When I write or read ACIM stuff, after a while I'll start to feel upset. I may feel overwhelmed, or agitated, even hurt, and might feel like I want to cry. It's almost like someone just said a whole string of lies about me.

I look at what part of me feels this way and I acknowledge what it is likely feeling. It feels offended by everything the truth says. It feels threatened by it. It does not want anything to do with the stupid-ass course and does not want to wake up at all. It wants it all to go away. It wants the truth to shut the hell up. It sees it as constantly attacking it, and it won't leave it alone. It feels victimized and threatened and hurt. It is offended by everything the truth said, as if it were all a personal insult and attack. It is frightened about the notion of the truth being true, and hates the Holy Spirit.

This "part of me" does not want anything to do with ACIM, or any spiritual path, or any kind of waking up, or anything to do with God. It just wants to be the way it is. It is reluctant to have anything to do with God or making truthful statements or reading what is true and or studying. It just reacts to it all from an ego perspective.

This is something maybe not spoken about by many people but it happens with me all the time and I think it probably does with most people too.

This stuff happens because the ego's vantage point is actually totally opposite to the truth, opposite to God, opposite to reality. It interprets everything to do with God as false, wrong, bad, evil, vengeful, an attack, offensive, abusive, hurtful, to be avoided, etc. Every possible attribute of "evil" is assigned to God by the ego. Every possible way to want nothing to do with it is given him. This is simply because the ego believes that what is true is false, and what is false is true, and in this it is actually insane and confused.

Then, there is my mind, which is "doing this ego", or is identified with the concept of it. So part of MY mind or self is latched onto this perspective, caught up in it, identified with it as if it is true of my own self, as if it IS me. So part of my mind is turning my back on God and is peering back at God through highly negating opposing ego glasses, and everything it sees is backwards and upside down and inside out. But it doesn't realize this. And so as I look "through" the ego, everything true is false, and everything real is an illusion, and God is death and death is life.

We have this stuff going on in us so long as we are identified with the ego/body. A bodily identification, an ego-thought-system identification, a sense of limitedness or exclusion or specialness. That collections of vantage points seems to form "the ego self" or false self, an "area" of our mind that is temporarily flipped inside out. And so long as we're still bound to it in that way, exposure to the light will be experienced as attack by darkness. And moving closer to truth is experienced as reality falling apart. And trying to open up to love and sharing and union is interpreted as a threat to my very life.

It's tough to go through this because on the one hand the majority of me is wanting to awaken and be loving and spiritual while this ego portion wants the exact opposite. And so doing the course, reading the words, doing the lessons, writing about the topics, whatever related to it, sooner or later pushes these buttons and out comes the tears and the tantrums and the emotional breakdowns and the resistance and the procrastination and all the rest of the dysfunction.

We perhaps have to be gentle with ourselves, with the part of our self that is still confused, still bound and identified with a way of perceiving that is backwards. And some times that part of ourselves needs a break, it needs a rest from course shit, it needs to stop reading and writing and thinking about it 24/7, and it needs to just live and do some basic earthly ego things for a while, to cool off, to feel less threatened and pressured. Because that self, typically filled with childhood traumas and twisted early beliefs, is completely confused about God and truth and everything real.

It wants nothing to do with it. And actually it can become seemingly "happier" when you ease up on threatening it. Gotta throw it some bones sometimes. Relax, take a study break, go shopping, eat some fun food, whatever. Be "normal" for a while. This can actually bring you a feeling of peace, at the ego level, temporarily. Then when you are rested and ready to press forward, go exposure yourself to what the ego interprets as "its demise" all over again.

"NO evidence will convince you of the truth of what you do NOT want."

""Give up what you do not want, and keep what you do." How simple is the obvious! "

"When you think you are projecting what you do NOT want, it is still because you DO want it. "

"You must have noticed that the emphasis has been on bringing what is undesirable TO the desirable, what you do NOT want to what you DO. "

Before the separation, there was only the truth of God. God's Kingdom was the only reality. Everything in it was directly known and cognized. There was no interpretation, no judgement, no evaluation, and no decisions about what things mean. It was a very direct unified experience and everything was a given.

In this state of perfection, we knew that only God's truth was true. That only God's laws applied. There was nothing else to oppose this. There was, you could say, a recognition, that only the truth is true, AND that only the false is false. But you also knew that the false means nothingness and non-existence - that nothing is false. So there was no experience of the false, only of the true, and love had no opposite.

Let's then consider the tiny mad idea, BEFORE you believed in it. Let's imagine the idea has only just formed and you are considering what it is. The idea is that there is an opposite to God, as an opposite to what has no opposite. It's the idea of an opposite to the truth, which had to be nothing like the truth in order to BE opposite. We made-up in our minds an imagined notion of what it might be like it God were completely opposed, and something completely different were to exist. But note at this point you had not "gone into it" with belief or conviction.

This mad idea was an idea filled with opposites to God's nature. It was an idea of that which is false, untrue, unreal, impossible, non-existing, murderous, deadly, vulnerable, weak, powerless, unloving, impermanent, corrupt, distorted, deceptive, valueless, meaningless, nothingness, evil and every other notion that opposes some quality of God.

If you would have remained in your right mind, examining this idea, you would not have given it a moment's belief. It would have been completely obvious to you how impossible and unbelievable it is. You would have had no faith in it, on trust in it, and it would appear to be you be completely nothing. You would see no value in it, no merit to it, and would not want it at all. You would turn away from it instantly knowing that it was so profoundly false, you could not help but laugh at it.

Let's now say that you, nevertheless, chose to start to entertain the idea, began to persuade yourself that it was possible and true, and listened to it. You gave it a second thought and started to take it more seriously. What this meant is that you suddenly began to lose touch with what is objectively real. You lost touch with God's reality, and started to enter into a subjective reality. A reality which seemed to be different for you than for others, where reality was unstable.

This subjective position was what we call "perception", which put you into a slightly removed mode of "reading into" what you saw. A slight delay or gap was introduced between what was there and what you knew, producing a sense of space and time, and also removing you a little from the direct experience. Your mind began to twist and distort, it began to lose touch with context, it began to hallucinate, it entered into doubt and lost track of meaning. It started to interpret everything according to what it thought it might mean, making up meanings, and judging everything to try to assess what it was. And this was also a hallucinatory experience.

By believing that there was some truth to what was false, the mind began to swap the true and the false. Perception acted like a layer of interpretation overlaid on top of the clarity that the true and the false were completely opposite. That the false didn't even exist. Truth and reality was given to the false, combining with it into a blurred soup of meaninglessness and confusion. And similarly aspects of the false were incorrectly associated with the truth, further distorting your view of reality and driving you insane.

