In ACIM Jesus describes that revelation is direct communication between God and one of his creations.

It also describes revelation as intensely personal.

It also describes revelation as being knowledge which cannot be directly shared, but that God wants us to bring or express the truth of the knowledge to OTHERS.

Now, we can do some pretty simple logical reasoning here.

1) God can only communicate directly with beings that He directly created, with no go-between.

2) He must communicate immediately and directly to whatever He created.

3) Whatever He created must be in Heaven and must be real.

4) Revelation is not given to the ego, it's given to God's creation. The ego is not part of His Creation and He does not communicate with it.

5) Since revelation is "intensely personal" and it's given to a real creation in heaven, and yet cannot be directly shared with others, there MUST be "personal selves" in heaven.

6) Since God wants the knowledge of the revelation to be shared with OTHERS, there must BE others in heaven.

7) Therefore God must have multiple sons who He DIRECTLY CREATED IN HEAVEN, which are real and permanent. Which also means, the idea of a "one son" who somehow encompasses the sonship or is the ONLY Son, is incorrect. The One Son is the SHARED EXPERIENCE of all DIRECTLY CREATED Sons, not a go-between or umbrella.

8) Given that God can communicate directly and fully to ONE of His creations, in an experience of transmission which goes ONLY to that one creation and not to other creations, and cannot be shared BY other creations at the same time, this MUST mean that there is some kind of "separation" or division IN heaven distinguishing one self from another, preventing the revelation from being shared.

9) Therefore Heaven cannot be a state of "no separations" or "no individuality" or "no free will".

10) Therefore ideas of non-duality and "oneness" meaning "only one thing" with "no separate parts" is a very poor fit for the truth of A Course in Miracles.

"God, who encompasses all being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually, and are willing to share it to increase their joy." - ACIM

I have been noticing in myself lately that I keep being judgemental. My thoughts feel like judgements. Even just basic thoughts of "what something is" feels like a judgement. I wondered to myself why I seem to be judging all the time. I hadn't realized just how judgmental I seem to be all the time.

This could be in the form of just having some opinion about everything. It didn't even necessarily need to be in terms of anger or projecting blame, just a kind of incessant "believing I know". Just constantly and consistently labelling everything in terms of what I believe it means.

I would just keep labeling everything in course terms. "That's an illusion", "They're level confused", "This is unreal", etc. I seemed to be just using the whole course to add a layer of naming and shaming to everything I was aware of.

I noticed also that I couldn't seemingly just look at something without "coursifying it". I couldn't just enjoy something or do normal activities without having to have an ACIM commentary running alongside it. Just constantly trying to "counteract" the world and everything I see with statements, trying to deny it, trying to change it, trying to push it away.

This also seems to be tied into a general sense of unhappiness about everything. My ego would sometimes really flare up with attack thoughts which clearly were attempts to increase separation. It increased a sense of being alone, and further justified a sort of seeming "bitterness" about the world. It kind of felt like kind of slipping down further into hell rather than rising out of it.

I also have been growing weary of ACIM, quite honestly. I've chewed on its words and metaphysics and have written about it to such an extent that I was becoming tired of it. Tired of thinking about it. Like I'd done it all and seen it all and there was nothing left to figure out. As if figuring it out, or understanding it, was the whole point.

I wanted some kind of more direct, simplified experience. Something more practical that works. Something more direct, that didn't have a layer of interpretation or second-hand thinking alongside it. I didn't want more affirmations or course statements flying around in my mind. I didn't want just another commentary or people just parroting the course's words as if knowing what it means. I and I didn't want to keep doing forgiveness on the basis of some bunch of statements, trying to use words to fend off ego attacks.

I had to step away from all this for a bit to just settle down and get a sense of something more basic and simple and fundamental. And this is when I started opening up to wanting the Holy Spirit to inform me of a better way. I wanted to see things how he sees things and to join with him more, to just very simply take some small little step that would be enough to fix my mind without all the psychobabble. Some kind of simple something I could just "do" that would produce a happier experience without all the course crap alongside it.

I saw that having conversations about the course just wasn't really working. Everyone's just talking about it. We use its statements as if they are magic wands. But I wasn't seeing a satisfying effect from this. Just figuring out what it means and repeating its words didn't do much. I didn't want to be just another parrot regurgitating the same stuff while staying entirely confined in this same "way" of trying to apply it. I wanted something much closer to my being, that I didn't have to think about. Something much more basic and intimate that I could "live" without mental gymnastics.

This is when I started to discover that I was in general laying an entire interpretation of everything on top of it. This interpretation was based on my thinking that I knew what things were. An attempt to understand it. I saw that I was giving everything meaning through this interpretation. I was deciding that things sucked or were negative and was then reacting to my own decision as to what I thought it was. My interpretation of everything was being mistaken for the thing itself.

So then I considered the fact that every single time that I was less than happy in any way, it was a part of this "way" that I was interpreting. I was filtering or translating or changing, twisting, whatever was "out there", into some kind of decided-upon "version" that I was then experiencing as my "perception of it". Because if you remember, "perception is a result not a cause" and "projection makes perception".

It's really what I project that produces perceptual issues. If I perceived a result or conclusion of "unhappy", I must have projected and wanted that. If I was interpreting that something happening "meant" that I should be afraid, I must've decided that it meant this. I gave it this meaning. And this meaning changed my perception and produces "experiences" or effects which were generally unpleasant.

In the truest sense, I was doing this to myself, as in the secret of salvation, because it was this whole "layer" of interpretation, coming in between me and the world so to speak, that was responsible for causing my "experience" of the world to be faulty. I was willing to consider that any time I was not happy I MUST have mis-interpreted and had come up with some kind of MISTAKEN opiniion about what it MEANS.

I had to be willing to recognize that it was my chosen interpretation that was entirely responsible for the "effects" of that interpretation upon myself, the seeming ego reactions or fears or upset emotions or any kind of annoyance or disturbance. All of my suffering was really rooted in that layer of interpreting, NOT in what lied "beyond it" as the world. And that meant that I was making a lot of mistaken interpretations, resulting in a lot of unhappiness.

