The ego wants to believe that God created this world.
The ego believes the world is real.
The ego believes the body is real.
The ego wants to keep all forms and bodies.
The ego believes bodies and forms are alive.
The ego believes there is value in keeping objects.
The ego does not regard the world as unreal or a dream.
The ego insanely believes the illusory world is reality.
The ego believes God created its world and justifies it.
The ego tries to make its illusory world permanent.
The ego attempts to give the world reality and keep it real.
The ego does not want to look past the world.
The ego does not want to forgive or overlook the world.
The ego puts the world on a pedestal and worships it.
The ego has no conception of a world beyond this world.
The ego is totally in denial of the existence of heaven.
The ego has no desire to believe in a spirit realm.
The ego believes that there is nothing beyond its world.
The ego believes there is nothing beyond the body.
The ego believes you don't even have a mind.
The ego believes your body is your mind and thinks for itself.
The ego believes your body is the cause of life.
The ego both values and hates the body.
The ego manifests as the form of physical objects.
The ego is permanently stuck in false perception.
The ego made the body so as to only fixate on sinful forms.
The ego regards all forms and objects as real sin.
The ego believes everything the body senses and sees.
The ego uses the world as an attack on God and reality.
The ego made this world to defend against reality.
The ego made this world to try to block and deny God.
The ego constructed this world as a wall of sin and death.
The ego uses the world to block the reality of Heaven.
The ego believes that bodies are special and are living.
The ego values the body as a place to hide from God.
The ego does not question whether the world is real or not.
The ego has accepted that the world is real to it forever.
The ego has no intention other than to destroy everything.
The ego manufactured this planet for a reason.
The ego made the world to obscure God's nature.
The ego invented an artificial nature to replace God's nature.
The ego made the world to be completely unnatural.
The ego runs the world based on unnatural laws of death.
The ego has no intention of waking up, nor can it.
The ego pretends it can become spiritual.
The ego spiritualizes the world to lead you away from spirit.
The ego does not want you to leave this world and go home.
The ego regards this world as its home and yours.
The ego has placed the world on a pedestal and worships it.
The ego doesn't believe the world is a dream at all.
The ego has investment, faith and trust in the world it made.
The ego made bodies to ensure your unconsciousness.
The ego surrounded you with forms of error to trap you.
The ego made a world filled with temptation.
The ego made hell, and this world is hell.
The ego has no desire to go towards light or truth.
The ego leads entirely towards darkness and death.
The ego is unaware of the truth about God and Holy Spirit.
The ego sees life here as death and death as life.
The ego is threatened by reality.
The ego has no reality.
The ego's world is not real.
The ego's world is a delusional system of insane dreamers.
The ego made physicality to blind your perception.
The ego made space and time to live inside of.
The ego made planet Earth and all galaxies and worlds.
The ego made the world from unwillingness to accept truth.
The ego materialized the planet from a desire to attack God.
The ego ensures that all things it made will die.
The ego provides no escape from problems of any kind.
The ego built sickness into the world.
The ego tried to make death an inevitable part of spacetime.
The ego does not want you to question the world's reality.
The ego doesn't want you thinking of the world as illusion.
The ego hides in the world, in the body, in the darkness.
The ego is threatened by the idea that there is no world.
The ego sees God as the undoing of itself.
The ego sees the Holy Spirit as making itself invalid.
The ego sees eternal life as death and mortality as life.
The ego doesn't really exist, nor does its world.
"Illusions will not last. Their death is sure and this alone is certain in their world. It is the ego's world because of this. What is the ego? But a dream of what you really are. A thought you are apart from your Creator and a wish to be what He created not. It is a thing of madness, not reality at all. A name for namelessness is all it is. A symbol of impossibility; a choice for options that do not exist. We name it but to help us understand that it is nothing but an ancient thought that what is made has immortality. But what could come of this except a dream which, like all dreams, can only end in death?
What is the ego? Nothingness, but in a form that seems like something. In a world of form the ego cannot be denied for it alone seems real. Yet could God's Son as He created him abide in form or in a world of form? Who asks you to define the ego and explain how it arose can be but he who thinks it real, and seeks by definition to ensure that its illusive nature is concealed behind the words that seem to make it so.
There is no definition for a lie that serves to make it true. Nor can there be a truth that lies conceal effectively. The ego's unreality is not denied by words nor is its meaning clear because its nature seems to have a form. Who can define the undefinable? And yet there is an answer even here.
We cannot really make a definition for what the ego is, but we can say what it is not. And this is shown to us with perfect clarity. It is from this that we deduce all that the ego is. Look at its opposite and you can see the only answer that is meaningful.
The ego's opposite in every way, in origin, effect and consequence, we call a miracle. And here we find all that is not the ego in this world. Here is the ego's opposite and here alone we look on what the ego was, for here we see all that it seemed to do, and cause and its effects must still be one.
Where there was darkness now we see the light. What is the ego? What the darkness was. Where is the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: Its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God's Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the ego? Who has need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?"
"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient.
The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the Guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE. Remember that you ARE choosing a guide for helping, and the wrong choice will NOT help. But remember also that THE RIGHT ONE WILL. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God.
