An "appearance" is another term for something physical. It's what you see when you take the physical form at face value. You look at what it appears to be on the surface, on the face of it, without any seeming interpretation.

"There is nothing so blinding as perception of form."

When mind denies itself and denies God's reality, it tries to become one with a body. To become one with separation. It narrows itself and confines itself and aligns itself with the body. The closer it becomes to being "body like", the less difference there seems to be between them.

Eventually this lack of difference makes the body seem like an ally, as in "the ego's chosen home", a friend of sorts, and something you can "identify" with (agree with), because it seems to agree with your mind. The mind is then confused with the body and the two seem to become one. In this ***illusion of oneness***, the body's sight is believed completely to be total fact.

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

Actually, without a difference between mind and body, you will enter a state where it seems you are not even interpreting at all. Where the physical world is total fact. Where everything is physical proof. Where the form something takes is entirely what it means. And where there is no sense of questioning or a bigger picture or a different vantage point. Everything seems to be "exactly as it is".

In false perception, the mind trusts the body's senses and this produces an experience of being "convinced", that what you see happening really is happening. In fact, you move toward a state of "obviousness", where everything physical seems to "obviously" be there, doing what it's doing, irrefutable and undeniable. The more you are in false perception the more the physical world seems to be totally real to you.

The mind gets into a state of being so body-aligned that it is no longer questioning what the body senses. Everything physical becomes total reality. Everything that "happens" becomes actual life and real events. And without any difference between mind and body, other bodies and their activities are taken as absolute and irreversible, having all the qualities of God.

So our minds, by believing IN separation, actually get into a state of what SEEMS to be ***"no separation"*** between mind and body, where all sense of you interpreting anything is lost. There is a seemingly unified experience, a oneness with the world at the physical level, everything looks obvious and real, and you take everything to be exactly what it appears to be.

In this state you also form a "story", because now the story of what bodies are doing, what events transpire etc, is all taken to be actual real fact. If someone's body acts out, or someone attacks, or there's a conflict, or any kind of thing you don't agree with, it is taken as being totally real. Like they REALLY DID DO it, provable in a court of law. And then you will automatically and naturally and logically hold it against them, justified by the fact of it happening.

Holding something against someone happens as a result of the mind binding with the body and believing that physicality is true. It does not question or doubt the physical "reality", so if someone does something offensive it is now a SIN. And this sin has physical proof right in front of your eyes. And your eyesight cannot deny it sees it. And this sin is irreversible, unhealable, unfixable, and the person has definitely messed up in a way that is so actual that it has the property of permanence.

"The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible."

You will then find yourself accusing the person, justifiably, of having done some terrible thing, all on the basis of what things look like at the physical level only. You did this, and you didn't do that, and that's the fact of it. And you used to be like this, and now you're like that, and I don't like you like this anymore. And how dare you treat me this way, and why are you doing this to me etc. Why is your BODY doing this to me.

This of course gives rise to an experience in which you are a helpless victim. In which you seem to have no say, no influence, no interpretation or way out of anything. Because what happens physically is factual reality. So now there is real physical threat and danger, people really are physically attacking, and there are physical things wrong with "you".

This is all blindness. This is the state of perceiving falsely and being body-identified, mind seeing itself as a body, total unforgiveness, unconsciousness, special-relationship, ego identification, and self destruction. There is no "gap" between mind and body, so everything that happens seems to happen to you, hurting you and upsetting you.

"The mind can be made free when it no longer sees itself as in a body, firmly tied to it, and sheltered by its presence. If this were the truth, the mind were vulnerable indeed!"

So "appearances" really are form, ie physical form. They are how stuff looks when you don't question its reality. It's how the physical world appears to you, or what it seems to mean, when you are totally invested in it. All meaning seems to be taken from how the external world tells you it is, as though you are not giving anything any meaning. Whatever happens seems to be the only truth. If someone kills your cat, they sure as heck actually did do that, and the cat is in fact really dead to prove the sin.

In such a state, we have been tempted by form and have "fallen for" the temptation. We've believed that people are bodies, that we are having relationships with bodies, that the physical world is the only reality, that there is no other mind besides the body, that God doesn't exist, and your self is a physical object. In this state you are not aware of reality, but you THINK you are, and because you're so convinced the physical world is WHERE the reality is, you do not question it.

To get out of this requires the questioning of appearances. The questioning of the PHYSICAL. This is why Jesus in the course introduces ideas such as that you give everything all the meaning it has, that you are projecting something, that you are influencing what happens, that your thoughts are involved and are attacking you, that you need to dis-identify from the physical body, that the physical world is an illusion not to be believed, and that all the events are nothing. To not even believe what the body tells you.

Without this rising up above "the battlefield", you will just live a life of hell, of blame and accusation, or suffering and selfishness, of specialness and deprivation, or mis-treatment and attack, unfairness and regret and remorse and resentment.

Only by questioning the physical world can your mind begin to see that it is NOT one with the body. And that because mind and body are different, they DISAGREE. And therefore what the body shows you is not to be believed. And you are now starting to step outside the "story" of your little body life and seek for a higher life.

If you were to describe someone's life based purely on what appears to be happening at the physical level, that is false perception. Only when you begin to look for a larger purpose or meaning, an influence of mind over matter, a choice and a freedom of will, a way by which someone might be responsible for making the world be the way it is, and an identity beyond the physical, only then are you properly recognizing that there IS a separation between mind and body. And that mind does not HAVE TO believe in the separation.

The gap of separation was COVERED OVER by your attempt to be one with the body. It seemed to disappear entirely underneath your mind's identification with the physical. Trying to be one with the body and make the physical real HIDES the fact that the world is separate from God and is not heaven. Only by beginning to recognize that you are NOT a body, can you recognize that there IS a separation between mind and body, and the two are not the same. Nor is the world a part of God.

Then you will seek for a higher oneness, a oneness with something NOT physical, a oneness with God and with a true reality. And the whole transition towards that is the awakening process. Waking up from the dream of hell and death and suffering and murder. Only then are you being forgiving, and seeing a forgiven world, because the world must be seen in another light in order to overlook its illusions of form.And only through the forgiveness state can you be free from deception permanently.

"The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought which gave it birth is cherished. When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear, and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well."

"Lesson 253 "My Self is ruler of the universe. ... It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. ******What happens is what I desire.***** What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

We're familiar with the idea of scapegoating. Something that seems separate from you happens, someone does something, and then you become triggered. You use the opportunity to project some guilt onto the person to relieve yourself.

But what if we said that the things that happen, do not happen on their own without your consent? What if we say that you cause things to happen, you coerce people to do things, and you put the events in place? And what if the reason you do this is so that you can position yourself as a victim, prime yourself for being upset about the situation, disown responsibility, and project blame for it onto someone else?

Is it possible that before you even scapegoat, you dream a dream and put the figures there and make them act out for you? What if the ego in you seeks to sabotage everything, find people sinful, and condemn them, long before you even seem to be projecting stuff onto them or reacting to them?

"It is the FIGURES in the dream, and what THEY do that seem to MAKE THE DREAM. You do not realize that ****you are making them act out FOR you****, for if you did, the guilt would not be theirs, and the illusion of satisfaction would be gone."

What if you actively seek to set people up for failure, actively try to cause problems to happen, actively amplify suffering and actively want things to go wrong so that you can have an opportunity TO scapegoat? What if life only sucks because you are CAUSING it to distort towards hell? What if your mind is actually INFLUENCING the dream, orchestrating events, changing behaviors, and is causing you to SET UP unpleasant situations?

Jesus in ACIM says that your self is ruler of the universe, and nothing comes to you unbidden by yourself. Whatever happens is what you desire. And what does not happen you have not chosen. This sure seems to suggest that your mind is a powerful creator, that events don't just happen on their own without your consent, and that you actually have a psychological influence over the world. This is your dream, after all.

What we maybe need to be willing to look at, and this is very deep, is that we don't just have a problem projecting guilt onto people, supposedly justified by "what they do", or the sins they commit, but we actually also orchestrate events and manipulate happenings and sabotage proceedings and cause problems to arise, just so that we can have scenarios in which scapegoating becomes possible. We ARRANGE the world into configurations of suffering.

Is it too much of a stretch to suggest that your mind is actually asking for trouble? Or that you are wanting there to be unsolvable problems? Or that you're making your life a living hell on purpose? Or that your ego wants there to be war? That your mind actually induces problems and holds them as real and maintains and energizes them in order to keep you in a position of victimhood, so that you'll be primed and ready to project crap onto all those involved?

What if it's that you secretly want there to be a problem? What if you secretly want to suffer, have unsolvable issues, be confronted with conflict and see yourself as powerless and hopeless and unable to see a way out? What if your descent into hell and your attempt to push everyone there with you, is actually a choice you're making that demands the dream conform to your wishes? What if your desire to see yourself unfairly treated actually manipulates spacetime and world events and people's health and so on, just so that you can keep the lie of "I didn't choose this" going?

After all, how are you going to scapegoat if no-one is doing anything to bother you? How are you going to project your guilt if no-one is sinning or making mistakes? Maybe you have to trip them up. Maybe you have to put obstacles in place. Maybe you actively seek to destroy your life and your relationships. Maybe you want things to go wrong so that you'll find yourself in an impossible situation, a nightmare of your own making, so that you'll seem imprisoned and powerless and can blame everyone else for making you feel this way?

I really do think that our minds are powerful enough that we actually influence events, manipulate happenings, induce and increase problems, make issues persist through resistance, attract even more suffering through fear, and so on. Our minds influence the dream world. Our focus, especially if it's coming from ego on some subtle level, can actually attempt to sabotage and destroy and tear down and constantly throw things into stressful states. Our egos want this, so that we can have the perfect justification for seeing ourselves unfairly treated.

