there' so this is the only part of reality that I have control over. I can change 'my mind' in here to see what's 'out there' differently. But that's NOT the point.

The point is, the very IDEA that your mind is separate from the world is what has to be undone - the whole idea of 'I have a separate mind' that is separate from the world. Because if you don't see that, you'll just want to keep the world and stay in a body and remain a separate ego identity having its own perception. And the truth is, you can't HAVE correct perception if you are still separate because as the mind is HEALED it is healed by union and undoing separation and joining and sharing, which means you have to realize that the world is IN your mind and it/your body are just mind-stuff. And as mind-stuff, they are just illusions, not reality. So the whole world ITSELF is not real. This is a very fundamental Course concept.

Again "The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought that gave it birth is cherished." - Jesus

Once we stop cherishing the thought (separation) which gave 'birth' to ERROR, which is the world (the form of error), it will REMAIN NO LONGER and will disappear. Forgiveness is meant to OVERLOOK error, ie overlook the world, to get to where perception is purified so that it can see the world for 'what it is', and what it is is an illusion. Forgiveness must look PAST the illusion otherwise it is not forgiveness. It overlooks the world and recognizes it is NOT really there, because it's just a figment of the imagination. In all its physical-ness and energy-ness and all of its 'life forms' and everything - it's all unreal. It is not reality at all. This is why the idea of "there is no world" is so threatening to ALL Course students (me too) - it implies the total non-existence of the ego self that they think they are.

So what's left, if there is no world and the world disappears?

God's Creation! God's Creation was hidden BY the world, and that was the world's only purpose. Once removed, we will be AWARE of God's Creation again - not conscious of it, not perceiving it, but AWARE of being it.

The world is just a giant mind-game.

For many, ACIM is about self help and doing the lessons and trying to get back to a simplified idea of God/reality. But the scenario of what is happening in this world, why we're here, and what we're returning to, is part of a big picture "story" that I don't really see talked about a whole lot. At least not in fully encompassing terms.

Basically we existed as eternal beings in heaven, God's sons, and he had also created the angels etc... and everything was groovy, and then this separation thing happened, there was "war in heaven", a split, and the descent into "hell" through the making of hierarchies of illusions, levels, dimensions, worlds etc... and we ended up with this physical universe.

And now God has created the Holy Spirit and is sending his angels to guide and support and educate us, to help us to come back home to our heavenly home. Which means... drumroll.. this entire world is like a DEVICE which heaven is using as a mechanism for bringing home all of the lost souls who attempted to war against God. And the whole purpose of this world is for the lessons and learning - the curriculum, which has been set up by God, by which we might learn the truth and return willingly to cooperation with God's will, freely.

When people for example have near-death experiences they go and encounter these situations, where they are having life reviews and meeting with God and talking to spiritual beings and all this stuff, and then being sent back and "its not your time" and so on... script to be fulfilled, lessons to learn etc.... and so you get this overall picture that this world is not just some random world that we're trying to wake up from, and we're not just trying to wake up to an nice sanitary idea of "reality" or "oneness" or "non-duality".

There's way more to this story. And there's an entire foundation for "the fall of man" and how we got into this mess, and realizing that this world IS the mess we made of reality, and how we now need to clean up the mess and go home. And that means that despite all the theories that various people have, despite all the religious beliefs, despite all the concepts of why we are here, the scientific models, bla bla bla, agnostics, atheists, whatever, basically underneath everything it's TRUE that we all descended from heaven, fell in the "tiny mad idea" which really was a huge monstrous idea, are now having go through a special curriculum for salvation, and eventually will be ready to return to God's Kingdom.

So all this sort of Christian-religious stuff about heaven, making hell, believing in sin, suffering, death, illusions, trying to be separate from God, authority problem trying to oppose his will, angels helping us, there being scripts and curriculums, life lessons that are orchestrated before birth, all this stuff, it's all actually quite correct. It's all part of this huge PLAN, the atonement plan. And all because of what went on in heaven, the fall of man, the descent into hell, and the subsequent need for the atonement to correct us and restore us to awareness of love's presence.

But I think we get really out of touch with this a lot in the course community, drifting off into these intellectual models of what the course is about, vague ideas of oneness/reality, somewhat clinical God-less models, and a whole bunch of skepticism about anything not "explicitly" mentioned in the course text. We get rather narrow and start to see things through a kind of "ACIM filter", through which we filter OUT stuff that doesn't seem like it's mentioned in course lingo etc. But if you look all this stuff is in there. It lines up quite significantly with what the bible says albeit that a lot of the bible stuff is somewhat distorted. But it has the basics down.

We are part of a giant classroom, in which the atonement plan/curriculum is playing out. And this is precisely the same atonement plan that is to do with our incarnations, our themes and scripts for our lives, our lessons that we agree to, the mighty companions and angels that help us, spirit guides, the astral plane and other dimensions, and the fact that no matter what anyone in the world believes they are ALL part of this same scenario. We're all in the boat of "wanted to be separate from God" and "made worlds to live in apart form God" and are all in various ways trying to find our way back because that's what God wants.

For some it's more accepted than others. For others they don't even think any of this is true, and fixate on various other explanations for why we exist. For many ACIM is just some nice little tiny behind-closed-doors self-study "course" with very little to do with this huge big story of how we got here.

But we can't change the facts. We're living the curriculum that God established to correct the separation. This world isn't just some scientific experiment. It's not some virtual reality. It's not just a random chaotic environment. It's a school - repurposed from the hell we made, designed to lead *everyone* of *every kind* of civilization back towards the reality of heaven, our true home. There's no way to avoid this fact. We can deny it and believe other things but this is the underlying "framework" that encapsulates this whole world.

