If you perceive that someone out there is your enemy, opposition, separate from you or wrong in some way, you absolutely MUST and WILL simultaneously see yourself as under attack and victimized by them.
It doesn't even matter if they actually are doing anything to you or not. Just the mere perception of them as your enemy is enough to force your mind to see ITSELF as THEIR enemy, and therefore a victim of whatever they are doing.
This happens instantaneously as soon as you are tempted to see someone else as being separate, different, worse, more guilty or more at fault than yourself.
So what this means is, by choosing to see someone as an enemy, you automatically make yourself an enemy.
Enemies experience threat and danger. Enemies fear attack. Enemies see themselves as victims. Enemies are driven to become victimizers to then try to defend themselves against that perceived attack.
But who is it that chose to see the other person as an enemy in the first place? You.
So not only did you set yourself to be the opponent of this person or group of people, by choosing to see them as your enemy, but you also set yourself up in a victim role.
Being in a victim role you MUST experience fear, anger, upset, and all manner of negative feelings and perceptions.
You might then think that these feelings are being 'caused by' the enemy. In a way they are, in that IF that person is an enemy and IF you believe they are, it would seem that you think they can and are doing something to you. But, the truth is, that it was YOUR choice to see them as your enemy that simultaneously set you up in a split-mind perception, where you are also their enemy, and therefore you are under attack.
This leads to the ultimate truth.... that you have in fact attacked yourself by attacking the other person. There is no escaping this. Either you are both innocent, or you are both enemies. Either you are both on the same side, or you are opposed to each other. It works both ways. And quite literally, everything you perceive them as capable of doing TO you, YOU are doing to yourself. It's you that is choosing to be in opposition to them, and to yourself, and it's you who has now perceived yourself in the role of victim in relation to the distorted figure you see in them.
So you can be upset about other people if you want to. But it is a *GUARANTEE* that you will victimize yourself. And that also means, if you choose not to see other people as enemies, you will set yourself AND them free.
Those who have no enemies have no fear, no anger, no hate, no danger, and no need to react. Ultimately because you are choosing to be a victim in EVERY victim situation, you are your ONLY victimizer. Once you realize this and stop victimizing yourself, recognizign the total futility of 'doing this to yourself', you will be set free. Free from your own tyrrany.
"The problem which everyone MUST decide is the fundamental question of his own authorship. All fear comes ultimately, and sometimes by way of very devious routes, from the denial of Authorship."
The "authority problem" is where, in heaven, you who are an effect of God and a co-cause of creation, attempt to turn around and CAUSE GOD, while also DENYING YOU ARE HIS EFFECT. You deny his fatherhood and causation of you, you reject everything he has therefore GIVEN you, and therefore ORPHAN yourself - "separate yourself off" from sharing everything with him, collapsing your oneness and trying to "go it alone."
You then proceed to try to AUTHOR YOURSELF, which leads to you trying to reinvent yourself and make a self (ego), while simultaneously believing you have not BEEN authored, and this begins the fear that you DO NOT EXIST - which is the basis of all fear.
"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all."
All fear is the fear of not existing - the fear of death - which is the same thing as the belief that you have not been created - that you have no source, and are therefore fundamentally UN-CAUSED, and not a co-cause, and so must be purely an effect/victim that is ceasing to exist.
AS you begin to open up to hand back to God HIS FUNCTION, in which you acknowledge that you share everything with him, what you have is what he has GIVEN you, you have nothing OTHER than what he has given you, he is your cause and creator and father, and you RECEIVE what he has given you by reclaiming your shared inheritance, you are once again acknowledging that God is the AUTHOR of you, and therefore the AUTHORITY in terms of causal power that has CREATED you. You as a creation are SECOND to him - his son, not his father.
Essentially this is a movement toward giving the role of God back to God, reinstating God as your creator, recognizing that you have BEEN created, allowing yourself to receive everything from God again, and to therefore recognize that you ARE LOVED, you are BEING given, and therefore your existence is being CAUSED BY something other than yourself. Which means that you do not establish or maintain or put in place the continuation of your existence - which you tried to do driven by the fear of death, but instead that God is the one who is causing you to exist FOREVER, and THEREFORE, you absolutely exist and will always exist. Which IS THE END OF FEAR - the reclamation of your GOD SUSTAINED immortality.