Light a light-switch, I then found that simply by recognizing I had made an interpretation, and just being willing to admit that it was the entire reason why I was not happy, my mind would become open to just "letting that interpretation go." I didn't seem to have to do anything else for this to happen. As they say, "illusions recognized must disappear." My interpretation IS the illusion. It was a way of turning "reality" into something it's not. Just recognizing it as an illusory, self-made, made-up, filtered "view", was enough to make it disappear.

As soon as it would just disappear, immediately my mind would light up with light and happiness. It would seem as though a higher me, rooted in the "back" of my mind, would suddenly shine outward. It was as if secretly behind all my ego upset sense of self, there was this higher me that was just always happy and filled with light and wasn't taking anything seriously. It seemed to already be there. I didn't invent it myself. Perhaps this was the real me.

This has started a revolution in my mind and in my outlook and in my way of experiencing the world. It isn't a forgiveness based on some kind of long-winded, elaborate story that I have to tell myself, trying to deprogram myself, trying to counteract perceived problems with a long litany of affirmative statements, or trying to remember course principles, or trying to grasp at straws to make it go away.

It was very very simple. It was much more a sort of change in how I EXPERIENCE what's going on. And that was far more immediate. More like just a kind of attitude change. Not something "thought about", or arrived at through understanding, or made out of complicated metaphysics, or logically deduced. It was a kind of forgiveness that was just a much more intimate matter of psychological engagement.

Either I was interpreting or I wasn't. Either I had chosen to invent some kind of "meaning" for something, or I had let it go. Either I was filtering and believing I knew what something was, or I was just willing to stop doing it. It wasn't a matter of replacing it with something or justifying it or explaining it or writing a book about it. It was kind of like just stepping back. Getting out of my analysis. Stopping my self-made attempt to determine what something is.

The bizarre thing is just how effortless it is and how immediately a whole world of low-level ego experience, suffering, upset and darkness, is immediately overruled by a much much higher bright light of happiness and lightness.

It almost seems wrong, in that the light-heartedness of it doesn't even seem to care to "address"the many doubts and fears and concerns that the ego had. It just sort of leaps above it and pays no attention to it. Like, who would have thought THAT would be a solution? Not to change the ego but to just get OUT of it? To just leave the desert without even dealing with all the many loose ends and questioning fears.

I think for a ton of years now I've generally been locked into the ego mind. Regardless of how lofty my thoughts have been, and regardless of efforts to forgive. It's always still been accompanied by ego feelings, upsets, emotions, fears, reactions, ego rebounds.

I was just kind of getting fed up with the fact that every time I tried to do anything with the course, it ALWAYS had a stupid ego rebound afterwards. Catharsis, release, upset emotions, fear reactions etc. It was just so annoying. I was kind of getting tired of the course in this sense because I couldn't seem to do any of it without having this sense of ... I just don't want to do this. My ego self or whatever just is wired against God and does not want to wake up, and can't. "I", mixed up in that sense of lower-suffering-self, couldn't stop being the way it was.

So there's been this tug of war between the part of mind that just basically couldn't care less about the course and just wants to live a normal life in a body, versus this constant barrage of attempts to awaken to some kind of higher life and perspective that's totally incompatible. The contrast between the two was becoming very acute and I couldn't find a way to satisfy both. I had to even take a break from ACIM for a while and just be in "my ego" to just be normal and stop hitting it over the head with a hammer of spirituality.

But I think what's come out of that now is this very very unexpected movement in which I let the ego stuff remain ego and just seem to step outside of it. It's quite odd. Because I now see that within myself there's this sort of self-contained internal bubble of my suffering self, complete with all the ego emotions and upsets, which is generally most of the time unhappy, riddled with fears and grief and uncertainty and so on. And it seems like this is all within my body. And then somehow there's this higher me that is totally outside of all that, shining a light from a vantage point of not even trying to understand or interpret anything.

It has raised questions of, who even am I. What aspects of myself or of my experience actually is "the ego" and should be something to "get rid of", versus what aspects of this is actually a permanent part of my true nature? Are my emotional reactions just an ego thing? Is this sense of "me suffering" the ego? In particular, where do I draw the line?

But I'm finding that maybe I don't actually have to answer that in terms of a description of it. Because what I seem to be realizing is that ALL of that internal seeming "struggling self" is entirely sort of the "byproduct" of this whole "thinking I know" thing. This whole interpretation of everything. Having a judgement about what everything is. Labelling everything in course terms. Trying to describe everything in explicit detail.

That whole approach of trying to "understand" the world and everything in my experience, is precicely what CAUSES all of the suffering. It's as if, when I try to interpret "reality", it produces generally negative forms of consequence, in a cause-effect kind of way. And the outcome of that is what we might call "the ego" in me. It's this collection of reactions, emotions, upsets, perceived threats, fears, guilts, etc... which all seem to revolve around victimhood and being at the effect of something. That all seems to actually be the END RESULT OF, my minds attempts to INTERPRET reality.

So I put out some kind of negative faulty mistaken interpretation or effort to understand what something is, this results in a false perception, which in turn results in a bunch of suffering, which in turn assembles as a collection of unhappy elements that bundle together as an "ego experience". And that ego experience seems like it's somewhat outside of me. And when my mind is going there, it seems that I am the one having this experience, that my identity IS the suffering, that I AM the upset and the unhappiness. And that anchors and confines and limits my whole awareness INSIDE OF that whole viewpoint.

So if my view is so narrow and limited and false, producing heavy false dark perceptions, then my whole sense of self seems to become imprisoned and confined, alone and afraid, small and weak and vulnerable. It seems like my entire life has been spent accumulating sufferings in this little internal storehouse, surrounding and forming this confused and separated-off sense of self or of "my experience" of life. All gathered up in a ball, even which seems to be housed within my body and especially within the "emotional center" in the stomache area.

If this ENTIRE experience of life is the end RESULT, ie perceptual consequence of, the various mistaken MEANINGS that I keep putting onto things, then it stands to reason (lol) that if I fundamentally CHANGE my entire approach and alter the process of "giving meaning", then it's going to totally override that ENTIRE realm of expeirence.

