As you work to forgive yourself and recognize your own innocence, you become more loving. But you're going to find that this cannot happen in isolation.

As you increase your light, and no longer believe sinfulness or guilt within yourself, you're going to encounter the fact that other people still regard themselves as sinful and guilty.

This puts you in a position where you "have more" than they do, and are in a lighter place than they are.

"Miracles supply a lack." "Miracles are given by those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less."

If you were to simply "drop down" to where they are at, through false empathy, you will lose your light. You also can't maintain a forgiving perspective on yourself if you still run into the obstacles to peace that other people put in place.

So that means that sooner or later, as you continue to ascend into the light, you're going to have to start moving past other people's guilt. Whatever their belief or darkness is, if you don't forgive it in them, you can't maintain your state of mind.

"When I am healed I am not healed alone."

That means you begin to no longer support other people's self attack. You start to question whether they are guilty. And you start to support the light in them as well. You begin to steer them towards the light, so that you can remain in light.

As this progresses, it's going to become very natural that as you become more loving, you will automatically uplift others as well. You will have to not believe that they are guilty, in order for you to not be guilty. You can't have different rules for them and you - that's ego.

So that means that you becoming healed, you begin to turn into an instrument for healing.

"Those who are healed become instruments of healing."

This isn't even really optional, unless you want to go back into darkness. By stepping into light and recognizing the Golden Rule, and developing what is now a shared interest, you literally HAVE to have a healing and forgiving attitude towards others in order to maintain your own. This isn't a passive state of just sitting there observing, it's an active DOING and a going out and an expressing towards others in relationship.

This positions you as a healer and a forgiver of others. And I don't mean in the sense that you do forgivenesses about the stuff you think other people do to you. If you have BECOME healed, you are now in a position to undo the confusion of others and shine past their blockages.

Your mind becomes constructive, rather than destructive, as it realizes that only by supporting light can it move towards heaven, and only by moving towards creation can it move away from its own self destruction. This puts you in a position to constructively assist others who are trying to destroy themselves.

"By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others. The message which he then gives to others is the truth that THEIR MINDS are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them. By affirming this, the miracle worker releases the mind from over-evaluating its own learning device (the body), and restores the mind to its true position as the learner."

It is not only your duty and role, but also your right and privilege, to assist others in this way, healing them and enlightening them and steering them towards their innocence.

"Having been restored to your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. You now share MY inability to tolerate the lack of love in yourself and in everyone else, and MUST join the GREAT CRUSADE to correct it."

"It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive."

The correct and effective forgiveness of yourself does lead to an automatic function of healing on earth, in relation to others, which you share with the Holy Spirit. This function positions you as the light of the world.

"Forgiveness is my function as the light of the world."

"Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth."

In this function, this natural role, you profess Christ. And this professing or expressing of Christ is a healing function which is given to others. To those who have less light than you, in order to raise them up and resurrect them.

"The Disciples were officially and specifically told to heal others, as Physicians of the Lord. They were also told to heal themselves, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me."

This is the point at which you become a miracle worker who is in service to others.

"Miracles are the maximal service you can render another."

Serving, therefore, is what you automatically do, or move into doing, as your own awakening progresses. If you have received miracles then it is automatic that you will give them. To receive them you have to recognize your innocence, which you have to believe is true of everyone, otherwise it cannot be fully believed. And this recognizing that the same truth (golden rule) applies to everyone makes you ready and willing and able to reinforce it in others."You can only give the miracles you have received."

Thus you join the great crusade, you become the atonement, you are now part of the plan and a mechanism which God is using to bring about the healing and awakening of your brothers. As a Teacher of God you now function as part of God's way of bringing everyone home, because atonement is more than just about your own personal salvation, it's about the salvation of the entire sonship.

Separation is really about trying to do everything alone, without God. After all, if you separate yourself off from God, who was essentially doing everything for and with you, you end up in a position where you have do it all yourself. You then start to depend on yourself in every respect.

Depending on your own thinking, your own efforts to assign meaning, to figure out what things are, what to do and when to do it, making plans, making decisions, interpreting everything through your own personal beliefs, trying to single-handedly do everything without help.

It's as if we say, "I don't need God". And then we start developing all kinds of needs, lacks and limitations. And now we seem to have to fend off the attacking world single-handedly. And then we develop pride and prowess and abilities and skills and information and all manner of defenses to try to bolster our ability to survive.

But the fact is this. All of our efforts to do everything alone, has made us miserable and exhausted. It has produced every conceivable form of suffering and sickness. It has eroded all relationships and trust. It has made us seem small and weak and helpless.

We've basically tried to take on this huge burden of managing "our own life" to the exclusion of depending on God, and we've found that we're horrendously under-equipped. We've been just carrying a heavy weight of burden trying to be "the one" that does everything. And then to top it off we've framed our efforts at "independence" as something to be celebrated, complete with victories and successes, and all manner of self-appointed empty awards.

