Although God's kingdom is a state of changelessness and permanence, THIS world isn't. This world is a world of shifts and changes, transformations, beginnings and endings. Nothing here remains the same whatsoever.

In and of itself this wouldn't be a problem if we would LET IT CHANGE. If we would not fight against, resist, or try to control its fundamental changing nature. If we would not hold onto its states and conditions, not want it to be a certain way, not prefer even that it stay in a certain configuration, we would be better off. But to do this we would have to let the entire world go and be attached to nothing.

The world has to be allowed to change because that's all it CAN DO. And it will be a bit of a rude awakening to say this, but, regardless of what you WANT, you WILL NOT be able to stop it changing. And everything that came will go, and everything that arrived will leave, and everything that was born will die.

This is the nature of illusions, of unreality, or dreams. They are not permanent, they are not immortal, they are not eternal. They canont stay the same. They depend on relativity and differences. They have to constantly fluctuate and move and change form in order to seem to exist at all. There is no stillness, no peace, no rest, no constancy of any kind in spacetime.

In order to recognize this and allow the world to be like this, it means you have to stay entirely in the present moment, in which you resist nothing and have no issue whatsoever about how anything else. No resistance against what arrives, no holding on to what is leaving. And that would be enlightenment.

The problem we have is that we tend to live in a way that assumes things can NOT CHANGE. We form relationships, we build houses and cities, we spend time accumulating, we become attached, we develop favorites, we form emotional bonds, we cling to treasures. All of this is an attempt really to DENY that the world IS going to change, to dream a little while that we can find a way to make the world stay the way we want it.

Most of our urges to do something in the world are based on a drive to try to make it permanent in some way. We build the house we want to live in and decorate it and fill it with objects hoping to make a home that will last. We work on relationships and deepening bonds and falling in love with bodies in the hope that they will always be there. But inevitably it all comes tumbling down because the harsh truth is that the world MUST change, and it will.

"It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while. No lasting love is found, for none is here. This is the world of time, where all things end."

The suffering we experience is the direct result of attempting to CONTROL THE CHANGE. To resist it, to deny that the world has a fundamental nature of change, and attempting to keep things how we want them. Every time that we become invested in NEEDING or WANTING something to stay a certain way, we are going to suffer. Because it IS going to change, and then we are going to be unhappy because we've come to depend on it being that way.

We develop expectations that things will stay how we want them. And then our expectations are dashed and smashed. We set the world up to CAUSE US, to give us what we think we want in a certain specific form that we agreed to. And then it changes, and it fails to give, and then we are left hanging.

When there is a disconnect, a gap, a distance of spacetime, a contrast, between how the world IS NOW in its present configuration, and how we WANT it to be, that contrast is LOSS. It is discord and tension and stress and war. The ego says "I want it thus!", and the world just repeatedly says "no". And so the world moves on and you stay in the past, clinging to what once was, hoping it will continue, hoping it will return, and it never does.

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it."

As such, the world disappoints you over and over again WHEN you are expecting it to be a certain way that you prefer. It can't satisfy your wishes. It can't give you what you want. You can manipulate it and control it and manage it and rearrange it to try to fend off change (death), to try to keep an illusion that it is going to stay the same. You can repaint the walls and repair the rotten wood and redo the garden but again and again the onslaught of time - which is change and death - will keep happening.

The degree to which you have strings attached, psychological investment in, and desire to KEEP the things of the world, to that degree you will suffer when it ignores your wishes and changes anyway. Because it can't help it. You hold onto possessions, places, things, relationships, people, bodies. You resist them changing, you don't want to lose them, you fear loss, you try to preserve bodies for as long as possible, and maybe you don't even conceive of your favorite things coming to an end at some point. But they will.

This is not to be morbid. The world is a dream of death and it can't help but keep recycling itself. It transforms from birth to death and back to birth again. It is utterly incapable of staying the same forever. Expecting that it can and trying to live as though it can will make you suffer.

When something changes "against your will", and you cling to how it was, and live in the past, and don't want to accept the change, you will experience loss and despair. In order to "move on" from the perceived loss and stop perceiving it as a loss, you have to let go of CONTROL, and of wanting things to be how you want them. That means, to move on, is to move WITH the change and let it happen, accepting that change HAS occurred and surrendering to the fact that you can do nothing to stop it.

In a way that seems like beign powerless and a victim, in that you have to accept the change and LET IT change. To let go is to let go of the resistance against change, to admit it has changed, and to stop fighting against it. When you fight change you fight the world. When you fight the world you are also fighting reality and moving away from the present. The only way to live, is to live in the present and go with the flow of whatever happens with no resistance to it.

That means letting go of all your wishes, all your wants and desires and needs, all your dependencies, reclaiming all the power you gave to wordly things to affect you how you preferred, letting all bodies go, letting people come and go, surrendering control and allowing whatever happens. Ultimately you can only fully do that in the present, in the holy instant, in the eternal now. And it means relinquishing all attachmen to everything you value here, because the world holds NOTHING that you want.

It's in the present that you really transcend change, and become changeless, as you observe changes come and go without resistance. It's in the present that you find peace, and God, and love, and become open to what is. It's in the present that you gain "reality contact". And it's in the present that you find freedom from suffering. Dropping the "unreasonable expectation" that the world can be something it can never be, sets you free. Accepting how it is NOW, is the only way.

"Whenever we move from one instant to the next, the previous one no longer exists."

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."

"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it into another world."

"Simply do this: Be still and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false or good or bad; of every thought it judges worthy and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God."

What you are, and what your brother is, is ONLY what has been given by God. Your inheritance, shared with your brother, comes only from God. You are permanent host to God. God is in you. He has shared his Will with you. He has given his Mind to you. You have his freedom and his love. You are ONLY what HE intends you to be.

There is nothing about you which God Himself did not create, and anything He did not create does not exist. If it did not come from God, it is not really there. If God didn't give it to you, or you didn't extend it from Him, it is not yours. You have nothing that does not come from him.

"What God did not create can only be in your own mind apart from His. Therefore, it has no meaning."

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you."

The only seeming temporary difference between you and Jesus is that you think you have things which did not come from God. You think you are something He did not create. You think you have a will that is different to his. You think your body is really happening. You think problems in this world of problems need to be solved. You think there is a world you made to oppose his. Nothing that He did not create exists. Nothing you made is really there.

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it."

If there appears to be sickness, it cannot exist. If God Himself personally did not put the sickness there, it cannot exist. God must be involved in anything real. If a person has any form of sickness, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, it cannot have come from God. If it did not come from God and is instead an attempt to shut God out, then it did not come from reality, nor can it be anything but an illusion.

Your brother cannot be sick because God did not create sickness. Your brother cannot be a body because God did not create bodies. Your brother cannot be unhappy, sad, suffering, dying, afraid, guilty, sinful, condemned, attacked, or even slightly annoyed, because God himself did not put it there.

There is no sickness in God, there is no pain in God, there is no hatred in God, there is no death in God. God does not have cancer or heart disease or diabetes or stroke or heart attacks or liver failure or brain damage or ulcers or lung disease or broken bones. He did not create these things. They do not exist in Him. He did not give them to you or your brother. Therefore they CANNOT be real, they cannot exist, and you and your brother CANNOT really have these things.

We are but to recognize that we have nothing other than what came from God. Only the truth is true and nothing else is true. If God isn't a co-creator of it with you, it is not real. If God Himself did not create it with you, it is not real. If you made it yourself, it is not real. There can be nothing true about the world or the body because God did not create it. He did not create war or sickness or death. These cannot be true, they cannot be real, they cannot be there.

"It is not God's will that you suffer."

"In the real world, there is no sickness, for there is no separation and no division."

"God is very quiet, for there is no conflict in Him."

"There is no difference between your will and God's."

"Here there is no attack upon the Son of God, and YOU are welcome."

"There is no death, and we renounce it now in every form."

"There is no opposition to the truth."

"There is no death because what God created shares His Life."

"There is NO chance that Heaven will not be yours"

"If God is real there is no pain. If pain is real there is no God."

"There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

"There is no place where you can suffer, and no time that can bring change to your eternal state."

"There IS no hindrance to the Will of God"

"A Son of God is happy only when he knows he is WITH God."

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

"There is no emptiness in him."

"There IS no barrier between God and His Son"

"For there is no lack in him."

"And in the Mind of God there is no ending, nor a time in which His Thoughts were absent, or could suffer change."

"If death is real for anything, there is no life. Death denies life. But if there is reality in life, death is denied. No compromise in this is possible."

"There is no veil the love of God in us together CANNOT lift."

"There IS no guilt in you, for God is blessed in His Son, as the Son is blessed in Him."

"There is no fear in perfect love."

"there is no possible alternative to God's plan that will save you"

"There is NO strain in doing God's will as soon as it is also your own."