As you awaken other minds TO Him through HIM, and not yourself, you will understand that you are not obeying the laws of this world, but that the laws you ARE obeying WORK. "The good is what works" is a sound though insufficient statement. ONLY the good CAN work. Nothing else works at all. This course is a guide to behavior. Being a very direct and very simple learning situation, it provides the guide who tells you what to do. If you do it, you will SEE that it works. Its RESULTS are more convincing than its words. THEY will convince you that the words are true."
When you are willing to step aside and let the holy spirit work through you, making sure not to interfere, or to even think you need to be the one who makes something happen, this open conduit is a channel through which HE can express healing miracles. As soon as your ego takes over and tries to interfere by trying to "be the one" who is causing the healing, it interrupts the process. Similarly by actively stepping back and allowing and letting go, the Holy Spirit can best utilize your body to heal through.
The exciting challenge we have is to really realize that the Holy Spirit IS HERE as a HEALER AND THERAPIST, and we are supposed to seriously LET HIM fulfill that function , to let HIM do profound things through you, to get out of the way and be nothing more than a conduit through which he performs HIS miracles of healing.
That’s a very different role and function than believing that healing originates with your egoic forcefulness. And it can take a while to learn to stop trying AT ALL and allow and TRUST him to do the miracle. This doesn’t mean "not doing anything at all", you still have to participate. He needs to use your body to move THROUGH to reach others. But HE is the one with the power to cause things to happen, so our job is to be willing to LET HIM do the profound healing work THROUGH us.
This means, standing there with your hands on someone, plugged into the Holy Spirit, trusting him, allowing HIM to do stuff through your body, and recognizing you are doing NOTHING to interfere with HIS expertise. HE knows how to heal anything. YOU DO NOT. You haven’t the first clue how to repair a body. So you don’t be the healer. You just be a doorway through which a true healer moves through you. You let HIM do the work.
This is humbling because it means giving up all effort to BE the one who heals someone. Ironically, paradoxically, when you stop trying to use your ego to heal, trying to force it to happen, and failing, and you give up that entire desire and identity, you are then willing to surrender enough to ALLOW HIM to perform miracles through you.
This means dropping the spiritualized ego, the hero, the performer, the savior,the rescuer, the fixer, the resister, and getting rid of all ego attempts to be a miracle worker. To try doing it yourself and to fail at it, so that you can open up the door to a supernatural power not of this world, and not of you. In a way, you be a miracle worker by letting HIM be the miracle worker.
"BUT DO NOT INTERFERE. The power set in you, in whom the Holy Spirit's goal has been established, is so far beyond your little conception of the infinite, that you have no idea how great the strength that goes with you."
"The holy do not interfere with truth."
"Purification is of God alone (the Holy Spirit), and THEREFORE for you. Rather than seek to prepare YOURSELF for Him, try to think thus:
"I, who am host to God, AM worthy of Him.
He Who ESTABLISHED His dwelling-place in me created it as He would have it be.
It is not needful that I make it ready for Him, but only that I DO NOT INTERFERE with His plan to RESTORE to me my own AWARENESS of my readiness, which is eternal.
I need ADD nothing to His plan.
But to RECEIVE it, I MUST be willing NOT to substitute my own, IN PLACE of it.""
"We thank You, Father, for Your guarantee of only happy outcomes in the end. Help us not interfere, and so delay the happy endings You have promised us for every problem that we can perceive; for every trial we think we still must meet.""
"What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world."
"The Holy Spirit is the MECHANISM of miracles." (He does them!)
"You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see His manifestations. And unless you do, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the witnesses who speak for it. For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, as its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth."
In this world, nothing gets done unless you put in some effort. And that's a chore, meaning that making stuff requires work. This isn't really natural to us - we are creators. We should be able to cause things to happen just by will alone, by mind power.
But we made the world as a result of being unwilling, which means it's not a world of will, it's a world that seems unwilling to do anything. So you have to then force it.
When bits of trash fall on the ground, they will stay there forever, unless someone does something to pick them up. If you want to "create" something here, which really means making something, there is now a craft to it, which requires skill and effort because all the objects are different.
At first, the thing you want to make doesn't exist at all, you have a blank slate, an empty canvas, a nothingness. You have no idea what it will be like, but you have to start somewhere. This is daunting, to take nothingness and make it into something.
The process of making is a process of translating higher-level abstract mind-stuff into form, which is an act of materialising, or at least sculpting and forming and reshaping and assembling and building from parts and pieces and materials.
To make anything, you have to take it from an idea to an implementation. But at first, you will have no idea how to do that. You will have to push, and force, and try to wrangle stuff to get it to become a bit more finite, more concrete, to nail things down, commit to decision, to move things forward and see it "take shape" as it turns into form.
That can be difficult because it means trying to take an empty nothingness and somehow "make" something out of it, which means having to put limits in place, define things, make lots of decisions, design and plan, and gradually refine it.
You start with a basic template perhaps, a vague idea, and you start somewhere and put some pieces roughly in place, but it's not finished and you have a lot to figure out. You don't even as yet know how it's going to end up, because you don't as yet understand how to even move forward with it.
So in order to push it forward you have to do some work on it, because if you don't it will just sit there, lifeless and doing nothing, because you're really make it out of death. And even if you do a bit of the work, it's not finished, it will just stop whenever you stop, because it has no real life of its own. It can't become anything until you force it to.
So then making becomes an act of forcing and applying effort and energy and attacking the thing to overpower it and coerce it into taking on a certain form, as an accumulation of actions. And gradually as you apply this effort you reshape the thing and refine it and it starts to turn into something.
