"Loss is not loss when properly perceived. Pain is impossible. There is no grief with any cause at all and suffering of any kind is nothing but a dream."
I had to think a bit on this one.
It reminds me of denial, because Jesus says that denial when properly perceive attests to the thing being denied.
When you deny something, you're saying that you believe the thing DOES EXIST, but that you are hidden from it, seemingly unaware of its existence. Just because you are unaware of it doesn't however make it go away for real. The denial doesn't CHANGE what's there, it just changes how you look at it.
Similarly perhaps, loss is not loss, because if you believe you have lost something, you BELIEVE IN that thing existing. You're saying, I believe I have lost this real thing. If it is real, if it exists, if you COULD lose it, it must still exist and so is not really lost. The loss attests to the continued existence of the thing.
So if I say I'm having loss about someone being dead, for example, I'm really saying that I believe in the existence of what has died. The loss comes from the belief that I am being denied something that exists. I want it, believing it's there to be wanted, but cannot seem to have it. This produces suffering because I am out of alignment with reality.
Obviously for example the "loss of a body" is really a belief that the body is real and is the person, and that the body is "gone", and therefore lost. But I can't really truly be believing that the body is gone if I'm believing I have "lost it", because the loss is affirming the belief in its existence, its reality, its importance.
In a way then, loss is itself a denial, in which it i claiming to be an experience of "having lost something", but is really a way to try to "hold onto something" and let it NOT be lost. Because the so-called loss, really is an undercurrent of a "belief in having" the thing. It seems like loss, but it is an attempt to gain. So loss realise is the flip side of a coin, and on the other side is attachment.
The loss therefore is an illusion, a suggestion that only one side off the coin exists. That there is only loss, and that there is no actual belief in the existence of the thing. But you can't have loss without the belief in it, just as you can't have denial without the belief in the existence of what you are denying. To say I am feeling loss is to say I am pretending to believe something is gone while believing it hasn't. That I'm wanting it to exist even more but this wanting is disguised as not having.
It's all rather complicated. lol But as Jesus says, loss when properly perceived is not loss. When properly perceived it's really an assertion of having, of holding onto, of possessing. A grasping.
Jesus also goes on to say that grief and suffering are nothing but a dream. In this sense, what seems like a loss can't really be a loss because only dream-stuff seems to have gone away. There is no loss in God, nothing related can ever be lost, and no part of myself - one with everything - can be lost.
Denial itself is a defense, but it can be used positively or negatively. In its negative use it is used to deny God, reality, truth. In its positive use, it is used to deny the denial of truth, to deny ego, to deny illusions and unreality.
The entire separation from God is simple a misuse of denial. Blocks to awareness are denials of what is true in God. The ego is nothing but denial of reality. All sickness and death are denials. The world is the denial of heaven. Bodies are the denial of the soul. The opposite of denial is acceptance - ie the acceptance of the truth and reality of God - the atonement.
Here are some interesting quotes about how we use denial in the wrong way, in support of ego and in denying God, reality, and truth....
"Denial of Life perceives its opposite, as ALL forms of denial replace what IS, with what is NOT. No-one can really DO this, but that you can THINK you can, and BELIEVE YOU HAVE, is beyond dispute."
"It is the DENIAL of the spark that brings depression, and whenever you see your brothers WITHOUT it, you ARE denying God."
"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival."
"Arrogance is the denial of love, because love shares and arrogance withholds."
"What makes this world seem real except your own denial of the truth which lies beyond?"
"For the separation is only the DENIAL of union, and, correctly interpreted, attests to your eternal knowledge that union is true."
"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH."
"Projection arises out of FALSE DENIAL."
"But in every hurtful thought you hold, wherever you perceive it, lies the denial of God's Fatherhood and your Sonship."
"Your denial made no change in what you are. But you have split your mind into what knows and does not know the truth."
"Accepting His Son as guilty is denial of the Father so complete, that knowledge is swept away from recognition, in the very mind where God Himself has placed it."