God is using this world as a device to bring us back to God. The whole thing. It's one giant school for learning, to lead us back to awareness of love - back to God, back to the Kingdom that we fell from - where we are safe in God, dreaming of exile. This world is the exile. Going home to God is the goal for everyone, regardless of how much they accept it or are aware of it. This is why Jesus calls it "the universal curriculum". Everyone is part of the plan. There are no exceptions. Even people not "doing ACIM". Even the atheists and scientists. Everyone is part of this. "The great awakening".

I think perhaps we under appreciate what being "ruler of the universe" really entails. It seems fanciful and lofty and like some kind of fake superhero idea.

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

What Jesus is saying is that we should, in our more natural state of mind, adopt a position of great responsibility. We should be powerful beings who cannot be affected by the world. We are free from fear, causing us to be decisive and certain. We no longer are tossed around by the world and its changes, but instead remain in a continual state of calm and strength, acting deliberately, fully conscious and purposeful.

"It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences."

It is not a state in which you are a victim, or affected by the world, or upset by anything, or caused in any way by any person. It is not a state in which you are constantly changing and adapting and reacting and cleaning up a mess. It's not a state in which you are being bossed around, intimidated, offended, attacked, persuaded or caused against your will.

Jesus is asking us to step into shoes of authority. Shoes of responsibility not only for everything we feel and see and experience, but even responsibility for causing things to happen. As he states clearly, you as ruler of the universe rule your destiny, even in this world. You DECIDE what you want to happen and it MUST happen. You decide what you do not want to happen, and it DOES NOT happen. This is not wishful thinking. This is the power of God to alter the world and affect events. This is being a miracle worker.

In our lives we are probably used to being pushed around, caused to changed, made to feel upset, affected and stressed, scared and attacked. At the same time, the very world that we give power to upset us, is also given power to do things "favorable" to us. We want to get from the world, but only the stuff we approve of, and the rest remains an enemy. But this is not an enlightened or empowered state.

To move out of victimhood into authority, we have to learn to exercise our power consciously and deliberately. We have to learn to stop giving our power away, and we have to learn to take it back from where we have disowned it.

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

It is only because you give your power away to the world and to people and events that you seem to allow them to DECIDE FOR YOU what you are, what you feel, what you experience and what happens. You have to learn to stop doing that. Stop enabling people, in your mind, to have possession of YOUR authority, and stop USING them to attack yourself.

The problem mainly is that by giving power to things that have no power, we keep asking them to give us what we want. We keep searching externally for salvation. We want it to do things to us. We want it to give us peace, make us happy, love us, worship us, please us, and bestow gifts upon us. And when it doesn't, or does the opposite, we instead allow it to decide for us that we will not be happy, will not be at peace, and will be upset. As Jesus says, any time that we search externally for the gifts of God, we are mentally ill.

"Peace is an attribute in YOU. You cannot find it outside. All mental illness is some form of EXTERNAL searching. Mental health is INNER peace. It enables you to remain unshaken by lack of love from without, and capable, through your own miracles of correcting the external conditions, which proceed from lack of love in others."

Being the ruler of the universe, you get to be a boss, of sorts, along with the Holy Spirit working with and through you. You use the POWER of your decision, your decisiveness, to DECIDE what will and will not happen. You make it so with the power in your mind. If you say something will be healed it will be healed. If you say something will not happen, it will not happen. You get to decide your destiny. You get to decide who will or will not do what.

"What do you think "the meek shall inherit the earth" MEANS? They will literally take it over because of their strength."

This is not the same as "control" or "manipulation", or other ego fantasies of tyranny and dictatorship. This is your true freedom and power. If you want to not be a victim, you have to step into the role of being an authority and a powerful being, of being responsible and in command, of choosing and deliberately deciding what will occur for you, and NOT assigning responsibility for it to other people or the world. You have to stop sitting on the sidelines and stand up to be counted.

You get to call the shots here, you get to direct your life, and you get to never have to tolerate or put up with any shit ever again - knowing that you only ever put up with what you did to yourself to begin with.

"I am not weak, but strong."

"I am not helpless, but all powerful."

"I am not limited, but unlimited."

"I am not doubtful, but certain."

"I am not an illusion, but a reality."

"I cannot see in darkness, but in light."

"It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events OUTSIDE him. It is impossible that the happenings that come to him were NOT his choice. His power of decision is the DETERMINER of every situation in which he seems to FIND himself by chance or accident. No accident or chance is POSSIBLE within the universe as God created it, OUTSIDE of which is nothing. Suffer, and YOU decided sin was your goal. Be happy, and you GAVE the power of decision to Him Who MUST decide for God for you."

"The Holy Spirit does NOT work by chance, and the healing that is of HIM ALWAYS works. And unless the healer ALWAYS heals BY Him, the results WILL vary. But healing itself IS consistence, because ONLY consistence is conflict-free, and only the conflict-free ARE whole."

If you believe you are guilty, it's because you believe you really did something which has caused a loss or damage to someone else. It means you believe you succeeded in attacking and taking something from them. The guilt tells you that because you did take something away from another (sinned), you owe them.

This means they are justified in doing something to you in return, in attempt to take back what you stole, and to retaliate against your crime. You now must fear revenge, and see it as an inevitable, constant threat. You believe in their likelihood of revenge because you believe in your success at sinning, hence your guilt.

So long as you believe that the person is suffering the consequences of your sin, which you want to believe because you want to have succeeded in separating, you will believe they are going to hunt you down and attack you. You believe they are completely justified in doing this and even agree with their motivations, even if it threatens you.

Therefore your guilt has automatically produced a state of fear, whereby simply because you are guilty, you yourself can see the sense in someone else wanting to attack you back. You believe in what you stole and see them as seeking revenge, to atone for the sin. Of this you must be afraid, and so guilt leads to automatic, mandatory fear of punishment.

