This is a potent, and clarifying passage, about the fact that ALL perception (even true) is totally OPPOSITE to reality still. Even Christ vision, even sight of the real world, is STILL a state of separation. "Perception is a separated state." "To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it." Knowledge is a direct experience of God's Kingdom, whereas perception is a once-removed, separated, interpretative IMAGE-based reflection. Nothing in the world of illusions (including Eath) HAS any truth to it. True perception merely recognizes that the world IS SENSELESS. Teachers of God who choose to look on dreams a while, are NOT DECEIVED by what they see.

"This is a course in miracles. And, as such, the laws of healing must be understood before the purpose of the course can be accomplished. Let us review the principles that we have covered, and arrange them in a way that summarizes all that must occur for healing to be possible. For when it once is possible it MUST occur. ALL sickness comes from separation. When the separation is denied, it goes. For it IS gone as soon as the idea which brought it has been healed and been replaced by sanity. Sickness and sin are seen as consequence and cause, in a relationship kept hidden from awareness, that it may be carefully preserved from reason's light.

Guilt ASKS FOR punishment, and its request is granted. NOT in truth, but in ***the world of shadows and illusions BUILT on sin***. The Son of God perceives what he would see, because perception IS a wish fulfilled. Perception changes, MADE to take the place of changeless knowledge. ***Yet is truth unchanged. It cannot BE perceived, but only known.*** What is perceived takes many forms, but ***NONE has meaning***. ****Brought to truth, its senselessness is quite apparent.**** Kept APART from truth, it SEEMS to have a meaning and be real. ****Perception's laws are OPPOSITE to truth, and what IS true of knowledge is NOT true of ANYTHING that is apart from it.**** Yet has God given Answer to the world of sickness, Which applies to ALL its forms.

God's Answer is eternal, though It operates in time, where It is needed. But, because It IS of God, the laws of time do not affect Its workings. It is in this world, but NOT a part of it. For It is real, and dwells where all reality MUST be. Ideas leave not their source, and their effects but SEEM to be apart from them. Ideas are of the mind. What is projected OUT, and seems to be EXTERNAL to the mind, is NOT outside at all, but an effect of what is in, and has NOT left its source. God's Answer lies where the belief in sin MUST be, for only there can its effects be utterly undone, and without cause.

****Perception's laws must be reversed, because they ARE reversals of the laws of truth****. The laws of truth FOREVER will be true, and cannot BE reversed; yet can be SEEN as upside down. And this must be corrected where the illusion of reversal lies. It is impossible that one illusion be LESS amenable to truth than are the rest. But it IS possible that some are given greater VALUE, and less willingly OFFERED to truth for healing and for help. ****NO illusion has ANY truth in it.**** Yet it appears some are MORE true than others, although this clearly makes no sense at all. All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality."

This is really key:

"Brought to truth, its senselessness is quite apparent. Kept APART from truth, it SEEMS to have a meaning and be real."

The world is an illusion. Period. Having illusions ABOUT the world, means you are believing the world is real. It means you have illusions ON TOP OF an illusion, and are not RECOGNIZING that it's an illusion.

"the world of shadows and illusions BUILT on sin" "The world of bodies is the world of sin."

Perceiving the world AS REAL, means that it has been kept APART from truth. And therefore true perception is not occurring.

Because the world IS AN ILLUSION, perceiving it AS REAL is a MISTAKE. An error. This is FALSE perception.

Because the world IS AN ILLUSION, perceiving it AS NOT REAL, is CORRECT perception, true perception. When the world is seen with true perception the world does NOT BECOME REAL. It becomes RECOGNIZED AS FALSE. Its senselessness becomes apparent. It ceases to DECEIVE because you do not buy INTO its illusions of temptation.

This world is not real. Nor is is real in the eyes of christ. Believing it is real is a complete 180 degree reversal of what the course is teaching.

Safety is an important aspect of reality. Where there is fear you can't feel safe. Where there is love you are safe and protected.

We might not realize it, but if you are separate or distanced from God in any way, you will start to feel unsafe. The more you go away from love, the more you go into fear. And the fear will seem justified because unreal threatening things will seem real.

The world has no safety to offer. It doesn't matter how many defences you put up how many walls, layers, boundaries or defences you erect. In fact, the more that you believe you need profound levels of defences to protect you, the more you will believe in being vulnerable, weak, afraid and in danger. The more you are visible and undefined and open and exposed, the safer you will become. A king or queen locked in the highest tower in their most fortified castle walls is most terrified.

"If I defend myself I am attacked."

"In my defencelessness my safety lies."

