God willed that you be innocent forever, and God's will is done. Nothing can ever change this. This innocence isn't merely some kind of judgement of your condition. It's your actual permanent state of being. In your being, in your mind, there is still a place that is wholly completely innocent and pure and will never be guilty.

"We seem to be discrete and unaware of our eternal unity with Him. Yet back of all our doubts, past all our fears, there still is certainty. For Love remains with all Its Thought, Its sureness being Theirs. God's memory is in our holy minds, which know their oneness and their unity with their Creator."

In the separation, we merely went into a state of denial. We pretended that the truth was not true. We also pretended we were no longer ourselves, no longer innocent and no longer a part of God. This denial isn't a fact, because denial doesn't actually make anything go away.

All denial does is hide the awareness of the presence of that which is STILL THERE, pretending it is gone. In fact, Jesus speaks to this property of denial and the fact that even the denial confirms the existence of that which it denies.

"For the separation is only the DENIAL of union, and, correctly interpreted, attests to your eternal knowledge that union is true." So a part of your mind does in fact still believe, right now, and always, that you are perfectly innocent forever. Then your mind became split, and now a second portion of your mind believes it is guilty. You therefore have two conflicting opinions about yourself in your mind at the same time.

"You, then, have two conflicting evaluations of yourself in your minds, and they CANNOT BOTH BE TRUE."

The problem we typically have, is that once we go into denial, the denial DOES SEEM to block the AWARENESS OF the presence of love. It seems to block the awareness that, in truth, you actually still are holy and innocent. You still are an immortal being in God. And you will never change, nor have you been changed by the denial.

So some portion of you is literally still innocent right now. And some other portion of you believes the opposite. That second portion is what we call ego.

"The ego is a part of your belief about yourself."

However, in order TO DENY the part of you that is still innocent, your mind does block awareness. This produces a shift in premise, which makes it potentially possible to become convinced that what you've denied HAS GONE AWAY. Ie, out of sight out of mind. If you are not aware of it, surely it's not there.

Entering into denial tends to make you believe that you have actually CHANGED, from an innocent holy being, into an evil anti-christ false-self. The denial suggests your real self has been destroyed, and no longer exists. That you have literally transformed from one state to another, and now you are SOLELY in a state of guilt. The unawareness of the continued presence of your innocent self tempts you toward believing these illusions.

All of the world, all bodies, space and time, all sickness and death and suffering, is entirely designed to try to HIDE FROM THE TRUTH. It's an attempt to shut out the FACT of what you STILL ARE. That you actually literally still are as God created you right now. Just as the world was made as an attack on God, it was an attempt to ASSERT a one-sided ego war upon the truth about you. To depict you as if you have been destroyed and turned into something dead.

"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son."

All suffering, all death, all states of sickness, all resistance to reality, all defenses against the truth, all blocks to awareness, all lies and deceptions, all body identification, its entire purpose was to resist God. To try to stop God's will. To try to overthrow and usurp his completed permanent works and replace it with something else, in order to PRETEND that his kingdom had been destroyed. That the son of God could be killed.

The strange scenario, however, is that while you are busy being guilty and worthless and deserving of horrible punishments, SIMULTANEOUSLY, there is another self, another PART OF YOU, that is right this instant STILL HOLY AND INNOCENT. It has not in truth changed.

What this then reveals is that the world, the mindset of the ego thought system, all of space and time, and every separation ego idea, is all a COVER UP. It is literally a veil placed OVER the truth of the permanence of the Kingdom of God. It is put there to come BETWEEN you and the truth to HIDE the truth. To hide from the attraction of God. To smother reality with illusions. To keep you from realizing that NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

"To this distorted form of vision, the OUTSIDE of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true." "The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear"

Therefore, we can say that "underneath" your guilt, there is ALSO a place any our mind where you are STILL innocent. That innocent place was NOT converted into guilt, it was NOT transformed into an anti-christ, and it remains exactly as God created it. Right now. Even in PARALLEL with the guilty false sense of self that you maintain is your whole identity.

THERE IS STILL INNOCENCE IN YOU AND THERE ALWAYS WILL BE.

"The changelessness of Heaven is in you, so deep within that nothing in this world but passes by, unnoticed and unseen. The still infinity of endless peace surrounds you gently in its soft embrace, so strong and quiet, tranquil in the might of its Creator, nothing can intrude upon the sacred Son of God within."

"But most of all, try to sink down and inward, away from the world and all the foolish thoughts of the world. You are trying to reach past all these things. You are trying to leave appearances and approach reality."

"Go past all the raucous shrieks and sick imaginings that cover your real thoughts and obscure your eternal link with God."

"and then try to reach past all your images and preconceptions about yourself to the truth in you. If Love created you like Itself this Self must be in you. And somewhere in your mind It is there for you to find."

So Jesus is actually telling us that below the murky surface "clouds of guilt" which seem to smother and obscure, block and distract, deflect and deceive, BELOW and BEYOND the world and the body and the ego guilt, there is STILL a quiet place within you where you are perfectly innocent still. Where you are still as God created you.

This means that you actually have two parts to you right now. A holy self and a false self. Because your mind is split. The guilt is in one part, and the innocence is in another. And the guilt merely seems to HIDE the innocence, so you think there is no innocence in you, or that you can ONLY be guilty OR innocent at one time. This is not true.

