God has one law. It is very simple.
God can only create in his own likeness. He doesn't know anything else. He creates beings - sons or souls - who are all identical to Him, and therefore are identical to each other. What applies to each one of them, applies to all of them equally. What is true of one, can be said to be exactly true of all of them.
This sets up "The Golden Rule", which is the primary law of God's creation, that everything applies the same to everyone, everywhere, at all times. The law simply states that what applies to you applies exactly the same to all brothers.
This law is always in effect. It is permanent. You cannot escape it. The law is in effect whether you like it or not. The law is in effect regardless of whether you are awake or asleep, aware of Heaven or suffering in the dream of spacetime. The law is the truth.
Our friend "the ego" is nothing other than the attempt to DENY that the law is in effect. It is an attempt to be outside of the law. The ego is nothing other than the belief that something DIFFERENT applies to one son versus another.
If the law of God means UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, since all sons are loved equally, then the ego means CONDITIONAL LOVE or "special favor", in which some sons are to be treated differently and unequally from others. Special love is a lack of love and so the ego is a thought system of lacking equality and unconditionality.
When you are trying to be "in the ego", you are in denial of the law. That doesn't mean the law stops applying. Denying that it always applies is suicidal. What happens when you try to operate outside of the law is that you will hurt yourself. You will believe that you can do something to others that you yourself escape the consequences of, and yet you will not escape those consequences.
When you do not treat your brother as a perfect identical equal, you will think you can get away with murder by getting away with attacking them and avoiding the effects. But you will not escape the effects. What you attempt to do to him you WILL do to yourself, because the law is always functioning. You cannot attack without being attacked. You cannot treat someone in a special way without withdrawing from love. You cannot attempt to hurt without hurting yourself.
The Golden Rule - the one law of God - also applies in the dream in terms of bodies, sickness, and death. The Course teaches clearly that if you show your brother a physical body which is sick, you are accusing him of sin and are attacking both of you. When you use the body for attack it becomes attacked and weak and sick and dead. This is a consequence of denying the law of God.
Simply, what applies to you always applies to others. So when you go into attack, attack is the idea that you can be different to others and have special treatment. This differences drives a wedge of separation between you and your brother and attempts to assert that what applies to them does not apply to you, or that you can attack without being attacked. This is the basis of all projection, where you try to project blame onto another as if to say "that is true of you, but not true of me".
When you do this, you are in denial of the law, and the law is still functioning, and so you will experience a split mind and are attacking yourself. You cannot cause your brother to be treated separately without treating yourself separately. Separation comes BETWEEN you. The body comes BETWEEN you as a separation device. You cannot have something apply only to him and not yourself.
Sick bodies are accusers. When you try to make your body sick you are accusing your brother of sin. That means that in your attempt to "make plans for him" you inevitably end up hurting yourself. You cannot accuse him of attack without being attacked. And so as you try to make out that your brother is a sinner, you are accusing yourself. It applies to you as it applies to him. And this hurts you. You will experience the consequences. It seems to be to an unfair consequence or something you did not want, but you literally did it to yourself. Whatever you try to do to another, you WILL do to yourself.
The Golden Rule also works in your FAVOR when you comply with it and recognize it and work WITH it. Recognizing it is the secret to salvation. That means you must be willing to have the truth be the same for everyone, all are treated equal and no-one is special. And that means moving into unconditional love. Here, the Golden Rule actually supports you and helps you, because it ensures that giving and receiving are one, therefore as you treat others with love you receive love. As you give miracles, you receive miracles.
When you acknowledge the law is in effect and you COMPLY with it, it ensures that you will be treated with unconditional love, that you will have access to sharing the entire treasure of God's creation, and that you will recognize your brother as your identical equal. "Healing is a thought in which two minds perceive their oneness and become glad". This means that the two minds recognize the law, know it to be true, see that they are identical children of God, and celebrate their equality.
A Course in Miracles is entirely based around this law. All of its concepts about how what you do to others you to do yourself, how giving and receiving are one, how you attack the body, how you become sick, how you must demonstrate a BODY THAT IS FREE FROM ATTACK, and how you must overcome death, is all based on the law of God - the Golden Rule. This is why Jesus says that either everything lives or everything is dead.
When the rule applies and you acknowledge equality, you are recognizing that anything God creates must be like him, and since He is life, everything He creates must live. And that means ALL that He creates is alive forever. And in this acknowledgement you are acknowledging that YOU are alive and cannot die, any more than anyone else can. Acknowledging life is the resurrection and in the resurrection the curriculum ends, because it's there, in the atonement, that you acknowledge and receive the unconditional love that comes from ALIGNING with the law of God. Accepting the truth.
When you comply with the law, everything is peaceful in Heaven. When you oppose the law, you make yourself suffer. Denying the law is ego and is suicide. Accepting the law is heavenly and protects you perfectly in eternal life.
Jesus tells us that our perception works like a mirror. Whatever we have inside of us, we project outside, and perceive it reflected back. We are doing this all the time, every second of every day.
We first look within, find our own attitude about ourselves there, and then we project that out and see it. This means in effect that we are really blind to seeing anything out there OTHER THAN ourselves.
If we have guilt in our mind, we will see guilt in others and in the world. If we have innocence in our mind, we will see innocence in others and in the world. This is because the world acts like a mirror and reflects back to us whatever we project onto it, including meaning. This is because it follows the Golden Rule, that what is true of you is true of the whole.
"Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego."
"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."