"The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will." We are not idle spectators in this world, we are creators, and our minds are powerful and never stop creating. And while we pretend not to create with or like God, we instead mis-create. And our mis-creations become a world that we make and look upon and react to. It may be completely wrong to assume that this physical world is just some objectively solid real fixed thing, there on its own, doing its own thing. Maybe instead it is a fluid dream fabric which our minds are constantly manipulating, causing things to happen, asking for certain people to show up, putting problems there etc. After all, the world IS an hallucination OUR mind is having.

"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them."

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up?"

I've seen for myself how when I'm in a more egoic mood or angry, more things go wrong than usual. It's not just that I'm annoyed and can't stay patient with everyday things, it's more that there's an actual increase in how many things mess up. If I'm in fear the same thing occurs. Stuff breaks, falls, drops, slips, gets bumped into, goes missing, malfunctions etc, a lot more than usual. As children of God we need to learn to realize and master the fact that we are not just sitting here passively perceiving the world, we are MAKING IT.

Could it be that we actually are far more powerful creators than we realize? Could it be that even in this dream world we are rulers of our destiny and have to learn to create constructively and responsibly, even of dream stuff? Could it be that when we're having one of those days where everything goes wrong it's because we're making it go wrong on purpose?

Could it be that if we master this ability of mind power, mind over matter so to speak, that we could in fact orchestrate what happens, how it happens, who it happens to, and thereby be truly ruler of the universe? And what if when your mind is more peaceful, it INDUCES a life in which events are smoothed out and problems melt and attacks diminish and the so-called physical world actually bends to your will? That "all around the signs of life spring up" as you walk by, simply by the power of your mind to organize and turn chaos into order?

"external conditions are produced by the thoughts of many, not all of whom are pure in heart as yet."

"Miracle-working entails a full realization of the power of thought, and real avoidance of miscreation. Otherwise, the miracle will be necessary to set the mind ITSELF straight."

"He will go before you, making straight your path, and leaving in your way no stones to trip on, and no obstacles to bar your way. NOTHING you need will be denied you. ****Not one seeming difficulty but will melt away BEFORE you reach it.****"

"The scent of flowers is their gift to you. The waves bow down before you, and the trees extend their arms to shield you from the heat and lay their leaves before you on the ground, that you may walk in softness, while the wind sinks to a whisper 'round your holy head."

What if when you become healed, the whole world is transformed in some way and is a little lighter?

This may sound radical, but it does appear to be supported in the course in various ways.

Jesus speaks of how when you are healed, others cannot be omitted from your healing.

Jesus speaks of how if you change your mind the WHOLE world must change. This isn't because its ONLY your world, but because you are joined with everyone.

Jesus speaks of how if you join minds with another person and deny/reject their denial of health, they will become healed, and cannot stay sick unless you support their belief.

Jesus also says that you are your brother's keeper. Meaning that HIS condition is YOUR responsibility.

How is this possible? It seems it is only possible if somehow, you and other people are actually connected together and SHARE something. Some part of your self is their self and vice versa. Meaning that if something applies to you, it also applies to them.

In the biggest picture this is the Golden Rule, that what is true of you is true of others. And this rule is God's law which is always in effect everywhere on all levels at all times, even if we deny it.

Let's frame it this way. Let's say there is a kind of collective consciousness. There's this vast sea of being, in which there are concentrations of self, sufficiently organized as to be "individuals", yet intimately joined to the tapestry of everyone else's existence. Sort of like we're all one big joined entity with multiple heads. A bit like siamese twins.

This is actually a vague and not accurate enough description but just for analogy's sake... this would mean that if someone chooses to rise up, they tend to "drag" others up with them. If someone opens their mind to truth, there is sort of a ripple effect that propagates to ALL others.

What that must mean is, any work you to do heal or love yourself, MUST overflow and affect others.

Jesus similarly talks about how you are the light of the world.

Jesus also talks about how it only takes ONE teacher of God to save the world.

Jesus also talks about how the light into your mind can shine into another mind and enlighten it.

Given the fact that then that there is a SHARING component to all of us, there is some part of us that is ONE, joined, connected, it becomes not only impossible to do anything truly in isolation, but also anything you do DOES affect everyone else.

This would be reflected in statements like "There are no private thoughts" for example.

Now, this might sound radical. In fact it will. But this leads to the conclusion that its possible for you to HEAL ANOTHER PERSON, if you will apply an appropriate attitude. Certainly the person still has free will and can choose to resist, to stay anchored down in the darkness. But you can at the very least offer love.

Love has such healing power it can dislodge even the resistance to truth in another. As Jesus says, "the task of the miracle worker is to deny the denial of truth." And also that there is not really any point in miracles at all unless they are able to affect someone who NEEDS healing, and thus is in a state of resistance. Healing of the person would not be possible otherwise.

For this to be "ok", there must be some aspect of another person that IS LITERALLY YOU. Or that is so intimately shared with you as to be essentially your self. If you love someone "against their will", it can still overthrow their unloving nature and heal them, to the degree it can be accepted.

What's radical is, this means that the condition of the body of another person, is not entirely "up to them". You have an influence as well. For example "Forgiveness is not complete unless it has brought a healing to both your brother and yourself." "He is healed along with you." "Miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver" etc.

There is something about miracles that is based on sharing, and on returning to the state where you SHARE everything with others. That return to sharing is "joining". In a shared state, your brother's health is yours. In fact "YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health."

Jesus even says that when YOU heal your mind and body and it now represents and symbolizes the absence of attack, the presence of innocence and love etc, the state of YOUR healing AFFECTS your brother, exonerates him, lifts sin from his mind, heals him, and thus heals HIS body as well.

At the level of the ego and the physical world, the ego suggests that there is total separation between you and others due to bodies. And thus changes in you have NO effect on anyone. That your mind can change is perceptions of the world WITHOUT changing the world. This is not what Jesus says is possible, because its not true that there is absolute separation. Even the world's separation is slightly joined, as proven by quantum entanglement and the holographic universe theory etc. Even duality is not quite fully duality.

This means that we ARE all ALWAYS at least slightly joined. We are always part of the experience of others. And this reflects our status as co-creators. So if someone has a sickness, this means there IS something I can do about it, because their sickness is not ENTIRELY their own sickness. Moreso, sickness arises from the belief in separation BETWEEN brothers, and is a two-sided sword which attempts to accuse both.

The sense of separation that it is based on cannot be sustained if I choose to acknowledge that we are JOINED and SHARING. If I do not AGREE to the separation-based sickness, and do not uphold my end of keeping the division between us maintained, it cannot be there and the person must be healed.

If I float my mind to a high level of love and light, I also become far more powerful in my ability to "affect" others. Or rather, to extend and share my healed state and the healing agent of spirit WITH the other person, lifting them up also. This is how it becomes possible to raise the dead for example, to GIVE life to others that they seem to lack, because you have it. This is only possible if we truly are joined together in some way, whereby a person fundamentally has "access" to the being and mind of another.

Total unconditional absolute sharing is the natural state of the Kingdom of God, which all of His children (as brothers) share forever. It is completely natural and real. "One mind is all minds, one brother is all brothers, such is the truth." While I have a self, a soul, it is STILL true that I am "one with" all other brothers, and their souls are joined to mine in such intimacy that we literally are FUSED together in some way. And that fused sharing "network" between us is what Jesus calls the Christ Mind.

So truly, we are not separate people. We are in fact totally the opposite. And that means that we can't consider ourselves to be totally incapable of healing others. Whatever we do, however we focus, whatever we feel, it's going to influence everyone in the universe. This is how holographic reality works. Each individual is a whole in and of themselves but shares the whole with all the rest. I am you and you are me and we are brothers eternally.

It then isn't a question of whether you can heal another person or by what mechanism this happens. It's more a fact that you can't AVOID influencing them. You share everything. If you have a bad day you drag everyone down. If you have a good day you are the light of the world and lift everyone up. People are literally lightened and healed when you bring the light. "you ARE your brother's keeper."

This is perhaps why there the "great awakening" happening. It's because there are contributions from an increasing number of awakening individuals whose influence is more powerful than those who sleep. "Teachers of God will take over the world because of their strength." And so the entire world is going through a spiritual transformation.

Each time that you have a loving thought, each time that you recognize joining and sharing, each time that you forgive, you are healing the entire sonship. Because every single child of God shares itself with you. You are part of a vast network of interconnected parts that depend on each other. You are responsible thus for your brother because what you choose either blesses or curses him, either heals him or compounds his sickness.

This ties further into holy relationships, in that when you are holy towards another, and they thus become more holy, the shared state of joined consenting minds transcends their individual contributions. The fact that there are two souls sharing everything is more powerful than any sense of "one in isolation". To be joined is to share and to share is to love and to love is to wield God's miraculous power.

You do have the authority, power, and ability, connections, and access, to heal other people if you so choose. Shining your light of love into their minds cannot help but offer healing. Your prayers of love can lift others up from despair. And through you the Holy Spirit can move mountains.

"HOW MANY TEACHERS OF GOD ARE NEEDED TO SAVE THE WORLD?

The answer to this question is - one.One wholly perfect teacher, whose learning is complete, suffices. This one, sanctified and redeemed, becomes the Self Who is the Son of God.He who was always wholly spirit now no longer sees himself as a body, or even as in a body.Therefore he is limitless.And being limitless, his thoughts are joined with God's forever and ever. His perception of himself is based upon God's Judgment, not his own.Thus does he share God's Will, and bring His thoughts to still deluded minds. He is forever one, because he is as God created him. He has accepted Christ, and he is saved."

---

"God's teachers appear to be many, for that is what is the world's need.Yet being joined in one purpose, and one they share with God, how could they be separate from each other? What does it matter if they then appear in many forms? Their minds are one; their joining is complete. And God works through them now as one, for that is what they are."

Lately I've been noticing that .... my state of mind, has something to do with what happens. I know that sounds a bit far fetched to many people. But we are after all told that this world is a dream, and that our minds are dreaming it.

