Separation HAS occurred? Sort of.

Some people claim that it is impossible to explain the "tiny mad idea". It seems logical at first, because when the ego asks a question like "what if", it's not really a question, and the tiny mad idea hasn't "really" happened in reality. It has no real consequences in reality, and it's just a dream.

But the tiny mad idea HAS happened in IMAGINATION. It HAS happened in your mind, and you've "made it real to you". That is why you are sitting there right now reading this on your screen, which *seems* real. A dream "at all" wouldn't even be possible unless God gave you free will to choose to mis-create and dream.

"Whatever is true & real is eternal, & cannot change or be changed. The Soul is therefore unalterable because it is ALREADY perfect, but the mind can elect the level it chooses to serve. The only limit which is put on its choice is that it CANNOT serve two masters."

Your mind has FREEDOM, and therefore can be used to choose EITHER to will with God's will, or to will against it. Either in service to the soul/spirit, or in service to a fictional ego. This freedom granted you the very REAL "possibility" of being ABLE to make this choice, to use will against will, and to mis-create. God would not give you an `option` that could *actually* hurt you at all, and it has not, but this freedom HAS given you the ability to OPT not to laugh at the idea of separation, if you choose.

Jesus also describes below how while you have free will, it is necessary to choose both FOR (toward) God and AWAY from the option of ego/dreaming.

"While the ballot itself is a secret one, and the right to vote is fully protected, voting ALWAYS entails both election AND rejection. If two candidates are voted for for the same position, the machine cancels the ballot automatically.

This is necessary, because a split vote does not represent ANY REAL allegiance.

Free will is the attribute of the mind, NOT the Soul. The Soul always remains changeless, because it never leaves the sight of God.

The Creation of the Soul is already fully accomplished. The mind, if it votes to do so, becomes a medium by which the Soul can create along the line of its own creation. If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants."

So you can see here that the mind actually has the freedom to "choose to dream" if it wants to. It CAN place itself under tyrranical rule and seem to "sleep". Of course this dreaming is FICTIONAL and it is not REALLY happening in reality, it has no real consequences in heaven, but it IS still a "valid option" that you are free to entertain or ELECT.

This essentially means that, the tiny mad idea is a POSSIBLE CHOICE, but it is not a REAL choice. That's a vital distinction. You COULD choose to dream if you want to, to mis-create, to opposte God's will (or try to), but it's not a REAL option. It's an option of unreality that the mind is quite capable of making if it chooses to. This is why "heaven is a choice I must make" - the mind HAS to freely, willingly, elect to choose heaven, ie the only real option, and not the ego, which is an imaginary option you've tried to MAKE real.

Does this mean the dream "has happened"? It has not happened IN REALITY, but it HAS occurred within the context of the mind's freedom to dream. It doesn't have REALITY to it, but it IS something you are CAPABLE OF PRODUCING through mis-creation. And when you DO freely choose it, with your free will, it will become seemingly real to you because what you accept into your mind becomes your reality.

"To "change your mind" means to place it at the disposal of True authority. The miracle is thus a sign that the mind has elected to be guided by Christ in HIS service. The abundance of Christ is the natural result of choosing to follow him."

The mind has to ELECT (choose) to be under service to Christ. This IS a free-willed choice, not something forced upon you. God does not create slaves.

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny mad idea"

There DID creep an idea, a thought, an imagining, into the mind, because IT COULD. The mind CAN DREAM. But the dream that it produces is not real or like God. Elsewhere Jesus refers to it as "an order of reality", meaning that you gave reality TO it to try to turn it into reality, through belief, but the belief is based on a false premise, so it is ultimately unfounded and fundamentally unreal at its core.

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny mad idea", at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. Together, we can laugh them BOTH away, and understand that time can NOT intrude upon eternity. It IS a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which MEANS there is no time."

I will leave you this statement by Jesus:

"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."

What he means here, is not that the separation is REAL, but that in the MIND, it HAS OCCURRED as a thought, an idea, an IMAGINED possibility. There HAS been an attempt to usurp God's will. There HAS been a "dream". Not REALLY, but ... in the proper context, in the mind, this IS something that we CHOSE, something we TRIED TO MAKE REAL, something we tried to DO, to will it, to mis-create. We DID mis-create. That's the ONLY reason that you are able to be sitting there seeming to be a body reading this text right now. But the ultimate truth is, this is a dream, an unreality, it's ultimately based on a false foundation or premise - that there is an alternative to God's will, and because that is untrue, it is not REALLY REAL. So it hasn't REALLY happened in truth, in the biggest picture.

