Oneness does NOT mean you do not have a self or free will.

ACIM quotes:

God, Who encompasses all being, created beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. (T-4.VII.5:1)

God created His Sons by extending His Thought, and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. All His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other. (T-6.II.8:1-2)

Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite. (W-pII.11.1:1)

God knows His children with perfect certainty. He created them by knowing them. (T-3.III.7:9-10)

In the creation, God extended Himself to His creations and imbued them with the same loving Will to create. (T-2.I.1:2)

The constant going out of His Love is blocked when His channels are closed, and He is lonely when the minds He created do not communicate fully with Him. (T-4.VII.6:7)

What God does know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His children are wholly joyous….God's extending outward, though not His completeness, is blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. So He thought, "My children sleep and must be awakened." (T-6.V.1:5,7,8)

When the Atonement has been completed [and we are back in Heaven], all talents will be shared by all the Sons of God. (T-1.V.3:1)

When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed…the Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless their creations and keep them in the light of joy. (T-5.I.5:5,7)

The Holy Spirit promotes healing by looking beyond it to what the children of God were before healing was needed, and will be when they have been healed. (T-5.II.1:2)

God has but one Son, knowing them all as one. (T-9.VI.3:5)

It should especially be noted that God has only one Son. If all His creations are His Sons, every one must be an integral part of the whole Sonship. The Sonship in its oneness transcends the sum of its parts. However, this is obscured as long as any of its parts is missing. That is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved until all the parts of the Sonship have returned. (T-2.VII.6:1-5)

It should be noted that God has begotten only one Son. If you believe that all of the Souls that God created are His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul must be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship. You do not find the concept that the whole is greater than its parts difficult to understand. You should therefore not have too great difficulty with this. The Sonship in its Oneness does transcend the sum of its parts. However, it loses this special state as long as any of its parts are missing. This is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved until all of the individual parts of the Sonship have returned. Only then, in the true sense, can the meaning of wholeness be understood.

One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth. Yet do these thoughts make clear the meaning of creation? Do these words bring perfect clarity with them to you? What can they seem to be but empty sounds; pretty, perhaps, correct in sentiment, yet fundamentally not understood nor understandable. The mind that taught itself to think specifically can no longer grasp abstraction in the sense that it is all encompassing. We need to see a little, that we learn a lot. (W-pI.161.4:1 8)

When you are told what is natural, you cannot understand it. The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you. (T-16.II.3:2-3)

"I could not atone for MYSELF ALONE. Listening to one Voice implies the decision to share It in order to hear It yourself. The Mind that was in me is still irresistibly drawn to EVERY MIND CREATED BY GOD, because God's Wholeness is the Wholeness of His Son. You cannot be hurt, and do not want to show YOUR BROTHER anything except your wholeness. Show him that he cannot hurt you and hold nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself. This is the meaning of turning the other cheek."

"Oneness is simply the idea God is. And in His Being, He encompasses all things. NO MIND (implying there are many) holds anything but Him (therefore he created many minds)."

"Miracles make MINDS one in God. They depend on cooperation because the SONSHIP is the SUM OF ALL THAT GOD CREATED. Miracles therefore reflect the laws of eternity, not of time."

"God speaks for you in answering your question with these words: I walk with God in perfect holiness. I light the world, I light my mind and ALL THE MINDS WHICH GOD CREATED ONE WITH ME"

"ONE CHILD OF GOD (implying there are many) is the only teacher sufficiently worthy to teach ANOTHER (there are many!). One Teacher is in ALL YOUR MINDS, and He teaches the same lesson TO ALL. He always teaches you (one such mind) the inestimable worth of EVERY SON OF GOD, teaching it with infinite patience born of the infinite love for which he speaks."

"The Holy Spirit is the spirit of joy. He is the Call to return which God blessed THE MINDS OF HIS SEPARATED SONS. This is the vocation of the mind."

"Let us not wander into temptation, for the temptation of the Son of God is not Your Will. And let us receive only what You have given, and accept but this INTO THE MINDS WHICH YOU CREATED AND WHICH YOU LOVE. Amen."

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I don't know about you guys-n-gals but it sounds to me very clearly that there are MULTIPLE SONS and MULTIPLE MINDS. And that the presence of multiple minds is completely natural and normal because God CREATED THEM. Therefore EACH ONE has its "own mind". Each mind may well be "one" or in harmony with other minds, but there are still many minds, and each still has its own potential to choose whether to do God's will or not.

This is why some parts of the Course refer on ONE LEVEL to the ONE SON OF GOD, and on another level to the MANY INDIVIDUAL SONS (or souls).

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References to BROTHERS who are one with God:

"You are afraid of God because you fear your BROTHER. This BROTHER who stands beside you still seems to be a stranger."

"Some bitter idols have been made of him who would be only BROTHER to the world. Forgive him your illusions, and behold how dear a BROTHER he would be to you. For he will set your mind at rest at last and carry it with you unto your God."

"To know your BROTHER is to know God."

"Miracles unite you directly with your BROTHER."

"One moment of real recognition makes everyone your BROTHER."

"Any BROTHER with whom you have a limited relationship, you hate."

"Don't deny yourself the message of relief that every BROTHER offers you now."

