If you think that they are causing your problems, and that they need to change, you're mistaken. If you could get them to change, your problem won't really go away.

Because you are the one who is attacking you.

You just think it's someone else's fault, but really your blame is just your attempt to get rid of your own self-blame. You attacked yourself, and now you are trying to find someone else guilty for it.

If you were to get someone else to behave differently or treat you differently, it still wouldn't undo your suffering. It might remove from your experience, temporarily, the current projection of your self-attack, but as soon as someone else comes along that fits the bill, you'll do it all over again.

You do not have a problem with other people. You have a problem with yourself. You can't fix this problem by trying to force someone else to be responsible for it, or to get them to fix it for you.

You have to recognize that you're doing this to yourself, and you were all along. Then undo that. Stop hating yourself, and your need to blame will disappear. Stop hating yourself, and your need to find other people guilty will disappear.

Your finding other people guilty is not really the problem, and your hating other people is not really the problem, and your blaming of people is not really the problem. But your problem is that you do these things in order to deny what YOU believe is true about yourself. These attacks are just cover-ups for your own self-attack. They are indirect self-abuse.

You don't even particularly need to be concerned about trying to become more loving towards others. Love will reveal itself naturally when you remove your own blocks to it. Your own blocks are your belief that you're sinful. It's your self-condemnation and judgement of yourself. You but accuse others of your own sinfulness.

Once you remove your own crap and clean up your own attitude about yourself, automatically you will see this renewed self in other people, because you won't be putting tons of guilt into them. You'll see them for how they really are because you're seeing yourself for how you really are.

As within, so without. You are the one who needs forgiveness.

You know sometimes when you're doing something on a computer and there's a progress bar, and sometimes there are actually two progress bars - overall progress and the progress of one of many smaller tasks? Well I think it's kind of like that with forgiveness too.

There is an overall progress which slowly evolves along similar steps to how each individual forgiveness progresses, but it goes a lot slower. This means that in general, you will start out really strongly believing that forgiveness has something to do with other people, that it's their fault, that you have to forgive them in some way.

Then gradually you will pull away from that and start to realize that it's not really about other people, it's about you. Each time something happens, over time you are a little less convinced that you're starting out with someone else being the problem. So you sort of start a little further along the process.

Each time you do a small forgiveness, each time you tackle some individual issue, and you take it all the way to it being forgiven, you are sort of practicing. You wear away at the rock of sin. And then you do another one, and another one.

What I've seen is that as a result of all these practices, all these forgiveness of individual events and people and situations, in the big long-term picture my mind seems to be gradually moving its 'starting position' away from others and more toward myself.

Instead of falling for some of the more obvious ego traps that convince and tempt me to believe that it's all someone else's fault, there's been a progression where I at least don't fall for those basic starting illusions as easily. I start my forgivenesses a bit further along the process.

Lately I've been encroaching more closely on the idea that forgiveness has nothing at all to do with other people. Instead I'm seeing that there is stuff going on in my own mind, a conflict between two parts of my own split mind, and that I play both the role of victim and victimizer. Whatever way I am using my mind to judge or attack others, I see that this is just my own mind content playing out, there's activity in my own mind about myself, and I'm doing this to myself. I am sort of learning that I can completely ignore any suggestion that this upset has anything to do with other people.

So I think gradually we erode this overall attitude of unforgiveness, we gradually chop down trees and the forest starts to clear. We keep winning little battles and gradually we're winning the war, so to speak. I am much quicker now to recognize that my issues have nothing to do with other people, and can quickly jump over the whole emotional drama tangle of "they are doing this to me", "I'm a victim of them", "I don't want this etc". I've had to take that illusion, that perceptual fault, so many times that I guess I've learned, overall, or have become able to generalize that learning, so that I just kind of 'know it' now.

I think this is really how things progress. I can well imagine that as time continues to unfold I will just keep having fewer reactions, less belief in victimhood, less fear, that I will fall for illusions less, that I will inevitably gradually be sustaining a certain level of 'awareness' and 'wakefulness' which acts as the starting point for any further corrections that are needed.

We wake up gradually. We make progress. And once we've done enough of the undoing of the grosser, more ego-extreme aspects of our mistaken perceptions, we will learn and won't be so easily fooled by them. Then it will come down to the subtler aspects of what's happening, what I'm doing to myself, how my mind is functioning, as we gradually 'home in' on revealing to our awareness what the simple truth really is about us.