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

The world has no safety to offer because of its constant format of war, conflict, differences and limits. You can barely get through a day without something going wrong or being threatened in some way. If you look for safety on a physical level you will not find it anywhere. The world is a system of murder and suicide.

Safety can only be experienced psychologically as a result of joining with God in light and love and wholeness, in which you are no longer attacking yourself or believing in murder and suicide. Only your self attack could truly make you feel unsafe. In fact, it's the belief that you've sinned and deserve to die that threatens you.

When you become honest and admit to the truth of reality, you are no longer living a lie or living in a state of deception. And without this deception you are not in conflict with your reality. This lack of conflict brings a feeling of peace and safety. The ego can never experience safety because it relies on conflict and deception which undermines its perception of reality.

To feel safe, join with God, receive his love, and remember who you are.

"The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus."

"For we would not return again to the belief in sin, which made the world seem ugly and unsafe, attacking and destroying, dangerous in all its ways and treacherous beyond the hope of trust and the escape from pain."

"Nothing in madness is dependable. It holds out no safety and no hope. But such a world is not real. I have given it the illusion of reality, and have suffered from my belief in it. Now I choose to withdraw this belief, and place my trust in reality. In choosing this, I will escape all the effects of the world of fear because I am acknowledging that it does not exist."

"There IS no safety in a battleground. You can look down on it in safety from above, and NOT be touched. But, from within it, you can find NO safety. Not one tree left standing still will shelter you. Not one illusion of protection stands against the faith in murder. Here stands the body, torn between the natural desire to communicate, and the unnatural intent to murder and to die."

"As evening comes, let all my thoughts be still of You and of Your Love, and let me sleep sure of my safety, certain of Your care, and happily aware I am Your Son."

"God is with me. He is my Source of life, the life within, the air I breathe, the food by which I am sustained, the water which renews and cleanses me. He is my home, wherein I live and move; the Spirit Which directs my actions, offers me Its Thoughts, and guarantees my safety from all pain. He covers me with kindness and with care, and holds in love the Son He shines upon, who also shines on Him. How still is he who knows the truth of what He speaks today!"

"I am in danger nowhere in the world."

"But God Himself has protected EVERYTHING He created BY His laws. Therefore, everything that is not under them does not exist."

"And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error."

"He protected both your creations AND you together, keeping one with you what you would EXCLUDE."

"Even in sleep has Christ protected you, ensuring the real world FOR you when you wake."

"The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it. Amen."

"You will identify with what you think will make you safe. Whatever it may be, you will believe that it is one with you. Your safety lies in truth and not in lies. Love is your safety. Fear does not exist. Identify with love, and you are safe. Identify with love, and you are home. Identify with love, and find your Self."

"And reason now can lead you to the logical conclusion of your union. It must extend, as you extended when you joined."

Some of us like to describe reality as oneness, or perhaps that "its all God", or "non-duality". A state with no separations or differences. But there is a problem with this.

If you take something and you "boil it down" to something else, you end up with this idea of something very simple. Something seemingly singular. Perhaps even a single word which represents it. So maybe we'll say that there is just oneness and that's an entire description of reality.

But the problem is this. If you can't take that boiled-down simplified concept, and arrive at the original state, condition, nature, contents, of reality by building upon it, extending it, then something has become lost in the process. If you START WITH e.g. "God is all there is", you can't logically get to "God has a son".

There is an analogy in the world of data compressionm like when you "zip" some files on your computer. When you try to compress a file, you can do so losslessly or with some acceptable loss. If you want to get every single byte of the file back in its original condition when you decompress it, you have to use a lossless algorithm or process.

Whatever it "boils down to" or compresses to, it has to be detailed enough that when you reassemble the original file, every single detail is still there. If you omit even a tiny bit of "information", you can't get the original file back. How much it can boil down is determined by how much information there is, and relates to the "entropy" of the data. This is why your big image file cannot be compressed below a certain level. It has to maintain enough information to get the original back.

What happens is, if your method of boiling down leaves out some details, omits some information, doesn't fully and accurately represent the original data, then when you go to re-expand the file you don't get back the same data you started with. It becomes "inaccurate." Something has been lost in translation. That means, whatever you boiled it down too was too generalized, too simplified, too basic, and not descriptive enough. Trying to get back the original data is then impossible because too much information is lost. So the simplified file no longer accurately REPRESENTS the "actual reality" of the file.

The same thing happens when we try to describe reality and use concepts or terms which are TOO simple, too basic, and omit too much information. They seem like nice handy symbols but logically they are lacking too much information. You should be able to take a simplified description of reality and derive the full contents of reality from it, by "decompressing it" or reversing the boiling-down process.

