Surround search terms with " " double quotes for exact matches e,g, "drops of healing rain"

Bodies are incredibly separating. They are like anchors, and little prison cells. One body is over here, the other is over there, separated by a gap of space and time. If you are in and as your body, and if the other person is in and as their body, you are not connected, you have no relationship, and are kept apart.

This separation gap will fester with sin and attack and specialness and selfishness. Identifying that you, who are you and your brother, are only located in and as your separate body, rips you away from them and separates your mind.

Part of your mind is in and as their mind, which you have located as separated off and bound to their body, out of reach to you. Given they are separate, if they so much as flinch in the wrong way, you will take it as an act of war, inflicted by a separate will against your will. Being bodies is an act of war. There can be no undoing of specialness while you believe your brother is anchored to a physical object.

Both of you are supposed to share everything, join entirely, be in psychological union as one, and overlap with each other. Your brother is part of yourself, and ONLY by recognizing and identifying your sense of self WITH them, including them on who and what you are, can you enter into love. Without this joining, love is absent and separation has taken hold, and conflict will not be far behind.

"You" (separate body) "did this to me" (separate body) "and I" (separate body) "did not do this to you" (separate body) "and therefore you are guilty." It is the entire basis of scapegoating and all sense of victimhood. If you are NOT your brother, there are two sides and there is war. You have excluded him by associating him with a body. You do not see him, because his body blocks your vision, a wall of flesh around his mind, locking him into darkness.

Bodies literally are in the way. They are completely opposite to the nature of the mind. They are separation devices. Your whole life you have identified people AS a separate body, not a part of you, kept away from you, responsible for their own acts and not yours, and whose interests are not your own. And every body-identified (egoic) mind sees themselves as separated off and held apart by the body. This is completely unnatural.

No one is a body. Bodies are designed to keep apart what God has put together as one. Your brother is literally you. Your minds are one. Your self is shared. You are both the whole Kingdom. What many people don't realize is that Jesus recognized that he IS EVERYONE, and that is why he united the will of the whole sonship with the father, and why you were with him when he ascended.

"The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist."

"The sonship is your soul."

"We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

"No one can remember God alone."

"In a split mind, identity MUST seem to be divided. Nor can anyone perceive a function unified which has conflicting purposes and different ends. Correction, to a mind so split, MUST be a way to punish sins you think are YOURS in someone else. And thus does he become your victim, NOT your brother, DIFFERENT from you in that he is MORE GUILTY, thus in need of your correction, as the one MORE INNOCENT than he. This splits HIS function off from yours, and gives you both a DIFFERENT role. And so you CANNOT be perceived as one, and with a single function that would MEAN a shared identity with but ONE end."

I was being controlling. I did not want things to be the way they are. i wanted to stop them being the way they are and be different. I could not accept that this was okay or that it should be this way.

But I did not realize the effect that this control has on the world.

When I resist what's happening, I resist by attempting to control and reject what's going on. I try to shut it out, at the same time as trying to put into place some kind of 'alternative' that I think is better or more correct. So there I am in a state of strong rejection, and strong enforcement, simultaneously - which obviously is conflicting and therefore upsetting.

I did not realize that my attempt to resist and control was actually CAUSING the situation I was looking at, to appear to me in the way it was appearing.

The more I did not like what was happening, the more I tried to stop it and control it. But the more I did that, the more the situation seemed to get further from how I wanted it.

The more we control, the more we resist. So now that I am in resistance, that resistance only becomes stronger as I become more passionate about forcing things to be how I think they should be. In fact, it's really impossible for me to HAVE things the way I want them, because to make them be that way takes a tremendous amount of control and manipulation, which means I am in tremendous resistance, which means I am not in a state of acceptance.

There never will be a time when I can both be controlling and enforcing situations while also experiencing acceptance. So in effect, i will never be able to experience that the outcome I wanted has actually occurred and that I am at peace with it. Unless that is I became SO incredibly controlling that I violated boundaries and rights attempting to get others to change. Which would of course be completely inappropriate on many levels.

I did not know that trying to control a situation makes it worse, and takes it further from acceptability. How can anyone ever find the peace of acceptance through being controlling? Good luck.

The more I saw the situation is needing to be controlled because it was 'out of control' and unacceptable, the more the people involved seemed to become even more out of control and unacceptable. Funny that. They reacted to my controlling efforts with their own resistance against my attacks, so no wonder the scenario I was trying to get away from simply became more stuck and rigid. What you resist persists.

