"I am forever an effect of God."

While it is wonderful to reflect on your truly divine attributes, such as your immortality, invulnerability, permanence and unchangeability, we should also recognize that the ONLY reason you have these attributes is because of something other than yourself.

It is purely because of God that you are immortal. God is the one who is causing you to be what you are. You are eternal because of him, not because of yourself. You are permanent and unchangeable because of him. You are protected and safe because of him. You can never die because of him.

You are an effect of God. God causes you to exist. His will puts you in place and holds you in place forever. He wills what you be, and you have absolutely no say in this. Nor can anything in heaven or earth ever change this fact of what you are. God's will cannot be opposed and nothing can ever act against it.

You did not exist when God created you, so you had no input into what you were created to be. God himself, and only himself, decided what you are and what he wanted you to be. He extended himself as thought and life to create you and gave you everything that you are. You have absolutely nothing that does not come from God, and everything you have is inherited. You have not gathered up extra stuff, made yourself out of other things, nor added a single thing to what God has created you to be.

Jesus: "There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE."

You only have what you have been GIVEN by God, and you can only be what God has given you to be. You have been given AS a blessing to the whole Kingdom. God blessed creation by creating you as a gift. You are exactly what GOD intends that you be, and you can never change this. God creates you, causes you, maintains you, and keeps you going.

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind."

The only reason you are immortal is because God has GIVEN you immortality and sustains your immortality for you. The only reason you are sinless is because "My sinlessness is guaranteed by God", meaning that God himself makes it impossible for you to be anything other than innocent. God gave you his own innocence and shared it with you, and so you must be innocent because he is.

Everything about you is inherited from your creator and is shared with him. This does NOT mean that God handed over some things to you and let them go. It does not mean God died off and you got an inheritance afterwards. Nor does it mean God was depleted by giving everything to you. What it does mean is that the giving to you is active and ongoing, that you SHARE IN what you have WITH him, all the time and always, such that while it is your inheritance, it is STILL HIS as well.

"I am forever host to God."

"Love created my like itself"

So love created you loving, immortality created you immortal, invulnerability created you to be invulnerable, innocence created you to be innocent, perfection created you perfect, peace created you peaceful, light created you light, eternity created you eternal, unchangeability created you unchangeable, the absolute created you absolute, holiness created you holy, and happiness created you happy.

It is because of God that you are what you are, and because of no-one else. This is why you naturally are completely grateful to God because you ONLY have what HE has given you, and he has given you everything.

"God loves His Son forever, and His Son RETURNS his Father's love forever."

The ego would like to claim that you are immortal, but it would like to do it in such a way as to say God has nothing to do with it. That you aren't immortal because of him, but that you are a standalone independently immortal being in your own right, and because of yourself. It wants to claim credit for God's work. In this way the ego aggrandizes itself and inflates itself pretending to be like the sons of God or God himself but without God's causation. Without acknowledging God as your father.

To recognize you are immortal, permanent and unchangeable, you have to also acknowledge God is your creator. You are protected BY God and he does not allow anything to happen to you. Not only are you invulnerable because God says you are, you are invulnerable because he causes you to be invulnerable, and because you share HIS invulnerability.

"It is God's Will that nothing touch His Son except Himself, and nothing else comes nigh unto him. He is as safe from pain as God Himself, Who watches over him in everything."

"And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error."

"God is my strength. Freedom is his gift."

So because God is immortal and invulnerable, innocent and holy, perfect and permanent, unchangeable and absolute, so are you. He has created you by sharing himself with you, and you have inherited all his attributes. You are forever a host to him, and therefore he is in you. What is yours, is ALSO his, because it is shared with him. You have nothing exclusive of your own, you only have what you have been GIVEN. And you must share it in order to keep it.

This means that you have to give life and immortality and love and innocence and peace and freedom and unchangeability, in order to retain it in your mind. It must be shared. If it is not shared, you close it off to yourself and stop sharing IN it. God's gifts are given to you, as you, but also THROUGH you. Because YOU are a gift of God that is being given BY God TO OTHERS. What you have received from God, you have to pass on, as in the "pay it forward" idea.

This is why EXTENSION (of creation) is natural to all of God's creations. God extends himself to give himself to you, so that you can give God to others. Everyone shares in everything all the time. You are permanent because God is permanent and his permanence is yours. You are unchangeable because God cannot be changed. You are immortal because God is immortal. You can never die because God is eternal life.

Therefore you MUST still be exactly as God created you to be, originally and without flaw, without distortion, without degradation or decay. You must STILL be wholly innocent because of God's guarantee of your sinlessness, which is his own. You must still be perfect and immaculate and unharmed and unchanged. And not one single thing in all the world has ever altered what you are ever so slightly. You are the will of God, and what God wills lasts forever. "Lesson 326 "I am forever an Effect of God."

"Father, I was created in Your Mind, a holy Thought that never left its home. I am forever Your Effect, and You forever and forever are my Cause. As You created me I have remained. Where You established me I still abide, and all Your attributes abide in me because it is Your Will to have a Son so like his Cause that Cause and Its Effect are indistinguishable. Let me know that I am an Effect of God, and so I have the power to create like You. And as it is in Heaven, so on earth. Your plan I follow here, and at the end I know that You will gather Your Effects into the tranquil Heaven of Your Love, where earth will disappear, and separate things unite in glory as the Son of God."

Receiving of miracles it not something that you "get" from God and then just sit there with it as though it is now in your possession. It is not possible to actually receive miracles WITHOUT being also willing to give and extend them. They are not personal. You will only allow yourself to receive them if you believe you are worthy, and having believed you are worthy you will automatically believe everyone else is worthy of receiving them from you.