"The issue of authority is really a question of authorship. When an individual has a "authority problem," it is ALWAYS because he believes he is the author of himself"
"The authority problem remains the ONLY source of perceived conflict, because the ego was MADE out of the wish of God's Son to father HIM."
"The authority problem IS "the root of all evil."
"We spoke before of the authority problem as involving the concept of USURPING His power. The ego believes that this is what YOU did, because it believes it IS you. It follows, then, that if you identify WITH the ego, you MUST perceive yourself as guilty."
The ego mind is in the business of seeking to try to find whatever it is that it believes you do not have.
And that is pretty much everything, because the ego is quite adamant that you are totally empty and devoid of all-that-is and therefore MUST go off on a lonesome journey to try to REPLACE it.
And in that journey, you will attempt to replace it with things, stuff, artificial idols, false values, etc... which attempt to REPLACE what the ego says you lost.... i.e. replace it with something ELSE. You want something else instead of the real thing because you believe you CANNOT HAVE the real thing, so have to SETTLE for substitutes (unworthiness).
But this other 'stuff' that you try to replace God with, does not really satisfy you like God does. So you really continue to feel empty.
There are a lot of business people especially who are very much excited about the pursuit of money and riches or fame and fortune, who believe that they ACTUALLY WILL FIND and CAN ACQUIRE what it is they are lacking. Their sense of lack is so great, that they are profoundly COMPELLED to seek strongly. And with a passion.
And in so doing they may indeed seem to find a lot of success in business. But at some point, they may also find, that they have really not found a solution to the emptiness inside. They've tried to replace the need for God with a need for other stuff, thinking that to get other stuff fills the hole, but it doesn't work. There is still an emptiness. And this is why many people then eventually throw in the towel and realize that they need something more meaningful in their lives than shallow accumulation of wealth.
I know someone personally actually who was very successful in business and very driven and passionate about it, making a lot of money and having all the gifts of a wealthy life etc, and pretty much everyone assessed that he was not really a very spiritual person and seemed to be quite strongly egotistical... and then later in life he hit this very same realization that all of this 'stuff' wasn't getting rid of the empty void inside. He had some kind of breakdown/breakthrough and realized that all of that pursuit and seeking did not really 'work' and that he needed a deeper meaning. And so began his sudden 'flip' into the pursuit of spirituality and a deeper truth.
The problem is, once we realize that "the world holds nothing that I want" - ACIM - we might unfortunately flip into a continued ego activity of "seeking for the truth". The presence of the seeking is still strong, and the subject matter of the seeking has changed to trying to find meaning and truth, but it's still actually the intense seeking that is the problem itself. And as you seek, you may seem to find, or at least take steps closer to the truth. But to really find the truth, you have to get DONE WITH SEEKING.
You only sought in the first place due to the profound sense of emptiness and lack of God and separation from the awareness of His presence. So THAT has to be healed and undone. And then the truth will be revealed, that you do not need to seek for God at all because GOD IS HERE!
The sheer extent of being deceived by FORM, is easy to recognize in this world. The sheer degree by which we have fallen for the belief that DIFFERENT FORMS are in fact different things.
We've given them different values, different meanings, different importance, different seriousness, different degrees of problem, different solutions, different natures, different materials, different shapes and colors and sizes. There is no end to the variations.
Look then at our addiction to forms. Our addiction to OBJECTS. To bodies, to toys, to buildings and cars, to special foods, to special relationships, to idols we worship. The idolization of places and things.
Look at how we seek after the next best special toy. That particular preferred clothing. That special kind of house. That dream car. That selection of food at the grocery store we like the taste of. That lifestyle. That environment. The decorations for our homes and bodies.
And look at how the world is constantly driven to tell you the many ways that the FORMS of things are different, special, unique, worth having. That some forms are SALVATION. That other forms are to be avoided, in favor of the chosen ones.
That if you just get this special form you will be happier, better off, safer, healthier. That some forms have magical powers and are better for you, while others hurt you. That some forms are to be avoided while others are to be deeply desired.