My strategy is now shifting. I need to learn to be accepting, not controlling. Allowing, not enforcing. Permitting, not resisting. And that means, or at least seems to mean to my ego, that I cannot have things the way I want them. Which to the ego, seems to suck, right?

My ego wants to have a world where I get to 'control' certain things, even if it's only in the scope of my 'own life' or my 'own body'. I still want to have that control over 'my' life. And so that really means, I am wanting to control MYSELF. How strange is that?

Control isn't the same as free will. And having no control does not mean you don't have freedom. In fact you have more freedom when you are not controlling. How's that for a paradox? Control takes away your freedom instead of giving it to you! Yet another way in which the ego says one thing and does the exact opposite.

So then, to my intellect, it doesn't understand how I can be accepting and uncontrolling and still be in any way 'happy' about what's going on, or how I can have any 'say' in what's going on. It doesn't understand how it's possible to accept what is, and yet have the freedom and power to do something to change something. It sees acceptance as the doorway to powerlessness, to no choice, to passivity and victimhood. Interesting how the ego sees it this way in order to avoid acceptance, because if you become really accepting you become empowered.

Acceptance without powerlessness or passivity. A novel concept.

One of the really tricky things about A Course in Miracles, is the way that Jesus writes in certain contexts and sometimes it SOUNDS AS IF He is saying something which is totally opposite to what He says somewhere else. He is very "extreme" in his writing, in order to be very clear and black-and-white in his impeccable reasoning. And this can lead people to become confused as to what he really means.

For example, he could be talking in one part about how the world can be forgiven, it becomes lovely and beautiful and a reflection of holiness, then in another passage, turn around and say, from a different context, that the world is entirely a dream of death and is totally illusory and will never make you happy. It seems totally opposite.

For example, he could talk about using the body as a communication device and to help others. But then in another passage he can turn around and say, the body doesn't exist and it's the idea of sin, totally an illusion made to attack the son of God. It seems like a totally opposite attitude.

For example, he could say that the meaning of love cannot be taught, then tell you to "teach only love". Seems like a contradiction.

For example, he could be saying in one place, that God only has one son. But then in another passage, is talking about all the children of God who are co-creators with you and are your brothers. Seems like a totally opposite contradictory statement.

So what happens is, people will read the course and will tend to see these contradictions. And then they will be confused. And then to try to "fix" the contradiction, they will select WHICH of the two things are "true", and will reframe the other thing and change its meaning to "fit". This is usually fairly random but mostly people will "side with" whichever statement SEEMS more true or "bigger" or "higher".

So then for example, "one brother is all brothers" would turn into "all brothers are one self and there aren't really many brothers", as an attempt to rectify the seeming contradiction. But this is INCORRECT. It's a mistake to change what IT means in order to fit with YOUR thinking. It is YOUR thinking that needs to change to accommodate and ACCEPT what He is saying. That it is literally true, there are MANY brothers, who are one. And that means you're going to have to learn an entirely different way of thinking in order to see WHY it makes SENSE the way it is, without having to change it.

See, Jesus is not contradictory, and to claim he is really is an attack on his uniformity and consistency. He is not confused. He is an awakened being. He knows everything. He doesn't teach conflicting messages. He even says "no one can learn through double messages." He doesn't give contradictory statements. He gives statements at various LEVELS and CONTEXTS, and within one context, it can seem to be saying one thing, while in another larger context, it can blow that out of the water. Or he can talk about aspects of creation where ego laws are broken entirely, and be TELLING THE TRUTH when he says God has many children who are "all one". It does not erase the many, it doesn't result in "only one". IT IS BOTH.

We are supposed to learn to open our minds and accept ALL OF THE COURSE and EVERYTHING JESUS SAYS in it, not just the parts we like, and not just the parts that seem to make sense, and we're definitely not supposed to be hacking it apart to try to MAKE IT FIT into a thought system that is, itself, broken. God is a creator. He has many children. They are all one. Such is the truth.

"Everything God created (many things) KNOWS its Creator (individually). For this is how creation (as one thing) is accomplished, by (producing many, who are one) the Creator, and by His creations (many). In the holy meeting-place are joined the Father and His creations (many direct creations/sons), and the creations of His Son (their many creations, as one), with them together (as one, yet many). "

"An unwilling will does not mean anything, because it is a contradiction in terms which actually leaves nothing. You can make yourself powerless only in a way that has NO MEANING AT ALL. When you think you are unwilling to will with God, you are not thinking. God's will IS thought. It cannot be contradicted by thought."

