To judge or be judgemental, in course terms, is to section off part of the world and put it into a category, likely based on its form or appearance or behaviour. Sometimes it is judged as good sometimes as evil. Sometimes it is regarded as a sin, sometimes a blessing.

But in all cases it is based on separating off and pitting it against other things, producing more conflict. Even seemingly positive judgements are ways of saying "this is better than that", as a subtle put-down of something else. Nothing can be elevated above unless something else is worse.

We use judgement like a way of selecting what something is "in isolation", and then determining its merit. Is it righteous or cursed? Is it acceptable or rejected? But in truth all judgement rejects because it has to push something else away in order to focus on and accept something.

Essentially judgementalism is simply a way of applying an un-whole and unholy viewpoint, to only a portion of the world, rather than to the whole of it. And that requires emphasising differences and comparing them and finding something lacking. No matter how positive the judgement seems to be it must have a flipside, of the dark things it judges against indirectly in order to put something on a pedestal. Just as special relationships hate the rest of the community.

Therefore judgement leads to idol worship, where something is either put on a pedestal or buried in the ground based on what you "believe" its value is. But the thing about judgement is that it isn't objective, it isn't passive, and isn't unbiased. It is always a condemnation and used as a weapon to separate and subdivide and increase space-time. It's a way of accusing something of being something, projecting some of your lovely guilt onto it, or onto its competition.

While we are in ego we are being partial, and all our judgements are wrong. That's a big statement but it means every single way that we judge on our own without the wholeness of the Holy Spirit, is a form of grievance, unforgiveness, attack, making sin real, and projecting guilt. It's a way of separating things off, splitting the mind, and focusing on differences.

This is why we have to be willing to give up making ANY judgements without the Holy Spirit's judgement, because every single time we judge or evaluate anything we're making a mistake. EVERY time. And then our judgement is an attack thought, and projects guilt, and labels and categorises, and fragments everything into a worse state. Plus you are included in the mind-splitting effects of judging.

We might not think we judge, but we're doing it all the time. We might think we're not even angry, making a passing commentary about something, having an opinion, giving a wise and educated verdict, using our experience, but it's all flawed. Unless it addresses the whole coming from wholeness and concludes only universal innocence, it is judgementalism and is ego.

"Judgment was made to be a weapon used against the truth. It separates what it is being used against, and sets it off as if it were a thing apart. And then it makes of it what you would have it be. It judges what it cannot understand, because it cannot see totality and therefore judges falsely." UrW311L1

You believe that it is true that you are meant to suffer and die and that doing so is right and happy and is your salvation. How nuts is that? Even worse, you do not even REALIZE you are suffering because you think it's your idea of heaven.

But here we are, in the middle of suffering, asking for more suffering, wanting to keep suffering, because we falsely believe that suffering and attack is SAVING US from something even worse.

What could be worse than suffering a death? Happiness and eternal life? The ego actually believes this. It's replaced the truth with what is false and identified what's false as true and something ELSE is where all the suffering lies.

So if you believe suffering is happiness, death is your way to be free, you deserve to suffer more because you don't deserve love, or that it's true that you need to keep the ego because it is totally your friend, then you're going to keep on suffering. The only reason you will keep suffering is because you think it is perfectly sane and real and true.

Jesus has told us, you do not need to suffer. Period. There is no call for, justification for, need for, or purpose for suffering. All you need is God's love. Yet to the ego, it has all these reasons 'why' you need to suffer more... reasons which justify suffering, reasons which build up a picture to defend suffering, to protect suffering, to want it and to keep it, because you're convinced it's actually in your best interests.

Whatever you think is true you will defend because you believe that, conversely, whatever is NOT true is against you and is your enemy. And this is how you defend against God because you think God is not the truth. Why would ANYONE want to deliberately stay away from God? Not in their right mind! Nobody has any valid reason to. But people have a LOT of really invalid reasons to. A lot of beliefs that all reinforce this conviction that what the EGO is offering is better, truer, more correct, more safe, more reliable, more trustable. We've put a lot of faith into the ego.