What I see ACIM telling me now is that basically, I have orphaned myself, and put myself in a position of loneliness and isolation, such that I've ended up having to carry the weight of the world. To do alone everything that I should be allowing God to do for me. It's like someone who refuses to accept any help and prides themselves on their seeming "abilities" to accomplish goals on their own.

But the course is saying hey, the Holy Spirit is here to do all this for you and through you, to mange your life for you, to look after your body and health for you, to think and inspire and heal for you. But it's going to require two things - a willingness to give up your position of autonomy, and a willingness to surrender to trusting in being dependent on a higher power.

It really boils down to a question of, do you want to be separate anymore? Do you want to be alone in everything you do? Do you really want to have to be the one that figures everything out and makes all decisions and solves all problems and heals all wounds?

The fact is this. The more you separate off from God, the less power you have. The more you isolate from help, the smaller and weaker you become. The more distance you put between you and God, the less capable you are of doing anything at all. You basically lose everything by moving away from him. You THINK that you're gaining everything, but it's really an illusion, and you end up with literally nothing. Or as Jesus puts it, you will think you are gaining the whole world, but will lose touch with your soul.

What we call an "ego" is just some soul who is trying to be separated off from the shared dependency of relationship with God. It's a self that doesn't want to share and doesn't want to be part of the whole. It's a self with an attitude problem of selfishness, autonomy, specialness and every aspect of the ego mindset that comes with that. It's just someone who is alone and afraid, lost and confused, and doesn't know how to get out of it.

The more you try to gain in terms of what you can do on your own, the more you lose in terms of what you share with God. The more you think you are becoming strong in your independence, the more strength you lose. The more you think that you are so confident on your own that you don't need anyone, the more afraid and vulnerable and limited you become.

The only thing that we're really being asked to do is to come home and rejoin the family. To stop being an outsider or a loner. To open up to sharing with God again. To re-establish your dependency on God for everything, and learn to not want to do anything alone any more. It's God's heart just reaching out and saying, hey son, I love you, come back to me, you're still welcome. Come home.

And so this whole thing is indeed like the prodigal son, running away from God believing you are so capable of going it alone, until you run into pain and misery and suffering, and then finally realize it is utterly impossible to live without him. And then you return to him, willing to surrender and let go of all efforts to do everything without him. To give up all judgment and all evaluation, all decisions and all plans, all interpretations and all meanings, and everything you thought you had to do when you had no-one else to depend upon.

Just to let yourself be a part of God again. Supported and protected, nourished and cared for, guided and directed, loved and made whole.

When we typically experience the world from an ego viewpoint, we might encounter lessons and people and problems. And then we attempt to forgive these things. And we think we are then done with forgiveness. And then another one comes along. And then we do another forgiveness. And this gives you the impression that you are doing forgiveness.

But over time, you are really moving horizontally through the world, encountering obstacles, one at a time, and these obstacles always seem specific. The form of the obstacle is what deceives you. The problem with your mother, the problem with the plumbing, the problem with the sick brother, the problem with your boss. Each one seems specifically different and unrelated to the rest. And so you perform a string of seeming forgivenesses through time.

But as you perform each forgiveness and move towards truth, you are in fact moving UPWARDS, towards the light. And this upwards movement may seem to be more subtle and gradual, such that it isn't even specific and it may be difficult to realize whether you are making upwards progress. But over time, it will start to occur to you that each of the seemingly different "forms" that problems take, is itself an illusion.

You will start to see that each of these forgiveness opportunities have something in common. Common characteristics. There's always some problem with your belief in who is causing who. And there's always some issue of authority and power. And there's always fear and reaction involved. And there's always the same stresses. And as you progress you start to generalize the learning and start to transcend the forms and differences. And then it starts to occur to you that these are not all different situations.

What forgiveness reveals to you, is that you aren't really in fact having to deal with a multitude of totally different problems, but that in fact the whole world, ALL of the problems, are doing the same thing. And ALL of the problems have the same characteristics. And ALL of them are forgiven in the same way. And this starts to show you that it's not really a specific problem with specific people, or specific groups, or specific situations, it's a problem with THE WHOLE WORLD.

And then you start to question the nature of the whole world. Maybe the WHOLE world is a collection of attacks. Maybe all of it, regardless of the form it takes, is ONE problem. And now you are starting to not fall for the illusion of form or the shape that a problem takes. You are realizing that either you move downwards into the darkness of hell, or upwards into the light of heaven. And either you are lost in the battlefield of stress and misery, or you are above the WHOLE battlefield in light and happiness.

Forgiveness starts to now take on a different direction. Its not so much to do with having a DIFFERENT way of handling each situation, but of developing a SINGLE "way" of dealing with them all. And you start to see through the deception or form that each one presents. And you stop falling for the obvious temptations. And now forgiveness is seen as vertical, in which either you are moving into hell or out of it, as a whole. And the qualities of the whole WORLD are now being brought into question.