You DO, in a sense, dream a dream. But you CAN stop dreaming, by changing your mind. Dreaming is a state of MIND, of insanity, believing that time can replace eternity and space can replace God's presence. Effectively, there HAS been a "fall of man", but the fall is imaginary. It is ONLY an idea, but it IS an idea, not less than that. The "existence" of this idea, however, must be temporary, because it is an idea of being temporary, and is naturally limited and finite. It is therefore INEVITABLE that the dream will end and the IDEA - in which this entire physical universe dwells - will disappear.

When you try to go into the light, while still holding onto ego in any way, you are trying to bring darkness into the light.

What that means is, you believe the darkness can 'stay dark' while you enter the light. But this is impossible because light dispels darkness.

So the light of God, Holy Spirit's mind, the right mind, 'level 2', etc... will repel the darkness of the ego. It would dispel the ego, so it cannot ever approach it. Darkness has no real effect on the light.

When you try to do this, you are creating a 'spiritualized ego' which attempts to make it SEEM like you're more spiritual or more light when in fact it MUST all be an illusory form or appearance, deceiving yourself, because darkness literally CANNOT, even a tiny bit, become light.

Darkness is REPLACED by light. When light replaces darkness, you wake up FROM darkness.

Similarly, you cannot bring the light into the darkness. You can shine a light SO THAT darkness is shone away. When you bring the light toward the darkness, the darkness MUST disappear. So again, light and dark cannot combine. The dark cannot be made light, and the light cannot be made dark. They are mutually exclusive.

So again, one of the properties of the spiritual ego is the attempt to bring light into the darkness, into the world, in such a way as to KEEP the world the same as it is and NOT dispel illusions. This doesn't mean you can't bring 'heaven to earth', because by doing so you actually dispel and REPLACE darkness. But the ego has many ways to pretend to bring light into the world which are deceptive.

The only option for you is, to leave the darkness behind and go into the light. That means detaching from the ego's mind, and attaching to Holy Spirit.

In heaven, we’ve had an innocent little idea. We’ve wondered, what it might be like if things weren’t the way they are.

Nothing happens. We just have an idea. Like a daydream. We use our "imagination" to imagine what it MIGHT be like. We visualize it.

As a human, I can similarly take a moment to IMAGINE what it might be like, if I were a different person. I can imagine myself perhaps from a different country, with a different body, a different lifestyle, doing different things. I can imagine it in a fair amount of detail, maybe even imagine sights and sounds and smells and experiences, which seem partly real to some degree.

But my imagining what that might be like, is a far cry from what it would mean to *actually* be another person. When I stop daydreaming, I come back to my senses and remember the obvious fact of who I "actually am". Who I imagined myself to be is simply dropped, like a discarded toy. My body didn’t actually turn into another person from another country. Who I seem to be is not changed at all. I was just having an idea.

When I wake up from my little visualization, it no longer exists. I was just dreaming. Imagining. There are no consequences to "this" reality from my little daydream. Everything in the daydream does not exist and never really did.

The Son of God is having a little dream like this. Except the Son of God’s mind is VERY powerful. It is able to have really, really big ideas. When the Son of God imagines He is not as God created Him, his little fantasy is *extraordinarily* sophisticated. Very, very elaborate.

He dreams of an entire universe, with billions of planets, all kinds of creatures and objects and strange things happening. A massive history of time spanning billions of "years’, and even an illusion of time passing very slowly.

He also dreams of planet Earth, complete with human bodies and plants and animals and mountains and oceans. He does this in such extraordinary detail, with such POWER, that it produces a massive massive dream. A huge visualization.

But remember, this is just an IDEA. He’s having a thought. He is not CREATING it for real, it is entirely him "wondering", exploring the idea, thinking about it, imagining it. This universe "showing up" is HIM THINKING. An idea.. what MIGHT it be like IF I were separate from God. This IDEA contains the entire physical universe and the Earth. It’s a huge idea. Everything that seems to happen is INSIDE that idea.

"Ideas leave not their source" ultimately means that the universe we made (this "world", containing Earth), did not LEAVE the IDEA. Nor did any causes in the dream leak out" and effect reality. Nor did any of that idea of separation *actually happen*. It ONLY IS AN IDEA. A "what if?"

This idea, did not ACTUALLY produce a separation. God is sitting there totally happy and unaffected. The Son of God is just a little bit asleep having this really really big idea. And that’s all. Nothing else is happening! Just an idea.