And someday we'll realize, there is nothing left to forgive, and forgiveness isn't even needed, because now we are in a permanently forgiving attitude with Holy Spirit that shows us a forgiven world all the time. Ultimately there is nothing to forgive when you get to that point because you're seeing clearly, and really you were only ever forgiving your mistaken belief that there was something wrong that needed to be undone. Nothing has really happened. We're all doing fine. Congratulations on your progress.

Victims require victimizers.

Victims ask for victimizers.

Victims create victimizers.

Victimizers victimize victims (victims victimize themselves through third-party victimizers)

Then the victimizer gets all the blame.

Seeing yourself as a victim is actively a choice, an attitude, a viewpoint and a way of looking at and valuing yourself in relation to reality. If you see yourself this way, you will project victimization.

"Being a victim" in this sense, psychologicaly, IS an attack on you, by yourself. And therefore you will project this out and bring about events where other people victimize you, to reflect what you're basically 'asking for'. You ask by your beliefs and if your belief is that you are a victim, and you choose to play the role regardless of whether they are victimizers out there, you'll manifest some.

How will you be a victim when everyone else REFUSES to play along or acknowledge your victimhood?

Even if everyone ceases to play your victim game or to buy into it or to believe in it or support it, you will still play it. Because it was always you playing it all along anyway, with yourself.

Victims ask to be victimized .... extremely controversial yes. Upsetting, possibly, yes. But we must believe we're victims before we are victimized, not the other way around, otherwise this could not happen, and would not happen, because there would be no spiritual lesson needing to be learned.

The sooner we own up to not being a victim the sooner we will stop victimizing OURSELVES and then finding all kinds of people to blame for it.

I [insert name here] hereby testify that I am wholly innocent before God, have not sinned, have no fear and have had nothing done to me against my will. I need not be attacked because I choose not to attack myself or to see myself as attackable. Therefore all is forgiven.

or something like that.

I think a lot of people have a belief that they are 'supposed' to suffer.

When an opportunity for healing is presented, unconditionally, with no strings attached, we actually recoil a bit in suspicion that we're not 'supposed' to be free of the suffering.

We believe the sickness is honorable, truthful, justified and deserved, and we defend it, and would even feel guilty for throwing all that away in favor of instant healing. How dare you heal someone when they're in the middle of good bit of suffering?! They were really getting into it ;-)

It seems 'too easy' that God would just come along and take away any degree of sickness instantly, as if, that's not allowed. Or it's breaking some kind of rules. Or some kind of 'agreement' that we all seem to have about how the common level of 'mutual suffering' is agreed upon and normal.

How dare you step out of the ego and be healed with no repercussions, throwing all guilt aside and claiming innocence. Blasphemy!

I noticed this in my path where I felt like some kind of 'rightness' in taking the very-longwinded suffering route through forgiveness, like, I was not supposed to skip any steps, was not supposed to just 'jump to innocence'.

I had to go 'through' and handle and spend time with all this guilt and fear like, it was not 'correct' (with the Course) to move on from it quickly without having 'properly suffered' first.

The ego says, you must ATONE on its terms, first, before you are 'allowed' to move on. You must atone by suffering and sacrifice and punishment, in hell. If you haven't suffered enough, it's wrong to seek healing.

Even if I were able to access healing quickly, some part of me believed I was meant to suffer for a long time and make sure to thoroughly look at every fault, and really beat it to death, just to make sure that I am really really really prepared to then start to heal it.

Silly nonsense. How can guilt and suffering be justified?

What about healing right now, full and complete, as an unconditional gift of love from God? Do we deserve it? Do we want it? Why don't we want it? Why do we believe we are supposed to suffer, right to suffer, meant to suffer, doing a service to God by suffering, carrying out God's will by suffering, going along with society by suffering, being aligned to truth by suffering, and being honest by suffering?

lol, you have to laugh.

Miracles are available right now.

There is only one trap. The ego has only one tool. Do you know what it is?

Separation. The ego wants to come between you and God, between you and yourself, between you and others.

It has one devious way of doing this, which in all its forms is exactly the same trap.

