"You are safe in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of waking to reality."
"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."
The world in which we think we live, is nothing but a dream. But we're so used to being in it, that we refer to it as real. We think it has real buildings, real people, real cars and real trees. We think we are eating real food, having real sickness, working at real jobs, and that bodies really die.
To align ourselves with the truth, however, we need to properly identify what this world is. This world is UNREAL. It's a hallucinated dream happening in the mind of someone who doesn't want to accept reality. Reality is the Kingdom of God, beyond space and time. The contents of this world are false.
"The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."
"And what you seem to WAKE to, is but another FORM of this same world you see in dreams. All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. THEIR CONTENT IS THE SAME. They are your protest AGAINST reality, and your fixed and insane wish to CHANGE it."
Jesus is pretty blatant here, saying that even when you wake up from sleeping at night, you are STILL dreaming. This world which you think is real and is your real life, is STILL a dream. It has the same content because it's made of the same illusions, it just differs in its forms. It's so elaborate, so detailed, so seemingly separate, and so seemingly huge, that you don't suspect it's not even real.
We should properly identify then that this world IS a dream, it is UNREAL, and it is FALSE. It has no truth, because its contents are invalid. It is a false world because it opposes heaven. "Earth, which is heaven's opposite in every way." It is not created by God, so it can't really exist. It's more like a strange realm of illusions and dreams, images and fantasies, whisps of deceptive smoke and mirrors, in which figures come and go as if by magic.
"Time is a trick; a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures come and go as if by magic."
"When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."
Mind went into a sleep state, it dreamed of time (and space), it made up events which don't really exist anywhere, with consequences that have no real effect, with changes that are completely substanceless, and which will merely disappear into nothingness when we wake up to reality.
This means that, everything in this world is NOT a "real" anything. So all the things we think are real, need to be re-labelled as not real. For example, sickness is not REAL sickness. I don't mean that a person is pretending to be sick, in the context that there IS a real sickness that they're mimicking. But that ALL "actual" sickness is NOT real.
Cancer is not real cancer, it's fake cancer. Brain damage is not real brain damage, because "the body is a dream." Broken limbs are not real breaks, because the limbs are fictional. The graveyards are all fake and all the funerals are meaningless. Nothing is ever really dying because it can't, it just changes from one illusion to another, and it's just a neutral nothingness. Every kind of sickness or suffering is an illusion and NOT A REAL ONE. And there is no counterpart as a REAL sickness or suffering of any kind.
None of these things can exist in reality. In heaven there is no sickness or suffering, no attack or death, nothing goes wrong, there are no problems, there's no job to work at or house to maintain, there's no stores to buy crap at or streets for cars that break down. There isn't even a real sun.
"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."
So in this world, when you look at anything, you should really be recognizing that it is a DREAM OF something. A sick broken body is not a REAL sick broken body, it's a fake body pretending to be sick. A dead body is not a REALLY dead body, it's a DREAM IMAGE of a dead body pretending to look like it's dead. It's no different than a living one because they're both totally fake. Their forms different but they don't really mean anything different.
This also why there is really no death, because all of these things which we think "die" are just dreams. Reality cannot die because it cannot be threatened. They're figments of the mind. They're just images and holograms floating around in a fictional environment. This is why ACIM also teaches that the body cannot really die, OR live, because it is nothing. It is meaningless.
"The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life."
"Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have It not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die."
"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."
"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. The last one had gone. It was laid in the tomb, but there was nothing left to bury. It did not disintegrate because the unreal cannot die. It merely became what it always was. And that is what "rolling the stone away" means. The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond. It merely ceases to interfere with vision. To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness."
What we need to learn as teachers of God, is to recognize and be aware that we're literally hanging out inside a giant DREAM right now. This world ISN'T real. Spacetime isn't real. Physical matter isn't real. Objects and bodies aren't real. Your body isn't a REAL body. There are no such things as real bodies. Your sickness isn't a REAL sickness. There is no such thing as a real sickness. Your sins aren't real either, because there is no such thing as REAL sin.
It's a complete reframing of this whole "reality", this whole experiential realm of mind or system of thought. To realize that since it is opposite to reality, it is UNreality, and is just a dream. We try to GIVE it reality to MAKE it real, but we only do this BECAUSE it's not real. We want to believe in it and value it, only because it HAS no value of its own. It's a meaningless world, made of nothing, an illusion of nothing appearing to be something. A tiny mad idea.
To recognize the world for what it IS, you have to categorize its ENTIRE CONTENTS as unreal. Everything the body can see with its physical sight has to be recognized as NOT REAL, and NOT TRUE, and NOT ACTUAL.
"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which 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 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."
So we should get our mind into the habit of regard the things of this world as DREAMS. As fiction. Properly labelling them as artificial fake things. If your partner has a physical sickness in their body, they DO NOT have a REAL sickness in a REAL body. It's an illusion of sickness in an illusory body.
You wake up in the morning and brush your dream teeth and eat your dream breakfast and drive to your dream job, you do your dream work and drive your dream car home and eat your dream supper. Then you go to dream sleep in your dream bed and pretend to dream within a dream.
It's precisely BY recognizing that a sick body does not have a REAL sickness, that all power is stripped from the sickness and it is recognized as nothing. This is part of the healing approach of a miracle worker. When sickness is realized to be FICTION, it holds no weight and has no power and is nothing at all. "Illusions recognized must disappear" and what is recognized as nothing must vanish. You weaken and withdraw power from the sickness by regarding it as NOT REAL SICKNESS. Real sickness does not exist anywhere, just the illusion of sickness pretending to be sickness. It is empty.
"Here is the CAUSE of unreality. And it is here that it will be undone. YOU are the dreamer of the world of dreams. No OTHER cause it has, nor ever will."
"You will first DREAM of peace, and THEN awaken to it. Your first exchange of what you made for what you want is the exchange of nightmares for the happy dreams of love. In these lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the world of dreams, where ALL perception is."
"Yet nothing in the world of dreams remains without the hope of change and betterment, for here is NOT where changelessness is found. Let us be glad indeed that this is so, and seek not the eternal in this world. 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."
I wasn't intending for this post to be elaborate but I LOVE how this analogy unfolded to explain the body, sickness, death, miracles, and awakening.....I think that I might even write a whole book based on this analogy alone, it's so clear and exact.... Thanks to Holy Spirit for the nudges and corrections.
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Computers are strangely similar in their following of rules as we are in our responsibility for choice. And similarly, our bodies do exactly what we tell them to and nothing else.
A computer doesn't do anything whatsoever without a decision being made. When a decision is made, when the computer is told what you want, it produces exactly that result. The language used to tell it what to do is absolutely specific. And it only produces the exact result that was asked for. It is almost annoyingly specific in its requirement for precise instruction.
The computer doesn't really decide on its own to do anything else. It is very true to the programmer's instructions. If it seems to be doing something else, some illusion of a higher-level functioning has arisen. It's really still just processing binary data, 1's and 0s', yet produces what looks to be much more sophisticated results. Images on a screen, objects moving around, sounds happening, it's all an ILLUSION.
When the computer seems to do something it was not supposed to do, this is actually impossible. If there is a bug in the software, the computer still does what the bug tells it to do. It doesn't decide not to do bugs, and it doesn't decide to do bugs on its own. It faithfully follows instructions. That's all it can do. It has no real intelligence. It is just a machine. You get out what you put in.
