In A Course in Miracles, Jesus speaks of the face of innocence. This is an aspect of the ego identity which tends to side with "positivity" and "being good" and "people pleasing" and trying to portray itself as innocent, harmless, even weak and frail. This face of innocence is "the innocent victim", and sides with victims. The illusion of innocence is there to cover up secret hidden desires to attack and victimize. And the innocent face is a way to pretend you are not the cause of anything that happens.

In psychological terms the face of innocence is what we also call "the persona". It's part of the split mind. It's a device we use to only accept that which appears to be acceptable, positive, good, desirable, etc. But it also acts like a knife, splitting the mind and rejecting parts that it finds not good enough. It is in fact a way that the mind attacks itself by identifying aspects which are unacceptable and dissociating from them. This places them into the "shadow" behind walls of denial (blocks to awareness). It is perfectionistic, because it always asserts that you are not perfect enough.

Jesus: "The concept of the self the world would teach is not the thing that it appears to be. For it is made to serve two purposes, but one of which the mind can recognize. The first presents the face of innocence, the aspect acted ON. It is this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. It searches for companions, and it looks at times with pity on the suffering, and sometimes offers solace. It believes that it is good, within an evil world. This aspect can grow angry, for the world is wicked, and unable to provide the love and shelter innocence deserves. And so this face is often wet with tears, at the injustices the world accords to those who would be generous and good."

"This aspect NEVER makes the first attack. But every day a hundred little things make small assaults upon its innocence, provoking it to irritation, and at last to open insult and abuse."

He goes on to describe how this face of innocence covers up a terrible secret. That behind this "special love" there is "special hate". Underlying the face of innocence and the innocent victim, is an attack and judgement and condemnation. And in it, others stand accused of sinning against you. The face becomes a way to portray oneself as "at the effect of the world", such that if it appears to be the innocent party, then others must stand accused at the slightest provocation. It is a device for scapegoating.

"Beneath the face of innocence there is a lesson that the concept of the self was made to teach. It is a lesson in a terrible displacement, and a fear so devastating that the face which smiles above it must forever look away, lest it perceive the treachery it hides. The lesson teaches this; "I am the thing you made of me, and as you look on me you stand condemned, because of what I am." On this conception of the self the world smiles with approval, for it guarantees the pathways of the world are safely kept, and those who walk on them will not escape."

Behind the innocent face therefore, there is a hidden accusation that others are sinful, and the face is held up as a mask ready to "receive" their attack, like a trap. The face is easily offended and easily upset by the world and the acts of others, as it was designed to be. It is produced by the condemnation of oneself, the partitioning off of parts of self as "evil", hiding this from ones own awareness (in the shadow) and then projecting it onto others. Thus behind the face of innocence there is judgement and condemnation, unforgiveness and victimization of others.

"Here is the central lesson that ensures your brother is condemned eternally. For what YOU are has now become his sin. For this is no forgiveness possible. No longer does it matter what he does, for your accusing finger points to him, unwavering and deadly in its aim. It points to you as well, but this is kept still deeper in the mists below the face of innocence. And in these shrouded vaults are all his sins and yours preserved, and kept in darkness, where they cannot be perceived as errors, which the light would surely show. "

False innocence is not real innocence. It's a mask that people wear to pretend to be spiritual or holier than thou. It is not authentic and isn't your self. It's a disguise, designed to make you look like the innocent one so that you are not identified as the source of guilt. Always the ego takes steps to DENY what it does, to deny your soul, to deny even that you sinned, to deny that you are even guilty, resulting in the production of a facade which hides your own guilt from you. You will then "look" innocent but only in appearance, and no-one would suspect you are the one who is attacking.

The persona and the shadow - the accepted parts of self and the rejected parts of self, are the two halves of the split mind. You keep the rejected parts in darkness because, if they were brought into the light, you would see that the mind is one, not two. And this would heal and undo the split, removing both the persona and the shadow. And it is this the persona avoids at all costs.

"Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking, whereby two systems of belief, which CANNOT coexist, are BOTH MAINTAINED. It HAS BEEN recognized that, if they were BROUGHT TOGETHER, their joint acceptance WOULD become impossible. But, if one is kept in darkness FROM THE OTHER, their SEPARATION seems to keep them both alive, and equal in their reality. Their JOINING thus becomes the source of fear, for, if they meet, acceptance MUST be withdrawn from one of them."

"The light of guiltlessness shines guilt away because, when they are BROUGHT TOGETHER, the truth of one MUST make the falsity of its OPPOSITE perfectly clear. "

"WHAT DO YOU WANT? Light or darkness, knowledge or ignorance are yours, but not both. Opposites must be brought together, and not kept apart. For their separation is only in your mind, and they are reconciled by union, as YOU are. In union, everything that is not real MUST disappear, for truth IS union. As darkness disappears in light, so ignorance fades away when knowledge dawns."

I never really knew how much my 'mind' seems to think that it has an answer about everything. It can't seem to shut up. I am completely addicted to the belief that "thinking equals knowing". And it's becoming apparent that it will come up with an answer even if it has really no grounds for knowing. And it will share that answer like it's some kind of fact. I go around clucking like a chicken making all these mental noises and thinking that I'm actually speaking truth, when in fact all of the things that come out are just stories and ego-based comments. I'm some kind of babbling idiot.

All of these activities seem to make up a 'me' that I really thought was aware and speaking truth. But everything coming from my ego mind is deception and illusion. In every way possible, my mind is constantly attempting to seek for the truth outside of it, and separate from where truth is.

I realize more and more, that God is the ONLY location of truth. The ego quite literally is running around this world believing 'it' knows everything, when in fact it knows absolutely nothing. It thinks it knows what is true, but it absolutely doesn't know any truth at all because truth is GOD!

The ego is not a faculty of knowing and the ego mind is NOT CAPABLE of knowing anything. All it can do is imagine and think and believe that it can obtain and hold the truth. Yet it is not a faculty of connection to Truth (capital T). It is not a device that can even perceive what the truth really is. It is obsessed with finding partial answers in amongst an absolute minefield of fragmented possibilities, seeking deeply to have the 'intelligence' to 'solve' apparent problems by delving into them even deeper, which makes them worse, and which turns into an exasperatingly frustrating experience of loss and failure.

It relies completely on analysis of the situation. In other words, it has already made everything seem real and now goes into detail trying to explain 'why' whatever is happening is happening. And as it digs for this answer in a swampland of confusion, it always comes up empty handed. It never finds any sense of absolute certainty, although instead it comes up with what it thinks is certainty, which is really, honestly, not complete certainty. And no matter how many times I take this trip with it, even if it comes up with what the world would think of as 'the' answer, it STILL is not the answer.

There is still no sense of completion in the search, no sense of complete acceptance, no sense of finding a truth which encompasses everything so fully that there is no doubt left. It is quite literally incapable of finding such a Total Truth within the realm of partial ideas, partially perceived distorted perceptions, false ideas, cleverly imagined possibilities, carefully explained analysis or any other approach to trying to find truth IN the illusion. All the time this ego mind has been looking for truth outside of it, in everything and everywhere other than in God, believing it is actually POSSIBLE to find truth outside of itself.

All of this activity is geared towards a completely impractical waste of time, to always avoid a real solution or answer, to avoid healing, to ignore God and to shut out the correction which would undo the perception of there being a problem in the first place. The ego is absolutely not interested in truly solving any problems whatsoever, or of really succeeding at finding 'the' answer that gives a satisfying and acceptable explanation for 'what is' (i.e. it is not interested in accepting God). It is only interested in dissecting and studying them deeply, wearing a hat which says "worlds best problem solver" on it. It seeks and does not find, all of the time.

