The proper use of the body is as a communication device to transmit LIFE.

Communication means extension and creation. The body is to be used by the Holy Spirit as a way to extend past the body, past the body of others, and join with the mind of others. In His mindset, He sees Himself in all Brothers already.

We are to use the body to overlook the "obstacles to peace" which we and our brothers both place in the way of vision. We are to forgive, ie overlook, ie not make real, all of these illusory obstacles, so that our mind can join with the minds of our brothers. Our mind should literally reach out past our body, past their body, and "hook up" with their mind. This allows our MINDS to communicate and SHARE directly.

When we fail to do this, we introduce a form of separation inbetween ourselves and our brothers. This form can be a mere thought of sin or of bodies being real or being deceived by what the eyes see. Anything that prevents us from fully extending to and being one with our brother, implements a separation or attack thought between the two, separating us from each other.

This affirmation of being separate from others, is an attack on BOTH of you, and INDUCES sickness. Since any belief in separation is mental illness and is a block or denial of Unity and Wholeness, it renders the mind believing that it is not whole, and this unwholeness/unholiness attacks the body.

Or rather, it’s an attempt to use the communication device of the body to "communicate attack" to the other mind, which means your body now has to SHOW attack to your brother, which FORCES your body to BE attacked or in a state of "showing you are attacked". To communicate the idea of separation or attack to your brother, the message becomes attack, the communication device has to transmit "an attack", and thus the communication device itself is AFFECTED by the toxic message it is trying to transmit.

This is like pouring acid through a plastic pipe and hoping it will transmit the acid without affecting the pipe. We think the attack will affect your brothers, but it ends up affecting your transmission device. You can’t pour molten lava through a plastic straw, either. The fire and brimstone you try to give or project onto your brother, simply ends up HURTING YOU. This inevitably must contaminate your communication device by sending "harmful messages" through it. This is of course the cause of body sickness, and can lead to death.

Instead of mind moving past the body, as though communicating a perfectly pure transparent stream of life outward and to others, affirming the life in both, the mind is now holding up a picture of attack and separation. This picture now becomes the "message" that is transmitted through the communication device of the body, as a message of attack. The body, as a communication device, must now SHOW that picture. It causes the body to BECOME the message of death.

So essentially, it is totally natural and a holy use of the body, to overlook all bodies to the point where we recognize our oneness with others and join with their true self in the mind. When this breaks down, communication and extension break down, love breaks down, the flow of life is restricted, and sickness appears.

This is the ONLY cause of sickness, of all sickness, in all its forms, whether it’s a suble pain or total death. It’s merely a continuous spectrum of severity of belief, where a mere headache is even a sign of a belief in death and an attempt to die. Even the slightest annoyance, tiniest grievance, slight hint of separation belief, or the subtlest of ways of making forms real, it is still an attack and an attempted murder. "What is not love is murder."

When the mind is ceasing to place obstacles in the way, is overlooking/forgiving the body, is overlooking and forgiving the forms of others, and connecting to their mind to truly COMMUNICATE - because ONLY MINDS CAN COMMUNICATE DIRECTLY - then the mind sees itself as WHOLE, thus holy, and this holiness is unlimited in its healing power.

Believing in and experiencing wholeness, the mind transmits a message of wholeness through the body, causing the body to show up AS WHOLE or holiness in order to exhibit the message, thus inducing TOTAL HEALING of the body. In this mode, when perfected, it is absolutely impossible for the body to become sick or die because the mind is ONLY COMMUNICATING LIFE. It is supernaturally protected and sustained indefinitely as a perfect communication device for transmitting LIFE. This makes it impossible for it to die because there is no death in WHAT is being communicated through it.

A sane mind heals the body. A sane mind communicates fully and directly. "Miracles unite you directly with your brother". "Use it to bring the Word of God (love/life) to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Being holy it CANNOT be sick, nor can it DIE."

Usually we want to get rid of everything we do not like, everything that feels harmful, every fear, every upset, every ounce of grief or loss. We want to get rid of all our enemies and things that hurt.

But this is actually the ego in action. It wants to get rid of these things because there is a potential that these things might be used to wake you up.

So long as you're in the midst of a lesson, in which something seems to be against your will, you will have this sense of "I don't want this and it shouldn't be happening". This is the ego's reaction. It does not want you to use this opportunity for forgiveness. It does not want you to learn the lesson.

Not that the ego is arbitrarily against you. You made it and you asked it to do this for you. You wanted it to deflect you away from sources of healing, from anything that might trigger an awakening to truth. You wanted it to keep telling you that stuff isn't supposed to happen to you, and you wanted it to make you see things as if they are happening against your will. That way you could stay asleep.

But each time you try to 'get rid of' what you do not like, or be free of a lesson, or fix a problem, or make a bad person go away, or stop something from happening, you're really using ego denial. And you do this in the name of spirituality.