Look at all the bullshit values we've given everything. A bar of gold is allegedly more valuable than a bar of shit. The fancy dresses and suits seemingly worth more than shabby rags. Expensive houses and cars seemingly better than that old clunker.
The world tries to manufacture untold new forms, to leverage new properties of matter it discovered, and to sell the next most amazing form to you. This leads to all the shopaholic frenzy of possessions and purchases, sales and discounts. Ways to get more objects and forms of salvation.
To surround yourself with a fortress of form and to completely shut out all reality. To tell yourself your important job is doing some real good and is a great symbol of status, when all it is keeping you blinded and locked into a prison. To seek for riches, or for poverty, believing either one is the better form or more spiritual.
And then look at how we spiritualize forms and worship idols. How we put them on pedestals or throw them in the trash. And not for long will the next amazing form tempt you with its thrills, only to be discarded soon after when another comes to take its place.
Always competition. Always one-upmanship. Always the next best thing. Always superceding and overthrowing and exalting only to destroy. This is what the world is like. Driven mad by the utterly nonsense illusion that ANY form is DIFFERENT to any other. That one thing is not another thing. That all things are separate.
And so by worshipping form we worship death, because death means a lack of wholeness, and a preference for littleness. And there is no wholeness in the world as a result. And wholeness is health, meaning the worship of forms produces sickness. And now the body has become the hero of the dream, the celebrity, the one to watch.
Every way this world offers up the next puke casserole of "stuff" that you're supposed to think of as "not the same" as all the "stuff" that came before it, be not deceived. Consider that this world is going to just keep churning out form after form after form, all the while thinking it is creating something NEW, when all it is doing is rehashing and remaking what is old and dead.
Do you really WANT anything this world has to offer, when all it offers is the same one thing? The same illusion of fake things which have fake importance? Stuff you don't need, stuff you don't really want, stuff you can't rely on, stuff that just constantly changes into new forms to tempt you away from the truth.
Just how many thousands of "things" do you need? Just how many pieces of paper and shiny coins? How many different pairs of shoes and pieces of clothing? Exactly why do you collect all the rare and unusual trinkets and treasures? Why do you think EACH one is truly unique and not like the rest, worth having? And why do you seek to find the rarest and most valuable ultra-special items, exclusively for you which no one else has?
This is the madness of the world. It is disappearing up its own backside in its obsession with MAKING more and more and more. Regurgitating an endless list of piffle and drivel. Tempting you that the next right kitchen counter and the next sofa and the next douvet cover is going to save you from the very biased lopsided problems it is designed to cause? And which solution will ever set you free from the very problems it induces?
The forms of this world are a trap. They are ALL made to tempt you away from God and from wholeness, health and truth. They are all a decoy, disguising the fact that they are all ONE THING. One big illusion, pretending to be many illusions.
You keep buying the same shit over and over and over again because you don't realize it is the SAME as the last shit, just in a different form. And while you think the differences that keep forms apart are desirable, you will keep falling for the same one trick. This world really has NOTHING to offer. And ALL its objects are a lie.
"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 takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give."
"This world holds nothing that you really want"
"The world you see has nothing that you need to offer you; nothing that you can use in any way, nor anything at all that serves to give you joy. Believe this thought, and you are saved from years of misery, from countless disappointments, and from hopes that turn to bitter ashes of despair. No one but must accept this thought as true, if he would leave this world behind and soar beyond its petty scope and little ways."
"Each thing you value here is but a chain that binds you to the world, and it will serve no other end but this. For everything must serve the purpose you have given it until you see a different purpose there. The only purpose worthy of your mind this world contains is that you pass it by, without delaying to perceive some hope where there is none. Be you deceived no more. The world you see has nothing that you want."
"When we are all united in Heaven, you will value NOTHING that you value here. For nothing that you value here you value wholly, and so you do not value it at all. "
"If you will lay aside the ego's voice however loudly it may seem to call; if you will not accept its petty gifts which give you nothing that you really want; if you will listen with an open mind which has not told you what salvation is; then you will hear the mighty Voice of truth, quiet in power, strong in stillness, and completely certain in Its messages."
"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer. The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it CAN blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true."
"What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?" This means that if he listens to the wrong voice, he has LOST SIGHT of his Soul. He CANNOT lose it, but he CAN not know it. It is therefore LOST TO HIM, until he chooses right."