"It is not up to you to change your BROTHER, but merely to accept him as he is."

"In your BROTHER is the light. See him as sinless, and there can be no fear in you."

"The miracle enables you to see your BROTHER without his past, and so perceive him as born again."

"Your BROTHER does not have to be aware of the Holy Spirit in himself or in you for the miracle to occur."

"What you acknowledge in your BROTHER you are acknowledging in yourself, and what you share you strengthen."

"The miracle acknowledges everyone as your BROTHER and mine. It is a way of perceiving the universal mark of God."

"Because the miracle worker has heard God's Voice, he strengthens It in a sick BROTHER by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does not share." (again confirmation that your brother can refuse healing even if you are healed)

"Where there is love, your BROTHER must give it to you because of what it is. But where there is a call for love, you must give it because of what you are." (similarly again, you give love to those who lack it)

"How willing are you to forgive your BROTHER? How much do you desire peace instead of endless strife and misery and pain? These questions are the same, in different form."

"Trials are but lessons you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one. In every difficulty Christ calls to you and gently says, My BROTHER, choose again."

"If you attack error in another, you will hurt yourself. You cannot know your BROTHER when you attack him. Attack is always made upon a stranger. You are making him a stranger by misperceiving him, and so you cannot know him. It is because you have made him a stranger that you are afraid of him. There are no strangers in God's creation."

"Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your BROTHER did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in that view are all your sins forgiven. What is sin, except a false idea about God's Son? Forgiveness merely sees its falsity, and therefore lets it go. What then is free to take its place is the will of God."

"Not one does Christ forget. Not one He fails to give you to remember, that your home may be complete and perfect as it was established. He has not forgotten you. But you will not remember Him until you look on all as He does. Who denies his BROTHER is denying Him, and thus refusing to accept the gift of sight by which his Self is clearly recognized, his home remembered and salvation come."

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It seems to me what the One Son of God, as Christ, is considered a BROTHER to the MANY SONS, who were also created (souls?) as extensions of him/god, ... and that at times the course refers to them on an equal footing because they are made of God-stuff equally, even though Christ appears to be a "larger" identity than the individual sons. But Christ+the individual sons make up "the sonship". So the sonship is not just the individual sons, it also includes the one son, and all are considered equal brothers in that sonship.

I found myself in a conversation with Jesus last night about whether or not it's okay to pray for someone if they have not 'given permission'. I wanted to pray for someone to attempt to help them and heal them, but I wondered, what if they did not want this?

I thought about how we're not meant to violate someone's free will and how maybe it would incur some kind of 'karma' if we try to do this. I also thought about ethics and about how everyone has 'rights' and that we're supposed to be respectful and all that.

I seemed to be getting hints from Jesus that it was still okay to pray, and in fact it had been Jesus who initially had suggested to me "pray". Jesus has been trying to get me to experiment more with 'true prayer', since prayer is the medium of miracles, and to learn more how to extend God's miracles to people. But I felt a bit awkward about 'doing a prayer to someone'.

I wondered if it was some kind of manipulation. But somehow it seemed plausible that maybe it was helpful, that maybe anything that truly comes from God is perhaps useful and uplifting and a blessing of some kind.

So then I started wondering about whether in the higher realms there might be some kind of special 'rules' or 'laws' in place which govern this kind of thing, whether I should ask Jesus or God or someone not only IF it's okay to pray for someone, but also what to pray for. It seems at least to make sense to ask for guidance as to what will be helpful, rather than just launch into an ego 'I think this should happen' sort of thing.

Then it started to occur to me that perhaps there is a difference between horizontal and vertical thinking, ie that most of our worries about violating someone's free will are to do with things we would 'do to someone' in a horizontal, ego-logical way, on the level of form and separation... and that perhaps when you go into 'vertical' mode (which is conducive to miracles), you are perhaps transcending that entire scenario... it occurred me to also that everything in this world is basically illusion and part of ego-world laws, and yet in truth, "I am under no laws but God's".

Having spun my wheels around all of this I then turned to Jesus and just asked, why or how is it okay to pray for someone when they haven't asked for it and maybe don't even want it?

In his becoming-increasingly-common fashion, he replied with a single short sentence which cut through absolutely all of the bullshit and confusion like a knife.

"Since when was it a crime to love someone?"

:-)

Praying with God and receiving God's love and extending God's love, which is the 'mechanics' of miracle working, is entirely within the realm of loving people. It's not really 'about' the miracle as such, or the outcome, but really just about loving people. The love that inspires the miracle is important, more than the miracle itself. The miracle is almost a side-effect of love. So with a focus on simply praying as a form of a) thanking God for love, b) receiving love, c) extending love to others, where's the possible harm in that? And if a miracle comes of it, that's fine too... because "miracles are natural expressions of love, when they aren't happening something has gone wrong".

So I focused on love. And I prayed for the person. And I even prayed for the person to receive healing, which may even entail changes in their body. But rather than it seem like an act of control, manipulation, non-acceptance or overstepping boundaries, it simply became an affirmation of truth, an exclamation of the lovability of the person, and a restoration of how God would have things be. In this sense it can only be a blessing. And this made me think of...