This process continued in the "descent into hell", whereby all things true were confused with all things false, and vice versa. This eventually produced a complete inversion of the facts. All true things were believed to be false, and all false things were believed to be true. This produced a completely upside down viewpoint. Whereas we might say truth was above and the false was below, the true was now placed below and the false above. This backwards perception was overlaid on top of the actual arrangement of the facts or levels.

The state of false perception turns everything into its opposite. So we also perceived from a vantage point of believing that unreality was real, the false was true, the impossible was possible, death was life, suffering was salvation, hell was heaven, and god was non-existent. It was this combination of the false and the true which was the state of false perception in the mind, and it was this which as projected out AS THE PHYSICAL WORLD. A world where everything is backwards, the impossible happens, and everything is insane.

The world therefore took on a nature which is completely impossible and contradictory. It appeared to be in some ways both true and false. In it the impossible seemed to always be happening, as though it were possible. Death could occur even though this is not possible. It gives only to take away. There was a cost to everything. And since there was this overlaid blend of true and false, everything in the world was something other than what it appeared to be on the surface.

False perception therefore looks upon a false unreal world, riddled with impossibilities, and believes it to be real and true. It in a sense sees heaven in it, but not through recognizing heaven as it it. Instead by believing that something that is NOT heaven is heaven. The world itself was made on this basis. The body was made on this basis. And the body's eyes now look out upon the unreal world and make it seem real.

As Jesus states in the course "The world is false perception." This means that so long as your mind is backwards and confused, having swapped the true and the false, it will perceive what we call the physical world. And this way of perceiving will line up with the world's nature. When the mind is in false perception, ie upside-down belief, or backwards cause-and-effect, everything in the world seems natural and makes sense and seems like the only reality.

So long as the mind remains in false perception it will see the physical world, along with its seeming laws and its insane ways, because it is a projection of madness. False perception sees all false things as if they are true, all illusions as if they are real, and buys into all the impossible things that seem to happen. It falls for temptation and is deceived.

The way out of such a world is through true perception. The only thing that is needed to move into true perception, is to reverse the upside-down inverting lens of perception. Remember this is a layer of interpretation overlaid on top of the facts. False perception turns the truth upside down and associates it with the false, and true perception corrects this and lines up the filter of truth with the actual truth. Now both the actual truth and the perceived truth are on the top, lined-up, and the actual false and the perceived false are on the bottom.

True or "accurate" perception now very closely matches knowledge, in which you are much more directly and accurately recognizing what things are. That which is false is now clearly recognized AS false, instead of believing it has truth to it. The false world, which includes Earth, is no longer given value and belief, and instead it is recognized as unreal and untrue. It is seen as nothing, which causes it to become transparent to your perception. You see through it because you see through the lie.

True perception therefore focuses on the actual real truth of the real world, or of heaven, and lines up with it. It wants to see it because it values it. And in order TO see it, it denies that the false world has any reality. The world you see in false perception is completely denied, because seeing it shuts out awareness of the real world. You deny the physical world - anything not of God - and this steers your perceptual reality filter towards the right-side-up truth.

Heaven is then perceived through the lens of perception, because the truth in belief now lines up with the actual truth. It becomes so close to it and so alike its nature that it can "accurately interpret" reality. It forms reality contact and recognition, which is also enlightenment. The true is recognized as all that is true, and the false is recognized as completely false. The false world is recognized as nothing, and disappears, as the face of Christ - symbol of the real truth, appears to your vision.

While some amount of perception remains, and while you seem to still have a false body, the body still continues to see WITH totally false perception. It is worth noting this because this does not change. The body still continues to send images of a false world to the mind, and all the things it sees are still JUST AS false as they ever were. The mind has to learn that they ARE false and categorize them as unreal. This doesn't stop the mind seeing them, until the most advanced state, so it has to learn that everything the body shows it is unreal. And this acutely conflicts with its growing awareness of reality.

Also at the same time, true perception (vision) is developing. Note that false perception manifests through physical sight, and true perception manifests through a spiritual non-physical sight - the spiritual eye or mind's eye. While the mind is still looking at the false world temporarily, yet from a very healed state, it is seeing from a vantage point that is very filled with truth. It is very heaven-like, operating in a loving and forgiving manner. This loving sight looks upon the false unreal world and forgives it, and also even loves it. But it is not a special love of attachment and still does not want it.

The vantage point of true perception comes from a mind that has lined itself up with God and the soul. And so it is itself a reflection of heaven. And therefore what it projects is a reflection of heaven, still within perception. And this "glosses over" the false world's falseness and sees love "in" it, seeing God's reflection in it. Not because the false world contains God but because God is there in spite of and beyond the false images. This is how the reflection of heaven is seen in the world. This doesn't change the world's nature either, but it does see it in a beautiful way.

The real world, or heaven, looks away from and beyond the forgiven world, beyond spacetime, beyond form and matter and bodies, and looks to the light of reality. It's the minds desire to value only reality and to accept the truth (atonement). It therefore becomes able to see the real world, ie reality's reflection in perception, as a kind of "perception of heaven", as though outside of heaven peering in slightly removed from it. You see the real world, in which everything shines forever, and this is just prior to your total movement INTO the Kingdom.

Once this point is reached, all perception ends and its re-purposing is done, because it has now lined up with reality as much as is possible. Perception vanishes, the physical world vanishes, the real world vanishes, and all that remains is heaven. You wake up in reality knowing that you never left, and that you merely slept a while, and now you continue co-creating with God as though nothing ever happened. Your mind has been restored to knowledge and the direct cognition of the Kingdom.

When someone becomes afraid, they also become resistant to being helped. The fear and victimhood is really a choice to deny and resist the truth, and so they do not want the truth. This can make the situation very difficult if you're trying to help someone because they literally do not want to be helped, even if in the victimhood they are complaining and saying that they want things to not be this way.

In the Course for example Jesus talks about "requests for healing" whereby someone may seem to be asking for help, through complaint or even direct asking, but because they would be scared by a miracle, which would remove the very thing they themselves put in place, they could become afraid if this "treasure" were suddenly taken from them. In this case, it's not a real request for healing, it's just the form of a request, but really a denial and wish to not be helped.

One of the hardest things to deal with is when other people do not want to really be helped. And by that I don't mean people who actually are ready or willing to be helped, but those who say they are but are not. Those who are steeped in fear and resistance, and so are resistant also to anything that would help them. Resistant to ideas, suggestions, healing, advice, simply on the basis that their backwards perception makes it seem like "help" is actually "danger".

This happens when the thought system goes into egotism because what is true and false become reversed. Defenses are erected against the misinterpreted truth, which seems false, so understandably you'd not want it. Then the person will defend and side with the very thing that's hurting them, because they believe it's the truth. Whatever we think is true we will value and want to keep and protect. So when we're in the ego with this backwards perception, we'll actively fight against help and healing, believing it's not actually help but a form of attack. The ego thinks of the Holy Spirit as an attacker.