You are now asking yourself, whether ANY of the things that happen are real. Whether ANY problem is really happening. Whether ANY person's attack has anything to do with you. Whether there even IS anything specific or different about any of it. And as you broaden your horizons to learn very large abstract truths such as that there is no world, this is just a dream, NONE of it is happening to you, loving everyone equally is the way to holy relationship, unity is the truth, sharing with everyone is unconditional love, etc... you move away from the specific towards the abstract.

And now it boils down the real "root cause" of the WHOLE of suffering, the reason for EVERY reaction, the purpose behind EVERY sickness. And you discover there not only really is only one problem, there is also only one solution. One solution to rule them all. And only one lesson that the Holy Spirit is teaching. Either the world is real or its not. And if it is real, you will suffer. And if it's not, you are free. If it's a dream, you have no basis for reactions or fear. If it's not a dream, you cannot help but react in fear. This is a fundamental lesson in the generalization of the teaching. That every form the illusion takes is just as DECOY to distract you from realizing that it's ALL the same.

This causes you to also start realizing that the hierarchy of illusions is a lie. Some things are NOT harder or more difficult than another. The form of a problem lies about its severity. You start to question whether a giant cancer is really any more threatening than a headache. You see how the ego tries to correlate the seriousness of a cause with the appropriate level of reaction, and you stop falling for this lie. The hierarchy starts to flatten, and all of the deceptions that make it seem like a world-sized maze of confusing corridors and disjointed pieces, simply start to fuse into each other as they're all seen as ONE DREAM. One problem, one solution.

"Miracles entail a sudden shift into vertical perception".

"Yet they are all the same and must be recognized as one if the one solution which solves them all is to be accepted."

"Without the values from the past you WOULD see them all the same"

"We will try to realize that we have only one problem, which we have failed to recognize. We will ask what it is, and wait for the answer. We will be told."

"Today I would remember the simplicity of salvation by reinforcing the lesson that there is one problem and one solution."

"The Holy Spirit will repeat this ONE inclusive lesson of deliverance, until it has been learned, REGARDLESS of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him, He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form."

We speak of the separation from God. But the separation is also a separation from the sonship, which means a separation not only from others, but also from the part of you which is shared with them.

Before the separation we were all one, joined together and sharing everything. We even shared our identity and our souls. We overlapped and everything belonged to everyone.

But then in the separation, we went into an isolation mode, where we saw our own self as not shared with others, as not extending to include them, and had a sense of a "gap" or rift of distance (space) form in-between us.

This then led to the production of bodies symbolizing this separateness, in which we enter a state of solitude. Or to put it another way, solitary confinement. By seeing that other people are not a part of myself, I saw myself as exclusively "only me", and therefore disconnected from everyone.

That's a very lonely state to be in, in which we see ourselves as the only inhabitant or our little prison body, and everyone else seems kept apart from us physically. Jesus refers to this state as one of solitude, in which we basically tried to stop sharing anything with anyone. We also can really think of this as the ego, because it's this way of changing your sense of identity to identify with a body and believe that you are a lonesome person.

The truth is then, that if your IDENTITY does not include others, you ARE alone. And since separation is selfish, you ARE being selfish if you think ONLY of what seems to be your own self. You must expand your sense of identity to encompass and include all others, recognizing them as PART OF YOU.

Only when you can experience that others ARE part of your own self can you have a vested interest in developing shared interests. If you ARE others, then what benefits you benefits them equally. This means opening up to being more than JUST you.

This isn't really an attempt to throw away your self. The sense of egocentricity only comes from having a sense of identity that doesn't share with anyone. It's a temporary side effect or symptom. I think we can say the ego is a symptom of the separation, and without separateness from others there is no egotism.

Instead we are to open up to join, to reunite, with others. To let them into us. To see our own self IN them. To recognize them AS ourselves. And to share everything with them equally. This doesn't mean getting rid of myself, it means ADDING ON all the other selves that I CUT OFF in the separation. It means GAINING a much more expanded sense of self, which INCLUDES everyone as part of you.

When you are more than just yourself, you have made room for the interests of others in your life. When your own separate self stops being "all important", when you stop depending on your own strength, when you put aside making all your own decisions, and when you let go of trying to be in control of everything, you make room for others, and for God.

I can only make room for God if I make room IN MY SELF to include others and to include God as part of me. I literally am you and you literally are me. ONLY when identity is SHARED, is there true holy relationship. Only when I am US, am I devoid of the selfishness of the ego.

"Lead not your little lives in solitude, with one illusion as your only friend."

"We do not go alone. And we give thanks that in our solitude a Friend has come to speak the saving Word of God to us. And thanks to you for listening to Him."