As soon as you believe in separation, you perceive a difference between you and God, between you and your real self, or between you and others, you have fallen for it.

As soon as you see difference, you will see a different meaning for each party, and will award each of them a different label. One will be more good, one more bad. Or one will be more right, one more wrong. Or one is better looking, or one is more spiritual, or one is more mature, or one is a better friend, or whatever. Conditionality.

To put it even more simply:

The ego wants you to TAKE SIDES.

By taking sides, it gets you to believe that one of the two SEPARATE CHOICES are better than the other in some way, more preferable, more desirable, more true, more credible or worthy or real.

The instant you do this, you COME BETWEEN yourself and God, yourself and your real self, and yourself and others.

Let's be clear about the ego's motives.

The ego does not give a shit who wins the war.

The ego does not give a shit who is better or worse.

The ego does not give a shit who is good or bad.

The ego does not give a shit who is more evil or holy.

The ego does not give a shit who is right or wrong.

The ego does not give a shit who is winning.

ALL it wants to do is SEPARATE what once was one, into separate parts, to distinguish what it is that keeps those parts separate, and to emphasize that difference as much as possible.

IT DOES NOT MATTER which side you take, where you fall, who you align with, or what you think is a better option. If you are choosing darkness and evil, you are just as much falling for the trap as if you are choosing to try to make out your are "good" and well behaved. If you are the winner of the war or the one that gets destroyed, it doesn't matter. The ego doesn't give a shit. All it wants to do is COME BETWEEN, to keep apart, to separate out and to stop there being unity or oneness or wholeness.

So don't fall for the primary trap, the only trap, of believing that you are escaping the ego by going into one of two sides or one of two possibilities. Or that you're more spiritual by siding with appearances of spirituality (the spiritual ego). Or that you're less spiritual if you're siding with appearances of darkness and rebellion.

BOTH the dark (the shadow self) and the `light` (the persona) are parts of the EGO SPLIT MIND. And both of them are dependent on each other. And both of them are attacked by each other. And both of them are doing things which are mistaken. They both uphold the separation.

It doesn't matter what side you pick. IF you pick a side, that is what matters. IF you go along with the illusion that one party is better than another, or one choice is better than another, you are fucked.

The ego's major weapon with illusions is to get you to be convinced that how something APPEARS tells you what IT IS, and therefore its FORM tells you of its inherent qualities. This is totally deceptive. It makes it APPEAR as though some things in the world are innocent victims and other things are victimizers. Some things are good/light, some things are dark/bad. And then if you start to defend the good stuff against the bad stuff, or feel sorry for the victims, or go along with this whole charade of separate enemies, YOU HAVE fallen for the ego.

BOTH sides of every argument lose. BOTH victimizer and victim lose. BOTH sides of every war lose. As soon as you enter into separation and conflict you're losing yourself, losing God, and losing your brother. You cannot fight and win and be free of this fact. The ego's lie is that you CAN fight and win and be free of this fact - that you can get away with it, or one side can actually conquer the other, or that someone can "win" at this game of life.

THERE ARE NO WINNERS IN THE EGO'S DREAM OF DEATH!

Anyone who plays the game LOSES. Anyone who plays the game or goes along with the game comes to believe in separation, and DIES. The only way out is not to play the game at all.

Something simple that I was inspired by yesterday is simply this idea that we are trying to get rid of ourselves. We've filled ourselves with all this guilt which we believe is the truth of us, and then we're trying to get rid of 'that self'. But basically in the bigger picture we're trying to destroy the Son of God - who we are.

So as we take stuff from inside us, that we think we are, and we push it outside of us, this is us trying to get rid of ourselves. You're trying to get rid of what you are and to deny that you are it. And because you don't like the idea that you are guilty, which you believe is true, you will try to get rid of that guilt, which makes you get rid of yourself.

So you see, your identity goes along for the ride - shoveling out all the guilt shit from your mind and projecting it outward to disown it, makes you disown your self as well, because you've identified with it. So it's your identity you're trying to get rid of.

When you keep trying to get rid of 'that guilty self' by getting rid of the guilt (and you along with it because you're attached to it), you basically send yourself to hell and death. Projecting it keeps the guilt intact and you just end up getting rid of all of yourself. It's because you've identified AS the 'guilty self' that this happens.