Those who believe miracles are merely shifts in your own personal perception are much mistaken, because miracles affirm that giving and receiving are One and therefore, because you are one with God, you will automatically give what you received from Him, being also its giver to yourself and others.

Miracles therefore are EXPRESSIONS or extensions of the truth through you, for you, and for others, to others and to yourself, from God. They are SHARED. They are the embodiment of sharing and wholeness and inclusiveness. They are not personal or found in isolation. You must GIVE ALL to have all. And even Jesus said of his own atonement that by receiving it he received it for all and now expresses it for all. How else would you be the light of the world or truly helpful in any way if you just hoard the goodness of heaven for yourself?

This is why if you are to receive miracles for yourself you MUST also become willing to SHARE IN THEM and to receive AND give them, otherwise you cannot have them. You cannot have the kingdom without its extension and it is extended by sharing. You cannot have anything real without it being GIVEN also. This is why miracles are not just about you, they are about you giving TO your brother. They are the maximal service you can render to your brother.

Members of Jesus's party are active miracle workers.

It's a bit similar to "use it or lose it". Give it, or you cannot have it.

"You are saved, and your salvation thus becomes the gift you give the world, because you have received" - ACIM

"They are received where they are given" - ACIM

"You will receive miracles because of what God is. And you will offer miracles because you are one with God" - ACIM

"No one can give what he has not received. To give a thing requires first you have it in your own possession. Here the laws of Heaven and the world agree. But here they also separate. The world believes that to possess a thing, it must be kept. Salvation teaches otherwise. To give is how to recognize you have received. It is the proof that what you have is yours." - ACIM

"You understand that you are healed when you give healing. You accept forgiveness as accomplished in yourself when you forgive. You recognize your brother as yourself, and thus do you perceive that you are whole. There is no miracle you cannot give, for all are given you. Receive them now by opening the storehouse of your mind where they are laid, and giving them away. " - ACIM

"What you want in yourself you will make manifest, and you will accept it from the world because you put it there by wanting it." - ACIM

"Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." - Bible

Lesson 159 - I give the miracles I have received:

The mind of Holy Spirit is bi-directional, in that it both gives and receives equally. It isn't just a mind that gives, or just a mind that receives.

In the ego's mind, giving and receiving are separate, creating the illusion that cause and effect are separate - that you can give without receiving (attack), or receive (get) without giving.

In Holy Spirit's mind, what applies within applies without. What applies to you applies to others, and vice versa. It is a mind of complete equality.

Holy Spirit's mind is also a miraculous mind, in that because of the complete absence of separation between cause and effect, or inner and outer, or self and other, all illusions of separation are undone within its perception.

As we go `up` to the Holy Spirit's mind from our ego mind, we can be tempted to believe in ego terms that our journey is one-directional. We might say that we take our illusions to the truth. But it is also equally correct to say that the truth shines light upon our illusions.

We might also think one-directionally that we go and accept the Atonement for ourselves, but Atonement means at-one-ment which means it applies to us equally along with everyone else.

We could also come to think that a movement "towards" the Holy Spirit is a miracle, like a shift in perception from 'less' to 'more', or bringing illusions to truth. But what we're actually doing is leaving behind a thought-system of one-directionalness and separation, and moving into a thought-system of oneness and equality. It's apples and oranges.

We could therefore think (with ego-separation logic) that moving towards Holy Spirit is a miracle, but a miracle, being from the Holy Spirit's mind, must be bi-directional. It must be an act of both giving and receiving. It applies to you AND it applies to your brother. It heals the separation between you by recognizing that your brother IS your brother and not a stranger, and blesses both of your minds with healing.

The ego always thinks with one-directionality because it wants to keep giving and receiving separate, it wants to keep cause and effect separate, and it wants to ensure that every interpretation of what the Course means or what the Truth is like falls into its way of thinking about things as separate.

Miracles are unifying and are expressions of unity (love). This means not just that they lift you and your brother into Heaven or revelation, but that they also "bring" or "extend" Heaven into the Earth, shining it away. This is why, I believe, miracles subsequently are gifts you can give to others, and are not just something you claim for or use for yourself.

Our mind in its natural state is joined with our Soul and with God. In this state, it receives the causal expression and extends it. In a sense, the mind does not have its own content, it just extends what it receives.

After separating from God and ourselves, the mind is cut off from its "owner". This is due to a separation introduced between cause and effect. That which at the effect, the mind, starts to see itself as causeless, and so begins to make up its own ideas about what it is and what is true.

This turns the mind from being an extender of truth, to being a solo broadcaster of imagination.

The problem then is that anyone with an ego tends to broadcast a lot, and tends to receive very little. Being alone or isolated or trying to live without God makes us weak, vulnerable, afraid and helpless. Yet it also makes us spew out "noise", the noisy broadcasts of the ego, which basically is an attempt to be recognized as the cause of oneself, rather than being caused by God or Soul.

In a world where so many people are broadcasting themselves, there isn’t much listening. Consequently, even though people are broadcasting loudly, 24/7, everyone is talking over everyone else. People then are not really being present, available, un-distracted with themselves, or able to pay full attention. That means that those who are broadcasting, paradoxically end up not being heard.

This is because the rest of the broadcasters are not willing to receive. So no matter how loud you shout, if everyone else is also shouting your expressions will be stunted and stifled and you won’t feel like anyone really listens to you. In fact, the more that you shout louder in an attempt to be heard more, you will be heard less.

Many people in this world are expressing the ego. Few are expressing silence or stillness or presence or quietness or a willingness to receive. If you yourself become willing to receive from Spirit, your own mind will become quiet and you will subsequently become willing to receive ie listen to and pay attention to, what other people are expressing. Without distraction from your own thoughts or memories or judgements or attempts to process or reflect on what someone said.