You think it is spiritual to have a life where there are no problems, where nothing is happening to you, where you have no enemies, where everything goes well, where people seem to just adore you, and where you aren't hurt or offended by anyone. I mean, as a goal that's great... That could be true of real spirituality, but the ego wants this goal WITHOUT awakening.

So that means, getting rid of all protagonists, all offenders, all enemies, and all threats. It tells you you shouldn't be afraid and that fear is a bad thing. It tells you not to be guilty. It even tells you you should be constantly happly or people-pleasing. These are all deceptive ways the ego gets you to NOT deal with your shit, and it forms a spiritualized ego.

When you are afraid, that's very good, because you are being confronted with the results of some belief that you have and it's coming into your awareness. This is a great opportunity. Instead of the fear hiding out in the back of your mind, it's being brought into awareness. You don't like it, for sure, but recognize it is an opportunity because now some normally hidden dark shit has come out into the open where you can take a look at it.

It's all about how you use things - whether you use it to deny your shit or use it to bring light to your shit and undo it. So you could take the fact you're scared as a great opportunity to look at WHY you are scared, rather than to just want the fear to go away. It's pretty normal to want the fear to go away, but it's not healthy. It is healthier to take a look at it with Holy Spirit and find out why you are afraid... What guilt is the fear based on? What's the deeper cause of it? Why do you want it? How's it serving you to keep you in the dark? Where is the so-called truth that surrounds the fear to make it seem justified? What is the real truth of this situation?

Its the same with feeling guilty, upset, angry, offended, whatever... Each time this stuff comes to your awareness it's a great opportunity to heal and undo. So don't try to hide this stuff away. Don't shove it back down or want to get rid of it or to avoid it. And don't blame people for triggering it off - they're trying to help you to look at the stuff you don't want to look at. You're better off dealing with it and then being done with it, rather than constantly hiding from it and feeling its torment in the back of your mind, only to keep resurfacing saying "please acknowledge me and recognize my message to help you grow, and please use me for awakening."

This is all great material. Great opportunities to make progress. It's hard work but it's worth it, and it's far better for you than to want to just keep making this stuff go away. You can be free of it permanently if you deal with it properly and heal it. Isn't that better?

Given everything is driven by free-willed cause and effect, nothing is accidental. There are no mistakes. There is nothing happening randomly or by chance. Nothing happens at all without someone choosing it and willing it. There must be a CAUSE, before there is ANY effect.

You might think this is not true based on what appears to be a world or 'nature' that seems to do random stuff and is hard to explain as being anything but chaotic. But the fact is that nothing happens without some kind of "cause" making it happen. Whatever the cause may be. Without a cause there is no effect, so whenever something is 'happening', something caused it.

You then also get the idea that even if you cause something, it seems to have a cascade of completely "unintentional" consequences or side effects. There's seemingly knock-on effects or a whole chain of seemingly chaotic aftershocks. Yet are these things truly random? Are they not simply cause producing effects, which act as causes producing effects, and so on, in a chain of causality?

As the Course says, those who are to meet will meet. So for example, people meet because they choose to do so.

If you also look at My Self is Ruler of the Universe, it explicitly states that nothing happens without your say-so, and anything you choose happens, and nothing else.

The course also describes how teachers of God make all decisions fully consciously, with total awareness of the consequences, meaning, they know exactly what effects they are causing, and cause only those effects, on purpose, deliberately. And it is by choosing only loving choices that they guarantee their safety.

So this world, while it may SEEM like it's a total mess of random chaos and accidents and things happening against your will and victims and mistakes and all these illusions of uncertainty, in actual fact absolutely nothing is happening without a cause. It is all chosen. All deliberate. All instigated by a mind, somewhere.

Nothing moves or animates without mind making it move. Nothing appears or disappears without mind's say-so. Even the laws of nature are being "run" by a mind, somewhere, deliberately choosing what will and will not occur. The entire world would not even show up if it were not for a decision made somewhere.

And just because we think okay, we "set it in motion" and now the chips will fall where they may and a completely automatic random chaos follows, that's simply not true. Causality ensures that the consequences were set up in the causing, not as a result of the effects. Effects do not choose. Effects are not the source of decision. Even if there seems to be an entire cascade of consequences, one thing leading to another, is that not also completely specifically deliberately set in motion by a mind making a choice?

The truth about this world and enviornment then is that nothing happens without your consent, everything that happens is chosen, the world doesn't even spin unless someone spins it, and it is literally impossible for anything to happen if you do not choose it to. You are the author and dreamer.

You are the causer, chooser, instigator, of everything. You are never at the effect of some 'other chooser' choosing against your will, or things happening 'on their own' or as a result of some process or sequence of events that seem totally unrelated. There is no 'un-asked-for' anything. Remember that this entire world didn't even exist until someone explicitly put every piece of it in place, through choice and belief.