"And His Sons, who are like Him, cannot contradict themselves or Him. But their thought is so powerful that they can even imprison the mind of God's Son if they so choose. This choice does make the Son's function unknown TO HIM, but never to his Creator. And because it is not unknown to his Creator, it is forever knowable to him."

When we try to use our free will to will AGAINST free will, or in essence to "not use" your will, you attempt to be UN-willing. But this is a USE of will, and so makes no sense. It's more like, willing strongly that you don't will anything at all. It is a loss of will, and a loss of freedom. That is why it results eventually in the loss of the will to live (death).

What the ego and the world call free will, is actually a reduction in will, and an illusion of freedom. It's more like an opposition to will, a rogue or alien will, which in deceptive illusions SEEMS to will separate things, but in truth is not REALLY willing anything.

What SEEMS to be "independence" and autonomy separate from all others, held up like a hero, is really the absence of freedom, absence of self, and absence of life. The ego is not your self, it is the denial of your self, an unwillingness to be your living eternal self, which is why it resists life and induces the "death of you".

The illusion of conflicting and contradictory "wills" runs rampant in this world, but it is not really what free will looks like. IT's more like a bunch of prisoners who have imprisoned their will due to being unwilling to will like God. And in this world, being upside down and backwards, those who will the most "freely" are really the most unwilling to will with God.

This is why Jesus asks us to have a little (and later total) willingness. We need to move upwards into freedom, and into accord with God's will, so that we are willing freely. Or rather that we are willing anything at all. This is why in order to enter heaven, you have to be FULLY WILLING to do so. You cannot be forced there, because you ARE free, but in your "exile" you are resisting being free, using your free will to oppose your freedom. When you are ready, you will go home to God. And nothing will be able to stop you.

Unwillingness is really a state in which your will is being used to will against itself, and this means there is conflict in your willing. You are willing one thing, and opposing it at the same time. This can only CANCEL OUT the will's power and produce NO REAL EFFECTS. This in turn results in the mind seeming to "have no power to cause anything", which is why those who are unwilling have no miraculous power to heal or change the world.

When your will becomes undivided, and you are no longer willing against yourself, which is the secret of salvation, you become single-minded instead of split-minded, enter into miraculous power, and become unlimited and unopposed. Since you are no longer stopping yourself from exercising the power of God, there is NOTHING your holiness cannot do.

"No one comes to the atonement except willingly."

"God does not coerce."

"God commended His Spirit to you, and asks that you commend yours to Him."

"Nothing can prevail against our united wills because nothing can prevail against God's."

"Your will is free, and nothing can prevail against it."

"Nothing can prevail against a Son of God who commends his spirit into the Hands of his Father. 2 By doing this the mind awakens from its sleep and remembers its Creator. 3 All sense of separation disappears."

Ok so you might be feeling like you're incapable, always making mistakes, are clumsy, can't communicate with people well, or problems just keep happening that you can't seem to solve. But it's not just you. It's a systemic problem of the world in general.

The world is just fundamentally difficult.

"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."

"Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."

This also ties into the laws of chaos. Basically in the separation from God we invented all kinds of levels, degrees, amounts, variables, contrasts, divisions and differences.

This has set up an entire landscape of what we can only describe as a mismashed chaotic jumble of disjointed pieces and conflicting differences. Everything is in contrast, nothing gels, everything conflicts with everything else, the whole continuity is broken and every form seems to beg for a different response.

We automatically have made physical obstacles, difficult terrains, awkward weather, speech deficits, communication problems, incompatible personalities, loss of function, broken behaviors and dysfunctional relationships. Not to mention that pretty much everyone is insane.

This just automatically makes the whole world fundamentally a difficult place to be. Everything involves effort and struggle, adaptation and interpretation. You have to always have caution and be careful lest you perhaps hurt yourself. Who knows what crazy lune you might run into or what strange problem is going to erupt out of nowhere.

So don't take these things personally to mean something is wrong with you. It's not "just you" that has to struggle navigating this awkward environment. I used to beat myself up for being poor at communication until I realized the entire world is set up to break it. It's an imperfect world where nothing really works effortlessly or easily.