"IN the Kingdom, there is no teaching OR learning, because there is no BELIEF. There is only CERTAINTY."

"There is no death, because the living share the Function their Creator gave to them. Life's function CANNOT be to die. It must be life's EXTENSION, that it be as One forever and forever, WITHOUT end. "

"God created ONLY the eternal, and everything YOU see is perishable."

"There is no sin."

"There is no death, the son of God is free."

"I am not a body,I am free.For I am still as God created me."

"There is no death because an opposite to God does not exist."

"Today's idea is true because the world does not exist."

"I who remain as God created me would loose the world from all I thought it was. For I am real because the world is not, And I would know my own reality."

God who is the first cause, can only give what he has. All he has is himself. He can give his own nature and extend himself. He cannot add anything which he did not have before he gave it. He cannot add anything of a nature unlike his own. Nor can his creations give anything OTHER THAN God.

If God is love, then God can give love. If God is permanence, then God can give permanence. If God is happy, then God can give happiness. But if God is not death, God cannot give death. If God is not separation, God cannot give separation. If God is not a body, God cannot give a body.

All that God can create is created in his own likeness. He cannot even conceive of anything unlike himself. He has to operate within the laws of the very reality of his own nature. He cannot break his own laws or operate outside of them. All that comes from him has to be entirely like him.

When God creates something all it can do is inherit God. God gives all of himself to it and so it has everything that God has. This is an act of sharing. Any creation must have all the qualities of God.

Since God is a creator, or extender of self-nature, so too must his creations be extenders of their own God-given nature. This means that all creations are REQUIRED to be able to GIVE what they have inherited. They must be able to create fully, and anything they create must have ALL the properties of their creator, including the ability to create in his likeness.

It is not possible for creation to occur whereby what is created is only PARTLY like its creator. Nor can a creation only inherit SOME of its creator's nature. It has to be FULLY GIVEN otherwise it is not fully created. Therefore any child of God can and must create creations, which are themselves AS FULLY CAPABLE OF CREATING as God is. And they CAN ONLY CREATE WHOLENESS.

The nature and attributes of God are therefore inherited and passed down through the generations of creation from father to son to grandson, and the grandson is JUST AS CAPABLE AS GOD and FULLY LIKE HIM still. But similarly, his grandson CANNOT CREATE anything UNLIKE God. And God is not a planet.

Now, when you look at planet Earth, this perfect extension DOES NOT HAPPEN. "Creation is impossible in this world." On Earth, that which seems to exist or which seems to be made or created, unfortunately NEVER inherits ALL of its creator's potential or nature. At best it inherits only SOME of its parents attributes. And as a result, most of the things that exist in this world CANNOT CREATE LIKE THEIR CREATOR. This produces a kind of "dead end" where "created things" cannot create anything at all.

For example, there is no way to claim that a car is capable of creating its own lineage of cars. It is ridiculous to suggest that a house can beget houses, or that a planet gives birth to planets exactly like themselves. Even when you look to objects which are somewhat more organic or reproductive, you still see a LACK OF TRANSFER of the full attributes of the parent to the child.

For example even humans are NOT able to create PERFECT MIRROR IMAGES of themselves in their chidren. Not only do children come from TWO different parents, the child as a single body cannot look FULLY like BOTH of them. It is impossible. Nor does any child inherit ALL of the attributes of the parent. In fact most children are biased toward being more like one parent than another, and no child is an exact mirror image of anyone. This is why all bodies are different and not equal.

This is because physical objects, matter, energy, this world, planet Earth, this galaxy and universe, are NOT A CREATION. They do not exhibit the LAW OF EXTENSION. They CANNOT PASS ON the fullness of the attributes of their creator. This alone also tells you that this world was NOT MADE BY a WHOLE-MINDED creator. It was made by someone who only partially created, or who wanted to not create fully, and who "created" WITHOUT GOD.

This world cannot have come from God. Quite literally, if a potato exists and is real, then God is a potato. But God can't be a potato. Because there are also chickens. And For a chicken to be real and exist, its creator has to be a chicken. God can't be a chicken and a potato because they are different. God has ONE NATURE, not two. And expecially not billions of natures, all of which contradict each other. God is not contradictory.

The more glaringly obvious and simple argument that God did not create this world is simply that IT IS NOT ABLE TO DO THE SAME. It cannot create in its total likeness. It cannot pass on all its attributes to a creation. Its creations DO NOT inherit all of its qualities. And no body, planet, chicken or potato, has ANY ability to CREATE A MIRROR IMAGE OF GOD. Nor are any of them actually LIKE God AT ALL.

It doesn't matter how you frame it. It doesn't matter how you perceive it. It doesn't matter what forgiveness you do. It doesn't matter how much you love or it choose to see a reflection of God in it. It STILL IS NOT like him. It STILL IS NOT A CO-CREATOR. Every child of God has to be a co-creator with God and create in his EXACT likeness. This world simply can never do that. It cannot extend itself at all because it is not really a creation.

This is why "only the creations of light are real." The creations of light produce creations of light. All such creations are perfectly like God. All of them exhibit all of God's qualities - permanence, immortality, perfection, invulnerability, innocence, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotency, happiness, love, eternal life etc. Every single creation of God has ALL of this. Anything which does not have ALL of this is NOT a creation of God.

I'm sorry but when was the last time you saw a fire hydrant that was loving and creative? When was the last time that you put aside your ego perceptions and saw with the eyes of christ and found that fire hydrants suddenly had offspring? When did you last witness a car giving rise to a continual line of creation of more cars? When did you last see a house which got up and testified to being EXACTLY LIKE GOD, meaning that God is a house? These ideas are nonsense.

Regardless of how you see, regardless of how much ego you do or do not have, regardless of what you believe, nothing will ever change the fact that anything you can identify as an object LACKS the ability to EXTEND FULLY. No amount of spiritual awakening will change this fact. Nothing will ever stop the world from being a dead end. It is MADE, not created, in an unwilling attempt to NOT CREATE, which is why it takes on forms which CANNOT create.

Even the reflection of God seen in the world, even the face of Christ, even the real world, even the forgiven world, is never going to change the fact that the WORLD YOU MADE IS FALSE. It is false because it is NOT LIKE the truth. Even when you shine the truth onto it is it still not the truth. Even seen with perfect vision, it is STILL not able to operate like God. No human body will ever produce an exact replica of itself.

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it.

This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world. But the REAL world HAS the power to touch you even here, BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT. And what you call with love WILL come to you. Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, and do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make, is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

And if God created bodies, death would indeed be real. But God would not be loving."

Let's just be clear about something here. God creates or extends reality. Everything real is within God's being. Everything real comes from His Will. Ok. The entire "realm" of God is within Himself, and all of it is real and deliberately created BY HIM.

SO.....

If we claim, God created planet Earth, God created bodies, THEN... we have to also say this:

Earth, bodies, dog shit, death, war, terror, sickness, suffering, starvation, explosions, supernova, ice ages, being eaten alive, piles of puke and diarrhea, cannibalism, murder, destruction, rape and incest, etc... ALL OF IT.... MUST, be part of God, per God's will. If it is God's CREATION, there is no loopholes, no exceptions, no OTHER makers of this stuff. It is all God's. And it's all real. And you cannot escape any of it.

If whatever God creates is within HIS OWN BEING, and is part of HIS OWN SELF, per HIS OWN WILL, then absolutely EVERYTHING within his being must be in accord with His Will, CREATED BY HIM, without exception. And therefore everything "created" MUST reflect God's nature, intention, attitude.

This should be pretty obvious. The ENTIRE CONTENT of whatever "world" He creates must be 100% HIS DOING and entirely WHAT HE WANTED.

So this now means, every single thing in this world, good or bad, right or wrong, happy or sad, is HIS DOING. And this leaves NO ROOM for other wills to have other doings. There are no other causes. This makes God the AUTHOR of all hatred, pain, torture and decay. All suffering is HIS FAULT. HIS WILL.

God causes floods. God causes famines. God causes stars to explode destroying solar systems. God causes black holes to suck up galaxies and civilizations. God causes murder and attack and death. ALL OF IT MUST be part of God's mind and will, IF GOD CREATED THIS WORLD.

And if you can understand why this is entirely correct, you should also realize that if God WERE to do this, to have DONE this, God WOULD BE EXTREMELY CRUEL.

As the opening statement says, if God created BODIES, which includes all forms of bodies not just human, including planetary bodies, IF GOD created them, DEATH IS REAL. Because these bodies DO DIE. Flowers die. People die. Planets die. Galaxies die. IF God created these things, DEATH IS REALITY. And if death is reality, then you CANNOT UNDO IT, you cannot overcome it, you are guaranteed to die forever. And that means there is NO SUCH THING as eternal life. So you better be counting the days until your "inevitable death."

The idea that God made the world is the idea that GOD IS THE EGO!!!!

