The "physical world", exists only IN false perception. This is why the body's eyes can see it. The body's eyes are rooted in false perception permanently.

"Everything the body sees is an illusion."

"These eyes made not to see will never see."

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."

"Eyes perceive falsely"

The world is like a veil that hangs in front of the face of Christ to block your vision. It must be seen THROUGH and past, which is what it means to OVERLOOK it, which IS forgiveness.

When you overlook the world, and look to the light beyond all forms and bodies, the light of the real world, you will become UNABLE to see the world. At its peak, christ vision makes the veil become totally invisible, the world is utterly forgotten, and it disappears.

You only become able to see the physical world by LOWERING your "frequency" to one less loving, causing you to enter into illusions and start to allow them into your mind, making them real, causing you to "see them". Without false perception, you CANNOT SEE the false world. And you cannot see BOTH the false world and the true world in their simultaneous entirety.

"The world you see (the false world) must be denied, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision."

"You cannot behold the world and know God."

In order TO see the real world, the TRUE world, you have to make the false world - Earth, FALSE, and not believe it's TRUE, otherwise you are making NO distinction between what is true and false and are CONFUSED (ego). Only by being clear about what is true and what is false, or what is good and what is evil, can you DISCERN with accurate (true) perception what is REAL and what is UNREAL.

The world that exists ONLY in false perception, DOES NOT exist in true perception. In true perception you see the real world, in which there ARE no streets, buildings, houses, shopping malls, street lights, not even night and day, and not even the sun and the earth.

If you want to see the face of christ, you have to LET GO OF this world. You have to access the spiritual eye and use christ vision. And you have to see PAST physical matter, IGNORING IT. Making it unreal to yourself. Recognizing it as false. Realizing it IS just an illusory world, not a real world. It is by recognizing that illusions ARE NOT REAL, that you transition from false to true perception. True perception recognizes what is real and what is illusion.

You cannot forgive the world and keep the world. "A world forgiven cannot last." You can ONLY forgive that which is an ILLUSION, and see through its illusory nature to the truth beyond it. Doing this makes the illusion DISAPPEAR. Forgiving the world UNDOES it, and makes it disappear. You cannot SEE IT when you see the face of Christ. Because then, the world is forgotten entirely.

In the following quotes, Jesus outlines clearly why you CANNOT see BOTH worlds at once, in full. And sight of one REQUIRES that you NOT SEE the other. You cannot therefore keep both heaven and Earth, you have to choose one or the other. And ONLY one of the two is real.

"The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought that gave it birth is cherished. 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**** and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well."

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

"The world as YOU perceive it cannot have been created by the Father, for the world is NOT as you see it. God created ONLY the eternal, and ***everything YOU see is perishable***. Therefore, there must be another world which you do NOT see."

"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***, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream"

"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****, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant ***is the world forgot***, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."

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

***Both are not true***, yet either one will seem as real to you, as the amount to which you hold it dear. And yet their power is NOT the same, because their real attraction to you IS unequal. You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it.

This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all."

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences. But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal. This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two, but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place—for differences cannot exist within it—so too are illusions without distinctions. The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. The one answer to all illusions is truth."

"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 alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute.'

There are two sort of perspectives relating to perception that we seem to fall into.

1. There is an objective world with our perception OF it, and what we project ONTO it is to do with how we interpret it.

2. There isn't an objective world and we're just dreaming it up and not projecting anything "onto" it because we're projecting IT in the first place.

I am coming to see that neither of these is correct.

There is a third possibility.

3. I am having a dream, which is surrounding me with a fictional environment which is coming from my mind. Without my dreaming of it - my projecting it - there wouldn't be any world here at all. There is NO objective world. There is ONLY a subjective world. My projection makes my perception and makes "the world I see."

The important distinction here is that the world I am projecting/dreaming, is coming from my mind and SEEMS to be an objective world. AND yet at the SAME TIME, this world is being projected BY me. So it seems to be both objective and subjective.