It's going to basically switch off the ego experience, it's going to totally override all the upsets and reactions, all the unhappy emotions etc. Because it was as though, all along, all this time, ALL of my sufferings have been the RESULT of the meaning that I'VE been giving to everything.

I've become very good at describing things, explainig things, analyzing the world, picking apart illusions, labelling stuff, counter-attacking attacks, and generally just reacting to MY OWN decisions. And suddenly I seem to be embarking on an entirely different ballgame. I guess it can be described as moving above the battlefield in a way. It's like a HUGE stepping back and just stopping trying to fucking figure everything out. Not just because it can't be figured out but because the act of trying to do so is BLOCKING me. It shuts down my light and decreases my awareness and turns me into a judger.

So now for me, this whole course thing, it's turning into something very very simplified. It's just some basic sort of flip of the switch thing, between whether I want to carry on with my faulty judgements/interpretations/translations of what's going on, or whether I want to just let those go.

As I let them go, it's like a huge cloud of psychological blockage is lifted away. A bright HAPPY light switches on out of nowhere, as if I'm getting back in touch with the REAL me that is in the back of all this, and has been there all along covered up by all the mental distortions. It immediately feels remarkably happy and light, regardless of how heavy and dark the ego experience was "before" I stepped out of it.

What the ego is, I think it really is just the "effects" that are produced when we try to "narrow" (Jesus interjected) reality down to being this or that, to describe it, to judge it, to assess or evaluate what stuff "is". The labels and meanings we keep trying to give things. And then mistakedly confusing that effort for reality, believing that reality now inherently IS the meaning that WE decided it has. That produces all the ego reactions, all suffering, all unhappiness and dissatisfaction.

When we stop producing these illusions of interpreation, trying to think we know what things are, trying to understand the ego and the world, trying to filter what's happening, trying to insist that something is what we think it is, trying to be right about our labels and projections, all that just immediately switches off the "ego effect" and puts our mind back in touch with cause.

We settle back into reality, we return to our baseline, we get back in touch with who we are BEHIND all these layers of interpretation, and the clouds part and the light comes shining forth. And it feels SO much happier than the deluge of suffering that ALL interpretations produce.

So it's not a matter of trying to get "that ego" to change and grow and wake up and become spiritual, the ego is just the result of "shutting down". If we are to "open up" we have to be willing to actually be open all the time. Because any time we judge or label or describe or analyze or think we know about or seem certain of what stuff is or means, we are actually narrowing and closing down, casting anchors into the wind. And that just diminishes our light and makes us feel dark and alone and afraid.

We step out of the ego by stepping into the light of "not knowing", of forgetting what you taught yourself, or letting go of thinking you know, and of learning NOT to try interpreting anything. When you stop projecting your made-up meanings onto everything, you leave an open space for the Holy Spirit and God to project THEIR meaning instead, in the emptiness that you've left there. In the space you've provided for light to shine through you. Really it's more like, getting out of your own way.

I am finding this is what forgiveness means to me now. It's the simple movement away from having made the mistake of deciding what something must mean, which is pretty much always in error and leads to suffering, and just being willing to not do that. My own meanings are what blocks my sight. My own judgements of reality are what keeps reality from me. This is how we undo perception itself, by undoing the basis for judgement. And it takes no more than a slight willingness to recognize my self-inflicted suffering is coming from my self-imposed meanings, to let them disappear to reveal the light within.

Yesterday I saw for the first time, myself just pivoting differently, in a situation where someone had clearly "done something wrong", breaking some rules. I could've "held it against" the person, and yet somehow I remembered that this entire experience of it being "wrong" or sinful was a meaning I was giving it, and as I stepped back from that I found myself expressing that the person was still lovable regardless of this mistake, and it was only a mistake. It was as kind of "experiential forgiveness", so basic and simple, a psychological act of just "withholding judgement" in a way, that I felt it produced some kind of miraculous effects afterwards. And it felt good.

Ultimately it all boils down to the simple idea that we have en experiential realitionship with truth and reality, and we are either going to be fully open it and let it be what it is without trying to define it, or we're going to narrow our perception and lay judgements and labels on it, trying to dissect it. And as soon as we do that we will shut down our light and go into darkness (ego). If we want light and happiness, we have to learn to just accept reality in the fullness of "what is" (not the world as such), by not "having an opinion about it". Not laying a meaning on it. So that the light can fully shine and illuminate our happiness.

"Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, ****nor seeks to twist it to appearance that it likes.**** It merely looks and waits and judges not. ****He who would not forgive must judge****, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must ****learn to welcome truth exactly as it is.****"

"If you could accept the world as meaningless and ***let the truth be written upon it for you****, it would make you indescribably happy." "In the world you, can become a spotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you, to all around you. You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves."

"The reflection of God NEEDS no interpretation. IT IS CLEAR. Clear but the mirror, and the message which shines forth from what the mirror holds out for everyone to see, NO-ONE will fail to understand. It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to the mirror that is in HIM. He recognizes it, because he has been taught his NEED for it, but knows not where to look to FIND it. Let him, then, see it in YOU, and share it WITH you. Could you but realize, for a single instant, the power of healing that the reflection of God, shining in YOU, can bring to all the world, you COULD not wait to make the mirror of your mind clean, to receive the image of the Holiness that heals the world."

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision."

"The miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or suffering in any form, because it can so easily be changed."

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer I cannot experience loss and I cannot die. I am not a body. Love created me like Itself."

-------------------

Grief from a loss can be very, very difficult to deal with. I've personally had to go through a ton of it. 18 years ago I left my home country of England and immigrated to the USA.

This entailed a significant sense of loss in ways I never imagined and was just horrendous to go through producing massive amounts of tears over a span of several years. Some of the losses included:

Loss of family - not being around them or able to be around them, even on holidays. Not being able to travel easily to see them. Not a single member of my family was at our wedding or any other event. Although no-one literally died, it was as though they all had. Actually just even writing that just now has brought me to tears again.