Eventually with enough time and effort you can get through the seeming brick wall of nothingness, through all the uncertainty and difficult lack of definition, and pin things down. It's a process of taking something in the mind and trying to make it physical. You have to physically go through the motions, apply the tools, click the buttons, do all the little annoying steps, in order to get to the end result. Sometimes this can be painstaking.
This is a translation process, and it takes time. And unless you keep hammering away at it, it won't happen. Again and again you have to keep gong back to it to do more to it, to keep building, to keep growing it, to keep moving it forward toward the goal, otherwise it just sits there lifeless and incomplete. And no-one's going to do it for you or come along and rescue you, unless maybe you pay them.
And then once you complete the thing you're making, when you think it's good enough, and done, maybe you're happy with it, and maybe you recognize it's ended up a bit shit anyway. Because the things we make in form and from materials in spacetime are all very limited and strange and not really like the level of mind where anything is possible. Have you seen people's DIY disasters?
You have to make do and tolerate limits and put up with imperfections, to accept choices for one color and not another, to go with some option that partially works and know that the other options had something you're missing. What you end up with is a strange collection of stuff that is very limited and unwhole and imperfect, but it'll have to do, because that's as good as physicality gets. You're forced to have to "conform" to form, which means accepting limits and separations and exclusions.
This is all unnatural for the mind and soul, because it means trying to work within the confines of a very awkward system of limits, in which every little part of the thing you're trying to make has to be undertaken personally and with effort and force, to sculpt it and mold it and make it be something. That takes a lot of time and patience and commitment.
You can easily be put off when the next step is unclear, when you don't have the experience, when you don't know how it's going to look or what's going to work. When you have to figure things out as you go along, and the whole thing seems like you're just winging it, making it up as you go.
And then when you get to the end you don't even know if what you made is really the most ideal or best it could be, because you didn't have the foresight to be able to produce perfection. And what you then made is quirky and odd and maybe partly does the job. They you'll probably have to go back over it and fix stuff and polish it up, to do more work on it based on hindsight.
Making is certainly a strange process. But without making, nothing in this world gets done. The world just stays much the same way as it is. Your "life" stays stagnant, your home remains undecorated, your projects remain unfinished and you end up stuck in a rut. If you want things to be different in form, you have to take action. Physical action and effort. You have to try.
Compare that to heaven where to create you simply will what you want to exist and there it is, perfect and whole and complete, instantly effortless, with no time or space involved, no forcing or constant refinements, just simply direct perfect results every time, and joyfully so. How very different that is to getting anything to happen in spacetime through labor.
This is why life is a bit of a chore, and why sometimes people just can't be bothered to do the work. It's tiresome, unless you can find some way to enjoy the process itself, enjoy the craft, or feel some sense of accomplishment or purpose to why you're doing all that work. Maybe if it's of service to others you can feel better about it. Life here is hard work, in general, because the world is difficult in general. But maybe it can be repurposed and seen in a better way.
"You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in IS a world of limits. In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur."
"You still could not will against Him, and that is why you have no control over the world you made. It is NOT a world of will, because it is governed by the desire to be unlike Him. And this desire IS NOT WILL. The world you made 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."
Here a beautiful and inspiring collection of short quotes all to do with going BEYOND. Beyond the body, beyond appearances, beyond forms, beyond sin, beyond the world. This is the goal of the course. To return home to Heaven.
"Beyond all idols stands his holy will to be but what he is."
"Beyond the body"
"Beyond this world there is a world I want. I choose to see that world instead of this, For here is nothing that I really want."
"You can only GO BEYOND it, and look back from a point where SANITY exists, and SEE THE CONTRAST."
"It must reach out beyond itself, as you reached out beyond the body to LET yourselves be joined."
"Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them."
"Understanding IS beyond perception, because it introduces meaning. But it is below knowledge, even though it can grow TOWARDS it."
"Not yet is Heaven quite remembered, for the purpose of forgiveness still remains. Yet everyone is certain he will go beyond forgiveness, and he but remains until it is made perfect in himself."
"The Holy Spirit is the Christ mind that senses the knowledge that lies beyond perception."
"Let us, then, look upon them calmly, that we may look beyond them, understanding what they are, not what they would maintain."
"We go beyond the veil of fear, lighting each other's way. The holiness that leads us is WITHIN us, as is our home."
"I DO go before you, because I am beyond the ego. Reach therefore for my hand because you want to transcend the ego."
"Appearances deceive but can be changed. Reality is changeless. It does not deceive at all. And if you fail to see beyond appearances, you ARE deceived. For everything you see will change, and yet you thought it real before, and now you think it real again. Reality is thus reduced to form, and capable of change. Reality is changeless. It is this that makes it real, and keeps it separate from all appearances. It must transcend all form to be itself. It CANNOT change."
"Your brother has a changelessness in him beyond appearance and deception both. It is obscured by changing views of him which you PERCEIVE as his reality."
"Each speaks in time of what is far beyond it. Two voices, raised together, call to the hearts of everyone, and let them beat as one."
"And It must use all learning to transfer illusions TO the truth, taking all FALSE ideas of what you are, and leading you BEYOND them to the truth that IS beyond them."
"Beyond the body, beyond the sun and stars, past everything you see and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light that stretches, as you look, into a great and shining circle. And all the circle fills with light before your eyes. "
"Your destiny and purpose are far beyond them, in the clean place where littleness does not exist."