The key is that the objective part does not exist at all, and that's what ACIM means by "there is no world apart from what you wish", and wishes are dreams.

So it's not just to do with hey, I'm projecting something "onto" the objective world. It's that literally I am projecting the world ITSELF - that I think is an objective world - with my dreaming mind. And when my mind dreams of a different world, I project out an entirely different world. The old world doesn't transform because it has no objective reality or continuity of its own. I just project a different dream and stop projecting the old one.

When we go into false perception, however, there is an additional LAYER of projection, which seems to project "onto" the dream. Like, you're filled with anger and hate and so this seems like it projects "onto" the objective world. But the objective world itself is still being projected from your mind at that same time. So in truth, you are not really projecting ONTO the world, you are projecting the world and your "bad projecting" is actually changing the world and making it appear like a bad world to you.

In this way, it would appear that ACIM is never really talking about "projecting onto" anything. It's entirely talking about you projecting the world itself, directly, and your "bad attitude" projects what later is perceived to be a world that you seem to experience in a negative way. You think there is some other objective world that is "not negative" hiding underneath your negativity, but there isn't! You think you're projecting ONTO the world, but in fact you're not. You're projecting the world, period. Projection makes perception. Not "projection makes perception makes projection makes perception."

Just as at night when you dream, your mind forms en entire environment/world filled with buildings and people and stuff, and you seem to show up as a single body person. But your mind is making the world AND your body person. How the body person seems to experience the dream is an illusion because the person is actually MAKING the environment. Any attacker in the dream is you. People in the dream are figments of your own mind. It's the same with "waking life". We are literally dreaming of an entire universe.

The only way that A Course in Miracles can really make any sense whatsoever, is if there is a CLEAR distinction between what is real and what is illusion.

Every way in which you are confused about which is which, is your entire problem. This confusion is the ego - which simply is the belief that illusions are real.

If you believe that the physical world is real, you are confused about what is true and what is illusion.

Believing the world is real, when it is not, is confusion which will lead you further astray. It will lend credibility to parts of the ego's viewpoint and you will fail to fully believe that God is real.

Either God/Truth is real, or illusions are real. That's what you're choosing between. Each time you think this world has any truth to it, any answers, any solutions, any causes, any value, any meaning whatsoever, you are deceived.

If you think the world is not an illusion, to any degree, it is because you have given it reality. You've tried to turn it into reality. It is not inherently real. It is your wishful thinking that makes it seem real. And its apparent reality will make you seem to suffer and die.

It really is a choice between life and death, in the sense that if you are choosing that God's Truth is true, then you are choosing eternal life. If you are are choosing that the ego's illusions are true, then you are choosing death. But let's not forget, in truth, that death is an illusion and never a reality.

Death is not real. Sickness is not real. Suffering is not real. War is not real. Loss is not real. Separation is not real. Guilt and fear are not real. Darkness is not real. Insanity is not real. Bodies are not real. The world is not real. And this whole universe is not real.

You have to get to where it's absolutely clear cut, cut and dry, black and white. Only when you can begin to accept that this entire world is an illusion, can you begin to place faith and trust in God, which automatically means you are being forgiving because you are overlooking illusions, and this also automatically means that you are overcoming illusions.

This overcoming of illusions means you are not stopped by illusions, are not limited by illusions, and do not see any measure of weight or importance in illusions. You are not deceived by them. And they have no real power at all. And therefore, you are now a miracle worker.

A Course in Miracles is telling the truth IF God is the only truth and IF God did not create the world and IF there literally is no physical world. If that's not the case, then it makes no sense at all and you will be confused. You can't keep your illusions and experience reality.

Only the truth is true. Therefore everything your body shows you in this so-called 'precious world' is an illusion, and you should not believe in it. Put all your belief and trust in the fact that God is truth, and you will transcend the world and be a miracle worker.

Jesus showed us that this is possible. He learned that the world and the body are not real. He made his body disappear when he finally overcame the illusion of death. He saw the so-called 'real world' briefly, in its illusory loveliness, and then ascended to Heaven. We can too.