There is no reason to not be with God. There is no reason to suffer. There is nothing keeping you away from God other than your own desire to not be with God, based on your beliefs that tell you God is not what you want. The only way you can not want God is to not be aware of God's true nature. You MUST cover it up and distort it otherwise, if you were to RECOGNIZE God you would jump into His arms in an instant. The attraction to love is very powerful. And it is this attraction to love that you are trying to HIDE underneath and using your ego beliefs. Their only purpose is to cover up God so that you don't remember how much you want and love Him.

If you've got reasons to not accept God's love... you're definitely deceived by the ego and definitely mistaken in your grasp of what God is like. Its good to admit that. God's got a whole shitload of love coming your way.

"I cannot seen in darkness but in light."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What if you looked within and saw NO sin?"

"Let me remember that there is no sin."

"There is no sin."

"There is no sin. Creation is unchanged."

"Before a holy relationship there is no sin."

I asked God, "please forgive me". HS responded, "for what?" Again I remembered, there is no sin. Does this mean God has completely forgiven me? That He sees absolutely no sin in me? If this is true it must mean I have never sinned. I have no reason to be guilty. There is no reason to fear punishment. I've literally never done anything wrong. Nothing is being held against me.

So if there is anything in me which suggests that this is not true, that something in me must be a belief. And it must be me own belief, and a false one at that. I must be falsely believing that I have done something that I have not really done. Therefore I must be very mistaken in believing this. If I think it is true that I'm a sinner, who has done terrible things and is unforgivable, unworthy, guilty, it must be a mistaken belief.

If only the truth is true, that there is absolutely no such thing as real sin, then it is literally impossible that I have ever sinned. Anything which seems to have occurred must be a mere nightmarish dream, an imagining, a fantasy, an attempt to hallucinate, to try to prove the truth isn't true. And in this fantasizing I must be lying, I must be making stuff up, and I must be trying to believe in it to try to give it reality. But it is never true. It is just denial. I am very mistaken to believe that I am even slightly sinful at all.

In God's eyes, in terms of the Atonement, there is a recognition that sin does not exist. There is no sin in God, there is no sin in me, there is no sin in my brothers, and there is no sin in the world. There is no sin anywhere! The idea that the world is a cause of anything, or that the body is a cause of anything, is the belief that the world and the body are sinful. That they can, have, are, and will be doing something through attack. They can't be real, or exist, because if they were to do so they would be really sinful.

There is a simple truth deep in my mind. There is no sin. There is no consequence of sin. There are no effects of sin. There is only perfect innocence, holiness, purity and divinity. True sinlessness. A state of no blame, no accusation, no condemnation, no harsh judgement, no finger pointing, no scapegoating, no victimization, just the complete absence of sin.

Sin is the big lie at the root of the ego thought system. It is the belief that you can sin, at all. Which means the belief that you can cause effects in something real, that you can affect God, that you can be God, that you can have power over God or your brothers, that you can do something to cause real consequences which are permanent and irreversible. Sin is the authority problem, it is the belief in magic, it is level confusion, it is false perception.

And the secret behind the entire ego construct, the whole world the ego made, is that sin does not exist. It never did happen. No-one ever changed God's will. Nothing real was ever threatened. Nothing truly living ever suffers or dies. Literally, sin is impossible. You can't sin even if you wanted to. All you can do is imagine it, dream it, and pretend it is real. And in doing so, you can only be mistaken. It's simply not true. You are immortal. You are real. You are permanently innocent. God did not create sinners and you have no power to turn yourself into one.

If you think you're sinful right now, or guilty, or have reason to fear punishment for what you did, or should suffer with sickness and death, YOU ARE MISTAKEN. Choose again.

"Loudly the ego tells you not to look inward, for if you do, your eyes will light on sin, and God will strike you blind. This you believe, and so you do not look. Yet this is not the ego's hidden fear, nor yours who serve it. Loudly indeed the ego claims it is. TOO loudly and TOO often. For underneath this constant shout and frantic proclamation, the ego is not certain it is so. Beneath your fear to look within because of sin, is yet another fear, and one which makes the ego tremble. What if you looked within, and saw NO sin? This "fearful" question is one the ego NEVER asks. And you who ask it now are "threatening" the ego's whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to pretend it is your friend."