So there are no accidents, of any kind, ever. There is no victimhood. There is no mistake or something un-asked for. BUT, it DOES remain possible to make a POOR decision. It's possible to make a wrong decision or a decision for something that brings suffering. It's possible to evaluate situations and set in motion things which later turn out to be harmful. And it's possible to be very deluded as to what you have chosen or why.

The law always holds. Your free will is never violated by anything. If you would simply choose to wake up, you would. "Heaven is a choice I must make". Nothing can keep you imprisoned in hell against your will, other than YOUR choosing. You CAN make a poor choice, producing explicitly selected consequences or conditions, but you cannot make NO choice, and whatever you DO choose WILL happen. No exceptions.

The task then simply becomes one of, making a better choice. "I must have made a wrong decision because I'm not at peace - I made the decision myself but I want to choose otherwise - I want to choose otherwise because I want to be at peace". Choose again, the course says. You are free to choose, but not free from the consequences of choosing. And all consequences are chosen. This is how you create your own hell. And it is how you find salvation.

When a situation presents itself, on a physical level, with signs and symptoms and effects that you can see and touch, it seems to be real to you. If you do not overlook it, they form evidence and proof that something seems to be going wrong. On the basis of this you can't help but go into fear as a logical consequence. If the problem is real, you should be concerned.

What then happens is you'll start going into the "I have to do something about it" mode. This compulsion will arise as a natural logical consequence, following on from the belief that the problem is real. If it's real, it really needs solving. If it's real, it's seen as a real threat, calling for a real solution.

Before you know it, you'll be launching into a tirade of all the things that you thin should happen, need to happen, should be done, that other people should be doing, etc, in order to "save" the situation. And this will take the form of what appears to be genuine concern, caring, wanting to help, trying to fix, compelling others to act, trying to get something to be done about it, a sense or urgency and demand and even anger in the name of getting someone to solve it.

While on the surface this will look and feel like some fervent effort to help, and even if it might bring what many would consider forms of assistance and magical solutions that many would consider a resolution, this performance of drama and urgency is heavily laden with attack. If a person were totally fine and nothing were going wrong, and you were expressing these compulsions toward and about them, it would be attacking their invulnerability.

Claiming "something seriously needs to be done about it" relies entirely on the strong belief that there is attack, there is weakness, there is compromise and suffering. You can't have these kind of thoughts without buying into the belief in these things. And the belief in these things IS a form of attack. It contributes to supporting the notion that the problem exists, and you can't be doing that if you are trying to make it go away.

If I say, ok, someone needs to do something about this right now because there's really a major problem, then mixed in with what seems like selfless helpful attitudes is a whole array of undermining, making real, believing in suffering, giving power away, energizing the problem, holding it in a space of attack, and just generally having a negative fearful attitude about it. And fear, even if it seems to be an experience of being under attack, is itself a form of attack.

While it's seemingly true that a person might really "need help", at least on a physical level, through some magical means, and that this help might indeed seem to help the situation, there is also the fact that this help is in part harmful. And it will always have side effects to prove it. These side effects come from the fact that fear is a form of attack, and concern for physical appearances is actually an attempt to reinforce them, making them worse. The person trying to "save" with the ego is actually against salvation.

There is alternative way to help and to save, and it moves the mind and perception in the direction of true healing. Not just the illusion of healing but actual miraculous support. And for this, the entire ego mechanic of making the problem real and coming from fear and urgency has to be let go. It has to be recognized as fake help, a reaction based on the assumption that the problem is real. As fear turns to anger and insistence, it becomes murderous.

It's better that we move into true forgiveness, where we withdraw belief in the problem, we stop fearing by stopping believing that there is even a real problem happening, we move into a mindset of recognizing the person's wholeness and health, we get our mind out of the gutter of ego temptation, we affirm what is really true about them beyond appearances, step back and allow the Holy Spirit to heal, and dismantle the artificial forms of salvation that were making the problem worse.

In this we undo, take away, cancel, reverse, disbelieve, disempower, disappear, vanish and generally make non-existent the problem. There is no real problem. There is no real suffering. There is nothing real going on here that calls for serious reactions and actions. This stepping back has a power in it far greater and able to actually heal and correct the signs and symptoms and effects, than the measly magical efforts that were an attempt to extend fear. By NOT supporting the existence of the situation, you weaken it and move it towards undoing.

We either get to simply react to what appears to be happening, as though it were dreamed by someone else. Or we get to express God's Power and assert what IS true and make it so. We are the dreamer of the dream. We can change what we choose to occur in the dream. The power of decision is your own. Choosing what must be is far more powerful than reacting to what appears to have come from an alien will. Paradoxically it's by withholding the ego's outward reactions that your inner light intensifies and shines forth to correct all ills. By not trying to fix, you can truly save.