You should get back what you started with. So if your description is the "starting point" you MUST be able to fully ACCOUNT FOR every possible detail or characteristic of that reality. And your description of reality in its "most condensed" or most simplified form MUST have enough descriptive information, otherwise you simply cannot end up with what you started with. And when you try to do so, you will produce massive errors.

Particular culprits of this kind of loss of information are conceptual terms such as oneness, "its all God", "God is", "non-duality", "no differences", "no separation" "no self" "unity" etc. These all sound plausibly realistic or representative of the full details about reality, but they're not. They in fact are too generalizing, too basic, and not accurate enough. They leave out some details. And so when you then try to base the description of heaven, for example, on this "premise", on this basic generalization, you CANNOT get back the details of heaven. And in fact you will get back conclusions you did not bargain on.

So if you say ok, it's all oneness, or one thing. Well, now you cannot get a son of God out of that. At all, in any way. Or if you say "its all God", you cannot get out of that an accurate description of why the son of God dreamed and God DID NOT because God has been too mixed in or included in the tiny mad idea. Or if you say it's non-duality and there are no separations, you can't get back the fact God has a Son, yet alone that there is a holy trinity and a bunch of creations.

So there is a big risk, actually an error, in using these really super basic ego-logic-derived terms and concepts to try to describe the reality or God. There is such a thing as something being TOO lacking in detail to accurately describe it. Yes God HIMSELF is one, and reality itself is singular, and there is no opposite to reality, but this unfortunately is not the WHOLE STORY. And so major aspects of the picture become lost in the process of over-simplifying. To the extent that they BLOT OUT key characteristics of reality's true contents.

When you look at what ACIM says about the contents of reality, it is a very different picture to just "its all one" or "there's only God there" or "there are no separations". Yes, there are aspects of reality which ARE only one, or that it IS all just God, but that is only PART OF the story. There are more facts, there is more information needed, and more has HAPPENED in reality because God is a creator. Just the fact God creates results in these ideas being not sufficient to ACCURATELY AND FULLY describe reality.

So if God is to for example have even one son, we cannot JUST say that it's all one because that's now illogical. Yet it IS all one, and that is always true, but it MUST also be true that there is SOME WAY for there to be a son. Otherwise God is not a father or a creator and he is alone and cannot love and there is no extension of life and so on.

In fact the PUREST possible non-duality concept logically ends up with the conclusion that God is dead because He has nothing to give or extend or share or create. It makes him lifeless. You get all kinds of utterly nonsense conclusions deriving FROM that "basis" of what reality IS, when you leave out some facts. So if you start out your reasoning based on things like "its all God" you WILL end up with some horrendously wrong conclusions.

So if you take for example what ACIM says, which is that God has one son, which is also many sons, who have their own sons ad infinitum, and also there is the holy spirit and the angels, apparently in many legions and with a hierarchy, and who knows what else you've created, to describe that ACCURATELY, you can't JUST say "its one thing". A blob is one thing. A state is one thing. A singular entity like God is one thing. But there is MUCH MORE going on in reality than that according to what Jesus tells us. And we should be trusting his word.

So describing it as oneness, or generalizing too far and blotting out the details, or boiling it down so much that the nice soup mixture of various key ingredients becomes just a singular meaningless slush, is actually an error in logical reasoning. It does NOT accurately describe reality or what is happening in reality. It does not accurately describe God's nature either.

It in fact in some ways it can be far better to be MORE DETAILED in describing the nature of God and His Kingdom than it is to be LESS detailed. Just saying "God is" is a premise SO BASIC that it is massively open to huge false conclusions when you try to derive the Kingdom out of it. If God is were the WHOLE story, God would not have a creation at all.

The ego only leans towards less detail because it reasons, if I remove all sense of separations and divisions and multiplicity, I will end up with ONE THING, and this one thing SEEMS like it might most accurately describe the idea of what is all encompassing and infinite. Except that it doesn't. Its a total fail.

It does not take into account that God has a mind, has thoughts, creates beings, or that there are relationships, or that the beings he creates have their own children, minds, and will, or that there are millions of angels for example, or that God doesn't will to be alone. That all goes out the window because the EGO'S conclusion about God IRONS OUT all the details to the point of nothing - the loss of information. It's a great way to become BLIND to what reality is really like.

In the ego's thought system, its sense of logic is that something is either this or that, but not both. This results in differences, and it sees the existence of the separation between those differences as "separation". It even labels that separation as "ego". And then it seeks to get rid of those separations, to attack itself, to remove all separations, in order to end up with "no separation", thinking that this is what it will be like when you have "undone the separation", and must therefore describe God.