I see how sometimes events and the appearance of certain people seem to correlate to certain attitudes or modes that I'm in. Sometimes a freer happier mode seems to produce the appearance of certain types of people, while unhappier or angrier modes seem to produce other types.

One of the ways that I've noticed this manifesting is with the idea that "what you resist persists". For example if you are driving a car and some slow person is in front of you, and you resist them being there, they seem to linger more than if you let them be there. When you let them go and don't make them an obstacle, they seem to leave sooner. In a sense, the showing up of a roadblock or "reason to slow down" shows up when you are "pushing too hard" or rushing. It influences what happens.

I've seen also times where, if I am doing a healing and saying things which are truthful, such as a few times in the hospital recently, following those times I noticed how other people seemed to lighten up a lot and laugh more. The whole sort of "atmosphere" of the place changed, the people changed and their moods changed and the events became more supportive.

For sure I also find that if I am upset or angry or frustrated, I start producing things going wrong. More and more things seem to fall on the floor, break, slip out of reach, get in the way, or generally just become "more reasons to be annoyed." I don't think that this is merely a matter of being annoyed and interpreting them as annoying. I think there is actually an increase in the number of things that happen, which don't appear to happen in such a condensed way at other times. Mind mind is literally influencing what happens.

Sometimes I get a sense that there is a kind of "psychic weather", in which, let's say.... it seems like maybe there are some minds that are contributing to external conditions - to dream content. Certain events seem to transpire as though "put there" by the minds of certain people. It seems at times as if there is a kind of psychological war playing out, literally orchestrating changes in events and what objects or people show up, in a subtle but noticeable way.

"This is not safe, because ***external conditions are produced by the thoughts of many***, not all of whom are pure in heart as yet."

Overall, I sense and notice more often, that the world in fact does appear to be a malleable dream. Not just some fixed physics-driven state of objective reality, but really a much more malleable fluid sort of "mix" of contributions and influences. It even appears to be possible that stuff which seems like it would've taken a long time to "plan" or "make possible", becomes possible complete with backstory, just to "fit" into place. As if the whole world just "changed" to line up with expectations.

There are some days when I wake up and I feel like everything has changed, in a subtle but noticeable way. Almost like as if you had jumped to a different "dimension" or "version" of the world, in which everyone and everything is subtly different in the same way.

I wouldn't be the first to claim this either, because there is plenty of evidence and stories out there about buildings appearing out of nowhere, strange correlations, sudden appearances or disappearances of things which couldn't seem possible, etc. Again suggesting that this world is not a fixed predictable place but rather a "mind-driven" realtime mixture of effects coming from the minds of people.

I think that in some way, the more that I become responsible for causation, as per the secret of salvation, and less of a victim, and perhaps stronger spiritually, I'm seeing more "influence" happening. Perhaps in the early stages of this development, but it does seem that my mind and focus and mood often influences the environment around me. Not merely in a subtle way as suggested in the heisenberg principle of quantum physics, but at even a much more "macrocosmic" level.

I feel this also points to having to also be more responsible and vigilant for thought, for more carefully managing my projections and my ego activities. After all, Jesus in ACIM also says that we need a healthy respect for the power of the mind....

"All miracle-workers HAVE to be trained that way. I have to be able to count on them. This means that I cannot allow them to leave their mind unguarded, or they will not be able to help me. ***Miracle-working entails a full realization of the power of thought, and real avoidance of miscreation.*** Otherwise, the miracle will be necessary to set the mind ITSELF straight, a circular process which would hardly foster the time-collapse for which the miracle was intended. Nor would it induce the ***healthy respect that every miracle-worker must have for true cause and effect.***"

Notice here that Jesus says that mind is very powerful and we need to be careful about mis-creating. If we are indeed powerful creators, and we have power of mind over matter, and mind is stronger than bodies, etc... and mind knows its dreaming, then obviously mind is going to start being able to "control" what dream content there is, what happens, and what does not happen.

"Yet this world is ONLY in the mind of its maker, along with his REAL salvation. Do not believe it is outside of yourself, for only by recognizing WHERE it is, ***will you gain control over it***. For you DO have control over your mind, for the mind is the mechanism of decision."

This suggests to me that in fact the workbook lesson "my self is ruler of the universe" where "what happens is what i desire" is not merely suggesting that we live in an objective world where we are "okay with" whatever happens, but that in fact LITERALLY we actually CAUSE EVENTS TO HAPPEN. That we begin to orchestrate the dream, consciously. Perhaps we can call it "lucid dreaming" in a sense. Indeed the mind certainly seems to have an INFLUENCE.

What this suggests then is this quite profound idea.... As you awaken more, your mind becomes more powerful. It becomes more causal, or more focused or "in control" of more DELIBERATELY CHOOSING. And this results in actual effects. It causes the dream to change. Your mind actually dreams of a different world. Not simply that you dream of the same world in a different way, or interpret the world differently, but that you PRODUCE a different world. The so-called "physical world" literally turns into a different configuration.

This would mean that the mind actually has the power to change the dream world directly, to manipulate events, to cause objects to show up and disappear, to have power OVER matter, to quite literally manipulate the world through direct effects. This would mean that, for example, for a person of enough power, they do not merely walk "the world", they walk whichever kind of world they want to emanate.

They literally can cause events, and prevent events. Nothing happens without their consent. They begin to have control over the dream world, over objects, over what transpires and what doesn't. And perhaps they can even literally force death and attack not to happen. They can cause events to steer away from destruction and death. Just as ACIM states that the Holy Spirit can clear a path for you so that you are free from obstacles...

"He will go before you, making straight your path, and leaving in your way no stones to trip on, and no obstacles to bar your way. NOTHING you need will be denied you. ***Not one seeming difficulty but will melt away BEFORE you reach it.*** You need take thought for nothing, careless of everything except the only purpose that you would fulfill. As THAT was given you, so will its fulfillment be. God's guarantee will hold against ALL obstacles, for it rests on certainty, and NOT contingency. IT RESTS ON YOU. And what can be more certain than the Son of God?"

That is quite a radical interpretation of the course because it suggests we don't just "re-perceive" the world in a better way, but that in fact the world literally is OUR DREAM, our mind is literally THE CAUSE of it, and we literally can dream of something else, CAUSING literal physical-seeming things to change. Why would this NOT be the case, when the mind has the power to actually cause bodies to heal, and the dead to resurrect, and mountains to move, and storms to calm? Such a mind can, let's say, ALTER REALITY. And that's quite exciting and interesting. And it means MIRACLES CAN MODIFY DREAM CONTENT DIRECTLY.

Obviously someone would need to become very vigilant about heir mind, very careful NOT to mis-create, very careful not to deliberately cause "bad situations", very careful not to CHOOSE events in which there is suffering etc, and to only induce dream environments which are conducive to healing etc. But this doesn't mean they can't choose anything they want. Imagine that Jesus could manifest any object he wanted out of thin air. Imagine that Jesus could make things multiply out of nowhere, he could turn bodies into other bodies, and could make things disappear. Why not, when he was "ruler of the universe"?

Not a mere passive traveler in a foreign land, but an ACTIVE DREAMER. Indeed, a "miracle worker", someone who can literally transform ANY APPEARANCE into any other, manipulating space and time and matter as if it's something to play with. In which the laws of reality as the world knows it are violated, any there is NOTHING your holiness cannot do.

"There is no world apart from your ideas because ideas leave not their source, and you maintain the world within your mind in thought."

"But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. "

"The idea for today is a beginning step in dispelling the belief that your thoughts have no effect. Everything you see is the result of your thoughts. There is no exception to this fact."

"There is no point in lamenting the world. There is no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect. But there is indeed a point in changing your thoughts about the world. Here you are changing the cause. The effects will change automatically."

"Neutral thoughts are impossible because all thoughts have power. They will either make a false world or lead me to the real one. But thoughts cannot be without effects. As the world I see arises from my thinking errors, so will the real world rise before my eyes as I let my errors be corrected."

"Learning must lead BEYOND the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it."

"I demonstrated both the powerlessness of the body AND the power of the mind, by uniting MY will with that of my Creator, which naturally remembered the Soul and its own real purpose."

"Very few people appreciate the real power of the mind. Nobody remains fully aware of it all the time. This is inevitable in this world, because the human being has many things he must do, and cannot engage in constant thought-watching. However, if he hopes to spare himself from fear, there are some things he must realize, and realize them fully, at least some of the time."

"The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will."

"It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains.

It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is merely arrogant, but that is not the real reason why you don't believe it.

People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them."

"My Self is ruler of the universe. ... It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do."

Many here are familiar with a line that says your "sole responsibility" is to accept atonement for yourself. This has, however, been butchered and used as a separation device, and an excuse for not doing anything. When you look at ALL of the quotes about taking "sole responsibility", every one of them is tied to some manner of ACTIVITY which ensues when you accept atonement.

This phrase has been misunderstood. People have taken it to mean "the only thing you have to do." Or perhaps worse, "the only thing there is to be done." As though to say, once you do this ONE thing, you have NO responsibilities to do anything else. This is unfortunate because it is TOTALLY opposite to the course's teaching. It has been used to justify against miracles, against healing, and against helping others.

What he's really saying is that, because you are a free willed being, you have the right and the freedom to CHOOSE. The secret of salvation tells you that YOU are responsible for what you experience. YOU are responsible for your own suffering. YOU are responsible for your own sickness and death. You "do it to yourself." Owning that, accepting that, admitting that, being aware of that, is "taking responsibility." It's a recognition of WHO is causing stuff to happen. The PURPOSE of taking responsibility is in fact SO THAT you can be miracle minded and perform miracles FOR OTHERS.

What this leads to is the recognition that you are the ONLY ONE (sole) who is responsible for the condition of your mind and your experience. God has already done his part by creating you and giving you free will. YOUR part is to "be you", or to be as God created you. To be your natural true self. To be true to the truth about you and others. Because you have free will, it is YOUR CHOOSING that determines whether you are experiencing heaven or hell. And it is this choice that you are SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR.