"YOUR denial of reality precludes ACCEPTANCE of God's gift, BECAUSE YOU HAVE ACCEPTED SOMETHING ELSE IN ITS PLACE."
"Guilt hides Christ from your sight, for it is the denial of the blamelessness of God's Son."
"Denial of light leads to failure to perceive it. Failure to perceive light is to perceive darkness."
"That is why the ego IS the denial of free will."
"Denial is NOT mere negation. It is a positive miscreation. While the miscreation is NECESSARILY believed in by its own creator, it does not exist at all at the level of true Creation."
"The mind can make the belief in Separation VERY real and VERY fearful. And this belief IS the devil. It is powerful, active, destructive, and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood. Never underestimate the power of this denial. Look at your lives and see what the devil has made."
"Yet this is what denial DOES, for BY it you ACCEPT insanity, believing you can make a private world, AND RULE YOUR OWN PERCEPTION. But FOR this, light MUST be excluded."
"Being made out of the denial of the Father, the ego has no allegiance to its own Maker."
"In the darkness you have obscured the glory God gave you, and the power that He bestowed upon His guiltless Son. All that, lies hidden in every darkened place shrouded in guilt, and in the dark denial of innocence."
"For eternity is NOT regained by still one more denial of the Christ in him."
"And therefore those who look on sin ARE seeing the DENIAL of the real world."
"This is not difficult to realize in some forms which these self-deceptions take, for the denial of reality is very obvious."
"Can the ego teach truly, when it overlooks truth? Can it perceive what it has DENIED? Its witnesses DO attest to its DENIAL, but hardly to WHAT it has denied. The ego looks straight at the Father and does not see Him, for it has denied His Son."
"This is a very primitive solution, and has led to a denial of the spiritual eye, which always depends on light."
"DENIAL of the error results in projection."
A person has a real self, and temporarily an unreal self. The real self is the soul, and the unreal self is the ego. The ego is nothing more than the attempt to DENY the real self. Denying the real self produces an appearance that the real self is NOT there, and all that's left is the unreal self. As if a person is ONLY an ego.
If you look upon a person through YOUR ego, which is a very narrow exclusive way of seeing, blinded by form and unable to see past the surface of a person (literally their body), you fail to see their real self. If they are ONLY an ego, then their ego is their whole reality, their whole truth, and they REALLY are being egoic. And now anger seems justified.
Then you'll think the person's unreal self is their real self. As if there is nothing else. Denial does this because it hides or blocks awareness of anything more. The soul is hidden by this denial, so if someone is denying their soul by being egoic, they appear to be ONLY an ego. As if they do not have a "higher self". As if their real self doesn't even exist.
The strange thing is that the higher self and the seemingly lower self both exist simultaneously. In truth, the higher self is the only real self and exists forever. But in time, temporarily, the lower ego self seems to exist as well. While the ego is an attempt to destroy the real self, by opposing and denying its existence, denial doesn't actually remove anything. What is being denied is still there.
"Each man makes one ego for himself, although it is subject to enormous variation because of its instability, and one for everyone he perceives, which is equally variable." "The out of mind is out of sight, because what is denied is THERE, but is not recognized. Christ is still there, although you know Him not."
"denial DEPENDS on the real belief in what is denied for its OWN existence."
The ego is the denial of God and your real self, which makes it SEEM as if a person is ONLY their ego. And when someone presents this egotism in your relationships, you can easily fall for believing that's all there is to them. If they're being an asshole, you'll think they simply are being an asshole, and nothing else is true of them. You'll hold against them whatever they're doing and all their sins are real.
But at the same time as this "denial of self", masquerading as a second self, made of unreality and lies, the higher self persists and continues uninterrupted. The soul is permanent and immortal and innocent forever. It never sins and never enters the illusion of hell.
"The soul never leaves the sight of God."
"Christ has never slept."
"Your Soul does not need salvation, but your mind needs to learn what salvation IS."
"The ego is part of your belief about yourself."