"Miracles are the maximal service you can render to another". So if a miracle is the absolute BEST that I can possibly offer to someone, as a natural component of love through prayer, than where is there room in there for doubt or ideas of 'not supposed to' or 'respecting separate will' or whatever. And I guess it boils down to this..... miracles from God's love are ALWAYS a blessing, are ALWAYS welcome, are ALWAYS justified, are ALWAYS allowed (per God's will), and are a kind of 'right' that we each have to bestow upon each other.

We are, in our miracle working, extending God's authority and using that authority to have authority over ILLUSIONS, not so much over the person. The person is NOT the illusion of sickness, the person is NOT the life challenge, the person is NOT what their ego is up to or the lessons they have. So we cannot really do anything TO the person anyway, because they already ARE perfect love in truth. And we are not really in fact healing the real person because the real person needs no healing. All we are doing is calling for love to come in and set a person free from illusions, which is a divine blessing.

Okay so I realize this may sound like potentially a lot of rationalization or justification... but really just clarity. Coming into awareness that we ARE extensions of God's authority, we DO have the ability to give love, Jesus DOES perform miracles as "intercessions for your holiness", and doing this IS allowed and normal and loving, regardless of whether someone asks to be helped or not. Divine help is TRULY HELPFUL. Ego help is the kind of help that has side-effects and boundary-violating properties. There is a difference. Provided we are putting God/Love first, all is well.

It's okay to work miracles for those who are not able to help themselves, and for those who are temporarily weaker, and for those who are temporarily more resistant to love. But you should probably still seek Spiritual guidance as to whether this is in accord with the Plan of Atonement. As Jesus says, indiscriminate miracles are not always helpful, and that you should consult with Him first. I guess that's as good a basis for 'what to do' as any.

It all comes back to that funny old adage ... "what would Jesus do?"

"Everyone should love everyone."

"You cannot enter into REAL relationships with ANY of God's Sons, unless you love them all, and EQUALLY. Love is not special. If you single out PART of the Sonship for your love, you are imposing guilt on ALL your relationships, and MAKING them unreal."

This is a clear message from Jesus. Each one of us needs to get to the point where we love *everyone*, literally. Not a single exception, not a single "type of person", not a single reason why we can't love someone.

Regardless of what political party, regardless of criminal history, regardless of sins committed, regardless of what color or sexual orientation their body is, no matter their personality, no matter how they behave or what their voice sounds like or what foods they like or what team they support.

This is unconditional love. Love without exceptions. Love without special conditions.

If you are a man, a straight man, are you willing to fully love all other men? Including gay men?

If you are in an exclusive marriage, are you willing to love EVERYONE as much as you love your spouse?

Will you love your children as much as your husband?

Can you love all of the neighbors that you disapprove of?

Can you love all celebrities, political leaders, groups, corporations, the military, all war mongers, hitler?

Wherever there are reasons not to, there are reasons not to love yourself. Wherever there is some limit on WHY you cannot love them, there is a limit on why you cannot love yourself. If you cannot be willing to fully express love to every single one of God's children equally and fully, there is a limitation placed on how much love you are willing to receive. Which means you do not love yourself either.

Special relationships are especially prone to exclusion. That one special person, who is better than all others, your favorite, whom you love the most, such that no-one else compares, and everyone else sucks. Can you find the same love everywhere you go, regardless of whether that special person exists?

Can you love another man's wife as much as you love your own?

Can you love another woman's husband?

We're not talking here about having sex with them or getting into an orgy. We're talking about non-physical spirit-based extensions of love through the heart.

There can be no enemies if you want peace. There can be no-one identified as "not worthy of love" if you are to be worthy of love. You can't maintain that someone is wrong or sinful or undeserving. You can't keep separating off one group of people to spiritualize them at the expense of putting another group down.

Jesus loves EVERYONE EQUALLY. Every single person on or off the planet. All the children of God. When there isn't full total willingness to love everyone equally, there is a resistance to loving ANY of them fully. This is why Jesus says if you do not love them ALL fully and equally, you do not really love ANY of them.

If you have a special person or family member that you feel you love a great deal, but you do not love every other person to the same extent, you DO NOT love that special person fully. The love you withhold, the unhealed grievances, the special hate you have for others, must detract from how loving you can be towards a special person. To love that special person fully, you HAVE to love everyone fully. It's the only way that works. In case you didn't notice, you cannot love and hate at the same time.

For those who want to return to Heaven, to God, to unconditional reality without limits, all such grievances must be relinquished. All specialness has to be questioned. All exclusivity has to be transcended. Whether you choose to spend extra time or attention with certain people still, that's up to you. Holy Spirit wants to turn your special relations into holy ones. But to be holy, what applies to that one person must apply to all, including you.

You cannot love others if you do not love ourself. You are also included in this. To have enemies is to be at war with yourself. You cannot get away with it. Maintain enemies and you are not at peace, seeing yourself as under attack. Only when every single person is your friend are you free from this. And to do that you have to be a friend to yourself. You have to be willing to love yourself and receive love from God. When you do, you can then give or extend it. You must be included in this because love is a state of SHARING. It belongs to everyone.

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

God's miracles are as total as His Thought, because they ARE His thoughts. God shines in them all with perfect light."