"There is no world. This is the central thought the Course would aim to teach" - ACIM

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."

Here are some quote which speak to miracles or miraculousness being something that does not depend on perception, suggesting that miracles are not "shifts in perception", but rather that miracles are creative expressions of love which can *produce* shifts in perception.

This is because MIND and PERCEPTION are two different levels. Mind was mind before perception was introduced. Perception is a layer of interpretation on top of the mind. Miracles come through the mind from God's mind, as expressions of MAXIMAL LOVE, and CAUSE perception to change to line up with the mind. "Miracles are a corrective device introduced into the MIND by me." But the miracle is occurring and coming FROM the mind-level of love, producing secondary EFFECTS in the perceptual realm.

Decoupling miracle mindedness from perceptual shifts, and seeing the shifts as "effects" of miracles, allows us to see that you can be consistently miraculous when your perception has nothing left to shift. Simply because miracles originate BEYOND PERCEPTION, which is why they can CORRECT it.

This is also why we become MORE miracle minded and more miraculous and more able to constantly perform miracles, as we uncover love and our mind lines up with God's will and power. Being miraculous isn't temporary. We are a PERMANENT MIRACLE and miraculous creation is our nature. Which is why "Miracles are supposed to be happening all the time. When they aren't, something has gone wrong."

"12a. Miracles are thought-creations. Thought can create lower-order or higher-order realities. This is the basic distinction between intellectualization and thinking. One creates the physical, and the other the spiritual, and we believe in what we create."

"23 ... YOU are a miracle. God creates only "that which, or one who, is of surpassing excellence or merit". Man is capable of this kind of creation, too, being in the image and likeness of his own Creator. Anything else is only his own nightmare, and does not exist. Only the Creations of Light are real."

"Prayer is the medium of miracles, not because God created perceptions, but because God created YOU. At the beginning of this course, we said that YOU are a miracle. Therefore, the miracle worker is a miracle NOT of his own creation."

"Each *Soul* knows God completely. This IS the miraculousness of the *Soul*. The fact that every each *Soul* has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

"9. Miracles are a kind of exchange. Like all expressions of love, which are ALWAYS miraculous in the true sense, the exchange reverses the physical laws."

"4. All miracles mean life and God is the giver of life."

"27. A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers."

"38 - The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles."

"43 - Miracles arise FROM a miraculous state of mind, or a state of miracle-readiness."

To be aware of dreaming, is to be aware that this entire world, all bodies, this whole seeming universe, space and time, it is all a dream.

But this awareness also includes the important awareness that only the Kingdom of God - which is not of this world - is real and true.

This sounds like a simple distinction but awareness of dreaming can only FULLY arise when we are 100% clear that this world IS NOT reality, and that God's kingdom IS. It is the awareness that only the truth is true and nothing else is true. Anything not of God is unreal.

This awareness of dreaming also entails the full appreciation of the fact that this world DOES NOTHING at all to the Kingdom of God. Bodies coming and going has no effect. Death does nothing. Sickness doesn't change anything. Not one single thing in this world has the slightest influence on God's creation.

And this also entails a recognition therefore that YOUR IDENTITY, is fully aligned with and aware of being "as God created you", as a perfect innocent soul in heaven. In which you have fully released all traces of EGO, and all sense of body-identification, and all belief that the bodies in this world are people.

Everything your eyes behold here must be recognised as A DREAM, and thus is unreal. A false dream, a fiction, an empty world, a nothingness. Something you are just dreaming in a state of seeming sleep, with absolutely NO CAUSAL POWER, and no consequence upon anything in the reality of the waking Kingdom of God.

Nothing you see here means anything. Nothing in the world can bring oppression. Nothing can make you suffer or be sick or die. You are immortal and eternal. The entire world is fake and unreal. Nothing that happens in the world or that has ever seemed to happen has any real meaning or value whatsoever. You are safe in God, at home in God, dreaming of exile.

