The way the ego thinks about oneness is fraught with massive mistakes and assumptions and faulty conclusions. And a lot of people do this.

It seems simple enough to aim to "become oneness". But the way the ego thinks causes this to mean some things that it does not really mean.

And the aim often tends to be to get rid of the ego, but this is also then lumped in with self as though we are to have no self at all. And being one seems to imply that you cannot have a self, which is false.

There are numerous things wrong with this because not only does it erase the self that God created, it equates you with being entirely the same thing as God.

Now, in truth you actually are the same thing as God, up to a point, because you have all of God in you and are part of him. But God created you and you did not create him, so you are not his equal, and he IS greater than you.

This might imply you cannot be one with God, therefore, because if you are not totally the same as him how can you be one? But this isn't true either. You can be entirely fully one with God and still be secondary in creation. You can still be entirely one with God and still have a self.

I know it sounds paradoxical and nonsense but anything that is true sounds nonsense to the ego, just as anything the ego believes IS nonsense. And the egos beliefs ABOUT oneness are completely nonsense.

God is a holographic system of creation in which the whole is in every part and every part contains the whole. What oneness means in such a system is not the same as what it would mean in spacetime. The whole of God is in each of us, and each us of is whole and contains the whole - a shared whole. In this system, we DO have a self, AND we are one, and we are not, and we are.

What often happens is many people conclude that in order to gain oneness they have to give up self, so then there is this whole drive to destroy the self. This can only lead to more depression because self-repression is not natural. It's not natural because God created you to have a self. "I am still as God created me."

But we have to then reconcile how we can be one and still have a self. And that's easily explained by the fact that God's reality follows the holographic principle. Each individual part of God contains all of God.

"The whole power of God is in every part of Him"

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."

So we don't actually want to be trying to get rid of self, but we also don't want our sense of "type" of self to be getting in the way of being able to be united with, one with, in communion with, the whole of God and creation.

We can be a part and a whole at the same time. That's the truth. It's only when we try to be a part that is NOT the whole that we move into ego. A partial part is a selfish part which is trying not to share with the rest. It's rejecting wholeness.

All we have to thus do to become one, is to reclaim and own and unite with the wholeness, while still being a part. We remove the egotism which is the idea of being apart-from the whole, which is the walls we surround ourselves with to shut it out. But we do not get rid of the prisoner in the prison cell - only the cell walls need removing, and then the sense or type of self is purified.

If we aim to be one with everything and have "no self at all", we're only getting half of the story. We are supposed to be full of self, not having no self. But some people teach and practice a non-dual view of having no self at all. This obliterates God's creations. Just because you're not an exclusive self doesn't mean you're not an inclusive self, and the opposite of false self is not no self - it's true self.

We don't want selfishness, but selfishness is an attitude problem, not a problem of what you are.

Trying to see yourself as "one", as the whole, as the entirety of everything, TO THE EXCLUSION OF selves, will result in further insanity twisted around to make it seem like there is a spiritual awakening while continuing to deny God's creation.

Being ONLY oneness is not the answer. You have to be oneness AND twoness. A self that shares, a self that unites, a self that gives, a self that relates, a self that includes, a self that loves. A self that knows it is one with and like its creator, but also knows its been given the freedom to be its own self, with free will, which is a gift from God. We are not supposed to be throwing the gift of having been created away.

So there is risk in focusing entirely on oneness, or on non-duality, because it can deny the self to such an extent that you end up with a sense of having none at all, which is not what God wills. You do have a self, it's just a very open shared self that includes others within it.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth.

"Your brother is your Friend BECAUSE his Father created him like you. There IS no difference. You have been GIVEN to each other that love might be extended, NOT cut off from one another."

The ego aligns with the physical world, and is completely backwards. It operates on the basis of how the physical works.

It says, if I give you something, I must lose it. We can't both have it. We could have a tug of war, or a compromise of lack, but we can't both have it at the same time.