You need a way to be free of the guilt without it being YOU that you are free of. You need to be freed from the 'guilty self' without it being your real self that is removed.

To do that of course we need two parts.

1) Correcting the belief that the guilt is true

2) Detaching from the guilty self and recognizing/re-attaching to your true self.

You can't detach from the guilty self while you believe that the guilt is the truth. You have to REINTERPRET THE MEANING that you've given to yourself. Guilt reinterpreted the meaning of WHAT YOU ARE to begin with, and now you need to RE-interpret the meaning of what you are to restore it back to its TRUE MEANING as given by God.

Once you can look at the guilt and recognize it is not the truth (in the light of truth/God/Holy Spirit), THEN you can detach what YOU are from IT and be willing and ready to genuinely let it go/detach from it.

This of course involves surrender of the belief in the guilty self and an opening up to your true/higher self/Holy Spirit's view of you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can't be attacked by someone else without attacking them first. You have to believe you are attackable, otherwise you'd be invulnerable. By seeing yourself as attackable, which is an attack on yourself, you are also attacking others. Whatever you believe about you is shared with everyone, and so you believe everyone else is just as attacked. You cannot attack yourself with something and believe it affects only you.

Each sickness is attack on yourself and everyone else. Each injury is an attack on yourself and everyone else. Each bad mood is an attack on yourself and everyone else.

Then, holding a focus on self-attack, you radiate and 'call for' attack, which expresses itself outwardly as a kind of invitation, energetically and mentally, which is sort of like laying a trap and sending an invitation.

It's very easy for people to come along and fall into that trap because it's a temptation. If they are not really clear about who they are and the certainty of their own innocence, they will likely buy into what you're selling and go along with it, proceeding to launch a "counter-attack" ie to give you what you want. You'll think it's not a counter attack but an initial attack because you don't recognize you attacked first. And then you'll blame them for attacking you because you don't want to admit that you attacked yourself before this all happened.

It's especially easy if you are more sensitive to energy/emotion in others ie more empathic, to 'sense' when someone has a certain attitude about themselves. I feel this particularly with many people who are overweight who actually 'call themselves' "fat", on an energetic level. They actively are walking around 'tempting' others to agree with them and to hate WITH them, in hopes of proving that they are worthless. It's really a test, and choosing not to buy into that temptation and to overlook how they see themselves is forgiveness.

We all know that it's very controversial among more dualistically-minded people to suggest that anyone "asks for it", especially when seemingly serious things happen to some people. But Jesus would counter that nothing happens without your consent, and this takes a huge amount of honesty and willingness to look at yet alone admit to.

Without admitting it you truly are powerless because if you did not choose this, you cannot choose against it either. But if you did choose this, yes, it is painful to acknowledge you did this to yourself or wanted it in any way whatsoever, but at the same time, this owning up gives you back power and gives you hope for being able to overcome it. Without this self empowerment there is truly no hope for recovery.

So what are you broadcasting today? Do you have a big sign on your head saying "loser" or "reject me" or "hate me" or "don't love me?". What are you asking for? Or rather, what truth would you have apply to you and everyone else equally?

This goes way beyond "just healing yourself."

"To heal, then, is to correct perception in your brother AND yourself by sharing the Holy Spirit with him. This places you both WITHIN the Kingdom and restores ITS wholeness in your minds."

Note that such healing REQUIRES that you ***SHARE THE HOLY SPIRIT*** with others. He cannot be left out of the equation.

"***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? Sins are beyond forgiveness just BECAUSE they would entail effects which CANNOT be undone and overlooked entirely. In their UNDOING lies the proof that they were merely errors. LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, ***offering salvation to your brother AND yourself***. A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect. "

Note that "the world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible" and that the physical world is "the granite block of sin", tells us that when sins are forgiven, BODY-LEVEL healing should occur to undo the presence of "physical" sin.

It's saying that unless your mind AND BODY are healed, and unless your brother's mind AND BODY are healed, forgiveness is not real or complete. Essentially, all trace of occurances, sins, events, attacks, must be ERASED from showing up anywhere at all, in yourself AND in your brother. And it must leave no trace behind.

"Idols MUST disappear, and leave no trace behind their going."

It also suggests that as you forgive, it SHOULD also induce healing in OTHERS simultaneous to your own.