If you are not seeing innocence in the world, in which you see there is nothing to forgive because everything is innocent, it is because you yourself are not being innocent. You are looking at the result of what you believe is true about yourself and others.
If you want to see and experience the world in a happier way, in a lighter way, in which the world seems beautiful and kind and lovely, then you have to be beautiful and kind and lovely in your mind.
This is the meaning of:
"God is in everything I see because God is in my mind."
When you have an awareness of God in your mind, you will project this out and see it reflected back. Then it will seem as though, in the mirror, you are looking at the reflection of God or heaven, because you are putting it there.
This is a fixed rule of how perception works. You do not ever really see something that is true of others or the world that isn't true of you. As in, "you but accuse your brother of your own sins." The guilts and offences and blames and stuff that you see in the world are yours, projected.
You are always looking at yourself!
If the world seems lacklustre, your mind is lacklustre. If the world seems dark and evil, you are being dark and evil. If the world seems sparkling and new, you are being sparkling and new. If others seem sinful and guilty and hated, you are hating yourself and regarding yourself as sinful and guilty.
As we progress with the course we're meant to be getting to a point where we see the world with so much forgivingness - ONLY because we have forgiven OURSELVES - such that we see the forgiven world. The forgiven world is beautiful and lovely and new, seen in the present FROM a state of mind that is lovely and beautiful and new.
"From my holiness does the perception of the real world come."
Similarly the eyes of christ look out upon the world and SEE christ reflected back. This is because Christ is in the mind FIRST, and then is projected and reflected. By being aware of heaven in your mind within, you see the reflection of heaven on earth. This is STRICTLY how it works - this is the functional mechanics of perception.
What you believe you perceive. It's not about "believing your eyes" or "I will have to see it to believe it." It's the other way around - what you BELIEVE you will SEE. We are meant to see this world and the bodies through beautiful forgiving eyes, which see them as beautiful and forgiven.
We are meant to see from holiness and innocence within, so that we will see holiness and innocence without. So if we're not seeing that, we're not being that and we have work to do within ourselves in our mind healing. You can't see what you're not willing to be.
"Perception is a mirror, not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind reflected outward. I would bless the world by looking on it through the eyes of Christ."
"How lovely does the world become in just that single instant when you see the truth about yourself reflected there. Now you are sinless and behold your sinlessness. Now you are holy and perceive it so."
"And the love He feels for us becomes our own as well. This will become the only thing we see reflected in the world and in ourselves."
"By sharing its reflection HERE, its truth becomes the only perception which the Son of God accepts."
"The blameless cannot blame, and those who have accepted their innocence see nothing to forgive. Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God's Love on earth."
"It is the witness to your state of mind, the OUTSIDE picture of an INWARD condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive."
"Projection MAKES perception, and you CANNOT see beyond it."
"All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes."
"Your gift to me, and it has power to translate all that the body's eyes behold into the sight of a forgiven world. How glorious and gracious is this world!"
"The teachers of God have trust in the world, because they have learned it is not governed by the laws the world made up. It is governed by a Power which is in them but not of them. It is this Power that keeps all things safe. It is through this Power that the teachers of God look on a forgiven world."
"To the extent to which you value guilt, to that extent will you perceive a world in which attack is justified. To the extent to which you recognize that guilt is meaningless, to that extent will you perceive attack cannot BE justified. This is in strict accord with vision's FUNDAMENTAL law: You see what you believe is there, and you believe it there because you WANT it there. Perception HAS no other law than this."
"Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves."
If you believe you are guilty, it's because you believe you really did something which has caused a loss or damage to someone else. It means you believe you succeeded in attacking and taking something from them. The guilt tells you that because you did take something away from another (sinned), you owe them.
This means they are justified in doing something to you in return, in attempt to take back what you stole, and to retaliate against your crime. You now must fear revenge, and see it as an inevitable, constant threat. You believe in their likelihood of revenge because you believe in your success at sinning, hence your guilt.
So long as you believe that the person is suffering the consequences of your sin, which you want to believe because you want to have succeeded in separating, you will believe they are going to hunt you down and attack you. You believe they are completely justified in doing this and even agree with their motivations, even if it threatens you.
Therefore your guilt has automatically produced a state of fear, whereby simply because you are guilty, you yourself can see the sense in someone else wanting to attack you back. You believe in what you stole and see them as seeking revenge, to atone for the sin. Of this you must be afraid, and so guilt leads to automatic, mandatory fear of punishment.
The guilt will therefore automatically imply, project, and turn into fear. Now that you are in fear, you believe that you should be afraid, because you believe that punishment is going to come. And even though you yourself believe that you don't want the punishment to happen, you cannot help but be afraid it is going to happen because you already believe in the reason for it. It must happen, because you are guilty, and all your efforts will be to try to avoid and escape it, even though you believe it is inevitable. You attempt to escape BECAUSE you believe it is coming.
However, your own belief in your guilt will keep producing the fear, and the fear itself will keep visualizing the ways in which punishment is going to happen. At every turn it will haunt you and you will not feel safe, threatened by the revenge that you believe must be coming. In fact, so strong will be your belief that the punishment will come, that you will in fact begin to make it come. You will draw it to you, ask for it, and even take steps to make it happen. You will hate yourself for this but you yourself believe in the logical sense that you should be punished, and so you will agree to allow punishment to come to you, even if it makes you suffer.
