In the separation from God we made what seems to be a world, opposite to God - space and time and bodies etc. But we're told this world is unreal. What does "unreal" mean? Because while we're told it's unreal we're also told we believe in it, and that by believing in it it becomes real to us.

Being unreal is a way to say it's not ultimately true and isn't how God creates. So in a sense, it is dream-like. But people DO have dreams, and the mind IS dreaming of a world of space and time. This dream can seem very real and solid and effectual to the dreamer.

As such even though the world is ultimately unreal, which would seem to write off anything that seems to happen in it, while we are still in it believing in it we do still have experience of it AS IF it were real. In fact we can make it extremely real to ourselves and have a horrible nightmare.

"anything else is only his own nightmare, and does not exist."

"The mind can make the belief in Separation VERY real and VERY fearful. And this belief IS the devil. It is powerful, active, destructive, and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood. Never underestimate the power of this denial. Look at your lives and see what the devil has made. But KNOW that this making will surely dissolve in the light of truth, because its foundation IS a lie."

But nightmares do in fact seem very real and frightening and full of suffering and stress to the believer. To the believer, even if they are hallucinating, even if what they experence is total fantasy and not possible in God's laws, it nevertheless can seem VERY real and true to a mind that belives in it.

How do we overcome this nightmarish experience of a world in which everything suffers and dies? What is NEEDED? What is called for? If the problem is that the mind is believing in it and giving it power, then the mind has to withdraw that power and stop believing in it. And by not believing in it, the mind will ultimately stop seeing it.

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who SEEM to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are WHOLLY unreal? Could you have FAITH in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? AND WOULD YOU SEE IT? Hallucinations disappear when they are RECOGNIZED for what they are. This IS the healing and the remedy."

Here the course doesn't say that the remedy or approach we're supposed to take is to just write the world off with labels like "unreal, illusion, nothing, doesn't exist" ESPECIALLY when the mind IS honestly still believing in it and giving it reality. That's a form of denial. Instead it says we are to use RECOGNITION to realize that the world isn't real and isn't true, WHILE still in it. That's different from PRETENDING TO BE OUTSIDE IT.

A hallucinated world will disappear only when RECOGNIZED that it is a dream and not a reality. This is what "awareness of dreaming" is about. Awareness of dreaming isn't denial. It's in fact a state in which you are still asleep and dreaming, but you have the awareness of what you're doing.

We're not supposed to keep bypassing the world in an attempt to overcome or escape it. In fact, Jesus's remedy for us is to CHANGE PERCEPTION so that we will come to first see this world from a different vantage point. That does require us to "love the world" and to find peace in the world. Before we can leave it. As the course says:

"First you will dream of peace, then you will awaken to it."

If we try to skip the dream of peace, or the happy dream, or the forgiven world, and just try to jump from false perception to knowledge, we're doing a bypass.

"Knowledge is not the remedy for false perception since, being another level, they can never meet. The one correction possible for false perception must be true perception. It will not endure. But for the time it lasts it comes to heal. For true perception is a remedy with many names. Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one. They are the one beginning with the end to lead to Oneness far beyond themselves. True perception is the means by which the world is saved from sin, for sin does not exist. And it is this that true perception sees."

Those who use non-dual-seeming statements like "the world doesn't exist so it doen't matter what you do", "the body isn't real so don't bother healing it" etc... are trying to use truths from the level of KNOWLEDGE, to correct the problem. But Jesus says this will not really work. THE ONE CORRECTION for false perception is true perception. We can't skip having true perception. We have to find a way to forgive this world and everything in it first instead of trying to jump ahead to being what is only really experienced AFTER we complete the curriculum.

"Miracles are thought-creations. Thought can create lower-order or higher-order realities. This is the basic distinction between intellectualization and thinking. One creates the physical, and the other the spiritual, and we believe in what we create."

"We have discussed the fall or Separation before, but its meaning must be clearly understood, without symbols. The Separation is NOT symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of thought that is PERFECTLY real in time, though not in Eternity. All beliefs are real to the believer."

"You have expressed surprise at hearing how VERY different is reality from what YOU see. You do not realize the magnitude of that ONE error. It was so vast and so COMPLETELY incredible, that from it, a world of total unreality HAD to emerge."