What can you then do but let go and let the person continue to suffer. I mean, that sounds awful but sometimes people simply want to carry on suffering, even if on the other hand some part of them is not liking it. It's really difficult to "allow" someone to make choices against themselves or against life and happiness, especially when you know that there are options and possibilities.

Perhaps at that point all that you can do is appeal to a higher power, pray for them, send them love or happy energy, try to lift them up by being a light around them, or be an example or demonstration of a better way. It's hard to let go of control and the desire to fix or save those who are destroying themselves, or at least who appear to be. Because we also have to remember that even those people are not really doing anything at all. Nothing real can be threatened, and every postulation of suffering is fake and illusion. Even if the person finds it to be terrifyingly real.

You can't force anyone because everyone has free will. Jesus even says in the Course that "your will is as strong as mine" and this is why he is not able to simply overthrow your errors or force you into awakening. You have to choose it willingly. No one comes to the atonement without being willing. It takes total willingness, not just a little willingness. "Heaven is a choice I must make". So if someone is hell bent on not choosing it, what can you do but choose it for yourself and try to extend it to them in any way they can accept? Even if all that is is you being kind or gentle or listening or whatever.

Everyone has free will. Everyone has power. Everyone is choosing everything that's happening. Everyone even those suffering are expertly manifesting whatever they want. Everyone is putting everything in place. And nothing is happening anywhere to anyone without their consent. Even in situations where it seems like they are not giving any consent, they are giving it 100%. Even when it is producing suffering or sickness, again they are literally electing for it to occur and are putting it in place. And they have that exact same freedom and power to do that, just as much as using that same freedom and power with a non-self-destructive choice.

Jesus is telling us we are free and we are choosers and we are responsible for everything. Even if we're practically dead, we are choosing to be, and no-one is going to take that away from anyone against their will. Some people want to be dead. Some people want to be sick. Some people want to scapegoat the world. Some people want to be in terrible fear all the time. And every person does not believe they have the power to do anything to change it, which is part of the deciding not to.

Keep praying for the lost souls. No-one is lost. Everyone is just finding their way. And sometimes that may mean that it takes a long time and a lot of struggle and mistakes to get there.

There is no real evil in God's reality so it does not really exist.

But evil is an illusion of something being true that isn't. It's what you get when reality is confused with illusions, and the truth is confused with what is false. Everything becomes switched around. You mistake an illusory thing for a real thing. You think stuff is happening that isn't. You think you can do things that you can't. And you become very confused.

The end result of the whole ego thought system, of its whole process of descent into hell, is total confusion.

"The Kingdom is the result of premises, as much as this world is. You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING. "

When you are totally confused about everything, you have completely mis-identified what everything is. You have no clue what is really real any more. You have no idea of what to trust. There is no sense of actual truth, no sense of reality or sanity. There's a total breakdown of all sense and reason.

A person in this state is essentially highly insane, highly confused, hallucinating, completely out of their mind, and now believes that everything is what it is not. For example death is now seen as eternal life. Heaven is believed to be hell and hell is heaven. Sickness is saving your life. Murder is seen as justified forgiveness. Attack is considered deserved. Hate is now love. And you believe you will find peace by dying.

Such a state of mind is truly what we might call evil. It isn't real evil or absolute evil. But it has all the hallmarks. It's so twisted and backwards. And if a person is close to this state, they WILL likely act in what we call evil ways.

There is such confusion and insanity that the person is likely to become murderous, but at the same time as believing they are not even remotely murderous. They are likely to attack on a whim, become vicious, and vengeful. They will attempt to tempt everyone. They will be deceptive and full of lies. They will undermine and sabotage. They will happily sin against anything. They will celebrate the sacrifice of innocence and life. And they will become lost in the body.

They will think they are the body and develop very twisted special relationships, which ultimately become sick and muderous. They will use people, control people, imprison people and kill people, but not because they think this is what they are doing, they will think they are saving them, helping them, or are justified because of what the person is doing to them. They see themselves as justified victims who are not even remotely victimizing, but yet are victimizers. They may even think they are saving everyone by destroying others.

This is what we call evil or "satanic". It's simply the backwards and totally confused failure to recognize reality and truth. It's the opposite of being close to God. And it signifies such mental illness that love is blotted out. It is a dark and twisted state of mind, resulting in literal states of what we would commonly call mental illness and insanity. And in this state of mind a person seeks to destroy in order to save.

There is so much separation from others that the person is cut off and special, lacking all empathy and sense of connection, lacking all joining, alone and isolated. There is no sharing. There is internal competition between all those who are in a similar boat, because they all want to be special and to be God and have power over everything else. It's everyone for themselves, in a free-for-all of selfishness and conflict. It's a state of war and a state of self attack.

We would consider this "evil" because a person in this state would indeed come across as corrupt, deceptive, untrustworthy, dangerous, sinful, indulgent, selfish, vengeful, and all the qualities that you might associate with some kind of "devil". This so-called "devil" is simply a state of being very confused about what is true.

And the person in this state is VERY mistaken. And remember that mistakes are not sins, they are errors, which call for forgiveness, not punishment. Which means that evil must be forgiven. It must be recognized as a call for love. It must be recognized as a state that needs healing and is just a state of denial, confusion, fear, uncertainty, loneliness, desperation, loss and unconsciousness. The evil person needs love as much as anyone does, and is perhaps even more in need than most.

People who are confused, who thus believe in separation from God, and in sin and death and guilt and fear, are "evil". But they are not REALLY evil, because this evil is nothing more than being very mistaken. These people have mental illness and need correction. They are calling out for love. Which is why God has provided Love in response to heal them and guide them back to sanity. They believe they are really evil, but they aren't. They believe they are sinful monsters, but they aren't.

Everyone deserves forgiveness no matter how evil they may appear to be, because everyone is still a child of God whose REALITY is still perfect innocence and truth. "The ego" is just another word for the idea of "the devil". It's not a real entity, or anything other than a label for insanity. When someone is possessed of the devil they are merely confused and are in the ego.

These mental illnesses were misunderstood and labeled as "devils". The ego in people CAN become very "evil" and vicious, totally backwards and deranged. It can be very twisted. Look at the murderous infectious shit it's done in the world. But it isn't real and it can be undone.

Those who are mentally ill therefore are trying to be evil, in an evil dream. They also want to possess and take from everyone else what they think they lack, being in a state of emptiness and desperation. They see scarcity and danger and fear everywhere, and try to destroy others to take from them what they think is theirs.

They would try to "possess your soul", or have you trade in your soul in some kind of bargain. And ultimately they would call for sacrifice in an offering to a false God that wants even its followers to die. They worship false idols and participate in meaningless magical rituals which attempt to curse and destroy and control. They hide in the darkness and remain in denial, unwilling to look at their belief in their own sinfulness.