Therefore because you have condemned yourself as sinful, it leads eventually to you implementing your own self punishment. Even if other people will not comply with your attempts to destroy yourself, you will do enough of a job on your own to ensure you receive what you believe you deserve. And so you will continue to prove your worthlessness by demonstrating that you deserve punishment, enacting it against yourself, and literally hurting your own self by your own hand.
And so fear inevitably leads to the enactment of punishment, because it strengthens the belief that you should be punished, and what you fear you attract. Fear pretends to not want what it focuses on, but it feeds tremendous energy into what it would avoid, through attempts at further separation, which only intensifies the sense of sin and guilt and produces more of the same. Eventually the shame and guilt produces so much fear of punishment that it starts to produce actual punishment. And so fear turns into punishment, sickness, and suffering, and perhaps even death.
Fear perpetuates and justifies a perception of yourself as being victimized, whereby whoever is to attack you is justified in doing so because of your sin. You owe them, and you know it. Therefore you dread the punishment that you yourself believe you should be receiving, and it's only a matter of time before it finds you. And if it is taking too long, one way or another you will cause it and welcome it, because you believe it is what should happen.
As punishment increases, so too is fear increasing, and gradually the atoning for sin nears completion. The more you are punished and suffering, the more you believe you are getting what you deserve, even if you exclaim that it is unfair and undeserved, and even if it is scaring you shitless. You yourself started this whole cycle through your own self condemnation, and your guilt and fear and punishment is just the fulfillment of your own belief in your worthiness of suffering. And so punishment comes and as it continues to ramp up in severity, so do you inflict upon yourself what you think you are worth.
The final blow of punishment is of course death, the idea that your sin is so great and so irreversible that you might as well give up on life completely and just let yourself be caught by those who you believe would bring the punishment to you. You surrender to death and lay down your life as though it is simply inevitable, because there is absolutely no way out of the logical sequence of conclusions you come to as soon as you start down the slippery slope of sin. Here you have followed sin to its logical conclusion, the call for atonement in death. The sinful must die, and the inescapable progression of logic from sin to death gives no way out, regardless of your protests.
This need not be.
The Son of God is not sinful. You are not guilty. And you have no reason to be afraid. Sin is not real, and no matter what you did, it is forgiven already by God. It wasn't reality and it didn't happen in reality. Only in a dream. Wake up to the happy news that all is forgiven and you are welcome home.
The progression of unfolding from sin through guilt fear punishment and death, need not occur, if the root foundation of that entire thought system is dug out. You must be willing to question whether the sin was real, whether you really did separate from God, or whether nothing has happened. This is the undoing of the dream of death, and is what the atonement represents. The idea of truth, that you cannot possibly separate from God, your attacks cannot have any effects, you cannot really sin, and no real consequences have come from trying.
You still remain as innocent as God created you to be. All the rest is just delusional nonsense and dreaming. You don't deserve to die. You deserve to live forever.
Your ego is a device, a kind of machine, similar to how your car is a machine.
You designed it to perform in a certain way and to carry out your instructions.
Just as a car can only do what it is designed to do, the ego can only do what it is designed to do.
When your car is doing what you ask of it, driving you from A to B, it is fulfilling its function. Similarly when your ego is doing what you asked it to do, it is fulfilling its function.
It was the ego's function, as you designed it, to skew awareness away from God and to fixate on the opposite of God. Its function is to be unforgiving. Its function is murder.
Now, don't expect your ego to carry out some other function. You wouldn't expect your car to suddenly start washing your dishes and cooking dinner. It can only do what it was designed to do. And you would be nuts for condemning it for failing to come up with a 3-course meal.
Similarly with your ego, don't expect it to be not ego. Don't expect it to attempt to do anything other than it was designed to do. It's still carrying out your orders and doing what you wanted. It's something you made, just as people make cars.
Do you think the ego is ever going to turn around and say "you should apply forgiveness now", or "god loves you" or "there's nothing to be afraid of"? It's not meant to. That's not its job function. It's supposed to remind you how separate you are from everything and how death is life and how attack is salvation and all the rest of it, which it does very well.
What you can learn here is not to be afraid of the ego, because it's actually not 'against' you for no reason. It only seems to be against you because you asked it to be. You designed it to be. And its just doing what you wanted at one point in time. What you want now may be different but the ego, like an old machine, is still doing the same old thing that old machines do. They can't change.
So, in a way, don't take it personally when the ego is retaliating or being vicious. Don't think the ego is out to get you or has a will of its own or power over you. You are its master. Also don't think the ego has some kind of say or power over you as if it's deciding 'new things' about you. It's a one-track pony. It just keeps on doing what the ego does. And since you set that in motion yourself, it's actually being very faithful, a faithful servant, giving you exactly what you asked it to give you.
So now the ego is not so much your enemy, or necessarily a friend, but it is a friend in the sense that it is obedient and is doing what you made it to do. Don't be getting all up in its face about why it's being the way it's being, when you're the one who chose it. Recognizing it is serving you helps you to not only be grateful for the opportunities it presents, but also stops you from seeing yourself as victimized by it.
Maybe think of it like someone who has a serious disability or mental disorder and they really can't help it but keep blurting out swearwords... and so there they go again, swearing, but you understand they can't help it, their body is programmed to make it happen. So then it's not personal, and its forgivable because they know not what they do, and you're not a victim of it because you understand there isn't a malicious 'will' or intent that's running this. It's not someone out to get you. It's just a device mechanism behaving in a certain way.
