"Whenever you question your value, say, "God Himself is incomplete without me."
"God is incomplete without you, simply because His grandeur is total, and you cannot BE missing from it."
"YOU are the work of God, and His Work is wholly loveable and wholly loving. This is how a man MUST think of himself in his heart, because this is what he IS."
Worth, is really a question of value, but even moreso a question of whether something QUALIFIES or "deserves". It's also related to appropriateness. Is it right, that you be loved. So we're also talking about your "rights", or what you are entitled to. Which also relates to what you are allowed, or what is yours, or what belongs to you inherently.
When we form any idea of having sinned, believing in separation, we are actually saying that we no longer qualify. If we have become sinful or guilty, instead of innocent, we have kind of "dropped out" of the running. We've positioned ourselves as not worthy or not capable or not of a quality sufficiently high or appropriate enough to meet the "requirements". By changing the premise to "I'm sinful", the logical conclusion is that you are no longer worthy. And the only sense of unworthiness is a sense of sinfulness against God.
Those who are innocent do meet the requirements of heaven, and so are entitled to heaven. They are entitled to the inheritance of God, and everything belongs to them. But when they attack themselves, they undermine their authority or "permission to access" the benefits which correlate to innocence. By stepping out of innocence we step out of deserving the love of God. At least, we believe this is the case.
If you believe you have sinned, are criminal, are evil or guilty, have done something wrong, messed up, or failed in some way, you will regard yourself as a failure. This is a view of yourself as weak and frail, powerless, hopeless, lost, alone, valueless, incapable, ineffective, not deserving freedom or love, and generally feeling horrible about yourself.
Feeling "unworthy" is kind of a logical conclusion based on the supposed evidence of what you think you did, or what you failed to do. If you see yourself as innocent you see yourself as deserving all of heaven. If you see yourself as guilty you see yourself as deserving all of hell.
This ties in very strongly to the victim role. If you feel unworthy, you will feel deflated, defective, lacking, having nothing much to offer, having very low "value", having no rights and no freedoms. You will feel like a prisoner, as though everyone else gets to decide your fate, as if you have no say in your own life. You'll feel like a kind of slave, undeserving of having any of your needs met, yet feeling very much in need.
Impoverished and empty, you'll regard yourself as not worth being given any attention, or anything. You'll also be afraid all the time because you'll see the whole world as defining your fate on a whim. Secretly this is an attempt to project self-blame onto the world, believing it is blaming you. The world will now seem like it's taking everything away from you and having power over you, because that's what YOU are doing to yourself.
If your value is so low, you will regard yourself as having failed, and therefore as being a failure. If you are a failure, you will feel like there is no point in trying to do anything, because not only do you see yourself as very likely to fail, you'll believe you have already failed before you even begin. This will stop you from doing many things on the basis that you "can't", rooted in some belief that "no-one wants me." Secretly this is your belief that YOU don't want you, projected and reflected back at you.
Of course, being unworthy, you have to believe no-one loves you. That everyone is against you and can "use you" for whatever purposes they see fit, for their own gains, with no regard for yours. This of course is a state that also results from such things as abuse, violence, attack, sexual assault, trauma and so on.
It can leave you feeling helpless and powerless and very "low", like you don't mean anything and have no value. That, even in your own eyes, you don't deserve anything because you aren't worth anything. Like something to be discarded and thrown away which no-one wants. Of course this is how YOU feel about yourself, because it's really you who has decided you are worthless. But by asserting "you're not worth anything" to the world, it reflects back to you from the outside in. A projection of self-hate.
Clearly when you're in such a state, although it feels unfair, and imposed from outside of you, much more likely you are actually the one who has decided that you are unworthy. You have in some way depleted your own idea of your own value. And we're not so much talking here about self-esteem as we are about God-esteem.
The only real value is the value God has of you, regarding your true nature. And so really the only thing in your mind that you care about is whether or not you qualify or meet God's "standards". Whether you are worthy of his love. Whether you deserve forgiveness or punishment. If you believe you are a weak and miseable valueless sinner who isn't worth anything and should be punished and hurt, then you are trying to decide for God what God thinks of you.
You'll do this on the basis of what you think you did. ie, which sins you think you committed, the reasons why you are guilty, the faults and lacks and insufficiencies of your personality or body or mind. The various value systems you yourself have invented and then judged yourself harshly by. Systems which God doesn't even use, because he simply ALWAYS finds you worthy of him.
If you are feeling unworthy, it's really kind of a severe case of a pity party. It's self-inflicted, just as the secret of salvation says. It might seem like it was induced or enforced by someone outside of you but really you went along with it and believed it. You allowed it to affect you and decided to comply with it, because deep down something far worse than other people condemning you is YOU condemning yourself. Only you can hurt yourself so deeply. And it's really just a matter of a lack of self-love.
We have to own up to this because really it's not God who is thinking of you as a miserable sinner or a worthless piece of shit. It's you. It's your self-talk and your self-attack. It's your self-destructiveness. Which when you think about it is quite weird because there you are, feeling utterly shit about yourself, while simultaneously having the total freedom and power to choose to feel that way. And you must've made a wrong decision because you're not at peace.
Taking ownership of your decision to reject God's evaluation of you, and your attempt to overthrow his will, and to ignore his unconditional love, is the only way out of it. You have to be willing to see that you are the one who has decided that your value is extremely low. That you're so worthless you pretty much just deserve to die, because no-one would want you. But hey, even if it seems true that no-one DOES want you, that's their problem and not yours. And it has nothing to do with whether YOU want you.
While you may think well, I can't do this or that because I am a failure and no-one would want me or anything I do, it's really you telling yourself this. It's you not wanting what you do. It's you being hard on yourself. And you shouldn't even be giving other people power over you to decide for you whether you are worthy or not. It's none of their business. God is the only one in the privileged position to determine your real value, and he finds you to be permanently worthy forever. It's not even really up to you.
You can't therefore really obliterate your value or worth, or decide that you deserve to die against God's will. You can pretend to do this, and you can believe in it, but even underneath your utter self-hate there is total self-love. You can't change what is really true of you, no matter how hard you try to destroy yourself. God has guaranteed your sinlessness forever. Your value is inestimable and infinite. And you are worthy and qualify for everything he has to offer. You qualified in your creation!
So if you're feeling low, down, bad about yourself, unworthy, not good enough, undeserving, a failure, weak, powerless, barely worth wiping a shoe on, recognize that this can't be true of you. It's absolutely not true in God's eyes. And it doesn't even matter what other people think of you or how they fail to properly value you. Everyone should be loving you, unless they themselves have failed to love themselves. It says nothing about your worth.
You have to decide to accept your perfection, your innocence, your value, your worth to God, your infinite credibility, your integrity, your divine honor, your holiness and your entitlement to the Kingdom of God. And that means you have to put aside all of the abuse and hurt and pain and misery and reasons "why" you deserve suffering. God does not will that you suffer, and nor should you.
"I who am host to God AM worthy of Him. He Who ESTABLISHED His dwelling-place in me created it as He would have it be."
"The truth about YOU is so lofty that nothing that is unworthy of God is worthy of you."
"But you COULD not make YOURSELF unworthy because YOU ARE THE TREASURE OF GOD. What HE values IS valuable. There CAN be no question of its worth, because its value lies in God's sharing Himself with it and ESTABLISHING ITS VALUE FOREVER."
"EVERY mind that God created is equally worthy of being healed because GOD CREATED IT WHOLE."
"You should know that all God's children are fully worthy of COMPLETE courtesy."
"He always teaches you the inestimable worth of EVERY Son of God, teaching it with infinite patience born of the Love of Him for whom He speaks."
"The Atonement is the only gift which is worthy of being offered to the Altar of God. This is because of the inestimable value of the Altar itself. It was created perfect, and is entirely worthy of receiving perfection. God IS lonely without His SOULS, and THEY are lonely without Him."
"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable value simultaneously."
When you are angry, you are using projection to try to make someone guilty. It's really an attempt to take some guilt or pain or upset from inside of you and push it out onto the world.
"ALL anger is nothing more than an attempt to MAKE SOMEONE FEEL GUILTY."
When you do this, if you watch carefully, you may notice a sensation of "separating off". While it seems like you are attacking outwardly, as if pushing something onto the world, you also feel a sense of withdrawing, distancing, stepping away. As though you are breaking off from the thing you're attacking and being more separate from it.
Although the feeling you have may be one of hurt or pain or guilt or justified anger, which you're trying to accuse someone else of, the actual side effect is that you are attacking yourself from the outside in and pulling yourself away from others. So you simultaneously are pushing and pulling at the same time, which splits the mind, like ripping it apart. It's this splitting that actually produces suffering.
"Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel DIFFERENT from your brothers and separated FROM them."
What this means is that you are trying to "separate from" what you see. In the workbook there is a curious lesson which speaks of you joining with what you see instead.
"For vision CAN but represent a wish, because it has NO power to create. Yet it can look with love or look with hate, depending only on the simple choice of whether you would JOIN with what you see, or keep yourself apart and separate."