When we are not in heaven, or out of the body in spirit, we are in an environment that is fundamentally a strain. It is unnatural to us. In fact all things physical are totally opposite to our true nature. They are alien to us. It's like trying to live on an alien planet that you have no clue about, and no-one gave you the manual or prepared you for it.

So don't worry if life seems to just keep on sucking. It's just how the world is. We are tasked with recognizing this, then laughing at it and forgiving it. Because a world made by mistake can't help but be mistaken.

"Grace is the natural state of every Son of God. When he is NOT in a state of grace he IS out of his natural environment, and does NOT function well. Everything he does becomes a strain, because he was not created for the environment which he has made. He therefore CANNOT adapt to it, nor can he adapt IT to HIM. There is no point in trying. A Son of God is happy ONLY when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make."

Jesus is truth-full. He is honest. He is awake. He is aware of everything. He does not lie. He has no reason to hide anything.

Since Jesus IS the Atonement, in order to "accept" the Atonement we are going to have to at some point completely Accept everything Jesus has said as true. ALL of it. Not just some parts, not just the bits we like, all of it.

Our questions should not so much focus on "whether" what the Course says is true. We are supposed to TRUST JESUS, that He is being truthful and that we can rely on His Word. If He says something is true, it simply is true. It is our job to ACCEPT IT.

When we take other parts of the course and pull it apart and bring up the quotes and use them as "evidence" as to some "contrary meaning" or conflicting truth, something has gone wrong. We are using the course against ITSELF, because Jesus is perfectly truthful all the time. When we use one quote to attack another, we are claiming that Jesus Himself is a liar.

What we can't seem to agree on is what Jesus MEANS, and we have all these discussions about what OUR opinion is, instead of putting aside our opinion and simply being open to TRUST AND ACCEPT Jesus's at His word, in a very literal way. We are simply not willing to be honest enough. Honesty is not self-serving.

I sometimes put up a quote of what Jesus has said. It is plain and obvious. And then people start saying either what it does or does not mean, or give other quotes to try to fight it. Even if it's extremely obviously clear and plain.

This is OUR EGO attempting to be some kind of "authority" through whom all decisions and approvals have to be fed in order to accept anything at all. We stand here like some kind of armed guard only allowing through the little parts we like and rejecting the rest. It is really an act of denial and keeping the Truth at arm's length. It's a defense against the atonement.

This very ego ITSELF has to be put aside, and we have to open up to TRUSTING JESUS. Trusting that He is telling us the truth, not deceiving us. Trusting that He is genuine and honest and authentic. Listening to what He has said. And that means, even if it does not make us look good, accepting it ANYWAY. Accept it first, learn how it MUST BE CORRECT later. Otherwise where's the trust? Where's the listening to and accepting of Atonement? Where's the taking Jesus at His word and not fighting with everything He has said?

When He says over 250 times that God directly created multiple children and also gave them free will, we listen to that, and we ACCEPT IT. We don't get into nonsense arguments of denial that have one goal and one goal only - to NOT accept it at its word. When He says plainly that God would not create a world like this, we have to ACCEPT IT, not get into "whether" it is true or not. When He says God creates Angels directly, we have to ACCEPT it. When he says miracles can heal the sick and raise the dead, we have to ACCEPT IT. When he says you can LITERALLY move a mountain with your faith, we have to ACCEPT IT. We have to stop fighting with Jesus all the time and TRUST HIM.

For something to be special it has to have a value that is different to the value of something else. We give it its value by taking away value from something else.

So if I have an apple and an orange, which are essentially equal, and I say, well, I like apples more than oranges, I have to 'demote' the orange and withdraw some of its value and give it to the apple. Now I have a sense that the apple is more important or 'special' than the orange.

What this does, is it makes me have a 'special love' relationship with the apple, and a 'special hate' relationship with the orange. I've also turned the apple into an idol, and the orange into an enemy.

The Course also talks about how we use special love to cover up special hate. The ego has made a world from separation and has made everything in the world be separate. This is based on hate. It is an attack on God. However, the ego then comes along and tries to 'cover up' and deny this hate by creating the illusion that things are somehow joined. It does this by the illusion of 'sameness', things being similar, of like mind, or having minimal conflict.