This is completely backwards according to God's law. God says that if you give something you receive it because giving and receiving are one. So if I give something to you, there is no loss, and we both have all of it at the same time.

It then seems completely impossible to actually express God's law in this world on a physical level, because the physical laws themselves - which are laws of separation - say you cannot do it. That we can't both have the whole simultaneously.

However, a more advanced miracle worker can break the physical laws and demonstrate that giving and receiving are one. For example Jesus did this when he showed that he could multiply food and feed thousands of people. This violated the physical laws which said that if he would give the original bread and fish away, there would be none left to feed the crowd.

The ego believes entirely in physicality as being reality. It based its whole thought system on this model of separation. Objects which are kept apart by physical space (distance) and time (delay). Both of which are attempts to avoid the presence of God.

If for example in this world a person seems to die, their body is dead etc, the ego says that this evidence proves the person has been extinguished from existence. And if this is real, you should be horrified and upset. You should then experience loss and grief.

But the truth is that the person's spirit lives on in heaven and has eternal life, so there has not really been a death. And so the body isn't showing the truth. Spirit could demonstrate this fact for example by materializing another body, which is what Jesus did in his resurrection, and sometimes the angels do this also.

Similarly the ego believes that freedom means separation. In order to be free of something or someone it has to go away. You have to lose it. But in God's rules, you can have freedom and also have oneness shared with another at the same time. Being free doesn't mean you are separate whatsoever, it means you are also joined without strings attached. To the ego, freedom is imprisonment.

It then seems quite challenging for us to rise up out of the ego thought system - a system which aligns closely to how the physical world seems to work - and up into a higher path based on the laws of God. A state in which only the truth is true, and "I am under no laws but God's". A state from which the seeming laws of physical can be completely broken and ignored through miracles.

The higher state completely violates and reverses and ignores the physical order. It pays no attention to the seeming limitations of separateness, the illusion of objects and forms, the presentation of distance or time. Miracles pay no attention to what the physical says can or cannot happen.

"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"

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt."

In order to awaken to reality we have to move our mind into the higher order, into the higher mind and its higher thought system. This means aligning with God's laws and living by them. These are NON-PHYSICAL laws which run totally against the grain of the world.

And that means that you're adopting a belief system and perspective and relationship that is running totally contrary to the world. In fact the entire world's lower and backward thought system has to be totally reversed and denied.

This world, the physical world, space and time, Earth and bodies, operate completely opposite to how heaven functions. And we have to learn to wean ourselves off of its illusions and its ways, its nature and its limitations, and rise up to heaven in a celebration of joy and happiness that this world is completely false and does not apply to us.

We need to stop believing, perceiving, and functioning based on how the physical world operates. We need to function based on how God operates, and it is totally opposite to the physical world and all its ways. You are not of this world and never were.

"The world will end when its thought system has been completely reversed."

"This is the first idea we have had which is related to a major phase of the correction process; the reversal of the thinking of the world."

"Yet it is the final lesson in which Unity is restored. It goes against all the thinking of the world, but so does Heaven."

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely."

"Today's idea, completely alien to the ego and the thinking of the world, is crucial to the thought reversal which this course will bring about."

"To give up all problems to one Answer is to reverse the thinking of the world entirely."

"Only be quiet. You will need no rule but this to let your practicing today lift you above the thinking of the world, and free your vision from the body's eyes."

"Here is the perfect statement of my freedom. I am under no laws but God's." "I am entitled to miracles because I am under no laws but God's."

Suffering is really in the mind. It is not really in the physical universe, in the world, or in the body. What is physical does not really suffer. The experience of suffering is psychological only.

The world and the body are a projection in the mind. The law of projection is one of giving, or of pushing outward, based on what is within. In its pure form this is the extension of the Kingdom of God. In its distorted ego form, it is the pushing outward of an inner state of sin, guilt, fear and denial.