"In Heaven God's Son is NOT imprisoned in a body, nor is sacrificed in solitude to sin."

"To each who walks this earth in seeming solitude is a Savior given, whose special function here is to release him, and so to free himself."

"But those who KNOW that they are all the same, need not salvation. And each one FINDS his Savior, when he is ready to look upon the face of Christ, and see Him sinless."

"This is the lesson that His giving holds, for He has saved you from the solitude you sought to make, in which to hide from God."

"The body HAS no purpose of itself, and MUST be solitary."

"I made up the prison in which I see myself."

"Christ's hand has touched your shoulder, and you feel that you are not alone. You even think the miserable self you thought was you may not be your identity. Perhaps God's Word is truer than your own."

"It is impossible to remember God in secret and alone. For remembering Him means you are NOT alone, and willing to remember it. Take no thought FOR YOURSELF, for no thought you hold IS for yourself. "

"If I am with you in the loneliness of the world, THE LONELINESS IS GONE. You CANNOT maintain the illusion of loneliness if you are NOT alone."

People like to think they don't have an ego, or that if they have one it's tucked away somewhere. Distancing from it is a way to protect it. But having ego means being to ANY degree, even slightly, outside of heaven. The tiniest belief in separation is all it takes. And that applies to just about everyone on the planet.

So we have to at least acknowledge honestly that if we're still here we probably still have egotism to some degree. And that means we can't just pretend that we don't have one. It means that there's some part of our mind which is mentally ill, and distorted, and lost and confused. A part of the mind that believes things which are not true, but still believes them anyway. And that part of mind has a sense of identity attached to it, a sense of truth about oneself.

And that ego-identifying mind is going to have false perceptions and egoic viewpoints, regardless of how much a person is doing ACIM, how often, or for how long. So we can't just be in denial and pretend we're not being egotistical, we are being egoistical pretty much 100% of the time in one way or another. And denying this will only produce sacrifice and repression and even more separation in the mind.

There has come to be an ACIM 'culture' now of ego denial. It's one thing to recognize that yes we have to work on undoing our egotism and return to wholeness, but it's another to just pretend we don't have egotism when we do. Shoving it under the carpet isn't healing the mind, any more than throwing the book at it 24/7. It will generally take a long a slow and gradual process to correct all of the mind's errors and until then you have to 'work with' your ego and be gentle with yourself.

We have to admit that we DO have an ego right now and we - at times, need to be IN that ego, in order to feel a sense of being "what we are", because our sense of what we are has become ego-identified. If we pretend not to be e.g. body-identified, while still being so, we will move into sacrifice and body shaming and other things which are unhealthy. People are developing increased senses of shame and guilt over 'having an ego', or outright denial at having one while demonstrating it, instead of being gentler with ourselves about where we are at.

It's ok to acknowledge that you're being/having an ego while you are doing it, while you are working on undoing it, and not pretend that just because you believe the truth of the theory of ACIM that you somehow are above it all. Or that you can live as though you don't have an ego, before you are truly ready to do so. Everyone is mired in ego and mental illness until they reach enlightenment, and no-one is excluded from that.

So we have to then recognize this and be gentle with our self-deceptions and our delusions, even if that isn't an ideal scenario, and isn't healing it. We have to be where we're 'at', while we're trying to move closer to God. Once we've moved closer, great, we're more spiritually aligned, but while we have ego we shouldn't be treating it like some kind of enemy or bashing it or hating it or trying to lock it in a box, because YOU will experience the effects of that.

It comprises part of your belief about yourself, and a sense of your current identity, and denying or attacking that will be experienced as an attack upon yourself, which will not make you happy. You don't have to snuggle up beside it and love it and want to keep it, but you also shouldn't be demonising it or not having compassion for where you're at. Everyone's trying to run and they don't even know how to walk.

Many ACIM students think that they are not only miracle workers but also egoless selfless lovers of everyone, having barely stepped foot on the road to God. This is part of the ego arrogance itself. Can we just for goodness sake just be where we're at and relax and stop pressuring ourselves to be perfect and flawless when we're clearly riddled with issues that we're working on? It's okay to be a mess while you're working on cleaning up the mess.

"The Soul in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does NOT attack the ego."

"The voice of the Holy Spirit does not command, because it is incapable of arrogance. It does not demand, because it does not seek control. It does not overcome, because it does not attack. It merely REMINDS. It is compelling only because of what it reminds you OF."

"Truth does not struggle AGAINST ignorance, and love does not ATTACK fear."

"Light does not ATTACK darkness, but it DOES shine it away."

This is a simple idea. Since the world is neutral, and since you are having a subjective view of it, your mind is able to see it in different ways. And this means that there is always more than one way to look at something.

Sin is the idea or state of mind in which you see an illusion and combine it with reality, resulting in the perception that it cannot change. That perception is fixed. But this suggests there is only one way to look at something. And here it's meaning seems locked into the form it takes.