The body is similar in that it is your faithful machine, and it literally only does what your mind tells it to do. It does not have a will of its own. It does not invent bugs on its own. It doesn't malfunction on its own. It only follows the program that is given to it. It is always 100% correct in carrying out orders. It does not complain or have an opinion or make judgement about rightness or wrongness of the program. It just EXECUTES.
It is a device, that you use for various purposes. Some of those purposes are malicious and as a result, they lead to the body seeming to produce malicious states of being. But regardless of these states looking like a high-level sophisticated problem, it is still just the body following orders. In this way, the body (like a computer) is completely neutral. It is your servant and you are the one operating it.
This is also exactly the same as the fact that, as Jesus tells us in the Course, you always get exactly what you ask for, you only ever get what you ask for, and you never get anything that you do not ask for. Therefore what you get and what happens is 100% your responsibility. If the body seems to go wrong or do bad things, it is because the programmer told it to.
Just as it is the responsibility of a computer programmer to give it the exact-right specific instructions for behavior, so too do you give your body exact instructions for behavior. This is why as Jesus says, if the body is exhibiting signs of sickness or disease, it must mean that the mind has given it a program where you've asked it to be sick and diseased. It is just following your request, to the letter. A sick body is a sign of a sick mind, because the programmer of the body has to be sick in order for sickness to show in the body.
This also shows us the way out of the illusion of stuff happening that allegedly shouldn't be happening. There is not ANYTHING happening in the entire world that has not been asked for by a mind. There is nothing happening in your body that you have not asked for in your mind. You put it there yourself through your instructions - your creative power and freedom. And you have received exactly what you asked for. It is a TOTALLY reliable system.
"Ask and you shall recieve" does not mean that sometimes you ask and sometimes you receive, it means you are always asking and you are always receiving and it is not even possible to not receive what you've asked for. There also therefore is never a situation where you might not receive what you've asked for, where you are in doubt, or thinking that you have asked the wrong question or don't know how to ask etc. You ask nevertheless, and everything you are experiencing right this very second, you have asked for. You can't blame the RESULTS for being something you do not want. YOU need to find out how and why you are programming the system to produce an output of suffering.
If stuff seems to be happening in the body which you don't prefer, you cannot blame the body for it, and you cannot look to outside causes to find out where the symptoms came from. There is only one program and you wrote it. Symptoms are just correct outputs, based on the program you have given the body and the request you have made.
Sickness is a correct output! Death is a correct output! If you ask for it, you shall receive it. If you say, body, you will die, it will die. If you say body you will live, it will live. This is why the illusion of things being right or wrong is 100% bullshit delusion, because there is nothing BROKEN about this system. You are giving it instructions unconsciously to produce HELL, and if that's not what you want, you need to program something else.
As explained in the Song of Prayer, you are constantly praying, constantly asking, and constantly receiving what you are asking for. Therefore, learn to pray a higher prayer. Prayer is PROGRAMMING! As Jesus says, prayer is the medium of miracles, because prayer is the act of CHANGING THE SOFTWARE! This also means that in the prayer you do not beg or request or have fear about what you are asking, you CHOOSE the results you would receive with total certainty that the system MUST produce what you have requested, and therefore you believe 100% that you MUST receive it, and YOU SHALL RECEIVE THE MIRACLE!
This also explains why really nothing has gone wrong and nothing is really happening at all. If the computer is just faithfully doing what you TOLD IT TO, nothing has gone wrong, even if what you told it to do (express a world of separation) was a pretty wacky idea for a program. This also shows why you have not gone off the path, plus there is no reason to be afraid that you cannot get back Home, because it is ALWAYS true that you are receiving what you're asking for and you can always choose again. Therefore, by choosing God's "program", you need not produce programs of suffering and death. NOTHING CAN STOP YOU FROM CHOOSING NOT TO PROGRAM DEATH! All death is a choice. All death is suicide.
This is why there is never anything out of place, there are no accidents, nobody dies without their own consent, and nothing happens without you making it happen. You are causal. You cause things. You produce. You direct. It is all extremely specific, 100% specific. Every single thing that seems to happen in illusions is put there on purpose. There are absolutely no victims whatsoever. Every notion of victimization, accidents, right/wrong, good/bad, should have happened or not, things unwanted, events you resist, etc.. it's all an effort by an unconscious programmer to fix the program by fighting with the output, instead of changing the program!
You have dominion over the body and over the Earth. You have power over all sickness and death because you MADE THEM with your programming, and you can UNMAKE them just as easily. If stuff is happening which, when you look at the results, you do not want, then you need to change your programming. You need to erase the instructions that you keep giving (false beliefs, delusions, ego), and replace it with a higher, more orderly program (Holy Spirit's mind, right-mindedness, sanity, truth).
Your body does not have bugs. Your programming of the body has bugs. Your life does not have bugs. Your programming of your life has bugs. You need to go fix your errors, your mistakes in thinking, which are producing exactly the correct output given the input. If you don't like the output, change the input, don't fight with the output like some victim that has no power to choose again.
You cannot keep looking at the output and saying, this output is not supposed to be happening, this output is wrong, this output is not what I asked for. That's a victim, which is a mind who has forgotten that they are the instructor and the INPUT to the system, and they are the ones who are causing the OUTPUT from the system, but they've forgotten that they're doing this. It's like they fed in a program (the script), walked away from the control system/terminal, and looked at the screen to see what results were coming out, saw something crazy coming out, and then having forgotten that they ASKED FOR IT, start freaking out and blaming the problem on 50 billion other reasons why the output is wrong.
The output is ALWAYS CORRECT based on the input, even if its an output of death. So who is really RESPONSIBLE for writing dodgy programs?! You are.
What you put in, you get out. If your mind is feeding input to your body and your life with unloving, unforgiving intentions, then you are going to be writing scripts which are filled with chosen suffering. You're going to be writing scripts, programs, which contain outputs that are unpleasant. You're going to even write scripts which create illusions that you're not the script-writer and that you did not ask for the output. You can even produce outputs which disguise the fact that there was ever a programmer!
So once you start getting SHIT come out of your printer, you probably can tell that shit was fed INTO the printer and you need to correct that. It's not the printer's fault. It's not the body-computer's fault. It's not other people's fault or life's fault or the environments fault or food's fault or anything's fault.
This is just a simple cause-and-effect system. It functions like a computer. There are decisions being made, there are inputs being given to the system, and it is producing exactly the output that was requested. There is not even a single interference with that. There is no corruption on the disk drive, there are no viruses infecting things, it's all running perfectly. EVERY prayer is being answered. EVERY request is being granted. You just keep making stupid-ass requests!
This is why if you really want to change the output, i.e. change the world or the body or any other effects, the ONLY real way to do that is to get back to the mind - to the programmer, get the programmer's mind corrected so they're not writing ridiculous programs, and then feed a new program into the system. A more truthful, orderly program. And this MUST (not sometimes, not maybe, but MUST) produce a corrected OUTPUT in the form of the "symptoms" or "effects" seen as the body. Remember Jesus's principle, "If miracles are not happening, something has gone wrong" - meaning, there is NEVER a wrong output given the input, so if you are not seeing a miracle, YOU CORRECTLY ASKED FOR SOMETHING OTHER THAN WHAT YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE ASKING FOR! And you WILL receive it.