The ego thought system in the mind therefore tries to deny and "get rid of" what it does not want, which ultimately it YOU, by first attacking you and then projecting the attack. The projection of attack, in an attempt to give without receiving, which is murderous, is an way the mind "hides from" its own content. The physical world and the body arise as make-believe images and now act to disguise what the real problem is.

This means really that it is your psyche that suffers, and your mind that is hurt, and it is the mind that needs healing. It is your beliefs that twist your thoughts, and distort your perceptions. And it is really only the mind that can seem to be sick.

But when the mind IS sick, it has entered into denial and separation. And as the law of projection now functions, the mind tries to dissociate (separate) from its own suffering. It tries to push "separateness" outside of itself, to create distance and delay between itself and the problem. This produces spacetime. And the whole physical world and body arise to SYMBOLIZE and represent the inner state of mind, as if the mind itself has become physical form.

This means that if the mind is sick, it WILL attack the body and render the body as a sickened image, a broken body, showing up as if deformed or malfunctioning or damaged. And this body now acts to testify that IT has been attacked. And since the cause of the attack is not SEEN, because it is in the mind, we instead look to the world to explain HOW it came to suffer.

We even look to the body itself to ask how the body could make itself sick, and also look to the body to make itself well. But the body cannot attack itself, or heal itself, because ONLY THE MIND puts the body there. And only the mind attacks the body. And only the mind heals the body.

Or to put it in a better way... if the mind attacks itself first, it will project an image of an attacked body in an attacking world. If the mind heals itself first, it will project an image of a healed body in a healed world. There are many statements in ACIM that support this. And it means that the only true way to heal the body is to heal the mind, so that IF the body is projected, its form will symbolize and represent and point towards its origins - as a mirror of a sane and harmless mind.

"The body is endangered by the mind that hurts itself. The body suffers that the mind will fail to see it is the victim of itself. The body's suffering is a mask the mind holds up to hide what really suffers. It would not understand it is its own enemy; that it attacks itself and wants to die. It is from this your "laws" would save the body. It is for this you think you are a body."

"And it grows old and dies, because that mind is sick within ITSELF."

"If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick."

"Yet must all healing come about because the mind is recognized as NOT within the body, and its innocence is quite APART from it, and where ALL healing IS."

"The lesson is the MIND was sick that thought the body COULD be sick; projecting OUT its guilt caused NOTHING, and had NO effects."

"Sickness is anger taken out upon the body, so that IT will suffer pain. It is the obvious effect of what was made in secret"

"The glitter of guilt you laid upon the body would KILL it. For what the ego loves, it kills for its obedience."

"For your beliefs converge upon the body"

"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible."

"Your PERCEPTION of the body can clearly be sick, but project this not upon the body."

"Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For you have seen in it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions. And you will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile, and apart from other minds and separate from its Source."

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."

"LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother AND yourself. A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind MUST BE STRONGER. Every miracle demonstrates this."

"The real world still is but a dream." - section 7 of Chapter 29, section 4 of ACIM.

In the Course, sometimes Jesus uses some terms which SEEM to imply something He did not mean to imply. When he referred to the "real world", He did NOT mean the world is real. And by world here, I'm talking about the physical universe, because every reference to "world" in the Course is referring to the physical universe (the dream of death).

So Jesus referred to the world, seen correctly with "true perception", ie perception without any errors - still perceiving WITHIN the dream, within space and time, but without any delusions ... as the "real world". It is "real" as in, seen WITH TRUTH, the truth OF it is seen correctly. The truth OF it is that it is NOT REAL. The truth of it, is that it is FALSE and untrue. When this is RECOGNIZED with true perception, you are seeing the "real version" of the world. In other words, real as in, what it actually is (unreal) compared to what you thought it was (illusions appearing real).

He uses this terminology because He's comparing it to when you have false perception, where you see this physical world with eyes of hate and judgement, and do not recognize it for what it is. In false perception you see a world of vengeance. You see hate IN the world. When you compare that false view OF the world, with a CORRECT view OF the world, the correct view is seeing "the truth" ABOUT the world... which shows you, in correct recognition, that this world is FALSE and NOT REAL.