It constantly fails to find a real answer, anywhere, about anything, in spite of the fact that it fervently believes it CAN find an answer, which makes it an obsession. And since the answer can never be found, going looking for it (seeking) always comes up empty handed, frustrated, lost and confused, obsessed over why there 'should' be an answer, and simply not letting go of the total absorption with its own reliance on itself.

Absolutely every ego activity, thought, behavior and process, entirely stems from this ... insane search, which is absolutely guaranteed to fail, because the very thing that would actually conclude the search and bring an answer is the very thing which would inherently UNDO the entire ego. God is the answer and God is the only truth. God is the only place where you will experience a sense of wholeness or completion or a sense of peace at having 'found' something which actually completely SOLVES all problems. And the problem is only solved by rejoining and being one with God/Holy Spirit, which the ego has absolutely no interest in.

The ego would have to SURRENDER, which means stopping searching, stopping seeking, stopping looking for, stopping figuring out, stopping imagining outcomes, stopping trying to control the situation, stopping giving energy to fruitless pointless conceptualizing and storytelling, stopping running away from God, and stopping believing in separation in all its forms. The ego mind is only even in a state of doing things 'on its own' BECAUSE OF the separation from God which gave birth to it. The separation from God was a separation from truth, answers, facts, reality and peace of mind. For the ego to believe it can find any of these things is insanity.

It seems to want to now be in the driver's seat, in charge of running the show, playing God, depending on its own prowess and utilizing its own separate intelligence and intellect to solve aaaaaaaaaall of the problems that have arisen because of its own seeming existence. How can the ego solve its own existence when IT is the problem it's trying to solve? How can it be free of a problem when its attempt to solve it creates it? How can it pursue the truth where it is not, expecting to find it, and have any hope of doing so?

The only truth is God. The only answer is love. The only response to any situation is love. The only sane practical solution is to extend God. The only response to the world is unconditional love. The only practical and wise response to any problem is to HEAL IT NOW through the miracle. And the only way for the problems to all 'go away' is for the EGO to go away. It is our very own ego self, our intellectual mind, our reliance on our separate faculties, and our intent to never surrender to actually ASK GOD FOR THE ANSWER, that ensures we will just keep spinning our wheels in suffering.

The ego will never be the truth. It will never find the truth. It cannot know the truth. And it is not the truth. The ego is FALSE. Your ego self is false.

Your TRUE SELF is in God. The truth is in God. And who you really are is in God. The answer to every problem is in God. The end of suffering is in God. The practical application of healing and correction that truly ANSWERS all problems is in God. And God is all there is.

The ego wants to believe that God created this world.

The ego believes the world is real.

The ego believes the body is real.

The ego wants to keep all forms and bodies.

The ego believes bodies and forms are alive.

The ego believes there is value in keeping objects.

The ego does not regard the world as unreal or a dream.

The ego insanely believes the illusory world is reality.

The ego believes God created its world and justifies it.

The ego tries to make its illusory world permanent.

The ego attempts to give the world reality and keep it real.

The ego does not want to look past the world.

The ego does not want to forgive or overlook the world.

The ego puts the world on a pedestal and worships it.

The ego has no conception of a world beyond this world.

The ego is totally in denial of the existence of heaven.

The ego has no desire to believe in a spirit realm.

The ego believes that there is nothing beyond its world.

The ego believes there is nothing beyond the body.

The ego believes you don't even have a mind.

The ego believes your body is your mind and thinks for itself.

The ego believes your body is the cause of life.

The ego both values and hates the body.

The ego manifests as the form of physical objects.

The ego is permanently stuck in false perception.

The ego made the body so as to only fixate on sinful forms.

The ego regards all forms and objects as real sin.

The ego believes everything the body senses and sees.

The ego uses the world as an attack on God and reality.

The ego made this world to defend against reality.

The ego made this world to try to block and deny God.

The ego constructed this world as a wall of sin and death.

The ego uses the world to block the reality of Heaven.

The ego believes that bodies are special and are living.

The ego values the body as a place to hide from God.

The ego does not question whether the world is real or not.

The ego has accepted that the world is real to it forever.

The ego has no intention other than to destroy everything.

The ego manufactured this planet for a reason.

The ego made the world to obscure God's nature.

The ego invented an artificial nature to replace God's nature.

The ego made the world to be completely unnatural.

The ego runs the world based on unnatural laws of death.

The ego has no intention of waking up, nor can it.

The ego pretends it can become spiritual.

The ego spiritualizes the world to lead you away from spirit.

The ego does not want you to leave this world and go home.

The ego regards this world as its home and yours.

The ego has placed the world on a pedestal and worships it.

The ego doesn't believe the world is a dream at all.

The ego has investment, faith and trust in the world it made.

The ego made bodies to ensure your unconsciousness.

The ego surrounded you with forms of error to trap you.

The ego made a world filled with temptation.

The ego made hell, and this world is hell.

The ego has no desire to go towards light or truth.

The ego leads entirely towards darkness and death.

The ego is unaware of the truth about God and Holy Spirit.

The ego sees life here as death and death as life.

The ego is threatened by reality.

The ego has no reality.

The ego's world is not real.

The ego's world is a delusional system of insane dreamers.

The ego made physicality to blind your perception.

The ego made space and time to live inside of.

The ego made planet Earth and all galaxies and worlds.

The ego made the world from unwillingness to accept truth.

The ego materialized the planet from a desire to attack God.

The ego ensures that all things it made will die.

The ego provides no escape from problems of any kind.

The ego built sickness into the world.

The ego tried to make death an inevitable part of spacetime.

The ego does not want you to question the world's reality.

The ego doesn't want you thinking of the world as illusion.

The ego hides in the world, in the body, in the darkness.

The ego is threatened by the idea that there is no world.

The ego sees God as the undoing of itself.

The ego sees the Holy Spirit as making itself invalid.

The ego sees eternal life as death and mortality as life.

The ego doesn't really exist, nor does its world.

"Illusions will not last. Their death is sure and this alone is certain in their world. It is the ego's world because of this. What is the ego? But a dream of what you really are. A thought you are apart from your Creator and a wish to be what He created not. It is a thing of madness, not reality at all. A name for namelessness is all it is. A symbol of impossibility; a choice for options that do not exist. We name it but to help us understand that it is nothing but an ancient thought that what is made has immortality. But what could come of this except a dream which, like all dreams, can only end in death?

What is the ego? Nothingness, but in a form that seems like something. In a world of form the ego cannot be denied for it alone seems real. Yet could God's Son as He created him abide in form or in a world of form? Who asks you to define the ego and explain how it arose can be but he who thinks it real, and seeks by definition to ensure that its illusive nature is concealed behind the words that seem to make it so.

There is no definition for a lie that serves to make it true. Nor can there be a truth that lies conceal effectively. The ego's unreality is not denied by words nor is its meaning clear because its nature seems to have a form. Who can define the undefinable? And yet there is an answer even here.

We cannot really make a definition for what the ego is, but we can say what it is not. And this is shown to us with perfect clarity. It is from this that we deduce all that the ego is. Look at its opposite and you can see the only answer that is meaningful.

The ego's opposite in every way, in origin, effect and consequence, we call a miracle. And here we find all that is not the ego in this world. Here is the ego's opposite and here alone we look on what the ego was, for here we see all that it seemed to do, and cause and its effects must still be one.

Where there was darkness now we see the light. What is the ego? What the darkness was. Where is the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: Its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God's Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the ego? Who has need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?"

If someone tries to attack you, they have a problem. They are not sane. They are attacking themselves, but they're doing it in such a way that they think they are attacking someone else. Whatever they accuse you of, they are accusing themselves of.