"The wearying, dissatisfying gods you made are blown-up children's toys." "The gap that is not there is filled with toys in countless forms." "Look calmly at its toys, and understand that they are idols which but dance to vain desires. Give them not your worship, for they are not there." "Shall we continue to allow God's grace to shine in unawareness, while the toys and trinkets of the world are sought instead?" "Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children's toys? How soon will you be ready to come home?" "In my hands is everything you want and need and hoped to find among the shabby toys of earth. I take them all from you and they are gone. And shining in the place where once they stood there is a gateway to another world through which we enter in the Name of God." "What toys or trinkets in the gap could serve to hold you back an instant from His Love?" "Today He gives you His defenselessness, and you accept it in exchange for all the toys of battle you have made." "Whom He has judged can only laugh at guilt, unwilling now to play with toys of sin, unheeding of the body's witnesses before the rapture of His holy Face."What seems to happen to the body, does not happen to the soul. The son of God is utterly unchanged and unaffected, even by physical death.
If we look to the body and see what the mind has mistakenly made of it, attacking it and disfiguring it with guilt, producing symptoms and sicknesses and disabilities, and if we regard these changes as truly happening to the person, we are mistaken.
It's more like a car that gets some dents in it, but the car driver is unscathed. If we regard the body as the person we'll start to feel awful at what has happened to the person, terrorised by their maladies, and deeply upset at the loss of their perfection. Especially if the body is driven all the way to death and destruction.
But this has to be mistaken. A person is not a body, and a body is not a reality. It is just a symbol in a dream. It's something that the mind projects a shadow of its guilts onto, which show up as physical forms. But the body is just an empty shell, and not the pilot. It's just an outer casing. Its condition doesn't really say that the soul or son of God has been wounded.
The interesting part perhaps is that even though this is true, the mind of the sufferer seems capable of experiencing the body's conditions as though they are real. There can be experiences of pain and torment, of sadness and loss, of fear and guilt and shame, revolving around the body. There can be upsetting sensations and troubling conditions and aches and pains and all manner of ways to suffer, and somehow the mind can experience these as though "real suffering."
But even if the mind if seeming to experience body conditions as real suffering, the soul still does not experience them as real suffering. The mind can be confused, and in effect suffering is a psychological thing. If the mind can be purified it cannot feel pain, or conceive of sickness, and instead heals the body and makes sickness impossible.
So when someone is sick and it seems that their sickness is making them suffer, and they feel depressed and upset, and in agony of pain and screaming in dis-ease, this still does not prove that something is really happening to the person. It's still a mistaken state of mind on top of a mistaken state of body, covering up a completely unmistaken central core of perfection.
So it's our job as a miracle worker to not be deceived, either by the physical appearance of disfigurement, or the psychological interaction with that disfigurement by the person's mind. Both are states of mistakenness. If we buy into it we support it, and have ourselves become mistaken, confused about the truth, deceived about a lie, associating a soul with a body or mind, and are now just as lost in the false empathy of suffering.
Ultimately there is nothing really going wrong. It's all an illusion, at both min and body levels. The reality of the soul or son of God is always immortal and perfect.
"The Soul never loses its communion with God. Only the mind and body need Atonement. The miracle joins in the Atonement of Christ by placing the mind in the service of the Spirit. This establishes the proper function of mind, and abolishes its errors." UrT1B27E
"False perception", ie being heavily in your ego, is a state of imprisonment. It's a very closed way of looking at things, it cuts you off from the light, wraps you in heavy walls, and makes everything look serious. It faces you to focus on how things look physically as if there is nothing else, and even shuts out the mind.It offers no bigger picture and dwells entirely on appearances.
In this view it becomes apparent that there are serious problems, and the problems seem impossible to solve. One thing seems to depend on another to be righted and everything seems locked in. It makes you feel stuck and lost and alone, powerless and helpless. It starts to feel like there's no way out, no solution, no hope. It is a state of psychological darkness and limitation.