What the course actually says is that you have a responsibility for CHOOSING the atonement (accepting it). This is because it is your free will choice whether to accept or not. "No one comes to the atonement except willingly." "Heaven is a choice I must make." Just because it says "for myself" on the end of it, people's egos have taken a hold of it and have used it to mean "this applies only to me and no-one else is involved." This couldn't be further from the truth because atonement means SHARING WITH OTHERS.

Taking that full responsibility and electing to do God's will and align yourself with truth, puts you in a position of accepting the truth ie the atonement. But this is only to do with the scope of your freedoms. What you CAN do. What you ARE in a position to decide about in relation to your free will. You are responsible for accepting the atonement for yourself because no-one else is capable of forcing you to accept it. You have to "do your part."

This however has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with whether or not "there are responsibilities" besides this for you to embark upon. In fact, logically speaking, what is true of you must be true of everyone. This is the Golden Rule. As Jesus states in the course you CANNOT accept atonement WITHOUT sharing it. If you are going to accept that YOU deserve love and power, then you MUST also grant ALL OTHERS the same right to love and power. You also MUST support them in accessing that love and power, which means that, because they are PART OF YOU, you cannot fully rest if your brothers are still experiencing hell.

Miracle Principle 24:

"24 A miracle is a Universal Blessing from God through Me to all My Brothers. Explanation: You once said that ***souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation.*** This happens to be true. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. The Disciples were officially and specifically told to ***heal others, as Physicians of the Lord.*** They were ***also told to heal themselves***, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. ***Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me."***

Atonement is not simply a STATE. It is not something that you do IN ISOLATION. It is not something you CAN accept only for yourself. Only yourself CAN CHOOSE to accept it, but OF ITSELF it is not about "just you"! It is something that applies to the entire sonship and by accepting it you are agreeing to UPHOLD it FOR everyone and to participate in bringing EVERYONE into the atonement. It is PART OF YOU. You become PART OF the atonement itself. The process of it, for the whole sonship. And because your brothers are part of you, you CANNOT rest fully knowing that they are still suffering.

In fact what Jesus says is TOTALLY opposite to what many people believe, ie that "the only thing you have to do" is to accept atonement. Like it's some kind of thing you pick up off a shelf and then you "get it" and possess it and it's yours. And then you sit there on a cloud picking your nose. Jesus's view is that to enter into atonement is to enter into RELATIONSHIP with everyone, and to SUPPORT everyone, and to HEAL everyone. To EXPRESS FROM the atonement. Miracles are EXPRESSIONS from the atoned state.

"The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ and acceptance of his Atonement. The mind is then in a state of Grace, and naturally becomes gracious, both to the Host within and the stranger without. By bringing in the stranger, he becomes your brother."

"I repeat that you will see Miracles through your hands through MINE. Conviction really comes through accomplishment. Remember that ability is the potential, Achievement is its expression, and Atonement is the Purpose."

Atonement is a PURPOSE. The purpose is to bring all your brothers back home to God WITH you. That does not happen by you "just accepting atonement for yourself." In fact, when a person isolates off the atonement as a "me only" thing, they are in fact being utterly selfish. This is the ego's version of accepting the atonement. You get to be included, and everyone else is excluded.

"Refuse to accept anyone as WITHOUT the blessing of Atonement, and bring him INTO it by blessing him. Holiness MUST be shared, for therein lies everything that makes it holy."

So Jesus isn't actually saying, in his wording, that you only have a singular "project", or a singular "thing to do". As if you just need to reach the finish line and then you're done. Jesus is still very active in spite of accepting atonement - if you notice he's written a large book and helps you to learn it. He is an active teacher. ANYONE accepting atonement MUST .... HAS TO.... IS REQUIRED TO... CANNOT AVOID.... DOES NOT WANT TO AVOID ..... helping others to find atonement for themselves. It is in fact a metaphysical and logical and mystic condition that your own peace of mind is NOT complete while others remain in darkness. You can't go home without them.

"Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return."

"only the whole Sonship is a worthy co-creator with God"

"YOUR salvation IS critical to the whole Sonship."

"To teach the WHOLE Sonship WITHOUT EXCEPTION demonstrates that you PERCEIVE ITS WHOLENESS and have learned that it IS One."

"The voice of the Holy Spirit IS the call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind. When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed, there will be no call to return, but what God creates is eternal."

"Every decision is made for the WHOLE SONSHIP, directed in and out, and influencing a constellation larger than anything you ever dreamed of." Jesus does not MEAN that you have only one job to do. He means that there is only one scope of free will that you can be responsible FOR, which is your own free will choice to accept atonement. This in NO WAY means that accepting it absolves you of ALL responsibilities, nor does it mean that you don't HAVE a duty - a responsibility - to help others with their atonement. It is in fact a privilege to do so, not a chore, or some crappy job you don't want.

This is not about spiritual laziness. It's not about you "getting what you want" and then forgetting about everyone else. You can't accept atonement WITHOUT accepting that you are eternally BOUND to everyone else and cannot be entirely at peace knowing that they are still suffering. Regardless of whether that suffering is ultimately real or not. The only thing you CAN be responsible for is your own free willed choice to accept the truth. But you are ALSO responsible for the whole sonship. Once you have accepted atonement and have BECOME TRULY RESPONSIBLE, you are now in a position to BE responsible, and you are now responsible FOR EVERYONE.

"You have a PART to play in the Atonement. But the plan of the Atonement IS beyond you"

"The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO IT."

"Holiness MUST be shared, for therein lies everything that makes it holy." "The sole responsibility of God's teacher is to accept the Atonement for himself (you are responsible for MAKING THE CHOICE TO ACCEPT IT - this says nothing about what you DO IN THE ATONED STATE). Atonement means correction, or the undoing of errors. When this has been accomplished, the teacher of God becomes a miracle worker by definition." ( you can't even be a FULL miracle worker until AFTER you accept atonement and THEN are in a position to DO ANYTHING ).

"The unforgiven HAVE no mercy to bestow upon another. That is why your sole responsibility MUST be to take forgiveness for yourself."

"If the sole responsibility of the miracle-worker is to accept the ATONEMENT, and I assure you that it is, ...."

"Would you take unto yourself the sole responsibility for deciding what can bring ONLY good to everyone?"

"The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept Atonement himself. This means that he knows that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors ARE healed by the Atonement. ***Once he accepts this, HIS mind can only heal.*** By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, ***he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others.*** The message which he then gives to others is the truth that THEIR MINDS are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them."

"Miracle Principle 8

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

"I told you you were now restored to your former role in the Plan of Atonement. But you must still ***choose freely to devote your heritage to the greater Restoration. As long as a single slave remains to walk the earth, your release is not complete.*** Complete restoration of the Sonship is the only true goal of the miracle-minded."

"My part in the Atonement is not complete until YOU join it, and give it away. As you teach, so shall you learn. I will never leave you or forsake you, because to forsake you would be to forsake myself and God who created me. You will forsake yourselves and your God if you forsake any of YOUR brothers. You are more than your brother's keeper. "

"The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything TO you. (That is, to restore the awareness. Later clarification.) You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did.

Having been restored to your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. You now share MY inability to tolerate the lack of love in yourself and in everyone else, and *************MUST join the GREAT CRUSADE************* to correct it. The slogan for this Crusade is "Listen, Learn, and DO."

This means Listen to My Voice, Learn to undo the error, and DO something to correct it.

The first two are not enough. The real members of MY party are ACTIVE workers."

"Perception is a mirror, not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind reflected outward. I would bless the world by looking on it through the eyes of Christ. And I will look upon the certain signs that all my sins have been forgiven me." UrW304

There is a trap which people may not be aware of, which can cause you to get very stuck. And the more egoic you are the more likely you are to get stuck.

The problem is, what we are "being" in our mind and identity, directly influences what aspects of the world we focus on and what we see IN it.

If we are being very separate and body-identified and full of guilt etc, the world will actually seem to take on these qualities and reflect back an experience of it being fragmented, discordant, warring, unsafe, etc.

This doesn't depend on the things that happen in the world, or the specific forms or objects or people. It's more to do with how it registers to your awareness, that it means to you, what you read into it, what stands out to you and what it means.

You actually have a SUBJECTIVE experience of the world. All perception is subjective. The world does not objectively exist. Only heaven is objectively real. In the world what's going on in YOU, directly CORRELATES to what you "make of" what's out there.

THIS can become a horrible trap because if you don't realize that your inner state is influencing how you see things, you could think that the world "is just like this". That if you FEEL that the world is dangerous and guilt-ridden and fearful and full of sin, it's because YOU are being these things.

If you don't realize that your experience of the world is a MIXTURE of the world itself and your inner state of mind, you could by mistake believe that "the world is just like this". As if how it appears to you, what it means to you, what you focus on in it, is INHERENT to the world itself.

For example if you are filled with guilt and shame and fear and darkness, the world will see to be a very dark guilty nightmarish place. You will focus on separations and physicality. The solidity of matter will seem heavy and impenetrable like a prison. Things will loom over you and threaten you. You won't feel safe anywhere and everything will seem evil. And then you will think the whole world IS an evil place, and it's impossible to escape it.

If you're sort of living in an experience of "a world" that seems like that, you will reason to yourself that it makes sense for you to act certain ways, to defend yourself from it, to not love it, to hate it and resent it. You might be thinking that you hate the world because it's a horrible place. But the reason that it seems horrible is because you hate yourself. You are MIXING your attitudes about yourself, WITH your perceptions of the world. You are FLAVORING the world with your mind.

Essentially, you cannot see OUTSIDE OF your own sense of identity and nature. You project this identity and nature onto spacetime. You then "relate" to this projected mixture of objects and meanings and regard it as "objective truth", but it isn't. It's a sort of blind closed-box experience, in which YOU are making the world seem to justify hate and resentment.