In heaven, in God's mind, all of God is in all parts of God. Not just that his left hand is on one side and his right hand is on another, so to speak, but all parts of him are simultaneously in all places.... if we can speak of it in terms of space. This is God's omnipresence. Not just that He is everywhere, but ALL of Him is in EVERY location at once. In this sense, God is kind of a "blur".

Similarly, when God has a thought, this thought is alive. It is a living being. His thoughts produce souls. The thing is, since God is whole, absolute, and omnipresent, when He creates or has a thought, it produces something which is also WHOLE, complete, omnipresent. This leads to the interesting and mind-boggling situation, that there are now TWO WHOLE THINGS. God and His child.

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. ALL His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they, were created neither partially nor in part."

"The soul has not only been created perfect, it has been FULLY created. There is no lack in it."

His children are not partial children. They are not finite children. They are infinite, absolute, complete, whole, eternal, endless, unlimited beings. They are completely whole in and of themselves. Which means God, who is whole, and who is whole in every part of Himself, creates a part (a thought) which itself JUST AS WHOLE as God is. And now there are two wholes.

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is perfectly natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you." (this is holographic - the whole in every part!)

Now, logically speaking, to the ego, this is impossible. It makes no sense whatsoever. How can there be two wholes? But heaven's nature has an attribute unlike spacetime which makes it completely possible. That attribute is the fact that everything OVERLAPS AND IS SHARED.

An analogy in spacetime would be that you literally occupy the same space as another person's body. That your atoms occupy the same space. They literally are right on top of each other, overlaid like two layers in one. This isn't possible in spacetime because it would cause atoms to explode, ie death would occur. But in heaven it's opposite - and life occurs.

God and his children are one, in that they are each a whole in and of themselves, and yet are so united that they SHARE and OVERLAP everything. One soul has all of God, full access, total unlimited complete "ownership" of everything God has. AND so does another soul. And another. And another. Each soul has everything.

In this world it's not possible to share anything because everything is finite. If I give you some pizza I can only give you half otherwise I'll have none for myself. But in heaven this doesn't happen. Both can have the whole pizza simultaneously. This is possible because they truly SHARE everything. They both simultaneously have full total access to everything. We both get the same full pizza. This unlimited sharing is oneness.

This same dynamic is actually what Jesus is referring to as "miraculous". This is the miraculous nature of the soul. It's able to have everything, while also sharing everything with others. And therefore there IS EVERYTHING LEFT for another soul to have everything.

Similarly when God creates you he does not "run out of" himself. Since God gives you everything, ego would say there is no God left over at the end. This is nonsense. God gives everything AND retains everything. He does not diminish by creating, he increases creation. This defies ego logic but is completely true and miraculous.

Actually it's not even possible TO create anything real, generally speaking, because if reality is already whole and infinite you cannot ADD to it. BUT, God HAS added to it, miraculously, not by "tacking on" extra being, but by SHARING HIMSELF. Making room, so to speak, within his own being, that he SHARES WITH His creations, so that no "extra room" is needed.

"Nothing real can be increased, EXCEPT by sharing."

This is only possible in a system where all the creations are sharing fully with each other, therefore overlapping fully, one with each other and cooperative. It doesn't require the cessation of individuality, only the cessation of conflict. Or more to the point, the absence of selfishness, which is the opposite of sharing.

All things that are real, are permanently miraculous. They are miraculous because they defy the strict boundaries, exclusions, boxes, limits and selfishness of the ego's thought system. In heaven it is not a problem for multiple individuals to have everything for themselves at the same time. This is impossible in this world. It was the selfishness and exclusion and attempt to NOT SHARE, that produced the entire ego thought system and all of space and time.

What that means is, in God's holographic thought system, every part of God, every individual being, is just as totally whole as God is, at the same time, without there being any issues of "no room" or "private ownership" or "hoarding" or selfishness. It's all totally shared. Shared so much that you are literally one with all your brothers. You are literally THEM, in a sense, because you SHARE everything with them. Yet you are still two, and are still brothers. There are many children of God who are all one.

What some people are calling a paradox, is actually MIRACULOUS. It's paradoxical to say many individual beings can co-exist and have everything at once. But miraculously they can. God is a miracle worker. "You are a miracle." "God's miracles." "Miracle are a universal blessing from God". God is ENTIRELY MIRACULOUS AT ALL TIMES. And being miraculous - having this nature - of shared minds, equality, oneness with others, is completely natural. It's how we're supposed to be all the time. It's why being a miracle worker is permanent.

This is also why miracles are not mere shifts in perception because the fact is that you are uncovering your PERMANENTLY MIRACULOUS nature. Your soul is always miraculous. You are meant to be miraculous all the time, every day. This is why "miracles are natural, when they are not happening something has gone wrong" and "every day should be devoted to miracles." This is also why Jesus is STILL miraculous even after accepting atonement.

Miracles are not the healing EFFECTS that occur, or the shifts. They are a REMEDY, a cause of healing - a spark of life which resurrects. Healing or shifting is the effect. When you are done shifting, you are STILL miraculous. If shifts were miracles you would stop being miraculous when you reached the atonement. You don't. You are in the process of RETURNING TO being miraculous FOREVER, uncovering your miraculous nature, and resuming the nature of your soul. All beings of light are eternally miracles and eternally miraculous.

If you are feeling unworthy or unwanted, know this.