The guilt will therefore automatically imply, project, and turn into fear. Now that you are in fear, you believe that you should be afraid, because you believe that punishment is going to come. And even though you yourself believe that you don't want the punishment to happen, you cannot help but be afraid it is going to happen because you already believe in the reason for it. It must happen, because you are guilty, and all your efforts will be to try to avoid and escape it, even though you believe it is inevitable. You attempt to escape BECAUSE you believe it is coming.

However, your own belief in your guilt will keep producing the fear, and the fear itself will keep visualizing the ways in which punishment is going to happen. At every turn it will haunt you and you will not feel safe, threatened by the revenge that you believe must be coming. In fact, so strong will be your belief that the punishment will come, that you will in fact begin to make it come. You will draw it to you, ask for it, and even take steps to make it happen. You will hate yourself for this but you yourself believe in the logical sense that you should be punished, and so you will agree to allow punishment to come to you, even if it makes you suffer.

Therefore because you have condemned yourself as sinful, it leads eventually to you implementing your own self punishment. Even if other people will not comply with your attempts to destroy yourself, you will do enough of a job on your own to ensure you receive what you believe you deserve. And so you will continue to prove your worthlessness by demonstrating that you deserve punishment, enacting it against yourself, and literally hurting your own self by your own hand.

And so fear inevitably leads to the enactment of punishment, because it strengthens the belief that you should be punished, and what you fear you attract. Fear pretends to not want what it focuses on, but it feeds tremendous energy into what it would avoid, through attempts at further separation, which only intensifies the sense of sin and guilt and produces more of the same. Eventually the shame and guilt produces so much fear of punishment that it starts to produce actual punishment. And so fear turns into punishment, sickness, and suffering, and perhaps even death.

Fear perpetuates and justifies a perception of yourself as being victimized, whereby whoever is to attack you is justified in doing so because of your sin. You owe them, and you know it. Therefore you dread the punishment that you yourself believe you should be receiving, and it's only a matter of time before it finds you. And if it is taking too long, one way or another you will cause it and welcome it, because you believe it is what should happen.

As punishment increases, so too is fear increasing, and gradually the atoning for sin nears completion. The more you are punished and suffering, the more you believe you are getting what you deserve, even if you exclaim that it is unfair and undeserved, and even if it is scaring you shitless. You yourself started this whole cycle through your own self condemnation, and your guilt and fear and punishment is just the fulfillment of your own belief in your worthiness of suffering. And so punishment comes and as it continues to ramp up in severity, so do you inflict upon yourself what you think you are worth.

The final blow of punishment is of course death, the idea that your sin is so great and so irreversible that you might as well give up on life completely and just let yourself be caught by those who you believe would bring the punishment to you. You surrender to death and lay down your life as though it is simply inevitable, because there is absolutely no way out of the logical sequence of conclusions you come to as soon as you start down the slippery slope of sin. Here you have followed sin to its logical conclusion, the call for atonement in death. The sinful must die, and the inescapable progression of logic from sin to death gives no way out, regardless of your protests.

This need not be.

The Son of God is not sinful. You are not guilty. And you have no reason to be afraid. Sin is not real, and no matter what you did, it is forgiven already by God. It wasn't reality and it didn't happen in reality. Only in a dream. Wake up to the happy news that all is forgiven and you are welcome home.

The progression of unfolding from sin through guilt fear punishment and death, need not occur, if the root foundation of that entire thought system is dug out. You must be willing to question whether the sin was real, whether you really did separate from God, or whether nothing has happened. This is the undoing of the dream of death, and is what the atonement represents. The idea of truth, that you cannot possibly separate from God, your attacks cannot have any effects, you cannot really sin, and no real consequences have come from trying.

You still remain as innocent as God created you to be. All the rest is just delusional nonsense and dreaming. You don't deserve to die. You deserve to live forever.

Everyone is an immortal being. If they are portraying themselves otherwise, do not listen to their claims. They are trying to deceive themselves and you with a story about being a mortal victim. It is not true.

Everyone you meet is an immortal being. There is nothing that truly can come to them against their will, and nothing has befallen them from which they are not already free.

Every single person is immortal, regardless of their standing in life, occupation, merit or accountability. There is no one who is outside of the scope of immortality and divine right to perfect living.

Each and every brother or sister on your journey should be met as though they are capable of sustaining immortal living, unfettered and distinct from every conceivable form of suffering. They have chosen to pretend to lose the power of God and to suffer at the hands of another.

There is no being who walks this Earth who is truly mortal, because death is a lie. We are all equal in our immortality and we disguise ourselves behind a brick wall of flesh and bones, pretending to go through trials and difficulties at the hands of someone other than ourselves.

The great lie has portrayed the Son of God as a mere mortal, as weak and frail and preparing to die an unnatural death. How can God's infinite Creation give rise to a being whose life can be terminated by circumstances and illusions?

Every person you meet has infinite immortality, cannot die, has never died, will never die, and is truly in divine health. It is only through their own attempt to pretend to be not themselves, and not Life, that they portray a fiction in which they play a starring role as sufferer and loser of Life.

How can that which is immortal ever experience the end of itself? How can that which has eternal life, given by God Himself, ever come to cease to exist? It is not God's Will. The Father knows only the everlasting nature of His Creation and, by His Will alone, has chosen for it to live forever.

So while it is very popular to meet those who believe in dying, who believe in suffering, in sickness, in despair, and those who perceive loss as though it were real, and who think themselves little and mortal and absolutely destined for the grave sooner or later, you should always choose to look beyond the lie they have told and focus your awareness on the living reality which governs them.