And that means, quite simply.... GOD WANTS YOU DEAD. That it is GOD'S WILL THAT YOU DIE.

So now, we're in a bit of a predicament, because unless you want this to be TRUE of God, you CANNOT be claiming that God made the world. It literally CANNOT BE POSSIBLE that God had ANYTHING to do with the making of any of this shit, if God is to be loving. It is absolutely ridiculous to suggest, God WANTED there to be suffering, sickness and death.

Now, some people, who are insane and in denial, and cannot accept this fact, try to find another way to look at this situation, so that they can do two things: 1) KEEP the world and keep believing God created it, 2) Explain it in such a way that it is NOT terrible, bad, ugly and murderous. And so what do they do?

They come up with this bullshit idea that if you will simply change your mind ABOUT it, you'll suddenly realize that MURDER AND DEATH are totally LOVELY. That it is NATURAL for animals to eat each other alive. That there is SUPPOSED to be seasons in which things are born, suffer, and die. That if we will just skew our perception enough, supposedly "truly", then we'll see it as GOD INTENDED, as though to say, the things which SEEM like death and cruelty, ARE NOT ACTUALLY that.

And so what does that mean? It means God is totally nuts. Because now God does CRUEL THINGS, on purpose, under the BELIEF that THEY ARE NOT. It makes God out to be an absolute idiot. It justifies murder. It justifies death. It tries to adjust to the world to MAKE IT OK. It sees true perception as a device for changing the MEANING of a meaningless world, to GIVE it meaning, so that it seems meaningful. It's an attempt to find a way to look at this world such that EVEN THE HELL of it SEEMS LOVELY AND ACCEPTABLE.

That, is totally nuts. But that is what some people are doing with ACIM.

This world cannot be God's will. God HAS TO BE CRUEL to produce ANY of this, regardless of how you perceive it, regardless of how you think it was conceived, regardless of how you think God views it. God could not construct EVEN THE POSSIBILITY for suffering. God could not come up with even a scenario where you MIGHT even die. Yet alone to accuse God of MAKING DEATH. And to then try to explain it away by saying it''s not death, really, it's actually totally natural part of life. BULL SHIT.

I want you to consider this deeply. Think about it. God HAS to be TOTALLY FUCKING CRUEL in order to make a world like this. Which,may I remind you...

"Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end?"

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its power declines if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."

And therefore, Because God IS NOT CRUEL AT ALL, He CANNOT have made it.

Nor does it STOP BEING cruel just because you try to LOVE IT. Just because you forgive it, look past it, or truly perceive it, this does not change what it is. A true perception of a world of death doesn't turn it into a world of life. Who can look on death and believe IT IS NOT THAT? No amount of forgiveness has ever stopped animals from eating each other alive, babies from dying at birth, planets colliding, or black holes swallowing whole entire civilizations.

THIS WORLD, is NOT God's creation.

THIS WORLD, is the world WE made when we were delusional and trying to DENY God's world. This is written all over the course. A delusional system of those driven made by guilt. A place where God could enter not. An attack on God. A picture of the crucifixion fo God's son. Make no mistake it is NOTHING LIKE God's creation, and crediting it to him is a MASSIVE disservice. God in his perfection could not come up with the shite that happens in this world. And all of the shit that happens would HAVE TO BE BECAUSE OF HIM if he created it.

God does not create hell, suffering, death, decay, destruction, sickness, meaninglessness, suicide, insanity or hatred. Look around you. This is not reality.

"The world you see is an illusion of a world.God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself."

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever." This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS. For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER."

If you want to SEE REALITY, you have to DENY THIS WORLD. There are two worlds. One you made, one God created. In God's world there are no bodies, no day and night, no stores, no stupid stuff you don't need, no sickness, no death, no muder or attack, no suffering, no time, no loss, no dog shit, and especially no bad weather that kills people. If you want to SEE IT, to see the world GOD ACTUALLY created, you have to STOP LOOKING AT THIS PLANET. Sight of it is COSTING YOU the ability to SEE CHRIST where HE IS, in God's Kingdom, BEYOND THIS WORLD.

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it.

This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world. But the REAL world (heaven) HAS the power to touch you even here, BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT (heaven). And what you call with love WILL come to you. Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made (earth), and do not want. The only effort you need make, ***to give this world away in glad exchange*** for what you did NOT make, is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

Heaven is not like this, folks. God can do a lot better.

There is a law of God, in that God must give all of himself to create something. And what he creates must therefore inherit everything from God. Nothing can be left out. A son of God inherits EVERYTHING. And so the creations of God are created "in the image and likeness" of God.

A Son of God in turn is able to create things by passing onto them ALL that they have received from God. Which literally means, passing God onto them. As such, your creations inherit from you what you have inherited from God. This is extension.

There is no limit to what is given, and no limit to what is received. Therefore, the son of a son has ALL of what the son has, and ALL of what God has. Similarly, you as a creation of a creator MUST be a co-creator, and MUST be able to create life just like God can. You create in the image and likeness of yourself and God.

"If creation is sharing, it cannot create what is unlike itself. It can share only what it IS."

Now, on Earth things are not remotely like this. A fleeting glance at it will tell you that objects are NOT co-creators. They do not inherit all of their parent's attributes. When there is birth, something is lacking. A child is not an identical image of the parents. No two bodies are alike. Every object lacks something that others have. Nothing has everything. And for sure objects cannot create more objects.

For example a car cannot extend itself and produce more cars. Houses don't give birth to houses. And rocks do not produce baby rocks. We might say that organic life forms come closer to creation, in that they do seem to reproduce and generate anew. However, if you look closely you'll see that they DO NOT pass on the fullness of what they have.

"In this world, it is impossible to create."

A child will inherit SOME attributes from one parent, and SOME from another, and will not look entirely like either of them. Each created life form only loosely resembles its creator, is always lacking something, and is never a true "spitting image". Indeed the child is separated from its creator and is even capable of changing itself, without the parent changing.

This happens because physical objects are not creations. They cannot be creations, because they are not CREATORS. They CANNOT EXTEND. This means that not only is the world not a creation of God's, it is not a CO-CREATOR with God either. This is why ACIM says:

"The body cannot create, and the belief that it CAN, a fundamental error responsible for most of the fallacies already referred to, produces all physical symptoms."

There is NO extension in this world. Physical reproduction is separation, it is not creation. Cell division or growth is separation. Birth is separation. There is no sharing and there is no extension of life and no real inheritance. Objects cannot create more of themselves and they cannot hand-down their personal attributes to what they create, if anything.

What this means is, that this world really is founded on an idea of NOT EXTENDING GOD. It is founded on an idea of unwillingness to create, a desire to NOT give fully, a withdrawal and a resistance and a fear. It is founded in a mindset of separating and limiting and reducing and not sharing fully. The end result, is that the world CANNOT GIVE. It cannot give because it does not HAVE anything to give, because it has NOT inherited from God.

"It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give."

A way to describe this situation is simply this. THE WORLD IS A DEAD END. It is what happens when you attempt to STOP creation from happening. It is a lack of extension. As a result, its symbols, images, forms, objects, and matter, all express and represent the idea of ENDING the creative process. You make something, and it's done, and that's the end of it. You create something, and it stops, and it does not keep creating. You cause something, and its game over. Everything ends.

"The world of time is the world of illusion."

"No lasting love is found, for none is here. This is the world of time, where all things end."

"How can a world of time and place exist if you remain as God created you?" Essentially then, the world is not a world of co-creation, or extension, or the continuation of life, or the unending inheritance from one to another, or the total full giving of anything to anyone. It is a world is limits and holding back and unwillingness. A world where life is not allowed to be permanent or eternal, and ultimately a world of death. A dead-end in a dead-end universe.

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."

The reason you cannot escape anything here is because it is a DEAD END, a closed off corner surrounded by walls of division and isolation. This is why everything in the world of form (objects, bodies, planets) leads to death. It was born from an idea of death, an idea of ending life, or putting a stop to creation. It was made from a desire to kill God and his Son and to put a stop to extension. It was not made with love or with an intention that it last forever. And so all things in it die eventually.

"Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death."

There is no other reason for this other than that we had to resist and deny God (life, eternity, creation) in order TO make this world. And to hold it in place, we have to keep denying God. And when God is not denied, the world of death cannot remain. Its forms, its objects, its human bodies, it mountains and rivers, its planets and galaxies, all of it cannot remain without the idea of death. Without the idea of putting a stop to the co-creative extension of eternal life.

"Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one. This is salvation's final goal; the end of all illusions. And in death are all illusions born. What can be born of death and still have life?"

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it."

The world, Earth, is a dream of death. It was made by trying to make heaven DIE, and so was already formed from an idea of death EVEN AS you made it. It is nothing more than a dream and will not remain when dreaming is over. This HAS to be true, otherwise we would be seeing all things creating all things, we would see total inheritance from all objects, we would see endless life and permanence and no death of any kind. This is not a world of life-forms, it is a world of death-forms. It is a world of exile outside of heaven.