So the ego is not your enemy, because in a way it is helping you to have lessons, to be asleep, to have a chance to choose again whether you want to be with God or not. And you hold all the power and the on-off switch to the ego machine. You get to choose whether to use the ego in the way it was designed to be used - to divide and separate and make illusions real, or whether to use it with Holy Spirit.
To use the ego with Holy Spirit is to look upon the ego simply for what it is, and recognize it as a faulty broken mistaken machine, which has no will or power of its own, which is just ticking along and doing its role. And here you are, in Holy Spirit, hearing the ego's voice and its assertions but taking the opportunity to listen to Holy Spirit's version of events.
Your sole task now is to simply choose not to listen to or believe what the ego is saying. You may hear it still, because it's not going to change its tune, but don't buy into it. Don't get caught up in it. Don't get lost in blaming it or fearing it. And don't keep using it for the original purpose you designed it for. You need to use it for forgiveness and as an opportunity to be triggered into healing, learning to listen to the Voice for God instead. The ego is just a limited mechanical robot. It's really nothing at all.
Thank you ego for being ego and for being a faithful servant of my awakening. And thank you for your efforts to attack so that I have an opportunity to learn to forgive. And thank you for guilt and fear so that I can learn that I am guiltless and fearless if I take those opportunities and work with them correctly. And I accept you as you are for what I made to you to be, and release you in freedom and gratitude.
When you are done using the ego and buying into this notion that it has power to do stuff to you that you didn't ask for, which is like a farmer saying "I didn't plant those stalks of corn" when clearly he did because they didn't get there into neat rows all by themselves, you'll set it aside as a 'toy' that you no longer want to play with or have a use for. It's as simple as that.
You're not a victim of the ego you made.
Ego projections boil down to a very, very simple dynamic.
1) I decide what I want to see in someone.
2) I interact with what I now see in them as if I did not put it there.
The way I interact with what I see in others, is quite bizarre. It's really insane. I'm trying to accomplish two opposite goals at once.
1) I want other people to be what I say they are, by projecting my sin and guilt onto them, "convinced" that they really are that way.
2) I then demand that they stop being what I am seeing them being, and that they be the opposite, and that they are the one who has to choose differently. This is "forgiveness to destroy".
So right off the bat, this is a state of conflict. It's me who is seeing other people are doing "something wrong", and then it is me who is insisting that they change their behavior. So now I'm holding it against them when they don't change "for me". And they won't.
I'm literally demanding two separate outcomes simultaneously. I want people to be what I decide they are, and then I want them to not be what I've decided they are, simply because I'm in denial of being the one who has laid down the ground rules to begin with.
So I'm going around basically projecting shit onto people, deciding ok, you are doing this and that wrong and should be doing this and that instead. And then the rest of my "play" is to react to that accusation. It tends to go one of two ways.
1) They are wrong and they shouldn't be doing what they're doing so they are the ones who need to change, not me, and if they don't, I will victimize them. I will hold it against them.
2) They are wrong and they shouldn't be doing what they're doing, but in a hero savior role I will now swoop in and save them from "themselves", those sorry bastards, since they refuse to change themselves and seem 'helpless' and needy.
Each time I react to something being incorrect or unacceptable in another, who exactly is it who has made that person out to be wrong in this way? Are they inherently wrong in this way or have I actually decided to see them this way, and therefore it's my judgement of them? And now that I am responsible for what I'm seeing, having put it there to see, it's now my responsibility to admit that I'm interacting with my own projection.
As Jesus says in the course, generally speaking we will project our own sin outward and try to disown it (disassociate) and then we will attack what we've projected, accusing it of being sinful and bad, in order to create a sense of separation between it and ourselves, so that we can keep it away from our identity.
We will attack our own sin, thinking that we're attacking it in another person, believing that to do so causes them to receive the punishment and not us. Except it doesn't work because the sin never leaves our own mind (ideas leave not their source), it just seems external because we are in denial of it.
So it really all boils down to this. Whatever interaction I seem to be having with "the world", if I don't like it, it's because I'm the one who is deciding on what I am seeing "in" it, and am reacting to it as though it's really out there. And regardless of whether I am liking to do that or am feeling frustrated or upset or whatever about "what they are doing", I am the one who is making them out to be doing that to me. Because I want to. Because it gives me an opportunity to disown some sin.
ie, I love to suffer. I choose suffering on purpose and position myself as a victim on purpose, so that I can seem to be at the effect of the world, so that I can then explain that the world has caused me and therefore the world is the sinner, not me. I might suffer and be sick or afraid or upset as "effects" of what they supposedly did to me (even though I invented those effects in myself, by myself), but I secretly am getting away with murder by "using" the person as an outlet for projecting my own sin. Now they are the sinner and not me, and I'm suffering... poor me, but at least I am not the sinner any more.
So the ego's mantra is, I wish to suffer in order not to suffer. Or rather, I will see the world as attacking me and attack myself with it so that it seems that I'm not attacking myself with it.
We are to demonstrate that we cannot be hurt, or made sick, or caused to die, as a result of this world. And whenever these things seem to be happening, you can be assured that you've positioned yourself as a deliberate victim, in order to pretend that the world is responsible for what you are experiencing. You may be suffering, you may be sick, you may even end up dead, and it will conveniently seem as if the world made this happen against your will, but nothing could be further from the truth.
No-one dies without their own consent. And anyone who dies has secretly arranged to make it appears as if they did not choose it at all. Death is an attempt not to choose, by pretending that you have no choice, by pretending that others have taken all your power away from you, making you an "unwilling" victim, in a state of unwillingness, such that it appears death happens to you against your will. How convenient. It's a total lie.