Everyone is immortal and cannot die. So anything suggesting otherwise MUST be an illusion and not a reality. Any sign or symptom MUST be a disguise, a lie, a mistake and is correctable. There can be no suffering in God because it's not God's will that you suffer. Only the truth is true and nothing else is true.

Everyone is free. Everyone is entirely given total permission to be free by God. That means that even if you choose to deny God, you are free to do so. Even if you want to try to be evil, you are free to do so. Even if you want to hate and attack and murder and destroy, you are technically free to do so.

That doesn't mean that there won't be consequences that happen as a result of what you choose, however. If you hate you will be hating yourself, and cannot love yourself while you hate. If you attack and murder you are in effect attempting to kill yourself, and you will feel guilty and alone as a result, not to mention society's typical punishments.

But that doesn't meant you are not free if you so choose. God doesn't coerce. He does will your happiness and sanity but it's still up to you if you want to try to be insane and choose things which produce suffering. No i'm not condoning that anyone does anything harmful whatsoever, I'm just saying that you have the freedom.

If someone is being hateful and you start trying to resist their hate, you are actually trying to be affected by it. If you let them be hateful you will feel a sense of relief that you are not as affected by it. You are choosing whether or not you are affected by it. If you are not affected by it then you can feel at peace even as someone tries to hate, because it really is up to your own freedom as to what you experience.

It isn't therefore necessary to try to control or resist or stop people from being hateful or mean or vicious, because if you say that you need them to stop then you're also saying that your peace and happiness depend on their choice. And that means you're trying to deny your own freedom. And then you're trying to deny them their freedom, to imprison them, in order to control reality and try to make things be the way you want them.

You have no real right to control the free will of others, to imprison them for anything they think they do, to stop them or prevent them or resist them or attack them in the name of love. Everyone is always free, even what people call criminals or evil or abusers or enemies. This isn't necessarily a popular view but it's reality.

Jesus tells us in ACIM that we should let the people in the world be as vicious as they may, because the only way that we would be affected by that viciousness would by be forgetting that you had the freedom to dream the dream. If you are able to choose not to be affected, because you are free, and immortal, then obviously it's not really the responsibility of anyone else to "behave correctly" to try to make your world right.

You don't need, and shouldn't need, anyone else to change in order for you to be happy and at peace, otherwise your peace depends on them and now you are seeking outside yourself for salvation. Not to mention that you are shifting responsibility outside of yourself and placing the weight of guilt into the hands of others. Wanting the haters to stop hating is a form of scapegoating, and the projection of justified anger as guilt.

You don't need people to stop hating you, or to acknowledge you, or to recognize you, or to treat you well. You need to claim your immortality and invulnerability and stop using people to attack yourself. They have no power over you that you don't give away to them yourself. When you give no power to the illusion to cause you it has no effect on you. Only you can attack yourself, only you can make yourself suffer, and only you can really hate yourself. Let the world spin, let the haters hate, and let them have their madness. It's not yours.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

It is very important in the development of trust, that we learn to make room for SPIRIT in our lives and hand over the responsibility for decision making to the Holy Spirit. This means ASKING the Holy Spirit WHAT TO DO. And this includes even in small matters which seem very specific. Just because the matters are small does not mean that you are not advanced.

We are asked to hand over all decision with increasing frequency, allowing him "to decide for God for me." Which means we have to talk to him and we have to listen to his response. We have to open up to trusting and being willing to RECEIVE GUIDANCE. And we have to learn to TRUST this guidance, seeing that it works, seeing that it is always for the best, seeing that it is never harmful, and seeing that it CAN BE trusted. Thus we develop trust.

By giving him all decision making it also absolves us of guilt, because then we are simply following his WISER advice. Part of this is because our attempts to judge anything correctly are heavily flawed and ego-driven because we can't see the big picture and we don't have access to all the variables. We are meant to relinquish judgement, which means we then can't know what anything means, or what to do, or where to go, or how to act. And thus we have to ASK FOR HELP. And our egos really do not want to give up control.

This is an absolute vital and required practice as part of doing this course. We must learn to trust the Holy Spirit in ALL THINGS, and turn to his advice ESPECIALLY in serious and difficult decisions, decisions about health, about life and death even, as well as what's for dinner and which way to go on a walk or which item to buy at the store. ALL THINGS, ALL decisions. Deep trust and handing over of ego autonomy and trusting in your own strength.

It is not only perfectly acceptable AND curriculum-aligned to seek for spiritual guidance, it is in fact what Jesus WANTS us to do. And that includes getting guidance from Jesus and the Holy Spirit, using it, AND sharing it with others to help them. It is a sign of spiritual maturity to do this because it means you're having true humility and are willing to serve God's will.