In truth there is another way to look at everything, because the Holy Spirit and Christ has given an alternative dream. There is always a "bright side to life" which is different to the "dark side of life." There is always another way to see it, other than how the negative ego sees it.

No matter what it is, how severe it seems, what form it takes, there are always at least two interpretations of it. One of them coming from ego makes the things seem dark and stressful and dangerous and unpleasant. The other provided by Christ Vision through Holy Spirit sees the same thing in a very different light.

The higher way to see, Christ Vision, is what the workbook lessons are geared towards developing. The whole process of forgiveness is of shifting from one thought system to another, or simply making a choice between seeing heaven or hell reflected in what you see.

For everything you see that you do not like, there is a miracle of sight which can look on this exact same thing and see it as beneficial and harmless. For everything which seems to be locked into meaning based on its form, there is another view which frees meaning from its form and uses it for a higher purpose.

So in all things, you can simply say to yourself, that you want another way to look at this. There MUST BE a higher way to look at everything. And when that way of looking is what you do consistently and what you choose to move into regularly, you'll develop Christ Vision.

Since Christ Vision is a gift of Christ that you share with him, your alignment with the Holy Spirit to see how HE sees grants you a viewpoint which is much more charitable and benevolent, which then sees this benevolence reflected back to you.

"What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this."

"There is another way of looking at the world."

"There is another way of looking at this."

"Since the purpose of the world is not the one I ascribed to it, there must be another way of looking at it. I see everything upside-down, and my thoughts are the opposite of truth. I see the world as a prison for God's Son. It must be, then, that the world is really a place where he can be set free. I would look upon the world as it is, and see it as a place where the Son of God finds his freedom."

"The Holy Spirit is one way of choosing. This way is in you BECAUSE there is also another way."

"I came to your minds because you had grown vaguely aware of the fact that there is another way, or another voice. Having given this invitation to the Holy Spirit, I could come to provide the model for HOW TO THINK."

"I WANT another way to look at this."

"Perhaps there IS another way to look at this. What can I LOSE by asking?"

"Yet can he learn to look on it another way, and find the peace of God."

"For you have learned of Christ there is another way for them to walk."

"Who would be willing to be turned AWAY from all the roadways of the world, UNLESS he understood their real futility? Is it not needful that he should BEGIN with this to seek another way instead?" "Belief that there IS another way is the loftiest idea of which ego-thinking is capable. This is because it contains a hint of recognition that the ego is NOT the self."

"Yet reason looks on this in another way."

"How COULD there be another way to solve a problem which is VERY simple, but has been obscured by heavy clouds of complication, which were MADE to keep the problem unresolved?"

"Alternatives are in your mind to use, and you CAN see yourself another way."

"No one who has learned from experience that one choice brings peace and joy while another brings chaos and disaster needs much conditioning. The ego cannot withstand the conditioning process, because the process itself DEMONSTRATES that there is another way."

"Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. 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."

At times I get this sense that when "life lessons" come along, they are not so much "optional lessons" or just painfully difficult trails and struggles,, but rather, that situations and circumstances happen "on purpose" as a kind of "conditioning". A kind of reprogramming.

You are exposed to these conditions and the conditions change you. Rather than that, like, you have to learn by making decisions and picking up facts and figuring something out mentally. You kind of inevitably end up learning something almost as if the situation "forced" you to. But of course, you have free will still.

It seems at times these lessons are more like... corrections... in the form of three dimensional spatial scenarios and interactions and happenings .... as if, some larger being is putting stuff in front of us that it knows will change us in a certain direction. That it is in fact, a form of healing? That you can't really fail to "learn the lesson", you just "go through it" and come out the other side changed.

It seems also that whenever Holy Spirit tells me some difficult situation is a lesson, before I would've thought of that as annoying as hell, and confused about what I have to learn. But lately when He says this, I almost get that this is a clue telling me "it is educating you" "it is correcting you" "it is steering you" "it is prompting you to change your mind in a good way"... almost "it's happening to you, choose God".

Like, this situation and your way of dealing with it and so on WILL lead to you discovering new things and developing more trust and opening up to new truths. Sometimes when I get through a lesson I might've learned something new about working miracles or had some deep insight or it produced a major catharsis or something.... and so when the lesson is "happening", I might more easily consider, "somehow, this is leading to growth and making me better off".

Like, the lesson is a "nudge in the right direction" regardless of how it appears, and you always come out the other end "better off". Because what I see and know now versus what I didn't know at the beginning of a recent "trial" I could never have imagined would be the outcome or insights gained as a result of going through the difficulties.

You could almost think of life situations as little "scenarios", little holographic 3D classrooms, into which you enter and are exposed to, and the classroom itself molds and shapes you and steers you in a certain direction. And generally speaking you will learn whatever you are ready to learn, freely, while passing "through" that chamber of conversion.