The entire "universe of separation" is inside of and part of that IDEA. It’s just a dream. A fantasy. Imagination.

There is a MASSIVE difference between, an IDEA of separation being dreamed, and an ACTUAL separation happening in reality. Separation does not happen in reality or in truth, at all. All that happens, is the Son has an idea. And everything he imagines INSIDE that idea, is still just part of the idea. It‘s got nothing to do with reality.

Since we as the Son are dreaming, having an IDEA, we are seeming to currently experience what it’s like INSIDE the idea. And inside the idea, it seems huge and elaborate and convincing. This makes us THINK, that "it is really happening". We even think, we really are a body. We even think, there really is a planet earth!

But the truth is, there is ONLY an idea of a body, there is ONLY an idea of a planet earth, and there is ONLY an idea of being separate from God. A visualization, an imagined image of what it MIGHT BE LIKE, *IF* it were to happen. Not *AS* it happening.

We are mistaken when we believe this idea is in fact HAPPENING. We are mistaken when we believe we are ACTUALLY a body. We are mistaken when we believe that the universe we are IMAGINING, is actually existing. We are mistaken when we think the PLANET EARTH, actually EXISTS.

All of this, is inside of an IDEA. Just a THOUGHT. Not a thought which "DID make something happen". Not a thought which "DID happen in reality". It’s a thought that DID NOT HAPPEN IN REALITY, or TO reality, or outside of the IDEA.

An idea of being separate from God, is NOTHING LIKE *actually* being separate from God. Being actually separate from God is IMPOSSIBLE. Being separate from God HAS NOT HAPPENED AT ALL! The *idea* has had no REAL consequences outside of itself. In other words, the DREAM of what separation *might* be like, did not cause anything to happen OUTSIDE of the dream. It had NO EFFECT on God, no effect on the Son of God, and no effect on reality.

Separation from God is just an idea. "We" as humans are living INSIDE A THOUGHT ABOUT SEPARATENESS! Not inside a real separation. Sin, the idea that we actually DID separate from God "for real" and that separation had "real consequences" on "reality", ie something *leaked out* of the dream/idea and did something IN REALITY. If this were true, God would have been affected, and you as the DREAMER would no longer be as God created you.

For example, in this dream, when something *seems* to happen, we tend to believe something REALLY happened. This is a belief that sin is real - that dreams affect reality. Then we believe there are "real consequences", that something "real" was affected and changed. And this of course produces guilt.

We therefore need to become able to recognize, that whatever seems to "happen" inside this huge IDEA, is not actually happening in REALITY. It is not happening TO reality. Nothing is REALLY happening. Therefore whatever appears to happen "as a sin", is not being done TO reality and has NO REAL CONSEQUENCES. God is not affected in the slightest. Your real self, which is dreaming this whole thing, has not been affected. Your real self, your dreaming self, having an IDEA, is STILL as God created you.

Since sin did not happen IN reality or TO reality, that must mean, that you are only having an innocent idea. Your idea has no reality. Your idea has no consequences. It’s FICTION. Which means, whatever you think you DID, you DID NOT DO IT in reality. You only do it INSIDE AN IDEA. Inside a dream. And it does not leave the dream. God is unaffected.

Which means....... drumroll...... that you are STILL 100% INNOCENT, you HAVE NOT sinned against God, there HAS NOT been a separation, there ARE no consequences, you are NOT guilty, you are STILL as God created you, and your idea is ONLY an idea.

When your dream ends, when you stop having the idea, when you stop imagining that you can be something you can never be, what has happened? Nothing. Just an idea. Just a thought. Just a little daydream where you wondered what separation might be like. You don’t return from a real separation. It was NOT a real separation. It was nothing more than an IDEA. And ideas ARE NOT in any way anything like THE REAL THING.

Your idea is an idea of impossibility. "It is the world you see that is impossible." This "world" is the content of EVERYTHING inside the idea. An entire universe of fantasy separation. That includes the entire planet Earth, the sun, the moon, and the whole rest of this universe. This is the world you MADE UP. You did not create it. You did not make it ACTUALLY EXIST. You just dreamed of it.

This means, even the Earth, the sun, the galaxy, the universe, all bodies, all physical forms, all creatures here, the oceans and mountains, has never ACTUALLY existed in REALITY. It has only seemed to exist inside an IDEA. A dream. A fictional fairytale. An imaginative visualization of something impossible seeming possible.