"You whose hands are joined have begun to reach BEYOND the body, but NOT outside yourselves, to reach your shared identity TOGETHER."
"Desiring to look upon their brothers in holiness, the power of belief and faith goes far beyond the body, SUPPORTING vision, not obstructing it."
"ITS effects are changelessly eternal, BEYOND fear, and PAST the world of sin entirely. "
"NOTHING beyond yourself can make you fearful or loving, because nothing IS beyond you."
"One instant of complete belief in this, and you will go beyond belief to Certainty."
"The holy instant's radiance will light YOUR eyes, and give them sight to see beyond ALL suffering, and see Christ's Face INSTEAD."
"Who stands before a lifeless image when a step away the Holy of the Holies opens up an ancient door that leads beyond the world? You are a stranger here."
"Do not defend this senseless dream, in which God is bereft of what He loves, and you remain beyond salvation."
"Truth is so far beyond time, that ALL of it happens at once. For as it was created one, so its oneness depends not on time at all."
"Sink deep into the peace that waits for you beyond the frantic, riotous thoughts and sounds and sights of this insane world. You do not live there."
"He will enable you to go far beyond the healing YOU would undertake, for beside your small willingness to make whole He will lay His Own COMPLETE Will and make YOURS whole. What can the Son of God NOT accomplish with the Fatherhood of God in him? "
"And now the mind returns to its Creator; the joining of the Father and the Son, the Unity of unities that stands behind all joining but beyond them all."
"But from within me it will reach beyond, and everything I see will but reflect the light that shines in me and in itself. "
"He leads you steadily along the path of freedom, teaching you how to disregard, or look beyond everything that would hold you back."
"It is this that makes it holy and beyond the world. It is its holiness that points to God. It is its holiness that makes you safe."
"This thought has power to wake the sleeping truth in you, whose vision sees beyond appearances to that same truth in everyone and everything there is."
"Now he seeks to go beyond them, recognizing that another dream would offer nothing more than all the others. Dreams are one to him."
"The universe beyond the sun and stars, and all the thoughts of which you can conceive, belong to you."
"How far beyond this world my Self must be, and yet how near to me and close to God!"
"If they understood what is beyond them, they would not BE handicapped. You do NOT know the meaning of love, and this IS your handicap."
"Then turn to one who laid all limits by, and went beyond the farthest reach of learning. He will take you with him, for he did not go alone."
"No-one but must accept this thought as true, if he would leave this world behind and soar beyond its petty scope and little ways."
"Who, then, can say which one can be healed of what, and what must remain beyond God's power to forgive?This is insanity indeed.It is not up to God's teachers"
"Look, then, BEYOND error, and do not let your perception rest UPON it, for you will believe what your perception HOLDS. "
"Otherwise, you still are free to choose a goal that lies beyond the world and every worldly thought, and one which comes to you from an idea relinquished yet remembered, old yet new; an echo of a heritage forgot, yet holding everything you really want."
"He is here because He wills to be, and what He wills is present now beyond the reach of time."
"He gives you vision which can look beyond these grim appearances, and can behold the gentle Face of Christ in all of them."
"But what is that to those who have been given one true relationship, BEYOND the body? Can they be long held back from looking on the face of Christ?"
"Only joy increases forever. Joy and Eternity are INSEPARABLE. God extends outward beyond limits and beyond time, and you, who are co-creators with Him, extend His Kingdom forever and beyond limit. "
"When truth has come it harbors in its wings the gift of perfect constancy, and love which does not falter in the face of pain but looks beyond it, steadily and sure."
"It is their extension, far beyond the limits you perceive, that demonstrates you did not do them."
"What lies beyond them cannot BE attacked."
"For His answer is the reference point BEYOND delusions, from which you can look back on them, and see them as insane."
"It comes from far beyond itself, for it reflects Eternal Love and the rebirth of love which never died, but has been kept obscure."
"They choose for all mankind; for all the world and all things in it; for the unchanging and unchangeable beyond appearances; and for the Son of God and his Creator. "
"For power is not seeming strength, and truth is beyond a semblance of any kind."
"NOTHING is beyond His will for you. But signify your will to remember Him, and behold! He will give you everything but for your asking."
"The picture of light, in clear-cut and unmistakable contrast, is transformed into what lies BEYOND the picture."
"Its oneness is forever guaranteed inviolate; forever held within His holy Will beyond all possibility of harm, of separation, imperfection and of any spot upon its sinlessness. We are creation; we the Sons of God."
"Its holy purpose stands beyond your little range. When vision has shown you the holiness that lights up the world, you will understand today s idea perfectly."
"The power set in you, in whom the Holy Spirit's goal has been established, is so far beyond your little conception of the infinite, that you have no idea how great the strength that goes with you."
"Yet, for all its might, so great it reaches past the stars and to the universe that lies beyond them, your little faithlessness can make IT useless, if you would use the faithlessness instead. "
"For the words we use are mighty, and they need no thoughts beyond themselves to change the mind of him who uses them."
"You will go far beyond it. Our direction is toward perfect safety and perfect peace."
"Yet this is writ in hell and NOT in Heaven, where you are BEYOND attack, and prove his INNOCENCE. "
"Nothing will be beyond your healing power, because nothing will be denied your simple request."