"You looked upon the unreal and found despair. But by SEEKING the unreal, what else COULD you find? The UNreal world IS a thing of despair, for it can never be."

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

"The separation is merely a faulty formulation of reality, WITH NO EFFECT AT ALL. The miracle, without a function in Heaven, IS needful here. ASPECTS of reality can still be seen, and they will replace aspects of UNREALITY. Aspects of reality can be seen IN EVERYTHING and EVERYWHERE. Yet only God can gather them together by crowning them AS ONE with the final gift of eternity."

I think a lot of people have a belief that they are 'supposed' to suffer.

When an opportunity for healing is presented, unconditionally, with no strings attached, we actually recoil a bit in suspicion that we're not 'supposed' to be free of the suffering.

We believe the sickness is honorable, truthful, justified and deserved, and we defend it, and would even feel guilty for throwing all that away in favor of instant healing. How dare you heal someone when they're in the middle of good bit of suffering?! They were really getting into it ;-)

It seems 'too easy' that God would just come along and take away any degree of sickness instantly, as if, that's not allowed. Or it's breaking some kind of rules. Or some kind of 'agreement' that we all seem to have about how the common level of 'mutual suffering' is agreed upon and normal.

How dare you step out of the ego and be healed with no repercussions, throwing all guilt aside and claiming innocence. Blasphemy!

I noticed this in my path where I felt like some kind of 'rightness' in taking the very-longwinded suffering route through forgiveness, like, I was not supposed to skip any steps, was not supposed to just 'jump to innocence'.

I had to go 'through' and handle and spend time with all this guilt and fear like, it was not 'correct' (with the Course) to move on from it quickly without having 'properly suffered' first.

The ego says, you must ATONE on its terms, first, before you are 'allowed' to move on. You must atone by suffering and sacrifice and punishment, in hell. If you haven't suffered enough, it's wrong to seek healing.

Even if I were able to access healing quickly, some part of me believed I was meant to suffer for a long time and make sure to thoroughly look at every fault, and really beat it to death, just to make sure that I am really really really prepared to then start to heal it.

Silly nonsense. How can guilt and suffering be justified?

What about healing right now, full and complete, as an unconditional gift of love from God? Do we deserve it? Do we want it? Why don't we want it? Why do we believe we are supposed to suffer, right to suffer, meant to suffer, doing a service to God by suffering, carrying out God's will by suffering, going along with society by suffering, being aligned to truth by suffering, and being honest by suffering?

lol, you have to laugh.

Miracles are available right now.

I've come to realize, through painful lessons and helpful support, that I've for a long time now been using my learning about 'truth' as a way to justify being 'right' about that truth.

It's a trap. It's not just that in some situations I am 'actually right' based on the facts of the matter, and that therefore I get lost in being 'right' about being right. It's not just about that form of blindness to and use of the ego situation to make myself look even 'righter'.

It goes way beyond that. Because the fact is, the ego has taken all of what could be considered 'truth', A Course in Miracles truth, even very high lofty metaphysical truth, and this ego in me has used it repeatedly to make myself ultra-right whenever anyone ELSE is not complying with this 'truth'.

When someone else is not matching up to this lofty truth, I start to spout off this truth to them. I start to correct them. I even judge them as 'doing it wrong' or 'failing to be truthful' or whatever. The more 'insanely wrong' they seem to be the more I react with 'noooo, that's not the truth'. Doesn't help.

I've been pushing and enforcing 'truth' onto people for a long time. Correcting people. Analyzing situations to prove why someone is not being truthful. Using what seems to be 'honesty' and 'clarity' as tools to point out where other people are being less than honest, so that my ego mind has an opportunity to jump all over them.

Yes we're talking 'holier than thou' with a capital H.

This is the ultimate ego trap, using the highest-possible 'truth' to make others wrong, by pointing out how they are 'incorrect' or using their mistakes to point out how they aren't 'doing it right'. And all along, it's me not 'doing it right', because I'm stuck in the ego.

Being stuck in my ego mind and relying on its accumulated concepts, causes me to attack others with this vantage point, seeing them as stuck in a place of listening to the ego too much, when in fact its me listening to the ego.

Hmmmmm.

And all of this is a substitute for trusting God.

"Fear is trusting in your own strength"

Sometimes when I am upset and I am asking God to help, I am in a state of begging, and that's because I believe there is such a tremendous distance (separation) between where I am and where the solution seems to be.