"Today we are trying to use the new kind of projection. We are not attempting to get rid of what we do not like by seeing it outside. Instead, we are trying to see in the world what is in our minds, and what we want to recognize is there. Thus we are trying to join with what we see, rather than keeping it apart from us. That is the fundamental difference between vision and the way you see."
When I first read this in Lesson 30 I had no clue what it meant by "joining with what you see." Like, how do you do that? How do you join with a world which is supposed to be an illusion? How am I not joining now? Surely I'm not separated off, in a position to need to join?
But for sure when we are angry and expressing ego pain we are indeed separating off. We attack in anger and hatred. We make everything an enemy. We make the whole world wrong and condemn it for its shortcomings. And while doing this, our own mind is actually splitting.
The split then seems to take place between you and the other, or you and the world, not realizing that part of your mind includes them and is in them. So you split off from the fact that you are here AND there. And then you see yourself as only here, and not there. This is something you can actually notice happening in your mind while you do this.
To join with what you see then means to stop attacking, stop splitting, stop projecting guilt, stop making guilty, and essentially, "stop separating."
The separation from God wasn't just some ancient moment of leaving heaven. It was a movement into a dissociated state in which your mind becomes split, and then attempts to continue that state indefinitely. The separation was the beginning of the war upon yourself, and the ego tries to keep it going.
It is something that takes place in your mind between your mind and itself. It's actually a form of dissociation. It's a way whereby you experience internal conflict and attack upon yourself, split off part of yourself and see it as a separate enemy.
"Exclusion and separation are synonymous. So are separation and dissociation. We have said before that the separation was and IS dissociation, and also that once it had occurred, projection became its main defense, or the device which KEEPS IT GOING."
So notice here that Jesus is saying we've put ourselves into a separated state by attacking ourselves and splitting our mind, AND then we KEEP IT GOING, by projecting it through hate onto what SEEMS to be stuff outside or separate from yourself, in order to REINFORCE the idea that "it" IS separate from yourself, in order to keep perpetuating separation.
So if you are angry at something, you are trying to be separated off. And if you'll notice, if you attempt to "not separate", ie not attack, your projection of guilt subsides and your ego deflates and you stop projecting and separating. And what you then experience is more of a sense of unity or wholeness, a sense of joining ,a sense of love and connection.
You can actually try to "not separate", ie to not resist, attack, push away, condemn, judge, or make guilty, etc. Instead embracing and opening and allowing and accepting, loving and sharing and joining. Separation is you REJECTING stuff, trying to EXCLUDE it.
So really the question is, are we walking around being separators, or are we walking around being joiners? Are we attacking or healing? Are we projecting guilt or withholding judgement? Are we broadcasting hate and hurt or are we giving love?
"What you project you disown, and therefore DO NOT BELIEVE IS YOURS. You are therefore EXCLUDING yourself from it, by the very statement you are making that you are DIFFERENT from someone else. Since you have also judged AGAINST what you project, you attack it because you have already attacked it BY rejecting it. By doing this UNCONSCIOUSLY, you try to keep the fact that you must have attacked yourself FIRST out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe."
If you exclude, ie attack, ie project guilt, you are increasing separation and insanity. By excluding, you are separating off. This is forming an ego or a sense of being separate. When you are separate you will feel like the whole world is against you and that you are at war with it, that you have taken a side against it and are not on the same side as it or anyone else. This is because there is internal conflict in the mind. An excluding mind is a split mind, because it does not want to share a single space with anyone else. Another word for joining is INTEGRATION.
You may also notice that fear produces the same split mind, the same separation, and the same desire to push something away. Fear is an attempt to run away from and thus separate off from something else. There is a pulling away and a sense of wanting to be separate or distanced from something. To get away from it.
This is a rejection, just as the projection of guilt through anger is also secretly an attempt to reject. Anger seems less obvious of a rejection because it has overtones of attack aimed outward, but subtly you'll find that fear also is a form of attack in a more passive way. If anger is over outward attack, with subtle withdrawal, fear is overt withdrawal with subtle outward attack. Both are just more forms of the same attempt to SEPARATE. "Fear produces dissociation because it induces SEPARATION. Healing ALWAYS induces harmony because it proceeds from integration."
"When you think you are projecting what you do NOT want, it is still because you DO want it. This leads DIRECTLY to dissociation, for it represents the acceptance of two goals, each perceived IN A DIFFERENT PLACE, separated from each other BECAUSE YOU MADE THEM DIFFERENT. The mind then sees a divided world OUTSIDE ITSELF, but NOT within. This gives it an illusion of integrity, and enables it to believe that IT is pursuing one goal. As long as you perceive the world as split, YOU are not healed. For to be healed is to pursue one goal, because you have ACCEPTED only one, and WANT but one."
"Can you be separated from your identification and be at peace? Dissociation is NOT a solution; it is a DELUSION."
"What better vocation could there be for any part of the Kingdom than to restore it to the perfect integration that can make it whole?"
"The mind always strives for integration, and if it is split, and WANTS TO KEEP THE SPLIT, it will believe it has ONE goal by MAKING IT ONE."
"True depth perception becomes possible only at the highest order of perceptual integration."
There are many ACIM myths circulating and one of them is an improper idea of what the Holy Spirit is. Some people will say "he is just your right mind". This isn't accurate enough and can be misleading, greatly diminishing the Holy Spirit's function and power.
When you were created by God, you were created complete and lacking nothing. You are a whole being, a son of God, extended from wholeness. At this point, the Holy Spirit did not exist, and was not needed.
It was only in the separation from God, which was the "fall of man" or the attempt to BELIEVE that separation was possible, which has happened. .... that God created the Holy Spirit. God ADDED the Holy Spirit to the mind in order to protect the connection between all parts of mind, and to guarantee the healing of the belief in separation. He is "God's Voice" calling you to return to sanity.
So the Holy Spirit is actually ADDITIONAL. This means that originally there wasn't a holy trinity, there was in effect a holy duality. But when the Holy Spirit was ADDED to creation, as an eternal and permanent being, with a mind and with creative power, the holy duality became a holy trinity.
The Holy Spirit is to be thought of as in addition to you. Something extra. This is why the course tells you that he is actually your "appointed friend". He is in parallel to you, another alongside you, a helper, a supporter, a healer, a teacher, a comforter, and the answer to the question of separation.
"Your teaching has already DONE this, for the Holy Spirit is PART OF YOU. Created by God, He left neither God nor His creation. He is both God and you, as you are God and Him together. For God's answer to the separation added more to you than you tried to TAKE AWAY."
Since the dynamics of heaven are holographic, in which there is a shared oneness, you can say for example that each son of God shares everything with all the others. They are brothers to each other as individuals but they still are one with and united with each other, as though part of each other.
In the same way, the Holy Spirit was ADDED as another created being to be shared with, to be one with, and to be part of you. But when you say he is part of you, you must be careful not to be thinking in separating terms. This doesn't mean he is ONLY a part of you, or exclusive to your mind, or just another name for some pre-existing part of your mind.
The Holy Spirit is shared with all minds and is like an extra layer of mind added on top of the christ mind. Being united in oneness with you, he does share everything with you, which in the holographic sense means you share the same wholeness that he shares with God. Which makes him literally part of you - as the collective sonship/kingdom, but he is STILL a distinct created individual entity.
ACIM actually tells us that the holy spirit is a co-creator with God, is an eternal creation, will always exist even after the atonement, implies that he has his own creations, is a very firm third entity in the trinity of God-Sonship-HolySpirit, and that there ARE "three" components to that. To deny this is to deny that the TRINITY is real.
The Holy Spirit is not your higher self. He is not just some piece of your mind that remained sane while the rest of it went nuts. He is actually a third party. He is an entity, an actual spirit being. He has eternal life. He has mind and thought. He can create as well as heal. He is a living being. And he was given to creation as part of creation to keep all the seemingly separated parts of mind connected and to act as a savior and healer of the mind's insanity.
Your higher self is your soul, which is a son of God, which God created originally. Your higher self is your ONLY real self, and it's what and who you are. The Holy Spirit having been added to creation has become part of you, just as God is part of you and your brothers are part of you and your creations are part of you. That doesn't mean he's some kind of little compartment that's in your mind that was always there since the start. He is secondary and additional to your mind. Him being "part you" doesn't mean he is "just a part of you". He spans beyond you and includes others as well.
"The Holy Spirit is the Christ mind that senses the knowledge that lies beyond perception. It came into being with the separation as a protection, and inspired the beginning of the Atonement at the same time. Before that, there was no need for healing and no-one was comfortless."
Here for example there is a suggestion that the Holy Spirit is "nothing more than" the christ mind, as if to say that he is a synonym for christ. But that is not an appropriate interpretation because christ is the second part of the trinity, and the Holy Spirit is actually a distinct third part. He symbolizes God and he symbolizes christ, having a somewhat symbolic function, but that doesn't mean he isn't a fully created being in his own right.