Even in the bible it says that if you ask, and believe that you have received it, you will receive it. This suggests it's possible to not receive if you do not believe enough, which is not true. The correction for this is to realize, YOU MUST and ARE receiving exactly what you actually are asking for, so if it "looks like" you are not receiving what you want, you MUST be the one who is out of touch with what you want, and you're asking for stuff unconsciously that your conscious mind is in denial of.
Attempting to mess with what output you got, or what your body state is, or what your life looks like, from the end of the system that is the output of instructions, you are hitting your head against a wall and are attempting to perform magic. Magic means that you are believing that the output came from a non-obvious source, that the system is broken, and that you need to "patch it up" with some kind of bypass that messes with the output and mangles it to make it look like what you thought should have come out. That, however, does not fix the faulty PROGRAM, or the programmer that's nuts who is writing the faulty program, and so it will likely still keep producing the same output eventually. You can actually remove the effects of "sin" but if the person continues to "sin", i.e. write programs of separation, they will keep reproducing the same effects and symptoms.
A miracle, is simply the mind choosing to cause a different output. Writing a different program. Fixing bugs in its own software. When these changes show up in the output, it's amazing, like someone just rewrote all the rules, all of the old rules were broken, and the design of the whole system has been overridden. We call this miraculous. Some "super-natural" power from outside of the entire "matrix" of the system has just flipped some switches and changed the INPUT, and therefor the output has to fall into line.
Another way this can show up as miracles is that the programmer of the system can decide to rearrange space or time, can insert and remove objects from the scenery, can manipulate any piece of 'data' in the system, can modify absolutely anything in the system, and can convert anything into anything else. These are the powers that Jesus has demonstrated through miracles. He got in touch with the programmer's chair, sat down and started rewriting the programs. Everyone has the freedom to do this, we just have to get back into the chair and write programs from love!
We are not getting anything out of this system that wasn't put in, or that wasn't asked for. The computer is not broken. The hardware is not broken. We have a software problem. We keep writing faulty software. Software is PERCEPTION. The content of spacetime is DATA. Software operates on the data. True perception means seeing the program clearly and being able to do anything to modify it at will, producing different data - a different output.
We need, therefore, to tap into the assistance of a superior software writer, aka Holy Spirit, Jesus, God, who are capable of not only writing or changing portions of our program for us (collapsing time, rearranging space, etc), but can also guide and assist us with "correction" of our programming expressions. Thus we gradually can write a happier dream, leading up to a final climax.
The ultimate release from this whole CLOSED SYSTEM (it's closed because it's all happening inside of God and there are no hidden rules or secret wills and everything is very exact), is when you decide to ERASE ALL PROGRAMS. A complete reboot. A total fresh start. A renewing of everything. Not just a correction of all software bugs, but a complete realignment of the state of the system with God's truth. When this happens, basically the hard drive (body) is erased, the memory (ego) is erased, and all that is left is the hardware.
Then, the only thing running is the operating system - GOD, who has programmed Christ - the perfect program, to produce the perfect output - Heaven.
When something is logical, you start with a premise, and then as the nature of this premise "extends", it produces logical conclusions. The conclusions that will come from this premise are really established in the premise itself. The limitations or scope of the premise determines what can come from it, and what comes from it is completely in accord with its starting point.
"Every system of thought must have a starting point. It begins with either a making or a creating, a difference we have already discussed. Their resemblance lies in their power as foundations. Their difference lies in what rests upon them. Both are cornerstones for systems of belief by which one lives."
When you use logic, and you arrive at a logical conclusion, what you're looking for is consistency, or the lack of contradiction within the logical system. If what you end up with seems to correlate to what you started with, and there was no obvious "nonsense" creeping in, then you can conclude that your logical conclusions are valid. You won't see any sign of contradiction so you'll consider the conclusion to be "correct". It will seem that the logic "makes sense".
What's happening is you're finding an internal consistency within the system, set up by the premise you started with. And each step you took in your reasoning did not violate the rules of the logic system. So whatever conclusions you ended up with seemed to make sense, based on what you started with. And this gives you a notion of things making sense, being valid, even being correct.
The problem is that the premise itself has absolutely everything to do with what you end up with. The conclusions that come from it, if you follow the logical steps carefully and impeccably, are really "automatic". If you start at a given starting point, you WILL end up at an ending point which is in harmony with the starting point. And you won't be able to come to a "false conclusion" if you reason it through carefully.
But if you start off on the wrong foot, if you begin with an assumption, of your premise is entirely wrong to begin with, what will happen? You'll still make logical steps, you'll still seek out internal consistency, you'll still look for that sense of "it all seems to fit together", and you'll still draw conclusions which seem to be in accord with the premise you started with. And you'll conclude "it makes sense" even. But the conclusions you come to, if you start off on the wrong foot, will be actually false. Even though they'll seem correct.
So you can be logical, and be wrong. If you start out wrong, you will only get something wrong at the other end. If you begin with a lie, you will end up with a lie, but it will be a logical lie which makes sense within the context of the whole system.
Thought systems work the same way, whatever the system is based on determines what can come from it, and only that can come from it and nothing else, unless you want to be contradictory. Yet if you start out with a system based on a lie, you will end up with lies. The lies will seem to make sense and even will seem "true" in that they seem to "add up" without contradicting the starting point, but they will still be false in the big picture. But if you believe them, you will be trapped and stuck, while believing you are free. And that is false perception.
This is the problem with the ego thought system. In the really big picture, the ego's system is a "small picture", and it is out of context, and it does not start with the whole truth. It is not beginning with something that is actually really true. It is starting out on the wrong foot, such as the belief that separation is true, or sin is real, or the impossible is possible, or death is life, or something real can be threatened etc.
When you start out with something ultimately false like that, you will produce an ENTIRE logical "system", where your reasoning will progress completely "logically" from the start to the end. And you will end up with conclusions which seem consistent. The conclusions will even seem to make total sense, IF the premise is true. But in the big picture, if it is recognized that the premise was false to begin with, then even though the conclusions are logically consistent, they are still false conclusions.
So the ego starts off on the wrong foot, on an assumption which is wrong. It starts with the belief that separation is possible, or sin is real, and then begins a progression of seemingly natural logical conclusions. If separation is real, then it must be true (consistent) that bodies are real. Then if bodes are real, it must be true that anything bodies experience is real. And if their experiences are real, then death is real. etc. That's a natural logical progress and completely impeccable logic. But the conclusion is insane because the whole "system of thought", the system of logic, began with a false premise.
When you start with a true premise, such as that God is infinite and permanent and immortal, there are once again logical progressions which come from this. If you follow the steps and start to draw conclusions based on that, and if you are careful to be consistent and not contradictory, you will end up with natural conclusions. And these conclusions will make sense, and seem valid, and they ALSO WILL BE TRUE. If you start with truth, you will end up with truth. And so whether or not the result is true or false, depends on whether the premise is true or false. And what you get out of the system as a natural logical conclusion or outcome, is set up in its starting point.
When the starting point is God, the natural logical outcome of God is the creation of the Kingdom. It's not that God randomly decides to create immortal beings, it's that the whole system just functions that way, truth goes in at the start, progressions of logical consistency occur, and you automatically get creation out the other end. And because you started with immortality, you end up with immortality. "God is but love, and therefore so am I." Such conclusions therefore are not only making sense, they are also TRUE.