Loss of culture - not being immersed in the culture and not even realizing it was a culture. Being surrounded by a completely alien environment where no-one even speaks your language or sounds like you, where there are no recognizable holidays or shared events, with no familiar social cues, no familiar traditions, sense of dress code, or anything. Top this off by being surrounded by an entire country that celebrates things you have no familiarity with or sense of identification with, and it adds up to even more alienation.

Loss of familiar forms - an entirely different set of foods, brands, products, money, buildings that are completely different in design, traffic laws totally flipped around, extremely different weather, totally different tv shows, clothing, standards, a different style of working, all new holidays, etc. Not to mention the loss of a sense of "home" or belonging or fitting in or being part of anything.

Loss of identity - I assumed that so much of what made me "me" was inherent to me. It was not. It was inherent to the country and culture. Once I was outside of it it brought into question who I even am, what is truly "mine" and what was just something I inherited or assumed as part of "normality". My whole sense of self was shaken to the core and transformed. I grieved even for who I used to be.

Each year various thing would trigger me off. Especially holidays, birthdays, christmas, and even American holidays which were celebrated en masse but which I could not relate to, making me feel deeply left out in a whole other way. Christmas was a nightmare. The first sign of decorations or snow or holiday jingles would immediately trigger 2 months of hell. Sometimes I felt powerfully compelled to just run away and get the hell out of here.

What I had to learn, was about what this grief is, what is causing it, and what I can do about it. Besides hundreds of boxes of tissues, accompanying the massive purge of "losses" that I perceived, I tried various things. One thing which did immediately help was EFT (emotional freedom technique) - a form of acupressure, which alleviates emotional pain. It takes the edge off and offers some relief. But I wanted to truly heal this suffering.

What I've learned about grief is that is stems entirely from ego beliefs. Just as the course say, "No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision." Meaning, unless I am doing something to myself, there can be no basis for grief.

Every single sense of grief or loss comes from a perceived "real separation" occurring. Something which seemed real, which is now inaccessible, unavailable, distant, kept apart, or more permanently removed. This can be a loss of a person's life or a country or a pet or a culture or a favorite job or a tv show or whatever.

The ego first values these things by making them special, making them real, attaching to them, identifying with them, and believing they are important. Then, when one of these things is "lost" or separated from us, we literally are experiencing this idea that we're separated from reality, from what we "love", from what we think is valuable or important. This produces a rift within our mind, a split, and it can be very deep.

This sense of "real separation happening" is absolutely nothing short of a reflection or fragment of the idea of being separated from God. Every "loss" is the idea that God has been lost. That love has gone away. This produces horrendous feelings of lack, emptiness, depression, sadness, loss, loneliness, hurt, anger, fear, guilt, shame, you name it.

Additionally, in the ego thought system there is an idea of sacrifice. Sacrifice means that you first of all make something real or valuable or special, and then you believe that in order to atone you have to forceably be deprived of it, even while you still value it, which *guarantees* that you will suffer a sense of having lost something important to you. It is the idea that if you lose i.e. sacrifice something, you will gain something. The ego is totally nuts.

Even giving something to someone else through the ego and perceiving it as you being diminished or lacking or losing in some way, is the exact same dynamic which all grief is based on. And your reaction to it will be varying degrees of a sense of loss. It may not be a deep deep grief when you begrudgingly give up something you liked, but it's still the same dynamic.

I've found over time that all of my grief stems from my false perception. i.e., it ENTIRELY erupts out of the perception that a "real separation" has occurred. There is no other cause of it. It is not really about "oh I miss that person" or "oh I lost that job I loved" or "oh I don't have my family any more". These are mere forms of the same basic content of separation. It is the sense of having lost something you are attached to or which is special to you, i.e. fake reality, that produces the ego responses of grief.

I have also found, that even if I am deep in feelings of grief and it becomes possible to reclaim or get back or visit people or things which were "lost", this still does not in any way fix the grief. It is my own perception of real separation which causes the upset and until that is undone, as a false belief, I can still be in the presence of the very people or things I lost and still feel a loss. All loss is an inside job.

The grieving is actually taking place INSIDE my mind, between one part of myself that I made special and another part which has lost it. I've seen that my grieving is entirely selfish and about myself, and never really about anything outside of me. This has also taught me that e.g. returning home or going back to family will NOT resolve the problem of grieving, and through my own experience it never has. For the ego it's a fake promise of salvation.

I've also found therefore that any grief that I am having is entirely due to my own beliefs, my own choices, my own perceptions, my own attitude, and what I choose to perceive. If I choose to believe death is real, I WILL automatically be very upset when someone dies. If I choose to make someone special or attach to them or "need" them, I will AUTOMATICALLY grieve whether I like it or not when they are taken away. I set myself up for loss every time that I try to take possession of something or depend on it too heavily or make it special or considering it more exclusively valuable or conditional. And so, I literally do this to myself.

Every ego attempt to make something special, to "have it" or value it or attach to it or believe in it (ego beliefs) or possess it or need it, will AUTOMATICALLY bring with it the conditions for its INEVITABLE LOSS. It is a total trap. You literally are signing up for LOSS, when you sign up for "getting".

The truth is, no-one needs to grieve, no-one is supposed to be experiencing loss, no-one is supposed to be crying or unhappy, no-one is supposed to spend 50 years getting over the loss of a parent or child, no-one is supposed to be SUFFERING like this. Without using ACIM whatsoever, and just fudging our way through this stuff, we will take however long it takes to cry and cathartic and remember and try to keep them alive etc...ie reluctantly letting go. Without any other tools, most people spend years dealign with deep losses.

And then there is another camp of people who are so level-confused that they'll try to force you to just "get over it" or repress it or censor it or not feel any feelings or never cry or bypass it with ACIM pleasantries like "it never happened" etc. For most people, they HAVE to go through a "grieving process" because its the only way they have to heal the ACTUAL problem, which is a sense of separation from God. And that is the ONLY problem, even in the case of grief, and even in the case of death.