As it says, the Holy Spirit came into being along with the separation (tiny mad idea) as God's answer to that idea, his guarantee of its undoing. He should rightly be thought of as your friend and helper because he literally is an additional being that God added to creation.
When we say the Holy Spirit is some kind of "synonym" for "my right mind", we're stripping him of all his life and his eternal nature, his power and his creative ability. We're trying to then exclude him from existing as a standalone third party, and are trying to REDUCE him to being "just" some little part of our mind that remembers God. He isn't "your memory of God", but he does remember/know God FOR you until you can remember and know God for yourself.
The attempt to think of him as "only my right mind" or "my true self" is really an attempt to limit what he is and pretend he doesn't exist. This was part of the teaching of certain individuals who did not like the idea of the Holy Spirit actually existing. It's something you should be wary of because the Holy Spirit is there for you, is there to help you and heal you and guide you, to teach you and decide for you, to give you the eyes of christ, and to resurrect you from death. To say he is just some part of your own mind is self-centered as if you can "save yourself". Which is a usurping of his function.
He must be acknowledged as something that God did in fact deliberately create and ADD as a response, as a purposeful act of creation, and one which is eternal. You tried to take something away from God and God ADDED even more than you took away by creating the Holy Spirit. He is MORE THAN just you. He is also partly God. He also has functions that you do not have. He is due proper acknowledgement and recognition as a truly fully created being in his own right.
It is once again "separatist thinking", based on exclusive either/or logic, that leads people to conclude the Holy Spirit is EITHER part of me own self or EXCLUDED from me. And since the course says he is part of you, people then think that he is EXCLUSIVELY part of you and does not exist beyond you. That is the fallacy of this kind of thinking. In truth the Holy Spirit is you AND is others AND is God. He is more than just you and more than just a part of you. He is the third entity in the trinity of God's creation and always will be.
"The Holy Spirit is the only part of the Holy Trinity which is symbolic. He is referred to in the Bible as the Healer, the Comforter, and the Guide. He is also described as something separate, apart from the Father and from the Son. I myself said, "and if I go I will send you ANOTHER comforter, and he will abide with you."
"He is part of the Holy Trinity, because His Mind is partly YOURS and also PARTLY GOD's."
"The Holy Spirit abides in the part of your mind that is part of the Christ Mind. He represents your Self and your Creator, Who are One. He speaks for God and also for you, being joined with both."
"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. The Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless THEIR creations and keep them in the light of joy."
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."
The idea of non-duality is an attempt to describe reality or the nature of God. What is really real and really exists. At first we have the idea of duality or polar opposites. Then we reach the idea that the world is secretly "all one thing", as though all the objects are connected together by a singular "one" something.
Then we're presented even further with the idea that if we're being really "pure" about it, the forms and objects really don't exist at all, and the "oneness" beyond them is all that really exists, ie God. In this model of "pure non-duality", there is no world", and this is what SEEMS to correlate to SOME of what ACIM says. This usually leads to conclusions such as "oneness" as in "a count of one something", "its all God", "it's all mind" etc.
So various people took up the idea that ACIM is pure non-duality. But this has some problems. Let's put it this way - the idea is not pure enough. Because if this is a logical concept and we're trying to get down to the purest essence of "what is", usually you'll find that the pure non-duality folk will ACCEPT that "God has one son". There's a lot of material about God having a son - "The Son of God". And while this is accepted, it's not actually pure.
How can God have a son, at all, if there is only God? How can you even label some aspect of God - like his "radiance", as "a son"? God would not be able to have parts, or aspects, or anything you can ever attach a label too. Not even in the most vague of ways. Some people like to try to get around this by suggesting that the Son of God is so joined to God that there is nowhere he ends and God begins... while STILL keeping somehow in their minds this loose idea that SOMEHOW, you can still point a finger at this "part of God" and call it God's Son. THAT is still not pure. It's a bandaid attempt to explain it.
The problem is that if you get really pure about it, and we remove all sense of separations, divisions, multitudes, labels, parts and aspects etc... and we REALLY boil it down to "one thing" as in the traditional idea of "oneness" (the ego's idea of purity), we end up with .... there literally is only God. And that means God, sitting there ALONE, by Himself, WITHOUT a Son, without a sonship, without any creations or thoughts, just totally alone, no-one to share with, nothing to communicate with, just complete a total loneliness. THAT, actually, is the purest possible interpretation of "pure" non-duality. That "there is only God" all by Himself and he doesn't even have a Son at all. Not even one.
But many people will not want to "go there" because to suggest there isn't even one Son flies in the face of a lot of ACIM material. And certain popular teachers have taught for a long time that a) there is only one thing but b) a slight exception is made for there being a single son. This sort of hybrid mishmash of logical concepts has been quite widely accepted as a correct mapping to what ACIM is saying. One God + One Son, who is God, but isn't, but is. It's a bandaid and not logically pure nor does it match what the Course itself says.
The fact is, if there is truly this "oneness" in which there are not "many" of anything, in an effort to avoid "duality", there is **no son** there whatsoever. Not even as an aspect or expression or radiance or thought or part of God. And that leads also to the super watered-down conclusion of "it's all God" ie "there is nothing else". And that conclusion by itself has problems because e.g. the Course speaks of how a) God does not will to be alone and b) God is a creator and c) God has at least one Son and d) God created the Holy Spirit and e) God created angels and f) the Son has his own creations as well. Which is shaping up to be a lot of "parts", a lot of "somethings" that are sufficient enough to say there isn't "just" God there - that there HAS BEEN an act of creation. That something has been ADDED TO reality.
There is also an issue of freedom. If everything in reality is God and God is just being God in all of His ways, then there is no freedom in which any part or aspect has any free will. There is no way that you as a Son of God can dream of exile. There is no way that anything can occur without it being God doing it Himself, directly. And any idea of a Son must really be an idea of some kind of PUPPET that God is manipulating that has no mind or life or will of its own - no freedom at all. Which really runs counter to what Jesus tells us of the Son of God, free will, the ability to choose and the separation seeming to happen.
If you also blob it all together and say "its all God" then you end up with the alarming scenario that God therefore MUST be dreaming of exile, God must have invented the illusion of death, God is REALLY cruel, and God has attacked himself. This renders God insane, and that just isn't acceptable. Because if God could go off the rails, there is no way He would ever return to sanity, and all of existence would vanish.
It is vital that there be some kind of freedom between God and the Son in order for God NOT to be pulled into insanity along with His Son's dreaming. Free Will is absolutely vital in order to prevent this. But to have free will means, you guessed it, there MUST be a kind of "independence" or individuality, in which the Son CAN, if He so chooses, try to will against God. And this is based on the fact that God is the CAUSE of His Son, His Son is the EFFECT of Him, and God has given His son FREEDOM to SHARE His freedom with Him, or deny it. Either way, without freedom there is no free will and no son at all.
There is also another major problem with non-duality. God by His nature is love and love MUST be given. Unless it is given ie shared, it does not extend or shine and so becomes essentially lifeless. IT MUST go out and create. If God has no son, there is nothing TO love or to SHARE it with. And so love cannot love. And this means, ultimately, logically, that God is dead because He isn't LOVING. This again is unacceptable as a conclusion. God can't be dead or unloving. But to be alive, GOD MUST CREATE, so we must accept God has created ADDITIONAL BEINGS in a state of freedom.
And this is the key part that non-duality shits all over. Regardless of the fact that it destroys the sonship and ignores God's creations, it basically denies that God CREATES at all. It's the idea that God is just sitting there alone twiddling his thumbs. And this means He is not creating a son, not even one. It means there is no Kingdom. No Heaven. No HOME for the Son of God. No inheritance. It means the denial that God has a family. It denies that God's SON is a creator, AND it denies that God's son has created children. It's not conceptually a good FIT for ACIM's metaphysics.
So non-duality basically suppresses the MANY thought creations of God, denies many aspects of REALITY, and overthrows the Kingdom. It kills off God, puts a stop to Creation, eradicates sharing, makes it impossible for God to create many children, and interprets the Sonship as a collection of egos. Now, WHO exactly do you think comes up with such a concept of "what reality is like"? THE EGO. These are the EGO's conclusions, non-duality is an EGO CONCEPT, and like all ego concepts it actually NEGATES what is true and cancels or denies reality.
All non-duality models are the ridiculous FALSE conclusions that the ego comes to when trying to understand something TOTALLY BEYOND the ego. Something whose nature is NOTHING LIKE the ego, and so the ego is utterly clueless as to its nature. Non-duality is not really an attempt to define or describe reality, it's an attempt to destroy it.
At best, and only loosely, non-duality MIGHT describe "God Himself", if you could isolate Him and say, God is one whole being, PRIOR to creation. But beyond that, in terms of God being a CREATOR, who HAS CREATED CHILDREN, it totally falls flat on its face. There is no sonship without creation. Non-duality is Kingdom-denying. Reality IS NOT a state of "its all God" or "its all mind". It's all God AND God's creations AND their creations. Because you can ADD TO REALITY, reality cannot be non-dualistic.