In spacetime, cause and effect seem to occur whereby you cause something temporarily, it produces something temporary, and then the cause is withdrawn. As if it has deposited a creation and left it alone, essentially similar to the idea of birth.

Physical creations are like discarded pieces of trash, made momentarily and then forgotten about. In effect, its creator abandons it, does not want to maintain it, withdraws life from it, and leaves it to die alone.

What is deposited upon the Earth is merely thrown away, discarded and no longer nurtured by its creator. And being without a cause, it must die. This is true of all bodies and objects and forms, which are nothing but discarded rejects from a temporary creator who creates nothing that lasts and who wants none of his creations.

This is the metaphysical origin of feelings of unworthiness, of rejection by God, of being discarded and abandoned, of deserving death and of being orphaned in a trashcan of a world. If you ARE a body, then you are disconnected from your source, and your creator has rejected you as unworthy.

It is simply because you believe you are identified with something that is not permanent, came from a creator who does not permanently love you, were produced by a sinful evil cause who hated you and no longer wanted you, and who has left you for dead in a graveyard, lost and alone to wither and die.

No one can be sustained or maintained without a cause. Effects do not exist unless their cause is ongoing. You cannot step away from something, believing you have caused it, and have it remain. To do so is to reject and discard and abandon it to death. A creation which can exist on its own without its creator is a total illusion in this world. Without your creator you are nothing.

God is a permanent creator and he creates only that which is permanent, and he maintains you in his mind forever by his thought and will and power. He cannot ever stop loving you or stop creating you or sustaining you. That is why you are able to live forever, because he is permanently holding you in existence. You are forever ever-present and ever-perfect. He WANTS YOU permanently and so does NOT leave you.

Only in such a way can you BE worthy, or WANTED, or DESIRED by your creator, or VALUED enough to have permanent ongoing nurturing, support, maintenance and continued existence. Only if you were wanted FOREVER could you have eternal life. And this is how we have to learn to think of ourselves.

If we see ourselves as children of temporary parents, or deposits of a creator who has turned his back on us, or effects who have become orphaned from their cause, or fatherless sons, or motherless daughters, or in any way disconnected from our source, then we will see ourselves as unwanted. This is why all those walking the earth feel themselves to be unworthy, because they think they have become separate from God.

Separation is really the idea that cause and effect have become separated. That father and son have been separated. That the son no longer has a father. That the father is no longer a father and does not want a son. That the father has rejected the son and is trying to destroy him. And that the son has rejected the father and is trying to destroy him also. This MUST produce a sense of unworthiness because it means the father does not want the sons and does not value his life.

If you are the child of a permanent creator, who wants you permanently, and who can never stop wanting you, then you must be worthy and you must be wanted. If you are something lost and forgotten, discarded like a piece of trash, hated and reviled, evil and ugly, then obviously you're going to feel unworthy. Identifying with a body you MUST reject God and msut therefore feel valueless. The body is not worth ANYTHING, and if it is your self, then you have no creator.

A lack of worth therefore is nothing more than a breakdown in cause and effect. To be an effect without a cause, is to have been disowned. If you are disowned by your creator then what can that say of your value, who has turned his back and left you behind to suffer alone? Only if cause and effect are permanent can you be worthy of God. You cannot be some lump of flesh that was squirted out and became a separate thing, otherwise you ARE literally separate from your creator and are PHYSICALLY unwanted.

Fortunately God never leaves his children comfortless. He never abandons you. He never forgets you. He never stops loving and wanting you. He never finds you to be imperfect or worth discarding. He never stops suspending you in his mind, or making sure theat you live forever. He never leaves you and he never forsakes you. And most of all, he never fails to value you, because he has decided to hold you in his heart forever.

"You have not left me comfortless. I have within me both the memory of You, and One Who leads me to It."

"You do not walk alone. God's angels hover close, and all about. His Love surrounds you, and of this be sure: that I will never leave you comfortless."

"Before that, there was no need for healing and no-one was comfortless."

"It was accomplished FOR you by the Will of God, who has not left you comfortless."

"He will not leave you comfortless, nor fail to send His angels down to answer you in His Own Name."

"He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your minds from everything that hides His Face from you."

"God did not leave His Children comfortless, even though they left Him."

"And he is entitled to everything, because it is his birthright as a Son of God."

"The Children of God are entitled to perfect comfort, which comes from a sense of perfect trust."

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. ALL His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they, were created neither partially nor in part."

While it may seem like the ego is the idea of an individual self, some kind of artificial self, this isn't really an accurate way to frame it. The ego is actually the idea of NOT having a self.

In heaven God created your soul which is your real self. It is a fully created being. It is an individual being, at least in the sense that it has its own mind and free will, but it ALSO SHARES with everyone else, and so is also one.

"God created every mind by communicating His Mind to it, thus establishing it forever as a channel for the reception of His Mind and Will."

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. ALL His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they, were created neither partially nor in part."

In the separation, the willingness to share was denied, producing a state of selfishness. "The ego is the idea of selfishness. The soul is the idea of self-fullness." Selfishness is an attempt to withdraw from sharing, to not want to be be one with the rest.

In what we might describe as "making an ego", the truth is that we didn't really make an ego. We HID the soul. And we did this by denying the soul. This repression of self was an act of TRYING NOT TO EXIST. It was an attempt not to will anything at all.