The situation then is that everyone has temporarily two selves. The lower ego self is false, or "the false self", and is unreal. It seems true, and it seems to blot out the higher self. It HIDES the person FROM the higher self, and when you look upon it you too may be deceived and buy the illusion that the person is ONLY their ego. But this isn't true.
Forgiveness is all about OVERLOOKING the illusion of the ego and looking to and recognizing reality. This means looking to the christ-self in the person BEYOND his ego, and BEYOND his body. The larger self, and the truth of that self. This presents an interesting situation. There seem to be TWO TRUTHS to a person at the same time.
While a person is presenting their insanity to you, and provided you are not blinded by it, there is ALSO some part of them that is sane. While a person is filled with ego and hate and murderous thought, there must still be some part of them that is TRUE. Their ego is ALWAYS wrong, but their real self is ALWAYS right.
"Errors ARE the ego, and CORRECTION of errors of ANY kind lies solely in the RELINQUISHMENT of the ego. When you CORRECT a brother, you are telling him that he is WRONG. He may be making no sense at the time, and it is certain that if he is speaking from the ego, he WILL be making no sense, but your task is still to tell him HE IS RIGHT. You do not tell him this verbally if he is SPEAKING foolishly, because he needs correction AT ANOTHER LEVEL, since his error IS at another level. HE is still right, because he is a Son of God. His ego is ALWAYS wrong, no matter WHAT it says or does."
So a person is a son of God, which is perfect and "right", but at the same time, in time, temporarily, this perfect being also has an ego in their mind, which is always wrong. If you are in your own ego, your sight narrows to THEIR ego, and this is all you see in them, as real sin. But if your vision WIDENS to incorporate the BIGGER PICTURE, then now you can recognize this person is REALLY a perfect child of God whose egotism is just mistaken (not a sin). What they claim about themselves isn't true, and who they think they are isn't who they really are.
"Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, "My brother, what you think is not the truth.""
We need to learn to look past the ego in ourselves and others, to the truth in ourselves and others. So that in light of what that truth is, everything else is put into its proper perspective and RECOGNIZED as false. This clarity is accurate perception or "true" perception. It is sanity. And seeing WITH this sanity allows you to see the sane truth of the other person, BEYOND their insanity.
Seeing this FOR THEM, has miraculous healing properties to correct their insane egotism. It's how you shine YOUR light into THEIR mind to enlighten them. You look to God's truth ABOUT your brother, and accept only this as true, while denying and rejecting everything that is false. Even if the person themselves believes that which is false. You disbelieve it on their behalf. You hold the light and stay in the truth of God. And this joins your mind to theirs through love. And now you are undoing sickness and raising the dead.
There is a clear teaching in ACIM that there are TWO worlds, and you can ONLY see one of the two in its entirety at any given time. Seeing one, REQUIRES you NOT TO SEE the other. You CANNOT see both of them in full simultaneously. And each of them uses a different KIND of vision, designed ONLY to see one kind of world.
One of these two worlds is Earth and its environment - all galaxies etc. The other is the real world/heaven - God's creation. You can ONLY see ONE of the two in full. If you shift your vision to true perception you can see God's world. If you shift your vision to false perception you can see the physical world. But you CANNOT DO BOTH AT ONCE.
So there is a dynamic, whereby the MORE that you see the real world, the LESS you see the physical world. As the real world "phases in", the physical world "fades out". You cannot see both at once, and in order to see one or the other you have to sacrifice the ability to see its opposite.
To the DEGREE that you value one of the worlds, that is how much you will see it, and inversely, this valuing of it causes you NOT TO VALUE the opposite world, which causes you to SEE IT LESS. This is a basic function of perception, that you see what you value, because you believe in it, and thus want to see it. You do NOT SEE what you DO NOT VALUE. And any world you consider "false" due to its opposite being "true", becomes invisible to you.
This is a very core teaching. You are choosing between heaven or hell.
"The world is false perception" and relies on physical sight of photons using the biological apparatus of the eyeballs an nerves etc.