Your mind is in fact divided between TWO goals, and wants two conflicting things at once. One part of you still accepts your innocence while another part is attacking it. The only reason you tolerate this is because you've identified WITH the guilt and have believed the illusions of the denial, such that you don't think the innocent part is EVEN THERE any more. And you maintain the guilt IN ORDER TO keep the innocence hidden.

Because if you were to actually become aware of the sinlessness within you, it would then become obviously clear that you cannot be both innocent AND guilty at the same time. And yet this is what your mind has actually been believing. Covered up, below, beyond, and underneath your guilt, there is a dwelling place of innocence and being as God created you still. And how can that be compatible with being guilty?

If you go within and look for that innocence and realize it MUST still be there, then it also becomes apparent that you cannot ACCEPT being both innocent and guilty, in conscious awareness. Only one of them can be true. One of them must go! And since the innocence has the property of permanence and unchangeability, the guilt MUST be fake. The guilt must be false and a mistake and NOT TRUE. And this also means the world must be false as well.

Jesus actually refers to "the real world" as this borderland of thought or place within your mind, where you come to fully realize that the innocence is true and the guilt is false. Allowing yourself to recognize that ONLY THE TRUTH CAN BE TRUE, ie only the permanent innocence in you can be really there, the guilt is correctly framed as IMPOSSIBLE, and is finally let go.

"Here is the meeting place where thoughts are brought TOGETHER; where conflicting values MEET, and ALL illusions are laid down beside the truth, where they are judged to be untrue. This borderland is just beyond the gate of Heaven."

"It HAS BEEN recognized that, if they were BROUGHT TOGETHER, their joint acceptance WOULD become impossible. But, if one is kept in darkness FROM THE OTHER, their SEPARATION seems to keep them both alive, and equal in their reality. Their JOINING thus becomes the source of fear, for, if they meet, acceptance MUST be withdrawn from one of them."

"They are brought together, and only ONE continues past the gate where Oneness is. Salvation IS a borderland, where place and time and choice have meaning still, and yet it can be seen that they are temporary, OUT of place, and EVERY choice has been ALREADY made."

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

God is always light.

When we resist God, we try to block the light.

This blockage produces an illusion of the absence of light, ie a "lack of light."

This lack of light may seem like darkness. But this darkness is entirely dependent on the block remaining to obscure the light. When the block is removed, the light will be present and there will be no darkness.

God's law is that light always dispels darkness, and that the illusion of darkness only shows up when the light seems to be blocked/denied. This works the same as clouds - when the cloud blocks the sun the cloud seems dark, but the darkness is an illusion. When the sun shines upon the cloud from below it is illuminated.

"Light dispels darkness automatically, by definition." UrT1B22A

If there is a lack of light, also called a lack of love, this is merely a seeming absence. It's like there isn't enough of something, or it's being held back. It is not the presence of something.

A darkness is merely the dimming of light, producing an illusion that there is less light. But this isn't the same thing as a "presence of darkness." Your world doesn't become "filled with darkness" at night, it just has a lack of light.

Darkness is not causing the light to go away. The blockage to light is what obscures the light and makes it seem like it has gone away. The blockage directly causes a shadow or darkness to appear, but the darkness is entirely dependent on the blockage because the blockage is keeping the light from shining.

If the blockage were to be removed, there would be no lack of light, and no illusion of darkness, and the light would shine so much that there would be no darkness. Light always dispels darkness this way.

Someone who is blocking the light/love of God is merely mistaken. They are putting up a block trying to deny what is still true. This is seeming to shut out the light and love of God, but only in an illusory way, because God's light and love cannot be affected.

So blockages to light are really just forms of denial, in which we try not to admit that the light is still there, and hide it from awareness, covering our eyes to try to be blind to it. And we may go so far as to hide in the illusion of the darkness to pretend there is no light.

Doing this isn't a sin, it's just a mistake. It's an attempt to not extend God's light and love, or to put the brakes on creation, so that God is prevented from shining/extending outward. Trying "not to shine" holds the light in and doesn't let it out, producing an illusion of an absence of light - a darkness.

"God's extending outward, though not His completeness, was blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one." UrT6F2

If the denial of light, or the block to awareness of light, is recognised for what it is, without getting into ego, then it calls for an obvious remedy. It is seen as merely a lack of love, and the obvious response is that love needs to be supplied. So you give love/light to supply the lack. This is what miracles are for.

"Miracles are a form of healing. They supply a lack, and are performed by those who have more for those who have less." UrT1B8

There is no "sin" involved in this, only mistakenness ie denial of the truth. An unwillingness to admit that the light is still there.

"Sin" is a faulty interpretation of this whole scenario. It ignores that the block to love is the "cause" of the darkness, or that if the block were removed the darkness would be dispelled. To suggest this is to suggest that you could heal the darkness and replace it with light by removing the blockage.

The ego does not want this to happen. Ego is the idea that the blockage is not the cause of the darkness, and that the darkness exists in its own right. Such that whatever has put the darkness in place is irreversible, because it seems to have no cause other than itself.

Ego doesn't just see a shadow projected from the blockage. It takes the darkness and considers it as standalone thing, and fails to recognize that there is a lack of light/love. Instead it interprets that the darkness is the PRESENCE OF something else. Something which has its own existence, its own power, its own will, its own causality. Something which can make the light go away. Or as the course describes, this is the belief that darkness can hide.