If a person is having such a deep emotional pain, there is nothing helpful in repressing it or trying to ignore it or not letting it out or trying not to cry or to shove it down in some way to pretend it's not there. Feelings, once they are created, MUST be felt and allowed to flow. And usually the sense of loss is so deep that it simply generates a ton of feelings. They must be felt, not turned into emotional constipation. But that said.... tentatively.... there must be a better way, and there is.

Tackling the real issue, which is a sense of "real separation" or "real loss" or "real sacrifice" or "real absence", which is a BELIEF in your mind that has nothing to do with the world or other people, there is much more HOPE for a swifter recovery. What a person has "suffered" in a "loss" is really that they are suffering from a false perception of reality (God) being lost permanently, as though completely real. It is very, very convincing to the ego, and it produces just horrendous depths of unhappiness.

But this separation, this loss, it can be healed. And it can be SIGNIFICANTLY undone if not entirely, through applications of ACIM principles. i.e. forgiveness, seeing the truth, unearthing the lies about "justified grief" or "everyone grieves" or "loss is normal after death" or whatever else... stuff that well-meaning psychiatrists have made up to explain why most ego-driven people suffer. Jesus has a different message: "You need not suffer."

It is ONLY a perception of real separation that produces grief or loss, ever. There is no other cause. And perception CAN be healed because beliefs CAN be changed. It is NOT necessary to have terrible grief. It is NOT necessary to have a deep, bottomless pit of misery for years and years. It is NOT necessary to feel like you lost part of yourself forever and ever. It is NOT necessary to feel hurt and angry and abandoned and upset for the rest of your life. There is nothing that cannot be healed.

For me now, every single year my "christmas grief" has dwindled at a rapid rate, since doing the course. This years was the least upset I've ever been. Triggers have been collapsed. Ideas of real loss undone. A sense of major separation significantly reduced. Tears have dwindled. It's not simply been through years of suffering and tears or "normal grieving process". It's because I apply forgiveness principles to what I am experiencing. In the middle of a moment of grief, if I can even remember that "I am not separate from God", and that this grief is about that... it immediately cuts through it like a knife.

Grieving can be a very long term process for many people, me included, but it does not HAVE to be. There is no requirement in God's Creation that anyone be upset for any reason. There is no justification for unhappiness. There is no rational for why it's "normal" to be seriously upset about anything. The Course is offering us the END of all death, all suffering, all sickness, and all grieving. To restore us to life, to happiness, to joy, to freedom, to liberation from all sad feelings and all sense of God being dead.

You need not suffer. What can you possibly grieve for but the belief in separation from God, which is not real? There has been no loss. Separation has not happened. God is alive and well and loves you. What's to be grieving about in truth?

This is a slight technicality which the ego forgot to mention.

If you knew and could see that any attempt you make to influence or hurt or affect another, immediately has direct repercussions upon yourself, and that it is absolutely impossible to escape ANY of the effects, then you would have no choice but to always love.

It is ONLY because you do not see, ie are not aware, that this is true, and applies in every situation, that you think it's possible to get away with one set of rules applying to someone else that does not apply to you. Or that you can cause something without experiencing the effects.

The ego is entirely based on this idea that you are not equal to your brother in some way, that they can be the one who is a sinner and not you.

This creates the tremendous illusion, commonly believed-in by most of the planet, that you literally can attack or judge or harm or condemn without having any side effects whatseover.

This is false. It is not true at all.

You could call it karma. It's not pay-back. It's not compensation. It's the simply fact that WHATEVER you do, you WILL do it to yourself and everyone.

"Whatever you do unto the least of my brothers you do unto me" ... or something like that. Every way you treat everyone else, you are treating Jesus and God the same way.

Not necessarily that they will receive the treatment you are dishing out, but you will believe they are.

What applies to others applies to you. At all times.

There are no loopholes. There is no exit clause. There are no workarounds. There is no hope of being especially skilled or capable or clever or imaginative in how you figure out how to cheat the system. The system is not cheatable. God's laws are pemanent.

This is what "shared interests" are all about. You, being literally one with your brother, SHARE everything with them, and therefore receive everything you give.

This is also why giving and receiving are one. What you give you will receive.

The ego in you will cleverly point out just how much you are "being ego", in an attempt to compel you to want to "get rid of the ego".

Once you fall for this trick, you will be not only reinforcing the belief that you are not spiritual enough, but will also add to this unspirituality by adding force and attack and sacrifice to your life. You'll "should yourself" and guilt yourself for being guilty.

Feeling bad because you feel bad. Feeling guilty because you feel guilty. Criticizing yourself for being too critical. Attacking yourself for attacking. Demanding you be a better person for not being good enough. These are all ego traps.

The way out is to not believe what the ego is saying is true. Is it true that you are being too guilty, too unworthy, too ego? Is it true that what you are doing is not spiritual? Is it true that you are so behind in your forgiveness? Is it true that you haven't done enough of the workbook today? Is it true that you've been buying into the ego again in a big way? Is it true that you're not where you're supposed to be? Is it true that you are behaving in an ego way and must stop immediately? All ego temptations.

The ego loves to play the role of "spirit in charge" or "teacher of the course" or "spiritual police" or "enforcer of spiritual ways". The ego will always pretend to be separate from itself and to stand apart from itself, so that it can stand in judgement of itself and hand out rules and regulations against itself for how it needs to get into line and conform. It will even do this in the name of being "more spiritual", based on the assertion you are not spiritual already.

It will put on a disguise to pretend it is `not the ego` and then hand down some kind of sentence for how `the rest of the ego` needs to stop being ego. You wouldn't think of this because you're so used to the idea that what one person does to another has no effect on themselves. But the ego's entire mechanism is SELF-ATTACK, and it will happily stand over itself and destroy itself and attack itself in the name of attempting to improve itself. It tells you to get rid of the ego, with vigor, so that you will attack the ego and try to chop it out of your life... all the while enforcing the ego and keeping it.

So when it is telling you to get rid of ego... beware... its a trap, especially if it is making a big deal about just how awful the ego is and how wrong it is to have one.

When you're having an emotional reaction to anything, you usually believe it's because something outside of you is causing it.