They see themselves as innocent and just, yet they are bitter and corrupt. And they cannot remember what love is or who the really are. To them, God and love have become enemies to be destroyed, mistreated, unwanted and undeserved. The Holy Spirit becomes a threat, Jesus is seen as evil, and God Himself is considered blasphemous.

This is nothing but a dream of insanity, in a world made by those driven mad by guilt. There is no real guilt and no world and no evil. Only the good exists. Only God's Kingdom is true.

Here is what Jesus says:

"The "devil" is a frightening concept because he seems to be extremely powerful and extremely active. He is perceived as a force in combat with God, battling Him for possession of His creations. The devil deceives by lies, and builds kingdoms in which everything is in direct opposition to God. Yet he attracts men rather than repels them, and they are willing to "sell" him their souls in return for gifts of no real worth. This makes absolutely no sense."

"The mind can make the belief in separation very real and very fearful, and this belief is the "devil." It is powerful, active, destructive and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood. Look at your life and see what the devil has made. But realize that this making will surely dissolve in the light of truth, because its foundation is a lie. Your creation by God is the only Foundation that cannot be shaken, because the light is in it. Your starting point is truth, and you must return to your Beginning. Much has been seen since then, but nothing has really happened. Your Self is still in peace, even though your mind is in conflict. You have not yet gone back far enough, and that is why you become so fearful. As you approach the Beginning, you feel the fear of the destruction of your thought system upon you as if it were the fear of death. There is no death, but there is a belief in death."

I kind of feel like, all this time doing the course I've been generally "pulling away" from the world. Seeing the world as out there and sort of trying to detach from it and rise above it. Or rather, to withdraw from it and get away from it.

But I'm getting this intuition that, maybe this is backwards. That the darkness and confusion and illusions and ego stuff isn't "out there in the world", but rather than I am IN that stuff within myself.

The result being that I need to get OUT of myself and "embrace reality", ie attune to the reality of the world - the real world - through forgiveness and awakening. To experience "loving the world", as that vital stepping stone towards ascension to heaven.

Not that this means like, regarding spacetime as God's creation or as ultimate reality but... I'm wondering if my whole approach has been fundamentally wrong this whole time, due to the projection of judgments onto the world and associating them with it, and then trying to get away from those projections.

If I stop judging the world, then it's obviously not the world that's "in the wrong", it's my mind. There could be a "lovable real world" "out there" that I'm not seeing because I keep trying to "separate from it", because I'm lost internally in the ego darkness and judgments and stuff.

The course is clearly pointing toward finding a way to see what the world is in the present moment, without condemnation, without my ego judgments, without guilt projection, and with the Holy Spirit's holiness and eyes of Christ. To look upon that "out there" I obviously can't be trying to "remove myself from it".

Perhaps the defensive posture of "get away from the world" has been a backwards ego decoy this whole time, laden with projected judgments designed to justify not engaging with it or opening up to it. Because who would want to become in some way "closer to" something "judged" to be evil and cruel.

Maybe my judgements of it have been unfair and unwarranted and incorrect, and maybe the forgiven world is there to be seen when I'm not projecting internal confusions onto it. Maybe there is a way to love the world, for what it is - not to give it reality or permanence or confuse it with heaven but, at least to look at it with a greater embrace of "what it is" without all the projections of "what it is not" that I keep putting onto it.

The world has been my favourite scapegoat for many years, presumably my whole life. Maybe the world isn't really the problem. Maybe the problem is in my mind. And maybe I've been lost in an internal "dream" of reality distortion and denial of the truth.

It seems we're meant to learn to see "with accurate perception", the world "as it is". To recognize it, to see past the differences and contrasts. To see an underlying "reflection of heaven" in it. Actually seemingly "out there". Such that we experience the world from a whole-minded forgiven vantage point of openness and welcome and sharing rather than attack and rejection.

Perhaps ultimately we give the world we made a big hug and then watch as it dissolves away.

"Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does so. "

"From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily to his home."

"Father, Christ's vision is Your gift to me, and it has power to translate all that the body's eyes behold into the sight of a forgiven world. How glorious and gracious is this world! Yet how much more will I perceive in it than sight can give. The world forgiven signifies Your Son acknowledges his Father, lets his dreams be brought to truth, and waits expectantly the one remaining instant more of time, which ends forever as Your memory returns to him."

"The teachers of God have trust in the world, because they have learned it is not governed by the laws the world made up. It is governed by a Power which is in them but not of them. It is this Power that keeps all things safe. It is through this Power that the teachers of God look on a forgiven world."

"Can the world seem bright and clear and safe and welcoming, with all my past mistakes oppressing it, and showing me distorted forms of pain? Yet in the present love is obvious, and its effects apparent. All the world shines in reflection of its holy light, and I perceive a world forgiven at last."

"Can the world seem bright and clear and safe and welcoming, with all my past mistakes oppressing it, and showing me distorted forms of pain? Yet in the present love is obvious, and its effects apparent. All the world shines in reflection of its holy light, and I perceive a world forgiven at last."

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there is a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."

I think that for years I have been mistaken about the course. Mainly in terms of the orientation of my mind and the direction in which it was heading.

We start out in false perception, in ego, in body identification. As if we are down in hell at the bottom of a ladder. And then we think of heaven or light or truth or atonement as being higher up the ladder, and so we start the process of climbing out of hell.

Along the way we're told of particularly "high" things which become goals to strive for, like true perception, accepting atonement, the real world, christ vision. And we wonder how to achieve these things. We kind of come at it from a "I don't have it, how do I get it?" point of view.

But the thing is, this is all backwards. We're literally starting out in a backwards thought system, moving in the wrong direction, looking in the wrong direction, and trying to get our heads around what the truth is.

I think as we gradually learn more about the truth, God, soul, reality etc over time, we open up to it more. We do more forgiveness, we heal, we let go of old pain etc. Our identity starts to shift away from the body. We begin questioning the reality of the world etc.

Then at some point, perhaps a kind of tipping point, where for a while we've had our feet in both worlds - heaven and earth - we start to lean more towards reality. We start to side more with the truth than with the false. We develop more truth and find a surer footing that anchors us in reality.

The interesting thing then is that our whole orientation seems to do a 180 degree shift. We start looking from the top down instead of from the bottom up. And we feel more secure in the truth of God and more accepting of what's real as "where we are coming from".

I have found it extremely helpful and clarifying to spend time investigating the nature of God, heaven, creation, souls, sonship, mind, free will, causation, etc. Not the things of this world. This has really fleshed out some solid "facts" that I can depend upon.

I see the simple truth that God, who is truth, has extended himself to create me, and whatever is true of me ONLY comes from God. And that I in turn ONLY have what I inherited from God, and can only be and extend that which I have been given. This has now become a kind of "starting point" for me. A rock solid core of truth within my being. Not even I have any real say in what I am or what I can do.