Anyone who attacks is not in their right mind. No one in their right mind would attack, because they'd recognize that part of themself is in the other, and to attack them is to attack themselves. This is the law of God, the Golden Rule. Also the right minded are not split minded, and do not act against themselves or other.

If someone is attacking you, or it seems like they are, they are not really attacking who you are, they are attacking an image in their mind of what they think you are. And this image is really an image of what they think they are.

They target your body because they are being unforgiving toward themselves, and in this unforgiveness they can't help but focus on the form of objects. This mean they are not really seeing you, your spirit, or your real identity. The target of their attack is themselves, driven by guilt.

It can look like the attack is upon you, because in their dissociated state they separate off the part of their mind that attacks itself and see it as "outside themselves". They attack "it", to try to maintain the split minded state. And in dissociating from it, they tend to associate it with someone other than themselves. And that may seem to be you.

Even if they call your name, even if they speak of you and what you've done to them, even if they hurl abuse at "you", it is really nothing to do with you. Not even remotely.

"You but accuse your brother of your own sins."

"It can be but myself I crucify."

"I can be attacked by nothing but my thoughts."

So in no way has this attack got anything to do with you at all. It might seem to play out that way, or it might even seem that they physically attack your body as if that really is an attack upon you, but it is still themselves they are trying to attack.

"Let them be as vicious and hateful as they may. They could have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is your dream."When you yourself are not in your right mind, you will attack yourself. You'll accuse yourself of sin and judge yourself harshly. This means you believe it's true that you are guilty.

When this is happening, and if it is happening at the same time as another insane person fighting with their own shadows, you will fail to recognize that their attack is entirely a self attack. You will fail to realize they are calling out for love, and you will think that their hallucinated "attack on you", which is really on themselves, is actually about you.

Since what they accuse you of taps into what you have accused yourself of, you won't be able to discern between the two. This will create a kind of blind-spot in your mind. A block to awareness. And because of the block, you will be deceived. And being deceived you'll "read into" what they're doing, failing to see all of what they are doing to themselves. And due to this lack of recognition, you'll think that some of what they are doing, they are doing to you, and that it's really about you.

Because of your own self attack, you see yourself as vulnerable and affect-able. And you'll see yourself as being able to be accessed by the cause-effect relationships that seem to play out physically. And you will have confused yourself with your body, and now it may seem that because it can be attacked, you can be attacked. And so you're going to take their attempted attack personally as a threat to your identity and existence.

That means you're failing to remember it's your dream, and have entered into dreaming, or a state of greater unconsciousness. And in this state you'll think that someone else "is attacking you" and is "having an effect on you". It's really you having an effect on you, but you confuse it for them being the cause. So you blame them for it.

It can seem as if, what they do triggers pain in you. And its really your own pain that you put there, being raised to awareness. Because it resonates with what they are expressing and agrees with it. And then you'll think they caused the pain in you because it arose when they attacked, but its really your own self inflicted wound that is unhealed, resurfacing in resonance with their insane behavior.

You then are in the position of having to apply forgiveness processes to sort out "what is yours" and "what is theirs". And ultimately this has to lead to the undoing of the self attack, otherwise you won't be able to recognize that the other person was not the cause of your upset. And their innocence can only be recognized if you can see how they are solely attacking themselves.

The blinds spots and blocks to awareness in your own mind have to be removed, otherwise you cannot see the full picture. And without the full picture you can't tell whether what someone is doing is really about you or not. You can't tell your sin apart from theirs. You have to find your own innocence in order to recognize the innocence of others.

Once you do, what seemed like a call for attack, or seemed like an obvious selfish attack upon you, is now recognized as a call for love. It's calling for love because the person is solely interacting with themselves, within their mind, in a private world. And they are attacking themselves, believing it is not coming from them. And they seem to falsely accuse you of it, which you must not buy into, for your sake and theirs.

In recognizing the secret of salvation that people can only attack themselves, and no one ever really attacks anyone else, you take responsibility for your own choices and give them back responsibility for theirs.

Everything they are experiencing they are doing to themselves. Everything you are experiencing you are doing to yourself. And never the two shall meet. People are asking for love, in an attacking way, because they are denying their own love. The only thing that can truly be shared or communicated between you, is love.

Love is joining in peace and recognition. It facilitates sharing and communication and transfer. Without love, the breakdown of communication and separation of mind and relationship ensures that all attack is self contained. Just as trying to will against God disables all will and is an attempt to will nothing, trying to attack places you in a prison in your mind and stops any transfer to others. Attack is always separation between others and self. This happens because God does not will that attack between beings be possible.

No-one is ever affected by anyone else. No-one else is the cause of you. You have not caused anyone else, other than your own creations. And God is the only cause of you and your equal siblings. There has never been an attack on you, by anyone but yourself. And anyone who believes otherwise is not in their right mind.

"Miracles violate every law of reality as this world judges it."

"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world."

"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all."

"The world is but an effect and not a cause at all."

"The mind must be stronger than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this."

"It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen."

"Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

----- There are two levels -----

1. Higher mind, which is causal and causes everything. It causes the EFFECT of a lower level 3D world, which is entirely governed by what this mind decides to make happen. This is the level of "the dreamer."

2. The world, a 3D projected image which is entirely an EFFECT of the higher level. This level has NO causality and cannot make anything happen on its own. No part of it causes any other part of it to do anything. This is the level of "the dream."

The higher level CAUSES the lower level effects. That means causality is "vertical". It proceeds from above to below.

The lower level of the world itself, has NO CAUSALITY in it. It is 100% pure effect. It is not alive, it has no will, it has no mind, there are no forces or powers, no reactions, no chain of events, nothing. It's like a movie that's been projected onto a screen. The movie cannot DO anything outside of the content that the PROJECTOR has put onto the screen.

However, the higher level mind is capable of creating ILLUSIONS of lower-level causality. For example, it can place an apple in the world, next to an orange. It can then make the orange move (which cannot move by itself). The orange can move towards the apple. However, there are NO lower-level laws that DO anything, not even laws of physics. So the orange moves THROUGH the apple, having no effect on it. It's like it's not even there. It's just an IMAGE. Two images overlapping.

In order to make the orange "collide with" the apple, the higher level mind of causality has to make the apple move, at just the right moment as the orange SEEMS to touch it, so that there is an ILLUSION of a reaction, which makes it look AS IF the orange collided with the apple. There were NO laws on the level of the world causing this reaction. It's entirely fictional, decided upon by the higher level mind.

To an observer who has "bought into the illusion", it SEEMS as if there is some kind of "law" on the lower level, governing what will happen when the orange hits the apple. And the these are described as laws of physics. These laws are based on the idea that stuff on the lower level is capable of CAUSING EFFECTS on the SAME lower level. This is the idea of "horizontal causality". ACIM refers to the illusion of this as "horizontal perception."

The illusion is so convincing that it seems there is a "law" in effect, some kind of universal rule, that ensures the apple and the orange will act AS IF they are colliding. These are then thought to be natural laws or laws of nature. THEY ARE NOT. THEY DO NOT EXIST! The orange NEVER causes anything to happen. The apple NEVER is affected by the orange. BOTH OF THEM are being simultaneously moved and animated BY the higher level mind.

So in the world, it SEEMS as though there are laws of physics which govern how everything interacts, but it's 100% once removed from what ACTUALLY causes everything to occur. The world ITSELF is once removed from reality/causality, which is why it is an EFFECT or illusion and DOES NOT EXIST!