Death is unwillingness to admit that you are pretending to die and are blaming everything on anyone other than yourself. This is why death is failure, and death is failing to wake up from the dream. Death is impossible for anyone but self-imposed victims. Death is not life. It is not success or graduation. It is the total opposite of life. It cannot happen without being severely against yourself and against the will of God. Therefore it cannot happen "peacefully" nor can it happen AT ALL unless you attack yourself.
"The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself."
1. God is permanent. Earth is not. Earth will end.
2. God is eternal. Earth is not. Earth does not last forever.
3. God can only create by extending himself, and so whatever He creates has to be LIKE Himself in EVERY way, having extended from His own nature. For God to create Earth, God has to be a planet.
4. God, being eternal, never changes. He is changeless. And everything He creates CANNOT change. Earth changes all the time and at NO TIME has a permanent identity.
5. God is eternity, in which there is no time, because there is no beginning or end. He is everywhere at once. In God, there is no space or time. Earth 100% relies on the seeming existence of space and time without which it cannot show up as a 3D planet. And spacetime is just a belief.
6. Nothing God creates can ever be sick or decay or die. Nothing real can be threatened. Everything real last forever. On Earth, everything is sick, decaying and dying.
7. God can only create ONE Kingdom or world. That world has to mirror His nature. Earth, is opposite to Heaven in every way, and God would have to have a contradictory split mind in order to produce TWO DIFFERENT worlds. "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."
8. In God's perfect extension, He can only create like Himself, and so creates CREATORS, who in turn have the ability to create like God. Everything on Earth CANNOT CREATE, cannot pass down all of its own qualities and abilities, and everything on Earth is a dead end.
9. Knowledge is only possible in God, where there is no perception, and nothing to perceive. Earth requires perception in order to see it, and without a body it cannot be experienced. "To sense is not to know", and the body is a sensor. Knowledge is not possible in a body. "You cannot remain in this world with this knowledge." It requires the end of perception, and the end of the body.
10. Immortality is God's nature. Nothing real can be threatened, attacked, changed or hurt. Everything about Earth can be threatened, attacked, changed and hurt. It cannot be real.
11. Because God creates/extends only Himself, in His likeness, everything He creates is equal and identical. There is no difference between any Son of God. On Earth, everything is different, unequal, there is no harmony and therefore inherent war.
12. Life means eternal life, that which is sustained forever. God sustains it forever by His permanent will that there be eternal life. Real life never ends. On Earth, all life has a non-existence, followed by an illusion of a beginning, followed by illusory suffering, followed by an illusory death, followed by a non-existence. That is not eternal life.
13. God, being forever, is always the same. Eternity is always the same. It never changes. Time, is the idea that nothing is EVER the same, and everything always changes. It is totally opposite to eternity. Earth, governed by time, is never the same and always changing. Earth is not eternal.
14. God creates only the perfect, being perfect, and creates them perfectly. This perfection is flawless, has no damage, no imperfections, no lack, nothing missing, no corruption or limitation. Everything on Earth is flawed, damaged, imperfect, lacking, missing something, and severely limited.
15. Holiness is a quality and condition possible only in the Kingdom. Holiness comes from wholeness. In God, who is whole, He creates wholes, who create wholes. Wholeness only begets wholeness. On Earth, nothing is whole, because everything lacks what everything else has. This is what makes all thing unique and different. The world cannot be holy.
16. Only the truth of God is true. And God is everywhere. This is why love has no opposite. There is nowhere for an opposite to exist. That which is false is unreal and nothing unreal exists. Earth is opposite to truth, being an illusion which attempts to oppose reality. Everything about it is false. This is why it doesn't exist.
17. In God, there is only love. The extension of God's likeness produces the Golden Rule. What is true of one Son is true of all others. What applies to one, applies to both. Earth is an attempt to break this law, by making it seem possible that what applies to one thing does not apply to another. That you can cause, and escape the effects. That something can be true of another and not you. This is the idea of getting away with murder. Earth is the idea of the crucifixion of God's Son. "The world was made as a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son." The planet is murderous.
18. Life in God is eternal. It is real. Life means eternal life, life without end. Everything in the Kingdom has eternal life. That which does not last forever is the idea of death. That which can be attacked is the idea of death. "The world was made as an attack on God." "Without the idea of death there is no world." Earth is the idea of death, a dream of death, and is not life. "An illusion of life at best, at worst, death." Earth is not alive or dead, it is nothing.
19. The world God "projected" ie extended or created, is the Sonship. God's ONE SON, is God's ONE CREATION. The Son, is God's world. "You are the Kingdom of Heaven." "We are creation, WE, the sons of God". When the son sleeps, God creates the Holy Spirit. This forms the TRINITY. God never creates ANYTHING ELSE. Father, Sonship an Holy Spirit are all that exist. There is no Earth in this equation.
20. God's world is reality. The Kingdom is real. Because it is permanent and never changes. Anything as an alternative to reality must be unreality, or illusion. Another word for illusion is dream, and all dreams are dreams of opposition to life. "Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem." Even "the real world" is an illusion of death. Illusions are not eternal life. Every part of the dream, does not exist in reality. No part of the dream is created by God. God is not a dreamer. When the dreamer (sons) wakes up, the entire dream content vanishes, having never existed. Earth is a dream world. There is no Earth in Reality, and Earth will vanish BECAUSE it is not really there. "Illusions recognized must disappear." "The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came." "There is no world."