As I "ask" God to "do things" (lol)... the suggestion to me by Holy Spirit is to, instead, THANK GOD. Well... in a state of upset and begging, the idea of thanking seems totally opposite of what I can muster or believe in, because when I am EXPERIENCING things happening that I DO NOT WANT, I am being the OPPOSITE OF GRATEFUL.

I seem to be having a pity party in my upset feelings and here it's being simply suggested that I lighten up and 'rejoice' in God by ACCEPTING that God IS helping or HAS/WILL help, by entering into the stream of thought which appreciates and THANKS Him for doing so.. like, it's a given, because then I am PARTICIPATING IN THE MIRACLE.

There's a world of difference between "God please help, things are so fucked", and "Thank you God, thank you for restoring ... to peace and love" or whatever.

The question is, can we love, can we be willing to rise up out of despair and actually JOIN GOD in love, and to then have a celebration party about how wonderful he already is and how much he is already going to solve this entire problem... THANK GOD.... can we jump to that from the middle of despair?

It's hard. But not impossible. Sometimes you have to have good old fit first of all and feel it all and get it out of your system to use up all that stupid ego energy. Then you might be more ready and able to reach up to the higher truth of God and align with it in gratitude.

It's a leap. And to go from 'I need help' to 'thank you for helping' also requires that I LET GO OF my ego misery pot. I mean, after all, if I'm asking for help, then I better dam well get prepared to RECEIVE THE HELP and stop just wallowing in the darkness, right? I'm asking for it, so I need to shift gears and actually open up to receiving and thanking.

Ego doesn't want to thank God for anything ;-) But this is the simple difference between ego prayers and Holy prayers. Ego prayers come from the dark and cry out in anguish and in belief at how everything sucks and there's nothing to be thankful for. Holy prayers align with Heaven and extend and express love in gratitude and happiness. Big difference. It's night and day, as well, in terms of the POWER that will come when you enter gratitude and COMMAND situations to heal instead of being a victim.

Thank you God for extending your love through me.

You might be angry with someone, you might be upset and annoyed about what they're doing or how they're treating you or others, but here's the secret.

There is no such thing as genuine anger.

Anger always has a secret motive of USING the other person to get rid of YOUR own sin and guilt. Always.

It's very convenient that anger comes across as though you are justified, outraged, offended, annoyed, as though it's entirely someone else who is wrong and not you.

And even in the midst of that anger or upset you will feel all hurt and victimized and unfairly treated, making it seem like this experience is something you totally do not want and have not asked for. You even think you want to get rid of the anger and make it go away. Except you don't.

It serves your secret plan to get rid of your deeper sin, which you've made unconscious to yourself.

You might complain, you might blame, but you're getting a huge benefit by maintaining this state of anger and upset.

You WANT other people to attack you, you WANT other people to hurt you, and you WANT them to do things to you so that you will have a great opportunity to find them guilty.

You'll then jump at the chance to accuse them, regardless of how upset you are or how much you perceive that you don't want this to be happening. You DO want it to be happening.

You are using other people to hurt you so that you can get revenge and get rid of your own sin. You're trying to make them wrong, think of them as the one who is wrong or bad, so that you have this opportunity.

So in your anger, it might seem as though you're upset because of what they are doing to YOU. But what about what you are doing to THEM?

Your desire to see them as wrong is an attack. Your desire to find them guilty is an attack. Your desire to pin the blame on them is an attack. This hardly justifies your innocence.

No-one else is ever the real cause of your upset. No-one else ever attacks you or makes you experience effects. No-one else puts the effects into you or into your body. No-one can do anything to you but your own mind.

You have to own up to this and admit that YOU believe you are sinful and guilty, regardless of whether other people seem to be accusing you. YOU believe it. And you need to undo that belief (go to the Atonement) if you are to be at peace.

Then having forgiven yourself for what you did not REALLY do (sin is not real), you'll be able to recognize that this other person was innocent all along, they were COMPLETELY uninvolved in what you were experiencing. They didn't cause any of it. You were just using them and doing it to yourself.

Had a nice chat with Jesus last night.