"HE created the Sonship, and YOU increase it. You HAVE the power to ADD to the Kingdom, but NOT to add to the Creator OF the Kingdom."
"God created His **Sons** by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. ALL His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they were created neither partially nor in part."
"You should know that all God's children are fully worthy of COMPLETE courtesy."
"We are creation, WE, the Sons of God."
"And we, God's children, rise up from the dust and look upon our perfect sinlessness."
But let's back up a moment. The Course DOES say that there is only God. It DOES say God has one Son. It DOES say there is only one mind (Christ mind). It DOES speak of oneness. "Into eternity where all is one" "I and my father are one" "God has but one son" etc. And that *seems* to support the idea that "its all God". But here's the thing. IT IS all God, it IS all "one", BUT.... THERE IS **ALSO** CREATION. And all created BEINGS are LIKE God, share with God, are one with God (of the same nature, joined to Him), yet have THEIR OWN FREEDOM.
God HAS created a family of beings. God IS a creator. God DID create at least one son. SO non-duality is out the window. Reality is not some giant expanse of singularity. It's more like a womb in which God has given birth to creations, WITHIN His own being, and has given them FREEDOM. Living, whole-minded, willfully free beings. Children of God. And if that makes you uncomfortable because it "does not compute" or "it sounds like duality", too bad. It is what it is and its your job to accept it.
It's not the same thing as duality. Duality means the localization of parts which are split off and kept separate by NOT SHARING with each other, confined and isolated and different. Duality is the nature of space and time, where nothing shares. Non-duality is the idea of the opposite of that - that the differences are illusions and everything is one thing. But that too is not accurate. Reality isn't some "state" where God is contemplating his navel. Reality isn't like duality even with its many parts because they STILL are all "one" AND YET also many. And each part SHARES with all the rest and IS EVERYWHERE. "One mind is all minds."
Love is EXPRESSIVE. "Divine abstraction takes joy in application." "God did not will to be alone." And as such God has gone BEYOND the concept of "there's only one thing there". God has CREATED children. He has ADDED to existence, and your function is to add to it further. That's not non-duality by a long shot. Nor is it duality (spacetime where things are separated and limited).
God has created a Kingdom. A home for His Sons. Who are one, but many. This is what's miraculous and ego defying. Because of SHARING ("nothing real can be increased, except by sharing"), God has "made room" for beings within Him who share with Him FULLY (oneness) but who STILL retain their own souls. The soul has been FULLY ADDED to existence.
"The soul has not only been created perfect, it has been FULLY created. There is no lack in it."
After the ego is undone, after the separation has ended, after the universe has disappeared, after all divisions and artificial UNNATURAL separations are gone, when duality is no more... the children of God WILL REMAIN children of God, just as they were BEFORE the separation.
"I am as God created me".
"The Holy Spirit promotes healing by looking beyond it to what the children of God were before healing was needed, and will be when they have been healed."
"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 (Holy Spirit) is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with ***the Sons of God***, to bless ***their creations*** and keep them in the light of joy."
A Course in Miracles is NOT non-duality. It only loosely teaches that "its all ONE" or "we are all one". That's TRUE. We're woven from the same cloth. BUT, it's not the WHOLE truth. We are ONE, BUT, God as the Oneness has created many of us WITHIN His being. And this is NOT contradictory to God, only to the ego. It is miraculous. And this is because God is MIRACULOUS. He HAS done what seems impossible to the ego. He HAS created a Kingdom filled with souls, beings of light, who share everything together as one united family, WITHOUT destroying reality and without fragmenting existence.
"God, who encompasses all being, NEVERTHELESS (regardless of whether you like this or it makes sense) created **separate beings**, who have everything **individually** and want to share it to increase their joy."
One of the major teachings of A Course in Miracles, also present in Buddhism and Hinduism and many other belief systems, even present in the very first lessons of the Workbook, is that the physical world is a world of illusions. That many different objects only appear to be different, and their differences are meaningless.
In effect, the teaching is that you cannot judge a book by its cover, and you absolutely cannot take the objects of the world at face value. While most of the world believes that the world contains many many different things, different forms, objects, bodies, types, shapes, sizes, configurations, combinations etc, in truth there is actually only one thing here.
At first, to a person who is somewhat "blinded by perception of form", the world appears to be a tremendously complicated place filled with many different things. The differences are identified by how they appear, or what materials it seems to be made of, or how it behaves, or how it's constructed, or what it is used for, or what the symptoms seem to be etc. But these are all disguises.
Such a person will then believe that there really is a major real difference between a hammer and a screwdriver, between a car and a house, between a man and a woman, between a cake and some icecream. Places will all seem to be different and offer different seeming experiences. The next new toy will appear to be something you've never seen before. And everywhere you turn every single object seems to be distinct, separate and unique.
In such a view, uniqueness is valued highly, as though being unique and different sets you apart and identifies you and defines you. As if you stand out and be yourself by being unlike anything else. This merely emphasizes the sense of separateness between things and reinforces the belief that space and time are real.
The more a person thinks that there really are real differences between things, the more they will buy into what we call the "hierarchy of illusions". That is where some things are considered to MEAN something different to others, such as that a death is far "worse" than a mild headache, or that a million dollars is better than 1 dollar, or a burning house is a far worse problem than just that your fingernails need clipping.
For such a person, the world is seen as having the power to cause them, to victimize them, to do things to them. They see the world as both offensive and attractive. Some parts of it they will separate out and label as desirable, wanted, meaningful and valuable. At the same time other things which induce more unpleasant reactions will be relegated to hell and labeled as unwanted.
A person then will be living half a life, separated off, trying to maximize the good stuff and minimize the bad stuff. Always on the run and living in fear, trying to hide from and prevent all the terrible suffering and tragedies that happen, while simultaneously strongly investing in, believing in and wanting to keep, the very same world which induces these things - for its supposed benefits.
This is clearly an insane state of mind, in which a person is in a relationship with a fickle, unpredictable, demanding, controlling, overpowering world, which sometimes throws them a bone and gives them something to seemingly celebrate, while quickly turning around and slapping them in the face the next day with some horrifying problem.
Such a life is a rollercoaster of constantly being thrown around by the waves of whatever's next, with no real peace and no consistency and no true invulnerability. It is a life of fear, wrapped up in an interpretation which frames parts of it as a life that is wanted. A life of judgement, in which some aspects of the world are despised and rejected while others are overly embraced and absorbed into. This is not a spiritual life, it's a life of contradiction and conflict.
What we have to all come to realize, and what a person generally WILL realize given enough time, is that the offerings of the world are not REALLY different things. It may take exposure to a great many things the world seems to separately give, in order to "tire" of the lure of these differences, to transcend them, to see through them, and to realize they are all the same.
This is real spiritual progression, where a person begins to see that the differences between objects are all artificial and meaningless. That having that super precious rare gem is not really that important, versus having a glass of water. Where the extremes of the values of things versus others, flattens out, and a person becomes far less attracted to, or put off by, any particular "temptation" that the world is offering that day.
What this means is that the learning becomes generalized. As a person matures more spiritually they will realize there isn't really a significant difference between things. That in order to retain a sense of integrity, peace, consistency and honesty, the difference forms of things have to be ignored. In order not to be constantly thrown around on the rollercoaster of hell, reacting to everything as if it means something, you have to learn to become more stable and unconditional.
Not changing moods based on conditions, not adapting to what's happening, not allowing the world to do things to you, not seeing yourself as either victimized negatively OR positively, not giving power TO the world to change or define you, not allowing circumstances to dictate what will happen, not giving away power to the extremes of the hierarchy of illusions, and no longer falling for the temptation to believe that the world in certain configurations means hell on earth.
Being deceived by the forms and differences of the world is unconsciousness. It is a state of unawareness and spiritual irresponsibility. It indicates a person who is selfish and wants to get things from the world, but at the same time doesn't want the world to give them the wrong things. It's a person whose relationships are all based on specialness and unholiness, a person who is themselves not whole, who is in denial of wholeness and therefore distanced from God in their "independence."
In order to wake up to reality, a person has to learn that this world isn't really offering anything different. It is really regurgitating the same stuff. It spews out the same illusions in different forms. Masses of materialistic products are made in which everyone now tries to create every single possible variation of a thing. And how many such variations does anyone really need? Their differences are insubstantial and superficial. Their different appearances are regarded as the defining factor as to how valuable they and what price tag they come with. But it's all made of the same lies and untruths.
The real truth is that there IS no difference between anything in the world. All appearances are illusions. All forms and shapes and sizes and amounts and values are utterly deceptive. They are all designed to tempt you to believe, to deceive you into believing, that physical reality is real when it isn't. That there is a world of many things, all of which are unlike the others, offering you constant distractions and side-quests and tempting pathways, all of which lead to the same ultimate end in death.
The truth is that there is not really any choices in the world. ALL of the things the world offers lead to death and destruction. Whether it appears to temporarily give you something you want or to take it away quickly, all forms end in death. They are made of death because they are made of the attempt to separate things out, to attack the other, to be unlike, unequal, in a constant state of war and conflict, incapable of peace and never offering anything consistent.