Lately I've been separating out what is MY proper function from what is God's proper function (or via the Holy Spirit or Christ).
This is because I think we all have it radically backwards as to what we are supposed to be DOING to awaken.
First I recognize what God has done, and recognize that he has already accomplished his will. And whatever God has done, I do not need to do.
God has done:
Created me and everyone perfectly.
Created everyone holy innocent and pure.
Given everyone perfect love and eternal life.
Guaranteed sunlessness and perfect forever.
Guaranteed safety and wholeness and peace.
Given his answer to the separation.
Put in place a perfect plan for all our awakening which cannot fail.
Shared true perception with us through christ vision.
Forgiven everyone already by giving the atonement.
Ensured nothing real has ever been hurt or lost or sick or dead.
Like, literally all the hard work has been done FOR us already. We've been handed total perfection and perfect functioning and an absolutely idyllic permanent and safe home in God forever. Plus God has handed us the answer to all our prayers and has met all our needs. He has given us the Holy Spirit to answer the separation and to guarantee its end.
That is hardly anything that WE need to be doing. Other than, as the course says, having a LITTLE WILLINGNESS to receive, acknowledge, and accept, what GOD HAS GIVEN.
All we're doing is being in denial of something that is already there. The opposite of denial is acceptance. All we're being asked to do is to LET GOD be God, and let his will be done.
As we allow God to be God and realize that God can and has DONE all the hard work, it should come as a massive relief, in which you can start to let go of YOUR attempted role of playing at being God. Of being the one who has to be responsible for getting yourself out of hell all on your own.
By handing over ownership of the solution to God, you can let go of trying to solve and fix your life, mind, self, suffering, whatever, and LET HIM DO IT FOR YOU.
The separation from God was nothing to do with an actual loss of perfection, it was only to do with a kind of breakdown in communication in which we just sort of "shut out" absolute perfection and pretended to be imperfect. Shutting out immortality to try to be mortal.
We also shut out God's authority and stopped wanting him to GIVE US EVERYTHING, so we closed ourselves off to him and tried to go it alone. It's that heavy burden of going it alone that you need to relinquish. To let go of "I will get myself out of this".
This is why the course asks us to resign as our own teacher, but here we all, all hitting our heads against the wall trying to TEACH OURSELVES how to wake up. We have taken over the Holy Spirit's function and God's function and Christ's function. We have to hand back to them the true functioning that THEY HAVE, and let them be that, so that they can GIVE TO US what we're supposed to be receiving and extending.
We can't wake up by hacking away at the ego self, the false sense of identity, the limitations, the suffering self, the thinking mind, bla bla bla. We wake up FROM it by shifting our entire identity so that it is centred in the christ self that God HAS ALREADY created us to be. The self you have and are which is hiding underneath all the ego lies.
Your function is not to do what God has already done - which is to create you to function perfectly and to have no flaws and to be worthy of love. You are simply melting your RESISTANCE AND FEAR of it, so that you can LET IT IN again. To reclaim your inheritance which you have denied.
"Glory is your inheritance, given your Soul by its Creator, that you might EXTEND it."
"Yet perfect security and complete fulfillment are my inheritance. I have tried to give my inheritance away in exchange for the world I see. But God has kept my inheritance safe for me. My own real thoughts will teach me what it is."
"Peace is a natural heritage of the Soul. Everyone is free to refuse to accept his inheritance, but he is NOT free to establish what his inheritance IS. The problem which everyone MUST decide is the fundamental question of his own authorship. All fear comes ultimately, and sometimes by way of very devious routes, from the denial of Authorship."
"Instead of "seek you first the Kingdom of Heaven" say "Will ye first the Kingdom of Heaven," and you have said "I know what I am, and I will to accept my own inheritance."
"Your inheritance awaits only the recognition that you have BEEN redeemed. The Holy Spirit guides you into Life Eternal, but YOU must relinquish your investment in death, or you will not see it, though it is all around you."
"Perceiving the majesty of God AS your brother is to accept your OWN inheritance."
"Who assumes a power that he does not have is deceiving himself. Yet to accept the power given him by God is but to acknowledge his Creator and accept His gifts. And His gifts have no limit. To ask the Holy Spirit to decide for you is merely to accept your true inheritance."
"What God has given is so far beyond our curriculum that learning but disappears in its presence. Yet while its presence is obscured, the focus properly belongs on the curriculum."
Heaven has always been the same, has not changed, and will always be the same.
The way that heaven was before "we separated" (an illusion, not possible), is still going to be the same it is NOW and the same it will ALWAYS be.
When the separation is over, the earth, which is an illusion, and is impossible...
"It is the world you see that is impossible."
...stuff which seemed to be the "possible content" of a world of separation, WILL NOT be getting "access" to heaven, will not be joining with heaven, and will not be CHANGING heaven into some kind of "post separation" state that is DIFFERENT to how heaven was BEFORE separation.
Heaven is a constant state.
There is NO WAY that planet earth can be "integrated" into heaven, included in heaven, or turned into heaven, or translated into heaven, or seen as heaven, or in any way become "part of" heaven. Heaven CANNOT CHANGE.
Heaven is the same as it always was, always is, and always will be. There is no open-door policy for renegade worlds to find amnesty. Earth CANNOT be translated into heaven. No part of "the separation" can become part of heaven.
The separation HAS NOT HAPPENED. The separation is IMPOSSIBLE. You cannot BE separate from God in truth, you cannot actually make "real planets", you canot create a "real world" of form and populate it with "real bodies". None of this "making of planet earth" has actually happened!