The things in the world that you THINK are "causes" or "causing something", are NOT THE CAUSE. Cause is always in the mind! They are ILLUSIONS of causes, pretending to be causes. Both causes AND effects on the level of the world are BOTH EFFECTS. This is why Jesus says "the world you see DOES NOTHING. It has no effects at all" (it has no causal power at all).

So while there is this horizontal illusion of cause and effect, which is of the ego, since these so-called "laws" are actually fictional and not the REAL cause, when the mind decides to make a change in what it PROJECTS, it is capable of BREAKING THE LAWS. If the mind decides suddenly, that the apple and the orange will combine together to produce a banana, THEN SO BE IT.

Vertical mind will CAUSE a banana to be projected INTO the world as a banana showing up. This will VIOLATE every conceivable "horizontal law" that you can imagine. And THIS IS MIRACULOUS! "Miracles violate every law of reality as the world judges it." The mind has simply decided to CHANGE ITS DREAM, and this breaks all of the FICTIONAL horizontal laws that APPEAR to explain why things are the way they are, or what limits they are restricted by. Mind OVERRIDES the law!

Miracles are also demonstrations. And miracles are also teaching devices. When the higher mind expresses its power OVER the lower level, and shows that it is the AUTHOR of the "fake laws" by breaking those laws, it demonstrates that those laws ARE ILLUSIONS. "Appearances can be changed." And by changing those appearances, it is PROVEN that those appearances MUST have been illusions. This is educational.

Additionally, the "nature" or "natural law" of the horizontal level, which is fake, is BELOW the TRUE NATURE of the higher level mind that causes it all. That means that which CAUSES the lower level effects is ABOVE the NATURE of the lower level. Another word for that is SUPER (above) NATURAL. Supernatural. Miracles are supernatural! They transcend the "nature" of the "ego", which is the illusion that horizontal causality is real. Also the idea that horizontal causality is real, is really the ego idea that there is no God! That there is no HIGHER CAUSE.

This is why it was possible for Jesus to do things like walking on water to defy gravity, multiplying food to defy ideas of limited materials, changing a tree branch into a snake and back again, raising a body from seeming death, etc.

These are all POSSIBLE because the mind that MAKES all this worldly content show up has POWER OVER IT from a higher level. When a person's mind has become VERTICALLY ORIENTED, which relates to "miracles entail a sudden shift from horizontal to vertical perception", the mind aligned with CAUSALITY can make ANY changes you can possibly conceive of, OUTSIDE of the illusion of "laws that can't be broken." And this is what MIRACLE WORKERS demonstrate. The idea of irreversibility is SIN. Miracles prove sin is not real by CHANGING what the world says cannot be changed.

The distinction between what is CAUSE, and what is its EFFECT, perfectly explains the structure of cause and effect and WHY supernatural miracles are possible and HOW they operate. They are acts of MIND and WILL firmly rooted in causal power, simply electing to produce a different EFFECT. Since "the world is but an effect and not a cause at all", there is nothing in the world or OF the world that cannot be changed, healed, undone, reversed or manipulated by the power of the Mind. This includes bodily sickness and death. "The mind (cause) must be stronger than the body (effect), every miracle demonstrates this!"

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given unto you in Earth and Heaven. There is nothing you cannot do."

"3 Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus keeping it unreal for you."

Forgiveness does not react to problems you think are real and then try to fix them. Forgiveness ensures THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS TO FIX.

Simple isn't it? What forgiveness means, is that you simply are "being forgiving". That you have a forgiving attitude. An attitude in which you see correctly, you do not make illusions, you do not separate, you do not attack, you do not judge, you do not make sin real, and you simply observe clearly that nothing has happened.

This awareness of truth simply shows you the proof that there is no ego, there is nothing to really undo, there is not even really anything to forgive.

Forgiveness should NOT be an attempt to "fix" or "undo" stuff which seems to really exist. The things which seem to exist, as ego stuff, are illusions of things existing. These perceptions have ONLY come about as a result of FAILING to be forgiving.

"He who would not forgive must judge, to justify his failure to forgive."

Forgiveness is fore-giveness. It is a willingness to give love fully, at all times. That is what makes for a forgiving attitude, versus being "unforgiving" ie attacking. By constantly emitting truth and love and light, a forgiving mind simply does not MAKE errors. That means it does not MAKE ego.

It is only when we slip into being unforgiving that we MAKE the ego at all, and then it seems to show up as something that seems real, but still isn't. Through being unforgiving, we weave dreams, fiction and illusions.

It is not really then that you need to DO anything about any of the errors that you make, any of the mistakenness, or anything to do with the ego at all. The ego is not the problem. The problem is that you stopped being forgiving. Or simply, that you tried to be separate from God. That's the only problem. So returning to being with God, to being forgiving, is the solution.

Forgiveness then is not a process as such. It is a permanent attribute of the Son of God. Even after the world disappears and you're back in full awareness of God, you will still be forgiving. God is permanently forgiving. This has absolutely nothing to do with whether there is anything TO forgive as such. God does not "forgiven you because you did stuff". It's not a pardon. He forgives you forever knowing that you cannot sin. And it is the "privilege of the forgiven to forgive" meaning those who are in a state of forgiveness having accepted atonement are PERMANENTLY forgiving.

Forgiveness is not a matter of... well.. something has gone wrong, or someone sinned, and now I have to DO something to clean up the mess. That is not forgiveness. That is "forgiveness to destroy." That has made the problem real and now is fighting with the problem to try to make it go away. And who hasn't attempted to use the Course to make bad stuff go away? Or to "forgive other people for what they did"? It doesn't work because that isn't the real problem.

It's not about tackling the error itself directly. The error is an indirect side-effect of moving away from a forgiving attitude. The problem is not the error. The problem is the sense of separation from love/forgivingness. Returning TO a state of pure forgivingness ie love is the ANSWER which automatically will undo and disappear any of the errors which were manifest. And that is miraculous.

We really need to learn not to fight with illusions, but instead to drop the belief that you NEED to fight with them at all, to recognize that they are not the problem, that they are not even real and do not exist, and thereby return TO a mindset of a forgiving attitude.

A fore-giving mind gives ahead of time to ENSURE that there is no error made, that perception remains true, and therefore that ego simply is not MADE at all. There being no ego and no error, there is nothing TO forgive. But rather, forgiveness MAINTAINS a state of "having nothing to forgive".

Therefore when forgiveness is "complete", it means that all things which seemed to need to be forgiven are now forgiven, and it is really only that you are being forgiving NOW (and peramenently) that those errors appear to not be showing up any more. They are not showing up because you are not MAKING them, rather than that you really tackled "real substance" of ego stuff and manipulated it through some process to transform it.

The ego does not need to be undone, because it does not really exist in the first place. Rather, we need to simply come to RECOGNIZE that it does not exist, by stepping out of judgement (unforgivingness) and back into a forgiving attitude. A forgiving attitude looks and sees that there IS no sin, there is no ego, there is no separation, there is no reality to sickness or death, and literally nothing has happened.

Forgiveness and atonement and salvation are all words for the same thing.

So how do you "DO" forgiveness? You really don't. If you are DOING "forgiveness" (as a process) it is because you believe there is something to forgive, which means you are actually being unforgiving, and therefore your doing of forgiveness is really an attack - an attempt to make a "real problem" change. But what you DO need to, or seem to need to "do", is to become clear that there IS NOT ANYTHING TO FORGIVE, by correctly perceiving, and thus correcting perceptual errors so that you do not see stuff AS real sin.