Fluctuating illusions cannot be reality. If something can change its form and be something one day and something else the next, it has no real permanent identity. A flower goes from a seed to a bloom to a wilted mess and not one of those states is reality. It is all the same thing. Be not deceived by what you see in the world. The world presents a picture of nothing pretending to be something, and it has absolutely no meaning.
The entire drive of A Course in Miracles is to teach us and help us to practice NOT being deceived by physical differences, by appearances, or by any sense of there being any variation in importance or relevance between one object and another. As we look around the room and OVERLOOK any particular reason to categorize things or to say they are more or less applicable to the ONE truth, we are training ourselves to no longer be deceived by the world and its lies.
"The belief in order of difficulties is the basis for the world's perception. It rests on differences; on uneven background and shifting foreground, on unequal heights and diverse sizes, on varying degrees of darkness and light, and thousands of contrasts in which each thing seen competes with every other in order to be recognized. A larger object overshadows a smaller one. A brighter thing draws the attention from another with less intensity of appeal. And a more threatening idea, or one conceived of as more desirable by the world's standards, completely upsets the mental balance. What the body's eyes behold is only conflict. Look not to them for peace and understanding."
"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives."
"Appearances deceive BUT CAN BE CHANGED. Reality is changeless. It does not deceive at all. And if you fail to see BEYOND appearances, you ARE deceived. For everything you see will change, and yet you thought it real before, and now you think it real again. Reality is thus reduced to form, and CAPABLE of change. Reality is changeless. It is this that MAKES it real, and KEEPS it separate from all appearances. It MUST transcend all form to be itself. It CANNOT change. The miracle is means to demonstrate that ALL appearances can change BECAUSE they are appearances, and CANNOT have the changelessness reality entails. The miracle attests salvation FROM appearances by SHOWING they can change."
"But appearances are shown to be unreal BECAUSE they change."
"Nothing so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form MEANS understanding HAS BEEN obscured. Only MISTAKES have different forms, and so they CAN deceive. You CAN change form, BECAUSE it is not true. It COULD not be reality, BECAUSE it can be changed. Reason will tell you that, if form is NOT reality, it MUST be an illusion. And is Not THERE to see. And, IF you see it, you MUST be mistaken, for you are seeing what can NOT be real, as if it WERE. What cannot see BEYOND what is not there, MUST be distorted perception. And must perceive illusions AS THE TRUTH. Could it, then, RECOGNIZE the truth?"
"Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies but it is not deceived."
"Applying the same idea to each of them separately is the first step in ultimately recognizing they are all the same."
"Everyone in this world seems to have his own special problems. Yet they are all the same, and must be recognized as one if the one solution which solves them all is to be accepted."
"This world SEEMS to hold out many purposes, each different, and with different values. Yet they are all the same. Again, there is no order, but a SEEMING hierarchy of values."
"The spark of beauty, or the veil of ugliness; the real world, or the world of guilt and fear; truth or illusion; freedom or slavery, - it is all the same. For you can NEVER choose EXCEPT between God and the ego."
Once upon a time, in heaven, there was a rebellion against the will of God. The children of God believed they were separate, and threw themselves into a nightmare world of magic and hell and death.
God saw this and, loving his Children, created the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was a divine idea in God's mind, a single perfect idea of healing the entire separation. A thought of miraculous power and of love. An expression, as though a voice, calling his children to return, and providing them with all he help and healing they would need.
The Holy Spirit was established as the single perfect solution to the thought of separation, the bringer of the atonement, the very idea of resurrection and healing. The miracle, which was given by God to completely and fully and successfully heal the entire sonship.
The Holy Spirit has been endowed with all of the power in heaven and earth. All of God has been given him and he is absolutely unlimited in his capabilities. He is the mechanism of miracles, because he alone is in a state of the transfer from hell to heaven.
He is your only appointed friend, he is your only teacher, your only qualified therapist, and your comforter. He has been given to you by God as the only help you need to return to heaven, to become a miracle worker, to act as a healer, and to resurrect the dead.
His healing capability is perfect and flawless and guaranteed to always work. He never fails. His healing is powerful and effective and there is absolutely nothing beyond his reach. There is no situation he cannot resolve and no sickness he cannot undo.
He is your guide through foreign lands and alien worlds. He is there for you. He has been created as a permanent part of reality, bridging your mind and God's mind like a bridge, guaranteeing your absolute success in returning to reality.
The Holy Spirit cannot fail. He is beyond all flaws, beyond weakness, and beyond death. There is nothing he cannot do, and nothing he cannot do through you when you are willing to let him. He can undo all the consequences of all wrong decisions, all faulty choices, all attempts to make yourself suffer, and all forms of sickness. The reversal of death is effortless to him.
He has been given to you by God as the single perfect solution to your desperate attempt to be separate. He is the answer to the questioning and the doubting and the fearing of God. He provides the vision for you to see, the power for you to heal, and the guidance and comfort to guarantee all outcomes.
Your mission is to align with him, follow his guidance, turn to him for all decisions, depend on him for healing, work with him to heal others, and help to facilitate and extend his perfect function in the world. Your destiny is to be a healer with the Holy Spirit. He is the power that works miracles through you. Utilizing his power is the natural expression of all the children of God for the good of all.
He is not of this world. He is of God and of heaven. He brings to you and to this world a power and a functioning which is in complete violation of all the world's laws. He stands for an opposite and alternative solution, a happier dream, and the only way home. He will guide you and strengthen you and support you and work through you. He will speak for you, see for you, decide for you, heal for you, and resurrect you. And he will guide you back to eternal life. With him you are unstoppable and all powerful. With him there is nothing your holiness cannot do as a miracle worker, the light of the world, a teacher of God, a physician of the Lord, and a representative of God.
"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you CAN see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His RESULTS, you will understand where He MUST be, and finally KNOW what He is."
"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."
"Lead not your little lives in solitude, with one illusion as your only friend. This is no friendship worthy of God's Son, nor one with which he could remain content. But God has given him a better Friend, in whom all power in earth and Heaven rests. The one illusion that you THINK is friend obscures HIS grace and majesty from you, and keeps his friendship and forgiveness from your welcoming embrace. Without him you are friendless. Seek not another friend to take his place. There IS no other friend. What God appointed HAS no substitute. And what illusion CAN replace the truth?"
"Make NO illusion friend, for if you do, it CAN but take the place of him whom God has called your Friend. And it is he who is your ONLY Friend in truth. He brings you gifts that are not of this world, and only he, to whom they have been given, CAN make sure that you receive them. He will place them on YOUR throne, when you make room for him on his."
"All therapy is release from the past. And that is why the Holy Spirit IS the only therapist."
"The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE. Remember that you ARE choosing a guide for helping, and the wrong choice will NOT help. But remember also that THE RIGHT ONE WILL. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God."
"Do not, then, think that following the Holy Spirit's guidance is necessary merely because of your own inadequacies. It is the way out of hell for you."
"Leave ALL decisions to the One Who speaks for God, and for your function as He KNOWS it. So will He teach you to remove the awful burden you have laid upon yourself, by loving not the Son of God, and trying to teach him guilt INSTEAD of love."
"Make no decisions about what it is, or where it lies, but ask of the Holy Spirit EVERYTHING, and leave ALL decisions to His gentle counsel. The One Who knows the plan, of God which God would have you follow, can teach you what it IS. Only His wisdom is capable of guiding you to follow it."
"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life."
"Perception is not an attribute of God. His is the realm of knowledge. Yet He has created the Holy Spirit as the Mediator between perception and knowledge. Without this link with God, perception would have replaced knowledge forever in your minds. With this link with God, perception will become so changed and purified that it will lead to knowledge. That is its function as the Holy Spirit sees it. Therefore, that is its function in truth."
"The Holy Spirit was God's answer to the separation, the means by which the Atonement could repair until the whole mind returned to creating. The Atonement and the separation began at the same time. When man made the ego, God placed in him the call of joy. This call is so strong that the ego always dissolves at its sound."
"The Atonement principle was given to the Holy Spirit long before Jesus set it in motion."
"Therefore, says reason, if escape from guilt was given to the Holy Spirit as His purpose, and by One to Whom NOTHING He wills CAN BE impossible, the means for its attainment are MORE than possible. They must be THERE, and YOU must HAVE them."
"The seemingly new abilities that may be gathered on the way can be very helpful. Given to the Holy Spirit, and used under His direction, they are very valuable teaching aids."
"The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's will can be done on earth as it is in Heaven."
"The Holy Spirit is the mind of the Atonement. It represents a state of mind that comes close enough to one-mindedness that transfer is at last possible."
"The Holy Spirit is the MOTIVATION for miracle-mindedness. It is the will to HEAL the separation by letting it go. It is IN you because God placed it in your mind, and although you can keep it asleep you cannot obliterate it. God Himself keeps it alive by transmitting it from His Mind to yours as long as there is time. It is partly His will and partly yours. The miracle itself is just this fusion or union of will between Father and Son."