The real world is true perception/christ vision and relies on the spiritual eye, which in turn DOES NOT rely on the body, and is direct mind-seeing.
Two types of perception. Two ways of seeing. Two worlds resulting. "The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."
"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."
"Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you, as the amount to which you hold it dear"
"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight."
""The real world can ACTUALLY BE PERCEIVED. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive nothing ELSE. For if you perceive both good AND evil, you are accepting both the false AND the true, AND MAKING NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM."
"Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten"
"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. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear."
"When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear."
"The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is KNOW THYSELF. ***There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself*** and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."
"For everyone is seeking to escape from the prison he has made, and the way to find release is not denied him."
It's strange to realize that you don't remember who you really are. Your mind is in a state of confusion. You are lost and seemingly alone in darkness. You've forgotten what is true of you, your true nature, or what you are really like.
Your real identity seems to have become buried underneath the rubble of the ego thought system's destructiveness. You seek in the darkness for yourself, trying to sort through the clues which may point in the direction of yourself. Yet you don't even remember what your self is actually like, so can't quite tell what it is you're looking for.
In the separation from God you denied your soul, and blocked awareness of your real identity as Christ. You forgot who you were. Jesus even goes to the extent to say that because of the authority problem, in which you rejected God as your father, you actually believe that you don't exist at all.
Yet everyone is trying to find the self that they lost. We're all searching for some sense of something we once knew, but can't quite remember. Some self that was, and still is, our true reality, but which has become so obscure that we're not even sure where to look.
Some have a notion of a higher self, as if the soul is some other secondary self. And this is only because the ego that you have become identified with instead is a secondary sense of self. But it is not yourself. It is not who you are, and nor is your body.
Your "higher" self isn't really higher, nor does it really have a separate mind of its own. It isn't a second you, but rather, your first and only you. It's who you are deep down. The you that is true to yourself. The you that is actual and permanent and unconfused, uncluttered with illusions and unblocked by denial. It's your spiritual holy self.
If you reach into your mind, recognizing that the ego you've latched onto is not yourself, and with willingness to go beyond the body which is also not yourself, you can search within (or above) for your soul. Reach out to it, or rather, to you. Dig deeper behind the clouds of denial and the blocks to awareness. Who are you really?
Somewhere in your mind, there is awareness of the real self that you are. The most honest direct self, simple and pure and strong. The self that you forgot. The self that you have trouble remembering. The self you used to be before the confusion of separation set in. Who are you really, behind all these masks and disguises? What are you really like? Where is your soul?
In the separation from God, we basically denied God and tried to reject him. We tried to will against his will, reject his fatherhood, block awareness of his love, and hide in the darkness. We did not want God to love us, and wanted to hide our love for him.
This means that now, in our separated ego state, we are actually in a position where we are not allowing ourselves to be aware of God. Or to put it another way, we're trying to shut him out of our mind.
This means ultimately that we're trying NOT to be loved, to block and limit love, and are trying to resist being loved or loveable. We have to suppress our love and lovability in order to shut God out, because God himself IS love.
Before the separation, and in our creation, God gave ALL of himself, all of his immense unlimited unconditional love to us, and loved us with an endless deep love. We received this love and ARE this love. We are created as entirely lovable to God, loved BY God, and we are THE love of God.
In the separation, in the authority problem, we tried to deny this love and therefore also this lovability. But now we find ourselves feeling empty, lacking love, unlovable, unworthy, not good enough, and feeling that we don't love ourselves.
The thing is, that we can't love ourselves WITHOUT including God in that love, and that means that any willingness to love ourselves will have to also be a willingness to LET GOD love us as well. It means being willing to RECEIVE LOVE.
The problem we have is that we basically have stopped letting ourselves RECEIVE, and have placed great emphasis on giving without receiving, which is sacrifice. We don't love ourselves in isolation, and can't love ourselves while trying to be separate from God.