It is not happening now. It did not occur! Separation is impossible.
People are concerned that who THEY ARE is going to be left behind and left out of heaven, when the universe disappears, and are frightened that THEY HAVE ALREADY BEEN LEFT OUT. There are subconscious illusory fears and experiences of "rejection" from God playing out, whenever anyone tries to find a way to KEEP the Earth and rationalize HOW it is possible for it to become part of God’s creation.
God’s creation is already DONE. It is COMPLETE. There will be no seconds. There is no afterthought. Earth cannot become part of it on any terms. ILLUSIONS CANNOT ENTER HEAVEN and earth MUST be an illusion because separation CANNOT HAPPEN and HAS NOT HAPPENED. So the entire foundation of "the earth existing" is FALSE.
The world DOES NOT EXIST NOW, it DID NOT EXIST in the past, and IT WILL NOT EXIST in the future.
This is also reflected in Jesus’s statement that "at no time does the body exist". At no time does Earth exist either!
We are worried that who we ARE is going to be left out of heaven, forgotten by God, not included in the return home, and that what we ARE is tied to FORM and therefore when FORM is shown to have NEVER EXISTED IN THE FIRST PLACE, we think this means WE will not be able to enter heaven. But truth is, we are believing this ALREADY, because we already think we sinned for real, were already kicked out, and have already been rejected by love.
Truth is, if we stay identified with the ego, we will keep trying to find ways to prove that there IS a world and it will somehow become a part of heaven. WE DO NOT NEED THE WORLD. "The world holds nothing that I WANT". You do not NEED this wold at all, neither to keep its specialness nor to keep WHO YOU ARE. It has no meaning, no usefulness, no purpose, IT IS AN ILLUSION. You don’t want this!
Why in any way try to "defend the earth" or find some loophole or rationalization for how it will be kept and become part o heaven? GOD has already created your HOME - heaven - and it is PERFECT FOR YOU.
When you cross over the bridge to heaven, you will recognize that you GAVE UP NOTHING and GAINED EVERYTHING. The world, earth, IS NOTHING. Giving it up is NOT A LOSS. There are no grounds for keeping it. If you want to keep it, you have *ego attachments*, which are keeping you bound to an ILLUSION of something other than what God WILLS for you to have.
What God is offering is far greater, IS EVERYTHING, compared to the meager shit-farm that is planet earth. This World OFFERS YOU NOTHING. Nothing that you want. "A teacher of God will be more than willing TO GIVE UP ALL THE PLESAURES OF THE WORLD." Ie, give up the earth, because it no longer. SUBSTITUTES FOR LOVE. Pleasure is not love. Your TOYS of physicality are not love.
God has a wonderful reunion planned for you. When you finally let go of the world that NEVER EXISTED, recognizing that it is NOTHING because "there is no world", you will HAPPILY accept WHAT DOES EXIST - which is God’s creation for you, which is HEAVEN. What you will GAIN is absolutely huge compared to the fact that you will not LOSE anything worth having AT ALL, because earth is NOT WORTH HAVING.
Defenders of the planet have one thing to learn. THERE IS NO WORLD, and never was. There IS nothing to turn into heaven. All the content of heaven is *already complete* and nothing else will be added to it other than an extension of what it already is INSIDE it. Let go of planet earth. It is an impossible place. It is nothing more than an illusion. It is not God’s gift to you. You should have no desire to have it be kept in any way whatsoever. What God IS going to share with you is FAR BETTER than anything you could ever dream of.
The body is a separation device. It was made to section off and fence in a SMALL PORTION of mind, which seems then to find itself housed "inside" the body, while the larger portion of mind appears to be "separated off" or unconscious, outside the body. The sense of being isolated, separated, limited, partial, not whole, thus belongs to the "inside the body" experience, which is an experience of being only PART of yourself. To return to wholeness you have to thus transcend the body, erase the body, have no separation devices in the mind, and therefore collapse the gap between the outer and inner. The body symbolizes the split in the mind and once the split is erased the body is erased.
"God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there. Limits on love will ALWAYS seem to shut Him out, and to keep you APART from Him. The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and completely limitless idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that, within it, is YOUR Kingdom, where God can enter not. Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And, to defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe."
Since the body itself is a separation device BETWEEN parts of mind, designed to keep one part of mind sectioned off from the other part, it can only seem to EXIST at all while there is a sense of separation. If the mind is split, the split shows up as a body coming between "you" (within the body) and the rest of you (outside the body, in others). The body is thus a symbol of separation in the mind, and when the mind does not have separation in it there cannot be a body at all.
This is why God cannot enter a body, because that's like saying you can keep a separation device, something which sections off inner and outer, and keeps them apart. It's like saying the whole of God which is everywhere (within and without) can be stuffed inside a container which is less than everywhere, and all of God can thus be housed inside a box and be ABSENT from the outside. This is utterly impossible because God is unlimited and infinite and all encompassing.
Thus God, all of God, cannot enter a body or dwell in a body entirely. Nor can you, who find yourself to "be in a body" or rather, who have a split mind which shows up AS a body coming between you and the rest of you, join with God fully while maintaining a body. The body can only be there IF there is separation in the mind. If the mind has NO belief in separation it utterly not only transcends the body but ERASES the body. There can be no body at all without a belief in separation. Total wholeness wipes the body away completely. Meaning that to truly be whole you cannot be inside a body. And you therefore cannot fully MEET, join, be one with all of God, while there is a body present. You have to leave the realm of bodies entirely to be infinite and unlimited.