My wife was in the ICU for the second time, having been oxygen deprived, and was being declared more or less brain dead by the doctor, who told me to my face that she would never recover. She wasn't breathing well and he said we might as well let her die. I however did not trust this advice. The man seemed like the devil incarnate to me, certainly skilled in his profession but still an ego.

I instead sought the Holy Spirit and Jesus to decide for me and tell me what to do, knowing that I myself COULD NOT. I trusted their advice MORE than anyone. Their advice was to "resurrect her". And because of that, I made the decision that she would NOT be terminated and that we would wait.

In the next few days I did my praying and affirming and attempts to heal and so on, whether it helped or not I do not know. But a few days later, she began to wake up. The doctor at first accused me of lying when I told him she'd been trying to communicate. He was rather arrogant that he knew better and that it was impossible. He was completely convinced she would never recover.

But when they tried leaving off the sedation she suddenly came around and was talking. And a couple weeks later she was back at home to continue living. Had I listened to the advanced educated human ego advice of the chief doctor, she would've been put to death. Because Jesus told me what to do, and because I trusted it, she lived.

"ALL miracles mean Life, and God is the giver of Life. He will direct you VERY specifically."

"Remembering this, let us devote the remainder of the extended practice period to asking God to reveal His plan to us. Ask Him very specifically:

"What would you have me do?" Where would You have me go? What would You have me say, and to whom?"

"There is another advantage,- and a very important one, - in referring decisions to the Holy Spirit with increasing frequency. Perhaps you have not thought of this aspect, but its centrality is obvious. To follow the Holy Spirit's guidance is to let yourself be absolved of guilt. It is the essence of the Atonement. It is the core of the curriculum. "

"Leave ALL decisions to the One Who speaks for God, and for your function as He KNOWS it. So will He teach you to remove the awful burden you have laid upon yourself, by loving not the Son of God, and trying to teach him guilt INSTEAD of love."

"When you have learned how to decide WITH God, ALL decisions become as easy and as right as breathing. There is no effort, and you will be led as gently, as if you were being carried along a quiet path in summer. "

"Make no decisions about what it is, or where it lies, but ask of the Holy Spirit EVERYTHING, and leave ALL decisions to His gentle counsel. The One Who knows the plan, of God which God would have you follow, can teach you what it IS. Only His wisdom is capable of guiding you to follow it. Every decision you undertake alone but signifies that you would define what Salvation is, and what you would be saved FROM. "

People are all different. One of the most harmful aspects of this ego world is the attempt to make everyone the same and gloss over their differences. This is the ego's attempt to pretend that 'everything is ok' and 'we are all equal' as a form of denial and repression. It thus leads to people feeling like they have to 'pretend that they agree', when around individuals who are different.

For me, for example, I am an introverted person. That means I am more independent from society and social interactions and tend to be more sensitive and introspective. What seems 'natural' for me is quite different to what is natural for extroverted people. When the two worlds collide there is almost always a sense of tension and miscommunication and people-pleasing and dishonesty and lack of authenticity

For years and years I always felt compelled to have to try to 'be like others', or fit in, or just automatically accept sociable situations, as if not doing so was wrong and anti-social. This I think is largely because more extroverted people `push` sociability as though it is normal and exalted (especially with the whole idol worship/celebrity/hollywood ideals). But what is ideal for them is not ideal for me. Layers and layers of guilt and shame have had to be released and healed to come to feel that it is `ok` to be truer to my personality and my own standards and that I do not 'have to' just go along with other people.

The main area I experience this is in social interactions especially with strangers or where more sociable people are engaged. Just even the mere fact that people decide to suddenly stop and connect and converse is to me an uninvited intrusion, and due to my sensitivity I experience it as jumping ahead several steps in the amount of `trust` or depth of connection I would need to establish first. It's especially difficult around people that I think of as - social bloodsuckers - the people who suddenly decide to include themselves and involve themselves and start yacking on about themselves, especially filled with complaining and other forms of social attention-seeking, as a way to kind of `hold me hostage`. I want to tell them to shut the fuck up and leave me alone and stop invading my space.

So you can see that if you are different in some fundamental ways, whichever side of the fence you fall on, it can really produce a lot of tension and conflict, either externally or internally. That discomfort makes it feel like it's not okay to be the way you are or its not normal or its not acceptable, and that can lead to profound shame and emotional pain.

The term 'painfully shy' can arise for introverted people quite easily and the pain actually comes from social embarrassment, a lack of social prowess, troubles speaking (at all), troubles finding things to engage about conversationally (to even have the mental thoughts that lead to conversation), not belonging or fitting in, feeling inadequate socially and thus as a person, feeling lacking and insufficient and defective, feeling unheard (because more extroverted people actually don't connect at the same depth as introverted people - they are shallow and enjoy social-lies rather than truth), etc... this all can add up to a tremendous sense of 'being attacked' (either internally or by others) and that produces profound emotional pain. I suffered with that for years and years thinking it was not okay to be the way I am.