So when the Course says, "there is no world", it is saying, this entire "world" - dream existence - that we thought about for an instant, and never actually created, DOES NOT REALLY EXIST. This world, including earth, does not exist. It does not exist IN REALITY. Dreams do not exist in reality. Sin does not exist in reality. "The Earth" does not exist in reality. This whole physical universe does not exist in reality.

Were just having a little idea. That’s all. The idea has no real effects. Having the idea doesn’t create the thing we’re having an idea about. The world we made-up is a figment of our imagination. It’s not there!

There is nothing in, or about, the Earth, which will ever be a part of reality. It is made of thought. IT’s an idea. And this tiny mad idea was over the instant it seemed to be thought. It’s already over. The thought of limitation has been limited. The idea of an end has ended. Not a single note in heaven’s song has been missed.

The really key thing to realize is, AT NO TIME did Heaven stop being Heaven. At no time did you stop being as God created you. At no time did God change. Your inncence was NEVER affected. You did not sin, requiring you to have to undo the sin. There is no sin. There is no death. There is no world. Your real self, did not stop being real. Even when you had this little idea, your true self did not change even slightly. It is as God created it RIGHT NOW, always has been, and always will be. Just because you are having a MAD LITTLE IDEA, doesn’t change anything real AT ALL.

When you dream at night of all manner of strange things happening, perhaps that you have a terrible disease and people are chasing you down a dark alley, you wake up the next day.... where is the terrible disease? Did it leak out of the dream and affect your body? Not at all. Where are the figures who seemed to chase you? They are nowhere to be found. They were fiction. A dream. NOT REAL. Not happening. Nothing. Just a temporary idea, which seemed convincing from inside it, but was utterly unconvincing from outside of it.

You are just inside a dream. IT’s not happening. There is no earth. There are no bodies. There is no death. The son of God is FREE! Separation has not happened. There is no sin. You simply had a little idea, and it is already over.

An idea of something happening is not the same as something happening. Nothing has happened. There is no world. Accepting this is the atonement. Stop dreaming. Wake up.

Where could be absolutely no sympathy for victims, IF you could clearly see that the victim is 100% choosing everything that happens to them.

If someone is suffering with sickness and disease, you might feel sympathetic toward them, but would you feel this way if you could clearly see that the person was causing this themselves on purpose? If they were deliberately putting the sickness in place and making it happen, would you feel sympathetic as though it were happening against their will?

If someone is afraid, you might feel sympathetic and sorry for them, but would you feel this way if you knew that this person was completely making up every single part of this fear? That they did not really have any need to be afraid and were just pretending to be afraid?

If someone is feeling guilty, you might feel sympathy for them, but would you feel sympathy if you knew they were totally making up all of the guilt, had absolutely no real need to be guilty, were just pretending to be guilty and it was all just a big lie?

If someone were riddled with sinfulness and remorse over some terrible thing they did, would you feel any sympathy for them if you could clearly see that, in fact, and in truth, they had not only not done anything wrong whatsoever, but also you could see clearly that they were just pretending to be sinful, were putting on a big show, and were totally faking it?

See .... we have all these ways in which we support, protect, reinforce, and make real, all of these layers of suffering... all of these experiences, in which it SEEMS like the person is not choosing, does not want it, did not create it, hasn't contributed to it, and therefore they are this sort of innocent victim.

The fact is that the APPEARANCE of someone being an innocent victim is nothing more than an ILLUSION. It's an illusion, because it seems to paint a picture that could be believable ONLY IF you were unaware of the whole picture of what is going on. You only fall for it and have a response of sympathy, based on the fact that YOU were fooled by their trickery, YOU fell for the deception, and YOU failed to have the ability to see through/past/beyond/overlook what APPEARS to be a "real problem".

Your unawareness causes you to react to things that you see as though they are real, ONLY because you do not recognize that it is an illusion, and you do not SEE what is really going on. You don't have all the information. And only when you are lacking information could you believe, for an instant, that someone is ACTUALLY a victim. If you do not see the ways they are choosing, and if you do not recognize their immense power, and if you forget that they can create anything, and if you are unaware of how they've set up the entire event - EVEN IF within the event it looks totally obvious that the world has transpired against the person - against their seeming will - it's STILL an illusion. The person is STILL choosing it.

Nothing happens against your will. Nothing happens to anyone against their will. Absolutely every event in 'life' is planned, orchestrated, chosen on purpose, and set in place, and set in motion, and ENACTED BY, every person that is involved. Cooperatively, deliberately, and on purpose. Because it serves the overall intention of spiritual growth, learning lessons, proceeding in awakening, and the ULTIMATE goal of returning to God.