To get to that place does appear to require a process or a transition, in which you question what it is you think needs to be forgiven, and LEARN WHY IT DOES NOT. ie, to learn to see it correctly and not in a distorted way, so that you can RECOGNIZE it for what it is, realize it was not a real attack, there has not BEEN any real effects, the causes you thought were causes are not causes, and withdraw from it all sense of belief that it even exists or has happened at all, and therefore completely circumvent the ego's insistence that there is a "real problem" to deal with.

The Holy Spirit does not fight the ego because He knows there is no ego. The Holy Spirit reminds us that what we THINK we need to forgive, does not exist, and therefore it IS forgiven.

We do not need to forgive other people, because they have NOT done what we thought they did and they are NOT being the source of OUR unforgiveness. They do not need to change at all. And we ourselves are also not in need of any real change, only recognition. We have not done what we thought we had done. It's an illusion.

We must learn to recognize it is NOT REAL and therefore what we THOUGHT we had to "deal with" or to "forgive" or "overcome" or "prevent" really isn't even there in the first place. We're not seeing correctly because we are in error, and we are in error ONLY because we are not being forgiving. We've bought into some lies. Lies are not solved by attacking the lies, they are solved by TRUTH.

You are already forgiven and you are already purely forgiving. God created you to be permanently forgiving, SO THAT there would never arise any kind of error or thing TO forgive, given that everything was already seen correctly as perfectly innocent. Everything else is "unforgiveness", judgement, attack, and so-called "ego", which does not really exist at all.

The body is very much the opposite of your reality as an immortal being. Your real self can never be changed, attacked, hurt or destroyed. But the body is defenseless, exposed and vulnerable, capable of destruction and utterly unsafe in a dangerous world.

"God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom. The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist."

Having lived your life in a body, you've had to deal with all kinds of vulnerabilities. And this has taught you that you are a target for destruction. Weak, susceptible, fragile, attackable and unsafe. That you can be destroyed and should take great care to avoid all possible threats. Wary of every passing car, frightened of every stranger, upset by the mere presence of something moving.

The body has endured suffering, pain, breakage, malfunction and damage. It has been influenced by the weather and the environment. It has been attacked and hurt, bullied and hit, poked and prodded, maybe even assaulted surgically. Maybe the body has been mutilated, perhaps parts of it are missing, perhaps it is ugly and deformed and lacking, and maybe it was never whole to begin with.

Because of this, and because you believe you are your body, you must have thought this about yourself. You believed you'd lost parts of yourself, that you were under attack, that you have to be constantly vigilant when crossing roads and stepping on cracks and turning corners just in case it is your day to die - hoping to alert you early that you might avoid more suffering. You've put considerable effort into securing your body, making a home for it, protecting it with walls upon walls and layers upon layers, trying to shield it from your enemies.

All of this has told you that you are weak and fragile, vulnerable and attackable, defenseless and exposed. It has caused you to feel frightened and threatened all the time. It has given you constant anxiety and nervousness, constant stress and concern. You never feel fully safe anywhere, you are always on alert and wary of the next biting teeth or hammering nails or sharp pointy objects, trying constantly to avoid the body's death.

"In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies. Its safety is its main concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule. It tries to look for pleasure, and avoid the things that would be hurtful."

This can have done nothing but undermine your peace of mind, your sense of safety, your confidence and your happiness. Having to be constantly on the lookout for danger like some kind of animal in dangerous territory. You avoid the places you don't like to go, you avoid the people who bother you, you steer clear of the brand names you don't trust, and you only expose yourself with select few. And you reason that better the devil you know than the ones you don't.

This all comes about by confusing your identity with the body, believing you are a body, that you are body-like or of a physical nature. It comes with the territory. You cannot believe you are a physical body without being afraid of death, because you know the body can die. You cannot believe the body is your self, without being traumatized when you clip your nails or cut your hair. If you are a body, you are literally as susceptible and vulnerable as the body is, even if you take measures to defend yourself or ward off attackers.

It is not possible to believe you are a body and to feel confident. It is not possible to believe you are a body and be sane. It is not possible to believe you are a body and have real relationships with anyone, because the body literally cuts you off from them. It is not possible to believe you are a body and feel a sense of true safety and peace, or happiness and love. "the body CANNOT be used for purposes of union"

The body is separate in a separated world. It stands apart and alone. By the mere fact that it does not share with others, separate by space and time, it is lonely and isolated. Believing you are a body brings with it a fundamental loneliness and sense of exclusion, of conflict and disagreement, and even constant war. Bodies can never be equal because they rely on inequality and difference to make them distinct. And so there is no peace available when bodies are your truth.

Believing you are a body deceives you and sets you up for failure. It guarantees death and sickness and ensures a breakdown in communication. Being a body means putting a death sentence on your head and limiting yourself to a small span of time, riddled with obstacles and difficulties and suffering. If you are a body you cannot be a mind, or an idea, or a thought of God. You are parentless and orphaned and alone.

The body is essentially a blasphemy against God, because it suggests things about you which cannot be true in reality. You are actually an immortal, permanent, absolute, unchangeable, endless being, given eternal life and incapable of ever being hurt in any way. If you believe you are a body, you do not believe in yourself. If you believe you are a body, you are shutting yourself off from who you are in reality, and are guaranteeing suffering.

Your real self is immortal, it cannot be hurt or attacked, it cannot be affected or altered, it is utterly invulnerable, it is impervious and unassailable. It cannot be attacked or threatened, it cannot be hurt or made to be sick, it cannot be poisoned or traumatized, and it cannot die. Your real self is permanently happy, constantly joyful, and utterly at peace. Its peace can never be disturbed because nothing can ever threaten it, just as it is always free from all fear and anxiety because it knows that it is perfectly safe from all harm.

To identify with who you really are as God created you is to escape from the torment of being a body. It is to free you from all potential for suffering, attack, sickness and death. Identifying with your spirit/soul lifts you out of hell and into heaven. It lifts you away from danger and out of harm's way. It gives you real protection and permanent peace. It guarantees you are sinless and guiltless, incapable of being evil, unable to attack or be attacked, harmless and unharmed forever.

Only by not being a body can you be as God created you, because God did not create bodies. Only by not being a body can you laugh in the face of death and overcome the world. It is the body that becomes a target for attack and destruction, and not your real self. Your real self is beyond the world and beyond space and time and beyond the laws of physics. It is not of this world because you were created in another world, in the Kingdom of God, where everything is eternal.

"You can never suffer because the Source of all joy goes with you wherever you go."

Your eternal self can never suffer pain, can never be hurt by another, can never be upset or offended, can have no reason to ever be afraid, can never have its peace disturbed, can never become sick or suffer, can never experience pain, can never malfunction or break down or degrade, can never become old or tired, can never lose anything, and can never die. Surely you would rather identify with your real self and be free from hell forever, than to regard yourself as a lump of flesh and bones stalking the earth like a zombie waiting to finish dying.

Only by associating yourself with the properties of immortality can you be set free from the mortal body and all its limitations. Only by identifying as permanent and unchangeable can you have no grounds for upset. Only by recognizing you can never be changed can you free yourself from the blame and tyranny of other people's actions. Only by knowing yourself as the eternal life God gave you can you utterly disregard anything the world seems to do or cause.

"I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me."

"To be without a body is to be in your natural state."

"This is accomplished very simply, as you instruct yourself that you are not a body."

"But I am not a body. What am I?"

"The Christ in you inhabits NOT a body. Yet He IS in you. And thus MUST it be that YOU are not within a body."

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die. I am not a body."

"But I am not a body. And my mind cannot attack. So I can not be sick."

"A mind and body cannot both exist. Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real. If you are physical your mind is gone from your self-concept, for it has no place in which it could be really part of you. If you are Spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality."

If you're carrying around some guilt about something you did wrong, you need to let that shit go.