Gradually, and this is thanks in large part to A Course in Miracles and other healing and loving support, I've been learning two things - how to be more comfortable being the way I am - at least in terms of personality and needs - and consequently, being more comfortable to be around people and converse. The `opening up` of the Course has helped me to heal from 'social torture' to a large degree and to feel more confident in being `myself`. Even if that means just being my ego self more authentically. Because that authenticity is a doorway to my True Self.

Being true to yourself no matter what your `self` is, is empowering. And it also has helped me to learn healthier boundaries, that I don't have to people-please, that I can just walk away from people when I don't want to be social, that I'm not `held captive` by anyone's need for attention or domination, and generally an overall sense of ... greater peace, I suppose. These weren't necessarily goals I had with the Course but it has definitely healed to bring about healing in these areas, to remove fear and inhibitions, and to build a deeper connection of trust - and yet personal power - when interacting with others.

I don't know what kind of a moron I am in the eyes of extroverted people. I must come across as some kind of inept antisocial lifeless idiot or something. I have more to learn about how the majority of society functions. This is why it is very hard for me to envisage ever standing in front of some audience and giving a speech or being a highly visible public figure. Jesus has me doing things on a much lower-key and more behind closed doors, lol. Whatever your style is though, I'm just glad to finally be feeling a sense of RELIEF from years of torment and misery trying to be something I'm not, and I hope extroverted people can also learn they don't have to be like those annoying, antisocial, holier-than-thou, wimpy introverts ;-)

There is, as always, a paradox - the truer you are to yourself and to how you are different, not trying to pretend you are the same, actually allows you to become inter-dependent and open to true communication, understanding and compassion. And that is joining. Everyone has their gifts and talents. Let's celebrate how our differences can be acknowledged so that we can all experience peace. Political correctness out the window - we need to embrace who we are (even as an ego) in order to let others be who they are, in order to accept others and not be insensitive to their differences.

Thank you Jesus!

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its powers decline if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."

This is one of those 'clincher' statements about the world which make it SO clear that he's talking about the physical world, and NOT some kind of interpretation of the world.

Children are PHYSICALLY BORN into it, through physical pain and in physical pain.

The children's PHYSICAL bodies grow and suffer.

Their minds are trapped in the PHYSICAL brain.

Their PHYSICAL bodies become hurt.

Their PHYSICAL bodies wither and die.

These are not perceptions. These are physical states.

And because of this, because of these things happening, PHYSICALLY, with actual physical matter going through these things, people would believe that God is cruel.

This has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with having false perceptionr OR true perception ABOUT the world. It is merely a statement of facts about the PHYSICAL. Physicality, ITSELF, is cruel, and if it were real, God would be its creator, which would make God cruel. And everyone who DOES BELIEVE that the physical world is reality, MUST believe that God is cruel.

Either the world is reality and God IS cruel. OR, the world is NOT reality and God is loving. Since the world IS PHYSICALLY cruel, regardless of anyone having any perceptions or meanings of projections or interpretations or judgements of it, PHYSICAL DEATH IS A CRUELTY, if such things are real then God must be cruel.

And this is why so many people legitimately recognize that because the physical world IS fundamentally, INHERENTLY cruel, a loving God CANNOT have created it. If God had created it, God MUST be cruel, because the world is physically cruel.

And this is why many people become disillusioned with God existing, because they reason that since the world IS cruel, God must either exist AS a cruel creator - which we rightly would want nothing to do with, and would be justifiably angry at, OR God does not exist at all.

But of course the alternative option which many overlook, is that God DOES exist, and IS NOT cruel, and HAS NOT created this world, because the physical world IS NOT reality. The assumption that it is real has to be questioned in order to arrive at any sense of what can possibly be NOT cruel - a loving experience, a loving God.

When you attune to the loving God, your interpretation of or use of this cruel physical world changes, and you RECOGNIZE it as cruel, and not of God, while simultaneously being in a greater state of love WITHIN yourself. The world then appears to take on what we might call a less harmful registering with the mind. But it is still always PHYSICALLY cruel even if it is interpreted as not psychologically cruel. It is then a STRANGE combination, like a "beautiful tragedy", or a "happy dream of death".

And who wants a world that is a contradiction anyway. A world that a loving God creates cannot even entertain the merest POSSIBILITY of cruel things occurring, such as damages or breakages or loss or getting stuck or attack or harm or decay or weapons or war or forms of sickness or pain or misery or death. These things cannot even be CONCEIVED OF by a loving God, yet alone exist.