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed. It takes the central place in every dream, which tells the story of how it was made by OTHER bodies, born into the world OUTSIDE the body, lives a little while, and dies, to be united in the dust with other bodies, dying like itself. 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. Above all, it tries to teach itself its pains and joys are different, and CAN be told apart."

You can see from statements like this, that the body is clearly identified as being PART OF A DREAM. Now, if you're considering whether or not the world ITSELF is a dream, or whether it's just your thoughts ABOUT the world that is a dream... consider what this says.

Firstly there is no dream without the body. That's a strong tie.Then we're told the body acts, within the dream, as if it were a person. So this places the body INSIDE a dream and its actions are INSIDE a dream.

It takes the central place IN every dream. INSIDE the dream.It tells a story of being made (childbirth, which is physical) by the dream. Meaning the body AND physicality are part of the dream.To be united in the dust (death) with other bodies, tells you that the dream comprises sickness and death of bodies along with graveyards and cemeteries.

Other bodies dying like itself tells you the physical conditions of things is part of the dream as well.

It seeks for other bodies as friends and enemies, as part of the dream, so all relationships in the world are also part of a dream.It seeks for comfort and pleasure, so now all comforts, all pleasures, sex, hobbies, etc, are all part of dreaming. And many of these are quite physical.

All of this is providing evidence that a dream is not merely a dream about the world, but that the dream ITSELF comprises the world, the body, other bodies, childbirth, relationships, physical sickness and death, comforts and pleasures, etc.... this is all dream.

As confirmed by "The body is a dream."

It's not merely that your perception of the body/world is a dream, or that your interpretation or thoughts about the world/body are a dream. But that the world ITSELF, fundamentally physical matter, IS a dream. It's a dream world, not a real world.

The whole planet is a dream. The whole galaxy is a dream. The whole universe is a dream. All the bodies and animals and plants and all matter is a dream. And dreams are not reality.

"The world IS perception" also tells you that the world ITSELF is perception, not just "seen by" perception.

"The world is false perception" also tells you that the world is utterly bound as part of falsely perceiving ITSELF. That mind is projecting a false world TO see, in the mind, as part of perception. This doesn't mean you perceive the world in terms of "I look at the world" like it's a separate thing. What it tells you is that your mind MAKES the world IN ITS PROJECTING, and then perceives it, and believes it's there and solid and real, when in fact it is just a PART OF perception itself. In your mind.

"You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts."

"Both heaven and earth are in your mind."

That makes your mind pretty big and pretty powerful, given it houses an entire universe of galaxies. This is all dream stuff, and you are the dreamer of a universe of dreams. And dreams only happen while you sleep. After that, they go bye bye.

"As the world spins into the nothingness from which it came."

"Eternity will shine away the world."

"The stars will disappear in light."

"There is no world."

"The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought that gave it birth is cherished. When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well.

The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him."

...This section of the Course is interesting. It clearly says that "the world IS false perception", having not left the mind. In other words, the world is inside the mind, is made of mind-stuff/images/illusions, and is not physically real or objectively real. But notice it says the world *IS* false perception, not just that you are misperceiving a world.

Notice also it doesn't say the world is 'out there' and you PERCEIVE IT falsely. The world ITSELF IS perception. Your perceiving hallucinates a world, because "projection makes perception". Projection making perception does NOT mean that you are just projecting ONTO the world and perceiving things that are not there, it means that you are projecting THE WORLD ITSELF and are then perceiving it. Your interpretations of what you then PERCEIVE is just another LAYER of projection on top of the projected world. You are projecting the world in your mind and THEN you perceive it with the body.

This is an important distinction because so many Course folks are thinking that you just need to fix your perception OF something that exists kind of on its own, and that if you can get the right perception of it then you'll be in reality. That's not how it works. The world seeming to exist AT ALL is because of perception, which is false.

When the thought of separation (which hallucinated the world) is seen in another light (ie right-minded perception), you may see the forgiven world (which is lovely), BUT only as a stepping stone to LEAD TO the truth, "where all the world must disappear".

"WHERE ALL THE WORLD MUST DISAPPEAR". Because it's not real to begin with. It's just a great big IDEA of separation in the mind.

"Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well". Its source is the idea of separation, and the effect of that idea was the hallucination of a world existing. Not just a hallucination ABOUT a pre-existing world or on TOP of a world, but THE world itself.