False perceptions always feel imprisoning because the mind is actively trying to imprison. It's seeing things in such a way as to focus on what is wrong, what is broken, what can't be solved, what is evil, what has been done to something, how bad it is, how sorry it is, how awful it feels, how much it's painful etc. It emphases and blows everything bad out of proportion making it seem far worse than it is. It also shuts down any openness to positive possibilities.
Such a state of mind is easily driven by old unforgiven hurts, grievances, being triggered, upsets and heavy ego emotions, loss and grief, anger and frustration. It's as though the ego functions always at a very low level of consciousness and with a very dire outlook, and everything it thinks and feels and experiences is gloomy and a nightmare. When you get into that you can't help but see that way and it seems practically impossible to get out of it.
All the problems become real and you become filled with reactions, which are attempts to make it go away. But none of them work because the problem looms heavily and seems completely solid and fixed and stuck, unmovable and unchangeable, irreversible like as sin. This is what ACIM refers to really as "the granite block of sin", something that seems to be happening that seems utterly impossible to undo.
The only way out of this is to move into the light, and miracles are seen in the light. The only way to get into the light is to start to look for the light and seek it out. The light means looking on the brighter side, looking for openings which lead to freedom, looking for goodness, looking for a higher purpose, looking for a sense of calm and peace, looking for positivity and holiness. It requires stepping back and realizing that you're actually being unforgiving, and to look at what you're doing to attack through fear, and choosing to stop doing that. To break out of psychological jail.
Only by becoming more forgiving can you get out of hell. It is literally the only way. To be forgiving entails increasing the light so that you can see more clearly, and letting go of grievances and reactions. Eventually it entails taking away all sense of heaviness and darkness, strength and power, reality and irreversibility from the situation. There has to be a surrendering of control and an opening up to higher help. Seek out the Holy Spirit to help you, to heal you, to correct you, direct you, decide for you. Let yourself receive some love and light to brighten up the situation. Everything always looks better with the lights on.
The world's idea of the most ideal relationship is where you find the chosen one and give them all your love. But you don't give that same love to anyone else. The chosen one gets exclusive access, special rights, permissions and trust. But this exclusivity means that the love is conditional, and is switched off around other people. The two of you will likely side with each other against everyone else.
While the ego and the body and the world might suggest that this is the only natural way to relate, as if everyone is supposed to be paired up with one person, it is actually highly unnatural. If you follow this kind of relationship dynamic to its extreme conclusion, it would mean that the person you love is the person you most imprison, and you live in a prison with them in order to keep everyone else away from you. They become a safe haven in the storm, and everyone else is left outside.
Unconditional love is a kind of love that doesn't change based on who you are with or where you are or what you're doing. It gives all of the love to all of the people all of the time. It doesn't pick favourites, nor does it hold back the love only to give it to those who have met your standards, or you like them, or they have something in common, or they aren't seemingly against you. Love just loves always in one single response to everything. This is total holy relationship, which is inclusive not exclusive.
Trying to love only one person or only a small group of people is quite a confined and ego-driven form of love. It's an attempt to narrow love down and only hand it out to the most special winners of the human contest. And if you can only trust that one person you will have mistrust of just about everyone. What would Jesus do? Would Jesus hold off on loving someone because they aren't apparently his closet companion?
Special love is imprisoned love, conditional love, and limited love. Special love is actually an attempt to cover up all the special hate you have for everyone by selecting the most ideal and agreeable person that you seem have the least hate for.
"The special love relationship is an attempt to limit the destructive EFFECTS of hate, by finding a haven in the storm of guilt."
"The special love relationship is NOT perceived as of value IN ITSELF, but as a place of safety, from which hatred is split off, and KEPT APART. The special love partner is acceptable ONLY as long as he serves this purpose."
"the special love relationship is an attempt TO BRING LOVE INTO SEPARATION."
"The special love relationship is the ego's chief weapon for keeping you from Heaven."
"To believe that SPECIAL relationships, with SPECIAL love, can offer you salvation, IS the belief that separation is salvation."
"Beyond the poor attraction of the special love relationship, and ALWAYS obscured by it, is the powerful attraction of the Father for His Son. There is no OTHER love that can satisfy you, because there IS no other love. This is the ONLY love that is fully given, AND FULLY RETURNED. Being complete, it asks nothing. Being wholly pure, everyone joined in it HAS everything. This is NOT the basis for ANY love relationship in which the ego enters. For EVERY relationship on which the ego embarks IS special. The ego establishes relationships ONLY to GET something. And it would keep the giver BOUND TO ITSELF, through guilt."