"Miracles are associated with fear only because of the fallacy that darkness can hide. Man believes that what he cannot see does not exist, and his physical eyes cannot see in the dark." UrT1B22B

When a "lack of light" is interpreted to be the "presence of darkness", this is the idea that evil exists. That there is a power capable of causing light to go away. And then there becomes a vested interest in staying in the darkness in order to "exist". This is why the ego dwells in shadows and cannot exist in the light, and why it wants to keep the illusion of darkness going.

So we turn a lack of love into a "real sin" with "real consequences". We hold the lack against the person, and instead of saying that they are merely mistaken and we need to give them more love, we say that they have failed to love and do not deserve forgiveness. Therefore their blocks to love are irreversible and their darkness its produced is permanent and they are now wretched and darkened beings.

In effect, what should just be a simple error easily corrected by love, is misinterpreted as something real in its own right with its own meaning, proof that evil is real and exists, and holds that against the person as their truth. We take what should be easily forgivable and turn it into a crime, as though to say that they aren't just making a mistake, they are positively making an act of assault.

"The ego does not perceive sin as a lack of love. It perceives it as a POSITIVE ACT OF ASSAULT. This is an interpretation which is necessary to its survival, because as soon as YOU regard it as a LACK, you will automatically attempt to remedy the situation. And you will also succeed. The ego regards this as doom, but YOU must learn to regard it as freedom." UrT5G8

So essentially the idea of the belief in sin, or interpreting things as sins, is rooted in taking something which is actually an absence, and interpreting it as the presence of something. It's not just an error, it's a crime. It's not just a mistake or something to be learned by a child, it's a deliberate attempt to harm and offend. It's not just an innocent lack of wisdom, it's a positive desire to do horrendous things on purpose out of malice and spite.

So really when we interpret someone as sinning, we're sort of saying "you're a dark evil person for being this way", rather than that "you are just lacking some light and need more light." Any sense of accusation, scapegoating, making guilty, turning what someone does into a crime, holding the mistake against them like it proves that they're unworthy of love etc, is all the ways that we convert a mere "lack of" love into a "presence of" evil.

True perception accurately and correctly views all illusory things - all blocks and the results of those blocks - as nothing more than temporary errors, which can be perfectly corrected without any punishment or need for chastisement or blame or hurt. And no death sentences or justified revenge. It merely sees an innocence and a mistakenness within the confused/lost person, rather than converting that mistakenness into "you're doing this on purpose to hurt people because you're evil and deserve attack."

There are only mistaken innocent souls who lack wisdom and are lost and confused and choose incorrectly, who need simple gentle correction by a loving hand such as the Holy Spirit. A simple classroom of children learning how to stop hurting themselves. When we turn this into a bloodbath or a warzone or a battlefield or a place filled with enemies and opponents and competition, we're moving into the belief in sin.

The belief in sin is the belief that darkness is real and contains real evil and can really produce real powerful consequences in its own right. This completely ignores the truth that there is only love and a lack of love, and never a sin. Nothing is a sin, because sin is nothingness misinterpreted as something. Your brother's sins are not sins, they are just mistakes calling for love.

"Dream softly of your sinless brother, who unites with you in holy innocence. And, from THIS dream, the Lord of Heaven will Himself awaken His beloved Son." UrT27H14

Light is truth. You can see what really is, when there is light. You cannot see in the dark. Darkness appears to hide the light, as though blocking it, removing it, or affecting it. But light cannot be affected by darkness. Darkness is always affected by light, because light dispels it. Even in the dream world, light dispels the darkness.

In awareness, in your mind, the light of truth reveals to you what the truth is. In awareness of the truth, everything is revealed. Whatever the illusions were, they are seen clearly and understood to be only what they are and nothing that they appeared to be. They are nothing.

The light itself is enough to clarify the matter of whether the ego exists or not. The light shows you that there is no real ego. The light clearly reveals to your awareness, that all of the things which you thought really happened because of separation, actually have not happened.

The light also shows you something very important. And it's simply that, in the light of truth, nothing has really gone wrong, so there is nothing that you need to do "extra" to deal with the wrong stuff. You don't need defenses against it, you don't need special skills to deal with it, you don't need a special technique or a meditation or a set or rules. Your behavior doesn't matter, you don't have to effort to interpret things differently.

There simply has not been anything that has gone wrong. There is no ego, no world, no death. They were just illusions and tricks all along, pretending to be real but being nothing but fantasy. This is all *recognized* in the light. The light shows you that this is true. So it's not like, you suddenly realize that there's all this shit going on and now you have to deal with it. Its a recognition that there is not really any shit at all! None. Zero.

And then instead of having to constantly be at war, to defend yourself against the ego, you instead have cause for celebration, because you suddenly see that every single form of suffering was pretend, make-believe, illusory and fake. There was not a real separation. There was not sickness or suffering or death. It was all made up. And all you needed to do was to RECOGNIZE it for what it is - literally nothing.

The light is not concerned about the ego. The light is not upset about separation. The light does not fear the consequences that separation seems to cause. The light is just full of joy and celebration, in the recognition and knowledge, that God's Kingdom is completely intact, safe, unharmed, filled with eternal life, and absolutely nothing has ever gone wrong.

The light shows you this. It's a perspective. It's a correct way of looking. Its True Perception. Vision. The ability to see "what is" and, in that light alone, see that everything of the ego is simply false, untrue and not real at all.