This is very different to the idea that you just "do forgivenesses" for yourself in isolation, or with no effect on others. Jesus is saying that your joined minds should produce healing effects in BOTH of you.

"I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts." tells you something very similar.

"My forgiveness is the means by which the world is healed, together with myself. Let me, then, forgive the world, that it may be healed along with me."

"How just are miracles! For they bestow an equal gift of full deliverance from guilt upon your brother AND yourself. YOUR healing saves HIM pain, as well as you. And YOU are healed BECAUSE you wished him well. This is the law the miracle obeys: That healing sees no specialness at all."

"So does your healing (physically) show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, ***and healed along with you.***"

"It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive."

"And thus is healing given BOTH of you."

"Show THIS (healed body) 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 his innocence and NOT his guilt. ***YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health***. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true."

"When I am healed I am not healed alone.

Today's idea remains the central thought on which salvation rests. For healing is the opposite of all the world's ideas which dwell on sickness and on separate states."

"It is impossible that anyone be healed alone. In sickness must he be apart and separate. But healing is his own decision to be one again, and to accept his Self with all Its parts intact and unassailed."

"Healing might thus be called a counter-dream, ***which cancels out the dream of sickness*** in the name of truth, but not in truth itself. Just as forgiveness overlooks all sins that never were accomplished, healing but removes illusions that have not occurred."

"Healing is shared."

"And as you let yourself be healed, you see all those around you, or who cross your mind, or whom you touch or those who seem to have no contact with you, healed along with you."

"But you are never healed alone. And legions upon legions will receive the gift that you receive when you are healed."

"Those who are healed become the instruments of healing."

"When I am healed I am not healed alone. And I would share my healing with the world, that sickness may be banished from the mind of God's one Son, Who is my only Self."

"When I am healed I am not healed alone. And I would bless my brothers, for I would be healed with them, as they are healed with me."

"I will heal as I let him teach me to heal."

In ACIM the idea of evil is defined as 'ego', more or less. Not just individual egos but also a collective one.

The ego uses temptation to distract you from the truth. It is capable of creating scenarios in which it seems like you want and enjoy things which you would normally not want or enjoy.

It is also very cunning in that it can use your very own weaknesses against you. If you think that some person or project or activity might be 'the answer' and that it will save you, even though it's not true, the ego will encourage you to pursue it. And it knows you are likely going to go along with it because you yourself are the one who is believing it will work, or is what you want.

I have only recently discovered that my own ego has been 'playing me', using my own self deceptions to lure me away from the truth. It's particularly bad if I am very mistaken about something, like I think I'm onto some kind of solution or really great thing, but really it's another ego bullshit wild goose chase which will have me 'seek and do not find' for a long time.

In other words, if I choose to believe in an illusion and I give it faith and am convinced of its supposed value, this becomes a blind spot in my awareness. My ego comes along and says "why don't you do that thing, you know you want to, you know you like it, you know how appealing it is". And then I'll be all gooey eyed with hypnotic spirals spinning in my eyeballs while I salivate over this very appealing, attractive opportunity. All the while, my mind is completely distracted from God.

Notice though that the ego thus really has no power of its own. It can only use the things I have agreed to as a way to tempt me away from the truth. If it weren't for me getting gooey eyed over some new piece of technology or some amazing movie or some pathway that seemed really enticing, the ego would have no way to deceive me. I have deceived myself, willingly, and that is all the ego needs.

It can trigger off a memory of these tempting offers just at the right moment, knowing that their allure will particularly hurl my awareness off in a different direction, like some rat in a maze that just caught a glimpse of a big chunk of delicious cheese. Suddenly all my senses are ignited and the unfinished business I have with this 'promising savior' has captivated/captured my attention. I fall for my own traps.

It's good to be aware the ego is actively tempting us in this way, using our own mistakes against us, and trying to get us to reinvest in anything other that what we really are. There is nothing guilty or bad or wrong with enjoying life, but if we are psychologically using it as a false savior, then we will fall for temptation - the temptation to believe the truth is not true and God does not deserve our attention.

Watch out ... for yourself :-) You are the one who gives the ego the fuel it needs, and you thus hire it to serve your false interests. It is merely a reflection of your own self deception. It is not against you but for you. You want it. But you need to want God instead.