Now I find myself basing my whole thought process on that truth. Regarding myself as not of this world. Recognizing that only the Kingdom is real. Feeling into and aligning myself with God's will and with my real function. Embedding myself in heaven and looking outward from there. This is orienting me from "the top down" to look at everything the course says from a new vantage point. And it's as if I am seeing things in a way I never saw before.

I'm finding is just an avalanche of clarification and insight about what it's getting at. I find for example that while many "bottom-uppers" believe their whole mission is to escape from hell and return home, really the whole course is aimed towards anchoring yourself in your true nature and expressing that, shining a light into the world to produce healing. As if what's at the top of the ladder reaches down to the bottom of the ladder, to either shine it away or raise it up.

There are in fact many parts of the course related to bringing heaven into the world. Shining God's light as a reflection of his being. The extension of miracles which we are literally told fall DOWN like drops of healing rain FROM heaven ONTO the earth.

The fact that christ works through our bodies, that the holy spirit uses the body for his purposes, and that we extend through the body to form holy relationships. Even forgiveness is a matter of allowing the light of heaven's truth to infuse the mind to correct it's perceptions. Where do we get any kind of truth from if not from outside of perception itself? Truth is of God!

It's not so much a "let's just get out of here" thing. It's more of a, let's remember who we really are anchored in heaven's reality and shine outward from that core truth into the world, to be the light of the world, a healing presence, a teacher/extender of God into the dream, and to help shine away the world. This isn't escape from hell, it's a DISPELLING OF DARKNESS by shining the light of heaven onto it. And this will seem "backwards" to those who believe their only goal is to get out of here asap.

I also think that all the discussions about true perception, christ vision, the face of christ, the real world, atonement etc, are all quite misleading. Mainly because it's very clear to me now that true perception is merely a SIDE EFFECT of a mind which is anchoring itself on the OTHER side of the separation. A mind which is identifying with the spirit being that is BEYOND the realm of perception entirely.

Even the perception of the real world is clearly infused with the light of heaven and is really just a stopping point just prior to entering heaven, on the way to TOTAL immersion in heaven. It just represents a state of being ALMOST entirely spirit identified. And giving yourself over entirely to the atonement merely means becoming FULLY dependent on the truth, having been previously only "mostly" dependent upon it. And truth is not of this world.

"Since perception rests on lack, those who perceive have not totally accepted the Atonement (but have partly accepted it) and given themselves over to truth. Perception is based on a separated state, so that anyone who perceives at all needs healing. Communion, not prayer, is the natural state of those who know."

This really tells us that the acceptance of atonement is at first a GRADUAL TRANSITION out of hell towards heaven, out of false perception towards truth, and it is only FULLY or FINALLY accepted at the end, where you are 100% willing to accept the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Until then, you are PARTLY atoned, just as Jesus says you are "not now wholy insane." Truth has corrected your mind to SOME extent.

Indeed the whole idea of forgiveness is riddled with confusion and misunderstanding. To forgive really means, that you recognize what is true - which IS HEAVEN, and to then "defend" that truth through the proper use of denial, to REJECT that anything not of God is real or has any power. It's a recognition that illusions are false, BECAUSE OF what is true. AND what is true is God - not of this world. Forgiveness thus is rooted in and depends on recognizing God's nature, which is itself BEYOND forgiveness.

The most obvious point is that, here we are in bodies starting out in false perception, blind to God and in denial of reality. The question then is how do we solve that. And obviously the only real way to solve that is in "leaving the desert". That means that in order to become more loving, more light, more truthful, more sane, you have to actually identify with something BEYOND the dream, with a real eternal truth that is entirely OUTSIDE of perception, so that your perception transforms to line up with it. The blueprint for right mindedness is the one mind.

You can't just work on perception in a closed box. True perception in fact has to be BASED UPON knowledge. And knowledge is the real truth. Believing that the real truth is true - a truth which is OUTSIDE of spacetime - causes perception to be transformed to line up with it. It's almost like, you have to reach outside of ALL perception first, get a hold of reality, then infuse that reality into your mind so that your perception becomes lighter. This was not at all evident in years of past study and in the common interpretations of the course.

We're also told about miracle working and the fact that miracles in fact come from God and fall down from heaven like healing rain, onto the earth. This is similar to how forgiveness works, in that the light that is higher and more true, shines into the mind and into the world, and bestows life where there was death.

Because "Miracles mean life and God is the giver of life" and "Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers". That means they're starting out IN HEAVEN and are expressing FROM God through our minds, transforming perception and healing the world. That's a TOP DOWN mechanic, which is why they cannot be received when fear (false perception) is too strong.

I've also found that until you can get a really solid metaphysical, logical grasp of the nature of God and creation, you can't really have anything clear and true enough to compare anything to. You really need a solid idea of the light, in order for it to clearly contradict the darkness. You need to know the truth of heaven and of your being and nature, in order to compare that to other things that happen in the world, to recognize WHY those things are false and unreal. You can't just compare illusions to true perception, you have to compare them to God, then perception will follow.

"Perception (even true perception) is a RESULT, not a cause".And so it sort of comes down to not just the question of what things are, but of the question of WHY they are that way. The understanding or logical reason that they are based on. Illusions are illusions BECAUSE of what the truth is. Sickness is unreal BECAUSE of the immortal nature of God. The world is a dream BEACUSE reality is not like it. Miracles can raise the dead BEACUSE of their expression of eternal life. If you don't have your mind anchored in heaven, you really don't have any solid ground to stand on at all.

For me, my whole orientation with the course is quite strongly transitioning to a totally top-down view at the moment. This reflects the changes in myself which are transitioning to a "going within in order to be able to express outward", or seeking the higher mind in order to shine FROM it into the world. Or aligning myself with a higher light, so that I can shine darkness way. I am finding out WHO I AM, so that I can REJECT what I am not.

"Yet when they find their own Reality is even here, then they step back and let It lead the way. What other choice is really theirs to make?"

"And so again we make the only choice that ever can be made; we choose between illusions and the truth, or pain and joy, or hell and Heaven."

Ultimately what we're really doing is we are rising up from the pits of hell and ascending into heaven. But the closer you get to heaven the more you feel like you are IN heaven, looking back downward towards hell. It's most like returning to HERE, having been AWAY. Or becoming more PRESENT, having been absent. Or becoming more authentic, having been artificial.

That orientation of "peering out from the truth" or "operating under the laws of God" or "being true to yourself first" or "having innocence in you first which you project out", is what MAKES the real world and true perception be what they are. They are reflections of the light that is IN you, which you have stepped into and are radiating. The love which you give in order to see love. "Love looks upon itself."