The world is still an illusion. A false perception OF an illusion makes it seem real to you, and then you do not recognize it is an illusion, and you think it is the truth. That mistaken perception of the world needs to be corrected in order to see the FORGIVEN WORLD. When the world is seen through forgiving eyes - eyes of truth - those eyes do not see hate and guilt and fear IN the world. It simply sees what is "there", which is... an illusory world. It SEES and recognizes that there is a FALSE WORLD appearing in perception. You might well see God "in it", or see God "about it", or overlook the world to see Christ beyond it. But the world ITSELF is recognized as NOT REAL. The "real world" is actually the NOT REAL WORLD.

Once the world is recognized as not real, ie you are finally able to SEE what this thing IS for what it actually is - a false illusion pretending to be a world - then the purpose of perception and of the world is complete, and THEN YOU WAKE UP FROM THE DREAM, the world disappears, and there is only you with God. NOW you are in reality.

Jesus's use of the term "real world" in the Course has been very confusing for many students, because so many of us rely on the exact specific words Jesus uses and we don't really take it all in proper context of the bigger picture. This creates contradictions. If Jesus really meant the "real world" was actually REALITY, this would go against 99% of the rest of the Course. He ONLY uses this term to describe a correct perception of an UNREAL world - see the "reality" or "truth" of the world, which shows you that it is not really there. It's not a real world at all.

Jesus actually does this also in some other places in the course where he uses a terminology that SEEMS contradictory or seems to suggest something He did not intend. To discern this you need quite a bit of experience grasping the metaphysics. For example He said in one place that something can be "perfectly real within time but not in eternity." That can seem to imply that something inside of time - even though the course teaches that time is an illusion - is "real". If you interpret it that way, you will now come to a vast array of further confused conclusions. Jesus is not saying that anything in time is real at all. He is only saying that eternity is real and anything in time is an ILLUSION of reality, and seeing it correctly is seeing the "reality of it" - the truth that it is an illusion, just as above.

The "real world" is not real. There is no real world. This is the central thought the course would attempt to teach. This is the thought which anyone with an ego DOES NOT WANT. The fact is that when you get to True Perception, you WILL and MUST recognize that this thing you've been calling a real world, is JUST an illusion. Nothing more or less. It has no reality to it, no truth to it, it is recognized and registers with you as completely FALSE. You see THROUGH it, with forgiving eyes. You do not buy its illusions, you do not believe in it, you do not think it is really happening. And then it disappears as God scoops you up and you wind up back in REALITY. A reality in which THE WORLD DOES NOT EXIST. Or in a word, "Heaven". Only heaven is real.

"THE WORLD YOU SEE DOES NOT EXIST" (the world you see with your physical eyes does not exist).

"Forgiving dreams have little need to last. They are not made to separate the mind from what it thinks. They do not seek to prove the dream is being dreamed by someone else. And in these dreams a melody is heard that everyone remembers, though he has not heard it since before all time began. Forgiveness, once complete, brings timelessness so close the song of Heaven can be heard, not with the ears, but with the holiness that never left the altar that abides forever deep within the Son of God. And when he hears this song again, he knows he never heard it not. And where is time, when dreams of judgment have been put away?" - ACIM

Nothing in the world is doing anything to you whatsoever. Not even seeming physical attacks, physical sickness, or death.

All of it must be seen as having NO EFFECT on you as a son of God.

If it has no effect on you, then it cannot be a CAUSE. If it is not a cause, it cannot have SINNED against you. And therefore it must be harmless and forgiven.

Then the world is recognised as NOT DOING ANYTHING, it is recognised as merely a dream - an effect of dreaming, and not a cause of anything at all.

When the world is recognised as CAUSING NOTHING, changing nothing, doing nothing of any real value, all sense of blame and bitterness and hate and rejection are taken away from it.