Minimally conflicting individuals end up as 'friends and allies'. And as the Course says, these allegiances are formed because two people temporarily agree to be against something else. Thus their allegiance still 'includes' an idea of attack and rejection, because it can't exist unless 'everyone else' is not like them. Thus the friends become special and have a special love relationship. But this special love is at best temporary, and covers up the foundation of the relationship which is hate. Separation from others. Isolation. Exclusivity. And so if something takes away that veneer of special love, it 'reveals' the hate beneath it and the claws come out.

While we attempt to make certain parts of the world more important or valuable than others, we make them special. This is our attempt to 'spiritualize' the dream. We attempt to make some parts more spiritual than others, so that at least some of the parts seem sacred, spiritual, holy, valuable, rather than it all being equal and neutral. In this way the ego holds onto these parts of the dream to make it real and to be attracted to it. And of course, to be attracted to one part of the dream requires the formation of a 'shadow' attitude which is against other parts.

So for example, to me, Apple Mac computers are more special than Windows PC's. Green grass is more special than brown. Summer days are more special than winter. Certain TV shows are more special than others. The olympics are more special than regular team sports. And raspberry-anything is more special than most other flavors. These are things I've made special, at the expense of other things being despised and disliked.

This is where the Holy Relationship comes in. With a goal of true holiness, we recognize that instead of depending on another separate thing to 'get' what we lack, or to reinforce our own self-specialness, we instead become wholly dependent on God. It is now God who created us, not our parents. God now also created our children, and he is responsible for them, not us. This of course dissolves all family structures. Absolute equality is the only family - God's family. Equality dissolves specialness and sees everything with unconditional love.

You can still be having your relationships and your favorite foods and whatever, but eventually we will let Holy Spirit choose everything for us and we will live in freedom. We may well remain with those we had special love with and no longer see them with specialness. But this doesn't mean we don't love them. It means we love them even MORE. We love them with an unconditional, ego-free love. One where being together is voluntary and not forced, or maintained out of guilt. But not until we are truly ready to accept this. It can't be forced while we still value specialness or we will experience sacrifice and loss.

You can still be in a one-to-one parternship all the way to waking up. Just look at Jesus and Mary as an example.

On the surface, it seems that fighting against something is a noble attempt to bring about change.

But what's really happening is that the ego has split the mind in two, one part is now opposed to the other part, and the two parts are at war with each other.

That means one part is positioning itself as this righteous savior or hero or protestor or fixer or helper who has come to "correct" the wrongs done by the other part. And the other part has been positioned as the evil enemy who must be overthrown and stopped.

The part which acts as the savior of the world appears on the surface to be doing everything to care about what is right, to fight for rights, to uphold some kind of ideal, BUT.... and this is a big but.... that role DEPENDS entirely on KEEPING the enemy separate, attacking them, stopping them, disallowing them, rejecting them and therefore maintaining their position of power.

It is ineffective and inefficient to protest in this way. And it is dishonest.

Your mind when whole is powerful enough to directly dissolve all concepts of enemies and wars and opposition. It undoes all illusions of separation. It simply would extend and create peace and love. It wouldn't be engaged in this INDIRECT attempt at getting the opposition to change, which really is a belief that you do not have the power to change things directly.

Indirect confrontation always shows up AS IF it is direct confrontation. It always shows an illusion of people marching and signs being held and things being shouted. It always involves a lot of offense and defense and people being offended and outraged. It's a good show, by the ego.

But it doesn't really work very well because it's a state of war, which is the ego's attempt to prolong separation. The mind can only be acting against itself with a split will, fighting with itself, making an enemy of itself, and therefore struggling to make any headway whatsoever because it keeps working against itself.

Trying to get "someone else" to change when, in truth, that someone else IS YOU, simply means you're are fighting with yourself and not realizing it. One part of you is willing one thing and another part of you is willing another. You think you have no way to influence the other, so you make a big stinking war against them to try to convince them or defeat them. But they are you, their will is your own, and it's really YOU fighting with your own will. This is what happens in a split mind. Anyone with an ego does this. To realize this and to become singular and whole in your will will show you that there IS no enemy and there IS no opposing will and therefore there IS nothing to stop you bringing about peace and love.

Enemies are not outside you. You are making an enemy of your own self, inside you. You are fighting against your own will. You are split in your interests and have conflicting simultaneous goals. You are the one who has offended you, and it is you that you are outraged against. It is you that you are trying to stop. And that's really going to ramp up the frustration and anger, which is highly ineffective and weak.