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE. "

"Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

A world where things come to an end, is not a living world, or a created world, or an eternal world, or God's world. It cannot create and it cannot live and it cannot exist forever. It must be a world of death, opposite to life, and guaranteed to end, because it is made from the idea of ending existence, and so it even denies its own existence.

"What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it into another world. et the REAL world HAS the power to touch you even here BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT. And what you call with love WILL come to you. LOVE ALWAYS ANSWERS, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, but do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began."

Let me first just say that I don't intend for this to be a "negative" post. Nor is it being pessimistic. But it's going to point out the inherent negativity of the world. Not to try to make it real or be drawn into despair over it, but to just recognize it for what it is. And there is no need to react to it with assertions of "happier interpretations."

There is a tremendous need for us to stop believing that the world is something we WANT. Or something that can offer us any redeeming qualities or content. Jesus actually wants us to learn to recognize that this world has nothing to offer, nothing to give, does nothing, means nothing, and is nothing.

Jesus frames the world - by which I mean EARTH and its physical neighbors regardless of your perceptions - as nothing. And that we are to recognize its nothingness in order to realize that giving it up is not a sacrifice. And that by giving it up, we stand to GAIN EVERYTHING by accepting the reality of the Kingdom that God created for us.

"The world I see has nothing that I want."

"But if I see no value in the world as I behold it, nothing that I want to keep as mine or search for as a goal, it will depart from me. For I have not sought for illusions to replace the truth."

"It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give. What can the sacrifice of nothing mean?"

ACIM is teaching that the world is nothing, it has no value, and everything in it is a pain. It says you do not want this world. That even though you made it you do not want it. And even that you made it BY not wanting it - by not wanting what was in your mind, which you projected outward as a world to try to get rid of it.

"the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, but do not want."

We are confused and caught up in the world because we keep believing that it can offer us salvation, something of value, something beneficial, something we want. And before you start dreaming up denials via the repurposing of the body and world, let just just clarify that the purpose of the world does not change what it IS.

"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."

Our problem is that we do believe the world has something to offer. That it is a great place to live forever, and never leave. That it has real pleasures and that its pleasures entail no pain. But Jesus also teaches that even the pleasures of the world are really pains in disguise, because the cost is that by indulging in temptation you are separating from God, and real pleasure only comes from doing God's will. Pleasure binds you to the body and takes you away from reality, just as pain does.

He wants us to recognize that pain IS pain, and pleasure IS pain, because truthfully we actually don't quite recognize what anything is. We think that pain is pleasure. We even think that sickness is saving us from life, and death is salvation. In our confusion we keep trying to dress up this world and frame it as somewhere that you can enjoy the full fruits of heaven. But as Jesus aptly explains, you CANNOT ESCAPE from the world's suffering by staying in it.

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."

Much of our problem then is that we think there really is a way to be in the world that fixes it up and makes it great and provides room for an entire civilizations to emerge. A massive attempt to tame hell and "civilize" it. But this is really a form of DENIAL. The truth is that ALL of the world's roads lead to death, suffering, loss and disappointment. If you are willing to look at it you'll see this is true. And it will just keep on disappointing you until it disappears. That is its NATURE. It is a device for guaranteeing death.

"The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it"

"Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life."

These are the facts. Everything in spacetime is limited, it is not even really life (only eternal life is life), bodies are mostly destined to die, flowers can't bloom without dying off, entire planets cease to exist after a while, there is decay and destruction everywhere, sacrifice is built into spacetime itself, and there is scarcity everywhere. The world is TURD floating in cess-pool toilet-bowl of spacetime. Failure is inherent to the entire cosmos. This is not being negative about it either, it's being honest and truthful. This is a dream of mortality.

"Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

If we go into DENIAL that the world is basically a one-way trip to hell and death, we will start trying to find ways to PRETEND it's not true. We in fact have built up what we call a "civilized society" (a dysfunction), complete with the "comforts" that avoid as much pain as possible, the clever manipulations of matter that result in seeming "fixes" for problems, we've found all kinds of distractions and ways of making life seem "interesting", and have discovered every imaginable toy and play-thing to occupy our time. And yet all the while death can strike at any instant in any number of ways. And no-one knows what the heck they're doing.

"The intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then."

The world really, in truth, is fundamentally broken, and it was broken from the start. It was made from the idea of the malfunction of reality. It was an attack on order and peace and love and harmony. Its separations are constant and relentless. Its isolation and exclusion are rampant. And not one single particle in all of spacetime is without a form that symbolizes separation, repulsion and rejection. The world is made of denial, and it even denies its own existence.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What ***denies its own existence and attacks itself*** is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and ***earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite*** in every way."

If you look, you'll notice that the world has a plentiful supply of problems lined up for you, and even if you seem to solve one using a highly specific customized solution made just to perfectly fix this one problem, it WILL NOT EVER stop the onslaught of all the other problems it has lined up for you. Not to mention death. The one problem that everyone seems to be in TOTAL denial about, as if it doesn't matter because it's off in the future. And so we pretend we won't die, while nevertheless rushing towards it and making sure it happens.

We have to be willing to put aside all of these adjustments, these wishful thinkings, these rose-tinted glasses, the ignorant bliss, the framing the world as heaven, the trying to make it be our home, our adjustments to it and our attempts to make it out to be a great place. It is nothing. It can be forgiven, like all illusions can, but its nothingness is what makes this possible.

"YOU make the world and THEN adjust to it."

Adjusting to the world, trying to cope with the world, trying to make it more palatable, trying to make it softer and safer and seem to be a place that's not all that bad, is all forms of denial. The desire for the nice materials, the riches, the shiny objects, the fancy cars and expensive buildings, it's all an attempt to pretend that the world is desirable and that it WON'T disappoint you, as you seem to enjoy SHORT LIVED temporary reprieves from its hell-bent destructiveness. And as you hide behind the next "new thing" which claims to offer escape from death.

It is an avoidance of the fact that the world is just fundamentally not EVER going to really work correctly. It cannot function correctly because it is based on an idea of death and destruction. It is fundamentally a world of suicide and self-attack. Everything in it will always go wrong sooner or later. Expecting it not to will make you suffer.

This isn't a pessimistic view, by the way. This is a truthful view. I am not saying that we should be sad and unhappy and despairing because of it. Or that there is no alternative. In fact, Jesus is trying to get us to look at this truth SO THAT we can be recognize it is something we DO NOT WANT, so that we will in turn change our minds and choose the one reality that God created for us. And in which we will be infinitely happy forever. We only keep choosing the world because we mistakenly think it is WORTH HAVING, but how can you want a world made of rejection?

The world is not supposed to be your home, the thing you are in love with, your special adored idol, or your salvation. If you watch honestly you'll see that everything just goes wrong, eventually. It happens, again and again. Stuff breaks. Things get lost. Objects fall off tabletops. Food splats on the floor. The clothes become worn. The beds become mis-shapen. The roofs leak and cave in. The cars break down. The rust creeps in. I like to say, "there goes the physics again". And the assault of time, which is the idea of change and therefore death, guarantees that everything comes to an end.

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

Shall we live in denial that this is true, that the world can NEVER BE HEAVEN? Shall we live in denial that everything in the worl WILL END? Or even that it has death built into it from the start? That it can never turn into a perfect society or an ideal civilization or even a safe place? We try to make it safer with our defenses and castles and our potions and rituals and our avoidance of dangers, but it remains an unsafe place. Can you escape a supernova?

"The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus."

The world cannot GIVE us what we want. It cannot make us happy. It cannot provide us with peace. It cannot satisfy us. It gives only to take away. It fails in order to disappoint. Every road, path, way, direction, goal, ambition and achievement in the world is pointless. Yet the world can present seeming illusions of "things going well", for a while, before it attacks and destroys what it has given. It can tempt you will fake happiness and fake values and fake salvation, only to fail you once again and deceive you in doing so.

"On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once."

"The world you see is merciless indeed, unstable, cruel, unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate. It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while."

Jesus is not being negative when he describes the world like this. The world IS like this, isn't it? It's not a matter of how you look at it. There is no real loss in admitting to this, nor is this an attack upon the world. It isn't an unforgiving accusation. It is just a simple clear look at the world we made, its inherent nature, and its limitations. It is a world of limits, not a world of freedom, which is why it is like a prison for everyone in it.

"Are you not weary of imprisonment? God did not choose this sorry path for you."

"If it (mind) does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants."

The world itself is tyrrannical. It is selfish and separate. Each part of it is separate and at war with every other. Even the forms of objects are in conflict, which is why they are different. Conflicting shapes, sizes, colors, textures, they are all forms of war. Everything the body sees is a form of conflict. Every atom is at war. You cannot turn something that is fundamentally conflicting into something that isn't, because this will erase all of its properties and it will cease to exist.