The secret then is that in order to feel loved and loving, you HAVE to let God love you. You have to let God in, into your mind, into your awareness. You have to be willing to allow yourself to RECEIVE LOVE from God, acknowledge that God has already GIVEN total love to you, and have gratitude that it has been given so that you can give it back as well.
You can't feel loved unless you share and flow love. You can't flow love unless God is its source. You can only share the love of God. You can only feel loved if you let God love you and are willing to extend it to others. You can't find love in isolation or exclusion, nor can you find a love in yourself that you can love yourself with that is other than God's love.
This is why when you try to love yourself you fail, because you cannot create love out of nothing. You have to get it from God. There is no love other than God's love, so you have to let God in and let him love you in order to feel love. And when you do... .... you feel loved and safe and happy and strong, and have love to give.
"And I must learn I need do nothing of myself, for I need but accept my Self, my sinlessness, created for me, now already mine, to feel God's Love protecting me from harm, to understand my Father loves His Son; to know I am the Son my Father loves."
"For we will learn today what peace is ours when we forget all things except God's Love."
"Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God's Love on earth. It will bring me near enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me to my home."
"Yet is the world of hatred equally unseen and inconceivable to those who feel God's Love in them. Their world reflects the quietness and peace that shines in them; the gentleness and innocence they see surrounding them; the joy with which they look out from the endless wells of joy within."
"The only part of your mind that has reality, is the part that links you still with God. Would you have ALL of it transformed into a radiant message of God's Love, to share with all the lonely ones, who have denied Him with you? GOD MAKES THIS POSSIBLE. "
"YOU are the work of God, and His Work is wholly loveable and wholly loving. This is how a man MUST think of himself in his heart, because this is what he IS."
"I am sustained by the Love of God."
"Put all your faith in the Love of God within you, eternal, changeless and forever unfailing. This is the answer to whatever confronts you today. Through the Love of God in you, you can resolve all seeming difficulties without effort and in sure confidence."
"I am surrounded by the Love of God."
"I feel the Love of God within me now."
"If you feel the Love of God within you, you look out upon a world of mercy and of love."
"To all who share the love of God the grace is given to be the givers of what they have received."
"You who could give the love of God to everything you see and touch and remember are literally denying Heaven to yourselves."
"I bless you, brother, with the Love of God which I would share with you. For I would learn the joyous lesson that there is no love but God's and yours and mine and everyone's."
"Sacrifice is gone. And in its place, the Love of God can be remembered, and will shine away all memory of sacrifice and loss."
"If you would but let the Holy Spirit tell you of the Love of God for you, and the need that your creations have to be with you forever, you would experience the attraction of the Eternal. For no-one can hear Him speak of this, and long remain willing to linger here. For it IS your will to be in Heaven, where you are complete and quiet, in such sure and loving relationships, that ANY limits are impossible."
"For the special relationship is THE RENUNCIATION OF THE LOVE OF GOD, and the attempt to secure for the self the specialness that He denied."
"But the sane KNOW that only attack COULD produce fear, from which the love of God COMPLETELY protects them."
"The love of God, for a little while, must still be expressed through one body to another."
"You who identify with your egos cannot believe that God loves you. YOU do not love what you have made, and what you have made does not love you. Being made out of the denial of the Father, the ego has no allegiance to its own Maker. You cannot conceive of the real relationship that exists between God and His Souls, because of the hatred you have for the Self you have made."
"You cannot understand how much your Father loves you, for there is no parallel in your experience of the world to help you understand it. There is nothing on earth with which it can compare, and nothing you have ever felt, APART from Him, that resembles it ever so faintly."
"The denial of God is the ego's religion."
At the soul level, everyone is immortal and holy. There is no problem, no unhappiness, no sickness, no death.
At the mind level, which is part of the soul, and perhaps only part of the mind at that, there is denial present.
This denial is the rejection of reality, God, truth, sanity, Self, health and holiness.
So in effect you've got holy immortal beings whose minds are experiencing temporary insanity, who are pretending to be mortal and want to die.