While they pretend to die and put on a good show, you know this is not the truth. It is not reality. It is not God's way. Death is a fictional religion of artificial mortality, come to disguise the underlying factual truth that you cannot die, and nor can anyone. Even if a person should lay down their body in attempt at death, they will find themselves out of it and continuing on, having failed to terminate their existence.

And on it goes, around and around, having one more try at overcoming the self-made belief that you can die, taking another lifetime to learn that death is not real, and putting first the priority of the Kingdom of God over all else, such that you do not believe for an instant the sorry tales of despair that befall every believer in death.

The plague of this Earth lies in the illusion that death is real and that dying is inevitable. Death is powerless over the Son of God. It can do nothing to Him whatsoever, and cannot rob Him of his immortality. And it is He alone who is attempting to give death this power to do so, through acts of suicide and a death wish which has no hope of succeeding.

Whether through your current body or another, or ten from now, you will at some point surrender the absolutely futile attempt to prove death is real, and will learn from your mistake that no matter how hard you try, your immortality cannot be extinguished. There is no end to you. And there can be no moment in which you cease to be. Because you are real to God.

There is no real death. You can pretend all you like. You can even make it seem to happen to your body in a thousand ways, but you can never bring an end to the Spirit of Life that constitutes your entire reality. You are safe forever in Heaven with God, incapable of destruction and absolutely free from harm or fear of it. You cannot be genuinely sick, or actually suffer, or truly die for any reason. Your maladies are pretend and make believe.

When will you wake up? How long does it take for you to stop trying to make death real? How much effort will you expend pointlessly trying to bring about an impossible end which can never actually happen? Regardless of your efforts you die, you cannot, and even your death wish to do so will never succeed. It is not God's will that you can possibly die even remotely, and it is impossible for you to overthrow it.

Give up. Surrender your desire for destruction. Stop pretending that you are mortal. There is nothing about you that can be truly terminated. There is no aspect of your immortal being that can suffer in any way. There is nothing you can do to change God's will. And there is absolutely no way you can end Eternal Life. Trying to do so it like banging your head against a wall, which may seem for a time to make your head bloody or even to bring to you a moment of bodily death, and yet still this won't work. It will cease to succeed in isolating you to nothingness.

You can never die. Nobody ever has died. Nobody ever will die. The body is not real. Death is not real. You are immortality itself, set in stone for ever and ever and ever by your Holy Father who loves you with an eternal heart.

To accept this is to stop fighting with the truth, to acknowledge what has always been factual, and to surrender to the effortless never-ending existence which God has given you. You are what He wills you to be, His Shining Light of Holy Creation, and there is nothing you can do to change it.

Put aside your mortal stories of how you have been undermined, attacked, weakened, damaged, offended, hurt or betrayed. How can they be true of someone who is immortal spirit, invulnerable, incapable of suffering and absolutely indestructible? You are absolute, not relative. You do not die. You only live forever.

Peace.

There are two approaches to ACIM. One is to learn the theory about what is true or false. The other is to actually change your mind and transform your awareness so that you wake up to experiencing it.

Theory is learned on a horizontal level. It involves the intellect. It involves trying to understand what ACIM says and means. It's analytical and it studies the words, the levels, the structures, the relationships of things, the definitions of words and the "description" of the truth. it dwells on the form and the word choices and so on.

Some people have an easier time learning the theory than others. Some people are not as intellectually able to get their heads around the intricate depths and nuances of Jesus's genius. For some the theory seems complex and off-putting. And many people get the theory profoundly wrong, while others are very accurate in their discernment of it.

Sometimes there are debates and fights about what the course says and means. This is all to do with the horizontal approach. It's an intellectual battle in which sides try to convince each other that their understanding of the course is the correct one. And in many cases some people may well be correct while others are very lost. There are some people who are so incredibly lost on the theoretical level that they are practically learning a totally different belief system. They think they're heading toward reality while heading away from it.

Then there is a vertical movement away from hell toward heaven, away from darkness toward light, away from ego towards the Holy Spirit, away from the body towards the soul, and away from the world towards the Kingdom of God. This is a transformational movement which does actually require a vertical change of mind, an awakening, a willingness, an opening, and a trust.

In the vertical learning we actually have to apply the theory. The mind has to be transformed. Beliefs have to be undone. Healing has to take place. Your life and your curriculum presents you with challenges and lessons which you have to learn. Your relationships have to change and your sense of identity has to alter. This is not achieved through theory.

Some people struggle to accurately understand the course's theories on the horizontal level, and turn a blind eye to this fact by trying to focus on something more experiential. They may focus on love or feeling. This can produce progress upwards to some extent, but then the faults in the theory hold them back.

It can hold them back such as, for example, someone believing that Earth is God's Kingdom, which is going to pull the person in the completely wrong direction. So while they're trying to go up, faults in the theory are pulling them down. It's like a handicap. There are some quite loving-seeming people doing ACIM who nevertheless say things which are profoundly wrong and delusional.

On the flip side, there are also people who become expert at the horizontal theory. Great intellects and scholars and theologians who are very good at discerning accurately the logical structures and relationships of things. Of realizing how everything fits together and correctly putting everything in its proper place. Some people are very good at this. But at the same time, those same people can at times become lost in this understanding and fail to apply the course to move vertically. The "study" of the course then becomes a handicap that keeps them from opening their minds and actually encountering reality.

I think for the most part the ideal is to be proficient at both. We need theory in order to help us to make sense of things, to guide us in the right direction, to clarify meanings, to have a proper framework so that you know what you're supposed to be doing and why. But to also then take that and use it, apply it, live it, look at how it works in your life, use it to change your mind, to develop trust, to actually open up to reality, to a different kind of vision, and to shift your sense of identity away from the body. As the workbook begins:

"A theoretical foundation such as the Text is necessary as a background to make these exercises meaningful. Yet it is the exercises which will make the goal possible. An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of these exercises to train the mind to think along the lines which the course sets forth."