It is by recognizing the world as "the hell you made", that we might be willing to go the other way. It is when we sugarcoat it as "not hell" in a spiritualizing pretense to make it seem wanted and worthy, that we put ourselves to sleep. We are blinded by perception of form and tempted by its luster and flair. Its picture frame of jewel-encrusted death suggests it is not a world of death but our most cherished possession.

We are to correctly identify that the world IS meaningless and IS nothing and HAS nothing that we want and DOES nothing for or to us and ISN'T our inheritance from God and IS NOT real and HAS no power and is basically absolutely NOTHING. The recognition that "there is no world." How can a world which does not really exist appeal to us and be something we want INSTEAD OF God? At the cost of heaven? And in a bargain where we "gain the whole world and lose our soul"?

True escape from the battleground does not entail the faulty belief that the battleground can be made into a pleasant place. You can rise above it, and you can leave the desert, and you can see it in a better light. But you cannot change what it IS. And denying what it is merely keeps you in hell for longer. And that isn't going to make you very happy.

"The world you see must be denied."

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see."

"A desert is a desert is a desert. You can do anything you want in it, but you CANNOT change it from what it IS. It still lacks water, which is why it IS a desert." ... "The thing to do with a deserve is to LEAVE."

"Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."

"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."

"That is the only environment in which you can be happy. You cannot make it, any more than you can make yourselves. But it has been created for you, as you were created for it. God watches over His children and denies them nothing."

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it."

"God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. Is it a sacrifice to give up pain? Does an adult resent the giving up of children's toys? Does one whose vision has already glimpsed the Face of Christ look back with longing on a slaughter house? No-one who has escaped the world and all its ills looks back on it with condemnation. Yet he must rejoice that he is free of all the sacrifice which its values would demand of him. To them he sacrifices all his freedom. To them he sacrifices all his peace. And to possess them must he sacrifice his hope of Heaven and remembrance of his Father's Love. Who in his sane mind chooses nothing as a substitute for everything?"

"What is the real meaning of sacrifice? It is the cost of believing in illusions. It is the price that must be paid for the denial of truth. There is no pleasure of the world that does not demand this, for otherwise the pleasure would be seen as pain. And no-one asks for pain if he recognizes it. It is the idea of sacrifice that makes him blind. He does not see what he is asking for. And so he seeks it in a thousand ways and in a thousand places, each time believing it is there and each time disappointed in the end. "Seek but do not find" remains this world's stern decree, and no-one who pursues the world's goals can do otherwise."

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end?"

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its powers decline if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."

"YOU DO NOT WANT THE WORLD. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it YOU look upon with love. This GIVES it the only reality it will ever have. ITS value is NOT in itself, but yours IS in you."

"What is meaningless is neither good nor bad. Why, then, should a meaningless world upset you? If you could accept the world as meaningless and let the truth be written upon it for you, it would make you indescribably happy."

In the very big picture, this is what ACIM is getting at. This entire world does not exist. No bodies, no planet, no sun, no galaxies, no spacetime, no events, no happenings, no consequences. It is all nothing. Only the Kingdom of God - a world of spirit and light - really exists at all. Only that means anything and is of any value to you.

"There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it"

"There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere?"

"The world you see does not exist BECAUSE the place where you perceive it is not real."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

We made up this world when we tried to separate from God. We invented time and space. We made the galaxies and planets. We invented bodies to hide in. It's all a hallucinated wishful-thinking dream of denial and the belief in the opposite to eternal life - death.

"Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one."

"There is no world apart from your ideas because ideas leave not their source, and you maintain the world within your mind in thought." "What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who SEEM to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are WHOLLY unreal?"

In order to accept this profound, extremely radical idea, we have to first acknowledge that we do NOT believe it. We are heavily invested in this world, we give it reality, we value it, we want it, we think it has things to offer us, we are attached to it, we fancy ourselves as being human bodies, we seek for bodily relationships, we want to collect stuff, we idolise and worship objects and bodies and places, and we just basically want to stay here as long as possible, all the while believing this is reality.

This is a problem.

In order for us to accept the atonement truth, that none of this has happened and this world doesn't exist, we're first going to have to go through a process of relinquishment. We're going to have to come to recognize, primarily, that this world is not actually a world - it is nothing. Bodies are not really bodies, they are nothing. Nothing is really happening here. Spacetime itself is an illusion. There is no space or time and nothing in it. All events are nowhere. All of the sickness and death is a lie and doesn't exist.

"It (mind) dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere."

This means we're going to have to become willing to not only recognize that the world is nothing and not worth having, we're going to have to stop trying to accumulate it. We're going to have to stop having psychological "ownership", possession and attachment to objects, people and places. We're going to have to recognize that the world holds nothing that we want, that it cannot give us anything, it cannot cause us to be happy, it cannot inherently mean anything to us, and it has no real value. And this also means letting go of all identification with (attachment to) the body, and re-identifying as a spirit being.

This is going to take an uprooting of everything that keeps you rooted in this world, all your commitments, all your investments, all your hopes and dreams and wishes, all your denials and anticipations, all your attempts to deny that this world is made of death. A big part of this involves recognising that death is woven into everything in this world, even in those things which seem like new or just born. That all the world's roads lead to death, all its laws are laws of punishment, and that it will always disappoint you. You have to come to realize that the world will not ever satisfy you, and that in itself can seem depressing.

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it."

"There IS no choice where every end is sure. Perhaps you would prefer to try them all, before you REALLY learn they are but one. The roads this world can offer seem to be quite large in number, but the time must come when everyone begins to see how like they are to one another. Men have died on seeing this, because they saw no way EXCEPT the pathways offered by the world. And, learning THEY led nowhere, lost their hope. And yet this was the time they COULD have learned their greatest lesson. All must reach this point, and go BEYOND it. It is true indeed there is no choice at all within the world. But this is NOT the lesson in itself. The lesson has a PURPOSE, and in THIS you come to understand what it is FOR."

Basically, we have to recognize that this world is fundamentally broken, spacetime is an attack on omnipresence and eternity, everything you try to do here will end in death and destruction eventually, there is no point and no meaning to this life, and then turn around and realize that there MUST be a better way, there MUST be another world, there MUST be a light and a way out of this nightmare. There MUST be a world that means something, there MUST be a truth and a light that you can depend on, and there MUST be a way to live forever. You're not going to find any of that in this world. Heaven is the reality that you heart really desires.

So then you're going to have to sort through all the ways in which you depend on, want, attach to, value, find important, give meaning to, want to keep, believe has power and will, believe can attack or heal you, basically anything to do with this world that might be a reason why you'd want to stay here and not go home to God. You're going to have to give up the whole world.

You're going to have to surrender and let go of absolutely everything and recognize you DO NOT WANT ANY OF IT. And thus you will let it all go and detach from it and become empty handed. And only by being empty handed, or rather, empty of your desire for spacetime and its bullshit offerings, will you be ready and willing to choose heaven.

So when Jesus says there is no world, which is literally true, that is the central theme of the course. The thing to "get". That there is not really a separation, there is not really a spacetime, or a planet earth, or a world of bodies and suffering and death. It's all a fiction.

In order for you to wean your mind off of it, you're going to have to go through a process of purification, of withdrawing power from the world, of recognising the world does nothing to you or for you, that it can no more please and save you than that it can offend and hurt you, of withdrawing all value and desire for the world and all wish to resist its impossible nature, recognizing that the world literally is nothing at all, and that giving up truly entails giving up a non-world.

Empty your hands of this world and reach for what God has given you in your creation in heaven. Accepting atonement is nothing more than accepting God's reality.

"Go on to meet them gladly, and learn how much awaits you, for the simple willingness to give up nothing, BECAUSE it is nothing. The new perspective you will gain, from crossing over, will be the understanding of WHERE HEAVEN IS. From HERE, it seems to be outside, and ACROSS the bridge. But, as you cross to JOIN it, IT will JOIN WITH YOU, and BECOME ONE with you. And you will think, in glad astonishment, that for all this, YOU GAVE UP NOTHING!"

"the sorry gifts of earth are joyously relinquished. In my hands is everything you want and need and hoped to find among the shabby toys of earth"

"It goes against all the thinking of the world, but so does Heaven." "The world will end when its thought system has been completely reversed. Until then, bits and pieces of its thinking will still seem sensible. The final lesson which brings the ending of the world cannot be grasped by those not yet prepared to leave the world and go beyond its tiny reach."

"YOU DO NOT WANT THE WORLD. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it YOU look upon with love. This GIVES it the only reality it will ever have. ITS value is NOT in itself, but yours IS in you."

"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision."

"What loss can be for you in choosing not to value nothingness? This world holds nothing that you really want, but what you choose instead you want indeed!"