It really reminds me of the dream I had just recently where I was going through all kinds of trials, obstacles, escape acts, problems and people chasing after me, running through different rooms and stuff, ending up in an open area where the "host" of a game show (Holy Spirit) showed up as this woman... who asked, "what is it that is so valuable to you that you would be willing to go through all this to attain it"? And the instant answer in my mind was HOME... Heaven... I would be willing go through all these trials and life events IF it would in the very long term picture actually POINT me in the direction of home.

This also ties in with what I've heard about writing our life scripts before we incarnate... we literally choose to go through various things, those who are to meet will meet, we choose our family and major life events etc, even our enemies and people we will clash with. Even our serious illnesses and accidents etc. Even when we are likely to "die" ie leave the classroom. And then we come in and "go through it all" like it's a real "pain in the ass you wish wasn't happening", but in the big picture, somehow, using these difficult scenarios as a way to guide us home to love.

And the only reason the life events SEEM like trials, or difficult, or stressful, or upsetting etc.. is because of our ego. Our egotism and "what we need to learn" or unlearn is what makes the situations into a challenge. It's why we sort of "need" these lessons. So that we can move closer to love and way from ego choices. To that we will will surrender. And sometimes the lessons are so annoyingly fucked up that the only thing you are left able to do is surrender and give up and let go. And that's a good thing. lol

This makes me think of this...

"W-pI.135.18. What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? 2 Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. 3 But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. 4 While you made plans for death, He led you gently to eternal life."

and

"Trials are but lessons which you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain which what you chose before has brought to you. In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity you face, Christ calls to you, and gently says, "My brother, choose again." He would not leave one source of pain unhealed, nor any image left to veil the truth. He would remove all misery from you whom God created alters unto joy. He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your minds from everything that hides His Face from you."

An interesting insight I had is that what we see as causing us, we literally take to mean it is causing us to exist. If we are the effect of it, we are whatever it decides we are.

When we are caused by God, we are forever an effect of God. Whatever God wills us to be we are that. God has total authority and privilege in this and we have absolutely no say in it.

Fortunately God's idea of us and what he wants us to be is very loving and beautiful, and so we are created and "forced to be" perfect happy immortal beings forever.

But if you switch your idea of what causes you to anything else, anything of the world, the body, the ego, thoughts, emotions, beliefs, a similar thing happens. Your SELF is once again defined by it.

So let's say the world does something to "you", someone attacks your body or something, you might see it as not changing YOU but maybe changing your body or causing upsetting feelings. But you assume that YOU are still you.

However, this can't be true, because if you perceive that these external things are CAUSING you at all, you MUST believe you are their effect. YOU, your self, your identity, is the effect of them. And they have the power to change you, alter you, upset you, affect you, modify you according to their will.

This is part of how the mind shifts its IDENTITY from being identified with spirit/Christ to identifying with other things like the the ego or body. When we try to become one with these things, or we give them power, or we see ourselves as caused BY them, our very sense of SELF actually changes.

You begin to see yourself kind of like through the eyes of this other thing, the thing you gave power to. However it's treating you, whatever it's doing to you, is redefining you. You now become the effect of it and your whole sense of identity repositions as a victim and a sufferer and that which is attacked and weakened.

When we look for things to forgive, we might say that a person did this or that to us, or something in the world is upsetting us. But it's not just that it does something to upset us, it does something to CHANGE us, and that literally changes our sense of who we are.

When you believe the world, which is your dream, is dreaming you, and it has power to affect you or change what you are, your sense of self shifts from an immortal being to a temporary mortal suffering entity. The mind shifts its view of itself as though it's now being caused BY the world, and loses track of the soul. As if what causes you CREATES you.

Who you see yourself as, the role you play, how you are positioned, who you are in the drama or story, all becomes defined BY the causes you perceive to be having an effect on you. This can happen even with emotions and thoughts where you start developing a sort of sense of being a suffering person who the emotions or thoughts are happening to.

To wake up from this we have to become clear that we're not only not affected by anything in the whole world, but that nothing in the world has any power to CHANGE us in any way. Otherwise it has the power to change our SELF, and convert our identity into something we're not. Even a slight upset emotion is a change in identity, a twinge of unhappiness, a minor fear, it's all going to change your view of what is true of you.

So we have to learn to stop making ourselves CAUSED BY anything other than God. Nothing in the world does ANYTHING to us. We are UNCHANGEABLE, and nothing anywhere can change us except for God - who has no intention of ever changing his mind about us. We have to let ourselves be only what he wants us to be, and accept the truth of ourselves, in order to recognize WHO we really are.