"Today we will make our first real attempt to get past this dark and heavy cloud, and to go through it to the light beyond."
"The mind that serves the Holy Spirit is unlimited forever, in all ways, beyond the laws of time and space, unbound by any preconceptions, and with strength and power to do whatever it is asked."
"Knowledge is far beyond your individual concern. You who are part of it, and all of it, need only realize that it is of the Father, NOT of you."
"And this will be your concept of YOURSELF, when you have reached the world beyond the sight your eyes alone can offer you to see."
"Today's exercises are an attempt to go beyond these differences in appearance, and recognize a common content where it exists in truth."
"From you salvation radiates with gifts beyond all measure, given and returned. To you, the giver of the gift, does God Himself give thanks."
"And it is given us to look past death and see the light beyond."
"It is the world s most lofty aspiration, for it leads beyond the world entirely."
"It is past the clouds, and in the light beyond. Remember that you will have to go through the clouds before you can reach the light."
"Help him go in peace beyond it, with the light of his own innocence lighting his way to his redemption and release."
"But it begins within the world perceived as different, and leading from this fresh perception to the gate of Heaven and the way beyond."
"Grace is not given to a BODY, but to a MIND. And the mind that RECEIVES it, looks INSTANTLY beyond the body, and sees the holy place where IT was healed."
"Far beyond his dreams is his reality. But he must learn he is a Savior first, before he can remember what he is. And he must save who would BE saved."
"There is no Thought of God that does not go with you to help you reach that instant, and to go beyond it quickly, surely and forever."
"Accept these little gifts of thanks from us, as through Christ's vision we behold a world beyond the one we made, and take that world to be the full replacement of our own."
"You have many times been urged to look beyond the body, for its sight presents the symbol of love s "enemy" Christ s vision does not see."
"And so they need a teacher who perceives their madness, but who still can look beyond illusion to the simple truth in them."
"We go beyond appearances today, and reach the source of healing from which nothing is exempt. "
"The Creator of life, the Source of everything that lives, the Father of the Universe, and of the Universe of universes, and of everything that lies even BEYOND them, would you remember."
"The fourth obstacle to be surmounted, hangs like a heavy veil before the face of Christ. Yet as His face rises beyond it, shining with joy because He is in His Father's Love, peace will lightly brush the veil aside and run to meet Him, and to JOIN with Him at last."
"From BEYOND each of these OBSTACLES to love, Love Itself has called, and each has been surmounted by the power of the attraction of what lies BEYOND. Your WANTING fear SEEMED to be holding them in place. Yet when you heard the voice of love BEYOND them, you answered, and they disappeared."
"No mad desire, no trivial impulse to forget again, no stab of fear, nor the cold sweat of seeming death, CAN stand against your will. And what attracts you from BEYOND the veil, is also deep WITHIN you, unseparated from it, and COMPLETELY One. "
"Communion is another kind of completion, which goes beyond guilt BECAUSE it goes beyond the body."
"This One can teach you how to look on time differently and to see BEYOND it. But NOT while you believe in sin."
If you see yourself as being victimised in any way, mistreated, not respected, attacked, hurt, threatened, judged, abused, terrorised, not recognised, hated, left out, invalidated, accused, misrepresented, subject to racism or sexism or homophobia, in any other way somehow slighted or offended by anyone OTHER than yourself, they your ego has formed a FACE OF INNOCENCE, and you ARE in heavy denial!
This face of innocence is a facade the ego wears to DENY AND COVER UP the internal guilt, to hide itself from itself in self-hate. The internal guilt is denied, so that it is not even recognised as existing at all within you, and is then projected. It is then seen IN AND AS everyone else other than oneself. It then appears that everyone but yourself is doing something TO YOU against your will that is un-asked for and undeserved.
This projection of guilt and ego frames you as an innocent victim of it in OTHER people, which in turn justifies an angry counter-response - since you see yourself as doing absolutely nothing wrong at all, which points a further finger - a second layer of projection - designed to hide the first, to further reinforce the ways that other people have obviously sinned, been guilty, committed evil acts, failed to live up to standards, or any other way that they are defective.
The "mask" of innocence is worn as a face psychologically, really a disguise, as part of the ego. And it is especially part of the spiritualised ego. Having denied that oneself believes oneself to be guilty - which is still an ongoing internal belief - on sees oneself as "not guilty", and thus innocent. But this is a fake innocence covering up a persistent guilt. The guilt is then projected onto others and associated with them, as though attached to them and part of them.
It is particularly viciously reinforced by an increased level of anger and resentment, as a REACTION to what is now perceived as something other people are doing to you and not you doing to them. The more you feel justified in anger the more you project even more separation and increase the sense of dis-association between you and the guilt. This is designed to make sure it seems that you have nothing to do with the guilt, and it is entirely associated with someone other than yourself. The more this is believed the more unconscious you become as a helpless victim.
What this entails really is self attack, which began long before the projection of guilt. Self and self innocence were denied, producing an accusation against oneself as an attack upon oneself. This is a denial of self as God created you. This is an opinion of oneself - an ego view of oneself - that is far short of the divine holy self that God created you as.
This vicious self-attack produces guilt, inferiority, judgement, self-hate, and various other forms of self destructive behaviour. This is DENIED, which makes it seem largely unconscious or at least disowned and "not part of me". And the result of this is projection. It is given away in order to try to make it not be a part of oneself, or within one's mind. It is seen as "outside" the mind, external to the self (body perimeter), as though literally someone other than oneself, seen as an inherent built-in permanent PART OF someone else. And now it is THEY who are guilty and full of sin.