I think one of the main reasons a lot of people think they just need to "change their mind about the world" is because that IS a stepping stone toward the truth - but is not the final goal. It's just a way to get to where you stop protecting the illusion and are ready to dissolve the underlying thought of separation/attack-on-God which caused it to appear. And since the Course does speak to taking those steps toward undoing distorted perception, people get caught up thinking that's all they need to do, and that after that the 'real world' will be kept - the physical world. That's not what it means. There are steps after that where the world disappears because it as only ever an illusion in the mind.

I think also this has a lot to do with how people perceive themselves as a separate body. That's what we come to the course with. I'm separate from 'the world out there'. I have a mind 'in here' in my body which is separate from the world 'out there' so this is the only part of reality that I have control over. I can change 'my mind' in here to see what's 'out there' differently. But that's NOT the point.

The point is, the very IDEA that your mind is separate from the world is what has to be undone - the whole idea of 'I have a separate mind' that is separate from the world. Because if you don't see that, you'll just want to keep the world and stay in a body and remain a separate ego identity having its own perception. And the truth is, you can't HAVE correct perception if you are still separate because as the mind is HEALED it is healed by union and undoing separation and joining and sharing, which means you have to realize that the world is IN your mind and it/your body are just mind-stuff. And as mind-stuff, they are just illusions, not reality. So the whole world ITSELF is not real. This is a very fundamental Course concept.

Again "The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought that gave it birth is cherished." - Jesus

Once we stop cherishing the thought (separation) which gave 'birth' to ERROR, which is the world (the form of error), it will REMAIN NO LONGER and will disappear. Forgiveness is meant to OVERLOOK error, ie overlook the world, to get to where perception is purified so that it can see the world for 'what it is', and what it is is an illusion. Forgiveness must look PAST the illusion otherwise it is not forgiveness. It overlooks the world and recognizes it is NOT really there, because it's just a figment of the imagination. In all its physical-ness and energy-ness and all of its 'life forms' and everything - it's all unreal. It is not reality at all. This is why the idea of "there is no world" is so threatening to ALL Course students (me too) - it implies the total non-existence of the ego self that they think they are.

So what's left, if there is no world and the world disappears?

God's Creation! God's Creation was hidden BY the world, and that was the world's only purpose. Once removed, we will be AWARE of God's Creation again - not conscious of it, not perceiving it, but AWARE of being it.

The world is just a giant mind-game.

He also says nothing can happen without your decision to make it happen, and what you choose to happen must happen, and nothing else can happen. There are no accidents or victims.

This completely flies in the face of the typical experience of most people, whose lives seem filled with cases of apparent victimhood, victimization, unfairness, accidents, things going "wrong", blame for responsibility, and all manner of lies which cannot be true.

But how is it possible that someone chooses death?

Imagine a perfectly happy, sane person who absolutely deliberately wants to die, just for fun. Imagine that this person very carefully orchestrates a plot, which allows them to seem to be killed by someone else, with absolutely no involvement of their own. This person puts on such a powerful "performance", like an actor in a play who pretends to die, that most bystanders believe wholeheartedly that the person died against their will.

But imagine that you know better, and that you know every single part of this person's death was chosen by themselves. That they literally did it to themselves. And there wasn't even the slightest bit of room for error, or mistakes, or other people being involved. And yet, this person very very cleverly painted a picture for the whole world to make it seem like they absolutely did not want this. "Poor me, woe is my, how could you do this, gasp etc".

And so this person puts on a spectacular show, for example entering into tremendous fear, getting down on their knees and begging for their life, when secretly they know exactly what they are doing and absolutely cannot be killed by anyone else. Yet they try to make it look like someone else is doing it to them. They will even hide their own tremendous power, they will shove all of their sense of responsibility under the carpet, trying to create the *illusion* that they are not choosing this at all. And the only part of themselves which they will allow the world to see is a tiny spec of identity represented as an innocent victim, who did not choose this terrible end.

So basically, this is someone faking their own death, or at least the circumstances of how or why they died. It's a huge story they made up, a lie, to cover up the fact that they themselves were the one who dealt the final blow to themselves. And yet, all these other people came to be blamed, all these other people became involved and falsely accused, and absolutely nobody suspected that this person made this happen on their own.