So yes you need to be pretty accurate with the theory, but the purpose of that is so that you can be more effective and efficient in your application of it to your life. Your living curriculum of lessons, holy relationships and life events is where you will be having to apply the principles.

"The miracle is the means, the Atonement the principle, and the healing is the result."

It's not enough to be excellent at the theory and not apply it to change yourself. It's not enough to try to change yourself while being absolutely all over the place on the theory. If you really want to shoot for the stars you need to understand the course in principle, and apply it in practice. The two work together to atone your mind correctly, heading in the appropriate direction for the appropriate reasons. Otherwise it's like sailing your boat in the wrong direction.

As Jesus once said to me, "you understand it, now you just need to apply it."

There is a myth in the ACIM community relating to how perception works. It's based on the belief that we only have one perception, one outlook. There's us, in the body, perceiving. We read stuff about how perception shifts and how it changes what we see.

So we think ok, my one perception will shift and it will show me a different world. In other words, the bad stuff I was seeing will seem to disappear and I will see good stuff. We read about the spiritual eye and christ vision and we start to think that our entire perception is going to shift to ONLY seeing perfection and beauty.

This of course then implies that all the bad stuff, all the sickness, the wars, the conflict, the decay, it's all going to magically disappear from my perception and I will not see it at all. Which in turn means, all the hospitals will be empty, everyone with broken limbs will magically be fixed, it's my dream so the entire physical contents of the world will transform into a heavenly condition.

This is not what ACIM teaches.

Perception is a little more complicated because there are actually two perceptual mechanisms involved, and Jesus goes to great lengths describing them.

One perception mechanism, the spiritual eye, is direct "mind seeing", also referred to as the eyes of Christ or Christ Vision. This seeing does not rely on or depend on the body whatsoever. It is not limited by space or time or distance. The mind can be anywhere, go anywhere, see anywhere. It can see through walls.

In fact, the spiritual eye does not really acknowledge what ACIM refers to as "the veil" of physical matter, the granite block of sin. It looks right THROUGH it as if it's not even there and looks to the light of the real world beyond. This fixation on the face of Christ is one way of perceiving. But there is another.

The body has its own perceptual mechanism. It has physical eyeballs. Its form of perception depends entirely on illusions. And the body's perception is not capable of seeing anything else.

"Everything the body sees is an illusion."

"These eyes made not to see will never see"

"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality."

"The body's eyes behold it as solid granite"

"Nothing the body's eyes seem to see can be anything but a form of temptation"

"This is the function you have given your body's eyes. 5 It is not seeing. 6 It is image making. 7 It takes the place of seeing, replacing vision with illusions."

The body's perception relies entirely on the laws of physics, which the spiritual eye completely transcends. They rely on photons of light, concentrated particles of finite energy. Light has to collide with surfaces of physical forms, objects, matter, and be "denied" by the form. The light is thus "reflected" rather than passing through it. This reflected light then enters the body's eyes and passes images to the mind for interpretation.

This is a fundamental difference between the two types of perception. What Jesus refers to as "physical sight" can only "see" when vision is blocked. In other words, seeing has to stop at the surface of objects, in order to see them as being there. This seeing is therefore blinded by physical objects. "Nothing so blinding as perception of form." Your eyes cannot see through matter.

Spiritual vision is the opposite, in that it does not stop at physical objects, it is not limited by matter or surfaces, it looks right through them as though they are just a very thin transparent veil. It overlooks the physical world because "to forgive is to overlook", looking beyond to the light.

Christ vision sees past the illusion of physical form to something beyond it - the face of Christ. Vision therefore doesn't really pay attention to what we would call physical stuff or the world of bodies, nor dose it function based on "seeing photons".

"This world of idols IS a veil across the Face of Christ"

"the veil of sin that hangs between you and the face of Christ"

"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"

"The fourth obstacle to be surmounted hangs like a heavy veil before the face of Christ."

"Real vision is not only unlimited by space and distance, but it does not depend on the body's eyes at all"

Essentially, body vision is blinded by perception of the form of physical objects/matter, but to the body this causes it to "see" them. ie my vision "stopped at" the surface. Spiritual vision does not use photons of light, does not depend on physical matter, and sees directly with the mind.

The thing is this. For anyone who has a body or is in a body, BOTH mechanisms for seeing are simultaneously functioning. It does not matter how asleep or awake you are, whether you have false perception or true perception. It does not matter if your mind is sick or healed. If you still have a body, the body's eyes STILL will continue to report images of the PHYSICAL ONLY world to the mind, at the same time as the mind trying to see past it. It will still see the forms of matter, bodies, wars, sickness and death.

This is also why for example you can read the ACIM workbook and STILL READ THE WORDS, even if you are making progress in opening christ vision, because you are still using the body's eyes at the same time. Those who wake up in the world are still perfectly capable of watching tv and choosing food and navigating around a building and driving a car.

This "double vision" of body sight and mind vision, will occur as a kind of parallel perception. As the spiritual eye opens, as your mind opens up to direct vision, as you overlook (forgive) the world of matter, your body is still going to function in exactly the same biologically limited manner. It is still going to relay messages to the mind as to what it senses and sees. And the mind has to sort out what these messages mean to it.

Mind, as the only seer ("only the mind sees"), is therefore receiving impressions either directly (the real world, face of Christ), or indirectly (via the body's eyes). It is experiencing TWO inputs for a while. In order to open the spiritual vision, investment in physical sight has to be diminished. But this only means that the images coming from the body are recognized as illusions not to be believed. Visions of reality are accepted as true, visions of the physical are recognized as false. There are two levels of perception:

"Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye (which is now a second way to perceive), simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the ***two types or levels of perception*** is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences. 2 But the mind ***that has let itself be healed*** (has christ vision AND is using the body) will no longer acknowledge them. 3 ****There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others (seen with the body's eyes still), and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before****. 4 But the healed mind (having true perception, accurate recognition) will put them all in one category; they are unreal (recognized as false)."