This goal is so far-reaching and so long-term and so FIXATED on being accomplished, that we even create scripts in which we suffer and die and have disease and are attacked brutally JUST SO THAT there will be something that will happen to our mind, something that MIGHT just trigger us to take steps towards truth, towards God, towards love. These are just lessons. Horrible nasty painful lessons, sometimes, but STILL chosen. Still agreed to.

The days of the innocent victim are numbered. Its game is up.

The body is the idea of sin. It is an extension of the idea of being separate. The body cannot become sinless in and of itself, although it can be used for a holy purpose.

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh and then projected outward." - ACIM

"At no single instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but never experienced just now. Only its past and future make it seem real. Time controls it entirely, for sin is never present. " - ACIM

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. " - ACIM

The body is always a symbol of being separate from God. It must be imperfect and it must be an illusion. Otherwise, if it were not, it would be possible for the body to have power over the mind and could prevent the Son of God from awakening or healing.

The body itself, in its fullness, must be fundamentally an illusion of separation, and therefore sin. IT MUST BE FALSE. It can't be a truth and it can't have any truth to it. If truth were associated with the body, we'd be totally stuck in the dream.

To say that the body is inherently holy or perfect or anything other than a symbol of sin is to say that God, who is holiness and perfection, is a body. That is a way the ego wants to make God be a body so that it can kill God, just as it makes the Son of God a body in order to kill him.

"Any thought system that confuses God and the body must be insane." - ACIM

At its core, metaphysically, the body is an illusion of sin. It cannot be the central truth of who or what you are. It cannot be holiness. It cannot be wholeness. It cannot be innocence. It can only exist inside of the dream of separation. It cannot enter heaven. It is never present. And it never really exists at all.

We need to learn to recognize that the body is the idea of sin, and then undo it. If we are to undo sin, the body must disappear, being an illusion that we believe is really there as a real sin. You can perceive the body with love or use it with love to give it a holier purpose, in which it can appear to be free from sickness and so on, but it is still a body. It is still an idea and representation of sin, and so long as it remains, the mind cannot be 100% free. This is why Jesus had to disappear his body in order to completely remove its blockage to the awareness of God's presence.

The body is never present. It cannot exist in the now. It does not live. It is always a memory or an idea of the future, with an artificial history and a fabricated illusion of continuation. The body IS the symbol of sin. It is false. It does not exist. It not who or what you are. You do not need it. You are immortal spirit.

"Miracles reawaken the awareness that the spirit, not the body, is the altar of truth. This is the recognition that leads to the healing power of the miracle." - ACIM

Separation is the idea that there is an opposite to love.

It has given rise to a world where both love and hate seem to coexist, where there is both joy and sadness, and where there is both Life and death.

The "duality" of the world is therefore a picture of the belief that Life and death both coexist, that death has been added to the realm of God's existence, and that it's possible for opposites to occur simultaneously.

There seems to be duality in the world because the ego believes in conflicting goals and opposite possibilities. We seem to now experience a world of both life and death, happiness and sadness, love and hate, certainty and fear.

We say that the hate and the unhappiness and the death and the fear are the problem that the ego created. But moreso it's the belief that these things can exist and that they are separate from the good stuff - love/light/joy/peace - that creates this illusion of a split.

The world is an idea of the introduction of an opposite to Life, an opposite to love and an opposite to happiness. It therefore has to manifest forms which depict both of those opposites. To have one without the other would seem to be impossible. Where there is life there must be death.

But in truth, real life does not require death in order to exist. Death on the other hand requires life in order to define itself as its opposite. Death is not a true opposite to life. Life is eternal and death is nothing.

"At no single instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but never experienced just now. Only its past and future make it seem real. Time controls it entirely, for sin is never present." - ACIM

Although it can seem like you can look at your body "right now" and see it "now", you might not realize that this is not actually "now" that you are seeing it. Rather, you are seeing how it was just a moment ago.

Even in terms of the body's sensory organs itself, it takes "time" for signals of sight to travel through space into the eyes, through the optic nerve, into the brain, into the mind, to perceive what is out there. You do not actually see the body as it is immediately now, you see how it just was a moment ago. The body is always in the past for you.

It is never possible to experience or see the body as it would be immediately in the exact present. Presence requires absolutely no space and no time. It is immediate and direct, with no gap and no delay. In such a present, it is not even possible to perceive. Perception happens in time and space and relies on separation. Only awareness can be present - an awareness of the presence of God.