"The Kingdom is the result of premises, just as this world is. You may have carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is total confusion about everything."
"The ego's logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit, because your mind has the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects."
"From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos must follow. It is because it follows that it seems to be a logical conclusion; a valid step in ordered thought. The steps to chaos do follow neatly from their starting point. Each is a different form in the progression of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror and away from truth."
When you begin a thought process/system on a lie or illusion, you will end up with illusory lies which seem to make sense but are false. This means the total absence of REASON, which is the absence of sanity, because the whole system of thinking started out insane. When you start out the thought process/system with sanity and truth, you end up with a SANE conclusion. This is what ACIM refers to as REASON. The reasoning is LOGICAL, just as the ego's reasoning is logical, but it starts with sanity so ends with sane conclusions.
Just because something seems extremely logical, does not mean it is true. And this is a BIG problem for a lot of people studying ACIM. If for example you start out with a premise that e.g. God created the world, and you do not challenge this premise, the ENTIRE course will now be interpreted to try to "fit" it into that premise. And every conclusions drawn will not challenge that premise.
In order to uphold the premise that God created this world, a LOT of adjustments have to be made to the course's meanings, in order to produce consistency and a lack of contradiction. And this can lead to what seems like a consistent picture, but it is also completely wrong. Because it started out with a belief that is completely mistaken and unfounded, in light of God's nature.
A massive collection of CONSISTENT logical conclusions will be made based on it. And all of these conclusion together will form the appearance of what seems like a completely consistent internal coherence. It will STILL all seems to "fit together". A clear "picture" will form. There won't appear to be any contradictions. And any steps necessary to keep the premise valid will be made, regardless of the extent to which that means changing the meaning of the course.
Everything it says will be interpreted through that lens and filter. And the person will end up with a very elaborate, consistent, highly polished, internally supportive, self un-contradictory, and seemingly highly sensible set of conclusions. And it will all seem TRUE because it seems to make sense. And they will marvel at the seeming beauty of its logical harmony. BUT, the entire thing will be bullshit, because it all starts out with a false premise. And so the entire system of thought is completely mistaken. Yet it is regarded as truth because of its consistency.
You have to therefore be careful that your reasoning begins with something which is absolutely true. You need to understand God's nature first. And when you reason based on the truth, you will end up with truthful and valid and consistent answers, which are correct. You can't start with the world and try to reason backwards to find the truth. You have to start at the beginning of the system.
You have to have an awareness or grasp of what the absolute truth IS FIRST, before you can even proceed to think about anything. If you set off on the wrong foot, every conclusion you come to will be potentially false. But most of us will start out with false conclusions and assumptions and not question them, resulting in more false conclusions. Because we're starting out exploring all this with our egos, which has taken a whole bunch of assumptions as true, and this has not yet been questioned.
We have to find out first what the premise of our entire thinking is, whether we have started out on the wrong foot or not. And for that you have to ask yourself, what is the ultimate truth really like? What is God like? What is his nature? What IS the ultimate absolute premise? Where DID everything actually start, and what is the logical nature of that premise? Because from God, everything real proceeds as a logical system of thought, and it proceeds only according to His nature, and nothing can come from it which is unlike its starting point. So you have to be REALLY clear about God's nature before you can reason anything correctly.
When you can understand what God is like, you can start to draw truthful conclusions. And if you are careful, you can be GUARANTEED that these conclusions will be true. But if you do not understand God's premise, or you have difficulty being impeccable with your logic, then you will come to false conclusions because you'll be starting out with something false. And yet these conclusions will see true to you and make sense, even though they are mistakes or errors in reasoning. And you can end up with a whole lot of "it makes sense" even if you start out with lies.
This is happening A LOT in ACIM circles because many students are not yet in a position to grasp the nature of God's system, the premise of reality and the one truth. And so most of us are struggling to come to terms with what the conclusions are, yet alone being able to grasp where it all started or what it's all based on. And a lot of time is spent trying to uncover or learn about the premise.
If you return to the highest possible starting point, the pre-separation system, and you look at how God functions, and then you begin to reason out what CAME from that premise, and if you do so impeccably logically, you WILL come to true conclusions. But if you are mistaken about God, you will be mistaken in everything you conclude.
Those true conclusions will not only show you the things God COULD do, it will also show you what he COULD NOT do. What CAN come from Him, and what cannot. What He would will, and what he would not. And thus what you are, what your nature is, and what you are capable of in reality. When you do that, you'll see why the ego's system is entirely a FALSE premise, and EVERYTHING that comes from it will be false. And that includes the attempt to oppose God's premise, to overthrow the Kingdom, to make another world (including Earth), and why Earth CANNOT have come from God due to its nature being a complete contradiction of God's nature.
God does not make contradictions because He is logically consistent. For Him, heaven is the natural outcome of His premise. And Heaven is the ONLY outcome of His premise. Nothing else CAN come from it because it is rooted in truth. And because of His nature, Heaven HAD to be created. It's in God's nature to extend His logical premise to produce The Kingdom. Which is why it has always existed.
Earth, which is OPPOSITE to heaven in *EVERY* way, CANNOT COME FROM GOD. Its nature is opposite to His premise. It does not function like Him. It does not begin with the premise He begins with. And it cannot be a natural outcome of His thought system. If He were to create it, in addition to creating Heaven, that would mean two entirely different and opposing outcomes can result from a single premise. This is logically IMPOSSIBLE regardless of what the premise is. Each premise produces ONE conclusion in accord with it, not two different ones.
God could only create one or the other, and which one is set up in his beginning nature. Since Earth is opposite to Heaven, God could NOT have created it, otherwise He would have to have STARTED OUT with a split mind and be opposing himself. He would have to be fundamentally contradictory, as a premise, in order to PRODUCE two contradictory outputs. He could only Create ONE or the other, not both, and they cannot both exist or "be one" because of their contradictory natures. If Earth is real, heaven does not exist at all.
God is NOT contradictory, so He can ONLY produce ONE outcome. That outcome is HEAVEN, and Earth is therefore NOT OF GOD, and is not based on truth or reality. And since God is real, Earth therefore, logically, cannot be real. And since only what God creates CAN exist, Earth does not exist at all. And if God is permanent, Earth cannot be permanent. And if God exists, having Created ONLY heaven, Earth cannot exist at all. This is why "there is no world" and God did not create it.
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates MUST be eternal AS HIMSELF" is a logical statement. Since Earth is NOT eternal, it must have come from a NON-ETERNAL premise, and since God is eternal, it cannot have come from HIS premise. And because HIS premise is true, it must have come from a FALSE premise. And therefore Earth is an illusion, and never will it be His one outcome.
"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."
I have been noticing in myself lately that I keep being judgemental. My thoughts feel like judgements. Even just basic thoughts of "what something is" feels like a judgement. I wondered to myself why I seem to be judging all the time. I hadn't realized just how judgmental I seem to be all the time.
This could be in the form of just having some opinion about everything. It didn't even necessarily need to be in terms of anger or projecting blame, just a kind of incessant "believing I know". Just constantly and consistently labelling everything in terms of what I believe it means.