And so it reasons, reality is one thing, a oneness, a pool of singularity in which nothing happens and there is no creation. This is only PARTLY correct because it loses too much information. And so the ego cannot accurately describe reality with THIS thought process. You have to become open to thinking outside the box and using God's reasoning in order to describe what God and His creations are like. And since God does have at least one son, it certainly is not a state of logically pure non-duality, nor is it "only oneness", and certainly it's not "just God" because he has ADDED you to Himself.

"YOUR creations add to Him, as YOU do. But nothing is added that is different, because everything has always BEEN."

If you end up with "it is oneness" or "its all God", and then you decompress that idea to address for example the issue of the making of death, you have to conclude God is death, or God is a body, or God separated from God, or God is a pile of shit, or God went insane, or even God is an illusion that doesn't really exist. Without enough information you cannot "get back" the full picture of what God is, what has happened, what we dreamed, and what has not really occurred, without making some CRAZY false conclusions.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made" .... "earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way".

We made this world, the physical world, complete with stars and galaxies and planets and bodies, in an attempt to be COMPLETELY OPPOSITE to God's reality. It therefore HAS to have the properties that are OPPOSITE to God.

Heaven is everything, and so the world you made LACKED EVERYTHING and IS therefore nothing. Heaven is entirely meaningful, and so the world you made LACKS ALL MEANING and is utterly meaningless. Heaven is reality, and so the world you made IS COMPLETELY UNREAL. Heaven exists, and so the world you made DOES NOT EXIST. Heaven is the truth, and so the world you made IS COMPLETELY FALSE. Heaven is all possibility, and so the world you made is IMPOSSIBLE.

So what you have ended up with is an imagined, hallucinated world, within your mind, which presents an illusion of a world. An image of a world which seems to be there, but isn't. Which seems to do things which are impossible in truth. And which seems to exist in some way, but still doesn't. It is a fiction, a dream, a make-believe wishful-thinking desire to have something be possible that isn't. As a result, "the world" in and of itself IS NOTHING AT ALL. It has NO meaning, NO truth, NO life, NO reality, NO power, NO will, NO mind, NOTHING AT ALL. And we're talking here about what the world IS, not about your interpretations and perceptions of it.

"That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected, and drawn between you and truth."

"We also have observed that man can create an empty shell, but cannot create nothing at all. This emptiness provides the screen for the misuse of projection."

In the separation we made "an empty shell", which has no inherent meaning or reality of its own, which becomes a seemingly "neutral screen", ONTO which we project meaning. This is because the world in and of itself has NO meaning and IS NOTHING. It can only act like a mirror to reflect back whatever meaning you GIVE to it.

"It is essential, therefore, that you learn to recognize the meaningless, and accept it without fear. If you are fearful, it is certain that you will endow the world with attributes which it does not possess, and crowd it with images that do not exist. To the ego illusions are safety devices, as they must also be to you who equate yourself with the ego." "That is all the world of the ego is. NOTHING. It has no meaning. It does not exist."

So what happened was, we made this NOTHING world, a meaningless empty mirror devoid of ANY meaning, good or bad. And then what we call "the ego", really the ATTEMPTED BELIEF that an opposite to God HAS the attributes of God, began to project ITS meanings onto the meaningless world. It wanted the world to be real, to have truth, to mean something, to be alive, to have power and mind and will, and to replace heaven as a real existence.

All of that was meaning PROJECTED ONTO the meaningless world by the ego in the mind. The belief in, or the desire to WANT the world to BE something it can never be, has pushed our minds into egoic states of insanity where we believe this world is reality.

We have fallen for illusions, given value to stuff that doesn't exist, have interpreted NOTHING as SOMETHING, have GIVEN the world meanings so that the forms of objects mean different things, we have decided that the world has power over us, and have tried to force it to act as if it is alive.

All in an attempt to turn what is really essentially NOTHING into something that seems like it really exists. We've tried to MAKE it be real, even though it can NEVER BE. By doing this, we've now failed to recognize that the world simply is still a "neutral mirror", or basically a NOTHINGNESS, which is empty in every way and lacks any kind of meaning. It is not positive, or negative. It is not light or dark. It is not evil or holy. It is not ANYTHING. It's not even really there at all. But we've tried to invest it with attributes of SOMETHING, whether it be that we've tried to give it ego attributes or holy attributes. And BOTH are incorrect, because it in and of itself IS NOT THERE.

"Earth can reflect (because it has no truth of its own) Heaven or hell; God or the ego."

"To see a SINLESS body is impossible. For holiness is POSITIVE, and the body is merely neutral. It is NOT sinful, but neither is it sinless. ***As nothing, which it IS, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes of Christ OR of the ego.*** EITHER must be an error, for both would place the attributes where they cannot BE. And BOTH must be undone, for purposes of truth."