Learning to listen is part of waking up, because it entails your own willingness to listen to Spirit. That means instead of running your own show, you turn your mind and your life over to the care of God. You become willing to receive input from Spirit. You become willing to trust Spirit. You become willing to let Spirit guide your every action, to even speak for you and through you.

The willingness to receive is what has become blocked by the ego. Separations and blocks to awareness are attempts to not listen to God, to hide from God, to replace God’s Word with your own, and to make up your own truth. Becoming willing to accept Atonement entails becoming willing to receive from God, to be guided by God, to allow yourself to accept love, and to let miracles be performed through you.

Therefore as you tune into Spirit, handing over your stolen life to its rightful owner, and giving back control of the mind to Love, you automatically become a better receiver and listener. You become better at being present. You become more available. And you start to allow others to fully express, willing that you receive everything they are offering. This simultaneously creates space for them to fully express themselves, to be heard, and to know that their expressions are not being met by deaf ears or a wall of selfishness. This holding space alone can be very healing.

You simply need to put all of your ego distractions aside, pay full undivided attention to the person, let them express absolutely anything they want to without interrupting or interfering or offering advice or any kind of transmission, without your secret mental judgements or attempts to chew on what they expressed, free of your reactions and defenses, just totally being fully present for them.

Do this for someone and you’ll be offering a tremendous healing service just by listening attentively without judgement. Afterwards, even if their ego erupts in a free-flow of expression, they will feel so peaceful and relieved that finally they could express themselves fully without someone being self-absorbed with their own ego reactions.

Give the gift of unconditional receiving and listening to someone this year. Let them have the microphone 100%, not 50%. Let them tell you whatever they want to tell you and just receive it.

Giving and receiving are one.

Miracle principle 11 says "A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable value simultaneously."

If you believe and perceive that your neighbor is not yourself, that they are a separate person, and you are not one, you will find yourself unwilling to give to them.

There is a very simple reason for this. If the two of you are separate, then logically when you give something to them, you are excluded from receiving it. What is theirs is not yours.

This leads to the quite sensible conclusion that, since your brother seems separate from you, you should NOT give to them, because if you do, you will stand to lose everything that you give.

It makes perfect sense because if the premise is that the two of you are separated, then it also makes sense to say that what belongs to you does not belong to them, and vice versa.

Believing that the two of you are separate, you will therefore find yourself "naturally" unwilling to give to others. You will not want to perform any miracles. You will not want to share yourself or give love.

Giving love across a divide, to a separate person, who is cut off from you, can only seem to entail a sense of loss. You believe quite logically that whatever you give you will lose, and giving will be a sacrifice.

This is rooted in the fundamental dynamic that giving and receiving are not one. If you and your brother are separated, then giving and receiving are also separated. Who you give to will appear to exclude your self, and so you will see yourself as not the receiver. If you do not stand to receive, then you will not want to give away, because it will seem detrimental to you.

In a sense, you could say that this appears to be selfish. However, the person is really just doing what seems logical based on the premise that they are separate. A person is unwilling to give because they want to keep what they give. They want to be included in the receipt of it. But because they see themselves as not included in the "list of receivers", they conclude that hoarding is a better strategy. This is entirely sensible and logical.

What this means then is that if you see yourself as separate from another, and you think you have something they lack, or you see yourself as a healer or giver, but do not see yourself as one with the other person, you will not want to give to them. You will be unwilling to perform a miracle of union on the grounds that giving so fully will deprive you of everything. And no-one is going to argue that this makes no sense.

If your brother is indeed separate from you, then by all means you should not give anything to him, because what he stands to gain you stand to lose. And so the ego will counsel that it's important to recognize the separation, make it real, and therefore stay within your private prison. And that it is in your best interests not to even try to give, or to perform a miracle of love, because this runs against your best interests.

So long as this separateness is maintained, you will of course maintain separate interests. What is in your own best interests is not the same as what is in the interests of another. If the two of you are not actually one, then there is no way for you to really receive or keep what you're giving. Only IF the two of you are one, can your interests be mutual, and therefore shared.

Only through shared interests, recognizing that you are one with the other person, they are a part of your self, and therefore it IS in your best interest to give to the part of you that you share with them, can you be naturally and logically willing to perform a miracle.

The ego will suggest this is impossible because it claims that you are currently separate. And if you are separate, there is no logical basis for saying that giving is going to help your situation. In fact giving will appear to deprive you, so long as you remain separate. And it's clue here is that if you give love, in an attempt to heal, the healing will have no effect on YOU, and therefore there is no way to bridge the gap anyway.

The interesting thing, however, is that regardless of how separated you are right now, when you TRY to give, you will find that the giving of love actually heals you along with it. You cannot heal without being healed. The love that you try to squeeze through to share with another is actually received by you as well. It includes you in it. And this inclusiveness of love actually unifies your minds and lifts your spirits.

If you can recognize therefore, however dimly, that your brother is yourself, and is part of you, and therefore you are not losing by giving, then you will become willing to give. Giving is sharing and inclusion, not loss If you believe that giving is going to deprive you, then you have to recognize you currently see yourself as separate. It's actually then a necessity to be willing to try to overcome this sense of separateness, in order for you to be okay with giving.

Indeed the course suggests that "miracles are taken first on faith", because you may be in a position where you do NOT really recognize your oneness with another, and you do not see them as part of yourself. They still seem separate to you. Which means that you're going to have to "take it on faith" that IF you give love and attempt to join, to heal the isolation that keeps you apart, then the love will do its job and make it clearer to you that you are in fact NOT separate, AND that you stand to gain from the giving.