I would just keep labeling everything in course terms. "That's an illusion", "They're level confused", "This is unreal", etc. I seemed to be just using the whole course to add a layer of naming and shaming to everything I was aware of.
I noticed also that I couldn't seemingly just look at something without "coursifying it". I couldn't just enjoy something or do normal activities without having to have an ACIM commentary running alongside it. Just constantly trying to "counteract" the world and everything I see with statements, trying to deny it, trying to change it, trying to push it away.
This also seems to be tied into a general sense of unhappiness about everything. My ego would sometimes really flare up with attack thoughts which clearly were attempts to increase separation. It increased a sense of being alone, and further justified a sort of seeming "bitterness" about the world. It kind of felt like kind of slipping down further into hell rather than rising out of it.
I also have been growing weary of ACIM, quite honestly. I've chewed on its words and metaphysics and have written about it to such an extent that I was becoming tired of it. Tired of thinking about it. Like I'd done it all and seen it all and there was nothing left to figure out. As if figuring it out, or understanding it, was the whole point.
I wanted some kind of more direct, simplified experience. Something more practical that works. Something more direct, that didn't have a layer of interpretation or second-hand thinking alongside it. I didn't want more affirmations or course statements flying around in my mind. I didn't want just another commentary or people just parroting the course's words as if knowing what it means. I and I didn't want to keep doing forgiveness on the basis of some bunch of statements, trying to use words to fend off ego attacks.
I had to step away from all this for a bit to just settle down and get a sense of something more basic and simple and fundamental. And this is when I started opening up to wanting the Holy Spirit to inform me of a better way. I wanted to see things how he sees things and to join with him more, to just very simply take some small little step that would be enough to fix my mind without all the psychobabble. Some kind of simple something I could just "do" that would produce a happier experience without all the course crap alongside it.
I saw that having conversations about the course just wasn't really working. Everyone's just talking about it. We use its statements as if they are magic wands. But I wasn't seeing a satisfying effect from this. Just figuring out what it means and repeating its words didn't do much. I didn't want to be just another parrot regurgitating the same stuff while staying entirely confined in this same "way" of trying to apply it. I wanted something much closer to my being, that I didn't have to think about. Something much more basic and intimate that I could "live" without mental gymnastics.
This is when I started to discover that I was in general laying an entire interpretation of everything on top of it. This interpretation was based on my thinking that I knew what things were. An attempt to understand it. I saw that I was giving everything meaning through this interpretation. I was deciding that things sucked or were negative and was then reacting to my own decision as to what I thought it was. My interpretation of everything was being mistaken for the thing itself.
So then I considered the fact that every single time that I was less than happy in any way, it was a part of this "way" that I was interpreting. I was filtering or translating or changing, twisting, whatever was "out there", into some kind of decided-upon "version" that I was then experiencing as my "perception of it". Because if you remember, "perception is a result not a cause" and "projection makes perception".
It's really what I project that produces perceptual issues. If I perceived a result or conclusion of "unhappy", I must have projected and wanted that. If I was interpreting that something happening "meant" that I should be afraid, I must've decided that it meant this. I gave it this meaning. And this meaning changed my perception and produces "experiences" or effects which were generally unpleasant.
In the truest sense, I was doing this to myself, as in the secret of salvation, because it was this whole "layer" of interpretation, coming in between me and the world so to speak, that was responsible for causing my "experience" of the world to be faulty. I was willing to consider that any time I was not happy I MUST have mis-interpreted and had come up with some kind of MISTAKEN opiniion about what it MEANS.
I had to be willing to recognize that it was my chosen interpretation that was entirely responsible for the "effects" of that interpretation upon myself, the seeming ego reactions or fears or upset emotions or any kind of annoyance or disturbance. All of my suffering was really rooted in that layer of interpreting, NOT in what lied "beyond it" as the world. And that meant that I was making a lot of mistaken interpretations, resulting in a lot of unhappiness.
Light a light-switch, I then found that simply by recognizing I had made an interpretation, and just being willing to admit that it was the entire reason why I was not happy, my mind would become open to just "letting that interpretation go." I didn't seem to have to do anything else for this to happen. As they say, "illusions recognized must disappear." My interpretation IS the illusion. It was a way of turning "reality" into something it's not. Just recognizing it as an illusory, self-made, made-up, filtered "view", was enough to make it disappear.
As soon as it would just disappear, immediately my mind would light up with light and happiness. It would seem as though a higher me, rooted in the "back" of my mind, would suddenly shine outward. It was as if secretly behind all my ego upset sense of self, there was this higher me that was just always happy and filled with light and wasn't taking anything seriously. It seemed to already be there. I didn't invent it myself. Perhaps this was the real me.
This has started a revolution in my mind and in my outlook and in my way of experiencing the world. It isn't a forgiveness based on some kind of long-winded, elaborate story that I have to tell myself, trying to deprogram myself, trying to counteract perceived problems with a long litany of affirmative statements, or trying to remember course principles, or trying to grasp at straws to make it go away.
It was very very simple. It was much more a sort of change in how I EXPERIENCE what's going on. And that was far more immediate. More like just a kind of attitude change. Not something "thought about", or arrived at through understanding, or made out of complicated metaphysics, or logically deduced. It was a kind of forgiveness that was just a much more intimate matter of psychological engagement.
Either I was interpreting or I wasn't. Either I had chosen to invent some kind of "meaning" for something, or I had let it go. Either I was filtering and believing I knew what something was, or I was just willing to stop doing it. It wasn't a matter of replacing it with something or justifying it or explaining it or writing a book about it. It was kind of like just stepping back. Getting out of my analysis. Stopping my self-made attempt to determine what something is.
The bizarre thing is just how effortless it is and how immediately a whole world of low-level ego experience, suffering, upset and darkness, is immediately overruled by a much much higher bright light of happiness and lightness.
It almost seems wrong, in that the light-heartedness of it doesn't even seem to care to "address"the many doubts and fears and concerns that the ego had. It just sort of leaps above it and pays no attention to it. Like, who would have thought THAT would be a solution? Not to change the ego but to just get OUT of it? To just leave the desert without even dealing with all the many loose ends and questioning fears.
I think for a ton of years now I've generally been locked into the ego mind. Regardless of how lofty my thoughts have been, and regardless of efforts to forgive. It's always still been accompanied by ego feelings, upsets, emotions, fears, reactions, ego rebounds.
I was just kind of getting fed up with the fact that every time I tried to do anything with the course, it ALWAYS had a stupid ego rebound afterwards. Catharsis, release, upset emotions, fear reactions etc. It was just so annoying. I was kind of getting tired of the course in this sense because I couldn't seem to do any of it without having this sense of ... I just don't want to do this. My ego self or whatever just is wired against God and does not want to wake up, and can't. "I", mixed up in that sense of lower-suffering-self, couldn't stop being the way it was.
So there's been this tug of war between the part of mind that just basically couldn't care less about the course and just wants to live a normal life in a body, versus this constant barrage of attempts to awaken to some kind of higher life and perspective that's totally incompatible. The contrast between the two was becoming very acute and I couldn't find a way to satisfy both. I had to even take a break from ACIM for a while and just be in "my ego" to just be normal and stop hitting it over the head with a hammer of spirituality.