Isn't it great news to know that absolutely nothing has ever really gone wrong, and all the stuff that seemed to have gone wrong was just a bad dream? That in reality, there is only the light and the joy and the peace? And that's all that there is? :-)

Its the big secret that all illusions attempt to hide. That there really has not been a separation at all, God is unchanged, You are still your True Self, you are still absolutely worthy of and welcome by God's love, and there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to be upset or afraid? This is the truth. This is the atonement of God. Reality is a HAPPY reality. All else is just a nightmarish illusion that isn't even real at all.

There is no true or valid reason to be upset or unhappy, ever. There is only justification for eternal life in joy and peace.

It is to clearly recognize when something is an illusion and when it is reality.

It is only because we have become convinced that illusions are real, that they have truth to them, and give them credit, that we are experiencing sleep.

Unconsciousness is denial, which is an attempt to not be aware of the factual truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Instead we have attempted to block the truth, so that we might have an opportunity to believe that something else is the truth, without the real truth distracting us or reminding us of what the truth is.

We had to hide from God, which seems like hiding God, in order to be as close as possible to forgetting the truth. Otherwise we could not possibly give even a moment's attention to illusions which are unreal.

We wouldn't be able to even potentially believe illusions are truth while the real truth was glaringly obvious, but with the real truth out of sight, illusions appear to be plausible.

Unawareness of the real truth makes it "easier" to believe in an illusion of truth. The purpose of the illusion then is to hide the real truth and substitute for it, replacing it with some other form of meaning.

Even though spiritual lessons may show up in a variety of forms and feature different people and problems, they are all still basically the same one lesson. They are all exercises in learning what is true and what is false. Learning to recognize an illusion for what it is, rather than make it real and react to it.

When we believe an illusion has truth to it, we will have a whole cascade of reactions and counter-perceptions which arise out of that fundamental sense of reality. We might think our lesson is to deal with those reactions or overcome them, but ultimately the lesson is only learning to "see through" the illusion.

To overlook the claim of an illusion and not see it as the truth, to not believe in it, and to not fall for its tricks, is simply an act of forgiveness. Forgiveness is therefore the answer to all lessons. To put it even more clearly, forgiveness is the ONLY answer to ALL problems. It is not one of many options, it is the only option.

To remain deluded is unforgiveness, judgement, and attack. To forgive is to learn to see clearly what the truth is, which will put everything into its proper perspective and show the illusion for what it is. When the truth is present, there is so much obvious evidence that the illusion is false, you can't help but recognize it as false. It's obvious, without any particular effort or skill needed to see it as such.

Forgiveness isn't an interpretation of illusions. It's not an attempt to twist your way of looking or to strain or make effort to see in a certain way. Forgiveness is completely effortless and natural. It looks upon illusions in stillness, doing nothing, and simply recognizing them for what they are. They are false. They are untrue. They are not reality.

This is how simple it all comes down to. Every lesson is a lesson in forgiveness. Every lesson presents illusions which you initially believe are true, are dangerous, are able to affect you, or prove that God is dead. Learning to sort out the evidence and become aware of a greater truth is the only way out of the lesson. Learning to discern true from false.

All lessons are learned the same way. Once forgiveness has come to establish a clear perception - true perception - of what the truth really is and what is false, the lesson is over, and the need for the lesson is over. Forgiveness is a permanent correction of sight.

To forgive or not to forgive, that is the question. Forgiveness is the answer.

If you are trying to be separate from God, you are trying to be the antichrist.

If you believe in separation to any degree, this is the same thing as believing that you are in darkness, and therefore that you are evil.

Although you may say you don't believe in evil, or that it is relegated to only those who are in the extreme of it, evil basically is the opposite of 'live' (spelled backwards) and, more than just a play on words, is the attempt to be different to what God created.

In that sense, most of the people in the world are evil.

However, evil is not real. It is not possible to be really evil, because evil means darkness and darkness is an illusion. It is not possible for darkness to remove the light or replace the light. On the contrary, light shines away darkness by its mere presence. This is why darkness has no real power over God's Kingdom.

Similarly, what you think of yourself as being dark, which can take on many forms such as believing you are unworthy of love, that you are guilty or afraid, etc... these are all forms of believing in darkness. You think that darkness has come to block out the light and that it has succeeded. That is a magical belief and is essentially 'evil', if there were such a thing.

Efforts that you might make to make darkness real, or to side with darkness, or to think that darkness has some kind of power over the light, are efforts to enact 'magic'. These can be nothing more than attempts to make illusions real or to turn things which are untrue into true. This is always impossible of course, and darkness really does not exist at all.

So while you might be currently pretending to be the antichrist, fear not, because your efforts have no real effects and God still knows that deep down you're really Christ. This will never change. And your attempt to make yourself into the antichrist (the ego), really is just a make-believe fairytale about it being possible. It isn't.

Regardless of how evil you think someone is, or what special cases you reserve for evil, or how evil you think you are, and believe me if you think you're anything less than 100% innocent you believe you are evil, it doesn't matter to God. God loves and forgives absolutely all, knowing that we are really incapable of sin and that evil is not reality.

You're not really evil. Your darkness is just an illusion you use to pretend to hide the light, and what you keep in darkness or keep from the light seems to take on a kind of reality. You hide it to protect it because exposure to the light would show you that it is not true and does not matter. Unconditional love would sweep it away and pay no attention to it. You only keep your, twisted, wicked evil ways hidden, because to expose them to light would show you that you are just mistaken and cannot ever be evil at all.