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams, once they are recognized for what they are? Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeing and yet surely theirs." UrM13A6

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed." UrT27I1

"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real." UrT27I2

"No-one asleep and dreaming in the world remembers his attack upon himself. No-one believes there really was a time when he knew nothing of a body, and could never have conceived this world as real." UrT27I5

"For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes." UrT27I10

"Forgiving dreams are means to step aside from dreaming of a world OUTSIDE yourself. And leading finally beyond ALL dreams, unto the peace of everlasting life." UrT27F9

"The truth is true and nothing else is true"

Here's the facts.

1) God established what is true, forever. It is permanent and cannot be changed by anyone.

2) You have only two options.

a) Accept that it is true and be glad that the truth is loving.

b) Reject the truth and pretend it is not true and suffer.

You have no other choice. Acceptance or denial.

Acceptance aligns you with Life. Denial aligns you with death.

When we reject the truth and go into denial, we simply are not willing to admit that we cannot change the truth. We start believing that we can change it, and that we have. That's the idea of sin and it puts us into ego thinking. It's also the authority problem because now we believe we can change God.

This is a very uncomfortable truth for the ego. It literally means up there on the hill there is a shining light which shines forever, and either you can go there and be part of the light or you can hide away in a cave and pretend it's not there. But nothing you can do can stop it shining.

This means you are POWERLESS OVER GOD. You are powerless over truth. And you are powerless to change reality. "Nothing real can be threatened."

To admit this takes great willingness to surrender all egotism, all opinions, all other viewpoints, all independent efforts to decide what the truth IS, and entails a total letting go of the protest against reality. That means giving up fighting with the truth. It means stopping this insane effort to DENY that it is true and to try to make it go away.

To hide from it and to block it out of awareness produces a state of "un-consciousness" or un-awareness, also known as death. Death is the denial of the truth, the denial of life, and represents an unwillingness to admit or demonstrate that you are immortal.

We have to come out of our dark hiding place and into the light but we will only do that by dropping the ego and being VERY VERY HONEST with ourselves, radically honest, in admitting that WE CANNOT CHANGE THE FACTS. We cannot change the truth. We cannot change what God established. We cannot change what God created us to be. And therefore we MUST still be as God created us to be.

This is why the curriculum ends in the Atonement, which entails TOTAL ACCEPTANCE OF THE TRUTH. The key word there is "acceptance". It means the total surrendering of all denial, the absolute complete letting go of the authority problem, relinquishing all attempts to DENY that the truth is true, and being FULLY willing to simply ALLOW God to be God.

It's almost a moment where you'll say, okay God, I give up, I surrender, you win. Except God isn't a dictator or tyrant. His will for you is perfect happiness. And that means that by surrendering to His will and His truth and His power you SHARE in it and enjoy perfect happiness, eternal life, and peace forever.

We simply do not have the option to ESTABLISH what the truth is. It is already established by God, it is permanent, it never changes, and nothing of the ego can modify it. Either we are squirming all over the place trying to avoid admitting to it, or we are coming to it quietly and gently and accepting it with holiness and willingness. And God welcomes us home.

"Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true and nothing else is true. This you have heard before, but may not yet accept both parts of it. Without the first the second has no meaning, but without the second is the first no longer true. Truth cannot have an opposite. This can not be too often said and thought about. For if what is not true is true as well as what is true, then part of truth is false, and truth has lost its meaning. Nothing but the truth is true, and what is false is false.

This is the simplest of distinctions, yet the most obscure. But not because it is a difficult distinction to perceive. It is concealed behind a vast array of choices which do not appear to be entirely your own. And thus the truth appears to have some aspects that belie consistency, but do not seem to be but contradictions introduced by you."

... "Now do we join in glad acknowledgment that lies are false and only truth is true."

False perception is exclusive vision. It sees only a small part of what there is to see, excluding the rest. It is blinded by form and appearance and cannot see past the surface of an illusory world. It has covered the world in labels and categories and fragmented boxes.

True perception is an inclusive vision. It can see the small parts of the illusory world but only as a thin transparency overlaid upon a unifying light. It sees through and beyond the physical realm. The compartmentalizing of the world is removed and all things are placed in a single box.