But more accurately, you previously created a self condemnation within yourself and this is rising to the surface of your awareness. It's like a bruise which it *seems* like someone else is activating or triggering.Its your guilt about separating from God - your sin.

Our reactions are often so quick to happen that it seems like someone or something outside of you 'causes' the feeling.

So I'm sitting here, and if someone comes along and pokes me with a stick, if I suddenly feel angry and annoyed, initially it might look like I've been made to feel this way BY that person. Or that I'm only feeling this way because of that person. Its an illusion of cause and effect.

But what's really happening is, my mind already contained guilt and anger and upset which was buried unconsciously, and being poked with the stick has somehow triggered it off, like a memory or an association, and its come up in my mind quickly and now I'm experiencing it. It's easy to bridge the gap and say, well this person has inflicted a 'fresh wound' upon me, but really it's something that was already in me.

Remember as ACIM says, "we but accuse our brother of our OWN sins." - meaning that our brother does not HAVE any sins that we can accuse them of - its all your own stuff that you project onto them.

The only reason we are here in bodies is because we tried to separate from God by condemning ourselves, attempting to destroy ourselves and to punish ourselves. WE are the ones who believe in our own sinfulness and our own guilt. It's got nothing to do with anyone else and nobody else put it there. And it is this inner self-guilt that becomes 'activated' in EVERY situation where we think someone or something else does 'something' to us to 'make us' unhappy. We simply 'recall' our own guilt and re-suffer.

So instead we hire people to come along and to seem like they are the cause of our suffering, because this triggers off our AGREEMENT that what they're insinuating about us is true (that we deserve punishment or mistreatment), even if we protest violently that this is uncalled for. We cannot get upset UNLESS we agree with the person, and we cannot get upset UNLESS we already believe deep down that we deserve this treatment.

Its not other people that take our power away. We are the ones who keep trying to GIVE it to other people, to give them our own self-responsibility in an attempt to ask them to take over the rights and responsibilities that WE have for ourselves and for our own feelings. We want someone else to be to blame for the separation from God because we have blamed ourselves heavily and can't bear the burden. But OUR suffering has NOTHING to do with anyone else.

So its extremely convenient when someone comes along and triggers you or pushes your buttons. And even though you will react in such a way as to suggest your entire reaction is their fault, or you were just sitting there innocently minding your own business, the fact is they would not be ABLE to upset you if you were truly free of your own guilt. So all they are really doing is helping you to become aware of what you are hiding from, and your hidden unconscious self-hate is actually calling for you to be punished, which is why you hire and attract people to do it to you, for you, even if you fight with them about it consciously.

Ok so, this is really all about taking responsibility for who you are and what you feel and what you believe is true about yourself. You need to learn to decouple and detach the lie, that how you feel is caused by someone else. How you feel is NEVER caused by someone else. Whoever is in your life that is pissing you off, ITS NOT THEM... its not their fault, they're just helping you to see that you pissed yourself off. You HAVE to stop blaming other people for what you are feeling. Fully. Totally. "You are never upset for the reason you think" and "anger is never justified" (ie blaming another).

I have been finding that I am so incredibly used to being a victim, that whenever someone does or says something to 'upset me', and I experience a reaction (which is really just my own self-attack surfacing in my awareness) I immediately add two-and-two together and find the other person to be 'guilty of' upsetting me. It seems like they caused the upset, and its all their fault. I actually buy into this really quickly. And it totally glosses over the fact that I am only experiencing what is already in me, what I already believe it true about myself, and I am only reminded of my own self condemnation.

So what I have to learn to do, which I am experimenting with now, is to remember to remind myself... "I am completely responsible for these feelings". Whatever my reaction is, I have to stop blaming the cause of it on other people. I have to stop seeing myself as having been at the 'effect' of anyone or anything other than myself. If anyone else has 'done this to me', then I am a victim. If I am a victim I can't find peace, no matter how much I protest. No matter what my feeling is, or how much it seems justified or unjustified, or how much it *seems* to have been activated by another person, I HAVE to get to where I admit honestly that EVEN THIS FEELING is not there 'because of' that other person, it's there because *I* put it there because its MY self-attack. "The secret to salvation is this - that you but did this to yourself."

To stop being a victim, or seeing yourself as victimized, you MUST own up to the fact that everything you are experiencing is YOURS. It is your own inner experience. It is not someone else's. It is not something that anyone else put there or created or caused or made happen or reinforced in any way. Its yours. This is your shit.

You have plenty of your own shit in your own mind which you put there to cover and explain absolutely all of your reactions and upset feelings and unhappiness, without needing even one other person to explain why you feel this way. You're doing a fine job of condemning yourself without needing to resort to trying to claim that someone else has 'added to' your load.

Nobody else has ever done anything to you. Period. Let that soak in for a minute. Nobody else has EVER done anything to you, and ALL of your reactions and feelings and experiences are INSIDE YOU, because you put them there. They're YOURS.

You are completely responsible for everything you experience and everything you feel and you are NOT at the effect of anyone else, ever.

Now, this is very tempting for the ego/hurt parts of yourself to want to skapegoat and this happens very rapidly and automatically when you are not being truly honest or observant. And you are so used to this happening that every single time someone or something outside of you 'goes wrong' or 'offends you' or 'attacks you' or 'does something to you' or whatever... you immediately launch into the mistaken perception that this OTHER has 'caused you'. Caused-you, in general... ie... they are the cause, you are their effect, you have no say in who you are, and you must change to match what they say you should be feeling. Victimhood.

So.... now your job is different. Your job is to notice whenever you are in the midst of an 'interaction' with someone or something, in which it has triggered off some feelings. Some upset. Some hurt or anger or whatever it is. If you are not happy, then chances are you are currently `holding a grievance` which you THINK is a grievance against someone else. You blame them for it.

BUT... your job now is this.... you MUST CLAIM OWNERSHIP of every part of what you are experiencing. All of your feelings of hurt, anger, rejection, pain, loss, suffering, sadness, offense, frustration, unfairness, etc... all of it... it is YOURS. It's inside you. And the ONLY reason you are experiencing it is BECAUSE YOU PUT IT THERE. We have to learn that it is NEVER about the other person, you are NEVER affected by someone else, you are NEVER at the effect of the world you see, you are NEVER experiencing something as the effect/result of someone or something else, and nobody has EVER done anything whatsoever to change who you are.