This does not mean the mind is blind to sick bodies. NOR does it mean that seeing sick bodies is proof that your mind is sick! You see them because your BODY shows them to you, but your mind decides whether to BELIEVE what the body sees.

You still see physical signs of sickness because you're still USING the body. Even when the body is used by the Holy Spirit for communication and healing, even when your spiritual eye is very open, physical sight STILL functions and the mind DOES still SEE the images of the physical world. But it categorizes these images as "these are not reality, they are illusions." It is not tempted by them, deceived by them, nor does it believe they depict the truth. This means you are AWARE that you are in a dream ie "awake in the dream."

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. ***They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die*** (via physical eyes).Yet they are not deceived by what they see (because the mind is not tempted and doesn't believe the physical is real)."

So you see (pun intended), while having a body, your mind is going to be in a state where you keep seeing the physical world, in its continued condition of constant inescapable corruption and death, complete with sick broken bodies and suffering and time and everything going wrong. BUT, the condition of your mind will be such that the MEANING of these images will be different. How they strike your mind will be different. And what you recognize them AS will be different.

You WILL still see the same FORM of physical matter, people with missing limbs, rotting leaves, dead carcasses, the signs of decay and weathering, rot and animals eating animals etc. But your mind will not regard them as true, real, valid, wanted, heaven, or God-created. They are simply recognized as an illusory dream. You will be aware that it is a dream. This doesn't mean you are blind to them, it means you see them accurately for what they are. True perception produces ACCURATE perception, which correctly interprets body visions, and is therefore NOT an INABILITY to see bodies.

Being in this position, where your mind can see beyond the physical world to the light of reality, where all differences and forms and shapes are not given credence, but where the physical is STILL included in what is seen due to still having eyeballs, you are now above the battlefield, in the world but not of it, aware of dreaming. And now you are in a position to be truly helpful.

What that means is, you can discern accurately what others are doing in the world. You can see their physical ailments. You can recognize their emotional and mental sickness - their call for love. And you are in a position to offer them help, WITHOUT making their sickness real. It's because you DO NOT believe the sickness (that you do see) is real, that you CAN help.

"But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals."

This is what makes you a teacher of God. Being in a position of greater truth YET STILL IN THE WORLD. Able to still REACH those who are still in bodies, able to heal both the minds AND bodies of others, able to see sickness and famine and war and death, and able to offer help. Able to heal the sick, transform matter, raise the dead, move mountains, etc.

This sets you up for the situation where there is a ground for performing miracles. Because only if you can be "more healed" (have opened christ vision, mind seeing past bodies) while simultaneously being exposed to those who are "less healed" (can still see them with the body's mechanisms), do you have any way to HELP anyone. You are still "where the sickness is" but are not sick yourself.

And miracles are a service. They are given by those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less. They supply a lack. This is ONLY possible if you can be in the world in a healed state, NOT disappearing into a state of perfection. This is the function of a teacher of God. They help those who are less loving than themselves. They dissipate the fear in others. They raise the dead and heal the sick. This is ONLY possible because you have simultaneous Vision and body sight.

Christ needs your body to reach those who need reaching at a PHYSICAL level. Miracles are needed to demonstrate PHYSICALLY symbols of truth and to prove to those whose eyes are not open that there is a better way. The body is used to communicate to those who see only bodies, that their spiritual vision may open. And miracles are performed to liberate their minds from being blinded by perception of form. To demonstrate that the laws of the world can be broken.

ONLY when the face of Christ is FULLY seen, at the instant of atonement, is the investment in physical sight COMPLETELY undone. And investment only means dependence upon and belief in. The "veil" of physical matter, which the body alone can see ("only the body makes the world seem real"), appears as thin and transparent to the healed mind. It is seen through like x-ray vision to the light beyond.

And then eventually it vanishes from sight completely as the real world is seen but for an instant. Only as the world is not seen AT ALL do you stop seeing sick bodies. Because only as the BODY ITSELF is utterly transcended and let go does the mind awaken to a body-less reality. This means the mind goes beyond being awake in the dream (vision + body vision), and returns to a state of ONLY seeing with the mind (and only seeing the Kingdom of God). That's what it means to wake up FROM dreaming, in which for you the world ends.

This is why Jesus was able to walk the Earth in a highly healed state of mind, HELP OTHERS, perform miracles, SEE LEPERS, SEE THE DEAD, and demonstrate the laws of God. Without his BODY'S SIGHT, he would not have been able to see OR communicate with those who were limited to bodies. And because He had both christ vision and body sight, he could act as a Teacher of God in this world, before he woke up FROM the dream of death entirely.

"But the face of Christ is the great symbol of forgiveness. It is salvation. It is the symbol of the real world. Whoever looks on this ***no longer sees the world***."

"For what appears to hide the Face of Christ is powerless before His Majesty, ***and disappears*** before His holy sight."

"Now there are no distinctions. Differences have disappeared and Love looks on Itself. ***What further sight is needed***? What remains that vision could accomplish? We have seen the face of Christ, His sinlessness, His Love ***behind all forms***, beyond all purposes. "

"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 which it came."

"Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And ***gone are bodies*** (sick ones and healthy ones) in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, ***no walls, no bodies***, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

When you are in this world, it seems that who and what you are, is of this world. That you are a body.

When you are in heaven, who and what you are, is of heaven. You are spirit/mind without a body. "To be without a body is to be in your natural state."