"What is meaningless is neither good nor bad. Why, then, should a meaningless world upset you? If you could accept the world as meaningless and let the truth be written upon it for you, it would make you indescribably happy. But because it is meaningless, you are impelled to write upon it what you would have it be. It is this you see in it. It is this that is meaningless in truth."

"All these attributes are given it by you. The world is meaningless in itself."

"I am looking at a meaningless world."

So Jesus is really trying to get us to realize that "the world" is in fact absolutely utterly NOTHING. It is not this or that, or up or down, or good or bad, or anything. That ANY kind of judgement about it is wrong. That even trying to assign it positive meanings is invalid. It can't BE holy, because it doesn't exist. It can't BE given life, because it cannot be eternal. It isn't an evil hell, nor is it a heaven. It is an empty lifeless nothing mirror in which you see, at best, a REFLECTION of what YOU PUT THERE TO SEE. It can REFLECT heaven, but it cannot ever BE heaven.

This is where perception comes in. Or rather, projection makes perception. Your mind is always projecting something. If it projects from ego then it GIVES the meaningless world EGO meanings, and this somewhat transforms the NOTHING world into a "hell on earth" kind of experience. It makes the world a nightmare for you because your mind is now ASSIGNING all kinds of unnatural, inappropriate, incorrect meanings to everything you see.

This in turn makes the world SEEM dark and foreboding and frightening and dangerous. It sets up a hierarchy of illusions in which different forms seem to have different meanings or importance or severity. And now your whole experience of a NOTHING WORLD transforms into a NEGATIVE experience of hellish nightmares, victimhood, victory, and everything in between.

The whole of ACIM is geared towards lifting AWAY these projected false meanings that you've "given to everything you see", so that you stop trying to turn NOTHING into SOMETHING. Which really is the definition of making mountains out of molehills - creating drama from nothing at all.

Jesus is then saying that if you lift away from the world all of the ego meaning, sin, attack, giult, fear etc, that you PUT ONTO IT unnaturally, then a light will shine in your mind from the Holy Spirit which will "light up" the meaningless world, and you will GIVE IT A HAPPY MEANING.

This happier meaning, aligned with God, is in turn STILL an illusion and a projection of meaning. The world is GIVEN a sense of innocence, purity, love, etc. Not because it HAS that, and not because it is inherent to it. In fact the world is STILL NOTHING. But your mind is able to "bless it" with the giving of love, so that what you "see in it" is a REFLECTION of the love you gave.

You then look upon "what you made" with forgiving eyes, and see the forgiven world. Not a world that's REAL or TRUE, but a REFLECTION in a MEANINGLESS world that is shining back at you the light that you are PUTTING there to see in it. This is how "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind", NOT because God is in the world or as the world.

And eventually this will give way to the complete DISAPPEARING OF THE MIRROR as "the world" disappears in light and is no more. It never was really anything to begin with. It has always been nothing and never really became anything. And so "the world was over long ago."

What this means for us is that in ACIM there is a very powerful and deep thread which basically says, the central lesson is, "there is no world." Not that the world is inherently anything, it is not hell or heaven, it can at best REFLECT them but cannot BE them. It's just an empty shell, a meaningless nothingness which, IF you invest it with belief, seems to become a "something" with real existence and life, but when seen truly, is RECOGNIZED as NOTHING AT ALL.

"The eyes of Christ look on a world forgiven. In His sight are all its sins forgiven, for He sees no sin in anything He looks upon."

"And as we look upon a world forgiven, it is He Who calls to us and comes to take us home, reminding us of our Identity Which our forgiveness has restored to us."

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals."

The central core message then is simply this. The world is nothing at all. The body is nothing at all. There is no war. There is no death. There is no sickness. There is no attack. There is no sin. There is no guilt. There are no victims. There is no suffering. There is no unhappiness. There is no history of the human race. There is no space or time or galaxies. There are no civilizations of bodies. There are no cities or streets. There is no devouring nature. There is no decay or loss or deprivation or sacrifice. There is NOTHING HERE AT ALL.

It is only when we mistake this nothingness for SOMETHING, that we become upset. Now we have made it real and given it belief. Now we have confused it for having a life and mind and will of its own. Now we think the world we made as nothing, has become something, and has risen up out of nowhere to do something by a will of its own, against our will. And now we are victims and are afraid and suffering and dying at its hand. And now we accuse others who seem to populate the world of being the cause of sin against us. And all of this is confused, insane and mistaken, because the entire world IS NOT DOING ANYTHING AT ALL.