The problem is that then you will feel that you cannot forgive the world. No-one who believes the world is evil and horrible can forgive it. If it REALLY IS these things, you cannot forgive it. You cannot feel safe in it, you cannot trust it. You know it would make no sense to trust an UNTRUSTWORTHY world. And the idea of TRUSTING it seems completely risky and opening yourself up to attack. Forgiveness is unjustified and attack is justified.

God also DOES NOT love "such a world". He does not and cannot love a world in which there is this content of fear and guilt. Because in order to BE IN such a world, his mind would have to contain fear and guilt, and then he would be lost in unreality and attack, and find it IMPOSSIBLE to forgive and love such an "experience" of a world.

But we are told God does love "the world", because he sees it WITH love and GIVES love and thus his reflection of love is upon it. And thus he EXPERIENCES love because the love is in him. As in "God is in the world I see because God is in my mind." The reflection of heaven is possible when YOU are being heaven-like, and holy-minded, and forgiving of yourself, such that you PROJECT this out and see it REFLECTED back to you.

Essentially, THE WORLD IS A MIRROR. It is NOT a separate thing from you. It is not "having its own" stuff. Believing that the world is separate from you and has its own objective truth which you have no influence over, is the ego mindset of false perception. It causes you to focus on separations and differences and sees no cohesion or unity. This is a mistake, because the egoic mind is experiencing "the world" AS THOUGH IT IS ITSELF.

If you are experiencing the world LIKE the way you experience yourself, but you BELIEVE that you are "separate", you will believe that your experience of the world has no CONNECTION to your state of mind, and that now means YOU ARE TRAPPED. You are lost in a mirror, believing that what you see in the mirror is NOT YOU and is nothing like you. Yet alone that you might be putting it there.

In higher states of mind you come to see that because you are holy and innocent and loving and inclusive, because you are not separate and not attacking, you don't see these things "in the world". Or rather, you experience the world in a way that de-emphasizes these things. You don't experience or notice or pay attention to differences and separations. The more whole YOU become, the more the world SEEMS more whole.

So the big trap is, which most people are falling into, is that the more you think the world itself is SEPARTELY evil, the more you will emphasise that YOU are separated off, and your mind will become darker and darker. The darker your mind becomes the MORE the world will seem darker still. And you will think that your HATRED of it is totally justified and makes total sense. You will point and finger and believe the world ITSELF is inherently evil, and its evil has nothing to do with you. That it is NOT a mirror.

And that means you're quite capable of driving yourself into a "pit of hell", a nightmare of your own making, where you keep attacking the world over and over and making your relationship to YOURSELF worse, which makes your experience of the world worse, which just keeps you going down and down further into a hellish experience because you don't realize the world is a mirror. If it IS a mirror, and you treat it like it is NOT a mirror, you will think IT is "getting worse", when really YOU are getting worse, and you will justify hating "it" (as if not you) even more. This is the split in the mind.

The more you dissociate, separate, project guilt, attack, be unforgiving etc, the more you experience that the world has NOTHING to do with you. That its conditions are an inherent evil of its own, objectively evil. That you are not contributing to this evilness in ANY way. And that's a serious trap, you can get very lost in believing that you SHOULD hate and be outraged toward the world because "it" seems like a horrible evil place. But it isn't inherently a horrible evil place. YOU are being horrible evil in it, and it's making you FILTER your perception to show you aspects which seem to reflect that back to you.

The world IS a mirror, and if this is not recognised, you will see no way out. To get out of the hellish nightmare, you have to be able to RISE ABOVE, ie transcend, which means YOU have to become more heavenly if you want to experience the world as more heaven-like. YOU have to become less separated off if you want to experience the world as a less separating place. YOU have to stop attacking if you want to experience that the world isn't attacking you. YOU have to be what you want to SEE in the world.

And that means that no matter what you are experiencing the world as NOW, that's just the result of what you chose to BE previously. If you want to see the world in a better light, YOU have to get yourself into a better light. And then the qualities you saw IN the world in the darkness WILL DISAPPEAR, or become less emphasised, because YOU are being a better person.

Ultimately this leads to you reflecting heaven within yourself, which results in you projecting heavenly qualities, which results in the world appearing to reflect heaven back to you. And that allows you to transcend all the limits and separations and differences, allows you to ignore hierarchies of illusions, stops you being deceived by forms, and allows you to overcome temptations.

Essentially your EXPERIENCE of the world becomes more like a oneness the transcends all the forms things take. And then the world reflects the MEANING of God. When you reach that state you're in the real world, the world you made is the forgiven world, and you're ready to go home to heaven.

"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." UrT14E5

"This is a question everyone must ask. Certainly peace seems to be impossible here. Yet the Word of God promises other things that seem impossible, as well as this. His Word has promised peace. It has also promised that there is no death; that resurrection must occur, and that rebirth is man's inheritance. The world you see cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world. God's Word has promised us that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be impossible. But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this." UrM12A1

"The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real. Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly." UrW132L4

"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that." UrT21A1

"Projection MAKES perception, and you CANNOT see beyond it. Again and again have men attacked each other, because they saw IN THEM a shadow figure in their private world." UrT12E3

"To the extent to which you value guilt, to that extent will you perceive a world in which attack is justified. To the extent to which you recognize that guilt is meaningless, to that extent will you perceive attack cannot BE justified. This is in strict accord with vision's FUNDAMENTAL law: You see what you believe is there, and you believe it there because you WANT it there. Perception HAS no other law than this." UrT25D1

"In His (Holy Spirits) perception of the world, nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness. Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind, where it MUST be, and light the BODY up INSTEAD of it." UrT25D5

Your whole life, since you found yourself in a body, you've believed that your self is SEPARATE from other people. That you are isolated and alone INSIDE your body, and no-one else is in there with you.

You have believed that everyone else is excluded from you, is not a part of you, and exists outside of you, stuck in their OWN bodies. And that therefore they are NOT you. But this is completely untrue and unnatural.

In heaven, the whole Kingdom of God, which is the Sonship, comprises many beings. But all of these beings are SHARED. They share all of themselves with each other. So much so that a part of each being is IN and AS other beings. They are all one. One brother is all brothers, every mind contains all minds. So the sense of "self" really means, "I am myself AND I am everyone."

In the separation from God, bodies were invented as separation devices to IMPRISON each self, to cut it off from others and to NOT SHARE with them. This produced a sense of a self which is only you, and not anyone else. A self which is alone, isolated, separate, exclusive, and DOES NOT SHARE with others. This self appears to be trapped inside a separate body, kept apart from others by a gap of space, and confined.

So now you grew up believing that anything that refers to you, refers to the "only me" that is inside your body. The sense of self that EXCLUDES everyone else. Me, and NOT you. Only me. Only MY self, and NOT your self. That's what your sense of yourself has turned into. A self which shares nothing, a self which is special and exclusive, a self which is alone, and a self which is DISCONNECTED from others.

But what you may not have realized is that, in applying the imprisonment of bodies to your unified self, you actually split the mind and separate off PART of you into your body, and LEFT OUT the part of you that is IN OTHERS. The part of you that is them, became seemingly disconnected from you. You were "separated out" from the shared group collective mind. And it's still true that PART OF YOURSELF IS OUTSIDE OF YOU.

So whereas before, your whole experiencing of how to receive something was to bring it INTO you from the outside in, to "get" from the world, to possess something ONLY for yourself, what needs to happen in truth is that you realize that the parts of you IN OTHERS have to also receive in order for YOU to receive. Because, literally, you ARE in them and if you exclude the part of you that's in them from receiving then you are literally deprived.

So now your whole sense of "who and what am I" has to EXPAND and become MORE INCLUSIVE. It has to go from "only me by myself" to "me including everyone else". That you ARE everyone. You are the whole sonship.

"The sonship is your soul." "We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God." "One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds."

So now the dynamic of giving and receiving has to change. To your separated self, giving has been interpreted as LOSS, because to give away to someone NOT yourself is to LOSE what you had. And this is how the ego - the "me alone" sense of identity, sees it. And receiving was only ever seen as you GETTING for yourself and depriving others of what you have, so that they are the one sacrificing.

In truth, if you ARE everyone, and part of your very own self is IN them, then when you give to THEM, you are STILL INCLUDED, because the part of you in them receives it. And therefore to receive anything, you have to give it to YOURSELF AND OTHERS simultaneously. And the word for that is SHARING, or joining. Or even oneness.

It will seem odd at first, and counter-intuitive. It will seem ridiculous to suggest that you have to GIVE to someone "else", in order to receive. That whatever you want for yourself, you have to give it to someone else. That if you want to be healed, you have to give healing. That if you want to feel loved, you have to GIVE love. It will seem like you're being fooled, that someone ELSE is going to get all the benefit, and you will be left hanging. You'll be wondering to yourself how YOU are going to benefit at all if someone ELSE is getting all the stuff given to them.

But as you practice this and SHIFT your sense of self away from "I am only me" to "I am us", which is true sharing and natural oneness, you will realize that it does in fact work. When you do give love to another, you DO become elevated. This is why "miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver". Giving love makes YOU feel loved. Giving healing brings healing TO YOU. Making someone happy makes YOU happy.

This is actually the only way that miracles can be given to others. Because "miracles unite you with your brother" and "healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad." This is also where shared interests come into it.

If your SELF really encompassses and means, "You plus them", and you really start to develop a sense that YOU ARE IN THEM, then whenever you are thinking of your "own" interests you actually think of what is in the best interests of BOTH of you. You think of how you can BOTH BENEFIT and BOTH RECEIVE equally. You start to be your brother's keeper, because it is on your own best interest to do so.

The course also says that when you do this, when you start to see yourself as IN others, shared with them, which results in you looking out for your MUTUAL interests, you can now call yourself a Teacher of God. Because you are now TEACHING something BEYOND separation, beyond isolation and exclusion. You are teaching inclusiveness and sharing, which is aligned with God's nature.