So it's really about you deciding to change which ROOM you are located in. Are you in hell, or in heaven. When you seek for a better way than suffering, to any degree at all, you are seeking to be in the room of heaven, where you are happy. And then you start to move between the rooms. You want to get yourself as much immersed in heaven as possible, so that almost all of you is very close to being in heaven just before you leave the world. That means you are practically a REFLECTION OF DIVINITY, while in the dream, allowing you to perform miracles and heal the world. To extend God's love and light and to keep illusions from tempting you.

It's all top-down. All the correction is top-down. All the extension of love and light and power is top-down. All of the being true to yourself is top-down. All of the health of the body is caused from the top-down. All dispelling of illusions and the sanity of the mind is brought about from the top-down. Death is conquered throught the top-down expression of eternal life. True perception and the forgiven world and the real world all come about through the top-down application and expression of your true nature. And eventually the goal is to be SO completely vigilant for the Kingdom, or to seek first the Kingdom of God, so that you put God FIRST in all things, and everything else just follows naturally from there.

Let's say that you're eating some ice-cream, and your loved-one says to you, "don't have too much, I don't want you to get sick"... that can seem like caring. But is it?

Their assertion is that ice-cream has power over you, can affect you, you are vulnerable to it, you can be victimized by it, and it is capable of attacking you. Their belief in this is practically using the ice-cream as a weapon, while at the same time making it LOOK LIKE they are caring about your well-being.

Well, if the person would've said something more like "you are invulnerable to ice-cream and it has no power over you and I see you being completely unaffected by it" that's far more powerful and actually supportive. That affirms the person's immortality and invulnerability and strength.

In contrast then, compared to this supportive statement, the statement of "be careful you might be hurt and I don't want that" is shown to be filled with attack and fear and guilt. Does that make it truly caring? No.

Such an illusion of caring is based always on the perception that stuff happens to people against their will, and therefore they need to take certain actions or avoid certain things in order to be safe. It's not empowerment at all. It's not protection, either. And it's not causing the person to actually feel safer or more protected.

It is a veiled ego attack, which on the surface always has a persona mask of "I am just caring about you my love" while underneath the real content of it is "I want you dead".

Too harsh? No. The ego is very deceptive and it disguises attacks as help and hides behind a facade of innocence when in fact, in the light of truth, its content is very undermining and backwards.

We have to re-learn how to be supportive of others. Our entire system of false empathy and caring and worrying about people is all riddled with disempowerment and thinly-veiled attacks. If we want to really support people, we need to start seeing them as they truly are - powerful, strong, holy, innocent, free of all suffering, and completely invulnerable. To see them as anything less or to believe anything less of them is not caring at all.

The ego aligns with the physical world, and is completely backwards. It operates on the basis of how the physical works.

It says, if I give you something, I must lose it. We can't both have it. We could have a tug of war, or a compromise of lack, but we can't both have it at the same time.

This is completely backwards according to God's law. God says that if you give something you receive it because giving and receiving are one. So if I give something to you, there is no loss, and we both have all of it at the same time.

It then seems completely impossible to actually express God's law in this world on a physical level, because the physical laws themselves - which are laws of separation - say you cannot do it. That we can't both have the whole simultaneously.

However, a more advanced miracle worker can break the physical laws and demonstrate that giving and receiving are one. For example Jesus did this when he showed that he could multiply food and feed thousands of people. This violated the physical laws which said that if he would give the original bread and fish away, there would be none left to feed the crowd.

The ego believes entirely in physicality as being reality. It based its whole thought system on this model of separation. Objects which are kept apart by physical space (distance) and time (delay). Both of which are attempts to avoid the presence of God.

If for example in this world a person seems to die, their body is dead etc, the ego says that this evidence proves the person has been extinguished from existence. And if this is real, you should be horrified and upset. You should then experience loss and grief.

But the truth is that the person's spirit lives on in heaven and has eternal life, so there has not really been a death. And so the body isn't showing the truth. Spirit could demonstrate this fact for example by materializing another body, which is what Jesus did in his resurrection, and sometimes the angels do this also.

Similarly the ego believes that freedom means separation. In order to be free of something or someone it has to go away. You have to lose it. But in God's rules, you can have freedom and also have oneness shared with another at the same time. Being free doesn't mean you are separate whatsoever, it means you are also joined without strings attached. To the ego, freedom is imprisonment.

It then seems quite challenging for us to rise up out of the ego thought system - a system which aligns closely to how the physical world seems to work - and up into a higher path based on the laws of God. A state in which only the truth is true, and "I am under no laws but God's". A state from which the seeming laws of physical can be completely broken and ignored through miracles.

The higher state completely violates and reverses and ignores the physical order. It pays no attention to the seeming limitations of separateness, the illusion of objects and forms, the presentation of distance or time. Miracles pay no attention to what the physical says can or cannot happen.

"miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended"

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt."

In order to awaken to reality we have to move our mind into the higher order, into the higher mind and its higher thought system. This means aligning with God's laws and living by them. These are NON-PHYSICAL laws which run totally against the grain of the world.

And that means that you're adopting a belief system and perspective and relationship that is running totally contrary to the world. In fact the entire world's lower and backward thought system has to be totally reversed and denied.

This world, the physical world, space and time, Earth and bodies, operate completely opposite to how heaven functions. And we have to learn to wean ourselves off of its illusions and its ways, its nature and its limitations, and rise up to heaven in a celebration of joy and happiness that this world is completely false and does not apply to us.

We need to stop believing, perceiving, and functioning based on how the physical world operates. We need to function based on how God operates, and it is totally opposite to the physical world and all its ways. You are not of this world and never were.

"The world will end when its thought system has been completely reversed."

"This is the first idea we have had which is related to a major phase of the correction process; the reversal of the thinking of the world."

"Yet it is the final lesson in which Unity is restored. It goes against all the thinking of the world, but so does Heaven."

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely."

"Today's idea, completely alien to the ego and the thinking of the world, is crucial to the thought reversal which this course will bring about."

"To give up all problems to one Answer is to reverse the thinking of the world entirely."

"Only be quiet. You will need no rule but this to let your practicing today lift you above the thinking of the world, and free your vision from the body's eyes."

"Here is the perfect statement of my freedom. I am under no laws but God's." "I am entitled to miracles because I am under no laws but God's."

In terms of cause and effect, God who is cause created us as his effect, yet shared his causal ability with us, making us also able to cause. We are an effect of God, but we are also a co-creator and cause of our own creations.

God is cause. We are cause. And nothing can alter what we are or make us an effect, other than God, because we are sustained by God's constant will. We are affected by nothing, having been given eternal life, maintained forever by God himself.

The idea of the separation from God, introduced the idea of a breakdown in cause and effect. That means, a breakdown in the relationship between God and his creation/son. It suggests that causes are separate from their effects.