You are christ, holy and innocent, permanently loved by God, incapable of sin and are absolutely forgiven. If you are the antichrist, it only means you are christ pretending not to be christ. Ultimately we are all christ and there is no antichrist at all.

'I'm not the antichrist but I play one on TV"

You can easily escape into concepts, theories, course quotes as defences, in order to avoid something you don't want to admit to.

Instead of being willing to accept something uncomfortable, you go into denial, and start fighting against the thing with dissociation and intellectual "rising above."

There are things about this world that can be quite unpleasant. Someone dying, the loss of a house, wars raging, people being mis-treated and all that.

We become upset about the thing, not really because of what it is, but because we refuse to accept it. We make something of it, and then we start reacting to what we made of it, and going off on a tangent of a whole new kind of suffering which is even worse than the thing we were avoiding.

Yes nasty things seem to occur. These are kind of like hard facts. In space and time, in physical terms, they happen. Spiritually-minded people love to bypass this and start "attacking it away" with spiritual quote fests, favourite phrases, comments about how its not real, how we're not at the effect of it, and all this. But what this then becomes is avoidance.

If we would stay with the thing and admit to it, stare it in the face, confront it head-on, and be willing to actually look at it, we would be remaining in the present. We would be being honest. We would be not going into denial or trying to cover it up or placate it or make it go away because we don't like it.

And, as it turns out, this present confrontation with the thing helps you to retain your sanity, helps you to not avoid or hide, and helps you to accept it. It's the acceptance of it that actually gives you freedom from it, rather than all these efforts to change it into something, to bypass it spiritually, to move into the intellect, or to sprit the fuck out of it to make it not be there.

For all the time I for example have been dealing with loss over the death of my wife, ACIM has offered a lot of high-level clarity about what it really is, what hasn't actually happened, and all this stuff about how its my belief in it that makes me suffer. A whole lot of metaphysical philosophising and trying to rise above it, to transcend it, to forgive it, to find some peace somehow. But in a way, this has all been a way of avoiding looking at it - a form of denial.

Acceptance is needed in order to be able to let something go and move on. You can't find acceptance by wanting something to change, to be different, to have not happened. You also can't find acceptance by not being willing to admit that the thing HAS happened. It's staring you in the face and practically screaming at you that "this has occurred." On a physical level, IT HAS.

If you avoid this fact, you are putting yourself out of touch with reality. Not that the world is real but the attitude towards this world also in turn becomes your attitude about God. If you avoid an illusion, you avoid God. If you can't look at the world, you can't look at your self. If you hide from changes, you can't embrace changelessness.

So it may be true actually that we find more peace and acceptance through allowing the world to be the way it is, accepting what HAS happened even if that seems to be "making sin real", and even if it seems somehow to be giving the ego a whole lot of credit. What's the alternative, hide from the ego and hurl abuse at it from the mountain top? Or should we own what we've done to ourselves?

ACIM on the one hand is saying things like, "its not real, it hasn't happened, it's not true, the world is a dream, it's all an illusion, nothing is wrong, there is no death" etc. But this is higher level truth. On the physical level there is much that is wrong, and there is death, and people are sick.

Jesus refers to avoiding the "facts" of the world as "a particularly unworthy form of denial." Such as trying to deny that bodies exist. Yes ultimately they don't, but that's not your experience right now. Death does appear to happen. If you deny that you will suffer MORE than if you had accepted it. The person that dies is dead, physically at least. And that has to be acknowledged. No amount of running away from it into the mind's fantasies will undo that fact.

While it is not pleasant, we do have to stop being in denial. We have to stop avoiding what's happened or happening. It's not spiritual, it's a bypass. A mis-use of ACIM's teachings has led me and many people to try living on a cloud in avoidance of the battleground, rather than to take a good hard look at the battleground. It takes some deep soul-searching to admit to this.

We can't get to the "forgiven world" without being willing to look at it through the eyes of Christ. And that does mean looking at it, not looking away from it. It means staring it down. Being aware of all the nasty shit that is happening. Looking at it with Christ so that we translate it into a more tolerable interpretation, NOT as a bypass or an avoidance or a defense or an attempt to put some distance between you and the facts.

"Let all things be exactly as they are."

"The fear of healing arises in the end from an unwillingness to accept the unequivocal fact that healing is necessary. The fear arises because of the necessary willingness to look at what man has done to himself."

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

"Perhaps it will be helpful to remember that no-one can be angry at a fact. It is always an interpretation that gives rise to negative emotions, regardless of their seeming justification by what appear as facts."

"But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this."

"How can a fact be fearful, unless it DISAGREES with what you hold more dear than truth? Reason will tell you that this fact is your RELEASE."

"The body is merely a fact. Its ABILITIES can be, and frequently are, over-evaluated. However, it is almost impossible to deny its existence. Those who do are engaging in a particularly unworthy form of denial."

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life."

"The truth is true and nothing else is true"

Here's the facts.

1) God established what is true, forever. It is permanent and cannot be changed by anyone.

2) You have only two options.

a) Accept that it is true and be glad that the truth is loving.

b) Reject the truth and pretend it is not true and suffer.

You have no other choice. Acceptance or denial.

Acceptance aligns you with Life. Denial aligns you with death.

When we reject the truth and go into denial, we simply are not willing to admit that we cannot change the truth. We start believing that we can change it, and that we have. That's the idea of sin and it puts us into ego thinking. It's also the authority problem because now we believe we can change God.