How long are you supposed to suffer before it's enough suffering to make up for your sin? Do you want a bit more suffering? How much do you deserve?

10 years? 50 years? The rest of your life? Are you so worthless that you don't ever deserve forgiveness? When is it enough suffering that you're done? And what is going to happen when you decide its enough?

Your offering of 'being guilty' is supposedly your GIFT to the world, in an attempt to ATONE or "make up for" the mistake you made. You think that if you walk around feeling guilty about it, that you're appropriately ashamed, and you actually agree that you're supposed to be shameful.

You think this gift of guilt is actually a helpful offering, something that is called for or wanted by everyone else. You think if you remain guilty and carry around your sob story about how awful you are, that you're making up for what you did. And if you be guilty long enough, you "pay back" the suffering that you think you caused someone else.

This is bullshit. Offering guilt to the world to make up for something you did wrong is a DOUBLE OFFENSE. You not only did something wrong, but then you followed it up with this righteous self-punishment agenda where you punish yourself, on behalf of everyone else, to try to make up for it. Like, as if you can atone through suffering. And you think this is your gift to the world but all you've done is a) committed some sin, and then b) followed it up with a prolonged period of moping around acting like a guilty asshole, as if this is helping the situation. So now the world is not only hurt by you, but it's also got to put up with your guilty portrayal of yourself which, while seeming to be self-correcting, is actually just pulling everyone down even more.

How do you compare being guilty to being loving? How is being guilty for doing some wrong BETTER for other people than REPENTING FROM THIS SIN, receiving CORRECTION WITHOUT PUNISHMENT, and then being restored to being LOVING? When you are restored to being loving - which includes loving yourself - you now are in a far better position to actually 'atone', if you will, to make up for what you did. You can now offer a true gift of love and support. You can be more present. You can be more truly helpful and more attentive and available. You can't do that if you're carrying around a big heavy weight of guilt strapped to your ankle.

IT IS BETTER FOR EVERYONE if you forgive yourself and let yourself off the fucking hook, and give yourself a frickin' break, and say hey, I made this mistake, ok... it was a mistake, but it calls only for loving, unconditionally loving compassion and correction, so that I can correct my position to one of LOVE rather than one of being heavy weight of guilt around everyone else's ankles. I need to DROP the guilt and be freed from the burden of sin and shame, otherwise what USE am I to anyone else? How can I actually give anyone anything of TRUE value - true hope, true blessing, true understanding, true love, if I'm totally captivated by my own guilt?

We have to stop believing that guilt IS love. We have to stop offering guilt to everyone as if we're blessing them with it, and especially not taking guilty actions to try to 'make up for' doing something wrong. Guilt-driven actions are further attacks! We have to stop having this stupid ego-driven "guilty conscience" which we seem to think is our judge and jury and which governs and justifies us being punished for making mistakes. Each time we listen to it, it will always say, yup, you did something wrong, you guilty fucker, you deserve to die. That's it. That's how it works. It never says well, you made this mistake, because you were wrong about yourself, because you attacked yourself, and ended up projecting it onto other people as well, but really you deserve LOVE and love is all you need. So throw the guilty conscience away. It paralyzes your entire life and it's purely an ego device!

If you're feeling guilty, you need correction and love, not punishment and hate and shame. When are you going to drop your guilt? When have you suffered enough, needlessly (ALL suffering is needless except to use it to learn that you need not suffer because you're innocence)? When will you stop listening to everyone else's bullshit ego that says, yup, you gotta suffer a really long time you guilty asshole? When will you stop your own agenda of self destruction, for which you ARRANGED events to turn sour, so that you'd have an excuse to chastise yourself? And then it's like, oh, poor me, I guess I do deserve to suffer because I did something wrong, you're right, go ahead and destroy me. Its bullshit.

You need to stop making yourself guilty for every little fucking thing you do whether it's a mistake or not. And you need to drop all of the guilt that you have accumulated which enforces your STORY about WHY you are justified in not being loved by God (which is the secret purpose of your guilt-hood to begin with), and CHOOSE AGAIN to RECLAIM YOUR INNOCENCE. It's the best thing you can do for yourself, for everyone else, even for anyone that you might've harmed in a moment of confusion. The BEST thing you can do for everyone concerned is to RETURN TO LOVE. And this is the best thing you can do even for people you might've hurt because even if THEY can't forgive you continue to project THEIR guilt and hate onto you, you MUST choose innocence for yourself otherwise you're just making the whole situation worse.

And if we're sane about this, we have to say, that we should be ENCOURAGING all of our enemies and attackers and abusers and everyone else to BECOME LOVE, to be forgiven, to be recognized as innocent and to become OUR SAVIOR. This is the only way that our brother becomes our savior and Jesus speaks on this at great length in ACIM. You brother isn't going to be your savior if you can't WANT for them to be restored to a state of perfect innocence. And you can't BE a brother to someone if you're not willing to FORGIVE YOURSELF and ALLOW YOURSELF to be innocent. It's in everyone's best interests for anyone making a mistake to be healed and loved so that they can return to equality and unconditionality, otherwise they will ONLY drag down the entire brotherhood. It is counter productive to keep enemies as enemies because it only ensures that YOU are more likely to be attacked again. You can't remove attackers by punishing them, only be healing them. Rehab!

You're useless to the world when you're guilty. Stop it. Stop playing the "poor me, I'm guilty and unworthy, you better not love me" card. The secret purpose of this card is to have an EXCUSE for why God should not love you. Your failure to forgive yourself requires you to justify it with explanations for why you SHOULD suffer. "He who would not forgive must judge, to justify his failure to forgive" - ACIM. Stop justifying why you need to be guilty, for anything. YOU DESERVE COMPLETE FORGIVENESS.

You are God's creation. You are God's child. You are INNOCENT FOREVER. Stop putting yourself down and stop using other people to put you down, and stop using your stories about your mistakes to enforce why you should be stepped all over or why God can't possibly love you. You implicitly DESERVE ALL OF THE LOVE IN THE WORLD. Period. Unconditionally. Right now. Your guilt facade isn't helping anyone, least of all you.

Nobody really cares if you're guilty or ashamed or not. If they really want you to be guilty, THEY have a problem with making themselves guilty. That's their game which they are projecting onto you. Fuck em. You need to take back your power and stop being a deliberate victim about the mistakes you made. They are just mistakes. There is not a single mistake in all of the history of the world that calls for punishment. All mistakes are a CALL FOR LOVE. God is not holding a single thing against you. You cannot sin. You haven't sinned. You will never sin. You're just having a case of mental illness and thinking that you're sane when you're confused, and making mistakes in error because you've lost touch with the truth. That's all. Nobody is to blame for this. All you need is HEALING. That's all. Mistakes call for healing and restoration and for your RETURN TO UNION AND ACCEPTANCE with everyone else.

Take your life back. Everyone else can fuck off with their judgements and shaming. You deserve to be forgiven.

ALL problems are ONE problem - you believe you are separate from God.

There IS no other problem.

The ego, however, has been extremely clever in making the illusion that there are many many many separate problems. It has tried to fragment the problem, ie introduce separation into the separation.

What you've ended up with is a world where the FORM of the problem appears to be different. All 'forms' (objects etc) are the 'form of error'. The error is the separation from God. The FORM that the separation is taking varies greatly. The ego also has you use the body's senses to look upon form and to regard its form AS the problem. So it tells you like...

"The kitchen sink is broken therefore there is a problem with the kitchen sink".

"The car battery has died so there is a problem with the car battery".