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

"*****There is no world!***** This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again. But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn there is no world, and can accept the lesson now. Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize."

"*****There is no world***** because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His wholeness."

"Without the idea of death *****there is no world*****. All dreams will end with this one. This is salvation's final goal; the end of all illusions."

"He does NOT realize that HE MAKES THIS WORLD, for *****there IS no world outside him.*****"

Ok I thought I'd have fun with an overly long title ;-)

There is something that some ACIM students do, which I find quite annoying. I shouldn't. But I do.

Ok so ACIM has "levels" in it. There are contexts. There is the bigger context of God/Heaven/Creation, there is the context of the separation and everything inside the ego's world (the "real world" or forgiven world at best). And there is the context of mis-perceiving the world you made (making the world seem like hell).

What happens is, you can be talking about one of the lower levels, discussing some topic, and someone comes along and "trumps" everything you say, by jumping out of context to the higher level. This makes it almost impossible to hold a conversation about anything.

For example, you could be talking about performing miracles and healing people and raising the dead etc, and someone will come along and say "there's no point doing that, bodies don't exist". Or, "there is no world, why bother healing anyone". Or, "its an illusion so whats the point" sort of thing. What's happening there is LEVEL CONFUSION, where they're believing the larger context of truth at a higher level, while still being AT a lower level, and then using the higher-level information to modify whether to do or not do something on the lower level. Classic level confusion.

But what really drives it home, is the ego benefit that doing this has. It means you can jump "higher" than someone else's statements by switching levels. You get to "one up" them by superceding the entire context of the conversation, overriding everything that is said, not because it seems true but because the ego uses it as a weapon or device for "winning" against others.

Trying to find this "higher ground" of "bigger truth" so that arguments can be won. Even if it's totally off-topic. The benefit to the ego is that this makes the person intellectually arrogant, condescending, righteous, sacrificial, cold-hearted and ignorant of the miracle-working that we're supposed to be doing while in the world. And if anything even hints at implying that "there are bodies" or anything remotely like that, they're all over it like a swarm of ants.

It has led many people to this kind of cold-shoulder attitude about the world, in which these higher-level statements are used as "defenses" and denial, to deflect away any suggestion that there's any point doing ANYTHING to help anyone else. By shifting levels either mid-conversation or mid-sentence, the person is able to overthrow the conversation and grin happily at having seemingly blown up all reasoning.

I've found over time that such people generally seem to have "difficulty" comprehending or discerning or recognizing "context", especially if they are not aware that the course contains levels. It is also near-impossible to explain to such persons why they are doing this. I've met some people who will focus so heavily on the "higher level truth" in such total denial of ANYTHING to do with a lower level - the world, dealing with bodies, healing others etc, that they will not let you even say a single thing about the lower-level without it being "corrected" and evaluated as wrong.

They come across as cold, arrogant, uncaring and lacking empathy. I've had to block some of these people because I find them to be emotionally abusive, often aggressive, stubborn, righteous and unwilling to listen. It's as if to say "nothing happened, so any discussion of anything happening is an error". It's used as a defensive weapon of false logic to justify doing nothing in the world, helping no-one else, and basically disappearing off on a cloud and leaving everyone else behind. Honestly, it is SELFISH, egotistical, and separating.

Some of these same people also tend to become quite "non-duality" focused, which is a view in which there is only one son and there is no-one else to help, nothing else to do, nothing to heal, etc. It's unfortunate, and it's not just that they are so advanced that they understand the levels and where and when they are switching levels and why, or that they even show a willingness to stay within context.

They literally are blind to it and will just position themselves intellectually on the "side" of the higher truth in an effort to reject, separate from, attack and conquer anything remotely "down to earth". I also find that these same people seem to have trouble with reasoning and logic, and so the metaphysical foundation of things is obscure to them. They will brush aside any rational statements by switching levels and trumping the discussion through denial. The level of denial is generally high and somehow they've used denial to "deny the world" and the body, rather than really being willing to properly heal it. They seem stuck in their heads.

Anyway... just one of my pet peeves at the moment. Something to forgive of course.

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies."

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

"And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God."

"For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

"Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless."

"From the world of bodies, MADE by insanity, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind which made it."

"Sins are in bodies. They are not perceived in minds. They are not seen as purposes, but ACTIONS. Bodies act, and minds do not."

"It takes the central place in every dream, which tells the story of how it was made by OTHER bodies, born into the world OUTSIDE the body, lives a little while, and dies, to be united in the dust with other bodies, dying like itself."

"In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies."

"It hires OTHER bodies, that they may protect it, and collect more senseless things that it can call its own."