"You were willing to accept even death to deny your Father. But He would not have it so, and so it is NOT so. 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."

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely. Life is now recognized as salvation, and pain and misery of any kind perceived as hell. Love is no longer feared but gladly welcomed. Idols have disappeared, and the remembrance of God shines unimpeded across the world. Christ's face is seen in every living thing, and nothing is held in darkness apart from the light of forgiveness. There is no sorrow still upon the earth. The joy of Heaven has come upon it."

'"And so, our Father, we return to You, remembering we never went away; remembering Your holy gifts to us. In gratitude and thankfulness we come, with empty hands and open hearts and minds, asking but what You give."

"Heaven Itself is reached by empty hands and open minds, which come with nothing to find everything and claim it as their own"

"Simply do this: Be still and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false or good or bad; of every thought it judges worthy and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God."

"Here He leans down to lift you back to Him, out of illusions into holiness; out of the world and into timelessness; out of all fear and given back to Love."

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but ****has the mark of death upon it****. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it."

Jesus here tells us that this world, Earth, which comprises homes and cities and roads etc, has the mark of death upon it. That even from the start, even when it was made, it already had death and disappointment infused into it. It was made in an idea of death, being the idea of the opposite to eternal life. This is because "Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem." and so an illusory world is really a dream of death.

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it ****are the laws of death****."

Recognize then that by death he's talking about the fact that everything in spacetime, including spacetime itself, is founded on the idea of an interruption to life, or an attempt to change the eternal into the temporary. Things coming to an end. Things changing over time. Things decaying and rotting and dying. Things becoming sick. Things lacking and sacrificing and losing. Even things growing and transforming. All various forms of limitation. A limit on life and on eternity. A notion of "not forever".

One thing that I've been doing lately is just accepting the fact that this world's laws, the laws of physics, are just automatically set up to fail. Chaos becomes possible because of the way that objects interact with each other seemingly randomly. Your car breaks down. Objects fall on the ground. You bump into things. Stuff breaks. Your new toy has a mark on it. Your clothes wear out. Your food rots. Your house needs repairs. Your kitchen smells bad. And your clothes are all dirty.

We could struggle against such things as if we have an expectation that the world can be perfect or free from defects. And some people try to control the world and twist it into an illusory palace of perfection. But the problem is, it can't be that. It is fundamentally rooted in the idea of death, of interruption and inconsistency and difference and change and transformation. All the royal castles crumble. Always there is the drive to become something it's not now.

If we try to expect that we can make a life where these things are avoided, or you can make a little oasis or illusion of safety and security, you really are in denial. Sooner or later the grim reaper is coming to look for you and yours. Either in terms of bodies dying or in terms of melting your phone or sickening your pets or scorching your grass or breaking your flowers or freezing your toes or puking in your shoes or whatever.

"Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

It's better to recognize this is the way of the world, based on its laws. It's just how it is. It's how this whole system, this whole universe, functions. There's no point in being mad about stuff breaking, or things falling on the floor, or stuff getting trapped in the door, or physical objects doing their quirky strangely annoying things, especailly when you're in a bad mood. They kind of can't help it. They are governed by rules that force them to "behave" this way, like they always will. Even in a forgiven world, the cookies still crumble.

I've been finding a lot more patience and forgiveness in just accepting that this is the functioning of this whole world. It just is broken from the start. The laws of physics are simply "at it again". Gravity is messing with you. Forces and energies are messing with you. And none of it is really "personal" because it's just doing what it does blindly and mindlessly. To expect it to ever not be like this must be some kind of insanity because a separated world cannot help but act this way.

We do need to accept that we did in fact make a fundamentally broken world. A world that does not really function properly according to the laws of God. A world where stuff is pretty much destined to change and break and grow old and die eventually. Where things collide and conflict and seem to attack, and where you can seemingly even be hurt - a notion which is utterly impossible in heaven's reality.

"The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus." "The laws of chaos govern ALL illusions. Their forms conflict, making it SEEM quite possible to value some above the others."

Jesus is clear that you cannot really want this world, because it is not a perfect world. It is not heaven. It was made in a mad idea of rebellion against reality. It is a protest against harmony and peace. It was made to attack God and to attempt to depict the death of his creations.

"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."

"YOU DO NOT WANT THE WORLD. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it YOU look upon with love."

"Here is the world you do NOT want"

We have to be willing to look at this. The world is not EVER going to satisfy you and make you happy. It is not ever going to give you what you want. It is not ever going to feed your properly. It is not ever going to make you well or heal you or fix your problems. It has a neverending supply of madness and problems and difficulties. ALL its roads are pointed towards change, dissolution and death. Even planets and stars and galaxies die off eventually. And problems are completely built into its chaotic systems.

"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."

The world does not really give you any real choice, because ALL of its options are rooted in death. This isn't a pessimistic or negative view either. It is an honest and truthful view. The entire system was set up on a basis of separation and attack. Everything about it is aimed towards punishment for original sin, trying to bring about the death of life and the end of God.

"The ego's laws are strict, and breaches are severely punished. Therefore, give no obedience to its laws, for they ARE laws of punishment." "The laws of sin DEMAND a victim. WHO it may be makes little difference. But death MUST be the cost and MUST be paid."

"Sin calls for punishment"

"For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."

Can you accept that everything in this world was set up to die, right from the start? That this its inherent NATURE? Because only by looking at that and recognizing "there is no way out", on its terms, can you be willing to seek for a better way.

This is just how the world is set up. There is no point in denying it. There is no point in expecting it to behave differently. The laws of physics work how they work. The only reason we become angry about stuff breaking and things failing and attacks happening and so on is because we have an unrealistic expectation that the world isn't going to be like this. That somehow in the world we can make a little safe corner where the bad things don't happen, to fend off death and keep attack at bay. Good luck with that delusion.

Now, of course if this were the only state of affairs then we would indeed be screwed. But fortunately we are not stuck inside this closed-loop of hell. There is another way. There is another perception and another belief and another reality. This other way, however, isn't a rose-tinted glass of pretending in denial that the world isn't a world of death. Nor is it a form of denial that says it's okay that things die and suffer. Or an attempt to dress up the world or to expect it to be something it's not. The world can't work because it began with an impossible goal.

We can become miraculous, in that we can in fact override the laws of death. We can overcome the laws of physics. We can see past what the world was made to see. We can see with a mechanism of vision that doesn't depend on the physical eyes. We can overlook and not hold the world against itself, or condemn it for its shortcomings. We can recognize that a world made in error cannot help but be mistaken. And we can disregard notions that the world is real in its sin and attack. Indeed we are supposed to do this in order to be forgiving and to be set free from suffering.

For me lately, I have been doing a lot of physical stuff. Rearranging the house, buying and assembling new furniture, throwing out old stuff, cleaning, organizing, moving things around, and to some extent enjoying new stuff. But I've also become aware that all of these things are already fundamentally limited in what they are and can be. I'm not in denial or pretending that they can be perfect.

The furniture with the dents in it, the gaps between the planks of wood, the poorly written instructions, the missing parts, the slightly wrong color, the stuff that doesn't fit, the wrongly shipped item, the misunderstood specs, all the ways that there is shortcomings and failures and forms of death. Lacks of perfection and order.

But I feel mostly unbothered by all these things because I am no longer expecting the world to be capable of better. It is not capable of being perfect, so I now accept that "good enough" or "less than perfect" is the best it can acheive. And then I can let it go instead of trying to find perfection where it is impossible.

We made a broken world. It can't fix itself. And it's not capable of taking on a form of perfection. It will not ever fully satisfy us. And even in forgiveness where it is seen beyond and reflects heaven, even then it still falls short in its forms and its functioning. Ultimately, the world cannot make you happy. It cannot give you peace, or take it away. It cannot be the cause of anything. Nor can it really have any meaning of its own.

At best it can reflect meaning you give to it, and that is all, because by itself it is an empty void. We made a meaningless, chaotic, broken world, and we need to simply recognize this about it. The world is not our home.

"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."

The sooner you realize this the better, provided you also realize what CAN make you happy. What makes you happy is to laugh at the fundamental brokenness of the world. To realize the WHOLE THING is limited and false and can't do what you hoped it could do. The whole world is handicapped and disabled, falling short and incapable of eternal life. That's all it can be. And yet there is another world, a world we want, where this need not be.

"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. The miracle, therefore, has a unique function, and is motivated by a unique Teacher, Who brings the laws of another world to this one."

"But we are thankful, too, the need is done to walk the world of limits, and to reach the Christ in hidden forms and clearly seen at most in lovely flashes. Now we can behold Him without blinders, in the light that we have learned to look upon again."