They are actively denying God. Denying love. Denying health. Denying life. Denying who they are.
All sickness is simply denial of health. And this comes about purely as denial of the truth.
"Sickness is a defense (denial) against the truth"
It is our job as miracle workers, as healers, as not-denyers, to primarily NOT deny what the deniers are denying. Rather to accept God, health, happiness, life, immortality, etc.
We do this by in turn denying the denial of the truth. We deny that God IS denied. We deny that there is no health. We deny that sickness and death exist. We reject everything not of God.
"It denies the ability of anything which is not of God to effect you in any way. This is the PROPER use of denial."
"True denial is a very powerful protective device. You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you."
Once you have denied the denial of God, you have stepped out of the ego's religion. The ego's religion is one of death, being the denial of life. It worships the God of sickness.
"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival. But consider what this means to YOU. UNLESS you are sick you cannot keep the gods you made, for only in sickness could you possibly WANT them. Blasphemy (everything ego), then, is SELF-destructive, not God destructive."
By denying the denial of God, and thus ASSERTING the support and acceptance of LIFE, you become miraculous. You refuse to accept that the denial of truth is true, or that the unreality of sickness is in fact real. You remember God's religion of life.
Those who deny themselves are blocking their own identity and their own health and happiness. This denial is the sole cause of all sickness. It is a repression of life, a resistance against immortality, a defense against truth, and a rejection of divine order.
Thus your task as a miracle worker now becomes to not buy into the denial, reject the denial, reverse the denial, and thus shine a light of the truth into the mind of those who are in denial, to undo their denial for them.
"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick.
The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH. The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."
Denying health is a denial of light, placing you in darkness. Denying God denies innocence and asserts sin, producing guilt, which gives rise to sickness. Without the denial of God there can be no sin, no evil, no guilt, and no death.
The denial of death is the acceptance of eternal life. It is as simple as that. Resurrection and atonement are simply acts of accepting and extending God's Will. By being raised from the dead you become able to raise the dead. There is nothing more complicated to it.
Deny death by asserting that only immortality is real. No one can truly be sick. There is no real death. No one is really suffering. All of this can be undone because what is not life does not exist.
Admitting that you are afraid is not easy, but it's quite liberating. Admitting is an act of "allowing truth in". When truth takes a look at fear, it helps to shine it away and reassure you. But it can't do that if you keep pretending you're not afraid or trying to manage it in awkward ineffective ways.
You don't have to be a "tough guy" - someone who denies they are afraid when they really are. Fear denied turns into anger and attack.
Let Holy Spirit comfort you and remind you you're just a bit mistaken.
They are two MECHANISMS for seeing, and they REPORT in two entirely different ways, and it's to you to decide WHICH OF THEM you are going to listen to. And you cannot listen to them both, fully, at once.
"The body's eyes see ONLY form. They cannot see beyond what they were MADE to see."
"for they can see only illusions"
"Everything the body sees is an illusion."
"Everything that the body's eyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception"
The body, has 100% permanent false perception. It is a fixed, PHYSICAL form of perception which CANNOT EVER see anything other than form, error and illusion.
"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body"
"The spiritual eye, on the other hand, cannot see the building at all,"
"Vision adapts to wish, for sight is always secondary to desire. And if you see the body, you have chosen judgment, and not vision. For vision, like relationships, has no order. You either SEE, or not."
"Everyone sees only what he thinks he is."
"Forgiveness does not look upon bodies."
Christ vision, also, is a FIXED STATE. It is the spiritual eye. The spiritual eye CAN ONLY SEE THE LIGHT. Can only look upon the real world. It CANNOT SEE BODIES.
"the world forgotten, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the Face of Christ appears unveiled"
"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."
Let's be clear about this.
There are two worlds. The world of false perception which is the physical world of bodies and sin and forms and errors and illusions. "Only the body makes the world seem real."
There is also the REAL WORLD, where there are NO BUILDINGS, no streets, bodies, forms, errors, not even the sun.