This is a very uncomfortable truth for the ego. It literally means up there on the hill there is a shining light which shines forever, and either you can go there and be part of the light or you can hide away in a cave and pretend it's not there. But nothing you can do can stop it shining.

This means you are POWERLESS OVER GOD. You are powerless over truth. And you are powerless to change reality. "Nothing real can be threatened."

To admit this takes great willingness to surrender all egotism, all opinions, all other viewpoints, all independent efforts to decide what the truth IS, and entails a total letting go of the protest against reality. That means giving up fighting with the truth. It means stopping this insane effort to DENY that it is true and to try to make it go away.

To hide from it and to block it out of awareness produces a state of "un-consciousness" or un-awareness, also known as death. Death is the denial of the truth, the denial of life, and represents an unwillingness to admit or demonstrate that you are immortal.

We have to come out of our dark hiding place and into the light but we will only do that by dropping the ego and being VERY VERY HONEST with ourselves, radically honest, in admitting that WE CANNOT CHANGE THE FACTS. We cannot change the truth. We cannot change what God established. We cannot change what God created us to be. And therefore we MUST still be as God created us to be.

This is why the curriculum ends in the Atonement, which entails TOTAL ACCEPTANCE OF THE TRUTH. The key word there is "acceptance". It means the total surrendering of all denial, the absolute complete letting go of the authority problem, relinquishing all attempts to DENY that the truth is true, and being FULLY willing to simply ALLOW God to be God.

It's almost a moment where you'll say, okay God, I give up, I surrender, you win. Except God isn't a dictator or tyrant. His will for you is perfect happiness. And that means that by surrendering to His will and His truth and His power you SHARE in it and enjoy perfect happiness, eternal life, and peace forever.

We simply do not have the option to ESTABLISH what the truth is. It is already established by God, it is permanent, it never changes, and nothing of the ego can modify it. Either we are squirming all over the place trying to avoid admitting to it, or we are coming to it quietly and gently and accepting it with holiness and willingness. And God welcomes us home.

"Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true and nothing else is true. This you have heard before, but may not yet accept both parts of it. Without the first the second has no meaning, but without the second is the first no longer true. Truth cannot have an opposite. This can not be too often said and thought about. For if what is not true is true as well as what is true, then part of truth is false, and truth has lost its meaning. Nothing but the truth is true, and what is false is false.

This is the simplest of distinctions, yet the most obscure. But not because it is a difficult distinction to perceive. It is concealed behind a vast array of choices which do not appear to be entirely your own. And thus the truth appears to have some aspects that belie consistency, but do not seem to be but contradictions introduced by you."

... "Now do we join in glad acknowledgment that lies are false and only truth is true."

I want to tell you about a way in which I used my persona to destroy myself, and how I am learning to overcome it. This was actually a very very painful long-term lesson, so it is hard to write about.

I grew up as a highly sensitive person, who experienced everything in an intense, overwhelming, overpowering way. In order to try to cope with this, I developed the use of my persona. The persona is the side of the ego split-mind that focuses on specialness, goodness, success, social acceptability, favoritism, pleasantness, etc. So I went very strongly into 'people pleasing'.

What I'd do, quite automatically/unconsciously, was I'd put on this facade, literally a 'false face', where I'd smile a lot, become very quiet, try to appear pleasant, try not to upset anyone, look unthreatening and harmless, as though 'showing this' to people would deflect them and therefore protect me. It was my attempt to be invisible. This included a really intense repression of myself. Basically I was using this to hide my Self.

In any public situation I would put on this persona mask and make it appear that nothing was wrong, that everything was good and normal, nothing to see here, being nice to everyone and don't say a single word, and not get hurt. But there were many times this blew up in my face.

Once I was on a bus heading into town and it stopped at the hospital. A man got on the bus and sat nearby. He said that he had just gotten out of the hospital from his 3rd heart attack. This alone was enough to trigger me to hide myself even more than I already was. So I smiled a lot. He, having just gone through life-changing events, started up a conversation with me, which was horrifying. He saw I was smiling and thought that it meant I was happy, and therefore wanted to know what my 'secret to a happy life' was. This put tremendous extra pressure on me (as I saw it) and I just wanted to get the hell out of there. To do this, I intensified even more this persona of hiding myself, which was an attempt to reject him, smiling even more, being very tight-lipped, and just wanting the ordeal to end. I just became more and more quiet. For some reason I seemed to just do this as an automatic defense that I'd learned.

Once I got off the bus, I was just about ready to hurl. I put so much effort into psychologically rejecting the man, and hiding myself, that I felt literally sick. I reached/retched uncontrollably for several minutes before I could calm down. This put a huge damper on my day and was somewhat traumatic. But this wasn't the only effect of this.

See, when I used my persona to hide my real Self, this wouldn't just mean rejecting the other person, it would mean rejecting me. The more I tried to shut them out, the more I shut myself out. I had no idea I was doing this. But what I did know was how it felt. Absolutely horrible. I would come away from bad experiences like this, which occurred many many times in all kinds of public scenarios, with a feeling of tremendous tension in my head from intense embarrassment/shame/humiliation. I'd get a horrible headache, but even worse, I would feel deeply, deeply, deeply hurt. This hurt was more intense and horrible than ANY other emotion I have ever felt for any reason. Psychologically it was like I had experienced every single form of rejection, abandonment, hurt and pain all at once. The absolute only way to move past this was to have a huge cry.