As such, by being inclusive, vision sees wholly and sees the whole. It has one singular response of love to everything. It is unmoved by form and unchanged by conditions. It doesn't adjust or waver or fluctuate based on circumstances or upon what it seen. It is constant.

It brings a steady light to everything that is seen, such that everything is seen in the same way and with the same judgement of innocence. The steady innocence anchored within is projected outward, seen reflected in everything regardless of its form.

We are therefore transitioning from an exclusive, separating, partial way of seeing, to an inclusive whole-oriented way of seeing. To see everything in the same way. To judge everything as a single whole. To have no favoritism or special interests. To not pick out some parts as ugly and some parts as beautiful. But to bring a higher beauty, detached from form, which is seen in all parts at once.

A forgiven world is then a world of form, which might to unforgiving eyes appear to be separated out by that form. But seen anew with unifying eyes, which ignores the form, forgiving eyes regard everything in the same light and with a singular meaning.

Nothing is rejected or attacked or split off or segregated. Everything, all forms and appearances, are recognized as equally unreal. Simultaneously, the properties of unity, which includes innocence and holiness and love, are seen across all such forms, because these are what are being used for seeing. Thus Earth comes to reflect heaven and is forgiven of its attempt to be a symbol of separation.

Now that the mind is open to seeing wholly, it is open to the whole, and therefore now sees the whole beyond the partial world. It recognizes the world is not even a whole world, and sees the unity beyond the dream. Now is it ready for heaven, to enter into that which is truly one.

"The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness."

"They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeing and yet surely theirs."

The Spiritual eye is the mechanism of miracles, because what the Spiritual eye perceives IS truth. The Spiritual eye perceives both the Creations of God AND the creations of man. Among the creations of man, it can also separate the true from the false by its ability to perceive totally rather than selectively. It thus becomes the proper instrument for reality testing, which always involves the necessary distinction between the true and the false.

The way I see the world, I recognize at least in theory that it was made by mistake. It was made to oppose God's nature, even as an attack on God. It is unnatural and strange and filled with contradictions and conflict. It is inherently limited, problematic, confused and made from ideas of death and sin. Ok, so that's just what it is. A botched mis-creation.

But at the same time, while keeping that squarely in mind, and without using it to judge or condemn the world, I can also recognize that some of the "hell-like bullshit" that we made is not "all that bad". I mean, I just ate some pretty tasty French toast for breakfast. ie, "it's not all bad". The toast isn't heaven and must not substitute for it, but it can be enjoyed for what it is.

I'm finding out, the long hard way, that it's okay to enjoy some of the shit we made. To live a little. Because otherwise if all we do is label the world as a picture of crucifixion and death, our outlook can become a bit bleak.

I see that yes, on the one hand we did make a quite faulty, terrorizing, awkward and very bizarre world, but at the same time, it's possible to find a way to forgive it. To look at it without holding it against itself. It's flawed yes, but if I start labelling it as flawed I'm really accusing it of sin. And then I'll start experiencing it from a vantage point of suffering "from it".

The course seems to point to an attempt to "save" the world, and when we look at what it's being saved from, it's being saved from our accusation of sin. Saved from our projections of faulty meaning that we've given to it. Allowed to just be neutral and "what it is" without attacking or condemning it for being what it is. Without judging it wrongly and only sharing the Holy Spirit's judgement of it.

Yes it's a picture of hell and murder, but if I start holding that against it and using it as a way to condemn it, then I'm going to be dragged down into it. Even the ego knows that it slightly depends on God and accepts SOME good. It doesn't reject goodness entirely, but rather mixes it with evil ideas and confuses them.

Even if we made galaxies and planets and black holes in error, we could look at them from a more loving perspective and appreciate them for what they are, not making them into something they're not. We could be careful not to turn them into idols or something to depend on or artificially value, remembering always to recognize that the world is FALSE. But even a false world can become a forgiven world. And a forgiven world can be appreciated through beautiful vision.