It's actually completely true that nobody has ever done anything to you. As in my quote yesterday - "you are completely harmless and you cannot be hurt." Only you can do this stuff to yourself. Only you can STOP doing this to yourself. This doesn't require a crazy mental somersault or perceptual trampolining in order to see it this way. It's actually the way it IS. You're just allowing yourself to acknowledge things for how they really ARE instead of making up the story that someone else is to blame.

When owned up to with responsibility, you have ONLY done this to yourself. Everyone else is innocent. You have never been hurt by anyone. You ARE immortal and invulnerable. Admitting to this and seeing this is simply the truth. There is no distortion in it and no fairytale needed to paint a picture to make it believable. The truth is that everything you're feeling, you are choosing to feel, on your own, without any help from anyone else.

As you learn to OWN what you are feeling, something really interesting happens. Or at least this is what I am finding. If someone does something that usually I'd say "they caused me to feel xyz"... if I say to myself, ok, I'm upset and feeling hurt and angry... but its NOT because of them... these are MY feelings, ALL of this experience is MINE and has nothing to do with them.... this ownership/responsibility does two things. 1) It completely detatches from the other person and withdraws all blame from them and correctly identifies WHERE the problem is (its in me, in my mind, not in the other person), and 2) It puts me in touch with what is MINE and who I AM.

What I'm finding is that as I own my feelings and stop blaming them on other people, ALL of them... I am owning up to being MYSELF. My 'personality' is coming out. I am feeling freer and happier. My unhappy feelings are dissolving away very quickly and I remain in the victim role for FAR less time. Taking this responsibility immediately detaches me from the other person, and severs the 'tie' that was trying to pin my feelings on someone else. The door is closed, and now I'm within myself. And as I sit with my own feelings in awareness that these are MY own feelings, no matter what seemed to happen, it shines a LIGHT which dispels them. It makes me laugh. I end up laughing rather than crying.

Owning my feelings completely undoes the foundation of victimhood and completely removes victimhood from my perception, which means I now see myself as NOT victimized which means whatever I'm feeling is my OWN creation which means it's really quite hilariously silly that I've chosen to create this feeling. It shows me how ridiculous it is to choose to feel this way. Why would I choose to deliberately feel upset? I am recognizing it is not TRUE that its someone else's fault and its not TRUE that I have been attacked, and this therefore (through oneness) reminds me that I can't have been attacked therefore there CAN'T have been any effects, and therefore I have no reason to be upset. So I can let it go much more quickly and return to happiness.

I'm finding my 'personality' is coming out a lot more, my persona is diminishing, my happiness is increasing and I see myself as much less victimized. I have less reason to be afraid because I'm starting to believe that nobody else is doing anything to me, and that they can't. And by owning my own feelings I am owning BEING ME which means I am allowing myself to be myself freely without all this conditionality of my fake ego victim self. Yay.

Good times. Freedom.

I suspect that miracle impulses are not mere "urges" or "compulsions" to love, but rather I suspect they are actual "pulses" of an energetic expression, like a ball of light or a little spark of life force which a person transmits. And I think these pulses can be expressed/created by loving minds and transfer to others, causing instant healing.

I had one experience of this. My wife was very angry about something and yet, the night before I had been sending her a lot of love. So I was in a very open loving space. And as I looked at her and loved her, I felt a little pulse of concentrated energy shoot out of me and go into her. Instantaneously she went into laughter, the angry mood was immediately gone, and she said "don’t make me laugh!". I hadn’t done anything but shine love and it seemed the "impulse" that shot out of me had a miraculous healing effect on her mind.

ACIM says:

"Miracles are a spark of life."

"Miracles are energizers."

"Miracles mean life and God is the giver of life."

"Miracles are *expressions* of love."

"Miracles are thought creations."

"Miracles are thoughts."

"The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles."

"Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind."

These to me suggest that "a miracle", an impulse, is a kind of created "spark of life", like a ball of energy or life force, which is created by a loving mind and transfers to others. Upon receipt, this acts like a drop of detergent. As Jesus says it "breaks up erroneous thought". This "miracle" pulse is like a droplet of healing.

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain" is, I think, NOT metaphoric. They are actual droplets of healing power. Drops of life, which supply the lack of life and thus produce resurrection and reversal of sickness and all symptoms of love’s absence.

As expressions of love, it is not enough to say a person is simply radiating love. Rather, that the love literally generates a force that "travels" in the "form" of a love spark, which induces instant healing upon receipt. The eyes of Christ give birth to them. They are many in number and unlimited in supply. They are a power surge.

I have only experienced this impulse once. One time that I was loving enough - really pushing the envelope. I imagine that these impulses just naturally erupt like extraneous sparks from a light-filled person. I could be wrong but I have no other explanation.

As ACIM says, miracles cause healing, they are not the healing itself. They are a remedy. Meaning they are applied to something to cause effects. They entail a GIVER and a RECEIVER, which means something goes out of you into another. They happen naturally when you are loving. You emit them, like little thought creations, little ideas of love and healing. They are transmitted and render a service to another upon receipt.

Love recognizes perfect equality in all children of God. The Golden Rule states that what applies to you applies to all other creations and the entire sonship without exception.

When you believe that something applies to you which does not apply to someone else, you are being murderous.

When this happens, there has been a separation idea introduced in-between cause and effect. God the Father is cause, you are His effect. To separate from God you drive a wedge between the two.

This now means that you believe you can cause something without being at the effect of what you cause. That you can GIVE, without RECEIVING, which is a principle of sacrifice. And that in turn means, you can do something to someone else, and escape the consequences.

This immediately places you in a position of seeming to be able to "get away with murder", because if you can do something to someone or have something be true of them and not of you, you can attack them and cause them harm without seeming to hurt yourself (which is delusional.)