The two worlds are completely opposite. You cannot be one while being the other. You cannot live in one while living in the other. You cannot be aware of one while being aware of the other. Which you side with is your choice.

"Every decision you make is made for Heaven or for hell, and will bring you AWARENESS of what you decided FOR."

Either you are located within and made from, heaven. Or you are located within and made from hell. You are either spirit or matter. This is all there is to choose between.

Generally speaking, if you are not in any way spiritual, you will completely identify with being in this world, being a body, being mortal matter. You will confine yourself to your body and believe it is your self. And everything you do will revolve around trying to protect your fragile life and ward off inevitable death.

The idea is that, to be spiritual, you must identify as spirit. And that simply means, that while you are here having your body, you learn that you are IN and OF and FROM another world.

Everything which is true of heaven, must become your truth. All the laws of God must become the only laws you abide by. Your immortal eternal nature must be your only reality. Your invulnerability and power and fearless love must be your entire experience.

And this also means, on the flipside, that anything NOT of heaven MUST be denied. It is opposite to your heavenly nature. Bodies, planets, galaxies, space, time, limitations, all forms of suffering, even death, have to be completely denied. You must not accept them as true of yourself, or what you are made of.

This entails recognizing that this entire world is not reality. It is a dream. And everything in it is merely a dream. And none of it means anything. And none of it is valuable in any way. This world must be regarded as literally nothing, if you are to gain everything of the Kingdom.

"This world holds nothing that I want." "Teachers of God are willing to give up all the pleasures of the world." "It takes great learning to both recognize and accept that this world has nothing to give."

You cannot have it both ways. Ultimately to completely return to communion with God you MUST fully and completely and willingly embrace your entire true reality in heaven. You must wake up to what is actually real. And you must wake up FROM this dream world, leaving it behind to vanish.

While you are working your way TOWARD the goal of BEING ONLY AS GOD CREATED YOU, of knowing yourself, you will find your experience of THIS world changing. Your perception of it will change. The light of heaven will begin shining through you to illuminate your day. And you will become more loving. But this does not change any facts about what this world is or what is real

.Reaching what we call "the real world" or the "forgiven world" is just a stepping stone along the way home. It really ultimately is not important. You will pass THROUGH it, just before you enter heaven's gates. But not for a second will you look back longingly upon it or want for it to remain, when you wake up to the glory of the Kingdom.

It really is very simple in the big picture. Vigilance for the Kingdom must become your total attention. You must accept only what God has established as true, and reject everything out of accord with it. You must not believe anything the world says or suggests or demonstrates as true. You must assert the power and life of the Kingdom so that you can demonstrate resurrection and overcome death itself.

Either you are mortal or immortal. Either you accept your immortality or you deny it and pretend to die. Your choice. Nothing in the world can stop you or do ANYTHING to you. You are absolutely invulnerable permanent perfection forever. This world has nothing on you and adds nothing to you. And you cannot keep it if you are to know God. And why would you want to keep nothingness?

"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world. But the REAL world HAS the power to touch you even here, BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT.

And what you call with love WILL come to you. Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, and do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make, is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

"The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true.

I am come to tell you that the choice of which is true is not yours. If it were, you would have destroyed yourselves. But God did not will the destruction of His Creations, having created them for eternity. His Will has saved you, not from yourselves, but from your illusions of yourselves. He has saved you for yourselves. Let us glorify Him Whom the world denies, for over His Kingdom it has no power."

I seem to be operating through a male body in this lifetime. It has a certain appearance. A certain shape. It functions in a given way and has certain seeming abilities and inabilities. There are appendages and shapes and features which other bodies don't seem to have. It seems to have a physical gender. It seems to have needs. When it looks upon itself in the mirror using its own eyes it sees an image of what it seems to be.

But this body is not who I am. I am not a male, or a humanoid. I do not really have arms and legs or a head. This strange creature I inhabit is not my self. It is but one of many possible iterations of bodies, all of which are distinctly different, and none of which are an accurate representation of my soul. None of them, not even this one, depicts who I really am.

"What you are cannot be seen nor pictured."

Your face is not how you look, any more than the face of another person's body is how they look. The face is a disguise designed to present a picture of what appears to be a "person", or someone looking, or someone speaking. But this face is just an instrument, a device, a facade, like the outside of a building. It actually hides the invisible self which cannot be seen with the body's eyes. This face is merely an arrangement of bones and flesh and muscles and sensory organs operating in a certain, very specific way.

What you are as a permanent, perfect creation of God, cannot possibly bend to become the shape of a particular body. In one lifetime you might show up as a woman, in another as a man, and in another as a woman again. Shapes and features of different sizes and proportions and colors and behaviors. None of these conform precisely to the true nature of what you are, and not one of them is wholly a perfect depiction of yourself.

In fact, because the core of you is so perfect and formless, every single body that you could ever utilize cannot come close to or even touch upon your true nature. Every one of them is distanced from your identity and set apart from or is external to your soul's true nature. They are all strange pictures of persons, who are not really persons, portraying physicalized images of artificial identity, as temporary substitutes for who and what you are.

When you identify with or as this body, believing it is completely yourself, there must be quite a jump of the gap between your true nature and the nature of this strange image. You must distort yourself, confine yourself, mangle yourself, in order to consider yourself to BE IT. You must be not yourself, in the most extreme way, in order to regard it as who and what you are. Are you at toe? Are you a buttock? Are you teeth? Do you chop off parts of yourself when you get a haircut? Do you shed yourself? Are you constantly changing? You are not these things. And trying to identify as these things, alone, must induce mental illness simply because these things are so unlike you.