It is then merely seen as harmless, powerless, guiltless, and not sinful. It is then just a kind of harmless dream, which no real consequences and no inherent properties of any kind. Just a projected image.

Physical death does nothing to anyone real. Nothing real can be threatened. Souls are utterly unaffected by death or by anything in this world.

Similarly the things of this world must be seen and recognised as NOT PEOPLE, the bodies are not who we are, not who anyone is. They are just shells in a strange shape which are formed to look as though they are people with faces. These are not real people.

Nothing real has ever died. No-one real has ever been attacked. Nothing real has ever been sick. No-one real has ever murdered anything. There is no sin anywhere. The world is a dream. The world and body do nothing to you or to anyone. The physical does not rule the mind. Mind is the sole cause.

"This is a course in CAUSE, and NOT effect." UrT21H8

"What is the single requisite for this shift in perception? It is simply this; the recognition that sickness is of the mind, and has nothing to do with the body. What does this recognition "cost"? It costs the world we see, for the world will never again appear to rule the mind. For with this recognition is responsibility placed where it belongs; not with the world, but on him who looks on the world and sees it as it is not. He looks on what he chooses to see. No more and no less. The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world, because he was mistaken about what it was. Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both, for they are one. Yet to accept this release, the insignificance of the body must be an acceptable idea." UrM6C3

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness." UrW190L5

Here's a fairly easy meditation you can try. I call it 'being quiet'. You can use it to connect with and listen to Holy Spirit or Jesus.

Consider that your thoughts are actually audible, i.e. they are making sounds. If you can hear your thoughts, you are making sounds. And everyone else can hear your thoughts too, like being in a room having a conversation. I don't mean that there is a thought and there is a separate sound, I mean the thought IS the sound. We're so used to believing that all our thoughts are private that we let them run wild and unchecked, as though they impact nobody else. For the sake of this meditation, "there are no private thoughts!" - ACIM

Then imagine that you're in some place where, for whatever reason, you have to be very very quiet and not make any sound. Maybe you pretend you're in a library or a church or something. You don't have to picture anything particularly, you just need to know you need to be quiet - your audible thoughts need to be quietened down.

The main thing is simply 'being quiet' mentally, which basically means, not creating thoughts because they would disturb the peace. Since you know your thoughts are going to make sounds that are heard, and you need to be as quiet as possible, this simply compels you to focus on being quiet.

This isn't the same as thought control. You're not trying to stop thoughts once they've happened. You're just being quiet so that you do not make thoughts in the first place. And since your focus is on 'being quiet', that's enough to stop them arising. IF thoughts start to pop up you can bet you have 'failed' to be quiet because now your mind is chattering, and everyone can hear you! Shhhhhh!

I find this is easier for me than trying to be 'still', because stillness for me is too associated with lack of physical movement or not breathing and it just makes me become tense. I also find this easier than trying to focus on my breathing or breathing in a particular way or 'thought watching' and trying not to get caught up in thoughts. That's hard. Once thoughts are created they kind of have a mind of their own, because they are like little created beings with their own little bit of consciousness going off in random directions. Not making thoughts at all bypasses that. It's much easier to be quiet when there are no thoughts to deal with, than to try to clean up a noisy thought-mess after it's been triggered.

Once you've been doing this for al little while your mind should quieten down. In fact you should be able to 'be quiet' very quickly. I find this works far more effectively than other meditations I've tried.

While you're being quiet, take the opportunity then to calmly have a conversation with Holy Spirit or Jesus. Hearing them entails 'listening' which means not broadcasting your opinions and viewpoints, or your background 'processing' of what's being said. If you want to hear their voice, you need to stop your mental yacking and become receptive.Your thoughts ARE a conversation. And as the course says, the degree you will hear their voice is the degree that you're willing to listen.

Holy Spirit and Jesus are happy to talk to you if you will listen enough. Give it a try.