While you can do a good job of approaching the present, you'll find that you have a lot of trouble actually being squarely in it. For example you can watch your breathing and try to always keep up with exactly how the breathing is acting right now, in the present. But you'll find that instead of always flowing along in the present moment precisely, your awareness will lag behind. You'll attempt to attach to or grab hold of what you're perceiving, and will stutter along from one grasp to another, as the mind tries to get a grip of what's coming. It's anticipating the future, or it's holding onto the past, and slightly missing the immediate present.

To put it another way, the present happens slightly sooner than your ability to perceive it. It is always quicker than the ego. It is always more immediate and transcends time and space. You will not be able to latch onto it or keep up with it without complete surrender to the Holy Instant.

The body does not exist in the present. It exists as a manifestation of delay and avoidance. It is always slightly in the past, or being anticipated in the future. Even though there is what seems to be an illusion of it existing "now" it is not really now. You never see it now. This is also why Jesus says that it is impossible to see a sinless body, because sinlessness is so immediate that it transcends time and space and the body itself.

The body IS the idea of sin, and it is always separate from the presence, because sin is always separate from the presence of God. The body will always be sin and made of sin. It cannot be truly holy. It can be used for a holier purpose but of itself, it is not made by love and cannot be inherently holy, because it is not wholeness. This is why, being sin, it MUST disappear, in order to enter the eternal presence of God. It is an illusion which must be given up and let go. Otherwise if the body were capable of perfection, it would truly substitute for God and we would never wake up.

The ego is very clever at creating illusions. It very cleverly makes it seem as though there IS no present. There's an entire section in the course about how the ego uses the past to "gloss over" the present and extend the past into the future so that there appears to be no present. Even if you are looking at this text right "now" and seeing it "now" it is NOT happening now. You're experiencing the past. This is why the workbook says "I see only the past" or "I see nothing as it is now". It's not possible TO see anything as it is now, other than God. The entire world is therefore in the past and so is already over.

We are never present in this world. This world and presence are incompatible.

The idea of separation from God MUST ALWAYS lead to a physical universe, bodies which suffer, and death.

Physical matter is the CONSEQUENCE of believing in separation, causing there to be illusions of separation, which gradually intensify and become more extreme and differentiated, to the point where it turns into what WE call physical matter.

Physical matter is the solidification of the idea of separation. It is the idea taken to its extreme, yet completely logical conclusion. If there is separation from God, there is sin. If there is sin, there must be death. Death will be expressed as the pursuit of making the illusions ever more heavy, dense, attacking, unlike each other, at war with each other, and eventually will produce an entire universe of physical matter.

The objects in this physical universe will also not have completed the ego's "thought" of separation, until they have coalesced further to produce physical bodies, which will then be used to bind the Son of God to the body, and to then attack the body to kill it to try to COMPLETELY DESTROY the Life of the Son of God. That was the purpose of the whole idea of separation to begin with, and death - physical death in a physical world - is the completion or enactment of that idea.

A physical universe HAD to arise from the tiny mad idea. Illusions HAD to continue to fight with each other, because the establishment of sin demanded that there be punishment. The conflict produced by the idea of separation was automatically a state of WAR, and this war HAD to play out, and in doing so it led to a huge fragmentation of the mind, a diversification of illusions, and eventually a THOUGHT FORM which we regard as physical matter. The entire physical universe is a NATURAL RESULT of the idea of separation, and is all that COULD come from it.

Physical matter is nothing more than a very strong illusion. It is a "thought form". It is a very BIG thought of separation appearing in the mind of the Son of God. In all its ways, it is designed to cover up awareness of God and to block sight of the truth. Bodies are a specific outcome of the logical conclusion of the ego thought system, demanding a concentrated target to receive punishment in the dream, and their destruction is the "success" or final statement that attempts to make the illusion COMPLETELY REAL. Or more succinctly, it is the nail in the coffin.

All of this is illusion. All of it is thought. It is just an IDEA. It's an idea of being separate, and therefore dead. As dead as death could ever possibly show up or seem to happen in illusions. The most intense, believable, seemingly real death possible. To use it seems very real, but it is not.

This is the metaphysical truth of A Course in Miracles. Separation from God results in the eventual, inevitable "manifestation" of a physical universe, a universe of death and destruction, simply as the most extreme expression of an illusion of being separate possible. Regardless of whether the Course text itself has used the term "physical universe", this is still the truth about this place we inhabit. It is the lower end of the dream of death, and physical matter is a death thought.