In attempting not to exist, which is really an attempt to murder God's son, you tried to have en existence in which you didn't really exist. It was one thing to have the idea of existing "apart from God", but the real truth is that you were attempting NOT to exist at all. To be the total opposite of eternal life, which is death.

The ego then isn't really a self, or an individual. It is the idea of NOT SELF. It is really an ILLUSION of a self, seeming to be like a self, but this illusion is actually a deception. It isn't really the presence of something, it is actually the ABSENCE of self. It is a lack of self.

It lacks wholeness, it lacks real identity, it lacks truth and sanity, it lacks will power, and it lacks life. What it SEEMS to be, it is not. It appears to be a thing, but it is really a no-thing. It is an anti-self, and Jesus sometimes refers to it as the anti-christ. The lack of christ. A LACK OF "everything that exists" is obviously not the PRESENCE of anything at all.

So the ego is this upside-down idea of "a separate self" that you made. But secretly, when recognized, this illusion of a self existing is really actually an attempt to make something that DOES NOT exist. And it's not really there at all. That's the illusion of it. There is not really an ego.

When you identify with "the ego" and try to believe that it exists or that it is a self, or it is your own self, you are really identifying with nothingness. You are trying to reject your true existence as a soul and are trying to seemingly "take on" a new self.

As if you can line up the soul and the ego side-by-side and pick between them. But the ego isn't alongside the soul in this way, because it doesn't have any existence. So you're really identifying with a fictional nothingness that isn't really there, while believing it is really something.

If we correctly identify that the ego is a LACK OF SELF, and is an attempt NOT to exist, which is an effort to die or to cause the death of God's son, then we need to also recognize that the ego is NOT really an individual. Nor is it really the idea of individuality. It is the idea of separation from sharing an identity in christ. It's the idea of NOT KNOWING WHO YOU ARE. As if you don't even exist at all.

"The self you made is not the Son of God. Therefore this self does not exist at all."

"At no SINGLE instant does the body exist at all."

"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all."

When the ego is undone, so to speak, we're not REALLY talking about undoing something that exists. We're talking about recognizing that is never was anything at all. That there IS no ego. That it is NOT your self. And it was never really a self. We're talking about shifting from identifying as "I don't exist" to "I do exist." From identifying with nothingness while pretending it's everything, to identifying with everything and recognizing that the ego is nothing. Your soul IS everything.

So really it's all upside down. And a lot of people have believed this idea that the ego IS a self, and IS a real individual. And that therefore, we have to get rid of this self, and therefore get rid of individuality in order to be spiritual. But this then leads to the false conclusion that you HAVE NO SELF. Or that individuality is a bad thing. Thus has individuality received a bad wrap, and people keep thinking that there are no individuals in heaven. The truth is there are no real individuals on earth, and heaven is full of them!

The separation from God therefore was never really an issue about individuality. It was never really about BECOMING an individual. You had an individual self BEFORE the separation even happened, it's just that your individual self was so SHARED with others that it was also one with them. "We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God." "You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did." Remember that "God who encompasses all being

nevertheless CREATED SEPARATE BEINGS who HAVE EVERYTHING INDIVIDUALLY and want to share it to increase their joy." That is normal, that is natural. It's OKAY to have an individual self, provided it shares and is not selfish. The ego is all about specialness and selfishness. Getting rid of the specialness and selfishness doesn't have to get rid of YOU. Especially when the specialness and selfishness was an attempt to get rid of you in the first place.

As you awaken, as you come to know yourself, as you return to being as God created you to be forever, as you acknowledge your brothers ACTUALLY PERMANENTLY EXIST along with you in reality, and therefore that you DO HAVE real relationships, and that everything belongs to everyone, the sense of "I am a real ego" is replaced with "I don't have an ego". But not having an ego doesn't mean YOU don't exist.

The end of an illusion of a self, an illusion of who you are not, of what you are not, of NOT existing, and NOT having a self, is the re-dawning on your awareness of your REAL SELF which has always existed and always will exist. A recognition of your individuality AND your shared nature. A reclaiming of your real identity in christ. And awakening to remembering that you are the soul God created to live forever.

"The Name of Jesus is the Name of one who was a man but saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and remembered God."

"But I was a man who remembered the Soul and its knowledge."

1. DUALITY - is the idea of "real opposites". That there really is good and evil, black and white, up and down, male and female etc. The differences of objects are believed to be "real" and a first-hand reality. That when you see these things you are looking at reality. They I really am my body, that you really are your body. That there is no unity at all, no connection, no joining, everything really is separate. In the Course, this is equated with "false perception." And in fact Jesus says "the world is false perception", meaning that the physical objects/forms themselves ARE the idea of separation, without which they would not exist at all.

2. NON-DUALITY - the original form of the non-duality idea is that all of the objects present in duality "are there" still, but there is an underlying oneness/unity which joins them all together. It's as if to say, God is a limitless being who is "expressing as" various objects. As if a clock and a chair are "really" one thing, as if joined by a hidden energy field of field of mind. That "all things are one".