"A teacher of God is anyone who chooses to be one. His qualifications consist solely in this; somehow, somewhere he has made a deliberate choice in which he did not see his interests as apart from someone else's."

It can feel strange at first, but as you start to practive this, you realize that you need to "target" the you that is in someone ELSE, in order for YOU to really receive anything. And that when you try to target the you that is ONLY in your body, you end up being deprived. After a while you start to actually expand your sense of identity and self to INCLUDE other people. You start to feel like, references to "ME" are references to "US". That you start to ENCOMPASS others like a kind of umbrella.

Whatever is truly given is therefore given FOR you and TO you but also FOR others. This is why the light of God is given to you in order to move through you TO others. This is how miracles are working. Because we're really talking here about the basis of a holy relationship, a relationship in which "my selfish self" is being put aside and my sense of identity is transcending "just me" and is opening up to INCLUDE others.

That means you are becoming more WHOLE, or having more "self-fullness", because the whole of you really is the whole sonship. You ARE the Kingdom of God. You INCLUDE everyone in yourself. You are christ just as everyone is. So to be whole, you have to be everyone. Otherwise you exclude huge portions of yourself by excluding your brother.

You can't be seeing other people as "NOT ME" if you are to be spiritually awakened. Atonement is the TRANSCENDENCE of separation.

"Specialness is a lack of trust in anyone except yourself. Faith is invested in yourself alone. Everything else becomes your enemy, feared and attacked, deadly and dangerous, hated and worthy only of destruction."

"But NEVER you alone. This world is but the dream that you can BE alone, and think without affecting those apart from you. To be alone MUST mean you are apart, and if you are, you cannot BUT be sick."

"Specialness is the function that you gave yourself. It stands for you alone, as self-created, self-maintained, in need of nothing, and unjoined with anything beyond the body."

"It is not true that you can make decisions BY yourself, or FOR yourself alone. No thought of God's Son CAN be separate, or isolated in its effects. Every decision is made for the WHOLE SONSHIP, directed in and out, and influencing a constellation larger than anything you ever dreamed of."

"You communicate with no-one, and you are as isolated from reality, as if you were ALONE in all the universe. In your madness, you OVERLOOK REALITY COMPLETELY, and you see ONLY YOUR SPLIT MIND everywhere you look. God calls you and you do not hear, for you are preoccupied with your own voice. And the vision of Christ is not in your sight, for you look upon yourself ALONE."

"You BELIEVE that it is possible to harbor thoughts you would NOT share, and that Salvation lies in keeping your thoughts TO YOURSELF ALONE. For, in private thoughts, KNOWN ONLY TO YOURSELF, you think you find a way to keep what you would HAVE alone, and share what YOU would share. And then you wonder why it is that you are not in full communication with those around you, and with God, Who surrounds ALL of you together."

"Salvation needs your help as well as mine. Do not forget you do not answer for yourself alone."

"You cannot hear the Voice for God in yourself alone, because you are NOT alone. And His answer is only for what you ARE."

"Remember that you learn not for yourself alone, no more than I did. It is BECAUSE I learned for YOU, that you can learn of ME."

"You can no more pray for yourselves alone than you can find joy for yourself alone. Prayer is a re-statement of INCLUSION, directed by the Holy Spirit under the laws of God."

"The idea for today is obviously the reason why your seeing does not affect you alone." (I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts.) "WITHOUT His guidance, you will think you know alone, and will decide AGAINST your peace, as surely as you made the wrong decision in ever thinking that Salvation lay in you alone. Salvation is of Him to Whom God GAVE it FOR you."

"The ego teaches that your strength is in you ALONE. The Holy Spirit teaches that ALL strength is in God and THEREFORE in you."

"And how could your request be limited to you alone? No gift of God can be unshared."

"The gifts you have are not for you alone. What He has come to offer you, you now must learn to give. This is the lesson that His giving holds, for He has saved you from the solitude you sought to make, in which to hide from God."

"It will NOT be for you alone, for therein lay its misery. As its UNholiness kept it as a thing apart, its HOLINESS will become an offering to everyone."

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

"This you COULD spare him AND YOURSELF. For reason would not make way for correction in you alone. Correction cannot BE accepted OR REFUSED by you, without your brother."

"Salvation IS His Will BECAUSE you share it. NOT for you alone, but for the Self which IS the Son of God."

"The contrast is far greater than you think, for you will love this concept of yourself, BECAUSE IT WAS NOT MADE FOR YOU ALONE. Born as a gift for someone NOT perceived to be yourself, it has been given YOU. For your forgiveness, offered unto him, has been accepted now for BOTH of you."

"Neither of you alone can serve at all. Only in your JOINT will does healing lie. For here YOUR healing is, and here will YOU accept Atonement. And in your healing IS the Sonship healed, BECAUSE your wills are joined."

"Some illusions are shared, and some are part of your personal hell."

In this world, there are circumstances, events, happenings, situations, scenarios, some of which seem tolerable, and some of which are a nightmare. And rest assured that the world is set up in such a way that problems are endless and inescapable, all roads lead to death, and it is only a matter of time before things go wrong. It's built into spacetime itself. And according to the world's laws, everything is dead as soon as it is born.

But what makes it hell, isn't so much "what happens" or the current configuration of the external world. It's more to do with how you experience it. Whether you experience it like a happy dream, or like a horrifying nightmare, depends entirely on what's going on in your mind.

Regardless of whether you are in a good place mentally, or a bad place, the world will still keep functioning according to its nature. Animals die. Trees burn. Houses crumble. Cars break. Food rots. And planets are consumed by supernovae. This is built into spacetime. This is the rules of physics by which the world seems to be governed.

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it."

The question is, what meaning, purpose, use, attitude and way of perceiving you are going to have, while this stuff is happening. And what you make of it is going to determine whether or not you experience happiness or unhappiness, invulnerability or suffering, health or death. And you do in fact have it within your power to experience this script of the world, in a way that entails NO negative reaction at all.

Reactions to the world are ENTIRELY based on a belief that you are at the effect of the world. That the world is the cause of you. If you believe this in a way, in any situation, your mind will inflict imagined states of suffering upon itself. It will perceive itself as victimized, demoralized, attacked, hurt, threatened, abused and upset. And all of this is ONLY in response to how the mind is perceiving and using the situation. These experiences don't depend on what is "happening" in the world, it only depends on your use of them. Or the meaning you give them.

When you are lost in the ego, in specialness and self interest and attachment and arrogance, confused and blinded and lost and afraid, you likely will feel like you are ONE WITH the world. In this experience, there is no distinction between what the world seems to be doing, and what you seem to be experiencing. There is no "positive separation" between you and events. And when they happen, they seem to happen directly to you, causing you to suffer, upsetting you, threatening you and making you hurt. And you can see no seeming way to stop them.

But when you step back and remember that you have responsibility for your thoughts, your perception, your attitude, your beliefs, etc... you are in fact CONTRIBUTING to how you experience what is happening. If you suffer and are upset when something "bad" seems to happening, it is not really because of what happens, but because of your beliefs about it.

Let's say, you value human bodies and believe bodies are really people. You have some favorite bodies and you want to keep them around. You are attached to them and value them, and use them for self interests. And then one of these bodies is attacked and dies. And now you will experience what seems like real loss and terrible grief, will be sad and in despair. And it will seem cruel and unfair and you will feel victimized by it, angry at the person for leaving and abandoning you. But this is ONLY because of your mind's attitude about the body, about the events that transpired, and what it means to you. And you could just as easily laugh about it.

What happens, is not why you suffer. The world does not cause the suffering. Events don't have any power to do anything to you. No-one can cause you. Nothing in the world can oppress you or make you sick or dead. There is no causal power, no will, no mind in the world, capable of influencing you in any way at all. At least, not if you are in your right mind. Not if you are recognizing that the world is FICTION. And not if your beliefs are fully lined up with the truth. No one who recognizes that the world is a dream could possible take it seriously.

"You would not react at all to figures in a dream that you knew you were dreaming."

So it isn't the state of the world, or what happens, or who does what to whom, that makes you suffer in any way. It's not the reason why you are unhappy or upset or afraid. Any "re-actions" you have are EFFECTS that your mind is inventing to correspond to and are consequences of the CAUSES that your same mind is believing exist, happening against you from the outside in.

Your mind, attacks itself, and believes it is hurt by these attacks. And it believes the cause of these attacks is not itself, but something external to itself. This is because your mind disassociates from itself and is split. Two parts of mind at war with each other. And this split minded state is the only way your mind can experience suffering, at its own hand, and disowned.

I went through hellish experiences a little over a year ago. I managed to try to stay strong through some of it, as much as I could muster, but I was still beaten down, tempted, torn apart by it, terribly upset, stressed, like going through the worst living nightmare possible. But time has passed, and healing has occurred, and forgiveness has been applied. And I now look back and can ask myself, what is it that made it seem like hell at the time?

The answer is always that it only seemed like hell because I took it seriously, I forgot to laugh, I thought it was real, I believed in bodies, I believed in external threats, I saw others as enemies, I decided what things meant, I read into it, I feared for possible futures, and basically MADE the whole thing a nightmare. Internally. I allowed it INTO my mind, by my belief in it being real.

"Whatever you accept INTO your mind has reality for you."

I accepted it into my mind, through belief in external causes, which was really MY mind causing itself against itself, perceptions of hell and nightmarish threatening situations. It wasn't merely that the situations were there to make me stronger at the ego level, but they were there for me to rise above my own self attack. The lesson was not to suffer and become stronger because of it, but to become stronger in rejection of the suffering. Realizing I was doing it to myself, making it worse, inflating it, reading into it, giving it meaning.