These are two separate fixed STATES.
1) False perception - TOTAL ERROR.
2) True perception - TOTAL SENSE.
The body's form of perception - the *physical sight*, USES the body's physical eyeballs to see. "These eyes made not to see will never see" reality. They CANNOT in any way be adapted to SEE in any way OTHER than they were made to see. They will NEVER see the real world. They are fixated on hell, on the illusory world. Physical. This is a fixed state of false perception.
Christ vision is an entirely different KIND of perception, which DOES NOT rely on the body whatsoever, does not USE the body whatsoever, does not NEED the body's eyeballs, and can SEE WITHOUT A BODY. This vision LOOKS ONLY AT THE REAL WORLD - at the face of christ. It is FIXED, in a position of TRUE PERCEPTION.
Now, this flies in the face of common belief that you "transition your ONE perception" from false to true. False perception is an illusory hell. True perception is an illusory heaven. You however can choose WHICH FORM OF SEEING YOU USE. You can also TRADE OFF one for the other.
Using 60% christ vision causes you to use 40% body sight. Using 90% christ vision causes you to use 10% body sight. You CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS.
So what actually happens is, your MIND is electing HOW MUCH TO BELIEVE in each of these TWO WAYS OF SEEING. Will it believe the body totally? Will it believe the spiritual eye totally? And how much? And as you believe one, you do NOT believe the other.
The spiritual eye is just as much a WAY OF SEEING as the physical eye is a way of seeing. Your MIND elects WHICH to pay attention to. And if you pay attention to one, it is because you have DENIED the other. You cannot FULLY use both at once. It's one or the other. You can't BOTH have physical sight AND christ vision operating FULLY at once.
"The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER."
So instead of thinking of your perception as being this SINGLE thing that you need to "shift" out of falseness into trueness, instead thinking there being TWO RADIO CHANNELS, you can TUNE INTO one, by TUNING OUT of the other. You can't listen to both. As you TUNE IN to christ vision's station, you begin to see the LIGHT that christ vision can see. As you tune out of that, into the body's sight, you begin to see the WORLD OF BODIES (which is the world of sin). And doing this BLOCKS your RECEPTION of the christ vision station. It blocks your sight.
You cannot EVER make the body see reality. You also cannot ever make christ vision see the body. YOU, as mind, have to choose WHICH of them you will see, and how much. And only when you choose to see christ vision FULLY, will you STOP SEEING THE PHYSICAL WORLD. "The world is forgotten". The VEIL of physical matter becomes transparent and disappears!
"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."
"For there is light where darkness was before, and now the veil is lifted from his sight."
"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."
"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."
The physical world THUS VANISHES FROM YOUR MIND. You cease using the body entirely. You stop seeing physical matter. You stop interacting with the PHYSICAL world, which does NOT EXIST.
"Heaven is all that remains."
"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."
"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.""
"Each man makes one ego for himself, although it is subject to enormous variation because of its instability, ***and one for everyone he perceives***, which is equally variable." UrT4C2
Did you know you've made an ego for other people, just as much as you've put an ego inside yourself? That's what he's saying. You have invented an ego for other people and you interact WITH that ego rendition of the person rather than seeing them for who they are. And we're not talking here about just seeing them as a body, but even overlaying their body with another layer of modification.
He's also goes on to say that as your ego and the ego you made for another interact, they change and affect each other.
"Their interaction IS a process which literally alters both, because they were not made either BY or WITH the unalterable.
"It is particularly important to realize that this alteration can and does occur as readily when the interaction takes place IN THE MIND as when it involves physical presence. THINKING about another ego is as effective in changing relative perception as is their physical interaction." UrT4C2
For me I was quite shocked to realize that I had made an ego for a particular person, and I was interacting with it. And this ego was a very reduced view of that person. It focused on their body only, seeing their body as though it was all there was to the person. In fact, strangely even seeing the person as if they had NO mind at all and were entirely physical. All sense of them even being there or having a presence or personality was mostly gone, replaced by a seemingly empty shell of an appearance.