If God is loving, there can BE no real explosion, no real wars, no real sicknesses, no real missing limbs, no real deaths, no real losses, no real attacks or lacks or limitations of any kind, no physical plane crashes, no broken bodies or bodies at all. And that means there can be NO PHYSICAL WORLD. Because physicality itself is literally a state of separation and sin. And without the idea of death, spacetime would vanish completely along with all its contents.

Earth IS NOT heaven. At best it can reflect heaven when you look at it lovingly, but in and of itself it is nothing but an illusion of a system of death and destruction. And it will end. Just as space and time will end. Nothing unreal lasts forever.

The ego is sneaky about projecting sin and guilt onto others. If someone else is not really doing anything wrong, it is riskier and perhaps more difficult for you to "unfairly" project your own sin and guilt onto them. If you do, it will appear much more obvious that you are the one doing the attacking, and that it is not called for. This is too "overt". Just picking some random innocent target and attacking it would indeed be vicious, but our ego tends not to do this.

Instead, we lay a trap and lay in wait, trying to find a target. A target is someone who, of their apparent own free will, is sinning on their own. Someone who is digging their own grave. Someone who is hurting, attacking, being at fault, choosing poorly, doing something offensive, believing wrongly, saying harmful words, punishing or whatever. So long as the person is, themselves, seeming to be clearly the one who is sinning.

"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality. And so they do. For everything they see not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt."

Once we see this "proof of sin" in someone else, it becomes a strong temptation. It tempts you to believe it. It almost invites you to agree with it, to see judgement as justified, and to therefore launch an attack which reinforces the person's sinfulness. But this is a slippery slope, even though it's what the ego enjoys as its less overt tactic.

When it's clearly someone else who seems to be wrong, it presents a wonderful opportunity for your own ego. Since all attention is on the other person, and since they appear to be the one who is making things worse for themselves and everyone, your ego takes the "opportunity" to sneak in and USE it for its purposes.

If it can now condemn and accuse the person, based on "what they are doing", it seems completely justified. But the sneaky thing is that you aren't having to "invent" a sin for them to be accused of. They have already provided a nice sin for you to latch onto. All you have to do is "point it out". So now the ego simply seems to be mirroring what the person is already doing, rather than making a "fresh accusation".

By doing this, the attack upon the person becomes disguised. It hides in the darkness of the other person's actions. They were already sinning, so it seems like you're not ADDING anything to them. And so simply by "identifying it" and "pointing it out" and labelling it AS a sin, you appear to be not attacking them at all. But if you step back, you ARE still in fact accusing them of sin still, you are attacking them, you are compounding their own sin, and are being just as judgemental as before.

It's just that, when someone else provides the "material", you seem to not be the one who is "inventing" the sin, so your accusation against them seems invisible. It doesn't stand out from what they are already going. It's like you slip in a little sin of your own hidden by theirs. All the focus is on them, by their own doing, so your ego gets to hide from being the center of attention. It's still attacking but now it seems like you're not doing anything.

This becomes quite risky though, to yourself, because you can become quite blinded by this sleight of hand, even unto yourself as you're doing it. You may not even realize that you have been "tempted" by the sin of another, and that you fell for it, believed in it, and recognized it as a perfect opportunity to condemn without the implication fo yourself. You can then find yourself accusing the other of "doing what they're obviosuly doing", convincing yourself that YOU are not doing anything, and therefore are now are attacking even more unconsciously.

It's one thing to be more aware of your desire to project your own shit onto someone else. It's another to be attacking someone on the basis of what they are seeming to do, and then not even realizing that you're attacking them. When they are the "source" of the sin, you can easily lose sight of how you are contributing to it, or mirroring it. Your own attack becomes invisible to you, and then you believe that you're not even doing anything wrong at all.

Thus you end up in a pattern of not attacking people unless they sin first, and then when they do seem to sin, you take it as an ideal opportunity to scapegoat. Because you think no-one will notice what YOU are doing because they'll be so busy focusing on what THEY are doing. A good decoy goes a long way. Except that you even distract your own attention, and now you much more easily allow your mind to fall into a scapegoating mode.

Overall I personally experience this as "falling for temptation", in that the world is constantly presenting "opportunities" to focus on sin and make it real. It's a constant vigilance to try not to "take a cheap shot", when someone is obviously mistaken in some way. If I don't recognize it as "just a mistake", I will make it real and try to compound it, drawing myself away from myself, trying to displace my own guilt onto someone else. But only if "they started it."

No-one wants to overly be seen as an unjustified attacker, so we wait until someone makes the first move, before we pounce on it. Then the gloves come off and the claws come out, and rightly so, because now the other person has invited us to attack them. They want punishment, and if we agree with that we will give it to them, and benefit from doing so. It's much easier to "fall for" this temptation to "beat someone when they are down" than to look like a total a-hole hurting people for no apparent reason. This is why almost all attacks on others are "justified" as being "called for" based on what we think other people "did wrong first."