This is why anything short of love is attempted murder. It's an attempt to say, hey brother, we are different, and you are this thing that I am not, and so it's possible for you to suffer without me suffering, and it's possible for me to attack you without me receiving the same attack.

In this view, giving a receiving are no longer equal and what is true of me is no longer true for you, and so I can make something apply to you without it applying to me, and thus get away with it.

Even the slightest hint that the Golden Rule does not apply, or that there are different rules of values for each child of God, introduces a fundamentally murderous thought system, which is murderous at its very core. This is why anything which is not eternal life, is death, and there is no life outside of Heaven.

It IS a black and white, literal teaching. The ego is fundamentally a murderous thought system. Any lack of equality is an attack. Any imbalance or specialness or special favor or chaotic lack of identicality is an attack on the entire sonship.

God creates only perfectly identical mirror-image beings who are in His own image and likeness in every way. None of them lacks anything, nothing is missing. "God who encompasses all being nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually and want to share it to increase their joy." When such beings attempt to not share, and to not increase joy, and to not be perfectly identical, they enter into lack, which produces perceived attack, which is a state of attempted murder.

Jesus is very clear about this. "What is not love is murder." If it's not perfect unconditional divine holy love, the person is being murderous. And that means even a slight grievance is murderous. Even a casual judgement. Even a single attack thought. Even an irritation or slight annoyance. It may seem to show up as "degrees" of murderousness but it's still ALL murderous.

In God, who is cause, He created Christ, who is Effect. Or "Father" created "Son".

At the "separation", the Son attempted to separate from the Father, thereby introducing a separation between Cause and Effect.

Cause and Effect in Heaven are ONE, unified and completely immediately intertwined. But after separation, a "distance" or "gap" arose (illusion of course) between them, suggesting that Cause had been robbed of its ability to produce effects, and that the effects had not been caused by God.

Essentially this means two things. It means God seemed then to not create the Son, making an illusion that God’s will has been stopped (ie the Son has power over God). And then additionally, that the Son has no Father and therefore has to INVENT a false God as a substitute.

What also then happens is, now that there’s a gap between cause and effect, it *seems* as though somehow the "effects" coming from a cause are separated off from the cause. Instead of them being One, they are cut off from each other.

This sets up the entire ego thought system which believes and perceives that you can cause something WITHOUT experiencing the effects. And this further leads to the belief that an external cause (aka God, turned into an evil God) can do things to make you an effect against your will.

The more that your belief in separation between cause and effect increases, the more you become an unconscious victim, aka dead. It heightens your false perception that "causes outside of you" are producing effects inside of you. This makes you suffer and makes you a victim in every way.

If you are "heavily steeped in ego", strongly projecting sin (cause), and are believing that stuff applies to others that does not apply to you or vice versa, or that you can cause effects in others without those effects being in you and vice versa, then you have belief that Cause (Father) is separate from Effect (Son). To the degree that you believe this, you will experience an intensified sense of *separation*, denial, disassociation, war, and unconsciousness.

As we apply forgiveness, we undo the belief in separation by recognizing that what we thought applied "separately" to others but not to ourselves, is actually our attitude about ourselves. What we thought was their own separate sin, is actually our own sin. What we thought happened against our will, must have been caused by ourselves. It also means learning that you cannot be affected by anyone or anything other than yourself, or against your will, in any way!

When finally cause and effect are reunited, Father and Son are reunited, mind becomes ONE and whole, what applies within applies without, what applies to you applies to the entire Sonship, your innocence is everyone’s innocence, you will see your Self in everyone, and you will know sanity again. It is the end of war. It is peace, and the final release from all forms of self-attack which were masquerading as attack by separate causes. It is the end of death.

I've been recently experimenting with various forms of acceptance. I'm moving into more acceptance and letting go of more denial. This seems to be the 'new frontier' in my spiritual path.

One of these forms is in opening up to receiving God, receiving love, receiving healing. I've done this a few times now. The first time was the most powerful but each time I 'receive God' I feel that love comes in.

The thing is, when this love comes in it immediately receives a reaction from my ego, which is really kind of clueless as to what to do about this. It has no real response to it other than confusion, and clearly the power of God is SOOOOO much bigger than anything the ego can do, it renders the ego like dust on the surface of the ocean. It can't do anything about it. And so it will say/experience something like...."how could God love me?"

And by this I mean, it's actually thinking of it as though God loving me is some kind of an UNWANTED thing. Like an attack. How dare God love me?! How could he 'do this to me'?.

This is the part of me that believes God can't be love. It's the part that believes I can't be love. It is in disbelief. Its a part of me that believes God's unconditional love is impossible and doesn't exist. And its the part of me that is so confused and backwards about what God is that it thinks God's love is actually some disgusting thing that it does not want anything to do with.

And so for this part of me - this ego - to have an encounter with or be exposed to this offering of real love, it's like.. it's healing. It's transformative. It's not comfortable at all, it's kind of shocking. And actually it entails quite a lot of fear. I am very resistant to actually saying the full sentence "receive God", even though it's only 2 words. I can FEEL and know what it will mean if I allow God in. God is huge. God is powerful. His love is immense. Can I allow it?

Yet gradually I'm becoming more willing to accept, to receive, to allow. Slow steps. Baby steps. But having some willingness to surrender is the key.

Letting love in. It seems radical. Just receiving God and permitting Him to be in me. It shouldn't be such a big 'thing' but the ego has shut God out for so long. I suppose this relates to letting God take up residence at the 'altar' which the Course talks about as having been defiled by our ego separation idea.

Letting yourself be loved. To a degree that you never thought was possible, that you never thought you ever would deserve. It goes deep. Very deep. But I can also feel it giving me a kind of strength, a kind of certainty, and a kind of healing. Relief. Relief from the darkness of being separate.

My ego self is very shocked by what God is doing, by the unconditionality and complete lack of 'cost' in God's offering. It does not understand the sheer freedom with which the Gift is being offered. It is suspicious of it and resistant to accepting it. It can't comprehend why I could possibly be worthy of such unconditionality, as if there is a secret motive involved. Yet as I continue to be willing to let God in, love is taking up residence, and the ego can't do anything to stop it.