If everyone else involved were awake, they would not for a second buy this story, and would not be participating, and nobody would take this person's melodramatic self-destruction seriously. Nobody would become lost in the story of it, the illusion of it, and nobody would for a second be convinced that this person isn't doing it to themselves. All the facts would be out in the open for everyone to see.

Yet when other people are also asleep, and do not see the whole picture, and do not recognize how the person is making choices, and do not recognize freedom, they too will seem to "participate" in the story and make it seem much more plausible that the person is not the one destroying themselves. They believe that the person is a victim and is suffering death against their will, because THEY TOO believe in being victims who are destroyed against their own will, and do not want their own cover to be blown.

It is a cover-up, with accomplices. And so there are roles to be played and even contracts formed, by the person, to arrange a hitman so that nobody else suspects that they were arranging their own death. And at the last minute the hitman would be blamed and scapegoated and the person would be laughing all the way to the grave.

This is what happens, every single time that someone dies.

Death cannot happen if you do not choose it. But that choice is very extreme, as Jesus says, very absolute. It is not by half measures. Any choice for the ego is a choice for death. Any belief in illusions is a choice for death. And any belief that false lies are the truth, leads to death.

So if you are awake, let's say you are Jesus, looking upon a person who has gone through an extraordinary sequence of 'events' and transformations, to make themselves look like a terrible victim, on purpose, by choice, and yet at the end of this process most people are believing the person is a 'genuine victim',... Jesus would look and he would SEE the whole truth, he would RECOGNIZE the person's absolute freedom, and he would KNOW that every single step of everything that has happened has been by the person's choice. No matter how it seems on the surface. The person has created such an impressive illusion of death and victimhood that everyone falls for it and only the awakened can see through it.

And so if the person were to attempt to "die", or even if they seem to bring about their death, Jesus could be standing there taking none of it seriously, laughing at death, taking it as the con and the joke that it is, the deception and the lie that it is, believing it not even for a second. And then Jesus might say, as he did, "get up and live", or "Lazarus, stop being an idiot and pretending to be dead, come back to life. It's a lot easier".

And then the person would suddenly miraculously 'come back' to life. Or rather, they would own up to the fact they were doing this to themselves, AND that death is not FINAL because death is just denial of life not its removal... and would snap out of their silly mood and perk right up. And everyone would be like, well that's a miracle right there. Jesus raised the dead. Well, death is not permanent, and it is just a performance, underneath which is an immortal spirit pretending to be dead - an eternal unkillable being pretending that it can die. So yeah.

Death is not the end. It is not real. And you cannot seem to go through it unless you choose to. So you literally are faced with a life or death choice. Do you choose to live forever, or pretend to die (again)?

"The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is KNOW THYSELF. There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

"The Bible instructs you to "KNOW thyself," or BE CERTAIN. Certainty is always of God."

Do you know who you really are? What you really are is an immortal, eternal, changeless, endless, permanent, absolute being. As an immortal being, you can never change, never become anything, never turn into anything and never die. Nothing can ever happen to change you, and you cannot change yourself.

In order to KNOW who you are, you will have to be willing to fully embrace and acknowledge that you are an immortal being. If you are immortal, it is impossible that anyone has attacked you, has power over you, has hurt you, offended or upset you, or that the world has the power to do anything to you.

When you suggest that the world or its inhabitants have caused you in some way, causing you to change in some way, you are insinuating that you DO NOT know yourself. If you knew you were immortal you could not believe these things. If you enter into believing these things, you are losing touch with who you are and no longer know who you are.

It cannot be that you know yourself while someone else has the power to modify what you are. If someone can change you in ANY way, influence you in ANY way, you are unknown and are lost and confused about who and what you are. If you are absolutely certain of who and what you are, nothing and no-one can in ANY way change you or define you or modify you or cause you or hurt you or influence you. You must be unmoved and undisturbed by the world.

This means that anyone who believes in any way that they are affected by the world, does not know who they are. Anyone who believes they can suffer, be sick, die, be unhappy, be upset or offended, caused to change against their will in any way, does NOT know who they are.