"The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Joy. It is the call to return, with which God blessed the minds of the separated Sons. This the vocation of the mind."
"The way to LEARN TO KNOW your brother is by perceiving the Holy Spirit in him. We have already said that the Holy Spirit is the bridge or thought-transfer of perception TO knowledge, so we CAN use the terms as if they were related, because in HIS mind they are. "
"The Holy Spirit is the IDEA of healing. Being thought, the idea GAINS AS IT IS SHARED. Being the call FOR God, it is also the idea OF God."
"The Holy Spirit is the mediator between the interpretations of the ego and the knowledge of the Soul. Its ability to deal with symbols enables it to work AGAINST the ego's beliefs in its own language. Its equal ability to look BEYOND symbols into eternity also enables it to understand the laws of God, for which it speaks."
"The Holy Spirit is the perfect teacher. It uses only what your minds ALREADY understand, to teach you that you do not understand it."
"The voice of the Holy Spirit IS the call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind."
"The Holy Spirit is the radiance that you must let to banish the idea of darkness. His is the glory before which dissociation falls away, and the Kingdom of Heaven breaks through into its own."
"The Holy Spirit is the call to awake and be glad."
"The Holy Spirit is the Christ mind that senses the knowledge that lies beyond perception. It came into being with the separation as a protection, and inspired the beginning of the Atonement at the same time."
"The text explains that the Holy Spirit is the Answer to all problems you have made."
"The Holy Spirit is the home of minds that seek for freedom. In Him they find what they have sought."
"The Holy Spirit IS the translator of the Laws of God to those who do NOT understand them."
"We once said that the Holy Spirit is the Answer. He is the answer to EVERYTHING, because He knows what the answer to everything IS."
"The Holy Spirit is the part of the mind that lies between the ego and the Soul, mediating between them ALWAYS IN FAVOR OF THE SOUL."
"The Holy Spirit is the light in which Christ stands revealed."
"We have said that the Holy Spirit is the MOTIVATION for miracles. This is because He ALWAYS tells you that ONLY the mind is real, because only the mind CAN BE SHARED."
"Remember that the Holy Spirit is the ANSWER, not the question." "The Holy Spirit is the bridge to Him, made from your willingness to UNITE with Him, and created by His joy, in union WITH you."
"Remember that the Holy Spirit is the communication link between God the Father and His separated Sons. If you will listen to His voice, you will know that you cannot either hurt or BE hurt, but that many need your blessing to help them hear this for themselves."
"The Holy Spirit is the Highest Communication Medium."
Most people feel some sense of unworthiness. Some people feel it very strongly. Unworthiness means you do not believe you deserve to be loved. You're not good enough or smart enough or perfect enough or something enough. There is something lacking about you, something missing or something wrong with you. Something which proves that you can't and shouldn't be loved.
That which you believe is true and real, you will accept and allow and agree with. If you believe that something is wrong with you, that you are guilty or a sinner or are ashamed or remorseful about something that happened, even if you are upset about it you will believe that you deserve what you are experiencing. Whatever you accept as true, you will believe you are worthy of. Worthiness, deserving, entitlement, all correlates to what you accept and therefore allow and agree with.
If you do not feel worthy of love and forgiveness, it is because you believe you ARE worthy of something else. It means you believe that guilt is real. Believing in guilt means you accept that you are guilty, you agree that you are guilty, you believe that you should be punished and not loved, and will agree with anyone who comes along to punish you for you, ultimately on your behalf. Even if it hurts, you will not stop them, because you yourself believe that you are worthy of it.
When you are feeling unworthy or less than wholly lovable, you will experience some form of victimhood. You'll see yourself as unfairly treated, that what you are experiencing is not what you want, that you wish you could have a "do-over" and fix what you did, and that you feel deeply bad about what happened. These feelings seem very genuine.
In particular, feeling very bad about yourself, unworthy of love or attention or credit, feels very sad and depressing and unhappy. It makes you feel as though you are weak and have no power. Maybe someone took your power away. You see yourself as helpless and suffering.
It simultaneously will seem as though someone else has power over you. Someone else was hurt, or someone else attacked you, or someone else decided you are not good enough by not treating you well. Someone else has more than you, and you have less. You don't measure up, you fall short of the standard, you're not man or woman enough, or something is just lacking about you. These experiences are a perception of you being a victim. It seems so unfair, it seems so un-asked for, it seems like what you do not want. No-one seems to love you and there doesn't seem to be anything you can do about it.
Perhaps there is even something about you physically, mentally or emotionally which seems to be hideous or unacceptable or just not good enough that anyone would love it. Overweight? Underweight? Ugly? Bad hair? Pimples? Poor clothing? The wrong kind of physique? A strange voice? The list goes on of all the reasons why someone would not love you.
In this state of mind, there doesn't SEEM to be anything that you are doing to put yourself into this situation. It seems deserved. It seems like there is no way out and nothing you can do to change it. You WISH that it would not be this way, but you do not see a way out. You don't see how you can escape this, and instead have to avoid the people who judge you and who have decided for you that you are a sinner.
The experience and feelings that go along with this unworthiness or guilt can be deep and profound. You can feel really awful about yourself. You can feel as though God wouldn't love you, no-one would love you and nobody wants you. It seems tragic. You just seem to want someone to come along and rescue you or be a friend or side with you or whatever. But they don't show up. Funny that.
All of these feelings are unpleasant and seem to suggest there is nothing you are doing to put them in place, that you are trying so hard to get out of it and that you just feel really bad about what you did or what you are. It SEEMS like you do not want this, that your guilt is genuine, you feel really awful about what you did, and it seemed so real, you actually caused someone or God to be hurt and it's had a real effect and someone got damaged and there's just no way to undo it.
So now you're stuck feeling guilty, and you deserve it, but your feeling of guilt is almost like a plea for forgiveness or a wish that someone else will forgive you for you. It feels as though you feel really really bad for doing something wrong, a kind of remorse, as though you recognize clearly that it was not the right thing to do, and just feel terrible about it.
But what we now need to address is the fact that all of this is bullshit. There are illusions at play here. There is denial. There is unconscious material which is not being admitted to. There are cover-ups taking place. There is dishonesty. There is irresponsibility. And there are ego devices in place that actually have a hidden agenda and purpose for all of these feelings, which you at first will not want to admit to.
The suggestion that you in ANY way might be using this guilt, remorse, shame or unworthiness for a secret purpose, that you actually might want it to be happening because you're getting some kind of benefit from it, will initially be experienced as a slap in the face. It will seem like a blasphemy, which will trigger you to react with "how could you say that" and "how dare you" as though this is completely the opposite of what you're experiencing. It will seem insensitive.
The problem is that your mind has placed itself into a perceptual experience of being a victim and is very confused and deluded and simply does not see the truth. It does not recognize what it is doing or how it is using unworthiness on purpose. It doesn't want to admit the truth and sees the truth as a threat or offense or attack.
This is simply because, whatever your scope of awareness is right now, which you will believe is full and whole but really isn't, determines what information you have and what facts you are aware of. Although your perception is limited, you see yourself as being aware of everything there is to be aware of, because your awareness only shows you what is within its range right now and anything outside of it seems not to exist. You may not even suspect that there is more to this than meets the eye.
Because of this, based on the evidence you ARE aware of, you will simply conclude (erroneously) that it does not SEEM as though you want to be guilty, it does not look as though you are choosing this on purpose, and you are ONLY aware of the seeming causes of this unworthiness and the consequences it produced, ie the justification for WHY you feel guilty, and the explanation for why it is both logical and sensible to feel this way.
For example if you are aware that someone did something to you, seeming to cause you to feel ashamed, and you see no other causes, you will sensibly conclude that you feel this way because of what they did to you. But this doesn't mean this is the truth or the real reason why you feel this way. There is more truth that is outside your awareness which you haven't admitted to yet.
Or if you did something yourself, you sinned, and thus you feel guilty and ashamed, you will conclude that you're supposed to feel this way because what you did was awful, and therefore it is justified and normal. People refer to this as your "guilty conscience", as though you have this "conscience" which regulates and honestly perceives whether what you do is good or bad at all times. However, only the ego has a guilty conscience, and the conscience has absolutely nothing to do with truth. It is purely based on judgement and ego-based errors in perception, denial and an unwillingness to admit the real truth.
Guilt will always feel as though it is genuine and heartfelt and that you are truly sorry and feel bad about what you did. That is its purpose. It is meant to make you experience in this way. It is, however, a very effective cover-up for a deeper experience which is completely opposite. There are some facts which you are unaware of which would show you that your guilt is actually not pure and sacred and sincere. There are some facts which would reveal that your guilt is actually a device for further sinning and for increasing separation.
When you make-believe separation and move into sin - the belief that separation really has happened in reality - you are believing that you committed an act of murder. Such an act does not happen "by accident". It is deliberate, intentional, pre-meditated destruction. It was on purpose, you wanted it, and you chose it. The whole reason for sin originally was to establish separation from God SO THAT you could go off by yourself and pretend to have your own separate existence, be ruler of your own universe and act like God without God.