This also produced the belief that you are not caused by God. And also that you can cause God - which is the authority problem - a denial of the causal power of authorship. And therefore that you can cause what God created, thus changing what God created. And since you were a creation of God's, it began the belief that you could change yourself and redefine yourself, plus make-up a new father.

In this process, your recognition of being a creator was denied, you disowned God as cause and thus disowned causation, and began to see yourself as not causal. You began to see yourself as an effect, or affected by, or changed by. You began to believe thigns could happen to you against God's will and against your will. As the course says...

"Sickness and death entered the mind of God's Son against His Will."

In other words, you began to see yourself as at the effect of something other than God, and other than yourself, as though that which has been created (or dreamed/mis-created) has turned around and has begun to create, cause, define and affect what you are.

This introduces level confusion, as well as the reversal of the true and the false, and the reversal of cause and effect. You now see yourself as an effect and not a cause, and you deny causing anything. This means you are trying to "be affected", and to portray yourself as something that can be affected, so that you can change yourself into what you wish to be.

This produced the body, which is a sort of outside picture of the idea of a self that can be at the effect of its environment, a self that can be an effect and not a cause, with no power to cause at all, and acted upon by the world. This body presents the "face of innocence", which hides the idea that you're trying to be a victim, ie trying to be affected, by the world.

"The first presents the face of innocence, the aspect acted ON. It is this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. It searches for companions, and it looks at times with pity on the suffering, and sometimes offers solace. It believes that it is good, within an evil world."

So now there is this artificial you, which looks like a body, and which is "acted upon" by the world, in which the arrows or direction of causation begins out there somewhere, external and beyond the body and the self/mind, and comes in and acts upon the body/self/mind and causes it to change. Causes it to be affected. And thus the face of innocence, the surface of the body, becomes the canvas on which "effects" are painted to make it seem like you are caused by an alien will outside yourself.

Another way to put this is that, as soon as cause and effect were reversed, you introduced the idea of being "affectable" rather than immortal, that you could change and be changed. And this was the beginning of being a victim. And this is also exactly the beginning of the ego thought system.

To be a victim is to be ego. To be a victim is to be at the effect. To be a victim is to be an effect, not a cause. Victimhood is the denial and refusal to admit to being the cause. Victimhood is irresponsibility and a complete displacement of the responsibility for causing anything, portraying itself as helpless and powerless and at the mercy of anyone and anything.

And this shows up as the face of innocence - the innocent victim that seems not to ask for attack but is still attacked and can then justify anger and revenge. A self that won't take responsibility for causing anything, in an attempt to disown responsibility for sinning against God. To deny and disown all responsibility is to displace and project it onto others and the world, so that the guilty self can pretend to be exonerated.

If you are an effect, you are an ego. If you are an effect, you are a victim. If you are an effect, cause and effect have been reversed. This effectively means that if you swap cause and effect back around and claim total responsibility for being the cause of everything you experience, then you can no longer be a victim, and that also means you can no longer be an ego.

Ego is made of effects. It can only exist as a victim. It requires powerlessness and a disowning of causal power. It must see itself as deprived and lacking and less than whole. It cannot survive when you are powerful, it cannot survive when you are responsible, it cannot survive when you are the cause of everything. It depends on you remaining a powerless victim, and depends on cause and effect staying reversed. To be responsible is to own and know yourself as God created you!

Backwards peception or false perception is another name for ego and another name for being at the effect of the world. Backwards perception is the reversal of cause and effect, in which you are always affected by something seemingly against your will, while secretly choosing it. True perception is the restoration of cause and effect into their proper sequence, in which you are now the cause and the dreamer and a victim of nothing, totally invulnerable, incapable of suffering or blame.

So you can see that to put it simply, with the authority problem which is the breakdown and reversal of cause and effect, as soon as you begin to identify with/as being an effect/affected/victimized, as soon as you give away your power, as soon as you regard yourself as not the cause of what you experience, you are producing an egoic thought system and are losing your mind.

To reclaim total responsibility for the power of God and for causation and creative authorship and being absolutely incapable of being caused by anything but God, denying the power of anything not of God any power to affect or hurt you, which is the proper use of denial, you simply need to own up to being the immortal victimless powerful causer and chooser of what you experience. If nothing can happen to you, you cannot be an ego. If you are purely causal, you are the immortal son of God.

"Father, I was created in Your Mind, a holy Thought that never left its home. I am forever Your Effect, and You forever and forever are my Cause. As You created me I have remained. Where You established me I still abide, and all Your attributes abide in me because it is Your Will to have a Son so like his Cause that Cause and Its Effect are indistinguishable. Let me know that I am an Effect of God, and so I have the power to create like You. And as it is in Heaven, so on earth. Your plan I follow here, and at the end I know that You will gather Your Effects into the tranquil Heaven of Your Love, where earth will disappear, and separate things unite in glory as the Son of God."

The physical world of bodies and planet Earth, was made by projecting the idea of sin and separation and death out of the egoic mindset of being separate from God. All objects are part of a system (world) of conflict and separateness, symbolising the denial of God.

Everything that can and does transpire in this world of separateness, symbolises sin. It was made by projecting the idea of sin out of the egoic thought system in the mind. And so everything about it represents an attack on God's nature, to oppose it and deny it.

"The world you made (spacetime, physicality) is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it." UrT11D10

"He (God) did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way. UrW131L7

"For this world (spacetime, physicality) IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true." UrT16F3

We went into a thought system of ego, of separation and death. And from this thought system we made what we call the universe - spacetime and all things physical. These were made as symbols of the death of God, the crucifixion of his son, and the total opposition to heaven's laws.

"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." UrW230W32

"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. And until you realize that God's Son CANNOT be crucified, this is the world you will see." UrT11J4

"Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold? What need have they of sights or sounds or touch? What would they hear or reach to grasp? What would they sense at all?" UrW250W41

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant SEEMS to be life. An instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water, and set uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the Son of God stop briefly by, to offer his devotion to death's idols, and then pass on." UrT20G11

So what we have now in front of our faces, is a backwards world, an impossible world, a world which is like a physical representation of the idea of sin and separation. Everything in it is separate. Matter itself is selfishness. Every body is cut off and cannot join with anyone or anything. All particles are isolated and alone.

In this world on the PHYSICAL level, every single thing that takes place does so in a system 100% dedicated to ego ideals of separation, attack, suffering, murder and death. Effectively it is like a physicalised version of false perception.

"The world is false perception. It is born of error" UrW240W31

There is nothing that can happen which does not in some way symbolise egotism. If you eat food you are depriving someone else. If you breathe in you are killing microbes. Your body's immune system murders viruses and bacterias. Trees compete with each other for resources. Beasts tear each other apart. Walls imprison. Disease and sickness ravage everything. The entire system destroys itself in entropy and decay and ends in death.