Those who thus protest seem to be those who are making the most effort to bring about a "positive change", but secretly, their egos are actually the ones who are attempting to make the LEAST amount of change by seeing themselves as disempowered, making disempowerment real, using separation to attack opponents and keep them separate, using hate as a weapon against hate, and basically this just leads to a stalemate, or in extreme cases, violence.

All attack is self-attack. All protests are against yourself. All opposition is within your own mind. When your mind is made whole and is undivided against itself, it will admit that it was its own self that it was fighting with. It will realize how FUTILE it is to be split against yourself, trying to bring about one thing while another part is bringing about something else. When your will becomes ONE, singular, and whole, you then are much more POWERFUL because now you have no opposition at all. You are not canceling out your own efforts, and you do not see enemies. And thus are all your problems solved and there can be peace.

YOU are the cause of everything you think your enemies are doing to you, and you WANT them to keep doing it to you, and your attempt to portray yourself as believing otherwise is a stay of pure DENIAL.

"Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, Whom he called down upon the earth after he ascended into Heaven, or became completely identified with the Christ, the Son of God as He created Him. The Holy Spirit, being a creation of the one Creator, creating with Him and in His likeness or spirit, is eternal and has never changed. He was "called down upon the earth" in the sense that it was now possible to accept Him and to hear His Voice. His is the Voice for God, and has therefore taken form. This form is not His reality, which God alone knows along with Christ, His real Son, Who is part of Him."

----

"He sees FOR you, as your witness to the real world. He is the Holy Spirit's MANIFESTATION, looking always on the real world, and calling forth its witnesses and drawing them unto YOU. For He loves what He sees within you, and He would EXTEND it. And He will not return unto the Father, until He has extended your perception even unto Him. And there perception is no more, for He has RETURNED you to the Father WITH Him. "

----

"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."

----

"Whose manifestations would you see? Of whose presence would you be convinced? For you will believe in what you MANIFEST, and as you look out so will you see in. "

----

"I am the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and when you see me, it will be because you have invited Him. For He will send you His witnesses if you will but look upon them. Remember always that you see what you seek, for what you seek you WILL find. "

----

"We said before that WHAT you project is up to you, but it is NOT up to you WHETHER to project, for projection is a law of mind. Perception IS projection, and you look in BEFORE you look out. As you look in, you choose the guide for seeing, and THEN look out, and behold his witnesses. This is why you find what you seek. What you want in YOURSELF you will make manifest by projection, and you will accept it FROM the world, because you put it there BY wanting it."

----

"When you want ONLY love, you will see nothing else. The contradictory nature of the witnesses you perceive is merely the reflection of your conflicting invitations. You have looked upon your minds, and accepted opposition there, having SOUGHT it there. But do not then believe that the witnesses for opposition are true, for they attest only to your decision about reality, returning to you the message you GAVE them. Love is recognized by its messengers. If you make it manifest, its messengers will come to you, because you INVITED them."

----

"When you have accepted your mission to PROJECT peace, you will FIND it. For by MAKING IT MANIFEST you will SEE it. Its holy witnesses will surround you, because you CALLED upon them, and they will come to you."

----

"When you look within and see me, it will be because you have decided to manifest truth. And as you manifest it, you will see it both without AND within, for you will see it without BECAUSE you saw it first within."

----

"When you learn to make ME manifest, YOU will never see death. For you will have looked upon the deathless in YOURSELF, and you will see only the eternal, as you look out upon a world that cannot die."

----

"Mind cannot be made physical, but it can be made manifest THROUGH the physical if it uses the body to GO BEYOND itself. By reaching out, the mind EXTENDS itself. It does not stop at the body, for if it does it is blocked in its purpose. A mind which has been blocked has allowed itself to be vulnerable to attack, because it has TURNED AGAINST ITSELF. "

----

"Christ is within a frame of holiness, whose ONLY purpose is that He may be made manifest to those who know Him not; that He may call to them to come to Him, and see Him where they THOUGHT their bodies were. Then will their bodies melt away, that they may frame His holiness in them. "

----

In the oneness of God, there is no taking of sides. There is only one side, and everyone's on it. Because there is no split, there is no war.

This state of the "absence of conflict" is a state of peace. It is also very quiet, because there is no war, no shrieks of terror, no invasion and no destruction.

To attack is to not know, because it is an attack on knowledge which is an attribute of peace. To attack peace is to not know reality, and is insane. Those who attack are unaware of who or what they are attacking, and attack in the darkness of their own minds.