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you." W191L9

"The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world, because he was mistaken about what it was. Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both, for they are one. Yet to accept this release, the insignificance of the body must be an acceptable idea." M6C3

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. 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." URW190L5

"My Self is ruler of the universe. ... It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept." UrW253

I'm trying at the moment to get a better handle on how various MIRACLE WORKERS have been able to achieve their states of mind, and gain access to true miracle working power.

Most of these miracle workers are Christians or Catholics, be it Jesus himself or various saints and other notable individuals.

There is something about what they are reading into in the bible that is steering them towards states of saintliness, christ-consciousness, holiness and humility.

I believe there are parallels to some core teachings in A Course in Miracles, and that some of these aspects may not be so readily noticed.

The bible acknowledges that we are in a "fallen state", and have become "sinners."

ACIM would make a small adjustment to say we BELIEVE we are sinners, and as a result a part of our mind has "become evil". This evilness is what we call ego. Many ACIM students do NOT acknowledge that they have this evil ego in their mind and do not want to look at it. But we have to "confess" that we believe evil things, in order to admit to our mistakenness and seek a better way.

The bible would say we are trying to be evil or wicked, and that by doing so we are destined for hell.

ACIM makes a small adjustment to say that we do indeed BELIEVE that we are evil and wicked, which is the "ego" portion of our mind, and by so believing we project and perceive hell. The "devil in us" drives us towards destruction and suffering and death.

The bible would say "the devil" tempts us and plays upon our sins and uses our mistakes against us.

ACIM makes a small adjustment to say our egos produce this temptation, our belief in sin leads to self punishment, and we indeed seem to succumb to ego/devil when we believe in death and destruction. In unforgiveness we demand punishment for sin, and the wages of sin is death. This is because we are unforgiving toward ourselves and others and must purify ourselves of grievances/sin/guilt/fear.

The bible would say that only that which is of God is good and real and true, and ACIM would agree with this.

The bible would also say that we need to purify ourselves of our evil ways, ie repent of sin. ACIM also agrees in the sense that we have to stop believing in separation and sin and guilt. This means we have to own up to the fact that we are "being sinners" by having egos, we WANT to be sinful, and we need have a little willingness "to repent" ie to CHOOSE AGAIN and change our minds. We're not going to do this if we don't have willingness to admit that we WANT to be evil.

In both paths there is an acknowledgement of the fall of man. There is acknowledge that we have entered a state of belief in sin and death. There is acknowledgement that only that which is of God is holy and good. There is acknowledgement that this world is a fallen kingdom and the body is not natural to us. There is acknowledgement that we need to admit to "being sinners" (egos) and be willing to repent (choose again). That we need to become more forgiving and develop faith and trust in God.

In particular, all saints and miracle workers confess to having faith in God, trusting in his power, believing in his laws, and obeying his instructions. There is a great dependency on God, both in terms of carrying out his will, doing the Holy Spirit's work, and also being looked after by God. This is mirrored in ACIM as well in terms of us developing trust, gaining faith, listening to the Holy Spirit, receiving Help and Guidance and Correction etc and learning how to be HEALERS.

Both the bible and ACIM provide a notion of "salvation" from sin and suffering and death. A way to overcome the world. They both focus on resurrection and life. They both lead us toward God and toward spirit and eventually to heaven itself.

I do not see that ultimately, in terms of goals, there is ANY difference whatsoever between the two paths, in terms of their end result. When we become miracle workers we become exactly like this who have gone before us as renowned performers of the acts of God. We become empowered to utilize God's unlimited power, the Holy Spirit works through us, and we simultaneously become purified and holy and innocent and good.

The key to the success of these miracle workers appears to lie mainly in their dedication to the laws and nature of God, their development of faith and trust and dependence on God, their willingness to admit to being nothing without God, their humility and recognition of God as being the source of ALL power, and their great honesty in seeking out and purifying themselves of all devils and egos and evil thoughts within them, and their vigilance for the Kingdom.

A Course in Miracles asks us to do PRECISELY the same, and to become exactly like them.

"You once said that souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation. This happens to be true. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. The Disciples were officially and specifically told to heal others, as Physicians of the Lord. They were also told to heal themselves, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me."

You can either be selfish, or you can share. The entire separation from God is about becoming selfish. The atonement is entirely about learning how to share again. The entire problem in this world is that everyone is selfish, and we all need to learn to stop being selfish.

The ego is entirely the idea of being selfish. That means trying to be exclusive, to get only what you want, self-interest, denying and rejecting others, separating off, being autonomous, identifying with the body, believing you are special, relating to others through specialness, having a sense of neediness and lack, etc.

When we were in heaven before "the fall of man", the separation, we were all sharing everything. Everyone had everything, all the brothers in the sonship overlapped with each other and enjoyed being one. We were part of each other.

Everyone had simultaneous access to absolutely everything all at once without any sense of limits or greed or compromise or lack or finite amounts or special favor or favoritism or anything that could suggest inequality.