"It looks about for special bodies which can SHARE its dream. Sometimes it dreams it is a conqueror of bodies weaker than itself. But in some phases of the dream, it is the slave of bodies which would hurt and torture it."

"Is healing frightening? To many, yes. For accusation is a bar to love, and damaged bodies ARE accusers."

"For all the hurt that war has sought to bring; the broken bodies and the shattered limbs, the screaming dying and the silent dead, are gently lifted up and comforted. There IS no sadness, where a miracle has come to heal."

"YOU SEE THE WORLD YOU VALUE. On this side of the bridge, you see the world of separate bodies, seeking to join each other in SEPARATE UNIONS, and to become one BY LOSING. When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in."

"Within the dream of bodies and of death, is yet one theme of truth; no more, perhaps, than just a tiny spark, a space of light created in the dark, where God shines still."

"Homeless, the ego seeks as many bodies as it can collect, to place its idols in, and so establish them as temples to itself."

"The Holy Spirit's purpose lies safe in your relationship, and not your bodies. You have ESCAPED the body. Where you are now, the body cannot enter, for the Holy Spirit has set HIS temple there."

"The unholy instant IS the time of bodies."

"You have a fear of broken bodies, because your ego cannot tolerate them."

"Those who call upon the Name of God can not mistake the nameless for the Name, nor sin for grace, nor bodies for the holy Son of God."

"And sight of bodies becomes the sign that sacrifice IS limited, and something still remains for you alone."

"A mind within a body, and a world of other bodies, each with SEPARATE minds"

"Some idea of bodies MUST have entered, for minds can NOT attack."

"The thought of bodies IS a sign of faithlessness, for bodies CANNOT solve anything. And it is their INTRUSION on the relationship, an error in YOUR thoughts ABOUT the situation, that then became the JUSTIFICATION for your lack of faith."

"You do not perceive your brothers as the Holy Spirit does because you do not interpret their bodies AND YOURS solely as a means of JOINING THEIR MINDS and uniting them with yours and mine."

"But if you use it ONLY to reach the minds of those who believe they ARE bodies and teach them THROUGH the body that THIS IS NOT SO, you will begin to understand the power of the mind that is in both of you."

"For only bodies can be separate, and therefore unreal. The home of madness cannot be the home of reason."

"It sees NOT through the body's eyes, nor looks to bodies for its justification."

"Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its power declines if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."

"And if God created bodies, death would indeed be real. But God would not be loving."

Trying to "wake up" from this world can seem like a total denial and bypass.

We're told that the world, neutral in itself, is formed from ideas opposite to God's nature. Ideas of suffering and destruction, of sickness and death, of conflict and incompatibility.

So then if we are to move our minds out of this opposite state into God's nature, we in some way have to be "denying" the nature of the world.

Or in other words, we have to come to believe that the nature of the world is not the nature of God. But this can be a sticking point.

If we just say, the world is opposite to God, we're going to start dissociating, separating, trying to get away from it, escaping from it, we're going to attack it and pretend it's not there, which is an improper use of denial.

Jesus says Earth can reflect heaven or hell. What he wants us for us to find a way to make it reflect heaven. And that the world itself is neutral. He doesn't really want us "denying that it's there", he wants us to reintepret it.

"True denial is a very powerful protective device. You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you. This kind of denial is NOT a concealment device, but a correction device. The "Right Mind" of the mentally healthy DEPENDS on it."

Notice how he says true denial doesn't CONCEAL the thing. It's not about trying to not see it or to make it go away. It's about changing from what angle you see it, seeing it in a different light, giving it a different meaning or interpretation. It "corrects" HOW we see it, or from what vantage point, rather than WHETHER we see it. We're correcting the mind used to see WITH, which changes how we perceive the world.

There's a lot of high-level stuff in the course that sounds like it's denying the existence of the world. Indeed the world is nothing. But for our therapy we're not really supposed to deny its existence. We're meant to USE IT, for a different purpose. To see IN it, something we weren't seeing before.

For example we're told that we are not a body, we are free. This could make you think that you're meant to tell yourself bodies don't exist and it's not there. But it's really saying, while you still have a body, learn to be in it but not of it, to see it but not identify with it.

It's too easy to use the ego's basic device of "separation", as a spiritual tool, which produces the bypass. To try to make stuff go away. To try to get rid of things. That's actually murderous. To attack stuff with the course. To throw quotes at it. To try to avoid and hide from it. That's not really a healthy approach because it's using separation to try to destroy in the name of spirituality. Hurling a "there is no world" at the world BEFORE you really believe it is an attempt to kill it off.