At the time, yes, I was not ready or able to stop myself from doing this. I was not far enough along in my clarification of what I was doing to not make it worse for myself. I didn't know the many ways I believed bodies were real and hospitals were threats and all the rest of it. I "did my best at the time", certainly. But I still made it hell for myself, within, in spite of that. And that is where the real lesson is.

It is not what happens, it's what you make of it. And if you believe the world is real, you will suffer. And if you believe that other people are bodies, you will fear for their lives. And if you believe the world can attack someone and make them sick against their will, you will suffer along with them. And in all this false empathy you will feel victimized as much as the person you think has been victimized. And this is all an inside job.

I could-a should-a would-a laughed through the whole thing and not taken it remotely seriously and simply resurrected and healed and brushed it off as nonsense. But I wasn't ready to be able to do that at the time, so I suffered. But I suffered because of my beliefs, my attachments, my valuing of unreal things. And in every way, all of my suffering was really INSIDE myself, not really anything that anyone was actually doing outside of me. It was my inner experience that became hellish. It was my inner feelings and reactions that were my suffering, and it was all ultimately self inflicted. I chose it through believing in it.

Many people would say it's completely understandable that I would feel so upset given what was happening. And many would say that anyone would feel that way. And that when such things happen everyone is stricken with fear. And that this is all completely normal and natural. But it IS NOT. It is mental illness, and it is extremely widespread. Because we're not willing to look deeply and honestly enough at what is really happening in our minds, and what and HOW we are doing it to ourselves. No one is supposed to be unhappy, or suffering, or sick or dead, ever.

For a time I could not see my involvement in it, and just kept having these upsetting flashbacks of how "it was hell" and how upsetting and ridiculous it was. Because I could not "positively separate out" the what from the meaning. And emotional memories of ego experiences are always from a victim vantage point - the "one with the suffering" viewpoint.

I couldn't realize how I DID have a choice and I WAS choosing and the way I suffered was actually my own choice, albeit somewhat unconscious at the time. I didn't realize I could believe otherwise because I believed too heavily in the body and the world being reality. So the suffering was somewhat inevitable. And it was not the world's fault. It was my mistaken mindset. I had to learn that bodies aren't real and the loss of body parts has no effect on the spirit.

I used to also have a fear that it was going to repeat and something just as bad would happen again. But this too is melting because I can't fear that "hell will happen again" if I am realizing that I am the one who caused it to seem like hell. In choosing not to do that to myself again, I can render myself invulnerable. No matter what seems to transpire. A happy dream is an empowered dream, in which I am cause, not effect.

The only benefit perhaps to such trials, such suffering experiences, isn't so much that you learn skills or abilities to get through it and survive, but more that you learn the part you play in making it seem to be what it is. In taking responsibility for sight. In owning your power of decision to choose differently. To use it as an opportunity to forgive, and not as an opportunity to attack yourself. Because at the end of the day we really are just using the world to try to prove that we are weak and vulnerable and must die in guilt, which none of us really deserve or need.

You can set yourself free from hell, but it does require that you learn the beliefs you hold about the world are false. The valuing of bodies and the fear of sickness and death has to go. The indentifying with a body, and others with theirs, has to go. Otherwise you are going to suffer sooner or later, by your own choice. The secret of salvation tells you this. Nothing happens without your own consent. And all the ways that you experience any situation is you doing it to yourself, no matter whether it seems like you are the victim or the victimizer or who seems to play what role, in what is essentially a non-existent illusion of happenings.

You can't get out of hell by talking yourself into it, justifying why the world is real and why it's okay that there is suffering, by telling yourself that it's okay that bodies are dying, or trying to adjust to hell. You cannot find peace through making the world real and then trying to make yourself at peace with its real hell. The only way to escape it is to not believe in it at all, otherwise you do hell to yourself long before the world becomes hell to you.

The Holy Spirit will repeat this ONE inclusive lesson of deliverance, until it has been learned, REGARDLESS of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him, He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

I want to make an important point which I think many people overlook with what the Course is teaching.

There is something that you may not have realized about this world. It is not what you think it is.

Physical matter ITSELF, is an ILLUSION, of such profoundly convincing proportions, that you do not even suspect that there is something unnatural about it.

Its form and appearance are so deceiving, and so successful at convincing you it is "natural", that you don't even consider that there is something untrue about it. It is SO BLINDING that it is assumed to be "just the way it is", as if any universe would have objects like this.

This blindness about form has led many ACIM students to not even question physical form, as if it's just there and is real. Like it's a given, so vast and seemingly consistent that it seems to be outside of our minds and impossible to influence directly. And this then leads to a severely mistaken interpretation of the Course.

If physical form is natural, and it's not even up for question, then the only thing that seems changeable is "inside your mind", which will be interpreted to mean "inside your personal non-form self", separate from the world.

You will then start to interpret the course as meaning you should only change your mind "about" the world, because it seems to be the only part of "you" that CAN be modified easily.

It's as if, the world is a separate "thing", so big and so unchangeable by you, that you don't even begin to question its nature. The Course then becomes entirely about you accepting atonement "for yourself", you changing "your mind" ABOUT the world, you not changing the world at all, and you not having any miraculous power to do so.

What also results from this is a false sense of context, that your "perception" is kind of a personal thing, inside your mind, inside your body. Everything physically external to your body is considered to be something else.

Indeed there is barely any consideration for this entire universe being "inside your mind" in any way - that seems like FAR too big of a responsibility or a magnitude of identity FAR too big to be able to accept or relate to. We have become SO USED TO LITTLENESS, that we do not think big at all.

I want to make it clear just how BLINDING form is, and WHY it is so deceiving, lying, unnatural, false and unreal.

I also want to reframe this entire world as being inside the collective mind of the Sonship. This leads to a very important point, which is, that the appearance, manifestation, physicality and nature of "physical matter" is actually nothing more than a STATE OF MIND. Or to put it another way, it is PERCEPTION.

The Course literally says "This world IS perception." This does not mean perception OF the world, which is once removed. It means literally, the mind of the Son of God which is dreaming this universe, is having a false perception, which is showing up as a tree, a car, and a young child. These seeming forms are not really physical matter, they are IDEAS IN THE MIND. And all of these ideas are just thoughts. And thoughts are nothing more than PERCEPTIONS. So this seemingly physical universe is in fact the Son of God mis-perceiving, and the hallucinations He's having in his false perception are showing up as IMAGES which we think are physical objects.

There is a huge camp of people in the ACIM community who generally do not see or believe this. As described above, they think that this world is somehow real and natural and that we are only supposed to change our "little" minds about it, to see IT differently. Not realizing whatsoever that IT ITSELF is perception, INSIDE A MIND, a mind so vast and powerful that we don't even conceive of it as being who we really are or what we are capable of.

Now. How is it that form is blinding, or an illusion, and exactly HOW does form deceive you? How is it lying to you? What is it trying to DO? And what is its PURPOSE? Remember the Course tells us to ask, "what is it FOR"? What is form FOR?

Physical form is a device for massively obscuring the nature of God, by presenting a "picture of the crucifixion of God's Son" (ACIM terms), so that you see something completely UNNATURAL presenting itself as if it is "the nature" of existence, so that God's presence will be HIDDEN.

This entire world, this planet Earth, this universe and everything with it, IS A LIE. It is FALSE. It is unreal. And it does not exist. This is reflected in "there is no world". IT IS LITERALLY TRUE. So exactly how is physical matter lying or covering up God's nature?

In terms of how the ego thinks and how this world SUGGESTS things are true, it seems to us that physical objects cannot occupy the same space. It is also suggested that whatever is contained within one area of space, cannot be contained elsewhere. It seems there is only so much material (matter) to go around, and that in order to make something presence elsewhere it has to be *removed* from where it was, thus indicating a lack or limitation to "how much" there is of anything.

This is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to the nature of God. God is omnipresent. He is everywhere, fully, at all times. If you were to think of God as occupying "space" - as an analogy for the sake of explaining this - then ALL of God is in one location, AND, God is also fully in another location, at the same time, without any lack, any diminishing, or any limitation. All of God is in America, all of God is in Africa, all of God is in Europe, etc. This does not mean God has sectioned off 1/3rd of himself to be in the USA so that there is "some left" for the other places. He is fully 100% present in ALL of these locations simultaneously.

To the ego, this is absolutely impossible and absolute nonsense. In terms of physical matter it is impossible for some amount of substance to be fully located in more than one place. So physical matter inherently has this "belief system" built into it, of finite limitation, lack, difference, competition, murder, attacking (causing) without being affected, the opposite of abundance, absolutely no sharing, no unity, no stability, no sameness or equality, no constancy, nothing permanent, everything changing. Physical matter is the EMBODIMENT of the ego's thought system. THIS WHOLE UNIVERSE IS THE EGO THOUGHT SYSTEM!

Given that God's nature is to be everywhere fully, simultaneously, at all times, without lack, and completely defying all ego laws, when we are presented with an image of FORM, we are being presented with a picture of the OPPOSITE to God's nature. It is a massive lie. It is DELIBERATELY DESIGNED to obscure God's nature, to paint a picture of attack and crucifixion and death, to make it SEEM AS IF there is absolutely no sharing or abundance, that it is "natural" to lack or have limitations.

Even the way that one physical object seems to be separate from another, sharing nothing with it, unable to merge or be "one" with each other, different in their properties and which "physical laws" (ego laws) apply to them, influencing each other differently and unequally, is specifically INTENDED by the ego to LIE TO YOU, so that you will be convinced that it is normal and natural for things to be this way. It is NOT NORMAL OR NATURAL for objects to not share space, for there to be limitation and lack, or for there to be DIFFERENCES or different appearances.

So the fact is this. You are surrounded by a massive, very solid-seeming ILLUSION, which IS PART OF THE EGO, part of the ego thought system, and is inside of MIND, and is being thought by those who are separate from God, and is coming from a state of belief in sin and separation. Physical objects are SIN. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outward."