"A miracle is a reversal of the physical order because it brings more love to the giver AND the receiver."

Your willingness to try to share, join, be one with, see yourself as, with others, brings a healing love to you, to heal the gap in your own mind, and to lift you up in addition to lifting another up. You actually receive the love that you give. When you try to heal another, therefore, you should find that you yourself become healed as well. Both of you are recipients of love's benefit because it is inclusive.

So if you assess how much you see another as separate from you, you'll also find that this correlates to how much of an "unhealed healer" you are. If you regard yourself as having something others lack, you are seeing yourself as separate. And then you will feel that you can expend effort and therefore become taxed by trying to give healing.

This sense of limitation or that "healing is a sacrifice", is all part of the unhealed healer's thought process. To overcome this the healer has to be included in the healing and thus receive what is given. If I feel that I cannot perform miracles because it would be too much effort, would require me to give a lot, and I'm not willing to lose a lot in order to do so - because I'm selfish, then obviously I need to learn that by giving I will receive and the sense of separation and sacrifice is unfounded.

By learning to give to another AS yourself, you can actually take that all the way, and through such equality of giving and receving you will find God.

"Atonement is for all, because it is the way to UNDO the belief that ANYTHING is for you ALONE."

"It is impossible for a Child of God to love his neighbor EXCEPT as himself. That is why the healer's prayer is, "let me know this brother as I know myself."

"The unforgiving mind does not believe that giving and receiving are the same."

"The interval you think lies in between the giving and receiving of the gift SEEMS to be one in which you sacrifice, and suffer loss."

"Yet it is always God Who calls to you, and he who asks your help is but yourself. Who is the giver and the receiver then? Who asks the gift and who is given it?"

"Each miracle is an example of what justice can accomplish, when it is offered to everyone alike. It is received and GIVEN equally. It IS awareness that giving and receiving ARE the same."

""Father, I must return Your Love for me. For giving and receiving are the same, and You have given all Your Love to me. I must return It, for I want It mine in full awareness, blazing in my mind, and keeping it within Its kindly light, inviolate, beloved, with fear behind and only peace ahead. How still the way Your loving Son is led along to You!""

"Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone. THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember."

YOU HAVE TO GIVE LOVE FIRST TO RECEIVE LOVE

Love is in you, it is you, it is God given. God put love and light and power into you. You did not put it there and cannot produce it on your own. But if you believe love is not in you, you are unlovable, unworthy, are denying your real self, etc, love will be blocked. Love does not enter where it is not welcome.

Believing the love is not in you, you will see yourself as lacking love, and "in need". You will believe the love is separate from you and external to you. So you will go seeking for it. You will try to GET IT from anywhere other than inside yourself. That is, you'll try to acquire it, without undoing your belief that you don't have it.

The problem is even IF people give it, you will not allow yourself to truly receive it. Openness to receiving love requires that you NOT believe you're lacking it, and requires to TO believe that love IS IN YOU ALREADY.

It's not that you need to find a way to get the love you are lacking, it's that you need to learn that unless you GIVE or EXTEND it, you WILL NOT receive it. And this also means, no-one else can give you the love that you are unwilling to give yourself or to others.

If you fail to give love to others, ie you deny them love, what happens is you deny yourself love. In other words, if you find that you cannot love or aren't willing to, your "unloving attitude" towards others will also be experienced by yourself. You will find yourself lacking and needy and dependent on external sources.

How love really works, is that it must extend. It must be given. In order to have the love, you have to give the love. In order to receive the love, you must express the love. You must flow it, extend it. It's given to you BY GOD, and your natural function (when sane) is to extend it or "pass it on" to everyone else (and God).

When you do that, you acknowledge the love is in you, it's already being supplied to you, you are NOT lacking it, and therefore you HAVE it to give. If you feel like you're lacking it, you will also feel like you cannot give any more. The remedy for that is not to try to get more love from others, but to become more willing TO love. To give more love.

When you give more love, YOUR lack is supplied from within, and by giving your love away to others you RECEIVE it from God. This is the only way it works. This is how you love naturally. And that also means you MUST acknowledge that God loves you in order for you to be willing and able to love yourself and others. If you can't acknowledge God as the source of ALL love, it is impossible to experience real love at all. Sorry atheists but if you deny God you deny love.

Unless you are choosing to express love, you will not receive it. What applies to you applies to others. This is the Golden Rule in action. Love others to love yourself. If you unlove them you will unlove yourself. If you attack them you will attack yourself. If you are unforgiving in your attitude towards them you will find yourself guilty. If you love them you will love yourself. It's a rule of equality.

This also does not mean sacrifice. By giving love, you should not aim to only cause others to receive love, and omit yourself from receiving it. That too is egocentric. It's a form of sacrifice in which you believe others deserve love and you do not, so you try to give love but only in a way or form that ensures you do not receive or experience it yourself. You "burn out" that way because you are not getting fresh love input from God. You're trying to give yourself away and actually get rid of yourself. It's suicidal.

People who SEEM very giving and selfless can be the most denying of self love and unwilling to receive. This is the ego's illusion of love. Appearing to be loving or sacrificial in an attempt to look loving, when in fact all you're doing is creating a hole in yourself and denying yourself what little you have. This happens when you try to be the SOURCE of love, as an ego, rather than getting the love from God. Sacrificial selflessness is NOT unconditionally loving.

Similarly, if you are afraid, it is because you are failing to love. You are not fulfilling your function of extending God's being. Fear is what you experience as the absence of love. All suffering comes from that sense of lack or denial. You'll think, you are too afraid to love, you have nothing to give, you are empty, and this is terrifying you because you have no strength, nothing to stand up to others with, people are walking all over you and you have no confidence.