In this view, the world, bodies, Earth etc are actually "kept" and still show up and move around seemingly independently etc, but are thought to be all part of one overall single Mind's thinking, or its self expression. As if God is animating the world. As if God Himself is the world or is "in it", like in the background, pulling the strings. In this view, the world is retained but is reinterpreted as "one thing", wherein its various parts and shapes seem only to be separate things when the mind is unaware of the unity it springs from.

That you might in some way "experience it all at once" if an experience of oneness, a kind of transcendent unity in which "you are the airplane" "you are the car" "you are the house". Here, God seems to be in everything you see. This idea is actually not really in ACIM at all. Some people believe it is. But ACIM actually teaches that reality is BEYOND the forms, not AS them, regarding the forms themselves to be illusions regardless of how they are experienced - that even experience as "all one thing" is an illusion. This is often confused with "true perception" which is similar but not the same - in true perception see reality beyond forms, not as "their true nature".

3. PURE NON-DUALITY - as touted by several others, is a progressive form of non-duality, takes the aspect of non-duality that seems to still be "a world" with things happening, and says that all of these worldly things are literally 100% not there. Not even that they are reinterpreted or experienced as "one thing". Not even that you are "experiencing them all at once" - it separates the "oneness" from the "things" entirely and labels the things as absolutely nothing - non-experiencable. In pure non-duality, the idea is that there is "only God", and nothing else. Only the oneness. Seemingly the oneness alluded to by non-duality but dispensing entirely with the world of forms and all objects and bodies and happenings. This does tie in with the Course teaching that "there is no world". Not simply that "the world is one thing" but that it is NOTHING.

A pure state of "only God". Just an expansive eternity is sameness, no change, no movement, no creating, no increase, no individuals, no objects, no forms whatsoever, no differences, no appearances of any kind, just rock solid God on his own. In this view, logically, it should also mean that there is no Son of God and no Holy Spirit. Some people sometimes actually "go there". That we are God. That only mind exists. That even the Son doesn't really exist as anything other than God's radiance, still solely God.

Some have used this to justify that the Holy Spirit does not exist, that Jesus does not exist, etc. It's often associated with the idea of "Oneness". That there is only "one thing". Literally a count of "one". One box, one entity, one being, just God all by Himself. This view ignores creation, sonship, free will, souls etc. This view is really not in ACIM **AT ALL**, but many think it is. It's actually the result of the ego's reasoning, believing that if you remove all separations and get down "one" thing, it must be the final answer about what exists. This essentially boils down to the idea that God is alone and is dead because he is not extending, creating, sharing or loving. He just "is" ("God is"), WITHOUT anything having been created (no sonship, no souls, no creations). It logically becomes the idea that God is dead, because love has to be shared and has to create in order to exist.

4. TRANS-DUALITY - I don't know if there is really a word for this. It takes the idea of pure non-duality, in which there is NO WORLD (only Heaven exists and Earth is not it) but then acknowledges that "God did not will to be alone". That God is a creator. That God loves to ADD to His "solo" reality. That God has in fact created, not just one thing, but a great many things. That the Holy Trinity is real, there really are three parts, and the Sonship (as one of them) actually contains many souls that God created to freely create WITH him. This is much more closely aligned with Christianity.

All of these creations, together "the one son" in ACIM, aka "sonship", are extensions of His mind and being and have been fully created as essentially autonomous entities, with their own minds. However, this is not the same as in duality. In duality these individuals would be cut off from each other, ie separate. In "trans-duality", these entities share everything with each other. AND YET, do not lose their individuality. They share such extensive oneness with each other, you would think there is nothing defining their "self", and yet there is. God has fully created souls. It defies ego thinking. It is miraculous.

In this model, which is really the model of God being a creator who has created a Sonship (and the Holy Spirit) as eternal beings, "The Kingdom of God contains all his children and their creations", these beings are co-creators with God, and have their own creations, which are shared and celebrated by the whole. This is an extraordinary state where everyone shares absolutely everything with everyone else, including God. Total access. Total openness. No selfishness, no exclusion, no ego, no separation ideas, no thoughts of imprisonment or unwillingness or denial.

A family of God, sharing in love endlessly, celebrating and being thankful for having been created, joining with all brothers in a union which seems to transcend their self yet allows them to still have one. "The ego is the idea of selfishness, the soul is the idea of self fullness." It is the miraculousness of the soul that allows it to share everything without ceasing to exist. God created many children who are permanent brothers to each other.

God is a holographic thinker and creator - every part is a whole in its own right. He has created beings, "in number infinite". THIS IS THE TRUE MODEL OF A COURSE IN MIRACLES. It acknowledges God as Father and you as A SON, one of many. This is not non-duality, it is not pure non-duality, it is not duality. It is a state of "many and one" at the same time. It is God's family.

God's system is a system of inclusiveness, which is why all beings He created share everything. It's a system of AND/BOTH rather than the ego's system of EITHER/OR. All children of God are equal, per the Golden Rule, and are brothers. "One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds." This does not in any way mean there is only one mind or only one brother. Nor does it mean they are not joined as if one. It is a fusion of oneness and many-ness, without contradiction, and with no ego involved whatsoever. It is not a separation idea, is not duality, or non-duality. It is the Creation of an omni-present being who is fully present in all things He creates without limit, making each creation a whole in itself. It is a system of "many wholes", which defies all ego thinking.