There was a gospel of Judas which was discovered, I think it was part of the dead sea scrolls. I watched this on tv some years ago... in which, for one thing, Judas was properly recognized as being the one who was closest to Jesus and most believing him, which is why the authorities later depicted him as the worst traitor, to slander him. And in this gospel there were accounts that Jesus had already accomplished such spirit identification that he was able to transfigure in and out of different bodies. Sometimes appearing as a woman, sometimes as a child, or an old man, depending on what form was suitable to meet with particular people.

I don't find this to be improbable or impossible. Some of the great masters of the East have acquired similar abilities, dissolving the body and turning into a ball of light which then flies over the land and then rematerializes as a body later. Clearly when one has total clarity about what one is, and has power over the body and all forms, this kind of thing becomes easy and possible.

We are not bodies. We are spirit beings. And we do not need bodies in order to exist. "To be without a body is to be in your natural state." You do not need a body to be with God, or to be yourself. "God did not create the body." and so it is not a natural part of you or your inheritance. We must learn to correctly recognize that even the body we have right now, is not our identity. I am not a 6-foot caucasian male in his 40's. This is just the particular picture that my mind is projecting or that I chose to show up as or "incarnate into". In my last life, I was probably a woman.

In order to love yourself and to love everyone equally you cannot be offended by, putt of by, judging of, preferring, or being biased in any way about particular types of bodies. Fat or thin, large or small, tall or short, gay or straight, masculine or feminine, hairy or bald, ugly or beautiful, it should not matter, because these are all just clothing. Just flesh suits which our real selves are temporarily using. And no matter how a particular body appears, it is not the person.

Holding the body against them is like accusing them of sin. You must learn to look beyond your body and theirs, to recognize that deep within, there is a shining light, a perfect soul, just the same as yours, and all the children of God are perfectly identical and equal in Christ.

Our egos counsel us to separate ourselves off from others. That means identifying solely with your own body, and not with or beyond the bodies of others. It also means seeing yourself as completely cut off from others. No-one else is allowed to occupy the same space as you. You share nothing with anyone. You are isolated, imprisoned and alone inside your body.

The ego the tells you that because you are separate, it makes total sense to suggest you can attack someone and remain separate from the attack. That anything you express, anything you do, will not hurt you but will hurt someone else. Anything you give, is not given to you. Anything you hurl at another, you do not share in. Any way that someone else is wrong, is in no way associated with you. And you are completely dis-associated from everyone.

In its rage and hatred, the ego has you trying to emphasize the separation between you and others as much as possible. To want nothing to do with another person is the ideal mechanism for increasing the separation. Wanting to be distanced from them, pushing them away, destroying them, and making sure all guilt and sin is loaded onto their plate alone, is its whole ambition. This increases the sense of being separate and guarantees that you escape all the consequences of their sinfulness.

As a strategy this seems to all make sense. On the fundamental premise that you are ONLY you and you share nothing with anyone else, it's obvious that you have a great opportunity. You can easily blame someone without being blamed, hurt someone without being hurt, shovel all your guilt into someone's hands and absolve yourself of it, and generally identify your "self" as "not them." This is the egos entire approach to everything. Separate and be saved.

But what the ego will also be careful not to tell you is that in order to be separate, you must also lose something. Having attacked everything other than separation, it hates all the things that you stand to lose by your attacks, and believes they are not worth having. But there is a long list of very worthwhile valuable things that you DO lose when you regard yourself as "not one with them."

You lose all sense of love, all relationship, all communication, all safety and trust, all peace of mind, all freedom, all sharing, all inheritance from God, all power, all life, all holiness and all happiness. It goes flying out the window as soon as you try to be special by making yourself separate from others.

As soon as you try to stop sharing, you become selfish. This selfishness is an attempt to gain something exclusively for yourself, but has the side effect of excluding you from what others have. You seem to gain, AND lose, at the same time. And everything you lose in your special separated state is everything worth having. You have to convince yourself that it's not even there, or valuable, or worth having at all, in order to justify being so separate, barren, bereft and empty.

In the effort to have everything exclusively for yourself, in your selfish egotism, all you end up doing is having nothing. In grasping to hold onto things they completely slip through your fingers. Possessiveness leads to lack and sacrifice. All efforts to make something yours alone makes it no-ones. This is the cost of being separate.

So when you are being separate and are scapegoating and projecting sin and guilt onto others, trying to have it not apply to you, to exclude yourself from, recall also what you are giving up. You lose whenever you think you win. You sacrifice whenever you think you gain an advantage. You become empty whenever you shut someone out. And you become not yourself, whenever your sense of identity is not shared with everyone.

The question then becomes, is it worth it? You have to first recognize that you are being separate. Secondly you have to recognize that this separation has a major cost. Thirdly you have to value the things that you've lost as a result of being separate. And fourth you have to want to regain them. Only in the awareness that separation brings with it a whole host of deprivation, suffering, unhappiness and lack of peace, will you have an incentive to turn away from it.

You are not solely gaining when you separate. You are not getting off scott free. You are not winning without losing. You are not acquiring everything and sacrificing nothing. You are not surviving while others are dying. You are not escaping consequences. You are not becoming more free or more happy or better off. And you certainly are not feeling good in any real way.

The ego doesn't want you looking at the COST of being separate because it doesn't want you being aware that you're missing out on anything. It doesn't want you thinking that there are any downsides to being separate. It doesn't want you being aware that when you project guilt in anger you are still attacking yourself. It doesn't want you to realize that by isolating yourself and being exclusive you are leaving yourself out of the greatest party that ever happened. Nor does it want you remembering that deep down inside you want to be reunited with everyone in love.

Your real identity is shared with everyone in and as christ. Your real experience is to have everything at the same time as everyone else has everything. God's generosity is the guarantee that everything belongs to everyone, and everyone IS everyone. You are literally one with and a part of and shared entirely with every other child of God. And accepting this is the acceptance of atonement. You are not just you. You are all of us. And you are never alone.