But what happens is, surprisingly, if you can will yourself to love, to express and extend genuine love, unconditional love, it immediately dissolves that fear. It gives you strength, it empowers you, it sets you up in the correct arrangement of being an extender of God's power in which He takes care of you, it protects you, it makes you sane, and it shines away all darkness. The ONLY way to make that happen is to extend love.

By giving it, even if you don't THINK you have it TO give, you INCREASE how much you HAVE and find yourself in a better position. It seems counterintuitive because you think you can only give what you seem to have already. But if you give and extend willingly, it simultaneously instantly increases your supply. You can ride that wave and become much "higher" on that love. But you must initiate the giving of the love in order to break out of the sense of lacking it. As soon as you get into the flowing of it, your situation improves.

To love everyone equally and fully is the goal. EVERYONE. And that means no exceptions. And that is not easy for us ego people. People who are conditional in their love. Who don't want to love everyone. And who find some people to be sinful. This also indicates that you are unwilling to love because you are unwilling to love yourself. If you reach the limits of how much you can love someone and you feel like you just can't love them anymore, or enough, it's because you do not love yourself. You are blocking love from being received because you don't think you deserve or want it. And that makes it impossible to give it.

Yet you have to move past those blocks, those beliefs in negativity towards yourself, so that you can come to recognize that you DESERVE God's love. And this is what forgiveness and the atonement are around. Learning to recognize the truth about you, that you never sinned and all is forgiven, such that you utterly deserve God's total undivided love forever. Accepting that you are innocent and there is no reason NOT to love yourself. Or others.

You can only give the love you have received. You can only give the miracles you have received. But once you receive it and accept it as true of you, you accept it as true of others, and become willing to love BOTH you and others all the more. Which also means willing to give miracles to others. That's the path towards enlightenment. Towards the recognition that there is only love. And that nothing else exists to block it. Nor would you want to. In your right mind, there is no reason to do anything other than love fully and maximally. All expressions of true love are maximal.

Give to receive. Give first, receive next. If you receive first before giving, that is conditional and blocks the receiving, leaving you empty handed, especially if you fail to get it from someone. You must "give away" the love that you want to keep, then it will increase, and you will not lose it. This breaks all the ego's laws of lack. Ideas are increased by being given away. Miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver. If you want more love, love more. Find out the barriers you've placed against love and remove them. Become willing to love everyone, all the time, without exception. Then you're ready for God.

When everyone is willing to extend God's love, they share in that love together, but you don't give love due to other people lacking it, nor do you seek for people to love you on the basis that you lack the love yourself. Imagine if everyone already is full of love and everyone is extending love to everyone. The extension isn't done at this point in order to uplift those who are lacking (which is what miracles are for) but simply as a communication, an expression, a natural way of existing. You love the love that is already in everyone, not because it's not there, but because you acknowledge everyone is already love. Love then moves beyond its healing function and become simply a way of relating forever.

It is not your task to necessarily learn to "love more", however, because God has already in fact created you WITH love and AS love. Extending love is totally natural to you as a son of God and you are unlimited in your ability to do so. The only issue are your blocks to the awareness of love, your denial, which stops you from receiving unlimited love and stops you from expressing it. You should not be trying to KEEP your blocks and INCREASE the love. That will not really work. Keeping blocks while "trying to love more" will reach a limit fast. Instead, your job is to seek out the blocks you've made AGAINST love, remove them, and then love NATURALLY will flow at an increased rate. Effortlessly.

Because the fact is, if you didn't have insanity or blocks or denials, love would NATURALLY go out on its own because of what it is. "Love goes out because of what it is, but you are needed that it can begin." If you don't interfere with it, love maximally extends through you all the time and its so natural and joyful that it's all you want to do. But when you erect barriers against it, in preventing yourself from being loved by God, you block the receipt, and try to cut off your mind from spirit. That SEEMS to reduce the love. It doesn't reduce love at its SOURCE (God), it only reduces your willingness to RECEIVE and flow it.

That's similar to the idea that you have a pipe, and God is flowing maximum love through the pipe, through you, and your tap is fully switched on so that the love just flows right through you and on to others (extension of creation). But when you turn the tap OFF, you reduce the flow to a trickle. Not because the source is limited but because YOU are limiting it. All you have to do is OPEN UP the flow and let love in and through you and be willing to love. Because actually it takes effort to not love. It takes effort to be unwilling. To resist. To deny. It takes deliberate belief and energy to PREVENT love. So when you stop all that effort (ego doing), you open up and the love just flows full-force on its own and it is effortless and very natural.

Be a channel for God, basically. Let him move through you. Let the Holy Spirit perform miracles through you. "What the holy spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world" "Do his works". Obviously you cannot do his works on your own, you do his works by working with him to extend HIS healing power THROUGH you TO others. Which means cooperating in not resisting, not getting in the way of, not putting up blocks against, His power through you. This is a miracle working principle. This doesn't mean you become uninvolved and "sit on the sidelines" in your ego. It means you become an EXTENDER OF LOVE, a relay, a device which forwards the love through WILL, and in that you and the Holy Spirit team up and you become part of the machinery of miracle working. You MUST ACTIVELY EXPRESS LOVE YOURSELF in order to perform miracles, but you get that love from God.

You're basically learning to plug yourself back into God. Plug yourself into love. Allow yourself to depend on God as the SOURCE of everything you are and have. By being willing to extend what you are given (your inheritance) to others, to share it equally with everyone. This entails learning to TRUST the Holy Spirit, learning to DEPEND on God, learning to make decisions WITH him (not just him, and not just you). Letting go and letting God. And fulfilling your function as spirit. "The only function of spirit is to extend God's being." Then you are being your natural self. You're being as God created you. And God created you to be an extender and expresser of miraculous powerful unconditional love all the time.