The belief in separation, which you are working to undo through forgiveness, does not just heal your own mind.

What is it that you have been separated from? It is yourself, it is God, and it is your brother.

When you undo separation in what you think of as "your mind", the boundaries which confined your mind are expanded. Separation was COMING BETWEEN you and others. It was defining you as "not them".

Separation is an artificial wall which seems to make people into isolated individuals, with private minds experiencing private worlds.

When separation is lifted, you are literally going to become ONE with other people. They are you. They are other parts of you which you have been separated from. You, and what appeared before to be "others", in fact SHARE A MIND as the One Son of God.

You are NOT just working on your own private spiritual path in isolation. If you are truly making progress to undo separation, you are undoing the separation BETWEEN you and other people. This means it is IMPOSSIBLE to make progress in spiritual awakening without INCLUDING more and more of what it was you thought was "other people", which is actually parts of yourself that you previously were separate from. Your spiritual awakening is everyone's spiritual awakening.

That which kept you feeling isolated, imprisoned, alone, separate and in the dark, was essentially FEAR, which when it is lifted, *reconnects you* with other people. You begin to see them AS YOURSELF. And you begin to treat them how you would be treated.

In the ego's thought system, what applies to you does not apply to others. This is because it sees each individual as an isolated separated identity, cut off and kept apart. In the Holy Spirit's thought system, what applies to you applies to everyone equally, because they ARE YOU. You, and your brother, are PART OF the One Son of God. ONE identity. ONE mind. ONE Self.

Therefore as you are removing blocks to awareness of love, you are removing artificial limitations placed on "who you are", which put you in a little box and labelled you as separate. As these blocks are lifted, you will come to LOVE yourself more, and LOVE other people more. This love will JOIN and CONNECT you to other minds.

Separated minds produce sickness. Joined minds produce healing. You must set your brother free from his prison by rejoining with him as one. You must stop demonstrating sickness so as to stop accusing BOTH of you of sin. You must be the example of the love that applies to BOTH of you. It is literally in your own best interests to do this, because they ARE ONE WITH YOU!

Separation is a two-edged sword. It doesn't just apply in isolation. It causes isolation. It comes between brothers and makes them strangers. It makes a shared mind split and kept apart. When separation has gone, your mind will be SHARED with the Son of God. You are OPENING UP to a much larger sense of IDENTITY than who you thought you were, limited to a separate self, stuck in a body, or confused with that which dies.

You are EVERTHING. You are bigger than the universe. You are the Kindgom of God!

What did you do?! Did you hurt someone? Did you steal something? Did you break it and cover it up? Did you destroy a relationship? Did you deceive and lie? Did you commit a secret crime? What was it? Come on, own up. You really did something bad and evil didn't you? Something you want no-one to ever know about?

Ok well..... you didn't do it.

So long as you believe that IT HAPPENED, in some kind of "reality", in a real world, that you REALLY did it, you will not be able to forgive yourself. It doesn't matter how much you reframe it, cathart it, think about it, process it, heal it, work on it. There will always be this "core" thread that seems to keep it tied to you. Something that prevents you from COMPLETELY letting it go. You just can't seem to forgive yourself all the way.

This happens because the belief that YOU DID IT, is the core of sin. It is the absolute ROOT which is anchoring it in your mind. The memory of you doing it, the experience of it, the feelings surrounding it, the sense that "that happened".

It doesn't matter how much you hack at it with your amazing spiritual tools and healing devices. It WILL NOT go away so long as you believe, fundamentally, that "you did it." It doesn't matter how loving you attempt to be, or how much you try to forgive yourself "for doing it". If you believe and accept "I DID THAT" .... you MUST find yourself sinful.

Psychologically it simply is impossible to be forgiven for something that you BELIEVE IN. Your belief in it keeps it anchored in your mind. It means you WANT it, and so your mind holds onto it. The only way you can be free of it, to truly let it go, and feel RELIEVED, is to recognize IT DID NOT HAPPEN AT ALL.

"Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in this view are all your sins forgiven."

The only context in which you DID NOT DO what you believe you did do, deep down, is where this world is NOT REAL. Only if this world is a DREAM, a fiction, in which fantasies play out, and in which NOTHING REAL IS THREATENED, can it be possible that you DIDN'T REALLY DO what you think you did. And only in this context can you BE forgiven.

Your innocence can only logically and psychologically remain pure IF you DID NOT do it. If you did it, you are a sinner. If you did not do it, you are innocent. This is all your mind understands. But the only way that you could NOT have done it, is if your actions were IN A DREAM, and NOT in reality. If you only did it in dreaming, then nothing real has been harmed. If what you did took place NOT IN HEAVEN, but in some kind of fictional world, then your real innocence has NOT been changed. You just IMAGINED that you sinned.

This is the crux of the matter. Do you believe it was a real sin taking place IN REALITY, or was it a FAKE SIN taking place in a FAKE WORLD? If it took place in a fake world, then you DID NOT sin, and sin is NOT POSSIBLE. "There is no sin." This is what sets you free. This is ATONEMENT. Accepting the truth that "I am still as God created me", you have not changed, "God has not changed his mind about me", and your innocence is STILL undefiled.

You are innocent because YOU DID NOT DO what you think you did. You were mistaken. You mistakenly believed you did something wrong, when all it was is a fantasy in an UNREAL world. Nothing real has been hurt. You have not done anything to God. You have NEVER hurt another soul. No one else has EVER done anything to you. No one has ever died or suffered in truth. None of "what you did" took place in the reality of God, and he knows IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU TO SIN in his kingdom.

God did not create you capable of really sinning, or attacking, or hurting, or damaging, or stealing, or betraying, or breaking, or doing anything at all to destroy any kind of perfection. You CANNOT SIN. You have not sinned, ever. You never will sin. This is the view of forgiveness. This is the only light in which you can recognize YOU ARE forgiven, by yourself, because it's the recognition that YOU DID NOT SIN in any real way.

This world is just a dream. You did not do what you think you did. Even your "physical actions" WERE FAKE. Even the PROOF that you caused something to happen IS FAKE. Even the "lasting effects" ARE FAKE. Even your memory of DOING it is fake. It has NOT happened in reality. Nothing real can be threatened or destroyed or hurt. You have never hurt anyone. You DID NOT DO what you think you did. You are innocent and holy and forgiven.

Only in this light can you recognize that you are FREE FROM the feeling of guilt and sin because it has NO TIES TO YOU, because you HAVE NOT DONE ANYTHING in God's reality. What happens in dreams stays in dreams, and only in dreaming did you ever seem to do anything wrong. Dreams mean nothing. They have no real consequences upon anything real. You have NEVER sinned and you never will. Stop crucifying yourself.

"God's Will for you is perfect happiness because there is no sin, and suffering is causeless."

"There is no sin. Creation is unchanged."

"Healing is done, for what is perfect needs no healing, and what remains to be forgiven where there is no sin?"

"Before a holy relationship, there IS no sin."

"What is forgiveness, but a willingness that truth be true? What can remain unhealed and broken from a Unity Which holds all things within Itself? There is NO sin."

"The Holy Spirit will NEVER teach you that you are sinful. ERRORS He will correct, but this makes no-one fearful. You are indeed afraid to look within, and see the sin you THINK is there."

"Then let me, Father, look within and find Your promise of my sinlessness is kept; Your Word remains unchanged within my mind, Your Love is still abiding in my heart." "

"Now let His true perception come to me, that I may waken from the dream of guilt and look within upon my sinlessness, which You have kept completely undefiled upon the altar to Your holy Son, the Self with Which I would identify.""

"If you would look within, you would see only the Atonement, shining in quiet and in peace, upon the altar to your Father."

"What if you looked within, and saw NO sin?"

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."