Sometimes I want to be a healer. I want to be the one that helps or fixes or heals someone. But in this there is an authority problem. I seem to believe that I must be the 'source' of this healing, or that I must do something of myself. Even if I am perhaps involving Holy Spirit in this effort, it'll still be as though I'm trying to get Him to do what I think needs to be done.
Recently I've been in a situation where someone was sick and I could not do anything whatsoever to help it. I tried. A lot. But nothing worked. At all. This was a lesson. It showed me that I cannot do anything on my own and it also inspired me to seek out 'supernatural' and Spirit-driven possibilities. And it was important to see this, even though it was painful. Without recognizing I can't do anything by myself, I would just keep trying and not be willing to surrender.
The truth now has become clear. God is the one who wants to heal. And the healing might come through me for others. But the purpose of the healing is for others, from God to them, and really I am meant to just be a channel/conduit/facilitator. I need to get my authority-problem ego out of the way and act as a bridge.
It's not me that does the healing. It's God/Holy Spirit/Jesus. And therefore, because they are involved, I need to respectfully ask them for their input and help since, after all, maybe they don't want to heal someone or maybe it isn't an appropriate miracle. Jesus does warn that miracles should not be "under conscious control" and that we should not perform them "indiscriminately", since this may lead to ineffective sporadic outcomes or inappropriate side-effects.
I believe this now to mean that I should get my conscious-controlling ego out of the way and be working WITH God/Holy Spirit/Jesus rather than have them working for me. I do not need to be the one who decides whether healing will take place or not, I just need to show up and offer my openness to connect to God and extend His healing.
This really is just a matter of clarity, putting things in their proper perspective. And it is really a hard lesson to learn that God is the one with the Authority and I am just here to extend HIS Creation. My ego wants to be in control, or to be the hero, or the fixer/savior, but IT cannot do anything that works. Love is the motivating force behind miracles, no wishes or guilt or projected dysfunction or making sickness real and then trying to 'correct' it. It is still my function to see others as not sick and not sinful, so that I can allow God's love to bridge the gap and connect with them. This is all so different to how my ego fundamentally wants to function. It is the reversal of the authority problem, which takes a great deal of surrender.
Once you do surrender and admit that you are powerless and cannot do anything alone, then you can at least become open-minded about the possibility that God can help FOR you, that Holy Spirit can do this FOR you, and that you don't even need to be the one to fix things. Let go and let God. The future is now more exciting, healing-wise, simply because I am aligning more with God and allowing His healing to flow, rather than getting in the way or interfering. It's a tough lesson to stop fixing or meddling or correcting or believing in sickness, all of which compels me to fight with sickness instead of stepping back to forgive, recognizing that reality that there IS no sickness or death because that is not God's truth.
"T-18.IX.3. From the WORLD OF BODIES, MADE BY INSANITY, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind that made it. 2 And these messages bear witness to this world, pronouncing it as true. 3 For YOU sent forth these messengers to bring this back to you. 4 Everything these messages relay to you is quite external. 5 There are no messages that speak of what lies underneath, for it is not the body that could speak of this. 6 Its eyes perceive it not; its senses remain quite unaware of it; its tongue cannot relay its messages."
"The world *IS* the DELUSIONAL THOUGHT SYSTEM of those DRIVEN MAD by guilt."
T-14.I.2."THIS IS AN INSANE WORLD, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity. 7 There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and YOUR DREAM is sacred to you. 8 That is why God placed the Holy Spirit in you, where you placed the dream."
"W-pI.139.7. Nothing the world believes is true. 2 It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are. 3 And they will come again UNTIL the time Atonement is accepted, and they learn it is impossible to doubt yourself, and not to be aware of what you are."