Just as there are no roadways in the world which lead to eternal life, physically, there are also no movements of objects, arrangements of objects, activities of objects, which can escape the idea of sin. To have a body is to testify to sin.

"And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life." UrM28A3

"To see a SINLESS body is impossible. For holiness is POSITIVE, and the body is merely neutral. It is NOT sinful, but neither is it sinless. " UrT10H4

This essentially means that in PHYSICAL terms, there is NOTHING you can do that doesn't in some way, at the physical level, symbolise ego, attack, murder and death. Whether it be the way that objects collide and are incompatible, or the obvious fact of lack and scarcity, or the way one object affects another. All of the so-called "laws of physics" are laws of punishment and death.

So the essential fact becomes, you cannot PHYSICALLY escape from sin. There is sin in every game you play, every competition, every conversation, every show you watch, every thing you eat, every breath, every movement of your body. Because it's all part of the system of sin moving around, shifting and changing in an unnatural way, against the nature of God.

You could then say that everything you do here is a sin. However, that would be a judgement. And we need to now separate out what is PHYSICAL, and what is PSYCHOLOGICAL. Because the mind's attitude about, or use of, the world, is key to whether or not you see the world AS real sin, or AS forgiven. And let's remember that forgiveness is for looking AT A SIN-BASED world in a forgiving way, it is NOT directed at reality.

The world can't help but physically function on rules of separation. That's what it was made from, and initially made for. But you can change how you look at it.

If you look at the backwards world from a backward thought system of egotism, you will agree with the physical world as truth, and will regard it as "actually sinful". Everything that occurs will seem to be proof of this. Every death, every attack, every deprivation, all proving as soon as you open your eyes again that this is a world of destruction and not creation.

If you look at the same world in a forwards mindset, a thought system of the Holy Spirit, which IS TOTALLY OPPOSITE IN EVERY WAY to the way that the world physically functions, then the strange twisted functioning of the world is not seen as "a real sin." Instead it is FORGIVEN.

"Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind, where it MUST be, and light the BODY up INSTEAD of it." UrT25D5

Forgiveness here does not mean that you are seeing something that is fundamentally true and real in a correct way. It means that you are OVERLOOKING the ways that IS NOT fundamentally true and correct. You are flying against the grain and taking a direction totally opposite to what the world suggests.

Real forgiveness recognises that the world is utterly backwards, utterly insane, physically symbolic of murder, is absolutely unlike the nature of God, and is not reality. It meets insanity with sanity, unreality with truth, and darkness with light.

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal. This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real." UrM9A6

The forgiving mind, receives messages VIA THE BODY, via the physical sight and senses, FROM the "outside world" - the physical planet of bodies, spacetime and Earth, and correctly classifies ALL of what it is being shown as UNREAL.

The healed mind can USE the body to SEE the physical realm, but recognises that nothing at the physical level is true. All of its nature is backwards. All of its objects are forms of separation. All of its dynamics and physics are rooted in separateness and attack and death. All of its laws are laws of punishment and scarcity. And the healed mind does not BELIEVE what it sees there.

We then need to adopt a quite strange position, while we're still in this world. It's a position in which the world's physical nature, the things you can physically do, no matter what it is, continue to run TOTALLY OPPOSITE to reality, to the Kingdom of God, to heaven's nature, and to sanity. Everything that can happen physically by physical laws is absolutely false, unreal, untrue and insane.

But at the same time, we're looking upon this stuff with forgiveness. Which means that we don't regard the physical stuff as ACTUALLY anything. Because it is nothing. We don't say, okay this person committed an ACTUAL REAL SIN by murdering someone - it took place in a dream that isn't real, and nothing real has been threatened. There is an appearance of a sin happening but it is just a mistake. It is an illusion of sin.

We lift away from the world the condemnation and attack, the egoic attitudes, the egoic uses of the world, and replace it with a more loving purpose. This doesn't IN ANY WAY result in the absolute reversal of all physical laws, it doesn't stop goats falling off clifftops, it doesn't prevent car crashes or undo all sickness - except perhaps in times of miracles. But it does INTERPRET the utter backwardness and strangeness of the world from a much lighter, higher, less serious mindset of laughter and disbelief.

Essentially this means you have to learn to laugh at death and destruction. You have to adopt a mindset which flies entirely against the whole nature of the world, the typical direction of society, and every value the world holds. You have to be in the world but not of it.

Whatever happens physically IS A PHYSICAL-LIE ..... an idea of sin and death PHYSICAL-LIEZED. It CAN only function one way. It cannot be redeemed without the absolute CANCELLATION of the entire system, at the physical level. But you CAN change how you look at it, relate to it, and regard it, within your mind, psychologically. You can be internally aligned with God, while being completely out of sync with the external physical uni-perverse.

What this does mean though is that on the PHYSICAL level, everything your body seems to DO, will STILL seem to symbolise sin and death, no matter what you choose. It will still be a separate body, testifying to the presence of prisons separating sons of God. You won't be able to DO anything physical that isn't still symbolically a form of the idea of sin. But on the MIND level you can be in a state of innocence and harmlessness and unity. This is also because mind/spirit and body are always total opposites.

"A mind and body cannot both exist. Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real." UrW96L4

Life can become quite weird then. Because your physical body is still going to operate within a system of separation, limitation, conflict, war, lack, danger and so on, but at the same time your USE OF it mentally must become totally opposite. So for a time, it may seem like a "happy fiction", or "laughing at death", or "not taking bodies seriously", or "dis-identifying from form", or "not believing the unbelievable".

At the end of the day, when we have remembered to laugh at the ridiculousness of space and time, of Earth and bodies and human life, we will have no further use for it. And without a re-purposed purpose, the world will disappear without a trace.

"It cannot be too strongly emphasized that this course aims at a complete reversal of thought." UrM25A4

"A miracle is a reversal of the physical order" UrT1B10

"Look on your brother, and behold in him the whole reversal of the laws that SEEM to rule this world." UrT24G5

"The holy relationship is a phenomenal teaching accomplishment. In all its aspects, as it begins, develops, and becomes accomplished, it represents the REVERSAL of the unholy relationship." UrT17F2

"One sin perfectly forgiven by one teacher of God can make salvation complete. Can you understand this? No; it is meaningless to anyone here. Yet it is the final lesson in which Unity is restored. It goes against all the thinking of the world, but so does Heaven." UrM15A3 "The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely. Life is now recognized as salvation, and pain and misery of any kind perceived as hell." UrM29A2

"This IS the "natural" condition of the separation. And those who learn that it is NOT natural at all, seem to be the UNnatural ones. For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true. In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as UNION. Here, where the ILLUSION of love is accepted IN ITS PLACE, love is perceived as separation and EXCLUSION." URT16F3

"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 which 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." UrW240W31