Of course, "only the self-accused condemn" and "we but accuse our brother of our own sins."

Ok so, some people think it's not that big of a deal whether you think ACIM is non-duality or not. But it can have significant mental health effects which are no joke.

Let's remember that ACIM is a course in mind training, it is affecting and uprooting your whole belief system and bringing into question all your values. It's making you think about who and what you are, your identity, you relationship to others and the world. If you're going to undertake this course it's going to seriously threaten your sense of self and your worldview and everything you believe. This is THERAPY, and you're messing with your MIND here.

If you believe for example the non-dual lie that "there is no one out there", you become sociopathic. You stop caring about people, you start treating people like they don't matter or don't exist, and you stop respecting people's free will. You become apathetic and depressed and lonely. That is not good.

If you believe that no-one really has a self and your self does not exist, you will enter self denial and self destruction. You'll reason that it's the ego false self that doesn't want to be undone, but this far too often gets lumped in with not having any kind of a self at all. The son of God gets thrown under the bus. This produces self repression and depression.

When you also believe that there are no others or no real brothers or no permanent individuals, it radically affects how you relate to "people". You stop respecting people's free will because apparently they don't have any. Your sense of relationships breaks down. The people in your family that you love are all suddenly regarded as mindless illusory robots. None of this is good for your mental health.

Believing that you are one with everyone and there is only one of you here, that you are everyone, also can lead to massive guilt. You will start taking on responsible for everything that's happening in the world as though you are the one who is choosing it and making it happen. And now you have to carry the burden of everyone else's suffering, which can produce massive guilt.

There is merit to opening up to oneness but not at the expense of the self. Jesus refers to a massive expansion of the self (e.g. in the holy instant) - an expansion, not an annihilation. When oneness is taken too far to mean "you don't exist at all" or "you were never created', we're now into the authority problem. We're denying God's fatherhood, we're rejecting being his creation, we're denying that anyone else was ever created, and we're basically attacking the sonship. None of that is healthy for the mind.

People will claim it's not a big deal what you believe, but if you believe something that is so against the truth and start following that and living like it and behaving based on it, your entire relationship to the world and other people is going to change. And not for the better. If you're believing that ACIM is telling you you don't exist, other people don't exist, you were never created, there is no holy spirit, jesus is a metaphor, and other such nonsense, and you're believing it, you're going to be far WORSE off.

Can you imagine how distorted your mind will become when you start trying to regard all of the other people in the world as 100% fake? That they don't even have real minds or spirit or anything beyond the body? It's as bad as the belief that God made the world of illusions. It's going to send your mind down a totally wrong path towards even more ego, under the guise of trying to reduce the ego. It's going to split the mind further and make your mental health even worse.

I've had more than one person come to me in a state of feeling like near suicide because of gross misunderstandings about the course. One person was using our oneness as justification for why everyone's suffering was all her fault and felt horrendously guilty and paralysed. Another saw that the death of their partner was somehow a part of the non-duality teaching and was having horrible grief that they couldn't reconcile and so began to blame God for making the partner go away, harming their relationship with God and their own self.

Many quite serious and quite harmful things can come about if you get your facts misaligned and start following a belief system that is fundamentally flawed. There are people doing this course who for example develop physical sicknesses as defences against the truth. Just as it describes in the book. We're not just playing with ideas here. This isn't about discussing and debating on facebook. People's actual lives and minds are being distorted and damaged and made to be more insane by incorrect beliefs about what it's teaching. Some people are quite seriously lost and distraught and feeling awful because of the non-duality lie.

I know I was. I bought into it and believed it. I believed, just as some prominent ACIM teachers taught, that I didn't really have a self and other people didn't really exist. All in the name of being more 'oneness'. And I felt depressed by this. And I was told that this was just the ego not wanting to be found to be non-existent. An attempt to justify it. But when I finally realised this is NOT what ACIM is teaching, I felt such incredible relief that I cried with joy at realising that I actually AM a child of God, permanently. And I never looked back.

We need to stop perpetuating bullshit lies about A Course in Miracles. It is not just a matter of being right or debating or having heated discussions or following what people think it means. It's having significant affects on people that believe and follow these models of reality. It's not helping anyone to tell them that they don't exist and that everyone they love doesn't exist and no-one is out there and there's no basis for miracles and no reason to help anyone and all you gotta do is selfishly accept atonement and get out of here.

"I trust my brothers, who are one with me." W181

"In the holy instant, God is remembered, and the language of communication with ALL your brothers, is remembered WITH Him. " UrT15G8

"YOU, who are NOT at war, must look for brothers and RECOGNIZE all you see AS brothers, because ONLY EQUALS ARE AT PEACE." UrT7E2

"For you dwell in the Mind of God WITH your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone." UrT10B3