This morning Jesus told me to "listen". So I just lay there and focused on listening. My thoughts stopped. It was at times difficult to maintain extreme focus on listening intently, particularly without anything to listen "to". My mind kept getting lost agains in ego dreams and thinking. Then I'd come back to it.

Listening very intently stops all thoughts. It also makes you more present.

Then something else happened. Holy Spirit said, "receive". So while maintaining this listening state, I allowed myself to receive. This means, receiving without necessarily 'giving' anything. Allowing God to come to me. I immediately felt Holy Spirit's presence in my body which then proceeded to shake and stuff as Holy Spirit healed me. Each time I allowed myself to stop, listen, and receive, another wave came.

Here's why listening and receiving seem so alien to the ego, and why it stops ego thoughts.

Your mind in its natural state is supposed to receive everything from God. It is a receptive device. It's willingness to listen to everything God is sharing and to be open to it keeps it plugged into love. It is supposed to receive a constant broadcast of love, all the way into the deepest depths of the soul.

This is simple cause and effect. God is cause, God creates and sustains you forever, you are the effect of God and so it is completely natural for your soul to simply receive whatever God is creating you to be.

This openness to receive God, to allow God, puts the mind into its natural state of extension, where it receives input from God and then broadcasts it, like a repeater. It allows God to flow through it and express love outward, increasing the love and joy.

But in the separation idea, something happened.

Another way to think of separation is that we tried to unplug ourselves from God's input, to stop listening to His Voice, to stop receiving His love, and to run off with our hands over our ears trying not to acknowledge, allow or be open to receiving the truth. It was an attempt to shut out the 'cause' of ourselves and to pretend that we ourselves are our own cause.

This does something unnatural to the mind.

Without input coming from God, the mind starts 'inventing' inputs. It starts to dream. It makes stuff up. And since what it is making up is not love, all of this dreaming produces ego thoughts and forms. "All thoughts produce form at some level." So now instead of simply radiating silence, or peace, or love or joy, the mind starts making "noise". This noise takes the form of ego thinking.

So ego thinking then is, in every case, an attempt to run away from God, to not listen to God, to not RECEIVE, and to instead try to give without receiving. This is because in the separation, ego separated giving from receiving. It actually is trying to give give give all the time (because it is sacrificial), but without receiving, because it wants deprivation and lack.

So the ego-driven mind is very good at making noise, broadcasting, giving without receiving, creating lack, inventing thoughts and dreams, and making illusions. It is all symptomatic of being unplugged from God and not receiving God as input.

So what happens is, if you focus on listening, ALL of your ego thoughts will go silent. Very automatically. You don't need to thought-watch or try to transcend them or stop them or whatever. They are only happening because the mind is not listening to God. So as you put all your focus on God, all your problems are solved and the mind automatically stops inventing stuff.

All of the ego's thoughts are mind wandering. And mind wandering means, allowing mind to take you away from yourself and away from God. This means going into ego thinking, making illusions, believing separation, and stopping receiving. If you did not "wander away" from yourself, ie yourself in God, you would not have any ego thoughts - OR any ego at all.

Essentially this is the ONLY meditation that works, because there is only one problem - separation from God, and only one solution, rejoining your mind with God and putting your mind back in service to spirit. ie being willing to receive God's will and extend it, rather than willing against it.

It is very easy and simple and very powerful. Just put all your attention on listening. Listening means you are shutting up and stopping making noise and being quiet and allowing something else to have it's say. It means you are willing to stop being the author of illusions, and to receive reality - what it wants to tell you it is rather than your ideas about it.

Whether you listen to sounds or not does not matter. But even if there are sounds and if you put all your focus on listening to them, that is helpful too. Not much different to transcendental meditation where you focus on one thing. But you don't even need something to focus on.

You are basically focusing on God. On allowing God to express to you, whereby you listen to that expression and thus receive it. Listening and receiving are the same thing. This is also how you get in touch with spiritual guidance.

"If you do not hear the voice for God it is because you do not choose to listen."

When you surrender and listen, and become open to receive, it can seem as if you are being selfish by ONLY receiving. But try it. Allow God to come to YOU, rather than you doing all the "seeking". "Be still, and know that I am God." Just allow yourself to receive God's love, let Him love you, let the love come to you, and simply absorb it. Without needing to express anything, nor even trying to extend it.

We have become SO used to not receiving that we think we're supposed to do something in order to earn or be entitled to something. You don't. God would love you regardless of whether you do anything. Just be still and listen and let yourself receive from God.

I think I posted about this a while ago and called it "God bathing"... like sunbathing, you just soak up God and receive the warmth. Like recharging a battery before use. It feels great to let yourself receive love. Especially to allow yourself to be loved without you having to do anything, recognizing you are worthy of that. It actually makes you feel VULNERABLE. Exposed to God. Allowing God into your innermost private areas. Soak up the love. It will heal you.

And, if you are willing, to receive God's love, you might also invite Holy Spirit to enter you at that time, and He really can go to town healing you. There are major miracles of healing waiting for you to receive if you will just surrender and be willing to let it come to you. This is also the key to abundance.

Here are some of the miracle principles with particularly speak to the idea that a miracle is something that you receive from God, and GIVE TO another person. Remember giving and receiving are ONE.

3 - Miracles occur naturally as EXPRESSIONS of love.

8 - Miracles are healing because they SUPPLY a lack. (remember he who temporarily has more gives to he who temporarily has less)

16 - Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating it is as blessed to GIVE as to receive.