"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love, which as it is in Heaven has no form. Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed. In this form you can fulfill your function even here, although ***what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still.***"
This is similarly why you cannot be Christ in a body, IMO. Christ is similarly unlimited and whole and infinite. Just as is your soul. Your soul cannot enter a body either. "The body neither lives nor dies because it cannot contain you who are life." Christ cannot directly in a first-person way be CONFINED in a body or sectioned off and found to be isolated to one place and not another. However, I believe ACIM is saying that you can "channel" Christ in a body, to some extent. You can be close to Christ and you can extend His love and miracles, but it's like he is working "through you" once removed, not directly.
I don't think Jesus was thus "Christ in a body" because if Christ could be in a body, fully, with no limitation at all, bodies could coexist with Christ and be his equal, and bodies would then have to exist in heaven as creations. Christ is unlimited, infinite, everywhere, and bigger than the universe. In ACIM Jesus lets us know that he "was a man who remembered his soul" and he remembered it in the atonement and ascension to heaven. And prior to that, he still had some trials and lessons, not least of which was the crucifixion. He BECAME identified fully with Christ, but not until getting out of here.
"To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body’s nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear."
"The death of an illusion means nothing. It disappears when you awaken and decide to dream no more."
"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. The last one had gone. It was laid in the tomb, but there was nothing left to bury. It did not disintegrate because the unreal cannot die. It merely became what it always was."
I've been trying to find away to describe forgiveness in a way that is fully encompassing. I'm getting closer.
First of all we were in heaven and everything was, and still is, perfect and whole and innocent and beautiful and immortal.
Then we did the separation idea which is an attempt to dream that you are exiled from heaven and outside of God, in a mortal realm of death and suffering.
God created the Holy Spirit to answer this insane world and provide a template/example of how to live and see in such a way that a) hell is forgiven and overlooked and not believed in, and b) the way to heaven is opened up.
ACIM refers to "the real world" as something you reach or see just prior to heaven. It also refers to "the forgiven world", the world you made but seen from a different perspective.
The question is, how do you move from false perception to true perception, and what is the nature of this true perception? How do you look at hell and not regard it as hell?
The really mind-bending part I think is in trying to understand how you can be in this hellish cruel world and not regard it as real. Or the question of, how do you love something which is driven toward attack and sin and death.
I think what we have to realize is, Jesus is trying to get us to accept ONLY and align with, the nature of heaven. He wants us to be heaven-like. This entails several aspects:
1) "Be vigilant only for the Kingdom", meaning to put your full attention on accepting it as the ONLY truth and not believing anything else.
2) "I am under no laws but God's", meaning you recognize that you operate within and from God and by His laws, completely ignoring the laws of spacetime.
3) "Teach only love for that is what you are", meaning you are being the way you would be in heaven, loving and giving and joyful and appreciative.
4) "I am still as God created me", meaning you recognize your identity as Christ which is IN heaven, and live out from that Christ nature, expressing Christ at all times.
5) "The power to work miracles belongs to you" and "To recognize that all power is of God is to gain all power", meaning that you are plugged into Spirit and the Holy Spirit is mechanizing miracles through you, you are effortlessly able to break the laws of the world and "there is nothing my holiness cannot do."
6) "Only the truth is true and nothing else is true", meaning we believe and accept fully only God's truth and ways, and completely reject and deny and see as false anything that is against this truth. Which includes all aspects of the false world of hell.
The list really goes on, because the course says a lot about this. But I think overall if we focus on trying to "be heaven like" while in this world, accepting only God's truth as true, bringing Heaven's light and love into this world to heal, being "in it but not of this world", we will achieve "the real world".
The real world is a reflection of heaven, aligned with heaven, symbolizing heaven. It is a state of mind. And that state of mind is very close to being heavenly. So we need to get our minds into a heaven-like state as much as possible in dreaming.
As we do this, as we become "the light of the world", as we express miracles from God, as we extend God's love here and be as God created us, identified with spirit not body, and are essentially acting from beyond the laws of spacetime, our attitude towards hell and cruelty will automatically take on its "new perspective".
The true perception we are steering toward and HOW it looks and WHAT it sees are really determined by you "embedding" yourself in heaven. Being true to God's truth. Being aligned with God's will. Being an extender of God's love. Being a doer of God's will. etc... Like, if you might imagine, an angel of light who has briefly stepped into this dimension, retaining all its heavenly brightness and power, not of this world but acting in it temporarily.
It's by recognizing that the real world is a reflection of heaven, and that therefore true perception is aligned with knowledge, that we can see "what kind of seeing" we need to be having, "what kind of attitude" we need to be having about the world.
When we are coming from love and light and truth we just WILL see the world in a forgiving way. What seemed to be dark and cruel and twisted, will be loved and shone away. What seemed to be attack and threat and danger, will be rendered harmless. It's hard to imagine HOW that can be possible or what that "looks like", but it is automatically taken care of when your mind is approaching oneness with God.
We are to be heaven's representatives here in this realm. We are to be teachers of God who teach (give, extend, express, symbolize) God here in this realm. We are to demonstrate that we are entirely driven by, orchestrated by, willing with, in unison with, on the side of, accepting of, God and his mighty companions.
And we are to live as though we are in heaven already, perfect already, immortal already, while having these bodies, to symbolize and represent innocence, harmlessness and an eternal life to those who are tired of the drudgery the world has to offer.