So, as a result of putting on a persona and pretending to be someone I was not, regardless of whether that fake self seemed to be 'nice' or 'kind' or anything anyone values, the only way I could appear to be literally 'someone else' was to horrendously suppress, deny, reject and abandon myself. I thought I was using separation 'against' other people to separate myself from them in order to protect myself, but this separation did nothing but hurt me.

I also had a huge fear of other people judging me, and a fear of rejection. What I didn't realize was that each time that I tried to put on a persona mask of nice, likable, happy-smiley, quiet or whatever, I was buying into an ego thought system. And by doing that, I was taking a gamble. Either I would 'get' the result I wanted which was that people would be deflected and ignore me and I would pass by 'safely', OR other people would attack me or pressure me in some way and I'd end up suffering. By believing in the potential of being seen to be accepted or liked or pleasing to others, I was also simultaneously believing in the 'potential' that others would judge me. I wanted them to judge me favorably, which would feed my 'goodie goodie' persona, which meant I had to believe in judgement. And because I believed in judgement, I lived in fear of it.

So I thought I had an issue of being afraid of judgement from others. A fear of rejection. And this fear of rejection cycled around in a vicious cycle, compelling me to want to NOT be rejected, and therefore to put on a smiley persona face in order to get other people to not reject or hurt me. But of course that merely put me closer in touch with rejection and judgement, if not by others then much moreso by myself. The amount of rejection I experienced from myself TO myself as a result of self-suppression, was far worse than anything anyone else did. So this strategy really didn't actually work, even though I kept trying to use it, and each time it got worse. Over time I just became more and more uptight and quiet and withdrawn from society, eventually jobless and depressed and deeply unhappy and unable to see a way to be different.

Over time, through various avenues of healing, not least of which was the support by my wife who showed up right when I was at my worst, I gradually have learned about the dynamics of what I do to myself versus what I thought other people were going to do to me. I learned painfully and slowly to see that I only saw other people as 'attacking judging strangers' because *I* had already attacked them first. Through the years of working with A Course in Miracles and various other things I've come to very gradually realize exactly why my use of the persona is completely self-defeating and does not help at all. All the persona does is section off everything I think is wrong with me into a tidy little box and shove it away into the dark recesses of my mind, later to surface as pain and suffering.

Yet, over time I've still held onto a belief that I am mainly afraid of rejection or judgement, rather than realizing that my attempt to use the persona is what actually causes the problem. Every time I try to do what other people would want, or make myself like able, or appease others, or focus on what other people like or would buy, or whether I'd get approval, or showing only the parts of myself that I think are acceptable to others, this AUTOMATICALLY creates a fear of rejection and judgement. Because really, by using the persona (i.e. wanting to feed it by creating a self-image/persona of being pleasing) I am actually already rejecting myself and judging myself. Why would I want to put a facade on myself to cover up my True Self? Why would I want to soften the blow of someone else's attitude by abandoning myself first, so that I then need a defense?

The truth that is starting to reveal itself to me now, is that if I actually just be true to myself, and completely drop all need to use the persona to be 'likable' or 'acceptable to others' or 'what they want' etc, I actually stay in a STRENGTH and a authenticity that empowers me and completely overrides the apparent need, either for a fake persona self, or for a defense against rejection. And so this reveals what really is underneath all this.

If I reject myself FIRST, I will then believe I have to use a false self-image-persona to show other people a version of me that they will like, so that they won't point out how shitty I am. Once i'm in persona mode, I cannot escape the fear of rejection because I've already rejected myself and more will be forthcoming through the projection of it.

So the task in front of me now is, to learn to accept myself fully, to be true to the truth in me, to open up to reveal and expose who I really am, to 'let loose' without any shame or censorship, to stop trying to hide myself for any reason, and to basically 'be myself'. But it also HAS to mean, a willingness to stop putting on a show, to stop presenting myself in a fake way, to stop trying to 'appear' likable, to stop people-pleasing, to stop trying to feed my persona image, to stop trying to get everyone to approve of me, and to just drop that whole pile of horseshit. I only enter into a perception that I need 'protection' when I have already judged myself and have seen myself as vulnerable. I am not vulnerable if I am truth-filled. And I don't need to please anyone.

So the key to FREEDOM in all this, is awakening into Holy Spirit's view of me, in acceptance of the truth of me, and in completely surrendering BOTH the fear of rejection AND the attempt to 'win approval' through the persona. By stopping using a persona this solves every problem that ever arose out of its use. What I thought was helping me was hurting me deeply. And stopping the use of the persona stops the creation of the shadow (pain) as well.

Standing firmly in who I AM, brings all of the certainty, strength, assertiveness, disregard for other's opinions, invulnerability, and empowerment, that seemed to be MISSING when I chose to use the ego. And which could never be fulfilled by using the ego. Because once again, it's a case of seek and do not find. "I don't have to worry about what to say or what to do knowing He goes there with me" - ACIM, i.e. I am in my true self and my true self is completely uninterested in pretense or rejection.

Who knew - trying to please people makes you rejected!!!

Learning to love myself more. Learning to drop the ego more. Learning to be what I am, instead of trying to be something I'm not. And in that, there is no fear.

What if you lived in a world, where everyone was permanently dressed in costume. So much so that you had never actually looked at a person, but had only ever seen their disguise. You hadn't EVER seen a real face, or even real eyes. An entire world filled with make-believe characters, and no-one had ever set eyes on the actors that played them. All of it was hidden behind a thick wall of masks and covers.