You cannot remain in the knowledge that you are immortal while believing that you are vulnerable and susceptible. That you can be affected and attacked. You cannot maintain that you are invulnerable and permanently alive if you are asserting that you have been assailed by someone, damaged by something, destroyed in some way.

These are beliefs in mortality, which is a belief that you are dead and not alive. You can't know yourself to be immortal if you are confused about whether you have eternal life or not. Any suggestion we have that someone has done something to us is an attack upon our own immortality. Just as in "my attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability" and "I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts" and "nothing in the world can bring oppression."

The question of forgiveness then, as to whether I am forgiving or not, or how much, boils down to the degree to which I am CERTAIN about WHO I AM. If I KNOW myself with perfect certainty, then I am automatically forgiving. I will not accuse anyone of doing anything to me, because this is literally an attempt to assert that I am mortal. I will not produce a sickness because this also is an attempt to prove I can be hurt.

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."

By acknowledging your immortality you are automatically going to detach yourself from all the supposed causes in the world, you will take back all your power that you've given away, you'll see yourself as an immovable object in the river, and completely DOMINANT of everything you see. This is how you have power over death and power to overcome the world. NOTHING can prevail against a son of God who knows who he is, and his power is unlimited and absolute and unopposed.

"But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you seem to have to deal with fear or guilt, upsets of any kind, any kind of stress or suffering, any sense of shame or unworthiness, any apparent sickness or loss or malfunction, or even death, you MUST have forgotten who you really are. You must be out of touch with knowing that you are immortal, and you are trying to prove that you are susceptible, vulnerable, damageable, hurtable, attackable, weakened, capable of being destroyed and able to be CHANGED by something.

The immortal can never be changed by anything or anyone. If I claim that such and such a person upset me, I am literally claiming that I am changeable, malleable, affect-able, underminable, weak, victimizable, and destructible. It is a belief in mortality. When I am being unforgiving, I am asserting and choosing death. When I am suffering in any way, I am forgetting that I am still as God created me. When I am blaming people for stuff, I am doing myself a disservice.

Your task then is to remember who you are, be certain of who you are, be extremely in touch with who you are, be absolutely clear about the fact that you are an immortal permanent being that can never be changed by anyone or anything, and KNOW your self. To know yourself you have to remember your SOUL, the you that God created to live forever. And through this knowing you are in perfect forgiveness, because nothing can happen to those who have eternal life.

"That is why blame must be UNDONE, NOT re-allocated. Lay it to yourself, and you cannot KNOW yourself, for ONLY THE EGO BLAMES AT ALL. Self-blame is therefore ego identification, and as strong an ego defense as blaming others. YOU CANNOT ENTER GOD's PRESENCE IF YOU ATTACK HIS SON."

"You can know yourself only as God knows His Son, for KNOWLEDGE is shared WITH God."

"Separation is only the decision NOT to know yourself. Its whole thought-system is a carefully-contrived learning experience, designed to lead AWAY from truth, and into fantasy."

"To be alive and not to know yourself is to believe that you are really dead"

"This is a course in how to KNOW yourself. You have TAUGHT what you are, but have NOT let what you are, teach YOU."

"Accept as true only what your brother IS, if you would know yourself. Perceive what he is NOT, and you CANNOT know what you are, BECAUSE you see HIM falsely. "

"Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA?"

"Blasphemy, then, is SELF-destructive, not God destructive. It means that you are willing NOT to know yourself, IN ORDER to be sick."

"Identity and function are the same, and BY your function do you know yourself. "

"To believe that you can perceive the real world is to believe that you can know yourself."

When you move away from love, you move away from power. Love is power. God is love. God is power.

Moving away from love you move into fear. Fear is powerlessnses. It's the attempt to have no power. It's the attempt to be overpowered. It's the attempt to give your power away to someone or something else, who would otherwise have no power over you.In fear, you give your power to something in the world, asking it to have YOUR power OVER yourself. You ask it to attack, threaten, hurt, destroy and upset you. You give it the power to do this in your mind by framing it as an attacker. You want to be punished when you are afraid, and are asking the world to hurt you.