"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. The ego sees SOME good, but never ONLY good. That is WHY its perceptions are so variable. It does not reject goodness entirely, for this you could not accept, but it always ADDS something that is NOT real TO the real, thus CONFUSING ILLUSION AND REALITY. For perceptions cannot be partly true. If you believe in truth AND illusion you CANNOT TELL WHICH IS TRUE."

"Each spot HIS (Holy Spirit's) reason touches, grows alive with beauty. And what SEEMED ugly, in the darkness of your LACK of reason, is suddenly released to loveliness. Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release."

"All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes."

"Father, Christ's vision is Your gift to me, and it has power to translate all that the body's eyes behold into the sight of a forgiven world. How glorious and gracious is this world! Yet how much more will I perceive in it than sight can give."

"I cannot seen in darkness but in light."

Instead of thinking of the ego, think of two thought systems or two minds. Jesus refers in ACIM to us having a higher mind and a lower mind. A portion of mind became 'lower' in the separation from God, and focuses on being separate.

"The Separation is NOT symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of thought"

"I AM working with your higher mind whether you are asleep or awake, (just as your ego does with your lower mind.."

"Thought can create lower-order or higher-order realities. This is the basic distinction between intellectualization and thinking. One creates the physical, and the other the spiritual, and we believe in what we create."

When you are in the higher mind, you are in the light and you can see. You recognize what everything is, nothing is hidden, and you are not deceived.

When you are in the lower mind, you cannot see, you cannot recognize, and you are deceived. It's like being unconscious. You cannot tell that you are in the lower mind because it is a place of darkness.

When you are in the lower mind you lose perspective and lose sight of where you are, lost in the woods. You may not even realize you are in the lower mind at all, and think everything is normal, and may forget completely that there even is a higher way to see.

This is because the lower mind is the realm of egotism, separation, darkness and confusion, narrowness and closed-ness and limitation. It's a mind level that perceives falsely, makes illusions real and believes in the physical world. It is where you are deceived and distracted and reacting as a victim.

So really when you are in the "ego-mind" (thought system) you have a kind of loss of awareness that makes it much much harder to recognize that you are in the ego. The whole thought system of that mindset is like being in a dark prison cell, lost and alone, and not even remembering that there even is a light outside.

When you get back out into the higher mind, into the light, you can see again, you can recognize things, and you can tell where you are. You also, when in the higher mind, suddenly have the perspective that recognises where and what the lower mind is, and that there even is a lower mind within you.

This allows you to realize that you WERE in the lower mind, because you know that it was a state of ego. From the perspective of being in the higher mind, you have a sense that you have a kind of "lower self" within you that is very primal and basic and victim-oriented and fearful.

This is the "self you made", the ego-oriented thought system. Like a child that throws temper tantrums and screams at the universe. It's a whole system of thinking and perceiving.

If you slip out of the higher mind you lose sight of even HAVING a "lower self" within you, that you need to be vigilant against, and you fall back into it. Then you lose sight of the big picture and it seems like the lower self is all that exists and all that you are. Then it's a scramble trying to get yourself back out of it into the light.

It's like, you need the light of the higher mind in order to be able to tell that you're in the lower mind, but when you're in the lower mind you don't have that light so you get lost and stuck in it easily. Trying to get yourself out of the darkness into the light is the best thing you can do to give you perspective and help you to recognize where you are and what you're doing.

The aim is to be in the higher mind as much as possible so that the lower mind is ultimately dissolved. Or rather, that that portion of mind is freed from its egoic focus and its belief in separation so that that mind can be reintegrated as part of the higher mind.

Also note that the lower mind includes the intellect, which is a seemingly 'higher' function within the lower mind that uses separation to split things up and analyse and judge. Jesus says in ACIM that this intellectual lower mind actually produces the physical world of space and time. The higher mind rises above the battlefield and transcends it.

"Miracles are the absence of the body. They are sudden shifts into invisibility, away from lower order reality. That is why they heal."