That's the world we are living in here. The body is exactly this. It is a disguise and a physical wall surrounding a person's mind, so that you DO NOT SEE the person. When you look at a body you are not looking at a person. You're looking at a costume designed to completely disguise and HIDE from sight the real person within it.

As we learn that we are not our costumes, ie are not our bodies, we have to actually separate out the body from the person. As you look at a person you have to remind yourself you are not really looking at a person. You're looking at a body costume. A kind of vehicle, which is being piloted by an unseen person. By a spirit-mind. And the flesh you see doesn't even look like them.

I am constantly being reminded, corrected, by Jesus, each time I'm looking upon bodies and thinking of them as people, and forgetting that I am just looking at bodies. He tells me, "body", in place of whatever I was thinking about "person". Because I have to learn that flesh and bones are not really people. Bodies with faces and eyeballs are not really people. They are all disguises.

So we live in a VERY strange world, where in fact no-one is really seen by the human senses, and every body you look upon is a costume disgusing and hiding someone from sight. And even as you stare at their face and look them deep in the eye and think someone is peering back at you, even then you are looking at an illusion made to hide the person.

You have in fact likely NEVER looked upon a real person in your whole life here on Earth, because to see real beings requires a radically different kind of spiritual vision. It's VERY strange when you think about it, that the world is populated by costumes and vehicles and not by direct sight of beings. It's all a giant pantomime. An act like on the stage of a play. And you haven't ever feasted your eyes upon any of the actors.

It's so strange simply because this IS a VERY strange world. We have to learn that we ourselves are not bodies AT ALL, and other people are NOT bodies at all. And sight of bodies is not sight of people. And there are no people in the world of bodies, because they are all behind the scenes. Practice recognizing that the bodies you look at are JUST bodies, disguises, HIDING what lies unseen, trapped within.

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured." "The REAL beauty of the Temple cannot be seen with the physical eye. The spiritual eye, on the other hand, cannot see the building at all, but it perceives the altar within with perfect clarity. This is because the spiritual eye has perfect vision."

"How can man "come close" to others through the parts of him which are really invisible? The word "invisible" means "cannot be seen or perceived."What cannot be perceived is hardly the right means for improving perception."

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys."

"In this strange world which you have made, the Son of God HAS sinned. How could you SEE him, then? "

"LOVE ALWAYS ANSWERS, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, but do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

The ego thought system is a system within the mind. It is not physical. The ego has used its distortion of the law of PROJECTION in order to try to place this content OUTSIDE the mind, which has resulted in what we call the physical world. The purpose of doing this is to deny that the insanity is in the mind, hide it from the mind, block awareness of it being in the mind, dissociate from it, and therefore "believe" that it is no longer inside but outside. This "projects" the insanity and this takes the form of the physical universe/world. An inner belief in sin becomes "the world of bodies is the world of sin".

This physical world then is APPEARS to stand alone, as the only reality. And then we look WITHIN it to try to learn what is causing things to happen. We look at horizontal or linear cause and effect. We look at the properties of materials. We look at the seeming needs of one thing, such as food, supplied by another thing. And we look to medicines and magic to supply health when there seems to be a sickness caused by this very same world.

But all of these "laws" are utterly bullshit and made up, attempting to explain why things in the physical world exist, why and how they function, and how to "live with it". The truth however is that this world is not an end in itself, it does not CONTAIN the very cause that PUTS the world there in the first place, and it is in fact only a SYMBOL OF something removed from it, which preceded it.

The "laws" which project onto the world are the egoic laws or beliefs that projected the world in the first place. It is the MIND that is governing the world, causing what happens, deciding whether sickness and death occur, and choosing what events may arise. And the whole world was made to hide this fact. The cause of all the worlds problems is in the mind that made it.

"You maintain the world IN YOUR MIND, WITH YOUR THOUGHTS." We are not therefore really bound by any of the "within the system" laws that we think run the world. Not one single law of physics is true. Nor of biology or chemistry. Not one aspect of quantum physics or anything to do with matter or energy or space or time. None of these things are what runs the world. None of these things are the laws by which it is governed.

These are just effects in a world projected by an ego mind, disguised to make it seem like the world runs itself. As if the world is a closed system. As if the world is first-hand reality. And to look to this projected world for the cause of anything is insane, given that the entire thing is being caused by the mind. We can set ourselves free from all of these meaningless "laws" - laws of health and diet and abundance and safety and preservation and gravity and medicine and whatever.

We are to therefore first of all purge our mind of all the contents of the ego thought system, all the guilty baggage and fear, and all the level confusion which says the physical world causes anything. So that we stop projecting hallucinations of external causation onto what is, effectively, an inert effect. And then we can project "the real world", recognizing that we are under NO LAWS but God's. Eventually this recognition that ONLY God's laws of mind are real laws, will allow us to go beyond the real world to our natural environment in heaven.

"Think of the freedom in the recognition that you are not bound by all the strange and twisted laws which you have set up to save you. You really think that you would starve unless you have stacks of green paper strips and piles of metal discs. You really think a small round pellet or some fluid pushed into your veins through a sharpened needle will ward off death. You really think you are alone unless another body is with you.

It is insanity that thinks these things. You call them laws, and put them under different names in a long catalogue of rituals that have no use and serve no purpose. You think you must obey the "laws" of medicine, of economics, and of health. Protect the body and you will be saved. These are not laws, but madness."