It was also shocking to see that I was interacting with that ego and not with the person. I was not giving them any credit and was not seeing past their body form. I had taken their body form to be them almost entirely and was very blind to anything else. I now had a special relationship that had stripped that person down so much that it felt like I was interacting with a small child who was regarded as defective and weak and very sinful and treacherous.
It was strange to realize I was even doing this. And when I realized I was doing this I also realized I could step back from that version of them and get outside of it, to take a look at the person more directly and with more presence. It wasn't just "my ego" that was causing a clouding of how I see. It was the fact that I had also produced a kind of "mirror" ego that was projected onto that person and had substituted for them. That ego or "image" of a self was now masquerading as them to my awareness, and I was relating only to it. I was in a relationship with a fantasy character.
I then thought to myself, I don't even know how I got into this state. How did this happen? How could I have built up such a false view of a person that was so out of touch with them it made it seem like the person wasn't even barely there any more. That the person seemed to be so different from how they used to be that I barely recognized them, as if I thought that person was not even really there anymore, and yet they were.
So now begins the task of dismantling the egos we've made not just for ourselves but even for other people. These are narrow, condemned, faulty, dysfunctional, guilty senses of identity which have become counterfit selves standing-in for other people. It's now not simply just a matter of my finding out what my own real identity is, it's also a matter of finding out what is the true identity of others. Have I even seen them really? Do I even know what they're really like? It's not just that I'm not my thoughts or emotions or body, they're not theirs either, and they're not the version of them that I made up.
For sure my ego has a dominating tyrannical overpowering and attacking view of others. But in fact its view of what I think is them is in fact a view of further egos that my mind believes exists. Its relationship is with these artificial figures that aren't even the actual persons. It has special relationships with these "dream figures" like in a private world, subjectively interpreting that these make-believe fictional entities are actually out there to be interacted with, and that this is all that's there.
"Who sees a brother's body has laid a JUDGMENT on him, and sees him not. He does not REALLY see him as sinful; he does not see him at all. In the darkness of sin, he is INVISIBLE. He can but be IMAGINED in the darkness, and it is here that the illusions you hold about him are NOT held up to his reality. Here are illusions and reality kept SEPARATED. Here are illusions NEVER brought to truth, and ALWAYS hidden from it. And here, in darkness, is your brother's reality IMAGINED as a body, in unholy relationships with other bodies, serving the cause of sin an instant, before he dies." UrT20H6
"Can the ego teach truly, when it overlooks truth? Can it perceive what it has DENIED? Its witnesses DO attest to its DENIAL, but hardly to WHAT it has denied. The ego looks straight at the Father and does not see Him, for it has denied His Son." UrT10F17
"The other has many forms, for the content of INDIVIDUAL illusions differs greatly. But they have one thing in common; they are all insane. They are made of sights which are NOT seen, and sounds which are NOT heard. They make up a PRIVATE world which CANNOT be shared. For they are meaningful ONLY to their maker, and so they have no meaning at all. In this world their maker moves alone, for only HE perceives them.
Each one peoples his world with figures from his INDIVIDUAL past, and it is because of this that private worlds DO differ. But the figures that he sees were NEVER real, for they are made up ONLY of his REACTIONS to his brothers, and do NOT include their reactions to HIM. Therefore he does not see that he made them, and that they ARE NOT WHOLE. For these figures HAVE NO WITNESSES, being perceived in one SEPARATE mind only.
It is THROUGH these strange and shadowy figures that the insane relate to their insane world. For they SEE only those who remind them of these images, and it is to THEM that they relate. Thus do they communicate with those who ARE NOT THERE, and it is THEY who answer them. And no-one hears their answer save him who called upon them, and he ALONE believes they answered him. Projection MAKES perception, and you CANNOT see beyond it. Again and again have men attacked each other, because they saw IN THEM a shadow figure in their private world." UrT12E1