Fear seems to be saying that you do not want something to be happening, but it is DOING the opposite. It is requesting that there be suffering. It's a way for someone who is guilty to ask another to agree that they are guilty, deserving of punishment. As if to ask, please confirm that I am worthless and deserve suffering, and please make me suffer for me.

Being in fear is being away from love, and therefore away from life and resurrection. Fear produces death and sickness. "All forms of sickness even unto death are physical expressions of the FEAR of awakening." Suffering therefore arises from powerlessness, in which you appear to have no power to stop it because you believe falsely that you have no power.

Being afraid is a displacement of your total power onto the world. You give it your power and make it have power over you. You demand that it treat you a certain way, and usually in a destructive or threatening way. You fear in order to give your power away and to become powerless. Being powerless feels like weakness, it makes you freeze up, the life drains from you, you become paralyzed and eventually dead.

Death is a total power loss. It's like you are battery and all the life is drained out of you. It represents an unwillingness to live and an unwillingness to have power over the world. Truly you have power over death because nothing can overthrow your power unless you will to be powerless. "No one dies without their own consent."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. 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 which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

Giving your power away is also murder. It frames another person as an attacker and accuses them of sin. It associates cause with them while also believing in separation, and so they appear to be sinful to you - the cause of your suffering. While fearing them, you are attacking them. While feeling powerless against them, you are using your power to attack them. Seeking to destroy another destroys yourself. Seeking to disempower another strips you of your own power and gives it away. You cannot be powerful when you are taking power away from others - either you are both all-powerful or you are both dead.

To become powerful again you only need recognize that you still have total power to choose not to give your power away. You do it to yourself. No-one ever takes your power from you. No-one has power over your will and freedom. It is you who MUST consent to give your power, and you cannot "lose" it accidentally. Reclaiming entails recognizing the secret of salvation, that it is you who gives it away, and it's not the world that takes it from you.

All of your power is God's power. "To recognize that all power is of God is to gain all power." When you disown power you are disowning God, and are saying that you do not belong to God. It's an attempt to take yourself away from God and give yourself to someone else to be the author of you. Then you believe that the world is your cause. And when you believe that something evil and unlike God is causing you, you regard it as sinning against you.

There are no causes in the world. There is only cause in your mind. The world does not cause any kind of suffering. It does not cause sickness or disease or illness or damage or malfunction or death. Only your mind has the power to cause these things to show up in your dream. And it is in your mind that you have total power to undo and reverse and prevent all of these things. If you do not choose to give your power away, you cannot die. Who could see death who is powered by God?

Watch yourself as you give your power away to the world. Every time you believe it is doing something to you, you have given it power. You have framed it as having YOUR ability to cause. You are then afraid of your own power, seen dissociated and projected onto someone else. You accuse them of using your power against you. To believe that the world can overpower you, is to be afraid of power.

And to be afraid of power is an attempt to reject power. This is why fear feels like you're trying to stop something from happening.You cannot be disempowered unless you alone choose to disempower yourself. When you slip into this choice, you give power to the world and it gains the seeming ability to tempt you. But you gave it this ability by believing it has cause, power, mind, alien will, and ability of its own. It has NONE of its own, beyond what you have lent to it. Since you are disempowering yourself on a daily basis, you need to therefore recognize that you're doing this and stop doing it.

You need to take your power back, not from the world as such because it did not really take it from you. You gave it away freely. But you must freely reclaim it by realizing that in your mind there is an activity, an effort, a mechanism of thought, in which you are actively trying to get rid of your power. Every fear disowns power and assigns it to something else. You are fearing instead of loving, because you are trying to be a suffering victim. You are only ever doing this to yourself, and you can reclaim your power at any time.You have in you the ability to reclaim not only all power, but all power in heaven and earth. And then nothing has any power over you at all. When you are all powerful you are sharing in God's power, and nothing can oppose his will.

"God is seen as outside, fierce and powerful, eager to keep all power for Himself."

"It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth. My only gift to you is to help you make the same decision FOR YOURSELF."

"All power in Heaven and earth is therefore given him and he will share it with you when you have completed yours."

"My father gives all power unto me."

"you are part of God, Who IS all power."

"By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches you that ALL POWER IS YOURS."

"He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God."

"I am not helpless, but all powerful."