The result of this is then the formation of a face - a facade - a persona - a cover-up face of innocence, which sees itself AS innocent, but with fake innocence. This fake innocence is shallow and is merely a smokescreen to hide the self-hate that is behind it. Thus self-denying person then believes they are doing no wrong, asking for no harm, doing nothing to hurt others, and are completely benevolent, yet conveniently also are experiencing being "unfairly treated" as a victim. And this of course, if it were true, means anger is completely justified and everyone else should die for THEIR sins against the innocence.
The fact is however that this still remains a SELF ATTACK, because the mind is still hating itself, still believes it is guilty, does not want to admit to this, is IN DENIAL, and refuses to even look at what is being denied. The unwillingness to look at the denied guilt is because of the belief that IT IS THERE, and that it is dark and real and terrible. And the ego DOES believe that you are full of sin. So instead of looking within, it looks without, to find the guilt there instead.
Once the guilt is denied and projected there forms an extremely long lists of all the sins, errors, guilts, mistakes, faults, weaknesses, defects, horrors, and various other forms of unholiness that are regarded as the truth about OTHER people, and not oneself. And THEIR guilt and sinfulness is kept apart from YOURS, so that you are in no way associated with it, and can maintain an illusion of being the innocent one.
Being subject to an incredibly long list of things other people are doing wrong, and thus attacked and victimised BY, is DESIRED AND CHOSEN, so that the face of innocence can be maintained. Even if it seem to hurt oneself to do so, and even if one has to be willing to BE victimised - or so it may appear on the surface - this is ACCEPTED as the natural cost of being able to find someone else to be the fall guy for the guilt.
We even in the extremes are willing to be attacked, hurt, made to be sick, destroyed and killed off, if it will mean that someone ELSE can be accused of sin. And then we can say, "brother by your hand I die." This means that we literally are willing to suffer, be sick, and die, if it means the sick body can accuse someone ELSE of causing it to be the way it is, so that the mind can be exonerated of the sin IT believes it has committed against self, others and God.
But not for an instant does the guilt leave your own mind, not for an instant does your mind truly become healed of it, not for an instant do you escape what is being denied, not for an instant do your accusations of other people's wrongfulness NOT target you, not for an instant do you escape the murderous consequences, and not for an instant do you get away with NOT being hurt by the projections. Yet alone the fact that you then hurt yourself through other people due to the way that you see them as causing you to be hurt, which you want.
Ultimately this means that this whole mechanism is STILL a way of attacking and destroying yourself, of hurting yourself, and that you are doing this to yourself. This is the secret of salvation. Recognizing that it is YOU who is accusing yourself of guilt, it is YOU who is projecting the guilt, it is YOU who is in denial, it is YOU who does not want to admit to wearing a face of innocence, it is YOU who wants to be a victim, and it is YOU who keeps using people to attack yourself. And not once do you really WANT it to stop, because that would mean having to be more honest, stop scapegoating, look within at the guilt, and undo it. Those who are dissatisfied with OTHERS, are incredibly dissatisfied with THEMSELVES.
"Only the self-accused condemn."
"You but accuse your brother of your own sins."
"Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel DIFFERENT from your brothers and separated FROM them. The ego justifies this on the wholly spurious grounds that it makes you seem better than they are, thus obscuring equality WITH them still further."
And if you think you are not condemning yourself and it is only others that are condemning you, you ESPECIALLY are doing this. Your denial can be very strong and it can make it seem like you are not doing anything wrong AT ALL, that you have never chosen or provoked the slightest attack, and it is entirely everyone ELSE on your list of sins that has failed to measure up to God's standards.
Admitting to all this takes a greater willingness to be honest, to stop attacking yourself, to stop hating yourself, to stop projecting blame onto others, to stop believing that other people are the guilty ones, to stop judging others as the ones with egos, and to be far deeper in the willingness to look at WHAT YOU ARE DENYING. Because only by admitting that you are denying how much YOU hate yourself, are you going to ever stop finding a thousand ways to encourage others to hate you FOR you.
Projection of guilt simply keeps the separation going, and the ego absolutely loves that, as it hides behind its wall of "I'm completely innocent, I'm not doing anything to myself." You are trying to destroy yourself. Look at that! And stop doing it.
"The concept of the self the world would teach is not the thing that it appears to be. For it is made to serve two purposes, but one of which the mind can recognize. 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. This aspect can grow angry, for the world is wicked, and unable to provide the love and shelter innocence deserves. And so this face is often wet with tears, at the injustices the world accords to those who would be generous and good.
This aspect NEVER makes the first attack. But every day a hundred little things make small assaults upon its innocence, provoking it to irritation, and at last to open insult and abuse. The face of innocence the concept of the self so proudly wears can tolerate attack in self-defense, for is it not a well-known fact the world deals harshly with defenseless innocence? No-one who makes a picture of himself omits this face, for he has need of it. The other side he does not want to see. But it is here the learning of the world has set its sights. For it is here the world's reality is set, to see to it the idol lasts.