There was nothing accidental about that, you didn't do it "by mistake", and it wasn't a cosmic "oops". It was vicious, it was an attack, and according to your belief in sin, which you WANT to believe, it produced a tremendous amount of "real" consequences such as that God has been changed, God has been hurt, God is justified in getting revenge, and you now have no option other than to go off by yourself and hide in a corner.
The purpose of the original sin was to bring about a separation from God and therefore from yourself. It required you to disown yourself. Sin was an attempt to disown yourself by destroying yourself and what you are. Following sin, based on the logic of separation which naturally proceeds all the way to death, you CONTINUED to implement a "getting rid of what I am" mentality. This led to the invention of guilt as a cover-up story.
To disown yourself and to be less responsible for choosing and for who and what you are, you invented guilt as if to say, you didn't REALLY mean to sin, you didn't want to do it, it sort of happened on its own, or God abandoned you or cast you out of Heaven, or it happened to you against your will, or, having really hurt God you now feel sorry that you did it. It's as though you have had a change of heart! Suddenly you enter into this guilt as if to say, I'm really sorry that I did that, I wish I could take it back. But this is a total lie.
Guilt is a layer of denial. It represses the fact that you DID want to sin and you did want to be separate. It covers up the very deliberate choice that you made with an ILLUSION of you seeming as though you couldn't possibly have wanted this. You sinned, you attacked, and then all of a sudden... what did I do? How could I do this? What was I thinking?
Well... this shift may on the surface APPEAR to indicate that you did not want to sin and regret it, but this is not at all genuine. You did want to sin and you will do everything in your power to KEEP the sin in place and never question it and never attempt to be open to the possibility that it can be healed or undone or that it never happened. You never want to let sin be threatened.
Therefore you have to build this fictional illusion that you do not want sin, which actually is an act of further separation. You look at the sin and you try to get rid of it, just like you tried to get rid of God. You separate yourself off from it, judge it, attack it, and tell yourself that it and you have nothing in common. The movement from separation to sin is exactly the same motive, purpose, and goal, as the movement from sin to guilt.
In terms of illusions, the appearance of them as if they are true will tell you, no no, I didn't really want to sin... it was a mistake, I didn't realize what would come of it. Bullshit to that. You actually did know and you chose it and tried to MAKE it happen. And now you then cover this up with a facade of guilt as if you couldn't possibly have wanted this. But this pretend remorse really covers up the fact that you are USING guilt now as a device for not only keeping the sin in place, continuing to believe it cannot ever be changed, but also as a way of disowning it and yourself.
Guilt causes sin to go unconscious. It is your attempt to shut sin out of your awareness and pretend that you do not want it. Your not wanting of something is an attack, using a device of separation to get rid of something. It worked for you to get rid of God, and now again it works for you to get rid of sin. By being guilty and SEEMING to be all ashamed and unworthy and nobody-can-love-me-now, you paint a picture of the reasons WHY sin cannot be undone and WHY guilt is justified, making guilt the truth and protecting sin from healing.
Having blocked out sin, which is the sole cause of guilt, your mind will no longer be aware of the sense of sin. Instead, your conscious awareness only remains aware of this new fictional guilt that you invented - fake guilt, not real guilt. It is not genuine guilt, it is not honest guilt, it is not true guilt, it is completely artificial and a lie. But being unaware of the sin that came before it, guilt is now squarely in your conscious awareness and seems to be the truth to you.
Guilt explains why you should be punished. Guilt also explains that sin cannot ever be undone. It justifies keeping the sin, pushing it into the past, as though it's done and over with, and can never be changed. It puts the decision-maker or cause of why you are guilty outside of yourself, so that you do not appear to be the one who decided to invent the guilt in the first place.
You are guilty because of "what you did to God" or you are guilty because of "how you hurt another person". Their hurt, their suffering, is used as the justification for why you should be guilty, and because you believe (through sin) that their suffering is real, you see it as the cause of your guilt. Lo and behold, you have successfully disowned the power and honesty and choice of being the one who put the guilt in place, and will now come across consciously as NOT being the one who wanted any of this.
In the guilt you'll put on this performance, this sob-story, about how you don't want to feel this way, you wish it never happened, it was unfair, someone else made this happen, you didn't choose it, if you could do something to undo it you would - EXCEPT FOR what would actually undo it - we won't let ourselves go there, believing that because it was a sin in the past it is a given - irreversible and never to be questioned. Anything but that.
Since you then believe you are guilty, you will believe you do not deserve forgiveness. To forgive would mean to UNDO the guilt and question whether you sinned. You do not want that and you have no intention whatsoever of ever going there to look at that. You want to stay as far away from the sin as possible, which is what makes it unconscious. If you do not deserve to undo sin or be loved ever again, you now believe you are not worthy of love.
It is through your own belief that you are guilty, which is you agreeing that you should be guilty, that you will accept and allow the guilt, even if on the surface you will experience it as unwanted. From inside of the guilt, from inside the unworthiness, which means that you are blocked from being aware of love by a barrier of denial, it will SEEM as though this is just a horrible experience that you would never want to choose... because you do not SEE that you did choose it, OR that you chose it on purpose for a very "evil" intention of bringing about the death of the Son of God.
So then you'll experience that you are worthy of punishment and unlove and mis-treatment and being attacked and hurt, because you do not believe you deserve anything better. Your allegiance has to be somewhere, so if it's not to God, it's to the ego - the thought system of pain and suffering and death. Not much of a substitute, but it's your only choice. And secretly, it's what you wanted. Being closer aligned to the ego will allow you to further you plan, which has been in place since the start and never questioned, of becoming a separate individual in your own reality, where death is life and separation from God is absolutely true.
In this unworthiness you will feel powerless, helpless, victimized, profoundly "not wanting" this at all. Or do you? Secretly you do. You are getting away with murder. You wouldn't feel guilty unless you believed that sin is real. Guilt keeps sin real. You wouldn't believe you deserve to suffer and die unless you believed guilt was justified and therefore that you should be punished.
You might seem on the illusory surface not to want the suffering at all, to be not choosing it at all, to be completely averse and horrified and terrified about what is going to happen to you, but this also is a huge bullshit lie. You are deliberately positioning yourself to suffer SO THAT you can continue your plan of separation and death and keep justifying why the Son of God should die.
The more that separation is implemented the more there will seem to be this huge rift between what you APPEAR to be wanting, versus what you are secretly really wanting. And since the ego is a split mind, always there will be a conscious self-will which seems to not want to suffer or be guilty or upset in any way, but there will be an unconscious self-will which is constantly trying to bring about death and disaster.
You actually believe you deserve to die, because of what you did. And you want to believe it. Death is what you want. It's what this entire dream is all about - you choosing death over life, ego over God. And isn't it strange how you flipped from attempted murder of God and His Son, to suddenly now seeming like a victim? Like you went from being the victimizer, to being the one who is being victimized?
Isn't that like a perfect cover-up for a victimizer, to portray themselves as innocent, to show themselves as being the least likely to sin, to fake their own helpless death (suicide) in order to prove that they are so powerless that it couldn't possibly have been them who did it? Their secret sin and hidden hate goes to the grave with them, and is the reason they go there. Who would suspect the most innocent-seeming person of hiding a malice against God which has attempted to destroy all of Creation? Who would suspect someone who is so powerless, helpless, hopeless, weak, afraid, suffering and unfairly treated by life?
It's the perfect cover. It's the perfect mechanism of denial, layer upon layer of projection, disownership, displacement of blame, irresponsibility, pretending to have no choice, and picturing yourself as the least likely one to have sinned. We're all playing this game of who can seem to die without anyone suspecting that they wanted God to be dead. It's the desire to want God to be dead which CAUSES you to die.
So yes, you can feel guilty, ashamed, remorseful and unworthy, and these can seem like such unfair, un-asked for, unwanted experiences. But we have to get very honest here if we want to actually have a chance of being set free by the truth - any hope in hell of actually being forgiven and for this whole mess to go away.
We have to be willing to admit that our guilt is not genuine guilt, or real guilt, or truthful guilt. It is fake guilt, denial, and a cover-story for something even worse. We have to admit also that our feeling of unworthiness is a tremendous cover-story once again for how we couldn't possibly want any of this, life is totally unfair, other people have been really judgemental and mean and accusatory, and how we "don't deserve this".
Those who feel unworthy will be constantly saying "I don't deserve this". Bullshit! This is the conscious ego persona claiming that it doesn't believe you deserve this, and that you are just trying to preserve your integrity and innocence, while unconsciously the ego shadow is hell-bent on staying as unworthy as possible.
You are fundamentally worthy of God's unconditional love all the time forever. But if you can position yourself as unworthy and justify why you are unworthy, this will seem to "explain" why and how you should not be loved by God. But isn't this just another way for you to attempt to assert that you CANNOT be loved? If you cannot be loved, guess what that means? It means that you have STOPPED GOD. And what's another word for stopping God? Murder.