But I think what's come out of that now is this very very unexpected movement in which I let the ego stuff remain ego and just seem to step outside of it. It's quite odd. Because I now see that within myself there's this sort of self-contained internal bubble of my suffering self, complete with all the ego emotions and upsets, which is generally most of the time unhappy, riddled with fears and grief and uncertainty and so on. And it seems like this is all within my body. And then somehow there's this higher me that is totally outside of all that, shining a light from a vantage point of not even trying to understand or interpret anything.
It has raised questions of, who even am I. What aspects of myself or of my experience actually is "the ego" and should be something to "get rid of", versus what aspects of this is actually a permanent part of my true nature? Are my emotional reactions just an ego thing? Is this sense of "me suffering" the ego? In particular, where do I draw the line?
But I'm finding that maybe I don't actually have to answer that in terms of a description of it. Because what I seem to be realizing is that ALL of that internal seeming "struggling self" is entirely sort of the "byproduct" of this whole "thinking I know" thing. This whole interpretation of everything. Having a judgement about what everything is. Labelling everything in course terms. Trying to describe everything in explicit detail.
That whole approach of trying to "understand" the world and everything in my experience, is precicely what CAUSES all of the suffering. It's as if, when I try to interpret "reality", it produces generally negative forms of consequence, in a cause-effect kind of way. And the outcome of that is what we might call "the ego" in me. It's this collection of reactions, emotions, upsets, perceived threats, fears, guilts, etc... which all seem to revolve around victimhood and being at the effect of something. That all seems to actually be the END RESULT OF, my minds attempts to INTERPRET reality.
So I put out some kind of negative faulty mistaken interpretation or effort to understand what something is, this results in a false perception, which in turn results in a bunch of suffering, which in turn assembles as a collection of unhappy elements that bundle together as an "ego experience". And that ego experience seems like it's somewhat outside of me. And when my mind is going there, it seems that I am the one having this experience, that my identity IS the suffering, that I AM the upset and the unhappiness. And that anchors and confines and limits my whole awareness INSIDE OF that whole viewpoint.
So if my view is so narrow and limited and false, producing heavy false dark perceptions, then my whole sense of self seems to become imprisoned and confined, alone and afraid, small and weak and vulnerable. It seems like my entire life has been spent accumulating sufferings in this little internal storehouse, surrounding and forming this confused and separated-off sense of self or of "my experience" of life. All gathered up in a ball, even which seems to be housed within my body and especially within the "emotional center" in the stomache area.
If this ENTIRE experience of life is the end RESULT, ie perceptual consequence of, the various mistaken MEANINGS that I keep putting onto things, then it stands to reason (lol) that if I fundamentally CHANGE my entire approach and alter the process of "giving meaning", then it's going to totally override that ENTIRE realm of expeirence.
It's going to basically switch off the ego experience, it's going to totally override all the upsets and reactions, all the unhappy emotions etc. Because it was as though, all along, all this time, ALL of my sufferings have been the RESULT of the meaning that I'VE been giving to everything.
I've become very good at describing things, explainig things, analyzing the world, picking apart illusions, labelling stuff, counter-attacking attacks, and generally just reacting to MY OWN decisions. And suddenly I seem to be embarking on an entirely different ballgame. I guess it can be described as moving above the battlefield in a way. It's like a HUGE stepping back and just stopping trying to fucking figure everything out. Not just because it can't be figured out but because the act of trying to do so is BLOCKING me. It shuts down my light and decreases my awareness and turns me into a judger.
So now for me, this whole course thing, it's turning into something very very simplified. It's just some basic sort of flip of the switch thing, between whether I want to carry on with my faulty judgements/interpretations/translations of what's going on, or whether I want to just let those go.
As I let them go, it's like a huge cloud of psychological blockage is lifted away. A bright HAPPY light switches on out of nowhere, as if I'm getting back in touch with the REAL me that is in the back of all this, and has been there all along covered up by all the mental distortions. It immediately feels remarkably happy and light, regardless of how heavy and dark the ego experience was "before" I stepped out of it.
What the ego is, I think it really is just the "effects" that are produced when we try to "narrow" (Jesus interjected) reality down to being this or that, to describe it, to judge it, to assess or evaluate what stuff "is". The labels and meanings we keep trying to give things. And then mistakedly confusing that effort for reality, believing that reality now inherently IS the meaning that WE decided it has. That produces all the ego reactions, all suffering, all unhappiness and dissatisfaction.
When we stop producing these illusions of interpreation, trying to think we know what things are, trying to understand the ego and the world, trying to filter what's happening, trying to insist that something is what we think it is, trying to be right about our labels and projections, all that just immediately switches off the "ego effect" and puts our mind back in touch with cause.
We settle back into reality, we return to our baseline, we get back in touch with who we are BEHIND all these layers of interpretation, and the clouds part and the light comes shining forth. And it feels SO much happier than the deluge of suffering that ALL interpretations produce.
So it's not a matter of trying to get "that ego" to change and grow and wake up and become spiritual, the ego is just the result of "shutting down". If we are to "open up" we have to be willing to actually be open all the time. Because any time we judge or label or describe or analyze or think we know about or seem certain of what stuff is or means, we are actually narrowing and closing down, casting anchors into the wind. And that just diminishes our light and makes us feel dark and alone and afraid.
We step out of the ego by stepping into the light of "not knowing", of forgetting what you taught yourself, or letting go of thinking you know, and of learning NOT to try interpreting anything. When you stop projecting your made-up meanings onto everything, you leave an open space for the Holy Spirit and God to project THEIR meaning instead, in the emptiness that you've left there. In the space you've provided for light to shine through you. Really it's more like, getting out of your own way.
I am finding this is what forgiveness means to me now. It's the simple movement away from having made the mistake of deciding what something must mean, which is pretty much always in error and leads to suffering, and just being willing to not do that. My own meanings are what blocks my sight. My own judgements of reality are what keeps reality from me. This is how we undo perception itself, by undoing the basis for judgement. And it takes no more than a slight willingness to recognize my self-inflicted suffering is coming from my self-imposed meanings, to let them disappear to reveal the light within.
Yesterday I saw for the first time, myself just pivoting differently, in a situation where someone had clearly "done something wrong", breaking some rules. I could've "held it against" the person, and yet somehow I remembered that this entire experience of it being "wrong" or sinful was a meaning I was giving it, and as I stepped back from that I found myself expressing that the person was still lovable regardless of this mistake, and it was only a mistake. It was as kind of "experiential forgiveness", so basic and simple, a psychological act of just "withholding judgement" in a way, that I felt it produced some kind of miraculous effects afterwards. And it felt good.
Ultimately it all boils down to the simple idea that we have en experiential realitionship with truth and reality, and we are either going to be fully open it and let it be what it is without trying to define it, or we're going to narrow our perception and lay judgements and labels on it, trying to dissect it. And as soon as we do that we will shut down our light and go into darkness (ego). If we want light and happiness, we have to learn to just accept reality in the fullness of "what is" (not the world as such), by not "having an opinion about it". Not laying a meaning on it. So that the light can fully shine and illuminate our happiness.
"Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, ****nor seeks to twist it to appearance that it likes.**** It merely looks and waits and judges not. ****He who would not forgive must judge****, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must ****learn to welcome truth exactly as it is.****"
"If you could accept the world as meaningless and ***let the truth be written upon it for you****, it would make you indescribably happy." "In the world you, can become a spotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you, to all around you. You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves."