Which reminds me of an early workbook lesson where Jesus says we're trying to "join with what we see" instead of separating from it. And another, where we're said that "God is in everything I see, because God is in my mind." Or "God is in that wastepaper basket". That isn't "denying" the basket or the world, as such, it's saying you can learn to see something inclusive, something MORE THAN just the form.

A higher vision is more inclusive, a lower vision is more exclusive. The body's eyes are exclusive and see ONLY form. Higher vision sees form AND more than form. It's not another of these either/or scenarios. You should be seeing BOTH, the world and the light beyond the world.

"(Christ vision) And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

We're not really striving for the world to "go away" at this point. That may happen at the very end when the veil lifts. But until then we have to get to the forgiven world. You can't see the world as forgiven if you're not seeing the world at all. So becoming blind to the world is obviously not the recommended path.

We're not trying to use the level of knowledge, heaven, to make the level of the world go away. We're not really supposed to be using level 1 to attack level 2. We're meant to be staying WITHIN level 2 and changing our mind about it, while we're still in it. Changing our subjective view of it, rather than trying to use level 1 as a weapon to discard it.

We need to see "in a different way." If it is possible to see peace IN this world, then seeing that peace doesn't require you to NOT see the world. And indeed you should be finding the happy dream, BEFORE you stop dreaming entirely.

"The world you see cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world. God's Word has promised us that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be impossible. But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this."

I've seen how when I want to make something go away, I make myself sick.

We attempt to psychologically reject and push something away when we find it threatening, dangerous or undesirable, all of which is a perceptual error. This however immediately implements some form of sickness. Sickness is INDUCED by the attempt to separate from your BROTHER!

"The removal of blocks, then, is the only way to guarantee help and healing. Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind which is working THROUGH the body but not in it. If the mind believes the body is its goal, it will distort its perception OF the body, and by blocking its own extension BEYOND it, will INDUCE illness by FOSTERING SEPARATION. Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot but foster illness, because it is not true. A medium of communication WILL lose its usefulness if it is used for anything else."

When we perceive a threat or danger, or someone is fear-mongering, or there is "bad news", or some obnoxious person is hanging around, or whatever... if we perceive it as having power to attack and we want it to stop, instead of making it stop or dis-believing in it, we put up defenses. We try to reject and separate ourselves from it. That's a bad move. It attacks our body. "If I defend myself I am attacked."

I gave myself a panic attack yesterday at a medical office when the staff started becoming serious about heart problems that aren't real. Try as I might I couldn't help but try to reject and resist, and thus induced sickness and almost fainted. Later during forgiveness I saw how I'd done that to myself, trying to make it go away, as the result of *perceiving* that there was a real threat or danger.

Previously also I recall a very talkative coworker kept hanging around at my desk trying to chat, and wouldn't go away. And then got into chatting with others nearby. And instead of standing up to tell them to leave I just tolerated and tried to be patient, but wanted them to go away. And this induced a sudden immediate headache. Trying to separate from your brother induces sickness.

I also once gave myself an ear infection in a matter of hours as a result of trying to make Holy Spirit go away, having perceived his lack of "boundaries" as a threat. I suffered for a few days before being able to re-approach him without fear and thus recognize what I'd done to myself, and upon recognizing I did not NEED the defense, all symptoms disappeared within a matter of hours.

Whenever we USE SEPARATION as a tool, which is an ego tool, to try to "deal with" perceived situations, our attempt to put up a defense and withdraw into ourselves cuts us off from life, blocks extension, fosters separation, produces sickness, and eventually death ("sickness is but a little death"). Our attempt to DENY GOD or our brothers (whom God is in) is the only cause of bodily death. This is why all death is suicide - we give our consent through our denial of God's will. IT IS NOT GOD's WILL THAT ANYONE DIE. A dream of death is not left THROUGh death, but through life - truth.

Sickness cannot happen at all when you do not have a belief in separation in any way. When your mind extends to your brothers mind sharing love, it undoes all sense of separation and your minds join. In this joining there is no split and no division and no attack, and nothing for sickness to latch onto. It therefore MUST heal, and as such death is surmounted. This is a miracle, it is resurrection.

"Healing will flash across your open mind as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. There will be no dark corners sickness can conceal and keep defended from the light of truth. There will be no dim figures from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in your mind. It will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey.

Now is the body healed because the source of sickness has been opened to relief."

Notice it says NOW IS THE *BODY* HEALED.

"You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible." This is literal. Sickness becomes impossible when your mind is whole and healed.

Atonement makes sickness IMPOSSIBLE. This DOES MEAN BODY SICKNESS as well as mental illness.

"Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take. Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. And that is cure indeed. For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return."

So sickness IS A FORM OF GUILT, and if there is no guilt, there can be no sickness or death. Period.