And yet, none of it is really happening because separation was never really possible to begin with.

The physical universe is an ILLUSION. God did not create it or make it. OUR idea of separation made it.

God created you as a holy child of God. He gave you an individual soul with a mind and a free will. God has many creative children, forming the family of God.

"The soul is the idea of self fullness." It's the idea that you are fully a self, and that the whole of your soul/self is shared with the fullness of the Kingdom of God.

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him."

The idea of separation is simply an idea of denial. It's an attempt to deny and block reality. In a way, it's an attempt to disown what you are. Its a refusal to accept yourself as God created you. It's an attempt to NOT will, moving into unwillingness and imprisonment.

This means, "the ego" is not really the production of an additional self, or the manufacture of a first-and-only self. It is in fact the idea of NOT HAVING A SELF. It is self denial.

The ego is also the attempt to not be yourself. Being a denial of your soul, it's a withdrawal away from the awareness of what you are. As a rejection of light, this throws you into what seems to be the illusion of darkness.

Generally speaking, your soul is infinite and unlimited. It is everywhere, like God, sharing all of existence with Him. God occupies all "space" in the Kingdom and so does your soul in an "overlapping", sharing union.

In the idea of denial of self, you become withdrawn from being everywhere. You attempt to isolate yourself, to not share, to close down, to possess some small part of yourself which you claim is yours alone and NOT shared with the rest. It's the idea of having something exclusively yours which is unique and different and not accessible to anyone else.

This really is the idea of selfishness, the desire to have something special that no-one else has.

"The ego is the idea of selfishness." An idea of selfishness is NOT the idea of A SELF, it's the idea of a self having a poor attitude and not wanting to share with others.

But we have to frame this correctly. The ego is not a self. The ego is the idea of what you are NOT. It's the idea of NOT HAVING a self. It only SEEMS to be "a something" that you made, when in fact it is NOTHING. The belief that it has existence IS a state of deception, believing illusions are true. The ego is NOT really a self at all.

The ego, or egotism, is really the idea of self destruction, which is why the entire system of thought is centered on and leads towards death - the destruction of your self.

In death you are attempting to finish off the intention of becoming completely unwilling to exist. This is a selfish act. And it is there that the so-called ego reaches its climax. In essence, by trying to be selfish, a soul/mind tries to have private ownership, and ends up losing everything instead.

So it's not so much that we really made an ego. We didn't really invent a separate self. We didn't start out with no self and come up with a new self. We HAD a self before the separation and WILL have a self afterwards. Every soul that God created has individuality and eternal life.

The problem is not a matter of whether or not you have a self or are an individual being. The problem is a matter of whether you are willing to SHARE EXISTENCE with all of the rest of creation.

To be the fullness of the soul, you have to expand infinitely and unlimited. You have to be open to allowing access to YOU by everyone else, and to have access to everyone else. To join minds, to share all that exists, you cannot be closed off, isolated, excluded or imprisoned.

So by "going into egotism", we basically "made an ego" but only in the sense that we really did NOT create anything. Th ego has not been created, and in fact it does not exist at all. Not only is the ego the idea of what you would be if you did not exist, it also does not exist. In essence, "the separate self" is total fiction and DOES NOT EXIST. The belief that you ARE IT, is a mistaken belief and needs correction.

So you really can't be the ego, but you can believe you are. You can't be not yourself, but you can pretend to be. You can't lose your soul, but you can think you gain the whole world and lose it all anyway. You can't stop being as God created you, but you can dream of being something you're not.

The ego isn't the idea of a self. It's not a separate self. It's the idea of NOT a self, of NO self. An illusion that appears o be a something, but is a nothing. Believing that the ego is a self, or that you have an ego, is an upside-down belief. It suggests that in reality there is no self, and in illusions there are selves. This is an EGO perspective, having bought into the illusion that the ego state is a state of existence, not recognizing it as NON existence.

If you think that awakening means the end of self, due to the end of ego, you are thinking upside down. Selves ONLY exist in the Kingdom of God, NOT in the world of illusions. All illusory selves DO NOT exist, all REAL selves do exist.

"The Kingdom of God includes all His children, and their creations."

The Kingdom of ego death contains NO selves. Selves attempting to destroy themselves and ending in death.