18 - A miracle is a SERVICE. It is the maximal service you can render to ANOTHER.

19 - Miracles make MINDS (plural) one in God.

21 - Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles you accept God's forgiveness by EXTENDING IT TO OTHERS.

24 - Miracles enable you to HEAL THE SICK and RAISE THE DEAD because you made sickness and death. (the dead aren't going to be raising themselves, they need YOU, the un-dead, to perform the miracle!)

27 - A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me TO ALL MY BROTHERS.

35 - Miracles are EXPRESSIONS of love, but they may not always have observable effects.

40 - The miracle acknowledges EVERYONE AS YOUR BROTHER and mine.

45 - A miracle is never lost. It may TOUCH MANY PEOPLE you have not even met.

AS you can see, if you study the miracle principles it is CLEAR that a miracle is NOT just a shift in your own perception, OR just a healing in your own mind. It is something SHARED and EXPRESSED to others to help them. It's not all about your spiritual ego.

Now, you could loosely interpret most of these in a mindset of, well, this is only speaking of my 'perception' and 'seeking not to change the world' and all that... you could read into that if you want. You could say that your forgiveness just blesses people in a kind of passive way. But miracles are much more than this. This is what we have to wake up to. It's much more than just dealing with your own separate identity. It is about sharing God with others!

What is the title of the book?

"A Course in MIRACLES".

You'd think anyone who knows of Jesus would want to know how he performs miracles, right? He already demonstrated them and now he has given us a manual to learn how to do the same. Hello!

Separation seems to have disconnected our mind from Spirit. Jesus describes the separation process thus:

"7 First, the assumption is implicit that what God created can be changed by the mind of man.

8 Second, the concept that what is perfect can be rendered imperfect or wanting is accepted.

9 Third, the belief that man can distort the creations of God, including himself, is accepted.

10 Fourth, the idea that since man can create himself, the direction of his own creation is up to him is implied.

11 These related distortions represent a picture of what actually occurred in the separation. None of this existed before, nor does it actually exist now."

When this was occuring, basically we created a fictional lack in the mind, and then proceeded to fill it with our own separate voice.

Or in other words, began to express the idea that we created ourselves, that we author reality and truth, and we decide everything, that we can usurp God’s will, etc.

So then our mind has kind of gone rogue, it’s unplugged itself from God and is now making up realities (fantasies) left and right. It isn’t operating in service to Spirit so it generates its own content, the likes of which is UNLIKE God intended.

Rather than receiving all of its input, direction, and usefulness from a Spiritual source (soul), it instead runs amock inventing stuff on its own. It invents an artificial second identity, a world, bodies, events, fictional problems, you name it.

This all happens because it is unplugged from Spirit. It isn’t getting the proper input anymore so it just starts hallucinating. Outputting stuff it ITSELF thinks the input should be. It thinks it is the creator of itself.

What this means is that we have become unwilling to RECEIVE, and all that we want to do is CAUSE without accepting the effects of Spirit. We are basically trying to convert ourselves, from being an EFFECT of God/Spirit, to being the CAUSE of God and not at his effect.

When God created our soul, He shared His creative ability with us and gave us free will to enjoy creating in His/our perfection. This means we were able to RECEIVE FROM GOD, and EXTEND GOD, creating onward. So we were receiving and giving simultaneously. "Giving and receiving are one".

After separation, we stopped doing the RECEIVING part, and just kept on with the "creating part" which now became "mis-creating".

"All of his miscreations can literally disappear in "the twinkling of an eye" because they are merely visual misperceptions."

Since we stop receiving God’s will, God’s truth, God’s reality, God’s divine order and sanity, we go off making-up a bunch of shit out of nothing, for no good reason, with no solid foundation. We don’t get it from God. We dream, because instead of extending God’s truth, we just output with no correct input.

Being in ego then is a state of causing but not receiving. OR in other words, giving without receiving, which is SACRIFICE. This is also the same thing as "what is not love is murder" or "getting away with murder", in which the mind is trying to cause effects in others, without receiving the effects in itself. It is trying to express self, without receiving from God. It is trying to have an identity that has not been GIVEN BY God. It is trying to live without Him.

The key feature then of our awakening process, our endeavors to become closer to God again, entails OPENING UP TO RECEIVE again. Being WILLING to let INPUT come into you, to inform you and flow through you again, from A TRUE SOURCE or signal. To LISTEN to the Voice of God, instead of listening to our own voice. To EXPRESS God’s Will and miracles instead of our own magical bullshit.

This means putting your mind back in service to Spirit, becoming willing again to express God’s will instead of making up a will, being guided, directed, healed and empowered by God. And also it means being willing to ACCEPT, ALLOW, and RECEIVE God’s truth - in the atonement.

The ego’s game is all about trying to define a substitute self, in a substitute world, making stuff up all over the place without God. It wants to be the author of itself and make-up its own output. It think’s it’s prety special and important and capable, as if it does not need God’s input. It is like a screaching speaker system, broadcasting its own sounds instead of playing what the musical SOURCE is telling it to play.

Undoing the ego means surrendering this tyranny, this self-rule, this mode of functioning, this "thinking with the ego", where we "make" without God and don’t allow ourselves to RECEIVE INPUT.

We need to learn again to let God do for us everything we have been trying to do without Him. To let Spirit use our mind. To allow Spirit to work through us to extend miracles. To let God be the one to decide what the truth is. To accept His Will instead of inventing our own wishful thinking. To "channel" God again instead of making up our own signal.