Beneath the face of innocence there is a lesson that the concept of the self was made to teach. It is a lesson in a terrible displacement, and a fear so devastating that the face which smiles above it must forever look away, lest it perceive the treachery it hides. The lesson teaches this; "I am the thing you made of me, and as you look on me you stand condemned, because of what I am." On this conception of the self the world smiles with approval, for it guarantees the pathways of the world are safely kept, and those who walk on them will not escape.
Here is the central lesson that ensures your brother is condemned eternally. For what YOU are has now become his sin. For this is no forgiveness possible. No longer does it matter what he does, for your accusing finger points to him, unwavering and deadly in its aim. It points to you as well, but this is kept still deeper in the mists below the face of innocence. And in these shrouded vaults are all his sins and yours preserved, and kept in darkness, where they cannot be perceived as errors, which the light would surely show. You can be neither BLAMED for what you are, nor can you CHANGE the things it makes you do. And you are each the symbol of your sins to one another, silently, and yet with ceaseless urgency condemning still your brother for the hated thing you are.
That you are what your brother made of you seems most unlikely. Even if he did, who gave the face of innocence to you? Is this YOUR contribution? Who is, then, the "you" who made it? And who is deceived by all your goodness, and attacks it so? Let us forget the concept's foolishness, and merely think of this; there are two parts to what you think yourself to be. If one was generated by your brother, who was there to make the other? And from whom must something be kept hidden? If the world be evil, there is still no need to hide what YOU are made of. Who is there to see? And what but is attacked could NEED defense?"
This may not be popular.
True relationship is between one person and everyone, simultaneously. The human body was constructed in order to disrupt this relationship, and to focus on isolation, so that rather than being in relationship with everyone, you are in relationship with typically only one other person.
By becoming closer to their body, and attempting to unite with the body, there is actually an attempt to move AWAY from everyone else. Far more is excluded than included. By attempting to join with "only one", 99.99% of the rest of existence is left out. One winner and billions of losers, as is always the result of competition. And so the sex act is a total opposite of true joining.
Bodies cannot join, they cannot even share the same space. One part protrudes, another caves in, there seems to be a surface friction but there is never a true merging. The ritual of the sexual act is really a ritual to death and sin, whereby the body is emphasized over spirit in order to move towards the body, towards sin, towards hell, and towards death.
Intercourse is movement towards death because it emphasizes that the body is real, it highlights sensations over knowledge, it shuts spirit out of awareness, focuses on the body's sensors, eyes, touch and so on, and makes you "lose your mind." It produces and increases body identification, believing you are the body and that you are interacting with a person who is a body. This closes the spiritual eye, shuts out life, and proceeds towards death.
You could say that by a man and woman copulating, they are performing a death ritual, in which they are attempting to manufacture a separate self, born from death, born in pain, and produced as a result of an illusion of joining made to actually prevent joining. The separation then increases, there is a fragmentation, and another "entity" shows up as the result.
This is very much no different to the illusion of cell division, in which separation is used to split cells in order to multiply them. This is called reproduction, but it is the opposite of creation of life. Bodies come together and do not join and some matter is transferred and some illusory biological processes occur and another body appears, increasing bodies. But what has actually occurred is separation has been used to testify to the end of God and a symbol of the separation has emerged. It's called birth, but it's an eruption of death.
All sexual acts involving a person attempt to utilize the person's body to get something, to meet a perceived need, or to mutually take from each other. Since the body is a picture of selfishness, resulting from specialness, sin and isolation, both body identified persons see themselves as lacking and limited, and want to fulfill themselves by getting something out of the activity. Of course, we then imagine that if we "only give and don't receive" this is somehow more loving, but giving without receiving is sacrifice, and you can be sure the ego is right there to emphasize it.
More or less, everyone with a body is interested in self gratification, a kind of masturbation, in which ultimately they seek through the body to experience something external, to sense something, to have something happen to them which they find to be preferable. For some the "happens to me" might be painful, sadistic and twisted, while for others they might seek what appears to be an illusion of "love making". But rest assured, sex is murderous and cannot in any way create love.
"What is not love is murder" is based on the Golden Rule, that what applies to one applies to another equally. When this law is broken by our egos, we move into a state of imbalance where something is more for one and less for another, there is finite limitation, there is "give and take", and attempts to believe something is true of one person not the other. "It's my turn" is selfish. Two people copulating is an attempt on both parts, typically, to gain something which the other is perceived to give them, both taking from each other, usually under the guise of giving.
Bodies cannot create. They do not create life. Life forms are not alive, they are death forms. Illusions of life. Babies bodies are just as much illusory as adult bodies. Bodies reproducing is a testament to the ego's attempt to produce alternative, different, unique, separated off identities. Little walking prison cells for the mind to inhabit. There is no particular glory in the production of an allegedly "god given" (ego given) baby any more than there is glory in those children becoming adults and trying to merge back together. You'd think it should be obvious that the bodies should not have been produced through separation in the first place if later a "re-joining" is the supposed goal.
Bodies cannot join. Just so you know, no two atoms of matter can ever touch each other. They are repelled by nuclear forces. The sensation of someone touching you is not really them touching you, it's the force fields repelling your force fields and causing there to seem to be a sensation of collision. No two bodies have ever touched and lived to talk about it, because this would result in a nuclear explosion. And the earth does not "move" this way.
For the most part, most of us body identified people are rather self absorbed with our bodies. Men and women alike preen and prune as if attempting to allegedly attract a mate, but quite honestly, almost all of it is self adoration. Because it is the body that we are in love with, not people. Bodies are idols to worship and we worship no bodies more than our own.