This world of ego perspectives is merely a world of pretend selves, blocking and covering up the world of real selves. Trying to end self is just another extension of the ego's suicidal approach resulting in SELF DENIAL. Rejecting the soul results in death, not life. The ego does need to be "let go", but since it was never who you were to begin with, this is a loss of NOTHING. You give up nothing, to gain everything.

Recognizing that this no-self does not exist, and that you are the self God created, is the atonement. The ego doesn't have to "die" because it never existed in the first place. All we really need to do is stop pretending to be OTHER than the self that God created, or opposed to our self in any way.

Jesus also clarifies that our sense of self will EXPAND as we awaken. It will expand to INCLUDE all of the brothers and creations that we tried to deny. And it will expand to include the infinite immortal soul that you forgot is who you really are.

Losing the ego isn't the end of you. It's a return to your self. It's a reclamation of your immortal identity - still a God created you.

The separate self is really just the idea of being a SEPARATED self.. a self that had a self before the separation, which BECAME separated due to a lack of sharing, and will RESUME sharing and cease being separated after the atonement. This is why Jesus refers to such selves as "separated ones", NOT "separate ones". Just because you are separated does not mean you throw out your self when the "separateness" ends.

Awakening is a return to your real self. An acceptance that you are as God created you. A remembering of your soul.

"NOTHING can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the hands of His Father. By doing this, the mind awakens from its sleep, and the Soul remembers its Creator. All sense of Separation disappears, and level confusion vanishes."

"Separation" does not mean that which allows there to be many. It means that which keeps many things from sharing anything.

"God who encompasses all being nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually and want to share it to increase their joy."

We are all permanent beings in the heart of God.

This world is part of death.

Heaven, in which there is eternal life, is the only "place" where there is life. Everything this side of the separation idea, which includes this entire universe, this planet, and all bodies, is part of the idea of an opposite to life, thus death. This is why it's a "dream of death".

Everything in this world is dead. The course calls it "a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son".

You need to realize that only at the very, very highest level, squarely centered in Heaven, is there "life", because life must be eternal life and eternity is not outside of Heaven. That means that anything "outside" heaven, which is this universe and everything in it, is not life. It's an idea or picture of death.

So even while you are "living" your life and seem to be in relative health or having a body or "half dead" or totally dead and buried, all of that spectrum of "death and dying" is death. Not just the climax. The final moment of death is just a symbol of death WITHIN a dream of death.

"There is no life outside of Heaven" literally means that every form in this world is not life. "Heaven and Earth are opposite in every way". Earth is nothing like Heaven.

When we say, that we see God in the world because God is in my mind, this is a helpful idea and can be an experience but it is not well-worded considering how many people use it. It should say, this world is an idea WITHIN God, or at least more accurately we could say, I see God IN SPITE of the world because the world is in my mind and so is God.

We must be careful not to equate this world with heaven or with God. This world is an illusion. It does NOT EXIST and it is not heaven. There is at best a reflection of heaven here in this dream, which is not the same thing as being in heaven.

This world, a picture of death, must disappear, because death is an illusion, and all illusions must disappear. This is why this world holds nothing that you want. Who could want death to be real? It is not God's creation and it is nothing like the nature of God at all.

As the course teaches, you cannot see both worlds. The body's eyes behold a world which the ego made from death, and the "spiritual eye" (the one mind) sees only heaven. The bridge, in-between the two states, or the "forgiven world", is just a transitionary state in which the world of heaven is reflected and glimpsed.

Jesus refers to Heaven as a "living world". Earth, and this universe, is not a living world. It is a dead world. It is an idea of being dead. This is why Jesus says the idea of death is the last to go, and that when the idea of death goes, the entire world goes, because the entire world is founded on the idea of death, and everything in it is an idea of death.

If you were not dead already, you would not need to achieve resurrection, and resurrection would be meaningless. But resurrection is your goal because it means you have accepted atonement and returned to life. Returned to heaven, and left the world of illusory death behind.

There is no world. This is the central lesson the course would attempt to teach. Only God's creation, God's world of Heaven, the Kingdom, which is the extension of Himself, his holy creative thoughts, as the One Son, the many sons, and the sonship, sharing love IN HEAVEN.

Where is Jesus? He is in heaven. Why isn't he in the world? Because the world is not heaven. Where will Jesus be when his body disappears? Not in this world. Where will this world be when death is fully undone? Nowhere. What will REMAIN when a world of death has been undone and disappeared, recognized as having not existed at all? The only thing that will remain is God's Kingdom, which is HEAVEN, and you are part of it and all of it. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with this universe or this planet.