This completely covers over what the problem really is. These are fake problems. They are decoys. They are MEANT to distract you and fixate you on FORMS - physical matter - so that you will not look to the mind where the real problem is. Like, right now as I look out the window, it just started snowing. So now there's a problem - it's snowing out, so if I go out there it's going to be cold. So now I have a problem, and I must problem solve THIS form of a problem by fetching my jacket. That seems to then SOLVE the problem - this problem at least. But it doesn't solve world hunger. It doesn't solve drought. It doesn't solve your favorite TV show ending before you're ready to be done with it.

The ego keeps all problems completely separate by identifying problems as forms, so that unique forms of problems need unique solutions. And it appears you CAN solve unique problems with unique solutions. Except that this a) makes you think you've really solved the real problem (which is not true), and b) ensures that there is no "transfer value" between problems. You fix this problem, another one will pop up. You fix your toaster, your fridge melts. You fix your car, your window breaks. Whatever it is. Endless separate problems, all designed to DISGUISE the ONE PROBLEM.

The ONE PROBLEM is that you believe your relationship with God has gone to the shits and its broken and now you are separate from the only One you can ever fully love - God and His Creation. That's the ONLY problem that ever exists.

So then because you're so distracted by the ego's illusion of problems, when problems 'happen' you get all caught up in how you need to 'forgive this problem' and 'forgive that person' and 'forgive my body' and all this bullshit. Its' all kind of at a surface level because your attention is really distracted by all this external stuff. It's meant to distract you. Ego doesn't want you realizing there is only one problem and one solution.

When you car breaks down it is because you believe you are separate from God.

When your house catches fire it is because you are separate from God.

When your cat dies its because you are separate from God.

When it rains on your wedding day its because you are separate from God.

When the wrong politician wins an election its because you are separate from God.

When you run out of your favorite food its because you are separate from God.

NONE of these thing could even EXIST if you weren't separate from God. EVERY single problem in the entire physical universe is the direct result of you separating from God. The physical universe ITSELF is the FORM of your being separate from God - it is a depiction of your broken relationship. And your separation from God IS the problem. Not your cat, your car, your house, your job, your friends, your upsets, your fears, bla bla bla... endless list of bullshit. You only have ONE problem.

Your relationship with God. Something seemed to happen to damage your relationship with God, and the RESULT was that you ended up in hell. Hell - this world - is ONLY the symptoms of a blocked relationship with God. It has NO other basis. There aren't any other sources of problems or causes of problems anywhere in the entire universe. All other sources are fakes and decoys and cover-ups and false origins.

It all stems from you believing that you've had a lover's tiff with God and now you're not on speaking terms and you've gone off in a huff all pissed off and at the same time upset and ashamed and feeling bad about it, because you believe you've hurt God and destroyed the only meaningful relationship you ever had.

What are you going to do to solve this problem?

How are you going to REPAIR and HEAL this ONE problem?

How are you going to get yourself BACK to God? How are you going to clear the air, forgive everything that seemed to happen, let go of all 'bad blood' and get back to where you and God are IN LOVE again? How are you going to get there if you are not directly addressing and undoing your belief in separation?

Yes you can work on it by addressing how the separation shows up in tiny fragments. You can address individual little problems in your life like your toaster blew up and singed your hairdo. You can forgive that little bit of upset. Or you can forgive that political candidate that you despise and undo a bit of separation there. But that's just scratching the surface. That shows how deeply embedded you are in the APPEARANCE of problems in the world, which is just a surface coat of distraction. Why not TARGET your efforts at DIRECTLY repairing your relationship with God - which IS what this is all about?

If you want to undo separation, it means you are going to have to get back to being ONE with God. It means you're going to have to have a REUNION. It means you're going to have to COMMUNE with Him. It means you need to take all the reasons that you think you are separate from Him, all the problems that you think are coming between you, and offer them up with a willingness to let them go. Because all your grievances and all your problems are grievances against God. Period. You think it's about other people. It's about you and God. That's all there is.

So ask yourself, as you forgive, exactly how much DISTANCE is there between you in that forgiveness effort, and God? Is it scratching the surface and skirting around the real problem? Is it actually bringing you closer to God? Are you becoming aware of the way that you are trying to avoid and deny God and stay far away from Him? This is what it is all about. You need to heal your separation from God, and nothing else.

You're not going to heal it if you're not willing to GO TO GOD and make an effort to reunite. You're not going to heal it if you're not willing to admit everything is about your relationship to God and that this relationship needs to be healed. You're not going to heal if you think your job is to just `forgive illusions` or `see my brother correctly` or whatever. Those are just tools and stepping stones. The huge elephant in the living room that people don't want to touch with a barge pole is GOD. God loves you and wants to be with you again and you're having this stand-off and making up all these extraneous complicated reasons why it is 'other stuff' that you have to deal with.

There is nothing you need to do other than to heal your connection to God and release absolutely everything that comes between you. If you want to totally simplify the Course, simply work on what's happening between you and God that keeps you apart, and remove that stuff with Holy Spirit so that you can be with God again. It's that simple. Being with God is all you really want. It's the only thing that means anything to you in reality. It's your heart's desire. You would be hugely relieved and overjoyed to learn that God still loves you and you CAN be together again. All other goals are fake goals and distractions.

God... please help me to be with you.

God... I give this belief in body sickness to you because it's just coming between us and I want to be with you.

God... I've been all pissed off at my coworker and have been trying to forgive them and its not working, because I know its not really about them its about us, and the anger I feel is anger at you, and I don't want to be angry at you any more. Please forgive me and correct me so we can be One.

God... I recognize this lack of money is directly a symbol of us being separate and I have no real interest in money, all I want is to be with you. Please heal this absence of you in my life and replace it with symbols of our togetherness, until I'm able to be with you fully.

God... please heal my mind of the belief that I am separate from you, which is showing up in my body as disease and threat. I know it's because I believe our relationship is diseased and that I am threatened by you. Please help me to feel safe with you and know that I'm mistaken for believing we're at war.

God... help me undo my belief that we are not loving toward each other. I was mistaken for thinking I hurt you in any way and I recognize and accept your unconditional love and forgiveness.

Go to town on it. Include God in everything. This is the purpose of the Course.

If you see yourself as being victimised in any way, mistreated, not respected, attacked, hurt, threatened, judged, abused, terrorised, not recognised, hated, left out, invalidated, accused, misrepresented, subject to racism or sexism or homophobia, in any other way somehow slighted or offended by anyone OTHER than yourself, they your ego has formed a FACE OF INNOCENCE, and you ARE in heavy denial!

This face of innocence is a facade the ego wears to DENY AND COVER UP the internal guilt, to hide itself from itself in self-hate. The internal guilt is denied, so that it is not even recognised as existing at all within you, and is then projected. It is then seen IN AND AS everyone else other than oneself. It then appears that everyone but yourself is doing something TO YOU against your will that is un-asked for and undeserved.

This projection of guilt and ego frames you as an innocent victim of it in OTHER people, which in turn justifies an angry counter-response - since you see yourself as doing absolutely nothing wrong at all, which points a further finger - a second layer of projection - designed to hide the first, to further reinforce the ways that other people have obviously sinned, been guilty, committed evil acts, failed to live up to standards, or any other way that they are defective.

The "mask" of innocence is worn as a face psychologically, really a disguise, as part of the ego. And it is especially part of the spiritualised ego. Having denied that oneself believes oneself to be guilty - which is still an ongoing internal belief - on sees oneself as "not guilty", and thus innocent. But this is a fake innocence covering up a persistent guilt. The guilt is then projected onto others and associated with them, as though attached to them and part of them.