"The reflection of God NEEDS no interpretation. IT IS CLEAR. Clear but the mirror, and the message which shines forth from what the mirror holds out for everyone to see, NO-ONE will fail to understand. It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to the mirror that is in HIM. He recognizes it, because he has been taught his NEED for it, but knows not where to look to FIND it. Let him, then, see it in YOU, and share it WITH you. Could you but realize, for a single instant, the power of healing that the reflection of God, shining in YOU, can bring to all the world, you COULD not wait to make the mirror of your mind clean, to receive the image of the Holiness that heals the world."
Sorry this is a bit longish... it's hard to explain.
The physical world is a holographic dream. But the way that it is holographic isn't very obvious. And most people do not believe it is a dream!
Firstly, a hologram is not a projected 3D image. It is not the hollywoodized concept of an artificial three-dimensional object projected in space that you can view from any angle. That very loosely is tied to the idea of a hologram and they just ran with it and turned it into a marketing exercise.
Holograms have some interesting properties which describe the way that this world is put together, and the reason why it is a dream.
You will see a hologram on most credit cards. It's the little shiny symbol in the corner which, if you look at it from different angles, appears to let you see a virtual object suspended in space. You actually seem to be able to look at it from different angles, even though it's a flat image. They use this on cards because they are hard to manufacture, requiring precise laser technology, so this offers a certain level of protection against fraudulent cards.
The idea of a hologram is that information about the whole of something is present in all of the parts. On your credit card, information about the image of an object as viewed from countless different angles, is embedded into each tiny particle of the image. It's as though there were thousands of cameras recording images of the object from different angles, and then all of these images were overlaid on top of each other. Therefore each part of the image contains a ton of information, much more than just one particle of image.
One way to produce a hologram like this is to create tiny 3-dimensional bumps which you project different images onto from a specific direction. When your viewing angle changes, you see a different side of the bumps thus forming a different image. That's a very loose approximation of how a hologram works.
One of the properties of a hologram, therefore, is that if you remove a physical portion of the holographic image, it does not lose a specific portion of the information stored in it. That's because the same information is present in all of the other parts of the image. It's like storing the same piece of data a thousand times scattered across the surface. Chopping off a part of the object does not lose information stored in that part, it only reduces the overall sum total of occurrences of the information.
In the book, The Holographic Universe, it was described for example that a person had a portion of their brain removed. It was believed by science that certain memories were stored in that part of the brain, and that removing it would definitely produce a memory loss. However, afterwards, the person still could recall the memory, it was just a little fuzzy. That's because the memory was actually stored throughout the brain in a holographic manner, meaning that "all" of the memory was stored in "every part" of the brain. Removing one part of the brain did not remove a specific portion of the memory. The memory could still be recalled and reassembled because all of it was stored in all parts. Just with a little less clarity. The brain is holographic.
So in a hologram, each specific part of an object isn't JUST that part of the object, it is also connected to and shares information with all of the other parts. This is also similar to the scientific theory that matter is energy which exists as a kind of field of potentiality, which, when you look at it with consciousness, it condenses the field into a tight point and shows up as a particle. The particle then seems to be the only part visible so you think that that's all there is to it, but the particle actually is still intimately connected to and extends into the field. Thus there is an extension beyond the form of matter.
Another word that describes this extension beyond the form, and the idea that the part contains the whole, is a "symbol". Symbols are representations of something greater beyond themselves. They are not the thing, but they're sort of a condensed representation of the core qualities of the thing. They allude to something beyond themselves, and they point in the direction of the whole of the thing they represent. They don't show up as the thing in its entirety, only as a small image which "symbolizes" the thing. And what is it that we know of that are built from symbols? Dreams.
Now, the reason that we can't usually tell this physical universe is a holographic dream, is because as much evidence as possible that each part (particle) is connected to the "all" has been squeezed out. The matter that shows up, as form and objects and bodies and worlds, are symbols representing energies that are far bigger than the objects themselves, and which connect the objects together. In other words, there is a lot of SHARING going on behind the scenes, but by the time the energy field coalesces into tight concentrations - as matter - you only see the concentrations ie forms, and you don't realize that these forms are symbolic of something more beyond them. You fixate on the form of what is visible and think that this is all there is, as though the symbol is not really a symbol but is actually the whole 'thing' in completeness.
So at the most extremely spread out end of the hologram, which is the physical universe, it APPEARS that there is no sharing. Particles do not seem to share the same space. They do not seem to be connected. Everything seems to be separated out. Objects do not really touch each other, but are held at a distance by forces. And so this makes us believe that each object does not share anything with other objects, particularly if you fixate on the object's form and appearance. This is an ILLUSION. It's an illusion composed of SYMBOLS, which you have interpreted incorrectly to be NOT symbolic, and instead see only the condensed form of the hologram, which makes you think that physical matter is entirely fixed and is showing you all of what exists.
This illusion, then, that matter is all separate and that there is no sharing going on, deceives you to believe this world is not a hologram, because you don't SEE the ways that the particles are joined together, or joined to the whole. You also don't see the ways that the whole is present in every part. You don't recognize, and your body can't show you, that this so-called reality is actually just a SYMBOLIC collection of temporary images, not a final end-state in its own right but a place that points beyond itself.
Just as your dreams at night are highly symbolic, so too the physical world is completely symbolic. There are established massive symbols in this world which represent all kinds of aspects of the separation idea. For example, outer space, empty and black and cold, symbolizes the unconscious mind, whereby instead of there being light everywhere, light is denied and reduced to tiny concentrations - which you call stars, which are symbols of the ego and the conscious mind as separated selves. If you go into it, there area many many symbols in this world representing the structure of the ego and its interpretation of the truth. The body is a symbol of the idea of separation from the whole environment, for example. It is not just a form and a finite thing in its own right, it REPRESENTS the idea in the mind that you are separate from the whole. It is a symbol with a hidden background.
Most people do not think they are inside a dream. They think that there are no symbols anywhere. Yet they might loosely say from time to that that something seems symbolic. When you have synchronicities and things seem to correlate and be "connected", that's you starting to realize and tap into the hologram, into the field of energy, which is diffused beyond just physical appearances. You're sensing and noticing that, uncannily, two seemingly separate symbols are actually related. ie you start to realize that there is something CONNECTING things together in a semi-meaningful way (synchronicity is "meaningful coincidence"), and coincidence means co-incidence, ie two things correlating, because they share a holographic background.
Dreams at night occur at what you could call a higher level of the hologram. As such, in a night dream, the seemingly concrete, fixed quality of matter is not as "dense" as in the physical universe. Therefore the reality of the dreams are much more highly and obviously symbolic, not just that the objects and events in them symbolize things you experienced in the daytime or whatever, but that they actually represent things. Dream interpretation isn't just an attempt to derive meaning from something that has no meaning, it is actually based on the fact that dreams are entirely composed of SYMBOLS, and those symbols are the structure of "dream reality" because dream reality is holographic, objects and events are representations and not things in their own right, and everything is joined together beyond just the appearance of its form.
Sometimes you will notice that you have dreams which are far more symbolic than others. Sometimes you'll have a dream where it seems effortless for objects to transform bizarrely into other objects. I remember having a dream where I walked out the front door and there was like a dog barking and something changed in my mind and the dog turned into a small child and started to talk to me and then something else happened and the child turned into an adult. This is possible because in these dreams, the "form" or the fixed condensed material quality of the reality experience, the holographic reality, is not as dense and not as concrete. Abstract weird stuff happens.