This is what A Course in Miracles is teaching. This is reality.

"Consciousness was the first split that man introduced into himself. He became a PERCEIVER rather than a creator in the true sense."

In ACIM terms, before the separation from God, we simply enjoyed what Jesus calls "awareness". This awareness is tightly tied into oneness and knowledge.

In awareness, you ARE that which you are aware of. There is nothing truly "separate" to observe that isn't already you. Since you ARE that which you are aware of, you have immediate and direct "knowledge" of it. Thus knowledge and awareness and oneness is all tied together.

Awareness also has power and love and creation in it. It can cause by will the creation of extensions to God's kingdom. It extends ITSELF as a co-creator, also extending God, to KNOW that which it creates. Just as God created US through directly KNOWING us.

"God knows His Children with perfect certainty. He Created them by knowing them."

In the separation, we attempted to reject all this. We rejected oneness and introduced separation. This now meant that we wanted something to "come between" ourselves and ourselves. Between us and God. Something which can be different over here than it is over there.

As a result, mind split and now formed what ACIM refers to as "consciousness". It's a separated state. The mind in this state is NOT creative, and does NOT have knowledge. Instead of being causal and powerful and one with everything, it is instead a state relying entirely on maintaining separation.

"Consciousness is correctly identified as the domain of the ego." At the same time of course the sense of identity went from you being the whole, to you being only a part. And now in the egoic consciousness state of mind, the mind became UN-creative (mis-creative) and unwilling to be one with everything.

Mind's rejection of creation and knowledge was kind of like trying to make the mind empty, or to stop broadcasting (creating). So instead of extending and uniting and sharing, it became sort of passive and unwilling.

As a result, mind now regards itself as a sort of RECEIVER of inputs, signals, which come to it from something it regards as NOT part of itself. Not one with itself or known. As such there now develops ideas of space and time, of distance and delay, or separateness between self and brothers and God.

"Perception is a RESULT not a cause."

"Consciousness is thus the level of perception, but NOT of knowledge. Again, to PERCEIVE is NOT to know."

"Consciousness is the level which engages in the world, and is capable of responding to both external and internal impulses. Having no impulses from itself, and being primarily a mechanism for inducing response, it can be very wrong."

The perceiving "consciousness" state has now gone from being a powerful knowing creator-extender that is one with everything, to a disempowered passive state that doesn't know anything and sees everything as separate. Effectively it now sees itself as a victim or at the EFFECT OF things separate from itself.

Signals then enter the conscious mind either from without or within, and from the superconscious (God level) or subconscious (miracle level). Consciousness sort of RECEIVES these signals and thus PERCEIVES what it is TOLD exists. As though something outside of itself is making impressions upon it and giving it signals and telling it that stuff exists.

All of these signals in the perceiving mind are SENSED, in particular by the body. There is now a separation between self and other, so a separation between observer (who has awareness) and the observed. Because of the separation split between these two, it introduces the delay and distance of spacetime.

As such, every single physical object, all matter, space and time themselves, all human bodies, the planet Earth, the sun and moon etc, it's all ONLY a perceptual signal occurring in a state of separation. Separate things, being sensed by a separated mind, in a state in which the mind is not ONE with those things, and in which both the separated things AND the "separate observer" (ego) are illusions.

Both the ego mind (separated self) and the world it perceives (spacetime) depend entirely on maintaining separation and differences in order to maintain the mind split that leads to perception and consciousness. Without this "first split" in the mind, consciousness is not possible, perception is not possible, and separate objects are not possible.

This doesn't mean that the separate objects can be perceived "as one with" the observer. If the two are separate, perception is possible. If the two are one, perception is NOT possible and separation is NOT possible and OBJECTS are not possible. Matter is not possible, space and time are not possible, without a split mind.

"To see a sinless body is impossible."

"Since perception rests on lack, those who perceive have not totally accepted the Atonement and given over themselves to truth. Perception IS a separated state, and the perceiver DOES need healing."

Thus if you are still perceiving, you are NOT knowing. Even true perception is NOT knowledge, not oneness, and not a healed mind. Thus you can seem to wake up to or attain very high states of CONSCIOUSNESS, in which you can perceive the "real world", BUT, this is not the same as the realm of total oneness which is heaven.

"Even the perception of the Holy Spirit, as perfect as perception CAN be, is without meaning in Heaven. Perception can reach EVERYWHERE under His guidance, for the vision of Christ beholds EVERYTHING in light. But no perception, however holy, will last FOREVER."

Waking up WITHIN consciousness, in a perceptual realm, is still a split-minded state of separation. Only when consciousness ENDS, the split is entirely healed, and separateness becomes impossible, does the mind return to TOTAL KNOWLEDGE, oneness, perception is impossible, and space and time are impossible. Without the split of consciousness, there is no world. And the mind must wake up FROM consciousness in order to return to the awareness of reality.

No more dreams, no more material objects with differences, no more bodies and planets, no more observers and observed things. Only a directly known realm of SPIRIT AND LIGHT, created by God to last forever.

"To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it."

"And now God's KNOWLEDGE, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its Kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

"The intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then. You will also remember that I made it very clear that the Resurrection was the return to knowledge, which was accomplished by the union of my will with the Father's."