Whenever "events" seem to happen in this world, and something seems to go wrong, this is an IDEA playing out, an idea of sin made real. This is why the REVERSAL OF THE PHYSICAL STATE represents a supernatural MIRACLE. To rewind time, to undo the symptoms, to cancel the chain of illusory cause-effect, to modify the outcome of sinful events, is an expression of miracles. Physical form is the idea of sin made flesh, and to reverse that IDEA will make that flesh DISAPPEAR. It must disappear because it is an idea in the MIND. Physical forms are IN THE MIND. Change your mind and "the world" MUST CHANGE ITS FORM, or disappear entirely.

This presents an entirely radically different view of some of the Course principles, that somehow PHYSICALITY is actually INCLUDED IN changes that are made to mind. The body is not outside the mind, nor is this world. They are not solid or real. They are IDEAS OF SEPARATION. That means as mind changes, physical form must change as well. This is why the physical body can become a symbol of immortality, why all sickness must be reversed, why a broken body is PROOF that the MIND has not been healed, and why there is a VERY PHYSICALLY ORIENTED aspect to performing miracles.

Miracles, true miracles, are not restricted to the "scope" of your LITTLE MIND. Nor are they limited to the scope of what you THINK of as mind, separate from matter. Miracles apply to THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE, because it is inside the mind, and IT IS perception. Physical matter is misperception of God. Period. You can change how "you" seem to perceive it, to see God "in it" etc, but if you are still seeing physical matter according to ITS ILLUSORY LAWS, and still think of yourself as separate, then you are still not perceiving correctly.

Fact is, because physical forms are IN THE MIND and are thoughts/ideas, changing the mind HAS TO CHANGE THE FORM. So what that means is something very interesting.... there is a direct connection between "changing your perception" and changing PHYSICALLY. So if for example Jesus changes water into wine, he is not really changing water into wine, he is CHANGING HIS MIND and it's showing up as water changing into wine.

This means, we have to stop thinking of physical bodies and forms as "separate from mind". That's part of the ILLUSION that they are trying to convince us of, that they REALLY ARE SEPARATE, because forms "prove" that separation IS REAL. Believing forms are real is falling for the illusion they were intended to convince you of. Instead we need to think of physical matter as IDEAS or THOUGHTS IN THE MIND. And that means, we are not living in a physical world, we are living INSIDE A MIND, and as the Course says, "everything is an idea". That means, if you HAVE A DIFFERENT IDEA, it will materialize as an image of a form.

It also means if you change your ideas/thoughts, IT WILL show up as things changing in the world. And this testifies to the POWER OF THE MIND, which most of us are scared shitless about. We literally MUST change forms if we change our mind and form MUST ALWAYS REPRESENT our state of mind. There is no matter separate from mind. There is no matter separate from our ideas and thoughts or misperceptions. Whatever form is showing up, that testifies to what we think about God. So a change in perception is not without power - a change in perception LITERALLY MUST show up as a change in physical images, because we are LIVING INSIDE A MIND and everything is fluid and changeable. Form is not "solid and fixed" implying that mind is only that which is flexible. Form IS WITHIN the mind.

This is NOT a physical world. This "world" is a THOUGHT. It is an idea, in the mind. Inside a VAST mind. The mind of the Son of God, not just the mind of a little separate human. If we are to be miracle workers, it MUST MEAN that we demonstrate that this PHYSICAL WORLD IS A LIE, by showing HOW it is a lie, by changing it, in order to SHOW that it is a lie, so that people are educated experientially. The course literally tells us to do this, and that our demonstrations will exonerate our brothers from belief in sin.

When the Course also teaches, which it does, that we are supposed to demonstrate a PERFECTLY HEALTHY BODY, free of all sin and symptoms and signs of death, it tells us this because our physical body is an IDEA in our MIND, which we are presenting to our brother. If the body is broken, the MIND IS DREAMING OF A LIE. So that proves the mind is not healed.

So if we show sickness to a brother, to his physical eyes, we are actually presenting a THOUGHT OF DEATH AND ATTACK, which shows up in what we call "physical form", but is really an IDEA in the mind. So now our physical body HAS TO BE USED as a "medium" through which God's laws are demonstrated, and the mind is SHOWN to be healed, through the miraculous absence of all signs of mental illness.

You cannot have mental health without physical health, and you cannot have sickness without mental illness. "All sickness is mental illness." And that's simply because, the body is IN THE MIND, so whatever state of mind you have it WILL SHOW UP as the body. And when the mind is perfectly purified, the body will disappear entirely.

What this reveals is that in A Course in Miracles, which many people think is about the mind (inside the body), MUST INCLUDE the transformation of FORM, as a symbol of truth, to use form to demonstrate the truth, and to use form to show that form is a lie. And these demonstrations are what the Course refers to as MIRACLES. They DO incorporate changes of mind, because form IS IN THE MIND. The body is not separate from the mind, nor are physical objects, nor is the world.

And this is why our PROVING of God's truth and laws must take place IN THIS WORLD, using miracles which demonstrate SUPERNATURALLY (beyond the illusory nature of physical matter), that the truth is true. If one object is multiplied into two objects, with no lack or limitation, this is a miraculous demonstration of the fact that the EGO'S LIE, which is physical form, does not apply to the nature of God.

"That the body cannot heal the mind but the mind can heal the body proves that the mind must be stronger than the body. EVERY MIRACLE DEMONSTRATES THIS." Miracles can ONLY demonstrate this by showing that the mind can HEAL the body, mind is more powerful than matter, mind is free of the ego's laws of physics, and therefore the mind has SUPERNATURAL POWER over physicality. This is a central, core teaching of A Course in Miracles.

"What you use the body for it will become to you." tells us that if you use the body with love, the body should BECOME A PICTURE OF LOVE. If it is being used for attack, IT WILL become a picture of sickness, proving the mind is not healed. The body is literally A REFLECTION OF YOUR MENTAL STATE. Because it is being projected by your mind. Just as this whole universe is being projected by the mind of the Sonship. And everything which seems physical IS NOT, it is in the mind. And so if you change your mind, THE WORLD MUST CHANGE.

We are not inside a physical world. The physical world is a lie inside our mind. Nothing more than an idea or thought, or a false perception. It is a visualization of mental illness. And because it is IN the mind, within the scope of the mind's influence, it can EASILY BE CHANGED by someone who is purified in their awareness of love's power.

So ACIM is not just about hey, I'm going to heal my mind in isolation, regardless of what other people do, in private, and not have ANY EFFECT on others or on the world. There are entire sections in the course talking about how we are afraid of the FACT that thoughts produce effects. "All thought produces form at some level." Therefore, all form is a thought, therefore it must be within the mind, therefore it must be changeable if the mind changes.

Form is the "form of error". Error means the unforgiving idea of sin and death considered to be real. All physical form is ERROR. It is an IDEA of attack, separation, difference and UNNATURAL conditions.

There is a great section in the course talking about how the body's physical eyes were designed to look upon FORM (of error) and make it real, BLINDING YOU to true vision or the ability to REALLY SEE or recognize the ILLUSION that matter is.

”The body's eyes see only form. 4 They cannot see beyond what they were made to see. 5 And they were made to look on error and not see past it. 6 Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing. 7 To this distorted form of vision the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true. 8 Yet how can sight that stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall, see truly?"

In this section we are told how the ego made form (matter) as errors, vs mistakes, and made the body with physical eyes, to be BLIND YOU, NOT to see. Physical sight is an ILLUSION, pretending to "see" when in fact it is like burying your head in the sand.

From the perspective of the whole of existence, in which you can see everything at once, the body was made to ISOLATE YOUR VISION, to trap you in an illusion, like going inside a closed box, in which you are only allowed to see the inside of the box. It's like being forced to look at a tv screen forever and ever, never allowed to look away or look at anything else. It gives you pre-presecribed images to look at, and to ONLY look at them in a certain way, so that you will NOT SEE ANYTHING REAL.

Physical matter, and sight of it with body eyes, was INTENDED by the ego to BLIND YOU, so that you would never question that physical forms are illusions, or can be changed, or have anything to do with mind, or that you put them there through dreaming for the sole purpose of LYING about the nature of God.

You cannot and should not believe your eyes, or any body senses. They are designed to FAIL TO SEE, to FAIL TO SENSE, and to NOT BE AWARE of what is real. Body sensory organs are LIES, pretending to be able to be "aware of" something when in fact these sensations BLIND YOU to true awareness. This is why pain and pleasure both make the body real. Sight of form, belief in form, and assumption that physicality is natural, is part of the ego thought system.

Demonstrations that it is false and limited is a miracle, revealing the TRUE NATURE OF GOD. If miracles could not demonstrate that the ego's laws, its world, physicality, matter, are NOT REAL OR TRUE, and are not governed by the laws that the ego made up, we would have NO WAY to prove that God's laws are true, there could be NO HEALING, and the ego could not be undone. As Jesus says, the mere fact that illusions CAN BE CHANGED by miracles proves their impermanence.

So open your mind. This world is not what you think it is. It is a huge lie. You are not little, isolated to a body. Nor do you have a private awakening. Your mind is not stuck in your body. You are bigger than this universe, and more powerful than anything this world can demonstrate. This world IS perception and it must be corrected. That's how it turns into a happy dream, not just a happy interpretation of hell, but the TRANSLATION of hell into Heaven, initially through the transformation of matter towards symbols of Heaven, and then its disappearance.

"Heaven and Earth are opposite in EVERY WAY." And that could not be more true - physical matter and its "nature" are SO OPPOSITE to God's nature, they have nothing in common. Matter is a lie. Objects are fiction. Bodies are illusions. Worlds and planets and stars are fake. There is no separation, no difference, no appearance and no forms. There is only God's nature governing the TRUE LAWS of existence, which we are to demonstrate through miracles HERE in this illusion so that we can teach others that this world is NOT NATURAL, and that the truth is therefore SUPER NATURAL.