"God is very quiet, for there is no conflict in Him. Conflict is the root of all evil, for being blind, it does not see whom it attacks." The stillness of God is quiet and peaceful, because in reality there is only harmony and unity. In the "separation from God", the tiny mad idea introduced the idea that some parts of existence could have something that other parts lacked. This provided the starting point for conflict.

Only when there is more than one side, and the potential to side against something, do you have conflict of any kind. War is impossible without separation, specialness, selfishness and isolation. To exclude is to attack, and heaven is only a realm of inclusion.

As soon as we added the idea of exclusivity we entered into war. This is when the war on God began, and it has not yet ended. All of the history of space and time has been a state of war. Even the physical objects, shapes, sizes, distances and so on, are forms of conflict. They conflict because they are different and do not share. They take sides against each other and differ, therefore conflicting.

"It rests on differences; on uneven background and shifting foreground, on unequal heights and diverse sizes, on varying degrees of darkness and light, and thousands of contrasts in which each thing seen competes with every other in order to be recognized. A larger object overshadows a smaller one. A brighter thing draws the attention from another with less intensity of appeal. And a more threatening idea, or one conceived of as more desirable by the world's standards, completely upsets the mental balance. What the body's eyes behold is only conflict."

Even the slightest removal from God is a state of conflict, in which there is no peace, no quiet, no relief, and no stillness. Everyone is constantly on-guard, seeing themselves as deprived and in need of defenses. To be un-whole is to be lacking, and in need, leading to a sense of vulnerability. Without conflict you are invulnerable.

Within the conflicted world of spacetime, including the Earth, everything conflicts all the time. Sometimes there appears to be what we might call "compatibility", in which there is less conflict. There can seem to be lulls in the fighting, interspersed with escalations of tension. Sometimes these break out into what we call wars or arguments or fights but the truth is that the whole system is a constant state of war, until the world disappears.

There was indeed a "war on God" which began at the separation and is ongoing until the atonement is complete. It is not so much a war between good and evil, because the good retains awareness of peace. The good is conflict-free. Only the evil believes in conflict and conflicts with itself. And thus self-attack is its entire system of thinking.

"Do you not realize a war against yourself would BE a war on God? Is victory CONCEIVABLE? And, if it were, is this a victory that you would WANT? The death of God, if it were possible, would be YOUR death. Is this a VICTORY? The ego ALWAYS marches to defeat, BECAUSE it thinks that triumph over you is possible. And God thinks otherwise. This is no war. Only the mad belief the Will of God can be attacked and overthrown."

If it is peace that you seek, then it is the end of conflict that you seek. To end conflict there has to be oneness, a singular side which benefits everyone and excludes no-one. There has to be an unconditional love and a total sharing of everything. This is the only way to end the war. So long as anyone is left out or opposes or attacks or separates themselves off, there cannot be peace.

Some pursue an escalation of conflict and attack and isolation in an attempt to bring an end to the conflict. This is the idea that if you "get it over with" or take it to the extreme, you'll alleviate the horror of the battlefield and constant suffering. Thus suicide starts to become appealing and death suggests a way out of the war.

But death is not the end of conflict, it's simply another form of it. It's just another way of saying that life and death are opposed and attack is a remedy and annihilation is a solution to conflict. It's an insane idea to suggest that dying is better than finding peace, or that death can bring peace. Only God can bring peace. "Yet the retreat to death is NOT the end of conflict. Only God's ANSWER is its end."

God's answer is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the call for a ceasefire. The Holy Spirit is offering healing and reunion and appeals to everyone to join together. All of his solutions are for the benefit of all without exception. His miracles extend to untold numbers of receivers. And his answers are in favor of everyone without taking sides. He is the idea of a return to peace and a real solution to all conflict.

To the ego, the Holy Spirit is the destroyer of worlds, the bringer of the end of space and time, the destructor of bodies and the final blow from God. But in truth the Holy Spirit is the resurrector, the restorer, the healer, the teacher, the therapist, the comforter, the friend and the help that God has sent to bring an end to destruction and death. He is literally the end of death and the guarantee of eternal life. And in eternal life, there is no more war.

A Course in Miracles - Urtext material - reproduced with permission from the Foundation for Inner Peace (acim.org), and the Foundation for A Course in Miracles (facim.org).
▲
MiraculousLiving.com ©2024 Paul West / OmniLogic Arts