It is particularly viciously reinforced by an increased level of anger and resentment, as a REACTION to what is now perceived as something other people are doing to you and not you doing to them. The more you feel justified in anger the more you project even more separation and increase the sense of dis-association between you and the guilt. This is designed to make sure it seems that you have nothing to do with the guilt, and it is entirely associated with someone other than yourself. The more this is believed the more unconscious you become as a helpless victim.

What this entails really is self attack, which began long before the projection of guilt. Self and self innocence were denied, producing an accusation against oneself as an attack upon oneself. This is a denial of self as God created you. This is an opinion of oneself - an ego view of oneself - that is far short of the divine holy self that God created you as.

This vicious self-attack produces guilt, inferiority, judgement, self-hate, and various other forms of self destructive behaviour. This is DENIED, which makes it seem largely unconscious or at least disowned and "not part of me". And the result of this is projection. It is given away in order to try to make it not be a part of oneself, or within one's mind. It is seen as "outside" the mind, external to the self (body perimeter), as though literally someone other than oneself, seen as an inherent built-in permanent PART OF someone else. And now it is THEY who are guilty and full of sin.

The result of this is then the formation of a face - a facade - a persona - a cover-up face of innocence, which sees itself AS innocent, but with fake innocence. This fake innocence is shallow and is merely a smokescreen to hide the self-hate that is behind it. Thus self-denying person then believes they are doing no wrong, asking for no harm, doing nothing to hurt others, and are completely benevolent, yet conveniently also are experiencing being "unfairly treated" as a victim. And this of course, if it were true, means anger is completely justified and everyone else should die for THEIR sins against the innocence.

The fact is however that this still remains a SELF ATTACK, because the mind is still hating itself, still believes it is guilty, does not want to admit to this, is IN DENIAL, and refuses to even look at what is being denied. The unwillingness to look at the denied guilt is because of the belief that IT IS THERE, and that it is dark and real and terrible. And the ego DOES believe that you are full of sin. So instead of looking within, it looks without, to find the guilt there instead.

Once the guilt is denied and projected there forms an extremely long lists of all the sins, errors, guilts, mistakes, faults, weaknesses, defects, horrors, and various other forms of unholiness that are regarded as the truth about OTHER people, and not oneself. And THEIR guilt and sinfulness is kept apart from YOURS, so that you are in no way associated with it, and can maintain an illusion of being the innocent one.

Being subject to an incredibly long list of things other people are doing wrong, and thus attacked and victimised BY, is DESIRED AND CHOSEN, so that the face of innocence can be maintained. Even if it seem to hurt oneself to do so, and even if one has to be willing to BE victimised - or so it may appear on the surface - this is ACCEPTED as the natural cost of being able to find someone else to be the fall guy for the guilt.

We even in the extremes are willing to be attacked, hurt, made to be sick, destroyed and killed off, if it will mean that someone ELSE can be accused of sin. And then we can say, "brother by your hand I die." This means that we literally are willing to suffer, be sick, and die, if it means the sick body can accuse someone ELSE of causing it to be the way it is, so that the mind can be exonerated of the sin IT believes it has committed against self, others and God.

But not for an instant does the guilt leave your own mind, not for an instant does your mind truly become healed of it, not for an instant do you escape what is being denied, not for an instant do your accusations of other people's wrongfulness NOT target you, not for an instant do you escape the murderous consequences, and not for an instant do you get away with NOT being hurt by the projections. Yet alone the fact that you then hurt yourself through other people due to the way that you see them as causing you to be hurt, which you want.

Ultimately this means that this whole mechanism is STILL a way of attacking and destroying yourself, of hurting yourself, and that you are doing this to yourself. This is the secret of salvation. Recognizing that it is YOU who is accusing yourself of guilt, it is YOU who is projecting the guilt, it is YOU who is in denial, it is YOU who does not want to admit to wearing a face of innocence, it is YOU who wants to be a victim, and it is YOU who keeps using people to attack yourself. And not once do you really WANT it to stop, because that would mean having to be more honest, stop scapegoating, look within at the guilt, and undo it. Those who are dissatisfied with OTHERS, are incredibly dissatisfied with THEMSELVES.

"Only the self-accused condemn."

"You but accuse your brother of your own sins."

"Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel DIFFERENT from your brothers and separated FROM them. The ego justifies this on the wholly spurious grounds that it makes you seem better than they are, thus obscuring equality WITH them still further."

And if you think you are not condemning yourself and it is only others that are condemning you, you ESPECIALLY are doing this. Your denial can be very strong and it can make it seem like you are not doing anything wrong AT ALL, that you have never chosen or provoked the slightest attack, and it is entirely everyone ELSE on your list of sins that has failed to measure up to God's standards.

Admitting to all this takes a greater willingness to be honest, to stop attacking yourself, to stop hating yourself, to stop projecting blame onto others, to stop believing that other people are the guilty ones, to stop judging others as the ones with egos, and to be far deeper in the willingness to look at WHAT YOU ARE DENYING. Because only by admitting that you are denying how much YOU hate yourself, are you going to ever stop finding a thousand ways to encourage others to hate you FOR you.

Projection of guilt simply keeps the separation going, and the ego absolutely loves that, as it hides behind its wall of "I'm completely innocent, I'm not doing anything to myself." You are trying to destroy yourself. Look at that! And stop doing it.

"The concept of the self the world would teach is not the thing that it appears to be. For it is made to serve two purposes, but one of which the mind can recognize. The first presents the face of innocence, the aspect acted ON. It is this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. It searches for companions, and it looks at times with pity on the suffering, and sometimes offers solace. It believes that it is good, within an evil world. This aspect can grow angry, for the world is wicked, and unable to provide the love and shelter innocence deserves. And so this face is often wet with tears, at the injustices the world accords to those who would be generous and good.

This aspect NEVER makes the first attack. But every day a hundred little things make small assaults upon its innocence, provoking it to irritation, and at last to open insult and abuse. The face of innocence the concept of the self so proudly wears can tolerate attack in self-defense, for is it not a well-known fact the world deals harshly with defenseless innocence? No-one who makes a picture of himself omits this face, for he has need of it. The other side he does not want to see. But it is here the learning of the world has set its sights. For it is here the world's reality is set, to see to it the idol lasts.

Beneath the face of innocence there is a lesson that the concept of the self was made to teach. It is a lesson in a terrible displacement, and a fear so devastating that the face which smiles above it must forever look away, lest it perceive the treachery it hides. The lesson teaches this; "I am the thing you made of me, and as you look on me you stand condemned, because of what I am." On this conception of the self the world smiles with approval, for it guarantees the pathways of the world are safely kept, and those who walk on them will not escape.

Here is the central lesson that ensures your brother is condemned eternally. For what YOU are has now become his sin. For this is no forgiveness possible. No longer does it matter what he does, for your accusing finger points to him, unwavering and deadly in its aim. It points to you as well, but this is kept still deeper in the mists below the face of innocence. And in these shrouded vaults are all his sins and yours preserved, and kept in darkness, where they cannot be perceived as errors, which the light would surely show. You can be neither BLAMED for what you are, nor can you CHANGE the things it makes you do. And you are each the symbol of your sins to one another, silently, and yet with ceaseless urgency condemning still your brother for the hated thing you are.

That you are what your brother made of you seems most unlikely. Even if he did, who gave the face of innocence to you? Is this YOUR contribution? Who is, then, the "you" who made it? And who is deceived by all your goodness, and attacks it so? Let us forget the concept's foolishness, and merely think of this; there are two parts to what you think yourself to be. If one was generated by your brother, who was there to make the other? And from whom must something be kept hidden? If the world be evil, there is still no need to hide what YOU are made of. Who is there to see? And what but is attacked could NEED defense?"