We already each had a self, a soul, which shared everything with all. But in the separation we each decided that we didn't want to share anymore. We wanted special favor from God, we wanted to have something exclusively our own, we wanted to regard ourselves as more important, we sought to become orphaned and to have our own world and our own separate something.

In essence we became selfish. We sought to think only of our own interests and not shared interests. We wanted a separate will and to make choices and to be tyrannical and get whatever we wanted in competition with everyone else. We wanted it all, but we didn't want anyone else to have it all. We became like little islands, cut off from each other and alone and concerned only with ourselves.

So now selfishness is really the entire problem. We have forgotten how to share and be one. We have become expert in various ways of being selfish little children. We see ourselves as lacking and lost and alone, and desperately in need.

This neediness fuels all kinds of manipulative special relationships, puts terms and conditions on love, seeks to get something to profit from everything, and is always thinking of what it means to me or what it does to me. Whether I stand to profit or lose. Relationships turn into bargaining transactions and covert exploitation. And all of our experiences of what happens revolves around me me me.

Ego is nothing more than this idea of being selfish, ie of not sharing. The mind sees itself as cut off and separate, isolated in a body, excluding the whole from its little patch of existence. In our selfishness we grovel in the dark for scraps and are in a kind of survival mode, desperate to get more and searching everywhere for what we've lost.

So the real issue is very close to home, because it's not really about the world or about what other people are doing to you. It's not about the body. It's about you being selfish. And that selfishness goes to the very "core" of the ego and the core of your sense of who and what you are. It's YOU that is the problem in your life. It's your sense of me me me me me that drives the entire ego thought system.

Your selfishness is the cause of all your suffering. It is the cause of all broken relationships, broken communication, loss and grief, all hurt and despair, all desperation and fear and neediness, all offense and defence and justifications for anger and attack. It all revolves around me me me, what they did or didn't do to me, what's happening to me without my permission, what I'm lacking, how I'm put out, what someone's taken from me. Me versus the world.

It's hard to look at because it's very much rooted deep inside you. This selfishness is right at the core of your sense of self, the ego self that your mind as identified with and as. It's you being selfish that's the problem, your desire not to share, your desire to have everything and lose nothing, your competition with everyone, your self interest and tyrannical disregard for the interests of others.

You being selfish is the cause of all your suffering. That includes grief and loss, sickness and death, loneliness and isolation, pain and misery, unhappiness and sadness, all of it revolves around this idea of.... there's a me that is like a forgotten lost little child crying alone in the desert... that just wants to get what it wants and doesn't care about anyone or anything else. That's where the problem is and that's what has to be undone if you want to return to heaven.

This is why in the course Jesus's is basically teaching us to SHARE again. That means opening up the sense of self to be more inclusive of others, joining with others in love and openness, developing trust again, overcoming boundaries, transcending limits, allowing yourself to receive love, extending the mind, etc, it' all about you coming out of your ego shell, out of your prison, out of your body, out of your separateness and rejoining the sonship in a holy communion of love and sharing and oneness.

In truth we need to learn to have a self that is whole. A self that includes the whole sonship. A self that is united and one. And this same self, the soul, is full of self, full of the identity of wholeness/Christ. And being full of this shared self is not at all selfish.

When someone is "full of themselves" it means that they are full of ONLY themselves and NOT of others. They lack the sharing and oneness. In their arrogance they reject everyone and think highly of themselves as more important and special. And so the ego counsels to not think of yourself at all otherwise you are selfish, while simultaneously thinking only of itself. And this leads to self-sacrifice which is martyrdom or greed, and not spiritual.

But you have to include yourself in everything if you want to be selfless, which means you are equal and a part of what is shared. And being selfless does NOT mean that you do not have a self, it means you actually have MORE self, because your self is shared with everyone and you are a whole self. It just means not being exclusively ONLY yourself. To be truly selfless is to gain the selves of everyone and to not be self-ish.

To be your true self is to be all self, one with all selves, and one with God. To know yourself as God created you is to know that you are the entire Kingdom of Heaven. And yet you are still you, yet you are all. To have the all you give the all to the all. That is sharing and extension per God's will and design. You can only be yourself by being everyone. Only when others are included in who and what you are do you have the basis and motivation to have truly shared interests. And those who have shared interests are Teachers of God.

"Selfishness is of the ego but self-fullness is of the Soul because that is how He created it."

"The full appreciation of its self-fullness makes selfishness impossible, and extension inevitable."

"The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO IT."

"The miracle therefore is a lesson in WHAT JOY IS. Being a lesson in SHARING, it is a lesson in love, which IS joy."

"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. Whenever you are with anyone ELSE, you have another opportunity to find them. Your power and glory are in HIM BECAUSE they are yours. The ego tries to find them in YOURSELF, because he does not know where to look. But the Holy Spirit teaches you that if you look only at yourself you CANNOT find yourself because that is NOT what you are."