It's much easier at that level, where matter has not concentrated so tightly, for forms to SHIFT and change quite naturally and normally. Forms that shift and change, by the way, is the foundation of all "life forms" that GROW and change over time, demonstrating that their reality is not actually fully fixed. And symbols can more easily transition into other symbols at the deeper level of the abstract hologram. The very form of objects can convert into other objects, as symbols shift around.
I also had a dream once which explicitly explained to me the holographic nature of dreams. In this dream I stood on a small bridge. There was nothing else in the scene. Then around me in all directions were apparently images, but each of these images was a symbol. It wasn't that I took the appearance of the image at face value, but instead, I recognized that the images were symbolic and therefore they "led" to something that they REPRESENTED. I could literally FEEL and sense that these symbolic images were not only connected to "other realities", but that the way the image was showing up wasn't "the whole" of what existed. It was just one finite expression of what it represented.
So it was possible to actually sort of "go into" the image, into the symbol, which caused it to expand as I moved closer to the environment that the symbol represented. I was able to travel through holograms this way. And it was then possible to take some other part of the environment, and go into it in similar fashion, upon which it would also expand out or elaborate into an entire scene based on that chosen focus. This showed me that the dream reality is highly holographic and fluid and symbolic and that everything is connected together behind the appearance of the symbols.
The physical world is less obviously symbolic and holographic because it is more DENSE, and that means the shared energy field - the all - has been very strongly broken out, to create the ILLUSION that each part barely has any trace of a connection to any other part. The extreme of separation is so strong between parts that you would be forgiven for being convinced not only that each object is not a symbol at all, but that there is nothing "beyond" the form of each object, nothing is shared, nothing is connected, and there is no reality beyond appearances. This is the lowest "level" of the hologram, where the unfied field, the shared symbolic nature of this dream, has become so cemented and "physicalized" that it barely seems possible to you that it is a dream at all. So extreme is the degree of concentration and contraction o the energy here, that it's almost undetectable to sense or tell that everything is joined.
That is, perhaps, unless you are an "empath", which is someone whose mind is able to sense where the symbols lead, and can expand upon what lies beyond them as though tuning into the hologram's symbolism and travelling in Spirit to its source. This is also why empaths are able to actually tune into "real people" that show up on television recordings or in movies, because even though the recording was done in the past, there is STILL a symbolic holographic connection between that IMAGE and the actually thing it represents. The mind can go into that image and sense and explore things about what the image shows, navigating through the symbolic hologram.
This highly obscuring, difficult to discern, God-blocking, reality covering, immense illusory dream, which seems to have solidified into a consistent solid world, is precisely what you wanted! This is why you used a holographic dream to create a world of separation, an illusion, where the illusion IS that the world is NOT symbolic, it is NOT a dream, and it APPEARS to be solid and real with everything separate.
We've pushed the hologram to the limits of physical density, causing particles to remain very fixed-seeming in their arrangements, which has created the ILLUSION of a place of form where consistency is very very sustained over long period of time. Objects don't apparently change into other objects, and you as a limited mind do not SEEM to have hardly a trace of power to change objects into other objects, because they're being held in a physicalized state very strongly, unlike the conditions in a nighttime dream which is much more maleable. Unless you're Jesus ;-) Events mostly do not seem to be symbolic. Bodies seem to function based on non-holographic laws. And nothing seems to be connected to a greater whole.
Then you are left only with the appearance of the physical matter, you make up laws about it based on its behavior, and then you justify that your science is correct based on its illusion of consistency, and have moved into the "linear" perspective. But the truth is lateral, vertical, because if you move out of the physicalized EFFECT and back towards the abstract CAUSE, you become able to modify the physicalization of matter to take on a different form. And this would be considered miraculous.
This therefore shuts out the idea of GOD, which is a reality where everything is shared. This is because the world was made as a defense against God and as a way to OBSCURE the truth that God is omnipresent, that ALL of Him is fully present in all parts. In physical matter, this could not be more obscured as an illusion that the all is NOT in ANY part, and therefore that the all does not exist. That was the PURPOSE of the physical world. To hide God from awareness.
So just because you think this world is an objective, verbatim kind of reality, it's not. It's a holographic dream. And sometimes this holographic dream actually does shift and change in symbolic ways that defy all logic and scientific explanation. Quite literally, sometimes, people report cases where an entire building which did not exist the day before, suddenly materializes in a known location that simply was not there. Somehow, it simply shows up in the dream hologram because of some kind of shift in the energy focus.
Also quantum physics is starting to reveal how objects at a distance can share the same reality - that a particle of light can be in two places at once, and that changes to the particle in one location AUTOMATICALLY changes the particle in the other location with NO TIME DELAY. This is "physically" impossible, in terms of a fixed dense world of form and matter, but in terms of holographic dreams, it is TOTALLY NORMAL! In fact, that this isn't happening more often is very abnormal, and shows you the extent to which we have designed this "world" (which is nothing more than an illusory dream) to APPEAR to be very fixed and separated.
In higher, more symbolic night dreams, it's possible to do things to bend reality, modify objects, transcend physical laws, transform one thing into another etc... all quite naturally, because that's what's possible when you know that everything is ONE, and everything is joined together. Form, matter, objects and appearances, including bodies and worlds, are nothing more than SYMBOLS, and those symbols can easily shift and change "form".
Having mastery over this dream illusion gives you the ability and mastery to defy all of the so-called "physical" laws, which are merely laws based on visible concentrations of the one field, and to do things like walking on water, changing objects into other objects, disappearing sickness, reversing death, etc. The miracles Jesus demonstrated merely shows us that this dream is a holographic illusion which is completely malleable, its form is nothing more than a temporary expression of an idea, and everything can be modified.
This world isn't real. It is a dream. It's an illusion of a world. It's a temporary concentration of an idea of separation, an idea that "the all" does not exist, and the idea that nothing is shared. It takes the form of a hologram which goes from a state where everything is one, to a state where nothing is one, and every level in between. The all IS in every part, because every part is not the WHOLE, it's just a portion of the whole. You are not seeing the whole picture! And if you believe solely based on "appearances" that physical matter is all that there is, you are completely falling for the holographic illusion that nothing is connected.
Everything is connected. All is One. At at the very peak of the hologram, everything is shared everywhere. God is omnipresent. All of God is in all parts fully, and this completely defies all physical laws. The physical laws do not apply to MIRACLES because miracles are expressions of the abstract source of the hologram, from the field of mind and energy which transcends particles and concentrations of matter, and which all of the symbols POINT TO.
So yes, you're dreaming. You're inside a symbolic dream right now, right where you are, as you read this, with your holographic dream body. All is not what it seems. There is reality beyond this apparent world, and appearances are not reality. Thus there is no real world here. At most, this world is a SYMBOL, and not a finite concrete objective wholeness. And yet even as a symbol it is just a symbol in a dream, and this dream is not real, because DREAMS ARE NOT REAL. That is why there is no real world here, no real death, and no real sickness or suffering.
We are meant to wake up from the entire holographic projection and return to the abstract source of truth where ALL IS ONE.