"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it into another world. Yet the REAL world HAS the power to touch you even here BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT. And what you call with love WILL come to you. LOVE ALWAYS ANSWERS, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, but do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

"God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. Is it a sacrifice to give up pain? Does an adult resent the giving up of children's toys? Does one whose vision has already glimpsed the Face of Christ look back with longing on a slaughter house? No-one who has escaped the world and all its ills looks back on it with condemnation. Yet he must rejoice that he is free of all the sacrifice which its values would demand of him. To them he sacrifices all his freedom. To them he sacrifices all his peace. And to possess them must he sacrifice his hope of Heaven and remembrance of his Father's Love. Who in his sane mind chooses nothing as a substitute for everything?

You might think that the only blocks to awareness are in your mind. ie, in your brain. You might think that there is no such thing as a block "outside your body."

But the world you see out there, is coming from your mind. And in fact, your mind has made a world. It is hallucinating a world. This means that effectively, your blocks to awareness will be regarded as outside of you, just as much as internal.

In fact, let's even go so far as to say, that blocks to awareness can be PHYSICAL. Especially since "you maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts" and "both Heaven and Earth are in your mind."

Let's see what Jesus says about this:

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant."

So Jesus is saying, THE WORLD - Earth, physical matter, is standing like a BLOCK in front of the face of Christ. ie the world's FORMS are BLOCKING your sight of Christ. They are coming between you, getting in the way. This is no mere symbol or metaphor either. Literally you've put what appears to be a PHYSICAL WALL between you and God.

Jesus also goes on to refer to the seemingly solid world as a block.

"Sin is a block, set like a heavy gate, locked and without a key, across the road to peace. No-one who looks on it without the help of reason, would try to pass it. The body's eyes behold it as solid granite, so thick it would be madness to attempt to pass it. Yet reason sees through it easily, BECAUSE it is an error. The form it takes cannot conceal its emptiness from reason's eyes."

Notice how the body's eyes are looking upon this "block of sin" as though it is SOLID GRANITE. Thick and solid seeming. Physical matter. This is "the veil". It is a BLOCK to awareness of Christ. A PHYSICAL WALL, made of thought in your mind.

He also notably tells you that REASON is able to SEE SENSE by OVERLOOKING this block. Recognizing the block as an "error". Which means physical objects are ERRORS. They are the FORM of error, the various forms that error (the separation idea, belief in sin) has taken. And here we are also clued in that physical forms are "forms of error."

"ONLY the form of error attracts the ego. Meaning it does not recognize, and does not know if it is there or not. Everything that the body's eyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception, a distorted fragment of the whole, without the meaning that the whole would give. And yet mistakes, regardless of their form, can be corrected. Sin is but error in a special form the ego venerates. It would preserve all errors, and make them sins. For here is its own stability, its heavy anchor in the shifting world it made; the rock on which its church is built, and where its worshippers are bound to bodies, and believe the body's freedom is their own."

Jesus also refers to solidity, in equation with illusions. Ie the physical world which SEEMS SOLID, is an illusion.

"If you but recognized how little stands between you and your awareness of your union! Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous, solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet, within you, there is a force which no illusions can resist. This body only seems to be immovable. This force is irresistible in truth. What, then, must happen when they come together? Can the illusion of immovability be long defended for what is quietly passed through and gone beyond?"

So to the body's eyes, the forms of error, physical objects, solid matter, their seeming "solidity" "weight" "firmness" etc.... these things all seem real. And failing to OVERLOOK them, is a lack of forgiveness. They form "the veil", which covers up the face of Christ. In fact, this world of SOLIDITY is an attempt to BLOCK YOUR VISION. The physical world, including Earth, and all the stars and galaxies, were made as a place where God could enter not. ie, were made as a WALL to BLOCK YOU from God. To come between you. To make it seem like you are not in the Kingdom.

To the body's eyes, "these eyes made not to see will never see" were made so that you CANNOT see the face of Christ. They were designed to LOOK AT the outside surface of nothing, matter, whereby photons are reflected off (denied) and bounce into the eyes to tell you "the world is there, it is solid, it exists." But because the world BLOCKS vision, it is the fact that your sight was BLOCKED BY the solid matter, that you have not ACTUALLY SEEN. You did not OVERLOOK the surface of the physical objects, and so did not see the face of Christ. "Nothing so blinding as perception of form."

"The body's eyes see ONLY form. They cannot see beyond what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on error, and not see past it. Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing. To this distorted form of vision, the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."

"It is not Will for Life, but wish for death, that is the motivation for this world. Its ONLY purpose is TO PROVE GUILT REAL."

Here's Jesus is clearly stating that the physical human body's form of sight, can ONLY see forms, and they only look on ERROR, and this error of form they look at is the granite block of SIN. Which means that the physical world is made of sin, and the body was designed to make the sin seem real. The body's vision STOPS at the SURFACE of nothing (forms, objects) and fails to see past it. This forms A SOLID PHYSICAL WALL, which stands between YOU and THE TRUTH (heaven/God/Christ).

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

"How is this done? It is extremely simple, being based on what this little kingdom really IS. The barren sands, the darkness, and the lifelessness are seen only through the body's eyes. ITS vision IS distorted, and the messages IT transmits to you, who MADE it to limit your awareness, ARE little and limited, so fragmented that they are meaningless. From the world of bodies, MADE by insanity, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind which made it. And these messages bear witness to this world, pronouncing it as true. For YOU sent forth these messengers, to bring this BACK to you.

Everything these messages relay to you is quite external. There are NO messages that speak of what lies underneath, for it is NOT the body that could speak of this."

The body can only "see" BLOCKS, and it sees them precisely BECAUSE vision STOPPED at their surface and failed to go beyond. Seeing with the body is thus NOT seeing at all, it is false perception. It is a state of seeing the interior surface of a walled-in room of hell and darkness, as if it's all that exists. A failure to look through or past the walls (with a kind of x-ray vision, christ vision), makes the world seem like it is SOLID and REAL and ALL THAT EXISTS. And believing this is blindness. It's an unawareness that the Kingdom exists, and an attempt NOT to see God.

"The body's eyes will NEVER look on it. Yet they will SEE what it dictates. The body will remain guilt's messenger, and will act as it directs, as long as YOU believe that guilt is real. For the REALITY of guilt is the illusion which seems to make it heavy and opaque, impenetrable, and a REAL foundation for the ego's thought system. Its thinness and transparency are not apparent, until you see the light BEHIND it. And then you see it as a fragile veil, before the light."

So here Jesus is clearly saying, that there is a light BEYOND the veil, beyond the wall of flesh, beyond the granite block of sin, beyond physical matter. By becoming able to SEE this light, you MUST use spiritual vision (christ vision) which is forgiving and DOES NOT SEE BODIES. "Forgiveness does not look upon bodies." It looks PAST bodies, past the illusion of form, past error, past the WORLD, TO the light. To the face of Christ. The face of Christ is effectively BEHIND the world (really outside of it, because we're inside a bubble of illusions, dreaming of exile).

So what this really adds up to is, BLOCKS TO AWARENESS are not simply your attitude about the world. They are not taking place just "in my head". There quite literally has been a PHYSICAL BARRIER placed outside you as the world, designed to tempt you to believe that THE WORLD is real, so that you do NOT SEE reality. So long as you use the body's eyes to see it, you will be blinded. You cannot look AT it with forgiveness to try to TURN IT INTO a Kingdom of God. It is made of the denial of the Kingdom. The world itself has to be OVERLOOKED.

And that means, blocks to awareness are not just inside your mind in the way you might think of them. The planet is a block to awareness. If you BELIEVE IN IT, your mind agrees with your body's eyes and you become unable to see. You instead perceive hell. This is false perception. The world you made is hell, the opposite of heaven. "Earth, heaven's opposite in every way." But if your mind chooses NOT to believe what your eyes are telling you is there, it becomes able to OVERLOOK what the body sees to see THROUGH IT, PAST IT, like a thin veil.

You not only overlook a block to awareness "in your mind", you overlook it "out there" also. By not believing in the world, you do not SEE IT. And this is based on the fact that your mind IS LARGER THAN THE UNIVERSE. It must be, because it CONTAINS planet Earth. If size can be considered real, your mind MUST be bigger than your body. In fact all bodies are within it, including all galaxies. And you put them INSIDE your mind to BLOCK awareness of where you really are - in Heaven. To remove the block, therefore, is ultimately to REMOVE THE WORLD.

"This world you see (with the body's eyes) MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision (christ vision). YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS. For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER."

"You do not really want the world you see (with the body), for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

You must DENY that what the body sees is real. You must OVERLOOK everything it shows you. You must NOT BELIEVE the testimony of the flesh. You must IGNORE it. You must look through its lies, its errors, its illusions, be NOT deceived, and look PAST THE WORLD, past your brother's body, to reality. This is what Christ vision allows you to do, and the development of this overlooking is the whole purpose of the workbook.

"The purpose of these exercises (workbook intro) is to train the mind to a different perception of everything in the world. The workbook is divided into two sections, the first dealing with the undoing of what you see now, and the second with the restoration of sight."

"Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

Look at that.

Christ vision DOES NOT look up on a body. It does not regard the body as "there". It looks PAST it. That is forgiveness.

It beholds a light BEYOND the body. That light is the face of christ. It's reality, or at least the real world.

It sees NO separation (no forms).

It sees BEYOND all happenings and events that the body seems to suggest are still there, while fixated on the light that is BEYOND it.

BEYOND WHAT CAN BE TOUCHED (the physical).

So as you "remove blocks to awareness", you are learning NOT TO SEE the blocks. To see beyond them. Which means seeing beyond the WORLD, which is really in your mind as AN HALLUCINATION OF A WORLD. To not believe in the blocks allows you to forgive the world, and this means being able to LOOK BEYOND it to reality. Because the world is an illusion, that you made up, to block your vision, so that you would not be aware of God.

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals."

Once the face of Christ is seen, perfectly, the physical world - the veil - which hangs like a block - disappears completely from your sight. The world is forgotten. Perception translates to knowledge and you wake up in Heaven.

"Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the Face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream. This is the gift the Holy Spirit holds for you from God your Father."

"Now is there silence all around the world. Now is there stillness where before there was a frantic rush of thoughts that made no sense. Now is there tranquil light across the face of earth, made quiet in a dreamless sleep. And now the Word of God alone remains upon it. Only That can be perceived an instant longer. Then are symbols done, and everything you ever thought you made completely vanished from the mind which God forever knows to be His only Son."

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

"The stars will disappear, and night and day will be no more. All things that come and go, the tides, the seasons, and the lives of men; all things that change with time and bloom and fade, will not return."

"The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish. Perception will be meaningless, when it has been perfected. For everything that has been used for learning, will have no function. Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible, will occur. The perception of the real world will be so short, that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world, and have been made ready for Him."

Everything in the world is an illusion. Everything. And this includes the bodies which are seemingly healthy, the bodies which are seemingly sick, and the bodies that seem dead. This also means that trees which have fresh green leaves are as much an illusion as trees whose leaves have fallen and are decaying. Images of a lovely sunset are just as much an illusion as stormy skies. Animals leaping around happily is just as much illusion as carcasses on the side of the road.

In the ego world, there are symbols, because it is a dream. And sometimes these symbols seem to imply that some parts of the world are different to others, or mean something that other parts do not mean. So we are used to the idea that a dead body is the idea of death. But bodies that are walking around are also not really alive either. We can think that when the leaves are falling from the trees, it's death happening, but perhaps we didn't realize when the leaves were on the trees that it was still a dream of death.

So in this world, there is deception all over the place. Things appear to be something they are not. The symbols that look like life only seem to be life, while the ones that look like death are only different in their forms. And it is us who have given meaning to them and decided "this one means death and that one means life". All of the forms, in whatever condition they are, are forms of death. As Jesus tells us:

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. *****In any state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it seems like life; at worst, like death.***** Yet both are judgments on ****what is not life****, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. Outside of Heaven (e.g. on Earth), only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true. "

So because illusions are forms (objects, shapes, materials, bodies, planets etc), their content is not true. They are illusions of life and death. An illusion of life is not really life. Life actually means ETERNAL LIFE, that which can never perish, that which is not born and does not grow and does not die and has no sickness or transformation. Life means that which never changes because it is permanent. Only in Heaven's reality is there eternal life, and that is the only REAL life there is. The rest of what we call life, the "life forms" of this world, are an illusion of life AT BEST.

"Either all things die, or else they live and cannot die. No compromise is possible."

Here Jesus is contrasting vertically the two states or levels. In Heaven all things live and cannot die. In illusions, all things die and cannot really live. The world we see is an illusion of a world that God did not create.

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

So having been in this world a long time, we are likely very used to the deception that some things in the world are more alive than others. Some people seem to have more health than others. Some bodies seem more dead than others. This is an illusion. All bodies are illusions, and their condition or state does not make them more or less real. One is not really more or less dead than another. Even a dead body in the ground is, in terms of miracle mindedness, no more dead than a living body. This is why for a miracle worker "dead-seeming" bodies can be converted or resurrected into living-seeming bodies as a kind of "translation of form".

"EVERYTHING is accomplished through life, and life is of the mind and in the Mind. The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life."

Again Jesus is telling us life is to do with mind and heaven, not to do with bodies. And it's reinforced by this idea.

""And the last to be overcome will be death." Of course! ***Without the idea of death there is no world.*** All dreams will end with this one. This is salvation's final goal; the end of all illusions. And in death are all illusions born. What can be born of death and still have life? But what is born of God and still can die? "

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem."

So every illusion, every part of the dream, all objects, all bodies, in all states and configurations, are all made of illusions, and ALL illusions are made of death. We have to therefore realize that death does not mean HORIZONTAL death, as in, at the end of the road of time for a given object. Or a state that follows on after another. Rather, the ENTIRE world we made, the universe, is all a dream of death. This whole planet is an idea of death.

VERTICALLY, anything on this level physically is an attempt to remove ourselves away from where eternal life is, away from Heaven. To move down a level. To drop into illusions, to sink into a dream world. And that world is based entirely on the idea that reality, Heaven, is not real. It's the idea of separation or opposition to Eternal Life, that you are exiled and outside of the Kingdom where eternal life is. And so it's the idea of NOT being alive. It's an idea of the opposite to life and permanence. And everything in it, no matter its form or appearance, is an illusion of death or partial life at best.

Even the most vibrant bunch of flowers is actually an illusion of not life. Even a newborn baby, of any species, is not a "new life" but rather a new form of death. Even as the season of spring seems to give life to new fresh growth, it is only later to transition into the season of "dying" and decay simply because both the birthing and dying are built into the system. Anything made of illusions has the mark of death upon it, meaning it already is formed from ideas of death and separation at the moment it is made. Every particle of matter is a separation idea and therefore an idea of opposition or attack upon God.

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. ****Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it.*** Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust ****even as you made it.****"

So even at the instant that illusory things are first formed, they are formed FROM the idea of death and separation and limitation. They have it built in. If they are born at all, death is guaranteed and "happening" already. Because all forms are lacking in some way, they are all lacking what the other forms seem to have, and all of them are inherently limited and limiting. None of them are whole, none are complete, and not have eternal life. And every single body is an idea of being little and lacking and less than everywhere.

"This aching world (Earth) has not the power to touch the living world (Heaven) at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world."

So this world is not the living world. The Kingdom of God is the living world, because life means permanent life, not some temporary mockery of life. It is insane to think that real life is a matter of existing a little while and then dying at a bodily level. Life perpetuates and sustains and continues forever and cannot be destroyed. God creates ONLY the eternal.

"Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end?"

"What God creates is eternal."

A big part of awakening then must entail the re-framing or re-evaluating of everything you see here. We need to realize the dream entails a hierarchy of illusions, and this hierarchy is entirely fictional. And everything it suggest through different FORMS is a deception and a temptation to believe something that isn't true.

Big bodies, small bodies, healthy bodies, dead bodies, are all the same illusion. None of them are more real than another. None of them are really closer to God. Big sickness, small sickness, tiny headache, massive tumor, none of them are any different. The only reason you would believe they are different, or more or less serious, is by looking to the appearance of their form and taking it as evidence or MEANING as to what the thing is. Every single illusion is deceptive. Every appearance is a lie.

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are? Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. ***They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see.*** ***They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful.*** Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."

When we reach a state of not being deceived by ANY appearance, we are in miracle mindedness. Which is right mindedness. Here the hierarchy of illusions is completely flattened and meaningless. There is no difference between a form in one configuration or another. We are not deceived by physical form, shape or appearance. One type of appearance does not trigger worse reactions than another, or any reactions, nor means something different to the rest. A "dead" appearing body is not regarded as any more dead than a living one. As such raising the dead is seen as NO MORE DIFFICULT than curing a headache, because all illusions are the same and you are not deceived by them. You can raise the dead as easily as heal an upset feeling.

"You who are dedicated to the incorruptible have been given through your acceptance, the power to release from corruption. What better way to teach the first and fundamental principle in a course on miracles than by showing you the one that seems to be the hardest can be accomplished first?"

When you are not deceived by illusions of life and death, forms of sickness, appearances of severity, you cannot be afraid, you can only be miraculous. Miracle mindedness transcends the world of illusions because The Miracle IS the state of Christ Vision which overlooks all forms. There is, from that position, nothing that your holiness cannot do. And it is from this state that you are a miracle worker. Here you are using miracles as demonstrations to PROVE that what appears to be death is not death, and you are under no laws but God's, where miracles break all the illusory laws of the world of appearances.

"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world."

"Miracles reflect the laws of eternity, not of time."

"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you can see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for ****miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it.**** Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His results, you will understand where He must be, and finally KNOW what He is."