Most of what we allegedly do to prepare ourselves for a partner (an excluder) is of no interest to them and they probably can't relate to it. We bolster ourselves up in our vanity and egotism so that if we approve of our own condition, we're satisfied. We're all a bunch of egomaniac vain self-obsessed fools, falling over ourselves to manipulate someone into doing something to us that we prefer so that we can get our own rocks off - a form of positive victimhood.
Having become body identified, we have identified with being separate. The bodies are literally separate. There is space between them and the bodies will never touch. There is even a line in the course that says God is the only one who has ever touched his creations. Going into body mode, we then go through this process of trying to hump the brains out of all the other body identified people, in an attempt to overcome the very separation that we bought into in the first place, without doing so.
And there really is no real attempt TO do so, the whole purpose of it is to STAY SEPARATE. The whole dynamic of bodies joining is an attempt to KEEP the separation going, to reproduce the separation, and to produce more separate things. "Babies" come from this, as an increase in the population of ego flesh suits, ready for the next mind to be trapped in a brain and ready to suffer.
You could say, that the more an intimate couple focuses on the body, the less connected they are. The more they focus attention on sex, the more love is shut out. The more they make the body real, the more disconneced they become and have no real relationship. Then it becomes just about the physical sex, which is not love. They come together, almost literally, to separate from each other. Only love joins people together, not the body. And by starting out by going into body identification, they have already moved away from love, away from relationship and away from true joining. You could even say that this is a form of sickness.
In holy relationship there is no interest in the body for its own merits or purposes. It is recognized that the body is not inherently pleasurable, and anything related to it is not the cause of joy. In fact, the body would diminish true pleasure (which comes from doing God's will), by shutting God out of the equation in order to "sin together." Is it any wonder that a vast majority of sexual practice occurs in the dark, under the sheets, behind closed doors, in guilt and shame and fear, perhaps even with eyes closed? What is there to hide? Or rather, what are we hiding from? God?
The sins of the flesh, so to speak, include temptation. The temptation to believe that a son of God is a body. To then relate to their body as if it is the person, which is really an attack on the person and an attempt to imprison them. And to even ignore their body and focus on your own, for what it is getting from them. What you think you're getting from them is the rest of your self, which they stole, and housed in their body, which you hate them for and want to destroy them for, and you plug yourself into them in an attempt to regain what you think you do not have.
Being tempted by physical form is also another example of the rejection of Christ Vision and a willingness to be blinded by perception of form. As we oogle the nude pictures or watch the naughty porn movies or get all excited upon seeing a physical specimen we like, we are quite strongly falling for illusions, entering into body vision, losing sight of the truth, losing our minds, losing sanity, losing sight of the light beyond the body, and preferring bodies to God.
Of course, all of this is enough to induce guilt and make everyone feel like dirty little sinners. Which the ego is perfectly happy to label you with. Let's say that there is nothing at all wrong or sinful about any such activities because they are not real. And you can bet that millions of people are still "doing it" right now and will continue to do so for a long time to come. Course students included. But it is what it is.
Sex is something we invented, for a purpose. The only HOLY use of the body is for extending love and perhaps, if conception happens in such a way as that the persons are in christ vision and barely even noticing the body at all, you could call this the ultimate use of the body for procreational purposes only. But we have to also realize that the entire functional mechanism of what causes a man to inseminate a woman for example, is entirely based on sensations, body senses, chemistry, physical interaction, and usually hormonally driven, testosterone powered desire. And that's all at the level of ego body stuff. And it's selfish.
In essence, in truth, there were never supposed to be bodies in the first place. Yet alone to use them for separation, to make bodies real, to mistake subtle pain for pleasure, or to mistake copulation for love. There isn't anything love related about a sexual act. Unconditional love has nothing to do with it. It's purely a physical, biological, sensory process. Producing feedback, perceptions and justifying certain behaviors. You can do the same exact procedures with or without love being present.
Of course, someone who is loving, truly, unconditionally, may well enjoy the sexual performance with less guilt, more joy, greater fearlessness and confidence, but the point will come eventaully where what the body "offers" is so pale in comparison to what the spirit offers, that all desire for intercourse will end. Spiritual marriage, mind-to-mind joining, oneness with God, are orders of magnitude more meaningful and enjoyable than anything the body has to offer with its parody of love. "A teacher of God is willing to give up all the pleasures of the world." Knowing that you are gaining far more than you are giving up.
This is not to say, you have to give up sex right now. I'm not going to and nor is most of the planet. But we ARE in a process of learning what it really IS, and what it is not, as part of our journey home towards true union with God. And we can use this information to help move our special, sexual relationships, with others or self, towards a more innocent, holy experience, as we transition onwards its eventual total relinquishment.
At some point we will come to recognize it is not possible to do ANYTHING REAL with the body, and so will stop using the body entirely. Until then, boink your brains out if you so choose, or not. It's up to you - free will. But keep in mind, your MIND is more important than your body, and if body identification is increasing as a result of how you look at what you're doing, you're heading in the wrong direction.
In heaven there is no sex. In heaven, there is the constant bliss of needing nothing and being permanently fulfilled. Surely this is better than an occasional splurt at the end of a long road of effort. And certainly better than the frustrations and failures of sexual attempts to separate from God.