One observation made is, that you can't just jump straight into fear or guilt. It's not like you can go from innocence straight to feeling afraid, although it seems this is what we do because it can happen quite fast. There are steps that MUST precede it.

e.g. if you are afraid, you have to:

1) separate from love, 2) believe its really happened (sin), 3) become guilty, 4) feel compelled to fear punishment.

So you don't just 'get afraid', you have to have first done these other things. Similarly if you find yourself mainly in guilt, you didn't just become guilty, there had be these other steps before it (ie separation and sin).

Once you see where you are on the spectrum between love and death, ie:

1) Love/atonement/Holy Spirit

2) Separation idea

3) Sin (something really has happened)

4) Guilt (guilty for making it happen)

5) Fear (afraid of the punishment that guilt suggests will come)

6) Punishment (actually experiencing punishment)

7) Death/ego

... then you can figure out how you need to 'undo' the preceding steps. If you find yourself mainly in fear on an issue, figure out what guilt it was based on. If you are afraid, you ALWAYS have guilt underneath it. If you mainly find yourself feeling guilty about something - at least you haven't moved into fear, but now you need to realize there was some sense of 'sin' underneath it.

As you move away from the 'death' end of the spectrum you are moving away from the ego. As you move away from the Love end of the spectrum you are moving towards the ego.

You need to move yourself toward the atonement end of the spectrum if you want to be at peace. AND... this is the important part, you need to go ALL the way. You don't want to go all the way because the closer you get to it the more it challenges the ego's deepest-held truths (e.g. that the world has happened - which is a 'sin' idea). It also means getting up-close and personal with God which your ego does not want to do.

Many people (me too) get stuck in the middle of the spectrum somewhere around the fear or guilt areas, and think we need to just undo the fear or guilt, but really we need to look at what the guilt is based on, which is some kind of sin, then look at what the sin is based on, which is some sense of separation from God and yourself, and then undo even the idea of being separate, so that you can REUNITE with God and yourself in the At-one-ment.

At any time, all you need to ask yourself is:

1) Where am I at on the spectrum between holy spirit and ego?

2) Where do I want to be? (ideally, with Holy Spirit)

Then work your way one step at a time uncovering the foundation of where you find yourself.

You believe that it is true that you are meant to suffer and die and that doing so is right and happy and is your salvation. How nuts is that? Even worse, you do not even REALIZE you are suffering because you think it's your idea of heaven.

But here we are, in the middle of suffering, asking for more suffering, wanting to keep suffering, because we falsely believe that suffering and attack is SAVING US from something even worse.

What could be worse than suffering a death? Happiness and eternal life? The ego actually believes this. It's replaced the truth with what is false and identified what's false as true and something ELSE is where all the suffering lies.

So if you believe suffering is happiness, death is your way to be free, you deserve to suffer more because you don't deserve love, or that it's true that you need to keep the ego because it is totally your friend, then you're going to keep on suffering. The only reason you will keep suffering is because you think it is perfectly sane and real and true.

Jesus has told us, you do not need to suffer. Period. There is no call for, justification for, need for, or purpose for suffering. All you need is God's love. Yet to the ego, it has all these reasons 'why' you need to suffer more... reasons which justify suffering, reasons which build up a picture to defend suffering, to protect suffering, to want it and to keep it, because you're convinced it's actually in your best interests.

Whatever you think is true you will defend because you believe that, conversely, whatever is NOT true is against you and is your enemy. And this is how you defend against God because you think God is not the truth. Why would ANYONE want to deliberately stay away from God? Not in their right mind! Nobody has any valid reason to. But people have a LOT of really invalid reasons to. A lot of beliefs that all reinforce this conviction that what the EGO is offering is better, truer, more correct, more safe, more reliable, more trustable. We've put a lot of faith into the ego.

There is no reason to not be with God. There is no reason to suffer. There is nothing keeping you away from God other than your own desire to not be with God, based on your beliefs that tell you God is not what you want. The only way you can not want God is to not be aware of God's true nature. You MUST cover it up and distort it otherwise, if you were to RECOGNIZE God you would jump into His arms in an instant. The attraction to love is very powerful. And it is this attraction to love that you are trying to HIDE underneath and using your ego beliefs. Their only purpose is to cover up God so that you don't remember how much you want and love Him.

If you've got reasons to not accept God's love... you're definitely deceived by the ego and definitely mistaken in your grasp of what God is like. Its good to admit that. God's got a whole shitload of love coming your way.