W-pI.53.1. "WHAT IS PRODUCING THIS WORLD IS INSANE, and so is what it produces. 4 Reality is not insane"
W-pI.135.2. "A sense of threat is an acknowledgment of an inherent weakness; a belief that there is danger which has power to call on you to make appropriate defense. 3 THE WORLD IS BASED ON THIS INSANE BELIEF. 4 And all its structures, all its thoughts and doubts, its penalties and heavy armaments, its legal definitions and its codes, its ethics and its leaders and its gods, all serve but to preserve its sense of threat. 5 For no one walks the world in armature but must have terror striking at his heart."
"W-pII.3.2. The world was MADE AS AN ATTACK on God. 2 It symbolizes fear. 3 And what is fear except love's absence? 4 Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him. 5 Here was perception born, for knowledge could not cause such insane thoughts. 6 But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely. 7 Now mistakes become quite possible, for certainty has gone."
"W-pI.49.4. Listen in deep silence. 2 Be very still and open your mind. 3 Go past all the raucous shrieks and SICK IMAGININGS that cover your real thoughts and obscure your eternal link with God. 4 Sink deep into the peace that waits for you beyond the frantic, riotous thoughts and SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF THIS INSANE WORLD. 5 ***You do not live here***. 6 We are trying to reach YOUR REAL HOME. 7 We are trying to reach the **PLACE** where you are truly welcome. 8 We are trying to reach God."
"T-18.I.8. Let them all go, dancing in the wind, dipping and turning till they disappear from sight, far, far outside of you. 2 And turn you to the stately calm within, where in holy stillness dwells the living God you never left, and Who never left you. 3 The Holy Spirit takes you gently by the hand, and retraces with you your MAD JOURNEY outside yourself, leading you gently back to the truth and safety within. 4 He brings all your INSANE PROJECTIONS and the WILD SUBSTITUTIONS that you have placed OUTSIDE YOU to the truth. 5 Thus He reverses the course of INSANITY and restores you to reason."
A tree ... well.... at first a seed, is planted, and there is husk and germ, and then there is sprout, and now leaves, and a stem, and then a trunk with bark, and then flowers are emerging with petals and pollen, and now the emergence of apples with sweetness, and then there is a seed forming in the apple, and the apple falls to the ground, and now there is a seed again which could become a new tree, and on it goes.
So the question then is, what is this thing? Is it a seed? Well, temporarily, but it turns into something else. Is it a tree? Well not entirely, it was a seed at one point. Is it an apple? For a while, but it used to be bark and petals. So what is this thing? What is this so-called organism that just keeps on changing?
Really the whole cycle of what we call life is a temporary mix of things shifting and changing, as though to say, it has no permanent truth. It is never always something, it's always turning into something else. It shifts and changes, and so says it is one thing one moment and another the next. Another word for that is a lie, or untruth. A physical lie.
There is really no absolute truth of this shapeshifting "lifeform", it's one thing one minute and then you come back some days later and it's become something else. It is partly something, but not wholly anything. Bits of parts sprouting here, other parts sprouting there, at first buds and leaves, then flowers and fruits, who knows what it even is.
This is the transient cyclic undependable uncertain (fear) constantly shifting deceptive dishonest delusional system of the physical world. It has no fixed truth, and it presents one thing as true one moment and changes it's "mind" the next. It has no permanent identity, no absolute anything, nothing dependable, nothing reliable, you can't even trust it.
Such a world symbolises the ego thought system, full of illusions, deceptions, lies, shiftings and changes, nothing ever truly dependable or reliable. Always uncertain, an entire system of fear, always uncertain as to what it is or will be, impossible to depend on, undecided in its insanity, committed to nothing, incapable of being. And as physical objects it has become PHYSICAL FEAR. A physical lie, shifting before your eyes. And who knows what it is or was or ever will be next.
The world is a physical version of insanity. A mind solidified into concrete and walls. All its workings the laws of madness. Its entire system one of total uncertainty and deception. An illusion of a world, driven by insanity and rooted in lies. Not one single part of it is eternal or true.
"The world is the symbol of fear."
""A meaningless world engenders fear."
The totally insane engenders fear because it is completely undependable, and offers no grounds for trust. Nothing in madness is dependable. It holds out no safety and no hope. But such a world is not real. I have given it the illusion of reality, and have suffered from my belief in it. Now I choose to withdraw this belief, and place my trust in reality. In choosing this, I will escape all the effects of the world of fear because I am acknowledging that it does not exist."
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."