So your unworthiness will be all sorrowful and you'll feel like you didn't ask for it and you don't want to be this way. But you do. You have to own up to that if you want to be free. And typically those who are in a victim mindset will NOT want to ACTUALLY take the steps necessary in order to undo the real problem. They will make HUGE amounts of noise about their desire to have this go away, how they don't want to suffer, and complain extensively about how unfair this all is, but the one key thing that they need to DO to ACTUALLY solve this problem - the undoing of separation and sin, they will avoid at all costs.
And so when you listen to a victimy person, you will notice that they are forever staying paralyzed, they are always staying exactly where they are, keeping all of their problems, keeping all of their suffering, but making huge screeching noises about how they want this to go away. They don't want it to go away. The one thing that would undo it, they do not want. Anything else they want, any other possible pathway or solution or answer they will be open to, but not the undoing of the unworthiness.
How are you going to be able to maintain that God cannot love, and therefore God is not love, and therefore God has no power to love you, and therefore you have power OVER God, unless you assert strongly that you cannot be loved? Your unworthiness is an authority problem. It is arrogance. It is you trying to stop God from loving. You justify it with guilt. You support it with an explanation of having sinned. You want to KEEP all of the ways that justify you being attacked and hurt and rejected and punished, because it allows you to GET AWAY WITH MURDER.
Your rejection of God's love, because you "don't deserve it", is bullshit. It is not true. You DO deserve God's love. You do not WANT to admit to deserving God's love. Your unwillingness to admit that you are USING your unlovability as a weapon, is keeping you in the dark and maintaining your agenda of death. Oh, poor me, I guess I sinned too much, I'm too guilty, God, you might as well not love me, just pass me by and go love someone else, you're really better off not loving me anyway, you wouldn't want to love someone like me, I'm SAVING YOU from unnecessary unjustified love and hurt by me turning away from you.
And so this unworthiness is really a denial of love and an attempt to explain why you should not be loved. Not that you cannot be, but that you should not be. And you will explain that because of your sinfulness, because of your guilt, you really do not DESERVE the love - that you're doing love a favor by saving love from having to love you. You believe the love will not WORK and that therefore you would be causing love to waste its efforts. Or in other words, your deserving to die comes from your attempt to make God die by stopping God's love from extending, ceasing the extension of Life.
It's almost like an admittance that you hurt someone so bad that they really should not love you, they shouldn't even try to, because they would be wasting their love unnecessarily and that you are saving them from this additional loss by not being worthy. So now you are God's savior, which makes your ego happy. So long a you stay unworthy, which SEEMS to be the illusion of wanting to be loved so badly, wanting to be forgiven, wanting to be seen as worthy, it REALLY is an attempt to do the exact opposite - to reject love as much as possible.
If God is permanently loving then you have to admit at some point that your belief in guilt and sin and unworthiness is YOUR belief. It is not God's view of you. You must also own up to and take responsibility for making the DECISION that you are guilty and unworthy, which reveals that you actually CHOSE it and put it in place on purpose, for a reason. You being responsible for all of this reveals the truth that every single part of what you are experiencing is a form of denial, is part of your ego plan, is untrue and dishonest.
You wanted to sin. You wanted to use guilt to cover up the sin and disown it. You wanted to be unworthy of love so that you could reject God. And you wanted to die to prove that God was dead. No-one else decided any of this for you. God didn't make it happen. It wasn't other people who caused you to be unlovable.
This is ALL part of your plan, every step of the way, and you wanted all of it. That means, that you have done this all to yourself, but it also means that therefore, if you change your mind and admit to the truth, you might STOP doing this to yourself and actually have a REAL HOPE of being free from this suffering. Unworthiness is hardly a joyful experience.
You will say you cannot forgive yourself for what you did. You do not want to. You don't believe in your innocence because you chose to believe that guilt is true. And not just because you did something really bad, but so that you could hide your sin and increase the attack on God.
Being guilty for murder is hardly a restoration of the state that existed prior to the murder, and guilt can hardly be said to be an atonement or compensation for attack. If you sin by attacking someone and its hurts them, what are you going to offer to them to compensate them? If you were to offer them love, healing, undoing of the sin, and reversal of all effects, that would be true "repentance". A miracle of healing would be true repentance. But you don't choose that. Instead you choose to go into guilt.
In this world, guilt has been terribly confused with love. People hurt those they "love" (but really don't) then go into guilt. Guilt is supposed to be some kind of position of being sorry, or remorse or regret, and then they will attempt to perform actions which make it up to the person, based on that guilt, as though that will atone for the sin. Guilt is not a gift, it's a slap in the face. It's an attempt to kick them while they're down. It's an attempt to save face. It is dishonest.
If you sin and hurt someone, the response from you should be that you RETURN TO LOVE, so that you can be as truly helpful as possible and heal the problem. And that person, IF they are in their right mind, should encourage you to return to love, through forgiveness, in order to RESTORE the state of innocence and invulnerability which seemed to be disrupted. Thus both of you are now better off. But if you instead move into guilt as your offering of atonement, you're really being selfish and are not atoning at all.
If the person you hurt is not in their right mind and has an ego agenda, they will likely seize the opportunity to notice that you made a mistake and, instead of forgiving you to help you to return to love, they will use this to get rid of some of their own sin and guilt. They will attack you, justifiably, accuse you, put you in the dog house, put limits on you, reject you from their "love", or generally separate from you as a justified punishment. This is a completely insane response and not in any way justified or honest or exhibiting integrity.
This is the ego's version of atonement, that you sinned so you must sacrifice in order to make up for it. You must lose something, you must be less loved, and you must give something away that you value and be at a loss, in order to "pay" for your crime. There is no justice when any Son of God is found to be guilty. Not only has one person been attacked, but now a second person has fallen from Grace and has entered into guilt. So now two people are suffering, which is hardly an improvement.
Being guilty and unworthy of forgiveness is exactly what your ego wants, and is exactly what it uses to pretend to be sorry about what happened. If you are TRULY regretful, you will return to love as quickly as possible, regain your sense of deserving love as quickly as possible, repair the "damage" by offering a miracle of healing, and give the TRUE GIFT of love. This will be a real atonement. This will undo the suffering and reverse the problem and restore peace. But the ego doesn't want that, and anyone with an ego will condemn and demand guilt as though it makes sense. It is insane.
Many forms of "love" are really guilt. Feeling guilty that you didn't do enough, feeling guilty that you hurt your loved one, feeling bad about not being able to help someone, feeling guilty that you caused someone to suffer or lack, etc... these are not positions of honesty or responsibility or repentance or atonement. These are positions of the ego using the situation to reinforce itself and increase separation and unconsciousness and death. And a "crime punishable by death" is the ultimate bullshit.
When someone makes a mistake, it must be innocent, because no-one in their innocent right mind deliberately sins. If it is a mistake, it is forgivable, calls for forgiveness and love and a restoration of communication and communion. It calls for even greater sharing and love, in order to correct the problem of the error in perception.
So at some point when you admit all this to yourself, you will have to learn to drop the entire "sob story" of how you are unworthy and guilty and ashamed and remorseful and regretful. None of these are genuine and every one of them is a dishonest plot to move you further towards death.
This "correct perception" of these perceptual errors allows you to RECOGNIZE these illusions as ego devices and not as truth. If you believe them then you have failed to recognize them, and they will remain. But illusions, when recognized for what they are REALLY doing, leads to their undoing and they must disappear. Therefore there is a healing and a release.
Yes, you feel like shit and unworthy of love, but.... do you want to keep spinning your wheels on this or... do you want an honest, real solution which will ACTUALLY repair the damage and heal you and set you free of this guilt and restore your worthiness for being loved? That is what forgiveness offers you. That is the escape from death that the truth offers you, if you are willing to own up to it.
Unworthy? Ashamed? Guilty? Mad at yourself for what you did? Self loathing? Low self-esteem? Bullshit!
You ARE permanently lovable, permanently worthy, permanently innocent, and permanently forgiven. Your self-hate is not justified. Your attempted self-destruction is not justified. Your guilt is unfounded. Your sadness is completely unfounded. Your fear of punishment is a total lie. And you have not really sinned at all.
God is very happy with you right now. Can you accept it as the truth? At least in your willingness to approach this truth, it may bring to light the ways that you are trying to believe the opposite, so that you can look at it honestly and let it go.
God loves you. Always has. Always will. And there is nothing that you need to "do" to make it up to Him or win Him over or convince Him of your innocence. You do not need to "atone" for a sin that you didn't really commit. You do not need to "atone" or "pay" for hurting God, because you haven't. You're just mistaken, and so long as you want to keep being mistaken God will STILL continue to love you unconditionally. At some time you will be ready to accept that, in truth, you deserve to be loved forever, and you are.
"Nothing you can do can turn me away, nothing anyone can say, 'cus I'm with you now and as long as you stay, loving you's the right thing to do, loving you is the right thing." - Carly Simon