It is all in the receiving. You cannot receive UNLESS YOU SURRENDER EGO CONTROL. Being in control of what your mind makes, in opposition to how Spirit wants it to be in ITS service, is a protest against God’s will and an attempt to steal the mind from God. It is supposed to be used for creating and extending love, not for making up your own fantasies.

God has provided the content. HE is downloading it to you. You simply need to be WILLING to receive it. We are not accustomed to receiving, as ego-oriented folk. It’s not what the ego wants to do. Billions of facebook accounts attest to the ego’s desire to broadcast ITSELF and not God. Mind is required to let there be help or input, or truth, that it has no ability or desire to define or interfere with.

Accepting the atonement is an act of TOTAL SURRENDER, giving back the mind to spirit, handing over decision making to spirit, dropping all fights against God’s will, admitting that God is the ONE SOURCE, ALLOWING GOD TO BE THE ONE WHO IS RIGHT, and letting Him do TO YOU and THROUGH YOU whatever he wants, happily, and gratefully, because he ONLY wants to love you. Which, fortunately, is absolutely in our best interests and can only bring us joy, not some kind of prison sentence.

God is waiting patiently for us to LET GO AND LET HIM. He wants to heal through us. He wants to love through us. We simply need to become willing to surrender our ego’s authority problem and LET HIM. To plug our mind back into HIS BROADCAST, His radio station, and to radiate it outward WITH Him.

Holy Spirit WILL UNDO ALL the consequences of your wrong decisions, IF YOU WILL LET HIM. You let Him by surrendering your ego and being open to TRUSTING Him and ALLOWING HIM to move IN YOU and through you. He can heal your sickness, your body, your mind, your life, your problems, IF YOU WILL LET HIM. He wants to help you and to heal you FOR YOU.

Holy Spirit is active. He is capable and willing to do anything FOR YOU. We are not supposed to be doing this course all on our own. We are not responsible for doing all of the healing or for fixing all of ourselves. We show willingness, by surrendering unwillingness, and then LET HIM DO IT FOR US.

"He asks but little. 8 It is He Who adds the greatness and the might. 9 He joins with you to make the holy instant far greater than you can understand. 10 It is your realization that you need do so little that enables Him to give so much."

He very actively WILL COME INTO YOU and will perform supernatural healing on you, and on others through you, without you lifting a finger, IF YOU WILL LET HIM. If you thought you had to do this whole entire course on your own and that the only advances would come from your own efforts, you are mistaken.

The Holy Spirit will start to operate FOR you and THROUGH YOU (speak through you, heal through you, direct you specifically, etc) as you start to surrender enough that you LET HIM, that you MAKE ROOM FOR GOD in your life.

As you start to RECEIVE AGAIN, being willing to accept atonement again, being willing to accept your innocence again, GOD WILL MOVE and will start to do stuff FOR YOU. It’s pretty awesome, when you let go of the reigns and take a leap of trust in Him. To let someone else "do stuff to you" for your benefit DOES require trust, which you CAN develop. Once you trust Holy Spirit to heal you FOR you, incredible things start to happen.

Invite Him in. Let Him work in you. RECEEIEEEEEEIIVE His Help. He wants to help you. You don’t have to do this all on your own.

In God, you are eternal life. You are immortal. You are given life by God, and you are made of life. Your gift of life allows you to give life. And so you can create life just as God gave life to you. And so on Earth you also can give life, to resurrect the lifeless and raise the dead, to restore minds to life and to re-empower those who are trying not to live.

To perform a miracle is to express life, which is also love and power and light. You provide life to those who lack life and they return to life. Miracle working is life-giving. Miracles give life to the dead and resurrect the sonship. As a miracle worker you are a life worker. You work on behalf of life and on behalf of all that lives in God.

"ALL miracles mean Life, and God is the giver of Life."

"As fear is witness unto death, so is the miracle the witness unto Life. It is a witness no-one can deny, for it is the EFFECTS of life it brings. The dying live, the dead arise, and pain has vanished."

"The miracle of life is ageless, born in time, but nourished in eternity. Behold this infant, to whom you gave a resting place by your forgiveness of EACH OTHER, and see in it the Will of God. Here is the babe of Bethlehem reborn. And everyone who gives him shelter will follow him, NOT to the cross, but to the Resurrection and the Life."

"The sick are healed as you let go all thoughts of sickness, and the dead arise when you let thoughts of life replace all thoughts you ever held of death."

"The gift of life IS yours to give, because it was given YOU."

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life."

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures came to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality."

"He sends a witness to your Life in Him Who knows no death. Each miracle He brings is witness that the body is NOT real. Its pains and pleasures does He heal alike, for ALL sin's witnesses do His replace."

"Its life and power are its believer's gift, and this is what the miracle restores to what HAS life and power worthy of the gift of Heaven and eternal peace."

"Life is given you, to give the dying world."

"And we see it in the dying and the dead as well, restoring them to life."

"EVERYTHING is accomplished through life, and life is of the mind and in the Mind. If we share the same mind, YOU CAN OVERCOME DEATH BECAUSE I DID."

"he can effect miracles as creative energizers, which they are."

"Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death."

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely."

"I am YOUR resurrection and YOUR life. You live in me because you live in God. And everyone lives in YOU, as YOU live in everyone."

"But let the whiteness of your shining gift of lilies speed him on his way to Resurrection."

"Let us give redemption to each other, and SHARE in it, that we may rise as one in resurrection, and not SEPARATE in death."

"So will we prepare TOGETHER the way unto the Resurrection of God's Son."

"God has one Son, and he is the resurrection and the life. His will is done because all power is given him in Heaven and on earth."

"YOUR resurrection is your re-awakening."

"It has also promised that there is no death; that resurrection must occur, and that rebirth is man's inheritance."